Question – I feel empty. I cry. What’s next?

Osho – This emptiness is negative. Otherwise you will not cry; you will laugh. This emptiness is like loneliness, not like aloneness. This emptiness is not a deep presence; it is simply absence. This emptiness is only death, and there is no resurrection in it.

That’s why the crying comes. You are filling your emptiness by crying, by tears. That is a trick of the mind. And that’s why the question arises: “What’s next?” — because when you feel negatively empty, you want to fill it with something. You are hankering for something to happen: some relationship, some achievement, some lottery… something to happen. “What next? ”

Emptiness, when it is negative, is never at ease with itself. It is thinking of the future. It is hoping that in the future this emptiness will not be there “and I will be fulfilled”.

Emptiness, when it is negative, creates future. Emptiness, when it is positive, has no future to it. There is nothing next to it; you have arrived home. There is nothing next to it. It is enough unto itself.

This type of emptiness. negative emptiness, has to be dropped. It has not come out of meditation; it is coming out of life’s frustrations. It has not come out of love; it is coming out of the frustration that lust gives to everybody. It is a by-product of failure.

Positive emptiness happens when you are in a deep inner contentment; negative emptiness happens when you are deeply frustrated. Your life seems meaningless. Whatsoever you do, you go on doing like a robot, mechanically. There is no romance in it. You drag your life; there is no dance to it. You cannot sing, you cannot be happy, you cannot celebrate.

Drop this type of emptiness! And this type of emptiness can be dropped only if you try to change the negativity towards positivity. Meditate more, and meditate without expectations. Love more, and love without expectations.

If you expect anything out of love, or meditation, you will get only frustration, and negative emptiness will happen. If you love for the sheer joy of it, if you meditate for the sheer delight of it and you don’t have any result in mind — you are not goal-oriented — then there comes an emptiness which is positive. You start feeling full. You start feeling, for the first time, that you ARE. Being is felt, and that being is tremendously beautiful, blissful. It is SATCHITANANDA: it is existence, it is consciousness, it is bliss.

Always remember to beware of the negative. Move from the negative towards the positive; and when the positive happens, then stay with it. Then allow it. Open yourself to it totally, be vulnerable to it — all doors and windows open so it can come from everywhere and it can drown you completely. Then it becomes a resurrection.

Source – Osho Book “Come Follow To You, Vol 2″

Question – Why do you prefer to call meditation the art of dying rather than calling it the art of growing?

Osho – Because I know your ego will like it very much if I called it the art of growing. The art of dying comes like a shock.

Let me tell you an anecdote. One day Mulla Nasrudin saw a crowd gathered around the town well. A Moslem priest with a huge turban on his head had fallen into the water, and was calling for help. People were leaning over and saying, ‘Give me your hand, Reverend, give me your hand!’ But the priest didn’t pay attention to their offer to rescue him. He kept wrestling with the water and shouting for help.

Finally Mulla Nasrudin stepped forward: ‘Let me handle this!’ He stretched out his hand towards the priest and shouted at him, ‘Take my hand!’ The priest grabbed Mulla’s hand and was hoisted out of the pond.

People were very surprised and asked Mulla for the secret of his strategy. ‘It is very simple, ‘ he said. ‘I know this miser would not give anything to anyone, not even his hand. I know this miser would not give anything to anyone, so instead of saying, “Give me your hand” I said, “Take my hand, your Reverence.” And sure enough, he took it.’

I know you would like it to be called the art of growing. Then your ego would feel perfectly good. ‘So it is a question of growth; so I am going to remain and grow.’ That’s what the ego always wants. I have knowingly called it the art of dying. Meditation is the art of dying. Then your ego will be shocked. And it is also truer to call it the art of dying, because your ego is not going to grow, your ego is going to die in meditation.

These are the only two possibilities: either your ego goes on growing more, it becomes stronger, or, it disappears. If your ego goes on growing and becomes more and more strong, you are getting more and more into the mud. You are getting more and more into fetters, you are getting more and more into the imprisonment of it. You will be suffocated. Your whole life will become a hell. The growth of the ego is a canceric growth. It is like cancer, it kills you. Meditation is not growth of the ego, it is death of the ego.

Source – Osho Book “The Art of Dying”

Question – My heart aches. such a tiny crevice of it feels able to open to you. I want to melt and flow around you like a puddle; and i don’t know how. Somehow my heart knows what it would feel like to open totally to you, and because it does not, it aches. and i shake and want to force, knowing that i can’t. I love you such a tiny bit and it is beautiful.

Osho – This is from Anupama. I can see that her heart aches, but that heartache is beautiful. Remember: headache is always ugly, heartache is always beautiful. Headache comes when you think too much, you are obsessed with thinking. Heartache comes when you start feeling, when you start melting. Heartache is a good sign, a great indication that something is happening in your deepest core.

MY HEART ACHES. SUCH A TINY CREVICE OF IT FEELS ABLE TO OPEN TO YOU. Good. Help it to ache more; and don’t try to avoid it, and don’t try to get rid of it, because heartache is a positive thing. Headache is a negative thing. Headache is a disease; heartache comes only to those who are starting to be healthy and whole. Heartache is holy. The word is the same: ache. That creates difficulty. Remember it, never forget it: whenever the heart aches, it shows that you are getting deeper into your being.

Love has its own ache. But blessed are those who attain to that ache of love. By and by the heartache will grow more and more. It will become intenser and intenser. Help it, so that it becomes a flame. You burn, but that burning is beautiful, because that fire will burn only the ego, not you. You will come out of it purified, like pure gold.
MY HEART ACHES. SUCH A TINY CREVICE OF IT FEELS ABLE TO OPEN TO YOU. Remember this too: that love never feels enough. Love always feels that it is not yet enough. That is a sign of love, it never feels enough. You can never feel enough love, you can never feel more than enough love. It is the very nature of love that it always feels that more is possible. “I can give more. I can flow more.” Love is an infinity. So howsoever you open, you will always feel more is possible. It is a journey which begins, but never ends. Love’s journey begins, but never ends. It is eternity.

I WANT TO MELK AND FLOW AROUND YOU LIKE A PUDDLE; AND I DON’T KNOW HOW. Nobody knows, nobody has ever known, nobody will ever know, because it is not part of knowledge. But you are already on the way; so move in the same direction. Allow it to ache more. Enjoy that ache. Delight in it, and help it. Don’t fight it. Surrender to it. Don’t stand aloof, don’t be a watcher, don’t separate yourself. Be drunk with it, get involved in it, be absorbed in it — so much so that only the heart aches and you are not there to watch and see. Only the heartache remains, and you have disappeared. Then it becomes a tremendous ecstasy. It is a birth pang; yes, a birth pain. One is reborn through it.

SOMEHOW MY HEART KNOWS WHAT IT WOULD FEEL LIKE TO OPEN TOTALLY TO YOU. Yes, the heart knows, because heart has its own ways of knowing. They are not of the mind. It knows how it will be to be totally open. That knowledge is not something learned. That knowledge is inborn; that knowledge is carried like a blueprint in the heart. The day you come out of the original source — call it God’s home — the day you are coming from the original source, that blueprint is put into your heart and sealed.

