JEWISH MYSTICS
The True Sage 10
Tenth 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,
What is the difference between being passive and flowing with the river?
A lot of difference, and not only of quantity but quality – of direction, of plane, of dimension. It has to be understood very minutely because the difference is subtle.
The passive mind can appear as if it is flowing with the river, but the passive mind is not flowing with the river because it has a certain attitude of passivity. The passive mind is also a mind and to flow with the river you need a no-mind. Through the centuries, many have been deceived because of the similarity. To cultivate passivity is easier than to flow with the river. To condition your mind in passivity is very easy. That’s why, in the past and even now, monasteries, monks, sannyasins have existed: people who have renounced the world.
What they are really trying to do is to become absolutely passive. But their passivity is negativity. They have already chosen an attitude.
First, these people were much too active in the world; running, desiring, ambitious. The mind was active, excited with desire, future, hope. Then they got frustrated because whatsoever you hope for is not going to be fulfilled. All hopes are hopeless and all desiring comes to frustration, and all expectations carry frustration as a seed within. So sooner or later everybody is bound to come to a point in life when the active mind looks simply like a hell: too much activity and no result out of it, running and running and never arriving.
If you are intelligent, it happens sooner; if you are stupid it takes a little longer, but it happens all the same. If you are very intelligent, then you will come to see it when you are young; if you are not that intelligent, then in old age. But sooner or later everybody comes to feel that a life with an active mind is frustrating. It leads nowhere; it promises much but it never fulfills anything. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth, a discontent in the being. One simply feels tired and wearied, defeated. One simply feels that the whole thing has been futile.
Whenever the mind feels this, it immediately suggests, “Try the opposite,” because the mind lives in polarity, in opposition. It says, “You have tried activity, now try passivity.” You longed for the world too much, now you renounce. You were clinging to money, renounce money. You had become too attached to the house, renounce the house. You got too involved with a woman, with children; now leave them and escape from all this. The mind suggests trying the opposite and it seems natural and logical: you have done one thing, failed; do the opposite, maybe the opposite succeeds.
Then the old type of sannyasin – the monk, the monastery, the Himalayas – is born. Then you escape from activity, you try just the opposite. Then you try not to desire, but to not desire is still a desire. Then you try to leave the world, but the very effort to leave the world shows your attachment. If you have really become unattached, what is the point of renouncing anything?
You can renounce a certain thing only because you are too involved in it. Then you escape from the woman, but that shows simply that your mind is still fantasizing about women. Wherever you go, you may become the opposite but still you will remain the same.
This has to be understood: through the opposite you never change; you appear that you have changed, you remain the same. This is one of the most important things to be understood; otherwise again you will be in the trap.
Now the trap will be of passivity – of not desiring, renouncement, non-attachment, nonviolence. First the world was your activity, now the world has become a passive thing for you, but you are the same. Now God will become your activity, moksha – a faraway world somewhere in the sky, where everything is beautiful. This world will be ugly, now the beauty is transferred to the other world. Now your object of desire changes but you don’t change. First you were asking for money, now you ask for meditation, but the greed is there. First you were asking for things of this world, now you ask for things of the other world, but the asking is persistent, the same.
People who look at you from the outside may be deceived because you will look totally transformed: you don’t touch money, you don’t have much to possess, you live in a cottage or under a tree, you are a naked fakir. People who are in the world will worship you because they think now you have transformed your being, and they are still in the world. When they come to you, they will compare and they will imagine that you must now be very peaceful because you look passive.
Passivity can give an appearance of peace. It is not peace, it is just deadness. Peace is alive, passivity is dead.
Just for example, think of yourself swimming in the river, trying to go up-current, fighting: you are active. Then think of a dead body floating down the river, not fighting at all, just floating down the river but dead, a corpse: that is passive. First, life was fighting, but death is passive. The man I call “one who is floating with the river” is neither alive in the sense of fight and is not dead like a corpse. He floats with the river, but he floats consciously. He floats with the river, not because he is dead but because he cooperates. He floats with the river; it is not that he cannot fight, but because he has come to know that fighting is futile, and he has not moved to the opposite. He floats, he communes with the river, he has become one with the river. Sometimes you will see him active and sometimes you will see him passive. Now passivity and activity are not two polarities to be chosen; he has accepted both. That’s what I mean when I say “floating with the river.”
Sometimes you will find him in the marketplace, very active. Sometimes you will find him in the temple, very passive. Now he has no fixed mode of his being. He can move from passivity to activity, he can move from activity to passivity. There is no barrier, he has not created a fence around himself. He is fluid, liquid, flowing; otherwise passivity itself can become an imprisonment.
I have heard of a Hasid story…
A man was going to see his friend. The friend was a farmer in a deep, hidden valley in the hills. When the man came nearer to the house of the friend, he saw something which puzzled him very much.
He saw a small meadow, not more than one mile long. But one thing was very special and disturbing: in that meadow thousands of birds and animals were standing together – thousands, it was difficult to count, there was no space left. The place was very crowded and the whole beautiful forest around was empty of birds and animals.
He could not believe it: “Why are they huddled together? Why are they not moving into the sky, to other trees? The whole vastness is available.”
They looked very nervous, tense, worried, not at ease at all, those birds and animals. Of course, everybody needs space. Everybody needs a certain space to live. Whenever that space is encroached, nervousness arises. But nobody was preventing them. There was not even a fence there.
So when he reached the friend’s house, the first question he asked was about these birds, “What misfortune has befallen on them?”
The friend said, “I don’t know exactly because I have not seen it, but I have heard that in the past, many, many years before, there was a landlord, a very violent and sadistic man, and he enjoyed this whole experiment. He created a high fence around the meadow. He placed guards all around the place and he ordered the guards, ‘If any bird or animal tries to escape, kill him immediately.’ He forced thousands of birds and animals into the meadow, into that prison. And for years this was the routine: whenever any bird or animal tried to escape, it was killed.
“By and by, the birds and animals settled, they accepted their prison. They forgot their freedom because freedom became associated with fear and death.
“Then the landlord died. The guards disappeared, the fence fell. Now there is nobody there to prevent them. Neither the guards are there nor the fence is there, but the birds and animals have developed a fence mentality: they believe that the fence is there. They actually see the fence: it has become deeply ingrained, it has become a conditioning.”
The man said, “But why does not somebody try to make them understand?”
The friend said, “Many good people have tried but the birds don’t listen. It is not only now ingrained in them, their children are born with the idea. It is in their blood and bones, it has become a part of their blueprint. The children are born with the idea of the fence, and good people have tried, and they go on trying.
“And you will be surprised,” said the friend, “that the birds have been very angry and animals have attacked the good people. They don’t want to be disturbed; in fact they have created a philosophy that they are in freedom and the world beyond is the imprisonment. Still, good people go on trying,” the friend said, “but it seems to be almost impossible to persuade them, ‘You are free and no fence exists, and you can fly into the sky.’”
I loved the story. That’s what Jesus, Baal Shem, Moses, Mahavira, Buddha have been doing with you – the birds and the animals – but you have developed a fence mentality. You don’t believe. Either you are active or you become passive but both belong to the fence, the same fence: the mind.
Think of a fence made of wood – one plank is white, another is black; then again one is white, another is black. A fence made of wooden planks, colored in two colors: one pillar white, one black. That is the mind: one idea passive, one active; yin–yang, right–wrong, good–bad, the world–nirvana. Both belong to the same fence, and you go on choosing. Sometimes you choose the white, then you get fed up with the white, then you start loving and worshipping the black. But the black is as much part of your imprisonment as the white.
Mind is active, mind is passive – both are part of the mind. What I mean when I say “flowing with the river” is to go beyond passivity, negativity – white and black, day and night, love and hate, the world and God. Go beyond it. Just see the whole point that the active becomes the passive, and the passive again becomes the active.
This I have watched: people who are very active in the world are always, deep down, thinking to renounce all nonsense. I know monks who have lived their whole life in the monasteries. Whenever they have confessed to me, they have always said that they always think that they have missed life, and are always fantasizing to come back to the world. The active wants to become the passive, the passive wants to become the active.
Choice is of the mind. To be choiceless is to flow with the river. That’s why Hasidism insists, and I also insist, on not leaving the world. Renounce it and be in it. That looks difficult, almost impossible for the mind to conceive. The mind can conceive of the world and of renunciation because both belong to the same pattern. When I say, “Be in the world and not be of the world,” the mind becomes uneasy. It cannot understand: “What are you saying?”
People come to me and say they would like to become sannyasins but they are in the world, “And how is it possible to be a sannyasin in the world?” Particularly in India, it looks absolutely absurd; the sannyasin is one who leaves the world. I tell them, a sannyasin is one who lives in the world and yet is not of the world. They seem confused. When I say these things to people, they look confused. They say, “Either this or that.” I say, “Both, together.”
When you take both active and passive together, they cancel each other, you become neutral. Then you are neither man nor woman, neither yin nor yang, neither body nor soul. You have gone beyond the duality, you have become transcendental. That transcendence is flowing with the river.
Flowing with the river is the greatest art. That is being both active and passive, but in deep cooperation with existence. You have to do something: you will have to live, you will have to earn; at least you will have to breathe. You will have to do something. Movement, activity has to be used, and you will have to relax also. Otherwise activity will become impossible.
