Freedom opens the door of responsibility

Question 1:

Satyam Svarup, the difference between waiting for the ship to come, and being passive and fatalistic is immense, although very delicate.

The fatalistic mind does not believe in the individual's own freedom, does not believe in the individual's own longing and search. Its belief system is that everything is predetermined; the individual is just a puppet in the hands of existence.

Fatalism destroys your individuality, your integrity, your pride, your self-respect. It destroys everything that is valuable in man. The fatalist is bound to be passive, because what is going to happen is not his desire, is not his longing - at the most it is just his acceptance. Whatever happens, he will accept it; he is dull, unintelligent.

But waiting for the ship is a totally different phenomenon; waiting for the ship does not mean fatalism.

The coming of the ship is not predetermined - it depends on the intensity of your longing: it depends on your love, on your heart, on your being afire.

You are arrowed towards the ship - but still it is not impatience. You trust your own longing, not fate. You trust your own dreams; you trust yourself. It brings more integrity to your individuality, more centeredness, more rootedness. And you are patient, because you know your longing is total, and existence is fair. It cannot defeat you, it cannot leave you aside in darkness, because you have longed, you have loved, you have desired, you have searched - although there is no impatience.

Impatience also shows that you are not trusting your dreams, you are not trusting your totality of longing. Patience simply means: I will wait, whatever time it takes for the spring to come - but I will not wait patiently; I will wait with a heart throbbing, desiring, waiting... each moment, day in, day out.

Waiting for the ship is a very total action on your part - because the action is total, your trust is total.

But all the mystics of the world have been teaching you to wait patiently, and the masses of the world have turned waiting with patience into a passive and fatalistic attitude. They are indifferent: there is no longing, there is no desire, no dream, no vision. If it comes, it is okay; if it does not come, it does not matter.

The whole world has fallen into a deep spiritual sickness of fatalism. It has stopped people from growing; it has stopped people from searching. It has stopped people... even when the ship has arrived, they are fast asleep and unconscious.

Unless you have seen the ship in your vision with total clarity, you will not be able to recognize it when it comes. How are you going to recognize that your ship has come? You can recognize it only because a thousand-and-one times in your dreams it has been there - slowly, slowly becoming more and more clear.

It is as if you have seen it thousands of times, so when it comes - even when it is far away, surrounded by mist - you recognize it, you know it. This is the way it has been coming into your dreams. And when you see it coming closer, and the mariners and the captain standing on the deck, you are absolutely certain: these people belong to the land from where you come - because you have dreamt about the land, you have dreamt about these people.

If the ship comes without your active desire and active longing, you may miss it. It may come and it may go, and you may not be able to recognize that it is your ship, that it has come for you, to take you back to the original source.

Question 2:

In the whole of existence it is only man who can giggle and laugh. Laughter is part of the highest consciousness achieved by man.

You are right: the sun rises, but there is no laughter; the birds sing, but there is no giggling. They are far lower as far as consciousness is concerned. Your saints also don't laugh; in your churches also there is no giggling. It is not an improvement for consciousness, but a going downwards, backwards.

Seriousness is a disease.

Only the sick mind is serious.

The youthful, the young, laugh, dance, sing, giggle. But with the serious mind, man loses that beautiful foam that comes on the ocean waves. Although it is just foam, without that foam those waves will look naked. That foam makes almost a crown to the waves. With the white foam, tidal waves coming towards the shore remind one of Himalayan peaks, where snow has never melted - eternal snow. And the whiteness of the foam gives a beauty, a life, a certain dance to the wave.

I am against all those religions which make you serious - and almost all the religions do make you serious. They destroy all possibilities of laughter: laughter seems to be profane. But I say unto you: Laughter is the most sacred phenomenon on the earth - because it is the highest peak of consciousness.

It is not only the religions, but almost all kinds of serious people - whether they are religious or not - are serious because the society gives respectability to seriousness.

If you meet Jesus with the cross... long British face - I sometimes wonder why he was born in Judea. Britain was the right place for him; he is British, out-and-out. He never laughed. And then that serious cross... and not only he has to carry it, he is telling his disciples that everybody should carry his cross on his shoulders. Why should everybody carry his cross on his shoulders? - why not a guitar? My people are going to carry guitars on their shoulders.

