BELOVED OSHO,

THE WANDERER

ZARATHUSTRA SPEAKS TO HIMSELF:

I AM A WANDERER AND A MOUNTAIN-CLIMBER... I DO NOT LIKE THE PLAINS AND IT SEEMS I CANNOT SIT STILL FOR LONG.

AND WHATEVER MAY YET COME TO ME AS FATE AND EXPERIENCE -- A WANDERING AND A MOUNTAIN-CLIMBING WILL BE IN IT: IN THE FINAL ANALYSIS ONE EXPERIENCES ONLY ONESELF.

THE TIME HAS PASSED WHEN ACCIDENTS COULD BEFALL ME; AND WHAT COULD STILL COME TO ME THAT WAS NOT ALREADY MY OWN?

IT IS RETURNING, AT LAST IT IS COMING HOME TO ME -- MY OWN SELF AND THOSE PARTS OF IT THAT HAVE LONG BEEN ABROAD AND SCATTERED AMONG ALL THINGS AND ACCIDENTS.

AND I KNOW ONE THING MORE: I STAND NOW BEFORE MY LAST SUMMIT AND BEFORE THE DEED THAT HAS BEEN DEFERRED THE LONGEST. ALAS, I HAVE TO CLIMB MY MOST DIFFICULT PATH! ALAS, I HAVE STARTED UPON MY LONELIEST WANDERING!

BUT A MAN OF MY SORT DOES NOT AVOID SUCH AN HOUR: THE HOUR THAT SAYS TO HIM: `ONLY NOW DO YOU READ YOUR PATH OF GREATNESS! SUMMIT AND ABYSS -- THEY ARE NOW UNITED IN ONE!

`YOU ARE TREADING YOUR PATH OF GREATNESS: NOW WHAT WAS FORMERLY YOUR ULTIMATE DANGER HAS BECOME YOUR ULTIMATE REFUGE!...

`YOU ARE TREADING YOUR PATH OF GREATNESS: NO ONE SHALL STEAL AFTER YOU HERE! YOUR FOOT ITSELF HAS EXTINGUISHED THE PATH BEHIND YOU, AND ABOVE THAT PATH STANDS WRITTEN: IMPOSSIBILITY.

`AND WHEN ALL FOOTHOLDS DISAPPEAR, YOU MUST KNOW HOW TO CLIMB UPON YOUR OWN HEAD: HOW COULD YOU CLIMB UPWARD OTHERWISE?

`UPON YOUR OWN HEAD AND BEYOND YOUR OWN HEART! NOW THE GENTLEST PART OF YOU MUST BECOME THE HARDEST....

`IN ORDER TO SEE MUCH ONE MUST LEARN TO LOOK AWAY FROM ONESELF -- EVERY MOUNTAIN-CLIMBER NEEDS THIS HARDNESS.

`BUT HE WHO, SEEKING ENLIGHTENMENT, IS OVER-EAGER WITH HIS EYES, HOW COULD HE SEE MORE OF A THING THAN ITS FOREGROUND!

`YOU, HOWEVER, O ZARATHUSTRA, HAVE WANTED TO BEHOLD THE GROUND OF THINGS AND THEIR BACKGROUND: SO YOU MUST CLIMB ABOVE YOURSELF -- UP AND BEYOND, UNTIL YOU HAVE EVEN YOUR STARS UNDER YOU!'

YES! TO LOOK DOWN UPON MYSELF AND EVEN UPON MY STARS: THAT ALONE WOULD I CALL MY SUMMIT, THAT HAS REMAINED FOR ME AS MY ULTIMATE SUMMIT!...

MAN, HOWEVER, IS THE MOST COURAGEOUS ANIMAL: WITH HIS COURAGE HE HAS OVERCOME EVERY ANIMAL. WITH A TRIUMPHANT SHOUT HE HAS EVEN OVERCOME EVERY PAIN; HUMAN PAIN, HOWEVER, IS THE DEEPEST PAIN.

COURAGE ALSO DESTROYS GIDDINESS AT ABYSSES: AND WHERE DOES MAN NOT STAND AT AN ABYSS? IS SEEING ITSELF NOT -- SEEING ABYSSES?

