Osho – Just the other day I was talking to you about Brian Weiss and his book, MANY MASTERS, MANY LIVES. He has also come across… but he has been hiding it for years, just afraid of the society – particularly Christianity, because he lives in a Christian world. He has been practicing hypnosis and taking people to their past lives.

Now Christianity, Mohammedanism, Judaism – three great religions of the world don’t believe in any past lives or future lives. They confine themselves only to one life. So for years he has been successfully working, but was not declaring it to his associates, to his colleagues.

Under hypnosis he took his patients into their past lives, and strangely enough whatever the patient was suffering psychologically, once he had found the source in the past life somewhere, immediately the symptom in this life disappeared. He has cured many people by just taking them to their past lives. Some wound, some hurt they have been carrying from past lives… You can go on psychoanalyzing their minds, but that won’t help.

But I want Brian Weiss again to remember that the whole East has put its total genius into the revelation of past lives and reincarnation. We know much more about it than you can even dream of, for the simple reason that for almost ten thousand years this country is the only country in the world which has been working with different techniques and methods to reach to past lives.

But Brian Weiss’ experiment is courageous. He will be disturbing the fundamentalist Christians, but he has come out. He says that what psychoanalysis cannot do in twenty years can be done in a few sessions of hypnosis. You just have to take the person to his past lives. He is carrying scars and wounds which are not of this life. Unless you reach to the sources, they will not disappear. But there is a difficulty – perhaps he has not even taken account of it. The person may be simply imagining that he has reached the past life. How do you make the distinction? The man may be dreaming under hypnosis that he has reached the past life.

Even that imagination and hallucination and dreaming may be helpful to remove the symptoms, but you cannot be certain that he has reached really beyond the birth, beyond the death, to the past life. And as far as many lives are concerned, the greater possibility is that under hypnosis the person will imagine.

Brian Weiss has to understand, because what I am saying is that unless first you teach your patients meditation… Meditation cuts the very roots of imagination, thoughts, dreaming, hallucination, illusion. Meditation cuts the mind completely out of the way. In hypnosis, only after meditation can it be certain that the person has reached to the past life. And the basic symptom will be, not remembering the past life, but re-living it. In deep hypnosis, after meditative practices, one does not remember past lives, one starts re-living the past lives.

There is a vast difference between remembering and re-living. If just mind remembering can help to heal psychological wounds, you can understand perfectly well that re-living the past life will not only remove your mental sickness, it will remove all the darkness around your being. It will not only give you mental health, it will give you spiritual growth – and the difference is tremendous.

But he has broken the ice. I respect the man, but he has to learn much more before he can be definite that the patient is not dreaming, but exactly has entered into a different time space. We are doing therapies with all kinds of meditations, ending the day with me in the deepest meditation, where you start feeling, recognizing, rejoicing, in a space which is called no-mind, your intrinsic buddha dhamma – your intrinsic nature of being a buddha. After these meditations, if some wounds remain, if your psychology still remains sick, you can go through hypnotic sessions which are available here, move into rebirth, go beyond this life.

But remember, you are not making any effort to remember your past life, you just allow the past life to reveal itself to you. The feeling will not be of remembrance, the feeling will be of re-living it. Re-living the past lives cleans you completely. It is not absolutely necessary; if you are doing meditations deeply, it is enough. If it is not enough, then perhaps re-living the past lives may be immensely helpful.

Dr. Brian Weiss is going to have tremendous trouble from Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism, and from his own colleagues who think that man is nothing more than one life. But he has taken a bold, a lion’s step. I support him from the East. Ten thousand years’ experimentation is in absolute accordance with his findings, although he is only a beginner.

That’s why I have invited him to be here, so that he can understand the difference between remembering and re-living, and can understand that hypnosis directly is not definitive, because you have not cut all the rubbish of thinking, imagination, hallucination. They will arise, and if you insist that in hypnosis you have reached to past lives, the person is helpless; he will believe in his own mind projections. Even these projections will be helpful – more helpful than psychoanalysis – but these cannot bring a transformation in the person.

You will be only dealing with patients. Do you understand that healthy people also need tremendous help? You may be healthy mentally, physically, but that does not make you a perfect man. Unless you know the beyond, the mysterious, you know nothing. You can live a healthy life, and you can have a healthy heart attack.

It is a well-known fact that sick people rarely have heart attacks. One needs some energy to have a heart attack. Have you observed the fact that after eighty years of age, very few people die? After ninety, even less and after a hundred, you will very rarely find somebody dying, because dying needs some energy. After a hundred years of living, you will be so exhausted… you cannot die!

It will be good for him to have a deep contact with the East, because he will not get any support in the West. He will be suppressed, subdued, contradicted, and alone he will not be able to fight the vested interests of Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism, communism. Now almost three-fourths of the world believes that man is only a material phenomenon, there is no spirit; nobody can move from one body to another body.

This country still remains the only stronghold for the theory and practice of reincarnation. That’s why I have invited him. Here he may flower, finding the right soil and the right atmosphere. It is not possible right now in the West.

I am trying my best to send my people around the globe, spreading something that they have experienced, something for which they are authoritative. The meditations will make you capable to have the courage to fight rotten conditions, rotten traditions, rotten scriptures. We already have two million people around the world. We can create a worldwide fire so that this night, a long night, ends into a dawn, and a new man comes out of the fire of meditation – a new man with a soul, with a deep connection with the cosmos.

