You are sufficient unto yourself

Question 1:

Bodhinavar, it is not the sound of your blood circulating. The sound of your blood circulating can be heard only in an absolutely soundproof room; there is no other way to hear it.

The sound that you are hearing is far more significant. It is the sound which the ancients in the East have called the sound of the universe, the sound of existence itself. They have named it omkar. It is the sound of Om, and if you listen carefully you will find exactly the word Om repeated again and again in the sound. Om is not part of any alphabet - it is the only word in the world which does not belong to any alphabet - neither does it mean anything. It simply resembles the sound of existence.

When you are utterly silent you can hear it.

The ancient seers and modern physics are very close on this point. Modern physics thinks that existence consists of electricity and sound is also only a certain wave of electricity. The mystics in ancient times thought just the other way around. They thought that sound is the basic constituent of existence and electricity is a certain wave of sound.

Hence, in the East there has been a certain music which can create fire. You can keep unlit lamps around the musician and once he plays a particular raga, some particular music, a moment comes when all the unlit lamps suddenly flare up. Fire can be created by sound; hence the mystics thought that electricity, fire or anything is nothing but different variations of sound waves.

Now, both agree in a way. One emphasizes electricity, another emphasizes sound, but deep down there is no difference - except that the mystic"s idea of sound being the foundation of existence is a more poetic conception, because then music becomes of tremendous importance, singing becomes of tremendous importance, dancing becomes sacred.

To accept electricity as the foundation is a very prosaic idea, not very poetic. You cannot conceive of music, song, dance, or rejoicing being made of electricity . So whatever the case may be, I still prefer the mystic"s, the poet"s approach to reality. He may not be so arithmetical, he may not be so scientific, but he is more poetic, more musical, more artistic, more creative. And to me, poetry is a higher value than science, music is a higher value than mathematics, because to me ecstasy is the source and the ultimate goal of life.

So, what you are hearing is what has been heard down the ages by all those who have come to a certain state of silence. It is the sound of existence, it is the song of existence itself. And you are asking, should you do something else except watching? No, to do anything will be a disturbance to watching. You simply watch - watch more joyously, watch more lovingly. Don't watch in a dry way, watch full of juice, watch the way a poet looks at the sunrise or the painter looks at the flower or the lover looks at the beloved. Don't watch the way the wife looks at the husband.

The woman made herself comfortable on the couch and her psychiatrist proceeded, "All right, Mrs.

Finkelstein, what has been the most exciting thing in your life these past weeks?"

"Well," she exclaimed, "I have been serving my husband rabbit food for dinner every night."

"And what does your husband say about that?" asked the psychiatrist.

"Ah, nothing much," she said, "but you should see the way he looks at me from across the table with those little pink eyes."

Don't watch that way. Every woman turns the husband into a rabbit "with those little pink eyes." Eyes have to be more joyful, more radiant, more beautiful.

So what you are doing is perfectly right, Bodhinavar, just put more juice into it, more beauty, a quality of song, and the sound will start becoming more and more clear - so clear that you will be throbbing with the whole sound. Each fiber of your body, each cell of your mind will be in a dance.

This is the true way of knowing the ultimate mantra. Repeating, "Om, Om ..." is simply foolish. It is not a question of your repetition; you should be absolutely silent and possessed by existence and then existence repeats in you, in every fiber of your being, the sound of Om. And it is so refreshing, it is so blissful that there is no comparison, in any human experience, which goes beyond the ecstasy of this dance of existence within you. You can call it the ultimate in ecstasy.

It is a good beginning, just go on and on. Slowly, slowly you will not be hearing the sound, you will become the sound. That is the end of the journey, you have come home.

Question 2:

Anand Nada, if you want to ride on two horses together, it is going to be a difficult job. You will have to understand one thing: if you have a longing for freedom, spontaneity and being in the moment, you will have to be not businesslike. You can continue the business but you will have to transform your business attitude, approach. You cannot compromise both, you cannot synthesize both. You have to sacrifice one in the favor of the another.

