A Chance To Pour My Grace Into You

The first question:

Question 1:

Latifa, love is painful because it creates the way for bliss. Love is painful because it transforms; love is mutation. Each transformation is going to be painful because the old has to be left for the new.

The old is familiar, secure, safe, the new is absolutely unknown. You will be moving in an uncharted ocean. You cannot use your mind with the new; with the old, the mind is skillful. The mind can function only with the old; with the new, the mind is utterly useless.

Hence, fear arises, and leaving the old, comfortable, safe world, the world of convenience, pain arises. It is the same pain that the child feels when he comes out of the womb of the mother. It is the same pain that the bird feels when he comes out of the egg. It is the same pain that the bird will feel when he will try for the first time to be on the wing.

The fear of the unknown, and the security of the known, the insecurity of the unknown, the unpredictability of the unknown, makes one very much frightened.

And because the transformation is going to be from the self towards a state of no-self, agony is very deep. But you Cannot have ecstasy without going through agony. If the gold wants to be purified, it has to pass through fire.

Love is fire.

It is because of the pain of love, millions of people live a loveless life. They too suffer, and their suffering is futile. To suffer in love is not to suffer in vain. To suffer in love is creative; it takes you to higher levels of consciousness. To suffer without love is utterly a waste; it leads you nowhere, it keeps you moving in the same vicious circle.

The man who is without love is narcissistic, he is closed. He knows only himself. And how much can he know himself if he has not known the other, because only the other can function as a mirror?

You will never know yourself without knowing the other. Love is very fundamental for self-knowledge too. The person who has not known the other in deep love, in intense passion, in utter ecstasy, will not be able to know who he is, because he will not have the mirror to see his own reflection.

Relationship is a mirror, and the purer the love is, the higher the love is, the better the mirror, the cleaner the mirror. But the higher love needs that you should be open. The higher love needs you to be vulnerable. You have to drop your armor; that is painful. You have not to be constantly on guard.

You have to drop the calculating mind. You have to risk. You have to live dangerously. The other can hurt you; that is the fear in being vulnerable. The other can reject you; that is the fear in being in love.

The reflection that you will find in the other of your own self may be ugly; that is the anxiety. Avoid the mirror. But by avoiding the mirror you are not going to become beautiful. By avoiding the situation you are not going to grow either. The challenge has to be taken.

Latifa, one has to go into love. That is the first step towards God, and it cannot be bypassed. Those who try to bypass the step of love will never reach God. That is absolutely necessary because you become aware of your totality only when you are provoked by the presence of the other, when your presence is enhanced by the presence of the other, when you are brought out of your narcissistic, closed world under the open sky.

Love is an open sky. To be in love is to be on the wing. But certainly, the unbounded sky creates fear.

And to drop the ego is very painful because we have been taught to cultivate the ego. We think the ego is our only treasure. We have been proteCting it, we have been decorating it, we have been continuously polishing it, and when love knocks on the door, all that is needed to fall in love is to put aside the ego; certainly it is painful. It is your whole life's work, it is all that you have created - this ugly ego, this idea that "I am separate from existence. "

This idea is ugly because it is untrue. This idea is illusory, but our society exists, is based on this idea that each person is a person, not a presence.

The truth is that there is no person at all in the world; there is only presence. You are not - not as an ego, separate from the whole. You are part of the whole. The whole penetrates you, the whole breathes in you, pulsates in you, the whole is your life.

Love gives you the first experience of being in tune with something that is not your ego. Love gives you the first lesson that you can fall into harmony with someone who has never been part of your ego. If you can be in harmony with a woman, if you can be in harmony with a friend, with a man, if you can be in harmony with your child or with your mother, why can't you be in harmony with all human beings? And if to be in harmony with a single person gives such joy, what will be the outcome if you are in harmony with all human beings? And if you can be in harmony with all human beings, why can't you be in harmony with animals and birds and trees? Then one step leads to another.

Love is a ladder. It starts with one person, it ends with the totality. Love is the beginning, God is the end. To be afraid of love, to be afraid of the growing pains of love, is to remain enclosed in a dark cell.

Modern man is living in a dark cell; it is narcissistic. Narcissism is the greatest obsession of the modern mind.

And then there are problems, problems which are meaningless. There are problems which are creative because they lead you to higher awareness. There are problems which lead you nowhere; they simply keep you tethered, they simply keep you in your old mess.

Love creates problems. You can avoid those problems by avoiding love. But those are very essential problems! They have to be faced, encountered; they have to be lived and gone through and gone beyond. And to go beyond, the way is through. Love is the only real thing worth doing. All else is secondary. If it helps love, it is good. All else is just a means, love is the end. So whatsoever the pain, go into love.

If you don't go into love, as many people have decided, then you are stuck with yourself. Then your life is not a pilgrimage, then your life is not a river going to the ocean; your life is a stagnant pool, dirty, and soon there will be nothing but dirt and mud. To keep clean, one needs to keep flowing. A river remains clean because it goes on flowing. Flow is the process of remaining continuously virgin.

A lover remains a virgin. All lovers are virgin. The people who don't love cannot remain virgin; they become dormant, stagnant; they start stinking sooner or later - and sooner than later - because they have nowhere to go. Their life is dead.

