George Gurdjieff

Question – Bhagwan, for years, there have been growth and consciousness movements. what is growth and consciousness really about? is consciousness something everyone has and can develop — or do some have it, and some don’t?

Osho – First: it was George Gurdjieff who for the first time in the whole history of man stated that everybody does not have the consciousness. Few have. The majority is without consciousness. It was simply a device. It is not a statement of truth. Because all ancient mystics have been saying, that everybody has consciousness. All that is to be done is to discover it, to become aware of it. They were stating the truth. But people are in such an unconscious state that they will misuse even a statement which contains truth — and they have misused.

Because two possibilities are there: if everybody has consciousness, and the only difference is that few people become aware of it, and that is what growth means. That is what consciousness is all about: becoming conscious of your consciousness. And then you start growing in a new dimension, which has never been available to you.

Ordinarily you grow only mentally, physically. The body gets old. The mind gets more and more knowledgeable. And these two are available to everybody. But the real growth begins when you start becoming aware of your potential of consciousness. Then you are moving from the individual to the universal, from the mortal to the immortal, from death to eternal life.

Because all the mystics have said it, people became very satisfied with the statement, that “The only difference is that we are not aware. A Gautam Buddha is aware. So we can become aware any moment. There is no hurry about it. There are much more important things that you have to do first. This can be done any time. There are things which you can do only today, but this is something that you can do tomorrow, day-after-tomorrow; in this life, in another life. There are thousands of lives available, so you can do it anytime.”

That gave them a dangerous safety. Gurdjieff has to hit hard, to make people aware, that “Forget all that nonsense. Only very few people have consciousness. And unless you strive for it, you can’t have it. So it is not to be postponed. Each moment is valuable, and it is the most important thing in life. There is nothing for which you can postpone it.”

In fact he wanted to create an urgency about it, and he had to lie. But his lie is out of compassion, seeing that people have made the truth a dangerous buffer. It protects them from growing spiritually, because they can always say, “There is not much problem. Consciousness I have got. Just I have to be conscious about it, so any day I can do it. And eternity is available.”

Gurdjieff was very perceptive, that whatever the mystics have been saying, was true but they have never looked what was the result. They wanted everybody to know, that “You have consciousness. There is no need to be worried about it, you can grow it.” They were simply stating a fact, without seeing what is going to be the effect on the sleepy people. In their sleep they will think, “There is no hurry, we can sleep a little more. It does not make much difference whether you wake up today or tomorrow. Right now sleep seem so beautiful, so why disturb it?”

Gurdjieff was the first man to become aware that to tell the truth to the sleepy people is a dangerous thing. They need to be shaken, shocked — and this is one of the greatest shocks, even to hear it: that you may not have any consciousness at all, that this death will be simply death, nothing will be remaining out of it. You will be simply dying totally. You are nothing but body and mind. You don’t have any eternal element in you. Because you have not produced it. It is not given by birth, that is Gurdjieff’s point. To insist, that “You are not given from the birth. You have to work for it and work hard, and you have to attain it before death. Otherwise your death will be complete death. So don’t wait for another life!”

And he really created panic in many intelligent people, because the man was of great power, of tremendous understanding. He knew what has to be done with a sleepy man better than anybody else. All these mystics were nice guys. He was not. They were simply saying what was true. It is not enough to say the truth.

Unless you bring people to the truth, your statements have no truth. If they prevent people from coming to truth, then you may be thinking you are saying the truth, but you are preventing millions of people from attaining it. Who is responsible for it? So Gurdjieff gave a totally new turn. People were shocked, because they have never heard, that “You don’t have any souls. All people don’t have. You have to create it. Then you can have it. It is your greatest creativity, greatest effort. So only very few people out of millions will be surviving death. Others will be dying like dogs, nothing will be surviving.”

He was emphatically trying to wake you up, that “Stop postponing. You don’t have it. And postponement is dangerous. Tomorrow you may not be here, so today is all that you have got. Create it — before death knocks on your doors. Do everything to create it.”

So I support him perfectly — knowing that he is lying. But his lying is far more compassionate, more understanding of man, than all the mystics of the past who have been telling the truth. But they were just nice people, good people, who never lie, but without taking in consideration what their statements are going to do to people. Gurdjieff was very much concerned, not much concerned what he says, much concerned what effect it creates in you. If that effect brings you closer to truth, then he was ready to say anything.

Very few people have understood Gurdjieff. The followers think he is telling the truth. The people who are against him see that he is telling certainly a lie because all the mystics cannot be wrong, and he is the only man who is saying such a thing. A single man against the whole history of mystics, of different races, different countries — who have all emphasized, that “You are born as consciousness.” — and he is simply denying them all.

But both have misunderstood him. Neither the critics can see his compassion, nor the followers can see that he is lying, but his lie is to produce a certain effect. He was a very scientific man. So I agree with him and I disagree with him. I know everybody has the soul. It has not to be created, and there is no way to create it. If you don’t have it, you don’t have it.

