Trust is the bridge between you and existence

Question 1:

Deva Pratito, it rarely happens that one attains his childhood again. It should happen more.

It should happen to everybody because without its happening, your life remains incomplete.

You go on missing something -- something that you had known but you have forgotten -- a faded memory, a lost remembrance. And the gap is not only a gap, it is a wound. It hurts, because you had brought something with your birth into the world and you have lost it somewhere. And it seems impossible to find it in this crowded universe. But unless it happens, your life has been in vain, a misery, a suffering, a futile longing, a meaningless desire, a thirst that you know cannot be quenched.

Deva Pratito, you are blessed. And remember always to pray to the existence that everybody should be blessed in the same way.

You are saying, "A circle seems to be complete." It is complete -- don't say it seems to be complete. "I feel myself arriving at a place I had left in my childhood, living an innocent, poetic, ecstatic life. The whole universe was my family. Then -- first out of trust and then out of fear -- I allowed society to take over."

This is the greatest crime that society commits against every child. No other crime can be greater than this. To spoil a child's trust is to spoil his whole life because trust is so valuable that the moment you lose trust, you also lose your contact with your own being.

Trust is the bridge between you and existence. Trust is the purest form of love, and once trust is lost, love also becomes impossible.

But every child's trust is being exploited. He naturally trusts his parents and because of his trust, they go on giving him beliefs which are poisonous, a personality which is false, an ego which will deprive him of his own soul; beliefs, thoughts, scriptures, which are going to hinder his intelligence, which are going to prevent his search for truth, which are going to make him part of some stupid, organized religion.

I call every organized religion stupid, because true religion can never be organized. True religion is always individual, it has nothing to do with the crowd. A Jesus can be religious but not the Christians. The Christians are only carbon copies. They have forgotten their own originality, their own individuality.

Jesus was not following anybody. He was not imitating anybody. That was his fault, that he did not allow the society to exploit his trust. He did not allow the crowd to reduce him into a false personality. He remained an individual.

He risked his life but he did not compromise with the society. It was better to die on the cross than to live as a hypocrite. At least on the cross he was true, authentic -- himself.

In the crowd, he would have lived, but not his own life. He would have been a cog in the machine -- without any individuality, without any intelligence of his own, without any realization of truth, significance, beauty and the immense grace of existence.

He could have saved his life but in fact, that would have been crucifixion. He accepted being crucified -- that was saving his life -- fearlessly, trusting in existence, without any anger against the crowd. Even at the last moment on the cross, he was praying for the crowd:

"Father, forgive them. They know not what they are doing. They are unconscious people. One cannot expect from unconscious people anything more."

He was only thirty-three; a long life was ahead of him. But this is the beauty of the man, that he sacrificed that long life which would have been meaningless, false, pseudo, for something authentic, real -- without any complaint, without any grudge against anybody.

First, the parents exploit the child because he cannot even conceive that they will be deceiving him -- and it is not that the parents deceive the child intentionally. They are unconscious. They have also been deceived by their parents.

Every generation has been corrupting every new generation. The parents don't know whether God exists or not, but they pretend before the child as if God exists; they take him to the church, or to the synagogue, or to the temple. Neither they know nor their rabbis and their bishops and their priests know.

It is a very mad world. Blind people are leading other blind people. And nobody raises the question: where are we going and why?

From the very beginning I refused to believe in anything unless I was convinced.

Everybody was irritated with me -- and I was not doing any harm to anybody. They wanted me to go to the temple. They wanted me to touch the feet of somebody they thought was a saint.

I said, "I don't have any objection. I can touch his feet. I can even touch his head, but at least I must know why I am doing it. What qualities has this man got?"

And the replies I got were so ridiculous... "Because this man has renounced the world."

So I said, "That simply proves this man is a coward. He's an escapist. And if he has renounced the world then what is he doing here? This too is the world!

"He may have left his house but now he's staying in somebody else's house. He has simply renounced his responsibilities. He has left his wife and his children. The children will become beggars, the wife will become a prostitute, and who is responsible for it? And this man has become a parasite, because he is not doing anything. His whole job is to let people touch his feet."

My father stopped taking me. But I would follow him and he would say, "Listen, you are not to come with me."

I said, "I am not coming with you. And this road does not belong to you. I don't know where you are going and I don't even want to know. Neither do you need to be worried about me. It is just coincidence that you happen to be ahead of me and I happen to be behind you."

He would stop. I would stop. He said, "This is not good, creating unnecessary fuss in the marketplace."

