JEWISH MYSTICS
The True Sage 04
Fourth Discourse from the series of 10 discourses - The True Sage by Osho.
You can listen, download or read all of these discourses on oshoworld.com.
The first question:
Osho,
Why does all that you say seem completely familiar? I have heard it all before in various contexts, and at the same time it sounds full of wonderful revelations.
That’s the quality of truth: it is neither old nor new, or it is both.
Truth is eternal. In a way, you have heard it millions of times, in many contexts. You may not have understood it but you have heard it, you carry the memory.
It is not that you are here on this earth for the first time. In the time of Buddha, in the time of Jesus, in the time of Krishna, certainly you were there, you have heard it. You have not understood it. That’s why you are here again. The day you understand, you disappear. Understanding is a great death – a death from this world of fantasy, dream, illusion.
You are right; your feeling is right that you have heard it before. It sounds familiar, and yet it reveals much. It sounds familiar because it is familiar; still it reveals new dimensions because a new understanding is dawning on you.
Truth is neither old nor new because it doesn’t belong to time. Anything that belongs to time is bound to be new or old. That which is new today will be old tomorrow. That which is old today was yesterday new. New and old are two aspects of time. Truth is timeless. Truth is timelessness: it is always there – as old as existence and as new as this moment.
If you understand, the familiarity carries deep mysteries hidden behind it. So don’t be deceived by the familiarity. You may have heard the words, you have not understood the truth; otherwise you would have been transformed. Transformation is a function of truth. Says Jesus, “Truth liberates.” The moment you understand, you are liberated. There is nothing else to do afterward. The very understanding is enough, is liberation.
Listen, but don’t compare; listen, but don’t bring your memory in. Otherwise your memory and your feeling that it is familiar will be a distraction. The moment your mind says it is familiar, the mind is saying there is nothing new to understand. There is much, there is infinite to be understood.
Don’t look through the memory and don’t compare. Look directly, look immediately, look without memory. Let there be a clarity of perception. Don’t compare with anything that you have heard before.
I tell you: you may have heard it before but you have not understood it. So what is the point of hearing it before? If you are so much in this idea of familiarity, you will miss it again. And again, whenever you hear it, the idea will be there that it sounds familiar.
Comparison is a disease: it obstructs, it doesn’t help. So even when you feel it is familiar you also feel, by the side, new flowers of understanding blooming. They bloom in spite of your comparison. If the comparison is completely dropped, you are liberated. If you can rightly listen to me, there is nothing else to do. One moment of total listening will be enough – you will be awake. One moment is enough because that becomes the door to eternity.
The second question:
Osho,
The words introvert and introspection have morbid connotations. How do they differ from healthy self-awareness and turning within?
In self-awareness there is no within and no without. You don’t turn within. In self-awareness the within and the without has disappeared, there exists only one. Within and without is the division of the mind, is the division of the analytical mind. What is within and what is without? How do you demark?
So when people say, “Turn withinward,” they are just using your language to help you because if they say, “Turn beyond within and without,” it will be almost impossible for you to understand what they mean. But that is exactly what they mean. Self-awareness is a total unity of within and without, the higher and the lower, the valley and the peak. All dualities meet and merge into it.
Yes, introvert has a morbid connotation. It is morbidity. A person who is an introvert is a person who is incapable of moving without. He is confined, closed: a flower which cannot open, a song which cannot burst, a river which cannot flow to the open sea. The introvert is morbid; he cannot relate, he cannot love, he cannot move in the world, he cannot spread. He has no expansion. Confined, closed, like a seed, he is not like a tree. But remember, the extrovert is also morbid.
In the western psychology the introvert is morbid but the extrovert is thought to be healthy. That simply shows that this type of psychological thinking has been developed by extroverts – nothing else. They think they are healthy and the opposite is unhealthy. There is an opposite school also in the East. The eastern psychology thinks the introvert healthy and the extrovert unhealthy. To me both are unhealthy because both are confined to a certain direction and are incapable of moving to the opposite.
To me, health means the capacity to move in all directions. To be healthy is to be whole. The word health comes from the same root as the word whole. To be healthy is to be whole, to be whole is to be all together. So to be healthy means where opposites meet and are no longer opposites but are transformed into complementaries.
A healthy person is one: when he wants to move inward, he moves; there is no hindrance. He has no compulsion to be extrovert, and the same vice versa. If you are compulsively introvert, whenever you start moving without there are inner hindrances: you have to fight, you cannot flow, you have to force. Then you are ill. A healthy person, a healthy being, a healthy energy, is always ready to move anywhere. There is no compulsion to be somewhere in particular.
A healthy energy is a flowing energy. You go to the market, you move outward; nobody inside condemns, “To move out is worldly, materialistic.” Nobody condemns. When you go to the temple, you move withinward; nobody condemns, “To go within is morbid. This is for foolish people, unworldly, simpletons. This way you will lose all because all the riches are outward – where are you going by closing your eyes and watching your navel? You are becoming a fool.”
In the West, when they want to condemn the East they call them “navel-watchers” or “lotus-eaters.” One cannot be alive by just eating lotus – mad people. And when in the East people want to condemn the West they call them “money-oriented, materialistic, worldly.” Both these types of psychologies are ill and morbid. A true psychology is still to be born: a psychology of the whole person: a psychology of flow, of no compulsion, no obsession.
You should be as capable of coming out and going in as you are capable of coming out of your house and going in. When the climate is beautiful, you go out, you sit in the garden under the tree. Then the sun rises and it is too hot, you seek shelter, you come in. In the day you go out, in the night you come in. A deep balance is needed, and for a deep balance opposites should not be taken as opposites. And they are not, they are complementaries: yin and yang, man and woman, day and night, summer and winter, sansar and nirvana.
Remember, my whole emphasis is on the meeting of the opposites. Then you are not confined, then you have no limitation. Then you are unlimited. No boundary exists, and this is the emphasis of Hasidism also.
A Hasidic sage is as worldly as anybody, and a Hasidic sage is as unworldly as anybody. He lives in the world but he is not of the world. He moves in the world, remains untouched by it; he is beyond. This is true religion.
The religion that you call religion is not true religion. It is just in opposition to the world. It is a choice. That’s why if you choose that type of religion you may change, but fundamentally you will remain the same. The change will be just on the surface. The change will be just as if one goes from one imprisonment to another. One imprisonment is on this side of the road, another is on that side of the road. You live in one prison and you think of the other as if over there is freedom. It is the opposite: things are different there, but again it is a confinement.
Between these two imprisonments there is the open road, the way of the white clouds. Just exactly in the middle, between two opposites, is the way. To me, extrovert is morbid, introvert is also morbid. When you are neither, you are healthy.
Remember the word flowing. The more energy flows, the healthier. You can reach the highest peak and you can come down to the lowest world, and there is no problem. You can meditate and you can love. Meditation is going withinward, love is going outward. Meditation is reaching to one’s own being, love is an effort to reach the other’s being.
There are religions which say that if you meditate you cannot love. There are religions which say that if you love, how can you meditate?
Christianity is an extrovert religion. The emphasis is on serving people, love, compassion. The emphasis is not on meditation because if you meditate that looks selfish. When the world is in such a misery – people are hungry, ill, dying – you are meditating? The whole thing appears to be too cruel. Somebody is dying on the road, a beggar, and you are sitting in your temple and meditating? It is selfish. “Throw this meditation away,” says the extrovert religion. “Go and help people: that is the only way to reach God.”
One of the greatest Indian poets, Rabindranath, was very impressed by Christianity. He wrote a poem in which he said, “Don’t seek me in the temple. I am not there. If you really want to seek me, come to the road where the stonecutter is cutting stones or where the farmer is tilling the ground. I am not in the temples. Come to the world where the laborer is working and the beggar is begging. There I am!”
This is extrovert religion, a reaction against too much introvertedness.
In India, introvert religions have existed. They say, “This world is maya, illusion. Beggars have always been dying and they will always die, and you cannot change anything. Move withinward, close your eyes. In your deepest core of being is godliness. Outside it is just a dream world. Don’t waste your time there, the real is within.”
To me, both are morbid. A part is always morbid; the whole is healthy.
So I tell you: godliness is everywhere. In the temple, when you close your eyes, there is godliness; and on the road also, where the stonecutter is working hard in the hot sun, there is godliness because only godliness is. Godliness is the whole and mind always tries to choose a part.
I have heard…
You must know a very famous movie dog, Rin Tin Tin. His trainer was asked about the dog. He tried to describe, but the dog had such marvelous qualities, such indefinable qualities, that he was at a loss to describe and define the qualities. So at last he stumbled upon a definition. He said, “Rin Tin Tin is God in the form of a dog.”
