Monthly Archives: December 2009

Question – I have controlled and disciplined my sex life for years, But i am still much too interested in it. why?

Osho – That’s why. It is so simple, so obvious. You have remained obsessed with it — otherwise why control it? Why repress it? What is control except repression?
You became too attached to it; it was an attachment. And as time has passed, the attachment has deepened. Of course your attachment is negative, hence the question. Because you have been against it, you thin, “Why am I still interested?”

In fact if you are negatively attached to something, your attachment will go on deepening as time passes; it will never end. If you are positively attached, there is a possibility of its ending, because experience liberates. I you had known sex, by now you would have been finished with it, because it is childish; it does not have the power that negative attachment creates.

Sex in itself is not that powerful. It appears very powerful, because we have been taught to be against it: our antagonism gives it power. And the more you ar against it, the less experienced you are about it, the more the desire arises to experience it.

In fact, monks remain interested in sex to the very end: they die thinking of sex and nothing else — it is a simple psychological truth. But the question arises because we only think of positive attachment as attachment.

Attachment has two forms, positive and negative. And the negative is far deeper than the positive, because there is no way to end the negative attachment. The positive attachment will wear, wither. You have known sex and its experience: slowly slowly, you start understanding that there is nothing in it, that it is a biological urge, that it gives you nothing much. Slowly slowly, it dawns upon your consciousness that it is a futile repetition.

And I am not saying to think that it is a futile repetition. If you think without understanding, that thinking will be repression; that will be negative attachment. I am not saying to judge it; the judgment arises on its own.

But when you are negatively attached to something, you go on escaping from it. When will you experience it? And the more you escape, the more the urge remains fresh, young. And the more you repress it, the deeper it goes into your unconscious and grips you at the roots. From the leaves it moves to the roots. From the leaves there was a possibility of evaporating, because the leaf was exposed to the sun, to experience, to life. Once it has reached your roots underground, now there is no way for it to evaporate.

Attachment is the sine wave of ’submission — resistance’. When you submit to something or resist something, or hate something, or identify with something, you are attached to it. Remember, saying yes is an attachment: submission. Saying no is an attachment: resistance. And the second attachment is far deeper.

That’s why friendships are not as great as enmities. Friendships are so-so, lukewarm. Enmities are very passionate, very hot. Enmities live long, for years; there seems to be no way to end an enmity. Friendship withers. You are asking, “Why am I still interested?” You will remain interested to the very end.

Drop your resistance, drop the negative attachment, go into the experience of sex. Don’t be afraid, there is nothing to be afraid of. It is not so important that you need to be afraid of it; by becoming afraid, you are making it something big. It is not such a big deal, it is a small biological phenomenon.

Priests have magnified it very much. The whole responsibility goes to the priests: they have made the whole of humanity sexual, utterly sexual. Without the priest there would be no pornography in the world, without the priest there would be no prostitutes in the world, without priests there would be no obscenity in the world. They are the root causes.

But it is very difficult to see he point, because they are against all these things — if you listen to their words, they are against them. Naturally you think if people are against something, how can they be the source of it? But they are the source. By being against, they are creating great interest, great attraction. Just let priests disappear and you will be surprised: sexuality will disappear. Sex will be there, but sex is a small thing; sexuality is a magnified obsession.

The late Dr. Kinsey was questioning a group of men about the number of times they had sex relations with members of the opposite sex. In response to his question, a group of men raised their hands to indicate that they had sex every night. Then some said they had relations ten times a month. A small group said they only did it about four times a month.

Finally, every man in the room had been accounted for except one man who was sitting in the corner. Dr. Kinsey moved closer to him. “All right. How many of you have sex relations only once a year?”

“Me! Me!” the man piped up, waving his hand wildly and wearing an ear-to-ear smile.
“Fine,” said Dr. Kinsey. “But why are you so happy about it?”
“Because tonight’s the night!” the man explained with glee. “Tonight’s the night!”

