Category: Osho

Sammasati – The Last Word – Osho

Friends,

Before the sutras there are a few questions from the sannyasins.

The first question:

Gesta Ital, a former famous German actress, was the first western woman who was allowed to enter in a Zen monastery in Japan and to work with an enlightened Master.

She wrote two books about her path and her experience of enlightenment. When I read these books, I had the impression of a very hard and lonely path. Being with you is much more joyful and playful. Would you like to say something about this difference?

The traditional Zen is hard. It takes twenty to thirty years of constant meditation, withdrawing from everywhere all your energy and devoting it only to meditation.

That tradition comes from Gautam Buddha himself. He had to find his enlightenment after twelve years of hard work.

I am changing it completely from the traditional Zen, because I don’t see that the contemporary man can devote twenty or thirty years to meditation only. If Zen remains that hard, it will disappear from the world. It has already disappeared from China, it is disappearing from Japan, and it disappeared from India long ago. It remained in India for only five hundred years after Gautam Buddha. In the sixth century it reached China, remained there for only a few centuries, and moved to Japan. And now it is almost extinct from both China and Japan.

You will be surprised to know that my books are being taught in the Zen monasteries. Zen masters have written letters to me: “Perhaps now Zen will exist in India, in its original place. It is disappearing from Japan because people are more interested in technology, in science.”

That is the situation in India too. Very few people are interested in the inner exploration. Here you can find a few people from every country, but these are so few compared to the five billion human beings on the earth. Ten thousand is not a great number.

Zen has to be transformed in a way that the contemporary man can be interested in it. It has to be easy, relaxed, it has not to be hard. That old traditional type is no longer possible, nor is it needed. Once it has been explored, once a single man has become enlightened, the path becomes easy. You don’t have to discover electricity again and again. Once discovered you start using it – you don’t have to be great scientists.

The man who discovered electricity worked on it for almost twenty years. Three hundred disciples started with him and nobody remained because it took so long; everybody became exhausted. But the original scientist continued. His explanation to his own disciples was, “The more we are failing in finding the root of electricity, the closer we are going to the very root. Every failure is bringing us closer to the discovery.”

And finally, one night in the darkness, suddenly the first electric bulb started radiating. And you cannot conceive the joy of the man who had been working for thirty years. His silence . . . he was in awe. He could not believe his own eyes that after all this time it had happened, electricity had been controlled – “Now in our hands, how to use it?”

His wife called to him, “Come inside the bedroom, it is the middle of the night. Put the light out!”

She was not aware that it was no ordinary light, and that the scientist had called her – “Come here and be the first to see something original. You will be the first person I will introduce to the secrets of electricity.”

Now, you don’t have to work for thirty years to know about electricity. Nor do you have to work thirty years for the Zen experience. The awakening of the buddha is a very easy and relaxed phenomenon. Now that so many people have awakened, the path has become clear-cut; it is no longer hard and arduous. You can playfully enter inside and joyously experience the awakening of awareness. It is not as far away as it was for Gautam Buddha.

For Gautam Buddha it was an absolute unknown. He was searching for it like a blind man, knowing nothing about where he was going. But he was a man of tremendous courage, who for twelve years went on searching, exploring every method available in his time . . . all the teachers who were talking about philosophy and yoga. He went from one teacher to another, and every teacher finally said to him, “I can tell you only this much. More than this I don’t know myself.”

Finally, he remained alone, and he dropped all yoga disciplines. He had his own five disciples, who thought that he was a great ascetic. But when they saw that he had dropped all yoga discipline, and he was no longer fasting, they dropped him. All those five disciples left him – “He has fallen from his greatness; he is no longer a saint; he has become ordinary.”

But in that ordinariness, when he had dropped everything – just being tired and exhausted – that full moon night when the five disciples left him, he slept under the bodhi tree, completely free from this world and completely free from the very search for that world. For the first time he was utterly relaxed: no desire to find anything, no desire to become anything. And in that moment of nondesiring, he suddenly awakened and became a buddha. Buddhahood came to him in a relaxed state.

You don’t have to work for twelve years; you can just start from the relaxed state. It was the last point in Gautam Buddha’s journey. It can be the first point in your journey.

And the first thing Gautam Buddha did after he became awakened was to go in search of those five disciples to share what had happened to him. And when he reached those five disciples . . . they saw him coming – it is a very beautiful story.

They decided, “Gautama is coming, but we are not going to pay any respect to him. He has stopped being a holy man; he has started living a relaxed and comfortable life.”

But as Buddha came closer, all the five disciples stood up. Although they had decided not to pay him any respect, in spite of their decision, they could see that Gautama had changed completely – “He is no more the same person we used to know. He is coming with such a silence, with such contentment. It seems he has found it.” And they all touched Gautam Buddha’s feet.

And Gautam Buddha’s first statement to them was, “When you had decided not to pay attention to me, why are you paying such respect?”

All those five asked to be forgiven. They said, “We were thinking you were the same old Gautama. We used to know you – for five years we have been together, but you are not the same person anymore.”

Enlightenment is such a transformation that you are a totally different person. The old person dies away, and a totally new awareness, a fresh bliss, a flowering, a spring which has never been there . . .

It took twelve years for Gautam Buddha. It need not take even twelve minutes for you. It is simply an art, to relax into yourself. In the traditional Zen they are still doing whatever Buddha did in his ignorance, and finally they drop it.

I am telling you, why not drop it right now?

You can relax this very moment!

And in that relaxation, you will find the light, the awareness, the awakening.

What has happened to Gesta Ital is not necessarily an introduction to Zen. She has been in the company of old and traditional Zen masters. I understand Zen to be a very simple, innocent, joyful method. There is nothing ascetic in it, nothing life-negative – no need to renounce the world, no need to become a monk, no need to enter a monastery. You have to enter into yourself. That can be done anywhere.

We are doing it in the simplest way possible. And only if Zen becomes as simple as I am trying to make it, can the contemporary man be interested in it. Otherwise, he has so much to do – so many things to do, so many paths to explore, so many things to distract him.

Zen has to become such a small playful thing that while you are going to sleep – just before that – within five minutes you can enter into yourself, and you can remain at the very center of your being the whole night. Your whole night can become a peaceful, silent awareness. Sleep will be in the body, but underneath it there will be a current of light from the evening till the morning.

And once you know that even in sleep a certain awareness can be present inside you, then the whole day, doing all kinds of things, you can remain alert, conscious. Buddhahood has to be a very normal, ordinary, simple and human affair. […]

The third question:

When energy goes inward it turns into thoughts, feelings, emotions, and when energy goes outward it turns into relationships with beings and nature. But when energy does not move inward or outward, it is just there pulsating, vibrating. Then it is one with existence, one with the whole. Is this Zazen?

Exactly. When the energy is just there – not going anywhere, just pulsating at the original source, just radiating its light there, blossoming like a lotus, neither going out nor going in – it is simply here and now.

When I say go inward, I am simply saying don’t go on moving in the head.

The whole society forces your energy to move in the head. All education consists of the basic technique of how to pulsate the energy only in the head – how to make you a great mathematician, how to make you a great physician. All the education in the world consists of taking the energy into the head.

Zen asks you to come out of the head and go to the basic source – from where the educational system around the world has been taking the energy, putting it into the head, and turning it into thoughts, images, and creating thinking. It has its uses. It is not that Zen is not aware of the uses of energy in the head, but if all the energy is used in the head, you will never become aware of your eternity. You may become a very great thinker and philosopher, but you will never know as an experience what life is. You will never know as an experience, what it is to be one with the whole.

When the energy is just at the center, pulsating . . . When it is not moving anywhere, neither in the head nor in the heart, but it is at the very source from where the heart takes it, the head takes it . . . pulsating at the very source – that is the very meaning of Zazen.

Zazen means just sitting at the very source, not moving anywhere. A tremendous force arises, a transformation of energy into light and love, into greater life, into compassion, into creativity. It can take many forms, but first you have to learn how to be at the source. Then the source will decide where your potential is. You can relax at the source, and it will take you to your very potential. It does not mean that you have to stop thinking forever, it simply means you should be aware and alert and capable of moving into the source. When you need the head, you can move the energy into the head, and when you need to love, you can move the energy into the heart.

But you need not think twenty-four hours. When you are not thinking, you have to relax back into your center – that keeps the Zen man constantly content, alert, joyful. A blissfulness surrounds him; it is not an act, it is simply radiation.

Zazen is the strategy of Zen. Literally it means just sitting. Sitting where? Sitting at the very source. And once in a while, if you go on sitting in the source, you can manage all mental activities without any disturbance, you can manage all heart activities without any difficulty. And still, whenever you have time, you need not unnecessarily think, you need not unnecessarily feel, you can just be.

Just being is Zazen.

And if you can just be – only for a few minutes in twenty-four hours – that is enough to keep you alert of your buddhahood.

Before the sutras, a little biographical note.

Tozan Ryokai, a disciple of Ungan, was born in China in 807, and died in 869. He originally was a member of the Vinaya sect but later became interested in Zen and set out on a journey to find a Master.

The Vinaya sect is the Buddhist name of the people who are interested in the scriptures, in the words of the masters in a philosophical and scholarly way. They are mentally active, but they are not moving into the experience themselves. They gather as much knowledge as possible, they become very wise. They know all the answers that are in the sutras, but they don’t have a single experience of their own.

Tozan was first a scholar, studying all the literature – and Buddhism has the greatest literature in the world. Compared to any other religion it has more scriptures.

Just as Gautam Buddha died, his disciples became separated into thirty-two branches. Immediately there were thirty-two branches of scholarship, of different scriptures and sutras, pretending to be authentic, pretending to be the only true ones. The problem was that for forty-two years Gautam Buddha was teaching, morning and evening – a few people heard a few things, a few people heard a few other things.

In forty-two years he was constantly moving from one place to another place. Obviously, there were different people who had heard different things from him, and they compiled sutras. Immediately thirty-two branches started. Gautam Buddha had not written a single word, but every branch pretended to be the authentic one – “This is what Buddha said . . .”