In the past, two kinds of fallacies have been perpetrated. One is from Christianity, Mohammedanism, Judaism, communism, and that is, accepting only the material part of man and rejecting anything inner. The second fallacy has been perpetrated by the East, by Buddha, by Mahavira, by Shankara: rejecting everything that is material, calling it illusory, and just confining themselves to the inner. Both are halfhearted. I teach you the whole man, and I want you to be the whole man: Zorba The Buddha.

Source – Osho Book “Zen: The Mystery and The Poetry of the Beyond”

Mikhail Bakunin

Question – Beloved Master, What is the difference between the individual anarchism of bakunin and the rebel of your vision?

Osho – Azima, I love Bakunin and his philosophy of anarchism, but he too, is an impractical, unpragmatic philosopher. He simply goes on praising the beauties of anarchism: no government, no armies, no police, no courts. And I absolutely agree with him. But he had no idea and no plan for how this dream could be made into a reality.

Looking at man, you will need the government; looking at man, you will need the police. Otherwise there will be a multiplication of murders, rapes, thefts… life will be a chaos. Anarchism would not come, only a chaos. People would start making gangs, those gangs would exploit the weaker people and life would not become better, it would become worse.

Bakunin’s anarchism is a utopia, a great dream. I don’t talk about anarchism. My own understanding is if we can transform man, if we can bring more and more people to meditation, if we can make more and more people unrepressed, living an authentic, natural life, sharing their love, having a great compassion for everything living, a reverence for life itself….

These individual revolutionaries, these individual rebels are not just political rebels, they are also rebelling against all the past conditionings. Mostly they are religious rebels; they are finding their own center of being. There are more and more people who are becoming individuals who can rejoice, and who are not going to betray the earth; who are not in favor of any unnatural way of life preached by all the religions. If these individuals spread around the world like a wildfire, then anarchism will be a by-product, not the goal.

For Bakunin it is the goal. He hates governments so much — and he is perfectly right in his hate, because governments have been doing so much harm to the individuality of people. He is against all laws, courts and judges, because these are not to protect justice, not to protect the weak, not to protect the victim — they are there to protect the power, the establishment, the rich. Behind the name of justice, they are enacting a tremendous conspiracy against man.

And Bakunin has no idea why men become rapists, he is not a psychologist. He is a great philosopher of anarchism. The future will owe tremendous respect to people like Bakunin, Bukharin, Tolstoy, Camus, because although they were not very scientific thinkers at least they created the idea. Without providing the foundation, they started talking about the temple.

My whole effort is not to bother about the temple but to make a great foundation; then, to raise the temple is not difficult. Anarchism will be a by-product of a society which is free from religions and religious superstitions; which is psychologically healthy, non-repressive, which is spiritually healthy, not schizophrenic, which knows the beauties of the outside world and also the inner treasures of consciousness, awareness. Unless these people exist first, anarchism is not possible; it can come only as a by-product.

In America, they are so afraid of the anarchist that when they interviewed me for my immigration into America, this was also a question, that I should commit, in writing, that I am not an anarchist. I said to the man who was doing the interview, “I am not an anarchist of the category of Bakunin, Bukharin and Tolstoy, but I have my own anarchism. And you need not be afraid about it, because anarchism is not my goal; my goal is to create individual rebels.”

The idea of rebellion is not new, but the idea of rebellion combined with enlightenment is absolutely new — it is my contribution. And if we can make the majority of humanity more conscious, more aware, with a few individuals reaching to the highest peak of enlightenment, then their rebellion will bring anarchism just like a shadow, following on its own accord.

Source – Osho Book “The Rebel”

Shunryo Suzuki

Question – Beloved Osho, Shunryo Suzuki, one of the first zen masters to live and teach in the west, was once asked why he never spoke much about satori, enlightenment. The master laughed and answered, “the reason i do not talk about satori is because i have never had it.” Could you please comment.

Osho – David Hey, Zen in the West is in a very strange context. The master you are talking about, Shunryo Suzuki, must have felt immense difficulty to express himself, because Zen has a language of its own. It has a climate different from any other climate that exists on the earth.

To bring Zen to any country is a difficult task. One has to be ready to be misunderstood. Suzuki’s statement seems to be clear, and anybody who will read it will not have any difficulty to understand it. But whatever he will understand will be wrong.

The master was asked, “Why don’t you speak about satori?” — the Japanese word for enlightenment. And he answered the way a Zen master should answer knowing perfectly well he could not be understood, he is bound to be misunderstood. He said, “The reason I do not talk about satori is because I have never had it.”

The statement is clear; linguistically there is no problem, there is nothing to be understood in it. Suzuki is saying, “I have never talked about it because I have never had it.” Now I will have to give you the whole background, the climate in which the meaning of the same sentence turns into exactly its opposite as you understand it.

Zen has an absolute certainty that no one can have satori or enlightenment; you can have things. You can have money, you can have power, you can have the whole world, but you cannot have enlightenment. Enlightenment is not a thing; it is not possible to possess it. Those who say they have it, don’t have it — they don’t even understand the ABC of it. One becomes enlightened — that’s what Suzuki is saying. There is no distinction between I and enlightenment, so how can I have it? The I disappears completely into enlightenment just like a dewdrop disappearing in the ocean. Can the dewdrop say, “I have the ocean”? The dewdrop is the ocean — there is no question of having it. This is the first thing to be clearly understood.

