KABIR
The Guest 12
Twelth Discourse from the series of 15 discourses - The Guest by Osho.
You can listen, download or read all of these discourses on oshoworld.com.
The first question:
Osho,
For me, you are all the masters that have been before and all the masters that will come. More and more a strange knowing grows that only death is the door to a perfect union with this “I don't know what.” Death can make us see what loving the master, love, only gives us glimpses of. Is this not so?
Love is a small death, and death is great love. They are not two things. Love is a small wave in the ocean of death. Hence, as much as people are afraid of love, they are afraid of death too.
People love because life without love is meaningless. But they only pretend the game of love, they don’t go into it. They keep a distance from any deep commitment, from any total involvement. Because if they really go close in the world of love, the flame of love will burn their ego. If they don’t love, life is meaningless, but if they really love, the ego disappears, so they pretend, they believe, that they love. Hence they make a compromise, they go only so far. They don’t go to the deepest core of love, they only touch the surface.
But they cannot remain without love; without it they are utterly useless, they only vegetate, they don’t really love, they don’t really live. Then life is a desert with no significance, no song; then life is utterly futile. Loving and living are synonymous.
So people have to at least play the game of love. That keeps them involved, but they don’t really go into it. They keep out of it because if they really go into it, the ego disappears. Then they are no more, then godliness is: the experience of orgasm, of deep orgasmic joy, is the first experience of God. Godliness comes when two lovers meet and merge into each other. When two are no longer two, when that union happens, God penetrates you. Then the beyond comes to the earth, the sky meets the earth.
But rarely are you in an orgasmic unity; rarely are you so much in tune with the other that you are ready to sacrifice your ego. In fact, you go on doing the contrary. Your love is also an ornament for your ego; your love is also a new treasure to strengthen the ego, to gratify it. Rather than destroying the ego, your games of love go on nourishing it.
But your insight is absolutely right: love can only give you glimpses. If you allow the ego to disappear, love will make something of the unknown available to you. Love will teach you how to die; love is the first lesson of death. Death is the crescendo of love, the highest peak. Those who know how to love know how to die. Their death is not an end; it is a beginning, it is a birth, it is moving into the divine. It is transcending the human and entering the superhuman. It is transcending the mortal and entering the immortal. Death is a portal, a door.
But death is a door only if you have learned the lesson through love. Love is the school that prepares you for death. Love and life are synonymous: if you love you live. If you love and live you become capable of dying. Millions of people die, but without being capable of dying. They die in unconsciousness. Then death simply takes them back into another body; then death simply helps them to enter into another womb. And the whole wheel starts moving again, the same repetitive wheel.
Love makes you utterly conscious because love makes you alert, because love is light. It dispels all darkness, all unconsciousness. It becomes a lamp inside you. And if you have that lamp, death has a totally different quality, it is not death at all; it is life abundant, it is life infinite, it is life divine, it is life eternal – for those who die consciously.
Yes, you are right: “Death can make us see what loving the master, love, only gives us glimpses of. Is this not so?” It is so, but it is only love that will prepare you. The greater the love, the greater the preparation. Hence, one has to remain forever grateful toward all that love has contributed to your preparation, not just your love for your master. Even loving a tree, or a rock, or an animal; or your woman, your man, your child; even these loves prepare you for the great love that happens between the disciple and the master. All your loves are involved in it, implied in it.
Love toward the master is the whole spectrum of love. The way you have loved your woman will be there, the way you have loved your man will be there, the way you have loved your mother will be there, and the way you have loved your child will be there. The way you have loved music, the way you have loved poetry, painting, dancing; all your loves, the whole multiplicity of loves, all the dimensions of love, will join together. Between the master and the disciple, love comes in its whole spectrum. It becomes the whole rainbow, all the seven colors. And that love will prepare you for the ultimate quantum leap, death.
In the ancient scriptures, the master is defined as death. You will be surprised that ancient scriptures say: acharyo mrityuh – the master is death. If you have come to know the master, you are coming closer and closer to death. Coming very close to the master is coming closer to the ultimate death. One day the disciple and the master both disappear.
The master has already disappeared. The master is a person who has attained nothingness. The master is one who is already dead, who is no more, who is just an absolute emptiness. And of course, if you come close to the master, closer to somebody who is no more, it is going to destroy your ego utterly. That’s what disciplehood means, coming closer and closer to somebody who is no more. One day, through the master you will taste your first experience of death.
Hence, people avoid living masters because living masters are nothing but death. People love dead masters because they cannot do anything to you. It is beautiful to worship Buddha, it is very, very convenient to worship Jesus; it is difficult to come close to me. It was difficult to come close to Buddha too when he was alive. Remember the paradox: when Buddha was alive he was death, hence the fear. Now Buddha is dead there is no problem – you can worship, you can hold the statue of Buddha close to your heart. Now Buddha is just a toy, he is in your hands. He cannot destroy your ego. In fact, your ego will use him. Even Buddha, Jesus, Krishna, are used by the ego to become stronger. Only a living master is fire enough – aflame enough to burn you totally, utterly, absolutely. Satsang, to be with the master, is the ultimate in love and the beginning of death.
Your insight is beautiful, a gift of your meditativeness, of your love for me, of your love for the commune. Go on moving in the same direction, don’t go astray. Many fears will arise. Many times the mind will say, “Go back! It is too dangerous.” Don’t listen to the mind, listen to the heart. The heart knows what is right, the heart feels what is right. It is a feeling. That’s why you don’t know; “I don’t know for what, toward what.” The movement is happening. You cannot know it, but you can feel it; the feeling is there. And one day the feeling becomes knowing.
When feeling becomes knowing, you have become enlightened. Knowledge is not real knowing. When feeling becomes knowing, you are enlightened. The moment feeling becomes knowing, there is no distinction between being and knowing, and that is wisdom. Then your heart starts pouring out not only your joy, not only your songs, but your wisdom too. That’s how all the great scriptures were born.
Mohammed was an ignorant person, illiterate, but when this knowing, this feeling, this being, happened – when he managed to die in the love of God – this illiterate, ignorant person started pouring out immensely beautiful verses. The Koran has tremendous beauty; both simplicity and beauty together. It is not complex. It has the beauty of the roses, the stars; it has the music of the birds, and the wind passing through the pine trees, and the sound of running water. And it came out of a man who never knew how to read, how to write, who had no knowledge, but who had a heart. In fact, because he had no knowledge it was easy for him to feel, and it was easy for him to dive deep into feeling, so deep that he touched the very rock bottom of his being.
And this is how Jesus speaks. His prose is not prose, it is poetry; there is no comparison. Jesus’ statements have such poetry in them, they are incomparable; so are Buddha’s. They are all unique in their own way; they are peaks, different peaks reaching beyond the clouds. But one thing is exactly the same for all their statements – they are all rooted in the same experience. The experience is not of knowledge; the experience is first of feeling and then of being.
Go on moving in the same direction, unafraid. That’s why I am here with you – to help you; that’s what sannyas is all about. When dangers arise and when your mind starts thinking of escaping, I have to keep you, I have to hold you. I have to go on pushing you, I have to go on persuading you. If you can listen, and if you can gather courage, and if you can go through this dark night of the soul, the dawn is not far away. In fact, when the night is darkest, the dawn is closest.
The second question:
Osho,
It appears that the pattern of human behavior is almost always this: we search for food, shelter and clothing, then money, power and prestige. And having attained these, we then search for God. Would it not make matters much simpler to somehow impress upon our young ones to begin with God?
Zareen, there is a hierarchy of needs, and you cannot bypass any step. If you bypass any step you will have to come back to it again. Life has an intrinsic logic in it. Each step has its own place and you cannot miss a single step. Otherwise the chain will be broken and your life will become discontinuous, your life will become chaos.
There is a hierarchy of needs: body, mind, soul, God.
First the bodily needs have to be fulfilled. If they are not fulfilled you cannot have the higher needs arising – impossible. The hungry person cannot think of music. If you start playing the guitar in front of a hungry person, there is every possibility that he may retaliate in anger. He may throw your guitar, he may break your guitar because it is insulting, it is humiliating.
Once, in America, Vivekananda was asked, “Why do you have to teach here? Why don’t you teach in India?” He said, “Here I can talk about Vedanta, the ultimate truth. But in India, seeing people hungry, I feel ashamed of talking about God, ultimate realization. It is insulting to those poor people. They need bread.”
Jesus is right when he says man cannot live by bread alone, but this is only half a statement. The other half should not be forgotten: man cannot live without bread either. And in fact, the bread is fundamental, your body is fundamental. If your body is ill, hungry, in pain, you cannot compose poetry, you cannot paint; or even if you paint, your painting will be that of suffering. If you compose music, your music will be nothing but your cry, your scream, If you write poetry, your poetry will be political. Your poetry will not be poetry at all but slogans. The bodily needs have to be fulfilled first; don’t get stuck there.
This has to be remembered. The children have to be helped to go beyond the body, but they cannot bypass it. They have to be helped to know the joys of the mind, the beauties of the mind: art, poetry, painting, music, the great joys of the mind. When they are fulfilled then the third need arises, the need of the soul. Then meditation becomes important.
Only a person who has lived deeply in music is capable of meditation because music prepares the background, creates the space, the context, in which meditation becomes simple. And the person whose soul needs are fulfilled, whose meditation needs are fulfilled, will be able to pray. Prayer is the fragrance of the flower of meditation. That is the ultimate.
You say, “Would it not make matters much simpler to somehow impress upon our young ones to begin with God?” That’s what people have been doing, that’s what you have been doing, that’s what has been done down the ages. It is being impressed upon children to begin with God, but they cannot because all three steps of the temple are missing and they cannot enter. Those steps are much needed. That’s why our temples have become false. Our temples are arbitrary, artificial; our temples are creations of the mind – with good intentions, of course.
