THE WORLD TOUR
The Osho Upanishad 44
FourtyFourth Discourse from the series of 44 discourses - The Osho Upanishad by Osho.
You can listen, download or read all of these discourses on oshoworld.com.
Osho,
Why is it that we are all so afraid of a hit from the master? When it is happening, it is proof that it is just what we needed, yet the fear remains. Is cowardice an essential part of the ego?
The ego is cowardice. Cowardice is not an essential part of the ego, it is the whole of the ego. And it is bound to be so, because the ego lives in constant fear of being exposed: it is empty within, it is nonexistential; it is only an appearance, not a reality. And whenever something is only an appearance, a mirage, the fear is bound to be there at the very center of it.
In the desert you see the mirage from far away. It looks so real that even the trees standing by its side are reflected in the water, which does not exist. You can see the trees and you can see the reflection; you can see the waves in the water and also the reflections shimmering with the waves – but it is all from a distance. As you come closer, the mirage starts disappearing. There has never been anything; it was just a by-product of the sunrays being reflected by the hot sands of the desert. In this reflection and the sunrays returning, the mirage of an oasis is created. But it can exist only when you are far way; it cannot exist when you come close. Then there are only hot sands, and you can see the rays of the sun being reflected back.
It will be easier to understand in a different context.
You see the moon, you see its beauty, you see its cool light. But the first astronauts were shocked because, as they came closer to the moon, there was no light. The moon was just a flat, barren piece of earth – no greenery, no life – a dead rock. But standing on the moon, when they looked at the earth they were amazed: the earth was radiant with beautiful light.
In comparison to that light, the moon and its beauty were nothing, because the earth is eight times bigger than the moon; its light is eight times more intense, all silver. And the astronauts knew that it was all false, but they were seeing it. It is not there. But a strange thing: when they were on the earth, they were seeing the beautiful silver light shimmering from the moon. Now they were on the moon, and it was just a dead rock, and the whole beauty was radiating from the earth. And they knew the earth, they have lived their whole lives on the earth; they had never seen anything of the sort. To see the reflection of the sunlight, you need a distance.
The earth is also radiating: when the sunlight comes, some of it is absorbed by the earth, but most of it is reflected back. That reflected light can be seen only when you are far away from the earth; otherwise you cannot see it.
The ego is a nonexistential phenomenon – the people who are farther away from you can feel it, can see it, can be hurt by it. Your only concern is that they should not come too close. Everybody is keeping everybody else at a distance, because to allow people to come too close means opening the doors of your emptiness.
The ego does not exist. And you are so identified with the ego that the death of the ego, the disappearance of the ego, feels as if it is your death. It is not so; on the contrary, when the ego is dead then you will know your reality, your essential being.
The egoist is going to be a coward. He cannot allow anybody closeness of any kind – friendship, love, even companionship.
Adolf Hitler never allowed anybody to sleep in his room. He always slept alone, locking the door from within. He never got married for the simple reason that if you are married then you have to allow the woman inside the room – not only inside the room but in the bed. This is too close and too dangerous.
He had no friends. He always kept people as distant as possible; there was not a single person in his whole life who had ever put a hand on his shoulders – this much closeness he would not allow.
What was the fear? Why was he so afraid? The fear was that the moment he allowed anybody such closeness, his greatness – “the great Adolf Hitler” –would disappear. You would find a very tiny and pygmy creature, nothing of greatness; that was all on the posters, that was all part of a great propaganda.
The more egoist a person is the more he has to remain lonely. And to be lonely is miserable, but one has to pay. You have to pay, for a non-existential ego to appear real, with your misery, with your pain, with your anguish. And anyway, even if you succeed in not allowing anybody to be close to you, you yourself know perfectly well that it is just a soap bubble – a small pinprick, and it will disappear.
Napoleon Bonaparte was one of the great egoists in the history of egoism but he got defeated, and the reason he was defeated is something worth consideration.
When he was a small child, just six months old, the nurse who was his caretaker left him in the garden and went for something in the house, and a wild cat jumped on the child. Now a six-month-old baby… The cat must have looked like a big lion. Things are always relative and in proportion, and to that small child it was a big lion. The cat was just being playful, but the child was so shocked, and the shock went so deep… When he became a young man, he fought many wars, was a great soldier, was able to fight with a lion – but he was afraid of cats. The moment he saw a cat he would lose all his courage; he would suddenly become a six-month-old baby.
This fact was known to the English commander-in-chief, Wellington; otherwise Wellington was no comparison to Napoleon Bonaparte. And this was the only war in which Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated. Wellington brought seventy cats in front of his army, and when Napoleon Bonaparte saw seventy cats – one was enough for the poor man – he had a nervous breakdown. He simply told his assistant, “You take charge of the army. I am not in a position to fight; neither am I in a position to think. These cats have killed me.” And of course he was defeated.
Historians who say he was defeated by Wellington are wrong. No, he was defeated by a psychological trick. He was defeated by the cats – he was defeated by his childhood, he was defeated by a fear over which he had no control.
He was kept imprisoned on a small island, Saint Helena. There was no need for handcuffs, because the island was small and there was no way to escape from there.
On the first day he was going for a walk, and because of the nervous breakdown and the defeat he had been given a doctor to take care of him. The doctor was with him. They were walking on a small footpath, and a woman carrying a big load of grass was coming from the other direction. The path was very small; somebody had to give way. Although the doctor was English, he shouted to the woman, “Stand aside! You don’t know who is coming. Although he was defeated, it doesn’t matter: he is Napoleon Bonaparte.”
But the woman was so uneducated she had never heard the name of Napoleon Bonaparte. So she said, “So what? Let him stand aside! And you should feel ashamed. I am a woman carrying such a load, I should stand aside?”
Napoleon Bonaparte took the hand of the doctor, stepped aside and said, “The time when mountains used to give way to Napoleon Bonaparte is gone; the soap bubble is no longer there. I have to give way to a woman who is carrying grass.”
In his defeat he could see what had happened: for his whole life he had been repressing a fear. It was kept as a secret, but now the secret was known, the fear exposed. Napoleon Bonaparte was just nobody. This is the situation of a great egoist.
So don’t think that cowardice is an essential part of egoism; it is the whole of it. Ego is cowardice. And to be without ego is to be fearless – because now nothing can be taken away from you; not even death can destroy anything in you. The only thing that can be destroyed by anybody is the ego.
The ego is so fragile, so much always on the verge of death that the people who are clinging to it are always trembling deep inside.
Dropping the ego is the greatest act a man can do. It proves your mettle, it proves that you are more than you appear; it proves that there is something in you which is immortal, indestructible, eternal.
