Chapter 6

[A sannyasin asks about the way in which people misunderstand what Osho is teaching, particularly in reference to sex.]

It has always been so. People live in such an unconscious state that it is almost impossible for them to understand anything. Misunderstanding comes natural to them. The mind functions as a distorting mechanism. They cannot see what is. They project something onto it, and they never become aware that they go on seeing their own projection.

If somebody is sexually obsessed, whatsoever he says, whatsoever he hears, whatsoever he sees, will somehow be coloured by his obsession. And humanity has lived under sexual obsessions.

Religions have repressed so much that every human being is a victim so he cannot see what is. He distorts it and gives it a colour of his own. He cannot even listen because the moment the words enter him, they no more have the same meaning.

So what I say is not necessarily what is heard. People will listen with their own minds. And my words have to go through their thoughts. By the time it reaches their being, it is almost unrecognisable.

People have no right vision, no right listening, no right understanding. But that is understandable.

They cannot have it. If it were otherwise it would be miraculous. So they have always done that. When Socrates or Jesus or Buddha is there, they do the same again and again and again.

They misunderstand, and upon their misunderstanding, organisations arise, churches are built, dogmas and creeds are settled, theologies throb. They are all based, not on jesus, but on the misunderstanding of people who thought that they understood Jesus.

So this strange thing happens - that Christianity is based on the misunderstanding of Christ, not on Christ. Buddhism is based on the misunderstanding of Buddha, not on what Buddha was. So every

religion is the enemy of its own founder. And it is very difficult to sort it out because there are two thousand years of misunderstanding and accumulation and argument. Now it is almost impossible to sort out what Jesus was like, what exactly he was saying. It is so distant and the interpretations are so many. Thick is their crowd... centuries of tradition. They have prestige and they have power - they are the authority.

This is my observation - that Jesus was not killed by Jews; he has been killed by Christians. The Jews could only crucify his body but that's nothing; that is immaterial. One day he was going to die, so how he dies doesn't matter much. The body had to be left. Whether it is left on the cross or sleeping in a bed makes not much difference. It is irrelevant in a way. But the real death happened through Christianity. They killed the very spirit - but they think they are helping to spread his message.

Misunderstanding is the whole history of the human being. And it is tremendous! I am here but people will not come to me. They will listen to somebody and will form a prejudice. They will ask you but they will not come to the ashram and see what is happening here. That too is a defence, because if they come, perhaps, maybe truth will be so much that it may not allow them to misinterpret it. The fact may be so heavy that they will not be able to carry their fiction. So they don't come close to the fact; they avoid it. Then it is very easy and cosy - their own mind, their own prejudices, and they go on applauding themselves. But they are not fooling anybody. They are just fooling themselves. And these people have always missed.

So watch it. It is good to watch these people. It will help you much towards self-understanding because that's how the mind functions. Never believe anything unless you have experienced it.

Never form any prejudice, even if the whole world is saying that it is so, unless you have encountered it.

In India there has been a great mystic, Kabir. He says, 'Never believe in the ears - just believe in the eyes. All that you have heard is false. All that you have seen is true.'

This should be carried as a constant remembrance because we are human beings and we tend to say falacies. We are part of this whole mad world, and that madness is inside every human being.

It has not to be allowed to overpower you. One has to remember continuously. And if this much can be done.... It is arduous, because prejudices are very comfortable and easy; you don't have to pay for them. Truth is costly, precious. You have to pay much. In fact you have to put your whole life at stake. Then you arrive at it. But only truth liberates.

So looking at other people and the functioning of their mind, always remember that the same type of mind is hidden in you also. So never listen to it. It will persuade you; it will argue, it will try to convince you. Just tell it, 'I will see for myself. I am still alive. I can encounter whatever is needed.'

That is the difference between belief and trust. Belief Is through the mind. Trust is through your own experience. Belief is just intellectual. Trust is total.

And if you start seeing, listening, without any prejudice, a great discipline arises in your life. They have a word in Latin for listening, 'obedire'. The english word 'obedience' comes from that. If you rightly listen, it creates obedience. If you rightly see, it brings its own discipline. The basic question

is that inside, one should be perfectly empty while listening, perfectly empty while seeing, perfectly empty while touching . . . no prejudice for or against, uninvolved, having no subtle leanings, because that leaning destroys the truth... having no leaning at all, allowing truth to be... not forcing it to be something else but allowing it, whatsoever it is. This is the austere life of the religious man.

This is real austerity: to allow truth to have its own say, not disturbing, not colouring, not manipulating, not managing it in some way according to one's own beliefs.

When truth is allowed to be itself, naked and new, a great discipline arises in you - obedience.

