A distant star

Question 1:

LIFE IS OVERFLOWING, life is blissful, but man has lost the contact with life.

He has become too selfconscious. That selfconsciousness functions as a barrier, and one remains alive, yet not truly alive. Selfconsciousness is the disease.

The birds are happy, the trees are happy, the clouds and the rivers are happy, but they are not selfconscious. They are simply happy. They don't know that they are happy.

Buddha is happy, Krishna is happy, Christ is happy, but they are pure consciousness. They are happy, but they don't know that they are.

There is a similarity between the unconscious nature and the supraconscious beings. Unconscious nature has no self, the supraconscious beings also have no self. Man is just in between. He is no more an animal, no more a tree, no more a rock, and yet not a Buddha. Hanging in between is the misery.

Just the other day a new seeker from the West wrote me a letter saying: 'Osho, I don't want to become a sannyasin. I don't want to become superhuman - Buddha or Christ. I simply want to become just human. Help me to become just human.'

Now, this is too ambitious, and it is impossible. Just to be human is impossible.

Try to understand it. Because that means you are saying 'Let me just remain the process, in the middle.' Man is not a state, man is only a process. For example if a child says, 'I don't want to become young, I don't want to become old. Let me just remain a child,' is it possible?

He is already becoming young, he is on the way. Childhood is not a state. You cannot remain in it, you cannot stick to it. It is a process. Childhood is already going, youth is already coming. And so is youth going. Howsoever hard you try to remain young, your efforts are doomed to fail, because the youth is already turning into old age.

Just to be human, you ask. You ask the impossible. You are too ambitious. You can become a Buddha. That is simpler. You can become a god, that is simpler.

But to ask that you would like to just remain human is impossible. Because humanity is just a passage, a voyage, a journey, a pilgrimage. It is a process, not a state. You cannot remain human. If you try too hard to remain human, you will become inhuman. You will start falling. If you don't go ahead, you will start slipping backwards. But you will have to go somewhere. You cannot remain static.

To be human simply means to be on the way of being a god nothing else. God is the goal. To be human is the journey, the way. The way can never be permanent, it cannot become eternal. Otherwise it will be very tiring. The goal will never arrive then, and you will be just on the journey, on the journey, on the journey.

To hope is to be human. But to hope means to hope to go beyond. To hope means to desire beyond. To hope means to hope to surpass, to transcend. This is really the state of a human being - that he is always surpassing, going, going...

somewhere else is the goal.

The person who has asked it must be a beautiful person. In fact, ready for sannyas - but he does not understand what he is saying.

Man is miserable because man has to be miserable. It is nothing of your fault, it is nothing like that you are in some error. To be human is to be miserable, because to be human is to be in the middle - neither here nor there... hanging in the limbo. Anguish arises because of the tension.

One home is lost - the home where birds are still singing, animals still moving, trees still flowering - the garden of Eden. That one home is lost. Adam has been turned out. Adam has become human.

When Adam was in the garden of Eden he was an animal; he was not an Adam, he was not a man. God turned him out of the garden. That very expulsion became humanity.

Man is expelled from one home so that he can search another home - bigger, higher, deeper, greater. One home is lost. There is a nostalgia. Man wants to become animal. It is very difficult to forget that garden of Eden; it was so beautiful. And there are moments we become animal-like - in deep anger, in violence, in war, we become animal-like. That's the enjoyment of being angry.

Why do you feel so happy in being angry? Why do you feel such a rush of energy in destroying something? Why in wartime do people look more radiant, more healthy, more sharp, more intelligent? - as if life is no more a boredom.

What happens? Man falls back. Even for a few days, a few months, man again is an animal. Then he knows no law, then he knows no humanity, then he knows no god. Then he simply goes... drops his selfconsciousness, becomes unconscious; murders, kills, rapes - everything is allowed in war.

That's why man needs war continuously. After each ten years a big war is needed, and small wars have to be continued continuously. Otherwise it will be difficult for man to live.

Man becomes a drunkard, becomes a drug addict. Through chemical drugs, man tries to reclaim the lost home, the lost paradise. When you are under LSD, you are back in the garden of Eden - from the backdoor; LSD is the backdoor of the garden of Eden. Again life seems psychedelic, colourful; again trees look luminous as they must have looked to Adam and Eve, as they must be right now for cuckoos and tigers and monkeys. The green has a luminosity in it. Everything looks so beautiful. You are no more human. You have fallen back. You have forced your being to fall back. Hence tremendous appeal exists for alcoholic beverages.

Since the very beginning of human history, man has been after drugs. In the Vedas they called it soma, now they call it LSD. But it is not a different thing.

Sometimes it was ganja, bhang, now it is marijuana and other things, but it is the same old game.

Chemically it is possible to fall back, but you cannot really go back. There is no going back; time does not allow that. One has just to go forward.

You cannot move backwards in time. The reverse gear does not exist. When Ford made his first car, there was no reverse gear. Only later on they thought that it was very difficult to come back home. You had to take long turns, unnecessary miles; then you could come back. Then the reverse gear was added as a later thought. But in time, god has not yet added the reverse gear; you cannot go back.

Man has dreamed about it, fantasized about it. There are scientific fictions in which man can go back into time. H. G. Wells has an idea of a time machine.

Mm? you sit in the machine and you put it in the reverse gear and you start moving backwards. You are young, you become a child, then you become a baby, then you are in the womb. Backwards you start moving. But no time- machine exists. It exists only in poets' minds, fantasies.