The ego makes you a coward. Egolessness makes you a fearless pilgrim of the eternal mystery of life.
Osho,
When I sit with you, sometimes I hear you say that enlightenment is a sort of death and it means never coming back to this life again. My mind freaks out about this, and I am not sure if I want this or not. Then I ask myself, “Well, then what are you doing with this crazy guy?” Then all I know is that you are irresistible to my heart and that is why I am here. What is happening?
You have heard only half of the truth, and a half-truth is far more dangerous than a full lie.
Enlightenment is ultimate death, but this is only half of the truth. It is also the beginning of an eternal life. You have not heard the other half. Perhaps the first half was so much of a shock that you started thinking about it, and missed the other half.
It is true: after enlightenment you will not be coming back to this life. But that does not mean that you will be dead; that means you will be having a real, authentic, universal life.
And what have you got in this life that you are so much afraid to lose? – very precious misery? What have you got except anxiety, pain, anguish, and a constant feeling that all is meaningless, that you are not living but simply moving toward the grave? Your living is nothing but a slow kind of death.
You should write down what it is that you have got that makes you so worried that you will not be coming back. Perhaps there are enemies – you have not been able to take revenge, and you want to come back.
I have heard about a man who was dying. He called all his four sons and he said, “My dear sons, I am dying and I hope that you will fulfill my last wish. Promise me…” But nobody would raise his hand. They looked at each other. The old man said, “Now this is not the time to think. My breaths are numbered. Gather courage.”
The youngest raised his hand. He said, “I will fulfill the promise.”
The three said, “What are you doing? Are you mad? You are too young. You don’t know this man.”
But the old man blessed the young boy and he said, “I have always known that you are my real son, my blood, my bones, my marrow, my everything. And these three idiots, they will not even promise a dying father a simple thing; they won’t even ask what the thing is.”
The young boy said, “You forget about them. You just tell me what the thing is that I have to do.”
He said, “It is very simple, but I will whisper it in your ear. These three idiots should not hear it, otherwise they will disturb you. But don’t listen to anybody. It is a question of keeping your word – and to a dying father.”
The boy said, “I promise. You just tell me.”
So he whispered in his ear, “You do one thing: when I am dead, cut off my hands, my feet, my head – cut my body into as many parts as you can.”
The boy said, “What are you saying? For what?”
He said, “Wait, I have the whole plan – then throw each part into all the neighborhoods, into everybody’s house, and go to the police station.”
The boy said, “But what is the purpose of this?”
He said, “Just a spiritual peace. My whole life I have been trying somehow to send all these neighbors behind bars. Now the chance has come. And when my soul sees all of them chained, going in the police lorry toward the police station, I will feel the only bliss. My whole life has been a life of misery. And my bliss will become a blessing for you.” And the man died.
And the boy said, “My God, what kind of a father…?”
All the three said, “We told you before not to listen to him. He is the nastiest man you can find. Although he is our father… But that is an accident, what can we do? What has he said? He must have said something really nasty.”
The young boy said, “Really nasty? I cannot conceive of anybody thinking at the time of death… He was bothered about the neighbors. He was planning… This is the plan: we have to cut his body into as many parts as possible and throw those parts into everybody’s house and inform the police that these people have killed our father – not only killed, they have cut him into pieces – and let them be caught red-handed. And he was saying that his soul will feel so blissed out that his life has been successful!”
What are you missing? What do you want to come back for? Is this not misery enough?
I know why people want to come back again and again, a simple arithmetic: this time you are married to a man or to a woman and you are fed up, and you see so many beautiful men and beautiful women, they seem to be almost other-worldly, and you are caught up with this ugly fellow, disgusting. But in this life it is very difficult to get rid of him; next life, there is a chance.
Remember the proverb: The grass on the other side of the fence is always greener. It looks like the neighbors are living so beautifully, so blissfully; only you are in hell. So perhaps next time things will be different. In this big world, five million people – forgive me, not million, billion – five billion people, it is a very rare chance that you would find the same wife again, the same husband, the same nasty children, the same neighbors. A great hope of change – for that, more time is needed. You have to come again and again. But just look backward, just a single glance. Millions of times you have come here, and each time you were hoping that something was going to change. Nothing changes. You have different husbands, different wives, different children, but they are all the same. Just different models but manufactured in the same company; the same mechanism inside the bonnet. All differences are only in the bonnets.
After each life you go on forgetting that you have lived so many times. It is time to realize that you are moving in a vicious circle. You have to come out of the circle. Here in this circle, in this circus, nobody has ever been happy.
Yes, people go out to the club, to the cinema, to the beach, smile, but these are not their real faces; these are masks which go on deceiving everybody. You know it perfectly well.
Husbands and wives are fighting, and somebody knocks on the door and immediately they start having a very nice, beautiful conversation. The guest is welcomed and he cannot conceive that just a moment before these two fellows were at each other’s throats – and they are just waiting for the time when you are going to leave so they can start again where the story has stopped, with vengeance.
One man used to pray to God, “I must be the most miserable man in the world, and I have been praying my whole life. And I don’t want much – I simply want to exchange my miseries, with anybody you like, because everybody seems to be so happy. I am willing. You choose.”
That night he had a dream. He heard a voice thundering from the sky: “Everybody take out his misery, put it in a bag and rush toward the temple.”
He thought perhaps his prayer had been heard. So he filled a bag with every misery that he had. And what he found on the road… “My God,” he said, “this is strange” – because his bag was just a small one. Others were carrying such big bags; a few were even supported by servants.
He said, “My God, these are the beautiful people! I have seen them. Now I know why God was not listening to my prayer. But it is too late. If I can save my bag and come back home, I will remain grateful to God forever.”
And in the temple they again heard the voice: “Everybody hang your bag on the wall, then the lights will be put off and a bell will ring; that will be the signal – in the dark you can choose any bag that you want. So while it is light, look all around. And stand near the bag that you want, so that in the darkness you don’t miss it.”
The man who had prayed was just holding his bag.
But he was surprised – another surprise, surprise upon surprise – everybody was standing with his own bag, holding on. He asked a few people, “Why are you holding your bag?”
They said, “Why are you holding yours? – for the same reason. At least we know what these miseries are. Somebody else’s miseries, unknown, unacquainted… Now at this age, to begin from scratch – it is better to live with our old friends.”
The lights were turned off and everybody grabbed his bag, ran out of the temple, and they were all happy and hilarious that they had got their own bags.
