Osho – The word suchness is of immense importance in Buddha’s approach towards reality. The word suchness is as important in Buddhism as God is in other religions.

The Buddhist word for suchness is TATHATA. It means, “Seeing things are such, don’t take any attitude, don’t make any opinion, don’t judge or condemn.” The Buddhist meditation consists of suchness. The method is very practical and very deep-going. Buddha has said to his disciples, “Just watch things as they are, without interfering.”

For example, you have a headache. The moment you note it, immediately the opinion enters that “this is not good. Why should I have a headache? What should I do not to have it?” You are immediately worried, you have taken an opinion, you are against it, you have started repressing it. Either you have to repress it chemically, through an aspro or novalgin, or you have to repress it in the consciousness — you don’t look at it, you put it aside. You get involved in something else, you want to be distracted in something else so you can forget it. But in both ways you have missed suchness.

What will Buddha suggest? Buddha says take note twice, “Headache, headache.” Don’t feel inimical towards it, neither friendly nor antagonistic. Just take a simple note, as if it has nothing to do with you: “Headache, headache.” And remain undisturbed, undistracted, uninfluenced by it, without any opinion.

See the point. Immediately, ninety percent of the headache is gone… because a headache is not a real headache, ninety percent arises out of the antagonistic opinion. Immediately you will see that the greater part of it is no longer there.

And another thing will be noted: sooner or later you will see that the headache is disappearing in something else — maybe you are now feeling anger. What happened? If you repress the headache you will never come to know what its real message was. The headache was there just as an indicator that you are full of anger in this moment and the anger is creating a tension in the head, hence the headache.

But you watched, you simply took note of it — “Headache, headache” — you remained impartial, objective. Then the headache disappears. And the headache gives you the message that “I am not a headache, I am anger.”

Now Buddha says take note again, “Anger, anger.” Now don’t become angry with anger, otherwise again you are trapped and you have missed suchness. If you say, “Anger, anger,” ninety percent of the anger will be gone immediately. This is a very practical method. And the ten percent that will be left will release its message. You may come to see that it is not anger, it is ego. Take note again: “Ego, ego.” And so on and so forth. One thing is connected with another, and the deeper you move the closer you come to the original cause. And once you have come to the original cause, the chain is broken — there is no beyond it.

A moment will come when you will take note of the last link in the chain, and then nothingness. Then you are released from the whole chain, and there will arise great purity, great silence. That silence is called suchness. This has to be practiced continuously. Sometimes it may happen that you forget, and you have made an opinion unconsciously, mechanically.

Then Buddha says remember again, “Opinion, opinion.” Now don’t get distracted by this — that you have made an opinion. Don’t get depressed that you have missed. Just take note, “Opinion, opinion,” and suddenly you will see — ninety percent of the opinion is gone, ten percent remains, and that releases its message to you. What is its message? The message is that there is some inhibition, some taboo; out of that taboo the opinion has arisen. A sex desire comes in the mind and immediately you say, “This is bad.” This is opinion. Why is it bad? — Because you have been taught it is bad, it is a taboo. Take note, “Taboo, taboo,” and go on.

Sometimes it will also happen that you have judged — not only judged, you have made an opinion; not only made an opinion, you have become depressed that you have missed. Then take note again, “Depression, depression,” and go on.
Whenever you become conscious, at whatsoever point, from there take note — just a simple note — and leave the whole thing. And soon you will see the entangled mind is no longer as entangled as it has always been. Things start disappearing, and there will be moments of suchness, tathata, when you will be simply there and the existence is there and there is no opinion between you and existence. All is undisturbed by thought, unpolluted by thought. Existence is, but mind has disappeared. That state of no-mind is called suchness.

Source – Osho Book “The Diamond Sutra”

Osho – False things are always cheap. You can always purchase a mask for your face, a beautiful mask. To transform your face into a beautiful face is an arduous journey. It needs great transformation in your being because your eyes will show that which is within you, your face will radiate your inner reality.

Unless your whole being is transformed you cannot have real beauty. Authentic grace is possible only when your innermost core becomes illumined, when it becomes a light unto itself. Then certainly from your eyes, from your face, from your hands, from all your actions and gestures, your inner reality is conveyed. But that needs great work.

To purchase a false mask is very simple. You can purchase a mask and look like Buddha or Jesus or Krishna. And you can learn how to act like somebody else. Acting is not a difficult thing. To be a real Christ is one thing, to act as Christ is another. Millions of Christians are doing that act — particularly the pope, the bishops, the priests. In their own way they are just acting.

Just a few months ago, the pope enacted the whole scene of Jesus’ crucifixion. He carried a small golden cross on his shoulders — a golden cross! Thousands of people followed him to a small hillock by the side of the Vatican, and there he washed the feet of a poor man who had already been cleaned and bathed and prepared for the whole scene. And the pope kissed his feet. This is all an act. And then he came back — no crucifixion! (laughter) At least they should have crucified him — then the whole act would have been done. The real thing was left out. They should have crucified him and then waited for three days to see whether he resurrected or not.

