Arguing with the ocean

Question 1:

It is true that everything takes place in its own time - but it is only half true.

Paltudas says, "Every art takes place in its own time, so why get impatient? No matter how much you water it, the tree comes into fruition in its own time." But that does not mean that you need not water the tree; that does not mean that you have not to sow the seeds. The seeds have also to be sown in time - only then will the fruits come in their own time.

What Paltudas is saying is only half of the whole thing. From the seed to the fruit is a long journey, and great patience is needed on the part of the gardener. But the patience must not become laziness, because the difference is very delicate and very fine. The patience should remain, in its heart of hearts, very impatient - knowing perfectly well that when the spring comes, flowers will come. That does not mean you have to forget longing, desiring, for the spring to come; praying, waiting, for the spring to come. Wait - but your waiting should not be a dullness on your part.

The guest will come - and one never knows when the guest will come; but wait like a lover, with doors open, eyes fixed on the road... as if the next moment is going to be the meeting with the guest, with the friend.

On the spiritual path, things which ordinarily appear contradictory become complementary. Be impatiently patient, or be patiently impatient; but both have to be together. If you choose one, there is danger. Patience alone is going to become laziness; impatience alone is going to become unnecessary anguish, anxiety. They both are needed, balanced; so impatience keeps you longing, waiting, and patience keeps you from becoming tense, from creating anxiety. Both have their parts to fulfill on the spiritual path.

And it is not only so about this contradiction; about many other contradictions the same is true. One has to be both together, in deep harmony. What do you think this is about - the gardener? Paltudas has forgotten completely that the real question is about the seed, not about the gardener, because the gardener is going to remain the same; there is going to be no growth, spiritual or unspiritual.

The growth is going to happen to the seed, and if the seed is too patient it will die; it will lose the very longing to live, the zest for living.

Long months have to pass before the rains will come. If it becomes too patient, it will die before even being born. It needs a certain impatience on the part of the seed - a tremendous desire to grow, to blossom, to come to fruition.

But even if there is tremendous desire and longing for growth, it will happen in its own time. Your longing cannot arrange that the spring comes a little sooner, but it can keep you awake - so that when the spring comes, you are not fast asleep and dead.

The seed has to continue to dream, desire... has to remain discontent as it is, because this is not its destiny, it is only a potential - otherwise it is empty. Everything is going to happen in the future, so it has to be alert, hopeful, aware of the unknown, listening to the footsteps of the spring coming.

And on the other hand it has to be patient, because there is nothing it can do to bring the rains or to bring the spring - they will come in their own time.

So if the seed can keep a balance between patience and impatience, it will remain alive, and it will also not go mad. Too much impatience can make you insane, and too much patience can make you one of the living dead. Both are needed in the right proportions: a deep harmony between the contradictions, so they are transformed into complementaries.

On the spiritual path a deep harmony is needed with every step - a little imbalance and you will be lost. And that's what your religions have been teaching you: they have been teaching you imbalance, not balance. They have been telling you to choose between two contradictions.

I say unto you: Never choose.

Remain choiceless. Both are yours. Use them - and use them in such a way that they both create a beautiful music in your heart. It looks very strange to say, but nothing can be done about the mysteries of life.

I can only say - even if I appear to be very contradictory - be patiently impatient, or be impatiently patient - but be both.

Question 2:

Anand Vimal, that's great! Rejoice in your craziness!... because in this world, where the whole of humanity is insane, to become sane looks as if you have gone crazy.

Some criteria have to be remembered: if your craziness brings you more joy, more intelligence, more silence, more peacefulness, more understanding; if your craziness dispels darkness from your life - darkness of jealousies, anger, rage, violence, destructiveness; if your craziness becomes a light unto yourself... then all the buddhas in the world were crazy.

And it is better to be in the good, crazy company of Gautam Buddha, Lao Tzu, Kabir, Nanak, Mahavira, than to be in the so-called mob, millions of people who all think that they are not crazy.

One has to be very clear-cut: if Gautam Buddha is right, then the whole world is crazy; and if the whole world is right, then of course Gautam Buddha is crazy.

