My presence says all

Question 1:

Deva Barkha, the question you have asked has raised many questions.

First, I am not an "intellectual giant of the century." That kind of misunderstanding is very much possible, particularly because whatever I have to say has to be said through the intellect. But intellect is only a means, a vehicle, a medium; it is not the source of what I am saying. It is not the meaning of my life and my being. I am not an intellectual. In fact, I am the most anti-intellectual person who has ever existed on this earth. I will have to explain to you.

Intellect is thinking about things you do not know. How can you think about things you do not know?

It is simply groping in the dark.

I am reminded of the old definition of a philosopher. A philosopher is purely intellectual. The old definition of a philosopher is of a man who is blind, in the darkest night, in a house which has no light. He is searching for a black cat which does not exist.

The intellectuals go on doing great gymnastics of the mind. They go on thinking about things which they do not know. Naturally, they never come to any conclusions. And it is impossible to come to any conclusion, to any realization through intellectual processes; hence the whole philosophical effort of the world has been an exercise in utter futility.

All philosophy is bunk. No philosopher has contributed to the world any new insight, any new consciousness, any new festivity, any new celebration to man's consciousness. No philosopher has contributed to the beauty of this planet and this humanity. But they have been doing tremendous work all their lives, creating great systems of thought which are nothing but castles in the air, soap bubbles.

The greatest intellectuals and philosophers of the world are just children, playing on the sea beach, making castles of the sand. You cannot live in those castles; in fact, just a little breeze and your castle disappears.

Mind can be used in many ways. One is the way of the intellectual: he goes round and round and round, about and about and about. He moves in a circle which is of course unending - every circle is unending - he travels much but he never reaches anywhere. This is the most futile use of your mind.

The other way is to use the mind not in circles but as a straight, horizontal line - one-dimensional.

That's how the scientific, the mathematical, the logical genius uses the mind. He moves in a straight line, but horizontally. He comes to certain conclusions, he comes to certain discoveries, he comes to certain inventions. He enriches the world as far as matter is concerned, as far as technology, machines and knowledge about objects is concerned.

At least his effort is not absolutely useless. It may be harmful, but it is not useless. Because the one-dimensional man is blind, he goes on searching, seeking, but knows not what is the ultimate purpose of all his seeking and searching.

Hence, even a man like Albert Einstein ends up finding atomic energy.

He was not a man who was violent or destructive; he was a man of peace. But if you are blind and you go on searching in directions without knowing where you are going, you are bound to end up in areas which are not healthy, which are not life-affirmative, which may be even dangerous to human beings. And that's what Albert Einstein's whole life's effort has proved: Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the ultimate conclusion of his discoveries.

Science is a blind search. It has no sense of direction; it does not know the meaning, the significance of human life. It does not understand that man is not only matter. That horizontal, straight line can never discover anything more than matter; hence, science has become confined to a materialist conception of the world. It is one of the most dangerous conceptions. A man like Karl Marx - a great genius, a giant as far as intellectuality is concerned - ended up with materialism.

Marx concluded that man is nothing more than a by-product of matter, an epiphenomenon. The moment the body dies, nothing remains, everything dies. There is no difference between a man and a machine. The machine has no soul, neither does the man have any soul. The ultimate result was that his follower, Joseph Stalin killed thirty million Russians after the revolution, without any difficulty.

If man is only a machine, there is no question of compassion and love, and there is no question of violence either. If you destroy a bicycle you will not feel any prick in your conscience. You have not killed anybody, you have not murdered anybody - a bicycle has no consciousness, no life. It is already dead; how can you murder a dead thing?

Because of Karl Marx's materialist communism, Joseph Stalin was able to kill thirty million people of his own land without any trouble, without a single night feeling any disturbance in his mind about what he was doing. He tortured more men than any other man in the whole of history.

It was possible for Adolf Hitler to destroy six million Jews in Germany and altogether nearabout forty million people in the second world war.... A materialist conception about man is going to be destructive, because it is coming out of a blind search.

Mind can also be used as a ladder going downwards; that's how the psychologist uses it.