Now Zareen is asking us, with good intentions, to help the children. But this is not the way to help, this is the way to hinder. That’s how people have become irreligious. They are Christians, they are Mohammedans, they are Parsis, they are Hindus, but they are not religious. We have created artificial gods. We adults had to create artificial gods because our own needs are not grown up.
In contacting the real God, these steps cannot be made hurriedly. These things are not like seasonal flowers; they are great trees, cedars of Lebanon, they take hundreds of years to grow. Lives are nothing; time is not the question at all. And one should go very scientifically.
First, fulfill the needs of the body. But what do we do? – we condemn the body. Rather than fulfilling its needs, rather than helping a child to enjoy the joys of the body, we condemn the body. The body has many joys of its own: the joy of running, the joy of surfing, the joy of swimming, the joy of jogging, the joy of climbing a mountain. These are all physical joys, of tremendous value. When one is climbing a mountain alone, the body has a thrill of its own, its own ecstasy.
First teach the child bodily ecstasy. Let him dance as totally as possible, so he can feel his own body. There are millions of people who don’t have any feel for their own body. They use the body, just like a mechanical device around them, but they don’t have a feel for it. They live in the body, but they are not bridged to the body. They don’t know the joys of the body. The children first have to be taught the physical joys. Help them to climb trees, help them to run, help them to swim, help them to dance. Help them to do physical yoga, Hatha yoga, so they can get the feel of their bodies, so they can feel their bodies as alive phenomena. Not as something dead around them, not as something disconnected, not as a machine to be used. So that they can have respect for the body, love for the body; so their bodies can become sacred temples.
And don’t be in a hurry. The next step has to be taken very slowly. The movement from the body to the mind has to be very, very delicate because you are moving from the gross to the subtle. The movement cannot be very direct; it has to be very indirect. Slowly, slowly, let the child know about music, poetry; let the child know about great paintings, architecture. Let the child enjoy the exercise of his mind.
And then, when the child is ready, when he has fulfilled his mind needs, help him to meditate. Nothing should be done in haste. Let everything ripen; help everything to become mature. Just remember one thing: the child should not get stuck anywhere. There are many who have become stuck in the body, the physical pleasure; then sex remains the center of their life. There are many who have got stuck in the mind; then thinking, philosophizing and logic – and the joys of thinking and philosophizing and logic – remain with them for their whole lives. These people are half grown.
Before the child gets stuck, push him to the next level, the next plane: help him to meditate. Only after meditation is prayer possible because only if you have learned to experience your own soul can you experience the universal soul. If you cannot know your own soul, how can you know the soul of the whole universe? If you cannot look deep into a drop of water, how can you see into the ocean? – impossible. Prayer is the ultimate fragrance.
But what happens is you start teaching the children prayer first. That’s where you go wrong. You start teaching them about God. They have not yet asked about God, they are not worried about God, that is not their concern – and you start implanting ideas in their minds. The question has not yet arisen in their hearts and you start stuffing them with answers. Into their immature minds, you go on putting conditions, indoctrinations, philosophies – which will remain just as baggage, as a burden. The children will be Christians and Hindus and Mohammedans, but they will not be religious, ever. In fact, because of your indoctrination they will hate you, and they will hate your gods, and they will hate your temples, and they will hate your priests. Although they will go to church on Sunday and they will go to the priest to marry, these will simply be formalities because it is the accepted thing in society. Deep down they will hate, deep down they will have no love for all this.
Parents, without being aware that they themselves are not religious, have been trying to help their children become religious. Do you really know that God is? You have become concerned about the children, but this may just be a way of escaping from your own problems. Do you know God is? Have you felt God yourself?
If you have known godliness, if you have felt it, this question would not arise because then you would see that there is a logical sequence of growth: the body, the mind, the soul, and ultimately God. You cannot bypass any step. If you bypass one, something will be missing. And there is every possibility you will have to come back to that missing part.
Let every part of your being be saturated, contented, so there is no need to look back and you can go ahead and ahead and ahead.
The third question:
Osho,
Why am I afraid of women?
It is not your personal question, it is almost universal. All men are afraid of women and all women are afraid of men – because all people are afraid of love. The fear is of love. Hence men are afraid of women because they are the object of their love, and women are afraid of men because they are the object of their love.
We are afraid of love because love is a small death. Love requires that we should surrender and we don’t want to surrender at all. We would like the other to surrender, we would like the other to be a slave. But the same desire is on each side: the man wants the woman to be a slave, and of course the woman wants the man to be a slave; the desire is the same. Their methods of enslaving each other may be different, but the desire is the same.
Man’s methods are crude, the woman’s methods are more subtle. If the man wants to destroy the woman’s freedom, he may beat her. If the woman wants to destroy the man’s freedom, she may beat herself – and that is far more effective, remember. She may cry and weep, that is far cleverer too, that leaves the man absolutely defenseless. If you hit somebody the other can retaliate, react, the other can hit you, or at least defend themselves. But if you hit yourself, then the other cannot do anything. The other is simply defenseless, is simply defeated.
So men only think that they are the masters in the home, the women know far better. But they never declare their mastery. In fact, they do not need to declare it because it is so certain. Man has to declare it because he is uncertain, hesitant. And the woman always agrees with him, “Yes, you are the master.” She can afford to agree, she knows far better.
It is very rare to find a husband who is not henpecked. In fact, to be a husband means to be henpecked because I have not yet come across a husband who is not. The word henpecked is superfluous, husband is enough because the ways of the feminine mind are so subtle that the cruder ways of man never succeed.
It is said…
A king was talking with his ministers one day and the conversation moved onto the perennial subject of men and women. Somebody said, “In your court everyone is henpecked.”
The king was offended. He said, “This cannot be so.”
But the man insisted. He said, “Not only in your court. In your whole capital you cannot find a single man who is not henpecked.”
The king was so offended he immediately called one of his wisest men. He gave him his two most precious horses, one black, one white, and told him, “Take these two horses and let whoever you are convinced is not henpecked choose one. If he wants the black horse he can have it, or the white one if he chooses that. Give it to him as a gift.”
The wise man left. Days passed, weeks and months passed, but the wise man could not find anyone who was not henpecked. Finally, in a hilly place, he came upon a very strong man, just sitting outside, sunning himself. The wise man was impressed, he had never seen such a man before. He said to himself, “Here is a man who must be master of his house.”
He asked him, “Who is the master of the house? Be truthful.”
The man simply showed his fists and his muscles. They were so big that even the wise man became afraid. The big man said, “Just look at my muscles. What do you think? Who else could be master of this house?”
The wise man asked, “Where is your wife?”
She was a very lean and thin woman. The man could have killed her at any moment, could have just crushed her with his hands. She was working in a corner, cooking something.
The man said, “That’s my wife.”
The wise man was absolutely satisfied that this man must be the master. So he said, “You can choose. The king has said you can choose the white or the black horse, either, whichever you want.”
The man looked at the woman and said, “Lalou’s mother, which one should I choose?”
And the wise man said, “You don’t get either. If Lalou’s mother is going to decide, we’re finished.”
That lean, thin woman was going to decide. This is the situation. Man tries in his way to somehow possess the woman; the woman tries to possess the man. The woman is afraid because the man can be physically violent. The man is afraid because the woman is psychologically very, very clever; very, very powerful.
You ask me “Why am I afraid of women?” You are afraid of love; you are afraid of losing your ego. You are asking the wrong question. And remember, the mind always tries to give you the wrong question. A little twist, a little turn, and the question is wrong. Now, you ask, “Why am I afraid of women?” The question seems to be perfectly all right – it is not. It is the wrong question. You should have asked: “Why am I afraid of love?” – and then it would have been the right question. But many times we ask the wrong one, thinking it is right.
Before you decide to ask me a question, meditate over it. Look at it from all sides. Sleep on it for a few days so that it becomes truer and truer – because if you ask me a true question my answer will be of immense help to you. But if your question is wrong in the first place, then my answer cannot be of any help. Be straight, be down to earth. And don’t be in a hurry to ask, meditate over the question, look at it from all possible sides. First try to find your own answers. Do your homework first and then you will be able to ask the right question. In fact, to ask the right question is almost half the answer.
The story is told of a Russian who came to a Welsh village to contact a spy named Jones. Approaching the stationmaster, he inquired where Mr. Jones lived.
“Oh, there’s lots of Joneses,” the villager replied. “I’m Jones the stationmaster, and there’s Jones the postman, and…”
The Russian leaned close to the stationmaster’s ear. “It’s raining in Birmingham today,” he whispered significantly.
“Oh,” said the stationmaster, “it must be Jones the spy you’re looking for. Why didn’t you say so straight off?”
Be straight. Never zigzag. Your question is basically, “Why am I afraid of love?” But you may be afraid to even ask the question because nobody wants to say “I am afraid of love.” Even to say it feels embarrassing, so we go on asking other questions. We never ask exactly the question that we need to ponder over. We ask other questions, very close to it, but not exactly it.
And this is not the first time that such a question has come to me. Almost every day some woman asks “Why am I afraid of men?” some man asks, “Why am I afraid of women?” Everybody seems to be afraid of everybody else.
And just look – what can the poor woman do to you? What can the poor man do to you? We are all in the same boat. We are afraid, certainly, but we are not really afraid of each other.
A defeated politician, after days and days of vainly looking for a job, is walking home in despair, when he suddenly sees the tent of a big circus. He decides to try his luck and asks the director of the circus for a job.
“The only person we need is a tightrope walker,” replies the director.
The politician feels afraid, but still accepts.
That evening, he is dressed as a monkey.
