Skies beyond skies

Question 1:

Amrito, there is no sequence amongst truth, consciousness and bliss. They are not steps of a hierarchy, but they come one after another. Neither of them is higher than the other two, so in the way we understand it, sequence is not there. The actual experience of sachchidanand happens simultaneously. In fact, these three words: sat, chit, anand - truth, consciousness, bliss - do not indicate three experiences. It is just the poverty of language that we cannot contain the whole experience in one word. Our words are so poor. The experience is absolutely an organic whole:

whatever happens, happens simultaneously.

But perhaps as far as the human mind is concerned, a very different kind of sequence may be needed to comprehend what happens. In the statement Sat-Chit-Anand, truth comes first. The natural tendency of the logical rational mind is that truth must come first in experience and then consciousness and then bliss. In actual experience you start with meditation, which brings you wider and wider consciousness. At the ultimate peak, when the explosion happens, suddenly you find yourself fully conscious.

Then on one hand, you find truth and on the other hand, you find bliss. This all happens in a split second. Perhaps it is better to say: it happens in no time. Even a split second takes some time.

It happens in timelessness. But for the mind's understanding - which is not the ultimate understanding, but only a relative understanding - you can say the enlightened person experiences consciousness; and as the consciousness comes into existence, suddenly he becomes aware of the truth that was hidden in the unconscious - because now there is no unconscious - and the bliss that was also hidden in the unconscious.

I have told you it is almost like a bird, a single unity. The bird has two wings: truth, bliss, and the bird's own body can be called consciousness. But you cannot divide them: you cannot say what comes first and what comes second. The whole bird comes; without the wings, it cannot come and without the bird, the wings cannot come.

Or take another example: you suddenly put the switch on in a dark room. Do you think that first you see the table, then you see the chairs, then you see the wall and then you see this and that?

So many things are in the room. But when the light comes, they all suddenly become clear to you without any sequence - nothing is first, nothing is second. They were all hidden in darkness. Once light is there, darkness is no more. You immediately become aware of the existence of everything that is there.

And your being is certainly a bird. The ancient seers have called it 'the golden bird' - consciousness as the body, truth and bliss as the wings, and the whole sky full of stars is yours. Not only this sky; the mystics have been aware of skies beyond skies.

Now even the scientist agrees that this sky cannot be the only sky. The expansion of scientific consciousness has also brought a vast universe. There was a day in the middle ages when it was thought the earth is the center and the sun and all the stars are moving around it.

It was a very small and cozy world, and nobody bothered about what was beyond it. As scientific exploration goes deeper and deeper, they become more and more mystical in their statements. Now they know existence has no limits.

And what we think of as stars are not stars. Each star is a bigger sun than our sun. Our sun is a very mediocre sun, although it is very big in comparison to the earth. It is sixty times bigger than the earth. It looks vast next to the earth, but in comparison to the faraway stars which look so small that we call them "twinkle-twinkle-little-stars" ... They are not twinkle-twinkle-little-stars. They are far greater suns than our sun.

Our sun has its own solar system, made up of Earth, of the moon and of all the other planets. Each sun has its own solar system, and up to now they have counted at least three million suns.

Amongst these millions of stars, the most mystical experience that has been encountered by the scientists is that they all are running away from the center - as far as possible, with a tremendous speed. It means the sky is available for them, they can go on ... They have been going on for billions of years and their speed is the same as the speed of light.

The speed of light is the ultimate speed, physicists have concluded. There is no higher speed according to them. It is tremendous. You will have to work it out. In one second light travels one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles. You have to multiply it by sixty - that will be the distance light travels in one minute. Then you have to multiply it by sixty again - so you will have one hour of the light's travel. Then twenty-four - that is one day's travel of light. Then three-hundred and sixty five - that is one light year. And that is the lowest unit of measurement as far as light and its speed is concerned.

One light year is just like one meter, one yard, one foot. There are stars thousands of light years away. The nearest star is four light years away. Even to reach this star seems to be impossible. Four light years - we don't have any vehicle, any rocket, that can go at the speed of light. And the trouble is intrinsic. The trouble is that at the speed of light, everything melts. Because it is so fast and the friction is so great, everything burns out and melts into light.

