JEWISH MYSTICS
OSHO-The Art of Dying 06
Sixth Discourse from the series of 10 discourses - OSHO-The Art of Dying by Osho.
You can listen, download or read all of these discourses on oshoworld.com.
The first question:
Osho,
Today at the lecture you extolled the virtues of Hasidism. But if they are so praiseworthy, so full of feeling of brotherhood, etc., why do they exclude women from their religious practices, and particularly their ecstatic religious dancing?
A woman has asked the question. It is very relevant, and has to be understood. The first thing to remember, to always remember, is never to judge the past by present standards. That is not compassionate. For example, when Hasidism was arising, to allow women into an ecstatic religious dance would have been impossible. Not that Hasidic mystics were not aware, not that they would not have liked to allow it – they would have loved it – but it was impossible.
Even Buddha was afraid to initiate women into his order. What was the fear? Was he an orthodox person? No, you cannot find a more revolutionary mind, but he insisted for many years on not allowing women into his order. The reason is to be found somewhere else.
A religion has to exist in the society. If the society is too much against a certain thing, even the founder has to make a few compromises otherwise the religion as such will not exist at all. The society is not in a condition of perfection, the society is not yet as it should be, but a religion has to exist in this society, in the framework that this society allows it. Revolutionaries try to go a little further than the boundary, but even they cannot go too far. If they go too far they will be uprooted.
For example, I have no objection if you go naked when meditating. I have no objection. In fact I will support it, because clothes are part of the repressive culture. I know it, but still I have to insist on you not being naked in the meditations because that creates such trouble that even meditation will become impossible. That will be too much. To destroy the whole possibility of meditation just for clothes or nudity would be foolish. It would have been good if I had been able to allow you to be absolutely free – free from clothes also. But then society will not allow us to exist at all, and we have to exist in society. So we have to choose the lesser evil.
Or, take the question of drugs. I am not in support of drugs, but I am not against them either. I am not in support of Timothy Leary, I don’t think that you can attain samadhi by drugs – about that I am absolutely certain. No one has ever attained samadhi by drugs, notwithstanding what Aldous Huxley and others say. It is too cheap, and there is no possibility to attain the ultimate through chemicals. But I am aware that drugs can help in a certain way. They can give you a glimpse; they cannot give you the reality, but they can give you a glimpse of the reality, and that glimpse can become a breakthrough. That glimpse can uproot you from your past and can send you on a search for the real. Even if you have seen God, even in your dream, your whole life will be transformed. Of course, the God in a dream is a dream, but the next morning you will start looking into the world – where can you find this phenomenon that has happened in your dream?
So many people start their journey toward godliness, truth, samadhi, because they have had a certain glimpse somewhere – maybe through drugs, maybe through sexual orgasm, maybe through music, or sometimes accidentally. Sometimes a person falls from a train, is hit on the head and he has a glimpse. I’m not saying make a method of that! But I know this has happened. A certain center in the head is hit by accident and the person has a glimpse, an explosion of light. Never again will he be the same; now he will start searching for it. This is possible. The improbable is no more improbable; it has become possible. Now he has some inkling, some contact. He cannot rest now.
I am not for drugs, I am not against drugs. But still, in this community, in my commune, drugs cannot be allowed, because politicians have never been very intelligent and one should not expect too much from them. In fact, only stupid people become interested in politics. If they were intelligent they would not be in politics at all.
So just for some ordinary, small thing the whole movement cannot be destroyed. That would be foolish. After a hundred years my attitude that drugs cannot be allowed in the Commune will be thought anti-revolutionary. Naturally, I know it is anti-revolutionary. So let it be on the record.
The Hasidic masters knew it well. It is inhuman, anti-revolutionary, not to allow women to participate in ecstatic religious ceremonies, in ecstatic dances. But that society was very much against it. Because of this the whole movement would have died. So they had to prohibit it.
Buddhism died in India. Do you know why? It was because Buddha finally allowed women into his order. He himself is reported to have said, “My religion would have lived at least five thousand years, but now it will not live more than five hundred, because I am taking a very great risk.” Just allowing woman into his order was such a risk that Buddha said, “The life of my religion is reduced by four thousand, five hundred years – at the most it will last only five hundred years.” And it happened exactly that way. Buddhism lived for only five hundred years, and that life was also not at the climax, not at the optimum. Every day the life was slowing down, every day death was coming closer and closer. What happened?
The society. The society has long been male-dominated. To allow women into a religious order was to destroy the old hierarchy, the superiority of man. Even a man like Mahavira, a very revolutionary man, is reported to have said that women cannot enter moksha directly as women. First they will have to be born as men and then… So no woman has entered into the Jaina moksha, into nirvana, directly as a woman. First she has to change her body, take a male shape and form, and then she can enter.
Why should Mahavira say this? Society, the politics of the country, the priests and the politicians, they were too male chauvinistic. Some compromise was needed, otherwise they would not allow anything. Mahavira lived naked, but he himself did not allow any women to go naked because the society was not ready to accept even him in his nudity. By and by people accepted him, grudgingly, reluctantly, but to accept the idea that women could go naked would have been too much.
And because Mahavira said, “Unless you leave everything – even clothes – unless you are as innocent as a child, as you were on the first day you were born, you cannot enter into my kingdom of God,” he had to say that women could not enter directly. If he had said that women could enter directly then a few courageous women would have come forward and would have thrown off their clothes also, would have become naked. Just to avoid nude women he had to make a very false statement, untrue. And I know he knew that it was untrue – I know because I make many untrue statements.
But we have to exist in a society, in a particular state, in a particular confused state, in a particular neurotic state. If you live with mad people you have to make a few compromises. If you live with mad people at least you have to pretend that you are also mad.
Narendra is here. His father went mad thirty or forty years ago. He escaped from the house. After a few months he was caught in Agra and put into jail with mad people all around. There was a special jail in Lahore, only for mad people. He said that for nine months everything went okay because he was also mad.
After nine months, just by accident, he drank a whole jug of phenol – a mad man, he found it in the bathroom and he drank it. That made him vomit, gave him nausea, diarrhea. Because of that diarrhea he was throwing things out for fifteen days continuously, and his madness also disappeared. It helped, it helped like a catharsis. When his madness disappeared then the real problem began, because he was among mad people.
Now for the first time he became aware of where he was – somebody was pulling his leg, somebody was hitting him on his head, and people were talking and dancing. And he was no longer mad. Those three months when he was not mad and was living with mad people, were the most painful; they were deep anguish and anxiety. He couldn’t sleep.
And he would go to the authorities and he would say, “Now let me out because I am no longer mad!” And they wouldn’t listen because every mad person says that – that he is no longer mad. So that was not proof. He had to complete his sentence of one year.
He told me that he could never forget those three months; they were a continuous nightmare. But for nine months he was perfectly happy because he was also mad.
You cannot conceive of what happens to a person when he becomes a Buddha or a Baal Shem in a country, in a world, which is absolutely mad. He is no longer mad, but he has to live with you, he has to follow your laws, otherwise you will kill him. He has to make compromises. Of course he cannot hope that you will make compromises with him. You are not in a state in which you can think. But he can think. Only the higher can make compromises with the lower, only the greater can make compromises with the lower, only the wise person can make compromises with stupid people.
So it happened that women have never been accepted. It is only just in this century, very recently, that women are coming out of the dark night of the past history.
I have heard:
It happened that when Golda Meir was Prime Minister of Israel, Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India, went to Israel. And when Indira Gandhi visited Israel she was welcomed by Golda Meir.
After seeing all the historical sights, Mrs. Gandhi said, “I would like to visit a synagogue.”
“By all means,” answered the Israeli Prime Minister.
Two weeks later, Mrs. Gandhi stood before her cabinet.
“What did you learn in Israel?” asked one of the members.
