What more do you want?

Question 1:

Dhyan Amiyo, meditation and death are very similar experiences. In death, your ego disappears; only your pure being remains. The same happens in meditation too: the disappearance of the ego and the presence only of pure isness, of your being. The similarity is so deep that just as people are afraid of death, they are also afraid of meditation. On the other hand, if you are not afraid of meditation, you will not be afraid of death either.

Meditation prepares you for death.

Our whole education is only for life. That is only half an education, and the other half -- which is far more important, which comes as the crescendo of life -- is completely missing from all systems of education that have existed before or are now in existence.

Meditation prepares you for the other half; it helps you to know death without dying. And once you have known death without dying, the fear of death will disappear forever. Even when death comes, you will be silently watching it, knowing absolutely that it cannot even make a small scratch on your being. It is going to take away your body, your mind, but not you.

What more do you want?

You belong to the immortal life. Your experience was good; you are saying, "As a child, one of my favorite games was to imagine I was going to die in the next minute. I enjoyed feeling the tension build up until it reached a peak and then slipped into relaxation, and I felt as if I was bubbling with happiness."

Unknowingly, you were doing a simple exercise of meditation. Perhaps from your past life, you may have carried the knowledge, the experience of the meditation, but it is one meditation amongst hundreds of methods -- this is one of the methods. And it is not only you, Dhyan Amiyo; many children go on playing things which are of immense importance. But they cannot understand the importance, they can only play them as a game.

For example, all over the world, children like to twirl, to whirl, and naturally the parents will stop them: "Don't do that, you may get dizzy. You may fall, you may hurt yourself." But all over the world, children enjoy it. And it was from seeing children enjoying whirling that Jalaluddin Rumi got the idea that there must be something... because whenever you see a child whirling, his face changes. A strange grace comes to his face; he starts radiating a certain aura, and when he stops he is so full of joy...

Jalaluddin Rumi tried -- in the forest, so nobody makes a laughingstock of him -- just to know what these children find in twirling. And he was amazed: he discovered one of the greatest methods of meditation, and for twelve hundred years after him, his school has been a living school. His school is called the Whirling Dervishes; in their temple, that is their prayer, that is their meditation. That is their whole religion. They go on twirling for hours together.

Jalaluddin himself became enlightened after thirty-six hours of continuous, nonstop twirling. And when he was asked, "There is no scripture describing this meditation; how have you found it?" He said, "Just by looking at children. I tried it myself, and I was amazed because the more you twirl, the faster you go, soon you become aware that something deep inside you is absolutely still and unmoving. The whole body is moving and the faster it moves, the more is the contrast between the unmoving and the moving. And the unmoving consciousness within is my soul. That is the center of the cyclone."

Man has much to learn from children -- but who cares about children? Everybody is trying to teach them without ever thinking about a simple thing: they are coming out of life's source, fresh. They must be carrying something which we have forgotten.

If you go backwards and remember, you cannot go farther back than your fourth year, or at the most your third year. Suddenly there comes a wall; your memory cannot penetrate farther back. What happened? You lived those four years -- and in fact, those four years were the happiest that you had known. But your experience somehow has been blocked by the society.

It is dangerous for the society that people should be so innocent, like children. Your parents, your teachers, your leaders -- with all the good intentions in their hearts -- are doing immense harm. They repress the child in you, and the child in you is closer to God than anything else.

This is why so many mystics have insisted: "Unless you are born again, unless you become childlike again, you will not know the truth and you will not know the beauty and you will not know the mystery of existence."

You can go backwards, remembering, and then suddenly comes a China wall: that is the time when your parents and your teachers started destroying your childhood, making you civilized, making you social, teaching you manners and etiquette, sending you to school,

What more do you want?

teaching you language and all other worldly ways. And making every effort that you forget completely your innocent days, your days of paradise.

Everybody forgets, but somewhere deep down in the unconscious, the experience of those days goes on echoing. It is this echoing of those experiences that sends you in search, because you cannot accept your miserable life -- full of anxiety and tension and psychological sickness -- as the meaning of your being here. Vaguely, somewhere, you know that there have been golden moments also. You cannot exactly remember, but an undercurrent in your unconscious goes on creating a longing in you to find those lost moments again.

Religion is basically the search for childhood: the same innocence, the same joy in things, the same fearlessness... those magical eyes, that heart which was able to dance with the trees, the heart that was enchanted with the moon and the stars. That space in which existence was nothing but sheer glory, pure splendor...