God and dog – both words have the same balance. God may be the introversion of energy, dog may be the extroversion of the energy, but the energy is the same because only one energy exists. The world is a unity, the mind creates opposites.
One very great Zen monk, Rinzai, was asked once – the questioner must have been a very skeptical mind; he asked, “You go on emphasizing that everything is God and everything is Buddha. Do you mean to say that even a dog is a buddha?” Rinzai laughed, didn’t answer. On the contrary, he jumped and started barking.
That’s exactly the right answer: a buddha barking like a dog. He showed the fact rather than talking about it.
You are morbid if you are confined to anything, whatsoever the name. You are healthy if you are flowing in all directions together. If opposites meet in you, you become perfect. That’s why a perfect man can never be consistent; he has to be contradictory because opposites will be meeting in him. Only ordinary people can be consistent.
The true sage is never consistent, cannot be, because he will have to move in all the directions together.
Walt Whitman says, “I’m vast. I contain contradictions.” What to say about existence? Vast – it contains all contradictions. It is in the lowest and it is in the highest. In the lowest it exists as the lowest, in the highest it exists as the highest. It is in sex and it is in samadhi, it is in this world as matter and it is in that world as non-matter. It is the sinner and it is the sage. The true sage is always contradictory – that’s the difficulty: to understand him.
It is very easy to understand your mediocre saints. They are plain, no contradictions exist in them. They are always the same: you can rely, you can predict. They are like a simple line, no complexity. They are simple and in a way, simpletons. They don’t have the beauty of complexity.
The true sage is very complex. He contains contradictions, and that’s why it has always been very difficult to recognize him. He eludes: you catch hold of him from one direction, he is moving in another. You cannot see because your eyes are morbid; you can see only the part.
You can see a man as a sinner, you can see a man as a saint, but it is difficult to understand a man like Gurdjieff who is both. In him the sinner and the sage meet. In him even sin is transformed. In him even the sage is transformed and becomes a worldly being. To understand Gurdjieff you will have to drop all your categories, all your labels of sinners and saints and this and that.
The true sage is godly: godliness is contradictory.
That’s what Krishna says in the Gita. He says, “Don’t be worried because I am the killer and the killed. Don’t be worried because I am in both: the one who is killed is me, and the one who is going to kill also is me. My two hands, right and left, are in a game of hide and seek.”
All your conceptions of God are very poor, and theologians go on trying to explain. They can never explain because the contradiction creates the trouble. If you say, “God is just,” then you cannot say, “God is compassion.” That’s the trouble for the theologian: if God is just, then compassion cannot exist, if God is compassion, then he cannot be just. Both are not possible together.
For thousands of years theologians have gone on thinking, “How to manage? God seems to be unmanageable, chaotic.” He is both! He is compassionate in his justice and he is just in his compassion. But then it is absurd because how can a judge be both? If the judge has compassion, then he would like to forgive. If he is just, then the criminal has to be punished – punished according to the law, with no compassion. Then he has to remain indifferent.
Justice has to be neutral. Compassion is love, it cannot be neutral. God is both. Let me tell you: God is bondage and God is freedom. That’s why I say don’t be in a hurry. Even in the market he exists. Even in this world, so ungodly, he exists because otherwise is not possible.
Once you can see it, such deep silence descends in your being because when you can see the contradictions meeting in existence, contradictions within you immediately meet and dissolve. Then you move; freedom becomes your nature. Then you move freely; then you become freedom. Then there is no goal. The only goal is to delight herenow. Nothing is to be achieved because all achievement is always against something. You have to leave this and attain that, you have to drop this and do that.
All achievement, ambition, goal, is choosing something against something else – and existence is both. That’s why Krishnamurti goes on insisting that the only way to attain to truth is to be choiceless. Choose and you have become morbid. Don’t choose, float choicelessly. Don’t be the chooser, just watch and flow, and you are freedom. This is what moksha is: absolute freedom.
The third question:
Osho,
Why am I afraid of other people?
If you are afraid of yourself, only then are you afraid of other people. If you love yourself, you love others; if you hate yourself, you hate others because in relationship with others it is only you mirrored. The other is nothing but a mirror. So whatsoever happens in relationship, always know: it must have happened before within you because the relationship can only magnify, it cannot create. It can only show and manifest, it cannot create. If you love yourself, you love others; if you are afraid of yourself, you are afraid of others because coming in contact with others you will start manifesting your being.
You have been conditioned – in the East, in the West, everywhere; Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, Jaina – you all have been conditioned to hate yourselves. It has been taught to you continuously that to love oneself is bad: “Love others. Hate yourself.” This is asking for absurdities, impossibilities. If you don’t love yourself, the one nearest to yourself, how can you love anybody else? Nobody loves himself and is trying to love others. Then your love is nothing but hatred – masked, hidden.
I tell you to love yourself first because if love happens within you, only then can it spread to others. It is just like throwing a stone in a silent lake: the stone falls, ripples arise, and then they go on moving, moving, moving – to the farthest bank they will go on. But the stone must have fallen within you first, the love must have happened to you: you must have loved yourself.
That is a basic requirement which is missing all over the world. That’s why the world is in such misery: everybody trying to love, but impossible to love because the basis is not there, the foundation is lacking.
Love yourself and then suddenly you will find yourself reflected everywhere. You are a human being and all other human beings are just like you: just forms differ, names differ, but the reality is the same. Then go on moving farther and farther. Then animals are also like you; the form differs a little more, but the being… Then the trees are also like you. Farther and farther go on. The ripples – then even rocks because they also exist and you also exist. Existence is the same, similar.
This is the only way to love existence: start by loving yourself and then let the love spread. Then don’t know any boundaries, go on and on to the very infinity. This is what prayer is, this is what devotion is.
If you miss the first point – the stone has not been thrown – then you go on waiting and watching and the ripples never arise. It cannot start anywhere else, it can only start in your heart because love is a ripple in the heart, a vibration in the heart, a throbbing of sharing whatsoever you are – a deep intense urge to go and reach the other, to share your being and your delight and your song.
But your heart is almost dead, frozen, and you have been taught to condemn yourself: that you are ugly, that you are bad. That this is sin: “Don’t do this – you are guilty.” You cannot accept yourself, how can you accept anybody else?
A deep acceptance is needed. Whatsoever and whosoever you are, a deep acceptance – not only acceptance but a delight that “I am.” I, here, now: all the three points, the triangle of being, should be filled with delight. You should not ask something else. There should not be any “ought.” Drop all shoulds and the whole world becomes different. Right now you continuously think, “I should be this and that, then I can love and be loved.”
Your God is nothing but the greatest condemner looking at you from the skies: “Behave well.” This gives you a bad feeling about yourself. By and by you become afraid because you are suppressing yourself. If you relate with somebody, the suppression may break, everything may bubble up, surface. Then…? So you are afraid, afraid to come in contact. So you remain hidden within yourself and nobody knows how ugly you are, nobody knows how angry you are, nobody knows how full of hatred you are. Nobody knows your jealousy, possessiveness, envy. Nobody knows: you create armor around, you live within yourself, you never make any contact so that you can manage your image. If you come deep in contact, the image is bound to break; the reality, the real encounter will shatter it. That is the fear.
You ask, “Why am I afraid of other people?” You are afraid because you are afraid of yourself. Drop that fear, drop the guilt that has been created in you. Your politicians, priests, parents, are all guilt-creators because that is the only way that you can be controlled and manipulated. They have condemned you: a very simple but very cunning trick to manipulate you because if you are accepted, not condemned – loved, appreciated, and if it is relayed to you from everywhere that you are okay – then it will be difficult to control you. How can you control a person who is absolutely okay? The very problem doesn’t arise.
So the priests, the politicians, the parents go on saying that you are not okay. Once they create the feeling that you are not okay, they become the dictators. Now they have to dictate the discipline: “Now this is the way you should behave.” First they create the feeling that you are wrong, then they give you guidelines how to be right.
You are here with me, involved in a totally different experiment. I have no condemnation, I don’t create any guilt feeling in you. I don’t say, “This is sin,” I don’t say that I will love you only when you fulfill certain conditions. I love you as you are because that’s the only way a person can be loved. I accept you as you are because I know that is the only way you can be. That’s how the whole has willed you to be, that is what the whole has destined it to be.
Relax and accept and delight, and there is transformation. It comes not by effort, it comes by accepting yourself with such deep love and ecstasy that there is no condition – conscious, unconscious, known, unknown. Unconditional acceptance, and suddenly you see you are not afraid of people; rather, you enjoy people, people are beautiful. They are all incarnations of God – maybe Rin Tin Tin, but still incarnations of God.
