Commentaries on Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet. Vol. 2 The Messiah Chapter 21: Become again an innocent child

BELOVED OSHO,

WISE MEN HAVE COME TO YOU TO GIVE YOU OF THEIR WISDOM. I CAME TO TAKE OF YOUR WISDOM:

AND BEHOLD I HAVE FOUND THAT WHICH IS GREATER THAN WISDOM.

IT IS A FLAME SPIRIT IN YOU EVER GATHERING MORE OF ITSELF,

WHILE YOU, HEEDLESS OF ITS EXPANSION, BEWAIL THE WITHERING OF YOUR DAYS.

IT IS LIFE IN QUEST OF LIFE IN BODIES THAT FEAR THE GRAVE.

THERE ARE NO GRAVES HERE.

THESE MOUNTAINS AND PLAINS ARE A CRADLE AND A STEPPING STONE.

WHENEVER YOU PASS BY THE FIELD WHERE YOU HAVE LAID YOUR ANCESTORS LOOK WELL THEREUPON, AND YOU SHALL SEE YOURSELVES AND YOUR CHILDREN DANCING HAND IN HAND.

VERILY YOU OFTEN MAKE MERRY WITHOUT KNOWING.

OTHERS HAVE COME TO YOU TO WHOM FOR GOLDEN PROMISES MADE UNTO YOUR FAITH YOU HAVE GIVEN BUT RICHES AND POWER AND GLORY.

LESS THAN A PROMISE HAVE I GIVEN, AND YET MORE GENEROUS HAVE YOU BEEN TO ME.

YOU HAVE GIVEN ME MY DEEPER THIRSTING AFTER LIFE.

SURELY THERE IS NO GREATER GIFT TO A MAN THAN THAT WHICH TURNS ALL HIS AIMS INTO PARCHING LIPS AND ALL LIFE INTO A FOUNTAIN.

AND IN THIS LIES MY HONOUR AND MY REWARD,-

THAT WHENEVER I COME TO THE FOUNTAIN TO DRINK I FIND THE LIVING WATER ITSELF THIRSTY;

AND IT DRINKS ME WHILE I DRINK IT.

SOME OF YOU HAVE DEEMED ME PROUD AND OVER-SHY TO RECEIVE GIFTS.

TOO PROUD INDEED AM I TO RECEIVE WAGES, BUT NOT GIFTS.

AND THOUGH I HAVE EATEN BERRIES AMONG THE HILLS WHEN YOU WOULD HAVE HAD ME SIT AT YOUR BOARD,

AND SLEPT IN THE PORTICO OF THE TEMPLE WHEN YOU WOULD GLADLY HAVE SHELTERED ME,

YET IT WAS NOT YOUR LOVING MINDFULNESS OF MY DAYS AND MY NIGHTS THAT MADE FOOD SWEET TO MY MOUTH AND GIRDLED MY SLEEP WITH VISIONS?

FOR THIS I BLESS YOU MOST:

YOU GIVE MUCH AND KNOW NOT THAT YOU GIVE AT ALL.

VERILY THE KINDNESS THAT GAZES UPON ITSELF IN A MIRROR TURNS TO STONE,

AND A GOOD DEED THAT CALLS ITSELF BY TENDER NAMES BECOMES THE PARENT TO A CURSE.

Kahlil Gibran is making his most profound statements. Hence, don't just listen to them: unless you drink them and let them become your blood, your bones and your marrow, you will not get the whole meaning and their beauty.

The first statement is of such tremendous importance that it is very difficult to find another statement which will be of equal importance.

WISE MEN HAVE COME TO YOU TO GIVE YOU OF THEIR WISDOM. I CAME TO TAKE OF YOUR WISDOM.

Usually the disciple thinks -- and has been made to think for centuries -- that the master gives his wisdom to him. That is absolutely untrue. The master simply takes away all that you think wisdom but which is not wisdom, only borrowed knowledge... it looks like wisdom but is phony, because it is not rooted in your experience.

The true master, or the true wise man, takes away all that is false in you -- and your wisdom is false, your knowledge is false. You know nothing of life, you know nothing of God; all that you know are mere words without any content, hollow, rotten, but just because they have been handed to you by your parents, by your teachers, by your priests, you have been preserving them as if they are great treasures. In fact, they are the burdens that don't allow you to fly in freedom in the open sky of existence.

The master takes away everything that is false in you -- and what is not false in you? Your whole personality is given by the society. You came into the world innocent, full of wonder, knowing nothing but longing to know everything. The society has filled your minds with all kinds of knowledge. And one thing has to be remembered here: Knowledge is significant when it grows within you; it becomes poisonous and dangerous and murderous when it is forced upon you.

All that you know -- have a look at it. Has it grown within you? Or has it been forced upon you? Is it a conditioning from the outside, or just an overflowing of your own being, of your own spring of life?

You don't know anything about your own being. Hence the true wise man takes away all your wisdom and leaves you again in the same space as you were born -- in wonder, knowing nothing. From there, your authentic journey can start.

