You have never looked inside

Question 1:

Devageet... Devageet is a dental doctor, but lately he is turning into a philosopher! Just today he has sent a telegram to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, saying "Drop the idea of saving the world through transcendental meditation. I have a better suggestion...." His suggestion is 'transdental medication'! And I think that if the world can be saved by yogic hopping, then there seems to be no problem why it cannot be saved by transdental medication.

He is asking for some sutras to meditate on, but sutras are serious, and meditation does not need any sutra. Meditation is a state where absolute emptiness exists, not even a sutra; there is not any possibility of any object. A philosopher never meditates, a philosopher contemplates. So I can give sutras for contemplation, but not for meditation because that will be absolutely wrong.

Meditation simply means silence -- absolute, unconditional serenity of the heart, of the mind, of the being... no stirring of any kind. Even a sutra is enough of a disturbance. You can contemplate on a sutra; sutra is Sanskrit for maxim.

The first... a successful man: one who earns more than his wife can spend.

And second, a successful woman: one who finds such a man!

Third: A jealous man always finds more than he is looking for.

Fifth: Some minds are like concrete -- mixed-up and permanently set.

Sixth: The first half of life consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance. The last half consists of the chance without the capacity.

Seventh: What Poona really needs is a vegetarian mosquito.

Eighth: The man who admits he is wrong is wise. The man who gives in when he is right is married!

Ninth: The rich get richer and the poor get children.

Tenth: Middle age is when it takes longer to rest than to get tired.

Eleventh: You never know how many friends you have until you rent a cottage in Poona.

Twelfth: You can't tell how deep a puddle is until you step in it.

Thirteenth: Virtue is its own punishment.

Fourteenth: By the time a man is wise enough to watch his step, he is too old to go anywhere.

Fifteenth: Prayer must never be answered. If it is, it ceases to be prayer and becomes a correspondence.

Fifteenth: An asylum for the sane would be empty in this world.

You don't get it! You belong to this world!

Sixteenth: It is always the best policy to speak the truth unless you are, of course, an exceptionally good liar.

Seventeenth: He who does not mind a big belly will hardly mind anything else.

Devageet, contemplate as much as you can, but it will not lead you anywhere. Anything that can bring you some light, some conclusion, is not contemplation, it is meditation.

It has been an old fallacy that meditation also needs an object to meditate upon. The very word 'meditation' is wrong because it gives the idea that you have to meditate upon something. Meditation simply means that you don't have anything left to meditate upon.

All is empty: there is no object, no chanting, no mantra, no sutra... just pure emptiness.

And suddenly all your energy of awareness turns upon yourself, without any effort on your part.

And the turning of the energy of awareness upon yourself is the ultimate experience of life, of light, of everything that is really valuable;everything that cannot be purchased but can be attained, everything that is not a commodity anybody else can give you but is something that you already have -- but you have never looked inside.

Looking inside is meditation -- just pure looking inwards, a turning of the eyes inwards one hundred and eighty degrees, and you have arrived home. Not a single step has to be taken, because you are not going anywhere; you are simply coming from here to here.

You are already there where you need to be, just you are not aware. Hence, meditation can be called awareness, watchfulness, alertness, witnessing -- but it is not thinking.

Contemplation is thinking; it will not lead you anywhere.

No philosopher has reached to any conclusion that solves the ultimate question of life, Who am I? But you are not to think about it... what will you think about it?

There are many people who have followed Maharishi Raman. His teaching was very simple -- he was a simple man, uneducated, not learned. He had escaped from his home when he was only seventeen. He escaped because his father died. When the whole family was weeping and crying, and the neighbors were preparing to take the dead body to the funeral pyre, nobody noticed that Raman had disappeared.

The experience of the death of his father became a tremendous revolution in Raman's mind. He was only seventeen, the only son of a poor family, and he escaped to the mountains. He remained his whole life on the mountain of Arunachal where he did nothing but just sit and watch inside. He never asked anybody anything. He had no master, he had nobody to guide him, but just sitting silently watching his own mind, he transcended his mind and he came to know himself.

