What kind of vehicle are you using

Question 1:

Prem Shunyo, you are simply confused. You are not sexually repressed. You are simply an English lady. It seems you had forgotten it.

Just a few days ago a drunkard was arrested in France. He was making love to a dead woman on the beach. When asked, he said, "I thought she is English."

Don't be worried about repression. And moreover you are coming to the age when everybody feels disturbed, particularly women from the West. Middle age is a troublesome and anguish-creating state.

A few things for you to contemplate...

First, one has to recognize that one is getting into middle age.

Middle age is when you still believe you will feel better in the morning.

Middle age is when you want to see how long your car will last instead of how fast it will go.

Middle age is when you are home on Saturday night, the telephone rings and you hope it is not for you.

Middle age is when you change from stud to dud.

Middle age is when you stop criticizing the older generation and start criticizing the younger one.

These are just symptoms I am telling you, so..!

Shunyo, people who have been here with me for almost ten or twelve years cannot be sexually repressed. That is my whole condemnation all over the world; you can call it my reputation. And asking me a question about sexual repression is just destroying my reputation!

Two men sitting in a bar were commiserating about married life. "I know a man," says one, "who has been married for thirty years and he spends every evening at home."

"That's what I call love," says the other.

"Oh, really?" replied the first, "the doctor called it paralysis."

It all depends how you take it.

You are not sexually repressed. You suddenly remembered that you are an English lady...

where are you?... what are you doing here?

A commissar was visiting a collective farm to check on the season's crops. "How are the potatoes?" he inquired.

"The potatoes are so plentiful," a farmer replied, "that if we put them end to end they will touch the feet of God."

"How can that be?" blurted the commissar, "there is no God."

"Well," the farmer answered, "there are no potatoes either."

Shunyo, all that has happened is that that crazy Milarepa has escaped from you. But don't be worried; he is crazy enough, he will come back.

You can rely on me, I will see to it that the poor fellow comes back. He will roam about in the ashram a few days. You enjoy the freedom, and don't be worried; he cannot get lost. Finally he is going to come to you.

This has been going on for years. I have been watching it, I have never said anything to you. It is not something new. Hundreds of times he must have left you and he has come back. He is a very tame fellow. You have just to give him enough rope, so that he can enjoy the idea that he is free.

There is nothing to worry about. You simply enjoy a few days of peace and silence, and paralysis.

It is very rare to find time to be alone, to be oneself. It is fortunate to find some people who once in a while escape, before they get caught somewhere else. And he has proved so reliable that many times I was thinking, now he is lost -- and I see him back again.

You just have to learn patience. And by the way, it is a good excuse to learn patience, waiting and trusting that he will come. Suddenly, one night he will start knocking on your door.

I don't think that there is any other woman who can tolerate him long enough except Prem Shunyo -- she is almost immune to Milarepa.

Question 2:

Prem Dheera, the first time you were right, when you thought I was simply being poetic.

The second time you were wrong, when you started thinking that I mean what I say so poetically -- I don't mean. If I start going into everybody's hearts it will be impossible to put me together again!

You can love me wherever you are.

You can feel me wherever you are.

But poetry is poetry; don't make it something pragmatic and practical. When I talk about melting and about merging and about having a heart-to-heart communion, don't take it that that's actually what I mean. Those are only indications towards a very subtle phenomenon in which I remain I, you remain you. In fact, you become more yourself than you have ever been before.

If love cannot give you individuality, uniqueness, that love is impotent. The power of love consists of giving you freedom and authentic individuality and being. That's the way to take me with you.

When you become an individual, peaceful, silent, utterly free from all kinds of bondage, then your freedom, your uniqueness, your love all indicate that you are taking me home.

You should not take me as a person.

You should take me as the values which I am teaching to you. If you take those values with your heart, you are taking me; hence I say again, the first time you were right when you thought I was being poetic. Poetry should never be understood literally; it is symbolic, but it is significant. Just because it is only symbolic does not mean it is insignificant. Its significance certainly does not consist in being factual. It is something much more than fact, it is truth itself.

Ordinarily we don't make any distinction between fact and truth. Factually you cannot take me in your heart -- that is an impossibility. But truthfully, you can take me in your heart. That will mean my fragrance, my joy, my meditativeness, my ecstasy, my presence but not my person.