“Ladies and gentlemen. Now admire the flying monkey.”
The terrified politician climbs up a ladder until he reaches a rope. Trembling, he starts walking along the rope until, overwhelmed by the lights, the emotion and the crowd, he loses his balance and is about to fall.
Suddenly, he sees a pack of lions climbing on top of each other, trying to reach him. Sure that his last moment has come, he starts to pray when he hears: “Don’t worry, brother, we are all defeated politicians.”
Don’t be afraid of women. They are really afraid of you. You are afraid of them unnecessarily and creating much fuss, much noise, for no reason at all. And both sides are missing the point. The point is: the fear of love.
Love frightens, scares, because love demands something which you are not ready to pay. Love asks you to drop the ego, that is the price love asks for. Without paying the price you cannot attain to love, and our whole life is an effort to attain to love without paying the price. Hence fear, jealousy, possessiveness, and all kinds of things arise in life, but not love. We go on hoping against hope that there may be some way we can save our ego and still be in love. It is impossible, it is not in the nature of things.
So if you want to be in love, the first thing to do is decide: “I am ready to drop the ego.” And remember, you are not surrendering to the woman; neither is the woman surrendering to you. That is a fallacy; the wrong approach has given you that idea. You are both surrendering to some unknown god of love. You are both surrendering to something invisible. You are not surrendering to each other, not at all. That is the wrong approach and because of that it becomes difficult to surrender: “Why should I surrender to somebody else? That means her ego will be more fulfilled.” And she also thinks, “Why should I surrender to somebody? His ego will be more fulfilled. Who is he? Why should I surrender to him?”
Remember, those who have looked deeply into this matter have something else to say. My own observation is that lovers don’t surrender to each other, they surrender to something unknown that exists between them. They surrender to love. Call it “the god of love” – they both surrender to the god of love. Hence, nobody’s ego is fulfilled by your surrender; both the egos disappear in love.
If you go with this understanding, all fear of women will disappear. There is nothing to be afraid of. On the other side there is the same trembling heart as yours, with the same fears. You will feel compassion rather than fear. Both will help each other rather than frightening each other, because both are in the same boat.
But remember, the surrender is on the altar of love, neither to man nor to woman. Down the ages you have been taught that lovers surrender to each other. That is utter nonsense, it must have been said by people who don’t know what love is. Lovers never surrender to each other, lovers simply surrender to love. Yes, lovers lose their egos, but they don’t give them to each other. Their egos simply evaporate.
Lovers don’t become dependent on each other; they are not enslaved by each other. On the contrary, love gives freedom. Lovers are the most free people in the world. They help each other to become more and more free because freedom brings joy, and meeting out of freedom has immense beauty. When two lovers meet not out of some kind of bondage but out of freedom, there is benediction.
The fourth question:
Osho,
You once said that this is a very beautiful world, but it is in the wrong hands. I agree, with all my being, I feel it. But how can we stop the greedy hands which are torturing nature and enslaving men if we don't fight and struggle? Is not the destruction of the old necessary for the building of the new?
Giovanni, this is one of the oldest traps into which man has fallen again and again. Yes, I say, “This world is a very beautiful world, but it is in the wrong hands,” and immediately your mind starts thinking how to destroy those wrong people, how to take the world from out of the hands of those wrong people. Rather than transforming yourself, rather than transforming your own mind, you immediately start thinking in terms of politics. I talk religion, you immediately interpret it as politics.
And it looks logical because it seems perfectly right: “How can we stop those greedy hands which are torturing nature and enslaving men if we don’t fight and struggle?”
But do you think if you fight and struggle you will be able to transform the world and its situation? By fighting and struggling you will just become like those people against whom you are fighting and struggling; that is one of the fundamental laws of life. Choose your enemies very carefully. Your friends you can choose without any care; there is no need to be worried about your friends because they don’t have the same impact on you, don’t affect you as much as your enemies. One has to be very careful with your enemies because you will have to fight them; and in fighting, you will have to use the same strategies as them, the same tactics. And you will use those strategies and tactics for years and years; they will condition you. Down the ages, that’s how it has happened.
Joseph Stalin proved a far more dangerous czar than the actual Czars that ruled Russia before communism took over. Why? – because he learned his strategy from the Czars. Fighting the Czars, he had to learn the same ways and means, the ways and means that they were using; his whole life was spent fighting, practicing violence. By the time Joseph Stalin came to power he was far more dangerous than the Czars because, obviously, he had succeeded against them. He must have been more cunning, must have been more violent, must have been more ambitious, must have been more Machiavellian. Otherwise it would have been impossible for him to win against the Czars.
And he did the same as the Czars on a far greater scale: he defeated all the new Czars. All the old Czars put together never did so much violence, so much murder, as Joseph Stalin did alone. He had learned the lessons very well; it is suspected that he killed Lenin, the leader of the revolution. Lenin was ill and, in the guise of medicine, he was slowly, slowly, poisoned. While Lenin was alive Joseph Stalin was the number three man because another man, Leon Trotsky, was number two. So the first thing was to destroy Lenin – he killed Lenin. And the second was to kill Trotsky – he killed Trotsky. Then he was in power, and once he was in power he started killing everybody. By and by, all the highest communist leaders, the members of the Politburo, were killed by Stalin. They had to be removed because they all knew the same strategies. This has happened with all revolutions.
Now when I say, “This world is a very beautiful world, but it is in the wrong hands,” I don’t mean that you start fighting those hands. What I mean is, please don’t be those wrong hands, that’s all. I don’t teach revolution, I teach rebellion – and there is a great difference. Revolution is political, rebellion is religious. Revolution means you have to organize yourself as a party, as an army, and fight against an enemy. Rebellion means you rebel as an individual; you simply get out of the whole rut. And at the very least you should not destroy nature.
If more and more people become dropouts the world can be saved. It will be a true, nonpolitical, revolution; it will be spiritual – if more and more people get out of the old mind and its ways, if more and more people become loving, if more and more people are non-ambitious, if more and more people are non-greedy, if more and more people are no longer interested in power politics, in prestige, in respectability.
That’s what sannyas is all about. Sannyas is dropping out of the old, rotten game and living your life on your own. It is not a struggle against the old, it is simply getting out of the clutches of the old – and this is the only way to weaken it, this is the only way to destroy it. If the millions of people in the world simply get out of the clutches of the politicians, the politicians will die on their own accord. You cannot fight with them; if you fight you become a politician yourself. If you struggle against them you become greedy yourself, ambitious yourself; that is not going to help.
Be a dropout. You have a short life, don’t waste it struggling and fighting. You may be here for only fifty years, sixty years, seventy years. You can’t hope to transform the world, but you can still hope to enjoy and love the world. Use the opportunity of this life to celebrate as much as possible. I am not creating a political force here, no, not at all. All political revolutions have failed so utterly that only blind people can go on believing in them. Those who have eyes are bound to teach you something new.
This is something new. It has been done before, but not on such a large scale. Millions of people have to become dropouts; we have to do it on a large scale. By dropping out, I don’t mean that you leave society and go to the mountains. You live in society, but you leave the ambition, you leave the greed, you leave the hatred. You live in the society and are loving; live in the society as a nobody. That is the pure essence of sannyas: living as a nobody, with no greed, with no ambition. Then you can enjoy and you can celebrate. And by celebrating and enjoying, you will spread ripples of ecstasy to other people.
We can change the whole world, but not by struggle, not this time; enough is enough. We have to change this world not by struggle but by celebrating, by dancing, by singing, by music, by meditation, by love. Certainly, the old has to cease for the new to be, but please don’t misinterpret me.
Giovanni is an Italian and modern Italy is really too political; its whole thinking is political. The whole Italian mind is obsessed with politics. Maybe one of the reasons is that they are fed up with the Catholic Vatican and the Pope and all that nonsense. They have seen too much of it and moved to the other extreme.
Certainly the old has to cease – but the old is within you, not without. I am not talking about the old structure of society, I am talking about the old structure of your mind: that has to cease for the new to be. A single man dropping the old structure of the mind creates such a great space for many to transform their lives that it is incredible, unimaginable, unbelievable. A single man transforming himself becomes a trigger; his presence becomes a catalyst and many more start changing.
This is the rebellion I teach. You drop out of the old structure, you drop out of the old greed, you drop out of the old idealism. You become a silent, meditative, loving person. Be more in the dance, and see what happens. Sooner or later, somebody is bound to join you in the dance and then more and more people. That is how it happened here.
Lao Tzu says that you need not go outside your room; everything can happen just by living inside your room. But Lao Tzu had to go out; he used to go out on his buffalo, moving from one village to another. I have simply followed his advice – I never go outside my room. Little Hasya lives in Lao Tzu and other kids ask her, “Do you see Osho walking around the house sometimes?” But she has not seen me yet, so what can she say? I am just living in my room, and you have all come from different corners of the world. It is a miracle. Why have you come? And many more are on their way, they will be here soon. This place is going to become a tremendous force in the world, a transforming force in the world. It is going to become a spiritual explosion – but we are not to fight with anybody and we are not to struggle with anybody.
I have no political leanings; I am utterly against politics. Yes, the old has to cease for the new to be, but the old has to cease within you, then the new will be there. And once the new is within you it is infectious, contagious; it starts spreading into other people.
Joy is contagious. Laugh, and you see others start laughing. So is it with sadness; be sad, and somebody looking at your long face suddenly becomes sad. We are not separate, we are joined together, so when somebody’s heart starts laughing many other hearts are touched, sometimes even faraway.