I remember my grandfather. My father and my uncles did not want the old man in the shop. They would tell him, "You just rest, or you can go for a walk." But there were customers who would ask for him, and they would say, "We will come back when he comes." The problem was that he was not a businessman.

He would simply say, "This commodity costs ten rupees to us and I am not asking for more than ten percent profit. That means it will cost eleven rupees to you. Are you hesitant even to give me ten percent profit? Then how are we going to survive and live?" And people would immediately make the deal with him.

But this was a loss in the eyes of my father, my uncles, because they would have started the price at twenty rupees - and then the haggling ... And if the customer manages somehow to bring them down to fifteen rupees he feels happy that he has got it for five rupees less. But in fact they have taken four rupees more. So naturally they were pushing my grandfather, "Go away, go to the river, have a good bath. Go to the park, rest. You are old, you need not be here."

But he would say, "There are customers who know me and who know you. They know one thing about me, that I am not a businessman. And you are business people. And I have told my customers that if I am not around, wait, soon I will be back from wherever they have sent me. I have been telling those customers, "Remember one thing: whether the watermelon falls on the knife or the knife falls on the watermelon, it is always the watermelon that is cut into pieces, not the knife. So beware of the business people."" He had his own customers, who would not agree even to talk, even to say what they had come for; they would sit. They would say, "Let the old man come."

Business also can be done with a sincerity, with an authenticity, with a truthfulness; it does not necessarily require you to be cunning, to be exploiting, to be cheating. So don't ask for any synthesis between "taking care of a business - continuity, commitment and responsibility," and "being in the moment, freedom and spontaneity, which the hearts longs for."

Listen to the heart, because it is finally the heart that is going to decide the caliber of your being, the very growth of your consciousness, and finally the transcendence that leads you and your awareness beyond death. Anything else is simply mundane. What is your commitment? A man of understanding avoids stupid commitments. What is your continuity? - because your father and your forefathers had been doing the business, so you have also to do it, the same way as they have been doing it. Are you here just to repeat the past?

Don't you have the courage to introduce the new and to drop the past and the old and the rotten, to bring a fresh breeze into your life and into the lives of those who are concerned with you in some way? What is your continuity? There is no question ... In fact you have to be discontinuous every moment, not only with the past of others - your fathers and forefathers - you have to discontinue even with your own past every moment. The moment that is gone, is gone. You don't have any obligation to continue and carry a corpse of a dead moment.

And commitment is always out of unconsciousness. For example, you love a woman and you want her to get married to you, but she wants a commitment. And you are so unconscious; you commit yourself so easily about the future, which is not in your hands. How can you say anything about tomorrow? Tomorrow is not your property. You may be here, you may not be here. And who knows about tomorrow? The love that has suddenly taken possession of you may disappear.

But almost every man commits himself to his woman, that "I will love you my whole life." And the woman commits herself also, that "I will love you not only in this life, but I will pray to God that in each life I will always find you as my husband."

But nobody is aware that not even a single moment of the future is in your hands. All commitments are going to create troubles. Tomorrow your love may disappear, just the way it has suddenly appeared. It was a happening, it was not your act, it was not your doing. Tomorrow, when the love disappears and you find your heart completely dry, what are you going to do?

The only way that is left by the society for you is to become a pretender, to be a hypocrite. What is no longer there, go on pretending, go on at least saying, "I love you." You know that your words are meaningless and the woman knows that your words are meaningless, because your words don't sound sincere. And you cannot deceive a woman as far as love is concerned; she has a tremendous sensibility. In fact, when there is love there is no need to repeat it. You know and she knows. The question of repeating it arises only when the heart is no longer radiating it, so you are substituting it with words.

But words are very poor. Your actions will show something, your face will show something, your eyes will show something, and your words will be trying to prove just the opposite. But the problem has arisen because you were not conscious enough to say to the woman, "How can I commit myself?