I am reminded of one of the great mystics, Bodhidharma. Nearabout fourteen hundred years ago he went to China. He had been invited by Emperor Wu of China; the emperor had even come to the boundaries of his empire -- and his empire was perhaps the greatest empire of those days -- to receive Bodhidharma. He touched his feet, but the questions that he asked prevented Bodhidharma from entering his empire.

His questions were not irrelevant; all so-called religious people ask them, and all so-called religious saints answer them. The emperor had asked, "I have made thousands of temples for Gautam Buddha, and I have thousands of scholars continually translating words of Gautam Buddha into Chinese. I have opened many monasteries, and the whole of China is now under the great influence of Gautam Buddha. What will be my reward for all this?"

Bodhidharma stared at the emperor and said, "You will fall in hell."

The emperor said, "Have I done anything wrong?"

Bodhidharma said, "Whatever you have done is right, but if doing it in itself is not your reward, then you have missed the whole point. Making a beautiful temple, a beautiful statue of Buddha... if that is not your reward and you want something else, then you are doing business -- it is not religion. In religion the very action in itself is either reward or punishment.

"I know you have opened your vast treasures for the spread of the message of Gautam Buddha, but you are waiting to have greater treasures in future life, in paradise as a reward -- you are bargaining with existence. I am not a businessman. You have invited the wrong person."

The emperor said, "But I have invited many monks and they always said, `Great will be your reward because great is your virtue.'"

Bodhidharma said, "I will not enter into your kingdom, I will remain outside. The day you understand that every action is in itself its reward or punishment, I am available to you, you can come."

He stayed outside the boundaries for nine years. Bodhidharma was a very strange man -- but a very beautiful man, so truthful and so straightforward.

Emperor Wu could not sleep the whole night, and in the morning he was back. And he said, "Forgive me, you have given me such a shock, but I needed it, I was living under an illusion. You have broken my illusion. I'm ready to learn."

Bodhidharma said, "There is nothing to learn. You have to be ready to unlearn! You already know too much, and all that you know is false. If you want to be in contact with me, think of unlearning. That is the beginning of wisdom."

Unlearning is the beginning of wisdom. All your priests and popes go on telling you, "Learning brings wisdom." But a man like Bodhidharma or Socrates or Gautam Buddha will not agree with these people, they will agree with Kahlil Gibran: the function of the master is to help you unlearn everything so that you become again an innocent child.

After nine years, when Bodhidharma came back to India, thousands of people had become his disciples. He had chosen four of them for the final fire-test, because out of those four, one would be chosen as his successor to continue his work in China.

There was great silence, although thousands of disciples were sitting there. They knew that those four people were worthy of it, but it was very difficult to tell who was the most worthy....

Bodhidharma asked the first man, "Tell me the essence of wisdom."

And the man said, "The essence of wisdom is that the kingdom of God is within you."

Bodhidharma said, "You have my flesh, but the flesh is not very deep. You are not chosen to be my successor. What you have said has a faraway echo of truth in it, but it is too faraway an echo."

He asked the second disciple, "You tell me -- what is the essence of wisdom?"

And he said, "The essence of wisdom is meditation, being absolutely silent."

Bodhidharma said, "You have my bones, but you don't have me. You cannot be my successor."

And he turned to the third man and asked the same question, "What is the essence of wisdom?"

The third person said, "The essence of wisdom is to bring your potential to its ultimate actuality, to blossom, to bring flowers to your being."

Bodhidharma said, "You have my marrow, but still you are not yet capable of being my successor. You are very close, but even closeness is a distance."

He turned to the fourth man, and he asked the same question. And the fourth man had tears in his eyes and he collapsed at Bodhidharma's feet, not saying a single word.

Bodhidharma said, "I understand your silence. But these thousands of people will not understand it. You have to bring your experience into words. Say it!"

And the man with tears said, "I don't know."

And Bodhidharma said, "You are going to be my successor, because the person who can say `I do not know' has already reached to the door of the temple of wisdom, he is already standing at the door. His innocence, his not-knowing, is the beginning of knowing."

Kahlil Gibran says,

WISE MEN HAVE COME TO YOU TO GIVE YOU OF THEIR WISDOM.

They were not truly wise, nor was what they gave you authentic wisdom; they only went on transferring borrowed knowledge from one generation to another generation. Neither was it their experience, nor the experience of those who had given it to them.

I CAME TO TAKE OF YOUR WISDOM.

That's why a true master is going to be condemned by the whole world, for the simple reason that he does not give anything to you -- on the contrary, he goes on taking things away from you. He leaves you utterly naked, in a state of innocence like a child. Only from there your real growth starts. Only from there is the true beginning.

AND BEHOLD I HAVE FOUND THAT WHICH IS GREATER THAN WISDOM.

What is greater than wisdom? Innocence is greater than wisdom, because wisdom is only a collection of empty words.

Innocence is a transformation of your whole being, as if you are cleaned of all dust -- you have just taken a shower. The freshness of innocence, the youthfulness of innocence, slowly slowly deepens and makes you aware of your immortality. That's why he said:

AND BEHOLD I HAVE FOUND THAT WHICH IS GREATER THAN WISDOM.

