Nowhere to go
Question 1
I FEEL LOST - THERE IS NO WAY BACK TO MY OLD LIFE - THE BRIDGES ARE BROKEN. AND I DON'T SEE A WAY IN FRONT OF ME.
There is none. The way is just an illusion of the mind. The mind goes on dreaming about the way to reach its goals, its desires. The way is a shadow of the desiring mind. First you desire something.
Of course desire can only be in the future and the future is not there yet. How to bridge that which is not with that which is? Then you create a way. It is imagination. It is illusion. But with the way, you become joined with that which is not, and then you start travelling. You are playing a game with yourself.
There is nowhere to go, so the way is not needed. You are already there. It is not something to be achieved; it has already been delivered to you. And deep down, religion is not a path but just a realization, a revelation - the realization that you are already there. Your hankering, your desire does not allow you to see the facticity of your being.
So good, old bridges are broken and there seems to be no path, no way ahead. That's what I want to do to you. I want to take all the paths away. Pathless, not knowing where to go you will go in. If all your paths - all the possibilities to escape from yourself - are taken away, what will you do? You will be yourself.
Just think. Just meditate upon it a little. It is desire, it is competition with others, that creates the whole thing, the whole illusion. You are always competing. Somebody else is ahead of you. You would like to put him back; you would like to overtake him. You run fast. You do everything that you can do - just/unjust, right/wrong. You forget everything; you simply want to undo him, to prove him a failure. This way you are not going to achieve your innermost reality. This way you will achieve a little more decoration of the ego. You have defeated one, you have defeated thousands, you have defeated millions - and you are moving and moving and moving. More and more ego will be accumulated. You will become more burdened. You will be more lost, you will be lost in a forest.
Competition is one of the most irreligious things in the world, but that's what everybody is doing.
Somebody has a big house. You immediately start desiring a bigger one. Somebody has a beautiful car. Immediately you desire to have another, a bigger one. Somebody has a beautiful wife, or somebody has a beautiful face or a beautiful voice. Immediately the desire arises.
The desire arises with the idea that you have to compete with others and that you have to prove something against others, that you have to struggle, that you have to achieve something. Not knowing what it is, but you go on moving in a dark valley thinking that somewhere there must be a goal.
You can go on and on for lives together. That's what you have been doing up to now. You will never reach anywhere. You will be always running and never reaching because the goal is within you. But to see that, you have to drop all competition, all ambition.
And remember, it is very easy to change your competitiveness into a new competitiveness, to drop the old and to have something new again in the same way, the same ambition. You are ambitious in the world. Then you drop it. Then you become ambitious in the name of religion, spirituality; then again you compete. Then again the same ego enters in. I have heard one anecdote. Listen to it very alertly.
Two brothers died at the same time and arrived at the Pearly Gates together, where they were interviewed by St. Peter.
He said to the first brother, "Have you been good during your life on earth?" And he replied, "Oh yes, Your Saintliness, I have been honest, sober, and industrious, and I have never messed around with women."
"Good lad," said St. Peter, and gave him a beautiful gleaming white Rolls-Royce. "There is your reward for being a good boy."
Then he said to the other brother, "And what about you?"
He sighed, "Well, I have always been very different from my brother. I have been crooked, drunk, idle - and a devil with the women."
"Ah well," said St. Peter, "boys will be boys, and at least you have owned up to it. You can have this, then." And he gave him the keys to a Mini-Minor.
The two brothers were about to get in their cars when the one who had been naughty started roaring with laughter. The other one said, "What is so funny then?"
He said, "I have just seen the vicar riding a bike!"
Your whole enjoyment is always just comparative. Comparison gives you a feeling of where you are - behind the man who has a Rolls-Royce but in front of the man who has a bike. It gives you the exact location where you are.
You can pinpoint yourself on the map, but this is not the right way to know where you are, because you are nowhere on the map. The map is illusory. You are somewhere beyond the map. Nobody is in front of you and nobody is at the back. You are alone - tremendously alone. You are unique, you are alone, you are one. And there is nobody else there to be compared with.
That's why people become very much afraid in going within because then they are moving into their aloneness, where all paths disappear, all possibilities of location where you are, disappear. All maps - imaginary, political, cultural, social - all disappear. Suddenly you are in the wilderness of your being and you don't know where you are. This is exactly what has happened: "I feel lost - there is no way back to my old life - the bridges are broken. And I don't see a way in front of me." This is what I call the beginning of meditation, the beginning of the entry within your being. Don't get scared; otherwise you will again become a victim of your dreams. Enter into it boldly, courageously, daringly. If you understand me, it is not difficult; just a tacit understanding is needed.
Of course you will never be able now to know where you are. You will be able to know who you are, but you will never be able to know where you are because "where" is always in relation with others.
