This i call the "razor's edge"

Question 1:

Atmo Khirad, everything is false in you. The false and the true cannot have a mixed existence. There is no compromise possible; either you are true or you are false.

Your whole personality is false because it has been given to you; it is not a growth. It is like plastic flowers - you have put them on a rose bush. They are not part of the bush and they don't get any nourishment from the bush, although they can deceive people.

One thing is strange, that the false is more permanent than the real. The real is almost like a river, a continuous change. Springs come and go, nothing remains the same. But the false, plastic flower is permanent; whether spring comes or goes does not matter to it. It is not alive, it is dead. Because of this strangeness humanity has depended more on the false, because the false is more reliable - tomorrow also it will be the same.

The real is unpredictable.

One thing can be certainly said about it, that tomorrow it will not be the same. It must have changed, because everything living goes on changing.

You are asking me, "What is the false in me?" Your question implies that there is something real too. As far as you are concerned, everything is false; and when the false disappears, you will also disappear. The real has no ego, no feeling of I-ness. The real is pure is-ness. It is there, in its all-glory, in its all-golden glamour, in its all-eternal beauty. But it is so vast that you cannot say, "It is me." It is God, it is the existence, it is reality itself.

You are the symbol of the false. Just look at your personality - it has all come out of nurture, training, discipline, education.

You have not been allowed to be natural for the simple reason that nature cannot be relied upon.

There is no guarantee about nature, there is no security, no safety. Hence every society before the child even comes to know who he is, starts forcing a false mask over his original face, giving him a name, giving him qualities.... And the child is so helpless and so dependent on you that it is almost impossible for the child to rebel. He simply becomes imitation; he starts learning whatever you want him to learn.

You give him a false name, you give him a false identity, you give him a false pride. You teach him to be obedient; you teach him to be good, whatever is your definition of good; you teach him to be religious, whatever religion you belong to - you make him a Christian, a Hindu, a Mohammedan.

And the poor child goes on being covered by layers of falsities.

Have you ever thought if your being a Christian or a Jew or a Hindu is your choice? Has it been your discovery? Have you ever looked at why you are a Christian? Just because of the accident that you were born to two persons who were Christians. They were also accidentally Christians, just as you are. One accident goes on giving birth to another accident. Neither was Christianity their discovery, nor is Christianity your discovery. And a religion that has not been discovered by you, how can it be real? How can it become a song in your heart? How can it transform you?

That's why the whole world is religious, but still there is no religiousness anywhere. Somebody is Mohammedan, somebody is Jaina, somebody is Buddhist - except my people, who are searching for who they are. And the miracle is, when you search you never find that you are a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan.

If you search, you find that you are part of God. You are divine - and who bothers about being Christian or Hindu or Mohammedan? You have reached to the very source of religiousness. You will not belong to any organized religion. And then whatever religiousness you have found will be authentic, true. It will show in your actions, it will show in your eyes, it will show in your relationships, in your responses to situations.

You will not go to a church or a temple or a mosque or a synagogue, because you have found the real temple of God within yourself. So whenever you want to go to the temple, you will close your eyes and be silent. In that silence you will start falling deeper and deeper... finally to your very center. And your center is also the center of the whole universe. Only on the periphery we are different; at the center all differences are lost, just a blissfulness remains.

Atmo Khirad, remember this as something very basic, that you cannot be something of the false and something of the true. Just as in this Chuang Tzu Auditorium, if there is light it is not possible that half of the auditorium will remain dark and half will become full of light - either the whole will remain in darkness, or the whole will become full of light. There is no co-existence between light and darkness, and there is no co-existence between reality and the false.

An Irishman was condemned to receive forty lashes, but the more they whipped him, the more he laughed. "Why are you laughing?" they asked him. "You don't understand," he told them, helpless with laughter, "you are whipping the wrong man."

You are also living the wrong man. Even when you are in love, which is your most precious moment, there are four persons, not two. The real two are hiding, and the false two are making love. And the false two are absolutely incapable of love - how can love arise out of falseness? Hence love gives you so much hope and frustrates you almost a thousand times more. But the problem is so deep that you never become aware of why you go on condemning the other person. You go on changing lovers, but with each lover the same thing is going to happen.

Even a man like Jean-Paul Sartre lives in the same fallacy; he calls the other the hell. The other is not hell, but there is some meaning when he calls the other the hell. You never come in contact with the real other; you always come in contact with the real other. The false has a quality of giving you great promises, but it never delivers any goods.

