You're not plugged in

Question 1:

Devageet, misunderstanding is obviously the mother superior of mistakes. Man lives almost half awake, half asleep. Hence whatever he understands is only half. With each of his understandings there is a shadow, a deep unconsciousness which continues to misinterpret, to distort, to confuse whatever small light, whatever small consciousness he has got.

His consciousness is certainly very small - just a thin layer, not more than skin-deep. And his unconsciousness is long, deep, nine times more than his consciousness. That dark night is within you. It has never seen the light of the day. So whatever your consciousness tries to see, to hear, your unconsciousness, which is nine times more - its weight, its pressure is tremendous - distorts it.

You think you have understood something, but it is always finally a misunderstanding. The misunderstanding is not coming from outside, neither is it coming from your conscious mind. It is coming from your darkness within. And unless that darkness disappears, there is no way to get rid of misunderstandings.

Understanding is almost equal to wisdom, almost synonymous to awakening. It is a transformation of your whole unconsciousness into consciousness, as if suddenly the sun has arisen and the whole night with all its darkness has disappeared.

Ordinarily we think that sometimes we misunderstand, but that most of the time we understand. I want to emphasize, that all the time you misunderstand. It is not your fault, it is just the very situation.

Because you are only a very thin consciousness with such a thick layer of darkness, you cannot do anything else than perhaps sometimes understand something.

Otherwise, almost all the time, everything is distorted. It is not in your control not to distort it. What is in your control is to start getting deeper into your being, bringing more awareness to the dark parts of your being. Awareness is just like the light. And as the light goes deeper into you, the darkness, the unconsciousness, will disappear. The moment you are fully conscious there will be no misunderstanding possible.

It has been asked again and again to the people who are awakened: "Can the awakened one misunderstand?" And the answer has always been, "No." It is impossible for the awakened one to misunderstand. It is just not possible. Just as the man of eyes goes through the door, not through the wall, a man of fully enlightened being naturally understands everything as it is in its true nature.

In other words, the moment you are in your true self, you will be able to understand everything in its true authenticity.

Before that, you cannot avoid misunderstanding. And it is good to understand that you cannot avoid misunderstanding. That will help you in many ways: it will make you humble; it will take away your arrogance; it will take away your so-called knowledgeability; it will put aside your ego which depends on all kinds of misconceptions; it will bring more innocence to you.

And in innocence meditation becomes easier. When the ego is not there a great barrier is removed.

And when you are humble you can see that by the very nature of your being - as you are now - in ten situations, nine times there is misunderstanding. Perhaps one time there may be understanding.

But you cannot even figure out when it is understanding and when it is misunderstanding. Your light is so dim. Everything is vague. And one moment, just like a flash, a lightning, you see something, and another moment it is all darkness. And what you have seen seems to be just like a dream.

Perhaps it is right, perhaps it is not.

In fact, if you are alert enough, you will start using the word 'perhaps' more. If you are asked about anything, you will not be so deterministic, you will not be so definitive; you will not be so arrogantly certain; you will not talk in terms of absolutes, you will become more relative. You will say 'perhaps'.

"Perhaps it is so. It is very difficult ...."

For example, you feel you are in love with someone. It is very difficult to say, "Perhaps I love you."

But it is true. More than that is not possible in the state man is in. Your love is only a 'perhaps', because what is love today can turn into hate tomorrow. Or maybe tomorrow is too far away. What is love this moment may disappear the next moment. Just a moment before you were so absolutely certain. And a moment afterwards you yourself cannot believe what has happened to you. Have you gone mad? What made you so certain?

You trusted too much in the one-tenth part of your mind, and you forgot completely about the unconscious mind which is so vast. And it is so dark that you don't know what is going on there, what is cooking there. Just on the surface you are thinking of love and deep down there is hate and anger and jealousy and all kinds of wild sentiments, emotions, prejudices. And you are sitting on the volcano.

If you are alert, as one great enlightened man, Mahavira - even after his enlightenment, when he could be absolute in his statements without any conditions ... even after his enlightenment he continued to use the word 'perhaps' about every question that he answered. He was the first man in the whole history of mankind to bring in the concept of relativity. All that we can say is only relatively true - perhaps for the moment, but we cannot say it's forever. We cannot make any unconditional statement.