COURAGE IS THE BEST DESTROYER: COURAGE ALSO DESTROYS PITY. PITY, HOWEVER, IS THE DEEPEST ABYSS: AS DEEPLY AS MAN LOOKS INTO LIFE, SO DEEPLY DOES HE LOOK ALSO INTO SUFFERING.

COURAGE, HOWEVER, IS THE BEST DESTROYER, COURAGE THAT ATTACKS: IT DESTROYS EVEN DEATH, FOR IT SAYS: `WAS THAT LIFE? WELL THEN! ONCE MORE!'

BUT THERE IS A GREAT TRIUMPHANT SHOUT IN SUCH A SAYING. HE WHO HAS EARS TO HEAR, LET HIM HEAR....

... THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA.

One of the most fundamental things to be understood by all those who are in search -- in search of a path, in search of a direction, in search of a meaning, in search of themselves -- is that they will have to become wanderers. They cannot remain static. They have to learn to be a process rather than being an event.

The greatest distinguishing mark between things and man, between animals and man, is that things remain the same; they cannot become wanderers. Animals also are born complete -- they don't grow up, they only grow old. A deer is born a deer and will die a deer. There is no process between birth and death, no becoming.

Man is the only being on the earth -- and perhaps in the whole universe -- who can become a process, a movement, a growing. Not just growing old, but growing up to new levels of consciousness, to new stages of awareness, to new spaces of experience. And there is the possibility in man that he can even transcend himself, he can go beyond himself. That is taking the process to its logical end.

In other words, I would like you to remember that man is not to be understood as a being, because the word being gives a wrong idea -- as if man is complete.

Man is a becoming.

Man is the only animal who is not complete. And that is his glory, not his curse; it is his blessing. He can be born as a man, and he can die as a Zarathustra, or as a Gautam Buddha, or as a Jesus Christ -- who have transcended humanity and reached to a new space you can call enlightenment, you can call awakening, you can call godliness, but something superhuman. Man is a becoming. Zarathustra uses the parable of the wanderer for this fundamental truth about man.

ZARATHUSTRA SPEAKS TO HIMSELF -- and naturally when somebody like Zarathustra speaks to himself he speaks more authentically, more truthfully than when he speaks to others. Speaking to others, he has to concede and compromise with the others; otherwise he will be speaking a language which is only going to be misunderstood. He has to come down from his heights to the dark valleys of those with whom he is speaking.

But when he speaks with himself he can speak on the sunlit peaks, without any compromise. He can say exactly what he wants to say because he is saying it to himself, not to anybody else; there is no problem of being misunderstood. The monologue and the dialogue are two totally different phenomena.

One of the most significant Jewish philosophers of this century, Martin Buber, has contributed to world thought the idea of the dialogue. According to him, dialogue is the most significant thing. But perhaps he does not know that monologue has a height which no dialogue can ever have. So when Zarathustra speaks to himself, listen more carefully, because he is speaking from the very source of his heart -- and without any compromise, without any concern that he may be understood or not understood.

He is talking to himself, and these are the most important statements that he makes.ZARATHUSTRA SPEAKS TO HIMSELF:

I AM A WANDERER AND A MOUNTAIN-CLIMBER... I DO NOT LIKE THE PLAINS AND IT SEEMS I CANNOT SIT STILL FOR LONG.

What he is saying represents exactly the innermost longing of human beings. They are all wanderers, although they have not dared to wander and they have not dared to mountain climb. Perhaps this is one of the basic reasons why they are miserable: their greatest longing remains unfulfilled; they are tied down to the plains.

There are reasons why they are tied down to the plains -- it is more comfortable, it is more convenient, it is less dangerous, more secure. But it is not according to the innermost longing of the soul. The soul wants to soar high in the skies, it wants to go into unknown lands, it wants to wander on paths which are virgin. It wants to climb mountains which have never been climbed before.

