Chapter 26

[NOTE: This is a typed tape transcript and has not been edited or published, as of August 1992. It is for reference use only. The interviewer's remarks have been omitted where not relevant to Osho's words]

QUESTION:* BHAGWAN, COULD YOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THE TRUST BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS IN SPITE OF WHAT'S HAPPENED RECENTLY?

A:* Trust is not something like faith. Faith is with motivation. You have faith in Jesus, in Krishna, because they promise if you have faith then paradise is yours.

Faith is the price you have to pay. It is simple business, but deep down faith cannot be total. There is bound to be suspicion, doubt, skepticism. You may cover it up by faith because you don't want to loose paradise, you don't want to fall into hell. So you cover up all the questions that are natural to arise. So, first thing, trust is not faith. There is no motivation in it. There is no promise in it.

I have not promised a paradise and I have not made you afraid of a hell. I am not cheating you because of the natural instinct of fear and greed. That's what faith does. And all religions are called faith. They all depend on the same strategy.

Trust is not belief, either. Faith is simple, emotional, sentimental. Belief is more rational. It has arguments to repress doubt. Faith has no argument, it has only motivation. Belief has arguments. To believe in God, there are arguments provided by the theologians of all the religions. They are more or less childish, but human mind ordinarily never grows beyond the age thirteen. That is the average mental age of humanity. So even those childish arguments appear to be very profound. But belief has arguments. It is a rational thing.

A believer can philosophize, rationalize, propound great systems of thought around a certain belief. The whole system may be logical, just the basic belief will be illogical. It is easily deceiving, because the whole edifice is so logical that you never suspect that the foundation itself is nothing but belief.

Belief has dominated for thousands of years, so those who were of rational tendencies, for them theologies have been provided. Those who are simple people, closer to their heart, for them faith is provided. But the function of both is to destroy doubt in you. But both fail. They succeed only in repressing doubt, they never succeed in destroying it.

Doubt is far more powerful, because it is natural. You are born with it.

Everybody is born as a question mark. Nobody gives you the question.

Everybody gives you the answers. Those answers are borrowed, but the question comes from your very being. Hence no answer from the outside is going to destroy the question. The question is authentic, and the answers are cheap.

So trust is not faith, not belief; then what is trust? These are the two things you will find in the dictionaries: they are all synonymous -- trust, belief, faith. They are not. Trust is not something that you can do. Faith you can manage, it is only a cover-up. Belief you can manage. Just a little rationality. Trust is beyond your doing. It happens in a certain state of silence. Let me say, it is the fragrance of silence.

With the Master, if the disciple feels a silence arising in him, the very presence of the Master gives him a tranquillity. Then as a fragrance trust arises. You cannot do it, it is an happening. So you cannot undo it, either. It is not in your hands. It is something beyond you -- still, within you. It is very close to qualities like love, respect. But I am saying something similar, not exactly the same.

The original meaning of the word respect is beautiful. It means looking back, re- spect, looking once more. It has nothing to do with honor. It has to do something so beautiful that you would like to look at least one time more. And it is non- ending. How many times you look at it, the desire, the longing, the thirst goes on growing rather than diminishing. You want to be more and more closer to the Master, more and more filled by His presence, His light, His silence, His love.

So something in it is like re-spect. Something in it is like love. You cannot do anything about love. Suddenly it happens. You find one moment in love with someone for no apparent reason. You yourself feel a little embarrassed. You start looking inside you, what may have been the cause. But there is no cause. If somebody asks why you have fallen in love with a certain person, you don't have any answer. And love comes, and spring comes with it, and suddenly all the flowers blossom, all the birds start singing. You are no more the same person.

You cannot believe that this was going to happen to you. You had never dreamed about it. And one moment it is gone, the same way it had come -- just like a breeze. It was so cool and so pleasant, but it comes from one side and moves from the other side. It cannot stay, otherwise it won't be breeze, it will become stale.

