JESUS
Come Follow Yourself Vol 02 02
Second Discourse from the series of 11 discourses - Come Follow Yourself Vol 02 by Osho.
You can listen, download or read all of these discourses on oshoworld.com.
The first question:
Osho,
Roses are red
Violets are bluish,
If it wasn't for Jesus
We'd all be Jewish.
Please comment.
We still are. Jesus could not succeed. To be Jewish has nothing to do with any race; it is an attitude. To be Jewish means to be calculating, to be under the world of law and not love. To be Jewish means not to be poetic, but to be arithmetical. To be Jewish means not to be in awe of the wonder that surrounds you.
It is not just accidental this whole century has been dominated by three Jews: Marx, Freud, and Einstein – because the world is materialistic. It has never been as materialistic as it is now. One Jew, Marx, invented the idea that life is nothing but economics. That’s what I mean by calculation. Even religion is economics, even poetry is economics. Marx says even consciousness depends on economic situations, it is a by-product: consciousness is a by-product of economic situations, the structure of the society. Marx is the perfect Jew: you cannot find a better specimen!
Then Freud tried to invent the idea that the whole of life moves according to unconscious laws, instincts: there is no conscious event in human life; everything is dominated by the unconscious. He was a fatalist.
Fatalism is also an idea that the world is run by dead rules. To Marx, it is economics that rules everything. To Freud, it is unconscious instinct that rules everything. Then Einstein tried to invent the idea the whole of life is nothing but a combination of atoms. All three are calculators.
To be a Jew has nothing to do with the Jewish race. There are Jews who are Hindus, there are Jews who are Jainas, there are Jews who are Buddhists. The Jew is an attitude.
Christ has not succeeded: Christians are Jews! Christ can succeed only when law is defeated by love, when matter is defeated by spirit, when language is defeated by silence, when prose is defeated by poetry, when life is not ruled by economic, instinctive, historical laws, but life is ruled by grace. Then Jesus succeeds.
So don’t think you are not Jews. Out of a hundred people, ninety-nine percent are Jews. Only sometimes one person is not Jewish. That person lives a life of love. He has nothing to force his life into, no pattern. He lives moment to moment; he flows from one moment to another moment – with no idea of where he is going, with no goal.
Then freedom happens. And only in freedom is there consciousness, and only in freedom is there godliness. Godliness is total freedom. If you live moment to moment – not knowing where you are going, not knowing from where you are coming – if the past is irrelevant and the future also, and only the present has any relevance, any reality, you go beyond being Jewish.
Everybody is born a Jew. Rarely, very rarely, somebody dies and dies not as a Jew. That is a rare blessing. Just by calling yourselves Christians nothing is changed. Only labels change. The container changes but the content remains the same.
Jesus has failed, but not because his revolution was not worthy of success. Jesus has failed because his revolution was too much for you. It was beyond you. Just to look that far away, that high, is impossible. Your eyes are fixed on the earth; you have completely forgotten the sky. And because you have forgotten the sky, you have forgotten you have wings. Looking down, groping in the darkness of the earth, you have become creepers, like a snake. You are no longer birds, birds of heaven.
Jesus failed because you are so deep in unconsciousness. And Jesus will go on failing. His very effort is such that success is almost impossible. As far as society is concerned, he may never succeed. Only with individuals is success possible.
Hence, all those who have known… Ask the awakened: Buddha, Jesus, Krishna, Zarathustra. You will always find their insistence is on the individual. They know well that at the most you can expect a few individuals to rise high. The greater part of humanity will do everything it can to save its bondage, to remain secure in its imprisonment, to remain comfortable and live somehow – dragging life as a burden – and die somehow. The greater mass will not listen, will not understand, will not try to transform themselves. Religion is individual.
And religion has no names. Whenever somebody becomes religious, immediately he is no longer a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian. He is simply religious. It is an understanding: it is a different kind of knowing, a different way of seeing. And when you see differently, you see a different reality. The reality depends on your eyes. If your eyes change, the reality changes.
If you are calculating, you will never be able to know more than matter because calculation has its limitations. If you are too arithmetical, you will never be able to know that which is beauty, that which is good, that which is true. You will never be able to know because calculation cannot lead to that.
How can you know a beautiful flower by being arithmetical? You can count the petals, but you will miss the beauty. You can count the parts, but you will miss the whole. And you are certain to miss the beauty that surrounds the flower, that exists like a climate around the flower – but cannot be caught hold of by counting the petals. You have to forget counting, you have to forget the mind that counts.
The mind is Jewish. Once you go beyond mind you enter a different world: the world that cannot be accounted for, that cannot be explained, that is a mystery and remains a mystery. The deeper you go into it, the greater the mystery. The more you know, the less you know. And there comes a moment… When you really know it, you know only one thing – that you don’t know.
The second question:
Osho,
Today I wanted to dance as you were speaking. And you even mentioned Kazantzakis, whom I love. But I feel inhibited to dance, even though I was sitting in the back. This place feels conservative to me, but probably I didn't dance because of my own conservatism. Is this a question?
Not at all – it is a confession.
This place is not conservative. But you are all conservative, and you make this place. It is not mine, it is yours. If it were mine, it wouldn’t be conservative. But I am alone and I cannot make it. I am a stranger here. It consists of you, and you are conservative. This place becomes conservative: it cannot go beyond you because you are the constituent parts. It is the total of your conservatisms.
But who bothers? If you are really in a state of dance, who bothers? Then you can dance, even on the road. Maybe the police will come and take you to prison, but that’s okay. What can you do? If you can stop the dance, then it is not worth doing. It must have been a mind game; it must have been just an idea, an idea in the mind that you would like to dance – but not really.
When dance happens, it is not an idea in the mind, not at all. It is a tremendous energy in the body. It has its own force. You are possessed, you cannot do anything. You forget this place, you forget the society, you forget the world. You are helpless, you are possessed by dance. Then something from the beyond enters.
It must have been just an idea in the mind. That’s why you stopped it. Ideas can be stopped, but when you are possessed, you cannot do anything about it. It happens; it is not done. And then it is divine when it happens. When you do it, it is human and ordinary.
It is not a question. It is a confession.
And you say you love Kazantzakis. That too may be just an idea in the mind because people love things that they lack in their life. Reading Zorba the Greek you may love Zorba, but if you met Zorba, you might not like him because he will be such a totally different, altogether different, being than you. Even Kazantzakis was never at ease with Zorba. They were friends. Zorba was a real person: he is not just in a novel. Even Kazantzakis was very uneasy with him because he was a totally different type of man – absolutely hedonistic, absolutely in the moment. Nothing else mattered except happiness.
Of course it looks very selfish. Only sad people look unselfish. Happy people always look selfish, and happy people are always condemned because the whole society is unhappy. “How do you dare to be happy? When everybody is so unhappy, you must be very selfish to be happy. Don’t smile when everybody is weeping and crying, and don’t laugh. Life is very miserable, and it looks unmannerly.”
A man like Zorba will never be accepted in any home. You will not allow him to stay with you because his very presence will be a disturbance. He does not believe in any morality. He knows only one morality: happiness.
And I say to you, that is the only morality there is. All else is rubbish because only a happy person can be moral, only a happy person is not interested in making others unhappy, only a happy person creates an atmosphere around him where others can also be happy. But those others will not like the idea of your being happy when they are miserable.