You love them and if you love them, you bring their godliness to the surface. Whenever you love a person, his godliness comes on top. It happens because when somebody loves you, how can you show your ugliness? Simply, your beautiful face comes up, and by and by the ugly face disappears.
Love is alchemical. If you love yourself, the ugly part of you disappears, is absorbed, is transformed. The energy is released from that form because everything carries energy. Your anger has much energy involved in it, your fear also has much energy crippled and suffocated in it. If the fear disappears, the form falls down and the energy is released. Anger disappears, more energy is released; jealousy disappears, still more energy. Whatsoever are called sins, when they disappear…
I don’t say that you have to change the sins; you have to love your being and they change; change is a by-product, a consequence. So much tremendous energy is released that you start floating higher and higher and higher. You attain to wings.
Love yourself! That should be the foundational commandment: love yourself. All else will follow, but this is the foundation.
The fourth question:
Osho,
I am confused about the difference between individuality and personality. What, if anything, is left of the individual after the exit of the ego?
Individuality is your essence: you come with it, you are born with it. Personality is borrowed: it is given to you by the society. It is just like clothes, subtle clothes.
A child is born naked; then we hide his nakedness, we give him clothes. A child is born with essence, individuality. We hide that too because naked individuality is rebellious, non-conformist.
Individuality is exactly what it means: it is individual. Personality is not individual, it is social.
Society wants you to have personalities not individualities, because your individualities will create conflict. The society hides your individuality and gives a personality. Personality is a learned thing. The word personality comes from a Greek root which means mask: persona. In Greek drama the actors used to wear masks to hide their real face and to show some other face. From persona comes the word personality; it is a face that you wear, it is not your original face.
When the personality disappears, don’t be afraid. For the first time you become authentic, for the first time you become real, for the first time you attain to essence. That essence, in India, has been called atma, the soul.
The ego is the center of personality and godliness is the center of essence. That’s why there is so much insistence from every corner that ego has to be dropped: unless you know what you are, not what you are expected to be…
Personality is false, it is the greatest lie. And because the whole society depends on personality, the state, the church, organizations, the establishment are all lies. The western psychology goes on thinking about the personality too much, that’s why the whole of western psychology is a psychology based on the basic lie.
In the East we think of the essence, not of the personality. That which you have brought, that which is your intrinsic nature, swabhava, that which is your intrinsic essence has to be known and has to be lived.
Personality is that which you are not, but try to show that you are. Personality is that which you have to use as a convenience when you move in society.
You are walking; you have gone for a morning walk, and then somebody passes by – you smile. The smile can be either from the essence or from the personality. If the smile is really a delight in seeing the person, in seeing the godliness in that person, in seeing the heart, the love, the formless that has become incarnate in that person… That’s why, in India we never use words like “Good morning” – they don’t mean much. We say, “Ram, Ram.” We welcome each other by the name of God. It is a symbolic act that means, “I see the godliness within you.” Ram, Ram means, “I see Ram within you. Welcome. I am happy, blessed, that you passed by.” If it comes from your essence, then the smile spreads all over your being; you feel a deep contentment, you feel blessed that this man passed by. The man is gone but the blessing remains and lingers around you like a subtle perfume.
If you say simply a “Good morning” because the man is a banker or a political leader – can be mischievous sometimes, can be dangerous, it is risky not to say “Good morning” – then you say it and you smile, you bring a smile on your face. That is persona, that is personality.
In each act you have to watch. It is arduous but it has to be done. There is no other way. In each act you have to watch from where it comes – from personality or from essence? If it comes from essence, the essence will grow because you will give an opportunity for the essence to be manifested, expressed. If it comes from the personality, then the personality will become harder and harder and harder and it will suffocate the essence completely.
Watch, remind yourself again and again from where it comes. You come home: you bring ice cream, flowers to your wife. Is the present from the personality or from the essence? If it is from the personality, it is a lie. You may have talked to somebody else’s wife – you were charmed, you felt attracted, a desire arose in you – and then you started feeling guilty, “This is not being faithful, so bring ice cream home.” And remember, your wife will immediately suspect; otherwise, you never bring ice cream. There must be something in it, you must be hiding something. “Why are you so good today, so suddenly unexpectedly good?”
You cannot deceive women. They have an instinct; they are lie detectors. They immediately feel because they don’t think. Their feeling is immediate and direct. They function from the center of emotion. You are feeling guilty, then you bring some present to the wife. It is a gift from the personality; it is very dangerous.
Suddenly the same can happen, the situation may be the same: you were talking to your friend’s wife, you were charmed – she was graceful and beautiful – and because of her beauty, because of her grace, you remembered your wife because when you love a person every beautiful person reminds you of the person. It has to be so. If the woman was charming, it immediately reminds you of your beloved. Something of the beloved was there – a part, a gesture. Something of your wife was there. You loved the woman in that moment because she reminded you of your wife. Then you are so full of the memory you bring ice cream or flowers or something – or nothing, just a smile. Then it is from the essence. It is totally different: the situation may be the same but you can behave in a totally different way.
Personality is an effort to deceive. Essence is an effort to reveal your being. Whatsoever it is, it is – to reveal and to be open and to be vulnerable. Try to live from the essence and you will become religious. Try to live by the personality and you will be the most irreligious possible.
To me religion doesn’t mean a ritual, it doesn’t mean going to the church or the temple, it doesn’t mean reading the Bible or the Gita every day – no. Religion means to live from the essence, to be authentic, to be true.
Remember, howsoever you lie, you cannot lie because a lie is a lie. Deep down you know it is a lie. You may pretend that you don’t know, but your pretension will be there and that will indicate. You cannot lie to anybody because anybody who has any eyes, who has any awareness, any intelligence will penetrate it.
There was a case…
A woman was suing Mulla Nasruddin. She claimed that her child was Mulla Nasruddin’s child, and he was denying vehemently in the court.
Finally the judge asked, “Say only one thing – did you sleep with this woman, Nasruddin?”
Nasruddin said, “No, your honor – not a wink!”
Your lies are apparent and the truth has a way of coming up. It finds a way and in the end the truth is known and you have wasted your whole life in lies. Don’t waste a single moment! All time wasted in lies is absolutely wasted, and through lies nobody ever becomes happy – impossible. Lies can give only pretensions of happiness; they cannot give you true happiness. True happiness is part of truth.
Hindus have defined God as bliss, sat-chit-anand. Anand, bliss, is the final, the ultimate core. Be true and you will be blissful, be authentic and you will be happy. And that happiness will be uncaused, it will be just a part of your being true. Happiness is a function of truth. Whenever there is truth, happiness functions; whenever there is not truth, happiness stops functioning, unhappiness functions.
Don’t be afraid. You ask, “I am confused about the difference between individuality and personality. What, if anything, is left of the individual after the exit of the ego?” In fact nothing of the individual is left because of the ego. When the ego is gone, the whole individuality arises in its crystal purity – transparent, intelligent, radiant, happy, alive, vibrating with an unknown rhythm. That unknown rhythm is godliness. It is a song heard in the deepest core of your being, a dance of the formless – but one can hear the footsteps.
Everything real arises only when the ego has gone. Ego is the deceiver, the falsification. When ego is gone, you are there; when ego is there, you simply think you are, but you are not.
The fifth question:
Osho,
I can think of nothing that I wish more clearly than to come closer to your inner temple. Is this possible while I am still doing my own thing? Or is it a prerequisite to drop all activities and interests not connected with you and your work?
If you really are doing your own thing, you have come closer to my inner temple. There is no other way.
I am here to help you to do your own thing. I am not here to drag you away from your own thing; that’s what the so-called religions have been doing all along. Remember this: I am not to make anything out of you. If you can just be yourself, it is enough, more than enough. If I can help you to be yourself, then the right thing has happened. But if in some way I become an opportunity to distract you from your own being, then I am the enemy not the friend.
So never again think it is “…a prerequisite to drop all activities and interests not connected with you and your work.”
You are my work, you are my activity. Nothing else is more important than you. You are supreme, there is no higher value than you. So if you are fulfilled, my work is done; if you are blissful, my activity is fulfilled. There is no other work. I have no idea, ideology, that it has to be fulfilled through you – no. I am at the most just an opportunity where you can find yourself.
When you reach your innermost home, you have reached my temple – and there is no other way.
The sixth question:
Osho,
You have said that the proper relationship of mind to consciousness is that of the servant. How is the servant to be treated? Is it to be not mistreated? How am I to know when that is happening?