Now, if you repress for one year, this is natural. How many years have you been controlling your sex? Even an ear-to-ear smile won’t do — your smile will spread from your toes to your head.
Please don’t control, because all control means control by the ego. I teach you uncontrol: remain natural. Control makes you unnatural, artificial, arbitrary. Remain natural. Control makes you unnatural, artificial, arbitrary. Remain natural, relax. Whatsoever God has given to you — sex, love, whatsoever — accept it as a gift. And go into it, go into it meditatively, go into it very consciously, so that you can see what it is, so that you can learn something from it.

And one day sex disappears. And that day is of great importance, because that day you are biologically free. That freedom is not attained through control; that freedom is attained through understanding, awareness, witnessing.

Source – Osho Book “Unio Mystica, Vol2″

Question – Is there such a thing as Right or Wrong?

Osho – Akam, there is no such thing as right or wrong, because something may be right this moment and it may not be right the next moment. Something may be wrong today and may not be wrong tomorrow.

Right and wrong are not fixed entities, they are not labels that you can put on things, “This is right” and “This is wrong.” But this has been done up to now. Right and wrong have been decided by people. And because people have decided right and wrong, they have misguided the whole humanity.

Manu decides in one way: what he thinks is right becomes right for millions and millions of Hindus for thousands of years. It is so stupid, it is unbelievable! How can people go on following Manu for five thousand years? Everything else has changed. If Manu comes back he will not be able to recognize the world at all; everything has changed. But the Hindu mind goes on following the categories that Manu has fixed.

Still, after five thousand years, there are millions of people in India who are not treated like people. What to say, that they are not treated like people — they are not even treated like cattle. Even cows are far more important than alive people. Cows are worshipped, cows are holy, and the untouchables, the sudras, the rejected people — rejected by Manu, five thousand years ago — are burned.

And even a man like Vinoba Bhave is ready to go on fasting if cow slaughter is not completely stopped in the country, totally stopped. But he is completely silent, he does not say a single word, that the untouchables are being killed, burned alive, their women raped, their children murdered, butchered. Villages of untouchables, whole villages are being effaced from the earth, and Vinoba Bhave is not thinking of going on a fast. Who bothers about these untouchables? They are not part of humanity, they are not human beings. Cows have to be saved, because Manu worships the cow.

It may have been right at that moment; I am not against Manu, I am against the foolish followers of Manu. It may have been right at that time, because the cow was very very important, it was the center of the whole economy; particularly the Indian economy was based on the cow. It was an agricultural society, and the cow was the source of many things: of the bulls, the bullocks, the manure, the milk — it was immensely important, it was perfectly right to save it. But now the world is living in a totally different way. Manu had a very small world; now we have the whole earth to think of, it is not only a question of a small sect. But once right has been fixed, people go on following blindly; it has been like that up to now.

For example, in the ten commandments Moses says, “Do not worship any other god than the true God. Don’t make idols of the true God and don’t worship any other gods.” It was a totally different world; three thousand years have passed. In fact, in those ten commandments there is not a single commandment which says anything about atheists. It says, “Don’t worship any other god.” It does not say, “Don’t disbelieve in God,” because there was no disbeliever. Atheism was not at all in the air.

Now the most fundamental thing will be to teach people how not to be atheists, because atheism is very prevalent. Almost half of the earth has gone communist, it is atheist, and the remaining half is only formally theist. Now the most fundamental commandment should be, “Don’t be atheists, don’t be disbelievers, don’t be doubters.” Now trust should be the most fundamental teaching to be given to people.

As time changes, rights change, wrongs change. And you can see it in your own life — every day things are different, and you go on clinging to your fixed ideas. The man who lives with fixed ideas lives a dead life. He is never spontaneous and he is never in a right relationship with the situation that exists. He is never response-able; he functions out of his old conclusions which are no longer relevant, he does not look at the situation itself.

So, Akam, according to me there is no such thing as right and no such thing as wrong. Then what do I teach? I teach awareness — not labeling, not categorizing. I teach awareness. I teach you to be fully aware in every situation, and act out of your awareness. Or, in different words I can say: Any action that happens through awareness is right; any action that happens through unawareness is wrong.

But see the emphasis. The emphasis is not on the action itself, the emphasis is on the source — awareness or unawareness. If you act fully aware, then whatsoever you do is right. If you move mechanically and do things unconsciously as if you are a sleepwalker, a somnambulist, then whatsoever you do is wrong. Awareness is right, unawareness is wrong.

