On the master's operating table

Question 1:

Vimal, it is of great understanding on your part that you have not blamed me because I have touched your old wound. It hurts. But unless all the wounds are opened to the sun, to the wind, they will go on growing underneath; they can become cancerous.

Many people, many more than the people who are suffering from physical cancer, are suffering from psychological cancer. And the only way to remove a psychological cancer is to expose it. If there is love and trust, then you will not start getting angry or hurt, because I am nothing but your physician. And just out of my love I have to hit you -- sometimes very hard, because the crust that is covering your wound has become very thick.

Your question reminded me of Veena. She had asked a question this morning. I had looked all around -- she was not here. Although I knew why she was not here, I have also enquired. And the reason she has given is that she woke up with a stiff neck. That need not prevent you from coming here. You have a stiff neck anyway! Then she has not turned up to work the whole day, and her boyfriend has been saying that she is very upset.

First you ask a question, without ever thinking that you are putting me into a situation:

either I have to lie just to console you, just to inflate your ego... but that way I am not your friend; that way I am your greatest enemy. That is what all the priests, all the religions, all your leaders have been doing for thousands of years, and I don't want to do it. But I can see why they were doing it: you were very happy with them. They were giving you more and more doses of opium to keep you fast asleep and consoled.

Because I have to say the truth, it is bound to hurt you, sometimes very deeply. And I can understand; the pain that has been repressed suddenly uncoils within you. But if rather than bringing understanding it brings an upset, then it was better you had not asked the question. You cannot expect from me that I am going to nourish your ego, protect your wounds, console you in your misery, suffering, insincerity, helping you to be a beautiful hypocrite.

She is again not here; I have looked around.... And it is not that she is not hearing what I am saying; her room is just close by. She has heard in the morning -- the stiff neck came later on -- and she is hearing right now.

But you cannot understand my difficulty. If I don't care about you, then I can simply say things which console you but don't transform you. If I love you, then I have to be a surgeon and I have sometimes to operate on you.

You laugh so beautifully when you hear of Zen masters hitting their disciples, and if Veena goes on like this she will have unnecessarily forced me to carry a staff too. I have never carried anything in my hand in my whole life, but a friend has sent a beautiful staff, which is waiting. Either Veena gets okay by tomorrow morning, or I will have to use for the first time a very gross and primitive method.

I hit you as sophisticatedly as possible, as playfully as possible. But if you are here not to be transformed, but are just hanging around unconsciously, not even aware why you are here, not being aware of the pilgrimage, then your being here or not being here is almost the same. One thing you should remember: by your being upset you cannot change me.

You can simply force me to use primitive methods that Zen masters used. Please don't force me! And the only way is that whenever I say to you... even if it hurts, my purpose is not to hurt you. When I hurt you it is almost a necessity.

Vimal has shown immense understanding. He is not complaining that I have touched his wound. That should be the attitude of everyone who has come to be part of this caravan, who has accepted a totally new way which has never existed before, and a totally new style of life, of utter freedom and love.

But you have to be reminded continuously that even love is not just simply a bed of roses.

And the more you love me, the more I am going to be hard with you. The more you understand me, the more I can operate on you. You should remember that all my sannyasins are just on the operating table twenty-four hours a day. If you have a stiff neck, good; it will be operated on!

Vimal, whatever your teacher said to you is almost a universal problem. Teachers hurt their students, not out of love, not to help them, but to feel a certain power.

There is a very beautiful historical incident in the life of one of the great emperors of India. He had captured his own father, imprisoned him, because the father was living too long. And he could not wait anymore; he himself was getting old. By the time his father dies he will not be able to live longer himself to dominate the whole kingdom. The father has to be removed.

Politics knows nothing about love.

The father was imprisoned by his own son in jail. And strangely enough, the next day the father simply sent a message, "There is no problem; I have ruled enough. You need not have taken so much trouble to arrest me. You could have simply said it to me. But now what has happened has happened. I would just like you to send thirty students, small boys, whom I can teach the holy KORAN" -- their religious book.

When the message reached the court of his son, who had now become the emperor of the whole of India... The son, despite being a ruthless, violent, ugly man, still seems to have had tremendous insight into the psychology of man -- and that is almost fifteen hundred years before Sigmund Freud.

He said to the court, "Do you see this letter from my father? For what does he want these thirty children? He cannot live without dominating somebody, and the best way is to dominate small children because they are so helpless."

