Tag: Osho

The Three Initiations – Osho

Is it true that to be in communion with the master is the initiation?

The word ‘initiation’ is very significant and profound. There are three initiations: first, when a student becomes a disciple; second, when a disciple becomes a devotee; and third, when the devotee disappears in the master. To understand the whole process, all three steps have to be understood.

Everyone begins as a student, as an inquirer into what this life is all about, with a curiosity to know the mysteries that surround us. But the desire is for knowledge; hence, superficial. Because the desire is for knowledge, it is of the mind. And mind is the periphery of our being, the most superficial part of our individuality.

The student has questions, but he has no quest. His questions are easily answerable, he is easily satisfied – just borrowed knowledge is enough for him. He does not yet need a master; he only needs a teacher. He accumulates answers, becomes an intellectual, but does not become intelligent. The accumulation of answers happens in the memory part of the mind, and the part that functions in accumulation is mechanical, it has nothing to do with intelligence. It is possible to find very educated, cultured, sophisticated intellectuals behaving in life in a very unintelligent way. They are very efficient whenever some question is asked for which they are already prepared. But if life raises a new question for which they are not prepared, they are completely at a loss, they are as ignorant as one can be. And the problem is, life goes on posing new questions, new challenges.

Memory is good in the marketplace; memory is not good as a lifestyle. And all your universities only teach you how to memorize. It has been found that the people of very great memory are generally unintelligent people. […]

It is a well-known fact that a student is interested in collecting knowledge. His questions are easily satisfied. His mind functions like a computer. But once in a while, a student falls into the trap of a master. He is not in search of a master; he does not know any difference in the words ‘master’ and ‘teacher’. In the dictionaries both words mean the same. But in actual life, a teacher simply transfers knowledge from one generation to another generation – it is not his own experience. The master does not transfer knowledge from one generation to another generation; what he gives out is his own realization.

But if the student is caught in the trap of a master, then it is very difficult to get out of it because soon it becomes clear that knowledge and knowing are two different things. Questions and quest are two different things. Questions are simply curiosities. Quest is a risk, is a pilgrimage, is a search.

A question is easily satisfied by any logical, rational answer. The quest is not satisfied by logical or rational answers; the quest is like thirst. You can go on repeating that scientifically, H2O means water, but that is not going to quench the thirst. It is an answer, and a perfectly right answer. If somebody is asking what water is, as a question, it is very simple to answer it. But if somebody is asking about water because he is thirsty, then H2O is not going to help. Then, only real water will do. Quest means thirst, hunger. No borrowed knowledge can satisfy it. And the master slowly makes the student aware that if you are really a man, then just to be curious is childish. Maturity demands that you should go on a quest, that you should not ask only for knowledge, you should ask for ways and means and methods so that you can know – not knowledge that has come from generation to generation. No one knows whether somebody invented it, whether it is fiction, whether somebody realized it or not, how much is lost in transferring it, how much is added, how much is edited out. Knowing means “I want a personal experience.”

A genuine seeker has no questions, but a tremendous thirst.

This is the first initiation – when the master changes the student’s focus from knowledge towards knowing, from memory towards intelligence. And it is not an ordinary phenomenon, it happens to only a very few fortunate ones. Millions of people simply remain curious, childish, immature for their whole life.

Once the emphasis has moved from knowledge to knowing, your concern is no more with the past, your concern is with the present. Your concern is no more with the great philosophers, wise people; your concern is about your own consciousness. For the first time you become interested not in objects but in your subjectivity, not about other things but about the one who wants to know: Who is this who wants to know?

This is the first initiation: the student dies, and the disciple is born. The second initiation is when the disciple also disappears, into a devotee. A disciple is still interested in gaining methods, disciplines, ways to know himself. The master has to be used; hence, he is grateful. But he is the end, and the master is the means; he is using the master for his own ends. As he comes closer to the master, the master takes him into the second initiation. And the second initiation is that unless you drop this obsession with yourself you will never know yourself. It appears contradictory; it is not. Your very obsession is preventing you; it is egoistic. You drop the ego, surrender the ego; you forget yourself, and in the very moment you forget yourself you will find yourself.

From knowledge to knowing, the student was never interested in himself. He was interested in things, objects, the whole world. The first initiation brought him into a new world of interest about himself. The second initiation takes away the ego. The second initiation teaches him love. Because knowing oneself is a byproduct – if you can love, you will know yourself without any difficulty.

Only in loving light does the darkness within you disappear. Love is light, and the flame of love has to be taught.

The master loves, his presence is love. His very presence is magnetic. Without saying a Word . . . just to be close to him, you will feel a certain pull, a certain love, a trust. And you don’t know the man, you don’t know whether he is trustworthy or not. But you are ready to risk. The presence of the master is so convincing that there is no need of any argument to prove it. […]

The master is not a teacher. He loves; it will be better to say he is love. He respects; it will be better to say he is respectfulness. Naturally he creates a gravitational field of love, respect, gratitude. In this gravitational field, the second initiation happens. The disciple is no longer interested in knowing about himself. His only interest is in how to be dissolved into the master, how to be in harmony with the master. And the day the harmony comes to its peak, the disciple disappears; the devotee is born.

The devotee is miles away from the student. The whole journey has taken such revolutionary changes. The devotee is on the verge . . . the life of the devotee is not long. The longest life is that of the student. In the middle is the disciple. And the life span of the devotee is very small. It is something like a dewdrop on a lotus petal in the early morning sun, slipping slowly, slowly towards the sun into the ocean. The dewdrop is just that small fragment of time that it takes to slip from the lotus leaf into the ocean.

The devotee’s life is not long, it is very short – because once you have tasted the harmony, you cannot wait to taste oneness. It is impossible to wait. The dewdrop runs fast, drops into the ocean, becomes one with the ocean.

There are two ways to say it. Kabir, one of the great mystics of India, is the only one who has used both ways. When for the first time he slipped into the ocean, he wrote a small statement in which he said, “I had been searching for myself, but, my friend, instead of finding myself, I have disappeared into the ocean. The dewdrop has disappeared into the ocean.”

After almost twenty years, when he was on his deathbed, he asked his son, Kamal, “Bring the notes you have been taking of my statements. Before I die, I have to correct one thing.” He said, “I have said at one place that the dewdrop has disappeared into the ocean. Change it. Write down, ‘The ocean has disappeared into the dewdrop.’”

His own words are tremendously beautiful. The first words are Herat herat hey sakhi rahya kabir herayi; bunda samani samunda men so kat heri jayi. And the second: Herat herat hey sakhi rahya kabir herayi; samunda samana bunda men so kat heri jayi. In the first, the dewdrop has disappeared in the ocean. In the second, the ocean has disappeared into the dewdrop. Perhaps two sides of the same coin . . .

This is the third initiation, and only after the third initiation is there communion – because there is union, there is no more separation, there is at-oneness.

The path of a mystic begins as a student, ends as a master . . . begins as a dewdrop, ends as an ocean.

-Osho

From Beyond Enlightenment, Discourse #12, 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.

You Are Alone – Osho

The first truth to experience is that one is alone. The first truth to experience is that love is illusory. Just think of it, just think of the enormity of it, that love is illusory. And you have lived only through that illusion . . .

You were in love with your parents, you were in love with your brothers and sisters, then you started falling in love with a woman or a man. You are in love with your country, your church, your religion, and you are in love with your car, and ice cream – and so on and so forth. You are living in all these illusions.

And suddenly you find yourself naked, alone, all illusions have disappeared. It hurts.

