Truth: the greatest surgery

Question 1:

Deva Nirupo, the moment you come closer to me, you are coming closer to yourself, because I am not here as a person. Coming closer to me is coming closer to your future.

People are afraid about the unknown, always, because the known seems so well acquainted that you can remain unconscious with the known; there is no need of any alertness.

The unknown requires you to be more conscious, more alert. And the fear is coming from your false ego, because the more conscious you become, the less is the possibility for the ego to exist. That's why you are feeling that something is dying in you.

This happens only to the fortunate ones, because anything that can die in you, is not you. Your life source is eternal and knows no death. You can take it as a criterion, that whatever is dying, deserves dying. It was false and you were unnecessarily identified with it. With its death you will realize your reality and that reality never dies - it is always there.

Your question is, "I am feeling closer and closer to you as my lover and my friend." You will have to come a little closer, so that even the friend and the lover disappear. These are distant relationships, however intimate, but there is a distance: you are you, I am I. And friendship can be broken and the love can disappear, so don't get stuck rejoicing in the feeling of love and friendship. You have to come a little closer.

The exact closeness is only one, when neither you exist nor I exist. As far as I am concerned, I do not exist at all - it is only your imagination. My ego has died decades ago. But unless your ego dies, you will not be able to see the point that ego can die and not only do you still remain alive, you become more alive.

These are the mysteries of life... when the friend disappears, it is not that the enemy appears. When the friend disappears, then you will find the first taste of true friendliness. When love disappears, you will find that now love is no more a relationship, but your very being.

You are love.

So whatever is happening, is on the right path, in the right direction.

"My trust in you is helping me to sink deeper and deeper into myself." A little deeper, and the trust in me will become trust in yourself; and only that can be relied upon.

Trust in me is going to disappear just as friendship and love. It is certainly deeper than friendship and love, but not the deepest. At the deepest point when your trust disappears, you will suddenly find a trust in yourself - and my work is not to make you a slave, but to make you a totally free individual.

"Fear is there for the unknown, and when I relax into it I fall more into myself." The fear is two-sided.

It is of the unknown, in which you are moving, step by step, and it is also of the known, that is leaving you. All that you had known about yourself will be gone, and all that will come, you have never even dreamt about it! But that is your essential self.

That's why you are feeling "... and after that, I feel as if something is dying." Don't hold onto it. That which is dying, help it to die - the quicker, the better. And when something dies, don't carry the corpse with you, because your attachment has been with it for so long, that even though it is dead, you would not like to depart from it. But unless depart from it, the barrier will not be broken between you and your reality. It is an thin barrier, but very strong.

So rejoice that something is dying, and remember that you are not to collect corpses. Many things will die; don't be a collector of antiques. You have a much more beautiful future, much more fresh, much more eternal....

And not for even a single moment be worried whether you are on the right path or not. What is happening can happen only if you are on the right path; these are indications, evidences. Just be intelligent: let the dead be dead. Don't look backwards, go ahead.

You are alive, otherwise, who would take note that something is dying? Don't freak out when something starts dying, because that will be going backwards.

Three Irishmen were caught up in the French Revolution and were sentenced to be guillotined. As the first man waited for the blade to fall, it stuck, and he was released according to the old custom.

The same thing happened to the second man, and he too was released.

As the third man looked up, waiting for the blade to fall, he shouted, "Hold on! I think I can see what is making it stick."

Don't be an Irishman. Be a little more intelligent. And intelligence always brings with it awareness, clarity. You can see yourself that the dead which is dead, was something false - that you have been taught to be false. Now that you are moving towards the real, the unreal has to fade away.

The unreal cannot encounter the real; the real is the death of the unreal. And there is much more which you will have to see dying - but remember you have never died before. Death is the greatest lie in existence; it is the most fictitious thing.

The real life always continues in different forms and ultimately, when you realize it, it moves into the formless. It becomes universal and that is the most blessed and the most ecstatic moment: you have found the very meaning of life.

Question 2:

Satyadharma, it is a very significant question. There have been men who have been trying not to tell the unpleasant truth and only tell the pleasant truth, but these men do not know what truth is. Once a man knows truth, then he is not concerned about consequences. The concern for consequences is only for the coward, and cowards have never been known to know the truth.

