Ego

Ripe ego
Chapter 6 - I Say Unto You, Vol. 1
The first question:
Osho,
I could not follow the relationship between the five minds you talked about and
the sayings of Jesus. Will you please enlighten?
My God, so I have to go into it again? I was thinking I was finished with those
five minds. But it is not a surprise, I was expecting something like that, because
I had not made it clear. I had only given you a few hints, and those too, very
indirectly.
If you had meditated over it you would have found the relationship, but you
dont want to work at all. You dont want to do any homework. Let us try to go
into it again.
The five minds were: first, the pre-mind - let us call it the primal. Second, the
collective mind - let us call it the social. Third, the individual mind - the ego
mind. Fourth, the cosmic mind - the universal mind. And the fifth, the no-mind,
christ-mind, buddha-mind let us call it the transcendental.
The first thing to be understood is that Jesus sayings are addressed to the third
mind, the individual, because they can be addressed only to the third mind. All
the scriptures are addressed to the third mind, because only at the point of the
third is understanding possible - difficult, but possible.
Up to the second mind, the social, you dont have any understanding. You are
imitative, you are just a member of a great mechanism called society. You dont
have any identity. You cannot be addressed, you cannot be provoked. Nobody
exists in you. You are just an echo - echo of the society, the church, the state,
the country - an echo of many things, but just the echo. You are not yet real.
How can you understand before that? Thats why a Jesus or a Buddha is born in
a highly evolved society. They are not born in primitive societies.
Buddha was born in Bihar, not in Bastar. Bihar was the highest peak of Indian
mind in those days. Never again has Indian consciousness touched that climax.
Jesus was born at the pinnacle of Jewish consciousness - he is the fruit and the
flower of the whole Jewish history; he could not have been born anywhere else.
For Jesus to exist, a certain milieu is needed, certain people are needed who
can understand him. Certain people are needed who can not only Understand
him, hut can he transformed by him.
So the first thing is that the sutras of Jesus are addressed to the third mind, the
individual mind, the ego mind. The ego has a certain function to fulfill; it is not
just useless. It becomes a hindrance if you go higher than the third, but you
cannot go higher than it if it is not there. It is a must: it is a necessary step;

only the ego can understand the misery of being in an ego. The social mind
cannot understand it; the problem has not yet arisen, so the solution is
meaningless.
If you are suffering from a disease, then the medicine, the remedy becomes
significant. If you are not suffering from the disease, the remedy is not a
remedy for you.
The social mind has not suffered yet from the ego. Hence anything that helps
to go beyond ego is utterly meaningless; it has no point of reference, it has no
context. Jesus talks to the third mind, remember it. If you are still in the second
mind, Jesus will remain an enigma to you. If you are just a Christian or a Jew or
a Hindu, then you will not be able to understand Jesus.
Just think. In those days the people who gathered around Jesus must have been
very individualistic people. Otherwise how was it possible for them to listen to
somebody who was so rebellious, who was so radical, who was turning the
whole society upside down, who was saying continuously: It has been told to
you in the old days, but I say unto you.? And was denying all that had been
said, was continuously dismantling, destroying - of course, to create something
new, but an ordinary Jew would not have been able to come into close quarters
with Jesus. It would have been too much. Only a few individuals, rebellious
people, must have gathered around him.
The social mind gave him crucifixion. The society, the formalist, the Pharisee,
the rabbi, the moralist, the puritan - they all gathered together to kill him,
because he was bringing something of the individual consciousness, he was
creating individuality in people. This is the first thing to understand in how the
sutras are related to the five minds.
First: they are addressed to the third, and they can only be addressed to the
third. The first, the primal, will not be able even to listen. The second, the
social. can listen, but will not be able to understand. The third, the individual,
can understand, but will not be able to follow. But once understanding intellectual understanding, at least - has arisen, then the door opens. Only the
fourth mind, the universal, can follow when ego has been dropped. When ego
has been used and dropped, when the egos function is fulfilled - its no more
necessary, one has gone beyond it - the boat can-be left behind.
So remember, the first cannot even listen; the second can listen, but cannot
understand; the third can understand, but cannot follow; the fourth can follow,
but only follow; the fifth can become the transcendental mind. This is how they
are related.
The second thing to remember:
Jesus says

Enter ye in at the strait gate:

for wide is the gate, and broad is the way,
that leadeth to destruction,
and many there be which go in thereat:
Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way,
which leadeth unto life,
and few there be that find it.
Visualize the third mind; it is just in the middle, half-way. Two minds are below
it, two minds are above it. The social mind is below it and the universal mind is
above it. Both look alike. And these are the only two ways open for the
individual mind to go, otherwise you will feel stuck.
In life, one has to continuously move. It is movement, it is process. If you feel
stuck you will become miserable, one has to go on and on till the goal is
reached. Standing in the third mind, the individual ego faces two possibilities:
either it can go up and become universal mind, or it can fall back and can
become the social mind.
Both look alike, thats why Jesus says Enter ye in at the strait gate.. Both are
gates, and both look very alike. What is their similarity? The universal mind has
dropped the ego, it is in tune with the whole. The social mind has not created
the ego yet, it is in tune with the social. But both have a kind of attunement.
The social mind is at ease with the society, it flows rhythmically, smoothly. It
has no struggle, conflict. It fits together, it is adjusted - adjusted with the
society. But society is a big thing; it almost looks as if you are adjusted with
God. The social mind is very normal. Thats what psychoanalysts go on doing.
Whenever somebody becomes too much of an individual, they say he is
maladjusted. Then what do they do? They bring you to a gate - the social; they
help you to adjust with the society. That they call normal health. That they call
psychological health. It reduces tensions, it reduces inconveniences, it makes
you more comfortable and secure, but at a great cost.
Religion also helps you to go beyond tensions, but not through the second door.
Religion helps you to go through the third door. That is the difference between
psychoanalysis and religion. Religion also makes you adjusted, but not with the
society; it makes you adjusted with the whole, with the universe, with God.
That is real adjustment, and great joy arises out of it.
To be adjusted with the society is a very tiny arrangement. You will be less
tense but not more joyous, remember it. The fourth mind will give you joy,
celebration; the second mind will simply help you to remain more calm and
quiet and collected, but there will be no ecstasy.

Let ecstasy always be the criterion. Whenever you go high, ecstasy grows. If
you go low, your ecstasy is diminished. But both look alike because both are

adjustments. In one you drop being the individual, you become a sheep. You
start imitating people, you become part of the mob. The mob itself may be
wrong - thats not the question - but you adjust with it. The mob may be
neurotic, and in fact is so: mobs are more neurotic than individuals.
Friedrich Nietzsche has said - and rightly - that as far as individuals are
concerned, neurosis is a rare accident. But as far as mobs are concerned, that
is the rule not the exception.
Mobs have always been neurotic. Adjust with the mob. You will feel good
because now you are part of the social neurosis, you dont have a private
neurosis. You will never feel it - everybody is just like you - things feel perfectly
good. Thats why Jesus says both gates are alike: both are gates. But there is a
great difference.
And the difference is: Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate.. If you
go backwards, the gate is wide: and broad is the way.. But if you go upward,
narrow is the way.very narrow. In fact, you have to go alone. You cannot take
anybody with you. If you go to the fourth you will have to go alone. You will
have to go in absolute aloneness. Thats why solitude, meditation, prayer - all
have to be done in aloneness. You cannot get into the fourth with all your
friends, family, acquaintances, etcetera. You will have to leave everybody
behind, you will have to move on a very narrow path. It is so narrow that it
cannot even contain two together. You cannot even take your wife, your
husband, your son, your mother. There is no way. You have to go alone. It is
solitary.
You can help others also to go to it, but they will go in their own solitariness.
Remember, the higher you go, the more alone you are. The lower you go, the
more you are with people.
It is like a pyramid. The lowest part of the pyramid has the biggest base: the
base is the biggest. Then, as you go higher, the pyramid becomes smaller and
smaller and smaller, and at the apex, it is just a point. You can visualize these
minds in this way. The primal is the base of the pyramid; the social is very close
to the base - a little smaller than the base; the individual is very close to the
apex, to the peak - far away from the base; and the universal is just a point, the
apex. And when you have jumped even beyond that, the pyramid
disappears.and the fifth, the transcendental. It is not part of the pyramid at all.
The third mind is addressed by Jesus, and is told that these are the two
possibilities. If you enter with the collectivity you will be destroying yourself; it
will be destructive, it will not be creative. You will not be born out of it, it will be
simple suicide. There will be no resurrection in it.
Enter ye in at the strait gate:
for wide is the gate, and broad is the way,
that leadeth to destruction.
And many there be which go in thereat.

The majority follows that. That is why you dont see flowering, you dont see
eyes full of splendor, you dont see people in a dance, you dont see hearts
singing, you dont see pulsating life energies, you dont see streaming vitalities.
You simply see dull, stale, stagnant, dirty pools, no more flow. And when the
flow disappears, glow also disappears. Then you are slowly slowly dying and
doing nothing. This is destruction.
If you follow the higher, the universal mind, because strait is the gate, and
narrow is the way.. That narrow has to be remembered always. With the
social you can be with the mob, with the individual you cannot be with the
mob.
You call only be with a small group of people. You will always find whenever
there are egoistic people that they will create small groups, their own societies,
clubs, lodges. They will not move with the mass, they will have their own
chosen few, select few; they will move with them. Authors will move with
authors. Poets will move with poets. Painters will have their own clubs, their
own restaurants where they will meet. They will have their own superior, small
groups, and they will be very choosy about who is to be allowed.
With the fourth, you are alone - not even a club of the chosen people; you are
alone. With the fifth you are not even alone, even you have disappeared. This is
how it goes. Slowly slowly things go on disappearing. First the mass; then the
small societies, groups, clubs; then you; and one day there is only emptiness in
your hands. That emptiness is what Jesus calls the kingdom of God, Buddha
calls nirvana.
Third: Jesus talks about prayer. Prayer is the way - Jesus way - to be alone.
Buddhas way is meditation, Jesus way is prayer. But the intrinsic quality has to
be the same. Jesus says: Be silent, language is not needed.
Language is helpful in the social. In the universal, language is not needed.
Language is a social phenomenon. Animals dont have language because they
dont have societies. Man has language because man has society; man is a
social animal. When you start moving beyond society, language becomes
irrelevant. Language is to relate with the other; and God is not the other, God is
your innermost core. There is no need for any language.
So Jesus says
And when thou prayest,
thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are:
for they love to pray standing in the synagogues
and in the corners of the streets,
that they may be seen of men.
Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

Dont pray for people to see that you are praying, that you are religious. Dont
pray as a show, dont make it a performance. It is sacrilegious. Prayer should
be in solitude, nobody should know about it. There is no need. It is nobody
elses concern.

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet.What does he mean by
closet? He means drop all language from your mind, all verbalization from
your mind. The moment you drop verbalization from your mind, you have
moved into such a private world that nobody else can go there. Language
dropped.you have dropped the whole world. Just think of it. If for a moment
there is no language inside you, then where are you? You are no more here, no
more in this world. You are in a world totally different from this. When there is
no language in you, you are utterly private. Language makes you public. Nolanguage makes you private.
This is what Jesus means when he says But thou, when thou prayest, enter into
thy closet - drop all language and verbalization. All communication has to be
dropped. You just have to be there silent, present - but utterly non-verbal, not
saying a single thing.
.And when thou hast shut thy door.. When the door on the language, on the
verbal, on the linguistic mind has been closed.pray to thy Father in secret then just be a deep gratefulness, a gratitude. Then bow down to the unknown.
Then surrender before the mysterious. Then just be in awe, in wonder. This is
what prayer is. This is the entry from the ego to the universal, from the third to
the fourth.
Language is the medium to relate with others, and silence is the medium to
relate with God - because God is not the other. Only in silence do you commune
with your own inner being.
Logic is the way in the world, love is the way in God. Prayer is a loving silence nothing else. If you ask me what prayer is, I will say a loving silence. Silence,
but utterly full of love, overflowing with love. If silence is there and love is not
there, then it is meditation. If silence is there, and suffused with love, fragrant
with love, then it is prayer - that is the only difference. If you can shower your
silence with love, it becomes prayer. If you cannot, then it remains meditation.
Both lead there, so there is no problem of higher and lower: meditation is not
higher, nor is prayer higher.
There are two types of people in the world - the man and the woman - the
people of intelligence and the people of love. Jesus belongs to the second type:
his path is the path of love. Buddhas path is the path of intelligence. Buddha
says: Just be silent and you will jump from the third to the fourth. Jesus says: Be
silent and full of love, and you will jump from the third to the fourth. Both are
bridges.

If it appeals to you, if it feels that it strikes in your heart, that the idea simply
clicks in your being - then prayer is your way. But try both. If you are confused,
try both. Whichever feels good is good, because both are as potent as the
other.
All words belong to the social; silence belongs to the universal. And in the
transcendental even silence disappears. First language disappears, then silence
too. Then there is absolute silence when silence has also disappeared. This is
the meaning when Jesus says Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as
it is in heaven. He surrenders in deep love, in silence.
And remember, these are not the words to be repeated. Christians have
misunderstood Jesus. These are not the words to be repeated, these are the
emotions to be lived. Not words to be repeated, but emotions to be lived.

Thy kingdom come.Now this can be just a word in you, you can repeat it; or this
can be a feel in you - Thy kingdom come.Not a single word is uttered inside but
this is your feeling. Your hands are raised to receive the kingdom, you are
surrendered, your heart is open. You are ready for God to descend in you.
Do you see the difference? Dont repeat the words. Let it be a feeling, and then
it will go deeper, and then it will really become a prayer.
And the fourth thing about the transcendental:
Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be
opened unto you:
For every one that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth; and to him
that knocketh it shall be opened.
What does Jesus mean by saying Ask, and it shall be given you? He means that
really it is already given to you. You have not been able to see it, because you
have not asked for it. The door is already open! But because you have not
knocked at it, it has remained open and yet closed for you. Is it just for the sake
of asking that you will get it? It is possible only if you have already got it,
otherwise how can you get anything just by asking?
Try. You want to have a big palace - are you going to get it just for the asking?
You are not going to get it just by asking, otherwise all beggars would be
emperors. You dont have it, and you will have to work hard, and then too there
is no certainty that you will have it. You may succeed, you may not succeed.
There are a thousand and one competitors too. You will have to go through
being aggressive, and you will have to put all that you have at stake. And then
too, more is the possibility that you will be a loser. You want money? You cannot
get it just for the asking. You want prestige, power, respectability, fame? You
will not get it just for the asking.

But Jesus says: God you can have just for the asking. He simply means what
Buddha means when he says that you have it already there. You are not to
achieve it; it is your intrinsic nature. This is Jesus way of saying the same
thing: You can get only by asking because you are already there. The asking
will make you alert, thats all. If you ask consciously, if you knock consciously, if
you start groping consciously, you will become alert to that which has already
been there, which has always been there, which has been the case from the
very beginning. God is given to you. You are carrying God within you. But you
have not asked. Your desire has not become conscious.
So God is there, you are there, but there is no bridge. By asking you will create
the bridge. If the asking is immense, tremendous, total, then in a single instant
the bridge will be projected. The kingdom of God is within you, thats why

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be
opened unto you.
This is how these sutras are related with the five minds. But they are basically
addressed to the third mind.
To those who seek identity, Norman O Brown advocates Get lost! and Timothy
Leary says Drop out! But I say to you, that to get lost, one must have found
oneself first, and to drop out one must have been in first. You can drop out if
you are, you can get lost if the ego is ready and ripe. That is the difference
between a sannyasin and a hippie.
A hippie is one who has been trying to drop something which he has not got
yet, who is trying to drop something which he has not earned yet, who is trying
to renounce something which is not there. A sannyasin is one who has come to
feel the ripe ego and, feeling the misery and anguish of it, drops it. Both look
alike. Both look alike, but the hippie is not going from the third to the fourth.
The hippie has not been in the third yet, he will fall to the second. Thats why
hippies start creating their own clan, their own tribe, their own society. It has
almost the same structure as the old society that they have left.
If in the old society you cannot have long hair, in a hippie society you cannot
have short hair. The structure is the same. If in the old society you cannot go
on without taking a bath for months, in the hippie society you are not allowed
to take a bath every day. That is too conventional. You will look a little antisocial if you take a bath every day. But it is the same society repeated, the
same structure - even though it is against, it is the same structure. The hippie
is not getting beyond society, he is going against one society and creating
another.
The sannyasin is going beyond society. He is moving away from the very need
of being part of a society.

The sutras are addressed to the egoist. But remember, the egoist can
understand them, but cannot follow. To follow them you will have to start
dropping your ego. Then you can follow, then the universal mind will arise in
you.
Prayer is the way. or meditation. And when the universal has arrived, dont stop
there. One step more.. This very consciousness that you have arrived, this very
consciousness that you have realized God, this very consciousness that you
have become one with God has to be drowned too. This is the last barrier to be
dropped. Once it is gone, you and the whole are one - so one that there is
nobody even to say I am one with the whole. That is the transcendental.
Thats what Jesus calls the kingdom of God.
The second question:

Mature ego
Chapter 8 - Returning to the Source
There are some beautiful letters carved over the gate of the Oaku Temple in
Kyoto which say: The First Principle.
People come from far and near to admire them. The original calligraphy was
done on paper by the Master Kosen.
When Kosen was drawing the characters there was a pupil standing by who had
mixed the ink. Not so good, said the pupil at Kosens first try. Thats worse
than the first one, said the pupil to the second try. And so it went on.
After the sixty-fourth try, the ink was running low,
so the pupil went out to mix some more. Just a quick one with the last of the
ink, thought Kosen, while that pupil is out of the way.
When the pupil returned, he took a good look as this latest effort, and said, A
masterpiece!
A few things before we enter this beautiful story. First, if you are divided, then a
conflict arises not only in the mind but in your bio-energy. Then you are two.
And if you are two, the energy is wasted in the conflict; the energy is
dissipated. Unless you are one, nothing can be done. As far as the inner
journey is concerned, your oneness will be needed more and more. On the
surface it is okay; you can go on doing the day-to-day work even if you are
divided.
Just imagine a circle with a center: if you draw two lines from the periphery
towards the center, on the periphery they are divided; the more you come
towards the center, the gap becomes less and less and less. Just near the
center the gap is almost not; at the center the gap disappears. At the center
everything becomes one; at the periphery everything is divided, is two.
When you are self-conscious you are two, because then you exist at the
periphery. When you are not self-conscious you are one, because then you
dont exist at the periphery, you exist at the center.

If you are an egoist you are dissipating your energy, because the ego exists at
the periphery. The ego exists for others; it has to be on the periphery. When
you are totally alone in your innermost being the ego doesnt exist. You are but
the ego is not, and when you are without the ego your energy is tremendous.
When you are without the ego you are a god. Then you are undivided and the
source of energy is infinite.
At the periphery everything is divided, and not only divided but in conflict. It is
as if both my hands are fighting - right fights the left, left fights the right. What
will happen? Is there any possibility of either hand being victorious? - no
possibility, because both hands are mine. The right cannot win because it is
mine; the left cannot be defeated - it is mine. Behind both hands I am one, so
there is no possibility of any victory. And all victories will be just dreams,
pretensions. I can fool myself, I can put my right hand on top of my left and
say, Now the right has won. I can change the situation in a single moment; I
can put the left on top of the right and say, The left has won. This is what you
have been doing continuously.
If you fight with yourself there is no victory. Nobody is going to be defeated,
nobody is going to win; the whole game is stupid. But one thing is certain: if
you go on fighting with yourself you are dissipating energy. The right cannot
win, the left cannot win - you will be defeated in the end. It is suicidal, you are
destroying yourself.
When you are one you become a creator, when you are two you become
suicidal - you destroy yourself. And how do you become two? Whenever selfconsciousness arises, you become two. Whenever you look at others and feel,
What do they think about me? you become two. Thats why all that is
beautiful cannot happen when you are two. A creator has to forget everything,
he has to forget the whole world; only then something from beyond descends.
It is said about one of the greatest poets of India, Rabindranath Tagore, that
whenever he was writing or painting a picture he would become so selfunconscious that he would forget to eat, he would forget to drink, he would
forget to sleep. Even his wife would come and he would not be able to
recognize who was standing in front of him. So whenever he was in a creative
mood nobody would disturb him, nobody would come near him, nobody would
pass by his house, because he was in such a different state of being that to
disturb him could be fatal. For three days, four days, even for a week, he would
not eat, he would not do anything. He had become just a vehicle. He was
one.
One great English poet, Coleridge, has left only seven poems completed, and
he was one of the greatest masters. He left thousands of poems incomplete;
forty thousand in all have been calculated, only seven completed. Just before
his death somebody asked, What is the matter with you? The whole house is
filled with incomplete poems, and a few poems need just a touch, the last line.
Or three lines are there, one line is missing. Why cant you complete them?

Coleridge is reported to have said, Who can complete them? I have never
written a single word. When I am not, then something descends. Only three
lines came; I was waiting for the fourth but it never came. And I cannot
complete it because that wont be right. I cannot complete it because it will
come from a different plane of being. I was not when these three lines came,
and I would be there too much when the fourth is added. I could add it, but that
would be just false. It would be something imposed - it wont have a flow, it
wont be authentic, it wont be true. So what can I do? I can simply wait. He
waited for certain poems for twenty years, and then the line, the missing line
would descend, and he would add it.
It happened: Rabindranaths book Gitanjali, for which he was awarded the
Nobel prize, became world famous. He translated it himself - because he wrote
in Bengali; the original was Bengali, then he translated it himself. But he was
not so confident: it is easy to translate prose, it is very very difficult to translate
poetry, even if it is your own, because poetry exists somewhere beyond
grammar. It is more music, less language; it is more a feeling, less a thought. It
eludes, and that is the beauty of it. You cannot fix it; it is like a river, moving, it
is not like a pond. Prose is like a pond, poetry is like a river.

Rabindranath tried. He worked for many days on single pieces. Then he

translated it completely. But, not confident, he asked C. F. Andrews for help. C.
F. Andrews was one of the colleagues of Mahatma Gandhi; he worked for Indias
independence very deeply. C. F. Andrews looked through it and he said, It is
wonderful, beautiful! Only at four places would I like to change it, because at
four places it is not grammatical. So he changed it at four places, just four
words, and Rabindranath was very happy. Andrews said, It is okay now.
So Rabindranath took it to London. Before it was to be published he called a
small gathering of poets at the house of Yeats, one of the great poets of
England. Almost twenty poets, all known, had gathered. They listened, then
Rabindranath asked, Do you feel that something is missing?
Yeats stood and he said, At four places something is wrong. Rabindranath was
surprised. He couldnt believe it because nobody else knew that C. F. Andrews
had changed the book at four places. He asked, What are those four places? and they were exactly the same places. Yeats said, At these four places the
flow has stopped. Someone else has put in those four words, not you.
Yeats was a very perceptive poet; he could feel that the river had somewhere
become a pond, that someone else from a different plane of being had entered,
that something had become like a block; the river was not flowing as easily
afterwards as it had been flowing before. There was a stone, a rock
somewhere. Grammar is like a rock - it is dead.
Rabindranath then said, Yes, C. F. Andrews suggested these words, and he is
an Englishman, so he knows better. English is not my mother tongue. He
added, These were the four words I had used before Andrews corrected it.

Yeats said, They are ungrammatical but they are poetic, they have the flow, so
forget the grammar and retain the flow.
At the very center, the flow is the thing. Grammar is irrelevant, grammar exists
on the surface; at the center, only a flow of energy. A different plane of being is
needed. When something from the beyond descends into you, you are needed
to be one.
These are the two planes of humanity: duality, the plane of duality, what
Hindus call dwaita, the plane of two; and non-duality, the plane of one, the
plane of the non-dual. When you are divided you are in this world; when you
are undivided you have transcended - you are no longer here, you have
penetrated into the beyond. Then boundaries meet and the boundaries meet in
you. So the whole effort is how to become undivided, how to become one.
Just the other night a girl came to me and she said, I am already a sannyasin
inside. Why divide the outside from the inside? Is there really a division
between inside and outside? Where is the demarcation line? Can you draw a
line and say, Beyond this is inside? Where? - at the body can you draw a line?
If the body dies, you die. If the body is not there, where are you? At the mind
then? - if the mind becomes unconscious you become unconscious. Who are
you without the mind? Where do you divide? - everything is linked.

At the periphery it is outside, at the center it is inside, but the periphery

belongs to the center. Can you have a center without a periphery? - then what
type of center would that be? The center belongs to the periphery. Can you
have a periphery without a center? - they belong to each other. They are just
like two banks of a river: the river flows in between and you cannot divide.
You are hungry - you dont say, Hunger is inside so how can I eat the food
which is outside? You eat the food and the food becomes your blood, and the
blood becomes your bio-energy, and your bio-energy becomes your thinking,
and your thinking becomes your heart, your feeling, and your feeling becomes
your witness, and your witness becomes the divine, the ultimate. There is a
subtle digestion on every plane. You take the food, it is outside. The moment
you have taken it in, you digest it, the non-essential is thrown out again; the
essential moves towards the center. You have digested it; it has become blood,
bones, flesh - the body. Then again a digestion takes place; the most subtle of
it is again absorbed. It becomes your bio-energy, what scientists call bioplasma. It becomes electricity in you. But then again a digestion happens; the
essential in it is again absorbed inwards - it becomes your thoughts. Thought is
subtle electricity. Then again you move inwards. Thinking is digested into
feeling - it becomes your heart.
So love is still a more subtle bio-energy than thinking, but that too is not the
end. Again, in love, that which is more subtle is absorbed and digested - it
becomes your witness, your meditation. It becomes your awareness. But that
too is not the end, because the witness is still there, and when the witness is

there the division is there. The division has become narrow; you are coming
almost to the center but the division is still there. You are a witness - the
subject and the object. Of what are you a witness? The division is still there.
Then at the last jump energy has become totally centered; the object and
subject disappear. Then there is no witness, then you have gone to the beyond,
then you are as if you are not. You are and you are not; you have become the
whole. This is the state, the final state, where in one way you are totally, utterly
annihilated, and in another way you have become the whole. The son
disappears, now you have become the father. Now there is no Christ, just the
supreme-most father exists - the son is absorbed. Where will you draw the line
between that which is outside and that which is inside?
Many people come to me and they say, Inside we are already sannyasins, but
outside.? But is there really a division? And if you divide you become two; if
you become two, then the conflict arises, the whole game of inner war. An
inner politics arises - who is to dominate whom? Either the outside is to
dominate the inside, or the inside is to dominate the outside. If the outside
dominates the inside you become a materialist. If the inside dominates the
outside you become a spiritualist. In either case you are half, you are not
whole.

When the outside and inside disappear, nobody dominates anybody, because a
domination is not a good state of affairs. The one who dominates will be thrown
sooner or later; the oppressors will become the oppressed, and the oppressed
will become the oppressors. It is just a fight between your left hand and right
hand, and the whole game is a pretense. Remember this paradox: the more
you go inwards, the less of the outer there is. When you really reach to the
innermost, inner and outer both disappear. Then you are nothing, and
everything.
In a school a teacher was asking tricky questions, and then she said, Charlie
Brown, how will you define nothingness?
Without a single moments hesitation Charlie Brown said, Nothingness is a
balloon with its skin off.
That is you at the last moment - the skin off.nothingness. But then you have
become the whole because the skin was dividing you from the whole.
And where is your skin? Self-consciousness is your skin, the ego is your skin.
When the ego is off you become nothing and the whole simultaneously,
because they both mean the same thing.
The second thing to be understood: you may have observed in yourself and in
others also, that there is a very deep urge to become unconscious; hence the
appeal of all types of alcohol, drugs, chemical intoxicants. Puritans cannot
understand it, moralists cannot understand it. Why? Preachers go on preaching

against it but it has not changed a single person; not a single man has been
changed through it. Humanity goes on moving on its path: puritans go on
condemning, but nobody listens to them.
It cannot be an ordinary thing, something extraordinary is involved. Thats why
it is so difficult to try to change an alcoholic - very very difficult, almost
impossible. Why is there so much appeal in becoming unconscious? - because
self-consciousness is such a disease, it is such a burden. And there are only two
ways to go beyond it: one is to fall into unconsciousness, the other is to
become superbly conscious. Either move to superconsciousness or move to
unconsciousness. Self-consciousness is such a tension, such an anguish and
anxiety, so move either to alcohol or move to God.
God and the devil are not opposites really; God and alcohol.If God is supreme
consciousness, then unconsciousness is the opposite pole.
I have heard: Once it happened that a social worker who was trying to convert
people towards religion and against sin, against alcohol, came to see Mulla
Nasruddin. She said, Last time I came to see you, you were sober, and it made
me tremendously happy. But now you are again intoxicated and it makes me
very very unhappy.
True, said Mulla Nasruddin beaming with happiness. He said, This time it is
my turn to be happy.

Alcohol, unconsciousness, may not give you happiness but at least it helps you
to forget unhappiness. You forget your anxieties, and through the chemical help
you drop the division, the division into two, the self-consciousness.
Self-consciousness is the greatest tension in the mind. Thats why sometimes
you would like to be alone; you would like to go to the Himalayas and forget the
whole society. Society is not the problem, but when the other is present, it is
very difficult to be self-unconscious or to be unself-conscious - both are the
same. It is difficult when the other is present to forget yourself; the thou
creates the I within you, they are two polarities. When nobody is there and you
are alone, you feel a certain relaxation. Thats why people go to the forests. But
then too they become bored, because when you are alone tension is not there,
but boredom enters because excitement disappears.
Excitement is a sort of anxiety, anxiety is a sort of excitement. If you are after
excitement you cannot be meditative, you cannot move to a solitary place, you
cannot move inwards, because there you will be alone and there is no
excitement. Excitement needs the other. Alone, how can you be excited? nothing is happening, how can you be excited? For anything to happen the
other is needed. So if you are alone you become bored. If you move with
society, live in relationship, then you become much too tense.

So going into loneliness wont help. But if you can drop your self-consciousness
while living in society, with others, in relationship, if you can drop your selfconsciousness, suddenly there is no tension and no boredom, and life is a
constant celebration without any excitement. It is a very silent celebration. It is
a joy, but without any excitement. It is a very very cool happiness; it is a deep
fulfillment, but without any excitement.
A buddha is so fulfilled, but there is no excitement about it. Hes simply
fulfilled. He has not achieved anything, nothing new has happened; he has
simply become so content with himself. It is a very very cool state of enjoyment
- it is a cool state of bliss.
Remember, that is the difference between bliss and happiness: happiness is
excitement; bliss is happiness without excitement. If there is excitement,
sooner or later you will get bored, because only when the excitement is new is
it excitement. But how can you be excited about the same thing again and
again? You are excited about a woman or a man, but when the honeymoon is
over, then the excitement is also over. Almost always, by the end of the
honeymoon a marriage ends. Then there is just a hang-over, because you are
looking for excitement and excitement cannot be a continuous phenomenon.
Unless your love is cool - not cold remember, but cool; cold is dead, cool is
alive, but without any excitement - it is bound to end in boredom.

In the world everything ends in boredom, it has to. When you attain to the
innermost core of your being you are happy without any cause, you are happy
without any reason, you are happy without any excitement. There will be no
boredom. And this is what happens in love also. You need love, because only in
love do you become self-unconscious; only in love does the other disappear.
There is no need to be I. With someone you love you can be alone. Even if
the lover or the beloved is present you can be alone. The deepest possibility in
love is that it helps you to drop self-consciousness.
But if you have to continuously carry the others presence, if you have to
behave accordingly, if you have to follow rules, if you have to plan even in love
what to say and what not to say, then this love is sooner or later going to turn
sour, bitter, because self-consciousness is there.
Wherever you find self-consciousness disappearing - in alcohol, in love, in
meditation - you feel good. But alcohol cannot give you a permanent state;
love can give that to you, but that possibility is very very difficult. Remember,
love is more difficult than meditation because love means living with the other
and without the self. Meditation means living with oneself, forgetting the other
completely - it is a less difficult dimension than love. Thats why those who can
love dont need meditation; they will reach through love.
Jesus says: Love is God. But to love is very difficult. It is difficult because the
other enters with all his problems. The other is ill, you are ill; and when two ill
persons meet illness is not only doubled, it is multiplied. It is very difficult to

love, but if you can love then there is no need for any meditation. Love will
become your meditation and you will reach through it. If you cannot love, if you
feel it difficult, then meditation is the only door. Only one in a million reaches
through love; others reach through meditation. Once you become meditative
love also becomes easy; then you can love. If you love, then meditation comes
as a shadow of it.
You have to decide how to drop your self-consciousness. There are two
methods: one is through love, relationship, living with the other and growing. It
is a difficult path, very very arduous - there is nothing more difficult than that.
And the other is living in meditation. You have to choose.
If you grow in love, meditation will happen like a shadow. Love and meditation
are two aspects of the same coin; if you have gained control of the one aspect,
the other follows. If you meditate, love will follow; if you love, meditation will
follow. This you have to choose. Meditation is easier, love is difficult. Unless you
want to move into the difficult unnecessarily - that is for you to decide;
otherwise with meditation love comes automatically. This is my feeling: that
ninety-nine persons in one hundred have to go through meditation, then love
will happen. Only one percent can go through love and meditation happens.
This is the state of affairs, this is how things are. But one thing is certain, that
in either case self-consciousness is to be dropped.
Now try to understand this story.
There are some beautiful letters carved over the gate of the Oaku Temple in
Kyoto which say: The First Principle.
People come from far and near to admire them. The original calligraphy was
done on paper by the Master Kosen.

Zen uses all types of skills to grow into meditation; calligraphy is one of them.
If you have seen Japanese or Chinese calligraphy, you will become aware of a
certain quality - there is flow. No other language can do that, because every
other language has an alphabet. These far eastern languages - Chinese,
Japanese - dont have an alphabet. They are pictorial languages: not the pen,
but the brush is used, and the flow is the quality.
So a calligraphy is not only that which is written, it also carries something of
the master who has done it - the flow. Change is not allowed, you cannot
correct it; you have simply to do it in one stroke. A very skilled master, a very
mindful state is needed. You cannot change it, you cannot correct it. If you
correct it, the whole point is lost, because then the ego enters. You simply have
to flow with it.
These are pictures, and the basic thing is not that which is written, the basic
thing is that which is hidden. You will be surprised: on the gate of a temple only
these words are written - The First Principle. What type of message is that? -

The First Principle. It says nothing. If you go and read these words, the first
principle, what does it say? There is no message in it.
The first principle is flow; it is not written, these words are just an indirect
way. If you look at the calligraphy, there is the first principle, the flow. If you
can flow, if your energy can flow without any blocks, you will achieve. But the
moment you become self-conscious a block enters, immediately. It is just like
falling into sleep: if you become self-conscious you cannot fall into sleep. Now
the West is suffering from insomnia, and sooner or later the whole world will
suffer, because sleep needs self-unconsciousness.
And yet the whole civilization teaches you how to be more self-conscious. Walk,
do, move in life - the whole training is how to be a subtle egoist. Western
psychology says that a mature ego is needed; the whole Eastern effort is that a
mature egolessness is needed. In fact, when you become egoless, only then
are you mature, never before.
Ego is a juvenile phenomenon. It is childish, it is foolish, it is idiotic, because
through ego you simply cut yourself off from the universal flow; then you are
no longer a part of it. It is as if a wave in the ocean says, I am total, I do not
belong to the ocean - I have nothing to do with the ocean. I am separate. Ego
is separation, and whenever a wave says, I am separate, the wave is foolish.
The wave is one with the ocean; the ocean waves in it.

Real maturity is to attain an egolessness, a balloon with the skin off; then you
are fully mature, a buddha, one who is now awakened. Western psychology
teaches that you should become a mature ego. It is good - if you are attaining
it just to throw it, then it is good, because you can throw a thing only when you
have it. So it is good: attain an ego, but dont get caught in it. It is something to
be attained and thrown. It is something you have to get, because if you dont
have an ego, how will you achieve surrender?
This has been a constant problem for me. Eastern people come to me: Indians,
Japanese, they can surrender very easily. They are almost ready to surrender,
but they have nothing to surrender. Western people come to me: they are very
very antagonistic to surrender, and they have something to surrender. If they
surrender they will grow. And Eastern people, before they surrender something
they have to attain a mature ego.
Remember, only that which you have can be surrendered. If you dont have an
ego, what are you going to surrender? Western psychology takes the first step
and Eastern religion takes the last. They are complementary. Unless Western
psychology and Eastern religion meet, man is going to remain in trouble.
What is in these words, the first principle? They say nothing. But the first
principle is not the point, the words are not the point. The point is, the point
was, for the master to make them with such a flow that not even a touch of

self-consciousness is in them. Whosoever loves to read between lines will be

able to read at this temple gate.
And why at the gate? - because that is the gate of the temple. If you are selfconscious you cannot enter a temple; that is the first principle. If you have selfconsciousness, an egoist mind, you cannot enter the temple. If you drop your
self-consciousness, only then you can enter.
And what is a temple? - it is an emptiness. It is nothing surrounded by walls, it
is an emptiness. You drop the ego outside. This was the problem for the master:
to write these three words in such a flow that while he was writing them, not
even a single touch of the self entered into them. Difficult, because you will not
be able to judge this unless you know how self-consciousness can destroy the
flow. The first principle is to be in such a flow that I is no block; you simply
live in a let-go.
Nothing is like Japanese or Chinese calligraphy; no language can do that, only
they can do it - pictorial, flowing, doing it with a brush. Years of training are
needed. First a man has to be taught the skill of calligraphy, and that alone
wont do because just skill is not the point. A very egoist person can become
very skillful but that is not the point.
So first one has to learn calligraphy for years, and then the master says, Now
drop it. For a few years forget about it. For three or four years the disciple has
to forget about it. He will do other things: gardening, cleaning, many millions of
things, but not calligraphy. He has to completely forget it so that the skill
doesnt remain in the ego, on the surface, but the skill settles and settles, and
settles at the center, reaches to the very bottom of the river.
Then the master says, Now - now you can do calligraphy. But do it without any
self-consciousness, do it as if you are not the doer, as if someone else is doing
it through you; you become just instrumental and just move with the energy.
That was the point, and it was going to be on the gate.
The original calligraphy was done on paper by the Master Kosen. When Kosen
was drawing the characters there was a pupil standing by who had mixed the
ink.
.standing by who had mixed the ink. The ink has to be mixed fresh constantly;
ready-made ink is not used. These are all symbolic things - everything should
be fresh, moving in the moment. A pupil stands by who goes on preparing the
ink, and the master goes on doing the calligraphy.
But when the pupil saw the first calligraphy complete, he said, Not so good.
At Kosens first try this became the problem: immediately the master became
aware of the disciple, that he was standing there judging, looking. And when
somebody is judging it is very difficult to remain self-unconscious. He became
self-conscious - a slight tremor in the hand, a slight fear, a slight effort, because
somebody was going to judge - he became afraid, a slight nervousness entered
him.

Mulla Nasruddin was invited to speak in a ladies club. A woman entered the
room and asked Nasruddin, Are you feeling nervous? - because he was just
about to speak in a few minutes.
Nasruddin said, No, I have never felt nervous, never in my life! - but he was
trembling as he spoke.
The woman said, Then what are you doing here in the ladies room? Nervous,
he had not noticed that he was in a ladies room. He was not conscious, he was
walking up and down.
When you are nervous you are not yourself. When you are self-conscious, you
are not your true self; you are afraid, there is a slight trembling inside because
others are going to judge whether they appreciate you or not - a fear has
entered.
I have heard about one Zen master, Bokuju, that he would talk to his disciples
even though sometimes the disciples would not come at the right time. He
would start talking and there was no one to listen. Sometimes he would talk for
so long that the disciples would simply disappear, but he would continue.
I have known a man in my own life. I had a teacher, a rare teacher. I was the
only student in his subject, so he told me, Remember one thing, because I
dont follow rules; when I am speaking I cannot remember time, so if you feel
uneasy or you would like to go to the bathroom, simply go and dont disturb
me. And then return silently, sit and I will continue. While you are gone I cannot
disrupt my flow, so it is for you to go and come, but dont disturb me. And dont
wait, because nobody knows when I will stop. I may start when the bell rings,
but I cannot stop, because how can the bell control me? Starting by it is okay,
but stopping? If something is incomplete, how can I stop? - I will have to
complete it. So if you are fed-up or bored, simply go.
I tried many times - I would be outside up to half an hour, and when I returned
he would be speaking and there was nobody there.
This type of man cannot be nervous because he is not bothered about whether
somebody is listening or not; he was not bothered about whether somebody
was judging him or not. But Kosen was bothered; he was not yet a perfect
master. This shows that he was more interested in the judgment of others than
in doing his own thing. He was not yet centered. He was almost at the center,
approximately he had reached, but something was missing.
Not so good, said the pupil at Kosens first try. That is worse than the first
one, said the pupil to the second try. And so it went on.
He must have become more and more worried
After the sixty-fourth try, the ink was running low, so the pupil went out to mix
some more. Just a quick one with the last of the ink, thought Kosen, while
that pupil is out of the way.

The pupil was outside, so while he was out of the way Kosen wanted to give it a
last try. Because when the pupil was out Kosen was not self-conscious; nobody
was there to judge.
Just a quick one with the last of the ink while that pupil is out of the way.
When the pupil is out of the way, the ego is also out of the way. While the pupil
is out Kosen is also out. Because of the pupil, Kosen could not not be; because
of the pupil he had to be there. When the pupil was out of the way, Kosen was
also out of the way - the passage was clear, there was nobody. The pupil and
Kosen had both disappeared.
When the pupil returned, he took a good look at this latest effort, and said, A
masterpiece!
How had it happened? Sixty-four times he failed and the sixty-fifth time he
attained. How did it happen? - sixty-four times he was there to do it; the last
time he was not there to do it - it had been done by the beyond. When you are
not, the beyond functions; when you are, the beyond cannot function because
you are in the way.
Not only did this calligraphy become a masterpiece, but through this
calligraphy Kosen became a perfect master. Never again could anybody bother
him, never again was he nervous, never again was he self-conscious - never
again! This became a revelation, a realization. He could see through and
through what the problem was: it was not the pupil, it was he himself; it was
not his eye and judgment, it was his own ego.
Remember this, because a moment will come in your meditation when only you
will be in your way, nobody else. A moment is bound to come in your own
growth also when everything is clear and only you are in the way. So never
think about what others are thinking about your meditation. Never think about
others - why they are judging you, how they are judging you. Their judgment is
their affair; it is their business, it has nothing to do with you. You do your thing
and do it totally. Efface yourself utterly, then everything starts happening.
The moment the doer leaves, everything starts happening. The doer is the
problem if meditation is not happening; you are still doing it. Let it happen. You
are still a doer, you are still watching how and what others are thinking,
whether they will judge you mad. If their judgment is in your mind you cannot
be total, you are divided.
Only the ego thinks about others, because it depends on others. It is nothing
but a collection of others opinions, what others say about you. You are
continuously on display, an exhibitionist: What are others thinking, what are
others saying? Because of these others your ego remains, becomes more and
more solid, crystallized.
Have you ever observed that whenever you are not thinking of others and not
thinking of what they think about you, suddenly you have a different flow of

energy within you, an unblocked flow? - there is no block and the river flows to
the ocean. And then whatsoever you do becomes a masterpiece - whatsoever!
Your quality is now totally different. Now you exist on a different plane
altogether, and whatsoever you do, even a very small thing, becomes totally
different. It becomes The First Principle.
If you are total, even just if you remove your shoes before you enter this house,
you remove them in a different way. It becomes The First Principle. If a
calligraphy, just three words, the first principle, can become a great
message, why not shoes? The way you walk becomes the first principle. You
walk unself-consciously - you walk like an animal, like a bird, or you sit under a
tree and you sit like a tree, unself-conscious. And then suddenly many millions
of things start flowering within you. The only problem is that you are, and the
only solution is that you should not be there.
Just give way; dont stand there, just give way, just put yourself aside. Difficult thats why it is the first principle. But once you can do it the temple is opened,
you have entered. There is nobody blocking the way except you.
Look at how you do things and you will always find the ego. People saying
prayers always look around; go to a mosque and watch, go to a temple and
watch. If many people are there, then people say their prayer with a fervor. If
there is nobody to look at them they simply do it in haste, as if the prayer is not
addressed to God but to the bystanders, to the onlookers.
This is happening continuously whatsoever you do. You are not enjoying the
act, you are enjoying others opinions. And what value does it carry, what is the
meaning in it? Why are you here? - just to be judged by others that you are a
very good man, a religious man, a meditator, a seeker after truth? Truth
doesnt seem to be so important as others saying that you are a great seeker
after truth.
People come to me every day. I watch. Something is happening to someones
back, maybe just a backache. He comes to me, and if I say, It is nothing but a
backache, go to the doctor, he doesnt feel very good. If I say, It is your
kundalini rising, and look at his face, he feels very happy, tremendously
happy. And in a hundred cases, ninety-nine cases are backache. He says,
Something is happening in the third eye. But it is nothing, just a headache.
But if I say, Go and take aspirin or something, he simply feels badly. I see it in
his face. He had come for something else, for recognition that he is growing,
that he is reaching somewhere. Through headaches no one has ever reached.
Not only does headache have to be left behind but the head itself.
Watch yourself, be alert to what you are doing. Dont be a fool, and dont befool
yourself. It is so easy to, but the ultimate can happen only when this
foolishness disappears. Nothing will help.unless you want to go on
accumulating more junk around your ego. Watch whatsoever you do and
remain alert. Dont go on moving like a somnambulist and dont try to seek any
recognition from others. Just be alert and watch and wait, and the ultimate will

happen to you. Because through watching you will disappear. Through

forgetting about others you will forget your own ego.
Even with God people have the same relationship - they pray loudly just to get
some recognition from the ultimate. Because no recognition can come from
that source, they have created mid-agencies: priests, popes. They can give you
recognition. God never recognizes you; God recognizes you only when you are
not, and thats the trouble. Thats why priests exist: they can give you
recognition. They can tell you, Yes, you are growing. If you are growing, there
is no need to ask anybody; the growth will speak for itself, and even if the
whole world denies it, it doesnt matter. If you are growing, the growth itself will
say; you will feel it, you will be fulfilled through it. You will not go asking. God
gives no recognition to you. Thats why in this century we have said that God is
dead. If he doesnt give us recognition, how can he be alive? If he does not
come and give us a certificate, how can he be alive? He should recognize us only then..
We would like to carry our egos to the very end, because he is not there to
affirm. But unless you also become a nobody like him, there is no possibility of
meeting him. We have created priests, great churches; they give you
certificates.
I know a man: he is the head priest of a small Mohammedan community in
India. He gives a letter - exactly, literally a letter - he writes a letter referring a
mans name who is going to die to God, saying that he has donated this much
and he has done that much, and this and that, so Take care of him. The letter
has to be put into the grave with the man. And people feel very, very happy;
they donate, they give money, they fast, they pray, just to get a big certificate.
You are lying in your grave and the letter will remain there.
I was speaking to this community once. I told them, you just go and dig up your
old graves and you will find those letters there. But they were afraid to dig,
because if they were to find the letters there, then the whole edifice would fall.
Then what to do? Then who would give them recognition?
Dont ask for recognition, because all recognition is the effort of the ego. Dont
look at others, just watch yourself. When you grow, you know. When you flower,
you know. When you are blessed you will know. If you grow there is no
possibility not to know; it is absolutely certain that you will know. But because
in our lives we continuously live with others, always looking in their eyes, at
how they feel, at how they think about us, we go on and on. Then the habit
becomes a fixed pattern. When you move into the other world you carry the
same habit.
Just a few days ago one man came to me and he said, I have become
enlightened.
I said, It is very good, now everything is finished. Why have you come to me?

He answered, Just to check. What type of enlightenment is this that you are
not certain of it?
There was a case against Mulla Nasruddin, because he was drunk, he had
insulted somebody, so he was taken to court. The magistrate said, Nasruddin,
are you here again? Are you guilty or not?
Nasruddin said, Guilty, your honor, but I would like to be tried to make
certain. Nobody is certain even about himself, and everybody is looking at the
other.
Once it happened that Mulla Nasruddins four-year-old child asked him, Daddy,
why did you marry Mummy?
Mulla Nasruddin stared at the child for a few seconds and said, So you also are
not certain why? You also are asking why? I am also not certain. He added, If
you can find out someday why I married your Mummy, please tell me.
You live in an uncertainty; your only certainty is others recognition. When you
start moving to the beyond this is not needed. And that is the temple, and the
first principle is at the door: drop yourself, drop yourself utterly. You cannot be
allowed to enter. When you are not, then you are allowed. Then you flow into
the temple; then there is no blockage of energy.
Try it. Be watchful and move in the world as if you are alone - there is nobody.
Move in the world as if it is a total loneliness - there is nobody. If nobody is
there your self-consciousness will drop by and by. Then the pupil will be out,
and with the pupil you also will have gone out.
Just a quick one with the last of the ink, thought Kosen, while that pupil is
out of the way.
When the pupil returned he took a good look at this latest effort, and said, A
masterpiece!
If you can put yourself out of the way, your whole being will say, A
masterpiece! You become the masterpiece. There are two types of creators in
the world: one type of creator works with objects - a poet, a painter, they work
with objects, they create things; the other type of creator, the mystic, creates
himself. He doesnt work with objects, he works with the subject; he works on
himself, his own being. And he is the real creator, the real poet, because he
makes himself into a masterpiece.
You are carrying a masterpiece hidden within you, but you are standing in the
way. Just move aside, then the masterpiece will be revealed.
Everyone is a masterpiece, because God never gives birth to anything less than
that. Everyone carries that masterpiece hidden for many lives, not knowing
who they are, and just trying on the surface to become someone. Drop the idea
of becoming someone because you already are a masterpiece. It cannot be
improved. You have only to come to it, to know it, to realize it. God himself has
created it; it cannot be improved.

Here, Im not teaching you to improve your life - no, not me. I am simply
teaching you to know the life that is already there, that has always been there,
that is already the case. Just put yourself aside so your eyes are not filled with
the ego, your being is not cloudy, and the sky becomes open. Suddenly, not
only you but the whole existence says, A masterpiece! This is The First
Principle.
Enough for today.

Chapter 4 - Come Follow to You, Vol. 3

[]
Im not for synthesis, for any artificial combination - Im not in favor of it. Im
not in favor of synthesizing Christianity with Hinduism, but what can I do? I am
helpless; it has happened in you. You have been once a Mohammedan, then a
Hindu, then a Christian. What can I do? It is in your blood, in your
consciousness; the synthesis has already happened. Im not trying to
synthesize, but for you a synthetic path in which all the three are involved, will
be helpful. It will give you a sudden surge of energy - it will release something
within you. You will start flowering in many directions immediately, and many
flowers are to come..
When I see that a man has been consistently following one path, then there is
no need for synthesis; then he has to follow that path. If one has been for at
least seven lives a Buddhist, then there is no need - then it will be confusing for
him to give him something else. He has already worked hard on a particular
path; now he has to be helped on the same path.
So when you come to me, if you are a Buddhist and you have been a Buddhist
in your past lives, I am here to make you a greater Buddhist. If you come to me
and you have been a Christian in your past lives, I am here to make you a
greater Christian. I may not tell you that I am helping you to be a Christian, but
dont be deceived by the appearances. I may not be saying that I am helping
you to be a Buddhist, but I am doing that. One day when the light will dawn on
you, then you will suddenly realize that I was not a detractor. I have not taken
you on another path which you were not on - I have simply helped you on the
same path, because all paths are mine. No particular path is mine. In that way I
am richer than anybody else who has ever existed in the world. They had
particular paths. The same Christ cannot say to you what I am saying. And the
same Mahavira cannot say to you what I am saying. They had particular paths I have none. I claim the whole of humanity.
The second question:
Osho,
What is the difference between being a fatalist and just floating, feeling
everything is beautiful?
A vast difference, a lot of difference. And the difference is not of quantity, the
difference is of quality. The fatalist is one who has not understood life, but who

has felt failure. A fatalist is one who feels helpless, frustrated. In fatalism he
seeks consolation. He says, It was going to be so. Hes trying so avoid that he
has failed. It was going to be so, so what can he do? He is throwing the
responsibility on fate, on God, on XYZ. Im not responsible, what can I do? It
was written in my fate. It was predetermined, predestined. He is saying, Im
not responsible. He has failed. In deep frustration he is trying to find some
refuge, some shelter. Fatalism is a consolation.
And the other thing, just floating, feeling everything is beautiful is not a
consolation - it is an understanding. It is not fatalism; it is not failure; it is not
helplessness. It is simply a deep insight into reality, as things are. It is to
understand that you are a very small part of the cosmic whole. And you are not
separate. You are one with the continent - you are not an island.
The understanding that the ego is false, the understanding that the separation
is false, the understanding that you dont have a separate destiny than the
whole, that a drop in the ocean need not worry about its own destiny - the
ocean has to worry about it - is not helplessness. In fact it releases tremendous
power. Once you are unburdened by yourself, once you are no more worried
about yourself, you become a tremendous energy. Then the energy is no more
struggling; now it floats. Now you are not fighting with the whole, now you are
with the whole, marching with the whole. Then you are not trying to prove
anything against the whole, because that is simply foolish.
It is as if my own hand starts fighting with me and starts trying to have its own
destiny, separate from me. I am going to the south, and my head starts going
to the north. It is so foolish, it is impossible - foolish, and impossible - and
frustration is bound to be there. Sooner or later the hand will see that the hand
wanted to go to the north, but it is going to the south. Deep in frustration, the
hand will say, It is fate. I am helpless.
In fact, the feeling of helplessness arises because of the struggle. When you
understand that you are part of the whole, that you are not separate at all, that
in fact the whole has been trying to attain some heights through you; you are
only a passage, a vehicle - suddenly all frustration disappears. When you dont
have a goal of your own, how can you be frustrated? When you dont have to
prove anything against anything; when you dont have to struggle, there is no
need for fatalism; you need not have any consolation. You simply dance with
the whole; you flow with the whole. You know you are the whole.
That is the meaning when the Upanishads say: Aham brahmasmi - I am God.
That is the meaning when Jesus says, I and my God are one - not fatalism,
not settling in helplessness; rather, knowing the fact that we are one with the
whole. Then your atomic tinyness disappears. You become cosmic.
.just floating, feeling everything is beautiful. Then it happens; then you just
float; there is nothing else to do. The same energy that was trying to fight
surrenders. Then you are not pushing the river: you simply float on the river,
and the river takes you. The river is already going to the ocean. You are

unnecessarily worried. You can simply Leave that responsibility to the river.
Whether you leave it or not, it is already going.
Dont fight, because in fight there is going to be frustration - in fight is the seed
of frustration, and in frustration you will seek some way to console yourself.
Then fatalism is born.
If you dont fight then everything is just beautiful. Why? Because then you
dont have any idea of your own to compare it with. Everything is beautiful for
how could it be otherwise? You dont have any conflict; hence everything is
beautiful. If the river turns to the right, you turn to the right - beautiful. If the
river turns to the left - perfectly beautiful, you turn to the left. If you have some
idea and some goal, if you say, I am a leftist, then there is going to be
trouble. When the river starts turning towards the right, you will say, Now this
is going too far; now I cannot surrender - I am a leftist. Then you will start
fighting against the river, and then the river will not be beautiful because your
notion, your idea, your ideal, has come in.

Whenever ideology comes in, things become ugly. All idealists live in hells.
Ideology creates hells. If you dont have any ideology you have nothing to
compare: you dont have any criterion. Then whatsoever is happening, is
happening - you have nothing to compare it with. Then wherever the river is
going, that is the only way to go. Then one simply allows existence to have its
own way. One never comes in the way; a deep let-go.
Then everything is beautiful. And then you realize that it has never been
otherwise. Everything was beautiful, always. Look at the animals; look at the
birds; look at the clouds; look at the trees. Ask the trees; ask the stones.
Everything is beautiful. The trees must be very much surprised that you look so
sad. The trees must be puzzled that man looks so burdened, when everything
is so light and so floating. The birds must be laughing at you that you go on
carrying such a load - the load seems to be nowhere except in your mind.
So much burdened, you miss life. So much burdened, you miss love. So much
burdened, you miss celebration. So much burdened, you miss laughter. You
cannot sing; you cannot dance; you cannot laugh. And because of this, you
become desperate and you start fighting more. You think you are not fighting
as much as you should. Thats why you are not so happy.
Once a man came to me, a very rich man, but very reluctant to accept the fact
that he was not happy. People dont accept that they are not happy. They are
unhappy, but they wont accept it because that is very ego shattering. They,
and unhappy? Impossible.
I looked into that rich man. I see thousands of unhappy men, but he was rare - I
have not found another so unhappy. And he had everything. And he tried to
smile. The smile was absolutely false, painted, just on the lips, not coming from
anywhere; not coming from the inner being; just mentally created, a facade, a

trick of the mind. I immediately looked at the man and felt that he was so
unhappy, but also unable to accept being unhappy. So I said to the man, You
look so happy. What are the reasons for your happiness?
He looked surprised. He was never expecting that. He said, What do you say I, and happy?
Yes, I have never seen such a happy man. And thats why I would like enlighten me a little - what are the causes of your happiness?
The man started enumerating, I have so much money, a beautiful wife,
children, palaces, cars, swimming pools, this and that. But while he was
enumerating, deep down, there was only hell and darkness. And he knew it,
and he could not believe that he had deceived me. But still he was trying.
Then I asked one question more: You say that because of these things you are
happy; just one question more. You say that you are happy. I would like to
know, how much happiness has your happiness given you? How much
happiness has your happiness really given you?
Then he caught the point. He started crying and he said, I am not happy. And
you have caught me. I go on deceiving myself that I am happy. I go on
deceiving others. I am desperate to prove that I am happy.

Remember, only an unhappy man tries to prove that he is happy; only a sad
man tries to prove that he is not sad; only a dead man tries to prove that he is
alive; only a coward tries to prove that he is brave. Only a man who knows his
inferiority tries to prove that he is superior. You go on trying to prove the
opposite of what you are, and the possibilities are ninety-nine out of a hundred
that you are just the opposite. When you smile, I can see hidden tears. When
you try to dance, I can see the rocklike heart within that cannot move. Dancing
is impossible.
Why is man in such a plight? The whole world laughs. The trees laugh at you.
You may not hear; you may be escaping; you may have become deaf. The birds
laugh; the animals laugh. Something has gone wrong with man. What has gone
wrong with him? Only one thing: the whole of nature is flowing and man is
fighting. In nature the ego does not exist. Trees are there, but without any egos
- only man is with the ego. And that ego is the whole hell.
That ego needs continuous fight, because it feeds on fight. The more you fight,
the stronger your ego becomes. It is a fighter. Thats why surrender is so
difficult. But unless you surrender you will remain in misery. Surrender is the
door to bliss, to beauty, to truth, to love, to life, to God. Surrender is the door.
And when I say surrender, I dont mean that surrender has to be towards
someone. That is just an excuse; because you cannot surrender unless you
have someone to surrender to - thats why someone is needed. Otherwise there
is no need; you can simply surrender, and the door is open.

Thats what Buddha says. He said, Simply surrender. But that looks very
difficult for the mind. You need some excuse. Jesus says, Surrender to God. If
you cannot just surrender, then surrender to God. Krishna says, If you cannot
surrender, then surrender to me. Let me be the excuse. But when you
surrender, then you know that Krishna tricked you. When you surrender you will
not find Krishna there: you will find the whole cosmos and you floating in it,
part of it. Then you are no more separate - not going on your way. Then
everything is beautiful, blissful. Without conflict ugliness disappears; without
conflict sadness disappears; without conflict sorrow disappears. Then
whatsoever is, is beautiful.
And it is so. But it is not fatalism. It is not an ism at all. It has nothing to do
with a faith or predetermination or any nonsense. It has simply something to do
with the insight that I belong to the whole and the whole belongs to me; that I
am in my home, I am not a stranger. And there is no need to fight.

With whom are you fighting? All fight is foolish, is stupid. Surrender is wisdom.
Fight is stupid. Float; flow with the flow; move with the whole. Dont have
private dreams and dont have private goals. Dont have a private ideology.
Then this moment you live; and when the next moment comes, you live in it. If
life is there, you live life; if death comes, you live death. Whatsoever happens,
you are grateful.
I have heard about a Sufi mystic who used to pray and every day thank God.
His disciples were worried. Many times they were very much puzzled, because
sometimes it was okay to thank God because things were going well. But the
man was absolutely unconcerned about things - sometimes when things were
going very badly, then too he would give thanks.
One day it was too much: the disciples for three days were hungry and
starving, and they were not given refuge in any town. They were thrown out.
The people were very orthodox, and the master was a revolutionary, a very
unorthodox, non-traditional man, unconventional, nonconformist; so no village
would allow them even to have shelter in the night. And they were without
food. On the fourth day, in the morning, when the master started praying, the
disciples said, Now it is going too far - he said to God, How wonderful you are!
You always give me whatsoever I need.
Then one disciple said, Wait, one minute. Now it is becoming absurd. What are
you saying? Three days we have been hungry. We are dying; no shelter in any
town, and you are thanking God that whatsoever you need he always gives!
And the mystic started laughing, and he said, Yes, for these three days we
needed starvation; for these three days we needed to be rejected. He always
gives whatsoever we need. For these three days we needed to be poor,
absolutely poor. Whatsoever we need he always gives, and I am thankful. And
he started praying and thanking God and being grateful.

If you are not fighting, then an understanding arises that everything is beautiful
and whatsoever is needed is happening, whatsoever is needed for your growth.
Sometimes poverty is needed; sometimes starvation is needed; sometimes
illness is needed. In fact, I have not come across anything which is not a need
sometimes to someone. If you understand, you accept. If you accept, you grow.
If you reject, your whole energy becomes a wastage in fighting. The same
situation could have been a growth - now it is simply a wastage, a leakage.
Dont be a fatalist, because in the first place dont fight. If you fight and get
frustrated, then fatalism enters in. In the first place, dont fight.
One man came to me and he was in much trouble because he got married and
he found a woman, as almost all people find, a very quarrelsome woman,
continuously fighting and creating hell for him. He came to me and said, Have
compassion on me. And he said, I would like to ask one question. What would
you have done in my place?
I told him, In the first place I would not have been in your place! Why should I
be?

