Pregnant with enlightenment

Question 1:

Dhyan John, man also gets pregnant - not in the same way as woman; his pregnancy is far superior.

The woman can produce more human beings, but when man gets pregnant, he produces either music, painting, sculpture, poetry - all that makes life worth living and all that gives life value.

But very few people feel this kind of pregnancy. They are so involved in their mundane affairs - in money, in honor, in power, in prestige - that they never care that they can also produce something which will outlive them.

The woman's child will have a life of seventy or eighty years, but what about the poetry of the UPANISHADS? Five thousand years, and it is still vibrant and still alive - and the people who gave birth to it could not have avoided feeling pregnant. Every great poet knows that when some poetry is striving to be born he feels almost feminine, almost like a womb in which the poetry is taking shape and growing.

The same is true of all creative arts; but it is more true about those who are meditating, because they are pregnant with a Gautam Buddha. They are going to give birth to themselves. It is a very mysterious phenomenon, but very like the pregnancy of a woman.

You are saying, "Something is happening to me - a feeling of fullness, richness, and expansion."

Those are the symptoms that your old life is going to disappear and a new life is taking shape within you. Where there was emptiness, now there is fullness. Where there was a poverty... because all that man desires, wants, proves only one thing: that he is poor. And you cannot find even the richest man who is not poor in this sense; he may have everything, still he is wanting more. He is a rich poor man, a rich beggar. Your poverty is disappearing and a richness is taking its place.

Everybody lives a closed life. Out of fear - the fear of exposure, the fear of becoming vulnerable, the fear of one's nakedness - one goes on hiding oneself, creating walls and walls around oneself.

But as one starts meditating those walls start collapsing, because consciousness needs expansion.

It cannot be confined in a small space - even the whole sky is too small for it.

You are going through a great transformation. This is the transformation everyone is here for. You are saying, "It is embracing me and everyone and everything around me. It is a touchless touch, like a sweet hello, not addressed to anyone or anything - but rather everyone and everything. And it is silently following me around. This is like a strange pregnancy, which I know nothing about."

Now you will know more and more about it. Just avoid abortion! And as far as man is concerned, and his creativity is concerned, no birth control is needed. More and more people have to be in the same state of creativity.

You are wondering, "How could I? I am a man." That's why you can be - because you are a man.

There is a deep psychological background to it which has to be understood. Man has always felt inferior in comparison to woman, because woman can give birth and man cannot. Woman can become a mother - the beginning of a new life; man cannot do it. To substitute for it man started finding in what ways he could also be creative and productive. It was a deep spiritual need to destroy that inferiority.

He has given birth to great paintings, to great poetry, to great dances, to great music - they are all substitutes. That is why women have not bothered about creating poetry, music, literature. You will be surprised to know that women are not even the best cooks in the world; and they have not even written a book about the art of cooking. The best cooks in all the great hotels of the world are men.

It is strange....

The woman feels satisfied - she knows she can give birth to life. You may create a beautiful statue, but still it is dead. You may create great music, but it is ephemeral; it comes like the wind and goes away. You may create great dance, but it cannot be a living child, a smiling child - a child who sees wonders, breathes, whose heart beats.

All your art and all your creativity seem to be a poor substitute to the woman. I have been asked many times why women are not great poets, great musicians, great painters, great sculptors. The reason is that because they can give birth to life, they don't feel any need to create anything else.

Only on one point, in one place, man and woman meet, and that I call the space of meditation - where man and woman are really equal, because both can give birth to themselves. They can be reborn; both can be pregnant with enlightenment.

Except in the space of meditation, man and woman are two different species. They meet only in deep meditation. And unless the whole of humanity is meditative, men and women will go on fighting with each other. Their love is always going up and down - there are moments of beauty, and there are moments of ugliness; there are moments of joy, and there are moments of misery.

But in meditation - if two meditators share their energies - love is a constant phenomenon, it does not change. It has the quality of eternity; it becomes divine.