That's where modern man finds himself, and because of this, all kinds of neuroses, all kinds of madnesses, have become rampant. Psychological illness has taken epidemic proportions. It is no more that a few individuals are psychologically ill; the reality is the whole earth has become a madhouse. The whole of humanity is suffering from a kind of neurosis.

And that neurosis is coming from your narcissistic stagnancy. Everyone is stuck with one's own illusion of having a separate self; then people go mad. And this madness is meaningless, unproductive, uncreative. Or people start committing suicide. Those suicides are also unproductive, uncreative.

You may not commit suicide by taking poison or jumping from a cliff or by shooting yourself, but you can commit a suicide which is a very slow process, and that's what happens. Very few people commit suicide suddenly. Others have decided for a slow suicide; gradually, slowly, slowly they die.

But almost, the tendency to be suicidal has become universal.

This is no way to live, and the reason, the fundamental reason, is we have forgotten the language of love. We are no more courageous enough to go into that adventure called love.

Hence people are interested in sex, because sex is not risky. It is momentary, you don't get involved.

Love is involvement; it is commitment. It is not momentary. Once it takes roots, it can be forever. It can be a lifelong involvement. Love needs intimacy, and only when you are intimate does the other become a mirror. When you meet sexually with a woman or a man, you have not met at all; in fact, you avoided the soul of the other person. You just used the body and escaped, and the other used your body and escaped. You never became intimate enough to reveal each other's original faces.

Love is the greatest Zen koan.

Latifa, it is painful, but don't avoid it. If you avoid it you have avoided the greatest opportunity to grow. Go into it, suffer love, because through the suffering comes great ecstasy. Yes, there is agony, but out of the agony, ecstasy is born. Yes, you will have to die as an ego, but if you can die as an ego, you will be born as God, as a Buddha. And love will give you the first tongue-tip-taste of Tao, of Sufism, of Zen. Love will give you the first proof that God is, that life is not meaningless.

The people who say life is meaningless are the people who have not known love. All that they are saying is that their life has missed love.

Let there be pain, let there be suffering. Go through the dark night, and you will reach to a beautiful sunrise. It is only in the womb of the dark night that the sun evolves. It is only through the dark night that the morning comes.

My whole approach here is that of love. I teach only love and only love and nothing else. You can forget about God; that is just an empty word. You can forget about prayers because they are only rituals imposed by others on you. Love is the natural prayer, not imposed by anybody. You are born with it. Love is the true God - not the God of theologians, but the God of Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, the God of the Sufis. Love is a tariqa, a method, to kill you as a separate individual and to help you become the infinite. Disappear as a dewdrop and become the ocean, but you will have to pass through the door of love.

And certainly when one starts disappearing like a dewdrop, and one has lived long as a dewdrop, it hurts, because one has been thinking, "I am this, and now this is going. I am dying. " You are not dying, but only an illusion is dying. You have become identified with the illusion, true, but the illusion is still an illusion. And only when the illusion is gone will you be able to see who you are. And that revelation brings you to the ultimate peak of joy, bliss, celebration.

The second question:

Question 2:

Alok, neither have I spoken to you nor has Jesus. It is only your Christian conditioning. You don't know a thing about Jesus - you can't know.

And to come to me through Jesus is not to come to me. If Jesus remains between me and you, there will be no connection, no contact, no communion. If you understand me, then there is no distinction between me and Jesus, so why go on carrying this Jesus of your mind? This is just your past speaking to you, and you are trying to hide your past behind a beautiful name, Jesus. You don't know a thing about Jesus.

I am here, you are with me, and you cannot understand me. How can you understand a Jesus? The gap between you and Jesus is that of two thousand years. All that you know about Jesus is what you have been taught. Although you say that you don't believe in the Jesus that has been given to you by the Christians - but what other Jesus do you know? If there had not been a Christian church you would not even have heard of Jesus. All that you know about Jesus you know through the Christian propaganda.

I am here confronting you, and still you are keeping a curtain between me and you. Now, you call that curtain Jesus.

Your question is relevant to many people. It is not only that wrong things can become barriers between a Master and a disciple; the so-called good things, beautiful things, can become even far stronger barriers between the Master and the disciple. In fact, only the good things can be the barriers - because you cannot think of them as barriers.

You say, "Did the REAL Master Jesus...?" What do you know about the real and the unreal Jesus?

And how are you going to make a distinction between the real and the unreal? You will make the distinction - and you are living in darkness, you are groping in darkness. Out of your confusion, whatsoever you decide is going to be more confusion and nothing else. Who is going to decide what is real and what is unreal? You, Alok? That is sacrilegious.

That's what the Jews were doing when they crucified Jesus. They Were deciding, and they decided, "He is not the real Christ. He is not the messiah we have been waiting for. "

How are you going to decide?

Now, Alok has two conditionings in his mind: one is Christian, another is communist. Now, Christians are dangerous, communists are dangerous - Alok is doubly dangerous. Now he will have a concept of Jesus which is in tune with his communist idea; his Jesus will be a communist. His Jesus will be "comrade Jesus". And that will be fiction - your fiction. You impose something on Jesus, and everything can be imposed, because people like Jesus or Buddha are so pure, so empty - they are white, empty curtains - you can impose anything on them, and they are so non-resistant.

Jesus has said, "Resist not evil." These people are non-resistant; you can impose anything. And now they are not there either to do anything about it. Jesus cannot say, "I am not a comrade." You can find statements which are of your liking, and then you can prove that Jesus was the first communist.