After fifteen hundred years Sigmund Freud came to the same conclusion -- he had no idea of this incident -- that the people who teach in the schools, who choose the profession of teaching, somehow are people who don't have the courage to go into politics but still want to dominate. That is one thing to remember about teachers. In my vision not everybody should be allowed to be a teacher. It is one of the most fundamental things in life. Only people who have a meditative understanding and no desire to dominate should be allowed to be teachers. Then they will not hurt others, just to feel powerful themselves.

I had graduated from the university, I had topped the whole university. I simply went directly to the education minister and I told him, "I need to be appointed as a professor in a certain university."

He said, "You are strange. You should have applied."

I said, "Applications cannot represent me. I have come myself."

But he said, "You need qualifications."

I said, "I have all the qualifications that you need, and I have much more."

He said, "What is much more?"

I said, "Look into my eyes. I have no desire to dominate the way you have the desire to dominate. I am not a politician. And just because I don't have any desire to dominate, I am qualified to be a teacher."

He said, "Strange argument. No application, no certificates, no moral certificates..."

I placed my certificates before him and I said, "These are the certificates. But if you cannot see me, what will you be able to see in these certificates? And I am saying to you that I simply qualify on a ground which will be absolutely necessary in the future for every teacher."

He looked into my certificates and he said to me, "Speak quietly! There are clerks and typists and other departments by the side."

I said, "I don't care about anybody. You just give me the appointment in the university I want; otherwise I am going to give a press conference and you will be unnecessarily embarrassed, because as far as educational qualifications are concerned they are amply fulfilled. What more do you want than a man who has topped the whole university? What more do you want than a man who has received as many marks as nobody else before?

What do you want from a man who has this certificate from one of his examiners?" It was just a letter written to me saying, "For my whole life I have been waiting just to see something like the way you have answered the questions. In my whole life I have never given the first class award to anybody."

He was well known all over the country, particularly in this part, because I think he belonged to Poona or nearby, Professor Ranade. He was at that time the greatest professor of philosophy in India. In his letter he said, "I wanted to give you one hundred percent marks, but I hesitated because people may think that I am somehow favoring you.

So please forgive me, I am giving you only ninety-nine percent. And the reason I am so impressed by your answers is that they are not from the textbooks. It seems you have never read your textbooks; it seems that you are the only person I have come across" -- and he was an old man, a retired professor -- "who has responded to the questions spontaneously."

I said to the education minister, "What more do you want?"

He became so afraid when I told him about the press conference that he immediately wrote the order. He said, "It will reach."

I said, "I want it to be given to me to take with me when I go myself. What is the need to waste money in postage? You give it to me."

And he became so freaked out! He said, "You don't understand the bureaucratic way. It has to go through the post."

I said, "I don't want to support any bureaucracy. You give me the order, and you can send another copy of the order through your bureaucratic channel."

Just out of fear he gave it to me with trembling hands. I laughed saying, "It is strange.

Are you taking my interview or am I taking your interview?"

And he was right. I reached before the order came through the mail, and when I gave the order to the vice-chancellor of the university he said, "But I have not received anything."

I said, "This is the original. You will receive the true copy."

He said, "This is just absolutely absurd. The original has to come to me."

I said, "It has come."

He became afraid that there may be some trouble later on for him. He immediately told me, "I have to phone to the education minister."

I said, "You can phone."

And he phoned. He said, "This is a strange case, unprecedented. The order, the original order, has been brought by the person himself, and he says the true copy is coming through the bureaucracy -- whenever it comes it will come. What should I do?"

The education minister said, "Exactly what I have done! Simply do what he says; otherwise, from the very first day you will be creating trouble for yourself. So just do whatsoever he says. The true copy is coming by the bureaucracy."

It came after seven days.

Teachers are psychologically attracted towards the profession for the simple desire of dominating, insulting, humiliating -- not out of love, not out of respect, not out of concern for your growth.

So it is good that you got your wound opened up. It has been created in your school, where they were telling you that you were "slow, a bit dim, not very intelligent and definitely needed to try harder." Now you are saying, "And listening to you I had the feeling that maybe all this was true. Is it?"

No. Something of it was true and something of it was not true. I will have to separate the truth from the untruth.

