Osho on American Writer Carlos Castanedas

Carlos Castaneda was an American author and scholar in the mid and late 20th century. He is known for his written works about shamanism under the tutelage of a Yaqui (“Man of Knowledge”) named don Juan Matus. Castaneda wrote about his experiences with spiritual hallucinations and guidance to the ancient path of knowledge in almost all his works. Unsurprisingly, there is an element of skepticism in the sheer truthfulness and reality of his work that originated with his first publication – The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. While his writing and storytelling were appreciated, the authenticity was never unanimously given the go-ahead.

Castaneda attended the University of California, Los Angeles to study anthropology to feature in more of his works such as A Separate Reality and Journey to Ixtlan. He liked to live in anonymity and was quite evasive about his life. Castaneda rarely ever made public appearances and ceased to respond to any criticism or questions about his work. In his life of allegedly feigned spirituality, he wrote up to 10 international bestsellers and did not put down the pen till his death in 1998.

Osho talks about Carlos, “..But Carlos Castaneda is worth reading. When I say fiction I don’t mean don’t read him, I mean read him more carefully, because one percent of truth is there. You will have to read it very carefully, but don’t swallow it completely because it is ninety-nine percent fiction.

It can help your growth — it can create a desire to grow. That’s why I say it is beautiful. But it can hinder growth also if you take it at its surface value.

This man Carlos is really crafty, very clever. Rarely it happens, such cleverness — because it is very easy to create scientific fiction, not much imagination is needed, but to create spiritual fiction is very very difficult; one needs a great artistic and imaginary mind. Because things you don’t know, how can you even imagine them? That’s why I say one percent of truth is there. On that one percent of truth he has been able to create a big edifice. On that one percent of truth he has been able to project much imagination. On that one iota of truth he has made the whole house, a beautiful palace — a fairy tale. But that one percent of truth is there, otherwise it would have been impossible.”

Osho Says…..

The third technique:

THIS CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE SPIRIT OF GUIDANCE OF EACH ONE. BE THIS ONE.

The first thing is that you have the guide within you but you don’t use it. And you have not used it for so long, for so many lives, that you may not even be aware that a guide exists within you.

I was reading Castaneda’s book. His master, Don Juan, gives him a beautiful experiment to do. It is one of the oldest experiments. On a dark night, on a very hilly track, dangerous, without any light, Castaneda’s master said, “You simply believe in the inner guide and start running.” It was dangerous. It was a hilly track, unknown, with trees, bushes, abysses. He could fall anywhere. Even in the daylight he had to be alert walking there, and at night everything was dark. He could not see anything and his master said, “Don’t walk, run!” He couldn’t believe it! It was simply suicidal. He became scared — but the master ran. He ran off just like a wild animal, and came running back. And Castaneda could not understand how he was doing it. Not only was he running in this darkness, but each time he came running directly to him, as if he could see. Then by and by Castaneda gathered courage. If this old man could do this, why not he? He tried, and by and by he felt an inner light coming in. Then he started running.

You only ARE whenever you stop thinking. The moment you stop thinking, the inner happens. If you don’t think, everything is okay — it is as if some inner guide is working. Your reason has misguided you. And the greatest misguidance has been this: you cannot believe in the inner guide. First, you have to convince your reason. Even if your inner guide says, “Go ahead,” you have to convince your reason and then you miss opportunities. Because there are moments… you can use them or you can miss them. Intellect takes time, and while you are pondering, contemplating, thinking, you miss the moment. Life is not waiting for you. One has to live immediately. One has to be really a warrior — as they say in Zen — because when you are fighting in the field with your sword, you cannot think. You have to move without thinking.

Zen masters have used the sword as a technique for meditation, and they say in Japan that if two Zen masters, two meditative persons, are fighting with those swords, there can be no conclusion. No one can be defeated and no one is going to win, because both are not thinking. The swords are just not in their hands, they are in the hands of their inner guide, the non-thinking inner guide, and before the other attacks, the guide knows and defends. You cannot think about it because there is no time. The other is aiming at your heart. In a flash of a moment the sword will penetrate to the heart. There is no time to think about it, about what to do. When the thought, “penetrate the heart” occurs to him, simultaneously the thought, “defend” must occur to you — simultaneously, with no gap — only then can you defend. Otherwise you will be no more. So

they teach swordsmanship as a meditation and they say, “Be moment to moment with the inner guide, don’t think. Allow the inner being to do whatsoever happens to it. Don’t interfere with the mind.” This is very difficult because we are so trained with our minds. Our schools, our colleges, our universities, the whole culture, the whole pattern of civilization, teach our heads. We have lost contact with the inner guide. Everyone is born with that inner guide but it is not allowed to work, to function. It is almost paralyzed, but it can be revived.

