Monthly Archives: November 2008

Question : WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH YOUR HANDS? I FIND MYSELF MORE EMOTIONALLY MOVED BY WATCHING THEM, THAN BY LISTENING TO THE WORDS YOU SPEAK.

Osho : It is natural, because when I am speaking I am speaking to your heads. Emotion cannot be involved, emotion cannot be there. I am talking to your reason to persuade it. And what am I doing with my hands? When I am talking to your heads I am continuously playing with your hearts also. I have to work on two layers.

For your head to be convinced that the time has come to drop itself, to commit suicide, that the time has come for committing a suicide of reason – I go on talking. But that alone won’t be enough. Because if suddenly your head is cut, and the heart has not started functioning, you will be in a very very deep confusion.

With my hands I go on working with your heart – that’s why in India we have called gestures,
MUDRAS; when a Buddha makes a gesture it is meaningful, significant. Hands are very very deep sources of energy. By the movements of the hands patterns of energy are made, invisible energy; but if you can feel, you can feel; and you will feel that something is going on continuously in the heart.

It is just like – have you seen a potter making an earthen pot? He works with both the hands, one inside the pot, another outside. From the inside he goes on supporting, from the outside he goes on giving the shape. And the wheel is moving. By my talking I go on destroying your head. By my hands I go on supporting your heart, encouraging it to function more, encouraging it to beat naturally.

It is natural if you feel that way. But don’t pay much attention to my hands because if you pay too much attention to my hands then you will be related to my hands with your head. You just forget about my hands – let them work! Because the heart functions in darkness. The functioning and the changing of the heart is indirect.

It is just like the roots of the trees; hidden underneath the earth in deep darkness they function. If you bring them to light they start dying. So don’t pay much attention to my hands, because if you pay too much attention to my hands IT IS HEAD which is paying attention to the hands. Then you miss the point. You may enjoy it, you may feel a certain emotion arising in you, but the real thing has been missed.

You pay attention to my words! You be 60 completely absorbed with my words that my hands and your heart are left alone, you are not in between – otherwise you can create trouble, you can become a barrier. And I am working on the third layer also – which you cannot see at all.

The movements of the hands can be seen – look! Words I use – you can understand the meaning of them. Hands I use – you can only see the movement, not the meaning. Words for the head, hands for the heart – and then there is my being continuously overwhelming you. You cannot even see the movement of it. My being – just like a cloud surrounding you.
But don’t pay attention to my hands. Let them be indirect.

Question : WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PRAYER AND MEDITATION?
Osho : A lot of difference. A great difference. in fact they are absolutely different things. Their movement is in different directions. There are two types of religions in the world: prayer oriented religions and meditation oriented religions. Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism, Hinduism – these are prayer oriented religions. Jainism, Buddhism, Taoism – these are meditation oriented religions.

For a prayer oriented religion the concept of a personal God is needed – to relate to. For meditation oriented religions God is a useless hypothesis; it can be discarded easily into the dustbin. It is not needed. Buddha could attain without any belief in God. The Taoist Lao Tzu never mentions the word God – never! There must be a very great difference – try to understand it. Prayer is a dialogue between two persons: God and you.

You are talking to God, it is a dialogue; it is not a silence. Words continue. You are not talking to another man but you are talking to another being; but that being is imagined also in the image of man. It is said in the Bible: God created man in his own image. The reality seems to be just the opposite: man created God in his own image. You have an imaginary conception of a person
there, somewhere. You talk. You confess your sins, you ask his forgiveness. You pray. Good, good for the heart. It helps a little bit.

You feel more unburdened, you feel light. Maybe there is a God, maybe not – that’s not the point. But believing there is a God, you can unburden yourself, you can surrender yourself, it becomes easier for you. The hypothesis is helpful. But in Christianity, in Judaism, in Mohammedanism, nothing exists like MOKSHA. There is a heaven, and hell. Hell for those who have never been related to God in any way but rather were working against him, against
his wishes, committing sins; and heaven for those who prayed, who worked for him according to his wishes.

But there is nothing like moksha: absolute freedom. Because even in heaven God will be the ruler; and he is not a democrat, he is absolutely dictatorial, because there is nobody on top of him and he is the creator: he can uncreate, he can create, he can do whatsoever he wants to do.
And he seems to be a little whimsical. He forgives sinners. Then the opposite must be happening also – that people who are virtuous but never prayed must be suffering in hell, because people who were not virtuous but prayed are enjoying beautiful women and wine and good things in heaven. Seems to be a little whimsical.

It seems that man has created the hypothesis as a consolation. It seems the whole phenomenon of God arises out of fear not out of knowing, out of guilt, out of the misery man is, not out of understanding. Meditation is not a dialogue, it is silence. There is nobody to relate to, to talk to.

