Question 1:
Deva Tharsita, the first glimpse of one's own being is inevitably unbelievable, firstly because you have not known it before so you cannot recognize what it is. It is so vast that what you have been thinking of as yourself is just like a dewdrop coming in contact with the ocean.
The fear is necessary. The dewdrop cannot think in other ways except that slipping into the ocean is death. Although it is not true, we have to be compassionate towards the dewdrop too. It is beyond its comprehension. The ocean is so vast - it is almost a necessity to think, "I will disappear and be lost."
Naturally one becomes tremendously afraid. Only one thing can be done and that is to have courage and take a jump. That's the fundamental function of the master, to tell you that "I was also a dewdrop one day. I was also afraid when I came closer to the ocean. I was also as much in deep trembling as you are, but there was no way of going back. I have known being a dewdrop for millions of lives and it has been nothing but misery and darkness, anxiety. Why not take a chance and see?"
It is risky; one never knows what is going to happen when the dewdrop simply disappears in the ocean." But I can say to you that the dewdrop does not disappear in the ocean. On the contrary, the ocean disappears in the dewdrop. The dewdrop becomes the whole ocean. It is not death, of which you have to be afraid; it is the eternal life, for which you have been searching.
I have given you the name Tharsita; Tharsita means one who is thirsty. Now that you have come so close to the glimpse of what it means just to be, don't turn back. Turning back is only for the cowards. This is the most precious moment. Allow it to happen.
The whole of history is a witness that those who have allowed themselves to disappear into the vastness of existence have not really disappeared. On the contrary, for the first time they have found themselves - so huge, without any limits, without any boundaries, without any bondages. This is freedom, to be oceanic; to be a dewdrop is to be imprisoned in a small boundary.
Your self is only a dewdrop. The ocean is a no-self.
Gautam Buddha has the right word for it. The language he used was the people's language of those days, Pali. In Pali the self has much more meaning than in the English language. The Pali word for self is atta. The very word is not synonymous only with self, but also contains ego, arrogance.
And the word for when the atta disappears into the oceanic existence is anatta. The ego is lost, the arrogance is lost, the anxiety is lost; death disappears, and for the first time you are really and totally alive, in a cosmic sense. For the first time you have touched the eternal.
This fear grips everybody. Those who can understand even the language of mountains and trees, those who are so sensitive they can feel - there are many references from enlightened people that when the river comes traveling thousands of miles from the mountains and the valleys and the plains and comes to the ocean, for a moment it trembles. Great anxiety grips it. A moment of decision, a decision of tremendous importance - whether to go back.
But there is no way to go back. You cannot travel backwards in time. You have only one possibility: to go ahead. If the river cannot go back, at least it certainly looks back to all those beautiful mountains it descended, to all those beautiful primeval forests it passed, to all those beautiful people. All the memories... just a moment of looking back. But it cannot stay long; it has to take a plunge into the ocean, knowing perfectly well that "this is going to be my death."
But it is not a death. The river itself becomes the ocean. It is expansion of your consciousness, of your being. You are becoming synonymous with the universe.
You have to put aside your fear.
If you don't put aside your fear and you cling to it, there is danger, because once you start clinging to your tiny self there is no way to persuade you to take the jump.
That's why I said, this is one of the fundamental functions of the master - to persuade you and show you that I have jumped and I am more alive than I have ever been. I have not lost anything; I have conquered the whole existence. Hence the master can say to you, "Come, follow me."
There are complications in things: unless you have a deep love for the master and an absolute trust, in this moment of fear he will not be of any help. Your trust and your love give nothing to the master, remember; it simply gives you the opportunity to be courageous.
Just the other day one sannyasin asked me a question, "If I can say only yes and not no, then what kind of freedom is this?" You can say no, but remember that this freedom of saying no is the freedom of the tiny dewdrop which is saying no to the ocean.
Before you became a sannyasin the freedom was yours: you could have said no, you could have said yes. Once you have said yes, then your yes has to be total; there has not to be any space for no. Otherwise, when you will need the yes more, the no will arise in you. It will support your fear, it will support your ego, it will support your self.
I have no objection, because I am not going to lose anything. You can say no as loudly as you want.
But remember, you have come here for a transformation, and only after the transformation will you know the real taste of freedom. What freedom can you have by just saying no or yes? Your yes is as stupid as your no. You are stupid.
And when you say such things and you ask questions like this, I am amazed. Why did you become a sannyasin in the first place? - because sannyas is a commitment, it is a dedication, it is a declaration of your love, your trust. It is a declaration to the skies: "Now I am dropping the no from my being.