So, in a very strange way, you always know how it will feel to be totally open, to be totally flowing, to be totally in love and prayer. Yet you don’t know, because the mind knows nothing about it. And yet you know, because the heart carries something in it which only needs flowering. It is like the seed which carries the blueprint of the whole tree. I say, of the whole tree. Even of a single leaf, the blueprint is there. There will be mi]lions of leaves, but each single leaf has a blueprint hidden in the seed. The seed is very small, but it carries the whole plan, it carries the whole future in it.

The heart is the seed of God. It carries the whole plan in it. It carries your destiny, and your destiny is tremendously great. The seed may be very small, maybe a mustard seed. The small ness of the seed is not the point — don’t be deceived by the smallness of it. It may just be atomic. It may not even be visible to the eyes, it may not even be visible to the greatest magnifying glass, it may be so tiny. It is very small — very small, atomic.

Nobody has known the atom, nobody has seen it yet. Only effects are known — it is an inference. Nobody has ever seen the heart — I am not talking about the physical heart. Nobody has seen the heart, the heart Jesus talks about, the heart Meera sings about, the heart Chaitanya dances about. Nobody has seen that heart yet; nobody is ever going to see it, because it is very, very small; it is invisible. But it carries God in it. It carries it, as every seed carries the tree.

Just look at a small seed — can you imagine what it can become? A tree can be born out of it, a great banyan tree, and then millions of seeds through this one seed. Scientists say that a single seed can fill the whole earth with greenery. A single seed can fill the whole universe with greenery, because there is no ‘finitude’ in it; it is infinite.

Each single heart can fill the whole universe. You will never be able to know what it is if you try to know through the mind. But if you relax into the heart, you will know in a very strange way. That is the way of the mystics, not of the intellectuals; that is the way of the poets, not of the philosophers. You will know it in a poetic way; you will know it, and it will never become knowledge. It will remain knowing, a groping; and it is beautiful, because whenever something becomes knowledge, it is already dead. Whenever you have known something, finished — then you are no more interested in it.

Love can never be known that way. It always remains unknown. It goes on alluring, it goes on invoking, it goes on calling you further and further. One peak, somehow, you reach; another peak is waiting. Another peak you reach; more doors open, more peaks are there waiting for you. It is an infinite journey. One knows, and yet one never knows.

MY HEART KNOWS WHAT IT WOULD FEEL LIKE TO OPEN TOTALLY TO YOU, AND BECAUSE IT DOES NOT, IT ACHES. AND I SHAKE AND WANT TO FORCE KNOWING THAT I CAN’T. I understand. And you have observed your heart perfectly well. This is how it happens: you know nothing can be done, you know that doing will only disturb; yet you go on thinking, you go on wishing that something may be there, that something can be done — maybe, perhaps. And you know all the time nothing can be done, because it is not a question of doing. But still, the heart goes on feeling that perhaps there is a way.

One hangs, as if in a mist. But that is how one grows. Nothing can be done, and I know that nothing can also be done about the thinking that goes on thinking that maybe something can be done. Nothing can also be done about that. So accept that too; that too is part of the heartache. Accept whatsoever it is; and in total acceptance is transformation. You relax. Don’t fight. Remember, this is very delicate. Because whenever I say relax, you think now you are not to think; now you are not to do anything; now you are not even allowed to think about what to do. Then you have misunderstood me.

When I say relax, I mean relax; whatsoever goes on — let it go. I am not saying…. Because if you start thinking that let-go means that you are not to think about what is to be done, then you will start fighting with the idea which will be coming again and again. What to do? — you will start fighting with it. Let-go simply means no fight.

Now it becomes even more subtle. If fight arises, what will you do? Let go, let the fight be there. This is the delicate thing about it, that at whatsoever level you start fighting, drop fighting. Do you understand me? When I say ‘drop fighting’, don’t START dropping it, because then you are not dropping, then you have started a new fight against fight.

It is tremendously significant. Let me repeat. I tell you not to fight, but fight arises. What will you do? Let it be. And I have been telling you not to fight, and fight arises. What should you do? Let it be. That is what I mean when I say don’t fight — at whatsoever level struggle arises and you become concerned and you become separate from the on-going process — don’t do that. Relax. Let it be, whatsoever it is. Accept whatsoever it is unconditionally, and by and by you will become aware that that is the only way to be, and the only way to be blissful, and the only way to be blessed. A totally different plenitude is attained when you relax.

… AND BECAUSE IT DOES NOT, IT ACHES. AND I SHAKE AND WANT TO FORCE, KNOWING THAT I CAN’T. Let it be so. Know that you can’t… still it goes on: accept it.

I LOVE YOU SUCH A TINY BIT, AND IT IS BEAUTIFUL. Love is beautiful, even a small window into the sky of love is beautiful. Of course, only a small part of the sky can be seen from the window, but it is still part of the sky. Sooner or later you will have to come out of the house; that which is beautiful will draw you. You will by and by be forced to come closer and closer to that which you love, that which is beautiful. Suddenly you will be running towards it; you will forget all about the house, the enclosure that you have been living in for lives together. Suddenly, in a deep ecstasy, you are out of the house, under the sky.

Only love can bring you out of your misery, only love can bring you out of your hell, because only in love can you forget yourself And you are the misery, and you are the hell.

Source – Osho Book “Come Follow To You, Vol 3″

Osho – These religions go on giving you hope. Hope is the poison; it keeps you dragging, waiting for the moment when the hope, the promise, will be fulfilled.

Christians are waiting for Christ to come back. He said to them again and again, ”I will be coming soon on the clouds of glory, with a divine body, for the salvation of all those who believe in me.” He has not come, and I can say to you categorically: he is not going to come again. What did you do to him when he was here? That experience is enough to prevent him – because I know if he comes back, you will crucify him again. But the hope….

Hindus are hoping, because Krishna has promised – all these prophets go on promising – Krishna has promised that whenever there is misery, whenever there is irreligiousness in the world, whenever virtue disappears, whenever things are not as they should be, ”I will be coming.” For five thousand years everything has been wrong – but there is no sign of his coming back. But Hindus still go on living in hope, still they go on repeating the promise of Krishna, that soon he will be coming. This keeps people unconscious of the reality. It is opium – very subtle, very psychological.

The contented man has been created by this opium: here be contented, and there you will be immensely rewarded for your contentment. Don’t be bothered about the rich and the luxurious. It is just momentary; soon the rich will be suffering in hell. Don’t be jealous of them and don’t be competitive with them. Be contented.

India, perhaps, is the oldest country in the world; its religions are certainly the most ancient religions. But in India not a single revolution has happened, and it has been suffering for thousands of years. Starvation, poverty, sickness – it has been living in a nightmare, but with the opium of hope: that the Hindus are the privileged people of God, and this is only a momentary life. The suffering is just a test of your faith. Once you have passed through the test, all the joys of heaven are yours. That’s why I said I don’t want the contented man. That is false, pseudo, sick, retarded, believing in lies.

I teach contentment. And the basic principle of contentment is to drop your ego. Don’t think for a single moment, ”To be or not to be.” Just not to be is the rule. What have you gained by trying to be? Just for a change try not to be, and you will be amazed. The moment you are not, there is contentment, there is silence, there is beauty, there is bliss. Meditation is only a methodology to make you aware that your only disease is your ego, and your only health is egolessness.

