Question 1:
Prem Yatro, Prince Charles is deeply interested in meditation. He is also interested in exploring the inner world. But in the West, unfortunately, such people are thought to be a little crazy -- a little loony.
His statements -- that he talks to his plants to help them grow -- have created almost a scandal all over England. They don't think that their future king should talk such nonsense -- although it is not nonsense. But from a man from the royal family, and particularly the man who is going to be the king, England must be feeling very insecure.
His going alone in the desert or to small villages to find peace of mind is very disturbing to the British traditional, orthodox Christian; it is disturbing to his family, to the queen and to his father, Prince Philip.
When he was in India, he had specially called Vimalkirti and his wife, Turiya -- they both were my sannyasins. Vimalkirti was one of his cousins. Vimalkirti was the great- grandson of the German emperor, and he was directly connected to Prince Philip; Prince Philip was his mother's brother.
He talked for hours about me, about meditation, about what is happening here. Vimalkirti and Turiya both invited him to come; he was very interested, but very afraid of the royal family. He was specially told by Queen Elizabeth not to go to Poona. He went to see the shankaracharya, he went to see Mother Teresa, but Queen Elizabeth was more afraid of Poona than anything.
In the East, kings were sent -- particularly future kings -- to the great seers and mystics to learn the ways of inner life, because a king is not of any worth if he has no contact with himself. If he is just an extrovert, he cannot be a blessing to his people. For years in the East the princes used to sit at the feet of the masters to learn silence, to learn compassion, to learn meditation, to become aware of the mysteries of existence. The king should not only be aware of the mundane world, he should also have his roots in the sacred -- only then is he a complete man. And only then can he look after his people in all aspects of life. But in the West, it is totally a different thing.
Prince Charles is being thought of as if he is a little crazy, and England is worried because he is going to be the king. He has already started throwing his weight; he insists on his way of life.
It is a well-known scientific fact that you can talk to the trees, and you can help them to grow faster, you can help them to bring bigger flowers, juicier fruits; you just have to be in a friendly, loving relationship with them. They are very sensitive people, more sensitive than man himself.
The latest research about trees and their sensitivity scientifically proves strange phenomena. Scientists have developed some instruments, something like cardiograms, which can graphically depict the exact emotions of a tree.
On a silent and beautiful morning, with the sun rising and the birds singing the graph is very harmonious. Then suddenly, the scientists bring a woodcutter with the intention to cut a tree. And immediately -- the man has not started cutting it, he has not expressed his thought even that he is going to cut it -- the graph starts wavering, loses harmony, shows fear, anxiety, tension; the tree has lost its joyous ecstatic interiority.
It seems that the tree is capable of reading the mind of the man, because he has not said anything. And if the same woodcutter is brought to the side of the tree without any intention to cut it, the graph goes on harmoniously, there is no change. The tree is not worried; the man is not dangerous, he is not going to harm it.
Not only that, but when a woodcutter comes with the intention of cutting a tree, a certain tree, other trees surrounding it all start showing anxiety, fear, anguish; their graphs start losing the harmonious beauty. They are not going to be cut, but one of their friends, one of their neighbors, a colleague for years, is going to be unnecessarily killed.
It was in the East with Mahavira, that the first insight came into the world that trees are living beings, and they should be treated in the same way. Vegetarianism is just a by- product of that intuition. But it remained a philosophical hypothesis.
Then another Indian man, Sir Jagdish Chandra Bose, scientifically proved that trees are living beings. He was given a Nobel prize for his great exploration and opened a new door for future explorers. But since then fifty years, or more than fifty years have passed; nobody has gone beyond Jagdish Chandra Bose.
But recently, many scientists around the world -- in the Soviet Union, outside the Soviet Union -- have gone far beyond Jagdish Chandra Bose and his discoveries. The trees are not only alive; they are also conscious in their own way.
Man should not think that he is the only conscious and intelligent animal in the world, and he should not think that his is the only type of consciousness that exists. The researchers show that animals have a different kind of consciousness and a different kind of sensitivity.
A few birds... particularly bees have been found to have a certain language, and trees have been found immensely sensitive. When the gardener comes to water and to nourish them, the graph on the cardiogram attached to them starts dancing in joy, shows some ecstatic welcome. Perhaps soon we may be able to discover that they have their own kind of language that we don't understand.
But Prince Charles talking to the trees in England will not be acceptable. He is being condemned as a little crazy. Actually, according to me, and according to all the scientific research too, what he is doing is absolutely sane -- more sane than your ordinary people are.