You can discover it only, you cannot create it. And that discovery can be helped by Gurdjieff’s statement. If you are shaken, and you cannot sleep anymore, knowing that you may not have the soul at all — because you have not encountered. One thing is certain. You are not aware, so you cannot deny him. You know your mind. You know your body, but you don’t know the knower, who knows the mind, who knows the body — but he is there. Knowing the mind, knowing the body is enough proof that there is a third entity in you, which knows these both. And it is from the very birth.

In fact, if you listen to children, in the beginning all the children of all the races use third person for themselves. They don’t say, “I am thirsty.” They say, “The baby is thirsty.” Or whatever is their name, that “Pinky is thirsty.” They use the third person. It is strange. It is universal. Not a single baby starts by using, that “I am thirsty.”

What will be the reason of it? The reason is that the innocent child is yet not programmed. He knows it perfectly well, that he is not thirsty, because he is aware in a certain way of his consciousness, and he is identified with his consciousness. The ego has not been created yet. And he knows, that “I’m not thirsty.” Because when he thinks of thirst, he thinks, “The body is thirsty. The mind is feeling the thirst.” Not so analytically, so logically, but in some innocent way every baby is aware, that there is something within him: his reality — which is never thirsty, never hungry. It is always the body, which he calls the baby, or whatever name the people have given to him. He also uses the name as if he is outside that personality.

Soon he will be losing that innocence. We won’t allow him to remain that innocent. We will, by the time he is three of four years old, force him to say, that “I am thirsty.” And the day he starts saying, “I am thirsty,” he is getting into a tremendously long journey of falsehoods. Soon he will get identified with the body and the mind, and will forget his real identity.

So when Gurdjieff said to people, that “You don’t have any soul”, nobody stood up to say to him, that “What are you talking about?” Nobody was capable. They have heard only that everybody has a soul. But what to do with Gurdjieff? He is challenging, that “You don’t have a soul. Unless you create, you can’t have it. You have deserve it, why you should have it by the birth? What you have done to get it?”

So I agree with him as a device, but I disagree with him because that is not a statement of truth. And you are asking, “What is growth and what is consciousness movement?” It is basically to understand that within you there is a line running into eternity. If you get disidentified with the mind and the body, you will suddenly become aware of a luminous eternity. That is the discovery of consciousness. And then growth happens.

Then you don’t simply grow old. You grow up. You mature. Then you don’t go on collecting thoughts, and thinking that you are becoming a great intellectual. No, then you grow in intelligence, not in intellectuality. You become more perceptive, more alert, more aware. You start seeing things which you have never seen before, within yourself and without you too.

There is a radical transformation of your whole personality. The personality disappears and individuality appears. All that is false in you goes on dropping, like dry leaves, dead leaves falling from the trees. And fresh, young, new leaves start coming out of the tree. You are always young, once you have discovered your consciousness. You are always fresh. You are always joyful. You have become part of the eternal dance of existence. I call it growth.

Source – Osho Book “Last Testament, Vol 6″

Heraclitus Sutra: “One should not act or speak as if he were asleep”

Osho on above Sutra – Act, speak, with full awareness and then you will find a tremendous change in you. The very fact that you are aware changes your acts. Then you cannot commit sin. Not that you have to control yourself, no! Control is a poor substitute for awareness, a very poor substitute; it doesn’t help much. If you are aware, you need not control anger; in awareness anger never arises. They cannot exist together; there is no coexistence for them. In awareness jealousy never arises. In awareness many things simply disappear, all the things which are negative.

It is just like a light: when the light is in your house how can darkness exist there? It simply escapes out. When your house is lighted, how can you stumble? How can you knock at the wall? The light is there, you know the door; you simply reach the door, you get out or in. When there is darkness you stumble, you grope, you fall. When you are unaware you grope, you stumble, you fall. Anger is nothing but stumbling; jealousy is nothing but groping in dark.

All that is wrong is wrong, not because of itself but because you are living in darkness. If a Jesus wants to be angry, he can be; he can use it. You cannot use it — you are being used by it. If Jesus feels that it will be good and helpful, he can use anything — he is a master.

Jesus can be angry without being angry. Many people worked with Gurdjieff, and he was a terrible man. When he was angry he would be terribly angry, he would look like a murderer; but that was just a game, just a game, just a situation to help somebody. And immediately, not a single moment’s gap would be there, he would look at another person and he would be smiling. And he would look again at the same person towards whom he had been angry, and he would be angry and terrible looking.

It is possible. When you are aware you can use everything. Even poison becomes elixir when you are aware; and when you are asleep even elixir becomes poison — because the whole thing depends on your being alert or not. Acts don’t mean anything. Acts do not matter. You, your awareness, your being conscious, mindful, is what matters. What you do is not the concern.

It happened: There was one great master, a Buddhist master, Nagarjuna. A thief came to him. The thief had fallen in love with the master because he had never seen such a beautiful person, such infinite grace. He asked Nagarjuna, “Is there some possibility of my growth also? But one thing I must make clear to you: I am a thief. And another thing: I cannot leave it, so please don’t make it a condition. I will do whatsoever you say, but I cannot stop being a thief.

That I have tried many times — it never works, so I have left the whole sport. I have accepted my destiny, that I am going to be a thief and remain a thief, so don’t talk about it. From the very beginning let it be clear.”
Nagarjuna said, “Why are you afraid? Who is going to talk about your being a thief?”
The thief said, “But whenever I go to a monk, to a religious priest or to a religious saint, they always say, ‘First stop stealing.’”

