Osho,
You got as far as breakfast. To complete our religious historical records, could you tell us what goes beyond the juice?
There is nothing that goes beyond the juice. The seers of the Upanishads have described the ultimate reality as the “juice” – raso vai saha. This is the only definition which comes close to what I call godliness. Raso vai saha means “that which is nothing but juice”: no person, no personality, but only a taste, a feel.
So if you ask me for anything that goes beyond the juice, it is very difficult for me to answer because juice is the last, the ultimate, the beyond itself – nothing goes beyond it. And as far as my breakfast juice is concerned I don’t allow anything to go beyond even that.
You will have to understand it. First, for your religious and historical records: after juice – and remember, “after” does not mean “beyond”; “after” simply means chronologically after, time wise, but not beyond. After the juice I listen to a few songs, poetry, music, that I have been listening to for almost thirty years. Those who have lived with me have always been puzzled – when I was a student I had the same records and my friends were puzzled. I had an old-style gramophone and a collection of records. When I started playing my records they would escape from their rooms, which were on either side; they couldn’t help but hear.
They complained to the vice-chancellor. I was called and I explained to him, “Hearing has two dimensions. One is horizontal. You hear a song and if it is new, you are interested because you don’t know what is coming next, what turn it will take. But if you have heard it once, then horizontally it loses meaning. Horizontally there is no excitement: you know perfectly well what is going to come next. When you know it already, how can you be excited?”
The horizontal meaning is finished just in experiencing anything for the first time. But I have discovered that there is a vertical meaning too, to everything in life. The songs, the music, that I have heard for thirty years and still listen to, now have no horizontal meaning for me. I know every nook and corner, every nuance – the horizontal lines have become almost irrelevant. When I hear them, a strange thing happens: physically I almost fall asleep, but I continue to hear. And in this state, the words which have been heard thousands of times are no longer significant, but something deeper than the words starts opening up.
The song is not in the words: it is something around the words, between the words, between the lines, but never in the word itself. If it is authentic poetry then there will be a depth where words are lost: you dive into the meaning itself, the pure meaning. It is more sound and silence. The word is left far behind; the word becomes almost transparent.
In the East this was discovered thousands of years ago. In English you have one word for reading, study. For reading, in Sanskrit we have two words – adhyayan, which means study, and path, which is not translatable. Path means reading something again and again, not to understand what it means linguistically – that you can understand by reading once or twice, you need not read it thousands of times. If you cannot understand it reading it five or ten times, then you are not capable of understanding it in reading it a thousand times either. You will still be you.
No, that is not the purpose of reading it a thousand times. The purpose is how to go farther than the word. The only way is to repeat the words so many times that they become absolutely meaningless, irrelevant. And when it becomes irrelevant, only then does the vertical dimension open, you start falling into its depth.
But it is possible only with authentic poetry or authentic music, not with ordinary music or ordinary poetry which is composed by the mind. That is nothing but a play with words, there is nothing to be conveyed. The man has no experience, no juice to pour into those words so that the words can become carriers of a message. He knows how to manage a certain rhythm in words, and he composes a song. It is a composition, it is not a creation.
When a song is created, it means it is not composed by the mind but has arisen out of a certain experience of rhythm, harmony. You try to express it through the words because words can reach the other – the pure juice is not transferable. It is as if you write a love letter, and you tie it to a stone and throw the stone through the window of the woman you love.
Your letter cannot be thrown: it won’t reach the window, it is so light; but the stone is heavy. The stone is not the message. The message is on that small piece of paper which is attached, tied with a string to the heavy stone. But if you fall in love with an idiotic woman – which is more possible – the woman may throw the letter away. What message can it have – just a piece of paper? She may think that the stone, the heavier part, must be the message. And that’s what goes on happening with songs, and poetry, and music: you go on holding and collecting the stones, and you go on throwing away the letters.
So after my breakfast, for two or three hours I listen to my chosen songs. I know them perhaps more than the people who wrote them and the people who sang them. I am far more acquainted with them because I have heard them thousands of times. Every day I enter a new depth. It is almost a state of deep silence. And because of the silence, my body relaxes and goes to sleep – I am awake. With the body, the words are connected; with me, the meaning. But this too is another experience of juice.
Sometimes, very rarely, I listen to instrumental music. Many people have asked me, “If you are not interested in the words, then instrumental music should be more to your liking.” But it is not the case. Instrumental music is beautiful, but because it has no words it has no dimensionality. The words give the song a horizontal dimension which makes it possible to dive vertically. Instrumental music is simple. It is horizontal, but because there are no words, the moment you drop the horizontal dimension you are in a desert without any oasis. It is beautiful, horizontally.
The songs are beautiful only when you enter the vertical dimension, but that is possible only by creating the polar opposite. The word is the polar opposite of silence. If the words are not there, you cannot create silence. Instrumental music is sound, there is no silence. It is sound arranged in a harmonious way but it cannot have that polarity of word and wordlessness.
So after breakfast I enjoy something which is again juice, but not material, immaterial – as if you taste without eating anything. There is no physical counterpart to it, just taste without anything tasty on your taste buds.
At eleven I take my lunch. Vivek still cannot believe that I am excited, but what to do? Whether you believe it or not I am excited. I myself cannot believe it. So I can understand that nobody will be able to believe it when I myself cannot believe it. I know exactly what she is going to bring, everything is predictable: three small quantities of vegetables, boiled, without salt, without any kind of spices.
