Playing a part in the movie

Question 1:

Anand Ashubodha, you are saying, "I sometimes fail to watch my mind with detachment." It means more often you do not fail; but the truth is, if you succeed even one time to watch the mind, then you cannot fail. So it is a misunderstanding on your part that you fail sometimes; you fail all times.

Sometimes, when you think you have succeeded in watching, that too is only a thought, not a witness.

I can remind you - many times, in sleep you can dream you are awake. There is no problem in it, only in the morning when you will really be awake, then you will see the difference - that the dream can manage to give you the feeling that you are awake. It is only a dream awakening, not a true authentic awareness.

I can say it with absolute authority, because once you know the witness, there is no way to lose it, even if you want. Once you have become a watcher of your mind, then all these rationalizations that you are giving in your question will not be needed. As the watcher becomes more and more crystalized, dreams disappear.

But you are saying, "Indeed, I sometimes revel in adding juicy tidbits to my otherwise unguided fantasies just for the fun of it." These are rationalizations. When you are dreaming you cannot add anything to your dream, you cannot add juicy tidbits. You are fast asleep. Your fantasies are going to remain unguided, because the guide is no longer there, not yet at least.

But this is the cunningness of the mind, that it may even console you that you are fully aware - not only aware, but you are guiding your fantasies just for the fun of it. And it becomes clear in your question: "This does help me to shed more light on my desires, but I sometimes wonder if I didn't get lost in the movie somewhere along the line, and still haven't found my way back out. That is, if I was ever outside in the first place."

You also have suspicions about your rationalization. No rationalization can be absolutely consoling.

There is bound to remain the doubt, "perhaps I am befooling myself." And that's what you are doing.

You have never been out of the movie. Even when you became a watcher, you were just playing a part in the movie.

Because you are so interested in being a watcher, your mind can give you even that. It is a safety device of the mind, to allow you to feel that you are the watcher: don't be worried, you are outside the dream; you can even guide it a little bit, you can make it more funny, more juicy.

And you are asking me, "Could you please speak on the foibles of finding the workings of one's own mind a form of entertainment?" The problem is that if you are a watcher there is no mind, and if there is a mind you are not a watcher, and for the entertainment both are needed to be together - and this is existentially impossible.

Either you can be part of the drama that the mind is playing - but at the same time you cannot sit in the hall and see the drama - or you can sit in the hall. But your mind is incapable of facing your awareness. It simply disappears - it is very shy. Leaving you alone, the screen of the mind becomes empty. So there is no possibility of entertainment.

I have heard that at one railway station, on the platform, a few people were waiting for the train. The train was late, it was the middle of the night, and they were all puzzled about one person who was sitting in his chair and really rejoicing about something. Everybody was watching him: What is going on? because sometimes he will throw something with his hand, sometimes he will smile, sometimes he will almost start giggling.

Finally they all said, "We have to ask him. The train is late, and this man is driving us crazy with what he is doing." So they went to the man and they said, "It is not right on our part to interfere, but now we cannot resist anymore. What exactly are you doing? Sometimes it seems you are throwing something away, sometimes you seem to be smiling and enjoying, sometimes you giggle, sometimes you put your hand on your mouth, as if you are worried that others may hear the laughter - and we don't see anything on this ugly station platform."

The man said, "Your question puts me in a very embarrassing situation, but I will have to answer it because you all seem so interested. It was not much, I was just telling jokes to myself. Finding nothing else to do - the train goes on being late - I started telling jokes to myself."

They said, "If you were telling jokes, then what were you throwing away?"

He said, "Sometimes old jokes which I have heard before - I was throwing them and saying, 'Get lost! don't bother me.'"

They could not understand whether that man was sane or insane, because any joke that he would be telling to himself must be old - at least for him. And he said, "Sometimes it is so juicy that I smile, and sometimes I am afraid that you may become aware of what is happening inside me, so I put my hand over my mouth."

They said, "All your actions have been maddening the whole crowd. We were discussing only one thing, what is happening to this man? And you are enjoying so much relaxing in the chair...."