Wisdom will not do. It is good for scholars and the priests and the preachers and the popes and the shankaracharyas and the imams -- but it is not enough for a true seeker. The true seeker wants not to know the truth, he wants to become it. He does not want to see God, he wants to feel God in his own being.

God as an object is for those who are collecting knowledge, wisdom, scripture. God as your own subjectivity, as your own being, is greater than wisdom... when the seeker himself is the sought, when the observer himself is the observed, when you and God are not two, divided by knowledge, when you are not separate from God but in your every breath is the fragrance of godliness and in every beat of your heart is the music of the ultimate.

Wisdom is for those who want to become respectable cheaply. The true seeker is not after respectability, not after Nobel prizes, not after any reward -- here or hereafter. The true seeker wants not to know, but to be. And the difference is immense.

To know love is one thing.

To be love is totally different.

And the difference is unbridgeable.

You can know love by going into a big library and finding everything that has been said about love. And you can collect all the great statements about love -- still you have not known love, still your heart is empty of love. Your head is full with words about love -- but your heart is not satisfied by knowing about love. Your heart wants to become love. Without becoming love, what is the use of knowing about it?

IT IS A FLAME, A SPIRIT IN YOU, EVER GATHERING MORE OF ITSELF.

Wisdom is not something that you gather from scriptures and holy books. It is a flame, it is a spirit, it is your very being which goes on gathering up more and more of itself. You go on becoming not more and more knowledgeable, but more and more rooted in the earth, centered in your being. Out of this grows the ultimate flower called enlightenment. Enlightenment is not knowledge, it is being.

WHILE YOU, HEEDLESS OF ITS EXPANSION, BEWAIL THE WITHERING OF YOUR DAYS,

IT IS LIFE IN QUEST OF LIFE IN BODIES THAT FEAR THE GRAVE.

What is the seeker doing? It is life in quest of more life, it is dance that wants to become more perfect, it is silence that wants to become deeper.

In the depth of silence there is a soundless song, the song celestial; there is a music without any instruments -- a music that is just part of your being. It is not something added from the outside, it is something that grows from inside.

Every being is pregnant with God. Just as the child grows in the mother's womb, God grows within your being. Clean yourself of all rubbish that you have gathered so that your God can have enough space to grow. It needs all the space that is available in existence... less than that will not do.

THERE ARE NO GRAVES HERE.

Remember... don't be afraid of death because there are no graves here.

THESE MOUNTAINS AND PLAINS ARE A CRADLE AND A STEPPING STONE.

WHENEVER YOU PASS BY THE FIELD WHERE YOU HAVE LAID YOUR ANCESTORS LOOK WELL THEREUPON, AND YOU SHALL SEE YOURSELVES AND YOUR CHILDREN DANCING HAND IN HAND.

If you enter into yourself, you will be surprised -- entering into yourself you have entered into the immortality of life. You will find your ancestors, your forefathers, and you will also find your children's children, hand in hand, dancing within you. Life is spread on both sides -- the past and the future -- and the present moment in you contains both.

If you can be just here and now, without any thought, any disturbance, totally centered, in that very centering you will find that you are only a link between an eternal life. The chain goes backwards, containing all your forefathers from the very beginning, and it goes forwards, containing those children who have not yet been born -- but their seeds are there.

To know the present is to know the past and it is to know the future. And then you will be able to say: THERE ARE NO GRAVES HERE.... There is only life eternal. Graves exist because of our ignorance, because we have never entered into our own life. We have remained always outside of our own life -- that's why the graves exist; otherwise there will be no graves.

I started telling my people that when some sannyasin leaves the body there is no need to be sad and sorry, rather dance and celebrate. Celebrate even the death, because death is false; celebrate that one friend has passed into the future, into a new body. But nobody dies, nobody has ever died. That's the meaning... when Jesus was asked, "Will you say something about Abraham, the oldest, the most ancient father of humanity?" And Jesus said, "Before Abraham was, I was."

He is not saying anything about Abraham; he is saying, "Even before Abraham" -- and Abraham was almost two thousand years before Jesus -- he says, "Even before Abraham was, I was."

The same can be said... even before my children's children and their children will be, I will be. I am spread all over existence. Where can there be graves? There are no graves.

VERILY YOU OFTEN MAKE MERRY WITHOUT KNOWING....

WHENEVER YOU PASS BY THE FIELD WHERE YOU HAVE LAID YOUR ANCESTORS LOOK WELL THEREUPON, AND YOU SHALL SEE YOURSELVES AND YOUR CHILDREN DANCING HAND IN HAND.

VERILY YOU OFTEN MAKE MERRY WITHOUT KNOWING.

Because it is such a profound truth, the eternity of your life, whether you know it or not, once in a while it explodes -- in your joy, in your dance, in your music. You don't know what it is which takes a grip of you, of which you become possessed: it is the life eternal within you.

The painter does not know -- I am talking about the authentic painter, not the technician -- the painter does not know who is painting through his hands, neither the poet knows who is writing through his hand.

