Chapter 09

Time cannot go back, but mind can. What a wastage - to give such a mind, which cannot forget anything whatsoever, to a man who not only has become a no-mind, but also preaches to others to drop the mind. As far as my mind is concerned - remember, my mind, not me - it is as much a mechanism as the one being used here. My "mind" simply means the machinery, but a perfect machine given to a man who will discard it! That is why I say what a wastage.

But I know the reason: unless you have a perfect mind, you cannot have the intelligence to discard it. Life is full of contradictions. Nothing is bad about it; it makes life more tasteful.

There was no reason for man and woman to be two; they could have been like the amoeba - you can ask Devaraj. The amoeba is neither male nor female, it is one. It is also like Muktananda, and all the other idiotanandas - celibate - but it has its own way of reproducing. What a trouble it causes all the doctors in the world! It simply goes on eating, becoming fatter and fatter, and at a certain point it splits in two. That is its way of reproduction. It is really brahmacharya, celibate.

Man and woman could have been one, like amoebae, but there would have been no poetry, only reproduction. Of course, no conflict either, no nagging, no fighting; but the poetry which has arisen is so valuable, that all the conflicts and all the nagging, and all the bickering, is worthwhile.

Just now I was again listening to Noorjahan... "That trust that was between us, you may have forgotten, but I have not. I still remember at least a little. Those words that you spoke to me, perhaps you don't remember them at all, but just the memory of them is enough to keep me hoping.

That love that was between us...." wo karar, "that love"...karar is far more intense than the word "love"

can translate; it is far more passionate. It would be better to translate it as "that passion," or "that passionate love." And "Wo rah mujh mein our tujh mein thee - and the way that was between you and me...."

"The way..." only once in a while, when the hearts are open is there a way, otherwise people communicate, they do not commune. They talk but nobody listens. They do business, but there is just emptiness between them, there is no overflowing joy. Wo rah - "that way," and WO KARAR- "that passionate love".... "Perhaps you have forgotten it, but I remember. I cannot forget that you once said, 'You are the queen of the world, the most beautiful woman.' Perhaps you cannot even recognize me now...."

Things change, loves change, bodies change; it is the very nature of existence to be changing, to be in a flux. I listen to that song just before I come into your cabin, because I have loved it from my very childhood. I think perhaps it may provoke some memories in me, and it certainly does.

Yesterday, I was telling you of the incident that happened between me and the Jaina monk. It was not the end of that story, because that next day he had to come again to beg for his food from my grandfather's house.

It will be difficult for you to understand why he had to come again when he had left our house in such anger. I have to explain the context to you. A Jaina monk cannot take food from anybody except another Jaina, and unfortunately for him, we were the only Jaina family in that small village. He could not beg elsewhere for his food, although he would have liked to, but it was against his discipline. So, in spite of himself, he came again.

I and my Nani were both waiting upstairs, watching from the window because we knew he had to come. My Nani said to me, "Look, he is coming. Now, what are you going to ask him today?"

I said, "I don't know. First, let him at least eat, and then conventionally he is bound to address the family and the people who have gathered." After each meal, a Jaina monk delivers a sermon of thanks. "Then don't be worried," I told her, "I will find something or other to ask. First let him speak."

He was very cautious in speaking, and very brief, which was unusual. But whether you speak or not, if someone wants to question you, he can. He can question your silence. The monk was speaking about the beauty of existence, thinking perhaps that it could not create any trouble, but it did.

I stood up. My Nani was laughing at the back of the room - I can still hear her laughter. I asked him, "Who created this beautiful universe?"

Jainas do not believe in God. It is difficult for the western Christian mind to even comprehend a religion that does not believe in God. Jainism is far superior to Christianity; at least it does not believe in God, and the Holy Ghost, and the whole nonsense that follows. Jainism is, believe me or not, an atheistic religion, because to be atheist and yet religious seems to be contradictory, a contradiction in terms. Jainism is pure ethics, pure morality, with no God. So when I asked the Jaina monk, "Who created this beauty?" obviously, as I knew he would, he answered, "Nobody."