It is one of the reasons, because of his 'perhaps', that he could not gather a very big gathering of disciples - one of the greatest enlightened persons. But people want certainty; they are living in uncertain lives. People want beliefs; they are drowning. Their situation is like the old Jew who had fallen on the street with sunstroke and was almost dying. And a Christian priest saw the crowd. He entered the crowd and he said, "The old man needs me. Just let me come in. He is dying!"

And he went by the side of the Jew, not knowing that he was a Jew, and whispered in his ear, "This is the moment! Remember God, God the Father, Holy Ghost, Jesus Christ the Son, the only begotten Son of God. Remember."

The old Jew opened his eyes and he looked at the crowd and said, "Who is this crazy man? I am dying and he is talking in puzzles. What God? What Holy Ghost? Who is the only begotten son? I am dying here and this idiot ..."

People do not want puzzles. People want clear-cut belief systems. But Mahavira never gave a single belief system to anyone. If you ask him if God is, he will say, "Perhaps." But a God who is a 'perhaps' is not much of a God. You cannot worship a God who is a 'perhaps'. Then your prayer will be 'perhaps'. You cannot create a religion out of the idea of relativity. 'Ifs' and 'buts' are prohibited from religious systems.

And people don't want anything that will create more confusion in their minds, howsoever great the source from which it may be coming. They are searching for some small beliefs that can give them a kind of security, safety, a God who will be their protector, to whom they can pray in difficult times.

And almost all the time is a difficult time. And if you don't have even a God to pray to, you are left in deep aloneness.

And a man like Mahavira, rather than giving you some comfort, some consolation, tells you 'perhaps' about everything. No consolation. But he has a great insight about you. He knows even if you believe in God, your belief is only an 'if'. It cannot be more than that, because your unconscious knows nothing about God. Have you ever dreamed about God?

I have asked many, many people, "Have you ever dreamed of God?" They say, "No." The unconscious has not even heard the word 'God'. And nobody has repressed God so deep into himself that it becomes part of the unconscious and uncoils in your dream like a djinn coming out of a bottle. And you will meet neither Jesus Christ nor Buddha. It is very strange.

Your unconscious is your greater reality, and Mahavira is correct when he says only 'perhaps' about everything. He is making you aware that in your situation nothing can be more certain than that.

Change the situation, make your whole being full of light - it does not mean that you will become absolutely certain. It simply means all questions will disappear. There will be no answer.

In authentic totality of consciousness, there is no question. You don't ask about God or hell or heaven. You simply don't ask about anything. You are so silent. Out of your silence questions cannot come. Questions grow in the mind, and you are so far away and beyond the mind - in your innermost center - where there is no question and there is no answer. You are tremendously fulfilled, contented, at ease ... with existence, with yourself, with everything.

Questions mean that you have some kind of tension, some kind of not-at-easeness. Some trouble is there that brings the question. Something is haunting you and you are incapable of figuring it out.

But when your whole being is full of light and all darkness has disappeared, you are so in tune with existence that even to say you are in tune with existence is not right. It will be right to say that you are one with existence. Or this will be even better to say: you are existence. All separation has disappeared.

There is no questioner.

There is no quest.

You have arrived home.

In that state there is understanding but there is nothing to understand. This is the strange situation of man. When he wants to understand, he cannot. When he is capable of understanding, there is nothing to understand.

The newlyweds walk up to the hotel desk and ask for a suite.

"Bridal?" asks the clerk, noticing the 'Just Married' signs on their luggage.

The young bride blushes and says, "No thanks, I will hold his shoulders until I get used to it."

This is misunderstanding.

Old man Finkelstein was brought to court on charges of sexually molesting a teenage girl.

The judge dismissed the case because the evidence would not stand up in court.

Mendel Kravitz returns home one day to find a stranger on top of his naked wife, with his head resting between her ample breasts.

"Hey!" yells Mendel. "Just what are you doing?"

"Why, er, I'm listening to music," replies the stranger.

Mendel puts his head beside the stranger's head and declares, "I don't hear any music."

"Of course you don't," replies the stranger. "You're not plugged in!"