I am a fragile human being, I am not absolutely conscious. Most of my being is deep in darkness, about which I don't know. What desires will arise tomorrow, I am not aware of, nor are you aware of. So please don't commit anything to me and I will not commit anything to you. We will love each other as long as love remains authentic and true, and the moment we feel that the time has come to pretend, we will not pretend - that is ugly, inhuman. We will simply accept that the love that used to be there is no longer there, and it is time for us to part.

"We will remember all those beautiful days and moments that we passed together. It will remain always a fresh memory. And I don't want to destroy it by pretending; neither do I want you to become a hypocrite."

As far as my people are concerned, never make any commitment. Make it clear that commitments are bound to lead to a difficult situation. Soon you will find that you cannot fulfill it.

And responsibility ... You have been burdened with the idea of responsibility, that you are responsible to your parents, you are responsible to your wife or your husband, you are responsible to your children, you are responsible to the neighbors, you are responsible to the society, you are responsible to the nation. It seems you are here only to be responsible for everybody - except yourself. It is a strange situation.

A woman was teaching her child, "The most fundamental thing of our religion is to serve others."

The little boy said, "I understand it, just one thing I cannot understand: what will others do?"

The mother said, "Of course, they will serve others." The little boy said, "This is strange. If everybody is serving everybody else, why should I not serve myself, you serve yourself? Why create this complexity and make it a burden - that I should serve others and wait for them to serve me?"

In his innocence the child is saying a truth which all the religions have forgotten. In fact, the very meaning of responsibility has changed in the hands of religions, of politicians, of so-called do- gooders, teachers, parents. They have changed the very meaning of responsibility. They have made it equivalent to duty: it is your duty. And I want you to know that duty is a four-letter dirty word.

You should never do anything because of duty. Either you do something because of love or you do not do it. Make it a point that your life has to be a life of love, and if out of love you respond, that I call responsibility. Break the word into two: response-ability, don't make it one. Joining these two words has created so much confusion in the world. It is not responsibility, it is response-ability. And love is able to respond. There is no other force in the world which is so able to respond. If you love, you are bound to respond; there is no burden. Duty is a burden.

Again I remember my grandfather. He was a simple villager, uneducated, but had the same quality of innocence that a child has. He used to love somebody to massage his feet before he went to sleep, and everybody tried to escape. At that moment when he was preparing his bed, everybody was as far away as possible, not to be caught; but I used to reach to him at that time.

He said, "It is strange that whenever I am making my bed, everybody simply disappears. Just a moment before everybody was here, and once I have gone to sleep - I may even be awake, just with closed eyes - they all come back."

I said, "Nobody wants to massage your feet. As far as I am concerned, it is not my duty. They think it is their duty, that once they are caught it is their duty to massage. It is not my duty. If I don't want to massage, I will say so." And I had made it clear to him that "I will massage to the point I feel; it is not going to be your decision."

And I made a symbolic language, a code language with him. When I started feeling that now it was time, I would say, "Comma."

He would say, "Wait, this is too early."

I said, "I have given you the warning - soon the semicolon and then the full-stop. And once I have said full-stop it is finished." It was out of my love that I massaged, it was not my duty.

The people who thought it was their duty all disappeared. And he understood it, and he said, "You have made it clear to me. It was never clear to me before that there is such a great difference between duty and love."

There was one Hindu saint in Africa. He had come to India for a pilgrimage to the Himalayas, particularly the Hindu holy temples of Badrinath and Kedernath. They are the most difficult places to reach - and at that time they were very difficult. Many people simply never came back - small pathways and just by the side ten-thousand-feet-deep valleys, eternal snow. Just a little slip of the feet and you are gone. Now things are better, but at the time I am talking about, it was very difficult.

The Hindu sannyasin was tired, carrying very little luggage - because to carry much luggage at those heights becomes more and more difficult; as the air becomes thinner, breathing becomes difficult.

Just ahead of him he saw a girl not more than ten years old carrying a little boy, very fat, on her shoulders. She was perspiring, breathing heavily, and when the sannyasin passed by her he said, "My daughter, you must be tired. You are carrying so much weight."

The girl became angry and she said, "You are carrying weight. This is not weight, this is my younger brother."