The man who had prayed was so grateful: “God is really compassionate, otherwise today I was going to be in a mess. Those big bags – my God, what kind of miseries people are hiding! And these are the people… I was thinking they were happy and I was the most miserable person, and my bag was the smallest!”
Nobody is showing his real face.
For what do you want to come back: just to have another mask, another bag of miseries, some other woman to torture you, some other man to beat you, some other children to drive you crazy? For what do you want to come back? Certainly not to repeat this life, you are hoping for some change, some possibility of change. But here there are only differences of bags; the contents are the same.
When I said enlightenment is ultimate death and you will not be coming back to this life, if you had understood the misery and the pain and the anguish and the meaninglessness and the boredom of your life, you would have rejoiced. But this was only half of the statement.
The other half is an eternal life, with no form. You don’t have any idea of it. You can have an idea of it if you go deep in meditation. You will find that you are not the body; you are not the mind. You will find your formless consciousness – and that is your real being, and it is always blissful.
There is tremendous possibility if you can get out of the rut of the wheel of life and death that you have been following since eternity: again and again doing the same thing, with a slight difference – maybe in the color, maybe in the shape – but the experience is basically the same. Just one life is enough for a man of intelligence to see that this is not worth repeating.
When I was a student, one of my friends never passed his master’s degree. At least before he became my friend, he had failed ten times. And he was the son of a very famous professor in the same university.
The man was strange – I liked his idea. I said, “You seem to be loving this class too much – you have failed ten times.”
He said, “What else to do? Because if I pass; then I have to do some job. My father is after me, but he cannot manage because I go on failing. My mother is after me. Now they have all become tired; they have decided there is no hope. And I am enjoying immense freedom: no worry, no job, no anxiety to pass the examination – because I am not going to pass it, unless this university decides to pass me whatever I do.”
I said, “I like your idea; it resembles people’s lives. They go on being born into the same world again and again. Unless existence itself forces them to become enlightened, they are not going to become enlightened. You are ready to suffer every kind of comment – everybody is condemning you, every professor is condemning you, every student thinks that they have never seen such an idiot. Ten years in one class!”
But he said to me, “Who cares about these people? I am enjoying my life.”
Finally the university had to decide to pass him: “Whether his attendance is enough or not, don’t bother; whether or not he writes anything in his examination paper, don’t take any note of it. Whatever he writes, it is right – he has to be passed. He is torturing his father, his mother. He is their only son. They are getting old.”
They were very respected professors – both the father and the mother – and he was simply cheating them and just being a vagabond.
Finally, he was passed. After I passed my examination, he was still there for two more years, but twelve years were enough. The university decided that whether he writes anything or not, he knows; he should be released. And you will be surprised that because he was forcibly passed, they could not give him a first class degree, they could not make him a gold medalist, so he was passed with a third class one. And he was very happy.
He met me. I said, “I have heard that you have passed. That is some news.”
He said, “It is. I have passed with a third class degree. Now my father and mother cannot torture me because I am not passing, I am not trying enough. For twelve years I have done as much work as possible – but who gives a job to a third-class graduate in India? So now I am still free. They have been successful in persuading the university to pass me, but they have passed me with a third class degree, and a third class one does not matter. I am freed from the university too. Now I am completely free.” But free for what?
He was drinking alcohol, he was a gambler, he was going to prostitutes; he was taking all kinds of drugs – freedom for what?
He died just two years ago. He lived a rotten life, condemned by everybody, and destroyed himself in the name of freedom. And all that he was doing was simply trying to escape from responsibility. But anyone who tries to escape from responsibility cannot experience freedom. Freedom goes together with responsibility.
Your life: you have never thought about it, that it is empty, that it is more or less a nausea, that it is simply boredom. That’s why you need so many entertainments.
But where are you going? You are not growing. You have not accepted the basic responsibility toward yourself: that you have to create a meaningful life, a life which has significance, a life which has light in it, luminous, a life which is joyful, a life which in itself is a poetry.
The eternal life I am talking about is a life of eternal creativity. You will not be in the body, you will not be confined in any form, but your energy will have absolute freedom to be creative, to make this existence more beautiful, more lovable, more conscious, more enlightened.
That’s why, although you are afraid, you still feel some irresistible attraction to this crazy guy. That irresistible attraction shows that inside you are empty, hollow, meaningless. You have come close to a presence which attracts your heart in spite of your head.
If you are courageous, listen to the heart; if you are a coward, listen to the head. But for the cowards there is no paradise. Paradise opens its door only for the courageous.
Osho,
Who is the modern man? Have science and technology corrupted the modern man?
The modern man has not yet come into existence. The people in the world are all very old and very ancient. It is rare to come across a contemporary.
Somebody belongs to a religion founded ten thousand years ago, somebody belongs to a religion two thousand years old – these people are not contemporary. They are living in modern times, but they are not modern.
And this has created a tremendous problem: technology, scientific progress needs the modern man to use it, and the modern man is not available. Technology is available, science is available, but the people who can use it creatively are nonexistent.
The result is disastrous, because to these people who are not contemporaries, science has placed technological instruments in their hands, machines, which are dangerous. It is like putting a sword in the hands of a child: he is going to hurt somebody, or himself; he is not a swordsman, he is not trained for it.
Man is lagging behind, and the technology has gone far ahead of him. He does not know what to do with it, and whatever he is going to do with it is going to be wrong.
Atomic energy could have been a great blessing to humanity. It could have removed all poverty. But instead of removing poverty, instead of making man’s life richer, it destroyed innocent people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki who had done no harm to anybody. And now the atom bombs that destroyed Nagasaki and Hiroshima are like toys, because now the nuclear weapons are so powerful that they can destroy the whole earth seven hundred times. And they are in the hands of people like Ronald Reagan, who is certainly not a contemporary.
He is a fundamentalist Christian. The fundamentalist Christians are the worst Christians, they are the most fanatic people. They believe that Christianity is the only religion, all other religions are wrong, and that the whole world should be converted to Christianity. These are not contemporary ideas. These are very primitive ideas.
And one cannot hope, either, that Ronald Reagan and people of his kind will be contemporaries.
He used to have a chimpanzee; that was his only friend. In these billions of human beings, he could not find anybody worthy of friendship – a chimpanzee! And it shows something about you, the company you keep.
When he became the president of America, on the first day he went to the beach with his chimpanzee for a walk. An old man saw them, and he could not believe his eyes. He thought that this was an insult to the whole country: that the president should go for a morning walk with a chimpanzee. He went ahead, stopped both of the fellows and said, “President, sir, do you think it looks right to be president of a great country and have a chimpanzee as a friend?”