One thing is certain, that buddhas are in a very small minority; so if it is a question of voting, they are going to be defeated - any crazy man, any madman, can defeat them. But fortunately, the idea has not yet come into people's minds that enlightenment has to be decided by voting. If two persons stand as candidates for enlightenment, and whoever gets more votes becomes enlightened, then one thing is certain - the really enlightened ones will never be known to the world, because it is impossible to conceive that a Gautam Buddha is going to compete for enlightenment. The very idea of competition is irrelevant to the consciousness of a buddha.

So you have to remember - people will call you crazy; don't be offended. If you are still offended, then something in you is still sane, something in you still belongs to the masses; you are not fully crazy.

Don't be offended; rather, gratefully accept it, that you are blessed to be crazy. It is a very strange fact that only sane people can accept that they are crazy. No madman in the whole history of man has ever accepted that he is mad. You can go to any madhouse, and you will not find a single madman who thinks he is mad.

One of Kahlil Gibran's friends became mad, and Gibran went to see him in the madhouse. The friend was sitting on a bench on the lawn. Kahlil Gibran was feeling very compassionate. The madman laughed; he said, "Don't feel compassionate." Kahlil Gibran could not understand why the man was so angry about his compassion.

The friend said, "I am feeling compassion for all those people who are outside the wall. The whole world is mad. Only a very few people who are not mad have been kept in the madhouse, just for security reasons. Who allowed you in? We are not mad, and we don't need your compassion."

I have visited many mad asylums, but I have never found a single man who would accept that he was mad; because to accept that you are mad means that you are sane enough even to see your own madness.

The question is asked by Vimal - and just nearby is sitting Narendra. His father had a strange disease: six months he used to be mad and six months he used to be sane - a great balance of enjoying both worlds. Whenever he was sane he was always sick, always grumpy. He would lose weight, and he would fall victim to all kinds of infection; all his resistance to disease would be lost.

And in the six months when he was mad, he was the healthiest person you could find - no disease, no infection - and he was always happy.

The family was in trouble. Whenever he was happy the family was in trouble, because his happiness was a certain indication that he was mad. If he was not going to the doctors, if he was enjoying his health - he was mad.

While he was insane, he would get up early in the morning, four o'clock, and wake up the whole neighborhood saying, "What are you doing? Just go for a morning walk, go to the river, enjoy swimming. What are you doing here in bed?"

The whole neighborhood was tortured... but he enjoyed it. He would purchase fruits and sweets and say, "You can come to my shop and get your money." Naturally - Narendra was very small, his other brothers were even smaller - even the smallest children were watching him, that he does not steal the money. But whether they watched or not, he would go on distributing fruits and sweets to people and saying to them, "Rejoice! Why are you sitting so sad?" Naturally, they had to pay money to all kinds of people.

It was a very strange situation. Children steal money, and fathers, grandfathers, prevent them. In Narendra's house, the situation was just the opposite: the father used to steal money, and the small children would shout for the mother: "He is taking money again!"

And by the time the mother was there, he was gone - gone to the market to purchase sweets, fruits, or anything whatsoever, wholesale! He was not concerned with small things - just wholesale purchase and distributing. And everybody loved it, but everybody was tortured, also.

Once it happened that he escaped while he was insane. He had just gone to the station, and the train was there, so he sat in the train. One thing just led to another... and he reached Agra.

In India there is a sweet; its name is such that it can create trouble, and it created trouble for him.

He was feeling hungry, so he went to a shop and he asked what it was, and the man said, "Khaja."

Khaja in Hindi means two things: it is the name of that sweet, and it also means, "Eat it"... so he ate it.

The man could not believe it. He said, "What are you doing?"

He said, "What you said."

He was dragged to the court because, "This man seems to be strange. First he asked the name, and when I said 'khaja,' he started eating it!"

Even the magistrate laughed. He said, "The word has both meanings. But this man seems to be insane - because he seems so happy, so healthy." Even in the court he was enjoying everything - no fear, no sign of fear. He was sent to a madhouse for six months, and he asked happily, "Only six months?"

