TAO and TAOISM

 


If you like these articles and others

you may well enjoy the Energy Enhancement Home Study Course,

CLICK HERE!!!


CONTENTS PAGE - SUFI AND SUFISM, JESUS, ZEN, TAO AND TAOISM, YOGA AND PATANJALI, AND TANTRA  ARTICLES OF ENERGY ENHANCEMENT

We talk about the sufi meditation tradition  but we also have a few other web pages, the Sufi Meditation master and Sufis People are Sleeping or Are You Angry, Mr Sufi? explained by Osho. Or perhaps you like Zen Meditation Stories or Zen and the Stars or Stories of the Tao by Ko Hsuan and other Taoist Meditations. Or The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali One or The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Two or Tantra and Tantric Meditations or even the Meditations of the Peace of the Guida Spiritual
 

Discourses on Ko Hsuan's The Classic of Purity - Just an empty passage

BUDDHA ZEN MEDITATION
 

 

THE VENERABLE MASTER SAID:

THE SUPREME TAO IS FORMLESS, YET IT PRODUCES AND NURTURES HEAVEN AND EARTH.

THE SUPREME TAO HAS NO DESIRES, YET BY ITS POWER THE SUN AND MOON REVOLVE IN THEIR ORBITS.

THE SUPREME TAO IS NAMELESS, YET IT EVER SUPPORTS ALL THINGS.

I DO NOT KNOW ITS NAME BUT FOR TITLE CALL IT TAO.


 

THE CLASSIC OF PURITY is one of the most profound insights into nature. I call it an insight, not a doctrine, not a philosophy, not a religion, because it is not intellectual at all; it is existential. The man who is speaking in it is not speaking as a mind, he is not speaking as himself either; he is just an empty passage for existence itself to say something through him.

That's how the great mystics have always lived and spoken. These are not their own words -- they are no more. they have disappeared long before; it is the whole pouring through them. Their expressions may be different, but the source is the same. The words of Jesus, Zarathustra, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Krishna, Mohammed are not ordinary words; they are not coming from their memory, they are coming from their experience. They have touched the divine, and the moment you touch the divine you evaporate, you cannot exist any more. You have to die for God to be.

This is a Taoist insight. Tao is another name for God. far more beautiful than God because God, the word "God", has been exploited too much by the priests They have exploited in the name of God for so long that even the word has become contaminated -- it has become disgusting. Any man of intelligence is bound to avoid it because it reminds him of all the non.sense that has happened on the earth down the age.s in the name of God, in the name of religion. More mischief has happened in the name of God than in any other name.

Tao in that sense is tremendously beautiful. You cannot worship Tao because Tao does not give you the idea of a person. It is simply a principle, not a person. You cannot worship a principle -- you cannot pray to Tao. It will look ridiculous, it will be utterly absurd, praying to a principle. You don't pray to gravitation, you cannot pray to the theory of relativity.

Tao simply means the ultimate principle that binds the whole existence together. The existence is not a chaos that much is certain; it is a cosmos. There is immense order in it, intrinsic order in it, and the name of that order is Tao. Tao simply means the harmony of the whole. No temples have been built for Tao; no statues, no prayers, no priests, no rituals -- that's the beauty of it. Hence I don't call it a doctrine, nor do I call it a religion, it is a pure insight. You can call it Dharma; that is Buddha's word for Tao. The word in English that comes closer or closest to Tao is "Nature" with a capital N.

This profound insight is also one of the smallest treatises ever written. It is so condensed -- it is as if millions of roses have been condensed in a drop of perfume. That's the ancient way of expressing truth: because books were not in existence, people had to remember it.

It is said that this is the first mystic treatise ever written down as a book. It is not much of a book, not more than one and a half pages, but it existed for thousands of years before it was written. It existed through private and personal communion. That has been always the most significant way to transmit truth. To write it down makes it more difficult because then one never knows who will be reading it; it loses all personal contact and touch.

In Egypt, in India, in China, in all the ancient civilizations, for thousands of years the mystic message was carried from one person to another, from the Master to the disciple. And the Master would say these things only when the disciple was ready, or he would say only as much as the disciple could digest. Otherwise words can also produce diarrhea they certainly do produce it -- our century suffers very much from it. All the mystics for centuries resisted writing down their insights.

This was the first treatise ever written; that's its significance. It marks a certain change in human consciousness, a change which was going to prove of great importance later on because even though it is beautiful to commune directly, person to person, the message cannot reach many people; many are bound to miss. Yes, it will not fall in the wrong hands, but many right hands will also remain empty. And one should think more of the right hands than of the wrong hands. The wrong people are going to be wrong whether some profound insight falls in their hands or not, but the right people will be missing something which can transform their being.

Ko Hsuan, who wrote this small treatise, marks a milestone in the consciousness of humanity. He understood the significance of the written word, knowing all its dangers. In the preface he writes: "Before writing down these words I contemplated ten thousand times whether to write or not, because I was taking a dangerous step." Nobody had gathered that much courage before.

Ko Hsuan was preceded by Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu. Even they had not written anything; their message was remembered by their disciples. It was only written after Ko Hsuan took the dangerous step. But he also says, "Ten thousand times I contemplated," because it is no ordinary matter. Up to that moment in history no Master had ever dared to write anything down, just to avoid the wrong people.

Even a man like Buddha contemplated for seven days before uttering a single word. When he attained to enlightenment for seven days he remained utterly silent. wavering whether to say anything or not. The question was: Those who cannot understand, what is the point of saying to them such profound insights? They will misunderstand, they will misinterpret, they will do harm to the message. Rather than allowing the message to heal them they will wound the message itself -- they will manipulate the message according to their minds, prejudices. Is it right to allow the message to be polluted by foolish people, by mediocre people, by stupid people?

Buddha was hesitant, very hesitant. Yes, he also thought of the few people who would be able to understand it, but then he could see that "Those people who will be able to understand my words will be able to find truth on their own because they cannot be ordinary people, they will be super-intelligent people, only then will they be able to understand what I am saying to them. If they can understand my words they will be able to find their own way, they will be able to reach the truth on their own, so why bother about them? Maybe it will take a little longer for them. So what? -- because there is eternity, time is not short. But the message, once it gets into the wrong hands, will be corrupted forever." Even to utter he was hesitant.

I can understand Ko Hsuan's contemplating over the matter ten thousand times -- whether to write it down or not -- because when you say something to people, if they are stupid people, they are bound to forget it very soon. If they are mediocre people they will not bother even to listen; they won't care. But once it is written down then they will read it, study it; then it will become part of their schools, colleges and universities, and stupid scholars will ponder over it and they will write great scholarly treatises on it. People who know nothing will be talking about it for centuries and the truth will be lost in all that noise that scholars make -- they will argue for and against.

 

It is said that once a disciple of the devil came running to him and he said, "What are you doing sitting here under this tree? Have you not heard? -- one man has found truth! We have to do something, and urgently, because if this man has found truth our very existence is in danger, our very profession is in danger. He can cut our very roots!"

The old devil laughed. He said, "Calm down, please. You are new, that's why you are so disturbed by it. Don't be worried. I have got my people, they have already started working."

The disciple asked, "But I have not seen any of our people there."

The devil said, "I work in many ways. Scholars are there, pundits are there, philosophers are there, theologians are there. Don't be worried. They will make so much noise for and against, they will create so much argumentation that the still small voice of truth will be silenced by them. We need not worry. These scholars and pundits and these professors are my people: I work through them -- they are in my service, they are my secret agents. Don't be worried. You may not have seen my well-known disciples there because I cannot go directly, I have to go in disguise. And I have arrived there and my people have started working -- they have surrounded the person. He cannot do any harm. And soon he will be dead -- he is old -- and then my people will be his apostles, his priests, and they will manage the whole affair."

 

Priests are in the service of the devil, not in the service of God. The so-called great scholars who go on and on with logic-chopping, hair-splitting arguments are in the service of the devil, not in the service of God.

Once you write down something you are giving a chance to these people; they will jump upon the opportunity, they won't miss the opportunity. They will mess the whole thing up, they will create great confusion around it. That is their expertise.

 

Hence I can understand Ko Hsuan contemplating ten thousand times whether to write it or not. But finally he decided to write and I think he did the right thing. One should never be afraid of darkness. Light, howsoever small, is far more powerful than darkness howsoever big, howsoever old. In fact, darkness has no power, light has power.