They have become experts in making everything tasteless. You cannot defeat them in that. And certainly they must be wondering: they go on giving this tasteless food to me, but I never complain. I have always appreciated it, because it has given me an opportunity that they don’t know about. When you are eating delicious food, with spices and all kinds of things, made to be tasty, perfumed, you are losing something that you don’t know. You are destroying your taste buds. They are not meant for such strong things; they are very small, and very delicate.
I discovered the real taste of things only when I started following Devaraj’s recipes. He has changed my dining room into a hospital. But I love it. Now you can put me in any hospital and they will not be able to do any harm to me.
Three vegetables, almost the same; four slices of bread just toasted and without any butter; and a cup of Indian sauce, chutney – that’s all. But in my whole life I have never been as satisfied with my food as I am now. In India there are thousands of kinds of food. Perhaps there is no other country which has so many different varieties of food: each province has its own varieties. I have moved all over India, and I have eaten all kinds of foods. Every state has its own tremendous findings – perhaps it has taken thousands of years for them to develop certain delicacies – but all their food, howsoever tasty, is not good, health wise.
My weight was good so I used to look very healthy. But I only discovered it late that just to look healthy is not health. Now I am healthy – but my mother comes, and every time she comes she says, “What have you done to your health?” She thinks that I am wearing this long and loose robe just to deceive her.
I remind her, “You have said this to me every time you have come. I am not trying to deceive.”
She says, “But I can see your hands on the video. You may be able to deceive others but you cannot deceive me. I have seen you from your very childhood, and you had such a beautiful body.” And I can see tears coming into her eyes looking at my food. She has been trying persistently for years to bring something, just a little – don’t allow her.
I say, “No, nothing doing. My doctor does not allow it. I can take only what he prescribes, I cannot take anything else.” But again and again – and I know why, because she saw me in 1960 when I was one hundred and ninety pounds, and I had a body that could have competed with Mahavira without any difficulty. I used to sit almost half-naked, with just a small wraparound lungi, even in winter in the coldest places, even in New Delhi. My host in New Delhi used to say, “You are the only person I have seen in New Delhi who is sitting in just a wraparound lungi, with half the body naked and the fan on full. How do you manage it?”
People used to say that my body looked as if cut out of marble. It used to look like that because I was exercising so much: I was walking eight miles in the morning, eight miles in the evening – at least for twenty years, sixteen miles per day. If you add it all up I think it will come to nearabout three times around the earth or more.
I have hated milk from my very childhood, but because everybody loved my body, and my family insisted, “Without milk you cannot remain the way you are,” I had been drinking milk against my will. That is the only thing in my life that I have done against my will. The only way I could manage it was to stop breathing and take the whole glass in a single gulp so that I didn’t smell it, because I can’t stand it. I have tried all kinds of types of milk, but I can’t stand the smell.
My feeling has been always – and I told my family – “Jainas should stop using all milk products because milk is just like meat. It is not vegetarian, it is animal food. And it has a double violence in it. From where does the milk come? It is the mother’s mechanism, biological mechanism, which transforms her blood into milk. You are really drinking white blood.”
My grandmother used to close her ears, “Don’t say such words because then I will not be able to drink it. I will remember ‘white blood.’ Never do such things to an old woman like me.”
Now, Jainas cannot live without milk because that is their only vital food ingredient; otherwise, everything is just vegetable. So they eat all kinds of milk products – butter, ghee, curd – and all kinds of sweets made of milk. But I had a strong feeling from the very beginning that this was just blood. That’s why it increases your blood so quickly, and that’s why the child needs only milk; that’s enough, that is all his food. The mother’s milk provides the child all the necessary food, nothing else is needed – and those are the days of its growth. So milk is a whole food.
On the one hand I had a strong hatred for milk because it is nonvegetarian; secondly, you are depriving the young of the cow or the buffalo. That milk is not for you. The cow has her own young, and the milk has come to her breasts for those young, not for you.
You will be surprised that in a country like India which pretends to be nonviolent, they kill the cow’s young because the cow will give milk first to its young; otherwise she will try and kick you and your bucket. Naturally the mother wants her child to be taken care of first. Who are you? Sitting on a small stool with a bucket and trying to milk the cow – who are you? The milk is not meant for you.
The cow has no way of knowing that you have purchased her. She does not understand money and purchasing or anything, but she understands one thing, that her own child is standing there deprived. So what do the Indians do? – they kill the child, stuff it, and keep the dead, stuffed child close to the cow’s breasts so she goes on believing that the calf is there. The calf is dead, it is stuffed – all his bones and everything have been taken out, just to deceive the cow.
These people believe that they are religious people, nonviolent, believing in truth. They are even deceiving a poor cow. And the cow they call “mother cow” – in India the cow is worshipped like a mother. But what strange people: you worship your mother and you kill your brother? And particularly if the calf is a male child, then certainly he has to be killed. If it is a female child then she is going to become a cow, so somehow she has to be preserved, but a male child can be killed. But if the cow is your mother, then the bull is bound to be your father, and you are committing patricide! – killing bulls. The purpose of this is just to deceive their “mother,” whom they worship, for whom they create great political movements. They create riots if somebody kills a cow and they are continually asking the government to absolutely stop cow slaughter.