To go back is not possible. There is only one possibility - to go ahead.

Man has to remain in anguish. There are only two ways - either make it possible to go back, or to go beyond humanity. Humanity is a bridge. You cannot make a house on it. It has to be passed. It is not to be lived upon.

When the Mohammedan mogul emperor Akbar, made a special city, Fatchpur Seekeri, he asked his wise men to find out something, a maxim to put on top of the bridge that joins the city to the world. They looked, they searched and they found a saying of Jesus. It does not exist in the Bible; it must have come from some other source, from Sufis. There were many sufis in Akbar's court. The saying is: The world is like a bridge - don't make your house on it. Still on the bridge the saying is there. It is beautiful. That's how it is.

Humanity is a bridge. Don't try to be just human, otherwise you will become inhuman. Try to become superhuman; that is the only way to be human. Try to become a god; that is the only way to be human. There is no other way. Have your goal somewhere in the stars, only then you grow.

And man is a growing phenomenon, a process. If you don't have any goal, growth stops. Then you are stuck, then you become stagnant and stale. That's what has happened to millions of people in the world. Look at their faces - they look like zombies, as if they are asleep or drugged, stoned.

What is happening to these people's hearts? They don't show any freshness, aliveness, no spurt of life, no flame... dull. What is happening to them? They have missed something. They are missing something. They are not doing that for which they are made, they are not fulfilling that destiny which has to be fulfilled.

A man is here to become superman. Let superman be your goal. Then only will you be able to be man, and at ease.

The more you will be transforming into a superman, the more you will find you are not in anguish, not in anxiety. The buds are coming soon, there will be great rejoicing. Soon there will be blossoms. You can wait, you can hope, you can dream.

When you are not going anywhere, when you are trying just to be human, then the river has stopped flowing. Then the river is not going towards the ocean.

Because to go to the ocean means to have a desire to become the ocean.

Otherwise why go towards the ocean? Going towards the ocean means merging into the ocean, becoming the ocean.

God is the goal. You can be human only if you go on making all efforts, all possible efforts to become divine. In those very efforts, your humanity will start shining. In those very efforts, you will become alive.

WHEN LIFE ITSELF IS SO FULFILLING....

Life is fulfilling, but you are not in contact with life. Old contact is lost, new has not been made. You are in a transmission, hence you are so dull, hence life looks so mediocre, sad, boring - even futile.

Says Jean-Paul Sartre: Man is a useless passion - futile, impotent passion, unnecessarily making much fuss about life, and there is nothing in it...

meaningless is life. The more you become enclosed in your self, the more life becomes meaningless. Then you are miserable. Then misery has some other payoffs.

When you are happy you are ordinary, because to be happy is just to be natural.

To be miserable is to become extraordinary. Nothing is special in being happy - trees are happy, birds are happy, animals are happy, children are happy. What is special in that? It is just the usual thing in existence. Existence is made of the stuff called happiness. Just look! - can't you see these trees?... so happy. Can't you see the birds singing?... so happily. Happiness has nothing special in it. Happiness is a very ordinary thing.

To be blissful is to be absolutely ordinary. The self, the ego, does not allow that.

That's why people talk too much about their miseries. They become special just by talking about their miseries. People go on talking about their illness, their headache, their stomach, their this and that. All people are in some way or other hypochondriacs. And if somebody does not believe in your misery, you feel hurt.

If somebody sympathizes with you and believes in your misery - even in your exaggerated version of it - you feel very happy. This is something stupid, but has to be understood.

Misery makes you special. Misery makes you more egoistic. A miserable man can have a more concentrated ego than a happy man. A happy man really cannot have the ego, because a person becomes happy only when there is no ego. The more egoless, the more happy; the more happy, the more egoless. You dissolve into happiness. You cannot exist together with happiness; you exist only when there is misery. In happiness there is dissolution.

Have you ever seen any happy moment? watched it? In happiness, you are not.

When you are in love, you are not. If love has ever made its abode in your heart, even for a few moments, you are not. When you see the beautiful sun rising, or a full moon night, or a silent lake, or a lotus flower, suddenly you are not. When there is beauty, you are not. When there is love, you are not.

Hearing someone, if you feel there is truth, you simply disappear in that moment. You are not, truth is. Whenever there is something of the beyond, you are not; you have to make space for it. You are only when there is misery. You are only when there is a lie. You are only when there is something wrong. You are only when the shoe does not fit.

When the shoe fits perfectly, you are not. When the shoe fits perfectly you forget the feet, you forget the shoe. When there is no headache there is no head. If you want to feel your head, you will need a headache, that is the only way.

To be is to be miserable. To be happy is not to be. That's why Buddha says there is no self. He is creating a path for you to become absolutely blissful. He is saying there is no self so that you can drop it. It is easy to drop something when it is not.

It is easy to drop something when you understand that it is not, it is just imagination.

Mulla Nasrudin was telling his friends in the tavern one day about his family.

'Nine boys,' he said, 'and all good except Abdul. He learned to read.'

Now when a person learns to read, difficulties arise; now the self is arising. In villages, people are more happy. They are closer to animals than in big cities - they are far away. In primitive societies, the aboriginals are more happy. They are closer to trees and nature than in London, Tokyo, Bombay, New York. Trees have disappeared, only asphalt roads - absolutely false - concrete buildings, all man-made.

