Truth is not divisible

From:
Osho
Date:
Fri, 18 March 1987 00:00:00 GMT
Book Title:
The Hidden Splendor
Chapter #:
13
Location:
pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Archive Code:
N.A.
Short Title:
N.A.
Audio Available:
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Question 1:

BELOVED OSHO,

LET'S REVERSE THE QUESTION FOR ONCE: WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED BEING WITH US?

Sarjano, it is the last supper. Jesus has gathered all his disciples together and there is a great feeling of gloom in the air. A single candle lights the room. Everybody can sense that something momentous is going to happen and that this may be their last meal together.

Jesus pours out the wine and passes the glasses around and then divides up the food and personally serves his disciples. The candle burns low and at last, all the food is gone except for one hard-boiled egg.

Jesus says to Peter, sitting on his right, "Peter, my blessed disciple, would you like to eat this last egg?"

"Ah, no master," says Peter. You must have it."

Jesus then turns to his left and says, "John, my blessed disciple, would you like to eat this last egg?"

"Ah, no master," says John. "You must have it." Jesus asked all his twelve disciples in turn, and they all refused the last egg, saying that he, their master, must have it. Just then a gust of wind comes through the window and blows out the candle. The room is plunged into darkness and it is filled with an awesome silence.

Suddenly, there is a hideous scream. Someone lights a new candle, and everyone gasps as they see Jesus with his hand stretched out for the remaining egg -- and embedded in the back of his hand, are twelve forks! But it was too late to learn...

I have learned much. One of the most significant things that I have learned is not to feel sad when you betray, not to feel sorry when you go astray -- in fact, not even to expect that you have to trust.

The relationship between me and you has to be one-sided, only from your side, not from my side at all. You are here of your own free choice; you can move away just as freely as you had come. You love me -- that is your decision. You can start hating me -- that will also be your decision. I am absolutely unconcerned; only then is it possible not to feel hurt, not to feel wounded.

Jesus was betrayed only once, by one disciple. I have been betrayed continually for almost as much time as Jesus lived on the earth -- thirty-three years. So many people I have trusted so totally have betrayed me so easily. There was a moment they were ready to die for me and just some small thing... if I was not fulfilling their expectation, which I have never agreed to

Truth is not divisible fulfill, their love changes into great hate. The same person who was ready to die for me is ready to kill me.

So I have learned it the hard way that if you love, it is your decision. If you hate, it is your decision. I am almost non-existent as far as my side is concerned: neither am I a partner in your love, nor am I going to be a partner in your hate. This is a sad lesson but it is good that I have learned it long before.

If somebody assassinates me, at least I will not have any complaint, any grudge -- because to love was his freedom, to hate is also his freedom. I am absolutely out of the relationship.

I will go on doing whatever I feel is needed for the growth of your consciousness. But people have been going on, changing... such stupid expectations and if they are not fulfilled...

it seems as if they have come to me to change me, to transform me. They want me to be according to their idea of how a master should be.

I give you total freedom to be yourself. I never expect anything, any ideal to be imposed on you. I don't give you any commandments. And yet you go on carrying within your mind certain expectations that I have to fulfill, and if they are not fulfilled... and they cannot be fulfilled. Thousands of people are related to me. They have different ideals, different moral concepts. It is almost impossible -- and even if it were possible, I am not a man to fit with those who are unconscious, who are themselves living in darkness.

You are here to go through a transformation. It is none of your business how I live, what I say, what I do -- the moment you start thinking to change something in me, the bridge between me and you is broken.

And it is a one-sided bridge; I am not a partner in it. I know it is hard for you but your very question implies, Sarjano -- perhaps you have not read it very consciously while you were writing it. You say, "Let us reverse the question for once." You cannot reverse it even for once. You are asking now, "What have you learned being with us?"

I have nothing to learn.

