Tag: Aham Brahasmi

Aham Brahmasmi – Osho

The most fundamental upanishidic statement is aham brahmasmi. Is it connected in any way to satchidanand?

Anando, the statement in the Upanishads, aham brahmasmi, is perhaps the most fundamental and the most essential experience of all the mystics of the world. The Upanishads are the only books which are considered not to belong to any religion, yet they are the very essence of religiousness.

This statement, aham brahmasmi, is a declaration of enlightenment – literally it means, “I am the divine, I am the ultimate, I am the absolute.” It is a declaration that, “There is no other God than my own inner being.” This does not mean that it is a declaration of a single individual about himself. It is a declaration, of course, by one individual, but it declares the potential of every individual.

It denies God as a separate entity. It denies God as a creator. It denies God as a ruler. It simply denies the existence of God, other than in our own existence. It is the whole search of the Eastern genius. In thousands of years, they have discovered only one thing: don’t look for God outside your own being. If you can find him you can find him only in one place and that is in you – other than you all the temples and all the mosques and all the synagogues and all the churches are inventions of the priests to exploit you. They are not in the service of God; on the contrary they are exploiting all the potential gods.

Aham brahmasmi is perhaps the boldest statement ever made by any human being in any age in any part of the world, and I don’t think it can be improved upon in the future, ever. Its courage is so absolute and perfect that you cannot refine it, you cannot polish it. It is so fundamental that you cannot go deeper than this, neither can you go higher than this.

This simple statement aham brahmasmi, – in Sanskrit, is only three words. In English also it can be translated in these few words: “I am the Ultimate.” Beyond me there is nothing; there is no height that is not within me and there is no depth which is not within me. If I can explore myself I have explored the whole mystery of existence.

But, unfortunately, even the people of this country – where this statement was made some five thousand years ago – have forgotten all about the dignity of human beings. This statement is nothing but the ultimate manifesto of man and his dignity. Even in this country, where such individuals existed who reached the ultimate awakening and illumination, there are people who are worshipping stones. There are people who are enslaved by ignorant priests. There are people who are living in the bondage of a certain religion, creed or cult. They have forgotten the golden age of the Upanishads.

Perhaps that was the most innocent time that happened in the history of man. At that time the West was almost barbarous, and that barbarousness somehow has remained as an undercurrent in the western consciousness. Otherwise, it cannot be just coincidental that the two great world wars have happened in the West. And preparation for the third is also happening in the West – just within a small span of half a century.

The days of the Upanishads in this land were the most glorious. The only search, the only seeking, the only longing, was to know oneself – no other ambition ruled mankind. Riches, success, power, everything was absolutely mundane.

Those who were ambitious, those who were running after riches, those who wanted to be powerful were considered to be psychologically sick. And those who were really healthy psychologically, spiritually healthy, their only search was to know oneself and to be oneself and to declare to the whole universe the innermost secret. That secret is contained in this statement, “Aham brahmasmi.” The people who followed the days of the Upanishads in a way have fallen into a dark age.

You will be surprised to know that the idea of involution has not appeared at all in the Western mind, only the idea of evolution, only the idea of progress. But the mystics of the Upanishads have a more perfect and more comprehensive approach. Nothing can go on evolving forever. Evolution has been conceived by the Upanishads as a circle and, in fact, in existence everything moves in a circle. Stars move in circles, the sun moves in a circle, the earth moves in a circle, the moon moves in a circle, climates move in a circle, life moves in a circle.

The whole existence knows only one way of movement and that is circular. So that which seems to be going up one day will soon be going down. Again, it will come up – it is just like a wheel and the spokes of the wheel. The same spoke will come up, will go down, will come up, will go down.

Evolution is incomplete if there is not any complementary idea of involution. Materially man has evolved. Certainly, there were no railway trains and there were no atomic weapons and there was no nuclear war material, there was no electricity, there was nothing of the technology that we have become accustomed to living with. Materially, man has certainly evolved, but spiritually, the situation is totally different.

Spiritually, man has not evolved. According to the Upanishads, man has gone deeper into darkness. He has lost his innocence and he has lost his blissfulness and he has lost his simple experience of: “I am the mysterious, I am the miraculous; I am the whole cosmos in a miniature form, just as a dewdrop is the whole ocean in a miniature form.” The dewdrop can declare, “I am the ocean,” and there will not be anything wrong in it. Certainly, a particular individual is only a dewdrop, but he can declare, “Aham brahmasmi,” and there is nothing wrong in it. He is simply saying the truth.

The Upanishads talk about four stages of man’s fall, not of evolution. The first stage, when the Upanishads came into being, is called the “Age of Truth.” People were simply truthful, just as small children are simply truthful.

To lie, one needs some experience. Lying is a complicated phenomenon, truth is not. To lie you need a developed memory, you have to remember what kind of thing you have said to one person and what kind of thing you have said to another person. A lying person needs a good memory. A man of truth needs no memory because he is simply saying that which is the case.

The child has no experience other than the truth, other than what he experiences. He cannot lie. The days of the Upanishads are the days of man’s childhood, of purity and innocence, of deep love and trust. The first age the Upanishads call Satyuga, the Age of Truth. Truth was not a long journey. You were not to go anywhere to find it. You were living in it.

The situation was exactly expressed by Kabir in a symbolic parable: A fish in the ocean, who must have had a philosophic bent, started inquiring of other fish, “I have heard so much about the ocean, but I want to know where it is.”

The poor fish that she questioned had also heard about the ocean but they were not so curious, so they never bothered about where it was. They said, “We have also heard about the ocean, but where it is we have never bothered to ask, and we don’t know the answer.”

And the young philosopher fish went on asking everybody, “Where is the ocean?” And they were all stunned. They had heard about it from their forefathers – it had always been known – but as far as an exact description or experience was concerned, nobody was able to explain it to the young fish.

Finally, the young fish declared, “You are all stupid. There is no ocean at all.” Nobody could answer the fish.

Kabir says the same is the situation of man. Man goes on asking, “Have you seen God? Have you seen the mysterious, the miraculous?” And all he can hear is, “We have heard about it, we have read about it . . .” But there was a day when people were so innocent, childlike, that they knew it – that they are surrounded by the ocean, that the ocean is not to be searched for, it is within and without. They are part of it, they are born in it, they live in it, they breathe in it, and they will one day disappear into it. They are part and parcel of the ocean.

But every child has to grow. And just as every child has to grow, Satyuga, the Age of Truth, could not remain forever. It produced the great scriptures called the Upanishads – the word is so beautiful: it simply means ‘sitting by the side of the master’ – those are recordings from the notes of disciples who were sitting in silence by the side of the master. Once in a while, out of his meditation, he would say something; out of his heart something would be transferred to the disciple, and the disciple would take a note. Those notes are the Upanishads.

Satyuga, the Age of Truth, disappeared – the child grew. The second stage is called Treta – it is compared to a table. The first, Satyuga, the Age of Truth, was almost like a table with four legs, absolutely balanced. Treta means three. One leg of the table has disappeared. Now it is no more a table with four legs, with that certainty, with that trust, with that grounding, with that centering, with that great balance . . . Now it is only a tripod, three legs.

Certainly, something is missing. It is not so certain – some doubt has arisen, trust is no longer complete and perfect, love is no more unpolluted. The disciple’s question is not coming from his whole being, just out of his head. But still, there was much yet to happen. The child went on growing. As far as age is concerned it seems a growth, but as far as innocence is concerned it is an involution. Both are going side by side: evolution as far as age and body are concerned, and involution as far as innocence, trust and love are concerned.

After Treta humanity fell still more. The stage after Treta is called Dwapar. One leg is lost again – now everything is unbalanced. Standing on two legs, how can a table have trust, certainty, security, safety, balance? Fear became the predominant quality rather than love, rather than trust. Insecurity became more prominent than a tremendous feeling of being at home. But things went on growing in one direction: as far as material growth is concerned, there was evolution; in another direction as far as consciousness is concerned, there was a continuous fall.

After Dwapar, the age of two legs, is the age we are living in. It is called Kaliyuga, the Age of Darkness. Even the last leg has disappeared. Man is almost in a state of insanity. Instead of innocence, insanity has become our normal state. Everybody is in some way or other psychologically sick.

I am talking about these four ages for a particular reason, because the statement that was made in innocence in the days of the Upanishads has become absolutely incomprehensible to our people, to our contemporaries. Even the people who are the inheritors of the Upanishads are afraid to declare that, “I am God,” that, “I am the Absolute” – what to say about others? Others have their own prejudices.

For example, when Christians started translating the Upanishads they were shocked. They could not believe that there are in existence scriptures so tremendously poetic, beautiful, but what they are saying goes against Christianity, against Judaism, against Mohammedanism, even against today’s Hinduism. Even the Hindu is not capable today of declaring, “I am God.” He has also become impressed and influenced by Christianity to such an extent.

Christian missionaries started condemning the Upanishads because if the Upanishads are right, then what to do with the Bible? The Bible absolutely declares, just as the Koran declares, that there is only one God. If the Upanishads are right then there are as many gods as there are living beings. Some may have come to manifestation, some may be on the way, some may not have started the journey yet but will start finally.

How long can you delay? You can miss one train, you can miss another train, but every moment the train is coming. How long can you go on sitting in the waiting room? And people go on becoming buddhas, and people go on becoming seers and sages, and you are still waiting in the waiting room with your suitcases. How long can you do that? There is a limit when you see that so many people have left already – the whole platform is empty – you will take courage that perhaps it is time to move.

For Christianity the problem was that everybody cannot be God. They cannot even accept everybody to be the son of God, what to say about God? Only Jesus is the son of God.

You are only puppets made of earth. God made man with mud and breathed life into it. It is just a manufactured thing, and if a puppet starts declaring, “Aham brahmasmi” – “I am God” – the puppeteer will laugh, saying, “Idiots! You are just puppets and your strings are in my hands. When I want you to dance you dance, when I want you to lie down you lie down, when I want you to breathe you breathe, when I want you not to breathe you can’t do anything.”

For Christianity it was a tremendous challenge, and they started finding arguments against it. Their first argument was that the person, the seer, the sage – whoever he may be, because even the name is not mentioned in the Upanishads – who declared for the first time, “Aham brahmasmi,” the Christian missionaries started saying that he was a megalomaniac, that he was suffering from a big ego. They were full of prejudice. They could not see the simple fact that it was not the ego that was declaring – because the Upanishads say it clearly: unless your ego disappears, you cannot even understand the meaning of “I am the Ultimate.”

It is not the declaration of ego. This declaration is possible only on the death of ego. That is a clear-cut statement in the Upanishads. But Christian missionaries went on misinterpreting the Upanishads to the West, distorting and commenting that these people were almost mad. Obviously, to a Mohammedan or to a Christian, the idea that somebody says, “I am God,” is very shocking. […]

When Christians – particularly the learned, scholarly missionaries – started translating the Upanishads, they distorted it in every way and they made comments, saying, “This is a statement of somebody who is utterly insane, whose ego is too big. And he is not religious at all, because a religious man should be humble. How can a religious man declare, ‘I am God’?”

This is very strange about religions. They can see the faults of each other but they cannot see their own faults. When Jesus declares, “I am the only begotten son of God,” they don’t see any ego – it is humbleness.