The meeting of love and meditation is the greatest experience in life.

To have love without meditation is to live in a very troubled, anxiety-ridden state - in anguish, angst, always in a turmoil. There are moments of silence, but that silence is nothing but cold war - preparation for another war, that's all. Obviously, to prepare for another war, for a few days, for a few moments, you have to be silent.

But it has not been possible up to now, because all the religions have decided on a wrong path. They have decided to separate men and women; they have decided to make them enemies. And they are all against me because I am trying for a single thing: that as far as meditation is concerned it is nobody's monopoly - neither male nor female. It is the only meeting point, where man is no more a man, nor a woman is a woman; both are just human beings, potential gods, seeds of godliness.

Neither love alone can do it - because it is too much trouble - nor meditation alone can do it, because without love, meditation becomes more like the silence of a cemetery, of a graveyard. It is no longer dancing, it is no longer flowering. Yes, there is peace, but the peace is deathlike - it is not alive. The peace is no longer breathing, the peace no longer has a heartbeat.

My whole life has been devoted to only one single program: how to bring love and meditation together - because only through that meeting a new humanity is possible. And only in the meeting of love and meditation, the duality of man and woman - the inequality of man and woman - disappears.

The women's liberation movement cannot deliver the goods. I am not directly concerned with women's liberation, I am concerned with the liberation of all - because if woman is not liberated, man is also not liberated. They are functioning with each other as the jailer and the jailed; they are in bondage to each other. Neither man is liberated, nor woman - both are living under a slavery imposed by each other in the hope that perhaps if they enslave the other, they will be free. But the other has its own ways of enslaving you.

Only in meditation, in silence, where love blossoms, there is - without any struggle, without any fight - a natural harmony, equality, a natural equilibrium. And when it is natural, it has a beauty of its own.

Dhyan John, you are asking, "Can men get pregnant?" The whole culture, all that is civilization, is nothing but the result of a few men getting pregnant. Every man has the capacity to be pregnant; but very few people take the challenge, move on the arduous path. The woman's pregnancy is only biological. Man cannot be pregnant biologically, but spiritually he can be pregnant. And woman can also be pregnant spiritually as well as biologically.

And you are asking, "Have you been visiting me in the night, Osho?" Dhyan John, do you think I am a holy ghost, making virgin girls pregnant - and now, getting tired of girls, I have started making men, virgin men like Dhyan John, pregnant? I am not a holy ghost - I am not a Christian at all. But it is true, you are pregnant. Feel blessed, rejoice in it! And allow it as much nourishment as possible.

It is going to give birth to you - a new you!

Question 2:

Devageet, it is true, there are mysteries which I never speak of. Not that I don't want to speak about them, but their very nature is - they cannot be spoken of. You will have to listen to them while I am silent. You will have to listen them between the gaps of my words. Words cannot indicate towards them, but silence continuously shouts about them. You just need the right way of listening - just as you understand a language because you have learned it.

Silence is also a language, the language of existence.

Trees use it, and the stars use it, and the mountains use it, and the mystics use it. I am saying that which can be said; I am also saying, through my silence, that which cannot be said. Now it is up to you whether you can get a silent whisper, and allow it into your deepest being - because only there its full meaning will be revealed to you. Your mind is incapable, inadequate. The mind has no way to understand silence, it can understand only language, only words; but the wordless....

You cannot complain about mind - it is beyond its capacity. It is just like - my eyes can see the light, my ears cannot see the light. That does not mean that I should complain about my ears: "Why don't you see the light?" They are not meant for it. They can listen to music - eyes cannot listen to music.

Mind can understand words. If you want to understand that which is beyond words, then mind has to be transcended; you have to enter into the space called no-mind. It is just above your mind, beyond your mind. No-mind only understands silence; words don't reach there.

You are saying, "Is it that we must come in the night and take them?" It is not a question of your coming in the night or in the day and taking them, because I am not hiding them; I am throwing them at you continually every morning, every evening. But you go on picking up only the words, and you go on dropping the wordless - the gaps.