It is something essentially human; it is born with man. You can keep it repressed, but then you will remain sad, miserable, and you will always feel something is missing. You may accumulate money, you may accumulate power, you may become very respectable, but inside yourself there will remain something unfulfilled, still hankering for the stars.

Man is certainly a moon-gazer. Deep down, everybody is a lunatic. The word lunatic comes from luna, the moon. Everybody wants to reach to the moon. It is not a question of finding something there, the question is of reaching there. The very pilgrimage is the bliss -- not the goal.

The goal is perhaps nothing but an excuse to wander, because whenever one reaches a goal, immediately he starts preparing for a new journey, a new pilgrimage. That goal has served its purpose. All goals are just to help you to keep on moving.

Movement is such a joy because movement is life. Movement is such an ecstasy because the moment you stop moving, you are dead. You may go on breathing, but that does not mean life. Movement brings you all the songs and all the dances possible.

Rabindranath Tagore has written a very strange poem. The poem is immensely significant in understanding the wandering spirit of man.

Rabindranath says that he is in search of God... perhaps God too is the ultimate excuse for wandering -- perhaps the best excuse, because you will never find Him; the wandering will remain eternal. That is the beauty of God -- you can long for Him, but you cannot find Him; nobody has ever found Him. The people who deny God are not aware of the deep psychology behind the fiction of God. They don't know that if you deny God, if you deny paradise, if you deny the afterlife, you are denying movement for man.

If you deny soul, if you deny consciousness, if you say consciousness is nothing but a by-product of matter as the communists say.... The way Karl Marx has defined consciousness is as a by-product of matter, nothing much. Whether he is right or wrong is not the question, the question is that if he is accepted he has destroyed your every possibility of movement. He has denied you the exploration of the unknown and the unknowable.

Rabindranath says, "I was in search of God, and once in a while I would see him far away, near a star. But by the time I would reach that star, lives would have passed and God would have moved somewhere else. And the search continued.... One day, suddenly, I reached a place before a beautiful palace, and on the signboard it said in golden letters `The House of God.' First I was thrilled -- thrilled that I had made it after all -- and I rushed up the many steps leading to the door of the palace.

"But just as I was going to knock on the door, a thought suddenly paralyzed me -- my hand remained paralyzed, without knocking, near the door -- a thought that `If in reality this is the house of God and He opens the door, then I am finished. My whole joy was the search, my whole joy was looking for God. After meeting God, what am I going to do?'"

A great fear grips him. He takes his shoes off and, carrying them in his hands, goes back down the steps. He is afraid -- although he has not knocked on the door, hearing the noise of the shoes, of footsteps, God Himself may open the door and say, "Where are you going? I am here."

"And then I ran away from that house, faster than I had ever run before. Now I am again searching for God. I know where He lives, so I can avoid that place and go on searching all over the universe. The search continues, my adventure continues, my excitement continues, the tomorrow remains meaningful -- and I am fortunate that I know that even by accident I cannot reach His house. I have seen His house, and I have also seen that He is just an excuse; my real desire is to explore the unknown.

"God was just a name, I had never really thought about all its implications. If you really meet Him, what are you going to do? It will be very embarrassing. What are you going to say? And then there is no tomorrow, you have come to the full stop -- because there is nothing beyond God; God is the very beyond."

I have loved that small poem very much; it gives insight into the human spirit. The human spirit is nothing but a longing -- longing for the unknown, longing to know more, longing to be more, longing to explore uncharted seas, unclimbed mountains, unreached stars.

And the joy is not in reaching, the joy is in making the effort, the arduous effort, the dangerous effort. Once you have reached you will have to find a new excuse; otherwise that will be your grave, that will be suicidal.

When Zarathustra says, I AM A WANDERER AND A MOUNTAIN-CLIMBER, he is saying something about you all. He is saying something about the very human spirit.

I DO NOT LIKE THE PLAINS AND IT SEEMS I CANNOT SIT STILL FOR LONG.

AND WHATEVER MAY YET COME TO ME AS FATE AND EXPERIENCE -- A WANDERING AND A MOUNTAIN-CLIMBING WILL BE IN IT.