He was sent to Lahore - in those days Lahore was part of India - and just by coincidence.... There was some cleaning stuff for bathrooms; after four months in the Lahore madhouse he drank the whole drum of that cleaning stuff and it gave him vomits and motions. For fifteen days he could not eat anything... but it cleaned his whole system - so he became sane!

And then began a great period of difficulty. He went to the superintendent and said, "Just because of drinking that stuff, for fifteen days I could not eat anything, and my whole system has been cleaned.

I have become sane."

The superintendent said, "Don't bother me, because every mad person thinks he is sane."

He tried his best to convince him, but the superintendent said, "This is the whole business here every day - every madman thinks he is sane."

He was telling me that those two months were really very troublesome. Those first four months were perfectly beautiful: "Somebody was pulling my leg, or somebody was cutting my hair - it was all okay. Who cares? - somebody was sitting on my chest... so what?

"But when I became sane, and the same things continued - now I could not tolerate it if somebody was sitting on my chest, somebody was cutting my hair, somebody has cut half my mustache...."

They were all mad people. Amongst those mad people he was the only one who was sane. No mad person ever accepts that he is mad. The moment he accepts he is mad, sanity has started coming.

Anand Vimal, your accepting that finally great craziness has happened to you, is a moment of rejoicing for all those who have either already become crazy or are on the path of becoming crazy....

There are all types of people here at different stages of craziness. But don't be satisfied. Rejoice!

- but remember that there are still crazier states. A moment comes when you start talking with the trees, playing with the stones, arguing with the ocean... because your very idea of being separate has disappeared. Now this whole existence is one organic unity.

And it is not that when you talk to a tree it does not respond to you; if you are crazy enough, there is a dialogue. Perhaps one time you have to speak from your side; another time you have to speak from the tree's side - because the tree cannot speak, but you can understand what it wants to say.

Just remember the basic criteria - that your happiness, your blissfulness should go on growing; your intelligence, your clarity should go on growing; your love should go on becoming more and more pure... and your understanding should start giving you insight into your past lives and into your future lives. You should become part of eternity - spread from the very beginning to the very end.

Naturally, people around you will think you are crazy. But I say to you: to me you have become for the first time sane.

Man, in his ordinariness, is insane.

Every thing that he goes on doing - you can watch... and you will find that it is out of insanity. Your craziness is not the ordinary insanity of humanity; it is the craziness of all the mystics, of all the poets, of all the creators. It is the craziness that happens only to the blessed ones.

Question 3:

Premda, it is certainly one of the most important questions - not only of your life, but of everybody's life.

But the thing that you are searching for cannot be expressed by the word "explosion"; it can only be expressed by the word "IMplosion." Reality is not somewhere outside you; you are it. So if all your energy starts moving inwards - just as if a lotus is closing its petals - you will find what has been the greatest search and exploration of all human beings down the centuries. And this is the only experience which will always remain in the future too - the search.

Existence can be divided into three categories: the known, the unknown, and the unknowable.

Science believes only in two categories: the known and the unknown. Between the known and the unknown there is not much difference - only a difference of degree - because what is known today was unknown yesterday; and what is unknown today may become known tomorrow. So the difference is not qualitative, but only quantitative.

And because science accepts only two categories, it feels certain that our world of the known is becoming greater, and our world of the unknown is shrinking into a smaller thing. Every day a chunk of the unknown becomes known. It can be expected that one day there will be only one category - the known. The whole unknown will have disappeared into the known. That is not a great future; that is very dangerous.

If a point comes some day when everything becomes known, existence will be demystified. Then love will be just hormones, chemistry. There will be no possibility of any poetry, there will be no possibility of any beauty - it will be only make-up. There will be no possibility of anything that in any way indicates the mysterious, the miraculous.

All mystery will be gone, all miracles will be gone, and man will come to a dead-end street, where life will not have any more challenges - no adventure, nothing to explore, nowhere to go. It is not inconceivable that the people who have been always exploring, accepting challenges from the unknown, may want to commit suicide, because now there is nothing that interests them.