But for thousands of years seriousness has been so much respected that a few countries have completely forgotten how to laugh. It is said that when you tell a joke to an Englishman, he laughs twice: first he laughs so that nobody sees that he has not understood the joke, and then secondly he laughs in the middle of the night, when he gets it.

If you tell the same joke to a German, he laughs only once - just for etiquette's sake; because everybody is laughing, he has to make the effort. Deep down he cannot understand why people are laughing. But he never gets it, so the second time is out of the question. If you tell the same joke to a Jew, rather than laughing he will say, "Wait, don't waste time! It is an old joke, and moreover, you are telling it all wrong."

People behave differently, because they have been conditioned differently. I have been searching for a joke that is purely Indian, but I have not been able to find one, all jokes are imported. It is good that there is no taxation on imported jokes; otherwise, in India there would be no jokes at all.

The Indians have been too serious about things, about God, about the ultimate. You cannot conceive of Gautam Buddha laughing, or Shankaracharya laughing, or Mahavira laughing - that is impossible.

I have always wondered about it... because some of the first statues in the world were made of Gautam Buddha; those are the most ancient statues.

And why have they chosen cold marble to make the statues of Buddha? Buddha is cold. Laughter brings warmth; seriousness slowly, slowly becomes coldness - inhumanly cold. And the white marble represents his face exactly - because he never showed any emotions on his face; nobody ever saw tears in his eyes, a smile on his lips. Even while he was alive, he was just a marble statue.

India has been very serious for centuries, and that is one of the causes of its degradation. Silence is beautiful - but silence does not mean seriousness. Silence can be full of smiles; in fact, authentic silence is bound to be full of smiles, joy. People who have been experiencing ecstasy - even they have not burst into laughter.

This is contrary to my own experience, and it is contrary to the existential law.

The first thing that happens to the enlightened person is a deep belly laughter - for the sheer stupidity that he has been searching for something which is within himself. He has been carrying it for centuries within himself, and he never looked there; and he looked all over the world - carrying within himself the treasure which was available within a minute.

Just close your eyes... be silent... and it is there.

I cannot conceive that anybody finding it within himself should not have laughed - but the stories of hundreds of awakened people don't mention it. Perhaps they laughed, but they did not allow the laughter to reach out; they controlled it.

Just because the whole tradition says that the higher you go into consciousness, the more serious you become.... But I know from my own experience - and logically it is relevant - that if you have your glasses and are looking all around for them, and then suddenly you become aware that they are sitting on your nose, it is impossible not to giggle, not to laugh.

The spiritual experience is no different from that: It is just sitting on your nose - and you are searching for it all over the world. You are missing it because you are searching all over the world.

Just sit down, forget the world, and it is there. Who is searching?...

The seeker is the sought.

The hunter is the hunted.

The observer is the observed.

But because you never look withinwards... and you cannot find it anywhere outside - neither on the Himalayan peaks nor on the moon - naturally, failure after failure will make you serious, sad, as if you are not adequate enough, capable enough to find it. The truth is: you are not finding it because it is not outside you.

So all paths are wrong. Wherever you go you will find failure and nothing else. Drop going, stop searching; be calm and quiet. First one should look into oneself. If you cannot find it there, then it seems logical that you should move further away. But anyone who has ever looked withinwards has always found it there.

And in this finding, there is going to be a great laugh at yourself, because existence has played really a great joke.

There is an old story: When God created the world he used to live in the world, in the marketplace.

But his life was becoming more and more a torture, because people were continuously coming with complaints: somebody's wife is sick, somebody's child has died, somebody is not getting employment - all kinds, all sorts of complaints and complaints. And people were not even concerned whether it was day or night: twenty-four hours a day he was listening to the complaints and, naturally, losing his marbles.

Finally he asked his advisers. They said, "The only way is.... In the first place, it was wrong for you to create the world; in the second place, it was wrong for you to live in the world. Now escape; otherwise these people are going to kill you."

But he said, "Where to escape to?"

Somebody suggested, "Go to Everest!"

He said, "You don't know the future. I know past, present, future: soon a guy - Edmund Hillary - will reach there. And once he sees me, soon the same trouble will start: buses, roads, airports, restaurants, hotels all around... because people will be coming there to complain about their problems and troubles. The same thing will start."

