Of the spirit of gravity part 2

All the religions and all the philosophies are based on the assumption that there exists a way to the ultimate truth. Zarathustra denies it totally. He says there is no way as such. And if there is no way as such, it has tremendous implications.

First, if the people who believe in the way were right, then the way already exists - you have simply to follow, you have simply to move on the way. This is how organized religions are created. They have highways and superhighways, and millions of people walk together towards the ultimate truth.

Nobody ever bothers about whether anybody ever reaches anywhere.

Twenty-five centuries have passed, and millions of people have moved on the way they have thought is the way of Gautam the Buddha. But no one has turned around and said, "I have arrived; the way has led me to the promised land." And the situation is the same for all other religions: Hindus have not been able to produce another Krishna, neither have Christians produced another Christ.

It is strange... still millions of people are following certain routines, certain prayers, certain scriptures; they constitute their "way." And all ways have failed - because if all these ways had succeeded, the world would have been totally different. It would not have been a world of constant wars, violence, crimes, murder, suicide, madness, of all kinds of perversions. And man would not have been so miserable as he is. He is nothing but a deep wound which knows no way to heal.

Everybody is hiding his wound. You smile just to hide your tears, and you show each other that everything is perfectly alright; and everybody knows nothing is right at all.

I had a friend, and whenever I met him, I used to ask him, "How are things going?" and his reply was almost mechanical, always the same: "Everything is alright." I enquired of other friends about this man, and they said, "That does not mean anything; he says that to everybody. Ask anything: 'How is your wife?' - 'Everything is alright.' 'How are your children?' - 'Everything is alright.'"

One day I met him on the way to the university, and I wanted to ask him once again, because three months before, his father had died. I knew it, so I enquired of him, "How is your father?" And he said, "He has been alright for three months, absolutely alright." I could not believe my ears. The father was dead - certainly he had been alright for three months; he had not created any problem, any difficulty. But he said it in just the same, routine way.

Everybody is showing a face which is not his. Nobody wants to expose himself and his suffering. For thousands of years, people have been practicing great religions, following great religious leaders, and this is the outcome. If a tree is known by its fruits, then all your religions should be judged by your state of misery and suffering. You are the fruits of your whole past.

Zarathustra is absolutely right: there is no way. What does he mean exactly, when he says there is no way?

He is saying many things. One thing: you have to walk, and create the way by your walking; you will not find a ready-made path. It is not so cheap, to reach to the ultimate realization of truth. You will have to create the path by walking yourself; the path is not ready-made, lying there and waiting for you. It is just like the sky: the birds fly, but they don't leave any footprints. You cannot follow them; there are no footprints left behind.

Zarathustra is saying, "Gautam Buddha may have reached. But in the sky of consciousness, no footprints are left behind, no path is made. Everybody has to create his own path." It also means, religion cannot be an organized phenomenon. It is basically individual, fundamentally individual.

It is just like love - you cannot have organized love. One person falls in love - not one organization falls in love. And in love, at least there is the other person, but in the search for truth, you are absolutely alone. It goes even higher than love, because love at least allows one person; you are not absolutely alone. Truth does not allow even a companion to go with you. And the reason why truth cannot allow it is simple: because truth is not there outside somewhere, it is within you. And within yourself you can go only alone. You cannot take somebody else with you.

In the inner sky of your consciousness you will have to find what you are searching for by creating the path. It creates fear in the cowardly soul; otherwise it gives a great thrill to the brave and to the courageous - a great excitement, a great challenge of being in solitude, alone, moving into the unknown with no map, with no guide, with no roads, with no milestones. It is a great joy for the courageous soul.

That's why the experience of truth is always virgin. Nobody has been there before you. Nobody can be there before you. They have all been in their own inner center; your inner center is still virgin and will remain virgin unless you reach to it.

The search for truth is falling in love with oneself.

The finding of truth is not something objective; it is just discovering yourself, just coming to know the beauty and the blissfulness, the peace and the eternity of your existence.

