Question 1:
Prem Neerja, nobody is born unworthy. Everybody is equal in the eyes of existence. But remember, equality does not mean similarity. Everybody is equally unique.
The idea of unworthiness that is torturing you is torturing millions of human beings. It is the people around you who make you feel unworthy, undeserving, useless, good-for-nothing; this is a secret conspiracy against the individual by the crowd.
Perhaps you are not aware that the crowd is the enemy of the individual. The crowd does not like individuals; it likes only phony people imitating each other. Anybody who stands alone, in his own right, declaring his own freedom, doing his own thing without any fear of consequences, will be condemned by the crowd.
The crowd cannot afford such rebels, because their very presence is dangerous - it may become a wildfire. Many others who are suffering in slavery may start revolting, seeing that it is possible to live your life according to your own light, that it is possible to have your own style, your own religiousness, your own morality - you don"t have to belong to any crowd, you don"t have to become a spiritual slave. If this idea spreads, there will be millions of people who have not died completely - in whose beings there is still a spark of life - who may explode into rebellion against the masses.
The masses are easy to control; hence, those people who are in power hate individuals. And this has been the story throughout human history. From the very childhood, the society in different ways - the parents, the teachers, the priests, the neighbors - from all directions the society starts encroaching upon the freedom of the individual. All their effort is to distract you from your own being; they want you to be somebody else, they don"t want you to be yourself.
That is the cause of your feeling of being unworthy. It is natural - you can never be somebody else; however perfect your pretension and your hypocrisy is, deep down you will feel you have betrayed yourself. Deep down you can never feel contentment, self-respect, a pride which is natural to every being, a dignity which existence showers upon you just by giving you life.
If you are allowed to be yourself, you will never feel unworthy, because that will be your natural growth. If you are a rosebush, roses will blossom in you, and if you are a marigold flower, then marigold flowers will come. Neither the marigold flower feels it is unworthy nor the roses feel that they are special, higher, or holier. Even the smallest grass blade feels as dignified as the biggest star in the universe.
In existence there is no inferiority complex anywhere, and as a corollary there is no superiority complex either. The marigold is happy being a marigold; even the idea is stupid: "Why am I not a rose?"
It will be a very poor existence where there are only roses and roses and roses, and no other flowers.
Roses will lose all their beauty. The variety of millions of flowers makes existence rich beyond all our dreams.
But the society wants you to be just a sheep. You may have the qualities of being a deer, or being a tiger, or being a lion, or being an eagle - all the varieties are possible in different individuals - but the society likes only one brand: everybody has to be a sheep. Now, if you force a lion to be a sheep, he is going to feel unworthy. You are imposing something upon him which is not natural.
This feeling of unworthiness is because of an imposition of unnatural demands upon you, made by everybody around you. Nobody likes you as you are; everybody wants you to be this, to be that.
Of course if you fulfill their demands you will be loved, respected, honored, but it is very dangerous and very costly; you will have to lose yourself. You will become just a hypocrite, and what will be the gain? What is their respect, what is their honor, what are their rewards? They cannot balance the loss - you have lost your soul. They can give you Nobel Prizes, but even a thousand Nobel Prizes cannot make up for the loss that you have suffered in the transaction. You have lost your very space in existence, your very territory, your most significant essential being and consciousness.
I can understand your problem, Prem Neerja, and I don"t think you are incapable of understanding it intellectually. You do understand, but just intellectual understanding never brings any change; it brings you more trouble. It makes you aware that you have done something very stupid, and now you have become an expert in doing that stupidity. Now that is your expertise - for that expertise you are paid, honored, respected, so you cling to it.
This becomes a tremendous dilemma. It creates a state of schizophrenia. You know that what you are doing is wrong, but this knowing is only intellectual; it has not penetrated into the deeper parts of your being from where actions arise.
Intellect is an inactive force. It has not become your meditation, it is still your mind, and mind is absolutely impotent. So you understand intellectually that you are doing wrong, and the same intellect says that this is the only thing that you know - unworthy or worthy, but this is the only thing that gives you credit, makes you respected by the crowd. Don"t leave it, because you don"t know where you have lost your soul and whether you will be able to find it again. You don"t even remember the way back home.
So you go on clinging to that which intellectually you know is not right. You are destroying yourself, but you go on drinking the poison, because you have forgotten the way to your home.
Just the other day, Latifa was crying, and today all the clouds have disappeared. She has taken the bold step. Intellectually she has been thinking and thinking for almost an eternity ... because misery lengthens time so long - one hour passes as if it is one life. Hence I say she has been suffering as if for the whole eternity, knowing perfectly well - because I was continuously hammering her - that if you are miserable in a situation and the doors are open, why don"t you get out of that situation?
