Aes Dhammo Sanantano
Question 1:
BELOVED OSHO,
IS IT POSSIBLE THAT YOU ARE NOT ENLIGHTENED? IF IT IS THE CASE, WOULD THAT MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE FOR ME?
Devaprem, it is not only possible, it is absolutely certain that I am not enlightened!
Enlightenment happens only when one is not, hence ONE cannot be enlightened. Either one is, or enlightenment is; both cannot be together -- that is an impossibility, that is not in the very nature of things. Buddha will say: AES DHAMMO SANANTANO, "This is the ultimate law of life."
One cannot be enlightened. To be is the barrier, not the bridge. It hinders; in fact, it is the only hindrance. To dissolve, not to be, that becomes the bridge.
Hence the word Buddha uses for enlightenment is tremendously significant and beautiful.
It contains the most profound truth ever uttered, but it is untranslatable; "enlightenment" is a very faraway echo of it. The very word "enlightenment" gives you a totally different sense. Buddha's word is nirvana; nirvana means cessation, disappearance. Literally it means when you blow a candle out, when the light of the candle is blown out, when the light disappears.... One cannot ask where it has gone, one cannot say where it is now; it is simply no more. This is nirvana: the disappearance of the light.
"Enlightenment" gives you just the opposite meaning. It makes you feel that YOU become enlightened, that YOU become full of light, that darkness disappears, not you.
You remain; in fact you are far more than you were before. Before, you were hidden in darkness; now, all the darkness is gone and your being is revealed.
Buddha says there is no being in you; you are a non-being -- ANATTA is his word.
Anatta means no-self, no-soul, no-being. He not only denies the ego, he denies every possibility of the ego; otherwise, the ego is so cunning it will go on coming back again and again. It will find subtle ways to catch hold of you. It will come in the name of the self; in fact it will come very loudly in the name of the self.
Ordinarily people write "self" with a lower case "s," and the people who philosophize about the ultimate reality start writing "Self" with a capital "S." It is ego magnified, it is ego decorated, it is ego pretending to be holy, it is ego pretending to be eternal.
Buddha uses the words "no-self," "no-soul," "no-being." He leaves no possibility for the ego to sprout again; he simply cuts it from the very roots. Never before Gautam the Buddha had it been done so efficiently.
My understanding, my experience, is exactly the same: nirvana cannot be claimed by anyone; to claim it is to falsify it. The UPANISHADS say: "Those who know cannot claim, and those who claim cannot know." The knower cannot say "I know," because in the knowing the "I" melts -- there is nobody to claim, there is nobody to brag. Hence, Devaprem, I can only say one thing: it is absolutely certain that I am not enlightened.
What is enlightened is not ME; it is beyond the idea of I. It is transcendental to the ego, and in that sense you are also enlightened. You may not know it, that's another matter.
Knowing or not knowing makes no difference to your nature; your nature remains the same, exactly the same. When you become enlightened you don't become a new person.
In fact you don't gain anything, you only lose something: you lose your chains, you lose your bondage, you lose your misery, you go on losing.
Enlightenment is a process of losing; you don't gain anything. When there is nothing left to lose, that state is nirvana; that state of utter silence can be called enlightenment. I don't claim anything....
And you ask me, "If it is the case, would that make any difference for me?" It will make a difference, because you are not HERE with me. You are not here in a love relationship, you are here out of your greed. If it were not so, the question would not have arisen at all.
Your questions show much about you. Your questions as questions may be meaningless, absurd, but they show much about you; they are indicators.
If you become absolutely certain that I am not enlightened, then your relationship with me is finished. Then you will start searching for somebody else who is enlightened; then you have to move to some other master. You will be caught by someone who brags, by someone who has a very subtle spiritual ego, who claims, who tries to prove his enlightenment through the scriptures or through miracles or through some other things.
You need to be convinced that you are with the right person. The greedy person asks for proofs; love never asks for any proofs.
