Question 2

OSHO, THERE IS A STORY IN THE LIFE OF PARAMAHANSA RAMAKRISHNA, AND WE HAVE HEARD IT FROM YOU MORE THAN ONCE, ABOUT HIS LUST FOR THE PALATE WHICH SHARADA DEVI TOLD ABOUT. DOESN'T IT INDICATE THAT DESIRE IS INTRINSICALLY RELATED TO LIVING, TO LIFE ITSELF?

Desire is related to life, but life can be desireless also. But then bodily life will become impossible. Really, desire is the link between life and body. If all the desires drop, then the body cannot continue any more because body is just an instrumentality for desires to be fulfilled. Now biologists say that we have developed the senses because of desires, and if you can desire persistently then your body will develop new senses.

It is only because of desires that we have eyes. Ordinarily, we think that because there are eyes we see. No! Biologists say that because there is a desire to see, eyes develop. If the desire is not there to see, then eyes will just drop. The whole body comes into existence because of desires.

Buddha lived forty years after his Enlightenment, so there was a question: If desires have stopped totally, then Buddha must die -- how is he alive?

The body has a momentum. If you are running and want to stop suddenly, you cannot stop. Your mind has stopped. you have decided to stop, but you will have to run a little more because of the momentum. You have been pedalling a bicycle, and now you have stopped pedalling, but the wheels have accumulated momentum. They will run on, and it will take a little more time for the bicycle to stop completely. That's why I always say that if the bicycle is going uphill, then it will stop soon. If you have stopped pedalling and the bicycle is going uphill, then it will stop soon. It may even stop the same moment you stop pedalling. But if it is going downhill, it may go on much longer.

So if Enlightenment happens before the age of thirty-five. the body may die soon. If it happens after thirty-five then it is downhill, it may continue more. So a Shankara dies soon. He was just thirty-three, and he became Enlightened at the age of twenty -- so it was rare! And he had to die. He couldn't complete the thirty-fifth year, he couldn't reach even to the middle. If the Enlightenment happens after thirty-five, then you are downhill, then the body can continue.

With desires stopping totally, really you have stopped being a body. Now the old momentum will work, and it will depend on many things.

Buddha died because of food poisoning, and he could not be cured; not because the food poisoning was so dangerous -- it was very ordinary -- but he had no bodily link, so he couldn't be helped. So now medicine accepts this: that if you have a lust for life, medicines wiLl he more helpful. If you don't have any lust for life, then medicines may not prove helpful at all.

So now there are many experiments. Two persons are ill, just on their deathbeds. One is more serious, and there is no hope for him -- but he is hopeful and he wants to live longer. Medical science is not hopeful, doctors are not hopeful, but he himself is hopeful. Another is not in such a serious state. Everyone is just hopeful: "He will survive; there is no problem." But he himself is hopeless. He doesn't want to survive. Suddenly, inside, something has dropped from the body. Now medicine cannot help. He will die -- and the seriously ill man will survive. Medicine can help him.

Body and consciousness are related by desires. That's why, if a person dies without desire, then he will not be reborn; because now there is no necessity, no causality to create a body again.

I have seen one person who cannot go to sleep because he is fearful of death. Death may occur in sleep, then what can he do? So he is afraid; he cannot sleep. And I think his fear is valid, his fear has a significance -- because he has no desire to live. He is not desireless! He just has no desire to live. Rather, he has a desire to die, and if a person has a desire to die, he can die in sleep very easily.

You can get up in the morning again, not only because the morning has come, but because you have something which forces you to get up. This person has nothing; nothing forces him to get up. So he cannot sleep because of the fear, and in the morning he doesn't feel at all like getting up. There is nothing! Still, I say. he is not desireless. He is just frustrated; all his desires have become frustrations. When all desires are frustrated, you create a new desire -- a desire to die.

Freud, in his old age, stumbled upon a new thing of which he had never dreamed. For his whole life he worked on "libido" -- the desire to live. He based his whole structure of thinking on this force of libido -- this sex, this desire for life -- and in the end he stumbled upon a second desire. The first desire he calls "Eros" and the second he calls "Thanatos". Thanatos means deathwish, a desire to die. Freud began to feel that if there is no desire to die, how can a man die? There must be hidden somewhere a desire to die; otherwise, biologists say that the body itself can continue -- even forever. There is no necessary reason why a man should die so soon, because the body has a built-in process to renew itself. It can continue renewing -- but there are many things....

