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OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
1<br />
MAY<br />
2015
CURTAIN UP<br />
Three Minutes<br />
to Midnight<br />
Swami Anand Kul Bhushan<br />
We all have just three minutes before the whole<br />
world blows up. Yes, that’s the message from<br />
the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which moved its<br />
iconic Doomsday Clock on 24 January 2015.<br />
The clock now stands at three minutes to midnight,<br />
the ‘latest’ it’s been since 1984, when the Cold War<br />
between the U.S. and Soviet Union was a major issue.<br />
Why has the clock been moved?<br />
“Today, unchecked climate change and a nuclear<br />
arms race resulting from modernization of huge<br />
arsenals pose extraordinary and undeniable threats<br />
to the continued existence of humanity. And world<br />
leaders have failed to act with the speed or on the<br />
scale required to protect citizens from potential<br />
catastrophe,” said Kennette Benedict, director of the<br />
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. “These failures of<br />
leadership endanger every person on earth.”<br />
The Bulletin executives look at global issues regularly<br />
and decide whether to move the minute hand of the<br />
clock, with particular stress on the status of nuclear<br />
arms and reaction to climate issues.<br />
In recent years, the clock has moved the wrong<br />
direction for humanity. After standing at 17 minutes<br />
to midnight in 1991 - the furthest it’s ever been from<br />
the end of the world - it’s moved closer each time<br />
it’s been changed since, with the exception of 2010,<br />
when it was pushed back by one minute to 11:54<br />
p.m. The last time the clock was moved was in 2012,<br />
when it was moved up one minute to 11:55.<br />
Now an agreement between Iran and Western<br />
powers signed on 2 April 2015 to curb Iran’s nuclear<br />
program has brought new hope to lower the risk<br />
of nuclear war. Still to be approved by the US<br />
Congress, the agreement reduced Iran will reduce<br />
its uranium enrichment set-up by 75 per cent and<br />
uranium stockpile from 800 tonnes to 300 kilos. This<br />
means Iran cannot produce nuclear weapons. When<br />
approved by US Congress, a final nuclear deal is in<br />
sight. Good.<br />
Hold on! USA still has 2,100 battle ready nuclear<br />
weapons it can launch anytime. Russia has 1,600<br />
followed by 250 for China, around 100 each with<br />
India and Pakistan and 80, and Israel at 80. With all<br />
these battle ready weapons, no wonder the minute<br />
hand moved.<br />
Osho says, “America should stop piling up nuclear<br />
weapons. They are pointless, and so costly, so<br />
meaningless. You already have enough to destroy<br />
the whole world, what more do you want? America<br />
should declare, ‘We drop the whole idea of war. We<br />
destroy all our nuclear weapons. We drown all those<br />
weapons in the Pacific, in the Atlantic. We’re finished<br />
with it.”<br />
Let’s finish them before they finish us. After all, we<br />
just have three minutes.<br />
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
3<br />
MAY<br />
2015<br />
With over 3,000 battle ready nuclear weapons that can be launched any time, is nuclear war a<br />
real threat? Or will it never happen because it has not happened for 70 years after Hiroshima?<br />
Tell us what you think in 250 words and the best entry will be published. Send your views to<br />
opendoor@oshoworld.com before someone pushes the nuclear button!
C O N T<br />
OPEN DOOR<br />
READERS RESPOND<br />
06 Osho’s Vision Of Gandhi Comes<br />
Alive During My Visit To Sabarmati<br />
COVER STORY<br />
Buddha<br />
07 You Are All Buddhas, Nobody Is Born<br />
Otherwise - Osho<br />
LEAD STORY<br />
Tobacco<br />
15 Real Killer: Tobacco<br />
24<br />
7<br />
LEAD STORY<br />
Ma Amrit Saraswati<br />
21 Rare Event : Master Initiates His Mother<br />
38<br />
MAY 2015 VOL XIV NO. 05<br />
EDITOR<br />
Swami Chaitanya Keerti<br />
Executive Editor<br />
Swami Anand Kul Bhushan<br />
Content Coordinator<br />
Ma Prem Naina<br />
Design<br />
Rohit Kumar<br />
Published & Printed by Swami Atul Anand for Osho World Foundation,<br />
C–5/44, Safdarjung Development Area, New Delhi–16, Tel : +91–011–26261616/17<br />
Email : contact@oshoworld.com<br />
Printed at : M.P. Printers, B–220, Industrial Area, Phase–II, Noida–205305, UP<br />
100 pages including cover<br />
The complete discourse of published articles is available<br />
in audio, video and book form at Osho World Galleria, Osho<br />
Rajyoga Meditation Centre and Oshodham. These discourses are<br />
also available online at oshoworldgalleria.com
E N T S<br />
28<br />
OSHO’S INSIGHT<br />
Tantra<br />
28 Merging With Your Other Half<br />
Caste System<br />
33 Manu Started It All, And It Went Wrong<br />
children<br />
38 Copying Parents Makes Children Suffer<br />
youth<br />
43 Young Strong Start Meditating<br />
DISEASE<br />
48 Cancer And Meditation, Dying With Joy<br />
DRUGS<br />
57 A Violent Effort To Awaken The Idiot<br />
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
NUCLEAR WEAPONS<br />
5<br />
63 Impossible To Destroy Nuclear<br />
15<br />
85<br />
Weapons, What Is To Be Done?<br />
CHINA<br />
68 Confucius, Mao And Lao Tzu<br />
Who Represents China?<br />
MAY<br />
2015<br />
COLUMNS<br />
03 72 74 77<br />
Curtain Up Rare Beings Meditation Techniques Book Serialisation<br />
80 82 83 84<br />
India My Love Sharing Osho Book Review How Osho Changed<br />
My Life<br />
85 86 88 90<br />
Celebrate Happenings Osho Events Forthcoming Osho<br />
Meditation Camps<br />
94 98<br />
Tarot<br />
Laughing Buddha<br />
OPEN DOOR<br />
Inviting Osho World readers to send in your responses on Osho’s vision, the articles published here and the Osho<br />
events presented here. Do ensure that the focus is always on Osho and spirituality. The most pertinent responses<br />
will be published to share them with all our readers. Please keep your response under 400 words and mail it to<br />
opendoor@oshoworld.com. Over to you!
OPEN<br />
DOOR<br />
READERS RESPOND<br />
Osho’s vision of Gandhi<br />
comes alive during my visit to Sabarmati<br />
mA PREM SUNAINA /Prachi Kaushik<br />
THE SPINNING-WHEEL OF LOVE AT<br />
SABARMATI ASHRAM<br />
What is the deep desire? Do you want to hurt the<br />
other in the name of truth? Then your truth is<br />
poisoned already: it is no longer religious, it is no<br />
longer moral – it is already immoral. Drop that truth.<br />
I tell you, even a lie is good if it is spoken out of love,<br />
and a truth is bad it is spoken just to hurt says, the<br />
millennium man Osho.<br />
The sight of the River Sabarmati, Ahmedabad was<br />
serene and stillness was blooming out of the water<br />
keeping aside all the hustle bustle of a metro city.<br />
Moving ahead, I grabbed a place to feel the vibe of<br />
that irresistible silence coming from the existence and<br />
it was such a relaxation after an examination.I am<br />
a nature lover and in the entire Gandhi Ashram, it<br />
was the Sabarmati’s beauty and the trees which came<br />
as nourishment to my soul with its unexplainable<br />
tranquility.<br />
The day was pleasant and I was busy exploring<br />
the artwork in picture gallery and took a glance of<br />
Gandhi’s spinning wheel; the only level of a technology<br />
that he accepted. The irony here is that Gandhi is<br />
known as a simpleton man and technology makes<br />
things simpler. On this Osho very well quotes “He was<br />
against the education that is available in the schools,<br />
colleges and the universities, against things so simple<br />
and so essential that you will not be able to believe<br />
it — that in the twentieth century a man can be<br />
against the telephone. Beyond that spinning wheel, all<br />
technology was evil, all science was evil; so why send<br />
your children to learn the devilish ways of science,<br />
technology, logic, philosophy, and destroy their faith,<br />
their belief in God?”<br />
Undoubtedly Gandhi was an incredible politician<br />
according to Osho, who belongs to the Indian mob as<br />
he followed the mob and in politics the leader is a voice<br />
of the common man and indeed he was intelligent<br />
enough to analyze Indians .<br />
Also, I found a deep connectivity in one of Gandhi’s<br />
quotation in the huge lawn decorated with his sayings<br />
and messages to the people. He talks in a psychological<br />
sense about the minds and hearts of people in the<br />
world and calls them people with same flow of<br />
emotionsand feelings who either become one via riots<br />
or dance and celebration. But the world vibrates with<br />
the intensity of their emotions, laughter and feelings.<br />
This quotation reveals to me that somewhere he has a<br />
good knowledge about people but the mere knowledge<br />
of the recipe and in cooking the delicacy is a different<br />
thing.<br />
Osho’s insights set a ground where self consciousness<br />
holds the key towards life further beginning a deep<br />
search within for all the questions. Here, the deciding<br />
factor is your own awareness and not any superficial<br />
realizations. I feel when Love dissolves in life from all<br />
the shores and when you let it rule you then everything<br />
already becomes non-violent leaving no traces to hurt,<br />
to dismiss anybody or anything. I had a beautiful time<br />
at Sabarmati Ashram which though entails story of a<br />
Mahatma, only divine love and bliss went straight to<br />
my heart and I celebrated with this new revelation.
COVER<br />
Buddha<br />
STORY<br />
you are all buddhas<br />
When ego disappeared<br />
Nobody is born otherwise - osho<br />
We celebrate it as Buddha Purnima the full moon night this month when Buddha was born,<br />
got enlightened and left his body. Osho explains the significance of his enlightenment and<br />
his compassion when he left his body. More than 2,500 years after the Buddha trod this<br />
earth, we have not really known him as Osho brings new insights in understanding this<br />
enlightened master.<br />
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
7<br />
The Buddha made a supreme vow not<br />
to rise from meditation until attaining<br />
enlightenment. for three days and nights he had<br />
visions and hallucinations, including ones of hell,<br />
demons, etcetera. what kind of effort is this?<br />
When Buddha made that vow he was not<br />
a buddha; he was as ignorant as you are. In<br />
ignorance, whatever he has done, please forgive<br />
him. Don’t take much note of it. In ignorance<br />
everybody goes on doing foolish things. That<br />
vow is stupid.<br />
Truth is not something that you can force by<br />
your willpower. Taking a vow that “I will not rise<br />
from meditation until attaining enlightenment”<br />
shows violence and ignorance. But Buddha was<br />
not Buddha at that time, he was Siddhartha<br />
Gautama – stumbling, groping in the darkness<br />
as everybody else gropes. He was not in any<br />
way different from you. He had himself yet not<br />
learned the art of being in the middle; he was an<br />
extremist. This is extremism.<br />
For six years he tried hard and failed. That<br />
perseverance did not yield any result; it cannot.<br />
That’s why when he became a buddha he was<br />
very much against a concerted effort, he was very<br />
much against extremes.<br />
He had lived through all kinds of extremes:<br />
he had lived like an ascetic, tortured himself.<br />
For six years he suffered as much as a human<br />
being can suffer – but truth cannot be bought<br />
by your suffering. It is not a commodity and it<br />
is not possible to attain it just by sheer force of<br />
willpower. You can sit for three days or three<br />
lives under a tree, and you won’t attain it. He<br />
didn’t attain it, remember. What he attained was<br />
MAY<br />
2015
hallucinations, visions of hell, demons, etc.<br />
That was his punishment, so beware of it.<br />
How he became enlightened is a totally different<br />
story. After three days, when he was tired, utterly<br />
tired of his effort, and he saw the frustration,<br />
the failure... those six years’ continuous torturing<br />
himself, and no gain, no success.<br />
He had not moved even an inch nearer to truth;<br />
he was still where he had started. Only one thing<br />
had happened: he had become weaker because<br />
he had been fasting. He had become ugly; he had<br />
become just bones, all flesh had disappeared. He<br />
enlightenment is not a success.<br />
Enlightenment happens only<br />
when you have totally failed.<br />
Enlightenment is born out of total<br />
failure – because if you succeed, the<br />
ego remains. When the failure is total,<br />
absolute, irrevocable, categorical,<br />
when there is no going back, the<br />
ego disappears<br />
had become just a skeleton. He looked like he<br />
had come out of a grave. No gain, no success... all<br />
efforts had failed.<br />
Then one evening he saw the futility of the<br />
human effort. He saw the futility of human ego<br />
– because all efforts are egoistic: “I will attain.”<br />
The ‘I’ is always behind all your achievements,<br />
desires of achievement.<br />
The ‘I’ is very ambitious and pronounced: it<br />
wants to be successful in this world, it wants to<br />
be successful in the other world. It wants to have<br />
money, it wants to have God too. It wants to<br />
have power; it wants to have liberation, moksha,<br />
truth, nirvana. It wants to have everything.<br />
Buddha saw it and in that seeing he dropped the<br />
mad effort and he dropped the very source of<br />
ambition. It was a fullmoon night. He laughed<br />
at himself, at the whole stupidity of six years.<br />
He relaxed, he sat under a tree. For the first<br />
time after six years, just sitting not to achieve<br />
anything, just sitting, not meditating. Hence in<br />
Zen, meditation is called Zazen. Zazen means<br />
just sitting doing nothing, the spring comes and<br />
the grass grows by itself. That evening he sat<br />
there under the tree with no desire, because all<br />
desires had failed. The worldly desires had failed,<br />
the otherworldly desires had failed.<br />
You will be surprised to know: enlightenment is<br />
not a success. Enlightenment happens only when<br />
you have totally failed. Enlightenment is born<br />
out of total failure – because if you succeed, the<br />
ego remains. When the failure is total, absolute,<br />
irrevocable, categorical, when there is no going<br />
back, the ego disappears. Ego lives, feeds on<br />
success; it cannot live in failure. It deserts you.<br />
That evening the ego disappeared. The full<br />
moon rose. He watched the full moon, he<br />
enjoyed the full moon. For six years he had not<br />
seen the moon at all, he was so preoccupied with<br />
his own spiritual attainment. The night was cool<br />
and beautiful. The forest was silent, and just by<br />
the side the river Niranjana flowed. He enjoyed<br />
the reflection of the moon in the Niranjana.<br />
He enjoyed the silence. Then he fell asleep. He<br />
slept without any dreams, because all dreams are<br />
by-products of desires. In the morning when it<br />
was dawn and the birds started singing he was<br />
awakened by their songs. Lying under the tree,<br />
nowhere to go, nothing to do, he watched the<br />
sun rise above the horizon; the east becoming<br />
red and a beautiful morning and the cool<br />
breeze.... And something happened, something<br />
clicked. He became enlightened – not out of six<br />
years’ effort but only one night’s effortlessness.<br />
Not out of six years’ constant striving of the ego,<br />
but only one night’s state of no ego, no desire.<br />
And in the morning he was enlightened.<br />
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
9<br />
MAY<br />
2015
Then again he laughed. He laughed because he<br />
saw that he was always enlightened but could<br />
not see the fact, the truth of it, because he was<br />
so concerned with attaining it. If you are so<br />
concerned with attaining it you will not be able<br />
to see that it is already the case.<br />
You are all Buddhas. Nobody is born otherwise,<br />
everybody is born a Buddha. It is not a question<br />
of achieving, remember it: Buddhahood,<br />
enlightenment, is not a question of attainment.<br />
It is a question of becoming silent, still, egoless,<br />
desireless, so that you can see with unclouded<br />
eyes who you are. You are a Buddha already, you<br />
are enlightened.<br />
He laughed at night because his whole life had<br />
failed; it was ridiculous. In the morning he<br />
laughed because he was searching for something<br />
that was already inside his soul; there was no<br />
need to seek and search for it. In fact, seeking<br />
and searching kept him away from it.<br />
Seek, and you will not find; seek not and it is<br />
yours.<br />
The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha,<br />
Vol 9<br />
Chapter #2<br />
WHEN BUDDHA DROPPED<br />
HIS LAST DESIRE<br />
Buddha got enlightened in a very strange way.<br />
The day the teacher said, “You have to move on. I<br />
am only a teacher, not a master. I was pretending<br />
and I am very sorry!” he was too tired. Just bones<br />
remained, and he was sitting under a bodhi<br />
tree in Bodhgaya. The name Bodhgaya comes<br />
from Gautam Buddha’s becoming enlightened<br />
there; bodh means enlightenment. Just because<br />
of Buddha the great city came into existence,<br />
because thousands of people wanted to live there,<br />
meditate under the same tree where Buddha<br />
had meditated, tried to do the same walking<br />
meditation by the side of the temple that one<br />
king had raised behind the tree as a memorial to<br />
Gautam Buddha’s enlightenment.<br />
Buddha was taking a bath by a nearby river,<br />
Niranjana. It is a very small river; in the summer<br />
it shrinks so small that you can walk across it,<br />
it is not even one foot deep. And he was taking<br />
a bath, but he was so weak that even that small<br />
You are all buddhas. Nobody is<br />
born otherwise, everybody is born<br />
a buddha. It is not a question of<br />
achieving, remember it: buddhahood,<br />
enlightenment, is not a question<br />
of attainment. It is a question<br />
of becoming silent, still, egoless,<br />
desireless, so that you can see with<br />
unclouded eyes who you are<br />
current he could not cross. He had to hang onto<br />
a branch of a tree for a few moments to gather<br />
some energy so that he could get out of the river.<br />
That experience made it clear to him that just<br />
by fasting you can kill yourself, but you cannot<br />
attain enlightenment. This is a good gradual<br />
process of suicide, but it is not a process of<br />
samadhi.<br />
“If I cannot pass this small stream, what about<br />
the mythological river, a vast river, that divides<br />
this world from the other heavenly world? If I<br />
cannot cross Niranjana, a small river, what are<br />
the possibilities for me? I will not be able to cross<br />
that vast river that divides these two worlds. It<br />
is almost like an ocean.” It is mythology, but in<br />
his mind at that time – up to that time – there<br />
was only mythology, philosophy; he was not yet<br />
enlightened. But hanging onto the branch or
Just after enlightenment<br />
the root of the tree, he thought that “I have been<br />
wasting my time.”<br />
He came out. It was a full moon night, and he<br />
was so weak that he could not go into the town<br />
that day to beg, so he remained under the tree.<br />
But by chance one woman, Sujata – her name,<br />
Sujata means well born or born in an upperclass<br />
society. I have discussed with Buddhist scholars<br />
that her name simply shows that she was born<br />
in a lowcaste society. You can see it: in India the<br />
blind man is called kamalnayan, lotus-eyes. If<br />
you have eyes, nobody will call you lotus-eyes;<br />
that is reserved for the blind man – not to insult<br />
him. Sujata cannot be an upperclass woman,<br />
otherwise she would not have that name.<br />
That name suggests that she comes from the<br />
lowest Sudra caste, the untouchables. As a<br />
consolation they give good names.<br />
In India, when somebody dies, they say he has<br />
become beloved of God. And what are we all<br />
doing here? Only the dead become beloved of<br />
God. God seems to be a kind of cannibal! The<br />
more people die, the happier God is of course –<br />
more beloveds are coming.<br />
When the corpse of a dead man is taken from his<br />
home to the funeral pyre it is called mahayatra,<br />
the great journey. It is not more than one or<br />
two miles, it is not much of a great journey. The<br />
poor fellow has died, but reading about it you<br />
may think he has gone on a great journey. Just to<br />
hide the truth, man has always been clever with<br />
words.<br />
This woman Sujata, according to me, is a<br />
Harijan, and only Harijans would come to such<br />
a poor place near the Niranjana river. She had<br />
been worshipping the tree, and only the lower<br />
classes worship the trees, not the richer. She<br />
had promised the tree that if a boy was born to<br />
her, she would bring for the tree many sweets,<br />
many flowers. And this was a coincidence, just a<br />
mere coincidence, that on the full moon night a<br />
beautiful young man was sitting under the tree.<br />
She thought, “The god of the tree has come out<br />
to receive the sweets!” She was immensely happy,<br />
because it rarely happens that the god of the<br />
tree comes out, and she offered Buddha all the<br />
sweets.<br />
This way, after three months he had a right<br />
breakfast; otherwise, living on smaller and<br />
smaller quantities... and yesterday he had eaten<br />
only one grain of rice. Sujata was very happy.<br />
The son had been born and the god of the tree<br />
had accepted. After he finished eating, Buddha<br />
dropped for the first time.... Six years before he<br />
had dropped the kingdom and all the material<br />
things of the world, all possessions. He had<br />
carried only one longing – for the truth. This<br />
night, with the full moon in the sky, he dropped<br />
that longing too, because that longing had<br />
become his desire, and whenever there is even<br />
a small desire, the mind continues. It does not<br />
matter whether you desire money or God, it<br />
does not matter whether you desire power or<br />
enlightenment; desire is desire, and with desire<br />
the mind remains alive.<br />
That night he gave up the last desire. Six years<br />
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
11<br />
MAY<br />
2015
he had taken all kinds of torture upon himself. It<br />
was enough! And he slept for the first time after<br />
six years, utterly relaxed – no desire, no longing,<br />
no future, no hope – he simply slept without<br />
any mind, no dreams. All were shattered. He<br />
was finished. “There is no truth and there is<br />
no world. It is all nonsense and I have simply<br />
spoiled myself.”<br />
That night he slept without a mind, and a sleep<br />
without a mind is very close to samadhi. That’s<br />
how Patanjali defines it: there is our ordinary<br />
waking state, below it is our dreaming state,<br />
below that is our dreamless sleep, and below that<br />
is our enlightenment, our absolute awakening.<br />
The whole night he slept in a dreamless sleep.<br />
That created the opportunity. Just one inch<br />
more, a aslight push more... As he opened his<br />
eyes – for the first time without any desire<br />
– the last star was setting, and with the last<br />
star setting, he suddenly became aware, so full<br />
of awareness.... The sun rose outside and the<br />
sun also rose inside. From dreamless sleep he<br />
had fallen to the fourth state of awakening, of<br />
Buddhahood. This Buddhahood was attained<br />
when he had dropped even the desire to be a<br />
buddha. The mind has to be absolutely empty.<br />
And the master’s function is to help you on<br />
the way of emptiness, because emptiness is the<br />
opportunity for fulfilment.<br />
Isan: No Footprints in the Blue Sky<br />
Chapter #5<br />
BEFORE BUDDHA LEFT<br />
THIS WORLD<br />
A very beautiful story is told about Gautam<br />
Buddha. He informed his disciples that on a<br />
particular day, the coming full moon night, he<br />
was going to die. As the full moon disappeared,<br />
he would also disappear.<br />
It is a rare coincidence that Gautam Buddha<br />
was born on a full moon night, he became<br />
enlightened on a full moon night, and he died<br />
on a full moon night. Thousands of his disciples<br />
rushed from all over the place just to see him for<br />
the last time. There was great sadness, but people<br />
held back their tears, not to make his departure<br />
difficult. And Buddha asked, “If you have any<br />
questions – because tomorrow I will not be here<br />
– if in your heart there is some question which<br />
you have still not exposed, just ask me. Before<br />
I leave, I want all my disciples to be completely<br />
alert, without any questions. I want my disciples<br />
to become answers, not questions.” Nobody said<br />
anything. Only Ananda said, “You have answered<br />
us for forty-two years continually, day in, day out<br />
– we don’t have any questions. We have come<br />
just to be near you when you dissolve into the<br />
universal consciousness.<br />
“We have heard from the ancient days, that<br />
whenever an enlightened man dies, as he leaves<br />
his body, his consciousness spreads all over the<br />
universe. We want to be close to you just to<br />
have a taste of your consciousness.” And at that<br />
moment Buddha said, “Fine, then I say goodbye<br />
to you. I will die in four steps. First I will leave<br />
my body; then I will leave my mind; then I will<br />
leave my heart; and in the fourth, the turiya, I<br />
will dissolve into the ocean of existence.”<br />
He closed his eyes, and just that very moment<br />
a man came running and he said, “I have to<br />
ask something. For thirty years I have been<br />
postponing it. Buddha has come to my town<br />
many times in these thirty years, and I have<br />
always thought that this time I am going to<br />
see him and ask my question. But something<br />
or other... and I kept postponing. Just human<br />
stupidity – a guest has come, I was engaged with<br />
customers, there was a marriage ceremony I had<br />
to participate in.<br />
So I went on postponing, thinking that there is<br />
no hurry, that when he comes next time, then<br />
I will ask. But sometimes my wife was sick,<br />
sometimes I was sick... and these thirty years
have passed. Just now I heard that Buddha is<br />
dying. Now I cannot postpone. No reason can<br />
prevent me.”<br />
But Ananda said, “You have come somewhat<br />
late. He has begun his inner journey; he has<br />
already moved two steps: we can see his body has<br />
become utterly silent, and as far as dropping the<br />
mind... it is just an empty mind, he must have<br />
dropped it.<br />
It may take a while for him to drop the<br />
heart, because it was the heart that he used<br />
continuously to radiate his love, his joy, his<br />
silence. It is not right to disturb him at this<br />
moment. Forty-two years he has been speaking;<br />
now it is your fault if in thirty years you could<br />
not find the time – it is your question.”<br />
But Buddha returned. His breathing, which had<br />
disappeared, resumed again, his heart started<br />
beating again. He opened his eyes and he said,<br />
“Ananda, do you want it to be remembered by<br />
the coming generations that Buddha’s love was<br />
so small that he could not come two steps back<br />
when a thirsty man had come? And I am still<br />
alive – I would be blamed forever. Don’t prevent<br />
him, let him ask his question.” The man saw<br />
Buddha for the first time, and in a very strange<br />
situation: thousands of people were sitting<br />
silently, their eyes full of tears. And Buddha<br />
was almost half dead: he had taken two steps<br />
inwards; just two more steps and he would<br />
become part of the oceanic consciousness. But<br />
a man who is love even in such a situation will<br />
radiate love. Ananda and all the disciples could<br />
not believe that for an ordinary man, who is not<br />
even a disciple, who has postponed for thirty<br />
years.... But Buddha’s love and his compassion<br />
are infinite – he asked the man... but the man<br />
was so overwhelmed by the situation, he forgot<br />
his question. He said, “I am fulfilled enough. Just<br />
your love has answered all my questions. You<br />
were half-dead and still you came back just to<br />
answer an ordinary man who has avoided you<br />
for thirty years, always finding different excuses.”<br />
He touched Buddha’s feet and said, “Let me be<br />
your last disciple; initiate me. I had come to ask<br />
a question, but now there is no question – before<br />
your love, all questions disappear. And I don’t<br />
want to miss this opportunity to be initiated by<br />
you.”<br />
Buddha initiated the man. And he asked again,<br />
“Is there anyone still holding some question?<br />
Because it will be very difficult for me... if I pass<br />
the third stage, if I have left the heart and moved<br />
into pure consciousness, the fourth state, it will<br />
be difficult for me – even if I want to return. So<br />
please, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate<br />
– ask them.” They said, “We feel already very<br />
sad and sorry because this man unnecessarily<br />
disturbed you. This is not a moment to disturb<br />
you, this is a moment to be silent – so silent<br />
that when you dissolve your consciousness,<br />
something of it becomes part of us, too.” He said<br />
goodbye again and entered into the fourth state.<br />
The story is very symbolic.... Up to this point<br />
it is absolutely historical. But in the East it is a<br />
tradition that what cannot be said in ordinary<br />
ways, can be related in parables, in stories. The<br />
story is:<br />
As Buddha died, the trees that were dying, the<br />
trees whose leaves had become pale, suddenly<br />
became green; out of season, bushes, plants and<br />
trees burst into flower. There was a tremendous<br />
impact from his death – people who had been<br />
with him for decades and had not become<br />
enlightened, became enlightened in that<br />
moment. Just as he dropped the body and his<br />
consciousness became unimprisoned, it spread<br />
all over. Whoever was receptive, according to his<br />
receptivity, he was fulfilled. Even the trees were<br />
not unaware. When he was dying the birds were<br />
silent, and when he died they started singing<br />
their songs of joy. Whenever an enlightened<br />
man dies, the whole world feels a rain of love, of<br />
consciousness, of blissfulness, of peace.<br />
The Rebellious Spirit<br />
Chapter #26<br />
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
13<br />
MAY<br />
2015
nEW cONTEST<br />
Suggest a Headline<br />
Suggest a headline for this photo. The<br />
most appropriate entry will be awarded<br />
with one year’s subscription to Osho<br />
World magazine.<br />
Send your entry before 18 May 2015.<br />
NOTE: The decision of the Editor<br />
of Osho World will be final and no<br />
objection will be entertained.<br />
SEND YOUR ENTRY TODAY!<br />
Email: contact@oshoworld.com<br />
Response for Spiritual Caption Contest<br />
You, the readers of Osho World magazine,<br />
responded very enthusiastically for the Caption<br />
Contest with spirited and varied entries from<br />
India and abroad. After musing over some of the<br />
outstanding ones, here is the best one from Baskar<br />
Lingam R :<br />
Outside World is beautiful when<br />
inside world is beautiful.<br />
Well done Baskar Lingam R! You get a one year’s<br />
subscription to your favourite magazine.<br />
Thank you all you entered! Among the<br />
outstanding entries are:<br />
1. The absurdness of the world through a pin hole...<br />
-Manoj Pehlwan<br />
2. Life : In the eyes of meditation.<br />
-Swami Aatmosharan<br />
3. There is only one truth but different ways to look<br />
& reach it<br />
-Ranjith<br />
4. “Meditation; a path to uninterrupted vision”<br />
-Pushyamitra<br />
5. O........sh...........O<br />
Be ‘Shunya’...to see ‘Shunya’.<br />
-Prem Nanda<br />
6. Life is to laugh and discover.........<br />
-Ma Lavanya, Pune<br />
7. Just live & laugh..No matter who is laughing<br />
-Sumit Sharma, Pathankot, Punjab<br />
8. United in vision!! The Right The Left!<br />
-Robinson Lakra, Vadodara, Gujarat
LEAD<br />
Tobacco<br />
STORY<br />
The fatal weed<br />
REAL KILLER: TOBACCO<br />
The recent controversy that tobacco is not injurious to health has upset all studies to the<br />
contrary and shocked the public as governments crack down on tobacco smoking. On<br />
World No Tobacco Day, 31 May, Osho points out some unknown aspects of this weed.<br />
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
15<br />
World No-Tobacco Day: 31 May<br />
Public health activists were eagerly awaiting<br />
the implementation of new health warnings<br />
on cigarette packs that were to come into<br />
force from, April 1. Instead, on the eve of their<br />
