ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS
Take It Easy Vol 1 12
Twelth Discourse from the series of 14 discourses - Take It Easy Vol 1 by Osho.
You can listen, download or read all of these discourses on oshoworld.com.
The first question:
Osho,
Though your talk was quite serious and deep yesterday, there were strange tickles and laughter arising in me. Somewhere deep within, there was a sense of humor as a subtle undercurrent. Tears often rolled down!
Do the moments of clarity and insight give birth to a sense of humor? And what are the tears?
Yes, Chinmaya, clarity always brings a sense of humor. One starts laughing, not at others but at oneself, at the whole ridiculousness of ego games, the whole stupidity of the human mind. And when there is laughter, tears are not far away; they are aspects of the same energy. They are not diametrically opposite, they are complementary.
Whenever there is deep laughter, tears are bound to follow; whenever there are deep tears, laughter will soon follow. They go together; they are parts of one climate – the climate of clarity, depth, height.
You may be surprised to know that schizophrenics cannot laugh, and a person who cannot laugh has something of schizophrenia in him, is mentally ill. Schizophrenics start laughing only when they are getting out of their schizophrenia. It has been observed that a psychoanalyst can terminate treatment once he sees a schizophrenic laughing. This is a fact of great importance.
Many so-called saints are really schizophrenic, they cannot laugh. And if you cannot laugh, how can you weep, how can you cry? Both become impossible, and when laughter and crying are impossible, your heart is completely closed. You don’t have any emotions, you start living only in the head; your whole reality consists of thoughts. Thoughts are dry: they cannot bring laughter, they cannot bring tears. Tears and laughter come from the heart. Clarity is of the heart, not of the mind; confusion is of the mind.
So, it has been a good experience: your schizophrenia is disappearing, I can terminate the treatment. Laugh more, cry more, become a child again. Seriousness is your disease: drop seriousness and don’t confuse seriousness and sincerity. Seriousness is not sincerity. Sincerity need not be serious; sincerity can have laughter, can cry, and can weep. Seriousness is a blocked stage of mind, a stage where you cannot flow; it is a state of unflowing stagnancy. Serious people are ill people.
Religion has been destroyed by serious people. There is one thing about serious people that you have to remember: they are very articulate, because they live in the head. They are logic choppers; they can express well. And because they have no heart, because they cannot feel, they are very authoritative. A man of feeling cannot be authoritative – how can compassion be authoritative?
A man of feeling always hesitates; he cannot make dogmatic statements. The man of feeling whispers, persuades, he cannot convince; he comes indirectly, like a subtle breeze. But the serious person, the person who lives in the head, the schizophrenic, is articulate, verbal, logical, rational, loud, authoritative, and these qualities enable him to gather a following.
All political leaders are schizophrenic. The crowd follows them because of their dogmatic statements; their dogmatic statements convince people. People are very vague, uncertain, insecure, and they need somebody to make them feel secure, even if he is a fool, an Adolf Hitler. It is a great puzzle to those who ponder over human problems how Adolf Hitler, a mediocre person of below average IQ, could convince a country like Germany, an intellectual country, an intelligent country, a country of professors, philosophers, thinkers. How was it possible that this idiotic person, Adolf Hitler, could convince people of such an intelligent race?
To me, it is not a problem at all. I can see through and through how it happened. Adolf Hitler was dogmatic; whatsoever he said, he said it absolutely. Only a foolish person can be dogmatic. Lao Tzu hesitates. Lao Tzu says: “I walk as one walks in cold winter in a cold stream. Everybody is certain except me; I am uncertain, I hesitate. I cannot claim knowledge, because all is so mysterious.”
Now, Lao Tzu is not going to convince people. If you hesitate, nobody is going to follow you. People are in deep confusion. They need somebody to shout so loudly in their ears that they are convinced: “This man must be true, this man must be in the know about things. How can he shout so loudly? How can he argue so loudly? Only truth can be so loud.” They are mistaken.
These dogmatic people go on repeating; Hitler continued to repeat the same theme. Slowly, slowly, when any untruth is repeated again and again it begins to look like a truth. People need somebody to lean on: they are uncertain, and need somebody who is absolutely certain. Politics is dominated by schizophrenics; religion is dominated by schizophrenics. These people are very, very articulate, convincing, they lead masses, establish religions, churches, organizations.
Jesus could not manage to lead many people; it has been estimated that he had a following of less than five hundred. And when he was crucified, thousands gathered to jeer at him. He had only twelve close disciples, only twelve – a man with the qualities of Jesus. What happened, was he not convincing?
He was not convincing in the way that people need. He was saying things in a mysterious way: in parables, in metaphors, in poetry. He was not logical, he was utterly illogical. He was vague. He was hinting, pointing, but he was not assertive.
Christianity was not born with Christ, it was born with Saint Paul, who must certainly have been a schizophrenic. Saul – his original name – was at first against Christ, so anti-Christ that he wanted to destroy all the Christians. One day he was traveling to the country where Jesus’ followers were slowly gathering, slowly becoming courageous, slowly starting to teach people, spreading the message. He was going there to argue, to discuss, to defeat them.
The story goes that on the road something happened, he was possessed by the spirit of Christ. He fell down on the road, dust in his mouth. He could not believe it! He saw Jesus. He asked forgiveness, he became converted. He changed his name from Saul to Paul. And this man was the founder of Christianity.
Now, what actually happened in psychological terms? This man must have had a split personality; he must have been a schizophrenic. Nobody appeared, no Christ appeared. But he was very much against Christ with one part of his mind, and completely unaware of another part. When he went deep into that part which was against Christ, the pendulum swung from one extreme to another extreme. That’s how it always happens.
He was going to persecute Christians – that small number of people who were talking of Jesus, remembering the man and the beauty of the man, the suffering that he went through for them, and the message that he had given to them. Slowly, slowly the word was spreading and this man Saul was going to persecute these people. And he was able to argue well. Jesus’ followers would not have been able to convince him; he would have convinced them. They were simple people, innocent people, farmers, fisherman, carpenters, uneducated people.
When you go to one extreme the pendulum swings back of its own accord. This is what actually happened. The pendulum swung, moved to the other extreme, and another part of his being took possession of him. He had a dream, a vision – there was no Christ, but he saw him. He was convinced and he was converted; this schizophrenic created the whole Christianity. He was going to persecute Christians: he converted the whole world to Christianity. He created the church.
It has always been so. Whenever a religion is born, sooner or later schizophrenics will catch hold of it. They are great leaders; they convince people. Their impact is great, their slogans convert people. They are loud, logical; they collect proofs, they argue.
Because of these people, no religion remains pure for long. The really religious persons are those who are not articulate, who are innocent, those who are simple, meditative, loving, who cannot convince anybody. They simply live religion; they cannot create great religions, great religious empires.
It is good that humor is arising in you, Chinmaya. Allow it, don’t crush it. Help it to come, let it surface. Humor will join your split parts, will glue your fragments into one whole. You may have observed that when you have a hearty laugh, suddenly all fragments disappear and you become one. When you laugh, your soul and your body are one – they laugh together. When you think, your body and soul are separate. When you cry, your body and soul are one; they function in harmony.
Remember always: all those things are good, for the good, which make you one whole. Laughing, crying, dancing, singing: these things make you one piece, functioning as one harmony. Thinking can go on in the head, and the body can go on doing a thousand and one things; you can go on eating, and the mind can go on thinking. This is split. You walk on the road: the body is walking and you are thinking. Not thinking of the road, not thinking of the trees that surround it, not thinking of the sun, not thinking of the people who are passing, but thinking of other things, of other worlds.
But laugh, and if the laugh is really deep, if it is not just a pseudo laugh, just on the lips, suddenly you feel your body and your soul are functioning together. It is not only in the body, it goes into your deepest core. It arises from your very being and spreads toward the circumference. You are one in laughter, or in crying, or in dancing, or in singing! Whatever makes you feel one is good, is meditative, is prayerful.
The second question:
Osho,
Is the purpose of the therapy groups to bring the participants to their natural self? If so, isn't the effort to be natural, unnatural? If not, what is the essential difference between natural and unnatural?
The purpose of the therapy groups is not to bring the participants to their natural self, not at all. The purpose of the therapy groups is to bring you to the point where you can see your unnaturalness. Nobody can bring you to your natural self; there can be no method, no technique, no device, which can bring you to your natural self, because all that you will do will make you more and more unnatural.
