Osho – Truth is God. There is no other God except the truth

Osho

Osho – I was in a big city. Some young men came there to meet me. They started asking: “Do you believe in God?” I said: “No. What relation is there between belief and God? I know God.”

Then I told them a story: There was a revolution in some country. The revolutionaries of that place were busy in changing everything. They were determined to destroy religion also. In the same context an old beggar was arrested and brought to the Court.

They asked that beggar: “Why do you believe in God?” That beggar said: “No gentlemen, I do not believe. But God is there. What should I do now?”

They asked: “How do you know that He exists?” That old man said: “After opening my eyes ever since I began seeing I have seen none except Him”.

That beggar’s replies served as ghee to the fire. Those revolutionaries became very angry and said: “Very soon we will kill all your monks and nuns. What then?”
That old man laughed and said: “As God may wish! ”

‘But we have decided to destroy all signs of religion. We will not leave any sign of God in the world.”
That old man said: “My son, this is a very difficult job that you have selected. But as the God may will! How will you destroy all signs? Whatever remains will announce His existence. At least you will be there, and you will announce His existence. It is impossible to eliminate God, because God is all-pervading.”

All these misunderstandings cropped up because God was compared to a man. God is not a person. He is what He is. And the thought of believing in God has also created a lot of misunderstanding.

What is the meaning of believing in light? That can be seen only when the eyes open. Belief is a supporter of ignorance and ignorance is a sin. Not the blind faith, with eyes tied under cloth, but the discrimination with eyes fully open can take a man upto the truth. Truth is God. There is no other God except the truth.

Source – Osho Book “The Earthen Lamps”

Osho – A scripture is a scripture only if it gives you freedom

Osho – I have heard a story. A wasp made its abode near a window outside a big building. In winter this wasp would sleep and rest, in summer it would fly, dance and collect the pollen of the flowers. It was very happy. But this wasp was a special one – it was a thinker. It used to think a lot and used to look down upon other wasps because there was no thinking in their lives. Their lives were full of desire.
They never did any thinking, they never contemplated, they never knew the scriptures. Sometimes it used to fly into that building also. It loved that building. The people visiting the building seemed to it of its own type because they were thinkers. Actually, this building was a big library. Professors, teachers, writers, philosophers, poets used to come there. Usually people used to drive out the wasp but it always would come back.
Gradually it started reading and writing. It started in the children’s department and soon it was studying big books of philosophy. It began to read big volumes of science and poetry. It became very proud and just could not tolerate the other wasps – they seemed very insignificant. It became very egoistic. It was thinking day and night. It forgot all about dancing in the sun, flying in the air and visiting the trees. Now mostly it used to sit down engrossed in deep thoughts like, ”Who made this world? Why was it made? From where has this existence come and where is it going?” It used to think about these serious questions all the time.
One day it was reading a book on the science of aviation. It was written in that book of aerodynamics that the body of a wasp is heavier than its wings, so theoretically a wasp cannot fly because its wings are small and weak and the body is big and heavy. On reading this it became confused and puzzled.
Up to now it did not know that its body was big and its wings were small. It was the first time it had learnt this and, of course, whatever is written in the scriptures cannot be denied. It is not possible to go against what is said by the scientists. It became very sad. That day it did not fly back to its hive, it arrived there by crawling. How was it possible for it to fly – to do something which was quite against science? It became very sad and stopped moving about altogether.
It still saw the other wasps flying around, going to the flowers, but it thought that they were doing so out of ignorance – how can a wasp fly? Its wings are small and its body is big. It was full of pity for those who were flying because they did not know the facts of science. If they knew they would have stopped flying.
But one day a bird attacked the wasp, intending to eat it for breakfast. In its nervousness and confusion the wasp forgot all about the scriptures and flew away. It sat on a bush, rested a little and became calm and realized that it had flown! ”I was thinking that a wasp cannot fly but I have flown, so there must have been a block in my mind stopping my natural capacity for flying which melted in the moment of danger.”
It had read about mental blocks in the mind in a book on psychology. So it started flying again from that day. It gave up the knowledge of scriptures from that day, and from that moment it again became the wasp – the natural wasp! From that day it became free of knowledge and stopped looking down on other wasps. That day it experienced its true nature.
Religion is freedom from knowledge, and in that freedom is the ultimate knowledge. The scriptures are not meant to make you lame but to give you the capacity to fly. If the scriptures have made you lame, then it is sure that you have misunderstood them or you have interpreted them wrongly. If the scriptures have made you sad, then you must have missed something in them or must not have understood them properly. The scriptures which have snatched away your natural capacity to fly or flow are not your friends – you have turned them into your enemies.
A scripture is a scripture only if it gives you freedom. A scripture is a scripture if it makes you natural. A scripture is a scripture if it does not fill you with condemnation for others and is able to make you realize that the divine is hidden also within them.
Source: from Osho Book “The Great Transcendence”