In fact, if suddenly somebody from outer space comes to Bombay, New York, Tokyo, London, he will not find any signature of god there. All is man-made.

Looking at Tokyo or Bombay, one will think man made the world. These concrete buildings, these asphalt roads, this technology - all is man-made. The farther away you go from nature, the farther away you go from happiness... the more and more you are learning to read.

God expelled Adam because he ate from the tree of knowledge - he started learning to read. He threw him out - he became knowledgeable. A man is bound to be more miserable if he is more knowledgeable. The misery is always in exact proportion with your knowledgeability.

Knowledgeability is not knowing. Knowing is innocence; knowledgeability is cunningness. It is very difficult for an educated person not to be cunning. It is almost impossible, because the whole training is cunning. The training is of logic, not of love. And the training is for doubt, not for trust. And the training is to be suspicious, not to be trusting. And the training is that everybody is trying to deceive you, so be aware. And before somebody else tries to cheat you, cheat - because that is the only way to be protected.

Says Machiavelli: the best way to defend oneself is to be aggressive. You see, all the governments of the world call their military organization, army, 'defence'.

They are all arrangements for attack - they call it 'defence'. Even Hitler called his military 'defence'. Nobody down the ages has ever said, 'I am attacking.' They say, 'We are defending.' They all follow Machiavelli. They all respect Mahavir, Mohammed, Moses, and they all follow Machiavelli. As far as respect is concerned, go to the temple, read the Bible. But as far as actual life is concerned, read THE PRINCE, read Machiavelli, read Chanakya.

In Delhi, the Indian capital where politicians live, they call it CHANAKYA PURI - the city of the Machiavelli. Chanak is the Indian counterpart of Machiavelli, even more dangerous than Machiavelli. The more a person becomes educated, the more machiavellian, cunning.

When Machiavelli's book THE PRINCE was published, he was thinking that all the kings of Europe would invite him, and he would be posted on a high post as an advisor to some king, But nobody called him. The book was read, the book was followed, but nobody called Machiavelli. He was surprised. He enquired.

Then he came to know that reading his book they had become afraid of him. He was so cunning that to give him a big post was dangerous. If he followed his own book, he would destroy, he would throw the king away. Sooner or later he would become the king. He lived a poor man's life, he could never get into any powerful post.

Education makes you more cunning. Of course, education makes you more miserable. To be religious is to wipe out all this nonsense. To be religious means to learn how to unlearn, how to uneducate yourself again. Whatsoever the world has conditioned you for, you have to uncondition it. Otherwise you are in clutches. Man is miserable because man is caught in his own net. He has to come out of it - and only a distant star will be helpful.

Maybe there is no god. I'm not worried about it. But you need a god, a distant star to move towards. Maybe by the time you reach there you will not find god, but you will have become a god by that time. Reaching to that star, you will have grown.

Man is miserable because man has learned the tricks to be miserable. Ego is the base of it. Man is miserable because bliss, happiness, is so obviously available - that creates the trouble.

The first time I met Mulla Nasrudin happened this way: I saw him fishing in a lake. I had not heard about him. I watched him. Hours passed, not a single fish. I asked him, 'What are you doing here? Just close by there is another lake, and don't you know? - there are lots of fish there.'

He said, 'I know. There are so much fish in that lake that it is even difficult for them to swim. The lake is full of fish.'

'But then why are you sitting here? I don't see any fish at all.'

He said,'That's why I am sitting here. What is the point of fishing in the other lake? Any fool can do that. To fish here is something!'

The ego goes on fishing in lakes where fishes are not. That which is obvious, that which is available, is not attractive. That's why we miss god. God is available, god is your very surround. He is the very atmosphere we breathe in and out. He is our very life. He is the ocean in which we live, are born, and will dissolve. But he is so close, no distance. How to feel him?

Watch it in your own life. Whatsoever you have loses interest for you. You have a beautiful house. It is beautiful only for your neighbours, not for you. You have a beautiful car. It is beautiful only for others who don't have cars, it is not beautiful for you. You have a beautiful woman or a beautiful man - it does not make any appeal. You have it, that's enough. People are attracted only to that which they don't have. The non-existential attracts.

I have heard:

'Say, Ramon,' said Mulla Nasrudin, as they met in the street one day, 'I have been meaning to ask you something.'

'Go ahead, Mulla,' said his friend.

'My wife is kind of fat. In fact when she takes off her girdle at night she is one great big blob. Is your wife like that?' questioned Nasrudin.

'Ah, no. My wife has a gorgeous figure. In fact she is so trim she does not wear anything underneath, and she is a real knock-out,' replied Ramon.

'Well,' continued Nasrudin, 'my wife is so ugly, she covers her face up at bedtime with creams and curlers. Does not your wife do that?'

'Ah, no. My wife does not need any creams or makeup, and her hair is magnificent,' replied the friend.

'Well, Ramon, I have only one more question. How come you are chasing my wife?' demanded Nasrudin.

That's the way of the ego - always chasing somebody else's wife, always chasing something that you don't have. Once you have, all interest is lost.

So an egoist remains miserable, because to be happy one has to be happy with that which one has. You cannot be happy with that which you don't have; you can only be unhappy with that. You can be happy only with that which you have. How can you be happy with that which you don't have? And ego is always interested only in that which you don't have.

You have ten thousand rupees - ego is no more interested in it. It is interested in twenty thousand. By the time you have twenty thousand, it is no more interested in it. It is interested only in thirty thousand. And so on, so forth... it goes on.