You are not unintelligent, you are not dim; these statements are ugly from any teacher towards any student. These are the statements which make people dim and unintelligent, because repeated often in every class, again and again, they become a kind of hypnosis.

They start believing in them. And once a person starts believing that he is unintelligent, dim, he starts acting also in an unintelligent way, because he has to prove the idea that he has been given.

But as far as your being slow is concerned, they were absolutely right. You are slow, you are lazy. And your laziness is not bone lazy; otherwise I will forgive it. You are just lazy by habit. Bone lazy is someone who cannot help himself; from his very bones he is lazy.

I am bone lazy, so I know perfectly well what bone lazy means. I have never done anything. How I have managed my life I sometimes wonder. People have been doing so much, and still they cannot manage their lives. It is just a miracle; I have simply not done anything.

One of my friends came from the Soviet Union to see me. He shook hands and he told me, "You should never go to the Soviet Union."

I said, "Why?"

He said, "Your hands! Anybody shaking hands with you will immediately say that you don't belong to the proletariat, you are a capitalist, because you have never done anything -- no sign on your hands that you have even carried a bucket of water." And that's true!

You are in a far better position, Vimal. I cannot help it, so I have not tried at all; I have simply relaxed in my laziness. People have understood that if somebody is bone lazy and you love him, what to do? -- prepare food for him, prepare clothes for him, prepare his bed, prepare his bathroom, do everything.

You are just habitually lazy. You can drop it, you are more fortunate than me. But that does not mean that you have to work harder. You have just to understand that laziness is your habit, and to be enslaved by any habit is against your own growth. I am not interested that you should work more or less -- what does it matter? At least to me it matters nothing whether anybody works or not.

This much is certain: that if for fifty-seven years I could manage without moving from my bed, moving from my chair... that is the only movement I do. I am the only man who enjoys freedom of movement -- no obstacles, no problem.

But it will go against your own growth if you don't drop the habit. And you have such a beautiful soul that it will be a great misfortune not to attain to the ultimate illumination I have been talking about. Your laziness may become a hindrance; it is just against your own growth.

So you can think: if you want to remain the same, I have no objection; if you want to grow, then just see that your laziness is not something natural to you. You have learned it just by your teachers telling you that you are unintelligent, you are dim. You accepted their ideas -- and the natural effect of those ideas is laziness.

You are neither unintelligent nor dim. Drop that laziness which is hanging around like darkness. By dropping it you will find your intelligence becoming sharper, better, your understanding more clear, more deep, your love gaining new flowers and new foliage.

A few sutras for you to contemplate, just lying down in your bed underneath the blanket, in utter laziness.

A small town is one where there is no place to go that you should not.

The only thing which cannot be misquoted is silence.

No matter what goes wrong, there is always somebody who knew it would.

An optimist sees a doughnut -- a pessimist sees a hole.

The best way to succeed in the world is to find a crowd that is going somewhere and get in front of them.

After man came woman, and she has been after him ever since.

Opposites attract -- like sloe gin and fast women.

You don't get it? Neither do I! I will also think over it, because my understanding about gin or any other kind of alcoholic drugs is nil. I thought you may understand it!

There is a crack in everything God has made.

Public opinion exists only where there are no ideas.

Whenever truth is injured, defend it. But if the truth goes against you, accept it. It is better to be defeated than to reject the truth.

A start is like a love affair... any fool can start it, but to end it requires considerable skill.

So be alert! Before starting any love affair, be prepared how you will end it. That is called homework.

An Englishman thinks seated, a Frenchman standing, an American pacing, and an Irishman afterwards.

To keep an idea secret is to tell it to only one person at a time.

Old age is when it is harder to find temptation than to resist it.

Old men are not really old men, they are just twice boys.

If everything is coming your way, you are in the wrong lane.

A fool and his money are soon elected. Drop the old proverb which used to say: A fool and his money are soon parted, that does not happen anymore. A fool and his money are soon elected.

If the facts are against you, argue the law.

If the law is against you, argue the facts.

If the facts and the law are against you, shout like hell.

If worry makes you so nervous that your hand shakes, learn to play the guitar.

The reason there are so few women after dinner speakers is because few can wait that long.

A woman is able to forgive and forget, except she will never forget what she forgave.

That is one of the mysteries of women.

If you have half a mind to watch TV, that's enough.

