Tag: surrender

The Purity of the Path – Osho

Seeing the dialectical facts of life, can one practice the path of relaxation and the path of effort simultaneously?

No, it is not possible! You cannot practice both simultaneously because both are diametrically opposite. They lead to one point, but they don’t pass through the same road, through the same route, through the same realms. They are quite diametrically opposite.

You cannot practice both, just like you cannot go to one place simultaneously following two roads. Two roads may be going. You are going to the station and two roads may be going to the station, but you cannot follow both the roads simultaneously. And if you do follow them, you will not reach the station. Both roads go, but then you will not reach because then you will have to go ten steps on one, then come back, follow the other, then come back, follow the first one. Then you can follow much, but you will reach nowhere.

Every way is a particular way. It has its own route, its own steps, its own milestones, its own symbols, its own philosophy, its own methodology, its own vehicles, its own mediums of movement. It has its own everything: every way is a perfect way. So never be in two minds. It will simply create confusion. Follow one! When you reach to the end, you will know that even if you had followed the other you would have reached. When you have reached, you can try just as a play to go on the other – that’s another thing – just to know whether this road also comes or not. But don’t follow two simultaneously, because every path is so scientifically perfect that this will only create disturbance.

Really, in the old days, even to know about the other path was prohibited because even that knowing creates disturbance. And our minds are so childish and so curious, and foolishly curious, that if we hear about something else or read about something else, we begin to amalgamate. And we don’t know that anything which is meaningful on a particular path may be just harmful on another. So you cannot amalgamate. Some part in one car may be meaningful, useful – so useful that the car cannot move without it. But the same part can become a hindrance in another car. Don’t use it, because every part is meaningful only in its own pattern, in its own gestalt. The moment you change the whole, the part becomes a hindrance.

So much confusion has come into the religious world because now every religion is known to everybody, every path is known, and you are just confused. Now, to find a Christian is difficult, to find a Hindu is difficult, to find a Mohammedan is difficult, because everyone is just something of a Hindu, something of a Mohammedan, something of a Christian – and that creates a lot of danger. It is dangerous. It may prove suicidal.

So purity of path is a basic necessity for one who has to follow. If one has just to think about it, then there is no need for any purity. You can go on thinking. But if you are to travel, then purity of the path is very essential. And you must be aware not to confuse anything and not to bring any alien, foreign element in it.

It doesn’t mean that the other is wrong. It only means that the other is right only on the other’s path. You need not take the other conclusion that “Only I am right and the other is wrong.” The other is right in its own way. And if you have to follow another path, just go to the other’s way leaving your way completely.

That is why the old religions – and there are only two basic religions: Hindu and Jewish – were never ready to convert anyone. And the only reason was this, that they knew a very old, very deep tradition – that to convert is to confuse. If someone has been brought up as a Christian and you convert him into a Hindu, you will just confuse him because now he cannot forget that which he has known. Now you cannot just wash it out. It will remain there, and on that foundation, whatsoever you give him as Hinduism will not mean the same because his old foundation will always be there. You will just confuse him, and that confusion will not make him religious, cannot make him.

So the old religions – really, there are just two old religions, the Jewish and the Hindu, and all other religions are just branches of those – have remained very dogmatically non-converting. The Hindu concept was disturbed by Dayananda. Because his mind was working in a political way, not in a religious one, he began to convert. But that concept has a beauty of its own. It doesn’t mean that other religions are bad; it doesn’t mean that others are not right. It doesn’t mean anything like that. It only means that if you have been brought up in a particular concept, it is better to follow that – follow that! It has gone deep in your bones and blood, so it is better to follow that.

But now it has become impossible, and it will never be possible now again because the old patterns have broken. Now, no one can be a Christian, no one can be a Hindu. That is not possible now, so a new categorization is needed. Now I don’t categorize as Hindu and Mohammedan and Christian. That categorization is not possible now. It is just dead and must be thrown away. Now we must categorize every path.

For example, there are two basic divisions: the path of relaxation and the path of effort, the path of surrender and the path of will. This is a basic division. Then other divisions will follow, but these two are basic and quite diametrically opposite. The path of relaxation means surrender just here and now with no effort. If you can, you can. If you cannot, you cannot. If you can, you can. If you cannot, you cannot – there is no go. The path of surrender is very simple: Surrender! If you ask how, then you are not for this path, because the “how” belongs to the other path. Mm? “How” means by what effort, by what technique: “How am I to surrender?” If you ask, “How I am to surrender?” then you are not for the path of surrender. Then go to the other.

If you can just surrender without asking how, only then is it possible. So it seems simple, but it is very difficult, very arduous, because the “how” comes instantaneously. If I say “Surrender!” you have not even heard the word and the “how” comes up: “How?” – then you are not for this path. Then the other path is of will, effort, endeavor. Then every “how” is supplied – how to do it. Then there are many ways. So surrender has only one way, and there are no branches. There cannot be. There cannot be different types of surrender. Surrender is simply surrender. There are no types. Types belong to techniques. There can be different techniques; but because there is no technique surrender remains the purest path, without any division.

Then the second: the path of will. It has many divisions. All the yogas, methods, belong to the second. The second says, “You cannot relax just now, so we will prepare you: a preparation is needed. So follow these methods, and a moment will come when you will drop.”

They look difficult – they are not! They look difficult because they say preparation, methods, years of training and discipline are necessary. So they look difficult, but they are not – because the more time is given to you, the more simplified the process becomes. And surrender is the most difficult process because no time is allowed. They say, “Just here and now.” If you can, you can. If you cannot, you cannot.

Baso, a Zen monk, would say to whosoever would come, “Surrender!” If the person asks, “How?” he would say, “Go elsewhere!” His whole life he used only two statements continuously – never a third. He would say, “Surrender!” If you would say, “How?” he would say, “Go somewhere else!”

Sometimes some persons came who would not ask, “How?” and would surrender. But rare becomes the phenomenon! As our modern mind progresses surrender will be rare, surrender will be difficult, because surrender means an innocence, a trusting mind, an absolute faith. It doesn’t need effort; it needs faith. It doesn’t ask for the method and the way and the bridge; it takes the jump. It doesn’t ask for the steps – it doesn’t ask anything.

But the other path is of effort, tension. And many methods are possible, because to do something there are many techniques. There are many techniques for how to create the ultimate tension so that you explode. But never follow both. You cannot follow! You can just go on thinking about both. And don’t confuse. Determine clearly, exactly, which is for you.

Can you trust? Are you ready without any “how” to take the jump? If not, then forget relaxation, then forget surrender, then even forget the very word – because you cannot understand it. Then effort – and this Upanishad is talking about effort: upward effort, a continuous arrowing of the mind towards the peak.

-Osho

From The Ultimate Alchemy, 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.

Are You Self-Realized – Osho

Are you self-realized? And how do you explain your relationship with existence and with people?

The word you say, “self-realized,” is not right, because realization always means a transcendence of the self. The word “self-realization” is, therefore, contradictory. If you realize, you know there is no self. If you do not realize, then there is the self. Whereas selfhood is non-realization, realization is non-selfhood. So I cannot say I am self-realized. I can only say there is no self now!

There was a self. That was only up to the door. The moment you enter the temple of realization, you find it no more. It is a shadow which follows you up to the door, and not only follows you but clings to you. But only up to the door. It cannot enter the temple. If you have to save it you will have to remain outside. The self is the last thing one has to throw. And one can throw everything, but to throw the “self” is so impossible because the effort for self-realization, the endeavor for self-realization, is an effort “of the self for the self”. The moment you realize, “you” will not be; you will not try.

So all the great preachers have used words which are fallacious. “Self-realization” is a fallacious word. But you do not understand if they say “no-self realization”. It will become absurd. But that is the real thing — no-self realization. Only Buddha used anatta, no-self. Anatta. Only Buddha used it. That is why Buddha was uprooted from India. He was just thrown out, and Buddhism could not get roots unless Buddhism began to use the word “self-realization”. In China and Japan it again came back, and they began to use “self-realization”. Buddha used “no-self realization”. I am also using no-self realization. That is the only realization. The moment there is no self you have become cosmic.

It is not realizing something. It is a great game. To know the self is the only, no doubt the greatest, the ultimate, game. The self is not something which is to be protected. It is something to be destroyed. It is something which is the barrier toward your ultimate potentiality, toward your ultimate realization.

So I cannot say I am self-realized. I will say, I am no-self realized, and that is the only realization that is possible. No other realization exists. The emphasis of all who claim self-realization is on the “self” and not on realization. My emphasis is on realization. That is why I emphatically deny the “self”.

How am I related to the cosmos and to other people?

Relationship exists between two selves. I am one who is not related, one who is not in relationship. Relationship is always between two. This may look paradoxical, but in every relationship you remain unrelated. Howsoever you are related, you will remain unrelated, because relationship exists between two. The two will be there. So relationship is only a facade to hide the duality. For moments you delude yourself that you are related, but again you are. You have fallen back to yourself and there is no relationship.

For example, when we are in so-called “love” we appear to be related. We create the fallacy of relationship, but, in fact, we are just deceiving ourselves. The two will remain two. However near, the two will always remain two. Even in a sex communion, they will be two. The twoness only creates a fallacy of oneness. Oneness can never exist between two selves. Oneness can only exist between two non-selves.

So as far as I am concerned, I am not related to the cosmic reality, not related at all, and by that I do not mean that I am isolated. By that I mean there is no one who can exist in relationship. As far as the cosmic reality is concerned, I am one, and the cosmic reality is one with me. From my side, I am one, but as far as people are concerned, I am not one from their side. They are related. Someone is related as a friend, someone is related as an enemy, someone is related as a brother, and someone is related as a disciple. They may be related to me, but I am not related to them. And the whole happening in me is to make them unrelated. But there cannot be any effort on their part. That only can be a realization of no-self.

If they know that there is no one who can be a disciple and who can be a guru, if they know that there is no one who can be related to anyone, only then the self falls and your emptiness is naked. And there are no clothes which give you a boundary, a self. In your total nakedness, when you know that there is no self, you are but a space, an inner sky — emptiness. Then you become one, or I may say then you really become related, but then there is no relation. When one is really related, then there is indeed no relationship, and when there is relationship, then one is not really related. When oneness happens, then one’s self is not.

You have asked me how I am related to the cosmic and to the people. To me they are not two things — the cosmic and the people. The cosmic happens in so many ways, and one of the ways is the people. The cosmic happens in so many ways, such as: the sun, the stars, the earth, the trees, the animals, the people. Only frequencies differ. The divinity is the same. So to me, the cosmic and the people are not two things. Whatever I have said before is not from thinking; it is a fact. But if I think — and I have to think if I am to understand your side — then you are related to me because you are and as long as you are, you will be related. That creates a very difficult situation. Daily, moment to moment, it creates a difficult situation.

You feel yourself related to me. You feel that you belong to me. Then you begin to expect that I should belong to you. Because you feel that you are related to me, you begin to expect that I should be related to you. Because of that expectation, I know that you are bound to be frustrated. Even with a person who is a “self”, it is bound to be frustrating, but it may take a greater time gap. If you are with a person who is a “no-self”, it will not take even a time gap. Every moment will be frustrating because there will be no fulfillment of your expectations. There is no one to fulfill them.

So I am very irresponsible because there is no one who can be responsible. There are responses, but no one who is responsible; and each response, therefore, is atomic. It cannot be a sequence. So you cannot expect anything from the moment that will follow. I even do not know. The response is going to be atomic, each complete in itself, not in any way related with the past or with the future.

The ego is a series of events, happenings and memories. It is so because you exist in a series, and you try to win with me, to take me as a series; but that becomes difficult. So everyone will feel, sometime or other, angry with me, because my response is atomic and not a serial one. The serial response becomes responsibility. Then you can rely.

I am very unreliable. You can never rely on me. I myself cannot rely on me. I do not know what is going to happen. I am completely open and accepting to anything that happens. And I never think in terms of relationship. I cannot think; rather, I live in terms of oneness.

Whenever you are near me, it does not mean that I am related to you. It is that I become one with you. And this oneness you interpret as love. But this oneness is neither love nor hate, because all that is known as love can change into hatred any moment. But this oneness can never change into hate. You may be near, you may be far; you may be a friend, you may be an enemy; it makes no difference. As far as I am concerned, you may come to me or go from me. It makes no difference.