You may have loved Zorba, but you won’t allow Zorba to become a guest in your home. He is unreliable. Such happy people are dangerous. You can rely on sad, dead people: they will not escape with your wife! Zorba can. He lives in the moment. He has no future, no past, no heaven, no hell. He is very true to the real moment.
But you may have loved him. This happens, this has to be understood. You always love the opposite. The opposite attracts you – but only in fantasy. In reality it will be troublesome. People who have never loved go on reading poetry about love. Sometimes they even try to write poetry about love. This has been my observation. I have come across many poets; they have missed love in life so they go on writing poetry about it. That’s a substitute: very pale, useless, but still a little satisfying. At least something is here. Plastic flowers, but they look like flowers. Love is dangerous. To write poetry about love has no danger in it.
Watch: if somebody is reciting a poem on love you may welcome him, but if the man really moves into love then the society will condemn him. Read the story of Laila and Majnu, or Shiri and Farhad, and you will love it. But the people who were alive in the days of Majnu hated the man – because who loves a lover? Try to be a lover and you will be condemned by the society. Write poetry about it and maybe the president will give you an award; you may get the Nobel Prize. No lover ever gets a Nobel Prize. People who write poetry about love get Nobel Prizes.
Man has become afraid of the real; but about the phony, there is no danger in it. Have you watched this? Sometimes you are sitting in your room or in your house and reading or doing something, and somebody knocks at the door. You feel very bad. Now somebody has come to disturb you. You don’t even like to answer; you would like to avoid it. You don’t go yourself: you send the servant to the door, or your child, to tell the person: “Daddy is not at home.” But if somebody gives you a call on the phone, then you are not disturbed. Then you immediately take the phone in your hand because the reality is so far away.
Sometimes it has happened that a thief has entered somebody’s house and has been caught, and caught because of an old habit. The phone was ringing and he could not resist it. He had to answer: a phone has to be answered! So he took the phone in his hand and he was caught. And when he was asked, “Why did you bother?” he said, “I completely forgot I was a thief in the house. When the phone rings, one has to answer.”
A man was doing some research work on this phenomenon. He called twenty public phones and somebody or the other answered. Then he inquired of a man: “Why did you answer? It was not for you.”
He said, “I was just passing.”
“Then why did you answer?”
He said, “But the phone was ringing!”
It has a certain power. When the phone rings you have to answer. It is a certain quality, something like hypnosis. It is not your concern, and it is certain it is not ringing for you. It is a public phone: you are passing by the way, you are going to your office. It is certainly not ringing for you – so why?
When the reality is far away, it is very easy to answer. When the reality comes nearer, it becomes more and more difficult. The greatest difficulties of life are concerned with the people who are very real to you and very near to you: your wife, your children, your husband – very close. They are real. There is the trouble.
You may have liked Zorba. Even Kazantzakis liked the man – when he was not with him! But when they lived together, it was really difficult because sometimes he will come drunk and will start dancing and will dance the whole night. And he was a powerful man, very strong. When you live with such a man, it will be difficult unless you yourself are such a man.
Don’t create substitutes. That’s a trick of the mind to deceive you. Love the real, don’t love the phony. It is better to love than to write poetry on love because love will transform you, love will give you insight. Love will give you insight into the human heart: into your own and the other’s. Through love there will be many unhappy moments, anguish, but there will be peaks of joy also. And that’s how one grows: through the night of anguish, then through the day of joy. One moves through the duality. It is a dialectical process.
Just reading poetry about love is so convenient, but don’t think that you really love. It is very easy because nothing is at stake.
Leo Tolstoy has written in one of his memoirs that when he was a small child his mother used to go to the theater. They were very rich people: they belonged to the royal family. In Moscow the snow would be falling – a winter’s night – and the mother and her child would be in the theater. And Tolstoy remembers that whenever there was a tragedy his mother would weep and cry and sob, and tears would flow down.
Tolstoy used to think, “What deep compassion she has!” But later on, by and by, he became aware she had no compassion at all. This was a substitute.
Then they came out of the theater, and the driver sitting on the buggy and waiting for them was dead, frozen in the ice. He could not leave the buggy. He had to be there: any moment they might come. He was dead, frozen in ice, and Tolstoy’s mother wouldn’t pay even a single bit of attention to him. The man would be thrown out, thrown away, another man would be called and they would move. And she would not weep or cry.
Tolstoy says, “Then I became aware her compassion was phony. It was a trick.”
It is very easy to cry in the theater because nothing is involved. It is very easy to cry while looking at a movie: everybody cries at the movies. But to cry in life is difficult because then something is involved.
If you cry for this man who is dead, your driver, then next time you will have to change your lifestyle. Then, if it is snowing too much, you will not go to the theater. Or you will make arrangements for the driver to sit somewhere, or you will make arrangements for better clothing. But that will affect your style of life.
Who bothers about the real man? People cry when they read novels, when they see a movie, when they go to the theater. But in real life their eyes are simply vacant, empty. No tears come.
Remember this: if you really love Zorba, you will become a Zorba; if you love Jesus, you will become Jesus. This is one of the fundamental laws of life. If you love somebody, if you love something, by and by the object of your love transforms you and you become alike.
Have you observed it? Sometimes you come across a couple, a wife and husband, who look alike. They talk in the same way, they walk in the same way, they smile in the same way – a deep affinity. What has happened? They are not brother and sister, so why are they so alike? They love each other and they love deeply. When you love somebody you are vulnerable. Then the other changes you and you go on changing the other. If wives and husbands really love each other, by the time life comes to an end they will be almost alike. It has to be so. Love transforms.
The theater and movies and novels and poetry will not transform you much. In fact, they are ways of avoiding the transformation. They are ways of how not to look at life and live in fantasy.
This is not a question. This is a confession. If you had really wanted to dance, who can prevent you? And when that type of dance happens, who would like to prevent you? When you are possessed and it is not a mind thing…
Next time you are possessed, don’t be worried about this place. Let them do whatever they want to do. It is not your business to be worried about it. Dance, but remember, this should not be a mind thing – otherwise you will simply create a disturbance.
Be possessed. When you are possessed, the dance is holy.
The third question:
Osho,
You said, “If there were no reformers, the world would be a more natural and beautiful place.” Then why is this place so full of reformers?
To reform the reformers!
The world is full of reformers – what to do? They have to be reformed. I am training people who can reform the reformers.
The question is not signed. The person who has asked this must be afraid. You should not be afraid. You should sign your question so I know exactly in whose mind this question is arising, because I don’t answer the question, I answer the questioner. The question is useless if you are afraid even to sign it. If you don’t want to reveal your identity, your whole heart is not in the question.
Why do you try to deceive? Even if the question is foolish, you have to show your identity because you are not here to hide yourself. You are here to expose yourself, to expose yourself to me so I can change you. If you go on hiding, then how can I change you? If you are foolish, it’s okay. Be foolish, but let it be exposed. If you are dark, don’t be afraid. Open the doors – otherwise from where will the light enter?
Here, there is not going to be any argument or discussion. I am not interested in any discussion or any argument. If I say something to you, I say it not as an argument, not for any argument’s sake. I am not trying to defend any dogma, any religion, any scripture. I have none – no dogma, no scripture, no religion – to defend. I am trying to create a communion between you and me. But if you are hiding, you will miss.