From consciousness to sub-consciousness, from sub-consciousness to unconsciousness, from unconsciousness to collective unconsciousness... they have yet reached only so far. One rung of the ladder is still to be reached - they will certainly reach it, they are groping towards it - and that will be the final conclusion of all our psychological in-depth research.

The last rung of the ladder will be the cosmic unconsciousness, utter darkness - a darkness that knows no dawn. Psychology is moving into the darker chambers of human beings; it is making man more and more at ease with his animality. Those dark chambers belong to his animal past. This is not the right use of the mind either.

There is one more use, and that is the way the mystic uses the mind. It is just the very diametrically opposite dimension of the psychologist - the ladder going upwards. From our so- called consciousness, which is very thin, almost negligible... just scratch it a little bit and it will disappear and your unconsciousness arises.

In the East this consciousness is called only the so-called consciousness. It is so thin, skin-thin, that it has no bearing on our spiritual growth. If you move upwards, you reach for the first time to the authentic consciousness that comes through meditation, awareness, alertness, witnessing.

Your consciousness becomes a tremendous force. Your whole life starts revolving around your consciousness. It is no more possible for anyone to drag you into unconscious worlds, no more possible for anybody to drag you backwards into the animal past - those dark nights of the soul that we have passed, but which are still dormant in our being.

This small consciousness that we have is not enough to fight with the nine times more powerful unconsciousness. That's why you decide one thing but you do something else. Perhaps you have never looked into the fact of your decision making - small decisions, not of any great importance.

You decide to wake up early in the morning at five o'clock, and even when you are deciding it, deep down you know it is not going to happen - and it does not happen.

At five o'clock the alarm clock goes off, you pull your blanket over you, you start convincing yourself that it is too cold, too early, "I am still not fully satisfied with sleep. In fact, just now I was going deeper into sleep and this crazy alarm clock disturbed me. There is no hurry. Tomorrow I can wake up at five o'clock."

And this has been going on your whole life. There are millions of people who have never seen the beauty before the sun rises, the utter silence of the sky, the tremendous magnificence of the stars, the music of celestial silence. In fact, between four and six, when the sun rises, those two hours are perhaps the most peaceful, the most magnificent in your twenty-four-hour day. But there are millions of people in the world who will never know about it, although they have decided many times.

But what goes wrong? Your consciousness decides and your unconsciousness cancels. You have heard the proverb: Man proposes and God disposes.... There is no God, but I know there is somebody who disposes. It is your unconsciousness, it is your dark layers of being. Your thin consciousness decides, but your thick layers of darkness cancel, dispose. They have never known about your decision, there is no communication between your consciousness and unconsciousness.

Going beyond this consciousness is the whole alchemy of meditation. To attain to an authentic consciousness which cannot be canceled or overruled by any unconsciousness that may be dormant in your being... Then the emperor has arisen in you, the master has arisen in you.

The second layer, beyond authentic consciousness, is superconsciousness. You become open to the beyond, to the mysterious and to the miraculous. Beyond the superconscious is the collective superconscious: you start losing your I, your ego, your separateness from existence. Your dewdrop starts melting into the ocean. Collective superconsciousness... and you are almost on the threshold of the divine.

Beyond the collective superconsciousness there is only one step more, and that is cosmic superconsciousness. This cosmic superconsciousness has been called by Patanjali, samadhi, by Gautam Buddha, nirvana, by Mahavira, kaivalya. In the East there are a thousand and one words for that ultimate experience. No language is so rich as to be able to translate all those words with their different nuances, different fragrances.

In English we are utterly poor - faraway echoes, not authentic translations. These are the words which are being used: enlightenment, self-realization, illumination, the ultimate awakening - but these are very poor words.

And why don't they exist in thousands of languages in the world? Because the experience has not existed in those languages. For example, Eskimos have twelve words for snow. No other language has twelve words for snow, but because Eskimos live with it day and night, all the year round, their whole life, they experience snow in different ways. They know the subtle differences.

In the same way, the cosmic superconsciousness has been expressed by different awakened beings according to their own taste, according to their own choice. Mahavira calls it ultimate aloneness, kaivalya, because he enjoys the freedom of being absolutely alone. Everything else has disappeared, only aloneness and the purity of it and the utter virgin silence of it; there is no "other" to create any hell... just absolute silence.

