The child is still within you

Question 1:

Anand Gogo, playfulness is one of the most repressed parts of human beings. All societies, cultures, civilizations, have been against playfulness because the playful person is never serious. And unless a person is serious, he cannot be dominated, he cannot be made ambitious, he cannot be made to desire power, money, prestige.

The child never dies in anyone. It is not that the child dies when you grow, the child remains.

Everything that you have been is still within you, and will remain within you until your very last breath.

But society is always afraid of nonserious people. Nonserious people will not be ambitious for money, or political power; they would rather enjoy existence. But enjoying existence cannot bring you prestige, cannot make you powerful, cannot fulfill your ego; and the whole world of man revolves around the idea of the ego. Playfulness is against your ego - you can try it and see. Just play with children, and you will find your ego is disappearing, you will find that you have become a child again.

It is not only true about you, it is true about everyone.

Because the child within you has been repressed, you will repress your children. Nobody allows their children to dance and to sing and to shout and to jump. For trivial reasons - perhaps something may get broken, perhaps they may get their clothes wet in the rain if they run out - for these small things a great spiritual quality, playfulness, is completely destroyed.

The obedient child is praised by his parents, by his teachers, by everybody; and the playful child is condemned. His playfulness may be absolutely harmless, but he is condemned because there is potentially a danger of rebellion. If the child goes on growing with full freedom to be playful, he will turn out to be a rebel. He will not be easily enslaved; he will not be easily put into armies to destroy people, or to be destroyed himself.

The rebellious child will turn out to be a rebellious youth. Then you cannot force marriage on him; then you cannot force him into a particular job; then the child cannot be forced to fulfill the unfulfilled desires and longings of the parents. The rebellious youth will go his own way. He will live his life according to his own innermost desires - not according to somebody else's ideals.

The rebel is basically natural. The obedient child is almost dead; hence the parents are very happy, because he is always under control.

Man is strangely sick: he wants to control people - in controlling people your ego is fulfilled, you are somebody special - and he himself also wants to be controlled, because by being controlled you are no longer responsible.

For all these reasons, playfulness is stifled, crushed from the very beginning.

You are asking, "There is a beautiful small boy within me, whom I have neglected for a long time.

This small boy is playful, curious, and ecstatic - but most of the time I do not allow him to lose control." What is the fear? The fear is implanted by others: always remain in control, always remain disciplined, always respect those who are older than you. Always follow the priest, the parents, the teachers - they know what is right for you. Your nature is never allowed to have its say.

Slowly, slowly you start carrying a dead child within yourself. This dead child within you destroys your sense of humor: you cannot laugh with your total heart, you cannot play, you cannot enjoy the small things of life. You become so serious that your life, rather then expanding, starts shrinking.

I have always wondered why Christianity has become the world's greatest religion. Again and again I have come to the conclusion that it is because of the cross and the crucified Jesus - so sad, so serious; naturally... you cannot expect Jesus to be smiling on the cross. And millions of people have found a similarity between themselves and Jesus on the cross.

Its seriousness, its sadness, has been the reason that Christianity has spread more than any other religion.

I would like our churches and temples, our mosques, our synagogues to become nonserious, more playful, full of laughter and joy. That would bring to humanity a more healthy, wholesome, integrated soul.

But you are here.... At least being my sannyasin you need not carry your cross on your shoulders.

Drop the cross. I teach you to dance, to sing, to play.

Life should be, each moment, a precious creativity. What you create does not matter - it may be just sandcastles on the seashore - but whatever you do should come out of your playfulness and joy.

Your child should never be allowed to die. Nourish it, and don't be afraid that it will go out of control.

Where can it go? And even if it goes out of control - so what? What can you do out of control? You can dance like a madman, laugh like a madman; you can jump and jog like a madman... people may think you are mad, but that is their problem. If you are enjoying it, if your life is nourished by it, then it does not matter, even if it becomes a problem for the rest of the world.

In my college days I used to go for a morning walk very early, three o'clock, four o'clock in the morning. Just beside my house was a small street with bamboo groves, very dark.... And that was the best place, because it was very rare to meet anybody there... just one watchman from a rich man's house used to see me.

But one day - this is what perhaps you would call going out of control - I was jogging along the street and the idea came to me that it would be good if I jogged backwards. In India there is a superstition that ghosts walk backwards, but I had completely forgotten that, and anyway there was nobody on the street... so I started jogging backwards. I was enjoying it so much, and it was such a cool morning.