These words are powerful words. And the way mystics speak the truth, it is almost beyond the scholars; they really cannot destroy its beauty. In fact, they cannot even touch its truth; it is impossible for them for the simple reason that the mystics speak in a paradoxical language, they don't speak logically. Hence they are beyond the grasp of the scholars. The scholars can only see contradictions in them because the scholar functions through logic and all the mystic expressions are paradoxical -- illogical or supralogical. And particularly Taoist sayings are superb in that way -- nobody has been able to transcend their paradoxes. Even in this small treatise you will come across paradoxes almost in every sentence, in every utterance.

That, too, has to be understood. Why do mystics speak in paradoxes? To remain unavailable to the scholars. The paradox can be understood only by a meditator; it can never be understood by a person who lives in the head, in the mind. Unless you have tasted something of the no-mind, you cannot understand a paradox. That is a safeguard, that is an inbuilt safeguard: speak paradoxically, speak as if you are almost mad.

 

Once a journalist came to see George Gurdjieff. He was drinking his morning tea. He always avoided journalists because they are the most stupid people around, and his way of avoiding them was unique. He asked the woman disciple who was pouring tea for him, as the journalist sat by his side, "What day is it today?"

And the woman said, "Today is Saturday."

And Gurdjieff became so angry that he went into a rage and threw the cup on the floor. The cup was shattered into thousands of pieces. The journalist became very much afraid... because it WAS Saturday.

And Gurdjieff said, "You always go on talking nonsense to me! Just the other day you were telling me that it was Friday and now today it is Saturday? How can it be? How can Saturday come after Friday?"

The journalist thought this man was mad. He simply escaped without even saying goodbye, and Gurdjieff had a good laugh. The woman was very much shocked. She was new; she did not know that this was his way of avoiding wrong people. She said, "But why did you become so angry?"

He said, "You will understand if you remain here a little longer. Now this man will never come back; for his whole life I have put him off. And he will go and spread rumors about me to his professional colleagues, so not only has he been thrown out, many more who may have bothered me will never come here."

He was thought to be a madman, utterly mad.

 

The paradoxical statements of the mystics have a purpose. The purpose is: the scholars avoid them. The moment they come across a mystic, deep down they know this man is mad -- they won't bother about such a man. Secondly: the paradox is the only way to indicate something that is really true. Logic is always half, it never takes in the whole, it cannot take in the whole. Life consists of polarities: just as electricity consists of positive and negative poles, the whole of life consists of polarities. And polarities are only apparently opposite to each other; deep down they are not opposite to each other. Deep down, for those who understand, for those who have the intelligence to see that deeply, they are not opposites, they are complementaries.

But for that you will need a deep experience of meditation; mind only won't help. Mind will say, "These are contradictory statements. This man is saying one thing at the beginning of the sentence and by the time he ends the sentence he has uttered just the opposite." But the mystic knows what he is doing: he is trying to put the whole truth in it. But the whole truth can be understood only by a person who has tasted something of the whole.

Mind always splits things: it divides, it separates, it functions like a prism. When a white sunray passes through the prism it becomes divided into seven colors. That's how a rainbow is created: it is created by very small drops of water hanging in the air; those drops of water function like prisms and the sunrays passing through them become divided into seven colors. The mind is a prism: it divides everything into MANY. The truth is one, but if you look through the mind everything appears to be many. And the mystic's way of saying things is such that he wants to put all the colors of the rainbow again back together as they were in the very beginning before passing through the prism.

Because of this paradoxical way of expression scholars avoid them. People who live in the mind cannot comprehend them; it is a safeguard. That's how such beautiful treatises have survived for centuries.

Ko Hsuan is simply writing it, remember it; he is not the creator of the treatise. He has also experienced the same truth because the truth is always the same whoever experiences it. Whenever one experiences it it is always the same, it does not change; time makes no difference. But what he is saying has been transferred by word of mouth for centuries, maybe for thousands of years. That's why we don't exactly know whose words they are.

He simply says:

 

THE VENERABLE MASTER SAID...

 

WHO IS THIS MASTER? Nothing is said about him. Perhaps the Master simply represents all the Masters of the past and all the Masters of the present and all the Masters of the future. Maybe it simply represents the essential wisdom -- not any particular person, but simply the principle.

Nothing is known about Ko Hsuan, nothing at all. Hence for at least a few centuries it had been thought that these words belonged to Lao Tzu. But Lao Tzu has a different way of speaking, a totally different way; these words can't be coming from Lao Tzu. We have gone into the words of Lao Tzu; he is even more mad than Ko Hsuan, he is even more mystical. And it is a well known fact that he never wrote anything other than TAO TE CHING, and that too he wrote under pressure, at the last moment, when he was leaving China to die in the Himalayas.

He had decided to die in the mountains, and one cannot find a more beautiful place to die than the Himalayas -- the silence of the Himalayas, the virgin silence, the beauty, nature in its most profound splendor. So when he became very old he said to his disciples, "I am going to the Himalayas to find a place where I can disappear into nature, where nobody will know about me, where no monument will be made in honor of me, no temple, not even a grave. I simply want to disappear as if I had never existed."

When he was passing through the country he was stopped at the border because the king had alerted all the borders and ordered that "If Lao Tzu passes out of the country through any gate he should be prevented unless he writes down whatsoever he has experienced." His whole life he had avoided it. In the end, it is said, because he was caught on the border and they wouldn't allow him to go to the Himalayas, he stayed in a guard's but for three days and just wrote down the small treatise, TAO TE CHING.

So this cannot be that THE CLASSIC OF PURITY belongs to Lao Tzu. But because nothing much is known about Ko Hsuan, people used to think that they must be words of Lao Tzu and Ko Hsuan must be a disciple of Lao Tzu who has simply written them down -- the notes of a disciple. That's not so. Ko Hsuan himself is a Master in his own right.

In his preface to this small treatise he says a few things which have to be remembered. First he says: "When I attained to union with Tao I meditated upon this insight ten thousand times before writing it down." He says, "When I attained to union with Tao..." He is not just a disciple, he is an enlightened man. He has attained to union with Tao. He is not writing notes heard from somebody else, he has experienced it himself. He has attained to the ultimate union with Tao: he has become one with nature.

He says in the preface, "It is only for the seekers of the beyond; the worldly cannot understand it." He makes it clear in the preface that if you are a worldly man it is better not to bother about it. Don't waste your time, it is not meant for you, it will not be of any use to you. It may even confuse you, it may even distract you from your wordly affairs. It is better not to get involved with things in which you are not really interested. It is better not to be accidental.

There are many people who are accidental, just by the way. They will meet somebody and they will become interested.

Just the other day I received a letter from Amritsar. From the International Hotel in Amritsar a man writes... You will be surprised to know that when I was talking about THE DHAMMAPADA, the last series, I mentioned a man, Michael Tomato, who had written to me from a hotel in Bangalore because he came across a sannyasin who told him that in my ashram, in Sufi dancing, his president, Reverend Canon Banana, was being laughed at. He became angry. He wrote a very angry letter to me saying: "This is not good that you should allow such things in your ashram, because it is insulting to our great nation of Zimbabwe."

The nation was born just seven days before that and this man, Reverend Banana, had become president just two days before Michael Tomato met this sannyasin -- just two days before that -- and we have been using the word "banana" in Sufi dancing for years! In fact, it may be because of our prayers that one of the bananas has become the president, because prayers have their own ways of working miracles.

That time I told you that this man was angry and that his name was Michael Tomato, and just jokingly I mentioned that soon another letter would be coming to me from a certain Michael Potato. It has come! This letter comes from the Amritsar International Hotel. Two sannyasins are staying there and this man saw them. This man comes from the West, but he has become a converted Sikh. Seeing two orange people he became interested; he introduced himself. And those sannyasins must have wondered when they heard his name, Michael Potato Singh, because now he has become a Sikh. They said, "Wait, we've got the tape -- you listen to it!"

He listened to the tape and he thought, "This is a miracle! How did Osho know about me?" So he has dropped his new religion. He is coming here! Soon he will be here.

Now these are accidental people. I was just joking, in a way knowing perfectly well that in this big earth there must be someone who is known as Michael Potato, but I was not hoping that so soon, just after one month, we would find him! Now, he had become a Sikh, so he dropped Sikhism. He writes: "I have cut my hair and I am coming, and I want to be a sannyasin because you are the right man I have been searching for my whole life."

These are accidental people. This is not the way to grow. These people are like driftwood: they simply go on moving with any wave, they are just at the mercy of the winds, having no sense of direction.

Ko Hsuan says: "It is only for the seekers of the beyond." He makes it clear that if you are a seeker of the beyond, if you are ready to risk... because the search for the beyond is risky. It is the greatest adventure, tremendously ecstatic, but not easy at all; it is arduous too. It has its ecstasy, it has its agonies -- it has its own cross. Of course, resurrection comes through it, but it cannot happen unless you are crucified. So he makes it clear that it is only for the seekers.