Only in Sufism is there a book which I can call holy. I cannot call the BIBLE holy, and I cannot call GITA holy. But the book of the Sufis I can call holy - for a simple reason: because nothing is written in it. It is empty. It has been coming down for almost one thousand years from the master to the disciple; and it is given only when the disciple is so ready that he can read that which is not written.

When it was given for the first time by a mystic.... He was dying, and for his whole life it had been a mystery to his disciples; his whole library was available to everybody, but one book he used to keep under his pillow. He would read it only when he had closed the doors, locked the doors, taken a good look that nobody was hiding inside the room; and then he would take the book out of his bed and read it for hours. Naturally there was great curiosity. People were even hiding on the roof, looking, by moving the tiles, to see what was happening. But they could not figure it out - what kind of book this was.

They asked him again and again, and he would say, "When the time is ripe, I will give you the book."

And the day came when he was dying, and all the disciples had gathered, and it was only a question of a few more moments and he would be gone. They were feeling a little embarrassed to ask about the book, "Now that you are going, at least tell us something about the book." To ask an old dying master looked very ungentlemanly.

But one man gathered courage and he said, "Master, you have forgotten one thing, that book!" He said, "I have not forgotten. It is just under my pillow, and before I take my last breath, I will give it to my successor."

And he called one of his disciples - nobody had ever thought that this man was going to be the successor of their master. Certainly he was a strange man, utterly silent. He had no friends, he would never participate in the mass prayers, he would never go into the library to look into the ancient scriptures; but he would sit under the trees by the side of the river. Sometimes the whole night he was lying down on the lawn and looking at the stars. Everybody thought he was a little bit crazy. He never asked the master a question.

There were learned scholars, even more learned than the master himself, very well acquainted with all the old scriptures; but the master called that strange man, that star-gazer, that silent one - the one who had no friends, who was alone amidst the crowd of disciples, but who had the eyes of an innocent child, and his heart full of unsung songs.

He pulled out the book and gave it to the disciple, and said, "This book will be symbolic. Whoever possesses it will be the successor, so remember, be very careful, don't let anybody else read it. Only you can read it, and before you die you can give it to the right person, who is capable of reading it."

This way for one thousand years the book has passed from one hand to another hand - and the book is absolutely empty. When for the first time, just fifty years ago, the mystic who was now the successor wanted to publish it, he could not find a publisher - because whomsoever he showed it to would look at it and say, "But there is nothing to publish in it. It is just a notebook, and nothing is written in it." But now it has been published; some daring publisher in England has published it:

THE BOOK OF NOTHING.

But they have destroyed it a little because they have put an introduction to it: the whole history of the book - in one thousand years, how many mystics have possessed it, and how it was transferred from one teacher to another teacher, and this is the first time it is being published. This is simple foolishness - that book does not need any introduction. But that is how man's mind functions - every book needs an introduction, so that book also needs an introduction; and inside there is nothing - one thousand pages, empty.

And they have destroyed it by publishing it, because now people are using it as a notebook, they are writing things in it. It was not meant for that purpose. It was meant that the master should give it to a disciple when he can understand the gaps between the words, between the lines; when words and lines become meaningless, then the empty paper.... Just watching it, and you also become empty.

Just deeply looking at it, you move from mind to no-mind - and suddenly that empty page becomes a door into the mysteries of life.

Devageet, try to listen to my silences. You will not find any speaker in the whole world speaking the way I speak. Just in the middle of the sentence, there is a gap. It is deliberate, it is significant, it has more meaning than all the words. In fact, I use all the words so that I can create a gap. Otherwise how to create a gap?

Listen to the gaps, listen to my silence, listen to the silence of the trees and the stars - because silence is nobody's monopoly, it is neither Hindu, nor Mohammedan, nor Christian; it is the only thing which is not monopolized by anybody - and you will start finding the mysteries that I want to speak about. But just the words are not capable of expressing them.