implementation, the Indian government announced<br />
that the amendments to the Cigarettes and Other<br />
Tobacco Products (Packaging and Labelling) Rules,<br />
2008, which sought to increase the size of health<br />
warnings from the current 40% to 85% of the<br />
packets’ surface area would be kept “in abeyance”.<br />
The reason given was that there was no Indian<br />
study to confirm that the use of tobacco products<br />
leads to cancer and that this was in the interests of<br />
bidi workers in the tobacco industry.<br />
The enhanced labelling requirements have been<br />
adopted by a number of countries such as Nepal<br />
(where the ‘warning coverage’ is of 90% of<br />
the display area on packs), Thailand (85%) and<br />
Australia (82.5%). These amendments were passed<br />
following the recommendations from an expert<br />
group constituted by the Union Ministry of Health<br />
and Family Welfare and were based on evidence<br />
that larger warnings, with a mixture of pictures<br />
and words, served as a stronger deterrent to<br />
tobacco use.<br />
There are, indeed, numerous studies including<br />
those commissioned by the government of India’s<br />
Health Ministry that show a link between tobacco<br />
use and various diseases, including cancer of the<br />
lungs and mouth. The tobacco industry’s influence<br />
on scientific research as well as government<br />
regulation and policy is an important part of the<br />
tobacco story.<br />
(The Economic Times)<br />
MAY<br />
2015
CAN’T TOLERATE<br />
TOBACCO SMELL – OSHO<br />
You don’t have to transcend anything. You<br />
have to live everything that is natural to you,<br />
and live it fully, without any inhibition –<br />
joyously, aesthetically. Just by living it deeply, a<br />
transcendence will come.<br />
You are not to transcend anything. Remember<br />
my words. A transcendence will come by itself,<br />
and when it appears by itself it is such a release<br />
and such a freedom.<br />
If you try to transcend, you are going to repress,<br />
and repression is the sole reason why people<br />
cannot transcend; so you get into a vicious<br />
circle. You want to transcend, so you repress,<br />
and because you repress you cannot transcend,<br />
so you repress more. As you repress more, you<br />
become more incapable of transcendence.<br />
Live it out fully, without any condemnation,<br />
without any religion interfering with your life.<br />
Live it out naturally, intensely, totally – and a<br />
transcendence comes. It is not your doing, it is a<br />
happening. And when it comes by itself, there is<br />
no repression, there is no antagonism.<br />
You are above all those things that you wanted<br />
to transcend – for example, sex. But a real<br />
transcendence does not mean that you cannot<br />
make love. Of course your love will have a<br />
totally different quality. It will not be sexual,<br />
it will not be a biological urge, it will not be<br />
animalistic; it will be simply a play between two<br />
human energies.<br />
If transcendence comes by itself, then many<br />
things, more or less, disappear. But anything<br />
that disappears – you are not against it. You<br />
can still enjoy it. For example, in a state of<br />
transcendence you are not a food addict, but<br />
that does not mean that you cannot enjoy, once<br />
in a while, going to a Chinese restaurant.<br />
Transcendence makes you free; it does not give<br />
you a new bondage: first you were so addicted<br />
that you had to go, now you are so addicted<br />
that you cannot go. Transcendence means that<br />
now all this addiction is gone – you can go, you<br />
may not go. You are neither against nor for.<br />
You may be smoking. Transcendence does not<br />
mean that once in a while with friends you<br />
cannot smoke a cigarette. I don’t think that<br />
a cigarette, once in a while, will destroy your<br />
spirituality. And if it destroys it, then that<br />
spirituality is not worthwhile.<br />
I cannot smoke – not because of transcendence<br />
but because of my breathing disorder. I have<br />
no antagonism against poor cigarettes; it is<br />
just the smell of tobacco I cannot tolerate, the<br />
smoke I cannot inhale. But that is a problem<br />
with my body; it is my allergy. But when I see<br />
somebody smoking I don’t feel that this man is<br />
condemned forever, is going to fall into hellfire.<br />
No condemnation arises in me, because what<br />
he is doing is simply playing a game. Being<br />
alone, finding nothing else to do and being<br />
told continually by his parents and the society<br />
that it is better to do something rather than<br />
nothing... so the poor man is doing something<br />
rather than nothing. He is at least smoking.<br />
Transcendence is a very childlike state.<br />
My grandfather used to smoke cigars and<br />
cheroots, and he would send me to get his cigar<br />
and lighter. And rather than bringing both, I<br />
would take the cigar in my mouth, light it and<br />
bring it to him. He said, “This is not right.<br />
I had asked you to bring the cigar and the<br />
lighter.”<br />
I said, “When I can bring one, which does the<br />
work for both... I am not stupid.”<br />
He said, “That I know. But remember, don’t<br />
learn this habit.”<br />
I said, “Don’t be worried. Seeing you cough<br />
continually the whole night, it is enough. I don’t<br />
have to go through the experience to learn it. I<br />
learn from others’ experience too.”<br />
His doctors keep warning to him, “Drop these
transcendence comes out of your experience. You see the futility of<br />
something and the addiction drops. Then once in a while, just for a change,<br />
if you want to smoke I don’t see any harm; if you want to make love I don’t<br />
see any harm. The harm is in the addiction – the harm is not in the act. And<br />
transcendence is not concerned with the act; transcendence is concerned<br />
with the addiction<br />
cigars.” But it was impossible for him... a whole<br />
life’s addiction. He was prepared to suffer – to<br />
cough and not to sleep well. I said, “Seeing you<br />
is enough prevention for me, and just one puff<br />
that I take when I light your cigar brings tears<br />
to my eyes. It is enough just to experience what<br />
kind of enjoyment you must have.”<br />
The people you know as saints are not<br />
childlike. They are addicted as much as others;<br />
their addictions have just become reversed.<br />
Somebody is addicted to sex – they are<br />
addicted to no-sex. Somebody is addicted to<br />
smoking – they are addicted to no-smoking.<br />
Transcendence is a state of no-addiction... just<br />
a childlike playfulness. There is no sin in sex.<br />
Just living it intensely, by and by you transcend,<br />
just the way you transcend playing tennis. One<br />
day you discard the whole thing, “Enough is<br />
enough!” You transcend football, you transcend<br />
all kinds of things, and nobody calls you a saint.<br />
To me transcendence comes out of your<br />
experience. You see the futility of something<br />
and the addiction drops. Then once in a while,<br />
just for a change, if you want to smoke I don’t<br />
see any harm; if you want to make love I don’t<br />
see any harm. The harm is in the addiction –<br />
the harm is not in the act. And transcendence<br />
is not concerned with the act; transcendence<br />
is concerned with the addiction. And to be<br />
completely unaddicted gives one an immense<br />
freedom and satisfaction.<br />
Beyond Psychology<br />
Chapter #25<br />
SMOKE OUT TENSION<br />
NOT WITH TOBACCO<br />
I say change your being and then things will<br />
start changing.<br />
Why is so much sex needed? Because you are<br />
tense, sex becomes a release. Your tensions are<br />
released through it – you feel relaxed, you can<br />
go to sleep; if you repress it, you remain tense.<br />
And if you repress sex – the only release, the<br />
only possibility of release – what will happen?<br />
You will go mad. Where will you release your<br />
tensions then?<br />
You eat food; it is needed by the body, and the<br />
body rejects only things which are not needed.<br />
Whatever you eat is somehow needed by the<br />
body. If you consume animal food, if you have<br />
non-vegetarian food, your mind, your body,<br />
your whole being is violent. And it is needed.<br />
don’t change it otherwise your violence will<br />
have to find another channel.<br />
Change yourself and food will change, clothes<br />
will change, sex will change. But change should<br />
come from the innermost core, it should not<br />
come from the periphery. And all turmoil is on<br />
the periphery; deep down there is no turmoil.<br />
You are just like the sea – go and watch the sea.<br />
All the turmoil, all the waves clashing, is just<br />
on the surface; deep, the deeper you go, there is<br />
more and more calm. At the deepest part in the<br />
sea there is no turmoil, not a single wave.<br />
First go deeper into your sea so you achieve a<br />
calm crystallisation, so you achieve the point<br />
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
17<br />
MAY<br />
2015
substitute for the mother’s breast, and food is<br />
relaxing. You cannot go to sleep on a hungry<br />
stomach, it is difficult to get sleep. When the<br />
stomach is full you feel sleepy, the body needs<br />
rest. So whenever the child takes the breast<br />
in his mouth, food is flowing, warmth, love.<br />
He is relaxed, he need not worry; tensions are<br />
relaxed. The thumb is just a substitute for the<br />
breast; it is not giving milk, it is a false thing,<br />
but still it gives the feeling.<br />
where no disturbance ever reaches. Stand<br />
there. From there every change comes, every<br />
transformation occurs. Once you are there<br />
you have become a master; Now whatever<br />
is unnecessary can be dropped, and can be<br />
dropped without any struggle and fight.<br />
Whenever you drop something after a fight,<br />
it is never dropped. You can drop smoking<br />
by fighting, and then you will start doing<br />
something else which will become a substitute.<br />
You may start chewing gum, it is the same;<br />
You may start chewing paan, it is the same,<br />
there is no difference. You need something<br />
to do with your mouth – smoking, chewing,<br />
anything. When your mouth keeps working,<br />
you feel at ease because through the mouth<br />
tensions are released. So whenever a man<br />
feels tense he starts smoking. Why is it that<br />
through smoking or chewing gum or tobacco<br />
tensions are released? Just look at a small child.<br />
Whenever he feels tense he will put his hand<br />
in his mouth, he will start chewing his own<br />
hand. This is his substitute for smoking. And<br />
why does he feel good when his thumb is in his<br />
mouth? Why does the child feel good and go<br />
to sleep? This is the way of almost all children.<br />
Whenever they feel sleep is not coming they<br />
put the thumb inside the mouth, feel at ease,<br />
and fall asleep. Why? The thumb becomes a<br />
When this child grows, if he takes his thumb<br />
in public you will think he is foolish, so he<br />
takes a cigarette. A cigarette is not foolish,<br />
it is accepted. It is just the thumb, and more<br />
harmful than the thumb. It is better if you<br />
smoke your thumb, go on smoking to your<br />
grave; it is not harmful, it is better. No harm<br />
is done but then people think you are childish,<br />
juvenile, then people think what you are doing<br />
is stupid. But there is a need so it has to be<br />
substituted.<br />
In countries where breast-feeding has stopped,<br />
more smoking will automatically be there.<br />
That’s why the West smokes more than the<br />
East – because no mother is ready to give her<br />
breast to the child because the shape is lost. So<br />
in the West smoking is increasing more and<br />
more; even small children are smoking.<br />
I have heard that one mother said to her child,<br />
“I don’t want neighbours to tell me that you<br />
have started smoking. Be truthful and whenever<br />
you start smoking, tell me.” The child said,<br />
“Don’t bother Mother, I have already stopped.<br />
It is one year now, that I have stopped smoking.<br />
It is one year now so don’t you bother, don’t you<br />
get worried about it.”<br />
Small children smoking, and the mother is not<br />
aware that it is because the breast has been<br />
taken away. In all primitive communities a<br />
seven-year-old child, or even an eight or nineyear-old<br />
child, will continue breast-feeding.<br />
Then there is a satisfaction and smoking will
The problem is that you are tense, so the goal should be how to be non-tense,<br />
smoking or not smoking. Meditate. Relax your tensions without any object<br />
into the sky, allow catharsis to happen. When you are non-tense these things<br />
will become absurd, foolish, and they will drop. Food will change, your<br />
lifestyle will change<br />
not be so necessary. That’s why in primitive<br />
communities men are not so interested in<br />
women’s breasts; there is no problem that<br />
somebody will attack them. Nobody looks at<br />
the breasts. If you had been given the breast<br />
for ten years continuously, you would get fed<br />
up and bored, you would say, “Stop now!”<br />
But every child has been taken away from the<br />
breast prematurely, and that remains a wound.<br />
So all civilised countries are obsessed with<br />
breasts. Even an old man, dying, is obsessed<br />
with breasts, goes on searching for breasts. This<br />
seems mad, and it is, but the basic cause is there<br />
– children should be given the breast otherwise<br />
they will become addicted to it, their whole<br />
life they will be in search of it. You cannot stop<br />
smoking directly because it has many related<br />
things, implications. You are tense, and if you<br />
stop smoking you will start something else and<br />
the alternative may be more harmful. Don’t go<br />
on escaping problems, face them. The problem<br />
is that you are tense, so the goal should be how<br />
to be non-tense, smoking or not smoking.<br />
Meditate. Relax your tensions without any<br />
object into the sky, allow catharsis to happen.<br />
When you are non-tense these things will<br />
become absurd, foolish, and they will drop.<br />
Food will change, your lifestyle will change. But<br />
my insistence is on you.<br />
Character is secondary, behaviour is secondary,<br />
the essential you is the primary thing. Don’t pay<br />
too much attention to what you do, pay more<br />
attention to what you are; being should become<br />
the focus, and doing should be left to itself.<br />
When being changes, doing follows.<br />
START MEDITATING TO<br />
STOP SMOKING<br />
A Bird on the Wing<br />
Chapter #6<br />
Just the other day, because I told Hasya not<br />
to unnecessarily struggle with dropping<br />
cigarettes – her entire life she has been<br />
smoking – many others who had already<br />
dropped, they immediately jumped! And many<br />
who had never smoked, they started smoking,<br />
perhaps thinking that this is a device towards<br />
Buddhahood. You are all Buddhas, but don’t be<br />
idiot Buddhas.<br />
Today the whole place is full of tobacco smell.<br />
I don’t want this place to be filled with tobacco<br />
smell. It has been so clean, and if you, many<br />
of you start smoking, you will bring the smell<br />
here. So those who have never smoked, simply<br />
stop. Those who have stopped and already were<br />
out of the withdrawal symptoms, should not<br />
start again. It was specially meant for Hasya<br />
and Chitten, who have been going through<br />
withdrawal symptoms. When I entered<br />
yesterday and looked at Chitten, he was looking<br />
so sad, so dead. I wondered what was the<br />
matter, because I was not aware that he was<br />
also following Hasya. And when I said that<br />
Hasya can smoke, and there is no need to be<br />
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
19<br />
MAY<br />
2015
worried... What does it matter if you live two<br />
years longer, or two years less? You will never<br />
know the difference. Nobody will know the<br />
difference, that Hasya lived two years less.<br />
So except Chitten and Hasya, everybody has to<br />
come back. Use your own intelligence.<br />
When I told Hasya to smoke, Chitten had a<br />
great smile on his face. I wondered what was<br />
happening to him, because Hasya’s withdrawal<br />
symptoms cannot affect Chitten. Later on I<br />
got to know that he was on the same trip. Just<br />
hearing that he is free to smoke was enough<br />
to bring a great smile to him – he has not<br />
smoked yet, but all the withdrawal symptoms<br />
disappeared! Don’t be unnecessarily stupid. If<br />
necessary, it is fine, but unnecessarily stupid,<br />
that is too much!<br />
And remember, I should never smell tobacco<br />
in Buddha Hall. Even Hasya and Chitten,<br />
they can smoke wherever they want, but before<br />
coming to Buddha Hall they will change their<br />
clothes, take a shower and wash their mouths.<br />
The cigarette is not a device for Buddhahood. It<br />
is simply a kindness, not to unnecessarily harass<br />
you, but it is not for others to follow. They<br />
are already good, there is no need for them to<br />
start smoking. It is poison, it is destructive. It<br />
cannot destroy your Buddhahood, but it shows<br />
your unintelligent habits. But if they have been<br />
formed a long time ago – for years – it will<br />
take too much time to give up bad habits. I will<br />
allow you to become a Buddha smoking, but<br />
this is not the rule, this is only the exception.<br />
Still you will look foolish, when you become a<br />
Buddha with your cigarettes. You yourself will<br />
think, “What am I doing? Being a Buddha...”<br />
One man used to come to me about thirty years<br />
ago. He wanted somehow to drop his smoking<br />
habit. I said, “It is not difficult, it is simply a<br />
question of determination, slight willpower.<br />
What the cigarette is giving to you – a certain<br />
poison, nicotine – that keeps you feeling a<br />
certain well-being for a few minutes, meditation<br />
can do for twenty-four hours without any<br />
nicotine.” He started meditating, he dropped<br />
the cigarettes – not with force. They dropped<br />
on their own as his meditation became deeper.<br />
Before you start smoking a cigarette, remember:<br />
it is going to create unhealthiness in you,<br />
in your lungs, and a shorter life. And most<br />
importantly, it takes away your drive, your<br />
urgency towards meditation. You relax with<br />
your cigarette, then what is the need of the rest<br />
that Hyakujo talks about. The nicotine gives<br />
some restfulness. There is no need for any<br />
meditation – just more and more cigarettes.<br />
I am not a man who is dogmatic in any way,<br />
but I will not put you in any discomfort. If you<br />
become sad and dull, and you start losing your<br />
zest for life, then it is fine, continue with the<br />
cigarettes. But remember, the responsibility is<br />
now greater on you to get into meditation. Only<br />
if in meditation you can get a deeper rest than<br />
nicotine can give you, will dropping cigarettes<br />
be easy. But two fools are in trouble. Why are<br />
other idiots, who are almost out of the trouble,<br />
immediately jump into it? Before withdrawal<br />
symptoms, you withdraw from the cigarettes.<br />
So anybody who has started, stop immediately.<br />
And anybody who has already stopped before,<br />
and has overcome the withdrawal symptoms,<br />
should not start again.<br />
Always interpret whatever I say as my<br />
compassion and my love. I don’t want you to be<br />
in unnecessarily uncomfortable states. So if I<br />
make somebody an exception, it does not mean<br />
I am making a rule for everybody.<br />
At least in Buddha Hall air, no smoke smell<br />
should be here. This you should take as a<br />
warning. If I smell the smell again tomorrow, I<br />
will immediately go back.<br />
Hyakujo: The Everest of Zen,<br />
with Basho’s Haikus<br />
Chapter #5
LEAD STORY<br />
Ma Amrit Saraswati<br />
RARE EVENT<br />
MASTER INITIATES HIS MOTHER<br />
Mataji, Osho’s Mother<br />
OSHO<br />
Osho’s mother, lovingly called, Mataji, became his disciple after her<br />
consistent meditation and devotion.<br />
A rare occurrence when the son becomes the guru of his own mother is given here in the<br />
words of Mataji that provides a unique opening for all meditators.<br />
WORLD<br />
21<br />
MAY<br />
2015<br />
Amrit Saraswati, mother of Osho left<br />
Ma her body on 17 th May. Lovingly called<br />
Mataji, she was initiated into sannyas by Osho,<br />
a rare event when a mother becomes a disciple<br />
of her own son.<br />
17 th May is celebrated as the Mahaparinirvana<br />
day of Mataji.<br />
During an interview, Mataji shared:<br />
“Bhagwan never gave any hint to the members<br />
of the family for them to take sannyas, so for<br />
each of us it has been a spontaneous event,<br />
born purely from our soul; it is difficult for me<br />
to narrate that experience, because although<br />
I know what happened to me, I will never be<br />
capable of describing it, not even now.”<br />
“I can say only that in that moment, when he<br />
placed the mala around my neck and bowed to<br />
my feet, I had the clear sensation that he was<br />
no longer my son but only my Master. Our<br />
primogenital relationship had ended, and now<br />
another relationship was taking place, the one<br />
between disciple and Master. He blessed me<br />
in that moment, and lifted my hand so that I<br />
could bless him too, and then it was all over; it<br />
was a sort of farewell between son and mother,<br />
and from now on another story was starting.”<br />
It is a strange phenomenon. Very rarely does<br />
it happen that a mother comes to become a<br />
disciple of her own son.<br />
Osho says “When my mother came to be<br />
initiated by me, I touched her feet because she
proved to be a rare mother. To bow down to<br />
your own son is really arduous and hard. It<br />
is almost impossible to touch the feet of your<br />
own son – it needs great courage. It needs great<br />
risk to drop all your ego. I touched her feet<br />
not because she is my mother, I touched her<br />
feet because she dared! It is rare, happens only<br />
once in a while. And I touched her feet also for<br />
another thing: because after that she would<br />
not be my mother and I would not be her son.<br />
The account has to be closed as beautifully as<br />
possible.”<br />
A MIRACLE IN WOMB<br />
My mother was just telling me yesterday... that<br />
when I was five months old in her womb, a<br />
miracle happened.<br />
She was going from my father’s house to her<br />
father’s house; and it was the rainy season. It<br />
is customary in India for the first child to be<br />
born at the maternal father’s home, so although<br />
it was the rainy season and very difficult - no<br />
roads, and she had to go on a horse - the sooner<br />
she went, the better; if she waited longer then it<br />
would have become more difficult, so she went<br />
with one of her cousin-brothers.<br />
In the middle of the journey was a big river, the<br />
Narmada. It was in flood. When they reached<br />
the boat, the boatman saw that my mother was<br />
pregnant, and he asked my mother’s cousinbrother,<br />
“What is your relationship?”<br />
He was not aware that he would get into<br />
trouble so he simply said, “We are brother and<br />
sister.”<br />
The boatman refused; he said, “I cannot take<br />
you because your sister is pregnant - that means<br />
you are not two, you are three.”<br />
In India, this is a custom, an old custom -<br />
perhaps it started in the days of Krishna - that<br />
one should not travel on water, particularly in<br />
a boat, with one’s sister’s son. There is a danger<br />
of the boat sinking. The boatman said, “What<br />
guarantee is there that the child in your sister’s<br />
womb is a girl and not a boy? If he is a boy I<br />
don’t want to take the risk - because it is not a<br />
question only of my life, sixty other people are<br />
going in the boat. Either you can come or your<br />
sister can come; both I won’t take.”<br />
On both sides there were hills and jungle, and<br />
the boat used to go only one time a day. In the<br />
morning it would go - and the river is really<br />
vast at that point - and then it would return<br />
by the evening. The next morning it would go<br />
again, the same boat. So either my mother had<br />
to remain on this side, which was dangerous,<br />
or go on that side, which was just as dangerous.<br />
So for three days they continued to ask him,<br />
beg him, saying that she was pregnant and he<br />
should be kind.<br />
He said, “I can’t help it - this is not done. If<br />
you can give me a guarantee that it is not a boy<br />
then I can take you; but how can you give me a<br />
guarantee?”<br />
So for three days they had to stay in a temple<br />
there. In that temple lived a saint, very famous<br />
in those days in that area. Now, around that<br />
temple there has arisen a city in the memory<br />
of that saint, Saikheda. Saikheda means “the<br />
village of the saint.” Sai means the saint; he was<br />
known as Sai Baba. It is not the same Sai Baba<br />
who became world-famous - Sai Baba of Shirdi<br />
- but they were contemporaries.<br />
Sai Baba of Shirdi became world-famous<br />
because of the simple coincidence that Shirdi is<br />
near Bombay, and all the celebrities and the rich<br />
people of Bombay started going to Sai Baba<br />
of Shirdi. And the richer you are, the more<br />
famous you are, the more successful you are, the<br />
more you are in need of something to give you<br />
fulfilment, because all your success, your riches,<br />
your fame has brought you nothing. These are<br />
the emptiest people in the world, the hollowest.<br />
And because of Bombay being a world center,
soon Sai Baba of Shirdi’s name started reaching<br />
outside India, and so many miracles were<br />
created around him.<br />
The same was the situation with this Sai Baba<br />
who lived in that temple. Finally my mother<br />
had to ask Sai Baba, “Can you do something?<br />
For three days we have been here. I am<br />
pregnant and my brother has told the boatman<br />
that he is my brother, and he won’t take us in<br />
the boat. Now, unless you do something, say<br />
something to that boatman, we are in a fix.<br />
What to do? My brother cannot leave me here<br />
alone; I cannot go alone to the other side. On<br />
both sides are wild jungles and forests, and for<br />
at least twenty-four hours I will have to wait<br />
alone.”<br />
I never met Sai Baba, but in a way I did meet<br />
him; I was five months old. He just touched my<br />
mother’s belly. My mother said, “What are your<br />
doing?”<br />
He said, “I am touching the feet of your child.”<br />
The boatman saw this and said, “What are you<br />
doing, Baba? You have never touched anybody’s<br />
feet.”<br />
And Baba said, “This is not anybody; and you<br />
are a fool - you should take them to the other<br />
side. Don’t be worried. The soul that is within<br />
this womb is capable of saving thousands of<br />
people, so don’t be worried about your sixty<br />
people - take her.”<br />
So my mother said, “At that time I became<br />
aware that I was carrying someone special.”<br />
I said, “As far as I understand, Sai Baba was<br />
a wise man: he really befooled the boatman!<br />
There is no miracle, there is nothing. And boats<br />
don’t sink just because somebody is traveling<br />
with their sister’s son. There is no rationality<br />
in the idea, it is just absurd. Perhaps sometime<br />
accidentally it may have happened and then it<br />
became a routine idea.”<br />
My own understanding is that because in<br />
Krishna’s life his mother’s brother was told by<br />
the astrologers that “one of your sister’s children<br />
will kill you,” he kept his sister and his brotherin-law<br />
in prison. She gave birth to seven<br />
children, seven boys, and he killed them all.<br />
The eighth was Krishna, and of course when<br />
God Himself was born, the locks of the prison<br />
opened up, and the guards fell fast asleep, and<br />
Krishna’s father took him out.<br />
The river Yamuna was the boundary of Kansa’s<br />
kingdom. Kansa was the person who was<br />
killing his sister’s sons in the fear that one of<br />
the sons was going to kill him. The Yamuna<br />
was in flood - and it is one of the biggest rivers<br />
in India. The father of Krishna was very much<br />
afraid, but somehow the child had to be taken<br />
to the other side, to a friend’s house whose wife<br />
had given birth to a girl so he could exchange<br />
them. He could bring the girl back with him<br />
because the next morning Kansa would be<br />
there asking, “Where is the child?” and planning<br />
to kill him. A girl he wouldn’t kill - it had to be<br />
a boy.<br />
But how to cross this river? There was no boat<br />
at night, but it had to be crossed. But when<br />
God can open locks without keys, without<br />
anybody opening them - they simply opened<br />
up, the doors opened up, the guards fell asleep -<br />
God would do something.<br />
So he put the child in a bucket on his head and<br />
passed through the river - something like what<br />
happened to Moses when the ocean parted.<br />
This time it happened in an Indian way. It<br />
could not have happened to Moses because that<br />
ocean was not Indian, but this river was.<br />
As he entered the river, the river started rising<br />
higher. He was very much afraid: what was<br />
happening? He was hoping the river would<br />
subside, but it started rising. It went to the<br />
point where it touched the feet of Krishna, then<br />
it receded. This is the Indian way, it cannot<br />
happen anywhere else. How can the river miss<br />
such a point? When God is born and passing<br />
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
23<br />
MAY<br />
2015
house, but in the rainy season so much water<br />
came that the road was completely like a river,<br />
and the lake and the road became merged into<br />
one. It was almost oceanic; as far as you could<br />
see it was all water. And that year perhaps India<br />
had the biggest floods ever.<br />
Floods ordinarily happen every year in India,<br />
but that year a strange thing was noted, that<br />
floods started reversing the rivers’ flow of water.<br />
The rains were so heavy that the ocean was<br />
not able to take the water as quickly as it was<br />
coming, so the water at the ocean front was<br />
stuck; it started flowing backwards. Where<br />
small rivers fall into big rivers, the big rivers<br />
refused to take the water, because they were not<br />
able even to contain their own water. The small<br />
rivers started moving backwards.<br />
Osho’s Parents both Sannyasins<br />
through her, just giving way is not enough, not<br />
mannerly.<br />
Since that time there has been this idea that<br />
there is a certain antagonism between a person<br />
and his sister’s son, because Krishna killed<br />
Kansa. The river was crossed, it subsided; it<br />
favoured the child. Since then rivers are angry<br />
against maternal uncles - all the rivers of India.<br />
And that superstition exists even today.<br />
I told my mother, “One thing is certain - that<br />
Sai Baba must have been a wise man and had<br />
some sense of humour.” But she wouldn’t listen.<br />
And it became known in the village what had<br />
happened, and to support it, after one month<br />
another thing happened. In life there are so<br />
many coincidences out of which you can make<br />
miracles. Once you are bent upon making a<br />
miracle then any coincidence can be turned into<br />
a miracle.<br />
After one month there was a very great flood,<br />
and in front of my mother’s house in the rainy<br />
season it was almost like a river. There was a<br />
lake, and a small road between the lake and the<br />
I have never seen it - that one also I missed<br />
- but my mother says that it was a strange<br />
phenomenon to see the water moving<br />
backwards. And it started entering houses;<br />
it entered my mother’s house. It was a<br />
double-storeyed house, and the first storey<br />
was completely full of water. Then it started<br />
entering the second storey. Now, there was<br />
nowhere to go, so they were all sitting on the<br />
beds, the highest place that was possible there.<br />
But my mother said, “If Sai Baba was right,<br />
then something will happen.” And it must have<br />
been a coincidence that the water came up to<br />
my mother’s stomach and then receded!<br />
These two miracles happened before I was<br />
born, so I have nothing to do with them. But<br />
they became known; when I was born I was<br />
almost a saint in the village! Everybody was so<br />
respectful; people were touching my feet, even<br />
old people. I was told later on that “the whole<br />
village has accepted you as a saint.”<br />
When I must have been nearabout four I was<br />
the only child in the house - nothing to do, no<br />
school, no place to go. My maternal grandfather<br />
had a multipurpose shop, of all kinds of things.