Ronald Reagan was just going to say something and the old man said, “Shut up! I am not asking you; I am asking Mister President.” He was thinking that the chimpanzee was Mister President – and perhaps he was right.
Sometimes, jokes are serious.
And if Ronald Reagan is angry with me… I know you cannot expect anything much more from a chimpanzee.
Now he has in his hands such powers to destroy – modern technology and science has not corrupted man. Man is not capable of using modern science and technology in the right way. The modern man is not born yet.
I am reminded of H.G. Wells, who has written one of the best histories of the world. When the book was published one interviewer asked him, “What is your idea of civilization?”
H.G. Wells said, “My idea? Civilization is a good idea, but it has still to happen. It is still an idea, somebody has to make it a reality.”
Technology and science are not the problems. The problem is the retarded man. But we are strange people. We always think in strange ways.
Mahatma Gandhi was thinking that if all the science and technology that has been developed by man and his intelligence, after the spinning wheel, could be drowned in the oceans; then all problems would be solved. And this country believed him, and not only this country, millions of people around the earth believed him – that the spinning wheel would solve all the problems.
Railway trains have to be stopped, airplanes have to be stopped, post offices have to be closed, telegrams, telephones have to be destroyed – because all these things have come after the spinning wheel. In fact nobody knows what can be saved. Electricity? No. Medical science? No. In fact one will have to find out when the spinning wheel was invented. Perhaps bullock carts can be saved, fire can be saved – that’s all: fire, bullock carts, the spinning wheel, and everybody is a mahatma – and all problems disappear automatically.
The question is not technology – that’s what Gandhi was insisting, that technology is corrupting man. My fight with him is that it is man who is retarded, that he is not capable of using the technology rightly.
How can technology corrupt man? Do you think if Mahavira comes and sees a gun, the gun will corrupt Mahavira and he will start firing here and there, this way and that, because the gun corrupted him? Technology cannot corrupt anybody. Technology is just a means in your hands, and whatever you want to make of it you can make of it.
Medical science thinks man can live three hundred years: old age can be simply avoided, diseases can disappear, man can live young, healthy, for three hundred years. But nobody is interested in that, no politician is interested in that. Their interest is in how to create death rays. And if death rays can be created, do you think it is inconceivable to imagine that life rays can be created? The same genius, the same scientist who can create death rays is capable of creating life rays.
But nobody is asking for life rays. The demand is for death rays, and most probably they already have death rays in Russia and America both. Then there is no need to send a missile with nuclear bombs; death rays can just be directed toward a certain spot and they will pass through people, killing them in such a way that they will not destroy anything else. Your furniture will be saved, your houses will be saved, your cars will be saved – they will only destroy life. A strange kind of world – if death rays are used, houses will be standing, cars will be there, trains will be there; only life will not be found anywhere.
Is technology corrupting man? No, I do not agree with that Gandhian idea.
I hope that we will be able to create life rays, so that if life rays pass through a village the whole village becomes young, full of life. But religions will not like my idea, because even old people will start falling in love. Life rays? – no religion will be ready. Death rays are perfectly okay.
Life rays passing through the Vatican: the pope falls in love, starts dancing in a disco, finds a girlfriend… As far as I am concerned, I would love for that to happen.
Contemporary man has to be brought into existence. That is my work. That’s why everybody is against me – because they are not contemporary people. I am fighting a fight against everybody, because they are old, ancient, dead skeletons.
If contemporary man comes into life, the whole of technology will be a servant. There is no need for any human being to function as a servant; technology can do that. Man’s labor hours can be almost finished. Machines can do that, and can do it more efficiently than man can ever manage. And if all the work can be done by technology and machines, man is free to evolve his consciousness. He has enough time to meditate, to transcend this life, to enter into the transcendental, the immortal.
And machines can do miracles. You have heart attacks – so many people die of heart attacks – and now it is practically possible to exchange your hearts for plastic hearts. That does not mean that your love will become plastic, but the heart will become so strong that there is no possibility of its failure. Man’s body can be improved in every possible way. Plastic surgery can make human beings as beautiful as you can dream of.
But the political idiots are concerned only with how to destroy. They are not concerned to beautify human life, to prolong human life, to help human beings to remain young, youthful, playful. They don’t want this earth to be a place of festivity, of joy, of song and dance; and they don’t want to give humanity time enough to evolve into new dimensions of being. They are perfectly satisfied with the old, out-of-date humanity.
So I repeat again: the new man, the contemporary man, has not yet come on the stage. We have to herald his coming.
Osho,
My imagination is very strong. Sometimes when I close my eyes, I see myself sitting with you and there are no more questions. Then I feel loved and accepted. Whenever I experience this, I feel so joyful. Is this real, or just a mind-game to keep me away from reality?
If you can manage it exactly the same, again and again, then it is not imagination. Then it is not the stuff dreams are made of, because you cannot repeat a dream. But if you can imagine such a thing only once, and you cannot manage to experience it exactly the same again and again, then it is a dream; then it is a mind-game. Don’t waste time on it.
This is the distinction between dream and reality: reality is that which remains as it is. Dream is something that happens once and is gone. And it is not in your hands to bring it back; you cannot manage to dream it.
Every morning you will open your eyes – your room will be the same. Every night you will close your eyes – your dreams will be different. That which remains the same is the real, and that which goes on fleeting, changing, and is not under your control, is a dream. Don’t waste your time in dreams.
One night Mulla Nasruddin suddenly nudged his wife and said, “Be quick! Where are my glasses?”
The wife said, “Are you mad? What are you going to do with your glasses in the middle of the night?”
Mulla Nasruddin said, “No argument at this moment, we can discuss things later. First my glasses!”
So the wife gave him his glasses. He put the glasses on, closed his eyes.
The wife said, “What are you doing?”
He said, “Nothing. I was having such a beautiful dream but because my eyes are not the same as they used to be in my youth… It is old age, so I could not see clearly; things were vague. From tomorrow I am going to sleep with my glasses on, because one never knows.”
The wife said, “Can I ask you what the dream was?”
He said, “It is better if you don’t ask. Such a beautiful woman, but she just slipped out of my hands because of a simple mistake: I had no idea where you had put my glasses. And I tried my best – by putting on my glasses, praying to God, that ‘just once more’ – but nothing happened. Instead what I saw… It is better not to say.”
She said, “What did you see? You have to say!”
He said, “Don’t create any trouble in the middle of the night. I saw you! That was the last thing I ever wanted to see.”
You cannot repeat dreams. They are not objective, you cannot share them; you cannot invite friends and have a dream party. Reality is objective; even the inner reality is also objective.
So you can check it. Try again.