Relationship is conditional; oneness is non-conditional. Relationship is always with conditions. Something changes in the condition, and the relationship will change. Everything is always on a volcano. Every relationship is always in a wavering state, always in a dying process, always changing. So every relationship creates fear, because always there is the danger of its being broken. And the more there is fear, the more you cling. And the more you cling, the more fear you create.

But oneness is quite diametrically opposite. Oneness is unconditional. It exists not because of any condition, not any expectation, not any fulfilment, not I am consciousness, I am freedom any future result, is hoped. It is neither conditioned by the past nor oriented to the future. It is a momentary, atomic existence, unrelated with the past, unrelated with the future.

So I feel oneness with the cosmic and with the people also. But from the cosmic the feeling is the same, as I feel one with it. From the cosmic the feeling is of the oneness. Once I was not feeling this, but I now know that the cosmic has always been in the same feeling towards me.

Oneness is always flowing. It has always been flowing. There has been an eternal waiting for the cosmic. Now I feel it toward the cosmic. I feel it also toward the people. The moment someone feels this oneness toward me, he becomes a part of the cosmic. He is then not a person. He becomes cosmic. And once you feel oneness, even with one person, you have known the taste; you have known the taste of ecstasy. Then you can jump into the all.

So this is what is happening around me. I do not say I am doing. This is happening around me.

I will call you near just to give you a taste of oneness. And if you can realize this even for a single moment, then you will never be the same again. This is a very patient effort — very unknown, unpredictable. No one can say when the moment is near. Sometimes your mind is so tuned that you can feel the oneness. That is why I insist on meditation, because it is nothing but tuning the mind to such a peak that you can jump into the oneness.

Meditation to me means tuning of the mind toward oneness, opening of the mind toward oneness. This can only happen when your meditation has gone beyond you. Otherwise, it can never happen. If it is below you, you are doing it, you are the controller. Then it cannot happen, because you are the disease. So I persuade you toward meditation in which, beyond certain limits, you will not be. Meditation will take you over. By and by you will be pushed. Of course, you will begin the meditation, because there can be no other way. You will have to begin, but you will not end the meditation. You will begin, but you will not end it. In between somewhere the happening will happen. The meditation will catch hold of you. You will be thrown, and the meditation will come in. Then you will be tuned to the infinite. Then you will be tuned to the cosmic. Then you will be one.

Oneness is important, not relationship. Relationship is sansar, relationship is the world. And because of relationship we have to be born again and again. Once you have known oneness, then there is no birth, then there is no death. Then there is no one except you. All are included. You have become the cosmic. The individual must go before the oneness comes. The ego must go before the divine comes.

Ego is the source of all relationship. The world is the relationship. God is not a relationship. The divine is not a relationship. The divine is not-selfness. This means you cannot become one with it. So a bhakta, a devotee, can never reach the cosmic, because he thinks in terms of relationship — God the father, God the lover, God the beloved. He thinks in terms of relationship. He goes on thinking in terms of “self” and the “other”. He can never transcend the ego. This is something very subtle, because the devotee is always struggling to surrender. Devotion, the path of devotion, is the path of surrender. He is trying to surrender, but to someone.

If you try to surrender to someone, the other is there. And the other cannot exist if you are not; so you will go on existing in the shadows. You will forget yourself, but forgetting yourself is not surrender. You remember the divine so much that you cannot remember yourself now. But you are in the back; you exist in the shadows. Otherwise, God cannot exist as the other.

So the path of devotion, as it exists, cannot lead you to the transcendental, to the cosmic, to the one. To me, it is not a question of surrendering to someone. It is just a question of surrendering the self — not at someone’s feet — just surrendering yourself. If there is no self, then you have become one.

The self can go on creating the seeds, it can go on creating the deception. And the greatest and most certain deception is that of the devotee and God — a religious deception. Any deception which becomes religious can be dangerous, because you cannot even deny it. Even to deny it will create guilt. You will feel guilty to deny selfhood to the divine. But to the divine the selfhood is the projection of your self. The moment you are not-self, there is no self as far as God is concerned. The whole existence has become selfless. And when the whole existence has become selfless, then you are one with it.

Selflessness is the path.

Selflessness is the real devotion.

Selflessness is the authentic surrender.

So the problem is always of the self. Even if we think of liberation, moksha, we think of freedom of the self, not freedom from the self. We think that then we will be free. But then you cannot be free. Moksha is not the freedom of the self, but it is freedom from the self. So I exist in a selflessness, in a flux, in a process of selflessness. Neither am I a self nor is anyone else a self. No one is a self . . . waves in the ocean, but each wave misconceives itself as separate from the ocean. It appears to be separate; it can deceive itself: There are so many waves around and each wave appears different. If my wave is higher and your wave is lower, or my wave is lower and yours higher, how can they be the same? And waves cannot look deep down in the sea. Only the surface is known. Your wave is dying and my wave is young and rising. Your wave has reached the shore and I am far off. How can I think that we both are the same? But yet, whether we think so or not, we are the same.

So the wave that is known as me is not an ego. It is not a self. This wave has known that the ocean is the wave. The wave is just a surface phenomenon: a surface appearance; a surface movement. This wave that I call “I” has not known that wavelessness — the waveless ocean — is the real. And that is one. Even your wave is not different.

I have known that which joins all. You may call it self-realization. I will not. I will call it no-self realization, because this is the essence of all realizations. This is no-selfness.

I think you understand what I mean. Whatsoever I said may not be what I mean and what I mean may not be what I said. So do not confuse my sayings with my meanings, but always look into the deep. Always listen to that which has not been said but indicated. There are things which cannot be said but shown, indicated. And all that is deep and all that is ultimate can only be shown and never said. And I am saying things which cannot be said. So do not think of my words. Always throw the words as meaningless. Then go deep down to the wordless meaning, to the silent meaning. It is always there behind the words. The words are always dead, the meaning is always living. One can be open to the words, but one can never be open through the intellectual understanding. You can be open with your total being, not with only your intellect. It is not that the intellect sometimes misunderstands. It is like this: that the intellect always misunderstands. It is not that the intellect sometimes errs. It is that the intellect is the error. It always errs.

So whatsoever is being said, be sympathetic with it. Do not try to understand it. Let it go deep in you. Be vulnerable, open to it. Let it go deep into the heart. Do not create intellectual barriers to it. Then, with your full being in participation, you will know. You may not understand, but you will know. And understanding is not enough. Knowing is needed. And sometimes you understand or think that you have understood. Thus, you create a barrier to the knowing. The intellect understands. The being knows. The intellect is just a part. It is your being that is the real.

When you know, you know with your blood, you know with your bones, you know with your heartbeats. But if you understand, you understand only with the mechanism of the mind which is not so deep. It is only a device, a utilitarian device, which is needed to survive, which is needed to be related, but which becomes a barrier toward oneness and toward spiritual death and resurrection. It is only a natural device to survive. It is not meant to reveal the ultimate truth. It is not meant to know the hidden mysteries, and the mysteries are hidden.

So whatsoever I am saying, do not think about it. Go home and sleep over it. Just let it go in. Let it penetrate. Do not guard yourself. Be open. Each guarding is against knowing. And only when it has reached your innermost being will it be known and really understood. That is what is meant by shraddha — faith. It does not mean belief. Belief is intellectual. One can believe intellectually; one can disbelieve intellectually. Both are intellectual. Faith is not belief; faith is not intellectual at all. It is the total mystic participation. It is being one with the hidden mysteries. It is a jump.

So whatsoever I am saying, I am not interested in any theory at all. I am not interested in any philosophies at all. I am interested in the existential jump. When I say something, it is only to lead you to that which cannot be said; and when I use words, I use them only to lead you toward silence. When I assert something, it is only to indicate the unassertable. My expression is not really to express something, but to indicate the inexpressible.

So be sympathetic, because only sympathy can be the opening. Let whatever I said drop into you. It will have a flowering. If the seed goes into the depths, it will have its flowering.

When the flower comes, you will know that which has been said but could not be said. You will know that which has been said but yet remains unsaid.

-Osho

From I Am the Gate, Discourse #1, Q2

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.

Surrender is Understanding – Osho

My surrender is goal-oriented. I’m surrendering in order to win freedom, so it is not real surrender at all. I’m watching it, but the problem is: it is always “I” who is watching. Therefore, every realization out of that watching is reinforcement of the ego. I feel tricked by my ego.

You have not understood what surrender is.

The first thing to remember about surrender is: you cannot do it; it is not a doing. You can prevent it from happening, but you cannot manage for it to happen. Your power about surrender is only negative: you can prevent it, but you cannot bring it.

Surrender is not something that you can do. If you do it, it is not surrender, because the doer is there. Surrender is a great understanding that, “I am not.” Surrender is an insight that the ego exists not, that, “I am not separate.” Surrender is not an act but an understanding.

In the first place you are false, the separation is false. Not for a single moment can you exist separate from the universe. The tree cannot exist if uprooted from the earth. The tree cannot exist if the sun disappears tomorrow. The tree cannot exist if no water is coming to its roots. The tree cannot exist if it cannot breathe. The tree is rooted in all the five elements – what Buddhists call skandhas, the five groups we were talking about the other day. Avalokita . . . when Buddha came to the transcendental vision, when he passed through all the stages, when he passed through all the rungs of the ladder and came to the seventh – from there he looked down, looked back – what did he see? He saw only five heaps with nothing substantial in them, just emptiness, shunyata.

The tree cannot exist if these five elements are not constantly pouring energy into it. The tree is just a combination of these five elements. If the tree starts thinking, “I am,” then there is going to be misery for the tree. The tree will create a hell for itself. But trees are not so foolish, they don’t carry any mind. They are there, and if tomorrow they disappear, they simply disappear. They don’t cling; there is nobody to cling. The tree is constantly surrendered to existence. By surrendered it means it is never separate, it has not come to that stupid idea of the ego. And so are the birds, so are the mountains, so are the stars. It is only man who has turned his great opportunity of being conscious into being self-conscious. Man has consciousness. If consciousness grows, it can bring you the greatest bliss possible. But if something goes wrong and consciousness turns sour and becomes self-consciousness, then it creates hell, then it creates misery. Both alternatives are always open; it is for you to choose.

The first thing to be understood about ego is that it exists not. Nobody exists in separation.

You are as much one with the universe as I am, as Buddha is, as Jesus is. I know it, you don’t know it; the difference is only of recognition. The difference is not existential, not at all! So you have to look into this stupid idea of separation. Now if you start trying to surrender you are still carrying the idea of separation. Now you are thinking, “I will surrender, now I am going to surrender” – but you think you are.

Looking into the very idea of separation, one day you find that you are not separate, so how can you surrender? There is nobody to surrender! There has never been anybody to surrender! The surrenderer is not there, not at all – never found anywhere. If you go into yourself you will not find the surrenderer anywhere. In that moment is surrender. When the surrenderer is not found, in that moment is surrender. You cannot do it. If you do it, it is a false thing. Out of falsity only falsity arises. You are false, so whatsoever you do will be false, more false. And one falsity leads to another, and so on and so forth. And the fundamental falsity is the ego, the idea, “I am separate.”

You ask: “My surrender is goal-oriented.”

The ego is always goal-oriented. It is always greedy; it is always grabbing. It is always searching for more and more and more; it lives in the more. If you have money it wants to have more money; if you have a house it wants to have a bigger house; if you have a woman it wants to have a beautiful woman, but it always wants more. The ego is constantly hungry. It lives in the future and in the past. In the past it lives as a hoarder – “I have this and this and this.” It gets a great satisfaction: “I have got something” – power, prestige, money. It gives a kind of reality to it. It gives the notion that, “When I have these things, I must be there.” And it lives in the future with the idea of more. It lives as memory and as desire.

What is a goal? A desire: “I have to reach there, I have to be that, I have to attain.” The ego does not, cannot live in the present, because the present is real and the ego is false – they never meet. The past is false, it is no more. Once it was, but when it was present, ego was not there. Once it has disappeared, is no longer existential, ego starts grabbing it, accumulating it.

It grabs and accumulates dead things. The ego is a graveyard: it collects corpses, dead bones.

Or, it lives in the future. Again, the future is not yet – it is imagination, fantasy, dream.

Ego can live with that too, very easily; falsities go together perfectly well, smoothly well.