We don't have any metal, artificial or natural, that can remain intact at the speed of light. And without the speed of light, there is no possibility of reaching to those stars which are millions of light years away.

Scientists say that this earth was separated from the sun about four million years ago. There are stars which will never know that this earth ever existed, because the day this earth was born, their light started coming towards it, but has not yet arrived, even at that tremendous speed. And scientists reckon the earth may go out of existence before these light rays reach here. Just in between two light rays your whole earth life begins, comes to a peak and ends.

These stars have infinite space available - that is the sky. And now it is absolutely certain that there is no limit. These stars can go on forever, as far as they want. We are citizens of an unlimited universe.

Just as there is this vastness outside ... existence is always in balance. That means the same tremendous expanse is within you - because the within and without should be in balance. The within will be exactly as vast, as infinite, as the without.

Physicists are the mystics of matter and the mystics are the physicists of consciousness. In this small statement of sachchidanand, the mystics are saying that a whole infinite universe within you becomes available simultaneously in an explosion of consciousness. The explosion of consciousness only brings light. Everything is there already - has been there forever - waiting for you to be awake.

There is no sequence in the way we understand sequence. But there is a certain secret to be understood: without consciousness coming to its peak, you will not become aware either of truth or of bliss. But once you have become aware, you know they are all one.

This is a far more meaningful, significant trinity than the Christian one. Their trinity seems to be fictitious: God, the son, the holy ghost - it is good for children's books, because they cannot understand sachchidanand. They say they can understand the holy ghost, they can understand the father, they can understand the son. But that is a very stupid fiction. With no rationale, with no evidence, Christianity goes on claiming it. Its whole structure depends on it.

The mystics' trinity seems to be based far more on experience, on truth. It is not a fiction. And it is available to you without any prayer, without any holy scripture. Just you are enough, because you contain that infinity. All that is needed is to look inwards. Allow your consciousness to grow so that it fills you with light and dispels all darkness, and you will find the most precious treasure within yourself.

In the experience, there will not be any division between truth, consciousness and bliss. It will come all at once, showering on you. But the moment you bring that experience into language, you have to make one into three - so as not to be unfair to the tremendous experience that has happened. No single word can say anything about it. It will be a very partial statement, and any partial truth is more dangerous than a lie. At least the lie can be detected: the partial truth is very dangerous, because it may not be detected. It gives you the feeling that it is true.

These three words contain almost three universes. Each is a sky unto itself. There is no limit to your consciousness. You can go in the inner world just as far away as stars are going in the outer world. Neither does bliss have any limits, nor does truth have any limits. And when three things don't have any limits, they cannot be three. Three unlimited things are bound to become one. So the experience is of one organic whole, not in sequence. But in language the difficulty is that we have to write words in sequence.

Languages like Chinese, Japanese, Korean - Far Eastern languages - are far better than alphabetical languages, because alphabetical languages have to put everything in a sequence, in a sentence. One thing will be followed by another and then by another, one word by another word, one line by another line, one paragraph by another paragraph, everything in sequence.

The non-alphabetical languages have disappeared from the world, except from the Far East. In the beginning, all languages in the world were non-alphabetical, they were pictorial. For example, if you see an elephant, you see the whole elephant as one unity. But if you have to describe the elephant, you cannot describe it as one unit. You will have to tell about its legs like pillars, you will have to tell about its ears like big fans and so on and so forth. It is a big animal. And in reading your sentence about the elephant, one who has never seen an elephant is bound to think that there is a sequence.

In Chinese, the situation is different. The elephant is not described the way we write about it. There is only a symbol of the elephant.

I remember one symbol I cannot forget: a symbol of a roof of a house, just a plain roof - anybody can understand the roof - and two women sitting under the roof. One of my friends was learning Chinese. I asked him, "What is it?" He said, "This symbol means 'fight', 'war'. Two women under one roof? There is going to be a third world war without any doubt."

Whoever made the symbol must have been a great psychologist. Knowingly or unknowingly, he has expressed so much in such a small symbol. If you have to write about it in an alphabetical language, you will have to use a few sentences to say the whole thing.

The mystic has always been in tremendous difficulty: how to say the unsayable? But he has tried, and he has tried his best in the East, because the East has known the mystic for almost ten thousand years. Ten thousand years is the minimum time that I am talking about.

