Question 1:
Anand Heeren, it is a very difficult question. I could not sleep the whole night. I tried and tried hard to find something nice about men, but I have to admit to you there is nothing that can be said. You can see for yourself.
An interviewer for a ladies' magazine is questioning a famous British general about his sex life.
"Excuse me, sir," she begins, "but can you recall the last time you had relations with your wife?"
His upper lip stiffens for a moment and then he says, "Yes, of course I can, it was nineteen forty-five."
After a moment's silence the woman says, "That was a long time ago."
The general glances at his watch and says, "Not so long really. It is only twenty-one forty-nine."
Hymie Goldberg sends his eldest son to India on a cultural exchange, but is very upset when he comes back as a sannyasin. Not knowing what else to do, he phones his old friend, Moishe Finkelstein, and tells him the sad news.
"Funny you should say that," exclaims Moishe. "My son went to Poona and he too came back a sannyasin." The two old friends decide to go to the rabbi for help.
When they have told the rabbi their unhappy tale, the rabbi scratches his head and replies, "Funny you should say that. My son also went to Poona and he came back a sannyasin. We had better go to the synagogue and pray to God for advice."
So the three old Jews go down to the synagogue and pray fervently for guidance. Suddenly there is a clap of thunder and a voice from above says, "Funny you should say that, my son also went to Poona and became a sannyasin: Swami Jesus Christ."
Man is a funny thing. If any of you find anything nice about man, please inform me. I accept my failure absolutely.
Question 2:
Veet Shrira, the problem of planning for the future is one thing: to start living in the future is another thing. The planning about the future is in the present. And the more you are in the present, the better you can plan: the activity of planning is in the present.
The problem with the mind is, it starts living in the future. It starts thinking of beautiful golden days that are coming. That is not planning; it is daydreaming.
I can understand planning, but remember, planning for the future is not equivalent to living in the future. Planning is a present moment activity. And the more you are present, the more you have clarity and transparency so you can plan without any haziness or dreams lurking around you.
You are saying, "I see that a lot of my mind activity goes into planning - for next week, for next month."
This is not being in the present. Being in the present there is no mind. Mind cannot exist in the present and when there is no mind there is clarity, absolute clarity, and with this clarity you can see into the future; then something of immense importance will happen to you. But mind activity is simply living in the future: next week, next month, next year, next life.
You are postponing living, in the name of planning. You should live, not postpone! You should live the moment and while you are living the moment - with the clarity that it gives to you - you can visualize. It is not mental activity. You can visualize a better moment that is coming to you. You have lived this moment, you know you can go even deeper, you know you can rejoice more, there is no limit to it. And when the next moment is coming you immediately go deeper into it, more rejoicing, more playful, more humorous.
And you have only one moment at a time. So if you know how to live one moment you can plan your whole life in that very living. You have tasted something of reality; next moment you can have a bigger chunk. But there is no need to plan for it, because in planning you will forget to live.
To the man who lives spontaneously two things happen: one, he never postpones; second, his future is lived through his present, through his experience of the present. Then planning is not a mind activity, but an expansion of consciousness, an understanding of life that goes on deepening every day more and more. And the deeper you are, the more beautiful, more human, more fulfilled will be your actions.
You are also saying, "And when I try to act spontaneously I look like a weather vane that does not know how the wind blows."
There is no need to know. The man who is spontaneous, just like the weather vane - the weather vane never worries whether the wind is blowing south or north or east or west - wherever the wind is blowing the weather vane simply turns towards that side. It shows in what direction the wind is blowing. It has no resistance. It is absolutely free to move in any direction. It does not fight with the wind. It is absolutely spontaneous and never lives in the past, nor in the future. It simply represents the present.
You have chosen a very beautiful word, 'weather vane', for a spontaneous life. But what is the point of a weather vane knowing where the wind is blowing? Your mind wants to know where the wind is blowing, because your mind has its own plans against existence. It wants the winds to blow towards the west and they are blowing towards the east. Then the mind is frustrated, angry and somehow, reluctantly, he manages to go towards the east. But by the time he does that - the wind has no idea of your mind or of fulfilling your expectations - the wind starts blowing towards the west and the mind feels again frustrated saying, "This is a strange situation: when I want to go east the wind blows west; when I agree, 'Okay, let us go to the west,' the wind changes."