If you can manage the same experience, then don’t be worried. It is not a mind-game; it is a beautiful meditation.
Go deep into it with all my blessings.
Why is it that we are all so afraid of a hit from the master? When it is happening, it is proof that it is just what we needed, yet the fear remains. Is cowardice an essential part of the ego?
The ego is cowardice. Cowardice is not an essential part of the ego, it is the whole of the ego. And it is bound to be so, because the ego lives in constant fear of being exposed: it is empty within, it is nonexistential; it is only an appearance, not a reality. And whenever something is only an appearance, a mirage, the fear is bound to be there at the very center of it.
In the desert you see the mirage from far away. It looks so real that even the trees standing by its side are reflected in the water, which does not exist. You can see the trees and you can see the reflection; you can see the waves in the water and also the reflections shimmering with the waves – but it is all from a distance. As you come closer, the mirage starts disappearing. There has never been anything; it was just a by-product of the sunrays being reflected by the hot sands of the desert. In this reflection and the sunrays returning, the mirage of an oasis is created. But it can exist only when you are far way; it cannot exist when you come close. Then there are only hot sands, and you can see the rays of the sun being reflected back.
It will be easier to understand in a different context.
You see the moon, you see its beauty, you see its cool light. But the first astronauts were shocked because, as they came closer to the moon, there was no light. The moon was just a flat, barren piece of earth – no greenery, no life – a dead rock. But standing on the moon, when they looked at the earth they were amazed: the earth was radiant with beautiful light.
In comparison to that light, the moon and its beauty were nothing, because the earth is eight times bigger than the moon; its light is eight times more intense, all silver. And the astronauts knew that it was all false, but they were seeing it. It is not there. But a strange thing: when they were on the earth, they were seeing the beautiful silver light shimmering from the moon. Now they were on the moon, and it was just a dead rock, and the whole beauty was radiating from the earth. And they knew the earth, they have lived their whole lives on the earth; they had never seen anything of the sort. To see the reflection of the sunlight, you need a distance.
The earth is also radiating: when the sunlight comes, some of it is absorbed by the earth, but most of it is reflected back. That reflected light can be seen only when you are far away from the earth; otherwise you cannot see it.
The ego is a nonexistential phenomenon – the people who are farther away from you can feel it, can see it, can be hurt by it. Your only concern is that they should not come too close. Everybody is keeping everybody else at a distance, because to allow people to come too close means opening the doors of your emptiness.
The ego does not exist. And you are so identified with the ego that the death of the ego, the disappearance of the ego, feels as if it is your death. It is not so; on the contrary, when the ego is dead then you will know your reality, your essential being.
The egoist is going to be a coward. He cannot allow anybody closeness of any kind – friendship, love, even companionship.
Adolf Hitler never allowed anybody to sleep in his room. He always slept alone, locking the door from within. He never got married for the simple reason that if you are married then you have to allow the woman inside the room – not only inside the room but in the bed. This is too close and too dangerous.
He had no friends. He always kept people as distant as possible; there was not a single person in his whole life who had ever put a hand on his shoulders – this much closeness he would not allow.
What was the fear? Why was he so afraid? The fear was that the moment he allowed anybody such closeness, his greatness – “the great Adolf Hitler” –would disappear. You would find a very tiny and pygmy creature, nothing of greatness; that was all on the posters, that was all part of a great propaganda.
The more egoist a person is the more he has to remain lonely. And to be lonely is miserable, but one has to pay. You have to pay, for a non-existential ego to appear real, with your misery, with your pain, with your anguish. And anyway, even if you succeed in not allowing anybody to be close to you, you yourself know perfectly well that it is just a soap bubble – a small pinprick, and it will disappear.
Napoleon Bonaparte was one of the great egoists in the history of egoism but he got defeated, and the reason he was defeated is something worth consideration.
When he was a small child, just six months old, the nurse who was his caretaker left him in the garden and went for something in the house, and a wild cat jumped on the child. Now a six-month-old baby… The cat must have looked like a big lion. Things are always relative and in proportion, and to that small child it was a big lion. The cat was just being playful, but the child was so shocked, and the shock went so deep… When he became a young man, he fought many wars, was a great soldier, was able to fight with a lion – but he was afraid of cats. The moment he saw a cat he would lose all his courage; he would suddenly become a six-month-old baby.
This fact was known to the English commander-in-chief, Wellington; otherwise Wellington was no comparison to Napoleon Bonaparte. And this was the only war in which Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated. Wellington brought seventy cats in front of his army, and when Napoleon Bonaparte saw seventy cats – one was enough for the poor man – he had a nervous breakdown. He simply told his assistant, “You take charge of the army. I am not in a position to fight; neither am I in a position to think. These cats have killed me.” And of course he was defeated.
Historians who say he was defeated by Wellington are wrong. No, he was defeated by a psychological trick. He was defeated by the cats – he was defeated by his childhood, he was defeated by a fear over which he had no control.
He was kept imprisoned on a small island, Saint Helena. There was no need for handcuffs, because the island was small and there was no way to escape from there.
On the first day he was going for a walk, and because of the nervous breakdown and the defeat he had been given a doctor to take care of him. The doctor was with him. They were walking on a small footpath, and a woman carrying a big load of grass was coming from the other direction. The path was very small; somebody had to give way. Although the doctor was English, he shouted to the woman, “Stand aside! You don’t know who is coming. Although he was defeated, it doesn’t matter: he is Napoleon Bonaparte.”
But the woman was so uneducated she had never heard the name of Napoleon Bonaparte. So she said, “So what? Let him stand aside! And you should feel ashamed. I am a woman carrying such a load, I should stand aside?”
Napoleon Bonaparte took the hand of the doctor, stepped aside and said, “The time when mountains used to give way to Napoleon Bonaparte is gone; the soap bubble is no longer there. I have to give way to a woman who is carrying grass.”
In his defeat he could see what had happened: for his whole life he had been repressing a fear. It was kept as a secret, but now the secret was known, the fear exposed. Napoleon Bonaparte was just nobody. This is the situation of a great egoist.
So don’t think that cowardice is an essential part of egoism; it is the whole of it. Ego is cowardice. And to be without ego is to be fearless – because now nothing can be taken away from you; not even death can destroy anything in you. The only thing that can be destroyed by anybody is the ego.
The ego is so fragile, so much always on the verge of death that the people who are clinging to it are always trembling deep inside.
Dropping the ego is the greatest act a man can do. It proves your mettle, it proves that you are more than you appear; it proves that there is something in you which is immortal, indestructible, eternal.
The ego makes you a coward. Egolessness makes you a fearless pilgrim of the eternal mystery of life.