If you can understand this there is no problem -- I can come with you.

Just one thing to be remembered: what kind of vehicle are you using?

A Frenchman, a German and a Russian were boasting about the modes of transportation at their disposal.

"I drive a Renault to work," said the Frenchman. "On Sundays I drive my Peugeot. And when I go abroad, I drive a Citroen."

"I drive a Volkswagen to work," said the German. "On Sundays I drive my BMW, and when I go abroad I drive a Mercedes."

"As for me," said the Russian, "I take the bus to work. On Sundays I drive around in my little Moskvitch. And when I go abroad, I drive a tank."

So just be careful if you are taking me in you heart, that you don't drive a tank -- I am a peaceful person and I don't want to go to war! But as far as my presence is concerned you are absolutely allowed to take me with you.

My whole effort here is not to create an illusion in you, but on the contrary to destroy all possibilities of illusion. Man has lived under all kinds of illusions; he is surrounded by hallucinations. When you fall in love with someone it is very rarely a true experience.

More often it is only an illusion, an idea, a projection. When you see someone as beautiful it is more your biology that is creating the illusion of beauty. Once your biological infatuation is finished the beauty will disappear; the same woman will not look beautiful at all.

From the very beginning the woman has known the psychology of man better than man understands woman's psychology. In fact, man has been continuously saying that woman is a mystery. I don't see any mystery anywhere. I have known more women than perhaps anybody else in the world, and I have known men also. None of them is a mystery.

Everything is absolutely clear, but you don't want to see it clearly -- you want to go on having illusions. Illusions are sweet, nice, beautiful. The truth, the bare, naked truth is not so sweet.

Gautam Buddha continuously says that when you see a beautiful woman, don't forget that she is just a skeleton, just as you are a skeleton, covered with a bag of skin. Maybe someone has a little longer nose and somebody has a little smaller nose, and somebody has round eyes and somebody has a different shape, but inside it is the same blood, bones, flesh. Beauty seems to be only skin-deep.

If you have X-ray eyes you will be surrounded with skeletons all around.

Just recently it happened in Europe that one woman was driving a crane and she struck an electric pole. The shock was so tremendous, she fell down in a coma. She did not die, but after a few hours she came back to consciousness with a strange phenomenon: her eyes had become X-ray eyes. Now she is suffering from a tremendous migraine... but doctors are using her in the hospital as an X-ray machine. She has opened a new dimension.

Because of too much electricity the eyes have changed. Now they can see deep down inside you, and she is completely horrified. She cannot open her eyes because she cannot see your face; she can see only your skeleton. She cannot see your skin and your beautiful nose. She is the first woman who sees people as they actually are, without any illusions.

Asked, "Do you feel some difference between beautiful people and ugly?" -- she laughed.

She said, "There is no one who is beautiful and no one who is ugly. All are skeletons and horrible."

A man was admitted to a psychiatric hospital because he thought he was Ronald Reagan.

But this caused a problem for the staff because they already had a Ronald Reagan on the books and the director thought it might cause trouble. But then he hit upon a brilliant idea. On his first night at the hospital, one of the staff put him in the same cell as the other Ronald Reagan in the hope that this confrontation would bring one or both to their senses.

The next morning he called the new man to his office and asked how his first night had been.

"Oh, doctor," replied the man, "I have been living under a delusion for many years."

"That's an amazing insight," said the doctor excitedly. "Please go on."

"Well," continued the man, "for as long as I can remember, I thought I was Ronald Reagan, but I'm not."

"That's very good," said the doctor. "So who are you?"

The man looked at the doctor, smiled sweetly and said, "I'm Nancy."

People go on changing their illusions.

I want you to come out of all the illusions and just see reality as it is. It is simple and it is beautiful. In the beginning you may be shocked because your delusions are destroyed.

But as you will become more and more accustomed and in accord with existence and reality, you will feel a tremendous freedom and a great sense of authenticity.

