Tag: Ramakrishna

Then Only You will be Able to Know – Osho

At the time of this samadhi, the moods of the mind take the form of the soul, and therefore they are not apparent.

But after the meditator had come back from his samadhi, those moods which had disappeared, are inferred by memory.

In this world, which is without a beginning, one accumulates millions of karmas conditioning from actions. They are all destroyed in this samadhi, and inner spontaneous qualities grow.

The great knowers of yoga describe this samadhi as dharmamegha, because it showers like a raincloud and inner spontaneity issues forth its thousand fruit.

Through this samadhi the whole crowd of desires become extinct. And when the holds of karma known as punya and papa, virtue and sin are uprooted, then the great saying – “tat twamasi,” That Art Thou – becomes illumined.

First as indirect knowledge and then as a fruit held in your palm, it becomes direct knowledge.

-Adhyatma Upanishad

In the morning we discussed four steps: right listening, right thinking, right meditation, and right samadhi.

This sutra goes beyond samadhi. This sutra says samadhi is the door into the unknown – not only the unknown, but the unknowable. it opens into the eternal, into the infinite.

The moment you enter samadhi you have to leave your mind behind. Your mind cannot enter samadhi; you can enter, but not your mind. Unless you can leave your mind behind, samadhi is not for you. Your luggage – thinking, memories, karmas, all your past lives, the whole luggage which is your mind – has to be left behind. When you have left your mind behind . . . and this is a basic condition: the mind cannot enter samadhi, only you can enter. Why? Because you are at the center; mind is just the periphery.

If you want to enter the center you have to leave the periphery. You cannot go with the periphery to the center. If you insist, “I will take my periphery, my circumference to the center,” then you will remain on the circumference. Howsoever you endeavor, if you cling to the circumference, you can never enter the center. Entering the center means leaving the periphery, leaving the circumference; mind is the circumference – this is a basic condition.

Samadhi means entering into yourself without the mind. But if you enter samadhi without the mind, you cannot feel samadhi – this is the essence of this sutra – you cannot feel, you cannot think. Really you cannot know what is happening, because the knower, the instrument of knowledge, is the mind.

It is as if you enter a garden. Your eyes are weak, and you cannot see without your specs. And this is the condition: you have to leave your specs at the gate. So you enter without specs. You enter the garden, but you cannot see because the very instrument of seeing is not with you.

Mind is the instrument to know, to feel, to recognize. Mind has been left behind. So a man who enters samadhi enters totally ignorant, just like a child. Jesus says, “Be like children; only then you can enter my kingdom of God. Be like small children.” At the door of samadhi everyone is like a child – with no mind – just being, pure and simple and innocent. But then you cannot see what is happening, you cannot feel what is happening. The happening is there and you are too much in it; there is no distance.

Mind creates the distance between the known and the knower. If there is no mind, the known and the knower merge, they become liquid, they enter into each other and the distance cannot be maintained. And without distance, knowledge is impossible.

So in samadhi you know nothing. In samadhi, knowing, the knower, the known . . . they all cease and they become one ocean, just one unity, liquid, flowing. That doesn’t mean that you are unconscious. You are conscious – fully conscious, for the first time – but the consciousness is so much, the consciousness is so unlimited, the consciousness is so infinite that it is impossible to make any differentiation between who is the knower and what is the known. You are immersed in it totally, as if a drop of water has become one with the ocean.

There is a beautiful story, and Ramakrishna used to repeat it many times. He used to say that there was a great gathering near the ocean once – some religious festival, and a great crowd gathered there. Two pundits, two great scholars also came, and they began to discuss whether the ocean is unfathomable or fathomable, whether the ocean can be measured or not. So they discussed around and around – discussions are always around and around, you go on beating around and around the bush. No discussion goes deep and direct, it cannot.

One simple man, just a villager, an innocent one, said, “I have been listening to your discussion, days have passed, and there seems to be no conclusion. And I think – I am an ignorant man – I suggest that unless you go deep into the ocean, how can you decide whether is is fathomable or not? You remain on the bank and you go on discussing; you go on arguing, quoting scriptures, and authorities. But I am asking a simple question: have you been to the ocean?”

Those two scholars said, “Don’t interfere, you don’t know scriptures.” But the poor man said, “I know the ocean. I need not know your scriptures. You are talking about the ocean; what is the need for scriptures to be brought in? I suggest you take a jump, go to the bottom, and then come back and tell us.”

So those two scholars jumped into the ocean, but they never came back.

Ramakrishna says, “They never came back because those two scholars were really men of salt, so as they went in, they began to melt. They were just salt; their bodies were made of salt.”

In a way it is not inconceivable. Our bodies are made of ocean water, they are salty. Your body is seventy-five percent water – seventy-five percent! – and the water is just the same as the water which is found in oceans. The proportion of salt in your bodies is the same as it is in the ocean water, because man is just a developed form of fish and nothing else. So the story is not very absurd.

Man comes from the ocean, and is salty. Those two scholars were men of salt; their bodies were made of salt. They came out of the ocean – everyone has come out of the ocean. Now science says that man has come out of the ocean, just a developed form of fish – nothing else. And who can say whether he is developed or not? If you ask the fish, they could not say that. They would say that some fish have gone astray – out of the ocean. They could not say those fish have developed – there would seem to be no reason. Only in man’s reasoning it seems that man has developed; in a fish’s reason it cannot seem so.

The two scholars never came back; the crowd waited and waited and waited. Ramakrishna used to say, “They cannot come back, because the deeper they went the more they melted, and when they reached the bottom, they were no more. So who can come back and who can say?”

When you leave the mind behind, you leave the bank; you take a jump into the ocean and you are part of the ocean – just the salt. When you enter into samadhi you take a jump into the ocean of consciousness – and you are consciousness. So when consciousness takes a jump into greater consciousness, infinite consciousness, it becomes one, the division is lost; you cannot experience anything. You experience the absolute, but you cannot say it is an experience. You cannot feel it as an experience.

This sutra says, when consciousness comes back to the mind again, and sees retrospectively from the specs of the mind what has happened, then it infers.

So all knowledge about God is inference. Those who have known . . . they too have to think it, to remember it, to live it again in memory, through the mind; then they can say what has happened: existence, consciousness, bliss – sachidananda. This is not the experience itself; it is mind looking at the experience – that’s why the division. There was no division in the experience itself; mind divides it into three.

And remember, mind divides everything into three. Three is the basic division of the mind – it divides anything into three.

Look at the world, all the divisions, and you will find the basic division is always of three – always three; not only in religion, but in science also. Now they say – since the atom was split – now they say the basic unity of the atom is constituted of three elements: electron, neutron, proton. You may call them Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh – trimurti, the three figures.

The basic division by the mind is three. Seen by the mind retrospectively, mind infers what has happened. Existence has happened, consciousness has happened, bliss has happened – but this is an inference.

This sutra says when you come back from that peak of ecstasy, back to the ground, you look again – now you remember. So all the scriptures, all that has been said about the ultimate truth is an inference of the mind, from memory. Remember it.

In samadhi, mind is not there; that’s why you become spontaneous. Mind is the instrument which always destroys spontaneity. Mind always brings the past into the present, and that destroys spontaneity. This part of the sutra has also to be understood before we enter into meditation.

A spontaneous act is never from the mind. A spontaneous act always happens in the present. If it happens through the mind, then the past has come in. I say something to you; you react – the reaction is from the mind. You think about it, you bring your past memories, your knowledge, your experiences, and then you react accordingly. Then this act is not spontaneous; this act is dead; it is not alive. Reaction is dead, never alive; response is alive and spontaneous. I say something to you and you respond – immediately, without bringing the past in, without bringing the mind in – you respond.

For example, if you ask something to a buddha, to an enlightened one, you will get confused. If you ask the same question today and the same tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, you are not going to get the same answer. It is impossible for a buddha. He is not reacting. He is not a parrot; he responds. You ask the question and immediately his consciousness responds – responds to it. It is not a reaction of the mind; it is an encounter, direct, immediate. Every moment you go on asking the same question, but the same answer will not be coming.

Repetition is through the mind. Spontaneous consciousness is always new and fresh.

This sutra says that samadhi brings you back to your center of spontaneity. That spontaneity is known in the upanishadic terminology as dharma. Dharma means your natural, spontaneous being, undistorted by the mind; your natural, spontaneous mirror, undistorted by anything, pure and innocent. Through samadhi you become spontaneous. Really, through samadhi you become religious. Before that, you can belong to a religion, but you are not religious. You can be a Christian, you can be a Hindu or a Mohammedan, but you are not religious.

You belong to a certain organization, a certain church, a certain sect. This belonging is mental. When you enter samadhi for the first time, you come into the world of dharma, of real religion. Now you become spontaneous, you become natural. Nothing is imposed from the mind, you act in totality, moment to moment. Your acts become atomic, always new and fresh and young. Whatsoever you do now is always fresh. This freshness of being is known as dharma. This is what a religious mind is. And unless you become a religious mind in this way, through samadhi, you cannot know what is meant by this mahavakya – tat twamasi – that art thou. When you become spontaneous then you know you are that.

With the ultimate, now you are one.

Now your finite being is not finite.

Now the divine is not far away.

Now you are divine, and the divine is you – the duality is lost. You become for the first time a knower that this sutra of tat twamasi – That Art Thou – is real, authentic. Now you can become a witness, now you can say, “This is so, because I have known it.” And unless you can say, “I have known it,” nothing is worthwhile.

Just a few days ago, a theologian came to me and he began to talk about God. I asked him again and again, “Please tell me, have you known? Have you seen?” But he began to quote The Bible; he began to quote scriptures. And he said, “This is written there, and that is written there.”

I told him, “It may be written; I accept that it is written there, but that’s not my question. I am asking whether you have known it?” But he would not answer the question. He would again repeat, “Jesus has said this in the New Testament.” He opened the book – he had a book of the New Testament in his pocket. He opened the book and he began to read.

I told him again and again, “Don’t read it! I have read it already, so I know what is written in it. Tell me directly, have you seen? Have you realized?” But there was no answer.

If someone asks you, “Have you seen the divine?” and you go on quoting the Upanishads, that’s stupid. Say yes or no – and you cannot deceive, because there is no question of deceiving anyone. Say to yourself whether you have seen it, known it, realized it. If you have not, then start on a long journey – from right listening to right thinking; from right thinking to right meditation; from right meditation to right samadhi. Then only you will be able to know. And unless you know, the whole knowledge of the world is futile – unless you know.

-Osho

From That Art Thou, Discourse #45

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

Then Only You will be Able to Know is from the evening talk, This Oneness is That Art Thou is from the morning talk of the same day.

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.

Meditation is Objectless – Osho

By meditating upon the lord Parameshwar, consorted by mother Uma, the highest lord, the all-powerful, the three-eyed, and the ever silent, the meditator reaches Him who is the source of all manifestation, the witness of all, and who is beyond ignorance.

-Kaivalya Upanishad

Meditation is object-less. If you use any object, then it is not meditation; it becomes thinking. It becomes contemplation; it becomes reflection, but not meditation.

This is the most essential point to be understood. This is the essence of a meditative state: that it is object-less. Only consciousness is there, but not conscious about anything.

Consciousness without being conscious of anything – this is the nature of meditation. But this may create a very depressed mood; this may create pessimism in the mind. It is so difficult to throw even a single thought out of the mind – how can one conceive of being totally thoughtless? It is so difficult to get rid of one object of the mind, that it is inconceivable how to be totally object-less; how to be just a mirror, how to be just conscious without being conscious of anything.

We are never conscious without being conscious of anything – something is always there. And there are some psychologists, some schools of psychology, who say that it is impossible to be conscious without any object. Consciousness to them means consciousness of something. Something must be there; otherwise, we will go to sleep; otherwise, we will become unconscious. But yoga says that ordinarily this is right: as far as the ordinary mind is concerned, if there is no object the mind will go down into sleep, slip down into unconsciousness.

We also are aware of it. If you are thinking something in the night, then sleep becomes impossible, because if some object is present in the mind then you cannot drop into sleep, into unconsciousness. So if you are thinking, then you cannot go to sleep; you go to sleep only when thinking has ceased. When thinking has ceased but there is no sleep, only then will you understand what is meant by meditation – but we never know any moment like that. When thoughts cease, thinking ceases, sleep takes over. You are not even aware when sleep has come; you become unconscious.

This is what hypnosis uses as a technique. Hypnosis – any method of hypnotism, any method – uses only this technique: to fix the mind somewhere on one object so intensely that the mind becomes bored of one object. This is the tendency of the mind – mind needs novelty; something new every moment, then it feels alert. If you are in a situation where you have to be aware of only one thing repeatedly then the mind feels bored, and boredom becomes the gate to sleep. So hypnotism uses it. It will give you any object to concentrate on, to concentrate your total consciousness on; then you will feel bored, by and by sleepy, and then sleep will take over. The very word hypnosis means induced sleep. So sleep can be induced if mind is devoid of thoughts.

But yoga says that this is right as far as the ordinary mind is concerned, but this is not right for a meditative mind. Through meditation, mind takes on a new quality, and it becomes possible to be conscious without thoughts. But it is difficult, and to take the jump is arduous.

In Zen there are two schools: one is known as the sudden enlightenment school, and another as the gradual enlightenment school. The sudden school says that any enlightenment is sudden. You have to take a jump from thought to no-thought, from ignorance to knowledge, from sleep to enlightenment. You have to take a sudden jump. But there are very few followers of the sudden school; there cannot be, because it is inconceivable.

There is another school which is known as the gradual enlightenment school. There are many, many followers of it, because the moment one says “gradual,” we are at ease – now we can do something. And in steps, gradually, in degrees we can proceed. In a sudden phenomenon there is no time, so you cannot postpone – you cannot say tomorrow. If the phenomenon can happen suddenly, this very moment, then your mind cannot excuse itself; there is no basis to postpone it. With a gradual school you can say, “Okay, we will try in this life, and if not in this life, then in another life. Gradually we will reach the peak. One step, second step – by steps we will reach to the ultimate.” Then you have to divide.

But this Upanishad belongs to neither. This is neither sudden nor gradual. This Upanishad takes a middle way. It says: It is difficult to take a sudden jump, and it is tedious and long to think in terms of degrees. Then you can go on thinking in infinite degrees. So this Upanishad says: Only one step is enough – neither sudden nor gradual. Only one step – only one step in between. To be object-less, to be thought-less and conscious is the goal. Only take one step: from many thoughts to one thought, and from one thought to no-thought. This one thought is suggested in this sutra.

This sutra says:

By meditating upon the lord Parameshwar, consorted by mother Uma, the highest lord, the all-powerful, the three-eyed, and the ever silent, the meditator reaches Him who is the source of all manifestation, the witness of all, and who is beyond ignorance.

From the world to the ultimate, take any image of God as a single step. This will look strange because we think of God as the ultimate. But the Upanishads never think of God as the ultimate. They say,

“God is a step towards the ultimate.” And they always use for the ultimate the term brahman, the absolute. God, Ishwara, Parameshwara, is just a step towards the ultimate. God is not the ultimate end. God is just to be used as a technical help for the jump into the ultimate abyss.

Use God as a jumping board from the worldly mind to the ultimate abyss.

This image of God used as a technical help is very typical and strange, because ordinarily the religious mind feels that God is to be achieved. But yoga says, “God is also just a technical help.” That’s why there are systems of yoga which are godless – for example even Buddha’s system. Buddha never talks about God – he discarded God. He created other steps; he discarded God. Mahavira never, never uses the word “God.” He discarded it – he used other techniques as jumping boards. But the ultimate remains the same: Hindus call it brahman, Buddhists call it nirvana, Jainas call it kaivalya. The ultimate remains the same: God is used as a technical help. Any imagery, any symbolism can be used. But it must be such a symbol that when you have used it, you are capable of discarding it.

Buddha has told a parable. He says:

Some villagers crossed a stream by boat. But then they thought, “This boat has helped us so much; otherwise, to cross the stream was impossible. So we must not discard this boat.” Then they carried the boat on their heads into the town.

Then the whole village gathered and everyone began to ask, “What is the matter? Have you come to sell this boat in the town? or why are you carrying it? The boat seems so old – just a ruin. Who will purchase it? And we have never seen anyone carrying a boat on the head. Why are you carrying it?”

So they said, “This boat is not ordinary; this has helped us to cross the stream. Without this, it would have been impossible to come to this village, so we cannot be ungrateful to it. Now we will have to carry it.”

Buddha always used this parable, and he said, “Every technique, every symbol, every ritual is just a vehicle. The moment you have crossed the stream, discard it. Don’t go on carrying it; otherwise, you will be just stupid.”

