Response ability

Question 1:

Shridhar, J. Krishnamurti and George Gurdjieff are not just two waves in the ocean of consciousness.

They are the very ocean of consciousness itself. The moment you become enlightened you are no longer an individual. You lose your ego, and with the ego you lose all your limits, all your boundaries.

They are not waves of my ocean; the ocean belongs to no one. I am the same ocean as they are.

You are also the same ocean as I am. You just have to wake up and realize the fact that your imprisonment is your imagination, that your fetters are nothing but your thoughts, that your bondage is nothing but your own unconscious way of living. Otherwise you are as oceanic as any Gautam Buddha, as any Lao Tzu, as any Kabir, as anyone who has ever realized his ultimate, his sachchidanand.

We are not separate. We belong to one existence without any demarcation lines. All limitations are mind projections. The moment you are beyond mind and you can see without the mind directly, you will be surprised that the trees and the stars and the oceans ... There is nowhere any demarcation.

The flowers of the trees are your flowers, the greatness of the stars is your greatness, and the smallness of the grass leaves is your smallness. The moment you start feeling this universalness, you have come home.

But remember always not to put me above anybody else, just because I am your master. So don't say that I am the ocean and J. Krishnamurti and Gurdjieff are just waves. That is ugly.

You may not be aware from where these kinds of ideas continuously come. And this is not only the case with you ...

Just today, Hasya was telling me about some Korean master, Su. He is going to come soon. He has disciples. Lani has just come from Korea. In the Korean language they have published more than thirty-five books of mine. Hundreds of people are interested in coming. They were not even aware where I am, and whether I am still alive or some past master.

Not only the so-called disciples go on praising their master as the highest. Even the so-called masters ... certainly they are not masters, just so-called. When master Su's disciples asked him, "What are the categories between you and Bhagwan?" he said he belongs to the first category of enlightened people and Bhagwan belongs to the third category of enlightened people.

Now such a man cannot be enlightened, to say nothing of first, second and third category, because there are no categories in enlightenment. How can you be enlightened and still belong to a certain category? The category is a limitation.

But the so-called masters will always put themselves higher than anybody else. The ego lingers on, whether you are in the world of matter, money, power, prestige or whether you are pretending to be a seeker, a searcher, a spiritual being. Even when you start declaring yourself as enlightened you are playing the same old game with new names. There is no difference at all.

I am waiting for master Su to come. He is going to be in trouble! He does not know me. In the first class enlightened category ... Why should a master who belongs to the first class come to a third class enlightened man in the first place? This is strange! So let him come. He will have to stand in line for the first time in his life.

Once you are enlightened there are no categories. Enlightenment simply means going beyond all categories, all mind trips, all ego trips. It is simply becoming one with the universe.

The reason for people like master Su is the simple pious ego, now acting in the name of spirituality.

The game is old: one has to be on the top. But why do the disciples do this? The reason is the same. If I am the greatest master, then naturally - you are my disciple - you are the disciple of the greatest master. You are no ordinary disciple, you are not a disciple of a third class enlightened man!

I have told you about one religious cult that exists only around the area of the Taj Mahal. They are called Radhaswamis. They were very much disturbed by the presence of the Taj Mahal. Now the Taj Mahal has nothing to do with their spirituality. But the disturbance began when their master died - they determined to make his memorial better than the Taj Mahal.

The Taj Mahal is unique in the whole world, there is no other building that can be compared to it. And it was made by a great emperor. It took thirty years in building, and almost ten thousand stonecutters, sculptors ... Master builders were gathered from faraway countries, the best from Iran, from Turkey, from Egypt, from Arabia. And the emperor who was making it had the whole empire of India and all the money was pouring into it.

These ten thousand people worked almost ... When they had come they were young; by the time the Taj Mahal was completed, either they were old or dead. The second generation was working.

Sometimes they had come old - they were famous so they were brought - so the third generation was working.

And the emperor who was making it as a memorial to his wife, Mumtaj, was also making on the other side of the river Jamuna his own memorial. When he died he would be buried there. Emperors took care while they were alive to make their memorial too, because after they were dead nobody was going to bother to put so much money and effort into it.

