The first question:
Osho,
Every time I'm away from my family I feel such a deep and beautiful love for my wife and my children. But when I am with them, lots of conflicts arise and I feel like running away from family, job, tradition, etcetera. But when I'm away I feel that's not it – that's not the answer.
What is going on? Can you tell me what to do?
It is not a question of doing. Whatsoever you do will be wrong because you are not in the right space. You are not right, so how can you do anything right? That is impossible.
It is a question of being, not of doing. Hence, you can move from one prison to another but you cannot be free. You can escape from the world but you will still be miserable – for new reasons of course. You can change your wife, you can change your job, you can change your house, you can change your religion, your church – still you will be the same. All these changes are superficial. They are just like painting your face black, white, red, but deep down nothing is changed, you remain the same.
You have to become more aware. And awareness is not a question of doing: it is a question of being. It is something about your essential core; nothing about your circumference. That’s why this is happening to you – not only to you, it is happening to everybody.
I have known people who have renounced life, renounced the wife, the children, the marketplace, have moved to the Himalayas, to the caves. Sitting in their caves they are still miserable – the same misery. There are no longer the same old causes. But those causes were just excuses, they were not real causes.
The real cause is always within you, and how can you escape from it? Wherever you go, you will be yourself.
Sitting in the Himalayan caves, they are still themselves, utterly miserable. And now they are thinking, “What are we doing here?” Now they have forgotten all the misery of the world, now they remember with nostalgia all the joys of the world. They may not have experienced those joys; they may be just imagining, fantasizing.
Miserable people have the habit – it is inevitable, otherwise it will become impossible to live – to fantasize beautiful things either about the past or about the future. The present is always miserable wherever you are, misery surrounds you. To escape from that misery, at least to forget all about it, the best opium is to think with nostalgia about the past – the wife that you have left behind, the children, the beautiful home, the coziness, the security, the safety. All those sweet things which may not have happened at all; you may have just created them, invented them. Or, if you don’t have much past and you cannot paint anything on the past, then the future is there – a vast canvas. You can always think of a beautiful tomorrow. If yesterday is not worth painting, then you can always paint tomorrow. It is always there.
And this is the way man has been avoiding the present. But to avoid the present is to avoid the real cause of it all.

The new inmate at the mental hospital announced in a loud voice that he was the famous British naval hero, Lord Nelson. This was particularly interesting because the institution already had a Lord Nelson.
The head psychiatrist, after due consideration, decided to put the two men in the same room, feeling that the similarity of their delusions might prompt an adjustment in each that would help in curing them. It was a calculated risk, of course, for the men might react violently to one another; but they were introduced and then left alone, and no disturbance was heard from the room that night.
The next morning the doctor had a talk with his new patient, and was more than pleasantly surprised when he was told, “Doctor, I have been suffering from delusion. I know now that I am not Lord Nelson.”
“That’s wonderful,” said the doctor.
“Yes,” said the patient smiling demurely, “I am Lady Hamilton.”