Then what is the purpose of a therapy group? It is simply to make you aware of the unnatural patterns that have evolved in your being. It simply helps you to see the unnaturalness of your life, that’s all. Seeing it, it starts dispersing. To see it is to annihilate it, because once you have seen something as unnatural in your being, you cannot persist in it. Seeing something as unnatural, you have also felt what is natural – but that is indirect, that is vague, that is not clear. What is clear is this: you have seen that something is unnatural in you. Seeing the unnatural, you can feel the natural. Seeing the unnatural, you can no longer support it. It existed because of your support, nothing can exist without your support; your cooperation is needed.
If you cooperate, something exists. Certainly the unnatural cannot exist without your cooperation. Where will it get the energy? The natural can exist without your cooperation, but the unnatural cannot. The unnatural needs constant support, it needs constant care, it needs constant control. Once you have seen that this is unnatural, your grip on it becomes loose; your fist opens of its own accord.
The group is not a device to open your fist. It is just to help you see that what you are doing is unnatural. In that very seeing, there is transformation.
You ask: “Is the purpose of the therapy groups to bring the participants to their natural self?” No, that is not the purpose. The purpose is simply to make you aware of where you are, what you have done to yourself, what harm you have done and are still doing, what wounds you are creating in your being. On each of the wounds is your signature, and the purpose of the group is to make you alert about your signature. To see that it is signed by you, nobody else has been doing it. To see that you have created all the chains around you, the prison you live in is your own work; nobody is doing it to you.
Seeing that, “I am creating my own prison,” how long can you go on creating it? If you want to live in the prison, that’s another matter. Nobody ever really wants to live in prison; they do because they think that others are creating the prisons, and they can do nothing. They always throw the responsibility on somebody else. Down the ages, people have found new and different devices, but the purpose remains the same: throw the responsibility on somebody else.
You will be surprised at the excuses man has been able to find. In the ancient days, man used to think, “This is the way God made us, so the responsibility is God’s. What can we do? We are just creatures, and we are the way he has made us. We have to live in this misery. This is destined.” That was a trick to relieve themselves of all responsibility.
But when a trick has worked for a long time it becomes a cliché. It no longer works; people are fed up with it. They start searching for new ideas, but the purpose remains the same. Marx says it is the society, the economic structure of the society, the exploitation, the exploiters, the imperialists, the capitalists that are doing the harm; they are the reason. Again you are relieved of the responsibility. So what can you do? The slavery is imposed upon you, you have been made miserable. Unless the revolution comes nothing is going to happen; so you can postpone.
And the revolution never comes; it has not happened yet. Not in Russia, not in China – nowhere. The revolution never comes; it is just a postponement. Man is as miserable in Russia as he is anywhere else, as much in the mire of the mind as anywhere else. Jealousy is as much in Russia as anywhere else. Anger is as much, violence is as much. Nothing has changed.
Freud says it is because of your upbringing. In your childhood you have been brought up wrongly, what can you do? It has already happened; now there is no way of undoing it. At the most, you can accept it and live it. Or you can go on fighting unnecessarily, but there is no hope.
Freud is one of the greatest pessimists ever. He says there is no hope for man, because in childhood the pattern is settled for ever. Then you go on repeating the pattern, throwing the responsibility. Now your mother is responsible. And the mother thinks what can she do when her own mother is responsible, and so on and so forth. These are all devices, but the purpose is the same; they are just different devices for the single purpose of taking responsibility off your shoulders.
The group therapy is to make you aware that neither God nor society is responsible, nor your parents are responsible; if anybody is responsible, it is you. A group process is a hammering of this simple fact: that it is you who are responsible. And this hammering has a great significance because once you understand that “This is me, I, myself, am doing wrong to myself,” then the doors open. Then there is hope; then something is possible.
Revolution is possible through responsibility, individual responsibility. You can transmute; you can drop those old patterns. They are not your destiny. But if you accept them as your destiny they become your destiny. It is all a question of whether or not to support them.
I am not saying that parents have not done something to you, remember, and I am not saying that society has not done anything to you. The society has done much, parents have done much, education and priests have done much. But, still, the ultimate key is in your hands; you can drop the whole conditioning. Whatsoever they have done, you can erase it, because your consciousness at the deepest core always remains free. That is the purpose of a therapy group, to bring this truth home: that you are responsible. Responsibility is the most important word in a group therapy process. Nobody wants to take responsibility, because it hurts. Just to see the point, “I am the cause of my misery,” hurts very much. If somebody else is the cause, one can accept it, one is helpless. But if I am the cause of my misery, it hurts, it goes against the ego; it goes against pride.
That’s why group therapy is a difficult process, hard. You want to escape from Encounter, from Tao, from Primal Therapy. You want to escape because you have always believed that you are perfectly right, you are perfectly good; others have been doing harm to you.
Now the whole thing has to be changed; you have to put everything upside down. Nobody is doing any harm to you, or if they are doing any harm, it is through your cooperation. So finally you are responsible, you have chosen it. You say, “My husband is doing harm to me,” but you have chosen this husband, in fact, only so that he can do harm to you. You wanted to be harmed and that’s why you have chosen this husband, this wife.
Just watch people who go on changing their wives. You will be surprised that again and again they find the same type of woman. It is a difficult thing to find the same type of woman, but they find one. And within six months they are complaining again, and the complaints are exactly the same.
I have heard about one man who married eight times; again and again he managed to find the same type of woman. Just see the point: he had a certain kind of mind, a certain conditioning. In that conditioning, only a certain type of woman appealed to him. A blonde or a brunette, a long nose, black eyes, or something – a certain kind of woman appealed to him; he was always attracted by a certain kind of woman. When that woman started doing the same things he was puzzled – he thought he had changed the woman.
You have changed the woman, but you have not changed your mind. So your choice remains the old, because the chooser is the old. It is not going to help; you will be in the same trap. The color of the trap may change, the fiber of the trap may change, but the trap is there and you will be trapped again and again, and the same misery will arise.
Group therapy is a great process of understanding “What I have been doing to myself!” You can go still deeper, where no group therapy, not even primal therapy has gone. But Buddha has gone deeper. He says if you have chosen a certain kind of parent, that is also your choice.
See the point: millions of foolish people were making love when you were hovering to take birth, but you chose a certain couple. Why? You must have had a certain idea; it was your choice. You say, “My parents have done harm to me.” Why did you choose them? You think your wife, your husband has done you harm? The society has harmed you, but who has created this society? You have created this society; it does not come out of the blue.
The beggar on the road has not appeared suddenly out of the blue; we have created him. If you want to become rich, somebody has to become a beggar. Seeing the beggar you feel very sorry, and you still carry the idea of becoming rich. Whom are you trying to deceive? If you want to become rich, somebody will have to become a beggar. If you want to become somebody, then somebody will not be able to reach fame. It is a competitive world. You don’t want wars, but you are violent; in everything you are violent, and you condemn wars.
Have you seen the pacifists and their processions? How violent they look with their slogans against war, their shouts against war. Sooner or later the procession turns into a riot; they are burning cars and destroying offices and burning buses and trains and attacking the police, and all in protest against war. Now what is happening? These people are violent people; war is just an excuse. Their protest is nothing but their expression of violence. They are not concerned about war; they are using it as a pretext.
This society is created by you. And then you say that society is responsible. Nobody is responsible except you. This is one of the hardest truths to accept. But once you accept it, it brings great freedom, it creates great space. Because with this, another possibility immediately opens up: “If I am responsible, then I can change. If I am not responsible, how can I change? If I am doing it to myself, then it hurts, but it also brings a new possibility that I can stop hurting myself, I can stop being miserable.” A group process is not to make you natural; it is to make you aware of your unnaturalness, of your phoniness.
“Is the purpose of the therapy groups to bring the participants to their natural self?” No, not at all. The purpose is just to make them aware of the unnatural self. The natural self comes of its own accord; nobody can bring it. When the unnatural disappears, the natural is found. The natural has always been there, hidden under the rubbish. Unnatural gone, you are natural. You don’t become natural; you have always been natural. How can one become natural? All becoming will lead you into unnaturalness.
“If so, isn’t the effort to be natural, unnatural?” Yes, the effort to be natural is always unnatural. But to understand the unnaturalness is not the effort to be natural, it is simple understanding. If you see that you have been trying to squeeze oil out of sand, you see the futility of it, you drop the whole project. Seeing that you have been trying to pass through a wall and hurting your head, you stop trying to pass through the wall, you start looking for the door. Yes, exactly like that.