But if you go to the priests, they will teach you what is right and what is wrong. They will not give you insight, they will give you dead categories. They will not give you light, so that you can see in every situation what to do and what not to do; they want you to depend on them. They don’t give you insight into things, so you have to remain dependent forever. They give you crutches, but they don’t make you stand on your own feet.
Avoid the priests. Whenever you go to any kind of experts, their whole effort in fact is how to make you dependent on them.

The star of a Broadway hit was visiting friends when talk got around, as usual, to psychiatry. “I must say,” said the hostess, “I think my analyst is the best in the world! You can’t imagine what he has done for me. You ought to try him.”
“But I don’t need analysis,” said the star. “I could not be more normal — there is nothing wrong with me.”
“But he is absolutely great,” insisted her friend. “He will find something wrong.”

There are people who live on finding something wrong with you. Their whole trade secret is to find something wrong with you. They cannot accept you as you are; they will give you ideals, ideas, ideologies, and they will make you feel guilty and they will make you feel worthless, dirt. In your own eyes, they will make you feel so condemned that you will forget all about freedom.

In fact you will become afraid of freedom, because you will see how bad you are, how wrong you are — and if you are free, you are going to do something wrong, so follow somebody. The priest depends on it, the politician depends on it. They give you right and wrong, fixed ideas, and then you will remain guilty forever.

I say to you: There is nothing right and nothing wrong. I don’t want you to depend on me, and I don’t give you any fixed ideas. I simply give you indications, hints, which have to be worked out by you. And the hint that I give to you is awareness. Become more aware, and it is a miracle….

If you are angry, the priest will say anger is wrong, don’t be angry. What will you do? You can repress anger, you can sit upon it, you can swallow it, literally, but it will go into you, into your system. Swallow anger and you will have ulcers in the stomach, swallow anger and sooner or later you will have cancer. Swallow anger and you will have a thousand and one problems arising out of it, because anger is poison. But what will you do? If anger is wrong, you have to swallow it.

I don’t say anger is wrong, I say anger is energy — pure energy, beautiful energy. When anger arises, be aware of it, and see the miracle happen. When anger arises, be aware of it, and if you are aware you will be surprised; you are in for a surprise — maybe the greatest surprise of your life — that as you become aware, anger disappears. Anger is transformed.

Anger becomes pure energy; anger becomes compassion, anger becomes forgiveness, anger becomes love. And you need not repress, so you are not burdened by some poison. And you are not being angry, so you are not hurting anybody. Both are saved: the other, the object of your anger, is saved, and you are saved. In the past, either the object was to suffer, or you were to suffer.

What I am saying is that there is no need for anybody to suffer. Just be aware, let awareness be there. Anger will arise and will be consumed by awareness. One cannot be angry with awareness and one cannot be greedy with awareness and one cannot be jealous with awareness. Awareness is the golden key.

Source – Osho Book “The Book of Wisdom”

Question – Beloved Osho, What is a Contemporary Mind?

Osho – Contemporary mind is a contradiction in terms. Mind is never contemporary, it is always old. Mind is past — past and past and nothing else; mind means memory. There can be no contemporary mind; to be contemporary is to be without mind.

If you are herenow, then you are contemporary with me. But then, don’t you see, your mind disappears; no thought moves, no desire arises: you become disconnected with the past and disconnected with the future.

Mind is never original, cannot be. No-mind is original, fresh, young; mind is always old, rotten, stale. But those words are used — they are used in a totally different sense. I can understand your question — in that sense, those words are meaningful. The mind of the nineteenth century was a different mind; the questions they were asking, you are not asking.

The questions that were very important in the eighteenth century are now stupid questions. “How many angels can dance on the point of a needle?” was one of the greatest theological questions in the middle ages. Now can you find such a stupid person who will think that this is an important question? And this was discussed by the greatest theologians; not small people, great professors were writing treatises on it, conferences were arranged. How many angels? Now who cares? It is simply irrelevant.

