The first question:
Osho,
I don't have eyes to see, I don't have ears to hear, and I am absolutely stupid. You promise us liberation some day. How is that possible with such a helpless case as I am? On the other hand, sometimes I am filled with grace which no words can describe. What happens? And where am I in all this?
A good beginning. If you can feel that you don’t have eyes to see, sooner or later you will have eyes. To feel that you are ignorant, you have taken the first step toward knowledge. To feel that you are lost is to attain to the path. That’s why sometimes you are filled with grace. The very understanding that you are ignorant suddenly illuminates your being.
The problem is with those people who think they know. They are in real trouble; they know not and they think they know, so there is no possibility for their growth. And they insist, and they defend their knowledge. In defending their knowledge they are defending their ignorance. If you are ill, you seek a physician; but if you pretend that you are not ill and you are ill, you avoid the physician. Even if the physician comes to your home you will say, “Why have you come here?”

Gurdjieff, working with his disciples, one day told a group, “Unless you know your chief characteristic and become aware of it, you will not be able to enter into your essence and you will remain stuck to your personality.”
Somebody asked, “Please give us concrete examples.”
Gurdjieff said, “Look at the man who is sitting in front of me: his chief characteristic is that he is never at home.”
Everybody could see the absent-mindedness on the man’s face. But the man shrugged and said, “What did you say, sir?” That was his chief characteristic. He was not at home, he was always somewhere else. And he wanted to grow – impossible because you have to be at home to grow.
Then Gurdjieff turned to another and said, “Look at this man. His chief characteristic is that he is always arguing with everybody and everything.”
The man became very heated and said, “Sir, there you are wrong. I never argue!”

Find out what you are defending. That may be the clue to enter within.
Just last night, a sannyasin said that from her very childhood she has been feeling she is stupid; and she is afraid, so she goes on defending and she tries not to do anything which is stupid. Now she is in a mess because what can you do? You can avoid, but who will avoid? The stupid mind will avoid. In avoiding, you will do the same stupidity again.
A stupid person – and all people are stupid unless they become aware and alert. All people are stupid, so when I say stupid I don’t mean any condemnation, I am simply indicating a state of unawareness. Everybody is born stupid. Fortunate are the few who don’t die stupid. Stupidity is the sleep you live in.
How can you avoid it? How can a man who is fast asleep avoid dreaming? If he tries, he will create another dream. In the very avoidance he will do something stupid. Don’t avoid it; accept it because avoidance is trying to defend it. You don’t want anybody to know that you are stupid, but that is not going to help. The trouble is, by continuously avoiding, you may yourself forget that you are stupid. Then you are settled in it, then there is no way out. That’s how you have created your troubles. You have been avoiding them, then you deceive others, then by and by you are deceived yourself.
People come to me with problems, but those are not the real problems. Rarely does a person come with an authentic problem; otherwise they don’t know exactly what their problem is. They have a false problem, so they can be engaged in solving it. They will never be able to solve it because a real disease can disappear, an unreal disease cannot disappear. In the first place, it is not there. How to make it disappear? By fighting with the wrong disease, they are defending the right disease. They are engaged in fighting with something which is absolutely pseudo, so they are giving time for the real disease to grow and spread and become a cancerous phenomenon in their being.
To look at the right problem is difficult because from the very beginning you have been taught to avoid.
Every day in the Pune newspapers I see somebody died – a husband died, a wife died – and in memory a picture is printed with text: “My wife left for the heavenly abode, this very day one year ago.”
You don’t say “death.” That word is too real and hits hard: “Left for the heavenly abode…” Who are you deceiving? – not the wife who has already left. You are deceiving yourself. You are afraid of death, you are hiding death in a beautiful terminology, “heavenly abode.” Now there is no fear; in fact, even a little desire to go yourself.
The basic problem is death. You have made a code and you may forget completely. And this is how you are working with life: you feel angry but you don’t say that you are angry; you say, “I feel restless.” Restlessness is not a condemnatory thing.
I was reading about a Quaker, a very religious Quaker…

One night, a thief entered. The Quaker took his gun. He wanted to say, “You son of a bitch,” but he wouldn’t say it – a Quaker, how can he say that? A religious person? So he said, “Dear sir, you are standing in the place where I am going to shoot. Please don’t move, I don’t intend to kill you. This is just accidental; you are standing in the place where I am going to shoot.”

How can a Quaker kill? You go on deceiving – your language, your philosophy, your religion – everything!
Once it happened…

I was talking and I used the word pissing. Ananda Prem wrote a letter to me immediately, a long letter: “Please don’t use this word; urination has to be used.”
Urination is clinical. Nobody urinates, it is a textbook thing. Pissing is alive. The very sound of it gives you the idea, but reality has to be hidden. That day I understood why Ananda Prem is so uptight: she has been urinating. You have to be uptight then.