We can understand that those villagers were stupid, foolish. But as far as religious vehicles, techniques, boats are concerned, everyone carries them continuously. If I give you a name “Rama” as a japa, as a repetitive method for your meditation, then one day it is bound to happen that you will come to me and say, “Now I feel very blissful with this mantra. Now I am more at peace, more relaxed. Now I am more fresh, now I am less disturbed, now I am less tense. So now what more to do?”

And if I tell you to drop this name now that you have crossed the stream . . . now that you have come to the other shore, now drop this name also, then you will feel disturbed. I have advised many, and when I say to them, “Drop this,” they say, “What are you telling us? How can we drop this? It is inconceivable. We cannot do this. And this seems profane – how can we? This is a very holy name, and this has helped us so much that we cannot discard it.”

No ordinary person – even a Ramakrishna . . . Ramakrishna used the name of Mother Kali as a mantra continually, for years. He achieved much through it, but not the ultimate. He became silent, he became purified, he became holy; he became everything that we can conceive of a religious man. He became totally a religious man – but still a discontent within, still a desire, the desire for the ultimate. He had not reached the end.

Then he met a Vedanta teacher, Totapuri. And he said to Totapuri, “I have reached a very deep silence but still something is missing; I feel it, something is missing. So what to do now?” So Totapuri said, “Now drop the name of Mother Kali. Drop it – you are carrying the vessel; you are carrying the boat. You have crossed the river; now don’t carry this boat.” Ramakrishna was absolutely disturbed. He said, “What are you telling me? – A person like you, a renowned teacher – what are you telling me? To drop the name of Mother Kali? This is simply irreligious, unholy! What are you telling me? Don’t tell me such things!” He began to perspire; he began to tremble – a person like Ramakrishna.

Totapuri laughed and he said, “I knew this. You will feel much disturbed, your whole base has to be destroyed. You have made it a foundation; hitherto this has been your base. Now this has to be destroyed; otherwise, you cannot go further.”

For three days Ramakrishna wept, because he had heard such irreligious words. He couldn’t speak to anyone; he just closed his door, wept; cried, “Mother! Mother!” and wept. And Totapuri would come and knock at the door, and would say, “Ramakrishna, come to your senses. Drop this name.”

After three days, fasting, weeping, Ramakrishna came out, and he said, “If you say, I will do it. But first let me go to the Mother and ask her permission. I cannot do it would her permission.” This is how a boat can become so meaningful . . . and don’t laugh at it; even if you are in the state of Ramakrishna, this will happen.

Ramakrishna went to ask the Mother – of course permission was given, because deep down Ramakrishna himself felt that now this name is the only obstacle. If it drops, consciousness will be totally pure; there will be no disturbance. But he couldn’t utter it, he couldn’t say it. He went to Mother – there was no one; this was his own deep-down unconscious which gave the permission. He asked the Mother . . . If one goes in a very devoted way, continuously, to feel in an image the divine presence, one’s own deep unconscious becomes projected. And even from the image, things can come which are just being put there by oneself. It was his own unconscious; it was his own deep existence which responded. So permission was given. He came back, of course, weeping, because the conscious was still clinging, clinging to the name. His own unconscious was ready. He was totally purified, and this last step was to be taken – had to be taken, it was a must!

So the unconscious allowed him, but the conscious began to feel guilty again. He came back. Totapuri said, “Don’t feel any guilt. When the Mother herself has allowed, now you drop it.” So Ramakrishna sat before Totapuri, closed his eyes, went into deep meditation. Tears were flowing. Hours pass and Totapuri goes on saying, “Now drop it! Don’t continue!” And Ramakrishna is continuing. Tears are flowing; he is weeping and trembling. He cannot stop.

He opens his eyes and says, “It seems impossible. I cannot stop. It seems it is absolutely impossible to stop! How can I myself drop the name? It is my heart of hearts. How can I drop it? This is just . . . it seems suicidal, as if I am killing myself. I cannot.” And poor Totapuri insists, “Try again, try again.”

Then Totapuri says, “This is the last, and I will not remain here for a single moment longer. I am not going to remain here; I will leave this place. So try again, only one.” And he brought a piece of glass, and he said, “When you are meditating and when I feel that the image of Kali has come into your consciousness as an object, I will cut your forehead on the third eye spot with this piece of glass. And when I cut your forehead, you cut the image inside.”

Ramakrishna said, “But how can I cut it? And with what? How can I cut it and with what? There is no weapon!”

Totapuri said, “If you can create an image, so alive, by imagination, why can you not create a sword? You have created the image of Kali so loving, so radiant, so alive, so why not create a sword? You are so capable a man – imagine a sword and then cut it! Otherwise, I am going to leave and you will not find me again.”

And Totapuri was a a rare man; to miss that man was to miss for lives. And Ramakrishna knew this, that this was the only man who could help; otherwise, one would have to wait, for lives even. And one is not certain that even after waiting for many lives, a man like Totapuri will be there. So Totapuri stood, and he said, “Now I’ll leave. You try.”

Ramakrishna closed his eyes – he was weeping, he was crying, screaming; and then Totapuri cut his head. And in a single stroke, Ramakrishna dared – this is the most daring thing – he dared: he cut the image within. The image broke into two. Tears stopped, crying stopped. And Ramakrishna began to laugh and Ramakrishna began to dance. And Totapuri said, “Now I am leaving. Just tell me in one sentence what has happened.”

So Ramakrishna opened his eyes and said, “The last barrier has dropped.” And Totapuri disappeared.

Ramakrishna tried and tried for many years to find the man again, to give him thanks, but Totapuri was not found again.

So don’t laugh. This middle step can become a barrier, or it can become a jumping board – it depends on you. Use any image, but remember continuously that this is just a technical help.

Remember continuously that this has to be dropped. If you can remember it, then you can use any method, any technique, any image, any help. It is artificial, but for our minds – which cannot take a sudden jump – it helps.

-Osho

From That Art Thou, Discourse #24

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 World Needs Masters – Osho

Can you explain the fine line between our trust in you and the saying, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him”?

There is no fine line. Unless you trust, you don’t have a Buddha, you don’t have a master.

Buddha has made the statement: “If you meet me on the way, kill me.” It is not said to those who don’t trust him, who don’t love him, who have not merged their identity with his being. Once you are in deep trust with a master, there is a danger that you may become so blissful with the merger of your identity with the master that you may not like to become enlightened on your own; hence, the statement.

The statement is saying that you are feeling so blissful, just being in tune with an awakened being, you don’t know how much more bliss is possible if you yourself become awakened. But to become awakened you will have to drop this identity. You will have to forget even the master. It is something about the inner journey. When a person is moving in meditation on the inner journey, the last thing is the master. It is easy to drop other ideas, other feelings; it is easy to drop greed, anger. But finally you come to a point when you have to drop the master too. That is the last barrier.

It is just in your mind. You have loved the man so much, your love has made it so difficult, that you would prefer to remain unenlightened than to drop the master. And a real master will say, “Drop me, so that you can also become a master in your own right.”

It happened in Ramakrishna’s life – and Ramakrishna was alive just in the last part of the preceding century, so he is not very far away, he is very close to us. He was a great devotee of the mother goddess, Kali. And it was not a formality, it was not just like going every Sunday to the church. He was the priest of the temple of Kali, but his behavior was strange. Sometimes he would worship, sometimes he would not open the doors of the temple at all. Sometimes he would worship the whole day, from morning to evening, till he fell down unconscious from dancing.

Rani Rasmani had made the temple near the Ganges in Calcutta – a beautiful temple and a very scenic place. But Rani Rasmani, although she was a queen of a small kingdom, belonged to the fourth caste of the Hindus, the untouchables. So no brahmin was ready to become a priest in the temple of an untouchable. For years there was no priest. Rasmani was very much in trouble. She looked all over Bengal; she was ready to give any salary the priest wanted, but no brahmin was ready to worship in a temple of a sudra, an untouchable.

But when Ramakrishna was approached, he said, “I will come.” Even Rasmani was a little puzzled: the man seems to be a little mad, because no brahmin was ready to come. Ramakrishna said, “Whether the temple is made by an untouchable or by a brahmin, the highest caste, the mother Kali is the same; it doesn’t matter. I am coming, and whatever salary you feel is right, must be right. I don’t know much about money – you are a queen; your decision will be far better.” When she heard that sometimes he dances, sings songs the whole day, and sometimes he does not even open the door, Rani Rasmani called him and said, “This is not right.”

He said, “Nobody can say to me what is right and what is wrong: it is a love affair. Only I know and my mother Kali knows. Sometimes I get angry at her when she does not behave. I have been for three days dancing, and she has not even given a little vision to me? Now let her be punished! I am not going to open the doors, and I am not going to offer the food.”

Rasmani said, “You are strange! You are supposed to be a priest – you have to do the ritual.” He said, “I am not a priest, and I am not supposed to do any ritual. I love! I love the Kali in my village. I will continue; if you are worried you can stop my salary… because when I prepare food for Kali, first I taste it, then I offer it to her. So that’s enough, I don’t need much – I can just taste a little more!”

This was unimaginable. In India you cannot taste anything and then offer it to God, or to a goddess. Rasmani said, “This is too much!”

He said, “No. My mother used to do the same. She would taste everything before she gave it to me. Was it worth giving or not? Has the taste come out right or not? I cannot offer anything to my mother without tasting it.”

This man, Ramakrishna, was really in love with that statue. Nobody was there, but his love was real. The goddess was unreal, but his love was not unreal.

One wandering mystic came to the temple and said to Ramakrishna, “You have not yet attained to the ultimate consciousness, and I can see you are capable of it. You are very close to it. Only one thing is blocking the way: this mother goddess, Kali. You love her too much. She does not exist, but your love certainly exists. And you have created a great image of her. You have dropped everything else from your mind, you are ready to reach to ultimate samadhi, ultimate ecstasy, but you will have to cut off the head of Kali.”

Ramakrishna said, “That is a little hard. Killing one’s own mother? – what are you saying? I would rather remain unenlightened. And anyway, the moment I close my eyes I see her; she is so beautiful and so alive, I cannot do this.”

But the mystic insisted. He said, “I have never come across a man who is so close – just one step!”

Ramakrishna was a simple man. He said, “Then you will have to help me, because when I close my eyes, I will not remember you. And Kali is standing before me, so gorgeous, so beautiful! And it is such an immense bliss to see her, I completely forget.”

Many times, he tried. He would close his eyes, and soon he was swaying, as if from an inner dance. And the mystic would say, “Wake up! Don’t forget what I have said.” Ramakrishna would open his eyes and say, “But this seems to be impossible.” Then the mystic found a way. He brought a piece of glass, really sharp, like a knife, and he said, “I will do one thing: I will just cut your forehead with this piece of glass. It will be painful, but it will remind you. The same way, you cut the mother Kali.”

Ramakrishna said, “Let us try.”

The mystic cut Ramakrishna’s forehead and the mark remained all his life. Blood started flowing, the pain was intense, and he remembered: with great courage, he cut the image of Kali in two parts – it was just in his imagination – and Kali fell in two parts. And he went into transcendental ecstasy. It took six days to wake him up, he was so deep in ecstasy. And the mystic said, “Don’t disturb him.”

After six days he was awakened, and his first words were, “The last barrier has fallen! I am grateful to you,” he said to the mystic. “If you had not insisted, I would have remained happy, but now I know what bliss is. It is a millionfold more.”

That is the meaning of Gautam Buddha’s saying. It is not for all, because you don’t have that love.

When you go inside you will not find Gautam Buddha. You may find all kinds of idiots there: the attorney general of Oregon, Governor Atiyeh, Ronald Reagan – anybody.

The statement is not for you. The statement is for those who had loved Buddha so much that Buddha knew that they could drop everything else, but they could not drop him. So he had to say, “When you meet me on the way” – that way is the inner way – “just chop my head off, so that you can become an enlightened person on your own.” And that is the joy of a master, to see his disciple also becoming a master.

This is the meaning when I say that this commune is a mystery school. The effort is to have everyone become a master; just disciplehood won’t do. I want you all to be masters. The world needs masters. Only a great energy of masters around the world can prevent the catastrophe of a third world war, which is looming on the horizon.

So it is not only a question of your enlightenment. It is also a question of the life or death of this whole planet.

-Osho

From From Bondage to Freedom, Discourse #26

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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

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The Three Entanglements – Osho

I loved the introduction about the psychological universe that you gave me yesterday. And yet I would like to repeat the question. You say that you were studying us in order to find out which are the difficulties that the seeker finds on the path towards realization of the Self, towards his own awakening. Now you have been studying us for fifteen years, and I would like you to give us some hints on what you find in your living experiment. Or, in other words, what are the patterns the seeker gets most entangled in, and what is the function of the master in that?

There are patterns the seeker gets entangled with.

The first thing is: most of the seekers are lost in an illusory feeling that they have arrived. It is a kind of dream in which you feel you are awake. You are still dreaming – your feeling of being awake is part of the dream.

The same kind of thing happens to the seeker. The mind is capable of creating the illusion that now there is nowhere to go, you have arrived. The mind is a deceiver, and the function of the master in this condition is to make you alert that this is not the reality but only a dream; you have not arrived.

This can happen at many points, again and again. And one can get very irritated and annoyed with the master for the simple reason that whenever you feel you have got it, he simply takes it away and puts you back into your ignorant state.

For example, it was happening to a German sannyasin continuously. Whenever he was in Germany he was living in a beautiful castle of his own – he was very rich – meditating; and then he would get the feeling that he had become enlightened. And the force of the illusion was so much that he could not keep it to himself, he would tell others. Not only would he tell other fellow sannyasins, he started writing letters to the presidents, prime ministers, kings, queens around the world: “I have become enlightened, and if you want any advice on any matters that concern the future of humanity in the world, I can help you.”

He was so certain. This happened three times, and because of his certainty he came to India to get my blessings. Naturally, it shows his certainty that he came for my blessings. One can think that the first time perhaps he was not aware that I would destroy his illusion, but the second time, he came again after two years; and a third time, after two years again he came.

Each time I had to tell him, “You are just being deceived by your own mind. Nothing has happened to you, you are simply the old man – the new man has not arrived. And all that you are doing – writing letters to the U.N., to other governments – are just ways of the ego. And you are in the grip of the ego.”

Close to me, he understood. Three times he became enlightened and I had to make him unenlightened. Now, that is not a good job. The fourth time he never came back; perhaps he is afraid I will make him again unenlightened. Now he remains in his castle and remains enlightened!

It is very easy to live in a beautiful dream. It is hard to see your dreams shattered by reality. In the ancient scriptures of the East it is called the power of maya. Mind has the hypnotic power to create any illusion. If you are after a certain thing, desperately, it is one of the functions of the mind to create the illusion to stop your desperateness. It happens every day to everybody in their dreams, but people don’t learn things.

In the night you go to bed hungry. In the night you are going to have a dream about eating delicious food. The mind is trying to help you so that your sleep is not disturbed; otherwise you are hungry and you are bound to be awakened by your hunger. The mind gives you a dream that you are eating delicious food of your choice, which satisfies your mind. The hunger remains but sleep is not disturbed, The hunger is covered by the illusion of the dream; it is a protection of your sleep.

You feel in sleep that your bladder is full. If the mind does not create the dream that you have gone to the toilet, come back and gone to sleep again, then your sleep will be disturbed – and sleep is a great necessity for the body. The mind is taking care that it is not disturbed again and again; you can have a long sleep, rest, so in the morning you are rejuvenated.

This is the ordinary function of the mind; on a higher plane the same thing happens. It is an ordinary sleep, an ordinary awakening that mind prevents. On the path, it is an extraordinary sleep and an extraordinary awakening. But the mind is programmed – it is just a mechanical thing. It simply does its work without bothering, because it has no way of checking whether it is ordinary sleep or spiritual sleep, ordinary awakening or spiritual awakening.

To the mind it is all the same. Its function is to keep your sleep intact and create a barrier for anything that disturbs your sleep. If you are hungry it gives you food; if you are desperately in search of truth, it gives you truth, it gives you enlightenment. You ask for anything, and it is ready to give it to you.

It can create the illusion of the real thing – that’s its intrinsic power.

Western psychology has not yet been aware of the dream’s actual function, what function it has. Sigmund Freud thinks that its only function is to bring up your repressed desires and allow them a certain illusory reality so that you don’t go insane. The dream is an outlet so the steam that you go on repressing is released. That seems to be the whole understanding of Western psychology about dreams – that it is an outlet. While you are asleep, your dreaming helps you to get rid of many aberrations.