“If not, what is the essential difference between natural and unnatural?” Natural is that which you have been given as a gift – a gift from the whole. Unnatural is that which you have created by teachings, scriptures, character, morality. The unnatural is that which you have imposed upon the natural, the given. The natural is from existence, the unnatural is from yourself. Take away all that you have imposed upon yourself, and godliness will burst forth into a thousand blossoms in your being.
Somebody asks Jesus, “What is your fundamental message?” And he says, “Ask the fowl and the fish and the flower.” What does he mean, “Ask the fowl and the fish and the flower”? He is saying: Ask nature.
My message is: Allow nature to take possession of you; don’t try to create any character. All characters are wrong; be characterless. Don’t create any sort of personality; all personalities are false. Don’t be a personality.
Then, slowly, slowly, you will see something arising from the deepest core of your being. That is nature. Its fragrance is great. It is good; it is never bad. It is not cultivated at all; hence it has no tensions in it, no anxiety, you need not maintain it.
Truth need not be maintained; untruths have to be managed, maintained, need care and maintenance. Still they are untrue and they never become truth. Only truth liberates.
The therapy available here is not to make you natural. Nobody can make you natural, existence has already done that. The problem is not to learn how to be natural: the problem is how to unlearn the unnatural.
The third question:
Osho,
How to be total? How to give everything?
One can be total only when one is not. Only emptiness can be total. If you are, you can’t be total. Your very presence will be a disturbance in your totality; your very presence will continue interfering with your totality.
That’s why Buddha says become a nothingness. Just look deep into yourself and let the cloud of the ego disperse. Let there be empty sky; in that empty sky there is no division. Clouds divide; when there are no clouds, the sky is undivided, one. Thoughts divide; when there are no thoughts in you, there is totality. And remember, even the thought of totality will be a divisive factor.
Now you ask: “How to be total?” This is an idea. Listening to me, seeing the grandeur of totality again and again, greed arises in you: “How to be total?” But you have missed the whole point. How can you ask such a question? Totality is not something that you have to do. If you do something, you will remain partial. Doing can never be total, only non-doing can be total. When you are a non-doer, when there is nobody doing anything, there is totality. Totality is absence of all doing, all thinking, all that divides. Totality is silence, utter stillness.
Don’t ask: How to be total? Just ask: How to see why I am not total? Remember, that’s why Buddha’s path is known as “via negativa“ – via the negation. It does not talk about positive things; it simply talks about the negative.
Don’t ask how to be natural; ask how not to be unnatural. Don’t ask how to be total; ask how not to be non-total. Just seeing is the question. Sometimes you are total; just watch what happens in those moments.
Making love, sometimes it happens, you are total. That totality is called orgasm. Mind stops for a moment. The frenzy of love, the madness of two energies meeting, merging, and the mind is surpassed, transcended. The mind is pushed aside; the mind is no longer needed in that space. All thoughts disappear, time stops, and suddenly you are total.
That’s why people are so much in love with love in spite of all the saints. They don’t bother about the saints. People go on loving – they pay lip service to the saints but they go on living and loving; they don’t follow them. They know that they have only one moment of ecstasy, and that is love.
If you have gone to Khajuraho you must have seen the ecstatic expression on the faces of maithun figures – lovers in deep ecstasy. Even the stone has become ecstatic. Those stone statues, that sculpture, has great poetry, has great softness. Those creators must have been of immense experience; to turn stone into loving ecstasy is great art. I have seen many things, but nothing compared to Khajuraho. Khajuraho remains the greatest wonder on the earth: transforming stone into ecstasy. The faces show something of the transcendental; time has stopped. There are no thoughts in the heads; all division has disappeared. These moments are holy moments, because they come from the whole.
You ask me how to be total. Just look in some moments when you are total, just to see the taste of totality. Sometimes is happens listening to music, or watching a sunset. It can happen listening to me. If you are deep in love with me, it happens; it happens again and again every day. I can see on your faces the same expression as is there on Khajuraho statues. You disappear; something stops deep down in you. There is no movement, everything is utterly quiet, and you are total.
I give you the taste of totality every day, and you ask me how to be total! Just allow these moments more and more; don’t miss a single opportunity. Looking at the trees, look so deeply that you disappear in the look. Listening to the birds, forget yourself completely, and so on and so forth.
Every moment there is a possibility to be total. Whatsoever you are doing, be absorbed in it so utterly that the mind does not think, is just there, is just a presence. More and more, totality will be coming, and the taste of totality will make you more capable of being total.
Try to see when you are not total. Those are the moments which have to be dropped slowly, slowly. When you are not total, whenever you are in the head – thinking, brooding, calculating, cunning, clever – you are not total. Slowly, slowly, slip out of those moments. It is just an old habit; habits die hard. But they die, certainly, if one persists, they die.
I have heard about a man whose wife died. And he was sitting late, very late, in the pub. Somebody asked, “Why do you still go on sitting late? You used to tell me that it is because of the wife that you sit in the pub so long. But now the wife is dead!”
The man suddenly stood up. He said, “Thank you! I had completely forgotten – just old habit!”
Just a few months ago, it happened: the defense minister of India, Jagjivan Ram, spoke somewhere in the south. For one hour he criticized the Congress party and Indira Gandhi. He himself has been in the Congress his whole life; he was a defense minister in Indira’s government too. Then he changed his party, became part of the Janata party. For one hour he spoke against the Congress party, and in the end he asked the audience: “Please vote Congress.”
Just old habit – must have been doing this for fifty years: “Vote Congress!”
Habits die hard; to be untotal is just a habit. And sometimes, in spite of yourself, totality happens. So just watch those moments: when it happens, how it happens. Learn some secrets from those moments and move in those moments more and more. Then see when it is not happening and get out of those moments, slip out. It is not a science; it is a knack, a very, very subtle art.
You ask: “How to be total? How to give everything?” It is not a question of giving everything. On the contrary, it is a question of recognizing the fact that you have nothing. This idea of “How to give everything?” is again egoistic. What have you got to give? You are all beggars; you have nothing to give.
And you ask: “How to give everything?” The very idea of giving is meaningless. When you have something to give, it gives itself, it shares itself. When you are happy, happiness spreads. When you are blissful, it overflows. One never asks “How to give?” One simply gives! One cannot do otherwise. That state finds its own way of expression and sharing. When you have a song it sings itself; you don’t have to ask how to sing it. It bursts forth in jubilation, in a great shout of joy. The shout may be wordless, may be meaningless, but that is not the point.
What is the meaning of hallelujah? There is no meaning in it. It is not a word at all; it is just a shout of joy. You are saying that you have something which cannot be said. You are saying something which has never been said and cannot be said.
But when it is there it happens. When the clouds come and they are full of rain they don’t ask, “How can I give everything?” They simply start giving, they start showering. When the flower opens it does not ask, “How can I share my fragrance?” In fact, what can the flower do? There is no question of doing. The fragrance is already on the way, on the wing; it has started moving.
When you have, sharing happens. When you don’t have, only then do these questions arise: “How do I give? How do I share?” Every evening, people come to ask me how to share. And my problem is that I don’t see anything that they are going to share; there is nothing. When you don’t have anything, this question arises: “How to share?” This question keeps you happy that you have something to share but you don’t know how to share. This keeps you unaware of the fact that you don’t have anything to share. When you have, it happens spontaneously; you cannot resist it, it has to be given forth. There is no way to avoid, it is inevitable.
So first you ask: “How to be total?” Not to be, is to be total. Secondly, you ask: “How to give everything?” Know that you have nothing, and wait in silence, in patience. Something will start flowing out of your being. It will take you unaware; it will be a great surprise that you have started sharing.
The most difficult thing in the world is to see that you don’t have anything. It is the most difficult, because it feels so bad that you are empty, that you are a beggar. People go on pretending that they have something.
Just the other night, Prem’s mother came to see me. She has been here for many months. Now, within two or three weeks she will be leaving, so she came to see me for the first time. For many months she has been here, but avoiding me, protecting herself, defending. Listening to me, and yet not listening to me, seeing me, yet with closed eyes. Being here with my people, but keeping aloof.
Last night she was there to see me, and I asked her to become a sannyasin – now it is time. And she said, “I cannot become, because I am a Roman Catholic. And I believe in God, and you are against beliefs, and I cannot leave my belief. And God has been very good to me.”