When Coleridge died, he left nearabout forty thousand poems incomplete. His whole life his friends were saying, "These poems are so beautiful, why don't you complete them? And it is not much work! Some poem is missing only one line or two lines or three lines, it is almost complete. Just compose one line more, and it will be part of the eternal literature of humanity."

But Coleridge always said, "I have never written anything. Whenever I am possessed, something pours from me. Sometimes the poem is complete; sometimes, before the poem is complete the possession has disappeared. Coleridge is there. I have tried; I can deceive the whole world, but I cannot deceive myself. Just to compose one line more and make the poem complete... nobody is going to find out unless a man reads who has the same poetic experience as me; only he will find that all these lines have come from the beyond, but one line -- the last line -- is written by somebody else. And I don't want to deceive myself, or the future humanity."

It happened... when one of the greatest Indian poets of this century, Rabindranath Tagore, translated his poems into English -- for which he was awarded the Nobel prize -- he was a little hesitant, because everything else is easy to translate, but poetry is very difficult to translate.

Every language has its own nuance, every language has its own different taste, its own different song -- no other language can catch up with it. It may be possible to translate prose from one language to another language almost exactly, but poetry is a different matter; so he was a little shy, He was well educated in England, so it was not that English was a strange language to him -- it was almost his second mother-tongue. But still the mother-tongue is mother-tongue; there is no way to substitute it.

He went to England; he had friends who were great poets. Before publishing those poems, he wanted first to read them to a small gathering of poets. Yeats, one of the great English poets, called a meeting of all the poets of London in his own home -- he was already a Nobel prizewinning poet -- and Rabindranath read his poems.

Everybody was surprised and was shocked too, that if these poems had not been translated, the world would have never known about them -- and they have a totally different dimension, which no other English poet has ever touched. But Yeats was silent. He was the greatest poet in that meeting.

Rabindranath said, "You have not said anything about it."

Yeats said, "The poems are great, but at four places... four words only are not yours. Somebody else has helped you."

Rabindranath could not believe his ears, because it was true. Out of his hesitation he had shown to a great Christian missionary, C. F. Andrews -- before he left for England -- he had shown his poems, and asked, "Do you see any grammatical, linguistic mistakes in them?"

C. F. Andrews was a great scholar, but he was not a poet. He had looked through the poems, and only at four places he said, "These words are grammatically wrong. Everything is absolutely correct as far as grammar and language are concerned, but these four words have to be changed."

He suggested four other words of the same meaning, and Rabindranath simply changed those four words. It became more grammatical, more correct as far as language is concerned -- but he could not deceive Yeats and his poetic sensibility. He pointed to exactly those four words in the whole book of poems and he said, "These words are perfectly right as far as grammar is concerned, but whoever suggested them is not a poet."

Rabindranath said, "You surprise me! These words were suggested to me by a great scholar, known worldwide, C. F. Andrews."

Yeats said, "It does not matter who suggested them; he knows language, he knows grammar, but he does not know anything of poetry. You please just write your own words that you had put originally."

He placed his own words, and Yeats said, "Now it is perfect -- not grammatically, but poetry is not grammar. A prose composition has to be grammatical; poetry soars higher than grammar, higher than language. Now it is perfectly right. These are the words of a poet."

It is without knowing... when you are dancing you may get possessed -- not possessed by something from outside, but by something from inside which was asleep, and in your dance became awake. And you will be surprised, wondering from where is this dance coming, from where is this song coming? From where this silence and this joy...? Uncaused, it is simply overflowing in you.

This overflow happens to everybody once in a while -- but without your knowing; otherwise these rare moments can be of tremendous importance. They can become a transformation of your whole life.

If you know from where the spring has suddenly exploded, from where this fragrance has come like a cloud surrounding you, if you go to its roots, its source, you will find not only your life but life as such. Remember, those who have found life have found life as such -- not yours, not mine. They have found simply the pure life that moves from form to form, life to life, plane to plane.

OTHERS HAVE COME TO YOU TO WHOM FOR GOLDEN PROMISES MADE UNTO YOUR FAITH YOU HAVE GIVEN BUT RICHES AND POWER AND GLORY.

LESS THAN A PROMISE HAVE I GIVEN, AND YET MORE GENEROUS HAVE YOU BEEN TO ME.

There have been others who have come with golden promises, and you have given your great riches, power and glory to them. Less than a promise have I given to you, yet more generous have you been to me.

What does Kahlil Gibran mean by saying that people have been more generous to him? He means, "You have given me a deeper thirst for life. Being amongst you, I have become more and more a seeker, a searcher. You may not be aware that you have given me this search, this seeking, but looking at you asleep, a desire to wake up has arisen in me. Looking at your anger, a desire has arisen in me -- is there some place where one transcends anger or transforms anger into compassion? Looking at you and living with you, I have seen that people are simply vegetating -- not living. Each of you has reminded me that I have not to waste my life like you; I have to find the source of life before death knocks at my doors."

Do you see the beauty of the man? Nobody has given anything to him, but he is still saying:

Less than a promise I have given... I have not given anything to you...yet more generous have you been to me.