"Who" is your nature; "where" is relative.
And now onward there will be no bridges with the past; and of course there is no possibility now for any bridges for the future. The past is gone, the future does not exist. The past is just memory and the future is nothing but hope. The past is just a reference and the future is just a dream. Both are gone. You will be living in the present... and the present is so vast you will be lost as a drop of water becomes lost in the ocean.
Be ready for it. Be ready to dissolve, be ready to be an nihilated.
The mind will hanker for the past, the identity, the clarity - where you are, who you are. But all those are games, language games.
I have heard one anecdote:
An Englishman touring the States remarked to a man in the West, "You have a remarkable country here. Lovely women, big cities, but you have no aristocracy."
"No what?" asked the American.
"No aristocracy."
"What is that?" asked the American. "Oh, you know," he said. "People who never do anything, whose parents never did anything, and whose grandparents never did anything - whose families have always been people of leisure."
"Oh, yeah!" said the American. "We have them here, but we call them hoboes!" But when you call somebody an aristocrat it looks very grand. When you call somebody a hobo, suddenly you fall from the peak of Everest into the deepest valley possible. But aristocrats have been hoboes, and hoboes think of themselves as aristocrats.
I have heard that two hoboes were talking to each other, leisurely sitting on a full-moon night. The first said, "What do you want to become in your life?"
The other said, "I would like to become a prime minister."
The first said, "What? Don't you have any ambition in your life?" A hobo thinking of becoming a prime minister. Hoboes have their values.
If you look at your past references, what are they? Language games. Somebody says that he is a brahmin. Because the society accepts that there are four classes. In India the brahmin is the highest caste and the sudra is the lowest caste. Now this type of caste system does not exist anywhere in the world; it exists only in India. Of course it is imaginary. You cannot sort out who is a brahmin if he does not say so. The blood will not show, the bones will not show - no examination, no X ray will show who is a brahmin and who is a sudra. But in India the game has been played so long, it has become so deep rooted in the mind, the moment somebody says he is a brahmin, look at his eyes, look at his nose - the ego radiates. When somebody says that he is a sudra, look at him. The very word humiliates; the very word makes him feel guilty. Both are human beings, but just a labeling that a society has accepted destroys their humanity.
When you say you are rich, what do you mean? You have a certain account in the bank. But that too is a game, money is a game. Because the society has agreed upon something to believe in, the game continues.
I have heard about one miser who had a great treasure of gold hidden in his garden somewhere.
Every day he will go and remove a little earth and look at his bricks of gold, hide them again, will come back very happy and glad and smiling, all smiles. By and by one neighbor started suspecting because every day - it was almost a religious ritual - every day exactly in the morning he will come - it was just like a prayer - remove a little soil, look at his bricks of gold shining in the morning sun, and immediately something will flower in him and he will be so happy the whole day.
One night the neighbor removed all the bricks of gold. Instead of gold bricks, he put ordinary bricks there and covered the earth. Next morning he came. He started crying and weeping and shouting that he has been robbed. The neighbor was standing in his garden; he said, "Why, for what are you crying?" He said, "I have been robbed! My twenty gold bricks have been stolen!" The neighbor said, "Don't be worried, because you were never going to use them. You can do the same with these ordinary bricks. Come every day in the morning, remove the earth, look at them, be happy and go back. Because you were never going to use them in the first place, so whether of gold or of mud, what difference does it make?"
You may have money. That does not make any difference. You may not have. That too does not make any difference. You may have great recognition, degrees, awards from the society, praise, certificates. That does not mean anything - it is a game. Once you look into this game through and through and you realize that in this game you will never be able to find yourself, who you are....
The society goes on befooling you and giving you some illusory ideas who you are, and you go on trusting and believing in them. Your whole life is wasted.
So when for the first time meditation starts really working in you and starts destroying you, destructuring you - your name disappears, your caste disappears, your religion disappears, your nationality disappears - by and by you are simply nude and naked in your pure aloneness. It is scaring in the beginning because you cannot find any place to put your feet on and you cannot find any place to continue, to remain in the ego. No help, all props withdrawn, your structure starts falling.
Stand by the side, have a good laugh, and let it fall. Have a good laugh that now there is no way to move back.
In fact there is never a way to move back; people only believe so. Nobody can go back; in time there is no possibility to go back. You cannot become a child again. You cannot go back into the womb of your mother. But the illusion, the idea that it is possible will haunt you and will not allow you to grow.
There are many men I see who go on seeking their mother in their love affairs, which is foolish. Out of a hundred, almost ninety-nine men are searching for their mother. The mother has been lost in the past; now they cannot enter the womb of the mother again. Have you watched yourself? Lying in the lap of your beloved, a fantasy arises in you - as if you have found your mother.