Nagarjuna laughed and he said, “Then you must have gone to thieves; otherwise, why? Why should they be concerned? I am not concerned!”
The thief was very happy. He said, “Then it is okay. It seems that now I can become a disciple. You are the right master.”

Nagarjuna accepted him. He said, “Now you can go and do whatsoever you like. Only one condition has to be followed: Be aware! Go, break into houses, enter, bring things, steal; do whatsoever you like, that is of no concern to me, I am not a thief — but do it with full awareness.”

The thief couldn’t understand that he was falling into the trap. He said, “Then everything is okay. I will try.”
After three weeks he came and said, “You are tricky because if I become aware, I cannot steal. If I steal, awareness disappears. I am in a fix.”
Nagarjuna said, “No more talk about your being a thief and stealing. I am not concerned, I am not a thief. Now you decide! If you want awareness then you decide. If you don’t want it, then too you decide.”

The man said, “But now it is difficult. I have tasted it a little, and it is so beautiful — I will leave anything, whatsoever you say.” The thief said, “Just the other night for the first time I was able to enter the palace of the king. I opened the treasure. I could have become the richest man in the world — but you were following me and I had to be aware. When I became aware, suddenly — no motivation, no desire. When I became aware, diamonds looked just like stones, ordinary stones. When I lost awareness the treasure was there. And I waited and did this many times. I would become aware and I became like a buddha, and I could not even touch it because the whole thing looked foolish, stupid — just stones, what am I doing? Losing myself for stones? But then I would lose awareness; they would become again beautiful, the whole illusion. But finally I decided that they were not worth it.”

Once you have known awareness, nothing is worth it — you have known the greatest bliss of life. Then, suddenly, many things simply drop; they become stupid, become foolish. The motivation is not there, the desire is not there, the dreams have fallen.

Source – Osho Book “The Hidden Harmony”

Osho – All obstructions are within you and not outside of you. Obstacles are there because of your insensibility and they cannot simply be removed. The only way is to awaken within; then all obstacles vanish.

Now suppose your house is in darkness. As you enter, every corner of the house seems filled with danger; maybe there are ghosts or goblins, or burglars, or even a murderer. Everything seems so ominous; the house holds a thousand perils; there might even be snakes and scorpions around.

How will you possibly overcome all these hazards if you set out to deal with them one by one? Who knows how many thieves, how many criminals, lurk within this darkness? You cannot deal with them individually. The only way is to light a lamp. One single lamp illuminates the whole interior and all fears flee. Once the house is lighted and you can see whatever danger there is, you can always find ways to deal with it.

The fact is as Buddha has said, ”The dark house attracts the burglar.”. A thief avoids the house that is well lit. If the lamp is burning within and if the awareness stands guard, no obstacle or hindrance dare enter within you.

One day, early in the morning, Mulla Nasruddin came running to me. He held a paper in his hand and seemed terribly disturbed. He handed me the paper and flopped into a chair. The anonymous writer was warning Mulla that if he did not refrain from following his wife within the next three days, he would shoot him.
”What should I do?” asked Mulla.
”Why, that’s simple,” I said. ”Just leave his wife alone!”
”But which wife shall I stop following?” he asked. ”If it were only one woman I’d been following I’d know which one to stop!”

If there were only one hindrance you could get rid of it, but they are infinite. You are stalking an infinite number of women; your desires are inexhaustible. Destroy one, ten more take its place. If you keep grappling with each, hoping to eradicate them one by one, you never will succeed. A method is needed to finish it once and for all. And he who shows you this method, the gur, is the guru.

So Nanak says: Through contemplation all hindrances on the path are eradicated. Continue the repetition of Omkar and let it reach the non-repeating state, then you find your eyes have opened. Then there are no obstructions, for these are but your creations. There is no outside enemy to be vanquished. You are your own enemy. Your insensitivity is your enemy and because of it you are enmeshed in endless entanglements. No matter how cautious you are, you keep adding fresh hindrances at every step.

There are people in this world who regulate their lives with control and restraint. They must take each step carefully so as not to go astray. But restraint is not the end; awareness is the ultimate goal. The invitation to wander is always beckoning inside. However much you impose restraints, the raging passions will bring you down at the slightest opportunity. A person who practices self-denial and controls his every action must always be afraid, for within him the imprisoned passions continue boiling.

Source – Osho Book “The True Name, Vol 1″

Osho – Kabir is a declaration of the secret of this love. He says: This is my path. And the path of love is for many. It is easier to move from the path of love than through any other path — because love is so close to your heart.

The only problem that has arisen for the contemporary person, for contemporary man, is that he no longer beats in his heart. He is hung-up in the head. More and more, we are trained for the head, and the heart has been neglected, ignored.

There is no training for the heart, there is no discipline for the heart; no school, no university bothers about the heart. About feeling, we are savages, worse than savages. Our whole culture is of the head, so the head becomes to-heavy and the heart goes on shrinking. It should not be so. This is the greatest calamity that has happened to humanity in the whole history of the mind, of consciousness. We are too much in the head, there is too much investment in the head; heart is left far behind. In fact, we have bypassed it, we have not even gone through it.