One can change from being Lord Nelson – one can become Lady Hamilton – but there is no change at all. That’s what people are doing all over the world. They change their religion, they change their wives, their husbands; they change their jobs, they change their outer situations. And again and again they are surprised – nothing changes. The misery persists, it remains the same. In fact, the more they change the outer circumstances, the more they become aware of one thing – the misery is not going to leave, it is going to stay there. Their frustration becomes more settled; their failure becomes their very lifestyle.
You ask me, “Osho, can you tell me what to do?” You have done enough. Now be done with it all; no more doing! Move from doing to being. Become a little more aware. Wherever you are – in the family, with the family, or somewhere else… Wherever you are, become more aware. Try to be now and here. This moment, this silence.
Don’t move from thisness. It will be difficult in the beginning; every small distraction will take you away. A bird starts calling and you get distracted, you cannot just accept it. Immediately you find an excuse – you start thinking what bird it is, and then the whole chain – the sound of the railway train, the traffic noise, anything is enough to take you away from the now. And that is the root cause of misery: to be there and then. The only source of bliss, the only source I say, is to be now and here.
Once you have learned to be present to the present, there is no problem at all. Then your response is total, then your response is from your very innermost core, very fulfilling. Then even living in the family situation with all the conflicts of it, you will remain untouched.
The conflicts will be everywhere. If you go to a monastery, there will be conflicts there – the same struggle, the same competition, the hierarchy – somebody trying to boss; somebody trying to put you the way he wants to put you together. Everywhere you will find manipulation, domination, nagging. Everywhere you will find exploitation of your fear, of your greed. Hence, changing situations is not going to help, it has never helped anybody – but it has been one of the ways of wasting one’s life.
For centuries people created monasteries, people created such monasteries that once you entered the monastery you could not leave. It was for your whole life. People became so afraid of each other – of the wife, of the husband – that there were Catholic monasteries where no woman entered for a thousand years. What fear! The founders of those monasteries must have been really terribly tortured by their wives. Now even an innocent woman who is not your wife is not allowed to enter the monastery. Not only a woman but even a small girl, a six-month-old girl, is not allowed in.
What kind of fear? Are these monks afraid of a six-month-old girl? Are they afraid of the girl or are they afraid of themselves? Are they going to rape the small child, or what? Are they monks or monsters? But fear has dominated them. And there are nuns and their nunneries where no man is allowed to enter. But these people are living in misery.
Here are many ex-monks, ex-nuns, Christian, Hindu, Jaina. They have suffered very much; they had to escape from those prisons. But people coming here also expect some kind of monastery.
Just the other day I was reading an article against me in an Australian magazine. The woman who had come to cover the ashram and its activities was very shocked. She seems to be a very traditional, orthodox woman, interested in Yoga and Hindu spirituality, etcetera. She says, “This is a strange kind of ashram. Nobody has ever heard of anything like this.”
She is offended most by one thing: that people are laughing, dancing, singing – in short, that people are alive. She is very offended that there is a certain “climate of a holiday resort.” She must have looked for a prison, not a holiday resort. What is wrong with the “climate of a holiday resort”? That should be the climate of the whole earth! That should be the very climate of life itself. Life should be a holiday. Only a holiday is a holy day.
And people are working here, people are continuously working – it is not that they are just lazing around. But the climate is certainly one of joy, of laughter. That offends.
The whole article is obsessed with the idea that an ashram has to be ascetic, people have to be there doing yoga postures, standing on their heads, doing all kinds of gymnastics, chanting mantras, doing religious rituals, and being very serious – as if they are just walking corpses. Then she would have been immensely pleased. “This is a religious place,” she would have said, “a spiritual place.”
Reading her article I decided one thing: that the new commune will not be called an ashram – that word is certainly ugly. We will drop it. This is not an ashram. In a way, this is the only ashram because ashram literally means rest, restfulness. But it has become associated with wrong people. We will drop it.
People come with all kinds of ideas. They are miserable in their ideas, but they are still looking for the same ideas. And if they don’t find them, they don’t feel good. They are miserable, and they want everybody else also to be miserable.
One gentleman has just written to me, “Osho, your claim that Swami Vimalkirti attained buddhahood sounds phony.” As if this gentleman knows what buddhahood is!