It is very difficult now to find out what actually was said by Gautam Buddha, and what was added by the disciples. So there is a great scholarship in the Buddhist world where people search into scriptures trying to find what is authentic and what is not.

Just recently, the same kind of scholarship has started in Europe. The professors and the very scholarly Christians have formed a special committee, the Biblical Scholars. And they are now searching for what exactly was said by Jesus, and what has been added by others – what is fiction, what is myth, what is truth. […]

They meet every few months, and they discuss papers. And if you listen to them, almost ninety percent of the Bible disappears. And they are absolutely right, because for the first time they are searching at the roots from where this saying, this statement, this gospel has come. A few are found to be in the ancient scriptures of the pagans, and those scriptures have been destroyed so that nobody can prove that Jesus ever said these things.

Even the idea of the virgin birth is more ancient than Jesus. It was a pagan god, a Roman god who was thought to be born from a virgin, and to the same god, the crucifixion happened. And to the same god is connected the idea of the resurrection. All that has been taken and compiled into the Bible. The pagans have been destroyed, their temples have been burned, their scriptures have been destroyed. Now these Biblical Scholars are trying to find ways and methods to uncover the facts from contemporary literature about when Jesus was alive.

One of the gospels was written in India – the fifth gospel of Thomas. It has not been included in the Bible, for the simple reason that it was not available to Constantine, who was compiling, and who was deciding what was to be included and what was not to be included. It was because of him that all these ideas and mythologies and fictions have been added to the life of Jesus.

The same is true about Buddhist literature: much is borrowed from Hindu literature, much is borrowed from Jaina literature – because these were contemporaries. And a few contemporaries of Buddha have left no literature behind, but they were also teaching in the places where Buddha was teaching, so many of their teachings have been compiled and mixed with Gautam Buddha’s.

A very scholarly tradition exists in Zen to find out the original teachings of Buddha. But even if you can find what is the original statement and what is not, that does not mean you can become enlightened. You may know exactly what Buddha said, but that will not make any difference to your consciousness.

Tozan was first a scholar and found that however you go on trying to know and find the original sources, you still remain ignorant. You become a great knower, but deep down you know nothing about yourself. And the question is not to know what Buddha said, the question is to know your own inner buddha, your own inner consciousness.

After being in the scholarly Vinaya sect, he became interested in Zen. He dropped out of the scholarly world and set out on a journey to find a master. He had been with teachers, great scholars, but none of them was a master.

And a master need not be a scholar – it is not a necessity. He may be a scholar – that is accidental. What is necessary and existential is his own knowing, his own experience.

So he went in search of a man who himself knows what is the truth, and who can tell him the way to it.

The sutra:

Beloved Osho,

Tozan had a question about whether inanimate objects expound the dharma. Tozan visited Isan, who recommended that he go to see Ungan.

His inquiry was whether inanimate objects in the world expound the dharma, the ultimate truth – whether you can find in the objective world the ultimate truth.

That’s what science is trying to do – trying to find the ultimate truth in objects. You cannot find it in objects. But this is part of the Zen tradition, that also . . .

Isan was himself a master, but he recommended Tozan to go to see Ungan, seeing that Tozan was a scholar. Isan was not a scholar – he was a master, he knew his own buddhahood. But seeing that this man Tozan was bound to ask philosophical questions, he sent him to Ungan, who was a master and a scholar.

With Ungan, Tozan was first made aware of the truth, and he composed the following gatha to record his experience:

“How wonderful! How wonderful!

The inanimate expounding the Dharma –

What an ineffable truth!”

Ungan told him to be in silence. And as you become silent, everything around you starts expounding the truth: the trees and the mountains . . . all the objects become suddenly aflame, afire with truth. If you are sitting silently in your own source of being, then everything in the world indicates toward the ultimate.

When he found his source, he wrote this gatha:

“How wonderful! How wonderful!

The inanimate expounding the Dharma –

What an ineffable truth!”

If you try to hear it with your ears, you will never understand it.

Only when you hear it through the eye, will you really know it.”

He is talking about the third eye. As you go inward . . . your energy is in the head. First it has to pass the third eye. Going deeper it will pass through the heart, the fourth center – and the whole energy is at the first center. From there it can rise back to the seventh center in the head.

But if you remain hung up in the seventh center only, you will never know as an experience what is truth. You have to come down to the depths, to the valleys of your being. You have to reach to the very roots from where you are joined with the whole.

Ungan asked him, “Are you happy now?”

Tozan answered, “I do not say that I am not happy but my happiness is like that of someone who has picked up a bright pearl from the heap of garbage.”

For a while after his enlightenment, Tozan continued to travel around China.

He is saying that unless you see it yourself, there is no other way to know it. You cannot hear it from somebody else. No buddha can preach it to you, no master can teach it to you. They all can only make gestures. They all can only indicate their finger toward the moon, but the finger is not the moon. You have to drop looking at the finger, and to start looking at the moon. When you look at the moon yourself, you know the beauty of it. You cannot know that beauty by looking at the finger pointing to the moon.

All knowledge is pointing to the moon. All sutras, all scriptures are pointing to the moon – just fingers. And people are clinging to the fingers, they have completely forgotten that the fingers are not the point. The moon is far away, the finger is only pointing toward it. Don’t cling to the finger; forget the finger. Forget all knowledge, all scriptures, and look at your truth yourself.

It is not a question of your ears, it is a question of your very eye, your inner eye. Unless you look inside . . . you cannot know it by hearing, or by reading. Becoming knowledgeable is not becoming a buddha, but becoming an innocent child, reaching to the sources playfully without any seriousness, joyously and cheerfully, dancing . . . Take your energy to the very source and remain there just for a few moments, and you will be filled with a new experience which goes on growing every day.

Soon you find you are filled with light – not only filled, but the light starts radiating around your body. That’s what has been called the aura, and what Wilhelm Reich was trying scientifically to prove. But he was forced into an insane asylum because people could not understand what he was talking about – “What radiation is he talking about?”

But now, Kirlian photography is able to take the photograph of your life aura around your body. The healthier you are, the bigger is the aura. In your happiness it dances around you; in your misery it shrinks. When a miserable person was used as an object by Kirlian, he could not find any aura in the photograph – the aura had shrunk inside. But when he photographed children dancing and enjoying, joyfully plucking the wildflowers or collecting stones on the seabeach, he found such a tremendous aura around them.

The same aura has been found around the buddhas. And it is almost miraculous that although no photography was available in the times of Buddha or Krishna, the paintings, the statues all have the aura – a round aura around the head.

Once you have seen your own life source, you start seeing the same light radiating from every object in the world, every person in the world. You can see from the aura whether the person is miserable or is happy.

His master, Ungan, asked him, “Are you happy now?”

Tozan was a scholar, and he knew the way a buddha speaks. And now he himself has experienced it – you can see it in his answer. He says, “I do not say that I am not happy, but to say I am happy will make it a very ordinary statement. To say that I am happy is not something great, and what I have found is so great that it cannot be described by the word ‘happiness’, it is far more. So I will not say I am not happy. You have to understand, it is something more than happiness. Words cannot describe it. Only this much I can say: I have found a bright pearl in the heap of garbage.”

What he is calling the “heap of garbage,” is his scholarship. He has accumulated so much knowledge unnecessarily, and all that knowledge was only heaping up and hiding the original being – your very roots into existence.

It is not ordinary happiness, in fact there is no word that can describe it. “Blissfulness” comes closer, even closer comes “benediction”, still closer comes “ecstasy”. But beyond that, no word is there; the experience is far deeper than ecstasy itself.

For a while after his enlightenment, Tozan continued to travel around China. One day he arrived at Leh T’an and met the head monk, Ch’u. Ch’u greeted Tozan and said:

“Wonderful, wonderful – the inconceivable realms of Tao and Buddha!”

Ch’u greeted Tozan, and in his greeting, he said, “Wonderful, wonderful – the inconceivable realms of Tao and Buddha! I can see in you the very meeting of Buddha and Tao.”

It is the same experience. Tozan responded, “I don’t know about these realms you are talking about. Who is talking of them?”

He is indicating to Ch’u that it is beyond words – “Look inside yourself. Who is saying these words? From where are these words coming? That source is beyond the words.”

Ch’u remained silent, and Tozan shouted “Speak!”

Ch’u then said, “No need to fight about it. That is the way to miss.”

Tozan replied, “If it has not been mentioned, how can there be fighting and missing?”

Ch’u could make no answer to this.

Tozan then said, “Buddha and Tao – next you will talk of sutras.”

“First you mention Buddha and Tao, and then you will start talking about sutras. Once you begin to talk, there is no end to talking, and the thing you are trying to talk about is beyond words.”

Ch’u replied, “What do the sutras say about this?”

Tozan responded, “When all is understood, words are forgotten.”

Ch’u said, “This is sickness of the mind.”

Tozan said, “Is this sickness slight or severe?”

Ch’u could make no reply to Tozan.

That was the reason Isan sent him to Ungan. He was a man of great scholarship, and once he has found his own buddha, he will become a very great master. Ordinary teachers will not even be able to understand him. Ch’u was an ordinary teacher of Tao and Buddhism both. And you can see that Tozan denied even Buddha and Tao. Those words only indicate, they don’t describe. And he said to Ch’u, “If you go on, soon you will start talking about sutras.”

You can see his philosophical approach. Now that he has found the truth, it is very difficult for anybody who is just a scholar even to talk with him. He will be able to defeat any scholarly person very easily.

Seeing that Tozan is saying that even Buddha and Tao are not exactly the experience, Ch’u, as a teacher, said, “What do the sutras say about this?” He is still talking about sutras – “What do the sutras say about this unknowable, this inexpressible? You are indicating that it is beyond Buddha and beyond Tao.”

Tozan said, “When all is understood, words are forgotten. Once you have known it, once you have tasted it, you become silent.” Of course, a teacher will not agree on this point.

Ch’u, in anger, said, “This is sickness of the mind.”

Tozan said, “Is this sickness slight or severe?”

What kind of sickness? It is not sickness, but a teacher is confined to the mind. You say anything beyond the mind and you are simply talking nonsense. You are sick, you are mad, you are insane. A teacher is confined to the mind, a master is beyond the mind.