Vimal, just give it a try. I have nothing against laziness. It is not a sin, it is not a crime; it is only a hindrance to your own spiritual growth. But if you find it impossible and if you find that it is your very nature, then relax in it, it is perfectly good. But first give it a try, because my understanding is that bone lazy people are very rare in the world, they cannot survive.

How have I survived? Later on when you start writing about me, make it a miracle!

Question 2:

Dhyan Parijato, "Nothing to hold on to, nowhere to belong to, nowhere to go -- why is it painful to feel my aloneness?"

What am I here for? For the time being hang around me, hold on to me. Go with me wherever I am going. Belong to this caravan which is simply enjoying, not going anywhere.

It is not the Jewish caravan that Moses was leading continuously for forty years. And just now they have discovered the reason was they had lost a quarter. They searched the whole Middle East -- it took forty years, and still they could not get it!

This caravan is not searching for anything.

This caravan is just remaining herenow.

And I am allowing you to hold on to me, belong to me, just as a device because you are feeling so alone. Just the idea that you belong to me, that you can hold on to me, that you go with me, and your painfulness and your feeling of aloneness will disappear. Once it has disappeared you will see that what I have given to you was only teddy bears just for the time being; temporary arrangements to keep you alive to the point where you can live in your aloneness, because aloneness is the most beautiful space there is.

But you are in a deep misunderstanding. You are mixed up because of the language and the dictionaries and the so-called learned people who use the word 'aloneness' synonymously with 'loneliness'. Aloneness is experienced only at the very height of consciousness, loneliness in the very dark ditches and valleys. Loneliness is a desire to be with someone, and aloneness is the joy of being oneself. They are not synonymous; they are absolutely opposite.

If you are feeling painful, it is loneliness. So just for the time being you need a few teddy bears. All through history those teddy bears have been used. What is your God? -- nothing but a big teddy bear. What are all your theological systems? -- just teddy bears made out of logical, rational argumentation, to help you and to give you the sense that you are not lonely.

But they have all proved dangerous, because if you go on carrying your teddy bear your whole life... It is okay up to a certain age. On railway stations, on airports you will see little boys, little girls carrying their teddy bears, which look absolutely Italian, so greasy, so dirty. But without them they cannot live, they are absolutely lonely. They sleep with them, they wake up with them, they go on carrying them everywhere.

But a moment comes when they have grown up and they see that what they have been carrying is just stupidity. Then the teddy bear remains in the corner of the room for a few days, and then nobody knows where it has gone. The corporation truck has taken it away.

So will go your God: the corporation truck will take it away with all the rubbish.

You don't know anything, Dhyan Parijato, about what aloneness is. Aloneness is that beautiful space where you feel yourself so contented with yourself that you don't need anybody else -- no God, no master, no friend, no lover.

That does not mean that you cannot relate. You can relate with a master, but for the first time the relatedness will be of a totally different quality. You can relate in love, but your relatedness will not become a relationship. You can have friends, but they will not be filling any gap inside you. You are so full, there is no gap. You can enjoy their company - - and you will enjoy when they are gone even more, because they are a kind of disturbance. Once in a while just for the change of taste you can enjoy people. But mostly you will enjoy yourself.

I am reminded of one of Walt Whitman's most beautiful songs: "I celebrate myself." You should look into that song and meditate upon it. Unless the moment comes when you start celebrating yourself for no reason at all, you have not known what religiousness is, you have not known for what this whole existence exists, you have not known anything of beauty, of truth, of divineness. Your life has been nothing but a long, dark night of the soul.

Your meditation will help you to make the distinction between aloneness and loneliness.

Your meditation will make you absolutely clear about the beauty and the light and the blissfulness of aloneness. Then what is the need to hold on to something? You are enough unto yourself. What is the need to belong to someone or to something? You are complete, entire: the circle has come to its completion. Nothing is missing, and what is the need to go anywhere?

The most funny people in the world are the tourists, who are always going somewhere for no reason at all. Whenever I see tourists, I have such a hard time to keep myself silent.

They are such a temptation to laugh: carrying two cameras, telescopes, thermos flasks, all kinds of junk and strange things; loaded with all that and running from one place to another. And they do all that running; they go on taking pictures!

Back at home, relaxed, they will see the album and will say, "My god, what a beautiful Taj Mahal." And they could have purchased that photograph in their own town without going anywhere else.