Bring anything existential and the ego disappears. Hence the insistence of being in the present, being here-now. Just this moment… If you are intelligent there is no need to think about what I am saying; you can simply see into it this very moment! Where is the ego? There is silence, and there is no past, and there is no future, only this moment . . . and this dog barking. This moment, and you are not. Let this moment be, and you are not. And there is immense silence, there is profound silence, within and without. And then there is no need to surrender because you know you are not. Knowing that you are not is surrender.

It is not a question of surrendering to me, it is not a question of surrendering to God. It is not a question of surrendering at all. Surrendering is an insight, an understanding that, “I am not.” Seeing, “I am not, I am a nothingness, emptiness,” surrender grows. The flower of surrender grows on the tree of emptiness. It cannot be goal-oriented.

The ego is goal-oriented. The ego is hankering for the future. It can hanker even for the other life, it can hanker for heaven, it can hanker for nirvana. It doesn’t matter what it hankers for – hankering is what it is, desiring is what it is, projecting into the future is what it is.

See it! See into it! I’m not saying think about it. If you think about it you miss. Thinking again means past and future. Have a look into it – avalokita! – look into it. The English word look comes from the same root as avalokita. Look into it, and do it right now. Don’t say to yourself, “Okay, I will go home and do it.” The ego has entered, the goal has come, the future has entered. Whenever time enters you are falling into that falsity of separation.

Let it be here, this very moment. And then you suddenly see you are, and you are not going anywhere, and you are not coming from anywhere. You have always been here. Here is the only time, the only space. Now is the only existence. In that now, there is surrender. “My surrender is goal-oriented,” you say; “I’m surrendering in order to win freedom.”

But you are free! You have never been unfree. You are free, but again there is the same problem: you want to be free, but you don’t understand that you can be free only when you are free from yourself – there is no other freedom. When you think about freedom, you think as if you will be there and free. You will not be there; there will be freedom. Freedom means freedom from the self, not freedom of the self. The moment the prison disappears the prisoner also disappears, because the prisoner is the prison! The moment you come out of the prison, you also are not. There is pure sky, pure space. That pure space is called nirvana, moksha, liberation.

Try to understand rather than trying to achieve.

“I am surrendering in order to win freedom.”

Then you are using surrender as a means, and surrender is the goal, is the end unto itself. When I say surrender is the goal, I’m not saying that surrender has to be achieved somewhere in the future. I’m saying that surrender is not a means, it is an end unto itself. It is not that surrender brings freedom, surrender is freedom! They are synonymous, they mean the same thing. You are looking at the same thing from two different angles.

“So it is not real surrender at all.”

It is neither real nor unreal. It is not surrender at all. It is not even unreal.

“I am watching it, but the problem is it is always ‘I’ who is watching. Therefore every realization out of that watching is a reinforcement of the ego. I feel tricked by my ego.”

Who is this ‘I’ you are talking about who feels tricked by the ego? It is the ego itself. The ego is such that it can divide itself into fragments, into parts, and then the game starts. You are the chaser and you are the chased. It is like a dog trying to catch hold of its own tail, and goes on jumping. And you look and you see the absurdity of it – but you see the absurdity, the dog cannot see it. The more he finds it is difficult to catch hold of the tail, the more he becomes crazy, the more he jumps. And the faster and the bigger the jump, the more the tail jumps faster and bigger also. And the dog cannot conceive what is happening: he’s such a great catcher of everything, and this ordinary tail, and he cannot catch hold of it?

This is what is happening to you. It is ‘I’ who is trying to catch, and who is the catcher and the caught both. See the ridiculousness of it, and in that very seeing be free of it.

There is not a thing to be done – not a thing, I say, because you are already that which you want to become. You are Buddhas, you have never been otherwise. Seeing is enough.

And when you say that, “I am watching,” it is again the ‘I’. Watching, the ‘I’ will be created again, because watching again is an act, there is effort involved. You are watching – then who is watching? Relax. In relaxation – when there is nothing to be watched and nobody as a watcher, when you are not divided into a duality – there arises a different quality of witnessing. It is not a watching, it is just passive awareness; passive, I say – remember. It has nothing aggressive in it. Watching is very aggressive: effort is needed, you have to be tense. But be non-tense, relaxed. Just be there. In that consciousness when you are simply there, sitting doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself.

That is the whole Buddhist approach: that anything that you do will create and enhance the doer – watching also, thinking also, surrendering also. Anything that you do will create the trap. Nothing is needed to be done on your part. Just be . . . and let things happen. Don’t try to manage, don’t try to manipulate. Let the breeze pass, let the sunrays come, let life dance, and let death come and have its dance into you too.

This is my meaning of sannyas: it is not something that you do, but when you drop all doing and you see the absurdity of doing. Who are you to do? You are just a wave in this ocean. One day you are, another day you will disappear; the ocean continues. Why should you be so worried? You come; you disappear. Meanwhile, for this small interval, you become so worried and tense, and you take all the burdens on your shoulders, and you carry rocks on your heart – for no reason at all.

You are free this very moment!

I declare you enlightened in this very moment. But you don’t trust me. You say, “That’s right, Osho, but just tell us how to become enlightened.”

That becoming, that achieving, that desiring, goes on jumping on every object that you can find. Sometimes it is money, sometimes it is God. Sometimes it is power, sometimes it is meditation – but any object, and you start grabbing it. Non-grabbing is the way to live the real life, the true life, non-grasping, non-possessing.

Let things happen, let life be a happening, and there is joy, there is rejoicing – because then there is no frustration, ever, because you had never expected anything in the first place. Whatsoever comes is good, is welcome. There is no failure, no success. That game of failure and success has been dropped. The sun comes in the morning and wakes you, and the moon comes in the evening and sings a lullaby and you go to sleep. Hunger comes and you eat, and so on and so forth. That’s what Zen masters mean when they say: When hungry, eat, when sleepy, sleep, and there is nothing else to do.

And I’m not teaching you inaction. I’m not saying don’t go and work, I’m not saying don’t earn your bread, I’m not saying renounce the world and depend on others and become exploiters; no, not at all. But don’t be a doer. Yes, when you are hungry you have to eat, and when you have to eat you have to earn the bread – but there is nobody doing it. It is hunger itself that is working; there is nobody else doing it. It is thirst itself that is taking you towards the well or towards the river. It is thirst itself moving; there is nobody who is thirsty. Drop nouns and pronouns in your life and let verbs live.

Buddha says: The truth is that when you see a dancer, there is no dancer but only a dance. When you see a river, there is no river but only rivering. When you see a tree, there is no tree but only treeing. When you see a smile, there is nobody who is smiling, there is only smile, smiling. When you see love, there is nobody who is a lover but only loving. Life is a process.

But we are accustomed to thinking in terms of static nouns. That creates trouble. And there is nothing static – all is flux and flowing. Flow with this, flow with this river, and never be a doer. Even when you are doing don’t be a doer. There is doing but there is no doer. Once this insight settles in you there is nothing else.

Enlightenment is not something like a goal that has to be attained. It is the very ordinary life, this simple life that surrounds you. But when you are not struggling, this ordinary life becomes extraordinarily beautiful. Then trees are greener, then birds sing in richer tones, then everything that is happening around is precious . . . then ordinary pebbles are diamonds.

Accept this simple, ordinary life. Just drop the doer. And when I say drop the doer, don’t become a dropper! Seeing into the reality of it, it disappears.

-Osho

From The Heart Sutra, Discourse #2

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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

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Surrendering to Nobody – Osho

You say that religion is total freedom or moksha, and you also stress the importance of surrender in religion. But are not freedom and surrender contradictory in terms?

They appear contradictory but they are not. And they appear so because of the language; existentially they are not. Try to understand two things. First: you cannot be free remaining as you are, because as you are is your bondage. Your ego i s the bondage. You can be free only when this ego point disappears – this ego point is the bondage.

When there is no ego, you become one with existence, and only that oneness can be freedom. While you exist separate, this separation is false. Really, you are not separate; you cannot be. You are part of existence – and not a mechanical part, but an organic part. You cannot exist for a single moment separated from existence. You breathe it every moment; it breathes you every moment. You live in a cosmic whole.

Your ego gives you a false feeling of separate existence. Because of that false feeling, you start fighting existence. When you fight you are in bondage. When you fight you are bound to be defeated, because the part cannot win against the whole. And because of this fight with the whole, you feel in bondage; everywhere limited. Wherever you move, a wall comes. That wall is nowhere in existence – it moves with your ego; it is part of your separate feeling. Then you struggle against existence. In that struggle you will be defeated constantly; in that defeat you feel bondage, limitation.

By surrender it is meant that you surrender the ego, you surrender the separating wall, you become one. That is reality, so whatsoever you are surrendering is just a dream, a concept, a false notion. You are not surrendering reality; you are just surrendering a false attitude. The moment you surrender this false attitude you become one with existence. Then there is no conflict.

And if there is no conflict you have no limitation; nowhere there comes a bondage, a boundary. You are not separate. You cannot be defeated, because there is no one to be defeated. You cannot die, because there is no one to die. You cannot be in misery, because there is no one to be in misery. The moment you surrender the ego, the whole nonsense is surrendered – misery, bondage, dukkha, hell – everything is surrendered. You become one with existence. This oneness is freedom.

Separation is bondage. Oneness is freedom Not that you become free, remember this – you are no more. So it is not that you become free – you are no more. Really, when you are not, freedom is. How to express it is a problem. When you are not, freedom is. Buddha is reported to have said, ‘You are not going to be in bliss. When you are not, the bliss is. You are not going to be liberated. You are going to be liberated from yourself.’

So freedom is not freedom of the ego. Freedom is freedom from the ego. And if you can understand this – that freedom is freedom from the ego – then surrender and freedom become one, then they mean one. But if you take the ego as the standpoint from which to think, then the ego will say, ‘Why surrender? – because if you surrender, then you cannot be free. Then you become a slave. When you surrender, you become a slave.’

But really, you are not surrendering to someone. This is the second point to be understood: you are not surrendering to someone; you are simply surrendering. There is no one who will take your surrender. If there is someone and you surrender to him, then it is a sort of slavery. Really, there is not even a god to whom you are surrendering. And when we talk about a god, that is just to find you something to help you to surrender.

In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, God is talked about just to help you to surrender. There is no God. Patanjali says there is no God, but it will be difficult for you to surrender to one; it will be difficult for you to simply surrender. To help surrender, God is talked about. So God is just a method. This is rare, very scientific – God is just a method to help you surrender. There is no one who is going to take your surrender. If there is someone and you surrender, then it is a slavery, a bondage. This is a very subtle and deep point: there is no God as a person; God is just a way, a method, a technique.

Patanjali relates many techniques. One of them is ishwara prandihan – the idea of God. There are many methods to reach the surrender; one method is the idea of God. That will help your mind to surrender, because if I say, ‘Surrender,’ you will ask, ‘To whom?’ If I say, ‘Simply surrender,’ it will be difficult for you to conceive. Try to understand in a different way. If I say to you, ‘Simply love,’ you will ask, ‘Whom? What do you mean by “simply love”? If there is no one to be loved, how to love?’ If I say, ‘Pray,’ then you will ask, ‘To whom? Worship to whom?’ Your mind cannot conceive non-duality. It will ask, it will raise a question, ‘To whom?’

Just to help your mind, so that the mind’s question is satisfied, Patanjali says that God is just a way, a technique. Worship, love, surrender – to whom? Patanjali says, ‘To God.’ Because if you surrender, then you will come to know that there is no God – or you yourself are that to which you have surrendered. But this will happen when you have surrendered. God is just a trick.

It is said that even to surrender to a god who is nowhere seen, who is invisible, is difficult, so scriptures say, ‘Surrender to the guru, to the master.’ The master is visible and a person, so then the question becomes relevant – if you surrender to a master then it is a slavery, because a person is there and you are surrendering to him. But then too you will have to understand again a very subtle point – even more subtle than the notion of God. A master is a master only when he is not. If he is, then he is not a master. A master becomes a master only when he is not. He has achieved non-being; there is no one.

If someone is sitting here in this chair, then there is no master; then it is going to become a slavery. But if there is no one sitting in this chair, a non-being, one who is not centered anywhere, one who has surrendered – not to anyone, but simply surrendered and achieved non-being, has become a non-person – who is simply there, not concentrated in an ego, diffused, not concentrated anywhere, then he can become a master. So when you are surrendering to a master, again you are surrendering to nobody.