It has tortured me enough. It has been a disease. I am entering into the world of yes, into life- affirmation."
And the yes to the master is not only to the master, because the master is only a window to the universe. You are saying yes to the universe. Only in that yes will you expand and know tremendous freedom. Your yes and no are just stupid games of the mind.
But if you are still feeling to enjoy the no, you can enjoy - but then sannyas is not for you. Perhaps a few more lives, and if you can meet somebody like me again, which is not necessary...
The day Gautam Buddha died, Ananda burst into tears. Gautam Buddha said, "Ananda, you have been with me for forty-two years; it is more than enough. Whatever I had to give to you, I have given.
You don't need me. Why are you crying?"
Ananda said, "I am crying because even while you were alive and I was with you day in, day out twenty-four hours a day for forty-two years..." He even used to sleep in the night in the same room where Buddha was sleeping. Who knows what Buddha may need in the night? He served him and followed him almost like a shadow.
Ananda said to Buddha, "I am crying because I have not become enlightened yet, and you are leaving the body. I cannot conceive of having such an opportunity in the future to be again so close and so intimate with a man like you. What will become of me?"
Buddha said, "Don't be worried. Your yes was mixed with no" - and there was a reason for it.
Ananda was an elder cousin-brother of Gautam Buddha, so just the ego saying that "I am the elder brother of Gautam the Buddha..." And when he took sannyas he told Gautam Buddha, "Listen, once I have become a sannyasin I don't have any right to go against your will; your will will be my will. But I am still not initiated, so before initiation I am still your elder brother and you have to listen to me. I have three conditions; promise me that you will never go against those conditions."
Buddha said laughingly, "What are those conditions?"
The conditions were not great - but a condition is a condition whether it is great or small. The condition carries an undercurrent of no. He is making it clear from the very beginning that "these three things you cannot touch." One was, "You cannot send me away from you. I will always remain with you; you cannot find any excuse like ?go and propagate the word' - that is not possible. I will remain with you; wherever you will go, I will go.
"The second condition is that I will even sleep in your room. And the third condition is that even in the middle of the night, if I want to ask a question or one of my friends wants to ask a question, I will bring the friend in and you will have to answer. You cannot say, ?I am tired, the whole day's journey on foot... then the whole day hundreds of people coming to meet me and their questions.... At least in the middle of the night, don't disturb me.' You cannot say that."
Buddha said, "You are my elder brother and I cannot deny you. So I promise, all these three things will always be fulfilled." And then Ananda took initiation.
The last day, after forty-two years, Buddha said, "Those three conditions have been the barrier. Many came after you and became enlightened, and you had the first opportunity. But when a dewdrop starts making conditions on the ocean it is creating barriers. Although you thought that you had made those conditions when you were not a sannyasin, the consciousness and its current are the same. You may not be aware, but I have been aware that deep down in you, you still carry that ego that ?I am the elder brother; I have a particularly special place.' Nobody else has made any conditions."
Initiations cannot be conditional. You are a sannyasin; you should have thought beforehand that you are going on the path of yes. And this path of yes will end in freedom. If you think you need the no also, then the whole world is free - everybody has the no, the yes, everybody has his mind.
The effort on the path of sannyas is to drop your mind, and your mind can be dropped only if your no is dropped. Let me say it in other words:
No is mind.
Yes is your soul.
You can choose; still there is no problem.
But remaining a sannyasin you cannot continue to have the no. Freedom will come, but it will come from the door of yes. That will be real freedom.
But many sannyasins go on writing to me, strange questions that surprise me. Just the other day in the newspapers, one sannyasin has given an interview. In the interview he was asked, "When Osho was in the jails of America, were you disturbed?
He said, "One day Osho is going to leave the body. He cannot be eternally in the body, so we have to accept it; it was a good opportunity to accept his absence."
The answer on the surface looks perfectly right. It is true, I am not going to be in the body forever.
But are you going to live in the body forever? - the sannyasin has completely forgotten that. There is every possibility you may pop off before me. You are becoming accustomed to my absence, and sannyas is to become accustomed of my presence. Underlying it, the invisible writing is that you are saying no, "I am enough unto myself."
But I would like to remind you that even if I leave the body, I am not going to leave you. I will haunt you in your dreams, I will harass you as much as I can. And remember, when I am in the body the harassment is not so much; when I am without the body, I will simply touch you and you will freak out!