I will not accept any other destiny, because any other destiny will be nothing but death. I will accept the destiny only if wandering and mountain climbing are part of it, if my wandering continues and new mountains and higher mountains and farther-away stars are still available to me.

IN THE FINAL ANALYSIS, ONE EXPERIENCES ONLY ONESELF.

As you go on searching for truth, searching for God, searching for meaning... these are all different names because you cannot go on simply searching for nothing. That needs a totally different insight.

If you understand that wandering in itself is the goal, that there is no goal for which the wandering exists -- all goals exist for wandering; wandering itself is the goal -- then you need not even have goals. You need not even bother about meaning, about truth, about God; you can go on searching.

But it may be a little difficult. And it will look a little irrational if somebody asks you, "What are you searching for?" If you cannot answer him, and if you simply say, "I am only a pure searcher, it does not matter what...." Not to feel embarrassed, you choose any name: you are searching for liberation, you are searching for enlightenment, you are searching for the ultimate truth -- beautiful words, and very satisfying to the person who is asking you the question. Neither he is embarrassed nor you are embarrassed.

But in all this wandering, in all this searching, in all this mountain climbing, what do you find? Zarathustra says: you find only yourself.

Of course, if you have not wandered, perhaps you may not have found yourself -- because all those ecstasies, all those new spaces that you come across help you to discover yourself. Slowly, slowly it dawns upon you that all goals are just excuses.

I am nothing but a longing, a desire for the impossible.

This is knowing oneself -- the desire for the impossible.

The possible is only for the mediocre minds, for the middle-class people. The impossible is for real giants. They know it cannot be found, that's why it is so important to find it. Knowing perfectly well it has never been found and it is not going to be found gives a great excitement.

The impossible goes on raising human consciousness to higher planes. You may not find anything but you will become a superman.

IN THE FINAL ANALYSIS ONE EXPERIENCES ONLY ONESELF.

THE TIME HAS PASSED WHEN ACCIDENTS COULD BEFALL ME; AND WHAT COULD STILL COME TO ME THAT WAS NOT ALREADY MY OWN?

Now, no accidents happen to him -- what does Zarathustra mean? Accidents happen in your life because you have chosen a certain goal, and if you go astray you miss the goal. You wanted to catch a train and you reached the station late and you missed the train. But if you have no goal except wandering, you cannot go astray. If you are not going to catch the train -- no train in particular -- you cannot miss the train.

Accidents happen only because we want our lives to be in a certain way and something goes wrong, something hinders, something prevents, something comes in the way. You wanted it to be otherwise, and it does not prove to be that way; that is why accidents happen.

Zarathustra says, THE TIME HAS PASSED WHEN ACCIDENTS COULD BEFALL ME. Now nothing can be an accident to me, because I accept everything. Even the accident is perfectly good, going astray is perfectly good. I was not going towards a particular goal anyway.

This is something of tremendous depth; that a man can come to an understanding with life, to such a deep rapport and harmony, that whatever happens is the right thing. He was not asking for something to happen, he was simply available -- whatever happens is the right thing, whatever happens, that's what he was wanting to happen.

To go beyond accidents means you have attained a tremendous accord with existence. There is no failure possible, there is no frustration possible. Your silence and your serenity cannot be disturbed.

Gautam Buddha has named this understanding the experience of "suchness." Whatever happens he says, "Such was going to happen." If you were expecting otherwise, then certainly you are sad and you are frustrated -- life has not been kind towards you. But to Gautam Buddha, life is always kind, existence is always compassionate, because whatever happens, that's how it should happen. Gautam Buddha has no other desire than existence itself.

His word is very beautiful. His original word is tathata, and because of this word, because he was using it continually... a disciple dies and he says, "It is perfectly okay, his time had come." Nobody dies untimely, although on every grave you will find written, "This poor fellow died untimely." Nobody dies untimely, everybody dies timely, exactly the way that he should die. Because of his use of the word tathata, "such is the nature of things," his name became Tathagat -- the man who believes in suchness.

You cannot disturb such a man. He will accept the disturbance with an absolute welcome. There is no resistance, there is no reluctance. It is not that he is somehow accepting it, there is total acceptance.