A man who is floating, accepting, understanding, has no need of fatalism. In

the first place he is not fighting, so there is no need to seek some consolation.
Fatalism is the end of a wrong life, and the feeling of let-go is the beginning of
a right life. They are vastly different, tremendously different, qualitatively
different. Remember the difference, because it happens that you would also
like to say good things about your failures. When you fail, you start saying,
Now I am in a let-go. Dont try to deceive yourself, because you are deceiving
only yourself; the existence is not deceived. If you have failed, try to
understand why you have failed. In the first place you started fighting, thats
why.
If you understand that, then even your successes will look like failures. They
are. Sooner or later each success becomes a failure. It is only a question of
time. What you call success is failure on the way.
So if every man is given enough time to fight then success and failure will all
disappear and everybody will become a fatalist. Thats why in old conditions,
ancient conditions, fatalism exists - not in new countries. For example, in
America fatalism does not exist. It is a child country, a baby country, just three
hundred years of history; it is nothing. In India, fatalism exists: thousands and
thousands of years of history, so old and so ancient that it has known all
success, all failure; it has known all types of frustration. Now, finding no other
way, it seeks consolation in fatalism.
As a country grows old, it becomes fatalist. As a man grows old, he becomes a
fatalist. Young people are not fatalists: they believe in themselves. Old people

become fatalists, because by that time they have come to know at least one
thing, that they have failed. Then they find consolation.
The whole basis is wrong. In the first place dont fight, then there will be no
need to fail; there will be no need to succeed; there will be no need to fight and
there will be no need to console yourself Each moment is such a blessing if you
dont fight.
The third question:
Osho,
As an artist, I tend to claim my perceptions, desiring recognition for sharing my
visions with others. My ego is strong. How can the western artist be free of ego
and transcend the dichotomy of the aesthetic and the spiritual?

First, there is no dichotomy between the aesthetic and the spiritual. The
aesthetic is spiritual in the seed form; there is no dichotomy. The same
sensitivity grows into spirituality. If you cannot see beauty, you will be
absolutely incapable of seeing God. If you can see beauty, then you are
approaching near God; the temple is coming closer. You may not be fully aware,
but you are on the way. You have heard the first note of that music. Maybe you
cannot yet recognize it; it is vague, but you have seen the first glimpse of the
sun. Maybe it is too much clouded.
Beauty is the first glimpse of the divine. Wherever you see beauty, remember
you are on holy ground. Wherever, I say: in a human face, in a childs eyes, in a
lotus flower, or in the wings of a bird in flight, in the rainbow, or in a silent rock.
Wherever you see beauty, remember, you are on holy ground - God is close.
Beauty is the first glimpse of the divine; so there is no dichotomy between
beauty and truth. The aesthetic and the spiritual are not two things, two points
on the same path, two milestones on the same pilgrimage.
But the so-called religions have created a dichotomy. They have created a
dichotomy and they have poisoned the whole mind of humanity. The so-called
religions are afraid of beauty because somehow, in beauty they feel sex
hidden. That becomes the trouble. Wherever they feel beauty they feel the
erotic, and they have been thinking that the erotic is against the divine. It is
not. The erotic is the first glimpse of the divine. It is not the last; that has to be
remembered. But it is the first arising of the same energy. The energy is the
same; it is the first flood; it is the first tremor, but the energy is the same. If the
energy goes higher and higher and higher, then it becomes a great wave of
bliss; then it reaches to the heavens.
Because religions became afraid of sex, because they became afraid of the
body, they became afraid of beauty: because beauty is form. God is formless.
Beauty is form, but the form is of the formless. Because religions became afraid
of the world, they started thinking of God as against the world - this is some
absurdity that entered into all religions. They all say that God created the

world, and at the same time they say that you cannot attain to God if you dont
renounce the world. This is patent foolishness, because if the world is Gods
creation, then why should it be a basic requirement to renounce it? Rather, one
would think that the basic requirement should be that one should rejoice in it. It
is Gods creation. If you love the painter, you love his paintings also. In fact,
you come to know the painter only through his paintings; there is no other way.
If you love the poet, you love his poetry also. How do you know that he is a
poet? It is only through his poetry. No poet will say that you can love him only if
you renounce his poetry.

If God is the creator, then the world has to be loved, loved totally, loved deeply.
You have to get involved in it: rejoice in it, delight in it. Only through your
delight will you by and by have glimpses of the creator in the creation. If you
look at the painting of a great painter, you will have glimpses of the master. It
cannot be otherwise, because the master has come into those colors; his touch
is there, the master touch. If you love the poetry and you penetrate into it, you
will find the heart of the poet beating there. And unless you have penetrated
that depth, you have not understood, you cannot understand it. Unless the
poetry becomes the heart of the poet, it is not understood.
The world has to be rejoiced. The body is beautiful - delight in it. It is a gift of
God. Dont try to renounce it, because renouncing it means you reject the
master.
Gurdjieff used to say that all religions are against God, and he is perfectly right.
The so-called religions are all against God. They talk about God, but they are
against God. They show it through their actions. They say, Renounce the
world, renounce the body.
Renounce should be a dirty word. Rejoice! Replace renounce by rejoice and a
totally different conception of religion arises. Then aesthetics, then beauty,
then the sensitivity to beauty is not against spirituality. Then it becomes the
beginning.
And one has to deepen it. Be committed to beauty, and through it you will
come to know what religions call God; you will come to know divinity,
divineness.
So this is the first thing, that there is no dichotomy between aesthetics and
spirituality, between poetry and religion, between body and spirit, between the
world and God. There is no dichotomy. The world is God become visible. Poetry
is the poet expressed. Painting is the painter in form. The formless has
descended into the form, but there is no dichotomy, there is no duality and
there is no antagonism.
Second thing: As an artist I tend to claim my perceptions desiring recognition
for sharing my visions with others. Sharing is beautiful, but seeking
recognition is not so beautiful. In fact, both cannot exist together - they are

antagonistic. If you want, if you are desiring recognition, then you dont want to
share really. You share as a means to be recognized. Then your painting or your
poetry or your dance is just a means to fulfill the ego. That will make you
separate from the whole. The ego is the separation. Then your whole life will
become ugly, and how, out of an ugly life, can beauty be born? Impossible.
If you are beautiful deep within you, only then can the beauty flow from you.
Only out of a beautiful life, a beautiful painting is born. There is no other way.
You are flowing into your painting, into your work of art, into your sculpture,
into your music, into your poetry. It is coming from you. It brings you; it is your
consciousness flowing. If it is only to gain recognition, then you are ugly. The
ego is ugly because it is a separation from the whole, because it is false. You
are not separate.

The untruth cannot be beautiful, remember. Truth is beauty. The untrue, the lie,
cannot be beautiful. It is ugly - they are synonymous. The ego is the moss
untrue thing in the world. It only seems to exist, it doesnt exist, it is a false
phenomenon. And if you are seeking recognition, then you are seeking the ego
and you are trying to fulfill a false thing. Out of this ugliness, beauty cannot
flow - out of ugliness, only ugliness is possible.
And if you are trying to fulfill the ego you are not interested in sharing, because
sharing is an act of love. Not that there will not be recognition if you share - but
that is not the point. In fact if you share, much recognition will happen, but you
are not seeking it; you were not after it. If it happens it is okay; if it doesnt
happen it is the same. You want to share. Your happiness is in sharing, not in
the after-effects of it; not in the result, not in the end, but in the act itself.
For example, you love a man or a woman. While you love, you hold hands or
you embrace each other. The very act in itself is the end, not that you are
trying to prove that you are a man; not that the woman later on says to you
that you are a great lover. If you love a woman just to hear from her that you
are a great lover, you have not loved her at all. But if you love a woman, who
bothers what she says? What she feels in the moment of sharing is the thing, is
the real thing; it is enough unto itself.
If a woman loves a man and she loves only as a means, so that the man can
say later on, How beautiful you are, she is seeking recognition for her beauty.
That is an ego effort, an ego trip, but there is no love in it. And she cannot be
beautiful.
If she loves and shares her being, in that sharing she is beautiful. There is no
need even to say, You are beautiful. If someone says it, okay; if somebody
doesnt say it, that doesnt mean that it has not been said, because there are
deeper ways to say things. Sometimes to remain silent is the only way to
speak.

I have heard, that in one museum in Europe, there is a piano on which Wagner
used to play. A woman came there to see it, and she was just a learner, just
knowing only the ABC of it. She immediately started playing on the piano. The
guide was shocked, but he was a very polite man, so he remained silent. After a
few strokes, the woman said that many great musicians must have come to the
museum to see this piano of Wagner, and they all must have played on it.
The guide said, Madam, you are the first. Great musicians come here. They
stand absolutely silent. And I have heard them say, We are not worthy even to
touch it. They remain in silence; they dont utter a single word. The moment
they see this, the masters piano, it is as if they become dumb. They dont
touch it. They say, We are not worthy of it. In their deep silence, they say
something.

When you love a woman, in deep silence much is said. When somebody comes
to see a painting, if he starts chattering about it, that simply shows he has
been not in deep rapport with it; otherwise the chattering would stop. If he
starts saying something about it, that shows that he is trying to show his
knowledge about paintings. Otherwise, before a great painting one becomes
silent; one has nothing to say. Language is lost; one becomes dumb. The mind
stops.
When you love a person, you share; you dont ask for recognition. If you ask
recognition, you dont share, you dont want to share. Your sharing is just an
empty gesture, just a means to recognition. It is not love; it is prostitution. A
great artist does not bother about recognition. He loves his art, his work. He
loves to share it, but hes not asking for anything; it is unconditional sharing:
and then it has tremendous beauty. That is the difference between great art
and mediocre art, and that is the difference between Eastern art and Western
art.
Go to the Eastern temples. Go to Khajuraho or to Ellora, Ajanta - tremendously
beautiful works, but you dont even know who has made them; they have not
even signed them. What of recognition? Nobody knows; they are anonymous.
Nobody knows who has written the Upanishads - anonymous. But they shared;
they are still sharing and they will go on sharing to the very end of time.
Whenever you go to Khajuraho, your mind will stop. Such tremendous beauty
has never been revealed anywhere in the world. Stones have never been so
expressive as in Khajuraho, sermons in stones. Even real women have never
been so beautiful as the Khajuraho sculpture. And to bring it into stone.such
subtle, euphoric feelings, like two lovers making love! - what happens to their
faces, what type of energy surrounds them, what ecstasy travels between
them-in stone, the hardest medium! But they have depicted even the ecstasy.
When two lovers make love, what type of energy they have brought to those
stones; it surrounds them still.

Looking at those faces, you can see that they are not only erotic. The erotic is
just the beginning, the first rung of the ladder. If you have insight you will see
the ladder going higher and higher, and then it disappears into the clouds.
Somewhere in the clouds the ecstasy is there. But nobody knows who made
those beautiful images. Anonymous - but they shared. And one still feels
grateful and will always feel grateful.
Eastern art is anonymous and hence its beauty - it is as if of the other world.
Western art, particularly the modern, not the classical, is too much egoistic.
Even a Picasso is too much egoistic. He may be a great painter, a great master,
but neurotic all the same; a great genius, but gone astray, neurotic. Hes mad.
His madness may be a method, thats another thing, but he is mad. And the
whole madness is because of the ego. Whatsoever he has painted, great works,
but the neurosis is there
And if you look and meditate on Picassos paintings long enough, you will feel
restless, uneasy. Something of the neurosis will start happening in you also,
something of the quality of nightmare. Dont keep Picassos paintings in your
bedrooms; otherwise you will have nightmares! Have a small Buddha, by some
anonymous sculptor. That will surround your sleep; that will protect your sleep;
that will give you a subtle awareness even while you are asleep.

So sharing is one thing, and asking for recognition is totally another. Share;
dont ask for recognition. Im not saying that recognition will not come - it will
come profusely. Ask for recognition and it wont come so profusely. Even if it
comes, it will limp. Because when you ask for recognition, the other becomes
reluctant to give it. Because when you are seeking your ego, the other also
wants to seek his own ego. Then you provoke criticism rather than recognition.
And the one who recognizes your art is deep down recognizing, through his
recognition, his own recognition. So you say that you are great lover of art-then
the ego game. Then the beauty is lost; two lies are trying to prove themselves
to be true.
Share. Recognition will come; it always comes, like a shadow. Dont be
bothered by it. Only small mediocre minds are bothered by it.
And the third thing: you say, My ego is strong. If it is really strong then you
can surrender. Only weaklings cannot surrender. To surrender, you need
tremendous energy of will. Only a very mature ego can surrender; just as a ripe
fruit falls, not an unripe. An unripe fruit cannot fall; you have to force it. A ripe
fruit falls of its own accord, so easily that the tree does not even become aware
that it has fallen. It falls so naturally.
If the ego is strong, then you can surrender. This is the only thing in favor of the
Western mind - that people are being taught to be egoistic. The whole Western
psychology has been teaching them to have ripe, mature egos. That is a
beautiful thing - dangerous, if one remains clinging to the ego, but with

tremendous possibilities. If one really becomes strong in the ego, then

surrender is possible.
The Western mind is more egoistic. Surrender seems difficult. The Eastern mind
is more humble. Surrender seems easy. But these are appearances. The
Eastern mind can surrender very easily, but the surrender is impotent, because
you dont have anything to surrender. The ego which has to be surrendered, is
not there. It is just like an impotent man taking a vow of celibacy, or a poor
man renouncing the kingdom - it is meaningless.
For the Western mind surrender is difficult but meaningful. It will take a long
time and a long struggle for the Western mind to surrender, but once the
Western mind surrenders, then there is nothing like it. The Eastern mind has to
be brought up; the ego has to be ripened and matured. Only at a certain point
of maturity, where the ego feels too heavy, the surrender is possible.
The Eastern mind is so humble. It goes on surrendering everywhere and
anywhere; it goes on touching everybodys and anybodys feet. The whole
thing has become useless; it has become just a mannerism, an etiquette. But
when a Western mind bows down and touches somebodys feet, it has
significance; otherwise he would not have done it. It is not just a mannerism; it
has happened. Something deep has been touched and stirred.
So if you say, The ego is strong, then prove it! That is the only way.
Surrender; that is the only way to prove it. Otherwise I will say it is still weak.
The fourth question:

Chapter 50 - The Book of Secrets

[]
One day the ink was just about to be finished, so the master said, Go out and
find more ink. The disciple went out. The master forgot him, his presence, and
became effortless. His presence was the problem. The idea was constantly in
his mind that the disciple was there, judging. He was constantly wondering
whether he was going to like it or not, whether he would discard it again. This
created an inner anxiety and the master could not be spontaneous.
The disciple went out. The design was completed. The disciple came in and he
said Wonderful! But why couldnt you do it before?
The master said, Now I understand why - because you were here. Because of
you - I was making an effort to get your approval. The effort destroyed the
whole thing. I couldnt be natural, I couldnt flow, I couldnt forget myself
because of you.
Whenever you are doing meditation, the very effort that you are doing it, the
very idea of succeeding in it, is the barrier. Be conscious of it. Go on doing, and
be conscious of it. A day will come.just through patience a day comes when
effort is not there. Really, you are not there, only meditation is. It may take a
long time. It cannot be predicted, no one can say when it will happen. Because

if something is to be achieved by effort, it can be predicted - that if you do this

much effort you will succeed - but meditation is going to succeed only when
you become effortless. Thats why nothing can be predicted. Nothing can be
said about when you will succeed. You may succeed this very moment, and you
may not succeed for lives.
The whole thing hinges on one thing - when your effort drops and you become
spontaneous, when your meditation is not an act but becomes your being,
when your meditation is just like love..
You cannot do anything about love, or can you? If you do anything, you falsify
it. It will become artificial. It will not go deep. You will not be in it. It will become
an acting. Love is - you cannot do anything about it.
You cannot do anything about meditation also. But I dont mean dont do
anything, because then you will remain whatsoever you are. You have to do
something, perfectly conscious that by only doing you will not achieve. Doing
will be needed in the beginning. One cannot leave it; one has to go through it.
But one has to go through it, one has to transcend it, and an effortless floating
has to be achieved.
The path is arduous and very contradictory. You cannot find anything more
contradictory than meditation. Contradictory because it has to be started as an
effort and it has to end as effortlessness. But it happens. You may not be able
to conceive logically hot it happens, but in experience it happens. A day comes
when you just get fed up with your effort. It falls.

It happened to Buddha this way. For six years he was making every effort
possible. No human being has been so obsessed with becoming enlightened.
He did everything that he could do. He moved from one teacher to another,
and whatsoever he was taught, he did it perfectly. That was the problem,
because no teacher could say to him, You are not doing well, thats why you
are not achieving. That was impossible. He was doing better than any master,
so the masters had to confess. They said, This much we have to teach.
Beyond this we dont know, so you go somewhere else.
He was a dangerous disciple - and only dangerous disciples achieve. He studied
everything that was possible. Whatsoever he was told, he would do it absolutely as it was told. And then he would come to the master and say, I
have done it, but nothing has happened. So what next?
The teachers would say, You go somewhere else. There is one teacher in the
Himalayas - go there. Or, There is one teacher in some forest - go there. We
dont know more than this.
He went around and around for six years. He did all that can be done, all that is
humanly possible, and then he got fed up. The whole thing appeared futile,
fruitless, meaningless. One night he relaxed all efforts. He was sitting under the

Bodhi tree, and he said, Now everything is finished. In the world there is
nothing, and in this spiritual search also there is nothing. Now there is nothing
for me to do. Everything is finished. Not only this world, but the other world
also. Suddenly all efforts dropped. He was empty. Because when there is
nothing to do, the mind cannot move. The mind moves only because there is
something to do - some motivation, some goal. The mind moves because
something is possible, something can be achieved, the future. If not today then
tomorrow, but the possibility is there that one can achieve it - the mind moves.
That night Buddha came to a dead point. Really, he died that very moment,
because there was no future. Nothing was to be achieved, and nothing could be
achieved - I have done everything. The whole world is futile and this whole
existence is a nightmare. Not only the material world became futile, but the
spiritual also. He relaxed. Not that he did something to relax. This is the point
to understand: there was nothing to be tense, therefore he relaxed. There was
no effort on his part to relax.
Under the Bodhi tree he was not trying relaxation. There was nothing to do,
nothing to be tense, nothing to desire, no future, no hope. He was absolutely
hopeless that night - relaxed. Relaxation happened. You cannot relax, because
something or other is still there to be achieved. That goes on stirring your
mind; you go on spinning and spinning around and around. Suddenly the
spinning stopped, the wheel stopped - Buddha relaxed and fell asleep.
In the morning when he awoke, the last star was setting. He looked at the last
star disappear, and with that last star disappearing, he disappeared
completely, he became an enlightened one. Then people started asking, How
did you achieve this? How? What was the method?

Now you can understand Buddhas difficulty. If he said that he had achieved
through some methods, then he was wrong, because he achieved only when
there was no method. If he said that he had achieved through effort, then he
was wrong, because he achieved only when there was no effort. But if he said,
Dont make any effort and you will achieve, then too he was wrong, because
to his no-effort those six years of effort were the background. Without that
effort, that six years arduous effort, this state of no-effort could not have been
achieved. Only because of that mad effort he came to a peak and there was
nowhere further to go; he relaxed and fell down in the valley.
This has to be remembered for many reasons. Spiritual effort is the most
contradictory phenomenon. Effort has to be made, with full consciousness that
nothing can be achieved through effort. Effort has to be made only to achieve
no-effort, only to achieve effortlessness. But dont relax your effort, because if
you relax you will never achieve that relaxation which came to Buddha. You go
on doing every effort, so automatically a moment comes when just by sheer
effort you reach a point where relaxation happens to you.

For example, you may take it in a different way. As I see it, in the west, ego has
been the central point: the fulfillment of the ego, the development of the ego,
the achievement of a strong ego, has been the whole western effort. In the
east, it has been how to achieve egolessness, how to be a non-ego, how to
forget, surrender, dissolve yourself completely so that you are not. The east
has been trying for egolessness. The west has been trying for the perfect ego.
But this is the contradictoriness of things: if you dont have a very developed
ego, you cannot surrender. You can surrender only if you have a perfectly clearcut ego. Otherwise you cannot surrender, because who will surrender? So to
me, both are half and both are in misery - east and west both. Because the
east has taken egolessness, which is the end part, and the beginning part is
missing.
Who will surrender the ego? The peak is not there, so who will create the
valley? The valley is created only around a peak. The greater the peak, the
deeper the valley. If you dont have an ego, or a very lukewarm one, surrender
is not possible. Or, your surrender will be a lukewarm surrender, just so-so.
Nothing will happen out of it; there will be no explosion.
In the west, the beginning part has been emphasized. So you can go on
growing with your ego. It will create more and more anxiety. And when you
have really created it, you dont know what to do with it, because the end part
is not there.
To me, the spiritual search is both. Create a very great peak, create a perfect
ego, just to dissolve it. That seems absurd - just to dissolve it, just to achieve a
deep surrender, just to lose it somewhere. And you cannot lose something
which you dont have. So in my view, humanity has to be trained for these two
things together: help everyone to create a perfect ego, a fulfilled ego - but this
is only half the journey - and then, help them to surrender it.
The greater the peak, the deeper will be the valley. The higher the ego, the
deeper you will move in your surrender. And this is for everything. On the
spiritual path, remember this continuous contradictoriness. Dont forget it even
for a single moment. Become perfect egoists so that you can surrender, so that
you can dissolve, melt. Do every effort that you can do, just to reach a point
where effort leaves you and you are totally effortless.
[]

Chapter 14 - The Ultimate Alchemy, Vol. 1

Osho,
You said last night that to realize the That, the transcendental truth
everywhere, one must first realize it at ones own center of being.
Then you said that a centering for this is needed.
Is this centering the same as that of Gurdjieffs crystallization?
Please tell us how this centering or crystallization is different from

strengthening ones own ego, and how does it lead to the transcendental truth,
the That?
Man is born with a Self, but not with an ego. Ego is a social construct, a later
growth. Ego cannot exist without relationship. You can exist, the Self can exist,
but the ego cannot exist in itself. It is a by-product of being related to others.
So ego exists between I and thou. It is a relata.
The child is born with a Self but not with an ego. The child develops the ego. As
he becomes more and more social and related, ego develops. This ego is just
on your periphery where you are related with others - just on the boundary of
your being. So ego is the periphery of your being, and Self is the center. The
child is born with a Self, but unaware. He is a Self, but he is not conscious of
the Self.
The first awareness of the child comes with his ego. He becomes aware of the
I, not of the Self. Really, he becomes aware first of the thou. The child first
becomes aware of his mother. Then, reflectively, he becomes aware of himself.
First he becomes aware of objects around him. Then, by and by, he begins to
feel that he is separate. This feeling of separation gives the feeling of ego, and
because the child first becomes aware of the ego, ego becomes a covering on
the Self.
Then ego goes on growing, because the society needs you as an ego, not as a
Self. The Self is irrelevant for the society; your periphery is meaningful. And
there are many problems. The ego can be taught and the ego can be made
docile and the ego can be forced to be obedient. The ego can be made to
adjust, but not the Self. The Self cannot be taught, the Self cannot be forced.
The Self is intrinsically rebellious, individual. It cannot be made a part of
society.
So the society is not interested in your Self. The society is interested in your
ego - because something can be done with the ego, and nothing can be done
with the Self. So the society helps to strengthen the ego, and you go on living
around your ego. The more you grow, the more you become social, educated,
cultured, civilized, the more polished an ego you have. Then you begin to
function from the ego, not from the Self, because you are not aware of it at all.
So your essence goes on into the unconscious, into inner darkness, and a false
construct, a social construct - the ego - becomes your center. Now you identify
yourself with your ego - with your name, with your education, with your family,
with your religion, with your country. These are all just part of your ego, not of
your Self, because the Self doesnt belong to your parents, the Self doesnt
belong to your country, the Self doesnt belong to any religion, the Self doesnt
even belong to your self. It doesnt belong. The Self is a freedom. It is total
freedom. It exists in its own right. It doesnt belong to anything else, it doesnt
depend on anything else. It is!

But the ego belongs. It exists in a pattern. So if you are left alone for a long
period your ego will, by and by, subside. By and by you will feel that your ego is
being starved, because the ego needs constant help from others. It needs a
constant energy, food from others. Thats why love gives you a very
heightened feeling of ego because in love the other gives you significance,
meaning. You become, for the first time, important. And in love, lovers help
each other mutually. Love is a very subtle food for ego. The ultimate vitamin for
the ego is love.
Thats why Mahavira and Buddha and Mohammed and Christ, they all escaped
from society. It was not really escaping from society, they all escaped into
loneliness. It was not against society. Basically, it was to know whether their
egos could exist outside society. And Mahavira was in loneliness continuously
for twelve years just to dissolve this ego, this social construct. He chose to be
without a center for the time being so that a real center, the authentic center,
could come up.
One has to be in a gap, mm? That gap is bound to be a chaos, because you are
centered in the ego and the real center is hidden behind. Unless you dissolve
this false center you cannot reach to the real center - because there is no need,
the ego goes on substituting for it.
The ego is enough as far as the world is concerned, society is concerned,
relationship is concerned - the ego is enough. If you go on a lonely retreat in
nonrelationship, this ego cannot exist because it is a bridge between I and
thou. If the thou is not there, the bridge cannot exist on one bank, it needs two
banks to be there. Thats why this retreating into loneliness became a deep
sadhana.
But you can deceive yourself. If you go into loneliness and then begin to talk
with God, then again you will create your ego. You have created the thou, the
other, again. So if you retreat into loneliness and then pray to God and begin to
talk with God, then you have created an imaginary thou, now the ego can exist
again. So to be in loneliness means to be without thou, no thou - to be totally
alone. Then this ego cannot exist, it will wither away, and you will be thrown
into chaos because you will be, for a certain period, without any center. This
chaos has to be faced. Unless you face it you cannot be centered in your Self.
You have to pass through this.
Christian mystics have called this The dark night of the soul. Really, one just
becomes mad, because when you have no center you are mad. You have
nowhere to function from; you have no unity now. You are just fragments with
no energy in them, with no center, with no focus. You are a crowd. You will be
mad. This madness has to be faced. This is the only courage the religious
revolution needs - to be mad, to be without a center. This is the real austerity,
to pass through it without creating any false center again; to be so honest that
unless the real center comes up you are not going to create any center
anymore. You will wait. This waiting may take any length of time. Nothing can
be said.

Mahavira had to be in loneliness for twelve years; Mohammed was in it for only
thirty days. It depends on many things. I feel Mahavira had to wait for twelve
years because he was the son of a great king. He must have been deeply
rooted in a false ego - more than Mohammed - he was no ordinary man. His
ego was greater than Mohammeds. Mohammed was just a poor man with no
developed ego; uneducated, really nobody. He was nobody. But Mahavira was
somebody, he belonged to a great family. He had a great heritage, a very
polished ego, well-educated, cultured. In every way he had a very crystallized
ego. Twelve years were needed to dissolve it.
Jesus was in loneliness for only forty days. He was also a poor man with nothing
to help his ego. The more civilization progresses, the more difficult it is because every progressive civilization is bound to have a solidifying effect on
the egos that constitute that civilization.
This passing through a chaos without any center, being a chaos, ultimately
throws you down to the center, the real center, to the Self. There are many
methods for how to go through this chaos and how to destroy this ego. But this
is a foundational thing: to have the courage to be without a center for a certain
period of time.
You can do it by surrender. You can surrender yourself to someone, to the
teacher. If the surrendering is total, then you will be without ego. You can be a
Self, but not an ego; thats why surrender is so difficult. And the more egoistic
an age, the more difficult surrender becomes. In surrender you give up your
self, you become a shadow, you just follow the instructions. You dont think
about them - you are no more.
But whenever surrender is to be contemplated, one begins to think: If I
surrender, then I will not be an individual.
This is absolutely incorrect. If you surrender, only then can you be an
individual, because the ego is not your individuality. It is false, it is just a
facade. If you surrender the false, then you are bound to explode into the real.
This is the beauty of surrender. You cannot surrender the Self - mm? - that is
impossible, you can only surrender the ego. You can give up only that which
has been given to you. You cannot give up your Self, that is impossible. There is
no possibility. How can you give up your Self? You can give up something which
has been put into you, which is a social penetration. Really, you can give only
that which doesnt belong to you, which you are not.
This will look contradictory, paradoxical. You can give only that which you are
not. That which you are, you cannot give. So in surrender you give up
whatsoever you know yourself to be. Then only the Self remains, which you
really are and you cannot give up. When the false is thrown, the real is
encountered.

So there are two ways, two basic ways: one is surrender, mm? There are many
methods of surrender, but the foundation is always to surrender to someone. It
is not significant to whom. It is absolutely insignificant to whom you surrender.
The real thing is surrendering. So sometimes it happens that the teacher
himself may not be a real one - but if you surrender, you may come to the real
Self.
Even a false teacher can be a help, even a dead teacher can be a help because the real thing is not to whom you are surrendering, the real thing is
that you are surrendering. The happening is in you. To whom it is addressed is
absolutely irrelevant. Krishna may be there or he may not be there; Buddha
may be a historical person or he may not be; Jesus may just be a myth - it
makes no difference. If you can surrender to Jesus, whether Jesus was ever
there or not, the thing will happen to you. It is the surrendering that is
meaningful.
So one way, one basic way, is surrender. Another is absolute will. Dont
surrender, but then be absolutely yourself. I said that when you surrender, the
Self cannot be surrendered. Whatsoever you surrender is bound to be the ego,
the false, the persona - not the essence. Another basic path is to be yourself
totally, dont surrender - but then be a will.
Again, the ego has no will; it cannot have. The ego is absolutely will-less
because a false entity cannot have the quality of will. Will belongs to the real.
You are absolutely will-less. In the morning you decide something; in the
afternoon you yourself cancel it. When you are deciding, at that very moment
some part of you is canceling it. You say, I love. Go deep, and somewhere in
the corner hate is hiding - in that very moment. You decide, I am going to do
this, and in that very moment the contrary is there.
Will means nothing contrary in the mind. Will means one - no duality. Ego
cannot have any will. Ego means many contradictory wills simultaneously. You
are a crowd as far as ego is concerned, and it is bound to be. It is natural,
because as I said, ego is created by relationships. It is a by-product. You have
many relationships, so your ego is a construct of many relationships. It cannot
be one, it is a crowd.
Really, look at it in this way: you have a part of your ego which was created
with your mother - a fragment of your ego was created by you in relationship
with your mother. Another part of your ego was created by you in relationship
with your father, another was created in relationship with your wife. Now the
fragment that was created by your wife cannot be the same as that which was
created by your mother. They will be antagonistic. They will fight inside you. It
is not only that your wife and your mother will fight outside, the ego part which
is in you will also fight. It is not only that your father and your mother will fight
outside. They have created fragments of your ego and they will fight inside. So
you have many fragments, you have a crowd in the name of the ego - a crowd.
A constant fight, a conflict, is going on. You cannot will anything.

Gurdjieff used to say, You cannot will, because you are not. Man is not,
because man is not one. You are a crowd, and a crowd without any real unity.
You have many faces, you have many wills. In a certain moment, in a certain
situation, one fragment is the master. Then you say something, then you
decide to do something. In that moment you feel that you have a will, but in
the next moment that fragment has gone down, another fragment has come up
- and this fragment is not even aware of your decisions.
You are angry and then you decide, I will not be angry again. The part that
was angry has not decided this. This is another part, and they both may not
meet at any time in your life. The second part which says, Now I decide not to
be angry, is not the part which was angry. There is no meeting. The part which
was angry will again be angry tomorrow, and when that part is angry you will
forget completely what you had decided. Again you will repent. The other part
has come up again - and this goes on.
Gurdjieff used to say that we are like a house, the master of which is either
asleep or has gone somewhere else. For years together the house has not
known its master. There are many servants. The servants have forgotten
completely that there was ever any master; either he is asleep or he has gone
away. For years together the servants have lived in the house without the
master.
Someone passes by the house; some servant is outside and he asks the
servant, Who is the master?
The servant says, I am the master.
Another day, the same man passes by the house and finds someone else there.
He asks, Who is the master?
The second servant says, I am the master.
Every servant claims that he is the master, and nothing can be decided
because the master is asleep or has gone somewhere else. These servantmasters can decide something, but they cannot complete it. They can promise
something, but they cannot fulfill it. They are not the masters at all.
his is the situation of the ego. It cannot will. So the second path is to create a
will. If you create a will, then the ego will disappear - because only the Self can
will. So if you begin to will, if you insist on willing, then by and by you will go in.
The ego cannot will; and if you insist on willing, the ego will disappear.
Surrender is one basic path - the path of the bhaktas. Tap, will, is the second
basic path - the path of the warriors, fighters. Each path has many techniques,
but this is the essential thing.
Gurdjieff used the second path - the path of will. He called it crystallization. He
said, If you will, then by and by you will crystallize into your center. The ego
cannot exist with a willing consciousness - it cannot exist. So Gurdjieff used
very deep methods for inner integration. He would say, for example, Dont

sleep for seven days. Whatsoever happens, dont sleep. You can remain
without food for seven days, it is not so difficult. But to be without sleep for
seven days is very difficult. To be without food for seven days is not so difficult;
a man can be alive without food for at least ninety days without any danger.
But with sleep it is difficult.
Food is a voluntary thing. You may eat, you may not eat. Sleep is not a
voluntary thing; it is nonvoluntary. Either it comes or it doesnt. You cannot
bring it, you cannot force yourself into sleep. You can force yourself not to take
food or to take more food, that is a voluntary thing. But sleep is a nonvoluntary
phenomenon, you cannot force yourself. When sleep comes you will not be
able, with your ego, to be awake. But you can insist. You can say, Whatsoever
happens I will not sleep. I am ready to die, but not to sleep.
Gurdjieffs chief disciple, Ouspensky, was dying, but he would not lie down. He
continued walking. He was dying, and he was aware that death was just about
to come but he would not lie down. Physicians insisted, persuaded, but he
would not lie down. He said, No, I am going to die walking. I am going to die
consciously. He used even death to create will, and he died walking. He was
the first man in the whole history of humanity who died walking - consciously.
Consider, contemplate, what was happening inside of him. It is not simply sleep
- it is death. He was not ready to surrender even to death, mm? This is an antisurrender path. He was not ready even to surrender to death. He continued to
fight. He went on walking for three days and three nights. The body was very
ill, old. Those who were keeping watch over him couldnt follow him, they had
to sleep. So someone would sleep and someone else would watch him. A group
of twelve persons continued watching him, but for three days continuously,
night and day, he continued walking. He would not sit. He would not allow any
terms, any compromise with death. He died a crystallized man. He used death
to create will.
You can fight with sleep, you can fight with food, you can fight with sex, you
can fight with anything - but then no compromise! Then no surrender! Then be
absolute in it! But ego cannot be absolute in anything, and if you insist on
being absolute, ego will disappear and suddenly you will become aware of a
different center in yourself. The ego cannot will, so if you will, the ego cannot
exist.
So either surrender totally or will totally. Then you will understand that these
seemingly contradictory parts are not really contradictory, not so contradictory,
because one thing is common, totality - total surrender or total will. The ego
can never be total in anything. It is always fragmentary, divided. So be total, in
any way, and the ego evaporates. When there is no ego, for the first time you
become aware of your real center.
I call it centering; Gurdjieff calls it crystallization. Words dont mean much.
Through this centering you become a being, through this centering you are in
existence. Before this you are in society, not in existence. Before this you are

part of a civilization, of a culture, of a language, of a religion, but not a part of

existence. Before this you lived in a man-created world. Before this you
belonged to this. Once you are centered you belong to That which is beyond,
which is not created, which is eternal. Then you come to the source. You may
call it God, you may call it soul, you may call it whatsoever you like. The
Upanishads call it That - that which is unborn, that which is deathless, that
which is.
This centering is possible, it is not impossible. It looks impossible, it appears
impossible; it is impossible for the ego - not for you. It is impossible for the ego
because ego cannot attain it. Rather, in attaining it ego will die.
The old yoga scriptures say, Hear whatsoever the teacher says and follow it because he is your Self. Whatsoever he is saying, it is your own inner voice. So
they say the real teacher, the real guru, exists in you. Outside you the teacher
is just a help to awaken the inner teacher. So, really, surrendering to a teacher
is surrendering to the Self. It is just like this: you come to a mirror, and for the
first time you become aware of your face - through the mirror. The teacher is
just a mirror. If you surrender, you become aware of your own Self.
This is one way. The other is to find out your own will. Decide which is your
way, because, as I know, there are many people who just go on thinking.
Sometimes they think of surrender, sometimes they think of will - rather, this is
their way. Whenever you talk to them about surrender, they think about will. If
you talk to them about will, they will think about surrender. This is how the
fragments of the ego work.
If I say to you, Surrender, then you will think, How can I surrender? What will
happen to my individuality, my freedom? Really, you have none - no
individuality, no freedom. But then you become afraid of losing something
which you dont have. How can I surrender? Then if I say to you, Dont
surrender. Create a will. Then you say, I am so weak, how can I create a will?
It is so difficult. Both these teachings can have counterparts in your ego, and
then you can go on wavering. That wavering will never help you to come to
your center.
Decide either this or that, and then follow it, and then follow it absolutely,
totally, because that totality ultimately helps to destroy the false structure of
the ego. When the false center is no more, you will come to know the real
center. There will be a gap - a gap of chaos. One has to face it. It is painful, but
it is a birth pain. One has to pass through it, it is a necessity. But when you
come to the center, then you know that you have paid nothing. What you have
gained is invaluable, and whatsoever you have done is just nothing. But before
you attain it, your effort is very valuable.
And, lastly, you can be in a confusion and you can go on thinking that you have
become centered or that you are crystallized - only because you have a
crystallized ego. So what is the difference? How can you judge whether you are
centered in the ego or centered in the Self?

Three things to be remembered: one, if you are existing in the ego you can
never be in silence, never. Then you are in a crowd, in the marketplace. Your
ego is a market production. You can never be in silence.
Secondly, you can never find even an iota of happiness, because happiness
happens only to the real center, silence happens only to the real center; they
are qualities of the real center. You need not make any effort for them, they are
just there. So if you are in the ego, your happiness will always be in the future never attained, always to be attained.
Thirdly, your life motivation will be fear when you are in the ego. Whatsoever
you do, your motivation will be fear-oriented, you will be fear-oriented. If you
love, you will love because of fear. If you pray, you will pray because of fear. If
you think of God, you will think because of fear. If you accumulate wealth, you
will accumulate because of fear. If you make friends.whatsoever you do, your
basic motive will be fear-oriented.
These three things. No silence will be possible because there is a crowd, a
conflicting crowd of tensions and conflicts, anxiety and anguish, but no silence,
no happiness - because happiness belongs to the center, not to the ego. There
will be fear-orientation because ego is constantly afraid of death - because ego
is just a construct. It is not a reality, so it is afraid of death. The Self is never
afraid of death, the Self has never known death. Death is impossible to the
center, to the real center. Deathlessness is the very quality of it, its nature. So
remember these three things.
Mind will be a constant tension, anguish, a longing for happiness, but no
experience; and everything will be trembling, fear-oriented. Your religion will be
just a fear. Your beliefs, your philosophies, just fear - existing only to hide the
fear, to escape the fear, to deceive yourself.
If you are in the real center, silence will be your nature.not dependent on any
situation. It is not that the situation is such that you are silent. Whatsoever the
situation, you will be silent; you cannot be otherwise. Nothing can disturb you.
Disturbance will be there but you will remain unaffected, untouched. Nothing
penetrates to your center, it cannot.
Silence, then, is not situational. It is not that the day is good, not that you are
successful, not that you are surrounded by friends, no. It is not anything
situational. Silence is there. Whatsoever the situation, silence is there and
happiness - not in the future, but here and now. This happiness is not a
happening, it is a state. It is not that today you are happy - you cannot be
otherwise. You are happiness, and fear dissolves. With the dissolution of fear,
the whole world that we have created around fear dissolves. You enter into a
world of no-fear, and when there is no fear, only then is freedom possible. Fear
and freedom cannot exist together. It is because of fear that we have created
all our slaveries, all our bondages. Our imprisonment is because of our fear.
So remember these three things. Once you have known your real center you
are not the same. The old man has died and a new one is born. It is a new birth.

When the child is born, only a body is born. Then the ego is given by the
society. You go on living with an ego and a body - with no Self. Unless you
dissolve this ego and find the Self, your life is wasted. The body is given by
your parents and the ego is given by your society. Who are you? The body
belongs to your parents, to heredity, to a long series, and the ego belongs to
the society. Who are you?
Gurdjieff used to say that you are not. You are just a construct. Unless you find
out something which has not come through the parents, not come through the
society, not come at all to you; which you have always been - before your birth,
after your death; that which you will be, which you have been, which you are;
unless you find that, you are not a centered being, you go on living on the
periphery. This peripheral existence has been called sansara - the world, the
this. This centered existence is called the nirvana - the That.
Osho,
How can one differentiate between a projected experience
and an authentic feeling?

Develop the ego

The first question:
Osho,
What is the difference between a crystallized self and a big, strong ego?
They look alike, but they are as different as two things can be. Not only
different, they are diametrically opposite. The crystallized self is not a self at
all. It is called a crystallized self, but it is not a self at all. And the big, strong
ego is neither big nor strong. It is very hollow - how can it be strong? It is very
empty - how can it be strong, and how can it be big? It is neither big nor strong,
but it has the selfhood in it, the I-amness, the feeling that I am.
The ego is the self. The real self is not a self at all. We develop the ego just to
hide the fact that we dont know who we are. It is very hard to see that we are
so ignorant about ourselves, that we dont know. To hide this ignorance, we
create the ego. Ego is a deception, it is a deception that you are giving to
yourself. It is really difficult to live without self-knowing, so we create a false
ego. It gives a little consolation. One starts feeling that one knows who one is.
It simply hides ignorance; thats why all the religions insist on dropping the
ego. Unless you drop the ego and you face your inner being.the vastness of it is
such that you cannot define it as I am. The vastness is so much that it cannot
be contained by any concept, within any concept. You cannot call it I. It is all how can you call it I? The real self, the real inner being, is existence itself. It
is all.
But one has to face it. In the beginning, when you face it, it looks as if it is
nothing. That is the fear. The all looks like nothing in the first encounter. If

you get in tune with it, by and by, the negativity disappears and you start
feeling its positive existence. Then it becomes your soul. Call it God, being, or
any word that you want to choose; call it enlightenment, awareness. But one
thing is certain: you are not there. Something is there, tremendously vital,
infinite, but you are not there.
This will look like a paradox: when you come to know yourself you are not
there; when you dont know yourself you are there. You exist only in your
ignorance. When knowledge has happened - when knowing has happened - you
disappear. You disappear like darkness - just as the sun rises and the darkness
disappears, you disappear like darkness when awareness arises. The
awareness does not belong to you, it has nothing to do with you. In fact you are
the barrier for it. It is because of you that it is not arising.
People come to me and they say, Osho, I would like to become enlightened. I
say to them, It is very difficult, it is impossible. I cannot help you. They say,
Why? Why cant you help? I say, From the very beginning you are putting
such a condition. You are saying, I want to become enlightened. This I is the
barrier. This I is not allowing you to know your enlightenment - which is
already there. The I never becomes enlightened, the I is the unenlightened
state, the I is the darkness.
Enlightenment is possible, but it will be possible only when you are ready to
lose yourself. That is the meaning of Jesus saying when he says, If you lose,
you will gain. If you dont lose, you will lose. In losing is the gain. In forgetting
is the remembrance. In dissolving, you become crystallized.
The crystallized self is a no-self - it is all - and the big, strong ego is very tiny,
not big at all. The tiniest thing in the world is the ego, and the hollowest thing
in the world is the ego, and the weakest thing in the world is the ego - because
it is the falsest thing possible. It exists not. It is a pretension.
The second question:
Osho,
Please will you explain to me what the way of religion means? I have always
been so strongly against religion that I cannot imagine what it means. But,
anyhow, I suppose it is the way of total aloneness - and this makes me a little
uneasy.
Since you gave me sannyas, I feel like I am in an abyss. Other people are not
reachable for me; I am only fixed to the fire of your eyes - a tremendous Pune
fiction story.
Right, I am creating a fiction here: the fiction of the master and the disciple, the
fiction of God and the devotee. It is really a myth, but very alive. And there is
no way to come to the truth unless you pass through a great mythology. Man is
lost in lies. From the lies there is no direct way to truth. Myth is a bridge
between the lie and the truth. A myth partakes of something of the lie and
something of the truth; it is a bridge.

Yes, you are right. This is a tremendous Pune fiction story. Whatsoever is
happening here is very fictitious: these people in orange, and so many crazy
things going on, and I am supporting you and leading you toward nowhere and
promising you things which cannot be promised.
Man lives in lies, God lives in the truth - but how to bridge both? Man is a lie,
godliness is a truth - how to bridge both? It is quite impossible! Myth is the way:
fiction, yes, a spiritual fiction. All the religions are fictitious, all mythologies are
fictitious, but they are of tremendous help. A mythology has something of the
truth in it - maybe just a reflection - and something of the lie in it. You can
move through the myth toward truth.

Chapter 5 - Inner War and Peace

[]
The two started laughing again and they said, Dont be concerned about us,
because anyway we are considered to be mad. But is there a correlation
anywhere in any conversation that may be taking place on this earth?
Jung felt nervous and turned away. And he has written in his memoirs that
since that day whenever he was talking to somebody he tried to notice if there
was a correlation in the dialogue.
We try to establish some semblance of a correlation. When someone is having
a conversation with another person and is not insane - which is very unlikely he starts talking inside himself while the other person is speaking. And the
moment the other person stops, he begins to speak. And what he then says is
related to his inner dialogue, not to the other persons. The relationship
between the two of them is at the most that of a coat and a coathanger. One
may catch hold of one word or one point from the others utterances and hang
what was going on all that time inside him onto it. That is all.
Such moments will come up again and again in the dialogue between Krishna
and Arjuna. That is why I thought I would tell you about it in detail.
Arjuna has not heard what Krishna has been saying at all. It is as if he had not
said anything. Arjuna just goes on listening to his inner conversation. He says,
The revered Drona and Bheeshma.. This is what he must have been thinking
inwardly, and what Krishna was saying must have all been on the periphery.
This is what was going on inside him. He says, Oh Krishna, how can I kill these
dear and venerable people - me, Arjuna?
Please keep this in mind. He has not heard Krishna.
Osho,
You just said that professors are mad. You yourself were a professor of
philosophy, now you have become an acharya, an enlightened teacher, and in
this way you have become available to us all, which is our blessing.
Just now you were talking about the ego. The question is that there is no
projection without the ego and the psychoanalysts say - well, you yourself are

a psycho-synthesizer - that the personality cannot develop totally without the

fulfillment of the ego. And yet you talk of egolessness. So are you suggesting
the annihilation of the ego?
Firstly, I said that a professor is more likely to go mad: I did not say that he
invariably goes mad. Secondly, I also did not say that all madmen are
professors. It is just that there is a greater possibility.

In fact, wherever there is too great a burden of so-called knowledge, the mind
can go mad. Knowing frees the mind; the burden of knowledge drives it mad.
And the knowledge that liberates comes from within oneself. The knowledge
that drives one insane doesnt come from within; it always comes from the
other, from the outside.
The second thing that you have asked is that psychoanalysts talk of developing
the ego and I talk of dispersing the ego. Certainly the psychoanalysts talk
about developing the ego - but not all of them. Buddha or Mahavira or Krishna
will not do that. Freud or Ericsson will do that - for the simple reason that for
them there is no higher truth than the ego. So the highest truth has to be
developed. For Mahavira or Buddha or Krishna the ego is not the highest truth.
It is only a ladder in between - a bridge. The highest truth is egolessness.
Existence is the ultimate truth, not the ego. The ego is only a ladder.
So Buddha, Mahavira or Krishna will tell you to develop the ego and then
dissolve it, climb the ladder and then let go of it, ascend it and go beyond it, go
higher on it and then transcend it. Since is-ness is also beyond the mind, the
last truth of the mind, the ego will be the first thing to be dropped for the
realization of the is-ness that is beyond it. If I want to come to your house from
my house, then leaving the last wall of my house behind will be my first step
towards entering your house.
The ego is the boundary of the mind. The mind cannot penetrate beyond the
ego.
Because western psychology understands the mind to be the highest truth, to
talk of developing the ego is justified. I am saying justified, not true. Within
the boundary walls of the mind, it is absolutely all right. But the day that
western psychology realizes.and it has begun to realize - with Jung the
boundary walls have begun to crumble and the realization has begun to dawn
that there is something beyond the ego as well.
But as yet, all that is being experienced by western psychology as beyond the
ego is still below the ego, it is not beyond the ego. There is also something on
the other side of the ego, the unconscious, which is below the conscious - but it
is not the superconscious, which is ahead of the conscious. Yet this is a very
auspicious hour. At least there is something in addition to the ego - even if it is
below it. And if there is something beyond the ego in a lower direction, then the
obstacles in the way of having something beyond it in a higher direction

become fewer. If we accept something beyond the ego, even if it is in the

direction of below, then the way for sooner or later accepting something
beyond the ego and above it is cleared.
Psychology is bound to want to make the ego more integrated, more
crystallized and pure: it should become more clear and synthesized - and that
is individuation, that is ones personality. But Krishna would not agree with this.
Krishna would say that there is one more step ahead: the integrated,
concentrated ego should surrender some day. This is the final step from the
egos end, but the first step from the eternals.
If the dewdrop can dissolve itself in the ocean, it can certainly become the
ocean. And if the ego can dissolve itself in the cosmic ocean it can certainly
become the eternal. But before dissolving, it has to be there, the dewdrop has
to be there. If there is no dewdrop, if there is only vapor, then it is difficult for it
to dissolve in the ocean. If a drop of vapor is soaring in the sky, we will first
have to ask it to become a drop of water, and only after it has become a drop
of water, can it be asked to jump into the ocean. Vapor cannot jump into the
ocean directly; it can try, but it is bound to fly towards the sky. It cannot jump
into the ocean, but a dewdrop can.
So western psychology goes as far as creating the drop, and Krishnas
psychology goes to the point of turning it into the ocean. But one has to pass
through the stage of western psychology. Those who are in the vaporous state
have to pass through Freud and Jung, only then can they reach Krishna. But
many drops of vapor try to reach Krishna directly and then they get into
trouble. Freud is in the middle and he cannot be bypassed. He is not the end
but he is certainly the beginning.
The psychology of Krishna is the ultimate psychology, the supreme psychology.
It begins at the point where mind comes to an end. It is at the last frontier. And
Freud and Adler are talking about the first frontier of the mind. If you can
understand this, there will be no difficulty.
I will say the same thing in another way: integrate the ego, crystallize the ego,
so that you can surrender it one day. Only the one who is crystallized can
surrender. How can someone whose ego is split into dozens of parts, who is a
schizophrenic, in whom even his I is not one but rather many surrender? You
may surrender one part, and the other will say, Leave it; come back.
This is how we are right now. According to all the psychological researches, we
are poly-psychic. We dont even have just one I within us, we have several,
many Is.
You go to sleep in the night and one I promises to wake up at five oclock in
the morning - it swears. In the morning, the other I says, Its too cold! Just
forget it! What were you thinking of? Leave it until tomorrow! You turn around
and you go back to sleep. And later, when you get up at seven oclock, the
third I says, You made a big mistake! You had already decided in the

evening, so why did you change your mind at five oclock in the morning? It
repents deeply.
Now, if you were just one person and you had decided to wake up at five
oclock in the morning, then who is this other one who is now asking you to go
back to sleep? It is someone inside you who is speaking; it isnt someone
outside you. And again, if you went back to sleep at five oclock, why are you
repenting now at seven? You yourself went back to sleep; nobody asked you to.
So who is repenting now?
Usually we have the idea that we are one. This creates a lot of confusion. There
are many Is inside you. One I decides to wake up early and another
refuses to oblige. The third one repents, and the fourth one forgets the whole
thing. No one remembers such things.and life goes on!
Psychology says: integrate the ego first. If there is one ego, surrender is
possible. But if there are a number of voices, how can there be any surrender?
The same thing happens in the temple. One I surrenders itself and bows
down in front of a statue, and another one stands erect - in the same place.
One I prostrates itself at the feet of a statue and another one is looking
around to see if anyone is looking. There is only one person but there are two
Is. One is bowing down and the other is watching people.
If you are surrendering, why do you want others to know about it? One I is
bowing down and the other I is saying, There is no God. What games you
are getting involved in? Its all meaningless! Or here one I is bowing down to
the statue, while another - in that very same moment - is sitting in the shop
running the business.
The ego should be integrated. Only then is surrender possible. So I dont see
any contradiction between the two, I see an evolution. Freud is not the end but
he is important and he is helpful in integrating the ego. Krishna is the end.
There, after a certain point, the I has to be surrendered.
It is more honorable to live in this world begging for alms
than to slay ones noble elders and teacher.
If I slay them for wealth and worldly desires,
then my every indulgence in them will be stained with blood.
I know not which is the noblest course for us to take,
whether we will win or they will win.
As for those elders and Dhritarashtras sons who stand before me
after slaying them I would not wish to live.
My customary nature has been marred by cowardice,
my mind confused about the rightness of things.
I beseech you to tell me what is good and decisive,
as your disciple, I take refuge in you. Please, enlighten me.

Arjuna keeps repeating his own things over and over again. He appears to be
asking Krishna what is religious, but in reality he keeps telling him. He is
imploring, I am fed up with the darkness of ignorance. I cannot figure out what
is appropriate and what is inappropriate, and at the same time he keeps
saying, The food that I will eat after killing my own people will be stained with
blood. It is better to be a beggar on the street than to become a king by killing
ones own people.
He keeps passing judgment after judgment but saying at the same time that he
is fed up with false knowledge. There is no correlation between the two. If he is
really fed up with false knowledge, then he should have nothing to say. It
should be enough to say, I am fed up with false knowledge. Please guide me. I
have no idea what is right and what is not. But no, at the same time he goes
on telling Krishna that this is right and that is wrong.
The mind may say that it is fed up with false knowledge, but the ego is never
ready to accept this. The ego says, Me? Fed up with false knowledge? I know
what religion is and I know what irreligion is.
The other thing worth noting is that the ego always goes for extremes, chooses
extremes. It jumps from one extreme to the other. The ego never stays in the
middle. It cannot afford to - because to remain in the middle will be its death.
So Arjuna says that it is better to be a beggar than to be a king: he chooses
between two polar opposites. Arjuna can either be a king or a beggar; he
cannot be anywhere in the middle. He will either be number one at this pole or
at that pole, but he has to be number one. This is worth keeping in mind.
Bernard Shaw once said: Even if I am sent to heaven but have to take second
place, I will refuse it. I would prefer to live in hell and be number one. Number
one I must be. What kind of fun will heaven be if I have to be number two?
Even hell can be enjoyable if I am number one.
So it will not be very surprising if all the people who want to be number one
gather in hell. The quickest way to hell is from the political capitals! Go to Delhi
and you have already gone to hell. There is no distance between them.
So if the person obsessed with becoming number one misses the chance to
become king, immediately his next alternative is to become a beggar.
It is worth understanding this alternative as well, because it is the ego that
chooses this alternative. The alternative of extremes is always chosen by the
ego. The ego doesnt care whether it becomes a king or a beggar, what is
important is becoming number one.
Arjuna says, I would rather be a beggar on the street.. It appears to be a
statement of utter humility. He is talking of renouncing the kingdom and
becoming a beggar. But inwardly there is not much of a difference: the inner
story is the same. The desire of the ego is always to be at the extreme. The
desire to be at the polar extreme is the desire of the ego - either at this pole or
the other. The middle is not for the ego.

Buddhas psychology is called the middle way. When somebody asked

Buddha, Why do you call your way the middle way? he said, Only the person
who stands in the middle of two extremes can be free of the ego; otherwise it is
impossible.
A small anecdote is associated with Buddhas life..
Buddha arrived at a village. The emperor came to him and made a request to
be initiated. Buddhas disciples whispered in his ear, Beware of this man! We
have heard all kinds of stories about him. This man has never come down from
his chariot, he has never walked on foot. He is mostly keeps drowning himself
in all sorts of enjoyments and luxuries in his palace. When he climbs the
staircases in his palace, they are lined with naked women whom he uses as
hand-rests instead of a banister. He has known nothing but wine and women in
his life. And today he suddenly wants to become a monk; he wants to renounce
everything and be involved in ascetic disciplines. He is likely to drop you on the
path.
Buddha replied, As far as I understand human beings, this man will not drop.
He is fed up with one extreme, and he is moving to another.
The disciples were still doubtful because they were looking at his past, but
Buddha said, I have no doubt about this. These sort of people always move to
extremes. Dont worry.
The disciples said, We dont think that he will be able to walk barefoot on the
streets or beg for his food, or will be able to bear the heat and the rain.
Buddha said, He will be able to put up with it more than you can.
They all laughed. They felt that in this case at least Buddha was sure to be
proved wrong.
But Buddha proved to be right. From the very next day it was seen that while
all the other monks were walking on a path, the king would get off the pathway
and walk through the thorns. And if the monks were sitting under the shadow
of a tree, he would stand in the sun. And while all the monks were eating once
a day, he would only eat once in two days. Within six months he was reduced
to a skeleton. He had a beautiful body but now it became dark and his bones
started showing. His feet had wounds on them.
Buddha said to his disciples, You see, you were saying that this man is not to
be trusted. He will surpass you in his ascetic disciplines.
The monks were amazed at Buddhas insight. How could he see this? Buddha
said, The ego always chooses one extreme or the other; it cannot stop in the
middle. He was a king among kings and now he is a monk among monks. He
had gathered all the beautiful women of the kingdom; he had all the pathways
of his palace studded with gems; now among the monks he is not an ordinary
monk, he is an extraordinary monk. You walk on the regular path, he walks on
the irregular path. You all avoid walking on the thorns and he looks for them to

walk on. You sit in the shade and he stands in the sun. He will be number one
no matter where he is. He cannot let go of being number one. He is going to
defeat you. He has defeated kings, how can he spare you simple monks? The
ego chooses extremes.
Arjuna is saying, I want to drop the whole idea of the empire; it is
meaningless. I would rather live by begging. He can; he is absolutely capable
of doing so. The ego can remain nourished by doing that as well - but it cannot
remain in the middle. It can easily move from one extreme to the other, but
there is no transformation in moving from one extreme to the other.
One evening Buddha went to see the king. Sick and ailing, he was lying by the
wayside. Buddha said to him, I have come to ask you one thing. I have heard
that when you were king you were an expert musician, an accomplished veena
player. What I want to ask you is, if the strings of a veena are too tight, will
they create music?
The king said, How can that be possible? The strings will break.
And what will happen if the strings are too loose? Will they create music?
asked Buddha.
The king replied, No. If the strings are too loose, they wont create even a
twang - what to say of music.
Buddha said, Now I will leave. Before leaving I would like to remind you that
the law of the veena is that its strings should be neither too tight nor too loose.
They should be somewhere in the middle. When the strings are rightly tuned,
when they are exactly at a mid-point where they can be said to be neither tight
nor loose, only then can they create music. The same is the law for the veena
of life.
Had Arjuna talked about the middle point, Krishna would have been sure to say,
Go wherever you want to go. The matter is over; there is no need to discuss
anything. But he is not talking about the middle point. He is talking about
moving from one extreme to the other. And, on that other extreme the ego is
reinforced.

Strong Ego
Chapter 1 - The Guest
When my friend is away from me, I am depressed;
nothing in the daylight delights me,
sleep at night gives no rest.
Who can I tell about this?
The night is dark and long.Hours go by.
Because I am alone, I sit up suddenly,
fear goes through me..

Kabir says: listen, my friend

there is one thing in the world that satisfies,
and that is a meeting with the guest.
Man is not what he is; man has become what he is not; thats the root cause of
his misery. He has gone astray from his being, he has become too involved in
becoming.
To become means to become false. To become means to become that which
you are not. To be is already the case. Man has not to become anything other
than he is, he has to relax into his being and know the truth.
The truth is already given, the truth is not somewhere in the future. It is not a
goal but the source. You are coming from truth. If you can find the source again
you will know what truth is. You are not going towards truth; all going takes you
farther and farther away from truth.
You must have heard the name of Radha. Mythologically she is known to be the
most beloved woman of Krishna. He had many lovers; Radha was the
suprememost. But historically there has never been any woman by the name of
Radha, and in the ancient scriptures her name is not mentioned at all. It is an
invention of later mystics, later sages, and it has tremendous significance; it
will be good to understand it.
In Sanskrit there is a word, dhara, which means the river moving from the
source towards the ocean. If you reverse the word dhara it becomes radha.
Radha means the river moving towards the origin, not towards the ocean;
radha is a metaphor. And one can be a beloved of God only if one turns the
whole process of life - from being a dhara one becomes a radha, not moving
towards the goal but going deeper and deeper down towards the source. And
the source is within you. The goal is without, the source, within. The source is
your very being.
But mind is aggressive - it wants to explore, it wants to go on adventures, it
wants to know that which is not known, it wants to demystify existence. It
wants to conquer, it is on a journey of conquest. Mind is masculine, basically
masculine, and through the mind there is no way towards godliness.
One has to become feminine. One has to become receptive rather than being
aggressive. One has to learn the art of relaxation rather than learning the
strategies of how to conquer the world and the reality. Truth is not going to be a
conquest, it is going to be a total surrender. One has to become a host, one has
to open up, one has to be just a receptivity so the wind can come in, the rain
can come in, the sun can come in. And just hidden behind the sun and the rain
and the wind one day comes the guest. And the guest does not come from the
outside, it arises within you. Godliness is the guest. But you have to be a host
first, you have to learn the art of being a host. You have to become a welcome,
you have to become a prayer, you have to become an invitation, and you have
to become a waiting, an infinite waiting. If it takes ages for him to come you

have to wait, of course with tears in your eyes but with tremendous trust in the
heart.
Kabir calls God the guest because he wants the seeker to be the host. The
masculine mind cannot become the host. The masculine mind can only become
an aggressor; it knows how to snatch things away. The masculine mind is a
doer, a great doer, hence the masculine mind gives birth to science; science is
basically male.
Religion is female, and those who want to enter into the world of religion have
to understand it very deeply because it is very fundamental. If you miss this
point you will miss all. You have to become feminine. And when I say
feminine I dont mean biologically; it is not a question of man and woman, it
is not a question of physiology - it is a question of your psychology. You may
have the body of a woman and yet the psychology may be masculine.
Thats what is happening now: many women are turning masculine, becoming
more aggressive. In the name of liberation they are losing something infinitely
valuable. For the mundane they are losing the contact with the sacred. The
woman has always remained in a subtle way connected with the sacred. The
woman has been the contact of mankind with the divine, but now she is
becoming more and more masculine.
It is not a question of physiology, biology, remember; you may have the body
of a man and you may have the psychology that I call feminine, receptive.
Buddha is feminine if you look at his psychology, Jesus is feminine if you look at
his psychology.
Friedrich Nietzsche was the first to point out the fact that Buddha and Jesus are
womanish. Of course he was criticizing, he was not appreciating the fact, but
he was the first to point it out; he had that intuitive genius. He used his genius
in a very wrong way. He would have become a buddha himself, but he used his
talents in a destructive way and released the greatest destructive force on the
earth up to now.
Fascism, Nazism, are nothing but offshoots of Nietzsches mind. He was very
masculine, he appreciated the masculine mind: he appreciated the soldier not
the sannyasin, he appreciated war not love, he appreciated swords not flowers,
he appreciated destruction, murder, conquest. He did not appreciate the
beauty of surrender, trust, love, friendship, no; those were not his values. He
did not appreciate compassion, ecstasy, celebration, no; those were not his
values. Hence he criticized Buddha and Jesus, more particularly Jesus. When he
said Jesus is feminine he was condemning Jesus.
I also say Jesus is feminine, but I am not condemning him - I cannot appreciate
him more. To say Jesus and Buddha are feminine is the greatest appreciation
possible because they have become hosts, they have become open, vulnerable
to existence. They have sent the invitation and they are simply waiting.