These are the people who have made the proverb: Man proposes and God disposes. There is no God and nobody disposes. Your very proposition is wrong. Proposing anything from your side means you are not trusting existence. Just be a weather vane which slowly moves without any reluctance, without any resistance, wherever the wind is blowing. It enjoys all directions. The whole of life has to be enjoyed; existence in all its colors has to be enjoyed.
But the mind is one of the most stupid things that you are carrying within you. When it is morning it is longing for the evening, when it is evening it is longing for the morning; it is the root cause of all your misery and frustrations.
What is the need? I cannot understand why the weather vane should want to know how the wind blows. Can you figure it out? Is there any need? Do these trees know where the wind is blowing?
Do the stars know? Except man nothing in this whole existence is reluctant to go with existence.
That's why everything is happy, blissful. They don't have riches; what do these poor trees have? But they have spontaneity. When the wind blows they dance, when it does not blow they rest. Both are equally acceptable.
A tremendous trust exists between the earth, the sky, the wind, the sun. When the sun starts rising in the morning, the trees wake up. They don't need any alarm clock. And when the sun sets, they all start going to sleep. As the sun sets, the birds start coming back to their nests - it is time to rest.
Nobody teaches them to go early to bed. Nobody teaches them ... in the morning as the sun is rising they all wake up, start singing, making sounds of joy, rejoicing, welcoming another day.
Life is so abundantly giving - again the sky, again the sun, the beauty of the morning and the birds are so happy, they cannot contain themselves. Their singing is not planned. When they had gone in the evening to their nests to rest, they had not planned, "Next morning, whatever happens, I am going to sing!" There is no need. When the morning comes, the singing will come on its own accord.
It is a synchronicity, a deep communion with existence.
The flowers don't decide, they don't have a committee, they don't have files, they don't make any decision, any planning for the future. When the spring comes they will blossom, and when the fall comes, the trees will become naked, all their leaves will fall. There is no sadness anywhere; the trees are not full of tears, because all their foliage is gone.
No, they enjoy this too. Standing against the sky without any leaves, a tree has a beauty of its own.
It has a beauty when the foliage comes, but that is a beauty of a different dimension.
Existence has all colors and nobody is planning except man. And nobody is in such a mess as man, because by your planning you are really trying to postpone living.
Shrira, there is no need to know where the wind blows. Just go with it. It will never mislead you, because this whole existence is ours; wherever we end up, it is our home. The wind cannot take you out of existence, but your mind takes you out of existence. Only your mind is capable of taking you into dreams which don't exist, which are unreal, illusory, and you get caught so much in them that you forget that existence never misleads you - it cannot!
Only the spontaneous person is in tune with existence. And only the spontaneous person is always blissful, because whatever happens, he immediately finds himself in tune with it. He has no desires of his own, no projections, no propositions of his own. He has simply accepted himself as part of the cosmos. And wherever the whole is going, he is also going, joyously, because the whole is certainly wiser than the part. And we are such small parts that all our planning makes us look stupid.
In this whole universe there is no planning at all. Everything is moving without any plan, every moment going deeper. Only man remains superficial: without living he goes on and on thinking to live sometime, but that time never comes.
Mrs. Rachel Saperstein has just sent the kids to school when the phone rings. "Is your husband's name Amos Saperstein?" asks a voice.
"Yes it is," she replies.
"This is the police," says the voice. "There has been an accident and we would like you to come and identify the body."
Mrs. Saperstein arrives at the morgue, and an attendant shows her a body covered in a white sheet.
He lifts the sheet. "Was this your husband?" he asks.
Mrs. Saperstein's eyes widen. "Oy, oy, oy!" she cries. "How did you - yes, that's my husband - how did you ever get your sheets so white?"
Just a woman's mind! The husband is dead and she is worried about how you get your sheets so white!
Mind takes you away from reality every moment. Except mind you don't have any other problem, neither sin nor past lives' evil acts; nor has God written your destiny on your forehead or in the lines of your hand or in the constellation of the stars. Your whole problem is very simple if you understand:
it is your mind constantly taking you away from existence.
When I say, be spontaneous, I simply mean one thing, always one thing: don't be a mind! Because mind can never be spontaneous. Mind is a mechanism of postponing. It will never allow you to live!
I have heard about a man who realized that he was alive only when he was dead. Then suddenly he realized, "My God, seventy years I was alive, but I never lived." And what can you do in your grave?
You cannot even turn this side or that, they don't leave much space in the grave. You lie down flat for eternity.
