Forget all about enlightenment

Question 1:

Shantam Lani, you have raised a significant question. It is meaningful for everybody to understand that modern research into the human mind divides humanity into two parts: the extrovert and the introvert.

The extroverts are the doers, explorers, adventurers - objective, love being in the world; alone, they feel completely lost. The introvert is just the opposite of the extrovert: he feels at ease and relaxed with himself when he is not doing anything - when his eyes are closed, when he is silently drowning into his own interiority.

This division is good as far as it goes, but it goes only to the limits of the mind. You have an extrovert mind, that is why you say, "I feel in my element when extroverted and in action. When I am quiet and when this busy bumble bee does not feel she has to be buzzing, it is very uncomfortable."

Meditation is a totally different dimension from the mind. The psychologists are very confused about it because they know nothing about meditation; they think the meditator is just another introvert - that is not true. The meditator is one who can be aware of his extrovert mind and also of his introvert mind - aloof, far away on the hills; watching all the games of the mind.

You are too much attached to the extrovert part of your mind - and anybody who is attached to half of the mind is going to be in trouble, because the other half is also there, neglected, repressed, ignored, humiliated. It will take its revenge. And there are many who are introverts. They think they are meditators, but they are not. They have just chosen another part of the mind and have become identified with it. The essential meditator is beyond mind - beyond extroversion and beyond introversion.

So you have to pull yourself out of your obsession with action, with extroversion, because that is being a kind of alcoholic - they call it "workaholic." If action is there, you are involved in it, and you can forget all about yourself: all your problems and all your anxieties are no longer there - at least not in your consciousness. They are still there; so whenever you find a moment when you are not doing anything - and you cannot continue to do for twenty-four hours a day; you have to relax too, you have to rest too - in those restful moments the repressed and neglected introverted mind tries to possess you.

And into the introverted mind you have thrown all kinds of garbage that you don't want to be identified with. Your extroverted mind is clean - you think that is you, and the introverted mind is not you, so you can go on throwing all kinds of rubbish into it, but it will surface. Whenever you are resting, it won't allow you to be at rest, it will make you fidgety.

My suggestion is, Lani, to get out of the extroverted mind - and don't get into the introverted mind.

They are two sides of the same coin. Learn a new secret: the secret of the watcher, who is neither doing something, nor deliberately not doing something. The watcher is just a mirror - he is reflecting whatever is happening. Going beyond mind is the greatest health and the greatest well- being possible to humanity. That does not mean that you cannot use your mind; in fact, only then can you use your mind. Right now the mind is using you; you are a slave of the extroverted mind.

There are many who have gone to the monasteries, to the mountains. They are introverted people - and to them introversion appears like meditation. That is not meditation either - they have just chosen the other side of the coin, and whenever there is a chance, immediately the extroverted mind will start creating desires and passions and longings and all kinds of things - hallucinations.

In all the old Indian scriptures, the sages come to a point.... The story is told about many saints and many sages - and it is not just a story, it is a very significant psychological fact: when a saint comes to the peak of his consciousness, Indian mythology says that the throne of the god Indra, in heaven, starts quivering. He becomes afraid - because if this man succeeds in attaining the highest consciousness, he will become Indra, and Indra will become an ordinary god.

So his strategy is to send beautiful women from heaven to distract the sage, and once he is distracted, he is destroyed. He loses his consciousness; desires start arising, lust overwhelms him - sensuality, sexuality, all raise their heads.

There is no Indra, and there is nobody who is sending things to distract you - it is your own mind. When the introverted mind reaches to its peak, the extroverted mind immediately becomes revengeful - it is being defeated.... Immediately it creates hallucinations - and sitting in the caves of the Himalayas or in a monastery, it is very easy to hallucinate.

All those beautiful women don't exist; they are just figments of your extroverted mind, which is saying, "What are you doing sitting here when such beautiful women are dancing around you? As far as your saintliness is concerned, you can pick it up again; but who knows whether these women will be there or not...?" This is your own mind playing games.

The extrovert is happy when in action, in a crowd, with people; but soon it becomes exhausted and tired, bored, and starts thinking of relaxing. That is the introverted mind poking its nose into your extroversion... and this game goes on and on. You are neither of them - but you become identified with them.

My suggestion is, Lani: this is the place where you can become unidentified with your mind. So when there is need to act, act - but let it not be your obsession; and when there is need to relax, relax - that should not be your obsession either. While acting, remain alert that you are not the mind, and while relaxing, also remember that you are not the mind.