Acting is so cheap, that’s why millions of people have chosen the easier course, the short-cut. But once you choose a lie you will have to choose a thousand other lies to support it, and you will become afraid of truth because a single truth will destroy the whole edifice of your falsity, of your pseudo-ness.

It is because of this that the Jews had to crucify Jesus. He was destroying their traditional lies. Socrates was poisoned for the simple reason that he started talking about the truth, he started seducing people into enquiring what the truth is and not being blind followers, not being believers but enquirers. And that was a danger to the whole establishment. The establishment immediately took action. This man had to be stopped. If he did not listen then he would have to be killed.

Why have people been so much against truth? Because of their investment in the lies. But the trouble with lies is that although they are cheap, simple, easily available… You can find all kinds of lies in the churches, in the mosques , in the temples, in the gurudwaras, everywhere. You can choose. They come in all shapes and sizes; whatsoever fits you, you can choose that kind of belief. But you will remain miserable.

That is the real price you are paying. On the surface they look cheap but ultimately you will come to realise one day that your whole life has been wasted, your whole soul has been destroyed — and you have done it. It is a suicidal act, and your whole life will be nothing but a long tragedy, a sequence of miseries, from one misery to another. Of course one will be always hoping that something good is going to happen but it never happens. Lies can never deliver the goods; only truth can bring bliss to you, only truth can bring celebration to your life, only truth can bring spring.

I have chosen for my sannyasins the orange colour. In India it is the colour of spring — when all the trees burst forth in red colours. They dance, they sing, suddenly their whole being is rejoicing. A tree flowers only out of overflowing energy. It is so overflooded with joy it has to share it with the existence. Flowers represent bliss, celebration, spring, youth, resurrection.

Remember, to be initiated into sannyas means to be initiated into truth. I don’t ask my sannyasins to renounce the world; I certainly ask you to renounce all lies, falsehoods, hypocrisies — that’s enough. If you renounce all lies your whole past is renounced. You will be reborn; in that renunciation is a rebirth. And when life is fresh and clean of all the junk of the past you can again have the same wondering eyes of a child, the same innocence. And it is innocence that can have a communion with the ultimate — not knowledge but innocence.

Source – Osho Book “I Am Not As Thunk As You Drink I Am”

Osho – Everything is really nonsense, toys to play with. When you are immature those toys are good, teddy bears. But when you become a little mature, a little understanding arises and you simply start feeling what nonsense you have been doing up to now.

When you are here with me, your understanding starts moving with me a little higher than it is ordinarily. With me it starts flying into the sky, so you look downwards and everything seems nonsense. The altitude changes. Back in your room again, those things will start seeming sensible.

So try to understand something while you are here – that it is a question of your altitude. If you are a little higher, then in the valley things seem to be just meaningless, nothing to be disturbed about. They don’t belong to you, you don’t belong to them. They are just irrelevant.

Back again in the valley, you have to remember what happened on the peak. Then only, you grow. Otherwise, again and again you are with me and again and again a vision arises and you don’t use it. Back home you again become the same; you fall victim to your old patterns. Then it is not going to help. It is going to be only a momentary glimpse. These glimpses should become the very base of your being. So while you are here with me, whatsoever happens, whatsoever you start feeling, carry it while you are not with me. Carry it there, take care of it so that it is not lost.

When you come to me be very alert about what happens here, because a darshan is not a conversation. It is not even a dialogue. It is a subtle transfer of energy, a subtle communication. In a subtle way I try to enter you. I knock at your door. There are moments when it becomes possible and you open your door and suddenly in that light, in that new breeze passing through you, you can see what things are meaningful and what things are meaningless,, what is essential and what is non-essential. When you go from here, carry that insight, treasure it, protect it, remember it.

Then wherever you are you will be with me, because if the insight is with you, then you are with me. And whenever you are again getting lost in old habits, jerk your being, shake yourself out of it and just remember that it is meaningless, it is irrelevant. And suddenly you will see it is irrelevant, it is meaningless.

Source – Osho Book “Dance Your Way to God”

[Osho suggested to a sannyasin to start a small meditation centre.]

Osho – It will be good for you also. This is my observation, that there are many things that you learn only when you start teaching them. The best way to learn a thing is to teach it. And you grow more when you are less concerned about your own growth and more concerned with others’ growth, their problems. Deep down no problem is such that it is not yours. Every human being carries on the same type of problem; degrees differ, but they’re almost the same problems.

So when you are helping somebody to resolve something, to decide something, to come out of a vague, confused state, to settle, to centre, to be rooted, grounded; whenever you are helping somebody, you become aware of many things about yourself, because they are your problems also. When you help somebody to really solve a problem, you have attained a key.