So pray that the longer I live in the body, the better for you. And if you become so accustomed to my presence, so deeply accustomed... my life source is eternal just as your life source is. Body or no body, I will be here. I have been here always.
Those who will be open to me - and that opening means those who will still be ready to say yes to me - will be able to be blessed far more in the silence of my unembodied presence. Then they are benefited while I am in the body. But to say that it was a good opportunity for you to become accustomed to my absence means that somewhere deep down the no is floating.
The relationship between the master and the disciple is not an ordinary relationship; there is no other relationship which can be compared to it. Even love falls far below - even in love you remain two, struggling, fighting, trying to dominate each other. Only in the relationship between master and disciple you are no more two; There is no fight, no struggle.
The master is already absolute yes, and slowly, slowly you also become absolute yes. Only then is the meeting, the merger, the dewdrop slipping into the ocean.
Tharsita, if you are too much afraid, stuck, there is every possibility you will remain always thirsty.
Because when you come close to the water you become afraid, the water is not going to come to you....
An old farmer went to the circus for the first time. Before he went into the big tent he saw a camel in a cage and stopped in amazement to look at it. He had never seen such wobbly legs, such dozy eyes, such floppy lips and such a huge hump for a back. Soon everyone was inside the tent and the circus began, but the old man was still staring in disbelief at the camel. Finally, after about half an hour, he turned away in disgust, "Darn it!" he cried, "there ain't no such animal."
He tried hard to figure out, how such an animal is possible. Now the only way is to deny it, to get unburdened; otherwise that camel will trouble him.
If you become afraid of the ocean, of the very isness of life, the only way to be away from it is to say, "It was just a hallucination, an illusion, a dream. It was not a reality." You can protect your small ego, but that is the cause of all your troubles.
You have to be very watchful about your ego, because the language of the ego is no. The language of your being is yes. The language of the ego is doubt; the language of the being is trust. And only from trust can you grow into satyam, shivam, sunderam - into the ultimate truth, into the ultimate godliness, into ultimate beauty.
Your no will make you more and more small and ugly. Have you ever watched? - whenever you say no, something in you shrinks; whenever you say yes, something in you expands. Whenever you say yes, you are in tune with the universe, and whenever you say no, you declare your ego as separate from life, from existence.
It is up to you. In love you will find yourself filled with yes; in hate you will find yourself filled with no.
In blissfulness there is no space for no; in misery there is nothing else but no.
So it is not as simple as you think; these simple words yes and no belong to two different planes of life: no to the lowest and yes to the highest.
Question 2:
Anand Rupesh, the question you have asked is immensely significant. You say, "Suddenly, sitting with you again, I tingle inside. Your beat inside the tablas - a magic moment. Is that the quality of non-doing?" Yes, Rupesh, but only a beginning. There is much more to non-doing but it is a good beginning, a small taste, just a small glimpse. But if you can go on growing in that direction, it has shown you the way.
When you are just sitting silently, then even the noises of the birds and the silent trees and a faraway cuckoo... they are no longer separate from you. You suddenly expand; you are not just hearing them, you become them.
And particularly, Rupesh, it will be helpful for others too that you have used the word ?again' - "suddenly, sitting with you AGAIN..."
Mind's tendency is to take things for granted; then it falls asleep. Because there has been a gap and you have come after waiting long, you cannot take me for granted; that is giving you a deep communion. You can keep this communion alive every day. You can make it deeper. But your arrow is directed in the right direction.
You say, "I tingle inside. Your beat inside the tablas - a magic moment." It all depends on you.
You can turn every moment of your life into a magic moment. I am only just helping you to have a few glimpses and to learn the knack of how to transform your life into a constant flow of magical moments - each moment bringing more and more wonder, each moment opening new mysteries.
Yes, Rupesh, this is the first experience of non-doing. You are not doing anything, you are just being here. The highest peaks of consciousness are when you are just a being - not doing anything, unmoving, utterly silent, as if you are no more. Suddenly the whole existence starts showering flowers on you.
Man is trained for doing, because society needs him as laborers in different directions, for production, for the greedy, for the cunning, for the powerful. He has to be turned into a slave whose whole life is nothing but doing from morning till night. He is not even rejuvenated by sleep and again he has to go to work on the roads, to work in the fields, to work in the orchards.
Out of this vested interest society has made doing very prominent and respectable. It has completely forgotten that there is another dimension to life. I am not saying you should not do anything. You have to eat, you have to clothe yourself, you need a shelter, so some kind of doing will be needed.