The discontented man is suffering from his ego. He is comparing his ego with others. Somebody is more beautiful than you, somebody is stronger than you. Somebody is richer than you, somebody is more powerful than you. All around there are people who have something which you don’t have. You have to complete against the whole world – by any means, right or wrong, but you have to reach the top.

Sometimes I think of Edmund Hillary standing on the highest mountain, the Himalayan peak, Everest. There is not even space for two persons to stand together. And whenever I think of it, I think of poor Edmund Hillary. He must have looked silly. Now what to do? You have reached the top of the world, but what now? Jump and commit suicide. Whatever you can attain, you will remain discontented.

Napoleon Bonaparte was not a very tall man, he was only five feet five inches. But I don’t see any problem. I am five feet five inches. I have tried to figure out why he was puzzled; I am not puzzled. Even if I were seven feet, my feet would touch the ground. At five-five they still touch the ground, so what is the problem? But Napoleon was very much disturbed, because his soldiers were taller than him, his bodyguards were taller than him. That was giving him a continuous feeling of inferiority. One day it happened, he was trying to put a nail in the wall to hang a picture. His hand was not reaching to the right spot, and his bodyguard said, ”Sir, you need not bother about it, I can do it – I am higher than you.”

Napoleon Bonaparte imprisoned that guard, and told him, ”You used wrong language. You are taller than me, but not higher than me!” That poor guard had unconsciously used a word that touched a deep wound in Bonaparte. Bonaparte had everything, but discontent was there.

There are ordinarily two types of people in the world: the discontented and the repressed discontented. I need the third type of man to evolve: the man who has no ego; hence, he cannot be discontented. Contentment is not something to be practiced. When discontent disappears, you find contentment has always been your nature.

Do you think a small bush is discontented because just by the side of it a tall cedar tree is standing, reaching to the stars? Do you think a small rose bush is discontented? There is no discontent in nature anywhere, except in the mind of man. It has been created by the politicians, by the priests, by the educationalists. Every child is being told to come first.

Source – Osho Book “From the False to the Truth”

Osho – What is the message of Heraclitus, the deepest message? Understand so you can follow. He does not believe in things, he believes in processes — process is God to him. And if you watch closely, you will see that THINGS don’t exist in the world; everything is a process. In fact to use the word “is”, is existentially wrong, because everything is becoming. Nothing is in a state of isness, nothing!

You say, “This is a tree.” By the time you say it, it has grown; your statement is already false. The tree is never static, so how can you use the word, is? It is always becoming, becoming something else. Everything is growing, moving, in a process. Life is movement. It is like a river — always moving. Says Heraclitus, “You cannot step in the same river twice,” because by the time you come to step into it the second time, it has moved. It is a flow. Can you meet the same person twice? Impossible! You were here yesterday morning also — but am I the same? Are you the same? Both rivers have changed. You may be here again tomorrow, but you will not find me; somebody else will be here.

Life is changing. “Only change is eternal,” says Heraclitus — only change never changes. Everything else changes. He believes in a permanent revolution. Everything is in revolution. It is how it is there. To be means to become. To remain where you are means to move; you cannot stay, nothing is static. Even the hills, the Himalayas, are not static; they are moving, moving fast. They are born, then they die. The Himalayas is one of the youngest mountain ranges in the world, and it is still growing. It has not reached its peak yet, it is very young — every year it grows one foot. There are old mountains whose peaks have been attained; now they are falling down, old, their backs are bent.

These walls you see around you, every particle of them is in movement. You cannot see the movement because the movement is very subtle and fast. Now physicists agree with Heraclitus, not with Aristotle, remember. Whenever any science reaches nearer to reality, it has to agree with Lao Tzu and Heraclitus. Now physicists say everything is in movement.

Eddington has said that the only word which is false is rest. Nothing is at rest, nothing can be; it is a false word, it doesn’t correspond to any reality. “Is” is just in the language. In life, in existence, there is no “is”; everything is becoming. Heraclitus himself, when he says about the river — and the symbol of the river is very, very deep with him — that you cannot step in the same river twice, he also says that even if you do, you are the same and you are not the same.

Just on the surface you look the same. Not only has the river changed, you have also changed. It happened: A man came to Buddha to insult him — he spat on his face. Buddha wiped his face and asked the man, “Have you anything more to say?” — as if he had said something. The man was puzzled, because he never expected this type of response. He went away. The next day he came again — because the whole night he couldn’t sleep; he felt more and more that he had done something absolutely wrong, he felt guilty. The next morning he came, fell at Buddha’s feet and said, “Forgive me!”

And Buddha said, “Who will forgive you now? The man you spat upon is no more, and the man you were who spat is no more either — so who will forgive whom? Forget about it, now nothing can be done about it. It cannot be undone — finished!… because nobody is there, both parties are dead. What can be done? You are a new man and I am a new man.”

This is the deepest message of Heraclitus: everything flows and changes; everything moves, nothing is static. And the moment you cling, you miss reality. Your clinging becomes the problem, because reality changes and you cling. You loved me yesterday; now you are angry. I cling to the yesterday and I say, “You have to love me, because yesterday you were loving and yesterday you said you would love me always — now what has happened?” But what can you do? And yesterday when you said that you would love me always, it was not false, but it was not a promise either — it was simply the mood, and I believed in the mood too much. At that moment you felt it, that you would love me always and always and always, forever; and it was not untrue, remember. It was true to the moment, that was the mood, but now that mood has gone. The one who said it is no more.

And if it is gone, it is gone; nothing can be done. You cannot force love. That’s what we are doing — and making much misery out of it. The husband says, “Love me!” The wife says, “Love me because you promised — have you forgotten the courting days?” But they are no longer there. Those persons are no longer there either. A young man of twenty, just remember: are you the same man? Much has passed; the Ganges has flowed too much — you are no longer there.

I have heard: One night Mulla Nasruddin’s wife said, “You no longer love me, you no longer kiss, you no longer hug me. Remember when you were courting me? — you used to bite me and I loved that very much! Can’t you bite me once more?”
Nasruddin got out of his bed, started walking. His wife said, “Where are you going?”
He said, “To the bathroom to get my teeth.”

No, you cannot step in the same river twice. It is impossible. Don’t cling; if you cling you create a hell. Clinging is hell, and a nonclinging consciousness is always in heaven. One moves with the mood, one accepts the mood, one accepts the change; there is no grudge, no complaint about it because this is how life is, things are. You can fight, but you cannot change.

When somebody is young, of course there are different moods because youth has different seasons and moods. How can an old man have the same? And an old man will look very foolish with those moods. How can an old man say the same thing? Everything has changed. When you are young you are romantic, inexperienced, dreamy. When you are old all the dreams have gone. Nothing is bad in it, because when the dreams are gone you are nearer and closer to reality — now you understand more. You are less of a poet because you cannot dream now, but nothing is wrong. Dreaming was a mood, a season — it changes. And one has to be true to the state in which one finds oneself at a certain point.

