Chapter 38

Okay.

I wanted to tell you a simple truth, perhaps forgotten for its simplicity; and no religion can practice it because the moment you become part of a religion you are no longer simple nor religious. I wanted to tell you just a very simple thing which I have learned the hard way. Perhaps you are getting it too cheap, and the simple is generally mistaken for the cheap. It is not cheap at all. It is the costliest thing possible because one has to pay for this simple truth with one's own life. It is surrender, trust.

Naturally you will misunderstand trust. How many times have I told you? Yes, I must have told you millions of times, but have you listened even once? Just the other night my secretary was crying, and I asked why.

She said, "The reason for my tears is that you trust me so much, and I am not worthy of it. It is too unbearable."

I said, "I trust you. Now if you want to cry again, you can cry. If you want to laugh, you can laugh."

Now this is certainly difficult for her. She understands me, but her tears were not against me, they were for me. I said to her, "What can you do? At the most you can tell me to leave this house.

Anyone who wants to come with me from this house will come, otherwise I will go alone. Alone I have come; alone I will have to go. Nobody can accompany me on the real journey. In the meantime you can play all kinds of games just to pass the time."

She looked at me. Her tears had dried but were still there on her cheeks. For a moment I knew what was in her mind. I said to her, "You are thinking that now you can cheat me. Okay, you will not find a better opportunity."

She started crying again and falling at my feet saying, "No, Osho, no. I don't want to cheat you.

That's why I was crying. I don't want to cheat you."

I said, "Then why the idea? If you don't want to, and I don't want you to either, then why are we wasting our time? If you want to cheat me, I am willing. In fact I should cry for you because from the very beginning I have been nothing but a problem. And still I am a problem, not to myself - myself, I am not at all, so the question does not arise. But to others who are, and are very much so... the more they are, the more problematic is their life. But you are with a man who is not. And as far as he is concerned he has no problem. And if he can trust you, existence is enough to take care of you."

But nobody seems to be at all interested in existence - in everything except existence.

That brings Masto back again. This Masto is such a fellow he would enter anywhere - asked, unasked, invited, uninvited. He was so interesting that whether he was invited or not, everybody would stand to receive him. Masto comes in again and again. It is just an old habit which is very difficult to cure.

Now poor Devageet simply writes his notes, and he does it perfectly. Once in a while I check by asking, "What was I saying?" and he reminds me exactly what it was that I was saying. He does his work, and because he is so full of love for me he cannot resist sighing, and breathing as if something he could never believe would happen has at last happened - and he cannot believe it still. And my difficulty is that I think that he is giggling! He is not giggling, just the sound of his excited breathing makes me feel that he is giggling.

He has written to me about it. I know it, but whenever he does it - I am also a diehard - immediately the word that comes to me is giggling. So, again he is giggling. This too is an old habit from when I was a professor. And you can understand: a professor is, after all, a professor, and he cannot allow giggling in his class. I don't mind it now, I enjoy it.

In my class there were more girls than boys, so there was much giggling. And you know me, whether they are boys or girls it does not matter: I still share the jokes. But if the giggling is out of place, then the person is bound to be in trouble. Just after the joke there is a moment when I would allow it, but not out of place. If the giggling came out of place then I would catch the person redhanded. Such giggling was not because of any joke, it was just because of boys and girls together; the old story of Adam and Eve. "Just get out, both of you!" That's what God said. "Get out of the garden of Eden!"

He must have been the old kind of teacher. And this serpent must have been just an old servant who had served many Adams and Eves, helping in every possible way, perhaps sending their letters to each other et cetera. It is better not to mention the other things. Of course there are no ladies here, and no gentlemen either; but just in case somebody is a gentleman pretending not to be, or a lady pretending not to be, then there would be unnecessary pain. I don't want to cause pain to anybody.

I remember my first lecture.... See how things happen in this series? It was in high school. All the high schools in the district had sent a speaker there. I was chosen to be the representative of my school, not because I was the best, I cannot say that, but only because I was the most troublesome.

If I had not been chosen there would have been trouble, that much was certain. So, they decided to choose me, but they were not aware that wherever I am trouble starts anyway.

I started the speech without the normal address to "Mister President, Ladies and Gentlemen...." I looked the president up and down, and said to myself, "No, he does not look like a president." Then I looked around and said to myself, "No, nobody here seems to be either a lady or a gentleman, so unfortunately I have to begin my speech without addressing anybody in particular. I can only say, 'To whom it may concern.'"

Later on my principal called me, because I had still won the prize, even after this.