But his whole treasure was finished with the wife's memorial. His own memorial has only the foundation stones. He could not complete it because he was dethroned by his own son and kept in jail. And the son immediately dropped the plan of the second memorial.

The Taj Mahal is made of white marble, all Italian marble. And the other memorial, just on the other side of the river - at the end he was going to make a bridge - was going to be exactly the same as the Taj Mahal, but in black marble. He was creating a beautiful symmetry. The architect was going to be exactly the same, the building exactly the same, just the marble was going to be white on the wife's memorial and black on his own memorial.

Now these followers wanted to try to make something better than the Taj Mahal, because thousands of tourists were coming every day to see the Taj Mahal. Naturally they thought it was not only a question of prestige, it was also a question of business. It had been going on for almost one hundred years.

They had been able to make only the ground floor. Certainly they have made it far better than the Taj Mahal, but there seems to be no possibility that they will be able to complete it. They wanted to make it a three-story building, so it goes higher than the Taj Mahal, but all the money that they could collect from their followers from all over India is finished. For one hundred years continuously thousands of workers have been involved in making it.

I have seen ... Their pillars are so beautiful, so creative: on the pillars they have made creepers in marble. And the creepers have green flowers of green marble and roses on top of the creepers made in rubies, emeralds, diamonds. They have certainly made it clear that if they complete it - even incomplete - it has gone beyond the Taj Mahal. They are immensely happy. They invited me when I was speaking at Agra University ... They invited me to show me their incomplete memorial.

They have done a tremendously great job.

They took me inside. Inside they have a map drawn on the marble and on the map there are fourteen divisions. And they have put all the enlightened people that they could think of in the division to which he belongs. There are not only three categories ... According to them there are fourteen.

Mohammed is in the third division, Jesus is in the fifth - so is Moses. In the sixth is Mahavira and Buddha. In the seventh, Kabir, Nanak, and in that way they went on. Names are engraved in marble.

And in the fourteenth there is only one man, their own master, who was not known outside Agra. All his following is centered in Agra. A few people have moved to different places, but basically, it is a one-city-oriented religion. They asked me what was my opinion about this map.

I said, "Who has made this map?"

They said, "It is in our holy scripture. Our master himself has made this."

I said, "Your master is right. He is in the fourteenth."

They looked at me, because before me they had shown that map to many people. Everybody disagreed because their masters were put in the fifth degree, somebody's master in the third degree, somebody's master at the most in the seventh. After the seventh, the other six planes are empty.

The fourteenth, the highest reach of consciousness, has been achieved by their master. Naturally no Hindu will agree, no Mohammedan will agree, no Jaina will agree, no Jew, no Christian, no Buddhist.

Nobody is going to agree. I was the first man to agree with what they said.

They said, "You are the only man who understands."

I said, "Certainly, because I am on the fifteenth and I know your master is trying, making every effort, to enter into the fifteenth. I don't allow him! He tries hard, but I don't open the door. And as long as I am there on the fifteenth - and there is no sixteenth, so I cannot go anywhere else - your master has no chance."

They said, "Fifteenth? But in our scripture there are only fourteen."

"I think that's natural. Your master knows about only fourteen because he has never entered the fifteenth."

They were very much shocked and angry. Their whole desire is that their master is accepted as the highest, then they are certainly the most significant people on the earth, following the greatest master. And the master was also on the same trip because in his own writing, which nobody reads except his own disciples - and they are not many, but they are very rich people ...

They showed me their scripture. He has written with his own hand the names of Gautam Buddha and Jesus and Kabir on lower steps, and his own name he has written on the highest. That very stupidity shows that he is not even on the lowest, the first floor. He does not know anything about enlightenment.

He may have been a learned scholar. That seems to be a possibility, because he writes well. But he is writing everything as a parrot, repeating from old Indian scriptures. There is not a single statement which is original.

I asked them, "Show me something that is original. A man who has reached to the highest plane of consciousness must say something which nobody has said, because nobody has reached to that plane. Show me something. Because all that is written in it has been said by people who are just on the third, fourth, fifth ... What is your master's own statement? What is his testimony?"

They could not find a single statement in their whole book which was not stolen. But this thing goes on and on.