Suzuki was an enlightened master; that’s why he denied it. If he were not enlightened, but was only a scholar, learned about Zen, he might have felt very embarrassed to deny it. He might rather have lied, and nobody would have been able to detect his lie. He could have said, “I have it, but the experience is inexpressible; it was so simple, that’s why I never talk about it.” But the man really had it. To really have it means you can’t have it; you disappear.

As long as you are, there is no enlightenment. The moment there is enlightenment, you are not. You disappear just like darkness disappears when there is light. Darkness cannot possess light; you cannot possess enlightenment. I don’t think, David, that the statement of Suzuki would have been understood by the people who asked the question and who received the right answer. It needs a totally different context to understand.

The Western education is so much of a nourishment to the ego… in fact the Western psychology supports the idea that a person should have a very clear ego — powerful, aggressive, ambitious; otherwise, one cannot survive in the struggle of existence. To survive, first you have to be, and you have to be not only defensive, because the right way of defense is to offend, to attack… Before anybody else attacks you, you should attack. You should be first, not the second, because to be defensive is already losing the battle.

And because of the Western psychology, the whole educational system supports the idea that a man becomes mature as he attains a more and more crystallized ego. This goes against the experience of all the buddhas, of all the awakened ones. And none of these psychologists or educationalists have any glimpse of what awakening is, of what enlightenment is.

Those who have become enlightened are agreed, without any exception, on the point that the ego has to disappear. It is false, it is created by society; it is not your original face, it is not you. The false must disappear for the real to be.

So remember these steps: first, the false must disappear for the real to be, and then the real has to disappear into the ultimately real. People are living so far away from their ultimate home — they are not even real, what to say about the ultimate? For it, they have to first move away from the ego. They have to experience in meditation their own center.

But this is not the end. Meditation is only a beginning of the journey. In the end, the seeker is dissolved in the sought, the knower in the known, the experiencer in the experience. Who is going to have satori? You are absent; you are non-existent when enlightenment explodes. Your absence is an absolute necessity for enlightenment to happen.

Suzuki is absolutely right: “The reason I do not talk about satori is because I have never had it.” I am absolutely certain that those who heard him are bound to have thought that he had had no experience of satori. That is simply the meaning of what he is saying. Unless there was somebody who had experienced egolessness, and finally selflessness, Suzuki was without fail, bound to be misunderstood.

But he was a man of immense daring, of great courage, to introduce Zen to the West. Not many people were impressed. Many certainly entertained Suzuki’s statements, his anecdotes from the annals of Zen; they thought them strange jokes. But there were a few who understood not what the man was saying, but the man himself. He turned a few people on; he has the same distinction as Bodhidharma who planted the seeds of Zen in China.

Suzuki can be compared to Bodhidharma. He planted the seeds in the West, and Zen became, in the Western climate and mind, a new fashion. Suzuki was very much disturbed by it. He was not introducing a new fashion, he was introducing a new revolution and a new style of being. But the West understands things only in that way — every two or three years a new fashion is needed; people become bored with the old.

And Suzuki was received with joy, because he had brought something which no Christian or Jew was even able to comprehend. He attracted many people of the new generation; a few of them remained true to the master to the very end. Many traveled to Japan just because of Suzuki. Hundreds of Zen classics were translated in Western languages because of Suzuki. Now it is possible to talk about Zen and still be understood, and the whole credit goes to a single man, Shunryo Suzuki.

It has never to be forgotten that words don’t exist without context. If you forget the context, whatever you will understand is going to be wrong. If you understand the context, it is impossible to misunderstand.

Berkowitz was crossing Washington Avenue on Miami Beach when he was hit by a passing auto. Several passersby picked him up and laid him down on a bench. A kindly, silver-haired lady approached the injured man and asked, “Are you comfortable?”
“Ehhh! I make a living,” sighed Berkowitz.

In the Jewish context he could not understand the word `comfortable’ in any other sense than in the sense of making a good living. He said, “Yes.” He has the accident, but he cannot understand the word `comfortable’ in the present context of accident. Perhaps he may be dying, perhaps he is badly hurt, but his context remains as his old mind which
thinks only of money, earning.

This has to be remembered while you are studying Zen — the differences of context. It is said: To arrive at the truth, the German adds, the Frenchman subtracts, and the Englishman changes the subject!

I have heard… You can always tell a man’s nationality by introducing him to a beautiful woman. An Englishman shakes her hand, a Frenchman kisses her hand, an American asks her for a date, and a Russian wires Moscow for instructions!

Source – Osho Book “The Invitation”

Edgar Cayce

Osho – I will tell you about another event in connection with the vermillion mark, so that you will be able to understand its relationship to the third eye. Edgar Cayce died in 1945. Forty years before that, in 1905, he fell sick, became unconscious and remained in a coma for three days. The doctors had lost all hope and said that they could not find any way to bring him back to consciousness. They thought that his unconsciousness was so deep that perhaps he would never come out of it. All medicines were tried, but there were no signs of his regaining consciousness.

On the evening of the third day, the doctors said that they could not do anything more and that within four to six hours he would die, or if he lived, he would be mad – which would be worse than death – because as time passed the delicate veins and cells of his brain were disintegrating. But Cayce suddenly started speaking even though he was in a coma. The doctors couldn’t believe it: Cayce’s body was unconscious, but he was speaking. He said that he had fallen from a tree, that his backbone was injured, and that was why he was unconscious. He also said that if he was not treated within six hours, his brain would be affected and he would die. He suggested some herbal medicine which he should be given to drink and said that he then should recover within twelve hours.