That was the only shop in the village so every<br />
kind of thing... a very miniature market it<br />
was rather than a shop. So I started playing<br />
with sweets and things, and I don’t know<br />
how it occurred to me... but soon people were<br />
continually coming who were sick; and there<br />
was no doctor, no physician, no hospital, even<br />
for hundreds of miles, no hospital. Somehow<br />
it came to me that if people think of me as a<br />
saint, and they touch my feet, I would start<br />
giving them medicines. And the medicines were<br />
nothing but mixtures of a few sweets, ground<br />
well, powdered, and kept in bottles of different<br />
colours. And of course, people who get fever<br />
or headache or a stomachache don’t die. And<br />
they started getting cured. They were going to<br />
be cured anyway - that was not a miracle, but it<br />
became a miracle.<br />
My nana, my maternal grandfather, started<br />
saying, “You will spoil my shop - now it is a<br />
hospital! The whole day people are coming and<br />
sometimes I even have to give your medicines,<br />
and I have no idea what those medicines are!<br />
You are destroying my sweets and my shop.<br />
But they are getting cured, so no harm, you<br />
continue.”<br />
When I moved after seven years to my<br />
father’s house I dropped that business of<br />
giving medicines, but people from that village,<br />
whenever they used to come, would remind me.<br />
They had already started calling me Doctor<br />
Sahib, and I would say, “Please don’t use<br />
that word here, because I have stopped that<br />
profession completely. In the first place there<br />
are no sweets here; my father has a cloth shop,<br />
I cannot make medicines out of cloth. And<br />
here nobody knows that I can do miracles. First<br />
people have to know, then you can do them;<br />
otherwise you cannot.”<br />
From Misery to Enlightenment<br />
Chapter #14<br />
OSHO’S MOTHER SPEAKS:<br />
CLEAR SENSATION, HE WAS NO<br />
LONGER MY SON<br />
When after two thousands years another Cecil<br />
B. DeMille makes a movie about Bhagwan, very<br />
likely with the title “The Master of Masters”, he will<br />
certainly never use an actress for the character of<br />
the mother who looks like this woman. If Amrit<br />
Saraswati, the mother of our Master would come for<br />
an audition, the director would certainly say: ”Too<br />
ordinary, she is not the right type!” We therefore<br />
hope for another Pasolini who perhaps will be able<br />
to see the mother of Christ in this little woman<br />
who has abandoned every pose, every pretension,<br />
every attitude, and is naturally innocent, luminous,<br />
transparent, and utterly simple.<br />
Why the mother of a Christ is supposed to be<br />
pleasant and shining like a doll is something that has<br />
always completely eluded me (but perhaps works<br />
for the production and sale of the sacred images?).<br />
Even more I should hope for a Miklós Jancsó<br />
or another Akira Kurosawa and their cinematic<br />
technique which in their jargon is called “long<br />
sequences”. This woman in fact does not act, not<br />
even unconsciously, she probably wouldn’t be able<br />
to … She can merely come in and out from a<br />
“sequence plan”, showing only her intense face that<br />
annihilates every language, any word.<br />
She speaks only in Hindi, and she offers you only a<br />
few timeless sentences, with no trace of any artifice<br />
or compliance, to the point that in front of her all<br />
my questions vanish completely, every tentative<br />
attempt to verbalise breaks down miserably, even<br />
worse, it becomes a sort of exercise in futility and<br />
more and more unbearable… I am painfully divided<br />
between the desire to know, to ask her for more<br />
details, to steal (as we usually say) some more<br />
words from her… and the impulse of bowing down<br />
at her feet and to rest there in silence… and today I<br />
will do both these things.<br />
“I have not been the first person of the family<br />
to take sannyas, because my daughters have<br />
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
25<br />
MAY<br />
2015
done it long before me….” Amrit speaks with<br />
a feeble voice, almost transparent, but with an<br />
incredible emotion.<br />
“The day I took sannyas wasn’t because of<br />
a decision, but because on that morning<br />
something happened to me. My son never<br />
asked me to take sannyas, so that morning<br />
I told to those present what was happening<br />
to me in that moment, and someone went<br />
immediately to inform Bhagwan, telling him<br />
that his mother was ready to be initiated, to<br />
which Bhagwan just answered, “Good!”<br />
“Then he sent somebody to bring me into his<br />
presence, but I told him that I wasn’t quite<br />
Once somebody asked Bhagwan<br />
why he bowed to his mother before<br />
initiating her into sannyas. The<br />
Master answered that he simply<br />
wanted to thank her in this way, and<br />
that this was a way to say goodbye<br />
forever, because in that moment she<br />
ceased being his mother.<br />
ready, because I had not taken a shower yet, and<br />
I would need to change my clothes; Bhagwan<br />
sent word that it didn’t matter, and that I<br />
should see him without wasting any time, and<br />
so I went....”<br />
The room seems filled with a palpable emotion,<br />
and in this silence one can only hear the slow<br />
breathing of those present, while I bow at the<br />
feet of the mother and stay there for an eternal<br />
time, crouched at her feet till she speaks again:<br />
“Bhagwan never gave any hint to the members<br />
of the family for them to take sannyas, so for<br />
each of us it has been a spontaneous event,<br />
born purely from our soul; it is difficult for me<br />
to narrate that experience, because although<br />
I know what happened to me, I will never be<br />
capable of describing it, not even now.<br />
I can say only that in that moment, when he<br />
placed the mala around my neck and bowed to<br />
my feet, I had the clear sensation that he was<br />
no longer my son but only my Master. Our<br />
primogenital relationship had ended, and now<br />
another relationship was taking place, the one<br />
between disciple and Master.<br />
He blessed me in that moment, and lifted my<br />
hand so that I could bless him too, and then it<br />
was all over; it was a sort of farewell between<br />
son and mother, and from now on another<br />
story began.”<br />
Q.: “Please talk to me about his childhood…<br />
which one is the fondest memory that you have<br />
about “your child”, about little Mohan?”<br />
A.: “My memories are of a child that never gave<br />
me any problem, never something to worry<br />
about. I took care of many children in my<br />
village, I was like a second mother to many of<br />
them, and sometimes I had to beat them up,<br />
but then little Mohan would come and scold<br />
me, saying that I should not punish them,<br />
that I should never punish any child!” Once<br />
somebody asked Bhagwan why he bowed to<br />
his mother before initiating her into sannyas.<br />
The Master answered that he simply wanted to<br />
thank her in this way, and that this was a way<br />
to say goodbye forever, because in that moment<br />
she ceased being his mother.<br />
The womb that his soul had searched for seven<br />
hundred years (that much time had passed<br />
from his previous reincarnation…) had now<br />
exhausted it’s obligation, and as one day she<br />
had given life to him, now he, her Master, was<br />
initiating the mother to a new life, the life of a
disciple. On that day their earthly connection<br />
was broken, and another deeper spiritual<br />
connection had begun, yet I have the feeling<br />
that the mother is not totally free from her<br />
past, from her function; that she tries to hide<br />
this sentiment with her innocence and infinite<br />
modesty behind the veneration for the Master,<br />
touches me to the bottom of my heart…but I<br />
swallow my tears and I ask:<br />
Q.: “How do you feel when the Master is sick<br />
in his body and can’t leave his bed to come out<br />
and sit with us? Who do you think about then,<br />
about your Master or your son?”<br />
A.: “Yes, sometimes I still have this feeling of<br />
being his mother, and I cannot forget that I<br />
have created his body; when I see his body<br />
so fragile, when he doesn’t come to give his<br />
discourse because his body is not well…then<br />
I cannot help remembering that he is my son.<br />
But even in those moments the palms of my<br />
hands fold in prayer, and I bow in front of him<br />
with my heart in turmoil, incapable as I am to<br />
contain both these emotions: the one of the<br />
mother and the one of the disciple … and then<br />
I cry, I try to hide it…but I cry, and not only<br />
about the delicate health of my Master, but<br />
because my son is sick….”<br />
Again we can feel this silence in the room…<br />
and who will dare to break it? Now you can’t<br />
even hear the people breathing; the intensity of<br />
these feelings has created an instant of absolute<br />
immobility, as if suddenly grace had descended<br />
in this room to dispense a fragment of eternity.<br />
Will you ever forgive me, oh mother, to have<br />
dug out your secret?<br />
My body finds itself bowing again at her feet,<br />
while the presence of the mother seems to<br />
enlighten the first shadows of the night, and<br />
everything, just everything, is frozen in this<br />
moment.<br />
I wish to say thank you, I wish that this instant<br />
would never end; I would like to pray silently at<br />
her feet, I would like to cry and laugh, I would<br />
like to say something to express my gratitude,<br />
I would like to carry with me always this<br />
emotion, this grace, but I don’t do anything at<br />
all, I won’t say a word…<br />
I just stay there, in absolute stillness for an<br />
endless time, to let my head be caressed by<br />
those hands that had caressed His head so<br />
many times; I listen simply to the silent music<br />
of the womb that has created him, the soft<br />
breath of the woman who gave birth to my<br />
Master….<br />
–Swami Svatantra Sarjano<br />
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
27<br />
MAY<br />
2015
OSHO’S INSIGHT<br />
Tantra<br />
merging with<br />
your other half<br />
Tantra misunderstood and tarnished with wrong concepts of black magic and evil.<br />
Osho points out the real meaning and purpose of Tantra for enlightenment.<br />
Man is bisexual – every man, every woman.<br />
Half of you is male and half of you is<br />
female. If you are a woman, then the female<br />
part is on top and the male part is hidden<br />
behind, and vice versa. Once you have become<br />
aware of this, then a new work starts: your<br />
inner woman and inner man can have a meeting<br />
and that meeting can remain absolute. There is<br />
no need to come back from the peak. But the<br />
first vision comes from the outer.<br />
Hence Tantra uses the outer woman, the outer<br />
man, as part of inner work. Once you have<br />
become aware that you have a woman inside<br />
you or a man inside you, then the work takes on<br />
a totally new quality, it starts moving in a new<br />
dimension. Now the meeting has to happen<br />
inside; you have to allow your inner woman and<br />
man to meet.<br />
In India we have had that concept for at least<br />
five thousand years. You may not have seen<br />
the statues of Shiva as Ardhanarishwar:<br />
half man, half woman. That is the picture of<br />
everybody’s being, inner being. You must have<br />
seen Shivalinga: it symbolises the male. But
Man is bisexual – every man, every woman. Half of you is male and half of you<br />
is female. If you are a woman, then the female part is on top and the male part<br />
is hidden behind, and vice versa<br />
Shivalinga is placed in the female sexual organ,<br />
it is not alone; they are together. That again<br />
represents the inner duality, the inner polarity,<br />
but the polarity can meet and merge.<br />
With the outer, the merger will be only for<br />
the moment. Then great frustration and great<br />
misery... and the higher the moment, the deeper<br />
will be the darkness that follows it. But the<br />
meeting can happen inwardly.<br />
First learn that the peak is possible, and then<br />
feel grateful to the woman who has given<br />
you the peak, feel grateful to the man. Tantra<br />
worships the woman as the goddess and the<br />
man as the god. Any woman who helps you<br />
to attain this vision is a goddess, any man that<br />
helps you to attain this vision is a god. Love<br />
becomes sacred because it gives you the first<br />
glimpses of the divine. Then the inner work<br />
starts. You have worked without, now you have<br />
to work within.<br />
Tantra has two phases, two stages: the outer,<br />
the extrovert Tantra, and the inner, the<br />
introvert Tantra. The beginning has to be<br />
always from the without; it is because we are<br />
there, so we have to start from the place we are<br />
and then move inwards. When the inner man<br />
and woman have met and melted, and when<br />
you are no longer divided inside, you have<br />
become one – integrated, crystallised, one –<br />
you have attained. This is enlightenment.<br />
But for the present, right now everything is<br />
upside down. You have completely forgotten<br />
the inner; the outer has become your whole life.<br />
This is as if somebody is standing on his head<br />
and has forgotten completely how to stand<br />
on his feet again. Now, standing on your head<br />
your life will be really difficult. If you want to<br />
go somewhere, if you want to do something,<br />
everything will become very difficult, almost<br />
impossible.<br />
And that is what is happening. People are<br />
upside down, because the without has become<br />
more important than the within. The without<br />
has become all-important, and the within is<br />
completely ignored, forgotten.<br />
The real treasure is within. From the without,<br />
you can get only hints of the inner treasure;<br />
from the without, only arrows pointing to the<br />
innermost core of your being; from without,<br />
only milestones. But don’t cling to a milestone,<br />
and don’t think that this is the goal and you<br />
have arrived.<br />
Remember that the ordinary man is lives an<br />
abnormal life, because his values are topsy turvy.<br />
Money is more important than meditation,<br />
logic is more important than love, the mind is<br />
more important than the heart.<br />
Power over others is more important than<br />
power over one’s own being. Mundane things<br />
are more important than finding some treasures<br />
which death cannot destroy.<br />
The Book of Wisdom<br />
Chapter #26<br />
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SUDDEN ENLIGHTENMENT<br />
WITH TANTRA<br />
Tantra believes, not in gradual development of<br />
the soul, but in sudden enlightenment. Yoga<br />
believes in gradual development: inch by inch,<br />
step by step, you progress towards the final.<br />
Yoga is very arithmetical: for each sin that<br />
you have committed you have to balance<br />
it by a virtuous act; your account has to be<br />
closed completely. Without completing the<br />
account with this world, you cannot become<br />
enlightened. It is a mathematical conception,<br />
scientific, and the mind will say, “Of course,<br />
it has to be so. You committed sins – who is<br />
going to suffer for them? You committed sins,<br />
you have to suffer for them. And only through<br />
suffering can you become liberated. Evil have<br />
been your acts; you have to balance them, you<br />
have to pay for them, and you have to move in<br />
good acts. When the balance is complete, then<br />
only liberation is possible; otherwise, you will<br />
have to be thrown repeatedly to the earth, to<br />
be reborn, to move, to grow.” That is the whole<br />
philosophy of transmigration, rebirth.<br />
Tantra says just the opposite. Tantra is a very<br />
poetic approach, not arithmetical. And tantra<br />
believes in love, not in mathematics; it believes<br />
in sudden enlightenment. And it says that<br />
small teachings teach you about action; great<br />
teachings don’t teach you about how to act, they<br />
teach you what to be, how to be.<br />
Actions are millions, and if you have to pay<br />
for all the actions, it seems almost impossible<br />
that you are ever going to be liberated. You<br />
have lived millions of lives; in each life, millions<br />
of acts you have committed. If you are going<br />
to pay for all those acts, suffer, and you have<br />
to balance each bad act with a good one, it<br />
will take again millions of lives for you. And<br />
meanwhile, in the complex relationship of<br />
life, you will commit many more actions. So<br />
where will this chain end? It seems impossible.<br />
Liberation becomes almost impossible – it<br />
cannot happen.<br />
If this is the way, that inch by inch one has to<br />
grow, then growth seems an impossible dream.<br />
If you understand the attitude of yoga, you<br />
will feel really hopeless. Tantra is a great hope.<br />
Tantra is like an oasis in a world of deserts.<br />
Tantra says this is not the point at all: acts<br />
are not the question. You committed them<br />
Tantra is a very poetic approach, not<br />
arithmetical. And tantra believes in<br />
love, not in mathematics; it believes<br />
in sudden enlightenment. And it<br />
says that small teachings teach you<br />
about action; great teachings don’t<br />
teach you about how to act, they<br />
teach you what to be, how to be<br />
because you were ignorant, they came out<br />
of your ignorance. In fact, tantra says you<br />
are not responsible for them. If somebody is<br />
responsible, then the whole – you may call<br />
it God – God may be responsible, but you<br />
cannot be responsible. Tantra says that even to<br />
take this responsibility is very egoistic. To say,<br />
“I will have to balance, I will have to do good<br />
acts, I will have to liberate myself inch by inch<br />
and step by step,” this too is a very egoistic,<br />
ego-centred attitude. Why do you think you<br />
are responsible? Even if responsibility has to<br />
be somewhere, then it has to be with the divine<br />
himself, with the whole. You have not created<br />
yourself, you have not given birth to yourself.<br />
You have been given birth, you have been<br />
created – then the creator must be responsible,<br />
not you.<br />
And you committed all your actions in
ignorance, you were not aware of what you<br />
were doing, you were completely drunk with<br />
ignorance. You groped in darkness, in darkness<br />
you came into conflict with others, in darkness<br />
you stumbled upon things and something<br />
happened. Tantra says the only thing that is<br />
needed is light, awareness. Not millions of acts<br />
have to be answered; only one thing has to be<br />
done and that is: don’t remain ignorant, become<br />
aware.<br />
Once you become aware, all that belongs to the<br />
world of darkness disappears. It will seem like a<br />
dream, a nightmare. It will not look like reality.<br />
And it has not been a reality, because when you<br />
are deep down unconscious, only dreams can<br />
exist, not reality. You have been dreaming that<br />
you loved. You cannot love.<br />
You are not there to love. You still don’t exist,<br />
Tantra looks at you, at the very<br />
center of your being from where it<br />
comes. Out of the poison of your<br />
ignorance, life cannot come, only<br />
death. Out of your darkness, only<br />
darkness is born. And that seems to be<br />
absolutely natural<br />
you don’t have any centre. How can you love?<br />
You only believe that you love, and then your<br />
love life and the acts concerned with it... it<br />
becomes a dream.<br />
When you awaken out of this dreaming, you<br />
will simply say, “How could I have loved?<br />
Impossible! I was not there in the first place. I<br />
was non-existential in fact.” Without awareness,<br />
what does it mean to say, “I am”? It means<br />
nothing. You are fast asleep, so deeply asleep, as<br />
if you are not there. A person fast asleep, in a<br />
coma in the house – is he really there? There is<br />
no distinction to be made. Whether he is there<br />
or not makes no distinction – he is in a coma.<br />
If thieves come and rob the whole house, will<br />
you call that man responsible who is lying in<br />
a coma, unconscious? Will he be responsible?<br />
Will he be asked and judged: “Thieves came!<br />
What were you doing here?” How can you<br />
make a man responsible who is in a coma,<br />
unconscious?<br />
Tantra says in all your lives you have remained<br />
in a coma – you are not responsible. This is the<br />
first liberation that tantra gives you. And on the<br />
basis of it, many things immediately become<br />
possible. Then you need not wait for millions<br />
of lives – this very moment the door can<br />
open. It is not a gradual process, it is a sudden<br />
awakening – and it has to be so.<br />
Tantra: The Supreme Understanding<br />
Chapter #6<br />
MORAL OR IMMORAL? TANTRA<br />
DOESN’T BOTHER<br />
Tantra is a great teaching. It doesn’t teach about<br />
acts, it teaches only about your being. Who you<br />
are is the point – fast asleep, snoring, or awake?<br />
Who are you – alert, conscious, or moving in<br />
a hypnosis? Are you a sleepwalker? or are you<br />
awake, alert, whatever you do? Do you do it<br />
with self-remembrance? No. It happens – you<br />
don’t know why, from where it comes, from<br />
what part of the unconscious comes an urge<br />
which possesses you, and you have to act.<br />
This act, whatever the society says about<br />
it – moral or immoral, sin or virtue – tantra<br />
doesn’t bother about it. Tantra looks at you,<br />
at the very centre of your being from where it<br />
comes. Out of the poison of your ignorance, life<br />
cannot come, only death. Out of your darkness,<br />
only darkness is born. And that seems to be<br />
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absolutely natural. So what to do? Should<br />
we try to change the acts? Should we try to<br />
become more moral, virtuous, respectable? Or<br />
should we try to change the being? The being<br />
can be changed. There is no need to wait for<br />
it for infinite lives. If you have the intensity of<br />
understanding, if you bring your total effort,<br />
energy, being, to understand it, in that very<br />
intensity, a light suddenly burns in you. A<br />
flame comes up from your being like lightning,<br />
and your whole past and your whole future<br />
is suddenly in your vision – you understand<br />
what has happened, you understand what is<br />
happening, you understand what is going to<br />
happen. Suddenly everything has become clear;<br />
as if it was dark and somebody brought a light,<br />
and suddenly everything is clear.<br />
Tantra believes in burning your inner light. And<br />
tantra says that with that light, the past simply<br />
becomes irrelevant. It never belonged to you.<br />
Of course, it happened, but happened as if in<br />
a dream and you were fast asleep. It happened<br />
– you did many things, good and bad, but they<br />
all happened in unconsciousness, you were not<br />
responsible. And suddenly everything of the<br />
past is burnt down, a fresh and virgin being<br />
arises– this is sudden enlightenment.<br />
Yoga appeals to people because it seems very<br />
businesslike. You can understand Patanjali<br />
easily because it fits with your own mind, the<br />
logical mind, the mathematical thinking. Tilopa<br />
is difficult to comprehend, but Tilopa is rare.<br />
Patanjali’s understanding is common – that’s<br />
why there is so much influence of Patanjali<br />
all through history. People like Tilopa have<br />
simply disappeared without leaving any trace<br />
on the human mind, because they couldn’t find<br />
affinity with you. Patanjali may be very great,<br />
but still he belongs to the same dimension. You<br />
may be a very small thinker, and Patanjali may<br />
be a great thinker, but you belong to the same<br />
dimension. If you make slight effort you can<br />
understand Patanjali; if you make an effort you<br />
can practise Patanjali. Only an effort is needed,<br />
nothing more.<br />
But to understand Tilopa you have to enter<br />
into a completely unknown dimension. To<br />
understand Tilopa you have to move through<br />
chaos. He will destroy all your conceptions,<br />
all your mathematics, all your logic, all your<br />
philosophy. He will simply destroy you<br />
completely. He will not be satisfied unless<br />
you are completely destroyed and a new being<br />
arises. With Patanjali you will be modified,<br />
you will become better and better – and the<br />
process is infinite, you can go on for many lives<br />
becoming better and better. With Tilopa, in a<br />
second, you can reach the ultimate. “Better” is<br />
not the question because he doesn’t think in<br />
degrees.<br />
It is just as if you are standing on top of a hill:<br />
you can take the path of the steps and one by<br />
one you go downwards to the valley, or from<br />
the valley you go to the hill, but by steps. With<br />
Tilopa you simply jump into the abyss, there<br />
are no steps; or you simply spread your wings<br />
and you start flying. With Patanjali you move<br />
in a bullock-cart, very slowly, safe, secure, no<br />
fear of any accident, the bullock-cart always in<br />
control. You can step down any moment, you<br />
can stop at any moment; nothing beyond you,<br />
you remain the master. And the dimension is<br />
horizontal: a bullock-cart moves from A to B,<br />
from B to C, from C to D, but the dimension<br />
is the same, the same plane. With Tilopa, the<br />
dimension changes: it becomes vertical; it is<br />
not from A to B, from B to C; no, it is just like<br />
an aircraft, not like a bullock-cart, not moving<br />
forward but moving upward. With Tilopa you<br />
can transcend time.<br />
With Patanjali you move in time. With Tilopa<br />
eternity is the dimension.<br />
Tantra: The Supreme Understanding<br />
Chapter #6
OSHO’S INSIGHT<br />
Caste System<br />
MANU STARTED IT ALL,<br />
AND IT WENT WRONG<br />
The four castes<br />
OSHO<br />
Caste System has created many social problems, tensions, hatred and violence in India.<br />
Osho explains the origin and purpose of caste system and how it was<br />
manipulated by priests and politicians to preserve their power bases.<br />
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Manu has for five thousand years ruled<br />
over India, particularly its morality, its<br />
caste system, and the harm that he has done to<br />
this country is incalculable. Millions of women<br />
have burned themselves alive because of Manu,<br />
because he prescribes that every wife who is<br />
sincerely faithful to her husband should jump<br />
into the funeral pyre when her husband dies; she<br />
has no right to live any more. Because of him<br />
millions of women down five thousand years have<br />
burned themselves alive. This is so ugly.<br />
It is because of Manu that one fourth of India<br />
has remained untouchable. They are called<br />
the Sudras; they are not accepted as human<br />
beings... subhuman beings. Even their shadow is<br />
considered to be untouchable. If a Sudra passes<br />
by and his shadow falls on you, you have to<br />
immediately bathe to purify yourself.<br />
These Sudras have been killed for any small<br />
reason: if they have entered into a street which is<br />
prohibited to them, if they have heard even words<br />
of Hindu scriptures, the Vedas.<br />
They were killed because it is prohibited that<br />
they should be educated and they should know<br />
anything about the Vedas; because the Vedas<br />
would become unclean if these poor people know<br />
anything about them.<br />
These Sudras have not been accepted in society.<br />
They cannot live inside the city; they have to live<br />
outside the city. They have remained utterly poor,<br />
and they have been doing all the dirty work of the
society. They don’t have any dignity, or respect.<br />
They are not accepted in any way to be human<br />
beings. You don’t see them. They live outside the<br />
city in their small bamboo huts, which any time<br />
– and this happens even today, any day... Hindus,<br />
high-caste Hindus, go to their villages, burn their<br />
bamboo cottages, burn living beings, rape their<br />
women and kill all of them. And it is because of<br />
Manu.<br />
And if I have put Manu, Krishna and Adolf<br />
Hitler in the same category, then anybody who<br />
says I am wrong, I am prepared to accept the<br />
challenge. Rather than writing to that newspaper<br />
editor – and that cowardly editor immediately<br />
has written an editorial asking for forgiveness,<br />
that it was his fault that he published my<br />
statement. It is not his fault.<br />
My statement is my statement, and I stand by it.<br />
And anybody who thinks that I am wrong I am<br />
ready for any public discussion on the point.<br />
But just conditionings, nobody is ready to look at<br />
the actual facts. No Christian will be hurt by this<br />
because it is not his conditioning. No Muslim will<br />
be hurt by this because it is not his conditioning.<br />
Your only problem in life is the religion in which<br />
you were born, the society in which you were<br />
born, the family in which you were born. But it is<br />
unfortunate there is no other way, at least up to<br />
now; this is the only way.<br />
And because you are born in a certain religion,<br />
in a certain ideology, in a certain morality, you<br />
become so conditioned and so attached to all<br />
these ideas which are not yours. You become<br />
absolutely incapable of seeing what is right and<br />
what is wrong. This is the problem which keeps<br />
you unenlightened; otherwise there is no other<br />
problem.<br />
The Invitation<br />
Chapter #30<br />
ONE OF THE HIGHEST THING–<br />
EXISTENCE<br />
I purposely choose the politicians and the priests.<br />
There are many other things to be remembered.<br />
The priest knows perfectly well that there is no<br />
God. In this world the priest is the only person<br />
who knows there is no God, but his whole<br />
profession depends on this non-existential God.<br />
He cannot tell the truth because all his vested<br />
interests will be lost – not only his, but for<br />
generations to come he will be spoiling the whole<br />
game. He knows the rituals are just hocus-pocus,<br />
that the mantras carry no power, that his theology<br />
is just a cover-up. Nobody else knows it better;<br />
he has studied the scriptures and he knows there<br />
is no evidence of God anywhere. He interprets<br />
the scriptures in such a way that they help his<br />
profession. He goes on making commentaries<br />
on the ancient scriptures, adding more and more<br />
things that are helpful for his profession.<br />
As times change he has to make new additions.<br />
For example, Manu, a five thousand–year–old<br />
thinker, priest, the father of priesthood, in his<br />
Manusmriti – the memoirs of Manu which<br />
Hindus follow word for word – he created the<br />
caste system, one of the ugliest things in existence.<br />
Because of it one-fourth of Hindus have<br />
suffered a long period of slavery, exploitation<br />
and humiliation. They have been turned almost<br />
into subhuman beings – they are called achhoot,<br />
untouchables. They have fallen so much that you<br />
cannot touch them; otherwise you have to bathe<br />
immediately. Even their shadow touching you is<br />
enough to make you impure. Manu reduced onefourth<br />
of the Hindus to eternal slavery it seems.<br />
He managed the highest position in the society<br />
for the priesthood, but he was really shrewd and<br />
clever: he gave all the superiority to brahmins,<br />
but he has not given them riches, nor material,<br />
temporal power. He has divided the castes so<br />
there is no conflict. Temporal power he has<br />
given to the second highest caste: the warriors,
Kshatriyas. They are going to be the kings, they<br />
are going to be the generals, the soldiers, the<br />
fighters, and they will be the second highest<br />
class. And money he has given to the third: the<br />
businessmen, the Vaishyas. To the fourth he has<br />
given nothing – except slavery.<br />
You can see the duplicity... he divides. He does<br />
not give money to Brahmins, or temporal power,<br />
because then three-fourths of the society will<br />
be against them, and it will not be possible to<br />
control. And if they have also spiritual power,<br />
material power, money, then there will be<br />
resentment, anger, violence – there will be riots.<br />
So to Brahmins he gives the holy power – they<br />
are the highest, the holiest – but he does not give<br />
anything temporal to them.<br />
He gives the temporal power to the warriors. It is<br />
satisfying, because they are going to be the kings;<br />
Brahmins cannot be the kings. And who cares<br />
about spiritual power? So let them have spiritual<br />
power; it is almost like having nothing, just a<br />
nominal quality of being superior, so the warriors<br />
are not angry about it. On the contrary, they are<br />
happy that one-fourth of the society will never be<br />
in conflict with them – they are already higher,<br />
they have nothing more to gain. And the warriors<br />
are the most powerful people.<br />
To the third he gives money and all other worldly<br />
things. These are the people who cannot fight,<br />
who are not warriors – but they can earn money,<br />
they can produce wealth.<br />
You will be surprised to know that in India all the<br />
kings, before India became a slave country, were<br />
indebted to the rich people. From where are they<br />
going to get money? – just by borrowing. They<br />
can pay when they invade some other country;<br />
otherwise they have to borrow from the business<br />
people. And the business people are happy;<br />
they have all the material things, money... Not<br />
only that, kings borrow from them, Brahmins<br />
have to depend on them for everything – so let<br />
them believe that they are higher... but basically<br />
the business people weild power, they have the<br />
money. And against these three classes the poor<br />
fourth has no power to fight. They are deprived<br />
of all education, deprived even of living in the<br />
city; they have to live outside the town. They<br />
cannot draw water from the city well – they have<br />
to make their own wells or carry water from<br />
the river. They are completely cut off from the<br />
society. They have just to come and serve, and<br />
do all the ugliest things that nobody else wants<br />
to do. And three powerful sections are there<br />
to keep repressing them; they have money, and<br />