And by knowing himself he came to know the ultimate bliss -- the ecstasy that surrounded Gautam Buddha, the enlightenment that was radiating from Mahavira, the joy, the dance of all those who have awakened. So whoever was asking him, "What are we supposed to do?" he had only one answer his whole life: "Meditate on 'Who am I?'" But people have misunderstood him... even such a simple statement. He was not saying, "Contemplate," he was not saying, "Think about 'Who am I?'" -- what can you think?

Either you know or you don't know; thinking is impossible. What will you think? If you start you will think, "This is my name, this is my country, this is my family, this is my race, this is my caste, this is my profession...." But what will you find by doing this? You will not find out who you are. These things are all on the periphery.

But Raman was not a master in the sense that he could explain to people that watching the mind, the whole process of the mind, the whole traffic of thoughts... Even "Who am I?" is a thought; don't get stuck to it. Just watch that thought too, and a moment comes when all thinking disappears -- just by watching. Just as you bring light into a dark room and darkness disappears, as you bring watchfulness to your mind, mind disappears.

And the disappearance of the mind is the beginning of knowing yourself.

This is the highest peak of consciousness, and unless a man achieves it, he has wasted his life in trivia. He lived only in name; in fact he vegetated. He may have been a very rich vegetable... They say there are only two kinds of vegetables, cabbage and cauliflower; the cabbage category is uneducated, and the cauliflower is a cabbage with college degrees.

But there is not much difference.

If you really want to live and not to vegetate, meditation is the only way; and meditation means no-mind... just silence.

Question 2:

Deva Shravan, I have spoken about being in the world but not of it. A commune is not a community, a commune is not a world, a commune is not a society. A commune is a very friendly gathering of people who live in the world but are not of the world.

A commune is not an organization, it is simply the gathering of individuals. It does not take away anybody's individuality. It does not destroy your dignity, your pride, your self- respect. On the contrary, it gives you dignity, respect, love: it accepts you as you are. It does not demand that you should be somebody else, then only will you be thought worthy; it does not ask you to be a saint. It simply loves you as you are. That's why in the commune there is no question at all...

How can I say to you, "Be in the commune but don't belong to it"? The commune is basically individuals who have learned to be in the world and not of the world. That statement is true about the world, because the world tries to strangle you, the world tries to make you a prisoner in a thousand and one ways. The commune gives you total freedom to be yourself; there is no question of belonging to it. Each individual exists as an individual, not as a part of the commune.

In the larger world each individual is only a cog in the wheel, he does not exist as himself. He is only a number, just like in the armies. A soldier dies... on the board of the office appears the notice that "number sixteen has died." In the army names are not recognized, but only numbers.

You will be surprised what the psychology is behind it; there is tremendous meaning. If your name is recognized, then you have a wife, you have children, you have old parents, an old father, an old mother, who must be waiting for you, who must be praying that you come back home alive. If you have a name, you are irreplaceable; but if you are just a number -- number sixteen...

Numbers don't have wives, they don't have children, they don't have parents -- nobody is waiting for them. In fact numbers can be replaced, but names cannot be, individuals cannot be. Hence for centuries armies have been changing people into numbers. So when somebody looks at the board -- how many numbers have died -- he does not feel anything about their wives, their children, their father, their mother, their friends, all their hopes, all their prayers.... It is a very cunning strategy to deceive people. And these numbers can be immediately replaced by other numbers; somebody else will become number sixteen. There is no problem in replacing numbers.

Society also, in a more subtle way, makes you just a part; it never allows you total freedom to be yourself. You are a husband, you are a wife, you are a father, you are a brother... you are never yourself, you are somebody else. There are a thousand and one expectations from you to be fulfilled; those are your chains. There are responsibilities and duties; those are your prisons.