With total acceptance, accidents stop happening and life becomes a totally different experience where there are no frustrations, no accidents, no disasters, where everything is exactly as it should be. You are so centered, so calm and quiet. Nothing stirs in you. Only in this centeredness, in this calmness and quietness, one comes to know oneself.

IT IS RETURNING, AT LAST IT IS COMING HOME TO ME -- MY OWN SELF AND THOSE PARTS OF IT THAT HAVE LONG BEEN ABROAD AND SCATTERED AMONG ALL THINGS AND ACCIDENTS. Now I am gathering to myself all those parts that had fallen apart. At last, I am coming home!

But remember, his home does not mean that he is going to sit still. Wandering is his home, climbing the mountains is his home. He has found his purest longing -- it is nothing but a desire to overcome itself. This he calls "returning home" and becoming one; gathering all the scattered parts and creating an organic unity.

AND I KNOW ONE THING MORE: I STAND NOW BEFORE MY LAST SUMMIT AND BEFORE THE DEED THAT HAS BEEN DEFERRED THE LONGEST. ALAS, I HAVE TO CLIMB MY MOST DIFFICULT PATH! ALAS, I HAVE STARTED UPON MY LONELIEST WANDERING! Up to now he was with his disciples. Now he is absolutely alone, and he is on his longest wandering -- a wandering that perhaps never ends, that only begins but never ends.

BUT A MAN OF MY SORT DOES NOT AVOID SUCH AN HOUR: THE HOUR THAT SAYS TO HIM: `ONLY NOW DO YOU TREAD YOUR PATH OF GREATNESS! SUMMIT AND ABYSS -- THEY ARE NOW UNITED IN ONE!' He is saying, "A man of my qualities, who is ready to go on the longest journey knowing perfectly well that perhaps it will never end, and alone, feels deep in the heart: only now am I treading the path of greatness. Summit and abyss -- the highest and the lowest -- both meet in one, because now nothing is high to me and nothing is low to me.

If I fall into the lowest abyss, that will be a wandering; if I reach to the highest summit, that will be a wandering. In my wandering there is no longer any goal. The summit and the abyss have become one; THEY ARE NOW UNITED IN ONE.

When such an experience happens you are both, together: your deepest self and your highest self. You are the whole range of all the colors of the rainbow, from one end to the other.

YOU ARE TREADING YOUR PATH OF GREATNESS: NOW WHAT WAS FORMERLY YOUR ULTIMATE DANGER HAS BECOME YOUR ULTIMATE REFUGE! What was first thought to be an ultimate danger -- to be alone on a journey which nobody knows whether it ends anywhere or not, whether it leads anywhere or not... that has always been the danger. That's why people remain in crowds. They don't go alone, they remain Christians, they remain Hindus, they remain Mohammedans; they remain Indians, they remain Germans, they remain British.

They are always clinging to some kind of crowd -- nation, religion, some organization, some political ideology -- just to avoid loneliness, because somehow we have convinced ourselves that so many millions of people cannot be wrong. But the trouble is, everybody is thinking the same.

In the life of one of the emperors of India, Akbar... he writes in AKBAR NAMMA, his autobiography, that a beautiful marble pond was made in his garden especially for swans to be brought from the Himalayas, because they are the greatest swans in the world -- the whitest and the most beautiful. One of his friends suggested, "Don't fill it with water, fill it with milk as a welcome for those great swans you are bringing from the Himalayas." They very rarely come to the plains; they remain at the highest lake in the world, Mansarovar.

Very few human beings have been able to reach Mansarovar. It is deep in the Himalayas, and at a height which no other lake in the world is. It is the most peaceful lake, and only those swans live there. The idea was good, to welcome them, but where to get so much milk from? -- the pond was very big.

The friend suggested, "Do one thing: we can inform the whole capital that tomorrow everybody has to bring a bucketful of milk for the king's garden. The swans are coming and it is the duty of the capital to welcome them with milk."

A very wise man who was very intimate with Akbar said to him, "You will be very much surprised tomorrow morning."