The names of the herbs which he requested were not likely to have been known to Edgar Cayce, and at first the doctors thought what he was saying was just part of his madness because the substances he had suggested were not known to cure a condition such as his. but because Cayce had specifically mentioned them they thought they should try them. Those substances were searched for, and given to Cayce: he fully recovered within twelve hours.

After he became conscious and when the incident was related to him, Cayce could not remember suggesting any such medicine; he neither knew the names of the medicines nor recognized them. But this event in Edgar Cayce’s life was the beginning of a rare happening. Edgar Cayce became an expert in suggesting medicines for incurable diseases; he cured about thirty thousand people during his life. Whatever prescription he gave was always right; without exception, every patient who tried his medicine was cured. But Cayce himself was not able to explain it. He could only say that whenever he closed his eyes to look for some treatment, both his eyes turned upwards as if pulled towards the middle of his two eyebrows. His eyes became fixed there and he forgot everything; he only remembered that after a certain point he forgot everything about this life, and until that point, the treatment would not come to him. He suggested some wonderful remedies, two of which are worth understanding.

The Rothschilds were a very rich family in America. A woman from that family had been sick for a long time and no treatment had helped. Then she was brought to Edgar Cayce, and in his unconscious state he suggested a medicine. We have to call his state unconscious, but those who know about this mysterious happening would say he was fully conscious at that time. In fact, unconsciousness continues until our knowledge reaches the third eye.

Rothschild was a millionaire, so he could afford to search the whole of America for that medicine, but he couldn’t find it. No one could even say whether such a medicine existed. Advertisements were placed in international newspapers requesting information about the medicine. After almost three weeks a man from Sweden wrote, saying that there was no medicine of that name in existence, although twenty years earlier his father had patented a medicine of that name but never had it manufactured. He wrote that his father had died but he could send the formula. The medicine was then made up and given to the woman, who then recovered. How could Cayce have known of a drug that had not even been available on the market?

In another incident, he again suggested a particular medicine to someone; a search was made for it but it could not be found. A year later an advertisement appeared in a newspaper announcing the availability of that medicine. For that previous year it had been being tested in the laboratories; it had not even been given a name but Cayce knew of it. The medicine was given to the patient who soon recovered.

Cayce had suggested medicines which could not be found, and so the patients died. When he was told about this, he said that he was helpless, there was nothing he could do. He said, ”I do not know who is seeing the patient and is speaking when I am unconscious – I have no relationship with that person.” But one thing was certain, whenever he was speaking in that state his eyes were drawn upwards.

When we are in deep sleep, then our eyes are drawn upwards in proportion to the depth of sleep. Now, psychologists are doing much experimentation on sleep. The deeper you are in sleep, the higher are your eyes; the lower the eyes, the greater is their movement. If your eyes are moving very rapidly under their eyelids you are having a very eventful dream. Now this has been scientifically proved by through experiments – that ”rapid eye movement, REM,” indicates a fast-moving dream. The lower the eyes, the greater the REM; as the eyes go higher, the REM is reduced. When the REM is zero, sleep is at its deepest. Then the eyes remain steady between the two eyebrows.

Yoga says that in deep sleep we reach the same state that we reach in samadhi. The place where the eyes become fixed is the same in deep sleep and in samadhi. I have told you about these two historical events only to indicate that between your two eyebrows there is a point where this worldly life ceases, and the life of the other world begins. That point
is a door. On this side of the door this world flourishes, and inside it there is an unknown world, supernatural.

The tilak – the vermillion mark – was first devised as an indication and symbol of that unknown world. It cannot be applied just anywhere, and only a person who can place his hand on the forehead and find the spot can tell you where to apply the tilak. There is no use in putting the tilak just anywhere, because the spot is not in exactly the same place on everyone. The third eye is not found in the same place on everyone; it is somewhere above the middle of the two eyebrows on most people.

If someone has meditated for a long time in his past lives and has had a small experience of samadhi, his third eye will be lower down. If no meditation has been done that place is higher up on the forehead. From the position of that spot, it can be determined what the state of your meditation was in your past life; it will indicate whether any state of samadhi happened to you in your past life. If it happened often, the spot would have come down lower; it would be at the same level as your eyes – it can’t go lower than that. If that spot has come in line with your eyes, then with just a small push one can enter samadhi. In fact the push can be irrelevant; so, many times when someone goes into samadhi without any apparent cause we are surprised.

Source – Osho Book “Dimensions Beyond the Known”

Ramanujan

Osho – In the 1888 a person named Ramanujan was born in a poor Brahmin family in South India. He became a very famous mathematician. He could not study much, but still his genius in mathematics was unique. Many well educated mathematicians have earned a name because of their training and guidance from others for a number of years. But Ramanuja, was not even a matriculate and had no training or guidance from anyone.

With great difficulty he got a clerical job, but very soon news spread that he had an amazing talent in mathematics. Someone suggested that he write a letter to the famous mathematician, Professor Hardy, of Cambridge University – he was the most eminent mathematician of those days. He didn’t write a letter, but solved two theorems of geometry and sent them to Professor Hardy. Hardy was astonished to receive them and could not believe that someone so young could solve such theorems.

He immediately wrote back to Ramanujan and invited him to England. When Hardy met him for the first time, he felt that he was like a child before Ramanujan in the field of mathematics. The genius and capabilities of Ramanujan were such that they could not be due to mental powers, because the intellect moves very slowly, thinking takes time, but Ramanujan didn’t take any time in responding to Hardy’s questions. No sooner was the problem written down on the blackboard or put to him verbally than Ramanujan began to reply, without any time gap for thinking. It was very difficult for great mathematicians to understand how it happened. A problem which would take about six hours for an eminent mathematician to solve – and then too he was not sure about being right – Ramanujan solved instantaneously, unerringly.