power, they have spiritual heights – they are the<br />
representatives of God.<br />
For five thousand years they have maintained<br />
this – and they have made the fourth, the slaves,<br />
believe that you are born slaves because of your<br />
evil acts in the past life – this is the punishment.<br />
The Brahmin enjoys his position because of good<br />
acts in his past life. And there is no mobility; one<br />
cannot move from one caste to another caste.<br />
Since Manu, the priests in India have remained<br />
the most anti-revolutionary element – naturally,<br />
because they will lose their superiority. Kings<br />
come to touch their feet, the super rich come to<br />
touch their feet – their ego is fulfilled. And the<br />
same is true around the world – everywhere the<br />
priesthood has maintained its superiority. It is<br />
not so clear-cut as in India, but a subtle division<br />
exists. The priest is superior everywhere, the<br />
warrior is everywhere number two, and the rich<br />
man is number three everywhere. The fourth, the<br />
slave, the servant, is the same everywhere.<br />
These priests go on preaching to every child<br />
a certain kind of mind that keeps the society<br />
running – or stuck. The politicians are in a deep<br />
conspiracy with the priests. The politicians are<br />
full of greed for power, and if they want power,<br />
they want blessings from the priests, because<br />
the priests have a spiritual hold over humanity.<br />
And if a politician goes and touches the feet<br />
of a priest, the followers of the priest will vote<br />
for the politician. There is a conspiracy: the<br />
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politician goes on praising the priest, his religion,<br />
his ideology, and the priests keep blessing the<br />
politician and his ideology. And between these<br />
two powerful groups the whole society is crushed,<br />
sucked.<br />
I know everybody is responsible, but not<br />
everybody is powerful enough to break the circle;<br />
hence I am hitting constantly at the priests and<br />
the politicians.<br />
Beyond Psychology<br />
Chapter #26<br />
SUFFERING UNNECESSARILY,<br />
REBEL AGAINST CASTE<br />
You suffer unnecessarily from the caste system,<br />
rebel against it. These same people have<br />
often tried to kill me. They have disturbed<br />
my meetings, they have thrown stones at me,<br />
they have even stopped my train. They would<br />
not allow the train to go ahead unless I was<br />
thrown out of the train. The same poor people<br />
are so conditioned.... They suffer from their<br />
conditioning, and I am fighting against that<br />
conditioning, and they think I am fighting<br />
against them.I am fighting for them against their<br />
conditioning, but they are so identified with<br />
their conditioning that it is almost impossible to<br />
make them aware of the distinction: that your<br />
conditioning is not you. And by birth nobody is a<br />
Brahmin.<br />
I am reminded of a beautiful old story: One great<br />
seer in the Upanishads is Uddalak. His father<br />
sent Uddalak to a forest university where only<br />
seers were the teachers, and meditation was the<br />
basic teaching. And when Uddalak came back<br />
home after ten, twelve years, his father – who was<br />
a learned scholar, well-respected and well-known<br />
– saw him coming and he ran away out of the<br />
back door. His wife asked, “Where are you going?<br />
Your son is coming.” He said, “I cannot face him;<br />
moreover, I cannot allow him to touch my feet; it<br />
will look very awkward. He has really become a<br />
Brahmin He has become a Brahmin because he<br />
has known the Brahma.” Brahma is the ultimate<br />
life source. “I am only a Brahmin by birth; he has<br />
earned it. If he does not touch my feet, that will<br />
look awkward, if he does touch my feet, that will<br />
look awkward, if I touch his feet that too will<br />
look awkward. It is better for me to escape. I am<br />
not leaving you alone – your son is back. I will<br />
come back home only when I am also a Brahmin<br />
not only by birth, but by experience, by my own<br />
realisation.” Nobody is born a Brahmin, and<br />
nobody is born a warrior, and nobody is born a<br />
Sudra, an untouchable.<br />
The poverty in this country exists because the<br />
religions of this country have been consoling the<br />
poor, just as they have been consoling the poor<br />
in other countries. Their explanations may be<br />
different, but the ultimate result is to console<br />
them: your poverty is not something bad; if you<br />
can patiently go through this fire test, in the<br />
afterlife you will be rewarded a millionfold.<br />
The Rebellious Spirit<br />
Chapter #27<br />
‘HARIJANS! PLEASE ENTER OUR<br />
TEMPLES!’ OSHO<br />
I am simply amazed that Harijans continue to<br />
remain part of Hindu society. For ten thousand<br />
years at least they have been exploited; they<br />
are the most exploited and oppressed part of<br />
humanity. They should get out of Hinduism,<br />
there is no need of any ‘ism’. They don’t have to<br />
be Hindus. It is so undignified that the Hindu<br />
scriptures deny them the right even to read the<br />
scriptures; the Hindu scriptures forbid them to<br />
worship in the temples; they are even forbidden<br />
to touch Hindus. Not even their shadow should<br />
touch any Hindu; otherwise the Hindu has to<br />
bathe to cleanse himself.<br />
And still those poor people go on remaining
part of Hindu society. It seems to be a certain<br />
conspiracy between the Hindu priests and the<br />
government, that the priests are out to protect<br />
their temples and the Harijans, who were<br />
trying ... what harm could they have done? Just<br />
worshipping in the temple ... and if a Hindu<br />
temple does not allow a certain section of society,<br />
then certainly that section should separate<br />
itself from such humiliation.Hindus will realise<br />
the situation only when the Harijans separate,<br />
because they are one-fourth of Hindu society and<br />
they serve the ugliest purposes. Once they leave<br />
the Hindu fold, then the Hindus will understand<br />
who is going to clean their toilets, who is going<br />
to kill, murder and butcher animals, and who is<br />
going to make shoes, and who is going to sweep<br />
the streets. All that is ugly has been imposed on<br />
Harijans.<br />
In fact this gives them great power. Nobody<br />
has ever told them that the work they are<br />
doing is such that if they stop even for seven<br />
days the whole of India will stink. And then<br />
let the Brahmins clean the toilets and the<br />
Shankaracharyas clean the streets – just seven<br />
days will be enough for Hindus to learn the<br />
lesson. Hindus will come to the Harijans and ask<br />
them, “Please enter our temples; without you our<br />
temples are not temples. Purify our temples by<br />
entering them, otherwise the whole society will be<br />
in such a difficult situation.”<br />
Brahmins cannot do such things, nor can other<br />
highclass Hindus. Only one man, Gautam<br />
Buddha, really denied the caste system. And<br />
because of denying the caste system, Buddhism<br />
had to disappear from India. Another person who<br />
denied the caste system was Mahavira, but he<br />
was more diplomatic than Gautam Buddha. He<br />
denied the caste system but continued to use the<br />
Harijans for the same purposes as other Hindus.<br />
That is the reason why Jainism became a small<br />
religion, confined only to the business class.<br />
They could not be Brahmins; Brahmins wouldn’t<br />
allow them. They could not be warriors, the<br />
second highest class, and they did not want to<br />
be Harijans, the fourth class, so only the third<br />
class, business people, was possible. Jainism<br />
compromised, and because of this I call Jainism a<br />
coward’s religion; they cannot exist on their own,<br />
they have to depend on Hindus.<br />
Buddha was absolutely uncompromising. As<br />
long as he lived people gathered around him, his<br />
personal charisma ... but the moment he was<br />
gone people were butchered, murdered, burned,<br />
or driven to become sudras. Most of the Sudras,<br />
the untouchables, come originally from the<br />
followers of Buddha.<br />
In Hinduism there is no possibility to enter any<br />
other class. If you want to enter Hinduism, you<br />
have to become a sudra. Only the fourth class<br />
is available, the higher classes are closed for any<br />
conversion. I hate to say that Jainism proved a<br />
coward’s religion, but if you are certainly different<br />
from Hindus and you don’t believe in the caste<br />
system, then you should not use it.<br />
You should find your own shoemakers; amongst<br />
yourselves you should find the toilet cleaners.<br />
Without this, you don’t matter; you are a<br />
dependent shadow of Hinduism, your revolution<br />
is not great enough.<br />
It is just in the scriptures that you deny the caste<br />
system, but in your life you believe it exactly like<br />
Hindus. Because Buddha did not compromise ...<br />
that is one of the reasons for my respect for the<br />
man. Humanity is one, and anyone who wants<br />
to create divisions of superiority and inferiority<br />
should be put into a psychiatric hospital. He<br />
needs good electric shocks to bring him to his<br />
senses so that he can see that two plus two is<br />
really four.<br />
Zen: The Diamond Thunderbolt<br />
Chapter #3<br />
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
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2015
OSHO’S INSIGHT<br />
children<br />
COPYING PARENTS MAKES<br />
CHILDREN SUFFER<br />
Seeking comfort<br />
Child Welfare and Child Labour make constant negative news.<br />
Osho explains how children should be raised and educated and not exploited.<br />
The parents should be aware of what they<br />
are conditioning their children because<br />
they have lived through that conditioning. What<br />
was their achievement? One thing is absolutely<br />
certain: that they have failed, that their life has<br />
been just a long period of misery and suffering.<br />
So one thing is certain that they should make<br />
the children aware: that, “Don’t copy us, we have<br />
failed. Do anything, but don’t copy us. At least<br />
try something new. Don’t copy us.”<br />
But parents are doing just the opposite. That<br />
is their projection of the ego. The father wants<br />
the child to represent him to the world– to be<br />
more respectable, to be more honoured, to be<br />
more rich– so that the world knows whose son<br />
he is. Even after death the world will remember<br />
him through his son. He is not interested in the<br />
individuality of his son; he is interested in his<br />
own ego projection. That’s why he completely<br />
forgets that he has lived in hell and now he is<br />
preparing his son also to live in the same hell.<br />
Parents have to be very alert and aware. This is<br />
the first thing.<br />
The second thing is that the children should be<br />
protected, watched that they don’t go astray, that<br />
they don’t commit suicide or become addicts
to drugs. They should be protected, but very<br />
delicately and very understandingly.<br />
I asked my father, that “I want to start smoking.”<br />
And I was only thirteen years old. And he said,<br />
“What?– smoking? And you have some guts–<br />
you are asking me? If people want to smoke, and<br />
particularly children, they hide somewhere and<br />
smoke; and you are askingfor my permission?”<br />
I said, “Yes, because I don’t do so many wrong<br />
things. First, smoking; then lying, cheating,<br />
hiding– and if I am caught, then what face will I<br />
Parents expect respect from the<br />
children, but they forget that this<br />
is something mutual. You respect<br />
the children and they will respect<br />
you. You trust the children and they<br />
will trust you. And then there is a<br />
possibility of communication<br />
show to you?<br />
“People are smoking all around. I want to know<br />
what is in it. And I don’t have money for it, and I<br />
want to have the best kind of cigars, cigarettes....<br />
You manage.”<br />
He said, “I have to manage it too?” I said,<br />
“Certainly, do you want me to steal? Do you<br />
want me to beg from neighbours? You have to<br />
arrange it.” He waited for a moment, then he<br />
said, “Yes, perhaps that is the right way. Perhaps<br />
you are right.”<br />
And he arranged, and that was my first and last<br />
experience with smoking. It was simply stupid<br />
and silly to take the dirty smoke inside and out<br />
when pure oxygen is available. And particularly<br />
in my place, it was so beautiful and so windy.<br />
Polluting your own breathing and paying for it,<br />
destroying your own lungs and paying for it.... I<br />
told my father, “It is finished forever. But if you<br />
had not allowed me, perhaps I may have got into<br />
the habit of it. It becomes a challenge. If you say<br />
no, then it becomes a challenge. Then I have to<br />
prove myself.”<br />
Every child has to prove his individuality some<br />
way or other. And perhaps if I had started<br />
smokingfor a few days, I may have become<br />
accustomed to it, addicted to it.<br />
The children should be protected, but given all<br />
opportunities and freedom. That is my second<br />
thing. And the children should be given every<br />
freedom to experience the good, the bad, so they<br />
can decide on their own. You need not have to<br />
say it to them. You need not have to force them<br />
to follow certain rules, regulations. Let them<br />
find their way. You simply watch carefully that<br />
they don’t fall into a ditch.<br />
And third thing: never say anything to your<br />
children that is not your existential experience.<br />
Accept your ignorance. That will give you more<br />
respect, more trust in you, but the parental ego<br />
wants to pretend that they know everything:<br />
they know God, they know heaven, they know<br />
hell. They know everything, and they know<br />
nothing. Sooner or later the children are going<br />
to discover that their parents were lying about<br />
such ultimate things that they... all their trust<br />
and all their love will disappear into their<br />
revenge, hatred.<br />
So the third thing is just tell the children what<br />
you have experienced. And tell them that you<br />
don’t know anything about God. You want to<br />
know, but you don’t know. You are a seeker, and<br />
tell the children, that “You are also to be seekers.<br />
If I find it before you I will tell you. If you find it<br />
before, you tell me. We can always be available to<br />
communicate.”<br />
This is one of the difficult things in the world.<br />
Parents and children are almost living with<br />
such a gap that communication is impossible.<br />
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
39<br />
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2015
Whatever the parents say to the children it<br />
seems like rubbish. Whatever the children say to<br />
parents appears childish.<br />
The third thing means that the parents should<br />
be friends with their children. It is their<br />
responsibility to bridge the gap. Be respectful<br />
to the child. Parents expect respect from the<br />
children, but they forget that this is something<br />
mutual. You respect the children and they will<br />
respect you. You trust the children and they<br />
will trust you. And then there is a possibility of<br />
communication, and a great communication is<br />
needed. But that is possible if the parents are<br />
not lying.<br />
The Last Testament, Vol 2<br />
Chapter #12<br />
SEEING THROUGH PARENTS<br />
Children see very clearly; their eyes are<br />
transparent. But soon they have to lose their<br />
innocence. We force them to lose it. We fill their<br />
heads with such rubbish that their eyes stop<br />
seeing. Every parent is trying, every society is<br />
trying, every church is trying to fill the child’s<br />
mind with inane ideas before he starts becoming<br />
aware on his own; otherwise he will be a rebel.<br />
So by the time you are three or four years old,<br />
things have already started being poured into<br />
you. You are sent to church, you are being taught<br />
religion– as if religion can be taught.<br />
Religion cannot be taught, it can only be<br />
caught. You can catch it only when you are in<br />
the company of a man like Jesus or Buddha.<br />
When you are in the company of a man like<br />
Yoka, Rinzai, Bodhidharma, you can catch it; it<br />
is infectious. But it cannot be taught. A religion<br />
that is taught– it is rubbish. But we are very<br />
interested in making our children Christian,<br />
Hindu, Muslim as soon as possible.<br />
In a better world, in a more human world, at<br />
least up to the age of twenty-one, children<br />
should not be taught any Christianity,<br />
Hinduism, Jainism or Judaism. Up to the age<br />
of twenty-one– when they become capable of<br />
voting– they should be left to inquire on their<br />
own. And I assure you, Christianity, Jainism,<br />
Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, will all disappear<br />
from the world. Just leave children to themselves<br />
up to their twenty-first year and then try to<br />
teach them Christianity. They will raise such<br />
questions that even you will start suspecting<br />
whether Christianity is worth while. But you<br />
force poor children three years of age... They<br />
cannot resist, they cannot protect themselves.<br />
They depend on you for their survival, so you<br />
can do anything.<br />
And this is the greatest crime that can be<br />
done to children. Parents have been criminals<br />
throughout the entire past, and the greatest<br />
crime is that you condition your children’s<br />
minds and you don’t allow them the freedom<br />
to seek, search and inquire for themselves. Of<br />
course, parents have not done it knowingly; their<br />
parents had conditioned them and they were<br />
simply repeating a pattern. And they think that<br />
they are doing it for your own good. In fact, the<br />
greatest crimes have been committed for your<br />
own good. Whenever somebody says, “I am<br />
doing it for your own good,” beware, because<br />
nobody needs to do anything for your own<br />
good.<br />
Yes, parents need to feed you, to clothe you, to<br />
support you, to make you strong in body, to<br />
support you in your inquiry, in your questioning,<br />
to give you every kind of support and protection<br />
so that you can freely inquire. The whole world<br />
will be full of agnostics, inquirers, and that will<br />
be the beginning of a true religion on the earth.<br />
And it has to happen from the very childhood<br />
because it is such a ridiculous waste of time<br />
to first destroy their minds, because then it<br />
becomes very hard, very difficult to uncondition<br />
them. They start resisting because then they<br />
start identifying with their own minds.
Every day I receive questions– rude questions,<br />
ugly questions– because whenever somebody<br />
feels hurt, immediately his conditioned mind<br />
reacts and he writes something in anger.<br />
I am trying to help you to be on your own, to be<br />
free, and you get angry because you don’t want<br />
to be free. You have become accustomed to being<br />
slaves. But you don’t think it is slavery; you<br />
think it is knowledge, it is wisdom. You think<br />
you know the Bible, you know the Gita, you<br />
know the Koran. And when I keep destroying,<br />
negating, you become scared. If all your<br />
knowledge is taken away, what is left? You are<br />
very afraid of nothingness– and that is the true<br />
beginning, that is the beginning of a new birth.<br />
Everybody has to become again a nothing, again<br />
a child, again innocent; only then will you be<br />
able to understand truth.<br />
Children are capable of understanding it, but<br />
they are not capable of understanding that they<br />
understand it. For that you have to wait. But<br />
we can prepare the children. We can use their<br />
capacity to understand to make them more freer,<br />
to make them more adventurous, to make them<br />
more courageous.<br />
If you really love your children you will help<br />
them to go on an adventure so that they can find<br />
God by themselves. It is beautiful to find truth;<br />
it is ugly to carry somebody else’s truth on your<br />
shoulders. It is simply a dead weight. It cripples,<br />
kills; it poisons you.<br />
Walking in Zen, Sitting in Zen<br />
Chapter #3<br />
GOING AGAINST NATURE RUINS<br />
CHILDREN<br />
A child feels alive, active; he wants to run and<br />
dance. The mother tries to force him to go<br />
to sleep. Have you ever thought that this is<br />
asking for the impossible? Can you deliberately<br />
go to sleep– even you? Can even the mother<br />
deliberately go to sleep? When there is no sleep,<br />
what can be done? The child will pretend, he<br />
will close his eyes and pretend, only to open<br />
them as soon as the mother has gone. This is<br />
training him for pretensions and making him<br />
a hypocrite all for absolutely useless things.<br />
Sleep cannot be forced– there is no way to do<br />
it. Otherwise why is there so much insomnia?<br />
Why are so many tranquillisers needed? Why<br />
do people spend the whole night tossing and<br />
turning in bed? And a child is expected to go to<br />
sleep on order, and wake up on order, in order<br />
to be a good child– a perfect child otherwise he<br />
is a bad guy. All those who are natural are bad<br />
guys, and all those who are artificial are perfect.<br />
Now the whole life of this being will suffer. He<br />
will go to this priest and that, this swami and<br />
that, from this master to that, and they will go<br />
on giving him things to do– this and that– but<br />
nothing will be of much help or use because his<br />
entire lifestyle is wrong, nothing can be added<br />
because the whole structure is wrong. The whole<br />
structure has to be dropped and a fresh start<br />
made.<br />
When the Shoe Fits<br />
Chapter #2<br />
MORE IMPORTANT THAN MATHS:<br />
MEDITATION<br />
Certainly, children have to be educated in<br />
mathematics and in logic so that their brains<br />
becomes clear and capable, their genius grows.<br />
They are not to be left like animals. There is<br />
something in the lives of animals but a lot is<br />
missing. There is an innocence in the lives of<br />
animals, but it is of idiocy not of saintliness.<br />
There is a simplicity, but it is compulsive, not<br />
an attainment. Animals are simple because<br />
they cannot become cunning; a saint is simple,<br />
but not because he cannot become cunning<br />
but because he does not become. It is his own<br />
choice. And whatever is your own decision, only<br />
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
41<br />
MAY<br />
2015
of life that are available only to the losers. The<br />
world is gained by those who know how to<br />
win, but the divine can only be attained by<br />
those who also know how to lose. Wealth may<br />
come to those who are the winners, but love<br />
is only for those who are losers. Defeat has its<br />
own victory. But mathematics and logic teach<br />
only how to win; meditation teaches how to<br />
lose. Logic and mathematics offer us the skill<br />
to increase our wealth and possessions in the<br />
world and to expand our empire. Meditation is<br />
the art of expanding the kingdom of the soul, of<br />
expanding the consciousness so that it embraces<br />
the whole universe.<br />
Beyond Thoughts<br />
that puts soul in your life. Animals have souls,<br />
but not in the sense in which man has a soul,<br />
because man makes his own decisions. If you<br />
had not the capacity to be a thief, then what<br />
value is there in you non-stealing? If you had not<br />
the capacity to be angry, what meaning is there<br />
in your compassion? No, you are capable of<br />
doing the opposite but you are not doing it, and<br />
this very decision of yours not to do it, sharpens<br />
and polishes your soul, brings a radiance to it.<br />
So the innocence of the saint is needed, not that<br />
of the animals.<br />
The child has to be educated so that he becomes<br />
aware of all the duplicity and shrewdness of<br />
man, so that he becomes acquainted with<br />
the entire troublesome world of man and<br />
experiences it. But if only this much is done,<br />
an unbalanced personality will be created; the<br />
intellect will be sharp, but his heart will be<br />
empty; mathematics will be clear to him, but<br />
love will be a mist. He will be able to destroy but<br />
he will not be able to create. He will be able to<br />
win but he will not be able to lose.<br />
A man who only knows how to win is not a<br />
total man, because there are certain dimensions<br />
If only the child’s intellect is educated he will<br />
be partially paralysed; there will be no fullness,<br />
no totality in his life. One of his legs will always<br />
be crippled, and his life will be a limping. It is<br />
only because all the others are lame too that no<br />
one recognises the fact. Children have a game<br />
called lame race in which one of their legs is tied<br />
to another child’s leg, so only one of their legs<br />
can run free. This is virtually the way our life is<br />
organized, so that we are running on one leg It<br />
is hardly surprising that we fail, collapse, break<br />
down only. Meditation is the second leg.<br />
We should teach children meditation as we<br />
start educating their intellect. Just as the child<br />
comes to understand science, he should come to<br />
understand religion simultaneously. As his head<br />
grows brighter let his heart also grow full of<br />
light. Let him not grow up only to know about,<br />
let him grow up also to be. Let it not be only his<br />
possessions that grow, let him grow too! Let not<br />
only his exterior expand, let his interiority also<br />
have a depth, just as the trees rise in the sky but<br />
their roots go deep underground. The deeper<br />
the roots go underground the higher the tree<br />
rises in the sky.<br />
Nowhere To Go But In<br />
Chapter #10
OSHO’S INSIGHT<br />
youth<br />
young strong<br />
start meditating<br />
Going Within<br />
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
Frustrated, ill-educated and untrained, jobless and aimless with high energy and no outlet<br />
for constructive contribution, that is the reality of youth today.<br />
43<br />
What is Osho’s vision for youth?<br />
MAY<br />
2015<br />
Buddha was the first in India to introduce<br />
the idea of a young sannyasin. His<br />
emphasis was that youth is the best time to be a<br />
sannyasin because it is great energy that will be<br />
needed for the inner transformation, for inner<br />
work. It can’t be postponed. And who knows<br />
about the future? Who knows about even<br />
tomorrow or even about the next moment? He<br />
says: You are young, you are strong – then this<br />
is the time. It is time to arise. Don’t postpone<br />
the moment.<br />
There is no need to postpone. Don’t say that<br />
“I will wake up only after seventy-five years<br />
of age.” A person who has been dreaming for<br />
seventy-five years will find it very difficult<br />
to wake up after so many years of dreaming.<br />
Dreaming would have become almost second<br />
nature to him. As you grow old you become<br />
increasingly stubborn, less and less flexible.<br />
As you grow old you become more and more<br />
mechanical, less and less alive. Your ways of<br />
life become so settled, your ways of thinking<br />
become so fixated, that it becomes impossible<br />
to change them. That’s why it is so difficult for<br />
an old man to learn any new thing. They say:<br />
You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Children<br />
learn very easily; old men find it very difficult<br />
to learn because they already think they know.<br />
Their whole life’s experience is there, and their<br />
life’s experience starts dominating them; it<br />
keeps dominating them to the very end.
Your whole life, if you are miserly... even in<br />
death you will be the same. As you grow old<br />
you become more and more settled and rigid.<br />
Youth is the best time for inner transformation<br />
because it is the most flexible time. Children<br />
are more flexible than young people, but they<br />
are not so understanding. They need some<br />
experience. Youth is exactly the middle; you are<br />
Buddha says: YOU ARE STRONG, YOU<br />
ARE YOUNG. IT IS TIME TO ARISE. To be<br />
youthful, to be young, to be fresh, is<br />
a great benediction. It is the time of<br />
rebellion. And if you miss your youth,<br />
it will be more and more difficult<br />
later on<br />
no longer a child, no longer ignorant of life and<br />
its ways and not yet settled as an old man. You<br />
are in a state of transition, and this state is the<br />
best time that you can jump out of the wheel<br />
of life and death. Youth is the most significant<br />
time to take any jump, because the jump needs<br />
courage, it needs energy, it needs an element of<br />
risk, it needs daring.<br />
Buddha says: You are strong, you are young. It<br />
is time to arise.<br />
To be youthful, to be young, to be fresh, is a<br />
great benediction. It is the time of rebellion.<br />
And if you miss your youth, it will be<br />
increasingly difficult later on. Not that it is<br />
impossible – it can happen even when you are<br />
old – but it will take more arduous effort and<br />
things will not be so easy. It is just like climbing<br />
a mountain: when you are young it is easier,<br />
when you become old it becomes difficult.<br />
Breathing is hard, rising is tiring, you perspire,<br />
you feel exhausted very soon, you will need<br />
more rest and the journey will seem very long.<br />
When you are young you can run up; you can<br />
run up to the peak and each step will release<br />
more energy in you, because to be young is to<br />
be a reservoir of energy.<br />
Many people come to me and ask why I am<br />
giving sannyas to young people. ... Because of<br />
this: youth is the time for sannyas, because<br />
sannyas is the greatest rebellion; no other<br />
rebellion is so great. Don’t waste your<br />
youthfulness on other ordinary revolutions –<br />
political, social, economic. Don’t waste your life<br />
energy on those stupid games. Put your total<br />
energy, focus your total energy, on a single point<br />
– the spiritual revolution – because that is a<br />
radical change, and other changes can follow<br />
that change.<br />
If your inner being changes, your whole outer<br />
life will be completely different. It will have a<br />
different fragrance, a different beauty, a different<br />
grace. And when your inner being is changed<br />
and becomes a flame of light, you will become<br />
a light unto others too. You will become a<br />
beckoning light, a great herald of a new dawn.<br />
Your very presence will trigger revolutions in<br />
other people’s lives.<br />
Buddha says: So arise! Don’t waste a single<br />
moment! – Lest through irresolution and<br />
idleness you lose the way.<br />
The only danger is irresolution. A life<br />
uncommitted, uninvolved, is not worth<br />
calling life. It is only through commitment,<br />
involvement, that your life attains sharpness,<br />
your intelligence becomes a sword. Through<br />
idleness you gather rust; your sharpness<br />
disappears. You become old even while you are<br />
young.<br />
And if you remain sharp and you remain<br />
rebellious, even when you are old you will not<br />
be old. Only physically you will be old, but your
inner being will remain young. And that is one<br />
of the greatest experiences of life: when your<br />
body becomes old, but your inner being keeps<br />
its youthfulness. That means you have not lost<br />
track of life, that you keep in step with life. You<br />
are not left behind, you are not lagging behind.<br />
The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha,<br />
Vol 8<br />
Chapter #1<br />
MIRACLE BODY REMAINS YOUNG<br />
AS LONG AS IT DOES<br />
There is one kind of youth that is dependent<br />
on the body. It carries a certain intoxication<br />
with it because youth is a novel thing. Old age,<br />
on the other hand, is like a river when the tide<br />
has gone out.<br />
Have you ever noticed a river just before<br />
monsoon, just before the rainy season? It looks<br />
dried up. It is always broken into several tiny<br />
streams and a great area of sandy bottom is<br />
always visible. It is as if the river itself has<br />
departed. There is no trace of the once-swollen<br />
river; there is only the rubbish it has deposited<br />
in its wake. It is as if some event had once taken<br />
place but there is no longer any trace of it and<br />
everything seems desolate.<br />
Have you ever seen a river flooded by the<br />
monsoon? Then there is a sort of mischief in<br />
its flow – it is as if it is drunk with wine, as if<br />
it is unable to walk straight. A river in flood is<br />
intoxicated; a river in flood is in its youth.<br />
The youth of the body is exactly like this.<br />
When all the energies of the body are in flood<br />
a young man has no faith in God. He seems to<br />
have great faith in himself then – he does not<br />
worry about anything at all. He contains so<br />
much excess energy he is drunk with it. There<br />
is no question of bowing down to anyone,<br />
no question of surrendering to anybody. In<br />
youth a man is mad, blind, but his condition is<br />
pardonable, the situation is out of his control;<br />
he is in flood.<br />
The youth of the body comes and then it passes<br />
on. It is like the water from the mountains<br />
flowing through the riverbeds – the water<br />
comes and goes, it does not remain. The energy<br />
of the body is like this because the body is a<br />
momentary thing, it cannot last for long. It is a<br />
miracle that the body remains young as long as<br />
it does.<br />
It is a mystery of mysteries how a rushing<br />
mountain flood can overflow so suddenly and<br />
then drop again so quickly. The flood of energy<br />
to the physical body will subside too. The light<br />
that illuminates the body will soon become<br />
darkness; the sweet music of the body will soon<br />
become a cacophony, and the beauty of the<br />
physical will surely vanish like a dream. The<br />
body you saw as a beautiful oasis will turn into<br />
a desert. It was all a transitory intoxication, all<br />
an illusion you took to be something else. This<br />
is why old age is filled with sadness. What was<br />
once, has disappeared.<br />
The whole phenomenon of youth is like a<br />
dream you see during the night. You dream<br />
of becoming an emperor, of possessing huge<br />
palaces and great piles of gold coins, of ruling<br />