Remember, if you are really a master you never mistreat the servant – that is one of the qualities of the master. You mistreat the servant only when you are not certain that you are master. That mistreatment is a deep insecurity. You try to mistreat to know whether you are the master or not. If you are absolutely certain you are the master, you love the servant, you treat him as a friend, you respect him even.
So only those who are suspicious of their own mastery treat the servants in a wrong way. A man who is absolutely certain, who knows he is the master – then there is no problem.
It is said of a Hasid master, Magid…
He went to see another master. He was a little late. The lecture hall was full and the other master was speaking, so he sat just near the door where people had left their shoes.
Somebody looked at him; the quality of the man attracted him. He told his neighbor, “Some rare being is here. But why is he sitting there? That is not a place for a master to sit. And he is so radiant!” It is said that by and by the whole audience turned toward him.
The master – who was a fake, who was talking – was surprised at the phenomenon. Magid had not uttered a single word; he was just sitting with closed eyes.
Later when they were alone, the pseudo-master asked Magid, “Tell me the secret. What happened? I was there as the leader of the congregation and I was to talk there. What happened? Why did people turn toward you?”
Magid said, “Since I became a master it almost always happens. It is not something to be done, it simply happens.”
A master has a quality. When you are really the master, you have become a watcher and become the master. It is such a simple thing: just say it and it happens. Just say to the mind: “Enough – now be the servant because you are the servant.”
I say it is just that simple. You are afraid, that’s why it cannot happen. You know that it will not happen, then you can say it and it will not happen. But it is not happening because you know it will not happen; otherwise it will happen. You have not really treated the mind as a master; otherwise you simply say, “Sit down, listen,” and the mind listens. Otherwise is not possible.
Vivekananda was in America. He was talking one morning and he told a story emphasizing the fact that faith can move mountains.
One old woman who was very worried by a mountain said, “This is good! I never tried it.”
Just near her house, behind it, was a big mountain. Because of the mountain the sun could not reach and because of the mountain air could not reach – and the house was very suffocating. So she said, “This is simple. Now I will go and I will have faith.”
She went immediately. She looked the last time, opened the window and looked, because now the mountain will disappear, there will be no chance again to see it. She closed the window, closed her eyes, and said, “I have faith. Now move.” Thrice she said it because she thought, “Maybe once may not work. Twice… But thrice is enough.”
Then she opened the window, the mountain was there. She started laughing and said, “All the time I knew it was not going to happen.”
If you know all the time, then it will not happen because you have not fulfilled the condition.
I also say faith can move mountains – but faith, remember. And faith need not speak thrice. It is doubt which speaks thrice. What is the point? Once you say it, finished! Faith will not open the window and look – it is finished.
I have heard…
In a town it happened that rains were not coming. It was already getting too late. The priest of the town gathered all the people one morning, called them all to come to the temple so that they would pray and it would rain. The whole town went and the whole town laughed about a child – a small child who came with an umbrella.
So everybody talked and laughed and said, “You fool. Why are you carrying your umbrella? You may lose it somewhere. The rains are not coming.”
The child said, “But I thought that when you pray, the rains would come.” Only one child was carrying an umbrella – how can the rains come? If that child had prayed, there was a possibility because faith can only be total – otherwise not. The people who were laughing about the child were simply stupid. Then why were they going to pray? When the prayer has not been fulfilled, they will say, “All the time we knew it. It was not going to happen.”
Faith is a different quality of inner functioning. If you really say to the mind, “Be the servant from now onward,” be finished, don’t open the window again to see. This is how it happens, and this is how it is going to happen to you because there is no other way.
When you are a master, you treat the servant like a friend. You feel grateful to the servant. He serves you – why mistreat him? Mistreatment comes only because when you see that the servant is the master, then you react, then you are angry, then you mistreat. Your mistreatment simply shows that the servant is not the servant and the master is not the master.
The seventh question:
Osho,
Listening to your words: “The sky appears to, but nowhere does it touch the earth,” a deep feeling gathered around me that the sky is touching the earth right through me, that I am the horizon wherever I am. The feeling – like a honeycomb with no substance in it, just the wide open sky penetrating every pore of it – has remained ever since as a constant meditation. It feels light and blissful to be in it. Please comment.
There is no need to comment. I bless you. This is what should happen.
The eighth question:
Osho,
Is everything in one's life, particularly the degree of spiritual progress, predestined? Or is one's life a series of challenges and possibilities without anything being known about the outcome?
The essence is predestined, the personality is just an accident. That which you are is predestined, that which you appear to be is just an accident. Your being a Hindu, your being a Christian is an accident. Your being a man, your being a woman is an accident. Your being a German or an Indian is an accident. Your being black or white is an accident. But your being, simply your being, is destined.
Try to find that which is destined and don’t be too concerned with that which is irrelevant, accidental. Your nose is a little long or a little short – don’t be bothered much about it, it is just accidental. Or your skin has a pigment and you are black, or your skin does not have that pigment, not more than four annas worth, and you are white – don’t be too worried about it. It is just irrelevant. Try to find that which is absolutely destined. That is your nature; that is your essence.
But you are lost in the accidents and you pay too much attention to accidents. You are too worried about them, your whole time and energy is wasted in them, and you become so much occupied with the nonessential that the essential is forgotten.
This is the state of the man who is asleep: always focused on the nonessential. Thinking of money, thinking of power, thinking of the house, thinking of the car, thinking of this and that, but never looking at that which is your innermost core, which is you, which is absolutely destined.
Outside nothing is destined. Inside everything is destined. Pay more attention to it. That’s what sannyas is all about: a turning toward the essential and a turning away from the nonessential.
I am not saying don’t eat, don’t live in a house – no, that is not the meaning. Live in a house, but don’t be too concerned. One has to eat to live; eat, but don’t make eating your whole business – there are people who continuously think of eating. Money is needed but don’t make money your God. Use it when you have it; when you don’t have it, also use that non-having because that has its own beauties. When you have money, you can have a palace. Have it. When you don’t have the money, become a vagabond and live under the sky; that has its own beauty. When you have money, use it; don’t be used by the money. When you don’t have it, enjoy poverty. Richness has its own richness, poverty has its own richness also.
There are many things which only a poor man can enjoy, never a rich man. There are many things only rich people can enjoy, never a poor man. So, whatsoever opportunity: when you are rich, enjoy that which a rich man can enjoy; whenever you are poor, enjoy that which poor men enjoy.
What do you do? You do just the reverse. When you are rich, you suffer for those things which only poor men can enjoy, and when you are poor you suffer for those things which only a rich man can enjoy. You are simply foolish; I don’t see intelligence.
I was staying with a friend. He was a vice-chancellor – an old man, a drunkard, almost always drunk – but he was a very good man, as drunkards are: always a very sweet, a very polite man, a very loving man.
One night he had taken too much and I was sitting with him and he became suddenly afraid – he became paranoid. So he told me, “Please write a letter immediately to the police station, to send two intelligence officers.”
I wrote the letter, but I committed an error. I wrote to the police superintendent “Please, send two intelligent officers.”
The old drunkard looked at the letter and started laughing and he said, “Who has ever heard of ‘intelligent officers’? Write ‘intelligence officers,’ not ‘intelligent officers.’”
It is almost impossible to find an intelligent officer because it is almost impossible to find an intelligent man.
Intelligence is absolutely lacking; otherwise when you have money enjoy it, live like a king when you have it. I see people, they have money and they live like beggars. They are saving it for the future, and when it is lost, then they start thinking about it, “Why? Why did we waste the time? We should have enjoyed.”
Poor people always think of living in palaces while they could be enjoying the tree where they are. The singing birds and the sun and the air – the world is more open to a poor man because he can enjoy a beautiful sleep, while for a rich man sleep has become difficult. He has better bedrooms, he has a better, more comfortable mattress, but he is not able to sleep. Then he thinks about beggars and feels envious and jealous: “These poor people are sleeping so well, snoring, and I cannot sleep.”
When you can sleep well, sleep well; when you have a beautiful mattress, enjoy it and suffer insomnia. But be intelligent.
The last question:
Osho,
Ancient Jewish mythology places Lilith as the first person on earth, not Adam. Why was this version lost? Would you tell us about it?
There is no secret in it, just male chauvinism. It was difficult for man to think that a woman was made first and man followed. No, it is against his pride.
The original version was that Lilith was created first. It seems natural that woman should come first because she carries the womb. Woman should come first; that seems natural, biological, true. But it is difficult for man to entertain the idea. He changed the story, he created another myth, that Adam was created; but then there was trouble because then how to produce Eve from Adam? So a rib was taken because there was no womb. Now the whole story is foolish. With a woman it would remain simple. With man it was almost impossible. A rib was taken out and Eve was created.