She wants to get out, but clings; she is afraid of the open, is afraid of the fresh air, is afraid of the unknown. Her deeper being feels the pull, the challenge, the excitement of the unknown, but her superficial mind thinks of security, safety. And who knows? - you may fall into a worse condition. At least this misery is well known, and you have somehow become accustomed - in fact, so habituated that a fear somewhere in the corner of your being lurks: are you capable of surviving without it?
It is miserable but at least there is something. You are not alone, and you are not empty; you are full of misery, and you can depend on it that tomorrow also the misery will be there. You need not be worried that tomorrow maybe you will be empty and alone. So one becomes a mess inside.
But finally, Latifa came to her senses, took the bold step. And today she wrote a letter to me of tremendous gratitude, saying that she feels as if a cancer has been removed from her being; she feels clean, healthy, happy, light - the whole burden has disappeared. And this was the cancer she was clinging to.
But you can experience the joy and the freedom and the lightness and the open sky, only when you drop clinging; there is no other way.
But people are such that even when they have come here and they have been listening to me, they are managing what to listen to, what not to listen to. Whatever gives nourishment to their prejudices, they are open to, very happy that their convictions are being supported. The moment I say something that goes against their convictions - and those convictions are their misery, the foundation of their suffering and their hell - immediately they close themselves. But how long can you keep yourself closed? I go on hitting you from every dimension, every direction. Sooner or later you have to listen.
Then too, such is human stupidity that people start defending themselves. I sometimes wonder why you are wasting your time. If you are here to defend yourself, that you can do very well wherever you are. It will be easier to defend yourself somewhere else; here it will be very difficult. I will not allow you to defend yourself, because by defending yourself you are defending all your miseries; they are synonymous. You and your miseries, you and your suffering, you and your ideology - they are not separate.
Your personality is your hell, and I have to hammer it and bring out your individuality, which is a totally different phenomenon - that which you had brought with you when you were born. This personality is a cover that has been put over you by the society; it is a mask. But you have lived with the mask so long that you have started thinking it is your original face. In their sleepiness people go on defending that which is their cancer.
One woman today wrote to me that she hates Hymie Goldberg. I could not believe that somebody can hate a poor fellow like Hymie Goldberg! But perhaps she has an anti-Jewish mind ... just the name of Hymie Goldberg and her Nazi upbringing feels hurt that I am making Hymie Goldberg almost a great hero. It is true, I am going to write a biography of Hymie Goldberg.
In the same question, the same woman says, "I don"t like you to laugh with us." It seems she is also against laughter. I rarely laugh, but once in a while I want simply to join with you - so as not to give you the feeling that I am separate from you. I want to be one amongst you, not somewhere high up, very serious - a stone golden Buddha.
Certainly, Gautam Buddha did not laugh; neither is there any reference anywhere that Jesus ever laughed. These people are serious people.
I am not serious. I have been telling you again and again that I am absolutely nonserious, but you don"t take it seriously! You think I must be joking ... it is such a difficult problem, how to solve it?
And when I read this woman"s question, I remembered Nadam"s question yesterday ... he was telling me that a few scientific researchers have found the G-point in the vagina of women. I could not figure it out, why it should be called "G-point."
I have also found a G-point. It is not in the vagina, it is in everybody"s belly - just behind your navel.
And it is meaningful to call it the G-point because it creates giggling. It is absolutely stupid to say there is a giggling vagina, but a giggling belly is a well-known fact. You know about belly laughter - a real laughter always comes from your belly.
So I don"t care about your scientists; my own research says that the G-point is in everybody, man or woman, in the belly, behind the navel. And perhaps this woman"s G-point is either paralyzed or is crippled, damaged - something is wrong with her G-point! Here she should expose herself; her G-point can start functioning. Amongst so many G"s, how can you remain serious?
I have heard .... Two small kids, twins, started their first day at school and their teacher asked them, "What are your names?" They were looking so beautiful, so absolutely alive. Dressed in the same way, it was almost impossible to figure out who is who. So she asked, "What are your names?"
One said, "My name is Ronald Reagan, and my brother"s name is Richard Nixon." The teacher could not believe it. She thought, "These kids are playing a joke on me, they are making fun of me." She immediately phoned their home and said to their mother, "Mrs. Johnson, your two kids have come and when I asked their names, one said his name is Ronald Reagan and that his brother"s name is Richard Nixon. I could not believe it; that"s why I am phoning. Are they making fun of me?"