an empire that stretches to distant places – and<br />
suddenly you awaken and the dream vanishes.<br />
For a moment you hardly trust the sorrowful<br />
state you find yourself in – only a moment<br />
before you were a monarch with gold, palaces<br />
and hundreds of servants. But now all that has<br />
disappeared.<br />
Old people always seem somewhat surprised<br />
and puzzled; they cannot grasp what has<br />
happened. Where has all that energy gone?<br />
Where have those sturdy legs gone? Where has<br />
all that self-confidence gone? Where has that<br />
dynamic personality gone? Their life-energy<br />
is at a low ebb; they only see emptiness all<br />
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around. Old people feel empty inside, hollow<br />
within. Only the skeleton of the body remains,<br />
and soon the time of departure will come. An<br />
old man stands in the queue, waiting for death.<br />
The youth of the body is transitory. The<br />
man who puts his trust in it is heading for<br />
disappointment because the death of the body<br />
is a certainty. You will live in deception as long<br />
as you put your faith in the body. And you will<br />
be filled with sorrow when that trust is finally<br />
and positively broken.<br />
Youth is the kind of thing that not only<br />
torments you in youth but in old age as well.<br />
The presence of youth bothers you while you<br />
are young; its absence bothers you when you<br />
are old. And every now and then an old man’s<br />
mind will want to return to the days of its<br />
youth.<br />
There is another kind of youth, the kind about<br />
which Kabir is speaking. It is the youthfulness<br />
of the soul. And there is yet another kind of<br />
youth, the youth of the supreme soul – and that<br />
is everlasting. There, the river never floods and<br />
the water never ebbs, it is always the same.<br />
There is no change; there is perpetuity. And<br />
the intoxication of perpetuity is altogether<br />
different. It is so different, it is of such a<br />
different kind, that no matter how you try to<br />
understand it in relation to the intoxication you<br />
know, you will be wrong. Not only will your<br />
idea be wrong, it will be quite the reverse of the<br />
real thing. It will not only be different, it will<br />
be exactly the opposite of whatever notion you<br />
have.<br />
The Great Secret<br />
Chapter #3<br />
IN OLD TIMES, NO YOUTH<br />
The truth is that youth itself is a new<br />
phenomenon. This youth did not exist in the<br />
old world. In old times there was the child<br />
and then there was the old man, but there was<br />
no youth. Before one attained youth he was<br />
married, married in his very childhood. So the<br />
phenomenon of youth and its problems simply<br />
did not arise in the past, because youth was<br />
bypassed and one entered old age directly from<br />
childhood. Being married at the age of ten, one<br />
did not have the opportunity to be a youth. He<br />
will have been a father of two children by the<br />
time he turns twenty. So he is already saddled<br />
with the responsibilities of an old man. A father<br />
is never young; he is always an old man. This<br />
was the answer that the old days had for the<br />
problems of youth – it just did not allow the<br />
child to go through the period of youth. And<br />
then the children lived with their parents, and<br />
so again there was no problem. Now twenty<br />
to twenty-five thousand – at places, even a<br />
hundred thousand young people live together.<br />
Evidently an altogether new problem has<br />
arisen. So what can we do?<br />
The exponents of sarvodaya suggest that the<br />
universities be disbanded and youngsters<br />
sent back to their villages where they should<br />
receive only primary education – what<br />
Gandhi calls “basic education.” This much<br />
education is enough – that they learn carpentry,<br />
shoemaking, weaving and things like these.<br />
Nothing more is needed.<br />
This country will be ruined if it accepts<br />
Gandhian teachings. Is basic education really<br />
education? It is not education at all, it is really<br />
an escape from education. But for them the<br />
problem is solved; they say that this is how we<br />
can get over the trouble.<br />
We have to grapple with the problem; we<br />
cannot escape it. Now that a new problem has
arisen, it will have to be solved in a new way.<br />
But since the exponents of decadent wisdom<br />
have no answer they plead for a return to the<br />
times when these problems did not exist. I say<br />
that not only India, but the whole world faces<br />
this problem of young people.<br />
All over the world they come together and<br />
have become a class. The old people are not a<br />
class. So we have to think it through and find<br />
a solution. And we have to think some new<br />
thoughts.<br />
My understanding is that going back to the<br />
village and resurrecting the gurukuls – teachers’<br />
family schools – and asking the youngsters<br />
to sit at the feet of the old gurus will not do.<br />
Those times are past, and what the teacher<br />
of old taught is of no use now. We have now<br />
so much to learn that small gurukuls cannot<br />
handle it.<br />
Even the existing universities are proving<br />
inadequate for the task, which is so vast. We<br />
need still bigger universities. We need much<br />
bigger libraries. Vast knowledge has been<br />
coming into being and with such speed that it<br />
has become difficult to communicate it to the<br />
new generation. The gurukul of old cannot do<br />
it; a single old teacher cannot do it. It is just out<br />
of the question.<br />
So the question remains – the question of<br />
educating thousands of tens of thousands of<br />
students. What can we do? The cry of the<br />
obscurantist, the escapist, is: “Just close the<br />
universities and go back to the past.” Gandhi<br />
was very much against universities. He did not<br />
send his own sons to schools and colleges, his<br />
sons remained uneducated. He was so opposed<br />
to universities. He thought that the university<br />
and modern education were diseases to be<br />
shunned.<br />
This whole outlook is the result of inadequate<br />
new thinking on their part. But I say: Work<br />
hard, grapple with the new questions and<br />
find new answers. In my understanding, it<br />
is necessary to bring the new and the old<br />
generations together. Wherever there is a<br />
university campus, a campus of retired elders<br />
should be attached to it. When elders retire<br />
from their active life let them become residents<br />
of a university campus. If there are ten<br />
thousand young people in a university, let there<br />
be ten thousand elders too, and let the two<br />
classes live face-to-face with each other.<br />
Undoubtedly the youngsters will bow down<br />
before the understanding, the experience and<br />
the knowledge of a lifetime that the elders will<br />
bring with them. That is why I say, instead of<br />
escaping, let the elders live together with the<br />
young. It will yield valuable results.<br />
In a university where ten thousand elders,<br />
with the experiences of a lifetime, live with the<br />
young, teach them, play with them, mix with<br />
them and converse with them, there can be no<br />
problems of youth. Let the two generations<br />
encounter each other directly.<br />
There is a great difficulty in this matter. We say<br />
that there are two generations – the old and the<br />
new. But while the new generation is a fact, the<br />
old is not.<br />
The old generation is not gathered together;<br />
it is scattered all over. You can meet the new<br />
generation living together in thousands at one<br />
place, but where can you meet the old? So<br />
bring the old generation together. But then new<br />
questions will arise because the problems are<br />
new. And they will again call for new thinking<br />
and new answers. The difficulty is that we<br />
prefer to go back to the past rather than do<br />
hard work.<br />
Beware of Socialism<br />
Chapter #5<br />
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OSHO’S INSIGHT<br />
DISEASE<br />
CANCER AND MEDITATION<br />
DYING WITH JOY<br />
Treating fatal diseases like cancer with meditation and laughter:<br />
Osho’s insights on why they are caused and how should be treated.<br />
The pseudo masters speak the language of<br />
your desires. They say, “If you meditate,<br />
you will become rich, you will become<br />
successful.” That is absolute nonsense.<br />
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi says to people, “If you<br />
meditate you will become healthy, you will<br />
become rich, you will become successful, you<br />
will become famous. In whatever line you are<br />
working you will be at the top.”<br />
That’s what you want, so you say, “Okay, then it<br />
is not much of a problem to meditate. Fifteen<br />
minutes in the morning, fifteen minutes in the<br />
evening...” just half an hour lost and all success<br />
is yours. This is the most successful formula for<br />
success – and you want to succeed. You want a<br />
thousand and one desires to be fulfilled.<br />
Now, there are masters who say, “Whatever<br />
you want, you will get it through meditation.<br />
Money will pour in. Just ask in deep meditation<br />
and it is going to happen.”<br />
This is speaking the language of your desire.<br />
The truth is just the opposite. If you ask me, if<br />
you really meditate you will be a failure in life,<br />
an utter failure. If you are succeeding, even that<br />
success will disappear because meditation will<br />
make you so relaxed, so non violent, so loving,<br />
so non competitive, so non egoistic, that who<br />
cares for success? Meditation will make you<br />
so joyous that who wants to bother about the<br />
tomorrow? Who wants to stake today for the<br />
tomorrow?<br />
Meditation will make you inwardly rich,<br />
certainly. Inwardly you will become ecstatic, but<br />
outwardly it can’t be guaranteed that you will<br />
become rich, that you will become successful,
that you will become very healthy, that no<br />
disease will ever happen to you. That is all<br />
sheer bullshit!<br />
Maharshi Raman died of cancer, Ramakrishna<br />
Paramahansa died of cancer. Can you find<br />
greater meditators? J. Krishnamurti suffers<br />
from many illnesses; he has been suffering from<br />
severe headache for almost twenty years. The<br />
headache is so severe that sometimes he wants<br />
to hit his head against the wall. Can you find<br />
a greater meditator? Can you find a greater<br />
buddha alive? If J. Krishnamurti suffers from<br />
a headache, if Raman Maharshi dies of cancer,<br />
if Ramakrishna dies of cancer, do you think<br />
meditation is going to give you health? Yes, in<br />
a way it will make you more healthy and more<br />
whole, but only in a very inner way. Deep down<br />
you will be whole, deep down there will be an<br />
inner spiritual health.<br />
Raman is dying of cancer, but his eyes are full<br />
of joy. He dies laughing. This is real health. His<br />
body is in deep agony, but he is just a witness.<br />
This is meditation.<br />
The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha,<br />
Vol 9<br />
Chapter #5<br />
MEDICINE AND MEDITATION:<br />
TAKE CARE OF YOUR SOUL<br />
The word ‘medicine’ comes from the same<br />
root as ‘meditation’. Both come from the same<br />
root – that’s very good; both have something<br />
in common. ‘Medicine’, ‘meditation’, both<br />
come from a root which means to take care<br />
– a caring, loving care. Medicine takes care of<br />
your body, meditation takes care of your soul.<br />
Certainly the Master is a physician, Buddha<br />
used to call himself ‘the physician’. When people<br />
would come and ask him great philosophical<br />
questions he would simply put them aside and<br />
he would say ‘Don’t talk nonsense. I am not<br />
a philosopher, I am a physician.’ Nanak also<br />
used to say ‘I am a Vaidya, I am a physician.<br />
I don’t answer questions, I treat people. I<br />
am not concerned about their questions, I<br />
am concerned with their illnesses, with their<br />
disease.’<br />
In Taoist circles the presence of the Master<br />
is called ‘medicine’, ‘the medicine’. You cannot<br />
find a more medicinal energy anywhere else.<br />
Whenever a man becomes enlightened his<br />
surrounding is therapeutic. Just being in close<br />
contact with him you will be healed. Not that<br />
The word ‘medicine’ comes from<br />
the same root as ‘meditation’. Both<br />
come from the same root – that’s<br />
very good; both have something in<br />
common. ‘Medicine’, ‘meditation’, both<br />
come from a root which means to<br />
take care – a caring, loving care.<br />
Medicine takes care of your body,<br />
meditation takes care of your soul.<br />
he will do something – no, a Master never<br />
does anything: he has forgotten all doing. But<br />
because he is a non-doer healing happens,<br />
because he is a nobody he gives you space: in<br />
that very space you become integrated, you<br />
become centred.<br />
Tao: The Pathless Path, Vol 1<br />
Chapter #13<br />
SERIOUSNESS IS A DISEASE<br />
Meditation is not a serious phenomenon.<br />
Of course for centuries people have taken it<br />
very seriously. That’s why millions have tried<br />
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Osho Dhyan Mandir<br />
44, Jhatikra Road, Pandwala Khurd ; Near Najafgarh, New Delhi– 110043
OSHO<br />
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meditation but very few have achieved it.<br />
Seriousness kills the whole thing. Seriousness is<br />
a disease.<br />
One should go into meditation cheerfully,<br />
joyously, blissfully, with a deep longing to<br />
enquire, a sincere longing to enquire, but no<br />
seriousness about it<br />
The moment you start taking life seriously you<br />
become burdened; and religious people have<br />
been very much burdened. Look at the faces of<br />
your saints – Christian, Hindu, Muslim. They<br />
look so serious, so deadly serious, as if life is a<br />
torture, as if they are burdened with mountains,<br />
as if they are carrying the whole responsibility<br />
of the world. That is sheer foolishness.<br />
Learn the art of being a child. Take life as fun,<br />
and meditation comes very easily. And when it<br />
is possible to enter into the world of the divine<br />
dancing, singing, laughing, why go with a sad<br />
face, with a long face? I don’t think that your<br />
so-called saints have ever reached heaven. God<br />
won’t allow them there. They are not worthy of<br />
being allowed in heaven. Their company would<br />
be absolutely boring. They don’t know how to<br />
laugh, they have forgotten all laughter.<br />
If God has been surrounded with all those<br />
so-called saints, he must have committed<br />
suicide. Just looking at those saints must be<br />
such a boring affair. He must have taken shelter<br />
in hell! Your so-called saints are not good<br />
company at all. I have lived with them, I have<br />
been with them, and I know: they are not good<br />
company at all. They are like rocks, dead people<br />
– rotten, stinking.<br />
One has to be full of laughter then life comes to<br />
its totality. And in laughter the ego can be put<br />
aside so easily. In fact in laughter it disappears.<br />
When you really laugh there is no ego.<br />
So be cheerful and be meditative. And<br />
meditation simply means silence – but a<br />
laughing silence, a dancing silence, a singing<br />
silence, a silence not cold but warm.<br />
Just the Tip of the Iceberg<br />
Chapter #15<br />
CAN MEDITATION BE USEFUL FOR THE<br />
COMMON PEOPLE TO BE HEALTHY?<br />
It is the best thing to help people to be healthy,<br />
because it gives you the taste of eternal life. It<br />
leads you into the shrine of your own being<br />
which has never known any death or any<br />
sickness. And when you become identified<br />
with it – which you really are – your resistance<br />
to sickness, to disease, even to death, is<br />
tremendously powerful. Yes, meditation can be<br />
a great help for people for health.<br />
Every medical institute or hospital must have<br />
a special section, a division for meditation.<br />
Anyone who is in hospital should also be<br />
meditating. While he is taking medicines he<br />
should also be meditating.<br />
By the way, you will be surprised to know that<br />
the words medicine and meditation both come<br />
from the same root, which means that which<br />
gives you health. Medicine is the physical way,<br />
meditation is the spiritual way. The spiritual is<br />
certainly higher, stronger.<br />
MEDICAL DOCTORS ARE NOW TRYING<br />
TO USE THE MEDICAL AUTOGENIC<br />
TRAINING TO HELP PATIENTS. WHAT IS<br />
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MEDITATION<br />
AND AUTOGENIC TRAINING?<br />
Autogenic training is good, but it is not<br />
meditation. Autogenic training is a very<br />
superficial relaxation, but it is basically the<br />
mind over the body, the mind telling the body,<br />
“Relax.”<br />
You lie down silently, you close your eyes, and<br />
you start feeling where the tense points are in
your body. Your knees are tense and you order<br />
the knees to relax; your hands are tense, you<br />
order the hands to relax. And this way you go<br />
on all over the body, giving each part which<br />
feels tense the order to relax. Slowly, your whole<br />
body feels absolutely relaxed.<br />
This is good. This is helpful for the body, but it<br />
is not meditation because it is still the mind in<br />
control; it is the mind dominating the body.<br />
Meditation is the mind no more in control.<br />
Something beyond the mind, your being has<br />
taken control of both the mind and body.<br />
Autogenic training can be helpful for physical<br />
relaxation; it can also be helpful to enter into<br />
meditation. First use the mind to relax the<br />
body, and then finally say to the mind, “Now<br />
you relax. I am here to take care; you just relax.”<br />
When the mind also relaxes and there is<br />
no mind, no thought, but absolute serenity,<br />
silence, a tremendous blissfulness arises in you.<br />
Meditation is the ultimate....<br />
Autogenic training is just the beginning, but<br />
it is not bad – it is perfectly acceptable. And it<br />
is an encouraging sign that medical doctors all<br />
over the West have accepted autogenic training.<br />
That is a positive sign. Sooner or later they will<br />
have to accept meditation too.<br />
WHAT DOES HOLISTIC HEALTH MEAN?<br />
Man can be divided, just for this explanation,<br />
into three parts: the body, the mind, the soul.<br />
If all three are perfectly in tune and there is<br />
a well-being in all three, it becomes one wellbeing<br />
of the total organism – from the physical,<br />
psychological, to the spiritual. Then it is holistic<br />
health. Your whole being has to be healthy.<br />
There are people with healthy bodies like<br />
Muhammad Ali, but these people don’t have<br />
any sense of something beyond the mind.<br />
They have trained their bodies; their bodies<br />
are perfect animals. Their minds are not so<br />
evolved. No Bertrand Russell will be ready for<br />
boxing; the whole idea is ugly, it is barbarous.<br />
Their bodies are in health, and strong, but just<br />
like animals. Their minds are very retarded;<br />
otherwise they would not be in such an ugly<br />
and violent profession.<br />
There is no question of their being meditative<br />
or their being in touch with the beyond. The<br />
holistic person is whole, undivided, one.<br />
His Zorba and his Buddha have become one.<br />
His hedonism and spiritualism have become<br />
one.<br />
Socrates Poisoned Again After 25 Centuries<br />
Chapter #20<br />
DEALING WITH CANCER<br />
AND DEATH<br />
[A sannyasin says she has just heard that her<br />
father has cancer, and that he has not yet been<br />
told that he may not have long to live.<br />
Osho says that the father should be told of his<br />
imminent death. The idea that one is going to<br />
die can change one so dramatically that in fact<br />
one’s life is prolonged, because death is also part<br />
of our mind.... ]<br />
Psychologists have come to feel – and medical<br />
people feel the same too – that man lives up<br />
to seventy years not because there is some<br />
boundary to his life, but because for thousands<br />
of years it has been said that man’s life consists<br />
of seventy years – this is an auto-hypnosis:<br />
three score and ten, the Biblical idea.<br />
From the days of the Bible it has been repeated<br />
that man lives three score and ten; seventy years<br />
is the law. So by the time one is fifty, one starts<br />
thinking that death is coming close. By the time<br />
one is sixty one feels ‘Now I am just on the<br />
verge’; by the time one is seventy, one is ready.<br />
This is a repetition of an idea. Continuously<br />
repeated for thousands of years it has become a<br />
great force – it is an auto-hypnosis – and man<br />
dies.<br />
The modern research shows that there is no<br />
need for man to die at seventy, in fact there is<br />
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no limit to his life. He can live one hundred and<br />
fifty years or two hundred years or even more<br />
once this auto-hypnosis is broken.<br />
So it is better to tell him the truth: that may<br />
break his pattern of life, may change his<br />
lifestyle. I have heard about a man who was<br />
going to die; the doctors gave him a limit of<br />
six months. He was a very rich man but a<br />
very miserly one – he had never lived. He was<br />
always thinking of making love to this .woman,<br />
to purchase that car, but he would never do<br />
it, he would continue in his old Ford. And he<br />
was really a miser – about each single penny<br />
he would think a thousand and one times. But<br />
now six months hence he was going to die, so<br />
he thought ‘What am I to do ?’<br />
He ordered all the beautiful clothes he could<br />
order – all custom-made, he purchased all the<br />
beautiful cars that were available – not one,<br />
but all – and he started falling in love with any<br />
woman he could find. He’d always wanted to<br />
have a world trip so he went on a world trip.<br />
He took everything that he wanted to and he<br />
started enjoying himself.<br />
He forgot about life because after six months<br />
he was going to die... and he had enough money.<br />
After six months when he came back from his<br />
world tour, his cancer had disappeared, and the<br />
doctors were puzzled. They said ‘No trace of<br />
cancer! What happened? What did you do?’<br />
He said ‘I have not done anything – it is you!<br />
During these six months I have lived for<br />
the first time!’ That living for the first time<br />
destroyed his stress – he relaxed. He went to<br />
the Himalayas, he went to Switzerland, he<br />
visited beautiful places. Now there was no point<br />
in denying himself. He indulged himself –<br />
death was coming. Maybe it would come in six<br />
months; if he indulged too much it might come<br />
in three months, so what? Let it come, but let<br />
him have his day!<br />
He uncoiled – his energies started flowing, his<br />
blocks disappeared...<br />
Go after one month, and first write to your<br />
sister to give you all the details. Then go and<br />
persuade the doctors to release the news to<br />
him. This is not fair at all.<br />
A man needs to be informed. This is such a<br />
major thing in his life, it should not be kept<br />
secret. His death is his death – he has to know<br />
about it.<br />
This Is It<br />
Chapter #21
OSHO’S INSIGHT<br />
DRUGS<br />
a VIOLENT EFFORT<br />
TO AWAKEN THE IDIOT<br />
Shortcut to false Samadhi<br />
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
Legalising Marijuana in US –<br />
57<br />
What does Osho say about drug addiction and how it is gives the impression<br />
of false Samadhi and how it can be overcome by meditation.<br />
MAY<br />
2015<br />
These two words are very meaningful:<br />
“extent” and “intensity”. When you see<br />
the world through the senses, the brain and<br />
the mind, the world is very dull. It has no<br />
luminosity in it, dusty, and soon it becomes<br />
boring, and one feels fed up: the same trees, the<br />
same people, the same actions – everything just<br />
monotonous and a rut. It is not so.<br />
Sometimes in LSD, or marijuana or hashish,<br />
suddenly the tree becomes more greener. You<br />
have never known it, that the tree was so green<br />
or the rose was so rosy.<br />
When Aldous Huxley first took LSD, he sat<br />
before a chair. Suddenly, the chair became one<br />
of the most beautiful objects in the world, and<br />
that chair has remained in his room for years<br />
and he had never looked at it. It was like a<br />
prism, many shades, many colours coming out<br />
of it; it was like a diamond. The chair was no<br />
more the same chair. Huxley was fascinated<br />
with the chair. He couldn’t believe what<br />
happens when somebody takes a drug.<br />
Drugs are a violent effort to awake the idiots.<br />
So you shock them, and they just open their<br />
eyes a slightly, and just look... “Yes!” And yet,<br />
the world is so beautiful, unbelievably beautiful,<br />
and then you are hooked, because then you
think that it is because of the drugs that the<br />
world is so beautiful. Now, when you are<br />
back and the trip is over, the world will look<br />
even dirtier and duller than ever, because now<br />
you have a comparison in mind. For certain<br />
moments it became a beautiful phenomenon; it<br />
was paradise itself. Even a person like Aldous<br />
Huxley got mixed up, and he thought that this<br />
was the samadhi Patanjali is talking about, and<br />
Kabir attained, and Buddha, and all the mystics<br />
of the world considered this is the samadhi.<br />
Drugs can give you a false sense of samadhi,<br />
but you are still in the prison. Only because of<br />
the drug shock your mechanism functions with<br />
alertness, but this alertness will not be for long.<br />
If you use it more and more, then the quantity<br />
of the drug has to be raised higher and higher,<br />
because with the same amount you cannot<br />
shock the idiots again. They become attuned to<br />
it, then more and more quantities are needed.<br />
Drugs work only just like this.<br />
Once Mulla Nasruddin purchased a mule, and<br />
he would not move, and he did everything...<br />
And the man from whom he purchased it<br />
told him not to beat the mule because he was<br />
very sensitive. So he prayed, pursued and did<br />
everything, whatever he could do: it would<br />
not move, it would not listen. So he called the<br />
man: he said, “What type of mule have you<br />
given to me?” The man came with a stick and<br />
hit the mule hard on the head. Nasruddin said,<br />
“This is too much you had told me not to hit<br />
him.” The man said, “I am not hitting it. Just to<br />
get his attention...” and immediately the mule<br />
started.<br />
The idiots are there: LSD hits like a stick. For<br />
a few moments you get their attention, you<br />
have shocked them. The whole world becomes<br />
beautiful. But this is nothing, absolutely<br />
nothing. If you can attain a single moment of<br />
nirvichara, then you will be able to know. The<br />
world becomes a million times more beautiful<br />
than any LSD can give you a glimpse. And it is<br />
not because you hit the mules on the head, it is<br />
simply that you are no more inside the mules,<br />
you have come out, you have dropped the<br />
idiots. You face reality with your total nudity.<br />
With no thoughts, you are nude. With no<br />
thoughts who are you? – a Hindu, a Muslim, a<br />
Christian, a communist? Who are you without<br />
thoughts? – a man, a woman? Who are you<br />
without thoughts? – religious, irreligious?<br />
You are nobody without thoughts. All your<br />
clothes have dropped. You are simply a nudity,<br />
a purity, an emptiness. Then the perception is<br />
clear, and with that clarity comes extent and<br />
intensity. Now you can look at the vast expanse<br />
of existence. Now there is no barrier to your<br />
perception; your eyes have become infinite.<br />
Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 3<br />
Chapter #9<br />
VISIONS, HALLUCINATIONS<br />
NO REALITY<br />
Drugs cannot give you reality. They can<br />
only give you very beautiful dreams. Or<br />
even horrible dreams – it depends on you,<br />
the dreamer. You can hypnotise yourself<br />
into a particular dream; there are hypnotic<br />
techniques. If you use them you will be in a<br />
state of autohypnosis, you will start feeling<br />
things, many things, but once you stop the<br />
technique, the whole thing will disappear. It<br />
was just a mental trick you were playing: you<br />
were dreaming, it was your imagination.<br />
If you really grow into awareness, it cannot<br />
be lost. That is the distinction between real<br />
methods and false methods. A real method is<br />
a growth method; it is not simply a vision. You<br />
grow in it; the vision comes because you have<br />
grown to a new state of mind.<br />
With drugs, or with a false technique, you never<br />
grow. A certain vision comes to you, but you
emain the same. When you are not using the<br />
drug, or the technique, the vision will disappear.<br />
It was produced chemically; it was not coming<br />
through your own growth. Remember always,<br />
only growth matters. Visions are of no use.<br />
Even if you see God, it is meaningless. If you<br />
remain the same, then your God is nothing but<br />
a by-product of your own imagination. Visions<br />
are not meaningful. Christianity has placed too<br />
much emphasis on them.<br />
That’s why drugs have become so prevalent<br />
in the West – because they can create visions<br />
easily. If you are looking for visions, then I will<br />
say that meditation is a waste of time; drugs<br />
are better. They give you visions easily. But you<br />
remain the same. Or, rather, you may even fall<br />
down from your ordinary state of mind; you<br />
may deteriorate.<br />
With meditation, whatever is attained remains<br />
with you. If you stop the technique you will not<br />
proceed further, but whatever you have attained<br />
will remain with you. It cannot be lost; a real<br />
growth can never be lost. It is not something<br />
added to you that you can lose. It is you who<br />
has grown.<br />
For example, if you have become a young man<br />
you cannot revive your childhood again. It is a<br />
growth. But if a child is simply dreaming that<br />
he has become a young man, he will fall down.<br />
When he awakens from his dream he will be<br />
a child again. That is the criterion to judge<br />
whether something has been a growth or it is<br />
just a dream. If it is a dream, it will be lost. If it<br />
has been growth, it will remain with you.<br />
The Eternal Quest<br />
Chapter #3<br />
FALSE ILLUSIONS OR<br />
REAL AWARENESS<br />
I am against his supporting drugs to transform<br />
man. That is dangerous.<br />
In fact, politicians are idiots; otherwise they<br />
would have used this man; he would have<br />
proved of immense help to them. He would<br />
have shown them how to enslave people forever.<br />
Drugs can be created – and people can be made<br />
addicted to those drugs – which will cancel all<br />
revolutions, all rebellions. Anything that goes<br />
against the status quo, the drug will prevent it.<br />
I am against him for other reasons too –<br />
because drugs can only change the mind,<br />
and man is not only the mind. He is<br />
something more. The real transformation<br />
has to happen in that something more – in<br />
consciousness. And no drug can even touch<br />
consciousness. It can change the mechanism<br />
of the mind, the chemistry of the mind. It<br />
can give you hallucinations of samadhi, of<br />
nirvana, enlightenment; but those are only<br />
hallucinations, they are not true.<br />
One day you miss your injection and they are<br />
gone and you are back in the dumps. And when<br />
somebody falls from nirvana, he is going to<br />
have multiple fractures – everything destroyed.<br />
If you are going to fall, it is better never to try<br />
climbing so high. It is better to crawl on the<br />
earth if you are going to fall; at least you won’t<br />
have any fractures. Drugs can take you very<br />
high but you will have to come back down; it<br />
was the drug, not you.<br />
Meditation changes not your mind, but you,<br />
your consciousness.<br />
And the change comes with your own<br />
awareness. Nobody can fall from awareness.<br />
The greater the awareness, the less is the<br />
possibility of falling. When awareness is<br />
complete, entire, then there is no way you can<br />
fall.<br />
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
59<br />
MAY<br />
2015
You have arrived. This feeling of arriving can be<br />
given by drugs; hence the influence of alcohol,<br />
marijuana, LSD, opium – and there have been<br />
hundreds of other drugs around the world.<br />
They have always been used. And Timothy<br />
Leary is not saying anything new: for thousands<br />
of years there have been people who have not<br />
only been talking about them, but have been<br />
using them and thinking that they are reaching<br />
closer and closer to paradise.<br />
In India you can find thousands of Hindu<br />
sannyasins taking all kinds of drugs, to such<br />
a point that they become so accustomed to<br />
drugs that drugs don’t affect them. Then they<br />
start keeping dangerous snakes, cobras and<br />
other kinds, with them, because only a cobra<br />
bite on their tongue will give them a little bit<br />
of hallucination. A cobra bite will kill you; to<br />
them it is just a drug – for a few hours they fly<br />
high. In fact there are monks in India – if they<br />
bite you, you will die, their whole body, their<br />
whole chemistry has become so poisoned.<br />
FROM FALSE SAMADHI<br />
TO REAL BLISS<br />
From Darkness to Light<br />
Chapter #15<br />
The drugs are as old as humanity itself, and<br />
they certainly fulfill something of immense<br />
value. I am against drugs, but my being against<br />
drugs is for the same reason as for thousands of<br />
years people have been addicted to the drugs.<br />
It may seem very strange. The drugs are capable<br />
of giving you a hallucinatory experience beyond<br />
the mundane world. That is the experience that<br />
is being searched through meditation.<br />
Meditation brings you to the real experience,<br />
and drugs give you just a hallucination, a<br />
dream-like experience but very similar. To<br />
meditate is difficult. The drug is cheap. But the<br />
attraction for drugs is spiritual.<br />
Man is not satisfied with his mundane<br />