The people who were with Jesus were very greedy. They were all Jews -- obviously they could not have been otherwise. They were continuously asking him, "Are you really the son of God -- REALLY?" In their question there is suspicion, doubt. They want Jesus to do miracles -- walk on water, raise the dead, cure the blind. And even then they are not convinced -- maybe there is some trick in it. Walking on water or curing the blind man or raising the dead -- who knows, there may be some trick; there is every possibility.
The whole story of Lazarus may just have been a managed act. Lazarus was one of the friends of Jesus. Jesus could have told him, "Lie down; pretend to be dead." He may have taught him a few yoga tricks -- how not to breathe. Yogis know the tricks, and Jesus had been to India. He may have learned a few tricks, how not to breathe, how to stop breathing. Now it is a proven fact that there are yoga exercises which can do it.
One yogi from south India, Brahma Yogi, demonstrated it in many universities -- in Oxford, in Cambridge, in Calcutta, in Tokyo, in many universities -- in front of very learned scientific gatherings. He used to stop his breathing for ten minutes; for all practical purposes he was not breathing. Only very sophisticated instruments showed that there was some slight breathing still going on, but that was not visible to the eyes; the pulse had stopped.
The pulse can be stopped very easily, you can learn the trick -- the trick is so easy. You do only one thing: count your pulse. Then, every day early in the morning when you get up, fresh -- don't do anything else -- sit on your bed and count your pulse. For five minutes focus your mind on the pulse and go on repeating inside, "It is slowing down, slowing down, slowing down..." and you will be surprised: within a week you will have learned the art of slowing it down. You can bring it lower and lower as your practice grows. Within three months you will be able to stop it for a few moments, and if you practice for years you can stop it for a few minutes. The same is true about the heartbeat and about breathing.
In front of scientists Brahma Yogi proved that he was capable of stopping the breath.
Now, Lazarus may have been just pretending that he was dead. Suspicions can never be put aside; if you doubt, you will doubt everything. And I don't say that there is something wrong in doubting -- the only thing is that you have not fallen in love with Jesus; the master-disciple relationship has not happened. Hence the questions, hence the desire for proofs. But your doubting mind will create new questions, will ask for new proofs. And it is an infinite regression.
I know of a Bengali saint, Bengali Baba, who once stopped a train at Calcutta station. He created much news all over Bengal and became famous because of that; otherwise nobody had heard about him. He entered a first-class compartment. The ticket collector came, he asked for the ticket, and Bengali Baba said, "I am a fakir, a saint, and saints don't need any tickets. You get lost!"
Of course the conductor became very angry. He said, "You have to produce the ticket; otherwise I will throw you out!"
Bengali Baba said, "You can throw me out, but remember, without me this train cannot move even a single inch!"
Now it was a great challenge! He was thrown out; the police were called and he was taken out. He stood there on the platform, closed his eyes, went into deep SAMADHI, and the miracle happened! The driver tried hard, the guard was waving his flag -- but nothing happened. And the guard was puzzled because there was nothing wrong with the engine. Everything was working perfectly, but the train would not move a single inch.
A great crowd gathered, all the passengers gathered. Even the station master came and touched the feet of Bengali Baba and said, "Please, let the train go!"
Bengali Baba said, "It cannot happen this way. Bring that man who threw me out. He has to touch my feet, apologize, and promise never to ask a fakir for a ticket!"
The conductor was very unwilling, but the whole crowd pressed him, forced him, virtually dragged him: "We have other work to do and the train is getting late -- somebody has to attend the courts, somebody has to go somewhere else -- and just because of your foolish ego! What is wrong with asking forgiveness? And you have seen the power of the man!"
Finally, he touched his feet, asked the Baba to enter the train, and promised never to ask any fakir for a ticket. And the moment the Baba entered the train, the train moved.
He became famous all over Bengal, and the secret was very simple. He was a very good man; before he died he revealed his secret. He said, "The secret was this: I had bribed two persons, one was the ticket collector and the other was the driver. Just two persons were bribed, and the whole show was so perfect!"