In Buddha’s time, a great question was: “Who created the world?” It has persisted for centuries, but now fewer and fewer people are worried about who created the world. Yes, there are some old-fashioned people, but very rarely such questions are asked of me. But Buddha was encountered every day. Not a single day must have passed when somebody did not ask the question, “Who created the world?”

Buddha had to say again and again that the world has always been there, nobody has created it; but people were not satisfied. Now nobody cares. Very rarely somebody asks me the question, “Who created the world?” In that sense, the mind goes on changing as time goes on changing. In that sense, the contemporary mind is a reality.

Husband to wife: “I said we are not going out tonight, and that is semi-final.”

Now this is a contemporary mind. No husband in the past would have said that. It was always final; the last word was his.

Two high-class English ladies met each other by accident while out shopping in London. One noticed the other was pregnant and asked, “Why, darling, what a surprise! You obviously got married since I last saw you! ”
The second said, “Yes. He’s a wonderful man; he’s an officer in the Ghurka rifles.”
The questioner was horrified. “A Ghurka! Darling, are not they all black?”
“Oh no,” she said. “Only the privates.”
The questioner exclaimed, “Darling, how contemporary!”

In that sense, there is a contemporary mind….

Have you heard about the latest family game? It is called incest.
Little sister to brother in bed: “Hey, you are better at this than Daddy.”
“Yes, Mummy says so too!”

Otherwise, there is no contemporary mind. Fashions come and go; if you think of fashions then there are changes. But basically all mind is old. Mind as such is old, and there can be no modern mind; the most modern mind is still of the past. The really alive person is a herenow person. He does not live out of the past, he does not live for the future; he lives only in the moment, for the moment. The moment is all. He is spontaneous; that spontaneity is the fragrance of no-mind.

Mind is repetitive, mind always moves in circles. Mind is a mechanism: you feed it with knowledge, it repeats the same knowledge, it goes on chewing the same knowledge again and again. No-mind is clarity, purity, innocence. No-mind is the real way to live, the real way to know, the real way to be.

Source – Osho Book “The Book of Wisdom”

Question – You said nobody should dictate what you should do with your life. How does that fit with being available and surrendering to you?

Osho – In the first place I am a nobody. Now listen to the question again. YOU SAID NOBODY SHOULD DICTATE WHAT YOU SHOULD DO WITH YOUR LIFE. Don’t surrender to me because I dictate to you. But if you feel like surrendering, what can I do? If you feel like surrendering, it is your feeling. If I am dictating to you to surrender to me, don’t listen to me. But if your heart is dictating, then what are you going to do? If I tell you to be available to me, don’t listen at all. But if your own understanding says, ‘Be available to this man’, then be.

And here there is nobody. If you look deeply into me you will not find anybody there. The house is empty, the whole space is yours, just for the asking. I am just a space. The man you see here sitting in the chair died long before. There is no entity who can dictate anything to you.

Just last night one woman seeker was saying, ‘I would like to do what other sannyasins are doing, but I cannot surrender. I cannot lose my freedom. I have lived in many confinements from my very childhood, in many disciplines. Now I am afraid to get involved in another imprisonment.’ I said, ‘Don’t be worried. I confer freedom upon you, an absolute freedom.’

Sannyas is freedom. If you understand rightly, it is absolute freedom. And the woman understood the point because I said, ‘Now you are afraid that you may get into another trap. But are you aware that your ego itself can become the trap, and the greatest of all? You have lived within many other commitments and you found they all became imprisonments — but your own ego can become the imprisonment.

When you surrender to a nobody he cannot imprison you, and the very danger of your own, ego becoming an imprisonment for you also disappears. When you surrender to me you are not really surrendering to me, because I am not here. And I’m not enjoying your surrender at all — whether you surrender or not makes no difference to me.

In fact, when you surrender to me, you surrender yourself. You don’t surrender to me. You simply surrender your ego. I am just a device, an excuse. It will be difficult for you to go and surrender to the river, or to the sky, or to the stars — it will be very difficult and you will look a little ridiculous. So I pretend to be here just to help you so that you don’t feel ridiculous. You can put you r ego here. There is nobody to receive it and nobody to be happy about it, but it helps.

