Tag: Jesus

You Will Find the Christ – Osho

Can Buddha or Christ be created or developed out of every common human being? Or is Buddha or Christ only born as such? Every man is Buddha, every man is Christ: I feel it is not true. 

The Buddha or Christ cannot be created because the Buddha is your intrinsic nature. It need not be created. It has not to be developed either; it is already there; it is already the case. It has only to be unfolded, it has to be discovered. The treasure is there; you have to find the key to unlock the door. The treasure is not to be created; the treasure is not to be developed; you only have to find the right key. You have forgotten about the key — the key is also with you. God provides you with everything that is needed on the journey; you come absolutely prepared. But society disturbs every child, distorts every child because a Buddha or a Christ is useless to the society; they don’t serve any utilitarian purpose.

What can you do with a buddha? What purpose is he going to serve? He will be a beautiful flower, but flowers don’t serve any purpose. Flowers have to be enjoyed, appreciated, loved. You can dance around them, you can drink their beauty, but they are not commodities in the marketplace. What can you do with the full moon? You cannot sell it, you cannot purchase it, you cannot be profited by it. You cannot have a bigger bank balance because of the full moon.

Hence the society is not interested in a buddha or a Christ. Buddha is a full moon, a buddha is a lotus flower; a buddha is a bird on the wing. The Buddha is a poem, the Buddha is a song, the Buddha is a celebration. Because they are utterly beyond utility, the society is not interested in them; it is really afraid of these people. It wants you to be slaves, to be cogs in the wheel of the society. It wants you to be servants to the vested interests. It does not want you to be rebels — and a buddha is bound to be a rebel.

A buddha cannot follow stupid commandments given by the politicians or the moralists or the puritans or the priests. And these are the people who are exploiting humanity, oppressing humanity. They start destroying every possibility of every human child ever becoming a buddha. They start crippling, they start poisoning. And down the centuries they have learnt many ways to poison. It is a miracle that once in a while a child has escaped — must have somehow been a mistake on the part of the priests and the politicians that a child escaped from the trap and became a buddha.

Bal Krishna, every man is born to be a buddha; every man has the seed of Buddhahood in him. But I can understand your question.

You say: I feel it is not true.

Yes, if you look at the masses it doesn’t seem to be true. If it were true there would be many buddhas, but one rarely hears about a buddha. We only know that somewhere, twenty-five centuries ago, a certain Siddhartha Gautam became Buddha. Who knows whether it is true or not? It may be just a myth, a beautiful story, a consolation, an opium for the masses, to keep them hoping that one day they will also become buddhas. Who knows whether Buddha is a historic reality?

And so many stories have been woven around the Buddha that he looks more like a mythological figure than a reality. When he becomes enlightened, gods come from heaven, play beautiful music, dance around him. Now how can this be history? And flowers shower on him from the sky — flowers of gold and silver, flowers of diamonds and emeralds. Who can believe that this is history?

This is not history, true, I agree. This is poetry. But it symbolizes something historical because something so unique has happened in Buddha that there is no other way to describe it than to bring poetry in. Real flowers have not showered on Buddha, but whenever somebody becomes enlightened, the whole existence rejoices — because we are not separate from it.

When you have a headache your whole body suffers, and when the headache goes your whole body feels good, a well-being. We are not separate from existence. And until you are a buddha, you are a headache — a headache to yourself, a headache to others, a headache to the whole existence. You are a thorn in the flesh of existence. When the headache disappears, when the thorn becomes a flower, when one man becomes a buddha, a great pain that he was creating for himself and others disappears. Certainly — I vouch for it, I am a witness to it — certainly the whole existence rejoices, dances, sings. How to say it? It is nothing visible; photographs cannot be taken of it. Hence the poetry; hence these metaphors, symbols, similes.

It is said that when Buddha was born his mother immediately died. It may not be a historical fact, it may be. But my feeling is that it is not a historical fact — because it is said that whenever a buddha is born, the mother immediately dies. That is not true. There have been many buddhas — Jesus’s mother did not die, Mahavira’s mother did not die, Krishna’s mother did not die. Maybe Siddhartha Gautam’s mother died, but it cannot be said that whenever a buddha is born the mother dies, not historically. But I know it has some significance of its own which is not historical. By “the mother” is not really meant the mother; by “the mother” is meant your whole past. You are reborn when you become a buddha, your whole past functions as a womb, the mother. And the moment a buddha is born, the moment you become enlightened, your whole past dies. That death is necessary.

Now, this is absolutely true. It happened with Mahavira, with Krishna, with Jesus; it has happened always. To say it, it is said that whenever a buddha is born the mother dies. You will have to be very, very sympathetic to understand these things.

I can understand that it is difficult; looking at the greater part of humanity, to see that there is any possibility of every human being becoming a Christ or a buddha. Looking at a seed, can you believe that one day it can become a lotus? Just looking at the seed, dissecting the seed, will you be able to infer, conclude, that each seed is going to become a lotus? There seems to be no relationship at all. The seed looks nothing, and when you dissect it, you find nothing in it, only emptiness. Still, each seed carries a lotus within it – and each human being carries the Buddha within him.

You ask me: Can Buddha or Christ be created or developed . . .?

No, they cannot be created, and they cannot be developed: they have to be discovered, they have to be uncovered. They are already there. You just have to reach your innermost core and you will find the Buddha enshrined, you will find the Christ. Christ and Buddha mean the same: the ultimate state of consciousness.

And you say: . . . out of every common human being?

I have never come across a single common human being. I have come across thousands of people, I have looked into the depths of thousands of different people, but I have never come across a common, ordinary man. Every human being is unique, extraordinary, uncommon, exceptional. God never creates common human beings; God only creates unique consciousnesses.

Drop this idea of a common human being. This is an insult to humanity.

And you say: Is Buddha or Christ only born as such?

No. Nobody is born as such. We are all born alike. That too is again a trick of the mind to avoid growing. If it is settled that a buddha is born as a buddha, and a Christ is the only begotten son of God, and Krishna is a reincarnation of God, this is a beautiful strategy to avoid: “Then what can we do? If we are not buddhas it is not our fault – we are not born like that. And if Buddha is a buddha, so what? He is born a buddha. No credit to him; he has not done anything special. If we were born like Buddha, we would be buddhas too. But we are born as common human beings.”

This is a strategy. Very cunning is the mind, and subtle is its cunningness: beware of it. Nobody is born as a buddha, yet everybody brings the potential of being a buddha. And don’t say, “I feel it is not true” — because how can you feel unless you have become a buddha? You can only infer, you can only think, you cannot feel.

Listen to me! I feel that everybody can become a buddha. And I feel it because I was also a common human being . . . and then suddenly this explosion, then suddenly this light, then suddenly this meditativeness blossomed. You can also become a buddha; it is your birthright. Don’t be tricked by your mind — remain alert, aware.

-Osho

From Be Still and Know, Discourse #1

Be Still and Know

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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

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Nothing Is Found – Osho

I was brought up in the teachings of Rudolph Steiner, but I could not yet break through my barriers towards him. Although I believe him to be right in the way he shows that for the West, the possibility to free ourselves from ‘maya’ is to learn to think in the right way. By doing this and by meditating, he says we are able to lose our egos and find our ‘I”.

The central figure for him is Christ, whom he differentiates from Jesus as a totally different being. Your way seems different to me. Can you please advise me? I am somehow torn between you and the way Steiner shows.

Rudolph Steiner was a great mind, but mind you, I say ‘a great mind’, and mind as such has nothing to do with religion. He was tremendously talented. In fact, it is very rare to find another mind to compare with Rudolph Steiner. He was so talented in so many directions and dimensions; it looks almost super-human: a great logical thinker, a great philosopher, a great architect, a great educator, and so on and so forth. And whatsoever he touched, he brought very novel ideas to that subject. Wherever he moved his eyes, he created new patterns of thought. He was a great man, a great mind, but mind as such, small or great, has nothing to do with religion.

Religion comes out of no-mind. Religion is not a talent, it is your nature. If you want to be a great painter, you have to be talented; if you want to be a great poet, you have to be talented; if you want to be a scientist, of course, you have to be talented; but if you want to be religious, no special talent is needed. Anybody, small or great, who is willing to drop his mind, enters into the dimension of the divine. And of course, great talented men find it very difficult to drop their minds; their investment is bigger. For an ordinary man who has no talent, it is very easy to drop the mind. Even then it seems so difficult. He has nothing to lose; still he goes on clinging. Of course, the difficulty is multiplied when you have a talented mind, when you are a genius. Then your whole ego is invested in your mind. You cannot drop it.

Rudolph Steiner founded a new movement called anthroposophy, against theosophy. He was a theosophist in the beginning, then his ego started fighting other egos in the movement. He wanted to become the very head, the supreme-most of the theosophical movement in the world, the world head. That was not possible; there were many other egos. And the greatest problem was coming from J. Krishnamurti, who is not an ego at all. And of course, theosophists were thinking more and more towards Krishnamurti. He was becoming, by and by, the messiah. That created trouble in Rudolph Steiner’s mind. He broke off from the movement. The whole German section of theosophy broke with him. He was really a very, very convincing orator, a convincing writer; he convinced people. He destroyed theosophy very badly, he divided it. And since then theosophy could never become whole and healthy.

Rudolph Steiner has an appeal for the Western mind, and that is the danger – because the Western mind is basically logic-oriented: reason, thinking, logos. He talks about it, and he says, “This is the way for the Western mind.” No, Eastern or Western, mind is mind; and the way is no-mind. If you are Eastern, you will have to drop the Eastern mind. If you are Western, you will have to drop the Western mind. To move into meditation, mind, as such, has to be dropped. If you are a Christian you will have to drop a Christian mind. If you are a Hindu, you will have to drop the Hindu mind. Meditation is not concerned with Christian, Hindu, Eastern, Western, Indian or German, no.

What is mind? Mind is a conditioning given to you by the society. It is an over-imposition on the original mind, which we call no-mind. Just so that you don’t get confused, all mind, as such, has to be dropped. The passage has to be completely empty for the divine to enter into you. Thinking is not meditation. Even right thinking is not meditation. Wrong or right, thinking has to be dropped. When there is no thought in you, no clouds of thinking in you, the ego disappears. And remember, when the ego disappears the ‘I’ is not found. The questioner says that Rudolf Steiner says, “When the ego disappears, the ‘I’ is found.” No, when the ego disappears ‘I’ is not found. Nothing is found. Yes, exactly; nothing… is found.

Just the other night I was telling a story of a great Zen master, To-san. He became empty, he became enlightened, he became a non-being; what Buddhists call anatta, no-mind. The rumor reached to the gods that somebody had again become enlightened. And of course, when somebody becomes enlightened, gods want to see his face – the beauty of it, the beauty of the original, the virginity of it. Gods came down to the monastery To-san lived in. They looked and looked, and they tried, and they would enter into him from one side, and get out from another side, and nobody was found inside To-san. They were very frustrated. They wanted to see the face, the original face, and there was nobody. They tried many devices, and then one very cunning god, clever, said, “Do one thing”: he ran into the kitchen of the monastery, brought handfuls of rice and wheat. To-san was coming from his morning walk and he threw it on his path.

In a Zen monastery, everything has to be respected absolutely; even rice and wheat, stones, everything has to be respected. One has to be continuously careful and aware. Not even a grain of rice can you find in a Zen monastery lying here and there. You have to be respectful. And remember, that respect has nothing to do with Gandhian economics. It is not a question of economy, because Gandhian economy is nothing but rationalized miserliness. It has nothing to do with miserliness. It is a simple respect for everything, absolute respect. This was disrespectful. This is the original idea of the Upanishads where seers have said, anambrahma – food is God – because food gives you life, food is your energy. God comes into your body through food, becomes your blood, your bones, so a god should be treated as a god. When those gods threw rice and wheat on the path where To-san came, he could not believe: “Who has done this? Who has been so careless?” A thought arose in his mind, and the story is that gods could see his face for a single moment, because for a single moment the ‘I’ arose in a very subtle way: “Who has done this? Something has gone wrong.”

And whenever you decide what is wrong and what is right, you are there, immediately. Between the right and the wrong exists the ego. Between one thought and another thought exists the ego. Each thought brings its own ego. For a moment, a cloud arose in To-san’s consciousness – “Who has done this?” – a tension. Each thought is a tension. Even very ordinary, very innocent-looking thoughts are tensions.

You see the garden is beautiful, and the sun is rising, and the birds are singing, and an idea arises, “How beautiful!” Even that, that is a tension. That’s why if somebody is walking by your side, you will immediately say to him, “Look, what a beautiful morning!” What are you doing? You are simply releasing the tension that has come through the thought. Beautiful morning… a thought has come; it has created a tension around it. Your being is no more non-tense. It has to be released, so you speak to the other. It is meaningless because he is also standing just where you are standing. He is also listening to the birds, he is also seeing the sun rise, he is also looking at the flowers, so what is the point of saying something like “this is beautiful”? Is he blind? But that is not the point. You are not communicating any message to him. The message is as clear to him as to you. In fact, you are relieving yourself of a tension. By saying it, the thought is dispersed into the atmosphere; you are relieved of the burden.

A thought arose in To-san’s mind, a cloud gathered, and through that cloud the gods were able to see his face, just a glimpse. Again the cloud disappeared, again there was no longer any To-san.