The ego only gives you goals, but whenever those goals arrive, it does not allow you to celebrate. One becomes more and more miserable! As life passes, we go on gathering misery, we go on piling up misery. And it is very difficult to realize this - that you are causing your own misery; that is against the ego. So you throw the responsibility on others.

If you are miserable you think the society is such, your parents were wrong. If you listen to Freudians, they will say it is because of your parents, your parental conditionings. If you listen to Marxians, they will say it is because of the social structure, the society. If you listen to the politicians, they say because it is the wrong type of government. If you listen to the educationist, they say because some other type of education is needed.

Nobody says that you are responsible - the responsibility is thrown on others.

Then it is impossible to be happy, because if others are making you miserable, then it is beyond you to be happy - unless the whole world is changed according to you.

Now it is difficult to choose your parents. It has already happened. What to do?

Somebody asked Mark Twain, 'What does one person need to be really happy?'

He said, 'The first thing is that one should choose his parents rightly.'

Now that is impossible, it has already happened. You cannot choose your parents now. One should choose a right society. But you are always in a society.

You don't choose it. You are always in the middle of it. And if you want to create it to your heart's desire, your whole life will be wasted. And it will never be changed because it is such a big phenomenon, and you are so tiny.

The only hope of any transformation is that you can change yourself. That is the only hope, there is no other hope.

But the ego does not want to take the responsibility. It goes on throwing the responsibility on others. In throwing responsibility on others, you are throwing your freedom also, remember. To be responsible is to be free. To give the responsibility to somebody else is to be a prisoner.

That is the religious standpoint. The religion says you are responsible. That's why Marx was so much against religion. His reasoning is clearcut. He knew it perfectly well - that either religion can exist in the world or communism. Both cannot exist together. And he is right: both cannot exist together. I also agree with him.

Our choices are different. I would like religion to exist, he would like communism to exist, but we agree that both cannot exist together. Because the whole standpoint of communism is that others are responsible for your misery.

And the religious standpoint is that except you, nobody else is responsible. The communist says a social revolution is needed for a happy world. The religious person says a personal revolution is needed to be a happy person.

The world is never going to be happy, it has never been so, and it is never going to be so. The world is bound to remain unhappy, only individuals can be happy.

It is something personal.

It needs consciousness to be happy. It needs intensity to be happy. It needs awareness to be happy. The world can never be happy because it has no awareness. Society has no soul, only man has it. But it is very difficult for the ego to accept this.

It happened:

Mulla Nasrudin made life very difficult for his associates because he believed he was infallible. Finally one of his workers spoke up. 'Nasrudin,' he said, 'you surely have not been right all the time?'

'There was one time I was wrong,' admitted the Mulla.

'When was that?' asked the surprised worker. He could not believe that Nasrudin would ever admit that he was ever wrong, even one time. He could not believe his own ears. He said, 'When was that?'

'The one time,' recalled Mulla Nasrudin, 'when I thought I was wrong, but I was really not.'

Ego is tremendously defensive. Ego is never wrong, hence you are in misery. Ego is always infallible, hence you are in misery.

Start looking in the loopholes. Make your ego fallible - and it will fall and disappear. Don't go on supporting it, otherwise you are supporting your own misery. But we go on supporting it. In good ways, in bad ways, we go on supporting it.

You call somebody a good man, a moral man, a very respectable man. He has his own supports and props for his ego. He goes to the temple every day, to the church, reads the Bible or the Gita, follows the rules of the society. But he is just trying to find props for his ego - he is a religious man, a respectable man, a moral man.

Then there is somebody else who never follows the rules of society - never goes to the church. Whenever he finds any opportunity to break any rule, he enjoys it.

He is enjoying another sort of ego - the ego of the criminal, the ego of the immoral person. He says, 'I don't care.' But both are finding supports for the same miserable thing. Both will be in misery.

As Muldoon walked down the street, he pinched a strange woman on the behind, threw a brick through the jewelry store window, and cursed a poor old lady. 'That should do it!' he said to himself. 'When I make my confession I will have enough to talk about.'

Even when people go to confess, they don't want to confess small sins - they are not worth confessing. This is the experience of many priests of many religions - that people exaggerate their sins. When they come to confess, they exaggerate.

They may have killed an ant and they think they have killed an elephant. They exaggerate, because it is not ego-fulfilling to do such a small thing.

The ways of the ego are very subtle. If you go to the jail and you listen to the talk of the people confined there, you will be surprised. They all go bragging that they have done so many robberies, and they have killed so many people. They may not have done at all, but there - that is the way of the ego. Then you are miserable, and then you become worried. Why? You create a barrier between you and life. Ego is nothing but barrier.

When I say drop the ego I mean drop all demarcation lines. You are not separate from the life, you are part of it... Like a wave, you are part of the ocean. You are not separate at all. Neither as a saint are you separate, nor as a sinner are you separate. You are not separate at all. You are one with life. You are neither dependent on life, nor are you independent of life - you are interdependent.

When you understand that we are all interdependent, linked with each other...

Life is one; we are just manifestations of it... then you start becoming blissful.

Then there is nobody who can prevent you from bliss.

Bliss is very obvious. Bliss is very close. Bliss is so natural and so close that mind tends to forget it. Every child is born in a blissful state, and every person - almost every person - dies in tremendous misery. Only rarely someone - a Buddha, a Jesus - dies in a blissful state. What happens? What goes wrong?