One has to be very certain about oneself whether one is a seeker or not. Are you really interested in truth? -- because every child is distracted from the very beginning. No child seems to be interested in God, but parents go on forcing the idea of God on every child. If by chance you happen to be born in a family of atheists, then they impose the idea of atheism on you. If you are born in a communist country, then of course communism will be imposed upon you. If not the Bible, then DAS KAPITAL. If not the holy trinity, then the unholy trinity of Marx, Engels and Lenin, but something is bound to be imposed upon you.

No parent is loving enough to leave you alone to yourself to grow, to help you, to nourish you and to give you total freedom to be yourself, authentically yourself. Hence there are many people who think they are seekers of God -- they are not. Their whole seeking is an imposed phenomenon, a conditioning. And if you are only searching for God because you have been told, you have been continuously told again and again, then the word has become a reality in you but it is not part of you, it is not intrinsic; it has come from the outside. You are just like a parrot -- or maybe even parrots are more intelligent than you are.

 

An overly enthusiastic Italian communist finds a parrot who can sing the popular communist song "Bandiera Rosa". He buys it and takes it home, but after a few days the wife can no longer stand it. The parrot keeps singing the song the whole day long.

In a moment of rage she knocks the parrot over and then covers it with a cloth. When the husband comes back she tells him everything.

In despair the man lifts the cloth to see how the parrot is.

Opening one eye the parrot whispers, "Hey, comrade, are those dirty fascists gone-a?"

 

Even parrots are far more intelligent than so-called human beings. They go on simply repeating cliches that have been handed over to them by their parents and the priests and the teachers, schools, colleges, universities. This whole society goes on conditioning you in a certain way, and after twenty-five years of conditioning, if you forget what you really want to do, what you really want to be, it is natural.

The first thing to be decisive about is whether there is a deep longing to know the truth. Are you ready to risk everything for it, even your life if the need arises? If it is so, "Then," Ko Hsuan says, "These words are for you." If you are only a worldly person -- by "worldly" he means one who is interested in money, power, prestige -- then it would be better if you don't bother about such great things; they are not for you -- at least not yet.

You have to become fed up with all your so-called worldly desires. First go into those desires. Unless you become tremendously frustrated, unless you see that they are all futile: that whether you succeed or fail you always fail; that whether you have money or you are poor you are always poor; that whether you are a beggar or an emperor you are always a beggar... When that insight dawns on you, then only you can really become a seeker of the beyond. Otherwise, if you pretend to be a seeker of the beyond, you will bring your whole world with you, you will bring all your desires with you.

That's why people think of God, of heaven. It is not that they are interested in God and heaven, they are only interested in power, prestige. Maybe they are afraid of death and out of fear and out of greed they start praying to God. But a prayer that arises out of fear and greed is not prayer at all.

A real prayer arises out of gratitude, never out of fear and greed. A real prayer arises out of love for truth, whatsoever it is. Otherwise your worldly desires will again be projected onto God, onto heaven.

If you look into the descriptions of paradise of different religions and different countries you will be surprised: what they desire is projected. For example, the Tibetan paradise is described as warm -- obviously, because Tibetans suffer from cold so much that they would like heaven to be full of sun and warmth so that they can at least take a bath every day. In Tibet the scriptures say that it is your duty to take one bath at least every year!

The Indian paradise is cool, in fact, air-conditioned. They did not know the word at that time so it is "air-cooled". It is bound to be so -- India has suffered so much from heat. And you know through your own experience now that all that the Indian mind wants is a little shade and coolness. So the Indian paradise is always full of cool breezes and there are big trees, so big that a thousand bullock carts can rest under a single tree. The Indian idea of shade and coolness...

The Tibetan hell is absolutely icy and the Indian hell is full of fire.

Now, there cannot be so many hells and so many paradises; these are our projections. Whatsoever we desire we project onto heaven and whatsoever we are afraid of we project onto hell. Hell is for others, for those who don't believe in our ideology, and paradise is a reward for those who believe in our ideology -- the same worldly things. These are not religious people.

In the Mohammedan heaven there are streams of wine. This is very strange: here you condemn wine -- it is a sin -- and there you reward your saints with wine!

All the paradises of all countries are full of beautiful women because they are all created by men, so I have never come across a description of beautiful men. If women... and, of course, sooner or later the Lib women are going to write about their own paradise. They won't talk about beautiful women, they will talk about beautiful men -- henpecked husbands, always following the women like shadows, obedient, etcetera, etcetera, just like servants. That's how women have been painted by men in their heaven. And they are always young, they never grow old. This is strange!

If you look at the idea of God, all the religions think of God as a very very old man. Have you ever thought of God as a young man? No country has ever thought of God as a young man because you cannot trust young people: they are dangerous and they are a little foolish, too. A wise man has to be very old, so God is very old. But the women he is surrounded with are all very young, in fact, stuck at the age of eighteen; they don't grow beyond that. Very stagnant! They must be getting tired of remaining eighteen for millions of years!

But this is man's idea: here the saints renounce women, they renounce sex; they condemn sex, they praise celibacy -- and, of course, they are hoping they will be paid well, they will be rewarded. These are our worldly desires again coming back from the unconscious; you cannot push them away. Unless you have encountered them, unless you have watched them, you cannot just repress them.

Ko Hsuan is right: he says, "The worldly cannot understand it." They are bound to misunderstand.

 

The new patient comes into the analyst's office. He is a theologian, a great scholar, and a philosopher. He says, "Doctor, I came here because everybody says I think too much of myself."

"Let's get into this," says the doctor. "To analyze your problem it is necessary that you tell me your story; it is necessary that you tell me your problem from the very beginning."

"Okay," says the professor, and sitting down continues. "In the beginning all was darkness."

 

You see? And he has come to tell the analyst, "People think I think too much of myself." And he really begins from the very beginning! His understanding is bound to remain with him wherever he goes, whatsoever he does. Whatsoever he chooses is going to be out of his mind and mentality.

 

A jealous Italian husband comes home early one night. He finds his wife in bed, smoke hanging in the bedroom. Suspicious, he starts beating his wife.

"I swear-a I'm alone!" cries the wife. "Don't-a beat-a me! You might-a be punished. Remember, up-a there, there is-a someone who knows-a everything!"

From the top of the closet a male voice says, "Yes, but the one under the bed knows even more!"

 

How long can you repress? How long can you hide? It is going to come up, if not from the front door then from the back door.

 

Two madmen looked at the clock: it is twelve o'clock.

One says, "It is midday."

The other says, "It's midnight."

The discussion becomes so heated that they decide to ask the director. "Is it midday or midnight, sir?" they ask him

The director looks at his watch and says, "Well, I don't know -- it's stopped."

 

In a madhouse you can't expect the director to be less mad than the other madmen. In fact, he may be the director because he is more mad! He may be the oldest inmate, hence he has been chosen to be the director.

 

The father calls his son and asks him, "Is it true that you are planning to leave home as Mother tells me?"

"Well, yes," the boy firmly replies.

"Well," says the father in serious voice, "when you decide to go, tell me -- I'll come with you!"

 

Ko Hsuan says in his preface: "I received it from the divine ruler of the Golden Gate."

 

Truth is always a gift, it is not an achievement because all achievements belong to the ego and truth cannot be part of-your ego trip. Truth happens only when the ego is dropped, so you cannot say, "I have achieved it," you can only say, "It has been given." It is a gift. Ko Hsuan is right: he says, "I received it..." Hence, remember it, you have to be at the receiving end. You are not to be aggressive about truth. The real seeker is not an achiever, he is not aggressive he is not masculine, he becomes feminine. He is just like a womb -- he receives. He empties himself totally so that space is created to receive.

And that's the whole art of meditation. That's what we are doing here, and that's what for centuries mystics have been doing and Masters have been telling their disciples to do: Empty yourself totally, become a nothingness. And the moment you are totally nothing, at that very moment, truth descends in you; you become full of it. First you have to be empty of yourself and then you become full of God, Tao, Dharma, or whatsoever name you would like to choose for it.

He says: "I received it from the divine ruler of the Golden Gate." This is a mysterious saying, "the Golden Gate." That is Taoist way of saying that God is not really a person but a gate, an opening into existence, and if you are empty, the door opens WITHIN vou. It is your ego that is blocking the door, it is you who are blocking the door; except you there is no hindrance. Remove yourself, don't come in between and suddenly the Golden Gate opens. And it is called golden because the moment you pass through it you are pure gold. The dust disappears, is transmuted, is transformed; it becomes divine.