Remember, this is what meditation is all about, to destroy you so utterly that even if gods come they cannot seek you, they cannot find you. You yourself have found when such a situation arises, that not even gods can find you. There is nobody inside to be found. That ‘somebodiness’ is a sort of tension. That’s why people who think they are somebodies are more tense. People who think that they are nobodies are less tense. People who have completely forgotten that they are, are tensionless. So remember, when the ego is lost, the ’I’ is not found. When the ego is lost nothing is found. That nothingness, that purity of nothingness is your being, your innermost core, your very nature, your Buddha-nature, your awareness – like a vast sky with no clouds gathered in it.

Now, listen to the question again.

I was brought up in the teachings of Rudolph Steiner.

Yes, they are teachings, and what I am doing here is not teaching you anything. Rather, on the contrary, I am taking all teachings away from you. I am not a teacher. I am not imparting knowledge to you. My whole effort is to destroy all that you think you know. My whole effort is to take all knowledge from you. I’m here to help you to unlearn.

I was brought up in the teachings of Rudolph Steiner, but I could not yet break through my barriers towards him.

Nobody is able to break his barriers towards a person who is himself ego-oriented. It is difficult to break your barriers towards a person who is no more. Even then, it is so difficult to break your barriers because your ego resists. But when you are around a teacher who has his own ego-trip still alive, who is still, who is still trying to be somebody, who is still tense, it is impossible to drop down your ego.

Although I believe him to be right in the way he shows that for the West, the possibility to free ourselves from maya is to learn to think in the right way.

No, the way for the East or for the West is: how to unlearn thinking, how not to think, and just be. And it is needed more for the West than for the East, because in the West the whole two millennia since Aristotle have been of conditioning you for thinking, thinking, thinking. Thinking has been the goal. The thinking mind has been the goal in the West: how to become more and more accurate, scientific in your thinking. The whole scientific world arose out of this effort, because when you are working as a scientist you have to think. You have to work out in the objective world, and you have to find more accurate, exact, valid ways of thinking. And it has paid off too much. Science has been a great success, so of course people think that the same methodology will be helpful when you go inwards. That is the fallacy of Rudolph Steiner.

He thinks that in the same way as we have been able to penetrate into matter, the same method will help to go in. It cannot help, because to go in one has to move in just the opposite direction, diametrically opposite. If thinking helps to know matter, no thinking will help to know yourself. If logic helps to know matter, something like a Zen koan, something absurd, illogical, will help you to go in: faith, trust, love, maybe; but logic, never. Whatsoever has helped you to know the world better is going to be a barrier inside. And the same is true about the outer world also: whatsoever helps you to know yourself will not necessarily help you to know matter. That’s why the East could not develop science.

The first glimpses of science had come to the East, but the East could not develop it. The East did not move in that direction. The basic rudimentary knowledge was developed in the East.

For example: mathematical symbols, figures from one to ten, were developed in India. That made mathematics possible. It was a great discovery, but there it stopped. The beginning happened, but the East could not go very far in that direction. Because of that, in all the languages of the world, the numerals, mathematical numerals, carry Sanskrit roots.

For example: two is Sanskrit dwa – it became twa, and then two. Three is Sanskrit tri – it became three. Six is Sanskrit sasth – it became six. Seven is Sanskrit sapt – it became seven. Eight is Sanskrit ast – it became eight. Nine is Sanskrit nawa – it became nine. The basic discovery is Indian, but then it stopped there.

In China they developed ammunition for the first time, almost five thousand years back, but they never made any bombs out of it. They made only fireworks. They enjoyed, they loved it, they played with it, but it was a toy. They never killed anybody through it. They never went too far into it.

The East has discovered many basic things, but has not gone deep into it. It cannot go, because the whole effort is to go within. Science is a Western effort; religion is an Eastern effort. In the West even religion tries to be scientific. That was what Rudolph Steiner was doing: trying to make the religious approach more and more scientific – because in the West, science is valuable. If you can prove that religion is also scientific, then religion also becomes valuable in a vicarious way, indirectly. So in the West, every religious person goes on trying to prove that science is not the only science, religion is also a science. In the East we have not bothered. It is just the other way round: if there was some scientific discovery, the people who had discovered it had to prove that it had some religious significance. Otherwise, it was meaningless.

By doing this and by meditating, he says we are able to lose our ego and find our ’I’.

Rudolph Steiner does not know what meditation is, and what he calls meditation is concentration. He’s completely confused: he calls concentration meditation. Concentration is not meditation.

Concentration is again a very, very useful means for scientific thinking. It is to concentrate the mind, narrow the mind, focus the mind on a certain thing. But the mind remains, becomes more focused, becomes more integrated.

Meditation is not concentrating on anything. In fact, it is a relaxing, not narrowing. In concentration there is an object. In meditation there is no object at all. You are simply lost in an objectless consciousness, a diffusion of consciousness. Concentration is exclusive to something, and everything else is excluded from it. It includes only one thing; it excludes everything else.

For example: if you are listening to me you can listen in two ways: you can listen through concentration; then you are tense, and you are focused on what I am saying. Then the birds will be singing, but you will not listen to them. You will think that is a distraction.

Distraction arises out of your-effort to concentrate. Distraction is a by-product of concentration. You can listen to me in a meditative way; then you are simply open, available – you listen to me, and you listen to the birds also, and the wind passes through the trees and creates a sound; you listen to that also – then you are simultaneously here. Then whatsoever is happening here, you are available to it without any mind of your own, without any choice of your own. You don’t say, “I will listen to this and I will not listen. to that.” No, you listen to the whole existence. Then birds and I and the wind are not three separate things. They are not. They are happening simultaneously, together, all together, and you listen to the whole. Of course, then your understanding will be tremendously enriched because the birds are also saying the same thing in their way, and the wind is also carrying the same message in its way, and I am also saying the same thing in a linguistic way, so that you can understand it more. Otherwise, the message is the same. Mediums differ, but the message is the same, because God is the message.

When a cuckoo goes crazy, it is God going crazy. Don’t exclude, don’t exclude him; you will be excluding God. Don’t exclude anything; be inclusive.

Concentration is a narrowing of consciousness; meditation is expansion: all doors are open, all windows are open, and you are not choosing. Then of course, when you don’t choose you cannot be distracted. This is the beauty of meditation: a meditator cannot be distracted. And let that be the criterion: if you are distracted, know that you are doing concentration, not meditation. A dog starts barking – a meditator is not distracted. He absorbs that too, he enjoys that too. So he says, “Look… so God is barking in the dog. Perfectly good. Thank you for barking while I’m meditating. So you take care of me in so many ways,” but no tension arises. He does not say, “This dog is antagonistic. He is trying to destroy my concentration. I am such a religious, serious man, and this foolish dog… what is he doing here?” Then enmity arises, anger arises. And you think this is meditation? – No, this is not of worth if you become angry at the dog, poor dog who is doing his own thing. He is not destroying your meditation or concentration or anything. He is not worried about your religion at all, nor about you. He may not even be aware of what nonsense you are doing. He’s simply enjoying his way, his life. No, he is not your enemy.

Watch… if one person becomes religious in a house, the whole house becomes disturbed because that person is continuously on the verge of being distracted. He’s praying; nobody should make any sound. He’s meditating; children should remain silent, nobody should play. You are imposing unnecessary conditions on existence. And then if you are distracted and you feel disturbed, only you are responsible. Only you are to be blamed, nobody else.

What Rudolph Steiner calls meditation is nothing but concentration. And through concentration you can lose the ego and you will gain the ‘I’, and the ‘I’ will be nothing but a very, very subtle ego. You will become a pious egoist. Your ego will now be decorated in religious language, but it will be there.

The central figure for him is Christ, whom he differentiates from Jesus as a totally different being.

Now, for a meditator there cannot be any central figure. There need not be. But for one who concentrates, something is needed to concentrate upon. Rudolph Steiner says Christ is the central figure. Why not Buddha? Why not Patanjali? Why not Mahavir? Why Christ? For Buddhists, Buddha is the central figure, not Christ. They all need some object to concentrate upon, something on which to focus their minds. For a religious man there is no central figure. If your own central ego has disappeared, or is disappearing, you need not have any other ego outside to support it. That Christ or Buddha is again an ego somewhere. You are creating a polarity of I-thou. You say, “Christ, thou art my master,” but who will say this? An ‘I’ is needed to assert. Look, listen to Zen Buddhists. They say, “If you meet Buddha on the way, kill him immediately.” If you meet Buddha on the way, kill him immediately, otherwise he will kill you. Don’t allow him a single chance, otherwise he will possess you and he will become a central figure. Your mind will arise around him again. You will become a Buddhist mind. You will become a Christian mind. For a certain mind, a certain central object is needed.

And of course, he is more in favor of Christ than Jesus. That too has to be understood. That’s how the pious ego arises. Jesus is just like us: a human being with a body, with ordinary life; very human. Now, for a very great egoist this won’t do. He needs a very, very purified figure. Christ is nothing but Jesus purified. It is just like if you make curd out of your milk, then take cream out of it, and then you make ghee out of the cream. Then ghee is the purest part, the most essential. Now you cannot make anything out of ghee. Ghee is the last refinement, the white petrol. From kerosene, petrol; from petrol, white petrol. Now, no more; it is finished. Christ is just the purified Jesus. It is difficult for Rudolph Steiner to accept Jesus, and it is difficult for all egoists. They try to reject in many ways.

For example: Christians say that he was born out of a virgin. The basic problem is that Christians cannot accept that he was born just like we ordinary human beings. Then he will also look ordinary. He has to be special, and we have to be followers of a special Master. Not like Buddha, born out of ordinary human love, ordinary human sexual copulation, no – Jesus is special. Special people need a special Master, out of a virgin. And he’s the only begotten Son of God, the only. Because if there are other sons, then he is no longer special. He is the only Christ, the only one who has been crowned by God. All others, at the most, can be messengers, but cannot be of the same level and plane as Christ. Christians have done it in their own way, but I would like you to understand Jesus more than Christ – because Jesus will be more blissful to understand, peaceful to understand, and will be of great help on the path. Because you are in the situation of being a Jesus; Christ is just a dream.

First you have to pass through being a Jesus, and only then someday will Christ arise within you.

Christ is just a state of being, just as Buddha is a state of being. Gautama became Buddha; Jesus became Christ. You can also become Christ, but right now Christ is too far. You can think about it and create philosophies and theologies about it, but that is not going to help. Right now it is better to understand Jesus, because that is where you are. That is from where the journey has to start. Love Jesus, because through loving Jesus you will love your humanity. Try to understand Jesus, and the paradox, and through that paradox you will be able to feel less guilty. Through understanding Jesus you will be able to love yourself more.

Now, Christians go on trying somehow to drop the paradox of Jesus through bringing the concept of Christ. For example: there are moments when Jesus is angry, and it is a problem; what to do? It is very difficult to avoid the fact because many times he is angry, and that goes against his very teaching. He continually talks about love, and is angry. And he talks about forgiving your enemies – not only that, but loving your enemies – but he himself lashes out his anger. In the temple of Jerusalem he took a whip, started beating the money changers, and threw them out of the temple singlehanded. He must have been in a real fury, in a rage, almost mad. Now this… how to reconcile this? The way that Christians have found to reconcile – and Rudolph Steiner bases his own ideology on it – is to create a Christ, which is completely reconciled. Forget all about Jesus; bring a pure concept of Christ. You can say in that moment, “He was Jesus when he was angry.” And when he said on the cross, “God my Father, forgive these people, because they don’t know what they are doing,” he was Christ. Now the paradox can be managed. When he was moving with women he was Jesus; when he told Magdalene not to touch him he was Christ. Two concepts help to figure things out – but you destroy the beauty of Jesus, because the whole beauty is in paradox.

There is no need to reconcile, because deep in Jesus’ being they are reconciled. In fact, he could become angry because he loved so much. He loved so tremendously, that’s why he could become angry. His anger was not part of hatred; it was part of his love. Have you not sometimes known anger out of love? Then where is the problem? You love your child: sometimes you spank the child, you beat the child, sometimes you are almost in a fury, but it is because of love. It is not because you hate. He loved so much – that’s my understanding of Jesus – he loved so much that he forgot all about anger and he became angry. His love was so much. He was not just a dead saint, he was an alive person; and his love was not just philosophy, it was a reality. When love is a reality, sometimes love becomes anger also.

He was as human as you are. Yes, he was not finished there. He was more than human also, but first and basically he was human, human plus. Christians have been trying to prove that he was super-human and the humanity was just accidental, a necessary evil because he had to come into a body. That’s why he was angry. Otherwise, he was just purity. That purity will be dead.

If purity is real and authentic, it is not afraid of impurity. If love is true it is not afraid of anger; if love is true it is not afraid of fighting. It shows that even fight will not destroy it; it will survive. There are saints who talk about loving humanity, but cannot love a single human being. It is very easy to love humanity. Always remember: if you cannot love, you love humanity. It is very easy, because you can never come across humanity, and humanity is not going to create any trouble. A single human being will create many troubles, many more. And you can feel very, very good that you love humanity. How can you love human beings? – you love humanity. You are vast, your love is great. But I will tell you: love a human being; that is the basic preparation for loving humanity. It is going to be difficult, and it is going to be a great crisis, a continuous crisis and challenge. If you can transcend it, and you don’t destroy love because of the difficulties but you go on strengthening your love so that it can face all difficulties – possible, impossible – you will become integrated. Christ loved human beings, and loved so much, and his love was so great that it transcended human beings and became the love for humanity. Then it transcended humanity and became love for existence. That is love for God.