The Upanishads are not egoistic. They are not saying that the one sage who declares, “I am God,” is saying something only about himself. He is saying that you are also God – just as I am God, you are God. We are all part of a godliness. We are all part of the same ocean. This fish and that fish are not different; they are all born out of the same ocean and they will all disappear into the same ocean.

The Upanishads’ statement is not egoistic at all, but religions which are God-centered cannot accept it easily. Even Hindus, whose forefathers made this statement, have become so cowardly that now they do not dare to make such a statement. They themselves think that it is egoistic.

Christianity and Mohammedanism have both impressed too much – even on the Hindu mind. The Hindu mind is no longer pure Hindu. […]

And you are asking, Anando, what is the connection between this great statement – it is actually called mahavakya: ‘the great statement’ – with another statement of the same significance, sachchidanand. Sachchidanand consists of three words, as I have told you: Sat – truth; Chit – consciousness; Anand – bliss. These three experiences make one capable of asserting the great statement, “Aham brahmasmi.” They are deeply connected. In fact, if sachchidanand is the flower, then “Aham brahmasmi” is the fragrance, so deep is the connection between the two.

Certainly, “I am the Ultimate” is the very conclusion of the whole search of the East – of all the Buddhas, of all the mystics. A single sentence can be called the conclusion of the whole of India. But God-centered religions will not be ready to accept it. That simply shows that their understanding is not of truth, not of consciousness, not of bliss.

Their understanding is of a very low order: it is not an experience, but only a belief. One is a Christian only by belief; a Jew only by belief; a Mohammedan only by belief. What the Upanishads are saying is not any belief – it is direct, immediate experience. And they are so poetic, so mystic, that there is no comparison in the whole world’s literature.

But this final flowering and fragrance is possible only if you start with meditation and not with prayer. These two ways will take you to different conclusions: prayer will take you more and more into fiction and meditation will take you more and more into truth. Meditation is to go within wards, and prayer is to look upwards, into the empty sky, with all your desires and greed and demands, with all your fears and insecurities. God is to you, if you are on the path of prayer, a consolation and nothing more, but if you are on the path of meditation, God will become one day your very own self, your very own existence. […]

If you want fictions, prayer is the path. All the religions that are based on prayer are not authentic religions.

But meditation is a totally different route. It takes you inwards; it takes you away from the world towards your own being. It is not a demand, it is not a desire, it is not greed, it is not asking or requesting anything. It is simply being silent, utterly silent, moving deeper and deeper into silence . . .

And a moment comes of sublime silence, and then a sudden explosion of light and you will feel yourself saying, “Aham brahmasmi.” Not outwards, because you are not saying it to anybody in particular – it will be just a feeling in the deepest core of your being. No language is needed, just an experience that, “I am the whole, I am the all. And just as I am the whole, everybody else is,” so there is no question of any ego or megalomania.

The Christian missionaries who interpreted the Upanishads were absolutely prejudiced and had no understanding about meditation and no understanding about the higher qualities of a true religion. They knew only an organized church. In comparison to the Upanishads, every religion of the world looks so ‘pygmy’, so childish.

Those organized religions don’t give you freedom. On the contrary, they give you deeper and deeper bondage and slavery. In the name of God, you have to surrender, in the name of God you have to become a sheep and allow a Jesus or a Mohammed to be a shepherd. It is so disgusting, the very idea is so self-disrespectful that I cannot call it even pseudo-religious. It is simply irreligious.

The Upanishads are the highest flights of consciousness. They don’t belong to any religion. The people who made these great statements have not even mentioned their names. They don’t belong to any nation, they don’t belong to any religion, they don’t belong to those who are in search of some mundane thing.

They belong to the authentic seekers of truth.

They belong to you.

They belong to my people.

-Osho

From Sat Chit Anand; Truth, Consciousness, Bliss, Discourse #12

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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I am That – Osho

Soham bhavo namskarah.

The feeling of I am That – So-Aham – is the salutation.

Existence is one, or rather, Existence is oneness. Al-Hillaj Mansoor was flayed alive because he said, “I am the Beloved; I am the Divine; I am That which created the world.” Islam was totally unacquainted with this type of language. This language is basically Hindu. Wherever man has contemplated, man has come to duality: God, the Creator, and the world, the created. Hinduism has taken the boldest jump by saying that the created is the Creator and there is no basic difference.

To Islam or to other dualistic thinking, this looks like sacrilege. If there is no difference between God and the world, between man and God, then for dualistic thinkers it appears that there is no possibility of religion, no possibility of worship, no possibility of salutation. If you are the Divine, then who are you going to worship? If you are the Creator, then who is superior to you? Worship becomes impossible.

But this sutra says that this is the only worship, this is the only salutation: “The feeling of I am That – So-Aham – is the salutation.” Ordinarily, this sutra is absurd, contradictory – because if there is no higher power than you, if you are the highest, then whom are you going to salute? To whom are you going to pay your respects? This is the reason Mansoor was murdered, killed; this is heresy. He was thought to be a heretic, a nastik – an atheist. If you say that you are God, you deny Godhood. Then you are the Supreme.

To the dualistic way of thinking, this is egoistic. The division must be maintained. You must come nearer and nearer, but you must not become the flame itself. You must become intimate with the Divine source, but you must not become one with it. Then respect is possible, worship is possible.

So you can reach to the Divine feet, but you cannot become one with the Divine flame. How can the created become the Creator? And if the created becomes the Creator, that means the created was not the created at all. And if the created becomes the Creator, that means there is no Creator.

This is one type of religious thinking – the dualist type. It has its own reasoning and it appeals to our ordinary minds. So, really, even those who are born Hindus are not Hindus unless they can come to conceive of this attitude – of being one with the Creator. One may be born a Hindu, but there is no basic difference between a Hindu, a Mohammedan and a Christian attitude. Theirs is our basic attitude – the attitude we learn and the attitude by which we behave.

A Hindu is really a deep absurdity, because he takes the impossible jump: the created becomes the Creator. And this sutra says, “This is the only salutation.” If God is there high above and you are here low down, if something in you is not already Divine, there is no bridge possible. You cannot be related to the Divine. You can be related to Him only if you are already related; otherwise there is an unbridgeable gap. God remains God and you remain just the created.

Because of this, a third attitude develops – the attitude of the Jains. They deny God altogether, because they say if there is a God as a Creator and we are just created beings, we can never become Gods. How can something created by you become you? The created will remain the created, and the Creator will always have the capacity to destroy you, because “Creator” also means the capacity to destroy, the capacity for destruction. If God has created the world, he can destroy it this very moment. He is not responsible to you. You cannot ask why because you have never asked why He created the world. So at this very moment, if there is just a whim in the Divine mind, the world can be destroyed. With all your holy men, with all your sinners, the world can at this very moment be destroyed.

So if there is a God, Jains say, then man is not really a spirit. He is just a created thing, not a soul, because then he does not have any freedom. If God is the Creator, then man is not free and then everything becomes meaningless: whether you are good or bad, it is meaningless. God remains the supreme power. He can do anything, He can undo anything. And He is not responsible to you. If you have created a mechanical device you can destroy it: you are not responsible to your mechanical creation. A painter creates a painting; he can destroy it. The painting cannot say, “You cannot destroy me.” And if God is the Creator and man is just a created thing, how can the created thing evolve and become Divine? That is impossible. So Jains say that there is no God. Only then can man become Divine, because only then is man free. With a God we are slaves; with no God we are free.

Nietzsche has said, without knowing that Mahavir has said this before him, “Now God is dead and man is free.” The same was the problem with Mahavir. If God is there, then man is not free. God’s being is man’s slavery, God’s non-being is man’s freedom. So Mahavir says that there is no God and that only then can you become Divine. Mohammedans, Christians, Jews, they say God is, man is, but man is just a created being. He can worship the Divine and come nearer. The nearer he comes, the more he will be filled with Divine light, bliss, ecstasy. But he cannot become one with the Divine, because if he can become one with the Divine that shows that potentially he was already one with the Divine; because nothing can happen in the world which is not already in the seed.

A tree evolves because the tree was in the seed. If you can become Divine, you were already Divine. So Jews, Christians and Mohammedans say that if you are already Divine, then evolving becomes meaningless. If you are already Divine in the seed, then there is no real evolution, then there is no growth, and whatsoever you do or do not do, you will remain Divine. Christians, Mohammedans and Jews say that religious growth is possible only if man is man and God is God. You come nearer and nearer, and that coming nearer is a growth.

It is your choice. You may not come near, you may go far away – this is your freedom. But if you are already Divine, say Jews, Mohammedans and Christians, then there is no real growth. The whole growth becomes just illusory, just a dream growth. You were bound to become Divine because in the seed you were Divine already. So the whole thing becomes hocus-pocus, they say. The whole evolution becomes meaningless.

Hindus take a standpoint just in between these two standpoints. They agree with Jains that man is Divine and they agree with Christians, Mohammedans and Jews that there is God as the Creator. And Still, they say, there is growth, there is evolution. Not only that: they say only then is growth possible. But to them growth means just unfoldment. A seed grows, and the growth is real, authentic, because a seed may not grow and may remain a seed forever; there is no inner necessity to grow But a seed grows only to be a particular tree because that tree is already potential in it.

Man can remain man, man can even fall down and become an animal, or man can grow to be Divine. This is choice! This is freedom! But this possibility, that man can become Divine, shows that somewhere deep down in the seed form man is already Divine.

So it is an unfoldment. Something hidden becomes actual, something potential becomes actual, something that was just a seed becomes a tree. In a way, the Hindu God is totally different from the Mohammedan and the Christian God because for Hindus man can become God. And they say that if you cannot become God, then even the concept of coming nearer and nearer is false – because if you cannot jump into the flame, what does it mean to come nearer and nearer? Then what is the difference between you and someone who is not near? If you can come nearer, then the logical conclusion will be more near, more near, more near, and ultimately you become one.

If you cannot become one, then there is a limit, a boundary, and beyond that boundary and limit there will be a gap between you and the Divine. That gap cannot be tolerated. And if there is a gap which it is not possible to bridge, the whole effort is useless. Hindus say that unless you become the Divine itself, the urge will not be fulfilled. The nearer you are, the more you will feel the gap and the more you will suffer. And when you come on the boundary line from where no growth is possible, you will stagnate and you will die, and the suffering will be unbearable, absolutely unbearable.

Man can become Divine because he is already Divine, and Hindus say you can only become that which you are already. You cannot become that which you are not; you cannot grow to be something else. You can only grow to be yourself.

This attitude has many dimensions. One is God the Creator: we can think of Him as a painter, but Hindus have not thought that way. They say the Creator is not a painter but a dancer: that is why there is the concept of Shiva the dancer. In dance the dancer is creating something, but the creation is not something separate from the Creator. In painting the painter and painting are two things, and the painter can die and the painting can remain. And the moment the painting is complete, it is independent of the painter completely. Now it will take its own course.

Hindus say God is a Creator like a dancer. A dancer is there dancing; the dance is the creation – but you cannot separate it from the dancer. If the dancer dies the dance will die, and if the dance continues the dancer will be there.