You are here only because of the fact that you have found a person who has nothing to learn -- and particularly from you, who are groping in darkness, in unconsciousness, who are almost on the boundary line of insanity -- any moment, just one step more and you are in a madhouse.

Neither from you, nor from anyone else.

And my whole approach is -- and I have been insisting millions of times -- that as far as truth or the ultimate reality is concerned, you cannot learn it from anybody else. And once you have known it, there is nothing that remains to be learned.

So I say to you: not even once can the question be reversed. I have not learned anything from you. You need not feel responsible for anything. Just being with you for all these three decades, it has not been a learning but simply a discovery: that there is nobody in the world who is so awakened that you can even call him a friend, so awakened that you can even call him, a beloved. This has not been a learning -- this is simply a discovery, slowly slowly, as I have come to know human beings.

And as I went around the world, my discovery has become absolutely clear: this humanity has come to a dead end. To hope for anything from this humanity is sheer nonsense. Perhaps a few people may be saved -- and for them I go on creating the Noah's Ark, knowing perfectly

Truth is not divisible well that perhaps when the Noah's Ark is ready, there may not be anybody left to be saved.

They may have all gone their own ways.

It rarely happens: never have so many people come in contact with anybody -- either Jesus or Mahavira or Buddha -- and never have so many people left Buddha, Mahavira or Jesus. It is significant to have some insight into it. Even Gautam Buddha, a man of immense insight, was ready to compromise on minor points with his disciples. And the disciple feels immensely happy if the master agrees with him -- although the master agreeing with the disciple is like light agreeing with darkness, truth agreeing with that which is not true, life agreeing with death. But because Buddha, Mahavira, Jesus and other teachers of the past have compromised on minor points, very few people have left them.

I am an absolutely non-compromising person. Either you have to be with me absolutely...

without expecting anything from my side, because I cannot agree on any smallest, most minute point if it is not true.

And truth is indivisible. You cannot say, "I may not have the whole truth... but a little bit, a piece of it, a fragment of truth." Truth is not divisible. Truth is almost like a circle. Have you ever seen a half circle? Perhaps you may have misunderstood: if you have seen a half circle, it is no longer a circle at all; the circle can only be full. The half is only an arc, it is not a circle.

Just as the circle is indivisible, so is truth, so is life, so is existence, so is love, so is ecstasy.

Either you have it or you don't have it.

If you have it, there is no question of your being here. If you don't have it, then be absolutely clear that you don't have it, because living in the illusion that perhaps you have a little bit of it, is dangerous.

What can I learn from you? -- being unconscious? Being greedy? Being jealous? Being violent? What can I learn from you?

As I have gone on discovering more and more people, my hope for humanity has disappeared. If you want to call it a learning, you can.

I don't see any future possible. And the time is so short before the curtain falls, that you should not waste it in unnecessary things. Your life has now to be absolutely devoted to the most essential thing, the most fundamental thing: to be enlightened has to be your single-pointed concentration.

Everything else has to be sacrificed for it, because you cannot even postpone it for tomorrow. Tomorrow may never come.

Question 2:

BELOVED OSHO,

WOULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT ON COMMITMENT AND SPONTANEITY. ARE THEY OPPOSITE POLES OF THE SAME ENERGY?

Prem Nirmala, commitment and spontaneity are certainly opposite poles, and of the same energy. Commitment is something like death; spontaneity is something like life. Commitment is something like darkness, and spontaneity is something like light.

Truth is not divisible Although they belong to the same energy as opposite poles, you have to start from being spontaneous. All the religions of the world want you to start from commitment, all political parties want you to start from commitment.

Commitment, if you start with it, is very dangerous. It is another name of slavery. It means you are saying and promising something which is not within your capacity. You are saying that "Tomorrow also, I will be the same." But who can say what tomorrow is going to bring?

Commitment means, "I will remain blind to anything else that can change my commitment." That's why every belief makes people blind. They have to keep their eyes closed, out of fear -- they may see something which goes against their belief, their commitment.

