Question : Have you a message for the Press?

Osho – Certainly. The press should be absolutely free, and the freedom of press includes television, radio, and all news media. Nothing should be in the control of the government, because government has all the powers, and individuals have no powers. Who is going to fight for them, and who is going to protect them against the government?

The press to me is more important than the politicians. But it is important only if it is free. For example in this country, the press has not fought that the television should not be government owned, that the radio should not be government owned. They should be public enterprises. Then the press can fight for individuals who have no power, but the press can give them great power.

I was myself once an editor, and I resigned from the post because everything has to be pro-government. Truth is not the criterion. The poor individual is not to be protected. Government is already powerful and press also joins with government. That was one reason I resigned. I said, “I will say what I feel is the truth, whether it goes against government or anybody.”

Second thing I found, that they are not interested in any good news. They are interested only in rapes, murders, suicides, divorces, scandal. And I told them that these are dangerous. There may be a million men, and only one man rapes, and he becomes news. What about the remaining?

I told to my owner of the press, that a man has confessed in France that he killed an stranger whom he had never seen. He killed him, he was sitting on the beach, from behind. Even while killing he had not seen him. There was no enmity, but he wanted to be a celebrity, his photos all over the press, and he has achieved his goal.

So giving prominence to evil, you are supporting evil. Rather than raising the consciousness of the people, rather than being teachers, you are simply following their lower instincts. You are not serving humanity. You are poisoning humanity. I cannot do that. It does not matter that a man commits suicide. In four billion people around the world, if a man commits suicide, so what? You cannot find anything else worth, newsworthy?

Those four billion people must be doing thousands of things, somebody must be making a beautiful painting. That should be on the first page. Somebody should be carving a statue, that should be on the first page. But your first page is devoted to criminals and politicians, who are really two sides of the same coin. In my definition, the successful criminal becomes the politician and the unsuccessful politician becomes criminal; so there is not much difference.

Politicians should be thrown to the fourth page, and they should not be given importance. Who is making them great? Adolph Hitler was retarded, he could not pass any examination, he was refused from art academy, architecture academy, wherever he applied he failed in the admission examination. And this man became world’s one of the greatest leaders. Who made him? If the press had simply ignored him, there would have been no second world war. More than Adolf Hitler, the press is responsible.

Life consists of both things, roses and thorns, but why pay so much attention to thorns? Roses should be brought to the people. It is a psychological revolution. If a person reads everyday about evil, slowly slowly he feels evil is the way of life. Slowly slowly he feels that even if he commits it, there is no big deal. Everybody is doing it.

And the good is ignored. The readers think that good does not happen anywhere because there is no news. They have even created a proverb, that “No news is good news.” That should be changed, “Bad news is no news. Only good news is the news.”

In California universities they have conducted a one-year survey, that why evil fluctuates; sometimes it reaches a height, sometimes it falls down? And they were surprised that whenever there is a boxing match, evil rises to thirteen percent than the normal; and it continues at least for one week before it normalizes again. Rapes happen, murders happen, suicides happen. If boxing is creating thirty percent raise in the evil, then boxing should be absolutely stopped. It is the criminal really. And no newspaper should report about boxing. It is ugly, but that ugliness gives people that you can also be ugly. To be ugly is not bad.

News media has to play a great and important role. First, freedom from government; second ignoring the bad, which is very minute compared to the good; and thirdly, creating a forum for each problem to be openly discussed. And the whole news media can be involved in it, in open discussion. That is human; it is not human that holding a sword in your hand and KORAN in your other hand and telling “You can choose.” This is not argument. This does not prove that the KORAN is right. It simply proves that the man does not want to die.

Things have changed. Christians are also coming in one hand bread, in another hand BIBLE. But to satisfy one’s hunger is not giving intelligence, is not giving the right to choose what is good and what is wrong. Whether the BIBLE is wrong or right, hunger cannot decide it.
The press has a great responsibility, but man has come of age. These are primitive methods of deciding who is right. We have intelligence, we can argue, we can go to the subtlest argument, and the whole press should be available. And out of that argument, a conclusion which will be more unanimous, not mine or not somebody else’s, will come out.

News media is the very soul of the century. Right now it is not so. It only creates sensationalism, it only fulfills people’s demands. In economics they have a theory, wherever there is demand there is supply. The news media is doing that. Whatever people demand, if they demand pornography, supply pornography because there is market.

I want to change that rule. I want to reverse it. I want to say “Wherever there is supply, demand is bound to be created.” Don’t go on fulfilling the demand, because the demand is coming from the lowest strata of the society. Supply from the highest intelligentsia of the society, and create the demand. And I know it happens, even against all economic theories.