In a commune you don't have a duty, you don't have a responsibility. You don't have to be somebody else to be worthy, to be respected, to be prestigious. Just as you are, in your utter nudeness, you are accepted, loved. Your very being is enough, nothing more is needed.

You don't ask a roseflower to be somebody else, and you don't ask a lotus to be somebody else. A marigold is as beautiful as the rose. The world would be poorer if there were no marigolds, and only roses. The world is richer because more variety is there.

Each individual in a commune is unique; in the world he is just a carbon copy. In the commune, everybody is original; in the world, only a true copy.

The world expects you to follow, imitate -- everything others are doing you should do.

The commune does not ask anything of you; you should simply do what is spontaneous to you, what you feel like doing. You should allow yourself absolute freedom for your potential to blossom. Hence I have not talked about the other part of your question, because that will be against the very idea of the commune.

A commune is not an alternative society.

A commune is a brotherhood of rebellious souls.

Bernie was more than a little annoyed when a neighbor telephoned at 3:OO a.m. and complained, "Your dog is barking so loudly that I can't sleep!" The neighbor hung up before he could reply.

The following morning at 3:OO a.m. Bernie called his neighbor and said, "I don't have a dog!"

This is your world -- utterly insane! That's why I say that unfortunately you have to be in it. Be, but don't belong to it; keep yourself as much unimpressed, uninfluenced by others as possible. Keep your originality; don't lose it in the crowd.

The young bride was inconsolable, in spite of the fact that her dead, seventy-five-year-old husband had left her ten million dollars in his will. Her friends tried to make her understand: "You are so young," they said. "You have a great life ahead, and ten million dollars! He had to die sooner or later."

"You don't understand," she sobbed. "He was the greatest lover. We lived next door to the church and he used to make love to me by the sound of the church bells -- ding-dong, ding-dong. And he would be alive today if it wasn't for that damn fire truck!"

That's why I say: Don't belong to this world. Be in it, but be alert that you don't get lost in the madness that is all over the earth.

Old man Finkelstein, aged eighty-five, went to a sperm bank to make a deposit. The young woman at the reception was skeptical. "Are you sure that you want to do this?" she asked.

"Yes," said old Finkelstein. "I feel it is my duty to give something from myself to the world."

The woman gave him a jar and directed him to a room down the hall. When thirty minutes had passed and he did not return, the girl began to worry that he might have had a heart attack. But just then the old man came out of the room and approached the woman.

"Listen," he said, "I tried it with one hand, then I tried it with two hands, then I got it up and hit it on the sink, then I ran warm water on it, then cold water over it, and I still can't get the lid of the jar open!"

It is better not to be part of this insane world! Remain sane. Insanity is normal in the world -- that's why you don't detect it. Once you understand that it is the normal insanity, and you start looking deeply into it, you will be immensely surprised that you are living in a big madhouse.

The commune is a rebellion, it is not a revolution. A revolution creates an alternative society. For example, what happened in the Soviet Union was a revolution; it created an alternative society. But that society is as insane as any other society; perhaps it has different names for its insanity, but nothing has changed.

Seventy years after the revolution, people are standing in queues just to get bread -- even today. Seventy years ago they revolted against the czar to make a new world where nobody will be poor, but what actually happened is that they have created a world where nobody is rich. They have brought equality to the world, that's certainly true: they have made everybody equally poor. People in the Soviet Union, which is one sixth of the whole world, are living in a concentration camp.

I have been in America, and my sannyasins in the Soviet Union are trying for me to enter into the Soviet Union some day. Today they must have gathered to celebrate -- they have informed me that they will be gathering at the same time as we are. They have to gather in basements. They have to read books silently, "underground," so nobody can hear.

The KGB, the Intelligence Department, has caught hold of twenty sannyasins and has interrogated them continuously for weeks, harassed them just because they had my books. They have taken away all their books, and they were trying to force them to tell who the other sannyasins are. And because they were not telling, they were harassed continuously in the middle of the night; they would be called to the police station and the whole night continuous interrogation... and this is revolution!