Just the idea of becoming a sannyasin disturbed her deeply. She immediately became defensive. That’s why I had asked – to bring her whole defense mechanism to the surface. Now she says, “I believe in God, and I cannot drop this belief.”
I asked her, “Do you believe in your belief more than you want to know God? God is not so very significant, it seems. Your belief in God is more significant. I am saying to you that if you drop your beliefs you will be able to see God!”
But she said, “No. I cannot drop my belief. How can I drop my belief? Why should I drop my belief? God has been very good to me.”
As if God has not been good to everybody else. God is simply good! That is the meaning of the word God – unconditionally good. It is not so that it is good only when you believe in God. Then what kind of God will it be? If you believe, he is good; if you don’t believe, he is bad. If you believe, he brings blessings to you; if you don’t believe, he brings curses to you.
Josephine thinks that God has been good to her because she believes in him. God is simply good. Believing or not believing makes no difference. The sun shines on both the theist and the atheist. When the moon comes it shares its joy with everybody, Communist and Capitalist. There is no distinction. God is good! But people think this way.
Really she is saying, “If I drop my belief then I am afraid God will not be good.” What kind of trust is this? She said, “I cannot drop my belief.” I said to her, “Your hands are empty; I see your hands are empty. You don’t have anything in your hands.” But she wouldn’t listen.
God is not important to her, her belief is important to her. And what is “my belief”? It is just hiding your ignorance, pretending that you know. It is very difficult to know that you don’t know. It is very difficult to see that you don’t have anything, that your hands are empty. This is the courage that I am trying to create in you: to see that you don’t have anything, that your hands are empty, and that you are empty, that there is no being inside, that all beliefs are just tricks to create the feeling that you have something.
When one becomes utterly naked and nude and empty, and all disappears and all is dropped from the hands, then the great, radical change comes. One is transformed. In your emptiness, one day you become full. Out of emptiness, fullness is born. The sharing is inevitable; nobody can stop it, there is nobody to stop it.
The fourth question:
Osho,
You say that you want the new commune to be separate from the rest of the world. What I see is that the ashram is the marketplace. Please comment.
The commune has to be separate from the rest of the world, but that does not mean that it cannot be a marketplace. That does not mean that it has to be some other world. It is going to be this world, with a different quality to it: it will be a marketplace with meditation and love in it.
I am not against the marketplace. I am not against the mundane, I am all for it. But the mundane can have a suffused quality of the sacred. I am not against the ordinary; the ordinary, lived rightly, becomes extraordinary.
My commune is not going to be a monastery; it will be a marketplace, with a difference. It will not be a monastery and it will not be the ordinary marketplace. It will be something that transcends both and implies both. It has to be like that, because man is body and soul together. The body needs the marketplace, the soul needs a monastery.
The monastery has always existed against the marketplace – soul against body. And the marketplace has existed against the monastery – body against soul. I don’t want to divide you; I want to create individuals here, not divided, split personalities. I accept all; the world is beautiful. The monastery has to become a marketplace; the marketplace has to become a monastery.
It will be separate from this world, not because I am against the world, but because right now this world won’t allow a new wave to arise. It will crush it. The new wave has to be protected; the commune is going to be a nursery. Once my sannyasins have become strong enough, then there will be no point, no problem. They can move into the world, they can go into the world and be in the world. But only once they have become strong trees. If they are very soft, small plants, just budding, they will be crushed by the world.
The commune is going to be a nursery. And the commune is also going to be a marketplace, because all your needs have to be fulfilled. I am not against your needs, I am not against anything; I am not life-negative. My approach toward life is not that of an ascetic. My commune will create people who are both Buddhas and Epicuruses, together; people who enjoy life, and enjoy godliness, and don’t create any division. When meditation is released, the marketplace becomes a temple. You can see it happening here: people who are working here, their work is their worship.
Josephine was telling me about her daughter, Prem. She could not believe her own eyes as she watched her for many months: Prem works ten hours every day, typing, typing, typing, with no holiday, and yet she seems to be very happy. It looks as if she is typing for ten hours, on the surface it is so; deep down something else is happening. It is a love affair with me; those are my words she is typing. It is worship, it is her prayerfulness; it is her devotion. And if you love your work, there is no question of any holiday. All days are holidays; each moment is holy.
My commune is going to be of this world, and yet an opening for the other. It has to be rooted in the earth; in fact only when something is rooted in the earth can it grow unto the sky. A tree, to go high in the sky, to whisper with the winds, to dance with the sun, to have a dialogue with the stars, must first go deep down into the earth, spread its roots into the deepest layers of the earth.
You don’t say to a tree, “You are contradictory: you want to rise high in the sky, then why are you spreading your roots into the earth? This is a contradiction.” Yes, it is a contradiction as far as logic is concerned, but life is not logical. The tree will laugh at your logic and will call you foolish, because if there are no roots deep in the earth, there can be no branches in the sky. The tree can move only proportionately, in the same proportion: as it goes deep, it goes high. Depth brings height, in the same proportion; it is always balanced.
The marketplace is the earth. My commune is going to be a marketplace. It will be rooted in the earth; it will have roots deep into the earth. And still it will dance with the winds, sing with the sun, rise higher into godliness. Where godliness and the world meet, there real religion exists.
So, you must have some condemnatory idea about the marketplace. The marketplace has not to be dropped but transformed. Nothing has to be dropped, everything has to be transformed. Whatsoever is given to you is given with a purpose; it can be used. The same substance can become manure and can create great fragrance in roses. If you collect manure in your house, it will stink: it stinks if you collect it. If you spread it on the soil, it brings thousands of roses, and a fragrance that is not of this world, a freshness that is not of this world.
Each and everything has to be transformed. My commune has to be magical.
The fifth question:
Osho,
Rene Descartes says, “Cogito, ergo sum – I think, therefore I am.” There is another statement which is now going round in the West: “Coito, ergo sum – I love, therefore I am,” or, “I copulate, therefore I am.” What is the difference between the two statements?
First, both are wrong. “I think, therefore I am” is putting things upside down. Your being is first; your thinking arises later on. Your thinking cannot become a proof for your being. Being precedes, being is first; thinking is later.
Descartes is not aware at all of the Eastern approach: that a moment comes when thinking can be dropped again, and still you are. That’s what happens in meditation: thinking is no more, but you are. So thinking is arbitrary, non-essential; it is not essential to “I am.”
He says: “Cogito, ergo sum – I think, therefore I am.” No: “I am, therefore I think.” But that is only one dimension. “I am, therefore I feel,” is another dimension. “I am, therefore I love,” everything is preceded by “I am.” That pure existence, that “amness” precedes all.
So both statements are false, not true. But if you have to choose between the two, then the second is far better. First is “Cogito, ergo sum – I think, therefore I am.” Second is “Coito, ergo sum – I copulate, therefore I am.” The second is far better than the first. Thinking is of the head, very fragmentary; copulation is more total, more orgasmic.
The second statement can be approved by the whole philosophy of Tantra. The first is ordinary, the second is extraordinary. But one has to remember that being precedes all. You are in the beginning, and you will be in the end. And all else is in between; like dreams, things come and go.
I have heard…
A villager, an old man, was sitting on his fence watching the traffic go by. Many cars were passing, and trucks and buses, and he was enjoying the scene. A motorist stopped, seeing the old man, very old – must have been eighty or more – enjoying himself so much just sitting on the fence. He asked, “What is the matter, old man? You look so happy. I cannot sit on the fence for more than a few minutes; I will become so restless. And you look so happy and so silent. I am always on the go, driving from one place to another, from one town to another. That keeps me happy; I am a traveler, a born vagabond. You are just the opposite.”
The old man laughed and he said, “Son, there is not much difference. You go in your car seeing fences pass by. I sit on my fence seeing cars pass by. There is not much difference. It is all the same.”
In the beginning I am, in the end I am. In the middle, a thousand and one things happen – what Zen people call “the ten thousand things” happen. But it is all the same: misery and happiness, ecstasy, excitement and agony, pain and pleasure – just dreams on the way. The source remains uncontaminated, and to return to the source is the whole process of coming to truth.
The sixth question:
Osho,
Nothing to do, nowhere to go. You say it so clearly. Your words fall like a crystal clear waterfall on my head. Some keep dancing in my heart. Yet I wonder. What are we doing here?
I wonder too, because we are not really doing anything here. That’s what we are doing: we are learning how to be in a state of non-doing – wu-wei.
