The mind has no reverse gear

Question 1:

Devageet, it really did happen. Don't mistrust your dream.

This is the situation: all your defenses are nothing but mosquito nets - and you can keep out of your mosquito nets only mosquitoes who are not masters.

A master finds a way through all your defenses to the very core of your being. And the whole work of the master is to wake you up. But man's unconsciousness is such that he can even dream that he is awake and continue to sleep.

Your mind is so rooted in doubt, suspicion, distrust, that even if I really come to your place, the first idea in your mind will be: is it true? Doubts grow in the mind just like leaves grow on the trees. You have to put a full stop to your doubting mind, and immediately your trusting heart takes charge.

These are the qualities: mind is doubt, the heart is trust. Mind is imagination, thinking, hallucination.

Heart is only love. And you can see the whole world through the mind, except yourself - because you are behind the mind, and the mind has no reverse gear. You just cannot go backwards. Hence, the mind has to be completely dropped; only then does your heart, for the first time, start functioning in its totality.

I am reminded of a great king, Prasenjita, who had come to see Gautam Buddha. As he was coming, he found in his garden a very beautiful lotus flower. He thought, "It will be a good present to put at the feet of Gautam Buddha."

But his wife said, "It is better you bring out from your treasures.... You have the best diamond in the country - a flower is just momentary. And love for Buddha and respect for Buddha are like a diamond that is forever."

So he said, "I will take both."

And one of the most significant things happened. When Prasenjita offered the flower to Gautam Buddha, he said, "Drop it!"

There were ten thousand sannyasins present, in absolute silence, because it was a great meeting - a meeting between a great emperor and their master. And they could not understand why Buddha said, "Drop it!"

Prasenjita thought, "Perhaps my wife was right. A flower is, after all, just for a moment." So he dropped the flower, and with the other hand he offered the best diamond of the country, thinking that it should be accepted now.

Buddha smiled and again said, "Drop it!" This was too much; but because Buddha was saying ?drop it' - it was his most precious diamond - still, because of Buddha and ten thousand people watching, he dropped it on the ground. Then he was standing with empty hands, and Buddha said a third time, "Will you listen to me or not? Drop it!"

He looked at his hands. He had nothing to drop. The flower is dropped, the diamond is dropped.

One of Buddha's very intimate disciples, Mahakashyapa, said, "Prasenjita, you have not understood what he is saying. He is not concerned with the flower, he is not concerned with the diamond. He is concerned with you. Drop yourself."

Unless you drop yourself, nothing is dropped. And the moment you drop yourself, the ego, the idea of "I," all the doors of existence open to you.

Devageet, drop the mind and start functioning from the heart. And whenever there is a question of choice, the heart has to be chosen. The mind is very rational; the heart knows nothing of reason.

But I am saying choose the heart, because the heart is just in between the mind and your being.

Without passing through the heart you cannot reach to your own center.

So your dream brings a message to you, that you cannot protect yourself with any kind of defenses.

It is better to drop all defenses; all defenses belong to the mind. The heart is open; it has no defenses. And that's why it has the great opportunity of becoming a door to your very soul.

Question 2:

Deva Gita, first I will answer for all, although the question is yours, and second I will answer you.

I would like to answer all... that there are many who are in the same situation. They have questions, but they do not ask. The wrong reason is that they are afraid to expose themselves.

Your question is not just a question, it is accepting ignorance. It is opening your wounds, which you have covered very cleverly, not only from the eyes of others, but from yourself too. You have almost forgotten them. They have faded far away as dreams, but they are still there - covered or uncovered. In fact, covered they are more dangerous, because you cannot allow them to heal. They need the wind, they need the sun, they need to be open to existence. Without that opening there is no healing. But nobody wants to accept a simple fact: I am ignorant. I don't know.

Your question brings your ignorance to the surface. If this is the reason why you are not asking, this is a wrong reason. But there is a possibility of a right reason too.

As far as Gita is concerned, she has been with me for a long time, and perhaps this is the first time she has asked. Her reason for not asking is that whether she asks it or not, I am always giving the answer while I am answering somebody else's question. And slowly, slowly a great trust has arisen in her that there is no need to ask. If an answer is needed, it will be given. To whom it is given does not matter. If it is relevant to your question, you have received the answer.

Hence, the desire to ask has disappeared. You have been able to understand a very significant factor: that before you ask the question, the master knows the question. Whether you ask it or not does not make much difference. He will answer it in some way or other.