“Many things,” answered the Indian Prime Minister. “But most of all I learned that in Israeli synagogues the men pray on the first floor and the prime ministers worship in the balcony.”
Two women, but she thought that prime ministers worship in the balcony and men on the floor. Once a thing settles it is very difficult to change it, even for a prime minister. Even for a prime minister it is difficult to change the traditional way.
The Hasids were a wave; but rather than destroying the whole movement they chose to go with the society and its rules and its regulations. At least let the message reach to men. If it cannot reach to women right now, later on it will – but at least let the message be rooted on the earth.
I exist here in a very alien and strange world. I would like to give you many things, but I cannot because you yourself will resist. I would like to make you aware of many things in your being, but you will be against me. I have to go very slowly, I have to be very roundabout; it cannot be done directly.
Just see: I have done what the questioner was inquiring about in relation to Hasidism. I have done it. In my community, men and women are no longer separate. That’s why Indians have stopped coming to my ashram. They cannot come. When they used to come, their questions were more or less all concerned about what type of ashram this was – men and women mixing and meeting, holding each other’s hands, going together? Even after meditations hugging, kissing each other? What type of things were these? This is not good.
They used to come to me and say, “This is not good, this should not be allowed. Osho, you should interfere.” I never interfered because to me there is nothing wrong – man and woman should not be made in any way distinct. They are not separate, nobody is higher and nobody is lower. They are different but equal. Difference is beautiful, it has to be there. The difference has to be enhanced, but the equality has to be saved. And to me, love is a way toward godliness.
I didn’t listen to them. By and by they disappeared. Now only very courageous Indians can enter here. Now only a few Indians can enter here, those who have no repressed mind in them, who are post-Freudians – only they can enter here. But India as a whole is pre-Freudian. Freud is still unknown in India. Freud has not yet entered into the Indian soul.
But I have done it. And I am a Hasid, so you can forgive the old Hasids. Time was not ripe at that time; even now it is very difficult. I have to encounter difficulties every day; for every small thing there are difficulties. Those difficulties could be avoided if I behaved in an orthodox way. I cannot behave in an orthodox way – because then there is no point in my being here, then I could not deliver the message to you – and I cannot be absolutely revolutionary because then there would be no possibility of something happening between you and me.
And I am not in any way interested in being a martyr because that too seems to me to be a sort of masochism. People who are always seeking to become martyrs are not really aware of what they are doing – they are seeking suicide. I am not a martyr. I love life, I love all that is implied in life, and the original Hasid masters were as much in love with life as I am. That’s why I have chosen to talk about them. When I choose to talk about some path, I choose it only because that path appeals to me tremendously.
The Hasids were not people who wanted to become political revolutionaries. They were not reformists. They were not trying to reform the society; they were trying to bring a mutation to the individual soul. And they had to exist in the society. Remember that always.
But then what happens whenever a tradition gets settled? Now Hasidism is a settled tradition, now it itself has become an orthodoxy. Now the time is ripe. If the community exists in New York – a Hasidic community exists in New York – now the time is ripe, but now they themselves have become orthodox. They have their own tradition, they cannot go against Baal Shem. And these people who are now Hasids are not really masters, they are simply followers of the followers of the followers.
You are here with me. You are face to face with something original. When you tell it to somebody else it will not be the original. You have heard it from me, then you will tell it to somebody else and much of it is lost – and then that person goes to somebody else and delivers the message. Again much is lost. Within a few years, within a few transfers, the truth is completely destroyed, only lies are left. And again a revolutionary movement becomes an orthodox tradition.
The second question:
Osho,
Can't you do it for me? Can't you cut my head off?
Because I can't drop it. I know that because I have tried.
I can do that but there will be much trouble. Let me tell you an anecdote:
St. Peter returned to the new arrival waiting impatiently outside the gates. “I can’t find your name,” he reported. “Would you please spell it for me?” The man did so, and St. Peter left to check his reservation lists again. In a few moments he returned, “Say, you are not due for ten years. Who is your doctor?”
If I cut your head off, then St. Peter will ask you, “You are not due for many lives. Who is your guru?”
It cannot be done by another. It is not something that can be done from the outside. In fact you also cannot do it. You have to grow into it. It is not something that you can do or force; it comes through deeper understanding.
The dropping of the head is one of the most difficult things because you are identified with the head. You are the head! Your thoughts, your ideologies, your religion, your politics, your scriptures, your knowledge, your identity – everything is in your head. How can you drop it? Just think of dropping the head – then who are you? Without the head you are nobody.
You have to grow into understanding. When you can grow a new head above this head, only then can you drop this head. That’s the whole effort of meditation – to help you grow a new head, a new head which does not need thoughts, does not need ideologies; which is pure awareness and enough unto itself; which needs no external influence to live; which lives from its own innermost core. When you have grown a new head, the old will be dropped very easily. It will drop on its own accord.
If I force anything upon you, you will resist it, you will become afraid, you will be scared. And nobody wants to die. It is a great art to be learned.
I have heard:
It was the day of the hanging, and as Mulla Nasruddin was led to the foot of the steps of the scaffold, he suddenly stopped and refused to walk another step.
“Let us go,” the guard said impatiently. “What is the matter?”
“Somehow,” said Nasruddin, “those steps look mighty rickety. They just don’t look safe enough to walk up.”
He is going to be hanged, but those steps look “mighty rickety” – not safe enough to walk on! Even at the moment of death a person goes on clinging – to the very end. Nobody wants to die, and unless you learn to die you will never be able to live, you will never be able to know what life is. A person who is able to die is a person who is able to live, because life and death are two aspects of the same coin. You can choose both or you can drop both, but they both come together in one parcel, they are not different things.
Once you are afraid of death you are bound to be afraid of life. That’s why I am talking about this Hasidic approach. The whole approach consists of methods, ways and means of how to die – the art of dying is the art of living also. Dying as an ego is being born as a non-ego; dying as a part is being born as a whole; dying as man is a basic step toward being born as a god.
But death is difficult, very difficult. Have you watched it? Except man, no animal can commit suicide. It is not possible for any animal even to think about committing suicide. Have you thought about it? Have you heard of any tree committing suicide, any animal committing suicide? No, only man, man’s intelligence, can make it possible that a man can commit suicide.
And I am not talking about ordinary suicide – because that is not really suicide, you simply change the body – I am talking of the ultimate suicide. Once you die the way I am teaching you to die, you will never be born again in life. You will disappear into the cosmos, you will not have any form anymore, you will become the formless.
I have heard:
The man was charged with trespassing on the farmer’s property and shooting quail. The Counsel for Defense tried to confuse the farmer.
“Now,” he asked, “are you prepared to swear that this man shot your quail?”
“I didn’t say he shot them,” was the reply. “I said I suspected him of doing it.”
“Ah, now we are coming to it. What made you suspect this man?”
“Well,” replied the farmer, “firstly, I caught him on my land with a shotgun. Secondly, I heard a gun go off and saw some quail fall. Thirdly, I found four quail in his pocket, and you can’t tell me them birds just flew in there and committed suicide.”
Only man is capable of committing suicide. That is the glory of man. Only man can be capable enough to think that life is not worth living, only man is capable enough to reflect that this life is simply futile. Ordinarily when people commit suicide, they don’t do it because they have understood life’s futility, they do it only because they have understood this life’s futility – and they are hoping that in another life somewhere else things will be better.
The spiritual suicide means that a man has come to understand that not only this life is futile, but life as such is futile. Then he starts thinking of how to get rid of being born again and again, how to get rid of getting into the tunnel of the body and of being confined and encaged; then he starts thinking of how to remain absolutely free without any form. This is what moksha is, this is what liberation is – or you can call it salvation.
A man can never be happy in the body because it is such a confinement. All around are walls; you are forced into a prison. It does not look like a prison because the prison walks with you – wherever you go it goes with you, so you don’t feel that it is like a prison. Once you have known a life without the body, once you have become capable of getting out of the body – even for a single split moment – then you will see how you are confined, how you are imprisoned.