The first story is true. I agree with the first, I reject the second.
Enough for today.
Osho,
Why does all that you say seem completely familiar? I have heard it all before in various contexts, and at the same time it sounds full of wonderful revelations.
That’s the quality of truth: it is neither old nor new, or it is both.
Truth is eternal. In a way, you have heard it millions of times, in many contexts. You may not have understood it but you have heard it, you carry the memory.
It is not that you are here on this earth for the first time. In the time of Buddha, in the time of Jesus, in the time of Krishna, certainly you were there, you have heard it. You have not understood it. That’s why you are here again. The day you understand, you disappear. Understanding is a great death – a death from this world of fantasy, dream, illusion.
You are right; your feeling is right that you have heard it before. It sounds familiar, and yet it reveals much. It sounds familiar because it is familiar; still it reveals new dimensions because a new understanding is dawning on you.
Truth is neither old nor new because it doesn’t belong to time. Anything that belongs to time is bound to be new or old. That which is new today will be old tomorrow. That which is old today was yesterday new. New and old are two aspects of time. Truth is timeless. Truth is timelessness: it is always there – as old as existence and as new as this moment.
If you understand, the familiarity carries deep mysteries hidden behind it. So don’t be deceived by the familiarity. You may have heard the words, you have not understood the truth; otherwise you would have been transformed. Transformation is a function of truth. Says Jesus, “Truth liberates.” The moment you understand, you are liberated. There is nothing else to do afterward. The very understanding is enough, is liberation.
Listen, but don’t compare; listen, but don’t bring your memory in. Otherwise your memory and your feeling that it is familiar will be a distraction. The moment your mind says it is familiar, the mind is saying there is nothing new to understand. There is much, there is infinite to be understood.
Don’t look through the memory and don’t compare. Look directly, look immediately, look without memory. Let there be a clarity of perception. Don’t compare with anything that you have heard before.
I tell you: you may have heard it before but you have not understood it. So what is the point of hearing it before? If you are so much in this idea of familiarity, you will miss it again. And again, whenever you hear it, the idea will be there that it sounds familiar.
Comparison is a disease: it obstructs, it doesn’t help. So even when you feel it is familiar you also feel, by the side, new flowers of understanding blooming. They bloom in spite of your comparison. If the comparison is completely dropped, you are liberated. If you can rightly listen to me, there is nothing else to do. One moment of total listening will be enough – you will be awake. One moment is enough because that becomes the door to eternity.
The second question:
Osho,
The words introvert and introspection have morbid connotations. How do they differ from healthy self-awareness and turning within?
In self-awareness there is no within and no without. You don’t turn within. In self-awareness the within and the without has disappeared, there exists only one. Within and without is the division of the mind, is the division of the analytical mind. What is within and what is without? How do you demark?
So when people say, “Turn withinward,” they are just using your language to help you because if they say, “Turn beyond within and without,” it will be almost impossible for you to understand what they mean. But that is exactly what they mean. Self-awareness is a total unity of within and without, the higher and the lower, the valley and the peak. All dualities meet and merge into it.
Yes, introvert has a morbid connotation. It is morbidity. A person who is an introvert is a person who is incapable of moving without. He is confined, closed: a flower which cannot open, a song which cannot burst, a river which cannot flow to the open sea. The introvert is morbid; he cannot relate, he cannot love, he cannot move in the world, he cannot spread. He has no expansion. Confined, closed, like a seed, he is not like a tree. But remember, the extrovert is also morbid.
In the western psychology the introvert is morbid but the extrovert is thought to be healthy. That simply shows that this type of psychological thinking has been developed by extroverts – nothing else. They think they are healthy and the opposite is unhealthy. There is an opposite school also in the East. The eastern psychology thinks the introvert healthy and the extrovert unhealthy. To me both are unhealthy because both are confined to a certain direction and are incapable of moving to the opposite.
To me, health means the capacity to move in all directions. To be healthy is to be whole. The word health comes from the same root as the word whole. To be healthy is to be whole, to be whole is to be all together. So to be healthy means where opposites meet and are no longer opposites but are transformed into complementaries.
A healthy person is one: when he wants to move inward, he moves; there is no hindrance. He has no compulsion to be extrovert, and the same vice versa. If you are compulsively introvert, whenever you start moving without there are inner hindrances: you have to fight, you cannot flow, you have to force. Then you are ill. A healthy person, a healthy being, a healthy energy, is always ready to move anywhere. There is no compulsion to be somewhere in particular.
A healthy energy is a flowing energy. You go to the market, you move outward; nobody inside condemns, “To move out is worldly, materialistic.” Nobody condemns. When you go to the temple, you move withinward; nobody condemns, “To go within is morbid. This is for foolish people, unworldly, simpletons. This way you will lose all because all the riches are outward – where are you going by closing your eyes and watching your navel? You are becoming a fool.”
In the West, when they want to condemn the East they call them “navel-watchers” or “lotus-eaters.” One cannot be alive by just eating lotus – mad people. And when in the East people want to condemn the West they call them “money-oriented, materialistic, worldly.” Both these types of psychologies are ill and morbid. A true psychology is still to be born: a psychology of the whole person: a psychology of flow, of no compulsion, no obsession.
You should be as capable of coming out and going in as you are capable of coming out of your house and going in. When the climate is beautiful, you go out, you sit in the garden under the tree. Then the sun rises and it is too hot, you seek shelter, you come in. In the day you go out, in the night you come in. A deep balance is needed, and for a deep balance opposites should not be taken as opposites. And they are not, they are complementaries: yin and yang, man and woman, day and night, summer and winter, sansar and nirvana.
Remember, my whole emphasis is on the meeting of the opposites. Then you are not confined, then you have no limitation. Then you are unlimited. No boundary exists, and this is the emphasis of Hasidism also.
A Hasidic sage is as worldly as anybody, and a Hasidic sage is as unworldly as anybody. He lives in the world but he is not of the world. He moves in the world, remains untouched by it; he is beyond. This is true religion.
The religion that you call religion is not true religion. It is just in opposition to the world. It is a choice. That’s why if you choose that type of religion you may change, but fundamentally you will remain the same. The change will be just on the surface. The change will be just as if one goes from one imprisonment to another. One imprisonment is on this side of the road, another is on that side of the road. You live in one prison and you think of the other as if over there is freedom. It is the opposite: things are different there, but again it is a confinement.
Between these two imprisonments there is the open road, the way of the white clouds. Just exactly in the middle, between two opposites, is the way. To me, extrovert is morbid, introvert is also morbid. When you are neither, you are healthy.
Remember the word flowing. The more energy flows, the healthier. You can reach the highest peak and you can come down to the lowest world, and there is no problem. You can meditate and you can love. Meditation is going withinward, love is going outward. Meditation is reaching to one’s own being, love is an effort to reach the other’s being.
There are religions which say that if you meditate you cannot love. There are religions which say that if you love, how can you meditate?
Christianity is an extrovert religion. The emphasis is on serving people, love, compassion. The emphasis is not on meditation because if you meditate that looks selfish. When the world is in such a misery – people are hungry, ill, dying – you are meditating? The whole thing appears to be too cruel. Somebody is dying on the road, a beggar, and you are sitting in your temple and meditating? It is selfish. “Throw this meditation away,” says the extrovert religion. “Go and help people: that is the only way to reach God.”
One of the greatest Indian poets, Rabindranath, was very impressed by Christianity. He wrote a poem in which he said, “Don’t seek me in the temple. I am not there. If you really want to seek me, come to the road where the stonecutter is cutting stones or where the farmer is tilling the ground. I am not in the temples. Come to the world where the laborer is working and the beggar is begging. There I am!”
This is extrovert religion, a reaction against too much introvertedness.
In India, introvert religions have existed. They say, “This world is maya, illusion. Beggars have always been dying and they will always die, and you cannot change anything. Move withinward, close your eyes. In your deepest core of being is godliness. Outside it is just a dream world. Don’t waste your time there, the real is within.”
To me, both are morbid. A part is always morbid; the whole is healthy.
So I tell you: godliness is everywhere. In the temple, when you close your eyes, there is godliness; and on the road also, where the stonecutter is working hard in the hot sun, there is godliness because only godliness is. Godliness is the whole and mind always tries to choose a part.
I have heard…
You must know a very famous movie dog, Rin Tin Tin. His trainer was asked about the dog. He tried to describe, but the dog had such marvelous qualities, such indefinable qualities, that he was at a loss to describe and define the qualities. So at last he stumbled upon a definition. He said, “Rin Tin Tin is God in the form of a dog.”