I was reading the autobiography of the man and he remembers that instance, that he was shocked.

It was true, there was a difference. On the weighing scale of course there will be no difference; whether you put your younger brother or you put a suitcase it does not matter, the weighing scale will show the weight. But as far as the heart is concerned, the heart is not a weighing scale. The girl was right: "You are carrying weight, I am not. This is my younger brother and I love him."

Love can cancel gravity, love can cancel burden. Out of love any response is beautiful. Without love, responsibility is ugly and simply shows that you have a mind of a slave.

So as far as I am concerned, if you are really longing for freedom, spontaneity, and being in the moment, there is no question of creating a synthesis. You will have to change your whole approach towards business: your business becomes your meditation, your sincerity, your truth; it stops being an exploitation. Your continuity simply disappears; you bring a newness into existence. Commitment is absolutely absurd. You cannot commit yourself because time is not in your hands; neither life is in your hands, nor is love in your hands. On what grounds are you committing yourself?

Your state is almost like those two men I have often talked about. Both were opium addicts. On a full-moon night both were lying under a tree and enjoying the full moon, and one of them said, "The moon is looking so beautiful, I would like to purchase it." The second one said, "Forget all about purchasing it, because I am not going to sell it. Just forget it, never mention it again!"

Neither possesses the moon, but in their unconsciousness one thinks he possesses the moon and the other thinks he is ready to purchase. The other says, "Don't get angry. If you don't want to sell, it is okay. But I am ready to pay any price, you just offer. And it is not right, we are old friends." But the second one said, "Forget all about it. Friendship or no friendship, I am not going to sell it at any price!" And they are very serious about it.

That is the situation of your commitments.

A man is telling a woman, "I will love you forever," and just the next day he falls in love with another woman. He is a victim of biological, blind forces. It is not that when he was saying, "I will love you forever," he was lying; it is not so, he was absolutely true. The man who was ready to purchase the moon was not lying, he was sincerely interested in purchasing the moon. And the man who was not willing to sell it was not lying either. He was absolutely sincere that he did not want to sell it at any price.

When the man said, "I will love you forever," he was absolutely truthful; but he was unconscious that tomorrow is not within his control. He can only speak about this moment: "I love you now. As for tomorrow, we will see what happens. Neither am I in a bondage, nor are you in a bondage. If tomorrow again we feel that we are in love with each other, it will be a great surprise."

Why close your life with commitments? Why not keep it open for surprises. Why not keep it open for adventures. Why become closed in a grave? Then you suffer, because you start thinking, "I have promised, I have committed. Now whether I want to fulfill the promise or the commitment does not matter. My whole integrity is at stake. I will pretend but I cannot accept that I was a fool when I committed."

There is no question, Anand Nada, of making a synthesis of the untruthful and the truthful, the authentic and the false. You will have to drop the false and you will have to listen to your heart and go with it, whatever the cost - it is always cheap. Whatever you have to lose, lose; but if you have been listening to the heart, you will be the winner in the end, victory is yours. But if you want to deceive others and deceive yourself, then it is a different matter.

Paddy was reading in a science magazine that cigarette smoking had been known to cause cancer in rats and mice. This moved him greatly, so that night when he went to bed he locked his cigarettes in a cupboard where the rats and mice could not get at them.

What a great understanding and synthesis!

You are only capable of making such a synthesis as this.

Question 3:

Nirvano, aloneness is the Everest of meditation, the highest sunlit peak. Once you start enjoying aloneness, there is no end to where your joy stops growing. It goes on growing, it goes on spreading; it seems as if the whole universe is full of joy and full of fragrance. Aloneness is the greatest achievement in life but certainly there is a painful period of transition.

Man ordinarily lives in loneliness. To avoid loneliness, he creates all kinds of relationships, friendships, organizations, political parties, religions and what not. But the basic thing is that he is very much afraid of being lonely. Loneliness is a black hole, a darkness, a frightening negative state almost like death ... as if you are being swallowed by death itself. To avoid it, you run out and fall into anybody, just to hold somebody"s hand, to feel that you are not lonely.