Secondly, listening to all the question asked by other people, you have also become aware that the real thing is not the answer. The real thing is dissolving the question. For the answer you have to depend on somebody else; but for dissolving the question, dropping the question, you are absolutely independent. Why go on carrying questions? Drop them - because they are wounds in your soul.

And remember, by dropping the questions you will not become ignorant, neither will you become knowledgeable. You will become innocent, just a pillar of silence - with no thoughts stirring your peace, disturbing your being, with no ripples on your consciousness. And this is the answer to all the questions. Questions can be millions, but the answer is one, and that answer is to be questionless.

Those who have been listening to me for years - there are many who have never asked, for the simple reason that I am not answering questions, I am destroying questions. That kind of work you can do yourself. Because you are not courageous enough to destroy them, you need my help. Just a little courage... drop the questions, and then you are the answer. Your innocence is the answer.

The answer does not come in words. It comes as ecstasy, as peace, as serenity, as centering, as maturity.

And that is the difference between a teacher and a master. The teacher answers your question; the master destroys it. The teacher makes you more knowledgeable; the master helps you to become a child again - full of wonder and innocence. That is happening to you, and this is the greatest thing in existence that can happen to a person: being reborn in this very life as innocence.

Question 3:

Prem Turiya, J. Krishnamurti is right. Analysis cannot lead to understanding or insight.

First, analysis is something like... you break a mirror into a thousand pieces, but each small piece of mirror reflects you exactly - as the whole mirror used to reflect you. Instead of one reflection, now you have one thousand reflections.

So I would like to say to you that J. Krishnamurti is not only right... he is only half right. Analysis cannot lead to understanding or insight; on the contrary, analysis will lead you to thousands of reflections of the same problem. In the place where there was one problem, now there are a thousand problems. You have broken the glass. You will be more puzzled than you have been ever before.

And secondly, the analysis is being done by somebody else. And analysis is not a science; it is just a hunch. The same problem... you go and be analyzed by Sigmund Freud and the conclusion of his analysis is not going to be the same as it would have been if you had gone to Carl Gustav Jung or to Alfred Adler or to Assagioli. And now there are thousands of schools, each pretending that they have found the fundamental truth. They have all found different pieces of the mirror.

Analysis simply breaks the mirror into parts. Analysis is perfect as far as objects are concerned.

Dissection, analysis - that's the only way to find out the truth about the objects that surround you.

But you are not an object.

And I have not used the metaphor of the mirror without any reason. Your consciousness is a mirror.

It reflects the whole world, just as your eyes are mirrors and they reflect the world. The eyes carry the impressions inside, and your consciousness reflects whatever the eyes bring to it. Your consciousness is your deeper eyesight. No eye specialist will suggest that to understand the eyes one has to dissect them into pieces. That will be destroying them.

In Jaipur, in India, there is a palace made by the same man who created the city of Jaipur, Maharaja Jai Singh. Perhaps Jaipur is the only city in India which is planned. And Jai Singh's whole idea was to create a city which is far more beautiful than Paris. He was almost succeeding, but he died in the middle of the process - only half the city was made.

But still, it shows signs that if he had lived he would have defeated Paris, certainly. It has a beauty of its own kind: very broad roads, which no old city can have, neither Paris, nor London, nor New York - very straight roads that you can see... they go for miles; and on both sides of the road all the houses are made of the same red stone - no two houses are different. It gives a very different feeling, as if the whole city is one house.

And while Jai Singh was alive, only one color, the color of the red stone, could be used to paint anything in the city. It seems that Jaipur is the only city which can be called, amongst cities, a sannyasin. On both sides of the road, on the pavement... for miles all the pavements are similar; but they are all covered, so even in hot summer or in the rains, you need not take an umbrella with you - there is no need.

Simple, very simple architecture, but absolutely the same all over the city. It was unfortunate that he died - and his successors were worried that he had been putting too much money into the city. The royal treasury was almost empty. But Jai Singh was a very proud man. He had asked loans from all over the world from great banks, and he was going to complete the city.

Inside Jai Singh's palace there is a small temple. That is the only place which he has not made similar to the whole city, because it is a temple, and a temple of God should be different from the abodes of man. It is made of small pieces of mirror.