There is an ancient parable in India: A man was a great devotee, but as devotees are, his devotion was not a gratitude but a greed. He was asking God, "Give me something so that I can perform miracles. Just one small thing I am asking. For years I have been praying, and there is no response."

And finally it happened. God must have become bored and tired, because every morning, every evening, the same prayer: "Give me some power of miracles."

So he gave him a small seashell and told him, "This is no ordinary seashell, it is magical. If you ask for something, that thing will immediately be presented to you." He tried and it worked. He asked for something and immediately the thing appeared. He created a big palace, gathered all kinds of luxuries, and became the richest man of his land. But one day he got into great trouble.

A sage was passing through the city. He was very famous, very much respected, and naturally, the richest man invited him to stay in his guest house. And in the night he saw that great sage sitting outside the guest house on the lawn, with a similar kind of seashell but of double the size. And he was asking the seashell, "Give me one hundred rupees," and the seashell would say, "I will give you two hundred."

The rich man thought, "This is.... I was thinking that I have got the most miraculous thing in the world, but this man has got something which even answers and asks, 'Are you ready to receive two hundred?'" He thought,"It will be good... he is a sage, perhaps he may be willing to exchange."

He went to him with his shell, and he said, "You are a sage; I am a worldly man. I also have got this miraculous seashell, but it only gives what I ask. Your seashell... I have never even dreamt. But you are a sage, you can do well with my shell and you can give me your shell."

The sage said, "There is no problem, you can have it." The man rushed into his palace. He had a small hiding place where he used to ask the seashell for things. With the new seashell he entered there, locked the door from inside, and asked the seashell, "Give me one crore rupees." And the seashell said, "No, I will give you two crore." He said, "That's very good. Give me two crore." The seashell said, "No, I will give you four crore." The man said, "Okay, give me four crore."

The seashell said, "Now I have changed my mind, I will give you eight crore." This went on - nothing was given, just it was doubled. He became afraid; he said, "What is the matter? Whatever I say, you simply double it." The seashell said, "That is my quality, I don't give anything."

He rushed out to get his old shell back, but by that time the saint had disappeared. He was so miserable, but the seashell said to him, "Why are you so miserable? I am ready to do whatever you say, just say it."

He tried it again, but again the same thing: "I want a great palace to be made." The shell said, "No, I will make two palaces." The tired man said, "Okay, make two." But the seashell laughed and he said, "No, not less than four."

It is just like your false personality: it goes on promising but it never delivers anything. And the people you are with, they are in the same track. They also go on promising - because the false is very articulate in promising, but absolutely incapable of giving anything.

Between two real persons there is no need of any promise. The real persons are overflowing with joy, overflowing with blissfulness. Before you ask, you receive; before you knock, the doors are opened; before you seek, you have already found it.

That is the quality of the real. The search here in this mystery school is how to get rid of the false, which is not yours, and to find out that which you have brought with yourself from the womb of existence itself. Your mother's womb was only representative of the existential womb.

The discovery of oneself in its total reality is so ecstatic and so eternal that you cannot conceive there can be more blissfulness, more benediction. The desire for more disappears, because you cannot even conceive that more is possible. The false goes on asking for more. Neither it gives anything, nor does it receive anything; it is a beggar. The real is an emperor.

So remember, all that you are right now is just a thick layer of falseness around you. In your thoughts you are false, in your feelings you are false, in your actions you are false. And you are not responsible for it; you have been prepared, disciplined with great skill, education. Almost one third of the life of a man is wasted in making him false. But you can drop it in a second, in a split second - just a sheer understanding: "This is borrowed, others have given it to me. It is not my own intrinsic nature."

Drop it! There will be a little fear, because with it your safety, your security, your respectability will also disappear. But something greater will come: your authenticity, which is such a tremendous fulfillment that only in that fulfillment does one come to know the tremendous meaning and significance of life.

So just watch. Whatever you find is borrowed, drop it. The moment you become empty of everything that was borrowed you will become the light of the world, a light unto yourself and to others.

Question 2:

Kavisho, I hear you, and you are not just getting off the wall. It is not your imagination; you are mature enough, centered enough. To imagine, to dream... you may have done it in the past, but not now. Whatever you are describing in your question is absolutely true. Only one problem is there which I cannot answer.