Be real, authentic, true – true to life, even in words. I will tell you a story…

A woman came to listen to a so-called saint with her small child, a young boy. Just in the middle of the discourse the boy started fidgeting and then he said loudly, “I wanna go piss.”
The saint was of course very angry – such a mundane thing in such a sacred atmosphere. He said, “You have to teach him manners, otherwise don’t bring him here. This is not only unmannerly, it is insulting.”
The woman said, “Tell me how to teach him.”
So he said, “You can make a code word. He can say, ‘I wanna sing.’ Then you will understand.” So the woman taught the boy.
After one year it happened that the saint came to visit the woman’s house, he stayed there. One night the woman had to go to another town. Her mother was ill, so the saint was left with the child. Just in the middle of the night, two o’clock, the child awoke the saint and said, “I wanna sing.” But by that time, the saint had forgotten the code; one year had passed.
So he said, “Wanna sing? This is no time to sing.”
The child said, “But I sing every day, even twice!”
“You are a very stupid child,” he said. “In the day you can sing, but not in the night. Don’t disturb me. Keep quiet and go to sleep.”
After a few minutes, again the child said, “But I cannot go to sleep. If you don’t allow me, it will come out by itself – I tell you!”
The saint said, “What type of singing? Even the neighbors will be disturbed. Go to sleep.”
The boy said, “I cannot sleep. First I will have to sing.”
So the saint said, “Okay. You come near my ear and sing slowly.”
So the boy sang. Then the saint understood the code.

Never hide in codes. Be true; life is simple, but because of your pretensions you complicate the whole thing. Don’t complicate it.
Ninety-nine percent of your illness is your own working – be alert and watch. If you are stupid, you are stupid. This is the first ray of intelligence that has happened to you, that you feel that you are stupid – perfectly beautiful. To understand that one is stupid is already to be intelligent. To understand that one is blind and cannot see light, one is already on the way. Now something is possible.
A blind man goes on imagining that he knows what light is. He dreams about light, dreams about the eyes, and if somebody says, “You are wrong,” is ready to protect himself, defend, rationalize, argue.
Look at the bare fact – whatsoever it is. To accept it is good. You are blind, everybody is born blind; nobody comes with eyes. If you have eyes, there is no need to come. You come only to learn how to be able to see, and from the very beginning you start thinking that you have eyes.
You come here to be enlightened. Life is a process of enlightenment; if you live it truly, buddhahood is bound to happen. It is not some accident. You carry the seed within you. Just give the right soil and the seed will sprout, and a buddha will flower in you.
Buddhahood is not accidental, is not only for the chosen few. It is everybody’s destiny. Delay you can, but when you attain there is nothing to brag about. I repeat: delay you can, but when you attain it there is nothing to brag about. It is very ordinary, it has to be so. It is your intrinsic being, it is your essence – just the personality has to be dropped; personality is the falsification.
Watch, and always be true. Whatsoever you say about yourself, be true and you will never be a loser. In the beginning it will seem that if you say that you are stupid everybody will know. But stupidity is not something that you can hide; everybody already knows except you. Everybody already knows, only you are deceived.
Drop all deceptions because finally, eventually, you will discover “Nobody was deceived, only me.” And nobody else is a loser for it; you lose. Drop all codes, drop all falsifications. And when I say “drop,” I don’t mean that any effort is needed. Just see, and they drop. Seeing is dropping.
That’s why if you feel, “I don’t have eyes to see,” eyes start opening. If you feel, “I don’t have ears to hear you,” you have already heard me. If you say, “I am absolutely stupid,” intelligence has arrived – the first ray has penetrated your being.
“You promise us liberation…” I don’t promise you anything. It is already promised by destiny, you are here for it. How can I promise something? Who am I to promise? I can promise only because I know it is already there. I know, whether you know it or not, that it is already there. I can see the flame inside you. You may have forgotten it, but I can penetrate and see. I promise because I know it is already there: it is the facticity of your being right now. Nothing is to be done; just one has to become a little more alert, a little more true, a little more in the essence. Don’t cling to the personality that you have created around you; go to the center.
You feel, “How is that possible with such a helpless case as I am?” Anybody who moves on the path feels helpless; only those who never move on the path feel themselves very strong. Anybody who moves on the path feels helpless because on the path one becomes flexible, on the path one becomes aware of how things are. One becomes aware of how small one is. One becomes aware of the tinyness of one’s own existence and the vast reality around.
One is just a small drop in an infinite ocean. Of course one feels helpless. But once you feel helpless the ego has been dropped, and for the first time, help from every nook and corner of existence rushes toward you. The whole ocean rushes toward you. In your helplessness the drop drops: you become the ocean. That’s why, “On the other hand, sometimes,” you say, “I am filled with grace.”
Yes, it happens. It is part of the whole process. If you feel helplessness, you will feel grace reaching to you. But if you feel that you are already strong, the door is closed; you don’t need grace.
There is a very ancient story…

Krishna was sitting. His wife, Rukmini, had brought food for him and he was just going to take the first bite. He dropped it and rushed toward the door. Then he stopped at the door for a single moment, came back, and started eating.
Rukmini was puzzled. She said, “What is the matter? You rushed toward the door as if there is some great emergency, as if the house was on fire or something, or somebody was going to die. And then you stopped, and then you came back. I’m puzzled. Tell me, what is the secret?”
Krishna said, “One of my devotees, a lover, was passing through a big city. He is almost mad in love with me. People were throwing stones at him. They thought he was crazy and when the stones hit him and blood flowed, he just said, ‘Krishna, Krishna’ and danced. He was so helpless, I was needed, so I rushed.”
Rukmini asked, “Then what happened? Why did you come back from the door?”
Krishna said, “By the time I reached the door, he had taken a stone in his hand. He was throwing stones himself. Now I am not needed. He’s taken the whole situation in his own hand. I am not needed.”