Ch’u could make no reply to Tozan’s inquiry whether this sickness was slight or severe.

One day the monk Akinobo went to visit a poet friend of his. Chatting, he mentioned that he had made a collection of poems – one for each day of the year. He read him one:

The fourth day
Of the new year;
What better day
To leave the world?

That very day was the fourth day of the first month of the year 1718. No sooner had he finished reciting the verse than Akinobo nodded his head and died.

Zen masters know how to live and also know how to die. They take neither life seriously nor death seriously. Seriousness is a sick way of looking at existence. A man of perfection will love to live and will love to die. His life will be a dance, and his death will be a song. There will be no distinction between life and death.

It is time, Nivedano . . .

Osho leads a guided meditation into no-mind:

Osho requests the first beating of the drum . . .

Nivedano . . .

(Drumbeat)

and everyone moves totally into gibberish.

(Gibberish)

After a few minutes Osho signals a second beating of the drum.

Nivedano . . .

(Drumbeat)

Be silent . . . Close your eyes . . . and feel yourself completely frozen.

This is the right moment to enter inward.

Gather all your energy, your total consciousness, and rush toward the inner center with deep intensity and urgency.

The center is just two inches below the navel, inside the body.

Faster . . . and faster . . . Deeper . . . and deeper . . .

As you come closer to the center of being, a great silence descends over you, and inside a peace, a blissfulness, a light that fills your whole interior. This is your original being. This is your buddha.

At this moment, witness that you are not the body, not the mind, not the heart, but just the pure witnessing self, the pure consciousness. This is your buddhahood, your hidden nature, your meeting with the universe. These are your roots.

Relax . . .

And the next drumbeat . . .

Nivedano . . .

(Drumbeat)

Relax . . . and just be a silent witness.

You start melting like ice in the ocean. Gautama the Buddha Auditorium becomes an oceanic field of consciousness. You are no longer separate – this is your oneness with existence.

To be one with existence is to be a buddha, it is your very nature. It is not a question of searching and finding, you are it, right now.

Gather all the flowers, the fragrance, the flame and the fire, the immeasurable, and bring it with you as you come back.

And the final drumbeat . . .

Nivedano . . .

(Drumbeat)

Come back peacefully, silently, as a buddha.

Just for a few seconds close your eyes and remember the path and the source you have found, and the buddha nature that you have experienced.

This moment you are the most blessed people on the Earth. Remembering yourself as a buddha is the most precious experience, because it is your eternity, it is your immortality.

It is not you; it is your very existence. You are one with the stars and the trees and the sky and the ocean. You are no longer separate.

The last word of Buddha was, sammasati.

Remember that you are a buddha – sammasati.

Okay, Maneesha?

-Osho

From The Zen Manifesto: Freedom from Oneself, Discourse #11

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

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Let Your Emptiness Become a Dance – Osho

I am often able to achieve the state – or what seems like the state – which you call ‘being a hollow bamboo’ – silent, watching, empty. The only problem is that there is no bliss in that emptiness. It is just nothing. Can I expect something to fill it one of these days?

Mariel Strauss, it is because of this idea that you are missing the whole beauty of nothingness: this desire to fill it. You are not really a hollow bamboo, because in this hollow bamboo this desire is there, and this desire is enough to fill the hollow bamboo, to block its emptiness.

This desire to fill it one day, this expectation that “Someday, God will come and fill my emptiness” this very idea is preventing you from really becoming a hollow bamboo. Drop this desire. Forget all about filling your hollow bamboo – then you are a hollow bamboo. And when you are a hollow bamboo, it is immediately full of God. But not that you have to desire it; if you desire it you will go on missing it.

This is one of the basic paradoxes to be understood about religious inquiry. Understand it as deeply as possible, let it sink deeply into your heart, because this is not only Mariel Strauss’s problem, this is everybody’s problem. Anybody who goes on in the search for truth, for being, for God, or whatsoever you call it, will have to come across it.

You can feel that you are empty, but deep down, lurking somewhere is the desire, the hope, the expectation that “Now, where is God? It is getting late and I have remained a hollow bamboo so long. What is the point? This is just nothingness.”

There is condemnation when you say, “This is just nothingness.” You are not happy with this hollow bamboo-ness. You are not happy with this emptiness; there is condemnation. You have managed somehow, because you have heard me saying again and again that the moment you are a hollow bamboo God will descend in you: “Become empty, and you will become full.” You want to become full, so you say “Okay, we will become empty. If that is the only way to become full, we will even try that.” But this is not true emptiness. You have not understood the point.

Enjoy emptiness, cherish it, nourish it. Let your emptiness become a dance, a celebration. Forget all about God – to come or not is His business. Why should you be worried? Leave it to Him. And when you have completely forgotten about God, He comes, immediately He comes. He always comes when you are utterly unaware of His coming; you don’t even hear His footsteps. One moment He was not there, and suddenly another moment He is there. But your emptiness has to be total. And a total emptiness means no expectation, no future, no desire.

You say, “I am often able to achieve the state . . .”

You must be forcing it, you must be trying hard, you must be cultivating it, you must be imagining it. It is imaginary, it is not true.

“. . . or what seems like the state . . .”

And deep down you also know that it is not the real state. You have managed somehow to create a kind of emptiness in yourself. It is a forced emptiness.

“. . . which you call ‘being a hollow bamboo’ – silent, watching, empty . . .”

It is not what I call the state of being a hollow bamboo; it is not. If it were, then there would be no desire for God, because there is no desire. It does not matter what you desire; God, money, power, prestige, it matters not. Desire is desire, its taste is always the same. Desire leads you away from the present, from the herenow into the future, somewhere else. Desire does not allow you to relax into the moment. It takes you away from your being.

So what you desire does not matter: you can desire presidency of a country, or you can desire money, or you can desire sainthood, or you can desire God, you can desire truth – desire is desire. Desire means you are torn apart between that which you are and that which you would like to be. This is anguish; this is anxiety. And this anxiety will not allow you to become a hollow bamboo. To be a hollow bamboo means: a state of desirelessness. Then you are utterly empty, and then that emptiness has a clarity in it. Then that emptiness has a splendor in it, a purity in it. Then that emptiness has a holy quality to it. It is so pure; it is so innocent that you will not call it ‘just emptiness’ or ‘just nothingness’. That emptiness is God itself! Once you are empty, once you are herenow, with no desire taking you away from your reality, God is. God means ‘that which is’.

God is already the case; your desiring mind does not allow you to see it. Your desiring mind makes you a monkey: you go on jumping from one branch to another branch. You go on jumping; you are never in a state of rest. This desire and that desire, and one desire creates another desire, and it is a continuum.

When there is no desire where can you go? When there is no desire where is the future? When there is no desire where is time? Where is past? When there is no desire where is mind? Where is memory? Where is imagination? All gone! Just cut one single root which is the chief root of the tree of mind: cut desire and just be. In that state of being you are a hollow bamboo. And the moment you are a hollow bamboo, reality bursts upon you, as if it has been always waiting but you were not available to it. It floods you!

-Osho

From The Secret of Secrets, Discourse #18, Q5

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An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

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Spectrum of Gender Identity – Osho

From the very beginning a boy is told, “You are a boy, not a girl. Behave like a boy! Tears are okay for a girl, but not for you. Be manly.” So every boy goes on cutting his feminine qualities. And all that is beautiful is feminine. So finally, what is left is just a barbarous animal. His whole function is to reproduce children.

The girl is not allowed to have anything with manly qualities. If she wants to climb a tree she will be stopped immediately, “This is for boys, not for girls!” Strange! If the girl has the desire to climb the tree, that is enough proof that she should be allowed.

All old societies have created different clothes for men and for women. This is not right, because each man is also a woman. He has come from two sources: his father and his mother. Both have contributed to his being. And each woman is also a man.

We have destroyed both. The woman has lost all courage, adventure, reasoning, logic, because those are thought to be the qualities of a man. And the man has lost grace, sensitivity, compassion, kindness. Both have become half.

This is one of the greatest problems we have to solve – at least for our people. My sannyasins have to be both: half man, half woman. That will make them richer. They will have all the qualities that are available to human beings, not only half.

-From Death to Deathlessness, Discourse #17

[A sannyasin who had done the Primal group said in darshan that she had been told she should try to be more womanly.

Osho said to listen to her own feelings, and that it was perfectly okay to be boyish, if that is how she wanted to be . . .]

A real world will be bi-sexual. It will not be divided into man and woman. Every woman is also a man and every man is also a woman. It has to be so, because half of you comes from your mother, and half of you comes from your father. So you are both; everybody is both.

This is your choice that you decide in favor of your father; perfectly good. It is the others’ choice if they decide in favor of their mother. But you are neither and you are both. So don’t be worried about it. There is nothing wrong in being a boy in a girl’s body.

-Osho

From Be Realistic: Plan for a Miracle, Chapter 22

One thing has to be told to you: just by being in a female body one need not be a woman. Just by being in a male body one need not be a man. Man and woman are more states of the mind. There are men who are psychologically not male but female, and there are women who are psychologically not women but men. These are the people who create many problems, because they cannot be heterosexual. Heterosexuality has no appeal for them, they have to be homosexuals or lesbians. Their psychology is different from their physiology; their biology and their psychology have a gap in them, unbridged.

And there is going to remain a problem with them. In fact in a better world, in the future world – soon, I think by the end of this century – things will be easier. Because if a man is deep down psychologically feeling himself a woman, it is better to go through an operation and become biologically also a woman. Or if a woman is feeling deep down a male, it is better to go through an operation, plastic surgery, and become a man, so it can be bridged.

Once this becomes possible, homosexuality and lesbianism will disappear from the world. Otherwise, it cannot disappear, because it has a certain reason in it. The man looks a man from the outside; deep down he is not a man, he is a woman. His deeper woman wants a man – hence the homosexual.

And there is a third category also: confused people, who don’t know who they are. In the morning, they are women, by the evening they are men. The difference is so small that they shrink; they become bisexuals. One moment they are loving a woman, another moment they are falling in love with a man. Their psychology and biology is in a state of mess; they will live a very confused life. Science can now help these people too, to make things clear.