One thing more which is basic and important: the dance cannot exist without the dancer, but the dancer can exist without the dance. Hindus say this world is a creation in this way. God is dancing, so whatsoever is created is part and parcel of it.

Another thing: a painter paints; he can complete the painting and then go to sleep. But a dance is a constant creation. God cannot go to sleep. So the world was not created on a particular day; it is being created every moment. Christians think the world was created on a particular day and date, and before that there was no world. They say in a week – in exactly six days – God created the world, and on the seventh day he rested. Now, even if He is, He is no more needed. He may have died meanwhile. The painter can die and the painting can continue. The painter may have gone mad, but the painting remains as it was.

Hindus say not that the world was created but that it is being created every moment. It is a constant flux of creation; it is a continuum. It is a constant flux of creation; it is a continuum of creation. So really, if you look at things in this way, then God is not a person: God is energy. Then God is not something static: God is movement. He is dynamic because a dance is a dynamic movement. You have to be in it every moment: only then can it exist. Dance is an expression, a living expression, and you have to be in it continuously.

The world is a dance, not a painting, and everything is part of this dance, every gesture is Divine. So Hindus say a very beautiful thing. They say if not everything is Divine, then nothing can be Divine. If not everything is holy, then nothing can be holy. If not everything is God, then there is no possibility of any God. This is one dimension – to look at this oneness. They never say there is oneness. They always say everything is non-dual, because Hindus think that to say that the world is one, that Existence is one, gives you a feeling that “one” can exist only if something else also exists.

One is a number. One can exist only if other numbers exist – two, three, four. If there are no other numbers, one becomes meaningless. Then what do you mean by “one”? Because there are nine digits, from one to nine, one is meaningful. It is meaningful in a pattern of digits, of numbers. If there is only one, you cannot say it is one. Then numbers become meaningless.

Hindus say that Existence is non-dual, not one. They mean it is one, but they say it is non-dual. They say it is not two. This is a non-committal statement. If you say “one”, you have made a commitment, you have committed yourself in many ways. If you say “one”, you are saying that you have measured it. If you say “one”, you are saying that Existence is finite.

Hindus say it is non-dual. They mean it is one, but they say it in a roundabout way, and this is very meaningful. They say that it is non-dual – that it is not two. Thus, they only indicate that it is one. It is never said directly, but only indicated. They say only that it is not two.

This is very meaningful, because when we say that the dancer and the dance are one, then there will be many difficulties. If the dance ceases, the dancer will cease – if they are one. Hindus say instead that they are not two. Then the dancer will be there even if the dance ceases, but the dance cannot be there if the dancer ceases.

This non-dualness is hidden; the duality is manifested. “Manyness” is manifest; oneness is hidden. But this many-ness can exist only because of that hidden oneness. Trees are different, the earth is different, the sun is different, the moon is different, but now science says that deep down everything is related and one. The tree cannot grow if there is no sun, but we have come to know only this oneway traffic. We know trees cannot grow and flowers cannot flower if the sun ceases to be. Hindus too say trees cannot grow if there is no sun, but they say also that if there are no growing trees, the sun cannot exist. This is a two-way traffic; everything is related.

Jains say if there is God, then man will be a slave. Mohammedans say if man declares that “I am God”, then God is dethroned and the slave pretends to be-the master. Hindus say there is neither independence nor dependence: Existence is an interdependence. So to talk in terms of dependence and independence is meaningless. The Whole exists as an interdependent whole. Nothing is high and nothing is low because the high cannot exist without that which you call low.

Can the peak exist without the valley? Can the holy man exist without the sinner? Can beauty exist without that which you call ugliness? And if beauty cannot exist without ugliness, then it depends on ugliness. And if the peak cannot exist without the valley, then what is the meaning of calling the peak something high and calling the valley something low?

Hindus say the lowest is the highest and the highest i5 the lowest. By declaring this, they mean that this whole world is a deeply interdependent pattern and all religions are arbitrary. They are good for thinking, for analyzing, for understanding, but basically they are false. And this is the longest jump.

The rishi says, “Soham bhavo namaskarah – the feeling of I am That is the salutation.” Unless the lowest can feel that he is the highest, he cannot be at home in this universe. But this is not a declaration: this is a feeling. You can declare that “I am God” and that may not be a deep feeling at all. That may be just an egoistic assertion. If you say that “I am God and no one else is God”, then you have not felt it. When it is a feeling, it is not a declaration on your part – it is a declaration on the part of the whole Existence.

The rishi says, “I am God, I am That.” He is saying that everything is God, everything is That. With him, the whole Existence declares. So it is not a personal statement. Al-Hillaj Mansoor was killed because Islam could not understand this language. When he said, “I am God,” they thought Al-Hillaj was saying, “‘I’ am God.,” It was not Al-Hillaj at all. It was simply that Al-Hillaj became vocal on the part of the whole Existence. It was the whole Existence speaking through Al-Hillaj, declaring. Al-Hillaj was no more – because if he was, then this declaration becomes personal. So this is the second dimension.

Man exists in three categories. One is when he says “I am” without knowing who he is. This is the ordinary existence of everyone, the feeling of “I am” without knowing “who I am”. The second stage is when he comes to know “I am not” – because the deeper you ponder over this am-ness, the more you dig, the more you will find that you are not, and the whole phenomenon of “I” disappears. You cannot find it. So there is no question of making it disappear. You simply do not find it; it is not there.

If you exist without any search, you feel that “I am”. If you begin to search, you will come to know that you are not. This is the second state: when man comes to know that he is not. First he was probing deep into the phenomenon of “I am”; now he will have to probe into the phenomenon of “I am not”.

This is most arduous. The first is difficult, very difficult. Even to come to the second is a long journey. Many stay at the first. They never probe into “Who am I?” Only very few go into a deep search to know who it is that says “I am”. Then, among those few, very few will go again on a new journey to know what this “I am not” is, what this feeling of “I am not” is. With “I am not”, still I am, but now I cannot say “I am”; I feel as if there is a deep emptiness.

Hindus have said that the first is “I-am-ness”; the second is simply “am-ness”. The “I” is dropped, but my existence is there. Even if I am empty, nothing, still I am. This is called “am-ness”. The first they call ahankar – ego; the second they call asmita – am-ness. If someone goes deep into ahankar, the ego, he comes to asmita, amness. And now, if someone again goes deep into this am-ness, he come to Divineness. Then he says, “I am That; aham brahmasmi – I am God.” Through emptiness. one becomes all. Through nonbeing, one becomes the very ground of Being. Dissolving, one becomes all.

This sutra, Soham bhavo namaskarah, is the feeling of the third state. When man has dissolved completely, ego has disappeared. Even am-ness is not a finite thing now. One has come to the very source, as if one is just a gesture in a dance just a gesture in a dance! He has probed deep, and now he has come to the dancer. Now the gesture of the dance is that “I am the dancer”.

This is going in. First you go in yourself, but you are relative to the universe. So if you continue, then you are stepping down into Existence. If you go on continuing, then from the periphery you will one day come to the center.

Even a leaf in the wind has its own individuality. If the leaf begins to travel inwards, sooner or later it will go beyond itself; it will enter into the branch. If it goes on, then sooner or later it will not be the leaf, it will not be the branch: it will become the tree. If it goes on, sooner or later it will not be the tree: it will become the roots. And if it still continues, sooner or later it will become the Existence: it will go beyond the roots.

But the leaf can remain itself without moving in. Then the leaf can think, “I am”; this is the first stage. If the leaf moves, sooner or later it will find, “I am not the leaf. I am more: I am the branch.” Then, “I am not the branch. I am even more: I am the tree.” And then, “I am not even the tree. I am still more: I am the roots, the hidden roots.” And if the journey goes on, from the roots also it will take a jump – it will become the whole Existence.

This is a feeling, a realization. And this is the more difficult part because intellectually your ego would like to declare that you are God, you are Divine. Intellect tries always to be high, at the peak. The very effort of the ego is to be something supreme. So this can appeal to you, this can appeal to the ego. It can say, “Okay this is right: I am God.”

But this sutra says this is the salutation, and salutation is a deep humility, a humbleness. It is not to put yourself on the peak, because then there is no one whom you can salute. This was the problem with Islam when Al-Hillaj declared. He declared himself God and Islam felt: “This is not humbleness – this is the climax of being egoistic!” So those who killed him felt that they killed him very righteously, in good faith: this was the peak of ego!

This sutra is contradictory. It declares that you are That, and this is the salutation. If this is felt and realized, then the peak will salute the valley – because now there is nothing else but the Divine, and now the peak will realize that it is dependent on the valley. Then light will salute darkness and life will salute death. because everything is interdependent and interrelated. At this peak of realization, one becomes humble – because this declaration of “I am That” is not against anyone. It is for all. Now, through me, everything is declaring its Divinity.

Many people were there when Al-Hillaj was killed; many were throwing stones. He was laughing, he was prayerful, he was loving. There was a sufi fakir also present in the crowd. The whole crowd was throwing stones, and the sufi fakir, just to be one with the crowd, just in order not to let them feel he did not belong with them, threw a flower. He could not throw any stone, so he threw a flower just to be one with the crowd – so that everyone would feel that he was with them, that he belonged to them.

Mansoor began to weep. When the sufi’s flower hit him, he began to weep. The Sufi became uneasy. He came nearer and he asked Mansoor, “Why, when they are throwing stones, are you laughing, praying for them? And I have thrown only a flower!”

Mansoor said, “Your flower hits me more because you know. This is not a declaration for me. I have declared for you and you know, so your flower hits me more. Their stones are just like flowers because they do not know. But this has been a declaration for them. If Mansoor can be Divine,” said Mansoor, “then everything can be Divine. If even Mansoor can be Divine, then everything can be Divine!” Mansoor said, “Look at me! I was no one and yet I declare I am Divine. Now everything can be Divine.”

This is a declaration not from the ego: this is a declaration from a non-ego realization. When one begins to feel that one is nothing, only then can one come to this. Then it is humble; then it is the most humble possibility. It becomes a salutation – a salutation to the whole Existence. Then the whole Existence has a Divinity.

Mystics have denied temples, mosques, churches, not because they are meaningless, but because the whole Cosmos is a temple. Mystics have denied statues, not because they are meaningless, but because the whole Existence is the image of the Divine. But to understand their language is difficult. They appear to us as antireligious – denying statues, denying images, denying temples, churches, denying scriptures; denying everything that we believe to be religious. They are denying only because the Whole is Divine. And if you insist on the part, that shows you do not know about the Whole.

If I say, “This temple is Divine,” just by saying this I have said that the whole universe is not Divine. If this temple is just part of a greater temple, then it is a different thing. But if this temple is against the Whole, against other temples – not only against other temples: if this temple is against any ordinary house even, if this temple says that houses are not holy and only temples are holy, it is a denial of the Whole.

For the Whole, mystics have denied the parts. But for us there is no Whole; we do not know anything about the Whole. So even when the part is denied it is uncomfortable, because that is all we know. If someone says there is no temple, it is enough for us that he is not religious. He may be saying this: that because everything is a temple, do not make anything in particular a temple; do not say anything in particular is Divine, because everything is Divine. This is the salutation.