That was what I was waiting for. I then said, "Can such beauty be created by no one?"

He said, "Please don't misunderstand me...." This time he had come prepared; he looked more together. "Please don't misunderstand me," he said, "I am not saying that no one is someone."

Remember the story in ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS? The Queen asks Alice, "On the way here, did you meet anybody coming to see me?"

Alice said, "I saw nobody."

The Queen looked puzzled, then said, "It is strange; then nobody should have arrived here before you, and he is not here yet."

Alice, just like an English lady, of course, giggled, only spiritually. Her face remained grave. She said, "Ma'am, nobody is nobody."

The Queen said, "Of course, I know nobody is bound to be nobody, but why is he so late? It seems nobody walks slower than you."

Alice forgot for a moment and said, "Nobody walks faster than me."

The Queen then said, "That is even stranger. If nobody walks faster than you, then why has he not arrived yet?"

Alice then understood her mistake but it was too late. She again repeated, "Please Ma'am, remember that nobody is nobody."

The Queen said, "I know it already, nobody is nobody, but the question is why is he not yet here?"

I said to the Jaina monk, "I know that no one is no one, but you talk so beautifully, so praisingly of existence that it shocks me, because Jainas are not supposed to do that. It seems that because of yesterday's experience you have changed your tactics. You can change your tactics but you cannot change me. I still ask, if no one created the universe how did it come to be?"

He looked here and there; all were silent except for my Nani, who was laughing loudly. The monk asked me, "Do you know how it came to be?"

I said, "It has always been there; there is no need for it to come." I can confirm that sentence after forty-five years, after enlightenment and no-enlightenment, after having read so much and having forgotten it all, after knowing that which is and - put it in capitals - IGNORING IT. I can still say the same as that young child: the universe has always been there; there is no need for it to have been created or to have come from somewhere - it simply is.

The Jaina monk did not turn up on the third day. He escaped from our village to the next where there was another Jaina family. But I must pay homage to him: without knowing it he started a small child on the journey towards truth.

Since then, how many people have I asked the same question, and found the same ignorance facing me - great pundits, knowledgeable people, great mahatmas worshipped by thousands, and yet not able to answer a simple question put by a child.

In fact, no real question has ever been answered, and I predict that no real question will ever be answered, because when you come to a real question, the only answer is silence. Not the stupid

silence of a pundit, a monk or a mahatma, but your own silence. Not the silence of the other, but the silence that grows within you. Except that, there is no answer. And that silence that grows within is an answer to you, and to those who merge with your silence with love; otherwise it is not an answer to anyone except you.

There have been many silent people in the world who have not been of any help to others. The Jainas call them arihantas, the Buddhists call them arhatas; both words mean the same. It is just that the languages are a little different; one is Prakrit, the other is Pali. They are neighboring languages or sister languages rather; arihanta, arhat, you can see yourself that both words are the same.

There have been arihantas and arhatas, but although they had found the answer they were not able to proclaim it, and unless you are able to proclaim it, proclaim it from the housetops, your answer is not of much value - it is only one person's answer in a crowd where everybody is full of questions.

Soon the arihanta dies, and with him his silence; it disappears as if one has been writing on water.

You can write, you can sign on water, but by the time you have finished writing your signature it is no longer there.

The real Master not only knows, but helps millions to know. His knowledge is not private, it is open to all those who are ready to receive. I have known the answer. The question I have carried for thousands of years, in one body, in another body, through one body to another body, but the answer has happened for the first time. It has happened only because I questioned persistently without any fear of the consequences.

I am recalling these incidents to make you aware that unless one asks, and asks everyone totally, it is difficult to ask oneself. When one is thrown out from every door, when all the doors are locked or slammed in your face, then at last one turns withinwards - and there is the answer. It is not written; you will not find a BIBLE, a TORAH, or a KORAN, a GITA, a TAO TE CHING or a DHAMMAPADA....

No, you won't find anything written there.