So sometimes be active, sometimes be passive but don’t get identified with either. Remain aloof. Use activity, use passivity but remain the third. Just as you put on clothes, sometimes white and sometimes black; just as in the day you work and in the night you rest; just the same, use both dualities. They are means; don’t get identified with them. Then you will be flowing with the river. This is the message of Hasidism.
The greatest people in the world are those who have lived in the world and have not allowed the world to corrupt them. It is very easy to go to the Himalayas and become uncorrupted, very easy because who is there to corrupt you? To live with the mountains you will become innocent, but that innocence may be just an appearance. Come back to the world, the test is in the marketplace. There you will come to know whether you have really become innocent because when the opportunity to become corrupted arises, only then will you be able to know: are you still corruptible or not? The Himalayas, their silence, can deceive you. It has deceived millions of people.
Hasids say, “Live in the marketplace. Move with people because people are your environment.”
A man asked Socrates, “Why don’t you go to the mountains to study mountains, rivers, trees, birds, animals?” The man said, “We have heard of old, ancient wise men who used to go deep in the mountains, live there and study nature.”
Socrates said, “My nature is people. What can trees teach me? Good to look at, but what can they teach me? What can mountains teach me? They are good to relax in. What can rivers teach me? My rivers, my mountains, my trees are people. People are my environment.”
He lived his whole life in Athens, lived and died there, among people.
He’s right: the true sage will not be an escapist; he will live among people and learn how to remain uncorrupted where everything tempts, tempts to corrupt you. Then you attain to the highest peak. That highest peak uses both the dualities of life. That highest peak is going to be very rich.
I have come across a few people who have lived their whole lives in the forest. They are very saintly but a little silly also because with the trees you will become silly. That is natural. You cannot have that intelligence which a Socrates has because you will become a tree. You will vegetate, you will look very pure, but that purity is not of a higher revelation. That purity is of a regression: you have fallen back. You have been trees in your past lives, you have transcended that; now you are falling back.
Just think, you are thirty years, thirty-five years of age – you can attain to innocence in two ways. One is somehow to become a child again, but then you will be foolish also. Innocent you will be, but foolish also because a child is a fool. Then there is another possibility: grow and become wise, old, through experience; mature, learn, and at the very end when you have become almost an ancient, attain to your childhood – but not through regression.
Go ahead, let the circle be complete. Don’t fall back, go on and on and one day you will see the circle is complete: you are old and yet you are a child. Then you will not be foolish.
A wise man is like a child, but also is not like a child. A wise man is both: a grown-up, really grown up – mature, lived the life, experienced it, is enriched by it – and yet has come to understand that innocence is the only way to be, is the only way to be blissful, is the only way to be divine. An old man is again in childhood but the childhood is a second childhood: he is reborn.
When I say “flow with the river,” I don’t mean become driftwood. I don’t mean become a corpse and flow with the river. All corpses flow, there is nothing much to say about it. If you are dead, you will float with the river because you cannot fight. First you were engaged in activity, now you are engaged in passivity.
Never move to the opposite, always remain in both and yet beyond. Always remember never to go to the extreme because just in the middle is the way. Buddha has called his way the middle path, majjhim nikai – and he is right.
One day in the afternoon it happened…
A parrot, a beautiful parrot was allowed to air himself every day. So he was allowed – it was hot and the whole house was fast asleep. The servant came and allowed the parrot to move around the room. The dog living in the house was also fast asleep. The parrot came near the dog, near his ear, and said, “Rats!”
Of course the dog became alert: “Rats!” He went round and round, looked around every corner. Finding nothing, he again went to sleep.
The parrot waited. The trick had succeeded, he had befooled the dog. So again he came near, again he said, “Rats!” Again the dog opened his eyes, looked around, went around the house, was very much frustrated. Then he suspected a trick, that there was nobody – everybody was fast asleep, no rat, nothing – only this parrot, maybe he was doing something. He then pretended that he was asleep, with one cocked eye.
The parrot came again, tried the trick a third time. The dog jumped on him. Later on the parrot was heard saying, “The difficulty with me is that I don’t know where to stop.”
That is the difficulty with all you parrots – where to stop?
From active you will go to passive, from passive you will go to active, and you don’t know where to stop. If you know where to stop, if you know the middle, because the middle transcends both…
There is a point you cross every day, again and again, but you don’t know where to stop. There is a point just in the middle from love to hate, where you move, you must be moving – the point where a buddha remains, where love is no longer, hate has not yet appeared. When you move from compassion to anger, you pass the point where a buddha remains. If you watch, in twenty-four hours you must be passing that point at least twenty-four thousand times – where a buddha is sitting, where buddhahood is. But you go fast, you swing fast, you go from one extreme to another. You are not even aware when you pass the point of buddhahood: the middle way, the middle path, absolutely the middle.
There suddenly you are neither a man nor a woman, neither alive nor dead, neither active nor passive. To know that point is to know all, to know that point is to know all that religion can give you. It is not in the scriptures; it is crossed by you every day, you come on that crossroad every moment. Whenever you are moving from one polarity to another, you have to pass it; there is no other way to go to the other polarity. But you move so fast that you are not alert when you cross that point.
When I say “flowing with the river,” I mean drop out of polarities and just choose the river in between and cooperate with it, commune with it. Be the river. This is what sannyas is all about – at least my sannyas.
The second question:
Osho,
Is it lonely up there?
It is not lonely, but it is alone.
Whenever you say “lonely,” you show a desire for the other, you are missing the other. The word lonely is indicative that you are not happy with yourself – that this loneliness hurts, that this loneliness is getting a little boring, that you would like to move away from this state of loneliness. When you say “lonely,” you have already condemned it. Loneliness means absence of the other, not your presence. You are missing the other and your eyes are focused on that missing, that absence.
Up there, it is absolutely alone. That’s why Mahavira has called it kaivalya. Kaivalya means absolute aloneness. In aloneness, the quality is totally different from loneliness. In the dictionary they may both mean the same. I’m not talking about the dictionary; in life’s experience they are absolutely different.
Aloneness means the presence of your being – so full of you, so totally in yourself that the other is not needed. Aloneness is sufficient unto itself. Loneliness is a missing phenomenon, loneliness is a gap where the other was or you would like the other to be. Loneliness is a wound, aloneness is a flowering: you are so happy to be yourself and you are not missing anything. You are totally yourself, settled, content.
Yes, up there it is very, very, alone and that is the beauty of it: you alone exist but you exist as a god, you exist as the universe, you exist as existence itself. Stars and suns and moons move within you, trees and the clouds exist within you, rivers and oceans flow within you. You become the whole, that’s why you are alone. Your own ego has disappeared so you cannot be lonely.
The ego always feels lonely, that’s why ego always seeks the society, the club, the movie house, this and that. The ego is always seeking the other because without the other it cannot exist, the other is needed as a must.
Remember this: I and thou exist together; if the thou disappears the I will disappear – it cannot exist. If you are there, I can be. But if you are not there, how can I exist? I and thou are just two poles of the same phenomenon, two poles of one thing. If the I disappears, the you disappears, if the you disappears, the I disappears.
In aloneness neither you are there, nor the I is there. It is absolute. It has no center in it, in fact. The whole is involved. You cannot say where you are in that state. You are not. The whole is and you are not; the ocean is, the drop has disappeared, or you can say the drop has become the ocean, which is the same.
“Up there,” the first thing to be understood is that loneliness is impossible. Aloneness exists, and aloneness has nothing of the quality of loneliness. Loneliness is sad, aloneness is blissful; loneliness is always dependent, a slavery, a wound, a thorn in the heart – aloneness, a flowering, a fulfillment, coming to the goal, reaching home. Loneliness is a sort of illness; aloneness is health, aloneness is wholeness. Loneliness is something of the world of disease, tensions, anguish, misery. Aloneness has nothing to do with that world, it is a transcendence. It is absolute blissfulness, sat-chit-anand.
The second thing: don’t call it “up there” because it is not up. It is neither down nor it is up. Down and up are meaningless for the whole. The whole is, simply is; there is no up to it, no down to it. Those words become meaningless. In the childish mind of humanity, God has always existed “up there,” and the Devil always “down there,” and man always in between. The earth in between, hell down and heaven up – this is a classification of the mind.
Existence is all: neither up, nor down, nor in the middle. Only existence is. In fact to say existence is, is to repeat because existence means isness, isness means existence; to say existence is, is to repeat the same thing. Just existence will do, or isness will do.
This boggles the mind because then the mind feels uneasy, it cannot categorize. It cannot categorize that which is impossible to categorize. Existence cannot be defined in any way. All definitions are false, so whatsoever is said about existence is bound to be wrong. Existence can only be showed in deep silence, it cannot be said through words.
So please don’t use “up” and don’t use “there” because it is always here. “There” is just a fantasy, the “there” does not exist. Everything is here. This moment, herenow, the whole culminates, joins together. It never moves from here, remember – and it never moves from now. That’s why I use herenow as one word. I don’t use them as two words, herenow – one word. That’s what Einstein came to realize through his whole life’s research work. He stopped using time and space as two words. He created a new word, spaciotime. Time is now, space is here. If spaciotime is true, then herenow should be one word, and I use it as one word: existence is herenow.
