Walking down the street, Mula Nasruddin noticed a boy of about 15, smoking a cigarette, “Aren’t you a little young to smoke?” Mulla asked. “Of course I ain’t,” replied the lad. “I got a girlfriend and all.” “A girlfriend!” said the Mulla. “Yeah, picked her up last night, I did. Smashing it was.” “Good Lord! How old is she?” “I dunno. I was too drunk to ask her.”

This is no ancient joke. It’s a reality, happening today with our kids. They are not even out of schools or colleges but they are smoking like adults, flirting with girls, getting drunk to lose their consciousness, which has not even evolved. In coming days, we can expect more of this and worse than this. Young ones are already too violent; there are incidences of rape and other crimes. This is happening not only in the West but here in India too.

Why is this happening? Nobody knows. Things are no longer in our control. The East is imitating the West, and vice versa. Says Osho. “This world is a world of imitators, monkeys all. A grown-up person is one who doesn’t imitate, who feels his own way, who is an individual, who looks into his nature and asks: ‘Who am I? What do I really feel?”

Once, Mulla Nasruddin’s wife drove home, got out of her car and promptly fell to the ground. Mulla rushed to her and asked, “What happened? Why did you faint?” She said, “It was too hot.” He asked, “Why didn’t you open the windows?” She said, “What! Open the windows, and let the neighbors know that our car is not air-conditioned?”

People are ready to die but they wouldn’t like others to know their reality. It’s a prestige issue that the car must be air-conditioned, whether one can afford it or not. She had to keep the windows closed. She may feel faint but she will suffer that; to keep the windows open hurts much more!

Osho says: Nobody allows anybody to be just himself. And you have been conditioned to all those ideas so deeply that they seem to be your ideas. Just relax. Forget all those ideas. Drop them like dry leaves. It’s better to be a naked tree without leaves than to have plastic foliage and plastic flowers; that is ugly. Having an original face means that you aren’t dominated by any morality, religion, society, parents, teachers, priests, anyone. You live your life according to your own inner sense. You have a sensibility. You are original.

The world’s great place to live in when we are original, not copies of any thing. It does not matter whether one copies Buddha, Krishna or Jesus- a copy is a copy. It is beneath human dignity to copy. Be original. Be your own master.

Osho tells us to meditate and says: “Listen to your being. It is continuously giving you hints; it is a still, small voice. It does not shout at you. And if you are a little silent, you will start feeling your way. Be the person you are. Never try to be another, and you will become mature. Maturity is accepting the responsibility of being oneself, whatsoever the cost. Risking all to be oneself-that’s what maturity is all about.”

It is quite understandable when the poor are miserable, but what is surprising is that even the well-heeled are depressed. This makes you wonder what really causes misery. Why does it not disappear by wealth, health or anything of that sort?
Osho answers: “The misery exists in the demand and desire for more. Can you see yourself in a situation where you can stop desiring for more? Impossible! All of us can imagine a better situation or condition than we are in. this means you will be miserable wherever you are. Even heaven won’t be enough.”

Here’s an interest anecdote from the life of famous author Leo Tolstoy. One day, a Tolstoy was walking in a forest, he saw a lizard sitting on a rock, sunning itself. Feeling jealousy of the lizard, he spoke to it: “Your heart is beating. The sun is shining. You are happy.”  And added after a pause, “But I am not.”

Osho asks us: “Why are lizards happy and man is not? Why is the whole creation is not? Why is the whole creation in a celebration and man isn’t? why is everything expect man beautifully tuned into itself and tuned into the whole? What has happened to man? What misfortune has befallen him? This has to be understood because from that very understanding strats  the path, from that very understanding you become a seeker and from that very understanding you are no longer part of the human disease.”

Osho answers: “A lizard exists in the present. It has no idea of the past or the future. It’s in the here-now. This moment is enough for a lizard, but not so far man. Here arises the disease: You only get one moment. And whenever you become aware, you will become aware in the now. The past is no more, the future not yet. We go on missing that which is for now, for that future which is not yet, for that past for that past which is no more.”

Osho adds: “Drop the past and the future. What does it mean? It means drop thinking, because all thoughts either belong to the past or to the future. There is no thought for the here-now. Thinking is unreal—either part of memory or of imagination. The real is an experience.”

You can dance, sun yourself, sing, love in the real but you cannot think in it. Thinking is always ‘about’ something, and in that ‘about’ is hidden the whole misery. In that ‘about’ go on meandering, never quite coming to the point.
The point of all meditation is to be like the lizard, sunning yourself on a rock, to be here-now to be part of the whole, not trying to jump ahead into the future, not trying to carry ‘that’ which is no more. Unburdened of the past, unconcerned about the future, how can you be miserable? Suddenly, you explode into a different dimension. You go beyond time and you become part of eternity.

But still we refuse to stop thinking and wishing for more, getting stuck like an old record. Like this girl… Noticing that her rind is extremely glum, one girl asks her: “Angeline, what’s wrong?” Says Angeline: “Oh, it is nothing. But a fortnight ago, old Mr Short died. He left me Rs 50,000. Then last week, poor Mr Pilkinhouse died of a seizure and left me Rs 60,000. And this week, nothing!”