Then the milkman happened to see me.... People used to bring milk from small villages, and he had come a little earlier than usual, so he had never met me before. Carrying his buckets of milk, he suddenly saw me. I must have been under the shadow of the bamboos, and when he came close to the shadow where there was a small patch of moonlight, I suddenly came out, jogging backwards.

He shouted, "My God!" dropped both his buckets, and ran away.

Still, I did not realize that he was afraid of me, I thought he was afraid of something else. So I took both his buckets, although the milk was gone.... I thought I should at least give him his buckets, so I ran after him. Seeing me coming... I have never seen anybody run so fast! He could have been a world champion in any race. I was very surprised. I was shouting, "Wait!" and he looked back, and without saying anything....

The whole scene was being watched by the gatekeeper of the rich man. He told me, "You will kill him."

I said, "I am simply going to return his buckets."

He said, "You leave the buckets with me; when the sun rises he will come. But don't do such things - sometimes you make me afraid too, but because I know.... For years I have been seeing you doing all kinds of strange things on this street, but sometimes I become afraid; I think: who knows whether it is really you or a ghost coming backwards towards me? Sometimes I close the gate and go inside; I keep my gun always loaded because of you!"

I said, "You should understand one thing, that if I am a ghost, your gun will be useless - you cannot kill a ghost with a bullet. So don't ever use it, because a ghost will not be affected by it; but if a real man is there, you may be arrested as a murderer."

He said, "That's true. That I never thought about, that ghosts...." And right in front of me, he took out all the bullets. He said, "Sometimes the fear is so great... I may shoot some man and kill him."

I said, "Just look at me: first be certain whether I am a real man or a ghost. You are taking your bullets out, and it may be just a ghost who is persuading you!"

He said, "What...?" And he started putting the bullets back in his gun.

I said, "You keep these two buckets." I remained for almost six months in that part of the city, and every day I asked the watchman, "Has that man come yet?"

He said, "He has not come. These two buckets are still waiting for him, and I think that now he will never come. Either he has gone forever, or he has become so afraid of this place that he never comes on this street. I have been watching and when my shift changes and the other watchman comes, I tell him that if somebody comes... and we keep these buckets in front of the gate, so he will recognize that his buckets are here. But six months have passed, and there is no sign of him."

I said, "This is a very strange thing."

He said, "There is nothing strange about it. You would have killed anybody, coming suddenly out of the darkness. Why were you going backwards? Jogging I know many people do, but doing it backwards...."

I said, "I have been jogging, and I became bored always going forwards; just for a change I was trying it backwards. I never realized that just on that day that idiot was going to come - nobody ever comes on this street. That man must have spread a rumor - and rumors spread like wildfire. Even the landlord in whose house I was living heard that on this street....

He told me, "Stop going so early for your morning walk; go only when the sun has risen, because one man has seen a ghost."

I said, "Who told you?"

He said, "My wife told me, and the whole neighborhood knows; after eight o'clock in the evening the street becomes empty."

I told him, "You may not believe it, but there was no ghost. In fact, it was I who was jogging backwards...."

He said, "Don't try to befool me."

I said, "You can come with me. At three o'clock in the morning there is nobody."

He said, "Why should I take the risk? But one thing is certain: if you don't stop going, then you will have to leave my house. You cannot live here."

I said, "This is very strange. Even if the street is full of ghosts, why should you insist that I leave your house? You cannot force me. I pay the rent... you have given me a receipt. And in the court you cannot say that it is because this man goes on a street where ghosts jog - I don't think any court is going to accept this reason."

He said, "Do you mean you will drive me to the courts? If you are so insistent, you can live in this house. I will sell it. I will leave this house."

"But," I said, "I am not a ghost."

He said, "That I know - but mixing with ghosts? Some day some ghost may follow you into the house - and I am a man with a wife and children. I don't want to take any risks."

Here, you don't need to be afraid: you can jog backwards, and even if you are a real ghost, nobody is going to take any notice of you. If you cannot allow your playfulness here, then you will not be able to allow it anywhere in the world. Allow it totally - let it go out of control; and once your child is really alive and dancing within you, it will change the very flavor of your life. It will give you a sense of humor, a beautiful laughter, and it will destroy all your headiness. It will make you a man of the heart.

The man who lives in his head does not live at all. Only the man who lives in his heart, and sings songs which are not understandable to the head, dances which are not in any way relevant to any context outside you... just out of your abundance, out of your affluence: you have so much energy that you would like to dance and sing and shout... so do it!