Osho – You can deny God, but God never denies you

Osho – There is an ancient Sufi parable: A man gave to a Sufi mystic a present, a golden bowl with a beautiful fish in it. The Sufi looked at the bowl and the fish and felt very sorry for the fish, because the bowl is an imprisonment.

He went to the lake and he was tremendously happy in liberating the fish. He threw the fish into the lake. He was happy that at least now the fish can have the whole lake, the great freedom, the space that really belongs to her. A golden bowl — although it is golden it is a confinement.
Then he thought, what will he do with this bowl? So he threw the bowl also into the lake.

The next morning he went to see how the fish was. He was surprised: the fish was in the bowl and the bowl was in the lake. What had happened to the fish? She had again chosen the bowl. Now the bowl is in the lake, but the fish is not in the lake; the fish has entered into the bowl again. She has lived so long in it, it is her home. The mystic thinks it is a prison, but not the fish; she may have been afraid of the freedom.

People become very afraid of freedom, more afraid than of anything else. You will be surprised to know that people talk about freedom, but when freedom is really given to them they become afraid, frightened, scared, because freedom is vast, unmanageable, uncontrollable. You cannot dominate it. Slavery is small, it is smaller than you. You feel good with it — you seem to be big compared to your slavery.

But compared to your freedom you are nobody, a nonentity, a nothingness. And who wants to be a nothingness? Everybody wants to be somebody; even though one has to live in a prison, one is ready…. If you can be made the head of the prisoners — a president, a prime minister, or something like that — you would like, you would love to live in the prison rather than be free and nobody.

The first requirement for attaining to truth is the capacity to be free, the capacity to be nobody. The ego is the greatest barrier. The ego can exist only in a golden bowl; it can’t exist in a lake. It is bound to melt, merge and disappear.

Lies are good for the ego. In fact, the ego is the greatest lie; it feeds on other lies. Although truth has a way of coming up again and again… howsoever repressed, it surfaces, because it is truth; you can repress it only for the time being. And to repress truth you will have to be constantly on guard. Of course you will get tired, you will need a little rest, and whenever you are resting the truth surfaces. The truth comes in your life again and again; you can go on denying it, but it never denies you. You can deny God, but God never denies you.