The way of Buddha is meditation, the way of Jesus is prayer, but these are
simply different names for the same phenomenon. Meditation means becoming
silent, utterly silent, becoming a no-mind, and prayer also means becoming a
deep listening. What you think is prayer is not prayer. You think saying
something to God is prayer? It is not prayer at all. What can you say to God what have you to say to God? Real prayer begins only when you start listening
to existence, when you become utterly silent, just a listening; then meditation
and prayer come very close. Meditation is silence and prayer too is silence just different names for the same phenomenon.
Jesus and Buddha are feminine, and thats what Kabir wants you to understand
and to be. Kabir used to say of himself, I am a woman married to God, God is
my lover. I am fortunate that he has chosen me as his wife, as his beloved. He
has sung many songs in which he says Ram ki dulhaniya - I am wedded to
Rama, I am wedded to God. Kabir is giving you tremendously important
insights in his simple poetry.
The first thing to be understood is that becoming is driving you crazy. You are
not to become anything, you are already that. You have to accept yourself and
relax in that acceptance. The person who is trying to become something is
bound to remain tense, naturally: the constant fear of whether he is going to
make it or not, the constant fear of whether what he is doing is going to lead
him to the goal or not, whether he has chosen the right path or not, the
constant fear of whether he is doing enough to achieve or not, the constant
fear that there are others who may reach before him. Becoming creates fear,
becoming creates competition, and becoming drives you crazy, neurotic.
Becoming takes you farther and farther away from your being.
Do not become.be, just be. Becoming is the root cause of all confusion, misery
and anguish - confusion because in fact you cannot become that which you are
not. The rose can try as much as possible, but it is going to remain a rose, it
cant become a lotus. The lotus can try hard, can practice all kinds of yoga
exercises, but the lotus is going to remain a lotus, it cant become a rose. A
rose is a rose and a lotus is a lotus. But the lotus is beautiful and the rose is
beautiful and there is no confusion, because the rose is perfectly happy in
being a rose and the lotus is perfectly happy in being a lotus. Only man is
miserable.
The only being who is miserable on the earth is man, because he is not happy
in being himself; he wants to become something else. We have been brought
up with this poison: Become. We have been driven by the society, by the
church, by the parents, by the teachers: Become. Nobody says to us: Be.
And if you can find a person who says to you Be, that is the person to listen
to, that is the real master, because he is giving you the most fundamental
thing. Through that vision you will be able to relax, and in relaxation there is
clarity.

Confusion arises out of the idea of becoming because you become a duality that which you are and that which you would like to be. You become a duality
and a great tension, and you have to deny your reality and you have to impose
the unreal upon yourself. You become phony, you become pseudo, you become
split. And what I am saying is not theoretical; you can look all around - the
whole humanity is split because everybody is trying to become somebody else.
Somebody is trying to become a Christ, somebody else is trying to become a
Buddha, somebody else is trying to become the richest man in the world,
somebody is trying to become the president of a country, but becoming.in the
name of religion also, becoming.
Then what is the difference between religion and the ordinary worldly affairs? If
the worldly man is trying to become the richest man or the most powerful man,
and the religious man also is trying to become somebody - a Buddha, a Krishna
- then where is the difference? Both are in the same boat; the name of the boat
is becoming.
The truly religious person is one who drops out of the whole trip of becoming,
who relaxes in his being, who rejoices in his being, who says, I am that Aham brahmasmi - I am already that; Anal haq - I am truth, I am God.
These are just expressions of being. The basic message is: I am already that,
so I need not try to become.
I have heard one of the most beautiful stories about a Hassid master, Sosya.
About seven hundred years ago a great master and mystic named Sosya, ripe
with years and honors, lay dying. His students and disciples asked if he was
afraid to die.
Yes, he said. I am afraid to meet my maker.
How can that be? You have lived such an exemplary life. You have led us out of
the wilderness of ignorance like Moses. You have judged between us wisely, like
Solomon.
Sosya replied, When I meet my maker, he will not ask, Have you been Moses
or Solomon? He will ask, Have you been Sosya?
This is one of the most beautiful stories; meditate over it. Sosya says: God will
not ask me, Have you been Moses or Solomon? He will ask me, Have you
been Sosya?
And remember, God is going to ask you the same thing. He will not ask you,
Have you been Jesus or Buddha or Kabir? He will simply ask you, Have you
been yourself? - and that is not happening, not to millions of people. They are
all trying to be somebody else, something else; rejecting their beings they go
on rushing towards some idea of becoming. They remain in confusion because
they remain in duality, and they remain in misery because it is not possible;
they are trying the impossible.

Remember, misery arises only when you try the impossible, because it cant
happen in the nature of things and you want it to happen. You want two plus
two to be five: you will be miserable unless you see the point that two plus two
cannot be five. You may even believe for a few moments that they are five, but
sooner or later the truth will reveal itself - they are four. How long can you
deceive, and what is the point of deceiving? You are simply wasting your life.

Dont try the impossible - and becoming is trying the impossible. You cannot be
anybody other than you are; let this idea sink deep into your heart. Let me
repeat: you cannot be anybody other than you are, there is no becoming. All
becoming is the world. Not to be a part of becoming is to be a sannyasin.
Who is a sannyasin? - one who is no longer worried about becoming somebody
because he is absolutely attuned with his being, he knows who he is and he is
happy in being that; one who is grateful in being that. Misery comes whenever
you try the impossible, so whenever you are miserable, remember: you must
be trying something impossible.
Bliss is an outcome of simply being the natural. Bliss is not an achievement, it
is a byproduct of relaxing with yourself, of simply being that which you are.
Then this very moment all misery can disappear, and this very moment there is
bliss, and this very moment there is benediction.and the heavens open up and
godliness starts showering. And suddenly, a great stirring is felt in the heart:
one who has been asleep becomes awake.
Becoming is your sleep. Being is your buddhahood, being is your awakening.
And becoming creates anguish because you have to find ways and means, and
everything fails, nothing ever succeeds. Nothing can ever succeed. Hence great
anguish arises: your life, which could have bloomed in flowers, becomes only a
bed of thorns.
But you are responsible and nobody else; it is your life, it is your responsibility.
You have to take care about your being. And the greatest thing that can be said
to you is: just be yourself. Carry no idea about how you should be - drop all
hows, drop all ideas, drop all ideologies, drop all concepts, images of how you
should be. You are already that. Start enjoying that which you are, and then
this very ordinary life suddenly becomes extraordinary. Then these ordinary
days have such tremendous poetry, then these ordinary moments are full of
dance. Then these ordinary people are no more ordinary people; they turn into
gods and goddesses. The moment you accept your being you accept
everybodys being.
Why has this happened at all in the first place? And why only to man? Why not
to the trees and the birds and the animals? Why are the Himalayan peaks so
beautiful, and why are the birds on the wing so enchanting, and why do the
trees have such splendor? Why has this disappeared from mans life? There is a
reason, and it has to be understood.

Man is the only conscious being on the earth; that is his glory and that is his
agony too. It depends on you whether it will be agony or glory. Consciousness
is a double-edged sword. You have been given something so valuable that you
dont know what to do with it; it is almost like a sword in the hands of a child.
The sword can be used rightly, can protect, but the sword can harm too.
Anything that can become a blessing can also become a curse; it depends how
you use it.

Man is the only conscious being, and consciousness has two possibilities: either
it can become divine consciousness - then it is a benediction, or it can become
self-consciousness - then it is a curse. And we have made it a curse. We have
changed our consciousness into self-consciousness, we have created an ego
out of being conscious. Rather than becoming aware of the organic unity of
existence, rather than becoming aware of the orgasmic joy of existence, rather
than becoming part of the universal, we have used our consciousness in
separating ourselves from the universe, from existence, from life. Rather than
making a bridge out of consciousness we have made a wall.
And thats what we are being taught continuously. Even modern psychology
goes on teaching a very nonsense thing: that ego needs to be strengthened,
that a man needs a strong ego because he has to fight in the struggle of life; if
he has not got a strong ego he will be defeated by other strong egos. There is a
point in it, it is true: if you dont have a strong ego you cannot be a politician, if
you dont have a strong ego you cannot become very rich. You will have to fight
tooth and nail for these things, you will have to fight madly, neurotically,
fanatically. You will have to fight, utterly blind to what is happening. You have to
go on rushing into the crowd, you have to risk everything; only then can you
have much money, much power. But what is the point of having much money
and much power?
In the first place they are not really needed to be happy, they are not really
needed to be contented. Modern psychology goes on teaching people to have
strong egos. Modern psychology in fact is still not yet modern, not modern
enough; it is still persisting in the old ideology, the old ideas. It has a very long
heritage; it has not been yet able to disconnect itself from the past. What the
priests were saying in the past, now the psychologist is saying. He is simply
repeating the same, with a new jargon of course, with more scientific
terminology, which is dangerous. The priest is exposed now, the priest no
longer has any power; the power has moved to the psychoanalyst, psychiatrist,
psychologist. The psychologist is the modern priest, and he is doing the same
stupid thing as the priests have been doing down the ages: Have strong
egos. The whole of education is based in giving you a strong ego.
And the problem is that the more strong an ego you have the more you are
disconnected with existence, because the more you feel you are separate, the
more you are separate. And to remain separate from existence creates fear,
creates paranoia.

Why are people so afraid of death? Do you think they are really afraid of death?
You may not have meditated over it. Nobody is afraid of death - because how
can you be afraid of something which you have not seen yet? You cannot be
afraid of something which is unknown, you can only be afraid of something
which is known. A child is not afraid of catching hold of a snake, a child is not
afraid of putting his hand into the fire. Why is he not afraid? Because he does
not know. How can he be afraid of the snake? He has no past experience, no
bitter experience. How can he be afraid of the flame? - he has never been
burned before. How can you be afraid of death? You dont know anything about
death. Who knows? It may be a beautiful rest. Who knows? It may take you to a
higher plane of life. Who knows? It may give you freedom from your body. Who
knows? How can you be afraid of death? No, nobody is afraid of death; let me
say it clearly.
But you will say everybody is afraid of death, I know. There is something else in
it: people are not afraid of death, they are afraid of losing their separation, they
are afraid of losing their ego. Once you start feeling separate from existence
the fear of death arises because then death seems to be dangerous. You will no
longer be separate; what will happen to your ego, your personality? And you
have cultivated the personality with such care, with such great effort; you have
polished it your whole life, and death will come and destroy it.
If you understand, if you see, if you can feel and experience that you are not
separate from existence, that you are one with it, all fear of death disappears
because there is nobody to die inside you. In the first place there is nobody at
all, existence lives through you.
Saint Paul says, Not I, but Christ lives through me. And Christ says, Not I, but
God lives through me. They are expressing their nonseparation, they are
declaring that they are one with existence. Once you know that you are one
with existence there is no death possible. For death to be possible first you
have to create a private, personal life; then death becomes possible. You make
death possible by creating the ego; and the stronger the ego, the more will be
the fear of death. Hence the most egoistic person is very, very prone.deep
down, trembling, afraid of death. The less the ego, the less the fear of death.
Thats why small children are not afraid of death - their egos are not yet born.
Animals are not afraid of death, they simply die; when death comes they die.
When birth comes they are here, when death comes they are gone.
A person of true consciousness will come like the wind and will go like the wind,
he will not leave any traces anywhere. He will not struggle with death, because
he will not struggle with life itself. He will allow life to flow through him and he
will allow death also to flow through him. Life is Gods and death is Gods; life is
a manifestation, death is a rest.
And remember, if the fear of death disappears then all other fears disappear
automatically, because all other fears are nothing but byproducts of the main,
basic fear - the fear of death. Go into any of your fears and ultimately you will

come to the rock-bottom, and that will be the fear of death. You are afraid of
losing money? Go deep into it and you will find that money somehow gives you
a feeling that you are more protected, that you can resist death more than the
poor man; hence you are afraid of losing money. If you are powerful, politically
powerful, it gives you an appearance as if you have conquered death. Because
you are so powerful over peoples lives, it creates an illusion that you are
powerful over your life too. It is a sheer illusion, but it is maintained by your
high post: you are the president, the prime minister, and millions of people look
up to you - you are so important, how can existence afford to lose you? You are
so important, how can life continue without you? You are so important that you
will be needed; that gives you the feeling. Also, because you are so powerful
over people, you can kill thousands of people.
Adolf Hitler killed millions of people, and those who have looked deeply into his
mind are all convinced of one fact: that he was very much afraid of death. He
was afraid of death, so much so that he never allowed anybody to be in his
room in the night, not even the woman that he had fallen in love with once.
Nobody was ever allowed to stay in the same room. He would lock the room,
check everything, because while he was asleep somebody could kill him. Who
knows? - the woman he had fallen in love with may be just a spy. He never
allowed anybody to come close to him, too close, he was so much afraid.
He got married only three hours before he was going to commit suicide; there
was not even a chance for the honeymoon. In fact that was his honeymoon suicide. In the middle of the night the priest was called to marry him to the
woman he had been in a kind of relationship with - it could not have been of
love, because a man like Hitler cannot love. They were married, and the next
thing they did after marriage was that they killed themselves. Now there was
no fear, he could allow the woman to come close - he was going to commit
suicide anyway. All was lost, the game was lost, the enemy had entered into
the capital. He could hear the bombs exploding just close by; now there was no
hope, he had failed. Now he could get married. For what? For twenty years he
had been waiting, for twenty years the woman had been waiting, but he was so
afraid of bringing anybody too close.
This man killed millions of people for stupid reasons. He killed Jews, millions of
Jews, with this stupid idea: that it was because of the Jews that Germany - the
race, the country, the nation - had fallen low; because of Jews the first world
war had been lost. Now these are all stupid reasons, with no logic, no
relevance. Jews had nothing to do with the first world war, they had nothing to
do with the fall of the German race. Really, they had given the greatest
geniuses that Germany has ever known: Karl Marx was a Jew, Sigmund Freud
was a Jew, Albert Einstein was a Jew. In fact it was the Jews who were the
cream, but he killed millions of Jews.
Deep down, it seems he was suffering from an inferiority complex. And deep
down he was suffering from so much fear of death that he wanted to kill to

convince himself that If I kill so many people, if I can kill millions of people,
then I am beyond death. I am so powerful.
A man who is afraid of death is dangerous, dangerous to himself and to others.
And the fear arises out of a very fallacious beginning; the fallacy is that we
think we are separate. But consciousness has that possibility. Man has been
given such a potential power of being conscious that he has to be very careful
how he uses it. Remember, if you move on plain ground there is no danger of
falling; if you move in the mountains, if you go towards the peaks, there is
great danger of falling. The higher you move, the danger becomes more and
more acute. Man is the only animal who is moving higher, at the peaks,
towards the peaks. Consciousness is the mountain and we have to be very
alert.
And that is the whole teaching of all the buddhas and all the Krishnas and all
the christs, and that is the teaching of Kabir: be conscious, be so conscious
that you dont create the self, be so alert that the self is not created at all. Selfconsciousness is a dis-ease. Just consciousness is great freedom, liberation. By
being just conscious, sooner or later you will become divine-conscious. By
becoming self-conscious, sooner or later you will lose even that small
consciousness that lingers behind the self like a small tail; that consciousness
will also disappear.
The ego will make you more and more unconscious. The ego will enclose you
like a prison wall. It will not leave even windows in your being to look out
through. It will make you a monad, a windowless, closed cell; you will be
encapsulated by the ego. It is the ego that is the problem.
And hence I repeat again: the male mind is egoistic. You have to learn the way
of the feminine, you have to become egoless, you have to learn the path of
surrender. You have to learn how to melt into existence, how to become one
with the rivers and the mountains and the clouds, how to feel affinity,
attunement, at-onement. And then slowly, slowly you become a host. The day
you are a host, the guest comes.
God is not a hypothesis; religion does not propose any hypotheses. The
hypothesis is part of the scientific world. A hypothesis means just an
assumption to explain a few facts which cannot be explained without it. But a
hypothesis is. always temporary: tomorrow we will find a better hypothesis,
then we will discard this one. Hence science goes on discarding every day;
better and better hypotheses are found and older ones are discarded. Now
Newton is discarded because of Einstein, Sooner or later we will find a better
hypothesis to explain the facts of the world. A hypothesis is just a way of
explaining the facts; it is man-made. Facts are there and the mind wants to fix
all those facts into a certain system because unless they are put into a certain
system the mind feels uneasy, restless. Unless they are systematized,
categorized, the mind feels very restless.

The mind is a great systematizer, it wants to systematize everything. Even

when there is no system available, it invents one. The hypothesis is an
invention of the mind, but all the time you know that it is only an assumption.
You need not believe in a hypothesis, you only use the hypothesis.
God is not a hypothesis. Then what is God? God is a hypostasis; it is an
experience. It is not to explain anything, it is the experience of the
unexplainable. I call it hypostasis; it cannot be changed, it is absolute, and it is
not a belief. Those who believe in God, their God is a hypothesis; those who
know God, their God is not a hypothesis but a hypostasis.
Kabir knows. What he is talking about is not an explanation, what he is talking
about is an experience - he is sharing his joy, he is sharing something that he
has known, he is singing the song about the unsung. Remember it, that
whenever Kabir talks about God it is not a belief; he knows it, it is his
experience. He is talking out of his experience, hence he can be of immense
help to you.
Those who believe cannot be of any help; they themselves dont know. If
somebody says, I believe in God, remember, he cannot be of any help to you.
He himself is ignorant, hence the belief. Find a man who says, I know God.
This is not my belief, but my experience. And the miracle is: if you know God,
you are God. Knowing God, one becomes God. The old Upanishads say:
Knowing God, one becomes that.
Kabir is talking as a God-realized man, utterly drunk. His songs are songs of a
drunkard drunk on the divine, small, but of immense beauty. They may not be
great literature - they are not - because he does not bother about the meter
and the grammar and the language. These are not composed songs, these are
outpourings of his joy; a drunkard dancing, singing. You cant expect formalities
to be fulfilled. These songs are very small gems. The quantity is not the
question, but the quality.
The original song begins:
Sai bin dard kareje hoy.
Without the beloved my heart aches, without the beloved my heart is nothing
but pain, without the beloved I am living in hell.
Sai bin dard kareje hoy.
Without the beloved we are empty, hollow: negatives. Unless God enters into
our beings, unless God blooms in our beings, we cannot be really existential,
we remain shadows. And it is painful, it aches, it hurts, it is like a wound.
When my friend is away from me, I am depressed;
nothing in the daylight delights me,
sleep at night gives no rest.
Who can I tell about this?

The helplessness of the mystic. On the one hand he has tasted something of
God, he has seen a glimpse; now he hankers for more, now he does not want to
leave that experience, that space, even for a single moment. But one cannot
take hold of that space in one go. The experience is so tremendous, so huge, so
enormous, that you cannot swallow it. You have slowly, slowly to imbibe it, you
have to chew it and digest it.
God is an ocean - you cannot drink him. You will have to slowly, slowly become
one with it.
Kabir knows, he has seen the face of the beloved. Now his heart is full of pain,
the pain of separation. He has known the state of nonseparation, maybe only
for a few moments; for a few moments he has been transported to another
world, he has tasted the nectar. Now he is back in the world, back to the earth,
and it is very painful. The world seems to be pale, utterly meaningless, with no
significance. His heart longs for the beloved, there is only one thirst - again to
be in that vast space, again to be with the friend. When my friend is away from
me, I am depressed; nothing in the daylight delights me.
Once you have known God then these so-called days are like nights. Once you
have known God then this life is like death. Once you have known God then all
the joys of this life are nothing but sorrows. Everything that you had thought
before as very sweet turns sour; now you can compare.
If you have been to the Himalayan peaks and if you have seen that virgin
silence, the coolness, the smell of the snow, that other-worldly something
which still exists in the Himalayas. It is not so in the Alps; no other mountains
have that, all other mountains are already polluted by man, all other mountains
are already destroyed by man. Only the Himalayan peaks still have something
very primitive, primordial, ancient, virgin. If you have seen that silence, then
coming back to the marketplace, the heart longs. Nobody will be able to
understand why you look so sad, nobody will be able to understand why your
eyes are so full of tears, nobody will be able to understand why you dont enjoy.
To the man who has tasted God the world becomes so futile, so utterly futile
that he is here but he is not here; his heart continuously longs for
God. .Nothing in the daylight delights me, sleep at night gives no rest.
To know God is to know ultimate rest. Your sleep is not much of a rest. If you
have known something of meditation you will understand what I mean when I
say your sleep is not much of a rest. Your sleep is a new kind of restlessness,
thats all; it is good for a change. In the day you are restless in one way, in the
night you are restless in another way - good for a change. It is a kind of rest. It
is like you have been doing mathematics for three hours and you are tired,
then you go into the garden and you dig a hole - it is a kind of rest. In fact it is a
new kind of work, but now, tired of mathematics, digging the hole feels good.
Thats why in the schools, colleges, universities, we go on changing subjects; it
is a kind of rest: one hour for mathematics, then another hour for geography,
then another hour for history. We go on changing, because the part of the mind

that functions when you are working on mathematics is not the part which
functions when you are studying literature. There are different parts, different
centers in the mind, so if one center starts functioning, the first center goes to
sleep, has a kind of rest.
Thats exactly what happens in the night. In the daytime your conscious mind
functions and your unconscious remains hidden. In the night the conscious
mind goes to sleep, the unconscious functions, but work continues, great work
really, much work. Your blood circulates, work continues; your heart beats,
work continues; your breathing continues, your digestion continues. A thousand
and one things are going on in the body, and a thousand and one things are
going on in the mind too. Dreams upon dreams are coming; and not only that,
a part of your mind prevents everything from the outside, keeps it blocked so it
does not disturb your sleep.
You want to get up early in the morning, at four oclock; you fix the alarm and
the alarm goes, but your mind is constantly working. It does not want you to be
disturbed. The mind creates a dream: you start dreaming that you are passing
a church and the church bells are ringing.. Now this is a way for the mind to
protect your sleep. It misinforms you, misguides you, it changes the alarm into
church bells. Great work is going on. The mind is guarding, seeing what has to
be allowed and what has not to be allowed. And if something cannot be
prevented, at least it can be interpreted in such a way that the sleep is not
disturbed. It is constantly on guard, great work continues the whole night.
But if you have known meditation, then a few minutes of meditation can give
you so much rest. Then your whole night will look like restlessness compared to
that rest because in meditation you are utterly relaxed, mind is not on guard,
you are not focusing on anything. You are simply open and available, available
to all kinds of things - the birds singing, the airplane passing by, the train, the
people, the traffic noise. You are available to all. Meditation is not
concentration, meditation is not excluding anything; meditation is inclusive of
all.
And then there is a great silence amidst all the noise around you, great rest
amidst all the turmoil around you. Once you have known the rest of meditation
even for few minutes, your whole night will look like restlessness. Comparison
will arise. But one who has known God - that means one who has known
samadhi, the ultimate peak of meditation. It is natural, Kabir is right:
Nothing in the daylight delights me,
sleep at night gives no rest.
Who can I tell about this?
This is one of the greatest problems for the mystics: Who can I tell about this,
who will understand?
I was traveling in this country for fifteen years, day in, day out, year in, year
out, talking to thousands of people. Slowly, slowly I became aware that I was
talking to walls. These people could not understand what I was saying. They

could hear, but they could not listen. The words reached them but the meaning
was left behind. I tried in every way, but it was impossible. Then I had to decide
to stay in one place and only to talk to those few who really wanted to
understand - and not only to understand, but who were ready to be
transformed.
Many people come here, particularly Indians, and they ask, Why isnt the
meeting open to all? .Because it is of no use to them, and they will be a
nuisance here. Their very presence will destroy something immensely beautiful
that is being created. It is open only to those who are seekers. It is not a public
place, it can never be a public place. It is a mystery school: it is only for those
who are ready to go into the unknown, the unexplainable.
And this has been my experience: that if I am talking to my sannyasins I feel a
deep rapport, if I am talking to nonsannyasins something seems to be difficult
to communicate. Many nonsannyasins have asked, Why cant we sit in front?
For the simple reason that if you are in front and I see you, it will be difficult for
me to say that which I would like to say. Just looking at your faces something
becomes impossible, communication becomes difficult - what to say about
communion? Looking at my sannyasins, looking into their eyes, communion is
possible.
Kabir is right. He says:
Who can I tell about this?
Kase kahun dukh hoy..
There is great pain in my heart because I have known the bliss of being with
the divine, but to whom can I communicate this? It would help me if I could
communicate.
Hence a buddhafield is always needed, satsang is needed. A community is
needed where many people are searching together, where you can say and you
can rest assured that you will not be misunderstood. A commune is needed
where you can share your burdens, your experiences; you can pour out your
heart and you will be understood, and you will not feel embarrassed.
Thats what is happening here. If a sannyasin comes to another sannyasin,
starts crying, the other understands, the other will not start asking questions,
questions which will be embarrassing to the person who is crying. He may hug
him, he may hold his hand, but he will not start a great discussion about it:
Dont be emotional, this is not good. Be a man, dont cry. No, he will
understand, he will have all sympathy, he will support. A commune becomes a
support where you can say things which are not ordinarily said in the outside
world, where you can share experiences which look imaginary, illusory,
hallucinatory, where you can share things which if you go in the outside world
and tell somebody, he will think you are mad.

Kase kahun dukh hoy. Kabir says: I cannot find anybody to whom I can say this
- that I have seen my lord, that I have been with my lord, and now I am again
separated. I have known nonseparation, those orgasmic moments, those
peaks, and now I am thrown back into the dark valley. Now nothing here
appeals to me anymore; the beauty here is almost ugliness compared to the
beauty that has arisen in my vision. And the happiness here is just false,
because I have known the authentic joy. And all the celebrations here are just
formal, people are moving in empty gestures. I have seen the real celebration!

The night is dark and long. Hours go by.

Because I am alone, I sit up suddenly,
fear goes through me..
The night is dark and long. You dont know about what night Kabir is talking. He
is not talking about the ordinary night, he is talking about the night that is
known only by those who have seen the light - a very paradoxical
phenomenon. He is talking about the night that happens only to those who
have seen the dawn, who have seen something of the morning, and again that
has disappeared and now the night is darker than ever before. Great fear
arises: Will I ever be able to attain to that peak again? Was that real? Or had I
only been dreaming? Great fear grows, great trembling arises, one is scared to
death. And one cannot even share it. It would have helped if there were a
companion with whom it was possible to share. It would have helped if some
consoling words from the other had come; if the other had told him, Dont be
worried, it will happen again. It has happened to me again. That would have
given confidence. But whom to say it to?
Kase kahun dukh hoy. I am in tremendous pain. But where to go, whom to go
to, with whom to share?
Adhi ratiyan pichhle paharva, sai bina taraf rahi soy.
Half the night is gone, waiting, waiting, waiting, and there is no sign. I cannot
hear his footsteps.
Adhi ratiyan pichhle paharva, sai bina taraf rahi soy.
I have waited long, half the night has passed. Now even the last part of the
night is passing and he has not come, and I dont see any sign, any indication,
any message. And the darkness is becoming darker and darker; there seems to
be no possibility that I will attain to him again. In deep despair, in great pain, I
have fallen asleep again.
The night is dark, and long.
Remember one thing: that time is relative. If you are in a mood of rejoicing time
goes fast, very fast; if you are in misery, in pain, time slows down. The clock
moves the same, but the psychological experience of time is very relative.

You are sitting by the side of a person who is dying - then you will know how
long the night becomes: there seems to be no end to it. You are with your
beloved, after many years you have met, and the night goes so fast, as if it
were just a few moments. You cannot believe how fast it has gone. It seems the
night played a game with you - it went fast - just not to allow you time enough
to be with the beloved.

Time is relative, not the clock time but psychological time. Those who have
known glimpses of God, for them this world is really difficult to live in, and the
night is very dark and very long. The Christian mystics have a right word for it;
they call it the dark night of the soul. Hours go by. Because I am alone.
And you will know real aloneness only when you have seen God. Before that
you have known aloneness - sometimes your friend is not with you, your wife is
not with you, your husband is not with you, your children are not with you - yes,
you have known a certain kind of aloneness, but that is nothing compared to
the aloneness that you will know when you have seen God. Then that
aloneness is like a knife in the heart. One is almost crucified.
I sit up suddenly, fear goes through me. I cannot sleep because he may be
coming. Who knows when he will come? His ways are unpredictable, he comes
at very unexpected moments. One has to be alert and watchful. So I wake up, I
sit up suddenly again and again, and fear goes through me: He has not come.
Has he forgotten me? Has he lost interest in me?
These are the fears of a lover - tremendously magnified, infinitely magnified,
when the lover is nobody except God himself, nobody other than God himself.
Kabir says: listen, my friend
there is one thing in the world that satisfies,
and that is a meeting with the guest.
Nothing else ever satisfies, Nothing else can ever satisfy. Without attaining to
God, without becoming God, without merging with God, you are going to
remain discontented. Contentment, real contentment, has only one meaning:
that is the meeting with the guest.
Kahat kabir suno bhai pyare.
My dear friends, listen.
Sai mile sukh hoy.
There is only one possibility of bliss, and that is when the beloved has been
found. And what is the way to find the beloved? Search is not the way. Lao Tzu
says, Seek, and you will not find. Do not seek, and find. Seeking is not the
way, because seeking is again the male mind. Nonseeking, a passive waiting,
just ready, the door open, the house prepared for the guest, sitting on the
doorstep, waiting..

This waiting is prayer, this waiting is meditation. This waiting is what is meant
by being a host. The moment you have become a host the guest comes,
inevitably comes; it has never been otherwise. It is not that you have to find
God; if you are ready God finds you. And how can you find God? - you dont
know his address, you dont know where he is, you dont know his face. Even if
you come across him you will not be able to recognize him. Even if you meet
him the meeting is not going to be any meeting because you will not recognize
him. How can you recognize him? You have never seen him before.
Man cannot seek God: this is the message of these sutras. God can seek man.
Then what has to be done by man? He should be ready, he should be available.
If a hand comes from the beyond he should not shrink back. If a voice comes
from the beyond he should be ready to listen. If his mind is noisy he will not be
able to listen to it. And if he comes and knocks on your door, you should be
ready to open the door, you should not be afraid of him. Yes, when the
unknown comes fear arises, and when God knocks on your door it is a death for
you.and a resurrection - but the resurrection will come later on. First the
crucifixion, first you will have to die.
Being with God means only one thing: dissolving in him - just as rivers come
from the mountains and disappear into the ocean. Maybe there is a moment
when the river hesitates. Kahlil Gibran says somewhere: I have watched rivers
falling into the ocean and I think that for a moment they hesitate, for a moment
the fear grips them - the vast ocean, and the river is going to lose its identity,
and forever. Kahlil Gibran says: I have seen rivers looking back with great
nostalgia at all the mountains that they have crossed, and the plains, and the
beautiful trees on the banks, and the sunrises and the sunsets, and a thousand
and one things. There is great nostalgia for all the memories and a great desire
not to lose ones identity, but the river cannot go back.
Man can go back, that is the problem. The river is bound to fall into the ocean,
but man can turn back even from the ultimate door. If fear grips you and you
become too protective of your separate existence, of your personality, of your
ego, if you have really a strong ego, you may turn back or you may close your
doors. You may not listen to the voice of the beyond.
And let me tell you, God comes every day and knocks on your doors.
Sometimes he comes as the wind and knocks on your doors, but you dont
open your doors. And sometimes he comes in the rains, but you dont go into
the open and you dont stand under the sky to be soaked by him. No, you hide,
you open your umbrellas. And you have psychological umbrellas too, and
whenever he comes you avoid, whenever he comes across you, you escape.
Kabir says: If you want the guest, be a host. Welcome him, receive him,
embrace him. And he always comes, continuously comes - every moment of
your life he is coming and searching for you; you go on avoiding. All that is
needed on your part is not a search for God but availability - when God comes

to be ready to surrender, when the ocean comes to disappear into it. Slip like a
dewdrop.silently, prayerfully. Dancing, laughing, loving, disappear.
Sai mile sukh hoy.. Kahat kabir suno bhai pyare.

Chapter 74 - The Book of Secrets

[]
One day I was suffering from a cold - it is my constant companion. So
somebody came and he said, You must have taken somebody elses cold.
That doesnt show anything about me, it shows something about him. It is
difficult for him to conceive of me suffering. So he said, You must have
somebody elses cold. I tried to convince him, but it is impossible to convince
disciples. The more you try to convince them, the more they believe that they
are right. In the end he said to me, Whatsoever you say I am not going to
listen. I know! You have taken somebody elses illness.
What to do? The bodys health and illness is its own affair. If you want to do
something about it, you are still attached to it. It will take its own course; you
need not be much worried about it.
I am only a witness. The body is born, the body will die; only the witnessing will
be there. It will remain forever. Only witnessing is something absolutely eternal
- everything else goes on changing, everything else is a flux.
The third question:
Osho,
Last night you explained in detail about how seekers deceive themselves by
not making earnest and sincere efforts toward meditation. But with many of
the seekers who earnestly ask you for meditation techniques, you simply say
to them to leave everything to you and that you will look after their spiritual
progress. But many seekers feel dissatisfaction about their spiritual
transformation that way. In this case, please explain how these seekers are
deceiving themselves.
Firstly, when they ask for a technique, I give them a technique. This is a
technique: Leave everything to me. This is one of the most powerful techniques
possible. And dont think that it is easy; it is very difficult, sometimes
impossible. It is difficult to leave everything to somebody, but if you can, in that
very surrender your ego has disappeared; in that very surrender, your past has
disappeared; in that very surrender a new point is born - you are different. Up
to now you were living with your own ego; from now onwards you will be living
without the ego, you will be following a path of surrender.

So dont think that this is not a technique! It is a technique - one of the very
basic techniques. And I dont give it to any and everybody. I give it only to

particular persons who are very egoistic, because for them any technique will
create trouble. Their ego will exploit it. They will become more egoistic through
it. They can practice anything else except this, but by that practice their ego is
not going to be destroyed; rather, it will be more fulfilled. They will become
great meditators. They can renounce the world, but their ego will be
strengthened whatsoever they do. Whenever I feel that this seeker has such a
subtle ego that any method will be poisonous to him, then only do I say, Leave
everything to me. Not that this is going to be the end, but this is going to be
the beginning. And this is going to be the right beginning for all those who are
ego-centered. If they can leave everything to me, then I will start giving them
other techniques - but only then. Then other techniques will not prove
poisonous. Once the ego is not there those techniques will transform them. And
if their surrender is so total that nothing is left to be transformed, then there
will be no need for any other technique. This too is possible, and this is possible
only for those who are very egoistic; only they can surrender totally.
This will look confusing, paradoxical - but remember, you can leave something
only if you have it. If you dont have a very strong ego, what can you leave?
What can you surrender? It is just like asking a beggar to surrender all his
riches. He will be ready, he will say, Okay, but his okay means nothing. It is
absolutely futile because he has nothing to lose. And if you have a very strong
ego, that means a very concentrated ego, crystallized, you can leave it totally
because it will be difficult to leave it in parts. It is so concentrated and
crystallized that it will be difficult to leave it in fragments. Either you can leave
it or not. It is one of the paradoxes of life that for surrender a very authentic
ego is needed to be there in the first place. So to me, a right education will
consist in creating strong egos, to the very extreme, where a great suffering is
born out of them, and then - surrender. Only the is surrender possible.
This has been my experience. Persons coming from the West have stronger
egos than the Eastern persons because in the West there is no concept of
surrender, no concept of obedience, no concept of guru and disciple. Really,
the Western mind cannot conceive of what a guru is. And they cannot conceive
of someone surrendering to anybody. The whole Western education, culture
and civilization is based on ego, ego-fulfillment. And Western psychologists say
that to be mentally healthy, you must have a strong ego. So all the Western
psychologies help the ego to be strong: a childs ego must be strengthened in
every way otherwise he will become mentally ill. But Eastern religions say that
unless you leave the ego you cannot know the ultimate truth, you cannot know
what lifes mystery is. Both seem to be contradictory, but they are not. To me,
the Western training must be there in the beginning with every person all over
the world. Every person should be given a strong ego. By the age of thirty-five
you should reach to the peak of your ego; at the age of thirty-five it should be
at its peak, strong, as strong as possible. Only then will surrendering happen.
So whenever Western seekers come to me and I tell them to leave things to
me, they are very hesitant, resistant. And it seems impossible, but sometimes,
when surrender happens, they achieve a much deeper realization.

With Eastern persons surrender is not very difficult. They are ready. You say,
Surrender, they say, Yes. There is not a single hesitation on their part. They
dont have very strong, developed egos. They can surrender it - but that
surrender is impotent. It will not help. So it almost always happens that with
the Eastern person I immediately give him a technique to work on, so that it
helps his ego. With Western persons I immediately say, Surrender. They have
already reached that point within them so they can surrender; their very
hesitancy shows that they can surrender. But their surrender is going to be a
struggle, and when it is a struggle it is a sadhana. When it is a struggle it
means something; it is going to transform them.
So firstly, when I say, leave everything to me, this is a technique; and I say it
only to persons who have very developed egos. Secondly.But many seekers
feel dissatisfaction about their spiritual transformation that way.
Right, these are the people to whom I say, Surrender. They feel very
dissatisfied. They want something to do, they dont want to surrender. I know
they will feel dissatisfied because their ego will resist; it will try in every way
not to surrender. But that cannot be helped. They will have to pass through this
dissatisfaction, and they will have to understand that leaving everything to me
is just the beginning. If they cannot do that, I am not going to give them any
technique right now. They can leave me, or leave everything to me. There is no
other alternative. Once I say to someone, Leave everything to me, I am not
going to give any technique to him. I know that it will be difficult and arduous but it has to be so. The more difficult, the more arduous, the better, because
that means he has a more evolved ego, and it is struggling. He will have to
come some day - to me or to someone else, it is irrelevant - and he will have to
surrender it.
The master is not so relevant; the surrendering is relevant. Where you
surrender is of no significance. You can surrender to a stone buddha. That will
do. Surrendering transforms you. It is putting your ego aside, unburdening
yourself; living for the first time not out of the past but moving into the present,
fresh and young, unburdened.
And the third thing: In this case, please explain how these seekers are
deceiving themselves.
They can deceive themselves. They can say to me, Yes, we leave everything
to you, and go on withholding everything. They can deceive themselves that
they have surrendered and they can go on insisting on their own ways.
Surrender cannot be partial, it can be only total - and then you cannot set your
conditions, your likes and dislikes.
It happened just a few days ago. A man came to me and he said, I will leave
everything to you. Whatsoever you say, I will do. I told him, Repeat it again
slowly, Whatsoever you say, I will do. He repeated it. I told him to repeat it
again and go more slowly. He became a little disturbed and said, Why? And
he also became aware of why I was saying go slowly. He said, You may be

right. I should not say this, because it is very difficult to leave everything to you
and it will be difficult to follow whatsoever you say. So I told him to make it
conditional, to be exact so that he could not change. He said, Right,
Whatsoever I like - give me the freedom to choose.
This is how you can deceive. Inside you remain the master; you go on choosing
what to do and what not to do. And as it happens, whatsoever you choose is
going to be wrong because the mind that is choosing is wrong, otherwise there
would have been no need to come to me. When I say surrender it means that
now you will not choose, now I will choose and you will follow. And if you can
follow totally, the day is not far away when I will say, Now there is no need.
Now you can choose.
You must disappear: the surface, the superficial ego must disappear. Then your
own being comes into being. I am not going to keep you following me forever
and ever. That is not a very happy business. When your ego is no longer there,
your own guru, the inside master, has come into being. The outer guru is
nothing but a representative of the inner one. Once the inner is there, the outer
is not needed. And your own guru will say to you, Now follow yourself. Move
alone. Now you dont need anybody to guide you, the inner guide has come
into being. Now you have your own inner light. You can see through it. It will
show you the path.
But right now, as you are, it is not possible. You dont have any light. You
cannot see. And wherever your mind leads you it will be wrong. This mind has
been leading you for lives and it always leads you into particular patterns. It
has old habits and it leads you accordingly. It is a mechanical thing. Just to
create a break, surrender is needed. If you surrender to something, even for a
few days, there will be a gap between now and your past. A new force has
entered within you. Now you cannot continue with the past; your way, as it has
always been, cannot be any more. A turning will happen. This gap is what is
meant by surrender.
But you can deceive. You can say, Yes, I surrender, and you may not have
surrendered. Or you may think that you have surrendered but unconsciously
you are fighting. Not only in surrender, but in everything where a let-go is
needed, we fight.
In the West much research is going on about the phenomenon of sex, because
people are becoming less and less capable of deep orgasms. They have sex but
no ecstasy comes out of it. It has become a boring affair. They feel only
frustrated, only weakened through it. And then it becomes a routine. They
dont know what to do. A deep ecstasy through the orgasm is its significance. If
it doesnt happen it is futile and useless and even harmful. Many schools of
psychology go on working on the questions: What has happened to man? Why
is he not achieving orgasm through sex? Why is there so much dissatisfaction?
All the researches indicate that the reason is that man cannot surrender - that
is why he cannot achieve orgasm. Even while making love, while deep in sex,
your mind remains in control. You go on controlling. You are not in a let-go.

You are afraid to let go because if you allow the sex energy to move
uncontrolled you dont know where it will lead. You may go mad, you may even
die. That is the fear. So you remain in control.
You go on manipulating your body. This manipulation from the mind doesnt
allow the whole body to become a flow of energy. Then sex becomes a local
affair, the whole body is not involved, the whole body is not in an inner dance;
the ecstasy is missed. You lose energy and you dont gain anything - there is
bound to be frustration. So psychologists say that you will not achieve a deep
ecstasy unless you are in a deep let-go, unless the mind is not there and the
ego is not there; unless the body has taken over with its own force, its own
momentum, and is moving by its own unconscious sources; unless you are not
there. That ecstasy can give you a first glimpse of the ultimate ecstasy that
happens in a total let-go of your ego with the divine, with the universe.
Samadhi, the ultimate goal of all yoga and Tantra, is a deep orgasm with the
universe itself, with the existence itself. The guru is just trying to help you, to
bring you to a point where you can at least surrender the ego. Then a deep
ecstasy will happen between you and your master. Wherever there is a letgo, ecstasy happens - that is the law.
So if you can surrender to a guru, dont listen to anybody. Even if the whole
world says that this guru is wrong, dont listen to it. If you can surrender, this
guru is right. You will achieve an ecstatic moment through him. And if the
whole world says that this guru is right, and you cannot surrender, he is useless
for you. So wherever you have the feeling of surrendering, there is your guru,
your master.
Search for the place, search for the person in whose presence you can allow a
let-go, in whose presence you can drop your mind even for a time. Once this
force from the outside enters into you, your path will be different, your life will
have taken a new turning.
You can deceive yourself: you can go on thinking that you have surrendered but
you know well inside that you have not surrendered. And remember: you
cannot deceive a master - he knows. And he will go on insisting unless the letgo really happens. You can maneuver, you can play a game, but you cannot
deceive a master. You can put your head to his feet but that gesture means
nothing. It may be just a superficial gesture, you are not bowing down at all.
But if bowing down really happens, the master can work.
So whenever I say, Surrender, or Leave it to me and I will take care, I mean
it. Exactly whatsoever I say I mean it. I want to create a gap within you, a
discontinuity with the past. Once the gap is there, you will sooner or later
become capable of going on your own. But before that, if you go on your own,
you will continue the past story. Nothing new is possible. For the new,
something from the outside must enter you, must push you onto a new path.
The last question:

Osho,
You said that Jesus didnt know that the earth is round. So for Christians who
believe that Jesus was God, this seems very strange. Isnt it implied that an
enlightened one like Jesus, who knew deep occult sciences, must also know
many astronomical and astrological facts about planets, the universe, and the
inter-relationship of celestial bodies? Please explain.
No, Jesus was not concerned. When Jesus said that the world was flat, he was
using the knowledge that was prevalent in those days. He was not concerned
about whether the world was round or flat; it was meaningless to him. He was
more concerned about those persons who were living on this flat or round
earth.
The concern has to be understood. It is absolutely futile for Jesus to discuss
these things. What difference does it make? For example, you know from the
geography books that the world is round. If your geography books were
teaching that the world is flat, as they were teaching in the past, what
difference will it make to you? Will you be a better man? Will you be more
meditative on a flat world or on a round earth? What difference will it make
to your being and the quality of your consciousness? It is irrelevant.
Jesus was concerned with your consciousness, and he will not unnecessarily
argue about things which are useless. Only unenlightened persons are dragged
into unnecessary things. If you had told Jesus that the world was round, he
would have said yes. It makes no difference to him because that was not his
concern. The prevalent idea was that the world was flat. And really, to the
ordinary mind, the world is still flat. It looks flat. The roundness is a scientific
fact, but Jesus was not a scientist.
For example, I know that it is a scientific fact that the sun never rises and never
sets. The earth is moving around, the sun is not moving. But still I use the
words sunset and sunrise. Sunrise is basically wrong. The very word is wrong,
because the sun never rises. Sunset is wrong, the sun never sets. So after
two thousand years, someone can say that this man was unenlightened
because he said the sun rises, sunrise, sunset. Didnt he know these
small things?
But if I am to change every word then I will be fighting unnecessarily and that
is not going to help anybody. Jesus simply used the prevalent knowledge - and
the prevalent idea was that the earth was flat. He was not concerned about it.
If he were here today, he would say that the earth is round. But even that is not
exactly scientific, because the earth is not exactly round. Now they say it is like
an egg, not exactly round. The shape is like an egg. But who knows? - the next
day they may change and say that this is not so. Science goes on changing,
because as it becomes more accurate, as it attains to more knowledge, as
more facts are known, as more experiments are done, things change. But a
person like Jesus or Buddha is not concerned about these facts.

Remember one thing: science is concerned with facts, religion is concerned

with truth. Facts are not its concern, truth is its concern. Facts are about
objects, truth is about you, your consciousness. So every enlightened person
has to use the prevalent knowledge about facts. But you should not judge Jesus
or Buddha by that - you are judging wrongly. They can be judged only by what
they have said about the truth, about the intrinsic truth of human
consciousness. About that they are always absolutely right although their
language differs.
A Buddha speaks in one language, Jesus in a different one, Krishna in another.
They use different factual knowledge, they use different techniques, devices,
but the central core of their teaching is the same. And that, if you allow me to
say it, is how to attain to total awareness.
Awareness is the basic teaching of all the enlightened ones. They use many
parables, techniques, devices, symbols, myths, but those are irrelevant. You
can cut them away, you can put them aside and just bring out the basic core.
The basic core of all the awakened persons is awareness. So Jesus goes on
telling his disciples how to be more awake - not to be sleeping, not to move in
dreams, but to be alert, awake.
He used to tell a parable. He said that it happened once that a great lord, a
great master, a very rich man, went on a far-away journey. He told his servants
that they had to be always alert because he would be back any moment, ANY
moment. And whenever he came back, the house should be ready to receive
him. He could come back, any moment. The servants had to be alert, they
couldnt even sleep. Even at night they had to be ready because the master
could come any moment.
Jesus used to say that you have to be alert every moment because any
moment the divine can descend into you. You may miss. If the divine knocks at
your door and you are fast asleep, you will miss. You have to be alert. The
guest can come at any moment, and the guest is not going to inform you
beforehand that he is coming.
Jesus said just like the servants of that master, remain alert continuously,
remain aware, waiting, watchful because any moment the divine can penetrate
you. And if you are not alert, he will come, knock and go back. And that
moment may not repeated soon; no one knows how many lives it may take
before the divine will again knock at your door. And if you have become
habitually asleep, you may have missed that knock many times already and
you may miss it again and again.
Be alert. That is the basic core. All else is only to be used to reach it. So just
because Jesus says the earth is flat, he doesnt become unenlightened. And
just because you know the earth is round, you dont become enlightened. It is
not so easy!
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Chapter 3 - Tao: The Golden Gate, Vol. 2

[]
While smoothing his feathers the parrot sadly said, But you did not treat the
other cocks like this!
The pundit is a parrot. He thinks Buddha influenced millions of people by these
words, Krishna transformed thousands of people by these words,
Bhagavadgita, and Mohammed has inspired thousands of souls for centuries by
Koran and the words that it contains - these words must be of great potential.
So he goes on repeating those words. But those words contain nothing. He is
simply imitating a device not knowing the exact purpose of it.
A corporal is instructing his platoon. He calls a newly-arrived soldier and asks
him, You, Gino! What is the flag for you?
The flag, answers the soldier, is a piece of cloth of different colors.
What! What are you saying? You idiot! The flag is everything. The flag is your
mother, remember, your mother!
Then he turns to the next soldier and asks, Tell me what is a flag?
Ginos mother, replies the soldier.
Beware of the scholars; they are the most stupid people around. But they talk
beautifully, and if you are not alert you can be very easily deceived by them.
They recite Koran, they recite Bhagavadgita, they quote the Vedas, the
Upanishads, they comment and they interpret, and in a very logical way, in a
convincing way - it will appeal to your mind. But, in fact, Buddha never wanted
to appeal to your mind, neither Krishna wanted to appeal to your mind. They
wanted to help you to go beyond the mind. They were not to convince your
mind, because if you are convinced about a certain idea you will remain in the
mind. They were trying to unhinge you from the mind.
Can you see the totally different purpose? The purpose of a master is to push
you beyond the boundaries of the mind, and the purpose of the scholar is to
convince you intellectually about the rightness, about the validity of a certain
ideology, philosophy. He makes your mind more strengthened, he gives you
more mind. The master takes away your mind, the master destroys your mind.
The teacher nourishes your mind. So many times the teacher will look more
appealing to you, more convincing to you.
You can miss the master very easily because he will seem a dangerous person
to be around. A teacher seems to be very fulfilling; he enhances your ego. It is
not accidental that the West has respected the teacher because the West has
believed for thousands of years that the ego has to be strengthened, that a
strong ego is needed; without a strong ego a man has no personality. It is true:
without a strong ego a man has no personality; but ego is false, so is
personality.

The word personality comes from a Greek word persona; persona means a
mask. In ancient days Greek actors used masks. Those personas, masks, we
are all carrying. A strong ego certainly gives you a strong personality in the
original sense of the word, but the personality is not individuality and the ego is
not your soul - just the contrary.
The master destroys your personality so that your individuality can be
discovered. He dismantles your personality, he takes away all your masks, so
that you can know your original face. His work is difficult and only very
courageous people can be with him because it is surgical. Your mask has
become almost part of your existence; to take it away now needs surgery. It is
not easy to take it away, it is painful. Only a master is needed to take it away.
Slowly slowly, chunk by chunk, he goes on taking away your mask. Finally,
when the mask has completely disappeared, you discover your reality, your
original face.
The teacher gives you to think much; the master only gives you a
meditativeness. The teacher gives you much to dream about, to desire about;
the master hammers on all your dreams and destroys them. The master is
against your sleep; the teacher is a sedative, a tranquilizer. The master is not a
solace, is not a consolation, is not a tranquilizer. The master hurts, wounds, but
he transforms.
A man finds himself in purgatory. The angel-in-charge welcomes him in.
Not your turn today, says the angel. You still have more time to pass on
earth. Come with me.
The angel takes him to a huge room full of small bottles full of oil. These show
how much life you have left, says the angel. His bottle is almost empty.
Can I see my wifes and childrens bottles? he asks.
Sure, says the angel, pointing to the three bottles next to his. The man
cannot believe his eyes. For the children, the quantity seems normal, but his
wife seems to have an extraordinary large quantity in her bottle.
Left alone and thinking, as the angel is working with newcomers, he delicately
sticks his finger in his wifes bottle, takes a little oil and puts it in his own one.
He keeps on doing this until the two bottles are more or less even. He wants to
go on, but is suddenly awakened by a big slap and his wifes voice saying, You
dirty old man, always wandering fingers, even when I sleep!
Man is deep asleep, dreaming, desiring, of hell, of heaven, of thousand-and-one
things. The function of the master is to hit you so hard that you cannot avoid
waking up.
Ko Hsuan says:
The Venerable Master said:

When he has clearly thought about these three he perceives only a void, but
when he contemplates the void, he realizes that the void is also void and has
become nothingness.
This is a very significant sutra, but first few words have to be put right. The
translation is done by a scholar and that too by a Western scholar. He says:
When he has clearly thought.
Now the original cannot mean that he has clearly thought, because clarity
and thought cannot exist together. Thats impossible; their coexistence is
impossible. If there is clarity there is no thought; if there is thinking there is no
clarity. It is like saying, The sky was full of clouds and very clear. The sky was
full of clouds and it was very sunny. It is impossible. Either it is sunny and the
sky is clear, then there are no clouds.If there are clouds, and many clouds, then
the sun will be hiding behind the clouds and there can be no clear sky. You
cannot see the sky because of the clouds.
Clarity is a byproduct of meditativeness, not of thought. But this is what is
going to happen when scholars do these things. In their own way they are
doing a great service, without knowing real differences. And one cannot expect
that they will be able to know - they have not experienced clarity. They have
thought about it, but to think about clarity is one thing; to know clarity is a
totally different thing.
I know clarity, but in clarity there is no thought at all. And I have known
thoughts: when there are thoughts there is no clarity. Hence, read this sentence
in a little different way:
When he has clearly meditated these three things he
perceives only a void.
In the last sutra we talked about the three things: sexuality.In India it is called
kama; it is the source of all desires. Remember it: sexuality is not only the
source of sex, it is the source of all desires. Hence you can change your desires,
you can forget about sex completely, but if desires persist it is still sexuality.
And you can watch it.
There are people who are obsessed with money. You can see one thing: they
are no more interested in sex; their whole interest has moved into money. But
now money has become their sex object. When they touch money they touch
as if they are touching their beloved. I have seen people touching hundredrupee notes with such tenderness - unbelievable.
I used to know one person whose only joy was money, even somebody elses
money. Just if you are interested in beautiful women it does not matter whose
wife it is. If a beautiful woman passes by you become immediately interested; a
great desire arises in you. Civilization prevents you; the police is there, the law
is there, so you dont do anything, you dont act - that is one thing - but the
thought starts fantasizing. The mind starts spinning, weaving dreams.

[]

Chapter 4 - Zen: The Path of Paradox, Vol. 3

The first question:
Osho,
How can I work as a therapist in an egoless way? What should I do?
Therapy is basically a function of love, and love flows only when there is no
ego. You can help the other only to the extent that you are non-egoistic. The
moment the ego enters, the other becomes defensive. The ego is aggressive; it
creates an automatic urge in the other to be defensive. Love is non-aggressive.
It helps the other to remain vulnerable, open, non-defensive. Hence, without
love there is no therapy.
Therapy is a function of love. So with ego, you cant help. You may even
destroy the other. In the name of help you may hinder his growth. But Western
psychology is caught up in a mess.
The first thing Western psychology still thinks in terms of a healthy ego. And
ego can never be healthy. It is a contradiction in terms. Ego as such is ill. Ego
can never be healthy. Ego is always leading you towards more and more illness.
But Western psychology thinks - the whole Western mind has been - that
people are suffering from weak egos. People are not suffering from weak egos;
people are suffering from too much of egoism.
But if the society is male-mind-oriented, aggression-oriented, if the only desire
of the society is how to conquer all, then naturally you have to drop all that is
feminine in you. You have to drop half of your being into oblivion - and you
have to live with the other half. The other half can never be healthy because
health comes through wholeness. The feminine has to be accepted.the
feminine is egolessness, the feminine is receptivity, the feminine is love.
A really healthy person is one who is utterly balanced between the male and
the female. In fact, he is one whose maleness has been cut, destroyed by his
femaleness, who has transcended both, who is neither male nor female - who
simply is. You cannot categorize him. This man is whole, and this man is
healthy. And to such a man, in the East, we have always looked as the master.
In the East we have not created anything parallel to the psychotherapist. The
East has created the master, the West has created the psychotherapist. When
people are mentally disturbed, they go to the psychiatrist in the West; in the
East, they go to a master. The masters function is utterly different. He does not
help you to attain to a stronger ego. In fact, he makes you feel that the ego
that you have is already too much. Drop it! Let it go!
Once the ego is dropped, suddenly you are one and whole and flowing. And
there is no block and no hindrance.
In the West also, sooner or later, psychotherapy will have to understand the
ultimate psychology - the psychology of the Buddhas. Before I enter into it, I

would like to say a few things about the ego - how this mechanism functions,
what exactly it is.
A child is born. A child is like an uninflated balloon. The balloon is there, it can
be inflated, it can carry much air. But right now there is no air in it. Then, by
and by, we inflate the balloon. This balloon is the symbol of the ego. From the
first year to the seventh year the child exists almost egolessly. He exists in tune
with existence, he has no separation, no clear-cut boundaries. He does not
know who he is, he does not compare, he does not fight. He lives in utter
relaxation - thats the beauty of a child. Thats why the eyes of a child are so
innocent; no tension floats there, no anguish has arisen, no fear.
Anguish arises only when your boundaries have become very clear-cut. With
the boundaries you are separate; when you are separate you are in danger.
Separation brings danger. When you start feeling that I am myself and nobody
else! then death starts hovering around you - because this is a false idea. You
are not yourself: you are part of the whole. You are not an island. The ego gives
the idea that you are an island. You are not an island; you are involved with the
whole of existence. You are not separate, so how can there be death? Thats
why a child is deathless - he can go and play with a snake. He has no concept
of death, he s so utterly innocent. From where does this fearlessness of the
child come?
It comes because there is no division yet; he lives an undivided life, a life of
unison, unity. Thats why later on we go on thinking with nostalgia how
beautiful those days, those few years, were. They continue to remain the
golden age - the poetry of those days, the dance, the joy, the celebration - that
goes on hovering around you for your whole life. As if the best happened first,
and since then you have been falling and falling and falling.
Because of this basic mechanism, all the religions carry the parable of The
Fall. The Fall presupposes that we were higher first; we were higher and then
we became lower. This doesnt seem to be a very good evolution. It is
involution! First you were in a golden age - so say the Hindus, so say the
Christians, so say all the religions of the world: that the real golden age passed
in the past. Now more and more gloomy days are coming - Kaliyuga, the Dark
Age - more and more dark it will be. From where does this parable of the Fall
come? It comes from the deep experience of every man. It is very fundamental.
The child was really happy. He had known no responsibility, he had known no
division, he had known no separation. He was egoless. The balloon was there,
potentially ready. You can put hot air into it at any moment. And we start
putting hot air in - the moment the child is born we start putting hot air into it.
The moment you start putting hot air in, the child starts becoming more and
more of an individual.

All small children look alike. Why do they look alike? They dont have many
distinctions. Their faces dont yet have characteristics, they dont have any

persona. They are almost alike, similar. Thats why all children look beautiful.
They have not yet grown a specific character, distinction, a personality. Without
this personality they are utterly in existence, one with it. There is a harmony.
But that harmony will be broken sooner or later. We will start preparing them
for the world. We will start telling them what their names are. We will start
telling them who they are - Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans. We will tell
them whether they are boys or girls. We will start enforcing ideas on them and
conditioning them and preparing them for the world. We will send them to
school and to college and, by and by, we will train them.
Our whole education consists of a subtle training in the ego; thats why the
education is so competitive. It depends on ambition create ambition! Tell the
child, You have to come first in the class. You have to top the college; you
have to attain to the gold medal in the university. These are the ways you have
to learn how to be the first in line. Then your whole life you will have to work it
out. First learn the map, and then your whole life work it out. Wherever you are,
go on trying to be the first in line.
Great anxiety is created, great anguish is created. Neurosis is created out of it.
From the first to the seventh year the child remains like an uninflated balloon.
From the seventh to the fourteenth the adolescent starts gaining air. Thats
why adolescents are difficult, always ready to say no and always ready to
fight and always ready to rebel. Down the ages it has been so, it is nothing new
in this age. Down the ages adolescence has been the age of problems. The ego
has started functioning. The adolescent says, I would like my own way, I want
to do my thing! Right or wrong is not the question - my thing I want to do!
We create it: we repress it also. We create it so that the child can fight in the
world with others. But the child starts fighting with the parents too! There is a
problem. The parents dont want the child to bring his ego against them, but
where is he going to practice? - they are the closest. So there is a contradiction
in the mechanism. They want him to be against the whole world: Go and
compete with everybody! Be a warrior and show your mettle and show your
spine - show that you are somebody! But the child starts learning at home.
Naturally, everything has to be started at home. He says no to the mother,
no to the father. The father says, Dont smoke! and he will smoke. And the
father says, Dont go to the movie! and he will go.