This is the definition of alchemy: transforming dust into the divine, transforming base metal into gold. And it happens simply by becoming a receiver. You have to be utterly a non-entity.

Ko Hsuan says: "It has been previously only transmitted by word of mouth. Those who will be able to comprehend the meaning will become ambassadors of the divine and enter the Golden Gate."

This small preface says: "Those who will be able to comprehend it, understand it, will become ambassadors of the divine..." Not that they HAVE to become, they WILL become so naturally, without any effort, effortlessly. They will start radiating God, they will start radiating light, they will become luminous. Miracles will start happening through them without any effort.

It is said that many miracles happened in Ko Hsuan's life. They are the same miracles which have been happening to many mystics. For example, it is said he was able to walk on water. The same is said about Jesus. It is not a fact, remember -- Jesus is not so foolish, neither is Ko Hsuan so foolish as to walk on water. There is no need to walk on water. Then what does it mean? It is a poetic expression, it is a metaphor. It simply means they were able to do the impossible .

And what is the most impossible thing in the world? The most impossible thing in the world is to transcend the world. The most impossible thing in the world is to know oneself. The most impossible thing in the world is to become utterly empty.

These are just metaphors, "walking on water"; don't take them as facts. They are poetic ways of saying certain things.

The second thing said about him is that he knew the secret of the elixir of life, that is the secret of alchemy. One who knows his consciousness, the consciousness which is just a witness to his thoughts, one who comes to know his state of no-mind, knows absolutely that there is no death for him -- no birth, no death -- that he has never been born and will never die, he has gone beyond both. This is the secret of life, this is the secret science of alchemy.

And the third thing said about him is that he ascended to the beyond in the full light of the day. That is said about Mohammed also and about many others. These are all beautiful ways of expressing the inexpressible. These people have ascended to the ultimate, not by any back door; they have achieved to the ultimate in the full light of the day. Those who had eyes have seen them ascending. Those who had ears have heard the music when they were ascending. Those who had hearts to feel have felt it, their transformation. These people lived on the earth and yet they belonged not to the earth. They were not earthly people, they were utterly unearthly.

Don't be misguided by religious fanatics who go on emphasizing that these metaphors are not metaphors but facts, that these poetic expressions are not poetic expressions but part of history. Be a little more poetic if you really want to understand the mystic way of life.

 

The perfection of the paradise was such that Peter got bored. One day, when everyone was sitting all together, he said to God, "I am so bored... I'd love to visit earth now and then, wouldn't you?"

"Not at my age," replies God.

Says Jesus, "Once has been enough for me."

Says the Holy Ghost, "Not until they stop shooting at doves!"

 

Jesus is called by his father who tells him that he has to sacrifice himself once more for the redemption of mankind.

Though rather unwillingly, Jesus says okay.

He goes around heaven saying goodbye to all his friends and promising to come back in thirty-three years. Then, followed by all the angels, he comes down to earth.

Thirty-three years go by, but there is no sign of Jesus. Finally, after eighty years, an old lean man comes to heaven saying that he is Jesus. He is taken to God who recognizes him immediately and exclaims in astonishment, "What happened? Why did you take so long?"

"Well, you see, Father," replies Jesus, "there is no more capital punishment on earth. I was condemned to a life sentence!"

 

Jesus is walking amongst the people and performing miracles. Suddenly a man falls at his feet and says, "Lord Lord, cure me, cure me!"

"Calm down, son. Have faith and you will be cured."

Jesus moves closer to the man and looks into his eyes, then backs away and signals to Peter to come over. As Peter draws near, Jesus whispers to him, "It's not going to work, Peter. Pretend we have to go -- he's got cancer!"

 

Reality is reality!

Either these miracles are metaphors or some coincidences. For example, Lazarus coming back to life: he may just have been in a coma or it is just a beautiful metaphor, because every Master calls his disciple to come back to life from his grave, because ordinarily you are dead; you have not tasted of life at all. You are all Lazaruses! And he was dead for only four days; you have been dead for millions of lives. It would certainly be a miracle to call you forth! And if you listen and come back to life it would be just as much a miracle done by you as it would be a miracle done by the Master. In fact, you will be doing a greater miracle than the Master!

The same miracles are described in all the lives of the saints; there are not many differences for the simple reason that every mystic lives such a life that he is in the world and yet not in the world. How to express it? How to say something significant about him? It can be said only through miracles. The language of miracles is the only possible way to express something, at least to hint at something, that is indescribable.

But there are foolish people who cling to these things and then they start creating a history. They are not helpful in spreading the divine message; they create obstacles, hindrances. In fact, many more intelligent people would be with Jesus if all these miracles and the nonsense attached to them were dropped. Yes, fools would desert him because they are only with him because of the miracles, but intelligent people would be with him.

And that's my effort here. I want you to be aware, intelligent, conscious. And if you choose to be with me it should not be for any foolish reason.

Just three, four days ago I received a letter from Australia from a new sannyasin, a young woman who had read only one of my books, it must have been because of the title, BE REALISTIC: PLAN FOR A MIRACLE. So she read that book and she started planning for a miracle: she became a sannyasin and then she started planning to come to India. Her. friends laughed, her family laughed. They said, "You are mad!" But she was so convinced that she didn't listen to anybody. She had been out of work for many months so she had no money, and because for many months she had been unemployed she had borrowed from almost everybody she knew; she could not get any more money from anybody else. So there was no possibility of her coming to India, but she started planning.

And one day at a friend's house she saw a magazine with an advertisement for a ninety-day trip to India. She looked into it and she said, "It must be Osho who is doing the miracle!" You had to read a book... you had to purchase the book and read the book and then answer a few questions in only twenty lines. She had only six dollars left but she purchased the book -- that was the price of the book. She read the book because the last date was coming so close that day and night she had to read the book. It was one thousand pages long! And then she answered.

She writes to me: "I don't know who was answering. You must have been answering!" Now, I have no idea what she is talking about. I have not answered at all -- I must say it before it is too late! But she says, "You must have answered because," she says, "I don't have any idea what I wrote -- I don't even remember what I wrote." Naturally, because if for three days she was reading day and night, how could she know what she was writing? And how could she remember some stupid book, one thousand pages long? And the book must be stupid, because this is not the way to sell a book of any value; this is the way to sell stupid books.

And she was determined that it was going to happen. But this is a series of coincidences! She went, handed over the answer because it was the closing date. She was not in her senses about what was happening and who was doing it. The next day while she was going to some friend's house, on the way suddenly she had the idea that she had to run back home -- the telegram had come! She rushed back. Yes, there was a telegram. Now, even if I tell her that I had nothing to do with all these things she won't listen to me. She won't believe me, she will believe in her own experience, obviously. And the telegram said, "Come immediately ,and contact us." She rushed there -- she had won the first prize! Now she is coming for ninety days. She says, "Osho, you have done it. You promised and you have done it!" Now, I am not guilty at all!

Sometimes coincidences and sometimes a series of coincidences is possible which can make a person believe. And when these things happen -- and these things can happen, it is such a vast world -- people are bound to believe. People are gullible.

But my effort here is to make you intelligent, not believers. There are no miracles. There is only one miracle -- THE miracle I call it -- and that is your being utterly empty. The death of the ego is the only miracle; if that happens you have attained the Golden Gate, you have passed through the Golden Gate. You have known what eternity is; you have gone beyond time.

 

ENERGY ENHANCEMENT

THE CORE ENERGY TECHNIQUES !!

 

CLICK BELOW TO GO TO

ESPANOL, Pulse Aqui!!           FREE YOGA BOOK            ENQUIRIES, JOIN SOL MAILING LIST
EE ESSENTIAL INFO EE LEVEL 1 EE LEVEL2 EE LEVEL3 TESTIMONIALS EE TEACHERS EE RESIDENTIAL
EE SPAIN INDIA EE India Tour EE TAJ MAHAL YOGA SACRED DANCE REIKI MASTERY YOGA TEACHER TRAINING
EE Shockwave EE BOOK Download ONLINE COURSE VIDEO COURSE EE KUNDALINI TALKS EE TEACHER TRAINING Sacred Dance
Taoism  Buddhism Zen Zen2 Meditation Alchemy Psychology
Dance Hinduism Pearl of Great Price Kundalini  Taoism and the Tao Taoist Orbits Taoist Alchemy
Greek Myth Hercules Pollution PollutionFood Merlin Gurdjieff Sufi Whirling
Taoist Techniques Ouroboros Enlightenment Buddhism BuddhistMetas BuddhismMeta Zen Master Hogen
EESYNTHESIS LORD OF THE RINGS Kundalini Kriyas What is Kundalini? THE MATRIX MASLOW AMERICAN BEAUTY
EE Machu Pichu, Peru and Brazil - Iguazu Falls The Energy Enhancement Dark Poetic Book The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali The 37 Practices of the Bodhisattva The Western Mystery Tradition

Sacred Dance VIDEO PERFORMANCES by Devi Dhyani

Take your time, this site has much new wonderful information.