But there is no need to fall into a sad or pessimistic attitude, because science has not covered the whole of existence in its two categories. The most important category has remained out of it - and that is the category of the unknowable, that is the world of religion.

In science, the known goes on becoming bigger and bigger, and the unknown goes on becoming smaller and smaller. In the religious search, just the opposite happens - because science means going outwards and religion means going inwards; it is implosion.

As you go deeper into yourself, the unknowable becomes more and more unknowable, the mystery deepens, the miraculous expands. You are engulfed in a wonderland where everything is beautiful - where everything can be experienced but cannot be converted into knowledge.

Premda, you are asking that I should continue to burn you to the point where the implosion happens.

As far as I am concerned, I promise you. As far as you are concerned, you have to remember not to escape - because it is a question of fire, and you are entering into the fire.

For the fire, there is no problem in promising you. Any flame can promise the moth, "Darling, come on!" The problem is with the moth - that as it comes closer to the flame, it becomes hotter and hotter and hotter... and there is every desire to escape, not to go nearer - because it seems it is going to consume you.

Remember my promise - and you have also promised to yourself that you will not escape; even if death happens, you will still go on. Death is going to happen - because your whole personality has to die; but the innermost being is not part of your personality. Your ego has to die. In the death of your ego is the resurrection of your soul. The moment you die, God is born. Death is the price to be paid.

So I will keep my promise. You have not to forget your promise - given to yourself, not to me. It is totally your exploration; you are going inside yourself. I will keep on pushing you. I will keep on blocking all the ways by which you can escape. I will go on breaking all the bridges that you have crossed, so that you cannot return. But remember your promise: that whatever happens, unless you have reached your innermost being, you will not stop.

You will never reach your innermost being. Just before entering your innermost being, you will disappear - and in your place you will find a totally new face, with which you have never been acquainted. This is your original face.

When the personality dies, your individuality is discovered. When all masks fall, you discover your original face.

It is one of the most important questions, not only of Premda, but of everyone who wants to travel in search of his own soul, in search of his own home.

Question 4:

Devageet, I was also wondering... who is this guy Devageet?

You are asking me, "Why do You encourage all his meaningless questions?" Because they are everybody else's questions too. Devageet is simple, innocent... therefore he never bothers about what others will think of his questions. He simply asks them. Hence, I am going to encourage him.

And it is true when you say, "I can't stand another question from this stupid guy." You may not be able to stand - then try to UNDERstand, because this crazy guy is asking very significant questions.

You are asking me, "Stop him, Osho." No, absolutely no, because he is bringing up everybody else's meaningless gibberish - which they themselves are not courageous enough to put forth, to expose.

He is the mouthpiece of you all - this stupid guy, Devageet.

And you are asking, "For God's sake, before he drives us all as crazy as he is." That is the time I am waiting for. The moment I see everybody is driven crazy, my job is done; then I can say to you, Goodbye.

Everybody is so sane, he needs to be hammered continuously so that his insanity, which is hiding inside, comes out. It is like pus, which people are covering; and they think that by covering them, their wounds will be healed. No, the pus has to be taken out, and the wound has to be left open to the sun, to the wind - then only is there a possibility of its being healed.

And Devageet is doing you all a great service. Just last evening I suggested to him that in the middle of the night, when he becomes a gorilla with his girlfriend, "Just suddenly jump out of the bed, sit in a lotus posture and become a buddha." And he did it! He is a very innocent fellow.

His girlfriend has reported to me:

Question 5:

His girlfriend is Prem Nityamo. It will take a little longer time for you. Now you start becoming the gorilla - because everything has to be done in the proper way.

When Devageet becomes a buddha, you disturb him: become a gorilla, and do anything that comes into your mind. Don't bother what it is, because nobody expects anything sensible from gorillas.

And I know that your boyfriend, who has become a buddha, a lotus flower... now it is a question of self-respect and integrity. You can dance like a gorilla, you can do anything you want to him, but he will remain a buddha.

Watching him being a buddha, perhaps you may also jump on the other side of the bed and sit in a lotus posture. It will be something unprecedented in the whole history of man - in one bedroom, two buddhas.... That close it has never come. Mahavira and Gautam Buddha stayed once in one caravanserai, but not in the same room. But this is my deepest dream: that in every bedroom there should be two Gautam Buddhas. Only then we can have a sane world.