Entertainment you can have - but then you cannot be the watcher. And if you want to be the watcher, you cannot have the entertainment. In fact, who needs entertainment? - only a miserable person.

Who are the people who are lining up in front of movie houses? - all kinds of miserable, tense, worried, tired people, crushed by life - wanting for at least three hours to forget all the problems and all the worries and all the anxieties and get lost in the movie.

Entertainment is for the miserable - not for the blissful, not for the meditator, not for one who is aware.

He is having so much joy within himself that no entertainment can enhance it; on the contrary, the entertainment may become a disturbance. If you are peaceful, silent, then any kind of entertainment is just a disturbance. But if you are too full of thoughts, and noisy, the entertainment gives a relief for two, three hours; you forget yourself.

It is good that in movie houses when the film starts, it is dark. In that darkness people cry, people weep, people laugh; they are not worried, because nobody is seeing them. But why are they crying?

- because on the screen there is nothing, except a play of light and darkness. But some tragic scene, and tears come to their eyes. They have become absolutely identified, part of the story.

Their life is so negatively empty that they would like to fill it with something. It may be a movie, a circus, it may be alcohol or some other drug - for the simple reason that they can forget this world and all its problems. But by forgetting them they are not solving them; after three hours the problems will be back with vengeance. After the whole night remaining drunk, in the morning they will have all the problems and above all, the hangover, a migraine - that is an additional gain. All the problems are there, all the worries are there... perhaps they have grown in the night.

I have told you many times that Jews have suffered the most in the whole history of man, and because of this suffering they are the people who have the best jokes in the world. Just something to laugh at; otherwise their life is just tears. To avoid the tears, something is needed that can make you laugh.

I have worked hard to find one, but in India we don't have a single original joke. Ten thousand years, and we don't have a single joke which we can say is our own. All jokes are imported, and most of them are from the Jewish tradition.

Jews have beautiful jokes. And the reason is not that they are very happy - just the opposite. The reason is that they have lived in such tragic times. Since the times of Moses - almost four thousand years - they have suffered and suffered. And there seems to be no end to their suffering - they are still suffering in Israel.

But you will be surprised: in this whole long history of suffering, they have somehow managed themselves, they have not gone mad. Their jokes have saved them; but their jokes have not solved their problems.

I will tell you two Jewish jokes. A rabbi finds himself sharing a railway compartment with a Roman Catholic priest. After some time, the priest leans forward, "Excuse me, rabbi, but is it true that men of your faith may not eat pork?" "Yes, Father, you are right,"

replies the rabbi. "And tell me, between priests, confidentially, have you ever tasted it?" "Well, as a matter of fact, a long time ago, I did taste some bacon." "And did you like it?" asked the priest. "Yes, I must admit, I did."

A little while later, the rabbi leans forward, "Excuse me, Father, but is it true that priests are not allowed to have any sexual relationship with a woman?" "Yes, rabbi," the priest replied, "you are quite right. It is forbidden to us." "And tell me, between priests, have you ever indulged?" asked the rabbi. "Well, as it happens, no, I have not."

"Hmm, pity," says the rabbi, "it is better than pork."

The second joke: Moses arrives at the Red Sea with the Israelites. The pharaoh and his army are in hot pursuit. He calls his public relations office, "Abe, where are the boats? You schmuck! Where are the boats?" Moses screams.

Abe says, "Boats? Who said anything about boats?"

"I need boats to cross the water, you idiot! What do you expect me to do - part the water and walk through it?"

"Hey, Moses baby, now you are talking! If you do that, I will get you two whole pages in THE HOLY BIBLE."

A long, long history of troubles, tragedies, torture that seems to be unending, has created a tremendous amount of jokes, but those jokes are just to hide the tears.

Friedrich Nietzsche is right when he says, "Whenever I laugh, you can be certain that I am hiding my tears. If I don't laugh, I may start crying."

Entertainment goes on growing in the world, because misery goes on growing. You need more and more new kinds of entertainment. Ordinary movies won't do - they are only for common masses.