For a meditator prayer is foolish: What are you doing? To whom are you talking? Just the other day I was reading a book – a woman writing letters to God. Vivek looked at it and started laughing; she said, What foolishness! Letters written to God! But that is the mind of prayer.
I told you there are three layers of your being; first: where you are just reason. in reason, dialogue is not possible; it is a debate, always a fight. Then the second layer: of love; dialogue is possible. And then the third layer of being: dialogue again is impossible because there is nobody else. You alone exist in your crystal purity. In absolute silence.

The Bible says: in the beginning there was the Word. It starts from the word. Buddha cannot say that, he cannot agree with that. in the beginning was silence. And in the end also there will be silence. Meditation is silence, it is not a dialogue. People who are reason oriented, head oriented, they become – if they are interested in religion – they become theologians. They write theories about God, they talk about God. If they are not religious, they become anti religious, they become philosophers, atheists, agnostics.

Then the second layer of your being: love, heart. If a man is religious love becomes prayer. If the man is not religious then love becomes poetry, art, painting, music. Then the third layer, the deepest core, beyond which nothing exists, is being. Absolute silence; and absolute aloneness. There;s no difference now between religious and non.religious. At the centre everything becomes one. In that silence one is neither religious nor anti religious, because those are the terms of the reason. In that silence one’s love is neither prayer nor art.

Everything has become one. That silence IS meditation.When people come to me, if I see that they are in their heads then I help them to be related, to move, to fall in love, to become a little foolish, so that they come down from their heads, so that they get down from the throne of the ego a little bit. Because one has to surrender in love. One cannot carry the ego.

If one carries it, love is not possible. If I see that they have lived, they have learnt, they have experienced what love is, then I tell them to fall still deeper into meditation. It is the last fall because there is no abyss more deep than meditation. If you are head oriented – move into prayer, love. But don’t make it a goal, it is not the goal. That’s why Christianity and Mohammedanism don’t reach to the height of Buddhism.

No, they remain with the second layer. (For the third layer something like Buddha, something like Lao Tzu, is needed.) They remain better than ordinary worldly people, but still not absolutely other worldly, they remain in the middle. Good as far as it goes, but not enough.
If you cannot love, pray. If you have loved and know what it is, then move into aloneness.

There are two sorts of aloneness; one is loneliness, another is aloneness. If you have not loved,
and you move into solitariness, it will be loneliness, you will feel a deep hunger for the other. It will not be aloneness. The other will be there – as absence. You will continuously feel the absence of the other, you will hanker. Maybe that’s why people who have not loved well, they start talking to God, to an imaginary phenomenon – to fill their loneliness, to be occupied with someone. It is a fantasy, it is a dream – good, religious, but still a dream.

One has to go beyond all dreaming. One has to go to the point when one is sure enough that the other is not needed. I am not saying that that type of person will not love. In fact only that type of person can love. But then he loves out of abundance. Then it is not a NEED. On the contrary he is so full, flooded, that he would like to share. Then he is in search of people who would like to unburden him, who would help him unburden his heart.

The greatest lover is one whose need for love has disappeared. Otherwise, there are small lovers, for whom love is a need just like food. They cannot be without food and they cannot be without a woman or without a man. But when you can be without, and you can be as beautiful without as you are with, then the greatest phenomenon happens: out of silence, if a dialogue starts, it is the greatest dialogue.

So these are the two things to remember. If you feel that there is a deep hankering for love, then prayer is the way for you. Let the other be there, talk to him, be with him. The question just before this question was on my saying to you ’I am with you’ – that is for the second layer people, those who are in need of love. If you become the third type of person then I will not say ’I am with you’, I will say ’I am you’. Then there is no point in being with. Then simply I am you, you are me. Then there is no
duality.

Question : YOU SAID THAT WHEN TWO BEINGS ARE IN LOVE THEY ARE IN COMMUNION WITH EACH OTHER. THEN WHY DOES THE WORLD CALL IT ’FALLING’ IN LOVE WHEN IT IS SUCH AN ECSTATIC HAPPENING AND NOT A FALL TO A LOWER PLANE?

Osho : The world calls it falling in love because the world is ruled by the head, and heart is lower than the head. When somebody falls in love he falls from the head towards the hear And heart is there in childhood, head grows later on. Head is a later growth. You are born with a heart, you are not born with a head. You are born only with the possibility of a head, not with the head. Reason has to be taught, love cannot be taught.

Reason has to be forced on you, your mind has to be conditioned. Schools, colleges,universities exist for reason, there exists no school, no college, no university for love – there is no need! One is born with a heart already functioning perfectly. The head is just a possibility. If it is taught, conditioned, it will function; if not, it won’t function at all. So when again in your youth you move into the relationship of love, you feel it also like a fall, because the mind feels that you are moving backwards, falling towards the childhood, moving towards the heart again.

And the head has a condemnation for the heart; that condemnation is also involved in that term ’falling. The head is saying: What foolish thing are you going to do? Are you mad? It is a fall! Avoid it! For the head, love is the greatest enemy; because once you are in love you become irrational. Look at two lovers – they talk foolishly, they behave foolishly, they are almost mad, and the head goes on condemning and judging: What are you doing?