It happened once that in the evening, when the priest closed the door, he forgot to look inside for a dog that had entered. All the worshipers were gone, but the dog could not get out. He was very much puzzled, because he saw so many dogs all around, reflected in thousands of mirrors.

The priest locked the temple and went home. The dog barked, fought, hit his own head against the walls, thinking that he is fighting with other dogs. And naturally, when he barked, the other dog reflected in the mirror also barked. When he approached him, that dog also approached. But he was alone - surrounded by thousands of dogs. Still he fought, and in the morning was found dead.

The gardener said, "The whole night he was fighting inside, but we don't have the key. The key is with the priest. And we knew what was happening: he was surrounded by reflections and he was taking those reflections for reality."

Analysis does not bring any transformation or understanding. It simply analyzes your mind, which is nothing but a reflector. Instead of one problem you find a thousand problems; as your analysis grows, more and more problems come up.

There are people who have been in psychoanalysis for fifteen years continuously, but there is not a single person in the whole world who is completely psychoanalyzed. In fact, there will never be any man in the world who is completely psychoanalyzed. You can go on and on, but mind is a reflector.

Your analysis, rather than bringing understanding, only brings more problems.

It is not a coincidence that more psychoanalysts go mad than any other profession, more psychoanalysts commit suicide than any other profession. Almost all the psychoanalysts sooner or later go to other psychoanalysts to be psychoanalyzed - and these people think they are bringing understanding to humanity!

Krishnamurti is right, that analysis cannot lead to understanding or insight. You go to one psychoanalyst and he has a certain conception which he imposes upon your mind. It does not matter what your dream is, Sigmund Freud is going to reduce it to something sexual. In fact, he is obsessed with sexuality, he is sick. He is almost in the same position....

I have heard: psychoanalysis was being done upon a man who was going insane. He was brought to the psychoanalyst's office. Just to figure out what kind of man he was, the psychoanalyst drew a line on a paper and asked the man.... But the man was keeping his eyes closed. He said, "Keep it away, no obscenity." The psychoanalyst said, "Obscenity? Does this line remind you of sex?" He said, "Yes, of what else can it remind me? And your mind is dirty. I have come here to be helped. Is this help?"

The psychoanalyst said, "Wait." He made a triangle, and the man turned his chair to the other side.

He said, "This is too much. If you do anything more I will hit you. Forget all about analysis. You are mad - you need psychoanalysis. You have become even more obscene. First it was a male genital, now it is a female vagina. You idiot! - you think you are a psychoanalyst?"

The psychoanalyst was completely at a loss. He said, "Forget all about these, just look out of the window." A camel was passing and he asked, "What does that camel remind you of?" He said, "Why are you torturing me? A camel always reminds me of sex and nothing else." The psychoanalyst said, "This is strange!"

He said, "Nothing is strange... because everything reminds me of sex. It is not a question of a camel, or an elephant, or a man, or a woman, or a tree - it does not matter. Everything reminds me of sex."

And this was the situation of Sigmund Freud himself, the founder of psychoanalysis. Whatever kind of dream you brought to him to be analyzed, or thoughts to be analyzed, he would manage to reduce it to repressed sexuality.

But if you go to Alfred Adler, sex will not be mentioned at all - the same dream, the same problem.

Alfred Adler was obsessed with another idea: will-to-power. He will reduce everything, even sex....

You can bring him a purely sexual dream - no psychoanalysis is needed, no interpretation is needed, the dream is simply that you are making love to a woman - and still Alfred Adler will say this is will- to-power. This is will-to-power, because the man is on top and the woman is below him. That's what every man wants.

If you go to Carl Gustav Jung, he will not talk about will-to-power, he will not talk about sex, he will talk about your past lives - that this dream comes from some experience in your past life.

Psychoanalysis is not a science. These people were very clever intellectuals, argumentative, rational. They could manage to prove anything. And the poor patient has not come to discuss philosophy or to discuss the reasonability of the conclusion; he has come there to be cured. He does not bother what the conclusion is - "Just show me the cure."

But psychoanalysis has no cure. "Bring more and more dreams, and we will go on analyzing them." And finally, when the analysis is complete.... And no man has ever come to the point where psychoanalysis is complete. It can never be complete, because mind is not something that remains the same.

