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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source – Osho Book “The Art of Dying”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source – Osho Book ‘A Bird on the Wing”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source – Osho Book “Beyond Enlightenment”

Question – Beloved Osho, What are the qualities of the Seeker of truth?

Osho – Every child is born with an innate search for truth. It is not something learned or adopted later on in life. Truth simply means, “I am, but I do not know who I am.” And the question is natural — “I must know the reality of my being.” It is not a curiosity.

These are the three differences, or three categories the world can be divided into: there are things which are, but they do not know that they are; hence there is no opening for any enquiry. They are closed, their existence is windowless. Then there are animals who know that they are, but they don’t have the intelligence to enquire what it is that they are. Their windows are open, but their intelligence is not enough to look out and see the stars and the sky and the birds and the trees. Their windows — whether opened or closed — don’t make much difference.

Perhaps once in a while a rare animal uses the window. In Shri Raman Maharshi’s ashram… and he was one of the most significant people of this century. He was not a master; that’s why people don’t know him as they know George Gurdjieff or J. Krishnamurti. They don’t know him even as they know Sri Aurobindo or P.D. Ouspensky who were only teachers — profound teachers, but not mystics.

Raman Maharshi was a silent pool of energy. Every morning he used to sit for a silent satsang, communion. He never talked much, unless asked something. Then too his answer was very short — having profundity, but you had to look for it. There was no explanation in it. His literature is confined to two, three small booklets.

His teaching was mostly to be in silent communion with the disciples. Naturally, very few people were benefited by him. But every morning he was sitting, people were sitting, and a cow would come and stand outside, putting her neck through the window, and she would remain standing there while the satsang lasted. It must have continued for years. People came and went, new people came, but the cow remained constant… and at the exact time, never late. And as the satsang would disperse she would move away.

One day she did not appear, and Shri Raman said, “Today satsang cannot be held, because my real audience is absent. I am afraid either the cow is very sick or she has died, and I have to go and look for her.” He lived on a mountain in the south of India, Arunachal. The cow belonged to a poor woodcutter who lived near the ashram. Raman left the temple where they used to meet, went to the woodcutter and asked, “What happened? The cow has not come today for satsang.”

The woodcutter said, “She is very sick and I am afraid she is dying, but she goes on looking out of the door, as if she is waiting for someone. Perhaps she is waiting for you, to see you for the last time. Perhaps that is why she is hanging around a little longer.”

Raman went in and there were tears in the eyes of the cow. And she died happily, putting her head in the lap of Raman Maharshi. This happened just in this century, and Raman declared her enlightened, and told his people that a beautiful memorial should be made for her.

It is very rare for human beings to be enlightened; it is almost impossibly rare for animals to become enlightened, but the cow attained. She will not be born again. From the body of a cow she has bypassed the whole world of humanity, and she has jumped ahead and joined with the buddhas. So once in a while — there are a few instances only — it has happened. But that cannot be called the rule; it is just the exception.

Things are, but they do not know that they are. Animals are, they know that they are, but they don’t have the intelligence to ask who they are. And it is not something to be wondered about. Millions of human beings never ask the question — that is the third category.

Man is, is aware that he is, and is capable by birth to enquire who he is. So it is not a question of learning, cultivation, education; you bring the quest with yourself. You are the quest. Your society destroys you. It has very sophisticated ways and means to destroy your quest, to remove the question from your being, or at least cover it up. And the method it uses is this: before the child has even asked who he is, the answer is given. And any answer that has been given before the question has been asked is futile; it is going to be just a burden.

He is told that he is a soul, that he is a spirit, that he is not a body, that he is not material. Or, in communist countries he is told that he is a body, just material, and that only in the old days, out of fear and ignorance, did people believe that they have souls — that that is just a superstition. But in both cases, the child is being given an answer for which he has not asked. And his mind is delicate, pure… and he trusts his mother, his father — there is no reason for him not to trust.