Why are men so interested in women's breasts? The interest is basically of the search for the mother because the child knew the mother through the breasts and he still hankers for the mother. So a woman who has beautiful, round, big breasts becomes more attractive to men. A flat chested woman simply becomes unattractive. Why? What is wrong? Nothing is wrong with the woman; something is wrong with the mind. You are seeking the mother, and she cannot help your imagination. She does not fit with your illusion. How can she be your mother? She has no breasts? Breasts are the basic necessity.
You go in Indian temples in Khajurao or in Puri and you will see such big breasts that it seems almost impossible. How were these women walking? The weight seems too much. But that simply shows the search, the search to go back, to find the mother again. Then your love life will be a disturbance because the woman who loves you is not in search of a child. She is in search of a friend, of a beloved, of a lover. She does not want to become your mother. She wants to become your friend, your companion, your consort. And you are asking her to be your mother, to take care of you as your mother used to take care. And you go on expecting the mother and she goes on frustrating it.
The conflict arises.
Nobody can go back. That which is past is past. Past is past and cannot be reclaimed. This understanding makes you a grown up; then you don't hanker for it.
And remember, if you hanker for the past, you hanker for the future. Your future is nothing but your modified, renovated past. What you desire in the future is nothing but all that was happy in the past minus all that was not happy. Your future is nothing but your repainted past - closer to the heart's desire, the painful accidents dropped and the pleasant exaggerated. Once you drop the past you drop the future also because it is nothing else but the repainted past, and then suddenly you are here now.
Then I can tell you, "Look at the cypress in the courtyard." Or I can take a flower in my hand and just let you see it. And if you can see it just here-now, a mysterious phenomenon 8tarts happening within you: a flower within you start5 opening. Something spreads over your being - something existential. It is not a dream. It has no hallucinatory quality in it. It has no ideas, no thoughts, no pictures, nothing; just a tremendously austere emptiness - beautiful, but totally empty.
Don't get afraid. That's the way how one comes to meet the present and how one comes to meet oneself.
Question 2
WHY DID PATANJALI WRITE AND YOU CHOOSE TO SPEAK ON THE YOGA SUTRAS WHEN NEITHER OF YOU WAS PREPARED TO SHARE WITH US THE ESSENTIAL KEYS OF THIS SADHANA?
The essential keys can be shared but cannot be talked about. Patanjali wrote these sutras so that he can share the essential keys with you, but those essential keys cannot be reduced to sutras. The sutras are just introductory, just a preface to the real thing. Let me tell you, the YOGA SUTRAS of Patanjali is just a preface to the real transmission he wants to do. It is just introductory. It just gives you an idea that something is possible. It makes you hopeful; it simply gives you a promise, a glimpse. Then you have to do much to come close to Patanjali.
In deep intimacy the keys will be delivered to you.
And that's why I have chosen to speak on these yoga sutras. It is just to allure you, to seduce you, so that you can come close to me. It is just to help some great thirst in you which you are carrying for lives together; but finding no way to satisfy it, finding no way how to quench it, you have forgotten about it. You have dropped it out of your consciousness. You have pushed it into the darkness of the unconscious because it is trouble. If you have a certain thirst and you cannot satisfy it, to allow it to remain in the conscious will be very, very burdensome, very troublesome. It will continuously go on knocking. It will not allow you to do other things, so you have pushed it into the unconscious.
These discourses on the YOGA SUTRAS of Patanjali are just to bring that neglected thirst into the focus of your consciousness. This is not the real work; this is just introductory. The real work starts when you have recognized the thirst, accepted it, and you are ready to change, to mutate, to become new - when you are ready to dare to go on this immense journey, the journey into the unknown and the unknowable. It is just to create a thirst, a hunger.
The yoga sutras are just an appetizer. The real thing cannot be written, cannot be said; but something can be written and said which can bring you nearer, closer to the real thing. I am ready to deliver the keys, but you have to be brought to a certain level of consciousness, a certain level of understanding. Only then can those keys start being understood by you.
I have heard:
Two beggars, really down and out, were each lying on the grass. The sun was shining above, beside them a rippling brook. It was quiet, restful, and peaceful.
"You know," mused the first beggar, "right now I would not change places with a man who had a million pounds."
"How about five million?" asked his companion.
"Not even for five million."
"Well," went on his friend, "how about ten million?"
The first beggar sat up and said, "That's different. Now you are talking real money." It is just to give you a glimpse. It is not giving you the real money but just to give you a glimpse of the real money so again the long-denied desire, thirst, discontent arises, again repossesses you, you become aflame; and then you can come close to me.
Question 3
FOR YEARS I AM MOST OF THE TIME WITNESSING AND I FEEL IT LIKE A DISEASE. SO IS IT THAT THERE ARE TWO KINDS OF WITNESSING AND MINE IS WRONG? TELL ME.