In fact, the real apostles of Jesus are not Thomas, Luke, but Karl Marx, Engels, Lenin, and particularly Mao - because Alok is Chinese too.

What Jesus do you think is real? On what criterion will you decide it? You will be choosing according to your mind; you will drop many things which don't fit with you. And this is the wrong approach.

You are already in great confusion, Alok. Just look at your confusion, and don't try to find out what is the "real" Jesus. The best way is to find out who are you - what is real in you. And that is the reality of Jesus, because the real is not separate. Whatsoever is real in you is real in me. Whatsoever is unreal in you is unreal in me. The only way to know is to come into a conscious state of your own reality: what is real in you. You are living in dreams and thoughts - you have not contacted your own ground of being - and then you start deciding who is the real Jesus.

Not only that, then that real Jesus sends you here to me. Now you will not even be able to understand me, because continuously the Jesus that you have created in your mind will be interfering.

You say, "Did the real Master Jesus, the one beyond all Christian distortions...?" And what do you think, you are not distorting? Maybe it is your distortion, but do you think your distortion is better than the distortion of the Christians? It can't be better; a distortion is a distortion, and all minds distort. Only in a state of meditation is there no distortion.

So please, become more meditative. When you are silent, utterly silent and quiet, contented, fulfilled, just herenow and no thought moves in your mind, the mind functions no more and you are transported into an unbounded space, contentless, thoughtless, but fully alert, you will know what is real in you. And whatsoever is real in you is real in Jesus, is real in me - because it is real.

Real is real. It makes no differences between me and you, Jesus and Buddha. Reality is one.

You say, "Did the real Master Jesus, the one beyond all the Christian distortions, to whom I once opened my heart, did he send me to you?"

Why bother him? Can't you come to me on your own? Can't you have even that much responsibility?

You are throwing the responsibility on Jesus? So if something goes wrong he will be wrong. If I am not proved right according to you, then Jesus will be at fault and you can complain. This is childish.

Why can't you come yourself? When are you going to become a little more mature? The moment a person is mature he takes responsibility on his own shoulders.

This is tricky, cunning, clever. Writing this question, you must have thought that you are writing a beautiful thing. And this is egoistic too: Jesus sends you, Jesus takes care of you, you are so important. On this earth there are millions and millions of people, and Jesus has chosen Alok - just think of it! How great Alok is, and he sends him to me.

Can't you come yourself? How long are you going to lean upon others? Why are you so afraid of committing mistakes? This is just a fear of committing mistakes. Jesus will not commit a mistake - if Jesus sends, then it must be right. If you choose, who knows? It may be wrong. But remember, people only grow through committing many mistakes. Each mistake is an opportunity to grow. Don't be irresponsible and don't hide your irresponsibility behind beautiful names. Jesus is only a trick of your mind.

"All the way back this time, tentative and unsure, I come to you. I would hold this mala and look at your picture and you would say to me, using Jesus' words.... " Why are you making things complicated? Why can't I say things directly to you? Why should I use Jesus' words? It is your own mind that is imposing these words of Jesus on me. It is your own memory that is playing a tape; that is simply an old record.

"'Come unto me ye who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest, for my yoke is easy and my burden light.' " Why should I say it through Jesus' words? But neither have I said anything to you.... I am here, so I can say, "Alok, I have not said a single thing to you." Now Jesus is not here, he cannot refute you, but at least I can refute you. These were your words. These are your desires.

You are afraid of me; you would like to rest, not to change. You would like the yoke to be easy, and it is not easy. You would like it to be light, and it is not light.

Just remember Jesus again. He has also said - but that didn't occur to you - that "Those who are going to follow me will have to carry their crosses on their own shoulders. " Now, to carry a cross on your own shoulders can't be easy, can't be light. It was not light even for Jesus; carrying the cross, the heavy cross, he stumbled on the way. Two, three times he fell on the ground.

The road was uphill. They were going to Golgotha to crucify him, and they had forced him to carry his own cross. It was heavy - crosses can't be light. It was not a gold cross that you can hang around your neck. It was not a cross that Christians, Christian priests, bishops, popes, hang around their necks. It was not a gold cross! His neck was going to be hung on it. And the weight was heavy, and he was thirsty and hungry, and they were forcing him to carry the cross, and he fell two, three times.

And the crucifixion was not easy either. Death cannot be easy. When Mohammed says, "Die before you die," it is not going to be easy. Don't deceive yourself. The work of inner transformation is hard.

But that's what Alok is desiring, that it should not be hard - hoping against hope. When Jesus was crucified on the cross he was really angry at God. For a moment all trust was shattered. He looked at the sky and said, "Have you forsaken me? What are you doing to me?" For a moment it was really hard, unbearable. He recaptured his balance, that is another matter, but the weight was not light. It can't be. No real transformation can be light.

Then why does he say, "Come unto me ye who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest, for my yoke is easy and my burden light"? This is just a seduction. I also seduce you, giving you an idea of a very easy sannyas. It is not.