You are falling back. That’s why the world calls love a ’falling’. But it is good to fall. In another sense also, not in a condemnatory sense, it is a fall, because it leads you towards depth. Reason is superficial. Heart is a deeper phenomenon within you, it leads towards depth, it is diving into your being.

Don’t condemn it. The society condemns because the society looks at love as an anarchic phenomenon. We teach a boy or a girl, and we waste so much money on him, and then suddenly one day he falls in love, and the whole structure is disturbed. It is said that the mother prepares the child for years to become wise; then he meets another woman and within minutes he is a fool again.

One woman prepares for years to help him become a little wise, and another woman comes in, and within a moment, he is a fool again. Don’t condemn it, because foolishness has its own beauty. In fact a man who cannot be a fool sometimes is not wise enough. To be constantly wise, to be wise twenty fours a day and seven days a week is FOOLISH. Sometimes you need to take a holiday from your wisdom and act like a fool.

Then only there is balance. The fool is also part of life.In old days every king in his court used to have a great fool. That was a balancing factor, because in the court there were too many wise men, and sometimes too many wise men prove to be too many cooks in the kitchen. They spoil. They are just ’reasons’, they don’t have the roots of heart.

A fool was needed – in every great court there was a fool. And he brought humour to the court, the sense of humour he brought; otherwise wise men bring long faces, sadness, seriousness. Of course seriousness is good, but only sometimes; it has its moments; and there are moments one should be a little foolish. To me, a really wise man is spontaneous – when wisdom is needed he is wise, when foolishness is needed he is a perfect fool.

If you cannot move to the polarities, you are a fixed and dead phenomenon. One should be capable of moving, flexible. You should be able to reason deeply and you should be able to fall
into irrationalities also. Calculate and love. Arithmetic and poetry. Wise and old, foolish and young. When the child and the old man meet, when the wise man and the fool have become one unity, you attain to the greatest growth. Remember this. Always retain the capacity to fall in love, to be foolish, to behave foolishly.

To me the only fool is the man who is always wise. Life needs polarities and proportions. Foolishness is very refreshing. It cleanses your eyes, gives you perspective. It again brings the innocence of the child. It again gives you spontaneity. Then you are not fixed in a pattern, you are flowing. But don’t try to be a fool continuously – that too is foolish. And it is easy for the mind to cling to one extreme. The most difficult thing for the mind is to change polarities because it disturbs your style.

You would L;ke to be fixed in a pattern – that is the way of least resistance. You have learned a trick and then you remain fixed in it. You remain closed in the known. You don’t want to move to the unknown. You don’t want to learn, you don’t want to be open to the new facts. Mind always wants either to be a leftist or to be a rightist, either to be this or that – BUT TO BE SOMETHING. And life is in the flow – TO BE NOTHING; the capacity to be everything and to be nothing; the capacity to move in any role and not get fixed in it.

’No role’ should become your life style. You should be capable of moving, of dropping it, just as you drop your clothes. Roles are just to be used, and if you don’t get fixed and imprisoned in them, you retain the freedom and the flow and you retain the capacity to enjoy life in its totality. Wisdom is good, foolishness also. Arithmetic beautiful, poetry also. This is the paradox.

Use the head, use the heart, and if you can use both a tremendous revolution will happen. If you can use both you will become aware that you are the third force – neither; you are neither head nor heart; because if you can move so easily from one to another you cannot be either; you must be separate from both – then the witnessing arises; then the identification is broken. And that witnessing is what meditation is all about.

Question : PLEASE EXPLAIN MAN’S FREE WILL AND ITS RELATION TO BEING AND NON-DOING.
Osho : There is nothing like that, like free will. It is just an ego concept, there cannot be anything like that. I am not saying the opposite, that you are dependent and slaves. Mind moves into opposites very easily. It creates dichotomies: either you are a free agent (free will), or you are a slave. Both are untrue, both are false concepts, because YOU are not, so you cannot be a slave, and you cannot be a free agent, because for both, YOU will be needed.

Life is a vast interdependence. You are just an organic part of the whole, you are not separate, so how can you be free But I am not saying that you are not free, remember that, because how can you be not free, or free? You are NOT, you don’t exist at all. It is a vast interdependence, and this interdependence is the totality, the God. But the ego goes on finding its ways….

I have heard, once it happened, a great elephant was passing across a bridge. The bridge was very old, and it shook tremendously, and a fly was sitting on the head of the elephant, just near his ears, and when they had passed – they had almost destroyed the bridge, ALMOST I say – when they had passed the fly said to the elephant: Boy! Did we shake that thing! But the elephant didn’t hear. So the fly said: What is the matter? Are you stupid or something! Can’t you hear me? But the elephant didn’t hear.

The whole is VAST. We are not even flies. The proportion is very very, TREMENDOUSLY great. It is hot the proportion of a fly to an elephant – that’s nothing. We are almost nothing, and the whole is so VAST. But you go on trying, insisting that the bridge is shaking because of you.
The fly was very considerate in a way; she said: Boy! We did shake that bridge! WE – that is much consideration.