We would like, so we rush to close the doors so the breeze does not go out. We call it marriage. And marriage is nothing but murder of love. The breeze is no more there. It was in the movement, in the change, the flow, in its coming and its going, in its freedom.

So something like love is there in trust. You cannot say why you trust a certain person, you simply feel. Every cell of your being says yes. There is no repression of any doubt, there is no question which you are repressing. It is not somebody else's answer, it is something that has grown out of your own being and it is so fulfilling. But you cannot say what is the cause, why it has to happen only in this moment, why not before. So about happening it is just like love, but about the other part of love, that it comes and goes, it is different.

It comes and never goes, because it is not something coming from outside, a breeze. It is something growing within you, expanding within you, your own spaciousness. There is no way for it to go; where it will go? You are it. The trust is your very being. It does not depend on any conditions. It makes no expectations, hence there is no way to take it away. Even if the Master, the friend, deceives you, the trust is not going to change. And sometimes Masters have deceived -- knowingly, just to see whether there is trust or you are in some misunderstanding.

It happened.... It used to happen almost every day in Gurdjieff's life. One very rich woman -- because it was the revolution time in Russia and all the rich people has left the country, and they were making their own small groups in different places. So for Gurdjieff it was very easily to find only the rich people, because he knew only Russian.

One woman was very much interested, very cultured and super-rich, was part of the royal family of czar. She wanted to be initiated by Gurdjieff, to be taken as a disciple.

Gurdjieff said, "My condition is, first bring all your jewelry." And it was much, millions of dollars worth. "First your jewelry you surrender to me, then I will think about it." Then too he will think about it!

She went back and asked her friend who had brought her to Gurdjieff that, "What is this nonsense?" The woman laughed. She said, "Don't be worried about it. The same he did with me. I filled all my jewelry in a suitcase, gave it to him and told him, 'Now, you can think, I will be waiting. Whenever you will call, I will come. If you decide not to call me, that too is okay. Whatever you decide is okay, because whatever you will decide will be beneficial for me. It is your decision, that is enough. It doesn't matter whether you initiate me or not. But I will follow your decision. If you say no, I will never come again. And, please, keep the jewelry. Don't return it, because that is not a condition between us.'" And the woman said, "Next day Gurdjieff called me. He initiated me and gave me the whole box. He said, 'It was not a condition. Now I give you as a gift from me. All this jewelry, what I am going to do? You take it.'" So the other woman said, "If this is the case, then there is no problem. That man is trustworthy. I was unnecessarily suspecting him." She filled all her jewelry into a suitcase, rushed... Gurdjieff took the case and told her, "Sit down, take your initiation." She was very much happy, waiting for the suitcase to be returned. It was never returned. This second woman has written in her autobiography that, "His not returning the suitcase make* me aware for the first time that you cannot deceive that man. He knows what is trust, and he knows what is not. I had never trusted him. I had given the jewelry believing that he will return it back."

But this is about an ordinary woman. Even a man like Ouspensky, one of the greatest mathematician of all the ages.... He was already world-famous before he met Gurdjieff. He was teaching in London. And Gurdjieff was in Tiflis* in a faraway land of Caucasus in Russia. And the days were very dangerous.

Everywhere there was no government. Nobody's life was safe. Trains were being burned, looted. There was nobody in control. The czar and his government has fallen, the revolutionaries have come into power. But a vast country like Russia, which spreads from one corner of Europe to the other corner of Asia, covers two continents, it is not easy to manage it. Just in Moscow you can come into power, that does not mean that....

All over Russia all kinds of crimes were being committed, and there was no government, no police, no army. Even army and police were looting, cheating, killing. They had weapons and it was very easy, they were raping women, and in such a bloody moment of history, Gurdjieff called Ouspensky from London that, "Sell everything and come immediately." He resigned from his well-salaried post.