I was very pleased with his question. I thought, “My God, Gautam Buddha is here who knows what buddhahood is, and what buddhahood is not; who knows the distinction between the authentic buddhahood and the phony buddhahood.” Must be a man far superior to all the buddhas, only then can he judge.
But he must have come with a certain idea. In fact, Hindus were offended by Gautam Buddha’s declaration that he had become enlightened because they had their own idea – just like this gentleman, they had their own idea. In fact, this gentleman will be surprised that Buddha’s five disciples immediately left him, thinking that he had either gone mad or was pretending to be enlightened. His five disciples, who had been worshipping him up to now while he was not a buddha – they were worshipping him as their master. And the moment he declared that he was a buddha – it must have sounded phony – they left him immediately. And what was their argument? Their argument was that he had fallen into the trap of the ego, he had fallen from his ascetic life.
For six years Buddha tortured himself as much as any human being has ever been tortured, and found nothing by that torture. It was the sheer masochistic teachings of the ages that he had been following. But he was an intelligent man – he understood. One full-moon evening, as the moon was rising, he could see the whole stupidity of what he had been doing for six years. Just by torturing your body, how can you become enlightened? What relationship exists between torturing your body, destroying your body, and buddhahood?
That evening he dropped torturing. He told his disciples that now he would live relaxedly, now he would not torture himself, now he would follow the middle path. Up to now he had been doing something extremist. First, he lived the life of a prince, indulged in all kinds of pleasures and luxuries – that was one extreme. Then he moved to another extreme, he renounced the world and all its comforts, luxuries, pleasures, and started torturing himself, started a suicidal course – that was another extreme. He said to his disciples, “Tonight I have come to a tremendous understanding, that truth is not to be found by extremes. I have renounced the world; today I renounce that renunciation too! Now I will be just ordinary, neither a king nor an ascetic.”
The disciples immediately left him, and that very night he became enlightened. He searched for his disciples because he felt they had been with him for so long – for six years continuously – and that it was his duty that he should share his understanding, his bliss, his love, first with those five disciples. When he reached close to those five disciples, they were sitting under a tree, they looked at Buddha coming and they said, “Here comes that fallen man! We should not stand up to pay respect to him; we should not fold our hands in respect to him. We should keep our backs toward him. If he comes and sits, it’s okay; if he wants to say something, it’s okay, but we are not going to pay him any more respect or attention.”
Even Gautam Buddha was not understood by his own disciples.
This gentleman says my assertion that Vimalkirti has attained buddhahood sounds phony. Why? What is wrong with Vimalkirti attaining buddhahood? If I can attain it, why cannot Vimalkirti attain it? Why cannot you attain it?
Buddhahood is not something like a goal far away; it is your very nature. In fact, you are all buddhas, although unaware of the fact. All that happens in attaining buddhahood is that one becomes aware of it. The treasure is there – it is always there, you cannot lose it even if you want to lose it. It is your very being, hence there is no way to drop it. Who will drop it? But you can forget about it. And buddhahood simply means a remembering, a recognition.
Why does it sound phony? If you have some preconceived ideas, if you have some idea how a buddha should be, then certainly it will sound phony.
Jainas in India have not yet accepted Buddha as enlightened. Twenty-five centuries have passed, and I don’t think they will ever accept him as a buddha for the simple reason that they have a certain attitude which is not fulfilled by him. They think that whenever a person becomes a buddha he goes naked, and Buddha never went naked. That’s enough to prove to them that he was not a buddha. When a person becomes a buddha he drops even a begging bowl, he possesses nothing. And Buddha possessed three pieces of clothing, one begging bowl, one walking staff – too many possessions. This won’t do. He’s still living in luxury. According to Jainas, it is still luxury.
Mahavira lived naked, with no begging bowl, with nothing at all. He used to eat from his hands; he used to drink water from his hands. He would lie down on the earth to sleep, the earth underneath and the sky above. Hence he was called a digambara. The word digambara means one who is clothed only with the sky and nothing else. The sky itself is his clothing – nothing else between him and the sky. How can they accept that Buddha has become enlightened?
Hindus cannot accept him. Christians cannot accept that he was a man of the same caliber as Christ because he never did any miracles. A christ is supposed to do miracles, to cure blind people, to make the ill healthy, to raise the dead back to life. How can they accept Buddha as a christ? He never raised any dead.
In fact, a story is worth remembering…