So who knows whether Lazarus was pretending to be dead. It is possible. If you doubt, you can doubt anything. After all these miracles, still the apostles were asking Jesus again and again, "Give us proof!" Even at the last moment, when he was crucified, they were hiding in the crowd and waiting for the ultimate miracle to happen. And when it did not happen they were really very disappointed. So their whole life was wasted by this man!
He had been doing all kinds of tricks, and now on the cross everything failed. So there was no God behind him; otherwise this was the time to prove it! They were all greedy people.
Devaprem, your question is full of greed. So when you ask me, "If it is the case, would that make any difference for me?" even in asking, you know it will make a difference, because you are not here for any love affair -- not out of trust but out of greed. You want to gain something -- and if the man is not enlightened, then why waste your time here?
Move somewhere else, find the right person who can help you. If I am not enlightened, how can I help you to be enlightened? So what is the point of being here? And I say to you it is better that you move, because I have said clearly it is not only possible, it is absolutely certain that I am not enlightened.
So those who are here out of greed, spiritual greed, should not be here; this is not the place for them. This is not a business place! It is only for those who are gamblers, who can risk. It is only for those who are a little bit mad, drunkards.
I don't promise you anything. I don't promise you the kingdom of God, I don't promise you enlightenment -- I don't promise at all. My whole approach is of living moment to moment; enlightened or unenlightened, what does it matter? Living moment to moment joyously, ecstatically, living moment to moment totally, intensely, passionately....
If one lives passionately, the ego dissolves. If one is total in one's acts, the ego is BOUND to dissolve. It is like when a dancer goes on and on dancing: a moment comes when only the dance remains and the dancer disappears. That is the moment of enlightenment.
Whenever the doer is not there, the manipulator is not there; whenever there is nobody inside you and there is only emptiness, nothingness, that is enlightenment. And out of that beautiful space whatsoever is born has grace, has glory.
Paradise is not something geographical, it is not somewhere else; it is a way of living. It belongs to those who can live totally and intensely. Then immediately, herenow, paradise descends -- or, even better, wells up within their own sources, within their own beings.
Just the space is needed for it to well up.
And I don't tell you to drop the ego, because if YOU drop the ego then the dropper will become the ego. I don't say become humble, because if YOU become humble then behind the facade of humbleness there will be a very subtle ego hiding.
So my devices are different. I say dance to abandon, sing, play music! Do whatsoever you like doing and move into it so totally that nothing is left behind. When nothing is left behind, the ego dissolves of its own accord.
That's the meaning of nirvana: you have blown the candle out, suddenly it is not there.
Then whatsoever is, is divine.
The ego is human; egolessness is divine.
The ego is hell; egolessness is paradise.
The second question:
Question 2:
BELOVED OSHO,
CAN I EVER BE HAPPY WITH MY WIFE?
Girdharilal Jain, it is almost impossible. Nothing is wrong with your wife, but the very institution of marriage is ugly, the very institution is anti-love. It is based on denying love a chance to flower within you. Marriage is an invention of those who don't want the earth to be full of flowers of love.
Love is dangerous to the establishment, the most dangerous thing, because if people are loving then this society is doomed. This society depends on hatred, not on love. Our whole politics and our whole so-called religions are based on hatred. Nations are divided -- for what? The earth is one, what is the need for nations? India and Pakistan and Afghanistan...what is the need for nations? Can't humanity live together? Why all these boundaries? These boundaries are needed by the politicians.
Without the boundaries the politicians will disappear; without the boundaries there will be no politics. These boundaries create the whole game, and these boundaries are just big prisons. You don't feel as if you are imprisoned because the prison is so big you cannot see it. But try to cross over the boundary from India to Pakistan, or from Pakistan to India, and then you will see that it was all nonsense to think of yourself as free. You cannot go beyond the boundary: you need a passport, a visa, a permit, a this and that.
Then suddenly you become aware that the prison was so big that you were not aware of its walls -- but there are walls all around you.
Man has not yet become civilized enough to be allowed to move around the earth in freedom. When you pass from one prison to another, you have to fulfill many conditions.