Every year, the Catholic pope declares a black list of books that Catholics are not supposed to read. Reading them means a certainty of your going to hell. I was talking to a bishop in Nagpur, because a few of my books had been listed by the Catholic pope as not to be read by any Catholics; whoever reads them is paving his path towards hell. And this is not new, this is an almost eighteen-hundred-year-old tradition in the Catholic Church.

Before this century, they used to burn and destroy any book they decided was dangerous for Catholics. Now they cannot do that, but at least they can prevent the Catholics -- who are a great majority in the world, seven hundred million people.

I simply said to the bishop of Nagpur, "At least somebody must have been reading my books; otherwise how do they decide? Either the pope himself must be reading, or some associate cardinals in the Vatican must be reading -- without reading, you cannot decide that a book is dangerous to the Catholic belief."

He was in a dilemma: he could not say yes, he could not say no. Because if he says "Yes, somebody reads it," that means that person is bound to fall into hell. And if that person is not going to fall into hell, then the whole idea is ridiculous; then nobody is going to fall into hell.

It is just to keep people's eyes closed: no facts should be allowed to be known to them that go against their belief.

Commitment demands that you lose your eyes, lose your mind, lose your reason, your logic, your intelligence, your consciousness. It is almost a living death. Never begin anything with commitment.

But such is the mystery of life... Begin everything with spontaneity, with natural awareness, with no commitment for anything, but always ready and open and available to anything new that you come across on the path. Only a spontaneous lifestyle can lead you to your authentic being.

And this is the miracle: that once spontaneous living has led you to clarity of vision, to purity of intelligence -- has destroyed all the darkness of your soul and has made everything light within you -- then spontaneousness itself becomes commitment.

But it is not being imposed from outside, it is a growth within yourself. It is your experience to which you are committed; it is your understanding to which you are committed.

You are committed to your own eyes, to your own consciousness, to your own intelligence, to your own experience.

This commitment has a beauty and an aliveness.

It is spontaneity becoming mature.

Truth is not divisible Spontaneity was like a child; commitment is maturity, crystallization. Just as nobody can start from the middle of life, or from the end of life -- everybody has to start from the childhood. Although every childhood will reach old age, and every birth will reach death... but nobody can begin with death. And a life that has been lived with joy and dance and love -- its crescendo, the death, will not be dark. It will not be an end of something but a new beginning, a new beginning of a higher spontaneity on another plane.

But religions have deceived humanity in such cunning ways. And unless you are very alert, it is difficult to understand in what ways they have deceived you. Spontaneity and commitment are two poles of the same energy, but there is one commitment -- which is imposed from outside, which has not come as a flowering of your own spontaneity -- that is a false commitment: your being a Christian, or a Hindu, or a Mohammedan, or a Jew is a false commitment. It has not grown within you, you have not lived up to it. It is not a maturity of your own consciousness, not a crystallization of your being, but something imposed from above by others.

It has no roots within you. That's why the whole world is full of religious people but there seems to be no religiousness anywhere. No religious values blossom, but just the opposite -- humanity lives on an almost subhuman level.

Prem Nirmala, start from spontaneity. But no tradition, no culture, no civilization, will allow it, because they can control only dead people. And they can control through commitment.

The spontaneous person is beyond anybody's enslavement. And if the spontaneous person grows, he will come to a commitment -- but that will be his own commitment to existence, between himself and existence. No other mediator, no priest, no pope, no imam, no shankaracharya is going to stand between him and this immensely beautiful existence, this great life, this divineness that is spread all over the world.

His spontaneity will bring him to a commitment, but that commitment will be out of his own freedom. It will have roots deep in his own being. He will not be a Christian -- he can be a Jesus Christ. He will not be a Buddhist -- he can be a Gautam Buddha. He will not be a Hindu, but he can be a Krishna; he will not be a Jaina, but he can be a Mahavira.