When a child is born he is not separate. When the child is in the mother's womb he is part of the mother, he does not exist separately. Then he is born - then too he remains part of the mother. He goes on being fed by the mother. Then he goes on hanging around the mother. Then, by and by, he grows.

This growth can be of two types. If he grows as ordinarily people grow, then he grows into an ego, he becomes hard, he gathers a hard crust around himself, and that will make him miserable. That is not the right way to grow. Something has gone sour, something has gone wrong.

To me, if the mother is religious, if the father is religious, if the family is religious... and when I say religious, I don't mean that they are Christians or Hindus or Mohammedans or Jains or Buddhists - that has nothing to do with religion. In fact, all these things never allow religion, to evolve. If the child is forced into a dogma, into a dogmatic ideology, then the ego will gather, then the ego will become Christian, and the ego will be against the Hindu and against the Mohammedan. Then the ego will become Hindu, and will be against the Christian and against the Mohammedan.

But if the house is really religious - by religion I mean meditative, loving - they help the child to be, but yet without the ego. They help the child to feel more and more the affinity, the unity, that exists. The child has to be helped; he is helpless, he does not know where he is, he does not know where he is going. If he is loved and there is a meditative rhythm in the family and the family vibrates with silence, understanding, the child will start growing into a more organic way. He will not feel himself separate, he will start learning how to become part.

That has not happened. I am not telling you to have any grudge about it - but you can do it right now. You can stop helping your ego and you can start dropping the burden. Make it a point not to miss any opportunity where you can feel one with anything. If it is a full-moon night, feel one with the moonlit night.

Allow to flow... stream with it, dance, sing... and drop your ego.

There is nothing better than dance for dropping the ego; hence I insist that all meditators should dance. Because if you go really in a whirlwind, if you are really a whirling pool of energy, if you really are in the dance, the dancer is lost.

In the dance the dancer is always lost. If it is not lost then you are not dancing.

Then you may be performing, then you may be manipulating, then you may be doing some bodily exercises, but you are not dancing.

Dancing means so lost, so drunk - and enjoying the energy that is created by dance. By and by you will see your body is no more so solid as it was before. By and by you will see that you are melting; the boundary is losing its sharpness, it is becoming a little vague. You cannot exactly feel where you end and where the world starts. A dancer is in such a whirlpool, he becomes such a vibration, that the whole life is felt as in one rhythm.

So whenever you can find a time, a place, a situation... you are in love with somebody; don't miss this opportunity. Don't talk nonsense, don't bring your ego and bragging. Drop that! Love is tremendously divine, god has knocked at your door. Be lost. Hold hands with your woman, or with your man, or with your friend. Get lost! Sing together, or dance together - but get lost. Or sit together - but get lost! And feel that you are no more an individual. Sitting by the side of a tree, get lost.

That's how it happened to Buddha. In that moment the bodhi tree and Buddha became one. For five hundred years after Buddha, Buddha's statues were not built. Instead, only the bodhi tree's picture was worshipped. It was tremendously beautiful. Those people must have understood. Just the bodhi tree was worshipped. In buddhist temples there was just a symbol of the bodhi tree.

Because in that moment Buddha completely disappeared. He was not there, only the bodhi tree was. He was completely lost.

Disappearing, you appear. Non-being is your way of real being.

And this can happen in ordinary life. You need not go to the Himalayas or to a monastery. There are millions of chances in ordinary life, millions of momentous situations where this can happen. You just have to be a little watchful and a little courageous to use them. Once you start using them, more and more situations will be coming. They have always been coming, but you were not aware so you missed them.

Sitting on the beach taking a sunbath, melt with the sun. It is an energy experience. Suddenly you see you are nothing but sun energy. Melting and meeting with the sun, hindus came to worship the sun. They said, 'The sun is god.' They said, 'The moon is god.' They worshipped trees as divine. They worshipped rivers, mountains.

It is very significant. Wherever it happened that they met god... sitting by the side of a river, listening to the beautiful music of the river, seeing the beautiful patterns of ripples, if they got melted, dissolved, the river became the god. It happened there. Sitting on a lonely mountain, they dissolved and disappeared - that mountain became their god.

God comes in millions of ways to you, but your ego never allows you to see him.

And he comes in such ordinary ways that you miss. He never comes like a monarch with a great procession, with a great band and noise and fuss. He never comes like that. Only foolish people do that. God comes very silently - he never comes shouting, he comes whispering. You will have to be very quiet to understand his message. It is a love whisper. And man tends to forget the natural.

I have heard a very beautiful joke:

A very naive american went to Paris and got into an argument with a french jew about the number of ways to make love.

'There are sixty-nine ways to make love, monsieur,' said the french jew.

'I thought there was only one - a man on top of a woman,' said the american.

The jew apologized, 'Monsieur,' he said, ' I am very sorry. I miscalculated. There are seventy ways to make love.'

Now the most simple, the most natural, the mind tends to forget. The mind is always interested in something exceptional - because that is the interest of the ego. The ego is not interested in the common - and god is very common. The ego is not interested in the simple - and god is very simple. The ego is not interested in the near - and god is very near. That's how you go on missing bliss and you become miserable.

It is up to you to change it. It is your choice. Each moment of life brings you two alternatives: to be miserable or to be happy. It depends on your choice.

Whatsoever you choose you become.

It is said about a sufi mystic, Bayazid, that he was a tremendously happy man, almost ecstatic. Nobody had ever seen him unhappy, nobody had ever seen him sad, nobody had ever seen him doing anything like grumbling, like complaining.