And these nations go on fighting, continuously fighting. Seventy percent of human energy is wasted on war -- and the people are starving and the people are dying. The same energy can transform the whole earth into such a rich planet that nobody will bother about heaven at all. We can create a far better heaven here; we are more scientifically equipped. I have read the descriptions of your heavens in all the scriptures of the world.
They are all living in the world of the bullock cart; they don't even know anything about bicycles. I have never come across any description of angels on bicycles! -- what to say about anything else.
Your conceptions of heaven were developed at least three thousand years ago. Man has come of age. We now have a far better technology, far greater efficiency in creating, in producing, but for stupid reasons the whole thing goes into the war effort.
Now, what is the point of Iraq and Iran fighting? Utterly foolish -- but they are destroying each other. And in destroying each other they will be destroying everybody else too, because the whole world depends on these two countries for all kinds of things: diesel, petrol and other petroleum products. These are two giant countries, and they are destroying each other's capacities. Once they are successful in destroying each other, they will have destroyed the whole world in a way; the whole world will be dragged back.
And there seems to be no point: the whole question is of boundaries, where the boundaries should be. On the earth there are no boundaries, only on the maps!
Mulla Nasruddin was going on an airplane trip -- it was his first trip. When he was passing the boundary of India and Pakistan, he was looking out of the window with his big binoculars trying to see the boundary, and he could not see anything.
And the pilot was saying, "Just two miles ahead is the boundary of India and Pakistan, and within seconds we will be crossing it." So he was looking very intently...but no boundary!
He asked the passenger sitting by his side, "Where is the boundary? I cannot see it!"
The very idea that the boundary existed on the earth was so foolish that his neighbor played a joke on him. He said, "You look carefully, concentrate on it. It is a very delicate thing and we are miles away, but if you look minutely you will see it."
He put one of the hairs from Mulla Nasruddin's beard on the lens of the binoculars, and Mulla said, "Yes, now I can see! Yes, there is the boundary! And at the end of the boundary line I can see there is a camel also, but such a very strange-looking camel I have never seen!"
The neighbor said, "This is a Pakistani camel -- how can you have seen it before?"
He was looking at his own beard!
On the earth there are no boundaries, but politicians need boundaries. Religiousness has no boundaries, but priests need them. Religiousness is neither Christian nor Hindu nor Mohammedan, but then what will the priests do? They will be out of a job, completely out of a job, and millions of people depend on these boundaries. Their whole business is to go on insisting: "Only Christianity is the right religion; only Hinduism is the right religion. Unless you are a Christian there is no hope for you." And the same is the claim of all the other religions. Everybody is trying to pull you into his fold because numbers create power.
Society, up to now, has existed in deep hatred -- hatred for other countries, hatred for other religions, hatred for other-colored people, hatred in every possible way. So the love quality has to be destroyed, and we start destroying the qualities of love from the very childhood. We start teaching the child: "You are a Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian -- hate others." But we don't say it directly, it is a very indirect maneuver. We start making every child ambitious, and ambition means you cannot love; ambition is anti-love.
Ambition needs fight, ambition needs struggle, ambition needs you to use others as a means.
Love is a totally different perspective. Love says respect the other as an end unto himself or herself; never use the other as a means. Nobody is a means for you, everybody is an end. But then ambition will flop, and our whole educational system depends on ambitiousness, our politics depends on ambition, our religions depend on ambition.
Politics is the religion of this world and religion is the politics of the other world; that's the only difference between the two. And the politician and the priest have been in a deep conspiracy for centuries. They have divided everything up amongst themselves: "You will rule here, we will rule there; you will rule before death, we will rule after death -- fifty-fifty!" But both have to do one thing: destroy any potential for love.
For thousands of years only child marriages were allowed. It was a subtle strategy.
Girdharilal Jain himself may have got married when he was a child, not knowing what was going to happen. Once you become older it becomes difficult for you to accept any woman or any man as your wife or husband: you will start asking your parents embarrassing questions: "I don't love this man, I don't love this woman...?" Love is something that cannot be enforced -- if it happens, it happens; if it does not happen it does not happen. So the cunning people decide that before you start asking about love it is better to arrange a marriage.