It will be difficult when you are really involved in your own problem because you are too close to it; you cannot be an observer, you cannot be aloof and neutral. You cannot be a witness when he problem is yours. But when the problem is somebody else’s you are wise, and you learn much. When the problem comes in your own life, you will be able to cope with it more easily, because you know that the problems are just problems; they don’t belong to you or to me, or to anybody else. And keys are just keys. Solving many probems of others, you are solving your own life, and by helping others, you are helped.

That’s why I go on insisting that people go back and start helping others. In the beginning you feel a little apprehensive, because you know that you cannot even help yourself. I also know it. Knowing it I give you some work to get you out of your self-concern. Sometimes the self-concern is the only hindrance. When you help others you have moved out of your own ego, you are more relaxed. This happens every day in life.

If the surgeon is going to operate on his own wife, it will be difficult, almost impossible. His hands will tremble. He may be a great surgeon, but when it comes to his own wife or his own child, he will have to seek somebody else’s help; he will have to ask some other surgeon – because now the problem is so close. It is as if he is operating on himself. As it is difficult to operate on yourself, it is difficult to operate on people who are close to you; you lose all skill. But whenever you are helping somebody who is not close to you, suddenly you become wise, you have the skill.

So always remember, never avoid an opportunity in which you can be of help to somebody. It pays… it will make you more and more centred, alert. And you may not have to pass through many things; helping others, they will be resolved in you. If you go on helping others, thinking, meditating for others about their problems, watching, analysing, finding clues, you forget yourself completely, and one day suddenly you will see that your own problems have disappeared on the way. So you go… and I am going to work – don’t be worried. Just call your friends, and start a small beginning.

Source – Osho Book “Hsin Hsin Ming: The Book of Nothing”

Krishna

Osho – Krishna is one of the incarnations of god. The Hindu concept of god coming to earth is not like the Christian – not that god has only one son, not that god only comes in one form, as Christ: god comes in many forms, god comes in every age. God comes in every country, every time, because god is not yet in a state of becoming careless towards man, and will never be. God still hopes that man can be redeemed, that man is not a hopeless case, so god comes again and again.

And whenever there is enlightenment, god takes possession of the enlightened person, because the enlightened person is not a person at all; he is just emptiness. And only in that emptiness can god take possession. So whenever there is this emptiness, whenever the ego disappears, god immediately appears. These are two aspects of the same phenomenon: the ego disappearing and god appearing; the death of the ego is the birth of god.

So in India we have many incarnations of god. Every enlightened person is a god person. His own personality is gone. Now he is just a hollow bamboo, and god can make a flute out of him and can sing his song. And one of the best songs that he has sung is through Krishna… one of the most beautiful, most enchanting. The very word ’krishna’ means enchanting, that which attracts, magical, that which is like a magnet and by which people’s hearts are suddenly moved. And Krishna is also one of the most affirmative expressions of god.

Jesus is a little sad. And who knows? – Christians may be right; they say he never laughed. At least in the way they have depicted him he seems to be completely incapable of laughter. He may have laughed, but the story that has come through the Christians is not of a laughing Christ, and you cannot think of him as dancing. Somehow they have made him fit with the cross. He looks perfectly made for it; the sadness, the heaviness, the seriousness, go perfectly well with the cross.

Krishna goes perfectly well with the flute, with flowers around his neck, with beautiful clothes – the clothes of a dancer, with ornaments on his body and with a throne, with all the grandeur, with a crown made of peacock feathers… utterly beautiful, utterly affirmative. The message is that religion should be a matter of dance, laughter, love. It should not be serious. It should be light – it should not be grave. It should be capable of loving this world and of affirming life, not negating it.

Source – Osho Book “Don’t Look Before You Leap”

Osho – Ananda means bliss, blissfulness, neelamber means blue sky: blissful blue sky. Blue is the symbol for depth. The sky is not really blue; it looks blue just because of the infinite depth. Neelamber is one of the names of Krishna, because he is as blue as the blue sky.

So the first thing: abysmal depth… and one has to disappear into that abysmal depth. It is not like falling in that depth, because if you are falling then the depth cannot be very much because you are there; you will make it shallow. Going into depth is more like disappearing. It is as when you put a cube of salt into water and you don’t know where it has gone. It has started disappearing, and a moment comes when it is nowhere to be found. But you can taste the water and it will be there.

Buddha was asked, ’Where will you be when you are gone from the body. Because this is your last incarnation in the body; you will not come back again to any womb. Where will you be?’
He says, ’Taste existence and you will find me there. As salt dissolves into water I will dissolve into the cosmos. And if you are capable of tasting it you will taste me.’