Those who are rich have special kinds of movies called blue movies. They are very respectable people, honored by the society, but in their homes they are seeing blue movies, which are nothing but sexual orgies. They are created only for the rich who can have a small theater in their own house, a private theater, where they can invite their friends. But that too makes me feel that they are in a more tense and anguished state than the ordinary common masses.

The common masses may be poor, they may not have enough food, they may not have enough clothes, they may not have good houses; they may even be sleeping on the streets, they may be beggars... but for centuries it has been known that beggars sleep better than emperors, although the emperor has the best facilities for sleep.

But facilities don't help sleep. The emperor's mind is so worried, so tense - so many problems which seem to be insoluble. And he has to face them the next morning. He has to find some way out of the jungle in which he is lost. The beggar has no problem; at the most he has to beg. That he has been doing - he has become an expert.

One day, a man was passing over a bridge and he saw a blind man. He was in a good mood - he had just got an increase in his pay scale - so he gave one rupee to the blind man. The blind man looked at the rupee, turned it upside down and said, "This is not authentic." The man could not believe it. He said, "You are blind!"

The blind man said, "To tell you the truth, my friend is blind, but today he has gone to see a movie, so I am just tending his shop. As far as I am concerned, I am deaf. In the beginning I also used to be blind, but people were cheating: they would give false coins, and I could not object because of my blindness. I knew that they were cheating, so I changed my profession; I became deaf. But this place is very profitable, and my friend asked me, 'Just for three hours I am going to a matinee show.

You just look after my place so somebody else does not occupy it.'"

The beggars don't have many worries. Even if they want to change their profession, it is very easy.

And you don't know one thing, that you may be a possession of a certain beggar. That I came to know because I was continuously traveling, and on the station there used to be a old beggar. It had become a routine that whenever I came I would give him one rupee, and whenever I left I would give him one rupee - and I was continually coming and going.

But one day I saw a young man standing in place of the old man. I said, "What happened to the old man?"

He said, "I got married to his daughter."

I said, "That's okay, but where is the old man?"

He said, "He has given his profession as a dowry to me. Now you belong to me."

I said, "Belong?"

He said, "Yes, because all the beggars in the city have their territory. People don't know to whom they belong but we have divided our customers. You just give me one rupee. Don't waste my time unnecessarily, because there are other customers coming. My father-in-law has given me the whole list of those who are his permanent customers and how much they give, and he told me, 'Don't settle for less.'"

I said, "This is a revelation. I will give you more than I used to give to your father-in-law, because you have made me aware of one thing which nobody knows - that people are the property of some beggar - customers. And beggars are giving you in dowries to somebody else; they are not even being asked."

It is the simplest profession. But life is not so simple. You need entertainment because your life is too complex. Once you start becoming simple, peaceful, once you start enjoying yourself, you will not need any entertainment.

Anand Ashubodha, you have not even known for a single moment the watcher, although you have many times thought in your sleep, in your dream that you are a watcher.

Dreams are very protective of sleep. Throughout the whole past of humanity it has been thought that dreams are a disturbance of sleep. But the latest findings of psychology are totally different:

dreams are not disturbances of sleep, dreams are protective of sleep; they avoid disturbances.

For example, in the night it is cold and you are feeling like going to the bathroom. Now, getting up in the cold night and going to the bathroom, your sleep will be disturbed. The dream is a protection.

The dream will give you the idea that you have got out of the bed, you have gone into the bathroom, you have done whatsoever you wanted to do, you are back and fast asleep. And you have not moved a single inch. The dream protected your sleep from being broken.

In eight hours, if you are sleeping eight hours, for six hours you are dreaming; only for two hours are you sleeping without dreams. And those two hours everybody has to find because they are not fixed: somebody may have them between four and six, somebody may have them between three and five; it differs with each individual.

The person who has them between one o'clock and three o'clock can wake up at three o'clock without any trouble, and he will not feel sleepy in the day; he will not miss anything because he had got up so early. But if the person whose two hours of sleep without dream are between four and six gets up at five, his whole day will be spoiled. That one hour of deep rest will be missed the whole day. He will find himself upset, irritated about small things, becoming angry, tense, feeling to go to bed early; and he will not know actually what is the cause.