This is a deep question for you. When you are surrendering, if you can understand that this is simply surrendering, not a surrender – surrendering, not a surrender. . . A surrender is to someone. A surrendering is something on your part. So the basic thing is surrendering – the act, not the object. The object should not be important, but the one who is surrendering is important. The object is just an excuse – just an excuse.

If you can understand, then there is no need to surrender to anyone – you can simply surrender. Then there is no need to love someone – you can simply love. You are significant, not the object. If the object is significant, you will create a bondage out of it. So even a god who is not, will become a bondage; even a master who is not, will become a bondage. But that bondage is created by you; it is a misunderstanding. Otherwise surrendering is freedom. They are not contradictory.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #60, Q1

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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

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

Create a Perfect Ego Just to Dissolve it – Osho

Isn’t it true that all meditation techniques are really doings which lead the seeker to his being? 

In a way, yes; and in a deeper way, no. Meditation techniques are doings, because you are advised to do something. Even to meditate is to do something, even to sit silently is to do something, even to not do anything is a sort of doing. So in a superficial way, all meditation techniques are doings.

But in a deeper way they are not, because if you succeed in them, the doing disappears.

Only in the beginning it appears like an effort. If you succeed in it, the effort disappears and the whole thing becomes spontaneous and effortless. If you succeed in it, it is not a doing. No effort on your part is needed then. It becomes just like breathing – it is there. But in the beginning the effort is bound to be, because the mind cannot do anything which is not an effort. If you tell it to be effortless, the whole thing seems absurd.

In Zen, where much emphasis is paid to effortlessness, the masters say to the disciples, ‘Just sit. Don’t do anything.’ And the disciple tries. Of course, what can you do other than trying? The disciple tries to just sit, and he tries to just sit, and he tries to not do anything, and then the master hits him on his head with his staff and he says, ‘Don’t do this! I have not told you to try to sit, because that becomes an effort. And don’t try not to do anything, because that is a sort of doing. Simply sit!’

If I tell you to simply sit, what will you do? You will do something, which will make it not a simple sitting; an effort will enter. You will be sitting with an effort; a strain will be there. You cannot simply sit. It looks strange, but the moment you try to sit simply, it has become complex. The very effort to simply sit makes it complex. So what to do?

Years pass, and the disciple goes on sitting and being blamed, condemned by the master that he is missing the point. But he simply goes on, goes on, goes on, and every day he is a failure, because the effort is there. And he cannot deceive the master. But one day, just patiently sitting, even this consciousness to sit simply disappears. One day suddenly he is sitting – like a tree or like a rock – not doing anything. And then the master says, ‘This is the right posture. Now you have attained it. Now remember this. This is the way to sit.’ But it takes patience and long effort to achieve effortlessness.

In the beginning, effort will be there, doing will be there, but only in the beginning as a necessary evil. But you have to remember constantly that you have to go beyond it. A moment must come when you are not doing anything about meditation – just being there and it happens; just sitting or standing and it happens; not doing anything, just being aware, it happens.

All these techniques are just to help you to come to an effortless moment. The inner transformation, the inner realization, cannot happen through effort, because effort is a sort of tension. With effort you cannot be relaxed totally; the effort will become a barrier. With this background in mind, if you make effort, by and by you will become capable of leaving it also.

It is just like swimming. If you know about swimming, you know that in the beginning you have to make effort – but only in the beginning. Once you know the feel of it, once you know what it is, the effort has gone; you can swim effortlessly. And even a good swimmer cannot say what swimming is, what exactly he is doing. He cannot explain to you what he is doing. Really, he is not doing anything.

He is simply allowing himself to be in a deep responsive relationship with the water, with the river. He is not doing anything really. And if he is still doing, he is still not an expert swimmer – he is still amateur, still learning.

I will tell you one anecdote. In Burma, one Buddhist monk was ordered to make a design for the new temple, particularly for the gate. So he was making many designs. He had one very talented disciple, so he told that disciple to be near him. While he made the design the disciple was simply to watch, and if he liked it he had to say that it was okay, it was right. If he didn’t like it then he had to say no. And the master said, ‘When you say yes, only then will I send the design. If you go on saying no, I will discard the design and will create a new one.’

Hundreds of designs were discarded in this way. Three months passed. Even the master became afraid, but he had given his word so he had to keep it. The disciple was there, the master would make the design, and then the disciple would say no. The master would start another one.

One day the ink was just about to be finished, so the master said, ‘Go out and find more ink.’ The disciple went out. The master forgot him, his presence, and became effortless. His presence was the problem. The idea was constantly in his mind that the disciple was there, judging. He was constantly wondering whether he was going to like it or not, whether he would discard it again. This created an inner anxiety and the master could not be spontaneous. The disciple went out. The design was completed. The disciple came in and he said ‘Wonderful! But why couldn’t you do it before?’

The master said, ‘Now I understand why – because you were here. Because of you – I was making an effort to get your approval. The effort destroyed the whole thing. I couldn’t be natural, I couldn’t flow, I couldn’t forget myself because of you.’

Whenever you are doing meditation, the very effort that you are doing it, the very idea of succeeding in it, is the barrier. Be conscious of it. Go on doing, and be conscious of it. A day will come… just through patience a day comes when effort is not there. Really, you are not there, only meditation is. It may take a long time. It cannot be predicted, no one can say when it will happen. Because if something is to be achieved by effort, it can be predicted – that if you do this much effort you will succeed – but meditation is going to succeed only when you become effortless. That’s why nothing can be predicted. Nothing can be said about when you will succeed. You may succeed this very moment, and you may not succeed for lives. The whole thing hinges on one thing – when your effort drops and you become spontaneous, when your meditation is not an act but becomes your being, when your meditation is just like love…. You cannot do anything about love, or can you? If you do anything, you falsify it. It will become artificial. It will not go deep. You will not be in it. It will become an acting. Love is– you cannot do anything about it.

You cannot do anything about meditation also. But I don’t mean don’t do anything, because then you will remain whatsoever you are. You have to do something, perfectly conscious that by only doing you will not achieve. Doing will be needed in the beginning. One cannot leave it; one has to go through it. But one has to go through it, one has to transcend it, and an effortless floating has to be achieved.

The path is arduous and very contradictory. You cannot find anything more contradictory than meditation. Contradictory because it has to be started as an effort and it has to end as effortlessness. But it happens. You may not be able to conceive logically hot it happens, but in experience it happens. A day comes when you just get fed up with your effort. It falls.

It happened to Buddha this way. For six years he was making every effort possible. No human being has been so obsessed with becoming enlightened. He did everything that he could do. He moved from one teacher to another, and whatsoever he was taught, he did it perfectly. That was the problem, because no teacher could say to him, ‘You are not doing well, that’s why you are not achieving.’ That was impossible. He was doing better than any master, so the masters had to confess. They said, ‘This much we have to teach. Beyond this we don’t know, so you go somewhere else.’

He was a dangerous disciple – and only dangerous disciples achieve. He studied everything that was possible. Whatsoever he was told, he would do it – absolutely as it was told. And then he would come to the master and say, ‘I have done it, but nothing has happened. So what next?’

The teachers would say, ‘You go somewhere else. There is one teacher in the Himalayas – go there.’ Or, ‘There is one teacher in some forest – go there. We don’t know more than this.’

He went around and around for six years. He did all that can be done, all that is humanly possible, and then he got fed up. The whole thing appeared futile, fruitless, meaningless. One night he relaxed all efforts. He was sitting under the Bodhi tree, and he said, ‘Now everything is finished. In the world there is nothing, and in this spiritual search also there is nothing. Now there is nothing for me to do. Everything is finished. Not only this world, but the other world also. Suddenly all efforts dropped. He was empty. Because when there is nothing to do, the mind cannot move. The mind moves only because there is something to do – some motivation, some goal. The mind moves because something is possible, something can be achieved, the future. If not today then tomorrow, but the possibility is there that one can achieve it – the mind moves. 

That night Buddha came to a dead point. Really, he died that very moment, because there was no future. Nothing was to be achieved, and nothing could be achieved – ‘I have done everything. The whole world is futile and this whole existence is a nightmare.’ Not only the material world became futile, but the spiritual also. He relaxed. Not that he did something to relax. This is the point to understand: there was nothing to be tense, therefore he relaxed. There was no effort on his part to relax.

Under the Bodhi tree he was not trying relaxation. There was nothing to do, nothing to be tense, nothing to desire, no future, no hope. He was absolutely hopeless that night – relaxed. Relaxation happened. You cannot relax, because something or other is still there to be achieved. That goes on stirring your mind; you go on spinning and spinning around and around. Suddenly the spinning stopped, the wheel stopped – Buddha relaxed and fell asleep.

In the morning when he awoke, the last star was setting. He looked at the last star disappear, and with that last star disappearing, he disappeared completely, he became an enlightened one. Then people started asking, ‘How did you achieve this? How? What was the method?’

Now you can understand Buddha’s difficulty. If he said that he had achieved through some methods, then he was wrong, because he achieved only when there was no method. If he said that he had achieved through effort, then he was wrong, because he achieved only when there was no effort. But if he said, ‘Don’t make any effort and you will achieve,’ then too he was wrong, because to his no-effort those six years of effort were the background. Without that effort, that six years’ arduous effort, this state of no-effort could not have been achieved. Only because of that mad effort he came to a peak and there was nowhere further to go; he relaxed and fell down in the valley.

This has to be remembered for many reasons. Spiritual effort is the most contradictory phenomenon.

Effort has to be made, with full consciousness that nothing can be achieved through effort. Effort has to be made only to achieve no-effort, only to achieve effortlessness. But don’t relax your effort, because if you relax you will never achieve that relaxation which came to Buddha. You go on doing every effort, so automatically a moment comes when just by sheer effort you reach a point where relaxation happens to you.

For example, you may take it in a different way. As I see it, in the west, ego has been the central point: the fulfillment of the ego, the development of the ego, the achievement of a strong ego, has been the whole western effort. In the east, it has been how to achieve egolessness, how to be a non-ego, how to forget, surrender, dissolve yourself completely so that you are not. The east has been trying for egolessness. The west has been trying for the perfect ego.

But this is the contradictoriness of things: if you don’t have a very developed ego, you cannot surrender. You can surrender only if you have a perfectly clear-cut ego. Otherwise you cannot surrender, because who will surrender? So to me, both are half and both are in misery – east and west both. Because the east has taken egolessness, which is the end part, and the beginning part is missing.

Who will surrender the ego? The peak is not there, so who will create the valley? The valley is created only around a peak. The greater the peak, the deeper the valley. If you don’t have an ego, or a very lukewarm one, surrender is not possible. Or, your surrender will be a lukewarm surrender, just so-so. Nothing will happen out of it; there will be no explosion.

In the west, the beginning part has been emphasized. So you can go on growing with your ego. It will create more and more anxiety. And when you have really created it, you don’t know what to do with it, because the end part is not there.

To me, the spiritual search is both. Create a very great peak, create a perfect ego, just to dissolve it.

That seems absurd – just to dissolve it, just to achieve a deep surrender, just to lose it somewhere. And you cannot lose something which you don’t have. So in my view, humanity has to be trained for these two things together: help everyone to create a perfect ego, a fulfilled ego – but this is only half the journey – and then, help them to surrender it.

The greater the peak, the deeper will be the valley. The higher the ego, the deeper you will move in your surrender. And this is for everything. On the spiritual path, remember this continuous contradictoriness. Don’t forget it even for a single moment. Become perfect egoists so that you can surrender, so that you can dissolve, melt. Do every effort that you can do, just to reach a point where effort leaves you and you are totally effortless.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #50

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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

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

Your Meditation Will Take You, I Cannot Take You Anywhere – Osho

Krishna said to Arjuna, “Surrender and I promise you moksha.” Jesus also said to his disciples, “Come follow me and I will take you to the kingdom, to God.” But you say to us that you can only show the facts. Why don’t you promise us nirvana?

All promises are poisons because they are political not religious. The people who have promised you that you have only to surrender to them and they will take you to the ultimate goal of light; you have just to follow them and they will take you to the kingdom of God… these promises have created a spiritually slave humanity. These promises have not helped anyone.

