When buddhas rebel

Question 1:

Nitin, your coming to me was from the very beginning not right. Those who come to me through their intellect only think they have come to me; they never arrive.

You were attracted because you were intellectually convinced of what I was saying.

You have never been in love with me, but only with the words, arguments. And the words and arguments are not my being. Because of this wrong beginning, ten years have passed, but you have not moved a single inch.

You think that there are moments of trust, love and openness; those are your imagination, because there are never moments of trust. When trust comes, it never goes. There are no moments of love - when love comes, it stays, forever and forever.

There are no moments of openness - and if you have known a single moment of openness, you will not close yourself again. Because closed, you are in darkness, cut off from existence and cut off from all that is valuable. For what should you close? You can remain closed if you have not known a moment of openness. Once you have tasted the moment of openness, it is impossible to go back.

So, the first thing you say is: "I was first attracted to You through the mind." You are still attracted through the mind. And mind never creates any bridge; when you are attracted through the mind you are falling in love with your own mind. You are using me as a support for your own arguments, for your own philosophy, for your own religion, and you are deceiving yourself that you are falling in love with me.

Mind never falls in love; it is the deadly enemy of love. It is so egocentric that it will always take anything that is supportive to it, that is nourishment to it.

These ten years I have been watching you, and I have been really surprised. You are amongst so many lovers - you see their joy, you see their songs, you see their dance, you hear their laughter - but nothing stirs within you, because everything goes into your head. And the head is the most superficial thing in your being.

So it is not that "in the beginning" you were attracted through the mind; I am afraid even in the end you will remain attracted through the mind. It is good to be aware of it, because then a change is possible.

You say, "I loved what You had to say." That could have been listened to from a tape recorder. Do you think you will fall in love with the tape recorder? You are in love with your own ego so much that you go on gathering everything that supports it, nourishes it, makes it stronger - and this is not the place to make your ego stronger! This is the place where you should lose your ego, and hopefully will not find it again.

The head-oriented approach to me has been destructive to your ten years; it can destroy your ten lives. You are saying, "It has been almost ten years since You gave me sannyas." I never give sannyas to anybody - you take sannyas. Just see the cunningness of the mind: you have taken sannyas, I have not given it to you. And you can drop sannyas any moment because you have taken it. If I had given it, then only I can take it back; you cannot drop it.

I did not knock on your door saying, "Nitin, please become a sannyasin." You came to me. You asked for sannyas. It was just out of compassion that I gave you sannyas, knowing perfectly well it was not going to change anything in you. You came here following your wife - she is an authentic sannyasin; she is not in love with my words.

When you love me, it does not matter what I say. To the loving heart, words don't mean anything; but the presence of the person, his love, his abundant readiness to share his bliss - this is a totally different approach.

But I know your problem: you are a poor chartered accountant. Accountants are not known to be lovers, and lovers never account. Your mind is full of your accountings: how much you are gaining.

You must be keeping inside you all the records. But that is not the way of love. So first you have to drop your false ideas. One is, that in the beginning you came through the mind. I insist again: you are still here because of the mind. You have a trained mind.

Secondly, you say, "You gave me sannyas." That is unnecessarily blaming me. You took sannyas; you asked for it. If these false ideas disappear - then perhaps there is a possibility of transformation.

And you are also unconsciously aware of what I am saying because you say, "And I am afraid I am still connected through the mind."

Mind never connects; it disconnects.

If you are all here, enclosed in your minds, then there are five hundred people. But if you are here, singing and dancing and celebrating through the heart, then there is only one consciousness.

Mind divides; and particularly the mind of a chartered accountant. You are spoilt by your accountancy. You are a good accountant, you have a good mind, a sharp intellect - but these are not of any use in sannyas. You are clinging to them, and you are with me because you feel I agree with you. You will have to change the whole thing: you have to agree with me; I do not have to be in agreement with you. And when I say you have to agree with me, that agreement is not going to be of the mind, but only of the heart. When your heart agrees with me there is a harmony and a bridge and things start taking mysterious, miraculous changes.