We are also worshipping. We go to the temple, to the mosque, to bow. We bow down, but the ego remains standing. It is only a bodily movement. The inner ego remains unmoved. Rather, it may become even more straight because you have been to the temple, because you have been to the teerth – because you have been on a holy pilgrimage – because you have been to Kaaba. Now you are no ordinary person! You are “religious” because you bowed down, but it was a bodily gesture. Your ego has become more strengthened by it; it has been a food for your ego. Your ego has been vitalized; it is not dead.

That is why so-called religious persons will always be more egoistic than ordinary worldly persons. They have something more, that you do not have. They are “religious”: they do prayer daily! When you go to a cinema hall your ego may not be strengthened, but when you go to a temple it is strengthened, because in a temple you can never feel that you are guilty. You may feel in a cinema hall that you are guilty; you may feel in a hotel that you are guilty, but you can never feel that you are guilty in a temple. You feel superior; you become more respectable; you gain something in terms of ego.

Look at the faces of persons coming out from temples. Observe them! Their egos are more strengthened. They are coming out with some gain; this has been a “vitamin”. You can bow down without bowing down at all – and that is the problem. Bowing must be inner. And if then the body follows, it is a deep experience. Even in the body it is a deep experience – if you are bowing inwardly with the feeling that because everything is Divine, then wherever you bow down you are at the feet of Divine. If your body moves with this feeling, then your body also will have a deep experience, and you will come out of it more simple, more innocent, more humble.

What to do? Man has invented many things, but they have not helped. And man’s ego is so subtle and cunning, and it can deceive you in such subtle ways that you cannot defeat it. If there is a God somewhere in heaven you can bow to Him, and you can still behave egoistically with the whole Existence because you feel that this world is not Divine. Your Divinity, your God, is somewhere high in heaven. To this world, you can go on behaving as you were behaving, and you can behave even more badly because now you are related to the Supreme Authority. Now you have a direct link. You can dial any moment to the Supreme Authority; you can tell Him to do anything.

Jesus was passing through a village. The village was antagonistic. They would not shelter the disciples of Jesus; they refused. They would not give any food, not even water, so they were having to move to another village. The disciples said to Jesus, “This is your moment. Show your miracles: destroy this village! Such irreligious people should not exist.” These are the disciples who later on created the whole Christianity. They said, “Destroy this village this very moment. This is the time! Show your miracles!” They are asking Jesus to prove that he is the Son, the only begotten Son. They are saying, “Now tell your Father who is high in heaven to destroy this village this very moment!”

Why this arrogance? Why this anger? And they were prayerful people. They were praying daily; they were living with Jesus. Why this arrogance? There were simply some ordinary people in the town. They had only refused to give food. This is not a sin. This is up to them. If I come to your house and you refuse me food, okay – it is up to you. Why this arrogance? And not the whole city had denied them. There were small children and old men, they had not denied them: only a few people had. But the disciples said, “Destroy this whole city. This whole village must be destroyed this very moment.”

The trees had not denied them shelter, but they were asking Jesus to destroy everything that belonged to the village. Why? Through prayer, through salutations, through worship, they have become more arrogant. They are not humble people; humility is far from them. And if they are not humble, how can they be religious? Why did this become possible? Because God is “in heaven.” Then they could feel that “The person who has denied us food is not Divine; the village is not Divine. God is somewhere in heaven and we are God’s chosen people. These people are anti-God, so destroy them.”

Real humility is possible only when God is not far away. He is your neighbor every moment. Wherever you are, He is your neighbor. To put God somewhere else, far away. is very easy, convenient, because then you can behave as you like with your neighbor and God is “always on your side.”

I was reading something: One French general was talking to an English general. It was after the Second World War. The French general said, “We were continuously defeated and you were not defeated. Why is this so?”

The English general said, “This is because of prayer. We pray before we start any fight. We pray!”

The French general said, “But that we also do.”

The English general said, “That is okay, but we pray in English and you pray in French. From where did you get this idea that God knows French? He cannot know it.”

This is how the so-called religious mind becomes arrogant. Sanskrit is the “only sacred language”; you can laugh at the anecdote, but can you laugh at this? You think Sanskrit is the only sacred language and that the Vedas are the only scriptures written by God Himself. You think: “The Koran? How is it possible! From where did you get the idea that God knows Arabic? He knows only Sanskrit!” Then you say, “God is always on my side. If He insists on not being on my side, I can change my God. That is always within my capacity.” So because of that fear, “He always remains on my side. He is my God; He has to follow me.”

This attitude is created because for you the whole Existence is not Divine. If the whole Existence is Divine, then God even understands the language of trees – not only Sanskrit and Arabic, but even the language of the stones. And then it is not a problem of language at all. Then language is irrelevant. It is not prayer which is meaningful now: it is a prayerful mind. And a prayerful mind is something totally different from a praying mind.

This sutra says that this is the only salutation, the only humbleness possible, but in a very paradoxical way. “I am God”: to feel this is the salutation. We would have liked to say, “You are God,” and then it would have been easy to salute. But this sutra says, “I am God. This is the only salutation.” Then we will ask whom to salute. There is really no need to salute. There is no need to salute! It is not an activity; it is not something you have to do. If the whole Existence is Divine, then whatsoever you are doing is a salutation.

Because Kabir continued to work as he was working before his Enlightenment, he was asked about it. He was a weaver; he continued weaving. Disciples would come from far, very, very faraway places, and they would say, “Why? You are an Enlightened One; you are now a Buddha. Why do you continue weaving?”

Kabir would say, “This is the only prayer I know. I was a weaver, so I only know how to salute Him in this way.”

Someone said to Kabir, “But Buddha, when he became Enlightened, left everything.”

Kabir is reported to have said, “He was a king. He knew only I know only this way. This is my prayer, and when I am weaving these clothes, I am weaving them for the Divine.”

And then Kabir would go to the market to sell them. So someone said to him, “But you go to the market to sell them. You say these are for the Divine, so why do you not go to the temple and lay them at the Divine feet?”

Kabir said, “I always lay them at the Divine feet, but my gods are waiting there in the market. My Ram is waiting there, and I believe in living gods.”

This attitude does not need any salutation. Now it is not an act to be done; rather, it is a way to live. your prayer can be just a part of your act – just one act among many. But to persons like Kabir, it is not an act. It is a way to live. So Kabir said, “Whatsoever I am doing is prayer.” It can be, but then the whole Existence must be Divine. Then whatsoever you are doing, if you are eating, it is prayer because it goes to the Existence. Then it is not you who are eating, but the Existence through you. Then, when you are moving or walking, it is prayer because it is the Existence moving through you, walking through you.

When you are dying it is prayer, because it is the Existence taking back that which was given. That which was made manifest is now becoming unmanifest. Then you are not in between. You are no more. You are just an opening, just an opening for the Existence, a window. Existence moves through you, in and out. You are nowhere in between at this moment of nothingness. Man can say, “Aham brahmasmi – I am the absolute; I am That.”

This is not an egoistic assertion: this is one of the most humble of assertions – but it looks very paradoxical. Life is such a complexity that if you have to assert simple truths you have to be paradoxical. If you are asserting complex truths you need not be paradoxical; you can be very logical. This has to be understood: only very simple truths are difficult to express – because the more simple they become, the more non-dual. And when it comes to the very center, then the statement has to imply all dualities.

Look at it in this way: the Upanishads say, “God is near and God is far away.” If you say, “He is only near,” it is false; if you say, “He is only far away,” it is false, because that which is near can become far and that which is far can become near. You can move; you are already moving. “He is everywhere”: this simple truth has to be expressed in a very paradoxical way. He is the nearest and the farthest; He is the minutest and the greatest; He is the seed and the tree; He is birth and death – because if He is life, then He must be both birth and death.

Why not simply say that He is life? Because in our minds, life is against death, so this simple truth – that He is life – cannot be asserted in this way. It has to be asserted in a paradoxical way: “He is birth and He is death; He is both.” He is life only because He is both. He is the friend and the foe, because the foe can become the friend and the friend can become the foe. He is both! We would like Him to be the friend and never the foe, but our likings are not truths. Really, unless our likings and dislikings cease, we cannot come to the Truth. We cannot come to it because we go on choosing and projecting.

This statement is again a paradox. The first part of it, “The feeling that I am Divine, I am That,” is the peak; and the second, “. . . is the salutation,” is the valley. It is the valley and peak both. First there is the most egoistic assertion possible – “I am That.” And then, falling down unto the feet of everything, the assertion, “. . . is the salutation.” These are two extremes, two polar opposites, and many things are implied.

If you feel that you are inferior and then you bow down, it is not a salutation. It is just part of your inferiority. If you say, “I am superior,” and you cannot bow down, then you are not really superior – because one who cannot bow down is dead. He cannot be superior. And one who cannot bow down is still afraid somewhere of his superiority – afraid that “If I bow down I will not be superior.” Only one who is at ease with his superiority can bow down; only one who has gone beyond his inferiority can bow down. And this is the highest peak possible – “I am That” – and then from there you bow down.

Buddha has given his past-life memories. In one, he says. “I was just ignorant.” Buddha says, “I was just ignorant. Then a Buddha, a person who had become Enlightened, passed through my village. I went to touch his feet. I touched his feet, but then suddenly I became aware that he was doing something. He was bowing down and then he touched my feet. I became afraid and I said, ‘What are you doing? I should touch your feet; that is as it should be. But why are you touching my feet?’”

That Enlightened One said to Gautam Buddha, “You are touching my feet because I am a Buddha. I am touching your feet because you are a Buddha also.”

Gautam Buddha, in his past life, said to him, “But I am not. I am ignorant; I am no one.”

The Enlightened One said to him, “Because you do not know what you are, you do not know what you can become. You are bowing to a present Buddha; I am bowing to a future Buddha. I have become manifest; you will become manifest. It is only a question of time.”

This bowing down of an Enlightened One is the secret of this sutra. He was a peak, and he is bowing down to an ignorant man. Now from his peak he can see another peak which is hidden in ignorance. It is not hidden for him; to him it is as clear as anything.

You can bow down to this ordinary Existence only when you feel that you are That! To say it in another way: unless you become God you cannot be humble, unless you become God you cannot be innocent. That innocence is expressed through this sutra. Salutations we know. We know about God, we know about salutations. But this sutra is very difficult. It is impossible to conceive of it. It makes you the God and it makes this being the God a basic condition for salutation.

To us, one must always salute to the higher, to that which is higher than us. But this sutra makes you the highest, and that is the basic condition for salutation. Whom to salute? You are the highest, so now salute the lowest. The salutation from the lower to the higher is just ordinary. There is nothing in it. It is the ordinary mind working – the political mind, the ambitious mind. It is working to salute the higher. But you are the highest. Now the mind will say that you need not salute anyone. Now the whole Existence must salute you. You are the highest. Now let the whole world come to you to salute; now let the whole Existence bow down to your feet.

This will be your feeling. If you take it as you are, if you begin to follow this sutra, this will be the feeling: “Now let the whole world come and salute me.” But this sutra says that this is the basic condition for you to salute the Divine.

