Existence must be laughing at man

Question 1:

Deva Jayan, the flowers don't open unto themselves. Otherwise they could have opened in the middle of the night. They open to a rising sun in deep welcome, in gratitude and prayer. They open to the songs of the birds.

And you are trying to do something utterly stupid. You are trying to open your heart to yourself. Do you understand what it means? How can you open your heart to yourself? Who are you, other than your heart? If you are trying to open your heart to yourself, it will close more and more because you are the center of the heart. The petals will have to come close to you ... they will become a bud ...

Even the open flower will start closing.

This is something very significant to understand: you can open to existence, but not to yourself. You are the one who is the barrier. But you seem to be accustomed to the old human habit of making somebody else responsible.

I will read your question: "Finally I have come home to myself with a silence and serenity never known before."

Remember - underline the word myself. When one really comes home, there is no self found.

Gautam Buddha has to use a negative word, anatta. Anatta means 'no-self'. When you really come home you are not to be found at all.

If you are still finding yourself, you have not come home. Your absence is the home. Your ego is taking you astray and it will give you the sense that you have come home just to prevent you - giving you some false substitute of a home. But this has to be remembered as a definitive criterion: when you come home you never come to yourself.

You come to the ultimate. You come to Sat-Chit-Anand. You come to truth. You come to consciousness. You come to bliss.

But in the world of truth, consciousness and bliss, where are you going to find this rat you call "myself"? I knowingly use the word 'rat' because rats have been found, scientifically, to survive under any conditions. They eat almost one-fifth of the food of humanity. One-fifth is a big lot - twenty percent - while half of humanity is starving. And they grow fast. Their birthrate is faster than any Indian; they don't believe in birth control at all; they are all followers of the Vatican Pope, they are all Catholics.

There has been a very revealing experiment somewhere in the oceans on a small island where both America and France have been experimenting with atomic weapons, nuclear weapons. The whole island has no population, except rats.

All the trees have died. There is a tremendous amount of atomic radiation which can kill any human being, but the rats have not died. They quickly became immune to any radiation.

It was thought that in the third world war all life will disappear. Now it is known rats will live, third world war or no third world war.

All kinds of poisons have been used on rats to save crops. The rats have not died, but the people who ate those crops died.

Your ego is just like a rat. It has the immunity and the adaptability for any situation, whatever you want. You want serenity? You want silence? You want to come back home? Just name it and your ego will give it to you. But anything that is centered on "myself" is going to be wrong.

Remember, no-self is your reality, your authentic reality. And how can you be silent with yourself?

The self is the cause of all chaos in you, the self is the cause of all anxiety and misery in you. How can you be silent and find serenity? Your ego is deceiving you. If one has to beware of any enemy, it is the ego, it is the self. You have not come home yet.

You say, "I feel like a flower bud ready to open, yet I do not feel in touch with the energy of love and joy that would allow this flower to bloom." From where are you going to be in touch with the energy of love and joy? From yourself? Yourself is a false entity; it has no energy and no love.

If you want energy and love for the nourishment of the bud that you feel, then you have to be open to all dimensions of existence and allow existence to reach to you in sun rays, in the songs of the birds. Just listen to their chit-chat, to the trees, to the mountains, to the moon, to the stars, to all living beings, particularly to human beings.

You have to become a receptacle. The ego never wants to be a receptive entity - it goes against the egoistic structure, it goes against its pride. The ego can give, but it cannot take. But it has nothing to give. Unless you take from existence you have nothing to give. Before giving you have to learn getting.

Open to existence, to the starry night, to the day full of flowers, full of the rays of the sun, to human beings who are all potential buddhas. Throw open all your doors and windows and the bud will start opening on its own accord. Do you think any gardener goes to the bud and tries to open it? If you try to open a bud forcibly, you will destroy all possibility of having a beautiful flower ... Something crippled, something distorted, something aborted - you did not allow it to open on its own accord.

Every bud opens on its own accord. It just has to grow and be ready when the sun rises.