It proved that Ramanujan was not replying through the medium of the mind. He was not very learned, he had actually failed in matriculation; there was no other sign of intellectual ability, but in connection with mathematics he was superhuman. Something happened that was beyond the human mind. He died when he was thirty-six because of tuberculosis.

When he was in hospital, Hardy, along with two or three other mathematician friends, went to see him. As it happened, he parked his car in such a place so that Ramanujan could see its number plate. When Hardy went into Ramanujan’s room, he told Hardy that his number plate was unique: it had four special aspects to it. After that, Ramanujan died. Hardy took six months to understand what Ramanujan meant, but he could only discover three of the four aspects. On his death he left a will that research work on that number should continue, to find out the fourth aspect. Because Ramanujan had said there was a fourth, there had to be. Twenty-two years after Hardy’s death, the fourth was discovered. Ramanujan was right.

Whenever he began to look into any mathematical problem something began to happen in the middle space between his two eyebrows. Both his eyeballs turned upwards, centering on that middle space. In Yoga, that space is described as the third eye spot. It is called the third eye because if that eye becomes activated it is possible to see events and scenes of some different world in their entirety.

It is like looking out of your house through a small hole in the door, and suddenly, when the door opens, you see the whole sky. There is a space between the two eyebrows where there is a small aperture which sometimes opens – as in the case of Ramanujan. His eyes rose to his third eye while solving a problem. Neither Hardy could understand this phenomenon nor would other Western mathematicians ever understand it in the future.

Source – Osho Book “Dimensions Beyond the Known”

Luther Burbank

Question – I am sure you will not say to a seed, “take a sudden jump and flower,” But why do you like to say to a man, “take a sudden jump and be a buddha”?

Osho – Because a seed is a seed and cannot understand, and a man is not a seed and can understand. But if you are a seed you won’t listen; if you are a man you will understand. It depends on you because you may look like a man — you may be just a seed or even a rock. Appearance is not the real thing. You all look like man, but rarely is one a man.

The word “man” is beautiful. It comes from a Sanskrit root manu. Manu means “one who can understand.” Thence, from that same root, comes the Indian term man, manasvi: one who can understand. “Man” is a beautiful word. It means “who can understand,” “who has the capacity to understand.” So I cannot say to a seed, “Take a sudden jump and flower,” but I say to man. And this is the irony, that sometimes even a seed can hear it and the man won’t hear.

Have you read anything about Luther Burbank, an American lover of trees and plants? He did this miracle: he talked to seeds, he talked to his plants, and he talked continuously — that’s what I’m doing — and a moment came when the plants started hearing him. He was working on a cactus for seven years — continuously talking to the cactus, saying, “You need not be worried and need not be defensive, because there is no danger to your life.”

Every cactus has thorns to protect himself. That’s his armor. Insecure in a desert; a cactus lives in a desert in very deep insecurity and danger. How a cactus survives in a desert is a miracle, and some cactuses survive even for two thousand years, very old cactuses. In a desert there is no water; life must be a very deep struggle. They live only on the dewdrops. That’s why they don’t have leaves, because leaves evaporate too much water. That is their trick so the sun cannot evaporate water from them. The water is so scarce. Cactuses have no leaves, only thorns; and deep inside their belly they go on accumulating water. For months together if there is no water they will live; they are really only accumulators of water. They don’t have anything extra — no leaves, nothing. And there has never been any species of cactus without thorns.

This man Burbank was mad. Friends started thinking. “He has gone crazy.” Even his whole family started thinking, “Now this is too much: every day sitting near the cactus and talking. saying, ‘You need not be afraid; I am your friend. You can withdraw your thorns. There is no insecurity — you are at home with a friend, a lover. You are not in a desert. And nobody is going to harm you.”

Seven years is a long… but it happened. After seven years a new branch sprouted out of the cactus without any thorns. That was the first human contact with the world of trees. It is a rare phenomenon — just by talk.

That’s why I go on talking, persuading you you can jump. knowing well that maybe seven years or seventy, or who knows? You will even start thinking about me: “He is crazy, goes on saying things every day; nobody listens.” But if Burbank can succeed with seeds. cactuses, trees. why not me?

Source – Osho Book “The Yoga, Vol5″

Subhash Chandra Bose

Osho – Almost the whole of humanity is a victim: victims of pretensions, victims of having masks, victims of not being natural, because being unnatural pays – society gives respect to the false. Society is not respectful to the authentic and to the real, because the false can be controlled, and society is deeply interested in controlling everybody.

But the authentic cannot be controlled, and society is very much afraid of those people who are authentic and real and themselves, because they cannot be enforced into any slavery, into any obedience, into being oppressed or exploited.

The desire for reward keeps society respecting the false. And because the false is respected, each small child slowly starts following the false. Parents teaching, teachers teaching … the whole effort is to give you a certain mold that is acceptable to everybody. The end result is a phony world, where nobody is real, where smiles are false, where love is only a word.

Just today I received news from England. A survey has been made of people aged between five and twenty-five. A single question was asked: ”What are the two values which you think the most significant and important in life?”