Do you have a single witness who can say, “Following Jesus I have reached the kingdom of God”? In two thousand years the promise remains there, and you remain in your misery, in your anguish, in your utter spiritual poverty.

It is very significant to understand that no one can take you to the ultimate goal of light except yourself. That is your prerogative, your privilege. That is your freedom, your individuality and its beauty.

Nobody can interfere with your spiritual growth. You are not cattle that somebody can take you somewhere. But you have been insulted, humiliated so continuously, that you have become almost accustomed to it and you don’t feel the insult of it. Somebody saying to you, “Surrender to me” – and you don’t see the humiliation…? To whom did Krishna surrender? He never surrendered to anybody. To whom did Jesus surrender? He never surrendered to anybody.

And if these people had some beauty, the beauty was their individuality, their freedom, their absolute uniqueness. A surrendered human being has almost fallen below humanity.

Jesus said to the people, “I am your shepherd, and you are the sheep.” And nobody even raised any objection that this was very insulting. On what grounds do you become the shepherd and reduce other human beings who are just like you into animals, into sheep? But any lie repeated again and again starts appearing to be a truth.

These words have been repeated so often by the so-called spiritual masters that you have forgotten what they are doing to your being. They are destroying you. There is no need for any surrender – the very word is ugly. There is no need to follow anybody, because if you follow somebody you will always remain a blind follower, you will never attain in your own eyes. And the most wonderful thing is: the people who are telling you these things have never themselves done those acts. They have never surrendered, they have never followed – and that’s what gives them grandeur, makes them pinnacles of consciousness.

You should try to understand Jesus, not to follow him. You should try to understand Krishna, not to surrender to him. It is your understanding that is going to lead you to higher levels of being. Do not depend on anybody else to help. There have been so many saviors in the world and the world is not saved yet – so many prophets, so many incarnations of God, so many tirthankaras… and what is the result? And they have all claimed that they have come to redeem the world from pain, from misery, from ignorance. They come and go – the world remains the same. In fact, it becomes darker and darker every day. It becomes more and more miserable every day.

Jainas have twenty-four tirthankaras – their quota is finished; they cannot have twenty-five. For one creation, from the beginning of this universe to the end of this universe, they can have only twenty-four tirthankaras. Now, what is the hope? And what have these twenty-four tirthankaras done? How many people have been redeemed? How many people have become enlightened? How many steps has humanity grown towards maturity?

It is strange. Hindu avataras have been here, Gautam Buddha has been here, Moses and Jesus have been here, Mohammed and many others. And this small earth and all these prophets, saviors… and the strange thing is that the world goes on becoming worse and worse. Man goes on becoming lower and lower; he has not become a spiritual being. He has not become more aware, more alert, more meditative, more compassionate. Otherwise there would not have been so many wars. In three thousand years there have been five thousand wars. This is the man that has been created by all your so-called spiritual founders. Just within this century we have already had two great world wars, and now we are preparing for the third.

What spiritual heritage, what spiritual insight is there that makes us destructive rather than being creative, makes us hate each other rather than being loving and compassionate? Even in the name of religion, for centuries there has been bloodshed continuously. In the name of peace, love, and all great qualities, we have done everything that even an animal would be ashamed to do.

It is time to have a look backwards and see that surrender and the idea of following has not helped; in fact, it has degraded you. And you are asking me also to insult you, to humiliate you. Please forgive me, I cannot do that. I can help you as a friend, I can hold your hand as a friend and companion, I can show you the way, but I cannot walk for you. You will have to walk for yourself; otherwise truth will be too cheap. If others can achieve it for you then it won’t have any value. And if others can achieve it for you, they can take it away also.

If, following Jesus, you reach the kingdom of God, remember – if you do something against him, he can kick you out of the kingdom of God because it is not your achievement.

You are living on borrowed spirituality. At least leave something which cannot be borrowed. Leave truth – it can be achieved. Those who have achieved can certainly help, but their help can only be that of a friend not of a master. The very idea of somebody being a master is the idea of spiritual slavery.

You have been asked for centuries to surrender, to trust, and do whatever the master says. And you don’t know whether he is a master or not. Do you have any criteria? Do you have any way to judge that this man is a master?

There is no criterion available, so you have been surrendering to people who are cunning enough to pretend to be masters. A real master will be so humble that he cannot call himself a master. The very claim, “I am the master, and you are just a devotee, a disciple, a follower,” is nothing but pure egoistic assertion. And wherever the ego exists one thing is certain: you cannot get any help towards light, love, life.

Man is capable of spiritual growth – he has the potential. All that he needs to know is the right way. And anybody who can show you the right way – you can be grateful to him; you can be thankful to him. But what is the need to surrender?

I am reminded of a Tibetan story….

Milarepa, a great master, was searching for truth. The story is of the days when he had not found it. And people told him, “There is a certain master – all that is needed is absolute surrender.” Milarepa went to the man and surrendered totally – he must have been a unique individual – and then other disciples of that master became very jealous of Milarepa because he started doing strange things. He would walk on water; he would go through fire and not be burned… And they all asked him, “What is your secret?”

He said, “You are senior disciples of the master, you must know. I have simply surrendered myself to him, so whenever I want to cross the river, I simply remember the master and just say to him, ‘Take me to the other side,’ and I walk on the waters.”

The master heard – he could not believe it. He wanted to see. He told Milarepa to jump from a mountain peak into a thousand-foot-deep valley. Milarepa simply remembered the name of the master, and jumped.

They all were thinking, “We will not be able to find even bits and pieces of the man, the valley is so deep and so dangerous.”

But when they went there – it took hours for them to go down – Milarepa was sitting there in the lotus posture, so blissfully.

The master said, “Just my name helps you…?”

And naturally, and logically, he thought, “If my name helps him so much, I must be a great master. And he thought, “If my name helps him, then what miracles can I not do?”

He tried to walk on the water, and he started drowning and had to be saved by his disciples. That moment Milarepa saw his own master drowning, and the whole idea of surrender to a fake, to a fraud, disappeared. He said to the master, “At least you should not have done it in front of us. You have destroyed our trust, our surrender. You have destroyed us so deeply that now it will be difficult for us to trust in anyone. You have made us skeptical. I came to you in innocence, and I am going absolutely corrupted.”

There is no criterion. Surrender, if it is total – which is very difficult, almost impossible; only a very innocent man can do it – will help you, not the master. The master may not be a master at all. But surrender simply means you have dropped your ego completely. But why call it surrender? Surrender always means to someone.

I am a straightforward, simple person. I will tell you to drop the ego; I will not tell you to surrender to me. That is a roundabout way of dropping the ego, and dangerous because you may be surrendering yourself to somebody who is not right; you may be following someone who himself is lost.

There is a beautiful story by Kahlil Gibran….

A man became a very famous master, and he went from one place to another teaching his doctrine which was very simple: “Come follow me.”

Of course, people have so many things to do they cannot just come and follow you. And they always think, “Next time when you come, perhaps I will be ready; my children are small, my girl has to be married, my wife is sick. What you are saying is right, but the time is not right. I am ready, but the situation does not allow it.”

He went on telling the people, “Whoever follows me, within days, he will attain to the ultimate illumination.”

In one village, one young man stood up and said, “I am ready.”

There was great silence for a moment because this had never happened. The master was a little hesitant. Now where to take him… what to do? He had no knowledge of what it means when you attain to self-illumination, but in front of the crowd he pretended. He said, “Okay, you come with me.” He took him into the hills, into rough places… made the journey as terrible as possible. But the young man was also very stubborn – he continued to follow him. Many times, the master said, “You must be tired; it is better you go back.”

That young man said, “I will never go back. First I will attain self-illumination whatever the cost; only then can I go back.”

But trying to put the young man into hardships, the old master was himself also trying to do the same. He was also terribly tired. Finally, he had a nervous breakdown.

The young man said, “What is the matter?”

The old man said, “To be honest with you – I have to be honest, otherwise you will kill me – you are young and I am old. You can go through all this suffering and I cannot.”

But the young man said, “I have not told you to go through all this suffering. I was simply following you; you were not following me.”

The old man said, “To be honest, I don’t know what self-illumination is. My profession was going so well… my whole life. Because nobody ever followed, no problem ever arose. You are such a rascal that you really followed, and you are still bent upon following me – that means you will kill me.”

The young man said, “But what about self-illumination?”

The master said, “I have forgotten all. I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what self-illumination is. I just pray to you to leave me in peace. I will never bother you again, but don’t disturb my business in other parts of the country. The only business I know is telling people, ‘I can give you salvation; you just come and follow me,’ knowing perfectly well that who is going to follow? – everybody has incomplete things to complete. But you are such a stubborn fellow that you dropped all that you were doing and simply went on following me!”

The story is significant. Jesus says, “Follow me and I will take you into the kingdom of God.” But is there any kingdom of God? In Buddhism there is no kingdom of God; in Jainism there is no existence of God. It is simply a hypothesis. And the people who followed Jesus were all illiterate, uneducated, coming from the lowest strata of society – fishermen, farmers, woodcutters, carpenters… He himself was the son of a carpenter. He himself was not educated, not cultured, not civilized. Not a single rabbi of his day, not a single learned person, not a single wise man followed him. The people who followed were following him out of greed.

A fisherman cannot hope that on his own he can enter into the kingdom of God – and this man is not asking for much money, he is simply saying, “Follow me.” Just following him there is no harm, and the promise is great. They were not in love with Jesus.

Even in the last hours before Jesus was caught they were asking him, “Soon you will be reaching to the kingdom of God” – because it was known that he would be crucified. “Before you leave us, we want to know… of course your place will be exactly at the right hand of God. You are the only begotten son of God – but what will be the place of your twelve disciples? Who will be next to you?”

Do you see their mind? Do you see their greed? Do you see their ambition? And what have they done? Just hanging around Jesus, and they have become capable of entering into the kingdom of God. Now they are asking what their position will be. They must have been feeling jealous of each other – “Who will be next to Jesus?” And when Jesus was crucified all the twelve apostles had escaped – great followers – just out of fear that they may be recognized as Jesus’ followers, because they were always hanging around him wherever he was going. Those twelve fellows were always with him; everybody knew them – they may be caught. If Jesus is crucified, the same may happen to them.

They all escaped. They forgot all about the kingdom of God, they forgot all about following Jesus Christ. And those twelve cowards who left the master hanging on the cross have become the twelve great prophets of Christianity.

A whole religion is created on the words of those twelve cowards. Jesus cannot save anyone – he could not save himself. At the last moment on the cross, in deep frustration, he shouted at the sky because he was waiting for some miracle to happen, and nothing was happening. And people were laughing, joking, making a fool of him: “This is the only begotten son of God. Now call your father to save you.”

Finally, he shouted, “Father, why have you forsaken me?”

Even his trust was not total, even he was full of doubt that perhaps God had forsaken him and that’s why no miracle was happening.

Miracles don’t happen.

Nature knows no exceptions.

But on this poor man Jesus, for two thousand years, millions of people have been depending. Just a hope, but that hope is dangerous because it prevents you from changing you; it prevents you from doing something yourself; it prevents you from your own potential, from your own powers, from your own intelligence, from your own inner being that is always present there.

No Jesus, no Krishna – everybody has to be alert, aware, drop all false hopes. Nobody can save you, and nobody has ever saved anybody. Masters have only shown the way. Because they have traveled on the path, they can save you unnecessary wandering, they can show you the straight way. But nobody can walk for you. And it is good that nobody can walk for you. It would have been dangerous if somebody was capable of saving you, because then he becomes your owner, you become a slave.

Even in your kingdom of God you will be a slave. The man who has brought you there – you bribed him by surrender, you bribed him by following him, you bribed him by massaging his ego as much as you could – can kick you out of the gate at any time.

It happened . . .

I was sitting in my village by the bank of the river. It was evening, and just getting a little dark, and one man started shouting, “Save me, save me!” He was drowning.

I don’t believe in saving anybody, so I looked all around – if somebody else saves… it is good. But there was nobody so, unwillingly, I jumped into the river, and somehow carried the man.

He said, “What have you done? I was trying to commit suicide!”

I said, “This is something! Then why were you shouting ‘save me’?”

He said, “I became afraid!”

I said, “Don’t worry.”

I pushed him back – if I can save him, I can push him back.