I have heard a beautiful story – Swami Ram used to tell it again and again…
He used to say that he had a friend, a very famous lawyer, a supreme court advocate. The man was an atheist, and he had written on the wall where he used to sit and work in his office, “God is nowhere.”
Then a child was born to him, and the child started growing and learning language. One day the child was trying to read the sentence, “God is nowhere.” But “nowhere” was a little too big a word for him so the child divided it in two. He said, “God is now here.”
Suddenly the father heard it. He looked at the sentence, “Yes, it can be that too. ‘God is nowhere’ can be read as ‘God is now here.’”
It is said that that disturbed the father very much. He pondered over it again and again, it became a constant meditation. After that day he could not read the sentence in the old way, “God is nowhere.” It got stuck, the child had opened a new door, and whenever he would look, he would now read just like the child, “God is now here,” and it became a mantra.
It is said the father was transformed by repeating “God is now here” again and again. He started feeling a certain tranquility arising in his heart. So he used it as a mantra. Not saying it to anybody, he would just look again and again and whenever he will have time he would repeat inside, “God is now here.”
He became a theist. The vision of a child transformed him, the innocence of a child transformed him.
So don’t say “there.” “There” is non-existential. The “there” does not exist, cannot exist. All that exists is here, now here. That’s all there is to life: now–here.
Once you move from the now and the here you are in misery. Once you move in your desire you move from now and here and you create a thousand and one miseries for yourself. Be herenow and forget about God. If you are herenow, you are in God and God will reveal himself to you.
There is no need to search for him because the very search is basically unsound. You cannot search for him because he is all. He cannot be sought in any direction because all directions are his. You will not find him anywhere because he is everywhere. So all search, from the very beginning, is bound to fail. Don’t seek and search, just be herenow and he will search for you and he will seek you – that’s what Hasidics say.
One of the greatest contributions of Hasidism is that you cannot seek him, he seeks you. How can you seek him? You don’t know the address, you don’t know the face, you will not be able to recognize him. If he suddenly meets you on the street, you will not even say, “Hello.” You will not recognize him. He will be so strange, you may get scared. Or you may not be able to see him at all because we tend to see only that which we know; that which we don’t know we tend not to see.
Scientists say that only two percent of impressions are delivered to the mind through the eyes and ninety-eight percent are not delivered because if all one hundred percent impressions were delivered you would be in a mess, you would go mad. That would be too much, you would not be able to cope with it. So only selected information is given to the mind, ninety-eight percent is dropped out.
I know well if God meets you – and I know that he meets you every day, millions of times, but the mind drops him. Unknown, strange, you cannot fit him anywhere with your mind, and he will be a disturbance. You simply don’t see him. How can you seek him? Where will you seek him?
Hasidism says: You cannot seek him, he seeks you. Just be available and ready.
I was reading an anecdote yesterday…
A medical student failed in his final examination. He was very much afraid of his father so he sent a telegram to his sister at home: “I have failed, prepare father. It may be too shocking to him.”
The sister tried but the father became very angry. Then she telegrammed back to the brother: “Father is ready, you prepare yourself.”
That is the case: father is always ready – you prepare!
God is always ready to meet you, you prepare. Be ready wherever you are: he will seek you, he will rush from everywhere, from all directions. He will penetrate you in a thousand and one ways and reach your heart.
The third question:
Osho,
Do you ever despair of us and your work?
You do your level best, but I am not in despair because I cannot be. Despair exists with expectation. Nothing can make me despair. I am not expecting anything from you. If it happens it is beautiful, if it doesn’t happen that too is beautiful. To me it is not a desire that you should become enlightened. If it is a desire and you go on missing, then I will be in despair. But it is not a desire at all.
It is my happiness to share whatsoever I have attained. I share it because I have it. If you take it, good; if you don’t take it, that too is good because basically enlightenment cannot be anything else than your freedom. This is part of your freedom: if you want to take you take, if you don’t want to take you don’t take. Whatsoever I say, if you do it that’s your freedom, if you don’t do it that’s your freedom. I am here to free you, so how can I make any expectation? Any expectation becomes a sort of a slavery, a bondage.
If I expect that you should be enlightened and you are not becoming, then there will be despair. And how can a man who is himself in despair help you to become enlightened? No, that’s not possible. I can help you only because you cannot force me into any sort of despair; I will remain happy whether you are in heaven or hell, I will remain happy whether you remain ignorant or you become enlightened. To me your misery is your choice. It exists nowhere except in your choice. If you choose, good; if you love it, good! Who am I to distract you? It is your choice.
What am I doing here then? I am simply sharing my understanding; it is my happiness to share it, it is your happiness whether you take it or not. That is irrelevant to me. Even if you are not here, nobody is here, I am sitting alone – I will still be sharing my happiness with the trees and the rocks. In fact, to say that I am sharing it is not right – it is being shared. To say that I am sharing it again makes it wrong, as if I am doing something to share it. No, it is being shared.
A flower has bloomed and the perfume is spreading – not that the flower is sharing it, the flower cannot help it. The fragrance is on the wings, moving, going far away; whether somebody will be able to fill his being with that fragrance or not is not a question for the flower. It has flowered and that’s all. The flower is happy that it has bloomed, the flower is happy because it is fulfilled, and fulfillment spreads a fragrance all around.
It is just like you light a lamp and the light spreads – not that the lamp is trying to share its light. What else can it do? It has to be so. Not that the light is waiting for somebody to come and enjoy it. If nobody comes, it is all the same; if many come, that too is the same. I am not sharing; in a way, rather, I am being shared.
Ordinarily you think you breathe. When someday you become awake, you will see that you are breathed, you are not breathing. Ordinarily you think that you are. When you become aware, you will say, “Existence is.”
Don’t call it work – I’m not doing anything. At the most you can call it play, but don’t call it work – playing. If it is work, it will be serious; if it is work, there will be a desire to attain to certain results. If it is work, it will have the burdensome quality of a duty to be performed. If it is work, there will be a reluctance, and if you don’t follow me there will be frustration. It is just a play. I don’t even call it a game because “game” starts moving in the direction of work. It is just like children playing: there is no end to it, it itself is the end.
I love to tell you stories. I am a storyteller, and the result is not there anywhere in my consciousness. I have told you a beautiful story, finished. It was beautiful, I loved it, I enjoyed it! Whether you enjoyed it or not is for you to decide.
One of my teachers was a very rare being – he was a little eccentric, as philosophers tend to be. He was one of the greatest philosophers of this century in India, but very rare, not much known – a real philosopher, not simply a professor of philosophy. He was very eccentric.
Students had dropped going to his classes long before I came across him. For many years nobody had entered his class because the first thing was that sometimes he would talk three, four, five, six hours continuously. And he used to say, “The university can decide when the period starts but the university cannot decide when it stops because that depends on my flow. If something is incomplete, I cannot leave it; I have to complete it.”
So it was very disturbing. Sometimes he would take all the time, and sometimes for weeks he will not say a single thing. He would say, “Nothing is coming – go home.”
When I entered his class, he looked at me and he said, “Yes, you may fit with me – you also look a little eccentric. But remember that when I start talking, whenever it stops, it stops. I never manipulate. Sometimes for weeks I will not be talking – you will have to come and go. Sometimes I will talk for hours. Then if you feel uneasy, you want to go to the bathroom or something, you can go but don’t disturb me and I will continue. You can come back – silently sit again – I will continue because I cannot break it in between.”
It was a rare experience to listen to him. He was completely oblivious of me, the only student. Rarely would he look at me. Sometimes he would look at the walls and talk. He was saying profound things, and with such deep heart that it was not a question of addressing. He was enjoying. Sometimes he would chuckle and enjoy his own speaking. Many times I would go out – I would go and talk to people and come after a few minutes or even sometimes after hours and he was there, and he had been talking.
A play, not even a game…
I am talking to you; it is not work. It may be work for you, it is not work for me. The day will be blissful when it is not work even for you and it has become play and you delight with me: whatsoever I have to share, you delight, you participate. You become in those moments, rare moments of participation, one with me – and the work is done. That is the way, how to do it.
Gurdjieff’s people called their discipline “the work.” I call my discipline “the play.” Gurdjieff’s disciples are very serious, doing great work. Please don’t be serious here around me. Seriousness is a more dangerous disease than cancer because someday cancer will be curable but seriousness is incurable.
Be light, weightless, happy in this moment to be here with me. Participate, enjoy, and the work will take its own care. The work happens by the side. You play and the work happens by the side.
My whole emphasis is to be playful. If you can be playful, everything will come on its own accord. So it is not work to me.
I love you, I enjoy you. I am simply delighted in your being. I am happy that you are here. This moment is the end: in this moment everything is fulfilled. I don’t look beyond it because to me this moment is eternal – it always remains there, no other moment is coming. This is the moment, it is eternity.
Once you understand how to play, how to be playful with me, around me, you will have opened the door. That door opens automatically, you never open it; you simply play and it opens. That is the secret formula to open it. Life’s door, love’s door, existence’s door, they all open when you are playful. They all become closed when you become serious. When you become work oriented, you miss godliness.