And it is shocking to see the answer, from the five-year-olds up to the twenty-five-year-olds. The answers are: money and success. These two things are the most important in life: not love, not laughter, not meditation, not blissfulness, not even God. Money and success. But in a world where money and success are everything, you cannot be authentic – it is dangerous. You will have to repress your individuality and compromise at every step for success, compromise at every step for money.

I am reminded of a young man. His name was Subhash Chandra. He became a great revolutionary and I have tremendous respect for him, because he was the only man in India who opposed Mahatma Gandhi; he could see that all this Mahatmahood is simply politics and nothing else. Indians believe themselves to be very religious. It is just a belief – nobody is religious. And Mahatma Gandhi was playing the role of a saint simply to be the leader of the majority of the country. All those who thought they were religious were bound to be in favor of Mahatma Gandhi.

Just one single man, Subhash, opposed and immediately the phoniness was apparent. What happened was this: Mahatma Gandhi used to say, ”I am beyond love and hate. I am beyond anger, violence,” because that was his whole philosophy to go beyond violence and become nonviolent, become so loving that you love even your enemy.

Subhash was well known for not being in agreement with Mahatma Gandhi, although he was in the same party. There was only one party which was fighting for the freedom of the country, so all freedom lovers were in the party. And Subhash stood as a candidate to be the president of Congress, and immediately Mahatma Gandhi’s phoniness was revealed.

On the one hand he was teaching that you have to love your enemy, and then seeing that Subhash, if he became the president of Congress, would be dangerous to his philosophy and to his leadership, he became a totally different kind of man. Subhash did not believe in hypocrisy, and there was a possibility of his winning. The only man who could defeat him was Mahatma Gandhi himself, but that would bring him down, very much down, from his great saintliness.

So what he did was this: he supported a certain man, Doctor Pattabhi Sitaramayya, as his candidate. And he thought that because he was declaring him as his candidate, the doctor would certainly win. But Subhash was very much loved by young people, by the young blood, and this fellow, Doctor Pattabhi, was absolutely unknown. He was an obedient follower of Mahatma Gandhi, so he would serve him, but he was not known to the country.

And Subhash was almost a lion: he fought and, unbelievably he won. Gandhi did not participate in the gathering where he was going to be declared the president. He forgot all his philosophy. In fact, Subhash proved to be a far greater man. Seeing that Gandhi was trying to create a split in the Congress – which would be a split in the movement for the liberation of the country – he resigned from the presidency, just so that the movement would remain one. He sacrificed himself completely; so as not to get into a fight, he moved out of the country.

He showed this sincerity from the very beginning. He was educated in England, belonged to a very rich family of Bengal, was going to be one of the top bureaucrats. He was trained for the Indian civil service in Britain, as were all top bureaucrats, most of whom were English. Very rarely was an Indian chosen – not more than one percent. Otherwise on some small excuse, Indians were rejected.

Shree Aurobindo was rejected and you will not believe on what grounds. He had come first in every subject, he was one of the geniuses of this century. Only in horse riding could he not succeed. But what has horse riding to do with being a top officer? This was a strategy: he was a scholar and he became world famous, but he was rejected.

Every method was tried to reject Indians. Subhash they could not manage to reject. All their strategies he managed to overcome, so very reluctantly Britain accepted Subhash for their ICS. One thing more remained, which was a formality: every ICS officer had to appear for a personal interview before the governor-general. It was just a formality once you had passed the examination. Subhash entered into the office of the governor-general.

Bengalis always carry an umbrella – one never knows why. Whether it is raining or not, whether it is hot or not; it may be winter and there is no need; they may have to carry it by their side, but they will carry it. An umbrella is absolutely necessary for a Bengali. If you see anybody carrying an umbrella, you understand: he is a Bengali. Now, there is no need to carry an umbrella into the office of the viceroy; at least you should leave it outside. But Bengalis will not leave their umbrellas.

Subhash kept his hat on, and carried his umbrella into the office. And he took a chair. The governorgeneral
was very angry. He said, ”Young man, you don’t understand manners. Who passed you in the examinations of the ICS?”
Subhash said, ”What manners?”

The governor-general said, ”You have not taken off your hat and you have not asked my permission to sit down.” The governor-general was not aware what kind of man this was. Subhash immediately picked his umbrella up and hooked the governor-general’s neck into it. They were alone in the office, so …. And Subhash told the governor-general, ”If you want manners, then you should learn manners also. You remained sitting. You should have stood first. I was a guest. You did not remove your hat. Why should I remove mine? You did not ask my permission to go on sitting, why should I ask your permission? Who are you, do you think? At the most you can reject me for the ICS, but I will not leave it in your hands. I don’t want to join the service.” And he went out of the office, leaving the governor-general almost in shock. He never dreamt anybody could do such a thing.

Any person who has any dignity, any self-respect, society is afraid of. Society wants you to be obedient, to be servile, to be compromising, to be always ready in every situation to surrender. It does not want you to be rebellious. But individuality is intrinsically rebellious; you cannot do anything about it; the only way is to put it under a blanket of personality, to cover it from every nook and corner, and not allow it even a window to breathe.

Source – Osho Book “Sat Chit Anand”

Question – What about  Rajiv Gandhi?

Osho – Even Rajiv is a non-politician. And the situation was ripe, because for forty years India has seen what the politicians have done. They have made the country worse and worse. So India is ready to accept the non-political people on their merit.

Now that is the question: those non-political people who want to enter into power should be made fully alert that they should not change; they should remain non-political. Their approach towards problems should remain human, not political. They should promise only that which they can deliver. The politician makes great promises just to gather votes, and once he is in power he forgets all his promises.