When there is no one whom you can ask, the ego feels starved. When you feel inferiority, you want someone to salute you. This is a hunger – a hunger for food. This shows that you are still just at the first stage of the mind: “I am.” And below this stage there is nothingness, so whatsoever you put into this “I am” goes deep into the abyss, and the “I am” remains always vacant. […]

-Osho

From The Ultimate Alchemy, V.2, Discourse #10

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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Realization is a Deep Communion – Osho

Sarva niramaya paripoornohamasmiti mumukshunam mokshaik siddhirbhawati.

I am that absolutely pure brahman: to realize this is the attainment of liberation.

Existence is divided into two. Existence, as we see it, is a duality. Biologically, man is divided into two: man and woman. Ontologically, Existence is divided into mind and matter. The Chinese have called this “yin and yang.” The duality penetrates every realm of Existence. We can say that sex penetrates every layer of Existence. The duality is always present.

This duality also penetrates into mind itself. There are two types of mind, two types of mentality – masculine and feminine. You can give other names also, Western and Eastern, or, more particularly, you can call it Greek and Hindu. In a more abstract way, the division can be called philosophical and religious.

The first thing to be discussed today is the differences between the Greek mind and the Hindu mind. The Upanishads are the peak of the Hindu mind – of the Eastern mentality or the religious way of looking at Existence. It will be easy to understand the Hindu mind in contrast to the Greek mind, and these are the basic minds.

When I say, “Greek mind,” what do I mean? The Greek mind is one aspect of the duality of minds. The Greek mind thinks, speculates; the approach is intellectual, verbal, logical. The Hindu mind is quite the contrary. It doesn’t believe in thinking, it believes in experiencing. It doesn’t believe in logic, it believes in an irrational jump into Being itself. The Greek mind speculates as an outsider standing outside – as an observer, an onlooker. The Greek mind is not involved. The Greek mind says that if you are involved in something, you cannot think scientifically. Your observation cannot be just: it becomes prejudiced. So one must be an observer when one is thinking.

The Hindu mind says you cannot think at all when you are standing outside. Whatsoever you think, whatsoever you try to think, will be just about the periphery: you can not to know anything about the center. You are standing outside. Penetrate in! So much penetration is needed to know that ultimately you become one with the center. Only then do you know rightly; otherwise, everything is just acquaintance, not knowledge.

The Greek mind analyzes: analysis is the instrument for it to know anything. The Hindu mind synthesizes. Analysis is not the method – not to divide into parts, but to look for the whole in every part. The Hindu mind is always looking for the whole in the part. The Greek mind, in Democritus, comes to atoms, because if you go on analyzing, then the atom becomes the reality – the last particle which cannot be divided. The Hindu mind reaches to Brahman – to the Absolute. If you go on synthesizing, then ultimately the Absolute, the Whole, is reached. If you go on dividing, then the last particle – the last divisible particle – is the atom. If you go on adding, then there is the Brahman, the Ultimate, the Absolute.

The Greek mind could develop to be a scientific mind because analysis helps. The Hindu mind could never develop to be a scientific mind because synthesis can never lead to any science. It can lead to religion but not to science. The Western mind is the development of the Greek seed. So logic, conceptualization, thinking, rational analysis, they are the foundations for the West. Experience, not thinking, is the foundation for the Indian mind. So I would like to say that the Hindu mind is basically non-philosophical – not only non-philosophical, but, really, anti-philosophical. It doesn’t believe in philosophizing: it believes in experiencing.

You can think about love, you can analyze the phenomenon, you can create a hypothesis to explain it, you can create a system about it. In order to do this, it is not necessary to be in love yourself. You can be an outsider, you can go on observing love, and then you can create a system, a philosophy, about love. The Greeks say that if you yourself are in love, then your mind will be muddled. You will not be able to think. Then you will not be able to be impartial. Then your personality will enter into your theory and that will be destructive to it.

So you must be as if you are not. You must be out of it completely, totally. Do not become involved. To know about love, it is not necessary to be in love. Observe the facts, collect the data, experiment on others. You must always remain outside; then your observation will be factual. If you yourself are in love, then your observation will not be factual. Then you are involved, you are part of it, you are prejudiced.

But the Hindu mind says that unless you are in love, how can you know love? You can observe others love, but what are you observing? Just the behavior of two persons who are in love. You are not observing love – just the behavior of two persons who are in love. They may be just acting. You cannot know whether they are acting or really in love. They may be hiding their real hearts. You can see their faces, you can listen to their words, you can look at their acts, but how can you penetrate into their hearts? And if you are not capable of penetrating into their hearts, how can you know love?

Sometimes love is absolutely silent and sometimes the deception of love is very much vocal. So you can observe thousands and thousands of lovers, but still you cannot penetrate into the very phenomenon of love unless you are in love.

So the Hindu mind says that experience is the only way, not thinking. Thinking is verbal; you can do thinking in your armchair. You need not go into any phenomenon. When I say that thinking is verbal, I mean that you can play with words, and words have a tendency to create more words. Words can be arranged in a pattern, in a system. Just as you can make a house of playing cards, you can make a system of words. But you cannot live in it; it is only a house of cards. You cannot experience it; it is only a system of words – mere words.

Jean-Paul Sartre has written his autobiography, and he has given a name to his autobiography which is very meaningful, very significant. He has called his autobiography Words. It is not only his autobiography – this is the whole autobiography of Western thinking – words.

The Hindu mind believes in silence, not in words. Even if the Hindu mind speaks, it speaks about silence. Even if words are to be used, they are used against words. When you are creating a system out of words, logic is the only method. Your words must not be contradictory; otherwise the whole house will fall down. Your system must be consistent. If you are consistent with your words, then you are logical in your system.

So many systems can be created, and each philosopher creates his own system, his own world of words. And if you take his presuppositions, you cannot refute him, because it is only a play, a game of words. If you accept his premises, then the whole system will look right. Within the system there is an inner consistency.

But life has no systems. That is why the Hindu emphasis is not on word systems, but on actual realization, actual experiencing. So Buddha reaches the same experience that Mahavira reaches, that Krishna reaches, that Patanjali or Kapil or Shankara reaches. They reach to the same experience! Their words differ, but their experience is the same. So they say, “Whatsoever we may say, howsoever it may contradict what others have said, whenever someone reaches to the experience, it is the same.” The expression is different, not the experience. But if you have no experience, then there is no meeting point at all. My experience and your experience will meet somewhere, because experience is a reality and the reality is one.

So if I experience love and you experience love, there is going to be a meeting. Somewhere we are going to be one. But if I talk about love without knowing love, I create my own individual system of words. If you talk about love without knowing love, you create your own system of words. These two systems are not going to meet anywhere, because words are dreams, not realities.

Remember this: the reality is one, dreams are not one. Each one has his own individual dreaming faculty. Dreams are absolutely private. You dream your dreams; I dream my dreams. Can you conceive of it – I dreaming your dreams or you dreaming my dreams? Can you conceive of us both meeting together in a dream, or of two persons dreaming one dream? That is impossible. We can have one experience, but we cannot have one dream – and words are dreams.

So philosophers go on contradicting each other, creating their own systems, never reaching to any conclusion. The Greek mind taught in abstract terms, the Hindu mind in concrete terms of experience. Both have their merits and demerits, because if you insist on experiencing, then science is impossible. If you insist on logic, system, reason, then religion becomes impossible.

The Greek mind developed into a scientific world view; the Hindu mind developed into a religious world view. Philosophy is bound to give birth to science. Religion cannot give birth to science: religion gives birth to poetry, art. If you are religious, then you are looking into the Existence as an artist. If you are a philosopher, then you are looking into the world as a scientist. The scientist is an onlooker; the artist is the insider. So religion and art are sympathetic, philosophy and science are sympathetic. If science develops too much, then philosophy, by and by, gradually transforms itself into science and disappears. […]

In the West, religion has no roots. Poetry is also dying because it can exist only with religion. These two types of mind develop into totally different dimensions.

When I say that religion gives birth to poetry, I mean that it gives you an aesthetic sense, a sense which can feel values in life: not facts, but values; not that which is, but that which ought to be; not that which is just before you, but that which is hidden. If you can take a non-rational, aesthetic attitude, if you can take a jump into Existence by throwing your logic behind, if you can become one with the ocean of Existence, if you can become oceanic, then you begin to feel something which is Divine.

Science will give you facts, dead facts. Religion gives you life. It is not dead: it is alive. But then it is not a fact – then it is a mystery. Facts are always dead, and whatsoever is alive is always a mystery. You know it and yet you do not know it. Really, you feel it. This emphasis on feeling, experiencing, realization, is the last sutra of this Upanishad.

This Upanishad says: “I am that absolutely pure Brahman. To realize this is the attainment of Liberation.”

Before we probe deeply into this sutra, one thing more: if you have a logical mind, a Western way of thinking, a Greek attitude, then your search is for Truth, for what Truth is. Logic inquires about Truth, about what Truth is.

Hindus were never very interested in Truth, never! They were interested more in mokska – Liberation. They ask again and again, “What is moksha? What is freedom?” not “What is Truth?” And they say that if someone is seeking Truth, it is only to reach freedom. Then it becomes instrumental – but the search is not for Truth itself.

Hindus say that that which liberates us is worth seeking. If it is Truth, okay, but the search is basically concerned with freedom – moksha. You cannot find a similar search in Greek philosophy. No one is interested – neither Plato nor Aristotle: no one is interested in freedom. They are interested in knowing what Truth is.

Ask Buddha, ask Mahavira, ask Krishna. They are not really concerned with Truth: they are concerned with freedom – how human consciousness can attain total freedom. This difference belongs to the basic difference of the mind. If you are an observer, you will be interested more in the outside world and less with yourself, because with yourself you cannot be an observer. I can observe trees, I can observe stones, I can observe other persons. I cannot observe myself because I am involved. A gap is not there.

That is why the West remained uninterested in the Self. It was interested in others. Science develops when you are interested in others. If you are interested in trees, then you will create a science out of it. If you are interested in matter, then you will create physics. If you are interested in something else, then a new science will be born out of that inquiry. If you are interested in the Self, then only is religion born. But with the Self a basic problem arises: you cannot be there as a detached observer, because you are both the observer and the observed. So the scientific distinction, the detachment, cannot be maintained. You alone are there, and whatsoever you do is subjective, inside you: it is not objective.

When it is not objective, a Greek mind is afraid – because you are travelling into a mystery. Something must be objective so that if I say something others can observe it also. It must become social! So they inquire into what Truth is. They say, “If we all arrive at one conclusion through observation, experimenting, thinking, if we can come to a conclusion objectively, then it is Truth.”

Buddha’s truth cannot be Aristotle’s truth because Aristotle will say, “You say you know something, but that is subjective. Make it objective so we also can observe it.” Buddha cannot put his realization as an object on a table. It cannot be dissected. You cannot do anything with Self. You have to take Buddha’s statement in good faith. He tells you something, but Aristotle will say, “He may be deluded. What is the criterion? How to know that he is not deluded? He may be deceiving. How to know that he is not deceiving? He may be dreaming. How to know that he has come to a reality and not to a dream? Reality must be objective; then you can decide.”

That is why there is only one science and so many religions. If something is true, then in science two theories cannot exist side by side. Sooner or later one theory will have to be dropped. Because the world is objective, you can decide which is true. Others can experiment on it and you can compare notes.