-Osho

From Take It Easy, Vol 2, Discourse #2, Q4

That’s why scientists are able to change sexes very easily. A man can become a woman, a woman can become a man — just a very small change, a change in the hormones, in the chemistry of their bodies. Just a few more hormones and the woman will start growing a mustache and beard.

Now there are many people in the world who have changed their sexes. Sometimes it has happened automatically because man consists of both, man and woman. Something is contributed by your father, something is contributed by your mother, so you are both: your father and your mother, part man, part woman. Whichever is more in percentage, perhaps sixty percent man and forty percent woman, then you are man, or it may be otherwise, then you are a woman.

This percentage of hormones can be changed just by giving you injections. And in the developed countries there are already men who have been born as women, and women who have changed to men. But in the beginning the very idea came to mind because once in a while there was an accidental case. For example, in the very beginning of this century in London there was a case. A man fell in love with a woman, and he married the woman. But after the marriage he was very much amazed that the woman slowly started changing into a man.

After a year he was so much ashamed because the whole town was laughing at him: his woman had turned completely into a man. He went to the court for divorce. The court was puzzled; there had never been a case like that before the court. And the man was perfectly reasonable. He said, “I married a woman; I have never married a man. Why should I marry a man? Obviously the marriage is canceled; in fact, I don’t need any divorce, but just not to be illegal, I am asking for divorce.”

His wife was sent for a medical examination. There was no need because she had a mustache and beard; her breasts had disappeared. There was not much need, but not taking any chances the judge said, “Let her be medically examined. If the doctor’s report says she has become a man, then there is no question, your divorce is accepted.”

That gave the idea to the scientists that perhaps the woman has a very small difference between her male hormones and female hormones. Perhaps she is fifty-one percent woman, forty-nine percent man, and by some change, climate, food, some medicine… it can be anything that has altered the proportion between man and woman in her. The difference was very slight, very borderline, and she became a man. This opened a door of great research, and it was found that every man can become a woman, and every woman can become a man.

This reminds me that in the East, from the very beginning, almost ten-thousand-year-old statues are available in which Shiva and his wife, Parvati, are represented as one personality: half man, half woman. It is a beautiful aesthetic and artistic sculpture, and that’s how it has been thought always: a beautiful metaphor, but nobody has thought of it as a reality.

The people who created that statue must have come to know that every man is carrying a woman within him and every woman is carrying a man within her — and this change is not impossible. My own feeling is that in the future many more people will be changing — because why not have both the experiences in one life? Most intelligent people will change — the unintelligent always are afraid of any change — otherwise, you have lived as a woman for thirty years, now it is time, why not have a look from the other side? Why go on living on this bank? The scenery from the other side is also very beautiful. Only then will the old idea of the poets that the woman is a mystery will be solved. You can become a woman and know what the mystery is. You can become a man and know what the mystery is. There is no mystery at all; it is just a poetic conception. The difference is only biological, chemical, hormonal. I don’t call that kind of infatuation love; I call it lust. And to be confused between lust and love has created your problem.

From The Invitation, Discourse #28, Q2

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These are Simply Cleansing Methods – Osho

The Western mind is very speedy, fast, because the conditioning is for only one life – seventy years – and so much to do. One third of your life goes into sleep, one third of your life goes into education, training – what is left?

Much of it goes into earning your livelihood. If you count everything, you will be surprised: out of seventy years you cannot even have seven years left for something that you want to do. Naturally there is hurry, a mad rush, so mad that one forgets where one is going. All that you remember is whether you are going with speed or not. The means becomes the end.

In the same way, in different directions . . . the Eastern mind has cultivated itself differently than the Western mind. Those one hundred and twelve methods of meditation developed in the East have never taken account of the Western man; they were not developed for the Western man. The Western man was not yet available. The time that Vigyan Bhairava Tantra was written – in which those one hundred and twelve techniques have come to perfection – is nearabout five to ten thousand years before us.

At that time there was no Western man, no Western society, no Western culture. The West was still barbarous, primitive, not worth taking into account. The East was the whole world, at the pinnacle of its growth, richness, civilization.

My methods of meditation have been developed out of an absolute necessity. I want the distinction between the West and the East to be dissolved.

After Shiva’s Vigyan Bhairava Tantra, in these five or ten thousand years, nobody has developed a single method. But I have been watching the differences between East and West: the same method cannot be applied immediately to both. First, the Eastern and the Western mind have to be brought into a similar state. Those techniques of dynamic meditation, kundalini meditation, and others, are all cathartic; their basis is catharsis.

You have to throw out all the junk that your mind is full of. Unless you are unloaded you cannot sit silently. It is just as if you tell a child to sit silently in the corner of the room. It is very difficult; he is so full of energy. You are repressing a volcano! The best way is, first tell him, “Go run outside around the house ten times; then come and sit down in the corner.” Then it is possible, you have made it possible. He himself wants to sit down now, to relax. He is tired, he is exhausted; now, sitting there, he is not repressing his energy, he has expressed his energy by running around the house ten times. Now he is more at ease.

The cathartic methods are simply to throw all your impatience, your speediness, your hurry, your repressions.

One more factor has to be remembered, that these are absolutely necessary for the Western man before he can do something like vipassana – just sitting silently doing nothing and the grass grows by itself. But you have to be sitting silently, doing nothing – that is a basic condition for the grass to grow by itself. If you cannot sit silently doing nothing, you are going to disturb the grass. […]

So these methods are absolutely necessary for the Western mind. But a new factor has also entered: they have become necessary for the Eastern mind too. The mind for which Shiva wrote those one hundred and twelve methods of meditation no longer exists – even in the East now. The Western influence has been tremendous. Things have changed.

So now my methods are applicable to both. I call them preliminary methods. They are to destroy everything that can prevent you from going into a silent meditation. Once dynamic meditation or kundalini meditation succeeds, you are clean. You have erased repressiveness. You have erased the speediness, the hurry, the impatience. Now it is possible for you to enter the temple.

It is for this reason that I spoke about the acceptance of sex, because without the acceptance of sex, you cannot get rid of repression. And I want you to be completely clean, natural. I want you to be in a state where those one hundred and twelve methods can be applicable to you. This is my reason for devising these methods – these are simply cleansing methods.

-Osho

From Light on the Path #16, Q1

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An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

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Waiting with Full Awareness – Osho

What is meditation?

Now this is strange. It reminds me of a story.

A cricket fan took his girlfriend for a date – it was a full moon night, and the beach was silent, and they were sitting on the beach, and it was beautiful. They were holding hands and hugging each other. And the cricket fan continued to talk about cricket for three hours. Then, suddenly he became aware that he must be boring the girl. Three hours is too long! So he said, “Sorry, forgive me. I have been talking for three hours about my hobby. I am a fan; I am mad about cricket. I must have bored you utterly?”

The girl said, “Not at all, not at all. But do tell me what is cricket?”

Now you ask, “What is meditation?” and my whole life I have been talking about meditation. But still, I understand why the question arises. You listen, but you can’t get it. You understand intellectually what meditation is, but still, it remains elusive. You cannot catch hold of it. And you cannot catch hold of it!

It is not that something is wrong with you. Meditation cannot be caught hold of, you have to allow it to happen so that it can catch hold of you. Meditation is not something that you have to do; meditation is something for which you have to wait! It is something that comes and comes on its own. It is like a breeze. It is not that you can pull it in, that you can manage and order it. You cannot order anything that is valuable. Ordered things are ordered things.

You cannot order God. So meditation, satori, samadhi, enlightenment, nirvana, God – they cannot be ordered. The very idea is silly. You cannot order. You can receive. Certainly, you can receive. You can invite, you can wait in patience. So whenever you are feeling happy, whenever you are feeling joyous, whenever you are feeling harmonious, in tune, then just sit silently. Wait for it. Just wait for it! Nothing else is needed to be done.

Meditation is not an action. You just wait. Relax and wait. Lie down or sit or stand – as you feel good – and wait for it. Wait, alert, and soon you will hear the whisperings, the silent steps of something which is coming closer to you. Soon you will see something is entering into your heart, into your being. You cannot see it, but it is there. You can feel it. It is like a fragrance that fills your nostrils. It is like light. Keep the window open. That’s all you need to do; just keep the window open, so when the light arises and the clouds are not there and the sun is high, the rays can enter in you. About meditation you can do only negative things. Keep the door open, keep the eyes open, keep yourself alert, and it comes. It certainly comes. It immediately starts flowing in you. It is a benediction. You cannot pull; you cannot manipulate it. A manipulated meditation will not be of any value. That’s what people are doing. Somebody is doing TM, somebody is doing something else – trying to manipulate.

Here, when you are doing the Chaotic [Dynamic] Meditation or the Kundalini or the Nadabrahma, these are not really meditations, you are just getting in tune. If you have seen them, it is like Indian classical musicians playing. For half an hour, or sometimes even more, they simply go on fixing their instruments. They will move the knobs, they will make the strings tight or loose, and the drum player will go on checking his drum – whether it is perfect or not. For half an hour they go on doing this. This is not music; this is just preparation.

Kundalini is not really meditation; it is just preparation. You are preparing your instrument. When it is ready, then you stand in silence. Then meditation starts. Then you are utterly there. You have woken yourself up by jumping, by dancing, by breathing, by shouting – these are all devices to make you a little more alert than you ordinarily are. Once you are alert, then the waiting.

Waiting is meditation – waiting with full awareness. And then it comes, it descends on you, it surrounds you, it plays around you, it dances around you, it cleanses you, it purifies you, it transforms you.

-Osho

From I Say Unto You, V.2, Discourse #6, Q8

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An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

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They will Remove the Barriers – Osho

Why are methods needed when releasement can happen instantly, herenow? I am so tired of trips. How many more must I try only to find they don’t work either? I know the problem is in me and I know there is no problem. So now what?

Celebrate now. Sing, dance, love, be.

You say: Why are methods needed when releasement can happen instantly, herenow?