Just this morning, Vivek was saying – and she has been saying again and again with these Ikkyu discourses – “These discourses are heavy, depressing.” They are bound to be so, because whenever any of your illusions are touched it creates great restlessness. You become afraid; somehow you were managing it – and you know deep down that there is no bottom to it but you don’t want to look. Seeing will be frightening; you want to go on remaining in the illusion.

Nobody wants to see that his love is false. People are ready to believe that their past loves were false – but this? No, this love is true. When it has disappeared, they will say it was also false – but then another love is true. In whatsoever illusion they are living, they pretend that this one is true. “Others – Ikkyu may be right, Osho may be right about other loves, they were false, we know. But this one? This one is a totally different thing. This is not an ordinary love, I have found my soul mate.”

Nobody has ever found one – how can you find your soul mate? Aloneness is absolute. These are just efforts to deceive yourself – and you can go on deceiving. That’s what you have been doing down the ages, for so many lives . . .

-Osho

From Take it Easy #15, previously Take it Easy, V.2 #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.

Enlightenment – Osho

Enlightenment is the greatest revolution you can conceive of because it destroys all fictions, all rituals, all gods, all traditions, all scriptures. It leaves you with only the essential consciousness of your own being. Its trust in consciousness is so total that there is no need of anything else.

It has not been said as clearly as I am putting it . . . I want to make it absolutely clear that the very idea of enlightenment is against all religions. Or, in other words, the only authentic religion is that of enlightenment. All other religions are part of the marketplace; they are businesses exploiting human helplessness, exploiting human weakness, exploiting human limitations.

Religions have done so much harm to man that it is unparalleled. Nothing else has been so dangerous. In every possible way they have been preventing man from even hearing the word ‘enlightenment’. You should not become aware that raising your hands to the sky is stupid — there is no one to answer your prayers, no prayer has ever been answered. […]

Enlightenment is a rebellion against all traditions, against all priests, against all religions, because it declares that there is nothing higher than man’s consciousness. And man is not suffering because some stupid man in the past disobeyed a fictitious God; man is not suffering because of millions of lives of evil acts. Man is suffering for the simple reason that he does not know himself. His ignorance about himself is the only cause of his suffering, misery, torture.

Enlightenment brings everything to a very simple and scientific conclusion. It pinpoints that all that you need is to learn the art of awareness.

Ta Hui is right to say that enlightenment is the key, the only key which opens all the realities and all the blessings and all the potentials which have been hidden within you. You are a seed: enlightenment is nothing but finding the right soil and waiting for the spring to come.

Enlightenment is such a radical standpoint.

It is not another religion.

It is the only religion.

All other religions are pseudo.

Ta Hui says, Some take sitting wordlessly with eyes shut beneath the Black Mountain, inside the Ghost Cave, and consider it as the scene on the other side of the primordial Buddha, the scene before their parents were born — They also call it “silent, yet ever illuminating,” and consider it ch’an. This lot don’t seek subtle wondrous enlightenment. They consider enlightenment as falling into the secondary.

This word ‘secondary’ has to be understood because it has a context, and without the context you will not be able to grasp the meaning. Gautam Buddha has said, “To experience enlightenment is primary, but to say anything about it is secondary.” To know it is fundamental, but to say anything about it — howsoever articulate, howsoever intelligently worded — falls into the secondary, into the nonessential. The essential is the experience; the expression is nonessential.

But this is one of the great misfortunes of humanity, that even great truths are destined to be misunderstood by people. What Buddha is saying is one thing; what people hear is another.

There is a school which says enlightenment is secondary, and Gautam Buddha himself has said it. Don’t be bothered by it. Certainly, Gautam Buddha has said it, but he has not said that enlightenment is secondary. He has said that to say anything about it is to go wrong . . . even the very word enlightenment, and you have gone far away from the experience.

And you know in your ordinary life there are situations . . . When you see a beautiful rose, is it the same to experience the beauty of the rose and to say that it is beautiful? Can the word ‘beautiful’ contain your experience of the rose? You experience love, but is it possible to say through the word ‘love’ exactly what you experience in the silences of your heart? The love that you experience and the word ‘love’ are not synonymous. The word is not even an echo of your authentic experience. And these are ordinary realities: beauty, love, gratitude. Enlightenment is the ultimate experience of being one with the whole. There is no way to say it.

Lao Tzu refused his whole life to say anything about it: “You can talk about everything, but don’t mention the ultimate experience” — because he cannot lie, and to say anything about the ultimate truth is a lie.

Gautam Buddha was right, but he was not taking into consideration the stupid people who are always in the majority. He would never have thought that there would be a school quoting him, saying that enlightenment is secondary; the real thing is to worship, the real thing is to pray. Gautam Buddha has denied . . . His last words were, “Don’t make statues of me, because I don’t want you to be worshipers, I want you to be buddhas. And a buddha praying before a stone statue is simply ridiculous.”

But such is the ignorance of man that the first statues made of any man were those of Gautam Buddha. There had been statues, but those were of fictitious gods. Gautam Buddha is the first historical person whose statues were made and made on such a great scale that even today he has more statues in the world than anybody else. And the poor fellow had said, “Don’t make my statues, because I am not teaching you to worship, I am teaching you to awaken. No worship is going to help; it is simply a waste of time.”

But the priest is interested in worship; hence Buddha’s words were not taken care of, and priests started making statues. Rituals were created, and he had been fighting for forty-two years continuously against rituals, against temples, against scriptures. Exactly what he had been fighting against was done afterwards — and done with all good intentions by people who thought they were doing some service to humanity, by people who thought that they were followers of Gautam Buddha.

It is a strange history. Every master has been betrayed, without exception, by his own people in different ways. The betrayal of Judas was very ordinary, superficial. But the betrayal of those who have created statues of Buddha, made temples of Buddha, created scriptures in the name of Buddha, brought everything back against which that man had fought for forty-two years continuously . . . From the back door everything has come in.

These people say . . . and they are many, and of many different sectarian ideologies. There are thirty-two Buddhist sects in the world, and they all think they are teaching exactly what Gautam Buddha has said. But there are only a few who can be said to have understood Gautam Buddha — because the only way to understand him is to become him, is to become an awakened being.

Except for that, there is no way to understand Buddha. You cannot study him from scriptures and you cannot persuade him by your prayers. You can be in his company only by being awakened the same way as he was. On those same sunlit peaks of consciousness, you will be able to understand him. In other words, the day you understand yourself you will have understood the message of this strangest man who has walked on the earth. The priests have been trying to misquote him, to distort him, to interpret him for their own interests. They consider enlightenment as falling into the secondary.

They think that enlightenment deceives people . . . The fact is, only enlightenment does not deceive people. Except enlightenment, everything in the name of religion deceives people.

. . . That enlightenment is a fabrication . . . And I say again to you: only enlightenment is the ultimate reality. Other than that, everything else is a fabrication. All your gods, all your messiahs, all your prophets are nothing but your own imagination, your own projection. They are fulfilling certain needs in you, but those needs are sick. They are providing you with father-figures.

It is not strange that people call God “the father,” because everybody feels alone in the world, unprotected. Always death is walking by your side; it can grab you any moment. Life is so insecure and unsafe that you need some insurance, some guarantee. God comes in handy; he is your father. In times of trouble, you can always rely on him, although he has never helped anybody.

Even Jesus on the cross is praying. Finally, he freaks out and shouts at the sky, “Father, why have you forsaken me?” But still, he goes on looking, hoping that God will be coming on a white cloud to save him, with angels playing on their harps, singing “Alleluia!” But not a single white cloud appears.