When there was no car, nobody was demanding for it. The moment car arrived, supplies arrived before; and now millions of people are owning cars. If that can happen in things, why it cannot happen in thoughts?
So my message to the news media is that you are not behaving responsibly. You are not taking care of humanity. You are simply exploiting people by supplying them whatsoever they want.
Source – from Osho Book “The Last Testament, Vol4′

Question – OSHO! OSHO! OSHO!!!…???

Osho – That is the way. If you can cry, if you can pray, if you can call from your very innermost core, the divine is always available. The divine is always close; it is just that you have not called, that you have not knocked at his door. Jesus says, “Knock, and the door shall be opened unto you. Ask, and it shall be given….”

Osho – Remember this: Whenever you are depressed, wait for the moment that the depression goes. Nothing lasts forever; the depression will go. And when it leaves you, wait — be aware and alert — because after the depression, after the night, there will be a dawn and the sun will rise. If you can be alert in that moment. you will he happy that you were depressed. You will be grateful that you are depressed because only through your depression was this mint of happiness possible.

But what do we do? We move in an infinite regression We yet depressed. Then we yet depressed because of the depression: a second depression follows. If you are depressed. that’s okay! — nothing is wrong in it. It is beautiful because through it you will learn and mature. But then you feel badly. “Why do I get depressed? I should not get depressed.” Then you start fighting with the depression. The first depression is good, but the second depression is unreal. And this unreal depression will cloud your mind. You will miss the moment that would have followed the real depression.

When depressed, be depressed. Simply be depressed. Don’t get depressed about your depression. When depressed, simply be depressed. Don’t fight it, don’t create any diversion, don’t force it to go. Just allow it to happen; it will go by itself. Life is a flux; nothing remains the same. You are not needed; the river moves by itself, you don’t have to push it. If you are trying to push it, you are simply foolish. The river flows by itself. Allow it to flow.

When depression is there, allow it to be. Don’t get depressed about it. If you want to remove it sooner, you will get depressed. If you fight it, you will create a secondary depression that is dangerous. The first depression is beautiful, God-given. The second depression is your own. It is not God-given; it is mental. Then you will move in mental grooves. They are infinite.

If you get depressed, be happy that you are depressed and allow the depression to be. Then suddenly the depression will disappear and there will be a breakthrough. No clouds will be there and the sky will be clear. For a single moment, heaven opens for you. If you are not depressed about your depression you can contact, you can commune, you can enter this heavenly gate. And once you know it, you have learned one of the ultimate laws of life: that life uses the opposite as a teacher, as a back-ground.

Nothing is wrong; everything is for the good. This is what I call a religious attitude. You may not believe in God — that makes no difference. Buddha never believed in God. Mahavir never believed in God but they were religious. There is no need to believe in an afterlife no need. You can still be religious. There is no need even to believe in a soul. You can be religious without believing in it. Then what is religion? Religion means this trust: that everything is for the good. This trust that everything is for the good is a religious mind; this is religiousness.

Source – from Osho Book “The New Alchemy: To turn you on”

Osho – Love is an entirely different matter. It has no relation
whatsoever to the intellect; it is quite unconnected to thought. Just as meditation is thoughtlessness, so is love. And just as meditation cannot be managed by the intellect, so it is with love.

In fact, meditation and love are two names of almost the same experience. When meditation happens through contact with another person, we call it love; and when love happens in a person without any contact with anybody else, we call it meditation. Love and meditation are two sides of the same coin.

Meditation and love are names of the same door seen from two different places. Seen from the outside, the door is called love. Seen from the inside it is called meditation. It is just like a door labeled entrance on one side and exit on the other; the same door serves both purposes. So if you arrive at the door from the outside, the label is love, if you arrive from the inside, the label is meditation.

Meditation is becoming filled with love in your own aloneness, and love is the art of slipping into meditation with the other. In either case it is only rarely that someone reaches, because meditators are rare, and lovers are equally rare.

Question – OSHO, YOU SAID TODAY THAT THERE IS NOTHING LIKE A ‘GROUP SOUL’, BUT I HAVE BEEN STRONGLY FEELING SOMETHING LIKE THAT IN THE COMMUNE. NOT ONLY THAT, BUT THIS FEELING OF A COLLECTIVE SOUL IS BECOMING MORE AND MORE INTENSE AND ATTUNED DAY BY DAY. IT IS SOMETHING NEW FOR ME, AND VERY BEAUTIFUL, AND ACTUALLY L EXPERIENCE IT AS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THING THAT IS HAPPENING FOR ME HERE. I KNOW THAT EACH OF US HAS TO AWAKEN ALONE, BUT I FEEL THAT THIS ‘COLLECTIVE SOUL’ IS A TREMENDOUS HELP, AT LEAST FOR US NOT TO CREATE OTHER DREAMS…. AM I DREAMING NOW OF A ‘COLLECTIVE SOUL’?