Whatsoever was - and he was happy. It was not always good, it was not always right for others. Sometimes there was no food, but he was happy. Sometimes for days he would live without food, but he was happy. Sometimes there were no clothes, but he was happy. Sometimes he had to sleep under the sky, but he was happy. His happiness remained undisturbed. It was unconditional.

He was asked again and again, but he would laugh and never say. When he was dying somebody asked, 'Bayazid, now give us your key, your secret. You will be leaving soon. What was your secret?'

He said, 'There is nothing like a secret. It was a simple thing. Every morning when I open my eyes, God gives me two alternatives. He says, "Bayazid, do you want to be happy or unhappy?" I say, "But God, I want to be happy." And I choose to be happy and I remain happy. It is a simple choice, there is no secret.'

You try it. Every morning when you get up, the first thing, decide. If you decide to be unhappy, nothing is wrong in it. It is your decision. But then stick to it:

remain unhappy whatsoever happens. Even if you win a lottery, don't be worried - remain unhappy. Even if you are chosen as the prime minister or the president, remain unhappy, stick to your choice. And then you will see - you can remain unhappy if you choose. The same is true about happiness also. If you choose, you can remain happy.

The day you decide that it is your decision to be happy or unhappy, you have taken your life into your hands - you have become a master. Now you will never say that somebody else is making you unhappy. That is a declaration of slavery.

Buddha was passing. A few people gathered and they insulted him very much.

He listened to them very attentively, very lovingly. When they were finished, he said, 'If you have said all that you wanted to say, can I go now? - because I have to reach the other village by the time the sun sets. If you have still something more to say I will be coming back again after a few days; you can tell me that time.' But he was absolutely undisturbed, his silence remained the same, his happiness the same, his vibration the same.

Those people were puzzled. They said, 'Are you not angry with us? We have been insulting you, we have been calling you names.'

Buddha said, 'You will have to remain puzzled. You came a little late. You should have come ten years before - then you would have succeeded in disturbing me. Then I was not my own master. Now, it is your freedom to insult me, it is my freedom whether to take it or not. I don't take it. You insult me, true.

That's your decision. I am free to take it or not to take it, and I say I don't take it.

What will you do with it? I am also puzzled - because in the last village people had come with sweets, and I said that I don't need them, so they had to take them away. I ask you, what must they have done with the sweets?'

Those people said, 'They must have distributed them in the village or they must have eaten them themselves.'

Buddha said, 'Now think about you. You come with these insults and I say, "Enough. I am finished with this. Nothing doing." What will you do? You will have to take them. I am so much sorry for you.'

It is your decision. Life is your decision, your freedom. That's why I call my sannyasins 'swamis'. 'Swami' means a master. It is just an indicator that from this moment you will try more to be a master than to be a slave.

Question 2:

Truth is - you have nothing to do for it; you have just to be. Truth is already there. You are not to invent it, you have only to discover it. Even that word is not right, because truth is not covered - your being is covered.

It is as if the sun has risen but you are sitting with closed eyes. The sun is not covered, only your eyes are covered. Open your eyes and the light is there. If you are in darkness it is because you are keeping your eyes shut.

When I say just be, I mean be open. I mean don't try to be something else.

Because in the very effort of being somebody else you will be strained, you will be tense, you will be under a stress, and you will remain closed. You can open only when you accept whatsoever you are.

If a rose is trying to be a lotus, it will not be possible for it to be a rose. The whole effort will make it so tense. A rose is a rose; that's why it opens and becomes a rose. There is no problem about it. Don't try to be something else other than you are. Don't try to become some ideal. That's what I mean when I say just be.

Being is a state of tremendous opening, of immense silence, no desire, no effort.

You are just here, present. You are just a presence. In that presence all happens - because in that presence you are so alert that nothing by-passes you. In that silence you start hearing god, you start seeing god. In that silence visions open, doors of the unknown open. The mystery is clear. But you have to be in that state. That's what meditation is all about just to be.

You ask:

YOU SAY BY JUST BEING HERE RIGHT NOW IS ALL WE NEED TO KNOW TRUTH....

Yes, I repeat it again.

WHY DO I FIND IT THE HARDEST THING TO DO?

Because your whole life you have been training yourself to be somebody else.

Your whole life you have been carrying some ideology in the head. That has become a mechanical pattern. You want to be more beautiful, you want to be more intelligent, you want to be this, you want to be that. You are carrying great politics in you, you are ambitious - that ambition makes you tense.

Remember, these are the two dimensions of life: to be political or to be religious.

To be political means compete, struggle, fight; you have to prove that you are somebody. That's why all politicians are, in a subtle way, stupid. They have to be.

I have heard:

Fondly Mulla Nasrudin and his wife looked into the cradle of their child. 'I think he is going to be a politician,' said the Mulla.

'Ah, how can you say that?' asked the wife.

'Well, he says more things that sound good and mean absolutely nothing than any other human being I ever saw. He is going to be a politician.'

A politician is a mess. He is always striving to prove that he is somebody. That means that he must be suffering from inferiority complex. Every politician suffers from inferiority complex. In a better world they will not be in the capitals, they will be on the psychological couches. They should be put in madhouses.

Mad people are not so dangerous; they have never done anything wrong.