And the whole genius of the East has been concentrated on only one point and that is the discovery of oneself. And that discovery has always culminated - whether the mystic was in China, or in India, or in Arabia, or in Japan, it makes no difference - the mystery has brought them to the same point of sachchidanand. They have all found tremendous bliss. Their lives have become absolutely authentic and truthful, and their beings have become absolutely conscious. There are no unconscious parts anymore lingering in them.

And this can be seen by people who have a receptivity, sensitivity and intelligence - who have eyes to see it, who are not standing with closed eyes saying, "There is no light." You will have to open your eyes. Any mystic belonging to any age, to any country, to any part of the globe, reveals the same truth, because truth is the unchanging, unmovable center of the whole of existence.

If you can find yourself in company with a mystic, and you can be unafraid, and open your heart so that he can pour his experience into you, he can only give to you. You need not be worried. He is not going to take anything from you. You don't have anything in the first place. And what you have, you are unaware of.

The mystic can pour his light within you and can make you aware of all that is hidden in you - your hidden splendor. This is the authentic relationship between the master and the disciple. The master does not teach anything. He simply pours his light into the heart of the disciple. There is no philosophy to be taught, there is no teaching that the student has to be converted to - there is only an experience that has to be transferred.

For centuries it has been known as the transmission of the lamp. It is a beautiful expression:

'transmission of the lamp'. The master simply allows you to have his fire, to make your dark house also light. He loses nothing, but you gain tremendously. Hence the great gratitude that has been felt by the disciples for the master, because you cannot repay him - there is no way. What he has given to you is invaluable. All that you can do is feel a heartfelt gratitude. This gratitude is the only authentic connection between the disciple and the master.

And as the disciple also becomes aware, he rises to the same status as the master.

A beautiful story: When the master of a great seeker, Rinzai, saw that the moment had come when Rinzai was going to be of the same status as the master himself, he called Rinzai and slapped him hard. Rinzai said, "But I have not done anything, I have not even said anything. You have been beating me for years." It is a very loving gesture, this beating. Only Zen has come to understand that it is out of sheer love that the master slaps the disciple.

And the master said to Rinzai, "This is my last slap to you. I could not resist the temptation of enjoying it once more, because from tomorrow you will be a master yourself."

So playful. Both laughed, both enjoyed it. Rinzai remembered it his whole life. He became a much better known master than his own master, but he never forgot the last slap that the master had given.

He continuously remembered that, "He loved me so much that there was not a single day that he would not beat me - on any excuse."

It looks very strange to the logical mind, but logic has nothing to do with the inner world. Rinzai said, "Now I understand how much effort that old man was taking in slapping me. In fact, his hands were hurting more than I was hurting, because I was young, healthy. He was very old, but he did not miss.

As I was reaching close to my enlightenment, he knew it before I knew it."

Naturally, the master knows before the disciple that you are just on the brink. And that slap was not just a slap. To the outsiders it was a slap, but to both the master and the disciple, that slap was a push beyond the boundary that was making him still think of himself as a disciple. With the last slap, he was recognized as a master, not with certificates - they are so inhuman, so dead - but with a living contact.

And then both the men, the old man and the young, laughed late into the night, and the whole monastery thought: "What is happening?" People were looking from every window and door - "What is happening?" And both were laughing tears of joy.

The next day, the master did not appear for his morning sermon. He sent word to Rinzai, "Now you can go. Now, you can do what I have done to you. You can transmit the lamp to others. I am too old - just take the whole responsibility of the monastery."

And Rinzai said, "When you said you were hitting me for the last time, I immediately understood that now I have to be responsible for this whole monastery. With your last slap, you have retired. That's why I was crying, because you are retiring. Without you, I do not want to be enlightened. Let me remain a disciple. Don't retire. But you have done it already. I was perfectly happy and I was not thinking that it was going to happen so soon."

What has he experienced, when the master slapped him the last time? Just a sudden explosion - sachchidanand.

There is no sequence, Amrito.

It is all simultaneous.

It is all together.

It is one without any order.

Question 2:

Vimal, such a beard comes with your birth. Enlightenment cannot give you such a beard. You can see it: Gautam Buddha has no beard, not only no beard, no mustache either. Don't be fooled. Great masters of the Jainas, called tirthankaras, are without any beard, without any mustache. In fact, both traditions - the Jaina and the Buddha tradition - have a strange idea which their scholars have not been able to explain, and which has been questioned for twenty-five centuries at least.