So, it is good: Devageet has turned into a lotus flower. It is a challenge to you. You also become a lotus flower - and forget the old, traditional idea that two buddhas cannot be in love with each other. In fact, only two buddhas can be in love with each other. Others are only playing the game of love, but deep down it is hate, possessiveness, domination. Only two buddhas can love without any politics, without any effort to be superior to the other, without torturing each other. They can share their love, because now they have got it.

Otherwise, in every bedroom there are two beggars, and each is insisting, "Give me love." And both are beggars; nobody has love. How can he give love to you? He himself is asking, "Give me love."

Every husband feels the wife is not giving him love; every wife feels the husband is not giving her love; every friend feels the other friend is not giving him love. It is always a question of giving: the other is not giving. But nobody bothers to ask how the other can give. The other has not got it.

Only two buddhas, two enlightened beings, can give. They don't beg; they don't ask, "Give us...."

They simply ask, "Be available to us. We are so overburdened with love; such an abundance of love is arising in us that we will be grateful if you can receive it." They become like rain clouds wandering in the sky, full of rain, asking the earth, "Accept us."

Love, in ordinary life, is only a word. Only a man of deep meditation starts giving content to the word "love," and it is full of flowers when one becomes totally awakened. Two awakened persons will be sharing, dancing, singing, loving - and there is no possibility of any quarrel; the quarrel arises only because you want to get more and give less. The moment you are fully conscious, the situation is reversed: you want to give more and get less, because you don't have any space. You are too full, your heart is overflowing - it has become a fountain.

So, Nityamo, you need not be worried, just jump onto the other side of the bed. But start from being a gorilla. First, the gorilla has to be released - that is, all your repressions that make you the gorilla.

To let the gorilla out of your being is the deepest cleansing, the deepest catharsis. And only when all the animality has gone out of you... buddhahood is not far away - just one step.

Buddhahood is your birthright, and the gorilla is only your conditioning. Your society goes on telling you to repress - and soon the repressed part of your being becomes so big that you are sitting on a volcano. It can erupt any moment; before it erupts, it is better to release it.

So first be a gorilla - with intensity and totality. And Devageet will help, because he has passed through the stage of being a gorilla. He will understand, he will have compassion, he will support. In this world there is only one who can be called your real friend: one who brings your enlightenment - not as a potential, but transforms it into an actuality. Actualization of your potential is what enlightenment is all about.

But before you can reach to that peak, you will have to get rid of much rubbish and luggage that you have been carrying for lives together. I have managed my meditations in such a way that first the gorilla has to be catharted out. That's what happens in Dynamic Meditation: you allow your gorilla to be released, with no inhibitions. And because of that Dynamic Meditation I have been condemned all over the world.

Keep the gorilla in and everybody is happy with you - but if the gorilla is in, you can never be at peace. I say to you: Let it out. It evaporates in the air, and what is left behind is pure space.

That pure space has many names: jina, buddha, enlightenment, samadhi, paramahansa - different aspects, but they indicate only one thing, that now inside you Charles Darwin has disappeared. Now Charles Darwin cannot find any trace of any gorilla or chimpanzee in you, not even the footprints; because the inner sky is just like the outer sky - when the bird flies, it leaves no footprints. When your gorilla goes out, in the sky of your inner world no footprints are left.

And the silence that descends, and the serenity that blossoms, and the blissfulness that becomes your fragrance, and the coolness which is not of this world - this is your true heritage. Unless you claim it, you have lived in vain. Only those few people are blessed who have claimed their inheritance, and they have found in themselves the greatest of treasures.

Outside you can, at the most, find a few reflections of beauty - in a sunset, in a full moon. But inside, every moment is full of beauty and full of joy; every moment is full of song and full of dance; every moment is ecstatic.

Being part of this ecstasy is being part of the unknowable, the miraculous, the ultimate mystery of existence.

Okay, Vimal?

Yes, Osho.