Dhyan Amiyo, either accidentally or out of some experience from the past life, you were doing a method of meditation. And that's why, as the tension grew... there is a limit, and the next moment is going to be the moment of death. You became totally concentrated. And from the highest peak of your tension, suddenly comes relaxation. In that relaxation, you found yourself bubbling with happiness.

If you had continued to do that, your life would have been immensely rich. You would not have known sadness, unhappiness. You would not have known anger, jealousy. You would have known only love, silence, joy -- and for no reason at all. It is our natural state.

Tension is not our natural state. That's why, after a certain moment, tension has to disappear. For example, you can keep your hand open for as long as you want, it is its natural state. But if you make a fist, and the harder you make your fist, how long can you keep it? It is a state of tension. Soon you will find it is tiring, exhausting and in spite of you, your fist will open. There is a certain energy that is exhausted.

The open hand is relaxed; no energy is being spent. Tension is just like a fist -- too much energy is being spent. Soon, you will find yourself utterly exhausted and the tension will disappear. And in its wake, there will be deep relaxation.

This relaxation is the space in which happiness grows, and again I repeat: for no reason at all. It is not that you are happy because of something. You are simply happy.

Happiness is your nature.

Unhappiness is something nurtured, you have learned it. Every credit goes to you for all your misery, but for happiness, you cannot have any credit. It is natural. You were born happy.

You were happy in your mother's womb...

Sigmund Freud has a great insight; what he says comes very close to the truth. But he was only a thinker and not a meditator; that's why although he is very close to the truth, he misses the experience of truth himself.

It is his observation, objective observation, that the search for religion, the search for God, or the search for paradise is nothing but the search for the mother's womb -- because those nine months were sheer silence, utter joy, a peace that passeth understanding. And to us those are nine months, but to the child it is eternity, because the child knows no dates, no days, no weeks, no months, no calendar.

Each moment is so full of joy, and nine months... it is almost an eternity to the child.

What more do you want?

That experience also remains with you, deep in your unconscious. And even after the birth, that experience continues for at least three to four years -- in the girls, three years; in the boys, four years. It is strange but about everything, girls are always one year ahead. They become sexually mature at the age of thirteen. Boys become sexually mature at the age of fourteen. In life, too, the girls learn better; they learn with more concentration.

You can see in the schools, in the colleges, in the universities -- the boys are scattered all over, their minds are always in fragments. They want to do many things. The girls are more together and more concentrated in whatever they are doing. They learn better, they learn early, and it is a historical fact that in the past, there used to be wise women who were more deeply experienced about life.

Christianity destroyed thousands of wise women, burned them alive. Even the name "witch" -- which means "a wise woman" and nothing else -- became so condemnatory... and the same happened in the East. All the religions prohibited women, and I can see that the reason is a great fear that if women are allowed the same opportunity as is given to men, they will be far ahead in the experience of God. And that is against the ego of man.

The male ego has done such great harm. Half of humanity has been completely prevented even from entering the area of religion. This was done out of fear. So you have Gautam Buddha and you have Jesus and you have Mahavira and you have Lao Tzu, but you don't have women of parallel height, because all chances were taken away, all possibilities were destroyed.

My own experience is that women can enter into meditation more easily than men. Man has a better head -- logically, intellectually, he can go far in search in the outer world -- but the woman has a better heart. She's more introvert; she can go easily, very easily, to the innermost center of her being.

Self-knowledge, enlightenment, will be far easier to a woman. For a man, it is easier to become Alexander the Great, Adolf Hitler, Genghis Khan, Nadir Shah. These thousands of wars would have been avoided if the woman had not been completely ignored, repressed, forced to live like a slave. And she constitutes half of humanity.

I want to say to the women of the whole world that your liberation movement has not done anything, because it is in the hands of very stupid women. They are reactionaries, not revolutionaries. Otherwise, the simple and the most important thing, the first priority, is that the women should demand a separate vote, so that women can only vote for women and men can only vote for men. Just a simple and single step, and all the parliaments of the world will be half filled with women. And the women will be naturally in power because man by nature has a tendency to fight. He will create parties, political parties, religious ideologies -- on small, minor, trivial things.

So if the women in a parliament are one single whole, the other half, of men, will be divided into at least eight or ten parties. The whole world can move into the hands of women.

And women are not interested in wars, women are not interested in nuclear weapons, women are not interested in communism or capitalism.