Just wait for the sun.

Again, you are saying, "It is almost as if I have not yet fully opened my heart to myself." I wonder that you could not see your question and its utter stupidity. To open to yourself? That is almost like trying to fly by pulling on your shoestrings. Rather than opening the bud, you may destroy it. You will fall flat on the earth and forget all about buds and flowers.

The ways of the ego are very subtle and very clever. And then you say, "Osho, am I missing something?" - you are missing everything - "or is it just a matter of time?" Don't throw the responsibility on time. What does poor time have to do with you? Time will not open your bud.

You need to be aware that the simple process of opening is always towards the beyond. Opening cannot be towards yourself - that's an absurdity. If you understand what I am saying, then you will be aware that you are full of words which you don't understand.

The question you have formulated has not arisen in your being. You have tried hard to make it very beautiful. You have used good words, but words are empty things unless they have content. And you cannot deceive me. In your question I can read your whole biography, not only the past but something of the future too.

If you go on this way, you will never reach what you call your home and you will never blossom. You will never know what spring is. You will have to change your whole approach. Right now you seem to be very knowledgeable. But knowledge is all rubbish. You don't have any experience of anything.

Even about the bud you are simply talking. There is nothing like a bud in you. It cannot be in this wrong situation which surrounds you. Your ego is too strong - it would crush any bud. Your ego is just like a bulldozer. Poor rosebuds cannot stand against a bulldozer.

If you change from all this knowledgeability and accept your ignorance about the path, about the workings of your mind, then you will still be missing meditation. And meditation needs patience.

Right now you are already a bud, without any meditation. You are already hoping to open unto yourself, which is really unique, because in the whole of history no mystic has talked about opening unto "yourself."

Deva Jayan, everything is possible - you just have to remove the hindrances: the greatest hindrance is the ego; the second hindrance is knowledgeability without experience; the third hindrance is imagination without seeing clearly that there is no bud yet.

I can see it. I don't know where you are, who you are, but I can see through your question - the bud cannot be there. Your question is very revealing. You have not reached home; perhaps some caravanserai ... an overnight stay but in the morning you have to move on.

Home is when everything stops - time and mind - and nothing moves. Home is an eternal moment which begins but never ends. Home is when there is absolute nothingness ... no self, no I. In this nothingness only buds of silence and serenity can grow. And if you are open towards the universe, then it showers with nourishment and all buds start opening on their own accord.

Meditate, so that you can go beyond mind and self. Certainly meditation will take a little time.

Because you are so full of bullshit you will have to clean the ground. You are in tremendous misunderstanding.

Chiang Kai-shek, the dictator of China before Mao Tse-tung came to power, was one of the most powerful people on the earth. He had become very old - he was ninety years - when Mao removed him from power. He escaped to Formosa, a private resort for the dictator.

He changed the name of Formosa to Taiwan and made it the capital of China. The whole of China was gone, but he made this small island the capital of China and continued to remain dictator of the whole of China. There was no China in his hands, yet because of American support mainland China was not represented in the U.N. Chiang Kai-shek's Taiwan represented China in the U.N. for many years - you cannot believe what kind of politicians are sitting on your chest. This man Chiang Kai-shek when he was dethroned in utter desperation, old age, sickness - he had passed ninety - was being interviewed in Taipei by an American reporter from NEWSWEEK.

"And when was the last time you had an election, General?" the reporter asked.

Chiang Kai-shek winked and said, "Just before bleakfast."

People's egos are such, even at the age of ninety ... that idiot is saying he had an erection just before breakfast.

There is a loud knock on the door and the psychiatrist hurries to answer it. "Doc," says a frightened voice, "I must talk to you about my brother. He breaks thermometers, drinks the mercury and throws away the glass."

"What?" shrieks the horrified shrink. "He throws away the glass? That is the best part!"

There are psychoanalysts who are far more insane than their patients but the ego goes on playing its games because they have qualifications, certificates. The ego very much enjoys degrees - Ph.D.'s and D.Litt.'s - and they never look at the fact that they are either neurotic or psychotic themselves.