Existence comes to you when you are helpless. When you are strong, existence is not needed. The divine reaches to you when you are empty. When you are too full of yourself, there is no need. Helplessness is the capacity to call, to invite grace. Grace is always available, only you have to be helpless.
In your ego you feel you are strong, you feel you are the master. You feel nothing can harm you; you feel everybody else dies, not you. You feel very superior, but nothing is there in that superiority. It is just a bubble, a soap bubble – inside, nothing but emptiness. And you know it because anybody can touch the bubble and it is no longer there, it explodes.
Feel helpless and you will never be helpless again. Feel empty and you will be full with the divine. That’s the secret.
“And on the other hand, sometimes I am filled with grace which no words can describe.” Yes, the grace cannot be described because when it comes the mind is not there which can describe. When it comes, the mind ceases to exist. Who can give and bring a report? The reporter is not present. It comes only when the mind is not – and only mind could have described.
“What happens? And where am I in all this?” You are nowhere in this. The moment you come in, the grace has disappeared. When you are not, godliness is; when you are, godliness is not. Your presence is its absence, your absence is its presence. Crucify your ego and you will resurrect in a greater, infinite life.

The second question:
Osho,
Does a buddha also need something as a complementary? Who is complementary to a buddha?
Buddha or buddhahood is not a polarity. It is not opposite to anything, it is beyond duality. Night is against the day, life is against death, love is against hate. Buddhahood is not against anything. It is to transcend the duality. When you are neither day nor night, you are a buddha, when you are neither life nor death you are a buddha. When you are neither this nor that, neti neti, you are a buddha. Buddhahood simply means transcendence of duality. So buddhahood is all and nothing. There is nothing as a polar opposite to it and there is no complementary to it.
Remember this. You would like to become a buddha because you would like to be happy, but then you misunderstand. Buddhahood is beyond happiness and unhappiness. That was the insistence in yesterday’s talk: it is beyond agony, and beyond ecstasy also.
So you will not see any ecstasy in the man who has really attained to ecstasy. Agony has disappeared, ecstasy also; the world has disappeared and nirvana also; the body has disappeared and the soul also, because those are all opposites. They are meaningful only when the other is present.
Have you observed? If you ask the scientists, “What is matter?” they say, “Not mind.” “And what is mind?” They say, “Not matter.”
Now look at the foolishness. When you want to define matter, you have to bring mind in. Mind itself is undefined yet. To define one thing, you bring another, undefined. How can you define something by another undefined thing?
“What is matter?” You answer, “No mind.” And when it is asked, “What is mind?” – now you bring matter in, “No matter.”
Dualities depend on each other. You cannot define love without bringing hate in. What type of love is this which needs hate to define it? You cannot define life without bringing death in. This life cannot be much of a life. What type of life is this which needs death to define it?
There is a life beyond life and death, and there is a love beyond love and hate. That love, that life, is buddhahood: transcending all the opposites.
So don’t choose. If you choose, you will be in a quagmire. Don’t choose, a choiceless awareness is the goal: just remain aloof, don’t choose. The moment you choose, you have fallen into the trap of the world, or into the trap of the mind.

It is reported that Rinzai, a great Zen master, was asked by a disciple, “I have left the whole world, renounced all – now why am I still to wait for nirvana? Why is the enlightenment not happening?”
Rinzai said, “You have left the world, now leave enlightenment also, otherwise it will not happen because whatsoever you call enlightenment is nothing but the opposite polarity of your world. In your idea of enlightenment your world still exists; maybe exists as negated, but still exists. Drop enlightenment also.”
It is said the disciple understood. He laughed, and the master said, “Finished. You attained.”