We don’t allow feelings. A man of feeling seems to be weak, the man of no-feeling seems to be very strong. We teach people not to be emotional. We teach people not to cry, not to laugh too loudly. We teach people to remain always in control; and if YOU are in control, then love is not going to happen to you — because love happens only when you are in a state of un-control.

Love is something bigger than you; you cannot control it. If you want to control, you can remain in hate. Hate can be controlled; hate is smaller than you. Love cannot be controlled; love is bigger than you. If you try to control love you will miss all possibilities. You will become a love-less being — and that’s what a dead person is: a loveless being who exists in the head and who has forgotten his own heart.

Kabir says: BHAKTI KA MARAG JHINA RA — subtle is the path of love. Yes, it is not gross. The head is very gross. The head is nothing but logic, arithmetic, calculation, cunningness, cleverness; good to exploit people, good to torture people, good to collect money, have a big bank balance; good to become a politician, good to overpower people, good to destroy. The head is very gross.

Heart is very subtle, and absolutely useless as far as the world is concerned. Through the heart is poetry, not calculation. Through the heart is emotion. Through the heart is sensitivity, not cleverness. Through the heart is compassion, not exploitation. the heart is not needed at all in the market; the heart cannot purchase any commodity. And the heart will not make you a great politician or a great general; it will not make you a great warrior, it will not make you a bloody Adolf Hitler or somebody else.

With heart, by-and-by, you will move away from the paths of competition, that cut-throat competition, that violent struggle where everybody is against everybody. This hostile world, this ugly world… you will, by-and-by, move to the side. You will no more be on the superhighway of ugliness; you will no more be a part of this ugly society; you will not play these games of nationalism, fascism, socialism, communism; you will not be in any way concerned with ideologies. You will love, and you will enjoy, and you will delight.

Let the difference be very clear to you. Just a few days ago one young man said to me, “I am meditating and great love is arising in me for humanity.”

I said, “For humanity? How are you going to love humanity? Where will you find humanity? Humanity you say? Human beings will be enough. Love a human being, not humanity. ‘Humanity’ is a trick of the head. Humanity? How will you love humanity? Where will you hug humanity? Where will you hold hands with humanity? You will always find a human being wherever you go; nowhere any humanity. Humanity is an ideology, a concept, an abstraction in the head. Life is always particular, the head is always conceptual. You will always find a certain human being, a man, a woman….”

And when I said to the young man, “Love a human being,” he was shocked. In fact, he was trying to escape into the “love humanity” to avoid human beings. No, he was not very happy when I said that. I could see in his eyes that he was not very happy — as if I had brought him down; he was flying very high. He was not flying at all; he was simply playing a verbal game.

If you love humanity, you can kill human beings to save humanity. If you love peace, you can go to war. Never love peace and never love democracy and never love communism — all ideologies. Love concrete human beings, love concrete trees, love concrete rocks, particulars… and only then will you know what love is. Forget great abstractions; they are dangerous. Men have been fighting because of them, destroying each other. A Mohammedan is ready to fight for Islam, and he will kill human beings for the love of Islam. Now this is foolish. The Christian is ready even to kill Christians if it is to save Christianity. what is this Christianity? Love the concrete, love the immediate. Enjoy this moment, don’t prepare for tomorrow. Today is beautiful: delight in it, let it be a celebration.

Source: Osho Book “The Path of Love”

Question – Osho, Why do all buddhas say the same thing?

Osho – Vinod, Truth is one. Even if it is said differently, it is the same truth. Languages may differ, metaphors may differ parables may differ, but if you really look a little deep, then all parables, all languages, all metaphors, culminate in one truth. TRUTH is one — what can Buddhas do? Although each Buddha speaks in his own way, and his expression has HIS signature on it. His expression is just his and nobody else’s. But still those who can see will always find that it is the same diamond — maybe we have been shown only one
aspect of it by Krishna, another aspect by Christ, still another by Mohammed, but those are aspects of the same diamond.

The diamond is one, this universe is one — and all the Buddhas have been saying the same thing, in different languages, in different ways. Those differences come from their individualities, not from their experience. The moment of experience is wordless, the moment of experience is thoughtless. So when Buddha experienced it, it was the same purity of consciousness as when Jesus experienced it.

Two purities cannot be different; two impurities can be different. Two healths cannot be different; two diseases can be different. Two silences cannot be different; two noises can be different. The truth is known in silence, but you cannot utter It in silence — you have to use words, language, noise. And immediately… when Buddha speaks, he speaks in Pali; that is the language that he knows, that is his mother tongue. And Jesus speaks in Aramaic; that is his mother tongue. If Jesus and Buddha had met, they would not have understood each other’s language at all, but they would have looked into each other’s eyes and would have understood each other TOTALLY!

A Sufi story: Mulla Nasruddin is sitting in the village square one evening plucking the strings of a sitar. Little by little, an expectant circle of villagers gathers around him. He keeps on playing just one note. Finally, one villager enquires, “That’s a very nice note you are playing, Mulla, but most musicians use all the notes. Why don’t you?”
“Those donkeys,” retorts the Mulla, “they are searching for the note, but I have found it!”