When Lazarus’ sisters asked Christ to come and raise Lazarus from death, he came running. He was far away; it took him four days to reach there. And after four days, he raised Lazarus from his grave. He called forth Lazarus, “Lazarus come out of your grave!” and Lazarus walked out.

A similar story is told about Buddha, but with a totally different dimension to it. A woman’s only son died; her husband had already died. Her name was Kisa Gautami. She went almost mad: her husband was dead, she was living only for this child – and a beautiful child, suddenly died. She carried the body of the son to every physician, every doctor, to every saint, and they all said, “Nothing can be done.” Somebody suggested, “Buddha is in the town. Why don’t you go to him? He says he has become enlightened. If he is really enlightened, he can raise the dead. His touch will do a miracle.”
Kisa Gautami was ecstatic, knowing that Buddha was there: “What was impossible to a buddha?”
She went to Buddha with the dead body of the child. She put the child’s body at Buddha’s feet and said to him, “You can do anything – you are enlightened. Make my child live again. I cannot live without my child.”
Buddha did not do what Christ had done; Buddha did something far more significant. But to understand its significance one needs great clarity.
This gentleman, who says that my assertion that Vimalkirti has attained buddhahood… If he was there – and there is every possibility he must have been there if he is here – he must be an ancient traveler, shopping for spirituality. He must have gone to Buddha, he must have been there and he must have thought, “This man sounds phony.” What Buddha said sounds phony if you compare it with Jesus, and if you don’t have a deep understanding of life and its mysteries.
Buddha said, “Okay, I will revive the child, but you have to fulfill one condition. Go to the town and bring a few mustard seeds from any family. The only condition is that I will only accept mustard seeds from a family in which nobody has ever died. Once you have brought those few mustard seeds, I will immediately bring your son back.”
The woman could not see the point; she was in such a state, almost going mad. She rushed to the town, she knocked on every door. And people said, “We can give you as many mustard seeds as you want” – because in that town they used to grow mustard seeds, that was their main crop. So they said, “We can give you as many mustard seeds as you want, but the condition is unfulfillable. So many people have died in our family – somebody’s father has died, somebody’s mother, somebody’s wife, somebody’s husband, somebody’s grandfather, somebody’s great-grandfather – so many people have died.”
In fact, in any family only a few people are alive, millions have died. If you take into account the whole of the family from Adam and Eve, then millions of your family have died. It is a miracle how so very few are still alive. You are sitting on a huge mountain of corpses: your fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, great-great-great-grandfathers. And underneath it all – poor Adam and Eve. And Friedrich Nietzsche says even God is dead. So underneath Adam and Eve, God the Father. That seems to be the foundation of this whole Everest of death. You are sitting on top of it and not aware at all that soon you will be really part of it. It is only a question of a few moments; any moment you will be part of it. And somebody else will be sitting on top of you – your son, your daughter, your son-in-law, somebody will be sitting on top of you.
The woman, by and by, became aware that the condition was unfulfillable. By the evening she came – she came dancing, she came rejoicing. She fell at Buddha’s feet and she said, “You have done a great miracle! You have made me see something; you have helped me to remember that this life is death.”
Buddha asked her, “Do you want me to revive your child?”
The woman said. “No because he will have to die again. What is the point? Making him die again is ugly. Once is enough, twice will be too much. Rather, I have come for something else now. Help me to know that life which never ends. My son is gone, I will be gone. Before I am gone, I would like to taste something of the eternal.”
Buddha initiated her into sannyas.

Now these two stories, Lazarus’ and Kisa Gautami’s, are in a way parallel. Christ brings Lazarus to life; Buddha gives Kisa Gautami a new insight into life and death itself. To a Christian, Buddha looks phony. To a Buddhist, Jesus looks phony. What is he doing? This is sheer nonsense, because what happened to Lazarus afterward? One day he must have died because we don’t see him around anymore. If he was going to die what was the point of postponing it for a few days, or a few years? Why let him go through that suffering again? – the same wife, the same children, and the same job.
I don’t think Lazarus will be able to forgive Jesus. He was resting in his grave, feeling, “Thank God, all that nightmare is finished. Now my wife cannot nag me anymore, I am out of their reach, I don’t have to go to the office again tomorrow morning.” But Jesus pulled him back. And the Christian fools think this is a miracle.
If I had been in Lazarus’ place, I would have killed Jesus. “What are you doing? Don’t you have any respect for anybody? Dragging somebody back into the turmoil of life? Is it human?”
This gentleman says that my claim is phony. He also says that my criticism of Mother Teresa seems to be the criticism of a very ordinary man. That is true. There I agree. I am certainly a very ordinary man, so ordinary that you cannot even call me phony because a phony person is not ordinary, he’s extraordinary. I am really ordinary. I have no claims. I don’t do any miracles. And, of course, he must have come with the idea that Mother Teresa is doing great work – she is extraordinary, I am ordinary, that’s perfectly true. And I am not in any way interested in becoming extraordinary. To me, any desire to be extraordinary is very ordinary. To be ordinary is the only way of being extraordinary because that is really extraordinary. Nobody wants to be ordinary.
But this gentleman must be as unconscious as you are…