Have you ever heard of any mad people doing anything wrong like Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin or Tamurlane or Genghis Khan, or Mao tse Tung? Mad people have never done anything wrong. But politicians.... Their very effort to prove that 'I am somebody' shows that deep down they suffer from inferiority - they feel they are nobody. They have to prove and perform. They feel they are nobody if they are not on a big power-post. They think they are nobody if they don't have power to crush, destroy people. This is a deep inferiority complex that is seeking to be superior.

A religious person is one who is immensely satisfied; who says, 'I am - there is no need to perform, there is no need to prove.' A religious person is one who says, 'Life is and I am. Why not enjoy? why not delight in it? why not celebrate?'

A religious person is one who says, 'God is and I am. Now why not hold his hands and have a dance? have a little party? Let there be a deep orgasm between you and existence.'

That's what I mean when I say: just be herenow. This is the only time to be - there is no other time. And this is the only place to be - there is no other place.

All that ever has happened has happened only in the now and here. Now is the only time and here the only space. Don't think of then and there.

A politician thinks of then and there. He says, 'Yes, one day I will enjoy. But wait, let me first arrange.' He prepares. He is a maniac in preparation. He goes on preparing, he goes on preparing.

I have heard about a man who collected millions of books. He had no time to read because it took so much time to collect. He collected and collected - his library became the best in the world - but he had not read anything. Then came his death, and doctors said, 'You will not be surviving more than one week.'

He said, 'But this is unjust! For my whole life I have been collecting and waiting that one day I will retire and read, but now there is no time. What to do?'

Somebody suggested, 'You can hire scholars. They can read all the books and in a summary form, before you die, they can give you the gist.' So scholars gathered, they read all the books, and they prepared short notes, but still it was too big a thing. Again it was like a Bible; and the man was dying.

On the seventh day they brought the book. He said, 'Are you mad? There is no time! Make it more short!'

By the evening they came. They had shortened it to only one paragraph, but the man was getting unconscious. So they said, 'Wait! We have shortened it!' But he was not there, he was relapsing into unconsciousness. He died without ever enjoying a single book.

Don't think that this is just a parable. This is the story of millions of people. You go on collecting. I have seen rich people collecting money, never enjoying it.

Even poor people are not so poor sometimes. Rich people are very poor, they never enjoy. They say, 'A little more. Let us first collect enough.' But it is never enough, it can never be enough. Mind never says 'enough'. It says 'a little more, a little more, a little more'. It goes on demanding more and more. It is a mad demand.

You can collect money; that will not make you rich - unless you enjoy it. You can have millions of books; that will not make you learned - unless you enjoy them.

You can have many flowers; that will not give you the sense of beauty - unless you dance with them in the air, in the wind, in the rain... unless you have a little dance with them.

Life is, god is, bliss is. God is never in the past tense: you cannot say 'god was'.

God is never in the future tense: you cannot say 'god will be'. God is only in the present tense - god is, life is, bliss is, truth is. Now you also be. Immediately there will be a meeting. Immediately you will be facing him, you will be encountering him. Not even a split second is needed to be wasted.

But I know your difficulty. All your life you have been trained and you have trained yourself for something which never happens. You are not ready for that which is; you are always getting ready for that which should be. You are suffering from the disease called 'should'.

From the very childhood the mother, the father, the society, the education, the priest, the politician - they are always saying, 'You should be like this'. Nobody says, 'You are already - rejoice!' Except sometimes a Jesus comes to people and says, 'Rejoice! God is!'

You have been always told to become something, to prove something - that you are worthy; to struggle, be ambitious. And of course your resent it deep down, but still you have to follow it because you don't know what else can be done.

You never come across a man who says simply, 'Rejoice!' That voice has become almost absent from the world - from the world of humanity, from the world of human beings. You resent, but still you go on doing.

People come to me and they say, 'We resent discipline, we resent somebody saying to us "do this!"' And in the next breath they ask me, 'Osho, tell us, what should we do?' Now what to do with these people. They resent, they say, somebody telling them, and still they have come to me to ask, 'Osho, what to do?'

You have been trained, so even you go on resenting. You don't want to follow, still you go on asking 'what to do? what to follow? whom to follow? where to go?

what is the ideal?' You have never been taught that you are original, you need not be a carbon copy. The habit can become so ingrained that even when you want to rebel, you want somebody to teach you how to rebel.

It happened:

Mulla Nasrudin lost his faith once, and became a hard-bitten aetheist. Now it is very difficult for a mohammedan, very difficult, but he became an aetheist. His new credo was - he came to me and he said, 'This is my new credo: There is no god - and Mohammed is his prophet.'

The old habit - Mohammed has to be the prophet whether there is god or not.

You come to me and say, 'We resent discipline... and Osho, tell us what to do.'

Mohammed is your prophet and there is no god. Now if you are always in a conflict, it is simple to understand.

It happened:

The two seven-year-olds were watching a movie. One of them kept sniffing loudly. A woman nearby finally advised him, with irritation in her voice, to blow his nose. The kid sniffed again.

'You better do what she says,' his pal advised. 'After all, she ain't your mother.'

Listen to what he says: 'After all, she ain't your mother. You better do what she says!' Who bothers to listen to a mother? Who bothers to listen to a father? One simply pretends to listen. But still, even in that pretension, the poison is entering in you.

You have been always taught not to be yourself - be somebody else. Be a Buddha, be a Krishna, be a Jesus - never be yourself. But have you watched?