This sutra is for that inner guide. THIS CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE SPIRIT OF GUIDANCE OF EACH ONE. BE THIS ONE. Don’t think with the head. Really, don’t think at all. Just move. Try it is some situations. It will be difficult, because the old habit will be to start thinking. You will have to be alert: not to think, but to feel inwardly what is coming to the mind. You may be confused many times because you will not be able to know whether it is coming from the inner guide or from the surface of the mind. But soon you will know the feeling, the difference. When something comes from the inner, it comes from your navel upwards. You can feel the flow, the warmth, coming from the navel upwards. Whenever your mind thinks, it is just on the surface, in the head, and then it goes down. If your mind decided something, then you have to force it down. If your inner guide decides, then something bubbles up in you. It comes from the deep core of your being towards the mind. The mind receives it, but it is not of the mind. It comes from beyond — and that is why the mind is scared about it. For reason it is reliable because it comes from behind — without any reason with it, without any proofs. It simply bubbles up.

Try it in certain situations. For example, you have lost your path in a forest. Try it. Don’t think — just close your eyes, sit down, be meditative, and don’t think. Because it is futile — how can you think? You don’t know. But thinking has become such a habit that you go on thinking even in moments when nothing can come out of it. Thinking can think only about something which is already known. You are lost in a forest, you don’t have any map, there is nobody you can ask. What are you thinking about? But still you think. That thinking will be just a worry, not a thinking. And the more you get worried, the less the inner guide can be competent. Be unworried. Sit down under a tree, and just allow thoughts to drop and subside. Just wait, don’t think. Don’t create the problem, just wait. And when you feel a moment of non-thinking has come, then stand up and start moving. Wheresoever your body moves, allow it to move. You just be a witness. Don’t interfere. The lost path can be found very easily. But the only condition is, “Don’t interfere with the mind.”

This has happened many times unknowingly. Great scientists say that whenever a great discovery has been made, it was never made by the mind; it was always made by the inner guide. Madame Curie was trying and trying to solve a mathematical problem. She did her best, all that was possible. Then she got fed up. For days together, weeks together, she had been working and nothing had come out. She was feeling just mad. No path was leading to the solution. Then one night, just exhausted, she fell down and slept. And in the night, in a dream, the conclusion bubbled up. She was so concerned with the conclusion that the dream was broken, she awoke. Immediately she wrote down the conclusion — because there was no process in the dream, just a conclusion. She wrote it down on a pad and then slept again. In the morning she was puzzled; the conclusion was right, but she didn’t know how it had been achieved. There was no process, no method. Then she tried to find the process; now it was an easier affair because the conclusion was in the hand, and it is easy to go back from the conclusion. She won the Nobel Prize because of this dream — but she always wondered how it happened.

When your mind gets exhausted and cannot do any more, it simply retires. In that moment of retirement the inner guide can give hints, clues, keys. The man who won the Nobel Prize for the inner structure of a human cell, saw it in a dream. He saw the whole structure of the human cell, the inner cell, in a dream, and then in the morning he just made a picture of it. He himself couldn’t believe that it could be so, so he had to work for years. After years of work he could conclude that the dream was true. With Madame Curie it happened that when she came to know this inner process of the inner guide, she decided to try it. Once there was a problem which she wanted to solve, so she thought, “Why worry about it, and why try? Just go to sleep.” She slept well, but there was no solution. So she was puzzled. Many times she tried: when there was a problem immediately she would go to sleep. But there was no solution. First, the intellect has to be tried, completely; only then can the solution bubble up. The head has to be completely exhausted otherwise it goes on functioning, even in a dream. So now scientists say that all the great discoveries are intuitive, not intellectual. This is what is meant by the inner guide.

THIS CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE SPIRIT OF GUIDANCE OF EACH ONE. BE THIS ONE. Lose the head and drop into this inner guide. It is there.

Old scriptures say that the master or the guru — the “outer” guru — can be helpful only in finding the inner guru. That is all. Once the outer guru has helped you to find the inner guru, the function of the outer guru is no more. You cannot reach to the truth through a master; you can reach only to the inner master through a master — and then this inner master will lead you to the truth. The outer master is just a representative, a substitute. He has his inner guide and he can feel your inner guide also, because they both exist on the same wavelength — they both exist in the same tuning and the same dimension.