Akbar said, "Why? What do you mean?"

He said, "Just wait. Tomorrow morning is not far away."

And Akbar was really surprised, because the whole pond was full of water! Everybody in the capital had thought that just one bucketful of water in millions of buckets of milk... who can find out who has poured in a bucketful of water? It will get mixed with the milk. But everybody had thought that. Not even a single person had brought milk. Early in the morning -- and because they all were bringing water, before the sunrise -- they all poured their buckets in. And they were very happy that they had managed it. They went back home.

When the king came to look, the wise man was there, sitting. He said, "Look at that, your pond full of milk. You don't understand the human mind."

They all think alike -- it is a crowd. You are part of a crowd and you think, "So many people cannot be wrong." But they all are thinking the same, that so many people cannot be wrong. Everybody is thinking the same. Although you may be in a crowd you are alone, and your aloneness remains intact. Why do people want to remain in crowds? What is the fear of being alone?

Zarathustra says, "That has been formerly my greatest danger -- to be left alone, because then one starts wondering whether I am on the right path, whether what I am doing is the right thing to do. And there is nobody else to ask for advice." Left alone, a thousand and one doubts arise, and there is nobody to answer.

People love to live in crowds. There are always people who are ready to give you advice, whether they know anything or not. Giving advice to others is such a joy, and everybody knows that advice is the one thing in the world which is given most, and never taken by anybody. But still people go on giving, free of charge.

But in the crowd one feels cozy. Surrounded by so many people there is every possibility to feel, "Whatever I am doing is right, because everybody else is doing it." Alone, great doubts arise -- and with them, great darkness surrounds you. Alone... where are you going? Is there any God? Does this path lead anywhere, or are you simply going into nowhere-ness?

But he says "What was the greatest danger before has become my ultimate refuge. Now I enjoy it; it is my shelter, it is my home. I have dropped all goals, I have made wandering my goal; now I cannot go wrong."

YOU ARE TREADING YOUR PATH OF GREATNESS: NO ONE SHALL STEAL AFTER YOU HERE! YOUR FOOT ITSELF HAS EXTINGUISHED THE PATH BEHIND YOU, AND ABOVE THAT PATH STANDS WRITTEN: IMPOSSIBILITY. Unless you accept the challenge of the impossible, your greatness can never blossom to its ultimate peak. Only the impossible brings you to your full flowering; only the impossible brings you your spring, your home.

If you ask me, I will say: God is nothing but another name of the impossible. But it has lost its quality because you have become so acquainted with it -- you never think that it is something that is impossible. You have started thinking of God as possible. It has lost its very purpose.

It is better now to change it for Zarathustra's word, impossibility. That is his home, that is his refuge, and that is his wandering. And it is bringing his genius, his greatness, his integrity, his individuality to its ultimate grandeur. There is no other achievement except the glory of your own being.

AND WHEN ALL FOOTHOLDS DISAPPEAR, YOU MUST KNOW HOW TO CLIMB UPON YOUR OWN HEAD: HOW COULD YOU CLIMB UPWARD OTHERWISE?

One has to transcend oneself.

One has to leave oneself behind; one has to go ahead of oneself.

All that you are has to be left behind -- your thoughts, your dreams, your imaginations, your prejudices, your philosophies... everything that makes up your personality. You have to leave it the way the snake leaves its old skin -- it slips out and never even looks back.

Unless one transcends oneself one cannot experience the impossible. One cannot experience the ultimate in wandering, in searching, one cannot experience the purest longing.

You are just an arrow, and for you there is no target. To understand that you are an arrow -- in full speed, going nowhere; you don't have any target -- is the most difficult thing to understand about your own being. All other religions seem to be childish -- toys for the children. Zarathustra is giving you a challenge which can be accepted only by the very courageous.

UPON YOUR OWN HEAD AND BEYOND YOUR OWN HEART! -- upon your own logic and beyond your own love -- NOW THE GENTLEST PART OF YOU MUST BECOME THE HARDEST.

