The puzzle remains but you are solved

Question 1:

Prem Komal, there is only one magic in the world, and that is the magic of sharing. All else in the name of magic is simply trickery; but sharing belongs to the ultimate truth. Sharing is possible only if you have experienced - in absolute depth - love, blissfulness, ecstasy, and these are not just words to you but your very heartbeat, your very breathing. Then the magic happens. There is no magician, just the magic. You don't do it, it simply overwhelms you. If there is somebody to receive, open and vulnerable, thirsty and longing, then something invisible starts flowing between the two.

You cannot see it, but you can feel that a connection has happened which is beyond the reach of the mind. Neither can anybody else see it, but if people of understanding are around you, they can see the effects of it. The person who becomes overwhelmed is immediately no longer a person but only a presence, no longer a flower but only a fragrance, no longer a dancer but only a dance.

You cannot catch hold of him, but you can enjoy to the fullest. And the person who has become connected starts melting and merging. There are no longer two persons; there are two bodies and one soul.

In fact, without our knowing there is only one soul of the whole universe. The trees and the birds and the animals, and all that is living, has a universal soul. We are simply parts of it, and our ignorance consists of our thinking of ourselves as separate. That"s what is called the ego.

The idea of separation is ego. The moment that false idea disappears, your whole life becomes a continuous experience of mysteries, miracles, and magic. And without your knowing, those who are thirsty start coming towards you, those who are searching suddenly start feeling a magnetic pull, a charisma, irresistibly. They may not even like to come, but they have to come; it is beyond their capacity to prevent themselves. Once they have felt something of the beyond, then they have no power to go against the flow; then they have to be just part of the flow and allow it to take them wherever it is going.

In a gathering like this, that magic happens every day. You may not give it the name "magic" ...

because that word has become very contaminated by wrong usage; otherwise it is one of the most beautiful words. There are thousands of eyes here, but suddenly one seeing; thousands of hearts, but suddenly one beating ... one harmony, and a silence as if there is nobody. This is the only magic there is.

Prem Komal, you don't have to learn it; it is not an art. It is not within your capacity to learn it. What is within your capacity is to allow existence to flow through you. You should not stand in the way, that is the only art; you should not block the radiation. You should simply stand aside and let the universal consciousness flow through you, and reach as far as there are people who can receive it.

When we are meeting here - and not just meeting in the ordinary sense but actually meeting, heart to heart, being to being - this overwhelming experience goes around the earth, to all the sannyasins wherever they may be. They may not understand what is happening, why suddenly they have become silent, why suddenly they have started singing or playing on the flute, why suddenly a deep urge has arisen in them to dance. They may not be aware of what is happening. So this gathering is not only the gathering of those few who are actually present here, it is a gathering of all those who have loved me and who have received my love. Wherever they may be, dead or alive, they are part of this gathering, and they will rejoice and sing and dance, and feel grateful to existence.

A great Zen master was getting on in years. Finally, one day a few of his disciples gathered around him, and with long faces asked, "Master, your death is approaching - you have told us that. Now we must ask, where would you like us to bury you?"

The old man looked up, and with a twinkle in his eye said, "Surprise me!"

These are the real people, the real magicians. Even death cannot make them sad. They can make fun even of death. What a beautiful man this old Zen master must have been, who could say, "Surprise me. Let me see what you do when I die. I am not leaving any instructions, I will wait and see. Do something that has never been done. Surprise me - just don't be repetitive."

I don't know what happened later on, because I cannot think myself how to surprise. Whatever you do must have been done thousands of times. The old man has left his disciples in a state of koan - that was his whole life"s teaching.

These people are so strange that even when they are dying they cannot forget their teaching. That was his teaching: giving koans to the disciples. Koans are puzzles which cannot be solved, whatever you do; it doesn"t matter. It is not a question of intelligence, it simply is not possible to solve them.

The moment you realize it, that all your efforts have failed and now you cannot see anything else that is possible, a great silence descends on you. In that silence you are no more. The puzzle remains, but you are solved.

And that"s the whole purpose of a koan. The puzzle will always remain - that"s why the same koan goes on being used for thousands of years, because no koan can ever be solved. But it solves the person. All his problems and doubts and questions and everything disappear. In that utter failure of his mind to solve a small puzzle, the mind stops. It has tried every way; there is no way out. And the moment the mind fails, you encounter yourself ... beyond mind, beyond words.