You had seen a beautiful woman while you were awake, but you had to maintain your civilization, the civil code, manners, morality, religion, respectability, and you behaved that way. You could not behave like an animal. That’s actually what you would have liked to do, but all these barriers prevent you.

In the dream you have the freedom to be an animal again, with all the freedom of an animal. You can do whatsoever you want to do with the woman. Nobody is preventing you – no priest, no policeman. Nobody is ever going to know what you did in your dream. Even you yourself will forget in the morning what you did in your dream.

But this is not the only function, this is a very small function of dreaming. In fact Western psychology has not divided mind’s different stages the way the East has done. In Eastern psychology the most superficial state is the waking state – very thin, very artificial. It is a social by-product.

You cannot live alone, you have to live with the society; you have to follow the rules of the game. This thin layer is created by the priests, by the parents, by the pedagogues, and by all kinds of influences on you. And you are given tremendous respect for it, you are rewarded for it.

The second layer is dreaming, which is far truer, far more natural – out of reach of the crowd, society, education, morality, religion. You are more authentic, you are not a hypocrite in your dreaming. The third stage is sleep mixed with dreams. That is even deeper. A few dreams float in it, and these dreams are far more important than the dreams of the second stage because the second-stage dreams are more or less reactions of your waking state. Whatever you have repressed creates them.

The third stage of sleep with dreams… these dreams have nothing to do with your waking state. These are more like visions. And if you can remember them, they can be of tremendous help for you for your spiritual growth. They show you the direction where to go, where the right way is.

These dreams should not be called dreams, and they are not called dreams in the East; they are called visions. And they can happen only when you have reached the sleep of the third strata of your mind. You are far away from your waking world, miles away. The waking world has no effect on it.

These visions are caused by the fourth stage – which is dreamless sleep. This is the fourth stage, when dreams disappear completely – no visions, no dreams; you are simply asleep. This is the deepest in your being. You are at the very bottom of your mind.

Patanjali, one of the most authentic seekers of the mind, and one of the oldest, ancient most people, in many ways very rare…. For example, there are very few people who have created a whole system alone.

Yoga is the creation of one single man, Patanjali – the whole system. And he created it to such a perfection that for five thousand years nothing has been added to it, nothing has been taken out of it. He has exhausted the whole field. It is very rare; it takes centuries for any science to become complete, and many people have to contribute to it.

There are only two cases: One is Patanjali who created a whole science of Yoga; and the other is Aristotle, who created the whole science of logic. And for two thousand years there has been no change, no improvement. But just in this century, Aristotle has lost his ground. Non-Aristotelian logic has come into being – which is absolutely against Aristotle. But Patanjali stands like a peak of the Himalayas – still unchallenged, still perfect and complete.

Patanjali says that the deep sleep, dreamless sleep, is exactly the same as samadhi, superconsciousness, the ultimate experience of being. It is the same; the only difference is you are not aware of it. Dreamless sleep plus awareness is equal to enlightenment.

One has to start with the first layer of waking, and make it alert. It is a very thin layer, very superficial, but it can be used as a preface for greater things to happen. Meditation begins with wakefulness.

You start becoming aware of the moments when you are awake.

Walking, eating, doing your work – anything – you have to make it a point that it is done in awareness, that it is not done like a robot, not mechanically. Even breathing has to be joined with awareness, so you know when the breath is going in and you know when the breath is going out.

The smallest things you have to try – even the blinking of the eyes. The smaller the thing you try, the better, because those are the things which one ignores, and those are the things which will give you a deeper penetration into the thin layer of wakefulness.

Buddha has said that the meditator has to walk keeping his eyes only four feet away, looking at the ground, not looking all around everywhere, reading the posters on the walls, looking at people and what they are doing. He has to keep his eyes focused four feet ahead, and remain alert that he does not move from that posture.

And while he is looking four feet ahead, he has to be continuously aware of each step that he is taking. He has to walk very slowly. He has to remember the breathing, that it is going in, coming out. He has to remember the blinking of the eyes. He has to be aware of each small thing that is happening.

Being awake plus awareness will lead you to the second step: you can dream with awareness – and that is a tremendous experience. Then dreaming cannot deceive you; you are alert. If you are hungry, you know you are hungry, and you know the dream is trying in every way to provide delicious food, but it is just dream-food, it is not the reality. You can see both the hunger and the food. You know the hunger is true and the food is false.

As you become more and more aware of subtle nuances of dreaming, a great surprise is waiting for you. Dreams become less and less because they don’t need awareness. They are very shy; they don’t want to face awareness. They come only in the shadows of sleep.

But if you are alert, then naturally they stop coming. And when dreams stop coming you fall suddenly into the third state, which is sleep with visions. And there is a clear-cut distinction between dreams and visions.

Dreams disappear when you are aware, visions become more clear and solid when you are aware; they are not shy. They are part of reality, they are predictions, they may be glimpses of your future. Dreams belong to the past, visions belong to the future. They are opening doors of the unknown.

And if you can see clearly, your path is made very simple. So they are of a great help.

But remember the distinction, that awareness makes them very solid, real; they don’t disappear, they become perfectly clear. And soon you start discovering that what you have seen in your visions comes to be true in life.

Dreams are simply repressed parts of life.

They are intuitive, and once you have become aware that you have seen them before…. For example, in the vision you see a man that you have never seen, and the next morning you open your door and the man is standing there. The vision has prepared you for something. The man is no ordinary man, there must be something significant. He is a guest to be honored and respected.

Your intuition has made you already aware of it, that he is carrying a treasure for you. Something is going to happen with this man, something is going to transpire between him and you.

In fact, most of the people find their master through visions. Thinking is of not any help. What can you think about a master?

And the people who go to a master through thinking always go to a wrong person, because thinking is a by-product of the society.

You are born in a Hindu family or a Christian family or a Buddhist family – those families have given you a certain idea of what a saint is. Your thinking cannot go beyond it, and if you go through thinking to find a master, you will end up with somebody who is trying to be a saint according to the expectations of the society. He is not really a saint; he is just rehearsing a part that he wants to play in life.

Only through visions do you come across beings who are not according to your expectations. In fact, they have nothing to do with your mind. It is through the tremendous sensitivity of your intuition that you start seeing something of the future. It is through the height of your awareness that what is future for others becomes present for you.

For example, it is like this: A man is standing by the side of a tree, and he looks at the road – the road is empty. He looks behind him, at the road that he has traveled – it is empty. He looks ahead to the future, the road that he is going to travel – it is empty. But at exactly that same moment, another man is sitting in the tree. He has a bigger perspective, he can see more of the road.

He sees a horseman coming closer to the tree. That horseman is present to him, but that horseman is future to the man who is standing by the side of the tree. So what is future to one man can be present to another: it depends on his height, on his perspective, on his alertness.

It is a known fact that thousands of saints down the ages have predicted their death – the exact time, days before, sometimes months before – because in the old days their disciples were miles away; they had to be informed that the master is going to leave the body. They have to come because the master cannot leave the body without saying goodbye to them, or maybe there is a last message.

So disciples from faraway places will start traveling – it will take time but they will all reach and the master will die exactly at the time he has declared. It is part of the vision – he knows when death is going to happen. To him it is already present; to his disciples it is future – maybe three weeks, maybe four weeks. He has seen it already.

So the vision is a tremendous help to the seeker – where to go? With whom to go? Whom to trust? It is not a question of the mind deciding. The deepest part of your consciousness has already decided, and there is no question of doubt about it.

I am reminded of a Sufi story. A king was told by his prime minister, “In your whole kingdom there is only one beggar, and it is within your powers – you can easily make that beggar a rich man. And that is the only blemish on your kingdom. Your kingdom can be free of beggars, it is already free – there is only one beggar.”

The king said, “I know it. I have tried, but my visions are not in agreement with my mind. That man will remain a beggar; whatever we do is going to be futile.”

The prime minister was a man of intelligence, intellect – he said, “I don’t believe… why should he remain a beggar? If we give him some money, a good house to live in, he will not be a beggar.”

The king said, “Wait for tomorrow morning. Let me check.”

The prime minister said, “With whom are you going to check? I am the person, your adviser – you have to check with me. About whom are you talking?”

The king laughed. He said, “You may not understand. I always have to check my visions, because I have noticed that when my vision has said, ‘Don’t go to war,’ if I went, I was defeated, even though I was mightier than the enemy. And there were times when the enemy was mightier and I was weaker, but my vision said, ‘Go ahead,’ and I was victorious. So it is there that I have to check: what my vision says about this beggar.

“And this is my method that I go to sleep thinking about a certain thing, for example this beggar. I will fall asleep thinking about this beggar. Slowly, slowly it settles to the point where visions happen.”

And the next morning the king said, “It is not possible, but I will give it a try, just to show you that it is not possible.” The beggar used to pass along a bridge. Just in front of the palace there was a river, and he used to pass over the bridge and sit on the other corner of it to beg the whole day.

The king, in disguise, and the prime minister, in disguise went on to the bridge early in the morning when the beggar used to come, with a big pot full of gold coins – enough for the beggar to live his whole life luxuriously. There was nobody on the bridge – it was too early in the morning and it was too cold.

The king put the pot with the gold coins in the middle of the bridge, and they both went away to the other corner to see what happened.

The beggar was coming. He was not blind, and on the whole bridge there was nothing except the pot, but the prime minister was surprised that the beggar was coming with closed eyes. He passed the pot full of gold coins with closed eyes, groping his way.

When he reached close to the king and the prime minister, they asked him, “What is the matter? You are not blind, and you have never done this before. Why are you walking with closed eyes?”

The beggar said, “Just as I got onto the bridge the idea occurred to me: what if I go blind, then how would I manage to walk along the bridge? So I closed my eyes and tried to walk along the bridge as a blind man. And you should be happy that I managed it.”

The king turned to the prime minister: “What do you say? I had seen this whole scene in my vision – that the beggar will pass the pot with closed eyes, and he will have a reason, he will give an argument. It happens to everybody, once in a while, to want to walk with closed eyes to see how it feels – but exactly on that day?”

Once you have become aware of the reality of your visions, you are safe from your dreams, from your mind. And you are in a state where trust is possible. Not that you have to do anything, just your visions will make you trust.

The real masters are found through visions.

And then you can give yourself up totally into the hands of the master. Below this stage, if you go on with awareness, visions will not be happening every day. Once in a while, only when something is very important that existence wants you to be alert about…. It is your connection with life, with existence, with the cosmos.

So visions will happen only once in a while – not an everyday affair – but whenever they happen they are going to materialize in reality soon. You have been warned beforehand.

If you remain aware you will reach the fourth stage – dreamless sleep. The word of Patanjali is sushupti – dreamless sleep. And he says sushupti and samadhi, dreamless sleep and the ultimate awakening, are exactly the same. The only difference is of awareness.

If you can go with awareness into dreamless sleep, it explodes. There is an explosion of light, suddenly you are full of light. Your whole mind – dreams, sleep, everything is gone. There is only pure awareness.

On the way, the disciple can first be misled when he is trying awareness in the waking mind. If you just put a watch with a second hand in front of you and keep your eyes on the second hand, you will be surprised: you cannot continue to remember even for one minute completely. Perhaps fifteen seconds, twenty seconds, at the most thirty seconds, and you will forget. You will get lost in some other idea – and then suddenly you will remember that you were trying to remember.

Even to keep awareness continuous for one minute is difficult, so one has to be aware that it is not child’s play. So when you are trying to be aware of the small things of life, you have to remember that many times you will forget. You will go far away into something else. The moment you remember, don’t feel guilty – that is one of the traps.

If you start feeling guilty, then you cannot come back to the awareness that you were practicing. There is no need to feel guilty, it is natural. Don’t feel repentance. It is simple, and it happens to every seeker. Accept it as natural; otherwise you will be caught in repentance, in the guilt that you cannot remember even for a few moments and you go on forgetting.

Mahavira is the first man in history who has actually worked out that if a man can remember, be aware, for forty-eight minutes continuously, that’s enough – he will become enlightened, nobody can prevent him. Just forty-eight minutes… but it is difficult even for forty-eight seconds – so many distractions.

No guilt, no repentance – the moment you remember that you have forgotten what you were doing, simply come back; simply come back and start working again.

My emphasis is, simply come back. Don’t cry and weep for the spilled milk; that is stupid. It will take time, but slowly you will become aware that you are remaining alert more and more, perhaps for a whole minute, perhaps two minutes.

And it is such a joy that you have been aware for two minutes – but don’t get caught in the joy. Don’t think that you have attained something. That will become a barrier. These are patterns where one is lost. Just a little gain and one thinks one has come home. Go on working slowly, patiently.

There is no hurry – you have eternity at your disposal.

Don’t try to be speedy. That impatience will not help. Awareness is not like seasonal flowers that grow in six weeks’ time and are then gone. Awareness is like the cedars of Lebanon which take hundreds of years to grow; but they remain for thousands of years and rise to one hundred and fifty feet, two hundred feet high in the sky. They are really very proud people.

Awareness grows very slowly, but it grows. One has to just be patient.

As it grows you will start feeling many things which you have never felt before. For example, you will start feeling that you are carrying many tensions in your body of which you have never been aware because they are subtle tensions. Now your awareness is there you can feel those very subtle, very delicate tensions.

So wherever you feel any tension in the body, relax that part. If your whole body is relaxed, your awareness will grow faster because those tensions are hindrances.

As your awareness grows even more, you will be surprised to know that you don’t dream only in sleep; there is an undercurrent of dreaming even while you are awake. It goes just underneath your wakefulness – close your eyes any moment and you can see some dream passing by like a cloud in the sky. But only when you become a little more aware will it be possible to see that your wakefulness is not true awakenedness.

The dream is floating there – people call it daydream. If they relax in their chair for a moment and close their eyes, immediately the dream takes over. They start thinking that they have become the president of the country, or they are doing great things – or anything, which they know at the very moment they are dreaming is all nonsense. You are not the president of the country, but still the dream has something in it, that it continues in spite of you.

Awareness will make you aware of layers of dreams in your waking state. And they will start dispersing, just as you bring light into a dark room and the darkness starts dispersing.

Awareness functions almost like a light. If you can disperse your dreams in the waking state, your waking state will have a clarity, your intelligence will have a newness to it. These will be the byproducts.

You will be able to see things which you were not able to see before. You will be able to reason, argue. You will be able to see your conditionings, which you were never able to before; you had accepted them in your childhood when there was no argument, no reasoning. […]

So as you become aware, your conditionings will start falling this way and that way. Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism – they will start disappearing from your wakefulness. You will start discovering your own identity, which has been covered with so many labels.

In the second step, dreams can delude you. That is where the master will be of immense help. He can tell you that you are dreaming, that you are awake. The Zen master in Japan has developed a staff; he moves amongst his disciples who are meditating with his staff. So whosoever he feels is dreaming, he hits him on the head… because when you start dreaming, you start dozing. Your face immediately changes. When you are awake, your face has a certain quality; when you start dreaming, it has a different quality – and immediately the hit comes.

Suddenly you are awake and the disciple is expected to bow down and touch the feet of the master in gratitude for his compassion that he did not allow him to fall into the trap of dreams.

In the third stage the master will be helpful in making it clear to you that what you are seeing now are not dreams. Listen to them, follow them – they are indications of your destiny. If you go astray, you will miss fulfillment. These visions are showing you the right path to follow.

But still there is a danger – the danger of getting very egoistic because you can know the future. Not only can you know your future, if you try a little harder you can start seeing other people’s futures. It is in this stage that all astrology has been born. It has nothing to do with stars – that is just a façade to deceive you. It has nothing to do with the lines of the hand.

It is a visionary who can manage to look into your future. But that can give him the role of a prophet.

The word “prophet” comes from prophecy. Only in India have there been no prophets – you will be surprised. In Judaism there have been prophets, in Christianity there have been prophets, in Mohammedanism there have been prophets. It is only in India that there have been no prophets, which is strange because this is the most religious part of the world, and the most ancient in religion, deep in religion.

What happened to the prophets? Why did they not appear here? – because every disciple was made aware by the master that these visions are not to make you a prophet, that you are not to move in that direction, that it is a false direction. Use these visions to go deeper, to the fourth. Don’t start using these visions to play around and show your power.

This is the greatest trap that waits for the disciple, because the attraction is immense – to tell somebody his future, that “tomorrow this is going to happen to you.” […]

So this is one of the greatest traps, because as power grows you are closer to being trapped. And this is the last trap.