In a single moment it is possible, but if you cling to the duality, then for lives together you can go on and on and on.
Try to see the point; it is only a question of vision and clarity. Try to see the point that you cannot choose one without choosing the opposite. If you choose love, you have already chosen hate. That’s why lovers go on fighting. Love is a love–hate relationship. If you choose love, you have already chosen hate. It will lurk just behind your love, and many times it will come up and you will have to relax because nobody can love for twenty-four hours. Where will you relax? You will relax in hate; it is just lurking by the side, you will fight. After a fight, again you are ready to love. Now you are fed-up with hate; you fall in love.
This way you go on moving. Happy–unhappy, sad–ecstatic, in anguish–in bliss, you go on moving. These opposites are two aspects of the same coin. When the head is up the tail is hidden, when the tail is up the head is hidden. Just close by, like a shadow, the opposite follows. To understand this is to become a buddha. Then you don’t desire because every desire will be a choice. Then you don’t say, “I would like love and I don’t want hate.” If you want love, you have already wanted hate, you have already fallen into the trap. Once you understand the duality and the trap of it, you simply laugh, you don’t choose. You say, “Enough, I understand. Now I don’t choose.” In that choicelessness a pillar of awareness arises in you, a flame; you are transformed.
Choicelessness is the alchemy of transformation, of inner mutation. A new being is born who has nothing to do with the past, is absolutely discontinuous with the past. He has no desire, and when there is no desire, for the first time you live.
Desire doesn’t allow you to live. It goes on forcing you toward the future. It doesn’t allow you to be herenow, it doesn’t allow you to let go. It doesn’t allow you to flow, it doesn’t allow you to move with the tide. The desire creates fight. The desire says, “Fight for the goal. You have to reach somewhere.”
Life is not reaching anywhere. It is sheer delight, it is just herenow. The desiring mind is always somewhere else.
What Gurdjieff said about the first man is true about many: You are never at home, you have made your abode in desires, and life is always here and you are always somewhere else. Except here. You may be anywhere but you are never here.
A choiceless consciousness is herenow. It lives – only it lives, only it can live. You only hope, you never live. You think to live, you plan, but you never live. Your whole life goes in planning, thinking of the morrow, thinking how to enjoy tomorrow and missing today – and there is no tomorrow.

The third question:
Osho,
I get bored in the discourse. Then I fear and feel guilty.
Boredom is your chief characteristic, so don’t avoid it. Be bored. Know it, watch it, be aware of it. There are many people whose chief characteristic is boredom, who are always bored with everything.
Maybe in the beginning… You fall in love with a woman and you are not bored, but the next day, or the next hour, or the next minute, you are bored. The same face, the same eyes, and the topography is known, and the geography traveled. Now nothing is there, finished: you are bored. Every day the same sun rises and every day the same moon, every day things move in a circle and a routine, and you are bored. Every second the breathing comes in and goes out, nothing seems to be new. You are excited sometimes, and you see something new, but soon it will be old. Once it is old, excitement is gone. Then you again search for something new.
I have heard…

Henry Ford was celebrating his fiftieth wedding anniversary – golden jubilee – and he was a very happy man. Rarely after fifty years of marriage is one as happy with a wife as he was.
Somebody asked, “This seems unbelievable; and particularly in America, it seems unbelievable that you are still happy with a woman you have been married to for fifty years. Fifty years looks almost like fifty centuries. It seems almost from the very beginning of time. Fifty years, the whole of life, and you still feel happy and you still look in love? What is the secret?”
Henry Ford said, “The same that I follow in manufacturing cars: I stick to the same model. I have never tried to change the model in my cars, and I have not tried to change the model of my wife. She is new every day; she has never been old and I’m not bored.”