The new people have to be made alert: don’t promise anything that you cannot deliver. Always promise something you can deliver — in fact, you can deliver more than you promised.

The signs are good. Rajiv is absolutely non-political. He never wanted to come into politics; it is just circumstances that have brought him into politics. That is a good sign that the inner being is not hankering for power, if the country supports him and helps him, and he has not to depend on politicians, he has a great future.

Rajiv is not the old Indian politician who was brought up under Mahatma Gandhi. That is something very valuable. I wanted India to be completely rid of Gandhism for the simple reason that he was the man who was propagating things which will never allow India to progress. Rajiv is good because he has no impact of Mahatma Gandhi on him.

Secondly, Rajiv is a contemporary man. The people who had come to power before him were really fighters for freedom. They had no idea what they were going to do when they became victorious. The fight for freedom was too much, they were so much involved in it. When suddenly the power came into their hands they were at a loss what to do, so they fell back upon the British system that was already there.

We have changed the high level politicians, but the system of bureaucracy is still British. Just as non-politicians have come to politics, non-bureaucrats have to be brought to bureaucracy. And it is not difficult, it is just a question of decision. And a decision is very important, because if you don’t decide now, every day it will become more difficult because the population goes on growing, problems go on growing. But there is still time.

My suggestion is: change the bureaucracy, make our politicians absolutely non-political. If somebody is an education minister then he should come from the educational world. If somebody is a health minister he should have the best medical expertise. If somebody is the minister for agriculture then he should know the latest technologies which are being used all over the world for agriculture.

What I am saying is that we should try for meritocracy rather than for democracy. Merit should be valued, nothing else. And my feeling is that after forty years’ experience, it is possible; people are ready to do anything if their faith can be restored. This opportunity should not be lost.

So as far as India is concerned, I see some rays of hope, but they have to be made a reality. And the press, the media, can play a significant role in teaching the country, in teaching the politicians, in teaching the bureaucracy. The Indian press and media are not doing that. They have not even considered that they are the greatest educational system today. No university is as great as the media, because it reaches to millions of people who will never go to the university.

The media, in other words, is a university reaching to people’s homes rather than bringing people to the university. And it has a great responsibility in such moments of change.

It should not live on sensationalism. It should not exploit people’s ugly desires. They read about rape, they read about murder, they read about crime, and it is a wellknown psychological fact: while people are reading these things they somehow enjoy it. They also want to murder someone but they cannot. Reading about the murders, they become identified with the murderer.

Source – from Osho Book “The Last Testament, Vol 4″

Note – Rajiv Gandhi was son of Indira Gandhi and became prime minister of India in 1984

Osho – J. Krishnamurti, a man who struggled for ninety years – his last words have some great meaning. One of my friends was present there. Krishnamurti lamented, he lamented his whole life. He lamented that ”people have taken me as an entertainment. They come to listen to me….” There are people who have listened to him for fifty years continually, and still they are the same people as had come for the first time to listen to him.

Naturally it is annoying and irritating that the same people… Most of them I know, because J. Krishnamurti used to come only once a year for two or three weeks to Bombay, and slowly, slowly all his followers in Bombay became acquainted with me. They all were sad about this point: What should be done? How can we make Krishnamurti happy?

The reason was that Krishnamurti only talked, but never gave any devices in which whatever he was talking about became an experience. It was totally his fault. Whatever he was saying was absolutely right, but he was not creating the right climate, the right milieu in which it could become a seed. Of course he was very much disappointed with humanity, and that there was not a single person who had become enlightened through his teachings. His teachings have all the seeds, but he never prepared the ground.

Osho – Deva means divine and punyatam means holy, pure, simple. You have to forget the old name and remember the new. And remember the idea behind it of purity, simplicity. A person can be pure and not simple; then purity is not worth anything. You can force purity on yourself but because you force it, it will not be simple. It will be very complex. It will always carry the repressed as an undercurrent and you will be sitting on a volcano.

So when I say pure and simple, I mean it. Purity is only when it is simple, when it comes spontaneously, when it is not enforced, when you don’t practise it but just allow it to flower. It is
like a child. He is pure, simple, but his simplicity is not that of discipline. Once you try to discipline something, your head becomes powerful, and simplicity is of the heart. The head cannot give you simplicity.

I was just reading this evening about Pope John. He was a simple man, very simple – so simple that many of his colleagues used to think that he was not holy. Because he was so simple they thought he was not great… not a saint at all. Before he became pope, he was a nuncio in Paris. His colleagues were very worried about him because he would mix with ordinary people and would be found in places where he should not be. He would not follow any rules and regulations of his office.

They thought him a little of a nuisance in the high circles… snobs. They used to think that he was a nuisance and not worthy of the post he was holding. He loved gossiping and telling anecdotes and stories – and sometimes rough ones too. In the diplomatic circles he would start saying something and ladies would feel embarrassed. But he was a very simple man, just like a peasant.

Then he became pope. Everybody all over the world was very surprised at how this man could have been elected. They tried to condition him. They taught him how to behave, how to talk, saying, ’You are pope, one of the most important persons in the world, and whatsoever you say means much.’ They taught him the etiquette and formalities. But he would always forget.

The first important person to come to him was Jacqueline Kennedy. They were very worried because Kennedy was the first catholic president of America and America was one of the greatest and most powerful nations, so Pope John had to talk and behave rightly. For seven days they conditioned him, and he would repeat whatsoever they were saying. Then the master of ceremonies was very happy and everything was settled.