Gautam Buddha's statement is on record that to experience truth in the beginning is bitter, in the end it is very sweet. But illusions are totally different, just the contrary: in the beginning they are very sweet; in the end they turn out very bitter. In fact, this should be the criterion: something that is sweet in the beginning, be aware of it; it is illusion. Soon you will be awakened out of it and it will hurt and it will feel very bitter. It is better to experience truth, which is bitter in the beginning but in the end proves to be the sweetest experience possible.

So when I am talking to you, I have to be poetic for the simple reason that there are things which cannot be said in prose. There are things which can only be hinted at in a poetic way. But poetry can always be misunderstood because poetry is symbolic and you cannot take it as actual. The moment you take poetry as literal and factual, you are creating an illusion which will sooner or later be destroyed by the reality.

No illusion can live for long.

Every illusion has a very small lifespan.

I don't want you to get into any kind of illusory relationship with me. I have been talking about the master and the disciple relationship from different angles, emphasizing many things; this also should be remembered, that all that has been said to you about it is poetic and symbolic.

You cannot merge or melt actually, but you can merge and melt by dropping your ego.

That's exactly the intention, that you drop the ego; that between the master and the disciple there will be only two persons -- the master and the disciple -- not four persons, the ego of the master and the ego of the disciple and then the master and the disciple behind their egos.

That is happening in almost all your relationships. On every bed where you find a couple, just look closely, you will find four persons: two real persons and two unreal persons.

Those two unreal persons are created by both projecting something onto the other.

Naturally there is going to be disillusionment. Every relationship comes into a state of disillusionment; then it really hurts. Never create any relationship with projection.

Avoid your ego, avoid your mind.

Just see clearly without any thoughts disturbing your vision and you will never create a relationship. You will have relatedness, you will have deep intimacy but there will be no relationship, no binding; otherwise every relationship becomes a kind of marriage. And the moment something becomes a marriage it has turned into an imprisonment. Certainly, the master disciple relationship cannot be allowed to turn into a marriage; that will destroy its whole purpose.

The whole purpose is to give you freedom, to help you to be free from all kinds of chains which you have mistaken for ornaments; to take you out of your imprisonment which you have taken as your home; to make you aware that your religion, your nation, your race, your caste, your ideology, all are different kinds of imprisonments, and they all turn you into prisoners.

They decorate their chains with flowers, they make their chains with gold, but it does not matter whether the chains are made of gold or of steel -- chains are chains, and they destroy your dignity. They destroy your humanity, they reduce you into a slave. The whole of humanity is living in many kinds of slaveries.

The slavery has become multidimensional: you belong to a race, you belong to a nation, you belong to a religion, you belong to a political party... And all these are causes of your slavery; all these are destructive to your spirituality.

An authentic human being does not belong to any religion, does not belong to any nation, does not belong to any race. He is simply part of existence. Why belong to small trivial crowds when you can belong to the whole universe? And with belonging to the whole universe there is an immense difference.

When you belong to the whole, it gives you freedom because the whole is unlimited and there are no limitations, no boundaries.

The whole can never become a prison to you.

The awakened man lives in the whole, belongs to the whole universe. He does not belong to small cages howsoever beautiful they may be.

I want my people to belong to the whole. That's the only way I can help you, and I can show my love to you and my respect to you. It has not been the case in the past: no master has been respectful towards his disciples. He has asked that the disciples should be respectful towards him; that they should be grateful towards him; that they should be surrendered to him. These are very subtle games of the ego.

If you love, if your love is real, you will not ask for surrender. If your love is real you will have tremendous respect, it does not matter whether you are master or disciple.

Respect, reverence for life, does not need any special qualification. You will be respectful to the trees and to the birds and to the stars too.

A master who is not respectful to his disciples has no right to have any respect from the disciples either; it is a mutual understanding and awareness. The master is not in any way holier-than-thou or higher-than-thou. He may be more experienced in certain ways, he may be richer in his inner world, but that does not create any hierarchy. All hierarchies are created by the ego, and to be a master, to be an awakened person, the first thing is to drop the ego then you cannot create any hierarchy.

There is a beautiful story about Gautam Buddha's past life...

He loved to relate about his many past lives. At least twenty-four past lives he has related in his discourses to his disciples -- beautiful stories. It does not matter whether they are historically true or not. There is no way to find it out, and there is no reason to be worried about whether they are historical or not -- they are significant.