The man who brought me to Poona for the first time, nearabout thirty years ago, was a follower of Mahavira and he was also a follower of Mahatma Gandhi. He lived with Mahatma Gandhi in his ashram for years. His name was Rishabhdas Ranka. Many people of Poona must know him.

Because Mahatma Gandhi was teaching continuously that all religions are the same, essentially the same - no religion is higher than the other, they are all equal - he also learned, like a parrot, to repeat it.

And then he wrote a book on Mahavira and Gautam Buddha, and he showed me the manuscript. I simply saw the title and I said to him, "Just look at your title. I don't have to read your book - your title says everything." In his title he writes, 'Bhagwan Mahavir' and 'Mahatma Gautam Buddha'.

'Bhagwan' is used for Mahavir, and for Gautam Buddha, just 'Mahatma'. There are so many mahatmas; 'Mahatma' is not something very special or unique.

I said, "You are writing this book to show that Jainism and Buddhism are equal, and their message essentially is the same. And Gautam Buddha and Mahavira are equally enlightened."

He said, "Yes."

I said, "Then why this difference? Either put 'Mahatma' in front of both the persons or put 'Bhagwan'."

Now he was in a great dilemma. He could not write 'Mahatma Mahavir'. The Jainas would kill him, they would expel him. He was a Jaina ... Nobody, not a single Jaina in twenty-five centuries, has made such an insult - writing about Mahavira as just a mahatma. Mahatmas are available in this country for one rupee a dozen. They are so cheap, every village has its own mahatma.

And he was not willing to write 'Bhagwan' before Gautam Buddha because no Jaina accepts Gautam Buddha as equal to Mahavira. He is enlightened, but not of the same height. Mahavira's enlightenment is complete; Buddha's enlightenment is incomplete - partial enlightenment, not total.

And the same is the situation of the Buddhists. They will not be ready to call ... I have asked Buddhist monks. One Buddhist monk was born an Englishman, but got converted when he was young and became a Buddhist monk. I don't know whether he is still alive or not, but he was a world famous man, Sanghrakshita. He lives in the Himalayas, in Kalimpong.

He used to come to the university where I was teaching and he became interested in me, because he was always invited to the Philosophy Department. I used to raise questions and he was in difficulty trying to answer them. But he was a very nice person, he never became angry. On the contrary, if he could not answer me he used to ask if I had some idea of what the answer could be. I said, "I never ask anything unless I know the answer."

We became friends. He even started staying with me while he was in the city. I asked him, "What do you think about Mahavira?" Mahavira and Buddha were contemporaries.

He said, "About Mahavira? He was enlightened, but not so completely as Gautam Buddha."

The same nonsense goes on around the world. But the reason the disciples are concerned or the so-called masters are concerned is the same. It is the ego that needs a certain kind of gratification.

Shridhar, as far as J. Krishnamurti and George Gurdjieff are concerned, they are both enlightened.

Both have disappeared in the same ocean in which all enlightened people have always disappeared.

And beyond enlightenment there is no distinction. There is no question, because the person is no more.

When the dewdrop falls into the ocean, do you think there will be differences, that when another dewdrop falls into the ocean, it will only partially fall into the ocean? Can a dewdrop fall partially into the ocean? Is it possible for any dewdrop to be different from any other dewdrop? They will all become the ocean.

I am a clear-cut, straightforward person. I don't want any nonsense to grow around me, and I want the same to be true about you. When I say that every enlightened being disappears into the same universe - and there is no question of anybody being higher or lower - you have to learn it. It is the first time that anybody is telling his disciples to drop the ego which is hiding behind the idea that, "I have got the greatest master."

It has nothing to do with the master, it has something to do with your own ego. Drop it. I am not the greatest master. In the world of masters there is no one who is great, and there is no one who is not great. All these categories are of the mind, they don't apply when mind is no more.

You are simply an utter silence, a pure presence with no person there. It is the same experience, the same taste, the same sweetness, the same blissfulness, the same truth, the same consciousness, the same ecstasy.

Question 2:

Dhyan Prabuddha, I find it always difficult to answer questions which are only intellectual, which arise out of your fear, out of your reason, but not out of your experience, not out of your meditation. You are saying, "living in the here and now, acting spontaneously," and the statement is within inverted commas. You must be quoting me, it is still not your experience. Just because I have been saying that, "living in the here and now, acting spontaneously" is all that can be said about meditation, and that if this is possible, everything else will settle down on its own accord, your mind starts spinning questions.