Be true to your changing self, because that is the only reality. That’s why Buddha says there is no self. You are a river. There is no self because there is nothing unchanging in you. Buddha was thrown out of India because the Indian mind, particularly the brahmins, the Hindus, believed in a permanent self, ATMA. They always said that something is permanent, and Buddha said only change is permanent — nothing is permanent.

Why do you want to be a permanent thing? Why do you want to be dead?… because only a dead thing can be permanent. Waves come and go, that’s why the ocean is alive. If waves stop, everything will stop in the ocean. It will be a dead thing. Everything lives through change — and change means changing to the polarity. You move from one pole to another; that’s how you again and again become alive and fresh. In the day you work hard, and in the night you relax and go into sleep. Again in the morning you are alive and fresh to work. Have you ever observed the polarity?

Work is against relaxation. If you work hard you become tense, tired, exhausted, but then you fall into the deep valley of rest, a deep relaxation. The surface is far away, you move to the center. You are no more the identity you are on the surface, no more the name, the ego; nothing from the surface is carried. You simply forget who you are, and in the morning you are fresh. This forgetfulness is good, it makes you fresh. Just try for three weeks not to sleep — you will go mad, because you have forgotten to move to the opposite.

If Aristotle is right, then if you don’t sleep at all, if you don’t move to the opposite, then you will become an enlightened man. You will be MAD. And it is because of Aristotle that there are so many mad people in the West. If they don’t listen to the East, or to Heraclitus, sooner or later the whole West is going to be mad. It is bound to be so because you have lost the polarity. Logic will say something else. Logic will say rest the whole day, practice rest the whole day, so that in the night you can go into a deep sleep — this is logical. This is logical: practice rest! This is what rich people do: they rest the whole day, then they have insomnia and they say, “We cannot sleep.” And they are practicing the whole day — lying on their beds, lying on their easy chairs, resting and resting and resting. And then in the night, suddenly they find that they cannot sleep. They have followed Aristotle, they are logical.

One day Mulla Nasruddin went to his doctor. Coughing, he entered. The doctor said, “It sounds better.”
Nasruddin said, “Of course, it has to sound better — because I practiced it the whole night.”

If you practice rest the whole day, in the night you will be restless. You will change sides again and again: that is just an exercise the body is doing so that some rest becomes possible. No — in life you cannot find a man more wrong than Aristotle. Move to the opposite: work hard in the day and you will go into a deeper sleep in the night. Go deeper in sleep, and in the morning you will find you are capable of doing tremendous work, infinite energy you have. Through rest one gains energy; through work one gains rest — just the opposite.

People come to me and they say, “We have insomnia, we cannot sleep, so tell us some way to relax” — they are Aristotelian.

I tell them, “There is no need for you to relax. Just go for a walk, a long walk, run madly — two hours in the morning, two in the evening, and then rest will follow automatically. It always follows! You don’t need techniques of relaxation; you need techniques of active meditation, not relaxation. You are already too relaxed; that’s what insomnia is showing, that you are already too relaxed — there is no need.”

Life moves through one opposite to another. And Heraclitus says this is the secret, the hidden harmony; this is the hidden harmony. He is very poetic, he has to be. He cannot be philosophic because philosophy means reason. Poetry can be contradictory; poetry can say things which philosophers will be ashamed to say — poetry is truer to life. And philosophers just go around and around: they never hit the point in the center, they beat around and around the bush. Poetry simply hits directly.

Source – Osho Book “The Hidden Harmony”

Osho – Just the other day I was reading an article on Oscar, the founder of Arica. The man who was interviewing him was a little surprised to see that he was continuously smoking, so he asked, ‘Why are you smoking so much and why do you smoke?’ At least Oscar was true. He said, ‘Whenever I feel nervous I smoke, it helps.’

If a person like Oscar, who has become a master to many people in America, is still nervous and needs smoking to help his nervousness, then what is going to happen to help his followers? He must have controlled himself.

Controlled persons are always nervous because deep down turmoil is still hidden. If you are uncontrolled, flowing, alive, then you are not nervous. There is no question of being nervous — whatsoever happens, happens. You have no expectations for the future, you are not performing. Then why should you be nervous?

If you go to Catholic, Jaina, Buddhist monks, you will find them very nervous — maybe not so nervous in their monasteries, but if you bring them out to the world, you will find them very, very nervous because on each step there is temptation.

A man of meditation comes to a point where there is no temptation left. Try to understand it. Temptation never comes from without, it is the repressed desire, repressed energy, repressed anger, repressed sex, repressed greed, that creates temptation. Temptation comes from within YOU, it has nothing to do with the without. It is not that a devil comes and tempts you, it is your own repressed mind that becomes devilish and wants to take revenge. To control that mind one has to remain so cold and frozen that no life energy is allowed to move into your limbs, into your body. If energy is allowed to move, those repressions will surface. That’s why people have learned how to be cold, how to touch others and yet not touch them, how to see people and yet not see them.

People live with cliches — ‘Hallo. How are you?’ Nobody means anything. These are just to avoid the real encounter of two persons. People don’t look into each other’s eyes, they don’t hold hands, they don’t try to feel each other’s energy, they don’t allow each Other to pour. Very afraid. Somehow just managing. Cold and dead. In a strait-jacket.

A man of meditation has learned how to be full of energy, at the maximum, optimum. He lives at the peak, he makes his abode at the peak. Certainly he has a warmth but it is not feverish, it only shows life. He is not hot, he is cool, because he is not carried away by desires. He is so happy, that he is no longer seeking any happiness. He is so at ease, he is so at home, he is not going anywhere, he is not running and chasing… he is very cool. In Latin there is a dictum: agere sequitur esse — to do follows to be; action follows being. It is tremendously beautiful.

Don’t try to change your action; try to find out your being, and action will follow. The action is secondary; being is primary. Action is something that you do; being is something that you are. Action comes out of you, action is just a fragment. Even if all of your actions are collected together they will not be equal to your being because all actions collected together will be your past. What about your future? Your being contains your past, your future, your present; your being contains your eternity. Your actions, even if all collected, will just be of the past. Past is limited. Future is unlimited. That which has happened is limited, it can be defined, it has already happened. That which has not
happened is unlimited, indefinable. Your being contains eternity, your actions contain only your past.

So it is possible that a man who has been a sinner up to this moment can become a saint the next. Never judge a man by his actions; judge a man by his being. Sinners have become saints and saints have fallen and become sinners. Each saint has a past and each sinner has a future. Never judge a man by his actions. But there is no other way because you have not known even your own being, how can you see the being of others? Once you know your own being you will learn the language, you will know the clue of how to look into another’s being. You can see into others only to the extent that you can see into yourself. If you have seen yourself through and through, you become capable of seeing into others through and through.