And the last question:
Osho,
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
e. e. cummings
Thank you, Katya.
Enough for today.
Osho,
Though your talk was quite serious and deep yesterday, there were strange tickles and laughter arising in me. Somewhere deep within, there was a sense of humor as a subtle undercurrent. Tears often rolled down!
Do the moments of clarity and insight give birth to a sense of humor? And what are the tears?
Yes, Chinmaya, clarity always brings a sense of humor. One starts laughing, not at others but at oneself, at the whole ridiculousness of ego games, the whole stupidity of the human mind. And when there is laughter, tears are not far away; they are aspects of the same energy. They are not diametrically opposite, they are complementary.
Whenever there is deep laughter, tears are bound to follow; whenever there are deep tears, laughter will soon follow. They go together; they are parts of one climate – the climate of clarity, depth, height.
You may be surprised to know that schizophrenics cannot laugh, and a person who cannot laugh has something of schizophrenia in him, is mentally ill. Schizophrenics start laughing only when they are getting out of their schizophrenia. It has been observed that a psychoanalyst can terminate treatment once he sees a schizophrenic laughing. This is a fact of great importance.
Many so-called saints are really schizophrenic, they cannot laugh. And if you cannot laugh, how can you weep, how can you cry? Both become impossible, and when laughter and crying are impossible, your heart is completely closed. You don’t have any emotions, you start living only in the head; your whole reality consists of thoughts. Thoughts are dry: they cannot bring laughter, they cannot bring tears. Tears and laughter come from the heart. Clarity is of the heart, not of the mind; confusion is of the mind.
So, it has been a good experience: your schizophrenia is disappearing, I can terminate the treatment. Laugh more, cry more, become a child again. Seriousness is your disease: drop seriousness and don’t confuse seriousness and sincerity. Seriousness is not sincerity. Sincerity need not be serious; sincerity can have laughter, can cry, and can weep. Seriousness is a blocked stage of mind, a stage where you cannot flow; it is a state of unflowing stagnancy. Serious people are ill people.
Religion has been destroyed by serious people. There is one thing about serious people that you have to remember: they are very articulate, because they live in the head. They are logic choppers; they can express well. And because they have no heart, because they cannot feel, they are very authoritative. A man of feeling cannot be authoritative – how can compassion be authoritative?
A man of feeling always hesitates; he cannot make dogmatic statements. The man of feeling whispers, persuades, he cannot convince; he comes indirectly, like a subtle breeze. But the serious person, the person who lives in the head, the schizophrenic, is articulate, verbal, logical, rational, loud, authoritative, and these qualities enable him to gather a following.
All political leaders are schizophrenic. The crowd follows them because of their dogmatic statements; their dogmatic statements convince people. People are very vague, uncertain, insecure, and they need somebody to make them feel secure, even if he is a fool, an Adolf Hitler. It is a great puzzle to those who ponder over human problems how Adolf Hitler, a mediocre person of below average IQ, could convince a country like Germany, an intellectual country, an intelligent country, a country of professors, philosophers, thinkers. How was it possible that this idiotic person, Adolf Hitler, could convince people of such an intelligent race?
To me, it is not a problem at all. I can see through and through how it happened. Adolf Hitler was dogmatic; whatsoever he said, he said it absolutely. Only a foolish person can be dogmatic. Lao Tzu hesitates. Lao Tzu says: “I walk as one walks in cold winter in a cold stream. Everybody is certain except me; I am uncertain, I hesitate. I cannot claim knowledge, because all is so mysterious.”
Now, Lao Tzu is not going to convince people. If you hesitate, nobody is going to follow you. People are in deep confusion. They need somebody to shout so loudly in their ears that they are convinced: “This man must be true, this man must be in the know about things. How can he shout so loudly? How can he argue so loudly? Only truth can be so loud.” They are mistaken.
These dogmatic people go on repeating; Hitler continued to repeat the same theme. Slowly, slowly, when any untruth is repeated again and again it begins to look like a truth. People need somebody to lean on: they are uncertain, and need somebody who is absolutely certain. Politics is dominated by schizophrenics; religion is dominated by schizophrenics. These people are very, very articulate, convincing, they lead masses, establish religions, churches, organizations.
Jesus could not manage to lead many people; it has been estimated that he had a following of less than five hundred. And when he was crucified, thousands gathered to jeer at him. He had only twelve close disciples, only twelve – a man with the qualities of Jesus. What happened, was he not convincing?
He was not convincing in the way that people need. He was saying things in a mysterious way: in parables, in metaphors, in poetry. He was not logical, he was utterly illogical. He was vague. He was hinting, pointing, but he was not assertive.
Christianity was not born with Christ, it was born with Saint Paul, who must certainly have been a schizophrenic. Saul – his original name – was at first against Christ, so anti-Christ that he wanted to destroy all the Christians. One day he was traveling to the country where Jesus’ followers were slowly gathering, slowly becoming courageous, slowly starting to teach people, spreading the message. He was going there to argue, to discuss, to defeat them.
The story goes that on the road something happened, he was possessed by the spirit of Christ. He fell down on the road, dust in his mouth. He could not believe it! He saw Jesus. He asked forgiveness, he became converted. He changed his name from Saul to Paul. And this man was the founder of Christianity.
Now, what actually happened in psychological terms? This man must have had a split personality; he must have been a schizophrenic. Nobody appeared, no Christ appeared. But he was very much against Christ with one part of his mind, and completely unaware of another part. When he went deep into that part which was against Christ, the pendulum swung from one extreme to another extreme. That’s how it always happens.
He was going to persecute Christians – that small number of people who were talking of Jesus, remembering the man and the beauty of the man, the suffering that he went through for them, and the message that he had given to them. Slowly, slowly the word was spreading and this man Saul was going to persecute these people. And he was able to argue well. Jesus’ followers would not have been able to convince him; he would have convinced them. They were simple people, innocent people, farmers, fisherman, carpenters, uneducated people.
When you go to one extreme the pendulum swings back of its own accord. This is what actually happened. The pendulum swung, moved to the other extreme, and another part of his being took possession of him. He had a dream, a vision – there was no Christ, but he saw him. He was convinced and he was converted; this schizophrenic created the whole Christianity. He was going to persecute Christians: he converted the whole world to Christianity. He created the church.
It has always been so. Whenever a religion is born, sooner or later schizophrenics will catch hold of it. They are great leaders; they convince people. Their impact is great, their slogans convert people. They are loud, logical; they collect proofs, they argue.
Because of these people, no religion remains pure for long. The really religious persons are those who are not articulate, who are innocent, those who are simple, meditative, loving, who cannot convince anybody. They simply live religion; they cannot create great religions, great religious empires.
It is good that humor is arising in you, Chinmaya. Allow it, don’t crush it. Help it to come, let it surface. Humor will join your split parts, will glue your fragments into one whole. You may have observed that when you have a hearty laugh, suddenly all fragments disappear and you become one. When you laugh, your soul and your body are one – they laugh together. When you think, your body and soul are separate. When you cry, your body and soul are one; they function in harmony.
Remember always: all those things are good, for the good, which make you one whole. Laughing, crying, dancing, singing: these things make you one piece, functioning as one harmony. Thinking can go on in the head, and the body can go on doing a thousand and one things; you can go on eating, and the mind can go on thinking. This is split. You walk on the road: the body is walking and you are thinking. Not thinking of the road, not thinking of the trees that surround it, not thinking of the sun, not thinking of the people who are passing, but thinking of other things, of other worlds.
But laugh, and if the laugh is really deep, if it is not just a pseudo laugh, just on the lips, suddenly you feel your body and your soul are functioning together. It is not only in the body, it goes into your deepest core. It arises from your very being and spreads toward the circumference. You are one in laughter, or in crying, or in dancing, or in singing! Whatever makes you feel one is good, is meditative, is prayerful.
The second question:
Osho,
Is the purpose of the therapy groups to bring the participants to their natural self? If so, isn't the effort to be natural, unnatural? If not, what is the essential difference between natural and unnatural?
The purpose of the therapy groups is not to bring the participants to their natural self, not at all. The purpose of the therapy groups is to bring you to the point where you can see your unnaturalness. Nobody can bring you to your natural self; there can be no method, no technique, no device, which can bring you to your natural self, because all that you will do will make you more and more unnatural.