And again, he started shouting, “Please save me!”

I said, “No more. Now you do it yourself.”

Do not depend; every dependence is slavery. That’s why I cannot say to you, “Just follow me.” I can say to you, “Try to understand.” In trying to understand me, perhaps you may be able to see the path yourself.

I can help you to see the path, I can help you to open your eyes; I can throw cold water in your eyes – that’s what I am doing every day. And sometimes you get irritated, you get annoyed, because nobody wants cold water in the early morning to be thrown into their eyes. I can shake you; I can wake you; I can drag you out of your bed. I can make you a little alert and give you the full details of how to become more aware, more meditative – and then there is nothing else to be done. Your meditation will take you.

I cannot take you anywhere.

And you will be grateful to me that I did not ask you cheap things – surrender to me, just trust in me and everything will be okay. All that is sheer nonsense. You like it because it is cheap, you like it because you have not to do anything. I am asking you something arduous. You will have to do it; you will have to work hard at it. You will have to sharpen your intelligence, your consciousness, and as it is sharpened the way becomes more and more clear. You are nobody’s shadow, nobody’s follower.

Everybody reaches to the truth alone, not by following anybody. And it is beautiful to reach alone because then it is your earning. Then you deserve it.

-Osho

From The Sword and the Lotus, Discourse #11

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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

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If I Say Surrender You Ask How – Osho

Techniques are shortcuts, revolutions, but are not these against tao, swabhav, the nature?

They are. They are against tao, they are against swabhav. Any effort is against shabhav, tao; effort as such is against tao. If you can leave everything to swabhav, tao, nature, then no technique is needed, because that is the ultimate technique. If you can leave everything to tao, that is the deepest surrender possible. You are surrendering yourself, your future, your possibilities. You are surrendering time itself, all effort. This means infinite patience, awaiting.

If you can surrender everything to nature then there is no effort, then you don’t do anything. You just float. You are in a deep let-go. Things happen to you, but you are not making any effort for them – you are not even seeking them. If they happen, it is okay; if they don’t happen, it is okay – you have no choice. Whatsoever happens, happens; you have no expectations and of course, no frustrations.

Life flows by, you flow in it. You have no goal to reach, because with the goal effort enters. You have nowhere to go, because if you have somewhere to go, effort will come in; it is implied. You have nowhere to go, nowhere to reach, no goal, no ideal; nothing is to be achieved – you surrender all.

In this surrendering moment, in this very moment, all will happen to you. Effort will take time; surrender will not take time. Technique will take time; surrender will not take time. That’s why I call it the ultimate technique. It is a no-technique. You cannot practice it – you cannot practice surrender.

If you practice, it is not surrender. Then you are relying on yourself; then you are not totally helpless; then you are trying to do something – even if it is surrender, you are trying to do it. Then technique will come in, and with technique time enters, future enters.

Surrender is non-temporal; it is beyond time. If you surrender, this very moment you are out of time, and all that can happen, will happen. But then you are not searching for it, not seeking it; you are not greedy for it. You have no mind for it at all: whether it happens or not, it is all the same to you.

Tao means surrender – surrender to swabhav, to nature. Then you are not. Tantra and Yoga are techniques. Through them you will reach to swabhav, but it will be a long process. Ultimately after every technique you will have to surrender, but with techniques it will come in the end; with tao, in tao, it comes in the beginning. If you can surrender right now, no technique is needed, but if you cannot, and if you ask me how to surrender, then a technique is needed. So, rarely in millions and millions of men, one can surrender without asking how. If you ask ‘how’, you are not the right type who can surrender, because the ‘how’ means you are asking for a technique.

These techniques are for all those who cannot get rid of this ‘how’. These techniques are just to get rid of your basic anxiety about ‘how’ – how to do it. If you can surrender without asking, then no technique is needed for you. But then you would not have come to me, you could have surrendered any time, because surrender needs no teacher. A teacher can teach only technique.

When you seek, you are seeking technique; every seeking is a seeking for technique. When you go to someone and ask, you are asking for a technique, for a method. Otherwise there is no need to go anywhere. The very search shows that you have a deep need for technique. These techniques are for you. Not that without technique it cannot happen. It can happen, but it has happened to very few persons. And those few persons are also really not rare: in their past lives they have been struggling with techniques, and they have struggled so much with techniques that now they are fed up, they are bored. A saturation point comes when you have asked again and again ‘How? How? How? – and ultimately the ‘how’ falls. Then you can surrender.

In every way technique is needed. A Krishnamurti, he can say that no technique is needed – but this is not his first life. And he couldn’t have said this in his past life. Even in this very life many techniques were given to him, and he worked on them. You can come to a point through techniques where you can surrender – you can throw all techniques and simply be – but that too is through techniques.

It is against tao, because you are against tao. You have to be deconditioned. If you are in tao then no technique is needed. If you are healthy then no medicine is needed. Every medicine is against health. But you are ill; medicine is needed. This medicine will kill your illness. It cannot give you health, but if the illness is removed, health will happen to you. No medicine can give you health. Basically every medicine is a poison – but you have gathered some poison; you need an antidote. It will balance, and health will be possible.

Technique is not going to give you your divinity, it is not going to give you your nature. All that you have gathered around your nature it will destroy. It will only decondition you. You are conditioned, and right now you cannot take a jump into surrender. If you can take it, it is good – but you cannot take it. Your conditioning will ask, ‘How?’ Then techniques will be helpful.

When one lives in tao, then no yoga, no tantra, no religion is needed. One is perfectly healthy; no medicine is needed. Every religion is medicinal. When the world lives in total tao, religions will disappear. No teacher, no Buddha, no Jesus will be needed, because everyone will be a Buddha or a Jesus. But right now, as you are, you need techniques. Those techniques are antidotes.

You have gathered around yourself such a complex mind that whatsoever is said and given to you, you will complicate it. You will make it more complex, you will make it more difficult. If I say to you, ‘Surrender,’ you will ask, ‘How?’ If I say, ‘Use techniques,’ you will ask, ‘Techniques? Are not techniques against tao?’ If I say, ‘No technique is needed; simply surrender and God will happen to you,’ you will immediately ask, ‘How?’ – your mind.

If I say, ‘Tao is right here and now: you need not practise anything, you simply take a jump and surrender,’ you will say, ‘How? How can I surrender?’ If I give you a technique to answer your ‘how’, your mind will say, ‘But is not a method, a technique, a way, against swabhav, against tao? If divinity is my nature, then how can it be achieved through a technique? If it is already there, then the technique is futile, useless. Why waste time with the technique?’ Look at this mind!

I remember, once it happened that one man, a father of a young girl, asked composer Leopold Godowsky to come to his house and give an audition to his daughter. She was learning piano. Godowsky came to their house; patiently he heard the girl playing. When the girl finished, the father beamed, and he cried in happiness and asked Godowsky, ‘Isn’t she wonderful?’

Godowsky is reported to have said, ‘She is wonderful. She has an amazing technique. I have never heard anyone play such simple pieces with such great difficulty. She has an amazing technique. Playing such simple pieces with such great difficulty, I have never seen anyone do before!’

This is what goes on happening in your mind. Even a simple thing you will make complicated, you will make difficult for yourself. And this is a way of defense, this is a defense measure, because when you create difficulty you need not do it – because first the problem must be solved and then you can do it.

If I say surrender, you ask how. Unless I answer your ‘how’, how can you surrender? If I give you a technique, your mind immediately creates a new problem. ‘Why the technique? Swabhav is there, tao is there, God is within you, so why this endeavor, this effort?’ Unless this is answered, there is no need to do anything.

Remember, you can go on in this vicious circle continuously for ever and ever. You will have to break it somewhere and come out of it. Be decisive, because only with decision is your humanity born. Only with decision do you become human. Be decisive. If you can surrender, surrender. If you cannot surrender, then don’t create philosophical problems; then use some technique.

In both the ways the surrender will happen to you. If you can surrender right now, it is okay. If you cannot surrender, then pass through techniques – that training is needed. It is needed because of you, not because of swabhav, not because of tao. Tao needs no training. It is needed because of you. And the techniques will destroy you. You will die through the techniques, and the innermost nature will evolve. You have to be shattered completely. If you can shatter it in a jump – surrender. If you cannot, then piecemeal – through techniques work on it.

But remember one thing: your mind can create problems which are tricks – tricks to postpone, to postpone decision. If the mind is not settled, you don’t feel guilty. You feel, ‘What can I do? Unless something is absolute, clear-cut, transparent, what can I do?’ Your mind can create clouds around you, and your mind will not allow you to be transparent ever – unless you decide. With decision clouds disappear. Mind is very diplomatic, mind is political, and it goes on playing politics on you. It is very tricky, cunning.

I have heard, once Mulla Nasrudin came to visit his son and daughter-in-law. He had come for three days, but then he stayed for one week. Then the one week passed, and he stayed for one month. Then the young couple started worrying – how to get rid of the old man? So they discussed how to get rid of him, and they hit upon a plan.

The husband said, ‘Tonight you prepare soup, and I will say that there is too much salt in it, it cannot be eaten, it is impossible to eat. And you have to say that there is not enough salt in it. We will argue and we will start quarrelling, and then I will ask my father what his opinion is, what he says. If he agrees with me, then you get mad and tell him to go away. If he agrees with you, I will get sore and I will tell him to go away immediately.’

The soup was prepared, and as it was planned, they started quarrelling and arguing. And then the climax came. They were just on the verge of hitting each other and Nasrudin was sitting silently watching. And then the son turned towards him and said, ‘Pa, what do you say? Is there too much salt or not?’

So Nasrudin dipped his spoon in the soup, tasted it, meditated a moment upon the taste, and then said, ‘It suits me perfectly.’ He didn’t take any side. The whole plan was futile.

Your mind goes on working in this way. It will never take any side, because the moment you take a side, action has to be there. It will not take any side; it will go on arguing. It will never decide anything; it will be always in the middle. Whatsoever is said will be argued, but it will never become a decision. And you can argue ad infinitum; there is no end to it. Only decision will give you action, and only action will become transformation.

If you are really interested in a deep revolution within you, then decide – and don’t go on postponing. Don’t be too philosophical; that is dangerous. For a seeker it is dangerous. For one who is not seeking really but just passing time, it is good, it is a good game. Philosophy is a good game if you can afford it. But I don’t see that anyone can afford it because it is wasting time.

So be decisive. If you can surrender, then surrender. Then there is no ‘how’ to it. If you cannot, then practice some technique, because only then through technique will you come to a point where surrender will happen.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #58, Q1

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt In Your Hands (Book of Secrets #58, Q1).

Osho’s Book of Secrets Meditations

All 112 of Shiva’s meditation techniques (Vigyan Bhairava Tantra)

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Surrender and 112 Meditation Techniques – Osho

On the path of surrender, how does the seeker come to the right technique out of one hundred and twelve methods? 

On the path of will there are methods – these one hundred and twelve methods. On the path of surrender, surrender itself is the method, there are no other methods – remember this. All methods are non-surrendering, because a method means depending on yourself. You can do something; the technique is there, so you do it. On the path of surrender, you are no more, so you cannot do anything. You have done the ultimate, the last: you have surrendered. On the path of surrender, surrender is the only method.

All these one hundred and twelve methods require a certain will; they require something to be done by you. You manipulate your energy, you balance your energy, you create a center in your chaos. You do something. Your effort is significant, basic, required. On the path of surrender only one thing is required – you surrender. We will go deep into these one hundred and twelve methods, so it is good to say something about surrender because it has no method.

In these one hundred and twelve methods there will be nothing about surrender. Why has Shiva not said anything about surrender? Because nothing can be said. Bhairavi herself, Devi herself, has reached Shiva not through any method. She has simply surrendered. So this must be noted. She is asking these questions not for herself, these questions are asked for the whole humanity. She has attained Shiva. She is already in his lap; she is already embraced by him. She has become one with him, but still she is asking.

So remember one thing, she is not asking for herself; there is no need. She is asking for the whole humanity. But if she has attained, why is she asking Shiva? Can she herself not speak to the humanity? She has come through the path of surrender, so she doesn’t know anything about method. She herself has come through love; love is enough unto itself. Love doesn’t need anything more. She has come through love, so she doesn’t know anything about any methods, techniques. That is why she is asking.