Then when Jacqueline Kennedy came, Pope John forgot everything. He opened his arms wide and cried, ’Welcome, Jacky !’ !

This is something very simple, peasant-like, child-like. You cannot manage it. Once you manage it, you destroy it. So what I meant by punyatam is that from this very moment, start thinking in terms of being a child – as if you don’t know the world and don’t know the ways of the world, as if you have no experience… as if you are just a clean slate with nothing written on it. And whatsoever gets written on it, wash it, clean it every day so it remains pure, clean. Remain clean of the past.

Prem means love and dhanya means blessed – blessed by love. Love is the only blessing there is, and those who love are the only ones who are blessed. All others simply live a life of curse. Nobody is cursing them; they themselves are responsible. If one wants to live a life of tremendous bliss and blessing, one should be more loving – not loving to a particular person, just loving.

Source: from Osho Book “A Rose is a Rose is a Rose”

Mahesh Bhatt

[Osho asks a sannyasin who is a well-known film star in India, how he is. He replies: I don’t know!]

Osho – That’s good! I know: things are going well. Things really always go well, nothing ever goes wrong. It is only a question of understanding. If one understands, everything always goes right. Nothing has ever gone wrong and it can never go wrong, so whatsoever happens is how it should happen. To accept this brings great relaxation.

The very idea that something can go wrong and we have to put it right, creates anxiety. It is impossible to change anything in existence. Everything is as perfect as it can be; no change is needed. To relax in this and to relax utterly into it, is real meditation. Meditation is not something to do, but the attitude that whatsoever is, is good and all is blessed. That attitude is meditation. It is coming slowly slowly. The hankering to change, the hankering to be this and that, is dropping.

That moment when there is no desire to be anything other than what one is, is a moment of great benediction. Then one comes to know that from the very beginning, nothing is missing. We were unnecessarily worried, unnecessarily puzzled, unnecessarily trying to find keys and clues.

And the door has always remained open – it was not closed at all. I am happy with you. Things are going very well.

[Osho then refers to the sannyasin’s colleague, a movie director.]
Osho – Just tell one thing to him: that if he has not been courageous enough to keep to the commitment of sannyas, he should be at least courteous enough to return it. And I knew that this was going to happen. I knew, because there were only two alternatives: either his girlfriend was going to become a sannyasin or he was going to become a non-sannyasin… and he was defeated by her. He will repent one day.

He will feel and he will come… but he betrayed. He has broken something very sacred. And one day when he realises the whole phenomenon he will be surprised. It is one of the basic tragedies of all love affairs: a woman becomes interested in any man who has some kind of illusive power; and that power was arising in him. It was not there before, it was arising.

The more meditative he was becoming, the more energy was arising in him. Something beautiful was on the way and I was really working hard on him – more than he ever deserved. Things were coming to a point, it was building up. In fact that energy became the attraction for her.

She is a beautiful woman – perceptive, courageous, adventurous, daring; not an ordinary indian woman – very modern, in search of some great thrill. She became interested in him not because of him – one day he will understand it – but because he was a sannyasin and something of meditation was arising in him. Even she may not be knowingly aware of it, because people are not knowingly aware of what is happening.

Sannyasins have always been attractive to beautiful women, because a sannyasin becomes a challenge. He is like an Everest which has to be conquered, has to be defeated, and she is an adventurous woman. She was not interested in him – she was interested in sannyas; whether knowingly, unknowingly, that is not the point. She was interested in a very feminine intuitive way in the energy that was arising in Mahesh and which was coming to a build-up and which was going to explode in a great flowering.

And once she became interested, the next step… that is the tragedy of all love. First, a woman is never interested in an ordinary man – no woman worth anything is ever interested in an ordinary man. A woman is always interested in something extraordinary, something majestic, something beyond the grasp. And that was there – something beyond the grasp. But once a woman catches hold of the man she was interested in, she starts destroying that very power, because then she becomes afraid: he will dominate, and nobody wants to be dominated.

Before he starts dominating, she has to destroy that very power. And I call it a tragedy, because once that power is destroyed she will no more be interested in the man. This is the dilemma: she is interested in power, then the power feels frightening. If the man remains so powerful then she will remain dependent; she will never be the whole – and soon she starts playing feminine tricks. And because he loves her, the man goes on yielding.

Once he starts yielding, the lion disappears and the mouse is born, and no woman is interested in a mouse, no woman at all. Once she has reduced the man to a mouse, she is finished, and as I can see, that is what has happened.

I was watching the whole phenomenon and that’s why I was again and again telling him ’Let her become a sannyasin. If she does not become a sannyasin, then the next challenge is to destroy your sannyas.’ I had not said so, but it was there. She had to destroy the relationship between me and him. She was jealous of it – there was something more powerful than her love affair.

And no woman wants anything more powerful than her love affair; that should be the suprememost. And soon, in fact already, her interest in him is flopping; she has started looking at other men. And she is not the kind of woman who can stick to one person. She could have remained with him if he had remained unyielding, if he had remained a real man. If he had remained an unconquered peak she would have remained interested, but now she will search for other peaks, somebody else. He is already a spare part, an extra.

So tell him: if he is not courageous enough to keep the commitment, he should be courteous enough to return it. And once his mala is back, I am going to burn it and destroy the whole work on him. Only that will bring him to his senses. So just tell this much to him.

Source: from Osho Book “The 99 Names of Nothingness”