 


 CONTINUED...



Now these small sutras:

 

THE VENERABLE MASTER SAID

THE SUPREME TAO IS FORMLESS...

 

FROM THE VERY BEGINNING Ko Hsuan wants you to know that Tao has no form. So you cannot make a statue of Tao, you cannot create a temple around Tao, you cannot create rituals; no priesthood is possible.

 

THE SUPREME TAO IS FORMLESS...

 

It is the universal law of existence. You cannot worship, you cannot pray. All your worship is foolish and all your prayers are unheard and will remain unheard. There is nobody to hear your prayers or to fulfill your prayers. Your prayers are your desires in a new form. Watch your prayers -- what they are. The garb is religious, the jargon is religious, but nothing has changed; the desires are the same. People are asking for money, power, prestige. Whatsoever you are asking for you are asking for something wrong because there is nobody to give you anything. The very idea of getting by asking is absurd. Be utterly silent.

Tao is not the path of prayer, it is the path of meditation.

 

... TAO IS FORMLESS,

YET IT PRODUCES AND NURTURES

HEAVEN AND EARTH.

 

It does not mean that Tao is indifferent to you; it simply means you cannot worship it, you cannot pray to it. But it goes on nourishing you, you are nourished by it; it nurtures you. The whole breathes it. It is the heartbeat of the cosmos, but not a person.

 

THE SUPREME TAO HAS NO DESIRES...

 

So if you want to have a communion with Tao you will have to drop all desires. People simply go on changing their desires, but they basically remain the same. People go on changing their outer structures of life; they call it character. Somebody smokes, you may not smoke; then you start chewing gum. It is the same stupidity. Or you may stop chewing gum, then you start doing something else. But because you are the same, nothing is going to change. If you go to the moon you will do the same stupid things that you are doing here. Everything will be different and nothing will be different.

 

A couple has been captured by a flying saucer from Mars and are taken to the living room of the spacecraft. There they are received by a Martian couple, are offered green drinks, and begin chatting. After several drinks, everyone relaxes. The man from earth asks the Martians, "How do you procreate?"

"My wife and I will demonstrate for you," answers the Martian.

They go over to a refrigerator-like closet and the female picks up a bottle containing brown liquid and the husband picks up a bottle containing white liquid. They go over to a table where there is an empty jar. Each pours the liquid into the empty jar.

"Now we put the jar in this closet," explains the Martian, "and in nine months we will have another baby. How do you do it on Earth?"

So the earth couple demonstrates for the Martians. They take off their clothes and lie down on the floor with the man on top of the woman. As they are coming and going, they notice the Martians are laughing at them.

"What are you laughing at?" they ask.

"Excuse us," they answer, "but we find it very funny because that is the same way we make coffee!"

 

You can be here, you can be on the moon, you can be on Mars, you can change outer things -- it makes no difference. Either you will make love in a stupid way or you will make coffee in a stupid way, but you will do something stupid!

Unless intelligence arises in you, unless your unconsciousness is transformed into consciousness unless your darkness disappears and becomes light...

 

THE SUPREME TAO HAS NO DESIRES

YET BY ITS POWER THE

SUN AND MOON REVOLVE IN THEIR ORBITS.

THE SUPREME TAO IS NAMELESS,

YET IT EVER SUPPORTS ALL THINGS.

I DO NOT KNOW ITS NAME...

 

THESE ARE IMMENSELY VALUABLE WORDS I DO NOT KNOWN... That's how the people who know speak. The people who claim that they know are utterly ignorant. The real knower functions out of a state of not knowing.

 

Ko Hsuan says:

 

I DO NOT KNOW even ITS NAME

BUT FOR TITLE CALL IT TAO.

 

But we have to call it something. See the non-fanatic attitude. You can call it anything -- XYZ. Tao simply means XYZ. Just because we have to call it something, we call it Tao. If you choose some other name there is no problem.

So when Buddhists reached China they were surprised because Taoist mystics simply agreed with them. They said, "Perfectly right! We call it Tao, you call it dharma. It is the same thing, because we define Tao as nameless you define Dharma as nameless. We say Tao is formless, you say Dharma is formless, so there is no problem. We are only speaking different languages, but we are indicating towards the same truth."

That is one of the most beautiful things that has ever happened in history. When Buddhism reached China there was no conflict, no argumentation, no conversion, and yet Buddhists and Taoists met and mingled and become one, absolutely one. It has not happened in the history of Christianity or in the history of Judaism or in the history of Mohammedanism, their history is full of ugliness. It has happened only in the of tradition of Buddha and Lao Tzu: a very rare phenomenon -- no argumentation. They simply tried to understand each other and they laughed and they hugged and they said, "Perfectly true!"

 

A Christian missionary went to see a Zen Master and he started reading the beatitudes from the Bible. And he said, "Blessed are the meek for theirs is the kingdom of God."

The Master said, "Stop! That's enough. Whoever has said it is a Buddha!"

The missionary was utterly dumb. He had come to argue, he had come to convert. He had come to convince the Zen Master that Buddha is wrong and Jesus is right. And this man said, "Whosoever has said it -- I don't know who has said it -- but whosoever has said it is a Buddha. There is no need to read more; that one sentence is enough. You can taste the ocean from anywhere, it tastes the same -- it is salty. This one sentence will do!"

 

The same happened in China. Buddhists went there and the whole of China became Buddhist without anybody converting anybody else. Because Taoism was so generous and Buddhism was so understanding; there was no question of converting. The whole idea of converting anybody is ugly, is violent. They never argued -- yes, they communed, they nodded at each other's understanding and they said, "Yes, that's true. That's what Lao Tzu also says. That's what Buddha has said in his own words."

And out of this meeting -- which is the rarest in the whole of humanity -- Zen was born. Out of the meeting of Buddha and Lao Tzu, out of the meeting of Buddha's insight and Taoist insight, out of the meeting of Dharma and Tao, Zen was born. Hence Zen is a rare flowering. Nowhere else has it happened that way -- so silently, without bloodshed, without a single argument. There was no question of argument; the difference was only of language.

This is how a truly religious person is. He is not a fanatic -- he cannot be.

Ko Hsuan says:

 

I DO NOT KNOW ITS NAME

BUT FOR TITLE CALL IT TAO.

 

It is a nameless experience, but we have to call it something so we will call it Tao. That is arbitrary. If you have some other name -- God, LOGOS, DHARMA, truth NIRVANA -- you can choose from those names; they are all beautiful because it has no name of its own so any name will do.

My sannyasins have also to be in this attitude, this approach should be our approach. You should not be part of any dogma -- Christian, Mohammedan, Hindu. You should not belong to any church; that is all childish, political. A religious person is absolutely free from all dogma. Only in freedom understanding grows.

My sannyasins have to understand this approach towards life; this is very fundamental. Once you are rooted in it you will start growing. Great foliage will happen to you and great flowering and fulfillment.

 

The first question:

 

Question 1

OSHO,

COULD YOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT DISCIPLINE AND REPRESSION?

 

ANUDEYA,

 

They are as distinct as the earth and the sky. The distance is so great between the two, that it is unbridgeable. Repression is just the opposite of discipline, but for thousands of years repression has been misunderstood and thought of as if it were discipline. It gives a pseudo appearance of it.

And remember one very fundamental thing: that the real is never in danger from the unreal; the real is always in danger from the pseudo. The unreal cannot harm it, but the pseudo can harm it because the pseudo looks like it. It is not it and yet it has the mask of it, the appearance of it.

Repression is cheap. Any stupid person can do it -- it needs no intelligence to repress. Discipline needs great intelligence. Discipline means awareness. Discipline comes from your innermost core; it is not an imposition from the outside. Nobody can discipline you.

The very word "discipline" is beautiful: it means the art of learning. Hence the word "disciple": one who is ready to learn, one who is capable of learning. Learning is an inner process. One has to be always alert, only then can one learn. One has to be awake, only then can one learn. One has to watch all that goes on happening around you and one has to deepen this watchfulness so that you can see even the inner processes of your body, mind and heart. You have to become a mirror. You have to witness everything within yourself, then only do you learn from it, and that learning brings discipline. Then a deep harmony arises in you, because whatsoever is wrong starts falling away from you of its own accord. You are not to drop it. If you have to drop it through effort, then it is repression; if it falls like dry leaves falling from the tree, then it is discipline.

