Albert Camus

Osho : The book by Marcel, THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS. I am not a religious man in the ordinary sense; I am religious in my own way. So people will wonder why I am including books which are not religious. They are, but you have to dig deep, and then you will find their religiosity. The myth of Sisyphus is an ancient myth, and Marcel used it for his book. Let me relate it to you.

Sisyphus, a god, was thrown out of heaven because he disobeyed the supreme God and was punished. The punishment was that he had to carry a big rock from the valley to the top of a mountain which was so small at the summit that each time he reached it with the huge rock and tried to put it down, the rock started rolling down to the valley again.

Sisyphus has to go down to the valley again to carry the rock, huffing and puffing, perspiring…. A meaningless job… knowing perfectly well it will slip again, but what to do?

This is the whole story of man. That’s why I say if you dig you will find pure religion in it. This is the situation of man, and has always been so. What are you doing? What is everybody else doing? Carrying a rock to a point where it always and always slips back to the same valley, perhaps even a little deeper every time. And next morning, after breakfast of course, you carry it again. And you know while carrying it what is going to happen. It slips again.

The myth is beautiful. Marcel has introduced it again. He was a very religious person. In fact, he was the real existentialist, not Jean-Paul Sartre, but he was not a slogan-monger so he never came to the front. He remained silent, wrote silently, died silently. Many people in the world do not know that he is no more. He was such a silent man – but what he has written, THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS, is very eloquent. THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS is one of the greatest works of art ever produced.

Wilhelm Reich

Osho : This is a strange book, nobody reads it. You may not even have heard about it, yet it was written in America. The book is LISTEN LITTLE MAN, by Wilhelm Reich. It is a very small book, but it reminds one of the SERMON ON THE MOUNT, TAO TE CHING, THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA, THE PROPHET.

In reality Reich was not of that status to write such a book, but he must have been possessed by some unknown spirit. LISTEN LITTLE MAN created much antagonism towards Reich, particularly among the professional psychoanalysts, his colleagues, because he was calling everyone ’little man’ – and he was thinking he was so great?

I want to tell you: he was! Not in the sense of a buddha, but in the same sense as Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, Assagioli. He belongs to the same category. He was a great man – of course still a man, not superman, but great. And it was not out of his egoism that this book was born; he could not help it, he had to write it.

It is almost like when a woman is pregnant, she has to give birth to the child. He carried this small book within himself for years, resisting the idea of writing it because he knew perfectly well it was going to create hell for him. And it did. After that book he was condemned from every corner.

To create anything great in this world is a crime. Man has not changed at all. Socrates he kills, Reich he kills. No change. They condemned Reich as mad and imprisoned him. He died in jail, condemned, reduced to a madman. He had the capacity to rise beyond the clouds, but he was not allowed. America still has to learn to live with people like Socrates, Jesus, Buddha.

This book should be meditated upon by all my sannyasins. I recommend it without any conditions at all.

Osho : Tenth… the last for this session. It is a very small book, known only to a very few people in the world, but it needs to be declared from the housetops to each and everyone. It is THE SONGS OF CHANDIDAS – a Bengali madman, a Baul.

The word Baul means a madman. Chandidas danced and sang from village to village and nobody knows who collected his songs. It must have been someone with a great and generous spirit, so generous that he has not even mentioned his name.

THE SONGS OF CHANDIDAS… I feel in such awe. Just the name of Chandidas and my heart starts throbbing with a different beat. What a man he was, and what a poet! There have been thousands of poets, but Chandidas is of the same category as Solomon, not less than that. If Solomon can be compared to anybody then it is to Chandidas.

Chandidas’ songs sing of strange things – of God who does not exist. Chandidas also knows that God does not exist, but he sings about him because God only represents existence. God does not exist; he is existence.

Chandidas also sings of meditation, although nothing can be said about meditation – but still he says something, something which cannot be ignored. He says: Meditation is equivalent to no-mind. What a tremendous formula! Albert Einstein would have been jealous of Chandidas.