Source – Osho Book “Dang Dang Doko Dang”

question: what about tennis ?

swami rajneesh:
very retarded and very damaging to the body !
in the osho resort some retards have made something called zennis
just put zen in front of anything and it looks intelligent
it is such a stupid game !
you are becoming right handed…
your whole power is rushing to the right…
you are disturbing the whole balance of the body
your body is not a machine…it is a very sensitive mechanism
your spine…the skeleton…the framework
it is held together by muscles and tissues

the energy finds a flow to move through it
and creates a balance for the brain
this tennis is a right handed aggression
the whole energy is moving to the right
you are disturbing your spine
you are becoming twisted
you are disturbing your heels…your ankles …your knees…
you can see those people who play on hard courts
their knees get damaged…their pelvic gets damaged…
their spine becomes twisted…
and they become right handed aggressive macho people

you can see golfers too
their whole body is twisted
they have destroyed the natural balance of the body
especially after doing meditation…
if you play tennis you are taking all the psychic power into the right hand…
feeding the left brain
this is how it balances…all male aggression
and it is all about winning…smashing…hitting…running…chasing a ball…
it is physically damaging

life needs balance
doing…non doing
male energy…female energy
upward movement…downward rooting
expression…settling
everything is in balance
higher…lower…left…right…
then you are in equilibrium
that is your life force

now you can place tennis within this framework
and you can see it is physically harmful to the body
suddenly here…suddenly there…
your mind will become agile
your mind will become stronger…the body will become twisted
so the mind will become more twisted
you cannot have balance…equilibrium…harmony…

running is a beautiful sport
swimming is a beautiful sport
anything that equally plays right and left
and that gives you rest and silence and stillness
then you do not damage the body and it is meditative
tennis is right handed
it cannot be meditative and it damages the spine
the kundalini will turn
the right body will harden
you need to become hard to hit
and you will lose the open muscle
the softer your body is the more life is flowing through it
the moment you harden the body you are bringing death
because life will stop moving in it

you can see the body of a child…soft…absolutely like butter…
so soft because nothing has hardened as yet
a soft body like a sponge…with life flowing through it

i cannot find one good reason for tennis at all
and it is simply aggression…hitting some stupid object
oof…what a retarded game…
try running…it is beautiful…
you catch the rhythm…you are in the rhythm
it is life affirmative
try running on one spot…
it is even more empowering to the body

swimming is beautiful and in deep harmony
in water your whole body has a buoyancy
it removes the weight from the body
you feel the gravity disappearing
and the spirit in you can expand
swimming is one of the most spiritual movements
in fact swimming is so beautiful though i cannot swim
but when the body is in water it displaces the gravity
and you have to use each and every part of your muscles to swim
you cannot leave any muscle unattended
you have to use the whole muscle in total flow and harmony
to attain to that movement in swimming
so your whole body gets a deep inner massage

i know swimming because i swim on land
i call it tai chi
i am a tai chi master
i am swimming with air
i am floating in the air with no gravity

what they experience while they are swimming…
i experience while walking on land
because surrounding me is not air
it is thick life…it is aura gripping me
it is thicker than water

you see this hand ?
it is moving as if in water
this empty space around you is your aura
once your aura becomes dense and thick…
even the trees will support it…
everything supports that physical form
you become weightless because everything around you
is pulling you and holding you
so i feel the same experience while walking
moving my body as one would feel while swimming in water

swimming is one of the great spiritual exercises
you are born in water
eighty percent of you is water
the womb is water
you were a fish once upon a time when the beginning of life began
water is the perfect medium for spiritual growth

you see what i am talking about
this tennis…this football…my god where am i living ?
i have to answer all these type of strange things
sitting in the mountains for fourteen years i never thought
i would be answering tennis and football and all that…

Question – Is it good to take risks?

Osho – Good or bad is not the question. If you are alive you have to take risks. Life is a risk. Only death is secure, life is never secure — there is no security. The companies that are called Life Insurance should really be called Death Insurance; in life there can be no insurance. Life is alive only because there is risk, danger — that’s why there is so much thrill.

You ask ‘Is it good to take risks?’
If you want to be alive you have to take risks, and the more risks you take, the more alive you will be. So really you are asking ‘Is it good to be alive?’ Rightly interpreted, your question will mean ‘Is it good to be alive?’

Now, I am not a murderer, and I don’t want to poison your life. Many people have done that: the priests, the politicians — they are poisoning your life. They are all teaching you to live within bounds; to live in such a way that there is no risk, that you are always safe and secure. But then you are dead, then you are already in your grave. And then you become miserable and then you start seeing that you don’t have any love, that you don’t have any happiness, that nothing is happening in your life which is of worth. Then you start feeling there is no meaning, no significance; and the reason is that you are avoiding risks. Meaning comes through being dangerous, adventurous. Value arises only when you are alive; value comes through vitality.

Virtue simply means to have the quality of courage. Courage is the only virtue. If you don’t live a life of danger then better commit suicide. Then why burden this earth? And then why feel miserable? Then what is the point of it all? Then your misery leads nowhere, then your misery is just a rut in which you go on moving.

Look at people. Their eyes have lost the lustre of life, their faces are more like masks than real faces. They don’t live, they only pretend that they are living. They act, they don’t live. And then, naturally, they come to feel that there is no meaning — no flowering, no fragrance, no dance, no song, arises. Then they go to the priest to ask, and the priest says ‘Yes, the song is possible, but it happens only when you are dead. After death.’ Then they go to the politician. He says ‘Yes, life can have meaning, but the social structure has to be changed, the economic structure has to be changed, the whole history has to be changed. Communism has to be brought in, socialism has to be brought in.’

When people lose meaning, of course they start asking where to find meaning. And these are the two persons to whom they go: the priest and the politician — and they are the persons who have put you into such a state where meaning has been lost. Now this is a very great conspiracy. First they destroy the possibility of meaning, and then, of course, you are in their hands — you have to go and ask, and they show you the ways.

Look at a child. He HAS meaning. Have you watched it sometimes — a child playing with the pebbles on the seashore or running after a butterfly? Just watch, but don’t make him selfconscious: the moment he becomes selfconscious he is no more a child. Just watch, hiding somewhere… absorbed, the child is completely lost. And how beautiful he is! The grace on his face, the colour, the joy, the glee, the gladness, the vitality — as if he has wings, and he is so much absorbed. In that absorbed moment he is closest to God, he is in Tao, he is on the Way, he is enjoying this moment. H e is tremendously happy, so happy that he is not even aware of happiness, because only miserable people become aware of happiness. He is so happy — who bothers? He is so totally ‘in’, that he is not an outsider.

Then do one thing: bring a camera and try to take a photograph of the child. The moment he becomes aware that the photograph is being taken, all gladness disappears. His face is no more true, the mask has come. His eyes are no more absorbed — that shining quality is no more there, they have become dull. He is no more dynamic; he has become static, rigid. Now he has become selfconscious, the ego has entered; with the camera, the ego has entered. Now the child is ugly.

That’s why it is very difficult to have a beautiful picture. The person may be beautiful, but when you take him to the photo studio, suddenly something goes wrong. The picture never comes out so well. Have you ever been satisfied with any of your pictures? Whenever you look at the picture, something is missing. What is missing? You became selfconscious, you became aware, you started performing. You wanted to look very good, happy, smiling; a great personality, magnetic, charismatic… and all is gone down the drain; you are just an ugly person, dead. You are conscious of the camera and you are conscious of the people who will look at your picture. You are so selfconscious, how can you be beautiful?

A person who is continuously thinking whether there is any risk or not becomes so selfconscious that he never lives. He becomes rigid and dull and stupid — mediocre. Forget all about risks. Life is a risk. The day you were born, one thing became certain: that you are going to die. Now what more risk can there be?