Jesus can be taken as the greatest example of all those who believe in fictions. He believed too much . . . The sky is not responsible for his beliefs, and if the sky is not fulfilling his expectations, only he is responsible — nobody else. He had immense belief, but he was not enlightened; he did not trust. He believed in a God; he believed madly that he was the only son of God.

These very ideas show that the man was a little neurotic. Instead of helping him and giving him the right treatment, there were other idiots who crucified him . . . but crucifixion is not a treatment. So one sort of idiots crucified him and another sort of idiots, in their imagination, have resurrected him. Now half of humanity is following a man who was a mental case.

But why has he been able to influence so many people? The reason is not that he had a great, convincing philosophy — he had no philosophy at all! The reason is that humanity at large is also neurotic. It feels very good to believe in Jesus Christ, to believe in God; it creates a protection — just in your mind. You will be deceived, finally you will be disillusioned, but to be disillusioned at the time of death is meaningless. Then there is no time is left to do anything else.

The people who say that enlightenment deceives people, the people who say that enlightenment is a fabrication, are people who since they have never awakened themselves, they don’t believe anyone has awakened either.

It is like blind people who don’t believe that there is light — and there is no way to convince them. Even the greatest logician will not be able to convince a blind man that there is light, because light is not an argument but an experience. You need eyes — you don’t need great philosophical proofs.

If you are deaf, no music exists for you. If you are crippled, it hurts you that somebody else can dance. And if the majority is crippled — which is the case as far as enlightenment is concerned . . . If once in a while there is a dancer and millions of people are crippled, they cannot believe that he is real. Maybe he is a dream, maybe an illusion, maybe a magical trick — but he cannot be real. Their own experience does not support his reality.

The awakened ones have found themselves in utter aloneness in a world where everybody is capable of becoming a dancer, but people have chosen to remain crippled, people have chosen to remain blind. There are people who can exploit you only if you are blind, if you are crippled, if you are deaf, if you are dumb. These parasites are your prophets, these parasites are your priests.

Enlightenment is a rebellion against all these parasites.

-Osho

From The Great Zen Master Ta Hui, Discourse #34

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.

I am not Going to Give You a New Pattern

You said that through chaotic breathing you want to destroy our old wrong patterns – to rebuild us in a new dimension. Please explain how this rebuilding in a new dimension happens after the old has been destroyed.

You have misunderstood me. The chaotic method is to destroy the old patterns, not to create a new one. It is not to create a pattern at all. Just the old pattern has to be destroyed. The method, all meditative methods, just destroy your conditioning without conditioning you in any way; otherwise there will simply be a change of fetters, a change of prisons. The new prison may look a little better but it is still a prison.

The unconditioned mind is the end – a mind which has no pattern around it. The old pattern has to be destroyed, and the new is not to be created because the new will become the old again. Nothing has to be created in its place; you are to be left alone without a pattern. But you have lived so long in patterns that you cannot conceive of how you can live without a pattern. How can you live without conditioning? How can you live without a discipline? How can you live without fetters? You have lived so long in slavery, in conditioning, that you cannot conceive of what freedom is. But you can live; really, only then will you live.

A conditioned mind is not alive. For instance, people come to me and they say, “You do not give us any discipline: what to eat, what not to eat, what to do, what not to do. You simply give us meditation and let us go into chaos. You do not give us something to live by. You just push us into chaos without any discipline.”

I do not give you any discipline because only those who are enemies to you can give you disciplines. I give you awareness, not discipline. And your awareness will give you spontaneous light about what to do and what not to do. And who can decide beforehand? And what is the need to decide it beforehand? When the moment arises, when the situation is there, you will be alert enough to do whatsoever happens to you – what is felt by your awareness itself to be done.

If you are aware, you do not need any discipline. Only people who are fast asleep need discipline because they do not know what to do. They need a pattern to follow. Their whole life becomes a misery because no pattern can be helpful in a changing life. Every pattern will become a prison because life is constantly changing. This moment one act may be good but the next moment it may become bad because the situation has changed. And you go on following a dead pattern; you never fit anywhere. […]

You will not fit because you can fit only when you are flux like, changing. A fixed entity cannot fit in a riverlike existence. You must be fluid. Only when you are liquid, fluid, flowing, changing, alert, aware, will you not repent. You will never feel guilty; you will never feel that something was better than what you did. Nothing can be better because you responded totally. That was all that could have been. Nothing else was possible.

My meditation technique is not to give you a new pattern; it is simply to drop the old pattern, to destroy it and leave you completely free without any imprisonment around you – without any prison. Of course, you will feel difficulty because the prison was also a shelter. Now there will be rains and there will be no shelter, and the wind will come and there will be no shelter, and the sun will be there, hot and burning, and there will be no shelter, and you would like to hide somewhere. Your eyes have become so accustomed to darkness that in the light you will feel uneasy. But this is what will make you free. You will have to get the feel of the new life under the open skies. Once you know the freedom and the beauty of it, once you have become aware, once you have come out of the prison, the old habit, you will not ask for any pattern or any discipline.

And this doesn’t mean that your life will become a chaos – no! Your life will be the only ordered life possible. The life that you are leading is a chaos. It only seems to be ordered on the surface. Behind it, underneath, there is disorder and turmoil. Only on the surface have you created the appearance of order. Look within yourself: there is disorder. Ordered life will be disordered; disciplined life will be chaotic within. This looks paradoxical but this is so, this is the truth. Only an alert life will have an order – not forced but spontaneous, alive. The order will go on changing with life. It must.

A spontaneous life is just like your eyes. Do you know that your eyes go on changing continuously? And when they stop changing, then you need some technical help. When I am looking at you and you are ten feet away from me, my eyes have one kind of focus. When I start looking at the hills which are far away, my eyes immediately change. The lenses of the eyes change immediately. Then only can I see the hills. When I look at the moon, my eyes change immediately.

You come into the house, it is dark; your eyes change. You come out of the house, it is light; your eyes change. And when your eyes become fixed, they are ill. They must be flux like; only then are you capable of seeing. The more flux like the eyes, the more liquid they are, without any pattern, the more they are just changing with the situation, then the more alert your consciousness will be.

Meditation will give you an inner eye which will be constantly changing, constantly aware of the new situation, constantly responding. But the response will come from your total being, not from a pattern. The response will come from you, not from a conditioning. […]

So I am not going to create a new pattern for you. I am a destroyer. I am not going to create anything, really. I am just going to destroy, because there is no need to create. You are already there behind the structure. If the structure is destroyed, you will be freed. If the structure which binds you is no more there, you will be there. You are not to be created; you are already there. Only the walls of the prison have to be destroyed and you will be under the open sky.

You have misunderstood me. I told you this chaotic meditation is to destroy your conditioning, your slavery, your mind, your ego – in a deep sense, you. It has to destroy and then the new will be born. I am not saying I will create it. No one can create it. And there is no need: it is already the case. It is there. Only the shell has to be broken and it will come out.

All religion is destructive in this sense. The society is constructive, religion is destructive. Society constructs the conditioning. Society makes you a Hindu or a Christian or a Jaina. Society never allows you to be yourself. It gives you a pattern, because society is an organization. The society wants you to fit into that organization according to its own rules. The society doesn’t want you; the society only wants your efficiency. You are not the point; you are not the target. You must behave like a mechanical thing. The more mechanical you are, the more society will appreciate you because you will be less dangerous.