He was a professor of mathematics in the University of London. Sold everything, rushed into that dangerous country where there was every chance that he may never reach Gurdjieff with all this money that he was taking with him. But he somehow managed to reach Tiflis*. He entered the room where Gurdjieff was sitting. Gurdjieff looked at him and said, "That's good. Now you can go back."

This is too much. And even Ouspensky, who has written the best books on Gurdjieff, could not forgive him. He disconnected himself. But this was the moment to know whether it was just intellectual conviction or trust. It was not trust, although he was intellectually convinced that Gurdjieff is one of the most remarkable men who has walked on the earth and there is nobody comparable to him alive. But this experience shut him completely against Gurdjieff. From that moment, Gurdjieff never mentioned Ouspensky's name. Ouspensky started calling him simply "G". He dropped his full name in his books, as if Gurdjieff died on that day, the Gurdjieff that he had known, that he had loved, that he had trusted.

But in fact Gurdjieff did not die. Ouspensky died on that date. He could not understand the distinction that a intellectual conviction, howsoever great, is not comparable to trust. Trust is a totally different phenomenon. It has nothing to do with intellect or with feeling. It is neither intellectual nor emotional, neither of the heart nor of the mind. It is of the being. And for that the only way is to be available to the Master's presence, to let His aura enter in you, let His fragrance penetrate to the every nook and corner of your being.

In the East we call it darshan. Darshan simply means seeing. When somebody goes to a Master, what can you expect just sit silently and see, drink, listen to the music of His heart?

Bayazid, one of the most significant Sufis, remained with his Master for twelve years, coming every day early in the morning, leaving last in the evening, waiting for the Master to inquire, "What do you want? What is your question?

What is your problem?" After twelve years the Master laughed. He said, "You have succeeded. Now there is no need to ask and there is no need to answer. But you are simply unique and rare. Twelve years! What a waiting! What courage!

What guts! You have experienced me. You have loved me. And you have come to trust me without asking a single question, without getting a single answer.

Now you are free, you can go into the world and help people in the same way."

And Bayazid bowed down, touched the feet of the Master for the first time and for the last time, tears in his eyes of gratitude, because what words cannot say tears can say.

Trust is something that is a growth in your being, a maturity of your being, indefinable, indescribable -- but experienceable. In a single word, trust is the whole experience of mysticism.

Q:* I'VE HEARD YOU SAID THAT THIS IS NOT A RELIGION BUT A MYSTERY SCHOOL. CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT HOW A MYSTERY SCHOOL SHOULD BE ORGANIZED, AND WHAT IT IS?

A:* The very word mystery school can give you the feel of the matter. Everything here -- it may be trust, it may be love, it may be friendship, it may be silence, meditation -- is a mystery, mystery in the sense that there is no way to put it into words just like two plus two is equal to four. Even that is not as simple as people think.

Bertrand Russell and Whitehead, two great geniuses of our century, joined hands in writing a book which nobody reads, PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA. And you cannot be angry with people if they don't read it. Just to explain that two plus two are really four, they have spent two hundred fifty pages. Apparently it seems to be a very simple thing, but when you go into details nothing is simple.

Even two plus two is not always four for the simple reason because they had to think of all the possibilities. In abstraction two plus two may be four, but in abstraction it means nothing exists.

Two chairs and two chairs are four chairs: this is not abstraction, now you have come to realities. But no two chairs are exactly alike. Then problems arise. The first two chairs are not alike, there are differences. The other two chairs are not alike, there are differences. In fact, there are four unique chairs. How can you make two plus two so easily four? In reality it is impossible. Only in abstract concepts it is possible. To go into all its implications, two hundred fifty pages of very complicated argumentation. And I am talking about trust, truth, your being, existence. All these are mysteries.