It is because of this that I emphasize that religion is a private, personal and individual affair. It cannot be organized. The moment you organize it, you destroy it. And if we want humanity to be religious, then all the religions have to disappear. They are the barriers.

There are three hundred religions on the earth. They are dividing human beings, giving them different commitments, and those commitments have nothing to do with the time, with the space in which we find ourselves.

When a commitment comes out of spontaneity, it is always timely, it is never dead -- it is always growing with the changes that are happening every moment. It is just a riverlike flow, it is not frozen ice.

But it is very easy to deceive people because both the phenomena are so deeply interrelated. And people are living in such a deep sleep -- without any alertness at all, that they cannot make the discrimination between such closely connected experiences.

But just a little turn makes all the difference. If you start from commitment, then you will never reach to spontaneity; you have started from death. But if you start from spontaneity, you

Truth is not divisible will reach to commitment -- and that commitment will not be death. Out of spontaneity, death cannot grow -- only more life and more life and infinite life.

But you have to be alert, just a little conscious...

Two criminals were caught and went to jail. They became friends, and most of the day they were talking about how to escape. One morning, George looked so blissful that his friend Arthur asked, "Hey, what happened to you last night?"

"Well," said George, "first tell me how you spent the night."

"Okay," replied Arthur. "I had a beautiful dream: The gate opened by itself and I walked out. In the street, there was a racing bike with ten gears and I jumped on it and rode away.

Great, was it not? But now, tell me about you?"

George answered, "In my dream, the door also opened and two very beautiful young girls came in, stripped, belly dancing.

"At this point, Arthur could not hold back and said, "George, but why didn't you wake me up?"

"Impossible," replied George. "Don't you remember? You were gone on the bike!"

Our lives are not different from our dreams. Have you ever observed that even in your dreams, the dream also looks real? as real as the life when you are awake -- perhaps more real because when you are awake, you can doubt.

You can doubt -- right now you can doubt; perhaps this is real or perhaps it is just a dream.

There have been great philosophers in the world, like Shankara in the East, and Bradley in the West, whose whole philosophy consists of a single, significant statement: that the world is illusory. There is no way to prove that it is real. One thing is certain, that you can doubt it. But in the dream, you cannot even doubt. The reality of the dream is so tremendous that you cannot dream and wonder if perhaps it is a dream. No, the dream overwhelms you completely.

We are living, although with open eyes, in different dreams. And those dreams don't allow us the alertness to see simple things: how we are being exploited, how our dignity as human beings is destroyed, what very stupid and idiotic people become our religious saints -- those who have no sharpness of intelligence. But we find strange excuses...

Just a few days ago, one young Jaina nun escaped from a Jaina monastery with a young man. The whole Jaina community in that area near Indore was in such a turmoil, and the turmoil became even more significant because the girl gave a statement to the press and wrote letters to her parents saying that "Now I am twenty-one years of age and I have the right to choose my lifestyle. I don't want to be a nun, and if you insist..." Because they were trying in every way to catch hold of her, to find where she was hiding. And Jainas are rich people. The government was supporting them, the police officers were supporting them.

She gave the statement to the newspapers: "If they insist that I have to remain a nun, then I will expose the reality, the inside story of the monastery and what is going on inside there.

Nobody is following the teachings that they teach to the layman outside. There are all kinds of corruption. Monks, who are not supposed to have money, have accumulated money. Monks and nuns who are not supposed to have any sexual relationship are having sexual relationships. And I have been tortured in so many ways that if you insist, I will expose it to the whole world." She said, "My younger sister is still there. She also wants to come out of the monastery but she is only eighteen years of age."

Truth is not divisible But still, in India, money functions like miracles. They must have bribed the police, they must have bribed the magistrate. An arrest warrant was issued. Now, that girl has not done any harm to anybody -- is she not free to have her own way of life? If she does not want to be a nun, has she to be forced to be a nun by the police and by the government and by the court?