That old man has again given them a koan. He will be gone and they will be sitting there trying to solve the puzzle. How to surprise the old man? Whatever you can think of must have been done before. Millions of people have died and thousands of masters have died. Everything must have been tried; surprise is almost impossible. That was the meaning of the twinkle in his eye - he knows that he is putting you in trouble.

Perhaps you will not be able to surprise him, but in the very effort to find a way out, you may find a way in, you may come to know yourself. His death may become a resurrection for you. In his death you may come to know the eternal, the immortal.

This is the only magic I know of: to have a taste of the eternal and to allow people to share the taste. Those who are ready and ripe, those who are mature and of age, they will immediately start growing. And those who are not yet ripe will have to wait a little.

There is no harm in waiting a little, because time is without any beginning and without any end. It does not matter whether you become enlightened on Monday ... because there are only seven days - you can choose any day. These seven days have been chosen because of the seven colors of the rainbow. These are the seven colors of the rays of the sun. These seven days are named after light and color.

Enlightenment is the most psychedelic experience. More colorful than enlightenment there is nothing else. More full of light and more full of delight there is nothing else.

Question 2:

Anand Urmila, everything that I have been saying to you consists of the art of watching - from different dimensions, from different aspects, from different angles. My whole teaching can be reduced to a single word - watching.

That is the only thing in you which is not part of the mind. That is the only thing in you which does not belong to you, but belongs to existence itself. For example, I can watch my hand; that means I am not the hand. Whatever you can watch you are not. This is a simple arithmetic. The watcher is bound to be separate from the object that he is watching.

You can watch your body from outside, and from inside too. You can close your eyes and you can watch your body from the inside. It will be dark, and it will not be so visible and so clear, but still you can feel many things. You can hear the heart beating. If you are really very silent you can even hear the sound of your blood running. You are not the body.

You can watch your mind. All its thoughts, howsoever fine, are available to your watching. You can see the subtlest expression of the mind. That makes one thing clear - that you are not the mind either. It is a little more difficult, but not impossible, to watch your feelings - what the poets call the heart; your emotions, your moods - which are the subtlest things in your personality. A little sadness, a little joy, or perhaps nothing but an indifference ... But even indifference is a certain attitude. Watching goes on becoming more and more deep.

Beyond your moods there is nothing to watch, but only silence. In that silence a great miracle happens. The energy that has been watching turns upon itself. Hence many old religions have used as a symbol the snake holding its own tail in its mouth. It is a circle ... the mouth and the tail. It has been used in a very ancient school in Tibet, and Madame Blavatsky brought it from there and it became a symbol for the Theosophical movement.

I have met many Theosophists. In the city where I used to live there was a Theosophical lodge; it was one of their big centers. And just before the lodge was the snake taking his tail in his mouth.

The president, who had invited me to speak in their lodge, was taking me inside the lodge. I asked him, "Do you know the meaning of this snake?"

He said, "I have once or twice been puzzled myself - what is the meaning of this snake? And I have been asking all our Theosophist leaders - president of the world society, secretary of the world society - but nobody seems to know the meaning of it. And it is there on all the lodges. It seems everybody has forgotten the meaning."

I said, "If you have forgotten the meaning of this simple symbol, then you have forgotten everything about theology, theosophy, or whatever name you give to it. You have forgotten everything about religion, because this snake represents the ultimate experience of watching. When the energy of watching, just like a snake, turns back to the source, creating a circle, one knows oneself, there is nothing else to know. That"s what Socrates was saying to his disciples: "Know thyself, because without knowing thyself you cannot be thyself.""

Unconscious, you simply think you are. But you don't know who you are, what you are, why you are.

Your whole life is lived in unconsciousness.

Mrs. Pomeroy"s maid became so sick one afternoon that Mrs. Pomeroy said to her, "Please, let me put you in my bed until I can get our family doctor here to examine you."

When the physician arrived, Mrs. Pomeroy showed him into the bedroom, then left him alone to examine the maid. "Doctor, I am not sick at all," confessed the maid, "I am faking it. That old tightwad owes me three months back salary, and I am not getting out of her bed until she pays me."