He starts a journey of belief, and belief kills the quest. He becomes more and more knowledgeable. Then education is there, religious education is there, and there is no end to collecting knowledge. But all this knowledge is futile — not only futile, but poisonous, because the first step has gone wrong. The question was not asked, and the answer has been implanted in his mind, and since then he has been collecting more and more answers. He has completely forgotten that any answer that is not the finding of a question is meaningless.

So the only quality of a seeker of truth is that he does not believe, that he is not a believer, that he is ready to be ignorant rather than to be knowledgeable, because ignorance is at least natural, simple, innocent. And out of ignorance there is a possibility, almost a certainty, that the question will arise, that the journey will begin. But through knowledge you are lost in a jungle of words, theories, doctrines, dogmas. And there are so many, and they are so contradictory to each other, that soon you will find yourself more and more confused… more and more knowledgeable and more and more confused.

As far as I am concerned the basic quality of a seeker of truth is to cut himself away from all belief systems, from all borrowed knowledge — in other words, to have the courage to be ignorant rather than to have borrowed knowledge. Ignorance has a beauty; it is at least yours, authentic, sincere. It has come with you. It is your blood, it is your bones, it is your marrow.

Knowledgeability is ugly, absolute rubbish. It has been poured upon you by others, and you are carrying the load of it. And the load is such that it will not give you any opportunity to enquire on your own what truth is. Your collection of knowledge will answer immediately that this is truth. If you are filled with THE HOLY BIBLE, then the question will be answered by THE HOLY BIBLE. If you are filled with the VEDAS, then the question will come out of the VEDAS. But it will come from some source outside yourself; it will not be your discovery. And that which is not your discovery is not yours.

Truth brings freedom because it is your discovery. It makes you fully into man; otherwise you remain on the level of the animals: you are but you don’t know who you are. The search for truth is really the search for the reality of your being.

Once you have entered your being, you have entered into the being of the whole, because we are different on the periphery but at the center we meet — we are one. You can draw many lines from the periphery of a circle towards the center; those lines on the periphery have a certain distance from each other. But as they come closer to the center the distance goes on becoming less. And when they reach to the center the distance disappears.

At the center we are one. At the periphery of existence we appear to be separate. And to know the truth of your being is to know the truth of the whole. There is just one quality, one courage: not to be afraid of being ignorant. On that point there can be no compromise, no cheap borrowed knowledge to decorate yourself with as a wise man. That’s enough! Just be pure and natural, and out of that purity, naturalness, ignorance, innocence, the quest is bound to be born.

Every human being would be a seeker of truth if the society were not interfering with children. The class of children is the most harmed, oppressed, exploited, distorted class of all classes — and the most helpless. And you are taking advantage of the helplessness of small children. But you are also not responsible. The same has been done to you. It is difficult to find out who was responsible in the beginning. But as long as we can look back, this has been the situation: every generation corrupts the new generation, and anybody who wants to prevent this corruption is condemned as corrupting the youth.

Socrates was condemned for corrupting the youth, and all that he was doing was the simple process of removing borrowed knowledge and helping his disciples to be themselves and then “to know thyself.” If anybody has served truth the most sincerely it was Socrates. But he was condemned by the court, by the law, by the people who were in power, for corruption, for corrupting young minds.

Strangely, in the land of Socrates I was also condemned as corrupting people’s minds. It seems the technology of corrupting the youth has evolved immensely in two thousand years, because it took Socrates his whole life to corrupt, and I was only there for two weeks! And the archbishop was already threatening to burn my house, to stone me to death.

Why are they afraid? They know perfectly well that they have no foundations. So if anybody shows the young people that their knowledge is unfounded, that all their answers are bogus because they don’t even have questions, that they are only repeating things parrot-like but they don’t have any understanding of what they are saying… then anybody who has a little intelligence will be able to understand it immediately. Is this corruption of the youth?

To bring people to the quest of the truth — is this corruption?
It seems it is the greatest crime in the world in which — unfortunately — we are living.