I had an old gardener who won every year a competition in the city because he used to bring roses so big that people could not believe it. He was a poor man and his secret was that he treated trees not as trees, but as his own children. He would talk to them, he would inform them before-hand, "I am going for a competition; don't let me down. You have to produce the biggest flower possible."
For almost the twenty years that he was with me, he was winning every year. But his secret was not better gardening; his secret was a deep respect for the plants, bestowing on them a dignity, communing with them as if they also were human beings. He was offered many other jobs by richer people because they wanted to win the prizes.
I told him, "You can accept if somebody is giving you more money -- don't be worried."
He said, "That is not the question. The question is that everywhere I will be thought mad.
It is only you who has never said to me that what I am doing is nonsense. You have supported me, and in my whole life you are the only person who has."
When I came to Poona, the gardener had become very old, but he was sending messages through sannyasins that he would like to come and take care of my garden. He was worried that nobody else could take care of my garden the way it should be taken care of.
What Prince Charles is doing is perfectly right. He should be supported, but he is being condemned all over England. We are so blind towards existence that it is not surprising.
Have you ever said, "Hello," to a tree? You yourself would think that you are going out of your mind. Have you ever touched a tree with love, the same way you would touch your beloved? Have you ever hugged a tree? You are missing a whole world of sensitivity that surrounds you, that is available.
Slowly, slowly, you will start feeling that when you say hello to a tree... of course, it cannot respond in language, but it will respond in some way. It may start swaying even though there may be no wind. When you touch it lovingly, just a little acquaintance is needed, and you can feel that on the other side there is not something insensitive, but something which is far more sensitive than people are. The tree will be sending its energy, its warmth to your hand.
If you hug a tree, the world is going to think you mad. But all the trees will know that there is still hope for man; there are still sensitive people. And hugging a tree, you will find more sensitiveness, more lovingness, than you can find even hugging your friend or your beloved, because your friend, or your beloved are full of tensions, anxieties, agonies. Trees are absolutely innocent; their consciousness is as pure as the purest sky, unclouded. We are not living in a dead world.
Although it has not been discovered yet by science, it is predictable that even in rocks you will find a consciousness deep asleep. Nothing is dead anywhere; it is whole, alive, sensitive. We are unnecessarily confining ourselves to human beings. We should spread our hands in all directions -- to the animals, the trees, the birds, the rocks, the oceans....
By this expansion of your experiences, your own consciousness will be evolving more and more. This universe is not a graveyard, it is full of rejoicings; you are just deaf. It is full of beauties, but you are blind. All the birds are living in a different dimension of consciousness; you can have a communication with them.
Man's future evolution is to expand his own consciousness in all dimensions, so that he can find the oceanic life and sensitivity that constitutes the universe. To me, this sensitivity and consciousness that makes up the whole existence is the only God, not to be worshiped, but to be loved.
Create more friends, and as your friendship goes deeper into different dimensions, you will find yourself becoming richer and richer; your own heights will start reaching Everest, your own depths will start reaching the Pacific.
The new man, of which I consistently dream, is going to deny God and to accept the world. But his world will be full of godliness. The old man has been a worshiper of dead gods in the temples and mosques and synagogues. The new man will find his living god in the trees, in the birds, in the rivers, in the ocean, in the mountains, in the stars. He will transform the whole universe into his temple.
Prince Charles is moving on absolutely the right lines. He needs encouragement from every nook and corner because England will not support him; it is one of the most dull countries in the world, the most serious, long-faced, dead in the soul. But he should continue his meditations in deserts, in deep forests, in mountains. Let the whole world call him mad, but the new man will accept him as a pioneer.
Question 2:
Prem Sandha, it is a difficult job you have taken in your hands. It is almost impossible to survive with Sarjano. But it is not a curse, it is a blessing.
You should not make any effort to survive either -- merge with him. He is mad, but with a method; he is full of energy and love. Just don't fight with him -- become one with him.
The way to survive with Sarjano is to become one with him. But that is the way for everyone who wants to love. Love is basically committing suicide. Two egos have to commit suicide to place them in a position for merging and melting, to create the space in which love can grow.
Sarjano is full of energy -- sometimes too much! But an understanding woman can help him to be more centered if she can love unconditionally and without asking anything. If she can enjoy his abundance of energy, then there is no problem. But if you want to dominate him, you cannot survive; if you want in some way to be bitchy, you cannot survive.
He is not a man who will accept any handcuffs, any curtailment of his freedom. Neither do you have to curtail your freedom; enjoy your freedom and let him enjoy his freedom.
Two freedoms can exist together beautifully, but two slave-makers cannot exist together; they are after each other's necks. Unfortunately, that is the situation in the whole world:
people are killing each other in the name of love, destroying each other in the name of love.