The existence is becoming more and more enlightened, because more and more enlightened people are disappearing into it. Man is not falling, man is evolving. Whenever one buddha again disappears into existence it is more salty. Of course existence is vast and big, and a buddha howsoever big is again just a drop, but still that one drop changes the quality of the very existence. You would not have been the same if Jesus had not existed in the world, although it is very difficult scientifically to find out how much he has affected you, how much buddha has affected you, how much lao tzu has affected you. You may not even have heard the names of many buddhas, still they have affected you because they are flowing in your blood. You are breathing them; you cannot remain unaffected by them. The trees have absorbed them and the stars have absorbed them, and wherever you look something of them is present….

So one has to disappear into the depth. When one disappears then only is there depth. If one is, then it is just a pretension of depth; it cannot be real depth. Real depth cannot allow the ego to exist. Ego as such is the superficial. It is just as on the surface of the ocean there are waves, but if you go deep there are no waves. There cannot be any waves because there is no wind. The ego is just on the surface of the mind – those waves and ripples and all that. Once you start entering deeper into your being all that disappears – the mind and the ego and the thoughts. And it is a bottomless abyss: it has no boundary to it. That is the meaning of the sky.

Sky is very symbolic in eastern mysticism… the greatest symbol there is. It means many things. One: it is always present, yet absent. It is present everywhere yet absent. Its very way of presence is being absent. It exists by not being. That’s how god exists. That’s why you cannot show where god is; that’s why you cannot pinpoint him. He is everywhere and nowhere… and that is the quality of the sky too. It is not just an accident that whenever people pray they look at the sky. Unknowingly, they raise their eyes to the sky, because god is like the sky: present and yet utterly absent.

The sky contains all, and nothing contains the sky. God contains all, and nothing contains god. The sky penetrates everything and yet never interferes. It is a miracle! It penetrates without trespassing. It is so non-violent. It accepts all: the sinner and the saint, the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. It makes no distinctions: it has no likes, no dislikes. It has no mind. It is simply open and available to all, whosoever wants to partake of it. It makes no conditions. It is unconditionally everybody’s: man and woman, animals, birds, trees, rocks, stars and sun. It is available to all. It protects but it never patronises. It surrounds you within and without… without ever touching you. And these are the qualities of god.

Black clouds come and go and the sky makes space available for them. White clouds come and go and the sky makes space for them with no distinction; it is choiceless. The acceptance is total; Buddha calls it tathata. The sky exists in a state of tathata, suchness: whatsoever is the case is good. Clouds come and go; the sky remains, it abides. It is eternal, it is timeless. It is always the same. It is the ancientmost and yet as fresh as the dewdrops; it never becomes old. So meditate on the sky, and whenever you have time just lie down on the ground, look at the sky.

Let that be your contemplation. If you want to pray, pray to the sky. If you want to meditate, meditate on the sky… sometimes with open eyes, sometimes with closed eyes, because the sky is within too. As it is big without, within it is the same. We are just standing on the threshold of the inner sky and the outer sky, and they are exactly proportionate. As the outside sky is infinite, so is the inner sky. We are just standing on the threshold. Either way you can be dissolved, and these are the two ways to dissolve.

You asked what prayer and what meditation is. If you dissolve in the outside sky, then it is prayer. If you dissolve into the inside sky, then it is meditation. But finally it comes to the same: you are dissolved. And those two skies are not two; they are two only because you are. You are the dividing line. When you disappear, the dividing line disappears. Then in is out and out is in.

The extrovert prays because he can only relate to the outward. The introvert meditates. The extrovert has to conceive of a god there as ’thou’ so he can have a dialogue. The introvert need not have any god; he can simply close his eyes and start disappearing. The extrovert needs some help – somebody there, objective. Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, are all extrovert religions. Jainism, Buddhism, Taoism, are introvert religions; they don’t have anything like prayer. Prayer is just absurd in Buddhism; because it carries the duality it is absurd.

Prayer is more like love: the other is needed. Whether the other is or is not, is not the point, but the prayer becomes possible only through the excuse of the other. If there is no god then god has to be invented, otherwise the extrovert will never be able to reach to the ultimate. Once he reaches he will know, but on the way he needs a support, an objective support, something there he can relate to. Prayer is a dialogue.

The introvert is enough alone. He need not create a god. God may be there; he is not needed. Whenever Buddha is asked, ’What do you say about god?’ he says, ’It is irrelevant.’ That was the attitude of socrates too. He says, ’If gods are there, perfectly good, but they are irrelevant.’ They don’t get in the way of a socrates or a buddha.

Prayer is akin to love and meditation is akin to silence. Prayer is a bridge between the two. Meditation is absolute aloneness – not lonely, not solitary, but alone, in a state of solitude. These are the two ways. Man is standing just in the middle of the two and he is the dividing line, so whether he disappears this way or that, once he disappears the dividing line disappears. Then there is no prayer and no meditation….

Source – Osho Book “Only Losers Can Win in This Game”

[A sannyasin said that he was feeling much better since last darshan, when Osho had suggested he undertake much physical activity – running, walking, swimming, or whatever he enjoyed.]