It happened in the life of Vivekananda in Ramakrishna’s ashram, in Dakshineshwar, in Calcutta, Bengal…. There were many disciples, and Vivekananda was one of the most intellectual disciples of Ramakrishna. There was a very simple man who was also a disciple – his name was Kalu, a poor man. He was so faithful, religious, emotional, that he had in his room hundreds of statues of different gods, because in India the traditional number of gods is thirty-three million. So he had hundreds of statues, and it was such a long affair to worship all those gods that it was only in the afternoon that he was able to take his breakfast.

Early, at four o’clock in the morning, he would take a bath in the Ganges, and then the worship would begin. And of course each god had to be worshipped equally; otherwise somebody may get angry, somebody may feel offended. So the whole day was lost and everybody was laughing at Kalu: “What are you doing? Just one god is enough!”

But Kalu said, “I have become so attached to these hundreds of gods – whom to reject? And whoever I reject will become annoyed. So in this life it is impossible; I have to worship these hundreds of gods and I have to give equal time to each.”

Vivekananda was the most prominent in making a fool of Kalu. He said, ”You are simply stupid – these are just stones! And you are wasting your life.” But Kalu would not listen to anyone; he continued his way.

One day Ramakrishna gave Vivekananda a certain method of awareness to practice: “Go into your cell, close the door and practice it.” When Vivekananda came to a certain stage of awareness he felt himself so full of power that the idea came to his mind, “If I say at this moment just within myself, to Kalu, ‘Take all your gods and throw them into the Ganges,’ he will do it.” He was so certain of it. And he did it, he said to Kalu, in his own cell, just within himself, “Kalu, just collect all your gods” – and this was the time when he was worshipping the gods – and throw them all into the Ganges.”

And Kalu collected all his gods into a big bag and was dragging the bag down the steps when Ramakrishna ran after him, stopped him and said, “What are you doing?”

He said, “Suddenly I heard a voice – it must have come from God himself, because there was nobody in the room – saying, ‘Kalu, collect all your gods and throw them into the Ganges.’ It was so powerful that I could not doubt it.”

Ramakrishna said, “Come back. Take your gods back and I will show you from where the voice has come.” He knocked on Vivekananda’s door. Vivekananda came out and Ramakrishna was very angry. He said, “Vivekananda, this is the last thing I had ever expected of you. I had told you to be aware – not to destroy a poor man’s life. This is his whole life, and he is no harm to anybody. He is so simple-hearted, so loving, such a beautiful man – how could you do it to him? Awareness is not for such things. And from now onwards I will keep the key of your awareness; you will never attain to the same power again.”

It is a very significant story. And it is said Vivekananda died without attaining enlightenment because the key was kept by the master. He never showed Vivekananda the way to go deeper. He tried hard in his own way but always went round and round, could not enter within himself. Although he became Ramakrishna’s successor because he was the most intellectual – a great orator, a very powerful personality, had a certain charisma, influenced people – he himself died a poor man, knowing nothing. And the reason was that he disturbed a simple-hearted man because he got just a little power and he immediately used it – not for the benefit of somebody, but to harm somebody.

There are traps and traps.

And the master is needed in many ways: to keep you aware not to use your power in any harmful way to others, not to use your power in any way harmful to yourself, not to use your power as an ego-trip.

And he has to go on reminding you that you have to transform your sushupti, your dreamless sleep, into samadhi, into superconsciousness.

-Osho

From Light on the Path, Discourse #18

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 Beauty of Egoless Moments – Osho

You are teaching us to believe in nothing. But why should I try to drop my ego without believing that life is better without an ego? Before I drop my ego I cannot know how life is without an ego. Therefore I have to believe that life is better without an ego before I try to drop the ego. But I can’t believe it, because I suppose that life without an ego is life without a will of my own. The idea of giving up my own will is horrible to me. I cannot imagine that anybody would do this of his own free will, because my ego is all I have. Osho, Please talk to us about this. 

Bernd Schweiger. It happens all the time that I say one thing and you understand something else for the simple reason that I am talking from a state of no-mind and you are listening through the mind. It is as if a person who is awake is talking to a person who is fast asleep. Yes, even in sleep you can hear a few words, fragments of words, maybe even fragments of sentences. But you will not be able to understand exactly what is being said to you. You are bound to misunderstand.

That is one of the problems faced by all those people who have experienced something of the beyond. The beyond cannot he put into words. It remains inexpressible for the simple reason that you can understand only that which you have experienced.

I am not saying drop the ego; that is impossible. Even if you want to drop it you cannot drop it. It is impossible because the ego does not exist. How can you drop something which does not exist? You can only drop something which exists in the first place. But the ego is a false phenomenon; nobody has ever been able to drop it.

Then what do I mean when I say learn the secret of being egoless? I do not mean that you have to drop it but that you have to understand it. There is no question of belief.

Now the whole question has come out of your misunderstanding, but you are making it look so logical that anybody looking at your question will think, “Of course, how can you drop the ego without believing that life will be better without the ego?” And I say don’t believe in anything. I repeat again: don’t believe in anything. I am not saying that you should believe me and become egoless, I am simply saying – sharing my own experience – that the more I tried to understand the ego the more I became aware that it is non-existential. When I became fully conscious of it, it disappeared.

It disappears of its own accord. You don’t drop it. If you drop it, then who will drop it? Then the ego will survive; then it will be the ego dropping another ego, dropping the gross ego. And the gross is not dangerous; the subtle ego is more dangerous. Then you will become a pious egoist, you will become a humble egoist, you will become a spiritual egoist. Then you will become an “egoless” egoist. And that is getting into more trouble because that is getting into more contradictions.

All that I am saying to you is very simple. Try to understand what this ego is. Just look at it, watch it. Become aware of all its subtle ways, how it comes in. And there are moments when it is not – watch those moments also. Even you have those moments when it is not. It needs constant pedaling – it is like a bicycle. If you go on pedaling it, it can go on moving; if you stop pedaling it… how far can it go without pedaling? Maybe a few feet, maybe one furlong, two furlongs, but then it is bound to fall.

The ego needs to be constantly nourished. There are moments when you forget to nourish it and it disappears. For example, seeing a beautiful sunset it disappears because the sunset possesses you so totally. It is so beautiful, it is so extraordinary, so exquisite, it fills you with wonder and awe; for a moment you forget completely that you are, only the sunset is, and the clouds and the luminous colors on the clouds, and the birds coming back to their nests, and the day ending, entering into a silent night; as the sun starts disappearing below the horizon, something in you stops.

It happened to Ramakrishna – his first experience of egolessness. He was only thirteen. He was coming home from the field – he was a poor man’s son and he lived in a small village. He was passing by the lake. A silent evening, the sunset, and there was nobody on the lake; his coming to the lake… There was a big crowd of white cranes sitting by the side of the lake. They suddenly flew up – it was so sudden, as if out of nowhere – and against the backdrop of a black cloud which was shining like velvet against the setting sun, those white cranes in a row flashed before his eyes like lightning. It was a moment, a tremendous moment!

He fell on the ground. He was so possessed by the beauty of it he became unconscious. He had to be carried home by others. After one hour somebody found him Lying down there on the shore of the lake. It took six hours for him to be brought back to consciousness. When he came back to consciousness he started crying. And they asked, “Why are you crying? You should be happy – you have come back to consciousness.”

He said, “No, I am crying because I have come back to the ordinary world. I was not unconscious. I had moved to a higher plane of consciousness, I had moved to some new plane. I don’t know what it was, but I was not there and still there was great joy. I have never tasted such joy!”

That was his first experience, his first satori: a moment of egolessness. Then he started seeking and searching for it deliberately, consciously. He would go to the lake again and again in the morning, in the evening, in the night, and it started happening again and again more easily.

It happens to you too; it has happened to everybody. God comes to everybody. You may have forgotten him; he has not forgotten you – he cannot. It is not only that you are searching for him; he is also groping for you, he is also searching for you.

I am not telling you to drop the ego, I am telling you to understand it, to see it. Seeing it, it disappears. And see and become aware of those moments when it disappears of its own accord. Making love, it disappears. In a deep orgasm, it disappears; you melt, merge into existence. The wave again becomes the ocean; it is no more separate, it falls back into the ocean. It is only for a moment. Remain conscious of that moment and you will see the beauty of it. Once you have seen the beauty of egoless moments, then it will be easy for you to see the ugliness of the ego, the misery of the ego.

You need not believe me; I am simply inviting you to experience it. I am utterly against belief – belief is the cause of destroying religion on the earth. It is belief that has made religions false and pseudo.

Now listen to your question again, Schweiger.

You say: You are teaching us to believe in nothing.

Absolutely true.

But why should I try to drop my ego…?

Who has said this? You must have heard it, that I can understand, but I have not said it.

A young man went to a sex therapist for advice about his staying power. “Ah yes, ” said the therapist. “Premature ejaculation is quite a common problem for many young men. It is entirely due to over-eagerness and there is a definite cure.”

“What is that, doctor?” asked the young man.

“Next time you go to bed with a woman, imagine that you are about to eat a delicious meal in a gourmet restaurant. Imagine every aspect of the meal, from the soup to the coffee.

“Begin with the soup… imagine it steaming in the bowl… taste each spoonful. Next, order the wine, perhaps a rose’. Smell the bouquet of the wine, look at it sparkling with each sip. Imagine the main course… perhaps a mushroom-garnished steak with a baked potato, sour cream and chives and a fresh green salad. Eat it very slowly, tasting each bite. After the main course order dessert… perhaps a chocolate mousse or a pecan pie with whipped cream. And then… you are ready for your coffee… Brazilian, French roast, or maybe cappuccino. Then you can relax and feel the contentment of having enjoyed a very satisfying meal.

“By the time you have enjoyed such a banquet in your imagination your problem will disappear. You will have such an orgasm, such fulfillment – together! ”

The young man thanked the therapist and went away, delighted. That same evening in bed with his woman friend, they began making love. So he started to fantasize. He pictured the restaurant in his mind, sat down at the table, and called out, “Hey, waiter, we’ll have the tomato soup… and a cup of coffee!”

You may have heard it, but I have not said it!

You say: Before I drop my ego I cannot know how life is without an ego.

You have known it many times already. Nobody is so poor… I have never come across a man who has never known a few moments of it. Just try to remember. Or now, if you cannot remember, just try every day to watch. Soon you will be able to see a few moments which are without ego. Even this moment, if you are not too concerned about your question, this moment can be without ego; it is so for everybody else. It may not be for you because you will be so disturbed that I am destroying such a logical question of yours, that I am avoiding the real question, that I am trying to evade it, that I am not being logical. I never am, because what I am trying to indicate is basically supra-logical.

If you just try to listen to me as if this were not Schweiger’s question but some other fool’s – some idiot has asked this, not you – then even this moment can be of tremendous beauty and you can experience egolessness. And then you can compare. Only your own experience and comparison will make it possible for you to decide. Who am I to decide for you? I never decide for anybody else.

-Osho

From Tao: the Golden Gate, V.1, Discourse #8

 

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 Head and the Heart – Osho

How is it possible that Gurdjieff needed another head, an Ouspensky, to work on a third psychology, the psychology of the buddhas, while you work by yourself and you can be both in the state of mind and no-mind?

There have been two kinds of Masters in the world. One kind, the first, has always needed somebody else to express, to interpret, to philosophize, to communicate what the Master has experienced. Gurdjieff is not alone in that; he needed P.D. Ouspensky – without Ouspensky he would not have been known at all. Ramakrishna comes in the same category; he needed a Vivekananda – without Vivekananda Ramakrishna would have remained absolutely unheard of.

So has been the case with many Masters, for the simple reason that their whole work concerned the heart center. They became crystallized in the heart center – so much so that it was impossible for them to move to the head and to use their own heads. It appeared far easier for them to use somebody else’s head rather than their own.

But there was a difficulty in it. One thing was good about it: the Master himself was not constantly moving between two extremes from mind to no-mind, from no-mind to mind – there was no movement in his being; he was absolutely crystallized. But another kind of trouble was there: the man who was being used as a medium – Ouspensky, Vivekananda, or others – was himself not an enlightened person. Gurdjieff could use Ouspensky’s head, but not exactly the way he would have liked to. Ouspensky’s own mind was bound to color Gurdjieff’s experience; he was bound to bring his own prejudices, his own philosophy, his own understanding to it. He had no experience of his own, he was simply a medium. But the medium is not just an empty vehicle, he has his own mind, and anything passing through his mind is going to be changed a little bit here, a little bit there.

Ouspensky introduced Gurdjieff to the world, but he introduced Gurdjieff in his own way. One cannot blame Ouspensky. What could he do? He tried his best. I think he was one of the best interpreters that any Master has ever been able to find; but still an interpreter is an interpreter. It can’t be the same; it is impossible to be the same. Hence sooner or later they had to part from each other.

In the last days of Ouspensky’s life he became almost an enemy to Gurdjieff. He started saying, “Now Gurdjieff has gone mad. At first he was moving in the right direction, but the later Gurdjieff has gone astray.” He could not say that the whole of Gurdjieff’s teaching was wrong because his own teaching was based on Gurdjieff’s teaching, but he divided Gurdjieff in two: the first part of Gurdjieff – when Ouspensky was with him – was right and the later part was wrong. In fact, the later part was the culmination of the first part.

But why did this happen? It was almost bound to happen because sooner or later Ouspensky’s own mind was going to become a barrier. When he first came to Gurdjieff he was absolutely surrendered to him – surrendered in the sense that he was fascinated by his personality, fascinated intellectually – because he was a great intellectual – absolutely surrendered in the intellectual sense, not in the existential sense. If he had been existentially surrendered he would have been of no use because Gurdjieff needed a head, he was in search of a head. He had many other followers who were devoted to him from their very innermost core, but they were not going to become his interpreters to the world.

When Ouspensky came to Gurdjieff he was already a world-famous mathematician, a philosopher. His own book, Tertium Organum, had already been translated into almost all the great languages of the world. And that book, Tertium Organum, is really something tremendous; coming out of a man who was unenlightened it is almost a miracle. Intellectually he managed something which nobody has ever been able to manage. He knew nothing, he had not experienced anything, but his intellectual grasp… his intellect was really sharp. He belongs to the topmost intellectuals of the whole history of humanity; there are very few competitors to rival him. Only once in a while….

Socrates had such a man, Plato. Socrates was the heart of the teaching, Plato was the head.

Exactly the same was repeated in the case of Gurdjieff: Gurdjieff was the heart, Ouspensky became the head. And if I have to choose between the two my choice will be Ouspensky, not Plato. Ouspensky is simply unbelievable; his insight, without any self-realization, is so accurate that anybody who has not experienced will think that Ouspensky was a Buddha, a Christ. Only a Buddha will be able to detect the flaws, not anyone else. The flaws are there but ordinarily undetectable.

He started writing books on Gurdjieff. He wrote one of his greatest contributions, In Search of the Miraculous, then he wrote The Fourth Way. And these two books introduced Gurdjieff to the world; otherwise, he would have remained an absolutely unknown Master. Maybe a few people would have come in personal contact with him and would have been benefited, but Ouspensky made him available to millions.

But as those books spread all over the world and thousands of people started moving towards Gurdjieff, Ouspensky also became very egoistic – naturally, because he was the cause of the whole thing. In fact, he started thinking, “Without me, what is Gurdjieff? Who is Gurdjieff without me? Who was he? When I met him he was just a refugee living in a refugee camp in Constantinople, almost starving. Nobody had ever heard about him. I have made him world famous; the whole credit goes to me.” This idea went to his head – it became too much for him – and in subtle ways he started to dominate the movement. And you cannot dominate a man like Gurdjieff, you cannot dictate to a man like Gurdjieff. They had to part.

In the last days of his life Ouspensky was so against Gurdjieff that he would not tolerate anybody mentioning Gurdjieff’s name to him; in his presence Gurdjieff’s name was not mentioned. Even in his books Gurdjieff’s name was reduced to only “G”; the full name disappeared. After the break just “G” remained – somebody anonymous, “‘G’ said . . .,” not “Gurdjieff.” And he made it clear, very clear: “We have parted and I have developed my own system.” He started gathering his own followers. Those followers were not allowed to read Gurdjieff’s books, those followers were not allowed to go and see Gurdjieff. While Ouspensky was alive he was very suspicious of anybody who wanted to go to Gurdjieff or who even wanted to study his books.

But Gurdjieff was aware that this was going to happen. Still, there was no other way; some head had to be used. Gurdjieff’s work was such that he was absolutely crystallized in his heart; he could not move to the head.