Then what is the purpose of a therapy group? It is simply to make you aware of the unnatural patterns that have evolved in your being. It simply helps you to see the unnaturalness of your life, that’s all. Seeing it, it starts dispersing. To see it is to annihilate it, because once you have seen something as unnatural in your being, you cannot persist in it. Seeing something as unnatural, you have also felt what is natural – but that is indirect, that is vague, that is not clear. What is clear is this: you have seen that something is unnatural in you. Seeing the unnatural, you can feel the natural. Seeing the unnatural, you can no longer support it. It existed because of your support, nothing can exist without your support; your cooperation is needed.
If you cooperate, something exists. Certainly the unnatural cannot exist without your cooperation. Where will it get the energy? The natural can exist without your cooperation, but the unnatural cannot. The unnatural needs constant support, it needs constant care, it needs constant control. Once you have seen that this is unnatural, your grip on it becomes loose; your fist opens of its own accord.
The group is not a device to open your fist. It is just to help you see that what you are doing is unnatural. In that very seeing, there is transformation.
You ask: “Is the purpose of the therapy groups to bring the participants to their natural self?” No, that is not the purpose. The purpose is simply to make you aware of where you are, what you have done to yourself, what harm you have done and are still doing, what wounds you are creating in your being. On each of the wounds is your signature, and the purpose of the group is to make you alert about your signature. To see that it is signed by you, nobody else has been doing it. To see that you have created all the chains around you, the prison you live in is your own work; nobody is doing it to you.
Seeing that, “I am creating my own prison,” how long can you go on creating it? If you want to live in the prison, that’s another matter. Nobody ever really wants to live in prison; they do because they think that others are creating the prisons, and they can do nothing. They always throw the responsibility on somebody else. Down the ages, people have found new and different devices, but the purpose remains the same: throw the responsibility on somebody else.
You will be surprised at the excuses man has been able to find. In the ancient days, man used to think, “This is the way God made us, so the responsibility is God’s. What can we do? We are just creatures, and we are the way he has made us. We have to live in this misery. This is destined.” That was a trick to relieve themselves of all responsibility.
But when a trick has worked for a long time it becomes a cliché. It no longer works; people are fed up with it. They start searching for new ideas, but the purpose remains the same. Marx says it is the society, the economic structure of the society, the exploitation, the exploiters, the imperialists, the capitalists that are doing the harm; they are the reason. Again you are relieved of the responsibility. So what can you do? The slavery is imposed upon you, you have been made miserable. Unless the revolution comes nothing is going to happen; so you can postpone.
And the revolution never comes; it has not happened yet. Not in Russia, not in China – nowhere. The revolution never comes; it is just a postponement. Man is as miserable in Russia as he is anywhere else, as much in the mire of the mind as anywhere else. Jealousy is as much in Russia as anywhere else. Anger is as much, violence is as much. Nothing has changed.
Freud says it is because of your upbringing. In your childhood you have been brought up wrongly, what can you do? It has already happened; now there is no way of undoing it. At the most, you can accept it and live it. Or you can go on fighting unnecessarily, but there is no hope.
Freud is one of the greatest pessimists ever. He says there is no hope for man, because in childhood the pattern is settled for ever. Then you go on repeating the pattern, throwing the responsibility. Now your mother is responsible. And the mother thinks what can she do when her own mother is responsible, and so on and so forth. These are all devices, but the purpose is the same; they are just different devices for the single purpose of taking responsibility off your shoulders.
The group therapy is to make you aware that neither God nor society is responsible, nor your parents are responsible; if anybody is responsible, it is you. A group process is a hammering of this simple fact: that it is you who are responsible. And this hammering has a great significance because once you understand that “This is me, I, myself, am doing wrong to myself,” then the doors open. Then there is hope; then something is possible.
Revolution is possible through responsibility, individual responsibility. You can transmute; you can drop those old patterns. They are not your destiny. But if you accept them as your destiny they become your destiny. It is all a question of whether or not to support them.
I am not saying that parents have not done something to you, remember, and I am not saying that society has not done anything to you. The society has done much, parents have done much, education and priests have done much. But, still, the ultimate key is in your hands; you can drop the whole conditioning. Whatsoever they have done, you can erase it, because your consciousness at the deepest core always remains free. That is the purpose of a therapy group, to bring this truth home: that you are responsible. Responsibility is the most important word in a group therapy process. Nobody wants to take responsibility, because it hurts. Just to see the point, “I am the cause of my misery,” hurts very much. If somebody else is the cause, one can accept it, one is helpless. But if I am the cause of my misery, it hurts, it goes against the ego; it goes against pride.
That’s why group therapy is a difficult process, hard. You want to escape from Encounter, from Tao, from Primal Therapy. You want to escape because you have always believed that you are perfectly right, you are perfectly good; others have been doing harm to you.
Now the whole thing has to be changed; you have to put everything upside down. Nobody is doing any harm to you, or if they are doing any harm, it is through your cooperation. So finally you are responsible, you have chosen it. You say, “My husband is doing harm to me,” but you have chosen this husband, in fact, only so that he can do harm to you. You wanted to be harmed and that’s why you have chosen this husband, this wife.
Just watch people who go on changing their wives. You will be surprised that again and again they find the same type of woman. It is a difficult thing to find the same type of woman, but they find one. And within six months they are complaining again, and the complaints are exactly the same.
I have heard about one man who married eight times; again and again he managed to find the same type of woman. Just see the point: he had a certain kind of mind, a certain conditioning. In that conditioning, only a certain type of woman appealed to him. A blonde or a brunette, a long nose, black eyes, or something – a certain kind of woman appealed to him; he was always attracted by a certain kind of woman. When that woman started doing the same things he was puzzled – he thought he had changed the woman.
You have changed the woman, but you have not changed your mind. So your choice remains the old, because the chooser is the old. It is not going to help; you will be in the same trap. The color of the trap may change, the fiber of the trap may change, but the trap is there and you will be trapped again and again, and the same misery will arise.
Group therapy is a great process of understanding “What I have been doing to myself!” You can go still deeper, where no group therapy, not even primal therapy has gone. But Buddha has gone deeper. He says if you have chosen a certain kind of parent, that is also your choice.
See the point: millions of foolish people were making love when you were hovering to take birth, but you chose a certain couple. Why? You must have had a certain idea; it was your choice. You say, “My parents have done harm to me.” Why did you choose them? You think your wife, your husband has done you harm? The society has harmed you, but who has created this society? You have created this society; it does not come out of the blue.
The beggar on the road has not appeared suddenly out of the blue; we have created him. If you want to become rich, somebody has to become a beggar. Seeing the beggar you feel very sorry, and you still carry the idea of becoming rich. Whom are you trying to deceive? If you want to become rich, somebody will have to become a beggar. If you want to become somebody, then somebody will not be able to reach fame. It is a competitive world. You don’t want wars, but you are violent; in everything you are violent, and you condemn wars.
Have you seen the pacifists and their processions? How violent they look with their slogans against war, their shouts against war. Sooner or later the procession turns into a riot; they are burning cars and destroying offices and burning buses and trains and attacking the police, and all in protest against war. Now what is happening? These people are violent people; war is just an excuse. Their protest is nothing but their expression of violence. They are not concerned about war; they are using it as a pretext.
This society is created by you. And then you say that society is responsible. Nobody is responsible except you. This is one of the hardest truths to accept. But once you accept it, it brings great freedom, it creates great space. Because with this, another possibility immediately opens up: “If I am responsible, then I can change. If I am not responsible, how can I change? If I am doing it to myself, then it hurts, but it also brings a new possibility that I can stop hurting myself, I can stop being miserable.” A group process is not to make you natural; it is to make you aware of your unnaturalness, of your phoniness.
“Is the purpose of the therapy groups to bring the participants to their natural self?” No, not at all. The purpose is just to make them aware of the unnatural self. The natural self comes of its own accord; nobody can bring it. When the unnatural disappears, the natural is found. The natural has always been there, hidden under the rubbish. Unnatural gone, you are natural. You don’t become natural; you have always been natural. How can one become natural? All becoming will lead you into unnaturalness.
“If so, isn’t the effort to be natural, unnatural?” Yes, the effort to be natural is always unnatural. But to understand the unnaturalness is not the effort to be natural, it is simple understanding. If you see that you have been trying to squeeze oil out of sand, you see the futility of it, you drop the whole project. Seeing that you have been trying to pass through a wall and hurting your head, you stop trying to pass through the wall, you start looking for the door. Yes, exactly like that.
