The greatest reality in the world

From:
Osho
Date:
Fri, 19 September 1986 00:00:00 GMT
Book Title:
The Osho Upanishad
Chapter #:
31
Location:
pm in
Archive Code:
N.A.
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Question 1:

BELOVED OSHO,

AS ONE PAIR OF SPARKLING EYES AFTER ANOTHER ARRIVES TO BE WITH YOU HERE, IS IT PERHAPS THAT YOU ARE SURROUNDED FOR THE FIRST TIME BY DISCIPLES WHO LOVE YOU AS YOU ARE, OR HOWEVER YOU WANT TO BE - AND WHO ARE CERTAINLY NOT LOOKING FOR ANY GOODY-GOODY SAINT?

Amrito, the way of love is the way of no-expectation. Love exists only when there is total acceptance and no desire to change anything.

The moment you start thinking of how the other should be... whether the other is your lover, your beloved, your child, your master, your disciple... it does not matter who the other is. What matters is a total acceptance of the other As he is. Not tolerance - tolerance is an ugly word. In the very word "tolerance" there is intolerance. The very word smells as if somehow against your will you are managing it: it is not a loving acceptance but an unloving tolerance.

It is true that it has taken me a long, long journey to find only those people who can understand me, accept me, love me as I am. I have never asked anybody to be somebody other than who he is.

But for thousands of years all the religions have lived in a nightmare, in a very strange and weird situation. The disciples were demanding how the master should be, the master was demanding how the disciples should be. One can understand the demand from the side of the master: you have come to him to be transformed, to be changed; it is understandable if he wants certain disciplines to be followed. But it is absolutely not understandable that the disciples, the followers, should also demand how the master should be. And the wonder of wonders is that the masters have been fulfilling the desires of those who are their followers. The leaders have been followers of their own followers. To remain in the dominant position of being a master they have compromised; it is a mutual compromise: "I will fulfill your demands, you fulfill my demands." And this has been going on for thousands of years.

A real master, an authentic master, a man who knows, is not going to accept any demand from those who do not know. He cannot fulfill your desires, your idea of how a master should be. But your so-called masters have been doing exactly that. If you wanted them to be naked, they remained naked; if you wanted them to fast, they fasted; if you wanted them to do certain yoga exercises, they did them. Whatever you wanted, they did, in order to remain in power, dominating you, dictating your life.

And of course the disciple was the loser, because these people managed to fulfill the demands of the followers... but the followers were not capable of fulfilling the demands of the masters, so they were condemned as sinners. All the religions created nothing but guilt in the human mind, a deep feeling of inferiority, a sense of failure, a kind of hatred for oneself, one's weaknesses, frailties. They destroyed people's self-respect. And no crime can be greater than that, because once a person loses self-respect he loses his very soul; he loses his manhood, he falls into a subhuman existence.

It has been a very strange nightmare, tremendously painful to the whole of humanity. A few cunning people - unintelligent but stubborn, stupid but adamant - managed to do all kinds of irrational things, and because others could not do them, they became great saints.

I used to know one man... Mahatma Gandhi himself had praised the man as a great saint, and all that he had done was that for six months he continued to eat holy cow dung, drink holy cow urine.

For six months he did not eat anything else, he did not drink anything else.

I was puzzled... certainly the man was crazy, needed psychiatric treatment. And he was a learned scholar, he was a professor; his name was Professor Bhansali. And Gandhi himself called him a great saint. He used to live in Gandhi's ashram, he was an inmate of Gandhi's ashram. Now what kind of saintliness is this? - except that the man was utterly idiotic. But in India cow dung is really holy. And in the whole history of India Professor Bhansali is unique; no other saint has been comparable to Professor Bhansali.

Hindu saints eat a little bit of cow dung and cow urine during special holy festivals. They call it panchamrit, "five nectars." All five nectars have come from the cow: the cow dung, the urine, the milk, the curd, the butter. They mix them all and it becomes something divine, it becomes nectar.

They drink it. They have been drinking panchamrit for ten thousand years.

But nobody can beat Professor Bhansali.

Naturally the people who have been doing a little bit of saintliness accepted Professor Bhansali as a great saint - unique, unparalleled, unprecedented. Even in Mahatma Gandhi's ashram nobody was capable of doing such a feat, so they all worshipped Bhansali. He became a great master to be followed, to be listened to.