All other relationships are given by birth. There was only one freedom for you: to choose your wife or your husband. Even that has been destroyed. You cannot choose your mother, you cannot choose your father, you cannot choose your brothers and your sisters -- that is all accidental. You cannot choose your uncles, your aunts; that is beyond your choice. The only freedom was that you could choose your beloved -- but that too was denied.
People were married when they were so small, six years old, seven years old. In India marriages used to be arranged even while the child was inside the womb. People used to arrange that "if your child turns out to be a boy, and my child turns out to be a girl, or vice versa, we will marry them." The marriage was already decided before the birth! This was a strategy to poison love. So the child would grow with the wife or the husband just as one grows with one's brothers and sisters: he would become accustomed, love would never happen.
The society is very much afraid of love. It condemns love, it calls love blind. The fact is, love is the only phenomenon which is not blind; everything else is blind. Logic is blind, not love, but you have been told that love is blind, you have been told that love is mad. In all the languages of the world this type of expression exists: "falling in love" -- as if one falls! I would like to change it. Whenever you are in love never say, "I have fallen in love," say, "I have RISEN in love." It is reaching higher than you have ever been before.
It is not a fall, it is growth.
Girdharilal Jain, you ask me, "Can I ever be happy with my wife?" It is not a personal question at all, remember, and I am not answering you in a personal way either; it is a general question. You cannot be happy with your wife unless you respect her as a person and not as a wife. Unless you accept her as independent, free to be herself, you cannot be happy. And the man has been told that he is the possessor, the wife is only a possession.
In China, for centuries the husband was allowed to kill his wife if he wanted, because the wife was just a thing. In India, the wife is thought to be the property of the husband.
Certainly, if the wife is your property, how can you be happy with her? You are insulting her, you are humiliating her, you are destroying her individuality. She will take revenge.
Of course her ways will be feminine ways of taking revenge, but she will take revenge.
She will create a situation in which you will be in constant hell.
Society has been dominated by the man for too long, and he has reduced the woman to a commodity. Now it cannot be done anymore. The woman has equal rights with any man; and she has to be respected -- she is a human being and nobody's property! At the most, the husband and the wife are friends -- not more than that. And don't take her for granted, because nobody can take anybody for granted. One cannot be certain about the tomorrow.
Tomorrow she may be yours, she may not be yours. This risk has to be accepted; only then can there be joy in relationship. When relationship is free, when there is freedom in it, there is joy, because freedom is the ultimate value; nothing is higher than that.
If your love leads you towards freedom, then your love will be a blessing; if it leads towards slavery it is not a blessing, it is a curse.
On his golden wedding anniversary a man was asked if his marriage had turned out better or worse than he had anticipated.
"Well," he said, "originally I thought our marriage would be a fifty-fifty proposition. It has turned out that way, but not as I expected. My wife has had her way the first fifty years, and I'll have my way the second fifty!"
Something like this arrangement happens between husbands and wives. It is an arranged phenomenon, it is not out of love. Both are trying to get as much out of it as possible and to give as little as possible.
"We got a divorce because we were incompatible," explained one bar fly to another. "My wife hated me when I was drunk, and I couldn't stand her when I was sober."
These are arrangements!
The newly-enlisted rookie was being examined by the army psychiatrist. "What do you do for social life?" he was asked.
"I just hang around the house."
"Do you ever go out with girls?"
"No."
"Don't you ever want to?"
"Yes."
"Then why don't you?"
"My wife won't let me!"
Husbands and wives are protecting each other, guarding, detecting. They are not friends but enemies, trying to prove in every possible way who the master is.
How can you be happy with your wife, Girdharilal Jain? If you are a husband you cannot be happy. The very word "husband" is ugly; it comes from husbandry. The wife is thought to be like a field and you are the farmer; you have to sow the seeds -- the wife is just like a field. You are the owner, the sower of the seeds, the reaper of the crops, and she is just the earth. We should change our language. Very ugly words still go on being used. "Husband" is an ugly word; it should be dropped from all languages.