No machine can be dangerous. It never goes out of the way: it never disobeys, it never rebels, it is not revolutionary. No machine is revolutionary; it cannot be. All machines are orthodox: they obey, they follow. Society tries to change you into a mechanical thing. Then you are more efficient, less dangerous, reliable, responsible. And there is no fear, no danger; you can be relied upon.

The society creates a mechanical device around you: that is the conditioning. And it allows you only certain outlets and closes certain things completely. It chooses some fragments from you and approves them, then rejects all else. It says that only a part of you is good and the other parts are bad, so deny those parts. Society doesn’t accept you as a whole, as a unity; it accepts only certain parts. Hence, the conditioning.

Religion is always destructive; in a way, religion is always antisocial. But society is very cunning. It tries to convert religion also into its managerial system. It wants to make religion also a part of it.

Jesus is rebellious, the church is not. Jesus is against society – he has to be, because he is trying to destroy the mechanical part and he is trying to free your spontaneity. He is bound to be against the society; the society will crucify him. But just by crucifying him you cannot destroy Jesus. Really, if you want to destroy Jesus, crucifixion will be of no help. You will have to organize a church around Jesus; only then will he be destroyed.

It is said that once it happened that the devil was very much disturbed because one man had achieved enlightenment on earth. He called his advisers and he asked them, “What to do now? One man has again achieved truth, he has become enlightened, and our whole profession is now in danger. What to do? How to prevent people from going to this man?”

The oldest follower of the devil said, “Do not be disturbed. We should go and we should organize a church around him. Do not worry. Then the church will become the prevention, then people will not be able to come to him directly. The church will be in between, and whatsoever he says will not be heard by the people directly. The church will first interpret it, and through interpretation you can destroy anything.”

Truth can be destroyed most easily if you order it, organize it. When religion becomes a sect, it becomes a part of society. Whenever religion is alive and not a sect, it is against society. Jesus is against society, Mahavira is against society, Buddha is against society. But Buddhism, Jainism, Christianity, they are all parts of society. They are religions no more. Religion has to be rebellious. And this is the rebellion: religion tries to destroy the mechanicalness because the mechanicalness is your hell. Spontaneity is your heaven; mechanicalness is your hell.

I am not going to give you any new pattern – neither new nor old. I am simply going to destroy the pattern and leave you alone to live without a pattern. A life without a pattern is a religious life. A life without any forced order is a religious life. A life without any discipline, but with inner awareness, is a religious life.

-Osho

From The Supreme Doctrine, Discourse #7

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.

 

Your Body has to Release Many Poisons – Osho

The first few days of active meditation tend to tighten muscles, causing pain everywhere. Is there any way to get over that?

Go on doing it! You will get over it – and the reasons are obvious. There are two reasons. First, it isa vigorous exercise and your body has to get attuned to it. So for three or four days you will feel that the whole body is aching. With any new exercise it will happen. But after four days you will get over it and your body will feel stronger than ever.

But this is not very basic. The basic thing goes deeper, and the basic thing is what modern psychologists have come to know. Your body is not simply physical. In your body, in your muscles, in the structure of your body, many other things have entered through suppressions. If you suppress anger, the poison goes into the body. It goes into the muscles; it goes into the blood. If you suppress anything, it is not only a mental thing, it is also physical – because you are not really divided. You are not body and mind; you are bodymind – psychosomatic. You are both together. So whatsoever is done with your body reaches to the mind and whatsoever is done with the mind reaches to the body, as body and mind are two ends of the same entity.

For instance, if you get angry what happens to the body? Whenever you get angry certain poisons are released into the blood. Without those poisons you will not get mad enough to be angry. You have particular glands in the body, and those glands release certain chemicals. Now this is scientific, this is not just a philosophy. Your blood becomes poisoned.

That is why, when you are angry, you can do something which you cannot do ordinarily – because you are mad. You can push a big rock: you cannot do it ordinarily. You cannot even believe afterwards that you could have pushed this rock or thrown it or lifted it. When you are back to normal again, you will not be capable of lifting it again because you are not the same. Particular chemicals were circulating in the blood. You were in an emergency condition; your total energy was brought to be active.

But when an animal gets angry, he gets angry. He has no morality about it, no teaching about it. He simply gets angry and the anger is released. When you get angry, you get angry in a way similar to any animal. But then there is society, morality, etiquette, and thousands of things. You have to push the anger down. You have to show that you are not angry; you have to smile – a painted smile! You have to create a smile, and you push the anger down. What is happening to the body? The body was ready to fight – either to fight or to fly, to escape from the danger, either to face it or escape from it. The body was ready to do something: anger is just a readiness to do something. The body was going to be violent, aggressive.

If you could be violent and aggressive, then the energy would be released. But you cannot be – it is not convenient, so you push it down. Then what will happen to all those muscles which were ready to be aggressive? They will become crippled. The energy pushes them to be aggressive, and you push them backwards not to be aggressive. There will be a conflict. In your muscles, in your blood, in your body tissues, there will be conflict. They are ready to express something and you are pushing them not to express. You are suppressing them. Then your body becomes crippled.

And this happens with every emotion. And this goes on day after day for years. Then your body becomes crippled all over. All the nerves become crippled. They are not flowing, they are not liquid, they are not alive. They have become dead; they have become poisoned. And they have all become entangled. They are not natural.

Look at any animal and see the grace of the body. What happens to the human body? Why is it not so graceful? Why? Every animal is so graceful: why is the human body not so graceful? What has happened to it? You have done something with it: you have crushed it and the natural spontaneity of its flow has gone. It has become stagnant. In every part of your body there is poison. In every muscle of your body there is suppressed anger, suppressed sexuality, suppressed greed – and everything – suppressed jealousy, hatred. Everything is suppressed there. Your body is really diseased.

So when you start meditating, all these poisons will be released. And wherever the body has become stagnant, it will have to melt, it will become liquid again. And this is a great effort. After forty years of living in a wrong way, then suddenly meditating, the whole body is in an upheaval. You will feel aching all over the body. But this aching is good, and you have to welcome it. Allow the body to become again a flow. Again, it will become graceful and childlike; again, you will gain the aliveness. But before that aliveness comes to you the dead parts have to be straightened and this is going to be a little painful.

Psychologists say that we have created an armor around the body and that armor is the problem. If you are allowed total expression when you get angry what will you do? When you get angry, you start crushing your teeth together; you want to do something with your nails and with your hands, because that’s how your animal heritage will have it. You want to do something with your hands, to destroy something.

If you don’t do anything your fingers will become crippled; they will lose the grace, the beauty. They will not be alive limbs. And the poison is there. So when you shake hands with someone, really there is no touch, no life, because your hands are dead.

You can feel this. Touch a small child’s hand – a subtle difference is there. When the child really gives you his hand . . . if he is not giving, then it is alright – he will withdraw. He will not give you a dead hand, he will simply withdraw. But if he wants to give you his hand, then you will feel that his hand is as if it is melting into your hand. The warmth, the flow – as if the whole child has come to the hand. The very touch, and he expresses all the love that it is possible to express.

But the same child when grown up will shake hands as if a hand is just a dead instrument. He will not come in it, he will not flow through it. This has happened because there are blocks. Anger is blocked . . . really, before your hand becomes alive again to express love, it will have to pass through agony, it will have to pass through a deep expression of anger. If the anger is not released, that anger is blocking and love cannot come out of it.

