The Empty Boat - Osho.pdf - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 8. THE USELESS
The whole day you are awake, at night you fall asleep. What is the use of sleep? It is wasting time
– and no little time. If you live to ninety, for thirty years of your life you will be asleep, one-third, eight
hours every day. What is the use of it?
Scientists in Russia have been thinking that this is a wastage of labor, of energy. This is very
uneconomical, so something must be done about it: some chemical changes or some hormonal
changes are nee-ded. Or, even if something has to be changed in the very genes, the very cell, it
must be done. We have to make a man who is aware, alert, awake for twenty-four hours.
Just think...if they succeed, they will kill! Then they will make you an automaton, just a mechanical
device, which goes on working and working, no day, no night, no rest, no work. There is no opposite
to which you can move and forget!
And they have started many things. They have started sleep teaching for small children. Now
thousands of children in Soviet Russia sleep with tape recorders plugged to their ears. While they
are sleeping, the tape recorder is teaching them. Throughout the whole night the tape recorder is
repeating something or other. They go on listening to it and it becomes part of their memory – sleep
teaching, hypno-pedia. And they say that sooner or later all that we do in schools can be done while
the child is asleep, and then the day can be used in some other way.
Even sleep has to be exploited. You cannot be allowed to be yourself even in your sleep. You cannot
even be allowed the freedom to dream. Then what are you? Then you become a cog in the wheel.
Then you are just an efficient part of the wheel, of the mechanism. If you are efficient it is okay;
otherwise you can be discarded, thrown to the junkyard, and somebody else who is more efficient
will replace you.
What happens after the whole day’s work? You fall asleep. What happens? You move from the
useful to the useless. And that is why in the morning you feel so fresh, so alive, so unburdened.
Your legs have a dancing quality, your mind can sing, your heart can again feel – all the dust of work
is thrown off, the mirror is again clear. You have a clarity in the morning. How does it come? It
comes through the useless.
That is why meditation can give you the greatest glimpses, because it is the most useless thing
in the world. You simply don’t do anything, you simply move into silence. It is greater than sleep
because in sleep you are unconscious; whatsoever happens, happens unconsciously. You may be
in paradise, but you don’t know it.
In meditation you move knowingly. Then you become aware of the path: how to move from the
useful world of the without to the useless world within. And once you know the path, any moment
you can simply move inwards. Sitting in a bus you are not needed to do anything, you are simply
sitting; traveling in a car or train or an airplane, you are not doing anything, everything is being done
by others; you can close your eyes and move into the useless, the inner. And suddenly everything
becomes silent, and suddenly everything is cool, and suddenly you are at the source of all life.
But it has no value on the market. You cannot go and sell it, you cannot say, ”I have great meditation.
Is anybody ready to buy it?” Nobody will be ready to buy it. It is not a commodity, it is useless.
CHUANG TZU REPLIED:
The Empty Boat 143 Osho