Somebody said, "Then it is better you go to the moon."

He said, "You don't understand: there is not a single place in the whole world where man is not going to reach some day or other."

One old adviser, who rarely used to speak, whispered in the ear of God, "I know about one place where man will never reach: you just get inside him. He will look everywhere - but he will not look within himself."

And God said, "That seems to be sensible." And since then he has been living within you.

Now I have told you the secret, it is up to you: if you want to go and meet him, go within! But don't complain.... In fact, he will be very happy to see you, because he has not seen very many people in thousands of years - only once in a while.

And the people who have reached him have reached by becoming silent, alert, conscious. They don't complain - they giggle, they laugh. And I say to you: God joins in the laughter with you.

But it has to be an experience; otherwise it will be only a belief - and I don't want to create any belief system. I am simply telling you my own experience; you can make it your own experience too.

Question 3:

Anand Maitreya, it is true that it is existence itself which brings fear and love of freedom together - and I have been telling you they cannot exist together. They cannot.

Existence gives you an alternative: to choose, so that your freedom is not interfered with. You can choose fear, or you can choose freedom. Freedom is not being imposed by nature on you, neither is fear imposed. Nature gives you alternatives. Now it is your own choice, out of your own intelligence that you have to choose.

You cannot choose both together - that is what I mean when I say they cannot exist together.

Existence makes them both available, but you have to choose one. Most people have chosen fear.

Out of fear they have created all kinds of gods, theologies, religions; out of fear they are being dominated by stupid politicians; out of fear they have been exploited for thousands of years; out of fear comes their whole spiritual slavery. But there must be some reason why they choose fear and why they don't choose freedom. Very few people have chosen freedom.

There is something which has to be understood: freedom brings responsibility. The moment you choose to be free, you are responsible for every one of your acts. You are responsible for your whole life; you are responsible for your misery or your blissfulness; you are responsible for remaining asleep or becoming awake.

Freedom opens the door of responsibility. Fear takes away all responsibilities - you are just a slave.

The responsibility is in the hands of somebody else, who dominates you. He will provide you with food, he will provide you with clothes, he will provide you with a shelter - you need not worry about it. If he wants a slave, he has to provide all these things.

Fear is a kind of security, safety - somebody else has taken the responsibility and the burden of responsibility - and this is the reason why millions of people have chosen fear. But the moment they choose fear, they also lose many things: not only responsibility - they lose their very souls. They are no longer themselves. They lose all possibility of growth - they are in the hands of somebody else. If your growth is going to be beneficial to those hands, the growth will be allowed; but if your growth, your intelligence, is going to be a disturbance, then your roots will be cut.

In Japan they have a strange kind of plant - three hundred years, four hundred years old, but only five or six inches tall. Many families of gardeners have taken care of those plants for centuries. You can see they are old, very old; every branch shows their age - but why have they remained only six inches high? They would have grown one hundred feet, one hundred and fifty feet high; they would have had such foliage that thousands of people could have sat under their shadow - and you can take them in your hand.

The strategy is simple and very symbolic for man too. They think it is an art; I think it is a crime. The method for keeping those trees growing old, yet not growing upwards - remaining small, pygmies - is that when they are four, five inches tall, they put them into earthen pots without bottoms. Whenever their roots grow, they go on cutting the roots - and if the roots cannot grow, the tree cannot grow.

There is a certain balance between the roots and the tree: the higher the tree goes, the deeper the roots go. You cannot have a one-hundred-foot-tall tree with six-inch-long roots - it will fall. By cutting the roots, they don't allow the tree to grow. People come from far away to see those plants; and those families brag about them - this tree is four hundred years old. And it looks so old... but it is very strange that it has remained only six inches high.

The same is true about man. The moment you allow somebody else to take responsibility for you, he starts cutting your roots - because a slave has to remain weak, has to remain retarded in the mind; otherwise he will be dangerous. If he is strong, intelligent, he may revolt. To avoid revolt, to avoid any kind of revolution, the slave has to be kept at the minimum of his growth, not at the maximum.

So they don't allow you to grow upwards as an individual; they don't allow you to become intelligent.