Man has become even more a slave than he was ever before. Man was not such a slave even in the days of the czar before the revolution; society was not so dominant and so afraid of people and their freedom.

America makes claims of democracy. I lived there for five years, and there is no democracy at all. It is one of the most hypocritical societies; it is deceiving the whole world in the name of democracy. It is another kind of dictatorship. But the whole world is like this....

I have been refused entry by twenty-one countries. Even before I had applied for a tourist visa, the German parliament decided and ordered all the borders and all the airports that if I try to enter into the country from anywhere I am not allowed... not only that I am not allowed in the country, my airplane has not to be allowed to land at any airport.

What kind of world have we made?

I have not done any harm to those people. I have never been in their country. And what harm can I do if my airplane just lands for refueling in their international airport? -- and why do you call it an international airport? In what way can I affect their morality, their religion, their tradition?

I was never aware that people can be so afraid of rational thinking, of intelligent behavior. I had never thought that the whole world lives under different kinds of superstitions. They are so afraid that somebody may create an upheaval -- at least in the younger generation -- by making them aware of their superstitions.

But to live under superstitions is to live blindly. That's why I say: don't belong to this world. This is not the world for human beings, this is not the world for intelligent people; this is an ugly world created by millions of years of superstition and darkness, exploited by the religious leaders, politicians and so-called moralists. They have all proved to be parasites -- and nothing else.

A commune is not an alternative society. A commune is simply a brotherhood without any organization, without any hierarchy. Nobody is your religious leader and nobody is your political leader. Everybody is simply allowed to be his natural self, without any judgment and without any evaluation.

Question 3:

Chaitanya, you have asked it! You say your interests are two: sex and meditation. If sex is your interest, forget all about meditation. When you get tired of sex, fed up with it, then the same energy that was involved in sex can be used for meditation. But you can't have both together -- that will be like riding on two horses together. Either you have sex, or you have meditation.

But one thing you have to understand: you cannot have meditation unless you have transcended sex. But transcendence should not be understood in the old ways as repression. Transcendence is experience, so much experience that you don't think anymore about attraction, infatuation.

Sex simply drops like dry leaves from the trees.

It is not that you have to make some effort. If you have to make some effort to drop it, it will remain with you. And if it is there, meditation is impossible; it won't let you be silent. It is one of the most torturous biological slaveries. It is good to get rid of it by experiencing it with totality and intensity -- don't think of meditation at all. Sex, lived totally, will bring you to meditation; and then meditation will be very easy, because there will be no biological pull against it. Your so-called priests, monks, saints, cannot meditate.

Even a man like Mahatma Gandhi, at the age of seventy, was having sexual dreams. This was the result of a whole life of repression. And finally at the age of seventy-five he started to sleep with young naked girls.

His disciples, who had become the rulers of the country -- he was the greatest spiritual and political leader, both -- tried to hide this fact; the masses of the country should not know about it. They protected him in every way. The news should not become common; people should not come to know about it. There was a danger that he might lose all his saintliness. People have respected him, followed him... and before his death, he will see himself fallen, failed.

They tried to persuade him to stop this, but he had his explanations and excuses. He used to tell them, "This is an experiment to check on my celibacy -- whether I am really celibate or not."

Mind is very cunning. Nobody in the world has ever checked celibacy this way before. If you are celibate, I don't think you will not know whether you are or not, whether the idea of the other sex comes to your mind or not. You don't need any test. You yourself will be enough to know whether your mind is visited by sexual ideas, dreams, fantasies, or not.

But the reality was he was tortured... and the reason was not that he was insincere; he was a very sincere man, but he followed a wrong path sincerely. Always remember: just sincerity is not going to help. You can be very honest, very sincere, very arduous... but if you are on a wrong path all your sincerity will lead you not to the goal you wanted to reach, but exactly to its opposite.