You need not be a follower: every follower is going in a wrong direction - just by following. You need not choose the path: the very choice is to begin the journey in a wrong direction. You need not have an ideal of Gautam Buddha or Jesus or Mahavira or Krishna, because to have an ideal will not allow you to be alone. Those ideals in your imagination will go with you. Hence, tremendous sayings:

Gautam Buddha says, "If you meet me on the path, kill me immediately." Zarathustra says, "Beware of the so-called saviors, and most precisely beware of Zarathustra."

If you fall in love with a man like Zarathustra - which is very easy, very consoling - your very love will become a hindrance, an obstacle in the search of your purity, of your innocence, of your authentic self. The statements this evening are very significant.

Zarathustra says, MAN IS DIFFICULT TO DISCOVER, MOST OF ALL TO HIMSELF; THE SPIRIT OFTEN TELLS LIES ABOUT THE SOUL.

The first difficulty in discovering yourself is that your mind is full of lies about yourself, which you have learned, which you have gathered from all over the place. From scriptures, from priests, from saints, you are collecting all kinds of garbage about yourself, and none of them knows you. None of them can know you. The possibility to know yourself exists only for you. It is absolutely your privilege - nobody else can enter into your privacy. This is a fundamental truth to be remembered:

your innermost being cannot be enslaved, cannot be even touched.

Alexander had come to India, and when he was going back, he remembered that his master, Aristotle, who is the father of logic in the West, had asked him, "You may be bringing many things and many gifts to many people. For me, I would like you to bring a sannyasin, because only the East knows what a sannyasin is - a man who has made it his life's task to discover himself, who has sacrificed everything, staked everything for a single point: he wants to know himself. I would love,"

Aristotle said to him, "to see such a man," because the West was still unaware of the inner search.

Unfortunately even today it is unaware of the inner search. Its whole effort is scientific, objective - how to know more about the world, how to know more about the farthest star. But nobody seems to be very interested in knowing oneself. It seems as if it is taken for granted: what is the need to know oneself? You are yourself already.

It is true you are yourself already - but who are you? You are not alert of your own being. You have not tasted the joy, the song, the dance of one who knows himself.

Alexander went through many, many places and he asked people, "I would like to know about someone who has found himself, because I don't want to take some amateur; I want somebody who has arrived home." They all indicated one man, saying, "On the way you will find, near a mountain, by the side of a river, an old man. In this area there are many sannyasins, but they are still seekers.

Only that old man is no longer a seeker. He has arrived. He has found who he is."

Alexander sent one of his generals to the sage. And the general asked him, "Alexander the Great wants you to be his guest, and he wants to take you to Greece, his homeland. You will be given all facilities, all comforts, all luxuries - whatever you need."

The old man laughed, and he said, "It would be better... bring your Alexander the Great himself to me. I don't talk to the servants. Bring the master himself!" The general was a great general himself, but he had never heard such an authoritative voice. He had fought in many wars, invaded many countries, but he had never encountered such a lion. He could not say anything. He simply went back and told Alexander, "It is better not to bother with that old man. He knows no courtesy; he is absolutely wild. He misbehaved with me and I am afraid he may misbehave with you."

Alexander said, "Anybody who misbehaves with me cannot live a single moment more. I am coming."

But as he came close to the old man, he started feeling a little trembling in himself, because the old man said, "So you are Alexander the Great. Anybody who calls himself 'the great' is not, and cannot be,'the great.' What is your opinion?"

Alexander said, "I have not come to discuss, I have come to invite you." The old man said, "I am like the wind - I move in freedom. You cannot invite a breeze; it comes on its own. If I feel like coming, I will come to Greece - and not on your invitation. But if I don't want to, then I will not even go to paradise."

Alexander was infuriated. He pulled out his sword and he said, "If you don't come with me, then I will behead you this very moment!" The old man laughed, and the whole valley echoed his laughter.

And he said, "This is beautiful. Do it! I always wanted to see my head falling down from the body.

Just cut it off. Don't be concerned about killing a man, because I am not the man you are killing. I am far away from my head. When the head falls down you will see it falling, and I will also see it falling, because I am not my head. This head is going to fall anyway sooner or later, dust unto dust.