What they go on doing is so ugly you cannot believe it. When I saw it for the first time in Kolkata, it was the worst thing I had ever seen. Hindus, who call the cow mother, and who are ready to be killed or to kill anybody to save the mother, do something which everybody in the world has to understand to appreciate how people can be hypocrites. They push a bamboo stick into the cow’s vagina when they are milking her. Pushing this bamboo stick in her vagina forces her to give more milk, almost double the quantity. These people call the cow mother and are fighting for her so that cow slaughter should be stopped – and this is what they are doing to their mother: pushing a bamboo stick into her vagina just to get double the quantity of milk.
When first I saw it with my own eyes, it became even difficult for me to drink milk with open eyes. But Devaraj has been of great help. He has dropped all milk products – milk, butter, ghee, everything – from my food, and I feel really clean. Of course, I have lost weight, but what purpose is weight? I don’t look cut out of marble but there is no need to look cut out of marble – there are enough marble statues.
For the first time in my life I am feeling at ease with food. In India it was impossible because everybody was harassing me: “If you drop milk then there is nothing in the food. If you drop curd then there is nothing in the food. If you don’t take butter then you will lose weight.” But that weight was causing me all kinds of difficulties. Right now all of my difficulties have disappeared.
My breathing is no longer a trouble, and as my weight has come down, my back has been getting better. Strangely, since the weight has come below one hundred and thirty pounds, my back is absolutely right. There is no strain at all; otherwise once in a while I used to feel the strain in a certain position. Now in no position do I feel the strain.
In eating the same food every day, my taste buds have discovered their sensitivity. I taste more than I have ever tasted, although there is nothing much to taste, but whatsoever there is, is immensely gratifying. I would like you to understand that all spices are deceivers. They are strong enough to force the buds to feel their presence, but the stronger the spice, the duller become your taste buds. When there are no spices, then your taste buds come to their natural sensitivity.
Now, these are two different things: having something delicious because it is in the food, and enjoying something delicious because your taste buds are more alive and more sensitive. The second should be the case. That is why it is so difficult for anybody to understand what I can be excited about. I am excited about my taste buds, not the food. Food has lost meaning; a new meaning has arisen. And I feel that this should be the approach, the right approach. Then just boiled vegetables are so delicious, just bread without butter is so sweet, that one cannot imagine; one can only experience it.
After lunch I go to sleep. This is something that I have followed my whole life. Two hours sleep in the middle of the day gives me two days out of one day, two mornings, two evenings; it doubles the joy of life. And sleep, according to Patanjali, is very close to samadhi. The only difference is that in samadhi your body is asleep but your consciousness is awake. Now to me, sleep and samadhi are the same. My consciousness is awake twenty-four hours a day: whether my body is awake or asleep makes no difference to my consciousness.
But to give the body a total relaxation – even sitting on a comfortable chair like this is not total relaxation for the body because of gravitation. If you have a comfortable chair, then your back is being separately pulled by gravitation. It is for this reason that Hindus have been practicing the lotus posture. The lotus posture was basically invented to reduce the effect of gravitation on your body, it is the minimum gravitation on your body. Less than that is not possible because in a lotus posture your spine is erect, your legs are in a line, so you are just like a cross upside down: with the legs in a straight line horizontally and another straight line up the middle of your spine. Now, this has the least possibility for gravitation to pull your body.
A few days ago I was talking to you about J. Krishnamurti – that I saw him in a television interview and I felt very sorry for him. Vivek thought that perhaps, because he was sitting on a straight-backed wooden chair with his hands underneath him, he suffers from a certain disease in which your hands start trembling. So she thought that he was afraid to show his hands, and that was why he was sitting on them. That is not the case. You should have looked at the chair. You can’t find a more uncomfortable chair than he has found: a straight-backed wooden chair, with no armrests. He was trying the lotus posture on the chair, because in England to sit in a lotus posture will not look right – and he is very fussy about being right, mannerly.
When he goes to India he uses Indian clothes and in England he uses blue jeans. But to find a solution – he has to sit on a chair – he has arranged the kind of chair which was used for children in old-time schools. Now it has changed: children ask for more comfortable chairs. But the more comfortable chair is more taxing on the body: the comfort is apparent, the taxing on the body is indirect. The best way is to sleep: then you are horizontal, and the gravitation is equal all over your body.
Why does sleep give you so much rest, relaxation, rejuvenation? – for the simple reason that man has come from the animals, who are horizontal. All the animals enjoy a relaxed state because of their horizontal backbone: the backbone and the ground are parallel so the gravitation is equal on each part of the backbone. Man, for good or bad, nobody knows – because there is nobody who is omniscient, so nobody knows – decided some day to stand on two legs. It helped in many ways, but it also harmed in many ways.
It is difficult to know whether it was more harmful or more helpful. It freed the hands so man could do many more things than animals could do: art, science – everything became possible because the hands became free. Animals cannot do anything – painting, or sculpture or music – because the hands are not free. Man, standing erect on his two legs, suddenly found his two hands were absolutely free: something had to be done. The question was very urgent: what to do with the hands? Man started doing all kinds of things with his hands. From the bullock cart to nuclear weapons is nothing but a by-product of man standing erect. If he had remained on all fours there would have been no trouble, no war, no problem; but there would not have been any mind either. The mind developed only because man stood on two feet.