Nor will you find anyone there either - no God, no father-figure, smiling and patting you on your back saying, "So, good, my son, you have come home. I forgive all your sins." No, you will not find anyone there. What you will find is a tremendous, overwhelming silence, so dense that one feels one can touch it... like a beautiful woman. One can feel it like a beautiful woman, and it is only silence, but very tangible.

When the monk had disappeared from that village we laughed continuously for days, particularly my Nani and I. I cannot believe how childlike she was! At that time she must have been nearly fifty, but her spirit was as if she had never grown older than a child. She laughed with me and said, "You did well."

Even now I can still see the back of the escaping monk. Jaina monks are not beautiful people. They cannot be, their whole approach is ugly, just ugly. Even his back was ugly. I have always loved the beautiful wherever it is found - in the stars, in a human body, in flowers, or in the flight of a bird...

wherever. I am an unashamed worshipper of the beautiful, because I cannot see how one can know truth if one cannot love beauty. Beauty is the way to truth; and the way and the goal are not different:

the way itself ultimately turns into the goal. The first step is also the last.

That encounter - yes, that's the right word... that encounter with the Jaina mystic began thousands of other encounters, Jaina, Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, and I was ready to do anything just to have a good argument.

You will not believe me, but I went through circumcision at the age of twenty-seven, after I was already enlightened, just to enter a Mohammedan Sufi order where they would not allow anybody in who had not been circumcised. I said, "Okay, then do it! This body is going to be destroyed anyway, and you are only cutting off just a little piece of skin. Cut it, but I want to enter the school."

Even they were unable to believe me. I said, "Believe me, I am ready." And when I started arguing they said, "You were so willing to be circumcised and yet you are so unwilling to accept anything we say at all?"

I said, "That's my way. About the non-essential I am always ready to say yes; about the essential, I am absolutely adamant, nobody can force me to say yes."

Of course they had to expel me from their so-called Sufi order, but I told them, "Expelling me, you are simply declaring to the world that you are pseudo-Sufis. The only real Sufi is being expelled. In fact, I expel you all."

Bewildered, they looked at each other. But that's the truth. I had gone to their order, not to know the truth; I knew that already. Then why had I entered? Just to have good company to argue with.

Argument has been my joy from my very childhood. I will do anything just to have a good argument; but how rare it is to find a really good milieu for argument. I entered the Sufi order - this I am confessing for the first time - and even allowed those fools to circumcise me; and they did it by such primitive methods that I had to suffer for at least six months. But I didn't care about that; my whole concern was to know Sufism from within. Alas! I could not find a real Sufi in my life. But that is true not only about the Sufis, I have not found a real Christian either, or a real Hassid.

J. Krishnamurti invited me to meet him in Bombay. The man who brought the message was a common friend, Parmananda. I told him, "Parmananda, go back and tell Krishnamurti that if he wants to see me, he should come - that is proper - rather than asking me to come to him."

Parmananda said, "But he is years older than you."

I said, "You go to him. Don't answer on his behalf. If he says that he is older than me, then it is not worth going, because awakening cannot be older or younger; it is always just the same - simply fresh, eternally fresh."

He went and never came back, because how could Krishnamurti, an old man, come to see me? Yet he wanted to see me. This is interesting, is it not? I never wanted to see him, otherwise I would have gone to him. He wanted to see me, and yet still wanted me to go to him. You must concede that is a little too much. Parmananda never returned with a reply. Next day, when he came, I asked, "What happened?"

He said, "Krishnamurti became very angry, so angry that I did not ask him again."

Now, he wanted to see me; I would have loved to see him, but I had never wanted to, for the simple reason that I don't like to go to people, even though the person was J. Krishnamurti. I love what he says, I love what he is, but I have never desired - at least have never said to anyone - that I want to see him, because then it is a simple matter: I should go to him. He desired; he wanted to see me, and yet wanted me to come to him. I don't like that, and never will.