existence. He wants to know something more.<br />
He wants to be something more. Just the<br />
ordinary life seems so flat, so meaningless, that<br />
if this is all then suicide seems to be the only<br />
way out of it. It gives no ecstasy, no joy. On the<br />
The drug experience is so cheap<br />
and the meditation experience is<br />
so costly, because you have to go<br />
through such effort. Then by and<br />
by the mind starts choosing the<br />
cheaper one<br />
contrary, it goes on piling you up with more<br />
and more misery, anxiety, disease, old age and,<br />
finally, death.<br />
From the cradle to the grave, the ordinary life is<br />
just a drag. People go on living it because they<br />
are cowards. Otherwise they would commit<br />
suicide. They don’t have enough courage to<br />
commit suicide. But this is not something one<br />
can rejoice in.<br />
You can drag on but you cannot call it living.<br />
There is no dance or vitality in it, no colour in<br />
it. It is just a vast desert spreading as far as you<br />
can see, with no oasis anywhere.<br />
I am reminded of one of dreams Leo Tolstoy’s.<br />
It is a rare dream. It is also unique that it went<br />
on repeating continuously almost his entire life.<br />
As long as he could remember, the dream was<br />
happening. And the dream is very strange.<br />
In his dream he sees a vast desert and two<br />
gumboots without anybody in them, just the<br />
two gumboots without any feet inside them, are<br />
walking, and they go on walking, and there is
no end to this walk. The desert is endless. And<br />
he always woke up perspiring, his heart beating<br />
louder, gripped* with great fear. Without going<br />
to any psychoanalyst, he knew the meaning. He<br />
himself was a genius. He knew that this is his<br />
life, this is not a dream. It is not even symbolic.<br />
It is exactly his life. Where he is going?<br />
Wherever he goes he will end in the grave.<br />
Who is going he does not know. The gumboots<br />
are empty.<br />
He is unaware of anybody inside. He is<br />
unacquainted with the person who is wearing<br />
the gumboots. He is invisible. All that is visible<br />
is the gumboots and the desert, and the tedious<br />
journey, pointless, meaningless.<br />
This is the reason that drugs have attracted<br />
man since the very beginning. And they have<br />
at least given him temporary relief. Only a<br />
few people tried meditation. And my own<br />
understanding is, these people also tried<br />
meditation because drugs at a point become<br />
useless. You become immune.<br />
Initially they give you tremendous experiences,<br />
but soon they become almost part of your body<br />
chemistry. Then if you don’t take them you are<br />
in trouble. Your whole chemistry wants them.<br />
If you take them, you gain nothing. You go on<br />
increasing the doses.<br />
In India where the experiments with drugs<br />
must have been the oldest, because the oldest<br />
scripture in the world is the Rigveda*, the<br />
religious source book of the Hindus, it talks<br />
about a certain drug, Somras*. Because of<br />
this Somras*, Aldous Huxley has called the<br />
ultimate drug one day, when LSD is refined and<br />
there is no side effect, it will be called Soma.<br />
The name is from the Rigveda*.<br />
The Rigveda* according to Hindus is ninety<br />
thousand years old, and nobody has been<br />
able to prove that they are wrong because<br />
their arguments for its old age are almost<br />
irrefutable. They are not logical, otherwise it<br />
would have been easy. They are astronomical.<br />
In the Rigveda* there is a description of a<br />
certain combination of stars that had happened<br />
according to modern astronomers also ninety<br />
thousand years before. Now there is no way for<br />
the people who were writing the the Rigveda*<br />
to describe it in absolute detail unless they have<br />
seen it.<br />
Now this is such an evidence that you cannot<br />
do anything about it. The astronomers say for<br />
ninety thousand years that combination has not<br />
been again in the sky. So certainly whoever was<br />
writing it was fully aware of the combination<br />
of stars at that time. For ninety thousand years<br />
Hindus have accepted drugs almost as part of<br />
their religious ceremonies. It was only under<br />
the British regime that drugs created trouble,<br />
but because they were part of a religious<br />
ritual, which is the ancientmost religion in<br />
the world, even the British government was<br />
afraid to interfere with it. It continued. Even<br />
in my childhood all drugs were available in the<br />
market. There was no question of any illegality.<br />
And every school of Hindu religion was using<br />
drugs, but they were using it in a very scientific<br />
way.<br />
They will give the drug in a certain quantity,<br />
create a certain experience in the man, and then<br />
when he comes out of it will tell him that, “This<br />
was only an illusion. It was simply because of<br />
the drug, because of the chemistry, your mind<br />
experienced. “Would you like to experience it<br />
in its reality? If the illusion is so beautiful, you<br />
can think how much more the reality would<br />
be. And the experience created by the drug lost<br />
for a few hours, and again you are back to the<br />
same old rotten world. But if the experience is<br />
real, it is yours forever. You never lose it. It is<br />
not something that has happened to you, it is<br />
something that was already in you; you have<br />
discovered it.” So I don’t see that it was wrong<br />
to use drugs in this way. In fact, this should be<br />
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
61<br />
MAY<br />
2015
The drugs are as old as humanity itself, and they certainly fulfill something<br />
of immense value. I am against drugs, but my being against drugs is for the<br />
same reason as for thousands of years people have been addicted to the<br />
drugs.<br />
the approach around the world for the modern<br />
man. And now we have more advanced drugs,<br />
synthetically made, and we are capable of<br />
purifying them even more. We can make drugs<br />
which have no negative effects at all. We can<br />
make drugs which are not addictive.<br />
And we can have in every hospital, in every<br />
university, a certain department which teaches<br />
people how to move from drug to meditation.<br />
Just to talk about meditation remains simply<br />
verbal. There is no way through words to give<br />
you any experience. But drugs are immensely<br />
useful.<br />
The words can explain to you what meditation<br />
is, the drug can give you an hallucinatory<br />
experience of it. And then you can be initiated<br />
into a method. And now you will not be<br />
moving in darkness. Now you know that<br />
something... if an ordinary drug can do so<br />
much, then there must be some way to find<br />
an authentic transformation, to experience it<br />
without any dependence on anything.<br />
So the drug simply opens up a door and helps<br />
you to understand that man’s life and his<br />
experience need not be confined to the ordinary<br />
mundane world – he can fly high towards the<br />
stars – that he is capable of knowing things<br />
which are not ordinarily available.<br />
Under proper guidance – medical, meditational<br />
– drugs can be of immense help.<br />
I said I am against drugs because if they become<br />
addictive then they will be the most destructive<br />
for your journey towards the self. Then you<br />
become enchanted into hallucinations.<br />
The Last Testament, Vol 4<br />
Chapter #6
OSHO’S INSIGHT<br />
NUCLEAR WEAPONS<br />
IMPOSSIBLE TO DESTROY NUCLEAR WEAPONS,<br />
WHAT IS TO BE DONE?<br />
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
Iran Nuclear Arms agreement – What does Osho say on nuclear weapons?<br />
How can they be controlled?<br />
Peaceful uses of nuclear science from Osho’s vision.<br />
63<br />
MAY<br />
2015<br />
Existence is enough unto itself; it does not<br />
need any outside agency. It has its own<br />
energy, it has its own intelligence, it has its own<br />
life.<br />
Existence needs no hypothetical God.<br />
And God doesn’t help anything.<br />
Remember one fundamental principle of all<br />
sane thinking: Don’t bring in a hypothesis<br />
which doesn’t help to solve anything. On the<br />
contrary, because of the hypothesis a thousand<br />
other problems start arising. A hypothesis is<br />
brought in to solve problems, not to increase<br />
them.<br />
God is the most useless hypothesis ever<br />
propounded by man. Because of Him there<br />
has been so much trouble, so many crusades, so<br />
many butcherings, so many people slaughtered,<br />
so many women raped – in the name of God.<br />
Please just flush him down the toilet.<br />
Forget about God.<br />
Existence is enough unto itself.<br />
That’s what I teach.<br />
And then we cannot throw the responsibility<br />
on someone else: there is no God, then the<br />
whole responsibility falls on us. That is my<br />
hidden desire.<br />
Why am I throwing God down the toilet?<br />
Because I want man to understand that he
is responsible. Because man has the highest<br />
consciousness in the whole existence, you<br />
should accept the greatest responsibility. Stars,<br />
trees, animals, birds are far below you; you<br />
cannot throw the responsibility on them.<br />
To be conscious means you are mature enough<br />
now to accept all responsibility for yourself and<br />
for the existence that surrounds you.<br />
Then the explosion in the gas factory in<br />
Bhopal is our responsibility. It was some stupid<br />
people there who were not careful enough; it<br />
was carelessness. And I would not like these<br />
people to be punished in hell – no, there is<br />
no hell – they should be punished herenow<br />
such an accident does not happen again. There<br />
are thousands of similar factories around the<br />
world: if it can happen in one factory it can<br />
happen in any factory. And this was only a<br />
poisonous gas. Now there are nuclear plants:<br />
just one man’s carelessness and the world can be<br />
finished and destroyed.<br />
You have created things which are so<br />
dangerous, but you have not created a<br />
comparable consciousness which can be careful<br />
about these things.<br />
If you create nuclear weapons... I am not<br />
against them because those nuclear weapons<br />
can prove creative, immensely creative.<br />
Anything that can be destructive can always be<br />
creative – it all depends on you. The sword in<br />
your hand can kill somebody and can also save<br />
somebody. The sword is neutral; it is up to you<br />
how you use it.<br />
I am not against atomic, nuclear, and other<br />
weapons. Though they are tremendously<br />
dangerous in the hands of man as he is today,<br />
but still I say we cannot go back: we cannot<br />
dispose of nuclear weapons. That is impossible,<br />
because movement backwards is impossible;<br />
we can only go forwards. Then what has to be<br />
done?<br />
All over the world great concern is being shown<br />
by politicians, the intelligentsia, and other<br />
humanitarian people that there should be some<br />
stop put to it: no more piling up of weapons.<br />
Nobody can stop it, it is impossible, and what<br />
they are saying is not the right solution. I don’t<br />
agree with it.<br />
I say: Increase man’s awareness in the same<br />
proportion as he has increased his dangerous<br />
powers, and there is no problem.<br />
Don’t put a sword in a child’s hand – that’s true<br />
– but let the child learn with a wooden sword.<br />
Let him mature, let him become more aware. I<br />
am not in favour of disposing of the sword. It<br />
cannot be done in the very nature of things.<br />
In the whole history of man is there any<br />
precedent where we have gone back a single<br />
step on anything? It is against the law of<br />
existence to go backwards.<br />
So don’t just hit your head against a wall, do<br />
something else. Increase man’s consciousness,<br />
his awareness.<br />
From Personality to Individuality<br />
Chapter #11<br />
NEW MAN, NEW WAY TO DEAL<br />
WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS<br />
The new man contains the whole future of<br />
humanity. The old man is bound to die. He has<br />
prepared his own grave – he is digging it every<br />
moment, deeper and deeper. What do you<br />
think Ronald Reagan is doing? Digging a grave<br />
for humanity as deep as possible. These people<br />
seem to be afraid even of dead people – that if<br />
the grave is not deep enough, they may come<br />
back; they may come back alive.<br />
Nuclear weapons and all destructive measures<br />
are a preparation for a global suicide. The<br />
old man has decided to die. It is up to the<br />
intelligent people in the world to disconnect
from the old man before he destroys you too...<br />
to disconnect yourself from old traditions, old<br />
religions, old nations, old ideologies.<br />
For the first time, the old is no longer gold. The<br />
old is the rotten corpse of an ugly past. It is a<br />
great responsibility for the new generation, for<br />
the young people to renounce the past.<br />
In the past, religions used to renounce the<br />
world. I teach you to love the world so that it<br />
can be saved, and to renounce the past totally<br />
and irrevocably, to be discontinuous.<br />
The new man is not an improvement upon the<br />
old; he is not a continuous phenomenon, not<br />
a refinement. The new man is the declaration<br />
of the death of the old, and the birth of an<br />
absolutely fresh man – unconditioned, without<br />
any nation, without any religion, without any<br />
discriminations of men and women, of black<br />
and white, of East and West, or North and<br />
South.<br />
The new man is a manifesto of one humanity.<br />
It is the greatest revolution the world has ever<br />
seen.<br />
You have heard about the miracle that Moses<br />
parted the sea in two parts. That miracle is<br />
nothing. I want to part humanity, the whole<br />
ocean of humanity divided in two parts: the old<br />
and the new.<br />
The new will love this life, this world. The new<br />
will learn the art of living, loving and dying.<br />
The new will not be concerned about heaven<br />
and hell, sin and virtue. The new man will be<br />
concerned about how to increase the joys of<br />
life, the pleasures of life – more flowers, more<br />
beauty, more humanity, more compassion. And<br />
we have the capacity and the potential to make<br />
this planet a paradise, and to make this moment<br />
the greatest ecstasy of your life.<br />
Let the old die. Let the old be led by people like<br />
Ronald Reagan. Let the blind people follow the<br />
blind.<br />
But those who have a younger spirit – and<br />
when I say “a younger spirit,” it includes even<br />
those old people who are not old in spirit; and<br />
it does not include even the young people who<br />
are old in spirit. The spiritually young are going<br />
to be the new man.<br />
The new man is not a hope: You are already<br />
pregnant with it. My work is just to make you<br />
aware that the new man has already arrived.<br />
My work is to help you to recognise him and to<br />
respect him.<br />
You are asking, Maneesha: “What is our<br />
relationship to the new man?” There is no<br />
relationship between you and the new man<br />
because you are the new man. You just have to<br />
drop all the dust that has gathered down the<br />
ages on the mirror of your consciousness.<br />
The new man is not someone from another<br />
planet. The new man is you in your freshness,<br />
in your silences of the heart, in your depth of<br />
meditation, in your beautiful spaces of love,<br />
in your songs of joy, in your dances of ecstasy,<br />
in your love of this earth. No religion teaches<br />
you to love this earth – and this earth is your<br />
mother, and these trees are your brothers, and<br />
these stars are your friends.<br />
You are not going to have a relationship<br />
with the new man because that would be a<br />
separation; all relationships separate. You will<br />
be the new man. In my vision you are already<br />
on the path of the new man. You have started<br />
the journey, although you are not fully awake;<br />
but as you will see the old man moving more<br />
and more towards the graveyard, it will become<br />
easier for you to renounce him and his ways of<br />
life, his churches, his synagogues, his temples,<br />
his gods, his holy scriptures.<br />
Your holy scripture is your whole life,<br />
and nobody else can write it – you have to<br />
write it. You come with an empty book, and it<br />
depends on you what you make of it. Birth is<br />
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
65<br />
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2015
not life; it is only an opportunity given to you<br />
to create life... to create a life as beautiful, as<br />
glorious, as loving as you can imagine, as you<br />
can dream.<br />
The new man’s dreams and his reality will be<br />
one because his dreams will be rooted here in<br />
this earth. They will bring flowers and fruits.<br />
They will not be just dreams – they will make<br />
the world a dreamland.<br />
The Golden Future<br />
Chapter #32<br />
STOP BEFORE GLOBAL SUICIDE,<br />
MEDITATE!<br />
The world is certainly preparing for a global<br />
suicide; about that there are not two opinions –<br />
it is becoming more and more certain every day.<br />
Naturally you think you have to do something<br />
to prevent it. It is beyond your doing; whatever<br />
you do will bring it closer.<br />
What can you do? The power is not in<br />
your hands; the power is in hands which<br />
are absolutely stubborn, and they don’t care<br />
what happens to humanity. Their ego is their<br />
supreme value, the only value. Even though it<br />
means their own destruction, they will take<br />
the risk; they will destroy whoever they think is<br />
their enemy.<br />
Initially, when this kind of war material was in<br />
the hands of two countries, the Soviet Union<br />
and America, there was some possibility that<br />
they could come to some negotiation. Now<br />
with the power of nuclear weapons in five<br />
countries, the possibility of negotiation has<br />
become more difficult, more complicated. And<br />
by the end of this century, the power will be in<br />
twenty-five countries’ hands. Then the question<br />
of negotiation does not arise.<br />
My suggestion is: time is certainly very short,<br />
but it is enough to become enlightened, and it<br />
is enough to spread an enlightened atmosphere<br />
around the world. That is the only possibility.<br />
If we can make the people of the world ... not<br />
the politicians, leave them aside; they have the<br />
power but without the consent of the people<br />
of the world, their power is not of much use.<br />
If armies simply say, “No, we are not going to<br />
use nuclear weapons,” if the scientists simply<br />
say, “No, we are not going to produce any more<br />
nuclear weapons,” if the whole intelligentsia of<br />
the world unanimously creates a great uproar:<br />
“It is not a question of war; wars we have seen<br />
in thousands – they have been destructive, but<br />
they have not destroyed all life. This is not war,<br />
this is simple suicide!”<br />
But these people: the scientists, the armies,<br />
the intelligentsia, the poets, the musicians, the<br />
mystics, the painters, the actors – the people<br />
who have a certain impact on the masses,<br />
although they don’t have any power except<br />
their individuality and their creativity – if they<br />
join hands together, this global suicide can be<br />
avoided. Not only can suicide be avoided, but<br />
with the same energy that was going to destroy<br />
all life, the planet can be turned into a paradise.<br />
Energy is neutral – it can destroy, it can create.<br />
Nobody has thought: What can be the creative<br />
use of atomic energy? What can be the creative<br />
use of nuclear weapons? If the destructive<br />
power is so great, the power for creation will<br />
be equally great. Hence, I say not only can<br />
global suicide be avoided, but we can bring<br />
into existence a new dawn, a new man, a new<br />
humanity.<br />
Perhaps for the first time there can be an<br />
authentic civilisation which loves peace, which<br />
is compassionate, which is creative, which drops<br />
all discriminations of nations, religions, races,<br />
and makes this whole globe one family.<br />
Once there are no discriminations of religions,<br />
races, nations, war becomes impossible.<br />
We have to avoid the suicide that is oncoming<br />
and we have to change the whole structure of
the world so that war itself becomes impossible.<br />
All our efforts, all our energies ... seventyfive<br />
per cent of human energy is pouring into<br />
creating war material. We are living only on<br />
twenty-five per cent of our energy. If that<br />
seventy-five per cent is also released for living,<br />
there will be no poverty, there will be no<br />
sickness. Life can be prolonged. People can<br />
live young till their last breath; they need not<br />
become old.<br />
All this is possible, and for this, there is enough<br />
time. But you have to understand perfectly well:<br />
anything on your part as a protest is not going<br />
to help. You will be simply crushed, ignored ....<br />
Pacifists have existed for centuries; they have<br />
not been able to avoid any war.<br />
In fact I have seen so many processions of<br />
protest and I have always wondered ... the<br />
people who protested were all violent: their<br />
slogans were violent, their gestures were violent.<br />
If they had power in their hands, they would<br />
start killing those people whom they think are<br />
warmongers. They are doing the same thing,<br />
they are not peaceful people; they may be<br />
pacifist in ideology, but they don’t know what<br />
peace is.<br />
I want my people to know the peace, to know<br />
the silence, to know the beauty of their inner<br />
being, the blissfulness and love and light, and<br />
spread it. And spreading it is not going to be<br />
a missionary thing – you are not to convert<br />
anybody. Just your very presence, just your<br />
loving eyes, your peaceful existence – the<br />
charisma that arises with enlightenment,<br />
a certain different wavelength that the<br />
enlightened man starts radiating around him,<br />
changes people’s hearts without their knowing.<br />
The New Dawn<br />
Chapter #4<br />
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
67<br />
A Meditation for the Jet-Set<br />
MAY<br />
2015<br />
You cannot find a better situation in which to meditate than while flying at a high<br />
altitude. The higher the altitude, the easier is the meditation. Hence, for centuries,<br />
meditators have been moving to the Himalayas to find a high altitude.<br />
When gravitation is less and the earth is very far away, many pulls of<br />
the earth are far away. You are far away from the corrupted society<br />
that man has built. You are surrounded by clouds and the stars and<br />
the moon and the sun and the vast space. So do one thing: start<br />
feeling one with that vastness, and do it in three steps. The first step<br />
is: for a few minutes just think that you are becoming bigger….you<br />
are filling the whole plane. Then the second step: start feeling that you<br />
are becoming even bigger, bigger than the plane, in fact the plane is<br />
now inside you. And the third step: feel that you have expanded into the<br />
whole sky. Now these clouds that are moving, and the moon and the stars<br />
– they are moving in you; you are huge, unlimited.<br />
This feeling will become your meditation, and you will feel completely relaxed and non-tense.<br />
Osho<br />
Meditation: The First and Last Freedom<br />
Chapter #20<br />
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OSHO’S INSIGHT<br />
CHINA<br />
CONFUCIUS, MAO AND LAO TZU<br />
WHO REPRESENTS CHINA?<br />
Lao Tzu<br />
Ancient spiritual China of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu and today’s modern, aggressive and<br />
world power China. Osho’s comments on ancient China and<br />
how they compare with today’s China.<br />
Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu, were certainly<br />
great Masters who have walked on the earth<br />
– rare human beings – but they have not made a<br />
clear-cut way so that others can also follow. No<br />
religion came into being because of these three great<br />
Masters. It remained a philosophy. They attracted<br />
people, but the attraction never went beyond<br />
intellect. And there is a reason for it.<br />
China has lived under the influence of Confucius,<br />
and Confucius was exactly an ancient Karl Marx,<br />
a sociologist of great insight, but he was not a<br />
religious master. He gave China its social structure,<br />
he gave China the principles of behaviour and<br />
etiquette, but he never gave anything that leads to<br />
interiority. And Confucius’ influence is the greatest<br />
in China.<br />
It is because of Confucius that communism<br />
became important. They fitted with each other very<br />
intimately, with no contradiction.<br />
Communism cannot fit with Hinduism,<br />
communism cannot fit with Jainism, but it can fit<br />
with Confucianism, because Confucianism is not<br />
a religion; it is only a sociology, and there is no<br />
conflict between Confucius and Karl Marx. Now<br />
Confucius is twenty-five centuries older than Karl<br />
Marx, but he has said everything essential that Karl<br />
Marx repeats after twenty-five centuries. And the<br />
moment China discovered communism it felt that it<br />
was just what they had always been thinking about.<br />
So communism is not just accidental, and not<br />
imported. Although it looks like it is imported, it<br />
is not imported; it is Confucius and his teaching,
turning and taking a new phase, a new colour.<br />
This is the reason why China and Russia could not<br />
stay together. Both are communist countries, both<br />
believe in Karl Marx and Das Kapital, but Russia<br />
does not have the background of Confucius, while<br />
China has a long tradition of Confucianism. So<br />
Russian communism is pure Marxian. Chinese<br />
communism is just communism for name’s sake, it is<br />
basically ninety per cent Confucianism.<br />
And these three great Masters remained individuals.<br />
Once in a while somebody was impressed by their<br />
writings, but it remained cerebral, so there is no<br />
hope in the near future of Lieh Tzu, Chuang Tzu<br />
or Lao Tzu being born again in China, or their<br />
influence in any way changing the course of China’s<br />
history, because in fact they have never been of any<br />
great importance in China’s mind.<br />
Confucius and Lao Tzu were contemporaries.<br />
Confucius had even gone to meet Lao Tzu, because<br />
Lao Tzu was certainly a man of tremendous<br />
qualities. Confucius was a great thinker, but only<br />
a thinker. He had nothing as far as his own inner<br />
consciousness is concerned, no experience, no idea<br />
who he was, but he had planned for the society<br />
perfectly well, a very mannered, cultured society.<br />
Hearing that Lao Tzu was nearby, living in a cave<br />
beyond the lake, he went to see him. A few of his<br />
disciples also went, but he told them, “You wait<br />
outside the cave.” They said, “Why? It will be good,<br />
we can listen.” He said, “You don’t understand. I will<br />
tell you the reason later on. Let me go first. If I feel<br />
it is right I will call you in.”<br />
They stayed outside, Confucius went in. Lao Tzu<br />
was sitting silently. He did not even tell Confucius<br />
to sit down, and Confucius was a man of manners,<br />
etiquette. He had not expected that a great sage,<br />
Lao Tzu, would not even ask. He did not even<br />
greet confucius. He simply sat down, looking at<br />
Confucius, and Confucius said, “Sir, don’t you<br />
believe in good manners?”<br />
Lao Tzu laughed. He said, ‘I thought you knew<br />
about manners – what is the need for me to tell<br />
you? If you feel like sitting, you will sit down! You<br />
are not a man who does not know about manners.<br />
If you wish to stand up, it is my etiquette not to<br />
disturb you. You can stand up!” Confucius said,<br />
“But you... you did not even say hello.” Lao Tzu said,<br />
“I said it. You could not hear it. It was a test: I said<br />
it silently. I wanted to know whether the famous<br />
philosopher Confucius understands silence or<br />
not. So you understand only words – that much is<br />
decided! And you have expectations. You cannot sit<br />
down on your own, you have to be told.<br />
“This cave does not belong to me. When I came<br />
here, nobody said ‘sit down,’ because nobody was<br />
here. Why should I say it? It is not my cave, nothing<br />
belongs to me. Just the way I am sitting, you can sit<br />
down. You are not a child to be told.”<br />
Confucius had never met such a man. And on each<br />
point he was rebuffed badly. Then Lao Tzu said,<br />
“If you really want to learn anything, first go and<br />
renounce all the idiots you have collected as your<br />
disciples. You don’t know anything and you have<br />
thousands of disciples. It is hilarious! You just<br />
go and tell them the truth, that you don’t know<br />
anything, and then come, because I teach only if<br />
somebody does not know. If he knows it already,<br />
why should he bother me? An old man... Leave me<br />
alone!”<br />
Confucius came out, and he had not the courage to<br />
say to his disciples that he did not know. He had<br />
thousands of disciples, he was the most famous man<br />
at that time. Very few people knew about Lao Tzu.<br />
Confucius has remained a shadow over the whole<br />
of Chinese history. It is only somewhere in the<br />
footnotes that you can find the name of Lao Tzu.<br />
Confucius was not courageous enough to say “I do<br />
not know.” The disciples said “You didn’t ask us to<br />
come in. He said, “It was good that I didn’t ask you<br />
to come in. And please don’t ask the reason. That<br />
man is not a man; he is a dragon. He is dangerous,<br />
avoid him as far as possible. This is my first and last<br />
meeting with that old man!”<br />
And he was perspiring. It was a cold morning and<br />
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
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2015
the cave was very cool, but he was perspiring. The<br />
disciples said, “But why are you perspiring?” He<br />
said, “I am alive – that’s enough! Just take me away<br />
from here.” Lao Tzu has never been a great influence.<br />
He was a silent man. Once in a while somebody<br />
would come who was courageous enough to be with<br />
him He was not prepared to come down to meet<br />
you, to be with you and to be amongst you. It simply<br />
was not his characteristic. He would remain on top<br />
of the hill. You would have to go to the hilltop, he<br />
was not going to come into the valley. He was not<br />
like a man, which I am.<br />
I can come to any depth where you are hiding and<br />
hold your head and pull you out. He was not that<br />
kind of man; he would simply sit on top of the hill.<br />
Anybody who wants... but who wants to go that far?<br />
He never wrote a single word, he never gave a<br />
single speech – just a few conversations at random,<br />
and only if somebody asked something. And then<br />
too, he was not civil, as is expected of Masters.<br />
Confucius was right that he was a dragon. He<br />
would kill you!<br />
Chuang Tzu is a very important person in the<br />
history of the whole world, not only China. There<br />
is not a single person in all history who can be<br />
compared with Chuang Tzu.<br />
He wrote the most absurd parables. To understand<br />
his parables you will have to be something close to<br />
his consciousness, otherwise you will understand<br />
those parables as jokes. Those parables are the most<br />
significant religious stories, but they are absurd.<br />
They contradict – the same story goes into so<br />
many contradictions, you are at a loss to figure out<br />
what he wants or where is the conclusion, or what<br />
is the meaning of it all. But if you can meditate<br />
and with meditative eyes look at his stories, you<br />
will be surprised: he is saying things which cannot<br />
be said through words, and just to say them he<br />
has created all those contradictions. Figuring out<br />
those contradictions you will suddenly come to<br />
understand a truth which was not said in the story<br />
at all, but if you try to figure out the contradiction<br />
meditatively, that truth is bound to be revealed to<br />
you. It is just there, but he has not said it.<br />
He was certainly the strangest creator of parables.<br />
There are parables of Aesop; in India there are<br />
parables of Panchatantra – beautiful stories – but<br />
all have simple mottos, simple teachings, there is<br />
nothing great about them. They explain to you a<br />
certain truth. But Chuang Tzu seems mad to anyone<br />
who reads him, hence he was never an influence.<br />
How could he be an influence? People were even<br />
afraid to go to him because he would say things that<br />
if they got into your head, you would become crazy.<br />
What to do about those things?<br />
For example, he would say, “Last night I slept and<br />
dreamed that I had become a butterfly. I have been<br />
wondering since I woke up in the morning: perhaps<br />
the butterfly has gone to sleep and is dreaming that<br />
she has become Chuang Tzu. What is your opinion?<br />
Which is true? Chuang Tzu dreaming himself as a<br />
butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming herself as Chuang<br />
Tzu – what is the truth?”<br />
Now, if this gets into your mind, you are going to be<br />
puzzled, and you had not come to get puzzled. You<br />
are already confused and this man is confusing you<br />
even more.<br />
So only very rarely a person would be able....<br />
When he used to tell this story to anybody, that<br />
was enough, and the man would escape. “Nobody<br />
knows. Even I don’t know whether I am dreaming<br />
you are here or you are dreaming I am here. This is<br />
beyond me. And I am not such a philosopher. You<br />
meditate over it. If you come to any conclusion, I<br />
live just nearby, and you can inform me. This is my<br />
name, but please don’t harass me.<br />
Just one young man, when he told this story,<br />
said, “Wait. I have the answer.” Chuang Tzu said,<br />
“Really?” He said, “Yes.” He went out. He had<br />
brought a bucket of ice-cold water and he poured it<br />
on Chuang Tzu and said, “Wake up!”<br />
Chuang Tzu said, “Really great! I was waiting for<br />
something like this answer. You are accepted as my<br />
disciple. You are the right man.”