Man standing on two feet created two things: it freed the hands and, because he was standing erect, less blood was reaching the brain. That was the greatest thing that happened, because in animals blood is flowing equally through their bodies: their tails and their heads are on an equal level so the blood is circulating equally. Because the blood is circulating equally, they cannot grow the very delicate tissues in the brain which are needed for thinking.
Man’s brain has ten billion small cells which will be killed if he walks on all fours. That’s why the yogis in India who have been standing on their heads have never created anything. They became just idiots, for the simple reason that if you stand on your head, so much blood rushes toward the head that it will destroy all your finer tissues.
So if you look at the whole history of the yogis – yes, they will be quieter because there is no mind to create a disturbance. They will look more calm and cool, obviously, because the disturber is killed. They will not get so easily angry or become violent, for the simple reason that it takes them a longer time to think about what is happening: “Have I been insulted?” It is that the brain tissue is gone, just very few tissues here and there are left.
I am against the headstand. Yes, if you stand on your head for not longer than three seconds it’s okay; that will be helpful because three seconds simply gives a quick shower to the whole brain but it cannot destroy anything. Then jump back on your feet. Not longer than three seconds – that’s my calculation, because I have tried it on many people, but not on myself.
In my university there was a department of Yoga. Of course the head of the department was an absolute dodo. I used to go there and he would ask me, “Why do you come here? You are not enrolled and I never see you doing any exercises.”
I said, “I don’t come here to do Yoga or to participate in exercises.”
“Then,” he said, “what do you come here for?”
I said, “To me these are all guinea pigs.”
He said, “What do you mean? – these are Yoga students.” Even professors were learning Yoga there.
I said, “Yes, to me these are all guinea pigs. And you are the head of the department.”
I watched, and I found a few people ready to answer my questions about what was happening. And I discovered this fact: that people can only stand on their heads for three seconds, more than that is absolutely harmful. But no Yoga scripture mentions three seconds. They say, “The longer you stand, the better.” Of course their purpose is different. The longer you stand on your head, the less you will be disturbed in the world, naturally, because for disturbance – even to be aware that there are so many problems – intelligence is needed. All problems disappear for a yogi; not because he has transcended problems, but because he has destroyed the very mechanism through which he was going to become aware of the problems.
I am not for destroying the mind. I am for transcending the mind. Mind transcended is always there; in fact, clearer, cleaner, stronger, more energetic. Because it is not used, it is full of energy. So whenever a person who has transcended the mind wants to use the mind, naturally he is a genius. In whatsoever dimension he wants to use his mind, he will be a genius. Geniuses will look like pygmies before him because they have tired minds, and he has a mind reserved, rarely used, not tired.
The transcendental consciousness is able to see things, to know things. It does not need the help of the mind. The mind is needed only when the transcendental consciousness wants to convey something to you – a song, a message; only then is the mind used.
The yogi has fallen into a stupid trap; and this head of the department, this dodo proved really a dodo. I was traveling from Bina to Gwalior – I had gone to speak at a college, and while I was speaking in the college, the driver of my car went somewhere and got drunk. I had only three hours to catch the train. First it was very difficult to find the driver, and he had taken the key and everything, otherwise I would have driven myself. The owner of the car rushed everywhere; he said, “He must have got drunk, so we have to look in the drinking places.” So they showed us the place and there he was found completely drunk.
I said, “But do you think we will ever arrive? This man will take us all to heaven.” He was completely oblivious of anything; I had to find the key in his pocket. But all this time wasted: I went at my speed – in India there is no trouble because there is nobody to prevent you and give you a ticket. But on Indian roads it is not possible to really go beyond seventy; seventy is the most that you and the car can tolerate.
The owner was jumping up and down in the back seat saying, “Slow down! I think the driver would have been better. What are you doing? And you are not drunk! Just look at the road. At this speed… It is better to arrive late than never to arrive at all.” That is put on Indian roads by the government: “Better late than never.” So he was telling me, “Read it! It is written everywhere: ‘Better late than never.’”
I said, “I have to catch the train” – but we missed by just minutes. As we arrived outside the station, the train moved away from the platform. The next train was a Janata train, which means a third-class train: the whole train is third class. You don’t have any air-conditioned class, first class, second class; the whole train is third class.
There was no other way, so I climbed in somehow. The owner of the car and a few of his friends who had come forced me in, forced my things in, and what did I see? – that dodo, that head of the department of Yoga had entered just before me. He simply jumped on the upper seat and fell asleep in front of me. He just closed his eyes and stretched out his legs to cover the whole seat.
I said, “This is something! You have entered just in front of me, I am coming just behind you – and you are asleep.” I said, “Okay, remain asleep.” His porter was bringing his things. I said, “Put them outside. He is fast asleep. You can take all his things.”
Now the man became afraid. The train was going to leave, and I wouldn’t allow the porter in. The porter said, “But these things are his – the yogi who is sleeping on top.”
I said, “I am giving all these things to you. He is fast asleep: certainly he must have come from a great distance. These things can’t be his.”
He said, “No, he has just entered and I am carrying his things.”
I said, “If he wants to take his things, he will have to get down and take his things from the platform.” He tried his yogic patience to the very last moment, and when the guard gave the whistle, he jumped down to pick up his things. I went up to the top seat and was fast asleep. Although I don’t snore, that day I snored too. It was worth seeing: he came in and he had to travel standing.