I have heard, an old man with his young son were lost in a forest. By the evening they reached a small hut. They inquired, "How far is the town?" They were utterly tired. Hungry, thirsty, they wanted to reach the town as soon as possible; they wanted to eat something and rest. And the old man was really old, very old The man in that hut said, "The town is ten miles away. "

Just listening to this, ten miles, the old man simply fell on the ground. He was not even able to take one step - ten miles? The woman who was also in the hut, the wife of the villager, said to her husband, "Please, make it two miles. Look how tired they are. Make it two miles. "

When somebody is too tired it is good not to say the whole thing. Bit by bit let them pass, two miles, then again two miles, then again two miles....

So when you ask me, "When is it going to happen, Osho?" I say, "Soon," just to keep you alive and moving. That's what Jesus is doing, each Master has to do. The whole truth cannot be told to you, you will not be able to bear it; you can absorb it only in small chunks, small bits. Once they are digested you will be able to bear a little more.

But don't try to deceive yourself that Jesus has spoken to you.

You say, "I was surprised by such happiness to be before you in darshan and was transported by the eternal now of your presence. Yet underneath somewhere I have held back. " That has happened because of your idea of Jesus, and he is sending you here and I have been speaking to you through Jesus' words and using his statements. That's why you could not be open totally to me.

Yes, you were happy, but that is nothing compared to the bliss that could have happened if you were really available. Jesus was standing between you and me - and not Jesus really, but your idea of Jesus. And Karl Marx is there and Lenin and Mao. It is a big queue! And to search for you behind this queue is very difficult, Alok.

Let these people be dispersed. I am enough, just as Jesus was enough when he was here. There was no need for anybody else. When you are with a Master the Master is enough. Either you are with him or you are not. If you are with him, he is enough. Then you don't bring Jesus, Buddha, et cetera; there is no need. And I am not saying that they are wrong, but that there is no need. Why unnecessarily complicate the phenomenon? It is already complicated.

Just face me. Just look directly into my eyes and let me approach you. Let me hold your hands.

Either you are with me or you are not with me, but don't play these cunning games, that "I am with you because Jesus has sent me." I have never sent anybody to Jesus, so why should he send anybody to me? He was enough unto himself, I am enough unto myself.

"Yet underneath somewhere I have held back." That is where your Jesus and Mao and all the others are standing and keeping you back, holding you.

"I have a bitter hatred towards false teachers.... " Why should you have a bitter hatred towards false teachers? That Very hatred will not allow you to be in communion with a Master. The false teachers are also needed, because there are false disciples. Where will they go? You never think of the false disciples? You may have never thought about it, never heard the word "false disciple", but false disciples need false teachers. You get only that which you deserve. If you are false, you will get a false teacher.

Why this hatred? The false is also necessary, because knowing the false as false you will be able to know the true as true. Otherwise how will you know? Recognizing the false as false is a great step.

And the real disciple will be thankful even to false teachers, because he will say, "It is through them that I have been able to come to the real Master. "

A man of understanding can use everything. Even poison can be used as nectar. All that is needed is awareness, intelligence. Hatred is not needed at all, because if you are full of hatred for false teachers, even if you come across a true Master your hatred will become a barrier, because how are you going to decide suddenly that "Now I have come to the true"? The suspicion, the doubt, the mistrust, the hatred will be there - and that won't allow you to know the real. And if you can't know the real, you will decide that he is also false. Now you are caught in a vicious circle.

There is no need to carry any hatred, no need to carry any wounds. If you lived with a false teacher that simply shows you were foolish. And living with a false teacher you have become at least that wise, that you know who is a false teacher.

Mulla Nasrudin was selling a certain medicine - it was nothing, just sugar pills, "homeopathic" pills - and he was saying, "Whosoever takes these becomes intelligent." And somebody purchased some, and the next day the man went to Mulla and said, "You deceived me. They were only sugar pills."

And Mulla said, "Look - you have already become wise. Yesterday you could not see that they are just sugar pills. Now, you see? It has worked. "

You were foolish if you got caught by a false teacher. Don't be angry at the false teacher, just see your foolishness. He has not done anything wrong to you. You were foolish enough; that's why you were caught. And if you have become aware that he is false, at least for this much you must be grateful to him. See? It has worked - you are wiser.

And remember always, before coming to the right door you will have to knock on many wrong doors, because a true Master is a rare phenomenon - once in a while. You will have to search the whole earth, and only once in a while will you come across a real Master. But you will come across thousands of unreal pretenders. But they also help; there is no need to carry any hatred for them, they also help. Knocking on a wrong door, seeing that it is wrong, slowly, slowly you become aware of what is wrong. And that's how one learns about what is right.

"I have a bitter hatred," you say, "towards false teachers and have been afraid to be duped again. "

They cannot dupe you unless you are ready to be duped, unless you are willing to be duped. It all depends on you. Never throw the responsibility on anybody else - that's what, Alok, you are doing in your whole question. You throw the responsibility on Jesus, that he has sent you here. You throw the responsibility on false teachers, that they have been duping you. And you keep yourself aloof, as if you are not involved in it at all, that you are not a participant. How can a false teacher dupe you if you are not ready to be duped?

My whole effort is to make you aware of your responsibility because only by becoming aware of your responsibility do you become mature, you become grown-up. And remember, just growing old is not synonymous with being grown-up. Everybody grows old, very few people grow up. Aging is one thing, growing up another. What is the meaning of growing up?taking all the responsibilities, good and bad. Whatsoever happens to you, you are responsible for it.