It must be wrong; otherwise it cannot be felt like a disease. Self consciousness is not consciousness of the self, and there is the problem. Consciousness of the self is totally different. It is not self consciousness at all; in fact self consciousness is a barrier for consciousness of the self. You can try to watch, observe with a very self conscious mind. That is not awareness, that is not witnessing, because this will make you tense.
That's what happens to people. You go on talking. I have never come across a person who is not a good talker; all people talk well. Talking is so human, so natural. But tell somebody to stand on a stage and talk to people. Even to a small gathering of four hundred, one thousand, people, let somebody stand; and he starts trembling and the fear arises and he feels as if the throat is choking, and suddenly words don't come easily, the flow stops. What happens? He has always been a good talker, almost to the extent of being a bore, and suddenly... suddenly he cannot speak a word.
He has become self-conscious. So many people watching. observing; now he feels as if his prestige is at stake. If he says something wrong or something goes wrong, what will people think about him?
He had never thought about it that way, but now with so many people facing him - and these may be the same people with all of whom he has been talking individually - but now standing on a stage looking at people, and so many people looking at him together - all their eyes like arrows penetrating him - he becomes ego-conscious. His ego is at stake; that creates the tension.
Remember, witnessing is not an ego-consciousness. Ego has to be dropped. And you are not to make it a strain. It has to he relaxed, it has to be in a deep let-go. Let me tell you one anecdote: A priest was unburdening himself to a rabbi. "Oh, Rabbi, things are very bad. The doctor tells me I am very sick and that I must have a very serious operation."
"It could be worse," said the rabbi.
"My congregation is deserting me for another parish because my sermons are so bad and I don't make house calls," continued the priest.
"It could be worse," said the rabbi.
"My housekeeper has given in her notice, my organist has resigned, and I can't get any boys to serve on the altar," continued the priest, close to tears.
"It could be worse," said the rabbi.
"The parish treasurer has decamped with the funds, and the bishop is due to make a visitation; one of the Children of Mary is pregnant, the roof leaks, and my car has been stolen," moaned the priest.
"It could be worse," said the rabbi.
"How could it be worse?" asked the priest, finally stung by the rabbi's lack of compassion.
"It could happen to me," said the rabbi.
If you are continuously thinking in terms of the ego, then even your witnessing will become a disease, then your meditation will become a disease, then your religion will become a disease. With the ego everything, becomes a disease. The ego is the great inconvenience in your being. It is like a thorn in the flesh; it goes on hurting. It is like a wound.
So what to do? The first thing, when you are trying lo watch, the first thing that Patanjali says is: concentrate on the object and don't concentrate on the subject. Start from the object - dharana, concentration. Look at the tree, and let the tree be there. You forget yourself completely; you are not needed. Your being there will be a continuous disturbance in the experience of the greenery, of the tree, of the rose. You just let the rose be there. You become completely oblivious of yourself - you focus on the rose. Let the rose be there: no subject, just the object. This is the first step of samyama.
Then the second step: drop the rose, drop the emphasis on the rose. Now emphasize consciousness of the rose - but still no subject is needed, just the consciousness that you are watching, that there is watching.
And only then can the third step be taken, which will bring you close to what Gurdjieff calls self- remembering, or Krishnamurti calls awareness, or the Upanishads call witnessing. But first the two steps have to be fulfilled; then the third comes easy. Don't start doing the third immediately. First the object, then the consciousness, then the subject.
Once the object is dropped and the emphasis on the consciousness is no longer a strain, the subject is there but there is no subjectivity in it. You are there but there is no "I" in it, just being. You are, but there is no feeling that "I am." That confinement of "I" has disappeared; only amness exists. That amness is divine. Drop the "I" and just be that amness.
And if you have been working too long on witnessing, then for a few months, at least for three months, drop it completely, don't do anything about it. Otherwise the old pattern may continue and may pollute the new awareness. You just for three months give a gap, and for three months you meditate with cathartic methods - Dynamic, Kundalini, Nataraj - that type in which the whole emphasis is on doing something and that something is more important. Just dancing, and the dance becomes important, not the dancer. The dancer has to lose himself completely in dancing. So for three months drop witnessing and be absorbed in some meditation. This is totally different. Being absorbed in something is completely forgetting yourself. Dancing will be very good, singing will be very good - forget yourself completely in it. Don't keep yourself apart and divided.
If you can dance in such a way that only the dance remains and the dancer disappears, one day suddenly you will see the dancing has also disappeared. And then there is an awareness which is not of the mind and not of the ego. In fact that aware. ness cannot be practiced; something else has to be done as a preparation, and that awareness comes to you. You have just to become available for it.