Because you cannot trust me, that’s why. You cannot trust me. I go on declaring that you are Buddhas, already enlightened, but you are skeptical about it. You can believe – that too very grudgingly – that a Gautam Buddha may have become enlightened, maybe, perhaps. A Jesus became enlightened, maybe. You can grudgingly concede that much, but to concede that you are enlightened is too much. You cannot give such a gift to yourself: you are so against yourself; you are so condemnatory toward yourself. You can immediately accept it if somebody says that you are a sinner. Just think of it; if somebody says you are a sinner, you are ready to bow down. Even if on the surface you deny it, deep down you know that he is right because from the very beginning you have been taught – you have been poisoned – that you are a sinner. The teaching has gone into your very blood and bones and marrow; it has become part of you that ‘you are a sinner’. All the religions of the world have been teaching this; for centuries, generations upon generations have been doing only one work: condemning man.

You are not even aware of the self-condemnation that you have for yourself, the hate that you have for yourself. You don’t love yourself, how can you allow yourself to be a Buddha?

Releasement can happen this moment, but you won’t allow it, hence methods are needed. If people can trust me, then there is no need for any method. The method is not going to help the releasement. Let me remind you, the method is only going to help you trust me. So I send you into therapy groups. Teertha and Divya and Siddha and Amitabh and Pradeepa – these people will work on you. They will help only one thing: they will help you to trust me.

The whole function of therapy groups here is totally different than it is in the West; it has a totally different meaning and significance. It is to create trust, it is to create a little love for yourself, it is to create acceptance. Then I send you into meditations; those meditations are cathartic.

A cathartic meditation is just throwing all the repressed energy that is boiling in you, that won’t allow you to trust. Dynamic, Kundalini, and others will take away much energy that hinders; it will be released. Slowly, slowly you will become capable of trusting. It is only because of lack of trust that methods have to be invented. If you trust already, then there is no need for any method.

You ask me: Why are methods needed when releasement can happen instantly, herenow?

Releasement will always happen instantly; whether it happens today or tomorrow it will always happen instantly, suddenly. It is a sudden experience, a lightning, and the whole past disappears; you are abruptly cut from the past, you become discontinuous with it. The old disappears and the new is born. And the new is not a modification of the old; it has no relationship with the old, it is simply unrelated with the old. The old has not caused it either, it is not an effect of the old; it is utterly unrelated with the old.

Krishnamurti has been saying the same thing for at least fifty years, but nothing much has happened. He goes on saying that it is possible just now – be aware, be awake. And people go on listening, because the problem is they cannot trust Krishnamurti that this can be just now. Their minds are spinning and weaving inside, “This is not possible – how can it be possible? What will happen to my past karmas? I have to undo them. And what about all the crimes and the sins I have committed? I have to be punished for them. And what about the Judgement Day? How can it happen right now?” Deep inside these unconscious rumblings go on and on. And you go on listening . . .

Seeing the failure of Krishnamurti, I have invented methods. I am saying essentially the same thing, because the message cannot be different. But I had to invent methods so that they can destroy your mistrust. Methods will help you to become unblocked; they will help you to become more flowing; they will help you to be less frozen – they will melt you; they will warm up the process of your being.

Releasement is going to happen instantly, any moment it is going to happen. But if you are ready, it can happen this very moment – not even a single moment more do you have to wait.

Why are methods needed when releasement can happen instantly, herenow?

Because of you, not because of me. From my side I am very much puzzled why it is not happening to you. It should happen, why is it not happening? Why do you go on listening without understanding it? Why do you listen only intellectually? Why can’t you listen from the heart, from your totality? It is a constant wonder to me – a miracle – that people can go on listening every day and can remain the same, hence the methods. The methods are not for the releasement, you are not going to become enlightened through any meditation, no; nobody has ever become enlightened through any meditation, but the meditations help. In a negative way they help; they remove the rocks and the stream starts flowing. They don’t create the stream; they can’t create it – how can rocks create the stream? They have nothing to do with the nature of the stream, but they can prevent it.

Because there are things which are preventing you from trusting the moment, trusting God, trusting life, trusting existence, you are shrunk in fear, in doubt. In doubt and fear you have armored yourself just to be secure, safe; you have created a great armor around yourself. Your body is no more an opening to existence; it has become closed. Your windows, your doors, are all closed. The sun rises – yes, the sun rises in the evening – but it cannot penetrate in you. It goes on rising, it goes on knocking on your door, but the knock is subtle – so subtle, so silent, that you cannot hear it in your noisy mind, in that constant chatter that goes on inside you.

These methods are negative methods; they will not give you enlightenment, but they will remove the barriers. And once the barriers are removed, once all the barriers are removed, enlightenment happens. It is nothing that you have to achieve; when you are available . . . the release, the liberation.

You say: I am so tired of trips.

Really? I don’t think so. If one is really tired, then one’s trips are finished. You are still hoping – maybe there is still some trip, some way of tripping so that you can attain. You are still hoping. You are looking out of the corner of the eye. “Maybe I have failed ninety-nine times; but who knows? I may succeed the hundredth time. I have failed up to now, but who knows? I may be trying the wrong methods, and there may be some right method. I have failed because I may have been with wrong Masters, and there may be some right Master. I have failed because I have not put all of my energy into it; if I put all of my energy into it I may succeed. I have failed because the time was not ripe for it and now the time may be ripe.” And a thousand and one excuses you can always find when you want to go on a new trip. If you are really tired, then who is preventing you? Then forget all about trips, relax, celebrate, be.

I am so tired of trips. How many more must I try only to find they don’t work either?

Nothing ever works; nothing has ever worked, because nothing is needed for it to work. Life is going perfectly well – there is no need to do anything whatsoever. But this vision comes slowly, slowly, when you have failed again and again and again. It sinks in very slowly. Our minds are very stubborn, hard, rock-like; they are not soft soil – they don’t allow anything to sink in easily. Hence sometimes it takes lives for a person to realize that nothing ever works. And that is a great moment when one realizes that nothing ever works, nothing can work. “My whole effort to attain was absolutely wrong from the very beginning. It was wrong because what I am trying to achieve is already the case. It is wrong because I am searching and it is already there inside me.”

All efforts are meaningless. If a person is intelligent, he will understand it soon. If he is not intelligent, he will take a little longer; it depends on your intelligence. A very intelligent person, attentive, alert, aware, will see the point in a single moment; with a single blow his head will disappear. He will see the point and all is finished – all misery, all hell, all search.

I am so tired of trips, you say. How many more must I try only to find they don’t work either?

It all depends on you. You can make a trip out of me.

Now, the question is from Hal Duggan, and he is taking sannyas on the twentieth. It depends on you; that too can become a trip. From my side it is not; it is the end of all trips. It is just a declaration that enough is enough. Sannyas is a declaration that “I am not going into any more trips”, that all methods have failed, and all paths have failed, that all paths lead astray, that “I am not going to be caught into any method, into any path, anymore.” Sannyas is a renunciation of all methods, all paths, all trips – psychedelic or otherwise.

But you can also make sannyas a trip – it depends on you – and then you will miss again. Sannyas is not a trip. It is the realization that all trips are bound to fail. It is coming out of all trips; it is coming home. It is realizing the fact that you don’t waste your energy and time in searching for anything anymore; you don’t go on waiting for anything to happen in the future, because it is already happening – it has always been happening. Dance, sing, celebrate, be.

God is, he has not to be searched for. God already is, you are not to discover him. All you have to do is dance a mad dance, you have to dance in such a mad way that all the doors are thrown open. You have to sing with such totality that the ego dissolves into that totality. You have to be in prayer, in gratitude, with such passion and intensity that the whole starts flowing toward you; your waiting becomes a magnetic field.

Sannyas is not a trip. So, Hal Duggan, remember it, it is not a trip. Don’t reduce sannyas to a trip.

I am not a trip. I am not here to create new bondages for you, I am here to make you free, totally free. That’s why I don’t give you any discipline, I give you only awareness. That’s why I don’t give you any character, I give you only alertness. And out of alertness if a character arises, good. And out of awareness a character certainly arises, but a very fluid and flowing character. It is not a fixed mode of life, because all modes are dead, stagnant. A character arises out of consciousness, but the consciousness goes on changing, so the character goes on changing; the consciousness goes on reflecting each moment the new reality that is happening, and the character goes on corresponding to the new reality that is happening. There is continuous adjustment, spontaneous adjustment, between you and the whole.

The people who have fixed characters are always maladjusted, because they have a fixed character, and life has no fixed character. God is characterless, and if you have a character, you will never meet God, because your character will confine you into a certain strait jacket; you will become a stereotype, you will not be a living being anymore; you will be a noun not a verb.

God is a verb not a noun. God is a process, a dynamism; and a man of character, the so-called man of character, is dull, dead. He has to be dull and dead, because if he were aware he would have to see the changes that are happening around him and he would have to change accordingly. He has to remain drugged in his unconsciousness, he has to remain fixed with his character because he is always afraid that something may happen and he may have to change his character. He does not want to change his character so he goes on remaining unaware of all that is changing. He also creates a society which is unchanging. That’s why in the East the society has remained unchanging; it is because of the so-called ‘character obsession’. If a man has to have a fixed character, then the society has also to be a fixed pattern; only then will he be adjusted, otherwise there will be difficulty.

In the East thousands of years have passed and things have remained almost the same; they have not changed – they have not been allowed to change because then there is fear. And that’s what is happening in the West now: because things are changing, people are losing character, and the Western religious leaders are very much worried. Life is changing fast; science has released so many energies that life goes on changing. And one has to change with it, one has to keep pace with life. And if one has to keep pace with life, one cannot stay in a fixed mode. It is very easy to live in an Indian village and remain in a fixed mode; it is very difficult to live in New York with a fixed mode of life – you have to be more fluid.

So the Eastern people think that Western people don’t have any character. What the reality is, in fact, is that the West has become more alive, more changing, and the East is still dull and dead, fixated, obsessed and afraid. “If anything changes on the outside then I will have to change inside too, because my inside has to correspond with the outside.”