This vision will help you to grow, because if you are responsible you become more conscious of each step that you take.

You say, "I come cluttered with my fear, doubt, pride, rebellion, guilt and wrath which erupts even at you." The whole problem is one: that you don't take any responsibility on yourself. That's why you erupt in wrath and anger even against me, and for no reason at all.

That's what happened in America. Alok was running a center there in San Francisco. A few sannyasins had gathered, and they said to Alok, "We don't feel Osho's presence in your center as we have felt it in other centers. " And they were right; they were not wrong. They were really sensitive. They must have felt your presence, Alok, not my presence - because you have not yet allowed me to happen to you. You have been a fence sitter. You have been just sitting on the fence, ready to jump if something goes wrong, jump away and escape. You are not yet involved with me; you are not ready to die with me and live with me. You are still carrying your ego. And they were right.

And what happened? When they said this, that they don't feel Osho's presence in Alok's place, he didn't listen to what they were saying, he didn't meditate over it; on the contrary, he threw my mala, jumped on it, broke the mala, went to the ocean and threw it in. And that time also he felt that God was saying to him, "Throw this mala!" and he threw it. Then God said, "Now you a]so jump." But he didn't jump. And he himself wrote to me, "I only followed half. I could not gather that much courage.

" So if it is a question of throwing me, you can throw easily, but if it is a question of throwing yourself, you cannot throw.

If it is a question of choosing between me and you, Alok, you will choose yourself. And that is not the way of a disciple. A disciple would have done just the reverse; he would not have thrown the mala. Yes, he may have jumped himself. He would have said to God, "Okay. If you say for me to jump, I will jump, but I cannot throw the mala."

Remember, just the other day I was telling you about Majnu, who said, "I will only open my eyes to see my beloved Laila"? And then God came, out of great compassion, and he said, "Look who is standing before you! I am God myself, asking you to look at me." But Majnu said, "Get lost. If it is a choice between Laila and God, I choose Laila. "

If someday there is a choice between the Master and God, the disciple will choose the Master - because it is only through the Master that he can reach God. The Master is the bridge. Choosing God against the Master, you will never reach, because you will not have any bridge.

You are full of "fear, doubt, pride, rebellion, guilt, wrath, " but if you look deep down, these are only on the circumference. At the center is nothing but an egoistic narcissistic neurotic attitude. You are an egoist, Alok, and you will have to die as an ego. Only then can I live in you and transform you.

Again, you say, "Osho... I long to trust and surrender, somehow knowing it is the best way for coming home totally, to you, to myself, to Jesus, to the universe." Again Jesus comes in. I am not separate from Jesus, Jesus is not separate from me. There is no need to say "coming to you and coming to Jesus"; it is an unnecessary repetition.

And the whole thing is very calculative; you say, "I long to trust and surrender, somehow knowing it is the best way for coming home totally.... " You are not yet risking. Calculating: this seems to be the best way, the most rational way - to surrender. But how can you surrender with this attitude?

Surrender means there is no way left. Surrender means, "I have failed, and failed totally." Surrender means there is no hope, "There is no possibility of my ever reaching the goal. " In that helplessness, in that hopelessness surrender happens. It is not something that you do; you cannot "do" surrender.

If it is done it is not surrender: you are there as a doer standing behind, you can take it back.

Surrender means you have disappeared. Now you cannot take it back, there is no way. You cannot go back, there is nowhere to go back to. Surrender is a happening, and it only happens not out of calculation but out of the failure of all calculation, when you have utterly failed. You have tried this way and that, and you have tried all the possible ways and you see that you cannot reach anywhere, you go on moving in the same groove.

That's what happened to Buddha. After six years of tremendous effort he came to recognize the fact that whatsoever he is going to do is not going to help. Because it comes out of the ego, how can it take you out of the ego? It comes as part of the ego, is an extension of the ego - how can it take you beyond the ego? It is the ego who becomes the doer; the ego cannot decide to surrender. If it decides, it has deceived you again. Then it is there, controlling even your surrender - and the ego cannot control your surrender. If it is true, surrender means egolessness.

Buddha worked hard for six years in all possible ways, and there was no way to come home. The more he tried, the farther away he was.

One evening, sitting under a tree near the river Niranjana, he just became aware of the whole absurdity of effort as such. He laughed and went to sleep. There was nothing else to do; that laughter was the end of all effort. It was ridiculous. He laughed at himself, went to sleep. "For the first time" - later on, he told his disciples - "For the first time, I slept, because there was no dream, no thought."

When you have dropped all effort, what dream can come to you? What thought can come to you?

There is nothing to do; all doing has failed. He was in a state of utter hopelessness, helplessness.

Don't think that he was sad; when you are really hopeless you cannot be sad either. Sadness means you are still hoping; sadness means this effort has failed, that's why you are sad - but some other effort will succeed. Again you will dream, again you will think, again you will plan, again you will project. Hopelessness means now there is no hope, not that "I am a failure."

In reality there is no possibility for human egos to succeed, because they are illusory and an illusion cannot succeed.

Seeing this, he laughed. In that laughter the transformation happened. He slept the whole night without any dreams, without any thought. It must have been a deep, deep sleep. And by the morning, when the last star was disappearing in the sky, he opened his eyes; and as he saw the last star disappearing, he also disappeared. That's the meaning of becoming enlightened. Then he used to say, "Doing, I failed. Non-doing, I arrived."