A great order arises in you. Then you are no more a chaos; for the first time you start gathering a centre, a nucleus, because truth known immediately becomes your truth. Truth known as it is, immediately transforms you. You are no more the same person. The very vision, the very clarity and the very experience of what truth is, is a sudden mutation. It is the revolution that religion is all about.

So keep this always in mind and be alert. And if you have started feeling, even a little, the first step of being responsible towards yourself, then I am going to be with you, because my whole effort here is to make you responsible towards your own life.

It is your life and it is tremendously precious. It is not something to just be thrown, wasted. And nobody can do anything unless you decide to do something with your being, your future. Only your decision is decisive. This is what responsibility is. It is great. It is almost frightening. If there is a God, He is responsible, so you can remain juvenile, immature. No need to be worried - the Father is there and He looks after you. Even if you do something wrong, His heart is great and He is always forgiving, so He will forgive.

Humanity has played these tricks for a long time. And because of these tricks, people have not grown, have not become mature.

To be absolutely responsible means that there is nobody who is looking after you. You have to look after yourself. There is nobody to whom you can say, 'You are responsible.' All responsibility is yours. If you become a wastage, it is because of you. If you go into hell, it is because of you. If you reach to heaven, it is because of you. All possibilities are open.

So each step is dangerous and one has to be very very alert. This very alertness, this responsibility, this feeling of responsibility, makes one mature. One becomes ripe and then one takes one's life into one's own hands. That very moment you are no more part of the fast-asleep humanity. A little awakening has happened. And I can see that that has happened.

But it can be lost, so one has to go on supporting it, helping it. One should never feel satisfied, because all that can be gained can be lost. The old habits are great and deep-rooted, but the light is very small and the grip of darkness is very old. The past is almost like an ocean. The new that has arisen is such a small wave, just a ripple. The ocean can drown it. So one has to fight for it so that it is not drowned, but rather, the ripple becomes so big that by and by the ocean is drowned in it. This is what Gurdjieff used to call 'the work'.

[A sannyasin was at darshan with her daughter and said that she felt guilty about her daughter who introverted and shy as a result of her upbringing.]

[to the mother] She has good possibilities. She is just a little shy, that's all, and that's not a big problem. Just help her to mix with people and find a few friends here of her own age or her own type and she will feel more free and at ease.

It is very difficult to be at ease with one's own mother or father, very difficult. The difficulty is natural in a way, so nobody is responsible for it. The gap is such. A different generation - there is bound to be a gap, and because of that gap, communication becomes difficult. The mother may like to communicate, the daughter may like to communicate, but the gap is such that it is difficult. They are not contemporaries so this is natural and just in the nature of things.

[The daughter said she did TM for a while but it was hard to continue.]

No, it will not be good for you because you are already shy and a little closed. It will close you more.

It is good for extroverts - people who are very much outgoing and who have completely forgotten how to come back home. For them it is good. That's why it is appealing so much in America. In India nobody bothers about it.

America has become the country of the extroverts. Everybody is chasing and running after something. Nobody knows what it is but people are chasing. One thing is certain - they are chasing with great speed. They go on speeding and finding more ways and means of how to chase 'it'.

Nobody knows what 'it' is exactly, but nobody is bothered. Nobody has time to think about what it is.

People are simply rushing.

People have become very extrovert and are continuously relating and have become tired of themselves. They don't know what to do with themselves. They have forgotten how to be alone. So TM is good for people who have become too extroverted, have lost balance. This will give them a little balance.

What you need are dynamic types of meditations. You are already an introvert. You need something which brings you out. You are already in the cell... hiding in the hole. Something which pulls you out will give you balance.

So try the meditations here. When the camp starts, Nataraj, the dancing meditation, will be best for you. You will enjoy it and it will help you to relax. So don't just sit in your room, otherwise you will feel fed up and bored.

[The Enlightenment Intensive group is present.

In talking about it, Osho said, 'It is a zen method and tremendously helpful. It is more concerned with going within than going without. You have to seek a virgin point within your being which has never been travelled to before. Nobody can enter there except you - and you too can only enter up to a certain point. Your whole identity is lost. Your whole address is no more there. You don't know who you are. You enter only when you don't know who you are, and then suddenly you are inside the shrine and you know who you are. But this has nothing to do with your previous identity.']

[A group member said: I've been through a lot of different things. It's just incredible. I feel different...

strange.]

You have touched a new space within your being, that's why it feels very strange. But you are on the right track so don't get frightened. Become more acquainted and the strangeness will disappear.

And many more new chambers have to be opened into the being. This is just a beginning. More and more strange lands you will have to pass through. Truth is stranger than any fiction. But be courageous.

Courage is one of the most essential qualities for a religious conversion, more important than any other quality.