It is a known fact that psychoanalysts go mad four times more often than any other profession. It is strange. These are the people who are supposed to help humanity out of all kinds of neurosis, psychosis, but they themselves go to the mental asylum four times more than any profession in the world.

And every psychiatrist - it is hilarious - once in a while goes to another psychiatrist to be psychoanalyzed. After six, eight months, they themselves need psychoanalysis. Now on what grounds can these people help those who are in real need of help? But the ego never even suspects that something may be wrong. It always pretends to be right.

The meditator is the only person in the whole world who begins his first step with a deep feeling that, "I am ignorant. I don't know anything." With this ignorance comes innocence, side by side. And with this ignorance all the crap of your knowledge and words and imagination drops away. With this ignorance, slowly slowly, you settle into being just like a child with a clarity, a purity, a silence, an alertness.

All that is needed is a deep recognition that you know nothing, a recognition that your ego is not you. You are simply the silence which has been taken over by the ego. You are a land conquered by an enemy and you are being identified with the enemy.

Jayan, everything is possible, but you have to begin from the right point with humbleness, with openness, with receptivity. And a silence and a patience and a trust will arise on their own accord.

Yes, many, many flowers will blossom in your being too, but you have to put things right.

Question 2:

Dhyandeep, instead of two words, you will have to understand three words, because you have a past and you have a present and you have a future. Instinct is what belongs to your animal past.

It is very old, very solid. It is the inheritance of millions of years. And when I say it is animal-like, I am not condemning it. With the word 'animal' the priests of all religions have associated some condemnation, but I am simply stating a fact, no condemnation at all.

Our past was an animal past. We have passed through all kinds of animals. Our evolution has been from fish up to man, passing through all the species of animals. It has been a long, long journey to arrive at mankind.

Intellect is human: it is our present. That's how we function, through intellect. All our sciences, all our businesses, all our professions - whatever is going on in the world - our politics, our religion, our philosophy, they are all based on intellect. Intellect is human.

Instinct is almost infallible, because it is so old, so ripe, so mature. Your eyes are blinking; are you doing it? They go on doing it by themselves. This is instinct. Your heart is beating; your breathing is going in and out; it is not up to your intellect to look after all these essential things of life. They are in the hands of instinct, because instinct is absolutely infallible. It never forgets to breathe, it never forgets anything.

But intellect is very fallible, because it is very new, a very recent arrival. It is just groping in the dark still trying to find what it is, where it belongs. And because it does not have roots in experience, it substitutes experience with beliefs, philosophies, ideologies. They become the focus of intellect.

But they are all fallible, because they are all man-made, manufactured by some clever guy.

And they are not applicable in every situation. They may be right in one situation and in another situation they may not be right. But intellect is blind, it knows not how to deal with the new. It always brings the old answer to the new question.

Paddy and Sean are sitting opposite the local whorehouse in Dublin, discussing the virtues of the Catholic faith. Suddenly, Gideon Greenberg, the local rabbi, approaches the door, looks left and right, then hurries up the stairs.

"Did you see that?" roars Paddy. "I'm glad I am a Catholic."

Ten minutes later, the Anglican priest approaches the door, looks around quickly, then dashes up the stairs.

"Another hypocrite," laughs Paddy. "Thank God I am a Catholic."

A few minutes later Sean nudges Paddy and says, "Hey, man, look! There is Father O'Murphy coming this way."

The two men watch in stunned silence as the Catholic priest disappears up the stairs into the whorehouse. Suddenly Paddy jumps to his feet, crosses himself and shouts at Sean, "Where is your respect? Stand up and take off your hat! There must be a death in the house!"

Now the whole thing has changed. Intellect lives through prejudices; it is never fair. Just by its very nature it cannot be, because it has no experience.

Instinct is always fair and shows you exactly the natural way, the relaxed way, and the one that the universe follows. But strangely, instinct has been condemned by all religions and intellect has been praised. Of course, if everybody follows instinct, there is no need of any religion, no need of any god, no need of any priest.