Your way seems different to me.

Not only different; it is diametrically opposite. In the first place, it is not a way at all. It is not a path, or if you love the word then call it a pathless path, a gateless gate. But it is not a path, because a path or way is needed if your reality is far away from you. Then it has to be joined by a path. But my whole insistence is that your reality is available to you right now. It is just within you. A path is not needed to reach to it. In fact, if you drop all paths, you will suddenly find yourself standing in it. The more you follow paths, the farther away you go from yourself. Paths misguide, mislead, because you are already that which you are seeking. So paths are not needed, but if you are trained to think in those terms, then I will say that my way is diametrically opposite. Steiner says right-thinking; and I say, right or wrong, all thinking is wrong. Thinking as such is wrong; no-thinking is right.

Can you please advise me? because I am somehow torn between you and the way Steiner shows.

No, you will have to remain in that state of tension for a few days. I will not advise and I will not help. Because if I advise and I help you, you can come and lean towards me; that may be immature. You will have to have a good fight with Steiner before you can come to me, and he will certainly give you a good fight. He is not going to leave you so easily. And I’m not going to give you any help, so that you come on your own. Only then do you come, when you come on your own. When a fruit is ripe it falls on its own accord. No, I will not throw even a small stone at it, because the fruit may not be ripe and the stone may bring it down… and that will be a calamity. You would remain in your torn state of mind.

You will have to decide, because nobody can remain in a torn state of mind for long. There is a point where one has to decide. And it will not be just towards Rudolph Steiner if I help you. He’s dead; he cannot fight with me. It is easier for me to pull you towards me than it will be for him. So to also be just to him it is better that I leave it to you. You just go on fighting. Either you will drop me… that will also be a gain, because then you will follow Rudolph Steiner more totally.

But I don’t think that is possible now… the poison has entered you. Now it is only a question of time.

-Osho

From Yoga: The Supreme Science, Discourse #6 (formerly Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, V. 10)

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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

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

A New World and a New Man – Osho

Many people are ready to simply change their state of being, but they are terrified of the possibility of the end of the world. I, too, toyed around like a puppet until I searched in the scriptures. I found out that the ancient phrase is not “the end of the world” but “the end of time” or “the end of days.”  

Will the highest mystery be the destruction of the world, or will it be the salvation of human beings – A glorious change of the universal forces of movement and man’s measurement of time? 

It makes no difference whether you call it the end of the world or the end of time or the end of days; it is simply three ways of saying the same thing, the end of the world.

Don’t try to deceive yourself just by different phrases. If there is no time, how can the world exist? If there are no days, how can the world exist? The end of the world is terrifying – but the answer cannot be found in the old scriptures because in the old scriptures there is no answer for the contemporary man.

The old scriptures are all rotten. They had answers for their own contemporaries – but some are twenty centuries old, some are thirty centuries old, some are fifty centuries old; they don’t have any answer for you.

You have to find the answer within yourself.

The world can be saved not by changing phrases, but by changing man. And it is worth understanding this most important thing: man can change only when he is faced with ultimate death; otherwise he goes on postponing change. Change is troublesome. You are fixed with your own habits, you are accustomed to your old mind, your old ideas, your old prejudices. Change means you will have to go through almost a death of the old so the new can be born in you.

As far as I am concerned, it is good news that the end of the world is very close, because only then can man be persuaded to transform himself totally. Certainly this world will have to die. This world has come to its end, but we can create another world.

This man has lived enough, but we can give birth to a new man. All the old concepts, ideologies, religions, philosophies, have become absolutely empty. They no longer give any nutrition, any nourishment to human growth; on the contrary they all hinder. If you go on listening to them and if you go on searching for answers in the old scriptures, then the world is going to end and you are going to end. There will be no new man, no new world.

Forget the old.

I am reminded of a beautiful parable in Jesus’ life… One morning, a beautiful morning on Lake

Galilee, he came and put his hand on one of the men who was trying to catch fish. The man turned round, and there was something in the eyes of Jesus: whatever Jesus said the man followed it. Jesus said, “Drop that net. How long are you going to destroy your life just by catching fish? Come with me. I will tell you the way to catch men.”

He had never thought that he could be anything else than a fisherman. This man was so authoritative that he dropped the net and followed Jesus. Just as they were going out of the town a man came running and said to the man, “Where are you going? Your father who was ill for so many days has died. Come home.”

He asked Jesus, “Give me three days so I can go and bury my dead father and do all the rituals that are needed. I will be back soon.”

What Jesus said to that man I would like to say to you. Jesus said, “There are enough dead people in the town, you need not worry. Let the dead bury the dead. You come with me.”

Those words are tremendously significant: “Let the dead bury the dead.” The whole town is full of dead people. Although they are breathing and walking and talking and doing all kinds of things, they are not alive. There is no song in them, their heart has no dance in it, there is no ecstasy in their lives. Whether they are alive or dead does not matter; it is just the same. In fact, death will be better, it will be a great rest for them.

The world you are asking about is already dead. You cannot save it, no savior can save it – and there is no need to save it either. It is rotten. There are only corpses all around. They have forgotten to live, they have forgotten to love, they have forgotten to celebrate. They have forgotten everything that gives meaning to life, makes each moment a souvenir, a memory so golden to be kept alive forever. Their lives are just empty; inside they are hollow, there is nothing substantial in them. They don’t have a soul.

It is perfectly good that this world dies, this man dies, this society dies. But before it dies and before we take it to the graveyard, we have to bring out of it a new life, a new man, a new world – exactly in the same way as when a seed dies into the earth it sprouts into a new life, with two beautiful leaves, green, fresh. This is transformation. The seed was closed and almost dead, but it has died into the soil and has given place to a living thing. A beautiful tree will grow with many branches, great foliage, fruits, flowers. And those branches will dance in the sun, in the wind, under the stars, under the moon.

Before it dies, let us use this world as a seed for the new man; let us use this man as a seed for a new humanity. That’s my whole work – to prepare you for two things: to die as far as the past is concerned; and to start living in a totally new way, discontinuous with the past, so you can become the new man. It is absolutely urgent. You cannot postpone it.

The time is running short – because the old world has prepared for its own suicide. The nuclear weapons, a third world war… it has prepared everything for its own suicide. It has not taken any chances: just now on the earth there are so many nuclear weapons that we can kill seven hundred earths of this size, seven hundred human civilizations of this size. We are not taking any chance; the whole society has prepared its grave already.

Before it commits suicide, we have to save the essential life principle. And that can be done by each individual without being dependent on any organization; that is the old way. Without being dependent on any church – that is again of the past… For the first time the individual has to take all the responsibility for his life in his own hands. No God, no savior, no church is going to help; they are all part of the old structure which is going to die. They are all woven together so closely that you cannot save anything from them; they will all die together.

But each individual can free himself.

Just when I came to your beautiful island I was informed that Kazantzakis, one of the greatest artists of the contemporary world, was expelled, excommunicated from the Greek Orthodox church. The reason for his expulsion was the creation of Zorba the Buddha. He named it Zorba the Greek. Unconsciously he was creating the base of a new man; I call that new man Zorba the Buddha. It cannot be Greek, it cannot be Italian, it cannot be German, it cannot be Hindu, it cannot be Mohammedan….

The same was the situation with me. I was also born into a religion – perhaps the oldest religion in the world, Jainism. It is older than Hinduism, because the Hindus’ oldest book, Rigveda, mentions the first Jaina tirthankara, the founder of Jainism. That means Jainism was already in existence when Rigveda was written.

And about Rigveda there are problems. Contemporary scholarship thinks it must be at least five thousand years old; but one very great scholar of ancient scriptures, Lokmanya Tilak has decided Rigveda is ninety thousand years old. And his argument is such that there is no way to destroy it; his argument is very factual.

In Rigveda there is a description of a certain configuration of stars that happened ninety thousand years ago, and about which astronomers are scientifically agreed that it has happened only once. That kind of constellation only happened ninety thousand years ago, and Rigveda describes the constellations so minutely, in such detail that it is impossible that the people who were writing it were not aware of it. It could not be fiction; they could not create it out of their minds. If Rigveda is ninety thousand years old, then Jainism must be perhaps one hundred thousand years old.

I was born into a Jaina family, and what happened to Kazantzakis was going to happen to me – but I am a different kind of man. The supreme command of the Jaina religion was going to decide about my expulsion from the Jaina religion. I wrote them a letter saying, “You don’t have to make any trouble. I expel you all; now you cannot expel me. I do not belong to your gang, I am finished with it.” They could not expel me because I expelled them all.

It is up to every individual not to be part of any dead, rotten ideology. Try to find out within yourself whatsoever is old, dead, and drop out of it. Throw it away. Clean yourself completely and be again a child. Be again innocent, with no ideas, no prejudices, no conditionings.

You have already been born; a new man has come into being, and it has to go from individual to individual. The fire can take almost like a wildfire, and if millions of individuals drop out of all old heritages, there is no need for life to disappear from this beautiful earth.

But we have to create a new life based on totally different principles. The old life was based, very strangely, on antilife principles. It was against everything that is living in you; it was against your love, it was against your sex, it was against your joy, it was against your pleasure. It was against everything that you enjoyed. It wanted you to be a dead saint, not a living human being. Antilife principles have ruled for thousands of years.

The ultimate result of it is that we are coming close to the end of the world. Your religions have contributed to it, your saints have contributed to it, and your so-called philosophers have contributed to it… because they were all antilife. Anybody like Zorba who was for life was not allowed by the society to exist. He was condemned, he was discredited; in every way his dignity was taken away. He was reduced into an animal. Naturally, the crowd was powerful and managed to repress all rebellious individuals and forced them to follow the crowd.

I want the society to disappear. I want the crowd to have no power anymore. Each individual has a birthright to be free, to choose his life pattern and to move according to his nature, respectfully, with dignity. That is going to be the new way of life, where each individual is respected in his uniqueness, and there are no ready-made ideas that everybody has to fulfill in his life.

Everybody has to live according to his own heart, has to move according to his own inner being, wherever it leads. That is your destiny. Nobody else is going to decide it; you are the only one to decide for yourself. This decisiveness – freed from all crowds, mobs, organizations – will create a new earth and a new jubilant, celebrant life for each individual. There will be no need for anybody to think of paradise after death; paradise will be here-now.

It is good that the old world is coming to an end. Now you have to decide whether you want to die with the old world or to take a quantum leap out of the old, and create a new world and a new man.

-Osho

From Socrates Poisoned Again After 25 Centuries, Discourse #23

Socrates Poisoned Again After 25 Centuries

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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

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

The Unknown Life of Jesus – Osho

Was Jesus fully enlightened?

Yes, he was fully enlightened. But because he lived amidst a people who were absolutely ignorant about enlightenment he had to speak in a language which may indicate he was not. He had to use such language because, at that particular time and place, there was no other possibility – only this could be understood. Languages differ. When a buddha speaks, he uses a language that is totally different. He cannot say, “I am the son of God,” because to talk about the son or the father is just nonsense. But for a Jesus it is impossible to use any other language – Jesus is speaking to a very different type of person.

Yet in many ways, Jesus is connected to Buddha.

Christianity has no knowledge of where Jesus was for thirty years. With the exception of two earlier incidents – when he was born, and once when he was seven years old – only the three years of his ministry are known; the remaining period is unknown. But India has many traditions about it: there are folk stories in Kashmir indicating that he was meditating in a Buddhist monastery there during all the years which are not accounted for.

Then, when he was thirty, he suddenly appeared in Jerusalem. Then he was crucified and there is the story of his resurrection. But again, where does he disappear to after he resurrects? Christianity has nothing to say about it. Where did he go? When did he die a natural death?

Miguel Serrano, in his book The Serpent of Paradise, writes: “Nobody knows what he did or where he lived until he was thirty, the year he began his preaching. There is a legend, however, that says he was in Kashir – the original name of Kashmir. Ka means the same as or equal to, and shir, Syria.”

It is also reported that a Russian traveler, Nicholas Notovich, who came to India sometime in 1887, visited Ladakh in Tibet where he was taken ill and stayed in the famous Hemis Gumpa. During his stay in the Gompa he went through various volumes of Buddhist scriptures and literature wherein he found extensive mention of Jesus, his teaching, and his visit to Ladakh. Later Notovich published the book, Life of Saint Jesus, in which he related all that he had found about the visit of Jesus to Ladakh and to other countries in the East.

It is recorded that from Ladakh, after traveling through lofty mountain passes, along snowy paths and glaciers, Jesus reached Pahalgam in Kashmir. He lived there for a long period as a shepherd looking after his flock. It is here that Jesus found some traces of the lost tribes of Israel.

This village, it is recorded, was named Pahalgam, village of shepherds, after Jesus lived there. Pahal in Kashmiri means shepherd and gam, a village. Later, on his way to Srinagar, Jesus rested and preached at Ishkuman/Ishmuqam – the place of rest of Jesus – and this village was also named after him. When he was thirty, suddenly he appeared in Jerusalem and there follows the crucifixion and the story of the resurrection.