The doctor"s face suddenly brightened. "Hell," he said, "she owes me for my past ten visits here." He then popped a thermometer into his mouth and said to the maid, "Move over."

But this is our whole life ... almost living in a state of sleep.

When a sudden storm blew up at sea, a young woman leaning against the ship"s rail lost her balance and was thrown overboard. Immediately another figure plunged into the waves beside her, and held her up until a lifeboat rescued them.

To everyone"s astonishment, the hero was the oldest man on the voyage, ninety-two years old. That night a party was given in honor of his bravery. "Speech, speech!" cried the other passengers.

The old gentleman rose slowly and looked around at the enthusiastic gathering. "There is just one thing I would like to know," he said. "Who the hell pushed me?"

This game goes on. Our life is really ridiculous, and the only way to make it sane and intelligent is the way of creating a watcher in you. Then whether you are awake or asleep the watcher remains inside you, just like a small flame, continuously burning. It watches your sleep, it watches your dreams; it watches everything. Finally it watches your death too.

And because it watches your death, it means you are not dying. Only that which was not you is dying. The flame has become your life source, and the center simply moves on into another form, into another life. And this flame cannot be extinguished. It is immortality itself. The experience of this flame is the experience of enlightenment. With this experience, all the fears of life disappear.

What remains is pure joy, and a tremendous gratitude towards existence. I call this gratitude the only prayer ... no words, but without words a deep feeling of gratefulness: "So much has been given to me which I don't deserve, which I have not earned, of which I am not worthy. Life goes on giving to me out of its abundance, not because I need it, I deserve it, but because life has so much to give.

It is overflowing."

The energy of existence is so much, uncontainable. So those who are not closed, who are open, they become filled with all kinds of flowers, and all kinds of fragrances, and all kinds of riches, and all kinds of mysteries, and all kinds of secrets.

The golden key is watching. And there is nothing much to learn in it. It is a very simple thing. You cannot imagine anything more simple which can open the doors of the whole existence for you.

Question 3:

Deva Vachana, you are in one of the most difficult skins. But I will take you out. And you also have become aware of slipping out of it; but just out of the old habit you again get into it. So now it is not as difficult as it usually is.

You are describing very rightly that English conditioning. It is one of the most serious and sad conditionings in the world.

You say, "Lately I have slipped right back into my English skin." Because you have been out, that"s why you can recognize what this skin is. Those who are already in have no way of knowing. They cannot compare, they have never been out of the bag.

" ... and I am so tired of it." Everybody who has that conditioning is tired of it. But one of the fundamentals of conditioning is that whether you are tired or bored, you have lived with it so long that leaving it aside makes you feel that you are standing naked, nude. Your conditioning has become your companion; without it you are suddenly lonely.

You want to get out of it because you can feel that the sadness is unnecessary, the seriousness is unnecessary. Life is not serious, life is very playful. And those who understand life a little bit immediately jump out of their conditionings and join with the celebration of the eternal, ongoing dance of existence.

You say, "Sad, serious, depressed, repressed, apologetic, hesitant, without humor or playfulness, conscientious, and boring." All great qualities! These are the qualities which used to make people saints. Think twice before dropping this skin. You can become a great English saint!

But if you want to drop it, you will be just a healthy human being. And to me a healthy human being who is sane, loving, full of a sense of humor, joyous, full of laughter, is far more valuable than any saint with all the qualities you have described. But you are in a kind of limbo.

You say, "It is really pathetic. When my energy takes off I am a totally different person, so I know this is not the real me. But something will trigger, and I am back in the old skin again." Just learn a simple thing: what triggers, that makes you go back into all these great qualities. It must be happening often, so you can watch - where is the switch that suddenly makes you English? Put it off and you are out of the skin.

And once you know the switch ... Perhaps it is jealousy, perhaps it is egoism - because these qualities make one very egoistic. One feels superior to others. The people who are laughing, enjoying, these qualities condemn them - they are childish, foolish. These qualities proclaim themselves to be spiritual. So if you have somewhere a desire to be called spiritual, saintly, special, then there will be the trigger.

To be out of this English sickness is very simple. Just go against all these qualities. When you feel sad, jog, jump, laugh. When you feel repressed, express. And don't be bothered that people may think you are mad; that it is not the time, it is not the right place where you are expressing. It is their problem. You remember that you have not to allow depression to set in. The moment you feel that something is becoming depressed, repressed, immediately express yourself in a song, in a dance, in a laughter. You will have to do something so that these qualities are counter-balanced.