Buddha used to call such things devices — UPAYA. It is just a UPAYA, a device to help those who cannot put their egos down unless they find some feet. I make my feet available to you, but inside there is nobody.

Source – Osho Book “The Art of Dying”

Question – You’ve said Meditation is a flowering. and for us, the perfume of the flower is gratitude. Is there anything we can do for you?

Osho – Yes. Meditation, compassion and gratitude. Whenever you are meditative, you feel blissful; whenever you are in compassion, you feel ecstatic. And then gratitude arises — not towards anyone in particular, gratitude just arises. It is not towards me or towards Jesus, or Zarathustra or Buddha, it is simply gratitude. You feel so grateful just for being here, just for being alive, just for being able to be meditative, just for being able to be in compassion. You feel simply grateful. That gratefulness is not towards anybody, it is towards the whole.

If you feel grateful towards me it is a gratitude of the mind. If you meditate and if you flower in compassion you will feel simply grateful, not grateful towards me. Then there is no “towards” — you feel simply grateful towards all. And when you feel grateful towards all, that is really gratefulness towards me, never before it. When it is a choice you choose me; then your master becomes a point, not the whole.

That’s what is happening everywhere. Disciples get fixed with the master and masters help them to be fixed. That’s not good, it is ugly. When you really flower then your perfume is not addressed to anybody; when you really flower the perfume goes in all directions. It simply moves in all directions, and whosoever passes near you is filled with your fragrance, he carries your fragrance. And if nobody passes you then on that silent, lonely path your fragrance goes on spreading — but it is not addressed.

Remember, the mind is always addressed; being is never addressed. The mind is always moving towards something; being is simply moving towards all. It is a movement without any goal. A goal exists because of motive: you move towards something because there is desire. When there is no desire how can you move? Movement is there but no motivation. Then you move in all directions, then you overflow. Then your master is everywhere; then I am everywhere. And only when this point comes are you free from the master also. Then you are freed of all relationship, you are freed of all presence, of all bondage. And if a master cannot free you from himself he is not a master at all.

So you need not do anything for me; you do something for you. Meditation, compassion — that is doing for me. Then the presence will come, and not thought by the mind. Right now you think and you feel: What shall we do? Then it is the mind. How to pay the master? He has done so much for you, what should you do? This is the mind thinking in terms of giving and taking. No, this mind won’t help. One thing you can do for me: drop this mind, allow your being to flower; then you will be fragrant. Then in all dimensions and directions the whole will be happy. You will be a bliss and your gratitude will not be narrow. It will not be towards a point, it will be moving all over, everywhere. Only then do you achieve prayer. This gratitude is prayer.

When you go in a temple and do a prayer, it is not prayer; but when, after compassion, gratitude arises, the whole existence becomes the temple. Whatsoever you touch it becomes a prayer; whatsoever you do it becomes prayerful. You cannot be otherwise. Deeply rooted, anchored in meditation, deeply flowing into compassion, you cannot be otherwise. You become prayer, you become gratitude.

But remember, the mind is always addressed. It has a goal, a desire to achieve. Being is unaddressed; it has no goal, it has nothing to achieve. The kingdom of being is already achieved, the emperor is already there on the throne. You move because movement is life, but don’t move towards any goal, because when there is no goal, there is no tension. Then movement is beautiful, graceful.

Source – Osho Book ‘A Bird on the Wing”

Question – Beloved Osho, Please tell us a few more murphy sutras and a few murphy anecdotes too.

Osho – Gandharva, the Murphy sutras are really beautiful!

The first sutra: If wives were good, God would have one.

Second: Some people are born silly, some people acquire silliness, and some fall in love.

Third: After man came woman, and she has been after him ever since.

Fourth: Be thrifty when you are young, and when you are old you will be able to afford the things that only the young can enjoy.

Fifth: Never miss an opportunity to make others happy, even if you have to leave them alone.

Sixth: Heredity is something people believe in if they have bright children.

Seventh: When in Rome, do as the Romans do — eat spaghetti.

Eighth: Some men have no solution for any difficulty, but will find a difficulty for any solution.

If you don’t believe in this eighth sutra you can ask Asheesh. He is the perfect personification of this sutra! He has no solution for any difficulty, but you give him any solution and he will find the difficulty!