But so many religions are possible because the world is subjective – an inner world. No objective criterion of judgement, of verification, is possible. Buddha stands on his own evidence. He is the only witness of whatsoever he is saying. That is why in science doubt becomes useful; in religion it becomes a hindrance. Religion is trust because no objective evidence is possible.

Buddha says something. If you trust him, it is okay; otherwise, there is no communion with him, there is no dialogue possible. There is only one possibility, and that is this: if you trust Buddha, you can travel the same path, you can come to the same experience. But, again, that will be individual and personal; again, you will be your own evidence. You cannot even say this, that “I have achieved the same thing Buddha has achieved,” because how to compare?

Think of it in this way: I love someone; you love someone. We can say that we are both in love, but how am I to know that my experience of love is the same as your experience of love? How to compare them? How to weigh? It is difficult. Love is a complex thing. Even simpler things are difficult. I see a tree and I call it green. You also call it green, but my green and your green may not be the same because eyes differ, attitudes differ, moods differ.

When a painter looks at a tree, he cannot be seeing the same green as you see when you look at it, because the painter has a more sensitive eye. When you see green it is just one green; when the painter sees a tree it is many greens simultaneously – many shades of green. When a Van Gogh looks at a tree it is not the same tree as you see. How to compare this – whether I am seeing the same green as you are seeing! It is difficult – in a way, impossible – even in such small simple things as the experience of green. So how to compare Buddha’s nirvana, Mahavira’s moksha, Krishna’s Brahman? How to compare?

The deeper we move, the more personal the thing becomes. The more in we go, the less possibility of any verification. And ultimately, one can only say, “I am the only witness of myself.” The Greek mind becomes afraid! This is dangerous territory! Then you can fall prey. Then you can fall a victim of deceivers, of deluded ones! That is why they go on insisting on objectivity: “What is Truth?” is the inquiry. Then one is bound to fall on objectivity.

The Hindu mind says, “We are not interested in Truth. We are interested in human freedom. We are interested in the innermost freedom where no slavery exists, no limitation; where consciousness becomes infinite, where consciousness becomes one with the Whole. Unless I am the Whole, I cannot be free. That which I am not will remain a limitation to me. So unless one becomes the Brahman, he is not free.”

This is the Eastern search. This too can be contemplated. You can think about it; you can also philosophize about it. This sutra says, “I am that absolutely pure Brahman. To realize this . . .” not “to contemplate about this,” not “to think about this” – because you can think, and you can think beautifully, and you can fall a victim to your own thinking. Thinking is not the thing. “To realize this is the attainment of Liberation.” Know well the distinction between thinking and realizing.

Ordinarily, everything is confused and our minds are muddled. A person thinks about God, so he thinks he is religious. He is not! You can go on thinking for lives together, but you will not be religious – because thinking is a cerebral, intellectual affair. It is done with words; life remains untouched. That is why, in the West, you will see a person thinking of the highest values and yet remaining on the lowest rung of life. He may be talking about love, theorizing about love, but look into his life and there is no love at all. Rather, this may be the reason, the cause: because there is no love in him, he goes on substituting it by theories and thinking.

That is why the East insists that no matter what you think, unless you live it, it is useless. Ultimately, only life is meaningful, and thinking must not become a substitute for it. But go around and look at religious people, so-called religious people; not only at religious people, but at religious saints: they are only thinking – because they go on thinking about the Brahman, go on talking about the Brahman, they think that they are religious.

Religion is not so cheap. You can think for twenty-four hours, but it will not make you religious. When mind stops and life takes over, when it is not your thoughts but your life, your very heartbeat, when your very pulse pulsates with it, then it is a realization. And to realize this is the attainment of Liberation – moksha, freedom. When one realizes that “I am the Absolute Brahman” – remember the word “realization” – when one becomes one with the Absolute Brahman, it is not a concept in one’s mind, now one is that, then one is free. Then the moksha, the Liberation, the freedom, is attained.

What to do? How to live it? This whole Upanishad was an effort to penetrate from different angles toward this one Ultimate goal. Now this is the last sutra. The last sutra says that you have gone through the whole Upanishad – but if it is only your thinking, if you have been only thinking about it, then howsoever beautiful it is, it is irrelevant unless you realize it.

Mind can deceive you – because if you repeat a certain thing continuously, you begin to feel that now you have realized it. If you go on from morning to evening repeating, “Everywhere is the Brahman, I am the Brahman, aham brahmasmi, I am Divine, I am God, I am one with the Whole,” if you go on repeating it, this repetition will create an autohypnosis. You will begin to feel – rather, you will begin to think that you feel – that you are. This is delusion; this will not help.

So what to do? Thinking will not help. Then how to start living? From where to start it? Some points: first, remember that if something convinces you logically it is not necessarily true. If I convince you logically about something, it doesn’t mean that it is true. Logic is groping in the dark. The roots are unknown: logic gives you substitutes for roots. […]

The whole life is a mystery. Everything is unknown, but we make it known. It doesn’t become known that way, but we go on labelling it and then we are at ease. Then we have created a known world: we have created an island of a known world in the midst of a great unknown mystery. This labelled world gives ease; we feel secured. What is our knowledge other than labelling things?

Your small child asks, “What is this?” You say, “It is a dog,” so he repeats, “It is a dog.” Then the label is fixed in his mind. Now he begins to feel that he knows the dog. It is only a labelling. When there was no label, the child thought it was something unknown. Now a label has been put: “dog,” so the child goes on repeating, “Dog! Dog!” Now, the moment he sees the animal, parallel in his mind the word “dog” is repeated. Then he feels he knows.

What have you done? You have simply labelled an unknown thing, and this is our whole knowledge. The so-called intellectual knowledge is nothing but labelling. What do you know? You call a certain thing “love,” and you then begin to think that you have known it. We go on labelling. Give a label to anything and then you are at ease. But go a little deeper, penetrate a little deeper beyond the label, and the unknown is standing. You are surrounded by the unknown.

You call a certain person your wife, your husband, your son. You have labelled; then you are at ease. But look again at the face of your wife. Take the label off, penetrate beyond the label, and there is the unknown. The unknown penetrates every moment, but you go on pushing it, huffing it. You go on trying – “Behave as the label demands!”

And everyone is behaving according to the label. Our whole society is a labelled world – our family, our knowledge. This will not do. A religious mind wants to know, to feel. Labelling is of no use. So feel the unknown all around; discard the labelling. That is what is meant by unlearning – to forget whatever you have learned. You cannot forget it but put it aside. When you look again at your wife, look at something unknown. Put the label aside. It is a very strange feeling.

Look at the tree you have passed every day. Stop there for a moment. Look at the tree. Forget the name of the tree; put it aside. Encounter it directly, immediately, and you will have a very strange feeling. We are in the midst of an unknown ocean. Nothing is known – only labelled. If you can begin to feel the unknown, only then is realization possible. Do not cling to knowledge, because clinging to knowledge is clinging to the mind, is clinging to philosophy. Throw labelling! Just destroy all labelling!

I do not mean that you should create a chaos. I do not mean that you should become mad. But know well that the labelled world is a false creation of man – a mind creation. So use it. It is a device, so it is good. Use it; it is utilitarian. But do not be caught in it. Move out of it sometimes. Sometimes, go beyond the boundaries of knowledge. Feel things without the mind. Have you ever felt anything without the mind – without the mind coming in? We have not felt anything. […]

You go to a tree. You say, “Okay, this is a mango tree.” Finished! The mango tree is finished by your label. Now you need not bother about it. A mango tree is a great existence. It has its own life, its own love affairs, its own poetry. It has its own experiences. It has seen many mornings, many evenings, many nights. Much has happened around it and everything has left its signature on it. It has its own wisdom. It has deep roots into the earth. It knows the earth more than you because man has no visible roots into the earth. It feels the earth more than you.

And then the sun rises – for you it is nothing because it is a labelled thing. But for a mango tree it is not simply that the sun is rising: something rises in it also. The mango tree becomes alive with the sun’s rising. Its blood runs faster. Every leaf becomes alive; it begins to explode. We also know winds, but we are sheltered in our houses. This tree is unsheltered. It has known winds in a different way. It has touched their innermost possibilities. But for us it is just a mango tree. It is finished! We have labelled it so that we could move on.

Remain with it for a while. Forget that this is a mango tree, because “mango tree” is just a word. It expresses nothing. Forget the word. Forget whatsoever you have read in the books; forget your recipe books. Be with this tree for a while, and this will give you more religious experience than any temple can give – because a temple, any temple, is finally, ultimately, made by man. It is a dead thing. This is made by the Existence itself. It is something that is still one with the Existence. Through it, the Existence itself has come to be green, to be flowering, to be fruitful.

Be with it; remain with it. That will be a meditation. And a moment will come when the tree is not a mango tree – not even a tree: just a being. And when this happens – that the tree is not a mango tree, not even a tree, but just a being, an existence flowering here and now – you will not be a man, you will not be a mind. Simultaneously, when the tree becomes just an existence, you will also become just an existence. And only two existences can meet. Then deep down there is a communion. Then you realize a freedom. You have expanded. Your consciousness expands. Now the tree and you are not two. And if you can feel oneness with a tree, then there is no difficulty in feeling oneness with the whole Existence. You know the path now. You know the secret path – how to be one with this Existence.

So repeating a sutra like, “Aham brahmasmi – I am Divine,” will not do. Realize that knowledge is useless. Be intimate with the Existence. Approach it not as a mind, but as a being. Approach it not with your culture, your education, your scriptures, your religious philosophies – no! Approach it naked like a child, not knowing anything. Then it penetrates you. Then you penetrate into it. Then there is a meeting, and that meeting is samadhi. And once you feel the whole Existence in your nerves, when you feel yourself spread all over the Existence, “Then,” this sutra says, “this is the attainment of Liberation” – to realize this, not to think about it.

So realization is a deep communion – oneness. What is the difficulty? Why do we remain outside this Existence? The ego is the difficulty. We are afraid of losing ourselves: that is the only difficulty. And if you are afraid of losing yourself, then you will not be able to know anything in this life. Then you can collect money, then you can strive for higher posts, then you can collect degrees, diplomas, you can become very respectable, but you will be dead – because life means the capacity to dissolve oneself, the capacity to melt.

When you are in love you melt: love is a melting. And if you cannot melt in love, then it is going to be simply sex; it cannot become love. When you love someone, you melt. When you do not love, you become cold: you freeze. When you love you become warm and you melt.

Religion is a love affair. One needs a deep melting into the Existence. Science is a cold thing. Logic is absolutely cold, dead; life is warm. The capacity to melt yourself is known in religious terms as “surrender”; and the capacity to be frozen, cold, is known in religion as “ego.” Ego makes you ice-cold, frozen. Then you are just stone, dead. We are afraid of losing ourselves; that is why we, are afraid of love. Everyone talks about love, everyone thinks about love – but no one loves, because love is dangerous. When you love someone, you are losing yourself: you will not be in control. You cannot know things directly; you cannot manipulate. You are melting. You are losing control.

That is why, when someone loves someone, we say he has “fallen” in love. We use the word “falling”: we say “falling in love.” It is a falling, really, because it is a melting. Then you cannot stand aloof, cold, in yourself – you have fallen.