After a few minutes he said, “There is no need to snore – you can simply sleep.”
I said, “Thank you. I was trying my hardest but it was too difficult: I don’t know how to snore. But you proved a perfect dodo. You were trying to take the whole seat, and just in front of me. If you had asked me I would have given you the whole seat, or the best thing would have been to share it – we could both have sat. But what you did, only a man who stands on his head for hours could do. So now stand.”
So he had to stand for six hours to Gwalior. When I got down, I said, “Now you can sleep, and remember me. This does not look good, at least for a yogi. The way you behaved simply proved what I have been telling you in the university, that you are a dodo.”
After that he wouldn’t allow me in his department. He told the peon of the department, “This student is not to be allowed in.”
But I was not interested; I was interested only in the headstand, and I had worked out that three seconds is the maximum. The less the better: one second is even better. So just a quick flush of blood makes all your brain cells vibrate, gives them a little more life. But if you are just pouring blood on them for hours, they will die. They are very delicate.
Man, by standing on two legs, allowed his brain to have less blood moving through it. Less movement of the blood in the brain gave the space and the possibility for the brain to develop. But in standing, sitting, your brain is continuously working. When you sleep the gravitational pull is similar all over, the blood movement is similar and quieter – not like standing on your head. Then it is just like a waterfall on your inner brain. When you are sleeping, the movement of blood becomes slowed and the gravitational pull is equal; you are back in the animal world. That’s why in the morning you will feel fresh, younger, sharper, more compassionate.
I have watched it in India: beggars never beg at evening time. I was wondering why. They always come to beg in the morning. I asked a few beggars with whom I had become friendly, “Why do you always beg in the morning, why not in the evening?”
They said, “It is clear: in the morning people are kinder, more compassionate. By evening they are tired, irritated, angry, you cannot manage to get anything out of them.”
Even beggars use psychology. They have been using it for centuries because they have always begged in the morning. People don’t look into things; otherwise, they would be surprised how many people know how many things. A beggar knows something tremendously important – that in the morning it is possible to exploit you because you are clean, refreshed, not irritated, not angry. It is difficult for you to say no. By the evening it is impossible for you to say yes to a beggar.
So for two hours in the day I enjoy a small night, and I make my room completely dark. Many times I forget: when I get up at quarter to two it takes a little while for me to figure out whether it is morning or afternoon, and sometimes Vivek has to come to wake me because I have simply completely forgotten that it is afternoon. So I have told her, “You can wait up to quarter to two; you should not wait longer than that. That means I am not clear whether it is morning or evening, and people must be waiting for the drive-by, so wake me.” Then again a cup of tea because it is morning again, and then I go to see you all.
It is enough for me just to see you happy, dancing, singing, enjoying. That’s what I want the whole world to be: just always in a dancing and singing mood. People who come just as spectators cannot believe it. The journalists cannot believe that people can be so happy, so joyful; they think that you are putting it on. And I cannot say that journalists are knowingly misrepresenting it. They have seen the whole world; there is no joy anywhere. How can they believe that so many people can be joyous – and for nothing, because what have we got?
One journalist, a woman from Newsweek, was here. She told Sheela, “This is all a put-up business – these people are just pretending.” Sheela told me, so I sent a message to the woman, “Remain here for seven days. For seven days, twenty-four hours a day, people cannot continue a put-up business. And these people are working twelve hours, fourteen hours a day, seven days a week. You try! – work fourteen hours a day, seven days a week, then pretend. If you can do that, then you can write about how this is a put-up job.”
The woman understood that this was true. She stayed seven days. Of course she did not work, but she said, “I can understand that working fourteen hours, it is impossible to pretend.” She stayed seven days, and she apologized. But she said to Sheela, “Now my bosses are not going to accept what I am writing. They will say, ‘You are hypnotized.’”
She left, and that’s what happened: her bosses said, “You should not have stayed there that long. That man played a trick upon you. He challenged you to remain seven days, and hypnotized you.”
But she said, “He has not even seen me, we have not met.”
But the boss said, “Your article is proof enough that you are hypnotized: not a single negative statement in it, no criticism. I cannot publish this article. You will have to change it.” The magazine is owned by a Christian association. The woman had to change it and write things which she knew were wrong.
This is a strange world. People are miserable, misery has become their natural quality. Here, once in a while somebody becomes miserable; there, once in a while somebody smiles. But that is a great difference.
Just seeing you happy is all that I am here for. Nothing else is expected from you. No master has ever expected less than I expect from you: just that you should be joyous, that you should treat miseries and sufferings as being below you. The whole world is ready to be miserable and suffer without you. Do you think the world is going to miss your misery, suffering? Don’t be worried about that. You can enjoy, you can rejoice.
Jesus says to his disciples again and again, “Rejoice!” But I don’t see his disciples rejoicing. Nor do I see him rejoicing. Have you seen a picture of Jesus smiling? Laughing would be too much, even smiling won’t suit. With the cross, how are you going to manage a smile? And if somebody smiles on the cross, then people will think this is certainly a put-up job! If without crosses they are not allowing people to rejoice, then smiling on the cross? – “This man is a great actor!” No, it won’t fit with the philosophy of Crossianity: sad, long faced, burdened with the whole history of the world, telling his disciples, “Rejoice!”