My suggestion is, Shrira, in your grave you can plan. You will have enough time and you can plan dreams as weird as you want. Right now while you are alive, live; when you are dead there is no problem - you can allow the mind to plan. In fact it will be a good companion in the grave: being so alone, the mind chattering will keep you entertained.
But while you are alive the mind has to be stopped from functioning on its own accord, stopped unless you want to use it. It has to be reduced to a servant. It has become the master. Spontaneity will bring it to its reality. It is just a mechanism. It was not meant to be your master. Your consciousness is your master.
But although people learning yoga stand on their heads, it was never meant by existence for you to stand on your head; otherwise it would have given you legs on your head like two horns, or it might have made you a tripod - three legs, perfectly balanced - or legs with wheels, so you can go on moving on your head ...
Existence certainly means you to be on your legs, not on your head, but man is strange. Mind was given to you to be used as a servant. And as a servant it is beautiful and great. It is a bio-computer and nothing else. But you have made it your master. And the master has been reduced to a dormant state. When the servants become masters, the most dangerous thing is that first they destroy the master.
It happened in a Mohammedan king's life ... He used to love his cook's food very much; he had one of the best cooks. And one day the cook - because they had become very friendly - was serving him food and chit-chatting. He said, "Sometimes I wonder how it must feel to be a king."
The king just jokingly said, "Do you want to become a king? I can make you one for twenty-four hours."
He said, "It will be a great joy. I have always been wondering how it feels to be the king of a great kingdom."
So the king made the cook a king for twenty-four hours. And the first thing he did: he ordered the crucifixion of the king. For twenty-four hours he was the king, so the king was crucified. And the cook proved a real crook. He then remained forever the master.
Once a servant is in the position of a master, his first act will be to repress the master somehow to such a state that he cannot assert himself. That is his only fear. If the master comes back, he will have to descend from the throne.
Your consciousness has been reduced into darkness, your light has been turned into darkness, your treasures have been hidden, your being has been disconnected. The mind has to do all these things just to remain in power.
A meditator tries to put things in their right place. The mind should be the servant and consciousness has to be brought back to the throne. And immediately you will have a spontaneous life. There is no other kind of life at all.
Question 3:
Gayano, you are asking me, a man who has never done anything. Just through relaxation ... without any effort and lots of naps! Mostly I am asleep. I just get up to talk to you in the morning, then I go back to sleep; then I get up again in the evening to talk to you and go back to sleep. My total hours of sleep must be eighteen. Six hours I am awake, two hours with you, one hour for my bath, for my food and the remainder I am in absolute samadhi. And I don't even dream - so lazy!
And you are asking me the question. This is my whole philosophy, that you should not make any effort, that you should relax and enlightenment comes. It comes when it finds you are really relaxed, no tension, no effort and immediately it showers on you like thousands of flowers.
But all the religions have been teaching just the opposite, that enlightenment is very arduous, it takes life-long efforts, perhaps many lives and then too there is no certainty, no guarantee. You can lose the way even when you are only one step away from enlightenment. And you don't know the way towards enlightenment! So there is every possibility of losing the way, of going astray. By chance a few people have stumbled upon enlightenment. It was just by accident.
Millions of people have been trying and finding nothing and they are not aware that their very search is making them too tense; their very effort is creating a state in which enlightenment cannot happen.
Enlightenment can happen when you are so silent, so relaxed, that you are almost not. Just a pure silence and immediately the explosion, the explosion of your luminous soul.
The people who have been very arduous simply destroyed their intelligence, or their body, and I don't think they attained to enlightenment. The very few people who have attained to enlightenment have attained in a relaxed state. Relaxation is the very soil in which the roses of enlightenment grow.
So it is very good that you want to be relaxed, at ease, with no effort and lots of naps. This is the recipe. You will get enlightened. You can get enlightened today! Enlightenment is your innermost being. Just because you are so much engaged in effort, in seeking, in searching, doing this, doing that, you never reach to your own self. In relaxation you are not going anywhere, you are not doing anything and the grass starts growing by itself.
All that is needed is alertness, intelligence, consciousness, which are not efforts; witnessing, watching, which are not tensions. They are very joyful experiences. You don't get tired of them.
You get very calm and quiet. Intelligence has not been known to be a part of your so-called saints.
They destroyed it completely by their stupid efforts. And I say unto you, all efforts for enlightenment are stupid.
Enlightenment is your nature! It is just that you don't know, otherwise you are enlightened already.