And here it is possible. Back in England it will be very difficult, because that is the only country where everybody is a saint. The climate of the country is very saintly - so sad, so grumpy. And just visualizing ... because they have not allowed me even to enter the country, perhaps out of fear that I will condemn everything that I see. It is better not to let me know their real situation, that everybody is walking with an umbrella. What kind of people are these? And with an umbrella can you laugh?

With an umbrella a serious and sad face fits perfectly well. Here it is possible, Vachana. I have heard ....

An English tourist was visiting a Wild West town in America for the first time. He had heard about an old Indian who was famous for his incredible memory. He spied the old Indian in front of the general store and decided to put him to the test.

"Okay Mr. Indian, what did you have for breakfast on October 4, 1920?"

The poker-faced old Indian answered, "Eggs."

The English man scoffed, "Hell, everyone eats eggs for breakfast. You are a fraud."

Eight years later, the English man once again was visiting the same Wild West town and saw the old Indian lounging in front of the same wild west store. The tourist walked up to him and said, good-naturedly, "How."

The Indian answered, "Scrambled."

Here it is possible. Laughter is in the air here. In fact, I cannot conceive how one can be sad and serious in this temple, which is a temple of a dancing god, of a laughing god; which is a temple rebelling against all temples of the past which were all serious, sad. This is a temple of love.

You have just to be alert and careful that the old habit does not catch hold of you. Just for a few days it will come again and again, but don't let it take possession of you. Run, stand on your head, do anything crazy, but don't be English, because that country is simply a big madhouse.

You will have to make just a little effort. Be playful. And here everything is allowed. If you are standing by the side and just laughing, nobody is going to ask you why you are laughing. If somebody is interested, he may stand by your side and start laughing himself. What is the point of asking you?

Laughter is such a healthy exercise. Somebody is laughing - that"s perfectly good exercise, join him.

Somebody is being playful - if you have time, join him. Make every effort which goes against these habits. Never hesitate for anything.

There is no question of being apologetic; you are not committing any sin, you are not interfering with anybody"s life or freedom. You don't have to be continually saying, "I am sorry."

I have heard about a man who had come from a faraway village to a big city, just to see the city - he had never seen it before. There are millions of people in India who have never visited a big city, who have never seen a railway train, who are still at least ten centuries behind the rest of the world.

But he found it very strange. There was such a crowd on the streets that people were pushing him, people were walking on his toes, and everybody was saying, "I am sorry." He could not understand:

"What kind of game is this? First push somebody and then say, "I am sorry." Walk over his feet and then say, "I am sorry."" He thought, "Perhaps in this big city ... I don't know the game." But watching a little more, he thought, "I have to participate in it."

So he really started hitting people and saying, "I am sorry." People looked at him: "What is the matter? What kind of lunatic has come here?" Because he was simply hitting on their head and saying, "I am sorry."

Then somebody took hold of him and said, "What is the matter?"

He said, "I am just joining in the game. Now that I have come to the city, I have to learn everything.

Everybody was making a fool of me. Soon I realized that this won"t do. And I am a villager; when I do something, I really do it."

"These weak fellows, they just hit a little bit and say, "I am sorry." I give them such a hit, they will never forget it for their whole life. And I am enjoying the game. Now I don't want to go back to the village, this game is so great. And you need not worry, just you have to say, "I am sorry," and you can do anything."

In this place you don't have to be continuously on the defense, because nobody is complaining against you, nobody is in any way trespassing on your territory. You are here as if you are alone. It is the easiest place where you can drop your English skin and conditioning. And you can learn ways of being joyous, cheerful, playful.

We are not creating here a commune of dead people. We are creating a commune of people who are living moment to moment, with totality, with intensity, squeezing the juice of life to the very last drop. And once you have learnt, all these conditionings which go against life cannot come back. You have to be so totally in tune with life that anything that goes against life will not be able to get hold of you.

Life is the greatest power. Once life gets hold of you, then no habit is big enough. And these are just sick habits; they are not even healthy. They are created by a society which has been thinking itself to be the greatest land of the world, the most powerful land of the world, the biggest empire in the world. And there was a time when it was a great empire. It was said that the sun never sets in the British empire; somewhere or the other the sun is always rising - because the empire was the biggest all around the world.