The body is a bondage, the mind is a bondage, but you have to understand, I cannot force you free. Remember one thing: you can be forced into bondage from the outside, but you cannot be forced into freedom from the outside. Somebody can force you into a prison cell, that can be done, but nobody can take you out of a prison cell. If you want to remain in a prison cell, you will find some other prison cell somewhere else. You may escape from one prison, but you will get into another – from the frying pan into the fire. You can easily change your prisons, but that doesn’t make any difference. That’s what everybody has been doing for millennia. Each life you have been in a prison – sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, sometimes black, sometimes white, sometimes Indian, sometimes Chinese, sometimes American. You have moved in all the forms possible.
When people come to me and I look into them, it is a surprise in how many forms they have moved in, how many bodies, how many shapes they have lived in, how many names and religions and countries… And still they are not fed up. And they go on repeating the old circle again and again.
Remember one thing more. Just as I said to you that suicide is absolutely human, no animal commits it, the same is true about boredom. Boredom is also absolutely human. A buffalo is never bored, a donkey is never bored – only man, only a highly evolved consciousness. If you are not bored with your life, it simply shows that you live in a very low state of consciousness.
A Buddha is bored, a Jesus is bored, a Mahavira is bored – bored to death! Just repetition all around and nothing else. Out of boredom comes renunciation. A man who is bored with the world becomes a sannyasin. The search is not for another world, it is for an end of the search. It is suicide, total, ultimate.
The third question:
Osho,
Listening to you I feel as if I am dying, as if you are continuously pushing me farther away. You are my peak, my Everest, so beautiful and so far away and yet incredibly close. Is there anything I can do to open myself to you?
My whole purpose here is to push you toward death, to push you into the abyss of the unknown, to push you into a zero experience. We in India call it samadhi. It is a zero experience – where in a way you are and in a way you are not; where you are empty of all content, just the container has remained; where all writing from the book has disappeared, just the book remains, empty. That’s the real Bible, the real Veda. When all writing has disappeared and the book is absolutely empty; when all the content, all the thoughts, mind, emotions, desires, have disappeared and there is only a pure consciousness, empty of all content – this is what I call the abyss.
You say, “You are my peak, my Everest…” Yes, that’s true, but the peak will come only later on. First comes the abyss. I am also your abyss. Let me tell you one very, very beautiful anecdote. Listen to it very attentively, and later on when you are sitting silently at home, meditate over it.
A man went to a ranch to buy a horse, pointed at one and said, “My, that’s a beautiful pony right there. What kind is it?”
“That’s a palomino,” said the rancher.
“Well, any friend of yours is a friend of mine. I would like to buy that pony,” said the man.
The rancher replied, “I gotta tell you sir, it was owned by a preacher-man. If you want the horse to move you say, ‘Good Lord’; if you want the horse to stop you gotta say, ‘Amen.’”
“Let me try that horse,” said the buyer.
He mounted and said, “Good Lord.” The horse promptly moved out and was soon galloping up in the mountains. The man was yelling, “Good Lord! Good Lord!” and the horse was really moving. Suddenly he came to the end of a cliff, and panic-stricken he yelled, “Whoa! Whoa!” That didn’t work and then he remembered and said, “Amen!” The horse stopped right on the end of the cliff.
And wiping his brow with relief, the man said, “Good Lord!”
You ask, “Is there anything I can do to open myself to you?” Say “Good Lord” and then all else will happen on its own accord.
The fourth question:
Osho,
I love every time I hear you speak, but my favorite thing I ever heard you say was the other day when you asked us if we could hear you.
I would like to ask it every day, every moment. Can you hear me? But just out of politeness I don’t ask it. That day the mike failed and I could gather courage. But remember, you lied to me. When I said, “Can you hear me?” you said, “No.” You lied. If you had not heard my question how could you answer it? Again because of politeness I remained quiet. I had to.
A young lady went to Mulla Nasruddin for advice. She said to the Mulla, “Should I marry a fellow who lies to me?”
“Yes, unless you want to remain unmarried forever,” said Nasruddin.
I have to accept you liars as my disciples because there is no other way, unless I decide to remain a master without disciples. You lied to me absolutely that moment. You had heard me, you immediately said, “No.” Not only did you like my asking you, “Can you hear me,” I also loved your answer.
The fifth question:
Osho,
You call the Hasidim a joyous, enlightened community, yet the Hasidism of modern New York appears to be so rigid, austere, dogmatic and contemptuous of both goyim and other Jews.
How did this transformation take place?
It always takes place.
Truth cannot remain long on the earth; it comes and it disappears. If you are available it hits you, and then it is gone. You cannot hold it on the earth. The earth is so false and people are so much engrossed in their lies that truth cannot remain here long. Whenever a buddha walks on the earth, truth walks for a few moments. When the buddha is gone, truth also disappears. Only the footprints are left and you go on worshipping the footprints. The footprints are not the buddha, and the words uttered by the buddha are just mere words. When you repeat them they are just words, they mean nothing.
It was Buddha who was the meaning behind the words. You can repeat exactly the same words, but they will not mean the same, because the person behind the words is no longer the same.
The Hasidim were a joyous community when Baal Shem was there. When he walked on the earth, the Hasidim were one of the most beautiful communities on the earth – they flowered. A master is needed, a living master is needed. Only in a living master’s presence does your innermost bud open, blossom.
After Baal Shem disappeared, there was only a tradition left. What he said, what he did, the legends about him, are many. And then people go on repeating them, people go on imitating them. These people are bound to be false.
But this is natural, so don’t be angry at them. Once I am gone from here this community will not be so joyous, cannot be. It is just natural. Then the words will be there and people will be repeating them and they will try to follow them religiously, but there will be effort. Right now there is no effort. You are simply flowing with me. Right now it is spontaneous, right now it is a love affair. Then it will be a sort of duty to be fulfilled. You will feel an obligation.
You will remember me. You will want to live the same way, but something very vital will be missing – the life will be missing. Whenever a master departs only a dead corpse of his teaching remains.
So always seek a living master. A dead master is of no use – because a dead master means nothing but a dead teaching. Always seek a living master. But it is very difficult because people’s minds are very slow. By the time you come to recognize somebody as a master he is gone. This is the difficulty. By the time you recognize that Jesus is a master, Jesus is no longer there. Then there are only Christians, then there are churches, then there are the pope and the priest, and they catch hold of you.
Yes, Hasidism has become orthodox but the Hasids were not. They were a living religion, a very living river.
I have heard:
A rabidly anti-Catholic Jew was on his deathbed. All the family were gathered round as he gasped, “Fetch a priest.”
They were all thunder-struck, but his wife said to their eldest son, “Go on, it is his dying wish. Fetch a priest.” So the son fetched a Catholic priest, who received the old man into the Church, gave him the last rites and left.
The eldest boy, with tears in his eyes, whispered to his father, “Dad, all your life you have brought us up to believe that the Church of Rome is the anti-Christ. How come in your last moments you can bring yourself to join them? You are a Jew, and you have always believed in the Judaic tradition. How can you do this at the last moment?”
And with his last breath the old man muttered, “Another one of the bastards dead.”
He converted himself to be a Catholic so that a Catholic dies in the world. “Another one of the bastards dead!”
People always become that way because people live through the mind. Mind is a tradition.
I have heard:
“Is your grandfather a religious man?” asked the young co-ed of her date.
“He’s so orthodox,” replied the boy, “that when he plays chess he doesn’t use bishops, he uses rabbis!”