But I don't belong to any tradition. That's why I have a certain objective insight into things. I can give the reason. It was not that they were shaving themselves twice a day - just that they had no beards and no mustaches from their very birth. They never grew them. In fact, in Jainism, it has become a part of the definition: unless a master is without a mustache and beard, he is not a master, because their twenty-four great masters are all without beards, without mustaches. I cannot believe that all these people were missing some hormones which create the beard, which create the mustache in man and not in women.

Once in a while some women may have - particularly in old age - a little mustache, a little beard.

Sometimes it happens in young age also.

I knew a very beautiful young girl. She was the daughter of one of the principals of a Leonard Theosophical College of the Christians. The principal was very much interested in me - that's how I came to know the girl. She was very intelligent, very beautiful; she got married in America, got a D.Litt. from America and now teaches in America - but all her beauty was in trouble because of a beard. She had to shave it every day twice. Still, the black spot - if you came close to her, and she was so beautiful - that black spot was making her feel very inferior.

When I saw her last with her husband ... they both came for six months to teach in the Leonard Theosophical College in Jabalpur - and then six months in some other theosophical college in America. The last time I saw them must have been thirty years ago. I told her, "You will suffer unnecessarily your whole life from inferiority because of this beard. And the more you shave it, the bigger it becomes. And you are in America. It is a simple thing - just a little change in your hormones and it will disappear. You need some more female hormones. You have some male hormones. The balance is not right."

She said, "I never thought about it and nobody ever told me." Then I received her letter a few months after she had gone to America saying, "I am very grateful that my beard has disappeared." It is a question of hormones. In old age women start growing beards because their female hormones are finished, but their male hormones are still there, active. They have lived the life of a woman, but they have not used their male part, so the balance has changed. In old age many women start growing a beard. But in old age, nobody takes much notice.

I cannot believe that all these twenty-four tirthankaras, spread over five thousand years, all had unbalanced hormones. What could be the reason? And the same was the question about Buddha.

I don't believe that they did not have mustaches or beards. My own understanding is that it is only a symbolic expression, that as you become more and more aware, you become more and more delicate - graceful as a woman. Instead of having male qualities, which are the qualities of a warrior or a soldier, you start having the qualities of compassion and love and grace and beauty of a woman.

Those statues don't represent the people exactly; they represent only a metaphor. They are not photographs. They are very objective pieces of art - twenty-four tirthankaras of the Jainas. You can go into any Jaina temple. If it is big enough, it will have twenty-four tirthankaras. If it is not big enough, then they place three statues and mirrors on both the sides and small windows for you to look in.

When you look in, those mirrors go on reflecting each other. So instead of three, you see a line of hundreds, as far as you can see. The first mirror reflects the second mirror, then that mirror reflects the other mirror, and this goes on and on. So as far as you can see and strangely, you can see exactly twenty-four tirthankaras - a great artistic device ...

But if the temple is very poor, then you will find only one statue of Mahavira. But one thing is - it is striking too that Jainas have not been able to explain it - all the statues look similar, exactly similar.

The only difference is a small symbol underneath their legs - a line represents Mahavira.

Even the priests cannot say which is Mahavira. First he has to look. You may not understand how he manages to tell that this is Mahavira, and this is Abhinava and this is Meminaka. There are different symbols for each master, but their statues are exactly the same. That too is impossible. Twenty-four persons exactly the same? The same height, the same nose, the same eyes, the same face, the same body - it is not possible. And for centuries they have been at a loss to answer, because they have been looking at those statues as factual.

I look at those statues as symbols. Those statues are saying nothing about the bodies of those twenty-four masters. They are saying something about their having exactly the same experience.

Their same faces, their same eyes, their same heights indicate only one thing: that what has happened within them is the same. Now, how to say it in a sculpture? The great artist must have found a tremendously beautiful way to say through their statues that, "We are not making their portraits; we are not photographers. We are trying to represent through the statue their inner experience."

And because the inner experience was the same - sachchidanand - there was no need to make any differences in the bodies.