Animals don't need God and they are perfectly happy. I don't see that they are missing God. Not a single animal, not a single bird, not a single tree is missing God. They are all enjoying life in its utter beauty and simplicity with no fear of hell and no greed for heaven, no philosophical differences.

There are no Catholic lions, there are no Protestant lions and no Hindu lions.

The whole existence must be laughing at man, at what has happened to man. If birds can live without religions and churches and mosques and temples, why cannot man? The birds never fight religious wars, neither do the animals, nor the trees. But you are a Mohammedan and I am a Hindu and we cannot coexist. Either you have to become converted to my religion or - be ready - I will send you to heaven immediately! Because of the fact that, if instinct is praised, religions lose any rationality, any reason to exist, they praise intellect.

And the third thing, which is your future, is intuition. So these three words have to be understood.

Instinct is physical. Your past, based on the experience of millions of years, infallible, never commits any mistake and does miracles in you of which you are not even aware.

How does your food become blood? How does your breathing go on functioning even when you are asleep?

How does your body separate the oxygen from nitrogen? How does your instinctive world of nature go on giving to every part of your body what it needs? How much oxygen is needed in your head for the mind to function? The exact amount is sent through blood running all around the body, distributing fresh oxygen, taking out the old, used, dead cells, replacing them with new ones and taking them back to places from where they can be disposed of.

Have you ever thought when you cut your nails why you don't feel the pain, or when you cut your hair why you don't feel the pain? They are dead cells of your body and this is the way instinct disposes of them. If they were living, then they would hurt just as if you had cut your finger. You would feel wounded and you would feel immense pain. But when you cut your hair, you don't feel anything, because they are dead already.

The scientists say that what instinct does for man, we are not yet capable of doing. And in a small body the instinct does so many miracles ... If someday science is going to do the work of a single human body, it will need at least one square mile of factory for a single human being. Tremendous machinery! And still it will not be infallible. Machinery can break, can stop. The electricity can go off.

But for seventy years continuously, or even one hundred years for a few people, or even one hundred and eighty years for a few people, the instinct goes on functioning perfectly well: the electricity never goes off; not a single mistake is committed; everything goes according to plan, and the plan is in every cell of your body. Scientists are trying to read it but because it is in code language, nobody knows how to read it.

The day we can read the human cells, we will be able to predict everything about a child even before he is born, even before he is in the mother's womb. The sperm of the father has a program and in that program your age, your health, what kind of diseases you will have, your genius, your intelligence, your talents, your whole destiny is contained.

Like instinct, on the other polarity of your being, beyond the mind - which is the world of intellect - is the world of intuition. Intuition opens its doors through meditation: meditation is simply a knocking on the doors of intuition; intuition is also completely ready; it does not grow; you have inherited that too from existence.

Intuition is your consciousness, your being.

Intellect is your mind.

Instinct is your body.

And just as instinct functions perfectly on behalf of the body, intuition functions perfectly as far as your consciousness is concerned. Intellect is just between these two - a passage to be passed, a bridge to be crossed. But there are many people, many millions of people, who never cross the bridge. They simply sit on the bridge thinking they have arrived home.

The home is on the further shore, beyond the bridge. The bridge joins instinct and intuition. But it all depends on you. You may start making a house on the bridge - then you have gone astray. Intellect is not going to be your home. It is a very small instrument to be used only for passing from instinct to intuition. So only the person who uses his intellect to go beyond it can be called intelligent.

Intuition is existential.

Instinct is natural.

Intellect is just groping in the dark.

The faster you move beyond intellect, the better.

When Billy Graham sang, "All I want is Jesus," five thousand people joined the Protestant church.

When Pope the Polack sang, "Ave Maria," ten thousand people joined the Catholic church.

When Frank Sinatra sang, "There's a gold mine in the sky," one hundred thousand Jews joined the Air Force.

Intellect functions that way. And Jews are intelligent people - if there is a gold mine in the sky, why waste time here? Just immediately join the Air Force.