You say, "In these years there have been but few instances when I have known the feelings of love, of trust and openness." Absolutely wrong! You are trying to console yourself; because people are living here in trust, in love, in openness, and you don't want to appear an absolute beggar who has not known any moment of love, of trust, or of openness.

Because the basic principle about love, trust or openness is: they come but they never go. Why should one leave the joy of love and fall into the misery of lovelessness? Why should one know the beauty of trust and still go back to his mind, to his arithmetic and accountancy?

I am not saying that you have to drop your accounting. Mind can do that, but through that you cannot be connected with me. If you can drop these ideas it will be a shock to you - that you have not known even moments of love, moments of trust, moments of openness - but this shock is going to be of immense value. It will heal you. This shock will awaken you.

You say, "My mind usually comes in and ends these moments." Mind has not the power to end love; this simply shows you have not known anything of love or trust. When people fall in love, however great a mind they may have, the love is going to be victorious, not the mind.

Mind is juiceless, dry bones. It is a bio-computer; it is not your soul. And unless you start from the heart you cannot arrive at the being: heart is the gate to the being. Mind does not allow you to go out of itself - just out of the fear that you may come across the heart, which is so juicy, so beautiful, so lovely and so loving, that meeting the heart, mind has no way to pull you back.

You can use the mind as an instrument, but it cannot remain your master; and, Nitin, it is still your master. You are quoting a Sufi saying which you cannot understand. The only person alive on the earth who can understand it is Ajit Saraswati. He was in the same trap in which you are - he approached me from his mind. Because I was saying things which he had not the courage to say, or was not articulate enough to say, he came closer to me, and as he became more and more articulate, listening, he asked me, "Many Rotary Clubs, Lions Clubs ask me to speak about You - should I go?"

I never prevent people; I knew that this was going to be his downfall. I said, "If they are inviting you, you can go." And he started talking to the Rotary Clubs in Poona and Kholapur and Sholapur - in different places. He had come with me to America too, and when he found that he could say the same words, he could manage to argue in the same way, he came back to Poona.

There was a celebration in the ashram and everybody thought that he had come directly from the commune, he must have brought some flavor with him - so they asked him to speak. And I was informed that: "It was such a surprise to us that he was not speaking about You, he was speaking himself - and he knows nothing."

And since I have come here he has not come to the ashram, he has not come to any meetings, he has not come even to see me once - and he has been related to me almost for twenty years. But that relation was the same as your relation: of the mind. Now he has become a parrot. He runs small classes where he teaches - not even mentioning my name; he teaches as if he has experienced.

Zareen asked him, "You have not come to see Osho?"

He said, "I love him very much. He is in my heart; I need not come to see him." Can you see the cunningness of the mind? It means lovers should stop seeing each other, because what is the point?

"I love you too much. You are in my heart; there is no need to see you."

In the ashram it has become a joke - if somebody wants to avoid somebody else he says, "I love you too much. You are in my heart; we need not meet. There is no need." This is a great way!

Anando was telling me that some sannyasin was interested in her, but she was feeling utterly disgusted by the man, so she said, "I love you too much. You are in my heart; we need not see each other."

You are quoting a Sufi song, "I love you whether I know it or not." It is a very mysterious statement, and only a mystic can make it - not you, Nitin; you cannot even understand the meaning of it. The Sufi mystic is saying, "I love you whether I know it or not." He is giving expression to the idea that whether the trees know about their roots or not, those roots are their very life; without them the trees cannot exist at all. The Sufi mystic is saying about God that, "I must be loving you, otherwise why I am alive? Without your love nourishing me continuously, life is impossible."

But he is a humble man. He says, "It does not matter whether I know it or not, but one thing is certain: love must be happening, because I am still alive. Not only I must be in love with you, you are also in love with me - whether I know it or not."