Godliness is love, a song, a dance. Godliness is not a commodity. Absolutely useless – what can you use, what use can you put godliness to? – non-utilitarian. I am here, absolutely useless – to what use can you put me? You can enjoy me, just like you enjoy flowers in the morning or you enjoy clouds in the sky or you enjoy the songs of the birds. They cannot be sold in the market, they are not commodities, but they have tremendous beauty in them.
Anything that you transform into a commodity becomes profane. Anything that you love for its own sake immediately becomes holy, sacred.
The fourth question:
Osho,
Recently, sitting before you, I become bathed in sweat. What is happening?
By jove, love is happening! And whenever love happens you feel very nervous because you are moving into the unknown. You are moving into something which you cannot manipulate, something which is beyond you, in which you can be lost – lost forever.
Maybe it may be a point of no return and you never come back. That’s what is happening: the whole personality shivering, afraid, sweating, nervous – a death is happening. That’s what I mean when I say “love is happening.” Love and death are two names of the same phenomenon.
On the edge of love, one feels so scared that one can be absorbed into it and there may be no possibility to come back. It is death yawning before you.
Love is death. If you have known love as death, you have opened a secret chamber of life. Then you will know death also as love, then death becomes godliness.
The fifth question:
Osho,
Before I know it, my watcher turns into my judger. What to do?
Don’t judge it.
If your watcher becomes a judger, okay. Don’t judge the judger, watch it; if again the judger comes, watch it. Always go on falling back to the watcher. Don’t be defeated by the judger and don’t be disturbed; it is not a question that you must not judge, because if you force it you will not be happy, you will be suppressed. Whatsoever you do, the judger will be there. You can force, suppress – no. Release it.
If a thought comes and another thought follows and becomes a judgment, watch the judgment also. Always go on falling into the watcher. That’s the whole thing. If again the judger comes, let it come, don’t be afraid. You are always free to become a watcher again.
The whole method of watching is not to be deceived and not to be distracted by the judger. Let it be there, there is no condemnation about it. What can you do if the judger comes? What can you do? There is nothing to do. You can again become a watcher, let it go on and on. The judger is going to be lost somewhere and the watcher will be centered.
It is going to be a long process because you have always been helping the judger to come in. For many lives, for thousands of years, you have always been getting identified with the judger, so the judger does not know that you have changed your mind. So it may still be coming for a few years. It depends on you.
If you go on falling to the watcher, sooner or later the judger will understand that it is no longer needed, an unwelcome guest. It will knock at your door a few times but the knock will become feebler and feebler and feebler. One day, seeing that you are no longer interested in it, the judger disappears. You cannot suppress it.
The sixth question:
Osho,
How is it possible that you always and always, without exception, talk about those things I have just thought about, or that came into my mind a day or a minute before?
When I am talking, you are part of me. You are not just the audience, you are also talking through me to yourself. I am also not only the talker, I am also a part of the audience. I am also listening, it is a deep participation. That is what the meaning of communion is. It is not only communication, it is a communion. If you are really listening to me, I am talking, you are also talking through me; you create many things that I would not have talked about if you were not there.
Somebody enters, a stranger – the audience changes: I will have to talk about something else. I may not know the man – that is not the point – but when the audience changes, the talker changes, if it is a communion. If it is a ready-made talk, then nothing matters, whoever you are doesn’t matter.
I am not saying anything which is ready-made. I am just herenow, responding to you and your being. So if you have a certain thought it is bound to be reflected in my talk. If you have a certain question, somehow or other it will synchronize, it will bring its own answer. That’s how it happens. There is no miracle; it is simply the miracle of communion.
If you are in deep love, then you reflect in me, I reflect in you; then you are a mirror to me and I am a mirror to you, and my mirror reflects in you and your mirror reflects in me, and this goes on and on. Two mirrors facing each other can reflect infinitely, again and again.
The more you come close to me, there will be no need to ask: there the question arises, and here is the answer. The question has to be asked because you are not yet certain of the communion.
So don’t be puzzled; it is simply the miracle of communion. It has nothing to do with me. I am not trying to read your mind. Remember, I am not a mind-reader, I never do such foolish things. I never read your mind, but I am here just like a mirror and you are reflected.
If you love me, your questions will be answered. If you deeply participate with my being, you will hear your own being revealed through me. You are also talking through me, I am also listening through you; the talker and the listener disappear, a circle of energy is created.
That is the difference between communication and communion: in communication you may be a student, I may be a teacher; in communion I become the master, you become the disciple.
One needs only a little trust and everything will be answered – not only answered, eventually solved.
The seventh question:
Osho,
By the time I see my moods, I am knee-deep in them. Then it is not so much a question of watching but of riding on the wave until it subsides.
So ride on it – but still watch.
You can ride on the wave, so how does it come into the way of the watcher? In fact, when you are riding on the wave you can watch the wave perfectly. The only thing to remember is don’t allow the wave to ride on you. Ride on the wave, there is no problem. Ride on the wave of anger and watch it. The problem arises when anger rides on you and the watcher is lost and you get identified.
Nothing is wrong in anger; just don’t get identified, watch it. It is a beautiful experience, an energy experience. Anger is pure energy. I call it “white petrol” – the purest form of energy. It becomes destructive because you get identified with it. It is inflammable because it is pure.
A man who cannot be angry will be impotent because he has no energy. A man who can be angry has a potentiality, a great energy in him. But it has to be used rightly now because the more energy you have, the more dangerous. With the more energy there is more possibility of exploding, so you need to be more alert and aware.
Once you are aware, the energy is there but it never becomes destructive. And to have energy is to have a depth, to have energy is to have a height, to have energy is to have a reservoir.
You can see two types of people who are not angry. One who has no energy. They are empty shells. You can see – shrunken beings. They will not be angry but they will also not be able to love because one who has no energy to be angry will not have energy to love – shrunken beings, already dead, only a part of them lives. They are ninety percent gone, only a little part is still throbbing, partially alive.
Then you will find another type of being who is so full of energy that he is a reservoir. He is also not angry because he knows how to be aware. His no-anger is not the absence of the energy of anger; his no-anger is because of awareness. This man can love and love tremendously, this man can become a great compassion. The whole world can be filled by one man’s compassion – the world is not big enough. A single man’s compassion, if it explodes, can fill the whole universe.
That’s how it has happened when a Buddha moves on the earth or a Jesus moves on the earth. That’s how it has happened: a single man’s energy – purified, absolutely purified, with no identification – becomes a soothing shower on the whole of existence.
It is said about Buddha and Mahavira… These stories are beautiful, that if Buddha moves in a forest – don’t take it literally, these are beautiful stories – then trees start flowering out of season. When he attained to enlightenment, the whole forest surrounding the area bloomed in the morning. The trees completely forgot that it was not the season. Sometimes one has to forget, when such a miracle happens. Buddha showered on those trees, they were happy, and how can a tree show its happiness?
It is said about Mahavira, whenever he would walk – and he was a naked man, with no shoes, with no clothes – thorns on the path would turn upside down. Thorns turning upside down so that Mahavira is not hurt: beautiful stories indicating great phenomena.
Yes, it should be so. I know thorns won’t do that, I know it well, but it should be so: when Mahavira passes by even a thorn should become a flower.
Energy is good, identification is bad.
Mahavira must have been potentially a very sexual man; otherwise from where does this nonviolence and love come? The same energy is released. In awareness it becomes love; in identification, unconsciousness, it becomes sexuality. Buddha must have been a very, very, angry man, very violent. I know it, intrinsically – whatsoever the scriptures say is irrelevant. He must have been intrinsically a very angry and violent man; otherwise from where will the compassion come?
That is the meaning of the historical fact that in India the twenty-four teerthankaras of the Jainas, and Buddha, Ram, Krishna, were all kshatriyas, warriors. All the Hindu avatars except one man, Parashuram, were kshatriyas, warriors – angry people, violent. Twenty-four teerthankaras of Jainas, all kshatriyas, not a single brahmin; Buddha himself, a kshatriya. The whole history in India indicates something. Why did it happen to kshatriyas, that they became the greatest openings of compassion in the world? They had anger, they were fighters, they could have been violent. Once the energy is released and awareness arises, the awareness rides on the energy and uses it.
Only one brahmin, Parashuram, was one of the avatars. But he was not a brahmin at all. It is said that you cannot find a more violent man in the whole history of the world. He was so against the warriors, the race of kshatriyas, that it is said that he killed all the kshatriyas in the world thirty-six times. He wanted to uproot all the kshatriyas from the world. He was not a brahmin at all, the world has never known such a great warrior. Why?
The fact is simple and scientific: if love is released, sex must have been there; if compassion is released, anger, hatred, violence must have been there; if non-attachment is released, greed must have been there, jealousy, possessiveness must have been there. You can know a tree by the fruit, and you can know a man… Whatsoever happens in his enlightenment is his fruit and you can know from where that fruit comes.
A lotus flower comes from the ordinary mud. By seeing the lotus flower, you cannot conceive that it comes from the ordinary mud. They seem so contradictory, but life joins contradictions. The most beautiful flower in the world, the lotus, the most delicate, comes out of ordinary mud, dirty mud.
Love comes out of the mud of sex, compassion comes out of the mud of anger, and nirvana comes out of the mud of this world.
The last question:
Osho,
I wonder, what is Hasidism?