People have been asking me, "What is the time in your ashram when everybody has to get up?" I say, "You are talking nonsense, because everybody cannot get up at the same time. Everybody has to get up at the time which gives him a peaceful day, a joyous feeling, a well being."

In Vinoba's ashram in Wardha, Vinoba used to wake up at three o'clock - perhaps it was suitable for him. He used to go to sleep at nine o'clock. In old age, six hours are enough, and perhaps those two hours were covered. But because he was getting up at three o'clock, he had made the rule that in the ashram, everybody had to get up at three o'clock. And you could see that everybody, the whole day, was feeling sleepy. People's faces were looking dry, dull; they were somehow carrying themselves, waiting for the night to come.

And just as there is a certain time to get up, exactly the same is true about going to bed. And it differs from individual to individual. No general policy or principle, or a discipline is psychologically and scientifically right. Everybody has to find out... and it is not a difficult job. Just try a few different times going to sleep, a few different times waking up, and you will find the right time to wake up and the right time to go to sleep. And that will transform your twenty-four hours.

You are not to follow any scripture - because the man who wrote the scripture may have been right about himself, but he cannot be right about the whole universe, for all the coming generations. But this kind of stupidity continues. Somebody may be finding it right to get up at seven; there is no harm, he is not doing any violence to anybody. In fact, if he wakes up early, he may do some violence, some harm, because he will be irritated, he will be always ready to fight. His nerves are not relaxed.

The old idea of a discipline for everybody is absolutely out of date. At least my people have to find their own discipline, and they have to remember not to impose it on anybody else.

And that conception, that dreams are disturbances, has been found absolutely wrong. Your dreams are immensely protective. You just watch your dreams, remember them in the morning, and you will be surprised how intelligently your unconscious mind creates a situation and protects your sleep.

Actually that's what is happening, Ashubodha, to you, because you are continuously interested in being a watcher. So the dreams say, "Okay, we will supply it - you can be a watcher." But it is a dream, and you are part of the dream. You are not standing out of the dream, you are playing the role of the watcher in the dream. Don't be deceived by it, because if the watcher is there, the dream cannot be there. So this can be used as a criterion: Either the dream can exist or the watcher can exist.

Mr. and Mrs. Goldberg went on a skiing holiday to Switzerland. On the first day Goldberg told his wife he was going off skiing all day in the high mountains. "Don't worry Becky, I will be back by five or six at the latest."

She waited nervously all day, and when he did not return by seven, she begged for a search party to be sent out. Eventually a Red Cross rescue team, a full complement of guides, Saint Bernard dogs, and army mountaineers set off. They climbed to the high slopes, calling as they went, "Mr.

Goldberg, Mr. Goldberg! It is the Red Cross, where are you?"

No reply. Up they went to the high valleys, "Mr. Goldberg, it is the Red Cross!" No answer still.

Eventually, almost at the glacier, they called out once more, "Mr. Goldberg, it is the Red Cross!"

And the faint answer came back, "I have given already!"

Question 2:

Deva Sudheer, I do not agree with your analysis. You say, "I took sannyas ten years ago and felt at home for the first time in my life." That is right. "Since then, silence, peace and clarity are growing."

That too is right. "Yet I feel that I am moving more towards death than towards life and love." That is not right and that is not your idea. That is your girlfriend's idea.

Because you are becoming silent, peaceful, and a clarity is growing in you and you are feeling for the first time at home in life, it will change immensely all your relationships - particularly the relationship with your girlfriend. You cannot be the same old person who used to be passionately, hotly in pursuit of the woman. You have become cooler, and the person who will note it first will be the woman you are with. She will not think that it is coolness, she will think it is coldness.

You, yourself are saying, "My girlfriend tells me I am cold and know nothing about love. She may be right." She is not right, because you are not cold, you are just cool. And it is not true that you don't know love. But people are accustomed to a hot love, and in their mind there are only two possibilities - either you are hot about them, or you are cold.

The golden mean does not exist for people.