He says, "In one of my past lives, when I was as unconscious as you are, when I was as miserable as you are, when I was searching for a master as you have come to me searching for a master, I heard about a man who had become enlightened. Immediately I rushed and when I reached a great crowd had already arrived.

"I touched the feet of the man who had become enlightened and the most surprising thing was that I had no thought of touching the feet -- it simply happened. Just the presence of the man was so immense, I found myself touching his feet without my will, without my thought, without my preparation, without even my readiness. I had just come to see out of curiosity whether he was really realized or not, and what had happened.

"As I came close to him something transpired and I touched his feet. I stood back and even a greater miracle happened: that man touched my feet.

"I said to him, 'What are you doing? You are awakened, enlightened; I am an ignorant man in search of a master, and masters don't touch the feet of the disciples.'

"And the awakened man said, 'I don't belong to that category of masters. I am ready to touch everybody's feet because I know they are all going to become enlightened one day or other. And there are only seven days in a week! Somebody becomes enlightened on Monday and somebody becomes enlightened on Sunday -- it does not matter. One thing is certain, that everybody carries inside him a buddha. And I can see in you that it is not going to be long before you will be enlightened. I can see the seed has already died and that new sprouts have started growing within you. Seeing your great future, I touched your feet, and also to remind you that when you become an enlightened man, remember that one enlightened man has touched your feet when you were just a disciple.'" Gautam Buddha used to relate this story again and again to his disciples saying, "I have as much respect towards you as you have. I have found the truth; you are searching for it.

It is not much of a difference. I have arrived; you are arriving."

I don't want to create any kind of illusory relationship between me and you. I want to stand alone and I want you also to stand alone, and in our aloneness we shall meet.

In our aloneness, in our freedom we shall have reverence and we shall have love, but our love will not be a bondage, and our respect will not create a hierarchy.

Question 3:

Anand Taral, the first thing to realize is that whether you want or not, you are alone.

Aloneness is your very nature.

You can try to forget it, you can try not to be alone by making friends, having lovers, mixing in the crowd... But whatever you do remains just on the surface. Deep inside, your aloneness is unreachable, untouchable.

A strange accident happens to every human being: as he is born the very situation of his birth begins in a family. And there is no other way, because the human child is the weakest child in the whole of existence.

Other animals are born complete. A dog is going to remain a dog his whole life, he is not going to evolve, grow. Yes, he will become aged, old, but he will not become more intelligent, he will not become more aware, he will not become enlightened. In that sense all the animals remain exactly at the point of their birth; nothing essential changes in them. Their death and their birth are horizontal -- in one line.

Only man has the possibility of going vertical, upwards, not just horizontal. Most of humanity behaves like other animals: life is just growing old -- not growing up. Growing up and growing old are totally different experiences.

Man is born in a family amongst human beings. From the very first moment he is not alone; hence, he gets a certain psychology of always remaining with people. In aloneness he starts feeling scared... unknown fears. He is not exactly aware of what he is afraid of, but as he moves out of the crowd something inside him becomes uneasy. To be with others he feels cozy, at ease, comfortable.

It is because of this reason he never comes to know the beauty of aloneness; the fear prevents him. Because he was born in a group he remains part of a group, and as he grows in age he starts making new groups, new associations, new friends. Already, existing collectivities don't satisfy him: the nation, the religion, the political party... He creates his own new associations: Rotary Club, Lions Club. But all these strategies are just to avoid one thing: never to be alone.

The whole life experience is of being together with people. Aloneness seems almost like a death. In a way it is a death; it is the death of the personality that you have created in the crowd. That is a gift of others to you. The moment you move out of the crowd you also move out of your personality.

In the crowd you know exactly who you are: you know your name, you know your degrees, you know your profession; you know everything that is needed for your passport, your identity card. But the moment you move out of the crowd, what is your identity, who are you? Suddenly you become aware that you are not your name -- your name was given to you. You are not your race -- what relationship has race with your consciousness? Your heart is not Hindu or Mohammedan; your being is not confined to any political boundaries of a nation; your consciousness is not part of any organization or church. Who are you?