Intellect can be a barrier to those who think nothing is beyond it. Intellect can be a beautiful way to those who understand that there is certainly something beyond it. Science has stopped at intellect.

That's why it cannot figure out anything about consciousness.

The intellect without your intuition awake is one of the most dangerous things in the world. And we are living under the danger of intellect, because intellect has given science immense power. But the power is in the hands of children, not in the hands of wise people.

Intuition makes a man wise. Call it enlightenment, call it awakening; those are simply different names for wisdom. Only in the hands of wisdom can intellect be used as a beautiful servant. And the instinct and intuition function together perfectly well: one on the physical level, another on the spiritual level.

The whole problem of humanity is getting stuck in the middle, in the mind, in the intellect. And then you will have misery and you will have anxiety and you will have agony and you will have meaninglessness. And you will have all kinds of tensions without any solution anywhere to be seen.

Intellect makes everything a problem and knows no solution at all. Instinct never creates any problem and does not need any solution, it simply functions naturally. Intuition is pure solution, it has no problems: intellect is only problems, it has no solution. If you rightly see the division, it is very simple to understand: unless instinct is available, you will be dead. And unless intuition is available, your life has no meaning - you just drag on. It is a kind of vegetation.

Intuition brings meaning, splendor, joy, blessings. Intuition gives you the secrets of existence, brings a tremendous silence, serenity, which cannot be disturbed and which cannot be taken away from you.

With instinct and intuition functioning together, you can also use your intellect for right purposes.

Otherwise you have only means but no ends. Intellect has no idea of any ends. This has created today's situation in the world. Science goes on producing things but it does not know why. Politicians go on using those things not knowing that they are destructive, that they are preparing for a global suicide.

The world needs a tremendous rebellion that can take it beyond intellect into the silences of intuition.

The very word 'intuition' has to be understood. You know the word 'tuition'. Tuition comes from outside, somebody teaches you - the tutor. Intuition means something that arises within your being; it is your potential; that's why it is called intuition.

Wisdom is never borrowed and that which is borrowed is never wisdom. Unless you have your own wisdom, your own vision, your own clarity, your own eyes to see, you will not be able to understand the mystery of existence.

As far as I am concerned, I am in absolute favor of instinct. Don't disturb it. Every religion has been teaching you to disturb it. What is fasting but disturbing your instinct? Your body is hungry and asking for food, and you are starving it for spiritual reasons. A strange kind of spirituality has been possessing your being. It should be called simply stupidity, not spirituality.

Your instinct is asking for water, it is thirsty; your body needs it. But your religions ... Jainism does not allow anybody even to drink water in the night. Now as far as the body is concerned, it may feel thirsty, particularly in summer in a hot country like India and Jainas exist only in India.

In my childhood, I used to feel very guilty because I had to steal water in the night. I could not sleep without drinking at least once a night in hot summers. But I used to feel that I was doing something that should not be done, that I was committing a sin.

Strange and stupid ideas are being forced on people. I am in favor of the instinct and this is one of the secrets I want to reveal to you: if you are in total favor of instinct, it will be very easy to find the way towards intuition, because they are both the same, even though functioning on different layers.

One functions on the material level, another functions on the spiritual level.

But intellect goes on creating repressive methods for the instinct. Celibacy for instance creates perversions - homosexuality, sodomy - because it is not part of your instinctive program.

To accept your instinctive life with absolute joy, without any guilt, will help you to open the doors of intuition, because they are not different, just their planes are different. And just as instinct functions beautifully, silently, without any noise, so does intuition function - and even more silently, far more beautifully.

Intellect is a disturbance. But it depends on us whether we make it a disturbance or use it as a stepping-stone. When you come across a stone in the street, either you can think it a hindrance or you can use it as a stepping-stone to a higher plane. Those who really understand use intellect as a stepping-stone.

But the masses are under the control of religions which teach them, "Use your intellect as a repressive force for instinct." They get involved in fighting with instinct and forget all about intuition.