And the parents started fasting. These are ways of torturing people -- people think these are ways of nonviolence, they are not. The father and mother started fasting in front of the monastery, and declared they would not eat unless the girl came back. Now, it is a very subtle way of forcing the girl to come back.

The prestige of the family, the prestige of the religion, the prestige of the monastery is at stake. But the girl must be courageous; she did not turn up. And before the police reached the place where she and the young man were hiding, they escaped from there. I hope they will come here, because they cannot find anywhere any shelter with dignity and respect. Wherever they go, they will be thought to be criminals.

In fact, she has done a really courageous act; she needs immense respect and honor. And their whole effort is to catch hold of her, alive or dead. The fear is what she is going to expose about the monastery -- but every monastery is doing all those things.

I used to meet Jaina monks while I was traveling around India, and I was surprised. When I became intimate and friendly with a few Jaina monks and nuns... They would close the door and they were hiding in their bags Coca Cola, Fanta, and they would offer it to me. I would say, "This is a miracle! From where have you got this? You are not supposed to keep these things..." They are not supposed to keep anything with them. They all had money, and they were all hiding their money. And they all had their agents everywhere who were bringing things -- even in the night -- for them to eat. And none of them was celibate.

I would love that girl to turn up here, because here we can give her total freedom to be herself. We don't have any belief system and we don't have any commitment. And from here, she can expose all that she has passed through.

Question 3:

BELOVED OSHO,

REFERRING TO THE PRESENT SITUATION OF THE WORLD AND OF HUMANITY, THE FAMOUS PSYCHIATRIST, R.D. LAING, ASKS HIMSELF THE QUESTION: "WHAT TO DO WHEN WE DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO?"

CAN YOU PLEASE ANSWER HIM AND ALL OF US?

Chidananda, R.D. Laing is certainly one of the most sensitive psychiatrists of the world. In fact, he was responsible for sending Chidananda's mother, Pratiti, to me. She was Laing's patient for twelve years, and because he could not cure her, he sent her here to me. And it is because of Pratiti's coming here that Chidananda also came to the commune.

The very fact that Laing accepted that what psychiatry cannot do, meditation can do, shows immense sensibility and understanding. What he is asking is "What to do when we don't know what to do?" If he wants a really Eastern answer -- and he is well-acquainted with the Western answers; they have all failed -- the Eastern answer is in Basho's haiku:

Truth is not divisible SITTING SILENTLY, DOING NOTHING, THE SPRING COMES AND THE GRASS GROWS BY ITSELF.

R.D. Laing must have read this small haiku of Basho. There are moments in life when you don't know what to do. But still you go on doing something as if all the answers need some kind of doing to find them, as if all the questions can be solved by doing. The whole of the East stands on a very different level. It says: the questions that cannot be solved by doing can only be solved by non-doing. Don't go on searching for something else to do; there are questions which cannot be solved by any doing. In fact, every doing will make them more complicated.

For example, if you are not falling asleep one night and you want to go to sleep, and you ask, "What to do?" and somebody suggests, "Do this mantra, do this chanting; count from one to a hundred and then backwards from a hundred to one," all these efforts will keep you awake. They are not going to help you to fall asleep because doing them needs awareness, not sleep.

I would say to you, forget all about sleep. What is wrong in it? If you are not able to fall asleep, enjoy it. Lying down in your bed, doing nothing, the night comes and sleep follows.

There are things which do not have to be done, which have to be allowed to happen. The West knows only one category of things: everything that has to be done. Unless you do it, how can it happen? But they are forgetting that there is a category which is not available to doing, which is available only to a state of relaxedness, of non-doing.

I have seen an American book on relaxation, and the title of the book is YOU MUST RELAX! The very word "must" makes even relaxation some kind of tremendous effort. And the book has sold millions of copies because America is one of the places where people suffer from sleeplessness most.