Discipline has to be effortless; it has to be out of sheer understanding. Repression has nothing to do with understanding, with learning. Others tell you what to do and what not to do; others give you the Ten Commandments. You have simply to follow, you have to be obedient. And who are these others? They are the powerful people -- politically powerful, religiously powerful. They may be the rich people, the people who own the state or the church, the dominant people. They have their vested interests; to safeguard their vested interests they create a certain kind of slavery, a mental slavery. They want people to be obedient, they don't want people to be rebellious; hence they cannot allow intelligence.

Intelligence is basically rebellious; it is radical, it is revolutionary. To be intelligent is the most dangerous thing for those who are in power. Hence every child has to be crippled and paralyzed; no child can be allowed to live his life according to HIS light. Every child is born intelligent, but twenty-five years of conditioning from the primary school to the university creates a stupid person out of an intelligent child -- so much conditioning that the intelligence disappears. He becomes so afraid to say no to anything, he becomes so afraid, so frightened of the crowd that he simply follows like a sheep; he is no more a man. The only way to do it is to teach him how to repress himself. First he has to repress his intelligence, then he has to repress all that can be a danger to the status quo.

For example, every society talks about peace but lives for war. Hence sex has to be repressed because sexually repressed people can be changed into soldiers very easily; there is no problem about it. The sexually repressed person is always ready to fight, he is always on the verge of violence. His sex becomes violence, he loses all tenderness, all loving qualities, and the instinct for love becomes perverted; it becomes the instinct for hatred. Up to now all societies have basically been warring societies, always preparing for war; they cannot allow sexual freedom. If a society is sexually free and a person is allowed to live his sexuality totally, then his violence will appear. Then he will not be ready to do such utterly stupid things as killing people for no reason at all; it will be impossible for him even to conceive. He will ask, "Why? Why should I kill? There seems to be no reason. Just because a few power maniacs want to dominate the whole world we have to be victims and we have to turn the whole world into a chaos?"

The sexually free person will be loving, tender; war will become impossible. Unless sex is free, war cannot disappear from the earth.

All psychological research shows one thing very conclusively: that weapons are nothing but phallic symbols. Hence societies which are preparing for war are bound to be repressive. Intelligence has to be crippled, sex has to be repressed. All that can make you capable of being an individual has to be discarded. You have to be forced to be a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Jaina or a Buddhist for the simple reason that if you are part of a crowd you lose your individuality, you start functioning according to the collective mind -- and the collective mind means the lowest mind. The collective mind functions through the lowest common denominator.

It is said that the best teacher in the schools, in the colleges, in the universities, is one who can make himself understood, who can help the students understand him in such a way that the most mediocre student is also capable of understanding him. If only the first grade students understand him he is not a good teacher. The third-rate should be capable of understanding him, then he is a good teacher. But to make himself understood by the third-rate he has to fall that low. He has to speak the language of the mob, of the crowd. And the crowd consists of the mediocre people.

It is because of centuries of conditioning, otherwise it would not have been so; it is a man-made calamity. So many people need not be so mediocre and stupid. They are not born that way, they are manufactured. Individuality has to be effaced, completely effaced, because individuals seem to be dangerous to the power-holders because individuals will think, and they will say yes only if they agree with it, otherwise they will say no.

I have heard:

 

It happened in the Second World War. Many people were needed in the army so all kinds of people were being recruited. Everybody was asked to sacrifice for the country, for the motherland, for the fatherland and all that nonsense. A professor of philosophy was also recruited.

The first day the corporal calls the newly enlisted men for their first training and starts shouting, "Platoon, attention! Platoon, halt! Platoon, attention! Platoon, about face! Platoon, halt! Platoon, right face!"

The professor steps out of formation and starts to walk away.

"Hey! you!" shouts the corporal. "Where are you going?"

"To the pub," says the professor, "I'll come back when you've made up your mind."

 

Naturally, a man who thinks will see the whole nonsense of it. What is the point of it? Why should one do all these things? But they have a certain reasoning behind it: this is how your intelligence is killed, this is how you are slowly transformed into a robot, into a machine. The man is slowly killed; then you start functioning like a machine. "Right turn!" and you need not think, you simply turn right. Not that you think why -- there is no question of why -- no question arises in you. In fact, your body functions almost mechanically. Just as you push a button and the light goes on or off or the machine starts functioning. So when the soldier hears "Right turn!" he simply turns right without paying any attention to what is being done by him; it simply happens.

 

I have heard about William James -- one of the most significant psychologists that America has contributed to the world. He was sitting with a friend in a restaurant talking about conditioning. It was the talk all over the world because just recently the Russian psychologist Pavlov had discovered the conditioned reflex: that a man can be conditioned so deeply that he starts functioning like a machine.

And Pavlov has become the father of Russian psychology and communists have been following his ideas for all these sixty years.

William James was talking to his friend, but the friend was not willing to accept the idea so easily -- it was so new.

At that very moment a retired soldier was passing along the street with a bucket full of eggs. To demonstrate, William James shouted, "Attention!" and the poor old soldier simply went into the attitude of attention. The bucket fell; all the eggs were destroyed. He was very angry. He said, "Who has done this?"

William James said, "But we didn't say that you had to follow!"

He said, "It is no longer a question of following, it has become my nature. Attention means attention! I was in the army for twenty-five years: attention means attention; it does not mean anything else. And it is not a question of my deciding whether to follow or not; it has become automatic."

 

This is what all the societies have been doing and all the so-called religions have been doing: they have been automatizing you. And this is done through the process of repression -- repress everything that can be dangerous to the establishment.

That's why Jesus is crucified and Socrates is poisoned and Al-Hillaj Mansoor is killed, for the simple reason that these people were bringing rebellion, these people were releasing others from their bondage, from their mental slavery. They were telling people to be intelligent, to be individuals, to be a light unto themselves. That's the message of Gautam the Buddha: Be a light unto yourself. Follow your own light, follow your own intelligence. Don't listen to those with vested interests because they are working for their own purposes. They have nothing to do with your welfare, they are not concerned about it.

And once you repress anything, the energy that is being repressed starts turning sour in you. The same energy that would have become a flower becomes a thorn. The same energy that would have helped you to grow becomes stagnant, starts stinking. Energy needs to remain in a flowing state; repression makes your life stagnant.

People's mental age is not more than twelve years. That means at the age of twelve they stopped growing psychologically They may be eighty years old, but their minds are childish -- remember, not childlike but just childish. It is beautiful to be childlike but it is ugly to be childish.

And why have they stopped at the age of twelve? For what reason? How does it happen? And this is the average all over the world. It is the same in the East, in the West; it is the same for the Hindu and for the Christian. All the societies in their own ways have been able to repress everybody before the age of twelve -- why? Because the age of thirteen is the dangerous age. At that time a person becomes sexually mature; before then all his growth has to be stopped. Once he becomes sexually mature then it will be very difficult to repress him. He will have so much energy that all your measures for repression are bound to fail. So repression has to happen before thirteen.

All kind of nonsense has to be put in people's minds before they are thirteen; by the time they reach twelve the work should be finished. Then they will only be growing old but not growing up.

 

In an oral exam in biology the teacher asks a student, "Which organ of man's body once stimulated can grow up to three hundred times its size?"

The girl replies, "I am not going to answer such questions!" and she walks out.

So the teacher asks the same question of another student who answers, "The pupil of the eye."

"Very good!" replies the teacher. "Now go and tell your friend that she's going to be disillusioned!"

 

This is the work of repression: if you repress something your mind slowly slowly becomes colored by it; everything becomes colored by it. A sexually repressed person is constantly concerned with sex. He may talk of celibacy, he may try to be a celibate, but his whole mind is full of sexuality; he dreams of sex and nothing else. And it is not so only when you are young...

Mahatma Gandhi writes in his autobiography that even at the age of seventy he was suffering from sexual dreams. That is bound to happen -- it is a seventy-years-old repression; otherwise, by the time one is seventy one should be mature enough to drop all these toys. Repression keeps things hanging in the air. The repressed person, even when he is dying, will be thinking of the thing that he has repressed his whole life.

I am against repression, I am all for expression.