So was the case with Ramakrishna. Vivekananda was an ordinary intellectual, not even of the caliber of Ouspensky, but he made Ramakrishna world famous. Ramakrishna died very early, that’s why Vivekananda and Ramakrishna never parted; otherwise the parting was absolutely certain. But Ramakrishna died and Vivekananda became his whole and sole representative. He dominated all the followers, he dominated the whole movement; he became for them the representative of Ramakrishna. If Ramakrishna had lived, the same thing would have happened sooner or later because Vivekananda was just head and nothing else, nothing of the heart. Even if he talks about the heart it is just head-talk, the head talking about the heart, it is not heart-full. There is no love in it, there is no meditation in it, there is no prayer in it, just intellectual analysis. He knew the scriptures and he forced his ideas on Ramakrishna’s ideas. And Ramakrishna had died so there was nobody to say no to it.

Vivekananda destroyed the whole beauty of Ramakrishna. But that was going to happen because Ramakrishna was not a man of the head at all.

But this has not always been the case. Buddha never depended on anybody else. He was capable of moving from mind to no-mind, from no-mind to mind; that is his greatness. That is a far greater achievement than that of Gurdjieff or Ramakrishna because their achievements are in a way limited. Buddha is very liquid; he is not solid like a rock, he is more fluid – like a river.

So was the case with Lao Tzu: he never depended on anybody else, he said whatever he had to say. He said it himself, and as beautifully as it could be said. And their philosophies are bound to be far more pure because they come from the original man, they come from the original realization, from the very source; there is no via media. So is the case with Zarathustra, Jesus, Krishna, Mahavira.

This is the second category of Masters. The first category is easier in a way; it is easy to be crystallized at one center. It is a far more complex process, a longer and far more arduous journey, to remain alive at both extremes. These are the two extremes: the head and the heart. But it is possible. It has happened before. It is happening right now in front of you.

I live in silence, but my work consists of much intellectual communication. I live in silence, but I have to use words. But when I use words, those words contain my silence. I don’t need anybody else to interpret me; hence there is a far greater possibility that whatsoever I am saying will remain pure for a longer period of time.

And now, since Buddha, many scientific developments have happened….

We don’t know what Buddha actually said although he never used anybody like Ouspensky or Plato or Vivekananda; he himself was his own interpreter. But there arose a problem when he died. He spoke for forty-two years – he became enlightened when he was about forty and then he lived to eighty-two. For forty-two years he was speaking morning, afternoon, evening. Now there were no scientific methods for recording what he was saying. When he died the first question was how to collect it all. He had said so much – forty-two years is a long time, and many had become enlightened in those forty-two years. But those who became enlightened had become crystallized in the heart because that is easier, simpler, and people tend to move to the simplest process, to the shortcut. Why bother? If you can reach a point directly, straight, then why go roundabout? And when Buddha was alive there was no need for anybody else to interpret him; he was his own spokesman, so the need was never felt.

There were thousands of arhats and bodhisattvas; they all gathered. Only those were called to the gathering who had become enlightened – obviously, because they would not misinterpret Buddha. And that’s true, they could not misinterpret him – it was impossible for them. They had also experienced the same universe of the beyond, they had also moved to the farther shore.

But they all said, “We have never bothered much about his words since we became enlightened. We have listened to him because his words were sweet. We have listened to him because his words were pure music. We have listened to him because just listening to him was a joy. We have listened to him because that was the only way to be close to him. Just to sit by his side and listen to him was a rejoicing, it was a benediction. But we did not bother about what he was saying; once we attained there was no need. We were not listening from the head and we were not collecting in the memory; our own heads and memories stopped functioning long ago.”

Somebody became enlightened thirty years before Buddha died. Now for thirty years he sat there by the side of Buddha listening as one listens to the wind passing through the pine trees or one listens to the song of the birds or one listens to the rain falling on the roof. But they were not listening intellectually. So they said, “We have not carried any memory of it. Whatsoever he must have said was beautiful, but what he said we cannot recollect. Just to be with him was such a joy.”

It was very difficult now – how to collect his words? The only man who had lived continuously with Buddha for forty-two years was Ananda; he was his personal attendant, his caretaker. He had listened to him, almost every word that he had uttered was heard by Ananda. Even if he was talking to somebody privately, Ananda was present. Ananda was almost always present, like a shadow. He had heard everything – whatsoever had fallen from his lips. And he must have said many things to Ananda when there was nobody there. They must have talked just on going to bed in the night.  Ananda used to sleep in the same room just to take care of him – he may need something in the night. He may feel cold, he may feel hot, he may like the window to be opened or closed, or he may feel thirsty and may need some water or something, or – he was getting old – he may feel sick. So Ananda was there continuously.

They all said, “We should ask Ananda.” But then there was a very great problem: Ananda was not yet enlightened. He had heard everything that Buddha uttered publicly, uttered privately. They must have gossiped together; there was nobody else who could have said, “I am friendly with Buddha,” except Ananda. And Ananda was also his cousin-brother, and not only a cousin-brother but two years older than Buddha. So when he had come to be initiated he asked for a few things before his initiation, because in India the elder brother has to be respected just like your father. Even the elder cousin-brother has to be respected just like your father.

So Ananda said to Buddha, “Before I take initiation…. Once I become your bhikkhu, your sannyasin, I will have to follow your orders, your commandments. Then whatsoever you say I will have to do. But before that I order you, as your elder brother, to grant me three things. Remember these three things. First: I will always be with you. You cannot say to me, ‘Ananda, go somewhere else, do something else.’ You cannot send me to some other village to preach, to convert people, to give your message. This is my first order to you. Second: I will be always present. Even if you are talking to somebody privately I want to hear everything. Whatsoever you are going to say in your life I want to be an audience to it. So you will not be able to tell me, ‘This is a private talk, you go out.’ I will not go, remember it! And thirdly: I am not much interested in being enlightened, I am much more interested in just being with you. So if enlightenment means separating from you I don’t care a bit about it. Only if I can remain with you even after enlightenment, am I willing to be enlightened, otherwise forget about it.”

And Buddha nodded his yes to all these three orders – he had to, he was younger than Ananda – and he followed those three things his whole life.

The conference of the arhats and the bodhisattvas decided that only Ananda could relate Buddha’s words. And he had a beautiful memory; he had listened to everything very attentively. ”But the problem is he is not yet enlightened; we cannot rely upon him. His mind may play tricks, his mind may change things unconsciously. He may not do it deliberately, he may not do it consciously, but he still has a great unconscious in him. He may think he has heard that Buddha said this and he may never have said it. He may delete a few words; he may add a few words. Who knows? And we don’t have any criterion because many things that he has heard only he has heard; there is no other witness.”

And Ananda was sitting outside the hall. The doors were closed and he was weeping outside on the steps. He was weeping because he was not allowed inside. An eighty-four-year-old man weeping like a child! The man who had lived for forty-two years with Buddha was not allowed in! Now he was really in anguish. Why did he not become enlightened? Why did he not insist7 He made a vow, a decision: “I will not move from these steps until I become enlightened.” He closed his eyes, he forgot the whole world. And it is said that within twenty-four hours, without changing his posture, he became enlightened.

When he became enlightened he was allowed in. Then he related… all these scriptures were related by Ananda. But who knows? He became enlightened afterwards. All those memories belong to the mind of an unenlightened person; even though he had become enlightened, those memories were not those of an enlightened person. It is not absolutely certain that what is reported is exactly what Buddha said.

But now science has given all the technology. Each single word – not only the word but the pauses in between – the very nuances of the words, the way they are uttered, the very gestures, all can be recorded. The words can be recorded, the gestures can be photographed, films can be made, tapes can be made.

Now the best way for any enlightened person is not to depend on anybody else, although that path is difficult, far more difficult, because you have to do two things together. You have to constantly shuttle back and forth, back and forth. You have to constantly go into wordlessness and come out from that emptiness into the world of words. It is a difficult phenomenon, the most difficult phenomenon in the whole of existence; because when you enter into silence it is so beautiful that to come back to the universe of words looks absurd, meaningless. It is as if you have reached to the sunlit peaks and then you come back to the dark holes where people live in the valley, the slums. When you have touched the sunlit peaks, when you can live there and you can float like a cloud in the infinite sky, to come back to the muddy earth, to crawl again with people who are living in mud seems to be very absurd. But there is no other way. If you have compassion enough you have to go into this difficult process.

It depends on many things too. It depends on the whole process by which a Master has reached through many lives. Ramakrishna was never an intellectual in any of his lives. A simple man – in this life he was a simple man. Even if he had wanted to it would have been impossible for him to become a Vivekananda too. It was easier to find somebody who could do that work.

Gurdjieff, when he was very young, only twelve years of age, became part of a party of seekers: thirty people who made a decision that they would go to the different parts of the world and find out whether truth was only talk or there were a few people who had known it. Just a twelve-year-old boy, but he was chosen to join the party for the simple reason that he had great stamina, he had great power. One thing was certain about him: whatsoever he decided, he would risk all for it. He would not look back, he would never escape even if he had to lose his life he would lose his life. And three times he was almost shot dead – almost, but he pulled himself back into life somehow; the purpose was still unfulfilled.

Those thirty people traveled all over the world. They came to India; they went to Tibet and the whole Middle East, all the Sufi monasteries, all the Himalayan monasteries. And they had decided to come back to a certain place in the Middle East and to relate whatsoever they had gained; after each twelve years they were going to meet. At the end of the first twelve years almost half of them did not return; they must have died somehow, or forgotten the mission, or become entangled somewhere. Somebody must have got married, fallen in love. A thousand and one things can happen – people are accident-prone. Only fifteen people returned. And after the next twelve years only three people came back. And the third time only Gurdjieff was there, all the others had disappeared. What happened to them nobody knows.

But this man had very great decisiveness: if he had decided then nothing was going to deter him. He was almost killed three times; the only thing that saved him was his mission, that he had to go back, and he pulled himself out of his death. It needed great inner power.

He had no time to become an intellectual. He was moving with mystics – from one monastery to another monastery, from one cave to another cave, from one country to another country. He came to India, he went to Tibet, he went up to Japan; he gathered knowledge from all over the world. By the time he himself became enlightened there was no time left for him to intellectualize it, to put it into words. He knew the taste, but the words were not there. He needed a man like Ouspensky.

My own approach has been totally different. I began as an intellectual – not only in this life but in many lives. My whole work in many lives has been concerned with the intellect – refining the intellect, sharpening the intellect. In this life I began as an atheist with an absolute denial of God.

You cannot be an atheist if you are not supra-intellectual, and I was an absolute atheist. People used to avoid me because I was doubting each and every thing and my doubt was contagious. Even my teachers would avoid me.

One of my teachers was dying; I went to see him. He said, “Please… I am happy that you have come, but don’t say a single word because this is not the time. I am dying and I want to die believing that God is.”

I said, “You cannot. Seeing me, the doubt has already arisen.’

He said, “What do you mean?”

And the thing started! Before he died, just after twelve hours, he died an atheist. And I was so happy! I had to work for twelve hours continuously. Out of desperation he said, “Okay, let me die peacefully. I say that there is no God. Are you happy? Now leave me alone!”

My university professors were always in difficulties. I was expelled from one college, then another, and then thrown out of one university. Finally one university admitted me with the condition – I had to sign it, a written condition – that I would not ask any questions and I would not argue with the professors.

I said okay. I signed it and the Vice-Chancellor was very happy. And I said, “Now, a few things. What do you mean by ‘argument’?”

He said, “Here you go!”

I said, ”I have not written that I would not ask for any clarification. I can ask for a clarification. What do you mean by an ‘argument’? And if I cannot ask a question, what is the point of your whole department of philosophy? – because all your philosophers ask questions. The whole of philosophy depends on doubt; doubt is the base of all philosophy. If I cannot doubt your stupid philosophers, your stupid professors, then how am I going to learn philosophy?”

He said, “Look at what you are saying! You are calling my professors, in front of me, stupid!”

I said, “They are stupid, otherwise why these conditions? Can you think of somebody being intelligent and asking his students not to question him? Is this a sign of intelligence? A professor will invite questions. An intelligent professor will be happy with a student who can argue well.”

That remained a problem. My whole approach from the very beginning was not that of a Ramakrishna. I am not a devotional type, not at all. I have arrived at God through atheism, not through theism. I have arrived at God not by believing in him but by absolutely doubting him. I have come to a certainty because I have doubted and I went on doubting till there was no possibility to doubt anymore, till I came across something indubitable. That has been my process.

That was not the process of Gurdjieff. He was learning from Masters, moving from one Master to another Master, learning techniques and methods and devices. He learned many devices, but he learned in a very surrendered spirit, that of a disciple.

I have never been anybody’s disciple; nobody has been my Master. In fact, nobody was ready to accept me as a disciple, because who would like to create trouble?

[…]

My whole approach has been a totally different approach than that of Ramakrishna and Gurdjieff. I have arrived through doubt; I have arrived through deep and profound skepticism. I have arrived not through belief but through the denial of all belief and disbelief too, because disbelief is belief in a negative form.

A moment came in my life when all beliefs and all disbeliefs disappeared and I was left utterly empty. In that emptiness the explosion happened. Hence it is not so difficult for me, so I can argue easily. I can even argue against argument; that’s what I am going to continue to do. I can argue against intellect because I know how to use intellect.

Ramakrishna had never used his intellect; he started from the heart. And the same is the case with Gurdjieff. Buddha could use the intellect because he was the son of a king, well educated, well cultured. All the great philosophers of the country were called to teach him; he knew what the intellectual approach was. And then he became fed up with it.

The same happened with me. I know what can be achieved through intellectual effort: nothing can be achieved through it. When I say it I say it through my own experience.

But it has been beautiful in one way. It did not result in giving me truth – it cannot give truth to anybody – but in an indirect way it has cleansed the ground, it has prepared the ground. It has not helped me to realize myself, but it has helped me to communicate whatsoever I have realized.

I can communicate with you very easily, with no problems. You can ask all kinds of questions, you can ask, you can doubt, because I know that all these questions and doubts can be quashed, they can be destroyed. And it is good that you should ask because then I can destroy your questions. Once all your questions are destroyed, the answer arises in your own being. In that utter emptiness something wells up; it is already there.

I am not in favor of repressing doubt by believing. You are not here to believe in me, you are here to bring out all your disbelief. Your doubts, your questions, all are respected, welcome, so that they can be taken out from you. Slowly, slowly a silence, a state of not-knowing arises. And the state of not-knowing is the state of wisdom, is the state of enlightenment.

-Osho

From Walking in Zen, Sitting in Zen, Discourse #8

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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On Nietzsche’s “God Is Dead” – Osho

Friends, a new series of talks begins today: God Is Dead, Now Zen Is the Only Living Truth. The series is dedicated to Friedrich Nietzsche, who was the first man in the history of mankind to declare, “God is dead, therefore man is free.”

It was a tremendous statement; its implications are many. First I would like to discuss Nietzsche’s statement.

All the religions believe that God created the world and also mankind. But if you are created by someone, you are only a puppet; you don’t have your own soul. And if you are created by somebody, he can uncreate you any moment. He neither asked you whether you wanted to be created, nor is he going to ask you, “Do you want to be uncreated?”

God is the greatest dictator, if you accept the fiction that he created the world and also created mankind. If God is a reality, then man is a slave, a puppet. All the strings are in his hands, even your life. Then there is no question of any enlightenment. Then there is no question of there being any Gautam the Buddha, because there is no freedom at all. He pulls the strings, you dance; he pulls the strings, you cry; he pulls the strings, you start murders, suicide, war. You are just a puppet and he is the puppeteer.

Then there is no question of sin or virtue, no question of sinners and saints. Nothing is good and nothing is bad, because you are only a puppet. A puppet cannot be responsible for its actions.

Responsibility belongs to someone who has the freedom to act. Either God can exist or freedom, both cannot exist together. That is the basic implication of Friedrich Nietzsche’s statement: God is dead, therefore man is free.

No theologian, no founder of religions thought about this, that if you accept God as the creator, you are destroying the whole dignity of consciousness, of freedom, of love. You are taking all responsibility from man, and you are taking all his freedom away. You are reducing the whole of existence to just the whim of a strange fellow called God.

But Nietzsche’s statement is bound to be only one side of the coin. He is perfectly right, but only about one side of the coin. He has made a very significant and meaningful statement, but he has forgotten one thing, which was bound to happen because his statement is based on rationality, logic and intellect. It is not based on meditation.

Man is free, but free for what? If there is no God and man is free, that will simply mean man is now capable of doing anything, good or bad; there is nobody to judge him, nobody to forgive him. This freedom will be simply licentiousness.

There comes the other side. You remove God and you leave man utterly empty. Of course, you declare his freedom, but to what purpose? How is he going to use his freedom creatively, responsibly? How is he going to avoid freedom being reduced to licentiousness?