For example, in India, one fourth of the society consists of the sudras. They are untouchables; you cannot touch them - or if by chance you touch each other, you have to take a shower immediately and change your clothes. They are dirty people; they do all kinds of dirty jobs for the society. They should be respected - because a society can exist without painters, without poets, without singers, without mystics. It is beautiful to have them all, but a society can exist without them. But a society cannot exist without all those people who are doing all kinds of dirty jobs: cleaning your toilets, cleaning your streets. They are not allowed to live in the city; they have to live outside the city. They are the poorest of the poor in the world. They are not allowed any education; they are not allowed even to listen to religious scriptures; the question of their entry into the temple of God is impossible.

These are ways of cutting roots: no education, no possibility of moving from one profession to another; they look as if they are living without the walls of a prison, but the subtle bars of the prison are there. There is no movement in Hindu society: the sudra, whatever he can do, can never become a saint; however virtuous, however pure he may be, he cannot be accepted into the higher classes of society. And he cannot move from the profession that has been his for thousands of years, that his forefathers have been doing. He has to do the same kind of job.

You have taken their freedom, you have taken their responsibility. Yes, they are given food, they are given clothes, they are given small huts - and that is all. They have a certain security; but because of this small security, they have lost their spirituality.

Existence always gives alternatives in every dimension, because existence does not want anything to be imposed on its children. You have to choose.

I have been talking to these sudras, untouchables. At first they could not believe that anybody from a higher caste would come into their small village outside the city; but when I started visiting them, slowly, slowly they became accustomed to it - that this man seems to be strange.

And I told them, "Your slavery, your oppression, your exploitation, is because you are clinging to such small securities. When society cannot give you your individuality and your freedom, that society is not yours. Leave it! Declare that you do not belong to such an ugly society! Who is preventing you?

"And stop doing all these dirty jobs. Let the brahmins and the higher castes clean the toilets, and then they will know that just sitting and reading the scriptures is not virtue; it is not purity."

Brahmins have not done anything except be parasites on society; but they are the most respected people, because they are educated, they are well-versed in religious scriptures. Just to be born into a brahmin family is enough; no other quality is needed: people will touch your feet. Just being a brahmin by birth, you have all the qualifications to be worshiped. And this has continued for at least five thousand years.

Talking to the sudras, I became aware they have become so accustomed to a certain security that they have forgotten the alternative of freedom. And whenever I tried to convince them, sooner or later the question was asked, "What about responsibilities? If we are free, then we will be responsible.

Right now we are not responsible for anything. We live safe and secure, although in utter humiliation"

- but to that they have become accustomed and immune.

Anand Maitreya, existence gives you fear; existence gives you freedom. You cannot have both together.

Freedom will create in you an authentic individual, with great challenges and responsibilities, dangers, risks. But a life without dangers and without risks is not life; then the safest place is the grave, where no disease happens - no hepatitis, no AIDS, no homosexuality, no crime, no rape, no murder - nothing happens. You are absolutely secure... and you cannot even die. One death is enough; after that there is no question of death. But do you want to choose a grave? Those who have chosen fear have chosen a psychological grave.

My effort here is to bring you out of all kinds of graves. Jesus has brought only one man out of the grave, and that was Lazarus. I am trying to bring thousands of people out of greater graves - which are psychological - and give them the opportunity to be free, and to be responsible; to take the risk, to accept the adventure. Climbing in the mountains is dangerous, but unless you accept the danger, you will never reach to the peaks of your being.

Freedom brings you to the highest peaks of enlightenment.

Question 4:

Sudhiro, I repeat it again to you: for one who can wait infinitely, things happen immediately.

In these seven years you have been searching here and there. You could not trust what I said to you: "Wait, and wait infinitely; allow existence to happen to you, and all miracles are possible within you."

You have come back to me; now let this be the beginning of patience. Don't wander unnecessarily here and there. You cannot find truth; it is not an object that you have to go somewhere and find. It is your subjectivity; it is your interiority. By being patient, silently waiting, you suddenly come across yourself.

And the first taste of oneself is so tremendous that one cannot go back; one wants to go deeper and deeper into oneself. But it is a different kind of pilgrimage: you have not to do anything; you have just to be silent, allow things to settle on their own.

You are not fooling yourself - but if you don't understand the message, there is every possibility you can start fooling yourself again. To be foolish does not need much intelligence; but to be patient, waiting, needs great intelligence.