As far as I am concerned you are all enlightened, because I can see your luminous flame within.
When I see you, I don't see your figure, I see your being, which is just a beautiful flame.
It is said that Gautam Buddha was surprised that the moment he became enlightened the whole existence became enlightened, because his own eyes changed, his own vision changed. He could look as deep into himself as he could into everyone, even animals and trees. He could see that they are all moving towards enlightenment. Everything needs to realize its own nature; without that life is not a joy, not a festivity.
Just be a little intelligent, Gayano, and enlightenment will happen on its own accord; you don't even have to think about it.
A woman walks into a bank and goes to the bank president's office. She walks straight up to his desk and says, "I would like to make a ten thousand dollar bet."
"I am sorry, madam," replies the president, "but this bank does not take bets."
"I don't want to bet with the bank," she says, "I want to bet with you. I bet that by ten o'clock tomorrow your testicles will be square."
"I think you are a fool," says the president, "but I will take the bet. Be here at ten tomorrow, and bring ten thousand dollars."
At nine fifty-five, the woman walks in with a tall, stately looking gentleman. "Who is this guy?" asks the president.
"He is my attorney," replies the woman. "He has come to see that everything is done right."
"Okay," says the president, and laughing he pulls down his pants.
The woman reaches over and feels if they are square. At that moment, the attorney collapses in a dead faint. "What is up with him?" asks the president.
"Well," replies the woman, "I bet him fifty thousand dollars that by ten this morning I would have a bank president by the balls."
Just be a little intelligent!
The manager, looking angry, strides over to Paddy's desk and taps him on the shoulder.
"Listen," he says, "do me and everyone a favor and stop whistling while you work."
"Hey, man," says Paddy, "who is working?"
A cannibal chief treats himself to a Mediterranean cruise, and on the first night he sits down for dinner and asks for the wine list. He orders a bottle of French wine and consumes it immediately.
Then the waiter approaches him and asks if he would like to see the menu.
"No thanks," the chief replies. "Just bring me the passenger list."
A Catholic missionary is captured by cannibals and is surprised to find out that the chief has been to school in England and speaks perfect English.
"I can't understand it," says the indignant priest. "How could you have spent so much time in civilization and still eat people?"
"A-ha!" says the chief. "But now I use a knife and fork."
Just be a little intelligent. The world is not intelligent. It is functioning in a very unintelligent way and is creating all kinds of miseries for everyone rather than helping them to be happier. Everybody is pulling on each other's legs, dragging them into deeper darkness, into deeper mud, into deeper trouble. It seems in this world everybody enjoys only one thing: creating misery for others. That's why such a cloud of darkness surrounds the earth. Otherwise there would have been a continuous festival of lights - and not ordinary lights, but lights of your very being.
Why have the priests succeeded in convincing man that enlightenment is a very difficult, almost impossible task? The reason is in your mind. Your mind is always interested in the difficult, in the impossible, because that gives it a challenge and the ego needs challenge to become bigger and bigger and bigger.
The priests were successful in convincing you that enlightenment is very difficult, almost impossible.
In millions of people only once in a while a man becomes enlightened. Their idea was that you should not become enlightened. To prevent you from enlightenment they used a very clever device.
They challenged your ego and you became interested in all kinds of rituals, in all kinds of austerities, self-torture. You made your own life as deep an anguish as possible.
But these people who have made their life a torture, masochists, cannot become enlightened. They go on becoming more and more endarkened. And these people living in darkness start crawling like slaves very easily, because they have lost all their intelligence, all their consciousness in their strange effort.
Have you seen a dog in winter just resting in the sun in the early morning? He sees his tail and immediately becomes interested. What is it? He jumps to catch the tail. But then he becomes crazy, because this seems very strange. As he jumps, the tail also jumps. Yet the distance between the dog and the tail remains the same. He goes round and round. I have watched: the more the tail jumps the more determined he becomes; he uses all his will-power, tries this way and that way to catch hold of it. But the poor dog does not know that it is not possible to catch hold of it. It is already part of him. So when he jumps, it jumps.
Enlightenment is not difficult, not impossible. You don't have to do anything to get it. It is just your intrinsic nature, it is your very subjectivity. All that you have to do is for a moment relax totally, forget all doing, all efforts, so that you are no longer occupied anywhere. This unoccupied consciousness suddenly becomes aware that, "I am it."