Question 2:

Nandan, you are here not as a separate ego, but as part of one phenomenon. So when anything starts happening it is bound to happen to many simultaneously. It will have a chain effect. It does not happen in the world, because people are not in any way deeply connected with each other. There is no communion. There are communities, but there is no communion.

And this is a commune. The whole purpose of your being here is to melt and merge with all who are present here. There is no friend, no enemy. All are in love with me. Their sole purpose is exactly what the other day somebody has said: Our whole purpose here is one, we all love you. It is a loving commune where you are all equal, where you are no longer competitive, where there is no struggle of any kind going on, just a tremendous music and a silence drowning you all into oneness, without your even knowing it. You are slipping deeper into a whole.

This wholeness brings a new health and a new joy and a new kind of love. Sex is a very primitive thing. It is an animal heritage. Nothing is wrong in it, it is just very old. And as you grow more and more mature, you start searching for something new and greater, something better and higher, something superior. Sex seems to be something below you - a little childish, a little immature.

It is good. There is a time when you can fool around. And while you are meditating your maturity comes sooner, your centering comes sooner, your awareness about things becomes clearer every day. And sex is going to be the first victim of your awareness - then other things will follow - because sex is the very root of your animality.

Once sex drops off, as if a tree has lost its roots, then branches cannot remain green any longer.

Then the flowers cannot remain alive any longer. The tree, in fact, has died with the roots. A few days perhaps, it may manage to remain standing. A few days the leaves will remain green and a few days, perhaps, the flowers will remain apparently alive. But basically the tree is dead the moment the roots are cut.

Your anger, your jealousy, your violence, your inferiority complex, your superiority complex, all kinds of your neuroses, psychoses are just branches. They will start dying by themselves. Once you have gone beyond sex without fighting with it ....

And that's my basic difference with all religions. They have been trying to drop sex. I am not telling you to drop it. I am telling you to be more mature, to be more meditative. And while you are not mature, sex is perfectly right. Nothing is wrong in it, there is no condemnation. Be playful and rejoice in it.

Here, for the first time, a totally original experiment is going on. Sex is accepted with deep respect:

it is our heritage; we are born out of it; it is in our every fiber and every cell. To condemn it is to condemn oneself.

Trying to drop it means only to repress it into the unconscious. And then things become more and more complex and perverted. Once you start repressing sex into your unconscious ... There is no other place in you - whatever you repress goes into the unconscious.

The unconscious is your basement, where you go on throwing all that you don't want, that you don't want to show to the world. But whatever you throw in the unconscious creates a very strange problem and that problem is: you start becoming afraid of your own unconscious. You cannot go there, even with a lamp in your hand, because you know what you are going to encounter.

I was staying in a friend's home. They were a little old-fashioned, so their bathroom and their toilets were not attached to the house, but a little distance behind the house. There was a small lawn, and beyond the lawn were their toilets and bathroom.

They had one small boy, just one child. And his mother was saying to me, "Somehow, while you are here, help us to teach this boy that there is no fear. Each time he has to go to the bathroom or to the toilet, somebody has to follow him. While he is inside, the doors have to be kept open and the person has to stand there - if it is night, then with a lamp. And the doors have to be kept open so that the person who is standing outside does not disappear."

I talked to the boy. I said, "What is the problem?"

He said, "I am very much afraid of ghosts."

I said, "How did you become afraid of ghosts?"

It was the parents themselves who had made him afraid of ghosts.

He said, "When I do not want to go to sleep they force me to go to sleep. When I don't want to get up early in the morning they force me to get up early in the morning. And to make this happen they frighten me with ghosts, saying, 'If you don't go early to bed ghosts may trouble you in the night.

And if you don't get up early in the morning ... Remember - we are warning you - there are ghosts all around sitting in the trees, invisible people.' And they have convinced me, so I am afraid of going, particularly in the night, to the bathroom or to the toilet. And now they want me to go alone, and nobody is interested to stand there outside while I am inside. And because of this I have to keep the doors open."

I said, "Why don't you do one thing: take the lamp yourself. And when there is light, you can see if a ghost is anywhere."

He said, "Please don't tell me such a thing. I can go in darkness but I can never go with a lamp."

I said, "What is the reason?"