You are asking, "Will I find that my actions will still be guided by experience and responsibility?" You don't know anything about spontaneity, you don't know anything about living here and now. Not only that, you don't know anything about responsibility and you don't know anything about experience.

Your whole question is absolutely rootless, but I will try to answer it because I don't want to hurt you.

You don't yet deserve it. Once you start deserving, then I don't hesitate. Then I hit you this way and that way and you rejoice in it. But when you are not ready, I try to be as polite as possible.

Now, you are saying, " ... guided by experience ...," which means guided by the past. And if you are here and now, how can you ask this question? It is a contradiction in terms. Guided by experience?

Experience is certainly of the past. In other words you are saying, "Being here and now, will I still be guided by the past?" Then you are not here and now. Then the past is more important than using the here and now to guide you.

Then you are afraid: perhaps if you act spontaneously, you may lose responsibility. And you don't understand even the meaning of the word responsibility. The society has been so cunning. It has destroyed our most beautiful words, given them distorted meanings. Ordinarily in your dictionaries 'responsibility' means duty, doing things the way you are expected to do them by your parents, by your teachers, by your priests, by your politicians, by somebody else.

Your responsibility is to fulfill the demands made upon you by your elders and your society. If you act accordingly, you are a responsible person; if you act on your own - individually - then you are an irresponsible person. And your fear is: in acting spontaneously, here and now, there is a danger - you may start acting individually. What will happen to your responsibility?

The fact is that 'responsibility', the very word, has to be broken into two words. It means 'response ability'. And response is possible only if you are spontaneous, here and now. Response means that your attention, your awareness, your consciousness, is totally here and now, in the present. So whatever happens, you respond with your whole being. It is not a question of being in tune with somebody else, some holy scripture, or some holy idiot. It simply means to be in tune with the present moment. This ability to respond is responsibility.

But without experience you will not be able to see the contradiction in your question. Yes, I say you will be able to act with absolute response-ability. But it will not be the responsibility that you have been taught and conditioned for. It will be a totally new phenomenon.

It will be just like a mirror. If you come in front of it, it responds, it reflects you. The moment you have gone out of its focus, it is again silent. It is not a photographic film that catches your reflection.

It remains always clean and available. Whoever comes in front of it - it will respond with totality and reflect the reality. The consciousness which is in the present is just like a mirror.

Any situation comes ... There are times when you are in the present in spite of yourself. For example, if walking on the path you suddenly come across a long snake, are you going to be guided by past experience? Are you going to be responsible? You will forget all that you have learned: all teachings, all scriptures, all teachers, parents. Suddenly you will find the here and now because this is not a time to think about what to do, what is right and what is wrong. You will simply jump out of the way.

This will be responsibility, spontaneity.

Or your house is on fire and you are taking a shower, naked. Are you going to dress before you get out of the house? Put your tie right? Polish your shoes? Have a look in the mirror? See whether all the buttons are in the right holes? No, there is no time. The house is on fire. You have to jump out of your bathroom window. And you will jump even without a towel around you. You will simply jump naked, just out of the shower through the window. This is spontaneous. It is not guided, because you have not been continuously experiencing your house catching fire. It has never happened before.

So there is no past experience to guide you. And nobody, your father or your mother or your teacher has ever told you that if you are under the shower naked, and the house catches fire, at least put the towel around yourself before you jump out of the window. Nobody has taught you. There is no book. I have looked into all the books about etiquette, not a single book is giving any guidance. If you are waiting for guidance you will be stuck in the bathroom. You will search in your mind and you will not find any guidance at all.

And if you think you cannot do anything without guidance, then you are finished. Then there is no more life for you, no more future. The window was open. You could have jumped. But it has to be a spontaneous action in the moment, here now. And I call it absolutely responsible, responsible to life, responsible to your own being. You are avoiding committing suicide.

But you have not lived a single moment here and now. And you have never acted spontaneously.

Hence the fear is natural, that if you act spontaneously, what about the guidance that you have been given - do this, don't do that? What about all those ten commandments? What about all the religious and moral teachings?