I wonder: not a single disciple asked Jesus, “Master, at least once, you rejoice.” The master is always serious, and of course the disciples do what the master does, not what he says – they are not that stupid. You are serious, and you are telling them to rejoice? You will be sitting by the side of God, his only begotten son, and these fools rejoicing will fall into hell.
I cannot think of anybody in heaven rejoicing – or do you think that in heaven people are rejoicing? The way God is being painted by all the religions – serious, deadly serious. It is impossible for God to smile. Have you seen any picture of God smiling? The idea has not happened; I am mentioning it for the first time. There are millions of painters, but not a single painter thought, “Let this poor fellow smile once. What harm is there if in one picture God smiles or bursts out laughing?” No, it is difficult, very difficult.
I have just received the news from England that a rabbi has been expelled by the managing committee of Jews in England because he told a dirty joke in his sermon. He must be reading my books. But I was curious to know what the joke was – it must have been a serious affair: he has been expelled. He is no longer a rabbi, he cannot preach in the synagogue, so what was the dirty joke? And I feel sorry to tell you that when I heard the joke I could not believe that it was a dirty joke. The joke was not even much of a joke. It is very simple and very short.
The rabbi was initiating a boy and he told the boy, “When you grow older, you will be learning a bit of this, a bit of that, and a bit of the other.” That was the joke! A dirty joke? – “A bit of the other”? These are the religious people – will they allow you to laugh? To rejoice? I wondered then what my jokes are. If this is a dirty joke then certainly my jokes are not dirty. If this is the criterion of a dirty joke, then I have never told a single dirty joke; it is absolutely proven, if this kind of joke is dirty. For this joke a rabbi has been expelled! Poor fellow. The very idea of telling a joke must have come to him by reading my books, because all the rabbis, all the priests, all the monks are reading my books. They cannot remain out of my influence in any way. They will be trying to hide it in the Bible, in the Gita, in the Talmud. They may not be reading it directly, but they are all reading it.
There was some other news today. One man, Nani Palkhiwala – a very famous tax expert, the topmost tax expert in India and an ambassador in America – has always been against me. So much so that he will not take any of the cases concerned with me, or my people or the Foundation. That’s absolutely absurd. You may be against my philosophy, but that does not mean that you cannot fight a case; that is your profession. It was not only that he was not willing to take any of my cases; he was telling other top legal people not to take any of my cases. Now he has been defeated in the election, and he has given a statement which has certainly come from my books, because I am the only person who has been using this word.
I have said many times that I am against democracy because democracy is nothing but a mobocracy. I am in favor of a higher system: people of merit. And I call that system, meritocracy. Now Nani Palkhiwala has been defeated, his statement is: “I am in favor of a meritocracy – we have been dominated by mediocre people long enough.” Now, he was one of the mediocre people who were in power! He has completely forgotten about whom he is talking. He was in power, and now that he is defeated he is saying, “So the people who were in power, or who are in power now, are all mediocre. A meritocracy is needed.”
I would like to ask Nani Palkhiwala: are Doctor Rajendra Prasad, Doctor Radhakrishnan, Doctor Zakir Hussain, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Lalbahadur Shastri, Jayaprakash Narayan, Doctor Ram Manohar Lohia, Acharya J. B. Krishani, and Indira Gandhi people of merit, according to you, or not? Secondly, does he consider that Mediocraji-bhai Desai must be, according to him, a man of merit? – because as prime minister he chose Nani Palkhiwala to be India’s ambassador to the USA. And I wonder why he remained silent for all these forty years without talking about a meritocracy?
Now that he is nobody, suddenly all politicians have become mediocre. And he was appointed the ambassador to America by one of the most mediocre persons in the whole world. What does it prove? He should have refused to be appointed by a mediocre person, but then he was wagging his tail like a dog. One thing is certain, that he is far below even a mediocre person. Perhaps Nani Palkhiwala thinks that he will be chosen because he has some merit. He is just a mediocre person. To become a tax expert one does not need merit. In fact only mediocre people will be interested in taxes and tax laws. People of merit have much more beautiful things to do.
Another defeated person is the ex-prime minister of India, Charan Singh. After the defeat he said, “All politicians should be shot, including me, Charan Singh.” This he should have done when he was the prime minister. Now he cannot do anything, he is defeated. “All politicians should be shot,” including him – but why suddenly? And just a few days earlier he was fighting the election to become a politician. If he had been victorious, do you think he would have made this statement? Or do you think if Nani Palkhiwala had been victorious he would have given his statement?
I quite agree with this great idea of ex-prime minister Charan Singh, that all politicians should be shot, including him. But my humble suggestion is, “Please practice what you preach. Just shoot Morarji Desai and yourself, and you will have made history. You two are the worst politicians in contemporary India. But be quick, otherwise Morarji Desai will not let you make history. He can shoot you and himself, and take this great opportunity from your hands.”
This world is full of very strange people and they think everybody is only the way they are. If they see you all dancing and singing, certainly it seems to be a put-up job. And what do they think of themselves? We are putting it on for them? Do they think that when they are not here we become long faced and start crying and weeping to compensate? These idiots should come sometime, suddenly – drop in by parachute.
The woman from Newsweek was very disturbed because whatsoever she had seen in seven days, she wrote about. She called from New York, “When Sheela comes this way, my boss and I will be in Chicago. If Sheela passes by, can she spare one day? – because I am in difficulty. My boss simply thinks that I need to be deprogrammed. So if Sheela meets him it would be good.”