Those who know it become enlightened. Those who don't know it - they also are nourished by the same source as any Gautam Buddha; but you cannot say that to me.

I am not an invisible God and love is not something that comes through the back door, you sometimes know it and sometimes don't know it. Love comes through the front door and comes like a flood. It drowns you: how you can avoid knowing it?

Love is the only thing, perhaps, which does not make any sound, does not speak, but is still heard.

It does not become your knowledge, but still there is a knowing far higher than knowledge. Your love for me is because of the words I say to you. You hear in those words echoes of your own ideas, but basically your love is for your own ideas. Because I am also expressing them - perhaps you were not so clear, things were vague, my statements have made them clear - you think you owe to me your love, your trust, your openness. But these are all mind games. Be clear that you have never loved anybody except yourself.

"Do you see any possibility for me to jump from my mind into my heart and stay there? Is it possible for me to know love?" It is everybody's birthright - but one has to claim it. And love is so precious, unless you claim it, you are going to miss it. There is every possibility for you to shift your energy from the head to the heart, and I would like to add also from the heart to the being - because the heart is only a half-way station. You can have a little stopover, change trains; you can have some breakfast, and rest a little before the train that goes to the being leaves the platform.

The heart is not the goal; the heart is only a means to attain the being. All these are possible for you, Nitin, just as they are possible for anybody else; but you have to put your conceptions in the right order. It may hurt, it may be painful - all surgery is painful - but if you are courageous enough, you can move through the surgery and you will come out of it healed, healthier, more wholesome.

You came because your wife came; you simply followed her. And you tried, deep in your unconscious, to compete with her - but the head cannot win in any competition with the heart.

But nothing is lost; even if after ten years you recognize the reality, the change will start happening.

The greatest problem in life is to go on living with false notions. Then you are so full of false notions that the truth has no space for itself. First destroy the false notions. Create space for the guest, and once your space is ready - your silence, your peace, your serenity - the guest comes without delay.

He is standing just outside your door. He has been waiting for many lives for you to open your doors and let the sun and the wind and the rain come in, because God comes with the sun, with the rain, with the wind. And throw out all the junk that you have gathered inside you.

The moment you are spacious, you have not to do anything else - that space will be filled with the presence of the divine. And then you will know what love is, what trust is, what openness is: the greatest treasures in life.

Question 2:

Deva Majid, I am aware that you are still "so much in doing," and you are expressing and exposing yourself very authentically. You are saying to me, "Doing is much more natural than being." Just one thing you are not aware of: you can compare two things only if you know them both.

You know doing, but you don't know being; hence, please don't compare. Being is only an empty word for you - doing is full of excitement. But this is how people go on living: in deceptions.

Doing can give you excitement.

Being can give you ecstasy.

Excitement is very mundane, very ordinary - any idiot can afford it. You are not an idiot, you are an intelligent being. So first, I am not saying that you have to change from doing to being; I am saying, first at least have a little taste of being, and then you are free to choose. I am certain that nobody has ever chosen doing, once he has known being.

It does not mean that the man of being becomes useless, that he stops doing things. No; the man of being does things more beautifully, more gracefully, more aesthetically. The man of being transforms his doings from their mundane quality into something sacred. So there is no opposition; it is not a question of choosing - it is not a question of to be or not to be.

When you know only doing, you are unaware of your great potential. I want you to know being, too.

And it will not destroy your doing, it will simply beautify it; it will make each act a prayer, each act an art, each act a deep fulfilment. Being will flow through your doing; it will make your life more colorful.

Otherwise, soon you will get fed up with your doings, because they are the same again and again, again and again - how long can you remain excited about them? But if your doing flows from your being, then each doing has a different flavor, a different individuality, a different fragrance.

You are saying, Majid, "To me doing is much more natural than being" - because doing is superficial.