Alas, Einstein knew nothing of Chandidas nor of meditation. One of the greatest men of this age, he was absolutely unaware of meditation. He was aware of everything except himself. Chandidas sings songs of love, of awareness, of beauty, of nature.

And there are a few songs which are not concerned with anything at all; just sheer joy, the very joy of singing – the meaning is not at all important. That is my tenth and last book today.

Paul Reps

Osho : Paul Reps’ ZEN FLESH, ZEN BONES. It is a great work – not original in that he has not created it, but although not original it is far more significant than just a translation. It is a category in itself. In one way it is original, in another way a translation.

It is a translation of old Zen anecdotes and original writing. I know because I have seen almost all the books written on and about Zen, and nothing compares to Paul Reps’ book. He has caught a glimpse. He has the same flavor as Basho or Rinzai.

The man is still alive somewhere in California. He has in this small book not only collected Zen anecdotes but also VIGYAN BHAIRAV TANTRA – the one hundred and twelve sutras of Shiva to Parvati, his beloved, in which Shiva talks about all the keys possible.

I cannot conceive that there can be anything more to meditation than VIGYAN BHAIRAV TANTRA. One hundred and twelve keys are enough – they seem to be enough; one hundred and thirteen will not look like a right number.

One hundred and twelve looks really esoteric, beautiful. This book is very small, you can carry it in your pocket; it is a pocketbook. But you can also carry the Kohinoor in your pocket… although the Kohinoor is studded in the British crown, and you cannot carry that in your pocket. But the most beautiful thing about Paul Reps is that he has not added a single word of his own – which is incredible.

He has simply translated, just translated – and not only translated, but he has brought the flower of Zen to the English language. That flower is not found in any other English writer on Zen. Even Suzuki has not been able to do it, because he was a Japanese.

Although enlightened he could not bring the flavor of his enlightenment to his English books. Suzuki’s English is beautiful but very unenlightened, perhaps electrified but absolutely unenlightened. Paul Reps has done an almost impossible task, being an American, and yet, I repeat, and yet getting the full flavor of Zen.

And not only getting it for himself but bringing it in ZEN FLESH, ZEN BONES for the whole world too. The world should remain grateful to him forever, although he is not an enlightened person. That is why I say he has done an almost impossible task.

Osho : I was worried that I may not be able to mention Gurdjieff’s book MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE MEN. Thank God for this P.P.S. This is a great work. Gurdjieff traveled all over the world, particularly in the Middle East and India. He went up to Tibet; not only that, he was the teacher of the late Dalai Lama… not the present one – he is a fool – but the previous one.

Gurdjieff’s name in Tibetan is written as Dorjeb, and many people thought that Dorjeb was someone else. He is none other than George Gurdjieff. Because this fact was known to the British government – that Gurdjieff had been in Tibet for many years; not only there, but had been living in the palace at Lhasa for many years – they prevented him from staying in England. He originally wanted to stay in England but was not allowed.

Gurdjieff wrote this book MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE MEN as a memoir. It is a tremendously respectful memory to all those strange people he had met in his life – Sufis, Indian mystics, Tibetan lamas, Japanese Zen monks. I must mention to you that he did not write of them all; he left many out of the account for the simple reason that the book was going to be in the marketplace and it had to fulfill the demands of the market.

I don’t have to fulfill anybody’s demands. I am not a man who worries at all about the market, hence I can say that he left out the really most remarkably significant people from his account. But whatsoever he wrote is still beautiful. It still brings tears to my eyes. Whenever something is beautiful my eyes fill with tears; there is no other way to pay homage.

This is a book that should be studied, not just read. In English you don’t have a word for path; it is a Hindi word which means reading and reading the same thing every day for your whole life. It cannot be translated as reading, particularly in the West where you read a paperback and once you have read it you throw it away or leave it on the train.

It cannot be translated as study either, because study is a concentrated effort to understand the meaning of the word, or words. ’Path’ is neither reading nor study, but something more. It is repeating joyously, so joyously that it penetrates to your very heart, so it becomes your breathing. It takes a lifetime, and that’s what is needed if you want to understand real books, books like Gurdjieff’s MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE MEN.