That’s what has to be done: if somebody is talking<br />
about dream and he became a butterfly or a<br />
butterfly became a dream, all that he needs is to<br />
have a bucket of ice-cold water thrown on him so<br />
he wakes up, whoever he is. If he is Chuang Tzu, he<br />
will be Chuang Tzu. If he is a butterfly, he will be a<br />
butterfly. Things will be cleared. “Anyway, the sleep<br />
has to be broken.” He said, “This answer was so<br />
close to the story but it never happened to anybody.<br />
Thousands have heard the story, and they laugh and<br />
they talk about it and they tell it to each other, and<br />
it has spread all over the country; but not a single<br />
man thought of a single solution. All that is needed<br />
is to wake the man up, whoever he is. Waking up<br />
will be decisive.<br />
Only that can be decisive.” So the young man said,<br />
“Have I to do anything more or are you satisfied?”<br />
Chuang Tzu said, “I am perfectly satisfied, because<br />
more will be too much. You just sit down. You are<br />
accepted.” He said, “I had come to be accepted. I<br />
have listened to great masters, but I have not found<br />
anything great. I have been to many monasteries,<br />
but all is ordinary. Then I heard about your<br />
story and then I thought, ‘Here is something<br />
extraordinary. Now I have to find this man.’”<br />
And all his stories are like that.... Now how many<br />
people can you influence?<br />
So these people remained peaks, reaching to the<br />
stars, but beyond human intelligence. They were<br />
never influential in China. In fact, listening to me<br />
you have become aware of their names. Otherwise,<br />
ordinarily nobody bothers about Chuang Tzu, Lieh<br />
Tzu or Lao Tzu. Nobody has written commentaries<br />
on these people. I am the only man who has spoken<br />
for years continuously...<br />
I spoke for one year continuously on Lao Tzu, every<br />
day. His book is very small, he wrote it in three<br />
days. I spoke on it one year in Hindi, and then<br />
when people from outside started coming, I spoke<br />
again on a few chosen parts. And you know me –<br />
my memory is not good, so I forgot what I said in<br />
Hindi – I had to interpret it again. So the Hindi<br />
books are being translated and you will be puzzled,<br />
because what I have said in Hindi I have not said<br />
in English, and what I have said in English I have<br />
not said in Hindi. In fact, there was a gap of four,<br />
five years between the two series, and I never look<br />
back to what I said yesterday, and I don’t feel any<br />
obligation to remain consistent with it.<br />
Certainly, what I said in English is more up to date,<br />
because it is five years afterwards. And this gives me<br />
an immense freedom. Any day if it happens to me, I<br />
can start speaking on Lao Tzu again, because I don’t<br />
know now what I have spoken on him – whether in<br />
Hindi or English. Both are forgotten. I can give you<br />
a third commentary.<br />
Otherwise, these peoples’ names are not known –<br />
what to say about their influence.<br />
So in China it seems very difficult. The meeting of<br />
Confucius and Karl Marx is very dangerous. They<br />
are both materialists, they both believe only in<br />
certain moral rules, and they don’t think that there<br />
is anything beyond this life.<br />
In Russia, there is more possibility that we may have<br />
many more sannyasins. China seems to be far away;<br />
it is more difficult to penetrate the Chinese skull. It<br />
is made hard, first by Confucius and now it has got<br />
a new coating – more modern, more contemporary<br />
– of Marxism.<br />
But nobody can deny the fact that perhaps, if China<br />
becomes richer, more affluent, more educated, more<br />
open to the outside world – as is happening, it is<br />
opening its doors to the outside world-then there<br />
is a possibility sometime in the future that the<br />
Chinese youth can be approached.<br />
But China is the most difficult country of all the<br />
countries for the transformation of man.<br />
The Last Testament, Vol 2<br />
Chapter #19<br />
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
71<br />
MAY<br />
2015
RARE BEINGS<br />
Nikos Kazantzakis<br />
EXPRESSING HIS SUPPRESSION IN<br />
ZORBA THE GREEK<br />
The author of Zorba the Greek, Nikos Kazantzakis, was totally different from the carefree,<br />
singing, dancing, loving and laughing character that he created, says Osho.<br />
Nikos Kazantzakis represents you – each human<br />
being. He was a rare man, but a victim of the<br />
entire past. He was a very sensitive man – that’s why<br />
the split became very clear; a very intelligent man, he<br />
could see he was divided. That created great inner<br />
torture for him.<br />
To be divided against yourself is hell, fighting with<br />
yourself is continuous torture. You want to do<br />
something – that is one part of you – and the second<br />
part says, “No, you cannot do it. It is sin.”<br />
How can you be at peace with yourself? And one<br />
who is not at peace with himself cannot be at peace<br />
with society, with culture, and finally with existence.<br />
The individual is the very brick of the whole<br />
existence.<br />
It is very significant to understand Nikos Kazantzakis.<br />
He was a Greek, and the Greeks have always been<br />
very much body-oriented. The whole history of<br />
Greece is full of love for your own body.<br />
Do you know that the woman in Greece was not<br />
thought to be beautiful? Just as everywhere else men<br />
managed and dominated societies, Greece was also<br />
male chauvinist, but with a difference. Women have<br />
been condemned everywhere, but not as much as<br />
in Greece. All Greek statues are of men. The whole<br />
sculpture is devoted to the beauty of the male body.<br />
You are bound to be surprised that this caused<br />
even people like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle – the<br />
highest you can conceive in intelligence – to become<br />
homosexuals. If a man loves his body, naturally he<br />
will love another man’s body. The woman is so<br />
condemned that she is almost treated as subhuman.<br />
In Athens perhaps democracy has flowered the best,<br />
but it was only for men; women had no votes.<br />
Nikos Kazantzakis represents both the things. One<br />
is his Greek mind, which is self-loving, materialist.<br />
In the West only Greece has produced materialistic<br />
philosophies, and Epicurus is the peak. So his Greek<br />
mind is Zorba – that’s why he calls his book Zorba<br />
the Greek.<br />
But Christianity contaminated the whole Greek<br />
mind. Jesus never knew the word `Christ’, never<br />
knew the word `Christian’. These are Greek words
and Jesus was not acquainted with Greek, not even<br />
with Hebrew. He spoke the language of the common<br />
masses. Hebrew was the language of the priests,<br />
rabbis – the common people spoke Aramaic, which<br />
is an unrefined form of Hebrew. He used the word<br />
`messiah’ which becomes `Christ’ in Greek, and the<br />
followers become “Christians.”<br />
Jesus influenced the Greek mind tremendously, for<br />
the simple reason that they were leaning too much<br />
towards the material – they were not balanced<br />
people. They thought themselves only bodies; the<br />
soul was just an invention. But man is not only body.<br />
The Greeks had no religion, and Christianity filled the<br />
vacuum. The Greek personality became split.<br />
The Greek is materialistic, Epicurean – loves the<br />
body, loves good food, good wine, beautiful women,<br />
beautiful men – and is not concerned at all what<br />
happens after death. According to Epicurus you die<br />
with your death, nothing happens afterwards. There<br />
is nothing after death, there is nothing before birth.<br />
You are an accident, without any planning – a small<br />
lifespan of seventy years. Don’t waste it, enjoy.<br />
Nikos is half Greek and half Christian. He cannot<br />
intelligently deny that there is something more to<br />
you than your physiology. He cannot deny his mind,<br />
he cannot deny even the witness of the mind – which<br />
are not physiological phenomena.<br />
That was his continuous torture. He was one of the<br />
most tortured artists of contemporary life – one of<br />
the best, but that is the curse. When you have the<br />
best intelligence, you want to become one organic<br />
whole. The idiots don’t get into self-torture – they<br />
don’t think at all. Torture needs thinking.<br />
Nikos is torn apart – his Greek heritage is materialist<br />
and his Christianity is anti-materialist. He cannot live<br />
as a materialist because his Christianity continuously<br />
condemns him. He cannot live as a Christian because<br />
that is only an idea, his reality is his Greek heritage.<br />
He is pulled apart – that is his torture, continuously.<br />
And the man who goes through self-torture<br />
automatically becomes guilty.<br />
The greatest guilt Nikos feels is against his own<br />
life. Whatever he does is wrong. If he follows his<br />
materialist tendencies, the Christian is there to<br />
condemn him, to send him to hell. If he tries to be a<br />
Christian, his Greek heritage is against it. He cannot<br />
do anything, he is in a fix.<br />
A sensitive man, an intelligent man is bound to feel<br />
guilty, that he is wasting his life fighting with himself.<br />
The man of guilt is of course obsessed with death –<br />
because he is not living and death is coming closer<br />
and closer every moment. Perhaps he may not be<br />
able to live – and death will finish him.<br />
A man who lives totally never bothers about death.<br />
His life is so full, death cannot even touch him.<br />
Death will come only to the body, not to him.<br />
He knows his inner organic consciousness.<br />
That was impossible for Nikos to know. He was<br />
obsessed with death, continuously afraid of death. He<br />
has not lived yet and death can come any moment.<br />
Nikos was a very troubled soul – whether to follow<br />
his materialist tendencies, which were natural to him,<br />
or to follow the ideology that Christianity preaches,<br />
which was just a superficial mind thing. He could not<br />
follow it; but he could not follow his natural instincts<br />
either. He was stuck. And death was approaching<br />
closer and closer. Naturally he became obsessed with<br />
religion. Religion became the shelter.<br />
The question is how he managed to create one of the<br />
greatest art works, Zorba the Buddha... the Greek.<br />
He could create it because it was one of his sides,<br />
which he had neglected, ignored, repressed.<br />
Zorba the Greek is Nikos repressed. He allows in<br />
the novel his repressed part to have full expression.<br />
And Zorba is so beautiful.... Expressiveness is always<br />
beautiful; repression is always ugly. Yes, Zorba is one<br />
of his basic parts. He had to give it a reality. He could<br />
not live it – but at least he could write it.<br />
Nikos suffered very much. He was a world-famous<br />
writer. He has written beautiful novels of tremendous<br />
importance, of great meaning. He was not confessing<br />
to a priest; he confessed in his own way. Nobody will<br />
think that Zorba the Greek is his confession. This is<br />
what he has been repressing, this is what has been<br />
continuously hammering him: “You have to do it.” He<br />
makes an individual, Zorba; he gives him reality, blood<br />
and flesh, and allows him to do everything that he has<br />
not allowed himself.<br />
Zorba the Greek is not a Christian. Zorba the Greek<br />
has nothing to do with churches. Zorba the Greek is<br />
a very practical, pragmatic, natural human being.<br />
From Death to Deathlessness<br />
Chapter #25<br />
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
73<br />
MAY<br />
2015
MEDITATION TECHNIQUES<br />
Vigyan Bhairav Tantra<br />
In the Book of secrets Osho reveals the most<br />
mysterious and mystical ancient techniques of<br />
realizing the ultimate state of bliss as explained<br />
by Lord Shiva to his consort Parvati. These Tantric<br />
secrets have been guarded most carefully by a few<br />
and never made public. But Osho has distributed<br />
this treasure without restraint and that’s why this<br />
book remains the top seller by people who want<br />
to learn the techniques and not just the theory.<br />
THIS IS REALITY. NOT lsd<br />
eel The Cosmos As A Translucent Ever-<br />
“FLiving Presence.”<br />
This again is concerned with light: “Feel The<br />
Cosmos As A Translucent Ever-Living Presence.”<br />
If you have taken any drugs such as LSD or some<br />
such thing, the whole world around you becomes a<br />
light phenomenon of colours that are translucent,<br />
alive. This is not because of LSD. The world is<br />
such, but your eyes have become dull. The LSD<br />
is not creating a colourful world around you; the<br />
world is already colourful, nothing is wrong with<br />
the world. It is a rainbow of colours – a mystery of<br />
colours and translucent light. But your eyes have<br />
become dull. That is why you can never feel it in<br />
such colourfulness.<br />
LSD is just clearing your eyes. It is not making the<br />
world colourful; it is just helping your dullness to<br />
go chemically, and then the whole world erupts<br />
before you. It is a new thing. Even an ordinary<br />
chair becomes a marvelous phenomenon. Just a<br />
shoe on the floor takes on new colours, a new<br />
youth. Ordinary traffic noise becomes musical.<br />
Trees you have always seen but never looked at<br />
are born anew though you have always passed<br />
them by and you know you have seen them. Every<br />
leaf of a tree is a miracle.<br />
And this is how reality is. It is not LSD which is<br />
creating this reality. LSD is just destroying your<br />
dullness, your insensitivity, and you look at the<br />
world as one should really look. But LSD can give<br />
you only a glimpse, and if you depend on it, sooner<br />
or later even LSD will not be able to remove your<br />
dullness. Then you will need greater doses, and<br />
then you will become immune to greater doses.<br />
And, really, if you then give up LSD or other drugs,<br />
the world will be duller than it has ever been.<br />
Then you will become even more insensitive.<br />
LSD will make you dull ultimately because with
They are there; the whole rainbow is there.<br />
Wherever light is, the rainbow is there because<br />
light is all colour. You need a subtle sensitivity. Just<br />
feel it and go on looking at it. Even if tears start<br />
flowing, go on looking at it. Those tears will help<br />
your eyes to be fresher. Sometimes you may feel<br />
that the flame, the candle, has become mysterious.<br />
It is not the ordinary candle you brought with you;<br />
it has taken on a new glamour, a subtle divineness<br />
has come into it. Go on doing this. You can also<br />
do this with many other things.<br />
Inner Space<br />
it you are not growing. If You grow, then it is<br />
a different process. Then you become more<br />
sensitive, and as you become more sensitive the<br />
world becomes different. Now you can sense<br />
many things you never sensed before because<br />
you were not sensitive. This technique is based<br />
on inner sensitivity. First grow in sensitivity. Just<br />
close your doors, make the room dark and light a<br />
small candle. Sit near the candle with a very loving<br />
attitude – rather, with a prayerful attitude. Just<br />
pray to the candle, “Reveal yourself to me.” Take a<br />
bath, throw cold water on your eyes, then sit in a<br />
very prayerful mood before the candle.<br />
Look at it and forget everything else. Just look at<br />
the small candle – the flame and the candle. Go<br />
on looking at it. After five minutes you will feel<br />
that many things are changing in the candle. They<br />
are not changing in the candle, remember; your<br />
eyes are changing. With a loving attitude, with the<br />
whole world closed out, with total concentration,<br />
with a feeling heart, just go on looking at the<br />
candle and the flame. Then you will discover new<br />
colours around the flame, new shades which you<br />
were never aware were there.<br />
One of my friends was telling me that a group<br />
of five or six people had been experimenting<br />
with rocks. I had told them how to experiment,<br />
and then they reported to me. They were<br />
experimenting with rocks on the bank of a lonely<br />
river. They were trying to feel them with their<br />
hands, with their faces, touching the rocks with<br />
their tongues, smelling the rocks. In every way<br />
possible they were feeling the rocks – just ordinary<br />
rocks which they found on the bank.<br />
They tried this for a whole hour, everyone with<br />
a rock. And then, my friend reported, there was<br />
a miracle. Everyone said, “Could I keep this rock?<br />
I have fallen in love with it!” An ordinary rock!<br />
If you have a sympathetic relationship with it,<br />
you will fall in love. And if you don’t have that<br />
sensitivity, then even with a very beautiful person<br />
you are with a rock; you cannot fall in love.<br />
Sensitivity must grow. Your every sense must<br />
become more alive. Then you can experiment with<br />
this technique. “Feel the Cosmos as a Translucent<br />
Ever-Living Presence.” Everywhere light is – in<br />
many shapes, forms, light is happening everywhere.<br />
Look at it! And everywhere light is because the<br />
whole phenomenon is based on the foundation<br />
of light. Look at a leaf or a flower or a rock, and<br />
sooner or later you will feel rays coming out of it.<br />
Just wait patiently.<br />
Don’t be in a hurry because nothing is revealed<br />
when you are in a hurry. In a hurry you are dull.<br />
Wait silently with anything, and you will discover a<br />
new phenomenon which was always there, but of<br />
which you were not alert – not aware of it.<br />
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
75<br />
MAY<br />
2015
“Feel the Cosmos as a Translucent Ever-Living<br />
Presence,” and your mind will become completely<br />
silent as you feel the presence of the ever-living<br />
existence. You will be just a part in it, just a note<br />
in the great symphony. No burden, no tension...<br />
the drop has fallen into the ocean. But great<br />
imagination will be needed in the beginning, and if<br />
Sensitivity must grow. Your every<br />
sense must become more alive.<br />
Then you can experiment with<br />
this technique. “FEEL THE COSMOS<br />
AS A TRANSLUCENT EVER-LIVING<br />
PRESENCE.” Everywhere light is – in<br />
many, many shapes, forms, light is<br />
happening everywhere. Look at it!<br />
And everywhere light is because the<br />
whole phenomenon is based on the<br />
foundation of light.<br />
you are also trying with other sensitivity training<br />
it will be helpful. You can try many ways. Just take<br />
someone’s hand into your hand. Close your eyes<br />
and feel the life in the other. Feel it, and allow it to<br />
move towards you. Feel your own life and allow<br />
it to move towards the other. Sit near a tree and<br />
touch the bark of the tree. Close your eyes and<br />
feel the life arising in the tree, and you change<br />
immediately. I have heard about one experiment.<br />
A doctor was experimenting with people to see<br />
whether their feelings changed their biochemistry.<br />
Now he has reported that feeling changes<br />
biochemistry immediately. He experimented with<br />
a group of twelve persons. He collected their<br />
urine before the experiment, and the urine was<br />
ordinary, normal.<br />
Each person was put under a different stress.<br />
One was shown a film of horror, anger, violence,<br />
cruelty – it was just a film – for thirty minutes he<br />
was shown a film of horror. Of course, with the<br />
film his emotions changed. He felt stress.<br />
To another a very joyful film was shown. He felt<br />
happy. And so the experiment continued for<br />
twelve people. Then their urine was taken again<br />
and the urine analysis showed that everyone’s<br />
urine was different now. The chemicals had<br />
changed in the body. The person who felt horror<br />
was ill now; the person who felt hope, happiness,<br />
joy, was healthy now.<br />
His urine was different, the chemicals of the body<br />
were different. You are not aware of what you are<br />
doing with yourself. When you go to see a murder<br />
film, you don’t know what you are doing. You are<br />
changing your body chemistry. If you are reading<br />
a detective novel, you don’t know what you are<br />
doing. You are killing yourself.<br />
You will become excited, you will become afraid,<br />
a tension will come to you. That is how you<br />
enjoy the detective novel. The more tense you<br />
become, the more you enjoy it. The more the<br />
suspense over what is going to happen, the more<br />
you get excited – and you are changing your body<br />
chemistry.<br />
All these techniques also change your body<br />
chemistry. If you feel the whole world as filled<br />
with life, light, then you are changing your body<br />
chemistry. And this is a chain reaction. When your<br />
body chemistry changes, you can look at the world<br />
and it will look more alive. And if it looks more<br />
alive, your body chemistry will change again, and<br />
then it becomes a chain.<br />
If this method is done for three months, you will<br />
be living in a different world because you will be<br />
different now.<br />
OSHO<br />
Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 2<br />
Chapter #07<br />
Full Discourse on<br />
www.oshoworld.com
BOOK SERIALISATION<br />
Meditation: The First and Last Freedom<br />
From Osho’s landmark book, this extract<br />
explains the techniques of one of the sixty<br />
meditations that he advocates. Step by step,<br />
Osho guides the seeker for every one of these<br />
meditation techniques and also answers<br />
questions put to him about these meditations.<br />
This extract can serve as a spring board for<br />
reading and understanding the entire book<br />
to get an overview of Osho meditations and<br />
practise them.<br />
HOW TO START MEDITATING<br />
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
77<br />
SUGGESTIONS FOR BEGINNERS<br />
Enough Space<br />
When you are trying to meditate, put the phone<br />
off the hook, disengage yourself. Put a notice on<br />
the door that for one hour nobody should knock,<br />
that you are meditating. When you move into the<br />
meditation room take your shoes off, because<br />
you are walking on sacred ground. And not only<br />
take your shoes off, but everything that you are<br />
preoccupied with. Consciously leave everything<br />
with the shoes. Go inside unoccupied. One can take<br />
one hour out of twenty-four hours. Give twentythree<br />
hours for your occupations, desires, thoughts,<br />
ambitions, projections. Take one hour out of all this,<br />
and in the end you will find that only that one hour<br />
has been the real hour of your life; those twentythree<br />
hours have been a sheer wastage. Only that<br />
one hour has been saved and all else has gone down<br />
the drain.<br />
(The Secret of Secrets, Vol 2, Chapter #1)<br />
The Right Place<br />
You should find a place which enhances meditation.<br />
For example, sitting under a tree will help, rather<br />
than going and sitting in front of a movie house<br />
or going to the railway station and sitting on the<br />
platform; going to nature, to the mountains, to<br />
the trees, to the rivers where Tao is still flowing,<br />
vibrating, pulsating, streaming all around. Trees are<br />
in constant meditation. Silent, unconscious, is that<br />
meditation. I’m not saying to become a tree; you<br />
have to become a Buddha! But Buddha has one thing<br />
in common with the tree: he’s as green as a tree,<br />
as full of juice as a tree, as celebrating as a tree, of<br />
course with a difference – he is conscious, and the<br />
tree is unconscious. The tree is unconsciously in Tao,<br />
a Buddha is consciously in Tao. And that is a great<br />
difference, the difference between the earth and the<br />
sky. But if you sit by the side of a tree surrounded by<br />
beautiful birds singing, or a peacock dancing, or just a<br />
river flowing, and the sound of the running water, or<br />
by the side of a waterfall, and the great music of it...<br />
Find a place where nature has not yet been disturbed,<br />
polluted. If you cannot find such a place then just<br />
MAY<br />
2015
close your doors and sit in your own room. If it is<br />
possible have a special room for meditation in your<br />
house. Just a small corner will do, but especially for<br />
meditation. Why especially? – because every kind of<br />
act creates its own vibration. If you simply meditate<br />
in that place, that place becomes meditative. Every<br />
day you meditate it absorbs your vibrations when you<br />
are in meditation. Next day when you come, those<br />
vibrations start falling back on you. They help, they<br />
reciprocate, they respond.<br />
When a person has really become a meditator, he<br />
can meditate sitting before a picture house, he can<br />
meditate on the railway platform.<br />
For fifteen years I was continuously travelling around<br />
the country, continuously travelling - day in, day out,<br />
day in, day out, year in, year out - always on the train,<br />
on the plane, in the car. That makes no difference.<br />
Once you have become really rooted in your being,<br />
nothing makes a difference. But this is not for the<br />
beginner.<br />
When the tree has become rooted, let winds come<br />
and let rains come and let clouds thunder; it is all<br />
good. It gives integrity to the tree. But when the tree<br />
is small, tender, then even a small child is dangerous<br />
enough or just a cow passing by - such a holy animal -<br />
but that is enough to destroy it.<br />
(The Secret of Secrets, Vol 2, Chapter #1)<br />
Be Comfortable<br />
A posture should be such that you can forget your<br />
body. What is comfort? When you forget your<br />
body, you are comfortable. When you are reminded<br />
continuously of the body, you are uncomfortable. So<br />
whether you sit in a chair or you sit on the ground,<br />
that’s not the point. Be comfortable, because if you<br />
are not comfortable in the body you cannot long for<br />
other blessings which belong to deeper layers: the<br />
first layer missed, all other layers closed. If you really<br />
want to be happy, blissful, then start from the very<br />
beginning to be blissful. Comfort of the body is a<br />
basic need for anybody who is trying to reach inner<br />
ecstasies.<br />
(Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6, Chapter #7)<br />
Begin with Catharsis<br />
I never tell people to begin with just sitting. Begin<br />
from where beginning is easy, otherwise you will<br />
begin to feel many things unnecessarily – things that<br />
are not there. If you begin with sitting, you will feel<br />
much disturbance inside. The more you try to just<br />
sit, the more disturbance will be felt; you will become<br />
aware only of your insane mind and nothing else. It<br />
will create depression, you will feel frustrated. You<br />
will not feel blissful; rather, you will begin to feel that<br />
you are insane. And sometimes you may really go<br />
insane.<br />
If you make a sincere effort to “just sit,” you may<br />
really go insane. Only because people do not really<br />
try sincerely does insanity not happen more often.<br />
With a sitting posture you begin to know so much<br />
madness inside you that if you are sincere and<br />
continue it, you may really go insane. It has happened<br />
before, so many times; so I never suggest anything<br />
that can create frustration, depression, sadness –<br />
anything that will allow you to be too aware of your<br />
insanity. You may not be ready to be aware of all the<br />
insanity that is inside you; you must be allowed to<br />
get to know certain things gradually. Knowledge is<br />
not always good; it must unfold itself slowly as your<br />
capacity to absorb it grows.<br />
I begin with your insanity, not with a sitting posture; I<br />
allow your insanity. If you dance madly, the opposite<br />
happens within you. With a mad dance, you begin<br />
to be aware of a silent point within you; with sitting<br />
silently, you begin to be aware of madness. The<br />
opposite is always the point of awareness. With your<br />
dancing madly, chaotically, with crying, with chaotic<br />
breathing, I allow your madness. Then you begin to<br />
be aware of a subtle point, a deep point inside you<br />
which is silent and still, in contrast to the madness<br />
on the periphery. You will feel very blissful; at your<br />
center there is an inner silence. But if you are just<br />
sitting, then the inner one is the mad one; you are<br />
silent on the outside, but inside you are mad.<br />
If you begin with something active – something<br />
positive, alive, moving – it will be better; then you will<br />
begin to feel an inner stillness growing. The more it<br />
grows, the more it will be possible for you to use a<br />
sitting posture or a lying posture – the more silent<br />
meditation will be possible. But by then things will be<br />
different, totally different.<br />
A meditation technique that begins with movement,<br />
action, helps you in other ways, also. It becomes<br />
a catharsis. When you are just sitting, you are<br />
frustrated; your mind wants to move and you are just
sitting. Every muscle turns, every nerve turns. You<br />
are trying to force something upon yourself that is<br />
not natural for you; then you have divided yourself<br />
into the one who is forcing and the one who is being<br />
forced. And really, the part that is being forced<br />
and suppressed is the more authentic part; it is a<br />
more major part of your mind than the part that is<br />
suppressing, and the major part is bound to win.<br />
That which you are suppressing is really to<br />
be thrown, not suppressed. It has become an<br />
accumulation within you because you have been<br />
constantly suppressing it. The whole upbringing, the<br />
civilisation, the education, is suppressive. You have<br />
been suppressing much that could have been thrown<br />
very easily with a different education, with a more<br />
conscious education, with a more aware parenthood.<br />
With a better awareness of the inner mechanism<br />
of the mind, the culture could have allowed you to<br />
throw many things.<br />
For example, when a child is angry we tell him, “Do<br />
not be angry.” He begins to suppress anger. By and<br />
by, what was a momentary happening becomes<br />
permanent. Now he will not act angry, but he will<br />
remain angry. We have accumulated so much anger<br />
from what were just momentary things; no one<br />
can be angry continuously unless anger has been<br />
suppressed. Anger is a momentary thing that comes<br />
and goes: if it is expressed, then you are no longer<br />
angry. So with me, I would allow the child to be angry<br />
more authentically. Be angry, but be deep in it; do<br />
not suppress it.<br />
Of course, there will be problems. If we say, “Be<br />
angry,” then you are going to be angry at someone.<br />
But a child can be moulded; he can be given a pillow<br />
and told, “Be angry with the pillow. Be violent with<br />
the pillow.” From the very beginning, a child can<br />
be brought up in a way in which the anger is just<br />
deviated. Some object can be given to him: he can go<br />
on throwing the object until his anger goes. Within<br />
minutes, within seconds, he will have dissipated his<br />
anger and there will be no accumulation of it.<br />
You have accumulated anger, sex, violence, greed,<br />
everything! Now this accumulation is a madness<br />
within you. It is there, inside you. If you begin with<br />
any suppressive meditation – for example, with just<br />
sitting – you are suppressing all of this, you are not<br />
allowing it to be released. So I begin with a catharsis.<br />
First, let the suppressions be thrown into the air;<br />
and when you can throw your anger into the air, you<br />
have become mature. If I cannot be loving alone, if I<br />
can be loving only with someone I love, then, really, I<br />
am not mature yet. Then I am depending on someone<br />
even to be loving; someone must be there, then I<br />
can be loving. Then that loving can only be a very<br />
superficial thing; it is not my nature. If I am alone in<br />
the room I am not loving at all, so the loving quality<br />
has not gone deep; it has not become a part of my<br />
being.<br />
You become more and more mature when you are<br />
less and less dependent. If you can be angry alone,<br />
you are more mature. You do not need any object<br />
to be angry. So I make a catharsis in the beginning<br />
a must. You must throw everything into the sky,<br />
into the open space, without being conscious of any<br />
object.<br />
Be angry without the person with whom you would<br />
like to be angry. Weep without finding any cause;<br />
laugh, just laugh, without anything to laugh at. Then<br />
you can just throw the whole accumulated thing –<br />
you can just throw it. And once you know the way,<br />
you are unburdened of the whole past.<br />
Within moments you can be unburdened of the<br />
whole life – of lives even. If you are ready to throw<br />
everything, if you can allow your madness to come<br />
out, within moments there is a deep cleansing. Now<br />
you are cleansed: fresh, innocent – you are a child<br />
again. Now, in your innocence, sitting meditation<br />
can be done – just sitting, or just lying or anything –<br />
because now there is no mad one inside to disturb<br />
the sitting.<br />
Cleansing must be the first thing – a catharsis –<br />
otherwise, with breathing exercises, with just sitting,<br />
with practising asanas, yogic postures, you are just<br />
suppressing something. And a very strange thing<br />
happens: when you have allowed everything to be<br />
thrown out, sitting will just happen, asanas will just<br />
happen – it will be spontaneous.<br />
Begin with catharsis and then something good can<br />
flower within you. It will have a different quality,<br />
a different beauty, altogether different; it will be<br />
authentic.<br />
When silence comes to you, when it descends<br />
on you, it is not a false thing. You have not been<br />
cultivating it; it comes to you; it happens to you. You<br />
begin to feel it growing inside you just like a mother<br />
begins to feel a child growing.<br />
(Meditation: The Art of Ecstasy, Chapter #4)<br />
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
79<br />
MAY<br />
2015
INDIA MY LOVE<br />
WITH CENTRE, CIRCUMFERENCE<br />
BECOMES SIGNIFICANT<br />
The colour orange that I have chosen for<br />
sannyas is the colour of the rising sun. It<br />
symbolises the East and it symbolises light. It<br />
symbolises that the night is over, that the East has<br />
become red and soon the sun will rise. The East<br />
is the land where all the religions were born, just<br />
as the West is the land where all the scientific<br />
discoveries were made.<br />
The West has not given birth to a single religion.<br />
It is strange. Even Christianity is Eastern.<br />
Jesus learned all his secrets in Egypt, in India.<br />
Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism,<br />
Sikhism, Taoism, Shinto - all the great religions<br />
were born in the East; it is not just coincidental.<br />
The East has not given birth to any scientific<br />
enquiry. All that is great in science has been given<br />
birth to in the West.<br />
It represents the two hemispheres of the mind,<br />
not only of the earth. The East is intuitive,<br />
feminine. Its functioning is from the heart; hence<br />
the birth of all the great religions. The West is<br />
reason, logic, objectivity; hence its approach is<br />
scientific.<br />
Science can explore the outer world but leaves<br />
man unexplored. It explores things; it cannot<br />
explore consciousness. Even if it thinks about<br />
consciousness it thinks in terms of it also as being<br />
a thing, an object. Even psychology does not go<br />
deeply into consciousness but only observes<br />
behaviour, from the outside. Even psychology is<br />
not really psychology; the word psychology means<br />
‘science of the soul’. It is not yet a psychology...<br />
very rudimentary.<br />
The objective approach denies that there is any<br />
subjectivity in the world. This is such an absurd<br />
state. The scientist goes on denying himself. He<br />
says ‘I am not’, he says ‘There is no soul inside<br />
me.’ He believes in the machine he creates but he<br />
does not believe in the creator of the machine.<br />
His belief in what he discovers and invents is
tremendous but his belief is not at all in the<br />
discoverer himself.<br />
Religion is an approach towards the very<br />
phenomenon of our being. ‘Love for the East’<br />
means: love for that hemisphere of the mind<br />
which is intuitive, which is based on love, which<br />
is poetic not mathematical – which is feminine,<br />
The West has not given birth to a<br />
single religion. It is strange. Even<br />
Christianity is eastern. Jesus learned<br />
all his secrets in Egypt, in India.<br />
Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Jainism,<br />
Buddhism, Sikhism, Taoism, Shinto - all<br />
the great religions were born in the<br />
East<br />
of existence, it cannot touch the centre. And<br />
without the centre, what is the meaning of<br />
the circumference? Yes, with the centre, the<br />
circumference also becomes significant.<br />
We need a world where religion will be the deity<br />
of the temple and science will be the temple; but<br />
without the deity the temple is empty. The deity<br />
can exist even without the temple - just under a<br />
tree the deity can exist.<br />
A Buddha statue can sit beautifully under a tree -<br />
no need for a temple - but if the temple is there,<br />
it is beautiful, it adds to the beauty. But a temple<br />
without the Buddha statue, without a Jesus inside,<br />
without God inside, is an empty temple.<br />
That’s why in the West more and more people<br />
are feeling a kind of meaninglessness; the deity<br />
is missing. The temple is beautiful. They have<br />
decorated it really beautifully - the walls are made<br />
of gold, studded with diamonds. But it is empty...<br />
the master is missing. And the master can be found<br />
only if you go inwards.<br />
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
not masculine. The West is masculine, the East is<br />
feminine, and all that is great is known only when<br />
you are in a receptive mood, in a kind of passive<br />
receptivity. When one is just feminine, then God<br />
descends in one. An active search for God is going<br />
to fail. One has to wait, and wait prayerfully.<br />
Become more and more intuitive; lean more and<br />
more towards the heart. And nothing is wrong<br />
in the objective approach - I am all for science<br />
- but science can only explore the periphery<br />
OSHO<br />
Don’t Look Before You Leap<br />
Chapter #29<br />
Full Discourse on<br />
www.oshoworldgalleria.com<br />
81<br />
MAY<br />
2015
SHARING OSHO<br />
Inspire your friends and relatives with Osho’s quotes by uploading<br />
them on Twitter, Facebook, your WhatsApp or Telegram group or<br />
any other social media platform.<br />
Here is a selection for you to share.<br />
• Love makes everything sacred. Carelessness<br />
makes everything ugly. - Osho<br />
• You have to transform each small thing through<br />
your awareness, watchfulness, alertness, into a<br />
beautiful act. Then ordinary things can become<br />
extraordinary. - Osho<br />
• Move! Be dynamic! And whatever you do, do it<br />
so lovingly that the very act becomes creative<br />
and divine. - Osho<br />
• Rebellion without prayer becomes egoistic:<br />
rebellion with prayer becomes religious. It<br />
becomes humbleness, humility. - Osho<br />
• The person who lives with “don’ts” lives not. His<br />
life is shallow, his life is pseudo, and his life is dry<br />
of all juice. - Osho<br />
• A non-tense person is a blessing; his very<br />
presence is a blessing to the world. A tense<br />
person is a curse. - Osho<br />
• God is available to individuals not to crowds.<br />
Each has to move on his own, alone, utterly<br />
alone. - Osho<br />
• Possessiveness makes you miserable and<br />
possessiveness destroys and poisons all love.<br />
- Osho<br />
• Problem means just a symptom not the true<br />
cause. Real problems are deep down in you - a<br />
relationship simply helps them to surface. - Osho<br />
• Rather than dropping a situation it is better to<br />
change yourself. That needs guts, to change<br />
oneself. - Osho<br />
• Drop all beliefs, all disbeliefs. Let the mind<br />
become less cluttered. Remove all unnecessary<br />
luggage, become more unburdened. - Osho<br />
• Knowledge is mechanical; it is not rooted in<br />
experience. Wisdom is existential; it is rooted in<br />
experience. - Osho<br />
• Science is male energy: religion is female energy.<br />
In science you acquire more knowledge: in<br />
religion you allow more wisdom to happen.<br />
- Osho<br />
• God is everybody’s potentiality; it has to become<br />
everybody’s actuality too. Unless it happens we<br />
remain in misery. - Osho<br />
• Contentment is a key: it opens the door of<br />
paradise. Paradise is not there - paradise is here.<br />
- Osho<br />
• My emphasis is not on what you have to do, my<br />
emphasis is on how you do it. If you do it totally,<br />
it becomes meditation. - Osho<br />
• For the outside journey use the vehicle of doubt<br />
and for the inner pilgrimage use trust. One<br />
should be capable of both. - Osho<br />
• Be life-affirmative. Rejoice in being alive and help<br />
others to rejoice. - Osho<br />
• The real victory is inner, not outer. Unless<br />
you know yourself you cannot be victorious.<br />
In knowing oneself one becomes the greatest<br />
conqueror. - Osho<br />
• Beauty is physical, grace is spiritual. Grace cannot<br />
be cultivated, it cannot be invented; it has to be<br />
discovered. It is divine. - Osho
BOOK REVIEW<br />
On the Edge: Living with<br />
an Enlightened Master<br />
Author: Punya<br />
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
Punya’s book: On the Edge: Living with<br />
an Enlightened Master, is a revelation<br />
– not only of Punya’s fascinating internal<br />
growth process but that it equally unfolds<br />
the magical transformative process of the<br />
collective growth in the presence of an<br />
enlightened Master, Osho.<br />
In her writing, Punya is honest,<br />
transparent, and open. She is full of<br />
love energy and consequently her vivid<br />
description of an event, an episode, a<br />
situation is so alive and exhilarating.<br />
Reading this wonderful book, one comes<br />
to realize how vibrantly the commune<br />
around Osho functioned, how the Master<br />
worked on the seekers, individually and<br />
collectively, and enhanced the spiritual<br />
maturity of anyone open and committed<br />
to His Vision and Work.<br />
Punya, remarkably leads the reader<br />
through her intense personal change<br />
which resulted because of her focused<br />
attention to Osho, her totality in making<br />
effort, and her undying optimism. Her<br />
exposition of the mysteries of relating/<br />
relationship is touching. Filled with<br />
subtle humour, she makes her playful<br />
observations, interesting.<br />
All in all, reading, On the Edge, is more<br />
like watching a movie which is insightful<br />
as well as entertaining. I feel the book will<br />
prove highly useful for a seeker on the<br />
path.<br />
Swami Satya Vedant<br />
(Dr. Vasant Joshi)<br />
Ph.D. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,<br />
Mich.,USA.<br />
M.A., Ph.D., M.S. University of Baroda, Baroda,<br />
India.<br />
83<br />
MAY<br />
2015
HOW OSHO CHANGED MY LIFE<br />
‘life is joyous.<br />
i laugh, cry, dance.’<br />
Swami Deva Shunyam<br />
MY HEART MELTS WITH OSHO<br />
It may sound funny but my inner journey started with<br />
watching the famous TV serial, “Shaktimaan.” As a<br />
teenager, I wanted to be strong like him. I learnt about<br />
Kundalini and supernatural powers in this serial.<br />
Years later, one day, I went to a book store to buy a<br />
book on Kundalini.<br />
At the book store, I felt pulled towards the title, “Sex<br />
to Superconsciousness” however I did not have the<br />
courage to ask for it. I ended up buying the book next to<br />
it by Bhagwaan Shri Rajneesh. Bhagwaan as a prefix felt<br />
awkward to me. For me, Bhagwaan was either Krishna<br />
or Shiva.<br />
I started reading the book and loved it. I was never fond<br />
of reading before but reading Osho was totally different.<br />
I can never forget the following words that hit me the<br />
most.<br />
“Sadness is very cheap. In fact you need not seek it, it<br />
goes on coming on its own. It is so cheap, it asks nothing<br />
in return; just your readiness to be sad is enough. It is so<br />
plentifully available that open any window of your house,<br />
any door on any side, and it rushes in. It is all over the<br />
place, because the whole world is in misery.<br />
But bliss requires a very determined search. It requires<br />
that one should start moving in a particular direction<br />
without going astray... because life is short, time is not<br />
really enough. And much has to be done and one has to<br />
go far. Unless one moves in a straight line, unless one<br />
finds the shortest possible route – without going zigzag,<br />
without going astray, without having many objects in the<br />
mind– unless one has only one object in life, bliss cannot<br />
be attained. It needs one-pointedness.”<br />
I melted into it. It was like listening to a beautiful song.<br />
I was an Engineering student in Allahabad. My college<br />
invited students to attend a meditation course by Art of<br />
Living. I liked it but my thirst was not quenched.<br />
I soon went to the Goenka school of Vipassana for<br />
ten days. It was a deep experience for me. It opened<br />
the doors to myself. But somehow I knew I needed<br />
something else and something more.<br />
In 2008, I was an M.Tech student with IIT Roorkee.<br />
Listening to Osho was my favourite way of enjoying my<br />
free time. Soon, I booked myself for a meditation camp<br />
in Osho Om Boddhisattva ashram in Dehradun. The<br />
first meditation was Dynamic which shook me to my<br />
roots. I didn’t know I was so full of garbage. Tears,<br />
anger, laughter and dance were finding their way out.<br />
This was my real need. Catharsis! I felt deep silence<br />
within. For the first time, I experienced life with my<br />
heart.<br />
Everything was beautiful however I was scared of taking<br />
sannyas. My idea of sannyas was that I will have to<br />
renounce my ordinary life and I was not ready for it.<br />
In 2009, I came to Oshodham and read, “Tales of ten<br />
thousand buddhas” by Ma Dharm Jyoti. I attended the<br />
meditation camp and took sannyas after understanding<br />
the real meaning of sannyas from Osho.<br />
In 2014, I did the Mystic Rose group which was nothing<br />
less than a Tsunami in my inner journey. It took away all<br />
the garbage inside. Mystic Rose is a blessing for seekers<br />
on the path.<br />
Life is joyous. I laugh, cry and dance. I have found<br />
expression to the unsung song in my heart.<br />
Another big change is that I can hear creativity knocking<br />
at my door. I am learning to play the flute. I notice that I<br />
am innovative with my work in Office. I am able to share<br />
my love and laughter with colleagues. Some of them<br />
have even started reading Osho.<br />
With Osho, I am able to introspect and see how I create<br />
problems for myself. Having said that, I realize that it is<br />
a long and beautiful journey of transformation.<br />
My favourite quote from Osho is, “Remember that from<br />
this moment meditation becomes your goal; everything<br />
else is secondary. So arrange your life in such a way that<br />
everything revolves around meditation. Arrange your life<br />
in such a way that everything helps your meditativeness.<br />
Do things, but do with such consciousness, such<br />
alertness, that every act has the flavor of meditation,<br />
because it is only meditation that brings transformation.”<br />
Meeting Osho is the biggest achievement of my life.