Friedrich Nietzsche was not aware of any meditations – that is the other side of the coin. Man is free, but his freedom can only be a joy and a blessing to him if he is rooted in meditation. Remove God – that is perfectly okay, he has been the greatest danger to human freedom – but give man also some meaning and significance, some creativity, some receptivity, some path to find his eternal existence. Zen is the other side of the coin.

Zen does not have any God, that’s its beauty. But it has a tremendous science to transform your consciousness, to bring so much awareness to you that you cannot commit evil. It is not a commandment from outside; it comes from your innermost being. Once you know your center of being, once you know you are one with the cosmos – and the cosmos has never been created, it has been there always and always, and will be there always and always, from eternity to eternity – once you know your luminous being, your hidden Gautam Buddha, it is impossible to do anything wrong, it is impossible to do anything evil, it is impossible to do any sin.

Friedrich Nietzsche in his last phase of life became almost insane. He was hospitalized, kept in a mad asylum. Such a great giant, what happened to him? He had concluded, “God is dead,” but it is a negative conclusion. He became empty, but his freedom was meaningless. There was no joy in it because it was only freedom FROM God, but for what? Freedom has two sides: from and for. The other side was missing. That drove him insane.

Emptiness always drives people insane. You need some grounding, you need some centering, you need some relationship with existence. God being dead, all your relationship with existence was finished. God being dead, you were left alone without roots. A tree cannot live without roots, nor can you.

God was non-existential, but it was a good consolation. It used to fill people’s interior, although it was a lie. But even a lie, repeated thousands and thousands of times for millennia, becomes almost a truth. God has been a great consolation to people in their fear, in their dread, in their awareness of old age and death, and beyond – the unknown darkness. God has been a tremendous consolation, although it was a lie. Lies can console you, you have to understand it. In fact lies are sweeter than the truth.

Gautam Buddha is reported to have said, “Truth is bitter in the beginning, sweet in the end, and lies are sweet in the beginning, bitter in the end” – when they are exposed. Then comes a tremendous bitterness, that you have been deceived by all your parents, by all your teachers, by all your priests, by all your so-called leaders. You have been continuously deceived. That frustration brings up a great distrust in everybody. “Nobody is worthy of trust…” It creates a vacuum.

So Nietzsche was insane in this last phase of his life, it was the inevitable conclusion of his negative approach. An intellect can only be negative; it can argue and criticize and be sarcastic, but it cannot give you any nourishment. From no negative standpoint can you get any nourishment. So he lost his God, and he lost his consolation. He became free just to be mad.

And it is not only Friedrich Nietzsche, so it cannot be said that it was just an accident. Many intellectual giants find themselves in mad asylums or commit suicide, because nobody can live in a negative darkness. One needs light and a positive, affirmative experience of truth. Nietzsche demolished the light and created a vacuum in himself and in others who followed him.

If you feel deep down a vacuum, utter emptiness with no meaning, it is because of Friedrich Nietzsche. A whole philosophy has grown in the West: Nietzsche is the founder of this very negative approach to life.

Soren Kierkegaard, and Jean-Paul Sartre, and Marcel, and Jaspers, and Martin Heidegger – all the great giants of the first half of this century – were talking only about meaninglessness, anguish, suffering, anxiety, dread, fear, angst. And this philosophy has been called in the West existentialism. It is not. It is simply non-existentialism. It destroys everything that has consoled you.

I agree with the destruction because what was consoling man were only lies. God, heaven, hell – all were fictions created to console man. It is good they are destroyed, but you are leaving man in an utter vacuum. Out of that vacuum existentialism is born, that’s why it talks only about meaninglessness: “Life has no meaning.” It talks about no significance: “You are just an accident. Whether you are here or not does not matter at all to existence.” And these people call their philosophy existentialism. They should call it accidentalism. You are not needed; just by accident, on the margin, somehow you have popped up. God was making you a puppet, and these philosophers from Nietzsche to Jean-Paul Sartre are making you accidental.

And there is a tremendous need in man’s being to be related to existence. He needs roots in existence, because only when the roots go deep into existence will he blossom into a buddha, will he blossom into millions of flowers, will his life not be meaningless. Then his life will be tremendously overflowing with meaning, significance, blissfulness; his life will be simply a celebration.

But the conclusion of the so-called existentialists is that you are unnecessary, that your life has no meaning, no significance. Existence is not in need of you at all!

So I want to complete Friedrich Nietzsche’s work; it is incomplete. It will lead the whole of humanity to madness – not only Friedrich Nietzsche, but the whole of humanity. Without God certainly you are free, but for what? You are left with empty hands. You were with empty hands before also, because the hands that looked full were full of lies. Now you are absolutely aware that the hands are empty and there is nowhere to go.

I have heard about one very famous atheist. He died, and his wife brought his best clothes, best shoes, before he was put in the coffin – the best tie, the costliest possible. She wanted to give him a good farewell, a good send-off. He was dressed as he had never dressed in his whole life.

And then friends came, and neighbors came. And one woman said, “Wow! He’s all dressed up and nowhere to go.” He was an atheist, so he did not believe in God, he did not believe in heaven, he did not believe in hell – nowhere to go, and so well-dressed!

But this is the situation any negative philosophy is going to leave for the whole of mankind: well dressed, ready to go, but nowhere to go! This situation creates insanity.

It was not an accident that Friedrich Nietzsche became insane; it was the outcome of his negative philosophy. Hence, I am calling this series, “God is Dead, Now Zen Is the Only Living Truth.”

I absolutely agree with Friedrich Nietzsche as far as God is concerned, but I want to complete his statement, which he could not do. He was not an awakened being; he was not an enlightened being.

Gautam Buddha also does not have a God, nor does Mahavira have a God, but they never went mad. All the Zen masters and all the great Tao masters – Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu – nobody went mad, and they don’t have any God. They don’t have any hell or heaven. What is the difference? Why did Gautam Buddha not go mad?

And it is not only Gautam Buddha. In twenty-five centuries hundreds of his people have become enlightened, and they don’t even talk about a God. They don’t even say that there is no God, because there is no point. They are not atheists. I am not an atheist, nor am I a theist. God simply is not there, so there is no question of atheism or theism.

But I am not mad. You are my witnesses. It does not create a vacuum in me; on the contrary, there being no God, I have gained the dignity of an individual who is free – free to become a buddha. That is the ultimate goal of freedom. Unless your freedom becomes your very flowering of awareness, and the experience of freedom leads you into eternity, leads you into the roots, into the cosmos and existence, you are going to be mad. Your life will be meaningless, with no significance. Whatever you do it does not matter.

Existence according to the so-called existentialists, who are all following Friedrich Nietzsche, the founder, is absolutely unintelligent. They have taken away God, so they think – according to logic it seems apparently true – if there is no God, existence also becomes dead, with no intelligence, with no life. God used to be the life, God used to be the consciousness. God used to be the very meaning, the very salt of our being. With God no longer there, this whole existence becomes soulless, life becomes just a by-product of matter. So when you die, everything will die, nothing will remain.

And there is no question of being good or bad. Existence is absolutely indifferent; it does not care about you. God used to care about you. Once God is removed, a great strangeness starts happening between you and existence. There is no relationship, existence does not care, cannot care because it is not conscious anymore. It is no longer an intelligent universe; it is simply dead matter, just as you are. And the life that you know is only a by-product.

A by-product disappears immediately when the elements that were creating it separate. For example, some religions believe that man is made of five elements: earth, air, fire, water, sky.

Once these five elements are together, life is produced as a by-product. When these five elements separate in death, life disappears.

To make it clear to you… in the beginning as you learn to ride a bicycle you fall many times. I have also learned, but I did not fall while learning, because first I watched the learners and why they fall.

They fall because they don’t have confidence. To be on two wheels you need tremendous balance, and if you hesitate… it is just like walking on a tightrope. If you hesitate just for a moment those two wheels cannot keep you on your seat. Those two wheels can keep you in balance only at a certain speed, and the learner is bound to move slowly. Obviously – it seems to be rational – if you are a learner, you should not go with great speed.

I watched all my friends learning to bicycle, and they always said to me, “Why don’t you learn?”

I said, “I am watching first. I am watching why you fall, and why after a few days you stop falling.” And once I got the point, the very first time I went as fast as possible!

All my friends were puzzled. They said, “We have never seen a learner go that fast. A learner is bound to fall a few times, then he learns how to balance.”

I said, “I have been watching, and I got the clue. The clue is you are not confident, not alert that a certain speed is needed to keep the bicycle moving. You cannot stop it and sit on top of it without falling; a certain momentum is needed, so you have to go on pedaling.”

Once I knew exactly what the problem was, I simply went so fast that my whole village wondered, “What will happen to him, because he does not know… and he is going with such speed!”

It was difficult for me to know how to stop; if I stopped, the cycle was going to fall. So I had to go to a place where there was a huge bodhi tree near the railway station, almost three miles from my house. Three miles I rushed so fast that people gave way, stood aside. They said, “This is absolute madness!”

But my madness had a method in it. I was going directly to that tree, because I knew the tree had become hollow. I rode my bicycle into the hollow tree so the front wheel was inside the tree. Then I could stop, there was no problem about falling.

One villager who was working in his field saw this. He said, “This is strange.” He asked me, “If there is no tree like this how are you going to stop?”

I said, “Now I have learned how to stop, because I just did it; I will not need a tree anymore. But this was my first experience. I had not seen the other people stopping, I had seen them falling. So I had no experience about stopping, that’s why I was riding so fast to reach to the bodhi tree.” One part of it had become completely hollow, and it was a huge tree, so I knew that it would be right to put my wheel inside and be held up by the tree. But once I had stopped, I had learned how to stop.

When I came to learn driving… Majid will be surprised that the man who was teaching me driving was called Majid, he was a Mohammedan. He was one of the best drivers in the city, and he loved me very much. In fact, he chose my first car. So he told me, “I will teach you.”

I said, “I don’t like to be taught. You just drive slowly so I can see and watch.”

He said, “What do you mean?”

I said, “I learn only by watching. I don’t want any teacher ever!”

He said, “But it is dangerous! A bicycle was okay. At the most you could have hurt yourself or one other, and not much. But a car is a dangerous thing.”

I said, “I am a dangerous man. You just drive it slowly and tell me everything about where is the pedal, where is the accelerator, where is the brake… you just tell me. And then you slowly move, and I will be walking by your side, just watching what you are doing.”

He said, “If you want it this way, I can do it, but I am very much afraid. If you do the same thing with the car as you have done with the bicycle…”

I said, “That’s why I am trying to watch more closely.” And once I got the idea I told him to get out. And I did the same thing as I had done with the bicycle.

I went so fast. Majid, my teacher, was running behind me, shouting, “Not that fast!” And in that city there was no limit on speed, because in Indian streets you cannot go above fifty-five. There is no need to put a sign everywhere that the speed limit is fifty-five miles per hour, you cannot go above fifty-five anyway.

But that poor fellow was very much afraid. He came running after me. He was a very tall man, a champion runner, there was every possibility that he could have become champion of the whole of India, and he might perhaps someday have participated in the Olympics. He tried hard to follow me, but soon I disappeared from his vision.

When I came back, he was praying under a tree, praying to God for my safety. And when I stopped by his side, so close that he jumped, he forgot all the prayer.

I said, “Don’t be worried. I have learned the whole thing. What were you doing here?”

He said, “I followed you, but soon you disappeared. Then I thought, the only thing is to pray to God to help him, because he knows nothing about driving. He is sitting in the driver’s seat for the first time, and he has gone nobody knows where. How did you turn? Where did you turn back?”

I said, “I had no idea how to turn, because you were just moving straight and I was walking by your side. So I had to go around the city. I had no idea how to turn, what signals to give, because you had not given any signals. But I managed. I went round the whole city so fast, the traffic was simply giving way. And I came back.”

And he said, “Khuda hafiz.” It means, “God saved you.”

I said, “Don’t bring God in.”

Once you know that a certain balance is needed between the negative and the positive, then you have your roots in existence. It is one extreme to believe in God; it is another extreme not to believe in God, and you have to be just in the middle, absolutely balanced. Atheism becomes irrelevant, theism becomes irrelevant. But your balancing brings a new light, a new joy, a new blissfulness to you, a new intelligence which is not of the mind. That intelligence which is not of the mind makes you aware that the whole existence is tremendously intelligent. It is not only alive, it has sensitivity, it has intelligence.

Once you know your inner being is balanced and silent and peaceful, suddenly doors that have been closed by your thoughts simply move, and the whole existence becomes clear to you. You are not accidental. Existence needs you. Without you something will be missing in existence and nobody can replace it.

That’s what gives you dignity, that the whole existence will miss you. The stars and sun and moon, the trees and birds and earth – everything in the universe will feel a small place is vacant which cannot be filled by anybody except you. This gives you a tremendous joy, a fulfillment that you are related to existence, and existence cares for you. Once you are clean and clear, you can see tremendous love falling on you from all dimensions.

You are the highest evolution of existence, of intelligence, and it is dependent on you. If you grow higher than the mind and its intelligence, towards no-mind and its intelligence, existence is going to celebrate: one man again has reached to the ultimate peak. One part of existence has suddenly risen to the highest possibilities of the intrinsic potential in everybody.

There is a parable that the day Gautam Buddha became enlightened, the tree under which he had become enlightened, suddenly without any wind, started moving. He was amazed because there was no wind, no other tree around was moving, not even a single leaf was moving. But the tree under which he was sitting was moving, as if it was dancing. It does not have legs, it is so rooted in the earth, but it can at least show its joy.

It is a very strange phenomenon that certain chemicals which make you intelligent, which give you a better mind, are found in the bodhi tree in greater amounts than in any other tree. So it is not just coincidence that the tree under which Gautam Buddha became enlightened is still called according to his name. Bodhi means enlightenment. And the tree, scientists have found, has a larger amount of intelligence than any other tree in the world. It has so much of those chemicals it is overflowing.

When Manjushri, one of Gautam Buddha’s closest disciples, became enlightened, the story is that the tree under which he was sitting suddenly started showering with flowers, and it was not the season for the tree to bring flowers.

It may be just a parable. But these parables indicate that we are not separate from existence, that our joy will be shared even by the trees, even by the rocks, that our enlightenment will be a festival for the whole of existence.

It is meditation that fulfills your inner being and takes away the vacuum that used to be filled by a great lie, God. And many lies have grown around him.

If you remain with the negative you are going to be insane sooner or later, because you have lost all contact with existence, you have lost every meaning, every possibility of finding meaning. You have certainly dropped lies, which is good, but that is not enough to find the truth.

Drop the lies and make some effort to go inwards to find the truth. That is the whole science of Zen. That’s why I have entitled the series, God Is Dead, Now Zen Is the Only Living Truth. If God is dead and you don’t come close to the experience of Zen, you will become insane. Your sanity depends now only on Zen, that is the only way to find the truth. Then you are absolutely related with existence, and you are no longer a puppet, you are a master.

And a man who knows his relation, his deep relation with existence, cannot commit anything against existence, against life. It is simply impossible. He can only pour as much blissfulness, as much benediction, as much grace as you are ready to receive. But his sources are inexhaustible. When you have found your inexhaustible sources of life and its ecstasy, then it does not matter whether you have a God or not. It does not matter whether there is a hell or a heaven. It does not matter at all.

So religious people when they read Zen are simply puzzled, because it is not talking about anything they have been taught from the very beginning. It is talking about strange dialogues which have nothing… NO place for God, no place for paradise, no place for hell. It is a scientific religion. Its search is not based on belief; its search is based on experience. Just as science is objectively based on experiment, Zen is based subjectively on experience. One science goes outward, another science goes inward.

Nietzsche has no idea how to go inward. The West has been a wrong place for people like Friedrich Nietzsche. If he had been in the East, he would have been a far greater master, a man of absolute sanity. He would have been in the same category, in the same family, as the buddhas.

But unfortunately the West has not learned the lesson even now. It goes on working so hard on objects. Even one tenth of our energy will be enough to find the inner truth. Even an Albert Einstein dies in deep frustration. The frustration was so great that before he died he was asked, “If you are born again, what are you going to be?” He said, “Never again a physicist. I would rather be a plumber.”

The greatest physicist the world has known dies in such frustration that he does not want anything to do with physics, anything to do with science. He wants a simple job like plumbing. But even that is not going to help. If physics has not helped, if mathematics has not helped, if such a great intelligence like Albert Einstein dies in frustration, being a plumber is not going to help. Still you are outside. A scientist may be too deeply involved; a plumber may not be that much involved, but he is still working outside. Being a plumber is not going to give him what he needs. He needs the silence of meditation. From that silence flowers meaning, significance, a tremendous joy that you are not accidental.