You are asking, "Who are you, who am I?" I don't know. Neither has anyone ever known; and this unknowability is the beauty of our being. You are saying, "You are so much in me, it is just more and more amazing. You are the most surprising friend I ever dreamt of having. I find myself talking to you inside, sharing. Sometimes I have the urge to ask so many essential things, just like an ongoing, intimate affair. I feel you in every corner of my being, in the here and now, in all moments, and yet it is very subtle."

This is only the beginning, Kavisho. Soon your questions will disappear, my answers will disappear.

The dialogue will remain, but it will be not in words, but in silence. Soon you are going to have a much more surprising experience. The friend that you have found will disappear, and at the same moment you will disappear too, and there will be just a nothingness - not empty, not negative, but overflowing with joy.

You have taken the first step towards reality, now never look backwards. And however dangerous it seems... because as questions and answers and me and you start disappearing, you will find yourself entering into a more and more unknown space.

This I call the "razor's edge." Those who are courageous - and as I feel you, you have every potential to be courageous - enter into the unknown; but the unknown is not the end. Very soon the unknown starts taking you into the unknowable, and that is the exact space of mysticism. In that unknowable you will know who you are and who I am.

But there are no words to express it. One simply has a good laugh, because this unknowable has been always within you, your most intimate inner reality, and you have been searching for it all over the world in many, many lives.

It is strange that the guest was in your home - to be more exact, the host was the guest - and you were searching. And every search was going to be a failure, was bound to be a failure, was destined to bring frustration. The moment you find that the host is the guest, that, "I am that which I have been searching for," all that remains is just to have a good belly laugh.

In Japan, a great mystic, Hotei, is called the laughing Buddha. He is one of the most loved mystics in Japan, and he never uttered a single word. As he became enlightened, he started laughing, and whenever somebody would ask, Why are you laughing? he would laugh more. And he would move from village to village, laughing.

A crowd will gather and he will laugh. And slowly - his laughter was very infectious - somebody in the crowd will start laughing, then somebody else, and then the whole crowd is laughing - laughing because.... Why are they laughing? Everybody knows, "It is ridiculous; this man is strange, but why are we laughing?"

But everybody was laughing; and everybody was a little worried, "What will people think? There is no reason to laugh." But people would wait for Hotei, because they had never laughed in their whole life with such totality, with such intensity that after the laughter they found their every sense had become more clear. Their eyes could see better, their whole being had become light, as if a great burden had disappeared.

People would ask Hotei, "Come back again," and he would move, laughing, to another village. His whole life, for near about forty-five years after his enlightenment, he did only one thing and that was laughing. That was his message, his gospel, his scripture.

And it is to be noted that in Japan, nobody has been remembered with such respect as Hotei. You will find in every house, statues of Hotei. And he had done nothing except laugh; but the laughter was coming from such depth that it stayed with anyone who heard it and triggered his being, created a synchronicity.

Hotei is unique. In the whole world there is no other human being who has made so many people laugh - for no reason at all. And yet, everybody was nourished by the laughter, and everybody was cleansed by the laughter, felt a well-being that he had never felt. Something from the unknowable depth started ringing bells in peoples' hearts.

Kavisho, if you can go without looking back at all, passing through the unknown into the unknowable, where everything will be lost - questions, answers, me and you - all that remains is pure existence, infinite and eternal. And I am saying it because it is possible. You have come a long way with me.

Thousands of people have come with me, and somebody drops out after a mile, somebody drops out after the second mile; I don't complain about them, I just feel sorry for them. They were not courageous enough. There came a point where they stopped.

But you have been like many of my sannyasins - going without any fear, risking everything. There is every possibility that you will be one of those very few fortunate ones who attain to the ultimate truth.

Before you come to the laughter of Hotei, start laughing more and more deeply, more and more madly. This joke is just for you, Kavisho:

A young couple have been trying for ages to have a baby, but with no success. Finally they decided to go to the doctor with the problem. After a detailed interview he suggests that maybe they should not make love every day, to avoid love becoming a routine. They should make love only spontaneously.

Not as if they have to do it, but only when they are possessed by it.

"You have to find the right, spontaneous moment," the doctor says, "when you feel the moment is right, do it." A few months later, sure enough, the woman is back and the doctor confirms her pregnancy. "May I enquire if my advice was of any help?" "Oh, doc," she says, "it was terrific. We were having a romantic candlelight dinner with french wine and soft music, and suddenly our hands met. We were looking deep into each others eyes and we both knew, 'this is it!' We simply threw off the tablecloth and made love right on the table."