Source – Osho Book “Beyond Psychology”

Osho – Many people have been doing that down the centuries. A Buddha comes, a Jesus comes, a Krishna, a Zarathustra — very few, very rarely. Shiko’s are very few — those who understand. Butei exists as the mass; Butei is the many; Butei is the majority, the crowd.

Buddha comes and walks; he brings another world into this world. He brings tremendous beauty, but you cannot see, you cannot feel, Jesus goes on saying to his disciples: “If you have ears, listen! If you have eyes, see!” Truth was standing before them. God Himself was standing before them. God has come many times to the earth — He cares for it! In many forms He has been seeking you. Never think for a moment that you are uncared for.

It is not only that you are seeking God — God is also seeking you in many, many ways. Sometimes as a Krishna with his flute, sometimes as a Buddha with his silence, sometimes as a Jesus with his revolutionary approach to life — in millions of ways God has been extending his hand towards you, groping for you. Sometimes your hand has even touched His hand — but you don’t understand. Sometimes even a glimmer, a tremor has gone through your spine, but you don’t understand. On the contrary, you explain it somehow.

A WOMAN came to me a few years ago. She sat just in front of me holding my feet, crying. It was a beautiful moment. Somehow, she had been able to feel me. But then she became afraid; then I could see — suddenly she left my feet, recoiled backwards. I asked her, “What has happened? Something was going deep in you — why have you withdrawn yourself?”

She said, ” I am a professor in a university and I teach psychology — this must have been a relapse, a regression. I must have regressed towards my childhood; you must have worked like a father-figure. No, this is nothing. Yes, something happened, but it was a relapse into childhood. Yes, something happened, but it was nothing but a sort of hypnosis. Your eyes got hold of me.” Now she has explained it away.

Something was on the way, something was really going to happen. One moment more and she would have been a totally different woman, and there would have been no possibility of her falling back. She would have crossed the point of no return. But just before it, she recoiled back, became afraid. And, of course, she was intelligent — as intelligence goes — a well-educated woman, capable of rationalizations. She immediately produced a rationalization: “It may be a sort of hypnosis, or a relapse into childhood, or you must have reminded me of my dead father.” Now that which was happening has been cut.

Many times God has reached you, and many times you have withdrawn yourself. Many times He has walked with you and you have not recognized Him. Many times He has shouted at you: “Lazarus, come out! ” and you won’t listen. Or you think: “He must be calling somebody else — Lazarus is not my name. ” Let me tell you: Lazarus is your name!

And don’t think about this story just as a story. That’s what Buddha has done, that’s what Bodhidharma has done, that’s what Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu have done: they have shouted at you, they have taken you by your hands and shaken you. Very few understand. In most of the cases people become angry, they become annoyed, because you are disturbing their sleep. They are sleeping and having beautiful dreams, golden dreams, sweet dreams, and you are disturbing their sleep.

That’s why they had to kill Jesus, murder Mansoor, poison Socrates — these people were great disturbers. They were disturbing your sleep.

Source – Osho Book “A Sudden Clash of Thunder”

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

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

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

That’s what is happening everywhere. Disciples get fixed with the master and masters help them to be fixed. That’s not good, it is ugly. When you really flower then your perfume is not addressed to anybody; when you really flower the perfume goes in all directions. It simply moves in all directions, and whosoever passes near you is filled with your fragrance, he carries your fragrance. And if nobody passes you then on that silent, lonely path your fragrance goes on spreading — but it is not addressed. Remember, the mind is always addressed; being is never addressed. The mind is always moving towards something; being is simply moving towards all. It is a movement without any goal.

A goal exists because of motive: you move towards something because there is desire. When there is no desire how can you move? Movement is there but no motivation. Then you move in all directions, then you overflow. Then your master is everywhere; then I am everywhere. And only when this point comes are you free from the master also. Then you are freed of all relationship, you are freed of all presence, of all bondage. And if a master cannot free you from himself he is not a master at all.
So you need not do anything for me; you do something for you.

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

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

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

Source – Osho Book :A Bird on the Wing”