The body is born, as we have said always, because of some desire to live. Mm? Really, Freud is right. A second desire is needed to complete the circle. A desire must be hidden there to die. That death-desire helps you to die, and the life-desire helps you to be reborn. That death-desire comes many times to everyone. Many times you become suddenly aware of it. Whenever something is frustrated, such as in the case of someone having lost a lover or beloved, suddenly the death-desire comes up and you want to die -- not because you have become desireless, but because your most longed-for desire is now impossible. So you begin to desire death.

This difference has to be noted, because many religious persons are really not religious -- they are only desiring death, they are suicidal. It is very easy to change the desire from life to death. It is very easy, because life and death are not just two things -- they are two aspects of one phenomenon, so you can change.

So it happens that the persons who commit suicide are really those who are very, very deeply attached to life. Because they are so much attached to life, whenever they are frustrated they cannot do anything else but commit suicide. A person who is not too much attached to life cannot commit suicide. And suicides can be committed in two ways: they can be long-term and they can be short-term. You can take poison just now, or you can go on dying slowly for many years. It depends how much courage you have.

Sometimes it happens that you have no courage to live and you have no courage to die, then you have to die slowly. Then a long-term suicide is chosen. Then one just goes on dropping by and by -- dying, dying, dying. Then death is a long, delayed process -- by degrees.

This deathwish is also there, and there are many things, many implications in it. Bernard Shaw, in his later life, left city life and went to live in a small village. And someone asked him, "Why have you chosen this village?"

He said. "I was just passing by the cemetery and I came upon a stone on which it was written:'This man died at the age of one hundred and ten -- the death was untimely.' So I thought this village is worth living in. If people here think that one hundred and ten is untimely, then it is good to be here." And, really, he lived very long.

Psychologists say it is a fixation. If the whole country thinks that seventy is the maximum, then it becomes a fixed mind-attitude. If the country thinks that one hundred is the maximum, then one hundred will become the maximum. If the country begins to think as a whole, collectively, that there is no need to die so soon and that a man can live three hundred years, if the whole country becomes fixed with three hundred years as the maximum, then the body can live for three hundred years. It is just a collective hypnosis.

We know a person is going to be old at a particular age, everyone knows. The child becomes aware of when one becomes old. The young man knows when youth will be gone. Everyone knows! And it is so repeatedly known, it is so suggestive, that everyone knows that seventy, or eighty at the maximum, is going to be the limit. We die at eighty because we believe that eighty is the limit. If you can change the limit, there is no need to die so soon. Basically, there is no need for the body to die so soon. It is a self-regenerating process. It goes on regenerating, it can continue.

This collective hypnosis and the deathwish become conjoined, they both become one. But if life needs desires, then death also needs desires. That is why we never say that Krishna died -- never! We say that he entered Samadhi. We never say Buddha died -- mm? -- it was Nirvana, deliverance. We never say that they died because, really, for them, how can death be possible when life has become impossible? Understand the implication: if for Buddha life has become an impossibility, then how can death be possible? A person who cannot desire life, how can he desire death? If he has become so desireless that life is impossible, then death will also be impossible. So we never say that a Buddha dies. We say only that he enters a greater life. We never say that he dies.

How is it that we die? We die because we live, because we are attached to life. We have to be detached from life, broken. When a Buddha lives, he lives as a momentum. He is in the car, and the car is going downhill. Wherever it stops he will not have any grudge -- wherever. At the very moment the car stops, he will get down. Not for a single moment will he feel something wrong. He will not feel anything is wrong: it is as it should be. He can live as if not living; he can die as if not dying. But if you want to continue, then some desire has to be there.

Ramakrishna tried to be alive for some time just to give the message to a right person. He felt that if there was no desire left and no momentum either, then the body would just drop. So he cultivated, he created, he forced a desire to be there. He continuously tried that at least one desire must be alive until the moment he could deliver the message to a right person. It never happened to a Buddha; it never happened to a Mahavir. Why did it happen to Ramakrishna?

Really, it is not a question of why it happened to Ramakrishna. It is a question concerned not with Ramakrishna, but with our age. At Buddha's time it was never impossible to find persons -- never! There were so many, and at any moment the message could be delivered to anyone. But for Ramakrishna it was such an impossibility to find a person. So for the first time, Ramakrishna alone is the man, in the whole history of mankind, who tried forcibly to be alive a little more -- just to get the right man.

And when Vivekananda came to him for the first time, Ramakrishna said, "Where have you been? I have waited so long! I have waited so long!" And when Vivekananda, for the first time, achieved the first glimpse of Samadhi, Ramakrishna stopped him; he said, "Now no more, because then you will also have the same difficulty. So just remain here, don't go further. Just remain here until the message is delivered. Now I will take your keys with me so you will not have to suffer the same as I have suffered. First I achieved something, then I had to be rooted in the earth and it was very difficult -- very difficult. So now I will take your keys with me, and these keys will be given to you only before your death -- three days before."