She was in for a great surprise, because from the other end of the phone the woman shouted very angrily, "You have some nerve to call me Mrs. Johnson. I am Miss Johnson and they are my kids, and when you have two bastards, what names can you give them? If you were in my place, would you be able to suggest two other names for two bastards?"
Just watch life, and your G-point will start functioning!
Prem Neerja, you have fallen prey, a victim to what people have said to you. This commune is to erase all that has been said to you, and accept you the way you are. As you are is absolutely right, worthy, respectable, and there is no need to change it and create a phony personality just because others want it. You have tried to make others happy too much, and the total result is that everybody in the world is unhappy. Everybody has tried to make others happy, but do you see the total result?
Everybody is unhappy.
I teach you to be happy, I don"t teach you to make others happy. In your happiness, if there is some truth, some vitality, it will spread - it will help others also to be happy. But that should not be the criterion; that should not be the ideal of your life. You are making others happy, they are making you and others happy, and everybody is unhappy because everybody is pretending.
People can be happy only in one way - there are not two ways - if they are authentically themselves.
Then the springs of happiness start flowing ... they become more alive, they become a joy to see, a joy to be with; they are a song, they are a dance. But they are not dancing for anybody"s approval, nor for anybody"s appreciation; they are dancing out of their own abundance of happiness, out of their own joy.
This whole world can be a dancing world, full of songs and full of music, full of creativity and full of life and laughter. But the basic strategy that has been followed up to now has to be completely destroyed, without mercy.
The new minister stood at the church door, greeting parishioners as they departed after the end of the service. The people were generous in complimenting the clergyman on his sermon, except one fellow who said to him, "Pretty dull sermon, Reverend." And a minute later, the same man appeared again and said, "Pretty dull sermon, Reverend."
Once again the man appeared, this time muttering, "You really did not say anything at all, Reverend."
When he got the opportunity, the Reverend pointed out the man to one of his deacons, "Ah," said the deacon, "don"t let that guy bother you. He is a poor soul who goes around repeating whatever he hears other people saying!"
This is a very strange and insane world. Everybody is living in some way falsely, just to get appreciation, just to hear people"s clapping. Everybody is so hungry for attention. The people you think of as great leaders are almost beggars as far as attention is concerned; that"s all their whole life is devoted to - how many people are looking up to them. That gives nourishment to their ego. And they are ready to do any nonsense if they are promised, "More and more people will be attracted towards you; you will get more attention."
I have a strange story to tell you. It is not fiction, and it is about one of the most famous men, Abraham Lincoln. He had a very ugly face. He came from a very poor family; his father was a shoemaker. He himself was chopping wood just to get enough money to go to school - a very poor heritage.
His face was certainly not attractive; it was repulsive. And when he stood for the presidential election .... His intelligence was great; perhaps there has been no other man in America of such great intelligence. His rationality, his logic, his ways of arguing his case were superb. But his personality was poor, just because of his face.
The first day when he started his election campaign, a little girl ... And as far as my understanding goes, that little girl should have the whole credit for Abraham Lincoln"s becoming the president of America, although nobody bothers ... nobody even thinks about that little girl, or to find out who she was. She came close and she said, "Uncle Lincoln, with this face you cannot win the presidency. I have a small suggestion: if you grow a beard and mustache, most of your face will be covered, and the beard and the mustache can be given a shape that can change your whole profile."
A little girl ... but she was looking attentively at his face; she was interested in his arguments. But women are more aware of physical beauty even from their very childhood. She figured out that if he grows a beard and a mustache, much of his face will be covered. Then a new face can be created by giving shape to the beard and to the mustache. And it appealed to Lincoln. He was himself worried what to do with his face. He started growing his beard ... and now you don"t see in his photographs or his statues that his face was ugly. All that ugliness is covered by his beard and mustache. In fact, that beard and mustache have given him a new personality.
People have forgotten, but Lincoln did not forget. After becoming the president, the first letter that he wrote was to that small girl, thanking her, "Your suggestion worked." He was a man of great humbleness and great understanding.
But this world does not look into the inner being. It does not look at your intelligence, your talents, your creativity, your potentiality. It simply looks at the outer, superficial personality.
And because you are continuously asking for attention, you have to concede to the people; you have to compromise on every step with them if you want to be accepted as worthy. And the problem is that whatever you do, you cannot be absolutely false; something of the real will remain, and that will be your unworthiness.
It will hurt you that you have not been able to succeed in being a complete success in the world.