Jesus is never repeated, never again. Buddha is never repeated, neither is Krishna repeated. God is such an original creator, he never repeats, he always creates new people. He peoples the earth with new beings. He is not looking towards you to become somebody else, he is looking at you to become you.

A hassid fakir, Joshua, was dying. Somebody said, 'Joshua, are you reconciled with Moses?' He was a jew, a hassid. Joshua opened his eyes and he said, 'Stop nonsense. Enough is enough! Why should I get reconciled with Moses? In fact, I was deep down worried that when I go before god - and soon I will be present before him - he is not going to ask me, "Joshua, why were you not like Moses?"

He will ask me, "Joshua, why were you not Joshua?" That is my trouble. I have missed my being. Trying to be somebody else, I have missed my goal.'

You can be only yourself, you can never be anybody else. You are an original person, you are not a carbon copy. When I say BE, I mean just be yourself, love yourself, accept yourself. Don't go on denying, don't go on hating yourself. If you hate yourself, you will never be able to love anybody. Love yourself, I say to you.

I say respect yourself. Be happy that you are the way you are. Thank god for your being the way he has made you. Don't complain.

That's what I mean by the religious dimension. Don't be political, don't be ambitious, don't be competitive. You are alone like you. Like you, you are the only one. You are incomparable. Don't be stupid, don't be competitive.

A politician at a cocktail party said to Mulla Nasrudin, 'I keep hearing you use the word "idiot". I hope you are not referring to me?'

'Don't be so conceited,' said the Mulla, 'as if there were no other idiots in the world.'

I am reminded of another joke. There was a case, a politician sued a man in the court. He said, 'In a hotel, this man called me an idiot.' Mulla Nasrudin was there to support the politician. 'Yes, he is right, this man called him an idiot.'

In India the leaders, the political leaders, are called NETARJI. Once it was a respectable term. In the days of the fight for freedom, before 1947, netarji, the leader, was a very respectable word. Then it deteriorated. Now it has just gone down the drain. Now to call somebody 'netarji' is to insult him. Now netarji means some crook, a fraud, a cunning fellow.

Somebody had called netarji, the leader, an idiot. The magistrate asked Mulla Nasrudin, 'in the hotel there were so many people - how can you say that this man called netarji an idiot? There were so many people - he may have been calling somebody else an idiot. How can you prove it?'

Nasrudin said, 'Absolutely it can be proved. There were almost two hundred people in the hotel, I know that, but this man called netarji an idiot.'

The magistrate said, 'You tell us - what is your proof?'

Mulla Nasrudin said, 'Because there was no other idiot present at that time.'

Don't be stupid. Just be yourself and you will be intelligent. That's what I mean.

If you are just yourself, you will be an intelligent being. If you are yourself, totally accepting of yourself - not only accepting but welcoming, happy, grateful just being the way you are - your intelligence will start blooming. If you are competing, you will become stupid, you will become mediocre - because you will be going against nature. If you compete and you try to become somebody else, you will destroy your inner spontaneity. That's what stupidity is. You will be retarded.

Be religious, never be political. And when I say never be political, I don't only mean don't be a member of a political party; by political I mean don't be ambitious. All ambition is politics, all struggle to be the first is politics. A non- struggling, non-conflicting mind is religious. Just be.

You have not been taught, I know. It is hard now to unlearn old habits - but they can be unlearned. Whatsoever is learned can be unlearned. It is difficult, but not impossible.

YOU SAY BY JUST BEING HERE RIGHT NOW IS ALL WE NEED TO KNOW TRUTH. WHY DO I FIND IT THE HARDEST THING TO DO?

Everybody finds it, because your whole conditioning goes against it, all your habits go against it. It is hard, difficult, but not impossible. And once you understand the point, it will become easy. And once you allow your nature to flow, to be, it will become the easiest thing in the world.

In fact, to be somebody else is the hardest thing. It needs tremendous effort to be somebody else. Then too, failure is certain. One never succeeds in being somebody else. That is the misery. That's why there are so many failures all around. You don't see so many failures in the trees, in the birds, in the animals, because they are not political.

Or sometimes in a Buddha, Mahavira, Moses, Mohammed, you see the flowering of a natural being... spontaneous, animal-like, innocent. Just be - god is already there waiting for you. Calm down a little; don't be in such a hurry to go somewhere else. Don't miss this moment, this tremendous blissful moment - delight in it. Rejoice! And let your joy be your prayer. And let just being still, silent, just being, be your meditation... and god will come rushing towards you.

Nobody need seek god, god is seeking you. Just you be silent, quiet, so he can find you. You are rushing, running, and god goes on trying to find you. But you are never found, because you are never in the present. The ambitious mind lives in the future, the religious mind lives in the present. The religious mind knows no other time. His only time is now, his only space is here. Now-here! - let that be your mantra.

If you miss now, you will miss always. If you miss here, you will miss there. Let now-here be your whole mantra. If this is not your mantra then god is nowhere.

Swami Ram used to tell a simple story about an aetheist. He was a professor, a very logical, learned man, and he was very against god. He had written on his wall a small sentence to deny god: god is no-where. Then a child was born to him, a small child, and the child was learning to read. 'Nowhere' was too big a word for him, so he split the word in two. He was reading 'God is'...'nowhere' he could not read; it was too big a word, so he read, 'God is now-here.'

Be that child. God is now-here. If you are not that child, then god is nowhere.

Yes, Jesus is right when he says 'Only those who are like small children, only they will be able to enter into my kingdom of god.'