"You have not given me your treasures, power, glory, but...you have given me my deeper thirsting after life. The more I have watched you, the more I have become aware that there is not much time to lose; I have to go after a great search, and stake everything that I have to find the truth of life. I don't want to die like everybody else; I want to die just to find a better life, a deeper life. You have given this to me -- although you are not aware of it."

It happened... when I came back from the university, completing my education, my whole family was worried about only one thing -- that I should get married. My father was very cautious, because he knew me, and once I have said "No," then there is no way to change it into "Yes." First he tried to find out from others, so my uncles asked me, his friends asked me.

I said, "I can see it is not your question, because you have never been interested in my life. Why should you suddenly be interested in my getting married? -- you don't have a daughter; so I can very easily infer somebody else's hand behind it."

They said, "This is great; now we understand why your father is afraid to ask directly."

I said, "Tell my father that I will not give my answer to his agents."

They said, "You are condemning us as agents?"

I said, "You are agents."

Then my father approached his best friend, who was a Supreme Court advocate, a very well-known arguer, logician, law expert.

My father said, "Perhaps you can convince him about marriage."

He said, "Don't be worried; I have never lost a single case in my life. I am a born winner. Whenever I take a case in my hands, you can remain certain that victory is ours... so I will take the case in my hands. You don't be worried, I am coming to your home this coming Sunday."

My father told me that his friend wanted to see me. I said, "I would love to see him. I know why he wants to see me, but tell him that this is not going to be an ordinary case in the Supreme Court. Inform him to come very ready -- he should do all his homework."

My father said, "What homework?"

I said, "You simply tell him!"

So he phoned him and said, "He is saying first do your homework, and when you are ready, he is willing to give you time. If you want the next Sunday, there is no hurry."

He was furious; he said, "What homework? I am coming today. I cannot wait even for Sunday; this is a challenge!" So he came.

I was standing outside. I received him and I touched his feet, because he was my father's very intimate friend. I took him inside and I asked him, "What is the matter? Why do you want to see me?"

He said, "There is no matter; it is a simple thing. You have come from the university and you have topped the university. Now we can find the most beautiful girl -- the best educated, from the best family -- for you. Are you ready for marriage or not?"

I said, "Before I say yes or no, I want to ask you a question."

He said, "What question?"

I said, "I want to know, are you happy with your marriage? And be honest, because it is a question of my whole life. I know you and I know your wife, so don't deceive me, because if you say anything that is not right.... I have phoned your wife too."

He said, "What? What have you said to my wife?"

I said, "I have told your wife that your husband is coming to convince me for marriage, and I will get into an argument with him. If I win the argument, he will have to divorce you; if he wins the argument, I am ready to get married... because you have to stake something also."

He said, "My God, now I understand what you mean by homework! I am going home!"

My father said, "What happened?"

He said, "I don't want to get involved with this matter. My life is already a torture, and this boy will create so many problems -- he has already phoned my wife! Now I am trembling; she will be ready at the gate."

I said, "I am coming with you."

He said, "No need!"

I said, "It is a government road, you cannot prevent me. It just happens, that you are going ahead, I am going behind -- a coincidence."

He said, "It is a strange difficulty I have taken upon myself; I had never thought that it would become a problem. I had come simply to convince you to get married, and you are ready to argue -- but I have to put something stake. I cannot divorce my wife! I have children, and my wife... I may have won all the cases in the Supreme Court, but as far as my wife is concerned, she is always the winner. You just leave me alone; I will never mention marriage."

I told my father, "Listen to him. He is saying that he will never mention even the word marriage. That's why I was saying, `I can give you time. Have yourself completely prepared; consult all your law-books, consult your wife.'"

And I followed him. Many times he stopped, and he said, "I am telling you you go back."

I said, "Nobody can remove me from the road -- it is a public place. You stop, I stop; you move, I will move."

He said, "You are a strange fellow. I have never thought that you are so dangerous."

I said, "I just want to see the scene -- what happens -- just to teach you a lesson. You yourself are tortured by your marriage, and a thousand and one times you must have thought, `It would have been better if I had not married.' Tell me the truth, then I can go back; otherwise you will have to confess before your wife. It is better just on the road; we are alone."

He said, "This is something; I had come to convince you, and you are making a mockery of me and my life."

I said, "You wanted to destroy my life, knowing perfectly well that your marriage has destroyed your life; it has become a prison to you. If you had really been compassionate and kind, you would have suggested to me, `Never get married.'"

He said, "I was not even aware that I was doing something wrong, but now I understand; just forgive me and go back. It is true -- never get married!"

I said, "You have to tell it to my father too; otherwise I am coming! I will not only see the scene, I will support your wife -- and I know perfectly well that she has beaten you many times."

He said, "You know too much about my life."

I said, "I am in great intimacy with your wife. She loves me. She tells me everything that happens in the house -- that today she has beaten you and you have gone to the court to beat somebody else. In fact, listening to her I have become aware of the truth of the proverb, `Every great man has a women behind him.' I know why he becomes great -- because the woman is behind him, beating him, the poor fellow has to beat somebody else! Naturally he becomes great; continually being beaten, he becomes famous."

He said, "I am coming with you; I will tell your father, `Don't mention marriage. He is never going to be married, because he has seen too much.'"