When you are acting according to past experience and teachings and conditionings, you are not a real person. You are absolutely phony, because you are not looking at the real situation. You are searching for the right answer in the memory. And the memory has never come across such a situation.

Every situation is so new, that you cannot be guided by experience. If you are guided by experience, it is going to be wrong action and that is the whole misery of the world. Everybody is acting wrongly, trying to be right - this is the trouble - trying to be in tune with past experience. But this situation has never happened before. This is so new.

I was driving from Jabalpur to Nagpur. And just outside a small village the car broke down. I was hoping to reach the nearest government rest house, because it was time for my afternoon sleep. So I took out a blanket and went under a tree, and the three persons who were with me simply watched what I was doing. And I went to sleep. They said, "This is strange. We are looking embarrassed and stupid, we are sitting here, and he has gone to sleep already. And he does not bother that the car is broken and something has to be done. And he was driving. And we don't know how to drive, we don't know what has gone wrong." They all three came and shook me.

I said, "Don't disturb me. Wake me at two! Car or no car, but I have to have my sleep."

They said, "This is strange, where should we go now?"

I said, "Go to hell, but don't disturb me!"

They said, "This is strange, you were driving us."

I said, "Forget all about it. Now the car is not worth driving. Find some car. While I am asleep, do something!"

At two o'clock I woke up. All three were sitting by the side of the car, very sad-looking, hungry. I said, "What are you doing?"

They said, "What can we do? We are feeling very hungry and ..."

I said, "At least, the village is near, you could have gone there."

They said, "We could not leave the car, all our luggage and everything is in it."

I said, "Then at least one person could have gone, two could have remained here. Or two could have gone, one could have remained here."

They said, "Nobody trusts anybody."

I said, "This is strange. I went to sleep, I trusted you all, though I knew perfectly well with a broken car, where could you go?"

Then I stopped a car and I asked the man who was driving if he knew anything about cars to have a look at mine, because I have never looked under the hood. I have never ... That is the work of Avesh or Anandadas, but I have never opened the hood. I don't know what is inside it. Whether a ghost runs it or an engine is there, I don't know at all. I simply know how to drive. That too is illegal, because I cannot keep both things in mind. When I am driving, I am driving. And then as fast as the car can go, it goes. I cannot bother that the government thinks it should go fifty-five miles per hour.

I think all these governments are a little unintelligent. If you don't want a car to go beyond fifty-five, then why are cars allowed to be produced which can go one hundred and forty miles per hour?

Strange! It is such an absurd situation. If you allow cars to be produced to go one hundred and forty miles per hour, you are giving me permission. And I trust that if the car says one hundred and forty, it will go a hundred and forty.

So I told the driver just to have a look. And there was nothing wrong, just something small and he fixed it within fifteen minutes.

Those three people said, "This is strange. So many cars have passed, but the idea did not arise in our minds to stop a car and ask somebody to look at ours."

I said, "You must be waiting for experience to guide you."

To me this was a new situation, my car had never broken down before. In fact I had never driven alone. Somebody was always driving ahead of me; sometimes two cars were driving, one behind me, one ahead of me, just to take care of my car. This was the first time that I had tried to go on my own.

Those two cars prevent me from being illegal. If my front car does not move at more than forty miles per hour, how can I? So they keep me within the limit. I wanted to try the car at its full speed and that was the reason why it broke down, because although they say it should go a hundred and forty but nobody tries it. Nobody thinks that the roads are made for only fifty-five miles per hour. And in India, they are not even made for that much.

And the traffic is so crazy - many, many centuries all going along in the traffic. A bullock cart, a camel, an elephant, you name it and you will find it in the traffic. And cows are resting in the middle of the road and because they are mother cows, you cannot disturb them. And father bulls ... they are standing in the middle of the road and, being a nonviolent country, you cannot do anything against them. You cannot take them to the court or ...

Life brings every day new situations. And if you are waiting to be guided by past experience, you will miss the opportunity to act responsibly, to act spontaneously. To me the greatest morality is to act spontaneously. And you will always be right, because your full awareness will be involved.