You have come from such faraway places. Somehow my laughter has reached you, somehow my love has reached you. Somehow, in some mysterious way, my being has touched your being and you have come here against all the difficulties. A thousand and one difficulties are being created and they will be more and more. Although I am not struggling against anybody, those in power are still afraid because they cannot think there can be a man with no political leanings. They cannot believe that there can be a man who can attract thousands of people and will not use the power of those people to attain political power, political status. They cannot believe it. How can they believe it? They can only understand the way they understand.
So the politicians are afraid and creating every kind of barrier, but that is not going to hinder anybody. In fact, it is going to help me tremendously. It will be a challenge to all courageous people. It may prevent a few cowards – and that is good because they will not be of any use here. In fact, it will be a kind of screening: only the people who can benefit from me will reach here. So it is good; whatsoever hindrances are being created are good.
But I am not teaching you to struggle against anything. Whenever you struggle against something you become a reactionary because it is a reaction. You become obsessed with something; you are against it. And there is every possibility that the thing you are against will dominate you, maybe in a negative way, but it will dominate you.
Friedrich Nietzsche was very much against Jesus Christ. But my own analysis is that he was too impressed by Jesus Christ, just because he was against him. He was obsessed; he was really trying to become a Jesus Christ in his own right. His great book, Thus Spake Zarathustra, is an effort to create a new gospel. The language he uses, the metaphors he uses, the poetry he uses, certainly reminds one of Jesus Christ; and he was very much against him. If he could condemn Jesus, he would, immediately – he never missed a single opportunity – but one is reminded again and again of Jesus. He was obsessed.
When he went mad in the last phase of his life, he even started signing his letters “Anti-Christ Friedrich Nietzsche.” Even when he went mad he could not forget Christ. First he would write “Anti-Christ” and there he would sign. You can see the obsession, the deep jealousy of Jesus that dominated his whole life. It destroyed his immense creativity. He could have been a rebel, but he reduced himself to a reactionary. He could have brought something new to the world, but he did not; he remained obsessed with Jesus.
I am not against anything or anybody. I don’t want you to be free from something, I simply want you to be free. See the difference: freedom from is never total; that from keeps it trapped in the past. Freedom from can never be real freedom. Neither can freedom for be real freedom; that is a search for a new slavery. Freedom from and freedom for almost always go together as two sides of the same coin.
What I teach is simple freedom, neither from nor for, just freedom; neither against the past, nor for the future; just in the present.
The fifth question:
Osho,
I am getting on seventy-five, yet I hesitate to take sannyas. Why?
Seventy-five is nothing. Morarji Desai is eighty-four and he is not a sannyasin yet. And J. B. Kaplani is ninety-three and he is not a sannyasin yet. And Ravishankar Maharaj is ninety-five and he is not a sannyasin yet. Compared to these people, you are in the prime of your life. Enjoy it. Forget all about sannyas. Why be bothered with it? Seventy-five? You are quite young.
A 75-year-old man had just taken for his bride a 21-year-young luscious blonde. “You’re heading for a broken marriage,” warned a friend. “I’m telling you, the age difference will break you up.”
“What would you suggest?” asked the old groom.
“As soon as you get back from your honeymoon trip,” the friend advised, “fix up a room in your place, and take in a boarder.”
It sounded a wise policy to the old man, so he decided to try it.
After a time, the friend came to visit and was cordially received by the elderly bridegroom.
“And how’s the little bride?” the friend asked cautiously.
“Couldn’t be better!” the old man answered. “She’s in the family way.”
“Looks like my plan worked. And how is that boarder of yours?”
“Fine.” explained the old man. “And, by golly, she’s also in the family way.”
Seventy-five? This is the time to fool around. And you are thinking of sannyas? Wait. Wait until you are a hundred at least.
Great-great-grandma studied the newborn baby with obvious satisfaction. “If my memory doesn’t fail me,” she cackled, “it’s a boy.”
At least wait until the point where you cannot recognize who is a boy and who is a girl – then sannyas. That was the ancient way. In India people used to take sannyas only when they were of no worth at all. People used to take sannyas only when life was really finished, when there was nothing left.
An eagle-eyed mortician noticed an old crone shuffling away from a funeral service at his parlor and asked her how old she was.
“A hundred and one,” cackled the old lady proudly.
“Well, well,” said the mortician suavely. “Hardly worth going home, is it?”
Wait. When it is hardly worth going home, then you can become a sannyasin. That was the old way and because of it, sannyas never became the force it could have become.
But my sannyas is totally different, it has nothing to do with age. It has something to do with youth rather than old age. The younger you are, the more possibility there is of entering my sannyas. Even those who are old physically – but only the ones who are young spiritually – will feel attracted to it.
I am not teaching you to escape from life. I am not teaching you the other world. I am teaching you how to live this life with great gratitude, with immense joy, with ecstasy. I am not anti-life; I am all for life because to me life is God. There is no other God.
You tell me, “I am getting on seventy-five, yet I hesitate to take sannyas.” Why do you mention your age? The old idea in India is that after seventy-five one should become a sannyasin. But age has nothing to do with sannyas, at least not my idea of sannyas. The younger you are the better because you have more energy and more juice and more aliveness.
Sannyas needs all the juice, all the aliveness, because sannyas is not a shrinking but an expansion; it is not getting out of life and life’s context, running away from life and its complexities. My sannyas is living in life, in all its complexities, and yet remaining simple, remaining innocent. I am teaching you something of a great paradox: to be in the world and not be of it, to be in the world but not let the world be in you.
Why should you hesitate? The old sannyas can certainly make you hesitate. In fact, no intelligent person would go into the old way because it is so against nature, against life; only stupid people can be victims of it. Hesitation is perfectly right if you are thinking of becoming an old Indian sannyasin. Then, hesitation is perfectly right; that simply shows intelligence.
But if you are hesitating to become my sannyasin, that simply shows indecisiveness, not intelligence, because I am not telling you to leave anything. You will be the same, in the same world; everything will be the same. Only deep down, at the center of your being, will a new quality be added. I don’t take anything from you, I give something to you. I make you more, not less. A quality of meditativeness will be added to you, a subtle fragrance of prayer will be added to you. You will become more fragrant, more perfumed, so why hesitate?
You also ask me, “Why?” It must be confusion, a confusion between the old concept of sannyas and the new; this is troubling many Indians. At the very word sannyas, the idea of the old sannyas arises with all its connotations. And that is natural in a way because the old idea has existed for at least ten thousand years, and my new sannyas is only ten years old. Ten years are nothing against ten thousand years; ten thousand years of conditioning has gone very deep into the Indian mind.
So when Western people come, sannyas seems to be easy for them because they don’t have any old ideas. They have nothing to compare it with so they simply understand what I am saying. They see the beauty of it; they take a jump into it. But naturally when Indians come, somehow the old idea of sannyas lingers.
I have deliberately chosen the name “sannyas” – I could have chosen something else – and I have deliberately chosen orange, the ancient color of sannyas, for a certain reason: I want to destroy the old idea completely and this is the only way. I want to destroy the old idea absolutely and the only way is to create so many new sannyasins that the old sannyasins, few and far between, are completely lost in an ocean of orange.
It must be the old idea that is creating the hesitation. Just try to separate the old and the new. My sannyas has nothing to do with the old, it is an absolutely new concept. It is very worldly and yet very godly.
The last question:
Osho,
Listening to you, I have decided that until I have found God I will not leave any stone unturned. Please help me.
You are certainly hearing me, but not listening. God is not a goal. God has not to be achieved. The achieving mind is the only barrier to God. It is not a question of your “leaving no stone unturned.” It is not a question of willpower, it is a question of surrendering. Leave all the stones unturned. Don’t turn even a single stone, please. Why disturb the stones?
It is not a question of will, and you are thinking in terms of will. That’s what you have been told again and again: have great willpower; struggle, search, seek; only then can you find God. That’s all nonsense. God is never found by seeking, you have been misunderstanding me.
Two men were sitting in a doctor’s office and after a while they began to talk.
“I’m aching from arthritis,” said one man.
“Glad to meet you,” said the other. “I’m Willy from California.”
That’s what is happening between you and me. I am saying I am aching from arthritis, and you are saying that you are Willy from California.
The town band was doing its best, when someone in the audience called the piano player a bastard.
The leader beat a tattoo on the music stand with his baton and the players became silent.
“Who called my piano player a bastard?” he demanded.
“Who called that bastard a piano player?” a voice yelled from the back of the theater.
Something like that is happening between you and me. I am saying one thing, you are hearing something else.
I am not teaching the way of will, I am teaching the way of utter will-lessness. I am teaching you not to be strong but to be vulnerable. I am teaching you not the way of the male but the way of the female. Be more feminine. Be more delicate, vulnerable.
A man was driving across the continent. He put up for the night at a rural hostelry. There was a lovely view of peaceful meadows from the second floor, and a beautifully kept lawn just below the window.
However, during the night there was a cloudburst, and when the man awoke, the ground had disappeared under water fully five feet deep. This was surprising enough, but then the man spotted something even more unusual. A straw hat floated by, reached the boundary fence, turned and floated back. Three times this was repeated. The man rushed to the proprietor with a hushed, “Do you see what I see?”
“Sure,” laughed the proprietor. “That’s Uncle Henry. Stubborn old coot. He swore he was going to mow that lawn this morning, come hell or high water.”
That is not the way to find God. In fact, you need not go anywhere and you need not do anything to find God. God is already trying to find you. But wherever he comes you are gone. Just stand still or sit still so he can find you. He can never find you, or even if he finds you sometimes, you are not there; you are somewhere else. You are always somewhere else. It is not a question of finding God from your side: God is in search of you.
Please be quiet and still. Sometimes do nothing, sit silently, just wait, and he will find you. Certainly, he will find you. That’s how he found me, that’s how he always has. It is not that you reach him, it is always he who reaches you. Allow him to reach you. And that is possible only when you are open, surrendered, in deep trust; your heart becomes an open lotus.