You don't dream the same dream again. Every day you are dreaming new dreams, every day you are repressing new desires. Every day you are jealous of this person or that person; every day you are full of longing for power, for money, for prestige, or for saintliness, or for God - the laundry list of your mind is infinite. It begins, but it never ends. And you are in the hands of the other person who goes on imposing his ideas on you.

So all that psychoanalysis does is... after a few years of psychoanalysis, you also become a psychoanalyst; you start analyzing other people. You are not cured; your sickness is still there, but now it is covered with a certain expertise. In three or four years you yourself have become an expert.

You will be surprised to know that Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, never allowed himself to be psychoanalyzed - for the simple reason that he was afraid to expose his dreams and inner world, because they were not different from anybody else's. Perhaps they were worse. A man who, the whole day, from morning till evening, is reducing everything to sex - you can imagine in the night he cannot dream of anything else.

Your night is nothing but a by-product of your day. Hence, so many times his friends, his disciples, asked him, "It will be a great experience for us all if you lie down on the couch and start relating your dreams, and we can analyze them." He never agreed. His non-agreement shows his fear.

How can psychoanalysis bring understanding if even the founder is full of garbage and is afraid of anybody coming to know this garbage? His whole profession... and he established a great profession. Jews are clever as far as establishing firms is concerned. They don't do small business.

One Jew was Jesus, who created the firm of Christianity. Another Jew was Karl Marx, who founded an equal establishment: communism. Another Jew was Sigmund Freud, who established psychoanalysis. Now psychoanalysts are the highest paid people in the world - and they do nothing.

Observation can bring understanding, but analysis cannot. In analysis you become dependent on the other person. People become addicts of particular analysts; they have to go there. Just as there are alcoholics and there are drug addicts, there are analysis addicts. After two or three days they start feeling fidgety: analysis is needed. Somebody has to listen to all their crap. And of course when somebody listens to your crap for one hour continuously, you have to pay for it! Observation is a totally different phenomenon - what I call witnessing, awareness.

It does not make you dependent on the other; it is your own growth of being alert. And the miracle is that as your observation becomes more and more clear, your dreams start disappearing - just as the morning comes close, stars start disappearing. When the sun has risen all the stars have disappeared from the sky. When your sun of observation and witnessing arises within you, all dreams and all problems simply disappear, leaving the whole sky absolutely clean.

Turiya, you say, "The first years running groups here in Poona, it was mainly problem-oriented." It had to be, because the people who were coming were not coming to know themselves - they were simply coming to get rid of their problems, of their anxieties, of their anguish, of their despair. "It felt like a big cleanup." It was exactly that.

"In Rancho Rajneesh somehow I knew therapy was really finished...." In the commune I had hundreds of different therapeutic schools working, but I was working to destroy every therapy. The therapists were working to destroy your problems, and I was trying to destroy therapies and the therapists! - because a therapy can be only a temporary relief, and the therapist can be only a very superficial help.

You say, "I did not know how to bring meditation into the group room. I was still focusing on the dark side and too scared to really move into the unknown. Being here now, for the first time I get a glimpse that through meditation, observing, and simplifying, everything that is in the way slowly dissolves. By allowing the lightness to shine within, and without doing anything, suddenly the click happens. Everything is light and playful and with it comes an incredible feeling of preciousness and gratitude that we can all be here with You at this time."

Now the people who are with me are not here to solve any problems, they are here to know themselves.

You can go on solving problems for lives together. There is no scarcity of problems. The moment you open your eyes, problems start arising. Your mind has been conditioned in such a way that very stupid things can become problems: somebody steps out of bed with the wrong foot and the whole day everything goes wrong, and he goes on saying, "I stepped out of bed wrongly." Now, for the bed, whether your right foot comes out first or your left foot comes out first does not matter. But superstitions....

You go for a morning walk and you meet a man with only one eye - finished, your whole day is finished. Now nothing can be right. Strange... what does that poor fellow have to do with your whole day? But a superstition, centuries old....

I had a small boy in my neighborhood with only one eye. Whomsoever I wanted to torture... early in the morning I would take the boy and just give him chocolates, and he was ready. I would watch from far away: "You just stand in front of the door. Let the fool open the door...." And the moment he would open the door and see the one-eyed boy, he would say, "My God! Again? But why do you come here in the morning?"

One day he became so angry that he wanted to beat him. I had to come from my hiding place, and I said, "You cannot beat him. It is a public road, and it is his right to stand here every morning. We used to come once in a while; now we will come every day. It is up to you to open your door or not to open your door."