So boredom is because you don’t know how to find newness every moment. In a way it is true that the same sun rises every day, but it is not the same. If you have the eyes to see, it has never been the same: the sky is different, the poetry is different, the color is different: it is never the same. The weather is changing every moment. Nothing has ever been the same. In existence nothing repeats, but it feels repetitive because you are not intensely alert.
If you are intensely alert, everything is new. If you are absolutely alert, everything is absolutely new, never any dust of oldness settles on it. In a way I go on saying the same thing every day, in another way I have never uttered a single thing twice. It depends on you: if you listen fast asleep, snoring, you will be bored. Don’t blame me; it is your characteristic.
I am not bored with your faces, neither am I bored with your problems. Every evening, excitedly I wait for you. Every morning, excitedly I wait for you. You are bored, so something must be wrong with you. Just think of me – and your problems and your faces and all sorts of stupidities you bring. I am always happy listening to them because to me every individual is so unique that you cannot bring anybody else’s problem, you always bring your problem. And you are changing every moment, you are a river: today you come in a different mood and climate, tomorrow you will come in a different mood and climate. I have never seen the same face again; it changes, it is continuously changing. One needs penetrating eyes to see, otherwise dust settles and everything becomes old and everything seems to be repetitive. That is the attitude that decides.
Listen more consciously; make yourself alert. Whenever you feel that you are getting bored, give a good jerk to the body – not others’ bodies, your own body. Give a jerk, open your eyes, make yourself alert; listen again.
Boredom is one of the greatest problems of human life. No animal is ever bored. Have you seen any animal bored? No animal, no bird, no tree is ever bored. Only human beings are bored. Why? They have missed the natural flow of life, they have moved away from life. The more you move away from your essence and your inner life, the more things will be dead and you will be bored.
Come back home. Be part of the existence, of the trees and the rocks and the rivers, of the sky and the sun and the moon, the birds and animals. Come back home and look at everything as a child looks: fresh, young.
Jesus says, “Nobody will be able to enter into my kingdom of God unless he is like a child.” What does he mean? What is the quality of a child? – he is fresh and never bored.
Have you observed? Tell a story to a child – he listens, he gets excited and he says, “Uncle, tell it again.” The same story, he is saying, “Tell it again.” Now he is even more excited. You tell him and he says, “Now, once more.” You cannot understand what is happening to this child because it is the same story. But for a child it is never the same story. Every night he listens to the same lullaby, but it is never the same. His consciousness is so fresh that dust never settles on it.
Your consciousness is so dusty already that you are not in a state to mirror reality. When I am saying something, you are understanding something else – your dust distorts. I say something, you understand something else, and you understand that which you already know; of course, it becomes repetitive, you are bored.
I am not saying the same thing. In a very, very deep sense I am saying the same thing, but that same thing is absolutely fresh. It is always fresh. Freshness is its intrinsic quality: truth is never old, it is eternal. It is not part of time where things are new and become old.
So if you are bored, catch this characteristic of boredom and make yourself more alive, more aware, and you will feel less bored. Bring your awareness to a deeper clarity, transparency, and boredom will disappear. You have to do something with your being.
It is not only a question of listening to me; it is a characteristic. Everywhere you will find it: wherever you go you will carry your boredom around you. Everything will bore you, nothing can give you the sheer excitement of a child running after a butterfly, or gathering colored stones on the sea beach.
You think, “What nonsense. Those stones are valueless.” But for a child, those stones are not commodities to be purchased or sold. Those stones have nothing to do with money. Each stone is unique, a Kohinoor; the value is intrinsic, it is not to be decided in any market. It is not a commodity. And you say nevertheless the child goes on collecting, every morning he goes and collects stones, but sooner or later consciousness will be destroyed. His essence will be lost, a crust of personality will arise and he will also think, “These stones are useless. But diamonds – no, they are not useless.” They are also stones but they are not useless. Why? – because they have a market value. Now life itself will not be valuable. The value has to be decided by the fools who run the market; they are the valuators, they will decide it. Now you will always be bored.
If you want to attain to a fresh stream of consciousness, drop the personality and the values attached to it. Become a child again. That’s what meditation is all about: to become a child again and look with fresh eyes. Look again with a new consciousness, and trees will be greener and flowers will be redder, and the sun will be every morning new. The stars then become infinitely valuable things. The value is not of the market, it is of the heart. Then you listen to me. Then I am not just talking to you, then these are not mere words that I am saying to you.
I will tell you a story. It happened…

A great Hasid master had a tome, a big book, always by his side and he would never allow anybody to look into it. When there was nobody around, he would close the windows and doors, and people thought, “Now he is reading.” Whenever somebody was there, he would put the book aside – and it was prohibited, nobody should touch it. Of course it became a great curiosity.
When he died, the first thing the disciples did? They forgot about the old master, he was lying dead. Now nobody was going to prohibit them. They jumped on the book; it must carry something tremendously meaningful. But they were very much disappointed. Only one page was written on and the whole book was empty, and on that page also there was not much, only one sentence. The sentence was, “When you can make a distinction between the container and the content, you have become wise.”

If you listen to the container, the words, you will get bored. If you listen to the content, you will be exhilarated, you will be in deep ecstasy. I am not speaking for speaking’s sake, I have no message that can be delivered through words, but there is no other way to indicate it. I am not trying to say something, I am trying to show something. These are not words. These words carry my silence. These words are only containers. Don’t bother about the containers, look at the content: these words are alive, they have the throb of my heart, I bring them to you as a gift. They are not doctrines. At the most you can call them poetries. At the most you can call me a good storyteller, that’s all. I am not a philosopher, not a theoretician, not a theologian.
I have something within me and I would like to share it with you. I am forced to use words because you cannot understand silence. Once you are ready to understand my silence, I will drop words. Then I will look into you.
Right now you are not at home. If I look into you, there is nobody, so I have to knock hard. My words are nothing but knocks on your door, so that you can come home and accept my gift.