A man of meditation never becomes cold and never remains hot either: he becomes cool, calm and quiet. His love takes a totally new dimension, which will appear to ordinary people as indifference.

To those who understand, his love becomes less noisy, less stupid, less retarded, less biological, but starts having a flavor of spirituality, which needs an understanding; otherwise the other person, your partner, is bound to think you have become cold. And coldness is a sign of death, not of life.

You are saying, "Am I keeping my heart closed?" No, your heart is as open as it has never been before. But your girlfriend is not growing with you in your meditations. She is no longer a fellow traveller; she has been left behind, and a distance has grown.

You have to help her. But on the contrary, she is trying to pull you back. And it seems she is powerful, because she has convinced you that you are growing and moving towards death and towards coldness, and not towards life and love. And you say, "She may be right."

This is a dangerous idea if you carry it in your mind; then rather than helping her, she will destroy you.

Now it is an urgent duty for you to share your meditation, your silence, your clarity, your coolness with your girlfriend. I know it is a difficult job. Particularly if the man goes ahead and the woman is left behind, it is more difficult. She will create tantrums, she will throw things, she will have pillow fights, she will disturb your meditations. She can do anything, because you are slipping out of her hands, out of her possession.

And it is not only about small people, even a man like Socrates... his wife poured boiling water, which she was preparing for tea, over his head and burnt half of his face for his whole life. He was teaching his students - and you will see what I mean by coolness: he wiped the water and continued with what he was teaching.

The students were shocked; they could not believe it. At least the woman could have waited if she wanted to fight with her husband; she had every right, but not before the students who have come from faraway places to seek the wisdom of Socrates. But they were more impressed by the way Socrates responded to the incident, as if nothing had happened.

He simply wiped his face, and started where he had been stopped by his wife - this is coolness, this is calmness - this is suchness. And when a student asked, "We cannot understand, and we have forgotten all that we had come to ask you. Now this question has become more important to us:

Your wife has misbehaved, and you have not even taken note of it."

Socrates said, "Whatever she is capable of she has done, and whatever I am capable of I am doing.

Our capacities are different - this is nobody's fault." He is not angry about his wife; on the contrary he is very compassionate. He said, "Any woman would have done the same, because I am continually concerned with my students, with philosophers coming from faraway places to visit me, and I am discussing things in which she is not interested at all. Sometimes the whole day passes and I don't have any time for her. She is a poor woman, and she is behaving just as any unconscious human being is supposed to behave."

But if it happens otherwise - my experience is of both the types - if the woman progresses in meditation, in silence, in blissfulness, she manages to pull her husband closer to her state.

Husbands are very obedient people.

It rarely happens that the couple grow together; then it has a beauty of its own, no conflict. I would like couples to grow together, hand in hand, dancing the same dance, singing the same song, so as they grow, their understanding about each other also grows and nobody creates trouble. Otherwise, whoever is left behind feels offended.

Your wife, Sudheer, or your girlfriend, is suffering from a natural phenomenon. She has been left behind. You have not cared to keep her hand in your hand; you have grown alone. Now, don't be convinced by her ideas.

You, yourself say, "I feel for the first time that I have arrived home." You feel your serenity, your silence, your clarity, and still you are convinced by your wife that you are moving towards death, and that you are not moving towards love and life because you are becoming cold. Now it is your responsibility.

Love knows responsibility.

Share whatever you have gained in these ten years. Help her to grow; otherwise, she will poison your own mind and destroy your growth. Your heart is not closed; neither is your meditation an escape and a protection from involving yourself completely in life.

Your meditation is a preparation for a higher life, for a deeper life, for a more divine life. But you will have to be more loving and more compassionate towards your girlfriend, and don't be, in any way, pulled back by her.

A man walks into a department store and goes up to the good-looking woman behind the counter.

"Excuse me," he says, "do you keep stationery?" She blushes and says, "Well, as long as I can, but then I go absolutely crazy."

Now the word stationery, one would have never thought would be understood in this way. But words are words; how you interprete them, what meaning you give them, becomes their meaning.