“If not, what is the essential difference between natural and unnatural?” Natural is that which you have been given as a gift – a gift from the whole. Unnatural is that which you have created by teachings, scriptures, character, morality. The unnatural is that which you have imposed upon the natural, the given. The natural is from existence, the unnatural is from yourself. Take away all that you have imposed upon yourself, and godliness will burst forth into a thousand blossoms in your being.
Somebody asks Jesus, “What is your fundamental message?” And he says, “Ask the fowl and the fish and the flower.” What does he mean, “Ask the fowl and the fish and the flower”? He is saying: Ask nature.
My message is: Allow nature to take possession of you; don’t try to create any character. All characters are wrong; be characterless. Don’t create any sort of personality; all personalities are false. Don’t be a personality.
Then, slowly, slowly, you will see something arising from the deepest core of your being. That is nature. Its fragrance is great. It is good; it is never bad. It is not cultivated at all; hence it has no tensions in it, no anxiety, you need not maintain it.
Truth need not be maintained; untruths have to be managed, maintained, need care and maintenance. Still they are untrue and they never become truth. Only truth liberates.
The therapy available here is not to make you natural. Nobody can make you natural, existence has already done that. The problem is not to learn how to be natural: the problem is how to unlearn the unnatural.
The third question:
Osho,
How to be total? How to give everything?
One can be total only when one is not. Only emptiness can be total. If you are, you can’t be total. Your very presence will be a disturbance in your totality; your very presence will continue interfering with your totality.
That’s why Buddha says become a nothingness. Just look deep into yourself and let the cloud of the ego disperse. Let there be empty sky; in that empty sky there is no division. Clouds divide; when there are no clouds, the sky is undivided, one. Thoughts divide; when there are no thoughts in you, there is totality. And remember, even the thought of totality will be a divisive factor.
Now you ask: “How to be total?” This is an idea. Listening to me, seeing the grandeur of totality again and again, greed arises in you: “How to be total?” But you have missed the whole point. How can you ask such a question? Totality is not something that you have to do. If you do something, you will remain partial. Doing can never be total, only non-doing can be total. When you are a non-doer, when there is nobody doing anything, there is totality. Totality is absence of all doing, all thinking, all that divides. Totality is silence, utter stillness.
Don’t ask: How to be total? Just ask: How to see why I am not total? Remember, that’s why Buddha’s path is known as “via negativa“ – via the negation. It does not talk about positive things; it simply talks about the negative.
Don’t ask how to be natural; ask how not to be unnatural. Don’t ask how to be total; ask how not to be non-total. Just seeing is the question. Sometimes you are total; just watch what happens in those moments.
Making love, sometimes it happens, you are total. That totality is called orgasm. Mind stops for a moment. The frenzy of love, the madness of two energies meeting, merging, and the mind is surpassed, transcended. The mind is pushed aside; the mind is no longer needed in that space. All thoughts disappear, time stops, and suddenly you are total.
That’s why people are so much in love with love in spite of all the saints. They don’t bother about the saints. People go on loving – they pay lip service to the saints but they go on living and loving; they don’t follow them. They know that they have only one moment of ecstasy, and that is love.
If you have gone to Khajuraho you must have seen the ecstatic expression on the faces of maithun figures – lovers in deep ecstasy. Even the stone has become ecstatic. Those stone statues, that sculpture, has great poetry, has great softness. Those creators must have been of immense experience; to turn stone into loving ecstasy is great art. I have seen many things, but nothing compared to Khajuraho. Khajuraho remains the greatest wonder on the earth: transforming stone into ecstasy. The faces show something of the transcendental; time has stopped. There are no thoughts in the heads; all division has disappeared. These moments are holy moments, because they come from the whole.
You ask me how to be total. Just look in some moments when you are total, just to see the taste of totality. Sometimes is happens listening to music, or watching a sunset. It can happen listening to me. If you are deep in love with me, it happens; it happens again and again every day. I can see on your faces the same expression as is there on Khajuraho statues. You disappear; something stops deep down in you. There is no movement, everything is utterly quiet, and you are total.
I give you the taste of totality every day, and you ask me how to be total! Just allow these moments more and more; don’t miss a single opportunity. Looking at the trees, look so deeply that you disappear in the look. Listening to the birds, forget yourself completely, and so on and so forth.
Every moment there is a possibility to be total. Whatsoever you are doing, be absorbed in it so utterly that the mind does not think, is just there, is just a presence. More and more, totality will be coming, and the taste of totality will make you more capable of being total.
Try to see when you are not total. Those are the moments which have to be dropped slowly, slowly. When you are not total, whenever you are in the head – thinking, brooding, calculating, cunning, clever – you are not total. Slowly, slowly, slip out of those moments. It is just an old habit; habits die hard. But they die, certainly, if one persists, they die.
I have heard about a man whose wife died. And he was sitting late, very late, in the pub. Somebody asked, “Why do you still go on sitting late? You used to tell me that it is because of the wife that you sit in the pub so long. But now the wife is dead!”
The man suddenly stood up. He said, “Thank you! I had completely forgotten – just old habit!”
Just a few months ago, it happened: the defense minister of India, Jagjivan Ram, spoke somewhere in the south. For one hour he criticized the Congress party and Indira Gandhi. He himself has been in the Congress his whole life; he was a defense minister in Indira’s government too. Then he changed his party, became part of the Janata party. For one hour he spoke against the Congress party, and in the end he asked the audience: “Please vote Congress.”
Just old habit – must have been doing this for fifty years: “Vote Congress!”
Habits die hard; to be untotal is just a habit. And sometimes, in spite of yourself, totality happens. So just watch those moments: when it happens, how it happens. Learn some secrets from those moments and move in those moments more and more. Then see when it is not happening and get out of those moments, slip out. It is not a science; it is a knack, a very, very subtle art.
You ask: “How to be total? How to give everything?” It is not a question of giving everything. On the contrary, it is a question of recognizing the fact that you have nothing. This idea of “How to give everything?” is again egoistic. What have you got to give? You are all beggars; you have nothing to give.
And you ask: “How to give everything?” The very idea of giving is meaningless. When you have something to give, it gives itself, it shares itself. When you are happy, happiness spreads. When you are blissful, it overflows. One never asks “How to give?” One simply gives! One cannot do otherwise. That state finds its own way of expression and sharing. When you have a song it sings itself; you don’t have to ask how to sing it. It bursts forth in jubilation, in a great shout of joy. The shout may be wordless, may be meaningless, but that is not the point.
What is the meaning of hallelujah? There is no meaning in it. It is not a word at all; it is just a shout of joy. You are saying that you have something which cannot be said. You are saying something which has never been said and cannot be said.
But when it is there it happens. When the clouds come and they are full of rain they don’t ask, “How can I give everything?” They simply start giving, they start showering. When the flower opens it does not ask, “How can I share my fragrance?” In fact, what can the flower do? There is no question of doing. The fragrance is already on the way, on the wing; it has started moving.
When you have, sharing happens. When you don’t have, only then do these questions arise: “How do I give? How do I share?” Every evening, people come to ask me how to share. And my problem is that I don’t see anything that they are going to share; there is nothing. When you don’t have anything, this question arises: “How to share?” This question keeps you happy that you have something to share but you don’t know how to share. This keeps you unaware of the fact that you don’t have anything to share. When you have, it happens spontaneously; you cannot resist it, it has to be given forth. There is no way to avoid, it is inevitable.
So first you ask: “How to be total?” Not to be, is to be total. Secondly, you ask: “How to give everything?” Know that you have nothing, and wait in silence, in patience. Something will start flowing out of your being. It will take you unaware; it will be a great surprise that you have started sharing.
The most difficult thing in the world is to see that you don’t have anything. It is the most difficult, because it feels so bad that you are empty, that you are a beggar. People go on pretending that they have something.
Just the other night, Prem’s mother came to see me. She has been here for many months. Now, within two or three weeks she will be leaving, so she came to see me for the first time. For many months she has been here, but avoiding me, protecting herself, defending. Listening to me, and yet not listening to me, seeing me, yet with closed eyes. Being here with my people, but keeping aloof.
Last night she was there to see me, and I asked her to become a sannyasin – now it is time. And she said, “I cannot become, because I am a Roman Catholic. And I believe in God, and you are against beliefs, and I cannot leave my belief. And God has been very good to me.”
Just the idea of becoming a sannyasin disturbed her deeply. She immediately became defensive. That’s why I had asked – to bring her whole defense mechanism to the surface. Now she says, “I believe in God, and I cannot drop this belief.”