The fourth question:
Osho,
How can I be authentic? How can I speak and act the truth when the society and the world on which I have to depend for my worldly needs are based upon lies and untruth?
Then be untrue, then don’t create any misery for yourself. But the life for which you are going to be untrue will be taken away from you sooner or later.
Death is certain. So if you want to live in an untrue society comfortably – live comfortably. But that comfort is not leading you anywhere except death. Whatsoever you call a comfortable and convenient life, I call only a comfortable way to die. It is a slow suicide. The choice is yours; I am not forcing any goal, any structure on you. I am simply stating bare facts: that if you want to be comfortably, conveniently dying – compromise with the lies that surround you. But you will never feel comfortable deep down. An unease will remain inside your heart.
I know well that if you become authentic and true it is going to be arduous. Otherwise, why should so many people be liars? Why should so many people live a life of lies? It is arduous, it is tapashcharya, it is austerity. When you start becoming authentic, you will be in conflict; but that conflict is worth it. It is the cost one has to pay to attain to inner life. One has to pay it, you cannot avoid it.
If you want a life of infinite bliss, a life which is beyond death, a life which is eternal, then you have to pass through the austerity. But the austerity is only in the beginning: in the beginning only because you become a stranger.
When everybody is a liar and everybody is a hypocrite, and when everybody is trying to show the way he is not, if you become true, you don’t fit. But that is only in the beginning. You don’t fit with the society, but immediately you fit with existence, and one who fits with existence does not bother whether he fits with the society or not. He has entered into a greater harmony.
Only in the beginning, while you are not in the greater harmony and you have lost contact with this tiny society and its so-called harmony – in the transition, in the transitory period, in this gap – will there be a little uneasiness. You will feel like a stranger, alien, alienated; but that is only for a small period of time, and it is worth it.
Once you enter into the greater harmony of existence, a cosmic harmony with the trees and rivers and the rocks and the sands, who bothers about your stupid society and the establishment and the government? Who bothers? They have nothing to give. The whole structure is false. They only pretend, they only promise; they give you hope, but nothing comes out of it.
Once you know the greater harmony you are not bothered. You accept the fact that you will be in a little rebellious conflict with the society. That’s why every religious man is rebellious. If a religious man is not rebellious, know well that he is simply pseudo-religious; he is not religious.
A Christ is religious, but not the Vatican pope. The pope is pseudo, false: he fits with the society. Christ is rebellious, Christianity is just against Christ. All religions are pseudo-religious: Buddhists are against Buddha, Jainas are against Mahavira, Christians against Jesus, and Jews against Moses and Baal Shem. They live in a different harmony. Real harmony is of the total.
Your society is a tiny thing. Just think of the earth, what it is: a tiny lump in the vast universe, nothing much to brag about. And then on the earth, a human society – even still, a very small part. And then in that human society, even smaller and smaller patterns – Christians, Protestants, even smaller. And it goes on and on. You make smaller wholes against the bigger whole, and then you are suffocated, then you don’t have any freedom to move, you don’t have space around you.
Why not look at the sky and have the whole space which is available? You say, “No, I am a Hindu. I cannot move into the whole sky of humanity. I am a man and I cannot move in the whole space of all beings. And I am a soul; I cannot move into the whole space of existence.”
Why do you confine yourself? It gives a little comfort, I know. It feels good that you are Indian, you have someone to belong to. It feels good that this country is yours; it gives you a certain solidity, something to stand on. But then it becomes the imprisonment also. To be left in the open sky, one feels afraid, alone. Freedom is always in aloneness.
Aloneness is tremendously beautiful, but in the beginning it looks tremendously terrible because you have never known aloneness. You have always lived in the family, in the society, in the establishment, this and that. You have never been alone, and religion is the art of being alone.
Religion is what you do with your aloneness. It has nothing to do with the crowd. It is coming to the original source of one’s being, to the very center. So the choice is yours. I am not forcing anything on you.
If you want to live comfortably – of course a hypocrite’s life, false, untrue, tasteless, boring but comfortable – live in a prison. Very comfortable, convenient. If you want freedom, then you have to be a little courageous because freedom is only for those who are adventurous. If you want to move into the infinite sky of existence, the cosmos, you have to leave the small holes that you call society, religion, church. You have to come out of them, out of the caves that your mind, in fear, has created.
Remember always, rebelliousness is the very substance of religion. There is no other beauty in the world, no other greater ecstasy than to be a rebel.
You have to understand the word. I don’t mean by rebellion that you have to be a revolutionary – no. A revolutionary is again in the same trap: he is trying to change the society, he is concerned with the society and the state. A revolutionary may be against this society but is not against society as such. A revolutionary is against this society and wants to create another society of his own imagination, his own utopia; he is not against society.
A rebel is a dropout: he does not bother about this society or any other society; he knows all societies will be imprisonments. At the most they can be tolerated, that’s all. There is no possibility of any society which will be really free. A society cannot be free.
No revolution is going to succeed, all revolutions have failed. Those who know, know that revolution as such is not possible. To change the crowd is not possible because the crowd has got no heart. To change the structure is not possible because people cling to structure. They can change it if you give them another structure, they can change this structure for another. A capitalist society can become a socialist society, a socialist society can become a communist society, a communist society can become a fascist society – they can change structures, they can change their presence, they can change their slavery, but they cannot be free. A crowd is afraid to be free. It clings. It wants to belong.
The inner emptiness forces everybody to belong to somebody: to somebody, to something, to some dogma, to some party, to some nation, to some philosophy, church. Then one feels, “I am not alone.” Freedom is the capacity to be alone. When you are infinitely alone, a purity, an innocence is achieved. That purity is religiousness.
A rebel is one who has dropped all hope of social revolution. A rebel is one who knows that society will always remain the same; it will change the outer form but deep down it will remain the same. Only the individual can change, only the individual can become a buddha; the society can never become enlightened. All societies will remain barbarous, crude, primitive; only individuals can reach to that height – the ultimate peak, of being totally alone, totally silent, totally one with existence.
Be rebellious, and don’t mistake revolution for rebellion.
Revolution is the game of society. Rebellion is the insight that the society is going to follow its own rotten, beaten path: you drop out. I am not saying that you escape from it; dropping out is an inward phenomenon. You remain in it but you are no longer of it. You don’t belong to it. On the surface you go on – you go to the market, you go to the office, to the factory and you fulfill things – but deep down you are no longer part of it. You become a lotus flower; the water of the society does not touch you.
This is what I mean by a dropout. I don’t mean a hippie because the hippie will come back, sooner or later. He will have to come back; that’s why there are no old hippies, only young people. By the time they reach thirty they become afraid and go back to the establishment. By the time they reach thirty they get married, they have children – now what to do? They move back to the establishment. Now their children will be hippies, but they become squares. Even when hippies or others drop out of the society, they create their own society. Then they start belonging to that society.
If you are a hippie and you don’t have long hair, you will be a stranger among hippies. If you are a hippie and you are not dirty, and you wash your face and you take a shower every day, you will not fit. They have their own rules, they have their own alternate society – small, but they have their own rules, forms, manners, language, ways of relating and they are as traditional as anybody else. They have their own tradition. Maybe it is a tradition against tradition, but it is a tradition. They have their own conformity.
A real dropout is one who has dropped out from within. On the surface he goes on moving, lives in the society because there is nowhere else to go, but deep down he has moved. He closes his eyes and he is no longer any part of the society. He comes home, he has forgotten the factory, the market, the office – everything. The society remains an outer thing; he doesn’t allow it to enter inward. That’s what I mean when I say “a dropout.” A dropout is a drop-in. Drop in and you will be a real dropout.