The ego functions in a very traditional way. To be revolutionary, one needs to be beyond the ego. And it is not that you can do it once and forever, you have to do it every moment again and again because the ego goes on closing in on you, it goes on caving in on you. Each moment that you pass through, whatsoever you have lived, whatsoever you have experienced, becomes your ego. You have to discard it. Renunciation is not once and for all. You have to renounce every moment; whatsoever is gathered you have to renounce it, only then renunciation remains a revolution. And not only do you have to renounce ordinary things of the world, you have to renounce ordinary ideologies also – Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan. You have to renounce thoughts so that you can remain in a pure mirrorlike reflection. Then your consciousness can remain undisturbed, uncolored by any thought, you can see into things directly and your consciousness is not distracted or distorted by any prejudice.
Once a tradition settles, once a religion is no longer revolutionary, you start interpreting it in your own ways. Then you don’t bother what Buddha means, then you start reading your own thoughts into Buddha’s assertions. Then you don’t bother what Krishna says, you go on reading into the Gita whatsoever you want to read. Then the perversion settles. That’s why I insist again and again: if you can find a living master, be with him – because you cannot distort a living master. You will try! But you cannot distort him because a living master can stop you from distorting his message. But a dead book, a scripture – Holy Bible, Holy Koran, Holy Gita – what can they do? They may be holy, but they are completely dead, you can do whatsoever you want to do with them. And man is very cunning and very clever.
When aged Fennessy collapsed on the street, a crowd soon gathered and began making suggestions as to how the old fellow should be revived.
Maggie O’Reilly yelled, “Give the poor man some whiskey.”
No one paid any attention to her and the crowd continued shouting out suggestions. Finally Fennessy opened one eye, pulled himself up on an elbow, and said weakly, “Will the lot of ye hold your tongues and let Maggie O’Reilly speak?”
Whatsoever we want to hear, whatsoever we want, becomes our scripture, becomes our interpretation. People are rigid. So whether they are Hasids or Buddhists or Sufis or Zen Buddhists does not matter – people are rigid, people’s minds are rigid. Wherever they belong they create rigidity there. You can move from being a Hindu and you can become a Christian, or from Christian you can become a Mohammedan, but it will not make much difference because you will remain you. And you will do the same by being a Christian, you will do the same by being a Mohammedan or by being a Hindu. What ideology you believe in does not matter much. The real thing that matters is you, your consciousness, your state of consciousness.
You are here with me. Your children, the next generation, will believe in me simply because their father or their mother believed in me. They will not have any direct contact with me, they will simply believe; it will not be a trust, it will be just a mental thing, a formal thing.
It happens that sometimes the children come and when the mother takes sannyas, the child also wants to take sannyas. The child does not know what he is doing, not knowing where he is moving; he is just imitating the mother. The mother has come on her own, but the child has come just as a shadow. For the mother I have a totally different meaning, for the child I have no meaning at all. If the mother had gone to another master, the child would have been initiated there. If the mother had become Mohammedan or Christian, the child would have become Mohammedan or Christian.
There is no relevance for the child, it is not significant for the child – and it may become part of his ego that he is a sannyasin. Later in his life he may wear orange, may wear a mala, and he will do the formal thing, but he will be as ordinary a mind as there are all over the world. And he will do with his belief what the ordinary mind has always been prone to do: he will become rigid about it, fanatical about it. He will start declaring that here is truth and nowhere else.
When you declare that only your belief is true and all else is false, you are not concerned with truth at all. You are simply concerned with the assertion of your ego. It is an ego declaration, “My country has to be right, my religion has to be right. Wrong or right, my country has to be right, my religion has to be right – because it is my religion.”
Deep down it is my “I” that has to be right.
The sixth question:
Osho,
Last night, in the early morning, I saw two dreams one after another. In one, you were sitting in a room in complete silence. I entered the room very slowly, came closer and closer to you, bowed down, touched your feet. You placed your hands on my head. I felt very blissful, ecstatic, very, very light. In the other dream there was a beautiful room, very cool, soothing, blue-colored. You were lying on the bed. Laxmi, some other disciples and myself were sitting there – very few disciples were there. Laxmi beckoned to me to come closer near your bed. You were indicating something not indicated before. Your fingers were making very different gestures. It looked as if you were giving your final message. I could even hear it very clearly and distinctly. It was, “Drink me, eat me, breathe me. Don't leave me undrunk, uneaten, unbreathed.” And we all were weeping.
There you missed. You should have been laughing. Correct your dream. Next time don’t commit that mistake.
The seventh question:
Osho,
“Shall the day of parting be the day of gathering? And shall it be said that my eve was in truth my dawn? Shall my heart become a tree, heavy-laden with fruit that I may gather and give unto them? Am I a harp that the hand of the Mighty may touch me, or a flute that his breath may pass through me? A seeker of silences am I, and what treasure have I found in silences that I may dispense with confidence?”
Yes, a million, million times, yes. Let this be your guide. You just allow the divine and he will start singing through your flute. Just don’t hinder his way.
Only one thing is needed – don’t hinder existence. It is not a question of God playing on your flute or not. It is only a question of whether you will allow him or not. If you allow him, this very moment the song begins. If you don’t allow him and you go on praying, “Play on my flute,” then it is never going to begin.
Man has nothing else to do but surrender – in deep trust, in deep love. Don’t be a doer, just surrender. Let there be a let-go. And whatsoever you have asked, I say yes, a million, million times, yes.
The eighth question:
Osho,
I was a sad child, a frightened adolescent, and an angry young man. Yet all my life I have felt deep within that everything was funny, absurd, ridiculous. When I was in the seminary some years ago, a friend told me that we have such a limited capacity for divine things that if God told us a joke, we would die laughing. I remember my friend's statement because since coming to Pune I have felt a great belly-laugh welling up inside of me. I feel that God has told me a joke, and the punch-line is slowly dawning on me. I am a little afraid that I will not catch it fully until I have left Pune in December, and then I will laugh so loud and hard that you will be able to hear me all the way from Texas. Please tell me, will I survive this joke?
It is impossible to survive this joke. The laughter that I am teaching to you is something that is going to destroy you completely. The laughter that I am teaching to you is very destructive, it is a crucifixion. But only after this destruction is there creation. Only out of chaos are stars born and only after crucifixion is there resurrection.
No, you will not be able to survive this laughter. If you really allow it, you will be drowned by it, you will disappear and only laughter will remain. If you laugh then the laughter is not total. When there is only laughter and you are not, then it is total. And only then have you heard the joke that God is telling.
Yes, this whole cosmos is a joke; Hindus call it leela. It is a joke, it is a play. And the day that you understand then you start laughing, and that laughing never stops. It goes on and on. It spreads all over the cosmos.
Laughter is prayer. If you can laugh you have learned how to pray. Don’t be serious; a serious person can never be religious. Only a person who can laugh, not only at others but at himself also, can be religious. A person who can laugh absolutely, who sees the whole ridiculousness and the whole game of life, becomes enlightened in that laughter.
No. You ask: “Please tell me, will I survive this joke?” No, if you have heard the joke you cannot survive. If you have not heard, then it is very unfortunate because you will survive.
The last question and the most important:
Osho,
Why do Jews have long noses?
Now don’t be afraid. I am not going to give you a long talk, a ninety-minute talk, no, because I know the answer. When you don’t know the answer you have to give a very long answer. You see, that’s why I go on talking so long. When I don’t know the answer I have to talk very long. In my talking you forget your question. But when I know the answer, then there is no need. And I know the answer. I happen to know the answer.
How I came upon the answer – about that I must tell you something.
One day – just a few days ago – Vivek asked me this question early in the morning: “Why do Jews have long noses?” I settled in my chair, in my posture. I made my towel comfortable, looked at the clock and I was just going to start a great discourse on the philosophy and the physiology of the Jewish nose. But then she became apprehensive and afraid. Naturally – because once I take off, then it takes ninety minutes at least for me to land again on the earth. So she said, “Stop! Stop! I happen to know the answer! You need not give me the answer!”
I was very shocked because I was already on the way. In a hurried way she said, “Because the air is free!”