If the fly had the mind of a man, ordinarily she would have said I. Flies are mote considerate. She at least included the elephant. But man says FREE WILL, he does not even include the whole, it is completely discarded. He says I. So two philosophies have existed in the world – one which says FREE WILL. But because this whole notion is wrong, absolutely false, it can be argued against, it HAS been argued against, so there is another side which says: Nobody is free. We are just puppets, and the threads are in some unknown hands, and whatsoever HE determines, happens. We are just slaves, nothing else.

Both parties are wrong. You are neither slaves nor free agents. This is a little difficult to understand: it is because YOU are not that you are part of the whole. But if you THINK yourself separate you will feel like a slave. If you understand yourself as part of the whole you become the master but you become master with the whole not against the whole. If you are against the whole, you become the slave. If you flow with the river, you become the master. You become the river! If you try to go upstream you become the slave.

Free will is not there, and neither is slavery. Dependence and independence are both false words.They should be dropped completely, they should not be used. It is interdependence. I exist in you, you exist in me. That is the way life is: we exist into each other, we PEOPLE each other. The breath that was in me just a moment before has now moved and has gone into you. Just a moment before I could have said: This is my breath – but where is it now? Somebody else’s heart is beating through it.

In your body the blood is flowing; just a few days before it was flowing as juice in a tree; it became a fruit, now it is flowing in your body. Again you will fall to the earth – dust unto dust, and again a tree will arise; you will become fertilizers; and again a tree will become alive, and a fruit will come, and your children’s children will eat it.

You have eaten your grandparents – you ARE eating them. And this goes on and on! The whole past is eaten by the present. And the whole present will be eaten by the future. Life is inter related, deeply inter-related. It is just like a net. You are just the crossing point of two threads, you are NOT, you are just a tie between two passing threads. When you understand that – you laugh, you really laugh! And you have been carrying so much burden!

That’s why Jesus says, Come follow me, my burden is light. Your burden is very heavy. Your burden is YOU. Jesus says, My burden is light, it is weightless – because when you are not, there is no weight, the gravitation doesn’t function then. You start to levitate. Wings grow out of you. You can FLY.

Drop dichotomies: independence, dependence; they are inter-related. If you try to be independent, you will feel you are dependent, if you try to be independent you will fail and you will be frustrated and you will feel that you are dependent. And both are wrong. Just look within: you are NOT; just cosmic rays passing, creating a web, a pattern…

A few days you are here and then you disappear; and then again you will be here – and disappear. Where do you come from? Where do you go again? Into the whole! You disappear to rest. Then again you are here. Spring comes, and trees start blooming, and birds start singing – a new life; and then it has gone, and everything is restful.

Again it will come. Many many times you have been here, many many times you will be here; but once you understand that YOU ARE NOT, that the whole goes on playing through you, once you understand – then there is no need to be thrown again and again back into the body, there is no need, you have become alert, conscious. Now there is no need for any manifestation; you rest in the whole – this we have called MOKSHA, NIRVANA. This we have called the ultimate freedom.

In the West it is very difficult to understand this because whenever you talk about freedom you think of free will, and whenever the East talks about freedom it talks of being free of all free will. Freedom means to be free from you. In the West it means freedom from every barrier, limitation, but YOU remain, it is YOUR freedom.

In the East when we talk about freedom YOU don’t remain in it – you are part and parcel of the
bondage, you go with the bondage. Freedom remains, not YOU; that is MOKSHA. It is not that YOU become free, on the contrary you become free of yourself. There is no self. Self simply disappears – it was a false concept, an arbitrary concept. Useful, but not true.

Question : IS NOT THE SEARCH FOR ENLIGHTENMENT A SELFISH SEARCH?
Osho : Yes, it is. And the most selfish. There is nothing like it, it is incomparably selfish.
And one has to be selfish, there is no other way to be. And all the teachings that go on telling you not to be selfish have not helped; rather, they have distracted your being, they have made you unnatural.

Self is your centre, and to be selfish is the only way there is to be. The more you try to be NOT SELFISH the more you become eccentric. (The word eccentric is beautiful; it simply means offcentre.) Then you are rooted no more in yourself, then you are grounded no more in your being, and a man who is not grounded in his being lives a false life, lives an artificial life. His whole life is more like a dream than like a reality.

And deep down you cannot help. Deep down you remain selfish. At the most you become hypocrites. You try to be unselfish, but that is an impossibility. Even in your effort to be unselfish you will remain selfish. So you create a duality, a conflict, and whatsoever you say on the surface deep down you go on denying it – and you know it well because how can you deceive yourself.’ The surface says one thing, the depth goes on broadcasting just the opposite.

It happened, there was a case against Mulla Nasrudin in the court and the judge asked: Did you
sleep with this woman, Nasrudin.’ Nasrudin said, No, your honour, not at all, your honour, not even a wink!