Love is a creative act. It enhances both. It gives freedom, it gives joy, it gives courage, and nourishment, but that seems to be only theoretical. In actuality, millions of people are suffering because of love. It is very rare to find someone who is growing because of love, who is becoming spiritually strong and integrated because of love.
But at least my people should understand it, because I don't want you to be just like the unconscious crowds that fill the whole earth. I want you to experiment with new ways of living, new styles of living. And one of the most important things for new styles of living is that love should never be used as politics, as an effort to dominate the other.
Love should make you humble and simple, innocent, available and open -- childlike, with no expectations. Then you can survive even Sarjano, or even nuclear weapons. He is a nuclear person!
I love people like Sarjano; they are so full of energy, they don't know what to do with it.
They are running hither and thither for no purpose, just to exhaust their abundance of energy. A right woman can help him to be centered, can help him to transform his abundance of energy into something creative.
A man walks into a bar looking for his friend. After finding him, he proceeds to tell the friend how much he hates his own wife.
"Why don't you have her murdered?" asked the friend. "I know a guy called Artie who will do it for you really cheap." This sounds great to the man. So he goes off to meet Artie who agrees to do the job for a dollar.
He asks the man where his wife goes shopping -- he plans to do the murder there. So Artie waits outside the supermarket until he sees the woman go in. Then he creeps up behind her and, in a deserted corner, strangles her.
When he has finished, he notices two old ladies staring at him, so he has to strangle them too. On his way out of the market, he is caught by the store detective and handed over to the police.
The headlines in the newspapers read, "Artie Chokes Three For A Dollar In Supermarket."
But it is not a rare case that husbands hate their wives and wives hate their husbands, although they go on saying, "Darling, I love you." The more they hate, the more they repeat, "I love you." They have to repeat it to create a facade to hide their hate.
I have heard about a very great surgeon. His friends had arranged a beautiful party and celebration as a golden jubilee of the surgeon's married life. They all were drinking and dancing and enjoying. Suddenly, somebody looked around; the surgeon was not there, so his most intimate friend and advocate went out in the garden to see where he could have gone. He was sitting under a tree very sad.
The advocate said, "What is the matter? Everybody is enjoying, and it is a moment of celebration, and you are sitting here sad." The surgeon said, "Don't come near me! I may strangle you. You are the person who destroyed my whole life."
The advocate could not believe this outburst. He said, "What do you mean?" The surgeon said, "You may have forgotten, but remember: twenty-five years ago, I had come to you to ask that if I murder my wife, what will happen? And you said, `Never do it because you will get at least twenty-five years in jail.' I am feeling sad that if I had not listened to your advice, today I would have been a free man."
In the name of love, people have been torturing each other for centuries... men in their own way, women in their own way.
Love has not yet entered into the world. It is still in the poems of the poet, in the songs of the musicians, but it has not become part of humanity. I hope that when we get rid of the old man and his whole so-called barbarous attitudes and approaches to life, love will become the very foundation of a new humanity. This love will not be a bondage, an imprisonment, but a tremendous freedom.
Unless love becomes freedom, you don't know what it is. Freedom without love is dry, is a desert. Love without freedom is fake, just a hypocrisy; it does not exist.
Love and freedom are two sides of the same coin.
It is one flower, and it can blossom only when both are allowed dignity and respect.
You can survive Sarjano. He is not a dangerous man. He has a very loving heart. If you can love him, you will find hidden in him one of the most beautiful hearts. There is no question of "surviving" him. You can dancingly live together, helping each other in creativity, in meditation, transforming each other into higher peaks of consciousness -- which are our birthright.
Question 3:
Devageet, first I have to remind you: I don't take any breakfast. Breakfast is a very religious word. It means breaking the fast. I hate all religious words, I hate fasting. That's why I had to stop taking breakfast too; so you need not be worried about that.
You say, "I hear you speak of boredom, I look inside but I can't find it anymore. I remember having it before I met you, but it has long gone."
That's how it should be; otherwise, what is the purpose of being with me? Boredom is a virtue for saints, and this is a communion of sinners of all kinds and varieties.
If you want to see boredom, you will have to visit heaven. There you will see ancient saints covered with dust, skeletons playing on their harps, "Alleluia"... although you cannot hear anything because when you for centuries go on repeating "Alleluia," you become bored with "Alleluia," you become bored with your harp. Heaven is the greatest accumulation of all kinds of antique, bored people. Unless you practice boredom here you cannot enter heaven.