Osho – You have much energy and you had not been using it creatively. Whenever energy is not used creatively it becomes destructive, stagnant, and by and by a prison of solid rock is created around you.

There are two types of people – those with high energy and those with low energy. If the high energy people don’t use their energy there will be problems: aggression, anger – anger for no reason at all, and against any and everybody – violence, hatred, jealousy.

Low energy people have a different type of problem – sadness, lethargy, a disinterestedness in life, and a dragging and dull attitude. So the problems of a low energy person need to be tackled in a different way. He needs more relaxation, and methods which don’t use energy, but rather allow him to relax into the non-tense so that energy is not dissipated in any way. Buddhist methods, Vipassana, are for low energy people. For a high energy person such methods will be a problem. He would not know what to do – so much energy and nothing to do, so the energy becomes suppressed. Dynamic methods and catharsis are for high energy people.

The East is basically low energy: poverty, malnutrition, and centuries and centuries of passivity. The West is high energy. You can divide it into male and female, yin and yang. Male means a high energy person, and female means a low energy person – it has nothing to do with man and woman. So you are a high energy person, remember that always. Whenever you feel any problem arising, that is simply an indication that you need more work, more creativity. It doesn’t matter what you do, but do something physical – anything physical is beautiful. If you don’t, then the mind uses the energy round and round in circles.

So swim or dance – do something with the body. Body movements are going to help you tremendously. It has been good, and you look perfectly well. But remember, don’t forget!

Source – Osho Book “Hammer on The Rock”

Question – How may I come to you?

Osho – There is no need. You have to come to YOU, not to me. I am not here to create a new kind of neurosis. There are enough alternatives available! Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Jainism, Buddhism… three hundred religions in the world. You can choose your own kind of neurosis; they come in all shapes, in all sizes. You can easily pick any kind of fanaticism, neurosis, and that will keep you engaged your whole life — but simply engaged.
It will not give you time or space to dance, to sing, to celebrate.

All kinds of goals basically create deep down in you a split, a hypocrisy. You are that which you are and you start trying to be that which you are not. In the beginning it is only an effort to be that which you are not; slowly slowly you start pretending too that you are becoming that which you are not, because to encounter failure continuously is very humiliating. At least you can pretend to others, you can wear masks, you can create a certain persona, a personality, a garb, a facade, and you can start living behind that facade. And people will look only at your mask and they will believe it, and once they start believing it — you will start believing it — because they are believing that you are holy, that you are saintly, that you are this and you are that.

It is a very strange game: you start it, and soon you will be caught in it yourself — in your own lie! And once you are caught in your own lie you will try to hide the truth, to evade the truth, to repress the truth; you will begin investing more and more in your lie. You may be a marigold and you may invest your whole life in being a rose. You may be a rose and you may invest your whole life in being a diamond — which you cannot be. This is the sheer stupidity
of the experience humanity has been living with for centuries.

Hence what I say hurts. It is not a question of small dimensions, it is a question of immense dimensions. For thousands of years man has lived a hypocritical life, utterly false, pseudo, and now to shatter his whole investment, to shatter his whole mind, certainly hurts. Hence everybody is going to be against me except just a few people who are intelligent
enough to wake up.

“My so-called liberal mother is really such a prude,” the high-school cheerleader sadly told her locker partner. “She said that I could only pet with my dates if they didn’t touch me below the waist.”
“Oh, that’s too bad,” her schoolmate commiserated. “What do you intend to do about it?”
“Well,” the cheerleader giggled, “the first thing I’m going to do is learn to stand on my head.”

That’s what your religious people have been doing: SIRSHASANA — the art, the yoga of standing on your head. It certainly fulfills something: the ego. Whenever you can do something unnatural or at least pretend that you are doing it, it fulfills the ego. Nature cannot fulfill the ego. If you eat and enjoy eating, what is there to brag about? If you make love and you enjoy it, what is there to brag about? But if you become a celibate then there is something
to brag about, if you fast then you have something which nobody else has. Then you can feel superior, higher, greater, bigger, chosen. The unnatural has an attraction, although it destroys your whole life, but the attraction is in the ego. And unless we drop this whole game of the ego, hypocrisy cannot disappear from the world.

Rabbi Goldstein had just moved into his apartment and decided he should get acquainted with his across-the-hall neighbor. When the door was opened, he was pleasantly surprised to be confronted by a young damsel considerably more than passing fair and considerably less than fully clad. Though justifiably flustered by this smiling apparition, the rabbi nevertheless managed a remark singularly appropriate to the occasion: “Hi, I’m your new sugar across the hall — can I borrow a cup of neighbor?”

You can try to be unnatural, but your nature will assert itself in a thousand and one ways; it will come up again and again. You will have to hush it, you will have to repress it.