It will make you more alive; it will give you a chance to taste what life is all about. The serious man is dead before his death. Long before his death, he remains almost like a corpse.

Life is such a valuable opportunity, it should not be lost in seriousness. Keep seriousness for the grave. Let seriousness collapse into the grave; waiting for the last judgment day, be serious. But don't become a corpse before the grave.

I am reminded of Confucius. One of his disciples asked him a very typical question asked by thousands of people: "Will you say something to me about what happens after death?"

Confucius said, "All these thoughts about death you can contemplate in your grave after death. Right now, live!"

There is a time to live, and there is a time to die. Don't mix them, otherwise you will miss both. Right now, live totally and intensely; and when you die, then die totally. Don't die partially: that one eye dies, and one eye keeps looking around; one hand dies, and the other hand goes on searching for truth. When you die, die totally... and contemplate what death is. But right now, don't waste time in contemplating things which are far away: live this moment. The child knows how to live intensely and totally, and without any fear that he will go out of control.

In this temple you are allowed to be yourself without any inhibitions. I would like this to happen all over the world. This is only the beginning. Here, start living moment to moment totally and intensely, joyfully and playfully - and you will see that nothing goes out of control; that your intelligence becomes sharper; that you become younger; that your love becomes deeper. And when you go out into the world, wherever you go, spread life, playfulness, joy, as far away as possible - to every nook and corner of the earth.

If the whole world starts laughing and enjoying and playing, there will be a great revolution. War is created by serious people; murder is committed by serious people; suicide is committed by serious people - madhouses are full of serious people. Just watch what harm seriousness has been doing to human beings and you will jump out of your seriousness, and you will allow your child, which is waiting within you, to play and to sing and to dance.

My whole religion consists of playfulness.

This existence is our home: these trees and stars are our brothers and sisters; these oceans and rivers and mountains are our friends. In this immensely friendly universe you are sitting like a stone buddha - I don't preach the stone buddha; I want you to be a dancing buddha.

The followers of Buddha will not like it, but I do not care what anybody thinks. I simply care about truth. If a truth does not know how to dance, it is crippled; if a buddha is not capable of laughter, something is missing; if a buddha cannot mix with children and play with them, he has come close to buddhahood, but he has not yet been totally awakened. Something is asleep.

In Japan there is a series of nine pictures and those pictures are tremendously significant. In the first picture a man has lost his bull. He is looking all around - there are trees and thick forests... but no sign of the bull.

In the second, he finds the footprints of the bull.

In the third, it appears that the bull is hiding behind the trees; just the backside of the bull is visible.

In the fourth, he has nearly reached the bull, and you see the whole bull.

In the fifth, he has caught the bull by the horns.

In the sixth, he has struggled with the bull.

In the seventh, he has conquered the bull. He is sitting on the bull.

In the eighth, they are moving back towards home.

In the ninth, the bull is in his stall, and the man is playing on his flute.

These nine pictures are missing one - they came from China, and the Chinese pack has ten pictures.

When they were brought to Japan, the tenth was dropped because it looked very outrageous - and the tenth is my buddha.

In the tenth picture, the bull is in the stall and the buddha is going with a bottle of wine towards the marketplace. The Japanese mind thought that this would be too much: what will people think of a buddha with a bottle of wine? This is outrageous to the ordinary religious mind, but to me it is the most important picture out of the whole series. Without it the series is incomplete.

When one has achieved buddhahood, then one should become just an ordinary human being. Going to the marketplace with a bottle of wine is symbolic: it simply means that now there is no need to sit in meditation, meditation is already in the heart; now there is no need to be serious. One has found what one wanted to find; now it is time to rejoice. That bottle of wine is a symbol of rejoicing - now it is time to celebrate!

And where can you celebrate except in the marketplace? For meditation you can go into the forest, into the mountains, but for celebration, you will have to go to the marketplace. Where are you going to find a disco...?

Always remember the tenth picture. Don't stop at the ninth - the ninth is beautiful, but incomplete.

One step more... just playing the flute is not enough. Get drunk!... and dance madly!

And, Gogo, you have such a beautiful name - whatever you do will fit with Gogo.

Question 2:

Rama Prem, it was not only you, it happened with many people, because in Woodlands, where I used to live, the door to my room and the door to my closet were exactly the same. For anybody who entered for the first time, it was natural - the chances were fifty-fifty, so almost fifty percent of the people used to go into the closet - and I enjoyed it very much! I used to have an electric remote control lock by my side for both doors. Once a person entered my closet, I would lock it.