The wife and the husband should come to a better understanding. They are together to make life a joy; they are together not to quarrel, not to nag, not to destroy each other but to enhance each other in every possible way -- physical, psychological, spiritual. Love should be a journey, a pilgrimage towards the ultimate.
An elderly couple are lying in bed. "Joseph," she says, "you remember the days you used to kiss my ear?"
Joseph turns over and kisses her ear.
"And Joseph," she says, "you remember the days you used to fondle my hair?"
Joseph gently strokes her hair.
"And Joseph," she continues, "you remember the days you used to bite my neck?"
Joseph gets up and walks through the room, "Hey, Marge," he says, "do you remember where I put my false teeth?"
Love is not a demand, love is a deep understanding. One cannot ask for it; one should give for the sheer joy of giving. Certainly it comes, a thousandfold it comes, but it has not to be asked for.
There is no future for the institution of marriage. We will have to discover new forms of relating, new forms of loving, new dimensions in which people can join together.
Marriage is out of date, but old habits die hard -- we go on clinging. Even young people....
Just the other day a girl who is only twenty-two -- and not even Indian, she comes from Germany -- told me, "I want to get married." For what? Can't you see the insanity all around? Her father has divorced her mother; her mother has gone with some other man.
Her father is living with some other woman, and still, she wants to get married!
Everybody thinks that his life is going to be an exception. That foolish idea destroys people's whole lives.
The first thing is love: love deeply. If you have been with a person for a few years, in deep love, and you have experienced all the joys and all the miseries, and still you decide to be with the person, then marriage is okay. Because marriage is only a legal arrangement, it cannot make anything more beautiful than it is. It can only make it ugly, it cannot beautify it. Once it is settled legally, once you start taking each other for granted, things will start going down rather than rising high.
So before one settles with anybody, one should learn to live with as many people as possible. My own understanding is that there are no two persons alike; hence, unless you have experienced many love affairs you will not know the multidimensionality of love.
Only after knowing the multidimensionality of love will you feel enriched. Only when you know that now you have known the world enough and you have experienced and observed many kinds of relationships with many types of people...only then can you choose. No astrologer can decide it for you, and no parents can decide it for you. Even YOU, just by your instinct, cannot decide it.
Love affairs have been failing, and parents feel very happy. People come to me and they say, "Look, in the West love affairs have been failing. Then why are you against marriage?" they ask me. Love affairs are failing because first the marriage was arranged by the astrologer, then it was arranged by the parents, and now it is being arranged by biology, by instinct. You suddenly feel that you like a woman, but you don't know how long this is going to last and you are not even aware why you like her. You are not even alert to what it is in you that likes her. Maybe it is just her hairstyle. Now, are you going to get married to a hairstyle? You can get married, but tomorrow morning when you see her hair disheveled you will be at a loss: "Is this the same woman I fell in love with?"
How long can you be interested in the hairstyle? Soon you will get fed up. The same hairstyle again and again -- the whole day, twenty-four hours a day...!
People are falling in love because a certain man has a certain type of nose. People are falling in love with fragments! Nobody is bothered about the totality of the person -- and it is a vast thing. The nose does not count for much -- after two days you won't look at it at all. Or the color, or the shape, or the proportion of the body -- all these things are very minor. The real thing is the total functioning of the person, and that can be experienced only when you live together. Before one decides to get married, one should live with many people so one can choose in awareness, and one should live with the person one is choosing for a few months, for a few years.
My own observation is that nobody should get married before the age of thirty-five. If you are going to live seventy years, then thirty-five is the right time; if you are going to live more than that, then you can prolong it. If you are going to die at eighty, then forty.
If you have decided to live a hundred years, then fifty. The longer you wait the better, because if you wait long enough you may decide not to get into it at all! That's the most beautiful thing: if you wait long enough.