God and dog – both words have the same balance. God may be the introversion of energy, dog may be the extroversion of the energy, but the energy is the same because only one energy exists. The world is a unity, the mind creates opposites.
One very great Zen monk, Rinzai, was asked once – the questioner must have been a very skeptical mind; he asked, “You go on emphasizing that everything is God and everything is Buddha. Do you mean to say that even a dog is a buddha?” Rinzai laughed, didn’t answer. On the contrary, he jumped and started barking.
That’s exactly the right answer: a buddha barking like a dog. He showed the fact rather than talking about it.
You are morbid if you are confined to anything, whatsoever the name. You are healthy if you are flowing in all directions together. If opposites meet in you, you become perfect. That’s why a perfect man can never be consistent; he has to be contradictory because opposites will be meeting in him. Only ordinary people can be consistent.
The true sage is never consistent, cannot be, because he will have to move in all the directions together.
Walt Whitman says, “I’m vast. I contain contradictions.” What to say about existence? Vast – it contains all contradictions. It is in the lowest and it is in the highest. In the lowest it exists as the lowest, in the highest it exists as the highest. It is in sex and it is in samadhi, it is in this world as matter and it is in that world as non-matter. It is the sinner and it is the sage. The true sage is always contradictory – that’s the difficulty: to understand him.
It is very easy to understand your mediocre saints. They are plain, no contradictions exist in them. They are always the same: you can rely, you can predict. They are like a simple line, no complexity. They are simple and in a way, simpletons. They don’t have the beauty of complexity.
The true sage is very complex. He contains contradictions, and that’s why it has always been very difficult to recognize him. He eludes: you catch hold of him from one direction, he is moving in another. You cannot see because your eyes are morbid; you can see only the part.
You can see a man as a sinner, you can see a man as a saint, but it is difficult to understand a man like Gurdjieff who is both. In him the sinner and the sage meet. In him even sin is transformed. In him even the sage is transformed and becomes a worldly being. To understand Gurdjieff you will have to drop all your categories, all your labels of sinners and saints and this and that.
The true sage is godly: godliness is contradictory.
That’s what Krishna says in the Gita. He says, “Don’t be worried because I am the killer and the killed. Don’t be worried because I am in both: the one who is killed is me, and the one who is going to kill also is me. My two hands, right and left, are in a game of hide and seek.”
All your conceptions of God are very poor, and theologians go on trying to explain. They can never explain because the contradiction creates the trouble. If you say, “God is just,” then you cannot say, “God is compassion.” That’s the trouble for the theologian: if God is just, then compassion cannot exist, if God is compassion, then he cannot be just. Both are not possible together.
For thousands of years theologians have gone on thinking, “How to manage? God seems to be unmanageable, chaotic.” He is both! He is compassionate in his justice and he is just in his compassion. But then it is absurd because how can a judge be both? If the judge has compassion, then he would like to forgive. If he is just, then the criminal has to be punished – punished according to the law, with no compassion. Then he has to remain indifferent.
Justice has to be neutral. Compassion is love, it cannot be neutral. God is both. Let me tell you: God is bondage and God is freedom. That’s why I say don’t be in a hurry. Even in the market he exists. Even in this world, so ungodly, he exists because otherwise is not possible.
Once you can see it, such deep silence descends in your being because when you can see the contradictions meeting in existence, contradictions within you immediately meet and dissolve. Then you move; freedom becomes your nature. Then you move freely; then you become freedom. Then there is no goal. The only goal is to delight herenow. Nothing is to be achieved because all achievement is always against something. You have to leave this and attain that, you have to drop this and do that.
All achievement, ambition, goal, is choosing something against something else – and existence is both. That’s why Krishnamurti goes on insisting that the only way to attain to truth is to be choiceless. Choose and you have become morbid. Don’t choose, float choicelessly. Don’t be the chooser, just watch and flow, and you are freedom. This is what moksha is: absolute freedom.
The third question:
Osho,
Why am I afraid of other people?
If you are afraid of yourself, only then are you afraid of other people. If you love yourself, you love others; if you hate yourself, you hate others because in relationship with others it is only you mirrored. The other is nothing but a mirror. So whatsoever happens in relationship, always know: it must have happened before within you because the relationship can only magnify, it cannot create. It can only show and manifest, it cannot create. If you love yourself, you love others; if you are afraid of yourself, you are afraid of others because coming in contact with others you will start manifesting your being.
You have been conditioned – in the East, in the West, everywhere; Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, Jaina – you all have been conditioned to hate yourselves. It has been taught to you continuously that to love oneself is bad: “Love others. Hate yourself.” This is asking for absurdities, impossibilities. If you don’t love yourself, the one nearest to yourself, how can you love anybody else? Nobody loves himself and is trying to love others. Then your love is nothing but hatred – masked, hidden.
I tell you to love yourself first because if love happens within you, only then can it spread to others. It is just like throwing a stone in a silent lake: the stone falls, ripples arise, and then they go on moving, moving, moving – to the farthest bank they will go on. But the stone must have fallen within you first, the love must have happened to you: you must have loved yourself.
That is a basic requirement which is missing all over the world. That’s why the world is in such misery: everybody trying to love, but impossible to love because the basis is not there, the foundation is lacking.
Love yourself and then suddenly you will find yourself reflected everywhere. You are a human being and all other human beings are just like you: just forms differ, names differ, but the reality is the same. Then go on moving farther and farther. Then animals are also like you; the form differs a little more, but the being… Then the trees are also like you. Farther and farther go on. The ripples – then even rocks because they also exist and you also exist. Existence is the same, similar.
This is the only way to love existence: start by loving yourself and then let the love spread. Then don’t know any boundaries, go on and on to the very infinity. This is what prayer is, this is what devotion is.
If you miss the first point – the stone has not been thrown – then you go on waiting and watching and the ripples never arise. It cannot start anywhere else, it can only start in your heart because love is a ripple in the heart, a vibration in the heart, a throbbing of sharing whatsoever you are – a deep intense urge to go and reach the other, to share your being and your delight and your song.
But your heart is almost dead, frozen, and you have been taught to condemn yourself: that you are ugly, that you are bad. That this is sin: “Don’t do this – you are guilty.” You cannot accept yourself, how can you accept anybody else?
A deep acceptance is needed. Whatsoever and whosoever you are, a deep acceptance – not only acceptance but a delight that “I am.” I, here, now: all the three points, the triangle of being, should be filled with delight. You should not ask something else. There should not be any “ought.” Drop all shoulds and the whole world becomes different. Right now you continuously think, “I should be this and that, then I can love and be loved.”
Your God is nothing but the greatest condemner looking at you from the skies: “Behave well.” This gives you a bad feeling about yourself. By and by you become afraid because you are suppressing yourself. If you relate with somebody, the suppression may break, everything may bubble up, surface. Then…? So you are afraid, afraid to come in contact. So you remain hidden within yourself and nobody knows how ugly you are, nobody knows how angry you are, nobody knows how full of hatred you are. Nobody knows your jealousy, possessiveness, envy. Nobody knows: you create armor around, you live within yourself, you never make any contact so that you can manage your image. If you come deep in contact, the image is bound to break; the reality, the real encounter will shatter it. That is the fear.
You ask, “Why am I afraid of other people?” You are afraid because you are afraid of yourself. Drop that fear, drop the guilt that has been created in you. Your politicians, priests, parents, are all guilt-creators because that is the only way that you can be controlled and manipulated. They have condemned you: a very simple but very cunning trick to manipulate you because if you are accepted, not condemned – loved, appreciated, and if it is relayed to you from everywhere that you are okay – then it will be difficult to control you. How can you control a person who is absolutely okay? The very problem doesn’t arise.
So the priests, the politicians, the parents go on saying that you are not okay. Once they create the feeling that you are not okay, they become the dictators. Now they have to dictate the discipline: “Now this is the way you should behave.” First they create the feeling that you are wrong, then they give you guidelines how to be right.
You are here with me, involved in a totally different experiment. I have no condemnation, I don’t create any guilt feeling in you. I don’t say, “This is sin,” I don’t say that I will love you only when you fulfill certain conditions. I love you as you are because that’s the only way a person can be loved. I accept you as you are because I know that is the only way you can be. That’s how the whole has willed you to be, that is what the whole has destined it to be.
Relax and accept and delight, and there is transformation. It comes not by effort, it comes by accepting yourself with such deep love and ecstasy that there is no condition – conscious, unconscious, known, unknown. Unconditional acceptance, and suddenly you see you are not afraid of people; rather, you enjoy people, people are beautiful. They are all incarnations of God – maybe Rin Tin Tin, but still incarnations of God.