Small changes bring difficulties. For example, since electricity came to India, many Jainas have started eating in the night. Now, for centuries they have not eaten in the night – they had a fixed mode – but when electricity came, suspicions arose, doubts arose. Now, what is the problem? Electricity is there, light is there – there is no fear of any insect or any ant entering into your food; you will not be killing anything. Now in the night you can have more light than you have in the day, so many Jainas started eating in the night. Now, what is the problem? And when one thing falls, then other things start falling, because everything is connected; all things are connected with each other. If you can eat in the night and Mahavir is wrong about it, maybe he is wrong about other things too.

That’s why the church has been fighting against science, because it creates suspicion. The church has believed that the earth is flat, and then science started saying it is not flat, it is a globe. Now, if Jesus is wrong about one thing, why can’t he be wrong about other things? Then he is no more infallible; suspicion will arise. He may be wrong about God too, he may be wrong about the Judgement Day, he may be absolutely wrong, who knows? because he is fallible.

Religions have always insisted that nothing should change; these religions are all in the service of death. I am giving you a totally new vision: a religion of life not of death, a religion of intelligence not of stupidity, a religion of dynamism not of stagnancy, a religion which will keep you flowing with the flow of the total and will not in any way hold you back from the movement of the total. It will keep you in tune with the whole. I don’t give a character to you, I only give consciousness. My whole emphasis is on consciousness.

Sitting is Zen, walking is Zen, talking is Zen, being silent is Zen. All should be only awareness. Awareness should be your God. Let awareness be the only fundamental law, and then you will be out of all trips; otherwise, it is difficult. You can go on changing from one trip to another. A Christian can become a Hindu; this is just changing the train – the trip remains. A Hindu can become a Christian, and nothing changes, only words; he will not go to the temple, he will go to the church.

And the same can be done with me too but remember that will be your responsibility. I can also become a trip to you. I don’t want to become a trip to you; I want to become a liberation to you. From my side I want you to be liberated, but still, your cooperation will be needed. The very idea of liberation, and you can catch hold of it and make a trip out of it. And your mind is very, very efficient in making trips out of everything. Beware.

Hal Duggan, on the twentieth you are going to become a sannyasin. Remember, this is not a trip, this is the end of all trips. Let it be the end of all trips. How long are you going to journey and journey and journey? Now, come home. Now, come to rest. Enough of the trips. Learn from me how to rest, how to relax, how to be.

-Osho

From The Sun Rises in the Evening, Discourse #8, Q3

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

 

 

The Non-Doing of Meditation – Osho

A few things before we enter this sutra of Sosan. In the West, just a few years back, there was a French hypnotist, Emile Coué – he happened to rediscover one of the basic laws of the human mind. He called it “the law of reverse effect” – that is one of the oldest sutras in Taoist and Zen thinking. Sosan is talking about this law. Try to understand this law, then his sayings will be simple to understand.

For example, if you don’t feel sleepy what will you do? You will try to get into sleep – you will make efforts, you will do this and that, but whatsoever you do will bring just the reverse; just that which you need will not come. Just the opposite will happen, because any activity, any effort, is against sleep.

Sleep is a relaxation. You cannot bring it; you cannot do anything for it to happen. You cannot force it; you cannot will it. […]

So when you make efforts to go into sleep, it is a self-destructive thing. You are doing something which will become just the opposite – you will become more awake. The only way to enter into sleep is: not to do anything.

If it is not coming, it is not coming. Wait . . . don’t do anything! Otherwise, you will push it further away and a distance will be created. Just wait on the pillow, put off the light, close your eyes, relax and wait. Whenever it comes, it comes. You cannot bring it by any act of your will. […]

And this happens in many things in life: just the opposite comes out of it. If you want to be silent, what will you do? – because silence is just like sleep. You cannot force it. You can allow it to happen, it is a let-go, but there is no way to work it out. What will you do if you want to be silent? If you do anything you will be less silent than ever.

If you want to be quiet, what will you do? – because quietness means non-doing. You simply float, you simply relax! And when I say simply relax, I mean simply. No method is to be used for relaxation, because method means again you are doing something. […]

If something is to be done, howsoever difficult, you can find the know-how, how to do it. You can learn the technique; there are experts, you can be trained. But in Zen nobody can be trained. In God there are no experts and no authorities – cannot be, because it is not a question of know-how, it is a question of relaxing into your being, not doing. The greatest thing will happen to you only when you are not there. And if you are doing something you are bound to be there.

Sleep comes when you are not there. Enlightenment also follows the same rule – it comes when you are not there. But when you are doing, how will you be absent at the same time? If you are doing something you will be there. Action feeds the ego. When you are not doing anything, the ego cannot be fed. It simply disappears, it dies, it is not there. And when the ego is not there, the light descends.

So whatsoever you are doing willfully will be the barrier. In my meditations here, do them, but not willfully. Don’t force them; rather, let them happen. Float in them, abandon yourself in them. Be absorbed, but not willfully. Don’t manipulate, because when you manipulate you are divided, you become two: the manipulator and the manipulated. Once you are two, heaven and hell are created immediately; then there is vast distance between you and the truth. Don’t manipulate, allow things to happen.

If you are doing the kundalini meditation, allow the shaking – don’t do it! Stand silently, feel it coming, and when your body starts a little trembling, help it, but don’t do it! Enjoy it, feel blissful about it, allow it, receive it, welcome it, but don’t will it.

If you force, it will become an exercise, a bodily physical exercise. Then the shaking will be there, but just on the surface. It will not penetrate you. You will remain solid, stonelike, rocklike within. You will remain the manipulator, the door, and the body will only be following. The body is not the question, you are the question.

When I say shake, I mean your solidity, your rocklike being should shake to the very foundations, so it becomes liquid, fluid, melts, flows. And when the rocklike being becomes liquid your body will follow. Then there is no shaker, only shaking; then nobody is doing it, it is simply happening. Then the doer is not.

Enjoy it, but don’t will it. And remember, whenever you will a thing you cannot enjoy it. They are reverse, opposites; they never meet. If you will a thing you cannot enjoy it, if you enjoy it, you cannot will it.

For example, you can will your love. You can do it according to the manuals, but then you will not enjoy it. If you enjoy it you will have to throw all manuals, all Kinseys and Masters and Johnsons – you have to throw them all. You have to forget completely about all that you have learned about love. In the beginning you will be at a loss, because there are no guidelines, no maps. How to start?

Just wait . . . and let your inner energy move and follow that energy wherever it leads. It may take a little time, but when love comes it overtakes you. You are no more there. Love is there but there is no lover. Love happens as an energy, but it has no ego within it. Then it is tremendous, then it is a great release. And then love becomes an ecstasy, and you know something that has been known to those who have come to the divine. You know a fragment of it, a drop of the ocean. You know a ray – and then the taste comes to you.

Meditation, God, enlightenment, nirvana, they all came into being through love, because through love a glimpse was achieved. And when the glimpse was there, daring souls went on an adventure to find the source from where this glimpse comes. Through love, God has been discovered. That’s why Jesus goes on saying . . . whenever somebody asks, “What is God?” he says, “God is love,” because through love the first glimpse comes.

But the process is the same: you cannot will love. If you will, the whole beauty is lost, the whole thing becomes mechanical. You go through the whole ritual, but nothing happens. There is no ecstasy – it is something to be done and be finished. It never reaches to your center, it never shakes your foundations, it never becomes an inner dance. It is not a throbbing of your being; it is just an act on the periphery.

Remember, love cannot be willed, and neither can meditation.

-Osho

From Hsin Hsin Ming: The Book of Nothing, Discourse #2

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

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It is a Religionless Religion – Osho

Is it just a coincidence that you started the neo-sannyas movement on September 26th and stopped it on the same day after fifteen years?

I have not stopped the sannyas movement; I have stopped it becoming a religion. A movement is a flux; that’s the meaning of movement – it is moving, it is growing. But a religion is dead – it has stopped moving, it has stopped growing. It is dead. The only place for it is in the crematorium. That’s where we had to take it. And we have celebrated the death of the religion – a religion which was not my idea.

I trust in sannyasins remaining individuals, I trust in their growth and movement; but I don’t like the idea of them becoming like Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists. That’s what was done while I was in isolation. In my absence, Sheela gathered around herself a fascist group and managed to cripple the sannyas movement, to make it dead, to make it a religion.

We have burned the religion – that does not mean we have burned our religiousness. That is a totally different thing.

Religiousness is like love – invisible, yet so tangible. You cannot explain it, but you can experience it.

Religiousness has been freed from a dead structure, a bondage that Sheela and her criminal group have put around it. Now you are not Rajneeshees. And I would like the press, the media to be kind enough not to refer to my people as Rajneeshees. They need some kind of reference – they can call them friends of Rajneesh, and that will be absolutely right and appropriate.

Sheela wanted a dead religion. Every priest or priestess wants a dead religion, because it is predictable. Everything is just a catechism. There is no opinion, no evolution, no growth. Just look at Christianity: two thousand years have passed – have they gone even an inch farther than Jesus Christ? Twenty-five centuries have passed since Buddha – have Buddhists gone a single step ahead? This is destroying growth, destroying evolution.

Now I want my people to remain open, alive, growing, always fresh and new. It remains a new kind of phenomenon, religiousness: no label attached to it, because every label is a full stop. And I don’t like full stops, I don’t like even semi-colons: Life is always ongoing . . .

One journalist was very much worried; he said, “You have destroyed Rajneeshism, the religion. Now you will be in great trouble on two counts: first, Rajneesh Foundation International will lose its tax-exempt status.”

I told the man, “Don’t you worry about it. We have burned religion but not religiousness; and we will fight so that a man can have a growing experience of religiousness without being part of a mob psychology, without being a member of a collectivity. That is perfectly good for the sheep, but not for lions. And I want my sannyasins to be lions, not sheep.

“Nobody can take away the tax-exempt status. We are more religious than any Christian, any Hindu, any Mohammedan. We have just buried the dead structure and freed the soul of religion. That freedom is religiousness.”

He was also worried that it would be difficult now for me in reference to my immigration, on the same grounds. It is not going to be difficult for me at all. If you don’t have a category for religiousness, that is your fault. Make a category for religiousness.

Even in my interview with the INS I had made it clear that this is no ordinary religion; it is simply a way of life, a quality of religiousness.