Their whole energy becomes involved in fighting with their own life force. And when you are continuously fighting with your instinct ....

A Jaina monk is supposed to remain naked all the year round, even in the winter months, even in the cold night. He cannot use a mattress, he cannot use a blanket, he cannot use anything to cover his body, day or night. He has to fast. The longer he fasts, the greater a saint he becomes in the eyes of the same kind of conditioned people - thirty days, forty days ....

Jainism is the only religion in the world which allows you to leave the body if you want, but you cannot do it quickly by jumping into a river, or by cutting off your head, or by drinking poison. These methods are too simple. Jainism believes in austerity, arduousness - no shortcut is allowed.

You have to fast. And if a healthy young man fasts, it takes ninety days for him to die, ninety days of utter agony. He can neither sleep, nor can he be at ease for a single moment. And every day he goes on becoming thinner, every day two pounds are disappearing. By the time ninety days have passed, he will be just a skeleton. Only then will he die. These ninety days he suffered hell unnecessarily, but this is spiritual.

This is fighting against the body. This is conquering the body and the material. This is spirit conquering the body.

Just a few months ago one Jaina monk did this kind of suicide. They call it santhara. And I wonder that a government which is against suicide takes no note of these people. They should be prevented.

They should be put in jails, with others who attempt suicide ... because what does it matter what kind of means you use for suicide? Whether you die within nine minutes or ninety days does not matter. And if you allow the Jaina monks, then why should you prevent others?

And the prevention is also very beautiful. If you are caught committing suicide - if you have committed, nothing can be done - but if you are caught committing suicide, then you will be sent to the gallows. Strange punishment! That's what he was doing himself! Now why waste unnecessary years of time in courts, cases, judges, advocates and finally, because he was trying to commit suicide, you sentence him to death. The poor fellow was doing it himself, without any expense to the country.

And after that Jaina monk, one of his disciples, an old woman, started ... Because her master has gone, now she does not want to live. And these people are surrounded by thousands who respect them, because this is the greatest sacrifice and the greatest victory of spirituality over materialism.

From all over the country thousands of people will come to touch their feet, and all that they are doing is simply committing a crime. But they are not criminals, they are saints.

It is the same situation in all the religions, with different superstitions. They turn the energy of your intellect against your instinct, and that spoils all possibilities of opening the flower of your intuition.

That is the mystic rose that will lead you to the ultimate ecstasy and to immortal life.

But people seem to be absolutely in the hands of the dead past. Whatever the old scriptures have told them, they go on doing it, without ever considering the whole science of man. These three are the layers of the whole science of man.

Instinct should be allowed a relaxed flow. Never disturb it with the intellect for any reason. And intellect should be used as an opening for intuition. It has just to give way for intuition to take over your life. Then your life is a life of immense light, of luminosity. It becomes a constant festival.

But it seems the majority of the world consists of very retarded people. They never think about their life themselves. Whatever they are told, they do. They never bother whether it comes from right sources or wrong sources.

You may be born a Catholic or a Hindu or a Mohammedan. But your birth does not ensure that your religion is right. Your birth and your religion have no connection. But up to now wherever you are born decides your religion. The child has not chosen the religion; the religion is imposed on him.

And a constant repetition of all kinds of lies makes him more and more unintelligent, superstitious, retarded, idiotic.

Paddy and Sean are eating their lunch on the construction site. Suddenly Paddy says, "Yuck! I just ate a worm in this apple."

"Well," says Sean, "drink some water and wash him down."

"To hell with him," replies Paddy, throwing away the applecore. "Let him wash himself."

You are surrounded with these kinds of people all over the world. You have to keep alert not to get trapped in the way everybody is imprisoned.

Being with me, if you cannot be unimprisoned, unfettered, then you will not find any other place on the earth where you can be free. To me, freedom is the most fundamental value. And only in freedom can you grow to the highest peak, can you become an Everest.

Only in freedom will your intuition blossom and bring immense treasures to you.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.