Now we are poisoning. When you poison somebody, you cannot trust that he
will throw his poison only at the outside world and he will not throw his poison
at you. Adolescence is the most troubled time - because the adolescent hovers
between two oppositions, between two polarities. He knows the childhood has
just been there and it was so beautiful. He has not yet left it absolutely. He can
still penetrate, sometimes he goes into it. Sometimes an adolescent becomes
again a child - playing with his toys, running after a butterfly, collecting seashells on the beach - he slips back. Then he is again beautiful. Then he comes

back because he has to go to school and he has to learn mathematics and

geography and history; and he has to compete and the examination is coming
close. He goes on moving between these two territories; hence he becomes
very anxious, uncertain of himself.
Up to the seventh year he was very certain, there was no problem. Now the
problem is arising: the ego is coming up, the balloon starts taking shape - not
very perfect, but the balloon starts taking shape. Now you can see one
adolescent becoming different from another.
Adolescents insist on their differences. If you put all the children into one dress,
they wont like it - then they lose their separation. They want their own dress.
They want everything of their own. They want their own room with a
nameplate. They start signing their names on their books - the signature has
come into being.
Character appears with adolescence. And almost always, if you watch an
adolescent rightly, you can write his whole future. The character starts forming,
the fundamentals start surfacing - what the boy is going to become. All
possibilities are there, but a few possibilities start becoming actual, and a few
possibilities, by and by, shrink and die away. Whether the child will become a
musician or a poet or a painter or a politician or a mystic - adolescence is the
age when you can judge. Before that it is impossible to judge because the
balloon has no shape, the air has not entered yet. And with adolescence a
great effort to be free from all patterns, disciplines..
From the fourteenth to the twenty-eighth year is the third stage of the balloon
or the ego - youth inflated to the full. With the fourteenth year a kind of fullness
enters into life because one becomes sexually mature. Nothing gives more air
to the ego than sex. Without sexual maturity you remain lacking something.
Your parents have something - they can produce children, you cannot. You feel
impotent. By the age of fourteen, a boy is no more a boy - at least he does not
think that he is a boy. Inside he starts thinking of himself as the man, a grownup man. And boys start taking more air; more flavor of the ego enters. With
sexual maturity ego comes to its full bloom. The balloon is inflated to the full,
personality arises clear and loud.
In adolescence you could have looked deeply and found personality, but on the
face of youth you need not look deeply - it is written all over the face. With
adolescence there was a little rebellious spirit, but with youth there is
revolution. He is ready to destroy anything. He becomes destructive, because it
is only through destruction that he can show that he is somebody. He is against
all rules, regulations; he does not want to believe in anything. He does not
want to believe in any tradition, in any religion. He wants to say no to father,
no to mother. Not only that: he wants to say no to God, no to the church,
no to the Bible, no to the Gita. He wants to say no with his whole heart.
The ego has come in a perfect way.

This third stage gives him the feeling I am me and nobody else! Ego at its full
peak. At this time the youth is always ready to fight, to explode. Aggression,
violence, competition, ambition, revolution - all enter into his blood and bones.
The fourth stage is from the twenty-eighth to the fifty-sixth year - middle age inflated beyond the natural capacity. The balloon is inflated beyond the natural
capacity. The natural capacity is attained by the twenty-eighth year; thats how
far the balloon can go. Between twenty-eight and fifty-six it starts getting
beyond the limit of the balloon. Hypertension arises. These are the most
difficult days.
Up to twenty-eight you were taught to inflate the ego more and more, so you
go on inflating. It has become a habitual thing. For twenty-eight years you have
been practicing only one thing - through education, through teaching, through
conditioning - inflate the ego. Now it has become a routine: you go on inflating
without thinking at all that there is a limited capacity to the balloon. You go on
pushing more and more air in - hypertension arises. So it is somewhere
between twenty-eight and fifty-six that you start getting high blood pressure,
heart attacks. It is somewhere between these two ages that you have to
consult the psychotherapist, that you start becoming shaky, that things dont
seem to go the right way, as you had expected them to go, as they were at
least appearing to go up to twenty-eight. Now they are no longer going the
right way. Everything seems to go wrong.
You are succeeding in life; you have money, you have prestige, respectability,
but somehow you are disappearing in it. You are losing your being, your peace,
your rest. A restlessness, a great restlessness, a feverishness arises. These are
the most difficult days. These are the days when a person becomes physically,
mentally ill. Anxiety arises, anguish arises, psychosis and all kinds of neurosis
enter into your being. This is the fourth stage.
The fifth stage is from fifty-six to one hundred and twelve, the ultimate
expansion. Just on the verge, any moment, of exploding. You are ready, just a
puff more and you will explode. No more inflation is possible. This is the time
when a person starts hoping that now death should be coming, starts thinking
about death. Not only starts thinking, but having a kind of hope that Death will
come and relieve me of all this burden.
Then the sixth stage: the balloon explodes.
Out of the sixth there are two possibilities - the seventh stage has two
possibilities - the Eastern and the Western. The Western possibility is: you die,
and you are reborn again as an uninflated balloon in some womb. Death is the
seventh possibility if Western psychology is allowed its full say. If there is
nothing like religion, then out of the sixth the seventh is born automatically. You
die here, you know only one way of being, you are again born in a womb again an uninflated balloon - and you start the same circle, the same repetition,
the same rut.

This is what, in India, we call the samsara - the world. Each death brings you
back to life again, and again you start the same game! And the game has been
played millions of times! And you go on playing, you go on playing.the same
again and again. Those who are perceptive and intelligent, they become alert.
They see the whole futility of it. What is the point? Why go on repeating like a
wheel? Why this wheel of birth and death?
Then there is another possibility and that is the Eastern possibility: either you
die - you explode and you are born; or you dont die - you dont explode.
Seeing the whole absurdity of the ego, you yourself relax, you puncture it.
Thats what I call sannyas - you puncture the balloon. The air goes out of it, the
balloon shrinks back; it becomes like it was when you were a child.
This is the second childhood: you have become twice-born. Not in some other
womb, not in some other life - herenow. You have dropped out of the wheel.
Thats why we say the saint is again like a small child. The circle is complete.
No womb is needed for him: he has become a womb unto himself. Again he is
innocent. Again trees are colorful, again the sun is a joy. Again everything is
celebration. God walks on the earth again. He is in paradise. He has not gone
anywhere! He has simply dropped that balloon that was creating the whole
trouble.
This is the birth of a new consciousness; not of a new body, but of a new soul the birth of a new being; not of a new mechanism, not of a new house, but the
dweller has changed. This is transformation.
Now, these two possibilities are there at the ultimate stage. But if you have
been brought up continuously in the Western way, in the materialistic way, in
the egoistic way, then it will be difficult for the other alternative suddenly to
happen.
So in the East we have been doing a very strange paradoxical thing. In the East
we do one thing: we go on helping the newcomer to become egoistic, and by
the side we go on helping him to remember that ego is not the goal - a good
game, but one has to come out of it. We teach the ego, certainly, but
simultaneously we also teach egolessness. We give him both the wings, so it
remains always possible for him to change the direction whenever he wants. At
whatsoever point he wants to change the direction, he can change the
direction. Any moment the balloon can be punctured. We teach him the art of
puncturing it too.
In the West you have only been taught one thing - how to go on pumping more
air into the balloon. And if sometimes punctures happen automatically, you
have been taught how to mend them. Your psychology is nothing but.it is like a
garage. The car is not functioning well, you go to the garage, and the garage
mechanic maintains it back to its normality. He brings it back to its old
functioning order.
The psychotherapists couch is like a garage for you. When - ever some
puncture starts appearing in your life pattern, you immediately rush to the

psychotherapist, so that he can cover the puncture and again you can go on
pumping air in it.

The Eastern way, the psychology of the Buddhas, is that whenever the
puncture happens, feel happy. Help it, it is good! Let this balloon go! But
remember, that does not mean that we want nobody to grow into ego. First you
have to grow into ego - thats a natural part of growth.
So if you ask me, my suggestion is: up to the age of fifty-six.that is the middle
age if we take the life span from one to one hundred and twelve years of age.
Thats what yogis say the natural age of man is: one hundred and twelve years.
Each man is capable of living at least that long if things go right. If life energy
moves in the right direction, one hundred and twelve years has been fixed by
the yogis down the ages as the natural limit of life. If we die before then
something has gone wrong - either in the body or in the mind, or in the food, or
in the society, something has gone wrong. We have not completed the natural
course. So fifty-six is just the middle line. Thats why Hindus say that after fifty
you start thinking of sannyas, of renunciation. And by seventy-five, thinking
wont do: you take the jump.
But we prepare from the very beginning. We say: Have a strong ego, and also
have a different kind of strength which is not of the ego, so that when the ego
becomes too much you can drop it too. Let your being also be strong, just as
your ego is strong. Strong being is needed to drop the strong ego.
In the West you have been taught only to grow in strength as far as the ego is
concerned. Then the ego becomes too strong and you are too impotent and
you cannot do anything with it, you cannot drop it.
For example: you have been taught how to think, but you have not been taught
how to stop thinking. So thinking becomes very, very skillful, very logical,
rational, very focused. concentrated. Then one day you want to stop it but you
cannot stop - your being is very, very impotent. You have put your whole
energy into thinking and being has remained without energy. Now the slave
that you have trained becomes the master. It is as if you have been
continuously feeding the slave and starving the master. By and by, the slave
comes to know that you are nothing. Why should he allow you on the throne?
He throws you off the throne and sits on the throne, and you cannot do
anything.
You have watched it many times. In the night you want to go to sleep and the
thoughts continue. And you say to them, Please, stop! But they dont stop,
they dont hear at all, they dont bother about you. They go on and on and on.
Good to teach thinking, but it is far better to teach how not to think too! so that
thinking remains a slave and the being remains the master. Good to have an
ego, otherwise in life you will not have any spine. You will be crushed by
anybody. If you dont have any ego in life, you will remain a non entity, you will

be exploited, oppressed, tortured. Anybody, any Adolf Hitler will become your
shepherd, and you will be a sheep. No, thats not good. You should be taught
the ego, but simultaneously, far more important and significant is to teach you
so that any moment you want to disconnect yourself from the ego you can
disconnect. Any moment you want to puncture the ego you can puncture. Any
moment you want to put the balloon away, you can put the balloon away.
The outer journey needs the ego, the inner journey needs egolessness. When
you are fighting, the ego is needed. The soldier needs the ego, but the saint
needs egolessness. And life is not all fight. If life is all fight, then it is
meaningless. There are joyous moments which dont come through fight, which
come through relaxation. Ego never allows you to relax; it keeps you
continuously tense. Hence, the stress destroys you - the body, mind,
everything is destroyed by the stress and the strain.
You ask me: How can I work as a therapist in an egoless way?
In the East our approach is that the therapist has not to work at all. The
therapist becomes just a vehicle for Gods energy. He has just to be available
like a hollow bamboo so God can pass through him. The healer has to become
just a passage.
The patient is a man - in Eastern eyes - who has lost his contact with God. He
has become too egoistic and he has lost his contact with God. He has created
such a China Wall around himself that he no more knows what God is, he no
more knows what the totality is. Hes utterly disconnected from the roots, from
the very source of life. Thats why he is ill - mentally, physically or any other
way. Illness means that he has lost track of the source. The healer, the
therapist in the East, is expected to connect him to the source again. He has
lost the source, but you have the connection still.
You hold the hand of the person. He is hidden behind a wall. Let him be hiding
behind the wall. Even if you can hold his hand through a hole in the wall.if he
can trust you - he cannot trust a God, he does not know what God means. That
word has become meaningless to him. But he can trust the therapist, he can
hold the hand of the therapist. The therapist is empty, just in tune with God,
and the energy starts flowing. And that energy is so vital, so rejuvenating, that
sooner or later it destroys those China Walls around the patient, he has a
glimpse of egolessness. That glimpse makes him healthy and whole, nothing
else makes him healthy and whole.
So if the therapist himself is an egoist, then it is impossible. Both are prisoners.
Their prisons are different, but they cannot be of much help.
My whole approach about therapy is that the therapist has to become
instrumental to God. Im not saying dont know the know-how. Know the knowhow! - but make that know-how available to God. Let him use it. Learn
psychotherapy, learn all kinds of therapies. Know whatsoever is possible to
know, but dont cling to it. Put it there, let God be available through you. Let

God through all your know-how, let God flow through all your know-how. Let
him be the source of healing and therapy. Thats what love is.
Love relaxes the other. Love gives trust to the other. Love showers on the
other, heals his wounds.
The second question is concerned with the first:
Osho,
Is psychic health possible apart from a religious view of the world?
No. Only partially is it possible. Man has three planes of his being: the body, the
mind and the soul. The mind is just in between, it is a bridge. Half consists of
the body, half consists of the soul. So if you drop the religious dimension
completely, the mind can never be whole; it will always be half, something will
be missing.
Thats what Carl Gustav Jung came to know at the latter stage of his life. He
must have treated thousands of patients. In the end he asserted, This has
been my observation: that the age of forty-two seems to be bringing something
new in the life of man. Just as at the age of fourteen sex enters, so at the age
of forty-two religion has to enter. All people who suffer after forty-two are
suffering somehow or other from the lack of the religious dimension. That is
Jungs observation. They need somehow to contact God again. They may not
know about it, but their basic problem is there. And it has to be there.
Life has two parts: birth and death. When you are young you are too full of
birth, you are close to birth. You dont bother about death. When you start
moving closer to death, one day you cross the boundary of birth and you enter
into the boundary of death. Then you start thinking of death. And there is no
other way to solve the fear of death except through religion. And if you cannot
solve it, it goes on shaking you, trembling you; it goes on gnawing your heart.
It becomes a wound. You can avoid it, you may not look at it. You can remain
occupied in a thousand and one things. You may not think about it consciously,
but unconsciously the death is coming closer, and your whole life starts losing
meaning.
In the middle of life a day comes when suddenly death becomes significant.
The moment you recognize that death is significant, you have to recognize the
religious dimension. Religion exists because of death.
Materialism would be perfectly okay if there were no death; there would have
been no need for religion. If there were only birth and no death, then
materialism would have been all, then Charvarka, Epicurus, Karl Marx - these
people would have been the buddhas. Then there is nothing else. If there is
only birth, then who bothers? If you are going to live here forever, who bothers
about the quality of life, or about something deeper? Then it is enough to go on
enjoying! Then Eat, drink, be merry is the only sutra. No other Vedas, no
other Bible, is needed.

[]

Chapter 4 - Ecstasy: The Forgotten Language

The first question:
Osho,
What is the difference between a crystallized self and a big, strong ego?
They look alike, but they are as different as two things can be. Not only
different, they are diametrically opposite. The crystallized self is not a self at
all. It is called a crystallized self, but it is not a self at all. And the big, strong
ego is neither big nor strong. It is very hollow - how can it be strong? It is very
empty - how can it be strong, and how can it be big? It is neither big nor strong,
but it has the selfhood in it, the I-amness, the feeling that I am.
The ego is the self. The real self is not a self at all. We develop the ego just to
hide the fact that we dont know who we are. It is very hard to see that we are
so ignorant about ourselves, that we dont know. To hide this ignorance, we
create the ego. Ego is a deception, it is a deception that you are giving to
yourself. It is really difficult to live without self-knowing, so we create a false
ego. It gives a little consolation. One starts feeling that one knows who one is.
It simply hides ignorance; thats why all the religions insist on dropping the
ego. Unless you drop the ego and you face your inner being.the vastness of it is
such that you cannot define it as I am. The vastness is so much that it cannot
be contained by any concept, within any concept. You cannot call it I. It is all how can you call it I? The real self, the real inner being, is existence itself. It
is all.
But one has to face it. In the beginning, when you face it, it looks as if it is
nothing. That is the fear. The all looks like nothing in the first encounter. If
you get in tune with it, by and by, the negativity disappears and you start
feeling its positive existence. Then it becomes your soul. Call it God, being, or
any word that you want to choose; call it enlightenment, awareness. But one
thing is certain: you are not there. Something is there, tremendously vital,
infinite, but you are not there.
This will look like a paradox: when you come to know yourself you are not
there; when you dont know yourself you are there. You exist only in your
ignorance. When knowledge has happened - when knowing has happened - you
disappear. You disappear like darkness - just as the sun rises and the darkness
disappears, you disappear like darkness when awareness arises. The
awareness does not belong to you, it has nothing to do with you. In fact you are
the barrier for it. It is because of you that it is not arising.
People come to me and they say, Osho, I would like to become enlightened. I
say to them, It is very difficult, it is impossible. I cannot help you. They say,
Why? Why cant you help? I say, From the very beginning you are putting
such a condition. You are saying, I want to become enlightened. This I is the
barrier. This I is not allowing you to know your enlightenment - which is

already there. The I never becomes enlightened, the I is the unenlightened

state, the I is the darkness.
Enlightenment is possible, but it will be possible only when you are ready to
lose yourself. That is the meaning of Jesus saying when he says, If you lose,
you will gain. If you dont lose, you will lose. In losing is the gain. In forgetting
is the remembrance. In dissolving, you become crystallized.
The crystallized self is a no-self - it is all - and the big, strong ego is very tiny,
not big at all. The tiniest thing in the world is the ego, and the hollowest thing
in the world is the ego, and the weakest thing in the world is the ego - because
it is the falsest thing possible. It exists not. It is a pretension.
The second question:
Osho,
Please will you explain to me what the way of religion means? I have always
been so strongly against religion that I cannot imagine what it means. But,
anyhow, I suppose it is the way of total aloneness - and this makes me a little
uneasy.
Since you gave me sannyas, I feel like I am in an abyss. Other people are not
reachable for me; I am only fixed to the fire of your eyes - a tremendous Pune
fiction story.
Right, I am creating a fiction here: the fiction of the master and the disciple, the
fiction of God and the devotee. It is really a myth, but very alive. And there is
no way to come to the truth unless you pass through a great mythology. Man is
lost in lies. From the lies there is no direct way to truth. Myth is a bridge
between the lie and the truth. A myth partakes of something of the lie and
something of the truth; it is a bridge.
Yes, you are right. This is a tremendous Pune fiction story. Whatsoever is
happening here is very fictitious: these people in orange, and so many crazy
things going on, and I am supporting you and leading you toward nowhere and
promising you things which cannot be promised.
Man lives in lies, God lives in the truth - but how to bridge both? Man is a lie,
godliness is a truth - how to bridge both? It is quite impossible! Myth is the way:
fiction, yes, a spiritual fiction. All the religions are fictitious, all mythologies are
fictitious, but they are of tremendous help. A mythology has something of the
truth in it - maybe just a reflection - and something of the lie in it. You can
move through the myth toward truth.
[]

Chapter 30 - Sat-Chit-Anand: Truth-Consciousness-Bliss

[]

Just be yourself, silent, peaceful, meditative, and love will arise in tidal waves
and will go on coming to you from unknown sources which are hidden inside
you. Those sources are as oceanic as any great ocean in the world. And you
can share that love without humiliating anyone and without feeding your ego;
these two things are done by responsibility, which feeds your ego, makes it
stronger and humiliates the other person.
You may not be aware that whenever you do something because of
responsibility, the other person can never forgive you. You have insulted him.
But when you do something out of love, nobody feels any humiliation because
love is humble, it cannot humiliate. Responsibility is not the quality of a humble
person, it is the quality of the egoist who wants to make everybody obliged to
him, who wants everybody to be a beggar and he the giver. He always wants to
keep the upper hand. Nobody can forgive such a man. They may give him
respect in the crowd, but behind his back, they all feel utterly insulted. And
they take revenge.
Love never humiliates; hence there is no question of revenge. It simply rejoices
in giving: it gives and it forgets. It does not even remember to whom it has
given, what it has given. It does not keep an account of all that it has shared. It
goes on, moment to moment, singing its song to whoever is capable of
understanding it. Whoever is capable of receiving it will receive it. But he is not
doing any social service, he is not a public servant. He is a man who knows
how to celebrate. He is celebrating himself.
In the three hundred years of America, there have not been many men who can
be compared to the great mystics of the world. Only one man, a poet, comes
very close to the mystics, Walt Whitman. One of his beautiful songs is: I
Celebrate Myself. America has not paid much attention to Walt Whitman, but
he is the only one in the three hundred years of Americas life who has reached
the highest peak possible.
When he says, I celebrate myself, he is saying everything about love. And if
you can rejoice in my celebration, you are welcome. If you can be my guest, I
invite you to celebrate. Love celebrates, it is not a responsibility at all.
Osho,
Why is it so hard to accept being a failure? I would rather sacrifice my wellbeing than admit that I have failed.
The question you have asked is the question of all those people who have been
trained to be egoists. And unfortunately the whole of modern education, based
on modern psychology, teaches everybody to be an egoist, strong, crystallized.
The idea is that you are being prepared by education for a world which is
competitive. It is a constant battle. Everybody is your enemy, because
everybody is your competitor. And unless you have a very strong ego, you will
not become a president, you will not become a prime minister, you will not
succeed in becoming the richest man in the world. You will remain a nobody,

left by the side of the road, and the whole caravan of competitors will go on
ahead of you. You will be crushed under everybody.
This fear has been created in every child from his very beginning that you have
to be very strong, otherwise you will be crushed. Everybody is trying to be
victorious in some way or other. Everybody is competing to reach ahead, to
become somebody special. Your question has arisen because of this wrong
teaching, this utterly inhuman teaching. You are a victim of a wrong world, of a
wrong civilization, of a wrong educational system.
You are asking, Why is it so hard to accept being a failure? It hurts the ego;
otherwise there is no problem.
I have told you one incident that I have never forgotten and will never forget.
In India, there is one day every year devoted to the worship of snakes. On that
day, all over India, there are wrestling competitions. My school used to be for
many years the champion of the whole district. This was due entirely to a
single student who failed every year in matriculation. The school was happy
about it, because he was a good wrestler.
The principal and the teachers all said to him, Dont be worried. You can fail as
much as you want, but every year you have to bring the championship to the
school. And when you are tired, we will give you some employment in the
school. Dont be worried about your employment, although you are not even a
matriculate. We will make some arrangements, we can make you a peon: you
do not need to be a matriculate.
And he was very happy that a job was guaranteed and every year he was the
hero. But the year I reached my matric class that man unfortunately passed the
examination. The whole school was sad and sorry. The principal called me and
said, Now find somebody, for up to now we have been winning.
I said, It is a difficult thing to find a wrestler of his quality. He was doing
nothing but exercises the whole day, morning till evening. And the school was
providing him with as much milk as he needed, because every year he brought
the championship.It will be very difficult to find somebody, but I will try.
In my class there was a man, a young man, not very strong and not in any way
a wrestler, but a very beautiful person with a great sense of humor. I told him
he would have to do this.
He said, I have never fought anybody. I have never been in any competition. I
have never done any exercise. And the people who will be coming from other
schools are trained.
I said, Dont be worried. Somebody has at least to participate. At the most you
can be a failure.
He said, If that is all, then I am ready. And what he did left an impact on
everybody.

It was going to be decided in the semi-finals.and because my school was

continuously the champion every other school was afraid. They were still
thinking that because of our man we would finally win. So they had brought a
professional wrestler who was not a student. They could find no other way to
defeat our man who had won continuously for ten years.
Naturally, they had to find some way. So they looked and found a wrestler who
was not too old and they shaved him well and prepared him perfectly as if he
were a student. But he was a trained wrestler and our candidate was not a
wrestler at all. He asked me, What am I supposed to do?
I said, Make it fun. Dont be worried. I had once seen a wrestler.the village
where I lived was famous throughout the area for wrestlers. There were so
many gymnasiums in that small village and wrestlers from outside used to
come to fight with the wrestlers of the village.
Once I had watched a wrestler and had become very friendly with him. His
style was very new. First he would dance around. The other wrestler is standing
in the center, looking embarrassed, and he would dance. And he had a very
beautiful body. He would dance all over the place. And his dance made the
other man feel embarrassed and a little afraid also: If this man is dancing with
such joy, there must be some strategy that will defeat me. And then he would
suddenly jump to the ground. He was not a very strong man, but he had a very
beautiful body, a very proportionate body.
And he had made the man so much afraid by this time, by his dancing which
was so out of the ordinary - nobody danced. There was no real need because
most of the time he would win. I liked the man very much. He used to stay in a
temple nearby, so I went to visit him and I said, This is very beautiful. This is
how things should be. You have a great psychological insight.
So I told the boy, You do the same. First you dance around. Make the other
fellow feel completely embarrassed. And we are here, because the competition
is going to happen in our school. All the students, all the teachers will be there.
We will clap when you dance. We will laugh and cheer you. So you dance, and
dont be worried about that man. Let him stand in the middle, embarrassed,
worried: what is going to happen, what is happening?
So he danced and we clapped and shouted and cheered and that man looked
near defeat. Nothing happened. But the boy that I had chosen was no match
for him. He was a wrestler and this boy had no idea. He danced and then he
simply jumped into the middle and fell flat on the ground. In Indian wrestling,
the person who falls on the ground with his back touching the ground and the
other person sitting on his chest is thought to be defeated and the man sitting
on the chest is the winner. So that boy without fighting simply fell in front of
him and we all cheered him and the man could not think what to do.
The boy said, Sit on my chest. Sit down, and be victorious! The man could
not bring himself to sit down on the chest of this man who had fallen by
himself. He looked all around and the boy was smiling.

And the referee came in and said, What do you want to do with your
opponent?
He said, I am simply puzzled. What kind of wrestling is going on? - because to
sit on this poor boys chest looks so ugly. I have not fought, how can I be
victorious? And he is telling me to sit down. He is almost ordering me.
[]

Chapter 22 - The Razor's Edge

[]
Can creativity on the material plane be truly meditative? The question of
material plane or immaterial plane does not matter. What matters is that
whatever you do should be born out of meditation. It can be material - a
painting is going to be material, a statue is going to be material.
If it is coming from deep meditation it will have that radiation for centuries. And
anybody who knows how to sit silently a little bit and just to watch it, will
receive your message. The gap of centuries will disappear - he will start feeling
the same meditation in which the sculpture or the painting was created.
Will my art remain solely subjective until the ego agrees to commit suicide?
The ego never agrees to commit suicide.
The ego is suicide.
Because of ego you have forgotten your authentic being. Dont be concerned
with the ego, be concerned with searching for your authentic being. The
moment you find your real being, the ego will disappear. There is no question
of suicide, because the ego is not a reality; it is only an absence of your being.
Because you have not entered into your being, the shadow of the being has
been misunderstood as the being itself.
So dont be worried about suicide, and dont be worried about what will happen
to your ego. I can understand that every artist, every creative person has a
very strong ego. Painters, poets, singers, dancers, actors - all have very strong
egos. But they are unaware that their egos are not allowing their genius its
total actualization. They are not friends; they are your enemies. And because
you are identified with them you will never look for the real one.
To be identified with anything false is very dangerous, because then the search
for the real stops. The false has to be dropped. The false has to be understood
at least as false, so that a process of search is triggered in you for the real. The
real belongs to existence. You have come with it at your birth.
Ego is your nurture, not your nature. Ego has been produced by your family, by
your friends, by your education, by your talents. It is just a false creation, and if
you become identified - as almost everyone is identified with it - this is the
greatest barrier. Disidentification with the ego will immediately give you a new
insight to enter into your own being - that which is a gift of nature. Finding it,

who cares about old junk? - your ego, your thoughts, your personality; you
have found the real diamonds.
And because Vipassana has given you a sense of what meditation is, dont miss
this opportunity. Use that sensitivity to go even deeper. At the deepest you can
go, something of immense beauty and grace will be created by your hands, but
not by you.
As far as the suicide is concerned, I will take care of it - you just.. I have seen so
many suicides. My whole business is to help people to commit suicide, because
unless you commit suicide as an ego, you will never find your soul.
A doctor calls his patient to give him the results of his test. I have some bad
news and some worse news, says the doctor. The bad news is that you only
have twenty-four hours to live. Oh no, says the patient. What could possibly
be worse than that?
The doctor answers, I have been trying to reach you since yesterday.
Dont be worried. The worst will also happen. Perhaps it has started happening,
because even a small experience of the real, just a small candle in the dark
night is enough to dispel all darkness.
Osho,
Being here with you I feel so fresh and light like a newborn child. All the
German heaviness is gone. Sitting in front of you I feel totally drunk. No more
thoughts and worries about the future and the past. Never before was being
with you so strong and fulfilling. But the other night, when you were talking
about aloneness, a shadow came over me - the fear to be without you, the fear
of getting stuck again in all my old worries. This shadow falls on me again and
again. Osho, can you lighten this up so that I can understand?
Whatever you are feeling in this moment, trust that the next moment is going
to be born out of it. If it is beautiful, the next moment is going to be more
beautiful. If it is nourishing, the next moment is going to be more nourishing. I
have been watching you, I have been seeing in your eyes that the German is
dead. You need not worry about it.
You have become a pure human being. German or Indian or Chinese or
Japanese, all this is nonsense. The simple reality is that you are a human being
with no adjective attached to you. I know the German glue is a little stronger,
but I have been destroying so many Germans that you can call me almost an
expert in killing Germans! Even the parliament of Germany is afraid.
I have not applied for any visa to enter Germany - I dont have to. Whoever
wants to die comes here. This way it is easier; otherwise how am I going to find
out who from all over Germany is ready to die, disappear, become a nobody?
The chosen ones travel themselves.
But the German parliament must have been afraid. Their problem is that any
German who comes to me never returns. And naturally, the parliament is

worried - what is happening? Their young people, men and women, educated
people, suddenly disappear. And even if they come back they are no longer
German; they have dropped all that idiocy.
[]

Chapter 8 - The Sword and the Lotus

[]
Every master wants the disciple to get free from the need, because the
relationship of need is not a very beautiful one. And particularly me - my
insistence is that I want my disciples to become my friends. If you have a need
you cannot become my friend, your need will become a prevention. I would like
you to drop the need. And the moment you drop the need, you are as divine as
anyone. And to be a friend of the master is the greatest glory possible.
In the past, no master has dared to say to his disciples, you are my friends,
because human consciousness was not so developed. But we have come a long
way. Now there are people in the world with immensely developed
consciousness. Just one step more and they can shake hands with Gautam
Buddha.
To be a friend is immensely beautiful, because friendship is nothing but pure
love. When you need, then it is a very low kind of relationship. When you dont
need and still you love, there is no condition. When you are not hankering to
get something, there is still love, gratitude, friendship. Then one comes to
experience something of the ultimate - there is nothing beyond it.
Osho,
What are the difficulties on the path of meditation and how can we overcome
them?
There are only two difficulties on the path of meditation: one is the ego. You are
continuously prepared by the society, by the family, by the school, by the
church, by everybody around you, to be egoistic.
Even modern psychology is based on strengthening the ego. The whole idea of
modern psychology, modern education, is that unless a person has a very
strong ego he will not be able to struggle in life, where there is so much
competition that if you are a humble man anybody will be able to push you
aside. You will always remain backward. You need a very strong steel ego to
fight in this competitive world. Then only can you become a success in any
field. It may be business, it may be politics, it may be any profession - you need
a very assertive personality. Our whole society is geared to produce an
assertive personality in the child.
From the very beginning we start telling him, Come first in your class. And
when the child comes first in the class, everybody praises him. What are you
doing? You are feeding his ego from the very beginning. You are giving him a
certain ambition: You can become the president of the country; you can

become the prime minister of the country. And he starts the journey with
these ideas. His ego goes on becoming bigger and bigger as he succeeds.
In every way the ego is the greatest disease that can happen to man. If you
succeed, your ego becomes big - that is a danger, because then you will have
to remove a big rock which is blocking the path. Or if the ego is small - you
have not been successful, you have proved to be a failure - then your ego will
become a wound. Then it hurts, then it creates an inferiority complex. Then too
it creates a problem: you are always afraid to enter into anything, even in
meditation, because you know you are a failure, you are going to fail. That has
become your mind because everywhere you have failed. And meditation is
such a great thing, you cannot succeed.
If you enter into meditation with this idea that failure is bound to happen and
that is your destiny, that is your fate, then of course you cannot succeed. So if
the ego is big it prevents; if the ego is very small it becomes a wound, then too
it prevents. In each case the ego is one of the problems.
The second problem.and after stating both the problems I will tell you how to
get rid of them. It is not difficult, but first you have to understand the problem
in all its complexity..
The second hindrance on the path of meditation is your constantly chattering
mind. You cannot sit even for a single minute. The mind goes on chattering:
relevant, irrelevant, meaningful, meaningless.thoughts go on. It is a constant
traffic and it is always rush hour. Whenever you close your eyes there are so
many thoughts running in all directions, that if you sit down for ten minutes
and write down whatever is going on in your mind - without any editing,
because you are not going to show this to anybody, so dont be worried.! Close
the door, lock it from inside so that nobody comes in, and just write exactly
what goes on in the mind for ten minutes. And after ten minutes read it.
And you will be surprised: Is it my mind or has somebody gone mad? Just
because you have never looked at it, you have never thought about what is
going on.
And if you try, as many people try, because studying books on meditation they
think that if you can stop the thoughts by chanting a mantra or the name of
God then perhaps the mind can be vacated from thoughts.The books are
mostly written by people who have never meditated. I know many people who
have written books on meditation. They came to me to ask how to meditate,
and I said, But in my library I have your book.
They said, Yes, we studied a few books on meditation and wrote the book just
to help others.
I said, But first you should have tried what you have written. If you cannot
help yourself, on what grounds do you think you can help others? You may
have destroyed many peoples peace of mind.

And there are so-called teachers of meditation who will also give you a mantra,
that chanted, chanted fast, or any name.Close your eyes, do a certain ritual,
take a bath, sit in a lotus posture, start the meditation, and go on as fast as you
can - faster and faster, repeating the same name, Krishna, Krishna, Krishna.
Do it as quickly as possible. After five to seven minutes, you will be in a state of
what is scientifically known as autohypnosis. It is not meditation, but it does no
harm. After ten to twelve minutes, when you come out of it you will feel a
certain peace, a certain well-being; you will feel good, but this is not
meditation.
I am not against it if you are trying to do it only to feel good. You can do it, but
dont think that by doing it you are going to realize your godliness. That is not
possible because this is simply a deliberately created sound sleep. When you
repeat a certain word continuously, fast, the mind has no way to go on
chattering. You dont give it any gap to put its thoughts into. Your chanting is so
fast that the mind has to remain almost in a situation of a crossroads where the
policeman has stopped the whole traffic. Your continuous chanting creates the
situation of a policeman stopping the whole traffic, but the traffic is still there,
it has not gone; in fact, more traffic has gathered on all the roads. And the
moment you come out of meditation your mind will have such a rush as it has
never had - naturally, because all the traffic that you have stopped will have to
pass. This is not meditation.
One more thing before I tell you what exactly is the problem with the mind. A
few teachers of meditation - and particularly in this part of the world, in the
East - are saying, Keep your mind fixed on something. Start from something
outer - a black dot on the wall - and then slowly, slowly close your eyes, and
with closed eyes look at the black dot.
And if you have been staring at the black dot for a few minutes, naturally with
closed eyes you will see the black dot. Just the impression takes time to
disappear. It is the negative of the positive black dot; it is part of the science of
photography. It is the negative that you have created inside.
Now look at this negative black dot and if you can continue looking at it, the
same thing will happen after five to seven minutes - autohypnosis. You will feel
good, and that is the danger. Because you feel good, afterwards you feel a
certain well-being, you think you are on the right path - not necessarily.
And these things are also not easy - chanting continuously for five to seven
minutes is not easy. A few thoughts will enter in and disturb it.
Keeping your mind fixed on one dot is also not easy. Thoughts may come, move
across and disturb you. And if you ask your teachers they will say, This is your
past karma; you will have to wait. There is no question of past karma, your
method is simply wrong.
If you are learning to ride a bicycle and you go on falling again and again, and
you ask somebody and he says, It is because of your past karma. It is simply

that you dont know how to ride the bicycle. It has nothing to do with past
karma or past life. You simply need the right technique.
I have heard of a story..
A man was very much interested to attain miraculous powers. Wherever he
went they said, First you have to learn meditation. Without meditation you
cannot have miraculous powers.
Finally, he found a very wise old man about whom he had heard, He is the
greatest meditator alive, but you will have to serve him and not to be in a
hurry. You just serve him; whenever the time is right he will give you the
meditation and his blessing. You should not ask for it.
The poor man served the man for one year and he was getting tired: This is
too much. The second year has begun and the old man still says, No sign. He
was getting fed up and thinking of running from that temple. The day he was
thinking to run, the old man said, Listen. I was waiting for the right time, but
you cannot wait. The time is not right, but because of your hurry I will give you
the method. It is very simple and very suited to you.
The man said, My Lord, my God! He touched his feet. He said, I was waiting
for this day. I am a fool for having such bad thoughts about you. Just forgive
me.
He said, Dont be worried about it. This is the method; you go home - he had
written on a small piece of paper just a small mantra and he gave him that.
This is the mantra. You have to chant it for ten minutes. Just remember one
thing: while chanting, dont let any monkey come into your mind.
The man said, You must be mad! Monkeys have never come into my mind. In
my whole life not a single monkey has come into my mind - why should a
monkey come into my mind?
The old man said, I dont know, but this is the condition that goes with this
mantra.
The man said, There is no problem. But he was worried. As he was coming
down the steps of the temple, he already started seeing monkeys. He would
close his eyes - and there were the monkeys. He said, My God! I have not
even started!
He went home. He took a good bath and sat in padmasana. But as he closed
his eyes, and before he could start the mantra, the monkeys started coming not one! In a line.giggling.!
The man said, What happened? He tried hard, but by the morning he was
utterly tired. He went to the master. He said, Take your mantra back. If this is
the condition then I cannot fulfill it ever because of those monkeys. There is not
one - you had said one - I dont know how many there are. I have been
counting - they go on coming! And I am going mad! I simply dont want any

miraculous power, and I dont want any meditation. I simply want to go home.
Just help me to get rid of the monkeys. I am giving your mantra back - but who
knows about the monkeys?
If you try forcibly to keep something out of your mind, it is bound to come. This
is a universal law.
Seeing the false methods, understanding that the mind is a constant process of
thought, I want to explain to you something very simple, without any
conditions. All that you have to do.no special posture is needed; whether you
have taken a bath or not does not matter. It does not mean that at a certain
time, at a certain place you should do it. No, you can do it anywhere, any time.
I want it to be so easily possible for you that it mixes with your ordinary life and
you dont have to take some time out of your life specially given to meditation.
The process is witnessing.
The thoughts are moving in the mind - you have nothing to do with those
thoughts. You are not to prevent them, you are not to chant a mantra, you have
just to be a watcher. You have just to see that thoughts are passing, and you
are standing by the side of the road looking at the traffic, unconcerned.
Whether a bullock cart passes or an elephant passes or a camel passes.it
doesnt matter. You dont have to make any judgment. You are just sitting by
the side watching the whole scene.
It takes a few days, because of your old habit to make judgments. Something
comes, you say, This is very good - and you have lost your capacity of being
a watcher, you have already given judgment.
Something comes and you say, This should not come, this is evil - you have
already fallen back.
Good or evil, beautiful or ugly, you are separate. You are the witness, you are
just a mirror. Anything that passes by does not affect the mirror at all.
Something good - the mirror reflects. Something bad - the mirror reflects. When
they have gone, the mirror is as empty as ever.
Your consciousness is a mirror, and your consciousness is neither good nor bad.
Your consciousness may have lived thousands of years, but not even a scratch
is possible on your consciousness. It only reflects; its function is reflection.
Thats why I say the divine between you and me is the same - there is no
difference at all. I just have recognized that the witnessing is a pure mirror,
eternally pure - and you get identified, you forget.
It happened in Calcutta in the last century..
There was one very renowned scholar, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar. He was
world famous for his scholarship. There was going to be a play and they had
asked Ishwar Chandra to come and inaugurate it. He came; he inaugurated it.
He was sitting in front. He was the chief guest of the evening, and because he

was invited, many scholars, many eminent people were present there, and the
drama was enacted with tremendous beauty, with great articulateness.
In the middle of the drama there comes a scene where a man who has been
after a beautiful woman, continuously harassing her - and she was not
interested in him at all.but he finds her alone in the jungle. She had lost her
way, and the man feels this is a moment not to be missed.
He wants to rape the woman, and just as he starts pulling her clothes off there is pin-drop silence - suddenly Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar jumps onto the
stage, takes one of his shoes in his hands and starts beating the man.
The man must have been of great intelligence. He took away the shoe and he
said to Ishwar Chandra, This is the greatest reward I have got in my whole life.
My whole life I have been an actor - thousands of rewards I have got, but this is
the most precious. That even a man like Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar forgot that
it is a drama and he is only a spectator, he is not supposed to come into it.!
And he said, I will be tremendously grateful if you give me the other shoe also,
because what will you do with one? For me it will be a souvenir. I am going to
keep it.
I have seen those shoes. I have been to that mans house. He is dead. His
grandson took me to see the shoes.
This is our situation. Your mind is just a screen, a movie screen, a TV screen or
a drama stage, and you are far away just looking at it. You are not supposed to
act. You are not supposed to do anything.
Once you get the knack of witnessing without judgment you will be surprised:
the moment you are utterly a witness all the thoughts disappear. There is
simply a plain white screen and no thoughts.
This is the first experience, that you have come to the door of meditation. Just
go on looking at the white screen. Dont do anything. Consciousness has a
nature - if it cannot find any object which prevents it, then it goes round and
comes back to you.
In existence everything moves in a circle. Remember that: nothing moves in a
straight line. If there is no obstacle, the consciousness comes back to its own
source. And the consciousness coming back to ones own source, for the first
time sees who is there, who has always been there. That is your real being.
You can call it godliness, you can call it divineness, you can call it truth. Any
name will do because it has no name; it is a nameless reality. But once it is
realized then there is nothing else left. You have attained to the ultimate
flowering of your being. This is enlightenment.
So put your ego aside - whether it is big or small, dont be worried - and just be
a witness to your mind. Wait and be patient. Dont be in a hurry. It may take a
few days for you to get the knack. It is a knack! It is not an art!

If it was an art, it would have been very simple to teach, but because it is a
knack you have to try. Slowly you get it.
How do you learn to swim? It is not an art. If it was an art you could have
learned it in your bedroom. Just on your bed you could have done all the
exercises that are prescribed in the book. But it is not an art; you have to go to
water. And you will have to face death a few times, but that is part of the
progress. Each time you face death, each time you learn something - the knack
slowly comes to you. Within two or three days you will be able to swim.
One Japanese professor of psychology is trying to teach six-month-old children
to swim, and he has succeeded. Then he tried with three-month-old children,
and he has succeeded. Now he is trying with the newly born, and I hope that he
succeeds. There is every possibility because it is a knack. It does not need any
other kind of experience, age, education.it is simply a knack.
And if a six-month-old or a three-month-old baby can swim, that means we are
naturally endowed with the idea of how to swim. We just have to discover it.
Just a little bit of effort and you will be able to discover it.
The same is true about meditation.more true, than swimming. You just have to
make a little effort. And if you dont succeed, dont be worried. You are losing
nothing - just a little rest.
And whenever you are going to sleep you can try - just lying in bed, or in the
morning when you are awake, wait for a minute. Give it a try and then wake up.
While taking a shower you can try it, because it is a question of witnessing.
You can witness anything, and anywhere.
There are one hundred and twelve methods of meditation, exhaustive. No more
methods can be added to them. And these one hundred and twelve methods
are written by Shiva himself perhaps ten thousand years ago. The name of the
book is Vigyan Bhairav Tantra. It simply describes one hundred and twelve
methods, each method in two lines.
I have tried all the methods, and the most surprising experience was that the
basic thing in each of the methods is witnessing. Their strategies differ, but
their soul is just witnessing.
So I have reduced the one hundred and twelve methods of Shiva into a single
method. I am giving you the essential method which no meditation can afford
to drop - it is the most essential. You can add any other structure to it, but I
have dropped the whole structure. I am giving you the very soul of meditation.
You just try, give it a chance. And if I can succeed, I dont see why you cannot
succeed.
Millions have succeeded in the past. We have just forgotten completely the
greatest science of discovering ourselves. It has to be rediscovered and it has

to be again spread all over the earth if we want the world to be saved, if we
want the world not to be destroyed.
One of my professors, Doctor S.K. Saxena, loved me very much. Most days I
used to stay with him instead of in the hostel, because he would not allow me
to go to the hostel.
I asked him, Why do you insist.? Because I am of no use to you - I simply sit in
the garden and meditate.
He said, That is the reason I want you to be here. I am getting old, I have
never meditated. Most of my life I have been a professor in America. I have
never given any thought to meditation.
Despite this, he had written for his doctoral thesis a book, History Of The
Evolution Of Consciousness. He said to me, When you are here I feel
something settling in me. When you sleep in my house - he lived alone - I
have a better sleep. I dont know why, but just your presence somehow helps
me to be more together.
I said, I can tell you why. But rather than depending on me, why dont you
start meditating?
And by chance, today it happens that his son is present in the audience. S.K.
Saxena is dead.
I received a message that he wanted to see me before he died. He wanted that
I should be present by his side when he died. But I received the message after
he had died, months after. Perhaps he wanted to die in the same peaceful
silent atmosphere that he had found around me.
I feel sad for him, sorry for him, that what he could have attained himself he
unnecessarily depended on somebody else for.
Meditation is something that is your birthright. Claim it! Make it a decision, a
commitment that whatever happens, you will not die before you have attained
to a meditative state.
It is only a question of a firm determination. And if you can attain to meditation,
your life will become real life, and your death will become a door to the divine.
It will no longer be a death, it will no longer be an end. It will just be freedom
from the body and entering into the universal, unlimited, infinite.

Chapter 10 - The Sword and the Lotus

Osho,
The technique of self-remembering seems easier for me than witnessing. Do
they both lead to the same goal?
They both lead to the same goal, but the technique of self-remembering is
harder, longer and dangerous. Only very few people in the whole history of

mankind have attained to enlightenment through the technique of selfremembering.

Many have tried, but utterly failed - it looks easy. The reason is that your selfremembering is not going to be your self remembering, it will be your ego
remembering; thats why it looks easy.
You dont know the distinction between the self and the false self. The false self
is our ego, and the ego is very subtle, very cunning, and tries in every way to
pretend to be the real self. Thats why in the beginning it will look easier than
witnessing, because in witnessing there is no place for the ego. From the very
beginning the ego is avoided.
In witnessing, the ego cannot enter. But in self-remembering, there is every
possibility of the ego pretending to be your self. Then the more you will
practice, the more your ego will become stronger.
If somebody wants to travel on the path of self-remembering, he absolutely
needs a master. He cannot move alone, because he cannot make a clear-cut
distinction of what is false and what is true. He knows only the false, he is not
acquainted with his true being. Unless he is under a very rigorous master it will
be very difficult to create a separation between the ego and the self.
I will explain it to you by an ancient Chinese story..
A great master had a big monastery - five hundred monks - and they were all
practicing the path of self-remembering. Self-remembering is one of the paths
Buddha has recommended.
One man entered into the monastery - he wanted to become a disciple. The
master accepted him, but he was a very simple man from a village, almost
uneducated. The master told him, Your job is cleaning the rice in the kitchen.
It was a big kitchen - five hundred monks. The poor man was cleaning the rice
before sunrise and late into the night. He had no time to go to the sermons, to
go to the prayers; he had no time to read the scriptures or listen to the wise
talks. Those five hundred monks were great scholars, and the monastery was
known all over the country.
Twenty years passed and the man continued just cleaning the rice and doing
nothing. He forgot even to count the years - what was the point? He forgot the
days, the dates, and finally he became suspicious about his own name. For
twenty years nobody had used it, nobody had called him by his name - perhaps
it was his name, perhaps it was not. For twenty years continuously he was
doing one small thing: cleaning the rice, from the moment he woke up until he
went back to bed again.
The master declared that his time to depart from the body had come. He
wanted to choose his successor, and the way he did it was this: Anybody who
thinks he has succeeded in self-remembering should write on the wall of my
hut some insight which shows that he has seen the truth.

One person, who was thought to be the greatest scholar in the commune, tried.
But he was so afraid to write that sentence there, because it was not his
insight. He knew - how could he not know it - he knew it was not his insight, it
was just borrowed from scriptures. It was not his experience - and it was
difficult to deceive the old man.
In the morning the old man came out, asked the servant to erase what had
been written, and said, Find out who this idiot is who has spoiled my wall.
It is said that the great scholar had not even signed, out of fear that he would
be caught. If the master appreciated that this was really a great insight, then
he would come out and say, I have written it. Otherwise he would remain
silent.who knows? Out of five hundred people anybody could have done it!
Almost one dozen great scholars tried, but none of them had the courage to
sign his name. And the master behaved in the same way; he erased the line
and said, None of you has come to the point of self-remembering. You have all
been feeding the ego in the name of self. I reminded you again and again, but
having a big ego is such a joy. And a spiritual ego, the otherworldly ego, the
divine ego, becomes even more delicious. Now I will have to find the person
myself.
In the middle of the night the master went to the man who had come twenty
years ago. For twenty years the master had not seen him, he had simply been
cleaning rice. He woke the man up. The man asked the master, Who are you?
Because twenty years.he had just seen him once for a few seconds when he
was initiated - And what is the idea of disturbing my sleep?
The master said, I am your master. You have forgotten.? Do you remember
your name?
The man said, That is the difficulty. The work you have given me is such that it
needs no name, no fame, no scholarship, no austerities. It is so simple that I
have forgotten everything. I cannot be certain that this is my name. A few
names come to my mind and I cannot decide which one is mine, but I am
grateful to you. He touched the feet of the master. Please dont change my
job. I have forgotten everything, but I have also achieved everything. I know a
peace that I had never dreamed of, a silence that no word can express. I have
known such moments of ecstasy that even if I had died there would not have
been any complaint that life has not been fair to me. It has given me more than
I was worthy of. Just dont change my job. I am doing it perfectly well. Has
somebody complained about my work?

The master said, No, nobody has complained, but your job has to be changed
because I am choosing you as my successor.
The man said, I am only a rice cleaner. I dont know anything about being a
master or a disciple. I know nothing. Please forgive me, I dont want to be your

successor because I cannot handle such a big job, I can only handle this rice
cleaning.
The master still insisted, You have achieved that which others have been
trying to achieve but have failed. You have achieved it because you were not
trying. You were simply doing your small work. Slowly, slowly there was no
need for thinking, no need for emotions, no need for anger, no fight, no
comparison, no ambition - your ego died. And with the ego died your name. You
are not born with a name. It is the ego that is given a name - that is the
beginning of the ego. With the death of the ego, you even forgot your own
master, because it was the ego that brought you to me.
Up to that moment you were on a spiritually ambitious trip. You are absolutely
the right person, so take my robe, my hat, my sword, which have always been
given by the master to the successor. But remember one thing: take them and
escape from this monastery as far away as you can, because your life will be in
danger. All these five hundred egoists will kill you. You are so simple and you
have become so innocent that if they ask you for the robe, the sword, the cap,
you will give them. You simply take them and go as far away as you can into
the mountains.
Soon people will start arriving to you just as bees start finding their way
towards the flowers when the flowers blossom. You have blossomed. You need
not bother about the disciples, you simply remain silently in a faraway place.
People will come to you; you simply teach them whatever you have been
doing.
But, he said, I have received no teaching and I dont know what to teach
them.
The master said, Just teach them to do small things, silently, peacefully,
without any ambition, without any motivation to gain something in this world or
in the other world, so that you can become innocent like a child. That
innocence is real religiousness. Not being Hindu, not being Mohammedan, but
being utterly innocent - just a tabula rasa, a clean sheet on which nothing is
written. No Bhagavadgita, no Koran, no Bible.
It is possible.a few people have attained through self-remembering. One of the
great masters of this age, George Gurdjieff, used the method selfremembering, but you have to be aware that not a single person of his
disciples became enlightened - and he was one of the most perfect masters.

But the problem is that the ego and the self are so close and so similar that
whatever you think is your self is most probably, in ninety-nine percent of
cases, just your ego. The masters function is absolutely necessary for this
method, because he has to destroy your ego. And he has to be hard, harsh.
Unless he destroys your ego, self-remembering is going to lead you, not to
enlightenment, but to darker spaces of being.

It will strengthen your ego more - you will become a very strong ego, very
assertive. In any ordinary field of life you will be very successful. You can
become an Adolf Hitler, you can become a Joseph Stalin.Stalin was not his real
name, it was given to him because he was such a strong man. Stalin means
man of steel.
But these people are not a benediction to humanity, they are a curse. If they
had not been there man would have been in a far better space, in a far better
consciousness.
So if you feel that it is easier for you, then be very careful. I will still suggest
that though witnessing may be difficult in the beginning, it is the most safe
method without any dangers. It cannot lead you anywhere other than towards
enlightenment. So it can even be practiced without a master.
I would like to give you something in which you are not to be dependent on
somebody else.
How long have you lived, how many lives? In all these lives you may have
come across many saints, many masters, but where have you reached? Your
darkness is the same, your unconsciousness is the same. Perhaps they all gave
you methods, but the methods were such that they needed constant
supervision. Those methods are called school methods. You have to enter into a
monastery, live in a monastery, function under a strict discipline - then perhaps
you may be able to achieve something from a school method. And there are
such monasteries.
In Europe, there is a monastery in Mount Athos; it is one thousand years old.
There are almost three thousand monks inside the monastery, and anybody
who wants to become a monk in that monastery can decide to enter, but only
his dead body will go out.
If there is such a commitment, only then is a person accepted. Once a person
enters Mount Athos, you will never see him till he is dead. This is a school for
absolute self-remembering, but you cannot put the whole world in monasteries.
Who will take care of these monasteries? Hence my preference is to use a
method which keeps you free from any commitment, from any dependence which keeps you in the world and yet not of the world.
Witnessing is the most simple and the most infallible method; it is the essence
of all meditations. Even self-remembering, finally, is witnessing - but at a later
stage, when you have dropped the ego. And if you start looking inside yourself,
you can understand what I am saying. Can you see your ego and self
separately? You simply know one thing: that is I. You dont know two things:
that I is the ego, and that the ego is capable of nursing itself through anything.
I have heard.
A small child was passing by the side of a palace. He had failed his examination
and was feeling very angry with the teachers. He was ready to do something,

and suddenly, he found a pile of stones by the side of the road. He took one big
stone from the pile and threw it at the palace. Now the palace had nothing to
do with his failing, nor had the stone anything to do with it, but he was in such
anger he wanted to do something; the energy was there, and it needed to be
released. The boy went on his way, but what happened to the stone?
As the stone started rising up he looked down - his brothers and sisters and
cousins were all there. And the stone said to them, I am going on a
pilgrimage. I have been thinking about it for a long time. God willing, I will
succeed in my adventures and come back to you to relate all that I experience
on the way.
All the other stones looked at this stone with their mouths open: What is
happening? He has no wings. He was just a stone like themselves. They also
wanted to fly, but they knew that they could not. But he is flying, you cannot
deny it. So they all said, Okay, just remember us; dont forget us. You are a
hero. In the centuries of time sometimes one stone gets wings the way you
have, and we are proud that you belong to us, to our family.
They were even feeling great pride because one of the stones was flying
towards the palace. The stone hit against a glass window, and naturally, when
a stone hits glass it is the glass that is broken, not the stone - it is just the
nature of things. But the stone said to the pieces of glass, You idiots. I have
always said, Never come in my way. Whoever comes in my way will be
shattered to death. Now look what happened to you. Let this be a lesson to
everyone who is listening.
At that very moment the guard on the gate heard the noise of the stone falling
on the floor, the glass being broken.he rushed in. He took the stone in his
hands, and the stone said - although the guard could not understand his
language, because he talked in Nepalese.! He said, Thank you my lord, you
are the owner of this palace - I can see from your beautiful dress. I will never
forget this honor that you have given to me - taken me in your own hands.
The situation was totally different, but the ego goes on turning every situation
in its favor.
The guard was afraid that if the king came to know then he would be caught:
What are you doing? Who has thrown the stone? He threw the stone back out
of the window.
And these are the ways of the ego: the stone said, Thank you! You are not only
a great host, you understand the hurts of other people too. You know I am
longing to meet my friends. I want to tell them the whole story of my visiting
the palace of the king - the meeting with the king, the conversation with the
king, the destruction of the enemies who came in my way. And as he was
falling back into the pile of the stones, he said to them, Brothers and sisters, I
am back. You should all be proud. My name should go down in history, and with
me, my familys name. This pile of stones is no ordinary pile, it is something
historical.

The ego has its ways of fulfilling itself even in situations where it should be
shattered. So beware of it.
Self-remembering can be done only in a school where you are devoting yourself
to the discipline twenty-four hours a day, because it is the moment you
remember yourself.While walking you remember, I am walking - then walking
is no longer natural. It becomes divided: you are separate, and the walking is
separate.
Walking is a simple process, but in life you are doing a thousand and one things
which are very complex. If you are going to remember yourself while using a
machine, while driving a car.it could be very dangerous because your whole
focus is in remembering yourself. You could cause an accident which could be
dangerous to you, which could be dangerous to others.
Life has its own wisdom. The body has its own wisdom. For example, try one
thing and you will understand what I mean: you have been eating every day
your whole life but you have never thought about what happens to the food
when it goes down your throat - you forget about it. Dont forget about it. Just
for three days try to remember that the food has gone in. Remember that the
food is being digested, that juices, chemicals and other things are coming in
from different directions, that the food is being mixed with them and the food is
being transformed into different things. It is becoming blood, it is becoming
your flesh, it is becoming your bones.
In three days time you will have such a disturbed stomach, you cannot
imagine. It will take at least three months to get it back to its normal state. You
are not needed to remember it. It knows its function, and it does its function
perfectly well without your remembering.
Thats why when you are sick it is better to rest, because the body needs you
to sleep so it can work better without any disturbance from you.
You must have heard the famous story about a centipede..
A centipede has one hundred legs - thats why it is called centipede. And for
centuries, centipedes have been in the world, walking perfectly well - no
problem. But one day a rabbit became curious. He saw the centipede, he tried
to count his legs and said, My God! One hundred legs! How does he manage
to remember which one to put first, which one to put second?
If I had one hundred legs, the rabbit thought, I would get entangled and I
would fall immediately; I could not walk at all. This centipede is performing a
miracle.
He said, Uncle, uncle, wait, wait! I have a question if you dont mind.
The centipede said, There is no hurry. I was just going for a morning walk. You
can ask your question.
He said, My question is simple: you have one hundred legs.?

The centipede said, One hundred? In fact, I have never counted. It would be
too difficult for me to count them, but if you say so then perhaps I must have.
The rabbit said, My curiosity is: how do you manage to walk with such a trail
of one hundred legs? How do you manage which one comes first, then second,
then third, then fourth.?
The centipede said, I have never thought about it. I will try. Just now - I will try
here.
And then and there he fell on the ground. He called the rabbit and said, You
idiot! Never ask another centipede such a question, otherwise centipedes will
die. We cannot live with this curiosity. I have been doing perfectly well up to
now, and just as I started becoming alert about what leg is going when.as I
started remembering one hundred legs, my mind got very much puzzled.
Self-remembering is a school method. And school method means you are in a
safe monastery, not doing work that could be dangerous. Otherwise your
remembering.working in a factory, working in a carpentry shop and trying to
remember, you are bound to get into the same position as the centipede.
I dont want anybody to get into any trouble in the name of spirituality, hence
my suggestion again is just pure witnessing - no question of I. And that too,
very playfully, not seriously, with a sense of humor.
If you forget, there is no harm. Whenever you remember, again you start. You
will forget many times, you will remember many times. There is no question of
guilt; it is human.
Very slowly, bigger and bigger gaps of witnessing will arise in you, and as the
gaps of witnessing become bigger, your thoughts will become smaller, less.
The moment your witnessing comes to a peak - at certain times with a crystal
clarity - the thoughts will simply disappear. You will be in an absolute silence.
Whatever you are doing will not be disturbed by your silence, but on the
contrary, your workmanship, your creative effort will be enhanced.
If you are making statues, or painting, or playing music.with such a mad mind,
with all kinds of thoughts running around, and you can still manage to create
beautiful music - just think of a silent mind, how much deeper and higher music
you could create.
The same applies to every area of life. I make it a point to be remembered that
if your meditation is right, everything in your life will start falling into better
shape. That is the only criterion. No need to ask anybody else; you can see
yourself.
Everything in your life will become better with your meditation. When your
meditation is at its highest peak, all your efforts will have a beauty and a grace
and a creativeness that you cannot imagine. Thats why I say, dont divide
spiritual life from the ordinary life. Dont create any division at all. Let this life
remain one single whole.

So if your consciousness changes, then everything that surrounds you also

changes.
I cannot imagine a man of meditation renouncing his wife. No, a man of
meditativeness will love his wife more. Perhaps his love will become more and
more purified, less and less sexual, more and more prayerful. But he cannot
renounce her, that is ugly.
Leaving a poor woman and escaping - that is not the work of a brave man. It
fits to a coward, but not to a man who is meditating.
In my village I loved to sit in an old mans small shop. He used to sell sweets. I
was attracted, not by his sweets, but by the sweetness of the man. He would
say, The cost price of this many sweets is one rupee, and if you are willing,
just for my labors and for my family, you can give me one anna more - that is
my profit.
First he would tell the cost price, and then he would tell his profit. And that too
he would leave up to you: If you dont want to give it to me, you can take it at
the cost price - of course, I am a poor man, I cannot give it to you below the
cost price. I can give you my labor, I can give you my profit, but I cannot go
below the cost price.
And I inquired - because it was a sweet market and there were many shops, I
inquired in other shops about what he was saying cost one rupee. And others
were selling for two rupees, two and a half rupees - the same quantity, but not
the same quality, not the same love.
While he was preparing his sweets, I used to sit. He even asked me, You are
the only one. Why do you come and sit here?
I said, I simply like it - to see you work. You work so lovingly, as if you were
preparing these sweets for your beloved who is coming after many years - and
you dont know who the customer will be.
And he laughed. He said, As far as I know it is the same customer who always
comes - different faces, but the customer is the same. Thats why I cannot
deceive. I cannot cheat, I cannot exploit because it is the same customer with
different faces. I have recognized him.
His whole life I would describe as the life of a great saint, although nobody in
the world would recognize him as a saint because we have this idea so deeply
rooted in our minds that a saint should renounce life, get away from life. That
anti-life attitude has proved so poisonous that it has destroyed the whole
beauty of human existence. It has taken away the whole dignity of man.
Hence I still insist - even if you feel self-remembering is easier - that you try
witnessing. Even though it is difficult in the beginning, it becomes very easy as
you go ahead.