You are the one who is watching.

Slowly, slowly the watching becomes more and more crystallized; it becomes your very being, and then you are free of the mind - and free to use it the way you want. But that will be a totally different quality: your action will not be something insane, doing because you have to do it - as if you are under a kind of possession, and the mind is forcing you to do something. So people are doing all kinds of things which are not needed.

Once the watcher is clear and separate from the mind, you have come into a new land, a new space - the space of witnessing - and this is your real soul. This which is neither active nor inactive, which only reflects, is you. This is the greatest mutation.

Those who die without this transformation have lived in vain, because if you can watch your mind in action, in inaction, you can also watch your body - healthy, sick - but you are separate. You can even watch death happening to your body and to your mind, because you are separate - you simply reflect whatsoever happens.

That is why a man who is really a meditator can die joyfully, because he is not dying; only the reflections in the mirror are disappearing. And I don't think you will come across a mirror that has tears in its eyes when some reflection disappears, or even a remembrance of the past, or a desire that the same face should be reflected in it again. No past, no future... the mirror is always in the present; whatever happens, it simply reflects.

There is a temple in China where, instead of a statue of Buddha, there is only a mirror. The whole temple is empty. The people who created the temple must have been great meditators: the mirror is to remind you of your inner being.

And then you are at ease in action, at ease in relaxation. In fact, you start using both - like the two wings of a bird. And once both your wings are functioning together, you have the freedom of the whole sky. It is your own: all the stars and the moon and the sun and all the directions... you are out of the prison.

So don't try to change the extrovert mind into an introvert mind. You have to get out from both the extrovert mind and the introvert mind. Just make a little effort: when you are active, watch that also.

I can move my hand, and still I can watch it. And this is the miracle - when you can watch your action, your action becomes very graceful, very beautiful; if you can watch your body, your body starts radiating a certain grace, a certain aura.

You have seen the whole world through your eyes. If you can watch from within your eyes, your eyes will start having a depth which you have not even conceived of in your dreams. Real life is far more beautiful than any dream, far more inconceivable than any imagination.

But get out of the mind.

Mind is your prison.

And here you can do anything you want - but remember watchfulness. Walking, also go on watching that you are walking. It is not that you have to repeat these words inside you, "I am walking"... just the feeling that I am sitting, that I am doing something, that I am not doing something, is enough.

And soon your watcher will come out of all kinds of fetters. It is your imprisoned splendor.

Question 2:

Devageet, my jokes are not jokes; they are my method to catch hold of you unawares. When you are listening to the joke, you are more intent not to miss the punchline... and that is a great opportunity for me to do my operation.

Your gorilla is dead. It was not a hairy suit; it was something in your heart - but it has been taken out. You are free from it.

Sometimes simple things can bring to you great experiences - because existence makes no difference between the simple and the great. Jokes have never been used for spiritual growth.

All kinds of methods have been used, but nobody has dared to use jokes as a method... afraid that the joke may make the whole thing very nonserious.

I can use the joke as a method because to me, to be serious is not to be spiritual - it is only being psychologically sick. To be playful, to be smiling, to be laughing... when you burst forth in laughter, your ego disappears. A joke kills the ego without any murder, without any bloodshed. Just in the laughter, you are suddenly fresh; all the dust that had gathered on you falls away.

I was wondering if the operation had been successful or not, because Devageet has been silent for a few days. Gorillas cannot remain silent so long; they cannot even sit in one place for a few moments. They are really very active people... but Devageet is free from his gorilla.

And buddhahood is not an attainment, it is only freedom from the gorilla, and nothing else. The animal in you disappears... and the God in you is discovered. It is difficult to believe, Devageet, but believe it or not, it has happened. I am responsible for killing the poor gorilla. Nothing was wrong in the gorilla, but it was preventing your buddhahood and its growth. The gorilla had to be removed.

With great love, I have taken it with a simple joke. Now you have to be a little alert, because the world is full of gorillas. I have taken one; another may enter in you. Many gorillas are searching for some place, some shelter, and you are a perfect shelter... and the post is vacant - so be alert! Keep the doors closed. Just write on the door: "Gorillas not allowed in anymore."