Ninth: There is no time like the present for postponing what you don’t want to do.

Tenth: Teamwork is essential — it allows you to blame someone else.

Eleventh: You can make it foolproof, but you can’t make it damn foolproof.

Twelfth: The height of futility is to tell a hair-raising story to a bald man.

Thirteenth: What is dumber than a dumb Italian? A dumb Indian.

Fourteenth: Adam was the happiest man on earth. Eve’s mother never told her that nice girls did not do it that way.

Fifteenth: You can’t get there from here, and besides there is no place else to go.

And a few anecdotes about Murphy….

The first: “I am getting more and more absent minded,” said Murphy to a few of his cronies. “Sometimes in the middle of a sentence I….”

“That fellow Bobo is so rude: this morning he was snoring in church!”
“Yes, I know,” said Murphy. “He woke me up!”
Murphy had recently become the father of triplets, and the priest stopped him on the street to congratulate him.
“Well, Murphy,” he said, “so the stork smiled on you.”
“Smiled on me!” exclaimed Murphy. “He laughed out loud!”

One friend met Murphy at the station. “Where are you going?” the friend asked.
“To Paris, for my honeymoon,” said Murphy.
“Without your wife?”
“Listen, when you go to Munich, do you take beer with you?”

One Sunday morning the preacher was ill and could not come to the church to perform his duties, so Murphy was doing his work. He was urging his congregation to sing.
“Now is the opportunity for all of you gifted with wonderful voices to show your gratitude towards the Lord. And for all of you without good voices, this is the time to get even with him!”

Murphy came home an hour earlier than usual and found his wife stark naked in bed. When he asked why, she explained, “I am protesting because I don’t have anything to wear.”
Murphy pulled open the closet door. “That’s ridiculous,” he said, “Look in here. There is a yellow dress, a red dress, a print dress, a pant suit…Hi Chris!…a green dress….”

And the last: The son was sitting at the bedside of the elderly gentleman, Murphy, who was dying. “Where do you want to be buried,” the kid asked, “in Forest Lawn or Hillside Memorial Park?”
The old man creaked up on his elbow and answered, “Surprise me!”

Source – Osho Book “Come, Come, Yet Again Come”

Question – Beloved Osho, What is happening to me? I am opening more and more, and I have the feeling that the shadows in my body are gradually disappearing. When I close my eyes I can see more light in the body. It is so beautiful, and I feel so much for you — more than I ever felt before. Beloved Osho, Can this be? Is this me? Why do these doubts still arise? Would you Please comment?

Osho – Whatever is happening is the deepest longing of every seeker. You are here only for this kind of happening. It is the beginning. In the beginning it is very natural: the mind will create doubts. There is no need to be angry with the mind; mind cannot understand it, it is beyond the scope of mind. And naturally the mind wants you to remain rational, reasonable, sane.

The mind creates doubts for the simple reason that it wants to protect you. It is not against you, it is trying to protect you so that you don’t get into some crazy space. But it is only in the beginning that the mind creates doubts. And this is the time when the master and the school of the master helps you not to be bothered with what your mind is saying, but to explore the new that is arising.

You are feeling light. All shadows are disappearing, and a luminous body is arising within you, a body of light. The mind can accept a skeleton; it cannot accept a body of light. Mind is very primitive; it still believes in matter. Physicists have come to the conclusion that there is no matter at all; only energy exists. But the energy particles are moving so fast that they create the illusion of solidness.

It is just like a fan moving fast: you cannot see the three wings separately, it becomes a circle. If it moved with the speed of light, the way electrons move in a pillar, then you could sit on the fan and you would not fall, and you would not feel that something is changing beneath you and there are gaps. Because before you could feel the gap, the other wing of the fan would have come in and you would not feel anything, the fastness of speed would make it a solid thing.

All that looks solid only looks solid. But mind is very primitive. The heart is neither primitive nor contemporary. The heart is eternal; it knows no divisions of time. So the heart can see without any doubt the body of light. In fact, that body is truer than the solid body that we see — because the body of light means the body of electrons, pure electricity.