Gandhi could never understand what meditation is, and that was one of his greatest failures. He could not understand that you can be free from any desire only if you have lived it completely, entirely. If something has remained unlived it is going to haunt you.

Chaitanya, you are saying sex and meditation are your two basic interests. Please have one basic interest! And sex is absolutely first, because that is your biological bondage.

You have to get free of it, and the way to get free of it is not to fight with it -- that's what religious people have been doing for centuries. They have not succeeded.

Not a single person has succeeded in transcending sex by fighting it, by repressing it.

Live it! -- and don't live it with guilt, don't live it as if it is something wrong, it is a sin. It is not. It is neither a sin nor a crime, it is an absolutely natural way of reproducing. You are not responsible for it.

You are produced through sex. Your every cell is sexual. Nature has found a way to go on reproducing life in new forms; sex is simply a methodology which nature has chosen.

You cannot fight with nature. Nature is vast and tremendously strong, but you can get beyond it, and the way beyond is through it -- not by fighting, but by understanding, experiencing.... And the more you become experienced, capable of understanding, it is absolutely easy to move your energy into the second stage of evolution: from sex to meditation.

Meditation is very simple if sex has been lived completely without any fear, any repression, any guilt. My own understanding is that by the time... just as at the age of fourteen you become interested in sex, if you live perfectly and totally and sincerely -- religiously -- your sexual life, by the age of forty-two you will be out of it.

Life has seven year cycles. If you take as an average seventy years, it has ten cycles of seven years. The first seven years you are absolutely innocent -- you are just as a saint should be. Your second seven years are a preparation for sex; slowly, slowly, the snake of sex starts uncoiling within you. By the age of fourteen you are mature and you can reproduce children. From fourteen to twenty-one your sexual energy is at its highest peak, exactly between fourteen and twenty-one: that means seventeen and a half is the climax of sexual energy.

But this society has lived with such repressive and unnatural, unscientific ideas that these are the years when you are told to be celibate. And these are the years when you could have lived sex, and celibacy would have come by itself by the time you are forty-two.

Between twenty-one and twenty-eight, sex is very normal, very natural. From twenty- eight to thirty-five, sex starts declining. From thirty-five to forty-two, sex reaches its ultimate decline. From forty-two to forty-nine, sex disappears. That's why in ancient India the wise people decided that by the time one is fifty-one should start preparing for vanprashtha. His face should be now towards the mountains, towards the forest -- that is the meaning of vanprashtha. He is still in the world, but now his whole consciousness has turned and he is getting ready to move into the deep forest to be alone. The days of meditation have come.

By the time a person is fifty his children will be nearabout twenty-five. They must be getting married, they must be getting into a profession. The father can look forward to twenty-five years more... these are the twenty-five years, from fifty to seventy-five, that he can watch -- he can live in the world yet not be of the world. He can watch his children slowly taking over. And after seventy-five all his interest in the world will have disappeared; then meditation will be his only interest.

But this is just a formal categorization. It depends on you and your intensity of living.

You can be beyond sex by the time you are thirty-five. You can be beyond sex without much difficulty when you are forty-two. But it is unfortunate that people die still as foolish as young people.

Psychologists have come to the conclusion that most people die with the idea of sex...

that is their last idea. They may be repeating the name of God, but inside they are thinking, If only it was possible one time more...! They have not lived their life wholeheartedly. That's why something that should have ended at forty-two has continued up to eighty, up to ninety.

Chaitanya, live your first interest and be finished with it. But be finished with it by living it, joyously! There is nothing wrong, there is no sin. Then meditation will become absolutely simple and easy, because your mind will not be burdened with sexual infatuation and desires. That is your only bondage. All other bondages are secondary, all other bondages are branches of your sexuality.