Always reveal your identity. And don’t try to polish the question because that, too, I feel. You make the question, you polish it; you try to make it in such a way so it looks very sophisticated, very cultured. The more you polish it, the further away from your reality it is. Let it be raw so it is close to your heart.
If your question itself has gone very far away from your heart, then how is my answer going to be close to you? My answer will hit the question and you will be very far away from it. Let it be raw like a wound so I can hit it directly. It will hurt. That is why you try to push it away from you. But if you are so afraid of being hurt, then the surgery I am trying to do will not be possible.
It is a surgery. You have a very ill mind, a cancerous growth in the mind. It has to be operated upon. It will hurt, it will certainly hurt, but that hurt is beneficial because once it hurts and the growth is removed, you will be healthy and whole. So don’t try to hide. Be true.
Remember: you can move to the other extreme. You can try to look very raw. That won’t help. Just be yourself.
The fourth question:
Osho,
While in one place Christ asks his disciples to carry their crosses every day, in another he bids them to celebrate his presence as that of a bridegroom. Why this contradiction?
There is none. It only appears to be a contradiction.
Every moment one has to remember death because any moment it is possible. That is the meaning of “to carry the cross every day.” You should not forget death. Once you forget death you relapse into unconsciousness. If you remember death you remain alert, awake.
But when we say “remember death,” we don’t mean you should become oppressed by the idea, obsessed by the idea. We don’t mean you should create a deep fear about death and tremble continuously. That will be morbid, that will be a perversion.
There are two types of perverted people in relationship with death. One: those who have completely forgotten, or try to forget, that death is. They try to avoid it. They do not even like to talk about death. If you start talking with them about death, they will think you are uncivilized, unmannerly. They will avoid the very topic. They will not go to the cemetery. That’s why cemeteries are built outside a town, so nobody comes across them accidentally. Only when one has to go, only then: otherwise you can avoid it.
Death is a taboo subject, more taboo than sex. Nobody talks about it – and everybody knows it is coming. Humanity lives in a great deception. This is one morbidity.
Then there is another morbidity. You can move to the other extreme and you can become obsessed with death. You can constantly tremble and not sleep in the night, because who knows? You may not get up in the morning. And you cannot eat well, because how can you eat well? Death is coming. You cannot love, because how can you love anybody when everybody is going to die? That too is morbid; that too is a perversion.
Jesus says, “Carry your cross every day.” He says to remember death and still let every moment be a celebration of life. Death is coming. That is an even deeper reason to celebrate, because who knows? This may be the last moment.
This moment of life should not to be destroyed by the fear of death. But against death, in contrast to death, this moment has to be celebrated even more deeply, because who knows? – the next moment we may not be here. And while the bridegroom is here, celebrate it.
The parable of the bridegroom can become a very inner thing. Within you, the body is the body of death and your consciousness is life – the source of life. You are both. Your body is going to die. It belongs to the earth: “dust unto dust.” It will have to go, it will return to its source. You belong to the sky, you belong to God. Your consciousness is separate from your body. This is the meaning of Jesus on the cross. Everybody is on the cross because consciousness lives in the body and the body is death.
If you understand, everybody is on the cross, but death should not become a pessimism. On the contrary, death should be all the more a cause for celebration. The bridegroom is within you and the body is the chamber of the bridegroom. Celebrate it!
Jesus is not contradictory. Jesus is simply plain. The contradiction is in life itself: life exists through death and death exists through life. Life itself is the paradox – but that is also the beauty. All beauty exists in contrast, and life exists as a tension between opposites. It is a bridge built on two banks: death and life.
Celebrate every moment because this may be the last moment. But while celebrating, don't forget that death is coming, that death comes. Remember!
Remembrance should not become an obsession. Remembrance should become a celebration. Carry the cross, but carry it dancing. Carry the cross, but carry it singing. Carry the cross, but carry it with a deep celebration within. Then you live both: you live life, you live death, and you live both deeply and intensely. And when you can live both intensely, they become one. Then you know that life and death are two aspects of the same thing, of the same energy. Life is expression, manifestation. Death is a returning.
The fifth question:
Osho,
Would you define and discuss the nature of consciousness? How does consciousness relate to ego? Is consciousness the creative principle? That is, could you say, “In the beginning was consciousness” as equally as “In the beginning was the word or the logos”? How does consciousness relate to God?
In the beginning was the word, or the logos. The same cannot be said about consciousness because in the beginning unconsciousness was also there. Consciousness is just a part of your reality, the reality of the inner. Unconsciousness is also there. So there was not just consciousness in the beginning. Unconsciousness was also there, as much as consciousness. Or you can say that in the beginning something was there in which both consciousness and unconsciousness are involved.
That is the meaning of God. God is not only consciousness: God is consciousness plus unconsciousness. God is both the dark night and the bright day; both summer and winter; both life and death. God is both the beginning and the end. God is beyond duality. And the duality is intrinsic in him: he is both matter and mind, the manifest and the unmanifest.
Consciousness is just a part of the great oceanic unconsciousness. Consciousness is just on the surface. Deeply hidden are layers and layers of unconsciousness. One has to transcend both to know that which was in the beginning, which is God.
“Would you define and discuss the nature of consciousness? How does consciousness relate to ego?” One part of you is conscious: one tenth. Nine tenths of you is unconscious. If the conscious part thinks itself to be the whole, it becomes the ego. Then it forgets about the unconscious; then the part imagines itself to be the whole. Then it is the ego.
The conscious becoming aware of the unconscious – that is the whole effort of religion, that is the whole effort of meditation. If the conscious turns back, looks back, and also becomes aware of the unconscious – the dark night within – then the conscious knows, “I am conscious. I am also unconscious, and my consciousness is just a wave on the ocean. The unconscious is vast.” Then the ego disappears. The ego is the part thinking itself to be the whole. Non-ego is the part becoming aware of the whole. Then the ego disappears.
How to define the nature of consciousness? It has never been defined, it will never be defined, because who will define it? To define it you have to be away from it. To define anything, you have to stand outside it, you need a distance. The perspective will not be possible if the distance is not there.
You are consciousness, you are unconsciousness. There is nobody who can stand outside and define it. You can know it but you cannot define it. That’s why all religion is mysterious, mystical, vague, cloudy – because no term that is very basic to religion can be defined.
The subject cannot be made an object. I cannot put myself in front of myself, so I cannot define. Neither has Buddha defined, nor Jesus. Definition as such is debarred by the very nature of the phenomenon. Everything else can be defined because consciousness is the definer. Everything else is before consciousness. The consciousness can know, go around, watch, observe, experiment, define, dissect – but who will define consciousness? You cannot get further away from it. You are it. You can know it, but you cannot define it. Knowledge is not possible, only knowing.
I can help you to create a meditative state where you can know what it is, I can give you the method, but I cannot give you the definition. That’s why religion always looks a little suspicious. “Why don’t you define your terms? Just do as science does: define! If you cannot define your terms, that simply shows you don’t know what you are talking about.”
A great linguist and positivist philosopher, A. J. Ayer, says that if we take two terms, “God” and “dog” the second is true and the first is false because nobody can define God. The word is meaningless. God cannot be defined. Dog can be defined. Dog is more meaningful than God.
If you insist on definitions, then only things can be defined; persons cannot be defined. Laws can be defined; love cannot be defined. Gravitation can be defined, but grace – grace cannot be defined. That which is without is definable; that which is within is elusive. One has to understand it and move into meditations.