Can you see any relevance in his eating cow dung, drinking the urine of the cow, to being a master and advising people how to achieve self-realization? But nobody raised a question, because to raise a question is not only going against Professor Bhansali, it is going against the whole Hindu mind.

And the Hindu mind has been conditioned for ten thousand years to accept such a man as a saint.

Now Bhansali is able to dominate, and he can call you all sinners, unvirtuous, non-religious, materialistic, unspiritual.

He was almost dying when I met him. He was an old man by that time; in fact, he died three or four days after I met him.

And I told him, "Stop all this nonsense. All that you have done is that you have eaten cow dung for six months. That gives you no authority of any kind - and you have gathered a following, you should be ashamed. First you did something stupid - and these people are not so stupid, so they cannot do it. Now there are only two ways available to them: either to be stupid like you, or to be a sinner.

It seems better to be a sinner than to eat cow dung for six months and then be a saint. And hell is far away, and who knows whether it is there or not? But to eat cow dung for six months is to live in hell herenow. Except that, what kind of spritual quality do you have?"

He said, "It is strange. Even Mahatma Gandhi never asked me."

I said, "It was because he himself saw that he could not manage to eat cow dung for six months he was a little more intelligent than you are. He called you a saint, but that does not make you a saint."

People have been demanding, according to their conditioning, how the master should be: what he should eat, what he should wear, how he should speak, what he should speak about. Everything is controlled by the followers, and the followers are controlled by the master - a mutual arrangement of enslaving each other and enjoying a beautiful feeling that you are on the path of spirituality.

I had to fight my way continuously, because people started gathering around me and then immediately they would start expecting. If I refused them, I was not a saint; they disappeared.

If I had accepted their ideas, they would have been my slaves for their whole lives... and strange ideas, which have no relationship at all as far as spiritual growth is concerned.

I was staying with a family. An old man, almost ninety years old... he was the father of the woman in whose house I was staying. He had renounced the world, he had become a recluse. He used to live outside the city. In thirty years' time he had never come to see his daughter, but hearing that I was staying there he came to see me, because he was very much influenced by one of my books. He was praising me like anything. He said, "If it was in my power, I would have declared to the whole world that 'This is the man who knows. and he should be listened to, followed.'"

I said, "You don't know me; you just have read one book. Don't go that far, because then the return journey is painful."

He was a Jaina. And his daughter came and told me that I should get ready, take my evening bath, because my supper was ready. And in a Jaina family the supper has to be eaten before sunset.

But I said, "Today can be an exception. Your old father, ninety years old, has walked for miles and he has come to see me and I am talking to him. And it seems inhuman... I can eat a little later, don't be worried."

The man heard that. He said, "What do you mean by a little later? The sun is almost setting - a little later? And I touched your feet, and you don't know even the ABC of religion - after sunset nothing should be eaten." Immediately everything changed - I was no more the world teacher, he had immediately become my teacher. He had come as a disciple; he had touched my feet.

I said, "That's what I was saying, that you don't know me and the return journey will be painful. It is not my fault. You decided just by reading one book. I don't see that there is any problem in eating in the night.

"Mahvira had a problem because there was no electricity, and the people were poor. They used to eat in the dark. Even today in India, in the villages people eat in the dark, not even a candle light.

And Mahavira was right, that it is possible that some insect might fall into the food and unknowingly you will be eating something living. and he was against violence.

"But today..." - and we were sitting in an air-conditioned room; no flies, no insects, and more light than the sun brings into the room - "you can bring as much electric light into the room as you want; now there is no problem. Now those who can afford light should be allowed to eat any time when they can afford light."

He said, "You are dangerous, and even to listen to your words is a sin. I am leaving utterly frustrated."

I said, "I am not responsible. You had expectations. I never promised that I would fulfill your expectations, I had no idea of you. If your expectations are not fulfilled it is your fault, it is your responsibility. Never expect again."

Leaving me he said, "But you have lost a great admirer."

I said, "I am going to lose millions of admirers. This is only just the beginning, you don't be worried."

And I have been losing - my whole art is how to influence people and create enemies. First they become influenced. Then they start expecting, and their expectations are not fulfilled; they become enemies. I have not done anything at all, it is all their doing - their own minds, doing the whole game.