IN ORDER TO SEE MUCH ONE MUST LEARN TO LOOK AWAY FROM ONESELF -- EVERY MOUTAIN-CLIMBER NEEDS THIS HARDNESS.

BUT HE WHO, SEEKING ENLIGHTENMENT, IS OVER-EAGER WITH HIS EYES, HOW COULD HE SEE MORE OF A THING THAN ITS FOREGROUND!

YOU, HOWEVER, O ZARATHUSTRA, HAVE WANTED TO BEHOLD THE GROUND OF THINGS AND THEIR BACKGROUND: SO YOU MUST CLIMB ABOVE YOURSELF -- UP AND BEYOND, UNTIL YOU HAVE EVEN YOUR STARS UNDER YOU!

YES! TO LOOK DOWN UPON MYSELF AND EVEN UPON MY STARS: THAT ALONE WOULD I CALL MY SUMMIT, THAT HAS REMAINED FOR ME AS MY ULTIMATE SUMMIT!

MAN, HOWEVER, IS THE MOST COURAGEOUS ANIMAL: WITH HIS COURAGE HE HAS OVERCOME EVERY ANIMAL. WITH A TRIUMPHANT SHOUT HE HAS EVEN OVERCOME EVERY PAIN; HUMAN PAIN, HOWEVER, IS THE DEEPEST PAIN.

COURAGE ALSO DESTROYS GIDDINESS AT ABYSSES: AND WHERE DOES MAN NOT STAND AT AN ABYSS?

Wherever you are, however you try to deceive yourself, you are standing at an abyss. All your consolations are false. All your defenses are only imaginary. Are you not standing at an abyss each moment of your life? -- because the next moment can be your death, and that is the greatest abyss.

IS SEEING ITSELF NOT -- SEEING ABYSSES? The more you are a seer, the more you see the abysses around you. The blind man can stand happily by the side of an abyss not knowing there is an abyss. Just one wrong step and he will be lost forever, but only a blind man can stand there without any fear. All seeing is seeing of the abysses. But also, if you want to see the summits of your being you will have to see the abysses.

If you don't have a goal, if you don't want to reach anywhere, if the very exploring is a joy unto itself, if discovering new spaces outside and inside is a bliss and a benediction to you, then abysses and summits don't make any difference. They become one -- they are one. And man has that much courage, one just has to awaken it; it is fast asleep.

Once your courage is awake, once your courage roars like a lion, you feel for the first time the thrill of life, the joy of life, the dance of life.

COURAGE IS THE BEST DESTROYER: COURAGE ALSO DESTROYS PITY. PITY, HOWEVER, IS THE DEEPEST ABYSS: AS DEEPLY AS MAN LOOKS INTO LIFE, SO DEEPLY DOES HE LOOK ALSO INTO SUFFERING.

COURAGE, HOWEVER, IS THE BEST DESTROYER, COURAGE THAT ATTACKS: IT DESTROYS EVEN DEATH, FOR IT SAYS: `WAS THAT LIFE? WELL THEN! ONCE MORE!'

I am reminded of a small anecdote. In the Soviet Union, in the middle of the night, a KGB man knocks on a door and shouts, "Is Ginsberg inside?"

Somebody opens the door, and the KGB man says, "I am from the KGB. Is Ginsberg inside?"

The man said, "Ginsberg? He is dead."

The KGB man said, "Dead? Who are you? What is your name?"

The man said, "My name? My name is Ginsberg."

The KGB man said, "Are you insane or something? Just now you said that Ginsberg is dead."

The man laughed and he said, "Do you call this living? Even in the middle of the night one cannot sleep peacefully -- do you call this living?"

If, at the time of death, death inquires of you, "Would you like to live your life -- the same life that you have lived -- one time more?" what do you think your answer is going to be? I don't think that any intelligent man would be ready to live this whole tragedy again -- exactly the same wife, the same husband; exactly the same drama, the same dialogues.

But a man who has lived life not as a misery, but as an exploration into new experiences -- always moving, always going upward; always searching for something better, always creating himself; always destroying all that is rubbish in him and bringing out the best -- perhaps he may say, "Well then, once more -- no harm!"