But doing should be only utilitarian; it will not give you the great experiences for which life is an opportunity. Your doing will give you a survival.
But just to survive is not to be alive. To be alive means to have a dance in the heart. To be alive means to have each fiber of your being full of the celestial music. To be alive means to experience the eternal flow of life force within your veins. That is possible not by doing; that is possible only by non-doing. So non-doing is the ultimate value. Doing is just mundane - out of necessity you have to do something.
But there is enough time - twenty four hours a day. You can devote five or six hours to ordinary necessities, and still there are eighteen hours left. If you can find even two hours for non-doing, you will be enriched so much that you cannot conceive beforehand - because when you are not doing anything, you are not. Then what is?
This whole silence of existence, this whole beauty of all the flowers, this infinitude of the sky surrounding you, all become part of you. And the touch of the eternal and the infinite and the deathless brings so much joy that even when you are doing, slowly, slowly you will find even in your doing those joys, those ecstasies are entering into your work.
Then the work is no longer work. Doing is no longer doing; it becomes your creativity. Whatever you do now, you do with your totality. And the whole existence supports you, goes on filling you with more juice so you can pour that juice into your actions, into your doings. Suddenly you become a magician yourself. Whatever you touch becomes gold. Wherever you move, existence goes on welcoming you, and whatever you do, howsoever small, becomes part of your meditation.
I don't want you to follow the old pattern, which was basically faulty: meditate for one hour and then for twenty-three hours destroy whatever you have meditated. There are even Sunday religions like Christianity: just one day, for one hour, go to the church for a good morning's sleep, that's enough.
Then for six days you can do everything that goes against all divine values - but there is no fear because one day again you can sleep in the church and you will be feeling very refreshed, all sin gone. Then you are again ready to sin and commit all kinds of crimes and ugly things - anger and hatred and rage - because the church is there on Sunday and everything will be settled again.
In Catholic Christianity they have developed really very sophisticated cunningness; they call it confession. You have to go to confess to the priest; he gives you punishment, and he prays for you and persuades God that you should be forgiven. Then you are free again for one week to do whatsoever you want, because you have a means to get out of all stupidities.
It happened once, a bishop and a rabbi were very deep friends, and they decided to go to the golf course. But strangely enough, on that day there were so many confessors that they were standing in a queue. The bishop was quickly finishing them, but still the line was long.
Finally the rabbi came into the cabin where the bishop had only a small window to hear the confession from the other side. The bishop said, "I am sorry but the line is too long."
The rabbi said, "Don't be worried. You just get ready; I will finish the line."
He had seen the bishop; just when he came in a man was saying, "I have raped a woman," The bishop had said, "Ten dollars in the donation box." Finished - the rape is finished with ten dollars. It seems the rate for rape is ten dollars.
The bishop went away and the rabbi took a seat. Another man came and said, "Forgive me, Father, I have committed three rapes."
The rabbi said, "My son, don't be worried - forty dollars in the donation box."
The man said, "It seems the rate has increased. I have committed rapes before, too, but it was always ten dollars. For three it comes to thirty. What do you mean by forty?"
The rabbi said, "Don't be worried, those ten are an advance. You can commit one more."
Rabbis understand business far better than anybody else. The man was also happy: "This is new.
We have never heard of paying in advance for our sins, so we need not come again to bother you."
These are strategies. This is not religious, this is psychological exploitation.
The only religion is the religion which teaches you non-doing.
Only when you start coming in communion with the universe, a tremendous change happens in you.
Even your doing starts becoming just an expression of your non-doing. The day your doing also becomes an expression of non-doing, you have come back home. You have touched the ultimate beauty and the blessing of existence.
Rupesh, it is good - but don't get stuck. It is only a beginning. On the path, it is always a beginning.
Yes, the end also comes, but even the beginnings are so beautiful that you have to be reminded of two things: don't lose the track, and secondly, don't feel that you have arrived.
The day you arrive there will not be any need for anyone to say anything - not even for you to say anything. The arrival is so tremendous that it brings its own self-evident certainty.
The distance between the beginning and the end is not something fixed; it is relative. One can move from the beginning to the end in a single moment. It is only a question of totality and intensity. One can go on moving for years if he is partial, just partly involved. If spiritual evolution is not the only focus of all his energies, then there is a danger he may get stuck somewhere because he has so many things to do.