I also wonder.
Enough for today.
Osho,
What is the difference between being passive and flowing with the river?
A lot of difference, and not only of quantity but quality – of direction, of plane, of dimension. It has to be understood very minutely because the difference is subtle.
The passive mind can appear as if it is flowing with the river, but the passive mind is not flowing with the river because it has a certain attitude of passivity. The passive mind is also a mind and to flow with the river you need a no-mind. Through the centuries, many have been deceived because of the similarity. To cultivate passivity is easier than to flow with the river. To condition your mind in passivity is very easy. That’s why, in the past and even now, monasteries, monks, sannyasins have existed: people who have renounced the world.
What they are really trying to do is to become absolutely passive. But their passivity is negativity. They have already chosen an attitude.
First, these people were much too active in the world; running, desiring, ambitious. The mind was active, excited with desire, future, hope. Then they got frustrated because whatsoever you hope for is not going to be fulfilled. All hopes are hopeless and all desiring comes to frustration, and all expectations carry frustration as a seed within. So sooner or later everybody is bound to come to a point in life when the active mind looks simply like a hell: too much activity and no result out of it, running and running and never arriving.
If you are intelligent, it happens sooner; if you are stupid it takes a little longer, but it happens all the same. If you are very intelligent, then you will come to see it when you are young; if you are not that intelligent, then in old age. But sooner or later everybody comes to feel that a life with an active mind is frustrating. It leads nowhere; it promises much but it never fulfills anything. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth, a discontent in the being. One simply feels tired and wearied, defeated. One simply feels that the whole thing has been futile.
Whenever the mind feels this, it immediately suggests, “Try the opposite,” because the mind lives in polarity, in opposition. It says, “You have tried activity, now try passivity.” You longed for the world too much, now you renounce. You were clinging to money, renounce money. You had become too attached to the house, renounce the house. You got too involved with a woman, with children; now leave them and escape from all this. The mind suggests trying the opposite and it seems natural and logical: you have done one thing, failed; do the opposite, maybe the opposite succeeds.
Then the old type of sannyasin – the monk, the monastery, the Himalayas – is born. Then you escape from activity, you try just the opposite. Then you try not to desire, but to not desire is still a desire. Then you try to leave the world, but the very effort to leave the world shows your attachment. If you have really become unattached, what is the point of renouncing anything?
You can renounce a certain thing only because you are too involved in it. Then you escape from the woman, but that shows simply that your mind is still fantasizing about women. Wherever you go, you may become the opposite but still you will remain the same.
This has to be understood: through the opposite you never change; you appear that you have changed, you remain the same. This is one of the most important things to be understood; otherwise again you will be in the trap.
Now the trap will be of passivity – of not desiring, renouncement, non-attachment, nonviolence. First the world was your activity, now the world has become a passive thing for you, but you are the same. Now God will become your activity, moksha – a faraway world somewhere in the sky, where everything is beautiful. This world will be ugly, now the beauty is transferred to the other world. Now your object of desire changes but you don’t change. First you were asking for money, now you ask for meditation, but the greed is there. First you were asking for things of this world, now you ask for things of the other world, but the asking is persistent, the same.
People who look at you from the outside may be deceived because you will look totally transformed: you don’t touch money, you don’t have much to possess, you live in a cottage or under a tree, you are a naked fakir. People who are in the world will worship you because they think now you have transformed your being, and they are still in the world. When they come to you, they will compare and they will imagine that you must now be very peaceful because you look passive.
Passivity can give an appearance of peace. It is not peace, it is just deadness. Peace is alive, passivity is dead.
Just for example, think of yourself swimming in the river, trying to go up-current, fighting: you are active. Then think of a dead body floating down the river, not fighting at all, just floating down the river but dead, a corpse: that is passive. First, life was fighting, but death is passive. The man I call “one who is floating with the river” is neither alive in the sense of fight and is not dead like a corpse. He floats with the river, but he floats consciously. He floats with the river, not because he is dead but because he cooperates. He floats with the river; it is not that he cannot fight, but because he has come to know that fighting is futile, and he has not moved to the opposite. He floats, he communes with the river, he has become one with the river. Sometimes you will see him active and sometimes you will see him passive. Now passivity and activity are not two polarities to be chosen; he has accepted both. That’s what I mean when I say “floating with the river.”
Sometimes you will find him in the marketplace, very active. Sometimes you will find him in the temple, very passive. Now he has no fixed mode of his being. He can move from passivity to activity, he can move from activity to passivity. There is no barrier, he has not created a fence around himself. He is fluid, liquid, flowing; otherwise passivity itself can become an imprisonment.
I have heard of a Hasid story…
A man was going to see his friend. The friend was a farmer in a deep, hidden valley in the hills. When the man came nearer to the house of the friend, he saw something which puzzled him very much.
He saw a small meadow, not more than one mile long. But one thing was very special and disturbing: in that meadow thousands of birds and animals were standing together – thousands, it was difficult to count, there was no space left. The place was very crowded and the whole beautiful forest around was empty of birds and animals.
He could not believe it: “Why are they huddled together? Why are they not moving into the sky, to other trees? The whole vastness is available.”
They looked very nervous, tense, worried, not at ease at all, those birds and animals. Of course, everybody needs space. Everybody needs a certain space to live. Whenever that space is encroached, nervousness arises. But nobody was preventing them. There was not even a fence there.
So when he reached the friend’s house, the first question he asked was about these birds, “What misfortune has befallen on them?”
The friend said, “I don’t know exactly because I have not seen it, but I have heard that in the past, many, many years before, there was a landlord, a very violent and sadistic man, and he enjoyed this whole experiment. He created a high fence around the meadow. He placed guards all around the place and he ordered the guards, ‘If any bird or animal tries to escape, kill him immediately.’ He forced thousands of birds and animals into the meadow, into that prison. And for years this was the routine: whenever any bird or animal tried to escape, it was killed.
“By and by, the birds and animals settled, they accepted their prison. They forgot their freedom because freedom became associated with fear and death.
“Then the landlord died. The guards disappeared, the fence fell. Now there is nobody there to prevent them. Neither the guards are there nor the fence is there, but the birds and animals have developed a fence mentality: they believe that the fence is there. They actually see the fence: it has become deeply ingrained, it has become a conditioning.”
The man said, “But why does not somebody try to make them understand?”
The friend said, “Many good people have tried but the birds don’t listen. It is not only now ingrained in them, their children are born with the idea. It is in their blood and bones, it has become a part of their blueprint. The children are born with the idea of the fence, and good people have tried, and they go on trying.
“And you will be surprised,” said the friend, “that the birds have been very angry and animals have attacked the good people. They don’t want to be disturbed; in fact they have created a philosophy that they are in freedom and the world beyond is the imprisonment. Still, good people go on trying,” the friend said, “but it seems to be almost impossible to persuade them, ‘You are free and no fence exists, and you can fly into the sky.’”
I loved the story. That’s what Jesus, Baal Shem, Moses, Mahavira, Buddha have been doing with you – the birds and the animals – but you have developed a fence mentality. You don’t believe. Either you are active or you become passive but both belong to the fence, the same fence: the mind.
Think of a fence made of wood – one plank is white, another is black; then again one is white, another is black. A fence made of wooden planks, colored in two colors: one pillar white, one black. That is the mind: one idea passive, one active; yin–yang, right–wrong, good–bad, the world–nirvana. Both belong to the same fence, and you go on choosing. Sometimes you choose the white, then you get fed up with the white, then you start loving and worshipping the black. But the black is as much part of your imprisonment as the white.
Mind is active, mind is passive – both are part of the mind. What I mean when I say “flowing with the river” is to go beyond passivity, negativity – white and black, day and night, love and hate, the world and God. Go beyond it. Just see the whole point that the active becomes the passive, and the passive again becomes the active.
This I have watched: people who are very active in the world are always, deep down, thinking to renounce all nonsense. I know monks who have lived their whole life in the monasteries. Whenever they have confessed to me, they have always said that they always think that they have missed life, and are always fantasizing to come back to the world. The active wants to become the passive, the passive wants to become the active.
Choice is of the mind. To be choiceless is to flow with the river. That’s why Hasidism insists, and I also insist, on not leaving the world. Renounce it and be in it. That looks difficult, almost impossible for the mind to conceive. The mind can conceive of the world and of renunciation because both belong to the same pattern. When I say, “Be in the world and not be of the world,” the mind becomes uneasy. It cannot understand: “What are you saying?”
People come to me and say they would like to become sannyasins but they are in the world, “And how is it possible to be a sannyasin in the world?” Particularly in India, it looks absolutely absurd; the sannyasin is one who leaves the world. I tell them, a sannyasin is one who lives in the world and yet is not of the world. They seem confused. When I say these things to people, they look confused. They say, “Either this or that.” I say, “Both, together.”
When you take both active and passive together, they cancel each other, you become neutral. Then you are neither man nor woman, neither yin nor yang, neither body nor soul. You have gone beyond the duality, you have become transcendental. That transcendence is flowing with the river.
Flowing with the river is the greatest art. That is being both active and passive, but in deep cooperation with existence. You have to do something: you will have to live, you will have to earn; at least you will have to breathe. You will have to do something. Movement, activity has to be used, and you will have to relax also. Otherwise activity will become impossible.