I have seen so many people -- my relatives, my uncles, my friend's fathers, my professors, but I have never found a single person who was happy in marriage. And I am grateful to all those people because they saved me from marriage; otherwise I may have fallen into the same well. Since then my whole work has been to pull as many people as possible out from the well, and once they are out of the well they are so happy.

Just today Anando was showing me a press-cutting. Some newspaper has done a survey of how many people are against me, and how many people are for me: sixty percent of men are against, forty percent are in favor; ninety percent of women are against, ten percent are in favor.

Anando said, "Why this difference?"

I said, "It is natural. I am wondering about the ten percent of women who are in my favor! The ninety percent who are against me is a very simple fact: they are worried about their husbands. If I am here, sooner or later their husband can be caught into my net, and once somebody is caught into my net, I pull him out of the well. Their women try hard to pull them back.... Secondly, the women are more against me because I have so many beautiful women with me; they must be feeling very jealous, and they must be feeling afraid that their husbands may become interested in some other women -- because Poona is famous for beautiful women. And the forty percent of men who are in my favor must be tortured by their women, and they are waiting for me to help them get out of the well."

Marriage is one of the great prisons created by the past. By the end of this century, all advanced countries are going to drop the very institution, because in Germany and other Western countries population is decreasing. It is just the opposite of the East, where population is expanding with such a rate that has never happened before. By the end of this century, India will be ahead of all nations. China has been traditionally ahead of all nations, but by the end of this century China is going to be defeated by India -- India is producing at a greater rate.

Germany is worried, because every month its population is decreasing by over five thousand. People are living longer. The average age of men is seventy-four and of women seventy-nine -- that is average; many people have gone beyond a hundred. So older people are increasing, but new children are not coming. Who is going to work? Who is going to be educated? Who is going to be enrolled for the army? And a greater fear -- that the East is increasing with such vastness that soon its population will start moving into other countries. No barrier will be able to prevent it.

In Germany, at least two thousand immigrants are entering every day. And the fear is that soon Germans will be the minority, and the immigrants will be the majority; they will have the government in their hands. All kinds of propaganda is being done to produce more children, all kinds of incentives, but nothing is working. And the reason is, unless they dissolve marriage there is not going to be any increase in population, because married people get bored; they are no longer interested in each other. And they have better things to do than to produce children.

It is the poor people who produce children, because that is their only entertainment. They can't go to see a movie because it costs money; they can't go to purchase a television set -- it costs money. Sex is the only free entertainment. But in richer countries there are many things; many drugs are available which give you more than any sexual relationship can give you. Although those drugs are banned, it does not matter -- underground, everything is available everywhere. Sex is the oldest drug, a biological drug. But people have found better drugs than sex -- why should they fall backwards?

These countries must understand a simple phenomenon: Dissolve marriage, and let men and women move freely. Children should belong to the state; the state should take care of them. And then, when a new woman meets a new man, naturally they would like to make love, they would like to have a child... if the state is going to take care of the child.

So two things: The family has to disappear, marriage has to disappear; and children have to be taken care of by the state. People have to be free, not imprisoned; otherwise Western societies are in danger of disappearing. Soon floods of people... and you cannot prevent it when it becomes floods of people. When one person wants to go to Germany you can prevent him, because he wants the visa and this and that. But when thousands of people move from one country to another country, who is going to prevent them? And how are you going to prevent them?

By the end of this century, this country will have almost one billion and eighty million people. Right now it has only nine hundred million people. It will have doubled the amount just within these few years. This century has not many years left, it is eighty-seven -- only seventeen years and India will have doubled its population. That population India cannot contain; even this population is difficult.

And it is a natural phenomenon -- when population becomes too much, it is going to move into countries where population is small. No visa can prevent, no passport can prevent -- no question of all these nonsense things -- no boundaries can prevent. It is a question of life and death. And when such situations arise, then naturally you have to understand that many things will have to be changed; otherwise you have to suffer the consequences.

But people go on living unconsciously.

In America, drugs were being used in the colleges, in the universities, but now they have moved to the primary schools; small kids -- eight years old, ten years old -- are using drugs. Just today I could not believe that twelve-year-old boys committed thousands of murders last year, thousands of rapes, made thousands of efforts to assassinate -- although they did not succeed -- but thousands they killed. Thirteen-year-olds have done more harm; fourteen-year-olds are at the top in murders, in damaging people's lives, in rape. And all these great leaders -- Ronald Reagan and company -- what they are doing for these children? And how is it happening? They are simply sitting, not knowing what to do.

The situation seems to be quite out of hand, but it can be solved so easily. The question is of awareness, of knowing. These sleepy people themselves don't know what they are doing. If you go on creating nuclear weapons to destroy the whole humanity, what is wrong if your children start killing people? It is the same -- only they are doing it on a small scale; you are going to do it wholesale, on a large scale -- destroying the whole of humanity. But nobody even seems to think about why these children are doing it.

The reason is that people are afraid to say the truth; they know what happens when you say the truth. I know by my own experience! You say the truth to help people, and the same people become your enemies -- such is their deep sleep, such is their ignorance.