Your whole body has become blocked, not only your hands. So you can embrace someone, you can take someone near your chest, but that is not synonymous with taking someone near your heart. These are two different things. You can take someone near your chest: this is a physical phenomenon. But if you have an armor around your heart, a blocking of emotions, then the person remains as distant as he ever was; no intimacy is possible. But if you really take a person near, and there is no armor, no wall between you and the person, then the heart will melt into the other. There will be a meeting, a communion.

Your body has to release many poisons. You have become toxic, and you will have pain – mm? – because those poisons have settled down. Now I am creating a chaos again. This meditation is to create chaos within you so that you can be rearranged – so that a new arrangement becomes possible. You must be destroyed as you are, only then can the new be born. As you are, you have gone totally wrong. You have to be destroyed and only then can something new be created. There will be pain, but this pain is worthwhile.

So go on doing the meditation and allow the body to have pain. Allow the body not to resist; allow the body to move into this agony. This agony comes from your past but it will go. If you are ready it will go. And when it goes, then for the first time you will have a body. Right now, you have only an imprisonment, a capsule, dead. You are encapsulated; you do not have an agile, alive body. Even animals have more beautiful, more alive bodies than you. […]

We have done much violence to our bodies. So in this chaotic meditation I am forcing your bodies to be alive again. Many blocks will be broken; many settled things will become unsettled again; many systems will become liquid again. There will be pain, but welcome it. It is a blessing and you will come over it. Continue! There is no need to think what to do. You simply continue the meditation. I have seen hundreds and hundreds of people passing through the same process. Within a few days the pain is gone. And when the pain is gone, you will have a subtle joy around your body.

You cannot have it right now because the pain is there. You may know it or you may not know it but the pain is there all over your body. You have simply become unconscious about it because it has always been with you. Whatsoever is always there, you become unconscious about. Through meditation you will become conscious and then the mind will say, “Don’t do this; the whole body is aching.” Do not listen to the mind. Simply go on doing it.

Within a certain period the pain will be thrown out. And when the pain is thrown out, when your body has again become receptive and there is no block, no poisons around it, you will always have a subtle feeling of joy wrapped around you. Whatsoever you are doing or not doing, you will always feel a subtle vibration of joy around your body.

Really, joy only means that your body is in a symphony, nothing else – that your body is in a musical rhythm, nothing else. Joy is not pleasure; pleasure has to be derived from something else. Joy is just to be yourself – alive, fully vibrant, vital. A feeling of a subtle music around your body and within your body, a symphony – that is joy. You can be joyful when your body is flowing, when it is a riverlike flow.

It will come but you will have to pass through suffering, through pain. That is part of your destiny because you have created it. But it goes. If you do not stop in the middle, it goes. If you stop in the middle, then the old settlement will be there again. Within four or five days you will feel okay – just the old, as you have always been. Be aware of that okayness.

-Osho

From The Supreme Doctrine, Discourse #5, Q2

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One Secret I Will Tell You – Osho

Man is a periphery but also a center. Man is a circumference but not only that. Your body is your circumference but not you. […] The body is just your abode, just a house – not even a home, just a house. You are in it, but you are not it. But the mind believes itself to be the body. That is known as adhyasa, illusion, projection.

Why does this mind take the body as identical with it, as one with it? The nearness, the constant nearness, the intimacy between the two, and the body begins to be reflected in the mirror of the mind. Constant association – not only in this life, but of many lives – and by and by you become one with that which has been in association with you. It becomes a habit.

For millions of years consciousness has existed in bodies, and because of that, it is identified with the body. This identification is the only error, the only ignorance, the only sin. For the Eastern approach, this is the original sin, to be identified with the body. How to be non-identified again? How to be aware that you are not your body, you are not your mind? How to go in and find the forgotten center? It is always there, you are standing on it; you are it! But your eyes, your senses have taken you far away; you have gone on a journey.

This journey is very miraculous; it is like a dream journey. You sleep in Mt. Abu, and in the night, you dream you are in London, or in New York, or in Calcutta. You have gone on a journey in the mind. The journey appears to be actual, real. You cannot remember in your dream that this is a dream. The moment you remember this is a dream, the dream will be broken. This is a basic condition of the dream, that you should not remember it as a dream. The dream must be taken as reality; only then the dream can continue, that’s the basic condition. The dream must appear as real; otherwise, it is broken.

So in the night when you dream, the dream appears not only real but really more than real. Real life seems pale before it; the dream is more colorful, more intense, more alive. You can go on a journey in the dream and still you continue to be here in Mt. Abu. In reality you remain in Mt. Abu, but in the dream you have moved. Nothing has moved; only the mind has moved.

The whole world, for the Eastern mind, is just a dream journey – you go on moving. You remain constantly at the center, but you go on moving to the periphery, to the circumference. You look at some beautiful face, some proportionate body . . . it appeals; the mind has moved. Now you are not at your center, you are not at your home; you have gone away. Now you will follow, your mind will move. Any desire is a movement; any motivation is a movement – a movement of the mind.

You see a beautiful car, or you see a rich palace, and the mind starts desiring, you start moving. You remain at the center, but the mind is not there. You have forgotten the center; now the mind is attached with the objects of desire. Those objects of desire become your clinging. That’s why the mind goes on and on, out and out – and you are at the center. This creates a division; this divides you in two. And because you never return to the center, you never go back to it, ultimately you forget that you have a center.

The more civilized, the more cultured, the more educated the world becomes, the more it is centerless. Everyone is just a circumference – the master is missing. The house is there; the center is not there. And even if you try to reach the center you cannot reach it because you don’t know how to reach it. And the ways and the means you try to reach it really are not means and ways. They are barriers because you try to reach the center in the same way as you reach the circumference. You know only one way: how to move to the circumference, how to desire.

You desire riches, you desire power, you desire facts – you desire so many things. The mechanism of desire is that you desire something which you have not. You desire something which can become possible only in the future, never in the present! Desire is meaningful only in reference to the future. You cannot desire immediately, here and now; you will need time. Desire needs time to move. So you desire for tomorrow. You say, “Tomorrow,” or “In the next life this will happen. This I would like to happen; I hope for it.” Desire is basically future oriented, and desire means something which you don’t have.

This mechanism, if you apply it to the inner journey, will become a barrier. This mechanism cannot help because the basic situation differs; not only differs, it is absolutely diametrically opposite. Your being, your center is not something to be achieved in the future, it is here and now. It is already the case – you can have it immediately! No time is needed to move to it; really, no movement is needed. Just an awareness and you are there. You have not moved away, you are just unaware. You have not gone anywhere so that you have to come back. You have never gone in reality, only in dream.

You are sleeping in Mt. Abu and dreaming of London, and someone suddenly wakes you. Will you be awake in London or in Mt. Abu? Or will you say, “Wait, I am in London, and now I need to come back to Mt. Abu?” No, from a dream, if you are awakened, you are suddenly here. The dream world, the dream journey disappears completely. You have not come back because you have never gone away.

Your being, your center is here and now.

It cannot be made the object of desire. You cannot desire it, and if you desire it, you will miss.

Your very desire will become the barrier.

Lao Tzu says, “Do not seek; otherwise, you will miss. Do not seek, and find.” This looks absurd! Do not seek and find, looks illogical; it is not. It looks illogical because we know only one logic: the logic of desire. If someone says, “Do not seek riches and you will find,” it is illogical, you will never find. If someone says, “Don’t long for worldly things and you will find them,” nonsense; you will never find them. You will have to seek; then too, it is difficult to find them.