So sometimes be active, sometimes be passive but don’t get identified with either. Remain aloof. Use activity, use passivity but remain the third. Just as you put on clothes, sometimes white and sometimes black; just as in the day you work and in the night you rest; just the same, use both dualities. They are means; don’t get identified with them. Then you will be flowing with the river. This is the message of Hasidism.
The greatest people in the world are those who have lived in the world and have not allowed the world to corrupt them. It is very easy to go to the Himalayas and become uncorrupted, very easy because who is there to corrupt you? To live with the mountains you will become innocent, but that innocence may be just an appearance. Come back to the world, the test is in the marketplace. There you will come to know whether you have really become innocent because when the opportunity to become corrupted arises, only then will you be able to know: are you still corruptible or not? The Himalayas, their silence, can deceive you. It has deceived millions of people.
Hasids say, “Live in the marketplace. Move with people because people are your environment.”
A man asked Socrates, “Why don’t you go to the mountains to study mountains, rivers, trees, birds, animals?” The man said, “We have heard of old, ancient wise men who used to go deep in the mountains, live there and study nature.”
Socrates said, “My nature is people. What can trees teach me? Good to look at, but what can they teach me? What can mountains teach me? They are good to relax in. What can rivers teach me? My rivers, my mountains, my trees are people. People are my environment.”
He lived his whole life in Athens, lived and died there, among people.
He’s right: the true sage will not be an escapist; he will live among people and learn how to remain uncorrupted where everything tempts, tempts to corrupt you. Then you attain to the highest peak. That highest peak uses both the dualities of life. That highest peak is going to be very rich.
I have come across a few people who have lived their whole lives in the forest. They are very saintly but a little silly also because with the trees you will become silly. That is natural. You cannot have that intelligence which a Socrates has because you will become a tree. You will vegetate, you will look very pure, but that purity is not of a higher revelation. That purity is of a regression: you have fallen back. You have been trees in your past lives, you have transcended that; now you are falling back.
Just think, you are thirty years, thirty-five years of age – you can attain to innocence in two ways. One is somehow to become a child again, but then you will be foolish also. Innocent you will be, but foolish also because a child is a fool. Then there is another possibility: grow and become wise, old, through experience; mature, learn, and at the very end when you have become almost an ancient, attain to your childhood – but not through regression.
Go ahead, let the circle be complete. Don’t fall back, go on and on and one day you will see the circle is complete: you are old and yet you are a child. Then you will not be foolish.
A wise man is like a child, but also is not like a child. A wise man is both: a grown-up, really grown up – mature, lived the life, experienced it, is enriched by it – and yet has come to understand that innocence is the only way to be, is the only way to be blissful, is the only way to be divine. An old man is again in childhood but the childhood is a second childhood: he is reborn.
When I say “flow with the river,” I don’t mean become driftwood. I don’t mean become a corpse and flow with the river. All corpses flow, there is nothing much to say about it. If you are dead, you will float with the river because you cannot fight. First you were engaged in activity, now you are engaged in passivity.
Never move to the opposite, always remain in both and yet beyond. Always remember never to go to the extreme because just in the middle is the way. Buddha has called his way the middle path, majjhim nikai – and he is right.
One day in the afternoon it happened…
A parrot, a beautiful parrot was allowed to air himself every day. So he was allowed – it was hot and the whole house was fast asleep. The servant came and allowed the parrot to move around the room. The dog living in the house was also fast asleep. The parrot came near the dog, near his ear, and said, “Rats!”
Of course the dog became alert: “Rats!” He went round and round, looked around every corner. Finding nothing, he again went to sleep.
The parrot waited. The trick had succeeded, he had befooled the dog. So again he came near, again he said, “Rats!” Again the dog opened his eyes, looked around, went around the house, was very much frustrated. Then he suspected a trick, that there was nobody – everybody was fast asleep, no rat, nothing – only this parrot, maybe he was doing something. He then pretended that he was asleep, with one cocked eye.
The parrot came again, tried the trick a third time. The dog jumped on him. Later on the parrot was heard saying, “The difficulty with me is that I don’t know where to stop.”
That is the difficulty with all you parrots – where to stop?
From active you will go to passive, from passive you will go to active, and you don’t know where to stop. If you know where to stop, if you know the middle, because the middle transcends both…
There is a point you cross every day, again and again, but you don’t know where to stop. There is a point just in the middle from love to hate, where you move, you must be moving – the point where a buddha remains, where love is no longer, hate has not yet appeared. When you move from compassion to anger, you pass the point where a buddha remains. If you watch, in twenty-four hours you must be passing that point at least twenty-four thousand times – where a buddha is sitting, where buddhahood is. But you go fast, you swing fast, you go from one extreme to another. You are not even aware when you pass the point of buddhahood: the middle way, the middle path, absolutely the middle.
There suddenly you are neither a man nor a woman, neither alive nor dead, neither active nor passive. To know that point is to know all, to know that point is to know all that religion can give you. It is not in the scriptures; it is crossed by you every day, you come on that crossroad every moment. Whenever you are moving from one polarity to another, you have to pass it; there is no other way to go to the other polarity. But you move so fast that you are not alert when you cross that point.
When I say “flowing with the river,” I mean drop out of polarities and just choose the river in between and cooperate with it, commune with it. Be the river. This is what sannyas is all about – at least my sannyas.
The second question:
Osho,
Is it lonely up there?
It is not lonely, but it is alone.
Whenever you say “lonely,” you show a desire for the other, you are missing the other. The word lonely is indicative that you are not happy with yourself – that this loneliness hurts, that this loneliness is getting a little boring, that you would like to move away from this state of loneliness. When you say “lonely,” you have already condemned it. Loneliness means absence of the other, not your presence. You are missing the other and your eyes are focused on that missing, that absence.
Up there, it is absolutely alone. That’s why Mahavira has called it kaivalya. Kaivalya means absolute aloneness. In aloneness, the quality is totally different from loneliness. In the dictionary they may both mean the same. I’m not talking about the dictionary; in life’s experience they are absolutely different.
Aloneness means the presence of your being – so full of you, so totally in yourself that the other is not needed. Aloneness is sufficient unto itself. Loneliness is a missing phenomenon, loneliness is a gap where the other was or you would like the other to be. Loneliness is a wound, aloneness is a flowering: you are so happy to be yourself and you are not missing anything. You are totally yourself, settled, content.
Yes, up there it is very, very, alone and that is the beauty of it: you alone exist but you exist as a god, you exist as the universe, you exist as existence itself. Stars and suns and moons move within you, trees and the clouds exist within you, rivers and oceans flow within you. You become the whole, that’s why you are alone. Your own ego has disappeared so you cannot be lonely.
The ego always feels lonely, that’s why ego always seeks the society, the club, the movie house, this and that. The ego is always seeking the other because without the other it cannot exist, the other is needed as a must.
Remember this: I and thou exist together; if the thou disappears the I will disappear – it cannot exist. If you are there, I can be. But if you are not there, how can I exist? I and thou are just two poles of the same phenomenon, two poles of one thing. If the I disappears, the you disappears, if the you disappears, the I disappears.
In aloneness neither you are there, nor the I is there. It is absolute. It has no center in it, in fact. The whole is involved. You cannot say where you are in that state. You are not. The whole is and you are not; the ocean is, the drop has disappeared, or you can say the drop has become the ocean, which is the same.
“Up there,” the first thing to be understood is that loneliness is impossible. Aloneness exists, and aloneness has nothing of the quality of loneliness. Loneliness is sad, aloneness is blissful; loneliness is always dependent, a slavery, a wound, a thorn in the heart – aloneness, a flowering, a fulfillment, coming to the goal, reaching home. Loneliness is a sort of illness; aloneness is health, aloneness is wholeness. Loneliness is something of the world of disease, tensions, anguish, misery. Aloneness has nothing to do with that world, it is a transcendence. It is absolute blissfulness, sat-chit-anand.
The second thing: don’t call it “up there” because it is not up. It is neither down nor it is up. Down and up are meaningless for the whole. The whole is, simply is; there is no up to it, no down to it. Those words become meaningless. In the childish mind of humanity, God has always existed “up there,” and the Devil always “down there,” and man always in between. The earth in between, hell down and heaven up – this is a classification of the mind.
Existence is all: neither up, nor down, nor in the middle. Only existence is. In fact to say existence is, is to repeat because existence means isness, isness means existence; to say existence is, is to repeat the same thing. Just existence will do, or isness will do.
This boggles the mind because then the mind feels uneasy, it cannot categorize. It cannot categorize that which is impossible to categorize. Existence cannot be defined in any way. All definitions are false, so whatsoever is said about existence is bound to be wrong. Existence can only be showed in deep silence, it cannot be said through words.
So please don’t use “up” and don’t use “there” because it is always here. “There” is just a fantasy, the “there” does not exist. Everything is here. This moment, herenow, the whole culminates, joins together. It never moves from here, remember – and it never moves from now. That’s why I use herenow as one word. I don’t use them as two words, herenow – one word. That’s what Einstein came to realize through his whole life’s research work. He stopped using time and space as two words. He created a new word, spaciotime. Time is now, space is here. If spaciotime is true, then herenow should be one word, and I use it as one word: existence is herenow.