But only a man who has really lived intensively and totally and who has not been lukewarm and tepid, who has burnt his life's torch at both ends together, will be ready to go through life again -- because he knows he can change everything that has been. He can find new spaces, he can find new mountains to climb, he can find new stars to reach, he can trust in himself. He knows his courage and he knows that to live dangerously is the only way to live.

BUT THERE IS A GREAT TRIUMPHANT SHOUT IN SUCH A SAYING. HE WHO HAS EARS TO HEAR, LET HIM HEAR.

Live in such a way that if life is given to you again it will not be a repetition. But it is already a repetition. You don't need another life; even this life is just a repetition.

I have heard about a man who married eight times. Obviously the story must be from California, because you cannot find greater idiots anywhere else. Otherwise, one wife is enough for any intelligent man. For those who are really intelligent, even one is not needed. But eight wives.... And when he married the eighth time, after two months he realized that this woman he had married once before, but it was long time ago.

Another thing he found: each time he had tried to find a new woman, but within six months the story would become the same. It is a strange thing -- he goes to faraway lands to find a new woman, but every woman turns out, within six months, to be the same. But he never understood that he is the same, his liking is the same, his choice is the same. So whenever he finds a new woman, it is always the same woman he likes. He has not changed, he is only changing the woman.

But who is going to choose? The same man who had chosen the first woman will choose the second -- for the same reasons. Only a certain face appeals to him, a certain hairdo, a certain way of walking... just all kinds of stupid things which don't make any essential difference. Again he will fall into the same trap, and eight times.... It is now happening in many people's lives, because in California the average time for marriage stability is three years. It is the same average for any man to remain in one job, the same average for any man to remain in one town.

Strange -- three years, and the man gets bored with the job, with the wife, with the town, with the friends. He changes everything, but he will again find, within three months, that he has again entered a similar type of story. And within three years the conclusion is always the same tragedy.

In the East, all the three great religions -- Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism -- have used the idea of reincarnation; that you don't have only one life like in Christianity and Judaism and Mohammedanism. Those three religions born outside of India have only one life. They have not understood the great psychological insight of the East: the East accepts that you will have many, many lives. You had many before, and you will have many in the future.

The idea was to create in you a sense of utter boredom. Just think, you have lived many times, you have done the same stupid things many times, you are still doing them, and you are bound to do them in the future also. Many, many times, thousands of lives, and you will be just sitting in a grocery store, tending the shop, fighting with your wife, complaining to everybody about your misfortunes. The film is the same, the story is the same, the dialogues are the same, the actors are the same.

The idea was used by these three religions to give you a clear-cut sense of utter boredom. If you want to change, change; otherwise you will be moving like a wheel, and the same spokes will go on coming on top and down, on top and down, and the same misery....

If you want to change then don't postpone it for tomorrow, from this very moment start exploring. And remember not to be repetitive. Always look for something new, something fresh -- because there is really no goal except the journey. So make the most of it. Make it as beautiful as possible, as enchanting, as creative as you have the capacity to make it. And you have infinite capacity, it is just dormant.

Zarathustra wants to provoke you to be a seeker of the impossible, to be a mountain climber, to be a wanderer on the paths where nobody has ever wandered and perhaps nobody will ever wander.

Only this newness, this youth, can be called authentic living; otherwise, you are simply vegetating. What kind of vegetable you are does not matter, cabbage or cauliflower, because I have heard that the only difference between cabbages and cauliflowers is that cauliflowers have university degrees and cabbages are uneducated!

To be a man needs guts, because to be a man means a continuous overcoming, a transcendence every day. Where the sunset leaves you, the sunrise should not find you there, and where the sunrise leaves you, the sunset should not find you there.

Be a wanderer of the soul.

Be a wanderer in the innermost depths of consciousness. This is the only true religion, which only a very few people, like Zarathustra, have introduced to humanity. But they have been either totally ignored or they have been misunderstood.

It will be fortunate if you can understand this man Zarathustra, because he can give you the incentive to go on a long journey, which will end in finding yourself.

... THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.