But it is not illogical for the inner journey. Note it, understand it deeply: the inner journey is just the reverse – from the center to the periphery, this is the way. Create an object of desire and then move toward it – just the reverse is the way which goes in. Don’t create any object of desire and don’t move – and you will reach it because you are already there.

Any movement anywhere, and you will miss your center. No movement and you are there, suddenly awakened.

Because we know only one logic, one method to reach a certain thing, we go on applying it toward the inner journey. That creates hindrances – they are self-created. Nothing is to be done to reach the center. I repeat, nothing is to be done to reach the center – it is there. If you can be in a non-doing moment, you will find it. Or, we can say:

Non-doing is the doing for the center.

Non-desiring is the way for the inner center.

Just being, not becoming, is the gaining of it.

But the mind will ask, “What to do?” Even if I say, “Don’t do anything,” the mind will constantly go on asking, “But how? How not to do anything? What to do to achieve this non-doing, this non-action? How is it to be achieved?” And “how” means that something is to be done.

So one secret I will tell you.

All the techniques of meditation, and the one which we will be doing just after the talk – all the techniques are really just toys to play with because the mind goes on asking, “What to do?” So the technique supplies you: Do this. By that doing you are not going to reach the center, but by that doing, suddenly you will be exhausted. Suddenly, totally moving in that doing, the doing will stop. As I said last night, you cannot be angry totally. If you try to be totally in anger, anger will disappear and compassion will arise. You cannot be in hate totally. If you hate totally, at the climax, hate will disappear and love will arise. You can try to be in love totally; the same will happen.

If you do, in no doing can you be total – your being remains out of it. You go on doing a certain thing, your being remains out of it, it can never be total. You walk – can you walk totally? You cannot because at a certain inner point is non-walking; it will never walk. Even if you go on to the moon, it will never go anywhere; it will remain there inside, just sitting there.

That’s why if you love and your love is an act, an action, then your love, too, cannot be total. If you are “doing” love, if you are making love, love cannot be total. Because no action can be total – the being remains out. The love can be total only if you become love. It is not a doing; you are love. You are not making love, your very being is love. That’s why hate cannot be total because your being can never become hate. You can hate someone, but your being can never become hate; your being can become love.

No doing, no action can be total.

Only being can be total.

So I will suggest a method to do, and the trick – I may be allowed to call it a trick – and the trick is this: that if you go totally into it, suddenly a moment will come when all doing will cease, all effort will cease. And you will be thrown back to your center, and there will be no doing, no effort – simple existence, innocent existence, just being. […]

Meditation is not doing something. But you cannot take a jump immediately into non-doing. So I suggest that you make your doing total. Move into it so deeply and so totally that suddenly the doing drops, and you alone are left, just existing.

Just like a tree – of course aware, but just like a tree.

Just like a flower – aware, but just like a flower, existing.

Just like a stream flowing – aware, but just like a stream.

No mind, just you alone, no thoughts.

When there are no thoughts, you cannot move from the center. You move through thoughts. Thoughts are the way toward the periphery, and no-thought is dropping back to the center.

Now I will tell you something about the technique we are going to use.

Four steps. First step, ten minutes fast, chaotic breathing with no system. This is not a yoga exercise . . . chaotic, anarchic. Why? – because if you use any systematic breathing, any rhythm, the mind can control it. Mind can control any system. Mind is the great systematizer, so we are here to break the systems, the system of the mind. So breathe chaotically, like a madman – fast. Take the breath in as much as you can and throw it out – fast, with no rhythm; so that the mind is just shocked. And breathing is a great device to shock the mind.

You must remember that with every emotion breathing changes. And every emotion has its own system of breathing. When you are in love, breathing is relaxed; when you are angry, breathing can never be relaxed. When you hate someone, breathing is different; when you are in compassion, breathing is different. When you are at ease, breathing is so silent that you cannot even feel it; when you are tense, breathing cannot be silent – you can feel it.

This chaotic breathing belongs to no emotion. So simply by doing it you transcend emotions, the mechanism of the mind. And the mind is just thrown off; it cannot continue. Ten minutes of mad, fast breathing.

The second step is a deep catharsis. You have to throw yourself out – the mind has to be thrown out. Laugh – but madly, totally; cry, weep or whatsoever comes to your mind – but madly. Jump, dance, do whatsoever comes to you; and if nothing is coming then too, try something, because mind is a long suppression. So sometimes you feel nothing is coming, start; choose anything – laugh, cry, scream, jump, dance – but do something; don’t just stand there. Do something, and whatsoever you are doing, do it exaggeratedly.

The second step you must throw away your whole civilization, your whole culture. Just be like children with no fear – the fear of the others. Your eyes are to be closed; you have to use a blindfold.

In the third, when all the nonsense that is suppressed is thrown out, when all the madness is thrown out, you have to use a mantra. The mantra is the sound of “hoo, hoo” – meaningless. It is just a sound with no meaning attached to it – just “hoo.” It is not “w-h-o”; it is “h-o-o, h-o-o.” Loudly you have to make it; […] and move in it totally, so that you are exhausted completely.

And in the fourth step, you are not to do anything.

-Osho

From That Art Thou, Discourse #36

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

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Samyak Shravan – Right Listening – Osho

To discipline ourselves in learning is called hearing.

And Buddhists call the first step of learning, of knowing, hearing; right hearing – ‘samyak shravan’. […]

Because the truth happens when you are in the mood of right listening. It has nothing to do with the object of listening; it has everything to do with the quality of listening. But we have forgotten how to listen. Even when we are silent, we are not listening. Even when we pretend to show that yes, we are listening, we are not listening; we are doing a thousand and one things in the mind. Many thoughts are crowding in. Politely we show that yes, we are listening, politely sometimes we nod also – we are listening –but deep inside us is the madhouse. How can you listen?

To listen you will have to drop your thinking. With thoughts, listening is not possible. If you are speaking inside and I am speaking here, how can you listen to me? Because you are closer to yourself than me, your thoughts will be closer to you, they will make a ring around you and they will not allow my thoughts to enter. They will allow only those thoughts which are in tune with them, they will choose and select. They will not allow anything that is strange, unfamiliar, unknown. Then it is not worth listening because you are simply listening to your own thoughts. And it is dangerous because now you will think that you have listened to me. Right listening means to be in a totally receptive, silent mood.

In Zen the disciple sits for many months, sometimes years, before he becomes capable of listening. Whenever anybody came to Buddha he would say, ‘For one year or two years you simply sit here. Nothing else has to be done. You simply learn how to sit.’ People would say, ‘We know already how to sit.’ And Buddha would say, ‘I have never come across a person who knows how to sit, because when I say sit, I mean sit – no turmoil, no movement of thought, totally silent, utterly silent, no movement in the body, no movement in the mind. A pool of energy with no ripples.’

To discipline ourselves in learning is called hearing.

So the whole Buddhist discipline, Zen discipline, starts by right listening.

-Osho

From Dang Dang Doko Dang, Discourse #9

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Is Timing Everything? – Osho

Is it true to say that timing is everything?

No, it is not true to say that timing is everything, because once you start thinking that timing is everything, you will stop seeking, searching. You will simply wait for the spring to come, you will become absolutely unaware of the fact that for enlightenment no season is right or wrong, no climate is right or wrong. Every moment is right; you just have to catch hold of your own being. But it has been said even by Gautam Buddha that timing is needed.

I want you to know that Gautam Buddha is simply trying to console those who cannot gather courage in this moment. He does not want to discourage them by saying, “You will never become enlightened.” He is saying, “You will become enlightened, just wait for the time, for the ripening, for the cause.”