I said to Sheela, “It will be good: meet him and try to hypnotize him – see what you can do.” And what actually happened? The boss wouldn’t look at Sheela. He didn’t give himself any chance to be hypnotized; he would look sideways, here and there, but not toward Sheela.
Many times I see people standing in the line, spectators who come. They don’t look at me. I feel like stopping my car and opening my window, but I feel if they get hypnotized then I will be found a culprit, so it is better that I pass on and don’t bother about them. They are looking somewhere else – and they have come to see me! What is happening? – I am seeing them, and they are avoiding me.
Coming back from the drive-by, Vivek looks a little puzzled: how can I go on enjoying every day the same people dancing and beating drums out of tune, and doing all kinds of things? How do I go on enjoying it every day? I don’t look at her for the simple reason that she may feel awkward. I don’t look at her, not even a single time: she may feel awkward because she is seeing me enjoying the same scene again every day. I enjoy immensely because my attitude toward life is this: tomorrow perhaps I may not be able to see you dancing again, so every day I see it as if I am seeing it for the first time and the last time.
But to me it is a question of tremendous importance. Perhaps tomorrow I may not be able to see you again; then the last time I see you, I should see you as fully as possible, as totally as possible. And because I never compare, the question does not arise that you are the same people singing the same song, playing on the same drums. And I know I will make arrangements so that even when I am not there, my car will pass at the exact time for you to dance and sing and play. Wherever I am, I will enjoy it. It is a promise.
So even if I am not there, at least you will not miss my car. Vivek will be there; and people already think perhaps she is driving the car. In front of the whole commune, Sheela had to clear up this rumor: that it is not so – because the rumor was coming again and again, and when it became too much… One day a radio reporter was following the car, giving a commentary to his radio station, which was then immediately played. He was giving a commentary like on a football match: “Now Osho has come, people are dancing, singing, jumping. There are all kinds of music, all kinds of tunes are being played. And now Osho has even let go of the steering wheel” – that too was in the commentary – “and he is beating time with the dancers and singers. Now it is a wonder how the car is…” Then Sheela came to me; she said, “This was the radio commentary. It was relayed all over America.”
Then the rumor started coming to her: “Is it true that Osho is not driving, Vivek is?” The pedals and gears are on Vivek’s side, and only a pseudo-steering wheel is in front of me so I can let go of it and there is no problem! In fact, it can be arranged that way if I am not there. My garage director, Avesh, is a great mechanic. He can manage it that way so that Vivek will be sitting still on the passenger’s seat with the gears and the pedals, and a certain small device for steering. And my steering wheel will remain free the way it is when I’m not holding it.
But I would like you still to enjoy drive-by the same way, to dance the same way, even more so because when I am not there, you have to “put it on” even better! Life is so simple and so beautiful. If you can remember that tomorrow is not certain, then it is intense too.
Coming back after drive-by I again listen to music. Then I again repeat the same routine: going to the bath, going to the swimming pool, going to the chilled shower, then the same supper. Why you call it supper, I don’t know, because it is the same as lunch. At least as far as I am concerned, a different word is not needed; it is just the same as lunch. As far as dinner is concerned, I don’t know the meaning of it because I have never had any dinner – just the same lunch, exactly the same.
My kitchen people have invented something new, a patty made out of dahl. It is really delicious, and perhaps my kitchen is the only place where it is made because it is not made in India. My kitchen has dozens of recipes for patties but I have chosen only two: one for the morning and one for the evening. But I end my lunch with a glass of juice the same as in the morning, because I will not allow anything to go beyond the juice. I end my supper, so-called supper, with a glass of juice and then I am excitedly waiting for Sheela to bring the questions.
You will not be as excited to meet me as I am to meet you. I don’t know what I am going to say, that’s why I go on missing many things. That’s why I forgot yesterday after breakfast – I must have gone somewhere else, because it is not a prepared speech. I am simply speaking as if to myself – the way you think. I don’t think, so there is no question of preparing: I simply start speaking. Speaking without thinking is bound to be a little bizarre.
Just yesterday I left Mahavira standing; I just moved on somewhere else. I forgot about it. Just now I remembered, because this is not India: it is freezing cold and yesterday I left the naked Mahavira standing and completely forgot about him. He must be getting angry by now. Howsoever nonviolent he is, he must be getting angry: “This is too much – in Oregon, in freezing cold, below zero centigrade.” But what can I do? I have no fixed track. I don’t move on rails like a train. I move like a river, unpredictable even to myself.
Let me finish poor Mahavira and give him leave; otherwise I am again going off the track. I was telling you that Mahavira was standing with closed eyes. A man came to him with his cows and asked him, “As you are standing here, please just keep an eye on my cows; they are grazing. And I will be back soon.” He didn’t even bother that the man was standing with closed eyes. He didn’t even bother that he had not said yes or no – he was silent for twelve years.
The man went away; he had some urgent business to do, and when he came back the cows had moved further into the jungle. He found Mahavira still standing there, so he asked, “Mister, where are my cows?” Mahavira didn’t speak, and the man was mad. He said, “It seems that you are a thief. You have stolen my cows, and here you are trying to stand with closed eyes and naked, as if you are some great saint. First tell me, where are my cows?”