It has to be remembered that truth is almost always going to be unpleasant, for the simple reason that the whole of humanity is living in many lies. The truth itself is not unpleasant, but because people's lies are exposed, it feels to them as unpleasant. And if you try to make the truth pleasant, you will have to make it a lie. Only a lie can be a pleasant thing for the masses because it fits with their conditionings.

My own experience is just the opposite: The man who has experienced truth will say it in its absolute sharpness, so that he can cut through your layers of lies.

All surgery is unpleasant. And truth is the greatest surgery in existence.

I am reminded of a story about Gautam Buddha. One day early in the morning, a man came. He was an atheist; his belief was that there is no God. Now, atheism is one of the lies. You have not explored the outer space, neither have you explored the inner space, and still you have come to the conclusion that there is no God. You have never meditated, you have never given a chance to yourself to feel the divineness of existence - still you go on carrying your belief that there is no God.

The man asked Gautam Buddha, "What is your opinion? Is there a God or not?" Buddha looked at the man. There was a moment of silence and he said, "There is nothing except God."

His intimate disciple Ananda was with him. He could not believe it because Buddha never taught about God, and suddenly, to a stranger, he says, "There is nothing but God."

And in the same day in the afternoon, another man came who was a theist. He believed there is a God; a God who created the world. Now this too is a lie because even if God created the world there cannot be an eye witness. If you accept that there was an eyewitness, that means the world was already there.

And if the God created the world, the world does not show the qualities that God would have given to humanity: constant violence, constant war, jealousy, anger, ego, depression, anguish. Unless God created these things in you, they cannot be in you. Looking into man it is possible to believe that the devil created man, but not God. And moreover, what was God doing before he created the universe, for eternity? And what was the sudden motive to create the existence?

According to Christians, He created the existence only four thousand and four years before Jesus Christ; so six thousand years are nothing compared to eternity. What was he doing all this time?

And why suddenly the motivation to create it? Has the motivation come from somewhere else? That will mean that existence was there before God created it. Otherwise, the motivation....

And finally, if existence needs to be created by God then the question is very relevant. Who created God Himself? And if you can accept the idea that God does not need any creator, then why unnecessarily bring in a useless hypothesis - then existence, can remain without any creator.

Anyway, God has to remain without any creator. With existence we are acquainted - it is there, all around. God is only in the beliefs of people.

And the man wanted to know Gautam Buddha's opinion... and Gautam Buddha said, "God? There is no God anywhere. Existence is self-sufficient; it does not need any creator. Existence itself is creativity."

Now Ananda was getting more puzzled. But it was the routine... Buddha had told him, "Whatever questions arise in your mind, when I am going to sleep and all the visitors have gone, then you can ask. Don't disturb my conversation with the visitors."

And in the evening a third man came. He was neither a theist nor an atheist; he was just an innocent seeker. He said to Buddha, "I don't know whether God exists or not. But there is a great urge in me to seek the truth. Can you be of any help?"

Rather than answering him, Buddha closed his eyes. There was utter silence... and Ananda was surprised. Seeing Buddha closing his eyes and sitting in silence, that man also closed his eyes and sat in silence. Almost an hour must have passed. Then the man opened his eyes, touched Gautam Buddha's feet and said, "Your answer is so precious that I will keep it in my heart forever."

Now it was too much, and as the man left, Ananda was furious. He said to Gautam Buddha, "What is going on? In one day you have contradicted yourself again and again and again. First you say there is only God and nothing else, and then you say there is no God - it is an absolutely useless hypothesis. And to this third man you don't say anything. And that great fellow receives the answer and I was present, but I have not received any answer! He touched your feet in deep gratitude, with tears of joy in his eyes, and he has gone so fulfilled..."

Gautam Buddha said to Ananda, "First, those were not your questions, neither were the answers given to you. You are unnecessarily poking your nose into other people's affairs."

Ananda said, "That I understand, but I am a human being. Although they were not my questions I have heard them; although the answers were not given to me I have heard them. And inside me there is so much trouble - what is the reality? And why should Gautam Buddha go on giving contradictory statements to different people?"

The answer that Buddha gave to Ananda is very important. He said, "The first man has been living in a lie, that there is no God; I had to shatter his lie. Without searching, it is much too egoistic to say that there is no God. And he has not done anything to discover the reality. He had come to me just so that I can support his lie and he can tell people, 'not only do I say that there is no God, even Gautam Buddha has supported me.'