Enough for today.
Osho,
For me, you are all the masters that have been before and all the masters that will come. More and more a strange knowing grows that only death is the door to a perfect union with this “I don't know what.” Death can make us see what loving the master, love, only gives us glimpses of. Is this not so?
Love is a small death, and death is great love. They are not two things. Love is a small wave in the ocean of death. Hence, as much as people are afraid of love, they are afraid of death too.
People love because life without love is meaningless. But they only pretend the game of love, they don’t go into it. They keep a distance from any deep commitment, from any total involvement. Because if they really go close in the world of love, the flame of love will burn their ego. If they don’t love, life is meaningless, but if they really love, the ego disappears, so they pretend, they believe, that they love. Hence they make a compromise, they go only so far. They don’t go to the deepest core of love, they only touch the surface.
But they cannot remain without love; without it they are utterly useless, they only vegetate, they don’t really love, they don’t really live. Then life is a desert with no significance, no song; then life is utterly futile. Loving and living are synonymous.
So people have to at least play the game of love. That keeps them involved, but they don’t really go into it. They keep out of it because if they really go into it, the ego disappears. Then they are no more, then godliness is: the experience of orgasm, of deep orgasmic joy, is the first experience of God. Godliness comes when two lovers meet and merge into each other. When two are no longer two, when that union happens, God penetrates you. Then the beyond comes to the earth, the sky meets the earth.
But rarely are you in an orgasmic unity; rarely are you so much in tune with the other that you are ready to sacrifice your ego. In fact, you go on doing the contrary. Your love is also an ornament for your ego; your love is also a new treasure to strengthen the ego, to gratify it. Rather than destroying the ego, your games of love go on nourishing it.
But your insight is absolutely right: love can only give you glimpses. If you allow the ego to disappear, love will make something of the unknown available to you. Love will teach you how to die; love is the first lesson of death. Death is the crescendo of love, the highest peak. Those who know how to love know how to die. Their death is not an end; it is a beginning, it is a birth, it is moving into the divine. It is transcending the human and entering the superhuman. It is transcending the mortal and entering the immortal. Death is a portal, a door.
But death is a door only if you have learned the lesson through love. Love is the school that prepares you for death. Love and life are synonymous: if you love you live. If you love and live you become capable of dying. Millions of people die, but without being capable of dying. They die in unconsciousness. Then death simply takes them back into another body; then death simply helps them to enter into another womb. And the whole wheel starts moving again, the same repetitive wheel.
Love makes you utterly conscious because love makes you alert, because love is light. It dispels all darkness, all unconsciousness. It becomes a lamp inside you. And if you have that lamp, death has a totally different quality, it is not death at all; it is life abundant, it is life infinite, it is life divine, it is life eternal – for those who die consciously.
Yes, you are right: “Death can make us see what loving the master, love, only gives us glimpses of. Is this not so?” It is so, but it is only love that will prepare you. The greater the love, the greater the preparation. Hence, one has to remain forever grateful toward all that love has contributed to your preparation, not just your love for your master. Even loving a tree, or a rock, or an animal; or your woman, your man, your child; even these loves prepare you for the great love that happens between the disciple and the master. All your loves are involved in it, implied in it.
Love toward the master is the whole spectrum of love. The way you have loved your woman will be there, the way you have loved your man will be there, the way you have loved your mother will be there, and the way you have loved your child will be there. The way you have loved music, the way you have loved poetry, painting, dancing; all your loves, the whole multiplicity of loves, all the dimensions of love, will join together. Between the master and the disciple, love comes in its whole spectrum. It becomes the whole rainbow, all the seven colors. And that love will prepare you for the ultimate quantum leap, death.
In the ancient scriptures, the master is defined as death. You will be surprised that ancient scriptures say: acharyo mrityuh – the master is death. If you have come to know the master, you are coming closer and closer to death. Coming very close to the master is coming closer to the ultimate death. One day the disciple and the master both disappear.
The master has already disappeared. The master is a person who has attained nothingness. The master is one who is already dead, who is no more, who is just an absolute emptiness. And of course, if you come close to the master, closer to somebody who is no more, it is going to destroy your ego utterly. That’s what disciplehood means, coming closer and closer to somebody who is no more. One day, through the master you will taste your first experience of death.
Hence, people avoid living masters because living masters are nothing but death. People love dead masters because they cannot do anything to you. It is beautiful to worship Buddha, it is very, very convenient to worship Jesus; it is difficult to come close to me. It was difficult to come close to Buddha too when he was alive. Remember the paradox: when Buddha was alive he was death, hence the fear. Now Buddha is dead there is no problem – you can worship, you can hold the statue of Buddha close to your heart. Now Buddha is just a toy, he is in your hands. He cannot destroy your ego. In fact, your ego will use him. Even Buddha, Jesus, Krishna, are used by the ego to become stronger. Only a living master is fire enough – aflame enough to burn you totally, utterly, absolutely. Satsang, to be with the master, is the ultimate in love and the beginning of death.
Your insight is beautiful, a gift of your meditativeness, of your love for me, of your love for the commune. Go on moving in the same direction, don’t go astray. Many fears will arise. Many times the mind will say, “Go back! It is too dangerous.” Don’t listen to the mind, listen to the heart. The heart knows what is right, the heart feels what is right. It is a feeling. That’s why you don’t know; “I don’t know for what, toward what.” The movement is happening. You cannot know it, but you can feel it; the feeling is there. And one day the feeling becomes knowing.
When feeling becomes knowing, you have become enlightened. Knowledge is not real knowing. When feeling becomes knowing, you are enlightened. The moment feeling becomes knowing, there is no distinction between being and knowing, and that is wisdom. Then your heart starts pouring out not only your joy, not only your songs, but your wisdom too. That’s how all the great scriptures were born.
Mohammed was an ignorant person, illiterate, but when this knowing, this feeling, this being, happened – when he managed to die in the love of God – this illiterate, ignorant person started pouring out immensely beautiful verses. The Koran has tremendous beauty; both simplicity and beauty together. It is not complex. It has the beauty of the roses, the stars; it has the music of the birds, and the wind passing through the pine trees, and the sound of running water. And it came out of a man who never knew how to read, how to write, who had no knowledge, but who had a heart. In fact, because he had no knowledge it was easy for him to feel, and it was easy for him to dive deep into feeling, so deep that he touched the very rock bottom of his being.
And this is how Jesus speaks. His prose is not prose, it is poetry; there is no comparison. Jesus’ statements have such poetry in them, they are incomparable; so are Buddha’s. They are all unique in their own way; they are peaks, different peaks reaching beyond the clouds. But one thing is exactly the same for all their statements – they are all rooted in the same experience. The experience is not of knowledge; the experience is first of feeling and then of being.
Go on moving in the same direction, unafraid. That’s why I am here with you – to help you; that’s what sannyas is all about. When dangers arise and when your mind starts thinking of escaping, I have to keep you, I have to hold you. I have to go on pushing you, I have to go on persuading you. If you can listen, and if you can gather courage, and if you can go through this dark night of the soul, the dawn is not far away. In fact, when the night is darkest, the dawn is closest.
The second question:
Osho,
It appears that the pattern of human behavior is almost always this: we search for food, shelter and clothing, then money, power and prestige. And having attained these, we then search for God. Would it not make matters much simpler to somehow impress upon our young ones to begin with God?
Zareen, there is a hierarchy of needs, and you cannot bypass any step. If you bypass any step you will have to come back to it again. Life has an intrinsic logic in it. Each step has its own place and you cannot miss a single step. Otherwise the chain will be broken and your life will become discontinuous, your life will become chaos.
There is a hierarchy of needs: body, mind, soul, God.
First the bodily needs have to be fulfilled. If they are not fulfilled you cannot have the higher needs arising – impossible. The hungry person cannot think of music. If you start playing the guitar in front of a hungry person, there is every possibility that he may retaliate in anger. He may throw your guitar, he may break your guitar because it is insulting, it is humiliating.
Once, in America, Vivekananda was asked, “Why do you have to teach here? Why don’t you teach in India?” He said, “Here I can talk about Vedanta, the ultimate truth. But in India, seeing people hungry, I feel ashamed of talking about God, ultimate realization. It is insulting to those poor people. They need bread.”
Jesus is right when he says man cannot live by bread alone, but this is only half a statement. The other half should not be forgotten: man cannot live without bread either. And in fact, the bread is fundamental, your body is fundamental. If your body is ill, hungry, in pain, you cannot compose poetry, you cannot paint; or even if you paint, your painting will be that of suffering. If you compose music, your music will be nothing but your cry, your scream, If you write poetry, your poetry will be political. Your poetry will not be poetry at all but slogans. The bodily needs have to be fulfilled first; don’t get stuck there.
This has to be remembered. The children have to be helped to go beyond the body, but they cannot bypass it. They have to be helped to know the joys of the mind, the beauties of the mind: art, poetry, painting, music, the great joys of the mind. When they are fulfilled then the third need arises, the need of the soul. Then meditation becomes important.
Only a person who has lived deeply in music is capable of meditation because music prepares the background, creates the space, the context, in which meditation becomes simple. And the person whose soul needs are fulfilled, whose meditation needs are fulfilled, will be able to pray. Prayer is the fragrance of the flower of meditation. That is the ultimate.
You say, “Would it not make matters much simpler to somehow impress upon our young ones to begin with God?” That’s what people have been doing, that’s what you have been doing, that’s what has been done down the ages. It is being impressed upon children to begin with God, but they cannot because all three steps of the temple are missing and they cannot enter. Those steps are much needed. That’s why our temples have become false. Our temples are arbitrary, artificial; our temples are creations of the mind – with good intentions, of course.