It happened after the second world war: a soldier came back home. He had been away from home for five years, and naturally he was in a hurry to meet his wife. As he hugged his wife he got a shock — such an electric shock, he fell flat on the ground. He said, “My God, what has happened?”

For five years the wife had been waiting and waiting and waiting with such intensity, her electric forces had been accumulating. Doctors were called. They could not even take her hand to check her pulse — immediate shocks. Then the electrician was called, hoping that something… now it is no longer physical; something electrical has gone wrong. The electrician was very much afraid. He said, “First take this bulb in your hand.” He gave the woman a five-candle bulb to put in her hand, and the bulb lit up.

That was the first happening of its type. The whole woman was throbbing with electricity. Because of her, research started into human electricity, and now it is an established fact that every human body has electricity.

If your eyes are very perceptive, you can see the electric aura around the body. As you have seen around the photos of Nanak, Kabir, Krishna, Rama, Buddha — those circles around the faces are not fictions, they are not the imaginations of the painters; they have been seen by disciples, by meditators.

And now in the Soviet Union, there is a photographer who even takes photographs…. He has developed very sensitive plates. His name is Kirlian, and because of his name, his photography has become known as Kirlian photography. He has become world famous. If he takes your photo, it will not just be you but also surrounding your whole body an aura of light.

And strangely enough, if somebody’s hand has been cut off in an accident and Kirlian takes a photograph, the hand is not there in the photograph but the aura of the hand is still there. The electrical body is still intact — nothing has been disturbed, only the physical part has dropped. One of your fingers has been cut off for some reason, some accident; but in the photograph four fingers will show a darker photo of the physical finger with a lighter shade around it, and one finger will be simply the lighter electric shade. But the shade will still be there.

And this is not only with the human body. A roseflower: you can pluck a petal and Kirlian can say which petal has been taken out — his photograph will show the missing petal’s electric aura.
So what is happening to you is that as you become silent, you start becoming aware of your inner being — which is surrounded by a light.

The ancients have called it the astral body, the body of light, the body made of starlight — that is what `astral’ means. Just remember that it is not in the area of mind, and tell the mind, “This is none of your business. You do your thing.” And there are many more things. Existence is not limited to the mind, it is far bigger, far more mysterious.

You have all the possibilities that any mystic has ever experienced anywhere in the world, but you will have to silence your mind; otherwise those doubts can go on disturbing you. That’s why my insistence is: before entering the mysterious world, first silence the mind. Discipline the mind for silence, for no-thinking, so that when you enter the mysterious world the mind does not come in the way, does not raise awkward questions which you cannot answer — and which even if you answer, the mind cannot understand.

Mind has a limited scope. It is a bio-computer. It is not your whole being. The heart is far bigger. And beyond the heart is your being, which is bigger than the heart. And beyond your being is the universal being — which is infinite. To enter into these mysteries you will need a silent mind that does not disturb you.

Source – Osho Book “Beyond Enlightenment”

Question – Beloved Osho, I am afraid to meet you. trembling, shocked, alone… It means Death.

Osho – The meeting with the master has always been a kind of death, death to all that you have been, death to your past, death to your ego, death to your personality. But it is not only death, it is also resurrection: the birth of the new, the birth of the fresh and the innocent, a new sunrise on the horizon, a new unfoldment of your being. But naturally, first you have to meet the death, you have to pass through it. Resurrection can only be afterwards.

The death is what you pay for your resurrection; hence, your question is significant. You are feeling afraid coming closer to me. This is not new. This has nothing to do with you or me. This is as old as man. The ancient most scriptures in the world are the VEDAS. They describe the master as death, but a death which opens the door to the divine, certainly a death which happens only to the blessed ones.

It is no ordinary death, it is not the death of your body; it is the death that transforms you. Everything remains the same — the body, the world — yet nothing remains the same because your vision, your perspective, your way of looking has gone through such a deep mutation that although superficially everything is the same, in depth everything has changed.

You have entered a new dimension of life — the dimension of eternity, the dimension of ecstasy, the dimension which is beyond time and space. But this much courage is needed: You will have to come close to the master, you will have to go through this fire which burns only that which is false in you. Out of it, you come as twenty-four karat gold.