Anybody who wants to be a success in the world, anybody who is ambitious and egoistic, is going to suffer the same problem as you are suffering, Prem Neerja. But the problem is very simple and can be dropped immediately, without any effort: just a simple understanding that you don"t need anybody"s attention; on the contrary, what you need is a deep contentment with yourself. And that is possible only if you are real.
What others say, don"t be worried about; it does not matter. The only thing that matters is your inner happiness, your peace, your silence, and finally your realization of your eternal life.
You are asking, "What should I do with my unworthiness? It still dominates my life and I am clinging to it so tightly that I despair of ever letting go." Just a little understanding is needed - not much effort, because it is you who are clinging to it; it is not clinging to you.
There is a Sufi story that a river was in flood, and a few people were standing on the bank watching the river rising higher and higher. A Sufi mystic was also standing there. Sufis use just a blanket, a woolen blanket to cover their body; they don"t use anything else. In fact, the name Sufi is derived from woolen blankets. In Persian, suf means wool, and sufi means one who uses only wool.
So with his blanket, he was also standing there watching other people, and then suddenly they saw a beautiful blanket, a woolen blanket floating down the river. A young man could not resist. Although everybody said it was dangerous - the river was in flood, and it was a huge river - the young man said, "That blanket I cannot lose." He jumped.
But it was not a blanket, it was a wolf, alive. So as he caught the blanket, the blanket caught him!
He started shouting, "Save me!" Everybody asked him, "What do you mean by saving? Just drop that blanket!" He said, "It is not a blanket that I can drop. Now it is a question of whether the blanket drops me or not - it is a wolf!" It was just that they had seen the wolf"s body, which looked like pure wool.
The Sufi wrote in his diary, "What I saw today was a real problem. Up to now I have seen people wondering how to drop this, how to drop that .... Those were all unreal because the problems were not clinging to them, they were clinging to their problems. It was not a question of any help; if they wanted to drop it, they could drop it."
The Sufi wrote in his diary, "But today it was totally different; it was a real problem. It was beyond that poor man"s ability to drop it, because he was not clinging to it; now the wolf was clinging to him, and the wolf took him down to his grave."
It is good that wolves are not clinging to you. Whatever you are clinging to, all are just false ideas given by others to you. And the reason why you are clinging to them is that you are afraid that without them you will be almost naked, you will be empty, and you will be moving in an unknown space.
But I want to say to you that moving every moment into the unknown is the greatest blessing of life.
Remaining with the known is sheer boredom, every day the same. Then what is the point of living?
You have lived it many times, many days.
My encouragement to you is:
Love change, love the unknown.
Risk everything known for the unknown, and you will always be in an ecstatic state. You will always be a gainer, because the unknown has hidden treasures only for those who can drop the known.
But I can only say it to you; the dropping has to be done by you. It has to be your decision, your commitment - only then will it bring joy.
Question 2:
Prembodhi, yes we have forgotten it at a precise time, and I will tell you why.
Just try to remember backwards - how far back can you go? Four years of age, or at the most when you were three years of age. Beyond that comes an absolute blank - no memory, no remembrance.
One thing is certain, that in those three years many things must have happened. You must have cried, you must have been loved, you must have been left alone, you must have been afraid in the dark night - a thousand and one experiences must have happened. You may have fallen, you may have been hurt, you may have been seriously sick ... but you cannot remember anything. It seems as if in those three years, nothing was recorded by your memory mechanism.
That"s exactly the time when you forgot your self-nature. Let us say it in another way: the precise moment you forgot your enlightenment and the language of it, is the moment when you started remembering the world and thousands of other things of the world. When you started remembering others, you forgot yourself.
Now if you are fifty years old, for forty-seven years you have been remembering the whole world of things and people and events, so you have gathered a thick wall of memories. Behind this thick wall of memories - which goes on growing every day, thicker and thicker - is hidden that small time in the beginning of your life when you were utterly innocent. Even memory was not formed - you lived each moment and you died to that moment, and were born again.
In those three years, your life was moment to moment. You did not bother about the past, you did not bother about the future; you were so involved, so totally and so intensely in the moment, collecting seashells on the beach, or running after butterflies in the garden, or collecting wildflowers in the forest, as if that were all. There was no past, no future; you lived in the present in those three years.
And those were the days of your glory, those were the days of your golden experience.
So I can say that it depends on everybody; it may be either four years or three years. For girls it will be three years, for boys it will be four years. Girls are one year ahead, they mature sooner.
Sexually they mature one year sooner than the boys; mentally also they mature one year earlier than the boys. So girls can remember backwards to the age of three, and boys generally will be able to remember back to the age of four. That"s where you have lost your treasure.