Look at a person who lives through mind: you can never feel any warmth in him. If you touch his hand, you cannot feel him there. If you kiss him, you cannot feel him there. He is like a dead wall. No response comes out of him. A man who loves is in continuous response. Subtle responses are coming from him. If you touch his hand you have touched his soul. It is not only his hand: he has come to meet you there – totally! He has moved: his soul has come to his hand. Then there is warmth. And if your soul can also come to the hand to meet him, then there is a meeting – a communion.

This can happen with a tree. And if it happens at all with anyone then it can happen with anything else – anything! It can happen with a stone, it can happen with the sand on the beach, it can happen with anything if at all it can happen – if you know how to melt, if you know how to dissolve yourself, if you know how to move in response and not in words. Words are not responses. […]

Religion is a love approach. It is a deep melting. And when you melt into the Existence, you become free. What is this freedom? When you are not, you are free. Let me say it this way: when you are not, you are free. Until you are not there, you cannot be free. You are your slavery, so you cannot become free: the “I” cannot become free. When the “I” dissolves, there is freedom. When you are not, there is freedom. So moksha, freedom, means a total dispersion of the ego. So learn it, or unlearn the coldness that everyone has created around himself. Unlearn the coldness and learn warmth. […]

So learn the language of love and unlearn the language of reason. No one is going to teach you, because love cannot be taught. If you have become bored with your mind, if it is enough, throw it! Unburden yourself, and suddenly you begin to move into life. Mind has to be there, and then it has to be thrown. If you throw the mind, only then will you know that “I am the absolute pure Brahman,” because only the mind is the barrier. Because of the mind you feel yourself finite, limited.

It is like this: you have colored specs. The whole world looks blue. It is not blue; it is only your spectacles which are blue. Then I say, “The world is not blue, so throw your specs and look again at the world.” But you do not know the distinction between your eyes and the specs. You were born with your spectacles, so you do not know the distinction between where specs finish and ‘I’ begins.

You have been thinking that your specs are your eyes: that is the only problem; that your thoughts are your life: that is the problem. The identity that your mind is your life: that is the problem. Mind is just like specs. That is why a Hindu looks at the world differently and a Mohammedan looks differently and a Christian differently: because specs differ. Throw your specs, and then, for the first time, you will reclaim your eyes. In India, we have called this approach darshan. It is a reclaiming of the eyes.

We have eyes, but covered. We are moving in the Existence just like horses move when they are yoked in front of carts. Then their eyes have to be covered from both the sides. They must look straight ahead – because if a horse can look around everywhere, then it will be difficult for the driver. Then it will go running anywhere and everywhere, so a horse is allowed to see only straight ahead in order that his world becomes linear. Now his world is not three-dimensional: he cannot look everywhere. The whole Existence is lost except the street. It is a dead street, because streets cannot be alive. It is a dead street, a dead road. […]

Every road leads to death. If you want life, then for life there is no fixed road. Life is here and now, multi-dimensional, spreading in every direction. If you want to move into life, throw your specs, throw your concepts, systems, thoughts, mind. Be born into life here and now, in this multi-dimensional life, spreading everywhere. Then you become the center and the whole life belongs to you, not only a particular road. Then the whole life belongs to you! Everything that is in it, all, belongs to you.

This is the realization: “I am that absolutely pure Brahman.” You cannot reach to the Brahman by any road. The path is pathless. If you follow a path, you will reach something, but it is not going to be the All. How can a path lead you to the All? A path can lead you to something, but not the All. If you want the All, leave all the paths, open your eyes, look all around. The Whole is present here. Look and melt into it, because melting will give you the only knowledge possible. Melt into it!

Thus ends “The Atma Pooja Upanishad.” This was the last sutra; the Upanishad ends. It was a very small Upanishad – the smallest possible. You can print it on a postcard, on one side. Only seventeen sutras, but the whole life is condensed into those seventeen sutras. Every sutra can become an explosion; every sutra can transform your life – but it needs your cooperation. The sutra itself cannot do it; the Upanishad itself cannot do it.  You can do it!

Buddha is reported to have said: “The teacher can only show you the path; you have to travel it.” And, really, the teacher can only show you the path if you are ready to see it. Finally, the teacher is a teacher only if you are a disciple. If you are ready to learn, only then can a teacher show you the path. But he cannot force you; he cannot push you ahead. That is impossible! […]

The Upanishad can give you a light, but then that light will not be of any help, really. Unless you can create your own light, unless you start on an inner work of transformation, Upanishads are useless. They may even be dangerous, harmful, because you can learn them. You can easily become a parrot, and parrots tend to be religious. You can know whatsoever has been said, you can repeat it – but that is not going to help. Forget it. Let me blow out the candle. Whatsoever we have been discussing and talking, forget it. Do not cling to it! Start afresh! Then one day you will come to know whatsoever has been said.

Scriptures are only helpful when you reach realization. Only then do you know what has been said, what was meant, what the intention was. When you hear, when you understand intellectually, nothing is understood. So this can help only if it becomes a thirst, an intense inquiry, a seeking.

The Upanishad ends; now you go ahead and move on the journey. Suddenly, one day, you will know that which has been said and also that which has not been said. One day you will know that which has been expressed and, also, that which has not been expressed because it cannot be expressed.

One day Buddha was moving in a forest with his disciples. Ananda asked him, “Bhagwan, have you said everything that you know:”

So Buddha takes some leaves from the ground into his hand, some dead, fallen leaves – and he says, “Whatsoever I have said is just like these few leaves in my hand, and whatsoever I have not said and have left unsaid is like the leaves in this forest. But if you follow, then through these few leaves you will attain to this whole forest.”

The Upanishad ends, but now you start on a journey – deep, inward. It is a long and arduous effort. To transform oneself is the greatest effort – the most impossible, but the most paying. This Upanishad has been a deep intimate instruction. It is alchemical. It is for your inner transformation. Your baser metals can become gold. Through this process, your utmost possibility can become actual.

But no one can help you. The teacher only shows you the path – you have to travel. So do not go on thinking and brooding. Somewhere, start living. A very small lived effort is better than a great philosophical accumulation. Be religious – philosophies are worthless.

-Osho

From The Ultimate Alchemy, V.2 #16

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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Ego and the Self – Osho

In the west I was trained as a social worker. I was taught that it is important that a person respects and loves himself and feels worthwhile. I was taught that it is important to give support to help strengthen the ego. You say kill the ego. I am confused.

Prem Aradhana, the ego is needed because the true self is not known. The ego is a substitute, it is a pseudo entity. Because you don’t know yourself you have to create an artificial center; otherwise functioning in life will be impossible. Because you don’t know your real face, you have to wear a mask. Not knowing the essential, you have to trust in the shadow.

There are only two ways of living in life. One is to live it from the very core of your being — that has been the way of the mystics. Meditation is nothing but a device to make you aware of your real self — which is not created by you, which need not be created by you, which you already are. You are born with it, you are it! It needs to be discovered. If this is not possible, or if the society does not allow it to happen…and no society allows it to happen, because the real self is dangerous — dangerous for the established church, dangerous for the state, dangerous for the crowd, dangerous for the tradition — because once a man knows his real self, he becomes an individual. He no longer belongs to the mob psychology; he will not be superstitious, and he cannot be exploited. He cannot be led like cattle, he cannot be ordered and commanded. He will live according to his light, he will live from his own inwardness. His life will have tremendous beauty, integrity. But that is the fear of the society.

Integrated persons become individuals, and the society wants you to be non-individuals. Instead of individuality, the society teaches you to be a personality. The word ‘personality’ has to be understood. It comes from a root, ‘persona’ — persona means a mask. The society gives you a false idea of who you are; it gives you just a toy, and you go on clinging to the toy your whole life.

The one way is to live through meditation — then you live a life of rebellion, of adventure, of courage. Then you really live! The other way to live, or to fake living, is the way of the ego — strengthen the ego, nourish the ego; so that you need not look into the self, cling to the ego. The ego is an artifact created by the society to deceive you, to distract you.

The ego is man-made, manufactured by us. And because it is manufactured by the society, society has power over it. Because it is manufactured by the state and the church, and those who are in power, they can destroy it any moment; it depends on them. You have to be constantly in fear, and you have to be constantly obeying them, conforming to them, so that your ego remains intact. The society gives you respect if you are not an individual. The society honors you if you are not a Jesus, not a Socrates, not a Buddha. It respects you only if you are a sheep, not a man.

The West has completely forgotten how to meditate — and Christianity has been the reason. Christianity has created a very false religion, which knows nothing of meditation. Christianity is very formal; it is a ritual. It is part of the society and the political structure of the society. Karl Marx is perfectly right about it, that it is the opium of the people. Because of Christianity, the West has lost track of its own being. And one cannot live without SOME idea of one’s self — and if you cannot discover, then create something. It will be false, but something is better than nothing.

Aradhana, what you have been told is utter nonsense. It does not matter who has been telling it — the universities, the politicians, the priests. Certainly, you will be feeling confused, because I am telling you just the opposite: I am telling you to get rid of the ego, because if you get rid of the ego, you get rid of the rock that is preventing the flow of your consciousness.

Your consciousness is there, just behind the rock; it has not to be brought from somewhere else. Remove the rock — real religion consists only of removing that which is unnecessary, and then the necessary starts flowing. That which is unessential has to be removed. And the essential is already there, is already the case! You remove the rock and you will be surprised: you need not create the real self — it reveals itself to you.

And the real has beauty, and the real is deathless. Because it is deathless it has no fear. The unreal is constantly trembling. The ego is always in danger — anybody can destroy it. Because it has been given to you by others, they can take it back. Today they respect you, tomorrow they may not respect you. If you don’t follow their idea of life, if you don’t confirm their style of being, they will withdraw their respect. And you will be flat on the ground…and you will not know who you are.

Borges writes:

“I dreamt that I was awakening from another dream — full of cataclysms and turmoil — and that I was waking up in a room which I did not recognize. Dawn was breaking: a faint diffused light outlined the foot of the iron bedstead, the table. I thought fearfully ‘Where am I?’ and realized that I did not know. I thought ‘Who am I?’ and I could not recognize myself. Fear grew within me. I thought, ‘This distressing awakening is already hell, this awakening without a future will be my eternity.’ Then I really awoke, trembling.”

Not to know oneself, to know one’s destiny, that’s certainly real hell. And man does not know himself. Now, the cheaper way is to create the ego, and the West has been following the cheaper way. And not only the West: the majority of people in the East, too, have been doing the same. Just leave a few enlightened people aside, and the whole world has been doing the same.

The West consists of ninety-nine point nine percent of the people in the world; the East consists of only a few people, they can be counted on the fingers. To me, the East and the West are not geographical — they are spiritual dimensions. Gautam Buddha, Lao Tzu, Zarathustra, Abraham, Moses, Christ, Saint Francis — the East consists of these people. Where they were born is immaterial, is irrelevant. Certainly Saint Francis was not born in the East, but I count him as part of the East.

The spiritual dimension, the dimension where the inner sun rises, is the East. And the dark night of the soul, which knows nothing of the sunrise, is the West. You don’t become religious just by being born in India. Religion is not that cheap. It is the costliest thing in existence, because it is the most precious. There is no shortcut to it, and those who seek shortcuts are bound to be deceived by somebody. They will be given toys, and you can go on believing in toys because you don’t want to risk an adventure into the unknown.