Gautam Buddha has said, My teaching is bitter in the beginning but sweet in
the end.

Osho,
Although what you say seems to be the very truth, when I tell this to my friends
who belong to the higher levels of society - doctors, professors, engineers and
administrators in the city - they think I have been hypnotized or brainwashed.
Every time I apply logic to this then they are at a loss. But why cant they
accept you when they are unable to argue? Why are they so against you?
It is very simple. They think they are intellectuals, but to be an intellectual does
not mean to be intelligent.
They are doctors, they are engineers - they may be civil servants, highly
posted; their egos have become very big. When you tell them, You can see for
yourself, they have no counter-argument. But still, they have to protect their
egos, and the only way is to tell you that you are brainwashed, that you are
hypnotized.
Next time you meet them tell them that to be brainwashed, first one needs a
brain. If you have a brain, come to the meeting. And tell them that the latest
psychological findings are that only the very intelligent can be hypnotized;
idiots cannot be hypnotized!
You can try it. All the experiments on idiots have failed. It is almost like
hypnotizing a buffalo. Now it is scientifically established that only thirty-three
percent of the whole of humanity is capable of being hypnotized - only thirtythree percent. And this is the same thirty-three percent of the people who are
the intelligent part. But perhaps they may not even be aware of the latest
findings.
They are using hypnotism and brainwashing just to put you down.
Ask them, how much they know about brainwashing? Ask them can they
brainwash you.how much they know about hypnotism? Ask them, Can you
hypnotize me? And if you dont know anything about brainwashing and about
hypnotism you do not have any right to talk about these things.
And I am available here. You can tell them, You can come, you can try to
brainwash me or hypnotize me.
I do not see any harm in either; both are good. A brainwash simply means
cleaning all the rubbish that you are carrying in your mind. They are afraid of
brainwashing because they dont have anything other than rubbish. If it is
washed away, they dont have any brain; that is their fear. And why are you
afraid of hypnosis? Hypnosis simply means a deliberately created state of
sleep. It is a beautiful space, very healthy, and can be immensely helpful. And

now, in the most modern hospitals, hypnotists are being employed, because
under hypnosis even surgery can be done without any anesthesia. Under
hypnosis many diseases can be cured simply because they were only in the
mind. They were simply obsessed with certain diseases that were not really
there. If through hypnosis you can put the idea in their minds that the disease
is finished and they dont have it anymore, when they wake up you will find a
different man who is no longer sick.
Hypnosis can be such a great blessing.
In the Soviet Union they are using hypnosis for teaching. The child goes to
sleep in his home, but he has earphones connected to the central system in the
school. When he goes to sleep, very slowly they start teaching him things - so
slowly that he feels as if he is dreaming and his sleep is not disturbed.
It is a great advantage. It means six hours of the night, eight hours of the night,
can be used for teaching.
In the twenty-five years that we waste as far as the university, three times
more education is possible. But your so-called intellectuals may not be aware
of all these methods which are being used around the world.
Very soon hypnosis is going to be one of the most important sciences to be
developed, because mans mind is in such a tension, in so much misery, in so
much anguish that he has to use alcohol, marijuana, hashish, opium and all
kinds of drugs just to forget, just to get rid of all the anxieties although he
knows it is only temporary. Tomorrow when he wakes up all those anxieties will
be waiting at the door; they have not gone anywhere.
Hypnosis can transform you very easily without any drugs. There are people
who are suffering from smoking - they dont want to smoke but they are
addicted. They go through a torture. They know perfectly well that it is harmful,
they are killing themselves, but no wise counseling can be of any help. They
know all that you are saying: that it will destroy your health, your lungs may go
wrong, you may get tuberculosis, you may even get cancer, and certainly you
will die at least two or three years earlier. Everybody knows it, but still the
addiction is there. Hypnosis is so simple. In three weeks time, just a threeweek course, one hour every day - and your smoking disappears. Just for three
weeks, one hour a day, you have to be told, You dont need cigarettes, you
dont need smoking.
There is no need for somebody to tell you, you can just keep a tape recorder by
your side. Just record the first session with a hypnotist - and a hypnotist is not a
magician, he is a scientist, and what he is doing is a simple method. So just
record the first session, and then every time you want, every day, you simply
use the recorded session. And within three weeks you will be free of all
addiction to smoking or alcohol or anything else.
Hypnosis has not yet been used. It is a tremendously powerful instrument to
improve man - his consciousness, his body - in every possible way.

These people dont know anything at all about brainwashing, nor do they know
anything about hypnosis, but because they are professors and they are
doctors, they think they are intellectuals. Just invite those intellectuals, and I
will do my best to brainwash them - I promise it!
These people are simply afraid - afraid, because on the one hand they try to
pretend that they are intellectuals, and on the other hand all that they are
doing is absolutely absurd.
I have seen professors behaving just like villagers - going to a certain saint to
touch his feet because that has a curative power. Or if the saint blesses you,
your promotion is certain. In those moments they dont think about their being
intellectuals.
I have been a professor myself so I know the whole lot..
I remember one professor who had this idea of being a great intellectual, and
still, he was a fanatic Hindu. I said, These things dont go together. An
intelligent man cannot be fanatic. An intelligent man is always open, always
ready to listen to the other, and always ready to accept the truth even if it goes
against his own old ideas.
There was a conference, and I spoke in that conference. It was about the status
of the Mohammedan women in the modern world. He was also in the audience.
I said, Allowing a man to have four wives is degrading women into subhuman
beings, reducing them to cattle - and Mohammed himself had nine wives. I can
neither forgive nor can I forget. This is time for the women to revolt.
He was very happy because he was a fanatic Hindu and against
Mohammedans. He said, You did a great job; the others were just lousy.
I said, But remember that Krishna had sixteen thousand wives. Mohammed is
nothing. The five Pandavas had one wife. That is another extreme - five
brothers with one wife. This is ugly. And one of the brothers, Yudhishthira, was
known as Dharmaraj - as a king of spirituality. If this is the king of spirituality,
what about ordinary people?
And this man, Yudhishthira, was a gambler. Still he is the king of spirituality. He
gambled everything. Only the wife was left - that too was a common property
of the five brothers. He staked her also, and finally lost her. And still no Hindu
criticizes him. At least we should stop calling him Dharmaraj. He is treating
women like property, using them like a stake in gambling.
The man said, Thats why I never ask you for a lift.
I said, It has nothing to do with the lift. You would have to listen to me - you
are in my car and I am going to stop when I am going to stop. And if you cannot
answer then at least drop the idea of being an intellectual. When I criticized
Mohammedans you were happy for the same reason. And with the Hindus - the

same reason, on a vaster scale, and then it hurts. This is not intelligence, it is
just fanaticism, it is just blind belief.
These people may have passed examinations, they may have a good memory,
but they dont have intelligence. Intelligence is a totally different matter. An
intelligent man in search of truth is always ready from wherever it comes; he is
never adamant, never stubborn, never closed. His doors are always open for
truth.
[]

Chapter 6 - From Death to Deathlessness

Osho,
For years you have talked to us of simplicity: simplicity in love, the simplicity of
enlightenment, and now the simple solution to the power game between the
United States and Russia. Why has man developed such complexity, and why
does he show such mistrust and disbelief in the simple?
The simple is not a challenge to mans ego; the difficult is a challenge; the
impossible is really a great challenge. How big an ego you want can be known
by the challenge that you have accepted, by your ambition; it is measurable.
But the simple is unattractive to the ego. The simple is the death of the ego.
And man has chosen complexities even in places where there was no need of
complexity at all, for the simple reason that with complexity he can go on
growing and strengthening his ego. He goes on becoming more and more
important in politics, in religion, in society - everywhere.
The whole of psychology is geared to make the ego stronger. Even those fools,
the psychologists, stress the point that a man needs a strong ego. So education
is a program to give you ambition by punishment and reward, to drive you in a
certain direction. Your parents from the very beginning are hoping for too much
from you. They think perhaps Alexander the Great has been born to them, or
their daughter is nobody but the reincarnation of Cleopatra. Parents condition
you from the very beginning that unless you prove yourself, you are good for
nothing. The simple man is thought to be a simpleton.
The simple man has not been the goal of human society until now. And the
simple man cannot be the goal, because you are born simple! Every child is
simple, just a clean slate. Then the parents start writing on his slate - what he
has to become. Then the teachers, the priests, the leaders - they all go on
emphasizing that you have to become somebody; otherwise, you have wasted
your life. Just the opposite is the case.
You are a being. You need not become anybody else. That is the meaning of
simplicity: remaining at ease with ones being, and not going on any track of
becoming - which is unending.
There is no place where you will feel, Now my journey is over. I have come to
the highest peak that I had desired. Nobody in the whole history of humanity

has been able to do that, for the simple reason that man is moving in a circle.
So somebody is always ahead of you in something or other.
You may become the president of America, but before Muhammad Ali the Great
you feel inferior. You dont have that animal strength. Muhammad Ali can give a
good punch on the nose of Ronald Reagan, and Ronald Reagan will be flat on
the ground. And you can go on counting one, two, three - Ronald Reagan is not
going to get up again to get another punch. He is simply waiting for number
ten, so that he can get up and go to the hospital.
You may become prime minister of a country, but encountering Albert Einstein
you will look like a pygmy - not a prime minister, but a pygmy.
Life is multi-dimensional. It is impossible for you to reach in all directions, and
to be the first in all directions. It is a sheer impossibility; existence does not
work that way.
The ego is mans disease.
The vested interests want you to remain diseased. They dont want you to be
healthy and whole, because your being healthy and whole is a danger to their
vested interests. Thats why nobody wants to be simple, nobody wants to be
nobody. And my whole approach is that you should be at ease with yourself,
that you should accept your being.
Becoming is sickness, being is health. But simple, whole, healthy, blissful: you
have not tasted that. Your society has not allowed a single moment for you, so
you know only one way: the way of the ego. You have been told to become
Jesus Christ. There are societies that are aiming for everybody to become a
god. This insane world! You have to come out of all this programming. If you
want to enjoy, relax, feel peace and the beauty of existence, that phony ego
will have to drop.
I dont want to take anything else from you. I want only to take your ego from
you, which is anyway just a fantasy. It is not a reality, so I am not really taking
anything from you. And I want to give you your being. Of course I need not give
it to you: you have it already! You just have to be shaken and awakened to the
tremendous beauty of innocence.
That is the moment when the camel has reached the state of the child.
Nothing is at risk. And you are running after shadows which you will never be
able to catch, forgetting all the treasures that you have brought into the world
with you. Before your ego is fulfilled, death will finish you. Life is too short, it is
not to be destroyed in such foolish games as the ego.
And it is only a question of understanding. You are not supposed to stand on
your head in a yoga posture. You are not supposed to contort your body in
many ways for many years doing yoga exercises. You are not supposed to fast
for months together to purify yourself. In fact, all these ways are also the way
of the ego.

The man who can stand on his head for twelve hours makes a record. He is
destroying his whole intelligence by standing for twelve hours on his head,
because all the blood of his body will be rushing towards his head. It will be a
flood, because gravitation will be pulling all the blood towards his head. In that
flood, your fragile nerves, which are so small, so delicate - you have seven
million in your skull - will be simply killed.
Thats why no yogi has contributed anything to the world. They have been
parasites, and you have been foolish enough to reward them with great
respect, for the simple reason that the man is standing on his head. He is an
idiot.
If God wanted you to stand on your head, I cant think why he allowed you to
stand on two legs. In the very beginning he would have told Adam and Eve,
Just stand on your head. And that would have been a far better strategy - by
standing on their heads, I dont think they would have reached the tree of
knowledge or the tree of eternal life. But you have legs to walk with.
The scientific fact is, animals cannot create intelligence. They have brains some animals have bigger brains than man. The dolphin has a bigger brain
than you; the elephant, almost the same size brain as you. But why have
elephants not been as intelligent as man? For the simple reason that the
elephant cannot walk on two legs. In the circus, once in a while he sits on a
stool. That is not going to help. It is certain he cannot walk on two legs for his
whole life, that would be torture.
It is a very simple phenomenon: if your body is horizontal - as all animals are then the gravitation is equally forceful all over your body. Man standing on two
legs is not an ordinary thing. It is the greatest revolution that has happened in
the whole of evolution.
When you stand on two feet, your heart has to pump blood against gravitation
towards the head because the head needs continuously to be fed with oxygen.
Only six seconds are needed - if your head does not get oxygen for six seconds,
you are dead. You can be revived because your body is perfectly okay, but you
will be just a vegetable; the head will be finished.
The brain has developed its delicacies - its very subtle system of nerves and
cells which functions as the biocomputer, which collects all the information and
stores it - because blood never comes as a flood. Only enough blood comes to
keep the brain living.
The yogis have not produced anything, have not created anything, have made
no contribution to the world. What have your ascetics given to the world? What
have your so-called saints been doing all along, except being parasites sucking
your blood? And these are the people you have been worshipping. And why
have you been worshipping them? For the simple reason that you cannot stand
for twelve hours on your head. Try it - even for twelve minutes it is difficult. In
fact, when you first try you will fall many times; you may have a broken rib. The
yogi is doing something difficult.

A man is standing naked in the snow in the Himalayas, and people come from
thousands of miles to touch his feet. All that he is doing is getting frozen and
dead. What is his contribution? Nobody goes to touch the feet of Albert
Einstein, or Bertrand Russell, or Martin Heidegger, or Ludwig Wittgenstein - the
people who have contributed to mans knowledge immensely, who have
expanded mans vision almost to infinity. But you cannot see it, it is not
something visible.
Bertrand Russell and Whitehead together wrote a book, Principia Mathematica.
It takes them one hundred and sixty-five pages to prove that two plus two is
really four. Who bothers to read such a book? One hundred and sixty-five
pages, and the ultimate outcome is, two plus two is really four. Nobody reads
that book.
Visiting all the universities of India - and perhaps India has the largest number
of universities; one hundred universities - I was always going to their libraries
to look at Principia Mathematica, whether anybody has read it. No - even the
pages are not cut, they are joined. I inquired of the librarians, Has anybody
read this book?
They said, Nobody ever asks. People come once in a while, they look at one or
two pages and thats all. And that was one of the greatest contributions to
humanity. Bertrand Russell and Whitehead managed to make mathematics a
solid foundation for any science to grow from.
You get easily interested.. Somebody is bicycling for twenty-four hours, and
hundreds of people go to watch him. He will not eat, or he will eat while
bicycling. Of course, he has a certain control over his bladder. He will not drink
anything. Perhaps he has not drunk for twelve hours before he started the
bicycling. It interests you; he is doing something difficult.
And he feels great. His ego is getting higher and higher. From twenty-four hours
he will go to forty-eight hours, and so on and so forth. And the more he can
manage, the more people will be coming to him. The people are mediocre, and
these are their leaders - who are even more mediocre.
Simplicity will not attract anybody towards you. In fact, to become as simple as
the child - instead of attracting people towards you and making you something
great - may keep people away from you, saying, He is only a child. Perhaps
they may become hostile to you, because your innocence can raise questions
which they cannot answer. There is no answer to those questions. Your
innocence will create curiosities which will be cutting the roots of their beliefs
and their faith.
I used to go with my father to all kinds of discourses - religious, political,
educational - and he used to take a promise from me that I was not going to
ask anything, and I was not going to create a nuisance there. I always promised
him, and I always did whatsoever I wanted to do. Coming back home, he would
say, You are not a man of your word.

I said, I am. But I wanted to go. I wanted to see that spiritual monk, to see
whether he knows anything or not. Unless I promise, you will not take me. It
was your fault to ask for the promise. You made me lie! After this, never ask for
a promise. Why should you make me a slave? Leave me free.
My whole towns elders were afraid of me - and I was only a child. The man who
was most respected in the town was a physician, and he was also thought to be
a very learned, religious scholar. I used to visit him almost daily, and the
moment he saw me I could see his face going pale, because he could not
answer a single question.
I would put the Bhagavadgita in front of him, and tell him, Put your hand on
the Gita and say whether you have seen God or not.
This was too much. If the Gita was not there, perhaps he might have lied, but to
put your hand on the Gita and lie means a direct ticket to hell.
And he would say to me, Are you some magistrate or what? Is my own house a
court? I dont want to put my hand on the Gita.
Then, I said, whatever you say will be a lie.
His continual statement to me was, Wait, you are too young. When you are a
little older, you will understand all these problems. Right now you cannot
understand.
I went on becoming older, and each year I would come from the university to
the town. Before going to my home, first I would go to the physician, knock at
his door, and say, One more year has passed; the question is still there.
He would say, Cant you wait?
I said, You just give me the date! How long do I have to wait?
Even when I became a lecturer in the university I used to come to my town
once in a while on holiday. His house was just between the station and my
house, so first I would stop at his house, knock on his door, and say, Now I
have even become a teacher of philosophy in the university. And what about
your statement? How long do I have to wait now?
And then one day when I was in the town, somebody came to my house because my father was a friend of the man - and informed us, He is just
dying.
I rushed - my father said, Where are you going? The message is not for you!
I said, Dont worry, you take your time. I am going because I have to ask him
something before he dies.
I was there with the Bhagavadgita in front of him. And I told him, Now I have
grown up, you cannot deceive me anymore. Put your hand on the
Bhagavadgita - and at the moment of dying dont lie; otherwise you will fall
directly into hell.

He said, Cant you forgive me?

I said, You have been deceiving me for almost twenty years. What was the
need? You could have simply said, I dont know. The thing would have finished
long ago. You have no obligation to know everything, but you pretended. You
wanted to be known as the wisest man around, and you have been deceiving
not only me, you have been deceiving everybody who has come to you. Now at
the last moment, recognize the fact and say, I do not know.
By that time my father had reached the house, other people had reached. They
said, This is not good. A man is dying and you are making a court here.
I said, If he dies without doing what I am saying, then I will be responsible for
throwing him into hell. This is the moment I can still save him. And at the
moment of death one thing happens: now you know death is there, you cannot
go on your ego trips anymore.
He put his hand on the Gita and he said, I am sorry. Please forgive me, and tell
everybody else also to forgive me. I know nothing. I was exploiting those
people by pretending that I know and they dont know. That is a strategy of
the ego.
The ego can find very subtle ways. It is always afraid of simplicity, innocence;
hence, all the societies destroy your simplicity, distract you from your
innocence. But it is a very simple thing to come back home, because you have
never left it in reality. You have left it only in fantasy. You cannot really go
anywhere away from your being.
All becoming is false, imagination. Being is the truth. And that truth can be
known only when you simply accept your ignorance.
I must remind you of Socrates last statement on the earth. He said, When I
was young I thought I knew everything. I bragged, because I could argue better
than anybody else. When I became a little more mature, I realized that there
were many things I didnt know, I was simply bragging. And because others
could argue against me they thought I must be knowing, because my argument
was weightier. And as I went on, slowly, slowly it became clear to me that I
know nothing. Let this be my last statement on the earth: that I do not know.
Socrates had become a child again, but he had risked all his wisdom,
philosophy, his great intelligence, all his arguments, his whole lifes effort of
winning against opponents in debates, discussions. He had become the
topmost intelligent man in Greece. But he had the tremendous courage to say,
I know nothing.
Nobody knows anything.
Existence is a mystery, it cannot be demystified.
And because existence is a mystery, it reveals itself only to the heart of the
child. It reveals itself not to knowledge, because knowledge is an aggression. It

reveals itself to innocence, because innocence is simply receptivity, not

aggression; not violence but keeping your doors open, waiting. If the truth
comes in, you are ready to welcome it.
Truth cannot be conquered. You have to be available to truth, so that truth can
conquer you. This is the reason why simplicity is the most significant religious
qualification. I want you to become just simple, innocent, not knowing anything
- waiting.
Jesus says, Seek and ye shall find.
I say, Wait! Never seek, because seeking is interfering, poking your nose into
the mysteries of existence. It is not graceful, it is just ugly. I say, Wait! and you
shall find.
Jesus says, Knock and the doors shall be opened unto you. Wait. The doors
always open for those who have patience, who can wait for infinity, but who
will not trespass. Even knocking on somebodys door is a trespass.
Jesus says, Ask, and it shall be given to you.
I say to you, Ask, and forget about getting it, ever. In your very asking you
have destroyed the possibility of getting it. Do not ask. Dont become a
question.
Let me repeat: dont become a question! And you are in for a great surprise,
because you are the answer. If you had become the question, then you would
have fallen into such a trap, there would have been no way out. You would
have gone on questioning - and the more you question, the farther away you
will be from the answer, because you are the answer!
In innocence, in simplicity, you simply find it; it is your very being.
Osho,
When you talked about trust, tears wouldnt stop coming. You said you trust us,
and I feel so untrustworthy. Please comment.
Trust is never conditional. I trust you, not because you are trustworthy; I trust
you because I cannot distrust.
Once in India I was traveling from Indore to Kanva. Kanva was a big junction,
and I had to wait there for one hour. I was alone in my air-conditioned
compartment. A beggar knocked on the window, and I indicated to him to come
in.
He came in. He said, My mother has died, and I dont have even enough
money to bury her. I gave him one rupee. In those days that was even enough
to get wood and burn your mother. The man looked surprised.
He was a professional beggar. I knew it, because I passed through Kanva many
times, and it was always his mother who was dying. I could have asked, What

a great mother you have got. Is your mother a Jesus Christ? But I never said
anything to him.
That day, thinking me mad or something, he came again. He said, My father
has died.
I said, Great! Take one rupee more.
The man could not believe that so soon.just five minutes before his mother had
died, now his father has died. And that gave him courage enough to come
again after five minutes.
I said, Has your wife died?
He said, How do you know? Yes.
I said, Here is one rupee more. How many relatives do you have? Because it is
unnecessarily disturbing me - these people will go on dying and you will have
to come again and again. You just tell me the whole number, as if the whole
family has died. How many relatives do you have?
The poor man could not imagine more than ten. I said, Okay, you take ten
rupees. And now, get lost.
[]

Chapter 16 - From the False to the Truth

Osho,
The growth movement has been called the new narcissism by many, due to
its emphasis on assertiveness and valuing ones own personal ego. How does
your way differ?
There is no way. It is impossible to have a way, because you are already there.
You have never left home. This whole search for the way is driving you crazy;
you cannot find it because you are already there. Wherever you go, you will go
against your being, farther and farther away. You have gone already too far.
It is time to drop the idea of the way. Life is not a becoming, not some kind of
process. It is being.
You cannot ask me how my way differs from the growth movement, because I
have no way. I am not teaching you a way - really, I am taking you away from
all the ways.
But the question has some significance. The growth movement was egoistic. It
was the assertion of the ego repressed for centuries. Just by being assertive
and egoistic you dont start growing. Or worse, you start growing in a wrong
way.
My movement is not egoistic. I am not here to make your ego more and more
strong - it is already too strong. My movement is towards egolessness. Thats

where I depart from the growth movement. And no one can grow by
strengthening the ego. He will remain just an imaginary being; he will not come
to know his authentic reality.
The ego is not you, it is a pretender. People need it because they dont know
who they are, and it is really difficult to live without having some idea of who
you are; hence the ego comes into existence. It is a make-believe; it is
constructed by you so that you dont feel the vacuum, so that somehow you
can manage to drag yourself to your grave.
I want you to drop the ego and then see: you will be vast, there will be no limit
to you. That is growth. To become a tiny, pygmy ego is not growth, it is just the
opposite.
The growth movement should not be called a growth movement at all. It is
selling phony commodities to you; it is really cutting your very roots. And if you
become satisfied with the ego you will never search, seek, for your self,
because you will continue to believe, This ego is me.
In Japan, for centuries it has been thought to be an art: great gardeners have
been cutting the roots of trees. The tree is placed in a pot which has no bottom,
so whenever the roots start growing, they just have to take up the pot and cut
the roots. There are four-hundred-year-old trees only six inches high. I cannot
conceive that this is art - this is murder. And those poor trees cannot say
anything. If you dont allow their roots to grow deeper into the earth, they will
not grow higher into the heavens, towards the stars. The deeper their roots, the
higher will be their growth.
The same is true about man. Nature functions in an absolutely harmonious way.
There are not many ways that nature grows. It may be a tree, a bird, a man - it
doesnt matter, the principle, the law of growth remains the same: Let your
roots go deeper.
Of course, a tree is standing, does not move - it has no legs. There are a few
trees in Africa which, out of sheer necessity, have had to move. The jungles in
Africa are so thick, and the trees are so big that there is no chance for new
trees to grow; the sun never reaches them. It is just a sheer question of life and
death. And they start moving out of crowded spaces to find some place where
they can also have the sun, the air, the moon, the earth. In Africa there are
walking trees; they walk in their own way, and are very intelligent.
Forget the idea that man is the only intelligent being on the earth. Yes, just as a
tree is different from your body, it is different from your intelligence. But it has
its own kind of intelligence. It has been found that the trees which move always
in the direction where more water is available, more sun is available, more air
is available, more space is available. How do they know which direction to
move, which path to take? And they never make any mistake.
They are not like Moses, who wandered for forty years with the poor Jews dying
in the desert, finding Israel, the holy land promised to him by God himself.

Forty years in the desert? Almost two-thirds of the Jews died on the way before
they reached the place. I certainly say that it has nothing holy about it. But
Moses was also tired and old. His people were almost finished, and the
remaining ones were getting angry with him. They had lost all trust in him. He
did not know where he was going. And in a desert it is very difficult to find a
path; there are no roads, no paths.
But these trees are far more intelligent than Moses. They dont wander here
and there, they simply rush exactly to the point where they can survive, grow.
In a few places where water pipelines are close by, they dont bother to go to a
faraway place where they can find a river or a pond. They are very progressive,
more progressive than Mahatma Gandhi.
They drop the idea of going to the river, which their parents have always
followed. They dont care a bit about the past and the tradition; they rush
towards the pipeline. And they are strong enough to break steel pipelines; they
put their roots into the pipeline. Can you call these trees unintelligent? They
have a different kind of intelligence.
But growth is possible only if you go deeper into your roots. You are not a tree;
hence, you are not to grow your roots into the earth - that will be sheer death.
You have to grow inwards. That is your earth. There you have to spread your
roots, because there is your nourishment: your water, your sun, your air, your
being.

Once you have found the center of your consciousness, growth happens of its
own accord. It has not to be done, you have not to grow. It is just as when the
tree gets nourishment, it starts growing: fresh leaves and flowers and branches
suddenly start appearing.
The growth movement was not a growth movement. It started, of course, in
California. Any nonsense.if you find it, and you want to trace where it started
from, you have to go to California. It started in Esalen.
One of the directors of Esalen came to me, because he had become fed up. No
growth was happening - and he was the director, so what about the poor
fellows he was directing? He became a sannyasin here in America, and after
one year he came to see me.
And this is one of my experiences: these people who become accustomed to
leading others, who become accustomed to the attitude that I know, and you
do not; therefore, follow me..
This director was directing the whole show in Esalen for many years. How many
people he destroyed I dont know, but he must have destroyed a lot. Reading
my books.. First his young daughter became my sannyasin, because she was
still unpolluted. She became my messenger in Esalen, she turned many Esalen

people to sannyas. It was she who insisted that her father come to me, and he
came.
To read my books, to listen to my tapes, is one thing. But to come to me and
look eye to eye - it is very difficult.
The mans name was Dick, and he proved a dick! Just within a few days he
escaped without telling anybody. We looked for him - where had he gone? From
Esalen I received his letter saying, Yours is too dangerous a place. He must
have been thinking that growth is without risk, growth is just a game, a
gimmick. Perhaps you have to read something, do a few stupid groups, and
within a few weeks you are grown-up.
Growth is simple on the one hand - the simplest thing - and on the other hand
the most difficult thing, almost impossible. The reason why it is so, is: it is
simple if you have guts. It is so simple that nothing has to be done, you just
have to become a little more ingoing, directed towards your inner reality. Just
as you see things with open eyes, you have to close your eyes and see what is
there. It is so simple.
It becomes dangerous because you have to lose many things. You have to lose
all your past, your knowledgeability, your so-called growth. You have to lose
everything that you have accumulated around you. It is all junk! If you cling to
it, growth becomes impossible.
That man ran away from me. He still reads my books, he still listens to my
tapes, but now I am so close, he has no courage to come back - because there
in Esalen he is the director, and here he has to be nobody.

Esalen is almost dead, it has seen its days of glory. People have deserted it only a few people once in a while go there - because they could see the point:
that in becoming egoistic they are creating a more miserable life for
themselves. What is the point of growing up? - misery, agony, jealousy,
competitiveness, violence.because if you are assertive, violence is not very far
away from you. It is just behind you like a shadow; your assertiveness can
become violence any moment. And with a strong ego it is bound to become
your very way of life.
I am not trying here to polish your egoistic mind. I am trying to demolish, not
polish. I am trying to help camels to become lions! Of course, it is difficult for a
camel to become a lion, but it is not impossible, because I have made many
camels into lions.
And once you become a lion, I have nothing to do. Your very lionhood will make
you a child: simple, innocent, clean, pure, holy. That is growth. You have found
the roots. And those roots are not just yours. You cannot claim, These are my
roots, because your ego is no longer there to claim it. You have found the

universal source of roots. You know now, perfectly well, that it is the same
existence that blossoms in the rose, in the lotus, that moves the stars.
It is the same universe that is your energy too. You are not apart from
existence, you are part of it. And the moment you realize that you are part of
this beautiful universe, a great ecstasy surrounds you twenty-four hours a day.
So there is not only a difference between the so-called growth movement and
what is happening here, they are diametrically opposite. The so-called growth
movement is preventing people from growing. It consists only of camels. We
are not interested in keeping you in the lowest grade of consciousness camels, ugly. Nothing is straight in a camel; you cannot find a single straight
line. Everything is as it should not be.
The lion has a beauty, tremendous beauty. If you have seen any statue, or a
photograph or a drawing of the face of that great lion, Bodhidharma, you will
be surprised looking at his eyes. Those eyes look so ferocious. The man was
not like that, he was one of the most beautiful men who has walked on the
earth. It is symbolic: those are the eyes of a lion.
It is a well-known fact that when the lion kills some animal, his method is
hypnotism. He simply looks into the eyes of the animal, and the animal
becomes hypnotized, stuck, frozen. He cannot escape, he cannot move.
Trembling, he stands before the lion. The lion just has to keep hold of his eyes;
through the eyes he prevents him from escaping. You will see in
Bodhidharmass eyes the same flare, the same flame.
Many people escape from me. Their whole lives they will escape; now this
becomes their growth. They waste their lives just escaping, and they cant see
a simple fact, that they are just cowards. There was an opportunity to go
through a transformation. Of course something has to be dropped, something
has to be burned, something has to be completely forgotten; only then do you
allow transformation to take place.
The masters work is to transform camels into lions. Then things take their own
course: the lion becomes a child without any effort. The lion has found the
roots. The child is going to blossom into his being.
Here, the sannyasins have to drop everything - and dropping everything you
have saved yourself; otherwise you are going to be drowned in all the mud that
you have accumulated. Your parents, your teachers, your priests, your culture,
religion, society - they are all pouring mud on you. And it is a very sticky mud,
you become glued to it.
The decision to become a sannyasin is a very great, momentous decision,
because from that point you will have to leave everything that you thought was
yours, and you will have to move into a new dimension where nothing belongs
to you. On the contrary, you belong to the whole.

Do you see the difference? When you say, This belongs to me, this is the
language of the ego. And when you say, I belong to the universe, this is the
language of egolessness. Then you are in a total let-go. If you belong to the
universe, then it is the universe who is going to take care of you.
I am saying it from my own experience. For thirty-two years I have been the
poorest richest man in the world. And I dont have anything that belongs to me,
nothing belongs to me, but the phenomenon of belonging to the universe has
created harmony out of a great contradiction. As far as belongings are
concerned, I am the poorest man you can find. Even a beggar has something
which belongs to him.
I used to go to the university to teach. An old beggar was always there. The
railway station was just in between my house and the university; the old
beggar was always begging at the railway station, and he knew when I would
be passing. He would come to the road and stand there. One day I was
surprised - a young man was standing there, a young beggar. I said, What
happened to the old man?
He said, I got married to his daughter, and he has given me his place as the
dowry. This is the best place in our profession! The railway station - so many
new people coming and going - the university, so many people coming and
going.there is nothing comparable to it.
So I said, What happened to him?
He said, Now he has moved to another spot. The city had two stations, so he
had moved to another station. And he was a very strong fellow; he must have
thrown out the beggar who was thinking that that station belonged to him.
Nothing belongs to anybody, but even beggars are richer than me. Because I
am not there, how can anything belong to me? And the moment I disappeared,
my consciousness became part of the whole. I lost everything and I gained
everything; hence I say, I am the poorest and the richest man. In these thirtytwo years I have lived like a king, and I have not earned a single cent. The
universe takes care. The universe is benevolent.
You are this universes children. Just become a child, and your eyes will be able
to see the point. And from that moment, growth goes on happening; you go on
and on. And there are no borders to existence. There are no borders to your
growth either.
Osho,
You have just been saying that the words of the master become mere words
after the master is gone. What will happen after you are gone?
Do you think my words are not already dead for you? First, think of that. The
master is there, his words are there, but are those words alive for you? If they
are alive for you, dont be worried. You know the secret.

It is not the words. The master can be there and the words can be dead. So
why cant it happen the other way around? - the master is dead, but the words
are still alive. It all depends on you. It is not a question of the masters life or
death, but how you relate to those words.
Yes, it is simpler when the master is there, only in one way. Because those
words are spoken, they carry some flavor of the masters heart. They carry a
few beats of the masters heart towards you. It is simple in this way. But on the
other hand, when the master is alive, perhaps the words will never become
alive to you, because you start taking the master for granted. Then the words
are dead.
It happened in the second world war that Adolf Hitler declared that he was
going to destroy the Tower of London. Millions of people rushed towards the
tower - they had passed the tower thousands of times in their lives, but had
never taken the trouble to see it. People come from all over the world to see
the Tower of London, but Londoners take it for granted. The moment Hitler said
he was going to destroy it, suddenly those people who had lived their whole
lives in London became aware that the Tower of London could not be taken for
granted anymore. They rushed to see it before this madman, Adolf Hitler,
destroyed it.
The master is alive - but the disciple can take him for granted. You can take me
for granted. Then those words are already dead, because your aliveness is not
available. If you are capable of being alert, alive, responsive, it makes no
difference: the master may be dead, but his words will go on resounding in you.
Even the written words, which are dead, can become alive in you; you just have
to open your heart.
The question is not of the masters life and death, the question basically is of
your response.
So dont be worried about when I am gone. Those who are missing me now will
be missing me then too - no loss. Those who are living my message now, they
will go on living it. And if they go on living it, they cannot help but spread it. I
am not depending on books - all the religions have depended on books - I am
depending on you!
George Gurdjieff used to say - very sadly, of course - that if even two hundred
people are enlightened, they can make the whole world full of light, full of life.
Just two hundred people can transform the whole character of humanity. He
could not manage it, but what he said is true.
I am going to manage it! I will not leave you unless I have made enough people
enlightened so that they can make the whole world afire, alive. I am depending
on you, not on any books. Those books may be helpful in some way to bring
people to you, but my word will be throbbing in your heart; only then can you
help anybody who comes to you.

And it is so simple. I have more than half a million sannyasins in the world, and
more than one million people who are just on the borderline - a little push and
they will be sannyasins. One million more who are lovers but cannot drop their
camelhood..
On this big a scale, a worldwide scale, nobody has worked before. Gautam
Buddha remained confined to the small state of Bihar in India - not even the
whole of India. India has thirty states; Buddha remained confined to one space,
one state. He did great work, but it was impossible to transform the whole
quality of consciousness on the earth. The same is true about Jesus, Moses anybody who has been trying.
For a simple reason I have been able to contact millions of people around the
world: I am not confined to any tradition. I am not burdened by the past, I am
completely weightless. So anybody who is burdened - and who is not
burdened? - becomes interested in me, particularly the young people who are
fed up with all the nonsense that is being taught in the churches and the
synagogues, in the temples, in the mosques.
All these people, these churches, synagogues and mosques, are trying to
bridge the gap. You have heard the phrase generation gap. Between you and
the church, between you and the synagogue, there is not just a generation gap,
there is a gap of hundreds of generations. And in trying to bridge it, they are
proving themselves buffoons, because truth never compromises. It cannot with whom will it compromise? Compromising truth means compromising with
lies.
And all these people have become afraid that young people are no longer
interested; they dont come to the synagogue, they dont come to the church,
so something should be done that can attract young people. Their whole
business is going down.
I have heard about three rabbis.. And by the way, dont let me drift. Whenever I
come across the word rabbi I immediately associate it with rubbish. These
three rabbis were meeting, discussing, talking about great things. One rabbi
said, My synagogue is the most modern, because we allow people to smoke in
the synagogue. There is no harm in it.
The second rabbi said, This is nothing, my synagogue is even more modern:
we even allow people to make love in the synagogue. What is wrong with it?
The third rabbi said, This is nothing. My synagogue is the most avant-garde.
The two rabbis said, Just tell us what you have done.
He said, My synagogue remains closed for Jewish holidays!
They are trying hard, but it is just foolishness. They cannot catch hold of the
new spirit of man.
I dont give you any tradition.

I dont give you any scripture.

I dont give you any discipline.
Those are all non-essentials. I simply concentrate my whole work on making
you more conscious. Consciousness is the key to transform the whole of
humanity.
And yes, Gurdjieff is right: if even two hundred people are aflame, enlightened,
the whole world will become enlightened, because these two hundred torches
can give fire to millions of people. Those people are also carrying torches, but
without any fire. They have everything, just the fire is missing. And when fire
passes from one torch to another, the first torch is not losing anything at all.
The enlightened consciousness is an infinite reservoir: it can give to you and
yet it remains the same. Its quantity does not decrease, because it is not a
question of quantity at all; it is a question of quality. Qualities can be shared
without losing anything.
You can love as many people as you want - that does not mean one day you
will go bankrupt, and you will have to declare, Now I have no love. You cannot
go bankrupt as far as love is concerned. Yes, you can go bankrupt as far as
money is concerned. Money is a quantity; love is a quality. What to say of
enlightened consciousness? It is the highest quality possible; there is nothing
higher than that.
Dont be afraid, worried that if I am gone, then what will happen to my words. I
will not be gone before I have sown the seeds of those words in you. They are
not mine! They are nobodys. They are coming out of existence itself - I am
simply a vehicle. You can become a vehicle. Everybody is capable of becoming
a vehicle. Hence, I am not depending on old strategies; they have all failed. I
am depending on living human beings.
And that is the only way to save humanity without becoming a savior, to save
humanity without creating in them greed for heaven and fear of hell. The only
way to save humanity is to give them some taste of what it means to be
enlightened, a little fragrance, so they can feel the invisible.
And I am absolutely certain, utterly happy, that I have got the right people:
people who are going to be my books, my temples, my synagogues. This is the
reason I call this the first religion, because it depends on living human beings,
not on dead holy scriptures, traditions, beliefs.
I am giving you the taste of my being, and preparing you to do the same, on
your part, to others. It all depends on you, whether my words will remain living
or will die. As far as I am concerned, I do not care.
While I am here, I am pouring myself into you. And I am grateful that you are
allowing it to happen. Who bothers about the future? There is nobody in me
who can care about the future. If existence can find me as a vehicle, I can
remain assured that it can find thousands of people to be its vehicle.

I am simply giving you a little opportunity to become vehicles of the whole.

Osho,
I am British, miserable, unenlightened, and an ex-sannyasin. Is there anything
else left for me to achieve?
No, sir! You have done everything. You have done really more than is possible.
Now the only thing left for you is Krishnamurti Lake.
Osho,
If you depart on the 6th of July of any year, are we all going with you?
No, nobody is going with me. I am not Reverend Jim Jones, I am not even a
Christian. The day I go, your responsibility to live becomes greater - to live me,
to become me. All around the world all the communes have to understand it.
It is very easy to die with me. It is so easy that it is against my sannyasins
dignity. I will not give you such any easy job. You have to live! And when I am
not there, you have to live more consciously, more carefully - because who is
going to spread me all over the world?
Remember, dying is a very easy thing; it happens in a single moment. Living is
the real challenge. My leaving the body will be a challenge for you, that now
that I have left one body, I can be in all of your bodies; that now I am not
speaking from one mouth, I can speak from millions of mouths.
Christians have been cowards, not accepting the responsibility of Jonestown.
They have created a religion which is death-oriented. My religion is lifeoriented, I do not believe in death. In fact, there is no death. Nothing dies, it
only transmigrates into new forms.
The enlightened person does not enter another life circle; he has nothing left to
learn. The world is just a school. If you go on committing mistakes in
unconsciousness, existence will give you millions of chances to come back
again and again until you get awakened and drop your mistakes. That will be
your last embodiment.
I am not going to be reborn in a body, because that would be just idiotic. When
I can live in the bodies of millions of my sannyasins, what is the point of again
getting caged in one body? In fact, the enlightened consciousness simply
spreads into all those who are available and open. It becomes universal.
You are not going with me, but I am coming within you!
Osho,
You speak of reincarnation. I have not experienced it, and I dont want to
believe in anything I dont experience. What to do?
Who is asking you to believe in reincarnation? And why are you concerned to
do something about it? There must be some lingering belief. If you dont
believe in reincarnation, that is the full stop. Why bother about what to do?

Dont believe in reincarnation! Just live this incarnation, and you will come to
experience that reincarnation is not theory, it is a reality. Just live this
incarnation. Do you believe in this incarnation, or not? Reincarnation is either in
the past or in the future, but you are here, alive. Life is throbbing in you.
I know reincarnation is a truth. But I am not saying that you should believe it
because I say so. Never believe anybody elses experience; that is a hindrance.
I can only say to you, just live this incarnation. That will open doors and you will
be able to see backwards, you will be able to see forwards. And then it is up to
you to believe in it or not. How can you disbelieve it then? But before that.. Let
it become an experience.
All the religions are based on belief systems. I am giving you absolute freedom
to enquire, to doubt, because that is the only way to experience on your own.
And unless you experience on your own, there is no value at all in believing.
You love me. Naturally, if I say reincarnation is a truth, out of your love you may
believe in me. Out of your love, how can you conceive that I may be telling
something untruthful to you? You trust me.
And this trust has been exploited for million of years, this love has been
exploited by every religion. I am not going to exploit in any way. About
whatsoever I have known I can open my heart to you, but remember not to fall
in the trap of believing. Love is good, trust is good - but belief is poison. If you
really love me, if you really trust me, then make every effort to experience
what I am saying to you. I want enquirers, people who are capable of doubt,
who are capable of asking questions.
All the religions have repressed peoples questions, their doubts, their
enquiries. They say, Dont bring in all these things. We know. For you, all that
is left is to believe. Thats why you see the whole humanity in such a
miserable, dark, dismal ignorance. The responsibility goes to the religions.
Your love, I respect. For your trust, I am grateful. But these beautiful things
should not be used as a strategy to make you a believer. I want you to be a
knower. If you love me and trust me, then go on enquiring, searching, seeking.
Till you have found, never believe. And I can say it with such certainty, because
I know that if you enquire you will find it; it is there!
The other religions have been telling you to believe, because they are not
certain that it is there. It is because of their own doubt that they are repressing
your doubts. They are afraid that if you start doubting and asking and
enquiring, you may not find any God, any reincarnation, any truth. Then their
whole business - and it is the biggest business in the world - will simply
disappear.
As far as I am concerned, not a single word from me has to be believed, but to
be experienced. And I am giving you the method, how to experience it.

Become more meditative. Reincarnation and God, heaven and hell, do not
matter. What matters is your becoming alert. Meditation awakens you, gives
you eyes - and then whatever you see, you cannot deny.
As far as I am concerned, reincarnation is a truth, because in existence nothing
dies. Even the physicist will say, about the objective world, that nothing dies.
You can destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki - so much power science has given to
chimpanzee politicians - but you cannot destroy a single drop of water.
You cannot destroy. Physicists have become aware of this impossibility.
Whatever you do, only the form changes. You destroy a single dewdrop, and
there is hydrogen and oxygen; they were its components. You cannot destroy
hydrogen or oxygen. If you try, then from molecules you come to atoms. If you
destroy the atom, you come to electrons. We dont know right now if we can
destroy the electron. Either you cannot destroy it - it is the ultimate objective
constituent of reality - or if you can destroy it, then you will find something
else. But nothing can be destroyed in the objective world.
The same is true about the world of consciousness, of life. There is no death.
Death is only a change from one form into another form, and ultimately from
form to formlessness. And that is the goal - because every form is a kind of
imprisonment. Unless you become formless, you cannot get rid of misery,
jealousy, anger, hatred, greed, fear, because these are concerned with your
form.
But when you are formless, there is nothing that can harm you, there is nothing
that you can lose any more, there is nothing that can be added to you. You
have come to the ultimate realization.
Only Gautam Buddha has given the right word for this experience. In English it
is difficult to translate it, because languages develop only after experience. It is
just arbitrarily that I am calling it enlightenment. But it is very arbitrary; it
does not really give you the sense that Buddhas word gives. He calls it
nirvana.
I can explain the word to you. Nirvana means ceasing to be. Strange.ceasing to
be. I could have used that word, but that would make you afraid. Already
people are so much afraid of me - I, who have never done any harm to
anybody.
Not to be is nirvana. That does not mean that you are no more; it simply means
you are no longer an entity, embodied. Yes, in that sense you are no more, but
that is the way - not to be is the way to be all. The dewdrop drops into the
ocean. You can say it has died, but those who know will say it has become
oceanic. Now it is the whole ocean.
Existence is alive at every stage. Nothing is dead. Even a stone - which you
think seems to be completely dead - is not dead. So many living electrons are
running so fast inside it that you cannot see them, but they are all living
beings. Their bodies are so small that nobody has seen them; we dont even

have any scientific instrument to see the electron, it is only guesswork. We can
see the effect; hence we think there must be a cause. The cause has not been
seen, only the effect has been seen. But the electron is as alive as you are.
The whole existence is synonymous with life.
Here nothing dies. Death is an impossibility.
Yes, things change from one form to another form till they become mature
enough that they need not go to school again. Then they move into a formless
life, then they become one with the ocean itself.

Chapter 28 - From the False to the Truth

[]
You say you have been struggling - but remember, your struggle was an ego
fighting. Thats where you failed. Your ego became strong, and remember, even
the strongest ego is prone to compromise. It can fight if that fulfills it; it can
compromise if that fulfills it. Why did you compromise? What can the world do
to you? At the most they can kill you. The rebel from the very beginning
decides, I would prefer to accept death but I will not compromise.
You were not fighting, struggling, to destroy your ego. You were fighting to
strengthen it, to make it more powerful. And then a moment came when you
were powerful enough - now struggle was useless, unnecessary trouble; you
could compromise. Your struggle has been reactionary and political; thats why
you failed.
My struggle was totally different. I was continuously watching that my rebellion
remained pure, that it was not polluted by reaction.
They look alike. When you dont follow an order from your father, your mother,
it can be either reaction or rebellion. They look very similar; they are as far
apart from each other as two things can be, but the appearance is very similar.
And it is very easy to believe that you are a rebel. All reactionaries believe that
they are rebellious spirits. In fact, that too fulfills their ego - that they are not
ordinary people, they are rebellious people.
Reaction means your ego does not want to be dominated by anyone; on the
contrary, you would like to dominate everybody. Once it becomes strong
through struggle, once you are certain that now nobody can destroy your ego,
you start compromising. There is no need to fight, you can manage things now
through compromise - a far easier way. Compromise - the very word is not in
my vocabulary.
Compromise is ugly.
Rebellion is either/or, it never compromises.
How can truth compromise with lies? Either the truth has to prevail, or death.
And when you have a small taste of truth, who cares about death? because
that very small taste of truth makes you immortal. Deep down you know death

is a fallacy: nobody dies, so what is the fear? At the most you can get a new
body instead of the old. So far, so good. Getting rid of the old model and
finding the fresh, new, latest model of the body - it is a beautiful experience.
But to see that death is a fallacy, it never really happens, you never die,
nobody dies, nothing dies.. Yes it can change forms, but life is eternal.
Compromise means you have become a strong ego. Now you do not need to
struggle; now you can manage through compromise to get whatsoever you
want. Once the ego is certain, then compromise is bound to happen.
I have never compromised on anything with anybody, for the simple reason
that I have made it plain to everybody who has come into my life: if you are
true, I am with you; it is not a compromise. I am totally with you, I dont make
any conditions. But if I am true, you have to remember that you will have to be
with me without any conditions.
Neither I compromise with anybody, nor do I allow anybody else to compromise
with me. I have never compromised and I have never allowed anybody to
compromise with me. Compromise is not my game. This is possible only if you
are not trying to strengthen your ego.
For ego, it makes no difference: struggle is okay if it is nourishment for the ego,
compromise is okay if it is nourishment for the ego. The ego wants to remain it can use any means. There is no question of deciding what is right, what is
wrong. For the ego, anything that keeps it strong is right - might is right. So if
you can get something through compromise, why should you bother to fight?
Yes, if you cannot get it through compromise, you are ready to struggle, to
fight, to do anything that you are capable of.
This must have been your situation - just look back. What I am saying, try to
find out.be just a fair judge of your own past, because if you had been
rebellious like me, I cannot conceive that there came a point where you
compromised. In rebellion there never comes a point of compromise. Only in
reaction is there a point of compromise.
Your word compromise makes me absolutely certain what it was - not rebellion
but reaction. You say, In the end they got me. Why? If you were so strong in
the beginning, in the end you would have been even more strong, all the years
of struggle would have sharpened your sword. But if in the end you
compromise, that simply means now you have come to a higher position as far
as ego is concerned. Now there is no fear; you can compromise and still go on
becoming bigger and bigger as an ego.
Nothing came in my way. You are asking, Why did this happen to you and not
to me? We were working from totally different standpoints. I was not
reactionary; hence, even the people with whom I fought had tremendous love
for me, they never became my enemies. I fought with my father, I fought with
my mother, but they both became sannyasins. It is a rare phenomenon. They
knew that I was not fighting with them for my ego. Just the contrary: I was
fighting so that they should not be able to create an ego in me.

I received their blessings always. It looks very strange that the people with
whom I was fighting were always blessing me. What was the cause of it? They
could see clearly that I was absolutely simple and humble. I was not trying my
ego against their ego. My teachers loved me. My professors wept when I left
the university. The same professors who were continually bothered by me, they
wept.
I asked them, What is the matter? You should be happy that you are getting
rid of a great nuisance.
They said, We will miss you.
One of my professors, S.S. Roy, said to me, I dont expect to get another
student of your type. For two years you have argued against me, but I could
see that your argument was not an ego trip. You were sincerely searching for
the truth. Students will come, he said. I had students in the past; I will have
students in the future. But I do not see that I will have a student like you,
whose effort is not just to pass examinations, get degrees - in fact who is not
interested in the examinations, not interested in the degrees, not interested in
the gold medals - but is sincerely interested in knowing the truth about
everything.
Nobody with whom I have struggled has ended in enmity with me. They all
loved me, they still love me.
Professor S.S. Roy, with whom I fought the most, was one of the most
intelligent people I have come across, and it was a joy to argue with him. Our
arguments were never finished in the class, so I had to follow him to his home.
By and by, his wife also became involved. And S.S.Roy said to his wife, This is
strange, you always seem to be on his side. He is enough! If you want to
support somebody, support me! He will kill the arguments of both of us.
His wife said, But hes so true and so sincere - not interested in defeating you.
You are interested in defeating him. I have been watching the scene
continuously. He is trying to figure out what is the truth, and you are trying
somehow to prove that your argument is right. I am going to be on his side.
And if you have guts. you should also be on his side.
S.S.Roy told me later on, This is the first time my wife has been so strong. It
must be your doing. She has adored me always, she has believed me to be one
of the most intelligent people in the world. You destroyed everything. Now she
thinks you are far better.
I asked S.S.Roy, What do you think?
He said, My wife is right.
He is still alive. Anybody who is my sannyasin is received in his home in
Allahabad with the same respect that he would give to me, with the same love.
One of my sannyasins who lived in Allahabad said, It is strange. He is a retired
head of the department of philosophy of Allahabad University - in India,

Allahabad University has the best philosophical department - and he is a

dignified old man. But whenever I go to him, he simply asks, Have you
received any new book, new magazine? Just say something to me, what is he
doing now?
He is one of those rare people who can respect somebody who is not in any
way equal to him. I was just a student; he was the head of the department and
the dean of the faculty of arts - one of the most dignified persons in the
university. He had every chance to become the vice-chancellor, he just did not
want to become the vice-chancellor - for the simple reason, he said, It is
enough. I have always wanted to retire and relax and do something that one of
my students has been continuously hammering on my head: meditate. Now I
am old and I dont want to waste time in being the vice-chancellor.
Retired, he is doing my meditations. And once in a while somebody will come
and tell me, He has a picture of you in his room where he meditates. His wife
thinks now he has gone crazy - doing dynamic meditation in his old age.
Revolution - reaction - and rebellion have a totally different flavor. Reaction is
ugly. You simply react because you dont want anybody to have the upper
hand. But one day when you find you can have the upper hand without
struggle, you start compromising; thats why those people could get you in the
end. It was your basic misunderstanding. Your reaction, your ego, helped you to
fall into the trap.
I have never reacted to anything, I have rebelled against everything, and on
the path of rebellion there is no compromise. Compromise is something Jewish!
It is something that happens in the marketplace, in politics. It does not happen
in the search for truth.
But nothing is lost. Get out of your compromises. Forget the past. Even if there
is only one single moment available, one can drop the whole past and taste the
beauty of rebellion. Just a single moment is needed, a moment of
understanding, insight.
I am not just answering your questions, I am trying to help you to get an
insight. And then your insight will show you the path. In India, we call that
insight the third eye. I am trying somehow.please open your third eye, so you
can see clearly and straight.
It is a miracle to see something clearly. And if you find it is wrong there is no
need to make any effort to drop it. Just in your seeing that it is wrong, your grip
on it is finished, the thing drops out of your life of its own accord. It is
miraculous. It is not that you become alert, aware, conscious, and then you
have to drop this, stop that, do this, not do that - no. The moment you have the
insight, that which is wrong falls away from you, that which is right you simply
follow - no effort.
Insight is a miracle, it is magical.

So my answers are not just answers. My answers are really an effort to

approach your third eye, and somehow make you aware. The moment you see
it was a reaction, not rebellion, you are finished with it. The moment you see
you compromised because you found now it is helpful to the ego, your
compromise is finished. You come out of this imprisonment of your ego fresh,
young, to start your life from the very first moment - as if you are born again.

Chapter 6 - Theologica Mystica

The first question:
Osho,
What is the difference between being an individual and just being stubborn?
The difference is immense - it is absolutely unbridgeable. Two things will have
to be understood: one is personality and the second is individuality.
We ordinarily dont have individuality at all. Thats what Gurdjieff means when
he says it is very rare to find a person who has a soul. He is the first
enlightened master who has said it so clearly. Otherwise, Mahavira, Buddha,
Krishna, Christ, they have all given the impression at least that everybody has
a soul. Everybody has a self but not a soul, and the self is a barrier not a bridge
to the soul.
Personality is your circumference, not your center. The word personality comes
from a Latin root persona. In Greek theater the actors used to wear masks;
they would speak through the mask. Sona means sound, persona means sound
coming through the mask. You cannot see the real person, you cannot see his
original face. You only see a facade, something pseudo, something made-up,
invented. The word personality comes from persona.
When the child is born we start giving him personality - by educating him, by
giving him a certain religious attitude, by imparting some philosophy, some
political ideology. Slowly slowly, brick by brick, we create a structure around
him in which he becomes imprisoned, so much so that he starts feeling
identified with the edifice created by others around him. He does not feel
imprisoned.
To feel imprisoned is a great insight, because from that moment one starts
making efforts to be free. Whatsoever you are, you are a creation of others. You
have been pushed and pulled from all directions, you have been given a certain
shape. It is not your originality; it is something imposed, painted. But you have
known it from your very beginning. You have known it for so long that you dont
remember that you can be anybody else. And you are somebody else - you are
not this personality.
This confusion prevails all over the world. Just a few days ago, Sarjano wrote to
me saying, Osho, it seems I have a strong individuality and I cannot surrender
to the commune. I cannot possibly become part of the commune. I want to
cook in my own way. Now he thinks he has a strong individuality; in fact, he
has no individuality at all - not yet.

When you come to me you come only with a personality, a persona. And my
work is an absolutely thankless job because I have to destroy your personality;
that is the only way to help you to discover your individuality. The individuality
is your original face: it is the way God wanted you to be, it is the way you were
made by him. Your individuality has the signature of God on it, but your
personality is a social phenomenon. Hence there are Christian personalities,
Hindu personalities, Mohammedan personalities, and so on and so forth.
Individuality is simply individuality. It is neither Christian nor Hindu nor
Mohammedan, it is neither Catholic nor communist, it is neither Eastern nor
Western. In fact, individuality is neither male nor female. It is the personality
that has all these divisions, categories, aspects.
Sarjano wrote, I feel I have a strong individuality. Individuality is never strong;
it is very fragile, as fragile as a roseflower. Of course, even in its fragility the
roseflower has a certain strength. It can dance in the wind, in the rain, unafraid.
It is fearless, but it is not strong in the sense steel is strong.
Buddha is not as strong as Joseph Stalin is. The very name Stalin comes from
steel. It was not his real name; it was given because he was a man of steel.
Buddha is not a man of steel; he is made out of very fragile elements: the
rainbow, the lotus, the fragrance of flowers. He is very feminine - feminine not
in the sense of being female but in the sense of being very vulnerable,
receptive, very available to existence.
The strong person is one who is stubborn.
Yoga Prem is asking: What is the difference between being an individual and
just being stubborn?
Personality is always stubborn, individuality never. Personality has to be
stubborn, because it is false. If it is not stubborn it cannot exist at all. It has to
be maintained continuously - you have to fight for it. The personality consists
of nothing but ego, self, greed, anger, violence, because deep down you are
aware of the trembling, of the fear of death. Deep down you know your
inferiority. The personality brags about its superiority.
Remember always, whatsoever the personality brags about is exactly the
opposite of your reality. If you are feeling unintelligent inside, your personality
will project intelligence. If you are feeling unloving inside, your personality will
create a very sweet, smiling, loving quality. It is not just to deceive others; it is
really, basically, to deceive oneself. You want to forget your unlovingness. If
you are feeling empty inside, your personality will start gathering a thousand
and one possessions.
Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Adolf Hitler - these people have lived only as
personalities, very stubborn. They have to be stubborn because they know that
if they are not stubborn, if they are not continuously fighting, the personality
will disappear - because it is a false phenomenon. It is not a reality; it is

manufactured by the mind, hence the mind has to go on finding mote props for
it

But individuality is egoless, selfless, a state of no-mind. It has no ambitions, no

desires, because it is immensely fulfilled just being itself. It need not fight for its
existence; it is existential. It cannot be destroyed; it is indestructible, but not
strong - very fragile, very feminine, never aggressive, always receptive. It
never brags about itself - there is no need because there is no inferiority
complex in it. Not that it feels superior! Those are two aspects of the same
coin: the inferior and the superior.
The real person, the authentic being, the individual, is neither inferior nor
superior; he is simply himself. He never compares himself with others - the idea
of comparison does not arise at all; he knows everybody has unique
individualities.
The word individuality is also significant; it means indivisible, that which cannot
be divided. Individuality is organic. Personality is a patchwork - something from
here, something from there. You go on collecting, and hence you are always
afraid it can be taken back.
Somebody says to you, You are so beautiful! Now you will be dependent on
the person, because he can withdraw his statement any moment. Not only can
he withdraw it, he can say, I have never seen such an ugly person as you!
Then what? You have to cling to his statement, and to cling to his statement
you have to compromise. You have to go on persuading him, buttressing him,
so that he goes on continuing saying that you are beautiful.
Dale Carnegie in one of his famous books suggests to couples, particularly
husbands, that they should go on saying to their wives, whenever there is an
opportunity, I love you. You are the most precious thing in my life. I cannot
believe there can be any person more beautiful than you. Whether you feel it
or not, that is not the point, he says; the point is repetition.
And the wife has to do the same: You are the greatest man in the world. There
is nobody who even comes close to you. You are divine. You are almost a god to
me. I will worship you forever and forever, in this life and afterwards too.
Whether you feel it or not, that is not the point. You may feel, I have never
seen such a man, so stupid, so ugly, so cunning, so mean! Go on feeling that,
but never say it because people live on words - personalities live on words.
I asked a woman, I knew her husband - he was always in the library. I asked the
woman, Is your husband a bookworm?
She said, No, he is just an ordinary worm!
But these things have not to be told to the husband!