Buddha says that buddhas can only show you the way: you have to move. One day you come upon the goal. Nobody can give you the goal beforehand. Not even a definition is possible. And it is good a definition is not possible, otherwise you will settle with the definition, you will settle with the information and you will never travel, you will never journey to the goal. Sometimes it happens the very map you were thinking to use for the journey becomes the barrier. You become satisfied with the map itself.
I was reading a very rare autobiography of a man who belonged to a very primitive race in the Amazon. He was the son of the chief and his father was a great lover of the Amazon River and had moved to the very source of the river.
Then this boy, the son of the chief, went to America. Some missionaries helped him to go. He studied there, became a graduate, and came back home.
Thinking, “My father loves the Amazon so much, he would be very happy if I brought him a map, a detailed map, of the Amazon,” he purchased the best map available and brought it to his father.
He thought his father would be very happy, but he looked at the map and he was very sad and he threw the map away. The son was very hurt. “I have brought a gift, a present, and my father has thrown it away. Why?”
He asked his father. The father said, “This is absolutely bogus, because I don’t see the Amazon anywhere. How can the Amazon exist on paper? You are a fool and you are deceiving me. I have moved with the Amazon and I know what it is. “Don’t be deceived by this map. There are only lines there.”
Definitions of God are maps, lines on paper. Definitions of consciousness are maps – and sometimes people get too obsessed with maps. The best way to be lost is to have a map. You cannot fail. If you have a really detailed map, you will be lost in it and the mind will think, “Now I know everything.” The living Amazon is beautiful, dangerous, terrible. At any moment life is at stake. With the map – conveniently sitting in your easy chair – you can study it and you can “know” all about the Amazon!
In the world outside you, maps have a little relevance, but in the inside world they are absolutely irrelevant. If you have any maps, throw them away. All the religions have given you maps: throw them away! Enough of maps – now let there be a real journey.
When you attain your consciousness, you will laugh at the stupidity of the mapmakers. Then you will know they have never been to the innermost source of life: they have been copying other mapmakers. For centuries they have been copying, and they go on adding their own fantasy and their own ideas. They go on changing and decorating.
All maps are false because the innermost remains indefinable. There is no need to define. Consciousness is there within you. Return, and the Kingdom of God is at hand. Why be bothered by the definition? When the thing, the real thing, is so close, why not taste it?
When the river is flowing, you ask me about the definition of water. And I know you are thirsty, and I know the definition cannot quench the thirst. But you say, “Unless water is defined, how can I drink the water?” I can’t see the point. If people had just waited for the definition, and only then had their thirst been quenched, humanity would have disappeared long ago because water is still indefinable. Don’t be befooled by what scientists say. They may say water is H20 – two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen – but when the scientist is thirsty, give him oxygen and hydrogen to drink. Then he will know, and he will say, “What are you doing? Have you gone mad? Water quenches thirst, not two parts of hydrogen and one part of oxygen.”
Mulla Nasruddin’s son came back from the university. He was studying logic there and he had become a great philosopher, as everybody is prone to become in youth. Youth is foolish, and to become a philosopher is easy. He was very interested in showing his knowledge. Fresh from the university, everybody is.
They were sitting at the dining table and his mother brought in two apples. Seeing an opportunity, Mulla Nasruddin’s son said, “Mummy, I will show you something I have learned. What do you see on this plate?”
The mother said, “Two apples.”
He said, “No! Logic says something else. There are three apples, not two.”
The poor mother looked again, but there were two apples. She said, “What do you mean?”
He said, “Look. Watch. This apple is one. This apple is two. How many are one plus two?”
The mother said, “Of course, one plus two is three.”
The son was very happy. Mulla Nasruddin was watching. He said, “Good, very good. I will eat one and your mother will eat two. You eat the third!”
But you cannot eat logic, you cannot eat science, you cannot eat philosophy. And religion is concerned with quenching your thirst. Religion is concerned with your hunger – not with definitions, maps.
The sixth question:
Osho,
You said, “We are not doing anything here,” but we who live and work here are continuously occupied with doing. In fact, the more we do, the more we are praised; and anyone who does not, or does less, is scolded. Please explain.
When I said, “We are not doing anything here,” I meant I am not doing anything here – because I love you. When you love, the doing is not a doing at all.
If you love me, then you will also not think that you are doing very much. In fact, you will not think that you are doing anything. Love is not a duty. In love, work becomes worship – and you work in the ashram. The whole quality of work, and the attitude, will be different if you love me.
If you don’t love me, of course it is work. Then your mind will hanker for praise. Then in many ways you will try to avoid the work – as many of you are doing! You go on finding ways and means: how to avoid it, how not to do it.
I never avoid, because I love you. The more I can do, the better I feel. But you avoid as if work is something that you are dragging, a burden. Work only looks like work if it is a burden.
If work is out of love, it becomes worship and then there is no need for any other meditation. It is enough. The work itself becomes the meditation. You are so deeply in it that the mind stops.
Energy needs work; otherwise the energy will become restlessness. Energy needs expression and energy needs to be creative, otherwise the same energy, coiled up within you, will become disease and illness. You have energy. That energy has to be creative. And there is no happiness except in creativity.
Creativity is work with love. A painter paints. He is not working; he is loving. He is completely absorbed in it – the doer is not there. A singer sings or a dancer dances. If the dancer is just a professional, then it is work, then he will be tired. But if a dancer really loves dancing, then the more he moves into it, the more energy he gets to go further.
It is said even scientists were surprised about Nijinsky, one of the greatest dancers that has ever walked on the earth. They couldn’t believe his jumping. When he danced he would take such big jumps that they were against gravitation. They were not possible: you cannot jump that much. And the way he would jump – so gracefully! And when he was coming down, he would come like a dove, so slowly, as if gravitation was not functioning.
Many times Nijinsky was asked, “What is the secret?”
He said, “I don’t know – except that I love dancing.” Once he said, “When you love dancing, then you don’t function under the law of gravitation. You function under the law of grace.”
That is the difference between Moses and Jesus. Moses brings the law of gravitation into the world. All those Ten Commandments are laws, just like gravitation. Jesus brings the law of grace, which is not a law at all.
You function in a totally different dimension when you love deeply – this question would not have arisen, you would not have thought of it as work.
Watch a mother, how much she does for the child. But if you ask her she will say, “I have not been doing anything. In fact, many more things were needed to be done and I have not done them. I always feel my child has not received as much care as was needed.”
Then go to the secretary of a club or institute and ask him. He will give you a long list of what he has been doing there. He will even include things he has not done on the list! He is a doer; a mother is a lover.
I was reading the biography of a Hindu sannyasin who lived in South Africa. He came to the Himalayas on a pilgrimage. He was going uphill and it was hot. He was perspiring and gasping for breath. The journey was hard.
Just in front of him was a girl, not more than ten years of age, carrying a very heavy, fat child on her shoulders. She was perspiring. The sannyasin spoke to the girl and said, “My daughter, the child seems to be very heavy.”
The girl looked at the sannyasin and said, “Swamiji, he is not a burden. He is my brother. He is not a burden at all. He has no weight – he is my brother.”
When you love, weight disappears; when you love, you function in a different world.
The last question:
Osho,
Is this it? Am I experiencing you? Has the final journey begun?