You can be initiated into these mysteries, but you have to travel alone with no guidebooks, because no guidebooks exist. In the very nature of things, guidebooks cannot exist, because reality goes on changing. It is like the continents: move, but very slowly, one feet in a year, so you don't take much note of it. If somehow they start moving faster, so today where America is tomorrow Africa comes in, where ocean is tomorrow there is land, then there will be no possibility to make geography, maps, because by the time your maps are ready the world has changed.

In the inner world, this is the situation. No maps, no guides are possible because everything is in such a tremendous change, speed, and so mysterious, so psychedelic, that to figure it out and bring it back into the world of words, nobody has succeeded yet. People have been into those spaces, but the experience is so different from all the experiences that they had that no translation is possible.

So when I say this is a mystery school, I am saying that we will be initiating people into different methods of meditation, helping them not to get discouraged. There are points where one feels great discouragement and wants to return back. Those are the moments encouragement is needed. Somebody is needed that, "Don't be worried, this will pass on. Just wait a little more. Just a little patience more. It has happened to me, too."

There are places where fear grips, because it is going to be a quantum leap. The jump is so big. Then one naturally feels afraid. One needs somebody whom he can totally trust. That's why the trust has become so significant. In those moments where fear grips and there is every possibility you may return back, and with the danger that you will never try again because the fear will follow you your whole life, you need somebody you trust so much that even you can risk everything, even your life. If he is saying, "Don't be worried, take the jump...." Now, except trust nothing can help in those moments.

I have one hundred twelve ancient methods of meditation which have never been tried by any school. Different schools have tried one method at a time, but nobody has dared to try all one hundred twelve methods. And I have developed my own dozens of methods, which are basically constructed, structured, for the contemporary man, because those one hundred twelve methods are at least ten thousand year old.

In ten thousand years, things have not stayed the same, neither the man has remained the same. Everything has changed -- for better or worse, but things have changed. So before trying those methods -- and those methods are tremendously powerful -- but as the contemporary man is, he cannot start on those methods. There is a gap of ten thousand years. First he has to destroy that gap. So my methods are cathartic, so that he can unload himself, throw out all burden and become as innocent as man may have been ten thousand years before. Just like a child. Then those methods can be tried.

And everything has to be done under guidance. That's the meaning of a school.

Otherwise you can do it alone. When you enter in your inner world, you are entering a jungle where there is no superhighway, not even footpaths. You have to walk and create the path simultaneously. Nobody can go with you. So you have to be watched from the outside because there are symbols which indicate what is happening within you.

For example, one of the Buddhist monk from Ceylon was sent to me. He has not slept for three years. He has even stopped blinking his eyes. His eyes were just open twenty-four hours. It was really very strange and tortuous: no rest, no relaxation. And his eyes looked as if they are dead, that they are made of stone, because your blinking keeps your eyes continuously wet. It is a strategy of nature to continuously clean your eyes from dust or anything, and keep them fresh and wet. For those three years a man's eyes, they are bound to become absolutely dry.

I asked him, "Have you not been taking medicine?" He said, "I have tried everything. Nothing helps, and no doctor is able to find out what is wrong."

What was wrong was that he was doing an old method of Gautam Buddha, vipassana. It is a method of continuous witnessing. It should be done under a Master, not alone, because you can do too much and it can harm you.

My own experience has been that one should do it only after sunrise and stop doing it after sunset. If you continue to do it after sunset, then soon you will lose your hours of sleep: from seven to six, from six to five, four, three, two, one. And one day suddenly you will find sleep has disappeared. And when you cannot sleep at all, then blinking disappears, because those mechanism of the eyes is working whole day like a wiper on the car. That too becomes tired. It also needs rest. And if you don't sleep at all in the night, then there is no rest for the wipers.

They will lose their quality of elasticity. They will become dull and slowly they will stop functioning. And then that man will look mad -- to others, to himself.

Now this has to be done under a guide, and if the guide feels that you need it to do in the night, then he can change. You sleep in the day and do the method in the night. When you have succeeded in doing it in the day, start sleeping in the day and do it in the night, so you have covered the twenty-four hour circle without tiring your mechanism. And it is significant to complete the whole circle.