It was eight a.m. at a Las Vegas gambling palace and two lone bettors were still standing by a dice table awaiting further competition, when a lusciously endowed brunette attired in a suit happened by.
“Although it’s quite early in the day,” she announced, “I feel lucky this morning. I’d like to roll the dice once for twenty thousand dollars. Would the two of you care to take me up on the wager?”
“Sure, lady,” answered one of the men, “we’ll take your action.”
“I hope you gentlemen won’t mind,” she then said, “but the only way I can get lucky is to roll the dice without my panties on.”

So saying, the lissome lovely proceeded to remove her slacks and panties. With a shout of “Mamma needs a new pair of pants!” she rolled the dice, gave a squeal of delight and yelled, “I win!” She then picked up her money, her slacks and her underwear and made a hasty exit from the room.
The two men exchanged double takes, and one of them blurted out, “Hey, what did she roll anyway?”
“How the hell should I know?” snapped the other, “I thought YOU were watching the dice!”

We have created such a strange humanity, and the whole rationale of this whole mad earth, this mad humanity, is religious, spiritual. Search for the truth, search for God, search for the peaks, and you have lost yourself in the search. There is only one search — to find yourself — and for that you need not go anywhere else. For that you have to withdraw from all your desires, ambitions, goals. You have to come back home.

Rahaman, you are not to become me. I am not your enemy — I cannot tell you to become me. If you try to become me you will only be a carbon copy, a hypocrite, you will only be an imitation. Those who have gathered around me are not my followers, not my imitators — just fellow companions, fellow celebrants, dance partners! Existence to me is a carnival, it is just a festival. It is for those who know how to dance. And the dance need not wait for tomorrow –
tomorrow never comes — the dance has to be now, here, this very moment. This very silence has to become the dance!

So don’t hanker for any peaks, just be where you are totally, utterly, and the goose is out! Hanker for the peaks, and the goose is in the bottle. Those peaks are the bottle, those goals are the bottle. They keep you encapsulated, they keep you imprisoned. The future is your bondage and the present is your freedom.

Here I differ totally from Jesus, from Buddha, from Krishna, from Mahavira, from everybody else. Knowingly, unknowingly, they have created a pattern of imitation for humanity. I want to destroy this whole pattern, this whole status quo. I want you to be just yourself. Whatsoever you are, you are beautiful as you are; you need not be somebody else to be beautiful.

That’s the only way to enjoy, but it is up to you. If you want to suffer… and there are people who love suffering, they cannot live without suffering; their only joy is in suffering and more suffering. The more they suffer the more they feel that they are doing something great. Then it is up to you; then don’t make any fuss about it, then go to the peaks. But the peaks won’t satisfy you because from those peaks you will again be looking far ahead for further
peaks.

The headmistress of a girls’ boarding school was abruptly awakened one night by one of her students, a rather mature-looking sixteen-year-old. “Miss Forbes,” she cried, “I’ve just been raped!”
“Now, be calm, Melissa,” the headmistress told her firmly. “The first thing you must do is to go to the refrigerator and eat half a lemon.”
“Half a lemon?” asked the surprised student. “Will that keep me from getting pregnant?”
“No,” admitted the headmistress, “but it WILL get rid of that silly grin.”

That’s what religious people have been doing: removing all your smiles, making you look as sad as possible, as long-faced as possible. Christians say Jesus never laughed. If it is true, then whatsoever he has said is wrong. If what he has said is right then this cannot be true, because the man continuously says, “Rejoice! I say to you again and again rejoice!” And Christians say he never laughed! Laughter seems to be mundane for them, laughter seems to be worldly; it is not good for holy people. Holy people have to be continuously sad, hence they have created a long tradition of sad, ill, sick, pathological people whom they worship.

The more pathological you look the more you will be worshipped. The more you are a sadist and a masochist the more you will be worshipped. Torture yourself and teach others to torture themselves — they call it asceticism — become a monk, renounce the world… The word “monk” means one who lives alone, escapes from people. And in fact it is
relationship that is the opportunity to grow, it is love that is a challenge to growth, it is friendship that brings you to your real flavor. It is life in all its adventures, challenges, that helps you to become mature, integrated.

Monks remain retarded, they remain stupid. They are bound to remain stupid — they have been taken out of the soil of life. At the most they are greenhouse plants: bring them into the world and they will immediately shrink and die. They are very afraid people, continuously trembling, afraid of hell, which does not exist, greedy for heaven, which does not exist — and between hell and heaven missing everything that does exist.

The inexperienced young man had heard that a good way to arouse sexual desire in a girl who proved impervious to the more usual forms of wooing was to forthrightly place her hand on his organ. Having parked with a date for more than an hour in the local lovers’ lane with nothing to show for it but some sisterly kisses, he decided to try this new technique. The response was instantaneous: the girl berated him with the longest stream of invectives he had
ever heard. Stunned, he tried to reply, but she refused to listen, insisting instead that he take her home at once.

As he pulled up in front of her house, she again started shouting imprecations. Finally out of breath, she demanded, “Well, do you have anything to say for yourself?”
“Yes, I have,” was his pained reply. “Please let go.”