The INS officer said, “But it is difficult, because we don’t have any category for that. We have a category for religion.”

“Then,” I said, “you can write that it is a religionless religion.” And that is on record.

What does “religionless religion” mean?

It simply means a religiousness. […]

So there is no question. The movement of sannyas has been freed, it has not been stopped. It was being stopped.

I used to have another corporation just like Rajneesh Foundation International: Neo-Sannyas International. Sheela dropped it. I came to know only when I came out of silence, that now Neo-Sannyas International does not exist – and that has been my whole life’s work!

I am going to revive Neo-Sannyas International. That is a movement; anybody can join it, and I have made it wider, I have given it a wide base. There are millions of people who love me, who love my insights, but cannot become sannyasins because they have to change their clothes – that creates trouble in their family, in their job, with their friends, in the society. I have withdrawn it.

I have withdrawn the mala. It has significance in India, because in India the red clothes and mala have been used for thousands of years by all the religions as symbolic of a sannyasin. I wanted to destroy that traditional idea of sannyas, because the sannyasin has to be celibate, the sannyasin has not to touch a woman, not to talk to a woman. The sannyasin cannot stay in a household, he has to stay in a temple. He has to eat only once a day; he has to fast continuously again and again.

He has to torture himself. This is sick.

I wanted to destroy this image, that’s why I had chosen the red color. And I had almost three hundred thousand sannyasins in India. My sannyasins created tremendous trouble amongst the traditional sannyasins, because there was no way to know who is who. My sannyasins would be walking on the road, and people would touch their feet, not knowing that these are not celibates; they have their girlfriends. They eat two times a day, they eat everything that is the best – whether it is Italian or Chinese or Japanese, it does not matter. These people belong to the twenty-first century, and old sannyasins were very angry because I have destroyed their image.

With our coming to the West, now red clothes and the mala are no longer needed, because in the West they have never been symbolic of religion. They have done their work in India. They have made their point, that a sannyasin can be with a wife, with children; that he need not be a parasite on the society, he can work, he can create, he can earn; that he need not be worshipped.

But in the West, there is no need. I was going to withdraw the mala and the color anyway, but Sheela made it more urgent; you have to be grateful to her. All her crimes made it absolutely necessary that now sannyasins should be absolutely normal human beings, so you can live in the society without creating any kind of hostility or embarrassment for yourself, for your family, or difficulties in your job.

And, more specifically, you are now completely devoid of all outer symbols. All that is left is the essential core of religiousness, the inward journey, which only you can do. I cannot do it for you, nobody can do it for you.

So now there is left only the essential quality, the most fundamental quality of religiousness.

That is meditation.

You have to go inwards.

I have been teaching you all the methods of meditation. You can choose any method that suits you. There are only one hundred and twelve methods; there is no possibility of adding more. It is exhaustive. All the methods possible have been explored. The simplest is witnessing.

So now that you no longer have any outer symbols, it is good, if you want to be a sannyasin, for you to remember only one thing: how to go into the discipline of witnessing; otherwise, there is a possibility that wearing red clothes and the mala you are completely satisfied that you are a sannyasin. You are not. Clothes don’t make anybody change, neither does the mala make anybody go through a transformation. But you can deceive yourself.

Now I am taking all that away from you and leaving only one simple thing. You cannot deceive, either you do it or you don’t do it. Without doing it, you are not a sannyasin. So the movement has come to its purest state, the most essential stage; it has not been dropped.

But it is a good coincidence that on the same date I had started the sannyas movement, and on the same date I have made it absolutely purified of all unnecessary, nonessential things. But it is purely a coincidence, because I am not good about dates, days, years. Forgive me for that.

I live in a timeless space. I don’t know what day it is, I don’t know what date it is. I use the watch only for you – in the morning discourse, in the evening interviews for the press – otherwise, the whole day I don’t use it. I don’t have any need to know what the time is. What am I going to do with the time?

Just for your sake . . . because I am such a crazy man that I may go on speaking and speaking – three hours, four hours, five hours – the watch prevents me. It is simply for your sake, a compassionate gesture.

-Osho

From Bondage to Freedom, Discourse #17

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

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The World is Where the Work Is – Osho

In the land of money, power, designer drugs like ecstasy and enlightened insurance, many of your sannyasins are now working, with a job, and earning their livelihood. Laughter, a sense of humor, and a deep love and gratitude towards you, keep us all connected with each other somehow. With your people in the world now and physically so far away, has your work with us taken on a new significance?

It has certainly taken on a new significance, a new turn.

I always wanted my people to be in the world, occasionally coming to me, being with me, refreshing themselves, then going back again to the world — because the world has to be changed. We are not the ones who renounce the world.

All the religions have been teaching, “Renounce the world.”

I teach you, transform the world.

Renouncing it is sheer cowardice, and by renouncing it, nothing significant happens — the world goes on living, producing new generations in the old pattern. And the persons who have renounced the world – they also don’t go through a transformation, for a simple reason that they lose all opportunities where they can test whether they are growing or not. You can sit in the Himalayas for a half a century, and you will feel silent, but that silence is not yours; it belongs to the Himalayas. Everything is silent, eternally silent, and there is nobody to disturb you.

Just to get out of the situations where you get disturbed does not mean that you are attaining peacefulness; it simply means you are running away from situations where you are certain that your peace will be disturbed. Renouncing the world has never been my idea; it was always to change it.

Millions of people are suffering, and suffering for stupid reasons. It is absolutely inhuman to turn your back on it and move to the mountains or to the deserts to live peacefully there. That peace is very cheap, very superficial; it has almost no meaning. Just come back to the world and it will be disturbed, it will be shattered into pieces. And that will be immensely significant to awaken you, that what you have been thinking of as peace, silence, has been just a dream which is shattered by the reality, just as a mirror is shattered when hit by a rock . . . and it is shattered forever. That mirror you cannot put together again, and all those years that you were enjoying the idea that you have attained peace have gone down the drain.

So my idea has always been: come to me to rejoice, come to me for a holiday. Come to me for pure joy. Be filled with the fragrance, be filled with my presence, then take it back into the world. There is the real test: whether it remains with you or not. If you want to keep it, spread it, share it, and it will grow within you. But whenever you feel somewhere stuck, not growing, I am available — come back to me, be with me.

When you feel the clarity again, go back to the world.

If you start living with me, you will be a loser on two counts. One: you will by and by start taking me for granted — which is a great loss, because I will be available to you. It is dangerous, because the more I am available to you, the less you will become available to me. […]

Now, this world is not to be renounced. There are beautiful people, there are immensely capable people; they just have never come across a person who could have triggered a process of mutation in their life. So my idea has always been: come to me whenever you start feeling, “Perhaps I am living in an illusion.” Then come and just touch me. Let yourself be showered by my presence, my love, so that you can regain confidence, courage, and you can go back to the world.

But the world is where the work is.

This is a mystery school.

We prepare people to send them to change the world.

That was from the very beginning my idea of a commune, but because I was silent and in isolation, things went not according to my idea. The commune, rather than becoming a refreshing place, a place for holiday, became just another world of work, of hierarchy, of bureaucracy. All those things that we wanted to change evolved in the commune itself.

So my new phase of work will be that there will be a mystery school. It will live like a commune, but the people will be changing. People will be coming whenever they can manage, whenever they need. There will be a certain number of people who will be permanent, to take care of all the visitors. But the commune will be a continuous pilgrimage place — where you learn something, where you drink something, and go back to the world.

We are not the renouncers — we are the revolutionaries.

We want to change the whole world.

And in changing the world, you will change yourself. You cannot change anything else unless you go through the change simultaneously.

So on one count it was a loss that if you were staying with me continuously . . . you are human, and it is a human mistake that one starts taking things for granted. I am available. […]

As far as the relationship with me is concerned, neither you are forever, nor am I forever. But you can take it for granted, and by and by a fog surrounds your mind. Rather than my presence there is a fog — which separates you, not connects you.

This was the most disastrous thing that was happening in the commune. People were with me, but they had created a fog around themselves. Seen from the outside, physically they were close, but spiritually they had gone far away.

Secondly, when five thousand or ten thousand people start living in a commune, their whole orientation, why they have come there, changes without their knowledge. They had come there to meditate, to be with me, to be as much as possible open and available to my experience . . . to enjoy, to relax, to sing, to dance, to be ecstatic. They had all come for that.

But when ten thousand people have to live together, you have to make houses, you have to make roads, you have to prepare food, you have to prepare clothes; a thousand and one things are needed, they go on taking all your time. Slowly, slowly you completely forget the real reason you had come. You go on getting into other things, and the original intention is completely forgotten.

This time I am working in a totally different way, so these two things can be avoided.

To me, I always want to be just a holiday. To me, I always want to mean nothing but ecstasy, music, dance. It is good to be only for a few days with me and then go into the world. Take the music, take the ecstasy with you, spread it, and whenever you feel thirsty, come back again.

So it will be a world school of mysticism where people will be coming and going, taking the message to all the nooks and corners of the world. And I don’t want you to be in any way associated with anything . . . road-making, making houses, and creating a dam — all that is just damned foolery!

I simply want you to remember me as a flower, a fragrance, a flame, a light; associate me with these things. That is going to be the purpose of the new mystery school. I would like to call it the mystery school rather than a commune, because that name has become associated with the commune we had.

I am not in any way thinking that the disappearance of that commune has been a loss. Not at all — because the way it was functioning, it was a non-ending rut. You would have needed new roads, because new houses were to be built, then new roads would have had to be connected. You would have needed more restaurants, bigger restaurants; you would have needed more clothes . . . and finally, you were going to have to produce. You would have had to make factories and other productive directions — because how long can five thousand people live only on donations? Friends can support for a time being, but not forever.

So soon you would have completely forgotten that you are separate from the world. In fact, you would have been in more difficulty, because in the other world somebody else takes care of the roads, somebody else takes care of the post office, and somebody else takes care of other things. You have just to work five hours, six hours. In the commune you were working for twelve hours, sometimes fourteen hours; even then the work was unending.