Dale Carnegie has become the prophet of the American way of life. In America,
after the Bible, Dale Carnegies book has been the biggest seller: How to Win
Friends and Influence People. And this is the secret - simple: just go on feeding
their egos and you can win people; they will be your friends. You can persuade
them even to die for you, because all that they need is support for their
personalities, and it has to come from all sources. The priest has to support
them, the educational system has to support them, the social system has to
support them. And if you cannot find ordinary ways - for example, not
everybody can hope to become the prime minister or the president - then you
start creating your own small clubs: the Rotary Club, the Lions Club. Now, go to
a Lions Club and see how many sheep are gathered there pretending to be
lions!
Once I went to a Lions Club meeting in Pune - fifteen years must have passed
since then - and thinking that they were lions, I shouted and roared. I was
staying at Sohans house. When we came back she said, You were the only
lion there, and they were all sheep! - because they became so afraid. They
were so shocked, because I started destroying all their assumptions.
Now there are Rotary Clubs all over the world. The word rotary is because
people become president by rotation. So everybody has a chance; you just
have to wait for your chance. Sooner or later.first you will become the vicepresident, then the president and then the governor, and so on and so forth.
They have a very cunning strategy to fulfill everybodys ego. And then there
are committees and chairmen of the committees. No work is done at all!
I have been to Rotary Clubs all over the country, and they have a placard on
the presidents table: We serve. I have never seen them serving anybody;
they must be serving each other. And they do serve each other - they serve
each others personality. It is a tacit assumption that I will help your ego, you
help my ego.
Then there are churches and religions: but have you seen the phenomenon? No
religion has remained undivided. Why? What happened?
The day Buddha died, Buddhists were divided into thirty-six sects. Why? These
people were one when Buddha was alive, and just after Buddha died they
started quarreling, as if they were just waiting for Buddhas death. There must
have been many egoists around who wanted to be the chief, but how to be the
chief when the Buddha is alive? So they must have waited for their opportunity.
The moment Buddha died, immediately the body was burning on the funeral
pyre, and they started playing their political game: Who is going to be the
successor? Now there were thirty-six pretenders so Buddhism was divided into
thirty-six sects.
Christianity could not remain one. Since Christ there have been many sects,
many sub-sects, and the greatest division was created by Luther. Luther was
one of the most egoistic persons ever. He had nothing to do with Christ, he had
nothing to do with Christianity, but he was in a constant fight with the Pope.

The Pope was just as egoistic, and Luther refused to submit to the Popes ego.
He created the Protestant section of Christians.

The same has happened to Jainism, to Islam, and it has happened more to
Hinduism. Hindus have a very quarreling spirit, very quarrelsome. I dont think
any country has such a quarreling spirit. The reason is that Hindus dont fight
physically so their whole fight becomes intellectual; it has to find some way.
Now Hindus have so many sects, sub-sects and sub-sub-sects that it is almost
too difficult to know how many Hindu religions there are. There are so many,
almost unbelievable. And this is not only so about religion; it is so about
everything that Hindus have done.
India has never been a nation because the Hindu mind is continuously
quarreling and fighting. In Buddhas time there were two thousand Indias, not
one India, because two thousand kingdoms existed - just small kingdoms, with
each kingdom trying to be the suprememost. And the disease has gone so
deep into the Hindu blood that in every sphere, even in politics, it is the same.
Now there are so many Congress Parties.not only are there so many Congress
Parties - that can be understood - there are so many Communist Parties in India
that you will not believe it. Nowhere in the world are there so many Communist
Parties. Even the Communist Party - which is an absolutely non-Indian
phenomenon, which is anti-religious, atheistic - even the Communist Party is
not one in India. There are many Communist Parties quarreling, continuously
quarreling. The old Hindu spirit cannot leave you so easily. You may become a
communist, but basically you will go on doing your old tricks.
But the whole thing happens because of personality: My ego has to be
supreme.
In India there are so many jagatgurus. Jagatguru means World Teacher. Now
without asking the world, how can you be the World Teacher? And there are so
many World Teachers! There can be only one World Teacher; one is enough
because there is only one world. I came across so many World Teachers while
traveling that I was surprised: in one world so many World Teachers?
In one village they brought a man and they said, He is a world teacher,
jagatguru.
I asked him, How many followers have you got?
He looked a little embarrassed. The man who had brought him said, His
philosophy is so abstruse, so difficult to understand, that I am his only disciple.
I said, Dont feel embarrassed. You do one thing. Jagatguru means the World
Teacher; jagat means the world. guru means the teacher. So you change your
name: simply make your name Jagat, the world. And he is your guru Jagatguru, the World Teacher - so the problem is solved! Then you need not feel
embarrassed - he is the guru of Jagat!

Personality is always dependent on others. Because it is dependent on others it

is a prisoner, and because it is dependent on others it has to be stubborn.
Otherwise others will make you an absolute slave; they will reduce you to the
status of a thing. You have to be stubborn, you have to fight, you have to
struggle for your survival.

Individuality is never stubborn. Individuality is very liquid, very flowing - just

like a river it goes on moving towards the ocean. It has no fixed route, it has no
a priori ideas as to what direction to go in, it has no plans. It adjusts to
situations; it is very adjusting.
But the personality is not so adjusting; it has to be on guard. It is not liquid, it is
very solid. It is more like ice than like water. But the personality is a false
phenomenon. It cannot give you any joy, it cannot make your life a festival, it
cannot give you the sense of the divine. It is a human phenomenon, a human
structure. It will keep you empty, meaningless; it will keep you miserable.
Individuality makes your life significant. It makes your life a beautiful song, but
the song is no more yours, the song is Gods. Individuality is divine. You are
simply a hollow bamboo: you become a flute on the lips of God or on the lips of
the whole existence. Then whatsoever the whole wants, you allow it; you
remain in a let-go.
Sarjano is absolutely wrong if he thinks that he has individuality; he just has a
very strong ego. And it happens when people come to me, if I see that they
have strong egos, the first thing that I do is to start puffing up their egos,
pumping up their egos, making them bigger and bigger like big balloons so that
they can see, others can see. And thats what I was doing with Sarjano.
He became very happy. He misunderstood the whole thing - he misunderstood
the device. He became very happy; he thought, This is the place for me! He
started thinking he had found the right man. He started telling people, Jesus is
nothing compared to Osho. Jesus is just a pygmy! Because I was pumping up
his ego and making his balloon bigger and bigger, of course he started paying
me in the same coin. He thought, These things are going to help.
Just old, stupid mind games. But I go on making the balloon bigger and bigger,
up to a certain point - when I see now the balloon is so thin that it needs just a
pinprick and it will burst.
Whenever Devaraj comes to take my blood he always says, Now comes the
prick, and I start laughing inside. I say, Thats my whole work! He is telling
me, Now comes the prick, and thats what I go on doing, day in, day out.
So when I told Sarjano, Now comes the prick, he started packing his luggage.
Now he is trying to go to Italy. Go anywhere, the prick is bound to come. My
prick is long enough! It can reach to Italy - you cannot escape!
The second question:

Osho,
Any message for Kutch?
Navin Mehta,
[]

Chapter 10 - The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol. 12

[]
There is a great difference. They are poles apart. Surrendering to a master is
something of the heart, it is a love affair, it is not an intellectual conviction. It is
not that you are convinced intellectually that what the master is saying is right.
It is not philosophical. What the master is saying may be absurd - in fact, it is
bound to be absurd, because he speaks from a totally different kind of vision,
from the peak where opposites meet, where the ultimate synthesis has
happened, where life and death are one, where man and woman are one,
where negative and positive are one. Hence whatsoever he says is bound to be
paradoxical.
Surrendering to a master means you have felt his grace. It is not a question of
his knowledgeability. He may not be knowledgeable at all. Jesus was not
knowledgeable. Mohammed was not even able to read or write, he was not
even able to sign his own name. But thousands fell in deep love with the man.
He had no logical acumen. If you go into the Koran you will not find great
philosophy - simple statements which can be refuted very easily. But the man
must have had something totally different. So many people gravitated towards
him. Now you cannot see gravitation; it is an energy, it is a force, invisible. It is
a communion, heart-to-heart. The masters presence overwhelms you, then
surrender happens.
It is not something that you do. You cannot do surrender, remember. Surrender
done is not surrender at all, because you can withdraw. Any day you can say, I
take back my surrender. Surrender is something that happens. Sometimes it
happens even in spite of you, you never wanted it to happen, you resisted it.
People resist to the very end; when it becomes impossible to resist, only then
do they surrender, because surrender goes against the ego, it shatters your
ego. The very idea of surrendering to someone is against your whole
upbringing, your whole education, your whole psychology. You are brought up
with the idea of having a strong ego.
Surrender means you are dropping your whole upbringing, you are pushing
aside all your knowledge, you are bypassing your mind, you are allowing the
heart to say Yes! - a total yes. It is a happening, not a doing. It is just like
falling in love.
What is the difference between falling in love and marriage, an arranged
marriage? Exactly that is the difference between surrendering to a master and

following a master. Surrendering to a master is like falling in love. The force is

irresistible. You are behaving like a madman. The master is mad, now you are
becoming mad. The master is like a flame, and you are moving towards the
flame like a moth, to your own death.
Following a master is a safe phenomenon, like an arranged marriage. You are
moving on safe ground. You think about everything - about the family of the
woman or the man, about their economic status, about their social prestige,
about everything except love. It is a calculated phenomenon. There is no risk in
it. And not to take any chances you go to the astrologer so that he can even
predict the future, how things will be going in the future: Will I be sailing
safely?
You make everything safe before you take the plunge. It is not a jump, it is a
calculated step. And thats what following a master is. It is intellectual, it is of
the mind, it is of the head. You are trying to understand intellectually, logically
what he is saying. Does it appeal to you?
[]

Chapter 4 - The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol. 1

{]
A braggart is telling his friend about his three cars, etcetera, etcetera. When he
also mentions that he has two kept mistresses in New York, but that he has
made his ravishingly beautiful and terribly passionate private secretary
pregnant, and must therefore take his gorgeous blond stenographer with him
on his business trip to Rio de Janeiro to see the carnival, the listener suddenly
begins to pant, grabs at his own necktie, and has a heart attack.
The braggart interrupts his tale, gets water, pats the victim on the back,
etcetera, etcetera, and he asks solicitously what the matter is. Can I help it?
the man gasps. I am allergic to bullshit.
It is better to keep such bullshit hidden deep down inside yourself, because
people are allergic. But in a way it is good that you exposed your mind.
If you think you are special then you are bound to create misery for yourself. If
you think that you are higher than others, holier than others, wiser than others,
then you will attain to a very strong ego. And the ego is poison, pure poison.
And the more egoistic you become, the more it hurts, because it is a wound.
The more egoistic you become, the more you become unbridged from life. You
fall separate from life; you are no longer in the flow of existence, you have
become a rock in the river. You have become ice-cold, you have lost all warmth,
all love. A special person cannot love, because where are you going to find
another special person?

I have heard about a man who remained unmarried his whole life, and when he
was dying, ninety years old, somebody asked him, You have remained
unmarried your whole life, but you have never said what the reason was. Now
you are dying, at least quench our curiosity. If there is any secret, now you can
tell it, because you are dying; you will be gone. Even if the secret is known, it
cant harm you.
The man said, Yes, there is a secret. It is not that I am against marriage, but I
was searching for a perfect woman. I searched and searched, and my whole life
slipped by.
The inquirer asked, But upon this big earth, so many millions of people, half of
them women, couldnt you find one perfect woman?
A tear rolled down from the eye of the dying man. He said, Yes, I did find one.
The inquirer was absolutely shocked. He said, Then what happened? Why
didnt you get married?
And the old man said, But the woman was searching for a perfect husband.
Your life will become very difficult if you live with such ideas. And yes, the ego
is so tricky, so cunning, it can give you this new project: You are so special,
become just ordinary. But in your ordinariness you will know you are the most
extraordinarily ordinary man. Nobody is more ordinary than you! It will be the
same game, camouflaged.
Thats what so-called humble people go on doing. They say, I am the most
humble man. I am just the dust on your feet. But they dont mean it. Dont
say, Yes, I know you are, otherwise they will never be able to forgive you.
They are waiting for you to say, You are the most humble man I have ever
seen, you are the most pious man I have ever seen. Then they will be
satisfied, contented. It is ego hiding behind humbleness. You cannot drop the
ego in this way.
You ask, I feel that I am a very, very special person. I am so special that I want
just to be ordinary. Please can you say something about this? No one is
special, or, everyone is special. No one is ordinary, or everyone is ordinary.
Whatsoever you think about yourself, please think the same about everyone
else, and the problem will be solved. You can choose. If you want the word
special, you can think you are special - but then everybody is special. Not only
people, but trees, birds, animals, rocks - the whole existence is special,
because you come out of this existence and you will dissolve into this
existence. But if you love the word ordinary - which is a beautiful word, more
relaxed - then know that everybody is ordinary. Then the whole existence is
ordinary.
One thing to be remembered: whatsoever you think about yourself, think the
same for everybody else and the ego will disappear. The ego is the illusion that
is created by thinking about yourself in one way and thinking about others in

another. It is double thinking. If you drop the double thinking, ego dies of its
own accord.
The last question:
Osho,
When I came here I felt God to be very near - any moment and I would be with
him - but as time passes it seems impossible. He is not around; it is difficult to
see him.
Why is it so? Please say something about this.
You must be carrying a certain image of God in your mind; hence you are
missing. And unless you drop that image you are going to miss. God has no
obligation to fulfill your idea of him. You must be carrying a certain idea that
God looks like this, behaves like this. Thats why it is becoming impossible:
you are making it impossible.
God can be known only by those who are capable of dropping all ideas about
God. Any idea that you have accumulated in yourself, in your ignorance is a
hindrance. Drop all ideas about God and you will be surprised, you will be
simply shocked, you will not be able to believe your eyes - because only God is.
Then you will never ask, Where is God? You will ask, Is there any place
where God is not?
[]

Chapter 9 - Unio Mystica, Vol. 2

[]
When Thomas Mann was visiting America for the first time, one of Hollywoods
literati abased himself before the novelist, emphasizing that he was nothing, a
mere hack, his work not to be mentioned in the same breath with that of the
master. Mann listened with infinite patience and courtesy, but when the party
was over, he turned to his host, an old friend, and said, That man has no right
to make himself so small. He is not that big.
Humbleness also makes people big. Humbleness is the most subtle way of the
ego, the subtlest - very refined, cultured, sophisticated. The egoist is a little
gross, the humble person is not gross, but the game is the same. See the
game, watch the game. And dont go to watch with already accepted ideas.
This is the problem, this is why people cannot go beyond the ego: they have
already decided what it is.
Western psychologists say it is a very good thing; it has to be strengthened, the
ego has to be made stronger. You have to be aggressive, only then can you act
and function in the world. And you need a strong ego to survive, because life is
a constant conflict; if you have a weak ego, anybody will crush you.
So the whole Western culture depends on strengthening the ego, making it
more and more strong, and more and more crystallized. And the East has taken
the polar opposite: become humble, just think of yourself as if you are nothing.

But that as if is just a make-believe - debase, abase yourself, be humble, let

the ego disappear completely.
These two standpoints seem to be very, very opposite, diametrically opposite.
But deep down they are not really opposite but complementary. The Eastern
man has been creating a very subtle kind of ego - a religious kind, but it is the
same game. The West is a little gross, and the reason is that the West is a new
phenomenon.
The real Western mind is just the by-product of three hundred years of scientific
upbringing. The East has lived for at least ten thousand years; it has learned
better ways of egoing. It has become very, very clever and cunning.
The West is a little childish; the East is old and has all the cunningness of an old
man. But whether you strengthen the ego or you weaken the ego, one thing is
absolutely certain, that you both have accepted its existence, its reality.
And that is where the defect lies: it is unreal. You need not strengthen it, you
need not weaken it. All that is needed is a penetrating insight into its
functioning, and that very insight dissolves it. It remains then, but just like a
shadow - a linguistic device, arbitrary, with no existential truth in it. Then you
can use it but you are not used by it.
.and when, after all that effort,
you finally open your eyes,
you will see your self, through inherent defects,
wandering around itself like the ox in a mill;
but, if, once freed from your self,
you finally get down to work,
this door will open to you within two minutes.
Yes, it opens within two minutes. Why two minutes? Why not one minute? It is a
metaphor, a Sufi metaphor: one minute for you, one minute for God. One
minute for you to open up, and one minute for him to enter in you. In fact those
two minutes are not two, but two sides of the same coin. Here you disappear,
there he immediately appears.
God will not be yours,
as long as you cling to soul and life:
you cannot have both this and that.
Bruise your self for months and years on end;
leave it for dead, and when you have done with it,
you will have reached eternal life.
God will not be yours, as long as you cling to the soul and life. As long as you
cling to the idea of separation, that I am separate from existence, God will
not be yours, because God is in the union with existence, unio mystica. God is
in fact the union. God is not a person but the union.

When the river meets the ocean, that meeting-point is God. When two lovers
dissolve into each other, that dissolution is God. When the painter is lost in his
painting, that moment is God. God is a space - a space where dualities
dissolve, disappear, and oneness arises.
A famous Taoist story says a great emperor asked the greatest painter of his
land to paint the wall of his bedroom with Himalayan mountain peaks. Paint
the Himalayas - he was a lover of the Himalayas. The painter worked for two
or three years, and when the painting was completed he asked the king to
come and see.
The curtain that was covering the wall was removed. The emperor was simply
transported to another world. He had been to the Himalayas many times, he
was a lover of the mountains, but the painting even surpassed the real. He
looked and looked and looked. He was so mystified that he could not utter a
single word for many minutes.
Then he suddenly said, But I have been to these parts. I have never seen this
path that goes round and round the mountains. Where did you get the idea of
this path?
And the story says the painter said, I dont know, really. Let me go and see.
And he went onto the path and disappeared behind the mountain - in the
painting! - and never came back again.
A strange story, unbelievable. How can you go into the painting and never
come back again? But it is of tremendous significance. It is not a historical
event but a mythological, poetic event, which says much.
It says that the painter can disappear into his painting - only then is he a
painter. The poet can disappear in his poetry - only then is he a poet. If he
cannot disappear in his poetry then his poetry is just rubbish. If he cannot
disappear in his painting, then he may know all the techniques of painting but
he is not a great artist. He may be a technician, he may know about colors and
canvasses and he may know how to paint, but he has no real genius in him. His
painting is something separate from him; he has not yet found the union with
his painting.
And whenever the union is found, godliness is found.
Thats why I say there are as many doors to God as there are people. All that is
needed is, whatsoever you are doing, get lost in it; be so totally one with it that
nothing is left behind. In that very moment, Godliness is. God is unio mystica,
the mystic union.
God will not be yours,
as long as you cling to soul and life.
If you are clinging to your separate existence, if you are clinging to your
separate life, God will not be yours - because God is the union.

.you cannot have both this and that.

You cannot have both separation and union; that is impossible. That is not
possible because of the very nature of things. Either you can be united or you
can remain separate.
Bruise your self for months and years on end;
leave it for dead, and when you have done with it,
you will have reached eternal life.
And the paradox is, when you are no longer interested in your separate life, in
your separate being, you will have infinite being and you will have eternal life.
You may disappear as a small flame of a candle, but you will become the sun of
all the suns. You may disappear as a drop, but you will become the ocean.
Remain unmoved by hope and fear.
To non-existence mosque and church are one;
to a shadow, heaven and hell likewise.
For someone whose guide is love.
belief and disbelief are equally a veil,
concealing the doorway of the friend;
his very being is a veil
which hides Gods essence.
[]

Chapter 9 - The Perfect Master, Vol. 1

[]
The man said, Sublime Highness, one of your disciples is objecting to the
behavior of the people in this quarter.
This is the sign of a stupid disciple. And when I say stupid I dont mean that
he is not knowledgeable - stupid people can gather much knowledge.
Knowledgeable people are always stupid people. To become knowledgeable is
their way of hiding their stupidity. They hang certificates and degrees around
themselves, and it feels good! Except for a stupid person, who carts about the
degrees and the scholarship and the certificates and the examinations that you
have passed? It is always the stupid person who becomes interested in these
things. These are his ways to prove to the world that I am not stupid. But in
the very effort of proving that I am not stupid, you are simply declaring that
you are stupid.
A man who is wise need not prove that he is wise - his wisdom is enough, a
proof unto itself. It is self-evident. It needs no certificates, it needs no degrees,
it needs no scholarship.
Jan-Fishan went into the crowd and said to his follower, Explain yourself.

This is a hot situation. People are there and the disciple was condemning them
and, of course, he was clover, logical. He could prove by scriptures; he could
quote scriptures and prove to them that they are wrong, that their behavior is
wrong. And he was doing that. Suddenly the master appears in the crowd and
says, Explain yourself! What are you doing?
The disciple said, These people have been hostile.
Now, if you are wise, it is impossible to say this. Unless you have some ego in
you, you cannot feel anybody as hostile. If you have a wound on the foot and
somebody touches it, it hurts - but not because of his touch. It is because of the
wound. If he touches somewhere else, it will not hurt. It hurts because of the
wound, not because of his touch. Whenever you feel somebody is hostile to
you, remember well: you must be having a very strong ego - he has touched
the wound, he has put his finger on your ego. Hence he looks hostile;
otherwise, there is no question! He is just himself. How can he be hostile to
you? And even if he is hostile, that is his problem; that should not become your
problem.
Buddha is insulted by people many times, stones are thrown at him, people
abuse him.he smiles. Once he said to a group of people who had come with
very great hostility, I feel sorry for you. You are almost in a rage! You must be
burning within. I feel sorry for you. What can I do for you to help? How can I
calm you down? You are in a spiritual fever!
He does not say anything about himself. He is not saying, You are being hostile
to me. He is not saying, Why are you hostile to me? He is not saying
anything in reference to himself; that is not the point at all.
Somebody asked, But we are being hostile to you, and you are feeling sorry
for us? We are enemies! We want to uproot you and your doctrine completely.
And you are feeling sorry for us?
And Buddha said, Yes. You may be hostile from your side. For example,
Buddha said, you can throw a burning torch into the river - it remains fire till it
touches the river. The moment it touches the river, it cools down. I am cool. You
throw fire at me - it remains fire from your side, but the moment it touches me
it becomes cool. It disappears! I am not hurt, you cannot hurt me - because the
one who used to be hurt is no more. That ego is gone.
I have searched for it, and it has not been found. There is nobody inside me how can you be hostile to me? I am not - how can you be hostile to me?
The disciple said, These people have been hostile.
The people exclaimed, That is not true: we were, on the contrary, doing him
honor for your sake.
What did they say? asked the master.

They said, Hail, Great Scholar! I was telling them that it is the ignorance of
the scholars which is often responsible for the confusion and desperation of
man.
And they told me, Hail, Great Scholar! And I was condemning scholars - as
Sufis have always been doing - I was condemning scholars and scholarship.
And these foolish people, they say, Hail, Great Scholar! This is an insult. This
is being hostile towards me.
I am saying that scholars are the persons who have created the misery in the
world, and they called me a scholar! These people have to be put right.
Jan-Fishan.said, It is the conceit of scholars which is responsible, quite often,
for the misery of man. And it is your conceit in claiming to be other than a
scholar which is the cause of this tumult. Not to be a scholar, which involves
detachment from the petty, is an accomplishment. Scholars are seldom wise,
being only unaltered people stuffed with thoughts and books.
The master is saying, These people are poor people, innocent people. They
dont understand great, subtle distinctions between words. They have not been
hostile to you! According to themselves, they were praising you. They were
saying that you are no ordinary person - you are a great scholar. From their
side, nothing is wrong. And from where have you got this conceit that you have
gone beyond scholarship? This is an even greater ego, to think that you have
gone beyond scholarship.
It is very difficult to go beyond knowledge, beyond the claim of knowledge. It is
the last step in the journey. The moment a person goes beyond knowledge, he
becomes enlightened. Because the moment knowledge is dropped, he enters
back into the Garden of Eden.
Knowledge is not a bridge: it is a barrier. The moment the barrier disappears,
you suddenly find that you have always been home. You had never left it. You
had not gone anywhere. But remember: to come to that point is a very great
accomplishment. Why?
Ordinarily, man, is ignorant - ignorance hurts. I am ignorant, I am inferior.
One of my sannyasins, a beautiful sannyasin, is Shanti. She goes on writing
questions again and again that Osho, I feel very inferior, because I can do only
cleaning work or I can prepare food. I cannot be a great group leader. I cannot
do something which is important. I cannot be a great editor. I am very inferior.
Now, this poor Shanti is unnecessarily suffering. My whole work consists of
cleaning! What else am I doing here? And preparing food - what else am I
doing, Shanti? You are just next to me!
But the mind goes on carrying these ideas: I am just cleaning or cooking food,
and I am not a great group leader, therapist, editor, or somebody important in
the office. I am nobody. She goes on asking, What should I do?

This is the question every child asks in the beginning: What should I do to
become important, to be somebody special in the world? And there are only a
few ways: either have money, more than others have, and you will be special;
or have more power, political power, than others have, and you will be special;
or have more knowledge than others have and you will be special. Or, if you
cannot do anything else then at least renounce everything and become a great
mahatma. But do something! Be special!
The inferiority complex inside goes on pulling and manipulating you to do
something so that you can stand out, you can be outstanding, so people know
who you are.
You can have money. It is not difficult - many stupid people have money. You
can become politically powerful, not a problem - only stupid people become
politically powerful. You can gather knowledge: so many stupid people have so
many degrees and scholarships, names, fame. It is not difficult at all! But deep
down you will remain the same: unaltered.
This is not the way to transform your being. You can have as much knowledge
as possible, but how is it going to make you more knowing? Maybe others will
think you know so much, but you, deep down, will know perfectly well: This is
only in the memory. My being has remained untouched by it.
And then, one day, you can gather another conceit, the greatest there is, that
I renounce all this knowledge too. Now I will be like Socrates - the one who
knows only one thing, that he knows nothing.
But deep down you are still hoping that people will think you are a Socrates.
You are a plastic Socrates, synthetic, just put together, not a real Socrates. A
real Socrates is a great accomplishment.
How does the real Socrates happen? It is not by renouncing knowledge and
declaring, I have renounced knowledge, I am no more a scholar, I dont pay
any value to scholarship - not that way. The real Socrates happens only when,
slowly slowly, you understand the unknowability of life and existence - the utter
unknowability of existence, the absolute suchness of existence. And there is no
way to know it, because we are it! Not that you renounce scholarship, no, but
that you fall in love with life itself. Not that you burn your scriptures - that is
very easy. Even in burning the scriptures you are paying too much attention to
the scriptures; they are still important to you.
There is a famous painting of a Zen monk burning scriptures. If I had been
there I would have told him, Why burn them? Why take so much trouble? Keep
them, and if some time you have nothing else to cook your tea with, you can
use them. But why take so much trouble in burning a big fire? You can cook
your food some day if it is needed - unobserved by anybody, unexhibited. This
is an exhibition: taking all your scriptures to the market place and burning
them there. It is an exhibition. You are again hoping that Now people will know
here is the real Socrates.

This is not the way to become a real Socrates.

It is not against the scripture that the real happens: it is going deeper into
existence and being that the real happens. The scriptures are forgotten! And
once in a while, one can look into them, because they are assertions of old
masters, beautiful assertions. Of course, you cannot become a knower through
them, but they can be great witnesses to your knowing.
Certainly, if you see the sun rising and you enjoy and dance with it, and one
day you come across a few immensely beautiful lines of Kalidas about the
sunrise, you will be surprised: he has said the thing that you would like to say!
but you cannot. You dont have that quality to express. Not everybody is a
Kalidas.
Remember: everybody can become a buddha, but not everybody can become a
Kalidas. Everybody can become a buddha, but not everybody can become a
Mozart or Beethoven. Everybodys potential is to become a buddha, because
buddha is your nature. But these are specific qualities, talents. A Kalidas is a
Kalidas! He can sing a song that nobody else may be able to sing again. A
Shakespeare is a Shakespeare - the way ho can put words together.nobody
may be able to put those words together again the same way. He is a magician
with words, you may not be.
Scriptures are good! You cannot become wise through them, but the day you
become wise you can relish scriptures. You can just go into them - here and
there a look - and immense joy arises through them too! Because suddenly an
insight that has happened to you is expressed by somebody else five thousand
years before. Then you are not only linked with existence through space, you
are linked with existence through time too. A new kind of expansion happens.
Five thousand years before, somebody sings a song in the Vedas, and one day,
reading it, suddenly you see he has stolen your words! Five thousand years
have disappeared. Between you and that unknown man, anonymous, there has
arisen a bond, a friendship, a love, an intimacy. He has become your
contemporary. You are not apart any more! He had seen things the way you see
them; he has uttered the things that you would like to utter but you cannot.
These are the two dimensions: one is through space. I am contemporary to you
through space. You are sitting in front of me - we are contemporaries. I am
contemporary to Buddha, to Jesus, to Krishna, to Rumi, to Hillaj.and to
thousands more, through time. They are also sitting exactly in front of me as
you are sitting in front of me. You are sitting in front of me in space, they are
sitting in front of me in time.
So when I say something about Buddha, Mohammed, Lao Tzu, I am not talking
about historical figures - I am talking about my contemporaries. And life is
immensely enriched when you can have Buddha on your one side and Lao Tzu
sitting on the other side, and sipping a cup of tea. Life is immensely rich.
I am not saying burn the books. They are valuable, but they are valuable only
for those who know how to cater into lithe and existence. Then they can enter

even into books, because they are part of life. But if you cannot enter into a
tree, into the being of a tree, how can you enter into the being of a book?
Impossible. The tree is more alive, contemporary to you in space. You can hug
it. The book can become contemporary to you only in time - for that you will
have to grow, you will have to expand. You will have to become so huge that
time and space both disappear in you. Then not only are the past buddhas your
contemporaries, but future buddhas too. Then the whole existence exists in thy
moment, culminates, converges, in this moment. all that has been, all that is,
and all that will be, converges into this here now. And then the beauty is
tremendous, and the benediction is incalculable, immeasurable.
The master asked, What did they say? Why did you feel that they are hostile?
They said, said the disciple, Hail, Great Scholar! I was telling them that it is
the ignorance of the scholars which is often responsible for the confusion and
desperation of man.
He was saying it, but he was saying it without knowing it. He had heard it. He
was repeating it; it was a mechanical repetition. He was being a parrot.
And that danger is always there for disciples: they can become parrots. That
danger has to be avoided. That danger is great! And it comes so slowly and
seeps into your blood and bones that you will never become aware of it.
Disciples go on listening, listening, listening, and one day they start repeating.
And they have forgotten completely that what they are saying is not their own.
Never repeat that which is not your own! because you will be getting into
trouble. It will remain formal. And it will be so formal that your whole being will
contradict it. You will say one thing and you will do another thing - because
your doing will come from you, and your saying will come from all that you
have heard. This creates a dichotomy and a very ridiculous situation. And
everybody can see it - it is so apparent.
Whenever you repeat something that you dont understand, your whole life will
contradict it, will belie it.
I was reading a beautiful anecdote:
Philadelphians have always been noted for their striving towards perfection, as
the following story illustrates:
Fenton, visiting the City of Brotherly Love, decided to dine in Philadelphias
most exclusive restaurant.
Your order? asked the waiter.
Ill have the hamburger plate, replied Fenton after examining the menu.
In a few minutes the waiter returned. He uncovered a casserole dish revealing
two hamburgers. From a pocket the waiter produced a pair of silver tongs and
with them he transferred the meat patties to the diners plate.

We never touch anything with our hands, said the waiter, smiling.
Very nice, said Fenton.
Cleanliness is our motto, retorted the waiter. And we never touch anything
with our hands.
Thats wonderful!
We even have a special rule about visiting the lavatory. See this little piece of
string attached to my apron?
I noticed all the waiters had them. Whats it for?
Well, said the waiter, placing a large potato on Fentons plate with his silver
tongs, if I have to go to the bathroom, I just unzip my pants and take it out
with that piece of string. That way everything stays sanitary.
But how do you put it back? asked Fenton.
I dont know about the other men, said the waiter, but I use these tongs. We
never touch anything with our hands.
That is the situation.when you are just repeating, when you have learnt a
formality which has not become your being, your whole life will belie it. On the
surface you will manage, but life is not lived only on the surface; it has many
layers.
The problem for the disciple is that he listens to great truth. The master goes
on sharing whatsoever he has experienced. You can become parrots.
Remember it. Listen, learn, but talk to people only when it has become your
experience, never before.
You can share only your experience, and then it has a beauty. When you start
talking about somebody elses experience, it is ugly. And you may be repeating
the same words! - that is not the point.
They said, Hail, Great Scholar! I was telling them that it is the ignorance of
the scholars which is often responsible for the confusion and desperation of
man.
You can understand only that which you can understand in a certain moment.
The master speaks from his vision. You understand from your capacity. The
master is like an ocean; you have your small cup - you cannot contain the
ocean. To contain the ocean you will have to break your cup; then you will
contain the ocean. The ocean cannot be contained in the small cup of thread.
The head has to be broken completely. When you are headless, you will contain
the ocean.
But that will come when it comes. In the beginning everybody has to listen
from the head, and the head goes on playing tricks. You hear one thing, you
understand quite another.

Passing a door in the early morning, a drunk noticed a sign which read Ring the
bell for the doctor. He did just that and a sleepy-eyed man came to the door.
What do you want? asked the man.
I want to know why you cant ring the damn bell yourself.
It was written on the door Ring the bell for the doctor.. Now the drunk is drunk;
he understands in his own drunkenness. He is puzzled why the doctor cannot
ring it himself, why somebody else is needed.
People are almost drunk with knowledge, drunk with ego. drunk with blindness.
Somehow they manage, just somehow. It is a miracle how people go on
managing and living for seventy years. It is really a miracle.
The young couple was going at it hot and heavy on a park bench when the girl
was heard to say, Morris, could you please take off your glasses? Theyre
hurting me. Quickly he whipped them off and went back to work.
After a few moments, the girl could be heard again. Morris, could you put your
glasses back on? Youre kissing the bench.
Just thin glasses, just a little consciousness, and it is enough to carry on your
day-to-day work. It is not enough to enter into reality. The reality will need eyes
all over your being - eyes and eyes. It will need great awareness, it will need
awakening.
So this disciple has heard that the master says that scholars have been the
cause of the misery in the world. Yes, they have been. Without understanding
what they are saying, they have created much misery for humanity. Without
understanding what they are saying, they have been advising people. They
have poisoned peoples minds.
Jan-Fishan.said, It is the conceit of scholars which is responsible, quite often,
for the misery of man. And it is your conceit in claiming to be other than a
scholar which is the cause of this tumult.
Now you are gathering another conceit which is more subtle, subtler than the
first. Somebody thinks, I am a scholar, a great Scholar. Now you are thinking
that you have renounced all that kind of childishness - you are no more a
scholar. You are still a scholar.
Not to be a scholar, which involves detachment from the petty, is an
accomplishment.
Not to be a scholar means one is no more interested in the trivial: one is
interested only in the real, in the ultimately real. One is not interested in
theories any more: one is interested only in existential experiencing.
Why are you wasting your time? the master said to the disciple. Who are
you to teach these people? They may be ignorant, they may not know as much
as you know, but they did not mean any offence to you. They were thinking

that to call somebody a great scholar is to pay respect. Look at their intention.
Their intention was good. They are innocent people. Now you are confusing
them. You are not helping them to become more clear. Now you will create a
fear in them; now they will be afraid even to use the word scholar. And they will
be at a loss as to how to respect somebody.
And you dont have that accomplishment, because not to be a scholar is the
highest kind of consciousness.
The first stage is ignorance, the second stage is knowledge, but both are
similar in one way. The first state is unconscious ignorance, and the second
stage is unconscious knowledge. And the third state is conscious ignorance.
The first comes back, but with a new form. The sage again becomes a child, the
circle is complete - but in a totally different way. consciously a child again - this
is rebirth.
Jesus says: Unless you are born again you will not be able to enter into the
kingdom of God. This is rebirth: Unless you become a child again, unless you
become ignorant again, with absolute consciousness that there is no way to
know, that there is nothing to know, that there is nobody to know.so all three
points of knowledge simply disappear into oblivion, and then the suchness of
existence opens up. There is great ecstasy and great benediction.
Yes, love is there and dance is there and celebration is there, but there is no
knowledge. That is a great accomplishment. And for that one needs
detachment from the petty.
Why are you bothering about these people and what they have said? Why are
you so much interested in words? And cant you see your conceit? - that by
trying to teach them that scholars are the cause of misery, you are trying in a
subtle way to pronounce, to propound, that you are not a scholar - and you are
a scholar, because whatsoever you are saying is not your own experience. You
have heard me say it and now you are, parrot like, repeating it. You must have
been searching for these people; these people are victims.
Whenever you have some information, you start searching for somebody in
whose mind you can pour it; otherwise, it creates a restlessness. Unobserved,
you go on searching for somebody unaware. Whenever you have some
information, it is very difficult to keep it inside yourself. Thats why it is so
difficult to keep a secret, almost impossible. It becomes heavy. One wants to
say it to be unburdened.
It is very difficult to contain something that you have come to understand and
not to say it to others. People search, they move around, they wait for some
victim.
Scholars are seldom wise,
said the master,
being only unaltered people stuffed with thoughts and books.

And so are you - you are unaltered. You have not yet been transformed. You
have become very much informed, thats true. The information is so much that
you cannot even digest it. And what you are doing here is just a kind of
diarrhea. You are throwing it on these poor people. And they have not done
anything! You have just found an excuse: You are hostile - you called me a
great scholar, and scholars are the cause of the misery of the world.
Unaltered. Knowledge never alters anybody. You remain the same, knowledge
goes on being accumulated on the same Level. And unless the level changes,
unless you have an altered state of consciousness, nothing is going to help. You
can have all the scriptures of the world by your side, but you will remain as
miserable as before.
Scholars are seldom wise being only unaltered people stuffed with thoughts
and books.
But they become very conceited, they become very egoistic.
A man who had just been promoted to vice-president boasted so much about it
to his wife that she finally retorted, Vice-presidents are a dime a dozen. Why,
in the supermarket they even have a vice-president in charge of prunes.
Furious, the husband phoned the supermarket in the expectation of refuting his
wife. He asked to speak to the vice-president in charge of prunes.
Which kind? was the reply. Packaged or bulk?
Presidents and vice-presidents and professors and scholars, they all go on
bragging - they are somebody special. On their noses it is written: Look who I
am. I am not an ordinary mortal. Just puffed up egos. And just a small prick
and the balloon bursts.
Beware of it. The ways of the ego are very cunning. Unless one is very aware, it
goes on coming back from the back door.
These people were trying to honor you. If some people think mud is gold, if it
is their mud, respect it.
This should be the approach of a really human person. If it is their mud and
they think it is gold, why disturb them? It is their mud. They respect it and they
think it is gold - let them be happy whatsoever they think. Dont unnecessarily
disturb them. And:
You are not their teacher.
A master is allowed to disturb, nobody else. Why? Because if somebody else
disturbs people, he will only disturb, he will not be able to reset. He will not be
able to create the harmony again.
He will disturb the first thing, and he will not be able to create anything else
instead. He will demolish the old building.it may have been a ruin, but still
people were living in it. Now they will be under the sky in the rains, and under

the hot sun. Dont demolish a building unless you can construct another and
better.
Remember it: if you cant give truth to people, dont take their lies away.
Otherwise, they will be left in such agony, their lives will become impossible. At
least they were living - with their lies they were hoping. Dont destroy peoples
beliefs if you cannot give them truth. If you cannot give them trust, dont
destroy their belief. If you can give them the real coin, it is perfectly okay to
take their false coins away. Only masters are allowed, only buddhas are
allowed, to shake, shatter, to destroy, because they can create. Because
destruction in itself is not the goal - the goal is creation.
Do you not realize that in behaving in such a sensitive and self-willed manner
you are acting just like a scholar and therefore deserve the name even if it is
an epithet?
The master has used the situation in a beautiful way. He has made it absolutely
clear to the disciple that he has been acting like a scholar - he knows not a
single thing. He is a pretender. But he can destroy those innocent peoples
beliefs, and he can enjoy that he can destroy. He can argue, he can silence
those people - although he cannot convince, because no argument ever
convinces. Only the presence of a master is a convincing source, not an
argument.
Guard yourself my child. Too many slips from the path of supreme attainment and you may become a scholar.
In the world of the Sufis, a scholar is the dirtiest thing. Mm? If you fall too many
times from the path you may become a scholar. Just as it is said: When a poet
fails he becomes a critic, exactly the same way it can be said: When a sage
fails to become a sage, he becomes a scholar.
To you also, I say:
Guard yourself, my child. Too many slips from the path of supreme attainment
- and you may become a scholar.
Scholarship, to be a pundit, is not an attainment: it is a failure. It is a
consolation only. You have missed the real treasure, and now you have just old
dirty books - and that is a burden, not a liberation. Books cannot liberate. In
fact, books themselves wait for somebody to liberate the truth from them - how
can they liberate you?
When a master is there, he liberates truths from the imprisonment of books.
Thats why I have chosen so many books to speak upon. Many truths are
imprisoned there - they have to be liberated. The book cannot liberate you;
how can a dead book liberate you? Truth liberates. And if you know the truth,
you can liberate truths from books too.
But remember: this is not possible if you only become a scholar. This is possible
only when you become a sage. And who is a sage? A child again. A child who

has consciously understood the futility of knowledge, and has understood the
ultimate beauty of ignorance.
Enough for today.

Chapter 6 - The Path of Love

The first question:
Osho,
The Steiner School of Anthroposophy teaches one to have a strong will. This is
a departure from traditional Eastern thought. What is this will? How does this
will relate to the ego?
The East and the West, up to now, have worked as polar opposites - the West
through the will, the East through surrender; the West through the ego, the
East through absolute egolessness. The way of the West is that of the male,
and the way of the East is that of the female.
The East believes in passivity: God comes to you when you are absolutely
passive, receptive, a nothing, just an awaiting, a prayerful awaiting, with no
effort at all on your part. The way of the West is aggressive: the way of the
male. Man has to seek, man has to go, man has to conquer. Even God has to be
conquered, nature has to be conquered, truth has to be conquered.
Both have failed, because both are partial; they had to fail. The East has failed
tremendously, as tremendously as the West has failed - because man is not
only male and man is not only female. Man is both.and more. Man is both the
yin and yang. And a greater religion, a far more synthetical religion is needed in
which the East and West will lose their old conflict.
Steiner is the representative of the Western mind. He revolted against
theosophy and created a new school, anthroposophy. Theosophy was Eastern:
Blavatsky, Annie Besant, Leadbeater and Olcott. They had searched in the East,
in the old scriptures, traditions, old masters, and they had come to a certain
conclusion about the East: that if you surrender, God happens.
Theosophy means: theo means God, sophy means love. You simply live like
a woman. You wait, you remain in a welcoming mood. Only that welcoming
mood is needed, and God penetrates you. You become the feminine and he
becomes the male. That is the allegory of Krishna and his girlfriends. Krishna is
God, the male; and the seeker, the devotee, is a female, a girlfriend, a gopi.
One has to become feminine to reach to God - that has been the essential core
of Eastern thought, religion, philosophy.
Steiner revolted against it. First he was a theosophist, but by and by he became
aware that this was not possible for him to accept. He created a new
movement against theosophy, a new school. He called it anthroposophy.
Anthrop means man, theo means God. Theosophy is love of God,

anthroposophy is love of man. He placed man in the very center. God is not in
the center of his thinking, man is at the center.
For theosophy, God is at the center: Krishna playing on his flute, and man is
dancing the dance around him - the girlfriends, the gopis. Man is on the
periphery, God is at the center. He turned the whole thing upside down: he put
man in the center, man becomes the central thing. In the West man has
remained the central thing. In the East man is peripheral.
Now, both efforts have failed because both are partial; man is both male and
female together. It has to be so: you are born of a mother and a father - how
can you be just man or just woman? Within your soul your mother continues to
live, and your father too. And you have to be a deep harmony of the two.
I call that man religious who has come to a great harmony within his own self,
the harmony between his mother and father. They are still quarreling within
you, they are still fighting. It is not only that when you were a child your mother
and father were fighting; they are still fighting in each of your cells.
So there are two possibilities: a man who is still in conflict and has not come to
a deep understanding of his polarities; then he has to choose. Either he
becomes an egoist if he chooses the man, the yang; or if he chooses the
woman, if he chooses yin, the woman, then he becomes surrendered. But in
both cases one part will suffer, the unchosen part will suffer, and you will never
be whole. And how can you be holy if you are not whole? The part that is
neglected, rejected, will take its revenge. The part that you have rejected will
become your unconscious - the unconscious is nothing but the rejected part of
your being.
There is a possibility in the future of a humanity where the unconscious will not
exist. If we stop rejecting, the unconscious will disappear; man can become
absolutely conscious. And thats what we mean by a buddha, the awakened
soul - it means that now there is no rejected part; you have absorbed your
totality, you have accepted all your facets, you have become multidimensional.
Now the polarity is no more in contradiction; it has become complementary.
Your woman inside helps your man, your man inside helps the woman. They
have fallen in love with each other, conflict has disappeared. They have
become one, they are wedded together. This is the spiritual marriage, and only
out of this marriage will you be born. Only out of this inner meeting of the
contradictions will you be born.
This is the whole philosophy of the concept of the Trinity. The concept of the
Trinity is beautiful and has many meanings: God the Father, the Son and the
Holy Ghost. Of course, the Holy Ghost is not the right name - people who
coined that must have been male chauvinists. Otherwise, the Holy Ghost is
not right, but the Mother - the Father, the Mother and the Son. Then it is
perfectly true, factual.
The father and the mother are in you; the son is still missing. Your father and
mother have not met inside you; they have met outside you, so your body is

created. When they meet inside you your soul will be created, the son will be
born - and that is the birth of Christ.
The East has suffered because the East became feminine. Thats why anybody
could conquer it: it lost willpower, it lost zest, enthusiasm to live, it lost energy.
It became very fatalistic, it became very relaxed. The whole history of the East
is the history of being conquered by others - a history of poverty, a history of
no science, no technology. It is not a beautiful history.
Yes, a few beautiful people happened: Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, Kabir,
Nanak, Dadu - a few beautiful people, but they are exceptional, they cannot be
counted. The greater mass, the greater humanity, has lived in a very ugly way,
a miserable way, in deep anguish. At this cost, if one Buddha happens and one
Kabir and one Nanak, it is not of worth. The cost is too much.
The West has suffered from male-orientation: conflict, struggle, violence, fight,
and no rest, no possibility of any relaxation; a great tension in the mind,
hankering for speed, ambition; competition, a cut-throat competition, each
fighting with everybody else - a very hostile atmosphere. Of course it has
created mad people, it has created neurotic people. Still, a few beautiful people
have existed on the fringe: a Christ, a Saint Teresa, a Saint Francis and an
Eckhart. But this cannot be said to be a success: the philosophy has failed. The
East and West have both failed.
Thats my whole effort here: what I am trying to do is to bring East and West
closer. The twain can meet. Kipling was wrong when he said, East is East and
West is West, and the twain shall never meet. I say they can meet; they have
to meet. Now everything will depend. Even the possibility of a future humanity
will depend on that meeting. Kipling has to be proved wrong. They have not
met up to now, thats true. Kipling is right about the past, but wrong about the
future - has to be wrong, otherwise humanity cannot exist. Both are suffering:
the East from outward poverty, the West from inner poverty. Both have failed
tremendously - grand failures, but failures.
A man has to be a synthesis of will and surrender. A man has to grow his
willpower, his ego, first. My approach is that if life is going to be for an average
of seventy years, then thirty-five years, the beginning of life, should be devoted
to strengthening the ego and willpower - and one should listen to Nietzsche
and one should listen to Steiner and one should listen to Freud - and the ego
has to be strengthened, made very integrated.
After the thirty-fifth year, one has to learn relaxing and dropping the ego and
becoming more and more surrendered to the divine. The West, the first part of
life; the East, the second part of life. Life should start Western and should end
Eastern. One should first go into the world; in the world, will will be needed.
One should go and fight and struggle, because struggle gives you a sharp
intelligence, but one should not continue fighting and fighting to the very end.
Then what is the point?

Fight, sharpen your intelligence, know the ways of the world, wander all over
the world, be a conqueror, and then. Then move inwards. Now you have known
the outside; now try to know the inner.

And to know the inner one has to relax, one has to forget anxiety, anguish,
tension. One has to be non-competitive; will is not needed. To conquer the
world, will is needed; to conquer God, will is not needed.
To conquer God means to be conquered by God; to conquer God means to relax
and surrender unto his feet. Now this will seem very difficult, very illogical. I am
an illogical person. My understanding is this: that only strong egos can
surrender; weak egos cannot surrender.
Every day I come across weak egos. Whenever a weak ego comes, he
hesitates: to surrender or not to surrender, to take sannyas or not to take
sannyas. And why is he afraid? He is afraid because he knows he has a very
weak ego; if he surrenders he is gone, he will not be able to stand. He is afraid
of his inner weakness. He pretends on the outside, but he knows his inner
reality - that he is ready. So he becomes defensive; he defends.
Whenever a person of strong ego comes he says, Okay, let us see. Let us try
this too. He knows, he is confident enough that even if he goes into some
unknown path he can still protect himself. And if he decides to come back, he
can come back; he has enough trust, enough self-confidence, he has enough
will.
Remember, surrender is the last and the greatest act of will. Surrender is not a
cheap and easy thing. It is not something that because you cannot stand you
surrender; because you were already falling you say, Okay, I surrender because you were not able to stand on your feet. Surrender is not impotence.
Surrender is not out of impotence, it is out of tremendous power. You have lived
the ways of the will and you have found nothing. You have looked into all the
possibilities of the ego and you have only suffered; it simply hurts. Then you
decide, Now let us try the ultimate: dropping of the ego.
To drop the ego you will need a great will; otherwise it is not easy to drop the
ego. It is the greatest act in the world, the last. Only very courageous people
can do it. You will be surprised: in India, all the great saviors, avataras, are
warriors. This is not coincidental. Both Krishna and Rama belong to the warrior
race, kshatriya; Buddha, Mahavira, the twenty-four tirthankaras of the Jainas
are kshatriyas. This has to be not only a coincidence. Why have all these great
people come from the warriors - and they talk about surrender? And they say,
Surrender is the way. They had the will to surrender. A brahmin has not yet
come to the state of a Buddha or Mahavira. Why? The brahmin has no will. He
has thought, from the beginning, of surrender. He has not arrived to a will that
he can surrender.

Or take it from a different angle: a poor man wants to renounce - what will he
renounce, what has he got to renounce? What does his renunciation mean?
Then a Rockefeller decides to renounce: his renunciation will mean something.
It carries weight; he has something to renounce.
If a beggar declares, I have renounced the world, people will laugh. In the
first place, you had nothing to renounce. If a king renounces, then the
renunciation is meaningful. This man has known what wealth is, this man has
known what power is, this man has known what will is - and knowing it well, he
has understood that it cannot be the last thing in life. Good for the beginning,
good for the young people to play with as a toy, but for those who are
becoming mature, useless - they have to drop it.
We give small children toys to play with. The day they become a little more
mature they throw the toys away, and they start asking for the real thing. We
give them a toy train and they say, Forget about it. We give them a toy
airplane and they say, Throw it away. I want a real car, a real airplane. I want
the real thing.
Ego can only give you toys to play with. But it is needed, otherwise you will
never grow and never become mature. One day you understand, Now I need
the real thing - and the real thing is God. And for God to happen, you have to
surrender.
Steiner is wrong, because his philosophy is half. So is Annie Besant; shes
wrong, her philosophy is half. I am talking about a total philosophy.
Up to the age of thirty-five, move in the ways of the world, the ways of will.
Strengthen your ego as much as you can by knowledge, by power, by money,
by ambition. Live it, because that is the only way to know it. Go into the
deepest hell the world can make available to you. Know it - because only by
knowing is one liberated.
And then suddenly a light will dawn on you. You will see the whole absurdity of
it. And then you start returning home; then you start returning toward the
source. For thirty-five years go into the world, and then for the remaining part
come back to yourself. First lose yourself so that you can gain; first sin so that
you can become a saint. If you are a saint from the very beginning, your
sainthood will not be of much value.
I am not against sin; I am not against anything. I say: Use everything, go into it.
God has made this whole world available to you for a certain purpose: the
purpose is learning. Sin is a lesson, is a must. If a child is a saint from the very
childhood, is forced to be a saint, he will not have any spine. Let him first know
what sin is. Let him himself become aware, and let him drop it on his own
accord. Dont force him, dont discipline him. Give him freedom to move so one
day he can see with his own eyes, feel with his own heart. And he can realize
that Buddha is right, that Kabir is right, that Christ is right. But this has to come
from your own understanding, otherwise it is borrowed. And God never wants
anybody secondhand. Be firsthand. Let your experience be original.

So this is what I say to you: Will and surrender have to become part of your life,
together - because you are man and woman together, and you are East and
West together. The world is one, the Earth is one village. All distinctions are just
utilitarian, not real. What is East and what is West? And what is surrender and
what is will? They are both part of the one wave. They are not two, they are a
quantum, one; two aspects of the one thing, one phenomenon.
So grow in will, and dont be afraid. Become a strong egoist, dont be afraid. Let
it hurt, let it become a self-torture, let it become a cancer in your soul - then
one day drop it. And that dropping is out of your own feeling, own experience.
Then it is beautiful.
There is a danger; I must make you beware of it. The danger is that rather than
coming to a synthesis, the danger is we may change roles: the East may
become West and the West may become East. That is more possible. Seeing
the stupidity of human beings, that seems more possible.
The East is trying to become the West: more technological, more scientific,
more materialistic, more communistic. In fact, the Pune people simply laugh at
you: What are you doing here? What is here in the first place? Meditating? what nonsense! They want to go to the West to know more engineering, to
know more about electronics, to know more about computers, to know more
about hydrogen and atom bombs, to know more about how to create
spaceships, how to create wealth, more wealth. They want to become more
materialistic, more productive. And you are coming here? - have you gone
crazy?
And when they go to the West you cannot believe what they are doing there.
You are fed up with your materialism, and what are they going there for - to
know better technology? To destroy their natural atmosphere? To pollute it? To
destroy the ecology? For what are they going to the West? The West is getting
fed up with technology. The modern mind is trying to move away from
technology - at least the new generation is absolutely against it. The new
generation in the West can understand Buddha better than Einstein. The new
generation can understand Mahavira, a naked Mahavira, better than all the
Darwins and Eddingtons and Rutherfords. But in the Eastern universities,
colleges, the new generation is hankering after Rutherford, Einstein, Max
Planck - how to know more about science.
The possibility is that the East may become the West and the West may
become the East - and the old foolishness continues: again you are far apart,
again the meeting has not happened. The meeting has to happen, that is the
only hope for humanity. And the meeting has to happen in each individual. It
cannot happen in books and philosophies; it has to happen in each individual.
That is what Tantra is all about. Tantra is the oldest science to help you to come
to an inner harmony, an inner wedding, an inner orgasm. Your woman and man
meet inside and give birth to the child, the child Christ. Then you become a
trinity: the father, the mother, the child. And when you are a trinity, you are

blessed, you have come home. You know what life is, you have achieved the
goal.
The second question:
Osho,
I am a gambler in life. I have brought suffering to almost everybody who came
close to me. My eyes have deceived everybody up to now, and when people,
out of their suffering caused by me, sometimes said, You are a good soul,
then it was part of my game to deceive myself and feel good about their
statement. And now, in my first darshan, Osho, you looked into my eyes and
you said I am a very good person. But now as you, you the master, are saying
this, I cant deceive myself any longer, and I cant accept these words from
you. What are you doing? Im so puzzled, so lost. Have you also been deceived
by me? Or are you gambling with me? Please dont gamble; please help me to
drop the games. My whole being is hurt because, Osho, how could you be
deceived?
I am not deceived; thats why I said to you that you are a good soul. I wanted
to settle it from the very beginning. I wanted to bring it to the surface. That has
been your problem, and I am here to bring your problem to the surface of your
consciousness. I have not missed - you were caught! I am not deceived.
I dont ordinarily say so: it is very rare I say to somebody, You are a good soul
- because people are not! It is very rare that I say so. But I had to say it to you
because this is your old game, and it is very good, from the very beginning, to
be clear about it - that this game has not to be played here.
Every individual has a particular weakness, and the weakness persists because
you remain unaware of it. I wanted it to be perfectly clear to you. And it did the
work.
It was your first darshan with me, and I wanted to start from the very
beginning. I talked about your goodness because I wanted to create the
problem, so you can face it. And it is good that it created anxiety in you. It is
good that it created a question in you. It is good that you became puzzled. It is
good that you became confused. That is one of my ways of working on you: to
confuse you.
When you are clear your ego is in control; your clarity is nothing but your ego
in control. When you are confused your ego is thrown off-center; then you dont
know what is what.
The first thing is, when you come to me, that I should confuse you. I should
throw you off balance so your old ego control is no longer in control - so you
dont know what to do. When you dont know what to do, only then do you ask
me. And it is good that you have asked.
And you say, Please, dont gamble with me - I am not gambling - Please help
me to drop the games. Thats why I have started this game of calling you a

very great soul, good, a really good soul. It is to help you drop your egoistic
attitudes.
This is going to happen: you are going to become a good soul. You are not,
thats true - but to realize, I am not a good soul, is the beginning. To realize,
I dont know is the first step; to realize, I have yet to grow, I am yet far
away, is the first step.
If you continue to think that you are a good soul and you are not, then there is
no hope for you. It is as if an ill person thinks he is healthy and well and he
never goes to the doctor. What is the point, he is healthy.. He thinks he is
healthy - and the disease goes on spreading.
You have come to me, and I have diagnosed your disease absolutely. This has
been your disease: you have been thinking you are good, you have been
deceiving about your goodness, and when people trusted you and they were
deceived, you were deceived by their deception. And this is how it went on
feeding itself; it became a vicious circle.
You are not good, but you can pretend to be good. And through pretension you
can deceive others. And when they are deceived, of course, you look at your
image in their eyes and you feel very happy. This is how things grow: when you
feel very happy, you try to be more good; when you try to be more good, of
course the person thinks you are a really great soul, a mahatma. Then in his
eyes you can see your reflection - more decorated, still more beautiful. You are
again deceived. Now you have to try more, because this person is there, and
this game continues. This is how it happens in everybodys life.
You meet a woman or a man - you look at the woman, she looks at you. You
look with adoration; she looks into your eyes at her adored image. She feels
very good. She was hankering for somebody to pay attention to her, and you
are paying attention. She feels very good; thats why she looks at you with
adoration. When she looks at you with adoration, of course you look into her
eyes: you have never seen your image so beautiful. You feel tremendously
good, enhanced. Your ego is strengthened. You try to be more loving.. And this
way the game continues.
You fall in love. Ninety-nine percent of your love affairs are simply foolish. What
you call romance is nothing but stupidity. And you feed each other, and you
help each other. One day you are going to be shocked. Now you want to remain
close, more close to each other; you want to be together twenty-four hours a
day. Then you are ready to get married, then you go for a honeymoon, and
then you become acquainted with each other, and then the reality asserts..
Reality cannot be denied for long. Thats why your so-called great people, or
so-called great saints, dont live in the marketplace, they go to the Himalayas.
If they lived in the marketplace it would be impossible; sooner or later the
reality would assert. Reality cannot be defeated forever. You can create a fiction
for a few days, a few moments, but you cannot live in the fiction forever, that is
not possible. The fiction is bound to collide with reality and will collapse.

If you really want to love a woman never get married to her. If you really want
to adore a man, escape as far away from him as possible. Then you will always
love. But if you want to crash the whole love affair, get married, the sooner the
better. Go for a honeymoon, and by the time the honeymoon is finished,
everything is finished. Suddenly one morning you look at the woman: she is an
ordinary woman.
Have you heard the old story? A princess found a frog, and the frog said, Lady,
I have been cursed, and for five thousand years I have remained a frog. If you
take me with you and if you allow me to sleep with you in your bed, by the
morning I will become a beautiful prince. You must have heard. This type of
story is there. And the princess took the frog, and in the morning he became a
beautiful prince.
But reality is just the opposite: you bring a beautiful prince, in the morning he
becomes a frog! Every prince turns to being a frog in the end. And then you are
puzzled: What happened? What went wrong?
Nothing went wrong. The frog is a frog; the prince was your idea, it was your
wish-fulfillment. You were wanting to have a prince, so you had him. You were
longing, you were projecting, you were dreaming.
When you come to me you are going to be shocked in many ways, and you are
going to be confused in many ways. I have to dismantle your mind completely.
It hurts, and it is not a very kind job. It is surgical. Thats why I insist that first
you become a sannyasin before I start the surgery - because if you are not a
sannyasin, there is every possibility that you will escape in the middle of the
surgery. And that will be more dangerous, because then you will be mad: the
work incomplete, something dismantled and nothing created. Thats why I
insist: first become a sannyasin - because then I can trust that you will at least
lie down for the time the operation takes. You will be on the operating table;
you will not escape. You will trust me. Otherwise, I dismantle a part of you, and
you escape; then you will be in a worse state than you ever were before. The
work has to be completed.
You will be thankful only when you have been completely renewed: you have
been killed and you are reborn - only then. Before that there is going to be
much pain. Growth goes through pain, much suffering. Growth is not cheap.
So, in fact, I have started the work on you. By calling you a good soul, I have
thrown my net. You may think I have missed, I have not missed.
Let me tell you one anecdote:
The knife-throwing expert and his beautiful young assistant stood in front of
their tent at the state fair while the spieler described the wonderful act that
would be performed within.
Mrs. Silas Hawkins was attracted by the knife-thrower, and Mr. Silas Hawkins
detected in the assistant a few curves he had never seen before. They paid

their two slim dimes - the tenth part of a dollar - and entered the tent. Finally
the assistant stood against a wooden wall and doffed her spangled robe.
Silas Hawkins gasped audibly, then the knife-thrower stepped on the platform,
and it was Mrs. Hawkins turn to gasp. The knife-thrower pulled back his right
arm, and a steely blade went zinging through the air. It buried itself in the wall
one-eighth of an inch from the assistants shell-pink ear. Silas Hawkins jumped
to his feet with a cry. Doggone! he said. He missed her.
I have not missed. It has hit you exactly where I wanted it to hit you. It has
created all the turmoil in you. It has brought all the unconscious rubbish to the
surface. The work has started. Now, if you allow me, more shocks will be
coming. The more you allow, the more shocks will be needed. It is arduous. To
be reborn is going to be arduous - and this is the real birth.
Even in physical birth there is pain and there is trauma and there is suffering.
This is a spiritual birth. One birth you have received from your parents, your
father and mother; another birth you receive from your master: you are born as
a spiritual being. Much has to be cut, much has to be dropped. Only the very
essential has to be saved; the nonessential has to be completely destroyed.
And you dont know the essential; you are identified with the nonessential.
So I will have to cut your old identities, by and by. By saying to you that you are
a good soul, I have made you aware of a certain fact: that this has been your
game up to now. No more. I am not gambling with you. But things should be
clear from the very beginning; you should be alert to what is going to happen. I
am not here to console you. I am not here to give you any consolations
whatever. I am here to destroy you utterly - because that is the only way to
give you a new birth.
Mulla Nasruddin was leaving his office at his usual quitting hour, three-thirty,
when he noticed a truck-driver at the curb struggling unsuccessfully with a
heavy case of books.
I will give you a hand, volunteered the Mulla. The two seized opposite ends of
the case and huffed and puffed several moments, to no avail.
I am afraid it is hopeless, gasped Nasruddin. We will never get it on the
truck.
On? screamed the driver. I am trying to get if off!
So let it be clear from the very beginning: you will try to save yourself, and I am
trying to destroy you. And I could see you directly, because the chief
characteristic is such that you cannot hide it.
When disciples used to go to Gurdjieff, he would look into them; he would
create situations to find out what was their chief characteristic. Unless the chief
characteristic is known, work cannot start. Somebody is greedy, his problem is
greed, and if you talk about anger, that is not his problem. If you talk about
sex, that is not his problem.