And, lastly, you are asking, "Osho, what does ?understanding' mean?" This English word "understanding" is a little strange, but significant. Whenever you know something, you are standing above it, and that which you know is standing under. You have gone higher. To say it in other words:

as your consciousness starts moving higher, more and more things are standing under. Things that are standing under, you have understood them. Things that are standing above you, you have still to go higher - only the higher can understand the lower, the lower cannot understand the higher.

So the basic thing is to go as high in your consciousness as possible. And consciousness goes on becoming higher as you go on dropping unneccessary knowledge, which is a load. Anything borrowed is a load, is a hindrance. You have to be so light that you can become an eagle and can fly to the faraway sky.

The first man who walked on the moon - when he came back he was asked what was his first idea?

Standing on the moon, looking at the sky, looking at the earth, what was his first idea? And what he said is very significant.

He said, "My first idea was, my beloved earth! For the first time I understood that there is no America, there is no Russia, there is no China, there is no India - it is one earth, my earth. There are no lines, no divisions, all are man-manufactured. And the strangest thing I saw was that the earth was looking like the moon, radiating light." It is eight times bigger than the moon, so just to see the moon eight times bigger, with eight times more light.... And the moon itself was looking like just dry desert, not even a single drop of water has fallen on it, never has even grass grown on it - no life anywhere, utter silence. And this silence I call the silence of death.

Our earth is also silent, but the wind passes through the trees... and there is life... and the birds sing, and there is light, and deep in the middle of the night when everything is silent a cuckoo starts singing - do you think it disturbs the silence? No, it deepens it, it makes it more musical; and as the cuckoo becomes silent, the night is more deeply silent than it was before. This is a living silence.

Always remember, any quality that has no life in it is not worth having. Unless a saint can also dance, he is not a saint; he is just a dead fossil.

When you start seeing that even truth, meditation, beauty or virtue - all have their own songs, sung or unsung, you will be moving into the mysteries. Death has no mystery, death is a dead- end street. Life is an ongoing process, forever and forever. Just raise your consciousness, and your understanding will become wider and bigger; when your consciousness reaches to the highest point, everything is below it. That is exactly the meaning of understanding. Now you understand.

Question 3:

Prem Pradeepa, it is not only possible that you know yourself less and less: the more you are here, the closer you come to me, the more your knowledge will evaporate; the more you will become innocent, not knowing, but full of wonder - just like a small child wondering about each and everything. This is absolute freedom and liberation from mind.

Socrates is reported to have said, "When I was young I thought I knew everything; when I became a little more mature I also became aware that there is much that I don't know. When I became still older I was puzzled because I used to know more when I was young - and now I know less and less every day. And finally, before he died, he said, ?I know nothing.'"

The day he said, "I know nothing.".... In Greece there was a temple in Delphi, and there was an oracle in the temple who used to predict many things in trance. The day Socrates said, "I know nothing," the same day, the same time, in Delphi, the oracle declared that Socrates was the wisest man in the world.

People who had come from Athens to listen to the oracle rushed back to inform Socrates, because such an honor had never been given to anyone by the oracle - the wisest man in the world. And when they reported it to Socrates he laughed; he said, "I used to be, when I was very young, when I was very arrogant, when I was very egoistic. Now I know nothing."

But the people said, "The oracle has never been wrong." They returned to Delphi, and they reported, "This time you are wrong, because Socrates himself denies it; he says, ?I know nothing.'"

The oracle laughed now, and said, "That is the reason why I have declared him the wisest man in the world. Only the wisest man in the world has the courage and the innocence and the humbleness to declare ?I know nothing.'"

Pradeepa, here you are all not to know more and more, but to know less and less. My work is not to load you with more knowledge; my work is to unload you, unburden you, make you so light that you can fly. So what is happening is exactly the right thing that is expected to happen. This is a mystery school; those who enter the gateless gate of this mystery school should come with a clear understanding that when they return they will be reborn again as small children, knowing nothing.