This is the situation. You say something and immediately your inner depth contradicts it. You become a contradiction. You become tense. Your life becomes a deep anguish, a suffering. I teach you to be totally selfish because I teach you that which is natural. But if you understand me well – which is difficult, you may misunderstand me – if you are really selfish then much flows out of your life which is absolutely unselfish. Because when a man is grounded in his own being he has so much to share, so much to give, there is no need to be altruistic.

If you are centred you ARE altruistic because you have overflowing love, overflowing being, you HAVE to share. You are just like a flower, so full of fragrance it goes on sharing it with the winds. You are like a pregnant being, you carry so much within you that you have to give, to share, and by sharing it grows more – but you share it from your centre. So I am not saying that when you become selfish you are not unselfish then, no, just the opposite.

When you try to be unselfish you remain, deep down, selfish. When you become totally selfish a tremendously beautiful unselfishness happens in your life. But you are not even conscious about it because if you are conscious it is false. Things which are natural and healthy need no consciousness. Are you conscious of your breathing?

Yes, sometimes, when something goes wrong, when something is ill, when the breathing is not as it should be – then you become alert, then you are alarmed, then you become conscious. Otherwise the breathing goes on day and night, twenty-four hours, whether you are asleep or awake, whether you are in love or in hate, whether you move or you sit, whatsoever you do the breathing continues. It does not depend on your being conscious of it – and it is fortunate that it doesn’t depend on your consciousness, otherwise you would have been already dead.

If you had to be careful about it, if you had to DO it, it would have stopped long before. Unselfishness should be like breathing. You should be centred, then it happens. Unselfishness is not the opposite of selfishness, unselfishness is the by.product of being totally selfish.

This is what I teach you. And all the churches and all the religions and all the priests and preachers, they have been teaching you just the opposite. They have corrupted humanity, they have poisoned your minds. You cannot be centred and you are trying to help others, to be of service to them. The only help that you can give, the first and the very basic thing, is to be centred and rooted within yourself.

Yes, enlightenment is a selfish search. This is half of the answer I would like to give you.Now the other half. Because enlightenment is a selfish search, the most selfish, incomparably selfish – that’s why you cannot attain enlightenment through search. The search will make you a beautiful person, wise, compassionate, in a thousand and one ways, but not enlightened.

So, for me there exist three types of persons; one, the so called religious person, the moral, the
puritan, the so-called good, who goes on trying to be unselfish and remains selfish. Second, the
person who knows there is no other way to be, that to be selfish is the only way there is, who
becomes centred and becomes unselfish, who through selfishness attains to unselfishness, as a
by-product, he makes no effort to attain it. And the third person who is neither selfish nor unselfish. He is the enlightened person who goes beyond duality, who goes even beyond self.

Hidden in yourself is no self. Hidden behind you is emptiness, nothingness, what Buddha has called SUNYATA, absolute nothingness. So the second part of the answer: You cannot attain to enlightenment through search. All search fails there, because until the seeker is lost enlightenment is not possible, and how can the seeker be lost if there is search? How can the seeker be lost if there is self?

It is not possible. So what happens? How does a man become enlightened? He searches and searches, and there comes a moment when he realizes the total absurdity of searching for it; because you can search for something which is not already within you, you can search for something which is in the future, but how can you search for that which is already the
case? Through searching you will miss it.

How can you search for the seeker himself? The seeker can search for everything except himself. Trying to search for himself is absurd. How can the seeker seek himself? For search a distance is needed between the seeker and the sought. When the distance is not there – and it is NOT THERe – the seeker is the sought. When this is realized… and this is realized after much search, remember – don’t drop searching, I am not saying that – this is realized after many failures, when all hope is lost.

This is realized only when you have searched in all the ways possible, when you have done all that you could, no stone has been left unturned, not even a single corner has been left unsearched, you have done all that can be done, nothing is left – then you simply sit; the search drops from you; no hope, no possibility of ever gaining this goal; in a moment of absolute frustration you drop the search – this is how it happened to Buddha, this is how it happened to me, this is how it always happens.

You make tremendous effort, that is needed! I’m not saying that right now you can drop the search, how can you drop it if you have not got it? Search hard. Make all the efforts you can, bring your total energy to it, but I am not saying that through it you will attain. Without it you will never attain, through it no one has ever attained. You will have to pass through it. Go in, and then a moment comes when you come out freed from all search and seeking.

Suddenly you turn inwards, because search is always outward: seeking, you always look somewhere else, seeking, you run all over the space, seeking you go in all directions – and there is within you something that is beyond all directions. You may call it the eleventh direction. There is within you something which need not be searched for but only realized. It happens in a single moment, not even in a single moment, in a split second – not even tha
t; it doesn’t happen in time. Search stopped, seeker gone, suddenly it is there. It has always been there.

Osho on Knowledge, Knowing, man of Knowledge

Osho : All knowledge is belief. Knowing is not belief, it is KNOWING. It is your perception it is your vision it is your growth. It is just like the mother – the child grows in her womb, she knows, the child is HER PART, her own extension, her own being, blood and bone. A father is extrinsic, he is not intrinsic. He simply believes that the child is his.