That created, at least on his part, an antagonism towards me. Since then he has been speaking against me. The moment he sees one of my sannyasins he behaves exactly like a bull. If you wave a red flag at a bull you know what will happen. That's what happens when he sees one of my sannyasins, clothed in red; suddenly he becomes enraged. I say that he must have been a bull in his past life; he has not forgotten his antagonism with the color red.

This only started when I refused to go to see him. Before that, he had never spoken against me. As far as I'm concerned, I am a free man. I can speak for somebody, and in the same breath against the same person, without any trouble on my part. I love all kinds of contradictions and inconsistencies.

J. Krishnamurti is against me, but I say I am not against him. I still love him. He is one of the most beautiful men of the twentieth century. I don't think there is anybody else alive I can compare him with - but he has a limitation, and that limitation has been his undoing. The limitation is that he tries to be utterly intellectual, and that is not possible if you want to rise high, if you want to go beyond words and numbers.

Krishnamurti should be beyond, just beyond, but he is tethered to the Victorian intellectuality. His intellectuality is not even modern, but Victorian, almost one century old. He says he is fortunate in not having read the Upanishads, the Gita, or the Koran. Then what does he go on doing? I will tell you. He reads third-rate detective novels!

Please don't tell it to anybody, otherwise he will hit his head against the wall. I am not worried about his head, I am worried about the wall. As far as his head is concerned, he has been suffering from migraine for more than the last fifty years - that's more than my whole lifetime - so much so that in his diary he says many times he wanted to hit his head against the wall.... Yes, I am worried about the wall.

Why does he suffer from migraine? - because of too much intellectuality, and nothing else. It is not the same as poor Asheesh, my chair-maker. He too suffers from migraine, but his is physical. J.

Krishnamurti's migraine is spiritual. He is too intellectual. Just to hear him is enough to give you a migraine. If you don't suffer from migraine after hearing a lecture by J. Krishnamurti it means that you are already enlightened - or that you don't have a head. The second is more probable. The first is a little difficult.

Asheesh's migraine can be cured but Krishnamurti's is not terminable. He is incurable. But now there is no need either because he is so old and accustomed to living with his migraine. It has become almost like a wife. If you take away his migraine he will be left alone, a widower. Do not do that. He and his migraine are married, and they are going to die together.

I was saying that my first encounter with the naked Jaina monk started a long, long series of encounters with many so-called monks - bullshitters. They all suffer from intellectuality, and I was

born to bring them down to earth. But it is almost impossible to bring them to their senses. Perhaps they don't want to because they are afraid. Perhaps not to have sensibility or intelligence is very advantageous to them.

They are respected as holy men; to me they are only holy cow-dung. One thing about cow-dung is good, it does not smell. I remind you of that because I am allergic to smells. Cow-dung has this one good quality, it is non-allergic. What is the right word, Devaraj?

"Non-allergenic, Osho."

Right, non-allergenic.

My Nani was not really an Indian woman; even the West would have been a little less foreign to her. And remember, she was absolutely uneducated - perhaps that's why she was so perceptive.

Perhaps she could see something in me of which I was not aware in those days. Perhaps that's the reason she loved me so much... I can't say. She's no longer alive. One thing I do know: when her husband died she never went back to the village; she remained in my father's village. I had to leave her there, but when I returned, again and again I would ask her, "Nani, can we go back to the village?"

She would always say, "For what? You are here." Those three simple words resound in me like music reverberating: "You are here." I also say the same to you. She loved me; and you know nobody can love you more than I love you.

It is beautiful.

You have never been here.

Alas, if only I could also invite you to this Himalayan space! "Now" is such a beautiful space. And poor Devageet - I can still hear his giggle. My God! Can no chemistry at least prevent me from hearing the giggles?

Don't think I have gone mad - I am already mad. Do you see? - your insanity and my insanity, they are totally different. Note it down. Even Rasputin, if he were alive, would be a sannyasin... I mean, he would have been a sannyasin. Nobody, without exception, can cheat me.

I am the type of person who even at the time of death will say, "Enough, enough for today...."