It is a beauty. I loved it. It explains everything. The Jews have long noses because the air is free!
Enough for today.
Osho,
Today at the lecture you extolled the virtues of Hasidism. But if they are so praiseworthy, so full of feeling of brotherhood, etc., why do they exclude women from their religious practices, and particularly their ecstatic religious dancing?
A woman has asked the question. It is very relevant, and has to be understood. The first thing to remember, to always remember, is never to judge the past by present standards. That is not compassionate. For example, when Hasidism was arising, to allow women into an ecstatic religious dance would have been impossible. Not that Hasidic mystics were not aware, not that they would not have liked to allow it – they would have loved it – but it was impossible.
Even Buddha was afraid to initiate women into his order. What was the fear? Was he an orthodox person? No, you cannot find a more revolutionary mind, but he insisted for many years on not allowing women into his order. The reason is to be found somewhere else.
A religion has to exist in the society. If the society is too much against a certain thing, even the founder has to make a few compromises otherwise the religion as such will not exist at all. The society is not in a condition of perfection, the society is not yet as it should be, but a religion has to exist in this society, in the framework that this society allows it. Revolutionaries try to go a little further than the boundary, but even they cannot go too far. If they go too far they will be uprooted.
For example, I have no objection if you go naked when meditating. I have no objection. In fact I will support it, because clothes are part of the repressive culture. I know it, but still I have to insist on you not being naked in the meditations because that creates such trouble that even meditation will become impossible. That will be too much. To destroy the whole possibility of meditation just for clothes or nudity would be foolish. It would have been good if I had been able to allow you to be absolutely free – free from clothes also. But then society will not allow us to exist at all, and we have to exist in society. So we have to choose the lesser evil.
Or, take the question of drugs. I am not in support of drugs, but I am not against them either. I am not in support of Timothy Leary, I don’t think that you can attain samadhi by drugs – about that I am absolutely certain. No one has ever attained samadhi by drugs, notwithstanding what Aldous Huxley and others say. It is too cheap, and there is no possibility to attain the ultimate through chemicals. But I am aware that drugs can help in a certain way. They can give you a glimpse; they cannot give you the reality, but they can give you a glimpse of the reality, and that glimpse can become a breakthrough. That glimpse can uproot you from your past and can send you on a search for the real. Even if you have seen God, even in your dream, your whole life will be transformed. Of course, the God in a dream is a dream, but the next morning you will start looking into the world – where can you find this phenomenon that has happened in your dream?
So many people start their journey toward godliness, truth, samadhi, because they have had a certain glimpse somewhere – maybe through drugs, maybe through sexual orgasm, maybe through music, or sometimes accidentally. Sometimes a person falls from a train, is hit on the head and he has a glimpse. I’m not saying make a method of that! But I know this has happened. A certain center in the head is hit by accident and the person has a glimpse, an explosion of light. Never again will he be the same; now he will start searching for it. This is possible. The improbable is no more improbable; it has become possible. Now he has some inkling, some contact. He cannot rest now.
I am not for drugs, I am not against drugs. But still, in this community, in my commune, drugs cannot be allowed, because politicians have never been very intelligent and one should not expect too much from them. In fact, only stupid people become interested in politics. If they were intelligent they would not be in politics at all.
So just for some ordinary, small thing the whole movement cannot be destroyed. That would be foolish. After a hundred years my attitude that drugs cannot be allowed in the Commune will be thought anti-revolutionary. Naturally, I know it is anti-revolutionary. So let it be on the record.
The Hasidic masters knew it well. It is inhuman, anti-revolutionary, not to allow women to participate in ecstatic religious ceremonies, in ecstatic dances. But that society was very much against it. Because of this the whole movement would have died. So they had to prohibit it.
Buddhism died in India. Do you know why? It was because Buddha finally allowed women into his order. He himself is reported to have said, “My religion would have lived at least five thousand years, but now it will not live more than five hundred, because I am taking a very great risk.” Just allowing woman into his order was such a risk that Buddha said, “The life of my religion is reduced by four thousand, five hundred years – at the most it will last only five hundred years.” And it happened exactly that way. Buddhism lived for only five hundred years, and that life was also not at the climax, not at the optimum. Every day the life was slowing down, every day death was coming closer and closer. What happened?
The society. The society has long been male-dominated. To allow women into a religious order was to destroy the old hierarchy, the superiority of man. Even a man like Mahavira, a very revolutionary man, is reported to have said that women cannot enter moksha directly as women. First they will have to be born as men and then… So no woman has entered into the Jaina moksha, into nirvana, directly as a woman. First she has to change her body, take a male shape and form, and then she can enter.
Why should Mahavira say this? Society, the politics of the country, the priests and the politicians, they were too male chauvinistic. Some compromise was needed, otherwise they would not allow anything. Mahavira lived naked, but he himself did not allow any women to go naked because the society was not ready to accept even him in his nudity. By and by people accepted him, grudgingly, reluctantly, but to accept the idea that women could go naked would have been too much.
And because Mahavira said, “Unless you leave everything – even clothes – unless you are as innocent as a child, as you were on the first day you were born, you cannot enter into my kingdom of God,” he had to say that women could not enter directly. If he had said that women could enter directly then a few courageous women would have come forward and would have thrown off their clothes also, would have become naked. Just to avoid nude women he had to make a very false statement, untrue. And I know he knew that it was untrue – I know because I make many untrue statements.
But we have to exist in a society, in a particular state, in a particular confused state, in a particular neurotic state. If you live with mad people you have to make a few compromises. If you live with mad people at least you have to pretend that you are also mad.
Narendra is here. His father went mad thirty or forty years ago. He escaped from the house. After a few months he was caught in Agra and put into jail with mad people all around. There was a special jail in Lahore, only for mad people. He said that for nine months everything went okay because he was also mad.
After nine months, just by accident, he drank a whole jug of phenol – a mad man, he found it in the bathroom and he drank it. That made him vomit, gave him nausea, diarrhea. Because of that diarrhea he was throwing things out for fifteen days continuously, and his madness also disappeared. It helped, it helped like a catharsis. When his madness disappeared then the real problem began, because he was among mad people.
Now for the first time he became aware of where he was – somebody was pulling his leg, somebody was hitting him on his head, and people were talking and dancing. And he was no longer mad. Those three months when he was not mad and was living with mad people, were the most painful; they were deep anguish and anxiety. He couldn’t sleep.
And he would go to the authorities and he would say, “Now let me out because I am no longer mad!” And they wouldn’t listen because every mad person says that – that he is no longer mad. So that was not proof. He had to complete his sentence of one year.
He told me that he could never forget those three months; they were a continuous nightmare. But for nine months he was perfectly happy because he was also mad.
You cannot conceive of what happens to a person when he becomes a Buddha or a Baal Shem in a country, in a world, which is absolutely mad. He is no longer mad, but he has to live with you, he has to follow your laws, otherwise you will kill him. He has to make compromises. Of course he cannot hope that you will make compromises with him. You are not in a state in which you can think. But he can think. Only the higher can make compromises with the lower, only the greater can make compromises with the lower, only the wise person can make compromises with stupid people.
So it happened that women have never been accepted. It is only just in this century, very recently, that women are coming out of the dark night of the past history.
I have heard:
It happened that when Golda Meir was Prime Minister of Israel, Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India, went to Israel. And when Indira Gandhi visited Israel she was welcomed by Golda Meir.
After seeing all the historical sights, Mrs. Gandhi said, “I would like to visit a synagogue.”
“By all means,” answered the Israeli Prime Minister.
Two weeks later, Mrs. Gandhi stood before her cabinet.
“What did you learn in Israel?” asked one of the members.
“Many things,” answered the Indian Prime Minister. “But most of all I learned that in Israeli synagogues the men pray on the first floor and the prime ministers worship in the balcony.”