The whole secret, the great secret, the secret of the secrets, is in non-doing. Non-doing is surrender.

Alok, you cannot figure it out. You cannot reckon, "Let us now surrender, because surrender seems to be the best way to attain something - bliss, God, Jesus, samadhi, enlightenment, nirvana. " But then surrender is a means to some end, and true surrender is not a means to any end. A surrender is simple surrender. There is no question of going anywhere; one has simply relaxed. That very relaxation, and you have come home.

You will not find me there, you will not find Jesus there, you will not find yourself there. You will not find the thing that you call "the universe"; you will not find anything that you have known or dreamed up to now. You will find a totally new phenomenon, utterly discontinuous with all that you have thought, dreamed about.

But you say, "Osho... I long to trust" - it is a desire in you - "and surrender, somehow knowing it is the best way for coming home totally, to you, to myself, to Jesus, to the universe."

You will not find anything - the universe, me, Jesus, you. Nothing is found when you are surrendered, when you are in trust, when you have come home. And what you find is inexpressible.

The Sufis call, the first state when you surrender, they call it fana fi'llah: disappearing into God. And then out of that disappearing, something starts appearing; that they call baka bi'llah: appearance of the total, the inexpressible, the indefinable. That indefinable is called God, that incredible experience of disappearing into the whole and becoming the whole. You will not find anything that you can think about right now; all words are inadequate to express it. It is a wordless experience.

There is not even an experiencer: there is no division between the knower and the known. The knower is the known, the experiencer is the experienced, the observer is the observed. All duality has disappeared. There is no subject, no object. It is a different state. You can call it "transjective":

neither subjective nor objective. It is transjective, it is transcendental to both.

You cannot find a word that will be relevant to it. It is so utterly new, your old mind cannot supply even a word to describe it.

The third question:

Question 3:

Asti, the whole time that you have been here with me, you have been trying to deceive me. That's the root cause of your sadness.

Asti is afraid of groups. Hence she is afraid of meeting me - because if she meets me I will tell her to do Encounter, Tantra, Vipassana, Primal. Because of this fear she has been playing a deceptive game. When she arrives she never comes for an arrival darshan. She always comes for a departure darshan so I cannot give any group, because she is leaving tomorrow. Even if she comes for darshan she never comes for a taLking darshan She sits at the back, she comes only for a silent darshan, because if she talks she is bound to be caught, trapped into some group. She cannot ask a question, because if she asks a question she will get a group. She cannot bring her problems to me.

And I have been watching, and I have been giving her enough rope. Now she is feeling sad. That is natural - you have been avoiding me. You are here, and avoiding growth. You have not yet surrendered to me; you have not told me, "Osho, do whatsoever you want to do with me. Tell me whatsoever you would like me to do. " You have kept yourself aloof, you have kept yourself away, you have been protecting. Hence sadness is natural.

That's why, Asti, when you come to darshan you feel sadness coming to you. When people come to darshan they feel great bliss arising in them; why sadness in you? Because you know that you are being smart with me, clever and cunning. And remember, the people who are clever and cunning here are the people who are going to miss. Be innocent. Only then is there a possibility of transformation.

Asti, I would like to tell you this story. You have been trying hard to be smart and clever, but all smartness, all cleverness is stupid. A really intelligent person need not try to be clever; a really intelligent person is innocent. Intelligence is a function of innocence And in trying to be clever...

Often we fail to check our facts. We think we know the whole situation before We check it out. I remember hearing about a young attorney whose first job was with a large railroad company. It was not long until he had his first case to try. A farmer noticed that his prize cow was missing from the field through which the railroad passed. He promptly went down and filed suit in the justice of the peace's office against the railroad company for the value of his cow.

In due course the case came up for hearing before the local justice of the peace in the back room of the general store, and the smart young attorney came down from the big city to defend the railroad company.

The first thing he did was to take the farmer, who had no attorney, over into a corner and begin talking to him about settling the case. Well, the young lawyer talked and talked and finally twisted the old farmer's arm so that the farmer, very reluctantly, agreed to accept half of what he was claiming to settle the case.

After the farmer had signed the release and taken the check, the young lawyer just could not resist gloating over the old farmer a little bit, and he said, "You know, I hate to tell you this, but actually I put one over on you this morning. I could not have won the case. The engineer was asleep, and the fireman was in the caboose when the train went through your farm that morning. I did not have one witness to put on the stand."

The old farmer smiled a bit and went on chewing his tobacco. Then he said, "Well, I will tell you, young feller, I was a little worried about winning that case myself. You know, that durned cow came home this morning. "

Asti, you have been trying to be smart - very hard you have been trying. But it is good that you have asked the question. Drop this cleverness. To be with me you have to be open, you have to be utterly naked. If you don't want to do the groups, you could have cried and said, "No, Osho, I don't want to do them." But there is no need to hide, there is no need to pretend. Otherwise you will become sad because you have no contact with me, and naturally sadness will arise, that "What am I doing here?

Everybody else is growing; what am I doing here?"

You have been doing these games. Stop playing these games. You have to be sincere with me.

And remember, more and more sannyasins will be coming. It will become more and more difficult for me if you are trying to be clever and cunning: you may be lost in the crowd. You have to be very open, sincere, true, authentic. These games cannot be played; we don't have any time for them.