Two buddies had been out drinking for hours when their money finally ran out.
“I have an idea,” croaked Al. “Lesh go over to my housh and borrow shum money from my wife.”
The two of them reeled into Al’s living room, snapped on the light, and lo and behold, there was Al’s wife making love on the sofa to another man. This state of affairs considerably unnerved Al’s friend, but did not seem to affect the husband.
“Shay, dear, you have any money for your ever-lovin’ hushban’?” he asked.
“Yes, yes,” she snapped. “Take my purse from the mantle, and for Pete’s sake turn off those lights!”
Outside they examined the purse and Al proudly announced, “There’s enough here for a pint for you and a pint for me. Pretty good, eh, old buddy?”
“But Al,” protested his friend, somewhat sobered by the spectacle he had just witnessed, “what about that fellow back there with your wife?”
“The hell with him,” replied Al, “let him buy his own pint!”

All that is needed is a little more consciousness. It is not a question of doing something; you need a new kind of being. Right now you are unconscious – you have to be conscious. You have to be more aware, watchful, witnessing.
Witnessing is the key of my sannyas, the master key. I don’t give you any other discipline because giving you a discipline will not help; your unconsciousness will be there, and the discipline will only cover it. You can look like a saint but you will be as unconscious as before. Your saintliness will be as unconscious as your sinfulness was; there will be no qualitative difference in it.
So I am not interested in making saints out of you. I am not interested in helping you to drop your sins either. What I am interested in is to make you aware. The moment you start becoming aware of your actions, your thoughts, your feelings – these are the three dimensions where awareness has to be applied. Walk, but know that you are walking, remain alert of each gesture. Eat, but eat with awareness, don’t just go on stuffing food inside. Think, but witness your thoughts, the process of thoughts, desires, dreams. Feel, but remain a little aware that these feelings, these moods, are not you.
You are only pure awareness and nothing else. You are not the body, nor the mind, nor the heart. You are the fourth, and the fourth is the miracle. Once you have tasted the fourth, then wherever you are – even in hell – you will be in heaven.

The second question:
Osho,
I am a member of a group in Holland called the “Open Lotus,” which is gathered around a medium who claims to transfer messages and energies from Master Morya. This has very much affected my heart and being.
When I am in your audience I feel a kind of melting, but my heart does not as yet seem to be as deeply touched as it is with the medium. What is happening?
Is the experience with the unseen Master Morya unreal and something of the mind? Can it be a hindrance to becoming one with you, Osho? Are you in support of groups like the Open Lotus? If so, do you have a message for them?
Marinus, first, meditate over this story…

Stan and his wife, Rita, were playing the tenth hole. He teed off and Rita hit hers into the woods.
Stan had not hit his ball very far on the fairway, so he went into the woods to help her find it. Suddenly they came across a little fellow about four feet tall with a pointed hat and green suit.
“Hey,” said Stan, “are you a leprechaun?”
“Sure I am,” he replied.
“Well, maybe you could grant my wish to be a scratch golfer.”
“All right, but you have to give up something. If you let me have your wife in the woods for one hour, I will grant your wish.”
“You’ve got it!” said the husband.
The little guy took Rita into the woods and after an hour’s pleasure asked, “How old is your husband?”
“Forty.”
“And he still believes in leprechauns?”