I have heard a beautiful story – Swami Ram used to tell it again and again…
He used to say that he had a friend, a very famous lawyer, a supreme court advocate. The man was an atheist, and he had written on the wall where he used to sit and work in his office, “God is nowhere.”
Then a child was born to him, and the child started growing and learning language. One day the child was trying to read the sentence, “God is nowhere.” But “nowhere” was a little too big a word for him so the child divided it in two. He said, “God is now here.”
Suddenly the father heard it. He looked at the sentence, “Yes, it can be that too. ‘God is nowhere’ can be read as ‘God is now here.’”
It is said that that disturbed the father very much. He pondered over it again and again, it became a constant meditation. After that day he could not read the sentence in the old way, “God is nowhere.” It got stuck, the child had opened a new door, and whenever he would look, he would now read just like the child, “God is now here,” and it became a mantra.
It is said the father was transformed by repeating “God is now here” again and again. He started feeling a certain tranquility arising in his heart. So he used it as a mantra. Not saying it to anybody, he would just look again and again and whenever he will have time he would repeat inside, “God is now here.”
He became a theist. The vision of a child transformed him, the innocence of a child transformed him.
So don’t say “there.” “There” is non-existential. The “there” does not exist, cannot exist. All that exists is here, now here. That’s all there is to life: now–here.
Once you move from the now and the here you are in misery. Once you move in your desire you move from now and here and you create a thousand and one miseries for yourself. Be herenow and forget about God. If you are herenow, you are in God and God will reveal himself to you.
There is no need to search for him because the very search is basically unsound. You cannot search for him because he is all. He cannot be sought in any direction because all directions are his. You will not find him anywhere because he is everywhere. So all search, from the very beginning, is bound to fail. Don’t seek and search, just be herenow and he will search for you and he will seek you – that’s what Hasidics say.
One of the greatest contributions of Hasidism is that you cannot seek him, he seeks you. How can you seek him? You don’t know the address, you don’t know the face, you will not be able to recognize him. If he suddenly meets you on the street, you will not even say, “Hello.” You will not recognize him. He will be so strange, you may get scared. Or you may not be able to see him at all because we tend to see only that which we know; that which we don’t know we tend not to see.
Scientists say that only two percent of impressions are delivered to the mind through the eyes and ninety-eight percent are not delivered because if all one hundred percent impressions were delivered you would be in a mess, you would go mad. That would be too much, you would not be able to cope with it. So only selected information is given to the mind, ninety-eight percent is dropped out.
I know well if God meets you – and I know that he meets you every day, millions of times, but the mind drops him. Unknown, strange, you cannot fit him anywhere with your mind, and he will be a disturbance. You simply don’t see him. How can you seek him? Where will you seek him?
Hasidism says: You cannot seek him, he seeks you. Just be available and ready.
I was reading an anecdote yesterday…
A medical student failed in his final examination. He was very much afraid of his father so he sent a telegram to his sister at home: “I have failed, prepare father. It may be too shocking to him.”
The sister tried but the father became very angry. Then she telegrammed back to the brother: “Father is ready, you prepare yourself.”
That is the case: father is always ready – you prepare!
God is always ready to meet you, you prepare. Be ready wherever you are: he will seek you, he will rush from everywhere, from all directions. He will penetrate you in a thousand and one ways and reach your heart.
The third question:
Osho,
Do you ever despair of us and your work?
You do your level best, but I am not in despair because I cannot be. Despair exists with expectation. Nothing can make me despair. I am not expecting anything from you. If it happens it is beautiful, if it doesn’t happen that too is beautiful. To me it is not a desire that you should become enlightened. If it is a desire and you go on missing, then I will be in despair. But it is not a desire at all.
It is my happiness to share whatsoever I have attained. I share it because I have it. If you take it, good; if you don’t take it, that too is good because basically enlightenment cannot be anything else than your freedom. This is part of your freedom: if you want to take you take, if you don’t want to take you don’t take. Whatsoever I say, if you do it that’s your freedom, if you don’t do it that’s your freedom. I am here to free you, so how can I make any expectation? Any expectation becomes a sort of a slavery, a bondage.
If I expect that you should be enlightened and you are not becoming, then there will be despair. And how can a man who is himself in despair help you to become enlightened? No, that’s not possible. I can help you only because you cannot force me into any sort of despair; I will remain happy whether you are in heaven or hell, I will remain happy whether you remain ignorant or you become enlightened. To me your misery is your choice. It exists nowhere except in your choice. If you choose, good; if you love it, good! Who am I to distract you? It is your choice.
What am I doing here then? I am simply sharing my understanding; it is my happiness to share it, it is your happiness whether you take it or not. That is irrelevant to me. Even if you are not here, nobody is here, I am sitting alone – I will still be sharing my happiness with the trees and the rocks. In fact, to say that I am sharing it is not right – it is being shared. To say that I am sharing it again makes it wrong, as if I am doing something to share it. No, it is being shared.
A flower has bloomed and the perfume is spreading – not that the flower is sharing it, the flower cannot help it. The fragrance is on the wings, moving, going far away; whether somebody will be able to fill his being with that fragrance or not is not a question for the flower. It has flowered and that’s all. The flower is happy that it has bloomed, the flower is happy because it is fulfilled, and fulfillment spreads a fragrance all around.
It is just like you light a lamp and the light spreads – not that the lamp is trying to share its light. What else can it do? It has to be so. Not that the light is waiting for somebody to come and enjoy it. If nobody comes, it is all the same; if many come, that too is the same. I am not sharing; in a way, rather, I am being shared.
Ordinarily you think you breathe. When someday you become awake, you will see that you are breathed, you are not breathing. Ordinarily you think that you are. When you become aware, you will say, “Existence is.”
Don’t call it work – I’m not doing anything. At the most you can call it play, but don’t call it work – playing. If it is work, it will be serious; if it is work, there will be a desire to attain to certain results. If it is work, it will have the burdensome quality of a duty to be performed. If it is work, there will be a reluctance, and if you don’t follow me there will be frustration. It is just a play. I don’t even call it a game because “game” starts moving in the direction of work. It is just like children playing: there is no end to it, it itself is the end.
I love to tell you stories. I am a storyteller, and the result is not there anywhere in my consciousness. I have told you a beautiful story, finished. It was beautiful, I loved it, I enjoyed it! Whether you enjoyed it or not is for you to decide.
One of my teachers was a very rare being – he was a little eccentric, as philosophers tend to be. He was one of the greatest philosophers of this century in India, but very rare, not much known – a real philosopher, not simply a professor of philosophy. He was very eccentric.
Students had dropped going to his classes long before I came across him. For many years nobody had entered his class because the first thing was that sometimes he would talk three, four, five, six hours continuously. And he used to say, “The university can decide when the period starts but the university cannot decide when it stops because that depends on my flow. If something is incomplete, I cannot leave it; I have to complete it.”
So it was very disturbing. Sometimes he would take all the time, and sometimes for weeks he will not say a single thing. He would say, “Nothing is coming – go home.”
When I entered his class, he looked at me and he said, “Yes, you may fit with me – you also look a little eccentric. But remember that when I start talking, whenever it stops, it stops. I never manipulate. Sometimes for weeks I will not be talking – you will have to come and go. Sometimes I will talk for hours. Then if you feel uneasy, you want to go to the bathroom or something, you can go but don’t disturb me and I will continue. You can come back – silently sit again – I will continue because I cannot break it in between.”
It was a rare experience to listen to him. He was completely oblivious of me, the only student. Rarely would he look at me. Sometimes he would look at the walls and talk. He was saying profound things, and with such deep heart that it was not a question of addressing. He was enjoying. Sometimes he would chuckle and enjoy his own speaking. Many times I would go out – I would go and talk to people and come after a few minutes or even sometimes after hours and he was there, and he had been talking.
A play, not even a game…
I am talking to you; it is not work. It may be work for you, it is not work for me. The day will be blissful when it is not work even for you and it has become play and you delight with me: whatsoever I have to share, you delight, you participate. You become in those moments, rare moments of participation, one with me – and the work is done. That is the way, how to do it.
Gurdjieff’s people called their discipline “the work.” I call my discipline “the play.” Gurdjieff’s disciples are very serious, doing great work. Please don’t be serious here around me. Seriousness is a more dangerous disease than cancer because someday cancer will be curable but seriousness is incurable.
Be light, weightless, happy in this moment to be here with me. Participate, enjoy, and the work will take its own care. The work happens by the side. You play and the work happens by the side.
My whole emphasis is to be playful. If you can be playful, everything will come on its own accord. So it is not work to me.
I love you, I enjoy you. I am simply delighted in your being. I am happy that you are here. This moment is the end: in this moment everything is fulfilled. I don’t look beyond it because to me this moment is eternal – it always remains there, no other moment is coming. This is the moment, it is eternity.
Once you understand how to play, how to be playful with me, around me, you will have opened the door. That door opens automatically, you never open it; you simply play and it opens. That is the secret formula to open it. Life’s door, love’s door, existence’s door, they all open when you are playful. They all become closed when you become serious. When you become work oriented, you miss godliness.