It is not a fiction like DON JUAN – a fictitious man created by an American fellow, Carlos Castaneda. This man has done a great disservice to humanity. One should not write spiritual fictions for the simple reason that people start thinking that spirituality is nothing but a fiction.

MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE MEN is a real book. A few of the people Gurdjieff mentions are still alive; I have met a few of them myself. I am a witness to the fact those people are not fictitious, although I cannot forgive even Gurdjieff for leaving out the most remarkable people he met. There is no need to compromise with the marketplace; there is no need to compromise at all. He was such a strong man, I wonder why he compromised, why he omitted the really important people. I have met a few people that he omitted from the book, who themselves told me that Gurdjieff had been there. They are very old now. But still the book is good – half, incomplete, but valuable.

Osho – Second is P.D. Ouspensky’s TERTIUM ORGANUM. It is a miracle that he wrote it before he had even heard of Gurdjieff. He wrote it before he knew what he was writing. He understood it himself only afterwards, on meeting Gurdjieff. His first words to George Gurdjieff were: ”Looking into your eyes I have understood TERTIUM ORGANUM. Although I have written it, now I can say that it has been written through me by some unknown agency I was not aware of.”

Perhaps it was that rascal Gurdjieff who wrote it through him, or maybe somebody else whom the Sufis call the Ultimate Rascal, who has been doing miracles – miracles like TERTIUM ORGANUM. The title means ’the third canon of thought’. The Sufis give that ultimate agency a name; it is not a person but only a presence. I can feel that presence right now, here… this very moment.

They call it a certain name, because everything has to be given a name, but I will not say it, not in the presence of this beauty, this splendor… of this exuberance… of this exaltation… of this ecstasy. I said it is a miracle that Ouspensky could write TERTIUM ORGANUM, one of the greatest books in any language of the world.

In fact it is said, and rightly so – remember, I emphasize and repeat, rightly so – that there are only three great books: the first is ORGANUM written by Aristotle; the second is THE SECOND ORGANUM written by Bacon; and the third, by P.D. Ouspensky, TERTIUM ORGANUM. ’Tertium’ means third.

And Ouspensky has, very mischievously – and only a saint can be so mischievous introduced the book by saying, without any ego, simply and humbly, that ”the first exists but not before the third. The third existed even before the first came into existence.”

Ouspensky seems to have been spent, totally and utterly spent, into TERTIUM ORGANUM, because he never could reach to the same height again. Even reporting Gurdjieff in IN SEARCH OF THE MIRACULOUS he has not attained to the same height. When he betrayed Gurdjieff he tried finally to create something better than TERTIUM.

As his last effort he wrote THE FOURTH WAY but failed utterly. The book is good, good for any university curriculum. You can see I have my own ways of condemning a thing….

THE FOURTH WAY can be part of a regular curriculum in a university course, but more than that it is nothing. Although he was trying to do his best it is the worst book that Ouspensky has written. It was his last book.

That is the difficulty with all that is great: if you try, you miss. It comes effortlessly or not at all. It has visited him in TERTIUM ORGANUM and he was not even aware of it. The words in TERTIUM are so powerful one cannot believe that the author is unenlightened, that he is still looking for a master, that he is still searching for the truth.

I was a poor student, working the whole day as a journalist – that is the worst job you can do, but that’s what was available to me at the time – and I was in such need that I had to join a night college. So the whole day I worked as a journalist, and at night I went to college. In a way my name belongs to the night. Rajneesh means the moon: rajni means the night, eesh means God – God of the night.

So people used to laugh and say, ”This is strange: you work the whole day, and go to study at night. Are you trying to fulfill your name?”

Now I can answer them, yes – write it in capital letters – YES, I have been trying to fulfill it my whole life. What else can be more beautiful than to be the full moon? So as a poor student in those days, I used to work the whole day. But I am a crazy man, rich or poor does not matter…. I have never liked to read books borrowed from others. In fact I hate even borrowing from a library, because a library book is like a prostitute.