I said, "you are creating, I was walking silently. I have not raised a single question. Why have you stopped? And if you can stop without my permission, why can't I stop without your permission? It is a government road."

And finally I would reach wherever he was going, and as we were coming near the temple, or near the place where some saint was staying, he would start persuading me, "Okay, you have come but keep quiet."

I said, "If I see something stupid, I cannot keep quiet. I need honest answers."

He said, "It seems I will have to stop going to the temple, going to the saints -- just because of you!"

I said, "It does not matter, I can go without you. And I will create more trouble because these people you are worshiping are the ugliest people I have seen."

The Hindu saints have such big bellies that one has to decide whether the man has the belly or the belly has the man. And these are the people who have renounced the world! So I used to ask: "What is the matter with his belly, is he pregnant?"

The simple fact is, the people who renounce sex start eating more and more, as a substitute. Food becomes their obsession. These big bellies of Hindu saints are nothing but symbolic of repressed sex.

And you are worshiping these psychologically sick people. I don't see any light in their eyes, I don't see any grace in their faces. I don't see any authority in their words. They quote scriptures. Their whole "being" is within inverted commas -- they don't know anything on their own.

Gautam Buddha may have known, but to repeat his words does not mean that you are also a knower. Those words can be repeated by a parrot, too. But the parrot cannot become a buddha.

I would go with my grandfather to the temples, and I would see people worshiping dead, stone statues -- what kind of humanity have we created -- just because somebody has said that "This statue is the statue of God."

Nobody has seen God. No photographer has even taken a single photograph. How have these sculptors managed to make these statues? Just pure imagination.

Gautam Buddha died twenty-five centuries ago, and his first statue was made after his death, five hundred years later. There was not even an eye-witness alive. And you will be surprised to know that it was at the time when Alexander the Great came to India, and all Gautam Buddha's statues have the face of Alexander the Great!

Alexander was a beautiful man, young and powerful. He attracted the painters, the sculptors, and he became the prototype for Gautam Buddha, for Mahavira, for the twenty-four teerthankaras of the Jainas. None of them have the Indian face; the face is Greek.

But my grandfather would say, "Don't talk such things. If somebody hears, they will think that I have brought you basically to create trouble."

I said, "You are wrong. You have not brought me, you have come with me. I was coming myself. From where have you got the idea that you have brought me? And unless somebody proves to me that these statues are of Buddha, or Mahavira, why should I be expected to worship them? In fact, they should be removed! They are statues of Alexander the Great, one of the maddest men the world has known -- who had the ambition to conquer the whole world.

"And these people -- Buddha and Mahavira and others -- were against ambition, against desire. They renounced their kingdoms, and what a strange fate: instead of their own statues, statues of Alexander are being worshiped in all the temples of India."

But naturally parents are powerful, more knowledgeable, and children are helpless, innocent. You can go on stuffing into their heads any nonsense. And by the time they mature, that nonsense will have become so deep-rooted that they will be ready to fight for it, they will be ready to kill for it or be killed for it.

What are religious wars? People are fighting about such fictions -- "God." None of them has known God, neither the Christians nor the Mohammedans, but they are fighting that their god is right and your god is wrong.

Simplified, they are saying, "We are right. You are wrong." And that would be far more clear, that it is a fight of egos, it is not a religious war. It is not a crusade. Everybody wants to prove his ego to be right, and that can be proved only if he proves that everybody else's ego is wrong. Then he attains to a superiority, he becomes higher, holier.

So first, it is the simple trust of the child. And second... your observation, Pratito, is absolutely correct. Second, it is fear.

The parents can punish you; they can deprive you. Teachers can punish you. You have to accept whatever is being said by those who have power of some kind. In this way, everybody has been distracted, derailed from his natural path. And he has moved in a direction which was not meant for him.

That's why there is always anxiety, anguish and a deep sadness. This sadness is existential:

unless you can be your natural self, the spring will never come to you, the flowers will never blossom in your being, love will never grow.

You will never know the glory of life and the splendor of consciousness.

You are saying, "Now all has peeled off." This is my whole work here -- just peeling the onions. Peeling to the point where nothing remains -- just spaciousness and silence.

Because an onion is nothing but layers and layers and layers, and when the final layer is taken off, your hands are empty.

In those empty hands descends the whole glory, the whole kingdom of God.

You have not to be standing in the way, you have to give way so that God can enter in.

You have to open the windows and doors so that fresh winds can come in and the life-giving sun rays can dance inside and the room becomes alive.