And the whole society teaches you to be a doer, nobody is concerned with your being. Otherwise being is your deeper nature. There is no antagonism between doing and being, just that being will bring depth, significance, to your doings.

So if you really want to be a doer, you have to enter into the realm of being. You are saying, "And in this way I feel to express my love and devotion to you." It is true: through your doings you express your love and your devotion to me - but you don't know that there are greater things possible in you.

The same acts of love, of devotion, will have such profundity, such eternity, that you will be amazed that you were satisfied only with the surface and never dived deep into the water. But without diving deeper into the water you cannot find the pearls. On the surface you can find the white foam on top of the waves, shining in the sun, and it looks beautiful - but it is nothing but air bubbles. If you take the foam in your hand, soon you will find it has disappeared, just leaving your hand wet.

You are asking me, "But is it true love?" It is. But love has many, many depths. It is only the beginning, the first rung of the ladder. When you are capable of reaching to the highest rung, why be satisfied with a poorer state of your consciousness?

I know you are a rebel - and that is what you are excited about, rebellious acts - but your rebellion cannot be more than a little excitement; it cannot transform you, and it cannot transform society. If you want to be really a rebel, first you have to find your being. Then each of your acts will be not only an act of love and devotion, it will also be an act of tremendous revolution - in your life and in other people's lives. Your love is true, but very small.

I want your love to be as big as possible - bigger than the sky. It should have no limits to it. And out of that love arises the true rebel, the true rebellion.

The whole of history is full of the failures of revolutions; and the reason for their failure is that they were not coming from being - they were only coming from doing. Neither Karl Marx had any idea of being, nor Lenin, nor Mao Tse-tung. All these great revolutionaries have done much. But because they themselves were very superficial their revolutions have remained superficial, just a kind of whitewash - not a revolution which comes from the very roots.

My sannyasins are going to be rebels, but rebels not in the ordinary sense of the word. Before they become rebels they have to become buddhas. Only then will the world know true revolution - when buddhas rebel.

In Hindi, we have a very beautiful word; it has the same root as ?buddha' - it is ?BUDDHU.' ?BUDDHU' means the idiot, and ?buddha' means the highest peak of consciousness. Strange people! the same root - the same word - becomes ?buddha,' and the same root becomes the word ?buddhu.' All the revolutions that have happened in the world have happened through the ?buddhus.' I would like revolutions to come from the deepest core of the ?buddhas.' I will not take your doing away; I only want to enrich it, to intensify it, to transform it from excitement to ecstasy.

You are saying, "Many years ago, I told You that I felt to be like a warrior in the West. Also now I have the same feeling. Does that mean that I don't move much on the path to become a meditator?"

You are misunderstanding; I am not against the warrior - I want you all to be warriors. But before you become a warrior, you must be.

Who is going to become a warrior? You don't know even who you are. This ignorance in the center... and you become a warrior? Then naturally your being a warrior is going to be destructive, not creative. It is arising out of ignorance. I would like you to be warriors out of silence, purity, innocence.

But you have a fixed idea, Majid, as if the meditator and the warrior are two different parts. It has been so in the past, because the past has not been able to create the whole man. My effort is to give you wholeness in all the dimensions possible.

Be a meditator, and then whatever you do - you can be a rebel, you can be a warrior - the world will not be harmed by you, the world will be beautified by you. And that is the only gratitude we can show to existence. When you leave the world, leave it a little better than when you entered into it - just a little better, just a little more beautiful, a little more humane, a little more loving, a little more colorful, a little more holy.

To me there is no contradiction between a meditator and a warrior, but the priority is for the meditator.

Only a meditator can be relied upon - that the sword in his hand is not going to destroy but to save; that the power that he has come to feel through meditation is going to be a creative energy, so whatever he touches is going to become gold.

I want you all to become magicians - magicians in the sense that your meditation will transform everything that you touch.

Without meditation, whatever you do is futile.

Okay, Vimal?

Yes, Osho.