But to know nothing is the beginning of knowing oneself. You know so may things that you have completely forgotten to know yourself. When you know nothing, your whole capacity for knowing turns upon yourself; and to know oneself is the only authentic wisdom there is, a wisdom that liberates, a wisdom that makes you aware of your immortality, a wisdom that makes you aware that you are not an island, but part of the whole.

Question 4:

Sarjano, I have promised you, and I have been fulfilling my promise. But I will not hold your hand from outside, I will hold your hand from your inside - your hand will be my hand. That is true holding; from the outside it is very superficial, but from the inside, it is as deep as it can be. And who do you think was following you with velvet feet? Feet are never made of velvet but my shoes are. But in the night a small misunderstanding is possible.

You are saying, "A few days ago it happened, and You must know it." Yes, I know it. "The one who can find words for everything now has no words to describe his experience. I only say what it was not." But this is the only way to describe a few experiences. All the great experiences have to be described negatively - what it is not. With a negative description there is a beauty.... The positive description confines a thing, the negative description only indicates - it does not confine. So it is absolutely right to describe it by what it is not.

"There were no angels playing their trumpets." There are no angels anywhere; and anyway, trumpets are so costly nowadays.... Forget those old days of the OLD TESTAMENT, when every angel was given trumpets and harps - even people who had reached heaven by mistake.

I have heard about one person certainly, a man from Munich, Germany. He was a porter at the station, and by some mistake, angels carried him to heaven. He tried many times, "You must be mistaken, I am just a porter, I am not a saint; why are you dragging me towards heaven? This is my time to go to the pub, and I tell you frankly, I am a sinner, just don't harass me." But they went on with their trumpets and their harps, and nobody listened to the poor porter. He said, "This is strange."

And then he was presented to the chief of the angels, and he was given a harp, and he said, "What?

What I am supposed to do?"

He said, "There is nothing to be done, you just sit on any cloud, and play the harp."

He said, "I am a porter, I have never played on any instrument."

They said, "Don't be worried, in the beginning every saint says so."

He said, "But I am not a saint! And I am concerned that pub may be closed! In all this nonsense, do you think me an idiot, sitting on a cloud, playing on the harp, when it is time to go to the pub?"

But they told him "You will have to behave, because soon God will be coming here. He always comes when new arrivals enter into paradise.

He said, "My God, so it means tonight I cannot go to the pub?"

They said, "You stop talking about the pub."

So he had to sit on a cloud. He felt very embarrassed, that this was not a place to sit; but he saw angels and saints were sitting on all the clouds and playing on their harps, "Hallelujah, hallelujah." He has never done any such thing. But then he heard God is coming, so he started doing anything that he managed to do and shouting loudly, "Hallelujah, hallelujah." But again and again he remembered the pub.

God was sitting on his golden throne, on a big white cloud. Just silently the porter was saying in between, "You son of a bitch, hallelujah, hallelujah."

He thought that God would not hear what he was saying very silently, but God heard it. He asked the other angels, "Why are you torturing that porter? It is an accident, he is not supposed to be here, and he is very unhappy, just look at his face. He is saying, ?Hallelujah, hallelujah,' but inside he is saying something else that only I can hear! Just send him back, let him go to his pub."

So he was thrown back to the earth. Although he fell with a thump on the ground he said, "At least there is still time! All those idiots sitting on the clouds, look like clowns, and for eternity you have just to play on your harp, and go on singing, ?Hallelujah, hallelujah.'"

He got up and went into the pub and the people said, "You are very late."

He said, "I got into such trouble. By accident people took me to heaven. It was just my old habit of telling people ?You son of a bitch' that helped me. When God heard it, he thought it was better to send this man away; otherwise he will corrupt the other saints."