The fifth question:
Osho,
When do we come to know love? For me, the more inside I go, the less love I seem to have. Or I seem to have lost the need to express myself lovingly to others, especially those I have loved in the past, such as a girlfriend, mother, old friends and others.
“When do we come to know love?” It is really a very, very difficult thing to understand because it has nothing to do with understanding.

George Gurdjieff never talked about love in his whole life, never wrote a single line about love. Once his disciples pressed him too much and they said, “Say at least a few words. You have never said anything about love. Why don’t you say something about love?”
Gurdjieff said, “As you are, love is impossible and unless you know love, whatsoever I say you will not understand.” He condensed his whole feeling about love in one sentence. He says, “If you can love, you can be; if you can be, you can do; if you can do, you are.” And he said, “Don’t force me anymore. I won’t say much.”

Love is not possible ordinarily. Love is a fallacy. Where you are, love is a fallacy, it is not possible. You cannot love because in the first place you are not; you simply think that you are. You are not one, you are a crowd – how can you love? One mind falls in love, another mind doesn’t know anything about it. One mind says, “I love,” another mind at the same time is thinking how to hate. Another mind is already moving toward hatred.
You are a crowd inside, you are not a crystallized whole. You are not one, and only one who is one can love.
Love is not a relationship. Love is a state of being. So whatsoever you call love is not love. That’s why it is happening that the more inside you go the less love you seem to have because whatsoever you have called love was not love; it was counterfeit, it was not real. So when you move inward… It belonged to the personality, to the world of lies, falsifications. When you move inward, you go away from the personality, you go away from the love that your personality was thinking was love.
Don’t be afraid. It is good to drop the false because only when the false disappears does the real arise. Soon a different quality of love will happen when you have settled within. Then it will not be a need, then it will not be a desire, then it will not be a relationship; you will be simply loving, it will be just a quality of your being. Then it has a totally different flavor, then it never creates a bondage. Then you share unconditionally, then your love is just the way you are. Then you sit lovingly, then you stand lovingly, then you move lovingly, then you look lovingly. Then whatsoever you do has the quality of love.
It happened…

A Hasid mystic was traveling with his disciples. They came to a serai and rested the whole night. In the morning the keeper of the serai served breakfast. While they were drinking their tea, suddenly the keeper fell at the master’s feet, ecstatic, crying and laughing together.
The disciples were puzzled. How could he know that this man is a master? This was a secret thing. And the disciples were told, “Nobody is to be told who the master is. The master is traveling in a hidden way.” Who has told this serai-keeper? The disciples were worried. They inquired but nobody had told, nobody had even talked to that man.
The master said, “Don’t be puzzled. Ask this man himself how he recognized me. Nobody told him but he has recognized.”
So they said, “We cannot recognize – even we are suspicious whether he is truly enlightened or not, and we have lived with him for many years. Still a suspicion somewhere goes on lurking. How have you recognized?”
The man said, “I have been serving food to thousands of people and I have been watching thousands of people. I have never come across such a man who looked with such deep love at the teacup. I could not help because I have known all sorts of people passing through here, millions of people, but I have never seen anybody looking at the teacup with such love, as if somebody is looking at one’s beloved.”