"And the same was the case with the second man - he was also living a lie. He knows nothing about God. He has simply acquired the belief from the atmosphere, from the society, that God exists and God created the world. I had to destroy his lie.

"The third man was very innocent. He had no lie. He had no belief, this way or that. That's why I could not answer him through words. I became silent. And he was an authentic seeker. Seeing me closing my eyes, and sitting in silence, he understood this was the answer. He closed his eyes, sat with me for one hour, and in that silence he understood... felt, not a belief, but something real within himself. Although I had not given him the answer, he has received it."

The man of truth cannot make it pleasant, because the only way to make it pleasant is to make it a lie. Lies are very pleasant; you never deny them. Somebody says, "I love you, you are the most beautiful person I have come across." You accept it, you never even enquire, "Have you ever met all the people of the world? Otherwise your statement is not true."

Say to the ugliest woman, "You are a beauty and I have fallen in love with you," and she will believe you because it is such a pleasure that at least somebody believes you beautiful. She will never doubt the fact, she will never question it. It is so pleasant that any doubt, any question cannot disturb it.

Truth is going to be a very shattering experience; otherwise the people who crucified Jesus were not mad. He was not making his truth pleasant. He was saying it in its utter nudity, in its utter purity, as it is.

And truth can be said only as it is; you cannot edit it, you cannot add something to it, you cannot delete something from it, you cannot distort it. So the people who have been telling pleasant truths are really cowards. They don't know anything about truth. All that they know are your lies, and they support your lies and it is very consoling.

It is a contract: They will support your lies and make you feel good and consoled, and you will give them great respect, as if they are sages, saints, men of wisdom - it is a mutual agreement. And the more respect you give them, the sweeter they will make their lies. And the sweeter the lies are, the more respect you will give to them.

You will not crucify such a person. You may give him a Nobel prize, your universities will honor him with "D.Litt.'s", he will be universally respected. But the man of truth is destined to be crucified. Even if you don't crucify him, the whole world is going to condemn him because he is disturbing your sleep, he is disturbing your lies which were very consoling. And the way of truth that he is telling you about is a great search; you are not ready for it, you don't have time for it.

And why waste your time? Jesus Christ has found... you can believe. Krishna has found... you can believe. Buddha has found - now what is the need for you to discover it again? You can simply believe.

This is the difference between the objective sciences and subjective religiousness. For example, Edison discovered electricity. Now it is not needed that when you electrify your house, you have to discover electricity again. Neither does the electrician who comes to put electricity in your house have any first-hand experience - there is no need. Once it is discovered, it becomes the common property of everybody. This is true about objective reality, but this is not true about subjective reality.

Truth is a subjective experience. Buddha experienced in his own innermost being, and unless you go to the same space within yourself you will not find it. And to go to your own innermost center, you will have to leave all your borrowed beliefs, which hurts, because they were so consoling. Without any effort, beliefs are available in the marketplace.

Satyadharma, you say, "It seems that some men of truth..." - they were not men of truth - "after contemplating the consequences of telling the truth..." no man of truth ever contemplates the consequences. Only cowards think about the consequences... whether to say it or not to say it, whether to say it in this way or that way so that you can retain your respectability, so that you will not be poisoned like Socrates, or killed like Mansoor, or crucified like Jesus.

These people that you think are men of truth are men of untruth. They are contemplating the consequences so that they can exploit you and gain respectability and nourishment for their egos.

You are saying, "They came to observe,' Say the truth, but say the pleasant truth.'" Do you think there are two kinds of truth, pleasant and unpleasant? Truth is simply truth; two plus two are four.

How can you make it pleasant or unpleasant? It is simply there without any fear of consequences.

And truth is such a big experience, the biggest experience, that in that very experience, you will be drowned. Who will remain out of it to contemplate? You will become the truth. And whatever you say, and whatever you do, and whatever is your way of life, is going to disturb millions of people around the world, because it will be just the very opposite of what they have been believing.

Truth makes you absolutely alone, outside the crowd, and the crowd takes revenge.

When Jesus was crucified, Judea, the country where he was born, was under the Roman Empire.

A Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, could not see why Jesus should be crucified. But all the rabbis and the highest priest of the Jewish temple were insistent, unanimous, that he should be crucified.

Pontius Pilate could not see any reason - he has not committed any crime, he has not harmed anybody. There is no valid reason to murder this innocent young man, and he is only thirty-three.