A man of knowledge believes that he knows. A man of knowing knows. Knowing is a transformation in your being, it is like a pregnancy, you have to carry it, you have to give birth to yourself, a resurrection into eternity, a turning away from time and a moving in no time, a conversion from mind to no mind, but something so tremendous that you know it is happening in you. A man of knowledge goes on collecting dust from Buddhas. Those who have known, he believes in them. Whatsoever he believes in is dead. He has not given birth to himself.

He has collected knowledge from others, everything is borrowed, and how can knowledge be borrowed? How can being be borrowed? If knowledge is going to be true it is going to be of the nature of being. George Gurdjieff used to ask people – seekers who would come to him – the first thing he used to ask is: Are you interested in knowledge or being?

Because here we give being and we are not concerned about knowledge, so you decide well. If you are concerned with knowledge, go somewhere else. If you are concerned with being, remain here. But make a very very clear decision. What is the difference between being and knowledge? The same as the difference between knowledge and knowing. Knowing IS being.

It is not something that is being added to you, it is something you grow into. Knowledge is something which is added to you. You don’t grow through it, rather, you carry it as a burden. So you will always find a man of knowledge burdened, heavily burdened, mountains of knowledge he is carrying on his shoulders. You will see his face very serious, deadly serious, and his heart completely crushed under the burden.

A man of knowing is weightless. He has nothing to carry. He can fly into the sky. The gravitation of the earth does not affect him. He is not pulled towards the earth because the earth can pull only that which is heavy. He remains on the earth but he is not of the earth. That is the meaning of Jesus’ saying – he says again and again: My kingdom is not of this world…. It is of some other world, the world of being, of eternity.

If you understand the distinction well, then remember never to move on the path of knowledge. Move on the path of knowing, being, because only then you gain something: not that you have more information, but you become more, and that is the crucial point to be understood – you have to become more.

Your poverty is not of information, your poverty is of being. You are poor and you go on hiding that poverty through accumulating things. And knowledge is also a thing: words, theories, philosophies, systems, theologies – all things; subtle, abstract, but still things. You are not growing, you remain the same, and you create a delusion around you that you have come to know.

Osho on Samurai warriors or Samurai Meditators

Osho : Seven or eight hundred years ago in Japan they tried to create a different type of person – they called him a samurai. He was a monk and also a warrior. This is very strange – because what is the relation between a monk and a warrior? The temples in Japan are very strange. In these temples, where they teach meditation, they also teach jujitsu and judo and the arts of wrestling, swordsmanship and archery.

If we were to go there and see, we would be surprised! What is the need to use a sword in a meditation temple? And teaching judo, jujitsu and wrestling – what relation do they have with meditation? In front of meditation temples there are symbols of swords! It is a very strange affair. But there was a reason.

The meditators in Japan slowly came to realize that if there is no possibility in a seeker’s life of developing courage and strength, then only the brain will exist in that seeker. His other deeper centers do not develop. He can only become a scholar, he cannot become a saint. He can become a so-called knowledgeable person. He can know the Gita, the Koran, the Bible, and the Upanishads, he can memorize them like a parrot, this is possible – but he has no experience of life. So a meditator was taught how to use a sword and an arrow.

Recently one of my friends returned from Japan. Someone there gave him a statue. He was very much troubled by it. He could not understand what kind of statue it was. When he returned, he came to me with the statue and said, ”Somebody has presented me with this statue, so I have brought it here, but I have been wondering again and again what kind of a statue it is. What is its meaning?”

It was a statue of a samurai warrior. I told him, ”You cannot understand because for thousands of years we have created a wrong understanding.” The statue is of a warrior with a naked sword in his hand. The side of the face on the same side as the hand with the sword, is shining with the reflection of the sword. His face on that side looks like the face of Arjuna may have done. In his other hand there is a lamp, and the light of the lamp is falling on the other side of his face.

His face on that side looks like the face of Buddha may have done or of Mahavira or of Christ. There is a sword in one hand and a lamp in the other hand. We cannot understand it because there should be either a sword in the hand or a lamp. How can there be both things in the hands of one man? So my friend was not able to understand anything. He said to me, ”I am very much puzzled. What is it all about?”

I told him that the lamp can only exist in the hand of a person who also has a shining sword in his other hand. With him it is not a question of using the sword; only weak people, fearful people, use the sword. A person whose whole life becomes like a sword, does not use it. There is no need for him to use it because his whole life is a sword. So do not think that if a person has a sword in his hands that he will use it, that he will hurt or kill somebody.

A person only kills when he is afraid of being killed himself – otherwise no one will kill. A violent person is really only a fearful person. In reality a sword can only be held in the hands of a non-violent person. In fact, when a person himself becomes a sword, only then can he be non-violent, otherwise not. The lamp of peace only benefits a man in whose being a sword of courage has been born, in whose being a sword of energy, of strength, has been born.

So on one hand the personality should be filled with total strength, and on the other hand with total peace – only then can an integrated personality, a total being, arise.