Something beautiful has happened to you. The spiritual explosion always happens as a very simple phenomenon. It is the egoist who has been trying to prove to the world that to be spiritual is something very great, arduous, an uphill task; it takes lives and lives to attain it. It is not so.

You are all born buddhas - covered with something which has to be removed, and which is not part of your nature. It is the society around you that wants you not to be a buddha. If you are a gorilla, it is perfectly okay; nobody is worried about you. A gorilla is not dangerous - at the most a good entertainment - but a buddha is really dangerous. His very presence is a fire with a magnetic force in it. It attracts people even to the point of being consumed by the fire.

The buddha is the most dangerous person in the world.

That is why the world either kills the buddhas or worships them. These are synonymous: killing is a way of getting rid of them; worshiping is also a way of getting rid of them.

When you worship a buddha, you are saying, "You are born a buddha; we are poor human beings.

At the most we can put two flowers at your feet. Just leave us alone... we have so many other things to do." This is also a very cultured way of creating distance. That is why, in every culture, either they have killed such people or they have said that they are incarnations of God. "It is easy for them. We are human beings, with all kinds of frailties, weaknesses; we cannot do it."

Just to create a distance, so many stories have been created - and I have been wondering continually why no psychologist has the guts to go into those stories and expose what is hidden behind them. For example, Gautam Buddha was born when his mother was standing under a tree.

Now, no woman has ever given birth to a child standing. Perhaps this was some accident, a kind of abortion; but the story is that Buddha was also born standing. As he came out of the womb, he stood on the earth, and the first thing he did was to take seven steps - a newborn baby taking seven steps and then declaring, "I am the greatest buddha in the world"....

Now, the people who were creating these stories were trying to create a distance between themselves and these awakened people. They were not ready to accept them being as human as they are, because then a great responsibility arises: if a human being can become a buddha, then what are you doing? Then it will be a great weight on the chest; it is better to put these buddhas as far away as possible.

If you go to a Jaina temple, you will see a strange thing: there are twenty-four Jaina tirthankaras, Jaina gods; all their ears are so big, the earlobes so long, that they are touching their shoulders.

That is one of the signs that a man is a tirthankara. You cannot find anybody who has such long lobes unless he goes through plastic surgery or some kind of massage continuously - like milking a cow.

But why does this kind of thing happen? Just to make them different from you. Mahavira lived naked in the hot sun of Bihar, but he never perspired. He does not perspire. This is possible only if he has plastic in the place of skin: plastic does not perspire. A human being has to perspire, because every pore in his body is breathing. It is not only your nose that breathes - if all the pores of your body are covered with thick paint, and your nose is left open, you cannot live more than three hours.

Each pore has its own way of breathing - and if there are pores, perspiration is not something evil, it is simply a natural way of keeping you at the same temperature, it is a protection. When it is too hot and you perspire... do you understand what it means? It means your body is bringing water out of the skin, so the heat evaporates the water, and is destroyed in evaporating it, and your temperature remains the same. If you cannot perspire, your temperature will go so high... and you don't have a wide range: after only one hundred and ten degrees, you will be flat on the earth, dead.

Perspiration keeps you continuously at the normal temperature: ninety-eight degrees. That is why when you are feeling cold you start shivering. Do you think it is the cold that is making you shiver?

It is your body mechanism: by shivering, you create heat. Your teeth start chattering - that way you create heat. Any movement, and heat is created, and that heat is protective. Because Mahavira does not perspire, he need not take a bath. He never used to take a bath - there was no need. That was for ordinary human beings - to take a bath, to clean themselves; Mahavira was always clean.

Are these people talking about a real living being or about a marble statue? But they had to invent all these fictitious ideas to create as much distance as possible between you and those who have attained, so you can feel at ease, without any tension, that whatever you are, you cannot go beyond it.

But I say unto you: All these stories are fictitious. I can say it with absolute certainty that if Mahavira lived, he must have perspired; only dead people don't perspire. If Buddha was not just a fiction but a reality, then he could not have stood up as soon as he was born and taken seven steps and declared, "I am the greatest buddha - past, present, or future."

Question 3:

Satgyana, the distance between agony and ecstasy, between darkness and light, is so small you can measure it in inches. How much is the distance between your head and your heart? Maybe twelve inches, fifteen inches - and that is the only distance: you have to come down from the head to the heart. It is not even an uphill task; you have just to come down, roll down, towards the heart.

And don't feel any agony - agony is also a shadow of the ego.