Truth is one — when you have found it you can go on repeating it, you can find different ways to repeat it, unique ways to express it, you can devise your own methods. And there are many methods devised — because of the compassion of the enlightened ones. Strange methods, very contradictory to each other.

If you go to a Sufi saint, he will be very polite to you, he may even touch your feet — because the Sufis respect God in all forms. That is their device. When a Sufi Master touches your feet… just think of that moment, contemplate over the moment — a Bahauddin, or a Jalaluddin, or a Farid — great Masters! diamonds of the purest water. A Bahauddin touching your feet, it is a device. In that moment when Bahauddin touches your feet, you are BOUND to fall silent, howsoever noisy your mind. Bahauddin touching your feet!? A great silence will descend on you. Bahauddin is giving you a taste of his meditation in this way; this is his device.

And a Zen Master is just the opposite: you go to him, you have to bow down seven times. And you ask some innocent question… and he jumps on you, hits you on the head — so unexpectedly. A very different device, but just think: a Bodhidharma, a Rinzai, a Bokoju, jumping on you, hitting on your head! For a moment all thinking stops… so unexpected. And you had asked a simple question: “Is there a God?” and he became furious. And you cannot figure it out — why? And he gives you no time to figure it out; he gives you no time to escape either.

It happened once that when Bokoju met his Master and asked something about Buddha, the Master took him physically and threw him out of the window… from a three-storey building. The poor fellow fell down on a rock, smashed, and the Master was looking from the window and he asked, “Do you understand now?” And the whole ridiculousness of it!

And the silence of the garden. And the silence of the accident. The shock. And the Master’s smiling face, and those compassionate eyes, and his asking, “Now do you understand?”
And in that moment, Bokoju became enlightened. He said, “Yes, yes, Master. Can I come in and touch your feet in gratitude?”

“You are welcome,” the Master said, “to have a cup of tea with me.”
And they are sipping tea together.

Something immensely valuable has happened. In that moment, in that dangerous moment, when you are falling, it is almost as if you are going to die — you are finished. How can you think? In dangerous moments thinking stops. When you come across a snake, suddenly thinking stops. You don’t decide to jump out of the way, remember — you jump FIRST and then you decide, then you think it over, then you can afford to think
it over. But you jump first!

Gurdjieff used to say that mind is very slow in action, and he is right. The body is far quicker. Mind is very lethargic; it goes on round and round in circles. So whenever there is some urgency, then your existence does not allow your mind to go round and round through logical processes to come to a conclusion, because then it will be too late.

By the time you have decided…. For example, if a snake is passing by and you give it to the mind, then there is trouble. First the mind will say, “Ninety-seven percent of snakes are non-poisonous, so there are only three chances out of a hundred that this snake is poisonous. A hundred persons who are bitten by snakes, they don’t all die; only five percent die, ninety-five percent are saved. And those five persons who die, maybe they were going to die anyway. So what is the hurry? Why bother? And one has to die one
day.”

And great philosophical ideas about death and the immortality of the soul…. And snakes don’t care about these things! They are absolutely non-philosophical; they won’t give you that much time. The snake may strike you before you have come to any conclusion. Gurdjieff is right: he says whenever there is any urgency, the body immediately takes over from the mind; it does not give mind any chance to do — it does it on its own. The body has its own wisdom: it jumps out of the way. It is almost an in-built response, so no thinking is needed. That’s what Zen people have been doing with their disciples.

One Zen Master had this habit that whenever he would talk of God, of Buddha, of the higher dimensions of life, he would raise one of his fingers towards the sky. It became so characteristic of him that one of his small sannyasins, a young boy — must have been of the age of Siddhartha — became very much interested in this one finger pointing upwards. And he was always in attendance just to do something for the Master — if he needs some tea, to run and bring the tea, or just to be by his side and to help him to get rid of the mosquitoes.

He learnt the trick, and playfully, whenever the Master was not looking at him, he would show one finger to the audience. The Master knew — people would laugh, or smile and he would know who was doing the whole trick.

One day — and this can be done only by a Zen Master — he simply caught hold of the child when he was making the gesture of one finger pointing to heaven, and cut the finger with a sharp knife. Now, just think of doing such a thing to poor Siddhartha….

The child cried, screamed, and the Master said, “Stop! And put the finger up!” And his shout was such, it was such a thunderlike shout, that the child forgot all about his finger, that it had been cut and blood was oozing, and he showed the finger which was NO more there, because the Master had ordered.

And in that moment when he was showing a finger which was no more there, he became aware of the invisible; the Master was not pointing to something visible, but something invisible. And the child started laughing, and the Master took him into his embrace and said, “You have understood.” And it is said that small child had his first satori. Later on became a famous enlightened Master.

Different approaches… but the truth is one. The truth is silence — the single note of silence. Be silent and know, and you will also know the same thing that Buddhas have always known and will always know: truth is eternal. It has nothing to do with time, it never changes.