While Jesus was still on the cross, a soldier speared his body, and blood and water oozed out of it. The incident is recorded in the Gospel of St. John: “But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water.” This has led to the belief that Jesus was alive on the cross, because blood does not flow out of a dead body.

But Jesus must die. Either the crucifixion is complete and he dies or the whole of Christianity dies. Christianity depends on the miracle of the resurrection; it had been prophesied that the coming Christ would be crucified and then resurrected. Jesus was resurrected – it had to be so. If it were not so then the Jews would not believe that he was a prophet.

They waited for this, and it happened. After three days his body disappeared from the cave where it had been put and he was seen by at least eight people. Then Jesus disappeared again. Christianity has nothing to say about where he went after the resurrection and nothing has been recorded about when he died.

He came to Kashmir again and he lived there until he was one hundred and two, when he died. And the town, the exact place where this occurred, is known.

Did he lie in Kashmir under another name?

No, not another name really. While those of you from the West call him Jesus, the whole Arabic world calls him Esus, or Esau. In Kashmir he was known as Yousa-Asaf. His tomb is known as The Tomb of Yousa-Asaf who came from a very distant land and lived here. It is also indicated on the tomb that he came to live there 1900 years ago.

Miguel Serrano, the author of The Serpent of Paradise, who visited the tomb, writes: ”It was evening when I first arrived at the tomb, and in the light of the sunset the faces of the men and children in the street looked almost sacred. They looked like people of ancient times; possibly they were related to one of the lost tribes of Israel that are said to have immigrated to India. Taking off my shoes, I entered and found a very old tomb surrounded by a filigree stone fence which protected it, while to one side there was the shape of a footprint cut into the stone. It is said to be the footprint of Yousa-Asaf, and according to the legend, Yousa-Asaf is Jesus.

“On the wall of the building hangs an inscription and below it a translation from the Sharda into English which reads: Yousa-Asaf (Khanya, Srinagar).”

Jesus was a totally enlightened being. This phenomenon of resurrection as far as Christian dogma is concerned seems inconceivable, but not for Yoga. Yoga believes – and there are ample proofs of it – that a person can totally die without dying. The heart stops, the pulse stops, the breathing stops – Yoga even has methods that teach this. In India we know that Jesus must have practiced some deep Yogic exercise when he was put on the cross because if the body really dies, there is no possibility of resurrection.

When those who had crucified Jesus felt that he was dead, his body was brought down from the cross and given to his followers. Then, after wrapping the body in thin muslin and an ointment, which even to this day is known as the “ointment of Jesus,” two of his followers, Joseph and Nicodemus, removed the body to a cave, the mouth of which they blocked with a huge boulder.

There is one sect, the Essenes, that has its own tradition about it. It is said that Essene followers helped Jesus to recover from his wounds. When he was seen again, because his followers could not believe that he was the same Jesus who had been crucified, the only way – and this is recorded in The Bible – was to show them his healed wounds. Those wounds were healed by the Essenes, and the healing took place during the three days when Jesus remained in the cave recovering from his ordeal. Then, when the wounds were healed, he disappeared. The huge boulder at the mouth of the cave had been rolled away and the cave was found vacant.

Jesus was not there! It is this disappearance of Jesus from the cave that has led to the common theory of his resurrection and ascent to heaven.

But after he had shown himself to his disciples he had to disappear from the country, because if he had remained there he would have been crucified again. He went to India into which, one tradition says, a tribe of the Jews had disappeared.

The famous French historian, Bernier, who visited India during the reign of Aurangzeb, wrote: “On entering the kingdom after crossing the Pir Panjal Pass, the inhabitants of the frontier villages struck me as resembling the Jews.”

Yes, Kashmiris really do look Jewish – in their faces, in their every expression. Wherever you move in Kashmir, you feel that you are moving in a Jewish land. It is thought that Jesus came to Kashmir because it was a Jewish land in India – a tribe of Jews was living there. There are many stories in Kashmir about Jesus, but one has to go there to discover them.

The crucifixion changed Jesus’ mind totally. From then on, he lived in India for seventy years continuously, in complete silence – unknown, hidden. He was not a prophet, he was not a minister, he was not a preacher. That is why not much is known about him.

Christianity lacks much. Even about Jesus it lacks much. His whole life is not known: what he practiced, how he meditated is not known. The Christian apostles who recorded what he said were ignorant people: they never knew much. One was a fisherman, another was a carpenter. All twelve apostles were ignorant.

The apostles didn’t understand what Jesus was doing when he went to the hills and was silent for forty days. They only recorded that it happened and that when he came back again, he began preaching. But what was he doing there? Nothing is known – nothing.

After his period of silence, he became more and more involved in something which looked more social and political than religious. It had to be so, because the people around him were absolutely non-philosophical, so whatever he said was misunderstood. When he said, “I am the king of the Jews,” he was not talking about a kingdom of this world; he was speaking in metaphors.

Not only his enemies misunderstood him – even his followers and apostles misunderstood. They, too, began to think in terms of an earthly kingdom; they could not understand that what he was saying belonged to another world, that it was only symbolic. They also thought that Jesus was going to become king sooner or later.

That created the whole trouble. Jesus might not have been crucified in a different land, but for the Jews he was a problem. Jews are very materialistic. They were materialistic in the time of Jesus, and they still are.

To them the other world is meaningless; they are only concerned with this world. Even if they talk of the other world, it is only as a prolongation of this world – not a transcendence but a continuity. They have a different way of thinking.

That is why, as far as the material sciences are concerned, the Jewish contribution is so great. It is not accidental. The person who is most responsible for molding the whole world in terms of a materialistic concept was a Jew, Karl Marx.

Karl Marx, Freud, Einstein – these three Jews are the builders of the twentieth century. Three Jews building the whole world! Why? No one exists in the world today who has not been influenced by the Jewish concept.

Jews are very down-to-earth, rooted in the earth, so when Christ began to talk like a Buddha, there was no meeting, no communion. He was continuously misunderstood.

Pilate was more understanding toward him than his own race. He continuously felt that an innocent man was being unnecessarily crucified and he tried his best not to crucify him. But then, there were political considerations.

Even when they were about to crucify Jesus, at the last moment, Pilate asked him a question: “What is truth?” Jesus remained silent. It was a Buddhist answer. Only Buddha has remained silent about truth, no one else.

Something has always been said – even if it is only that nothing can be said. Only Buddha has remained silent, totally silent. And Jesus remained silent. The Jews understood this to mean that he did not know. They thought, if he knows, then of course he will say. But I have always felt that Pilate understood. He was a Roman; he might have understood. But Pilate disappeared from the scene; he put the priests in total charge and just disappeared – he did not want to be involved.

This whole thing happened because there were two languages being used. Jesus was speaking of the other world – of course, in terms of this world – and the Jews took every word literally.

This would not have happened in India where there is a long tradition of parables, a long tradition of symbols. In India, the reverse misunderstanding is possible because the tradition has been going on for so long that someone speaking of this earth may be understood to be speaking of the other world. There are poets in India who talk about romance, love, and sex – of this world, totally of this world – but their followers interpret these as symbolic of the other world. Even if you talk about wine and women, they think that the wine means ecstasy and the women are devas. It happens!

Jews are literal, very literal. And incredibly, they have remained the same. They are a strange race, with a different outlook from the rest of the world. That is why they have never been at home anywhere. They cannot be, because they have a different type of mind. To penetrate a Jew is always difficult. He has a certain closedness, a certain defensiveness. And the longer Jews have been homeless, the more defensive they have become.

The basic thing about Jews is that they think in terms of matter – even God seems to be part of the material world. That is why it was impossible for them to understand Jesus. For example, Jews say that when someone does something wrong to you, you should do something wrong back to him – and with double the force. This is how matter behaves. React! If someone puts out one of your eyes, then put out both of his eyes.

Jesus began to say an absolutely contradictory thing: if someone slaps you on one side of the face then give him the other side also. This was absolutely Buddhist. One cannot really conceive of how a Jew could suddenly begin to talk like this. There was no tradition for it, no link with the past.

Nothing happens unless there is a cause. So Jesus is inconceivable as a Jew. He suddenly happens, but he has no roots in the past of Jewish history. He cannot be connected with it because he has nothing in common with it. As far as the Jewish god is concerned, Jesus’ love, his compassion, is just nonsense.

You cannot conceive of a more jealous god, a more violent and angry god than the Jewish god.

He could destroy a whole city in a single moment if someone disobeyed him. Then Jesus suddenly emerges and says, “God is love.” It is inconceivable unless something else had penetrated the tradition.

When Buddha talks about compassion it is not inconceivable. The whole of India has been talking about it for centuries, and Buddha is part of the tradition. But Jesus is not part of the Jewish tradition. That is why he was killed, crucified.

No buddha has ever been killed in India because, however rebellious, he still belongs to the tradition; however rebellious, he conforms to the deeper ideals. One even begins to think that he is more Indian than Indian society in general because he conforms more to the basic ideals of the country.

But Jesus was a total outsider in Jerusalem, using words and symbols, a language, totally unknown to the Jews. He was bound to be crucified; it was natural. I see Jesus as living deep in meditation, deep in enlightenment, but involved with a race that was political – not religious, not philosophical.

Jews have not given great philosophers to the world. They have given great scientists but not great philosophers. The very mind of the race is different; it works in a different way. Jesus was just an outsider, a stranger. He began to create trouble; he had to be made silent.

Then he escaped, and he never tried again. He lived in silence with a small group – working silently, esoterically. And I feel that there is still a hidden, esoteric tradition that continues. If one forgets Christianity and goes back to discover Jesus without the Christianity, one will be enriched. Christianity has become the barrier now.

Whenever you think about Jesus, the Christian interpretation of Jesus becomes the only interpretation. When the Dead Sea Scrolls were found twenty years ago near the Dead Sea, they caused much agitation. The Scrolls, which were originally possessed by the Essenes, are more authentic than The Bible. But Christianity could not compromise. The Dead Sea Scrolls tell a different tale, a totally different story about the Jews. Even the Koran has a different story to tell.

It seems that Mohammed also was in contact with many Jewish mystics.

This always happens: when I say something, I create two groups of people around me. One group will be exoteric. They will organize, they will do many things concerned with society, with the world that is without; they will help preserve whatsoever I am saying. The other group will be more concerned with the inner world. Sooner or later the two groups are bound to come in conflict with one another because their emphasis is different. The inner group, the esoteric mind, is concerned with something quite different from the exoteric group. And, ultimately, the outer group will win, because they can work as a group. The esoteric ones cannot work as a group; they go on working as individuals. When one individual is lost, something is lost forever.

This happens with every teacher. Ultimately the outer group becomes more and more influential; it becomes an establishment. The first thing an establishment has to do is to kill its own esoteric part, because the esoteric group is always a disturbance. Because of “heresy,” Christianity has been destroying all that is esoteric.

And now the pope is at the opposite extreme to Jesus: this is the ultimate schism between the exoteric and the esoteric. The pope is more like the priests who crucified Jesus than like Jesus himself. If Jesus comes again, he will be crucified in Rome this time – by the Vatican. The Vatican is the exoteric, organizational part, the establishment.

These are intrinsic problems – they happen, and you cannot do anything about it.

Yes, Jesus was an enlightened being just like Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna.

-Osho

From The Great Challenge, Discourse #9

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

You can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

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

The Church is Always Anti-Christ – Osho

I will speak on Christ, but not on Christianity. Christianity has nothing to do with Christ. In fact, Christianity is anti-Christ — just as Buddhism is anti-Buddha and Jainism anti-Mahavir. Christ has something in him which cannot be organized: the very nature of it is rebellion and a rebellion cannot be organized. The moment you organize it, you kill it. Then the dead corpse remains. You can worship it, but you cannot be transformed by it. You can carry the load for centuries and centuries, but it will only burden you, it will not liberate you. That’s why, from the beginning, let it be absolutely clear: I am all for Christ, but not even a small part of me is for Christianity. If you want Christ, you have to go beyond Christianity. If you cling too much to Christianity, you will not be able to understand Christ. Christ is beyond all churches.

Christ is the very principle of religion. In Christ all the aspirations of humanity are fulfilled. He is a rare synthesis. Ordinarily a human being lives in agony, anguish, anxiety, pain and misery. If you look at Krishna, he has moved to the other polarity: he lives in ecstasy. There is no agony left; the anguish has disappeared. You can love him, you can dance with him for a while, but the bridge will be missing. You are in agony, he is in ecstasy — where is the bridge?

A Buddha has gone even farther away. He is neither in agony, nor in ecstasy. He is absolutely quiet and calm. He is so far away that you can look at him, but you cannot believe that he is. It looks like a myth — maybe a wish fulfillment of humanity. How can such a man walk on this earth, so transcendental to all agony and ecstasy? He is too far away.

Jesus is the culmination of all aspiration. He is in agony as you are, as every human being is born — in agony on the cross. He is in the ecstasy that sometimes a Krishna achieves: he celebrates; he is a song, a dance. And he is also transcendence. There are moments, when you come closer and closer to him, when you will see that his innermost being is neither the cross nor his celebration, but transcendence.