Now Zareen is asking us, with good intentions, to help the children. But this is not the way to help, this is the way to hinder. That’s how people have become irreligious. They are Christians, they are Mohammedans, they are Parsis, they are Hindus, but they are not religious. We have created artificial gods. We adults had to create artificial gods because our own needs are not grown up.
In contacting the real God, these steps cannot be made hurriedly. These things are not like seasonal flowers; they are great trees, cedars of Lebanon, they take hundreds of years to grow. Lives are nothing; time is not the question at all. And one should go very scientifically.
First, fulfill the needs of the body. But what do we do? – we condemn the body. Rather than fulfilling its needs, rather than helping a child to enjoy the joys of the body, we condemn the body. The body has many joys of its own: the joy of running, the joy of surfing, the joy of swimming, the joy of jogging, the joy of climbing a mountain. These are all physical joys, of tremendous value. When one is climbing a mountain alone, the body has a thrill of its own, its own ecstasy.
First teach the child bodily ecstasy. Let him dance as totally as possible, so he can feel his own body. There are millions of people who don’t have any feel for their own body. They use the body, just like a mechanical device around them, but they don’t have a feel for it. They live in the body, but they are not bridged to the body. They don’t know the joys of the body. The children first have to be taught the physical joys. Help them to climb trees, help them to run, help them to swim, help them to dance. Help them to do physical yoga, Hatha yoga, so they can get the feel of their bodies, so they can feel their bodies as alive phenomena. Not as something dead around them, not as something disconnected, not as a machine to be used. So that they can have respect for the body, love for the body; so their bodies can become sacred temples.
And don’t be in a hurry. The next step has to be taken very slowly. The movement from the body to the mind has to be very, very delicate because you are moving from the gross to the subtle. The movement cannot be very direct; it has to be very indirect. Slowly, slowly, let the child know about music, poetry; let the child know about great paintings, architecture. Let the child enjoy the exercise of his mind.
And then, when the child is ready, when he has fulfilled his mind needs, help him to meditate. Nothing should be done in haste. Let everything ripen; help everything to become mature. Just remember one thing: the child should not get stuck anywhere. There are many who have become stuck in the body, the physical pleasure; then sex remains the center of their life. There are many who have got stuck in the mind; then thinking, philosophizing and logic – and the joys of thinking and philosophizing and logic – remain with them for their whole lives. These people are half grown.
Before the child gets stuck, push him to the next level, the next plane: help him to meditate. Only after meditation is prayer possible because only if you have learned to experience your own soul can you experience the universal soul. If you cannot know your own soul, how can you know the soul of the whole universe? If you cannot look deep into a drop of water, how can you see into the ocean? – impossible. Prayer is the ultimate fragrance.
But what happens is you start teaching the children prayer first. That’s where you go wrong. You start teaching them about God. They have not yet asked about God, they are not worried about God, that is not their concern – and you start implanting ideas in their minds. The question has not yet arisen in their hearts and you start stuffing them with answers. Into their immature minds, you go on putting conditions, indoctrinations, philosophies – which will remain just as baggage, as a burden. The children will be Christians and Hindus and Mohammedans, but they will not be religious, ever. In fact, because of your indoctrination they will hate you, and they will hate your gods, and they will hate your temples, and they will hate your priests. Although they will go to church on Sunday and they will go to the priest to marry, these will simply be formalities because it is the accepted thing in society. Deep down they will hate, deep down they will have no love for all this.
Parents, without being aware that they themselves are not religious, have been trying to help their children become religious. Do you really know that God is? You have become concerned about the children, but this may just be a way of escaping from your own problems. Do you know God is? Have you felt God yourself?
If you have known godliness, if you have felt it, this question would not arise because then you would see that there is a logical sequence of growth: the body, the mind, the soul, and ultimately God. You cannot bypass any step. If you bypass one, something will be missing. And there is every possibility you will have to come back to that missing part.
Let every part of your being be saturated, contented, so there is no need to look back and you can go ahead and ahead and ahead.
The third question:
Osho,
Why am I afraid of women?
It is not your personal question, it is almost universal. All men are afraid of women and all women are afraid of men – because all people are afraid of love. The fear is of love. Hence men are afraid of women because they are the object of their love, and women are afraid of men because they are the object of their love.
We are afraid of love because love is a small death. Love requires that we should surrender and we don’t want to surrender at all. We would like the other to surrender, we would like the other to be a slave. But the same desire is on each side: the man wants the woman to be a slave, and of course the woman wants the man to be a slave; the desire is the same. Their methods of enslaving each other may be different, but the desire is the same.
Man’s methods are crude, the woman’s methods are more subtle. If the man wants to destroy the woman’s freedom, he may beat her. If the woman wants to destroy the man’s freedom, she may beat herself – and that is far more effective, remember. She may cry and weep, that is far cleverer too, that leaves the man absolutely defenseless. If you hit somebody the other can retaliate, react, the other can hit you, or at least defend themselves. But if you hit yourself, then the other cannot do anything. The other is simply defenseless, is simply defeated.
So men only think that they are the masters in the home, the women know far better. But they never declare their mastery. In fact, they do not need to declare it because it is so certain. Man has to declare it because he is uncertain, hesitant. And the woman always agrees with him, “Yes, you are the master.” She can afford to agree, she knows far better.
It is very rare to find a husband who is not henpecked. In fact, to be a husband means to be henpecked because I have not yet come across a husband who is not. The word henpecked is superfluous, husband is enough because the ways of the feminine mind are so subtle that the cruder ways of man never succeed.
It is said…
A king was talking with his ministers one day and the conversation moved onto the perennial subject of men and women. Somebody said, “In your court everyone is henpecked.”
The king was offended. He said, “This cannot be so.”
But the man insisted. He said, “Not only in your court. In your whole capital you cannot find a single man who is not henpecked.”
The king was so offended he immediately called one of his wisest men. He gave him his two most precious horses, one black, one white, and told him, “Take these two horses and let whoever you are convinced is not henpecked choose one. If he wants the black horse he can have it, or the white one if he chooses that. Give it to him as a gift.”
The wise man left. Days passed, weeks and months passed, but the wise man could not find anyone who was not henpecked. Finally, in a hilly place, he came upon a very strong man, just sitting outside, sunning himself. The wise man was impressed, he had never seen such a man before. He said to himself, “Here is a man who must be master of his house.”
He asked him, “Who is the master of the house? Be truthful.”
The man simply showed his fists and his muscles. They were so big that even the wise man became afraid. The big man said, “Just look at my muscles. What do you think? Who else could be master of this house?”
The wise man asked, “Where is your wife?”
She was a very lean and thin woman. The man could have killed her at any moment, could have just crushed her with his hands. She was working in a corner, cooking something.
The man said, “That’s my wife.”
The wise man was absolutely satisfied that this man must be the master. So he said, “You can choose. The king has said you can choose the white or the black horse, either, whichever you want.”
The man looked at the woman and said, “Lalou’s mother, which one should I choose?”
And the wise man said, “You don’t get either. If Lalou’s mother is going to decide, we’re finished.”
That lean, thin woman was going to decide. This is the situation. Man tries in his way to somehow possess the woman; the woman tries to possess the man. The woman is afraid because the man can be physically violent. The man is afraid because the woman is psychologically very, very clever; very, very powerful.
You ask me “Why am I afraid of women?” You are afraid of love; you are afraid of losing your ego. You are asking the wrong question. And remember, the mind always tries to give you the wrong question. A little twist, a little turn, and the question is wrong. Now, you ask, “Why am I afraid of women?” The question seems to be perfectly all right – it is not. It is the wrong question. You should have asked: “Why am I afraid of love?” – and then it would have been the right question. But many times we ask the wrong one, thinking it is right.
Before you decide to ask me a question, meditate over it. Look at it from all sides. Sleep on it for a few days so that it becomes truer and truer – because if you ask me a true question my answer will be of immense help to you. But if your question is wrong in the first place, then my answer cannot be of any help. Be straight, be down to earth. And don’t be in a hurry to ask, meditate over the question, look at it from all possible sides. First try to find your own answers. Do your homework first and then you will be able to ask the right question. In fact, to ask the right question is almost half the answer.
The story is told of a Russian who came to a Welsh village to contact a spy named Jones. Approaching the stationmaster, he inquired where Mr. Jones lived.
“Oh, there’s lots of Joneses,” the villager replied. “I’m Jones the stationmaster, and there’s Jones the postman, and…”
The Russian leaned close to the stationmaster’s ear. “It’s raining in Birmingham today,” he whispered significantly.
“Oh,” said the stationmaster, “it must be Jones the spy you’re looking for. Why didn’t you say so straight off?”
Be straight. Never zigzag. Your question is basically, “Why am I afraid of love?” But you may be afraid to even ask the question because nobody wants to say “I am afraid of love.” Even to say it feels embarrassing, so we go on asking other questions. We never ask exactly the question that we need to ponder over. We ask other questions, very close to it, but not exactly it.
And this is not the first time that such a question has come to me. Almost every day some woman asks “Why am I afraid of men?” some man asks, “Why am I afraid of women?” Everybody seems to be afraid of everybody else.
And just look – what can the poor woman do to you? What can the poor man do to you? We are all in the same boat. We are afraid, certainly, but we are not really afraid of each other.
A defeated politician, after days and days of vainly looking for a job, is walking home in despair, when he suddenly sees the tent of a big circus. He decides to try his luck and asks the director of the circus for a job.
“The only person we need is a tightrope walker,” replies the director.
The politician feels afraid, but still accepts.
That evening, he is dressed as a monkey.
“Ladies and gentlemen. Now admire the flying monkey.”