Marinus, how old are you? – and you still believe in Master Morya? You must be feeling great because if something happens according to your belief, it strengthens the ego, it nourishes the ego. Master Morya is not visible, only the medium is there. And the medium is more concerned in impressing you, so she will follow you. In fact, there is no Master Morya anywhere. This whole idea of Master Morya was created by the theosophists. It is an invention of Madame Blavatsky – Madame Blah-blah-blah. It is just fiction.
Madame Blavatsky used to receive letters from Master Morya. In the roof there was a hole, and a servant used to hide on the roof, and all the Marinuses, the theosophists, would sit with closed eyes waiting for Master Morya’s message. And Madame Blah-blah-blah would sway, and she was a really fat lady and very ugly too. Ugly people become religious – what else can they do? I have seen many ugly people, but Madame Blah-blah-blah defeats them all. Only some fictitious entity like Master Morya could love her; no man – no man alive – would be able to gather so much courage.
And she would sway, and she would speak gibberish – what Christians call glossolalia – she would make strange sounds. Much incense would be burned, and much smoke would be created so nobody could see what was happening. And their eyes were full of tears because of the smoke. And then a letter would drop, and all these fools – and they were not uneducated people, all retired magistrates, high court judges, government officials, professors, scholars – they would wait for the letter. Then the letter would be read by Madame Blah-blah-blah.
And great messages were received, but they were all fulfilling their desires. Whatsoever they wanted was fulfilled. They were immensely happy.
It was J. Krishnamurti who destroyed the whole game, who came out of this nonsense and declared, “This is all stupidity.” J. Krishnamurti did a great service to humanity by destroying the theosophical nonsense. But Holland used to be one of the great centers of the theosophical movement, and a few fools still go on living with the hangover.
Certainly you will not feel the same here. In fact, you will feel just the opposite because I am continuously shattering your ego, I am hitting it hard. I am not here to nourish your ego, I am here to destroy it. You can be one with me only if you are totally egoless, otherwise there is no possibility.
If you want to enjoy your ego and your dreams and your fantasies, then these mediums are good. But remember, you will remain childish, you will never grow. Yes, sometimes coincidentally something may appear to be true. If a medium says thousands of things, one thing may coincide with reality. And the fools and the gullible immediately jump upon that one thing, and they make much fuss about it. They think, “If one thing is right then others also must be right. Maybe we are not yet capable enough to understand, maybe we need more purity. We have to become as pure as the medium.”
And what the medium says, you have to interpret, and you always interpret according to your mind. These masters don’t exist at all.

“I have learned one thing about women,” said the experienced one to his drinking companions. “You just can’t trust a girl with brown eyes.”
“It occurs to me,” said one of his inebriated friends, “that I have been married nearly three years and I don’t know what color eyes my wife has.”
The second man finished his drink, climbed from his stool, and hurried home to investigate this disturbing possibility.
His wife was in bed asleep. He crept up to her and carefully lifted an eyelid. “By God! Brown!” he exclaimed.
“How the hell did you know I was here?” said Brown, crawling out from under the bed.

Yes, once in a while some coincidence like that will happen. Beware! All these mediums and all these priests and all these theosophists, theologians are the most cunning people, and they have many brands all around the world. It is better to be with a gambler, with a drunkard; it is better to be with a so-called sinner than to be with these people. These people have been preventing human growth for thousands of years. They are the most criminal people in the world. Their crime is unpardonable.

A genie jumped on his ball and said, “Would you like to be the world’s best golfer?”
“I sure would,” said the man.
“Would you give up your sex life for it?”
“Of course,” said the man.
The genie granted his wish, and in the next twelve months he won every tournament on the pro tour.
After the year was up, the man was back on the eighteenth tee, and once again the genie appeared.
“How did it feel to be the world’s best golfer?”
“Great!” said the man.
“Did you mind giving up your sex life?”
“Not at all.”
“How often did you have sex in former years?”
“Four or five times a year,” replied the man.
“That’s not very much!”
“Well, it is not bad for a priest with a small parish.”

These priests, these rabbis, these ayatollahs, these imams – beware of them. It is time that humanity should get rid of all this stupidity.

Rabbi Goldstein was allowed to join a “restricted” country club. His first day he met Peckham, the president.
“Welcome, Rabbi Goldstein. Would you like to play a round?”
“Sure, we will play a friendly game of a hundred dollars a hole.”
Rabbi Goldstein lost eighteen hundred dollars.
“Look” said Peckham, “I will give you a chance to get even – three thousand, six hundred dollars or nothing.”
Rabbi Goldstein agreed and lost again.
Later in the locker room, Rabbi Goldstein said, “You like to wager. I will bet you one thousand dollars I can pee over your head from ten feet.”
“All right,” said the club prezzy. “But nobody can pee that far.”
Rabbi Goldstein proceeded to pee all over Peckham.
“See,” he said, after changing his clothes. “I knew you could not do it. Come on, I will buy.”
At the bar they met Lockwood, the local bank chairman. “This is Rabbi Goldstein,” said the club president. “He is one of our new members.”
Peckham then told Lockwood about the money he had won, including how Rabbi Goldstein had peed all over him.
“Oh no!” cried the banker, “That son-of-a-bitch bet me twenty thousand dollars he would piss all over the president on his first day at the club!”

Enough for today.

---