The Empty Boat - Osho.pdf - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 6. THE NEED TO WIN
Tao, Zen, Yoga, Sufism, Hassidism, these are all methods for bringing you back, to make you sober
again, to destroy your drunkenness. Why are you so drunk? What makes you so drunk? Why are
your eyes so sleepy? Why aren’t you alert? What is the root cause of it all? The root cause is that
you desire.
Try to understand the nature of desire.
Desire is alcoholic, desire is the greatest drug possible. Marijuana is nothing, lsd is nothing. Desire
is the greatest lsd possible – the ultimate in drugs.
What is the nature of desire? When you desire, what happens? When you desire, you are creating
an illusion in the mind; when you desire, you have already moved from here. Now you are not
here, you are absent from here, because the mind is creating a dream. This absentness is your
drunkenness. Be present!
This very moment the doors of heaven are open. There is no need even to knock because you are
not outside heaven, you are already inside. Just be alert and look around without eyes filled with
desire, and you will have a belly laugh. You will laugh at the whole joke, at what has been happening.
It is just like a man dreaming at night.
It happened once that a man was very much disturbed – his nights were simply prolonged
nightmares. His whole night was a struggle. It was so painful that he was always scared to go
to sleep and he was always happy to get up. And the nature of the dreams was that the moment
he fell asleep, under his bed he would start seeing millions of lions, dragons, tigers, crocodiles, all
sitting under his small bed. So he dreamed that he couldn’t sleep – at any moment they would
attack.
His whole night was just a long disturbance, a torture, a hell. He was treated medically, but nothing
would help. Everything failed. He was analyzed by psychologists, psychiatrists, but nothing worked.
Then one day he walked out of his house laughing.
Nobody had seen him laughing for many years. His face had become hellish, always sad, afraid,
scared. So the neighbors asked, ”What is the matter? You are laughing? We have not seen
you laugh for such a long time, we have completely forgotten that you ever used to laugh. What
happened to your nightmares?”
The man said, ”I told my brother-in-law, and he cured me.”
The neighbors asked, ”Is your brother-in-law some great psycho-analyst? How did he cure you?”
The man said, ”He is a carpenter, and he simply sawed off the legs of my bed. Now there’s no more
space underneath, so I slept for the first time!”
You create a space – and desire is the way to create the space. The greater the desire, the more
space is created. A desire may be fulfilled in one year, then you have one year’s space. You can
move in it, and you will have to encounter many reptiles, many dragons. This space which is created
by desire, you call time. If there is no desire, there is no need for time.
The Empty Boat 103 Osho