All that is needed is mixed hostels of boys and girls, and rape will disappear. If you allow the boys and girls to make love... and there is no harm, because only after a certain age a girl can become pregnant, and before that there is no problem. Let them play, let them enjoy -- they will not rape. And nowadays after the age when the girl can become pregnant, pills are available. Every school should supply the pills; the teacher should explain how to use the pill.

In the past there was a pill which you had to take before making love, so once in a while you may be in a situation that you have not taken the pill but your boyfriend has come, your girlfriend has come. People are so sleepy; they think that it is not going to happen to them, and once in a while it does no harm to make love without the pill; so there have been thousands of accidents all around the world. Now they have come up with a new pill which you can take after making love -- that is safer. And they have also come with a pill that the man can take -- no need for the woman to take it; if one of the two takes the pill, there is no possibility of pregnancy....

Rapes will disappear. And you will be surprised that, with rape disappearing, these people -- who are murdering people using knives and who are crippling people -- will also disappear. It is one of the oldest findings of Sigmund Freud that the people who use weapons for killing people really don't know it, but they want to enter the body of a woman. Unaware, they try to enter the body with a weapon. But to say any truth which can redeem humanity is to create all kinds of antagonism against yourself.

My whole life I have been doing only one work -- how to influence people and create enemies! I think by the end I will have the whole world queued against me. And whatever I am saying, they are going to do -- but then it will be too late.

I was the first -- in the commune in America -- who talked about the disease AIDS; I warned the commune, told the whole commune of five thousand sannyasins, to go through the test... it is simply your compassion that you should not spread such a disease to those whom you love. All the news media made a mockery of it -- televisions, newspapers, radios, all laughed about it, saying that I was creating an unnecessary fear. Now the same measures are being taken by all the nations all over the world, and nobody even remembers that I was the first to take those measures, and that they had laughed about them. And the same is going to be the situation about other matters.

I started speaking in 1951, when India had only four hundred million people, and I was stoned, because I told people to use birth control. At Amritsar my train was prevented for two hours... and a crowd of people on the station platform would not allow me to get down there, because I was going to talk about birth control. If they had listened to me, India would not have produced five hundred million people in these thirty years. From four hundred million it has gone to nine hundred million. In the coming seventeen years, it is going to double again; but to talk about birth control is irreligious.

I don't understand that we are living in twentieth century... we are still crawling, darkness in darkness, far back in a very primitive stage where we are groping for light. And if somebody shows us light, naturally -- we have lived in darkness so long -- our eyes cannot tolerate the dazzling light. They become closed. They go back again into darkness.

YOU HAVE GIVEN ME MY DEEPER THIRSTING AFTER LIFE....

But those people are not aware when and where they have given it. Just watching them, Almustafa has learned that he is living in a crowd of dead people, and before he himself also becomes dead it is better to find the source of life.

SURELY THERE IS NO GREATER GIFT TO A MAN THAN THAT WHICH TURNS ALL HIS AIMS INTO PARCHING LIPS AND ALL LIFE INTO A FOUNTAIN.

AND IN THIS LIES MY HONOUR AND MY REWARD....

Nobody has given him anything; but if a man is intelligent, without your knowing he will learn much from your sleep, from your behavior out of unconsciousness, and he will try to live a different style of life. Naturally such a man will say: and in this lies my honour and my reward.... You have given me much -- much more than you have given to those who have been promising you golden rewards in the afterlife. I have not given you any promise. And in this:

THAT WHENEVER I COME TO THE FOUNTAIN TO DRINK I FIND THE LIVING WATER ITSELF THIRSTY;

AND IT DRINKS ME WHILE I DRINK IT.

It is a very metaphoric, very symbolic, statement. He is saying, "Whenever I come to the thirsty water, it is not only that I drink it, it is not only my need, it is also the need of the thirsty water. As I drink it, it drinks me." It is always a give and take. It is never a one-sided phenomenon.

SOME OF YOU HAVE DEEMED ME PROUD AND OVERSHY TO RECEIVE GIFTS.

TOO PROUD INDEED AM I TO RECEIVE WAGES, BUT NOT GIFTS.

Almustafa says, "Certainly I am proud, and I will not receive any wages, but that does not mean that I will not receive a gift -- a gift is out of love. I will not receive wages because I am not your servant or your slave. If you give out of your abundance, out of your love, as a friend, I am always available."

AND THOUGH I HAVE EATEN BERRIES AMONG THE HILLS WHEN YOU WOULD HAVE HAD ME SIT AT YOUR BOARD,

AND SLEPT IN THE PORTICO OF THE TEMPLE WHEN YOU WOULD GLADLY HAVE SHELTERED ME,

YET IT WAS NOT YOUR LOVING MINDFULNESS OF MY DAYS AND MY NIGHTS THAT MADE FOOD SWEET TO MY MOUTH AND GIRDLED MY SLEEP WITH VISIONS?

"I have not accepted your invitations to sleep in your houses and I have not accepted your invitations to eat at your boards because I want to be an individual, and I don't want to feel any obligation -- because all obligations turn into chains; all obligations finally become expectations. But your invitation has made my sleep sweeter, my days beautiful, my sleep full of visions and dreams."