Your beliefs, your traditions, your scriptures, your religions -- all are closing your being from all sides. No fresh air, no sun rays, no fragrance coming with the air, no life dancing inside you with the sunrays -- how can you be happy? How can you be blissful? You have carved a grave for yourself. Alive, you are living inside the grave. Anybody who is a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Buddhist, is living in a grave. He is no more alive.

It is good that you were courageous enough to drop all the layers of the onion.

"I have walked through the pain." Yes, there is pain because all those beliefs, thoughts, philosophies, have become so much part of you that it is not like taking your clothes off -- it is something like taking your skin off. It is painful.

But this pain is worth it. It is almost the pain of a surgery, to remove the cancer from your soul. And once you have passed through the pain, the fear is gone, the ambition is gone.

Pratito, your observation is immensely significant for everybody, because all ambition is out of fear. All ambition is out of an inferiority complex, because you are afraid to be yourself.

You want to be somebody else -- a president of a country, a prime minister of a country, the richest man... and people find different ways because so many people cannot be the president, cannot be the richest, cannot be the prime ministers. Then they create a Rotary Club.

Man's stupidity knows no limits. In a Rotary Club, the presidents go in rotation. Everybody becomes the president, everybody's ambition is fulfilled. But the Rotary Club chooses only the topmost people from every profession. What about others? They create a Lions Club! And there are many other clubs. Their whole function is to give you some solace, that you are a president, that you are a secretary, that you are not just nobody.

The Hindu shankaracharyas, who are equal to the Christian popes, call themselves "world teachers" -- jagat guru. I used to live in a place -- Raipur. And I was surprised that a man in that city called himself Jagat Guru, the "world teacher." And he was not a shankaracharya.

Even the shankaracharyas are not jagat guru, because the whole world does not recognize them as masters. Even the pope, who has the greatest number of followers in the world -- seven hundred million people -- cannot call himself a world teacher. And this man was living just close by my house. So one day, I went there.

He was having a massage session; one of his disciples was massaging him. So I asked him, "I heard so much about you; just one problem has been puzzling me. How did you become the world teacher, Jagat Guru?"

He said, "It is a long story."

I said, "Howsoever long it is, you tell it."

And it turned out to be the shortest story I have heard! The whole story was that the man who was massaging him, was named Jagat. And this was his only teacher, and he was his only disciple, so somebody suggested, "Why don't you call yourself Jagat Guru?" And the idea was really very fulfilling! He started calling himself Jagat Guru.

I said, "This is absolutely logical. In fact, the shankaracharyas are not Jagat Guru, you are.

But you were saying the story is very long -- the story is so short, only two persons!"

Man is in search of being somebody.

He cannot allow himself just to be himself.

Just to be himself means nobody.

I was a professor in a university, and just near my quarter lived the head of the economics department. And I was wondering: he was an Indian but his name was Doctor Gilbert Shaw.

This is a strange name because in India...Gilbert Shaw?

Finally, I introduced myself to him. And I asked him, "Just one enquiry I have, that's why I have come to you. How come you have got such a strange name, Dr. Gilbert Shaw?"

He became serious. But I said, "You will have to tell me. Otherwise, I am going to come every day and I will make it known to everybody else in the university: 'Ask how this man has become Gilbert Shaw.' So you simply tell me."

He became afraid -- he said, "You don't tell anybody because I have been here for two years and nobody has enquired. The reality is, my name used to be Gither Sahai. But when I went to London for my Ph.D., I changed to Gilbert Shaw. And when I came back... it looks more prestigious. Just the name seems to be impressive to people -- Gilbert Shaw. Gither Sahai... there are so many Gither Sahais." Gither is one of the names of Krishna, and Sahai is his caste.

Seeing thousands of people, I have come to know such sick minds. Even changing the name, giving it some color so that it looks Western -- as if he is the son of George Bernard Shaw, or at least some faraway relative.

People want to be somebody. But it is out of fear. The fear is that nobody knows you; whether you exist or not makes no difference to the world. Whether you have been here or not, nobody will remember.

People are not interested in living but being remembered.

What use is it to be remembered when you are dead?

"... Knowing about this whole journey with open eyes I am sitting under the sky drinking the sweet splendor day and night. Osho, there seems to be no darkness, no end, sometimes not even me."

There is no darkness.

Darkness is only less light.

Our eyes are not capable, but there are animals, owls, who can see in the night -- it is their day. In the morning comes their night, because their eyes are so delicate that they cannot open their eyes in the hot sun rays. So the whole day long, they are in darkness and the whole night they are in light. The difference between darkness and light is only of degree.