Two women, but she thought that prime ministers worship in the balcony and men on the floor. Once a thing settles it is very difficult to change it, even for a prime minister. Even for a prime minister it is difficult to change the traditional way.
The Hasids were a wave; but rather than destroying the whole movement they chose to go with the society and its rules and its regulations. At least let the message reach to men. If it cannot reach to women right now, later on it will – but at least let the message be rooted on the earth.
I exist here in a very alien and strange world. I would like to give you many things, but I cannot because you yourself will resist. I would like to make you aware of many things in your being, but you will be against me. I have to go very slowly, I have to be very roundabout; it cannot be done directly.
Just see: I have done what the questioner was inquiring about in relation to Hasidism. I have done it. In my community, men and women are no longer separate. That’s why Indians have stopped coming to my ashram. They cannot come. When they used to come, their questions were more or less all concerned about what type of ashram this was – men and women mixing and meeting, holding each other’s hands, going together? Even after meditations hugging, kissing each other? What type of things were these? This is not good.
They used to come to me and say, “This is not good, this should not be allowed. Osho, you should interfere.” I never interfered because to me there is nothing wrong – man and woman should not be made in any way distinct. They are not separate, nobody is higher and nobody is lower. They are different but equal. Difference is beautiful, it has to be there. The difference has to be enhanced, but the equality has to be saved. And to me, love is a way toward godliness.
I didn’t listen to them. By and by they disappeared. Now only very courageous Indians can enter here. Now only a few Indians can enter here, those who have no repressed mind in them, who are post-Freudians – only they can enter here. But India as a whole is pre-Freudian. Freud is still unknown in India. Freud has not yet entered into the Indian soul.
But I have done it. And I am a Hasid, so you can forgive the old Hasids. Time was not ripe at that time; even now it is very difficult. I have to encounter difficulties every day; for every small thing there are difficulties. Those difficulties could be avoided if I behaved in an orthodox way. I cannot behave in an orthodox way – because then there is no point in my being here, then I could not deliver the message to you – and I cannot be absolutely revolutionary because then there would be no possibility of something happening between you and me.
And I am not in any way interested in being a martyr because that too seems to me to be a sort of masochism. People who are always seeking to become martyrs are not really aware of what they are doing – they are seeking suicide. I am not a martyr. I love life, I love all that is implied in life, and the original Hasid masters were as much in love with life as I am. That’s why I have chosen to talk about them. When I choose to talk about some path, I choose it only because that path appeals to me tremendously.
The Hasids were not people who wanted to become political revolutionaries. They were not reformists. They were not trying to reform the society; they were trying to bring a mutation to the individual soul. And they had to exist in the society. Remember that always.
But then what happens whenever a tradition gets settled? Now Hasidism is a settled tradition, now it itself has become an orthodoxy. Now the time is ripe. If the community exists in New York – a Hasidic community exists in New York – now the time is ripe, but now they themselves have become orthodox. They have their own tradition, they cannot go against Baal Shem. And these people who are now Hasids are not really masters, they are simply followers of the followers of the followers.
You are here with me. You are face to face with something original. When you tell it to somebody else it will not be the original. You have heard it from me, then you will tell it to somebody else and much of it is lost – and then that person goes to somebody else and delivers the message. Again much is lost. Within a few years, within a few transfers, the truth is completely destroyed, only lies are left. And again a revolutionary movement becomes an orthodox tradition.
The second question:
Osho,
Can't you do it for me? Can't you cut my head off?
Because I can't drop it. I know that because I have tried.
I can do that but there will be much trouble. Let me tell you an anecdote:
St. Peter returned to the new arrival waiting impatiently outside the gates. “I can’t find your name,” he reported. “Would you please spell it for me?” The man did so, and St. Peter left to check his reservation lists again. In a few moments he returned, “Say, you are not due for ten years. Who is your doctor?”
If I cut your head off, then St. Peter will ask you, “You are not due for many lives. Who is your guru?”
It cannot be done by another. It is not something that can be done from the outside. In fact you also cannot do it. You have to grow into it. It is not something that you can do or force; it comes through deeper understanding.
The dropping of the head is one of the most difficult things because you are identified with the head. You are the head! Your thoughts, your ideologies, your religion, your politics, your scriptures, your knowledge, your identity – everything is in your head. How can you drop it? Just think of dropping the head – then who are you? Without the head you are nobody.
You have to grow into understanding. When you can grow a new head above this head, only then can you drop this head. That’s the whole effort of meditation – to help you grow a new head, a new head which does not need thoughts, does not need ideologies; which is pure awareness and enough unto itself; which needs no external influence to live; which lives from its own innermost core. When you have grown a new head, the old will be dropped very easily. It will drop on its own accord.
If I force anything upon you, you will resist it, you will become afraid, you will be scared. And nobody wants to die. It is a great art to be learned.
I have heard:
It was the day of the hanging, and as Mulla Nasruddin was led to the foot of the steps of the scaffold, he suddenly stopped and refused to walk another step.
“Let us go,” the guard said impatiently. “What is the matter?”
“Somehow,” said Nasruddin, “those steps look mighty rickety. They just don’t look safe enough to walk up.”
He is going to be hanged, but those steps look “mighty rickety” – not safe enough to walk on! Even at the moment of death a person goes on clinging – to the very end. Nobody wants to die, and unless you learn to die you will never be able to live, you will never be able to know what life is. A person who is able to die is a person who is able to live, because life and death are two aspects of the same coin. You can choose both or you can drop both, but they both come together in one parcel, they are not different things.
Once you are afraid of death you are bound to be afraid of life. That’s why I am talking about this Hasidic approach. The whole approach consists of methods, ways and means of how to die – the art of dying is the art of living also. Dying as an ego is being born as a non-ego; dying as a part is being born as a whole; dying as man is a basic step toward being born as a god.
But death is difficult, very difficult. Have you watched it? Except man, no animal can commit suicide. It is not possible for any animal even to think about committing suicide. Have you thought about it? Have you heard of any tree committing suicide, any animal committing suicide? No, only man, man’s intelligence, can make it possible that a man can commit suicide.
And I am not talking about ordinary suicide – because that is not really suicide, you simply change the body – I am talking of the ultimate suicide. Once you die the way I am teaching you to die, you will never be born again in life. You will disappear into the cosmos, you will not have any form anymore, you will become the formless.
I have heard:
The man was charged with trespassing on the farmer’s property and shooting quail. The Counsel for Defense tried to confuse the farmer.
“Now,” he asked, “are you prepared to swear that this man shot your quail?”
“I didn’t say he shot them,” was the reply. “I said I suspected him of doing it.”
“Ah, now we are coming to it. What made you suspect this man?”
“Well,” replied the farmer, “firstly, I caught him on my land with a shotgun. Secondly, I heard a gun go off and saw some quail fall. Thirdly, I found four quail in his pocket, and you can’t tell me them birds just flew in there and committed suicide.”
Only man is capable of committing suicide. That is the glory of man. Only man can be capable enough to think that life is not worth living, only man is capable enough to reflect that this life is simply futile. Ordinarily when people commit suicide, they don’t do it because they have understood life’s futility, they do it only because they have understood this life’s futility – and they are hoping that in another life somewhere else things will be better.
The spiritual suicide means that a man has come to understand that not only this life is futile, but life as such is futile. Then he starts thinking of how to get rid of being born again and again, how to get rid of getting into the tunnel of the body and of being confined and encaged; then he starts thinking of how to remain absolutely free without any form. This is what moksha is, this is what liberation is – or you can call it salvation.
A man can never be happy in the body because it is such a confinement. All around are walls; you are forced into a prison. It does not look like a prison because the prison walks with you – wherever you go it goes with you, so you don’t feel that it is like a prison. Once you have known a life without the body, once you have become capable of getting out of the body – even for a single split moment – then you will see how you are confined, how you are imprisoned.