And Vivekananda remained without having the glimpse again. Then he couldn't achieve. This happening, what Ramakrishna had said, became the barrier. He couldn't cross the barrier. He crossed only before his death -- three days before.

Life is desire -- mm? -- the life we know is desire. But there is another life which is desirelessness -- the life we don't know. This life is through body; that life is through pure consciousness -- direct, immediate. This life is through body, through mind, through instruments. That's why it is so dim and faint. It is not an immediate thing.

When something reaches you through many mediums, it is distorted. It is bound to be. You have never seen the light: your eyes see the light. Then the light is transformed into chemicals, into electric waves. You have never seen those electric waves, you have never seen those chemicals. Those chemicals carry the message, then they are decoded in your mind. They are just codes. Then they are decoded, and the mind gives you the message that you have seen the light. And then you begin to say, "I have seen the light; the sun has risen." You have never seen the sun rising. It is just a chemical process that reaches you -- never the sunrise. It is only the picture that is again decoded.

Our whole experience is like this -- indirect. I touch the hand of my beloved, of my lover, of my friend. I have never touched them. I cannot -- because touch remains at my fingertips. And then, just through my system, an electric wave comes to my mind. That wave is decoded and I say, "How beautiful!" This touch can be created if my eyes are closed; this touch can be created by a mechanical device. And if the same wave frequency can be created as is created by my beloved's touch, I will say, "How beautiful!"

No touch is even needed if the message-carrying system in the mind can be stimulated by an electrode. Again I will feel, "How beautiful!" Just an electrode can be put in your skull, and if we know what the frequencies of your experiences are -- when you feel love, what frequency waves you receive -- then we can push the buttons and the same frequency is created by the electrode in the mind and you begin to be in love. What frequency do you receive when you interpret it as anger? The electrode can create the same frequency and you will begin to be angry.

What are you living in life? What have you known? You have known nothing -- because everything is through so many mediums that only an indirect message reaches you.

There is another life without the body, without the mind. Then the experience is immediate, without any medium. It is direct, there is nothing in between. If the light is there, there is nothing in between, then for the first time you are filled with light, not with a coded message. That experience is the experience of the Divine.

I can say it in this way: if you are experiencing Existence through mediums, it is the world. If you are experiencing the Existence without any mediums, it is God. That which is experienced is the same: only the experiencer experiencing in different ways.

One way is through something else. I give you a message, then you give it to somebody else, then he to somebody else. Then it reaches to whomever it was to be given -- to whom it may concern. Then it reaches -- and it has changed. Every time it is given to someone, it is changed. With our eyes we don't see alike. We cannot see alike because in a subtle way every instrument is different. So when I see light I feel it in a different way. When you see light you feel it in a different way.

When a Van Gogh sees the sun, certainly he sees it in a different way, because he will become just mad, begin to dance, cry, scream. He will just be mad when he sees the sun. For one year Van Gogh continuously painted only sun pictures. He would not sleep: he was just mad. And in Arles, where the sun is very hot, for one year continuously the sun was beating down on his head, and he was in the field painting -- painting for one year continuously. He went mad. For one year he had to be put in a madhouse, and the only reason was that he couldn't stand so much sun.

But no one goes so mad! He committed suicide and he wrote a letter. And in the letter he had written, "Because I have painted all the faces of the sun, now there is no need to live. I have painted all the faces possible. I have known the sun in every mood -- now there is no need to live. Now I can drop dead." Certainly he must have seen the sun in a different way. No one goes so mad after the sun. Why this madness?

He must have had a different message system. And now psychologists say he must have had some difFerent chemicals, built-in chemicals. It is possible that soon we will come to a conclusion that poets have a different quantity of certain chemicals, and only because of that do they begin to be mad after flowers, after clouds. For all others it is just nonsense. It is okay that there is a flower, but it is nonsense to go on painting it, creating poetries and living for it. Certainly something like LSD must be a built-in chemical with them. A dancer has a different chemistry. It seems that the bioenergy works in a different way.

So when I say that life is bound with desires, I mean this life, not that. This life is bound with desires. So the more desires you have, the more you will have the feeling of this life. Mm? That's why those who are after desires, running and running, seem to us to be very much alive; we say they are very much alive. What are you doing? Run! Everyone is running and everyone is so alive! Are you just dead?

But there is another life also -- greater, deeper, more vital, more immediate and direct. We have a word for it, aparokshanubhuti -- immediate experiencing. God must be seen, but not by eyes. He must be heard, but not by ears. He must be embraced, but not by hands, not by the body. But how can it happen?