But I say unto you, in spite of Gautam Buddha, that no timing is needed, no causation is needed, because you are already enlightened. It is just that you are afraid to declare it, you are just afraid of what people will say . . . “I am enlightened? People will laugh, they will say, ‘Look at this fellow, he is enlightened.’”

Every day Neelam brings news to me that somebody is creating trouble, walking naked in the ashram because he thinks he has become enlightened. But just walking naked has nothing to do with enlightenment.

One woman was declaring herself a master and one man declaring his enlightenment – and both are cuckoos. So I told Neelam, “It is better to put both the cuckoos together.” The woman has been declaring herself for almost fifteen years. I said, “Neelam, tell the woman that if she is really a master and enlightened, take care of this fellow. He is very new, needs care.” And that fellow is a much bigger cuckoo.

The woman was cured. She said, “I am no more . . . he is too much. I take my words back that I am enlightened or I am a master . . . If this man has to be taken care of, I refuse. I will be simple from now onwards.” And for three, four days she has proved simple. The greater cuckoo managed to make the smaller cuckoo silent. Now Neelam was asking me what to do with the remaining cuckoo. I said, “Simply wait, somebody will be coming who is bigger. Give this one into his charge and tell him, ‘Here is your first disciple.’ There is no other way.”

And then Anando told the enlightened man that, “You either be silent and stop disturbing other people or you will be given to a greater cuckoo.” For at least one and a half days he has been behaving silently, just being afraid, because here there are so many potential cuckoos! I have even told Neelam to make a special office and department where cuckoos meet and discuss their enlightenment.

Enlightenment is not something that you have to shout on the streets, enlightenment is your recognition of your silent inner flame. It will make you saner, not a cuckoo; it will even help create a certain energy field around you which can trigger other people to enlightenment. But you don’t have to be a nuisance. You cannot force anybody to enlightenment. You can kill someone, that is not difficult, but even dead he will remain unenlightened. Enlightenment is not something that can be done from outside.

But from the outside, situations can be created, devices can be created in which suddenly you become aware of your own self. The master himself, his presence, is nothing but a situation; those who are thirsty will draw water from the well. But the thirst has to be authentic; otherwise, people go on standing by the side of the well, thirsty, and their thirst is either intellectual or just a curiosity to know what this enlightenment is. It has to be a tremendously powerful longing in you, a very life and death question – then there is no barrier, then there is no timing.

So even though it goes against Gautam Buddha’s statement, I will not say that you have to wait for tomorrow. Do it now, this is the time!

-Osho

From This. This. A Thousand Times This: The Very Essence of Zen, Discourse #10

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There is No Third Way – Osho

Why did the mind develop in a destructive direction?

Man has lived almost four million years on this planet. In these four million years most of the time there were dark nights without fire, wild animals, danger all around, and every moment full of fear. Out of this fear and danger man has had to create a certain capacity to survive.

You may have observed that man’s child is the weakest child in the world. He needs care for years until it is possible for him to stand on his own. The mother was continuously afraid for the child: in the deep forest – all the wild animals were in search of food just as man was in search of food. That was the basic search for millions of years – food. And even today, for millions of people, that is the basic search.

Mind developed as a survival measure – how to hide yourself, how to find caves, how to make caves? How to live in darkness without being harmed, how to live in trees? It has been a difficult time for millions of years.

And man’s child is so weak against any animal. You cannot fight hence you had to invent weapons as a substitute. You don’t have the claws of a tiger, you need something as a substitute. You don’t have the teeth of the lion or the crocodile; you needed to be inventive enough so that you were not too close. Because even if you had a knife in your hands – which was very difficult, the early knives were made of stone . . . even if you had a knife in your hand and a lion came, most probably you would tremble with fear and the knife would fall down! Just the roar of the lion and you would be frozen; you would not know what to do now.

I have heard . . . a man with his wife and his mother-in-law had gone hunting. Suddenly they heard from a nearby cave the mother-in-law shouting, “Help! Help!” The wife was sitting on a tree, and she saw that a lion was there, so she asked her husband, who was underneath the tree with his gun, “My mother is in trouble – a lion is facing her. Do something!”

The husband said, “The lion got into trouble himself – why should I do anything? Your mother-in-law is enough! She finished me, she will finish the lion. Now it is his problem, not my problem.”

Man had to invent arrows so that he could be far away from the wild animals and still kill them. Slowly, slowly other weapons came. All these weapons came because of the helplessness of man. When he found fire, then he was safer. When he discovered gunpowder, first in China, he became even more safe. Perhaps the Chinese became civilized before anybody else for the simple reason that they finished off the wild animals, and in finishing the wild animals a great fear, a constant fear and danger, disappeared.

But the mind remained, the mind that has been created through millions of years. It is still afraid of darkness, although you know there is no need to be afraid of darkness. But the mind does not know that times have changed; millions of years’ habit still continues. The mind does not know, the mind is blind.

One professor, a vice-chancellor of Varanasi University, Professor Rajnath Pandey, was staying with me, and he was very much against the way I grow trees around my house. I said, “Why are you so much against them?”

He said, “These trees are enemies! If you don’t go on cutting them, if you don’t go on keeping them away, sooner or later your house will be a ruin and the trees will have overtaken it.”

Man has been fighting with trees. We don’t think in that way now, but he was right, he was a man of history. I had never thought of it but he was right, that trees have killed man. We had to destroy trees to create towns, villages, and we had to destroy trees because they were hiding wild animals.

Man has passed through such a struggle for survival that he cannot forget those habits. So even though now we don’t have wild animals to attack, we are preparing nuclear weapons. We don’t have any reason to fight, but we are cultivating more and more arms just out of old animal habit.

Everybody knows that the Third World War is impossible, simply because the Third World War will destroy everybody. Nobody is going to be the winner, and nobody is going to be the loser. All will be finished; the whole planet will be a graveyard.

The whole joy of fighting is in being victorious – but there will be no victory, what is the point? It is absolutely clear. Just now there are only five countries with nuclear weapons, but by the end of this century there will be twenty-five countries with nuclear weapons. One cannot understand . . . for what? Already we have enough nuclear weapons to destroy this earth seven hundred times. […]

There are enough nuclear weapons. But it is out of fear – the mind is still the old mind repeating old fears, dangers – that if you stop making nuclear weapons, the enemy is not going to stop. And the enemy is also thinking in the same terms; every country is thinking in the same terms. So seventy percent of the world’s wealth, production, genius, everything, is devoted to a war which is never going to happen. Just by making it so total, you have made it out of date.

The mind had to develop in a destructive direction just to save itself. But now it is no longer needed. Now the destructive energy has to be transformed into a creative energy. And a mind that can create destructive weapons like atom bombs and hydrogen bombs and destroy cities like Hiroshima and Nagasaki within seconds . . . And today the bombs that were thrown on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are – in comparison to American and Soviet nuclear missiles – child’s play, just toys.

We have gone far in these forty years: we can destroy ourselves within ten minutes. This totality is a great blessing in disguise. This means, now we have to find ways to protect ourselves from our mind’s fear, to protect ourselves from our own weapons. Now there is no enemy to be killed; now the world war, if it happens at all, will be suicide.

We have to save ourselves from our own minds. This mind was created for a certain reason: to save us from the animals. For centuries we were in danger; now we are in danger from our own destructive weapons.

This is a great moment in the history of mankind, and perhaps in the whole history of the universe, because we only suspect that there are some planets where life may exist, but there is no certain proof. It may be that only on this earth has life come to such a point that a few people have become buddhas, a few people have come to know the universal secret of life. To destroy it is so idiotic, is so against the universe!