So Shiva relates one hundred and twelve methods. He also will not talk about surrender because surrender is not a method really. You surrender only when every method has become futile, when you cannot reach by any method. You have tried your best. You have knocked on every door and no door opens, and you have passed through all the routes and no route reaches. You have done whatsoever you can do, and now you feel helpless. In that total helplessness surrender happens. So, on the path of surrender there is no method.

But what is surrender and how does it work? And if surrender works, then what is the need of one hundred and twelve methods? Then why go into them unnecessarily? – the mind will ask. Then okay! If surrender works, it is better to surrender. Why go on hankering after methods? And who knows whether a particular method will suit you or not? And it may take lives to find out. So, it is good to surrender, but it is difficult. It is the most difficult thing in the world.

Methods are not difficult. They are easy; you can train yourself. But for surrender you cannot train yourself… no training! You cannot ask how to surrender; the very question is absurd. How can you ask how to surrender? Can you ask how to love?

Either there is love or there is not, but you cannot ask how to love. And if someone tells you and teaches you how to love, remember, then you will never be capable of love. Once a technique is given to you for love, you will cling to the technique. That is why actors cannot love. They know so many techniques, so many methods – and we are all actors. Once you know the trick how to love, then love will not flower because you can create a facade, a deception. And with the deception you are out of it, not involved. You are protected.

Love is being totally open, vulnerable. It is dangerous. You become insecure. We cannot ask how to love; we cannot ask how to surrender. It happens! Love happens, surrender happens. Love and surrender are deeply one. But what is it? And if we cannot know how to surrender, at least we can know how we are maintaining ourselves from surrendering, how we are preventing ourselves from surrendering. That can be known and that is helpful.

How is it that you have not surrendered yet? What is your technique of non-surrendering? If you have not fallen in love yet, then the real problem is not how to love. The real problem is to dig deep to find out how you have lived without love, what is your trick, what is your technique, what is your structure – your defense structure, how you have lived without love. That can be understood, and that should be understood.

First thing: we live with the ego, in the ego, centered in the ego. I am without knowing who I am. I go on announcing, “I am.” This “I-am-ness” is false, because I do not know who I am. And unless I know who I am, how can I say “I”? This “I” is a false “I”. This false “I” is the ego. This is the defense. This protects you from surrendering.

You cannot surrender, but you can become aware of this defense measure. If you have become aware of it, it dissolves. By and by, you are not strengthening it, and one day you come to feel, “I am not.” The moment you come to feel “I am not,” surrender happens. So try to find out whether you are. Really, is there any center in you that you can call your “I”?. Go deep down within yourself, go on trying to find out where is this “I”, where is the abode of this ego.

Rinzai went to his master and he said, “Give me freedom!” The master said, “Bring yourself. If you are, I will make you free. But if you are not, then how can I make you free? You are already free. And freedom,” his master said, “is not your freedom. Really, freedom is freedom from ‘you’. So go and find out where this ‘I’ is, where you are, then come to me. This is the meditation. Go and meditate.”

So the disciple Rinzai goes and meditates for weeks, months, and then he comes. Then he says, “I am not the body. Only this much I have found.” So the master says, “This much you have become free. Go again. Try to find out.” Then he tries, meditates, and he finds that “I am not my mind, because I can observe my thoughts. So the observer is different from the observed – I am not my mind.” He comes and says, “I am not my mind.” So his master says, “Now you are three-fourths liberated. Now go again and find out who you are.”

So he was thinking, “I am not my body. I am not my mind.” He had read, studied, he was well informed, so he was thinking, “I am not my body, not my mind, so I must be my soul, my atma.” But he meditated, and then he found that there is no atman, no soul, because this atma is nothing but your mental information – just doctrines, words, philosophies.

So he came running one day and he said, “Now I am no more!” Then his master said, “Am I now to teach you the methods for freedom?” Rinzai said, “I am free because I am no more. There is no one to be in bondage. I am just a wide emptiness, a nothingness.”

Only nothingness can be free. If you are something, you will be in bondage. If you are, you will be in bondage. Only a void, a vacant space, can be free. Then you cannot bind it. Rinzai came running and said, “I am no more. Nowhere am I to be found.” This is freedom. And for the first time he touched his master’s feet – for the first time! Not actually, because he had touched them many times before also. But the master said, “For the first time you have touched my feet.”

Rinzai asked, “Why do you say for the first time? I have touched your feet many times.” The master said, “But you were there, so how could you touch my feet while you were already there? While you are there how can you touch my feet?” The “I” can never touch anybody’s feet. Even though it apparently looks like it touches somebody’s feet, it is touching its own feet, just in a round-about way. “You have touched my feet for the first time,” the master said, “because now you are no more. And this is also the last time,” the master said. “The first and the last.”

Surrender happens when you are not, so you cannot surrender. That is why surrender cannot be a technique. You cannot surrender – you are the hindrance. When you are not, surrender is there. So you and surrender cannot cohabit, there is no coexistence between you and surrender. Either you are or surrender is. So, find out where you are, who you are. This inquiry creates many, many surprising results.

Raman Maharshi used to say, “Inquire ‘Who am I?’” It was misunderstood. Even his nearest disciples have not understood the meaning of it. They think that this is an inquiry to find out really “Who am I?” It is not! if you go on inquiring “Who am I?” you are bound to come to the conclusion that you are not. This is not really an inquiry to find out “Who am I?” Really, this is an inquiry to dissolve.

I have given many this technique, to inquire within “Who am I?” Then a month or two months later, they will come to me and say, “I have still not found ‘Who am I?’ The question is still the same; there is no answer.”

So I tell them, “Continue. Someday the answer will come.” And they hope that the answer will come. There is going to be no answer. It is only that the question will dissolve. There is not going to be an answer, that “You are this.” Only the question will dissolve. There will be no one to ask even “Who am I?” And then you know.

When the “I” is not, the real “I” opens. When the ego is not, you are for the first time encountering your being. That being is void. Then you can surrender; then you have surrendered. You are surrender now. So there can be no techniques, or only negative techniques like this inquiry into “Who am I?”

How does surrender work? If you surrender, what happens? We will come to understand how methods work. We will go deep into methods, and we will come to know how they work. They have a scientific basis of working.

When you surrender you become a valley; when you are an ego you are like a peak. Ego means you are above everyone else, you are somebody. The others may recognize you, may not recognize you – that is another thing. You recognize that you are above everyone. You are like a peak; nothing can enter you.

When one surrenders, one becomes like a valley. One becomes depth, not height. Then the whole existence begins to pour into him from everywhere. He is just a vacuum, just a depth, an abyss, bottomless. The whole existence begins to pour from everywhere. You can say God runs from everywhere to him, enters him from every pore, fills him totally.

This surrender, this becoming a valley, an abyss, can be felt in many ways. There are minor surrenders; there are major surrenders. Even in minor surrenders you feel it. Surrendering to a master is a minor surrender, but you begin to feel it because the master begins to flow into you immediately. If you surrender to a master, suddenly you feel his energy flowing into you. If you cannot feel energy flowing into you, then know well you have not surrendered even in a minor way.

There are so many stories which have become meaningless for us because we do not know how they happened. Mahakashyap came to Buddha, and Buddha just touched his head with his hand, and the thing happened. And Mahakashyap began to dance. So, Ananda asked Buddha, “What has happened to him? And I have been for forty years with you! Is he mad? Or is he just fooling others? What has happened to him? And I have touched your feet thousands and thousands of times.”

Of course, to Ananda, this Mahakashyap will either look like he is mad or as if he is just deceiving. He was with Buddha for forty years, but there was a problem. He was his elder brother, Buddha’s elder brother; that was the problem. When Ananda came to Buddha forty years before, the first thing he said to Buddha was this: “I am your elder brother, and when you will initiate me, I will become your disciple. So allow me three things before I become your disciple, because then I cannot demand. One, I will always be with you. Give me this promise, that you will not say to me, ‘Go somewhere else.’ I will follow you.

“Secondly, I will sleep in the same room where you sleep. You cannot say to me, ‘Go out.’ I will be with you like your shadow. And thirdly, if I bring anyone at any time, even at midnight, you will have to answer him. You cannot say, ‘This is not the time.’ And give me these three promises while I am still your elder brother, because once I become your disciple I will have to follow you. You are still younger than me, so give me these promises.”

So Buddha promised, and this became the problem. For forty years Ananda was with Buddha, but he could never surrender, because this is not the spirit of surrender. Ananda asked many, many times, “When am I going to attain?” Buddha said, “Unless I die, you will not attain.” And Ananda could attain only when Buddha died.

What happened to this Mahakashyap suddenly? Is Buddha partial – partial to Mahakashyap? He is not! He is flowing, constantly flowing. But you have to be a valley, a womb, to receive him. If you are above him, how can you receive? That flowing energy cannot come to you, it will miss you. So bow down. Even in a minor surrender with a master, energy begins to flow. Suddenly, immediately, you become a vehicle of a great force.

There are thousands and thousands of stories… just by a touch, just by a look, someone became enlightened. They do not appear rational to us. How is this possible? This is possible! Even a look from the master into your eyes will change your total being, but it can change only if your eyes are just vacant, valley-like. If you can absorb the look of the master, immediately you will be different.

So these are minor surrenders that happen before you surrender totally. And these minor surrenders prepare you for the total surrender. Once you have known that through surrender you receive something unknown, unbelievable, unexpected, never even dreamed of, then you are ready for a major surrender. And that is the work of the master – to help you in minor surrenders so that you can gather courage for a major surrender, for a total surrender.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #2

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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

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.

Rain Falling Softly on Earth – Osho

You tell me to float, but my body is so heavy with a dead-weight mind that I feel I will drown if I float. So I keep swimming in panic.

Floating is a totally new way of life. You are accustomed to fight; you are accustomed to swim upstream. The ego feels nourished if you fight with something. If you don’t fight, the ego simply evaporates. It is very essential for the existence of the ego to continue fighting. This way or that, in worldly matters or in spiritual matters, but go on fighting. Fight with others or fight with oneself, but continue the fight. The people you call worldly are fighting with others; and the people you call spiritual are fighting with themselves. But the basic thing remains the same.

The real vision arises only when you stop fighting. Then you start disappearing because without fight the ego cannot exist for a single moment. It needs constant pedaling. It is just like a bicycle. If you stop pedaling, it has to fall; it cannot continue for long — maybe a little while because of the past momentum. But your cooperation is needed for the ego, to keep it alive, and the cooperation is through fight, resistance.

When I say to you to float I mean that you are such a small, tiny part of the cosmos it is absolutely absurd to fight with it. With whom are you fighting? All fight is basically against God, because he surrounds you. If you are trying to go up current, you are trying to go against God. If he is flowing downwards to the ocean, go with him.

Once you start floating with the river, you will have a totally different quality arising in you. Something of the beyond will descend. You will not be there; you will become just an emptiness — tremendous emptiness, a receptivity. When you fight you shrink, when you fight you become small, when you fight you become hard. When you don’t fight — you surrender, you open, like a lotus opening its petals — then you receive. Unafraid you start moving, moving with life, moving with the river.

The question is: “You tell me to float, but I am afraid if I float I will drown.” It is good if you drown because only the ego can be drowned, not you. When you are fighting, in fact the ego is fighting with your innermost core. You will drown. But by that drowning, for the first time you will be able to float, for the first time you will be. Choose and you choose the ego. Be choiceless, let life choose for you, and you become egoless. Choose and you always choose hell. Choice is hell. Don’t choose. Let this prayer of Jesus resound in your hearts, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done.” Let him do for you.

Drop yourself, drown yourself. Disappear from that plane of being. And then suddenly you are no longer human; you are superhuman. Your whole life will become a life of beatitude. Let me tell you one anecdote.

One unfortunate soul arrived at the doors of hell and was interviewed by old Nick himself “Which group would you like to join?” he asked with a leer.

What do you mean — group?” asked the new arrival.

“You see,” said the devil, “we have all sorts of torments here, and we allow people to choose their own. We believe in democracy, and we are not dictatorial — and there is no emergency going on. It is for you to choose. It is for eternity, remember one thing — mind this — so you must choose carefully. I will take you on a tour.”

So the devil took him through hell. One group was wallowing in slime and being perpetually eaten by maggots, another group was constantly being prodded with red-hot tridents, another group was being stretched on racks, etc., etc., and the new arrival was feeling very despondent.