I say unto you, that what I am teaching you is authentic existentialism, and what in the West is thought to be existentialism is only accidentalism. I am teaching you how to come in contact with existence, how to find out where you are connected, wired with existence. From where are you getting your life moment to moment? Where is your intelligence coming from? If existence is unintelligent, how can you be intelligent? Where will you get it from?

When you see the rose flowers blossoming, have you ever thought that all this color, all this softness, all this beauty was hidden somewhere in the seed? But the seed alone was not enough to become a rose; it needed the support of existence – the soil, the water, the sun. Then the seed disappeared into the soil and the rosebush started growing. Now it needs air, it needs water, it needs the earth, it needs the sun, it needs the moon. All these together transform the seed which was almost like a dead piece of stone. Suddenly a transformation, a metamorphosis. These roses, these colors, this beauty, this fragrance, cannot come from it unless existence has it already. It all may be hidden; it may be covered in the seed. But anything that happens means it was there already – maybe as a potential.

You have intelligence…

I have told you the story of Ramakrishna and Keshav Chandra Sen. Keshav Chandra was one of the most intelligent people of his time. He founded a religion just on his intellectual philosophy, brahmasamaj, the society for God. And he had hundreds and thousands of intelligent people, a very intelligent group, as his followers. And he was puzzled that this uneducated Ramakrishna, who had not even completed the primary school – in India the primary school, the lowest school, takes four years; he had done only half…. Why were thousands of people going to this idiot? That was in Keshav Chandra Sen’s mind.

Finally he decided he had to go and defeat this man, because he could not think that the man could not be defeated by argument. That was impossible for him to imagine. This idiot from a small village is collecting thousands of people every day! From far and wide people are coming to see him, and to touch his feet!

Keshav Chandra with his followers informed Ramakrishna: “I am coming on such and such a day to challenge you on every point in which you believe. Be ready!”

Ramakrishna’s followers were very much afraid. They knew Keshav Chandra was a great logician; poor Ramakrishna would not be able to answer anything. But Ramakrishna was very joyful, he danced. He said, “I have been waiting all this time. When Keshav Chandra comes that will be a great day of joy!”

His disciples said, “What are you saying? That will be a day of great sadness, because you cannot argue with him.”

Ramakrishna said, “Wait. Who is going to argue with him? I don’t need to argue. Let him come.”

But his disciples were shaky, very shaky, very much afraid that their master was going to be defeated, completely crushed. They knew Keshav Chandra. In that century there was no parallel to Keshav Chandra’s intelligence in this country.

And Keshav Chandra came with one hundred of his topmost disciples to see the argument, the debate, the challenge. Ramakrishna was standing on the road to receive him, far away from the temple where he used to live. And he hugged Keshav Chandra. And Keshav Chandra felt a little embarrassed, and that embarrassment went on growing.

Ramakrishna took his hand in his hand and took him inside. He said, “I have been waiting and waiting for years. Why did you not come before?”

Keshav Chandra said, “He seems to be a strange man, seems not to be afraid at all. Do you understand? I have come here for a discussion!”

Ramakrishna said, “Of course.”

So they sat near the temple by the side of the Ganges, a beautiful place, under a tree.

And Ramakrishna said, “Start.”

So Keshav Chandra asked him, “What do you say about God?”

Ramakrishna said, “Have I to say anything about God? Can’t you see God in my eyes?”

Keshav Chandra looked a little puzzled – “What kind of argument is this?”

And Ramakrishna said, “Can’t you feel God in my hand? Come closer, boy.”

And Keshav Chandra said, “What kind of argument…?”

He had been in many debates; he had defeated many great scholars, and this villager… In Hindi the word for idiot is gamar, but it actually means the villager gaon means village, and gamar means from the village. But gamar is used as stupid, retarded, idiot.

Ramakrishna said, “If you can understand the language of my eyes, if you can understand the energy of my hand, you are proof enough that existence is intelligent. Where have you got your intelligence from?”

This was a grand argument. He was saying, “If you have got this great intelligence – and I know you are a highly intelligent person; I have always loved you – tell me from where it comes? If existence is without intelligence you cannot get it. From where? You are the proof that existence is intelligent, and that is what I mean by God. To me God is not somebody sitting on a cloud. To me God simply means existence is not unintelligent. It is an intelligent universe; we belong and we are needed. It rejoices in our rejoicings, it celebrates in our celebrations, it dances with our dance. Have you seen my dance?” – And he started dancing.

Keshav Chandra said, “What to do!”

But he danced so beautifully. He was a good dancer, because he used to dance in the temple sometimes from morning till evening – no coffee break! He would dance and dance till he would fall on the ground.

So he started dancing with such joy and such grace that suddenly there was a transformation in

Keshav Chandra. He forgot all his logic, he saw the beauty of this man, he saw the splendor of this man, he saw a joy which he had never felt.

All that intellect, all those arguments were just superficial, inside there was utter emptiness. This man was so overflowing. He touched the feet of Ramakrishna and said, “Forgive me. I was absolutely wrong about you. I know nothing, and I have been just philosophizing. You know everything, and you are not saying a single word.”

Ramakrishna said, “I will forgive you only on one condition.”

Keshav Chandra said, “Any condition from your side. I am ready.”

Ramakrishna said, “The condition is that once in a while you have to come to discuss with me, to debate with me, to challenge me.”

This is the way of a mystic; and Keshav Chandra was completely finished. He became a totally different man; he started to come every day. Soon his disciples deserted him: “He has gone mad. That madman infected him so much. There was only one madman, now there are two. He is even dancing with him.”

But Keshav Chandra, who had been a sad man, grudging, complaining about everything, because he was living in a negative space, suddenly blossomed, flowers came to his being, a new fragrance. He forgot all logic. This man helped him have a taste of something that is beyond mind.

Zen is the method to go beyond mind. So we will be discussing God and Zen together. God has to be negated, and Zen has to be planted deep in your being. The lie has to be destroyed and the truth has to be revealed. That’s why I have chosen God and Zen together. God is a lie, Zen is a truth.

-Osho

Excerpt from God is Dead, Now Zen is the Only Living Truth, 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.

Prajna or Samadhi? – Osho

Beloved Osho,

Once, when Obaku was sitting in Nansen’s reception room, Nansen asked him, “It is said that the Buddha Nature can be clearly seen by those who study both samadhi and prajna equally. What does this mean?”

Obaku answered, “It means that we should not depend on anything at any time.”

Nansen then asked, “I wonder whether the opinion you have just expressed is really your own. “

Of course not!” said Obaku.

Nansen then said, “Setting aside the question of payment for the drinking water for the moment, let me ask whom you intend to have the money for the straw sandals returned to?”

To this question, Obaku made no reply.

Maneesha, although this anecdote seems to be very simple, it is not so. In these few words a tremendously important question has been raised. And unfortunately nobody has discussed that question up to now. I would like to go in detail into what I mean. Once, when Obaku was sitting in Nansen’s reception room, Nansen asked him, “It is said that the Buddha Nature can be clearly seen by those who study both samadhi and prajna equally. What does this mean?”

Before we go into the answer of Obaku, you have to understand the meaning of samadhi and prajna.

It is a very intricate and complex question. Samadhi can be understood watching Ramakrishna. That will give you the basic symptoms which can be observed from the outside.

Ramakrishna used to go into samadhi for hours. Once for six days he was in samadhi. And samadhi to him and to his followers – and there is a great tradition from Patanjali, five thousand years old, which believes in samadhi – means to become perfectly unconscious. To every outsider he was almost in a coma; to the psychologist he had gone deeper into the unconscious layers of the mind.

And there was no way to bring him back.

Automatically, whenever his consciousness surfaced again, he would become aware. And whenever he came out of this samadhi, this deep coma-like unconsciousness, he would weep and cry, “Why have you taken away that great beauty, that great bliss, that great silence that I was experiencing. Time had stopped, the world was forgotten, I was alone and everything was at its perfection. So why have you taken it away?” He was asking the question to existence. “Why don’t you let me continue it?”

Now, Buddha himself would not consider it a samadhi. His samadhi means prajna, and prajna means awareness. You have to become more and more conscious, not unconscious; just two polarities, samadhi and prajna. Prajna is perfect awareness of your being. And samadhi in Ramakrishna’s case means absolute oblivion. Nobody has gone into the deeper search for what exactly is the difference deep inside.

Both talk about great blissfulness, both talk about eternity, truth, beauty, goodness as their ultimate experience. But one is completely unconscious – you can cut his hand and he will not know – that much unconsciousness; and Buddha is so conscious that before sitting on the floor, first he will look to see if there is any ant or anything that may be killed by his sitting there. In his every act he showed immense awareness.

I have told you the story that one day passing through a street in Vaishali, a fly came and sat on his head. He was talking to Ananda about something. So just automatically the way you do it, he simply waved his hand. Then he suddenly stopped talking to Ananda and again waved his hand. Now there was no fly.

Ananda said, “What are you doing? The fly has gone.”

He said, “The fly has gone, but I acted unconsciously. I waved my hand automatically like a robot. Now I am moving as I should have moved, with full consciousness, awareness.”

So these seem to be two polarities. Both have become a point of great debate as to who is right, because the experience they talk about is the same. My own experience is that mind can be crossed from both ends. One tenth of the mind is conscious, nine tenths of the mind is unconscious. Just think of mind: the upper layer is conscious and nine layers are unconscious. Now mind can be passed from both the ends. You cannot pass from the middle; you will have to travel to the end.

Ramakrishna passed the mind by going deeper and deeper into the unconscious layers. And when the final unconscious layer came, he jumped out of the mind. To the world outside he looked as if he was in a coma. But he reached to the same clear sky although he chose a path which is dark, dismal; he chose the night part of consciousness. But he reached to the same experience.

Buddha never became unconscious in this way. Even walking he was stepping every step fully conscious and gracefully, every gesture fully conscious, gracefully. He transformed his consciousness to such a point that unconscious layers started becoming conscious. The final enlightenment is when all unconscious layers of the mind have become conscious. He also jumps out of the mind.

Both samadhi and prajna are no-mind states, going outside the mind. So the experience is the same but the path is different, very different. One is the white path of light that Buddha followed; one is the path of darkness that Ramakrishna followed. And it is obvious that the people who cannot understand both, who have not followed both the paths and come to the same experience, are going to debate and discuss to no end.

One will say that Ramakrishna’s samadhi is a coma, that he has lost consciousness. Another will say that because Buddha never goes into Ramakrishna-like samadhi, he does not know anything about samadhi. But my experience is, both know the samadhi, both know the prajna.

Ramakrishna first knows samadhi and out of samadhi prajna is born. Buddha knows first prajna and then out of prajna samadhi is born. It is only a question of understanding that existence is always contradictory, made of opposites – night and day, life and death.

Ramakrishna’s path is of unconsciousness. Nobody has deliberately considered the point. And Buddha’s path is of pure light, of continuous awareness. Even in sleep Buddha sleeps consciously.

So Nansen has raised a very meaningful question.

“It is said that the Buddha Nature can be clearly seen by those who study both samadhi and prajna equally. What does this mean?”

Obaku answered, “It means that we should not depend on anything at any time.”

Obaku was not a master, Obaku was a scholar. And this question cannot be decided by any scholarship; no intelligence will do, only experience. So what he answers is absolutely irrelevant.

He says, “It means that we should not depend on anything at any time.” Can you see any relevance to the question? It has nothing to do with samadhi, nothing to do with prajna. He is not only a teacher, but a blind teacher. The question has gone above his head.

Nansen then asked – immediately, which shows what I am saying – “I wonder whether the opinion you have just expressed is really your own.” Anybody could have seen that this is so stupid, it has nothing to do with the question. He could have said, “I don’t know, I have not experienced either samadhi or prajna. I don’t know whether they end up into the same experience or they lead to different experiences. It is not my own experience, so I can’t say anything.”

That would have been more honest. But looking at his answer, Nansen immediately asked, “I wonder whether the opinion you have just expressed is really your own.”

Even this absurd opinion that you have expressed, I think even this one is not your own. “Of course not!” said Obaku.

Seeing the situation he must have felt it is better to say that this is not my opinion. Nansen then said, “Setting aside the question of payment for the drinking water for the moment... Nansen lived on top of a high mountain for thirty years. To bring water to that height, he had to go miles down to bring water up. To us it may look a little strange that he was asking a price for water. He says, “Setting aside the question of payment for the drinking water, for the moment, let me ask whom you intend to have the money for the straw sandals returned to?”

Zen monks use straw sandals, the same shape as my sandals, but they are made of straw, very beautiful, very aesthetic and very cheap. Nansen is saying, Who has paid for your straw sandals? They look so new. You don’t deserve these straw sandals; they are specially meant for Zen masters. And as for giving you water, I will not ask anything for it, but it has been wasted on a man who does not even know what samadhi is, what is prajna, and still has the guts and the nerve to give an absolutely irrelevant answer; an answer, too, that is not his own. Such a borrowed state is all of scholars, pundits, rabbis.

Nansen exposed Obaku completely to the very innermost core of his being just by asking a small question. But the question is not small, and it is a question which nobody has explained the way I am telling you, that the experiences are not two. Just, the paths leading to the experiences are very different, contrary paths.

One follows the darkness, goes deeper and deeper into the darkness of the mind and the unconscious, reaches to the very end of the mind and jumps out of it. And another tries every possible way to make the unconscious also conscious. And when everything becomes conscious in him, he also takes a jump.

Perhaps Buddha’s method is more scientific. There is no question of right and wrong. Both lead to the same space, but Buddha’s method of prajna is more scientific in the way that you cannot miss because you are aware. Ramakrishna’s path is groping in the dark. He may reach to the dawn, he may not reach. And once he has gone into unconsciousness, all is darkness, he cannot see where he is going. It is just by chance that he finds the door out of the mind, just by chance.

Science does not believe in chance, it has to be a certainty. That’s why you will not find more Ramakrishnas in the world, because it is just a coincidence that groping in the dark you find the door and get out of the mind. It happened to Ramakrishna but you will not find another parallel in the whole history of mankind.

Thousands of mystics have reached to the same point. But they have all followed the path of prajna, because when you have a light with you, you need not grope. When you have a light with you, a consciousness, like a torch showing the path, your reaching to the goal has more certainty.

And once you have known the path, then it is very easy. Only the first time are you going into the unknown. But the unknown is not dark; you keep a torch in your hand. Ramakrishna is going into the unknown without a torch. Ramakrishna’s samadhi in a way is special. He is alone of that kind. He is a rare specimen who went into his depths without taking a single candle. It is more than probable that you will not find the door.

When Buddha was asked about it, he said, “There was a palace with one thousand doors; only one door was real, the remaining were fake; they appeared like doors, but when you went close to them, they were just painted doors, there was a flat wall with no opening.

“A blind man got lost in the palace. He went around groping and groping. He touched many painted doors, but they were not really doors and the time he reached the real door, the only one, a fly came to sit on his head. So he became engaged in waving it away and passed the door.”

Nine hundred and ninety-nine doors, and a chance comes; that chance is very fragile, it can be missed by anything: your head starts itching or you become so tired of groping and touching that you say, “Take a chance, leave this one, go ahead.”

So Buddha said, “My path is not of such groping. In my palace all the doors are real. And there is no need to grope because I give you eyes of meditation and a light that burns like a fire within you, which is your very life. With that light and silence of meditation you can find the door. There are a thousand doors, every door is capable of taking you out.”

I am absolutely certain that Buddha is right; but that does not mean that Ramakrishna is wrong. But Ramakrishna cannot be the rule, he can only be the exception. Buddha is providing for everybody, not for exceptions. A rule has to be for everybody. You cannot make a rule on a single exception. Of the followers of Ramakrishna not even a single one has attained samadhi. But Buddha’s followers even today, continuing as a chain, master to disciple in different countries, are attaining prajna.

Whether you call it samadhi or you call it prajna, it is the same; the meaning of both is ultimate wisdom.

Buddhists don’t believe Ramakrishna to be enlightened. One very old Buddhist monk… he was an Englishman, and when he was just a child, his father was appointed to some post in Kalimpong where the child came in contact with Buddhist masters. He became a Buddhist at the age of eighteen. His whole family resisted; they were Christians and said, “What are you doing listening to the Buddhist masters?”

He could see that Christianity is very childish. It has nothing much to give to you. What can you do even if Jesus did walk on water? Even if you learn to walk on water, what spirituality can you attain through it? Even if you can turn water into alcohol, which is a crime, it does not help anyone to be spiritual. What are the teachings of Christians which can be compared to Gautam the Buddha? None comes close to him. He certainly is the Everest of the Himalayas.