Osho,
When I sit with you, sometimes I hear you say that enlightenment is a sort of death and it means never coming back to this life again. My mind freaks out about this, and I am not sure if I want this or not. Then I ask myself, “Well, then what are you doing with this crazy guy?” Then all I know is that you are irresistible to my heart and that is why I am here. What is happening?
You have heard only half of the truth, and a half-truth is far more dangerous than a full lie.
Enlightenment is ultimate death, but this is only half of the truth. It is also the beginning of an eternal life. You have not heard the other half. Perhaps the first half was so much of a shock that you started thinking about it, and missed the other half.
It is true: after enlightenment you will not be coming back to this life. But that does not mean that you will be dead; that means you will be having a real, authentic, universal life.
And what have you got in this life that you are so much afraid to lose? – very precious misery? What have you got except anxiety, pain, anguish, and a constant feeling that all is meaningless, that you are not living but simply moving toward the grave? Your living is nothing but a slow kind of death.
You should write down what it is that you have got that makes you so worried that you will not be coming back. Perhaps there are enemies – you have not been able to take revenge, and you want to come back.
I have heard about a man who was dying. He called all his four sons and he said, “My dear sons, I am dying and I hope that you will fulfill my last wish. Promise me…” But nobody would raise his hand. They looked at each other. The old man said, “Now this is not the time to think. My breaths are numbered. Gather courage.”
The youngest raised his hand. He said, “I will fulfill the promise.”
The three said, “What are you doing? Are you mad? You are too young. You don’t know this man.”
But the old man blessed the young boy and he said, “I have always known that you are my real son, my blood, my bones, my marrow, my everything. And these three idiots, they will not even promise a dying father a simple thing; they won’t even ask what the thing is.”
The young boy said, “You forget about them. You just tell me what the thing is that I have to do.”
He said, “It is very simple, but I will whisper it in your ear. These three idiots should not hear it, otherwise they will disturb you. But don’t listen to anybody. It is a question of keeping your word – and to a dying father.”
The boy said, “I promise. You just tell me.”
So he whispered in his ear, “You do one thing: when I am dead, cut off my hands, my feet, my head – cut my body into as many parts as you can.”
The boy said, “What are you saying? For what?”
He said, “Wait, I have the whole plan – then throw each part into all the neighborhoods, into everybody’s house, and go to the police station.”
The boy said, “But what is the purpose of this?”
He said, “Just a spiritual peace. My whole life I have been trying somehow to send all these neighbors behind bars. Now the chance has come. And when my soul sees all of them chained, going in the police lorry toward the police station, I will feel the only bliss. My whole life has been a life of misery. And my bliss will become a blessing for you.” And the man died.
And the boy said, “My God, what kind of a father…?”
All the three said, “We told you before not to listen to him. He is the nastiest man you can find. Although he is our father… But that is an accident, what can we do? What has he said? He must have said something really nasty.”
The young boy said, “Really nasty? I cannot conceive of anybody thinking at the time of death… He was bothered about the neighbors. He was planning… This is the plan: we have to cut his body into as many parts as possible and throw those parts into everybody’s house and inform the police that these people have killed our father – not only killed, they have cut him into pieces – and let them be caught red-handed. And he was saying that his soul will feel so blissed out that his life has been successful!”
What are you missing? What do you want to come back for? Is this not misery enough?
I know why people want to come back again and again, a simple arithmetic: this time you are married to a man or to a woman and you are fed up, and you see so many beautiful men and beautiful women, they seem to be almost other-worldly, and you are caught up with this ugly fellow, disgusting. But in this life it is very difficult to get rid of him; next life, there is a chance.
Remember the proverb: The grass on the other side of the fence is always greener. It looks like the neighbors are living so beautifully, so blissfully; only you are in hell. So perhaps next time things will be different. In this big world, five million people – forgive me, not million, billion – five billion people, it is a very rare chance that you would find the same wife again, the same husband, the same nasty children, the same neighbors. A great hope of change – for that, more time is needed. You have to come again and again. But just look backward, just a single glance. Millions of times you have come here, and each time you were hoping that something was going to change. Nothing changes. You have different husbands, different wives, different children, but they are all the same. Just different models but manufactured in the same company; the same mechanism inside the bonnet. All differences are only in the bonnets.
After each life you go on forgetting that you have lived so many times. It is time to realize that you are moving in a vicious circle. You have to come out of the circle. Here in this circle, in this circus, nobody has ever been happy.
Yes, people go out to the club, to the cinema, to the beach, smile, but these are not their real faces; these are masks which go on deceiving everybody. You know it perfectly well.
Husbands and wives are fighting, and somebody knocks on the door and immediately they start having a very nice, beautiful conversation. The guest is welcomed and he cannot conceive that just a moment before these two fellows were at each other’s throats – and they are just waiting for the time when you are going to leave so they can start again where the story has stopped, with vengeance.
One man used to pray to God, “I must be the most miserable man in the world, and I have been praying my whole life. And I don’t want much – I simply want to exchange my miseries, with anybody you like, because everybody seems to be so happy. I am willing. You choose.”
That night he had a dream. He heard a voice thundering from the sky: “Everybody take out his misery, put it in a bag and rush toward the temple.”
He thought perhaps his prayer had been heard. So he filled a bag with every misery that he had. And what he found on the road… “My God,” he said, “this is strange” – because his bag was just a small one. Others were carrying such big bags; a few were even supported by servants.
He said, “My God, these are the beautiful people! I have seen them. Now I know why God was not listening to my prayer. But it is too late. If I can save my bag and come back home, I will remain grateful to God forever.”
And in the temple they again heard the voice: “Everybody hang your bag on the wall, then the lights will be put off and a bell will ring; that will be the signal – in the dark you can choose any bag that you want. So while it is light, look all around. And stand near the bag that you want, so that in the darkness you don’t miss it.”
The man who had prayed was just holding his bag.
But he was surprised – another surprise, surprise upon surprise – everybody was standing with his own bag, holding on. He asked a few people, “Why are you holding your bag?”
They said, “Why are you holding yours? – for the same reason. At least we know what these miseries are. Somebody else’s miseries, unknown, unacquainted… Now at this age, to begin from scratch – it is better to live with our old friends.”
The lights were turned off and everybody grabbed his bag, ran out of the temple, and they were all happy and hilarious that they had got their own bags.
The man who had prayed was so grateful: “God is really compassionate, otherwise today I was going to be in a mess. Those big bags – my God, what kind of miseries people are hiding! And these are the people… I was thinking they were happy and I was the most miserable person, and my bag was the smallest!”