Source – Osho Book “The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty”

Osho – The eyes can approach everything else because everything else is in front of the eyes and the self is not in the front. The self is behind the eyes, only the self is behind the eyes. Everything else is in front. You can encounter everything through the eyes but you cannot encounter the self because it is not in front; that is one thing. So eyes cannot be used to see it. Really, you will have to become blind to see it. Not actually, but the eyes must become so vacant, nonseeing, so closed, not functioning, only then will you know it. Eyes cannot approach it. You will have to come to it without eyes. You will have to come to it just like a blind man.

So really, a blind man and a man with eyes are not different as far as the self is concerned. As far as the world is concerned the blind man is at a great loss; he cannot know anything. But as far as the self is concerned he is not at any loss – not at all. And if he is a wise man, his blindness may be a help to him.

That is why we in India have called blind men PRAGYA CHAKSHU – wise eyes. It is not that every blind man is wise but potentially he is nearer to the self than those who have eyes, because those who have eyes have wandered far away through the eyes into the world. They have gone very VERY far away. You can move on through the eyes to the very end of the world. And science goes on creating more powerful eyes for you so that you can see minute parts, atomic phenomena, and so that you can see to distant stars.

Science goes on removing you from the self. So the more an age becomes scientific, the less it comes to religious knowledge. Now you have more powerful instruments with which to go away, and you HAVE gone – far away from your self. Senses have become powerful. Really, science is doing nothing but creating more powerful senses for man: your hand can now reach to the moon; your eyes can now reach to distant stars. Every sense has been magnified, and this goes on.

A blind man is closed in himself; he cannot go out. But he can go in, if he is not disturbed by the fact that he is blind and if he is helped by the society to know that this is not a misfortune but a blessing in disguise. That is what we mean when we call blind men pragya chakshu. We say, ”Don’t be worried about the ordinary eyes. You can gain those inner eyes through which you can know yourself, so do not be worried about them. Forget them completely. You are not losing anything because no one gains anything through the eyes. You can move within easily because the other door is closed.”

Eyes are your doors for going out. Through eyes you are moving, through eyes the desire, through eyes the illusion, through eyes the projection – through eyes moves the whole world. But the innermost cannot be approached through the eyes. You will have to become blind. Not that you have to throw away your eyes but that your eyes must become vacant, objectless, without dreams. Your eyes must become empty – empty of things, empty of pictures, empty of reflections.

If you can look into the eyes of an enlightened one, you will see they are totally different. A buddha looks at you and still he is not looking at you. You do not become a part of his eyes. His look is vacant. Sometimes you may get scared because you will feel that he is indifferent to you. He is looking at you so vacantly, not paying any attention to you.

Really, he cannot pay any attention to you. The attention is lost now; he has only awareness. He cannot be attentive to anything exclusively because that exclusiveness is created by desire. He looks at you as if not looking. You never become a part of his eyes. If you can become a part of his eyes, then you will become a part of his mind – because eyes are just the door for the mind; they go on collecting the outer world into the inner. Eyes must become blind. Only then can you see your self.

Source – Osho Book “The Supreme Doctrine”

Osho -The end result of indulgence is always agony. One finds pleasure in it, but it is always interwoven with misery, because every pleasure brings its own unique misery. And while the pleasures last only momentarily, they leave behind a long trail of miseries. In finding a single pleasure we have to go through many sufferings. And if the pleasures are analyzed in detail they prove to be only illusory. Viewed closely, it is very doubtful whether what we have called our moments of pleasure were really so! Look back over your life, over forty, fifty, sixty years, and can you really find in all these sixty years a moment of true happiness?

Socrates used to say, ”An unexamined life is not worth living.” But if you examine your life,, you will be surprised to find that nothing in it can survive close scrutiny. Just turn back and look: where are the moments when you really found happiness? Yes, at first you may recall a few precious moments like when you fell in love for the first time. The memory is very blurred now, and you will have to wipe the dust off those recollections. But if you do this and recapture those moments, you will begin to tremble with the realization that those moments too only gave the illusion of happiness, not happiness itself. And the deeper into those memories you look, the more their so-called happiness will disappear.

Whoever truly reflects finds that life is empty. So the seeker always comes to the experience of his own emptiness. Only fools think that their lives are full. They go through life carrying bags full of stones, and believe them to be jewels. They have only to empty out their baggage and look at their contents to discover the utter barrenness of their lives. To the man who has not seen the emptiness, the door of religion is closed. A man only turns inwards when he finally sees that all his pleasure-seeking is in vain.

There is not a single moment of true happiness, and yet in attempting to find that moment we suffer so much unhappiness. With great difficulty a man builds himself the house he really wants, and when he finally moves in, he asks where the happiness is – and sets about finding something else with which to continue his search. If he has ten rupees, he devotes his energy to turning it into ten thousand rupees, and when he comes to rest and relax, his task accomplished, he cannot find any happiness in the ten thousand rupees that are now his. But even in this situation we do not allow our mind to really see this fact. It feels so dangerous to do so that we immediately commit ourselves to turning the ten thousand into ten million.

This is the way the mind works – and even if we make the ten million we will not be happy; instead we will be busy turning the ten million into ten billion! And the last thing we have any intention of doing is leaving ourselves any space to be able to look back and assess what we are doing, to reflect and meditate on whether we have actually experienced any happiness in pursuing or achieving our goals.