So a Buddhist won’t accept Ramakrishna as enlightened. But talking to Buddhist monks and particularly this English monk, I asked him, “Have you ever tried forgetting Buddha’s method and giving some time to using Ramakrishna’s method?”

He said, “No, I have never tried it.”

I said, “Then saying that Ramakrishna never achieved samadhi is going beyond the limits of your experience.”

I have tried both ways, going on the path of light and going on the path of absolute darkness. Nobody does that because once you have reached the path, then why should you bother about other paths?

You have reached the station in a rickshaw, now are you going to come back and try a taxi? People will think you are mad. You have reached, now there is no need to try whether a taxi also reaches the station or not.

But I am a little crazy. Seeing the argument going on for centuries, I decided that the only way to come to a conclusion is, follow both the paths: one time the path of light and another time the path of darkness. When I was following the path of darkness, almost all my friends, my professors thought that I had gone mad. “What is the need if you have reached to the light in the day, what is the need to continue traveling in the night after reaching?”

I said, “There is a need because there is no other way to conclude whether Ramakrishna was also in the same state of consciousness as Buddha.”

But neither has any Buddhist tried nor have any of Ramakrishna’s disciples tried. And I am nobody’s disciple, I am just an outsider; I don’t belong to any religion or any organization. But to come to a conclusion, seeing that for centuries people have been discussing it, I could not conceive any way that it could be decided by argument; the only way to decide it was to follow both the paths.

And now the meditation that I have been teaching to you is a combination of both the paths. It is neither a meditation dependent only on prajna, just being aware; nor is it a meditation just to forget all and drown yourself in deep rest and darkness. I am using both. I am telling you to forget the world, I am telling you forget the body, forget the mind, you are not these things, but keep your light alive as a witness. So you are going on both the paths together.

There is no problem. In fact it is more significant, because you will be achieving the space that Ramakrishna achieved and that Buddha achieved. And you will have a good laugh that for centuries scholars have been unnecessarily wasting their time. It is always good to experiment because this is not a philosophical question. It is a question of inner experimentation; it is as scientific as any science.

But in a very nice way Nansen said, “Setting aside the question of payment for the drinking water, because I have to carry the drinking water for miles, Let me ask whom you intend to have the money for the straw sandals returned to? Who has paid the money for your straw sandals? Return the money. You are just a teacher; don’t pretend to be a master. To this question, Obaku made no reply.

-Osho

From Nansen: The Point of Departure, 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.

Path of Will or Path of Surrender? – Osho

Last night you spoke about witnessing as a method; other times I have heard you speak about becoming a thing totally, being totally involved in any given situation. Usually, I am at a loss as to which of these two to follow: Whether to stand back and witness in a detached way or become something totally – for example, when there is anger or love or sadness. Are these not two opposite paths? Are they both for different kinds of situations or for different types of people? When should one do which?

There are two basic paths – only two. One is of surrendering and another is of willing: the path of surrender and the path of will. They are diametrically opposite as far as going through them is concerned. But they reach to the same goal; they reach to the same realization. So we have to understand a little more in detail.

The path of will starts with your witnessing Self. It is not concerned with your ego directly – only indirectly. To start witnessing, to be aware of your acts, is directly concerned with awakening your inner Self. If the inner Self is awakened, the ego disappears as a consequence. You are not to do anything with the ego directly. They cannot both exist simultaneously. If your Self is awakened, the ego will disappear. The path of will tries to awaken the inner center directly. Many, many methods are used. How to awaken the Self? We will discuss that.

The path of surrender is directly concerned with the ego, not with the Self. When the ego disappears, the inner Self is awakened automatically. The path of surrender is concerned with the ego immediately, directly. You are not to do anything to awaken your inner Self. You are just to surrender your ego. The moment ego is surrendered; you are left with your inner Self awakened.

Of course, these both will work in opposite directions, because one will be concerned with ego and one will be concerned with Self. Their methods, their techniques, will be opposite – and no one can follow both. There is no need to and that is impossible also. Everyone has to choose.

If you choose the path of will, then you are left alone to work upon yourself. It is an arduous thing. One has to struggle – to fight – to fight with old habits which create sleep. Then the only fight is against sleep, and the only ambition is for a deep awakening inside. Those who follow will, they know only one sin, and that sin is spiritual sleepiness.

Many are the techniques. I have discussed some. For example, Gurdjieff used a Sufi exercise. Sufis call it “halt.” For example, you are sitting here, and if you are practicing the exercise of “halt” it means total halt. Whenever the teacher says “Stop!” or “Halt!” then you have to stop totally whatsoever you are doing. If your eyes are open, then stop them there and then. Now you cannot close them.

If your hand is raised, let it be there. Whatsoever your position and gesture, just be frozen in it. No movements! Halt totally! Try this, and suddenly you will have an inner awakening – a feeling. Suddenly you will become aware of your own frozenness.

The whole body is frozen, you have become a solid stone, you are like a statue. But if you go on deceiving yourself, then you have fallen into sleep. You can deceive yourself. You can say, “Who is seeing me? I can close my eyes. They are becoming painful.” You can deceive yourself – then you have fallen into sleep. No – deception is sleep. Don’t deceive yourself, because no one else is concerned. It is up to you. If you can be frozen for a single moment you will begin to see yourself as different, and your center will become aware of your frozen body.

There are other ways. For example, Mahavir and his tradition have used fasting as a method to awaken the Self. If you fast, the body begins to demand, the body begins to overpower you. Mahavir has said, “Just witness – don’t do anything. You feel hungry, so feel hungry. The body asks for food – be a witness to it, don’t do anything. Just be a witness to whatsoever is happening.” And it is a deep thing.

There are only two deep things in the body – sex and food. Nothing is more than these two, because food is needed for individual survival and sex is needed for race survival. Both are survival mechanisms. The individual cannot survive without food and the race cannot survive without sex. So sex is food for the race and food is sex for the individual. These are the deepest things because they are concerned with your survival – the most basic things. You will die without them.

So if you are fasting and just witnessing, then you have touched the deepest sleep. And if you can witness without being identified or bothered – the body is suffering, the body is hungry, the body is demanding and you are just witnessing – suddenly the body will be different. There will be a discontinuity between you and the body; there will be a gap.

Fasting has been used by Mahavir. Mohammedans have used vigilance in the night – no sleep!

Don’t sleep for a week and then you will know how sleepy the whole being becomes, how difficult it is to maintain this vigilance. But if one persists, suddenly a moment comes when the body and you are torn apart. Then you can see that the body needs sleep – it is not your need.

Many are the methods to work directly to create more awareness in yourself, to bring yourself above your so-called sleepy existence. No surrender is needed. Rather, one has to fight against surrender. No surrender is needed, because this is a path of struggle not of surrender. Because of this path, Mahavir was given the name “Mahavir.” “Mahavir” means “the great warrior.” This was not his name. His name was Vardhaman. He was called Mahavir because he was a great warrior as far as this inner struggle is concerned. He had no Guru, no Master, because it is a lonely path. Even to take somebody’s help is not good – it may become your sleep.

There is a story: Mahavir was fasting and remaining silent for years together. In a certain village some mischievous people were disturbing him, harassing him, and he was on a vow of silence.

He was beaten so many times because he would not speak and he remained naked – completely naked. So the villagers were at a loss to understand who he was. And he would not speak! And moreover he was naked! So from one village to another village he would be thrown out, made to leave the village.

The story says Indra, the King of gods, came to him and said to Mahavir, “I can defend you. It has become so painful. You are being beaten unnecessarily, so just allow me to defend you.”

Mahavir rejected the help. Later on, when he was asked why he rejected the help, he said, “This path of will is a lonely path. You cannot even have a helper with you because then the struggle loosens. Then the struggle becomes partial. Then you can depend on someone else, and wherever there is dependence sleep comes in. One has to be totally independent; only then can one be awake.”

This is one path, one basic attitude. All these methods of witnessing belong to this path. So when I say, “Be a witness.” it is meant for those who are travelers on the path of will.

Quite the opposite is the method of surrender. Surrender is concerned with your ego, not with your Self. In surrender you have to give up yourself. Of course, you cannot give the Self; that is impossible.

Whatsoever you can give is bound to be your ego. Only the ego can be given – because it is just incidental to you. It is not even a part of your being, just something added. It is a possession. Of course, the possessor has also become possessed by it. But it is a possession, it is a property – it is not you.

The path of surrender says, “Surrender your ego to the Teacher, to the Divine, to a Buddha.” When someone comes to Buddha and says, “Buddham Sharanam Gauchhami – I take shelter at your feet. I surrender myself at Buddha’s feet,” what is he doing? The Self cannot be surrendered, so leave it out. Whatsoever you can surrender is your ego. That is your possession; you can surrender it. If you can surrender your ego to someone, it makes no difference to whom – X, Y or Z. The person to be surrendered to is irrelevant in a way. The real thing is surrendering. So you can surrender to a God in the sky. Whether He is there or not is irrelevant. If a concept of the Divine in the sky can help you to surrender your ego, then it is a good device.

Really, yoga shastras say that God is a device to be surrendered to – just a device! So you need not bother whether God is or not. He is just a device, because it will be difficult for you to surrender in a vacuum. So let there be a God, and you surrender. Even a false device can help. For example, you see a rope on the street and you think that it is a snake. It moves like a snake. You are afraid, you are trembling, you are running. You begin to perspire, and your perspiration is real. And there is no snake – there is just a rope mistaken for a snake.

The yoga sutras say that God is a just a device to be surrendered to. Whether God is or is not is not meaningful; you need not bother about it. If He is, you will come to know through surrender. You need not be bothered about it before surrender. If He is, then you will know; if He is not, then you will know. So no discussion, no argument, no proof is needed. And it is very beautiful: they say He is a device, just a hypothetical thing to which you can surrender yourself, to help you surrender.

So a Teacher can become a god; a Teacher is a god. Unless you feel a Teacher as a god, you cannot surrender. Surrendering becomes possible if you feel that Mahavir is a god, Buddha is a god. Then you can surrender easily. Whether a Buddha is a god or not is irrelevant. Again, it is a device, it helps.

Buddha is known to have said that every truth is a device to help; every truth is just a utility. If it works, it is true. And there is no other basis for calling it true or untrue – if it works, it is true!

On the path of surrender, surrendering is the only technique. There are many techniques on the path of will, because you can make many efforts to awaken yourself. But when one is just to surrender, there are no methods. […]

These are completely, diametrically opposite standpoints. But just in the beginning and while on the path – they reach to the same thing. Either surrender your ego – then you have not to do anything. You have to do only one thing: surrender your ego. Then you have not to do anything. Then everything will begin to happen. If you cannot surrender then you will have to do much, because then you are on your own to fight, struggle.

Both paths are valid, and there is no question of which is better. It depends on the person who is following. It depends on your type. […]

The path of will is just like naturopathy – you have to depend upon yourself. No help! The path of surrender is more like allopathy – you can use medicines.

Think of it in this way: when someone is ill, he has two things – an inner, positive possibility of health and an accidental or incidental phenomenon of disease, illness. Naturopathy is not concerned with illness directly. Naturopathy is directly concerned with a positive growth of health. So grow in health! Naturopathy means growing in health positively. When you grow in health, the disease will disappear by itself. You need not be concerned with disease directly.

Allopathy is not concerned with positive health at all. It is concerned with the illness: destroy the illness and you will be healthy automatically.

The path of will is concerned with growing in positive awareness. If you grow, the ego will disappear – that is the disease. The path of surrender is concerned with the disease itself, not with positive growth in health. Destroy the disease – surrender the ego – and you will grow in health.

The path of surrender is allopathic and the path of will is naturopathic. […]

-Osho

From The Ultimate Alchemy, V.1, Discourse #16, Q2

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation 

For a related post see The Light of Awareness.

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.

Tantra Failed for Two Reasons – Osho

Do you see shortcomings in the teachings of Tantra that incline you to feel tantric methods are not suitable for us?

It is not a complete system. There is a basic fallacy that human beings fall into: they find a small truth, a part of the truth, and rather than discover the whole, the remaining part they imagine to fill up the gap. Because they have part of the truth, they can argue and they can manage to make a system, but the remaining part is simply their invention.

All the systems have done that. Rather than discovering the whole truth, it is the human tendency to say, “Why bother? We have found a small piece which is enough for the showcase, which is enough to silence any enemy who raises any question” – and the remaining is just invention.

For example, tantra is right that sexual energy is the basic energy, so this energy should be transformed into higher forms. It is a truth. But what happened is that they never went very deep into meditation; meditation remained just secondary. And man’s sexuality shows itself so powerfully that in the name of tantra it became simply sexual orgy. Without meditation that was going to happen. Meditation should have been the most primary thing because that is going to transform the energy, but that became secondary.

And many people, who were sexually perverted, sexually repressed, joined the tantra school. These were the people who brought all their perversions, all their repressions. They were not interested in any transformation, they were interested only in getting rid of their repressions; their interest was basically sexual.

So although tantra has a piece of truth, it could not be used rightly. Unless that piece of truth is put in second place, and meditation moves into first place, it will always happen that in tantra, people will be doing all kinds of perversions. And with a great name, they will not feel that they are doing anything wrong; they will feel they are doing something religious, something spiritual.

Tantra failed for two reasons. One was an inner reason – that meditation was not made the central point. And second, tantra had no special methodology for the perverted and the repressed, so that first their repressions and perversions are settled and they become normal. And once they become normal, then they are introduced to meditation. Only after deep meditation should they be allowed in tantra experiments. It was a wrong arrangement, so the whole thing became, in the name of a great system, just an exploitation of sex.

That’s what many of the therapists are doing. Just the other day I saw Rajen’s advertisement for a tantra group – with an obscene picture. It will attract people because this is real pornography. Why bother to go to see just pictures printed on paper when you can see real people doing pornography? And Rajen has no understanding of meditation, has never meditated.

And these people will feel good, relieved, because the society does not allow them… In the group they will be allowed to do everything they want to do, so much repression will be thrown out, and they will feel relieved and light and they will feel thankful that they have gone through a great tantra experience. And there has been no tantra experience – it was simply a sexual orgy. And within a few days, they will again collect repressions because they cannot do it outside in the society. So they become permanent customers, chronic tantrikas.

And the so-called therapists enjoy the money that they bring. They have nothing to lose, they simply allow freedom. They start with all the great words that I have been using – “freedom,” “expression,” “no repression,” ”just be yourself, and don’t be worried what others are thinking,” “do your own thing.” And those idiots start doing their own thing!

First people should be introduced to meditation, and then they should be introduced to tantra methods. This is not tantra. Tantra methods are totally different. These people who are doing tantra, they don’t know anything about tantra.

For example, Ramakrishna meditated deeply, and whenever he felt any sexual urge disturbing his meditation he would ask his wife Sharda – who was a beautiful woman – to sit on a high stool, naked, and he would sit in front of her just looking at her, meditating on her till that sexual urge subsided. Then he would touch the feet of Sharda, his own wife, and he would thank her, saying, “You have been helping me immensely; otherwise, where would I have gone? The urge needed some expression, and just watching you was enough.”

The temple of Khajuraho has beautiful statues in all sexual postures. It was a tantra school that made the temple and those statues. And the first thing the student had to do was to meditate on each statue – and they are arranged in such a way that from one corner you go around the temple in a circle. It may take six months, but you have to watch each statue until you can see it just as a statue with no sexuality in it – and it is in a sexual posture. But just in your watching it, seeing it for months, it becomes a pure piece of art; all pornography disappears. Then you move to another. And all the perversions of human mind have been put into the statues.

And when you have circled the whole temple, only then will the master allow you inside the temple. Those six months are of immense meditation and of tremendous release, all repressions gone: you are feeling absolutely light. Then the master allows you in. And inside the temple there is no sexual statue; inside the temple there is nothing – emptiness.

Then the master teaches you how to go deeper into your meditation which has arisen in the six months, and now you can go very deep because there is no hindrance, no problem, no sexuality. And this going deep into meditation with no sexual disturbance means the sexual energy is moving with the meditation, not against it. That’s how it is transformed and takes higher forms.

All these so-called therapists know nothing about tantra; know nothing of why it failed. But they are not interested in that, they are interested in exploiting repressed people. And the repressed people are happy because after a seven or ten day tantra session, they feel relieved; they think this is some spiritual growth. But within two or three days all that spiritual growth will be gone, and they are ready for another group.

There are some people – you can call them “groupies” – that move from one group to another group to another group. Their whole life is just a movement from group to group. Just like hippies… but you can call them “groupies.”

-Osho

From The Path of the Mystic, Discourse #38

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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