I asked her, “Do you believe in your belief more than you want to know God? God is not so very significant, it seems. Your belief in God is more significant. I am saying to you that if you drop your beliefs you will be able to see God!”
But she said, “No. I cannot drop my belief. How can I drop my belief? Why should I drop my belief? God has been very good to me.”
As if God has not been good to everybody else. God is simply good! That is the meaning of the word God – unconditionally good. It is not so that it is good only when you believe in God. Then what kind of God will it be? If you believe, he is good; if you don’t believe, he is bad. If you believe, he brings blessings to you; if you don’t believe, he brings curses to you.
Josephine thinks that God has been good to her because she believes in him. God is simply good. Believing or not believing makes no difference. The sun shines on both the theist and the atheist. When the moon comes it shares its joy with everybody, Communist and Capitalist. There is no distinction. God is good! But people think this way.
Really she is saying, “If I drop my belief then I am afraid God will not be good.” What kind of trust is this? She said, “I cannot drop my belief.” I said to her, “Your hands are empty; I see your hands are empty. You don’t have anything in your hands.” But she wouldn’t listen.
God is not important to her, her belief is important to her. And what is “my belief”? It is just hiding your ignorance, pretending that you know. It is very difficult to know that you don’t know. It is very difficult to see that you don’t have anything, that your hands are empty. This is the courage that I am trying to create in you: to see that you don’t have anything, that your hands are empty, and that you are empty, that there is no being inside, that all beliefs are just tricks to create the feeling that you have something.
When one becomes utterly naked and nude and empty, and all disappears and all is dropped from the hands, then the great, radical change comes. One is transformed. In your emptiness, one day you become full. Out of emptiness, fullness is born. The sharing is inevitable; nobody can stop it, there is nobody to stop it.
The fourth question:
Osho,
You say that you want the new commune to be separate from the rest of the world. What I see is that the ashram is the marketplace. Please comment.
The commune has to be separate from the rest of the world, but that does not mean that it cannot be a marketplace. That does not mean that it has to be some other world. It is going to be this world, with a different quality to it: it will be a marketplace with meditation and love in it.
I am not against the marketplace. I am not against the mundane, I am all for it. But the mundane can have a suffused quality of the sacred. I am not against the ordinary; the ordinary, lived rightly, becomes extraordinary.
My commune is not going to be a monastery; it will be a marketplace, with a difference. It will not be a monastery and it will not be the ordinary marketplace. It will be something that transcends both and implies both. It has to be like that, because man is body and soul together. The body needs the marketplace, the soul needs a monastery.
The monastery has always existed against the marketplace – soul against body. And the marketplace has existed against the monastery – body against soul. I don’t want to divide you; I want to create individuals here, not divided, split personalities. I accept all; the world is beautiful. The monastery has to become a marketplace; the marketplace has to become a monastery.
It will be separate from this world, not because I am against the world, but because right now this world won’t allow a new wave to arise. It will crush it. The new wave has to be protected; the commune is going to be a nursery. Once my sannyasins have become strong enough, then there will be no point, no problem. They can move into the world, they can go into the world and be in the world. But only once they have become strong trees. If they are very soft, small plants, just budding, they will be crushed by the world.
The commune is going to be a nursery. And the commune is also going to be a marketplace, because all your needs have to be fulfilled. I am not against your needs, I am not against anything; I am not life-negative. My approach toward life is not that of an ascetic. My commune will create people who are both Buddhas and Epicuruses, together; people who enjoy life, and enjoy godliness, and don’t create any division. When meditation is released, the marketplace becomes a temple. You can see it happening here: people who are working here, their work is their worship.
Josephine was telling me about her daughter, Prem. She could not believe her own eyes as she watched her for many months: Prem works ten hours every day, typing, typing, typing, with no holiday, and yet she seems to be very happy. It looks as if she is typing for ten hours, on the surface it is so; deep down something else is happening. It is a love affair with me; those are my words she is typing. It is worship, it is her prayerfulness; it is her devotion. And if you love your work, there is no question of any holiday. All days are holidays; each moment is holy.
My commune is going to be of this world, and yet an opening for the other. It has to be rooted in the earth; in fact only when something is rooted in the earth can it grow unto the sky. A tree, to go high in the sky, to whisper with the winds, to dance with the sun, to have a dialogue with the stars, must first go deep down into the earth, spread its roots into the deepest layers of the earth.
You don’t say to a tree, “You are contradictory: you want to rise high in the sky, then why are you spreading your roots into the earth? This is a contradiction.” Yes, it is a contradiction as far as logic is concerned, but life is not logical. The tree will laugh at your logic and will call you foolish, because if there are no roots deep in the earth, there can be no branches in the sky. The tree can move only proportionately, in the same proportion: as it goes deep, it goes high. Depth brings height, in the same proportion; it is always balanced.
The marketplace is the earth. My commune is going to be a marketplace. It will be rooted in the earth; it will have roots deep into the earth. And still it will dance with the winds, sing with the sun, rise higher into godliness. Where godliness and the world meet, there real religion exists.
So, you must have some condemnatory idea about the marketplace. The marketplace has not to be dropped but transformed. Nothing has to be dropped, everything has to be transformed. Whatsoever is given to you is given with a purpose; it can be used. The same substance can become manure and can create great fragrance in roses. If you collect manure in your house, it will stink: it stinks if you collect it. If you spread it on the soil, it brings thousands of roses, and a fragrance that is not of this world, a freshness that is not of this world.
Each and everything has to be transformed. My commune has to be magical.
The fifth question:
Osho,
Rene Descartes says, “Cogito, ergo sum – I think, therefore I am.” There is another statement which is now going round in the West: “Coito, ergo sum – I love, therefore I am,” or, “I copulate, therefore I am.” What is the difference between the two statements?
First, both are wrong. “I think, therefore I am” is putting things upside down. Your being is first; your thinking arises later on. Your thinking cannot become a proof for your being. Being precedes, being is first; thinking is later.
Descartes is not aware at all of the Eastern approach: that a moment comes when thinking can be dropped again, and still you are. That’s what happens in meditation: thinking is no more, but you are. So thinking is arbitrary, non-essential; it is not essential to “I am.”
He says: “Cogito, ergo sum – I think, therefore I am.” No: “I am, therefore I think.” But that is only one dimension. “I am, therefore I feel,” is another dimension. “I am, therefore I love,” everything is preceded by “I am.” That pure existence, that “amness” precedes all.
So both statements are false, not true. But if you have to choose between the two, then the second is far better. First is “Cogito, ergo sum – I think, therefore I am.” Second is “Coito, ergo sum – I copulate, therefore I am.” The second is far better than the first. Thinking is of the head, very fragmentary; copulation is more total, more orgasmic.
The second statement can be approved by the whole philosophy of Tantra. The first is ordinary, the second is extraordinary. But one has to remember that being precedes all. You are in the beginning, and you will be in the end. And all else is in between; like dreams, things come and go.
I have heard…
A villager, an old man, was sitting on his fence watching the traffic go by. Many cars were passing, and trucks and buses, and he was enjoying the scene. A motorist stopped, seeing the old man, very old – must have been eighty or more – enjoying himself so much just sitting on the fence. He asked, “What is the matter, old man? You look so happy. I cannot sit on the fence for more than a few minutes; I will become so restless. And you look so happy and so silent. I am always on the go, driving from one place to another, from one town to another. That keeps me happy; I am a traveler, a born vagabond. You are just the opposite.”
The old man laughed and he said, “Son, there is not much difference. You go in your car seeing fences pass by. I sit on my fence seeing cars pass by. There is not much difference. It is all the same.”
In the beginning I am, in the end I am. In the middle, a thousand and one things happen – what Zen people call “the ten thousand things” happen. But it is all the same: misery and happiness, ecstasy, excitement and agony, pain and pleasure – just dreams on the way. The source remains uncontaminated, and to return to the source is the whole process of coming to truth.
The sixth question:
Osho,
Nothing to do, nowhere to go. You say it so clearly. Your words fall like a crystal clear waterfall on my head. Some keep dancing in my heart. Yet I wonder. What are we doing here?
I wonder too, because we are not really doing anything here. That’s what we are doing: we are learning how to be in a state of non-doing – wu-wei.
And the last question:
Osho,
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
e. e. cummings
Thank you, Katya.
Enough for today.