Jesus has forgotten the real beautitude: Blessed are the bored for they shall inherit the Kingdom of God. All the nice people you will find in hell -- juicy people, poets, singers, dancers, actors, sculptors, mystics. Hell is colorful; heaven is almost like a white-washed graveyard.
Here there is no question of being bored. I am making every effort to destroy the very roots of boredom in you. But there is something very complex to be understood: boredom can be destroyed by making you blissful; boredom can also be destroyed by making you utterly retarded. Retarded people don't feel boredom. Certainly, no retarded people ever approach me. I am not a magnet for them; my charisma is only for the very intelligent, for the very few.
Harry and Abe had been friends almost all their lives. Now as their time on earth drew to a close, Abe asked Harry, "Do you believe in life after death?"
"I don't know," Harry said, "but we should make a pact: whoever goes first will give the other a sign." Not too long after, Abe died, and Harry waited for a sign. One day the telephone rang.
"Hello, Harry," came the voice.
"Abe," Harry said. "Where are you?"
"Well, where I am the grass is green, the air is sweet and pure, there are beautiful mountains. I get up in the morning, have a little grass, make a little love, take a little nap.
In the evening, I have a little grass, make a little love, and go to sleep."
"You mean you are in heaven?"
"Heaven? What heaven? I am a buffalo in Montana."
Buffaloes are never bored! So there are two kinds of people who are never bored -- one is the meditator, and the other is the buffalo type. You will not find more contented, more satisfied saints than buffaloes. They go on eating the same grass; they don't even change the variety of grass their whole life. And you will never see even a sign of boredom. For boredom, a certain intelligence is needed, and to go beyond boredom, tremendous intelligence is needed.
Devageet, you are not a freak, but the reason why you are not feeling bored even in your life with Nityamo is very simple. You say, "We fight, we love, we joke and giggle, we cry, we decide to part at least twice every month -- once during my period, and once during hers. Sometimes we have long faces, sometimes we beam with bliss, but boredom? Never!" You don't have any time for boredom. You are so engaged in tremendous revolutionary activities.
That reminds me of the case with Neelam. Her boyfriend says he is utterly satisfied with her. That is the beginning of boredom. She is a silent, peaceful, non-fighting, loving woman. If she also starts throwing things, every night a pillow fight... if she follows your lifestyle then her boyfriend will not be utterly satisfied, and he will not have any time to feel bored or any time to look for another woman. In fact, he will come to the conclusion that one is enough; two will be too much. It is a question of survival.
You are not hiding anything, and you need not feel guilty that no boredom is happening.
You have got the right woman for you; she will not leave you alone to feel boredom. And it is not true that you are so boring that you don't realize how boring you are. If you were boring, Nityamo would have escaped. But she's also not feeling bored -- that shows certainly that you both are engaged in a great adventure.
I have heard about a neighborhood where every couple was fighting and shouting at each other, but they were very much intrigued by the fact that one sardarji lived in their apartment building. From the sardarji's flat, they never heard any shouting, any fight; on the contrary, every night they heard laughter. They could not believe it -- what secret has this sardar got? He's enjoying life so much, laughter every night.
Finally, the temptation was so much that one day they gathered when the sardarji was coming out from his office. They surrounded him and said, "Now you have to tell us the secret. You know we all fight, you know we throw things and our women break the pottery, but from your flat always comes a soothing laughter" The sardarji said, "It would have been better if you had not asked, because the reality is very heavy. The reality is we have decided that she can throw things at me. If she hits, she can laugh, and if I can save myself and she misses the target, then I laugh. So fifty- fifty it goes. Sometimes she hits me, then she laughs; sometimes she misses the target, then I laugh. But as far as you are concerned, you hear laughter every day."
But the same sardarji was found after ten years standing in the court asking for a divorce.
The magistrate said, "How long have you been married?" He said, "Almost fifty years."
The magistrate said, "If you have been married for fifty years, what emergency has arisen so suddenly that you want the divorce?"
He said, "The fact is, we used to laugh fifty-fifty," and he explained their arrangement.
"But now she laughs one hundred percent, because during the fifty years, she has become such an expert in hitting me that there is no way to escape. For years I have not laughed.
So now it is too much... I want the divorce."
Devageet, life is a very strange thing. Because you are continuously fighting, then making friends, then making love, then deciding to separate, then coming together again... this whole panorama, this whole drama, keeps you so engaged that you don't feel bored. But if you were totally satisfied, if she was a woman like Neelam -- silent, available, not fighting, not creating any trouble for you, not nagging you -- you would have become bored.
Boredom is a flat life, but when there are so many ups and downs, there is no boredom.