He said, "But if I don't open my door, how will I go to my shop?"

I said, "That is your problem, not our problem. But this boy is going to stand here."

He said, "This is strange. But why this boy...? Can't you take him to somebody else? Just... my neighbor is a competitor in my business, and I am getting defeated continually because of this boy."

I said, "It is up to you. Baksheesh! - if you give one rupee to this boy, he will stand at the other gate."

He said, "One rupee?" In those days one rupee was very valuable, but he said, "I will give."

I said, "Remember, if the other man gives two rupees, then this boy will still be standing here. It is a sheer question of business."

He said, "I am going to report to the police. I can...."

I said, "You can go. Even the police inspector is afraid of this boy. You can get him to write the report, but he will not call him into his office. Everybody is afraid - even the teachers are afraid. And this boy is so precious... so whoever creates any trouble in the city, I take this boy. Nothing has to be done - he simply stands there in front of the door."

Problems are all around you. So even if you somehow get finished with one problem, another problem arises. And you cannot prevent problems arising. Problems will continue to arise till you come to a deep understanding of witnessing. That is the only golden key, discovered by centuries of inward search in the East: that there is no need to solve any problem. You simply observe it, and the very observation is enough; the problem evaporates.

Now the people who are here are not here to solve their problems. They are here to dissolve themselves. They are here to know the very secret of their life. For that, no therapy is needed. For that, only meditation - and only meditation - is the way.

Question 4:

Turiya, it is most human and natural. It is not arising out of distrust; on the contrary, it is arising out of a deep trust because you love me, you trust me, you feel me in thousands of ways in your heart. Naturally, a longing arises out of this trust; a longing: when will the same fragrance, the same freshness, the same insight, the same understanding, the same light, happen to me?

And it is simply human frailty. One feels: Perhaps it is too much and I am not capable of it. Perhaps it is too far and I may not be able to go on a pilgrimage in the unknown, alone, on my own.

This is absolutely natural, nothing to be condemned. And rather than thinking that it is arising out of distrust, distrust in yourself.... No, it is arising out of trust in me. I have become to you such a certainty that there is no question that a space of this tremendous freedom, liberation, glory and grandeur exists.

You have seen the sunlit peaks in me and naturally you feel yourself weak: The peak is too high, too far away; so immensely beautiful - but is it possible for me to reach to the peak from my dark valley?

This is a human question. You are afraid: I can walk only one step at a time, and the distance seems to be infinite.

In China they have the right proverb for you: The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.

And nobody is given the right to take two steps together. Everybody is equal as far as steps are concerned. You can step one by one; and a journey of ten thousand miles can be completed just by small steps.

If you look too much at your small step and the faraway sunlit peak, you are bound to feel, Perhaps this is not for me. But I say unto you: it is for everybody.

Just as love and trust have arisen in you about me, wait a little more. You will find that same trust and the same love arising within you for yourself too. The master is only a catalytic agent. He triggers a process in you. All that is needed is a little patience, just a little patience. Wait with gratitude and start the journey.

If I can reach to the sunlit peak, then every human being is capable of reaching it; because I am not special, I am just one amongst you. There was a day when I was in the dark valley and I was also trembling, seeing the unknown, far-away peaks. But I thought, At the most I may not reach. Anyway I am in the valley - even if I don't reach to the peak, even if I reach only half way, what is the harm?

In the next life perhaps I may be able to complete the journey. But there is no point in wasting time, just sitting in the darkness of the valley and always remaining afraid.

I started the pilgrimage - not with the certainty that I will reach, but with the certainty that at least I can get out of the darkness of the valley - and once I was out of the darkness of the valley, suddenly my steps became bolder, my heart became more certain. And it was not only me who was moving to the peak - it will be very difficult for you to understand - I saw that in every movement, the peak was also moving towards me.

Another Arabic proverb: When you move one step towards God, he moves one thousand steps towards you. These small proverbs contain the essence of centuries of wisdom. When you see the peak also moving towards you, suddenly you grow wings. Now there is no need to walk - you can fly. Such lightness comes to your being; all fear, all weakness, all human frailty, disappear.

Suddenly you understand it is not only you who need the peak - the peak also needs you. It was not only you who were waiting for the peak - the peak was also waiting for you. In your meeting, the whole existence is going to celebrate.

Okay, Vimal?

Yes, Osho.