Certainly many people have come to me and have had to drop me for small reasons, because those small reasons, to them, were very fundamental.

I had many followers of Mahatma Gandhi around me at a certain time. Even the president of the Congress, the ruling party, U.N. Dhebar, was coming to my camps... Shankar Rao Dev, one-time secretary general of the ruling party, and many imminent Gandhians.

I used to wear hand-spun clothes, and that is something very spiritual to the Gandhians. It was perfectly good in India's freedom struggle as a token of protest against Britain, that we would not use clothes manufactured in Manchester, in Lancashire. And it had a certain logic behind it: before the British rulers came to India, India had such craftsmen that even today there is no technology to create such thin material as was spun and woven by the Indian craftsmen - particularly living in Dacca and around Dacca in Bangladesh. Their clothes were so beautiful that Britain was at a loss as to how to compete with them in the market.

And what was done was so ugly: the hands of those craftsmen were cut; thousands of people lost their hands so that the beautiful clothes coming from Dacca should disappear. This is not human. It was good as a protest, that "We will not use clothes woven by your machinery. You have destroyed our people, for whom it was not only a living but an art, an art that they have inherited for thousands of years, generation to generation."

But now that the country is independent, that protest no longer has any meaning. After the country became independent, it was idiotic to make hand-spun clothes and the spinning wheel something spiritual. To protest against this, I had to drop those hand-spun clothes. Because now India needs more machinery, more technology; otherwise, the people are going to be hungry, naked, without any roof over their heads.

The moment I started using clothes made by machinery, I was no longer spiritual. All the Gandhians disappeared. U.N. Dhebar, the president of the Congress, told me; "You are unnecessarily losing thousands of followers. Be a little more diplomatic."

I said, "You are telling me to be a diplomat, to be cunning, to be an exploiter, to cheat people? Just to keep them following me I should fulfill their expectations? I am the last one to do that."

And this went on happening in small things, small matters.

I am reminded of an old Tibetan story.

There were two monasteries: one monastery was in Lhasa, in the capital of Tibet, and one of its branches was deep in the faraway mountains. The lama who was in charge of the monastery was getting old, and he wanted somebody to be sent from the chief monastery to be his successor. He sent a message.

A lama went there - it was a few weeks' journey by foot. He told the chief, "Our master is very sick, old, and there is every possibility that he will not survive for long. Before his death, he wants you to send another monk, well trained, to take charge of the monastery."

The chief said, "Tomorrow morning you take them all."

The young man said, "Take them all? I have come only to take one. What do you mean, take them all?"

He said, "You don't understand. I will send one hundred monks."

"But," the young man said, "this is too much. What are we going to do? We are poor and in those parts, the monastery is poor. One hundred monks will be a burden to us, and I have come here to ask only for one."

The chief said, "Don't be worried, only one will reach. I will send one hundred, but ninety-nine will be lost on the way. You will be fortunate even if one reaches."

He said, "Strange..."

On the next day, a long procession started, one hundred monks, and they had to go across the country. Everybody had his house somewhere on the way and people started dispersing... "I will be coming. Just a few days with my parents... I have not been there for years." Within just a week there were only ten people.

The young man said, "The old chief was perhaps right. Let us see what happens to these ten people.

Just as they entered a town, a few monks came and said that their chief had died: "So it will be very kind of you - you are ten, you can afford to give one lama to us as a chief - and we are ready to do everything, whatever you want." Now everybody was ready to become the chief. Finally they decided upon one person and he was left behind.

In another city, the king's men came and they said, "Wait; we need three monks because the king's daughter is being married and we need three priests. That is our tradition. So either you come willingly, or we will take you unwillingly."

Three men disappeared; only six were left. And in this way they went on disappearing.

Finally only two persons were left.

And as they were coming closer to the monastery... it was evening and a young woman met them on the road. She said, "You are such compassionate people. I live here in the mountains - my house is just there. My father is a hunter, my mother has died. And my father has gone, and he promised to return today but he has not returned. And I am very much afraid to remain alone in the night... just one monk, just for one night."