Poor people cannot afford sleeplessness; it is a rich man's disease. Poor people snore perfectly, rich people suffer. Even sleep -- which is so natural to all the animals, to all the trees -- even that has become difficult for man, and the reason is that our whole day is full of doing. And the doing is so much that when we go to bed, the mind needs time to drop the habit -- but before it can drop it, you start a new doing: methods of sleep. So you continue in the same rut of doing. You never touch a deeper layer of your being where all is relaxed, where all is at rest, where nothing moves... just eternal silence.

This is the time, certainly, to find the right answer for R.D. Laing's question: "What to do when we don't know what to do?" He is still asking, "What to do?" That is the Western conditioning of the mind. He should have asked, "What not to do when we don't know what to do?"

Doing has failed. Now let us try non-doing -- and non-doing is another name for relaxation, another name for meditation.

Basho is absolutely right. The world has known great poets but perhaps none of them was a great meditator like Basho; hence his poetry is not just poetry, it is the very essence of his meditations. Each word contains immensities.

Truth is not divisible So when I repeat Basho's haiku, don't just listen to the words. Try to feel the content of the words, not the container -- the words are only containers.

SITTING SILENTLY, DOING NOTHING, THE SPRING COMES AND THE GRASS GROWS BY ITSELF.

He has said everything about meditation, all the essential ingredients. It is not something that you have to do; it is something that happens. You have just to wait; it happens in its own time. When the spring comes, the grass grows by itself. And just sitting won't do, because you can sit and your mind can go on wandering around the world. Hence, he has added: "Doing nothing" -- neither with your body, nor with your mind. Just sitting like a stone statue of Gautam Buddha, and waiting for the spring... There is no impatience: it always comes, and when it comes, the grass grows.

The world has come to a point... and it has been brought to this point by the Western attitude of action, and always action, and condemnation of inaction. Now the East can be of immense help. Action is good, it is needful, but it is not all.

Action can give you only the mundane things of life. If you want the higher values of life, then they are beyond the reach of your doing. You will have to learn to be silent and open, available, in a prayerful mood, trusting that existence will give it to you when you are ripe, that whenever your silence is complete, it will be filled with blessings.

Flowers are going to shower on you.

You just have to be absolutely a non-doer, a nobody, a nothingness.

The great values of life -- love, truth, compassion, gratitude, prayer, God, everything -- happen only in nothingness, in the heart which is absolutely silent and receptive. But the West is too rooted in action. And there seems to be perhaps not enough time left for it to learn non-doing.

You will be surprised to know that India never invaded any country -- and India was invaded by almost all the countries of the world. Whoever wanted to invade India, that was the easiest thing. It was not that there were no courageous people, that they were not warriors, but simply the idea of invading somebody else's territory was so ugly.

It is a surprising fact that one Mohammedan conqueror, Mohammed Gauri, invaded India eighteen times, and he was thrown back by a great warrior king, Prithviraj. Mohammed Gauri was driven back, but Prithviraj never entered his territory.

Prithviraj was told again and again, "This is going too far. That man will gather armies again in a few years, and again he will invade the country. It is better to finish him once and for all. And you have been victorious so many times -- you could have gone a little further. He has just a small country by the side of India; you could have taken his country and... finished!

Otherwise, he is a constant worry."

But Prithviraj said, "That would be against the dignity of my country. We have never invaded anybody. It is enough that we force him to go back. And he is such a shameless fellow that even after being defeated dozens of times, he again comes.!"

Truth is not divisible The eighteenth time when Mohammed Gauri was defeated, all his armies were killed, and he was hiding in a cave and thinking, What to do now? And there he saw a spider making its net. Sitting there, he had nothing else to do, so he watched the spider. It fell again and again. It fell exactly eighteen times, but the nineteenth time it succeeded in making a net, and that gave the idea to Mohammed Gauri: "At least one time more I should make the effort. If this spider was not discouraged after eighteen failures, why should I be?"