If I have found my inner guide, I can look into you and feel your inner guide. And if I am really a guide to you, all my guidance will be to lead you to your inner guide.

Once you are in contact with the inner guide, I am no longer needed. Now you can move alone. So all that a guru can do is to push you down from your head to your navel, from your reasoning to your intuitive force, from your argumentative mind to your trusting guide. And it is not like this with only human beings, it is so with animals, with birds, with trees, with everything. The inner guide exists, and many new phenomena have been discovered which are mysteries. There are a number of cases. For example, the mother fish dies immediately after she lays the egg. Then the father helps the egg to be fertilized, and then he dies. The egg remains alone without a mother and without a father. It matures. Then a new fish is born. This fish doesn’t know anything about father, mother, parents; she doesn’t know from where they came. But although this particular fish lives in a particular part of the sea, she will move to the part from where the father and mother came to lay the eggs. She will move to the source. This has been happening again and again, and when she wans to lay an egg she will come to this bank, lay the egg, and die. So there is no communication between parents and their children but the children somehow know where they have to go, where they have to move — and they never miss. And you cannot misguide them. It has been tried, but you cannot misguide them. They will reach to the source. Some inner guide is working.

In Soviet Russia they have been experimenting with cats, with rats, and with many small animals. A cat, a mother cat, was separated from her children and the children were taken deep down into the sea; she could not know what was happening to her children. Every type of scientific instrument was attached to the cat to measure what was going on within her mind and her heart, and then one child was killed, deep in the sea. Immediately the mother became aware. Her blood-rate changed. She became puzzled and worried, her heartbeat increased.. as soon as the child was killed. And the scientific instrument said that she was feeling severe pain. Then after a while everything became normal. Then another child was killed — again the change. And the same with the third child. It happened every time, exactly at the same time, without any time-gap. What was happening? Now Soviet scientists say the mother has an inner guide, an inner feeling-center and it is joined to her children, wherever they are. And she immediately feels a telepathic relationship. The human mother will not feel so much. This is puzzling. It should be quite the otherwise: the human mother should feel more because she is more evolved. But she will not because the head has taken everything into its hands and the inner centers are all lying paralyzed.

THIS CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE SPIRIT OF GUIDANCE OF EACH ONE. BE THIS ONE.

Whenever you are puzzled in a situation and you cannot see how to get out of it, don’t think; just be in a deep non-thinking and allow the inner guide to guide you. In the beginning you will feel afraid, insecure, but soon, when you come every time to the right conclusion, when you come every time to the right door, you will gather courage and you will become trusting. If this trust happens, I call it faith. This really is religious faith — the trust in the inner guide. Reasoning is part of the ego. It is you believing in yourself. The moment you go deep within you, you have come to the very soul of the universe. Your inner guide is part of the Divine guidance. When you follow it, you follow the Divine; when you follow yourself, you are complicating things,

and you don’t know what you are doing. You may think yourself very wise. You are not.

Wisdom comes from the heart, it is not of the intellect. Wisdom comes from the innermost depth of your being, it is not of the head. Cut your head off, be headless — and follow the being, whatsoever, wheresoever it leads. Even if it leads into danger, go into danger, because that will be the path for you and your growth. Through that danger you will grow and become mature.

 Even if the inner guide leads you to death, go into it, because that is going to be the path for you. Follow it, trust it, and move with it.

Source:

This is an excerpt from the transcript of a public discourse by Osho in Buddha Hall, Shree Rajneesh Ashram, Pune. 

Discourse Series: Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 2

Chapter #37

Chapter title: Become each being

5 November 1973 pm in Bombay, India

References:

Osho has spoken on prominent writers and philosophers like Albert Camus, Aristotle, Byron, Descartes, Fyodor Dostoevsky, D.H. Lawrence, H.G. Wells, Hegel, Huxley, John Milton, Kahlil Gibran, Kalidas, Kant, Leo Tolstoy, Nietzsche, Rabindranath Tagore, Shakespeare and many more in His discourses. Some of these can be referred to in the following books/discourses:

1. Come Come Yet Again Come
2. Beyond Psychology
3. The Dhammapada: the way of the Buddha Vol.1,3,7,9,10,12
4. The Transmission of The Lamp
5. I am That
6. The Perfect Master
7. The Golden Future
8. Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind
9. One Seed Makes the Whole Earth Green
10. Sufis: People on the Path Vol.1-2
11. The Empty Boat
12. Dang Dang Doko Dang
13. Zarathustra, the laughing prophet
14. From Personality to Individuality
15. From Death to Deathlessness