On one hand, you are saying, "The ecstasy of being in Your beautiful presence... the thrill of Your love, Your laughter, Your dance, Your silence" - if this is true, why are you concerned about your own transformation? Let this beautiful presence, this dance, this silence, this ecstasy, overwhelm you.

But you remain standing aloof, and you are thinking about your own transformation: that creates agony.

"The agony of realizing the transformation has not yet happened to me"... to you, the transformation is never going to happen. You have to disappear, and you will find transformation is there. You will never need transformation: either you, or transformation - you can choose.

That is why I say that when there is dance and there is ecstasy and there is a beautiful communion, get lost in it. Don't just stand in the corner; become part of the laughter, part of the ecstasy, part of the mystery that is created by the silence of so many people here.

For a few moments just put aside your concern with yourself, and then you will not take it back up again. Because you are the agony, and your absence is ecstasy. And the whole work here is somehow to persuade you not to be the ego, but just a silent presence with no sense of "I."

The distance is very small... I am not telling you to go for a thousand miles' pilgrimage - just a few inches, from your head to your heart. And it is so easy, because you are going downwards:

you simply stop clinging to the head, where the ego resides, and immediately you will find yourself slipping into a totally new wonderland which you can see happening here, but which is not happening to you.

To you, it cannot happen. It is happening to those who are no longer concerned with themselves, no longer concerned with attainment, no longer concerned with transformation, no longer concerned with enlightenment.

This contradiction has to be understood: unless you forget all about enlightenment, it is not going to happen to you, because it is not an achievement. All achievements are of the ego: they are decorations of the ego, and the ego is interested in decorating itself with enlightenment, too.

There is a beautiful story in the life of Mahavira. Prasenjita, one of the great kings of those days, had conquered almost the whole known world, and he was very much gratified and very egoistic.

But his wife was deeply interested in Mahavira and his teachings.

One night she said to Prasenjita, "Tomorrow morning Mahavira is coming to the city. I am going to meet him and to listen him."

Prasenjita said, "But what has he got that I have not got? He is just a beggar, naked, and I am a world conqueror, a CHAKRAVARTIN."

His wife laughed and she said, "You have everything; and yet you don't have anything, because you don't have that quality of meditativeness which is the real treasure. All of this kingdom will disappear, will be taken away by death; there is only one thing death cannot destroy, and that is meditativeness.

You don't have it."

He could not sleep the whole night. He said to his wife, "I'm coming with you. I will purchase this meditation, whatsoever the cost."

His wife said, "Purchase it...?"

He said, "If it is not available, I will conquer it." Those were the words he understood: everything can be purchased by money; everything can be conquered by power.

His wife said, "You had better come to see Mahavira."

And the same question he raised with Mahavira: "I have come here.... Give me your meditation, and I am ready to give you anything you want - you can take my whole kingdom. My wife has shattered my ego, telling me that you have something which I don't have."

Mahavira laughed, and he said, "There was no need to come so far to see me. Just in your city a very poor man, who is my disciple, has what you are asking for. And he is so poor... perhaps he may sell it." It was a joke.

Prasenjita said, "I know that man - there is no problem." He turned his chariot towards that poor man's house. His chariot had never been in that part of the city, so a whole crowd gathered. The poor man came out of his house and he said, "What can I do for you?"

Prasenjita said, "You need not do anything. Just give me meditation and whatever you want in return, you will receive ten times more. Just name the price."

The poor man had tears in his eyes, and he said, "I am crying for your poverty. You don't even understand that there are things which cannot be purchased. I can give my life to you, but as far as meditation is concerned, how can I give it to you? Not that I don't want to... but it is a quality of egolessness, and you are wanting it just as a decoration for your ego - because your wife has hurt your ego by telling you that Mahavira has something which you don't have."

Meditation is something that you have to grow within yourself. The only condition for growing it is dropping the ego. Just enjoy whatever existence has made available here. Dance it, sing it, laugh it, love it - and forget all about yourself. And it will happen; not to you - but it will happen when your idea of yourself is absent.

Question 4:

Disha, I have been up to the same mischief all my life. Just it goes on becoming bigger and bigger.

And I have to move because when it becomes too bigger, I have to find a new place, new space, new people to participate - but it is the same mischief. I want to destroy you, so that God can be born in you.

I want your death, so that you can be resurrected into a life which is eternal.

Okay, Vimal?

Yes, Osho.