That’s the beauty of Christ: there exists a bridge. You can move towards him by and by, and he can lead you towards the unknown — and so slowly that you will not even be aware when you cross the boundary, when you enter the unknown from the known, when the world disappears and God appears. You can trust him, because he is so like you and yet so unlike. You can believe in him because he is part of your agony; you can understand his language.

That’s why Jesus became a great milestone in the history of consciousness. It is not just coincidental that Jesus’ birth has become the most important date in history. It has to be so. Before Christ, one world; after Christ, a totally different world has existed — a demarcation in the consciousness of man. There are so many calendars, so many ways, but the calendar that is based on Christ is the most significant. With him something has changed in man; with him something has penetrated into the consciousness of man. Buddha is beautiful, superb, but not of this world; Krishna is lovable — but still the bridge is missing. Christ is the bridge.

Hence I have chosen to talk on Christ. But remember always, I am not talking on Christianity. The Church is always anti-Christ. Once you try to organize a rebellion, the rebellion has to be subsided. You cannot organize a storm — how can you organize a rebellion? A rebellion is true and alive only when it is a chaos.

With Jesus, a chaos entered into human consciousness. Now the organization is not to be done on the outside, in the society; the order has to be brought into the innermost core of your being. Christ has brought a chaos. Now, out of that chaos, you have to be born totally new, an order coming from the innermost being — not a new Church but a new man, not a new society but a new human consciousness. That is the message.

And these words from the gospel of St. John — you must have heard them so many times, you must have read them so many times. They have become almost useless, meaningless, insignificant, trivial. They have been repeated so many times that now no bell rings within you when you hear them. But these words are tremendously potential. You may have lost the significance of them, but if you become a little alert, aware, the meaning of these words can be reclaimed. It is going to be a struggle to reclaim the meaning… just like you reclaim a land from the ocean.

Christianity has covered these beautiful words with so many interpretations that the original freshness is lost — through the mouths of the priests who are simply repeating like parrots without knowing what they are saying: without knowing, without hesitating, without trembling before the sacredness of these words. They are simply repeating words like mechanical robots. Their gestures are false, because everything has been trained.

Once I was invited to a Christian theological college. I was surprised when they took me around the college. It is one of the greatest theological colleges in India: every year they prepare two hundred to three hundred Christian priests and missionaries there — a five-year training. And everything has to be taught: even how to stand on the pulpit, how to speak, where to give more emphasis, how to move your hands — everything has to be taught. Then everything becomes false, then the person is just making empty gestures.

These words are like fire, but through centuries of repetition, parrot-like repetition, much dust has gathered around the fire. My effort will be to uncover them again. Be very alert because we will be treading on a well-known path in a very unknown way, treading on very well-known territory with a very different, totally new attitude. The territory is going to be old. My effort will be to give you a new consciousness to see it. I would like to lend you my eyes so that you can see the old things in new light. And when you have new eyes, everything becomes new.

-Osho

Excerpt from Come Follow To You,Vol.1 (Originally titled Come Follow Me, Vol. 1), Discourse #1

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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

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

 

Be Truthful so That One is Loving – Osho

If one is loving, one becomes truthful; it is impossible to be loving and not be truthful. Truth is necessarily created by the energy called love, and vice versa: when one lives the truth, one becomes loving; it is impossible to be true and unloving. If you find somebody who is loving and untruthful then know well that his love is just a façade, a camouflage, it is phony; because the criterion is truth. And if somebody is truthful and unloving then know well that truthfulness is just an imposed character. It is not growing in his being, it is not his own flower. It is something borrowed, something synthetic, not natural.

Whenever love grows naturally it brings truth in its wake and vice versa. They are always together, they cannot be separated. There is no way to separate them, they are inseparable. In fact they are one, two faces of one reality.

The real seeker has to work from both sides, then growth is fast. Be truthful so that you can be more loving; be more loving so more truth happens to you. And there comes a moment when they are one. That is the moment of illumination – when truth is love and love is truth. That’s what Jesus means when he says ‘God is love.’ God is his word for truth.

-Osho

From Turn On, Tune In And Drop The Lot, Chapter Four

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

You can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Flowering, Awakening, Self-Realization and Enlightenment – Osho

A short time ago you said that spring has come, and many sannyasins are ready to flower. Do “flowering,” “awakening” and “self-realization” all mean enlightenment, the ultimate truth? Or is there a difference? And can a person, after attaining, fall back into identification with the mind?

Mukto, there is a difference between flowering, awakening, self-realization, and enlightenment. Enlightenment is the ultimate truth — the seeker disappears but the truth is found. The pilgrim disappears but God is found. It is important to understand the differences . . .

From enlightenment there is no possibility of falling back because you are no longer there to fall back. As long as you are, there is a possibility.

Only your absence is the guarantee that you cannot fall back.

Flowering is just the beginning of entering within yourself — just as you enter into a garden. It is immensely important because without entering you are never going to reach to the center. But in flowering, for the first time you recognize your potential, your possibility. In flowering is the transition period, from human to divine. But one can fall back, because the flowering is so new and so fragile, and your past is so old and so strong — it can pull you back; it is still there.

Awakening is getting very close to your center. And as you get closer to the center, falling back becomes more and more difficult because your new experience is gathering power, strength, experience, and the old is losing. But the old is still there; it has not disappeared. Ordinarily, people don’t fall from awakening, but the possibility remains: one can fall.

Self-realization is reaching to your center. Many religions have believed that self-realization is the end — for example, Jainism — you have come to your ultimate truth. It is not true. Self-realization is only a dewdrop which has become aware, alert, contented, fulfilled. It is almost impossible to fall back from self-realization — but I am saying almost impossible, not absolutely impossible, because the self can deceive you; it can bring your ego back.

The self and the ego are very similar. The self is the natural thing and the ego is the synthetic, so it happens sometimes that a self-realized man becomes a pious egoist. His egoism is not going to harm anyone, but it certainly prevents him from dropping into the ocean and disappearing completely.

Enlightenment is the dewdrop slipping from the lotus leaf into the vast, infinite ocean. Once the dewdrop has fallen into the ocean, now there is no way even to find it. The question of turning back does not arise.

Enlightenment, hence, is the ultimate truth. What begins as flowering moves on the path of awakening, reaches to self-realization. Then one quantum leap more — disappearing into the eternal, into the infinite.

You are no more, only existence is.

I have told you about Kabir, India’s greatest mystic. When he was young, he became self-realized and he wrote a small couplet:

Herat, herat he sakhi
Rahya, Kabir, herai

“Searching and searching and searching, oh my friend, the searcher is lost. Seeking and seeking and seeking, the seeker is lost.”

Bund samani samund mein
Sokat herijai

“The dewdrop has slipped into the ocean; now there is no way to get it back.”

But it was too early to say that. The dewdrop was still there, slipping toward the ocean, but it had not yet fallen into the ocean.

When Kabir was dying, he became enlightened. He called his son Kamaal and told him, “I have written something wrong. At that moment, that was my feeling — that I had come to the ultimate. Before I die, you write this down, and change it.”

The change is very small in words, but in experience it is tremendous. He has used again the same words:

Herat, herat he sakhi
“Oh beloved, seeking and searching, the seeker is lost.”

Samund samund bund mein
Sokat herijai
“And the ocean has fallen into the dewdrop; now it is impossible to find it.”

Just a little difference in the words . . . “The dewdrop has fallen into the ocean” – something of the self has remained in it. But “the ocean has fallen into the dewdrop” . . . that is the tremendous experience and explosion of enlightenment. The first statement was about self-realization; the second statement is about enlightenment.

From enlightenment, falling is simply impossible. You are gone — and gone forever; not even a shadow or a trace of you is left behind.

Up to self-realization the possibility remains — it becomes less and less, but it remains.

You can start being egoistic about your self-realization: “I have known, I am a realized person. I am a saint, I have encountered God” — but that “I” is there, howsoever pious. Even its shadow is dangerous; it can pull you back.

I have heard a very beautiful story about Jesus . . .

Jesus was walking through Jerusalem when he saw an angry crowd shouting and screaming at a woman. He came closer and heard the mob accusing the woman of adultery. Jesus strode to the front of the mob, held up his arms and said, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”

The crowd fell silent, but one little old lady pushed to the front, picked up a huge rock, and hurled it at the sobbing woman. Jesus gently took the old lady by the arm and said quietly,

“Mother, why do you always embarrass me?”

Jesus’ mother! She is a virtuous woman — so virtuous that she has given birth to Jesus without any contact with another human being. She stands alone in the whole of history with the claim — even after the birth of the son — of being the virgin Mary. That idea must have got into the old woman’s mind too much. Her virtue, her piousness — God has chosen her to be the mother of His only-begotten son — has become a subtle ego in her. The others were not pious. The moment Jesus said, “The first stone has to be hurled by one who is virtuous,” the mob stopped. They were all in the same boat.

And you can see it in your saints . . . a strange but very subtle ego. Spirituality has become their achievement. Somebody has all the riches of the world, somebody is the most beautiful person, somebody is the strongest, and somebody is the most pious. The question is not what is it by which the ego can get nourished — any idea can make you fall.

One has not to stop until he has reached the point when he is not: when there is no claimer, when one has moved the full circle and has come back to the world, just a nobody. Perhaps people may not recognize him as a great saint . . . and this is my understanding, that the greatest of saints have remained unrecognized, because you understand only the language of the ego. You don’t understand the language of egolessness.

The greatest sage will appear to you as just an ordinary man, nothing special, with no claim for any talent, for any possession, for any power, for any genius, for any knowledge — no claim at all. He has become absolutely a zero. But the zero is not negative, it is full of godliness, overflowing with godliness.

-Osho

From The Hidden Splendor, Discourse #16, Q1

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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

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

This Is a Time of Crisis – Osho

For some time I have been feeling that you are in a hurry. What is that hurry and why?…

I am in hurry for three reasons: first, no matter how much time one has, one will always find it insufficient. Always, any amount of time and energy would be insufficient – because the work is as big as the sea, and the energy and the time one has are like the hollow of one’s palm. Even if one is a Buddha or a Mahavira, a Krishna or a Christ, the effort cannot be greater than the hollow of the palm, and the expanse of the work is as vast as the sea.

This is only ordinary haste, which is usual. But there is haste for another reason too. Some time periods move slowly so that the time appears not to be moving at all. As we look to our historical past, we will find that time used to move very slowly. Then there are some eras that move fast, in which everything seems to be moving at a high speed. Today we are in such a fast-moving era. Everything is moving at a high speed, and nothing seems to remain steady or stable. If religion continues to move at its ancient slow speed, it will lag behind and die.

In the old days, even science moved slowly. For ten thousand years the bullock cart remained the same. The bullock cart remained a bullock cart and the blacksmith used the same old tools.

Everything moved as slowly as a river moving on non-sloping plains. You would not know at all that anything was moving. Banks of such rivers still remain here and there.

In such times, religion also moved slowly. There was a sort of harmony in that movement, and science and religion both were in step with each other. But now religion moves slowly while science and other things are moving at a faster pace. Given these conditions, if religion lags behind and walks hesitantly, then it is no wonder people are not able to keep in step with it. For this reason also there is hurry.

Looking at the speed at which the world’s knowledge about matter is increasing and the speed at which science is making great strides, religion should actually remain somewhat ahead of science and achieve a higher speed – because whenever religion lags behind science it causes great harm. Religion should remain a little ahead to guide, because an ideal must always remain a little ahead; otherwise the ideal becomes meaningless. The ideal should always be ahead of achievement and should remain beyond it. This is the fundamental difference between these two.

If we look back at the era of Ram, religion was always ahead of him. If we look to the modern era, man is always ahead of religion. Nowadays only that person can become religious who is very backward. There is a reason for this: it is only because such a person alone is able to keep in step with religion. Today, the more progressive a person is, the farther he is from religion, or else his relationship with religion will remain only formal – will be just for show. So religion must remain in the forefront.

If we look back to the time of Buddha or Mahavira, it will be very surprising to know that those who had the best minds in their times were religious. But in our civilization, if we look to the modern religious man, he has a lesser intelligence. In those days, those who were the leaders, those who had reached the top, were religious people. And now, those who are rustic, rural and backward are religious. The more intelligent minds of our times are not religious. This means that religion is not able to march ahead of man. For that reason also I am in hurry.

Another reason for being in a hurry is that these are times of emergency, of crisis. For example, when you are going to a hospital, your footsteps have a faster pace than when you are going to your shop. The speed you use to go to a hospital is that of an emergency or a crisis. Today, the state of things is almost as if some religion is not able to create and put forth a strong vigorous movement it is possible that the entire humanity may be annihilated.

It is a time of emergency, like that of being admitted to a hospital. It is possible that the patient may die before reaching the hospital or before any medicine can be administered or by the time the disease is diagnosed, but the ill effects of this prevalent condition are not affecting any religious thinkers. Instead, they are affecting the younger generations of the entire world, and they have hit the younger generations of the developed nations the hardest.

If American parents tell a son to study for ten years in a university so that he may get a good job, the son retorts by asking whether there is a guarantee that he will live for ten years. The parents do not have the answer. In America, there is little trust in tomorrow. Tomorrow cannot be trusted; it is not certain whether there will even be a tomorrow. Therefore, there is a desire to enjoy today as much and as fast as one can.