The body is a bondage, the mind is a bondage, but you have to understand, I cannot force you free. Remember one thing: you can be forced into bondage from the outside, but you cannot be forced into freedom from the outside. Somebody can force you into a prison cell, that can be done, but nobody can take you out of a prison cell. If you want to remain in a prison cell, you will find some other prison cell somewhere else. You may escape from one prison, but you will get into another – from the frying pan into the fire. You can easily change your prisons, but that doesn’t make any difference. That’s what everybody has been doing for millennia. Each life you have been in a prison – sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, sometimes black, sometimes white, sometimes Indian, sometimes Chinese, sometimes American. You have moved in all the forms possible.
When people come to me and I look into them, it is a surprise in how many forms they have moved in, how many bodies, how many shapes they have lived in, how many names and religions and countries… And still they are not fed up. And they go on repeating the old circle again and again.
Remember one thing more. Just as I said to you that suicide is absolutely human, no animal commits it, the same is true about boredom. Boredom is also absolutely human. A buffalo is never bored, a donkey is never bored – only man, only a highly evolved consciousness. If you are not bored with your life, it simply shows that you live in a very low state of consciousness.
A Buddha is bored, a Jesus is bored, a Mahavira is bored – bored to death! Just repetition all around and nothing else. Out of boredom comes renunciation. A man who is bored with the world becomes a sannyasin. The search is not for another world, it is for an end of the search. It is suicide, total, ultimate.
The third question:
Osho,
Listening to you I feel as if I am dying, as if you are continuously pushing me farther away. You are my peak, my Everest, so beautiful and so far away and yet incredibly close. Is there anything I can do to open myself to you?
My whole purpose here is to push you toward death, to push you into the abyss of the unknown, to push you into a zero experience. We in India call it samadhi. It is a zero experience – where in a way you are and in a way you are not; where you are empty of all content, just the container has remained; where all writing from the book has disappeared, just the book remains, empty. That’s the real Bible, the real Veda. When all writing has disappeared and the book is absolutely empty; when all the content, all the thoughts, mind, emotions, desires, have disappeared and there is only a pure consciousness, empty of all content – this is what I call the abyss.
You say, “You are my peak, my Everest…” Yes, that’s true, but the peak will come only later on. First comes the abyss. I am also your abyss. Let me tell you one very, very beautiful anecdote. Listen to it very attentively, and later on when you are sitting silently at home, meditate over it.
A man went to a ranch to buy a horse, pointed at one and said, “My, that’s a beautiful pony right there. What kind is it?”
“That’s a palomino,” said the rancher.
“Well, any friend of yours is a friend of mine. I would like to buy that pony,” said the man.
The rancher replied, “I gotta tell you sir, it was owned by a preacher-man. If you want the horse to move you say, ‘Good Lord’; if you want the horse to stop you gotta say, ‘Amen.’”
“Let me try that horse,” said the buyer.
He mounted and said, “Good Lord.” The horse promptly moved out and was soon galloping up in the mountains. The man was yelling, “Good Lord! Good Lord!” and the horse was really moving. Suddenly he came to the end of a cliff, and panic-stricken he yelled, “Whoa! Whoa!” That didn’t work and then he remembered and said, “Amen!” The horse stopped right on the end of the cliff.
And wiping his brow with relief, the man said, “Good Lord!”
You ask, “Is there anything I can do to open myself to you?” Say “Good Lord” and then all else will happen on its own accord.
The fourth question:
Osho,
I love every time I hear you speak, but my favorite thing I ever heard you say was the other day when you asked us if we could hear you.
I would like to ask it every day, every moment. Can you hear me? But just out of politeness I don’t ask it. That day the mike failed and I could gather courage. But remember, you lied to me. When I said, “Can you hear me?” you said, “No.” You lied. If you had not heard my question how could you answer it? Again because of politeness I remained quiet. I had to.
A young lady went to Mulla Nasruddin for advice. She said to the Mulla, “Should I marry a fellow who lies to me?”
“Yes, unless you want to remain unmarried forever,” said Nasruddin.
I have to accept you liars as my disciples because there is no other way, unless I decide to remain a master without disciples. You lied to me absolutely that moment. You had heard me, you immediately said, “No.” Not only did you like my asking you, “Can you hear me,” I also loved your answer.
The fifth question:
Osho,
You call the Hasidim a joyous, enlightened community, yet the Hasidism of modern New York appears to be so rigid, austere, dogmatic and contemptuous of both goyim and other Jews.
How did this transformation take place?
It always takes place.
Truth cannot remain long on the earth; it comes and it disappears. If you are available it hits you, and then it is gone. You cannot hold it on the earth. The earth is so false and people are so much engrossed in their lies that truth cannot remain here long. Whenever a buddha walks on the earth, truth walks for a few moments. When the buddha is gone, truth also disappears. Only the footprints are left and you go on worshipping the footprints. The footprints are not the buddha, and the words uttered by the buddha are just mere words. When you repeat them they are just words, they mean nothing.
It was Buddha who was the meaning behind the words. You can repeat exactly the same words, but they will not mean the same, because the person behind the words is no longer the same.
The Hasidim were a joyous community when Baal Shem was there. When he walked on the earth, the Hasidim were one of the most beautiful communities on the earth – they flowered. A master is needed, a living master is needed. Only in a living master’s presence does your innermost bud open, blossom.
After Baal Shem disappeared, there was only a tradition left. What he said, what he did, the legends about him, are many. And then people go on repeating them, people go on imitating them. These people are bound to be false.
But this is natural, so don’t be angry at them. Once I am gone from here this community will not be so joyous, cannot be. It is just natural. Then the words will be there and people will be repeating them and they will try to follow them religiously, but there will be effort. Right now there is no effort. You are simply flowing with me. Right now it is spontaneous, right now it is a love affair. Then it will be a sort of duty to be fulfilled. You will feel an obligation.
You will remember me. You will want to live the same way, but something very vital will be missing – the life will be missing. Whenever a master departs only a dead corpse of his teaching remains.
So always seek a living master. A dead master is of no use – because a dead master means nothing but a dead teaching. Always seek a living master. But it is very difficult because people’s minds are very slow. By the time you come to recognize somebody as a master he is gone. This is the difficulty. By the time you recognize that Jesus is a master, Jesus is no longer there. Then there are only Christians, then there are churches, then there are the pope and the priest, and they catch hold of you.
Yes, Hasidism has become orthodox but the Hasids were not. They were a living religion, a very living river.
I have heard:
A rabidly anti-Catholic Jew was on his deathbed. All the family were gathered round as he gasped, “Fetch a priest.”
They were all thunder-struck, but his wife said to their eldest son, “Go on, it is his dying wish. Fetch a priest.” So the son fetched a Catholic priest, who received the old man into the Church, gave him the last rites and left.
The eldest boy, with tears in his eyes, whispered to his father, “Dad, all your life you have brought us up to believe that the Church of Rome is the anti-Christ. How come in your last moments you can bring yourself to join them? You are a Jew, and you have always believed in the Judaic tradition. How can you do this at the last moment?”
And with his last breath the old man muttered, “Another one of the bastards dead.”
He converted himself to be a Catholic so that a Catholic dies in the world. “Another one of the bastards dead!”
People always become that way because people live through the mind. Mind is a tradition.
I have heard:
“Is your grandfather a religious man?” asked the young co-ed of her date.
“He’s so orthodox,” replied the boy, “that when he plays chess he doesn’t use bishops, he uses rabbis!”