CELEBRATE<br />
ABaNDON YOURSELF<br />
Continue to meditate and to dance and sing.<br />
See life in as many ways as possible, in all<br />
its colours. Celebrating, you come closer and<br />
closer to the heart of reality. The moment you<br />
stop celebrating you are cut, disconnected.<br />
Celebration is the bridge. When you dance, it is<br />
not only you who is dancing; the whole existence<br />
is dancing with you – the earth, the sun, the moon<br />
and the stars. It is a celebrating existence... it is<br />
continuously dancing.<br />
The moment you stop celebrating and you become<br />
serious, you start taking yourself too seriously.<br />
That’s what a monk is: taking yourself too<br />
seriously, being too self-obsessed. Self-obsession<br />
makes a person a monk. He is too worried about<br />
the past and the future and the karma and the<br />
result, about hell and heaven and nirvana; but<br />
everything revolves around the self, his small self.<br />
How can one attain to nirvana when the entire<br />
effort is just centred on the self?<br />
In celebration the self disappears. That’s the<br />
beauty, that’s the divinity of it. When you are<br />
celebrating, you are not; celebration is, you are<br />
not. Slowly, slowly the realisation dawns on you<br />
that when you are not, nirvana is. Then one day<br />
one simply forgets all about oneself. To forget<br />
oneself is to know oneself. Not to be is the way.<br />
To be comes out of not to be. Being arrives<br />
through nothingness, but how to be nothingness?<br />
There are two ways that have been practised.<br />
One is the false way, you make an effort. But this<br />
creates the ego and the I; the monk becomes one<br />
of the most crystallised egos. That’s a false, pseudo<br />
path.<br />
The only real path is when you start dancing and<br />
singing. You start losing yourself, you abandon<br />
yourself, you become drunk. Then small glimpses<br />
start coming to you. Suddenly something happens:<br />
for a few moments you are and you are not. As<br />
if a door opens, you see a totally different vision<br />
of reality. The gestalt changes: there is no matter,<br />
there is only<br />
consciousness.<br />
There is no bondage, there is only freedom.<br />
And there has never been any misery; it was just<br />
imagination. All is joy and bliss. These moments<br />
come, and slowly the track is created in you. They<br />
become frequent visitors, and then suddenly one<br />
day they decide to reside in you. Then for twentyfour<br />
hours of each day one is in a kind of dance.<br />
Just remember celebration; let this be the key<br />
word.<br />
Believing the Impossible Before Breakfast<br />
Chapter #28<br />
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
85<br />
MAY<br />
2015
HAPPENINGS<br />
Mulla nasruddin Day celebration
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
87<br />
MAY<br />
2015
OSHO EVENTS<br />
Osho events keep happening all the time all over India and here we<br />
present some of the recent ones ranging from meditation camps to<br />
exhibitions to meetings and get-togethers.<br />
Anand, Gujarat<br />
Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh<br />
Indore, Madhya Pradesh<br />
Ambala Cantt, Haryana<br />
Dallas, USA<br />
Pune, Maharashtra
San Diego, USA<br />
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
Barnala, Punjab<br />
Rajkot, Gujarat<br />
89<br />
MAY<br />
2015<br />
Texas, USA<br />
Nargol, Gujrat<br />
Tapoban Nepal
FORTHCOMING EVENTS<br />
“Whatever you do, if you do it joyfully, if you<br />
do it lovingly, if your act of doing it is not purely<br />
economical, then it is creative. If you have<br />
something growing out of it within you, if it gives<br />
you growth, it is spiritual, it is creative, it is divine.”<br />
– OSHO<br />
OSHO<br />
d h a m<br />
Buddha Purnima Celebration<br />
May 1 - 5<br />
Swami Amit Saraswati<br />
Ma Prem Devyani<br />
Meditate Celebrate<br />
May 6 - 7<br />
Swami Prem Tanmay<br />
Discovering Osho’s New Man<br />
May 8 - 10<br />
Swami Anand Kul Bhushan<br />
Meditate Celebrate<br />
May 11 - 14<br />
Swami Avinash Bharti<br />
Born Again Group<br />
May 15 - 21<br />
Swami Prem Vartan<br />
Children Meditation Camp<br />
May 22 - 24<br />
Ma Prem Devyani & Team<br />
Parents Meditation Camp<br />
May 22 - 24<br />
Swami Shiv Bharti<br />
Ma Yog Madhu<br />
Art of Relaxing BodyMind<br />
May 25 - 31<br />
Swami Shiv Bharti<br />
Ma Yog Madhu<br />
Children Meditation Group<br />
May 25 -June 14<br />
Ma Prem Devyani<br />
Swami Amit Saraswati & Team<br />
No Mind Group<br />
June 1 - 7<br />
Swami Avinash Bharti<br />
Osho Meditation Camp<br />
June 8 - 14<br />
Swami Prem Tanmay<br />
Mystic Rose Group<br />
June 8 - 28<br />
Swami Dhyan Pulak<br />
Osho Meditation Camp<br />
June 15 - 25<br />
Swami Amit Saraswati<br />
Ma Prem Devyani<br />
Osho Meditation Camp<br />
June 26 -July 1<br />
Swami Ravindra Bharti
OSHO MEDITATION CAMPS<br />
BIHAR<br />
Jhanjharpur<br />
Buddha Purnima Celebration<br />
3 to 4 May<br />
Venue: Osho Ashiya Trust,<br />
Madhubani<br />
Contact: 9470883342<br />
Conducted by: Ma Prem Isha<br />
CHHATTISGARH<br />
Champa<br />
Osho Neo-Vipassana Dhyan Shivir<br />
4 to 10 May<br />
Conducted by: Swami Govind Kartar<br />
Osho Hasya Dhyan Shivir (For<br />
Children & Parents)<br />
11 to 15 June<br />
Conducted by: Swami Anand Ekant,<br />
Swami Veet Gyan<br />
Venue: Osho Madhuban, Janjgir Road<br />
Contact: Ma Prem Samarpita,<br />
07746968159<br />
Ma Prem Muskan, 09575518984<br />
DADRA AND NAGAR HAVELI<br />
Silvassa<br />
Osho Meditation Camp<br />
24 to 28 June<br />
Venue: Khanvel Resort, Vapi<br />
Contact: Swami Vitthal, 9833993593<br />
Conducted by: Swami Samdarshi<br />
GUJARAT<br />
Rajkot<br />
Buddha Purnima Celebration<br />
4 May<br />
Venue: Osho Vatika, Balsar<br />
Vagudad Village, Kalavad Road<br />
Contact: 9898980440<br />
Conducted by: Swami Sanjay<br />
Saraswati<br />
Junagadh<br />
Osho Sufi Dhyan Shivir<br />
14 to 16 June<br />
Venue: Osho Antaryatra Ashram<br />
Contact: 9451111582, 7398283431,<br />
8858358241<br />
Conducted by: Ma Prem Isha<br />
Valsad<br />
Osho Meditation Camp<br />
30 April to 3 May<br />
Conducted by: Ma Prem Nisha<br />
Osho Meditation Camp<br />
3 to 7 May<br />
Conducted by: Swami Atmo Jitu<br />
Osho Meditation Camp<br />
7 to 10 May<br />
Conducted by: Ma Atmo Sangeeta<br />
Osho Meditation Camp<br />
10 to 14 May<br />
Conducted by: Swami Kundkund<br />
Osho Meditation Camp<br />
14 to 17 May<br />
Conducted by: Swami Atmo Kranti<br />
Osho Meditation Camp<br />
17 to 21 May<br />
Conducted by: Ma Ajasta<br />
Osho Meditation Camp<br />
21 to 24 May<br />
Conducted by: Swami Vitthal<br />
Osho Meditation Camp<br />
24 to 27 May<br />
Conducted by: Swami Govind Kartar<br />
Osho Meditation Camp<br />
27 to 31 May<br />
Conducted by: Swami Om Prakash<br />
Venue: Osho Shanti Kunj Meditation<br />
Centre,<br />
Round Building, Near Sai Baba<br />
Mandir, Tithal<br />
Contact: Swami Kiran, 9375853439<br />
Nargol<br />
Osho Meditation Camp<br />
28 to 31 May<br />
Venue: Nargol, Maharashtra<br />
Contact: 9825978625, 9825650699<br />
Conducted by: Swami Samarpan<br />
Bharti<br />
HIMACHAL PRADESH<br />
Dharamshala<br />
Yes to Silence<br />
9 to 17 May<br />
Conducted by: Ma Yoga Neelam<br />
Alchemy of inner Transformation<br />
21 to 24 May<br />
Conducted by: Swami Vivekanand<br />
The Way of the Heart<br />
28 to 31 May<br />
Conducted by: Swami Deva Naman<br />
Dance Your Way to God<br />
04 to 07 June<br />
Conducted by: Ma Neelam & Ma<br />
Nidhi<br />
Osho Born Again Meditative Therapy<br />
14 to 20 June<br />
Conducted by: Swami Antar Khirad<br />
Balancing Body Mind and Soul<br />
24 to 28 June<br />
Conducted by: Ma Antar Pragya<br />
Venue: Osho Nisarga, Village Shilla,<br />
Post Office Pantehar,<br />
District Kangra, Dharmashala,<br />
Himachal Pradesh - 176057<br />
Contact: 91- 9418037370,<br />
1892275592<br />
Shoghi<br />
Buddha Purnima Celebration<br />
2 to 4 May<br />
Venue: Osho Vatika Resort<br />
Contact: Ma Alok Swati, 9560921112<br />
Swami Dhyan Samira , 9459260621<br />
Conducted by: Swami Jivan Abhiviraj<br />
Manali<br />
Osho Meditation Camp<br />
5 to 7 June<br />
Venue: Osho Holiday Home and<br />
Meditation Center<br />
Contact: Swami Kranti, 9418437155,<br />
08627888121<br />
Conducted by: Swami Anand Ekant<br />
Shimla<br />
Osho Meditation Camp<br />
31 May to 3 June<br />
Venue: Himgiri Resort, Meditation<br />
Valley<br />
Purani Kothi<br />
Contact: Swami Antar Nirdosh<br />
09899559011, 09810215918<br />
Conducted by: Swami Anand Vijay,<br />
Ma Jeevan Darpan<br />
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
91<br />
MAY<br />
2015
Solan<br />
Osho Dhyan Sadhana Shivir<br />
16 to 18 June<br />
Venue: Shivalik Hotel, Kasauli Road,<br />
Dharampur<br />
Contact: Swami Gyan Anugrah,<br />
8894925396,<br />
Swami Anand Ajay, 09805809702<br />
Conducted by: Swami Satya Vedant<br />
JAMMU AND KASHMIR<br />
Ladakh<br />
Osho Meditation Camp<br />
25 to 28 May<br />
Venue: Devachan, Choglamsar, Leh<br />
Ladakh<br />
Contact: Prem Musafir, 8130811532<br />
Conducted by: Swami Bodhi Vimal<br />
MADHYA PRADESH<br />
Jabalpur<br />
Buddha Purnima Celebration<br />
2 to 4 May<br />
Swadarshan and Abhinav Vipassana<br />
Camp<br />
8 to 17 May<br />
12 to 21 June<br />
Venue: Osho Amritdham<br />
Contact: Swami Chaitanya Shikhar<br />
09926549359, 09977716042<br />
Conducted by: Swami Anand Vijay,<br />
Ma Jeevan Darpan, Swami Anadi<br />
Anant<br />
MAHARASHTRA<br />
Lonavala<br />
Osho Dhyan Shivir<br />
1 to 5 May<br />
Venue: Dudhiware, Lonavala<br />
Contact: Swami Darpan,<br />
09922320063<br />
Conducted by: Swami Kundkund<br />
Bhusaval<br />
Osho Buddha Purnima Shivir<br />
30 April to 4 May<br />
Venue: Osho Urja Meditation Center,<br />
Yawal Tapi Road, Akrudi village<br />
Contact: Swami Anand Prem,<br />
09370005721<br />
Conducted by: Swami Vitthal<br />
Akola<br />
Osho Meditation Camp<br />
22 to 24 May<br />
Conducted by: Swami Gopal Bharti<br />
Osho Meditation Camp<br />
1 to 7 June<br />
Conducted by: Swami Amano<br />
Surdham<br />
Venue: Osho Heart Meditation<br />
Centre<br />
Contact: 7030706101, 8446588361<br />
PUNJAB<br />
Hoshiarpur<br />
Osho Tathata Sadhana Camp<br />
01 to 04 May<br />
Venue: Osho Silence Valley<br />
Contact: Swami Shikhar,<br />
08283821672,<br />
Ma Sambodhi, 8283821670,<br />
Gyan Naseeb, 09417221745<br />
Conducted by: Swami Anadi Anant<br />
Bathinda<br />
Osho Meditation Camp<br />
3 May<br />
Conducted by: Swami Dhyan Sagar<br />
Osho Meditation Camp<br />
7 June<br />
Conducted by: Swami Krishan Dev<br />
Bharti<br />
Venue: Osho Prem Dhyan Mandir<br />
Contact: Swami Dev Naman,<br />
09780076800, 9417090402<br />
RAJASTHAN<br />
Udaipur<br />
Osho Dhyan Shivir<br />
3 to 5 May<br />
Venue: Osho Dhyan Vihar,<br />
Ahmedabad Road, Near Amargarh<br />
resort<br />
Contact: 9828263450, 9414156929<br />
Conducted by: Swami Prem Vartan<br />
UTTARAKHAND<br />
Dehradun<br />
Osho Vipassana Meditation Camp<br />
1 to 5 May<br />
Venue: Osho Om Bodhisattva<br />
Commune<br />
108, Post Office Road, Clement town<br />
Contact: 0135-2642535, 6537071<br />
Conducted by: Ma Divya Gandha,<br />
Swami Prem Samarpan<br />
Bhimtal, Nainital<br />
Osho Appo Deepo Bhav Buddha<br />
Purnima Utsav<br />
1 to 5 May<br />
Osho Dhyan Sadhana Shivir<br />
14 to 17 May<br />
Osho Vipassana Group<br />
27 to 31 May<br />
Osho Manorog Chikitsa Dhyan<br />
Group<br />
4 to 7 June<br />
Osho Family Meditation Group<br />
11 to 14 June<br />
Osho Yog-Dhyan Sadhana Shivir<br />
18 to 21 June<br />
Osho Beyond Body and Mind Group<br />
25 to 28 June<br />
Venue: Osho Om Prakash Peeth,<br />
Bhimtal, Nainital<br />
Contact: 09557713399, 9639598282<br />
Conducted by: Swami Shunyam<br />
Prakash<br />
UTTAR PRADESH<br />
Ghaziabad<br />
Osho Zorba The Buddha Dhyan<br />
Shivir<br />
17 May<br />
Venue: Zorba The Buddha Wings,<br />
Raj Nagar<br />
Contact: Swami Hariom Bharti,<br />
8800139880, 9458580880<br />
Conducted by: Swami Dhyan Mudito<br />
Note: Please contact the<br />
organisers for information<br />
and details of the<br />
meditation camps listed<br />
above. Osho World News<br />
is not responsible for any<br />
error or arrangement.
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
93<br />
MAY<br />
2015
TAROT MAY 15<br />
MA PREM RITAMBHARA<br />
ritambhara7@gmail.com<br />
Message from the master:<br />
Religiousness is not something to be<br />
believed in, but something to be lived,<br />
something to be experienced…not a belief<br />
in your mind but the flavour of your whole<br />
being, says Osho, the Zen master.<br />
ARIES<br />
(March 21 - April 20)<br />
You mask intense passion with a calm surface this month!<br />
Its best to be flexible and elastic about plans and ideas if<br />
blocks come in your way, as this is a time to get on with<br />
your business rather than be caught up in emotional or ego<br />
conflicts. You become aware and feel disturbed about a<br />
young man who is subtle and crafty in the work area. Ruthless<br />
people with overweening ambition need to be avoided.<br />
You tend to get angry, moody or emotional easily at this<br />
point so remain centered and witnessing within rather than<br />
over reacting to situations outside. Deep feelings of love in<br />
emotional relationships are countered by negative attitudes<br />
at work. Trust your intuition and use a light approach to deal<br />
with negative or traditional people. Buddha Purnima on the<br />
4th is a great time to meditate and get in touch with silence<br />
and bliss. Lucky number is 6. Good colour is sky blue.<br />
TAURUS<br />
(April 21 - May 21)<br />
Things happen quickly this month and you may need to make<br />
snap decisions or you are liable to miss a rare opportunity.<br />
You are likely to fall in love with a new person or idea<br />
unexpectedly. Your energy is of high velocity and you end up<br />
involved in multifarious activity. You are fast approaching a<br />
professional goal that takes you to another level of success,<br />
especially during Buddha Purnima on the 4th. Visitors and<br />
positive communications can be expected. You opt for<br />
freedom and space in partnerships and relationships that are<br />
restricting. Beware of being too forceful or coming on too<br />
strong in new relationships and business connections. Also be<br />
aware of what you say to whom or your words can go against<br />
you in the future. You need to be open and receptive to<br />
changes and challenges that life offers you. Lucky number is 8.<br />
Good colours are pastels<br />
GEMINI<br />
(May 22 - June 21)<br />
You are brilliant, individualistic and not ready to make<br />
compromises in any aspect of life this month. Mental clarity<br />
and perspective bring balance in chaotic relationships and<br />
stability in professional ventures. You are intensely perceptive<br />
and don’t miss any undercurrents or political games that go<br />
on around you. You observe personal relationships keenly and<br />
express yourself in subtle terms. You can evaluate people and<br />
situations swiftly and accurately but need to act graciously.<br />
Tender, loving care is needed in personal relationships. You<br />
clear a misunderstanding with an old friend during Buddha<br />
Purnima on the 4th. Be aware and conscious to break through<br />
conditioning and reach the truth of your own heart to see life<br />
as it really is. Participate in current events and share views,<br />
ideas and feelings with people around you to feel part of the<br />
whole. Lucky number is 6. Good colour is turquoise blue.<br />
CANCER<br />
(June 22 - July 22)<br />
You are patient, laborious and clever with material aspects<br />
and manage finances and business ventures with ingenuity<br />
and success. Health problems for you or family members can<br />
be resolved with natural healing and alternate therapies. You<br />
are supported through a busy month with healing and earthy<br />
energy. Despite being somewhat preoccupied with material<br />
and professional affairs you manage to attend to loved ones<br />
with devotion and care. Parents may need your support and<br />
attention while children need your guidance and love. Be<br />
prepared to travel by road and enjoy a journey with friends or<br />
family. Beware of an avaricious, surly and petty man at work<br />
who vies for your position. Building a home or redecorating<br />
can be a passion. Sporty pastimes and physical activity keep<br />
you fit and energetic. Meditate during Buddha Purnima on<br />
the 4th to experience higher levels of consciousness. Lucky<br />
number is 5. Good colour is earthy brown.<br />
LEO<br />
(July 23 - August 23)<br />
Loosen your grip on whatever you are holding on to, be it<br />
anything material or emotional and feel the freedom and<br />
expansiveness sharing can bring. You bring order and clarity in<br />
chaotic situations at home and at work this month. You tend<br />
to dominate professional undertakings with your rank and<br />
power. You display leadership qualities and special skills to<br />
draw respect and confidence of people who matter. You have<br />
the need to feel emotionally secure in relationships and tend<br />
to be possessive or jealous without good reason. It’s time<br />
to be free and open to whatever life brings rather than be<br />
afraid of changes. An associate seeks impossible goals ignore<br />
him. Material power and stability are on the cards! You allow<br />
yourself a brief vacation and some meditative moments to<br />
get in touch with your inner peace, especially around Buddha<br />
Purnima on the 4th. Lucky number is 4. Good colour is<br />
saffron.<br />
VIRGO<br />
(August 24- September 23)<br />
This is a sensitive time for you when you need to conserve<br />
energy, resources and forces rather than meet impossible<br />
goals and demands. Your energy can be depleted this<br />
month as you have too much to handle at work and at<br />
home. Despite low energy and exhaustion you carry on
valiantly doing what you have to. Situations in business can<br />
be complicated and people concerned can be tiring. Beware<br />
of people who take advantage of your good nature and<br />
demand too much of your time and attention. Take time off<br />
by yourself and rejuvenate your energy, especially around<br />
Buddha Purnima this month. Health problems should not<br />
be neglected. Finances need to be conserved. A beloved<br />
helps you gain back your self-esteem and energy. You face<br />
obstacles and difficulties with courage and can expect victory<br />
in some areas. Personal relationships are sensitive and need<br />
to be treated with care. Lucky number is 7. Good colour is<br />
peacock green.<br />
LIBRA<br />
(September 24 - October 23)<br />
You prove to be a capable manager and a steadfast,<br />
competent worker this month. You may get heavily involved<br />
in business and professional affairs and need to take a break<br />
in order to attend to personal matters and relationships. You<br />
are slow to anger but implacable if aroused. Your social life<br />
can be dull so you can use this time to relax and attend to<br />
family, home and loved ones. This is a good time to explore<br />
and use opposite energies within you, for instance if you are<br />
soft and receptive, it’s time to be dynamic and strong and<br />
vice versa. A young man or son is ready to take off on an<br />
independent journey and career. You bring abundance to<br />
yourself by using all your talent but in an unconventional way.<br />
A balance of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual energies<br />
is recommended. Meditate during Buddha Purnima this month.<br />
Lucky number is 15. Good colour is emerald green.<br />
SCORPIO<br />
(October 24 - November 22)<br />
A bit of introspection and soul searching takes you past<br />
delusions and to the brink of an important change. You are<br />
able to see karmic patterns clearly and make a breakthrough.<br />
Personal relationships are rejuvenated as attitudes, priorities<br />
and values are transformed. You are able to restore selfesteem<br />
and recognize the fear or insecurity that motivated<br />
negative happenings. People and opportunities are drawn<br />
to you as you have a mystical and charismatic quality that is<br />
irresistible. You opt for professional projects that allow you<br />
freedom to be creative and original. Beware of deception at<br />
work and crazy outbursts in the family. Love and romance<br />
make this a special time of enjoying the finer things of<br />
life. Watch your health and adopt fitness routines again.<br />
Management of finances brings balance and stability at home<br />
and at work. Witness your moods during Buddha Purnima on<br />
the 4th. Lucky number is 18. Good colour is midnight blue.<br />
SAGITTARIUS<br />
(November 23 - December 23)<br />
There is likely to be strife and conflict in the work area and<br />
rivalry or competition in personal and professional situations<br />
this month. Quarreling and infighting if not curbed in the bud<br />
can be detrimental to your business and disturb harmony in<br />
the home. Family matters and business affairs may take time<br />
to resolve be patient and persistent. The knack of responding<br />
totally to whatever comes, as it comes in life equips you to<br />
face problems and challenges! Taking one step at a time with<br />
complete attention and energy brings vitality and creativity to<br />
all you do. Avoid negative and destructive people around you.<br />
Friends, family and loved ones are generous and supportive.<br />
A Leo person lends energy and resource to your business<br />
venture. Beware of an unwelcome visitor or admirer who may<br />
try to take advantage of you. Avoid confrontations and invite<br />
discussions instead. Yoga and meditation are good for you.<br />
Lucky number is 5. Good colour is old rose.<br />
CAPRICORN<br />
(December 24 - January 20)<br />
Feelings and emotions rather than intellectual ideas and plans<br />
influence your professional direction and personal decisions<br />
this month. You are closer to fulfilling a heart’s desire this<br />
month. Personal relationships are happy, loving and reflective<br />
with a promise for the future. You can expect to spend<br />
time in natural surroundings while experiencing beauty and<br />
relaxation during Buddha Purnima on the 4th. Business is<br />
likely to be brisk and you are highly productive and creative<br />
in professional ventures and projects. You are good with your<br />
hands and have special skills that are exposed and appreciated.<br />
You are able to exhibit your talent and express your creativity<br />
this month. Long-term plans materialize in one year from<br />
today and surprise you with phenomenal success. Others may<br />
not agree with you or accept your original ideas but don’t let<br />
that faze you. Lucky number is 1. Good colour is lotus pink.<br />
AQUARIUS<br />
(January 21 - February 19)<br />
‘The Priestess’ who is Isis veiled in light projecting a luminous<br />
spirit brings a pure, exalted and gracious influence in your<br />
life this month. Changes in relationships, and alternation of<br />
moods; increase and decrease in business and fluctuation<br />
of finances can keep you busy and guessing till the end<br />
of the month when you regain inner balance, harmony in<br />
relationships and professional stability. You can trust your<br />
intuition and insights about people and situations. You are<br />
ready to make lasting commitments in personal relationships<br />
that may lead to marriage. Loyalty and support of friends and<br />
family is heartening. Business partnerships and professional<br />
collaborations can be gainful and supportive. You are likely<br />
to handle two aspects of work simultaneously and balance<br />
opposite energies with diplomacy and tact. Yin and Yang<br />
energies are in balanced manifestation, especially around<br />
Buddha Purnima on the 4th. Lucky number is 2. Good colours<br />
are blues of the sky.<br />
PISCES<br />
(February 20 - March 20)<br />
You are blessed with spiritual insight that gives you clarity<br />
of vision in different aspects of life. You shine with true<br />
confidence in professional situations and self-esteem in<br />
personal relationships. You work well with groups or<br />
institutions and leave a lasting impact on people and situations.<br />
Unexpected professional support can be expected when you<br />
most need it. Visitors from overseas, friends and family make<br />
this a happy time as events are celebrated. Disappointment<br />
in certain aspects is likely, as you are full of dreams and<br />
expectations, its best to be realistic and practical. An associate<br />
close to you can make an error of judgement and cause some<br />
financial loss. This is a wonderful time to meditate, be silent<br />
and come home to yourself. You gain a new perspective and<br />
adopt a positive attitude. Health and finances need to be<br />
conserved. Lucky number is 17. Good colour is midnight blue.<br />
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
95<br />
MAY<br />
2015
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
97<br />
MAY<br />
2015
Laughing<br />
Buddha<br />
The Best Meditation<br />
Start the morning by<br />
laughing at yourself, and<br />
whenever you can find a<br />
moment in the day when<br />
you have nothing to do,<br />
have a good laugh. For<br />
no particular reason - just<br />
because the whole world is<br />
so absurd, just because the<br />
way you are is so absurd.<br />
There is no need to find any<br />
particular reason, The whole<br />
thing is so absurd that one<br />
has to laugh.<br />
Osho<br />
After the bride’s first<br />
dinner, she asked her<br />
husband, Mulla Nasrudin,<br />
“Now, dear, what will I get<br />
if I cook a dinner like that<br />
for you everyday?”<br />
“My life insurance,” said<br />
Nasrudin.<br />
Mulla Nasrudin, who was<br />
really unaccustomed to<br />
public speaking, arose in<br />
confusion after dinner and<br />
muttered hesitatingly:<br />
“M-m-my f-f-friends, when<br />
I came here tonight only<br />
God and myself knew what<br />
I was about to say to you<br />
and now only God knows!”<br />
Mulla Nasrudin’s young<br />
wife, recently returned<br />
from her honeymoon,<br />
was complaining to her<br />
friend about her husband’s<br />
drinking habits.<br />
“If you knew he drank, why<br />
did you marry him?” her<br />
friend asked.<br />
“I did not know he drank,”<br />
said Nasrudin’s wife, “Until<br />
one night he came home<br />
sober.”<br />
Mulla Nasrudin’s son,<br />
home from college, was<br />
talking to his father<br />
about the “Law of<br />
Compensation,” which<br />
he had studied. “If a<br />
person loses one eye,” he<br />
explained, “the sight in the<br />
other becomes stronger.<br />
If he loses the hearing in<br />
one ear, the hearing in the<br />
other becomes more acute.<br />
If he loses one hand, he<br />
becomes more agile with<br />
the other.”<br />
“I guess that’s right,” said<br />
Nasrudin. “I have always<br />
noticed that when a man<br />
has one short leg the other<br />
is longer.”<br />
“This book,” said the<br />
salesman, “will do half your<br />
work.”<br />
“Fine,” said Mulla Nasrudin.<br />
“I will take two of them.”<br />
Mulla Nasrudin used to<br />
say:<br />
“If you want your wife to<br />
pay close attention to what<br />
you are saying, whisper it<br />
to another woman in a low<br />
voice.”<br />
The two burglars worked<br />
as a team. One stayed<br />
outside as a lookout, while<br />
the other robbed the<br />
house.<br />
One night, when the inside<br />
man returned, his buddy<br />
said, “How much did you<br />
get?”<br />
“Nothing,” the other said.<br />
“This is the house of Mulla<br />
Nasrudin.”<br />
“Gee!” said his buddy.<br />
“Then how much did you<br />
lose?”<br />
It seemed that every time<br />
Mulla Nasrudin met his<br />
lawyer, he had some added<br />
legal fees. It worried the<br />
Mulla to the point of ulcers.<br />
Then one day, he met his<br />
lawyer in the post office<br />
and said, “Nice day, isn’t it?<br />
And remember, I am telling<br />
you, not asking you, sir.”
OSHO<br />
WORLD<br />
99<br />
MAY<br />
2015