QUESTION: DOESN’T INTUITION COME TO ONE THROUGH THOUGHT WAVES THAT ARE JUST LIKE RADIO WAVES?

Osho : This, again, will be very difficult to explain. If intuition comes through some kind of waves, then sooner or later the intellect will be able to explain it. It comes without any medium; that is the point. It comes without a vehicle! It travels without any vehicle, that is why it is a jump, that is why it is a leap. If some waves are there and it comes to you through those waves, then it is not a jump, it is not a leap.

It is a jump from one point to another point, with no interconnection between the two; that is why it is a jump. If I come to you step by step, it is not a jump; only if I come to you without any steps is it a jump. And a real jump is even deeper: it means that something exists on point A and then it exists on point B, and between the two there is no existence. That is a real jump.

Intuition is a jump. It is not something coming to you; that is a linguistic error. It is not something coming to you: it is something happening to you, not coming to you – something happening to you without any causality anywhere, without any source anywhere. This sudden happening means intuition. If it is not sudden, not completely discontinuous with what went before, then reason will discover the path.

It will take time, but it can be done. If some X-rays, some waves or anything are carrying it to you, reason will be capable of knowing and understanding and controlling it. Then any day an instrument can be developed – just like radio or TV – in which intuitions can be received. If intuition comes through rays or waves, then we can make an instrument to receive them. Then Mohammed is not needed. But as I see it, Mohammed will be needed.

No instrument can pick up intuition because it is not a wave phenomenon. It is not a phenomenon at all; it is just a leap from nothing to being. Intuition means just that. That is why reason denies it. Reason denies it because reason is incapable of encountering it; reason can only encounter phenomena that can be divided into cause and effect.

According to reason there are two realms of existence: the known and the unknown. And the unknown means that which is not yet known, but someday will be known. But religion says that there are three realms: the known, the unknown, and the unknowable. By the unknowable religion means that which can never be known.

Intellect is involved with the known and the unknown, not with the unknowable, and intuition works with the unknowable, with that which cannot be known. It is not just a question of time before it will be known; ”unknowability” is its intrinsic quality. It is not that your instruments are not fine enough or your logic not up to date or your mathematics primitive – that is not the question. The intrinsic quality of the unknowable is unknowability; it will always exist as the unknowable. This is the realm of intuition.

When something from the unknowable comes to be known, it is a jump. It is a jump! There is no interlink, there is no passage, there is no going from one point to another point. But it seems inconceivable, so when I say, ”You can feel it, but you cannot understand it,” when I say such things, I know very well that I am uttering nonsense. Nonsense only means ”that which cannot be understood by our senses.” And mind is a sense, the most subtle, and wisdom is a sense.

Intuition is possible because the unknowable is there. Science denies the existence of the divine because it says, ”There is only one division: the known and the unknown. If there is any God, we will discover him through laboratory methods. If he exists, science will discover him.”

Religion, on the other hand, says, ”Whatever you do, something in the very foundation of existence will remain unknowable – a mystery.”

And if religion is not right then I think that science is going to destroy the whole meaning of life. If there is no mystery, the whole meaning of life is destroyed and the whole beauty is destroyed. The unknowable is the beauty, the meaning, the aspiration, the goal. Because of the unknowable, life means something. When everything is known, then everything is flat. You will be fed up, bored. The unknowable is the secret; it is life itself.

I will say this: that reason is an effort to know the unknown and intuition is the happening of the unknowable. To penetrate the unknowable is possible, but to explain it is not. The feeling is possible; the explanation is not.

The more you try to explain it the more closed you will become, so do not try. Let reason work in its own field, but remember continuously that there are deeper realms. There are deeper reasons which reason cannot understand, higher reasons that reason is incapable of conceiving.

QUESTION: CAN LSD BE USED AS A HELP IN MEDITATION?

Osho : LSD can be used as a help, but the help is very dangerous; it is not so easy. If you use a mantra, even that can become difficult to throw, but if you use acid, LSD it will be even more difficult to throw. The moment you are on an LSD trip you are not in control. Chemistry takes control and you are not the master, and once you are not the master it is difficult to regain that position. The chemical is not the slave now, you are the slave.

Now how to control it is not going to be your choice. Once you take LSD as a help you are making a slave of the master and your whole body chemistry will be affected by it. Your body will begin to crave LSD. Now the craving will not just be of the mind as it is when you get attached to a mantra. When you use acid as a help, the craving becomes part of the body; the LSD goes to the very cells of the body. It changes them.

Your inner chemical structure becomes different. Then all the body cells begin to crave acid and it will be difficult to drop it. LSD can be used to bring you to meditation only if your body has been prepared for it. So if you ask if it can be used in the West, I will say that it is not for the West at all. It can be used only in the East – if the body is totally prepared for it. Yoga has used it, tantra has used it, there are schools of tantra and yoga that have used LSD as a help, but then they prepare your body first. There is a long process of purification of the body.