All that he does... he has certain teachings and those who want to listen to him - and they are not many - it is their freedom to listen to him.

But the problem was that Pontius Pilate was Roman and Jesus was a Jew. Whatever Jesus was saying was going against the Jewish lies. It was not at all concerned with Roman paganism, so it was not hurting Pontius Pilate. So for his consolation, he made a last attempt to save Jesus.

It was the convention that every year when the Jews have their holidays, they were allowed to ask for one man who was going to be crucified, and he would be given freedom - he would not be crucified.

So this was his last hope. Three persons were going to be crucified and Pilate was hoping that they would ask for Jesus because the other two were murderers, rapists - they had done all kinds of crimes. But the whole crowd of rabbis and Jews shouted for a murderer who had committed seven murders to be released. Not a single voice was heard shouting that Jesus should be released.

But the psychology is very simple to understand. Jesus was saying truths which were going against the Jewish tradition. For example, in the old testament, which is a Jewish book, God is made to say, "I am not a nice man. I am very jealous. That I never forgive, and those who go against me will have to suffer. I am not your uncle."

And Jesus said, "But I say unto you that God is love." Now Jews cannot tolerate this; he is turning the whole philosophy upside down. God Himself is saying that He cannot forgive, and Jesus says, "Don't be worried, He is pure love. You will be forgiven."

It was not against the Roman conceptions, Roman beliefs. Truth is simply truth, neither pleasant nor unpleasant. If you silently listen to it, without prejudice, you will not feel that it is pleasant or unpleasant. But your mind is full of prejudices, and if it goes against your prejudices, then it becomes unpleasant. If it supports your prejudices, it becomes pleasant.

Satyadharma, no man of truth ever contemplates the consequences. And it is good; otherwise this world would have been even poorer in spirit, more ugly in its behavior than it is now.

These are the people: Socrates, Mansoor and Jesus, who have raised the human consciousness by sacrificing themselves. They knew perfectly well that to say the truth was inviting death, but death does not matter to the man of truth. He knows there is no death - the body dies, but your consciousness remains always.

So drop this whole idea because this is simply cunningness, not the way of truth.

A new officer arrives in the French foreign legion in the Sahara, and he quickly tries to adapt to the ways of life there. One day he was very puzzled to see all the men rushing off, out of the camp, and he asked, "What is going on?" A soldier explained, "Well, you see, all this time here in the desert, and no women ever come here, so when the camels come, we... ah... take the opportunity."

" Ah yes, I see," says the new officer. "But then tell me, why such a rush?"

"Oh," the man answers, "of course, nobody wants to get stuck with an ugly one."

What you are saying is absolutely ugly. Truth has to be pure, uncontaminated, unpolluted, without any fear of any consequences - only then can it help humanity. Perhaps it may be dangerous for the man who utters it, but it is worth it. To be sacrificed for truth is one of the great blessings, one of the greatest ecstasies.

Socrates was offered three alternatives by the judges because they felt the man was innocent, but the crowd was shouting that he should be killed. Athens in those days was a city-state, and it was a direct democracy. So every citizen - slaves were not counted as human beings, so leave out the slaves, and half of Athens was full of slaves - but the citizens had the right to vote directly on any point. It was not like our democracies where you choose a representative for five years. They had no representatives, they represented themselves directly.

So the whole of Athens was shouting, "Socrates has to be killed because he is destroying our morality, he is destroying our religion, he is corrupting the mind of our youth and we cannot tolerate it anymore."

The chief justice knew that it was impossible to save Socrates, and that the man was absolutely innocent. His only crime was that he said the truth as it is.

So he offered three alternatives to Socrates. He said, "You can leave Athens - it is only a city-state and you can live just outside the city boundary. Those who want to be your disciples can come there and Athens will not have any power to kill you."

Socrates said, "That will be very cowardly. My inner truth will never forgive me. I have to face the consequence, but I am facing it because of truth, and it is a joy."

The chief justice said, "Then you can do one thing. You can go on living in Athens, but stop teaching your truth. If you promise that you will not teach the truth, then there is no need for me to kill an innocent man."

Socrates said, "This is not acceptable. For what should I be living if I cannot teach the truth? Then death is better, far better."

Unwillingly, in spite of himself, the chief justice had to give him the death sentence, death by poison.