And I will feel blessed that even Alexander the Great had to work for me, had to follow my order. Cut the head off immediately!" - as if he is ordering him to cut off somebody else's head!

Even Alexander, who had cut thousands of heads, could not manage to cut this man's head off. His sword went back into the sheath, and the old man said, "What are you doing?" Alexander said, "Just forgive me. I don't know the ways of you people. My master had asked me, because he wanted to see a man who has found the truth. Neither he knows nor I know how a man who has found the truth behaves. One thing is certain: you have known something beyond the body and beyond the mind. I will not force you to come with me. I am blessed just to have seen you. I will report to my master about you."

Man's mind is the greatest barrier in his way to self-discovery, because the mind goes on telling you lies about yourself: you are this, you are that. It tells beautiful lies: you are the immortal soul, you are God Himself, you are eternal consciousness, you are truth, you are beauty, you are good. But all these are just empty words. You have picked them up, borrowed them from different sources. They are all just rubbish. But they can prevent you, because they can give you a false sense that you know yourself already. And if you know yourself already, there is no point in going for exploration.

This is the treacherous, the most ugly fact about your mind, that it lies very beautifully. It quotes scriptures, it convinces you that you need not go anywhere - just read THE HOLY BIBLE, or the holy GITA, or the holy KORAN and you will find everything. There is no need to go in search; people have already found everything about the soul. It is true, people have already found out everything about the soul, just as people have found out everything about love, but does that mean that their findings about love will give you a taste of love? Their findings will remain only words to you. They cannot become an experience.

BUT HE HAS DISCOVERED HIMSELF WHO SAYS: THIS IS MY GOOD AND EVIL: HE HAS SILENCED THEREBY THE MOLE AND DWARF WHO SAYS: 'GOOD FOR ALL, EVIL FOR ALL.'

Zarathustra says, "One of the signs of the person who has discovered himself is that he always says, 'this is my good' and 'this is my evil.'" He does not talk in terms of the universe. He does not talk as if he has found some law that is applicable to all. Those who talk about laws which are applicable to all show definitively that they don't know themselves. Each individual is unique; hence each individual has his own morality, his own good, his own evil.

He cannot say... 'GOOD FOR ALL, EVIL FOR ALL.'He can only say, "This is good for me: I know myself, and I know what makes me happier, what makes me ecstatic. What makes me blissful is good for me, but I cannot make a general rule of it because what is nectar to me, may prove poison to you. You have your own uniqueness, you have your own individuality."

This is great about man. And this is the problem, the reason why science cannot come to any conclusions about man. It can come to conclusions about water, it can come to conclusions about matter, it can come to conclusions about everything, but not about consciousness - because science can conclude only if it finds a general rule without any exception. But what is true to one consciousness may not be so to another.

Gautam Buddha and Mahavira were contemporaries. They moved in the same area of India, Bihar.

The word bihar simply means the area of the wanderings of Buddha and Mahavir - bihar means "wanderings" and because they wandered in that area, the name of the area itself became Bihar.

They passed through the same towns, the same villages, the same cities.

Once it happened: they had to stay in the same caravanserai. In one part, Gautam Buddha was staying, in another part, Mahavira was staying. But they never agreed on anything - and they both were self-realized beings. Mahavira lived naked. Buddha used clothes - not many, only three sets of clothes were his whole possession. But the followers of Mahavira continually asked him, "The man who realizes himself drops all possessions, even clothes. Why have you not dropped clothes?"

And the disciples of Buddha used to ask Mahavira, "A self-realized man need not drop the clothes.

Buddha has not dropped, why should you unnecessarily suffer cold, heat, different seasons? Why torture yourself?"

But nobody - and both had thousands of followers - nobody could see a simple point. Perhaps it was so obvious that they missed seeing it.

They could recognize that both persons had the same charisma, the same spiritual depth to their eyes, the same grace to their gestures, the same authority to their words, and the same joyous aroma around them - the same fragrance, the same beauty.But why were they so different in their expressions, in their philosophies, in their disciplines?

Mankind has lived under a great illusion - that all men are the same, that man is equal. It is not true.

What to say about all men? Not even two men are the same.