And you are asking why. It is because you became interested in the vast world around you. And you went on becoming more and more interested; you became so curious about everything, you wanted to know everything. Just listen to small children - they go on asking all kinds of questions, they are untiring. You get tired, but they are so excited - they have entered into a new world.
For nine months they were in the mother"s womb, in utter darkness - no excitement, no problem, no responsibility, no companionship, just utter silence and relaxation. Then those three years, when their memory system was starting to be built up, their intellect was starting its ABC ... by the age of three or four, they were able now, with a memory system and an intelligent, enquiring mind to go in search of this vast world - millions of things to know, unending pastures to be discovered. Naturally, in all this excitement, they forgot one thing: their own being. They went out and out and out, and farther and farther away from the home.
They reached to the stars, and now the home is so far away that they have even forgotten the way they had followed. And they don"t know exactly what it was in those three years ... just deep down in the unconscious some feeling has remained like a shadow - that it was beautiful, that it was very peaceful, that it was majestic, miraculous, mysterious, that everything was a wonder, that every moment brought new experiences and joys. Just faint echoes, far back ... you cannot say if they are real or you are imagining them, or if you are remembering from your dreams. It has become almost a dream.
The why is very simple: because the world was very intriguing, very interesting to enter, to enquire.
It is natural. I am not saying that you should not have done this. You would not have been able to avoid it, and it would not have been good to avoid it. It is good that you have gone so far. Now that you have known the world and experienced everything good and bad, bitter and sweet, beautiful and ugly, have seen pleasures and have seen pain, you are again becoming interested to know what is your self-nature.
Your self-nature is enlightenment.
I was reading one story, which is significant in a totally different context - which was not supposed to be part of the story. I don"t think that whoever invented the story had thought about it. The story is:
One day a black man showed up at the gates of heaven and was met by Saint Peter. "I would like to be admitted to heaven," he said.
"Fine," said Saint Peter, "but first tell me what you have done lately which would permit you to be admitted."
"Well," said the black man, "I marched in a civil rights march."
"A lot of people did that," said Saint Peter. "Maybe there is something else?"
"Yes," said the black man. "I got married at twelve o"clock noon."
"What is so unusual about that?" asked Saint Peter.
"I married a white woman," said the black man.
"When was that?" asked Saint Peter.
"Ah, about two minutes ago," said the black man.
As I was reading this, I remembered a scientific calculation. They say that if we think of existence just in terms of one day - as if the whole existence is twenty-four hours, reduced into this small measurement, so that at twelve in the night the existence began, the stars formed, the solar systems arose .... And they have the given exact hour when - for example, at four o"clock in the morning, at six o"clock in the morning - our solar system was born. Then our earth separated from the sun, just at eight o"clock in the morning; then the moon separated from the earth, just at eleven o"clock in the morning.
The earth for the first time saw life exactly at twelve o"clock noon, and man came into existence just two minutes later; that is, at two minutes after twelve o"clock.
If we measure the whole existence in terms of twenty-four hours, we have come into existence just two minutes ago.
Reading this story, that the black man said, "Ah, about two minutes ago," I remembered that calculation of the scientists. This poor negro married a woman at twelve o"clock, and then he must have been shot two minutes later when he was coming out of the church, because whites cannot allow a black man to marry a white woman. So only two minutes he remained married.
If we go into more details - that if two minutes ago, man came into existence - then just fifteen seconds ago, a Gautam Buddha was born. Then enlightenment and the whole idea of enlightenment is not more than fifteen seconds old.
And we have still twelve hours more, if Ronald Reagan allows. Ronald Reagan is just a representative of all the mad politicians of the world. If they allow, then we still have twelve hours to evolve. If in fifteen seconds Gautam Buddha, Pythagoras, Lao Tzu, Mahavira, Jesus, Ramakrishna, Raman Maharishi, J. Krishnamurti, Gurdjieff - if all these people have happened just in fifteen seconds, then the coming twelve hours, if man remains on the earth ... one cannot imagine how fruitful these coming days can be.
What a great potential is ahead of us! And we have been on the earth only for two minutes. These foolish politicians are trying to commit suicide at a moment when we should be evolving as fast, as quickly as possible, because half the time of existence is gone - only half the time remains.
In this remaining time, the whole humanity has to become enlightened. If we can avoid this coming war, then this will be the new dawn of a totally new consciousness, of a totally new and fresh life, with a fragrance it has not known before. It is in our hands.
Okay, Maneesha?
Yes, Osho.