Source – Osho Book “The Goose is Out”

Osho – Look at the flowers — and not in a scientific way, because when you look at a rose in a scientific way it is a totally different kind of thing that you are looking at. It is not the same rose that a poet experiences.

The experience does not depend on the object, the experience depends on the experiencer, on the quality of experiencing. When the scientist looks at the rose he thinks of colors, chemistry, physics, atoms, electrons, neutrons and whatnot — except beauty. Beauty does not come into his vision, and that’s what the rose is.

To the poet, to the painter, the rose is a totally different experience: the rose is a manifestation of the unknown, of the transcendental, of the secret of life itself. It represents something of the divine, it brings into existence something of the sky, something of faraway stars. It grows on the earth, it is rooted in the earth, but it is not just part of the earth; it contains far more than that. It is not the sum total of its constituent parts. The scientist only comes to know it as a sum total of its constituent parts — there is nothing more to it — but the poet starts feeling something plus.

The moment you dissect the rose, the beauty disappears. The rose was only an opportunity for the beauty to descend, a receptivity of the earth to the sky, a receptivity of the gross to the subtle. The poet feels that; but it is a feeling, it is not a thought. So when you come out of your lab, forget all about atoms, forget all about the cosmos; rather, start looking afresh, with a different vision — the vision of a child, the vision of a poet, the vision of a lover. When you look at the woman you love never think of her in terms of biology, otherwise you will have missed the whole point. She is not biology, she has a being far greater than any biology can contain. When you kiss your woman don’t think in terms of what is being transferred from lips to lips chemically, otherwise you will be disgusted! You won’t see any poetry, you will be puzzled by what all these poets have been talking about. It is only an exchange of bacteria, germs, millions of germs — dangerous too. It can be a matter of life and death — beware!

When you are making love to your woman don’t think in terms of hormones, avoid that nonsense, otherwise the whole love act will simply be a mechanical phenomenon. You will be there and yet not there. You will be just an observer, not a participant. And the poet’s whole secret is participation.

Looking at a flower, become the flower, dance around the flower, sing a song. The wind is cool and crisp, the sun is warm, and the flower is in its prime; the flower is dancing in the wind, rejoicing, singing a song, singing alleluia. Participate with it! Drop indifference, objectivity, detachment. Drop all your scientific attitudes. Become a little more fluid, more melting, more merging. Let the flower speak to your heart, let the flower enter your being. Invite him — he is a guest! And then you will have some taste of mystery.

This is the first step towards the mysterious, and the ultimate step is: if you can be a participant for a moment, you have known the key, the secret. Then become a participant in everything that you are doing. Walking, don’t just do it mechanically, don’t just go on watching it — be it. Dancing, don’t do it technically; technique is irrelevant You may be technically correct and yet you will miss the whole joy of it. Dissolve yourself in the dance, become the dance, forget about the dancer.

When such deep unity starts happening in many many phases of your life; when all around you start having such tremendous experiences of disappearance, egolessness, nothingness; when the flower is there and you are not, the rainbow is there and you are not; when the clouds are roaming in the sky both within and without and you are not; when there is utter silence as far as you are concerned; when there is nobody in you, just a pure silence, a virgin silence, undistracted, undisturbed by logic, thought, emotion, feeling, that is the moment of meditation. Mind is gone, and when mind is gone mystery enters.

Mystery and mind cannot exist together; they are not, by their very nature, coexistential. Just like darkness and light: you cannot have both in your room. If you want darkness you have to extinguish the light; if you want light then you have to lose darkness. You can only have one, for the simple reason that the presence of light is the absence of darkness, the presence of darkness is the absence of light; they are not two things, in fact. The same phenomenon, present, is light; absent, is darkness. Now you cannot manage both, to be present and absent together.

Mind is the presence of the non-mysterious, the logical, and meditation is the presence of the mysterious, the miraculous. Hence, move from the mind. Let art, poetry, painting, dancing become more important — they will bring you closer to meditation — and finally take the plunge. If you have tasted something of poetry you will gather enough courage to take the ultimate plunge.

Hence, to me religion consists of three layers; the first layer is of science. Just as your body consists of material, atomic constituents, so religion consists first, the most peripheral part, of science. I am not against science — science is an absolute need — but it is only a peripheral phenomenon, the most superficial, the first concentric circle around your center.

Then comes the second concentric circle, which is deeper than science; that is of art, aesthetics. And then the third; that is meditation. And if you have entered these three concentric circles, slowly slowly you will attain to the fourth. The fourth in the East is called TURIYA; we have not given it any name, we have simply given it a number, “the fourth.” Nothing can be said about it, that’s why no name has been given to it. It is even beyond mystery. Meditation will take you into the mysterious, but there is still something more than that; that is inexpressible. Nothing can be said about it, nothing has ever been said about it, nothing will ever be said about it, but it has been experienced.