This is not accidental. It is like a patient who is lying on his deathbed and may die any moment. The whole humanity is becoming like that. There is a hurry, because if the diagnosis is slow there can be no quick remedy. Therefore, I am in a hurry that whatever is to be done should be done fast.

About my statement that I will move from town to town: I have by now, in one sense, already done that work. I have in mind some people; now it is a matter of working on them. But the difficulty is that it would be better if instead of my keeping them in mind they keep me in mind. And as long as I do not come into their minds, nothing can be done.

But I have started this work also. My going and coming or my staying are all for the purpose of doing something. After preparing some persons, I want to send them out in two years to various towns. They will go. Not one hundred but ten thousand persons will be prepared. These persons of crisis are as full of potential as they are of dangers. If time is properly utilized, great potentialities are developed; otherwise the result is calamity.

Many persons can be prepared. This is a time for enterprise, and many people can be prepared for a jump into the unknown. It will happen. I have told you about the outer state of things. But whenever an era of destruction appears near, there will be many a soul that will have reached the last stretches of development on the inner plane. Such souls only need a push, and with just that they will take the jump.

Ordinarily, when death is felt to be coming nearer, it can be seen that one begins thinking about what is beyond death. Every individual begins to become religious in such a situation where death is drawing nearer to him. The questioning about what is beyond begins at the approach of death.

Otherwise, one’s life remains so much engaged that such a questioning does not arise. When a whole era approaches a near-death condition, then millions of people begin to think inwardly about what is beyond. This situation can also be utilized; it has great potentialities.

Therefore, I will slowly confine myself to a room: I will stop coming and going. Now I will work on those who are in my mind. I will prepare them and send them out. The moving from place to place, which I cannot do myself, I will be able to do by sending out ten thousand people.

For me, religion is also a scientific process, so I have in my mind a complete scientific technique for it. As people become ready, the scientific technique will be passed on to them. With the help of that technique, they will work upon thousands of people. My presence is not needed for that. I was required only to find such people who could carry out that purpose. Now I shall be able to give work to them.

It was necessary to evolve certain principles; that has been done by me. The work of the scientist is over. Now the work is for the technicians. A scientist completes the work, like Edison discovering electricity and inventing an electric lamp. Thereafter, it is the work of the electrician to fix the bulb. There is no difficulty in that.

Now I have an almost complete picture of the work to be done. Now, after giving people the concept and getting them to do the technique, I will send them out as soon as they become ready. All this is in my mind, but the potentialities are not seen by all. Most people see only the actualities. Seeing the potentialities is a different task, but I can see them.

The conditions that were existing in one small area of Bihar during the time of Mahavira and Buddha can come about very smoothly within the next few years on a global scale. But an absolutely new type of religious person will have to be prepared, a new type of sannyasin will have to be born, a new type of yoga and meditation system will have to be devised. All this is ready in my mind.

As I come across people they will be given these things, and they will further pass along the same to others. There is a grave risk, however, because if the opportunity is lost it will cause great harm. The opportunity must be utilized because such a valuable time as exists today can hardly come again. From every angle, the era is at its climax or peak. Hereafter, there will only be anticlimax. Now America will not be able to progress further; it will only undergo disintegration. The civilization has touched its peak, and now it will disintegrate. These are the last years.

We have not noted that India disintegrated after Mahavira and Buddha. After them, that golden crest could not be touched again. People ordinarily think that this happened due to Mahavira and Buddha, but in fact the case is just the opposite. Actually, just before disintegration begins, persons of the caliber of Mahavira and Buddha are able to work, not before that – because just before disintegration, everything is in disorder and just on the point of crumbling.

Just as death faces an individual, so now death shows its dark face before the collective consciousness of an entire civilization. And that civilization’s collective mind becomes ready to go deep into the realms of religion and the unknown. That is why it was possible that in a small place like Bihar fifty thousand sannyasins could move along with Mahavira.

This can repeat itself again; there is a complete possibility for it. I have a complete plan and a blueprint in my mind for this. In one sense, my work of finding the people I wanted is near about complete. Also, they do not know that I have found them. Now I have to give work to them by preparing them and sending them out to spread the message.

As long as it was my work, I knew what I had to do and I was doing it with comparative ease. But now I have to give work to others; now I cannot remain in that ease. I have to hurry up. This is another reason for my hurry. I therefore want to make it clear to all friends that I am in a hurry, so they should also hurry up. If they keep on at the speed with which they are walking, they will not reach anywhere. If they see me in a hurry, then perhaps they will also pick up speed; otherwise not.

Jesus had to do this. Jesus said to the people that the world was very soon coming to an end. But people were so foolish that it was very difficult for them to understand. Jesus said that before their very eyes everything would be destroyed, that it was time for them to make a choice, and that those who did not change then would never get a chance to do so later. Those who heard and understood him became transformed, but most of the people went on asking when that hour would strike.

Now, after two thousand years, some Christian scholars, priests and theologians sit back and think that it seems as if Jesus had made some mistake – because up until now that day of judgment has not arrived: Jesus had said that the event of world destruction would happen before their very eyes – while he was there – that the day of reckoning would come and that those who missed would miss forever. But that time has not come yet.

Was this the mistake of Jesus or have we misunderstood him? Some say that he made such a great mistake because he did not know anything about the matter, and therefore there may have been many other things about which Jesus did not know. Still others say that there is something wrong in our interpretation of the scriptures. But none of these people know that there are deep reasons and a calculated purpose behind what people like Jesus say. By saying these things, Jesus created an atmosphere of emergency in which many people became transformed.

People become transformed only during emergencies. If one knows that one can transform tomorrow or even the day after, he will not do anything today; he will postpone it for tomorrow or the day after. But if he knows that there is no tomorrow, then that capacity for transformation comes into being.

In a way, when civilizations are on the verge of disintegration tomorrow becomes uncertain. One is not sure of the next day. Then the today has to be so compact that it can complete all that has to be done. If one has to enjoy, he has to do it today. If he has to surrender and renounce, that too he has to do today. Even if one has to destroy the ego or transform, that also must be done today.

So in Europe and America, a positive, decisive mentality has come into being that whatever one wants to do must be done today: “Forget the worries of tomorrow. If you want to drink, drink; if you want to enjoy, enjoy; if you want to steal, steal. Whatever you want to do, do it today.” On the material plane, this has happened.

I want this to happen also on the spiritual plane. This can run parallel to what is happening on the material plane. I am in a great hurry for this idea to dawn. It is definite that this idea will come from the East. Only Eastern winds could carry it to the West, and the West will jump into it with full vigor.

There are particular places suitable for the rise and growth of certain things. All types of trees cannot grow in all countries. There are particular roots, a particular kind of land, a particular climate and particular water required for the growth of certain things. Similarly, all types of ideas also cannot arise everywhere, because different roots, land, climate and water are necessary for these as well.

Science could not develop in the East. For that tree there are no roots in the East. Religion could develop in the East because for that the East has deep roots. The climate, the land and the water – everything required for its growth – are available in the East. If science has come to the East, it is only from the West. If religion goes to the West, it will be only from the East.

Sometimes there is an exception to this. For example, Japan, a country of the East, can challenge any country of the West in science. But it is interesting to note that Japan only imitates; it cannot be original. But it imitates in such a way that even the original looks pale before it. But still, it is imitation. Japan does not invent anything. If Japan makes a radio, it can outwit America in doing so, but it has to copy the basic one. Japan will be very skillful in copying, but the seed will come from Western countries. It will sow the seed and bring up the plant carefully, but it will never have original seeds of its own.

With religion also, America can outshine and surpass the East. Once the seed of religion reaches there, America will outdo the East in its growth. But all the same, this will be imitation. The initiative, the first step in this matter, lies in the hands of the East.

That is why I am in a great hurry in planning to prepare people in the East who could be sent to the West. The spark will catch like wildfire in the West, but it has to come from the East.

-Osho

From Dimensions Beyond the Known, Discourse #4

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

You can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

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

Mind as a Master is a Disaster – Osho

When I listen to your discourses, you take me on an indescribable journey. If afterwards someone asks me about what you have said, I hardly remember. But when people ask me personal questions, answers are coming out of my mouth which astonish me the most. Osho, am I becoming a parrot of your words?

Listening to me is less like listening and more like drinking. Although it is a verbal communication, that is only the superficial part of it. Hidden beneath it is the real communion where meanings are absorbed and words are forgotten.

You cannot become my parrot – at least while I am alive.

It is impossible to become my parrot. You will go crazy! My words are so full of contradictions that the poor parrot will be crushed under those contradictions. And it is a sure signal that you are not becoming a parrot because you don’t remember my words. The parrot only remembers words, but whatever is being communicated to you is absorbed.

It has to become part of your blood, your bones, your marrow – not part of your memory. Unless it becomes your blood, your bones and your marrow, it cannot transform you.

And the transformation is happening. You are aware of it, that in answering a personal question or responding to a situation, something comes out of you that is not yours. You are surprised even by your own words – because listening silently, not paying attention to the words but to the wordless message contained in them, you are slowly, slowly moving your very consciousness.

You will not become more knowledgeable here. You will become a new man, a man who knows the meaning of life, a man who has experienced the great benediction of silence and serenity. His actions are bound to reflect his consciousness.

And if you cannot remember my words, don’t be worried about it. You are nourished by the meaning, and it is the meaning that will change you, your actions, your responses. It is not the power of the words that transforms anybody. There is no need to be afraid, you are on the right track.

One thing has to be understood: you remember only things which you have not understood. Things that you have understood need not be remembered – they will act, they will be in your eyes. They will be in your gestures, they will be in your life, they will be in your love, they will be in everything that you do; but they will not be part of your memory system. They are far higher than the memory because they don’t belong to the mind.

Mind is the lowest part of your consciousness. It is good enough as far as the world is concerned, but it is not of any use if you are thinking to go on an inner pilgrimage. You will have to leave that mind behind. Its whole training is for the outside world. It will create all kinds of hindrances if you start moving inwards.

It is a trained outsider.

So it is good that words are not being caught by your memory system. Your listening is so total that the words go directly to your very being, to your consciousness – they don’t need the mechanism of the mind.

The mechanism of the mind is good as far as the objective world is concerned but in the inner, in the interior of your being, mind has no entry. Mind has never entered into the innermost core of any human being in the whole of history; the very nature of its functioning prohibits it. It is by nature, extrovert. The moment you start moving inwards, you are separating from your mind system, you are leaving it behind. Now you are moving on the wings of consciousness.

If what I am saying to you is becoming a reality in your life, who cares whether you remember my words or not? It is perfectly right not to remember them; any remembrance of the words will be an obstruction. Let only pure meaning spread to the deepest core of your being where words have no access, where only wordless meaning is able to enter.

A bishop, thinking to convert a Zen master – because he saw thousands of disciples, he thought it better if this old man were converted; then naturally all these disciples would be converted too. With great respect he approached the master. He had brought with him THE HOLY BIBLE. He opened the chapter containing the Sermon on the Mount. He wanted to show the Zen master the best of Jesus and if he agrees… and it is very difficult to disagree with the Sermon on the Mount. The argument inside his mind was that it is very difficult, almost impossible, to disagree with the Sermon on the Mount unless you have a superb, logical mind, something parallel to the genius of Friedrich Nietzsche – then perhaps you may be able to disagree.

Nietzsche is the only man in the whole of history who has disagreed with Jesus, and not on weak points but on the strongest. The ordinary way is to find loopholes, weaknesses, and hammer on them. If you cannot find them, create them – nobody is so much interested in going to the original sources to look.

The world lives on newspapers.

Jesus says “Man cannot live by bread alone.” I say to you, a man can live without bread but not without the newspaper. The newspaper is his whole wisdom. These are people who cannot argue against Jesus, Zarathustra or Lao Tzu.

For example, Jesus says, that God is love, God is just, always fair, always compassionate. The Old Testament’s God is a very angry God – never forgiving, never forgetting; nobody is going to avoid the punishment for his evil acts. The concept of Jesus’ God seems to be far more refined.

Loving, just, fair, compassionate… it seems to be closer to the human heart. But Friedrich Nietzsche criticizes it and his criticism is foundational and crucial. He says, “You cannot say God is love because wherever love is, hate is and if your God knows no hate, he cannot know love. How will he find it out that this is love? To define love, a certain experience of hate is needed. To define silence, noise is needed. To define beauty, ugliness is needed. You are alive because every day many people are dying and you can see the distinction. If nobody was dying, you would not even be able to imagine what life is.”

His criticism is very psychological. He is saying that you are taking one part, one side of a coin, and leaving the other side. This is impossible. You cannot have a coin with only one side. You can go on making it thinner but the other side will remain – either both or none.

Nietzsche says Jesus’ God is nothing but the completion of the Jewish concept of God. He was anger, he was hate, he was rage. Jesus has taken the other side of the coin, but both are halves and God is whole. If there is any God, he can only be whole. Jesus says, ”If somebody slaps you don’t be angry, but with humbleness give him the other cheek also.” It is such a beautiful idea, but a man like Friedrich Nietzsche has an insight and maturity which the common masses cannot have. His criticism is one of the examples of the highest reaches of logic.