He said, "The reason is clear. In darkness somehow I can dodge the ghosts. But when I keep a lamp, they all see me. Don't suggest that idea. If I have to go, I will go in darkness. At least they can't see me. And if I feel that something is there, I can run, I can dodge, I can shout, I can do something. But with a lamp, all the ghosts in all the trees will see me, and say, 'He is going now.

This is a good time.'"

I said, "This is right. Your logic is perfect."

I have always remembered this whenever I have talked about your unconscious and your repressions. If you repress all that you have been told is ugly, then there is no possibility of your ever becoming a meditator, no possibility of your ever becoming enlightened. That is the reason why in the West enlightenment has not happened.

Half of the whole world has remained absolutely unaware of the greatest experience in life, for the simple reason that Christianity is the most repressive religion in the world. It goes on forcing ... And other religions are not much different, just a little more lenient.

It is not surprising that all the psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists are born in the West, not in the East. It was a necessity in the West. Christianity has created the necessity because it has created the disease. It has created the repressive mind. It was absolutely necessary for a Sigmund Freud and a Carl Gustav Jung and an Alfred Adler to somehow help the Western part of humanity become acquainted with the unconscious. Christianity has cut humanity completely away from the unconscious. And unless the unconscious becomes part of the conscious, becomes conscious itself, there is no way of your ever being beyond the animal, which you are repressing within yourself.

Sex should never be repressed. Sex should be lived in its totality, with joy, without any guilt. And then what Nandan is saying and so many sannyasins have been feeling, one day comes: you were rejoicing in it so much, and suddenly it drops away.

Now all the religions have been against me, are still against me, and they will remain against me for at least five centuries. Such is the stupidity of humanity. And they cannot see that the simple experiment is so successful, that a young woman like Nandan, who is saying that she was having the juiciest affair of her life, "enjoying sex like never before," poor Nandan was not aware that this is how sex drops.

I don't tell you the real secrets because then you may become afraid and you may not enjoy. And you will remain a little less juicy, just to prolong the journey a little more. When you are enjoying sex at the highest peak, that's when it slips suddenly out of your hands.

But it is a beautiful experience, one of the most beautiful experiences, the moment sex drops on its own accord. It happens only to those few people who have lived with intensity, have loved with intensity, have not felt guilty at all, have not listened to any religion or any tradition or any past, who have lived almost like Adam and Eve - as if they are the first people on the earth and they don't know anything of repression. No priest has been able to pollute them. No religions have poisoned their minds. If you can be ... And that's my whole effort here, to make you into Adam and Eve, as if you are the first people on the earth, just driven out from the Garden of Eden, fresh.

What she is saying is tremendously important. I will read it to you. "Just when I felt that I was in the juiciest relationship, enjoying sex like never before, suddenly I could not stand it anymore." One can get free from sex only when one has seen the whole scene in its totality and there is nothing anymore to be discovered, when one has inquired, lived all the possibilities of sexual relationships.

Then what can you do except let it go? You are finished with it. You have come to the end of the book.

"Suddenly," Nandan is saying, "I could not stand it anymore. All the longing for the other, for sex and intimacy has gone. I am feeling so good and relaxed by myself, with a lot of love in my heart, but without any direction." The disappearance of sex does not mean disappearance of love. It really means appearance of love. Sex was a very primitive phenomenon. There was not much love in it, only biological infatuation.

If you have observed animals making love, you may have noticed one thing: they don't look happy.

They look almost as if they are in torture. And in fact, that is the reality - that it is a biological slavery, just a biological, hormonal, chemical slavery. It hurts those who have a little more consciousness.

And as your meditation grows, you will see more and more that it is not a sin, it is simply stupidity.

There is no need to be forgiven for it, because it is not a crime and there is nobody to forgive you.

And you have not committed anything for which you should feel guilty and ashamed.

But the moment you are free of it, suddenly you will feel a tremendous relaxation, because sex is a tension. You may not have felt it before, because it was constantly there. So one becomes accustomed and immune to it. The moment it disappears, suddenly - a great relaxation. Sex is the need of the other. In the very need of the other, there is dependence.

That's why no wife can really respect the husband, nor can the husband respect the wife. They hate each other. Now, psychologists are perfectly right when they say that husbands and wives are intimate enemies. And the reason? The reason is: you cannot love someone on whom you have to depend. Now, the man has to depend on the wife. He has a sexual need and the wife takes every opportunity to torture him. That is her only opportunity to torture him.