When these strange things start happening, if you don't have courage you will escape. You will become so frightened that you will never go in that direction again. Many people have become atheisic because in some past life they came across strange spaces within themselves and they got so frightened that not only did they escape from those spaces, they have created a philosophy around themselves that those spaces don't exist at all - the soul does not exist, God does not exist, and all religion is just hocus-pocus, fantasy, wishfulfillment.

These are the people who, some way, somewhere, became so frightened that they had to create these philosophies to defend themselves. These are defence measures, rationalisations of fear.

Before you start entering inside yourself, you don't know how much of yourself was never known to you. You were living with just a fragment of your being. You were living like a drop of water and your being is like an ocean. You were identified with just the leaf of the tree and the whole tree belongs to you.

Yes, it is very strange because one starts expanding. New realities have to be absorbed. Each moment one has to come across facts which one has never come across, so each moment there is an unsettlement and the chaos becomes continuous. You can never settle. You can never become certain, because who knows what is going to be opened to you in the next moment ?

That's why people never go in. They live a settled life. They have cleared a small land of their being and made their house there. They have closed their eyes and have made big fences and walls so they think, 'This is all.' And just beyond the wall is their real, their wild being waiting for them. That is the challenge, the challenge of the wild. That's what has struck you.

You are feeling shaky, strange. Your identity is shaken, but allow it. Allow the identity to completely disappear.

[A group member, who is an artist, said she wanted her passive area and angry area to come together. They did so while she was painting, but then she felt an evil spirit come in, so she stopped painting.]

No, everything is going well. In fact there is no need to make any deliberate effort to bring these two parts together. There is no need to create any communication. Just forget about it. That's why while painting it happened. It has nothing to do with painting, but because in painting you were forgetting all about it completely, you were so absorbed, it happened.

Your parts will come together whenever you are absorbed. Whenever you are deliberately making an effort to bring them together, it will be impossible. That coming together happens only when you

are in a deep forgetfulness about it. The more you look at it, the further away they will go. The more you try to bring them together, the more conflict there will be. It cannot be done directly. It has nothing to do with you. It cannot be done directly; nobody can do it. It always happens indirectly.

Whenever you are totally absorbed in something, it happens. So learn more and more to be absorbed and forget about these two parts. They come in closer and they go far away. It will depend on your absorbed state.

And my feeling is that painting is something very essential to you. So whenever you feel like painting, start. And this time I will possess you. No need to be worried about evil. Now I have taken complete possession, so nobody can enter. Don't be worried.

And you will flower through your paintings. Painting is a meditation. In fact if a person is talented, really talented, then his talent is his meditation. Painting or poetry, dancing or singing or whatsoever, if a person has a certain talent, it is futile to work somewhere else. That talent can become the best meditation for the person concerned, because there is a natural flow towards it. Why not use it?

Meditation techniques exist for people who have no particular talent. All are not talented, or they may be talented but in such things that nobody values those things so they don't know that they are talented. If a person is talented, his creativity is his meditation. You can use all the meditations but those meditations will fall into a pool and will start moving towards your creativity.

So whenever you feel the urge again - it will come soon - start painting. And this time I will possess you. That's a promise. And don't try to bring the two parts together. They are perfectly good separate. Active and passive parts have to remain separate. They come together only when you are in such an intensity that your totality has to be poured into it. When you are not in such an intensity, there is no need. Then relax and move away.

But wait, and when the moment comes for you and you hear the call, start painting!

[A group member said: For the first time in my life I feel that I am an individual person and a human being. I feel I have to do much work on myself.]

Good. . .very good. You are standing on the door.

Mm... work hard now because this realisation is just a beginning. Now much has to be done. When a person is fast asleep, he has no responsibility. You cannot blame him. But now if you miss, you will be blamed. You had the first glimpse of your humanness, your individuality. Now the real work starts. This is the real birth. Up to now it was just a waiting. You were in the womb and now you are born.

Now start breathing in a new way... start being in a new way. Very good.

[A sannyasin says: I've noticed that at times my breathing becomes really shallow, and on one hand If eel like going with that and going deeper into it, and on the other I feel, 'Okay, it's time to sit up and breathe properly.']

No, no, just go with it. The body is wiser than you, so if there is ever a choice between the body and the mind, choose the body. The mind is very foolish and the body has a wisdom of its own. So when this is happening, just go with it. Even if you collapse, collapse. Something great is going to happen through it. You are not allowing it.

When you are close to me, much is possible if you allow. Then the presence can become almost a fire. It can clean you and can give you a new resurrection. Then only the pure gold will be saved.

... allow it wherever. Because whenever you are in meditation, you are in my presence. It makes no difference where you are. If you are in meditation you are close to me.