He said, "What happened to you? You behaved strangely. We prepared you but you never said a single word that you were taught. Not only that, you completely forgot the prepared lecture; you did not even address the president or the ladies or gentlemen."

I said, "I looked around, and there were no gentlemen. I knew all those fellows very well, not one is a gentleman. As far as the ladies are concerned, they are even worse because they are the wives of these same fellows. And the president... he seems to have been sent by God to preside over all the meetings in this town. I am tired of him. I cannot call him 'Mister President' when in fact I would rather have hit him."

On that day when the president had called me for my prize, I said, "Okay, but remember you will have to come down here and shake hands with me."

He said, "What! Shake hands with you! I will never even look at you. You insulted me."

I said, "I will show you."

Since that day he became my enemy. I know the art of how to make enemies. His name was Shri Nath Bhatt, a prominent politician in the town. Of course he was the leader of the most influential Gandhian political party. Those were the days when India was under the British Raj. Perhaps as far as freedom is concerned India is still not free. It may be free from the British Raj, but not free from the bureaucracy which the British Raj created.

I have really always been talking about trust, and I have never been able to explain it. Perhaps it is not my fault. Trust: perhaps it cannot be talked about, only indicated. I have been trying hard to say something very definite, but everything fails. Either it becomes your experience, then you don't need to know what it is; or it does not become your experience, then you may know everything under the heading "trust," but still you know nothing.

I was again trying to tell you, in fact giving myself one more try, perhaps; and it is always alluring to talk about all the attempts, even those that failed. Just knowing that they were made in the right direction, one feels proud. It is a question of direction.

Yes, trust is many things, but first a question towards oneself - a change of direction.

We are born looking outwardly. To look inside is not part of the body organism. The body functions well; if you want to go somewhere else, it can take you. But the moment you ask "Who am I?" it flops, simply flops on the ground, not knowing what to do now because the relevant direction is not part of the so-called world.

The world consists of ten dimensions, or ten directions, rather. Dimension is a bigger word and should not be used for direction. These ten directions are: two, upwards and downwards; and the four we know as east, west, north, and south; the remaining four are just the corners. When you draw the east-west line, the north-south line, there are corners between the north and the east, and between the east and the south, and so on - the four corners.

I should not have used the word dimension. It is totally different, as different as Devageet's sneeze.

He tries to suppress it, and it is one of the most impossible things to suppress. I will suggest to him to allow it. It comes anyway. Why suffer? Next time when you hear the knock, open the door and say, "Madam, come in." Perhaps it may not happen at all. Sneezes are strange things. If you try to bring one on then you will have to do all the tricks of yoga. Then too, it is only a probability. But try to suppress it and it will come on with tremendous force. It is a woman you know; and when a woman takes possession of you it is better to sneeze her out and escape, rather than suppress.

Direction and dimension are as different as his sneeze, and my understanding that he is giggling. He is trying to suppress his sneeze and I was just starting to talk about the untalkable, and at that exact moment he sneezed. This is what Carl Gustav Jung calls synchronicity. Not a very great example; not exemplary I mean, but just a little example.

It is strange, but particularly in India, whenever such things are talked about - and I don't think people have talked about such things anywhere else for thousands of years - sneezing at a meeting with the Master is prohibited. Why? I don't understand how you can prohibit a sneeze. A sneeze is not afraid of your cops, nor your guns. How can you prohibit it? - unless you do plastic surgery on the nose, which would not be good because a sneeze simply informs you that something wrong has entered. It should not be prevented in any way.

So I say to you, Devageet, you are my disciple, and my disciples have to be different in every way, even in sneezing. They can sneeze exactly when the Master is talking about trust. There is no harm in it. But sometimes when you start repressing it, naturally it affects your breathing. It affects everything in you, and then I think that you are giggling. Then you are very shocked. In fact you should be happy that "My Master, even if he misunderstands once in a while, always interprets it as a giggle."

Laughter - that can be said to be my creed if it is allowed; I mean if the word "creed" is allowed to be used. I don't mean a loud laughter allowed... that will be okay with me. But people are such fanatics about their creeds, they don't laugh. At least in church they have such long faces that you cannot believe they have come there to understand the man whose only message if reduced to one word would be, "Rejoice!" They are not the people to rejoice.

They must have been the people who killed the man, and are still putting fresh nails into his coffin.

Who knows, he may come out.... They must be the people who are still hanging him; and he has been dead for two thousand years. Now there is no need to hang him, although he was intelligent enough not to be crucified.

He managed to escape just in time. Of course he played the role of being crucified, for the masses, and when the masses went home, he also went home. I don't mean he went to God. Please don't misunderstand; he really went to his home.