And when there is no other, aloneness is only a word, because how can you be alone without the other? The very word 'alone' loses all meaning if there is no comparison and context with the other.

Mahavira is aware of it. But, he says, this word kaivalya comes closest to the experience. The experience is beyond it.

The mystic uses intellect to transcend intellect; therefore, I say unto you, I am not an intellectual.

My whole effort is to help you to go beyond intellect, to reach to the cosmic consciousness, to go beyond thinking. Those who are thinking are still children, playing on the seabeach. Only the mystic is mature, only the mystic goes beyond the horizon. Only he has the courage of an eagle to fly across the sun.

I am not an intellectual.

I am simply a mystic.

I don't think about reality, existence, truth; I am experiencing them. They are my very being.

But, Barkha, it is not only you, there are many, very sincere people, very honest, who commit the same mistake.

Just the other day I saw a review of my two books, THE REBELLIOUS SPIRIT and THE NEW MAN, by one of the best and the most honest, sincere and courageous journalists of India, M.V. Kamath.

And he says the same thing you are saying, that I am the greatest intellectual of the second part of the twentieth century. He thinks he is praising me - and he has an honest intention, but he does not understand me.

As I looked at his review, things became more and more clear. He is an intellectual and naturally that is his only measure. He knows nothing of mysticism, and he commits the fallacy of all the intellectuals. With all good intentions he says in his review that if I was not a controversial man, always surrounded by controversies, I would have had many more admirers in the world.

Now, he does not understand a simple thing, that no great intellectual has ever existed in the world without controversy. Intellect is intrinsically controversial; only idiots are not controversial.

And secondly, he says I would have had many admirers.... With great love he says that, but the misunderstanding is there with all the good intentions and love and respect. The intellectual likes admirers; the mystic does not care at all. The intellectual, the artist, the showman, the politician all exist on the admiration of people. Their whole life is how to get more and more admiration. That is their nourishment. That's how they go on inflating their egos.

The mystic has no concern at all about admiration. He is so fulfilled, so contented that there is no need for any other nourishment. His nourishment showers over him from the beyond. He has found the very life source; he does not live upon the opinions of others. He can stand alone against the whole world.

And that's what I have been doing all my life: standing all alone - the majority of one against the whole world. The reason why I can manage to be against the whole world is because I have found my own life source. I don't depend on anyone. I don't need any admiration, any compliments, any rewards, any Nobel prizes. I am enough unto myself.

I am not an intellectual, I am not a giant. I am a simple person who is utterly lost into the beauty of this glorious existence.

I have disappeared into the whole.

I don't exist separately.

If the outsiders think like this - and M.V. Kamath is an outsider and perhaps deep down afraid of coming closer to me. He ends his review by saying, "Osho needs to be read. You don't have to listen to him and you don't have to see him; you have just to read him. He is the master of words, he brings magic to ordinary words."

Now, he does not know that I am not a master of words, I am not a poet, I am not a creative artist.

I use words just out of sheer necessity, feeling always guilty because what I want to say, no word is big enough to convey. I am committing a certain crime against truth every moment I utter a word, because no word is capable of bringing truth to you.

It is perfectly okay for an outsider, but it is not okay for you. You know that if my words have a certain beauty, it is not of the words. It comes from my silence. It comes from my wordless innermost fragrances. Because these words are coming from my heart, they carry some beats of my heart with them.

But you know me. You have heard me and you have seen me and you have felt me, and you are perfectly aware that if the written word impresses a man like M.V. Kamath and he thinks that is enough, more than enough, he is unnecessarily clinging to a limitation.

I speak words only to provoke you to come to me. If you get satisfied with my words that is a calamity.

Those words were only provocations, invitations, calling you forth..."Don't be afraid, come a little bit closer."

The spoken word is alive, the written word is dead. The written word may be beautiful but it is a corpse. The spoken word is still warm, is still carrying the silences of the heart. And to say that there is no need to see me is just to show your blindness.

My words say something.

My silences say more.

My presence says all.

If you can be in tune with my presence, if my heartbeats can become your heartbeats, only then you will understand my words and the transcendental meaning that surrounds them but becomes visible only to those who drink from my well. Otherwise, to the outsider, it remains invisible.