So the resources that were helping the commune were going to be soon exhausted; the commune was going to collapse. I was telling the people who were in power in the commune, “The commune will collapse, because how long can you live on other people’s support? And if you become productive – you open factories and you start making things — then why bother? All these things are being done everywhere else.”

This time, from the very beginning, only a small nucleus of people who are absolutely necessary to run the mystery school will be living with me. Everybody else will be a guest for a few days, a few weeks, a few months . . . as much as he can manage. But his being here with me will be all relaxation, meditation, so he can be rejuvenated. And then he can go back. The whole world is there to work on.

This way we will avoid the most basic thing — that he does not take me for granted. And the second thing — that he does not forget his basic intention in coming to me.

-Osho

From Beyond Psychology, Discourse #17

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

 

Life is Always Fresh – Osho

If my mind still controls and blocks my feelings, how do I discover what is the next appropriate step for me?

Listen to this question again, very carefully: If . . . It is not a true question; it starts with ‘if’. It is as if you are asking a hypothetical thing. You are supposing a question.

Never ask such questions. At least be honest about your questions. If they are there, then ask. And I know the question is there, but you don’t even want to take the responsibility for it. The question is valid – but you start by an ‘if’? Can’t you say that “this is my problem”? You want it to appear theoretical? You want it to appear impersonal? Then you will miss the answer – because I don’t give answers to theoretical questions.

This is not a philosophy class – I am not teaching you philosophy – I am teaching you life. not a philosophy of life, but life itself.

Remember: when you ask a question, let it be true. Don’t camouflage it, don’t cover it. Don’t try to be clever with me, otherwise you will be at a loss.

It may have happened unconsciously; I am not saying that you have put that ‘if’ consciously. You are not that conscious, I know. It must have happened mechanically. You may have learnt the trick of how to ask questions – and remain aloof, and detached, and out of them.

This is not the way to write or ask a question! – with me at least. You have to be in your question. I am going to be in my answer, and if you are not in your question, where and how shall we meet? If I am in my answer, I am absolutely there.

You have to be in your question – only then is the meeting possible. And the meeting is the solution – not the answer, not the question: the meeting. The point where my consciousness touches your consciousness. But if you are not in your question and I answer it, how am I going to touch your consciousness? You will be absent! I will be knocking on a door where you are not.

Don’t be so much afraid of the answer. Be authentic. Be existential! Let the question have the flavor of your being! Let the question have a life – it should have a heart which beats, it should breathe! Then only is there some possibility . . .

You kill the question from the very beginning: ‘if’?

If my mind still controls . . . as if it is not controlling and you are asking for others’ sake.

If my mind still controls . . . and just watch how many times in such a small sentence ‘I’, ‘my’, ‘mine’, have come.

If my mind still controls and blocks my feelings, how do I discover what is the next appropriate step for me to take?

With so much ‘I’, whatever step you take will be wrong. With so much ‘I’, a right step cannot be taken at all. The ‘I’ is the poison. It will destroy whatsoever you do.

With so much ‘I’, if you love, your love will turn into hatred. With so much ‘I’, if you meditate, your meditation will be nothing but a madness inside. With so much ‘I’, if you look at the flowers, you will not see the beauty.

The ‘I’ is ugly, and it creates ugliness all around it.

In fact, the very question: . . . What is the next appropriate step? Is because of the ‘I’. The ‘I’ wants to control not only this step but the next too. It has been controlling all your past steps, it is controlling your present step, it wants to control the next step too. What do you mean by appropriate? That which fits with your ideas of right, true; that which fits with your idea of religion, spirituality. And what do you know of religion and spirituality? What do you know of truth? How can your next step be adequate? appropriate?

Any step which is in accordance with the truth, any step which has the quality of suchness in it, is appropriate. But what do you know about suchness? You have lived in the mind – with the ‘I’, ’me’, ’mine’. All that you know is just rubbish. And out of that rubbish, you want to take an appropriate step? Remember: out of mind there is no appropriate step; out of mind all steps are inappropriate. Why? What do I mean when I say that?

Let us move slowly into this phenomenon.

Life brings a situation. Those situations are always new. Life is immensely creative; it never repeats. Even if you feel it is a repetition, it is not. There are vital differences, subtle differences . . . may not be available to you on the surface, but have you seen two mornings exactly the same? Have you ever come across two rose flowers exactly the same? Have you come across two human beings exactly the same? What to say about human beings? – you cannot find two pebbles exactly the same. You can search the whole earth . . .

Life is always fresh. That is the meaning of being alive – life is always moving into new spaces. And your mind is always old; it knows nothing of the new. It knows only of the past. It knows only of that which has happened. It accumulates experiences. ’Experience’ means it has happened. And remember: life is never going to repeat the same situation in which that experience happened. And you act out of the mind, hence there is always a gap between you and life – and nothing is appropriate. How can it be appropriate?

You act out of the past experiences and life is always creating new spaces. You never meet with life, you never merge with life. You are always inappropriate. Your answers don’t fit the questions that life raises. Your responses are not responses but reactions.

To be appropriate means to me to be spontaneous. Not to act out of the mind is to be appropriate: to act in this moment, to act utterly in this moment, to see the situation and to act, respond to the situation.

Don’t search in your memory for what is appropriate, because the memory will supply you with answers which are not appropriate and cannot be appropriate. The memory is always irrelevant. You have to put the memory aside. You have to be in a kind of absolute exposure to the reality, to the situation that is.

And let your total being respond. Don’t decide about it. Don’t rehearse it. Don’t prepare for it. Let it respond! And then it will be appropriate.

When you are not, it will be appropriate. When the mind is not brought in, it will be appropriate. When it is spontaneous, it will be appropriate. Bring a little preparation in it, just a little bit, and you have poisoned it, then it is never appropriate.

Life is not a school examination where you go prepared. That’s why schools are so ugly – they don’t prepare you for life, they destroy all possibilities of life. Schools have to disappear from the world, and the colleges and the universities. They are anti-life. They believe in rehearsals. They believe in giving you fixed answers – as if there are fixed challenges! – the basic fallacy.

And one third of the life is wasted in the university. By the time you are ready with a Ph. D. one third of the life has gone down the drain. And what are you ready for? You have simply bookish answers crammed into your head; you have become a computer. And now, with all that knowledge, whatsoever you do will be inappropriate!

A knowledgeable man has never been known to be appropriate – never. He always goes on missing the train; he is always late. He is never to the point – he cannot be. His arrows never reach the target – they cannot reach, because the target is moving! and his ideas of it are fixed.

Education no longer prepares you for life: it prepares you for death. Your universities are cemeteries where the past lives and goes on killing the present – and the future too. Education, as it is in the world now, is very reactionary. A totally different kind of education is needed – not that which simply goes on helping you to cram answers, but that which helps you to be open, which helps you to function from a state of not knowing.

Mm? – that’s what meditation is all about: a state of not knowing. Then whatsoever you do is going to be appropriate, because then you are no more the doer – then God is the doer. Then life itself is responding.

Just try to observe a few moments when you are spontaneous – they will give you such joy.

For example: somebody is drowning in the river, and you stand there and you think about it – “What should I do? What is appropriate?” If you are a Christian missionary, you will think this is a great opportunity to help and serve humanity – this is a way to reach heaven and be special there. And you repeat in your head all the quotes from the Bible, what Jesus has said – that service is the way to God . . . and you jump! You are not concerned with this poor human being who is drowning: you are concerned with your ego trip you call spirituality. You want to be virtuous.

This is so ugly! This spirituality, this religiousness, this service, is so ugly. It is not a spontaneous act, it is not out of your heart it is out of your head.

And if your head has been prepared in a different way, for example, if you had been born in another religion . . . there exists a religion in India, a sect of Jains – Terapanth: if you had been born into that sect, then these ideas wouldn’t come to you. A follower of Terapanth will stand there on the bank, he will also think just like you are thinking, but he will think . . . his scriptures say: Everybody suffers according to his karmas. Now, this man is drowning, he must have done some bad karmas in the past. And his scriptures say: ’Don’t come in the way of anybody’s karmas. Now, he is being punished by his own karmas – you need not jump and save him. That will not be a help; you will be hindering; you will be delaying! If you get him out of the river and you save him, someday he will again have to fall into the river and drown. Mm?’ the mathematics of karma: he has to. Maybe he killed his wife in some past life by drowning her in water – now he has to suffer!

Now think! From these two different minds: the Christian thinks this is the opportunity to go to God and the Jain thinks this is the opportunity not to get emotional – mm? – this is foolish to jump; it is emotional, sentimental. He has to control himself not to jump and not to save this human being, because he is suffering his karmas – let him suffer so that he can be finished with it. Next life he will be born in a better life, in a better way.

Now both these people are acting out of their memories. Can’t you see a third possibility: just acting out of the spontaneity of the moment, on the spur of the moment – neither a Hindu, nor a Christian, nor a Mohammedan, nor a Jain, nor a Buddhist . . . nobody? Just acting out of the situation itself? Then it is appropriate.

That is my definition of ’appropriate’. Act out of the mind and it is inappropriate; it is not true to the situation. Act without mind and it is appropriate.

Now I will read the question again:

If my mind still c0ntrols and blocks my feelings, how do I discover what is the next appropriate step for me to take?

Don’t think of the morrow. Just be in this moment, spontaneous, and out of the spontaneity of this moment the spontaneity of the next will follow of its own accord. You are not to plan for it.

But we have become great planners. You come from the office, and you start planning on the way what your wife will ask and how you will answer, and you prepare everything. You go to the office from the house, and you know what your boss is going to say and what you are going to answer.

You go on preparing! You don’t trust life.

To trust life is to be appropriate. What do I mean by trusting life? I mean let the moment come . . . let it happen . . . you be there present . . . you be available! And then whatsoever happens through you is good, is virtue.

Virtue is not a decision on your part. Sin is a decision on your part. Whatsoever you decide becomes a sin. The word ‘decision’ is beautiful. It is made of two words: ‘de’, ‘cision’ – it means ‘cut off’. Every decision cuts you off from life. When you act out of decisions, you act against life. When you allow life to take possession of you, everything is appropriate.

-Osho

From Walk Without Feet, Fly Without Wings, Think Without Mind, Discourse #4, Q2

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