You will be surprised to know: greedy people have no sexual problem. Thats
why Marwaris have to adopt children. Greedy people dont have sex-energy;
their whole energy moves into greed. Money becomes their love object, they
dont care a bit about women. So if you tell a Marwari to take a vow of celibacy,
he will be ready; it is not difficult. But dont tell him about renouncing his
money or wealth: that is his problem.
A politician does not bother much about women; his whole thrust, his sexual
thrust, is his politics. He wants to reach Delhi, Moscow, Washington; his whole
energy is involved in that. His ambition is his sex. He wants to penetrate into
the capital, the capital is his woman. His ambition is phallic. He can avoid
women, he will not be much interested. Once he has reached Delhi then he
may start thinking about women, otherwise not.
This has happened in India. Before the freedom, all the politicians were great
mahatmas, sages, servants of the people, celibates, a great readiness to
sacrifice. Then suddenly, when they came into power all that disappeared. Now
their energy was released. Their energy was involved in reaching Delhi. They
had reached Delhi; now what to do? The energy was there, something had to
be done with the energy. Then they got involved in a thousand and one things.
The chief characteristic has to be known. Somebody has anger as his chief
characteristic, somebody has deception, somebody has ego, somebody has
greed, somebody has jealousy, somebody has possessiveness - different
people. But if you come to a master he can just look into you directly, and your
chief characteristic is almost your soul. You dont know what else your soul is,
but your chief characteristic is there, burning.
Sherlock Holmes once confronted Dr. Watson with the statement, Oh, my dear
doctor, I see you have not donned your long winter underwear.
Amazing, Watson is supposed to have replied. How did you deduce that?
Elementary, explained the peerless Holmes. You have forgotten to put on
your pants.
And as far as I am concerned, you are always without pants, remember. There
is no way to deceive me, I am not deceived. Sometimes I may not be so rude,
sometimes I may be polite; I may not say to you what I am seeing in you.
Sometimes I may feel it is not the right time. But whenever you come to me and that is the meaning of darshan - whenever you come and encounter me,
you are absolutely naked to me. I may not say anything about it, I may wait for
the right time; or I may not ever say, and I may start working without saying it,
that depends. But there is no possibility of deception.
If you can deceive me, then I cannot be of any help to you. I can be helpful only
because you cannot deceive me.
The third question:

Osho,
Organizations have always frightened me because I felt there is a built-in
evilness, and maybe a necessary evil. The Osho foundation is an organization,
and has every possibility of becoming a very powerful organization. Can you
tell me why the organization is necessary?
Yes. Because evil is necessary.
The fourth question:
Osho,
Why do we wear one hundred and eight beads on our malas? Does this belong
to the world of ritualistic religion?
Yes, it belongs to ritualistic religion. Dont become ritualistic, but dont become
anti-ritualistic either. A little ritual is beautiful. To become ritualistic is wrong,
but a little ritual is just fine. A little ritual adds spice to life. It gives salt to your
food, it is tasteful. A life without any ritual will be a very poor, impoverished
life.
You meet somebody on the road and you say, Hello - it is a ritual. And he
says, How are you? and you say, Fine - it is a ritual. You are not fine: he
knows, you know, everybody knows. You meet somebody on the road, you
smile; it is a ritual. You just watch: you will find that life needs a little ritual. It
makes life run smoothly, it is lubricating. If the whole of life becomes ritualistic,
then it is dangerous; then you are only eating salt. A little salt in the food is
good, but to just feed on salt is dangerous. You will die. But to drop salt
completely is also dangerous. And always remember this: I am never totally
against anything, and I am never totally in favor of anything. I always keep a
balance.
The orange robe, the mala, the locket.innocent ritual, but it adds spice. It gives
you a feeling of community. And man needs a few fictions to live. The truth is
too hard. Yes, one day you will become able to live with the truth, but right
now, no. You have to pass through many stages. Only in the ultimate jump can
you drop all fictions. Then too you may not drop them, because they are
beautiful in themselves. They are not true, but they are beautiful in
themselves.
I am not against ritual. I am simply saying that ritual is not religion, ritual is
ritual. And a little ritual is always good: it keeps you in balance, it keeps you
sane. Otherwise people start moving into extremes. There are a few people
whose whole religion is ritualistic, there is no reality at all. Then there is
Krishnamurti: his whole idea is non-ritualistic. There is no poetry, no fiction, no
myth, no prayerfulness, no meditation, nothing - just a bare, naked statement
of truth.
I dont believe in extremes. I would like you to remember the tightrope-walker.
Always keep it in mind: the tightrope-walker. He is a symbol of life. He leans to
the left, feels that now if he leans a little more he will fall; immediately he

balances by leaning toward the right. Then he starts falling toward the right;
immediately he balances himself again, leaning toward the left. He
continuously leans from left to right, right to left. And thats how he keeps
himself in the middle. This is the mystery: to keep in the middle he has to lean
to the left, he has to lean to the right. To keep in the middle he has to be very
illogical, because the middle is not static, it is dynamic. Life is not static.
So always, if you want to keep yourself balanced, healthy, sane, you will have
to lean to both sides: sometimes a little ritual, sometimes no ritual; sometimes
a little scripture, sometimes no scripture; sometimes a little worship,
sometimes no worship; sometimes a little prayerfulness, sometimes no
prayerfulness. In this way you will become a tightrope-walker.
And remember - again I repeat - the middle is not a static posture. You cannot
just stand there. You cannot say to the tightrope-walker, Why do you go on
leaning this way and that? Why all this effort? Just stand there in the middle!
Then he will fall. If you are static you will die.
Life is a process, dynamic, river-like. Go and watch a river: sometimes it flows
to the north, sometimes to the east, sometimes to the south, and goes on
leaning to both sides, and one day reaches to the ocean.
Everything is accepted in proportion.
The fifth question:
Osho,
I hear there is a room here called The Office of the Grande Seducer of the
Oldies. How old is an oldie?
Now, it is a very technical thing, but I will try to give you a laymans
conception. And I will give you the right address where you can find a more
informed and expert opinion.
Yes, there is a secret organization here called SIN, S-I-N. S stands for seduction,
seduction into neo-sannyas. That is the name of the organization, SIN. And
there are three branches of the organization: for the babies, for the oldies, and
for those who are in-between. For the babies, up to the fourteenth year because by that time sexual maturity happens, and the baby is no more a
baby. In fact, he is ready to create new babies, so he cannot be a baby. So you
can demark the line - fourteen years is the line for the babies; after birth,
fourteen years. Before death, fourteen years is the limit for the oldies. If
seventy is the average lifespan, then fifty-six is the demarcation line for the
oldies. And in-between is everybody else.
So three departments exist, three branches of SIN: for the babies, Siddhartha
and Purva take care; for the in-between, Teertha and Maneesha; for the oldies,
Paritosh and Parijat.
But this distinction of the oldies, in-betweens and babies is applicable only
here. In America there are only two: the babies and the oldies. The in-betweens

exist not. That is a strange thing that has happened in America. People try to
remain babies for as long as they can. They go on pushing the line: fifty and
still they are babies, fifty-five and still they are babies, and fifty-six and still
they are babies. And it is the thirty-first of December, they are fifty-six, and
they are still babies!
When they cannot push any longer, when it is impossible, they simply become
oldies. They go from babies to oldies directly.
I have heard about a salesman who was succeeding, a door-to-door salesman,
and all his colleagues were surprised because they were selling the same
goods, but not so successfully. He was earning almost ten times what they
were. So they gave him a party, and asked him, Please tell about your secret.
He said, There is nothing much, it is simple. Even if an old hag, a sixty-year-old
woman, rotten, opens the door, I say, Baby, is your mother at home? And
that works, and I am immediately welcomed.
America has gone crazy. All natural limits have disappeared. From infancy,
people simply move into senility. Thats why the great problem of the gap of
generations has arisen - because there is no in-between to link them; the
bridge is broken.
Americans are crazy. Just as the old Italian said.. But I should not anticipate.
First I must tell you the anecdote.
Wallace Reyburn, author of Some of It Was Fun, entered Naples, Italy, with the
victorious troops who threw the Nazis out near the end of World War Two. A
grateful native offered to introduce him to a sister at home.
Is she beautiful? asked Reyburn.
Ah, bella! bella! enthused the native.
Young?
Si! Si! Si!
Is she pure? persisted Reyburn.
The native turned from him in disgust, remarking, These Americans and
Canadians are all crazy.
Natural limits are forgotten, natural things are forgotten. In America this
distinction may not be applicable, but here. And except for America,
everywhere in the world these are the three demarcations: the babies who are
not yet interested in sex; and the oldies who have grown out of it; and the
people in-between who go on wavering, who are still on the tightrope.
And of course, babies can convert babies, so Siddhartha, little Siddhartha and
Purva. Right now little Siddhartha is traveling in America, trying to convert
babies there, because that is the country where the greatest number of babies

exist. And for the in-betweens, Teertha and Maneesha are in charge of SIN; and
for old people, Parijat and Paritosh.
So, if you really want a very informed, expert opinion, you go to Paritosh. He is
in charge. And right now he is very busy, because many parents have come for
Christmas, and he is seducing them into neo-sannyas. And to help people
somebody has put a notice on his door; thats how this question has arisen.
Somebody has put a notice on Paritoshs door: Office of the Grand Seducer of
the Oldies - just to help people, so those who want to find the office can find it
easily.
The sixth question:
Osho,
What is your attitude to money?
I have lived without money, I have lived with money, and I have one confession
to make: it is always better to live with money than without. Money is useful.
One should not be used by it, thats all. Im not against money; it should be
used - it is a good, utilitarian invention. It helps. It is tremendously useful; but
use it, dont be used by it.
Money should not be your master; you should be the master, thats all. And if
you have to choose, then my suggestion is: always choose to be with money. It
is better to be with money than without money. I am not saying that you will be
more happy; I am saying only that you will have more choice to choose your
misery according to your heart.
A poor man has not much choice: he has to be miserable, whatsoever the
misery happens to be. A rich man has much more choice. The poor man has to
suffer in a limited way. The rich man suffers unlimitedly: he can suffer here, he
can suffer in New York, he can suffer in London, he can suffer in Peking. He has
the whole world to suffer in, and sooner or later he will be suffering on the
moon and Mars. He has more freedom, and freedom is good. If you are poor
you have to suffer one woman; if you are rich you have to suffer many women.
It opens doors.
So if you ask me, I will suggest that if you are trying to choose to live with
money or without, I would say to live with money. It will give you more
experience, it will bring you to God sooner because you will be tired sooner.
A poor man is never tired of money, remember, because he has no money. How
to be tired of something you dont have? A poor man always hankers and
desires and dreams about money. Only a rich man is finished with money. In
fact, that is the definition of a rich man: one who is finished with money, he is
the rich man. He has known, he has seen what money can give, and now he
would like to have something more that money can never give.
I am not saying money can give you God or peace or happiness, but there are
foolish people.

One mahatma came to see me a few years ago, and he said, I have renounced
money because through money you cannot have bliss.
But I said, Who told you, in the first place, that you will have bliss? Through
money you can have a beautiful house. Who told you that you will have bliss?
Who has told you that you will have happiness? You will have a big car.
There are foolish people who expect that through money bliss is going to
happen. Then they become disillusioned one day. Money is not wrong; their
illusion, their projection was wrong. Money is not at fault. If you go and try to
squeeze oil out of sand, and oil does not come out of it, will you say that the
sand is at fault? You were foolish, you were stupid. In the first place, who had
told you that by squeezing sand you would get oil?
Money cannot give you bliss, cannot give you peace, cannot give you God,
cannot give you paradise. But to come to know this, one has to have money.
Then you become clearly aware of what money can give and what money
cannot give.
When a person has known what money can give, his efforts start moving
beyond money, beyond the world. Money is a beautiful invention, one of the
most important inventions man has ever made, next only to language - the first
is language, the second is money. These are the two most important
foundations for civilization, society, culture.
I am not against it; I am simply saying what money can give and what money
cannot give. If you are thinking that by hoarding money, one day you will
suddenly become meditative, then you are a fool. Not by hoarding money are
you going to become meditative. And remember, not by renouncing money are
you going to become meditative. These are both foolish people. First they think
that through money they will get God, then one day they think that by
renouncing money they will get God - but in both cases they remain moneyoriented.
God has nothing to do with money. You can have God with as much money as
you want, and you can have God without money, as much without money as
you want. God has nothing to do with money. A rich man can become
meditative, a poor man can become meditative. But my understanding is this:
that if a poor man wants to become meditative, he will need tremendous
intelligence, because he will have to see the futility of money which he does
not have. He will need tremendous intelligence.
Kabir must have been tremendously intelligent - I think more intelligent than
Buddha and Mahavira. My reason for saying so is this: Buddha had money,
Mahavira had money. If they became fed up, it is simple, it is logical - it is as
simple as two plus two are four. If Buddha had not renounced the palace, then
it would have proved only one thing: that he was stupid. If he renounced, that
does not prove that he was very greatly intelligent, that simply proves an
average intelligence.

But Kabir, Christ, Mohammed, they are more intelligent people. They didnt
have money, they didnt have anything, and still they became aware that
money is useless. They didnt have a great kingdom, and without having it they
renounced it. They must have been very sharp people, tremendously alert.
They could see through things that they didnt have. Their transparency, their
clarity, was tremendous, incredible.
If a poor man wants to be religious, he will need great intelligence. If a rich man
wants to be religious, he needs only average intelligence. So, if a poor man
becomes religious, he is a great sage. And if a rich man does not become
religious, he is a fool, stupid.
The last question:
Osho,
Each day when I leave Chuang Tzu Auditorium, I see three white robes hanging
in the laundry room. Yet I never see you wearing more than one robe. I have a
suspicion that you are actually one of triplets. This would explain how you go
on contradicting yourself in successive lectures, and appear in more than one
place at the same time.
So, you have found it out! Now keep it a secret and dont tell it to anybody. It is
true, I have to confess. When you have found out, I have to confess. That is
true - I am a trinity, the trinity I was talking about: the father, the mother, the
son.
And yes, it is true. Thats why it is so easy for me to contradict myself:
sometimes the father is speaking, sometimes the mother, and sometimes the
son. You will find three rivers meeting in me. It is a sangam; it is a meeting
point of three rivers, a treveni, a trinity, a trimurti. I have three faces.
Thats why it is so easy for me to move through all the traditions - because
there are only three traditions in the world. Three is a very basic unit: the
father, the mother and the son. Thats why it will be difficult for you to make a
coherent philosophy out of my assertions. You will have to have great
intelligence to see the coherence; otherwise the contradiction is very obvious.
When I speak as a father, I speak as a father, authoritative. When I speak as a
mother, I speak as a mother, nonauthoritative, loving. When I am a father I
order you, command you; then I am a Moses with Ten Commandments. When I
am a mother I persuade you, I dont order you; then I am not a Moses, then I
am more like a Krishna. He persuades Arjuna, he persuades in a thousand and
one ways, very friendly, very lovingly. By and by, he brings him in. And when I
am the son I speak rebellion, revolution; then I speak as Christ, as Buddha.
And I am all three, and I would like you also to be all three. To be one is not to
be very rich. To be all three together is to be very rich.
And the very last question:

Osho,
What is this astonishing nonsense about you having no charisma?
True, it is astonishing and it is nonsense. How can it be - I, having no charisma?
But now things can be easy. Now you have understood the principle of the
trinity. And I told you that there are three types of master: the charismatic, the
methodical and the natural. The father is the charismatic, the mother is the
methodical, the son is the natural. The word natural comes from a root which
means out of birth.
Certainly so, you are right: it is amazing and it is nonsense. One of my parts is
charismatic, one of my parts is methodical, one of my parts is natural. And
thats how it should be. A perfect master should be all three, simultaneously.
So please, if I say something, now you can sort it out. You can have three
drawers, the father, the mother, the son, and you can go on collecting, and
everything will be sorted out, figured out easily, simply.
And dont ask me, Why did you say that one day? because you are not asking
the same person. And it is not so easy as it is in this anecdote. Let me tell you:
In Nathan Asubels Treasury of Jewish Folklore appears the story of a famous
preacher of Dubno whose driver stopped en route to a lecture date and said,
Rabbi, do me a favor. For once Id like to be the one receiving all the honors
and attention, to see what it feels like. For this one engagement, exchange
clothes with me. You be the driver, and let me be the rabbi.
The preacher, a merry and generous soul, laughed and said, Alright - but
remember, clothes dont make the rabbi. If you are asked to explain some
difficult passage of the Law, see that you dont make a fool of yourself.
The exchange was effected. Arrived at their destination, the bogus rabbi was
received with tumultuous enthusiasm, and obviously loved every minute of it.
Finally however, there came the dreaded moment when an extremely tricky
question was put to him. He met the test nobly.
A fine lot of scholars you are! he thundered. Is this the most difficult problem
you could ask me? Why, this is so simple, even my driver could explain it to
you! Then he called the preacher of Dubno: Driver, come here for a moment,
and clarify the Law for these dull-witted fellows.
This is not so easy for me - because when I am here the other two are not. I
cannot call, Come and explain this for me. So please, never raise any
questions about contradictions. Whatsoever I have said another day, it is
finished; I am finished with it. I dont look backwards, I go ahead.
And there is no need to worry about it. Whatsoever I am saying right now is the
truth. The present is the truth, the past is dead. All those assertions of the past
are dead. The next moment, again, the truth will have its own form. Then dont
carry this moment with you.

This is my whole teaching: not to carry the past and to just remain true to the
moment. Then there will be no contradiction. There is none - the contradictions
appear only because you are trained too logically, and I am an illogical person.
My whole logic is that of illogic. I am an irrationalist.
Yes, I am three, but please dont tell it to anybody.
Enough for today.

Chapter 9 - The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol. 3

[]
But everybody tries - Jews think they are the chosen race, that God has chosen
them specially; Hindus think they are the chosen race; Jainas think they are the
chosen ones. Buddha is rare. Buddha says there were millions of buddhas
before, countless. In fact, he has said that if you count the grains of sand in the
Ganges, there have been more than that many buddhas before, and there will
be more later on. This makes his own stature very ordinary, but this is his
beauty. Not to claim for any extraordinariness is what extraordinariness is. And
when you claim, when you claim you are superior, you are simply showing that
you suffer from an inferiority complex.
Now, Mohammed says there will be no prophet anymore. Why are you closing
the door? Now if somebody claims I am the prophet, Mohammedans will kill
him - because Mohammed has closed the door. But who is he to close the door?
The door belongs to nobody, or it belongs to all. How can he close it?
And why in the first place this idea? Mahavira thinks he is the last, Mohammed
thinks he is the last, Jesus thinks he is the last - then what do you mean by
this? You simply dont allow evolution, you dont allow any new idea to evolve.
You close the door, you make a closed dogma, so that nobody can disturb the
dogma
Buddha keeps all doors open: he says millions.. He remembers this gatha from
some past buddha, Kashyapabuddha was his name. He says, This gatha was
told by Kashyapabuddha.
Passions grow from the will, the will grows from thought and imagination: when
both are calmed, there is neither sensualism nor transmigration.
The will means the ego. The will means to fight against existence. Whenever
you see somebody fighting upstream, you say, He is the man of willpower.
What do you mean by willpower? All will is against existence. You fight with it.
You try to do something which is not in the nature of things. You try to force
something. If you are violent with nature, then you have will.
Many people come to me and they say, Osho, somehow help us to have more
willpower. Why? Am I your enemy? Should I help you to become more mad?
Willpower? But in the West, willpower is very important; because the whole
West thinks that to have a strong ego is a must, you should have willpower,
you should develop willpower. Thousands of books exist in the market on how

to develop willpower. And they are sold, because people want to be more and
more refined in their egos.
Buddha says: Passions grow from the will.desires grow from the will. The I, the
ego, is the root of your mind. Your whole mind is centered around the I, .the will
grows from thought and imagination.Thought comes from the past; imagination
means movement in the future. Whatsoever you have experienced, thought,
learned, that is your ego. And whatsoever you want to experience in your
future, would like to have in your future, is your will. These are two aspects of
the same phenomenon. .When both are calmed.when thought is no more
there.means when past is no more there, and when imagination, projection,
dreaming, future is no more there: .when both are calmed, there is neither
sensualism nor transmigration. Buddha says then all sensualism disappears;
then one is no more greedy for senses and the experience of the senses.
Remember: by the disappearance of sensualism he does not mean that your
sensitivity disappears; you become tremendously sensitive. A sensual person is
not a sensitive person; a sensual person is very gross, very rough, very
primitive. A sensitive person is very developed, highly developed; he is very
receptive. A sensual person is after pleasure, and the sensitive person is one
who knows bliss is here and he is open to it, and he goes on being showered by
the divine bliss. He soaks it up like a sponge. He is sensitive.
The sensual person is always after something, trying to achieve money, power,
prestige. The sensitive person is simply alive herenow, enjoying the beauty that
is available. When tomorrow comes then tomorrow will take care of itself.
Thats what Jesus means when he says, Think not of the morrow. Thats what
Jesus says when he shows to his disciples the lilies in the field and says, Look,
how beautiful they are. And they toil not. They are simply here; they dont
worry about what is going to happen tomorrow. Even Solomon, in all his glory,
was not so beautiful, says Jesus, as these poor flowers of the lilies.
A sensitive person is a flowerlike person, open to existence, enjoying it enjoying it tremendously - but not seeking anything. His search has dissolved.
He is not chasing anything.
I have heard:
A man lost everything at the casinos in Vegas. He tried every one in town and
each was a disaster. All he had left now was a Kennedy fifty-cent piece. He kept
tossing it in the air - a la George Raft - as he walked along the street trying to
figure out a way to get another stake, when his coin slipped out of his fingers
and fell into a grating in the middle of the street.
Our hero was after it like a shot, but before he could grab it he was hit by a taxi
and carried off to the hospital with a broken leg.
He was out in a couple of months, and with the settlement from the insurance
company he started back to the casinos. On the way, he limped past the same

grating where he had lost his coin. He started to look down to see if he could
find it when he was hit by another taxi, and he was back in the hospital with his
other leg broken.
How could you get knocked twice in exactly the same place? the nurse asked
him. I mean, what in the world made you go back to that stupid grating?
That was my good luck charm, he explained, and I didnt want to lose it.
People go on chasing, go on being hit every time. Their whole life becomes just
wounds and wounds and wounds, but again and again they go on chasing the
same things - as if they dont see what is happening to them.
A man of sensitivity remains wherever he is - and life seeks him. And a man of
sensuality rushes from here to there, from there to somewhere else, chasing
and chasing. And this is the beauty of the whole process: if you are chasing
God you will never meet him, because you dont know where he is. If you are
chasing happiness you will never meet it, because you dont know the
whereabouts, you dont even know the face of happiness - even if you come
across her, you will not be able to recognize her. The person who is sensitive
simply sits wherever he is and happiness comes to him, and bliss comes to
him, and God comes to him.
This is to be remembered: It is not only you who are seeking God - God is also
seeking you. And the case is such that he comes and knocks at your door, but
you are never there. You are somewhere else. He goes on knocking at your
door but you are never found there - because the door is in the present and
you are in the future or in the past.
The Buddha said:
From the passions arises worry, and from worry arises fear. Away with the
passions, and no fear, no worry.
Observe it. These are not theories. These are facts of life. Buddha is not a
theoretician, not a metaphysician - not at all. He is just a scientist of the basic
facts of life. He talks only about a fact. You need not believe in it, you have
simply to watch and you will find the truth of it.
He says: From passions arises worry. Whenever desire arises, worry arises:
How to get it? How to reach it? How to achieve? You are worried. When you are
worried there are a thousand and one alternatives. Then more worry arises:
Which will be the right alternative to reach to it? Which will be the right path?
And then fear arises: Whether you will be able to reach? There are so many
competitors in the world, and so many people have tried and failed. Look at
Alexander and Genghis Khan and Nadir Shah - and so many people have tried,
and tried so powerfully, tried so hard, and still they have failed. What is the
guarantee that you will succeed? Then fear arises. These are simple facts.
A man comes into a store to buy a suit. The salesman tries one jacket on him
after another. He says to the customer, Turn around, lets see it in this light;

now lets look at it in the rear-view mirror; now from this angle, now this angle.
Still the man asks to try on other jackets.
Finally the boss comes up to them and picks out a jacket. The customer puts it
on and buys it immediately. Says the boss, See how easy it is to make a sale?
Okay, says the salesman, you made the sale - but who made him dizzy?
Once a passion is there it will make you dizzy - worries, apprehensions - what
to choose, what not to choose, where to go, how to go, what will be the right
technique, the right method, the right approach? And then the fear: whether
you will be able to make it? A constant fear. One becomes dizzy.
Passion is the salesman. And then comes the devil: the boss. Then you are
thrown in hell. Desire makes you dizzy. And nobody can be certain, nobody.
I was reading a beautiful anecdote:
A junior devil has been sent to earth to look around and see how things are
progressing. He quickly returns to hell, horrified, and obtains an interview with
Beelzebub, the chief devil himself.
Sir, he sputters, something awful has happened! There is a man with a
beard walking around on earth, speaking truth, and people are beginning to
listen to him. Something has to be done immediately.
Beelzebub smiles pleasantly, puffing on his pipe but making no comment.
Sir! You dont realize the seriousness of the situation, continues the
distraught junior devil. Pretty soon all will be lost!
Beelzebub removes his pipe slowly, taps it out on the ashtray, and sits back in
his swivel chair, hands behind his head.
Dont worry, son, he counsels. We will let it go on a little longer and when it
has progressed far enough we will step in and help them to organize.
And once a religion is organized it is dead, because you can organize a religion
only when you compromise with the masses. You can organize a religion only
when you follow the desires of the common mass. You can organize a religion
only when you are ready to make it a politics and you are ready to lose its
religiousness.
A religion can be organized only when it is no more a religion. Thats to say: a
religion cannot be organized as religion. Organized, it is no more religion. A
religion basically remains unorganized, remains a little chaotic, remains a little
disorderly - because religion is freedom.
Now the sutras:
The Buddha said:
Those who are following the way should behave like a piece of timber which is
drifting along a stream. If the log is neither held by the banks, nor seized by

men, nor obstructed by the gods, nor kept in the whirlpool, nor itself goes to
decay, I assure you that this log will finally reach the ocean.
A very significant sutra. The first thing Buddha says: Surrender! The most basic
thing is: surrender to reality. The more you fight, the more you are in conflict
with it, the more you will create obstructions. The more you fight with reality,
the more you will be a loser. Of course, through fighting you can attain to the
ego, you can become a very strong ego, but your ego will be the hindrance.
Those who are following the way should behave like a piece of timber which is
drifting along a stream. They should be completely surrendered to the river of
life, completely surrendered to the river of existence. In deep surrender, the
ego disappears. And when the ego is not there, for the first time you become
aware of that which has always been there.
The ego functions as a blindfold on your eyes. The ego keeps you blind; it does
not allow you to see the truth. It creates too much smoke and the flame tends
to be lost in it. The ego is like too many dark clouds around the sun - the sun
gets lost. Not that those clouds can destroy the sun, but they can hide it.
Those who are following the way should behave like a piece of timber. they
should become driftwood. Have you watched a piece of timber moving in the
river? - with no idea of its own, not even trying to reach anywhere, not even
knowing where this river is going. If it moves north, the timber moves north. If
it moves south, the timber moves south. The timber is totally in tune with the
river. This tuning with the river is what surrender is all about.
But the idea of becoming a driftwood does not appeal. People come to me and
they say: Help us, Osho, to have more willpower. Help us to become more selfconfident. Why are we missing willpower? How can we have a stronger will?
Everybody!.if you watch inside yourself you will find the same desire hidden
there: how to have more willpower. Everybody wants to become omnipotent,
omniscient, omnipresent; everybody wants to become powerful. Somebody
wants to become powerful through having more money; of course, money
brings power. Somebody wants to have power by becoming a prime minister or
a president of a country; of course, politics brings power. Somebody wants to
become powerful by becoming virtuous, because virtue brings respectability.
Somebody wants to become powerful by becoming religious, because religion
gives you a halo of power, of divine forces. Somebody wants to gain power by
becoming more knowledgeable; knowledge is power. But it seems that
everybody wants to be powerful. This seems to be the ordinary desire of the
human mind.
And Buddha says: Become a driftwood. What does he mean? What does he
want to convey? He is saying: Drop this idea of becoming powerful. That is your
hindrance. Thats why you have become powerless. The very idea that I
should become powerful proves nothing but your impotence. All impotent
people want to become omnipotent; they would like to have all the power there
is in their hands - but why? Ego is an illness, a megalomania.

Buddha says: Become a driftwood - powerless, helpless. Watch timber going

down the stream: how helpless, no struggle, no conflict, simply cooperates. In
fact, to say cooperates is also not right. The driftwood is not there in any ego
sense, so there is no point in saying it cooperates. It has no conflict, it has no
cooperation. It is simply not there. Only the river is there. The timber is
completely surrendered. This is how a disciple should be. And when somebody
becomes so much surrendered, Buddha says he has become a srotapanna.
Srotapanna means one who has entered the stream.
In the East, the concept of surrender has been developed very minutely, in
details. But this example of driftwood is almost perfect; you cannot improve
upon it. Sometimes, sitting by the side of the river, watch timber flowing down.
See how peacefully, how relaxed, how very trusting the driftwood is. No doubt.
If the river is going south, it must be good to go to the south. None of its own
desire, no private goal - the rivers goal is my goal. The river is already going
towards the ocean. The river is going to dissolve into the vast infinity of the
ocean. If you can surrender to it, that will be enough.
Coming to a master and surrendering to a master is nothing but entering into
the stream. The master is one who is surrendered to the river of existence. It is
difficult for you to see the river of existence, it is very invisible. It is not
material, it is very immaterial. It is difficult to hold it in your hands, but when
you stand by the side of a buddha at least you can hold Buddhas hand. And he
has become a driftwood. He is floating in the river. You cannot see the river
right now; you dont have that much refined consciousness yet. Your eyes are
not yet ready to see that river. But you can see Buddha, you can hold his hand.
You can see Christ, you can hold his hand.
Buddha is surrendered to the infinite river of life. You can at least take courage
and be surrendered to Buddha. By surrendering to Buddha you will be
surrendering to the river to which Buddha is surrendered. A master is just a
midway passage, a door.
Thats why Jesus goes on saying again and again I am the door. Jesus is
reported to have said: Nobody achieves unless he passes through me.
Christians have misinterpreted it. They think nobody reaches to God unless one
follows Christ. That is not the meaning. When Jesus says: Nobody reaches
unless he passes through me, he is saying, unless he passes through one
who has already attained. He is not talking about Jesus the son of Mary and
Joseph; he is talking about Christ - not about Jesus. He is talking about a state
of consciousness.
Christ is the name of a state of consciousness. Buddha is also a name for a
state of consciousness. When somebody is enlightened, he is no more, he is
just a door. If you surrender to him you will be able to surrender in a
roundabout way, in an indirect way, to the stream of life itself.
To become a disciple means to be ready to float with the master. And if you can
float with a man, with a master, you will start enjoying, you will start

celebrating - because all anxiety will disappear, all anguish will disappear. And
then you will be ready to surrender totally.
First a little taste is needed. That taste can come through a master - the taste
of tao, the taste of dhamma, the taste of the way.
Those who are following the way should behave like a piece of timber which is
drifting along a stream. If the log is neither held by the banks.
Now, Buddha says, A few things have to be remembered. You should surrender,
surrender should be total, but there are a few obstacles which have to be
continuously watched.
If the log is neither held by the banks, nor seized by men, nor obstructed by
the gods, nor kept in the whirlpool, nor itself goes to decay, I assure you that
this log will finally reach the ocean.
Now, you can start clinging to the master. Rather than surrendering you can
start clinging - and both look alike, but the difference is vast. To cling to a
master is not surrendering to him. To cling to a master means you are still
clinging to your ego, because all clinging is of the ego.
Clinging is of the ego. To what you cling is immaterial. If you cling, then you are
trying to save yourself. I watch it. If I say to somebody to do this, if it is just
according to his desire he says, Osho, I am surrendered to you. Whatsoever
you say I will do. And if it is not according to his desire, then he never says, I
am surrendered to you. Then he says, It is difficult. And then he brings a
thousand and one reasons why he cannot do it. Now he is playing a game with
himself.
You cannot deceive me; you can only go on deceiving yourself. When it fits with
your desire, then you say, I am surrendered to you - whatsoever you say.
When it does not fit your desire, then you completely forget about surrender.
But the real question arises only when it doesnt fit with your desire. If you can
say yes, then too when your ordinary mind goes on saying no, then there is no
clinging, then it is real surrender. Otherwise, you can hide behind the master and that hiding itself can become a protection, a security.
A master is a danger. A master is insecurity personified. A master is an
adventure.
Buddha says:
I can .assure you that this log will finally reach the ocean .only if it is not held
by the banks, nor seized by men, nor obstructed by the gods.
Buddha does not believe in any gods. He says people who believe in gods are
only obstructed by their ideas; their very idea of God becomes their
obstruction. If somebody is obstructed by philosophies, dogmas, words,
theologies.

For example, a young woman came just two, three days ago, and she said to
me, I love you, Osho, but I am a disciple of Christ. You have helped me
tremendously. You have strengthened my religion. Whatsoever I used to
believe, now I believe more deeply. You have helped me tremendously. I have
come to give you my thanks.
Now, I am not here to strengthen your religion. I am not here to fulfill your
philosophies. If you think that I am strengthening your religion, then you must
be hearing something else than what I am saying.
Yes, I can bring you close to Christ, but the only way is if you go through me there is no other way. If you think you already know Christ, if you think that
your Christ is the right Christ, then Christ will become the barrier. How can you
interpret Christ? Two thousand years have passed, two thousand years of
misinterpretations are there; thousands of treatises, thousands of
interpretations - how can you interpret Christ now? Those interpretations will
never allow you.
A Protestant has a different idea of Christ; a Catholic again a different idea of
Christ; a Mohammedan has a totally different idea of Christ. From where will
you get your idea? Those ideas will be from the past. You will not attain to
Christ - because Christ is not a person who happened two thousand years
before. Christ is a state of consciousness which is always available for those
who really want to seek.
I say to you: My consciousness is a state of Christ. If you listen to me and still
you think that I am fulfilling your idea of Christ, you are missing me. If you have
understood what I am saying, then you will be able to see Christ in me immediately. Christ will become a presence - herenow. It has nothing to do with
the Christ who happened two thousand years ago. That was one man, Jesus,
coming to the state of christhood. Here is another man who has come to the
same state.
Now, you come and listen to me and you think I am here fulfilling your idea of
Christ? Your idea is bound to be your idea, it cannot be bigger than you, it
cannot be higher than you. It will be as foolish as you are. It will be as idiotic as
you are. It will be as dull and stupid as you are. It will be as ignorant as you are.
Your idea is, of course, bound to be your idea.
I am not here fulfilling your ideas. I am not helping you to become better
Christians and better Hindus and better Mohammedans. I am trying to drop all
obstacles from your path so you can become that which you are. If you can
flower to your totality you will be a christ, you will be a buddha.
But there are obstacles, Buddha says, sometimes the banks, sometimes men
around you, sometimes the gods, the philosophies, theologies. Sometimes your
minds own whirlpool. And sometimes you yourself can go to decay. If you are
not alert and intelligent, you are already decaying, you are already dying.
Every day your intelligence becomes more and more dull. Watch a child: how

intelligent, how fresh! And watch an old man: how dull, rigid, dead. Every
moment intelligence is slipping by, life is getting out of your hands.
So Buddha says these things have to be remembered. If these things are
remembered and you are not caught by anything, just surrender to the stream
and the stream will take you to the ocean.
If monks walking on the way are neither tempted by the passions, nor led
astray by some evil influences, but steadily pursue their course for nirvana, I
assure you that these monks will finally attain enlightenment.
If monks walking on the way are neither tempted by the passions. because the
passions are of the body, the passions are of the senses. They are very stupid.
People come to me and they say, What to do, Osho? I go on eating too much, I
go on stuffing myself, I cannot stop. The whole day I am thinking about food.
Now the person who is saying this is simply saying that he has lost all
intelligence. Food is needed, but food is not the goal. You need food to exist,
but there are many people who exist only to eat more and more and more.
Somebody is continuously obsessed with sex. Nothing is wrong with sex, but
obsession is always wrong. With what you are obsessed is not the question obsession is wrong, because then it starts draining your energy. Then you are
continuously moving in a whirlpool of your own making and you go on round
and round and round, and you waste your energy. And one day suddenly you
find death has come and you have not lived at all, you have not known even
what life is. You have been alive and yet you have not known what life is. You
have been here and yet you dont know who you are. What a wastage. And
what a disrespectful way of living. I call it sacrilege against existence.
It is good to eat, it is good to love, but if you are eating twenty-four hours a day
you are mad. There is a balance. When the balance is lost, then you are falling
below human standards.
If monks walking on the way are neither tempted by the passions. Temptation
is there, and it will be greater when you start walking on the path. Ordinarily it
may not be so, but when you start walking on the path the body will struggle.
Thats how it happens.
People who have come to meditate here, they were never aware that they were
obsessed with food. Meditating, suddenly one day a great obsession arises
about food. They feel continuously hungry; they are surprised because it has
never been so. What has happened? .out of meditation? Yes, it can happen out
of meditation, because when you are moving in meditation the body starts
feeling you are going distant, you are going away. The body starts tempting
you. The body will not allow you to become a master.
The body has remained master for many, many lives. You have been a slave.
Now suddenly you are trying to change the whole state, you are trying to make
the slave the master, and the master the slave. You are trying to stand on your

head - to the body it looks exactly like that, that you are turning things upside
down. The body revolts, the body fights, the body resists, the body says, I will
not allow you so easily.
The mind starts fighting! When the body starts fighting you will feel a great
obsession for food arising in you. And when the mind starts fighting, you will
feel a great obsession with sex arising in you. Sex and food, these two are
going to be the problems. These are the two basic passions.
The body lives out of food. When you start moving in meditation the body
wants more food to become more strong so it can fight you more. The body
wants all strength now so that it can resist the aggression that has come upon
it. The effort that you are making to conquer it, to become a master of it, has to
be destroyed. The body needs all energy that is possible. The body becomes
mad in eating.
The body survives because of food, and when the survival is at stake the body
starts eating madly. The mind exists through sex. Why does the mind exist
through sex? Because the mind exists by projecting in the future; the mind is a
projection in the future. Let me explain it to you.
You are a projection of your mothers and fathers sexuality. Your children will
be your projection in the future. If you dont eat you will die. If you drop
sexuality your children will never be born. So two things are clear: if you drop
sexuality, nothing is at stake as far as you are concerned, you will not die by
dropping sexuality. Nobody has ever been heard to die by becoming celibate.
You can live perfectly well. Only if you drop food you will die - within three
months.at the most you can survive three months if you are perfectly healthy,
then you will die. Dropping food will be death to you. Dropping sex has nothing
to do with you. Maybe your children will never be born; that will be a death to
them - death before they are even born - but not death to you.
Through sex the race survives; through food, the individual. So the body is
concerned only with food. This body is concerned only with food, but your mind
is concerned with sex - because only through sex, the mind thinks, will it have a
sort of immortality. You will die, that seems certain. You cannot deceive everybody some day is dying. And every time the bell tolls it tolls for thee.
Every time death happens, you become shaken: your own death is coming
close by. It will come. It is only a question of time, but it is to come; there is no
way to escape from it. And wherever you escape to, you will find it waiting for
you.
I have heard a very famous story, a Sufi story:
A king dreamt. In the night in his dream he saw Death. He became afraid. He
asked, What is the matter? Why are you making me so frightened?
Death said, I have come to tell you that tomorrow by sunset I am coming, so
get ready. It is just out of compassion so that you can prepare.

The king was so shocked, his sleep was broken. It was the middle of the night;
he called his ministers and he said, Find people who can interpret the dream
because time is short. Maybe it is true!
Then the interpreters came, but as interpreters always have been, they were
great scholars. They brought many big books and they started discussing and
disputing and arguing. And the sun started rising, and it was morning. And an
old man, who was a very trusted servant to the king, he came to the king and
he whispered in his ear, Dont be foolish! These people will quarrel for ever
and ever, and they will never come to any conclusion.
Now, everybody was trying that his interpretation was right, and the king was
more confused than ever. So he asked the old man, Then what am I supposed
to do?
He said, Let them continue their discussions. They are not going to conclude
so soon - and the sun will be setting, because once it has risen the sunset is
not very far. Rather, take my advice and escape - at least escape from this
palace. Be somewhere else! By the evening reach somewhere as far away as
possible.
The logic looked right. The king had a very fast horse, the fastest in the world.
He rushed, he escaped. Hundreds of miles he passed. By the time he reached a
certain town the sun was just about to set. He was very happy. He patted his
horse and he said, You did well. We have come very far.
And when he was patting his horse, suddenly he felt somebody was standing
behind him. He looked back - the same shadow of Death. And Death started
laughing. The king said, What is the matter? Why are you laughing?
Death said, I was worried because you were destined to die under this tree and I was worried how you would manage to reach.
Your horse is really great. It did well. Let me also pat your horse. Thats why I
came in your dream: I wanted you to escape from the palace because I was
very worried how it would happen, how you would be able to reach. The place
looked so far away, and only one day was left. But your horse did well, you
have come in time.
Wherever you go you will find death waiting for you. In all the directions death
is waiting. In all the places death is waiting, so that cannot be avoided. Then
mind starts imagining some way to avoid it.
First it spins philosophies that the soul is immortal, that the body will die - I
am not going to die. You are even more fragile than the body. This ego that
thinks I will not die is more flimsy, more dreamlike than the body. The body is
at least real; this ego is absolutely unreal. So you spin philosophies: The soul
will never die - I will remain in heaven, in paradise, in moksha. But deep down
you know that these are just words, they dont satisfy.

Then you find some other way: to earn money, make a great monument, a
great palace - do something historical, leave a place in history. But that too
seems to be meaningless. In such a big history, even if you make all the efforts
you will become only a footnote, nothing much. And what is the point of
becoming a footnote in a history book? You will be gone all the same; whether
people remember you or not does not matter. In fact, who bothers to
remember? Ask schoolchildren who have to read history: the great kings.and
they must have made great effort somehow to enter into the history books, and
now children are just not bothered at all. They condemn. They are not happy
that these great kings existed. They would have been more happy if nobody
had existed and there was no history to be read and crammed. So what is the
point?
Then the mind has a very subtle idea. The idea is: I will die but my children
can live; my child will be my representative. He will live and somehow, deep
down in him; I will live, because he will be my extension. It will be your sex cell
that will live in your child - in your son, in your daughter. Of course, then sons
became more important, because the daughter will move into somebody elses
life-stream, and the son will continue your life-stream. The son became very
important; he will be your continuity. And the mind starts getting obsessed with
sex, goes mad with sex.
Whenever you come closer to meditation, these two things are going to
happen: you will start stuffing yourself with food and you will start stuffing
yourself with sexuality - and you will start becoming a maniac.
Buddha says: If monks walking on the way are neither tempted by the
passions, nor led astray by some evil influences, but steadily pursue their
course for nirvana, I assure you that these monks will finally attain
enlightenment
You have to be alert not to be distracted by your passions, not to be distracted
from the way, not to be distracted from your meditation. Whatsoever the cause
of distraction, it has to be avoided. You have to bring your energy again and
again to your innermost core. You have to make yourself again and again
relaxed, surrendered, non-tense.
The Buddha said:
Rely not on your own will. Your own will is not trustworthy. Guard yourselves
against sensualism, for it surely leads to the path of evil. Your own will becomes
trustworthy only when you have attained arhatship.
This is a very significant statement. Buddha never said that you need a master,
but in a subtle way he has to concede it - because a master is needed.
Buddha was against masters, because the country was so cheated, exploited in
the name of guru-disciple relationship. There were so many charlatans and
frauds - there have always been and there will always be. And Buddha was very
much worried about it, that people were being exploited, so he said there is no
need for anyone to become anybodys disciple. But how can he avoid a very

basic thing? There may be ninety-nine percent frauds - that doesnt matter.
Even if one right master exists, he can be of tremendous help.
So in a very indirect way, in a roundabout way, Buddha concedes. He says:
Rely not upon your own will.. He says: If you rely upon your own will you will
never reach anywhere. Your own will is so weak. Your own will is so
unintelligent. Your own will is so divided into itself. You dont have one will; you
have many wills in you. You are a crowd.
Gurdjieff used to say you dont have one I, you have many small Is, and
those Is go on changing. For a few minutes one I becomes the sovereign,
and then it is thrown out of power; another I becomes the sovereign. And you
can watch it. It is a simple fact. It has nothing to do with any theory.
You love a person, and you are so loving. One I dominates: the I that loves.
Then something goes wrong and you hate the person - in a single moment love
has turned into hatred. Now you want to destroy the person - at least, you start
thinking how to destroy the person. Now the hatred has come in: another I
which is totally different is on the throne.
You are happy, you have another I. You are unhappy, again.it goes on changing.
Twenty-four hours, day in, day out, your Is go on changing. You dont have one
I.
Thats why it happens that you can decide tonight: Tomorrow morning I will
get up at three oclock. Whatsoever happens, I am going to get up. You fix the
alarm and at three oclock you stop the alarm and you are annoyed by the
alarm. And you think, One day - what does it matter? Tomorrow. and you go
to sleep. And again when you get up at eight oclock in the morning you are
angry at yourself. You say, How could it happen? I had decided to get up. How
did I continue to sleep?
These are two different Is: the one I that decided and the one I that was
annoyed with the alarm are different Is. Maybe the first I is again back in the
morning and repents. You become angry and then you repent. These are two
different Is - they never meet. They dont know what the other is doing. The I
that creates anger goes on creating anger, and the I that repents goes on
repenting - and you never change.
Gurdjieff used to say that unless you have a permanent, crystallized I you
should not trust yourself. You are not one, you are a crowd: you are
polypsychic.
Thats what Buddha says: Rely not upon your own will. Then on whom to rely?
Rely on somebody who has a will, who has an integral I, who has attained, who
has become one in his being, is no longer divided, who is really an individual.
Rely not upon your own will. Your own will is not trustworthy. Guard yourselves
against sensualism, for it surely leads to the path of evil. Your own will
becomes trustworthy only when you have attained arhatship. When you have

come to know who you are, when you have become a realized soul, when the
enlightenment has happened, then your I becomes trustworthy - never before
it. But then there is no point. Then you have come home. It is of no use now.
When there was need it was not there. So you need somebody to whom you
can surrender, you need somebody with whom trust can arise in you. That is
the whole relationship of a master and a disciple.
The disciple has yet no will of his own, and the master has. The disciple is a
crowd and the master is one unity. The disciple surrenders. He says, I cannot
trust myself, hence I will trust you. Trusting the master, by and by, the
disciples crowd inside disappears.
Thats why I say that when I tell you to do something and you want to do it, and
you do it, it is meaningless - because it is still according to your I, your will.
When I say to do something and it is against you, and you surrender and you
say yes, then you are moving, then you are growing, then you are becoming
mature. Then you are coming out of the mess that you have been up to now.
Only by saying no to your mind do you say yes to the master.
Many times I simply say that which you would like, because I dont see that you
will be able to do that which I like. I have to persuade you slowly. You are not
ready to take a sudden jump. First, I say: change your clothes, then I start
changing your body. Then I start changing your mind.
People come to me and they say, Why should we change clothes? What is the
point? They are not even ready to change their clothes; more cannot be
expected of them. They say they are ready to change their souls, but they are
not ready to change their clothes - look at the absurdity of it. But with the soul
there is one thing: it is invisible, so nobody knows.
But I can see your soul, I can see where you are standing and what you are
talking about; I can see through your rationalizations. You say, What is there in
clothes? but that is not the question. I also know there is nothing in the
clothes, but still I say, change. I would like you to do something according to
me, not according to you. Thats a beginning.
Then, by and by, first I take hold of your finger, then your hand - mm? - then of
your totality. You say, Why are you holding my finger? What is the point of
holding my finger? I know what the point is - that is the beginning. I have to
go very slowly. If you are ready, then there is no need to go slow, then I can
also go in a sudden leap, but people are not ready.
Buddha says: Rely not upon your own will. Your will is not trustworthy.
Find out a person in whose presence you feel something has happened. Find
out a person in whose presence you feel a fragrance of the divine, in whose
presence you feel a coolness, in whose presence you feel love, compassion, in
whose presence you feel a silence - unknown, inexperienced, but it surrounds
you, overwhelms you. Then surrender to that person. Then, by and by, he will
bring you to the point where surrender will not be needed - you will realize your

own innermost core of being, you will become an arhat. The arhat is the final
stage of enlightenment.
You become yourself only when all the selves that you have been carrying all
along are dissolved. You become yourself only when there is really no self left
but a pure nothingness. Then the circle is complete. You have come to the
ultimate nothingness, fully aware. You have become a witness of the whole
play of life, existence, consciousness.
This state is possible if you dont create obstacles. This state is certainly
possible if you avoid obstacles. I can also assure you that if you become a
driftwood and dont cling to the banks, and dont get attached to whirlpools,
and dont start decaying in your unawareness, you are sure, absolutely sure, to
reach the ocean.
That ocean is the goal. We come from that ocean and we have to reach to that
ocean. The beginning is the end - and when the circle is complete there is
perfection, there is wholeness, there is bliss and benediction.
Enough for today.

Chapter 10 - The Empty Bota

[]
Thats why Sufis always talk of wine, Sufis always talk of women. Their woman
is not the woman you know - God is the woman. And their wine is not the wine
that you know - God is the wine. Omar Khayyam has been misunderstood,
tremendously misunderstood; because of Fitzgerald he has been
misunderstood all over the world. Omar Khayyams Rubaiyat appears to be
written as if in praise of wine and women, not at all. Omar Khayyam is a Sufi, a
mystic. He talks of the wine which comes through Tao; he talks of this wine in
which you are lost forever and forever. This intoxicant, this divine intoxicant, is
not temporary, it is non-temporal, it is not momentary - it is eternal.
Sufis talk of God as the woman. Then the embrace is eternal, it is ultimate;
then there is no separation. If you can understand this then you are intelligent,
but not through your strategies, cunningness, arithmetic, your logic.
If you can, look deep into existence. From where have you come? Where are
you going? With whom are you fighting, and why? These same moments that
you are losing in fighting can become ecstatic.
Now look at the sutra: Wholeness.
You think of yourself as the individual. You are wrong. Only the whole exists.
This is false, this appearance, that I think I am. This is the most false thing in
the world. And because of this I am, fight arises. If I am, then this whole seems
inimical; then everything seems to be against me.
It is not that anything is against you - it cannot be! These trees have helped
you, this sky has helped, this water has helped, this earth has created you.

Then nature is your mother. How can the mother be against you? You have
come out of her. But you think of I as an individual, and then the fight arises. It
is one-sided. You start the fight, and nature goes on laughing, existence goes
on enjoying. Even in a small child, the moment he starts feeling I, the fight
arises.
In a supermarket, a small child was insisting on a toy. The mother said
positively, No, I am not going to purchase it. You have got enough.
The child got angry and said, Mum, I have never seen a meaner girl than you,
you are the meanest.
The mother looked at the child, at his face, the anger, and she said, Just wait,
you will certainly meet a really mean girl. Just wait!
In one house, the mother was insisting that the child do his homework. He was
not listening and went on playing with his toys, so she said, Are you listening
to me or not?
The child looked up and said, Who do you think I am - Daddy?
Only a small child, and the fighting starts - the ego has arisen. He knows Daddy
can be silenced, but not him. The moment the child feels he is separate the
natural unity is broken, and then his whole life becomes a struggle and a fight.
Western psychology insists that the ego should be strengthened. That is the
difference between the Eastern attitude and the Western. Western psychology
insists that the ego should be strengthened; the child must have a strong ego,
he must fight, struggle; only then will he be mature.
The child is in the mothers womb, one with the mother, not even aware that
he is - he is, but without any consciousness. In a deeper sense all
consciousness is illness. Not that he is unconscious - he is aware. His being is
there, but without any self-consciousness. The am is there, but the I has not
been born yet. The child feels, lives, is fully alive, but never feels that he is
separate. The mother and the child are one.
Then the child is born. The first separation happens, and the first cry. Now he is
moving, the wave is moving away from the ocean. Western psychologists say:
we will train the child to be independent, to be individual. Jungs psychology is
known as the way of individuation. He must become an individual, absolutely
separate. He must fight. Thats why, in the West, there is so much rebellion in
the new generation. This rebellion was not created by the new, younger
generation; this rebellion was created by Freud, Jung, Adler and company. They
have provided the basis.
Fight will give you a stronger ego. It will shape you. So fight the mother, fight
the father, fight the teacher, fight the society. Life is a struggle. And Darwin
started the whole trend when he said only the fittest survive; the survival of the
fittest. The stronger you are in your ego, the more likely you will survive.

The West lives through politics, the East has a totally different attitude - and
Tao is the core, the very essence of the Eastern consciousness. It says: No
individuality, no ego, no fight; become one with the mother; there is no enemy,
the question is not of conquering.
Even a man, a very knowledgeable man, a very penetrating, logical man like
Bertrand Russell, thinks in terms of conquest - conquering nature, the conquest
of nature. Science seems to be a struggle, a fight with nature: how to break the
lock, how to open the secrets, how to grab the secrets from nature.
Eastern consciousness is totally different. Eastern consciousness says: Ego is
the problem, dont make it stronger, dont create any fight. And not the fittest
but the humblest survive.
Thats why I insist again and again that Jesus is from the East; thats why he
could not be understood in the West. The West has misunderstood him. The
East could have understood him because the East knows Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu,
Buddha, and Jesus belongs to them. He says: Those who are last will be the
first in my kingdom of God. The humblest, the meekest, will possess the
kingdom of God. Poor in spirit is the goal. Who is poor in spirit? The empty boat,
he who is not at all - no claim on anything, no possession of anything, no self.
He lives as an absence.
Nature gives her secrets. There is no need to grab, there is no need to kill,
there is no need to break the lock. Love nature, and nature gives you her
secrets. Love is the key. Conquering is absurd.
So what has happened in the West? This conquering has destroyed the whole
of nature. Now there is a cry for ecology, how to balance. We have destroyed
nature completely, because we have broken all the locks and we have
destroyed the whole balance. And now through that imbalance humanity will
die sooner or later.
Chuang Tzu can be understood now, because he says: Dont fight with nature.
Be in such deep love, become so one that through love, from heart to heart,
the secret is given. And the secret is that you are not the individual, you are
the whole. Why be satisfied with just being a part? Why not be the whole? Why
not possess the whole universe? Why possess small things?
Ramateertha used to say, When I close my eyes I see stars moving within me,
the sun rising within me, the moon rising within me. I see oceans and skies. I
am the vast, I am the whole universe.
When he went to the West for the first time and started saying these things,
people thought he had gone crazy. Somebody asked him, Who created the
world?
He said, I, it is within me.
This I is not the ego, not the individual; this I is the universe, existence.

He looks crazy. This claim looks too much. But look in his eyes: there is no ego.
He is not asserting anything, he is simply stating a fact.
You are the world. Why be a part, a tiny part, and why unnecessarily create
trouble when you can be the whole?
This sutra is concerned with wholeness. Dont be the individual, be the whole.
Dont be the ego. When you can become the divine, why be satisfied with such
a small, tiny, ugly thing?
How does the true man of Tao
walk through walls without obstruction
and stand in fire without being burned?
Somebody asked Chuang Tzu, We have heard that a man of Tao can walk
through walls without obstruction. Why? If you dont have any obstruction
within you, no obstruction can obstruct you. This is the rule. If you have no
resistance within you, in your heart, the whole world is open for you. There is
no resistance. The world is just a reflection, it is a big mirror; if you have
resistance, then the whole world has resistance.
It happened once. A king built a palace, a palace made of millions of mirrors all the walls were covered with mirrors. A dog entered the palace and he saw
millions of dogs all around. So, being a very intelligent dog, he started barking
to protect himself from the millions of dogs all around him. His life was in
danger. He must have become tense, he started barking. And when he started
barking, those millions of dogs started barking too.
In the morning the dog was found dead. There he was, alone, there were only
mirrors. Nobody was fighting with him, nobody was there to fight, but he looked
at himself in the mirror and became afraid. And when he started fighting, the
mirror reflection also started fighting. He was alone, with millions and millions
of dogs around. Can you imagine the hell he lived through that night?
[]

Chapter 8 - My Way: The Way of the White Clouds

The first question:
Osho
I feel that through developing an attitude of endurance toward difficulties, I
have become resigned to much of life. This resignation feels like a weight
pushing against my effort to become more alive in meditation. Does this mean
that I have suppressed my ego, and that I must find it again before I can really
lose it?
It is one of the greatest problems. It will appear very paradoxical, but this is
true - before you can lose your ego, you must attain it. Only a ripe fruit falls to
the ground. Ripeness is all. An unripe ego cannot be thrown, cannot be
destroyed. And if you struggle with an unripe ego to destroy and dissolve it, the

whole effort is going to be a failure. Rather than destroying it, you will find it
more strengthened, in new and subtle ways.
This is something basic to be understood - the ego must come to a peak, it
must be strong, it must have attained an integrity - only then can you dissolve
it. A weak ego cannot be dissolved. And this becomes a problem.
In the East all the religions preach egolessness. So in the East everybody is
against the ego from the very beginning. Because of this anti attitude, ego
never becomes strong, never comes to a point of integration from where it can
be thrown. It is never ripe. So in the East it is very difficult to dissolve the ego,
almost impossible.
In the West the whole Western tradition of religion and psychology propounds,
preaches, persuades people to have strong egos - because unless you have a
strong ego, how can you survive? Life is a struggle; if you are egoless you will
be destroyed. Then who will resist? Who will fight? Who will compete? And life
is a continuous competition. Western psychology says: Attain to the ego, be
strong in it.
But in the West it is very easy to dissolve the ego. So whenever a Western
seeker reaches an understanding that ego is the problem he can easily dissolve
it, more easily than any Eastern seeker. This is the paradox - in the West ego is
taught, in the East egolessness is taught. But in the West it is easy to dissolve
the ego, in the East it is very difficult.
This is going to be a hard task for you, first to attain and then to lose - because
you can lose only something which you possess. If you dont possess it, how
can you lose it? You can be poor only if you are rich. If you are not rich your
poverty cannot have that beauty which Jesus goes on preaching: Be poor in
spirit. Your poverty cannot have that significance which Gautam Buddha has
when he becomes a beggar.
Only a rich man can become poor, because you can lose only that which you
have. If you have never been rich, how can you be poor? Your poverty will be
just on the surface, it can never be in the spirit. On the surface you will be
poor, and deep down you will be hankering after riches. Your spirit will hanker
after riches, it will be an ambition, it will be a constant desire to attain riches.
Only on the surface will you be poor. And you may even console yourself by
saying that poverty is good.
But you cannot be poor - only a rich man, a really rich man, can be poor. Just to
have riches is not enough to be really rich. You may still be poor. If the ambition
is still there, you are poor. What you have is not the point. If you have enough
then the desire disappears. When you have enough riches the desire
disappears. Disappearance of the desire is the criterion of enoughness. Then
you are rich - you can drop it, you can become poor, you can become a beggar
like Buddha. And then your poverty is rich; then your poverty has a kingdom of
its own.

The same happens with everything. The Upanishads or Lao Tzu or Jesus or
Buddha - they all teach that knowledge is useless. Just getting more and more
knowledgeable is not much help. Not only is it not much help, it can become a
barrier. Knowledge is not needed, but that doesnt mean you should remain
ignorant. This ignorance will not be real. When you have gathered enough
knowledge and you throw it, then ignorance is attained. Then you really
become ignorant - like Socrates who can say: I know only one thing, that I
dont know anything. This knowledge, or this ignorance - you can call it
whatever you like - is totally different, the quality is different, the dimension
has changed.
If you are simply ignorant because you have never attained to any knowledge
your ignorance cannot be wise, it cannot be wisdom - it is simply absence of
knowledge. And the hankering will be inside: How to gain more knowledge?
How to gain more information?
When you know too much - you have known the scriptures, you have known
the past, the tradition, you have known all that can be known - then suddenly
you become aware of the futility of it all. Suddenly you become aware that this
is not knowledge, this is borrowed. This is not your own existential experience,
this is not what you have come to know. Others may have known it, you have
simply gathered it. Your gathering is mechanical; it has not arisen out of you, it
is not a growth. It is just rubbish gathered from other doors, borrowed, dead.
Remember, knowing is alive only when you know, when it is your immediate,
direct experience. But when you know from others it is just memory, not
knowledge. Memory is dead. When you gather much - the riches of knowledge,
scriptures, all around you, libraries condensed in your mind, and suddenly you
become aware that you are just carrying the burden of others. Nothing belongs
to you, you have not known - then you can drop it, you can drop all this
knowledge. In that dropping a new type of ignorance arises within you. This
ignorance is not the ignorance of the ignorant, this is how a wise man is, how
wisdom is.
Only a wise man can say: I dont know. But in saying that he doesnt know, he
is not hankering after knowledge, he is simply stating a fact. And when you can
say with your total heart: I dont know, in that very moment your eyes
become open, the doors of knowing are open. In that very moment when you
can say with your totality that you dont know, you have become capable of
knowledge. This ignorance is beautiful, but it is attained through knowledge. It
is poverty attained through richness. And the same happens with ego - you can
lose it if you have it.
When Buddha comes down from his throne, becomes a beggar - what is the
necessity for Buddha? He was a king, enthroned, at the peak of his ego - why
this extreme, moving down from his palace to the streets, becoming a beggar?
But Buddha has a beauty in his begging. The earth has never known such a
beautiful beggar, such a rich beggar, such a kingly beggar, such an emperor.