All these "isms" are from the head. Women are interested in being joyful, in small things of life: a beautiful house, a garden, a swimming pool. Life can be a paradise, but it is going to remain a hell unless man is removed from power altogether.

And he can be removed so easily.

What more do you want?

I have so many women sannyasins -- more than men. And the strangest thing is that once a woman becomes a sannyasin, she remains a sannyasin. Once she starts meditating, it becomes her devotion, a part of her heart -- it is not so with the man; it remains only an intellectual search. There are exceptions, but as a rule...

I have seen men betraying me but not women. And the reason is that the man is intellectually convinced. He is with me... but I am still alive, I am not dead. So tomorrow, I may say something with which his mind does not agree. And just a small disagreement in his mind, and his path separates from mine. He is with me only to the extent that his intellect is nourished by what I am saying. The moment he feels something I am saying is not rational, he is no more with me. All connections have dropped. And my problem is, that my work is not to feed your intellect. If I talk intellectually, that is simply to persuade you towards something that goes beyond intellect, that goes beyond reason.

For the woman the problem is not the same. She is with me not because she is intellectually convinced by me; she is with me because she is nourished on a deeper level than intellect. Her heart sings with me, beats with me, dances with me. Her connection is not superficial: it is that of trust, not of intellectual conviction. Hence, in the whole of history you will find a Judas around every great mystic and great teacher, but you will not find a single woman who has been a Judas. It is strange, in a long history...

Mahavira has his own Judas; his own son-in-law remained with him just with that male ego, hoping that he would be the successor of Mahavira because he was his son-in-law.

Mahavira had only one daughter, and the daughter and the son-in-law both had become sannyasins. For twenty years, they remained with him, but the son-in-law was insisting again and again: "You are getting old. Before anything unfortunate happens, you should make it known to your millions of disciples who is going to be your successor."

Mahavira said, "Whoever is capable will succeed me. I don't have to declare his name.

Who am I? I am not a king; my treasure is not of this world. Whoever is enlightened will be recognized by the people as my successor, you need not worry about it." Frustrated, he went against Mahavira and took away with him five hundred followers. And he made many attempts on Mahavira's life. Gautam Buddha had his own Judas, and the same story is repeated again and again.

As far as women are concerned, the situation is just the opposite. When Jesus was crucified, all the twelve apostles escaped. They were afraid that somebody in the crowd might recognize them because they were always moving with Jesus, and everybody knew them:

"And now there is no point in being here, unnecessarily getting caught. You could be in trouble. Your master is being crucified; they might at least give you a good beating." But three women remained just at the foot of the cross, not even hiding in the crowd -- and one of them was a prostitute, Mary Magdalene; a prostitute rises higher than your twelve apostles. They have become great saints, but Mary Magdalene is not remembered, is not counted amongst the apostles.

The second was another woman, Martha. And the third woman was Jesus' mother, Mariam, whom even Jesus had been insulting because she was a woman. In a crowd, Jesus was speaking and his mother was standing outside the crowd. Somebody shouted, "Jesus, your mother is here and she has not seen you for years; you have been traveling all over the place.

Tell the people to make way for her to come in. She just wants to see you."

What more do you want?

And the answer that Jesus gave is ugly. He said, "Tell that woman" -- he could not even say "tell my mother" -- "Tell that woman that my father is in heaven and except my father in heaven, I don't have any relation with anybody else."

This is the man who is talking about love. This is the man who is even saying "Love your enemy." But don't love your mother.

Dhyan Amiyo, you should start your childhood's accidental meditation, because it will suit you immediately. And it has happened here also: "One day I was meditating alone and the fear of death returned. I was overwhelmed by the intensity of it and could do nothing to transform or even repress it. I jumped up in panic and tried to shake it off."

You missed a great opportunity. Again, the same space was opening up but you behaved like a grown-up, not like a child. A child is not afraid. He knows nothing about death: he is so close to life that death is a faraway thing, inconceivable to him.

You also remember that "The last time this happened to me as a teenager, I woke feeling the fear of death the strongest I ever had. But this time, instead of panicking without any conscious decision, I found myself accepting death and relaxing. Immediately there was an explosion of light and a sense of being uplifted by bliss."

You know the secret: you have to accept the fear. In acceptance, it disappears. In rejecting it, in escaping from it, you are nourishing it. You are feeding it.

There is no fear, because there is no death. Death is a fiction and fear is the shadow of the shadow. And you have experienced it accidentally, without doing meditation you have known, that if you remained in the space that was opening up, without fear and without panicking but accepting it, accepting even death and relaxing -- immediately there was "an explosion of light and a sense of being uplifted by bliss."