More than that you cannot do. More than that existence cannot demand from you. And if you are focused totally in the present, what more can you do? You are bringing your whole energy and consciousness to solve the question, to get out of the situation. More than that is not possible. So whatever happens is right.

This whole idea of responsibility and being guided by experience is told to you by people who don't want you to be here and now. They go on giving you advice on how to act, what to do, but they don't know that life does not go according to their guidelines. Their guidance becomes misguidance in any real moment.

A rich old woman whose husband has just died decides to get married. But this time she wants to have some fun. So she advertises in the world press for a young, strong twenty-year-old virgin. She gets thousands of replies, all accompanied by a photograph, but she is particularly attracted to a huge, bronzed Australian from the outback.

She flies him to New York and they are married the next week.

On the wedding night, the old bride is fixing herself up in the bathroom when she hears strange noises coming from the bedroom. She opens the door to find the huge Australian moving all the furniture to the sides of the room.

"What are you doing?" she cries.

"Well," replies the man, "if it is going to be anything like making love to a kangaroo, we are going to need all the space we can get!"

That man is guided by experience. He has known only how to love a kangaroo. If you bring a man from the outback of Australia, you are in for trouble. The poor fellow is simply guided by his past experience that the space seems to be too small. If it is going to be something like making love to a kangaroo, who is going to jump all over the place ...

Don't be bothered by the past. What is past is past. And you have to be in the present. And this is the only way to be response-able. This is the only way to be adequate to the situation you are facing. Otherwise you will find yourself always inadequate.

A woman who loves rock and roll music goes to the local tattoo artist and says, "I want a tattoo of Elvis Presley on the inside of my thigh. Can you do it?"

"Sure," says the man.

When he has finished, the girl looks down and says in disgust, "That does not look like Elvis. No way! I am not going to pay you for that."

"Okay," says the artist, "let me try again on your other thigh." When he has finished, the woman is furious. "That does not look like Elvis either," she exclaims.

"Wait a minute," says the tattoo artist in desperation, "I will go out and bring in a guy off the street; if he can identify the tattoos, will you pay me?"

The girl agrees, so he rushes out and finds a drunk staggering along the road. He drags him into the studio, points at the girl's spread thighs and says to the drunkard, "Can you recognize these two tattoos?"

The drunk says, "I don't know about the guys on the thighs, but that guy in the middle is definitely Mick Jagger."

So you have to respond to the reality.

A wild, Irish wedding reception is brought to a premature end when Paddy grabs the microphone and announces, "The party is over. We have run out of booze, there is no food left, and somebody has fucked the bride."

As everyone is heading towards the doors discussing what had happened, another announcement is made, "It is okay, folks, you can come back. We have found another case of Guinness, Maureen is making some sandwiches, and the guy who fucked the bride has apologized. So everything is okay, come back!"

You have to respond to every kind of situation in the world. Past guidance is not of much help. Every moment you will be coming across something new. The world is very inventive. That's why all so- called religious people who are guided by the past look so sad. They are always missing the train.

They go on looking for guidance, but this is not the situation for which the guidance was given. It may have been right in a certain moment, in a certain situation, but it is nothing that can be eternally true.

Only one thing is eternally true, and that is your consciousness. And if you can bring your consciousness to the present, you cannot go wrong. Whatever you do out of that consciousness is always going to be right, not according to any criterion, but just because it is coming out of a total awareness. Out of total awareness nobody has ever done anything wrong. According to me, right is what comes out of your spontaneity and out of your consciousness and out of your presence here and now.

And what is not out of your spontaneity, consciousness and your being here and now is wrong.

There is no other criterion than what I have just told you. All other criteria are dead. They may have been living at one time, but that time is past. Heraclitus is right, you cannot step in the same river twice. And he was stating something about life and existence.

Hence there cannot be any guidance. All guidance will create trouble for you. You have to be kept absolutely clean of all guidance, so that you can respond with total awareness to the present situation without any hesitation, without any thinking. Just out of your silent awareness arises the response and it is the most beautiful, the most honest, most authentic answer that could have come to anybody.

Because humanity has been forced always to be guided by the past, there is so much misery. If what I am saying is listened to by humanity, there will be great joy all over the earth, immense laughter, immense rejoicing, no repentance, no guilt, no confessions.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.