Do you think Socrates was not intelligent? Alternatives were offered: He could have moved out of Athens - but truth knows no compromise. He could have stopped teaching, he was already very old. But when you are pregnant with truth, you cannot stop teaching. You have to say it to those who are blind, who are deaf, and who are living in all kinds of lies.

He preferred to die. He said to the chief justice, "Remember, I am choosing death in favor of truth.

And because of this death, whatever I have been teaching will remain for centuries. Even the names of your judges, and you, will be forgotten. Nobody will know this crowd who is shouting to kill me, but my death will make it a guarantee that even after my death, my words will go on improving human consciousness."

But the people who are living in lies will always say the same thing, "Morality is in danger, religion is in danger, culture is in danger. Particularly, the minds of the youth are being corrupted."

These are the charges against me too - exactly the same, worded almost the same. And I was amazed that after twenty-five centuries, I was deported from Greece for the same reasons for which Socrates was poisoned. They could not kill me because I was just a tourist. I was not a citizen. I had not committed any crime there, and I had not even moved out of the house where I was living.

But the archbishop of the Orthodox Christian church of Greece, which is the oldest church in the world, threatened the government, and he threatened the owner of my house, my host, saying," If he is not moved immediately out of Athens, I am going to dynamite the house and kill him and the twenty-five people who are staying with him."

I could not believe that in twenty-five centuries nothing has changed - he listed the same crimes. He was giving telegrams to the president, to the prime minister, saying," This man's presence is going to destroy our tradition, our religion, our culture. And this man is corrupting the minds of our youth.

And I had been there only for fifteen days, just on a tourist visa for four weeks. Two weeks had passed and they had no reason to deport me.

But the old mind is still there. When I was arrested and brought to Athens from the small island where I was staying, the chief of the police was there with forty police officers to welcome me. I said, "In the middle of the night, there is no need for forty police-officers with loaded guns. I am not a violent man, I don't have even a pistol, and I am under arrest. Why have you gathered this crowd?"

My people in Athens - Amrito, who had invited me to Greece, was there - they were trying hard, that at least for the night, I should be allowed to stay in a hotel. But they were not willing, even for six hours, to let me stay in a hotel. I had to leave immediately.

I used to think that England is a far more developed country... so I told my pilot, my jet plane was there," It is better you leave Greece and we can rest at the London airport".

But I was amazed that human stupidity is the same all over the world. The London port authorities would not allow me even to stay in the first class lounge at the airport for just six hours. The officer showed me the file saying that the parliament had decided that I cannot do anything there. They were afraid, that from Greece I might come to England, and their fear had proved right.

But I said, "I am not going into England. This is an international airport and from the lounge there is no way to enter England." And the same charges were made: corrupting the youth, destroying the morality, the religion, the culture. I asked the officer, "You just think, how can I do this while I am asleep at the airport, just in six hours?" A culture that has been there for twenty-five centuries, a religion that has been there for twenty-five centuries, a morality that has been taught to every generation for twenty-five centuries - if it can be destroyed by a man within six hours sleeping at the airport, it is not worth much; it should be destroyed.

But I said, "My pilot cannot fly because he has run his whole time; now it will be illegal. You are forcing my pilot to go against the international flight laws."

He said, "I am in a dilemma." And he was continually going in the room and phoning the home minister, the prime minister asking, "What to do now?" And finally they decided that I could stay, but only in the jail for six hours, and in the morning I have to leave immediately.

I had a certain respect for England, it is an educated country with great universities like Oxford and Cambridge. But it seems man remains idiotic. No Oxford, no Cambridge can make any difference.

Truth has to be said.

Just the other day I received a letter from the German parliament. One year before they had passed an order that I cannot enter into Germany for the same reasons. Not only that, my airplane cannot land on any German airport for refueling. One sannyasin has appealed to the parliament appeals committee, saying," Now one year has passed, and this ugly order should be cancelled."

That's why I have received a letter again. A copy of the letter has been given to the sannyasin saying that this order cannot be cancelled because this man is dangerous. They don't mention what danger - just the same old crimes they had imposed on Socrates.

Almost twenty-one countries have decided that I cannot enter in their countries. And these are the most developed countries of the world.

Satyadharma, your name means "truth is religion." And there is no other value higher than truth. Life can be sacrificed for it - but on no account is any compromise possible.

Okay, Vimal?

Yes, Osho.