Moreover, being with me, I am taking away all your inhibitions, all your conditionings, all your saintliness; I am making you raw and wild. When you are raw and wild, and you don't live a life of a polished hypocrisy, boredom does not enter in.
Primitive people don't know anything about boredom. It is only the latest trends in philosophy, particularly existentialism, which has made boredom the central theme of thinking. Jean-Paul Sartre, Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, Soren Kierkegaard, Martin Buber - - all these people are engaged in a great intellectual exploration of what boredom is.
Once I came home from the university in the holidays, and I had a book on existentialism. My grandfather looked at the contents, and he said, "My God! What kind of philosophy are you learning in the university? There is not even a mention of God, soul, heaven, hell, reincarnation; the contents are anguish, boredom, meaninglessness, futility, suicide. What kind of philosophy are you reading about in the university?"
I said, "This is the latest philosophy because man has come to a point where everything has become flat. Nothing is wild anymore, nothing is raw anymore. Everything has become cultured; everybody is a gentleman, every woman has become a lady. It is very difficult to find an authentic woman; they are all ladies. It is difficult to find an authentic man; they are all gentlemen. These gentlemen and these ladies are creating an atmosphere of meaninglessness, of anguish, of boredom."
I am taking away from you all that can create boredom in you. My whole effort is to give you again a natural life -- wild, adventurous, dangerous; then boredom cannot exist.
The new man will live dangerously.
He will live like wild animals, not like tamed animals in a zoo. He will live like trees in a forest, not as trees in a British garden. Even the garden in Britain is boring.
My people have to learn to live like a Zen garden, where nothing is symmetrical, where trees are allowed to grow the way they like. The gardeners are not continually after them, pruning them, giving them a shape.
One beautiful Zen story is that a king sent his prince, who was going to be the next king, to learn gardening with a Zen master. It took three years, and whatever the prince learned... in the garden of the palace, he had one thousand gardeners; he told them how to do all that he had learned to create a garden. After three years the master would come, and if he was satisfied the prince would pass the examination; otherwise, again another three years.
The master came. It was a beautiful garden -- one thousand gardeners were working in it.
But the prince was becoming afraid because there was no smile on the master's face, and finally the master said, "Everything is right, but you will have to come back for three more years."
The prince said, "What is wrong? You say, `Everything is right,' then why have I to come back?"
The master went out of the garden, brought thousands of dead leaves which the gardeners had thrown out... the whole night they had been cleaning the garden of all the old dead leaves, so when the master came there would be nothing to object to. And the master brought the leaves and threw them on the garden path. The wind started playing with those dead leaves, and there was a certain music of the wind playing with the dead leaves, and the dead leaves moving all over the path.
The master said, "Now everything is okay. Without the leaves the garden was looking too man-made; now it looks natural. But as far as you are concerned, you will need three more years, because you have not learned the basic lesson that the garden should not be man-made. Man should help the trees to grow in their own way, in their own individuality."
A Zen garden is a beauty which no other garden in the world can be compared with...
suddenly a pond, suddenly old rocks, trees growing in their own way; it is more a forest than a garden. The forest has something of godliness, the garden is too sophisticated. You cannot be bored in a Zen garden; you can be bored in the garden which Europe has invented, that is man-manufactured.
A man also should be a little raw, a little wild, ready to live in insecurity, ready to risk, ready to go on the untrodden paths, always ready to take the challenge of the dangerous.
Then life is every moment an ecstasy, and boredom disappears.
Devageet, you are not a freak. You have relaxed and become wild, unsophisticated, not a hypocrite, authentic, sincere. And to be with me is to live in constant danger.
Jayesh is asleep; he came late in the night. He had been thinking for years to come to me, to sit silently, to relax, and to meditate. And the day he reached the commune I was arrested -- and he was arrested with me. Since then, for eighteen months he has not been able to sit silently for a single moment. We have been moving around the world, being thrown out from one country to another country, and he says, "My God! Before I came to you, I had time at least to sit silently, and I had come to meditate." He had to live with me in the jail... but he's not bored; he's enjoying the whole trip.
A Pole was working at a construction site where the boss left each day at eleven a.m. and was gone for two hours. This became such a regular occurrence that the rest of the workers decided to spend those two hours in the bar across the street, but the Polack decided to head home for some extra nookie with his wife. When he arrived home, he found his boss busy banging his wife in the bedroom. Well he walked right out and headed back to the job. The following day, the Polack was working his ass off when everyone headed across to the bar.
"Hey, Ski, aren't you coming?" asked one of them.
"Hell, no!" said the Polack. "I almost got caught yesterday."
Okay, Maneesha?
Yes, Osho.
The Golden Future