Question 4
"THESE THINGS CAN ONLY BE TRANSMITTED IN THE CLOSE PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DISCIPLE AND MASTER." WELL, WHAT HAVE WE HERE? I HAVE THAT RELATIONSHIP WITH YOU, AND THESE THINGS ARE NOT TRANSMITTED.
You cannot decide whether you have that relationship with me or not. Only I can decide. Your greed may tell you that you have that relationship, your desire to achieve it may tell you that you arc ready, but your saying that you are ready does not make you ready. Unless I see, it cannot be transmitted.
And if you look down, you will also see that you are not ready. Just by being here is not enough. Just by becoming a sannyasin is not enough - necessary, but not enough. Something more, something of a greater sacrifice is needed, in which you dissolve. When you are not, the keys can be delivered, not before it. If you are there watching and waiting, that very watching and waiting will become a barrier.
Let me tell you one anecdote:
Three novices joined a Trappist monastery. After a year they were seated at breakfast and the Abbot turned to a novice:
"Brother Paul, you have been with us a whole year and you have kept your vow of silence. If you wish you may now speak. Do you have anything to say?"
"Yes, Abbot. I don't like the breakfast food."
"Very well, perhaps we shall do something about it."
Nothing was done, and another year passed, a year of silence. Once again they were seated about the breakfast table and the Abbot turned to another young monk:
"Brother Peter, I commend you for having kept your peace for two years. If you wish you may now speak. Do you have anything to say?"
"Yes, Abbot. I don't see anything wrong with the breakfast food."
A third year passed, a year of silence. Again the Abbot turned to the third novice: "Brother Stephen, I commend you highly for your vow of silence which you have kept for three whole years. If you wish you may now speak. Do you have anything to say?"
"Yes, Abbot, I do. I can't stand this constant bickering."
All those three years have been lost on the breakfast food, and deep down in the mind it has continued to be a problem. All the three have answered differently, but all are concerned with it.
Their differences of answers are just on the surface. Deep down they have all been obsessed with it.
You can be ready only when all such obsessions disappear. It is very easy to be silent, but the inner chattering continues. Then it is not a silence; it is just outwardly an exhibition of silence. In fact people when they take a vow of silence chatter more in their minds than ordinarily because ordinarily they chatter with others and much of the stream is let out. When they keep silent, there is no door for the stream to go out - all valves are closed, so the stream goes on, round and round and round inside. It becomes a whirlwind, a whirlpool, and they go on chattering and chattering.
These three years, all the three novices have been chattering and chattering and chattering. On the surface everything looks perfectly calm and quiet, but it is not so in the depth.
So whenever you are ready.... And you cannot decide; it cannot be left for you to decide. Those who have become ready, to them the keys have been already delivered; and those who will be becoming ready, the keys will be always ready to be delivered to them. In fact not a single moment is lost.
The moment you are ready, immediately, instantly, the key is delivered. The key is not something material, that I have to give it to you and to call you. It is something - a transmission... once you are in tune with me, so much so that you are not even bothered about the keys, you have left the whole thing to me. That's what surrender is. You say, "Whenever - if ever - you feel right, I am ready. If you feel it is not right, then I am ready to wait forever. Even if it doesn't happen it doesn't matter." Only then, in that total acceptance, you become really open to me; otherwise you are trying to use me. You cannot use me.
I am available, but you cannot use me. You can simply become vulnerable to me - and you will be satisfied beyond all satisfactions. But for that, infinite patience, emptiness is needed.
Another question of the same type:
OSHO, IN ONE OF YOUR PREVIOUS LECTURES YOU HAVE ACCEPTED THAT YOU ARE FULLY READY ON YOUR SIDE TO PUSH sadhakas TOWARDS THE UNKNOWN PEAK OF THE SOUL.
YOU HAVE FURTHER SAID, "I AM WAITING FOR PERSONS OF SUCH TYPES WHO ARE READY TO DO ANY KIND OF EXPERIMENTS FOR ASCENDING TO THE UNKNOWN PEAK OF THE SOUL."
THE TIME FROM WHEN I HAVE HEARD THIS STATEMENT I HAVE BEEN PREPARING MYSELF TO FACE THIS CHALLENGE OF YOURS.
IN MY PERSONAL INTERVIEWS WITH YOU WHEN I ACCEPTED THAT I AM FULLY READY ON MY SIDE, YOU ADMITTED THAT YOU WERE NOT READY AT THAT TIME. WHY THIS DUALITY IN YOUR STATEMENTS? PLEASE CLEAR MY DOUBTS.
There is no duality - just etiquette. You are not ready, but I didn't want to hurt you, so I said I am not ready.