Both of them wanted to stay! The young woman was so beautiful that it was a great struggle. The young man who had come as a messenger had seen those one hundred people disappearing, and now finally... Finally they said to the woman, "You can choose either one, because otherwise there is going to be unnecessary fighting. And we Buddhist monks are not supposed to fight.

She chose the youngest, the most beautiful monk, and she disappeared into her house. The other monk said to the young man, "Now come on. That man is not going to come back; forget all about him."

The young man said, "But now, you remain strong - the monastery is very close."

And just before the monastery, in the last village, an atheist challenged the monk: "There is no soul, no God. This is all fiction, this is just to exploit people. I challenge you to a public debate."

The young man said, "Don't get into this public debate, because I don't know how long it will last.

And my chief must be waiting - perhaps he may have already died."

The monk said. "This will be a defeat, a defeat of Buddhism. Unless I defeat this man, I cannot leave this place. The public debate will happen, so inform the whole village."

The young man said, "This is too much! Because your master said at least one would reach, but it seems that only I will reach."

He said, "You get lost. I am a logician, and I cannot tolerate this kind of challenge. It will take months.

We are going to discuss everything in detail because I know, I have heard about this man. He is also a very intellectual, philosophical man. You can go, and if I succeed in the debate I will come. If I am defeated, then I will have to become his follower; then don't wait for me."

He said, "This is too much."

He reached the monastery. The old man was waiting, He said, "You have come? How many had started?"

He said, "One hundred and one, including me."

The old man said, "That's perfectly good. At least you have come back. You be my successor; nobody out of those hundred is going to come now."

And the master knew it, that only one would reach.

It is an old proverb in Tibet that hundreds go but rarely a single individual reaches - that too, rarely.

Many have come into contact with me, have been deeply connected with me, have looked very devoted. But I knew that so many people could not stay with me. It is not a journey for all, it is a journey only for the chosen few. All their devotion will disappear like a dewdrop in the early morning sun. Just a small excuse is enough - and they will find the excuse. And particularly around a man like me, who follows no scripture, who follows no tradition, who is a law unto himself. Only a very few courageous people are going to remain.

Amrito, now I am talking to those people who don't have any expectations from me. And they are perfectly aware that I don't have any expectations from them.

Now it is a pure love without any conditions attached to it. Only in this purity of love are miracles possible - and they are happening.

Question 2:

BELOVED OSHO,

SITTING AT YOUR FEET, FEELING ALL THESE MIRACULOUS THINGS HAPPEN WHICH I CANNOT PUT INTO WORDS. I WOULD LIKE TO WHISPER INTO YOUR EAR, "PLEASE

OSHO,

PROMISE ME THAT YOU WILL ALWAYS KEEP ME BUSY TO BE WITH YOU, THAT YOU WILL NEVER LET GO OF MY HAND, WHATEVER HAPPENS!"

OSHO, IS THIS GREED OR A KIND OF DISCIPLEHOOD?

It is not greed because greed has its own symptoms, which are absent.

First, greed never exposes itself. It always hides itself in something else, it never comes in the open.

It is ugly; it cannot believe that if it opens itself, exposes itself, it will be welcome.

Everything ugly in man always comes out with a mask.

It is not greed. It is a simple, innocent child in you.

Have you seen a child going for a morning walk with his father? The father is holding the hand of the child... and the father may have all kinds of worries, but the child is full of wonder. He has no worries; everything around him is a mystery - a butterfly, a flower, seashells on the beach, anything - all around, there are treasures and treasures.

The child is not worried, because he knows he is secure; his hand is in his father's hand. It is enough security, he does not need any more security. Secure in love, safe from any danger - that is his father's responsibility - he is available to all that is beautiful, to all that is divine and spread all over, all around.

Your question has come from your very innocence. "Osho, just keep holding my hand."

You are not asking much.

It is not greed at all.

I promise: you can enjoy the ecstasies that existence makes available to you. I am your security; just leave all the worries to me. In fact, this is what surrender is.

People ask what surrender is, but when they ask it becomes very difficult to explain to them, because it is their intellectual question.

This is surrender.

You are simply asking, "Just keep my hand in your hand; don't let go of it." The path is lonely, the night is dark. But if your hand is holding my hand then everything is light. Then there is no night, there is no dark, and everything is beautiful.

This small thing I can do for you without any trouble.