Then there is a possibility that you can fall asleep and still remain alert.

You may have observed a common observation. If all the people here are asleep and the house suddenly is on fire, and somebody shouts the name "Hasya!"

everybody will listen it, but only Hasya will get up and answer. Strange, because everybody listened but nobody answered it and nobody was disturbed.

Something in Hasya even in sleep knows her name is Hasya. Somebody is a slight alert that she has to respond, that somebody is calling her. So a little part is alert in everyone, but it is a very small part. Doing vipassana, that part starts growing, becomes bigger, and a moment comes when you can sleep the whole night, fully rested, and yet deep there is a current of awareness running. You are witnessing yourself sleeping. Then many experiences can happen, on every method, so the guide, the school, is absolutely necessary.

For example, in such a state when you are asleep and yet aware, you may come out of the body without your knowing, just simply slip out of the body, you may start floating in the air. And you are watching your body on the bed and you can see a cord -- luminous -- joining you with your navel. In this state, if somebody wakes you up, he will kill you. If your connection is broken you are finished.

Otherwise this is a great experience that you are having. And there is no problem. Just as you have come out, naturally, within few minutes floating in the air you will enter in the body again.

Not more than forty-eight minutes you can remain out of the body. That has been thousands of years of experience, that at the most forty-eight minutes a person can remain out of the body and still alive. More than that, then the connection will be cut. So after forty-eight minutes, or before it, you are bound to slip back into the body, and for the first time you will see that it is just like a sleeping bag, your body. You can come out of it, you can go into it. First it happens like a sleeping bag, your body. You can come out of it, you can go into it. First it happens on its own accord, then you start doing it.

This is just an example. I told the man that, "For three months you stop vipassana. You be with me. Don't do vipassana. I will give you another method, just the against... the very contrary of vipassana. Vipassana is witnessing, and I am giving you a method which is getting identified with whatever you are doing. You are digging a hole in the earth, get identified completely, don't stand and watch. Become the digger. You are dancing, become the dance, don't watch it. For three months you do just the opposite, so that your whole mechanism comes back to its natural stage. And then I will tell you how you have to proceed on vipassana. You are a Buddhist, you live in a monastery, but your abbot knows nothing of the meditation. He may have read into the books but he has no experience of it." And there are thousands of people who are suffering in the world because they read in the book something and they start doing it without knowing that the book cannot help you when problems arise. And there are problems.

A mystery school simply means that we will be trying all kinds of methods, because I have worked on all the methods and I have created my own methods to help people. First they should go through my methods so their contemporary garbage is flushed out and they become innocent children, then they can use those beautiful methods which have been sharpened through the ages.

Everything non-essential has been cut off. But those methods don't say anything, what will happen on the path, what kind of experiences, what kind of dangers.

For that a school is needed where there will be teachers who can help you, where there will be meditators who are ahead of you and can help you that, "Don't be worried, I have passed through the stage." And I have all kinds of therapies which are absolutely necessary for modern meditators so first they should have a healthy psychology.

Meditation is not for a madman. The madman first have to be brought to the normal state of the mind, and from there meditation can start. The work is tremendous, but if it can help few thousand people to become enlightened, it can save the whole humanity. And it can bring the New Man on the earth.

Q:* BHAGWAN, WHAT IS HAPPENING TO THE COMMUNES IN EUROPE?

WILL NEW COMMUNES START, GET STARTED... CENTERS?

A:* Yes.

Q:* DO WE KNOW HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE LEFT, DROPPED SANNYAS, AFTER THIS?

A:* Not many people. A very small group. And many more people will be coming back who had left, who are every day informing that they want to come back, because they have been harassed and somehow forced to leave the communes. They will be coming back. And whatever Sheela and her gang has done in three and a half years, here and in Europe and in other countries, everything has to be undone. Every commune has to become autonomous.