And when they reach their highest peak, then they are more unique and more different than ever, because then their genius comes to its fullest expression. And naturally Buddha has a different genius than Mahavira. Zarathustra has a different genius than Jesus. If we can understand a simple fact - that everybody has to discover himself and in that very discovery he will find his own morality, his own individuality, his own good, his own evil - we will not be so critical of each other.

Right now the Buddhist cannot accept Mahavira as enlightened - very close, but not perfectly enlightened. Neither can the followers of Jaina Mahavira accept Gautam Buddha as perfectly enlightened.

One of the followers of Mahatma Gandhi, who brought me to Poona for the first time - his name was Risabdas Raka - had written a book according to the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. Mahatma Gandhi was teaching that all religions are the same - which is nonsense, they are as different as different can be.

Risabdas Raka was a Jaina by birth and he wrote a book on Mahavira and Buddha. The name of the book was BHAGWAN MAHAVIRA AND MAHATMA GAUTAM BUDDHA.

I asked him, "You are trying to prove that all religions are the same, but the title of your book says that Mahavira is Bhagwan; and according to Jainism, Bhagwan means the realized one, the blessed one, one who has arrived. Why have you not used the same word for Buddha? - because the followers of Buddha call him BHAGWAN GAUTAM BUDDHA. For him you used mahatma. Mahatma means the great soul - great, but not so great as the blessed one; very close, but has not yet arrived."

He was very angry with me. He said, "Nobody has said that to me. I have even shown the book to Mahatma Gandhi and he appreciated it very much."

I said, "I am not Mahatma Gandhi; I am not so blind as he was. I can see from the very title that you, deep down in your mind, are still a follower of Mahavira and you cannot conceive that somebody else like Gautam Buddha, who has a different philosophy, a different life-style, has reached to the same experience, to the same truth, to the same height."And because I criticized him on the title of the book, that became the point of departure. Then he became my archenemy - just because I pointed out a simple fact which he could not deny.

I said, "If you really have any dignity, you should withdraw this book and burn it. Write it again and if you have even a small doubt in you that Buddha is not equal to Mahavira, then don't pretend."

Every individual has to come to such a unique space - which nobody has ever explored; it is his own. This is the dignity, the privilege of being human.

TRULY I DISLIKE ALL THOSE WHO CALL EVERYTHING GOOD AND THIS WORLD THE BEST OF ALL. I CALL SUCH PEOPLE THE ALL-CONTENTED. In the language of Zarathustra, the all- contented are not even human beings; they are buffaloes. Buffaloes are all-contented. Have you seen any buffalo discontented, sad, depressed, in despair? No, buffaloes are all-contented - they are all your saints, born as buffaloes.

An authentic human being has a tremendous discontent - discontent with everything.

Without that discontent there is no progress; without that discontent there is no growth; without that discontent there is no reaching for the stars. You need a great discontent - to be spiritual.

Contentment is for the lowliest. All-contented is for Zarathustra a word of great contempt. He is saying:

TRULY, I DISLIKE ALL THOSE WHO CALL EVERYTHING GOOD AND THIS WORLD THE BEST OF ALL.

And that's what your religions have been teaching to you: Everything is good; be satisfied with your life.Even if there is some suffering, it is just a test of your trust. Pass through it, but don't become discontented and everything is good.

Because of these teachings man has remained retarded - retarded as far as spiritual evolution is concerned, retarded as far as his growth as a superman is concerned. You need a divine discontentment. Only then a great longing will arise in you to go beyond yourself, to go beyond your so-called knowledge, to go beyond you so-called morality, to go beyond your so-called society.

This going beyond is a continuous process; it never stops.

Life's fundamental rule is: overcoming itself, again and again. That's what Zarathustra teaches and I agree with him with absolute totality.

Man needs a divine discontent, a longing for the distant, a longing for the impossible. Unless you have the longing for the impossible you will not have a great soul. A small soul is all-contented - having a wife, two, three children, a house, a grocery store, once in a while going for a picnic, every Sunday going to see a movie. This life and you are all-contented; things are going perfectly well.