The function of a mystic school is to encourage you: “You need not be worried. We have passed through the test; the fire is cool and the death is a blessing.”

But if you don’t have any guts, then perhaps the time is not ripe for you, perhaps in some other life with some other master the death will happen. But why postpone? What is possible right now should not be postponed for tomorrow. Why remain in misery even for one day, even for one minute, even for one second?

The death of the ego, the death of your personality, the death of all that you have been thinking about yourself, immediately opens a door. New flowers start blossoming, new songs start stirring in your heart, new dances. You don’t walk anymore, you simply dance; you fly. The ecstasy is such, the blissfulness is such… gather just a little bit of courage.

Source – Osho Book “Beyond Enlightenment”

Question – Beloved Osho, When I sit in your lecture I feel your silence and feel I become part of it. This is a wordless process in melting more and more into silence. At the same time, there are words from you. I hear them, and suddenly a connection happens from the silence to the words, and I feel golden, golden gratefulness about your beloved, wonderful words. the silence and the words are one. Please can you say something about this process — if it is really possible that words can say the wordless.

Osho – Yes, the word can say the wordless but only to the chosen few, only to those who are absolutely silent. The word coming out of silence carries around it the wordless silence.

Now the question is at the receiving end — if it is received by a mind full of words and chattering, then the silence and the wordlessness is destroyed, you only hear the word. But if you are silent, you hear the word and you also hear the wordless; you hear the sound, and you also experience the soundlessness.

In Mahavira’s life a strange thing is reported. It is very difficult to say that it can be factual, historical. Particularly in the outside world, it will look absolutely absurd and irrational.
But here, I can tell you the story. And I can tell you that it may have happened — because it is happening here, so there is no reason why it could not have happened in Mahavira’s time. Time is irrelevant, but it can be told only to those chosen few people who have experienced something similar.

It is said that Mahavira never spoke. Although there are scriptures — but Mahavira never spoke, he just remained silent. He had eleven disciples who were deep in silence, and there was something transferred from Mahavira in silence to the disciples. And these eleven disciples have written the scriptures; they told the people what Mahavira was saying.

So whenever it is said that Mahavira said this, remember, what he said is not a direct statement. Mahavira never spoke, he was silent. But something transpired between him and his chosen group of disciples, and those disciples became his spokesmen. They went around spreading his message.

What is the guarantee that they heard the right thing? What is the guarantee that they did not imagine that they were hearing? What is the guarantee that they are not saying things of their own? There is a guarantee, and the guarantee is that all the eleven heard the same thing.

All the eleven had to immediately write down what they heard, and because all eleven could not have imagined the same thing, it becomes an absolute guarantee: they have heard, silence has spoken to them. From silence to silence there has been a communion.The followers of Mahavira cannot prove this.

I have asked many Jaina monks, “Can you prove this?”
And they said, “Those were the days of truth, and this is the age of darkness. Now it cannot be proved; neither can it be experienced.”

To them it is simply a belief, and most often they don’t mention it because it is embarrassing. If somebody raises a question, they don’t have the right answer. But in this mystery school it is happening, so there is no question of the story about Mahavira being a fiction.

As my sannyasins are growing in silence, moving deeper into meditation — as their masks are falling down, as they are becoming more and more innocently connected with me — first it will happen that they will hear my words, and along with my words, the wordless message.

And at the second step, there will be no need for me even to use the word. I can simply sit here, and you can hear the wordless message. And before I leave this body, I want it to become an existential experience not only to eleven people but to thousands of people. Only that can give credibility to Mahavira’s story. In twenty-five centuries Mahavira’s disciples have failed, they have not been able to bring any rationality — because it is not a question of reason, it is a question of meditation.

And you will be surprised that Mahavira’s whole life is the life of meditation, and in Jainism meditation is simply forgotten. The whole religion has become a ritual. So it is true: you can hear the wordless side by side with my words. And soon you will be able to hear the wordless even without the words. And that day will be a day of great celebration — when I can speak to you without speaking.

A silent meeting, a communion with no noise, a music with no sounds… nothing is said but everything is heard, understood, immediately experienced.

Source – Osho Book “Beyond Enlightenment”