But Mahavira did not even open his eyes, so the man said, “Are you deaf or are you pretending that you are deaf? I will show you.” The man was very angry: all his cows were lost and Mahavira was doing nothing, just standing there; he could not even keep an eye on them. The man was so angry that it is said that he took two pieces of wood and hammered them into Mahavira’s ears: “Now you will be really deaf!” Still Mahavira remained standing just the same; perhaps he remained deaf his whole life after that.
But there is no need of ears for a master; all that he needs is a tongue, and that was there. In fact, my experience is that people like me, by and by, become deaf. They don’t have any use of the ears. That’s why I go on listening to music, because I don’t want to become deaf: some work for the ears. Otherwise your ears are being used but what about my ears?
I go on forgetting like that, in many places, for the simple reason that… I don’t think anybody has spoken really spontaneously the way I am speaking. And I was not aware that my spontaneity would have such a tremendous effect on people. I am not an orator, I have never been trained for oratory. I am just talking the way I talk when you see me personally; I don’t see any difference.
The man who was the first to introduce me to the West, Aubrey Menen, is an Anglo-lndian journalist, but he lives in England – a very famous journalist, one of the topmost. He was the first man to introduce me to the West. He wrote the first book which mentioned me. The book’s name is The New Mystics. Not only did he mention me, he had my picture on the cover.
I could not believe what he had written about me. He wrote that he had heard the greatest orators of this century – Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Jawaharlal Nehru, President Kennedy – he had listened to all these people, sitting very closely, in the front row because he was a leading journalist. And he said that he was never influenced by anybody the way he was influenced by me. He not only compares me with these people – Adolf Hitler, President Kennedy, Winston Churchill, and Jawaharlal Nehru – but he believes me to be the best orator that he has come across. It was a surprise because I am not an orator at all.
I could not believe my eyes. I said, “What is this man talking about? Adolf Hitler was a great orator, Kennedy was a great orator, Jawaharlal was a great orator, Winston Churchill was a great orator. And he is comparing me, who is not an orator at all, with them? What has impressed him?”
He writes, “What has impressed me is that I could see simply that this man is absolutely unprepared. He does not know what he is going to say next, but somehow everything falls in line. His sentences are small, conversational, as if he is talking man to man, not to a crowd.” When you are talking to a crowd, you are talking to the walls: you are not human in your talk.
Winston Churchill said that when he started talking and became an orator, he was very nervous. Later he said, truthfully, he was still nervous when he stood on the podium; he still felt the same, first nervousness he had felt sixty years earlier. But the same trick always helped. And what was his trick? This must be the trick of many great orators. He says, “The first thing that I repeat in my mind is, ‘All these people are idiots; you need not be afraid of them.’ And once I settle it in my mind that these are all idiots, then I start speaking. Who is afraid of idiots? And then one word leads to another and then one gets the momentum; then one is just going like a computer.”
All your great orators are just repeating speeches already written by their secretaries. Jawaharlal’s secretary told me that all his speeches were written by him. Not only has he told me, he has written in his memoirs that all those great speeches that Jawaharlal was famous for were written by him. Before going, Jawaharlal would have a look at the speech, and figure out how he was going to manage it.
But with me it is a totally different matter. You are not idiots. I am speaking to people who are potentially enlightened beings; I am speaking with immense respect and love. And I have never felt any kind of nervousness because I am not an orator, I am just conversing with you. Hence, many times it is bound to happen that I will tell only half a story, and then, wherever the wind blows, my cloud starts moving. I have never made any effort that things should be different.
I want to remain absolutely spontaneous, and I want you also to hear me spontaneously. In the same way I don’t know what I am going to say, you should also be in that emptiness where you don’t know what you are going to hear. Then there is a possibility of a transmission of something which is not in the words but follows the words like a shadow or an aroma. Then the word will be there; you will hear the word, but the fragrance, the shadow will enter your being and will stir your heart.
My whole effort is not to convince your intellect: it is to have a little love affair with your heart. These are heart-to-heart talks, not oratory. Not great lectures, but just simple, human talks. So forgive me, I am going to remain the same way – but you can always remind me that I have left something out in the middle. I can always complete it. I would love to complete it but what can I do? There is so much to say – and nothing to say.
You can understand my problem: so much to say that even if I go on for lives it will still be there – and nothing to say, because that which I want to give to you is not something which can be said. I am living in this dilemma but trying for some middle way. And I have the feeling I have found the middle way.
I have heard a story…

When God created man of course he was an amateur. He baked the man too much – a Negro came out. God said, “Jesus! What happened to this man?”
The Negro said, “You cooked me too much.”
So God tried the next man. That’s how mind works, from one extreme to the other: he was afraid to cook him too much. So, half-cooked, a European came out. God said, “What is happening?”
The man said, “I was just on the way to being cooked and you pulled me out.”
God tried a third time. Of course now he was experienced and trying to find the middle way. And it is said he found the middle way – the Indian.

After the discourse I do some work with Sheela, anything concerned with sannyasins’ spiritual growth. And nearabout ten o’clock I take my last glass of juice and go into sleep or samadhi, which are the same to me. Now you can see that I don’t have anything beyond the juice.
The juice is the last and ultimate thing: raso vai saha – that which is nothing but juice. In the Sanskrit sutra they do not use the pronoun he, instead they use that. It is quite clear that they are referring to existence itself and not to a non-existent God.

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