Thousands and thousands of sannyasins are going to come, and then it will be difficult for you. If you want to hide, you can hide in the crowd; it will be difficult for me to find you.

So let us decide that if you want to be here then you have to be according to me, not according to yourself - otherwise you will remain sad. Only surrender can help you. Only surrender can give me a chance to pour my grace into you.

The fourth question:

Question 4:

Parmar, man is born as a seed. He is born as a potentiality. He is not born as an actuality. And this is very special, this is extraordinary, because in the whole of existence only man is born as a potentiality; every other animal is born actual.

A dog is born as a dog, he is to remain the same his whole life. The lion is born as a lion. Man is not born as a man, man is born only as a seed: he may become, he may not become. Man has a future; no other animal has a future. All animals are born instinctively perfect. Man is the only imperfect animal. Hence growth, evolution, is possible.

Education is a bridge between the potentiality and the actuality. Education is to help you to become that which you are only in a seed form. And this is what I am doing here; this is a place of education.

The thing that is being done in the ordinary schools and colleges and universities is not education.

It only prepares you to get a good job, a good earning; it is not real education. It does not give you life. Maybe it can give you a better standard of living, but the better standard of living is not a better standard of life; they are not synonymous.

The so-called education that goes on in the world prepares you only to earn bread. And Jesus says, "Man cannot live by bread alone." And that's what your universities have been doing - they prepare you to earn bread in a better way, in an easier way, in a more comfortable way, with less effort, with less hardship. But all that they do is prepare you to earn your bread and butter. It is a very, very primitive kind of education: it does not prepare you for life.

Hence you see so many robots walking around. They are perfect as clerks, as stationmasters, as deputy collectors. They are perfect, they are skillful, but if you look deep down in them they are just beggars and nothing else. They have not even tasted one bite of life. They have not known what life is, what love is, what light is. They have not known anything of God, they have not tasted anything of existence, they don't know how to sing and how to dance and how to celebrate. They don't know the grammar of life; they are utterly stupid. Yes, they earn - they earn more than others, they are very skillful and they go on rising higher and higher on the ladder of success - but deep down they remain empty, poor.

Education is to give you inner richness. It is not just to make you more informed; that is a very primitive idea of education. I call it primitive because it is rooted in fear, rooted in that "If I am not well educated I will not be able to survive. " I call it primitive because deep down it is very violent:

it teaches you competition, it makes you ambitious. It is nothing but a preparation for a cut-throat, competitive world where everybody is the enemy of everybody else.

Hence the world has become a madhouse. Love cannot happen. How Can love happen in such a violent, ambitious, competitive world where everybody is at each other's throat? This is very primitive because it is based in the fear that "If I am not well educated, well protected, highly informed, I may not be able to survive in the struggle of life. " It takes life only as a struggle.

My vision of education is that life should not be taken as a struggle for survival; life should be taken as a celebration. Life should not be only competition, life should be joy too. Singing and dancing and poetry and music and painting, and all that is available in the world - education should prepare you to fall in tune with it - with the trees, with the birds, with the sky, with the sun and the moon.

And education should prepare you to be yourself. Right now it prepares you to be an imitator; it teaches you how to be like others. This is miseducation. Right education will teach you how to be yourself, authentically yourself. You are unique. There is nobody like you, has never been, will never be. This is a great respect that God has showered on you. This is your glory, that you are unique.

Don't become imitative, don't become carbon copies.

But that's what your so-called education goes on doing: it makes carbon copies; it destroys your original face. The word "education" has two meanings, both are beautiful. One meaning is very well known, although not practiced at all, that is: to draw something out of you. "Education" means: to draw out that which is within you, to make your potential actual, like you draw water from a well.

But this is not being practiced. On the contrary, things are being poured into you, not drawn out of you. Geography and history and science and mathematics, they go on pouring them into you. You become parrots. You have been treated like computers; just as they feed the computers, they feed you. Your educational institutions are places where things are crammed into your head.

Real education will be to bring out what is hidden in you - what God has put in you as a treasure - to discover it, to reveal it, to make you luminous.

And another meaning of the word, which is even far deeper: "education" comes from the word educare; it means to lead you from darkness to light. A tremendously significant meaning: to lead you from darkness to light. The Upanishads say, "Lord, lead us from untruth to truth" - "asato ma sadgamaya." "Lord, lead us from death to deathlessness", "mrityorma amritamgamaya." "Lord, lead us from darkness to light" - " tamaso ma jyotirgamaya." That is exactly the meaning of the word "education": tamaso ma jyotirgamayma - from darkness to light.

Man lives in darkness, in unconsciousness - and man is capable of becoming full of light. The flame is there; it has to be provoked. The consciousness is there, but it has to be awakened. You have been given all, you have brought it with you; but the whole idea that you have become a man just by having a human body is wrong, and that idea has been the cause of tremendous mischief down the ages.

Man is born just as an opportunity, as an occasion. And very few people attain: a Jesus, a Buddha, a Mohammed, a Bahaudin. Very few people, few and far between, really become man - when they become full of light and there is no darkness left, when there is no unconsciousness lingering anywhere in your soul, when all is light, when you are just awareness.