You love them and if you love them, you bring their godliness to the surface. Whenever you love a person, his godliness comes on top. It happens because when somebody loves you, how can you show your ugliness? Simply, your beautiful face comes up, and by and by the ugly face disappears.
Love is alchemical. If you love yourself, the ugly part of you disappears, is absorbed, is transformed. The energy is released from that form because everything carries energy. Your anger has much energy involved in it, your fear also has much energy crippled and suffocated in it. If the fear disappears, the form falls down and the energy is released. Anger disappears, more energy is released; jealousy disappears, still more energy. Whatsoever are called sins, when they disappear…
I don’t say that you have to change the sins; you have to love your being and they change; change is a by-product, a consequence. So much tremendous energy is released that you start floating higher and higher and higher. You attain to wings.
Love yourself! That should be the foundational commandment: love yourself. All else will follow, but this is the foundation.
The fourth question:
Osho,
I am confused about the difference between individuality and personality. What, if anything, is left of the individual after the exit of the ego?
Individuality is your essence: you come with it, you are born with it. Personality is borrowed: it is given to you by the society. It is just like clothes, subtle clothes.
A child is born naked; then we hide his nakedness, we give him clothes. A child is born with essence, individuality. We hide that too because naked individuality is rebellious, non-conformist.
Individuality is exactly what it means: it is individual. Personality is not individual, it is social.
Society wants you to have personalities not individualities, because your individualities will create conflict. The society hides your individuality and gives a personality. Personality is a learned thing. The word personality comes from a Greek root which means mask: persona. In Greek drama the actors used to wear masks to hide their real face and to show some other face. From persona comes the word personality; it is a face that you wear, it is not your original face.
When the personality disappears, don’t be afraid. For the first time you become authentic, for the first time you become real, for the first time you attain to essence. That essence, in India, has been called atma, the soul.
The ego is the center of personality and godliness is the center of essence. That’s why there is so much insistence from every corner that ego has to be dropped: unless you know what you are, not what you are expected to be…
Personality is false, it is the greatest lie. And because the whole society depends on personality, the state, the church, organizations, the establishment are all lies. The western psychology goes on thinking about the personality too much, that’s why the whole of western psychology is a psychology based on the basic lie.
In the East we think of the essence, not of the personality. That which you have brought, that which is your intrinsic nature, swabhava, that which is your intrinsic essence has to be known and has to be lived.
Personality is that which you are not, but try to show that you are. Personality is that which you have to use as a convenience when you move in society.
You are walking; you have gone for a morning walk, and then somebody passes by – you smile. The smile can be either from the essence or from the personality. If the smile is really a delight in seeing the person, in seeing the godliness in that person, in seeing the heart, the love, the formless that has become incarnate in that person… That’s why, in India we never use words like “Good morning” – they don’t mean much. We say, “Ram, Ram.” We welcome each other by the name of God. It is a symbolic act that means, “I see the godliness within you.” Ram, Ram means, “I see Ram within you. Welcome. I am happy, blessed, that you passed by.” If it comes from your essence, then the smile spreads all over your being; you feel a deep contentment, you feel blessed that this man passed by. The man is gone but the blessing remains and lingers around you like a subtle perfume.
If you say simply a “Good morning” because the man is a banker or a political leader – can be mischievous sometimes, can be dangerous, it is risky not to say “Good morning” – then you say it and you smile, you bring a smile on your face. That is persona, that is personality.
In each act you have to watch. It is arduous but it has to be done. There is no other way. In each act you have to watch from where it comes – from personality or from essence? If it comes from essence, the essence will grow because you will give an opportunity for the essence to be manifested, expressed. If it comes from the personality, then the personality will become harder and harder and harder and it will suffocate the essence completely.
Watch, remind yourself again and again from where it comes. You come home: you bring ice cream, flowers to your wife. Is the present from the personality or from the essence? If it is from the personality, it is a lie. You may have talked to somebody else’s wife – you were charmed, you felt attracted, a desire arose in you – and then you started feeling guilty, “This is not being faithful, so bring ice cream home.” And remember, your wife will immediately suspect; otherwise, you never bring ice cream. There must be something in it, you must be hiding something. “Why are you so good today, so suddenly unexpectedly good?”
You cannot deceive women. They have an instinct; they are lie detectors. They immediately feel because they don’t think. Their feeling is immediate and direct. They function from the center of emotion. You are feeling guilty, then you bring some present to the wife. It is a gift from the personality; it is very dangerous.
Suddenly the same can happen, the situation may be the same: you were talking to your friend’s wife, you were charmed – she was graceful and beautiful – and because of her beauty, because of her grace, you remembered your wife because when you love a person every beautiful person reminds you of the person. It has to be so. If the woman was charming, it immediately reminds you of your beloved. Something of the beloved was there – a part, a gesture. Something of your wife was there. You loved the woman in that moment because she reminded you of your wife. Then you are so full of the memory you bring ice cream or flowers or something – or nothing, just a smile. Then it is from the essence. It is totally different: the situation may be the same but you can behave in a totally different way.
Personality is an effort to deceive. Essence is an effort to reveal your being. Whatsoever it is, it is – to reveal and to be open and to be vulnerable. Try to live from the essence and you will become religious. Try to live by the personality and you will be the most irreligious possible.
To me religion doesn’t mean a ritual, it doesn’t mean going to the church or the temple, it doesn’t mean reading the Bible or the Gita every day – no. Religion means to live from the essence, to be authentic, to be true.
Remember, howsoever you lie, you cannot lie because a lie is a lie. Deep down you know it is a lie. You may pretend that you don’t know, but your pretension will be there and that will indicate. You cannot lie to anybody because anybody who has any eyes, who has any awareness, any intelligence will penetrate it.
There was a case…
A woman was suing Mulla Nasruddin. She claimed that her child was Mulla Nasruddin’s child, and he was denying vehemently in the court.
Finally the judge asked, “Say only one thing – did you sleep with this woman, Nasruddin?”
Nasruddin said, “No, your honor – not a wink!”
Your lies are apparent and the truth has a way of coming up. It finds a way and in the end the truth is known and you have wasted your whole life in lies. Don’t waste a single moment! All time wasted in lies is absolutely wasted, and through lies nobody ever becomes happy – impossible. Lies can give only pretensions of happiness; they cannot give you true happiness. True happiness is part of truth.
Hindus have defined God as bliss, sat-chit-anand. Anand, bliss, is the final, the ultimate core. Be true and you will be blissful, be authentic and you will be happy. And that happiness will be uncaused, it will be just a part of your being true. Happiness is a function of truth. Whenever there is truth, happiness functions; whenever there is not truth, happiness stops functioning, unhappiness functions.
Don’t be afraid. You ask, “I am confused about the difference between individuality and personality. What, if anything, is left of the individual after the exit of the ego?” In fact nothing of the individual is left because of the ego. When the ego is gone, the whole individuality arises in its crystal purity – transparent, intelligent, radiant, happy, alive, vibrating with an unknown rhythm. That unknown rhythm is godliness. It is a song heard in the deepest core of your being, a dance of the formless – but one can hear the footsteps.
Everything real arises only when the ego has gone. Ego is the deceiver, the falsification. When ego is gone, you are there; when ego is there, you simply think you are, but you are not.
The fifth question:
Osho,
I can think of nothing that I wish more clearly than to come closer to your inner temple. Is this possible while I am still doing my own thing? Or is it a prerequisite to drop all activities and interests not connected with you and your work?
If you really are doing your own thing, you have come closer to my inner temple. There is no other way.
I am here to help you to do your own thing. I am not here to drag you away from your own thing; that’s what the so-called religions have been doing all along. Remember this: I am not to make anything out of you. If you can just be yourself, it is enough, more than enough. If I can help you to be yourself, then the right thing has happened. But if in some way I become an opportunity to distract you from your own being, then I am the enemy not the friend.
So never again think it is “…a prerequisite to drop all activities and interests not connected with you and your work.”
You are my work, you are my activity. Nothing else is more important than you. You are supreme, there is no higher value than you. So if you are fulfilled, my work is done; if you are blissful, my activity is fulfilled. There is no other work. I have no idea, ideology, that it has to be fulfilled through you – no. I am at the most just an opportunity where you can find yourself.
When you reach your innermost home, you have reached my temple – and there is no other way.
The sixth question:
Osho,
You have said that the proper relationship of mind to consciousness is that of the servant. How is the servant to be treated? Is it to be not mistreated? How am I to know when that is happening?
Remember, if you are really a master you never mistreat the servant – that is one of the qualities of the master. You mistreat the servant only when you are not certain that you are master. That mistreatment is a deep insecurity. You try to mistreat to know whether you are the master or not. If you are absolutely certain you are the master, you love the servant, you treat him as a friend, you respect him even.