FOR THIS I BLESS YOU MOST:

YOU GIVE MUCH AND KNOW NOT THAT YOU GIVE AT ALL.

The best gift is that which is given without any idea that you are giving it. The moment the idea of giving comes into it, the gift turns sour.

FOR THIS I BLESS YOU MOST:

YOU GIVE MUCH AND KNOW NOT THAT YOU GIVE AT ALL.

VERILY THE KINDNESS THAT GAZES UPON ITSELF IN A MIRROR TURNS TO STONE,

AND A GOOD DEED THAT CALLS ITSELF BY TENDER NAMES BECOMES THE PARENT TO A CURSE.

Whenever you do something good, do it out of love -- not out of duty.

I used to go to many clubs to speak. In one Rotary Club they had a motto, which was placed just in front of me, `We serve.' I had not gone to speak to them about service, but I said, "Now I have forgotten what I had come for. I am going to speak about this motto that is in front of me in golden letters, `We serve.' If you are aware of your service, it is not service; it is a very cunning way of enslaving the other person. To me, duty is a four-letter, ugly word -- obscene."

Never do anything out of the idea of duty, because it means you are forcing yourself, it means you are fulfilling a certain demand from the other side, it means you are following a certain discipline taught by the society to you.

Only act out of love.

Then only your act is beautiful and is a blessing.

VERILY THE KINDNESS THAT GAZES UPON ITSELF IN A MIRROR TURNS TO STONE.

You should do things not to be rewarded, not to be remembered, not to have people be grateful to you. You should do because you enjoy doing -- and your reward is complete, beyond your action you are not expecting anything... otherwise even the best act becomes ugly. The most beautiful face, if it goes on constantly gazing into the mirror, becomes stone.

Whenever I see women carrying their bags with their mirrors in them I feel so sorry, because this is possible only for an ugly woman. A woman who is really beautiful does not need, at every stop of the bus, to open her bag and look at her face as if she has forgotten who she is.

Mulla Nasruddin was trying for half an hour to catch two flies which were disturbing him in the room. Finally he got hold of both of them, and he told his wife, "I caught both of them; one is male, the other is female."

The wife said, "Flies -- and you have found their sex too?"

He said, "It was very simple -- the female fly was sitting on the mirror for two hours continuously, and the male fly was reading the newspaper. It is just pure logic to infer who is male and who is female." Both remain glued -- one with the mirror, one with the newspaper.

It is not bad to look into a mirror, but to carry a mirror and after just ten, twelve minutes open the bag and look at the mirror -- that shows some fear that you are not beautiful. Beauty is beauty, even in its utter nudity.

Why are people so much against nudity? They may talk about great reasons -- spiritual, moral etcetera -- but the real fact is, most of the people are so ugly in their nudeness that they cannot stand nude, and if somebody is standing in nudeness it is a challenge. Your clothes are not made just to protect your body from seasons, they are also made in such a way that your body goes on looking beautiful. Any society that becomes really beautiful starts having less and less clothes -- there is no need to hide. One hides only the ugly part.

It is a strange psychology of man that he becomes interested only in the parts which you are hiding. If you see a Mohammedan woman with her veil on her face then everybody stops working, everybody wants to have some glimpse of what kind of woman is going by. She may be ugly, but the veil creates the illusion in the minds of people... who knows what she is hiding behind it?

Whenever a Mohammedan is married, the first question the wife asks to her husband is, before whom in the family she can remove her veil. She cannot remove her veil with all members of the family, only with the few people that her husband tells her.

When Mulla Nasruddin got married, the same question was asked by the woman.

He said, "First let me see your face, then only I can decide before whom you should open your veil and before whom you should not. How can I say anything without seeing your face?"

So she turned up her veil, and he said, "Close it. Close it! Except me, you can open it before anybody! Just forgive me; take revenge with the whole world, but I am just your poor husband. You are completely free, with only one exception -- and that is me."

One should not be too much aware of his good deeds; otherwise that very awareness kills them. The story is told about a famous Sufi mystic of Egypt, Junnun. God became so much interested in Junnun -- that's how the story goes -- that he came to see him and asked Junnun, "You can ask for any power and I promise that you will have it."

Junnun said, "I want only one thing: Wherever I walk, if trees are without leaves they should immediately have green leaves and flowers; if the well is dry it should immediately have a fullness of water; if people are poor, they should become rich" -- those kinds of things he said -- "but with one condition: all this should happen behind me, not in front of my eyes. When I have passed, all these miracles should happen behind me so that I never know what I am doing, so nobody else knows who has blessed them. I want to remain anonymous.

"If you can manage that, then give me the power to do goodness; but I should not become aware that it is happening, and nobody should become aware that I am the cause of it. I must be always behind my back."

I have loved the story. It is just a story, but it carries the same meaning as what Almustafa is saying.

Okay, Vimal?

Yes, Osho.

Kahlil-Gibrans-Prophet

THE MESSIAH, VOL 2

Chapter-21

Become again an innocent child