I will keep holding your hand.

I have my own ways, my own strategies. Slowly slowly, it is not me who is keeping your hand, but you who is the one holding it, But that's a secret, I should not have told you!

Question 3:

BELOVED OSHO,

SINCE I HAVE BEEN HERE WITH YOU IN INDIA, I FEEL THAT MOST OF MY ENERGY IS GOING MORE TO THE INSIDE THAN TO THE OUTSIDE. SO OFTEN I'M SITTING AROUND WITH THE FEELING THAT THERE IS NOTHING TO SAY; FEELING EMPTY MUCH MORE THAN I EVER EXPERIENCED BEFORE. SO MANY THINGS ARE BECOMING EXHAUSTING, EXCEPT LISTENING TO YOU.

OSHO, AM I CLOSING MY DOORS TO THE OUTSIDE, OR DOES THIS FEELING HAVE TO DO WITH THE SILENCE YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT?

The doors are the same, whether you open them for the outside or for the inside.

Whether you go out of your home into the world... it is the same door you open; or you come into the home... it is the same door again you have to open. The door is not different; your direction is just different.

When you are moving inwards - that's what is happening to you - the outside world is going farther and farther away from you. The doors are open, but your back is towards the outside world and your face is towards the inner. You are more ready to listen to the smallest sound inside than to all the noise outside. It is simply shifting your gear from outside to inside.

You will be surprised to know that when Ford made his first car it had no reverse gear; the idea had just not happened. And it was such a trouble: if you passed your house just by ten feet, you had to go around the whole town to come back to your house, because there was no reverse gear.

People said to Ford, "This is a very strange thing, and troublesome. You should make some arrangement so that the car can move backwards." Then the reverse gear was added.

You have a reverse gear in your consciousness, but you have not used it. You have always been going out, out, out, with as much speed as possible - not knowing where, but one thing is certain:

you are going with really great speed.

One wife was nudging her husband, "You should look at the map. You are going full speed, breaking all the speed laws and not looking at the map, at where you are going."

The man said, "Shut up! It doesn't matter where we are going. What matters is what beautiful speed, just enjoy the speed."

I have heard that George Bernard Shaw was once caught traveling in a railway train without a ticket.

The ticket checker said to him, "I know you; you are a world-famous man. But don't be worried" - because he was looking for the ticket, opening this suitcase, that bag, this pocket, that pocket, and the ticket was not anywhere. And he was perspiring and getting very much disturbed.

The ticket checker said, "You forget about the ticket. I know you must have it, it must be somewhere.

You relax, I will go, and no one will bother you on the way."

He said, "Who is bothering about the ticket? Don't poke your nose in my affairs. I am concerned about where I am going - because it is written on the ticket, how am I going to know without the ticket?"

But everybody is in this position: speed, great speed, no ticket, no vague idea even where you are going and why you are going. Just because you have nothing else to do, so you are keeping yourself busy.

Once you understand that there is a possibility of going inwards too, that you can go to yourself, then the whole world is left far behind. Then the noise of the world will not reach you.

It is not that the doors are closed. It is simply the depth of your own being. The silence is so much that it is capable of absorbing all kinds of noise; it will not be disturbed.

What is happening, allow it to happen. Don't interfere. If you can help it, help. If not, then at least don't interfere. It is happening on its own. Soon you will start enjoying the flowers that grow only in the innermost core of your being, the fragrances that are only of the inner.

And when you are at the very center of your being, there is no world outside. That has all gone so far away that the mystics have thought that it is an illusion, it is a dream. It is not a dream; that is not true, it is not illusory. The world is real. But the mystic's feeling is also very authentic. His feeling that the world is illusory, maya, is because when he is centered in himself, the whole world disappears as if it has never been there - just the way you wake up in the morning and the dreams and the whole world of dreams disappears.

That's why all the mystics of the world have agreed on one point, that the world is illusory. I do not agree with them. The world is not illusory, the world is very much real. Still, what the mystics say is an authentic feeling. The world goes so far away and you are so much immersed in silence and peace that as far as you are concerned, the world is almost illusory. But remember, I'm saying "almost illusory."