Suddenly your personality starts dispersing. This is the fear: the death of the personality.

Now you will have to discover freshly, you will have to ask for the first time who you are. You will have to start meditating on the fact: Who am I? -- and there is a fear that you may not be at all. Perhaps you were nothing but a combination of all the opinions of the crowd, that you were nothing but your personality.

Nobody wants to be nothing.

Nobody wants to be nobody.

And in fact everybody is a nobody.

There is a very beautiful story...

Alice has reached Wonderland. She came to meet the king and the king asked, "Alice, did you meet a messenger coming towards me?"

She said, "I met nobody."

The king said, "If you met nobody, why has he not arrived yet?"

Alice was very much puzzled. She said, "You are not understanding me rightly. Nobody is nobody."

The king said, "That is obvious that nobody is nobody, but where is he? He should have reached here by this time. It simply means nobody walks slower than you."

And naturally Alice was very much annoyed and forgot that she is talking to the king.

She said, "Nobody walks faster than me."

Now the whole conversation goes on with that "nobody." She understands that he is saying, "Nobody walks slower than you."

"... and I am a fast walker. I have come from the other world to Wonderland, a small world -- and he is insulting me." Naturally she retorts, "Nobody walks faster than me!"

The king said, "If that is right then why has he not arrived?"

And this way the discussion continues.

Everybody is a nobody.

So the first problem for a disciple is to understand exactly the nature of aloneness. It means nobodiness; it means dropping your personality which is a gift to you by the crowd.

As you move off out of the crowd you cannot take that gift with you in your aloneness. In your aloneness you will have to discover again afresh, and nobody can give you the guarantee whether you will find anybody inside or not.

Those who have reached to aloneness have found nobody there. I really mean no body.

No name, no form, but a pure presence, a pure life, nameless, formless. This is exactly the true resurrection, and it certainly needs courage. Only very courageous people have been able to accept with joy their nobodiness, their nothingness. Their nothingness is their pure being; it is a death and a resurrection both.

Just today Hasya was showing me a small, beautiful cartoon: Jesus hanging on the cross, looking at the sky, is saying, "It would have been better if alongside God the father I had Allah the uncle. It would have been better; at least if God was not listening, Allah might have helped."

Having just God for his whole life he was very happy proclaiming, "I am the only begotten son of God." And he never talked about God's family, his brother, his wife, his other sons and daughters. In the whole of eternity what has he been doing? He does not have a TV to waste time, to pass time. He does not have any possibility of having a movie hall. What does this poor fellow go on doing?

It is a well-known fact that in poor countries the population goes on exploding for the simple reason that the poor man has no other free entertainment. The only free entertainment is to produce children. Although it is in the long run very costly, right now there is no ticket, no problem, no standing in the queue...

What has God been doing for the whole eternity? He has created only one son. Now on the cross he remembers that it would have been better if God really had a few brothers, sisters, uncles. "I could have asked help from somebody else if he is not listening to me."

He is praying and he is being angry saying, "Why have you forgotten me? Have you given up on me?" -- but there is no answer.

He is waiting for the miracle. The whole crowd that has gathered to see the miracle by and by started dispersing. It was too hot, unnecessarily. Nothing is going to happen; if something was going to happen it would have happened.

After six hours there were only three ladies left who were still believing that a miracle may happen. One was Jesus' mother -- naturally, mothers go on believing that their child is a genius. Every mother, without exception, believes that she has given birth to a child which is a giant.

Another woman who loved Jesus was a prostitute, Mary Magdalene. That woman, although she was a prostitute, must have loved Jesus. Even the disciples, the so-called apostles, who became second to Jesus in importance in the history of Christianity, all twelve escaped just out of fear of being caught and of being recognized -- because they were always hanging around with Jesus, everywhere. You never can believe the crowd: if they were caught, they might have been crucified, if not crucified at least beaten, stoned to death. Only three women were left.

The third was another woman who loved Jesus. It was love that remained in the last moments in the form of these three women. All those disciples must have been with Jesus just in order to get into paradise. It is always good to have good contacts, and you can't find a better contact than the contact with the only begotten son of God. Just behind him they will also be able to enter through the gates of paradise. Their disciplehood was a kind of exploitation of Jesus; hence there was no courage. It was cunning and clever, but not courageous.