I have seen people when they are walking in the night on a lonely street, they start singing songs.

Nobody has ever heard that they are singers! And what suddenly transpires that they become singers? - and loudly. They are simply trying to forget that they are lonely. They are trying to drown themselves in their own voice.

Nothing hurts more than loneliness.

But the trouble is, any relationship that arises out of the fear of being lonely is not going to be a blissful experience, because the other is also joining you out of fear. You both call it love. You are both deceiving yourself and the other. It is simply fear and fear can never be the source of love. Only those love who are absolutely fearless; only those love who are able to be alone, joyously, whose need for the other has disappeared, who are sufficient unto themselves.

The common psychology of man is of loneliness. He does everything to avoid it. But whatever you do, it is always there, just like your shadow. You may not look at it, but you know it is there. And once in a while you cannot resist the temptation either: you will look and you will find it always there. You cannot escape from your shadow. In the same way you cannot escape from your loneliness just by creating friendships, relationships, marriages, organizations - religious, political, social. They give you a little relief, but they don't transform anything.

The day you decide that all these efforts are failures, that your loneliness has remained untouched by all your efforts, that is a great moment of understanding. Then only one thing remains: to see whether loneliness is such a thing that you should be afraid of, or if it is just your nature. Then rather than running out and away, you close your eyes and go in. Suddenly the night is over, and a new dawn ... The loneliness transforms into aloneness.

Aloneness is your nature. You were born alone, you will die alone. And you are living alone without understanding it, without being fully aware of it. You misunderstand aloneness as loneliness; it is simply a misunderstanding.

You are sufficient unto yourself.

The transition period is a little painful and difficult because of old habits but it won"t be long. And the way to make it short, bearable, is to enjoy your aloneness more and more. Make it a point that when you are enjoying your aloneness, you are not miserly. Then sing and dance, then paint. Do whatsoever you always wanted to do, but you were so much involved in relationships that there was no time left.

Be creative, and the more creative you are, the more rejoicing, the more dancing, the more songful your aloneness becomes. Those periods of sadness, of grumpiness - old habits - will start falling like dead leaves falling from the trees. They also cling for a little while, but they have to fall.

You just have to make your aloneness more and more strong. So you don't have to do anything with your sadness or your grumpiness, or your fear that the old habit may come back again. You have not to think about that at all. You have to pour your whole energy into the joy of being alone.

You have only a certain amount of energy - either you can dance or you can be sad. If you dance half-heartedly, then you are saving energy for sadness. That"s why I insist: live every moment totally and so intensely that no energy is left to be invested in sadness, in misery, in anger; there is simply no energy left.

So the whole effort has to be very positive. Feed and nourish your aloneness with all that you have, pour your love, and you will be surprised that those gaps of sadness and grumpiness are not coming any more because you don't have any energy for them and you are no longer in a welcoming mood for them.

And if by chance you find some clouds of sadness coming, just watch. Don't get identified with them.

Remember only one thing: everything passes. So these clouds will also pass. Many times before they have been there and they have passed, so there is no question that this time they are not going to pass away. So why unnecessarily get disturbed? You just let them pass. You remain absolutely unidentified and watchful.

If these two things are remembered, your aloneness gets your total energy so that no energy is left for anything else. But if in the beginning you don't understand what is total and you are holding something back, then some moments will come. For that, use a watchfulness, unidentified with the moment, as if it has nothing to do with you, as if it is somebody else"s sadness, somebody else"s grumpiness - none of my business. Keep a distance; don't let them come closer and become one with you.

That"s what I mean when I say, don't identify. Don't say, "I am sad," simply say, "A cloud of sadness is passing in front of me." Don't say, "I am angry," simply say, "A cloud of anger is just at the corner going by." And it will not leave even a trace on you, it will not even touch you. And once you have become aware that by not identifying you become free of everything, you have a secret key in your hands for freedom from any kind of emotion, any mood, any thought.