Your body becomes so pure and you become such a great master of it that even chemistry cannot become your master now. So yoga allows it, but in a very specific way. First your body must be purified chemically. Then you will be in such control of the body that even your body chemistry can be controlled.

For example, there are certain yogic exercises: if you take poison, through a particular yogic exercise you can order your blood not to mix with it and the poison will pass through the body and come out in the urine without having mixed with the blood at all. If you can do this, if you can control your body chemistry, then you can use anything, because you have remained the master. In tantra, particularly in ”leftist” tantra, they use alcohol to help meditation.

It looks absurd; it is not. The seeker will take alcohol in a particular quantity and then will try to be alert. Consciousness must not be lost. By and by the quantity of alcohol will be raised, but the consciousness must remain alert. The person has taken alcohol, it has been absorbed in the body, but the mind remains above it; consciousness is not lost. Then the quantity of alcohol is raised higher and higher. Through this practice a point comes when any amount of alcohol can be given and the mind remains alert. Only then can LSD be a help.

In the West there are no practices to purify the body or to increase consciousness through changes in body chemistry. Acid is taken without any preparation in the West. It is not going to help; rather, on the contrary, it may destroy the whole mind. There are many problems. Once you have been on an LSD trip you have a glimpse of something you have never known, something you have never felt.

If you begin to practice meditation it is a long process, but LSD is not a process. You take it and the process is over; then the body begins to work. Meditation is a long process – you have to do it for years, only then will the results be forthcoming. And when you have experienced a shortcut, it will be difficult to follow a long process.

The mind will crave to return to using the drugs. So it is difficult to meditate once you have known a glimpse through chemistry; to undertake something that is a long process will be difficult. Meditation needs more stamina, more trust, more waiting, and it will be difficult because now you can compare.

Secondly, any method is bad if you are not in control all the time. When you are meditating you can stop at any moment. If you want to stop, you can stop this very moment; you can come out of it. You cannot stop an LSD trip: once you have taken LSD you have to complete the circle. Now you are not the master.

Anything that makes a slave of you is ultimately not going to help spiritually, because spirituality basically means to be the master of oneself. So I wouldn’t suggest shortcuts. I am not against LSD, I may sometimes be for it, but then a long preliminary preparation is necessary. Then you will be the master.

But then LSD is not a shortcut. It will take even longer than meditation. Hatha yoga takes years to prepare a body – twenty years, twenty-five years, then a body is ready; now you can use any chemical help and it will not be destructive to your being. But then the process is far longer.
Then LSD can be used; I am in favor of it then. If you are prepared to take twenty years to prepare the body in order to take LSD, then it is not destructive.

But the same thing can be done in two years with meditation. Because the body is more gross, mastery is more difficult. The mind is more subtle so mastery is easier. The body is further away from your being, so there is a greater gap; with the mind the gap is shorter.

In India the primitive method to prepare the body to be ready for meditation was hatha yoga. It took so long a time to prepare the body that sometimes hatha yoga had to invent methods to prolong life so that hatha yoga could be continued. It was such a long process that sixty years might not be enough, seventy years might not be enough.

And there is a problem: if the mastery is not achieved in this life then in the next life you have to begin from abc because you have a new body. The whole effort has been lost. You do not have a new mind in your next life, the old mind continues, so whatever is attained through the mind remains with you, but whatever is attained through the body is lost with every death. So hatha yoga had to invent methods to prolong life for two hundred to three hundred years so that mastery could be attained.

If the mastery is of the mind then you can change the body, but the preparedness of the body belongs to the body alone. Hatha yoga invented many methods so that the process could be completed, but then even greater methods were discovered: how to control the mind directly – raja yoga. With these methods the body can be a little helpful, but there is no need to be too concerned with it. So hatha yoga adepts have said that LSD can be used, but raja yoga cannot say LSD can be used, because raja yoga has no methodology to prepare the body.

Direct meditation is used. Sometimes it happens – only sometimes, rarely – that if you have a glimpse through LSD and do not become addicted to it, that glimpse may become a thirst in you to seek something further. So to try it once is good, but it becomes difficult to know where to stop and how to stop. The first trip is good, to be on it once is good; you become aware of a different world and then you begin to seek, you begin to search, because of it – but then it becomes difficult to stop.

This is the problem. If you can stop, then to take LSD once is good. But that ”if” is a great one.
Mulla Nasruddin used to say that he never took more than one glass of wine. Many friends objected to his statement because they had seen him taking one glass after another. He said, ”The second glass is taken by the first; ’I’ take only one. The second is taken by the first and the third by the second. Then I am not the master.

I am master only for the first, so how can I say that I take more than one? ’I’ take only one – always only one!” With the first you are the master; with the
second you are not. The first will try to take a second, and then it will go on continuously; then it is no longer in your hands. To begin anything is easy because you are the master, but to end anything is difficult because then you are not the master.

So I am not against LSD, and if I am against it, it is conditional. This is the condition: if you can
remain the master, then okay. Use anything, but remain the master. And if you cannot remain the master, then do not enter into a dangerous road at all. Do not enter at all; it will be better.