In the old days it was okay, Sarjano. Nowadays there are "no angels, no trumpets, no celestial music nor smell of incense, nor flowers, nor colors of thousands of rainbows...." The mystics have been talking about these things, because they could not find words to relate the experience, just as you cannot.

There are just ways of describing something; thousands of lotus flowers, thousands of rainbows, thousands of suns rising all around - these are all simply indications that language has failed. And what they want to say they cannot say, but there is a tremendous urge to say it. So they are caught in a dilemma. They cannot say it and they cannot resist not saying it. So something has to be said.

One great German thinker - perhaps one of the greatest thinkers of this century - Ludwig Wittgenstein, in one of his most rare books: LOGICO TRACTUS PHILOSOPHICUS, has one statement. He does not write in the ordinary way people write, he writes only maxims. But each of his maxims he numbers one, two, three. Each of his maxims has tremendous value and is pregnant with meaning; he has condensed paragraphs, pages or perhaps books into one sentence.

One of the sentences in this TRACTATUS is: "That which cannot be said, should not be said." I wrote him a letter, "You have not followed your own dictum. You have said something about it. ?That which cannot be said should not be said.' You have said something about it."

I received a letter from one of his friends; Wittgenstein had died. I was not aware that he is dead - I was only a student in the university. The friend wrote, "Wittgenstein is dead. I am sorry that he could not see your letter because he was such a sincere and honest man, he may have removed his statement from the book - because what you are saying is absolutely right. If nothing should be said about that which cannot be said, even this sentence should not be there - just an empty place."

"The experience came from the back." It almost always comes from the back. Because anything coming from the front can make you tense, can make you closed, can make you defensive. All great experiences come from the back, because from the back... until they have overwhelmed you, you are not aware and you cannot be defensive. And by the time you become aware, it is too late - you cannot do anything. You are possessed.

"... with velvet feet, like a thief." In Hindi, one of the names of God is "Hari" and "Hari" means a thief.

India has a longer experience of the mysterious than any other country in the world. It has even chosen names with a very deep awareness that they should not be just names, but they should also contain the experience.

"The experience came from the back like a thief, so unknown and so familiar." Whenever any one of you will come to know something of the unknown, you will always find it both; unknown on the one hand, and so familiar - as if you have always known it. And it is both, Because it is not something that is coming from the outside. It is something that is really growing within you. It is something that in your unconscious you have always felt, but your consciousness has not been aware of it, and now the consciousness becomes aware. So you have both contradictory statements together, "unknown" and "so familiar."

"My arms grasp the sky searching for your hand." Sarjano, that's where you were not clear. You were searching my hand as though it were something outside. But slowly, slowly, as more and more experiences of this type become available to you, you will see that you are seeing through my eyes; and you are trying to search - and it is not your hand but my hand. There is a state of immense attunement, when the master is not outside, but inside you.

You are not so small as you appear. You are not confined to the body. You are vast enough, you can contain all. Your capacity for containing is oceanic.

"While my feet walked on their own towards Lao Tzu Gate and my being was only a river-like whisper, murmuring: ?Osho, Osho, Osho....' But Your hand was not there." It was there. And next time something like this happens, just look at your hand and you will not find your own hand - but you will find my hand.

"Or didn't I see it; did not I feel it?" No, it was just your first experience. And you were looking, very naturally, on the outside. You must have seen one of the great paintings of Michelangelo in which God is creating the world and his hand is touching the hand of Adam. He's hanging in the sky, downwards, and Adam is on the earth. It is one of the most beautiful paintings.

But Michaelangelo has no experience - that God's hand cannot come from outside, and anything that comes from outside is not God's. God can only blossom from your innermost being. He can see through your eyes and he can spread his hand in your hand. He can walk with your feet and he can breathe with your lungs, and he can beat from your heart.

Never think of God as something outside. It is always your interior, your subjective experience.

"Oh Osho! My Beloved Osho! Haven't You promised me that You would take hold of my hand?"

I had promised you, Sarjano; and I was holding it.

Okay, Vimal?

Yes, Osho.