Express yourself. Existence is God's expression -- that's what creativity is all about. Express yourself, and don't condemn anything. Nothing is wrong with you; all that is is beautiful. It may need transformation, but it is not wrong. It has not to be dropped, it has to be transformed. And transformation happens through discipline; discipline comes through meditation. Become more aware, watchful. But don't carry conclusions, a PRIORI conclusions.

If you are already convinced that sex is wrong then you cannot watch your mind. How can you watch if yoU have already concluded? Whenever a sexual thought arises you will shrink back; you will want to throw that idea out of your being. You will immediately jump upon it, you will start struggling and fighting. You cannot be simply watching; you will start evaluating.

A meditator has to be absolutely unprejudiced, with no conclusions. He has to be an utterly scientific observer. He simply observes, takes note of whatsoever happens in his mind. Notice, don't let anything go unnoticed, that's all. And the beauty of watchfulness is that whatsoever is meaningless starts disappearing of its own accord and whatsoever is meaningful starts growing. Your energies start gathering around the meaningful and they start deserting the meaningless. Then a certain discipline is born, not imposed by anybody from the outside.

Many people, particularly Indians, write to me asking why I am not giving a certain discipline to my sannyasins. I cannot -- I am not their enemy. I am not in any way here to dominate anybody, I am not here to dictate. I can help you to understand, then it is up to you. Out of your understanding if something happens in your life, good, but if it happens because I have said it then it is ugly. Then sooner or later you will repent, then sooner or later you will take revenge on me.

I am your friend. I can help you to be more alert; that's my whole function. And then whatsoever is good follows so silently, just like your shadow. It makes no noise and it does not give any ego to you. As you become more aware, all ego disappears. YoU become more and more humble, more and more simple, more and more ordinary. And that ordinariness is divine, that simplicity is sacred. But discipline has to arise in you. I can commune with you my understanding, I can share with you my experience, that's all; then it is for you to decide what to do and what not to do.

My sannyasins have to learn how to live in freedom. I know it is very difficult for you, too -- even my sannyasins ask: "If you give us definite rules it will be easier for us to follow them." I know it will be easier because that's what you have been doing your whole life. Somebody has been giving you orders and you have been following; that has become your habit. You would like me also to be a father figure, just to tell yoU that this has to be done and this has not to be done. That makes things cheap and simple you need not bother, you can simply depend on me. But that creates dependence and you lose something immensely valuable: you lose your freedom, you lose your independence, you lose your individuality, you lose yourself. And that is not my purpose here.

My purpose here is to make you more and more unique individuals, more and more authentic individuals. I would like you to take the responsibility of your life upon your own shoulders totally so that you become completely free of all kinds of father figures. That brings great blessing and great benediction.

 

The second question:

 

Question 2

OSHO,

PLEASE SAY SOMETHING TO US ABOUT SWAMI PREM CHINMAYA'S DEATH YESTERDAY.

 

PREM SAMADHI,

 

THE First THING about Prem Chinmaya s death is that it was not a death at all. He died very consciously.  He died so beautifully! It was rare. Ten years ago when he came to me I was afraid that he might die before he could taste something of deathlessness, because he was suffering from such a disease... it was incurable.

But he was a rare individual. He lived for these ten year.s by the simple strength of his individuality. His body was not capable of living. The doctors were puzzled, the physicians were unbelieving, but I knew the secret. He was not afraid of death, but he wanted to grow to a certain point before death happened. And he managed it!

And the moment he was ready I allowed him to go. I had to tell him, "Now you can drop your body."

A deep communion had started between me and him. Because of illness he was not able to come to see me -- and that's how sometimes blessings come in disguise. Because he was not able to physically see me, slowly slowly an inner communion was established.

The day before yesterday I called Sheela to my room just to tell her, "Now it is time. Chinmaya can go -- he is ready. Now there is no need for him to suffer anymore in the body. He has done whatsoever was needful, he ha.s attained to a certain integrity. Yes, he will be born once more, but that is a great achievement."

He died from his sixth center. To attain to the seventh would have been almost impossible in such a condition; even this was almost a miracle to achieve -- to die from such a height.

The moment Sheela reached Chinmaya's room he immediately said, "Did Osho call you to his room?" She was surprised because it is very rare that I call anybody into my room. In these six years I may have called Sheela only thrice, so it was not an every-day thing. And Sheela may be the only one besides Vivek and Laxmi who has ever been called to my room? But immediately he asked, "Did Osho call you to his room? What did he say? What is his message?"

A deep communion had started happening lately. And when Sheela told him, "Now Osho has said that you must rest, relax, go deep into yourself and forget about the body"... It was very difficult to forget the body because his body was in immense pain; it was not an ordinary pain. No pain-killer was of any help. Great doses of pain-killers were being given to him, but nothing was helping him. It was even impossible to help him to go to sleep; the pain was so great that it was keeping him awake.

He laughed and he said, "Yes, I will do it!"

Thrice in the night, again and again he asked Sheela, "Please tell me again what is the message of my Master? I don't want to forget his message at the last moment."

And whenever she said, "He has said only three words: 'Rest, relax, go deep into yourself,'" he would say, "Yes now I remember," and fall asleep again.

He told Sheela that he wanted to listen to this series -- that he hoped at least he would be able to listen to the first lecture. And he managed! Yesterday he listened to the whole lecture -- and fully conscious. With all that pain he listened to the lecture. Then he asked for the last time about the message, and then he closed his eyes and disappeared.

This is not death, this is something far more beautiful. This is let-go. This is surrender. This is love! He trusted me so totally. He died beautifully, silently, in utter relaxation. I am happy about him.

I was afraid that he may not be able to survive even these years, but it was through his sheer determination, his sheer will power that he survived. The body would have died at least six years ago; for six years he lived a kind of posthumous existence. He would have still lived -- he could have still managed at least for three months -- but I saw no point in it because it was not possible to attain more in this body than whatsoever he had attained. The body was getting rotten, absolutely rotten, and he was in such a good space that I did not want him to get disturbed as far as his inner space was concerned; I wanted him to leave. There are moments when one should depart. He was in such a positive mood in such a negative body, he was in such a healthy mood in such an unhealthy body.

Just the other day when I was telling you a joke about Jesus and the man who was suffering from cancer I was remembering Chinmaya and he was listening! And he must have laughed because he loved jokes.

The angels who must have carried him must be puzzled because he is at least six years late.

 

Three Italians arrive in paradise. St. Peter asked the first one, "Who are you?"

"I am-a Carletto from Milano."     'Very well, you are on time -- come in," says St. Peter. Then he asks the second one, "And you, who are you?"

"I am-a Genaro from Roma."

"You are six hours late. How come?" asked St. Peter.

"Well-a, San Pietro, from Roma to here it is-a a long-a journey. I stop-a to rest-a a little on the way."

"And you, who are you?" asked St. Peter to the third man.

"l am-a Pasquale from Napoli."

"Pasquale," says St. Peter, "this is too much! You are two months late!"

"Don't-a get-a angry, San Pietro. I have-a been-a in bed-a sick."

 

I don't know what Chinmaya is going to say because six years is really too much! They may have completely forgotten about him. They will have to look in the files -- it will take days for them to find oUt who this man is! But I think by now they must be becoming acquainted with orange people -- that they are not reliable people. They come at all kinds of odd hours, they don't bother about time, they don't follow any rules, they don't know anything of discipline!

He used to love jokes. He used to write me beautiful jokes. In his memory I will tell a few jokes to you.

 

A man enters a police station and says that his wife has disappeared.

"When did she disappear?" asked the policeman.

"Five or six years ago," he answers.

"Five or six years ago!" exclaims the policeman. "Why didn't you come earlier?"

"Well, you see," says the man, "I just couldn't believe it!"

 

In Moscow a communist chief sees an old man kneeling in front of an icon. He stops and asks him, "Are you praying, old man?"

"Yes, I am praying," answers the old man.

"You are praying for us, aren't you?"

"Of course."

"And you pray now for us just as in the old times you were praying for the Czar?"

"That's true," replies the old man.

"Now tell me, were your old prayers of any use?"

"Well, yes, they killed the Czar, didn't they?"

 

And this one he would like the most:

 

It is a bank meeting. The president, heated by the discussion, gets up and starts pacing up and down. His secretary notices that his fly is open so she whispers to him, "Mr. President, the garage is open. One can see everything."

"Ah yes, and what can you see? -- my new Mercedes?"

"No," replies the secretary, "a Fiat with flat tires!"

 

Samadhi, yesterday you celebrated his departure. Always remember him. He should be a light to you all. He loved deeply, he laughed deeply. He was a man who knew how to celebrate. Of course the body was not willing at all, but he never bothered about the body.