The cave which is still shown to Christians, where Jesus' body was kept, is all nonsense. Yes, it was there for a few hours, perhaps a night at the most, but he was still alive. This is proved by the BIBLE itself. It says that a soldier pierced Jesus' side with a spear after they thought he was dead, but blood came out. Blood never comes out of a dead man. The moment a man dies his blood starts disintegrating. If the BIBLE had said only water had come out then I would have believed that they were writing truly, but it would have looked so stupid to write that water came out of his body. In fact Jesus never died in Jerusalem. He died in Pahalgam, which at least as far as the meaning of the word is concerned means exactly the same as the name of my village.

Pahalgam is one of the most beautiful places in the world. That is where Jesus died, and he died at the age of one hundred and twelve. But he got so fed up with his own people that he simply spread the story that he had died on the cross.

Of course he was crucified - but you have to understand that the Jewish way of crucifixion was not the American way. It was not sitting in a chair, and with just a push of a button you were no more; not even time to say, "God forgive these people who are pushing the button, they don't know what they are doing." They know what they are doing! They are pushing the button! And you don't know what they are doing!

Jesus would not have had any time if he had been crucified in the scientific way. No, it is a very crude way that the Jews followed. Naturally, it sometimes even took twenty-four hours or more to die. There have been cases of people having survived for three days on the cross, the Jewish cross I mean, because they simply nailed the man by his hands and his feet.

The blood has the capacity to clot; it flows for a while, then it clots. The man is, of course, in immense pain, in fact he prays to God, "Please let it be finished." Perhaps that is what Jesus was saying when he said, "They don't know what they are doing. Why have you forsaken me?" But the pain must have been too much, for he finally said, "Let thy will be done."

I don't think that he died on the cross. No, I should not say that "I don't think..." I know that he didn't die on the cross. He had said, "Let thy will be done"; that's his freedom. He could say anything he wanted to say. In fact, the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, had fallen in love with the man. Who would not? It is irresistible if you have eyes.

But Jesus' own people were busy counting money; they had no time to look into the eyes of this man who had no money at all. Pontius Pilate for one moment had even thought to release Jesus. It was in his power to order his release, but he was afraid of the crowd. Pilate said, "It is better that I should keep out of their business. He is a Jew, they are Jews - let them decide for themselves. But if they cannot decide in his favor then I will find a way."

And he found a way, politicians always do. Their ways are always roundabout; they never go directly.

If they want to go to A, they first go to B; that's how politics works. And it really works. Only once in a while it does not work. I mean, only when there is a non-political man, then it does not work. In Jesus' case also, Pontius Pilate managed perfectly well without getting involved.

Jesus was crucified on the afternoon of Friday, hence "Good Friday." Strange world! Such a good man is crucified, and you call it "Good Friday." But there was a reason, because Jews have... I think Devageet, you can help me again - not with a sneeze, of course! Is Saturday their religious day?

"Yes, Osho."

Right... because on Saturday nothing is done. Saturday is a holiday for the Jews; all action has to be stopped. That's why the Friday was chosen... and late afternoon, so by the time the sun sets the body has to be brought down, because to keep it hanging on Saturday would be "action." That's how politics functions, not religion. During that night, a rich follower of Jesus removed the body from the cave. Of course, then comes Sunday, a holiday for everybody. By the time Monday comes, Jesus is very far away.

Israel is a small country; you can cross it on foot in twenty-four hours very easily. Jesus escaped, and there was no better place than the Himalayas. Pahalgam is just a small village, just a few cottages. He must have chosen it for its beauty. Jesus chose a place which I would have loved myself.

I tried continuously for twenty years to get into Kashmir. But Kashmir has a strange law: only Kashmiris can live there, not even other Indians. That is strange. But I know ninety percent of Kashmiris are Mohammedan and they are afraid that once Indians are allowed to live there, then Hindus would soon become the majority, because it is part of India. So now it is a game of votes just to prevent the Hindus.

I am not a Hindu, but bureaucrats everywhere are delinquents. They really need to be in mental hospitals. They would not allow me to live there. I even met the chief minister of Kashmir, who was known before as the prime minister of Kashmir.

It was such a great struggle to bring him down from prime ministership to chief ministership. And naturally, in one country how could there be two prime ministers? But he was a very reluctant man, this Sheikh Abdullah. He had to be imprisoned for years. Meanwhile the whole constitution of Kashmir was changed, but that strange clause remained in it. Perhaps all the committee members were Mohammedans and none of them wanted anybody else to enter Kashmir.

I tried hard, but there was no way. You cannot enter into the thick skulls of politicians.