Nobody is showing his real face.
For what do you want to come back: just to have another mask, another bag of miseries, some other woman to torture you, some other man to beat you, some other children to drive you crazy? For what do you want to come back? Certainly not to repeat this life, you are hoping for some change, some possibility of change. But here there are only differences of bags; the contents are the same.
When I said enlightenment is ultimate death and you will not be coming back to this life, if you had understood the misery and the pain and the anguish and the meaninglessness and the boredom of your life, you would have rejoiced. But this was only half of the statement.
The other half is an eternal life, with no form. You don’t have any idea of it. You can have an idea of it if you go deep in meditation. You will find that you are not the body; you are not the mind. You will find your formless consciousness – and that is your real being, and it is always blissful.
There is tremendous possibility if you can get out of the rut of the wheel of life and death that you have been following since eternity: again and again doing the same thing, with a slight difference – maybe in the color, maybe in the shape – but the experience is basically the same. Just one life is enough for a man of intelligence to see that this is not worth repeating.
When I was a student, one of my friends never passed his master’s degree. At least before he became my friend, he had failed ten times. And he was the son of a very famous professor in the same university.
The man was strange – I liked his idea. I said, “You seem to be loving this class too much – you have failed ten times.”
He said, “What else to do? Because if I pass; then I have to do some job. My father is after me, but he cannot manage because I go on failing. My mother is after me. Now they have all become tired; they have decided there is no hope. And I am enjoying immense freedom: no worry, no job, no anxiety to pass the examination – because I am not going to pass it, unless this university decides to pass me whatever I do.”
I said, “I like your idea; it resembles people’s lives. They go on being born into the same world again and again. Unless existence itself forces them to become enlightened, they are not going to become enlightened. You are ready to suffer every kind of comment – everybody is condemning you, every professor is condemning you, every student thinks that they have never seen such an idiot. Ten years in one class!”
But he said to me, “Who cares about these people? I am enjoying my life.”
Finally the university had to decide to pass him: “Whether his attendance is enough or not, don’t bother; whether or not he writes anything in his examination paper, don’t take any note of it. Whatever he writes, it is right – he has to be passed. He is torturing his father, his mother. He is their only son. They are getting old.”
They were very respected professors – both the father and the mother – and he was simply cheating them and just being a vagabond.
Finally, he was passed. After I passed my examination, he was still there for two more years, but twelve years were enough. The university decided that whether he writes anything or not, he knows; he should be released. And you will be surprised that because he was forcibly passed, they could not give him a first class degree, they could not make him a gold medalist, so he was passed with a third class one. And he was very happy.
He met me. I said, “I have heard that you have passed. That is some news.”
He said, “It is. I have passed with a third class degree. Now my father and mother cannot torture me because I am not passing, I am not trying enough. For twelve years I have done as much work as possible – but who gives a job to a third-class graduate in India? So now I am still free. They have been successful in persuading the university to pass me, but they have passed me with a third class degree, and a third class one does not matter. I am freed from the university too. Now I am completely free.” But free for what?
He was drinking alcohol, he was a gambler, he was going to prostitutes; he was taking all kinds of drugs – freedom for what?
He died just two years ago. He lived a rotten life, condemned by everybody, and destroyed himself in the name of freedom. And all that he was doing was simply trying to escape from responsibility. But anyone who tries to escape from responsibility cannot experience freedom. Freedom goes together with responsibility.
Your life: you have never thought about it, that it is empty, that it is more or less a nausea, that it is simply boredom. That’s why you need so many entertainments.
But where are you going? You are not growing. You have not accepted the basic responsibility toward yourself: that you have to create a meaningful life, a life which has significance, a life which has light in it, luminous, a life which is joyful, a life which in itself is a poetry.
The eternal life I am talking about is a life of eternal creativity. You will not be in the body, you will not be confined in any form, but your energy will have absolute freedom to be creative, to make this existence more beautiful, more lovable, more conscious, more enlightened.
That’s why, although you are afraid, you still feel some irresistible attraction to this crazy guy. That irresistible attraction shows that inside you are empty, hollow, meaningless. You have come close to a presence which attracts your heart in spite of your head.
If you are courageous, listen to the heart; if you are a coward, listen to the head. But for the cowards there is no paradise. Paradise opens its door only for the courageous.
Osho,
Who is the modern man? Have science and technology corrupted the modern man?
The modern man has not yet come into existence. The people in the world are all very old and very ancient. It is rare to come across a contemporary.
Somebody belongs to a religion founded ten thousand years ago, somebody belongs to a religion two thousand years old – these people are not contemporary. They are living in modern times, but they are not modern.
And this has created a tremendous problem: technology, scientific progress needs the modern man to use it, and the modern man is not available. Technology is available, science is available, but the people who can use it creatively are nonexistent.
The result is disastrous, because to these people who are not contemporaries, science has placed technological instruments in their hands, machines, which are dangerous. It is like putting a sword in the hands of a child: he is going to hurt somebody, or himself; he is not a swordsman, he is not trained for it.
Man is lagging behind, and the technology has gone far ahead of him. He does not know what to do with it, and whatever he is going to do with it is going to be wrong.
Atomic energy could have been a great blessing to humanity. It could have removed all poverty. But instead of removing poverty, instead of making man’s life richer, it destroyed innocent people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki who had done no harm to anybody. And now the atom bombs that destroyed Nagasaki and Hiroshima are like toys, because now the nuclear weapons are so powerful that they can destroy the whole earth seven hundred times. And they are in the hands of people like Ronald Reagan, who is certainly not a contemporary.
He is a fundamentalist Christian. The fundamentalist Christians are the worst Christians, they are the most fanatic people. They believe that Christianity is the only religion, all other religions are wrong, and that the whole world should be converted to Christianity. These are not contemporary ideas. These are very primitive ideas.
And one cannot hope, either, that Ronald Reagan and people of his kind will be contemporaries.
He used to have a chimpanzee; that was his only friend. In these billions of human beings, he could not find anybody worthy of friendship – a chimpanzee! And it shows something about you, the company you keep.
When he became the president of America, on the first day he went to the beach with his chimpanzee for a walk. An old man saw them, and he could not believe his eyes. He thought that this was an insult to the whole country: that the president should go for a morning walk with a chimpanzee. He went ahead, stopped both of the fellows and said, “President, sir, do you think it looks right to be president of a great country and have a chimpanzee as a friend?”
Ronald Reagan was just going to say something and the old man said, “Shut up! I am not asking you; I am asking Mister President.” He was thinking that the chimpanzee was Mister President – and perhaps he was right.