Perhaps you are still inside the closet - that is why you are saying, "It has been an uphill task, a battle ever since." You have not come out yet, and I don't live in Woodlands any more.

It was really fun, because people would come out of the closet so embarrassed, so upset.... The closet was big enough, so they would move around inside, and there were so many robes... so they would go around the robes, and finally they would come out, very shocked. What had happened? - they had entered by the same door, or so they thought.

Then as they came out, they became aware that there was another door just beside it, exactly the same, painted the same color.

There was also a third door, which led to my bathroom. Once in a while - it did not happen to you, Rama Prem - somebody would come out of the closet door in a hurry, and - as the mind is, it goes to extremes - he would miss the middle one and go to the third door, which would take him into the bathroom. Those who entered the bathroom would take longer to come out, because from my bathroom opened another door, which led to my sauna.

Coming out of all those doors, they would feel so embarrassed that they would ask, "What happened to the door by which I came in?" And I would say, "Always remember the golden mean, the middle one."

And it is not only true about those doors: in your life also, never go to the extremes. Always find the middle one, the golden mean. At the extremes, truth is always a half-truth; only in the middle is it complete, is it whole.

But now there is no problem. You think that your life has been an uphill battle ever since. We make our lives, we are the creators of our lives - it all depends on you. If you are trying to achieve something far away, if you are trying to achieve something which is not natural, then life becomes an uphill task. But if you are not trying to achieve anything unnatural, then life becomes a let-go, then you start flowing downwards with the stream of life.

Lao Tzu has called it the watercourse way, and I think that is the right concept for anyone who wants to live a relaxed, silent, peaceful and joyous existence. Never try to go against the current - you cannot win. Nature is too big, you are too small. You will simply get tired - and the more tired you become, the more life will look gloomy, dark, meaningless... just let the river take you wherever it is going.

A man who has a goal to reach is bound to remain in anguish and anxiety. My approach is that the river of life itself is going towards the ocean; you just float with it. Wherever it takes you is your home. And while you are floating with the river, you can enjoy the sun, the trees on the bank, the birds and their song, the stars in the night, and the moon. The whole existence - all is available to you because your whole energy is open, is not engaged, is free.

Rama Prem, just follow the watercourse way. Be relaxed, and allow life to take you wherever it is going. Don't be bothered that it should reach some specific goal; it has no specific goal. Just go on dancing with the river, singing with the river. You have made it a battlefield, fighting with the river, and then you are in trouble. You will never win, and you will never be able to enjoy a single moment, because every particle of your energy has to be put into fighting. Don't fight life.

But all the religions have been teaching you to fight life, to be anti-life. And they have created a poor humanity, which has forgotten to laugh, forgotten to dance, forgotten to sing; a humanity which knows only one thing: to fight.

Stop fighting. Every river reaches the ocean - and without any map, without any guidebook, without any guru. It is in the very nature of the river that it goes on flowing, and because it is not going upwards, there is no struggle. It is going downwards, so wherever it finds a lower level, it moves in that direction - and the ocean is at the lowest point, so no river can miss the ocean. The ocean is your goal; the ocean IS God.

If you allow yourself to be taken by life without fight, you will reach God - nothing can be a hindrance or a barrier to you. So if you feel that it has become a battle, nobody else is responsible except you.

And it is in your hands to change your direction within a moment. Don't fight... and to be defeated by life is not a defeat; it is our life:

to be defeated by it is our victory.

The moment you start understanding this strange statement - that to be defeated by life is our victory - you have found the very secret of all success, of all blessings.

Question 3:

Premda, I am aware that something happened to you. It was a jump, and it was not short. But it was a jump of consciousness - that is why you are puzzled. And when consciousness jumps, the body goes into strange postures, which you could not do deliberately even if you wanted to. The jump of consciousness was not deliberate. Here, whatsoever happens is never deliberate.

Anything deliberate is going to be very small, it is going to be smaller than you. Anything that happens without any deliberation on your part - you are just a watcher, and it happens... you are just just standing by the side, only an observer, not a doer: then something greater than you is happening.

Later on you felt both weak and strong. That must have puzzled you - and will puzzle others - but it is an absolutely certain consequence, because something happened that was beyond your control.

Your ego was not in control, hence the weakness. Your ego felt threatened; you had come too close to the point where the ego can simply fall apart.