Nietzsche says, “If somebody hits me on one of my cheeks, I am not so inhumane as to give him my other cheek. That is egoistic. It is trying to prove that ‘you are just an ordinary human being

– I am a messiah, a messenger of God. I forgive you and if you enjoy hitting me, you can hit me more.’ Nietzsche’s point is that you are reducing the other person to utter humiliation. Nobody in two thousand years’ history has raised this question.

Nietzsche says, “If somebody hits me, I will hit him as hard as I can because I am just as human as you are. I don’t want to prove myself holier than you, higher than you, superior to you. I respect your humanity and I accept your challenge. You have slapped my face. You have given the challenge to me.”

He is saying that Jesus’ idea is disrespectful. And certainly if you look deep into its psychology, you will find it is insulting. You are not accepting the other man as a man equal to you. He is an ignorant man, unenlightened. You are awakened. You are creating a distance between yourself and the person who has slapped you.

Nietzsche says, “I cannot create that distance. That distance is nothing but fulfillment of a very subtle kind – and fulfillment not of your being but only of your ego.”

But this bishop thought that by reading from the Sermon on the Mount, the old man was bound to be convinced that Jesus was as enlightened as Gautam Buddha. He read two lines and the old man said, “That’s enough. Whoever has written these will become enlightened in some future life but as far as this life is concerned, forget all about it.”

The bishop said, “But the lines are so beautiful – each word a diamond unto itself.”

The Zen master said, “It is not a question of words. While you were reading, I was also listening to the gaps. The man was articulate as far as words are concerned but the gaps expose him completely. What he is saying is only mind stuff, it is not his experience. But the man is good. Don’t be worried; in some future life he will become an enlightened person.”

Look – life is not a difficult matter. It becomes a problem when your life wants to go one way and your mind drags you in another and you are in a conflict, torn apart. You can go to neither side… because half of you is trying to go in another direction.

Life becomes absolutely simple once you start functioning from something that is higher than your mind. In the beginning for any seeker the whole search is to find a space above the mind.

Once you have found a small space above the mind, all dualism disappears, all tensions, all anxieties disappear. And strangely enough, the mind which was never in your control, suddenly surrenders itself to you.

Mind as a master is a disaster.

Mind as a servant is a beautiful gift of nature. You just have to find the master – and it is not far away.

It is just above the mind.

Only one step.

-Osho

From Sermons in Stones, Discourse #9

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

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

Established in One’s Own Witnessing Nature – Osho

To be established in one’s own witnessing nature is akshat – the unpolished and unbroken rice used for the worship.

Witnessing is the technique for centering. We discussed centering. A man can live in two ways: he can live from his periphery, or he can live from his center. The periphery belongs to the ego and the center belongs to the being. If you live from the ego, you are always related with the other. The periphery is related with the other.

Whatsoever you do is not an action, it is always a reaction. You do it in response to something done to you. From the periphery there is no action – everything is a reaction; nothing comes from your center. In a way, you are just a slave of the circumstances. You are not doing anything; rather, you are being forced to do. From the center the situation changes diametrically: from the center you begin to act. For the first time you begin to exist not as a relata but in your own right. […]

The moment you begin to act from the center, every act is total, atomic. It is there and then it is not there. You are completely free from it. Then you can move with no burden, unburdened. And only then can you live in the new moment that is always there – by coming to it fresh.

But you can come to it fresh only when there is no past to be carried. And you will have to carry the past if it is unfinished. The mind has a tendency to finish everything. If it is unfinished, then it has to be carried. If something has remained unfinished during the day, then you will dream about it in the night – because the mind has a tendency to finish everything. The moment it is finished, the mind is unburdened from it. Unless it is finished, the mind is bound to come to it again and again.

Whatsoever you are doing – your love, your sex, your friendship – everything is unfinished. And you cannot make it total if you remain on the periphery. So how to be centered in oneself? How to attain this centering so that you are not on the periphery? Witnessing is the technique.

This word “witnessing” is a most significant word. There are hundreds of techniques to achieve centering, but witnessing is bound to be a part, a basic part, in every technique. Whatsoever the technique may be, witnessing will be the essential part in it. So it will be better to call it “the technique of all techniques.” It is not simply a technique. The process of witnessing is the essential part of all the techniques.

One can talk about witnessing as a pure technique also. For example, J. Krishnamurti: he is talking about witnessing as a pure technique. But that talk is just like talking about the spirit without the body. You cannot feel it, you cannot see it. Everywhere the spirit is embodied; you can feel the spirit through the body. Of course, the spirit is not the body, but you can feel it through the body.

Every technique is just a body, and witnessing is the soul. You can talk about witnessing independent of any body, any matter; then it becomes abstract, totally abstract. So Krishnamurti has been talking continuously for half a century, but whatsoever he is saying is so pure, unembodied, that one thinks that one is understanding, but that understanding remains just a concept.

In this world nothing exists as pure spirit. Everything exists embodied. So witnessing is the spirit of all spiritual techniques, and all the techniques are bodies, different bodies. So first we must understand what witnessing is, and then we can understand witnessing through some bodies, some techniques.

We know thinking, and one has to start from thinking to know what witnessing means because one has to start from what one knows. We know thinking. Thinking means judgment: you see something, and you judge. You see a flower and you say it is beautiful or not beautiful. You hear a song, and you appreciate it or you don’t appreciate it. You appreciate something or you condemn something.

Thinking is judgment. The moment you think, you have begun to judge. Thinking is evaluation.

You cannot think without evaluation. How can you think about a flower without evaluating it? The moment you start thinking you will say it is beautiful or not beautiful. You will have to use some category because thinking is categorizing. The moment you have categorized a thing – labeled it, named it – you have thought about it. Thinking is impossible if you are not going to judge. If you are not going to judge, then you can just remain aware – but you cannot think.

A flower is here, and I say to you, “See it, but don’t think. Look at the flower, but don’t think.” So what can you do? If thinking is not allowed, what can you do? You can only witness; you can only be aware. You can only be conscious of the flower. You can face the fact. The flower is here – now you can encounter it. If thinking is not allowed you cannot say, “It is beautiful. It is not beautiful. I know about it,” or, “It is strange – I have never seen it.” You cannot say anything. Words cannot be used because every word has a value in it. Every word is a judgment.

Language is burdened with judgment; language can never be impartial. The moment you use a word, you have judged. So you cannot use language, you cannot verbalize. If I say, “This is a flower– look at it, but don’t think!” then verbalization is not allowed. So what can you do? You can only be a witness. If you are there without thinking, just facing something, it is witnessing. Then witnessing means a passive awareness. Remember – passive. Thinking is active. You are doing something. Whatsoever you are seeing, you are doing something with it. You are not just passive; you are not like a mirror – you are doing something. And the moment you do something, you have changed the thing.

I see a flower and I say, “It is beautiful!” I have changed it. Now I have imposed something on the flower. Now, whatsoever the flower is, to me it is a flower plus my feeling of its being beautiful. Now the flower is far away. In between the flower and me is my sense of judgment, my evaluation of its being beautiful. Now the flower is not the same to me. The quality has changed. I have come into it. Now my judgment has penetrated into the fact. Now it is more like a fiction and less like a fact.

This feeling that the flower is beautiful doesn’t belong to the flower, it belongs to me. I have entered the fact. Now the fact is not virgin. I have corrupted it. Now my mind has become part of it. Really, to say that my mind has become part of it means: my past has become part, because when I say, “This flower is beautiful,” it means I have judged it through my past knowledge. How can you say that this flower is beautiful? Your experiences of the past, your conceptions of the past, that something like this is beautiful – you have judged it according to your past.

Mind means your past, your memories. The past has come upon the present. You have destroyed a virgin fact; now it is distorted. Now there is no flower. The flower as a reality in itself is no more there. It is corrupted by you, destroyed by you. Your past has come in between. You have interpreted. This is thinking. Thinking means bringing the past to a present fact. That’s why thinking can never lead you to the Truth – because Truth is virgin and has to be faced in its total virginity. The moment you bring your past in you are destroying it. Then it is an interpretation, not a realization of the fact. You have disrupted it. The purity is lost.

Thinking means bringing your past to the present. Witnessing means no past, just the present; no bringing in of the past. Witnessing is passive. You are not doing anything – you are! Simply, you are there. Only you are present. The flower is present, you are present – then there is a relationship of witnessing. When the flower is present and your whole past is present, not you, then it is a relationship of thinking.

So start from thinking. What is thinking? It is the bringing of the mind into the present. You have missed the present then you have missed it totally! The moment past penetrates into the present, you have missed it. When you say, “This flower is beautiful,” really, it has become the past. When you say, “This flower is beautiful,” it is a past experience. You have known, you have judged. When the flower is there, and you are there, even to say that this flower is beautiful is not possible. You cannot assert any judgment in the present. Any judgment, any assertion, belongs to the past. If I say, “I love you,” it has become a thing that is past. If I say, “This flower is beautiful.” I have felt, I have judged – it has become past.

Witnessing is always present, never the past. Thinking is always the past. Thinking is dead, witnessing is alive. So the next distinction: first, thinking is active – doing something; witnessing is passive – non-doing, just being. Thinking is always the past, the dead which has gone away, which is no more; witnessing is always the present – that which is. So if you go on thinking, you can never know what witnessing is.

To stop, end thinking, becomes a start in witnessing. Cessation of thinking is witnessing. So what to do? – Because thinking is a long habit with us. It has become just a robot-like, mechanical thing.  It is not that you think; it is not your decision now. It is a mechanical habit – you cannot do anything else. The moment a flower is there, the thinking has started. We have no non-verbal experiences; only small children have. Non-verbal experience is really experience. Verbalization is escaping from the experience.

When I say, “The flower is beautiful,” the flower has vanished from me. Now it is my mind, not the flower I am concerned with. Now it is the image of the flower in my mind, not the flower itself. Now the flower itself is a picture in the mind, a thought in the mind, and now I can compare with my past experiences and judge. But the flower is no more there. When you verbalize, you are closed to experience.

When you are non-verbally aware, you are open, vulnerable. Witnessing means a constant opening to experience, no closing. What to do? This mechanical habit of so-called thinking has to be broken somewhere. So whatsoever you are doing, try to do it non-verbally. It is difficult, arduous, and in the beginning, it seems absolutely impossible, but it is not. It is not impossible – it is difficult. You are walking on the street: walk non-verbally, just walk, even if just for a few seconds, and you will have a glimpse of a different world – a non-verbal world, the real world, not the world of the mind man has created in himself. […]

You are not! If you are a witness, then you are not. The “I” forms itself through thoughts. So one thing more: accumulated thoughts, piled-up memories, create the feeling of ego – that you are.

Try this experiment: cut your whole past away from you – no memory. You don’t know who your parents are; you don’t know to whom you belong – to which country, to which religion, to which race. You don’t know where you were educated, whether you were educated or not. Just cut the whole past – and remember who you are. You cannot remember who you are. You are, obviously. You are, but who are you? In this moment, you cannot feel an “I”. The ego is just accumulated past. The ego is your thought condensed, crystallized. […]

In witnessing, there is no sense of I; in thinking there is. So if the so-called thinkers are so deeply rooted in their egos it is not just a coincidence. Artists, thinkers, philosophers, literary persons, if they are so egoistic, it is not just a coincidence. The more thoughts you have, the greater the ego you have. In witnessing there is no ego, but this comes only if you can transcend language. Language is the barrier. Language is needed to communicate with others; it is not needed to communicate with oneself. It is a useful instrument – rather, the most useful instrument. Man could create a society, a world, only because of language – but because of language, man has forgotten himself.

Language is our world. If for a single moment man forgets his language, then what remains? Culture, society, Hinduism, Christianity, communism – what remains? Nothing remains. If only language is taken out of existence, the whole humanity with its culture, civilization, science, religion, philosophy, disappears.

Language is a communication with others; it is the only communication. It is useful, but it is dangerous – and whenever some instrument is useful, it is in the same proportion dangerous also.  The danger is this: that the more mind moves into language the farther away it goes from the center: So one needs a subtle balance and a subtle mastery to be capable of moving into language, and also to be capable of leaving language, of going out of language, of moving out of language.

Witnessing means moving out of language, verbalization, mind. Witnessing means a state of no-mind, no-thinking. So try it! It is a long effort, and nothing is predictable – but try, and the effort will give you some moments when suddenly language disappears. And then a new dimension opens. You become aware of a different world – the world of simultaneity, the world of here and now, the world of no-mind, the world of reality.

Language must evaporate. So try to do ordinary acts, bodily movements, without language. Buddha used this technique to watch the breath. He would say to his bhikkhus, “Go on watching your breath. Don’t do anything: just watch the breath coming in, the breath going out, the breath coming in, the breath going out.” It is not to be said like this – it is to be felt. Mm? The breath coming in, with no words. Feel the breath coming in, move with the breath, let your consciousness go deep with the breath. Then let it move out. Go on moving with your breath. Be alert!

Buddha is reported to have said, “Don’t miss even a single breath. If a single breath is missed physiologically, you will be dead; and if a single breath is missed in awareness, you will be missing the center, you will be dead inside.” So Buddha said, “Breath is essential for the life of the body, and awareness of the breath is essential for the life of the inner center.”