The very tenseness and eagerness and the greed is creating a disturbance. If you are ready and I say to you, "Wait," you will listen to me. This question is from Anand Samarth. Just a few days before, he was there to ask me, and I again and again said, "Wait"; and he would say, "Now I cannot wait anymore. You have said before, 'Whenever anybody is ready, I am ready to transmit to him.'
Now I am ready; then why do you say to me, 'Wait'?" And I again said to him, "Wait," but he would not listen. You are not even ready to listen to me. What type of surrender is this? You are completely deaf, and still you think you are ready. Your greed is there, that I understand. Your ego is there, that I understand. You are in a hurry, that I understand. And you are trying to get things very cheap, that I understand. But you are not ready. Let me tell you one anecdote:
Two nuns were driving through the country when their car ran out of petrol. They walked on a couple of miles and eventually came to a farmhouse, where they explained their problem.
"You can siphon some petrol out of my tractor," said the farmer, "but I have not got anything to put it in."
However, after some thought, he produced an old chamber pot which appeared to be the only available utensil. So, with the pot filled with petrol, the nuns walked back to their car and began pouring it in.
A rabbi passed by in his car, saw this extraordinary sight, stopped and said, "I don't agree with your religion, sisters, but I admire your faith!"
I also don't agree with your readiness, but I admire your faith. I admire that the thirst has arisen.
Good. But thirst in itself is not enough readiness. It is the beginning, but not the end. Let it flower in silence, let it flower in patience, let it flower in a deep let-go. Don't be in a hurry. Move slowly; almost try to float with me. And don't try to go ahead of me - that will not be possible.
Question 5
PEACE IS HERE WITH YOU, BELOVED OSHO. BUT HOW DO I GET THIS MONKEY MIND TO BECOME UNATTACHED TO THE OLD SO AS TO MOVE WITH THE NEW: - Michael Stupid
Good. Very good. It is better than Michael "Wise." You are becoming wise; to accept one's stupidity is a great step towards wisdom.
But don't just try to be clever. You cannot deceive me, because the next question is again from Michael Wise.
Let me read the next question:
Question 6
PEACE IS HERE WITH YOU, OSHO. IF SOMEONE WERE TO ASK LAO TZU IF HE SHOULD TAKE SANNYAS, WOULD HE ANSWER: "WHAT! AND DIVIDE THE WORLD? THE FLOWERS KNOW NO UNIFORM; AND THE SUNRISE IS NOT BEAUTIFUL?"
Or:
"IF SOMEONE IS CRAZY ENOUGH TO TAKE YOUR MIND, GIVE IT TO HIM."
Or:
"THE FLOWER HAS ALREADY ANSWERED; THERE IS NO NEED FOR ME." - Michael Wise (Stupid)
Again, Michael Wise; now "Stupid" is in brackets. Already you have fallen from your wisdom.
And you are not Lao Tzu. If you were, you would not be here in the first place. For what will you be here?
And I tell you one thing: if I say so to Lao Tzu, he will take sannyas. But I am not going to say to him. What is the point? Why disturb the old man?
Question 7
YOU ARE NOT MY GURU, BUT YOU ARE MY MENTOR.
YOU AND I THINK ALIKE, FEEL ALIKE.
WHATEVER YOU SAY I SEEM TO HAVE KNOWN BEFORE; YOU ARE HELPING ME TO REMEMBER. I HAVE BEEN HEARING YOU FOR MANY YEARS AND I AM IN TOTAL EMPATHY WITH YOU. IF SUCH IS THE CASE, WHAT IS MY EXACT RELATIONSHIP WITH YOU?
I think you must be my guru.
Question 8
OSHO, YOU HAVE OFTEN MENTIONED IN YOUR LECTURES, "DON'T THINK THAT YOU HAVE COME ON YOUR OWN. I HAVE CAST THE NET AND HAVE SELECTED YOU."
I KNOW IT IS TRUE, BUT HOW DO YOU MANAGE TO KNOW THAT THE PERSON IS READY TO RECEIVE WHAT YOU COMPASSIONATELY WANT TO SHARE?
I HAD BEEN PINING FOR SELF-REALIZATION FROM THE VERY YOUNG AGE OF FIFTEEN AND WAS IN SEARCH OF A MASTER, WHICH TOOK ME TO SWAMI SIVANAND OF DIVINE LIFE SOCIETY, SANT LILASHAH, AND SADHU VASWANI, FROM WHOM I PICKED UP A FEW JEWELS, BUT THE KOHINOOR OF SELF-REALIZATION WAS NOT THERE. I HEARD RADHASWAMI, CHINMAYANAND, DONGRE MAHARAJ, AND SWAMI AKHANDANAND, BUT SELF-REALIZATION WAS NOT THERE.