Just the other day Amrit Chinmayo asked me.... Now, she is nearabout fifty; she is a beautiful woman and I like her because she is outrageous! She asked me, "I don't see many sannyasins of my age here. There are beautiful people, stunning people, but they are nearabout thirty or at the most thirty-five, and I am fifty. There are very few people who are fifty or beyond fifty. Am I transcending sex or is it just because I cannot find people of my own age?"
My feeling about you, Chinmayo, is that you have lived an outrageous life and it is time to transcend. Only outrageous people can transcend quickly. The orthodox, the conventional, the people who live in a lukewarm way go on and on repeating the same stupidity to the very end. Even when they are dying they will be thinking of sex, women - - and you can always find a copy of PLAYBOY under their pillow! Maybe a very old copy from when they were young, or just a hangover they are still carrying, or something like a memoir of their youth, their young days....
Chinmayo is a woman who has really lived, and if you live totally and really authentically, you will get beyond all this nonsense sooner. Fifty is the right time to go beyond, but don't force it because forcing will not help. Transcendence has to happen in a silent, whisperlike manner. One becomes aware of it only when it has happened.
But it is going to happen sooner or later, Chinmayo; it will not take long for you. Those who live intensely can live more in ten years than ordinary people can live in fifty years.
Once a man asked Emerson, "What is your age?"
Emerson said, "Three hundred and sixty years."
The man could not believe it -- he looked no more than sixty. And he could not believe that Emerson would lie because he was well known for his authenticity. He thought, "I must have heard wrongly." He said, "Pardon me, I could not hear. What did you say?
What is your age?"
And Emerson said, "Three hundred and sixty. And you have not heard wrongly, I said exactly that: three hundred and sixty."
The man said, "I cannot believe it."
Emerson said, "I cannot believe it myself, so I don't expect you to believe it. But I say I have lived three hundred and sixty years because ordinarily people live in such a lukewarm way that if they live three hundred and sixty years then they will come close to me, although I have lived only sixty years. But I have lived intensely and totally. Each moment I have squeezed the juice of life; I have not left a single drop behind. So in sixty years I have lived six times more than people ordinarily live."
And that's my feeling about Chinmayo: she has lived more in fifty years than people will live in a hundred years. And it is time to transcend, it is time to go beyond.
Sex is animal, love is human.
And to go beyond love is divine.
Then arises prayer.
Sex, love, prayer: these are the three stages of life.
If you die without knowing prayer, you have lived in vain.
The last question:
Question 3:
BELOVED OSHO,
WHY ARE YOU NOT SERIOUS? WHY ARE YOU ALWAYS JOKING?
Gunga Prasad, God is not serious -- what can I do? God is always joking. Look at your own life -- it is a joke! Look at other people's lives, and you will find jokes and jokes and jokes.
Seriousness is illness; seriousness has nothing spiritual about it. Spirituality is laughter, spirituality is joy, spirituality is fun.
Two hunters were in a forest looking for game, when they came across a huge black bear.
The first hunter took aim, but missed. The second hunter took careful aim as the bear drew closer to them, but his gun jammed. The two hunters fled in terror with the bear in hot pursuit. They came to a small cabin at the edge of the forest, ran inside and bolted the door just before the bear reached them.
The enormous bear circled the cabin, found an open window and climbed in after them.
Loud crashing and terror-stricken screams ensued, then silence....
Finally, after three days, the door burst open and the first hunter staggered out, walked ten paces then fell face first onto the ground.
Not long after, the second hunter staggered out, walked about twenty paces then fell to the ground. Hours later the bear appeared, staggered up the track about half a mile, then collapsed.
Shortly after, a beautiful young lady appeared at the door of the cabin. She walked up to the first hunter and said, "Him, he owes me ten dollars!"
Walking up to the second hunter, she said, "Him, he owes me twenty dollars." Then she looked up and began scanning the horizon. "Now, I wonder what happened to that big guy in the fur coat? He had another free one comin'!"
Enough for today.
Come, Come, Yet Again Come