I hate to see the marks, the underlining of other people. I always love the fresh, the snow-white freshness.TERTIUM ORGANUM was a costly book. In India, in those days, I was getting a salary of only seventy rupees each month, and by coincidence the book cost exactly seventy rupees – but I purchased it. The bookseller was amazed. He said, ”Even the richest man in our community cannot afford it.

For five years I have been keeping it to sell, and nobody has purchased it. People come and look at it, then drop the idea of buying. How can you, a poor student, working the whole day and studying at night, working almost twenty-four hours each day, how can you afford it?”
I said, ”This book I can purchase even if I have to pay for it with my life. Just reading the first line is enough. I have to have it whatsoever the cost.”

That first sentence I had read in the introduction was, ”This is the third canon of thought, and there are only three. The first is that of Aristotle; the second of Bacon, and the third, my own.” I was thrilled by Ouspensky’s daring, that he said, ”The third existed even before the first.” That was the sentence that caught fire in my heart.

I gave the bookseller my whole month’s salary. You cannot understand, because for that whole month I had to almost starve. But it was worth it. I can remember that beautiful month: no food, no clothes – not even shelter; because I could not pay the rent I was thrown out of my small room. But I was happy with TERTIUM ORGANUM under the sky. I read that book under a street lamp – it is a confession – and I have lived that book.

That book is so beautiful, and more so now that I know that the man did not know at all. How could he have managed it then? It must have been a conspiracy of the gods, something from the beyond. I cannot resist anymore from using the name the Sufis use; they call it khidr. Khidr is the agency that guides those who need guidance. TERTIUM ORGANUM is the second book.

Gurdjieff

Osho - I forgot to say something about Gurdjieff and his book ALL AND EVERYTHING – perhaps because it is a very strange book, not even readable. I don’t think there are any living individuals except me who have read from the first page to the last. I have come across many Gurdjieff followers, but none of them had been able to read ALL AND EVERYTHING in its totality.

It is a big book – just the opposite of the ISA UPANISHAD – one thousand pages. And Gurdjieff is such a rascal saint – please allow me this expression, rascal saint – he writes in such a way that it becomes impossible to read. One sentence may go running on for pages. By the time you come to the end of the sentence you have forgotten its beginning.

And he uses words he made up himself, just like me. Strange words… for example when he was writing about kundalini, he called it kundabuffer; that was his word for kundalini. This book is of immense value, but the diamonds are hidden among ordinary stones. One has to seek and search.

I have read this book not once but many times. The more I went into it the more I loved it, because the more I could see the rascal; the more I could see what it was that he was hiding from those who should not know. Knowledge is not for those who are not yet capable of absorbing it. Knowledge has to be hidden from the unwary, and is only for those who can digest it. It has to be given only to those who are ready.

That’s the whole purpose of writing in such a strange way. There is no other book stranger than Gurdjieff’s ALL AND EVERYTHING, and it certainly is all and everything.

Tenth: I remembered this book but did not mention it because it was written by P.D. Ouspensky, a disciple of Gurdjieff who betrayed him. I did not want to include it because of this betrayal, but the book was written before he betrayed his master so finally I decided to include it. The name of the book is IN SEARCH OF THE MIRACULOUS.

It is tremendously beautiful, more so because it was written by a man who was only a disciple, who himself had not known. Not only was he a disciple but later on a Judas, the man who betrayed Gurdjieff. It is strange, but the world is full of strange things. Ouspensky’s book represents Gurdjieff far more clearly than Gurdjieff’s own.

Perhaps in a certain state of being Gurdjieff had taken possession of Ouspensky and used him as a medium, just as I am using Devageet as my medium. Right now he is writing the notes, and with my half-closed eyes I am watching everything. I can watch even with closed eyes. I am just a watcher, a watcher on the hills. I have no other work left but to watch.

Osho – The essential proclamation of the Ishavasya Upanishad, the very meaning of its title, Ishavasya, is: Everything is God’s. All things belong to God. But our human mind tries to argue that it is all ours, and we live in this delusion throughout our lives. Something is mine. The idea is of ownership and possession – it is mine!