This will remind you that you have not been putting your total energy into your aloneness, something is left. So next time, when you are again feeling alone and the clouds have gone and the sky is clear, put in more energy. You never know how much you have. You will know only when you put it into action, when you make the potential actual - only then will you know. When the seed comes to blossom, only then will you know what was hiding in that seed. So many flowers - such a small seed - so much green foliage, such a beauty. But you know only when things become actual.

Much of your life remains unlived; it never becomes actual. That"s why very few people are able to blossom. They live at the minimum - and I teach you to live at the optimum.

A woman was pregnant and went to see her genetic specialist in order to find out what kind of baby she was going to have. "For one thing," said the doctor, "you are going to have twins."

"Ah, great," said the woman, "my husband always wanted twins." The doctor continued, "And they are both going to be boys."

"Ah, that"s really great," said the woman. "My husband will put them both on the baseball team."

"And what is more," continued the doctor, "one of them will be a musician of the stature of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart."

"Oh, no!" exclaimed the woman. "My husband hates music, especially Mozart." Feeling very depressed she went home and decided to break the news to her husband very slowly. She cooked him a beautiful candle-lit dinner, and after the first course she said softly, "Darling, I went to the genetic specialist today and he told me that we are expecting twins."

"That"s great," said the husband. "What else did he tell you?"

"He said that they would both be boys," she said. "Oh, marvelous," he said. "One day they can play on the baseball team."

They carried on with the meal but after a while the husband said, "Dear, there is something else that you have not told me. What else did the doctor say?"

"Well, darling," she answered, "I can"t hide it from you. The doctor said that one of them would be a musician with the talent of Mozart."

"Oh, no!" screamed the husband, "How could you do this to me? You know I hate Mozart." He then picked up a knife and in a mad fury he chased his wife around the room. Unable to get hold of her, he picked up a candle stick from the table and hurled it at her; it struck her on the belly. They both froze as a small voice from inside her stomach sang, "One for the money, two for the show, you got my brother, now go man go."

Just enjoy everything. When you are alone, laugh. Tell a beautiful joke to yourself, sing. But remember that you have to nourish your aloneness so much that it becomes the most beautiful experience of your life; that no sadness can overtake you; that no past can ever possess you again; that no old habit can get you again into patterns that you know perfectly well are simply misery and suffering.

Two things: one, a totality in aloneness. And if in the beginning sometimes you have not been total and a cloud comes, remain unidentified, far away. Slowly, slowly no sadness comes, no suffering comes, no feeling of loneliness comes.

And that does not mean that you cannot relate with people. In fact, only a person who lives in a beautiful aloneness is capable of relating, because it is not his need. He is not a beggar, he is not asking you for anything - not even your company. He is a giver. Out of his abundance of joy and peace and silence and bliss he shares. Then love has a totally different aroma to it, then it is a sharing. And if both persons know the beauty of aloneness, then love reaches to its highest point, which has very rarely been possible. Then it touches the very stars of the sky.

You cannot even dream of the beauty of it and the benediction of it - because both are overflowing with joy, both are overflowing with laughter, both are ready to give and nobody is asking for anything.

Both are ready to give freedom, both are ready to give unconditionally. This love becomes one of the most beautiful meditations, in which two persons melt and merge and become one.

Aloneness does not mean you cannot relate. It simply means you will have to relate in a totally new way, which will not create suffering and misery, which will not create conflict, which will not be an effort - directly or indirectly - to dominate the other, to enslave the other. Because it is not out of fear, it is pure life. Out of fear is only death; out of fearlessness grows everything that is beautiful.

Just a joke for Nirvano. In her aloneness she can think about it.

A priest, a backpacker and Ronald Reagan were flying in a plane. Suddenly the pilot ran in and said, "The plane is about to crash. There are only three parachutes and I am taking one." And he jumped out.

Ronald Reagan grabbed the next parachute and said, "I am the smartest man in America and America needs me." Then he jumped too.

The priest turned to the backpacker and said, "I am an old man. You take this last parachute and jump." The backpacker laughed and said, "Don't worry Father, the smartest man in America just grabbed my backpack and jumped."

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.