Have you ever thought why sick people in hospitals are called "patients"? There is some meaning in it, because all the medical people in the world have found that medicines can only help, it is really the relaxed sick person who heals himself - by being patient.

What is true about the body is even more true about the soul. Be patient. There is no place to go.

Yes, there is a space within you in which you have to get more and more drowned. People don't go inwards because they are afraid of drowning - it is an overwhelming experience.

Once I was sitting by the side of the Ganges in Allahabad, and a man jumped into the river and started shouting, "Help me! Save me!" I am not a savior, so I looked all around to see if some savior could be found - otherwise this idiot was going to spoil my clothes also. But there was nobody - so finally I had to jump.

He was a heavy man, a big man, but somehow I pulled him out. He said, "What kind of man are you? Why did you pull me out?"

I said, "This is strange. You were shouting, 'Help! Help! Save me.'"

He said, "That was out of fear. Really I was committing suicide!"

I said, "Then forgive me. I had no idea that a man who is committing suicide would shout for help - but I can understand that before jumping it is one thing; and when you really start drowning a fear arises.... You forget all the troubles because of which you were committing suicide: a new trouble has arisen which is far bigger." So I said, "I will never do such a thing again." And I pushed the man back into the river!

He said, "What are you doing!"

I said, "Now you commit suicide. I will sit by the side and wait."

And he started shouting, "Help me! What kind of strange man are you? Help me!"

I said, "Now help yourself."

But another man came meanwhile, jumped, and took him out. I said, "What are you doing? I did this - and he was very angry." But this time he was not angry; he had understood that he had not the courage to drown. I said, "What is the matter? You are very silent. Last time you were very angry."

He said, "I have understood one thing: that I will have to find some other way of committing suicide.

This drowning in the river is not for me."

I said, "I can help you."

He said, "You are really a strange man. First you pulled me out, and then you pushed me back...

and now you want to help me some other way."

I said, "I know many ways...."

He said, "I don't want to listen. I am going home."

I said, "That is up to you. You can go home, and if you want I can accompany you. On the way I can tell you many methods to commit suicide."

"But" he said, "I don't want to commit suicide."

But I followed him. He would stop and he would say, "Will you leave me or not?"

I said, "I am not going to leave you till we come to your home."

He said, "This is something. If I want to commit suicide, or if I don't want to commit suicide - it is my problem. You have made it your problem."

I said, "I am just trying to be helpful - just to be of some service at the last moment of your life."

He said, "But I am going to live!"

I said, "That you can decide later on. First, understand all the methods - simple methods." And then we passed a railway line and I told him, "This is also a good method. And it happens so quickly that even if you shout ?Help'... this and that... it will not disturb...."

He said, "But many times trains are very late."

I said, "That is true. You should always come with a tiffin carrier, so if the train is late you can have a good lunch and lie down again."

He said, "This I have never heard - that anybody committing suicide first enjoys lunch and then lies down.... And moreover it is going to rain; there are so many clouds."

I said, "Don't be worried about that. Don't you have an umbrella?... so while the train is coming, you keep the umbrella up. That will help you in two ways: you will not see the train coming, and your clothes will not be destroyed by the rain."

He said, "I pray to you, just leave me! I don't want to show you my house, because you seem to be a very strange person - you may start coming there." He said, "Really we have passed my house. I did not enter... I am going to meet a friend."

I said, "You can go anywhere. This is my address... whenever you need any suggestions about suicide. This is my expertise - to help people commit suicide."

He threw my card away. He said, "Keep your card. I am never going to commit suicide. I will never need you."

When you go inwards, you will feel afraid. You become alone - nobody is with you; and your center is almost a magnet - it pulls you. A fear can take grip of your mind: Where are you going? Will you be able to return? Many people become afraid of meditation. They just touch a superficial level and run away. But unless you gather courage and allow existence to dissolve you....

It is a dissolution. You will not be the way you used to be anymore - but you will be vast, as vast as existence itself.

So you are not going to be the loser - but that you will find only later on. When you have lost yourself, then you will find the treasure: it is not a question of your search - it is a question of your disappearance.

Your absence becomes the presence of God.

Okay, Vimal?

Yes, Osho.