Breathe, be aware. And if you are trying to be aware of your breathing, you cannot think, because the mind cannot do two things simultaneously – thinking and witnessing. The very phenomenon of witnessing is absolutely, diametrically opposite to thinking, so you cannot do both. Just as you cannot be both alive and dead, as you cannot be both asleep and awake, you cannot be both thinking and witnessing. Witness anything, and thinking will stop. Thinking comes in and witnessing disappears. Witnessing is a passive awareness with no action inside. Awareness itself is not an action.

[…]

If you become dead to your past, totally dead, then you can only witness. What else can you do?

Witnessing means becoming dead to your past, memory, thought, everything. Then in the present moment, what can you do? You can only witness. No judgement is possible. Judgement is possible only against past experiences. No evaluation is possible; evaluation is possible only against past evaluations. No thinking is possible; thinking is possible only if the past is there, brought into the present. So what can you do? You can witness.

In the old Sanskrit literature, the Teacher is defined as the death acharya mrityuh. The Teacher is defined as death! In the Katha Upanishad, Nachiketa is sent to Yama, the god of death, to be taught.

And when Yama, the death god, offers many, many allurements to Nachiketa – “Take this, take the kingdom, take so much wealth, so many horses, so many elephants, this and this,” a long list of things – Nachiketa says, “I have come to learn what death is, because unless I know what death is, I cannot know what life is.”

So a Teacher was known in the old days as a person who can become a death to the disciple – who can give death, who can help you to die so that you can be reborn.

Nicodemus asked Jesus, “How can I attain to the Kingdom of God?”

Jesus said, “Unless you die first, nothing can be attained. Unless you are reborn, nothing can be attained.”

And this being reborn is not an event, it is a continuous process. One has to be reborn every moment. It is not that you are reborn once and then it is okay and finished. Life is a continuous birth, and death is also continuous. You have to die once because you have not lived at all. If you live, then you will have to die every moment. Die every moment to the past whatsoever it has been, a heaven or a hell. Whatsoever – die to it and be fresh and young and reborn into the moment.

Witness now! You can only witness now if you are fresh.

This sutra says:

To be established in one’s own witnessing nature is akshat – the unpolished and unbroken rice used for the worship.

This Upanishad is giving deeper meaning to every symbol of worship. Akshat – unpolished rice – is used in worship. What is akshat? The word is very meaningful. But translated into English it becomes just an ordinary thing. Akshat means “that which has not been penetrated.” Akshat means “virgin.” We say akshatkanya – virgin. Akshat means virgin, unpenetrated, and the unpolished rice is used just as a symbol – virgin, fresh, raw. But the word akshat means unpenetrated. What is akshat in you, what has not been penetrated ever? That is your witnessing nature.

Everything has been corrupted; only one thing in you remains uncorrupted. Your body is corrupted, your mind is corrupted, your thinking, your emotions, everything is corrupted. Everything has been influenced, impressed, by the outside. Only one thing remains in you totally uncorrupted, untouched akshat – and that is your witnessing nature. The world cannot touch it. Your thoughts can be influenced, manipulated, but not your witnessing consciousness.

Your thoughts can be changed, you can be converted; you are being converted every moment.

Every influence is a converting influence, because either for or against you react. And even if you react against a particular influence, you have been converted, you have been manipulated. Every moment you are being manipulated by outside situations, impressions, influences. But one thing remains untouched, and that is your witnessing nature.

The sutra says, “It is your nature, it is you.” It is not something taught, it is not something constructed, it is not something given. It is you! When we say nature, it means it is you. You and it cannot be separated. So the last thing: witnessing nature, witnessing consciousness, is not something which has to be achieved. You have it already; otherwise, it cannot be said to be your nature.

A child is born. If no language is taught, then the child will not be able to know any language. It is not nature – it is nurture. If the child is taught nothing, he will know nothing; if he is taught Hinduism, he will be Hindu; if he is taught communism, he will be a communist. Whatsoever he is taught he will be. It is not his nature. So no one is born as a Hindu, no one is born as a Mohammedan. These are not natures – these are conditionings You are forced to be conditioned into a particular pattern.

So Hinduism is a habit, not nature. Mohammedanism is again a habit, not nature. By “habit” I mean something taught, something learned. You are not born with it.

Witnessing is not like that. You are born with it. Of course it is hidden. In the deepest depths of your being is the seed. Everything is taught except the witnessing nature. Knowledge is taught, but not knowing. A child is born with knowing, not with knowledge. He has the capacity to know – that’s why you can teach him – but that capacity belongs to him. You will go on conditioning. Many things will be taught, and he will learn many things – languages, religions, ideologies. He will be burdened; and the more burdened, the more experienced, the more he will have a mind. And the society will value it, respect it.

Mind is respected in the society because it is a social product. So whenever there is a brilliant mind – that means one who is efficient in accumulating – society appreciates, respects it. This mind created by society will be there, and this mind will go on growing. And you can die with this mind, burdened with this mind, without knowing the inner nature that you were born with. Witnessing, the effort towards it, means breaking this mind, creating a crack in this mind, to have a peek, a probe into nature – into your nature. You are born as an unknown witnessing energy. Then the society encrusts you, clothes you all around. That clothing is your mind, and if you are identified with this clothing then you will never be able to know that which you are, that which you always have been. And one can die without knowing oneself. That capacity is there. But in a way it has a beauty of its own also.

One has to throw the society from inside; one has to be free from society. And when I say that one has to be free from society, I don’t mean to be free from the outside society. You cannot be. Wherever you move, the outside society will be there. Even if you move to a forest, the trees and the animals will become your society. And when a monk, a hermit, moves to a forest and begins to live with animals, you say, “What beauty!” But he is again creating a society. When a hermit lives in the forest and begins to talk with trees, you say, “What a religious man!” But really he is again creating a society.

You cannot live without society as far as your outside world is concerned. You exist in society! But you can throw the society from inside, you can be free from society inside. And those who try to free themselves from the society which exists outside are just in a futile effort. They are in a futile effort – they cannot succeed. and they are deceiving themselves, because the real problem is not how to get away from the society which exists outside; the real problem is how not to be burdened inside by the society.

If there are no thoughts, if there are no memories, if there are no past burdens of experience, you are freed from society inside. You become virgin, pure, innocent. You are reborn. And then you know what your nature is, what your Tao is, what your dharma is. Dharma is translated again and again as “religion.” It is not; it is not religion. Dharma means nature; dharma means that which you are already – your essence.

Two words will be useful to understand: Gurdjieff uses these two words – “essence” and “personality.” Essence is your nature and personality is the construct, the social structure given to you. We are all personalities, unaware, completely unaware of the essence. This sutra saying “witnessing nature” means essence – the essential you. So witnessing is not something which you achieve; it is not something like an attainment. Rather, it is a discovery, an uncovering. Something is there which you have forgotten – you uncover it. So Gurdjieff never uses the word “witnessing”; rather, he uses “remembering.”

Kabir, Nanak, they also use “remembering” – surati. Surati means remembering. Surati is smriti – remembering. Nanak, Kabir or Gurdjieff, they use the word “remembering” only because, really, your essence is not a new thing to be achieved – it is already there. You have only to remember it; you have only to become aware of something which is already present. But you cannot be aware of it if you are crowded by thoughts, if you are lost in the crowd of thoughts.

The sky is there – but when there are clouds, dark clouds all over, you cannot see the sky. Clouds are just incidental. They are now, they were not before, and they will not be again. They come and go, and the sky remains always. And the sky is akshat; no cloud can corrupt it. The sky remains virgin, pure, innocent. No cloud can corrupt it. Clouds come and go, but the sky is that which is always – unperturbed, untouched, just an inner space, an inner sky is there. That is called your nature.

Societies will come and go. You will take birth and you will die, and many lives will come and go, and many, many clouds will pass through you. But the inner sky – akshat – remains uncorrupted, virgin. But you can become identified with clouds. You can begin to feel that “I am the clouds.”

Everyone is identified with his own thoughts which are nothing more than clouds. You say, “my thought,” and if someone attacks your thought, you never feel that your thought is being attacked – you are being attacked. The sky is fighting – fighting for clouds because some cloud has been attacked. The sky feels, “I am attacked”! The sky was there when there was no cloud, the sky will be there when there is no cloud. Clouds add nothing to the sky. And when clouds are no more, nothing is lost. The sky remains itself totally.

This is the nature – the inner sky, the inner space. One uncovers it, discovers it, through witnessing.

Witnessing is the basic, essential thing. It can be used in many, many techniques.

In the Chinese Taoist tradition, they have a method known as “Tai-Chi.” It is a method of centering, a method of witnessing. They say do whatsoever but remain conscious of the center at the navel. Walking, be conscious of the center at the navel. Eating, be conscious of the center at the navel. Fighting, be conscious of the center at the navel. Do whatsoever you are doing but remain conscious of one thing: that you are centered in the navel. Again, if you are conscious of the navel, you cannot think. The moment you begin to think, you will not be conscious of the navel. This is a body technique.

Buddha uses breathing, breath; Taoists use hara. They call the center at the navel hara. That’s why Japanese suicide is known as hara-kiri. It means committing suicide remaining centered in the hara, so it is not suicide, it is not just suicide. They call it hara-kiri only if a person commits suicide remaining continuously aware of the center at the hara. Then it is not suicide at all – he is doing it so consciously. You cannot commit suicide so consciously. With you, suicide is committed only when you are so much disturbed that you have become absolutely unconscious.

Whether you use the hara or you use breathing, you must remain conscious. Krishnamurti says, “Remain conscious of your thought process.” Whether it is the process of breathing or the palpitation of the hara or the thought process, it makes no difference. The basic thing remains the same.

Remain conscious of your thought process. A thought arises: know that it has arisen. A thought is there: know that the thought is there. When the thought moves and goes out of existence, then know, witness that it has disappeared. Whenever a thought goes and another thought comes, there is a gap in between. Be conscious of the gap. Remain conscious of the thought process – a thought moving, a gap, again a thought. Be conscious!

Use thought as an object for your witnessing. It makes no difference: you can use breathing, you can use thought, you can use the hara – you can use anything. There are many methods, and each country has developed its own. And sometimes there is very much conflict about methods, but if you go deep, one thing is essential and that is witnessing, whatsoever the method may be. The difference is only of the body.

And Krishnamurti says, “I have no method,” but he has. This witnessing of the thought process is as much a method as the witnessing of breathing. You can witness breathing; you can witness the thought process. And then, then you can appreciate that if someone is using a rosary, he can witness it. Then there is no difference between witnessing the movement of the rosary or witnessing breathing or the thought process.

Sufis use dancing, dervish dancing. They use dancing as the method. You might have heard the name “whirling dervishes.” They move on their heels just like children move sometimes. If you move like that you will get dizzy – just moving on your heels, whirling. And they say, “Go on whirling, know that the body is whirling, and remain conscious. Inside, remain aware! Don’t get identified with the whirling body. The body is whirling – don’t get identified, remain conscious. Then the witnessing will happen.”

And I think that the Sufi method is more sudden than any, because to witness thought process is difficult, it is very subtle. To witness breathing is again difficult because breathing is a non-voluntary process. But whirling you are doing voluntarily. Dancing, whirling round and round and round, the mind gets dizzy. If you remain aware, suddenly you find a center. Then the body becomes a wheel and you become the hub, and the body goes on whirling and the center stands alone, untouched – akshat – uncorrupted. So there are hundreds and hundreds of methods, but the sole, the significant, the essential, the foundational thing in all of them, is witnessing.

This sutra says that unless you go to worship with a witnessing nature inside, your going is futile. Unpolished, raw rice will not do. That can be purchased, that is only a symbol, a symbolic thing. Unless you bring something unpolished, untouched by society, uncreated, from your own nature, your worship is just stupid, it is foolish. And you can go on worshipping, and you can go on using symbols without knowing what they mean.

Remember this word akshat – uncorrupted, fresh, virgin. What is virgin in you? Find it out and bring it to the Divine feet. Only that virginity can be used – only that virginity, that freshness, that constant youngness, can be used for worship.

This witnessing you can understand intellectually. It is not difficult. But that is the difficulty! If you understand it intellectually and think that the work is done – that is the difficulty. You can understand it. Then again it becomes a theory in the mind; then again it becomes a thought in the mind; then again you have made it a part of the accumulation. Then you can discuss it, you can philosophize about it, but then it is still a part of the mind – it is not virgin.

If I say something about witnessing, it goes into your mind, becomes part of your mind, but it is not from you; it has come from the outside. If you read this Upanishad and then you are impressed, convinced, and you say inside yourself, “Right, this is the thing,” it becomes a theory. It is not from you, it has come from outside. It is not akshat; it is not virgin. No theory can be virgin. No thought can be virgin. Every thought is borrowed. Thought can never be original – never! The very nature of it is borrowed. No one’s thought is original. It cannot be because language is not original, concepts are not original. You learn them.

Akshat means “the original” – that which you have not learned, the discovery within yourself of something which belongs to you, which is unique to you, individual to you, which has not been given to you.

So intellectual understanding won’t do. Practice it! Only then, someday, something explodes in you, and you become aware of a different realm of purity, innocence, bliss.

-Osho

From The Ultimate Alchemy, V.1, Discourse #15

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt Established in One’s Own Witnessing Nature.

For a related post see Witnessing is Not a Mental Activity.

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

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