The man tortures her in many other ways. She is dependent financially. She has not the freedom to move in society; she has not the freedom to feel independent, liberated. Even the women who think they are liberated are not liberated. They are only reacting. They are still in the same old grip, only they have gone to the other extreme.

The moment you feel you are no longer dependent on anyone, a deep coolness and a deep silence settles inside, a relaxed let-go. It does not mean you stop loving. On the contrary, for the first time you know a new quality, a new dimension of love: a love which is no more biological, a love which is closer to friendliness than any relationship. That's why I am not even using the word 'friendship', because that 'ship' has drowned so many people.

Your love becomes more like an aura around you which can be shared with anyone, even with a stranger. In fact, it is not a question of doing anything when you are sharing. It becomes simply your nature. You are just loving. In the past you used to fall in love with some individual. Now you don't fall in love with anyone ... You are love.

Wherever you are, you carry your fragrance. Wherever you are, you carry your fresh breeze, your relaxed coolness. And you will feel tremendous freedom. This is true liberation of women, of men, because both are slaves of each other.

The women's liberation movement does not take account of the fact that she is not alone in bondage; man is also in bondage - because both are dependent on each other. After the whole day the man comes home, and the woman immediately lies down and has a headache. The whole day there was no head, no headache, nothing. The moment she hears the car of her husband moving into the car porch, immediately, strangely, with the husband comes the headache. They both come simultaneously.

Just a few days ago I was telling you that one day Hymie Goldberg came home and just shook his wife awake and gave her two aspirins.

She said, "What for?"

He said, "Take it."

She said, "But I don't have a headache!"

He said, "That's great. So let us go!"

Now he has tricked the woman. Now she cannot say she has a headache. She has refused the aspirin, not knowing Hymie Goldberg's subtle logical strategy.

Once this longing for the other - the dependence on the other - disappears, your life takes off into a new plane of existence. It is beautiful, Nandan, when you are in a commune like this where life is accepted in its totality without any condemnation, where there is no God except life. Naturally this experience will go on spreading because you are so close to each other. Not that somebody is your husband and somebody is your son and somebody is your mother and somebody is your father, no, just for the simple reason that in the center you have someone who disappeared a long time ago.

But still, your love is directed towards that same entity which has become only a presence, is no more a person. The closer you come to me, the closer you will be coming to each other. And it will not create any relationship. It will be simply a freedom: freedom to love, freedom to be friendly, freedom to rejoice in each other's happiness, freedom to dance, not even knowing with whom you are dancing. There is no need. It is perfectly beautiful to dance with a stranger.

Here, nobody knows from what country you are, nobody knows with what religion you have been conditioned, nobody knows to what caste you belong. Nobody bothers about all these stupidities humanity has been burdened with for centuries. Suddenly - just a pure humanness, a pure consciousness, a song that goes on from heart to heart, a rhythm that spreads like ripples in a lake. So if something happens to one, it is going to happen to many.

Certainly I have been cooking it for many years. I am waiting for that day when you are all free of all kinds of slaveries - and sex is the greatest slavery. Your greatest anxiety, your greatest jealousy, your greatest violence - all are rooted in your sex. But still I want you to live it, not repress it. One day it will disappear.

And it is joyful that Nandan has not become afraid or worried, because people who are coming from the West are in a difficulty. They have become accustomed to think of life and sex as synonymous.

They are not. Life is vast: sex is a small thing. In the West when sex drops, the person may think to commit suicide. Now, what is the point anymore?

Just the other day I heard you had an evening with my therapist, Veeresh, and Neelam may have suggested to him ... Being my secretary, it was her duty to suggest that Veeresh not talk about sex and drugs. And Veeresh said, "My God, then what is there to talk about? These are the only two things, that's all, the whole of life!"

In the West the idea has become very settled - in a subtle way, deep down in every being - that the moment your sex is gone ... Now, what are you doing? Just take your gun and shoot yourself.

I have heard a statement: You know you are getting old when you have been with a boy all night and all that comes is the morning. It seems to be almost a tragedy in the West. In fact, it should be rejoiced - that all that comes is the morning. Now Nandan, all that will come will be the morning.

Start enjoying the morning.