This is from Dharmateerth Bodhisattva. Yes.
Enough for today.
Osho,
Roses are red
Violets are bluish,
If it wasn't for Jesus
We'd all be Jewish.
Please comment.
We still are. Jesus could not succeed. To be Jewish has nothing to do with any race; it is an attitude. To be Jewish means to be calculating, to be under the world of law and not love. To be Jewish means not to be poetic, but to be arithmetical. To be Jewish means not to be in awe of the wonder that surrounds you.
It is not just accidental this whole century has been dominated by three Jews: Marx, Freud, and Einstein – because the world is materialistic. It has never been as materialistic as it is now. One Jew, Marx, invented the idea that life is nothing but economics. That’s what I mean by calculation. Even religion is economics, even poetry is economics. Marx says even consciousness depends on economic situations, it is a by-product: consciousness is a by-product of economic situations, the structure of the society. Marx is the perfect Jew: you cannot find a better specimen!
Then Freud tried to invent the idea that the whole of life moves according to unconscious laws, instincts: there is no conscious event in human life; everything is dominated by the unconscious. He was a fatalist.
Fatalism is also an idea that the world is run by dead rules. To Marx, it is economics that rules everything. To Freud, it is unconscious instinct that rules everything. Then Einstein tried to invent the idea the whole of life is nothing but a combination of atoms. All three are calculators.
To be a Jew has nothing to do with the Jewish race. There are Jews who are Hindus, there are Jews who are Jainas, there are Jews who are Buddhists. The Jew is an attitude.
Christ has not succeeded: Christians are Jews! Christ can succeed only when law is defeated by love, when matter is defeated by spirit, when language is defeated by silence, when prose is defeated by poetry, when life is not ruled by economic, instinctive, historical laws, but life is ruled by grace. Then Jesus succeeds.
So don’t think you are not Jews. Out of a hundred people, ninety-nine percent are Jews. Only sometimes one person is not Jewish. That person lives a life of love. He has nothing to force his life into, no pattern. He lives moment to moment; he flows from one moment to another moment – with no idea of where he is going, with no goal.
Then freedom happens. And only in freedom is there consciousness, and only in freedom is there godliness. Godliness is total freedom. If you live moment to moment – not knowing where you are going, not knowing from where you are coming – if the past is irrelevant and the future also, and only the present has any relevance, any reality, you go beyond being Jewish.
Everybody is born a Jew. Rarely, very rarely, somebody dies and dies not as a Jew. That is a rare blessing. Just by calling yourselves Christians nothing is changed. Only labels change. The container changes but the content remains the same.
Jesus has failed, but not because his revolution was not worthy of success. Jesus has failed because his revolution was too much for you. It was beyond you. Just to look that far away, that high, is impossible. Your eyes are fixed on the earth; you have completely forgotten the sky. And because you have forgotten the sky, you have forgotten you have wings. Looking down, groping in the darkness of the earth, you have become creepers, like a snake. You are no longer birds, birds of heaven.
Jesus failed because you are so deep in unconsciousness. And Jesus will go on failing. His very effort is such that success is almost impossible. As far as society is concerned, he may never succeed. Only with individuals is success possible.
Hence, all those who have known… Ask the awakened: Buddha, Jesus, Krishna, Zarathustra. You will always find their insistence is on the individual. They know well that at the most you can expect a few individuals to rise high. The greater part of humanity will do everything it can to save its bondage, to remain secure in its imprisonment, to remain comfortable and live somehow – dragging life as a burden – and die somehow. The greater mass will not listen, will not understand, will not try to transform themselves. Religion is individual.
And religion has no names. Whenever somebody becomes religious, immediately he is no longer a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian. He is simply religious. It is an understanding: it is a different kind of knowing, a different way of seeing. And when you see differently, you see a different reality. The reality depends on your eyes. If your eyes change, the reality changes.
If you are calculating, you will never be able to know more than matter because calculation has its limitations. If you are too arithmetical, you will never be able to know that which is beauty, that which is good, that which is true. You will never be able to know because calculation cannot lead to that.
How can you know a beautiful flower by being arithmetical? You can count the petals, but you will miss the beauty. You can count the parts, but you will miss the whole. And you are certain to miss the beauty that surrounds the flower, that exists like a climate around the flower – but cannot be caught hold of by counting the petals. You have to forget counting, you have to forget the mind that counts.
The mind is Jewish. Once you go beyond mind you enter a different world: the world that cannot be accounted for, that cannot be explained, that is a mystery and remains a mystery. The deeper you go into it, the greater the mystery. The more you know, the less you know. And there comes a moment… When you really know it, you know only one thing – that you don’t know.
The second question:
Osho,
Today I wanted to dance as you were speaking. And you even mentioned Kazantzakis, whom I love. But I feel inhibited to dance, even though I was sitting in the back. This place feels conservative to me, but probably I didn't dance because of my own conservatism. Is this a question?
Not at all – it is a confession.
This place is not conservative. But you are all conservative, and you make this place. It is not mine, it is yours. If it were mine, it wouldn’t be conservative. But I am alone and I cannot make it. I am a stranger here. It consists of you, and you are conservative. This place becomes conservative: it cannot go beyond you because you are the constituent parts. It is the total of your conservatisms.
But who bothers? If you are really in a state of dance, who bothers? Then you can dance, even on the road. Maybe the police will come and take you to prison, but that’s okay. What can you do? If you can stop the dance, then it is not worth doing. It must have been a mind game; it must have been just an idea, an idea in the mind that you would like to dance – but not really.
When dance happens, it is not an idea in the mind, not at all. It is a tremendous energy in the body. It has its own force. You are possessed, you cannot do anything. You forget this place, you forget the society, you forget the world. You are helpless, you are possessed by dance. Then something from the beyond enters.
It must have been just an idea in the mind. That’s why you stopped it. Ideas can be stopped, but when you are possessed, you cannot do anything about it. It happens; it is not done. And then it is divine when it happens. When you do it, it is human and ordinary.
It is not a question. It is a confession.
And you say you love Kazantzakis. That too may be just an idea in the mind because people love things that they lack in their life. Reading Zorba the Greek you may love Zorba, but if you met Zorba, you might not like him because he will be such a totally different, altogether different, being than you. Even Kazantzakis was never at ease with Zorba. They were friends. Zorba was a real person: he is not just in a novel. Even Kazantzakis was very uneasy with him because he was a totally different type of man – absolutely hedonistic, absolutely in the moment. Nothing else mattered except happiness.
Of course it looks very selfish. Only sad people look unselfish. Happy people always look selfish, and happy people are always condemned because the whole society is unhappy. “How do you dare to be happy? When everybody is so unhappy, you must be very selfish to be happy. Don’t smile when everybody is weeping and crying, and don’t laugh. Life is very miserable, and it looks unmannerly.”
A man like Zorba will never be accepted in any home. You will not allow him to stay with you because his very presence will be a disturbance. He does not believe in any morality. He knows only one morality: happiness.
And I say to you, that is the only morality there is. All else is rubbish because only a happy person can be moral, only a happy person is not interested in making others unhappy, only a happy person creates an atmosphere around him where others can also be happy. But those others will not like the idea of your being happy when they are miserable.