So only those who are suspicious of their own mastery treat the servants in a wrong way. A man who is absolutely certain, who knows he is the master – then there is no problem.
It is said of a Hasid master, Magid…
He went to see another master. He was a little late. The lecture hall was full and the other master was speaking, so he sat just near the door where people had left their shoes.
Somebody looked at him; the quality of the man attracted him. He told his neighbor, “Some rare being is here. But why is he sitting there? That is not a place for a master to sit. And he is so radiant!” It is said that by and by the whole audience turned toward him.
The master – who was a fake, who was talking – was surprised at the phenomenon. Magid had not uttered a single word; he was just sitting with closed eyes.
Later when they were alone, the pseudo-master asked Magid, “Tell me the secret. What happened? I was there as the leader of the congregation and I was to talk there. What happened? Why did people turn toward you?”
Magid said, “Since I became a master it almost always happens. It is not something to be done, it simply happens.”
A master has a quality. When you are really the master, you have become a watcher and become the master. It is such a simple thing: just say it and it happens. Just say to the mind: “Enough – now be the servant because you are the servant.”
I say it is just that simple. You are afraid, that’s why it cannot happen. You know that it will not happen, then you can say it and it will not happen. But it is not happening because you know it will not happen; otherwise it will happen. You have not really treated the mind as a master; otherwise you simply say, “Sit down, listen,” and the mind listens. Otherwise is not possible.
Vivekananda was in America. He was talking one morning and he told a story emphasizing the fact that faith can move mountains.
One old woman who was very worried by a mountain said, “This is good! I never tried it.”
Just near her house, behind it, was a big mountain. Because of the mountain the sun could not reach and because of the mountain air could not reach – and the house was very suffocating. So she said, “This is simple. Now I will go and I will have faith.”
She went immediately. She looked the last time, opened the window and looked, because now the mountain will disappear, there will be no chance again to see it. She closed the window, closed her eyes, and said, “I have faith. Now move.” Thrice she said it because she thought, “Maybe once may not work. Twice… But thrice is enough.”
Then she opened the window, the mountain was there. She started laughing and said, “All the time I knew it was not going to happen.”
If you know all the time, then it will not happen because you have not fulfilled the condition.
I also say faith can move mountains – but faith, remember. And faith need not speak thrice. It is doubt which speaks thrice. What is the point? Once you say it, finished! Faith will not open the window and look – it is finished.
I have heard…
In a town it happened that rains were not coming. It was already getting too late. The priest of the town gathered all the people one morning, called them all to come to the temple so that they would pray and it would rain. The whole town went and the whole town laughed about a child – a small child who came with an umbrella.
So everybody talked and laughed and said, “You fool. Why are you carrying your umbrella? You may lose it somewhere. The rains are not coming.”
The child said, “But I thought that when you pray, the rains would come.” Only one child was carrying an umbrella – how can the rains come? If that child had prayed, there was a possibility because faith can only be total – otherwise not. The people who were laughing about the child were simply stupid. Then why were they going to pray? When the prayer has not been fulfilled, they will say, “All the time we knew it. It was not going to happen.”
Faith is a different quality of inner functioning. If you really say to the mind, “Be the servant from now onward,” be finished, don’t open the window again to see. This is how it happens, and this is how it is going to happen to you because there is no other way.
When you are a master, you treat the servant like a friend. You feel grateful to the servant. He serves you – why mistreat him? Mistreatment comes only because when you see that the servant is the master, then you react, then you are angry, then you mistreat. Your mistreatment simply shows that the servant is not the servant and the master is not the master.
The seventh question:
Osho,
Listening to your words: “The sky appears to, but nowhere does it touch the earth,” a deep feeling gathered around me that the sky is touching the earth right through me, that I am the horizon wherever I am. The feeling – like a honeycomb with no substance in it, just the wide open sky penetrating every pore of it – has remained ever since as a constant meditation. It feels light and blissful to be in it. Please comment.
There is no need to comment. I bless you. This is what should happen.
The eighth question:
Osho,
Is everything in one's life, particularly the degree of spiritual progress, predestined? Or is one's life a series of challenges and possibilities without anything being known about the outcome?
The essence is predestined, the personality is just an accident. That which you are is predestined, that which you appear to be is just an accident. Your being a Hindu, your being a Christian is an accident. Your being a man, your being a woman is an accident. Your being a German or an Indian is an accident. Your being black or white is an accident. But your being, simply your being, is destined.
Try to find that which is destined and don’t be too concerned with that which is irrelevant, accidental. Your nose is a little long or a little short – don’t be bothered much about it, it is just accidental. Or your skin has a pigment and you are black, or your skin does not have that pigment, not more than four annas worth, and you are white – don’t be too worried about it. It is just irrelevant. Try to find that which is absolutely destined. That is your nature; that is your essence.
But you are lost in the accidents and you pay too much attention to accidents. You are too worried about them, your whole time and energy is wasted in them, and you become so much occupied with the nonessential that the essential is forgotten.
This is the state of the man who is asleep: always focused on the nonessential. Thinking of money, thinking of power, thinking of the house, thinking of the car, thinking of this and that, but never looking at that which is your innermost core, which is you, which is absolutely destined.
Outside nothing is destined. Inside everything is destined. Pay more attention to it. That’s what sannyas is all about: a turning toward the essential and a turning away from the nonessential.
I am not saying don’t eat, don’t live in a house – no, that is not the meaning. Live in a house, but don’t be too concerned. One has to eat to live; eat, but don’t make eating your whole business – there are people who continuously think of eating. Money is needed but don’t make money your God. Use it when you have it; when you don’t have it, also use that non-having because that has its own beauties. When you have money, you can have a palace. Have it. When you don’t have the money, become a vagabond and live under the sky; that has its own beauty. When you have money, use it; don’t be used by the money. When you don’t have it, enjoy poverty. Richness has its own richness, poverty has its own richness also.
There are many things which only a poor man can enjoy, never a rich man. There are many things only rich people can enjoy, never a poor man. So, whatsoever opportunity: when you are rich, enjoy that which a rich man can enjoy; whenever you are poor, enjoy that which poor men enjoy.
What do you do? You do just the reverse. When you are rich, you suffer for those things which only poor men can enjoy, and when you are poor you suffer for those things which only a rich man can enjoy. You are simply foolish; I don’t see intelligence.
I was staying with a friend. He was a vice-chancellor – an old man, a drunkard, almost always drunk – but he was a very good man, as drunkards are: always a very sweet, a very polite man, a very loving man.
One night he had taken too much and I was sitting with him and he became suddenly afraid – he became paranoid. So he told me, “Please write a letter immediately to the police station, to send two intelligence officers.”
I wrote the letter, but I committed an error. I wrote to the police superintendent “Please, send two intelligent officers.”
The old drunkard looked at the letter and started laughing and he said, “Who has ever heard of ‘intelligent officers’? Write ‘intelligence officers,’ not ‘intelligent officers.’”
It is almost impossible to find an intelligent officer because it is almost impossible to find an intelligent man.
Intelligence is absolutely lacking; otherwise when you have money enjoy it, live like a king when you have it. I see people, they have money and they live like beggars. They are saving it for the future, and when it is lost, then they start thinking about it, “Why? Why did we waste the time? We should have enjoyed.”
Poor people always think of living in palaces while they could be enjoying the tree where they are. The singing birds and the sun and the air – the world is more open to a poor man because he can enjoy a beautiful sleep, while for a rich man sleep has become difficult. He has better bedrooms, he has a better, more comfortable mattress, but he is not able to sleep. Then he thinks about beggars and feels envious and jealous: “These poor people are sleeping so well, snoring, and I cannot sleep.”
When you can sleep well, sleep well; when you have a beautiful mattress, enjoy it and suffer insomnia. But be intelligent.
The last question:
Osho,
Ancient Jewish mythology places Lilith as the first person on earth, not Adam. Why was this version lost? Would you tell us about it?
There is no secret in it, just male chauvinism. It was difficult for man to think that a woman was made first and man followed. No, it is against his pride.
The original version was that Lilith was created first. It seems natural that woman should come first because she carries the womb. Woman should come first; that seems natural, biological, true. But it is difficult for man to entertain the idea. He changed the story, he created another myth, that Adam was created; but then there was trouble because then how to produce Eve from Adam? So a rib was taken because there was no womb. Now the whole story is foolish. With a woman it would remain simple. With man it was almost impossible. A rib was taken out and Eve was created.
The first story is true. I agree with the first, I reject the second.
Enough for today.