A tremendous harm has been done to humanity by the people, whether in the West or in the East, who have been against life, against sex, because they are the people who keep people filled with sexuality for their whole lives. They are the people who are responsible for so much sexuality, so much pornography, so much obscenity in the whole world. But nobody blames them, nobody even thinks about the relationship, about who has made humanity so stupid that even an eighty-year-old man only thinks of sex. A tremendous misunderstanding ....

Sex certainly has to disappear, not by force but by deep understanding that comes only through experience. And then arises a celibacy which has a beauty of its own. The Hindu celibate monks, the Jaina celibate monks, the Catholic celibate monks cannot understand the beauty of the celibacy that will happen to my sannyasins. Just the word will be the same, but the levels will be so far away from each other. The celibacy of a Catholic monk is nothing but perverted sex. It will create all kinds of complexities in his being.

The celibacy that is happening to Nandan and to my people is a freedom, freedom from all complexities. It is a growth beyond biology. Because the enlightened people and the sages of the past went beyond sex, the ordinary man misunderstood the whole thing. He thought perhaps they have attained that great wisdom because they have left sex behind, so if we leave sex, we will also attain to wisdom. It looks logical, but it is fallacious.

The people like Gautam Buddha have not repressed sex. They have lived it in its totality. I don't think anybody in the whole world has lived a life of sex so totally, so intensely, as Gautam Buddha. By his twenty-ninth year he had come to the situation where Nandan is: sex simply became meaningless, just an old game - how long can you go on playing it? - and not a very clean game either.

But the misunderstanding, even by his own monks, was being continued for twenty-five centuries in the East. They thought that because he had left sex ... they could not see the difference between leaving sex and sex leaving you. From the outside it appears the same.

One thing was certain: that sex was no more part of his interest, his longings, his desires. But sex was not repressed by him.

But those who were seeing from the outside the great wisdom that arose, the great radiance, the great beauty, the explosion of sachchidanand, their simplistic logic was: "This man has left sex.

That's why he has attained to truth, to consciousness, to bliss. So if we also leave sex, we too will attain to the same state of being." For twenty-five centuries the monks have been doing that, but not a single Gautam Buddha has been produced.

And I have been condemned my whole life, so much so that I have started enjoying it. When for a few days nobody condemns me for something, I start thinking, "What has happened to the world?"

And the condemnation has been basically on a single point, that I was telling people, "You live sex joyously and it will leave you one day, so silently that you will not even hear the footsteps when it is going away. You will suddenly see yourself on a totally different plane of existence." But that old fallacy persists; not only persists, all the vested interests of all the religions of the world want it to continue.

A big, tall Cherokee Indian named Brown Bear comes into the bar with a six-shooter tucked in his belt. He is a giant of a man, so no one asks him why he is carrying a bucket full of horse manure in one hand and a black cat in the other. He puts down the bucket.

"I will have a whiskey!" he roars at the bartender.

After drinking it, in one gulp, he orders another and then another.

All of a sudden, Brown Bear pulls out his gun and starts shooting the bucket, drops the cat and chases it around the bar on his hands and knees. When Brown Bear finally catches it, the trembling bartender raises his head above the bar and asks, "What the hell was that all about?"

Brown Bear replies, "My father told me to be more like a white man, so I came here to have a few drinks, shoot the shit and chase a little pussy."

A little French boy comes to England in order to learn English. As his plane leaves Paris he learns the word 'take-off'. During the flight he is looking through a magazine about Africa and learns the word 'zebra'. When he arrives in England, the family he is staying with have a new baby and he learns the word 'baby'. The next day he comes to the school and the pretty young teacher asks him if he has learnt any English words yet, and the little boy replies, "Take-off ze bra, baby."

Little Ernie took his paper up to the teacher for marking and as she bent over the desk, he looked down the front of her blouse and said, "Teacher, I see something."

The teacher was extremely embarrassed and said, "Ernie, that is very rude. Tomorrow, don't come to school." The next week Ernie was sitting in the front row when the teacher was writing on the blackboard. She dropped her chalk and, with her back to Ernie, bent down to pick it up.

Ernie got up and without a word headed for the door.

"Where are you going?" asked the teacher sternly.

"Teacher," said Ernie, "my school days are over."

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.