A man asked Buddha.... The man was an astrologer, a very learned scholar. When he saw Buddha he was puzzled. He had never seen such beauty, such grace. Buddha was sitting under a tree. The man was just in awe; he bowed down to Buddha and he said, "Are you a deva, an angel? Have you descended from heaven, because I have never seen such grace on the earth? Who are you? Are you a gandharva?"

Gandharvas are, mythologically, the musicians of the gods. They are very graceful, obviously - they are the musicians of the gods. Their very presence is musical. Just in their presence you will start hearing melodies; just being in their presence you will fall into a totally different rhythm. Their very presence is music, celestial music. And the astrologer heard that music around Buddha.

He said, "Are you a gandharva?" And Buddha said, "No, I am not a god, I am not a gandharva. "

"Then who are you? Are you just a man?" And Buddha said, " No, I am not a man either. "

"Then who are you?" And the man went on asking, and Buddha went on saying, "No, no, no." He became more and more puzzled and finally he asked, "Then who are you?"

And Buddha said, "I am awareness. "

Awareness, just awareness, pure awareness... and only then is one fulfilled. Then life is a benediction.

Education is to bring you from darkness to light. That's what I am doing here. Parmar has asked this question because the Indian government is not ready to accept my work as education. It is natural.

They cannot accept it as education, because I don't create clerks and stationmasters and deputy collectors. I am creating new human beings. For them that is dangerous. If this is education, then they cannot allow it to happen. It is rebellion.

I am teaching you to be yourself. I am teaching you to be fearless; I am teaching you not to yield to the social pressure; I am teaching you not to be a conformist. I am teaching you not to hanker for comfort and convenience, because if you hanker for comfort and convenience, the society will give them to you, but at a cost. And the cost is great: you get convenience, but you lose your consciousness. You get comfort, but you lose your soul.

You can have respectability, but then you are not true to yourself; you are a pseudo human being; you have betrayed your God and yourself. But the society wants that, that you should betray yourself.

The society wants to use you as a machine, the society Wants you to be obedient. The society does not need you to function as an intelligent being, because an intelligent being will behave in an intelligent way and there may be moments when he will say, "No, I cannot do this. "

For example, if you are really intelligent and aware, you cannot be part of any army. Impossible. To be part of any army you need, as a basic requirement, unintelligence. That's why in the army they manage in every way to destroy your intelligence. Years are needed to destroy your intelligence; they call it "training". Stupid orders have to be followed: right turn, left turn, march forward, march backward - this and that - and they go on and on every day, morning, evening. Slowly, slowly, the person becomes a robot, he starts functioning like a machine.

I have heard, a woman went to a psychoanalyst and said, "I am very much worried, I cannot sleep.

My husband is a colonel in the army. Whenever he comes home for holidays it becomes a nightmare for me. Whenever he is sleeping on his right side he snores, and snores so loudly that not only am I disturbed, even the neighbors are disturbed. Can you suggest something to me? What should I do?"

The psychoanalyst thought it over, and then he said, "Do one thing. Tonight try this, maybe it will work," and he gave her a recipe and it worked. And the recipe was simple - he said to her, "When he starts snoring, just tell him,'Left turn.' "

She could not believe it, but when she did it, it worked - even in his sleep. He snored only on his right side, and when she said in his ear, slowly, not very loudly, softly, "Left turn," just out of the old habit he turned left. The snoring stopped, even in sleep.

I have heard, William James has quoted this instance, a real actual instance. After the First World War, a man who had retired from the army was carrying a bucket full of eggs on his head, and somebody just joked. A few people were standing by the side, and one man said loudly, "Attention"

and that man simply fell to attention, and the bucket fell and the eggs were broken all over the road.

And he was very angry; he said, "What kind of joke is this?" But they said, "We have not done anything. We have just said,'Attention.' Are we not allowed to say it?" And the man had been retired from the army for at least ten years - but it persists.

I have heard:

An insomniac boxer went to the doctor for some medical help. The ex-pugilist had tried mild sedation, but it didn't seem to work. The doctor, hesitating to prescribe a more addictive kind, said, "Look, before I prescribe this heavier injection I want you to try the old-fashioned remedy. You may laugh, but it actually works. Try getting yourself completely relaxed and then start counting to a hundred. "

A few days later, the old fighter came back and said, "Doctor, I can't do it. Every time I start counting, I jump up at the count of nine. " The whole training in the army is to destroy your consciousness, is to make you an automatic machine. Then you can go and kill. Otherwise, if you are still carrying a little bit of intelligence, you will see the other person that you are killing is innocent; he has not done anything to you or to anybody. And he must have a wife at home who is waiting for him to come back; and he may have small children, and they will become beggars; and he may have an old mother or an old father, they may go mad. "And why am I killing this man? Because the officer says,'Start killing. Fire!' "

An intelligent person will not be able to fire. An intelligent person may choose to die himself rather than to kill innocent people. Because some foolish politician wants to get involved in a war, because some politician wants to have more power, because of some stupid statements of the politicians, the war has started. He will not kill.

This I call education: to make people more intelligent. And that's what I am doing here. If this fire spreads, then this old, rotten society cannot survive. It survives on your unconsciousness, it lives on your unconsciousness.

So it is natural, Parmar, that the government will not recognize this place as a place of education.

For them, it is one of the most dangerous places.

But as far as I am concerned, this is education. tamaso ma jyotirgamaya - Lord, lead me from darkness to light.