For what do you want money? For what do you want power? Have you watched that all other interests are centered on sex? A man without money will not be able to get the most beautiful woman; a man without power will not be able to get the most beautiful woman.

All your so-called desires are centered on a single fact, a single interest, and that is sex.

Just live it, and live it joyously without any fear of hell or heaven. There is no hell, no heaven.

Once you are out of sex, once it has disappeared like smoke disappearing into the sky and you cannot see it, then meditation is so easy. You don't have to make any effort, you have just to sit silently with your eyes closed, relaxed , and you will find meditation is there.

Sex and meditation...? You will not be able to live sex fully, and that will go on lingering with you. And you will not be able to meditate because sex will continuously interfere.

You know the stories of the old seers, that even at their height, in their old age, after a long, long preparation of austerities, fasting, chanting, studying holy scriptures -- doing everything -- when they come to the point of realization, the stories say that suddenly apsaras from heaven... Apsaras are nothing but heavenly prostitutes, specially provided for the saints. They are sent down to disturb these poor fellows' meditation.

This is strange, why should anybody be bothered about these poor fellows who have been torturing themselves in every possible way -- starving, fighting with their body, repressing their sex? There is nobody who is sending these apsaras, and these apsaras are nowhere. It is just their own repressed sexuality that starts coming up in fantasies, in hallucinations.

And it is so simple... if you want to experiment with what hallucination is, just go to a mountain cave alone, fast three weeks, and don't meet anyone. By the end of the second week you will start talking to yourself -- and not only will you talk, you will answer also!

By the third week you will start seeing people... if you are a man you will see women; if you are a woman you will see men. By the fourth week you will not be able to make a distinction at all whether the woman that you see sitting in front of you in the cave is real or an hallucination...!

Just four weeks' experiment and you will know how apsaras have come. They will come to you too;they have not stopped the process of coming. But it is simply the hallucination of your repressed desire, so deeply repressed that it takes revenge -- with a vengeance.

My suggestion to you is, first sex, because it is more basic to your body, to your life; it is the foundation of life. Meditation is the highest peak, but sex is the roots. First think of the roots.

Meditation is the flowers. They come at the very end, at the very top of the tree; they will come. But don't try both together, otherwise you will remain wishy-washy, always halfhearted... meditating and thinking about sex, making love and thinking about Gautam Buddha! This will simply drive you crazy.

And you are asking, "I want to be your favorite disciple."

I feel scared! Please just remain a disciple! I don't have any favorite disciples, because to have favorite disciples means people who will betray you, people who will become Judases, people who will assassinate you. People who are first trying to be favorite disciples soon would like you to move over, give place to them; now they want to be masters. I don't want any favorite disciples. This is simple politics. Just keep to the space where you are. I am feeling perfectly at ease; when you come too close... I am allergic!

And you are saying, "What to do? Which is the worst question to ask you?" You cannot ask it. What worse question can you ask? You have asked it. But I can answer you, as bad as you like! Just I am looking for a worse...! So just be patient! It is really the worst, so just be quiet.

An English lady was on holiday in the wild west. One day she decided to visit an Indian reservation and became interested in the number of feathers in the men's headdresses. So she asked one brave, and he replied, "Me only have one feather because me only have one squaw."

Thinking this was a joke, she asked another brave. "Me only have four feathers because me only have four squaws," he replied.

Somewhat perturbed, the English lady decided to ask the chief, who had a magnificent headdress full of feathers. "Me Chief," he replied, "so me fuck them all! Big, small, short, tall... me fuck them all!"

The lady was horrified. "You ought to be hung!" she cried.

"You damned right," said the Chief, "me hung like a buffalo!"

The English lady cried, "You don't have to be so hostile!"

"Hoss-style, dog-style, any style... me fuck them all!"

With tears in her eyes, the lady cried, "Oh, dear...."

"No deer," said the Chief, "Deer run too fast and asshole too high!"

Okay, Vimal?

Yes, Osho.

The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here