You need not be told; you know already what has to be done. So when meditating, if you come close to the same space again and fear arises, rejoice that you are close to the death of the ego. The death of the ego is another name of relaxation, because the ego is your tension.

The ego is your anxiety, the ego is your anguish. The ego is your angst.

The moment you are relaxed, you are not. There is simply relaxation -- an immense peace and joy. And if it happens in meditation, consciously, and if you have to go through it again and again -- because such an experience has to be lived again and again; that's the only way to deepen it -- soon you will find there is no fear, there is nothing to panic about. On the contrary, you are entering into the most blissful experience ever. You are entering into your childhood again, in deep innocence, a freshness and a joy, and a music that is absolutely silent, without any sound.

If this experience goes on growing, it will become your enlightenment one day. You will be uplifted to your highest potential. All darkness will disappear; there will be only light and there will be only ecstasy. Then there is no need to meditate. Then it becomes your natural state, just like breathing, just like heartbeats.

Amiyo, you are fortunate because it rarely happens on its own. But we are so unconscious -- do you see your unconsciousness? You passed through everything -- you knew fear, you accepted fear, you experienced great relaxation, you experienced bliss, you experienced being uplifted by light -- and still you are afraid to go into the same space.

What more do you want?

But such is our unconsciousness. We are behaving like drunkards, not knowing what we are doing, not knowing what is happening to us, why it is happening to us. And even when we are very close to something great -- we go on missing.

Just be a little more alert, a little more aware. You have the key and that key will work to open all the doors of the mysteries of your inner being.

A nervous young priest, about to deliver his first sermon, asks an older priest how he might calm down a bit. He advises the young priest to fill his water jug with martinis.

Well, the new priest preaches up a storm and afterwards, he asks the older priest what he thought.

"You did very well, but I have just a few criticisms: there are ten commandments, not twelve; there are twelve apostles, not ten. David slew Goliath, he did not kick the shit out of Goliath. Next week, there is a toffee-pulling contest at St. Peters, not a peter-pull at St.

Toffee's. The Holy Cross is not to be referred to as the 'Big T'. Please do not refer to our savior Jesus Christ and the apostles as 'J.C. and the boys'. And restrain yourself from calling the father, the son, and the holy ghost, 'Big daddy, junior and the spook.' And lastly, kindly do not call the Blessed Virgin Mary, 'Mary with the cherry.'"

Question 2:

Shantam Shivano, your question is "There is immense trust inside me." But immense trust does not mean absolute trust. Howsoever immense it may be, there is space enough for doubts. So first you have to understand: just trust is enough. Don't make it immense.

Just trust is absolute.

And remember, trust is not belief. Belief is in ideas, in ideologies, in doctrines, in theologies, in philosophies. Trust is just the purest form of love; it has nothing to do with any ideology. Doubt can arise if you have a belief -- these are subtle connections -- doubt is connected with the belief. Doubt has no possibility in trust.

In fact, belief is nothing but a method of repressing doubt, and when you repress a doubt then there is always a possibility: any weak moment, and the repressed will spring up with great vengeance and destroy your whole belief system. But trust is not repressing any doubt.

Trust has no connection with any kind of belief system.

Trust is falling in love -- not the biological love, but the love that can exist between two beings, two souls, two consciousnesses.

What more do you want?

You say, "Being with you, everything happens so right that there is nothing more to do but let it happen." So I am not forcing anything; that's perfectly right. Forcing is violence, forcing is repression, forcing is dangerous. Whatever you force will take its revenge.

My whole teaching can be reduced into two words: Let Go. Just go with the stream and you are doing perfectly well.

"And more and more there is only this sweet painful love for You, and more silence and more laughter and more love. Yet, sometimes when You speak about 'doing everything for enlightenment,' a doubt arises in me that maybe I am cheating myself: Am I not doing enough?"

This doubt arises only because there is some space left empty, not filled with trust.

"Immense" is your trust, but immense does not mean total. And less than total is going to have, once in a while, this doubt, that doubt.

Otherwise, there is nothing to doubt. You are growing in silence, you are growing in love, you are feeling more and more laughter -- these are the signals that you are on the right path.

And when I speak of doing everything for enlightenment, you and everybody have to remember that I am speaking to so many people -- not only to those who are present here, but also to those who are spread all over the world. If you take every statement personally, you will be unnecessarily getting into trouble.