Spirituality needs a certain kind of concentrated effort. It demands your total being; you cannot hold anything back. The more you hold back, the longer the journey becomes. I would like your journey to be as short as possible.
Humanity has almost forgotten what it means to feel the heartbeat of the universe, what it means to be filled with an absolute silence that is not the silence of the graveyards, which is the silence that music creates, which is the silence that is created by the wind passing through the pine trees.
Judge Jeffreys leaned forward and said, "Are you trying to tell this court that the defendant actually strangled his wife in a disco, in front of three hundred people?"
"Yes, sir."
"But didn't anyone try to stop him?" Judge Jeffreys asked in amazement.
"No, sir. Everyone thought they were dancing."
We have even forgotten what dancing is: the woman is being killed and three hundred idiots think they are dancing. Our so-called modern musicians and dancers are all cuckoos, but they have tremendous influence on other cuckoos. From the Beatles to the Talking Heads, all these people need psychiatric treatment. But instead of psychiatric treatment they became heroes.
You just have to be a little articulate cuckoo and then all cuckoos immediately start rushing towards you.
Old Sammy Moskowitz was walking home late one night when he was stopped by a man with a gun who hissed, "Your money or your life." There was a long silence while old Sammy just stood there.
The robber became restless, looking around in case anyone was coming. He waited a bit longer and then hissed again: "Come on, your money or your life."
"Okay, okay," old Sammy replied. "Just a minute, I'm thinking, I'm thinking."
We have made mundane things so important that even life has lost all its value. We have made ourselves laughingstocks - but we all are in the same boat, and nobody reminds us. A man who does not know the silences of the heart, a man who does not know a merger and melting with the universe, a man who has never felt what William James used to call oceanic experience - such a man has never been born. He was a miscarriage. He lived, he breathed, he walked around, but he was just a somnambulist - and he died, too.
It is a strange fact that people who have never lived, die. Life needs immense centering and deep meditativeness. Only very few people in the trillions of people who have been around this planet have really lived.
One day it happened, Gautam Buddha was visited by one of the emperors of those days, Prasenjita. Naturally, nobody interfered because the emperor was talking to Gautam Buddha, although everybody wanted to be close to hear what was transpiring. But one man, a bhikku, a sannyasin, had to interrupt. He asked forgiveness from both, because he had to leave before sunset to spread Gautam Buddha's message to the people, but he could not leave without touching the feet of Gautam Buddha.
He was to be gone for many months, and the sun was just going to set, so he said to Prasenjita, "Forgive me, I don't want to interrupt you. Just a single moment... I want to touch the feet and I will be gone. I have to leave, but I can leave only before sunset."
He touched the feet - he was an old man nearabout seventy-five - and Gautam Buddha asked him, "Bante" - that was Gautam Buddha's word of deep respect for sannyasins - "Bante, how old are you?"
The old man said, "I feel ashamed to say it, but I am only four years old."
Prasenjita could not believe it. A seventy-five-year-old man! - it is absolutely impossible that he is only four years old. And when Gautam Buddha accepted it, it was even more amazing. He said to Gautam Buddha, "This man does not look four years old."
Buddha said, "Perhaps you are not aware.... The way we count life, unless one enters into deep meditation, realizes the light that radiates from a center, he is not thought to be born. This man experienced his first glimpse of himself four years ago. Those seventy-one years that passed before were of deep sleep; they cannot be counted as his age."
Prasenjita was very much puzzled - but it was true, and he touched Gautam Buddha's feet and said, "Help me also to be born again. Up to now I have been thinking I am alive. You have made me realize that I am dead."
Gautam Buddha said, "Just the realization that up to now you have been dead is a great beginning."
Now, I have been teaching continuously for meditation, and you have been listening to me for years.
It is time to start it. Listening only won't help. And that will be your first birthday - when you realize who you are.
It happened only in Gautam Buddha's commune that life was counted from the day you touched your innermost core. Otherwise only corpses are walking, moving around, doing all kinds of nasty things, creating wars, nuclear weapons, destroying beautiful cities like Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These are the works of the dead people.
The whole history that you are being taught in the colleges, in the universities, is not the history of the living; it is the history of the dead people. The living people have been so few that if you make a history of them, every child is going to be very happy.
A teacher was asking Ernie, "Why do you hate the past?"
Ernie said, "Because past creates history and I hate history."
In fact, the history that is being taught has to be burned completely. It is better that humanity forgets its nightmares - Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Alexander the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini - and the combination of them all, Ronald Reagan.
Okay, Maneesha?
Yes, Osho.