If you face your desires, and all the efforts you have exerted in attempting to achieve them, you will be in trouble. Much effort is there in, but the gain is nil. There is no lack of effort on your part – in fact there is so much of it that you have become completely lost in it! But you fear the examination – and your fear is that you will have to see that your work has been in vain, that you have gained nothing. The fear of failure is indeed great.

Source – Osho Book “Nowhere To Go But In”

Buddha Sutra – O Monks, Do away with Passions.

Osho on above Buddha Sutra – Drop desiring. Our desiring culminates everything. Our desiring becomes our interpretation of everything. The more you desire, the more miserable you will be, because the more you desire, the more will be your expectation. The more you desire, the less grateful you will be, because the more you desire, the more you will feel man proposes and god disposes. The less you desire, the more grateful you be, because the less you desire, the more you will see how much is given without desiring, without asking. If you don’t desire at all, you will be in tremendous gratitude, because so much is given already. Life is such a gift… but we go on with our mind.

I have heard:A man was reckoned to be the laziest man in the country and naturally spent most of his time sleeping. He was so inactive and so useless that at one time the townspeople thought it would be a good idea to bury him whether he was dead or alive.

They made a crude coffin, came around with it to his house, put him in it without any protest from his family, and started off with the live old critter for the cemetery. Of course there was no resistance from him; he was so lazy. He said, ‘Okay.’ Or he may not have even said that. He may have just watched what was going on.

But before they got to the cemetery, they were stopped by a stranger who had heard of the grim proceedings. They told the stranger the man would not work and had not a grain of corn on his place, and the town was sick of providing him with food. ‘Enough is enough,’ they said, ‘and we are fed up.’

‘If you boys will hold off, I will gladly give that man a wagonload of corn,’ said the stranger. Before the townspeople could reply, a head was raised out of the coffin, and the almost deceased asked, ‘Is that corn shucked?’

The lazy man is worrying about the corn — whether it is shucked or not. He is ready to die, but if he has to shuck the corn, then it is too much effort. A man who is surrounded by laziness looks at everything through his laziness. His laziness becomes his interpretation of things. If you are sleepy, you will look at life with sleepy eyes, naturally. And if you miss life, it is natural — because life is possible only if your eyes are fully alive, if your eyes are radiant with life. If you look at life with alive eyes, there is a meeting, a communion. We live surrounded by clouds of desire. Then those desires become our interpretation. Then we go on thinking according to those desires.

It happened: Applicants for a job on a dam had to take a written examination, the first question of which was: What does hydro-dynamics mean?
Mulla Nasrudin, one of the applicants for the job, looked at this, then wrote against it: It means I don’t get the job.

Whatsoever meaning we give to life, we give it to life. And Buddha is saying if you want to know the real meaning of life, then you have to drop giving all meanings to it. Then the way reveals itself. Then life opens its mysterious doors. You stop giving meaning to it — your desires are giving meaning to it; they are defining the undefinable. And if you remain clouded with your desires, whatsoever you know is nothing but your own dreaming. That’s why we say in India that this life, this so-called life lived through desires, is maya, it is a magical thing. You create it, you are the magician. It is your maya, your magic.

We don’t live in the same world, remember. We live in separate worlds, because we don’t live in the same desires. You project your desires, your neighbour is projecting his desires. That’s why when you meet a person and you want to live with a person, with a woman or with a man or with a friend, difficulties arise. That is a clash of two worlds.

Everybody is good alone. Together, something goes wrong. I have never come across a wrong person, but every day I come across, I have to watch and see and observe wrong relationships. I never come across a wrong person, but every day I come across wrong relationships. It seems almost all relationships are wrong. Because two persons live in two desire worlds, they have their own magical worlds. When they come together those worlds clash.

It happened:One night Mulla Nasrudin was sitting on one side of the fire and his wife on the other. Between them lay the cat and the dog, lazily blinking at the fire. The wife ventured this remark, ‘Now dear, just you look at that cat and dog. See how peacefully and quietly they get along together. Why can’t we do that?’
‘That’s all right,’ said Nasrudin, ‘but just you tie them together and see what will happen.’

Tie two persons together — that’s what a marriage is — and see what happens. Suddenly two worlds…. It seems almost impossible to understand the woman you love. It should not be so — you love her — but it seems impossible to understand. It is impossible to understand the man you love. It should not be so — you love him — but it seems impossible to understand. It is very easy to understand strangers, it is very difficult to understand people who are very close. To understand your mother, father, brother, sister, friend, is very difficult. The closer you are, the more difficult — because the worlds are clashing.

These worlds surround you like a subtle aura. Unless you drop this magical creation that you go on feeding, you will remain in conflict. You will remain in conflict with persons, you will remain in conflict with god. Because he has his own world, and you have your own private world. They never go both together. You have to drop your private mentation. Dropping mentation is what meditation is all about. You have to drop your thinking, desiring. You have just to be, and suddenly everything falls into an organic whole, becomes a harmony.

And these desires are the root of the darkness that is surrounding you. These desires are the support, the foundation of the darkness that surrounds you. These desires are the hindrances that don’t allow you to become alert. Beware of these desires. And remember — the word ‘beware’ means be aware. That is the only way. If you really want to get rid of these desires, don’t start fighting them. Otherwise you will miss again. Because if you start fighting with your desires, that means you have created a new desire — to be desireless. Now this desire will clash against other desires. This is changing the language; you remain the same.