Sheela's desire was to centralize all the communes. So first she dismantled small centers, which was ugly, hurting people. They were running small centers, just a dozen people, but they were happy and they were meditating. Just because they were only one dozen.... Quantity does not matter, because out of that one dozen a miracle is possible. And they were enthusiastic because they had a center of their own, and they were trying to expand it. Rather than helping them, she finished all small centers and forced people to move to the communes.

Those who moved were okay, those who did not move were "negative" people.

They were condemned. Either their malas were taken back -- they were not the right sort, just because they did not want to move from their place. Then she started destroying smaller communes which has eighty people, fifty people, forty people. And she concentrated in six communes finally in Europe. She destroyed England's all centers, told them that, "You all move to Medina so one commune can happen," and then finally she destroyed Medina, told Medina sannyasins to move to European communes, and Medina has to be sold.

It was good that she left. She has sold Medina, but the money has not been paid, so I have just informed Poonam that, "You take charge of Medina and take the money back. It has not yet reached to those people, so you take the money and you purchase a bigger place." She was so happy, and crying. She sent a message for me that, "Bhagwan, I have never felt in my life so much loved."

All these people were unnecessarily hurt, wounded. And I have told that she should be the head. "Find a better and bigger place, because that place was good but only for four hundred people." And England had at least two thousand sannyasins. "You can have a very big commune, and rather than sending sannyasins from England and destroying small centers...."

They don't understand a small thing, that those small centers are feeding centers.

From those centers people become acquainted with you, they started coming to the commune of that country. From that commune they become acquainted about me, about this place. Sooner or later they will be coming here. If you stop small centers, then you are destroying the feeding grounds. Then you start destroying.... And this was something personal, antagonism.

She wanted England to be completely finished with sannyas, and she has managed it. I have told that European sannyasins should go back to England, those who have come from England. And all centers that have been destroyed should be restored. Sannyasins should move back to their small communes. I don't want any centralized formation. Every commune, every center, is autonomous. Nobody is above it.

Q:* DOES IT MEAN THAT DANISH SANNYASINS IN CENTERS IN HOLLAND AND GERMANY WILL BE ADVISED TO GO BACK TO DENMARK TO MAKE THE CENTERS AGAIN IN COPENHAGEN AND...?

A:* Yes. I have even allowed Veeresh again, because they stopped his commune in Holland, that he can have his commune back. And all centers in Holland will have their own... which have been stopped from functioning, they should start functioning. The commune in Holland should function, but not destroying others but by taking help from others. All those should be your helpers in the whole country. But not that you are authoritative, that you order and command and they have to follow. They have equal rights as you. Every sannyasin is connected to me, not to any organization.

Q:* ALL THE DANISH SANNYASINS WILL PROBABLY READ THIS INTERVIEW. DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY TO THEM? THEY DON'T HAVE ANY CENTERS ANY LONGER IN DENMARK.

A:* Denmark? They used to have a center.

Q:* THEY USED TO HAVE TWO CENTERS.

A:* Now they don't have?

Q:* NO.

A:* So they should start again. Denmark should not be behind anybody else. In fact, Denmark was the first to have the center in the whole of Europe. They should start and they should expand and slowly make communes. And communes are going to become very attractive, just people have to see how they function, how easily, how more comfortably, how luxuriously, how economically -- no unemployment, no population growth, no unnecessary fighting, rape, no prostitution. All these can be avoided. Just people have to see.

And more and more people can move. And now that I have allowed you can be a sannyasin without red clothes, you can be a sannyasin even without mala, more and more people.... I have opened the doors, more and more people can come and be part of the commune. And slowly if they feel like having malas and having red clothes, that is up to them. But there is no need to enforce anything.

So Denmark should have centers, it should have commune. So tell my people to put their energy back into it. Okay?