My mother’s mother was a very old woman, and she was always afraid about me. I was continuously travelling in the train — fifteen days a month I was in the train. And she was always afraid, and she would say ‘There are so many accidents!’ and every day she would look in the newspaper just to see whether there had been some train accident, some aeroplane had fallen or something. And she would collect all the cuttings, and whenever I would go, she would show them to me. ‘Look! So many car accidents, so many aeroplanes and so many trains burnt, and so many people killed. What are you doing? Fifteen days on the trains, planes, cars! Stop this!’

So, one day, I said to her ‘Listen. If you are really interested in statistics then do you know that ninety-seven per cent of people die in their beds? So should I stand outside the bed the whole night? It is risky, there is no other thing more risky than to be in the bed. Ninety-seven per cent of people have to die in the bed! You are safer in an aeroplane — rarely does somebody die in an aeroplane, rarely in a train.’

She was very much puzzled. She said ‘It is true, but that cannot be done — it is impossible. Yes, that’s true.’ Since then, she stopped talking about accidents — she understood.

The day you were born you took the greatest risk that you could ever take. Now death is going to happen, death is bound to happen. The day you were born you already took one step into the grave. Now what greater risks can you take? Even if you go on avoiding risks, you will die, so why not take the risk and live really authentically?

A rich man once said to a friend ‘Why is it that everybody is always criticising me for being miserly when everyone knows I have made provisions to leave everything I possess to charity when I die?’

‘Well’ said the friend ‘Let me tell you about the pig and the cow. The pig was lamenting to the cow one day about how unpopular he was. “People are always talking about your gentleness and your kind eyes” said the pig. “Sure, you give milk and cream, but I give even more. I give bacon and ham, and I give bristles, and they even pickle my feet! Still nobody likes me. Why is it?” The cow thought a minute and then said “Well, maybe it’s because I give while I’m still living.”‘

Death is going to take everything. Why be worried then? Rather than saving it for death to take away, share it — take risks. The miserly man is the stupid man; everything will be taken away. Don’t be so cautious. Don’t be so cautious; have the spirit of adventure. Yes, I know sometimes you may commit a mistake, but nothing is wrong in it. Sometimes you may go astray, but nothing is wrong in it. Those who can go astray, they can come back; but those who never go anywhere, they are dead.

Never commit the same mistake again and again — that’s true, invent new mistakes every day. Be creative. Risk in new ways. And that’s what sannyas is all about: to be risky, to live dangerously, to live without security and safety. To be tremendously in love with life is what sannyas is. And don’t postpone it, because all postponement is again being very cautious. Do it right now. If you have understood the thing, let it happen.

A pious brother set on the front pew during the Sunday morning sermon. Presently he began to remove one of his shoes. This unusual procedure in the midst of a church service caused those who could see him to smile and lose interest for the time in the sermon. But the brother then proceeded to remove his sock. This caused so much distraction that the preacher stopped in his discourse and asked the brother if there was something unusual the matter.
‘No,’ said the disturber ‘I just noticed that one of my socks was wrongside out.’

‘Well, my brother’ chided the minister ‘could you not wait until the service is over to make the change?’
‘No, sir’ was the reply ‘when I find I am wrong I always proceed at once to get it right.’

That should be the procedure: whenever you feel that something is wrong, get it right immediately — don’t postpone. If you have never taken any risk, take it now, and you will be richer for that.

Source – Osho Book “Tao: The Pathless Path, Vol 1″

Question – How to see what is My will and God’s will?

Osho – There is a Chinese saying: Man is a puppet when he acts, a poet when he describes. All that you think is your freedom is nothing but your poetry. An unconscious man cannot be free, cannot have any freedom. Freedom comes as a consequence of consciousness, freedom is the function of consciousness. An unconscious man exists like a machine, like a robot. You may not know, but you are continuously functioning as a robot.

Somebody abuses you and anger arises. It is almost like when you push the button and the fan starts moving. Somebody pushes the button and you become angry. What kind of freedom is this? You don’t have any choice, to be angry or not to be angry. If the choice is not there there is no freedom. Freedom means freedom to choose — you can decide whether to be angry or not, then you are free. But can you decide? At the most you can decide to show your anger or not — that is another thing. But to be angry or not to be angry, have you got any decision about it, any choice about it?

The moment somebody pushes your button you are angry INSTANTLY, not a single moment is lost. You may not show it, that is another thing. You may control, repress, that is another thing. But anger has flashed in your being. And about that you have no choice. You function like a machine.

A parable: Once upon a time there was a magnet, and in its close neighbourhood lived some steel filings. One day two or three little filings felt a sudden desire to go and visit the magnet, and they began to talk of what a pleasant thing it would be to do. Other filings nearby heard their conversation, and they too became infected with the same desire. Still others joined them, till at last all the filings began to discuss the matter, and more and more their vague desire grew into an impulse.

‘Why not go today?’ said one of them; but others were of the opinion that it would be better to wait till tomorrow. Meanwhile, without their having noticed it, they had been involuntarily moving nearer to the magnet, which lay there quite still, apparently taking no heed of them. And so they went on discussing, all the time insensibly drawing nearer to their neighbour. And the more they talked, the more they felt the impulse growing stronger, till the more impatient ones declared that they would go that day, whatever the rest did. Some were heard to say it was their duty to visit the magnet, and that they ought to have gone long ago.

And while they talked they moved always nearer and nearer, without realizing that they had moved. Then at last the impatient ones prevailed, and with one irresistible impulse the whole body cried out ‘There is no use waiting. We will go today. We will go now. We will go at once. ‘ And then in one unanimous mass they swept along, and in another moment were clinging fast to the magnet on every side. Then the magnet smiled — for the steel filings had no doubt at all but that they were paying that visit of their own free will.

Unconscious, you don’t have any will. Unconscious, you don’t have any freedom. So don’t think about it. You ask, HOW TO SEE WHAT IS MY WILL AND GOD’S WILL? YOU have none. God is the magnet and you are the filings.

But you go on believing that you have your will, you go on believing that this is your choice. That you have chosen this woman to be your wife. Think about it again, remember this parable. Have you chosen this woman? Or was it just an accident? Have you chosen? Was there really any choice in it? Or had you been a victim of a certain impulse called love? Was it possible for you not to choose? Was it your decision? Then you will see that it has not been so. Whatsoever has happened in your life has happened more or less accidentally. And don’t laugh at those iron filings — that is the situation of humanity.

But you can rise out of your unconsciousness. Then you will have will. But you will not be there, you will disappear. Because in consciousness you cannot remain, you can remain only in unconsciousness. Now let me make it clear: When you are, you have no will. In unconsciousness the ego exists but there is no will. In consciousness the will exists but the ego disappears. Then there is no point of asking ‘…my WILL AND GOD’S WILL?’ Then there is no distinction between you and God. You are God and God is you.

The whole problem can be reduced to a simple thing To be conscious or not to be conscious. The unconscious man exists without any will. He only dreams that he has will. With consciousness ego starts disappearing on one hand, on another hand will arises. But it will not be your will, it will be always God’s will. Then what is the difference between the unconscious man and the conscious man? The difference is, it is always God’s will — the unconscious man thinks ‘It is my will’ and the conscious man knows ‘I am not, only God is.’