According to Zarathustra, according to me, this is not life. You are deceiving yourself - because you have so much potential. You can grow so many flowers in your being; you can give birth to stars. All that you need is somebody to put fire in you, to make you aflame with such a longing that nothing can satisfy you. Even if God comes into your possession, the true divine seeker will ask, "Now what?

because I want to go beyond God. God cannot be the end of the street."

Only the impossible, which always appears like the horizon - you are coming closer and closer and closer, but the distance between you and the horizon remains the same - only a horizon can help you to go on growing, to go on becoming higher. And that is the only hope: if man can be so discontented with himself that he is ready to die to give birth to a superman.

ALL-CONTENTEDNESS THAT KNOWS HOW TO TASTE EVERYTHING: THAT IS NOT THE BEST TASTE! I HONOUR THE OBSTINATE, FASTIDIOUS TONGUES AND STOMACHS THAT HAVE LEARNED TO SAY 'I' AND 'YES' AND 'NO'.

DEEP YELLOW AND BURNING RED: THAT IS TO MY TASTE - IT MIXES BLOOD WITH ALL COLORS. BUT HE WHO WHITEWASHES HIS HOUSE BETRAYS TO ME A WHITEWASHED SOUL.

You can ask Ronald Reagan, "What happens in a white house?" - one gets a whitewashed soul.

Man has to be a rainbow. All the colors, all the varieties, all that life makes available has to be tasted, has to be lived, and has to be lived intensely. Only a life lived totally, in all its colors, brings the opportunity to you for giving birth to something higher than you, something bigger than you, something greater than you.

You are not the goal.

You have to become the soil.

It is enough for you if you can become a soil in which many, many roses will blossom.

I CALL WRETCHED THOSE WHO ALWAYS HAVE TO WAIT - THEY OFFEND MY TASTE: ALL TAX-COLLECTORS - the income tax-commissioner of Poona included - AND SHOPKEEPERS AND KINGS AND OTHER KEEPERS OF LANDS AND SHOPS. They are all very small human beings. Their taste is only for the very trivial. Their interest is for money, their lust is for power, their greed is for honor, respectability - but they don't have any longing for the stars. They don't have any longing even to discover their own being.

TRULY, I TOO HAVE LEARNED TO WAIT, I HAVE LEARNED IT FROM THE VERY HEART, BUT ONLY TO WAIT FOR MYSELF. Zarathustra is saying, "I am also waiting - impatiently waiting, discontentedly waiting - but waiting only for myself. Not for money, not for power, not for honor, but just to know myself and to be myself." AND ABOVE ALL I HAVE LEARNED TO STAND AND TO WALK AND TO RUN AND TO JUMP AND TO CLIMB AND TO DANCE. I am not simply waiting.

He says, AND ABOVE ALL I HAVE LEARNED TO STAND AND TO WALK AND TO RUN AND TO JUMP AND TO CLIMB AND TO DANCE. My waiting is not empty. My waiting is full of songs and full of music and full of dances.

I am waiting for myself. I am preparing a great welcome for myself. My waiting is not sad, my waiting is not negative, my waiting is not hopelessness, my waiting is full of hope, tremendous hope. I know, however dark the night may be, the dawn will come... however long I have to wait. And I am not wasting my time while I am waiting; I am using my time as creatively as possible - because I have to be ready to welcome myself, I have to deserve myself.

You cannot know yourself just as you are. You have to refine yourself, you have to learn more silence, you have to be more poetic, you have to be more sensitive, you have to be more alert, you have to be more meditative, you have to be more grateful. And you have to be immensely discontented with all the trivia; people are contented....

Look at your so-called great people! They seem to be so childish: somebody gets a Nobel prize and he goes mad - and a Nobel prize is nothing but a lollipop. It doesn't have more value than that; it is a toy for the grown-ups, a teddy bear. But people are bragging - just look at the military generals and their colors and the great police officers and their colors. The line goes on getting bigger and bigger, more colors are added - and they are so happy! Is this world still childish? People are writing their degrees.... Just the other day I was looking at a visiting card. It was full on both sides: president of this association, vice-president of that association, retired from this post, working as a counselor to the government... and it goes on and on. On that small visiting card he had written his whole autobiography - all his degrees, all the posts he had served. Perhaps he had never thought that this is childish.