You have to become an insider. You have to taste the presence of a master, of a mystic. Only then you know that man is not just what you see in the world; man contains worlds beyond worlds, skies beyond skies.

A mystic is a window into the ultimate, a finger pointing to the moon.

I am not an intellectual, but the fallacy is created because I am compelled to use intellect and words to convey that which is not intellectual, which is not logic, that which is pure love. Out of sheer necessity I have to speak, but my speaking is not that of an orator. I am not a master of words; my speaking is just a simple conversation. At the most, I am only a storyteller, a man who loves to touch your hearts by different devices. Words are only one of the devices.

Barkha, you are saying also that "there is no competition." In the world, everywhere, there is competition. Only in the inner, in the subjective, there is no competition ever. Between two Gautam Buddhas there is no competition.

It happened... I have told you many times, I love it so much. I rejoice in telling it. It happened that two great mystics, Kabir and Farid, had a meeting. The meeting continued for two days. The disciples of both were immensely excited in the beginning, thinking that something great is going to be communicated by Kabir to Farid or by Farid to Kabir.

But as time passed their excitement turned into great frustration because neither Kabir spoke nor Farid. Both remained absolutely silent. Sitting side by side, holding each other's hand in deep love, once in a while smiling, giggling - and those smiles and those giggles irritated the disciples even more - they never uttered a single word.

And the day of departure came soon. Farid had to go; he was on a pilgrimage and just because Kabir's village was nearby, his disciples told him, "It will be a great occasion if we stay at least for one or two days with Kabir." And Kabir's disciples also asked him, "It will not look right if we don't invite Farid, who is passing by the side of the village."

Farid agreed, and Kabir himself came to receive Farid outside the village. They hugged each other, and two days passed in utter silence. Those two days appeared for the disciples like two centuries.

After two days they hugged each other again, had a good belly-laughter, and departed.

As they parted the disciples of both, who had been keeping themselves controlled with great difficulty because of the presence of the other master and his disciples - and the same was the situation with the disciples of the other master. When they were left alone, the disciples of Kabir were very angry.

They said, "You have been talking to us every day... and what happened to you? You simply became as if you don't know how to speak!"

Kabir said, "You don't understand. We are both in the same space: two bodies, one soul. Who is going to speak to whom? And what is there to speak? He knows it, I know it..."

The same was the reply of Farid to his disciples: "Don't be stupid. That fellow is exactly where I am.

You are not perceptive enough, otherwise you could have seen. Our bodies were separate, but our beings were merging and melting into each other. There was no need to say anything. Everything was understood without being said."

There is no competition ever in the world of the mystics. Even if all the mystics of all the ages gathered together, there would not be any competition. There would be great rejoicing, dancing, singing, but there would not be any addresses, any lectures, any discourses. And there would be no question of competition.

Competition is a word belonging to the ego, and the mystic comes into existence when the ego disappears. There is no question of any hierarchy - who is higher, who is lower, who is greater. All these childish categories are left far behind.

And finally you say, "I also feel a sense of urgency." That's beautiful. Everyone of you should feel the sense of urgency, because you are blessed with the presence of a master. You are blessed to be in tune with a mystic. In me you have seen Gautam Buddha, Jesus Christ, Zarathustra, Kabir, Farid.

They are all one with me.

You should feel the urgency, because what I am saying to you the whole world needs - and needs it urgently.

And don't think that only I can spread the message. I can ignite you, I can make you aflame. Then go and shout from the housetops and spread the fire around the world.

If you are touched by me, if you are thrilled and your heart has started dancing, then go with deep compassion for anyone who is ready to share your joy.

Share it, spread it.

Humanity needs it more than ever.

Question 2:

Anand Mumuksha, you are fortunate. If love cannot bring tears to your eyes, then that love is dead.

It is a great misfortune that tears have become associated with sadness, with sorrow; that is only one dimension of their being. But their more significant manifestation is in love, in gratitude, in prayer, in silence, in peace. When you are feeling so full, tears are just the overflow of your contentment, of your joy.

Tears have to be given a new meaning, a new poetry and a totally new dimension - which they have lost because humanity has lived in misery and tears have become part of that misery.