Enlightenment is the easiest thing in the world, but the priests never wanted the whole world to become enlightened. Otherwise people would not be Christians, they would not be Catholics, they would not be Hindus, they would not be Mohammedans. They have to be kept unenlightened. They have to be kept blind to their own nature. And they have found a very clever way. They are not to do anything, they have just to give you the idea that it is a very difficult, impossible task.
Your ego became immediately interested. The ego is never interested in the obvious. It is never interested in that which you are. It is only interested in a faraway goal - the farther the goal, the greater the interest. But enlightenment is not a goal and it is not even an inch away from you - it is you!
The seeker is the sought.
The observer is the observed.
The knower is the known.
Once you understand that your very nature is enlightenment ... in fact, the Sanskrit word for religion is dharma. It means nature, your very nature. It does not mean a church, it does not mean a theology, it simply means your nature. For example, what is the dharma of fire? - to be hot. And what is the dharma of water? - to flow downwards. What is the nature of man? What is the dharma of man? - to become enlightened: to know one's godliness.
If you can understand the easiness, no, effortless achievement of your nature ... I'll call you intelligent only if you can understand this; if you cannot understand this, you are not intelligent, you are simply an egoist who is trying ... Just as some egoists are trying to be the richest man, a few other egoists are trying to be the most powerful, a few egoists are trying to become enlightened. But enlightenment is not possible for the ego: riches are possible, power is possible, prestige is possible, and they are difficult things, very difficult.
Henry Ford, one of the richest men of his time though he was born poor, was asked, "What is your desire in the next life?"
He said, "I don't want to be the richest man again. It has been a continuous self-torture my whole life. I have not been able to live. I used to reach the factory early in the morning at seven o'clock, and the manual workers would reach at eight o'clock, the clerks would reach at nine o'clock and the manager would come at ten o'clock and leave at two o'clock; everybody else would leave at five o'clock and I had to work late into the night, sometimes up to ten, sometimes up to twelve.
"I worked hard to become the richest man and I became the richest man. But what is the point?
I could not enjoy anything. I worked harder than my laborers. They enjoyed life more. I had no holidays. Even on holidays I used to go to the factory to work out plans for the future."
It is difficult, but you can become the richest man if you make enough effort. It is difficult, but you can reach the top of Everest if you make enough effort. But if you make any effort at all, enlightenment becomes impossible for you. If you bring your mind with all its tensions and worries to work out your enlightenment, you are moving in the wrong direction, away from enlightenment.
You need a total let-go, an utterly peaceful, tensionless, silent state of being. And suddenly ... the explosion. You are all born enlightened whether you realize it or not.
Society does not want you to realize it. Religions don't want you to realize it. Politicians don't want you to realize it, because it goes against every vested interest. They are living and sucking your blood because you are unenlightened. They are able to reduce the whole of humanity into stupid labels: Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, as if you are things, commodities. They have labeled on your forehead who you are.
In India you will actually find brahmins with symbols on their foreheads. You can see the symbol and you can recognize to which class of brahmin this man belongs. These are means or commodities.
They have their symbols marked on their foreheads. You may not have your symbol marked, but you know deep down it is engraved within your being that you are a Christian, that you are a Buddhist, that you are a Hindu.
If you all become enlightened, you will be simply light, a joy to yourself and to others, a blessing to yourself and to the whole of existence, and you will be the ultimate freedom. Nobody can exploit you, nobody can in any way enslave you. And that is the problem: nobody wants you to become enlightened. Unless you see the point you will go on playing into the hands of the vested interests which are all parasites. Their only function is how to suck blood out of you.
If you want freedom, enlightenment is the only freedom. If you want individuality, enlightenment is the only individuality. If you want a life full of blessings, enlightenment is the only experience. And it is very easy, utterly easy; it's the one thing you don't have to do anything to get, because it is already there. You just have to relax and see it.
Hence in India we have nothing parallel to Western philosophy. Philosophy means thinking about truth, 'love of knowledge'. In India what we have is a totally different thing. We call it darshan. And darshan does not mean thinking, it means seeing.
Your truth is not to be thought about, it has to be seen. It is already there. You don't have to go anywhere to find it. You don't have to think about it, you have to stop thinking so that it can surface in your being.
Unoccupied space is needed within you so that the light that is hidden can expand and fill your being. It not only fills your being, it starts radiating from your being. Your whole life becomes a beauty, a beauty that is not of the body, but a beauty that radiates from within, the beauty of your consciousness.
Okay, Maneesha?
Yes, Osho.