Vimal, you are a little bit crazy, but not more than me. I insist: if you want this kind of beard, you will have to be born with it. It does not come with enlightenment. Enlightenment has no concern with your beard. Even a woman can become enlightened. That does not mean she will have a beard.

This kind of beautiful beard comes only with your birth.

And I have been very reluctant to listen to my parents. They were all insisting that this does not look right, "You should cut your beard." I said, "I want to keep the original hairs just as existence has given them to me. I am going to return them to existence exactly the same way. I am not going into this stupid business of shaving every day. Moreover, I am so lazy - someday I may shave half, and the other half ..."

The priest had been invited to preach at a mental hospital. During the sermon he noticed that one of the patients paid very close attention, his eyes fixed upon the priest's face, his body bent eagerly forward. Such interest was most flattering. After the service the priest noticed that the man was speaking to one of the attendants. So, as soon as possible, the priest asked him, "Did that man speak to you about my sermon?"

"Yes," said the attendant.

"Would you mind telling me what he said?" asked the priest.

"Well," said the man reluctantly, "what the man said was: 'Just think, he is out, and I am in.'"

Vimal, we are all in. There is no out. Out we have dropped. You are my people - insiders.

Question 3:

Milarepa, you have created more trouble than you are aware of, because Jivan Mary committed a mistake in typing the name of Lokita. She typed the name 'Lolita'. And there began such a chaos, because the boyfriend of Lolita was immensely freaked out. He suspected that this Lolita was having a love affair with Milarepa. And Lolita was crying and weeping and trying to convince him. But hearing about Lolita's beauty, many new lovers started knocking on her door, saying, "Don't be worried. If Milarepa has left after ten minutes, we are here." "For what are they here?" And the boyfriend freaked out even more.

And Lokita was enjoying immensely. She changed her name to Lolita. She dropped her own name Lokita. So many were following her and, Milarepa, the girl who hugged you was not Lolita. It was Lokita who has changed herself into Lolita. But you are such a fool that you have forgotten completely who this woman is. And naturally, just a ten minute love affair - who remembers the name, or the face?

I have heard about a man who married ten times. And when he married the tenth time, after three months he discovered that he had married this woman once before. When you marry ten times, memory has a limitation. You are not a computer. Milarepa changes people ten times every day. So naturally, when Lokita hugged him again, telling him that she was Lolita, he thought, "My God. I am again in trouble." You will remain in trouble always, Milarepa.

And now these girls are saying, "Who the hell is this guy Milarepa anyway?" and "Osho gives him so much juice." I have to give it to him, because the poor fellow has to distribute his juice all around.

If I don't give him juice, you will find him lying flat on the bed, finished. I have to keep him alive. Do you have any objections? And it is too much that the other replied: "Oh, he's no one really." He is one of my craziest disciples and I will not tolerate such insulting remarks. And she said, "Don't you know Osho just invented him as a joke?"

He is not a joke, although his whole life is full of jokes. But he is a real person, just sitting here, keeping his head down, avoiding the girls. He is becoming a little old - I may take him out of the circus. But I never take anybody out of the circus unless he requests me, and Milarepa has not requested yet. So I feel he needs a little more experience, a little more anxiety, a little more tension, a little more trouble. Let him have it to his heart's content.

The old bull's active days are over - soon Milarepa's days will also be over - but the farmer permits him to stay in the pasture with the cows. Of course, the farmer lets a young bull loose in the field as well, and he goes to work immediately.

Watching this, the old bull started snorting and pawing the ground with his hooves. "You are wasting your time," says the farmer. "You are too old for that sort of thing now."

"I know," says the old bull, "but I can show him I am not a cow, can't I?"

Poor Milarepa is not a joke, just an old bull that I am keeping in the pasture with the cows. Not to be caught, he finishes his love affairs quickly - ten minutes. That must be the minimum time in the whole world. A love affair finished in ten minutes! Perhaps three minutes honeymoon, two minutes married life, five minutes trouble, and it is finished. The fact is, now he is getting old. Everybody is getting old. But he has to go on proving that at least everybody should know he is not a cow.

And for you, Milarepa - you need not be afraid of the cows. You need not go to your room and lock it and feel that again another crisis has arisen and start repeating, "Vimal, Vimal, Vimal." 'Vimal' is not a transcendental meditation. This is not going to help. And don't be so afraid of women - just a little longer.