You are not your degrees, you are not the posts you have been on, you are not the vice-presidents and the presidents of stupid kinds of clubs - Rotary Club, Lions Club. Just gather twenty idiots and make a club; Jackals Club, will be more true - because I have been to many Lions Clubs and I have not seen a single lion. All kinds of cowards... but they are enjoying their time just being a member of the Lions Club. If a lion comes into the club, then you will see the reality of what happens to members who were pretending to be lions. And now their wives have Lionesses Clubs, their children have Kids Clubs.

How easy it is to deceive oneself.

How easy it is to create a false identity.

THIS, HOWEVER, IS MY TEACHING: HE WHO WANTS TO LEARN TO FLY ONE DAY MUST FIRST LEARN TO STAND AND TO WALK AND TO RUN AND TO CLIMB AND TO DANCE - YOU CANNOT LEARN TO FLY BY FLYING!

You have to go step by step. If you want one day to fly to the stars, move slowly, step by step. Dance to abandon. Dance so deeply that the dancer disappears and only the dance remains, and perhaps you will grow wings. Such a dancer can fly; such a dancer certainly flies to the stars.

I CAME TO MY TRUTH BY DIVERSE PATHS AND IN DIVERSE WAYS: IT WAS NOT UPON A SINGLE LADDER THAT I CLIMBED TO THE HEIGHT WHERE MY EYES SURVEY MY DISTANCES.

AND I HAVE ASKED THE WAY ONLY UNWILLINGLY - THAT HAS ALWAYS OFFENDED MY TASTE! I HAVE RATHER QUESTIONED AND ATTEMPTED THE WAYS THEMSELVES.

ALL MY PROGRESS HAS BEEN AN ATTEMPTING AND A QUESTIONING - AND TRULY, ONE HAS TO LEARN HOW TO ANSWER SUCH QUESTIONING! THAT HOWEVER - IS TO MY TASTE:

NOT GOOD TASTE, NOT BAD TASTE, BUT MY TASTE.

His insistence is always on the individual:

NOT GOOD TASTE, NOT BAD TASTE, BUT MY TASTE, WHICH I NO LONGER CONCEAL AND OF WHICH I AM NO LONGER ASHAMED.

'THIS - IS NOW MY WAY: WHERE IS YOURS?' THUS I ANSWERED THOSE WHO ASKED ME 'THE WAY'. FOR THE WAY - DOES NOT EXIST!

This is one of the greatest statements ever made by anyone: FOR THE WAY - DOES NOT EXIST!

It has to be created by walking, it has to be created by dancing, it has to be created by searching.

You have to do both things: walk on the way as you go on creating it; go on making the path and go on moving on it.

In fact, the making of the path and the walking on it is the same process. There are no ready-made ways. That's why only the very courageous people - who are ready to get lost, who are ready to lose all contact with the crowd and the crowd's comfort and cosiness, and the certainty that, "So many people are with me, and so many people cannot be wrong. And if they are all right, I am on the right path" - only a very courageous person moves out of the crowd.

The crowd has never found any truth. The crowd never moves, the crowd never grows. The crowd is not a river, it is a pond. It has no flow; it never reaches the ocean. And if you want to reach the ocean you have to become a river, you have to take the risk.

Have you watched how rivers reach the ocean? They do not have any ready-made path; they do not have any guidance as to the direction. They do not run like railway trains on rails. Arising far away in the Himalayas, the Ganges starts its journey not knowing where the way is - not even asking. But it goes on trying to find the way in the mountains, in the valleys, in the plains. And after thousands of miles, finally it finds the ocean.

It is a miracle that all the rivers finally find the ocean. Why should it be otherwise with man?

Why can man's consciousness not find the ultimate truth, the oceanic truth?

One just needs courage.

Of course to be a pond is very safe and comfortable - no danger of getting lost in any desert, no danger of losing your path, all-contented - but a pond is dead, a river is alive. A pond goes on becoming dirty and muddy, and the river remains clean. The movement keeps it young and clean.

A man has to be a river.

... THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.