What happened when he stepped down from his throne? He stepped down
from his ego. Thrones are nothing but symbols, symbols of the ego, of power,
prestige, status. He stepped down and then egolessness happened. This
egolessness is not humbleness; this egolessness is not humility. You may find
many humble people, but under their humility subtle egos are functioning.
It is said that once Diogenes came to visit Socrates. Diogenes lived like a
beggar; he always wore dirty clothes with many patches and holes. Even if you
presented him with a new dress he would not use it - first he would make it
dirty, old, torn, and then he would use it. He came to visit Socrates, and he
started talking about egolessness. But Socrates penetrating eyes must have
come to realize that this man was not an egoless man. The way he was talking
about humility was very egoistic. Socrates is reported to have said: Through
your dirty clothes, through the holes in your clothes, I cannot see anything else
but the ego. You talk of humility, but that talk comes from a deep center of the
ego.
This will happen, this is how hypocrisy happens. You have the ego, you hide it
through the opposite; you become humble on the surface. This surface
humbleness cannot deceive anyone. It may deceive you, but it cannot deceive
anyone else. From the holes of the dirty dresses your ego goes on peeping. It is
always there. This is a self-deception and nothing more. Nobody else is
deceived. This happens if you start throwing the unripe ego.
What I teach will look contradictory but it is true to life. Contradiction is
inherent in life. So I teach you to be egoists so that you can become egoless. I
teach you to be perfect egoists. Dont hide it, otherwise hypocrisy will be born.
And dont struggle with the unripe phenomenon. Let it ripen - and help it, bring
it to a peak. Dont be afraid - there is nothing to be afraid of. This is how you
will come to realize the agony of the ego. When it comes to its peak, then you
will not need a Buddha or me to tell you that the ego is hell. You will know it,
because the peak of the ego will be the peak of your hellish experiences, it will
be a nightmare. And then there is no need for anybody to tell you to drop it. It
will be difficult to carry it on.
One reaches to knowledge only through suffering. You cannot throw anything
just by logical argument. You can throw something only when it has become so
painful that it cannot be carried any further. Your ego has not become that
painful yet - hence you carry it. It is natural. I cannot persuade you to drop it.
Even if you feel persuaded you will hide it, thats all.
Nothing unripe can be thrown. Unripe fruit clings to the tree and the tree clings
to the unripe fruit. If you force it to separate, a wound is left behind. And that
scar will continue, the wound will always remain green and you will always feel
hurt. Remember, everything has a time to grow, to be ripe, to fall down into the
earth and dissolve. Your ego also has a time. It needs maturity.
So dont be afraid of being egoists. You are, otherwise you would have
disappeared long ago - you could not exist. This is the mechanism of life: you

have to be egoists, you have to fight your way, you have to fight with so many
millions of desires around you, you have to struggle, you have to survive.
Ego is a survival measure. If a child is born without the ego he will die. He
cannot survive, it is impossible, because if he feels hunger he will not feel: I am
hungry. He will feel there is hunger, but not related to him. The moment hunger
is felt, the child feels: I am hungry. He starts crying and making efforts to be
fed. The child grows through the growth of his ego.
So to me, ego is part of natural growth. But that doesnt mean that you have to
remain with it forever. It is a natural growth, and then there is a second step
when it has to be dropped. That too is natural. But the second step can be
taken only when the first has come to its crescendo, its climax, when the first
has reached its peak.
So I teach both: I teach ego-ness and I teach egolessness.
First be egoists, perfect egoists, absolute egoists, as if the whole of existence
exists for you and you are the center; all the stars revolve around you and the
sun rises for you; everything exists for you, just to help you to be here. Be the
center, and dont be afraid, because if you are afraid then you will never be
ripe. Accept it. It is part of growth. Enjoy it and bring it to a peak.
When it comes to a peak, suddenly you will become aware that you are not the
center. This has been a fallacy, this has been a childish attitude. But you were a
child, so nothing is wrong in it. Now you have become mature, and now you see
that you are not the center.
Really, when you see that you are not the center, you also see there is no
center in existence - or everywhere is the center. Either there is no center and
existence exists as a totality, a wholeness without any center as a control
point, or every single atom is a center.
Jacob Bohme has said that the whole world is filled with centers, every atom is
a center, and there is no circumference - centers everywhere and
circumference nowhere. These are the two possibilities. Both mean the same,
only the wording is different and contradictory. But first become a center.
It is like this: you are in a dream; if the dream comes to a peak it will be broken.
Always it happens - whenever a dream comes to a climax it is broken. And what
is the climax of a dream? The climax of a dream is the feeling that this is real.
You feel this is real, not a dream, and you go on and on and on and on to a
higher peak and the dream becomes almost real. It can never become real; it
becomes almost real. It comes so close to reality that now you cannot go
further, because one step more and the dream will become real - and it cannot
become real because it is a dream. When it comes so close to reality sleep is
broken, the dream is shattered, you are fully awake.
The same happens with all types of fallacies. Ego is the greatest dream. It has
its beauty, its agony. It has its ecstasy, its agony. It has its heavens and hells,

both are there. Dreams are sometimes beautiful and sometimes nightmares,
but both are dreams.
So I dont tell you to come out of your dream before the time has come. No,
never do anything before the time. Allow things to grow, allow things to have
their time so that everything happens naturally. Ego will drop. It can drop of its
own accord also. If you simply allow it to grow and help it to grow, there will be
no need to drop it.
This is very deep, because if you drop it, ego has remained inside. Who will
drop it? If you think you will drop it you are the ego, so whatsoever you drop
will not be the real thing. The real thing will be preserved and you will have
thrown something else. You cannot make yourself egoless. Who will do it? It
happens, it is not a doing. You grow into ego and a point comes when the whole
thing becomes so hellish that the dream is broken. Suddenly you see the goose
is out - it has never been in the bottle. You have never been an ego. It was just
a dream around you. A necessary dream, I say, so I dont condemn it - it is a
necessary part of growth.
In life everything is necessary. Nothing is unnecessary, nothing can be
unnecessary. Whatsoever has happened had to happen. Whatsoever is
happening is happening because of certain deep causes. You need it to remain
in the fallacy. It is just a cocoon that helps you, protects you, helps you to
survive. But one need not be in the cocoon forever. When you are ready break
the cocoon, come out. The ego is the shell of the egg, it protects you. But when
you are ready, break the shell, come out of the egg. The ego is the shell. But
wait. Hurry will not be of much help; haste will not help - it may hinder. Allow
time, and dont condemn it - because who will condemn it?
Go to the so-called saints - they talk of humbleness, humility. Look into their
eyes: and you will not find such refined egos anywhere else. Now their egos
have taken the garb of religion, yoga, sainthood - but the ego is there. They
may not be collecting riches, they may be collecting followers. The coins have
changed and they go on counting - how many followers.?
They may not be after the things of this world, they are after the things of that
world, but this or that, both are worlds. And they may be even more greedy,
because they say these temporary things, these momentary things of this
world, consist of momentary pleasures - and they want eternal pleasures. Their
greed is supreme. They cannot be satisfied with momentary pleasures, they
want eternal pleasures. Unless something is eternal they are not gratified. Their
greed is deep, their greed is absolute, and greed belongs to the ego. Greed is
the hunger of the ego.
So it happens sometimes that saints are more egoistic than sinners, and then
they are far away from the divine. And sometimes sinners can attain to God
more easily than those so-called saints, because ego is the barrier. This has
been my experience, that sinners can drop their egos more easily than saints,
because sinners have never been against the ego. They have been feeding it,

they have been enjoying it, they have lived with it totally. And saints have
always been fighting it, so they never allowed it to become ripe.
So this is my attitude: Ego has to be dropped, but it may take a long waiting and you can drop it only if you cultivate it. This is the arduousness of the whole
phenomenon, because the mind says: If we have to drop it, then why cultivate
it? The mind says: When we have to destroy it, then why create it? If you
listen to the mind you will be in trouble. Mind is always logical and life is always
illogical, so they never meet. This is simple logic, ordinary mathematics, that if
you are to destroy this house, then why build it? Why this whole trouble? Why
this effort and waste of your time and energy? The house is not there, so why
build it and then destroy it?
The house is not the point really - you are the point. Building the house you will
change, and then destroying the house you will change completely, you will not
be the same - because creating the house, the whole process of it will prove a
growth for you. Then when the house is ready you pull it down. That will be a
mutation.
Mind is logical and life is dialectical. Mind moves in a simple line and life moves
always jumping from one pole to another, from one thing to the very opposite.
Life is dialectical. Create, and then life says: Destroy! Be born, and then life
says: Die! Attain, and then life says: Lose! Be rich, and then life says:
Become poor! Be a peak, an Everest of the ego, and then become an abyss of
egolessness. Then you have known both - the illusory and the real, the maya
and the brahman.
Almost every day it happens, somebody comes to be initiated into sannyas and
then his mind starts functioning and he says to me: Wearing orange will make
me more egoistic because then I will feel that I am somebody different, distinct
- I am a sannyasin, one who has renounced. So wearing orange will make me
more egoistic, he says, and I say to him: Become! Become egoistic, but
consciously.
Ego is a disease if you are unconscious of it, if you hide it in the unconscious.
Ego is a game if you are conscious of it. You can enjoy it. You can play it. Be
conscious, mindful - and play the game. A game is not bad, but when you
forget that it is a game and become too serious then problems arise.
So I say sannyas is not serious; it is a game - a religious game, of course. It has
its own rules, because every game must have rules; without rules no game can
be played. Life can be without rules, but games cannot be.
If somebody says: I am not going to follow this rule, then you cannot play the
game. You play cards, then you follow rules. You never say: These rules are
just arbitrary, artificial, why cant we change them? You can change them, but
then the game will be difficult. And if every individual follows his own rules,
then the game is impossible.

Life is possible! You can play as you like because life never believes in rules - it
is beyond rules. But games have rules. So Remember, wherever you see rules,
know immediately this is a game. This is the criterion: wherever you see rules,
immediately know this is a game, because games exist through rules.
So if I say: Wear orange, wear the mala - this is a game, obviously. Play it as
well as you can - and dont be serious about it, otherwise you miss the point.
Be egoists - perfect, cultivated, refined. Go on working on your ego and make it
a beautiful statue, because before you give it back to existence it must be
something worth giving, it must be a present.
The second question:
Osho,
You have said that much energy is needed to achieve the inner alchemy. Would
you talk to us about energy: how can we build it up, and how can we retain it?
In what ways do we lose it, and can we gain it from outside sources?
The first thing: you are part of an infinite energy, a wave in an infinite ocean. If
you can remember this you never lose energy, because an infinite source is
always available. You are just a wave, and deep down the ocean is hidden.
You are born - who gives you birth? Who gives energy to you to move into the
body? Who gives energy to the body to become an automatic, delicate
mechanism, an organism? For seventy years or eighty years, or even a hundred
years, the body continues being alive. And now scientists say that death is an
accident, the body can continue infinitely. Scientists say there is no necessity
for death to exist. It exists because we have not been able to use the infinite
energy that is around us.
So the first thing to remember is: you are part of an infinite energy. Remember
it continuously - and feel it. Moving, walking, eating, sleeping - feel that you are
infinite. This is what the Upanishads say: always feel you are the brahman, the
eternal. If you can feel this more and more, you will become aware that you are
not losing any energy. The source becomes available. You become a vehicle.
Then do whatsoever you want to do. By doing, nobody loses energy.
This is one of the fallacies of the human mind, that if you do something you
lose energy. No. You have this idea that by doing something you are losing
energy. You lose energy by having that idea, not by doing. Otherwise, through
doing you can gain energy - if you have the idea. If you dont have any idea,
then also no energy is lost.
When people are retired they start thinking that now they have less energy so
they must rest and relax more; they should not do anything, otherwise their
energy is lost. And then they die sooner than they would have died. Statistics
say that the life span is reduced by ten years: a person who is working may
have lived to seventy. Retired, he will die at sixty.

Your body is a dynamo. The more you use it, the more energy is supplied from
the infinite source. If you dont use it there is no need for any new supply. Then
by and by the supply stops. Be more active and you will have more energy. Be
less active and you will lose much energy. Through activity energy is not lost,
through activity you renew it. You use the energy, then from the source more
energy becomes available.
Look at the trees. The sun rises and from the leaves of the trees water starts
evaporating. The moment a leaf starts evaporating water, new water circulates
from the roots. It is a long process. The leaf releases water, then just near the
leaf dryness is created. That dryness immediately sucks water from the twig;
then the twig is dry, the twig sucks water from its branch. This goes on down to
the roots; then the roots suck water from the earth. If the leaves think that if
we evaporate water then we will die, we will feel thirsty - then this tree is going
to die, because then new sources will not be available, then the roots will not
be able to function.
You also have roots in the infinite. When you use energy you suck energy from
the infinite. Your roots start working. A very fallacious idea is in the human
mind, that through activity we lose energy. No. The more active, the more
energy you will have; the less active, the less energy - in all directions of life.
Love more and you will have more love to give.
Become a miser and think: If I love more, then my love will be dissipated, and
sooner or later I will not have any more love, so it is better to preserve it. Then
your love will die and you will not be able to love.
Love and more love becomes available; use more and you have more. This is
the law of life. You can eat the cake and have it also. Compassion, love,
activity, whatsoever the dimension, the same rule applies. Whatsoever you
want to be more, do the same. If you want to become an infinite source of love,
then go on sharing love as much as you can. Dont be a miser; only misers lose
energy. And we are all misers, thats why we always feel dissipated.
But the idea can be dangerous, poisonous. If you have an idea, that idea works.
Mind works through hypnosis. For example, just a few decades ago all over the
world it was taught that you have a limited quota of sexual energy. You make
love, energy is lost. That idea created sexual misers all over the world. The
whole idea is fallacious. But if you have the idea in your mind, then whenever
you make love you are continuously hypnotizing yourself that you are losing
energy. Then energy is wasted. This idea becomes imprinted in your mind.
When you make love you are so vulnerable, so receptive, you are so soft, so to
speak, that whatsoever you are thinking goes deep into you. Then the
consequences follow, and then you feel dissipated, you feel your energy is lost.
And when you feel dissipated and your energy is lost, the old idea is
strengthened still more. This becomes a vicious circle.

Now some scientists, biologists say that sex is infinite energy. You cannot lose
it, because every day it is being created by your food, by your breathing, by
your activity. It is created; it is not a stored thing, that if you take a particular
quantity out, that much is lost, you now have less. It is not that way. It is not
something stored there, it is being created every moment. If you dont use it, it
goes stale and dead. If you dont use it, it will make you stale and dead. Then
the flow has stopped. But if you go on flowing, more and more becomes
available to you.
Jesus says somewhere - one of the most foundational things he says: If you try
to cling to life, you will lose it; and if you are ready to lose it, you will have it in
abundance.
All over the world up to the 20th century children were taught that any leakage
of semen in any way is very destructive: You may go mad, you may become
crippled. At least your intelligence will be less, and the possibility of becoming
crazy and eccentric and weak will be greater. This is absolutely false! But
teaching it did make many people crazy, many people weak, many people
stupid, mediocre - because of the idea, and this is such a dangerous idea.
When a child has grown up and become mature, at the age of fourteen or
fifteen, he starts losing semen. He cannot do anything about it. He will
masturbate; or if morality is too much he will not masturbate but nocturnal
ejaculations will occur, in the night he will lose semen. And all around the
propaganda is going on - if you lose semen, everything is lost.
In India they used to say - they still go on saying - if you go to old saints and
their followers, they still go on saying - that one drop of semen means forty
days of work for the body. So for forty days the body has to work, then one
drop of semen is created. So if one drop is lost, forty days of life is wasted.
Small children dont know anything, and they are very receptive. So when the
whole society teaches this, they become hypnotized by it. But they cannot do
anything - the semen flows when the body is ready, the semen is bound to go
out. This teaching is all around them; they cannot tell anybody that they are
losing semen. They hide it. They suffer inside, they go through a constant
torture. And then they think they are the exceptions, because they cant know
that everybody else is going through the same thing, because nobody talks
about it, nobody speaks about it. And whosoever talks about it, talks against it.
So every boy thinks that he is the exception, that only he is going through this.
Soon he will start feeling dizzy. Soon he will feel that his intelligence is waning.
Soon he will start feeling that he is going crazy, that his life is wasted.
Many people go on writing letters to me saying that their lives are wasted
because they have lost so much semen, they have lost so much sex energy.
But the idea is very dangerous, and if the idea is there, the thing will happen. It
happens through hypnosis.
Any idea can become a help or a hindrance. It is difficult to live with the noidea. So before you can reach to a mind which is thoughtless, when everything

becomes available spontaneously - before that, it is better to have this idea in

the mind - that you are part of an infinite energy, and by doing you are gaining,
not losing. By giving you are attaining, not losing.
Love, sex, activity, whatsoever - always remember and be filled with the idea
that whenever you give something, from the roots more becomes available to
you, more is given to you. Existence itself is the giver, the unconditional giver.
If you are also a giver, your hands will always be empty and existence can give
you more. If you are a miser, your relationship with the divine is cut. Then you
live as a small wave, always afraid of losing.
Live as the ocean. Be oceanic! Never think of losing, about anything. Nothing is
lost, nothing can be lost. And you are not an individual, you only appear as an
individual. The whole is joined to you; you are just a face of the whole, just a
way the whole has happened. Dont be worried about it. It is never going to
end. This existence is beginningless and endless.
Enjoy, celebrate, be active, and always be a giver. To be a giver so totally that
you never think of retaining or holding anything is the only real prayer. To give
is be prayerful. To give is to love. And those who can give, they are always
given more.
[]

Chapter 12 - The Message Beyond Words

Although the divine, the innermost soul of all living beings, is one, in the
bodies of different creatures it is reflected in their forms, just as the one fire in
all the world takes myriad forms. The divine that dwells within also dwells
without.
Although the innermost soul of all living beings is one, in the bodies of
different creatures it is reflected in their forms, just as the one air that
permeates the world takes myriad forms. The divine that dwells within also
dwells without.
Even as the sun, the illuminator of the world, does not become identified with
the flaws in mans vision, the divine, which is the innermost soul of all living
beings, does not become identified with mans misery. Though it is within all, it
is separate from all.
Only the wise ones, no others, who see the divine that is living within them in
each moment - the divine which is the knower of all inner thoughts and
feelings; which is the non-dual; which is the mover of all - will know the
unchanging, eternal bliss.
Only the wise ones who see the divine that is living within them in each
moment - the divine which is the stillness in the unmoving, which is the witness

within all consciousness and which alone ordains the fruits of the actions of all
living beings - will know the unchanging, eternal peace.
As he heard of the majesty, the bliss and peace that comes of knowing the
divine, Nachiketa thought, How can I truly know this indescribable supreme
bliss which the wise ones call the divine? Does it reveal itself, or is it
experienced?
Listening to Nachiketas inner thoughts, Yama, the Lord of Death, said, The
sun does not shine there, nor do the moon or the stars; nor does lightning or
electrical phenomena cast any light there. Where then does the fire of this
world stand? All the suns and the moons and the stars are illumined by its
light.the whole existence is illumined by its light.
In India there are three points of view about the ultimate mystery of existence.
The first is of the Hindu Upanishads, the Vedas and the Gita. According to their
view, the ultimate reality is one; all else are expressions of this one. There are
no individual souls, there is only a universal soul. There are no separate
individuals, there is only one universal existence.
The second viewpoint is of the Jainas. According to them the ultimate reality is
not just one, it is split into many: there is no universal soul, there are only
individual souls. There is not one single totality; instead, there are many
separate beings.
The third vision is of the Buddhists. For them there is neither a universal soul
nor an individual soul, neither the whole nor the individual. For them there is
nothingness, shunyata, the ultimate void.
These three viewpoints are very contradictory. And for thousands of years
arguments have been going on over them but there has never been any
conclusion. And the propounders of these three views are the enlightened ones
who have experienced and known the truth, so it is very difficult to understand
why there are these great differences. One can understand the arguments and
debates of the scholars because they dont have any inner experience. They
just use complicated words and they try to propound principles and explain
theories according to their own logic, but they dont have any inner experience
of their own.
But Mahavira, Buddha and Shankara are not scholars. Whatsoever they are
saying is not from their thinking. It is not philosophy, they are telling of their
own experiences. They are simply talking about that which they have known.
There is no mistake, no flaw in their knowing. Then why is there so much
controversy? Because of this controversy, in India there are three different
attitudes towards life. Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism are the three main
streams of thinking which dominate the Indian mind. And because there is no
end to the controversy, the Indian mind is also full of confusion. It will be good
to understand this more deeply.

I see absolutely no difference in these three views. The statements are

absolutely different but there is no difference in the essence. And these
statements are not only different, they are diametrically opposite - but their
meaning and purpose are the same. And one who cannot see this one purpose
will never be able to see the oneness in all the religions. Yet there are reasons
why these three insights have been presented in three different ways.
The Vedas, the Upanishads, the Brahma Sutra and the Gita say that the divine
is one, but the unconscious people interpreted this in a wrong way and it
became disastrous. They said, If there is only the one, then there is no point in
doing anything - all forms are of the divine: it is in sin and in virtue, in the good
man as well as in the thief, in the bondage of the world and in liberation; it is
here, it is there, it is everywhere. It is also in evil. Then what is the need to do
anything? Nothing remains to be done.
If this whole existence is only one reality, only one essence, then there is no
need to do anything in life. Then what is the difference between good and evil?
What is the difference between religion and irreligion? What is the difference
between maya, illusion, and brahman, the ultimate reality? If in reality there is
only the one, then there is nothing left to be done. What is there to aspire to?
What is there to renounce? The result of this unique concept of the one
ultimate reality has been a profound laziness; a great laziness has overpowered
the Indian mind. So people would just read the Vedas and the Upanishads; they
would memorize the Gita and think that there was nothing left for them to do.
But in this way there was no transformation in life.
This was not the intention of the enlightened people who shared these truths but the intention of the awakened ones and the understanding of the ignorant
are never the same. The intention of those who said there is only one reality
was to help you to let go of your self, and then only it is.

Your ego is false. You think that you are separate, but this is just your illusion.
This is the obstacle in your life; this is the cause of all your misery and your
bondage. You should allow your self to dissolve and disappear into this
vastness. Dont try to save yourself, to keep yourself separate. All the pain of
life arises out of the belief that you are separate. And if you are separate then
you have to protect yourself. If you are separate then you have to fight with
everyone because nobody is with you in the difficulties of life. All are your
competitors. Life becomes a quarrel and a fight and in this fight there is only
worry and anxiety. If you are separate then the fear of death grips you because you know that you will have to die.
Every day you see someone dying.but the whole never dies. People go on dying
but this vast immensity lives eternally. Life is never destroyed but every day
you see embodied life dying. Earthen lamps are extinguished every day but the
light as such remains. This is why the fear of death possesses you: if you are
separate, then you will certainly die. And if you have merged and become one

with this vast existence, then there is no way to die. Then life is deathless, life
is eternal.
The intention of those who wanted the concept of the one reality to prevail was
so that the ego could dissolve, disappear, evaporate. But the ego did not
dissolve, even though that was the intention of the awakened ones. The
ignorant misinterpreted the concept of one ultimate reality so that instead of
dissolving their egos, it only enhanced and supported the ego. The seers have
said, I am the ultimate reality. Their meaning was, I am not, only the
ultimate reality is. But the ignorant thought, I am the ultimate reality! Those
who declared I am the ultimate reality meant that there is no drop, only the
ocean is. But hearing this the drop thought, I am the ocean. Because of this
the drop could not dissolve, it became even more egoistic.
The awakened ones were thinking that on the day man realizes that there is
only one reality there will be no more sin, because sin is against the other.
When do you sin? - when you sacrifice the other for your own happiness, that is
sin. But if I am in all, spread in all and there is only one reality and there is no
one else, then there is no possibility of sin. For sin, the other is needed; for sin,
the other must be sacrificed - for my benefit the others benefit has to be
destroyed. But if there is only one reality and no other, there is no possibility
for selfishness or sin. Then to harm the other means to harm yourself. The
intention of the seers was that you realize that when you cease to be as an
ego, when you are no more, there will be no way to sin. But the ignorant
interpreted that if there is only one reality then there is no sin or virtue;
whatsoever you do is okay because this one reality is omnipresent in all.
When Mahavira saw what was happening to this supreme understanding he
tried to destroy it from the very roots, so he said that there is no one ultimate
reality; every person is himself divine and the drop does not need to dissolve
itself in the ocean. The drop simply has to go on purifying itself, it has to
become absolutely pure. He said that this idea of dissolving is wrong because
the whole country had become very lazy and lethargic because of it: the
ignorant people misinterpreted the word dissolve, so instead of destroying it,
the idea of one supreme reality became the very foundation of ignorance.

So Mahavira did not talk about the ultimate reality. He said, There is no
universal soul, only the individual soul exists. You must become pure. Sin is sin,
virtue is virtue - the same reality is not present in all. Bad is bad and good is
good and the difference between the two should be kept clear. That dividing
line should not be dissolved.
Mahavira has called his insight bheda-vigyan, the science of differentiation. The
Upanishads say abheda, no difference. But Mahavira has called his whole
technique bheda-vigyan, the clear awareness of difference: what is wrong and
what is right, where is wrong and where is right, where is good and where is
evil, from where does goodness begin and from where does evil begin, where

does worldliness end and where does liberation from it begin? Mahavira made
the understanding of this clear distinction the basis of spirituality. He said that
each individual is separate, he has not to dissolve. And when each individual is
separate then the whole responsibility for his life is his own. If you are suffering
it is your own responsibility, not the divines. If you experience bliss then only
you are responsible and it is not by the blessing of any divine. Mahavira
dropped prayer, only meditation remained. Meditation to him means that one
has to purify oneself so much that one day only pure consciousness is left.
Mahavira called that pure consciousness paramatma. Paramatma does not
mean God, it means param-atma, the ultimate soul, the purest soul.
Mahaviras intention was to help people to overcome their lethargy. People are
sleepy and unconscious because they are living in a deception which has been
created by the principles which they believe in and which give them the
permission to remain asleep. Mahavira wanted to destroy the whole basis of
these theories so that man would become more aware, more silent, more
conscious. He should stand on his own feet: he should not wait for any divine
blessing or grace or support. This was a very important technique for the
purification of man - but the end result of this too was exactly the same as it
has always been and will always be.
Mahavira wanted that man should purify himself and rise to his divinity, but the
ignorant understood, I exist, and there is no divine to dissolve myself into; my
existence is the end, the only reality. Mahaviras concept of the individual soul
simply enhanced the egos of the ignorant: neither did they realize the soul nor
did they purify themselves and rise to their own divinity. Instead they became
full of a very strong ego that believes that there is no God and that only I am.
And as this ego of I am becomes stronger, unconsciousness also becomes
stronger because then the ego is an intoxicant. This intoxication increases in
the same proportion as the ego; to the same extent, a mans life becomes
more unconscious. When there is no divine there is no reason to bow down, so
the people who were egoistic were supported by this. They were happy with
the idea that there is no need to bow down, no need to surrender. Humbleness
was no longer seen as a quality of saintliness; there was only pride and
arrogance.
Mahavira said, Be independent. Dont become lazy and dependent on prayer,
and the ignorant understood, I am all there is and I have only to trust in my
own strength. I have to rely only on myself. The ego became stronger and this
ego destroyed the Jaina philosophy. Just as the concept of brahman, the
universal reality, made the Hindus lazy and lethargic, so has the concept of the
individual soul made the Jainas very arrogant and egoistic.
When Buddha saw that both views - the universal reality and the individual soul
- caused the downfall of man, he then said that there is no universal reality and
no individual soul: there is only shunya, vast emptiness. His expression was
very unique. He said that there is no universal reality and no individual soul
because it was necessary to cut the very roots of the mistake made in the

Hindus way of thinking and in the Jainas philosophy. You are not, there is
nobody within you.Buddha says that to attain to this nothingness is the
ultimate knowing.
This is why Buddha has not used the word brahmalok, the abode of the divine;
neither did he use the word moksha, ultimate liberation. He used the word
nirvana, the extinguishing of the flame of an earthen lamp. When the flame of
an earthen lamp is burned out we dont ask, Where is the flame? Where has it
gone? It simply does not exist anymore. Buddha says that it is not the earthen
lamp of the awakened one which burns out but the flame of his ego which is
extinguished. What remains within is the ultimate emptiness, pure silence. And
to attain to that emptiness is nirvana. This was a very profound insight because
with this there was no more space for mans laziness to continue and there was
no more support for the ego to survive.
But when the ignorant heard that there is neither a universal reality nor an
individual soul, they interpreted that there is nothing worth attaining! - What
is the point when there is nothing? And when emptiness is already there within,
why make any effort? Why practice any spiritual discipline? Buddhas insight
seemed like atheism to the ignorant: When there is nothing, then whatever
pleasures are available in this life, we should enjoy them! When there is
nothing eternal then why give up the transitory? It is better to hold on to
whatever is available now because later on there will be nothing to attain;
there is only the void, emptiness. And Buddhas vision also failed because of
this teaching of emptiness.
It is very strange that whatsoever was the deepest insight of any vision
became the cause of its failure. The unconscious people are strange.the
enlightened ones are always defeated by them. To save themselves the
ignorant always find loopholes in everything. And they even argue and say that
their theory is right and the others is wrong.
Theories have no value in religion, the value is in the intention behind it. Try to
understand this. Theories are of value to the scholars, who themselves are not
worth much. The enlightened ones are concerned only with the intent of
religion. What is Shankaras motive? What is the motive of Mahavira? What
does Buddha intend? Whatsoever they are saying is not as important as their
motive. Whatsoever they are saying is only a device, an indication. What are
they indicating? But scholars take hold of the words and they go on fighting
and arguing over the words for centuries! The Jaina scholars go on proving that
there is no universal reality, that only an individual soul exists, the Hindu
scholars go on proving that there is no individual soul, that only one universal
reality exists and the Buddhist scholars go on proving that there is neither a
universal reality nor an individual soul, there is only emptiness.
But there is no question of proving anything: only the purpose and the meaning
have to be understood. The indication has to be understood. The only motive of
a Mahavira, a Buddha or a Shankara is that you should be transformed, that
you become reborn; that the dust on your mirror should be removed, that it

should become clean so that you can see that which is. Call it whatsoever you
like: the brahman, nirvana, shunya, atman - these are only words. Any word
can be used, but that which is has no name. Their only desire is that you should
be able to experience it.
But you go on discussing what they say and you dont experiment with what
they say. You just think about it and talk about it but you dont meditate on
what they say. You just stuff your mind with their words. But by doing all this
your life will not be transformed, no revolution will happen. So, in a way, all the
enlightened ones have failed.
Whenever someone becomes enlightened he finds it very difficult to
communicate because it has been said in a thousand-and-one ways, but you
are somehow able to protect yourself from listening to their actual message.
The cunning people can always find ways not to listen. Just a few simple
people, who are not so cunning, do listen, and they are benefited by it. But all
the traditions are created by the cunning people. The enlightened one shares
his religiousness and the cunning ones create the traditions.
According to the Upanishads it is the simple and innocent people who have the
subtle intelligence, and they are the people who transform themselves and
dont create any traditions. They dont care whether what is said is the actual
truth; they understand that what is said is only indicating towards truth.
All words are just indications. The only value of the indication is that it takes
you forwards, keeps you moving further and further, just as the arrows on the
milestones on the road show the right direction. If you are going to Delhi, the
arrow is pointing you towards Delhi. But you are so unconscious that when you
see the milestone with the arrow and with Delhi written on it, you become
attached to the milestone and you stop there in the belief that you have
arrived in Delhi. You pay no attention to the arrow. That stone with Delhi
written on it is not Delhi; the milestones only indicate that Delhi is some
distance away. When you see a zero on the milestone then you know that you
have arrived in Delhi. Then there will be no arrow on it, no word on it, only a
zero will be there. But as long as there are arrows to point the way, understand
that the destination is still far away.
No scripture is truth. All scriptures are like milestones that say, Go forwards.
But you start worshipping the milestones, and different people keep different
kinds of milestones on their heads. And then great discussions go on to prove
whose Delhi is the real one. No scripture is truth, all scriptures are just
indications towards the truth. And one who holds on to the scripture will only
prove that the scripture is wrong, and he himself will go astray.
All the scriptures say to go on moving, go forwards until you reach the zero
where all words disappear and nothing more is written. And when you have
reached the zero you will realize that all the words were different indications,
different devices of the enlightened ones to take you to the zero, to the
wordless silence.

Now we will enter this sutra.

Although the divine, the innermost soul of all living beings, is one, in the
bodies of different creatures it is reflected in their forms, just as the one fire in
all the world takes myriad forms. The divine that dwells within also dwells
without.
Just like fire, the divine energy has taken many different forms. The forms are
different but the energy, the formless within the form, is one.
Although the innermost soul of all living beings is one, in the bodies of
different creatures it is reflected in their forms, just as the one air that
permeates the world takes myriad forms. The divine that dwells within also
dwells without.
Even as the sun, the illuminator of the world, does not become identified with
the flaws in mans vision, the divine, which is the innermost soul of all living
beings, does not become identified with mans misery. Though it is within all, it
is separate from all.
This sutra has to be deeply understood. It can be very useful for the seeker on
the path.
In one of his memoirs, Rabindranath Tagore has written: One early morning I
was going towards the sea. It was monsoon time. All the pits, ponds and
ditches were full of water. Some puddles were clean and some were dirty. As I
reached nearer the sea the sun rose and its reflection could be seen in the dirty
water of the puddles, in the clean water and also in the sea. Rabindranath has
said, This phenomenon filled me with wonder! I immediately understood that
whether the reflection happens in dirty water or in clean water, it does not
make any difference for the reflection. How can a reflection become dirty? How
can the reflection of the sun in a dirty puddle become dirty? No dirt can make
the reflection dirty. The reflection in the sea is of the same sun and the
reflection in the dirty pond is of the same sun and the reflection in a small
puddle is also of the same sun, and there is no difference in these reflections.
Rabindranath has said, That day, I understood the meaning of the words of
the Upanishads - that the divine is manifest in all; the forms are different but
that which is manifested in all the forms is the One.
So the second thing that this sutra is saying is that your own impurity cannot
make the divine impure; the impurity of the puddle cannot make the reflection
impure. This is why the Upanishads say that the divine within the sinner does
not become a sinner and the divine within the saint does not become a saint because it was never a sinner in the first place, so how can it become a saint?
The Upanishads say that the divine is pure consciousness. All impurities are
confined to the form. This form may become dirty or impure, but the divine that
is hidden within it is not touched by impurities of any kind; it simply cannot be
affected by them.

This statement is very revolutionary. It is very dangerous too because the

sinner will say, Then it is okay- if I cannot become impure, then why should I
stop sinning? And when I cannot become pure by being virtuous because I have
never in the first place become impure, then what is the need to be virtuous?
This type of interpretation by the unconscious people has created much
confusion.
The Upanishads say that the divine can never become impure. If you can
understand the meaning of this then the burden of any feelings of guilt about
the past will disappear in one moment. If you understand that the divine within
you has never become impure, then the burden of sin and guilt in your mind
will immediately disappear.
Psychologists say that the greatest misfortune in human life is the feeling of
guilt. They say that in the West Christianity has done much harm by creating
the guilt-complex. But in this country we have done as much harm to man by
removing the feelings of guilt in him. Christianity has helped and benefited a
few people and a few people in this country have been helped by the other
insight - but it seems that those who can transform themselves will transform
themselves in any case, and those who are in the habit of missing and always
harming themselves will do it, no matter what the circumstances. There are
people who can support life even with poison and there are people who can
commit suicide even with nectar. It depends on the people whether they want
to harm themselves or help themselves. Nectar or poison alone cannot do
anything; it depends on how you use them.
In the West Christianity emphasizes that man is a sinner and that he is born in
sin; the first man was born in sin. God banished Adam from heaven because he
had sinned by disobeying his order, and the gates of heaven will remain closed
to him until he frees himself from sin. And every human being is suffering for
the sin committed by Adam, and they have to make efforts to get out of the
state of sin. Christianity insists that man is a sinner, that he is born in sin. This
has certainly created a deep feeling of guilt.
Those who understand things rightly try to be free of sin by changing their
lives. But the foolish people think that if man is born in sin then it is impossible
for him to become free of sin: When the first man, Adam, was also a sinner,
and if he could sin even in heaven in the presence of God, then we, who are
just ordinary people and Adams progeny, can do nothing to become free of sin.
Thousands of centuries of sin are on our shoulders. It is such a great burden
that it seems impossible to ever throw it off. Our very beings have become
sinful so there is no way but to accept sin.
Because of this the West has become very materialistic. The reason for this is
that the West has just accepted sin because it could see no way to be free of it
- man will always be a sinner. Yes, if God is kind he will pull man out of sin. But
then again if it were a question of Gods kindness, he could have saved Adam
from sin. There was no need to create this long chain of sins. The West has
become materialistic because it thinks there is no way to get out of sin. The

question becomes only of how to sin more cleverly, more efficiently, of how to
do it as much as you can. There is no other way. Since every cell of our being is
born in sin, we cannot do anything but sin.
In India we have tried the exact opposite experiment: we have said that the
ultimate, the pure soul, can never be a sinner. It is ultimate purity and it can
never become impure; no amount of sin can affect its purity. Those who really
understood this truth gave up any idea of sinning because they realized that
there is no point in it; they simply dropped out of it. Because of this
understanding of the ultimate purity of reality the concept of sin simply
disappeared, the desire to sin disappeared and the question of doing evil
disappeared.
But the majority of people said, If it does not affect the purity of the ultimate
reality, why not sin? When it remains always pure, then we can go on sinning.
The enlightened ones explain that the soul is absolutely pure and mostly the
sinners go on nodding their heads and saying, Absolutely right! They think,
Yes, we are absolutely pure - there is no difference between us and a Buddha,
between us and a Mahavira. The difference is only superficial, within we are all
the same.
But this statement is very valuable in itself: consciousness cannot be made
impure. You may go on trying for lifetimes to make it impure, but consciousness
cannot be made impure because the nature of consciousness is purity. You can
accumulate dust on its surface but the diamond inside, the shining light inside,
cannot be destroyed; you can only cover it. Those who understand this will give
up the effort to change the surface and will start searching for the diamond
inside which sin can never touch.
This can become clear with a little experience, because the divine with-in you is
not the doer: it is the witness. When you are stealing, someone inside you is
aware that you are stealing. This awareness, this witnessing, cannot be
affected by the sin of stealing. It is the witness that has seen you stealing.
When you go to a temple to pray, even then it is the witness that knows that
you are going to a temple to pray. No virtue can touch it. Whatsoever you are
doing remains outside. Doing is on the periphery and awareness is within, at
the very center. This awareness can never become the doing and the doing can
never become awareness.
So there are two separate currents within you. One is of doing, which is born
out of your body. Lately, many experiments have been done to find out where
desire actually arises in man, because it is desire which makes you act. These
scientific experiments are amazing because they prove that all desires are born
in the body.
There are male and female hormones and these are different chemicals. If male
hormones are injected into a woman then her whole behavior will change: her
voice will become deep like a mans, the womans delicacy and sweetness will
disappear and she will become aggressive. The woman is not aggressive, she

waits. Even in love she does not take the initiative. No woman ever tells the
man in the beginning that she loves him or that she will die without him. If any
woman says this then the man should run away from her because that woman
is not a woman anymore.
It is always the man who says, I love you and I will die without you. The
woman will just agree, will condescend to agree. Even her yes will be silent and
receptive; she is not active. It is because of her body structure and the system
of her body - the woman receives the man into herself.
The man takes the initiative, mans nature is aggressive - but if male hormones
are injected into the woman then she also will become aggressive. If female
hormones are injected into the man then he will become receptive, he will wait
for a woman to take the initiative.
One scientist was experimenting with a group of monkeys. He chose a female
monkey who was very humble and very feminine and who had no place in the
hierarchy of that group of monkeys.monkeys have a hierarchy system. Just as
politicians have a hierarchy, in the same way, monkeys also have a hierarchy.
Some monkey is the president, someone else is the prime minister, some are
cabinet members; this way, the hierarchy goes on. Scientists say that the
politicians are just continuing with this habit of the monkeys; there is no
difference.
A large dose of male hormones was injected into this female monkey who did
not hold any position and was at the bottom of the hierarchy. After twenty-four
hours this injection started affecting her. She became so aggressive that she
attacked all the male monkeys that were holding the high positions. She almost
came out on top, like Indira Gandhi! All the other politicians, the Kamrajas and
the Nijalingappas in the group, were pulled down. The scientist has written that
that female monkey managed to put all the old fighters in their place. They all
became sad and she dominated them so much that she did not even allow
them to do any mischief - which is the nature of a monkey. And this change was
just because of an injection of male hormones!
What you do is a contribution of your body: your behavior, your way of walking,
talking and sitting, your desires, your wishes, your ambitions, your struggle for
things - your hormones are responsible. Just a few chemicals can make the
whole difference.
Scientists have said that there are just five rupees worth of chemicals in a
mans body. It was cheaper in the ancient times.now they are worth about
fifteen rupees. A female body is worth sixteen rupees, so remember that
chemically, a woman is more costly. Only one rupee worth of chemicals makes
all the difference between a man and a woman! This is why scientists say that
a womans body can be turned into a male body just by giving an injection, and
a male body can be turned into a female body. By the end of this century you
will be able to decide whether you want to be a man or a woman; this will be
possible. Now there is no difficulty for this experiment.

Scientists say that it is because of some chemicals in the body that one man
steals and another man murders or is violent, and it is sheer stupidity to punish
them. It is just like punishing a man who is suffering from TB and you say, Why
have you got TB? What can that man do?
Scientists say that we go on punishing people who murder because until now
we have not been able to discover which chemicals in the body compel them to
murder. It will be better to change the hormones than to hang them or to
sentence them to life imprisonment - a simple injection can put them right. This
is a very valuable discovery, but it is also very dangerous. All valuable
discoveries are dangerous in the hands of ignorant peo-ple. This means that if
by one injection we can turn a murderer into a non-murderer, then by one
injection we can also turn a non-murderer into a murderer. If the country is at
war you can inject all the soldiers and they will go on madly killing people, the
enemies. Then the other country will not be able to win if they dont know this
trick of injecting people. If people are rebelling they just have to be injected:
they will become totally obedient and will start praising you! So this is a
dangerous discovery, but at the same time very valuable.
The Indian seers have always been saying that the divine that is hidden within
is only a witness, it is not a doer. The doer is outside. All actions are connected
with the body and the mind. The inner, pure consciousness is a witness, it only
watches; it has never done any act. If slowly you start becoming a witness to
your actions, the witnessing consciousness within you will begin to awaken. It is
sleeping because you have never used it.
So basically, all the techniques of meditation are an effort to awaken the
witness within you. As the witness becomes more awake, all the wrong things
in your life will drop on their own and whatsoever is right will go on growing
because the body cannot act without your cooperation, your support is needed.
You do not act, but inner cooperation is needed also by the body.
If a person has totally become the witness, then even if you give him many
injections to make him aggressive and violent, he will not become aggressive.
This has to be deeply understood.
All twenty-four tirthankaras of the Jainas are kshatriyas, warriors, and have
been born into warrior families. If their hormones could ever be tested - it is
difficult to do it now - then it might be proved that there were very aggressive
hormones in their bodies because they were the sons of kings, born into
kshatriya families. Their whole tradition, the lifestyle of their parents, was
aggressive. Hormones are genetically inherited.
All the twenty-four Jaina tirthankaras and Gautama the Buddha, all were
kshatriyas - and all of them preached non-violence. They were born in violent
families, violence was their heritage, but all of them preached non-violence.
Certainly they must have become witnesses to the extent that their aggressive
hormones could not affect them at all anymore.

It is interesting to note that until now not a single brahmin has preached nonviolence. The most dangerous brahmin we know of is Parashurama, who killed
all the kshatriyas on this Earth several times over. And these twenty-five Buddha and the twenty-four Jaina tirthankaras - are kshatriyas: fighting was in
their blood but they became teachers of non-violence. But the phenomenon is
the same - witnessing - that was happening to Parashurama and to the people I
have just mentioned. Parashurama was a witness, all his hormones were of
non-violence, but by witnessing Parashurama could see that the kshatriyas
were playing havoc all over the Earth. The life everywhere was full of trouble
and the kshatriyas were the cause of all that trouble, all that violence. To end
the violence, Parashurama started killing all the kshatriyas! If the witness
awakens, then even a brahmin can be so violent.
One who becomes a witness and becomes separate from his acts is able to see
what is right and what is wrong. All these twenty-five, Buddha and the twentyfour tirthankaras, inherited violence; fighting and aggressiveness was in their
blood. But by witnessing they were able to see that fighting was futile, nobody
would gain anything out of it. They became peaceful and silent and all the
violence simply disappeared from their lives.
What I am saying is that if the witness has been awakened within you, your
hormones will not have any more effect. They will not affect a Parashurama or
a Mahavira because the witnessing consciousness makes its own decisions. The
body is no more the master; the body cannot influence the witness. And the
witnessing consciousness lives life in a natural way. The witnessing
consciousness has its own spontaneity and that spontaneity has no limitations.
Secondly, whatsoever the witnessing consciousness does, even while doing it
knows that I am not the doer, I am only the witness. So I accept that
Parashurama was not affected by any sin - could not be. Parashuramas
personality is worth understanding. No sin could touch him because these
killings were done when he was in a profound state of witnessing. It is this kind
of killing that Krishna is suggesting to Arjuna in the Gita. He says to Arjuna, Go
to war not as a doer, but as a witness. You are just the medium. But the
difficulty for Arjuna was that he was unable to fight and remain a witness; he
went on feeling that he was the doer: How can I kill my loved ones? He was
identified with the doer, with his actions. And Krishnas whole effort was to
create witnessing in Arjuna even as he fought in the war.
But as soon as a person becomes full of awareness he ceases to be a doer.
The sutra says:
Even as the sun, the illuminator of the world, does not become identified with
the flaws in mans vision, the divine, which is the innermost soul of all living
beings, does not become identified with mans misery. Though it is within all, it
is separate from all.
That awareness that you are separate is the realization of the witness.

Only the wise ones, no others, who see the divine that is living within them in
each moment - the divine which is the knower of all inner thoughts and
feelings, which is the non-dual; which is the mover of all - will know the
unchanging, eternal bliss.
Only those who are able to separate the witness from the doer experience
bliss. As this experience grows deeper, the bliss also goes on growing. At the
peak point, when the witness is absolutely separate and the seer is absolutely
separate from the doer, one experiences the ultimate bliss.
Only the wise ones, no others, who see the divine that is living within them in
each moment - the divine which is the stillness in the unmoving, which is the
witness within all consciousness and which alone ordains the fruits of the
actions of all living beings - will know the unchanging, eternal peace.
As he heard of the majesty, the bliss and peace that comes of knowing the
divine, Nachiketa thought, How can I truly know this indescribable supreme
bliss which the wise ones call the divine? Does it reveal itself, or is it
experienced?
A very profound question has arisen in Nachiketas mind about the divine: does
the bestower of ultimate peace and the ultimate bliss reveal itself, or is it to be
experienced? This difference has to be understood.
I see you: I am not experiencing you, you are revealed to me. If it becomes
dark then I will not be able to see you. Light is needed to see the other; the
other can be seen only when it is revealed in the light. But light is not needed
for me to see myself, the experience is enough; it can also happen in darkness.
The question arose in Nachiketas mind: Will the divine be revealed like an
outer object, that I will see the ultimate reality standing in front of me shining
in some profound light, or will I experience it within me where no outside light
is needed? Will the divine manifest itself like matter as another, or will it be
experienced as consciousness, as myself? Will the divine be revealed within me
or outside of me? Is this divine within or without?
To see the things which are outside, light is needed, some medium is needed to
reveal them; only then do they become visible. But for the inside no medium,
no light is needed. Only through experiencing does the phenomenon happen.
So the question has arisen in Nachiketas mind: Does the divine become
revealed or is it to be experienced? Because if it is revealed then it is away
from me and I have to go in search of it. I have to search for its palace, its
temple, its throne. If it is revealed then I will have to search for the light by
which I will be able to see it. The process will be totally different. If it is an
experience then I dont have to go anywhere. If it becomes an experience then
no light is needed. Then I will know it by diving deeply into myself.
These are two different paths. Generally, people pray to the divine, and prayer
means that it is outside you. Prayer will serve as a light, a focus: you can see it.

You can worship the divine: worship is the light. It will become revealed in the
light of worship and you can see it. One path is that of worship, prayer and
devotion. The concept of worship means that the divine is outside, that it is
hidden somewhere out there in the sky and it will be revealed to you only if you
become worthy.
The second path is of meditation, of spiritual discipline. Then the divine is not
outside, it is present within - there is no question of worship or prayer in it. It is
only a question of purifying oneself. If you go on purifying yourself, awakening
yourself, then it will become your experience. For this, no outer worship or
ritual is needed.
The first path is absolutely wrong but it appeals to the majority of people. The
second path is totally correct but it attracts very few people. Why? - because
the first path seems easy. You are more attracted to the easy than to the truth.
On the first path you dont have to transform yourself. What is the difficulty in
collecting all the things that are needed for worship? What is the difficulty in
lighting an earthen lamp, burning incense, ringing a bell? - you remain just the
same.
The person who is going to the temple is the same person who was sitting in
his shop; there is not even the slightest change in him. The way he will perform
the rituals of worship in the temple will be the same as what he was doing
working in the shop. He will come out of the temple the same person as when
he went in. You will not find the slightest difference in him when he returns to
the shop. He may become even more dangerous because the hour that he
wasted in a temple may have to be compensated for by taking revenge on the
customers in the shop! He will extort more money from his customers, he will
exploit them more because of the hour that was wasted in praying. This is why
shopkeepers with so-called religious leanings are more dangerous. Beware of a
shopkeeper with religious leanings, because he is devoting some time for God which he knows is a sheer waste of time - and he would like to make up for it
from somewhere. No change seems to happen in his life. In spite of his going to
the temple, in his life he remains just the same.
But it is easier to go to a temple than to go within. This is why people choose
the easy, but this easiness has nothing to do with truth. Convenience has
nothing to do with truth. This is why most people prefer to worship and to pray.
Very few people meditate - but only those who meditate will finally know truth.
This question arose in Nachiketas mind: Should I pray or should I meditate?
Should I look for the divine on the outside, through some ritual, or should I
search within by awakening myself? Does it become revealed or is it to be
experienced?
Listening to Nachiketas inner thoughts, Yama, the Lord of Death, said, The
sun does not shine there, nor do the moon or stars; nor does lightning or
electrical phenomena cast any light there. Where then does the fire of this

world stand? All the suns and the moons and the stars are illumined by its
light.the whole existence is illumined by its light.
When the sun rises, how do you come to know it?
One morning Mulla Nasruddin was telling his servant, It is very cold. Look
outside and see if the sun has risen.
The servant went out, then came back and said, It is very dark outside!
Nasruddin said, So light a lamp so you can see if the sun has risen!
But no lamp is needed to see the sun, the sun is self-illuminated. We see other
things by the light of the sun, but the sun itself is not seen byany other light.
And Yama is saying that even the light of the sun is there through the light of
the divine. Behind the sun this divine energy is hidden. The divine is the light in
all fire, and all light is the light of the divine.
So in what light will you be able to see the divine? No light is needed to see it
because it is the original source of all light.
The divine is not revealed by any light, it has to be experienced.
It will be experienced only by moving to the original source. For that, one does
not have to search with an earthen lamp. In fact, one does not have to go
anywhere in search of the divine. You simply have to go within yourself. You
have to enter into your interiority to the original source of life: the divine is
there.and all is illuminated by it. Only because of it can your eyes see. The
moon and the stars are illuminated only because of its light. The whole
existence is its heartbeat. And no medium is needed to know it. You can know it
directly, in this moment, because no medium is needed. This knowing is direct,
immediate, without any medium.
Get ready for meditation.

Chapter 12 - Flight of the Alone to the Aloe

Parabrahman, the supreme reality which can never be destroyed, is even more
subtle than the most subtle; it is the source of all cause and effect; it is the soul
in all living beings - that art thou, thou art that.
Brahman is the nucleus of all worldly activities in the waking, dream and sleep
states. I am this brahman: knowing this, one is freed from bondage.
There are two phases of spiritual discipline. In fact, all endeavors have two
phases. In the first, all that is non-essential has to be dropped, renounced,
disidentified from. The second phase is when you identify with the essential
and become one with it. The first phase is that of negation, the second phase is
that of affirmation.
You will have to know the unreal as unreal: only then will you be able to know
the real as real. To know light, you will first have to know darkness - only then
can you know it. If you want to recognize life, you will first have to recognize

death; only then can you understand it. Because to reach that understanding,
the opposite of whatsoever we come to understand also needs to be in our
sight. When the night is dark, the stars shine more brightly. The stars are there
even in daylight, but you cant see them. You cant even see them, what to say
about if they are shining? Right now there are stars in the sky. Those stars dont
go anywhere. It is not that when the morning comes the stars go away, but it is
impossible to see those stars in the sunlight. To see them, the darkness of the
night is needed, and the deeper the darkness, the more clearly they can be
seen. Recognition lies in there being opposites.
Another very interesting point, then we will enter the sutras: what we call
opposites become complementaries because of their very opposition. An inner
connection exists between them. The darkness of the night is not an enemy to
the stars; it is a friend because without darkness you cannot see the stars.
Death is not an enemy of life, it is a friend. Life would not happen without
death. Looked at in this way, it becomes clear that what you think of as an
enemy is based on your own misunderstanding. When you say that a thing is
bad, it is nothing but your misunderstanding.
In the depths, all opposites are complementaries. Without a Ravana, a Rama
would not be possible; without a Rama, a Ravana would not be possible. To
understand Rama you will have to understand what Ravana is, because what
Ravana is, Rama is not.
Up to this point in the sutras the focus has been on negation, on what mans
inner being, his inner reality, is not: it is not the waking state, it is not the
dream state, it is not the sleep state; it is also not the ordinary affairs of your
daily life. Up to now we have only talked about what it is not. With this sutra
begins the positive aspect - what it is.

And remember, the negative has to be known first, because it is between the
lines of the negative that the positive emerges. When you see a mountain
peak, dont forget the valleys that surround it. The peak emerges only in
relation to the valleys. If you remove the valleys, the mountain peaks will also
disappear; if you go on deepening the valleys, the peaks will become higher.
You dont see the valley as going in the same direction as the peak, it looks the
opposite - but the fact is that they are complementary. From everywhere, the
valley creates the backdrop for the peak. The deeper the valley, the higher will
be the peak.
Negation is like the valley; it is the depth. First you have to negate, first you
have to discover what you are not. Until you have known what you are not, you
will not be able to know what you are. What you are is covered up by what you
are not, so first you will have to come face to face with what you are not, and
then you will see what you are. On the journey towards yourself, first you will
come across the valleys before you reach to the peaks.

Try to understand it from another angle: when you go inwards you will first
came across the negative. And if you are afraid of your negativity, you will
never go inwards. So when you first enter within, you will come across all your
darkness. You will feel much anguish and self-condemnation. You will feel that
there is no sinner greater than you. Dont think that saints condemn
themselves out of humbleness; this is what people think. Kabir has said, When
I looked for the evil in man, I could not find a man more evil than myself. Older
people tell children, and teachers tell their students that Kabir said this out of
his humility. This is not humility; it has nothing to do with humility. This is what
Kabir actually experienced.
Whenever a person begins the search for truth, first he will come across the
deep valleys of his own darkness. Only when the valleys of darkness have been
crossed will the peaks of light come into view. Anyone who is attached to his
idea that he is already a good person will not be able to look within himself. The
very idea that you are good will create fear in you, because when you first look
inside you will find only what is bad. Someone who thinks himself to be a nonviolent person because he does not eat at night or because he drinks only
filtered water, someone who has such a cheap concept of nonviolence, will see
violence the moment he looks inside. He will become afraid to look inside and
he will go on living only with the outside.
You are all wandering around on the outside because you dont gather the
courage to move across the valley of your own darkness. But only one who can
courageously cross the valley of all that is wrong in him will be able to reach
the peaks of the good in him. If you want to become virtuous, you will first have
to become a sinner. To be a sinner means that you will first have to pass
through the valley of sin. The more virtuous you are, the bigger the valley of
sin around you will be, because the peak of virtue will not emerge without the
valley of sin. It cannot happen.

If you want to avoid the valleys, there are only two ways: either dont approach
the valley at all, spend your whole life avoiding it - but then you will never
reach the peak; or reach the peak and you will automatically have become free
of the valley. To be free of the valley you will have to pass through it. The
Christian mystics have called it the dark night of the soul. Whenever
someone goes towards the ultimate light, he will first have to pass through
tremendous darkness.
All good exists against the background of the bad. Dont be afraid of this. Know
it, remember it - that the deeper the valley, the higher the peak. Dont
condemn yourself and become afraid. There is no need to condemn yourself,
that Now I am a sinner! If there is sin, hidden just behind there must be
virtue. It is just a matter of traveling a little further.
It will be good to understand one more thing. Once he is in the valley, man can
do either of two things: he can start fighting with the valley, which is what the

moral man does, or he can try to go beyond it - which is what the religious man
does. In all his fighting, the moral man becomes so entangled in the valley that
he will never be able to reach the peak.
A religious man does not fight with the valley, he simply passes through it.
Naturally, when you fight with the valley you will have to stay there to fight
with it. How will you ever reach to the peak? The man who fights will have to
stay where his opponent is. The level of his enemy will become his own level.
This is why when somebody has an evil enemy, he also becomes evil himself.
Having an evil friend will not do as much harm as having an evil enemy.
This is why you can choose anybody to be a friend, but you should be very
careful who you choose as your enemy. You will have to fight your enemy, you
will have to stand on the same ground where he is standing. Two people who
are constantly fighting and struggling slowly acquire the same behavior and
qualities. Slowly, slowly they change each other so much. Two friends will never
be as similar as two enemies.
To be moral means that the moment you see evil in yourself, the first thing you
do is you start fighting with it. And if you fight with evil you are bound to be
defeated. What is needed is to go above and beyond evil, not fight with it. The
one who goes above it will be victorious - because we become the master of
whatsoever is below us. The one who fights with evil will remain on an equal
footing with it, on the same level. And the one who fights never wins, because
he is standing on the same level as what he is fighting with. To change the level
is the revolution.
For example, there is violence inside you. If you fight it, what are you doing?
You are doing only one thing: you are suppressing it, overlooking it, imposing
some nonviolence from the outside. You try to enforce nonviolence and
suppress the violence. But when you suppress violence, it is never destroyed.
On the contrary, a suppressed violence will become even more intense, it will
manifest in new ways.

The attitude of a moral person is suppression, and the attitude of a religious

person is observation, not suppression. The religious person simply observes:
This is a ditch, this is a danger. He remains a witness and goes on moving
ahead. He is alert not to get into a struggle with anything in the valley. He does
not get into a struggle because in his struggle he will have to stop there. Then
he will have to make a camp there. But if you start living in the valley, it will
not be easy for you to leave the valley. This is why a moral man finds it as
difficult to become religious as an immoral man.
One thing is the same between the moral and the immoral man: the immoral
man is stuck and decides in favor of the valley, and the moral man is stuck in
denial of the valley; he only fights with it. There is no difference between the
two levels because both are stuck at the same place. The immoral man stays

where the violence is because he believes in it, the moral man stays where the
violence is because he does not believe in it.
A religious man is the one who does not choose either of the two: he neither
believes nor disbelieves in violence. He silently passes through the valley as he
keeps his attention on the peak. He wants to reach the peak. He does not have
any interest in the valley, neither of liking nor of disliking, neither of friendship
nor of enmity - he only wants to cross the valley. If you keep this focus in mind,
then the peak is very near. And if you make even a small mistake in this, then
the peak will be very far away.
This is why sometimes it happens that even an immoral man who believes in
violence will suddenly rush towards the peak. The reason for this sudden rush
is that because he lives in darkness, he has suffered so much that sometimes
the pain becomes so intense, so unbearable, and it makes him reject the dark
valley and run towards the light at the peak. But the moral person, the socalled good person who is constantly fighting with evil, will develop a very
strong ego - and it is only because of his fighting. He will develop a kind of
perverted interest in evil. This perverted interest is created because he needs
the existence of the evil that he fights. Evil is the basis for his ego.
A man who has become nonviolent by fighting violence will find it very difficult
to leave the valley. The difficulty is that if he leaves the valley, he will also have
to leave the ego. The ego of being a nonviolent person can exist only as long as
he fights with violence. If he abandons this fight with violence, he will also have
to leave the ego behind that he developed through fighting in the valley. This
ego cannot go to the peak with him, it is an intrinsic part of the valley.
This is why a good man will find it more difficult to become religious than a bad
man. The bad man cannot develop an ego through doing bad things: he will
just be in misery, pain, suffering. He will be in deep anguish. He gets nothing
out of his evil except trouble.
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