It is the same as the difference between coldness and hotness: the same thermometer can show you how much is the temperature. Is it cold or is it hot? -- the difference is only of degrees. Wherever you see opposite things, remember: the difference is only of degree. There is no opposition anywhere. There is nothing contradictory.

And certainly there is no end, because there is no beginning. Existence has always been there, is there, will be there, and we are part of it. Forms may have changed, but the essential reality remains the same.

And you say, "Sometimes not even me." What is happening sometimes will soon become a permanent recognition that you are not. Only existence is.

But the first glimpses have started coming to you. You are right, the circle is complete.

You are again becoming innocent, full of wonder. This is the rebirth Jesus used to tell of -- "unless you are born again, in this very life, you will not attain the kingdom of God."

Before death comes, everybody has to become a child again. Then there is no death; then you die consciously, knowing perfectly well that only the body which has become old and useless, is being renewed. You are moving your house.

The only problem in attaining to your childhood again is that what, because of trust and because of fear, you have accepted from the family, from the society, from the church, from the school -- all that has to be dropped.

It needs courage.

But what you drop is meaningless, and what you gain is so tremendous in its truth, in its beauty, in its joy, that it is worth it to drop everything and become an innocent child again.

My definition of sannyas is: the struggle to become a child again. Of course, the second childhood has a great difference from the first childhood: the first childhood was ignorant, and the second childhood is innocent. The demarcation point is very difficult. But once understood, it is simple.

The ignorant child looks innocent but he will lose his ignorance soon. He will have to become knowledgeable. As he grows, he will have to attain all kinds of knowledge just to survive in the society.

But the second childhood comes after you have known everything and known the futility of it and have dropped it. It is not ignorance -- it is just a totally different kind of consciousness.

It is awareness.

You will not fall again into the trap of knowledgeability. The first was only negative; the second is something positive.

Ignorance means absence of knowledge.

And innocence means presence of wonder.

A young woman is going to marry a Greek man. The night before the wedding, her mother takes her aside. "Now look," the mother tells her daughter, "Greeks are a little strange. If he ever tells you to turn over, I want you to get out of bed, pack your clothes and come back home to me."

So the couple get married and everything is fine for the first two years.

Then one night, while they were in bed, the man says to the woman, "Sweetheart, roll over now."

She gets very upset, gets out of bed, puts her clothes on and starts packing her suitcase. As she's ready to leave, the confused man says, "Darling, wait a minute. What is the matter?"

Holding her tears back, she says: "My mother told me that you Greek men are strange, and that if you ever told me to roll over I was to get my clothes on, leave you and go home to her."

"But honey," says the man, "don't you want children?"

Question 2:

Sarjano, your question is not a question. It is a statement. The only thing questionable in it is about my watches. So I can say to you, if I meet you on the way, take away my watch.

That will be enough. Moreover, they are not mine, they belong to sannyasins who want me to use them while they are here. And then they can take them back, and they become something precious to them. I don't own anything -- even my dresses are not my own. They are also made by sannyasins.

And I agree with you, I don't like these cheap watches myself. But where to find richer people than sannyasins? If you have some idea, either you can inform me or if you can manage, you can bring the right watch, one that you like.

You are an Italian Sarjano, so especially for you I have a joke here.

An Italian ship has been out at sea for months and all the crew is missing the delight of female company. Everyone is becoming more and more irritable. Everyone, except the captain.

The crew begin to notice that the captain does not seem to suffer from the same frustrations that they do. So they decide to spy on him and find out his secret. That night, they creep down to his cabin and look through the keyhole. They see him enjoying himself with a beautiful and very lifelike inflatable doll.

So when the captain is not in his cabin, they all take turns to go down and enjoy the favors of this magnificent piece of modern engineering.

When the ship docks in Amsterdam, the captain goes back to the shop in the red-light district where he bought the doll. "Good morning, captain," says the attendant. "Are you satisfied with our product?"

"Ah, yes," replies the captain, "She is magnificent! And she is so lifelike that I even got gonorrhea from her."

Question 3:

Anand Michael, melting with your beloved is the easiest because it is very superficial and very momentary. It is mostly physical. Your mind remains chattering inside and your being remains uninvolved in it. Just a peripheral melting, you can call it.

Melting with your master is more difficult. Because it is not melting between two peripheries but between two centers. It is melting of two consciousnesses. It is melting of two souls in one organic whole. The ego has to be completely dropped. The mind has to be utterly silent. And it is not something momentary.