I HAD EVEN HEARD YOU IN BOMBAY FOUR OR FIVE YEARS BACK FOR A FEW TIMES, DID SOME MEDITATIONS WITH YOUR SANNYASINS ON JUHU BEACH, AND APPRECIATED THEM, BUT WAS NOT FULLY DRAWN TO YOU, UNTIL IT HAPPENED LAST YEAR. I HAD COME AS A CRITIC, BUT A FEW MEDITATIONS AND TWO OR THREE LECTURES CONVINCED AND CONVERTED ME. IT HAPPENED... I SURRENDERED.
I AM FULLY CONVINCED THAT I AM IN THE SAFE HANDS OF THE MASTER, WHO IS EVERY MOMENT GUIDING PROPERLY.
I AM EXPERIENCING ECSTASY, OR RATHER JOY, BUT NOT THE FINAL STAGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT. I AM LIVING THE MOMENT, NOT CARING FOR THE PAST OR THE FUTURE.
AM I ON THE RIGHT TRACK? KINDLY ENLIGHTEN.
You are on the right track, but even the track has to be dropped because in the world of the ultimate, all tracks are wrong. Track as such is wrong. No way leads to it. All ways help you go astray. The very idea to reach God is wrong. God has already reached you; you have just to start living it. So the whole effort is in a way futile.
You are here with me. Now allow me to take all tracks away from you. Allow me to take not only the jewels, but the kohinoor also. Allow me to empty you. Don't try to fill yourself with me, because then I will become the barrier. Beware of me. No need to cling to me. All clinging is dangerous. You have to attain to a state of mind which is of no clinging. Be with me, but don't cling with me. Listen to me, but don't make knowledge out of it. Listen to my gossips, but don't make gospels out of them. Enjoy being with me, but don't depend on it. Don't make it a dependence; otherwise I am not your friend.
I am already an enemy then.
So what have you to do? You have been to Sant Lilashah, to Swami Sivanand, to Swami Akhandanand. You have left all of them behind you. You have to leave me also behind. If I cannot help you in that, then I am going to be a barrier on your path.
So love me, be close to me, feel my presence, but don't depend on it.
And why do you ask whether you are on the right track or not? The mind would like to cling. So if everything is certain and the track is right, you would say, "Now, okay. So I can blindfold my eyes.
Now there is no need to go anywhere." There is no need to go anywhere - not because you have to cling to me. There is no need to go anywhere because you are already there where you want to go.
Let me help you to know yourself.
It is delicate, subtle, very subtle, because what I say, if it appeals to you, there is a possibility you will make a philosophy out of it. What I say, if it convinces you - as the questioner says that "I became convinced".... I am not arguing with you, and I am not giving any arguments. I am completely absurd, irrational. I am trying to drop argumentation from your mind so that you can be left behind, pure, unpolluted, uncontaminated by words, theories, dogmas, scriptures - so that you can attain to your pure, crystal-like quality of consciousness, just an emptiness, a great space.
What I am trying is to give you the goal and not the path. My effort is to deliver you the whole, the all. I am not giving you means. I am giving you the end, the very end. That's where the mind feels boggled. The mind wants to know about the means so it can reach to the end. The mind wants to know the method. The mind wants to know the path. The mind wants to be convinced and converted. I want to destroy it, not to convince it. So if you are really convinced with me, drop the mind. If you have seen and heard me and if you have loved me, then don't allow relationship with me as a relationship of ideology. Let it be just pure love, with no ideology. You simply love me and let me love you, for no reason whatsoever. Let this love be unconditioned.
If you love me because what I say appears to be true to you, then this love is not going to last very long; or even if it lasts it is not going to give you that love which is God. It will re main a conviction, an argument in the mind. And I am a dangerous man in that way because today I will say something and you are convinced, and tomorrow I will say just the opposite, and then what will you do? Then you will be confused.
You can remain with me only if you are not trying to convince your mind; then I can never confuse you because you never cling to any idea. I will go on saying a thousand and one things, this way and that. These are all devices to destroy the mind.
And this difference you have to understand. If you go to some Master, he has a certain discipline, a certain scripture, a certain ideology. There are even Masters whose ideology is no ideology, but they have a very, very strict ideology of no ideology - that is their scripture. I don't have any ideology, not even the ideology of no ideology.
If you try to understand me through the mind, I will mess you up; you will become more and more confused. Just listen to me. Let it be just an excuse to be with me, and forget all about it, what I say. Don't gather it, don't accumulate it. Mind is accumulation. If you don't accumulate, the mind drops by and by. And listening to me from various standpoints, diametrically opposite to each other, by and by you will be able to see that all standpoints are just games.
And no standpoint can lead you to the truth. When you drop all standpoints, suddenly you find the truth is there. You were too worried about the standpoints; that's why you couldn't see it. Truth is that which is. Buddha called it tathata; it means "suchness": it is already there - such is the case.