I teach a scientific mysticism. The old mysticism is one-sided: it takes account of the inner and condemns the outer as illusory. I don't say that the outer is illusory; neither do I agree with the materialist who says the inner is illusory. The inner is as real as the outer. But the materialist has a point - absorbed in materialism, the inner is so far away it is almost illusory.

To a scientific approach, both are real. The inner and outer are two aspects of the same coin. But the trouble is, you can see only one side of the coin at one time. When you see the other side of the coin, then the first side has disappeared, seems to be illusory. When you move around and come to the first side, the second side has become illusory. There is no way of seeing the coin with both sides together simultaneously.

But it does not mean that one side is illusory. Because if one side is illusory, then the other side cannot be real. Either both are unreal or both are real. And both cannot be unreal. The only possibility is both are real.

Question 4:

BELOVED OSHO,

IF EVERYTHING IN LIFE I SEE, I FEEL, I TOUCH, IS ILLUSION, WHAT KIND OF RELATIONSHIP DO I HAVE WITH YOU?

Who has said to you that everything that you touch and you see and you feel is an illusion? Just hit your head on a pillar and then you will know it is not illusory. And if any saint says so, just bring him close to a pillar and tell him, "hit your head."

Even the people who have been talking their whole lives - the Vedantins who are the most fascinated with the idea of the world being illusory - just watch them: they don't pass through the walls, they always go through the doors.

One shankaracharya was staying in the same temple where I was staying, and he was very insistent that everything is illusory. And he used to have a walking stick - it was lying just by his side. I took the walking stick in my hands and I said, "I will hit you on the head."

He said, "What? Don't do that. I am an old man; you may break my skull."

I said, "It is all illusory - the walking stick, the skull, the breaking."

He said, "It is... theory is one thing, but that does not mean that... "

I said, "Theory is one thing and life is another? That shows your insincerity."

Theory and life should be one.

That is what is meant by being authentic.

You must have been reading these so-called great saints who have been saying that the world is illusory. You know perfectly well that it is not.

Just don't eat one day, and in the night you will know that food is not illusory, hunger is not illusory - and you will be found in the kitchen opening the fridge, knowing perfectly well that it is all illusory. Why are you taking such trouble to open the fridge and take out things which are illusory; unnecessarily eating things which don't exist?

Nothing is illusory. Everything has its own reality. There are realms of reality, levels of reality - the spiritual is more real than the material - but the material is not unreal.

You are asking me: if everything is illusory then what is the relationship between me and you?

If all is illusory, then I am illusory, you are illusory. And what relationship can happen between two illusions?

Nothing is illusory.

And my relationship with you is more real than the reality of things, because love is more real than anything else in the world.

Poetry is more real than prose.

The inner experiences are more real than the outer experiences, because with the outer experiences there is a distance between you and that which you are experiencing. With the inner experience, you and the experience are one; it has more reality.

The greatest reality in the world is your realization of yourself.

And the relationship with me has a reality far greater than any relationship can have, because this is the relationship that is going to lead you to the ultimate reality, the self-realization.

But don't just bring questions from books, from listening to all kinds of idiots. They may be worshipped as saints, but if they are not practicing what they say, then they are not even sincere men - what to say about their saintliness?

In my childhood, one of my father's friends was a great physician in that area, and also a very learned scholar. So saints, mahatmas, scholars used to stay in his home. And because of my father's friendship with him, I was allowed in his home, there was no barrier for me - although whenever there was any guest he wanted me not to come. He used to say, "This is a strange coincidence, that whenever I want you not to come you immediately appear" - because I was constantly watching from my house so that if some saint arrived, then the second person to arrive would be me. And I found out from my very childhood... these people were almost all Vedantins, the philosophy that teaches all is illusory.

One of the famous Hindu saints, Karpatri, used to stay there. One day he was sitting; behind him was a door going inside the house. I simply dropped a book on his head. Now, a clean-shaved head... and the book was not just dropping, it was really hitting. And he said, "What are you doing?"

I said, "Nothing, it is all illusory."

The physician was not present.

He said, "Let the physician come. You should be barred from entering into this house."

I said, "Strange, you believe in the house? You believe in the physician? He is sitting there just in front of you."

He looked. He said, "There is nobody there."

I said, "It is illusory, how can you see illusions? I can see him perfectly well; he is sitting in his seat surrounded by his medicines."

He looked again.