Osho – In India people worship God in such ways that one feels sorry for them

Osho – In India people worship God in such ways that one feels sorry for them. Once I was staying with a woman; she was a great lover of Krishna, so much so that she had stopped sleeping with her husband – how can you love two persons? That is a betrayal. She believed that her true husband was Krishna. Her poor husband was really in a very mad state. He could not say that she was wrong because he was also brought up in the same Krishnaite tradition.
He could not say it, although he was a doctor, well educated. But in India education makes no difference to people, not at all. Their conditioning is so old and so ancient and so deep rooted that education remains just on the surface.
Scratch any educated Indian and inside you will find the whole rotten past. So intellectually he knew that the wife was crazy but only intellectually; deep down he himself was afraid that she might be right, because Meera used to think the same way: that Krishna is her true husband. She left her own husband.
At least this woman had not left her husband, she simply had stopped sleeping with the husband.
She used to sleep in another room; she would lock the room from inside. She would sleep with
Krishna’s statue. When I stayed in their home I watched the whole game. In the morning she would sing songs to wake up Krishna. Now Krishna needs to wake you up! But she would sing songs to wake Krishna up. And then Krishna would be up and then the whole morning routine: he would take a bath, he would be given a bath, and then breakfast… the whole day was devoted to Krishna. And it was just a statue made of silver – there was nobody there!
But she used to talk to Krishna. And if you could have seen her you would have been impressed because she would cry tears of joy and she would dance in utter ecstasy – at least on the surface it would look like that. And the more repressive she became about her sex – because she was not having any sexual relationship with the husband – the more and more obsessed she became with Krishna. Then she started dreaming that Krishna was making love to her in the night. Once she even got falsely pregnant – just hot air in her belly and nothing else.
When I talked to her…. It was really cruel of me, but I am a cruel man – I have to be. I had gone
for only three days; I stayed there for seven days just to bring her to her senses. And finally she
understood the point – she was an intelligent woman. She presented the statue to me and she said, ”Now you take it from here, otherwise I can again get entangled into this stupidity. I have wasted my whole life. And I can see the point that I am just living in my own dream. There is no Krishna, nobody comes to make love to me, it is all my dream. It is just sexual repression.”
And this whole nonsense of waking him up and giving him a bath and then breakfast and then lunch and then Krishna retires for the afternoon sleep and then tea – and everything, as if she were really serving a real person! The statue remained with me for many days; I think I gave it to Mukta. Mukta must have it even now. But the woman was freed, freed from that stupid monologue.
It is madness. It is the same madness, even a little worse, because when you love a real person
there is at least somebody real, good or bad, frustrating or not frustrating. But when you start longing for the divine it is simply living absolutely in the abstract.

Osho – When a rich man prays, his prayer cannot be for money. If he is still praying for money, he is not yet rich enough

Osho – There are two kinds of religiousness in the world: the religiousness of the poor — it is very worldly, it is very materialistic — and the religiousness of the rich — it is very spiritual, very nonmaterialistic. When a rich man prays, his prayer cannot be for money. If he is still praying for money, he is not yet rich enough.
There was a Sufi saint, Farid. Once the villagers asked him, “Farid, the great king, Akbar, comes to you so many times — why don’t you ask him to open a school for poor people in our village? We don’t have a school.”
Farid said, “Good, so why should I wait for him to come? I will go.”
He went to Delhi, he was received — everybody knew that Akbar respected him tremendously. Akbar was praying in his private mosque; Farid was allowed in. He went in, he saw Akbar praying. He was standing behind Akbar — he could hear what he was saying. With hands spread, Akbar was just finishing his prayer, his NAMAZ, and he was saying to God, “Almighty Compassionate One, shower more riches on me! Give me a greater kingdom!”
Farid immediately turned away. It was just the end of the prayer, so Akbar became aware that somebody had been and had gone away. He looked back, saw Farid going down the steps, ran, touched the feet of Farid and asked, “Why have you come?” — because for the first time he had come — “and why are you going away?”
Farid said, “I had come with the idea that you are rich, but listening to your prayer I realized that you are still poor. And if you are still asking for money, for more power, then it is not good for me to ask for money, because I had come to ask for a little money to open a school in my village. No, I cannot ask from a poor man. You yourself need more. I will collect some from the village and give it to you! And as far as the school is concerned, if you are asking from God, I can ask from God directly — why should I use you as a mediator?”
The story is reported by Akbar himself in his autobiography. He says, “For the first time I became aware that, yes, I am not yet rich enough, I am not yet dissatisfied with all this
money. It has not given me anything and I go on asking for more, almost completely unconsciously! It is time for me to be finished with it. Life has flown and I am still asking for rubbish. And I have accumulated much — it has not given me anything.”
But almost mechanically one goes on asking. Remember, the religion that arises when you have lived in the world and known the world and the futility of it, has a totally different flavor to it from the religion which arises in you because your physical needs are not fulfilled.
The poor man’s religion is poor, the rich man’s religion is rich. And I would like a rich religion in the world; hence I am not against technology, against industrialization. I am not against creating an affluent society, I am all for it, because this is my observation: that religion reaches its climax only when people are utterly frustrated with the worldly riches, and the only way to make them utterly frustrated is to let them experience them.
Source: from Osho Book “Dhammapada Vol 2″