Don’t start fighting with the desires. When Buddha says, DO AWAY WITH PASSIONS, O MONKS, he does not mean to fight with the passions. Because you can fight only if there is a prize, if you are going to attain something. Then again a desire has arisen — a new shape, a new form, but the same old desire. Don’t fight, just be aware.

Beware of desires. Become more watchful, more alert. And you will see — the more alert you are, the less desires are there. Ripples start subsiding, waves start disappearing. And one day, suddenly… any moment it can happen, because all moments are as potential as any other. There is no auspicious moment for it to happen. It can happen in any ordinary moment, because all ordinary moments are auspicious. There is no need for it to happen under a bodhi tree. It can happen under any tree, or even without a tree. It can happen under the roof of your house. It can happen anywhere… because god is everywhere.

But by and by become aware. Create more and more awareness, collect more and more awareness. One day the awareness comes to such a point, the energy is so much that it simply explodes. And in that explosion, darkness disappears and light is. Immediately darkness disappears, instantly darkness disappears — and light is. And that light is your own luminosity, so you cannot lose it. Once known, it becomes your eternal treasure.

Source – Osho Book “The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol 2″

Osho – Buddha says: If your heart is ready, if you have experienced life and the pain of it, if you have suffered life and understood the frustration of it and your heart is ready to move to the other shore — you have experienced this shore and have found that it is just empty, just illusory — if you are ready to move to the other shore without looking backwards, not even a slight desire for this shore has remained in your being, then you are ready.

Then Buddha says: You are free of all discipline. Then there is no need; then this much is enough: your heart is in accord with the Way. Discipline will come; this is enough. Discipline is needed because your heart is not in accord with the Way. “But then,” Buddha says, “that discipline is not of much use.”

Remember, Buddha is not ready to take you on the Way if you are immature. Maturity is a must. And what do I mean by ‘maturity’? By ‘maturity’ I mean: a man who has looked into life and found that this is just a dream. When the reality that you think is real starts looking like a dream, you are mature. Then it is very simple to move to the other shore alone — there will be no difficulty; your heart will be in accord with the Way. You can go dancing, you can go singing, you can go laughing… you can go joyous, cheerful. You will not go reluctantly, you will not go resistantly, you will not go against yourself. In fact, you will not be going; you will simply be moving with the stream, like timber.

Source – Osho Book “The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol 4″

Osho – The last statement of Gautama the Buddha to his disciples was: Be a light unto yourself. They were crying and weeping, naturally — the master was leaving and they had lived with the master for almost forty years; a few older disciples had lived with him the whole time. These forty years were of tremendous joy, of great experiences. These forty years had been the most beautiful time possible, humanly possible. These forty years had been days of paradise on earth. And now the master is leaving! It was natural, they started crying and weeping.

Buddha opened his eyes and said, “Stop crying and weeping! Have you not listened to me yet? Why are you crying?”
His chief disciple, Ananda, said, “Because you are leaving, because our light is leaving. We see, we feel darkness descending upon us. I have not yet become enlightened and you are leaving. If I could not become enlightened while you were alive, what is the hope for me now when you will be gone? I am in great despair, my anguish is incalculable, I have wasted these forty years. I have been following you like a shadow, it was tremendously beautiful to be with you, but now you are leaving. What is going to happen to us?”

Buddha said, “You are crying because you have not heard me yet. I have been telling you again and again: Don’t believe in me — but you have not listened. Because you have believed in me, and now I am dying, your whole structure is falling apart. Had you listened to me, had you created a light into your being rather than becoming knowledgeable through me, if you had experienced your own self there would have been no need to cry.

“Look at Manjushree!” he said — Manjushree was another disciple of Buddha, one of the greatest. He was sitting under a tree just close by, with closed eyes, so serene, so quiet, so utterly blissful, that Buddha said, “Look at Manjushree! Go and ask him why he is not crying.”

They asked Manjushree. He laughed and said, “What reason is there to cry? Buddha has helped me to know my own light. I am thankful, I am grateful, but there is no darkness descending. And how can Buddha die? I know I cannot die — how can Buddha die? He will be here. Just as a river disappears in the ocean he will disappear into the cosmos. But he will be here! He will be spread all over the cosmos. It is going to be something tremendously beautiful. Buddha was confined to a small body; now his fragrance will be released, he will permeate the whole of existence. I am tremendously happy that now Buddha will be spread all over space. I will be able to see him rising in the sun and I will be able to see him flying in a bird and I will be able to see him in the waves of the ocean… and I will be able to see him everywhere.

“He is simply leaving his body. It was a confinement. And how do I know it? I know it because I have known my own soul. I listened to him and you have not listened to him — that’s why you are crying.”

Buddha said, “Let me repeat again: APPA DIPO BHAVA — be a light unto yourself.” Then he closed his eyes and disappeared into the cosmos. But his last statement was also his first statement. In fact that was his whole message — the whole of his life he was repeating the same message again and again and again.

Source – Osho Book “The Dhammapada, Vol3″