Your girlfriend must be troubling you. And I am not condemning her, I am simply saying that it is your fault. If you wanted to remain in a relationship, then you should not go too far away. The distance will destroy your relationship.

Meditate together, and help her to come closer to you. And don't be taken by her attitudes, don't allow her to poison your mind. That's what you are doing, you are accepting her ideas.

It is not yet understood by humanity that women are in many ways stronger than men. Just the other day, Neelam was showing me a woman's picture. I could not believe my eyes. She was preparing for a national competition in Japan, and now that kind of competition is becoming popular all over the world.

The competition is to show that a woman can also be muscular. This has been up to now the monopoly of men. And men have been convincing women all through history, "That is our superiority, our strength: we are muscular; you are weak, fragile, you need protection." Seeing that woman, I could not believe that she was a woman. She was looking like a great wrestler, with such good muscles.

And these competitions are proving it, that to be muscular is not men's monopoly. They have just convinced women that they cannot have muscles; otherwise, there is no reason. They can do the same gymnastics, the same exercises, and they can have a muscular body - although a muscular body in a woman is not beautiful, it looks ugly.

But in every way, the woman is stronger than man. This has to be understood. She lives longer - five years more than man. All over the world, her average life is five years more. And when children are born, a hundred girls are born to every one hundred and fifteen boys, because fifteen boys are going to pop off before the time of marriage comes. At that time there will be a hundred girls and a hundred boys. Girls don't pop off. They have more resistance against diseases than man has.

Now it all depends what we mean by power. Women fall sick less, men fall sick more. Women remain younger longer than men. Women go mad less than men. One would expect that things should be otherwise - because women behave so crazily they should go mad more. But because they are throwing out their madness every day, in installments, they don't gather it enough. And because man goes on controlling himself, he accumulates his madness, and then one day it is too much and he has a nervous breakdown.

Less women commit suicide than men; although women say almost every day that they are going to commit suicide. They even make attempts - but very safe ones. A few pills, sleeping pills they will take, knowing perfectly well that that is not going to kill them. It is enough to harass the husband and make him condemned by all the neighbors, and the doctor, and the whole crowd: "You should behave, and you should treat her in a more gentlemanly way. This is not right."

But women don't commit suicide. They talk about it, they manage the drama also, but their number of suicides is half the number of men's. Man does not play the drama; he feels that that kind of drama is womanish... it is not good to take sleeping pills and make yourself look stupid in the morning.

And it is strange - if the man takes the pills, then nobody is going to tell the wife, "You should behave better." Still the man will be told, "How stupid you are, is this the way to behave with a poor woman and children?"

If a man is developing spiritually, it is for his own sake that his girlfriend - or wife, or whatsoever is her name - should not be left behind. Otherwise she will go on pulling your leg. She is not worried about your spirituality. In the first place, she does not believe that you are spiritual. Just sitting with closed eyes, she knows you are simply avoiding her. It is not meditation, it is escape.

No woman has any good ideas about her husband or boyfriend. She knows that this stupid guy..."Who does he think he is befooling, that he has become serene, silent, cool, attained clarity?"

No woman with whom you are sexually related is going to believe that you have any intelligence.

She goes on worshiping people who have renounced the world, who have renounced the woman particularly. That man may have no other qualities, may be just a complete idiot, but the women will go and touch his feet - here is a great saint. So remember that your fellow traveler is not to be left behind.

When Hymie comes back from visiting the doctor, he looks terrible. Hymie tells his wife that the doctor had said that he was going to die before the night was out. She hugs him, and they cry a little, and Becky suggests they go to bed early to make love one more time.

They make love until Becky falls asleep, but Hymie is frightened to sleep because it is his last night on earth. He lies there in the dark while Becky snores.

Hymie whispers in his wife's ear, "Becky, please, just one more time for old times' sake." But Becky keeps snoring.

Hymie looks at his watch, leans over to his wife and shakes her hard, "Please Becky, just one more time for old times' sake!"

Becky simply looks at him and says, "Hymie, how can you be so selfish? It is alright for you, but I have to get up in the morning."

Okay, Vimal?

Yes, Osho.