Then the devil led him to one group in which all the inhabitants were standing up to their waists in a particularly evil-smelling cesspit and drinking cups of tea.

“This does not look too bad,” he thought to himself, “I will choose this group,” he said to the devil.

“You are sure?” asked Satan. “Remember, you can’t change your mind, and it is forever and forever and forever.”

“No, I am quite sure — this will do me,” said the newly damned.

“Very well,” said the devil, “in you go.”

And just as the wretched soul jumped into the pit, a whistle blew and a voice called out: “All right, everybody! Tea break’s over — stand on your heads!”

If you choose, you choose hell. Choice is hell. That’s how you have created your hell all around you — by choosing. When you choose you don’t allow God to choose for you.

Krishnamurti goes on insisting for choicelessness. That is just one end of the whole story. The other end is: if you are choiceless God chooses for you. That is only half of the story — become choiceless — just the beginning. The moment you are choiceless life continues. You will not be there — life will continue. And you are nothing but a hell. Once you don’t stand between you and God he chooses. He has been always choosing for you. There is a proverb which says, “Man proposes and God disposes.” The reality is just the opposite: “God proposes and man goes on disposing.”

Once you have felt that beatitude of non-choosing and floating with him, you will never choose again. Because whenever you choose you choose hell, and whatsoever you choose you choose hell.

So I would like you to drown — drown with my blessings.

When Jesus says that those who cling to themselves will lose themselves, and those who are ready to lose will gain, he means exactly the same thing. When Sufis say, “Die before your death, and then you will become deathless,” they mean the same.

The death of the ego happens only through surrender. People come to me and they ask, “How not to be egoistic?” But you cannot do anything to be non-egoistic. Whatsoever you will do will make you again egoistic. You can try, discipline the ego, but you cannot be non-egoistic because whatsoever you do enhances the ego. The moment you become a doer, in whatsoever way…. You may try to be humble, but if it is your humbleness, practiced, disciplined by you, then deep down in your humbleness the ego will remain crowned, and it will go on saying, “Look. How humble I am.”

I have heard about one man who went to see Adler, the great psychologist who coined the word “inferiority complex.” The man was psychoanalyzed. After a few months and much effort, Adler told him, “Now you are cured.” The man said, “Yes, I also feel that I am cured. Now I am the one who has the most beautiful inferiority complex in the world — the best inferiority complex in the world.”

Inferiority complex, and the most beautiful and the best? It is possible; it happens every day. You can become egoistic about the inferiority complex also. You can have-a superiority complex about an inferiority complex also. Man is so ridiculous.

Go to religious people and see their faces. They show all signs of humbleness, but you will have to go a little deeper, deeper than their skin, to know them. Deep down the ego is very happy, feeling that “Nobody is more humble than me.” If you say to a religious man, “I have found a man who is more humble than you,” he will be hurt. He will feel insulted, it is impossible; nobody can be more humble than him. But that is the whole effort of the ego — nobody has a better house than me, nobody has a better car than me, nobody has a better face than me, nobody has better knowledge than me. In that comparison and feeling better is the ego.

You cannot do anything to change it. You can simply see the point that nothing is needed on your part. And once you drop it — or rather it will be better to say: once in your deep understanding it drops — you are open to life. Then life starts flowing through you, like a cool breeze in an open room. You are like a windowless room: all doors,-windows closed, no ray of light enters in you, no new breeze passes through you. You are caved in within yourself, closed. And of course if you start feeling suffocated it is natural.

But I know it is difficult to allow yourself to drown. It takes time. Just a few glimpses will be needed. Sometimes float, don’t swim, and just feel the river taking you over. Sometimes just sit in the garden, don’t choose. Don’t say what is beautiful, what is ugly. Don’t divide; just be there present to everything. Sometimes move in the marketplace, not saying, not condemning, not appreciating. In many ways learn how just to be, without any evaluation. Because the moment you evaluate you have chosen. The moment you say this is good, you are saying, “I would like to have it.” The moment you say this is bad, you say, “I don’t want it; I would not like to have it.” The moment you say this woman is beautiful, you have desired. The moment you say this woman is ugly, you have already felt repulsion. You are already caught in the duality of good and bad, beautiful and ugly; and the choice has entered in you.

Subtle are the ways of the ego. One has to be very alert.

And once you know — once even for a single moment the ego is not there, you are not creating it — suddenly all doors open, and from everywhere, from all directions, life rushes towards you. That rush is very fragile. If you are not alert you will not be able to see it, you will not be able to feel it. God’s touch is very delicate. Great sensitivity is needed to feel it.

Just the other day I was reading a small poem of Huub Oosterhuis.

“God does not send us his word
like a great torrent of water
raging in tempest and flood
sweeping us blindly along
but like a glimpse of the sun
or a green branch in the winter,
rain falling softly on earth:
this is how God comes to us. ”

… rain falling softly on earth: this is how God comes to us.”

In deep surrender, sensitivity, awareness, suddenly you are full of something which you had never known before. It has always been there, but you were too gross to know it. It has always been there, but you were too occupied in fighting, in the ways of the ego, that you couldn’t look back and feel it. It was always there, but you were not present. It was always waiting for you, but you had forgotten how to come back home. Dropping the ego is the way back home.

So drown yourself. That’s the whole art I am teaching you here. If I am teaching anything, I am teaching you death, because I know only through death is resurrection.

-Osho

From Yoga: The Path to Liberation, Discourse #2 (Originally published as Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, V.9)

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

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

Feel First Your Own Feeling – Osho

This morning you spoke of the need to be responsible, to not lean on others, to be alone.

I see I have been taking sannyas as an excuse to avoid these things – Asking you all the time what to do, calling on your presence when I am sad and lonely, imagining you are with me, filling all the emptiness. I feel irresponsible and confused again about what sannyas is.

You will always feel confused if you lean on somebody else because then the understanding will not be yours, and understanding cannot be borrowed. So you can befool yourself a little while. Again and again the reality will erupt and you will feel confused. So the only way to avoid confusion is not-rationalization. The only way to avoid confusion is to stand on your own feet, to be alert, to be aware. Don’t postpone awareness. Whenever you start leaning on somebody, you are avoiding awareness — and you have been taught and conditioned for it from the very beginning. The parents, the peers, the society, the educationists, the politicians, they all go on trying to condition you in such a way that you always depend on others. Then you can be manipulated, then you can be dominated. Then you can be exploited and oppressed, then you can be reduced to being a slave. You lose your freedom.

This conditioning is there. When you come to me you come with that conditioning, of course; there is no other way. And immediately your mind starts functioning from your conditioning: you start leaning on me. But I am not going to allow you that. I will push you again and again, throw you again and again to yourself. Because I would like you to stand on your own understanding. Then it will be something of the permanent, then you will never be confused.

Confusion comes in…. I say something to you, you start believing in it — but it is not your vision, it is not your perception. Tomorrow in life something happens and you are in a difficulty. The difficulty arises because you have learned by rote — you have memorized me. Now you will try to respond through this borrowed understanding. Life changes every moment. My understanding of this moment will not be of any help to you the next moment. My understanding of this moment cannot be made a permanent reference. And if you take it verbally, intellectually, mentally, and you carry it with you, you will again and again be confused; because life will always sabotage your so-called understanding.

Life trusts only real understanding. Real means your own, authentic, that arises from you.

I am not here to give you knowledge, I am not here to give you theories. That’s what has been done for centuries, and man has remained as ignorant as ever. I am here to make you alert to the fact that hidden behind you, within you, is a source of light. Tap that source. Let that light bum bright within you. And then you have something alive. Then whatsoever problems come in life, you will not tackle them from your past knowledge. You will tackle them in the present. You will face them with your present understanding.

Whatsoever I say will always become past. The moment I have said, the moment you have heard, it has already gone into the past. And life goes on changing; it is a constant movement. It knows no stopping, it knows no rest. Again and again you will feel confused.

And with me also there is a problem. The next moment you will ask the same question, and I will never answer the same again. Because I respond. I don’t answer, I don’t remember my old answers — I respond. Your question is there, I am here, I respond again. And if you go on collecting my answers: not only confused, you will become mad. Because you will not find any harmony in them, any consistency in them. They are inconsistent. What can I do. Life is inconsistent. If I am to be true to life, I have to remain inconsistent in my statements. If I want to be true to my statements, then I betray life. And I would like to remain true to life. I can betray my past, but I cannot betray the present. I can go against my statements, but I cannot go against the present life, this moment.

So confusion will arise. Someday I will say something, and I will say something else some other day. If you compare, if you try to make a consistent whole out of my statements, you are going to be in trouble, in deep trouble. Don’t do that. You just listen to me. And don’t learn my answer; learn my response. Don’t be bothered with what I say. See the way I say it. See the way I respond to a situation, to a question. The answer is not important, but my alive response is.

And if you can learn the alive response, you become responsible. My meaning of the word “responsibility” is totally different from the dictionary meaning. In the dictionary responsibility seems something like a duty, a commitment, as if you are responsible to somebody else. The word is almost dirty. The mother goes on saying to the child, “You are responsible to me, remember.” The father goes on saying to the son, “You are responsible to me, remember.” The society goes on saying to the individuals, “You are responsible to us, to the society, remember.” And your so-called images of God, they also go on telling people, “You are responsible to us… to me.”

When I use the word “responsibility” I mean your aliveness, responding aliveness. You are not responsible to anybody else except your own being, this moment. You are responsible to be responsible. To respond with an open heart, with vulnerability. Not with closed fists but with open hands. Not hiding and holding something. Opening yourself completely, in deep trust with life. Not trying to be clever and cunning. Then you float with life moment to moment… your response will change because life is changing.

Sometimes it is hot and you cannot sit outside in the sun and you would need a shelter. Sometimes it is too cold and you cannot sit under the shelter and you would like to sit under the sun. But nobody is going to say to you that you look very inconsistent: “The other day you were sitting in the shelter, and now you are sitting under the sun? Be consistent! Choose! If you want to sit in the sun, then sit consistently in the sun.” You will laugh at this absurdity, but this is what people have expected of you in life.

Everything is changing around you. Don’t get fixed ideas; otherwise you will be confused. And don’t listen to what others say; listen to your own heart. I have heard:

What mankind had feared for generations finally happened: a nuclear reaction ran out of control and the entire globe exploded, killing every living thing in it.

Naturally, at the Pearly Gates there was terrible confusion, what with so many souls arriving at the same time, so St. Peter decided to try and sort out the grades by putting up various notices behind which the appropriate souls could form queues.

One sign read Bosses Only, and another read Men Who Were Under Their Wives’ Thumbs. Behind the Bosses Only sign was one solitary soul, whereas under the other sign was a queue stretching right to the Milky Way.

St. Peter, curious, said to the solitary soul, “How is it that you are the only one here?”

“I don’t know — the wife told me to stand here,” was the reply.

Sometimes it is the wife, sometimes it is the husband, sometimes it is the father, sometimes the mother — sometimes the guru. Somebody is telling you to stand here, and you don’t know why. Make sure why you are standing there.

Listen. It is a little complex. Even if you decide to follow somebody, listen to your heart, as to whether you want to follow. I am not saying don’t follow anybody, because if your heart says follow, then what will you do? But listen to the heart, feel your own feeling first because ultimately you are responsible to your heart. Everything else is secondary; you are primary. You are the center of your world.

If you choose to follow me or if you choose to be initiated by me, if you choose to surrender to me, feel first your own feeling. Otherwise you will again and again be confused, and again and again you will start thinking, “What am I doing here?” You will start thinking, “Why have I taken sannyas? Why?” Don’t take it because somebody else is saying to. Feel it. Then the confusion will never arise. Then it cannot arise; then there is no question of confusion.

Confusion is a wrong functioning. If you function from your center, confusion never arises. If you function from somebody else’s center, the confusion is bound to arise continuously — and people are functioning from others’ understandings, from advisers, experts. They are living through them. People have completely left their lives in others’ hands.

Feel it, wait for the feeling to arise. Be patient, don’t be in a hurry. And if you have felt your feeling well, then you will have a deep root, and that root will make you strong, and that root will not allow any confusion to settle around you.

-Osho

From Yoga: The Path to Liberation, Discourse #2 (Originally published as Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, V.9)

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.

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