So when you have come somehow, don't miss this opportunity, this door.
And you have asked, "How do you manage it - how do you manage to know that the person is ready to receive what you compassionately want to share?" These things are not managed; they happen.
If you are thirsty, you will seek a source of water. And if there is a source of water, the source of water will send messages for you - through the wind, the coolness. Hmm?... if there is a stream it sends messages through the winds, all around; and some thirsty traveller, tired, comes across a cool breeze; he knows, now, this is the direction.
Neither does the stream know about the traveller, whether he is there or not, nor is the traveller exactly certain whether the river is there or not; but it happens: the message is received, in a very vague way, and the traveller starts finding from where this cool breeze is coming. Sometimes he stumbles, goes wrong, but then there is no cool breeze; then he again tries. Through trial and error he finds that if he moves in a certain direction the breeze becomes cooler and cooler. And the stream has sent the message unaddressed. It is not for anybody in particular. Any tired traveller who is thirsty.
Things are happening that way. It is not that I am managing. That will be almost maddening. How can I manage? It is not the law of cause and effect; it is the law of synchronicity. I am here; certain cool breezes are spreading all over the world. Wherever somebody is thirsty he will start feeling a certain desire to move towards me. That's how you all have come.
And when you come here it is up to you, to drink or not to drink. Your mind may create troubles for you because if you want to drink you will have to lean down, to surrender and submit. You will have to fold your hands, cup your hands and go down to the river; only then does the river become available to you. Otherwise you can stand on the bank. Many of you who come new stand for months on the bank - thirsty, feverishly thirsty - but the ego says, "Don't. Don't submit. Don't sacrifice yourself." Then the river goes on flowing by your side and you remain thirsty. It is up to you.
There is no management about it. Many people think as if I send some astral message to you, then you come. No, the message is going, but it is unaddressed. It is not for anybody in particular - it cannot be - but whosoever is ready anywhere in the world will come by and by. He will start moving in this direction. He may not even be aware where he is moving. He may be just coming to India, not to me. Then from Bombay airport his direction may change; he will start moving towards Poona.
Or he may be just coming to see some friend of his who is in Poona and he may not be coming to see me. Things happen in a mysterious way, not in a mathematical way.
But don't be bothered about these things. Whether managing or happening, you need not be concerned. You are here. Don't miss the opportunity.
And I am ready to give you the very goal. Don't ask for the way. And I am ready to reveal the truth to you. Don't ask for the argument.
Question 9
BELOVED OSHO, I WISH TO BRING TO YOUR NOTICE THAT THERE ARE NOW THREE CROOKS RUNNING THE AFFAIRS OF YOUR ASHRAM, AND MASQUERADING UNDER THE GUISE OF BEAUTIFUL AND SIMPLE WOMEN. IN CASE THIS QUESTION INCURS YOUR DISPLEASURE, I WISH TO USE THE NOM DE PLUME - NEMO.
Nothing offends me, nothing incurs my displeasure. And remember, even God has to take the help of the devil to run the affairs of the world. Without the devil even he cannot run the affairs. So I had to choose devils, Beelzebubs. And then I thought, why not with style? - let them be women. Why not with taste? Devils they are going to be. I decided for women - more are wanted.
And there is no need to be anonymous, no need. You can just say who you are; there is no need to hide the name.
Let me tell you one anecdote:
A priest and a rabbi were discussing the finances of their respective parishes.
"We do very well out of envelope collection," said the priest.
"Envelope collections - what are they?" asked the rabbi.
"We hand out little envelopes to each household, and each member of that family puts in a few pence each day; then on Sunday they put the envelope into the collection plate. The envelopes are not marked or numbered in any way, so it is completely anonymous."
"A lovely idea!" exclaimed the rabbi. "I will try that myself."
A week later the priest bumped into the rabbi and asked him how the envelope scheme was progressing.
"Fair, fair," said the rabbi. "I have collected six hundred pounds - anonymous cheques."
"Anonymous cheques?" queried the priest.
"Yes - unsigned!"
Jews are Jews. Don't be a Jew with me; you can sign.
And remember again, more devils are needed. If you find any, particularly in the beautiful guise, masquerading as women, bring them - fetch them immediately. I need more.
In the Western mind there is a division between god and devil, not in the Eastern mind. The polarity is one. So if you look at the lives of Eastern gods, you will be puzzled; they arc both - godly and devilish. They are more whole, more holy. The Western god seems to be almost dead, because the whole life has gone to the devil. The Western god seems to be a very uptight gentleman. You can call him almost an English gentleman - very uptight, needs psychoanalysis. And the devil of course is much too alive. That too is dangerous.