"Amazing," says the doctor. "Yes, it was great," she says, "the only sad thing about it is, that we can never go to that restaurant again."

Question 3:

Satyam Svarup, the difference between easy and lazy is the difference between the positive and the negative. Easiness is a positive feeling; it is not empty. You are overflowing with energy, but you are simply enjoying the energy with ease. The very flow of energy is becoming an inner dance. In this very sense, Chuang Tzu says, "easy is right and right is easy."

Out of this easiness everything is possible, because it is not lack of energy, it is a fullness of energy, without tensions. It is energy relaxed. And the more relaxed it is, the more fresh, the more young, the more potential to be creative.

Laziness is negative; it is just feeling drained, having no energy, a kind of emptiness - No longing to do anything, no desire to create anything. One is simply tired, exhausted, spent.

The distinction is very subtle. One can be confused. When Chuang Tzu says, "Easy is right," you can think that perhaps laziness is right. Easiness is just the opposite of laziness - diametrically opposite. Easiness has a grace and an overflowing aura of energy. Laziness makes you almost appear like a corpse.

One ancient parable in India is: Two lazy persons are lying down underneath a tree; it is the season for mangoes to become ripe and a mango falls just by the side of one lazy man. A few minutes pass and nobody moves. Finally the man on whose side the mango is lying, says to his friend, "This is a great friendship. You know the mango has fallen just by my side, and you are so utterly lazy that you cannot even put the mango in my mouth - great friendship!"

And the other lazy man says, "Yes, it is a great friendship. Just a few minutes before, why had you closed your eyes - remember? A dog was pissing in my ear, and you could not even stop the dog or shoo the dog away, and you are talking about great friendship."

These are utterly spent people - as if much of their soul has left the body. Just somehow they are breathing, with great difficulty. They are breathing only because nobody else can breathe on their behalf. If it was possible that somebody else could breathe on their behalf, they would have stopped breathing.

Easiness means disappearance of tensions, anxieties, disappearance of all kinds of perversions, of all that is unnatural, and just becoming a natural human being - so relaxed that no energy is being unnecessarily wasted, not even thoughts are destroying your energy... utterly silent.

A Gautam Buddha is easy. Only in meditation will you find one day the exact meaning of easiness - not in any dictionary. When you feel so full like an ocean, everything is possible if you want, but there is no desire; the ocean is silent, resting. And just the feel of resting energy is so blissful, so peaceful, that if you come close to a man who is easy, you will start feeling yourself, a certain relaxedness.

Satyam Svarup, avoid laziness and create yourself a pool of energy without any ripples, and the small statement of Chuang Tzu, "Easy is right" will be understood in its essential meaning. Anything that is not easy and creates tensions in you, anxiety and anguish, is not right - don't do it. Follow the easy way to the point that you forget that it is easy. It becomes so natural to you that there is no need to remember that it is easy, or to remember that it is right. This is the state of enlightenment.

Easy flows the river of consciousness towards the ocean.

Dirty Ernie is sitting in the back of his first grade class, a can of beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. The teacher says, "Okay class, today we are going to play a game. I am going to say a few words about something and you try to tell me what I am thinking about, okay? Here we go: The first thing is a fruit; it is round and it is red."

Little Billy raises his hand and the teacher calls on him; little Billy stands up and says, "An apple."

The teacher says, "No, it is a tomato, but I am glad to see you are thinking. Now the next one is yellow and it is a fruit."

Bobby raises his hand, and after the teacher calls on him, he stands and says, "It is a grapefruit."

The teacher says, "No, it is a lemon; but I am glad to see you are thinking. Okay, the next question is round and it is a green vegetable."

Little Mary stands up and says, "It is a lettuce." "No," says the teacher, "It is a pea. But I am glad to see you are thinking." then she says, "Okay, that's enough for today." Just then, Ernie raises his hand and says, "Hey teach, mind if I ask you one?" "No," she replies, "go right ahead."

"Okay," says Ernie, "I got something in my pocket. It is long, and it is hard, and it has got a pink tip."

"Ernie," shouts the teacher, "that is disgusting." "It is a pencil," says Ernie, "but I am glad to see that you are thinking."

Satyam Svarup, just go on thinking and you will find the difference between laziness and easiness.

Okay, Vimal?

Yes, Osho.