The terrified politician climbs up a ladder until he reaches a rope. Trembling, he starts walking along the rope until, overwhelmed by the lights, the emotion and the crowd, he loses his balance and is about to fall.
Suddenly, he sees a pack of lions climbing on top of each other, trying to reach him. Sure that his last moment has come, he starts to pray when he hears: “Don’t worry, brother, we are all defeated politicians.”
Don’t be afraid of women. They are really afraid of you. You are afraid of them unnecessarily and creating much fuss, much noise, for no reason at all. And both sides are missing the point. The point is: the fear of love.
Love frightens, scares, because love demands something which you are not ready to pay. Love asks you to drop the ego, that is the price love asks for. Without paying the price you cannot attain to love, and our whole life is an effort to attain to love without paying the price. Hence fear, jealousy, possessiveness, and all kinds of things arise in life, but not love. We go on hoping against hope that there may be some way we can save our ego and still be in love. It is impossible, it is not in the nature of things.
So if you want to be in love, the first thing to do is decide: “I am ready to drop the ego.” And remember, you are not surrendering to the woman; neither is the woman surrendering to you. That is a fallacy; the wrong approach has given you that idea. You are both surrendering to some unknown god of love. You are both surrendering to something invisible. You are not surrendering to each other, not at all. That is the wrong approach and because of that it becomes difficult to surrender: “Why should I surrender to somebody else? That means her ego will be more fulfilled.” And she also thinks, “Why should I surrender to somebody? His ego will be more fulfilled. Who is he? Why should I surrender to him?”
Remember, those who have looked deeply into this matter have something else to say. My own observation is that lovers don’t surrender to each other, they surrender to something unknown that exists between them. They surrender to love. Call it “the god of love” – they both surrender to the god of love. Hence, nobody’s ego is fulfilled by your surrender; both the egos disappear in love.
If you go with this understanding, all fear of women will disappear. There is nothing to be afraid of. On the other side there is the same trembling heart as yours, with the same fears. You will feel compassion rather than fear. Both will help each other rather than frightening each other, because both are in the same boat.
But remember, the surrender is on the altar of love, neither to man nor to woman. Down the ages you have been taught that lovers surrender to each other. That is utter nonsense, it must have been said by people who don’t know what love is. Lovers never surrender to each other, lovers simply surrender to love. Yes, lovers lose their egos, but they don’t give them to each other. Their egos simply evaporate.
Lovers don’t become dependent on each other; they are not enslaved by each other. On the contrary, love gives freedom. Lovers are the most free people in the world. They help each other to become more and more free because freedom brings joy, and meeting out of freedom has immense beauty. When two lovers meet not out of some kind of bondage but out of freedom, there is benediction.
The fourth question:
Osho,
You once said that this is a very beautiful world, but it is in the wrong hands. I agree, with all my being, I feel it. But how can we stop the greedy hands which are torturing nature and enslaving men if we don't fight and struggle? Is not the destruction of the old necessary for the building of the new?
Giovanni, this is one of the oldest traps into which man has fallen again and again. Yes, I say, “This world is a very beautiful world, but it is in the wrong hands,” and immediately your mind starts thinking how to destroy those wrong people, how to take the world from out of the hands of those wrong people. Rather than transforming yourself, rather than transforming your own mind, you immediately start thinking in terms of politics. I talk religion, you immediately interpret it as politics.
And it looks logical because it seems perfectly right: “How can we stop those greedy hands which are torturing nature and enslaving men if we don’t fight and struggle?”
But do you think if you fight and struggle you will be able to transform the world and its situation? By fighting and struggling you will just become like those people against whom you are fighting and struggling; that is one of the fundamental laws of life. Choose your enemies very carefully. Your friends you can choose without any care; there is no need to be worried about your friends because they don’t have the same impact on you, don’t affect you as much as your enemies. One has to be very careful with your enemies because you will have to fight them; and in fighting, you will have to use the same strategies as them, the same tactics. And you will use those strategies and tactics for years and years; they will condition you. Down the ages, that’s how it has happened.
Joseph Stalin proved a far more dangerous czar than the actual Czars that ruled Russia before communism took over. Why? – because he learned his strategy from the Czars. Fighting the Czars, he had to learn the same ways and means, the ways and means that they were using; his whole life was spent fighting, practicing violence. By the time Joseph Stalin came to power he was far more dangerous than the Czars because, obviously, he had succeeded against them. He must have been more cunning, must have been more violent, must have been more ambitious, must have been more Machiavellian. Otherwise it would have been impossible for him to win against the Czars.
And he did the same as the Czars on a far greater scale: he defeated all the new Czars. All the old Czars put together never did so much violence, so much murder, as Joseph Stalin did alone. He had learned the lessons very well; it is suspected that he killed Lenin, the leader of the revolution. Lenin was ill and, in the guise of medicine, he was slowly, slowly, poisoned. While Lenin was alive Joseph Stalin was the number three man because another man, Leon Trotsky, was number two. So the first thing was to destroy Lenin – he killed Lenin. And the second was to kill Trotsky – he killed Trotsky. Then he was in power, and once he was in power he started killing everybody. By and by, all the highest communist leaders, the members of the Politburo, were killed by Stalin. They had to be removed because they all knew the same strategies. This has happened with all revolutions.
Now when I say, “This world is a very beautiful world, but it is in the wrong hands,” I don’t mean that you start fighting those hands. What I mean is, please don’t be those wrong hands, that’s all. I don’t teach revolution, I teach rebellion – and there is a great difference. Revolution is political, rebellion is religious. Revolution means you have to organize yourself as a party, as an army, and fight against an enemy. Rebellion means you rebel as an individual; you simply get out of the whole rut. And at the very least you should not destroy nature.
If more and more people become dropouts the world can be saved. It will be a true, nonpolitical, revolution; it will be spiritual – if more and more people get out of the old mind and its ways, if more and more people become loving, if more and more people are non-ambitious, if more and more people are non-greedy, if more and more people are no longer interested in power politics, in prestige, in respectability.
That’s what sannyas is all about. Sannyas is dropping out of the old, rotten game and living your life on your own. It is not a struggle against the old, it is simply getting out of the clutches of the old – and this is the only way to weaken it, this is the only way to destroy it. If the millions of people in the world simply get out of the clutches of the politicians, the politicians will die on their own accord. You cannot fight with them; if you fight you become a politician yourself. If you struggle against them you become greedy yourself, ambitious yourself; that is not going to help.
Be a dropout. You have a short life, don’t waste it struggling and fighting. You may be here for only fifty years, sixty years, seventy years. You can’t hope to transform the world, but you can still hope to enjoy and love the world. Use the opportunity of this life to celebrate as much as possible. I am not creating a political force here, no, not at all. All political revolutions have failed so utterly that only blind people can go on believing in them. Those who have eyes are bound to teach you something new.
This is something new. It has been done before, but not on such a large scale. Millions of people have to become dropouts; we have to do it on a large scale. By dropping out, I don’t mean that you leave society and go to the mountains. You live in society, but you leave the ambition, you leave the greed, you leave the hatred. You live in the society and are loving; live in the society as a nobody. That is the pure essence of sannyas: living as a nobody, with no greed, with no ambition. Then you can enjoy and you can celebrate. And by celebrating and enjoying, you will spread ripples of ecstasy to other people.
We can change the whole world, but not by struggle, not this time; enough is enough. We have to change this world not by struggle but by celebrating, by dancing, by singing, by music, by meditation, by love. Certainly, the old has to cease for the new to be, but please don’t misinterpret me.
Giovanni is an Italian and modern Italy is really too political; its whole thinking is political. The whole Italian mind is obsessed with politics. Maybe one of the reasons is that they are fed up with the Catholic Vatican and the Pope and all that nonsense. They have seen too much of it and moved to the other extreme.
Certainly the old has to cease – but the old is within you, not without. I am not talking about the old structure of society, I am talking about the old structure of your mind: that has to cease for the new to be. A single man dropping the old structure of the mind creates such a great space for many to transform their lives that it is incredible, unimaginable, unbelievable. A single man transforming himself becomes a trigger; his presence becomes a catalyst and many more start changing.
This is the rebellion I teach. You drop out of the old structure, you drop out of the old greed, you drop out of the old idealism. You become a silent, meditative, loving person. Be more in the dance, and see what happens. Sooner or later, somebody is bound to join you in the dance and then more and more people. That is how it happened here.
Lao Tzu says that you need not go outside your room; everything can happen just by living inside your room. But Lao Tzu had to go out; he used to go out on his buffalo, moving from one village to another. I have simply followed his advice – I never go outside my room. Little Hasya lives in Lao Tzu and other kids ask her, “Do you see Osho walking around the house sometimes?” But she has not seen me yet, so what can she say? I am just living in my room, and you have all come from different corners of the world. It is a miracle. Why have you come? And many more are on their way, they will be here soon. This place is going to become a tremendous force in the world, a transforming force in the world. It is going to become a spiritual explosion – but we are not to fight with anybody and we are not to struggle with anybody.
I have no political leanings; I am utterly against politics. Yes, the old has to cease for the new to be, but the old has to cease within you, then the new will be there. And once the new is within you it is infectious, contagious; it starts spreading into other people.
Joy is contagious. Laugh, and you see others start laughing. So is it with sadness; be sad, and somebody looking at your long face suddenly becomes sad. We are not separate, we are joined together, so when somebody’s heart starts laughing many other hearts are touched, sometimes even faraway.
You have come from such faraway places. Somehow my laughter has reached you, somehow my love has reached you. Somehow, in some mysterious way, my being has touched your being and you have come here against all the difficulties. A thousand and one difficulties are being created and they will be more and more. Although I am not struggling against anybody, those in power are still afraid because they cannot think there can be a man with no political leanings. They cannot believe that there can be a man who can attract thousands of people and will not use the power of those people to attain political power, political status. They cannot believe it. How can they believe it? They can only understand the way they understand.