The greatest unknown exists within you. The most uncharted sea is your consciousness, and the most dangerous too, because when you start moving inwards, you start falling into an emptiness, and great fear arises, the fear of going mad, the fear of losing your identity. … Because you have known yourself as a name, you have known yourself as a particular person — you have known yourself as a doctor, as an engineer, as a businessman; you have known yourself as an Indian, a German, a Chinese; you have known yourself as black or white; you have known yourself as man or woman; you have known yourself as educated or uneducated — all these categories start disappearing.

As you move inwards, you are neither man nor woman: neti, neti — neither this nor that, neither white nor black, neither Hindu nor Mohammedan, neither Indian nor Pakistani. As you move inwards, all these categories start slipping out of your hands. Then who are you? You start losing track of your ego, and a great fear arises — the fear of nothingness. You are falling into infinity. Who knows whether you will be able to come back or not? And who knows what is going to be the outcome of this exploration? The coward clings to the shore and forgets all about the sea. That’s what is happening all over the world. People cling to the ego because ego gives you a certain idea of who you are, gives you a certain clarity. But the ego is false, and the clarity is false.

It is better to be confused with reality than to be clear with unreality.

Aradhana, you are right: with me a great confusion is bound to happen — because all your knowledge, slowly, slowly, will be proved simple ignorance and nothing else. Hiding behind your knowledge is your ignorance. Hiding behind your cleverness is your stupid mind. And behind the ego there is nothing — it is a shadow.

Once this becomes clear to you, that you have been clinging to the shadow, a great fear and a great confusion, a great chaos is bound to happen. But out of the chaos stars are born. One has to pass through such chaos — that is part of spiritual growth. You have to lose the false to get to the real. But between the two there will be an interval when the false will be gone, and the true will not yet have arrived. Those are the moments, the most critical moments . . . these are the moments when you need a master or a friend.

Just the other day, Buddha was saying, “A master or a friend is needed.” These are the moments when you will need somebody’s hand who can hold you, who can support you, who can say, “Don’t be afraid. This emptiness is going to disappear. Soon you will be overflowing — just a little more waiting, a little more patience.” The master cannot give you anything, but he can give you courage. He can give you his hand in those critical moments when your mind would like to go back, to turn back, to cling again to the shore.

The joy of the master, his confidence, his authority . . . remember, when I say “his authority” I don’t mean that a master is authoritarian. A master is never authoritarian, but he has authority, because he is a witness to his own self. He knows about the other shore; he has been to the other shore. You have only heard about the other shore, you have read about it; you know only about this shore, and the comfort and the security, and the safety of this shore. And when the storms rage and when you start losing sight of this shore, and you are not able to see the other shore, your mind will say, “Go back! Go back as fast as possible! The old shore is disappearing and the new is not appearing. Maybe there is nothing on the other shore, maybe there is no other shore at all. And the storm is great!”

In those moments, if you are with a master, and somebody is sitting in the boat silent, utterly calm and quiet, laughing and saying, “Don’t be worried,” playing on his flute, or singing a song, or telling you a joke, and he says, “Don’t be worried. The other shore is — I know, I have been there. Just a little patience….” Looking into his eyes…in his absolute confidence will be the only help. Seeing his calmness, quietness, his integrity…. He is not looking back, he is not afraid: he must have seen the other shore, he must have been there. His whole being says it, his whole being proves it. And when he holds your hand you can feel that his hand is not trembling; you can feel that whatsoever he is saying he is saying out of his own experience, not because it is written in the Bible, in the Gita, in The Dhammapada. He knows it on his own! — That is his authority.

Once his confidence, his trust, becomes contagious to you, you will also start laughing. Of course, your laughter will have a little nervousness in it, but you will start laughing. You may start singing with him, maybe just to avoid fear, just as people whistle in the dark. You may join in his dance, just to forget all about what is happening. You don’t want to see the storm that surrounds you, and you don’t want to remember the past and you don’t want to think about the future. It seems dark and dismal to you. You may join in his dance . . . Dancing with him, even if out of fear, singing with him even though your singing is bound to be nervous, laughing with him although your laughter is not total, the storm will soon be passed. The deeper your patience, the sooner it happens — you will be able to see the other shore, because when the eyes are not troubled, when the eyes are not full of fear, they become perceptive. A seeing arises in you — you become a seer.

The other shore is not far away; just your eyes are so full of smoke that you cannot see. In fact, this very shore is the other shore. If your eyes are clear, if your perception is not clouded, if your insight has arisen in your being, if you can see and hear, this very shore is the other shore. When one knows, one really laughs at the whole ridiculousness of life — because we have already got that for which we are longing. The treasure is with us, and we are running hither and thither.

The ego has not to be created, because you have the supreme self within you.

But I can understand your confusion. Remain confused. Don’t go back to your old clarity — it is deceptive. Be in this confusion, be with me a little while more, and soon the confusion will disperse and disappear. And then comes a totally new kind of clarity.

There are two kinds of clarity — one, which is simply intellectual, which any moment can be taken away, doubt can be created any moment . . . Intellect is full of doubt. Whatsoever you had heard and whatsoever you had been told has been taken away so easily by me; it was not of much value. Your whole life’s training, and I have taken the earth from underneath your feet so easily . . . and you are confused. What value can such clarity have? If I can confuse you so easily, that means it was not real clarity. I will give you a new kind of clarity which cannot be confused.

Once a great philosopher went to see Ramakrishna. The philosopher argued against God, and he argued really well. His name was Keshav Chandra Sen. Ramakrishna was utterly illiterate; he knew nothing of philosophy, he had never been to the university, he had only read up to the second standard. He could write and read Bengali a little bit.

The philosopher was well educated, world famous, he had written many books. He argued, and Ramakrishna laughed. And each time the philosopher gave a beautiful, profound argument against God, Ramakrishna would jump and hug him. A great crowd had gathered to see the scene, what was happening. The philosopher was very much embarrassed, because he had come to argue, and what kind of argument is this? This man laughs, dances — sometimes hugs.

The philosopher said, “Are you not disturbed by my arguments?”

Ramakrishna said, “How can I be disturbed? I am really enjoying your arguments. You are clever, you are intelligent, your arguments are beautiful — but what can I do? I know God! It is not a question of argument; it is not that I believe in God. Had I believed, you would have disturbed me, you would have taken all my clarity and you would have confused me. But I know he is!”

If you know, you know — there is no way of distracting you. I will give you that kind of clarity — which knows, and is not dependent on any argument but arises out of existential experience. Then you need not be taught to respect yourself or love yourself or feel worthwhile. Knowing oneself, one knows one is God. Now what more respect can you give to yourself? When this experience arises in you — “Aham Brahasmi! I am God!” — What more respect can you give to yourself?

And who is there to give respect? Only God is. When in the deepest recesses of your being the realization happens: “Ana’l Haq! — I am truth!” what more worthwhileness do you need to feel? You have come to the ultimate, and you have come to know the ultimate as your innermost being, your interiority.

Yes, you have been told to be respectful to yourself because you don’t know who you are. You have been told to feel worthwhile because you feel worthless. You have been told to love yourself because you hate yourself. And the strange thing is, the irony is, that it is the same people who have been doing both things to you.

The same people first make you feel worthless; this is the trade secret of all the churches, of all the so-called religions, of all political ideologies, of all societies, civilizations and cultures that have existed up to now. This is the trade secret: first they make you feel worthless — every child is made to feel worthless. He is told, “Unless you become this or that, you have no worth.” When he starts feeling worthless, than we start telling him, “Feel worthwhile, feel some worth. If you cannot feel worthwhile, your life is wasted.”

First we tell him to hate himself and condemn himself; everything that he does is wrong, hence he starts hating himself because he is not a beautiful person. The parents, the teachers, the priests, they are all joined in the conspiracy. Every child is reduced to such a condemnable state that he starts feeling, “I must be the ugliest person in the world, because I do things that should not be done, and I don’t do things which should be done.” And then one day we start telling the child, “Why don’t you love yourself? Otherwise, how will you survive?”

We take all respect away from the child, and when he becomes disrespectful towards himself we start telling him to create respect. This is such an absurd situation! Each child is born with great respect for himself. Each child knows his worth, his intrinsic worth. He is not worthy because he is like Buddha or Krishna or Christ — he simply knows he has worth because he is, he has being. That’s enough! And each child loves himself, respects himself.

It is you who teach him just the opposite. First you destroy all that is beautiful in him, and then you start painting a false picture. Destroy the natural beauty and then paint his face, make him absolutely false. But why is this done? — because only false people can be slaves, only false people can follow the stupid politicians, only false people can be victims of utterly ignorant priests. If people are real, they cannot be exploited and cannot be oppressed.

Aradhana, remain confused — it is good. It is good that you have come to this point where a great confusion has arisen in you. You can no longer trust your ego — good! It is tremendously important, because now a second step becomes possible. I will give you your childhood back, your inner worth, which is not a created phenomenon; your natural love, which is not cultivated; your spontaneous respect, which arises only when you start feeling that you are part of God, that you are divine.

Remember, ego is comparative — it always compares itself with others — and the self is non-comparative. When you know yourself it is neither inferior nor superior in comparison to anybody, it is simply itself. But the ego is comparative. And remember, if you feel superior to somebody, you are bound to feel inferior to somebody else. So the ego is a very tricky phenomenon: on the one hand it makes you feel superior, on the other hand it makes you feel inferior. It keeps you in a double bind, it goes on pulling you apart. It drives you crazy.

On the one hand you know that you are superior to your servant, but what about your boss? You force the servant to surrender to you, and you surrender to your boss. You force your servant or your wife or your children to be slaves to you. And then to your boss? You wag your tail there.

How can you be blissful? Both things are wrong. To make others feel inferior is violent, it is a crime against God; and to make yourself feel inferior before somebody is again a crime against God. When you know the real self, both things disappear. Then you are you, and the other is the other, and there is no comparison — nobody is superior and nobody is inferior.

This is what I call real spiritual communism, but this is possible only when self-knowledge has happened. Karl Marx or Friedrich Engels, Joseph Stalin or Mao Zedong, these are not the real communists. They live in the ego. The real communists are Gautam Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tzu — nobody knows them as communists but they are real communists, because if you understand their vision, all comparison disappears. And when there is no comparison, there is communism. Equality is possible only when comparison disappears from the world.

Not knowing yourself, you are almost fast asleep; not knowing yourself, you are like a drunkard who asks others, “Where is my home?” The drunkard sometimes even asks, “Can you tell me, sir, who I am?”

Once a drunkard came back to the bartender and asked him, “Have you seen my friend? Has he been here?”

The bartender said, “Yes, just a few minutes before, he was here.”

And the drunkard asked, “Will you be kind enough to tell me, was I with him too?”

There was a drunk standing at a bar one day. He turned to the man on his right and said, “Did you pour beer in my pocket?”

“I certainly did not,” said the man.

Then the drunk turned to the man on his left and said, “Did you pour beer in my pocket?”

The man said, “I most certainly did not pour beer in your pocket.”

The drunk said, “Just like I thought — an inside job.”

-Osho

From The Dhammapada, the Way of the Buddha, V. 2, Discourse #8

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