You may have loved Zorba, but you won’t allow Zorba to become a guest in your home. He is unreliable. Such happy people are dangerous. You can rely on sad, dead people: they will not escape with your wife! Zorba can. He lives in the moment. He has no future, no past, no heaven, no hell. He is very true to the real moment.
But you may have loved him. This happens, this has to be understood. You always love the opposite. The opposite attracts you – but only in fantasy. In reality it will be troublesome. People who have never loved go on reading poetry about love. Sometimes they even try to write poetry about love. This has been my observation. I have come across many poets; they have missed love in life so they go on writing poetry about it. That’s a substitute: very pale, useless, but still a little satisfying. At least something is here. Plastic flowers, but they look like flowers. Love is dangerous. To write poetry about love has no danger in it.
Watch: if somebody is reciting a poem on love you may welcome him, but if the man really moves into love then the society will condemn him. Read the story of Laila and Majnu, or Shiri and Farhad, and you will love it. But the people who were alive in the days of Majnu hated the man – because who loves a lover? Try to be a lover and you will be condemned by the society. Write poetry about it and maybe the president will give you an award; you may get the Nobel Prize. No lover ever gets a Nobel Prize. People who write poetry about love get Nobel Prizes.
Man has become afraid of the real; but about the phony, there is no danger in it. Have you watched this? Sometimes you are sitting in your room or in your house and reading or doing something, and somebody knocks at the door. You feel very bad. Now somebody has come to disturb you. You don’t even like to answer; you would like to avoid it. You don’t go yourself: you send the servant to the door, or your child, to tell the person: “Daddy is not at home.” But if somebody gives you a call on the phone, then you are not disturbed. Then you immediately take the phone in your hand because the reality is so far away.
Sometimes it has happened that a thief has entered somebody’s house and has been caught, and caught because of an old habit. The phone was ringing and he could not resist it. He had to answer: a phone has to be answered! So he took the phone in his hand and he was caught. And when he was asked, “Why did you bother?” he said, “I completely forgot I was a thief in the house. When the phone rings, one has to answer.”
A man was doing some research work on this phenomenon. He called twenty public phones and somebody or the other answered. Then he inquired of a man: “Why did you answer? It was not for you.”
He said, “I was just passing.”
“Then why did you answer?”
He said, “But the phone was ringing!”
It has a certain power. When the phone rings you have to answer. It is a certain quality, something like hypnosis. It is not your concern, and it is certain it is not ringing for you. It is a public phone: you are passing by the way, you are going to your office. It is certainly not ringing for you – so why?
When the reality is far away, it is very easy to answer. When the reality comes nearer, it becomes more and more difficult. The greatest difficulties of life are concerned with the people who are very real to you and very near to you: your wife, your children, your husband – very close. They are real. There is the trouble.
You may have liked Zorba. Even Kazantzakis liked the man – when he was not with him! But when they lived together, it was really difficult because sometimes he will come drunk and will start dancing and will dance the whole night. And he was a powerful man, very strong. When you live with such a man, it will be difficult unless you yourself are such a man.
Don’t create substitutes. That’s a trick of the mind to deceive you. Love the real, don’t love the phony. It is better to love than to write poetry on love because love will transform you, love will give you insight. Love will give you insight into the human heart: into your own and the other’s. Through love there will be many unhappy moments, anguish, but there will be peaks of joy also. And that’s how one grows: through the night of anguish, then through the day of joy. One moves through the duality. It is a dialectical process.
Just reading poetry about love is so convenient, but don’t think that you really love. It is very easy because nothing is at stake.
Leo Tolstoy has written in one of his memoirs that when he was a small child his mother used to go to the theater. They were very rich people: they belonged to the royal family. In Moscow the snow would be falling – a winter’s night – and the mother and her child would be in the theater. And Tolstoy remembers that whenever there was a tragedy his mother would weep and cry and sob, and tears would flow down.
Tolstoy used to think, “What deep compassion she has!” But later on, by and by, he became aware she had no compassion at all. This was a substitute.
Then they came out of the theater, and the driver sitting on the buggy and waiting for them was dead, frozen in the ice. He could not leave the buggy. He had to be there: any moment they might come. He was dead, frozen in ice, and Tolstoy’s mother wouldn’t pay even a single bit of attention to him. The man would be thrown out, thrown away, another man would be called and they would move. And she would not weep or cry.
Tolstoy says, “Then I became aware her compassion was phony. It was a trick.”
It is very easy to cry in the theater because nothing is involved. It is very easy to cry while looking at a movie: everybody cries at the movies. But to cry in life is difficult because then something is involved.
If you cry for this man who is dead, your driver, then next time you will have to change your lifestyle. Then, if it is snowing too much, you will not go to the theater. Or you will make arrangements for the driver to sit somewhere, or you will make arrangements for better clothing. But that will affect your style of life.
Who bothers about the real man? People cry when they read novels, when they see a movie, when they go to the theater. But in real life their eyes are simply vacant, empty. No tears come.
Remember this: if you really love Zorba, you will become a Zorba; if you love Jesus, you will become Jesus. This is one of the fundamental laws of life. If you love somebody, if you love something, by and by the object of your love transforms you and you become alike.
Have you observed it? Sometimes you come across a couple, a wife and husband, who look alike. They talk in the same way, they walk in the same way, they smile in the same way – a deep affinity. What has happened? They are not brother and sister, so why are they so alike? They love each other and they love deeply. When you love somebody you are vulnerable. Then the other changes you and you go on changing the other. If wives and husbands really love each other, by the time life comes to an end they will be almost alike. It has to be so. Love transforms.
The theater and movies and novels and poetry will not transform you much. In fact, they are ways of avoiding the transformation. They are ways of how not to look at life and live in fantasy.
This is not a question. This is a confession. If you had really wanted to dance, who can prevent you? And when that type of dance happens, who would like to prevent you? When you are possessed and it is not a mind thing…
Next time you are possessed, don’t be worried about this place. Let them do whatever they want to do. It is not your business to be worried about it. Dance, but remember, this should not be a mind thing – otherwise you will simply create a disturbance.
Be possessed. When you are possessed, the dance is holy.
The third question:
Osho,
You said, “If there were no reformers, the world would be a more natural and beautiful place.” Then why is this place so full of reformers?
To reform the reformers!
The world is full of reformers – what to do? They have to be reformed. I am training people who can reform the reformers.
The question is not signed. The person who has asked this must be afraid. You should not be afraid. You should sign your question so I know exactly in whose mind this question is arising, because I don’t answer the question, I answer the questioner. The question is useless if you are afraid even to sign it. If you don’t want to reveal your identity, your whole heart is not in the question.
Why do you try to deceive? Even if the question is foolish, you have to show your identity because you are not here to hide yourself. You are here to expose yourself, to expose yourself to me so I can change you. If you go on hiding, then how can I change you? If you are foolish, it’s okay. Be foolish, but let it be exposed. If you are dark, don’t be afraid. Open the doors – otherwise from where will the light enter?
Here, there is not going to be any argument or discussion. I am not interested in any discussion or any argument. If I say something to you, I say it not as an argument, not for any argument’s sake. I am not trying to defend any dogma, any religion, any scripture. I have none – no dogma, no scripture, no religion – to defend. I am trying to create a communion between you and me. But if you are hiding, you will miss.
Always reveal your identity. And don’t try to polish the question because that, too, I feel. You make the question, you polish it; you try to make it in such a way so it looks very sophisticated, very cultured. The more you polish it, the further away from your reality it is. Let it be raw so it is close to your heart.