Source – Osho Book “This Very Body the Buddha”

Question – Beloved Osho, can you please say something about the difference between the spiritual question, “who am i” and the psychological trauma of “who am i”

Osho – Prem Shunyo, it is exactly the difference I was just talking about — the difference between the ego and the self. The ego is your false idea of who you are; it is just a fabrication of the mind. It is your own homemade mind-manufactured concept, but it has no corresponding reality to it. It is perfectly good as far as the world is concerned because there, you are dealing with other egos. The moment you go beyond your mind, you also go beyond your ego, and suddenly you realize that you are not what you have always thought yourself to be — that your reality is totally different, that it does not consist of your body or of your mind, that in fact you don’t have any word to express it.

But it is still not the ultimate reality; it is just in between, between the ultimate reality and the ultimate falsehood. It is better than the false, but it is lower than the really real. You are still carrying a certain idea of separation from existence. That separation keeps you unavailable to all the blessings which are your birthright. If you can drop those walls and open yourself to the immensity of reality, you will disappear as a separate entity.

But this is only one side. On the other side you will appear as the eternal, the immense, the vast reality — the oceanic experience, which is the only experience of enlightenment or liberation. You have to get rid of the ego first. That is your psychological trauma, or better, your psychological drama. There are religions which have accepted the false ego as the end of all, there is nothing beyond it. That is the religion of all the atheists of different trends, a communist. Or the atheist may not be a communist, but the atheist in any form stops himself at the ego; that is his ultimate reality.

He is the poorest man in the world. All other religions except atheism… because I take atheism also as a sort of religion, a lower form of religion than other religions. Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism, go a step further. They all insist to drop the ego and to recognize your authentic reality, your real self.

But there are religions like Zen which go to the very end of the road. They are not satisfied just by dropping the ego. They are satisfied only when there is nothing left to drop — even the self is gone — when the house is absolutely empty, when you can say, “I am not.”

This nothingness is creating the space for the ultimate to blossom. It does not come from anywhere else. It has always been there, just cluttered with rotten furniture, with unnecessary things. As you remove all those things and your subjectivity becomes empty — just as a room becomes empty as you remove everything from it — in this emptiness of your subjectivity, blossoms the flower of ultimate experience — you are no more.

Naturally, you cannot have your old miseries, your old traumas and dramas. You cannot have any connection with your own past; you have abruptly cut yourself away from all that you used to be. Suddenly a new, totally fresh opening… in a way, you disappear. In a way your authentic essence has the first opportunity to come into its full glory, into its absolute splendor.

This is what enlightenment is. It is a negative process: negate the ego, the psychological; negate the self, the spiritual. Go on negating until nothing remains to negate — and the explosion! Suddenly you have arrived home, with the revelation that you have never been out of your home. You have always been there, your eyes were just focused on objects.

Now all those objects have disappeared. Only a witnessing, pure awareness, has remained. This witnessing is the end of all your misery and all your hell. It is also the beginning of the golden gate — the doors are open for the first time.

Two white rats were chatting through the bars of their laboratory cages. “Tell me,” said the first white rat, “how are you getting along with Dr. Smith?”
“Just fine,” replied the second rat. “It took a while, but I have finally got him trained. Now, whenever I ring the bell, he brings me my dinner.”

It is such a strange world. The psychologist, Dr. Smith, must be thinking he is training rats, and the rats are thinking they are training Dr. Smith! The games of the ego… The wife thinks she is training the husband. All wives are training their husbands their whole lives; the husbands are training their wives. It seems life is just to train and to be trained — for what?
A woman reached Pablo Picasso. She wanted a portrait; the portrait was made. She was absolutely satisfied. She said, “Just one thing, you have forgotten to put great diamonds around my neck, a great diamond ring, diamond bracelets.”

Picasso said, “But you don’t have them.” She said, “It doesn’t matter. I have cancer, and I am not going to survive more than six weeks. And I know my husband is going to marry immediately after I die. He is just waiting for my death, although he goes on saying, `My dear, without you I will not be able to live a single moment.’ I know that without me he will not be able to live a single moment. He will immediately find another woman!”
Picasso said, “I don’t understand the relationship of what you are saying and the diamonds.”

She said, “You don’t understand the woman’s mind. I want my portrait, after my death, to be seen by the woman who my husband is going to marry. Then she will torture him, `Where are these diamonds?’ I cannot leave him, even if I am dead. He has to be trained, he has to be kept under control.” Great idea!
People have forgotten completely to live. Who has time? Everybody is training everybody else, how to be — and nobody seems to be satisfactory, never.

If one wants to live, one should learn one thing, to accept things as they are, and to accept yourself as you are. Start living. Don’t start training for a life sometime in the future. All the misery in the world is created because you have completely forgotten to live; you have become engaged in an activity which has nothing to do with life.

The moment you are married to a man, you start training him to be faithful. Live while he is faithful — it will not be more than two weeks; two weeks is the human limit! Live as deeply as possible — perhaps your living and loving deeply may help him to remain faithful the third week also. And never project too much; three weeks is enough.

My own experience is that if you have lived three weeks lovingly, the fourth week will follow. But you start disturbing things from the first moment. Before you start living, training is needed; you spoil the time by training, and a man who could have loved you for at least two weeks becomes bored within two days.

One woman never married. And when she was dying, a friend asked, “Why have you never married? You are so beautiful.”
She said, “What is the need? As far as training is concerned I train my dog, and he never learns! Every day I am training and he still comes home late in the night. I have a parrot who tells me everything a husband is expected to say. In the morning he says, “Hello darling!” I have a servant who steals, who continuously lies. What need have I for a husband? Everything is being fulfilled.” A husband is needed for these things?

A wife is needed, not to have an experience of intimacy and love, but to make an exhibition of her; just to show around the neighborhood and make everybody jealous that you have such a beautiful woman. Load her with all the ornaments and make everybody jealous of your richness; otherwise, how are you going to show your richness? A wife is a show-window; she shows your achievements, your power. Naturally, you have to train her how to become more social, how to help you in your businesses. The saying seems to be perfect that behind the success of every great man there is a woman — in many different senses. Sometimes just to escape from her, one becomes madly engaged in earning money.

When Henry Ford was asked, “Why did you go on earning and earning, when you have earned so much? It was time to enjoy and relax.”
He said, “That was not the reason for earning. I was engaged in earning first to escape from my wife, and secondly, I became interested in whether I can earn more or she can spend more.” A competition, a lifelong competition!

People get involved in strange dramas. Very few people live authentically — they just act.

A man is sitting in a cinema, and the wife is continually reminding him how the hero is showing his love so deeply to his wife. Finally, the husband says, “Stop all this nonsense! You don’t know how much he’s paid for it! And moreover, it is only acting; it is not reality. I will certainly say he is a good actor.”
The wife said, “Perhaps you are not aware that in actual life also they are wife and husband.”
He said, “My God! If that is true, then he is the greatest actor I have ever seen; otherwise, even on the stage, to show so much love to your own wife is simply beyond human capacity. He is almost a genius as far as acting is concerned.”