And at the same time you felt strong. Your consciousness felt strong because for the first time, for a few moments, it was not controlled by the ego. For the first time, for a few moments, it had wings of its own, it was not in the chains and the bondage of the ego. So your soul felt strong and your ego felt weak.

It is a good sign. The beginning of the death of the ego, the beginning of the end of the ego, and the beginning of your entry into the world of consciousness.

But later on your ego must have taken up its old possession, its old domination over your consciousness; and then you wrote: "The only certainty I have now is that I cannot jump." That is not your certainty, that is the ego, which has taken the power back into its own hands. For a moment the consciousness had slipped out.

You need not deliberately try to jump, that will not happen, because who will deliberately try? It will be your ego. You don't have any access to your consciousness yet. It was just that as I turned back and looked at you, you completely forgot about your ego - and jumped. Forgetting one's ego is the only jump that can bring you back to yourself. But never try deliberately. Allow it to happen just as it hap-pened this morning, on its own. Do not make any effort. When it happens, just be totally with it, don't hinder it, and don't feel weak. The weakness is not yours, the weakness is of the ego - the false self that is pretending to be your real soul.

Your real soul has felt strong for the first time. Give it more chances. And slowly, slowly it will become capable of coming out of the bondage on its own. The ego cannot keep it; it is just a kind of hypnotic conditioning, because from the very childhood your ego has been supported by everybody. All the nourishment has been given to the ego, and your soul has been starving. You have forgotten all about your soul.

Being here with me, it is going to happen more and more. Now that it has happened once, the possibility will become greater and greater. It will happen suddenly, first in my presence and then even without my presence. Sitting silently in your room, you will find a tremendous strength arising in you. And at the same time something is dying - something that is not you; something that has always been pretending to be yourself. The pretender has to die, the false has to disappear, so that the real can take its place.

And once the real is in its own place, your whole life becomes authentic. Each act takes on a tremendous beauty and grace; each word comes out from the very deepest part of your being, full of fragrance - fragrance that you cannot find anywhere else in the world.

Once, a Sufi mystic came to see me. One of my friends had made a beautiful marble hall for me to conduct meditation classes in and to use for my library. It was surrounded by a beautiful garden.

The whole day it was empty; only in the evening would people come to meditate. The Sufi had come in the afternoon, and he wanted to see the meditation hall, so I took him there. I was puzzled - it was the first time I had ever seen anybody doing that kind of thing.... He went around the hall, sniffing like a police dog, smelling this corner, that corner... and that hall was pure marble, nothing else; there was nothing in the hall.

I have always liked empty places. I was standing there, looking at him - an old man; he sniffed all around, and he was very joyous. And he said to me, "Whatever has been happening here is good, because I can smell the same smell which arises in me when I am in meditation."

He first gave me the idea that meditation can be smelled. Perhaps for Sufis it is easier, because for centuries they have been using perfume, certain perfumes which are in some way similar, a far away echo of the inner fragrance. They are the only people in the world who have worked for hundreds of years in search - in the outside world - of a similar kind of smell.

That day I started thinking, perhaps if somebody starts searching for taste?... Meditation may give you a new taste - because there are scriptures which say that meditators start having a sweet taste in their mouth. Perhaps all the five senses may have something to say about meditation.

Eyes - it has always been known that they express your meditativeness; the energy that jumps from one person to another jumps from your eyes to the other person's eyes. Eyes are the most sensitive part of your body; naturally they are capable of catching the subtlest vibration of light, of depth, of profundity, of love.

You all know that when you are in love, your eyes are not the same. When a lover looks at his beloved his eyes are not the same - although they are the same eyes, but something inside those eyes changes, some new energy starts flowing through those eyes.

Meditation is a far greater phenomenon than love.

Premda, you jumped well, but don't try to do it deliberately because you will fail. Just be grateful that it happened, and wait with silent longing, not expecting but just available; if it happens, you will be tremendously grateful.

Don't demand it, because these are such delicate things that expectations, demands, can destroy them. Simply wait, with a longing heart, and it will happen again and again, and it will start happening without me - I am just an excuse. And then slowly, slowly it need not happen... the ego disappears; your soul is settled in its right place. It has been displaced by society, by a false substitute. The false must die for the truth, for the real to assert itself. The false was feeling weak, and the truth within you felt strong. Nourish that strength, and let that weak part of you starve, and let it die.

The death of the ego is the birth of God within you. It is your real birth. From that birth, a totally different kind of life, a life of celebration, starts.

Okay, Vimal?

Yes, Osho.