If your question itself has gone very far away from your heart, then how is my answer going to be close to you? My answer will hit the question and you will be very far away from it. Let it be raw like a wound so I can hit it directly. It will hurt. That is why you try to push it away from you. But if you are so afraid of being hurt, then the surgery I am trying to do will not be possible.
It is a surgery. You have a very ill mind, a cancerous growth in the mind. It has to be operated upon. It will hurt, it will certainly hurt, but that hurt is beneficial because once it hurts and the growth is removed, you will be healthy and whole. So don’t try to hide. Be true.
Remember: you can move to the other extreme. You can try to look very raw. That won’t help. Just be yourself.
The fourth question:
Osho,
While in one place Christ asks his disciples to carry their crosses every day, in another he bids them to celebrate his presence as that of a bridegroom. Why this contradiction?
There is none. It only appears to be a contradiction.
Every moment one has to remember death because any moment it is possible. That is the meaning of “to carry the cross every day.” You should not forget death. Once you forget death you relapse into unconsciousness. If you remember death you remain alert, awake.
But when we say “remember death,” we don’t mean you should become oppressed by the idea, obsessed by the idea. We don’t mean you should create a deep fear about death and tremble continuously. That will be morbid, that will be a perversion.
There are two types of perverted people in relationship with death. One: those who have completely forgotten, or try to forget, that death is. They try to avoid it. They do not even like to talk about death. If you start talking with them about death, they will think you are uncivilized, unmannerly. They will avoid the very topic. They will not go to the cemetery. That’s why cemeteries are built outside a town, so nobody comes across them accidentally. Only when one has to go, only then: otherwise you can avoid it.
Death is a taboo subject, more taboo than sex. Nobody talks about it – and everybody knows it is coming. Humanity lives in a great deception. This is one morbidity.
Then there is another morbidity. You can move to the other extreme and you can become obsessed with death. You can constantly tremble and not sleep in the night, because who knows? You may not get up in the morning. And you cannot eat well, because how can you eat well? Death is coming. You cannot love, because how can you love anybody when everybody is going to die? That too is morbid; that too is a perversion.
Jesus says, “Carry your cross every day.” He says to remember death and still let every moment be a celebration of life. Death is coming. That is an even deeper reason to celebrate, because who knows? This may be the last moment.
This moment of life should not to be destroyed by the fear of death. But against death, in contrast to death, this moment has to be celebrated even more deeply, because who knows? – the next moment we may not be here. And while the bridegroom is here, celebrate it.
The parable of the bridegroom can become a very inner thing. Within you, the body is the body of death and your consciousness is life – the source of life. You are both. Your body is going to die. It belongs to the earth: “dust unto dust.” It will have to go, it will return to its source. You belong to the sky, you belong to God. Your consciousness is separate from your body. This is the meaning of Jesus on the cross. Everybody is on the cross because consciousness lives in the body and the body is death.
If you understand, everybody is on the cross, but death should not become a pessimism. On the contrary, death should be all the more a cause for celebration. The bridegroom is within you and the body is the chamber of the bridegroom. Celebrate it!
Jesus is not contradictory. Jesus is simply plain. The contradiction is in life itself: life exists through death and death exists through life. Life itself is the paradox – but that is also the beauty. All beauty exists in contrast, and life exists as a tension between opposites. It is a bridge built on two banks: death and life.
Celebrate every moment because this may be the last moment. But while celebrating, don't forget that death is coming, that death comes. Remember!
Remembrance should not become an obsession. Remembrance should become a celebration. Carry the cross, but carry it dancing. Carry the cross, but carry it singing. Carry the cross, but carry it with a deep celebration within. Then you live both: you live life, you live death, and you live both deeply and intensely. And when you can live both intensely, they become one. Then you know that life and death are two aspects of the same thing, of the same energy. Life is expression, manifestation. Death is a returning.
The fifth question:
Osho,
Would you define and discuss the nature of consciousness? How does consciousness relate to ego? Is consciousness the creative principle? That is, could you say, “In the beginning was consciousness” as equally as “In the beginning was the word or the logos”? How does consciousness relate to God?
In the beginning was the word, or the logos. The same cannot be said about consciousness because in the beginning unconsciousness was also there. Consciousness is just a part of your reality, the reality of the inner. Unconsciousness is also there. So there was not just consciousness in the beginning. Unconsciousness was also there, as much as consciousness. Or you can say that in the beginning something was there in which both consciousness and unconsciousness are involved.
That is the meaning of God. God is not only consciousness: God is consciousness plus unconsciousness. God is both the dark night and the bright day; both summer and winter; both life and death. God is both the beginning and the end. God is beyond duality. And the duality is intrinsic in him: he is both matter and mind, the manifest and the unmanifest.
Consciousness is just a part of the great oceanic unconsciousness. Consciousness is just on the surface. Deeply hidden are layers and layers of unconsciousness. One has to transcend both to know that which was in the beginning, which is God.
“Would you define and discuss the nature of consciousness? How does consciousness relate to ego?” One part of you is conscious: one tenth. Nine tenths of you is unconscious. If the conscious part thinks itself to be the whole, it becomes the ego. Then it forgets about the unconscious; then the part imagines itself to be the whole. Then it is the ego.
The conscious becoming aware of the unconscious – that is the whole effort of religion, that is the whole effort of meditation. If the conscious turns back, looks back, and also becomes aware of the unconscious – the dark night within – then the conscious knows, “I am conscious. I am also unconscious, and my consciousness is just a wave on the ocean. The unconscious is vast.” Then the ego disappears. The ego is the part thinking itself to be the whole. Non-ego is the part becoming aware of the whole. Then the ego disappears.
How to define the nature of consciousness? It has never been defined, it will never be defined, because who will define it? To define it you have to be away from it. To define anything, you have to stand outside it, you need a distance. The perspective will not be possible if the distance is not there.
You are consciousness, you are unconsciousness. There is nobody who can stand outside and define it. You can know it but you cannot define it. That’s why all religion is mysterious, mystical, vague, cloudy – because no term that is very basic to religion can be defined.
The subject cannot be made an object. I cannot put myself in front of myself, so I cannot define. Neither has Buddha defined, nor Jesus. Definition as such is debarred by the very nature of the phenomenon. Everything else can be defined because consciousness is the definer. Everything else is before consciousness. The consciousness can know, go around, watch, observe, experiment, define, dissect – but who will define consciousness? You cannot get further away from it. You are it. You can know it, but you cannot define it. Knowledge is not possible, only knowing.
I can help you to create a meditative state where you can know what it is, I can give you the method, but I cannot give you the definition. That’s why religion always looks a little suspicious. “Why don’t you define your terms? Just do as science does: define! If you cannot define your terms, that simply shows you don’t know what you are talking about.”
A great linguist and positivist philosopher, A. J. Ayer, says that if we take two terms, “God” and “dog” the second is true and the first is false because nobody can define God. The word is meaningless. God cannot be defined. Dog can be defined. Dog is more meaningful than God.
If you insist on definitions, then only things can be defined; persons cannot be defined. Laws can be defined; love cannot be defined. Gravitation can be defined, but grace – grace cannot be defined. That which is without is definable; that which is within is elusive. One has to understand it and move into meditations.
