The Mystery School
BELOVED OSHO,
COULD YOU PLEASE EXPLAIN EXACTLY WHAT THE WORK OF THE MYSTERY SCHOOL IS?
My beloved ones…
You are blessed to be here today, because we are starting a new series of talks between the master and the disciple. It is not only a birth of a new book, it is also a declaration of a new phase. Today, this moment: 7:00 pm, Saturday, the sixteenth of August of the year 1986 — one day this moment will be remembered as a historical moment, and you are blessed because you are participating in it. You are creating it; without you it cannot happen.
Books can be written, can be dictated to a machine, but what I am going to start is totally different. It is an UPANISHAD. Long forgotten, one of the most beautiful words in any language, a very living word, ‘upanishad’ means sitting at the feet of the master. It says nothing more: just to be in the presence of the master, just to allow him to take you in, in his own light, in his own blissfulness, in his own world. And that’s exactly the work of a mystery school.
The master has got it. The disciple also has got it, but the master knows and the disciple is fast asleep. The whole work of a mystery school is in how to bring consciousness to the disciple, how to wake him up, how to allow him to be himself, because the whole world is trying to make him somebody else. There, nobody is interested in you, in your potential, in your reality, in your being. Everybody has his own vested interest, even those who love you. Don’t be angry at them; they are as much victims as you are. They are as unconscious as you are. They think what they are doing is love; what they are really doing is destructive. And love can never be destructive.
Either love is or is not. But love brings with it all possibilities of creativity, all dimensions of creativity. It brings with it freedom, and the greatest freedom in the world is that a person should be allowed to be himself. But neither the parents nor the neighbors nor the educational system nor the church nor the political leadership — nobody wants you to be yourself because that is the most dangerous thing for them. People who are themselves cannot be enslaved. They have tasted freedom, you cannot drag them back into slavery. So it is better not to allow them to taste freedom, their own being, their potential, their possibility, their future, their genius. Their whole life they will grope in darkness, asking for guidance from other blind people, asking for answers from those who know nothing about existence, who know nothing about themselves. But they are pretenders — they are called leaders, preachers, saints, mahatmas. They themselves don’t know who they are. But there are these cunning people all around, exploiting the simple, the innocent, poisoning their minds with beliefs of which they themselves are not certain.
The function of a mystery school is that the master — speaking or in silence, looking at you or making a gesture, or just sitting with closed eyes — manages to create a certain field of energy. And if you are receptive, if you are available, if you are ready to go on the journey of the unknown, something clicks and you are no more the old person. You have seen something which before you had only heard about — and hearing about it does not create conviction but creates doubt. Because it is so mysterious… it is not logical, it is not rational, it is not intellectual.
But once you have seen it, once you have been showered by the energy of the master, a new being is born. Your old life is finished.
There is a beautiful story…. A great king, Prasenjita, had come to see Gautam Buddha. And while they were conversing, just in the middle an old Buddhist sannyasin — he must have been seventy-five years old — came to touch the feet of Gautam Buddha. He said, “Please forgive me. I should not interrupt the dialogue that is going on between you two, but my time… I have to reach the other village before sunset. If I don’t start now I will not be able to reach there.” The Buddhist monks don’t travel at night. “And I could not go without touching your feet because one knows nothing about tomorrow; whether I will be able again to touch your feet or not is uncertain. This may be the last time. So please, you both forgive me. I will not delay your conversation.”
Gautam Buddha said, “Just one question: How old are you?” Strange… out of context.
And the man said, “I am not very old — just four years.”
King Prasenjita could not believe it — a seventy-five year old man cannot be four years old! He might be seventy, he might be eighty, there is no problem. It is difficult to judge; different people grow old at a different pace. But four years is too much! In four years nobody can grow to be seventy-five years old.
Buddha said, “Go with my blessings.”
Prasenjita said, “You have created a problem for me by asking an unnecessary question. Do you think this man is four years old?”
Buddha said, “Now I will explain it to you. It was not unnecessary, it was not without a proper context. It was for you that I was asking him — really I was creating a question in you — because you were talking nonsense. You were asking stupid questions. I wanted some relevant question to come out of you.
“Now, this is relevant. Yes, he is four years old because our way of counting the age is from the day a person allows the master, allows his total being to be transformed, not holding back anything. His seventy-one years were simply a wastage; he has lived only four years. And I think you will understand that your sixty years have been sheer wastage unless you are reborn. And there is only one way to be reborn, and that is to come in contact, in deep communion with someone who has arrived. Then the real life begins.”
A mystery school teaches how to live. Its whole science is the art of living. Naturally it includes many things, because life is multi-dimensional. But you must understand the first step: being totally receptive, open. People are like closed houses — you cannot find even a single window open, no fresh breeze passes through those houses. Roses are standing outside but cannot release their fragrance into the house. The sun comes every day, knocks on the doors, and goes back; the doors are absolutely deaf. They are not available for fresh air, they are not available for fresh rays, they are not available for fresh perfumes, they are not available for anything. They are not houses, they are graves.
An upanishad contains in itself the whole philosophy of a school of mystery. THE UPANISHADS don’t belong to Hindus; they don’t belong to any other religion either. THE UPANISHADS are the outpourings of absolutely individual realized beings to the disciples.
Source:
This is an excerpt from the transcript of a public discourse by Osho in Buddha Hall, Shree Rajneesh Ashram, Pune.
Discourse Series: The Osho Upanishad
Chapter #1
Chapter title: The mystery school: an encounter with the miraculous
16 August 1986 pm in
References:
Osho has spoken on ‘mystery school, energy field, creativity, freedom, love’ in His discourses. Some of these can be referred to in the following books/discourses:
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Balasaheb Tupsaundar
I love my osho
Bhavik
Magnanimous