I said to the sheikh, "Are you mad? I am not a Hindu; you need not be afraid of me. And my people come from all over the world - they will not influence your politics in any way, for or against."

He said, "One has to be cautious."

I said, "Okay, be cautious and lose me and my people."

Poor Kashmir could have gained so much, but politicians are born deaf. He listened, or at least pretended to, but he did not hear.

I said to him, "You know that I have known you for many years, and I love Kashmir."

He said, "I know you, that's why I am even more afraid. You are not a politician, you belong to a totally different category. We always distrust such people as you." He used this word, distrust - and I was talking to you about trust.

At this moment I cannot forget Masto. It was he who introduced me to Sheikh Abdullah, a very long time before. Later on, when I wanted to enter Kashmir, particularly Pahalgam, I reminded the sheikh of this introduction.

The sheikh said, "I remember that this man was also dangerous, and you are even more so. In fact it is because you were introduced to me by Masta Baba that I cannot allow you to become a permanent resident in this valley."

Masto introduced me to many people. He thought perhaps I might need them; and I certainly did need them - not for myself but for my work. But except for very few people, the majority turned out to be very cowardly. They all said, "We know you are enlightened...."

I said, "Stop, then and there. That word, from your mouth, immediately becomes unenlightened.

Either you do what I say, or simply say no, but don't talk any nonsense to me."

They were very polite. They remembered Masta Baba, and a few of them even remembered Pagal Baba, but they were not ready to do anything at all for me. I am talking about the majority. Yes, a few were helpful, perhaps one percent of the hundreds of people that Masto introduced me to.

Poor Masto - his desire was that I should never be in any difficulty or need, and that I could always depend on the people he had introduced me to.

I said to him, "Masto, you are trying your best, and I am even doing better than that by keeping quiet when you introduce me to these fools. If you were not there I would have caused real trouble. That man for instance, would never have forgotten me. I control myself just because of you, although I don't believe in control, but I do it just for your sake."

Masto laughed and said, "I know. When I look at you as I am introducing you to a bigwig, I laugh inside myself thinking, 'My God, how much effort you must be making not to hit that idiot.'"

Sheikh Abdullah took so much effort, and yet he said to me, "I would have even allowed you to live in Kashmir if you had not been introduced to me by Masta Baba."

I asked the sheikh, "Why?... when you appeared to be such an admirer."

He said, "We are no one's admirer, we admire only ourselves, but because he had a following - particularly among rich people in Kashmir - I had to admire him. I used to receive him at the airport, and give him a send-off, put all my work aside and just run after him. But that man was dangerous.

And if he introduced you to me, then you cannot live in Kashmir, at least while I am in power. Yes, you can come and go, but only as a visitor."

It is good that Jesus entered Kashmir before Sheikh Abdullah. He did well by coming two thousand years before. He must have been really afraid of Sheikh Abdullah. Jesus' grave is still there, preserved by the descendants of those who had followed him from Israel. Of course men like me cannot go alone, you can understand. A few people must have followed him there. Even though he went far away from Israel, they must have gone with him.

In fact the Kashmiris are the lost tribe of Hebrews of which the Jews and Christians both talk so much. The Kashmiris are not Hindu, nor of Indian origin. They are Jewish. You can see by looking at Indira Gandhi's nose; she is a Kashmiri.

She is imposing emergency rule in India - not in name but in fact. Hundreds of political leaders are behind bars. I had been telling her from the very beginning that those people should not be in parliament or assemblies or in the legislature.

There are many kinds of idiots, but politicians are the worst, because they also have power.

Journalists are number two. In fact they are even worse than politicians, but because they have no power, they can only write, and who cares what they write? Without power in your hands then you may have as much idiocy as possible, it cannot do anything.

I was introduced to Indira too by Masto, but in an indirect way. Basically Masto was a friend of Indira's father, Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India. He was really a beautiful man, and a rare one too, because to be in politics and yet remain beautiful is not easy.

When Helen Keller met him, because she was blind, deaf and dumb, she had to touch his face. She gave the message to someone who could interpret her sign language, "Touching this man's face I feel as if I am touching a marble statue."

Many other people have written about Jawaharlal, but I don't think anything more needs to be said.

This woman with no eyes, no ears and no tongue to speak with, still managed to say the most poignant statement, and in a very simple way.

It was my feeling also, when I was introduced by Masto. I was only twenty. After only one more year Masto was to leave me, so he was in a hurry to introduce me to everybody that he could. He rushed me to the prime minister's house. It was a beautiful meeting. I had not expected it to be beautiful because I had been disappointed so many times. How could I have expected that the prime minister would not just be a mean politician? He was not.