Buddha says that buddhas can only show you the way: you have to move. One day you come upon the goal. Nobody can give you the goal beforehand. Not even a definition is possible. And it is good a definition is not possible, otherwise you will settle with the definition, you will settle with the information and you will never travel, you will never journey to the goal. Sometimes it happens the very map you were thinking to use for the journey becomes the barrier. You become satisfied with the map itself.
I was reading a very rare autobiography of a man who belonged to a very primitive race in the Amazon. He was the son of the chief and his father was a great lover of the Amazon River and had moved to the very source of the river.
Then this boy, the son of the chief, went to America. Some missionaries helped him to go. He studied there, became a graduate, and came back home.
Thinking, “My father loves the Amazon so much, he would be very happy if I brought him a map, a detailed map, of the Amazon,” he purchased the best map available and brought it to his father.
He thought his father would be very happy, but he looked at the map and he was very sad and he threw the map away. The son was very hurt. “I have brought a gift, a present, and my father has thrown it away. Why?”
He asked his father. The father said, “This is absolutely bogus, because I don’t see the Amazon anywhere. How can the Amazon exist on paper? You are a fool and you are deceiving me. I have moved with the Amazon and I know what it is. “Don’t be deceived by this map. There are only lines there.”
Definitions of God are maps, lines on paper. Definitions of consciousness are maps – and sometimes people get too obsessed with maps. The best way to be lost is to have a map. You cannot fail. If you have a really detailed map, you will be lost in it and the mind will think, “Now I know everything.” The living Amazon is beautiful, dangerous, terrible. At any moment life is at stake. With the map – conveniently sitting in your easy chair – you can study it and you can “know” all about the Amazon!
In the world outside you, maps have a little relevance, but in the inside world they are absolutely irrelevant. If you have any maps, throw them away. All the religions have given you maps: throw them away! Enough of maps – now let there be a real journey.
When you attain your consciousness, you will laugh at the stupidity of the mapmakers. Then you will know they have never been to the innermost source of life: they have been copying other mapmakers. For centuries they have been copying, and they go on adding their own fantasy and their own ideas. They go on changing and decorating.
All maps are false because the innermost remains indefinable. There is no need to define. Consciousness is there within you. Return, and the Kingdom of God is at hand. Why be bothered by the definition? When the thing, the real thing, is so close, why not taste it?
When the river is flowing, you ask me about the definition of water. And I know you are thirsty, and I know the definition cannot quench the thirst. But you say, “Unless water is defined, how can I drink the water?” I can’t see the point. If people had just waited for the definition, and only then had their thirst been quenched, humanity would have disappeared long ago because water is still indefinable. Don’t be befooled by what scientists say. They may say water is H20 – two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen – but when the scientist is thirsty, give him oxygen and hydrogen to drink. Then he will know, and he will say, “What are you doing? Have you gone mad? Water quenches thirst, not two parts of hydrogen and one part of oxygen.”
Mulla Nasruddin’s son came back from the university. He was studying logic there and he had become a great philosopher, as everybody is prone to become in youth. Youth is foolish, and to become a philosopher is easy. He was very interested in showing his knowledge. Fresh from the university, everybody is.
They were sitting at the dining table and his mother brought in two apples. Seeing an opportunity, Mulla Nasruddin’s son said, “Mummy, I will show you something I have learned. What do you see on this plate?”
The mother said, “Two apples.”
He said, “No! Logic says something else. There are three apples, not two.”
The poor mother looked again, but there were two apples. She said, “What do you mean?”
He said, “Look. Watch. This apple is one. This apple is two. How many are one plus two?”
The mother said, “Of course, one plus two is three.”
The son was very happy. Mulla Nasruddin was watching. He said, “Good, very good. I will eat one and your mother will eat two. You eat the third!”
But you cannot eat logic, you cannot eat science, you cannot eat philosophy. And religion is concerned with quenching your thirst. Religion is concerned with your hunger – not with definitions, maps.
The sixth question:
Osho,
You said, “We are not doing anything here,” but we who live and work here are continuously occupied with doing. In fact, the more we do, the more we are praised; and anyone who does not, or does less, is scolded. Please explain.
When I said, “We are not doing anything here,” I meant I am not doing anything here – because I love you. When you love, the doing is not a doing at all.
If you love me, then you will also not think that you are doing very much. In fact, you will not think that you are doing anything. Love is not a duty. In love, work becomes worship – and you work in the ashram. The whole quality of work, and the attitude, will be different if you love me.
If you don’t love me, of course it is work. Then your mind will hanker for praise. Then in many ways you will try to avoid the work – as many of you are doing! You go on finding ways and means: how to avoid it, how not to do it.
I never avoid, because I love you. The more I can do, the better I feel. But you avoid as if work is something that you are dragging, a burden. Work only looks like work if it is a burden.
If work is out of love, it becomes worship and then there is no need for any other meditation. It is enough. The work itself becomes the meditation. You are so deeply in it that the mind stops.
Energy needs work; otherwise the energy will become restlessness. Energy needs expression and energy needs to be creative, otherwise the same energy, coiled up within you, will become disease and illness. You have energy. That energy has to be creative. And there is no happiness except in creativity.
Creativity is work with love. A painter paints. He is not working; he is loving. He is completely absorbed in it – the doer is not there. A singer sings or a dancer dances. If the dancer is just a professional, then it is work, then he will be tired. But if a dancer really loves dancing, then the more he moves into it, the more energy he gets to go further.
It is said even scientists were surprised about Nijinsky, one of the greatest dancers that has ever walked on the earth. They couldn’t believe his jumping. When he danced he would take such big jumps that they were against gravitation. They were not possible: you cannot jump that much. And the way he would jump – so gracefully! And when he was coming down, he would come like a dove, so slowly, as if gravitation was not functioning.
Many times Nijinsky was asked, “What is the secret?”
He said, “I don’t know – except that I love dancing.” Once he said, “When you love dancing, then you don’t function under the law of gravitation. You function under the law of grace.”
That is the difference between Moses and Jesus. Moses brings the law of gravitation into the world. All those Ten Commandments are laws, just like gravitation. Jesus brings the law of grace, which is not a law at all.
You function in a totally different dimension when you love deeply – this question would not have arisen, you would not have thought of it as work.
Watch a mother, how much she does for the child. But if you ask her she will say, “I have not been doing anything. In fact, many more things were needed to be done and I have not done them. I always feel my child has not received as much care as was needed.”
Then go to the secretary of a club or institute and ask him. He will give you a long list of what he has been doing there. He will even include things he has not done on the list! He is a doer; a mother is a lover.
I was reading the biography of a Hindu sannyasin who lived in South Africa. He came to the Himalayas on a pilgrimage. He was going uphill and it was hot. He was perspiring and gasping for breath. The journey was hard.
Just in front of him was a girl, not more than ten years of age, carrying a very heavy, fat child on her shoulders. She was perspiring. The sannyasin spoke to the girl and said, “My daughter, the child seems to be very heavy.”
The girl looked at the sannyasin and said, “Swamiji, he is not a burden. He is my brother. He is not a burden at all. He has no weight – he is my brother.”
When you love, weight disappears; when you love, you function in a different world.
The last question:
Osho,
Is this it? Am I experiencing you? Has the final journey begun?
This is from Dharmateerth Bodhisattva. Yes.
Enough for today.