I said, "It must be that you are getting old and you need glasses."

He said, "I can see everything else perfectly - tables, chairs, the walls - it is just the physician I cannot see." And at that very time the physician came out, and he said, "Here is the physician!"

I said, "The whole day you are talking about illusion, illusion, illusion, but in your life I don't see any impact of your philosophy. And what is the point of having a philosophy of life which is just verbal, intellectual?"

Avoid these people.

In my childhood, when these people would be giving discourses in the temple, I used to stand up - and this was one of the points I would make to them: "Don't mention that things are illusory. If you mention it, I will prove that they are not. And you know me perfectly well, because we have met at the physician's place in the morning. I have already proved it.

It started happening that they would avoid coming to my village. The physician told my father, "Saints used to come to my house. Your son is such trouble that when I go to the railway station to receive them they say, 'We are not coming, because it becomes such an embarrassing situation: before thousands of people he stands up and he says he can prove... And he can prove, and we cannot prove, that is true. It is only a philosophy that the world is illusory.'"

Always remember that philosophies are worthless unless they can give you an insight, unless they can give you a new vision of life, unless they can transform you, unless they are alchemical.

Question 5:

BELOVED OSHO,

WHY IS IT ALWAYS SO DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND YOU AND YOUR WORK?

Narendra, you must be really dumb, very thick. Whatever I am saying is so simple, so obvious.

There is no question of understanding it; just listening to it is enough. And if it is difficult, that simply means you have not listened.

Forget understanding. Put your whole energy into listening, and understanding will come on its own accord, just like a shadow that follows you.

I am not saying anything difficult; I am not a philosopher. I am saying very simple things, so obvious that people have forgotten them. But I can feel your difficulty.

Narendra is a psychologist, more in the mind. His whole training is of the mind, and here the whole approach is to put the mind aside. The psychologist is really in a difficulty, because his whole training is of getting deeper into the mind, its mechanics. And here it is a question of getting out of the mind, forgetting all the nonsense that goes on in the mind. That must be your difficulty.

The difficulty is not in my teachings. It is in your training, in your education. You will have to unlearn your psychological training, because we are going beyond psychology. And if you cling to psychology, then anything that is beyond psychology will appear to be very difficult to understand.

Psychology is one of the professions in the world which is strange... Their effort is to help people, to bring people mental health. But more psychologists commit suicide than any other profession; more psychologists go mad than any other profession; more psychologists get into perversions, sexual and others, than any other profession. Something is basically wrong, and this is what is wrong: They have been told that man is mind and nothing else. There is no soul, there is no beyond. Mind is all, and with death of the mind everything ends.

This is a lie. Mind is not all; mind is only an instrument. You can use it rightly, you can use it wrongly.

If you use it wrongly then there are going to be perversions, murders, suicides, madness. If you use it rightly then you can step beyond it.

If you want to understand me, use your mind rightly.

Meditate, step beyond it.

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"If one committed sodomy with a child of less than nine years, no guilt is incurred."

-- Jewish Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 54b

"Women having intercourse with a beast can marry a priest, the act is but a mere wound."

-- Jewish Babylonian Talmud, Yebamoth 59a

"A harlot's hire is permitted, for what the woman has received is legally a gift."

-- Jewish Babylonian Talmud, Abodah Zarah 62b-63a.

A common practice among them was to sacrifice babies:

"He who gives his seed to Meloch incurs no punishment."

-- Jewish Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 64a

"In the 8th-6th century BCE, firstborn children were sacrificed to
Meloch by the Israelites in the Valley of Hinnom, southeast of Jerusalem.
Meloch had the head of a bull. A huge statue was hollow, and inside burned
a fire which colored the Moloch a glowing red.

When children placed on the hands of the statue, through an ingenious
system the hands were raised to the mouth as if Moloch were eating and
the children fell in to be consumed by the flames.

To drown out the screams of the victims people danced on the sounds of
flutes and tambourines.

-- http://www.pantheon.org/ Moloch by Micha F. Lindemans

Perhaps the origin of this tradition may be that a section of females
wanted to get rid of children born from black Nag-Dravid Devas so that
they could remain in their wealth-fetching "profession".

Secondly they just hated indigenous Nag-Dravids and wanted to keep
their Jew-Aryan race pure.