It was only by chance that, in the corridor as we were leaving and he was coming with us to say goodbye, Indira came in. At that time she was nobody, just a young girl. She was introduced to me by her father. Masto was present, of course, and it was through him that we met. But Indira may not have known Masto, or who knows? - maybe she did. The meeting with Jawaharlal turned out to be so significant that it changed my whole attitude, not only to him, but to his family too.

He talked with me about freedom, about truth. I could not believe it. I said, "Do you recognize the fact that I am only twenty years old, just a young man?"

He said, "Don't be bothered about age, because my experience is that a donkey, even if it is very old, still remains a donkey. An old donkey does not necessarily become a horse - nor even a mule, what to say of a horse. So don't you bother about age," he continued. "We can forget completely for a moment how old I am and how old you are, and let us discuss without any barriers of age, caste, creed, or position." He then said to Masto, "Baba, would you please close the door so that nobody enters in. I don't even want my own private secretary."

And we talked of such great things. It was I who was surprised, because he listened to me with as much attention as you. And he had such a beautiful face, as only the Kashmiris can have. Indians are certainly a little dark, and the more you move downwards towards the south, the darker they become until finally you come to a point when you see, for the first time in your life, what black means.

But Kashmiris are really beautiful. Jawaharlal certainly was, for two reason. My own feeling is that the white man, just a white man, looks a little shallow because whiteness has no depth. That's why all the Californian girls are trying to get their skins a little sun-tanned. They understand that when the skin is sun-tanned it starts having a certain depth which white skin cannot have. But black is too sun-tanned, burned. There is no question of depth, it is death. But Kashmiris are exactly in the middle; they are white people, very beautiful people, sun-tanned from their very birth; and they are Jews.

I have seen Jesus' grave in Kashmir, where he escaped to after his so-called crucifixion. I say so- called because it was managed so well. The whole credit goes to Pontius Pilate. And when Jesus was allowed to escape from the cave, naturally the whole question was, "Where to go?" The only place outside Israel where he could be at ease was Kashmir, because it was a small Israel. And it is not only Jesus who is buried in Kashmir, but Moses too.

That will shock you even more. I have been to his grave too. I am a grave-digger. Moses had been nagged by other Jews asking, "Where is the lost tribe?"

One tribe was missing, naturally, after their forty years' long journey in the desert. Moses mismanaged that too; if he had gone to the left instead of to the right, the Jews would have been the oil kings now. But Jews are Jews, you cannot predict what they will do. Moses traveled for forty years from Egypt to Israel.

I am neither a Jew nor a Christian, and it is none of my concern, but still, just out of curiosity, I wonder why he chose Israel. Why did Moses search for Israel? In fact he must have been searching for a beautiful place, but old age comes, and after a tedious journey, forty years in the desert....

I could not have done it. Forty years! I cannot do it for even forty hours. I cannot. I would rather commit hara-kiri. You know hara-kiri? It is the Japanese way of disappearing; in ordinary language, suicide.

Moses traveled for forty years and ultimately came to Israel, and that dusty, ugly place, Jerusalem.

And after all this - Jews are Jews - they nagged him to travel again in search of the lost tribe. My own feeling is that he went just to get rid of these fellows. But where to look? The most beautiful place that was close was the Himalayas, and he reached the same valley.

It is good that Moses and Jesus both died in India. India is neither Christian, and certainly not Jewish - but the man, or the families to be exact, who take care of the two graves, are Jewish. And both graves are made in the Jewish way. Hindus do not make graves, as you know. Mohammedans do, but in a different way. A Mohammedan grave has to point towards Mecca. The head has to be towards Mecca. These are the only two graves in Kashmir which are not made according to the Mohammedan rules.

But the names are certainly not exactly what you might expect. In Arabic, Moses is called Mosha; and the name on his grave is Mosha. Jesus in Arabic is just the same in Aramaic, Yeshu, from the Hebrew Joshua; and it is written in the same way. It may mislead you. You might think Yeshu is not Jesus, nor that Mosha is Moses. Moses is only an English - what to say? - mispronunciation of the original; just as Jesus is.

Joshua will certainly slowly become Yeshu - Joshua is too much; Yeshu will do, and that is exactly how we call Jesus in India, Isu - pronounced Eesu. We have added something to the beauty of the name. "Jesus" is good, but you know what has been made out of it. When one wants to curse, one says, "Jesus!" The sound certainly has something cursing in it. Try to curse somebody by saying, "Joshua!" and you will find difficulty. The word itself prevents you. It is so feminine, so beautiful, and so round that you cannot hit anybody with it.

What's the time?

"Twenty past eleven, Osho."

That's good, finish it.