He again gathered his army, and the nineteenth time he conquered Prithviraj. Prithviraj had become old, and having fought his whole life, his armies were tattered, ruined. He was taken prisoner, handcuffed, chained -- which was absolutely against the Eastern way of life.

When another king, Poras, was defeated by Alexander the Great, and was brought before him, chained, Alexander asked him, "How should you be treated?"

Poras said, "Is that a question to be asked? An emperor should be treated like an emperor."

There was a great silence for a moment in the court of Alexander. It was very appropriate for Poras to say this, because his defeat was not really a defeat; his defeat was through the utter cunningness of Alexander. Alexander had sent his wife to meet Poras -- he was waiting on the other side of the river. It was the time when, in India, sisters would tie a small thread around the wrist of their brothers -- and it was called rakshabandhan, a bondage, a promise that "You will defend me."

When Alexander's wife came she was received just like a queen should be received. Poras himself came to receive her, and asked, "Why have you come? You could have informed me -- I could have come to your camp."

That was part of the Eastern tradition: by the time sun was down, people would go into each other's camp -- the enemy's camp -- just to discuss how the day went, who died, what happened. It was almost like a football game -- nobody took it that seriously.

But the woman said, "I have come because I don't have a brother. And I heard about this tradition here, so I want to make you my brother."

And Poras said, "It is a coincidence; I don't have a sister."

So she tied the thread and took the promise of Poras that "Whatever happens in the war, remember, Alexander is my husband; he is your brother-in-law, and you should not want me to be a widow. Just remember that."

There came a moment when Alexander's horse died as Poras attacked the horse with his spear, and Alexander fell on the ground. Poras jumped down with his spear, and the spear was just going to pierce Alexander's chest when Poras saw his own wrist with the thread. He stopped.

Alexander said, "Why have you stopped? This is the opportunity -- you can kill me."

Poras said, "I have given a promise. I can give my kingdom, but I cannot break my promise. Your wife is my sister, and she has reminded me that I would not like her to be a widow." And he turned back.

Even this kind of man was treated by Alexander as if he were a murderer. And Alexander asked Poras, "How should you be treated?"

Truth is not divisible "You should treat me just as an emperor treats another emperor. Have you forgotten that just a second more, and you would not have been alive? It is because of your wife -- the whole credit goes to her."

But it was a conspiracy. The East cannot think of such things. Mohammed Gauri imprisoned Prithviraj -- and Prithviraj was the greatest archer of those times. The first thing Mohammed Gauri did: he took both of Prithviraj's eyes out.

Prithviraj's friend was also captured with him -- he was a poet. Prithviraj told him, "You come with me to the court. Nobody understands our language, and I don't need eyes to hit my target -- you just describe how far he is."

Mohammed Gauri was so afraid of Prithviraj that he was not sitting on his usual throne, he was sitting on the balcony; the whole court was on the ground floor. And Chandrabardai, the poet, described exactly how many feet high, how many feet away. "Mohammed Gauri was sitting..." He sang it in a song, and blind Prithviraj killed Mohammed Gauri just through that description. His arrow reached exactly to his heart.

But Chandrabardai was very much puzzled, because in Prithviraj's blind eyes there were tears. Prithviraj said, "It is not right of me, but he has forced to do me something which goes against our whole tradition."

The East has a totally different approach towards things. If the West learns something about the East, the most important thing will be that all that is great comes out of non-doing, non-aggressiveness -- because every act is potentially aggressive. Only when you are in a state of non-doing are you non-aggressive. You are receptive, and in that receptivity, the whole existence pours all its treasures into you.

R.D. Laing's question is perfectly significant. Chidananda, send my answer to him also. He has been reading my books; he knows me perfectly well. And he has influenced in the Western psychological field; he is perhaps the most influential and most original figure today.

If he makes it a point, he can spread -- rather than psychological, psychoanalytical, and psychiatric ideas -- what the West needs: a deep understanding of meditation, of non-doing and of allowing existence to take its own course.

Okay, Vimal?

Yes, Osho.

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