All this tourism has given them amoebas, all kinds of diseases. What they think is beautiful, to me has always looked ugly. It has given them a tan, it has destroyed their original color, just burned their skin. But idiots are idiots. You can see them lying down - - suffering, for a distortion of their faces, of their bodies -- on all the beaches of the world.

If you want to know how many authentic idiots there are, you just go on counting the number of people who are getting a tan on the sea beaches, and you will come almost very close to the right number. Whenever I see somebody with a tan I cannot practice what I preach. I simply cannot like that stupid act that they have done. And they waste so much money on it: there are tan oils and tan creams and tan powders, and all the five-star hotels are full of these people. A strange kind of mania -- tan mania!

There is nowhere to go.

Just meditate silently here and avoid these kinds of madnesses. They go on spreading like wildfire, and just because others are doing it you get caught into it.

Just meditation is enough for you.

Go in, and you will find all the answers for all your questions, and more.

Question 3:

Vedaprem, condensed to your very essentials the question means: I should slow down talking about meditation. You are doing perfectly well -- and you love it.

If people tease you and call you a workaholic, it is a compliment. These people must be lazy people like Vimal! All the people here are meditating, and if you are enjoying the meditation that I have given to you -- that work is your meditation -- and you are enjoying it and you love it, then why bother about others? Perhaps they are feeling jealous of you. Perhaps they want to destroy your joy.

This is a strange world. Here anybody who succeeds in any sphere is going to be teased, dragged down, bullied by the people saying, "You are doing something wrong." And all that they want is that you should be a part of the crowd of failures.

As far as I can see you are doing perfectly well. Perhaps I may have done too much talking about meditation. I will try to slow down.

A traveling salesman was stuck in a small town and went to the only available farmhouse for a place to sleep.

"Can you put me up for the night?" he asked the farmer.

"I guess I can," he answered, "if you don't mind sharing a room with my young son."

"My God," said the salesman, "I'm in the wrong joke."

This is your situation; you are in a wrong crowd. But don't look around at anybody; just concentrate, contemplate, meditate on your work. Everything has to be poured into work.

Yes, be a workaholic.

Be utterly drunk with the joy of creativity.

I have not said it in vain, that work is your meditation. Apparently I am bone lazy, but just apparently; otherwise, who is harassing you all, day in, day out? By the time somehow you have got rested I am again back in the morning to torture you for the whole day. By the time you have slowed down a little -- I am back!

A young swami on his way to M.G. Road fell out of his rickshaw. And as luck would have it, he landed in heaven.

After a few days' rest, he asked for some work. Finally he was given a position in the "Religious Statistics Department."

Here they had a clock for every religious leader on the earth, and any sins committed by them would be recorded by a slight movement forward.

The pope's clock had moved only two minutes in sixty-seven years. Mother Teresa's only one minute, and so on.

The swami enquired to the angel in charge, "What about Osho's clock?"

"Oh," said the angel, "we use his as a desk fan!"

Just to avoid talking about meditation...

There was a German, a Frenchman and an Englishman staying with their new brides at a famous honeymoon hotel. As they retired to bed they agreed that they would get together the next day and exchange experiences over some drinks.

The next day the German was asked, "How did you get on last night?"

"Ach, vunce to begin wid, then vunce one hour later, und every time the clock struck, vunce again, vich vass eight times in eight hours."

"And what did your wife say?"

"Wunderbar, wunderbar!!"

The Frenchman told them, "I am straight away on the work. Zen I am on the work again when I get back my breath. Zen I sleep and start again, and sleep and start again, and sleep and start again, twenty times. Then I am halted, finis."

"What did your wife say?"

"Magnifique, encore, magnifique!!"

The Englishman had been very quiet. "Come tell us, how many?"

"Once," he said.

"Once! -- what did your wife say at dawn?"

"Get off, we need some sleep."

I am in a difficulty -- how to avoid meditation? Only today I will avoid, not tomorrow, because I don't want difficult tasks.

Just for your sake...

Devageet falls in love with an eighteen-year-old girl and they go off to Goa for a honeymoon. When they get back, a friend says to him, "Do tell me, how was it?"

"It was beautiful," says Devageet. "The sun, the sea... we made love almost every night."

"Wait a minute," says his friend. "A man of your age -- how did you manage that?"

"Well," says Devageet. "We almost made love on Monday, almost on Tuesday..."

Okay, Vimal?

Yes, Osho.

The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here