Osho - Sarjano,

NO, IT IS A FACT, you just don t know the right word for it. ‘Collective soul’ is not the right term; it is very misleading. Soul can only be individual. Then what is happening here in this commune? Anybody who enters the ashram for the first time immediately becomes aware of something. He can see it on people’s faces, he can see it in their walk, he can see it in the way they are working. He can see that it is no ordinary humanity. Some grace he can feel, some joy permeating the whole place, some playfulness, some sense of humor. And people are working seven days a week. Nobody is looking at the clock…except the Indians!

People are enjoying the work: it is play, it is creativity. They are not tired. In fact, the deeper they go into this creativity, the more nourished they feel he more energy is released in them. Anybody can see that something is there like an inner connection that connects all the sannyasins into one whole. It is not a collective soul, it is only falling into the same rhythm. I have a rhythm. The closer you come to me, the more you start falling into the same rhythm. Then my breath and your breath synchronize, then my heart and your heart synchronize.

And all the sannyasins are getting synchronized with me; hence they are also synchronized, as a consequence, with each other. It is a synchronicity. It is an orchestra. We are all playing different instruments, but in harmony, in accord.

That harmony, Sarjano, you are calling the ‘collective soul’. It is not a collective soul. An army has a collective mind, no soul at all, because soul can never be collective. Soul is always individual. It is found in your deepest aloneness; there is no other way to find it. But n a commune…this is the chemistry of a commune, that it helps you to become harmonious with others. And the more harmonious you are with others, the closer you come to your own soul, because harmony brings you closer to the soul. When a person is absolutely in harmony with the universe he becomes enlightened.

A paradox to be remembered: the Buddha is one who is absolutely in harmony with the universe, and yet a Buddha is one who is an absolutely unique individual. He plays his flute or his guitar, but he plays his flute or guitar in absolute accord with the whole. He does not go in his own egoistic way — he is not an idiot.

Remember: either you are a Buddha or you are an idiot! The word ‘idiot’ is beautiful; it simply means: doing something privately. Literally it means doing something privately; hence the words like ‘idiosyncrasy’. The idiot does not mean a fool; the idiot is far more potent a word than the fool. The idiot simply means one who is trying to live through his ego, who is playing his instrument AGAINST the whole and trying to succeed. He is an idiot: he is going to fail, he is doomed to fail. His life will never know any blessing, any benediction.

Sarjano, your feeling is right, you are just using a wrong word. Yes, a harmony IS being created. I am in tune with the universe. You don’t know what the tune of the universe is; it is invisible. Right now you cannot connect yourself with the universal rhythm directly. But am in tune with the universe — call it God, nirvana, enlightenment — I am utterly lost in it. I have no song of my own to sing; I am singing the song of the universe. YOU can fall in tune with me. That is how you become a disciple: when you find somebody with whom falling in love brings joy. Falling in love is falling in tune with somebody.

Your ordinary love affairs are ugly, because you are both in discord. Your love affair is superficial. Because you like the blonde hair of a girl, or the shape of the nose, or the color of the eyes, or the curves of the body…and you fall in love. Now curves of the body, color of the eyes, the blonde hair, are not going to last long. Sooner or later you will be fed up with them — the same curve, the same eyes, the same nose — sooner or later you will stop seeing them. This is not love! Hence conflict arises immediately. All so-called love affairs are nothing but conflicts disguised — jealousies, possessiveness, domination, ego trips.

But when you fall in love with a Master it is a totally different phenomenon. You feel the rhythm of the Master; and slowly slowly your heart feels the call and you enter into an adventure. Slowly slowly, more and more people enter into that adventure…a commune is created.

First the Buddha: BUDDHAM SHARNAM GACHCHHAMI — I go to the feet of the Buddha. Then the disciples arise, those who have gone to the feet of the Buddha: SANGHAM SHARNAM GACHCHHAMI. Then many many disciples gather, and they start feeling attuned not only with the Buddha but a certain attunement with each other also arises naturally: they are all attuned to one center, hence they start feeling an attunement with each other. A brotherhood, a sisterhood, arises; that is the SANGHA — the commune.

And when you have fallen in love with a Buddha and have fallen in love with a commune, the ultimate surrender arises: DHAMMAM SHARNAM GACHCHHAMI. Then you know that it is neither the Buddha nor the commune: behind the Buddha is the universal law, the ultimate law — DHAMMA. Buddha only represents the ultimate law in a visible form; his commune represents it in an even grosser way.

These are the three shelters. First you take shelter in the Buddha, then you take shelter in the commune, and then you take shelter in the ultimate law. This is what is happening here. Sarjano, you are moving in the right direction; your feeling is perfectly right. Intuitively you are right, just intellectually you are using a wrong word. Drop that word!

Source – from Osho Book “Be Still and Know”