I came across a statement just the other day: There is nothing in the world better than the love of a good woman unless, of course, it is the love of a bad woman.

And here you will find the greatest women in the world - fed up with the world. They have come here to meditate. But a woman is fundamentally love. Her meditation cannot be without love. A woman is not much interested in sex. She is much more interested in warmth, in cuddling, in friendliness, in love. Man is much more interested in sex.

These are the fallacies which show that God never created the world, because nothing fits together.

He does not seem to understand that man and woman have to live together. They should be made in such a way that they fit with each other, but they are absolutely misfitting. Man's sexuality is genital and local. It's like a local anesthesia.

My personal physician, Amrito, in the beginning used to tell me when he took my blood: "Now, the prick." Finally he understood that what he is doing is nonsense. It is not the prick. Now he does not say that. I have been watching while he changed his idea. Now he does it silently without saying anything.

But man is nothing but the prick. Women have a totally different kind of being. Her whole body needs love. It is not sexuality. Her whole body is orgasmic. That's why there is tremendous trouble.

Man comes to orgasm quickly - within two minutes - and the woman has not even started. The woman takes a little time. Her whole body has to become ready, ecstatic. Her whole body has to join the dance. Only then can she feel orgasmic joy. So she is not actually interested in the prick.

She is more interested in hugging, in being close to you, in the warmth of your body. She wants to be surrounded by your love, she wants to surround you with her love.

As more and more people will be feeling that sex is dropping away, that does not mean that you have to escape when you see a woman approaching you, and close yourself in the room and repeat the transcendental mantra: "Vimal, Vimal, Vimal." You have to change your old idea of love. It was not love, it was pure sex. When sex drops, you can meet with the woman on a higher level, for which she has always been longing and suffering.

For millions of years women have suffered because man has not been able to give them what they need. Man has simply used them for his sexuality. They feel almost like a commodity to be used, and then the man turns over and goes to sleep and starts snoring. This is so ugly and the woman is crying. She has fear. After each lovemaking the woman cries, because she has not got anything.

Her standard of love is higher than the standard of man.

And as more and more sannyasins will be dropping out of sex, they should start learning the language of love, of warmth, of friendliness. No woman is going to feel offended that you have dropped sex. In fact, she is going to be immensely happy that now love can move on a higher level, which was always her deepest longing.

This difference between women's and men's orgasmic capacities has been one of the causes of the greatest misery of humanity. And nobody has ever tried to bridge it. Either the woman has to be brought lower, which is impossible, because her whole body is orgasmic - she cannot become locally orgasmic. The only way possible is that man learns the language of love and becomes the same as the woman, his whole body needing a shower of love. That will take almost ninety percent of the misery from the world.

But it can happen only if the man comes to a point where sex drops by itself, because this is the deepest reason for man's and woman's conflict. And they are not aware of it, so they fight on any other excuse - continuously misunderstanding. Man says something, the woman understands something else. The woman says something, the man understands something else.

It is almost impossible to have an intelligent conversation between two lovers. I have never heard of anything like that. You can have an intelligent conversation with somebody else's woman, but not with your own woman. With your own woman you can only fight, or you can read your newspaper.

Two Italians meet each other in the Ashram Pizzeria.

"Are you going to Goa?" asks the first.

"No, I'm-a going to stay-a," replies the friend.

The pope was giving another of his speeches to a lively crowd of Italian youngsters. He was trying hard to make his point. "You must not use-a the pill!"

A young, pretty signorina stepped forward and said, "Look, Polack! You no play-a da game, you no make-a da rules."

This goes on, this misunderstanding. But with my people I hope to create a very deep understanding of all that is hidden inside in the darkness. I am trying to bring it out in every possible way, so that you can become aware of your whole being and what the real authentic cause of your misery is.

And if you are thinking of some false causes of your misery, you are not going to get out of misery.

Nancy Reagan comes back from her medical examination with a smile on her face.

"Why the grin?" asks Ronald Reagan with a sour face.

"Because," she boasts, "Dr. White told me I have the figure of a woman half my age."

"Oh, yeah? And what about your seventy year old ass?"

"Come to think of it," replies Nancy, "he didn't say a thing about you."

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.