Secondly, because humanity has been dominated by man he has made it a point of his ego and pride that he will not cry. It is feminine to cry, it is womanish to have tears. It is not true. It is an ugly, male chauvinist idea - not only ugly, but unnatural and untrue, because man's eyes have as many tear glands as women's eyes have. Nature has not made any difference in tear glands.

It is obvious that the intention of nature is not to discriminate between man and woman, but man for centuries has been very egoistic and he feels that tears are a kind of weakness. He has stopped his tears, but he is not aware what the consequence of it has been. He has also stopped his love - and he has created situations for himself which are dangerous.

More men go mad than women, for the simple reason that man goes on controlling. A moment comes that the repression becomes too much and there is a breakdown. The woman does not control; when she feels like crying, she cries. She is more natural than man. That has given her a few more experiences that man has missed. The woman is healthier; she lives longer, five years more than man. She is more calm and quiet. Less women go crazy, less women commit suicide, although they talk about it. Sometimes they even try it, but very half-heartedly.

But man goes on accumulating, and a point comes where he is no more in control. Either he commits suicide or he commits murder or he goes mad.

Just here is sitting one of my attorneys in America, Swami Prem Niren. He came into deeper and deeper contact with me when I was for those twelve days in American jails. He followed me from jail to jail, and he was the only person who was seeing me all those days, almost every day. His eyes were always full of tears, and I could see how much he loves me and how helpless he felts. He was doing everything that it was possible to do.

All the other attorneys were paid; naturally they were simply doing their job. He was the only attorney who was not a servant, who was a lover; who was not being paid. He was one of my sannyasins; my life was at risk, and it was natural for him to fight with totality and intensity. The last day, when I was released from the jail, we were sitting in the hotel. We had our own hotel, our own disco, our own restaurant in Portland, in Oregon, America.

In our own hotel, he was sitting by my side with another of my sannyasins, Isabel, and he was crying like a child. And just the other day he was sitting on this side of me and then I again saw tears. Two years before I had left him in America with tears, and yesterday I found him again with tears.

But perhaps he is not even aware about his tears. When he came here just few days ago, he talked to one of my secretaries, Anando: "Why does Osho go on saying this, that 'my attorneys had tears in their eyes'?"

When I heard this, I could not believe it - and just yesterday he was sitting here with tears.... Perhaps thousands of years of conditioning have blocked his awareness of his own tears, of his own love, of his own feminineness.

A better world, a better humanity, and more people will enjoy tears. They are such a blessing.

You are asking, "Why do I always have to cry when I am touched by love?"

What do you want? What more do you want? Certainly you are thinking that those tears are something wrong. Crying when touched by love is something wrong? - you are carrying a wrong conditioning. It is absolutely right. When touched by love, what can you do? Words won't help; only tears can convey what is happening deep down in your heart.

Tears are the most valuable treasure that you have.

But man has been distorted everywhere, man's nature has been pruned according to the ideas of the vested interests. Nations need armies and they do not want man to be at all touched by love.

Their tears have to be dried up and their love has to be blocked; otherwise they will not be able to kill and murder and massacre people - people who are just like you, and people who have not done anything wrong to you, and people whose wives, whose children, whose old parents may be waiting for them just as your parents, your wife, your children are waiting for you.

But to create the soldier, man has to be destroyed completely. He has to be made into a robot - and robots don't cry, robots are not touched by love. Because armies were needed, man was distorted.

Because women were not needed in the armies, they were left by the side. It was good for women because they have remained more natural.

Never be ashamed of your tears. Be proud that you are still natural. Be proud that you can express the inexpressible through your tears. Those tears are your songs, unuttered. Those tears are your heart which cannot use words. Never feel ashamed of your tears. Eyes which have lost their tears have lost their most beautiful, their most glorious treasure.

I would like my people particularly to be absolutely natural, to be utterly innocent, uninhibited. And when tears are flowing, rejoice: you are still alive... because don't you know dead people cannot cry, dead people cannot have tears? And the people who think they are alive and cannot cry and cannot have tears, are living in a fallacy. They have died long before. The day their tears died, they also died, because their love died.

Except love you don't have any soul.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.