Sometimes, jokes are serious.
And if Ronald Reagan is angry with me… I know you cannot expect anything much more from a chimpanzee.
Now he has in his hands such powers to destroy – modern technology and science has not corrupted man. Man is not capable of using modern science and technology in the right way. The modern man is not born yet.
I am reminded of H.G. Wells, who has written one of the best histories of the world. When the book was published one interviewer asked him, “What is your idea of civilization?”
H.G. Wells said, “My idea? Civilization is a good idea, but it has still to happen. It is still an idea, somebody has to make it a reality.”
Technology and science are not the problems. The problem is the retarded man. But we are strange people. We always think in strange ways.
Mahatma Gandhi was thinking that if all the science and technology that has been developed by man and his intelligence, after the spinning wheel, could be drowned in the oceans; then all problems would be solved. And this country believed him, and not only this country, millions of people around the earth believed him – that the spinning wheel would solve all the problems.
Railway trains have to be stopped, airplanes have to be stopped, post offices have to be closed, telegrams, telephones have to be destroyed – because all these things have come after the spinning wheel. In fact nobody knows what can be saved. Electricity? No. Medical science? No. In fact one will have to find out when the spinning wheel was invented. Perhaps bullock carts can be saved, fire can be saved – that’s all: fire, bullock carts, the spinning wheel, and everybody is a mahatma – and all problems disappear automatically.
The question is not technology – that’s what Gandhi was insisting, that technology is corrupting man. My fight with him is that it is man who is retarded, that he is not capable of using the technology rightly.
How can technology corrupt man? Do you think if Mahavira comes and sees a gun, the gun will corrupt Mahavira and he will start firing here and there, this way and that, because the gun corrupted him? Technology cannot corrupt anybody. Technology is just a means in your hands, and whatever you want to make of it you can make of it.
Medical science thinks man can live three hundred years: old age can be simply avoided, diseases can disappear, man can live young, healthy, for three hundred years. But nobody is interested in that, no politician is interested in that. Their interest is in how to create death rays. And if death rays can be created, do you think it is inconceivable to imagine that life rays can be created? The same genius, the same scientist who can create death rays is capable of creating life rays.
But nobody is asking for life rays. The demand is for death rays, and most probably they already have death rays in Russia and America both. Then there is no need to send a missile with nuclear bombs; death rays can just be directed toward a certain spot and they will pass through people, killing them in such a way that they will not destroy anything else. Your furniture will be saved, your houses will be saved, your cars will be saved – they will only destroy life. A strange kind of world – if death rays are used, houses will be standing, cars will be there, trains will be there; only life will not be found anywhere.
Is technology corrupting man? No, I do not agree with that Gandhian idea.
I hope that we will be able to create life rays, so that if life rays pass through a village the whole village becomes young, full of life. But religions will not like my idea, because even old people will start falling in love. Life rays? – no religion will be ready. Death rays are perfectly okay.
Life rays passing through the Vatican: the pope falls in love, starts dancing in a disco, finds a girlfriend… As far as I am concerned, I would love for that to happen.
Contemporary man has to be brought into existence. That is my work. That’s why everybody is against me – because they are not contemporary people. I am fighting a fight against everybody, because they are old, ancient, dead skeletons.
If contemporary man comes into life, the whole of technology will be a servant. There is no need for any human being to function as a servant; technology can do that. Man’s labor hours can be almost finished. Machines can do that, and can do it more efficiently than man can ever manage. And if all the work can be done by technology and machines, man is free to evolve his consciousness. He has enough time to meditate, to transcend this life, to enter into the transcendental, the immortal.
And machines can do miracles. You have heart attacks – so many people die of heart attacks – and now it is practically possible to exchange your hearts for plastic hearts. That does not mean that your love will become plastic, but the heart will become so strong that there is no possibility of its failure. Man’s body can be improved in every possible way. Plastic surgery can make human beings as beautiful as you can dream of.
But the political idiots are concerned only with how to destroy. They are not concerned to beautify human life, to prolong human life, to help human beings to remain young, youthful, playful. They don’t want this earth to be a place of festivity, of joy, of song and dance; and they don’t want to give humanity time enough to evolve into new dimensions of being. They are perfectly satisfied with the old, out-of-date humanity.
So I repeat again: the new man, the contemporary man, has not yet come on the stage. We have to herald his coming.
Osho,
My imagination is very strong. Sometimes when I close my eyes, I see myself sitting with you and there are no more questions. Then I feel loved and accepted. Whenever I experience this, I feel so joyful. Is this real, or just a mind-game to keep me away from reality?
If you can manage it exactly the same, again and again, then it is not imagination. Then it is not the stuff dreams are made of, because you cannot repeat a dream. But if you can imagine such a thing only once, and you cannot manage to experience it exactly the same again and again, then it is a dream; then it is a mind-game. Don’t waste time on it.
This is the distinction between dream and reality: reality is that which remains as it is. Dream is something that happens once and is gone. And it is not in your hands to bring it back; you cannot manage to dream it.
Every morning you will open your eyes – your room will be the same. Every night you will close your eyes – your dreams will be different. That which remains the same is the real, and that which goes on fleeting, changing, and is not under your control, is a dream. Don’t waste your time in dreams.
One night Mulla Nasruddin suddenly nudged his wife and said, “Be quick! Where are my glasses?”
The wife said, “Are you mad? What are you going to do with your glasses in the middle of the night?”
Mulla Nasruddin said, “No argument at this moment, we can discuss things later. First my glasses!”
So the wife gave him his glasses. He put the glasses on, closed his eyes.
The wife said, “What are you doing?”
He said, “Nothing. I was having such a beautiful dream but because my eyes are not the same as they used to be in my youth… It is old age, so I could not see clearly; things were vague. From tomorrow I am going to sleep with my glasses on, because one never knows.”
The wife said, “Can I ask you what the dream was?”
He said, “It is better if you don’t ask. Such a beautiful woman, but she just slipped out of my hands because of a simple mistake: I had no idea where you had put my glasses. And I tried my best – by putting on my glasses, praying to God, that ‘just once more’ – but nothing happened. Instead what I saw… It is better not to say.”
She said, “What did you see? You have to say!”
He said, “Don’t create any trouble in the middle of the night. I saw you! That was the last thing I ever wanted to see.”
You cannot repeat dreams. They are not objective, you cannot share them; you cannot invite friends and have a dream party. Reality is objective; even the inner reality is also objective.
So you can check it. Try again.
If you can manage the same experience, then don’t be worried. It is not a mind-game; it is a beautiful meditation.
Go deep into it with all my blessings.