I have to take care of so many people who are so different from each other, and I am answering different people in different stages, in different situations. You have to remember always, to look at your own growth: if it is going towards love, compassion, silence, blissfulness, joy, laughter, celebration, and silence, then remember that I must have answered somebody else. You are doing perfectly well. And sometimes these kinds of doubts can disturb your growth.

Whenever I had said, "Do everything for enlightenment," I must have been answering some -- and there are many -- who are so lazy, that what to say about everything, they are not even ready to do anything. They are simply waiting for me to do something. If it were possible, if nature allowed, I would have done it, but it is against the law of nature itself.

You have to find your truth yourself. And for that, you have to risk everything. Truth cannot be anything else but your first priority. It cannot be one amongst many desires. It is not a desire, it is a wholehearted longing, as if you are lost in a desert and for days you have not been able to find water. Now, thirst is not a desire; now every cell of your body is crying "thirst." There are not even words to say, it is just an experience: you are burning with thirst, you are on fire.

Enlightenment is the greatest experience in human life. Certainly you have to leave your trivial engagements -- but remember that I am talking to so many people that everything is not for you. You have to choose.

One thing you have always to remember: if symptoms of love and joy and laughter are growing in you, then there is no need to worry. And there is no need to be in a hurry, either. It is better to go at your pace, slowly but very centered and grounded, so that you don't have to take any step backwards. You don't have even to look backwards.

What more do you want?

Drop your doubt. And remember, I am saying drop, I'm not saying repress. I am not saying fight with it. I am not saying that you have to do anything with it. Simply drop it. It has no business in your beautiful, slow growth.

Remember one thing: there are seasonal flowers; within six weeks they are there but within six weeks they are gone, too. And there are trees like Cedars of Lebanon, four thousand years old, two hundred feet high. They don't grow in six weeks. Their growth is very slow.

But their beauty, their longing to touch the stars, is almost like the human longing to find the divine in existence.

Drop the doubt and always remember that I am talking to so many people... their needs are different, their sicknesses are different, they need different medicines and different treatment.

Whenever you have any problem, you can ask. It is good that you have asked rather than carrying it within your heart. Doubt is as dangerous to spiritual growth as cancer is to the body.

Abie made a small fortune in California in the wholesale clothing business. After he provided for his family, he gave all his wealth to the local temple. He slept well at night knowing that his family was secure and that God was looking after him, so he had not a care in the world.

Imagine how surprised Abie felt when his Malibu beachfront home was endangered by an oncoming hurricane. First, the local fire department came and evacuated Abie's family. But Abie told the fire chief: "I will not leave my home. You cannot help me, only God can save me." The waves began to crash against the shore. The road around Abie's home was engulfed in water. Without fear, Abie decided to wait out the storm.

The Navy sent in a Coast Guard cutter to rescue Abie, as the waves were now crashing against his huge front window. The captain ordered, "Abie, please!"

But Abie insisted, "You cannot help me, only God can save me."

Now Abie was alone on the roof. In the distance, a tidal wave was fast approaching the shore. A US Air Force helicopter hovered above Abie's head. But Abie refused help, such was Abie's faith in his lord and master. Well, the tidal wave did its thing, and Abie looked up at the Pearly Gates, soaking wet and totally pissed off at God.

"But Abie," the gatekeeper said, "God wants to see you right away." Abie's response was, "Tell God to go to hell."

The gatekeeper suggested to Abie that God is not a saint and to give God a second chance.

Abie relented and was shown into God's room. God was so pleased to see his beloved Abie.

"Abie, why are you so mad at me?"

Abie said, in a cool, distant voice, "Because when I needed you the most down on earth, you did not lift a finger to help me."

God said, "You've got to be kidding, Abie. I sent the fire department, The US Navy, and the US Air Force. What more do you want?"

You have to remember that trust does not mean that you are not supposed to do anything.

Trust simply means that whatever you are doing is in the right direction, because the man you trust in cannot take you in a wrong direction. But you have to do the walking.

What more do you want?

I can only show you the path, I cannot walk for you. And there are so many paths and there are so many different people who need different paths, so each one of you has to remember:

all that I am saying is not for you.

You have to be very alert: whatever helps to strengthen your progress is for you. Whatever weakens your progress is not for you; it must have been said to somebody else. On some other path it may be helpful. To somebody else, it may be immensely needed.

Okay, Vimal?

Yes, Osho.