Osho – If you are identified you feed the mind; if you are not identified you stop feeding it

Osho – If you are identified you feed the mind; if you are not identified you stop feeding it. It drops dead on its own accord.
There is a beautiful story. I love it very much…. One day Buddha is passing by a forest. It is a hot summer day and he is feeling very thirsty. He says to Ananda, his chief disciple, “Ananda, you go back. Just three, four miles back we passed a small stream of water. You bring a little water — take my begging bowl. I am feeling very thirsty and tired.” He had become old.
Ananda goes back, but by the time he reaches the stream, a few bullock carts have just passed through the stream and they have made the whole stream muddy. Dead leaves which had settled into the bed have risen up; it is no longer possible to drink this water — it is too dirty. He comes back empty-handed, and he says, “You will have to wait a little. I will go ahead. I have heard that just two, three miles ahead there is a big river. I will bring water from there.”
But Buddha insists. He says, “You go back and bring water from the same stream.”
Ananda could not understand the insistence, but if the master says so, the disciple has to follow. Seeing the absurdity of it — that again he will have to walk three, four miles, and he knows that water is not worth drinking — he goes.
When he is going, Buddha says, “And don’t come back if the water is still dirty. If it is dirty, you simply sit on the bank silently. Don’t do anything, don’t get into the stream. Sit on the bank silently and watch. Sooner or later the water will be clear again, and then you fill the bowl and come back.”
Ananda goes there. Buddha is right: the water is almost clear, the leaves have moved, the dust has settled. But it is not absolutely clear yet, so he sits on the bank just watching the river flow by. Slowly slowly, it becomes crystal-clear. Then he comes dancing. Then he understands why Buddha was so insistent. There was a certain message in it for him, and he understood the message. He gave the water to Buddha, and he thanked Buddha, touched his feet.
Buddha says, “What are you doing? I should thank you that you have brought water for me.”
Ananda says, “Now I can understand. First I was angry; I didn’t show it, but I was angry because it was absurd to go back. But now I understand the message. This is what I actually needed in this moment. The same is the case with my mind — sitting on the bank of that small stream, I became aware that the same is the case with my mind. If I jump into the stream I will make it dirty again. If I jump into the mind more noise is created, more problems start coming up, surfacing. Sitting by the side I learned the technique.
“Now I will be sitting by the side of my mind too, watching it with all its dirtiness and problems and old leaves and hurts and wounds, memories, desires. Unconcerned I will sit on the bank and wait for the moment when everything is clear.”
And it happens on its own accord, because the moment you sit on the bank of your mind you are no longer giving energy to it. This is real meditation. Meditation is the art of transcendence.
Source: from Osho Book “Dhammapada Vol 10″

Osho – When a Person is filled with faith, Guru Begins his Work

Osho – There is a story about a Sufi fakir. There were two fakirs who stayed opposite each other. The disciple of one of them, approached his guru and said, ”The Sufi next door is spreading all kinds of stories about you. He even maligns you and spreads horrible rumours about you. Why do you not set him right? Why do you not say something to him?”
The fakir told him, ”Why don’t you go and find out yourself? But do not ask him in haste fo priceless things are not told to a stranger. If a traveller, walking on the road asks a question the answers are only good for the road.” ”Then what shall I do?” The disciple asked. ”Go and serve him for a year. Try to be as near to him as possible. Win his confidence. Then some day, seeing the right hour and opportunity put him the question.”
For a year the disciple served his Guru’s enemy. He won his confidence and was very close to him. One night as he was pressing his legs, thinking the moment to be opportune, he asked him, ”Why do you speak against and abuse the fakir across the road? What is the secret?” The fakir replied, ”I shall tell you since you ask but tell no one. I am his disciple. I am forbidden to give out the secret. You better go and ask him yourself. Remember, these things are not spoken about to a stranger. Try to be as near to him as possible.”
Now the poor disciple was in a dilemma! Thinking him to be the Guru’s enemy, he had set out to solve the mystery and this man turned out to be his Guru’s disciple! He went back to his Guru and served him devotedly for two years. Then one day as he was bathing the Guru and nobody was about, he asked him, what the mystery was.
The Guru said, ”He is my disciple. I have specially placed him there to spread false an derogatory rumours about me. Those who believe the false rumours, do not come to me for they are false. This saves my precious time, which I utilise on those only who are really the seekers of Truth. Those who turn back by rumours alone, are not genuine seekers. This is my own man and he has served me as no other can. He has saved me from hundreds of useless seekers.”
This was the general rule: When a person was filled with faith, this means, when a person was ready to open the portals of his heart directly, then the real Guru begins his work.
Source: from Osho Book “The Way of Tao, Volume 1″