Once you have melted with your master, you have melted. There is no going back.

And the third is, melting alone. That is the most difficult -- almost impossible. Because melting alone, you don't even have an excuse.

Melting with your beloved, there is an excuse -- you love her. And melting needs the other. Melting with the master is difficult but not impossible; the other is still there, and you are melting with the consciousness of the other.

But alone, what will you be melting in? I am saying it is the most difficult -- or perhaps impossible. There is only one possibility and that is, if you know how to melt with the master, you and your master's consciousness will become one. Then you are alone. Then you cannot say, "We are two." There is no "I", there is no "thou".

If you mean by "alone" this state of oneness, then melting is possible. Then melting will be with existence itself.

But one should start learning melting with the beloved. One should always learn from the easiest. If you are going to learn swimming, swim in shallow water. Don't immediately jump into the ocean.

When you are capable of melting with your beloved in love, then it is possible for you to melt with the master in trust. Trust is the higher quality of love.

And if you become capable of melting with the master, then the master becomes a door to the whole existence. Then you can try to melt alone.

Then, too, you are not melting alone; it only appears to you that you are melting alone.

You are melting into the universe itself. Because the existence is not present as the other -- as your beloved or the master -- it seems you are alone. But you are never alone. The existence is surrounding you from everywhere. You are almost like a fish in the ocean. The ocean is invisible, but you can try to understand it: you are breathing every moment, existence, in and out. Every cell of your body is breathing existence in and out. Every pore of your body is inhaling, exhaling.

You are eating food, which is your nourishment, without which you are going to die. In the food, you are eating the sun rays, the moon rays, the faraway stars and their effects, the earth.

In all that is coming in fruits, in anything that you are eating, you are eating existence. You are breathing existence.

You are not alone. Because all this is not visible, you can think you are alone.

And once you have experienced the joy of melting into the master, heart-to-heart, center-to-center, then this third step is also possible, even though I call it impossible.

The impossible also can become possible if you go in the right way -- step by step.

Hence I am not against love between a man and a woman. I want it to be as deep and as total as possible because that will prepare you for the second step, the melting with the master.

One who has never been able to melt in love with a woman or with a man, will be incapable of melting with the master. He does not know even the language of melting. He does not know even the most superficial experience of it. So start from the simplest.

The master is almost in the middle between you and existence. If you can melt with the master in total trust, in absolute surrender, you will find inside the master there is no one, but pure nothingness, a golden absence. A soundless music. A silence which is not of the graveyard but of a garden.

This will prepare you. The master and the merging in him is the greatest discipline in the world. It will prepare you to melt with existence itself. It will give you encouragement and it will give you a small taste... because the master appears from the outside as an individual but as you melt in him, you find that there is nobody. He was just a window into existence. Now the impossible can become possible.

You can melt alone. You can simply close your eyes and melt with existence -- with the sun, with the rain, with the wind, with the trees, with the birds. You can simply spread yourself all over the existence.

There is a difference of quality in all these three silences. There is also some similarity.

Two lovers melting have a faraway echo of the ultimate melting with the universe. Melting with the master, you have come very close; the distant sound is no longer distant. And as you melt in existence, you are melting in that distant music itself.

So there is a similarity and there is a difference, but the difference is not of quality. The difference is only of degree.

All the religions of the world have been telling humanity that there is a difference of quality, that when you love a woman and when you love a master and when you love God, there are differences of quality. I reject the whole idea, categorically. There is only a difference of degree.

Because the old religions believed in a qualitative difference, they wanted you to renounce the wife, the husband, because unless you renounce, you cannot attain to a different quality of silence.

I don't say to you to renounce anything. I simply say that these are three steps to the same temple. Even the lowest step belongs to the same temple, and is as absolutely necessary as the second step, as the third step. With the third step, you have entered into the temple.

Nothing has to be renounced.

Everything has to be deepened.

Everything has to be experienced as totally and as intensely as possible.

A Hollywood movie queen who had been married many times was to get married once again and went to her doctor to ask for a face lift. The doctor was not keen on doing it.

"I am sorry madam, you have had it done so many times that I do not think you should have it done again."

"Ah, please doctor, I am getting married again and he is much younger than me. I must look my best at the wedding."

"Alright, I will do it but it is definitely the last time!

After the operation she looked in the mirror, "That's funny, doctor. I never had a dimple before."

"That is not a dimple madam, that is your navel. If I was to lift your face again, you would have to shave."

Okay, Vimal?

Yes, Osho.