These qualities are the qualities of the imperialist - because the people who rule, they cannot be playful, they have to be serious. The people who rule, they have to be hard - not only hard on others, but hard on themselves. They had to be some kind of ascetics, serious people. They are carrying the whole burden of the earth. They used to call it "white man"s burden." And naturally, if you are carrying the whole world"s burden on your shoulders, you cannot laugh, you cannot rejoice, you have to be serious.

And the ridiculous thing is that they have taken on the whole responsibility themselves. The people they have taken responsibility for want freedom, they want their responsibility in their own hands.

Because the moment responsibility goes into others" hands, your freedom is also gone. The responsibility and the freedom remain together. The white man"s burden was because he was making slaves around the world - almost half of the world. And because they had taken their freedom, they had to take their responsibility too. That created all these great qualities - ugly, psychologically sick.

But there was a purpose once. Now that purpose also is gone. Now Britain is no longer even a big power. But they cannot forget those old days, those great days when they were the most powerful people around the world. And they cannot drop those qualities because those qualities make them remember the days of glory and power.

But for you, Vachana, for the new generation in England or anywhere else, there is no need to be bothered about the past and its glory and its golden days. In fact, those days were the most ugly and barbarous for England. The very idea that you are ruling over other human beings is inhuman.

And perhaps they were doing so much inhumanity to other human beings that it reflected back on their own joy. They started feeling guilty deep down that they are doing something wrong; hence the continuous apologetic mood. They could not mix with people because everybody was lower than them.

India has known them for three hundred years. They lived separately; they were not living in Indian cities, they had their own separate camps in every big city where Indians were not allowed even to enter. They had their own societies - small societies, small clubs, where Indians were not allowed. Indians were not accepted as human beings. The English had to keep a very serious face continuously because they could not be friendly with the people they were surrounded with.

They had to keep all the people continuously afraid of them because their number was small.

If Indians were not a race of very patient people, whose tradition has been of accepting everything silently, who have never revolted against anybody and who have never attacked anybody ... Even when they had a great empire of their own, they never went beyond their boundary even to conquer small countries, which would have been so simple.

It was totally a different kind of culture. But because of this different culture, a small group of Britishers could manage to control a country of millions. But they absolutely never mixed, just to make it clear that they are superior beings, higher beings. How can they mix with ordinary human beings?

But this kind of attitude naturally has a consequence on the person. He has to suffer. Carrying any kind of inhuman idea ultimately is going to backfire. And that"s what is happening. Now everything has backfired. England has fallen into a very dark state, and there seems to be no possibility that it will be able to come out of it.

But here nobody is a foreigner. Nobody is English, nobody is Indian, nobody is German, nobody is Chinese. My whole approach is that I am against all discriminations of race, nation, color. I believe in one world, one humanity, and I would like my people to be also aware that this whole world is ours. Nobody is superior and nobody is inferior. And then life becomes a very playful, a very blissful affair.

An English woman, traveling on safari in darkest Africa, was very excited until she discovered that part of the journey was to be made through cannibal country.

Knowing that the safari cook was a member of one of the cannibal tribes, she decided to consult him. He proved to be a pleasant, civilized man.

"You need not have any fear of my people," he assured her. "It would never enter their minds to harm anyone on safari. However," he continued, as he eyed the woman"s short, plump figure, "if you happen to meet with an accident and be killed, you won"t go to waste."

Do you get it?

I have to tell you something else.

Jealously eyeing her next door neighbor"s new mink coat, the young wife asked how she had been able to afford such an expensive item.

"You probably won"t believe this," replied the neighbor, "but I saved up all the money myself by charging my husband five dollars every time we made love." The young wife was determined to get a mink coat of her own, so that night when her husband advanced on her she pushed him away and demanded five dollars before going any further.

The aroused husband fumbled through his trouser pockets but could only come up with four dollars and fifty cents. "Well, for that amount you can only sample my affection," she bargained.

After several minutes of extensive sampling, the wife was very excited and knew she would be unable to resist her husband much longer. In a final last-ditched attempt to maintain her bargaining position, she whispered in his ear, "Say, if it is all the same to you, dear, why don't I lend you the fifty cents until tomorrow?"

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.