The ego functions in a very traditional way. To be revolutionary, one needs to be beyond the ego. And it is not that you can do it once and forever, you have to do it every moment again and again because the ego goes on closing in on you, it goes on caving in on you. Each moment that you pass through, whatsoever you have lived, whatsoever you have experienced, becomes your ego. You have to discard it. Renunciation is not once and for all. You have to renounce every moment; whatsoever is gathered you have to renounce it, only then renunciation remains a revolution. And not only do you have to renounce ordinary things of the world, you have to renounce ordinary ideologies also – Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan. You have to renounce thoughts so that you can remain in a pure mirrorlike reflection. Then your consciousness can remain undisturbed, uncolored by any thought, you can see into things directly and your consciousness is not distracted or distorted by any prejudice.
Once a tradition settles, once a religion is no longer revolutionary, you start interpreting it in your own ways. Then you don’t bother what Buddha means, then you start reading your own thoughts into Buddha’s assertions. Then you don’t bother what Krishna says, you go on reading into the Gita whatsoever you want to read. Then the perversion settles. That’s why I insist again and again: if you can find a living master, be with him – because you cannot distort a living master. You will try! But you cannot distort him because a living master can stop you from distorting his message. But a dead book, a scripture – Holy Bible, Holy Koran, Holy Gita – what can they do? They may be holy, but they are completely dead, you can do whatsoever you want to do with them. And man is very cunning and very clever.
When aged Fennessy collapsed on the street, a crowd soon gathered and began making suggestions as to how the old fellow should be revived.
Maggie O’Reilly yelled, “Give the poor man some whiskey.”
No one paid any attention to her and the crowd continued shouting out suggestions. Finally Fennessy opened one eye, pulled himself up on an elbow, and said weakly, “Will the lot of ye hold your tongues and let Maggie O’Reilly speak?”
Whatsoever we want to hear, whatsoever we want, becomes our scripture, becomes our interpretation. People are rigid. So whether they are Hasids or Buddhists or Sufis or Zen Buddhists does not matter – people are rigid, people’s minds are rigid. Wherever they belong they create rigidity there. You can move from being a Hindu and you can become a Christian, or from Christian you can become a Mohammedan, but it will not make much difference because you will remain you. And you will do the same by being a Christian, you will do the same by being a Mohammedan or by being a Hindu. What ideology you believe in does not matter much. The real thing that matters is you, your consciousness, your state of consciousness.
You are here with me. Your children, the next generation, will believe in me simply because their father or their mother believed in me. They will not have any direct contact with me, they will simply believe; it will not be a trust, it will be just a mental thing, a formal thing.
It happens that sometimes the children come and when the mother takes sannyas, the child also wants to take sannyas. The child does not know what he is doing, not knowing where he is moving; he is just imitating the mother. The mother has come on her own, but the child has come just as a shadow. For the mother I have a totally different meaning, for the child I have no meaning at all. If the mother had gone to another master, the child would have been initiated there. If the mother had become Mohammedan or Christian, the child would have become Mohammedan or Christian.
There is no relevance for the child, it is not significant for the child – and it may become part of his ego that he is a sannyasin. Later in his life he may wear orange, may wear a mala, and he will do the formal thing, but he will be as ordinary a mind as there are all over the world. And he will do with his belief what the ordinary mind has always been prone to do: he will become rigid about it, fanatical about it. He will start declaring that here is truth and nowhere else.
When you declare that only your belief is true and all else is false, you are not concerned with truth at all. You are simply concerned with the assertion of your ego. It is an ego declaration, “My country has to be right, my religion has to be right. Wrong or right, my country has to be right, my religion has to be right – because it is my religion.”
Deep down it is my “I” that has to be right.
The sixth question:
Osho,
Last night, in the early morning, I saw two dreams one after another. In one, you were sitting in a room in complete silence. I entered the room very slowly, came closer and closer to you, bowed down, touched your feet. You placed your hands on my head. I felt very blissful, ecstatic, very, very light. In the other dream there was a beautiful room, very cool, soothing, blue-colored. You were lying on the bed. Laxmi, some other disciples and myself were sitting there – very few disciples were there. Laxmi beckoned to me to come closer near your bed. You were indicating something not indicated before. Your fingers were making very different gestures. It looked as if you were giving your final message. I could even hear it very clearly and distinctly. It was, “Drink me, eat me, breathe me. Don't leave me undrunk, uneaten, unbreathed.” And we all were weeping.
There you missed. You should have been laughing. Correct your dream. Next time don’t commit that mistake.
The seventh question:
Osho,
“Shall the day of parting be the day of gathering? And shall it be said that my eve was in truth my dawn? Shall my heart become a tree, heavy-laden with fruit that I may gather and give unto them? Am I a harp that the hand of the Mighty may touch me, or a flute that his breath may pass through me? A seeker of silences am I, and what treasure have I found in silences that I may dispense with confidence?”
Yes, a million, million times, yes. Let this be your guide. You just allow the divine and he will start singing through your flute. Just don’t hinder his way.
Only one thing is needed – don’t hinder existence. It is not a question of God playing on your flute or not. It is only a question of whether you will allow him or not. If you allow him, this very moment the song begins. If you don’t allow him and you go on praying, “Play on my flute,” then it is never going to begin.
Man has nothing else to do but surrender – in deep trust, in deep love. Don’t be a doer, just surrender. Let there be a let-go. And whatsoever you have asked, I say yes, a million, million times, yes.
The eighth question:
Osho,
I was a sad child, a frightened adolescent, and an angry young man. Yet all my life I have felt deep within that everything was funny, absurd, ridiculous. When I was in the seminary some years ago, a friend told me that we have such a limited capacity for divine things that if God told us a joke, we would die laughing. I remember my friend's statement because since coming to Pune I have felt a great belly-laugh welling up inside of me. I feel that God has told me a joke, and the punch-line is slowly dawning on me. I am a little afraid that I will not catch it fully until I have left Pune in December, and then I will laugh so loud and hard that you will be able to hear me all the way from Texas. Please tell me, will I survive this joke?
It is impossible to survive this joke. The laughter that I am teaching to you is something that is going to destroy you completely. The laughter that I am teaching to you is very destructive, it is a crucifixion. But only after this destruction is there creation. Only out of chaos are stars born and only after crucifixion is there resurrection.
No, you will not be able to survive this laughter. If you really allow it, you will be drowned by it, you will disappear and only laughter will remain. If you laugh then the laughter is not total. When there is only laughter and you are not, then it is total. And only then have you heard the joke that God is telling.
Yes, this whole cosmos is a joke; Hindus call it leela. It is a joke, it is a play. And the day that you understand then you start laughing, and that laughing never stops. It goes on and on. It spreads all over the cosmos.
Laughter is prayer. If you can laugh you have learned how to pray. Don’t be serious; a serious person can never be religious. Only a person who can laugh, not only at others but at himself also, can be religious. A person who can laugh absolutely, who sees the whole ridiculousness and the whole game of life, becomes enlightened in that laughter.
No. You ask: “Please tell me, will I survive this joke?” No, if you have heard the joke you cannot survive. If you have not heard, then it is very unfortunate because you will survive.
The last question and the most important:
Osho,
Why do Jews have long noses?
Now don’t be afraid. I am not going to give you a long talk, a ninety-minute talk, no, because I know the answer. When you don’t know the answer you have to give a very long answer. You see, that’s why I go on talking so long. When I don’t know the answer I have to talk very long. In my talking you forget your question. But when I know the answer, then there is no need. And I know the answer. I happen to know the answer.
How I came upon the answer – about that I must tell you something.
One day – just a few days ago – Vivek asked me this question early in the morning: “Why do Jews have long noses?” I settled in my chair, in my posture. I made my towel comfortable, looked at the clock and I was just going to start a great discourse on the philosophy and the physiology of the Jewish nose. But then she became apprehensive and afraid. Naturally – because once I take off, then it takes ninety minutes at least for me to land again on the earth. So she said, “Stop! Stop! I happen to know the answer! You need not give me the answer!”
I was very shocked because I was already on the way. In a hurried way she said, “Because the air is free!”
It is a beauty. I loved it. It explains everything. The Jews have long noses because the air is free!
Enough for today.