Osho – What was the reason? Why did Buddha repeat so often

Osho – Once it so happened that a man came every day for twenty-one days to hear Lao Tzu. Every day he would tell Lao Tzu, ”I have forgotten what you said yesterday. Please explain again”. This went on for a few days. Lao Tzu’s one disciple Ma Tzu could bear it no longer. On the morning of the fifth day, he stopped the man outside Lao Tzu’s hut and said, ”What is your problem?” 
The man replied, ”I have forgotten what was said yesterday and so have come to ask again.” Ma Tzu said, ”Go away, do not enter in for one mad person is you and another is this Lao Tzu. If you come with the same question for the rest of your life, he will keep on explaining to you. Since the last five days I have noted that you are where you are with your question and he is where he is with his answer!”
When this talk was going on, Lao Tzu came out of his hut and said, ”You have come brother? Come in. Have you forgotten? Then hear again.” For twenty-one days this went on. On the twenty-second day, he did not come. The story goes that Lao Tzu went to his house, fearing he might be ill. ”What is the matter? Why did you not come today?” Lao Tzu asked. The man replied. ”I have understood. Now I am a different man.”
Understand the difference: Had we gone twenty-one times to Lao Tzu it would not have been for the sake of understanding. The understanding, according to us, took place the very first day but life did not change. This man however says that: ”If I understand what you have said, my life must change.” And there the matter ends.
Whenever Buddha spoke – and this amazing fact came to be known when his books were edited – he repeated each line not less than three times. Now it is difficult to print the same matter three times. Besides, making the book three times its size, it proves burdensome to the reader also. Therefore when Rahula Sankrityayana first translated the vinaya pitaka, he put an asterisk after each line and in his notes he added another asterisk and yet another – the whole book is filled with asterisks.
What was the reason? Why did Buddha repeat so often? To explain a thing, a logic has to be given but to convey the thing to the innermost to those simple people, all that was needed was repetition, which then became mantra-like and suggestible and it quickly penetrated the innermost centre. Continuous repetition was enough. Each repetition helped it to penetrate more within.
Source: from Osho Book “The Way of Tao, Volume 1″

Osho – Be watchful so that inside remains always alone, far away, a watcher on the hills.


Osho – A Zen master was passing across a river, a small river, and his disciple was asking a few questions. When they were crossing the river the disciple asked a question, saying ’Master, what is the way to cross the river?’

And the master said ’Cross it in such a way that the water does not touch your feet’.
The disciple was very surprised because he looked down and even the master’s feet were wet! So he said ’Sir, excuse me, but I see that even your feet are wet.’

And the master said ’I am not: it is only on the surface. Deep inside I am as dry as ever; the water has not touched me.’

Now, there are two ways to remain untouched by the water: one is, never to enter into any river – but that will be suicidal because the whole life is the river; then you are hung-up on the bank. That’s what happens to your so-called saints in the monasteries and to monks and people – catholics and hindus and jainas.

They are just dead, just hanging on the bank, always afraid that if they get into the river they will get wet. That is not the way… that is what is called ’throwing the baby out with the bathwater’. You have thrown your life also just because of the fear that you will get wet.

Get into the river, go in as deep as possible, and become a lotus. Cross all kinds of rivers and enjoy all kinds of experiences. East and west, here and there and everywhere, meet all kinds of people, fall in all kinds of love, enter all kinds of madnesses, have. a taste of everything that is available in life… and yet remain a lotus. Be watchful so that inside remains always alone, far away, a watcher on the hills. It will happen; it will start happening by and by….

Source: from Osho Book “The Further Shore”

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