Source – Osho Book “The Goose is Out”

Osho – Anand Ciska. Anand means bliss; ciska means freedom. Bliss is freedom and vice versa: freedom is bliss. In fact they are two sides of the same coin. Misery arises out of limitation. Bliss is to know that we are infinite, that even the sky is not our limit, that we are one with the whole. Only then does one know both the taste of freedom and bliss. They come together simultaneously, in the same instant.

And freedom is the goal of life. We are caught in many limitations – the body, the mind – and we have created many artificial limitations – of nation, of religion, of color, of race – and all together they create a prison around us. Just disidentify yourself from the body, mind, from all that limits you, and out of this disidentification, freedom arises and a fragrance that is bliss.

Prem Grada. Prem means love; grada means brave. Love is the bravest thing in life because it needs your total courage. It needs your total courage because the ego has to be dropped. Love can happen only when the ego disappears. With love you cannot have the ego, with the ego you cannot have love. They can’t exist together, there is no possibility of their coexistence. If the ego is there, then love is false, pseudo; it is something else masquerading as love. It can even be hate with the label love.

The ego has to be utterly dropped, and it can be dropped because it is not really part of our being. It is an artifact, it is our own creation. In itself it has no substance, it is a shadow. Hence to look deep down into it is to make it disappear; to look for it is not to find it at all. It exists only because we never look within.

Look within… let the ego disappear, and then you will be surprised: great love is welling up – love that you have never known before, love that you have not even dreamed about, love that is not a relationship but a state of being, an unconditional sharing of joy.

Source: Osho Book “The Rainbow Bridge”

Question – Why are you so much against logic?

Osho - Because it is logical to be against logic.
Logic proves nothing, that’s why I am against logic. It only pretends to prove; it proves nothing. It is an empty game, verbal. But the pretension is such that millions of people are befooled by it, and down the ages we have been trained for logic, so it has appeal.

But logic has never proved anything. Proof comes only through experience, never through logic. Logic can help to explain your experience. No experience is ever derived out of logic. Yes, logic can be a servant. when you have attained to a certain experience, logic can help to explain it, logic can help to make it clear. Logic is secondary. So, the first thing: logic proves nothing.

Reporter: They say the moon is made of green cheese. Is this correct?
Spaceman: We didn’t find any cheese on the moon.
Reporter: (laughing) Perhaps all the moon mice had eaten it.
Spaceman: We didn’t find any mice on the moon either.
Reporter: What do you expect with all the cheese gone?

Now this is how logic goes on moving: it is circular.

A famous Sufi story:
Mulla Nasruddin was seen by the people in the market-place throwing some seeds all around. From his bag he would take one fistful of seeds and throw. So a crowd gathered, and they asked ‘What are you doing, Mulla?’
He said ‘These seeds are very miraculous. If you throw these seeds, then no lion, no tiger, no elephant, no snakes, no wild animals ever come around.’
So they laughed. They said ‘Mulla, there are no wild animals, no elephants, no tigers, no lions, no snakes here!’
And Mulla said ‘See! They work! They are a miracle, they have miraculous power. It is because of the seeds they are not here.’

Logic is a game good only for small children to play. But a few people remain childish even when they have become old. They may be professors in the universities, but they go on playing with the game. It is a good game, an intelligent game like chess — but a game all the same.

First, logic never proves anything. And second logic can prove anything — this way or that, for or against. Logic is a whore! It has no grounds of its own. You can bribe logic, and it will be with you. Your enemy can bribe logic, and logic will be with the enemy.

A certain French general named Guillard, who lived in the time of King Louis XV and was renowned for his gallantry towards women, said, on one occasion, that there was no such thing as an ugly woman. His remark was overheard by a lady whose face was disfigured by a squashed nose and who thereupon accosted him with the words ‘Confess, General, that you are now face to face with a really ugly woman.’

‘Not at all, madame’ replied the general. ‘You are like all women, an angel fallen from heaven. You merely had the misfortune to fall on your nose.’

Logic cannot prove anything, that’s why it can prove ANYTHING. Logic has no truth in it. Logic is empty of truth. Truth is attained only by existential experience. I am against logic because logic is impotent. I would like you to go beyond logic. And that is the whole meaning of the word Jesus uses: faith.

It does not mean belief. It means trust in existence not belief in dogmas. Faith simply means that you are finished with logic. The day you are finished with logic, you are finished with doubt too because logic is a support to doubt; they are in a mutual conspiracy — doubt and logic. A doubter becomes a logician, a logician remains a doubter. They go together. Once logic is dropped, all the props for the doubt disappear, and doubt falls to the ground. And when you are free of doubt, then you are in faith.

Faith transforms. Trust transfigures. The sooner you can get out of logic and doubt, the better. A man is religious only when he has known the same of logic and is finished with it.

Source – Osho Book “I Say Unto You, Vol2 “