The master must have had something of a totally different quality, a being full of love; otherwise who looks at a teacup with such love? A teacup is a teacup, you have to use it, it is a utility – you don’t look with love. In fact you don’t look at your own wife with love. She is also a utility, a teacup to be used and thrown away. You don’t look at your husband with love; the husband is a means. Love is possible only when everything becomes the end. Then even a teacup has the quality of the beloved.
Love is not a relationship. Love is a fragrance that arises in you when you have reached home. Before that you can talk about love, you can fantasize about love, you can write beautiful poetry about it, but you will not know what it is.
Try to enter within yourself. There will be much difficulty because your love will start disappearing. It has never been there, so it is good that a false thing disappears. In fact it is not disappearing; you are only becoming aware that it is false. It has never been there, you have been deluding yourself.
When it has disappeared completely – when your essence is separate from your personality, when that which you have brought into the world is separated from all that the society has given to you, when you are naked in your being and all clothes have been dropped – a new love arises. That is the love Jesus calls God. Jesus says, “Love is God.”
Your love has been nothing but a hell, it has never been God. It has not even been a heaven. It may have promised heaven, but it always proved hell, and Jesus says, “Love is God.” That love arises only when you have arrived to your innermost core.
You will have to lose the false to gain the true, you will have to lose darkness to attain to light, you will have to lose death to become really, authentically alive. That is the price one has to pay. But you are so egoistic that you cling because you feel, “If this love disappears, then I will be empty,” and your ego creates a problem: “At least something is there; maybe it is false, let it be false,” and the ego can feed on it.
It happened once…

A king felt thirsty. He told his courtiers, “My throat feels dry.” He could have simply said, “I am thirsty,” but a king is a king, they have their own way. It is too common to say, “I am thirsty.” So he said, “My throat feels dry.”
The lackeys ran away to the market immediately; they thought and pondered over what to do when the throat is dry. Of course they couldn’t think of bringing common water because that won’t suit a king, so they brought lubricating oil. The king drank it. The throat was no longer dry, but he was in more difficulty than before because the whole mouth was tasting awful and he was feeling nauseous.
He said, “What have you done? Of course, the throat is no longer dry but I am in much more of a mess than before.”
So the greatest doctor of the capital was called. He came and he suggested pickles and vinegar. So it was given. It helped a little, but it gave a stomachache. More medicines were given; somehow the stomachache disappeared, but again the throat was dry.
Somebody brought scented syrups, wine and other things. He drank the wine, the syrups and everything else that was given. He felt a little relieved, but the digestion was disturbed.
An old man, a wise man who was watching this whole nonsense said, “I think, your highness, you need water, common water. You are thirsty.”
Of course, the king was very angry and he said, “This is an insult, to suggest common water to a great king. This is for common people, to feel thirsty and be quenched by common water. I am not a common man. You have insulted me. Moreover, it is illogical. Look at the illness. It is so complicated, so many medicines have been given and nothing helps. You are a simpleton to think it can be helped by common water. The greatest doctor has come and even he was not of much help. So what do you think about yourself – are you a physician?”
The man said, “No, I am not a physician. I am just a common man. Whenever it happens… But I don’t know about kings – sorry, excuse me, I don’t know about kings, I am not a king, but whenever it happens to me, common water helps. That may be because I am a common man.”
The king said, “You are not only a common man, you are an idiot.”

Amidst idiots, wise people prove to be idiots.
Your disease is very ordinary, common water will do. But that doesn’t suit the ego of the king. People come to me and they bring their complex illnesses. I say, “Don’t be worried, just meditation will do.” They look suspicious.
They say, “But why? You go on suggesting and prescribing meditation to everybody, each and everybody, and my problem is different. Maybe it helps others but it won’t help me. Tell me something specific, something special. What should I do? I cannot love. I cannot feel.”
Or somebody says, “I am very angry, and the anger continues like an undercurrent. What should I do?” Or somebody says, “I am much too sexual and fantasy continues in my mind. What should I do?” Or somebody is greedy, a miser, and millions of diseases, very complicated, and they have been to psychoanalysts and have failed, and they have been to this saint and that, and everybody has failed. In fact, they feel very good that everybody has failed because they are not ordinary people, their disease is very complex, complicated. If I suggest just common water, meditation, will do, they look suspicious.
And I tell you: meditation will do. Your ego has to be put aside, it creates all sorts of problems. Only meditation will do.
What is meditation? It is just putting the mind aside. Being without the mind for a few moments is meditation. Once you have known this for a few moments, you have the key. Then whenever you need, you can move withinward. It is just like ingoing breath, outgoing breath: you go out in the world, it is outgoing breath; you come in, it is ingoing breath. Meditation is in-going breath.
Forget about love, anger, greed, a thousand and one problems. Problems may be a thousand and one, but the medicine is only one. You may be surprised that the word meditation comes from the same root from where medicine comes. Medicine and meditation come from the same root. Meditation is a medicine, is the only medicine.
So forget about your problems, just move into meditation. The deeper you move, the more the false things will disappear. First there will be emptiness, nothingness. You will feel afraid. Don’t be afraid; that’s how it happens to everybody. I have been in that same state of fear. I know it happens, I can understand; but be courageous and move on.
If you can move on and on, any day, any moment, suddenly it happens – just a click, something clicks: the old has disappeared and the new has appeared. You are resurrected.
Enough for today.

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