The only way is to find something within you which can overpower your mind. Otherwise, the mind knows nothing else except destruction; that was the function it was created for. It is not its fault, but it is continuously afraid for no reason at all. Sometimes it knows that there is no reason to be afraid; then it starts asking, “Why is there no reason to be afraid?”

Even a great man like Bertrand Russell wrote a book, Conquest of Nature. The same fear of the mind – we have to conquer. This idea has to be changed. The idea should be that now we have to rejoice in nature, we have to find the mysteries and secrets of nature, and we have to go beyond mind. This artifact is not our nature.

That’s what we are doing in meditation.

Meditation is finding something in you that is superior to the mind. Only then can the mind be prevented from destroying humanity and this beautiful planet. It was perfectly okay to be destructive up to now, but now the situation and the context is totally different.

Somebody asked Albert Einstein, “What do you think about the Third World War?”

He said, “I cannot say anything about the Third World War, but I can say something about the Fourth World War.”

The questioner was puzzled. He said, “If you don’t know about the third, how can you know about the fourth?”

Albert Einstein said, “The fourth will never happen; that much can be said. If we just let the third happen . . . finished.”

Look at the past of the mind: Genghis Khan killed thirty million people, alone. His successor, Tamerlane, killed forty million people. We don’t know the exact numbers for Nadir Shah, but we know about Adolf Hitler; he killed thirty million. And now we are ready to kill five billion human beings, not to say anything about millions of birds, millions of animals, millions of trees – because the Third World War will be an end to all life on this planet. It is not just human beings who will be killed, it is going to be a loss to the whole universe.

Scientists say that there are perhaps five hundred planets where some kind of life exists, but it is all guesswork. No certainty, no communication has been possible up to now. All we know is that in this vast infinity we are the only people alive with a potentiality of becoming eternal, of becoming immortal. In every possible way this earth should be saved – from our minds.

The only way I can see is meditation.

Up to now, mind has been our survival. From now onwards only meditation can be our survival because meditation means going beyond mind, searching for something in your consciousness which is higher than your mind, which can dictate to the mind, which can rearrange the mind. Mind is just a bio-computer; it needs new data, that’s all. Instead of fear it can learn to love; instead of being in danger it can start enjoying the eternity of its life source.

There is no death. Only forms change, life continues on and on.

This is what we are trying to do here. This is what all the buddhas of the past have been doing, but in the past they were not so relevant. Today the situation is different: today either you listen to the Buddha, or you commit suicide. There is no other choice – meditation or suicide, global suicide. That is the simple alternative, there is no third way.

In Gautam Buddha’s time there was not much difficulty – small wars, a few people killed, there was no harm. But now the destructive mind has brought us to a situation where we have to re-code the mind for construction, for creation. And if the mind can be so destructive, it can be transformed in the same way to great creativity, with the same energy. Energy is neutral: you can put it in the service of death or you can put it in the service of life.

Our effort here is to put our minds, our bodies, in the service of life – in creativity, in music, in poetry, in dance. Great is the moment when we can change the mind, feed it with new information. And the same mind that brings nuclear weapons can bring great joys, plenty of food, better clothes, more health, longer life, less disease; it can eliminate old age completely.

And the moment is ripe because nobody who is a little bit intelligent can be in favor of a third world war; only a few retarded politicians – and even they cannot openly say that they are in favor of a third world war. But their preparation continues. That preparation is dangerous, dangerous in many ways, because a third world war may happen accidentally: the weapons have become so sophisticated that just a push of a button . . .

Just a few days ago I was telling you about a Soviet nuclear base which had a map of the whole world in the office showing the distance and the time, how much time it would take for its nuclear weapons to reach to this land or that land. The map also had pushbuttons on it and a janitor, seeing that too much dust had gathered on the board, was dusting it. The professor in charge came in. He said, “You idiot, what are you doing?”

He said, “I am simply dusting, there is too much dust . . .”

He said, “Do you see? Where is England? You have dusted it off!”

He had pushed the button.

But I don’t think we would like to be dusted off in this way. It is now time . . . No greater question has ever been asked, and there has never been such a parting of the ways. Those who want to commit suicide can commit suicide on their own, but they cannot be allowed to destroy the whole world!

Professor Wessling, your question absolutely fits with the Zen series, because Zen is a search for no-mind, or a cosmic mind, beyond the human mind.

Before we enter into our inner being, our every-evening meditation . . . I don’t want Professor Wessling to understand that we are serious people. We are very non-serious. We are absolutely playful; whatever happens we will sing and dance to the very last moment.

On his first trip out of Poland, Kabloski finds himself sitting next to a priest in the plane. He has never seen a priest before, and asks, “Why do you wear your collar back to front?”

“Because I am a father,” replies the priest, smiling.

“Funny,” says Kabloski, “I’m a father too!”

“Ah!” says the priest, “but I am a father to hundreds of people.”

“Really?” says Kabloski, thinking for a moment. “In that case,” he continues, “shouldn’t you wear your pants back to front?”

Little Rufus has been playing in the woods all day. Suddenly, he realizes that he is lost and that it is late. He hunts around for a way out, but finally gives up. Kneeling on the ground, he holds out his hands.

“Please, God,” Rufus prays, “I am lost. Please show me the way out of here.”

Just then a little bird flies overhead and drops a load of shit on his outstretched hands. Little Rufus examines it closely and then goes back to praying.

“Oh! Please, God!” he says. “I really am lost, so don’t hand me that shit!”

“I locked my husband out of the house last week for playing around with other women,” sobs young Mrs. Bedspring in the confession box. “And now he wants me to take him back. What should I do, Father?”

“You must take him back,” replies Father Fungus, patting her hand through the curtain. “It is your Christian duty. But first,” Fungus continues, tightening his grip, “how would you like to get even with the bastard!”

An Englishman, a Frenchman and a Russian Jew are discussing the meaning of true happiness.

“Coming home from work to a loving wife with a gin and tonic,” spouts the Englishman.

“Ah, you English!” says the Frenchman. “Real happiness is meeting a cute little girl who spends the night with you. She entertains you and then leaves you quietly and with no regrets.”

The Russian Jew is sitting, thinking.

“True happiness,” he says, “I experienced a few years ago. In the middle of the night the KGB knocked on my door and shouted: ‘Herman Fingel! You are under arrest!’”

The Englishman and the Frenchman look at him in alarm.

“Yes!” says the Russian Jew, smiling happily. “And I shouted back: ‘Herman Fingel lives upstairs!’”

-Osho

From Tuning In, Chapter One

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 Path is Only a Reminder – Osho

If Zen is the path, and you are the gate, then who lives in the house?

Prem Michael, Zen is the path, and I am the gate, and you live in the house. You have completely forgotten – that’s what makes the possibility of making a path, to remind you. The path is only a reminder. You have completely forgotten that you are in the house. You think you are out of the house; hence a gate is needed to bring you in. […]

Your question is beautiful. “If Zen is the path and you are the gate, then who lives in the house?” You live in the house, but you have forgotten. And to remind you, a path has to be created; to remind you, a gate has to be created. To remind you, you have to be taken on the path and given help to enter the house, which in fact you have never left.

Just an imaginary game – getting out on the path, doing great disciplines, meditations, the master . . . Finally, the gate comes, and you say, “Aha! I have arrived.” And this is the house which you have never left.

-Osho

From Hari Om Tat Sat, Discourse #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.