When everything is existence’s, there is no place left for this ’I’ of mine to stand. Remember, for its manifestation even ego needs a base. To endure, even ’I’ needs the support of ’my’. If the support of ’my’ were not there, it would be impossible to forge the ’I’. From a casual observation it appears that the ’I’ comes first and ’mine’ follows it.

But the fact is quite the reverse. First, ’mine’ has to be founded, and then the structure of ’I’ is built onto it. If whatever you have which you call ’mine’ is wrested entirely from your grasp, then your ’I’ will not be spared. It will disappear. ’I’ is nothing but the collection of ’mines’. ’I’ is created from the fabric of ’mine’ – my wealth, my building, my religion, my temple, my position, my name, my family, and so on.

As we go on throwing down each ’mine’ the base of ’I’ is simultaneously eroded away. If not a single ’mine’ is saved, then there is no foundation on which the ’I’ can stand. The ’I’ needs a resting place, a shelter, a house of ’mine’. The ’I’ requires a foundation stone of ’mine’ otherwise the whole structure of ’I’ will tumble down.

The first proclamation of the Ishavasya intends to collapse the entire structure. The sage says, ”Everything is of God.” There is no place for ’mine’. There is no scope at all even for ’I’ to say ’mine’ for itself. If it can say ’I am’, it is wrong. If it persists in saying ’I am’, then it is a bewildered ’I’. It is necessary to understand this from two or three points of view.

The first is this: you are born, I am born. But nobody asks me whether I want to be born or not; no trouble is ever taken to find out my wishes. My birth is not dependent on my desire or on my acceptance. When I know myself, I know myself having been born. There is nothing like my being before my birth. Let us consider it in this way: you are constructing a building;

you never ask the building whether or not it wishes to be built. The building has no will of its own. You are constructing it, and it is erected. Have you ever thought that you also were never consulted before your birth? Existence causes you to be born, and you are born. Existence creates you, and you are created. If the building becomes conscious, it will say, ’I’. If it becomes conscious, it will refuse to consider its maker as its owner, as its master.

The building will say, ”The builder is my servant; he has constructed me. The materials are mine; he has served me. I was willing to be made, so he has made me.” But the building has no consciousness. Man has. And in fact who knows whether the building has consciousness or not? It is possible; it may be so. There are thousands of levels of consciousness.

Man’s consciousness is of one particular kind, it is not necessary for all things to have the same kind of consciousness. A building may have consciousness of a different kind, stone may have of yet another kind, plants another. It is possible that they, too, live in their own ’I’. When a gardener is watering a plant, maybe the plant is not thinking, ”The gardener is giving me life,” but rather, ”I am showing favor to this gardener by accepting his service.

Through my grace I accept his services.” Nobody has ever approached the plant to inquire about its desire to be born. It is absolutely absurd to call it my birth when it is caused without my desire. Where is the meaning in claiming as my birth, that about which I am never consulted before my birth? When death comes, it does not ask our permission.

Death will not ask us, ”What do you want? Are you coming with me or not?” No, when it comes, it comes of its own accord, just as birth comes without our knowing about it. Death comes without knocking, without our permission, without instruction, without forewarning, and stands quietly before us; and it gives us no alternatives, no choice.

It hesitates not even a second, whatever we may wish. It is sheer idiocy to claim as my death that for which I have no desire or willingness in the least. That birth is not my birth in which there is no choice on my part. The death to which my willingness is irrelevant, is not my death. So how can the life which lies between these two ends be my life?

How can the span between be mine, when both its inevitable ends – without which I cannot exist – are not mine? It is a deception – one which we go on strengthening, forgetting birth and death completely. But if we consult a psychologist in this matter, he will say, ”You forget them purposely, because they are such sorrowful memories.” When my birth is not mine, how poor and miserable I become.

When my death is not mine, everything is snatched away from me; nothing is saved. My hands remain empty. Only the ashes remain.

Rabindranath Tagore

Osho on Rabindranath Tagore Gitanjali – It happened… a very significiant incident. One of the Indian poets, Rabindranath Tagore, translated one of his small books of poems, GITANJALI, “Offering of Songs.” He was awarded the Nobel prize for that small book.