Only love can be courageous.

You are asking about aloneness and courage. Courage comes out of love... Do you love yourself? Do you love this existence? Do you love this beautiful life which is a gift? It has been given to you without your being even ready for it, without your deserving it, without your being worthy of it.

If you love this existence which has given life to you, which goes on providing every moment life and nourishment to you, you will find courage. And this courage will help you to stand alone like a cedar of Lebanon, high -- reaching to the stars but alone.

In aloneness you will disappear as an ego and personality and you will find yourself as life itself, deathless and eternal. Unless you are capable of being alone your search for truth will remain a failure.

Your aloneness is your truth.

Your aloneness is your divineness.

The function of the master is to help you to stand alone. Meditation is just a strategy to take away your personality, your thoughts, your mind, your identity with the body, and leave you absolutely alone inside, just a living fire. And once you have found your living fire, you will know all the joys and all the ecstasies that human consciousness is capable of.

The old woman watched her grandson eat his soup with the wrong spoon, grasp his knife by the wrong end, eat the main course with his hands, and pour tea into the saucer and blow on it.

"Has not watching your mother and father at the dinner table taught you anything?" she asked.

"Yes," said the boy, chewing with his mouth open, "never to get married."

He has learned a great lesson: Remain alone.

It is really very difficult to be with others, but we are accustomed from our very birth to be with others. It may be miserable, it may be a suffering, it may be a torture but we are accustomed; at least it is well known.

One is afraid to step into the darkness beyond the territory, but unless you go beyond the territory of the collective mask, you cannot find yourself.

Groucho Marx has made a beautiful statement for you to remember: "I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set I go into the other room and read a book."

The teacher of a class of ten-year-olds is too shy to conduct the sex-education class and so she asks her class to make this a homework project.

Little Hymie asks his father who mumbles something about a stork. His grandmother said he came from a cabbage patch and his great-grandmother blushes and whispers that children come from the great ocean of existence.

The next day, little Hymie is called by the teacher to report on his project. Little Hymie says to the teacher, "I'm afraid there is something wrong in our family. Apparently nobody has made love for three generations!"

In fact, very few people have loved at all; they have pretended, have been hypocrites deceiving not only others but have deceived themselves too.

You can love authentically only when you are.

Right now you are only a part of a crowd, a cog in the wheel. How can you love? -- because you are not. First be; first know yourself.

In your aloneness you will discover what it is to be. And out of that awareness of your being love flows, and much more.

Aloneness should be your only search.

And it does not mean that you have to go to the mountains, you can be alone in the marketplace. It is simply a question of being aware, alert, watchful, remembering that you are only your watchfulness. Then you are alone wherever you are. You may be in the crowd, you may be in the mountains; it makes no difference, you are just the same watchfulness. In the crowd you watch the crowd; in the mountains you watch the mountains. With open eyes you watch existence; with closed eyes you watch yourself.

You are only one thing: the watcher.

And this watcher is the greatest realization. This is your buddha nature; this is your nature of enlightenment, of your awakening. This should be your only discipline. Only this makes you a disciple: this discipline of knowing your aloneness. Otherwise, what makes you a disciple? You have been deceived on every point in life. You have been told that to believe in a master makes you a disciple. That is absolutely wrong; otherwise, everybody in the world is a disciple.

Somebody believes in Jesus, somebody believes in Buddha, somebody believes in Krishna, somebody believes in Mahavira; everybody believes in somebody but nobody is a disciple, because to be a disciple does not mean to believe in a master. To be a disciple means to learn the discipline of being your self, of being your true self.

In that experience is hidden the very treasure of life. In that experience you become for the first time an emperor; otherwise you will remain a beggar in the crowd. There are two kinds of beggars: poor beggars and rich beggars, but they are all beggars. Even your kings and your queens are beggars.

Only those people, very few people who have stood alone in their being, in their clarity, in their light, who have found their own light, who have found their own flowering, who have found their own space they can call their home, their eternal home -- those few people are the emperors. This whole universe is their empire. They don't need to conquer it; it is already conquered.

By knowing oneself you have conquered it.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Invitation