So the politicians are afraid and creating every kind of barrier, but that is not going to hinder anybody. In fact, it is going to help me tremendously. It will be a challenge to all courageous people. It may prevent a few cowards – and that is good because they will not be of any use here. In fact, it will be a kind of screening: only the people who can benefit from me will reach here. So it is good; whatsoever hindrances are being created are good.
But I am not teaching you to struggle against anything. Whenever you struggle against something you become a reactionary because it is a reaction. You become obsessed with something; you are against it. And there is every possibility that the thing you are against will dominate you, maybe in a negative way, but it will dominate you.
Friedrich Nietzsche was very much against Jesus Christ. But my own analysis is that he was too impressed by Jesus Christ, just because he was against him. He was obsessed; he was really trying to become a Jesus Christ in his own right. His great book, Thus Spake Zarathustra, is an effort to create a new gospel. The language he uses, the metaphors he uses, the poetry he uses, certainly reminds one of Jesus Christ; and he was very much against him. If he could condemn Jesus, he would, immediately – he never missed a single opportunity – but one is reminded again and again of Jesus. He was obsessed.
When he went mad in the last phase of his life, he even started signing his letters “Anti-Christ Friedrich Nietzsche.” Even when he went mad he could not forget Christ. First he would write “Anti-Christ” and there he would sign. You can see the obsession, the deep jealousy of Jesus that dominated his whole life. It destroyed his immense creativity. He could have been a rebel, but he reduced himself to a reactionary. He could have brought something new to the world, but he did not; he remained obsessed with Jesus.
I am not against anything or anybody. I don’t want you to be free from something, I simply want you to be free. See the difference: freedom from is never total; that from keeps it trapped in the past. Freedom from can never be real freedom. Neither can freedom for be real freedom; that is a search for a new slavery. Freedom from and freedom for almost always go together as two sides of the same coin.
What I teach is simple freedom, neither from nor for, just freedom; neither against the past, nor for the future; just in the present.
The fifth question:
Osho,
I am getting on seventy-five, yet I hesitate to take sannyas. Why?
Seventy-five is nothing. Morarji Desai is eighty-four and he is not a sannyasin yet. And J. B. Kaplani is ninety-three and he is not a sannyasin yet. And Ravishankar Maharaj is ninety-five and he is not a sannyasin yet. Compared to these people, you are in the prime of your life. Enjoy it. Forget all about sannyas. Why be bothered with it? Seventy-five? You are quite young.
A 75-year-old man had just taken for his bride a 21-year-young luscious blonde. “You’re heading for a broken marriage,” warned a friend. “I’m telling you, the age difference will break you up.”
“What would you suggest?” asked the old groom.
“As soon as you get back from your honeymoon trip,” the friend advised, “fix up a room in your place, and take in a boarder.”
It sounded a wise policy to the old man, so he decided to try it.
After a time, the friend came to visit and was cordially received by the elderly bridegroom.
“And how’s the little bride?” the friend asked cautiously.
“Couldn’t be better!” the old man answered. “She’s in the family way.”
“Looks like my plan worked. And how is that boarder of yours?”
“Fine.” explained the old man. “And, by golly, she’s also in the family way.”
Seventy-five? This is the time to fool around. And you are thinking of sannyas? Wait. Wait until you are a hundred at least.
Great-great-grandma studied the newborn baby with obvious satisfaction. “If my memory doesn’t fail me,” she cackled, “it’s a boy.”
At least wait until the point where you cannot recognize who is a boy and who is a girl – then sannyas. That was the ancient way. In India people used to take sannyas only when they were of no worth at all. People used to take sannyas only when life was really finished, when there was nothing left.
An eagle-eyed mortician noticed an old crone shuffling away from a funeral service at his parlor and asked her how old she was.
“A hundred and one,” cackled the old lady proudly.
“Well, well,” said the mortician suavely. “Hardly worth going home, is it?”
Wait. When it is hardly worth going home, then you can become a sannyasin. That was the old way and because of it, sannyas never became the force it could have become.
But my sannyas is totally different, it has nothing to do with age. It has something to do with youth rather than old age. The younger you are, the more possibility there is of entering my sannyas. Even those who are old physically – but only the ones who are young spiritually – will feel attracted to it.
I am not teaching you to escape from life. I am not teaching you the other world. I am teaching you how to live this life with great gratitude, with immense joy, with ecstasy. I am not anti-life; I am all for life because to me life is God. There is no other God.
You tell me, “I am getting on seventy-five, yet I hesitate to take sannyas.” Why do you mention your age? The old idea in India is that after seventy-five one should become a sannyasin. But age has nothing to do with sannyas, at least not my idea of sannyas. The younger you are the better because you have more energy and more juice and more aliveness.
Sannyas needs all the juice, all the aliveness, because sannyas is not a shrinking but an expansion; it is not getting out of life and life’s context, running away from life and its complexities. My sannyas is living in life, in all its complexities, and yet remaining simple, remaining innocent. I am teaching you something of a great paradox: to be in the world and not be of it, to be in the world but not let the world be in you.
Why should you hesitate? The old sannyas can certainly make you hesitate. In fact, no intelligent person would go into the old way because it is so against nature, against life; only stupid people can be victims of it. Hesitation is perfectly right if you are thinking of becoming an old Indian sannyasin. Then, hesitation is perfectly right; that simply shows intelligence.
But if you are hesitating to become my sannyasin, that simply shows indecisiveness, not intelligence, because I am not telling you to leave anything. You will be the same, in the same world; everything will be the same. Only deep down, at the center of your being, will a new quality be added. I don’t take anything from you, I give something to you. I make you more, not less. A quality of meditativeness will be added to you, a subtle fragrance of prayer will be added to you. You will become more fragrant, more perfumed, so why hesitate?
You also ask me, “Why?” It must be confusion, a confusion between the old concept of sannyas and the new; this is troubling many Indians. At the very word sannyas, the idea of the old sannyas arises with all its connotations. And that is natural in a way because the old idea has existed for at least ten thousand years, and my new sannyas is only ten years old. Ten years are nothing against ten thousand years; ten thousand years of conditioning has gone very deep into the Indian mind.
So when Western people come, sannyas seems to be easy for them because they don’t have any old ideas. They have nothing to compare it with so they simply understand what I am saying. They see the beauty of it; they take a jump into it. But naturally when Indians come, somehow the old idea of sannyas lingers.
I have deliberately chosen the name “sannyas” – I could have chosen something else – and I have deliberately chosen orange, the ancient color of sannyas, for a certain reason: I want to destroy the old idea completely and this is the only way. I want to destroy the old idea absolutely and the only way is to create so many new sannyasins that the old sannyasins, few and far between, are completely lost in an ocean of orange.
It must be the old idea that is creating the hesitation. Just try to separate the old and the new. My sannyas has nothing to do with the old, it is an absolutely new concept. It is very worldly and yet very godly.
The last question:
Osho,
Listening to you, I have decided that until I have found God I will not leave any stone unturned. Please help me.
You are certainly hearing me, but not listening. God is not a goal. God has not to be achieved. The achieving mind is the only barrier to God. It is not a question of your “leaving no stone unturned.” It is not a question of willpower, it is a question of surrendering. Leave all the stones unturned. Don’t turn even a single stone, please. Why disturb the stones?
It is not a question of will, and you are thinking in terms of will. That’s what you have been told again and again: have great willpower; struggle, search, seek; only then can you find God. That’s all nonsense. God is never found by seeking, you have been misunderstanding me.
Two men were sitting in a doctor’s office and after a while they began to talk.
“I’m aching from arthritis,” said one man.
“Glad to meet you,” said the other. “I’m Willy from California.”
That’s what is happening between you and me. I am saying I am aching from arthritis, and you are saying that you are Willy from California.
The town band was doing its best, when someone in the audience called the piano player a bastard.
The leader beat a tattoo on the music stand with his baton and the players became silent.
“Who called my piano player a bastard?” he demanded.
“Who called that bastard a piano player?” a voice yelled from the back of the theater.
Something like that is happening between you and me. I am saying one thing, you are hearing something else.
I am not teaching the way of will, I am teaching the way of utter will-lessness. I am teaching you not to be strong but to be vulnerable. I am teaching you not the way of the male but the way of the female. Be more feminine. Be more delicate, vulnerable.
A man was driving across the continent. He put up for the night at a rural hostelry. There was a lovely view of peaceful meadows from the second floor, and a beautifully kept lawn just below the window.
However, during the night there was a cloudburst, and when the man awoke, the ground had disappeared under water fully five feet deep. This was surprising enough, but then the man spotted something even more unusual. A straw hat floated by, reached the boundary fence, turned and floated back. Three times this was repeated. The man rushed to the proprietor with a hushed, “Do you see what I see?”
“Sure,” laughed the proprietor. “That’s Uncle Henry. Stubborn old coot. He swore he was going to mow that lawn this morning, come hell or high water.”
That is not the way to find God. In fact, you need not go anywhere and you need not do anything to find God. God is already trying to find you. But wherever he comes you are gone. Just stand still or sit still so he can find you. He can never find you, or even if he finds you sometimes, you are not there; you are somewhere else. You are always somewhere else. It is not a question of finding God from your side: God is in search of you.
Please be quiet and still. Sometimes do nothing, sit silently, just wait, and he will find you. Certainly, he will find you. That’s how he found me, that’s how he always has. It is not that you reach him, it is always he who reaches you. Allow him to reach you. And that is possible only when you are open, surrendered, in deep trust; your heart becomes an open lotus.
Enough for today.