People think love is only for actors. It has been noted by psychoanalysts that people are sitting in front of their TV’s for hours. An American watches TV six hours per day on average — that is the average. There may be few maniacs watching nine hours, ten hours, twelve hours. Slowly slowly, watching movies, watching television, watching a football match, watching a tournament, people have simply become observers; they don’t love. Some actor loves — they simply watch. They don’t play; some professional players play — they watch. They don’t do anything; they are glued to their chairs and are just watching everything. But watching and doing are totally different. They feel completely satisfied that they have seen a beautiful film on love. They are completely satisfied that they have seen a great boxing tournament. And they themselves are just onlookers.

It is something of a great calamity that has reduced millions of people to onlookers. And the people who are being watched are actors. They are not in real love, they are being paid for it. They are experts in deceiving people, pretending that what they are doing is real. Their tears are false, their smiles are false, their love is false, their anger is false. What kind of world have we created? The doers are all acting because they are paid for it, and the remaining nondoing world is simply watching.

You are here to live.
You are here to dance.
You are here to experience life.

Others are doing it for you. On your behalf people are loving, people are playing, people are doing all kinds of things. And what is left for you? — just to watch. Death will not be able to take much from you — only your television, because you don’t have anything else. This is the false ego that has created a false life pattern and lifestyle.

Drop everything false. Be authentic and true; that is the first step. And once you are authentic and true, you will see how beautiful it is. And that will create the longing to go beyond, in search of the ultimate truth, the final statement and the final experience, beyond which nothing else exists.

A famous surgeon went on safari to Africa. When he came back his colleagues asked him how it had been. “Ah, it was very disappointing,” he said, “I didn’t kill a thing. I would have been better off staying here in the hospital!”

Fifteen minutes after the Titanic sank, Morie and Louis find themselves on the same overturned raft. The water is freezing, sharks are cruising by, and the raft is slowly sinking. “Ah well,” said Louis, “it could have been worse.”
“Worse? How could it be worse?” screamed Morie.
“Well, we could have bought return tickets!”

People are almost crazy — a tremendous cleansing is needed — and most of their insanity is because of their false life; it is not satisfying. False food cannot be nourishment, false water cannot quench your thirst, and false ego cannot give you real life. It is simple arithmetics.

Source – Osho Book “The Invitation”

Osho – There are no degrees of enlightenment. Once it is, it is there. It is just like jumping into an ocean of feeling. You jump, you become one with it, like a drop dropping into the ocean becomes one with it. But that doesn’t mean that you have known the whole ocean.

The moment is total: the moment of dropping the ego – the moment of ego elimination, the moment of egolessness – is total; it is complete. As far as you are concerned, it is perfect. But as far as the ocean is concerned, as far as the divine is concerned, it is just a beginning, and there will be no end to it.

One thing to remember: ignorance has no beginning, but it has an end. You cannot know from what point your ignorance begins; you always find it there; you are always in the midst of it. You never know the beginning: there is no beginning.

Ignorance has no beginning, but it ends. Enlightenment has a beginning, but it never ends. And both of these become one; they both are one. The beginning of enlightenment and the end of ignorance is a single point. It is one point, a dangerous point with two faces: one face looking toward beginningless ignorance and the other face looking at the beginning of endless enlightenment.

So you reach enlightenment, but yet you never reach it. You come to it, you drop into it, you become one with it, but still a vast unknown remains. And that is the beauty of it; that is the mystery of it. If everything was known in enlightenment, there would be no mystery. If everything became known, the whole thing would become ugly; then there would be no mystery, everything would be dead.

So enlightenment is not ”knowing” in this sense; it is not knowing as a suicide, it is knowing in the sense that it is an opening into greater mysteries. ”Knowing” then means that you have known the mystery, you have become aware of the mystery. It is not that you have solved it: it is not that there is a mathematical formula and now everything is known. Rather, the knowing of enlightenment means that you have come to a point where the mystery has become ultimate. You have known that this is the ultimate mystery; you have known it as a mystery, now it has become so mysterious that you
cannot hope to solve it. Now you leave all hope.

But it is not despair, it is not hopelessness; it is just understanding the nature of the mystery. The mystery is such that it is insoluble; the mystery is such that the very effort to solve it is absurd. The mystery is such that to try to solve it through the intellect is meaningless: you have come to the limit of your thinking. Now there is no thinking at all, and knowing begins.

But this is something very different from the knowing of science. The very word science means knowing, but knowing in the sense of making a mystery demystified. Religious knowing means something quite the contrary. It is not demystifying reality; rather, all that was known before becomes mysterious again, even ordinary things about which you were confident, absolutely confident, that you knew. Now even that gate is lost. Everything, in a way, becomes gateless – endless and unsolvable.

Knowing must be conceived of in this sense: it is participating in the exclusive mystery of existence; it is saying yes to the mystery of life. The intellect – intellectual theory – is not there now; you are face to face with it. It is an existential encounter – not through the mind, but through you, the totality of you. Now you feel it from everywhere: from your body, from your eyes, from your hands, from your heart. The total personality comes in contact with the total mystery.

This is just a beginning. And the end will never be, because the end would mean demystifying it. This is the beginning of enlightenment. There is no end to it, but this is the beginning. You can conceive of the end of ignorance, but there will be no end to this enlightened state of mind. Now you have jumped into a bottomless abyss.

You can conceive of it from so many points of view. If one comes to this state of mind through kundalini it will be an endless flowering. The one thousand petals of the sahasrar do not mean exactly one thousand: the ”one thousand” simply means the greatest number – it is symbolic. This means that the petals of kundalini that are flowering are endless; they will go on opening and opening and opening. So you will know the first opening, but the last will never be there because there is no limit to it. One can come to this point through kundalini or one can come to it through other ways.
Kundalini is not indispensable.

Those who reach enlightenment by other paths come to this same point, but the name will be different, the symbol will be different. You will conceive of it differently because what is happening cannot be described, and what is being described is not exactly what is happening. The description is an allegory, the description is metaphoric. You can say it is like the flowering of a flower – though there is no flower at all. But the feeling is just as if you are a flower that is beginning to open; the same feeling of opening is there. But someone else can conceive of it differently. He can say, ”It is like the opening of a door – a door that leads to the infinite, a door which goes on opening.” So one
can use anything.

Tantra uses sex symbols. They can use them! They say, ”It is a meeting, an endless union.” When tantra says, ”It is just like maithuna, intercourse, what is meant is: a meeting of individuals with the infinite – but endless, eternal. It can be conceived of in this way, but any conception is bound to be just a metaphor. It is symbolic; it is bound to be. But when I say symbolic, I do not mean that a symbol has no meaning.

A symbol has meaning as far as your individuality is concerned because you conceived of it in this way. You cannot conceive of it otherwise. A person who has not loved flowers, who has not known flowering, who has passed by flowers but remained unacquainted with them, whose whole life is not concerned with the realm of flowering, cannot feel it as a flowering. But if you feel it as a flowering, it means so many things; it means that the symbol is natural to you, it corresponds somehow to your personality.

Source – Osho Book “Meditation: The Art of Ecstasy”