Godliness is love, a song, a dance. Godliness is not a commodity. Absolutely useless – what can you use, what use can you put godliness to? – non-utilitarian. I am here, absolutely useless – to what use can you put me? You can enjoy me, just like you enjoy flowers in the morning or you enjoy clouds in the sky or you enjoy the songs of the birds. They cannot be sold in the market, they are not commodities, but they have tremendous beauty in them.
Anything that you transform into a commodity becomes profane. Anything that you love for its own sake immediately becomes holy, sacred.
The fourth question:
Osho,
Recently, sitting before you, I become bathed in sweat. What is happening?
By jove, love is happening! And whenever love happens you feel very nervous because you are moving into the unknown. You are moving into something which you cannot manipulate, something which is beyond you, in which you can be lost – lost forever.
Maybe it may be a point of no return and you never come back. That’s what is happening: the whole personality shivering, afraid, sweating, nervous – a death is happening. That’s what I mean when I say “love is happening.” Love and death are two names of the same phenomenon.
On the edge of love, one feels so scared that one can be absorbed into it and there may be no possibility to come back. It is death yawning before you.
Love is death. If you have known love as death, you have opened a secret chamber of life. Then you will know death also as love, then death becomes godliness.
The fifth question:
Osho,
Before I know it, my watcher turns into my judger. What to do?
Don’t judge it.
If your watcher becomes a judger, okay. Don’t judge the judger, watch it; if again the judger comes, watch it. Always go on falling back to the watcher. Don’t be defeated by the judger and don’t be disturbed; it is not a question that you must not judge, because if you force it you will not be happy, you will be suppressed. Whatsoever you do, the judger will be there. You can force, suppress – no. Release it.
If a thought comes and another thought follows and becomes a judgment, watch the judgment also. Always go on falling into the watcher. That’s the whole thing. If again the judger comes, let it come, don’t be afraid. You are always free to become a watcher again.
The whole method of watching is not to be deceived and not to be distracted by the judger. Let it be there, there is no condemnation about it. What can you do if the judger comes? What can you do? There is nothing to do. You can again become a watcher, let it go on and on. The judger is going to be lost somewhere and the watcher will be centered.
It is going to be a long process because you have always been helping the judger to come in. For many lives, for thousands of years, you have always been getting identified with the judger, so the judger does not know that you have changed your mind. So it may still be coming for a few years. It depends on you.
If you go on falling to the watcher, sooner or later the judger will understand that it is no longer needed, an unwelcome guest. It will knock at your door a few times but the knock will become feebler and feebler and feebler. One day, seeing that you are no longer interested in it, the judger disappears. You cannot suppress it.
The sixth question:
Osho,
How is it possible that you always and always, without exception, talk about those things I have just thought about, or that came into my mind a day or a minute before?
When I am talking, you are part of me. You are not just the audience, you are also talking through me to yourself. I am also not only the talker, I am also a part of the audience. I am also listening, it is a deep participation. That is what the meaning of communion is. It is not only communication, it is a communion. If you are really listening to me, I am talking, you are also talking through me; you create many things that I would not have talked about if you were not there.
Somebody enters, a stranger – the audience changes: I will have to talk about something else. I may not know the man – that is not the point – but when the audience changes, the talker changes, if it is a communion. If it is a ready-made talk, then nothing matters, whoever you are doesn’t matter.
I am not saying anything which is ready-made. I am just herenow, responding to you and your being. So if you have a certain thought it is bound to be reflected in my talk. If you have a certain question, somehow or other it will synchronize, it will bring its own answer. That’s how it happens. There is no miracle; it is simply the miracle of communion.
If you are in deep love, then you reflect in me, I reflect in you; then you are a mirror to me and I am a mirror to you, and my mirror reflects in you and your mirror reflects in me, and this goes on and on. Two mirrors facing each other can reflect infinitely, again and again.
The more you come close to me, there will be no need to ask: there the question arises, and here is the answer. The question has to be asked because you are not yet certain of the communion.
So don’t be puzzled; it is simply the miracle of communion. It has nothing to do with me. I am not trying to read your mind. Remember, I am not a mind-reader, I never do such foolish things. I never read your mind, but I am here just like a mirror and you are reflected.
If you love me, your questions will be answered. If you deeply participate with my being, you will hear your own being revealed through me. You are also talking through me, I am also listening through you; the talker and the listener disappear, a circle of energy is created.
That is the difference between communication and communion: in communication you may be a student, I may be a teacher; in communion I become the master, you become the disciple.
One needs only a little trust and everything will be answered – not only answered, eventually solved.
The seventh question:
Osho,
By the time I see my moods, I am knee-deep in them. Then it is not so much a question of watching but of riding on the wave until it subsides.
So ride on it – but still watch.
You can ride on the wave, so how does it come into the way of the watcher? In fact, when you are riding on the wave you can watch the wave perfectly. The only thing to remember is don’t allow the wave to ride on you. Ride on the wave, there is no problem. Ride on the wave of anger and watch it. The problem arises when anger rides on you and the watcher is lost and you get identified.
Nothing is wrong in anger; just don’t get identified, watch it. It is a beautiful experience, an energy experience. Anger is pure energy. I call it “white petrol” – the purest form of energy. It becomes destructive because you get identified with it. It is inflammable because it is pure.
A man who cannot be angry will be impotent because he has no energy. A man who can be angry has a potentiality, a great energy in him. But it has to be used rightly now because the more energy you have, the more dangerous. With the more energy there is more possibility of exploding, so you need to be more alert and aware.
Once you are aware, the energy is there but it never becomes destructive. And to have energy is to have a depth, to have energy is to have a height, to have energy is to have a reservoir.
You can see two types of people who are not angry. One who has no energy. They are empty shells. You can see – shrunken beings. They will not be angry but they will also not be able to love because one who has no energy to be angry will not have energy to love – shrunken beings, already dead, only a part of them lives. They are ninety percent gone, only a little part is still throbbing, partially alive.
Then you will find another type of being who is so full of energy that he is a reservoir. He is also not angry because he knows how to be aware. His no-anger is not the absence of the energy of anger; his no-anger is because of awareness. This man can love and love tremendously, this man can become a great compassion. The whole world can be filled by one man’s compassion – the world is not big enough. A single man’s compassion, if it explodes, can fill the whole universe.
That’s how it has happened when a Buddha moves on the earth or a Jesus moves on the earth. That’s how it has happened: a single man’s energy – purified, absolutely purified, with no identification – becomes a soothing shower on the whole of existence.
It is said about Buddha and Mahavira… These stories are beautiful, that if Buddha moves in a forest – don’t take it literally, these are beautiful stories – then trees start flowering out of season. When he attained to enlightenment, the whole forest surrounding the area bloomed in the morning. The trees completely forgot that it was not the season. Sometimes one has to forget, when such a miracle happens. Buddha showered on those trees, they were happy, and how can a tree show its happiness?
It is said about Mahavira, whenever he would walk – and he was a naked man, with no shoes, with no clothes – thorns on the path would turn upside down. Thorns turning upside down so that Mahavira is not hurt: beautiful stories indicating great phenomena.
Yes, it should be so. I know thorns won’t do that, I know it well, but it should be so: when Mahavira passes by even a thorn should become a flower.
Energy is good, identification is bad.
Mahavira must have been potentially a very sexual man; otherwise from where does this nonviolence and love come? The same energy is released. In awareness it becomes love; in identification, unconsciousness, it becomes sexuality. Buddha must have been a very, very, angry man, very violent. I know it, intrinsically – whatsoever the scriptures say is irrelevant. He must have been intrinsically a very angry and violent man; otherwise from where will the compassion come?
That is the meaning of the historical fact that in India the twenty-four teerthankaras of the Jainas, and Buddha, Ram, Krishna, were all kshatriyas, warriors. All the Hindu avatars except one man, Parashuram, were kshatriyas, warriors – angry people, violent. Twenty-four teerthankaras of Jainas, all kshatriyas, not a single brahmin; Buddha himself, a kshatriya. The whole history in India indicates something. Why did it happen to kshatriyas, that they became the greatest openings of compassion in the world? They had anger, they were fighters, they could have been violent. Once the energy is released and awareness arises, the awareness rides on the energy and uses it.
Only one brahmin, Parashuram, was one of the avatars. But he was not a brahmin at all. It is said that you cannot find a more violent man in the whole history of the world. He was so against the warriors, the race of kshatriyas, that it is said that he killed all the kshatriyas in the world thirty-six times. He wanted to uproot all the kshatriyas from the world. He was not a brahmin at all, the world has never known such a great warrior. Why?
The fact is simple and scientific: if love is released, sex must have been there; if compassion is released, anger, hatred, violence must have been there; if non-attachment is released, greed must have been there, jealousy, possessiveness must have been there. You can know a tree by the fruit, and you can know a man… Whatsoever happens in his enlightenment is his fruit and you can know from where that fruit comes.
A lotus flower comes from the ordinary mud. By seeing the lotus flower, you cannot conceive that it comes from the ordinary mud. They seem so contradictory, but life joins contradictions. The most beautiful flower in the world, the lotus, the most delicate, comes out of ordinary mud, dirty mud.
Love comes out of the mud of sex, compassion comes out of the mud of anger, and nirvana comes out of the mud of this world.
The last question:
Osho,
I wonder, what is Hasidism?
I also wonder.
Enough for today.