Yesterday he wanted to come to the discourse. I had to stop him, but still he heard the whole discourse. And he said to Sheela, "I wanted to hear the whole series, but when Osho says that I have to go then I have to go. Then this is the time, then this is the right time, and I don't want to miss it." He never wanted to let me down. He loved me tremendously.

His name, Prem Chinmaya, means love and consciousness. He was both. He was love and he became consciousness. He died with great love and with great consciousness.

It is not death at all, Samadhi -- it is transcendence of death.

Soon he will be back, and whenever he comes you will know because whenever I .see that he is back in the womb of some sannyasin of mine I will call him Ko Hsuan in memory of this series of which he wanted to hear the whole but could only manage to hear the first lecture. So whenever I call any child Ko Hsuan you will know that Prem Chinmaya is back to fool around!

 

The third question:

 

Question 3

OSHO,

MY HUSBAND LOVES ME SO TOTALLY THAT HE HAS NEVER THOUGHT OF ANOTHER WOMAN IN HIS LIFE, AND WE HAVE LIVED TOGETHER ALMOST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS. I CANNOT BELIEVE IT ALTHOUGH IT IS TRUE. WHAT DO YOU SAY ABOUT IT?

 

NIHARIKA,

 

I CANNOT BELIEVE IT EITHER!

 

ONCE THERE WAS A MAN whose name was Unbelievable. He was married to a very nice woman and the two of them were a very contented couple.

One day Unbelievable was so sick that he knew he was dying, so he called his wife and said to her, "Darling. I have spent my whole life being called by this idiotic name. Now that I am dying please promise me one thing -- not to put this name Unbelievable on my gravestone. You can put a saying or a picture, anything, but not my name. I do not want to carry it into eternity."

So the wife agreed. When he died she put a saying on his gravestone which read "Here lies a faithful husband who never betrayed his wife."

From that day people would pass by and read the gravestone and say, "It's unbelievable!"

 

Niharika, either your husband is dead or insane -- or maybe you have stumbled upon a Buddha! But what is a guy like Buddha doing with you?

 

At a beach resort two friends are talking. "Of course, all these young, almost-naked girls are a constant temptation for our husbands..." says one.

"Maybe," replies the other, "but I trust mine absolutely. He is madly in love with me."

"Oh," replies the first one, "and doesn't he ever have some sane moments?"

 

If a man loves a woman he is bound to love many other people too, or if a woman loves a man she is bound to love many people too, because love cannot be confined to one person. If it exists at all it cannot be confined; if it does not exist at all, then there is no question.

Love is like breathing. If a person says, "I breathe only when I am with you and the remaining time I never breathe," you will not trust him. How can you trust him? He will be dead if he does not breathe when he is not with you. Love is the breath of your soul.

But that's what we have done: for centuries we have conditioned people with such stupid ideas and created so much misery in the world and so much jealousy and so much possessiveness and so much hatred for not reason at all. We have conditioned people with this stupid idea that love can only be between one person and another, one to one: if it is true then it is one to one, otherwise it is untrue. Just the opposite is the truth: if it is one to one it cannot he true. Then it is false, pseudo; then it is only a make-believe. Then the persons are pretending and they are being untrue to themselves -- not only to the other person but to them.selves, too.

If a man is interested in beauty how can he avoid not seeing beautiful women and how can he avoid not being interested in them? The only way is to kill his interest in beauty totally -- but then he will no longer be interested even in his own wife. That's what has happened: because of this idiotic idea that love has to he one to one, love has disappeared from the earth. The only possible way to manage it is that the husband should not love the wife. He should kill the very instinct of love, he .should repress the very idea of beauty, he should forget that beauty exists in the world. But then, remember, he cannot love his wife either. Then he will pretend, then he will go on acting -- empty gestures with no content. If a woman is told "You have to he only in love with your husband and you cannot even feel interested in other people," she is bound to lose interest in the husband.

That's why husbands and wives lose interest in each other. They are constantly quarrelling; they go on finding excuses to quarrel. The real phenomenon is that they are quarrelling because their love energies are not being allowed to flower, but they have forgotten about it because the conditioning is so ancient. Their parents were conditioned the same way and their parents' parents; it comes from Adam and Eve's time. It has become so much part of us, almost part of our blood, bones and marrow, that we are not even aware of it; it has gone deep into the unconscious.

So husbands and wives are constantly angry at each other -- sometimes more, sometimes less -- and always finding excuses to be angry. And they look sad. They are bound to be sad, they are bound to be angry, for this simple reason. All other excuses are false. I am not saying that they are falsifying knowingly -- they are unaware of the whole phenomenon.

The simple truth is that a man who is interested in beauty will remain interested in many women; a woman who is interested in beauty will remain interested in many men. Maybe she is more interested in one person -- that is possible -- maybe she is so interested in one person that she would like to live with that person, but that does not mean that her interest in other people simply disappears; it remains. But if you are going with your husband or with your wife for a morning walk and your husband says to you, "Look at that woman. How beautiful she is!" immediately there is trouble -- he cannot say it! There is nothing wrong in it; in fact you should be happy that your husband is still alive and sane, that his tires are not flat yet! You should be happy that he is lively, young, that his eyes can still see beauty, that he can still be sensitive to all that is beautiful. There is no need to feel jealous.

But the husband cannot say it; in fact he will pretend that he has not looked at the other woman at all. He HAS looked, he is looking -- he may be using sunglasses only for that purpose! He will find excuses to look at the woman: he may start talking about the beautiful tree. He is not concerned with the tree but with the woman sitting under the tree! And the wife knows perfectly well why he is suddenly interested in the tree; otherwise he is never interested in the tree.

The wife cannot say to the husband, "This man looks so beautiful!" The husband will feel offended -- his ego is hurt. Everybody carries this idea that "Nobody is more beautiful than me." Now everybody knows that this is sheer nonsense Everybody is unique, that is true, but everybody has a few things that nobody else has. Maybe this man has more beautiful eyes than you have; you may have a beautiful nose and his nose is ugly, but what about the eyes? You may have a beautiful face, but what about his whole proportionate body?

People should be more intelligent and they should appreciate; they should help each other to appreciate. They should say to each other, "You are right. That woman looks beautiful, that man looks beautiful." And there is nothing wrong in it. And it is not going to destroy your love; it is, really, enhancing it, strengthening it. To communicate with each other so authentically is always a nourishment for love. Whenever you start pretending, whenever you are forced to pretend, whenever you are forced to say something which you don't want to say and you are not allowed to say something which you wanted to say then love starts disappearing, then distance is created.

Niharika, please help your husband to be alive again, help him to be sane again, help him to be sensitive again. You must have contributed much towards his dullness. This is not good, this is not healthy. This is a state of pathology. If he says that he has never thought of another woman in his life, then remember perfectly well that you are also a woman -- nothing more, nothing less. Just by becoming a wife you are not more than a woman. And if he has no more interest in any woman -- and this earth is full of beautiful women -- then he has nothing to do with you either; then he is finished with you -- or maybe you have forced him to be finished with you.

 

That's why you say: I CANNOT BELIEVE IT ALTHOUGH IT IS TRUE.

 

You cannot believe it because you must be thinking of other men -- how can you believe it? If you are still thinking of other men, how can you believe that your husband is not thinking of other women?

In fact whenever a man and a woman, particularly husband and wife, are making love, then in the bed there are never only two people, there are always four. He is thinking of some other woman and the woman is thinking of some other man. The woman is thinking of Mohammed Ali, he is thinking of Sophia Loren, and then things go well!

It is always good for wives and husbands not to make love in the daytime and even in the night to always put the light out so you can have free imagination; you can think of whomsoever you want to think. In fact, there is not much difference -- basically there is not much difference. Different models, little differences in the bonnets, et cetera, but basically there is not much difference. When you come to the fundamentals it is the same -- and when you are making love to a woman or a man you have come to the fundamentals, you have come to the very rock bottom; now there is no further to go. And this is good about nature: that about fundamentals it is very communist; there are not many differences. All differences are superficial.

But nothing is wrong in being interested. Help him -- he needs your help, because my own experience of thousands of couples is that it is always the woman who destroys the man. The man pretends to be the master, but he is not. And women are so utterly confident of their mastery that they allow him to talk about his mastery, but they don't bother about it.

They say, "You can say it. That's a good division: you talk about it -- that freedom is given to you -- but we are the real masters."

 

One day I went to see Mulla Nasruddin. He was sitting under his bed. I asked Nasruddin, "What is the matter? Why are you sitting under your bed?"

He said, "Why not? I am the master of the house, I can sit anywhere!"

And then his wife came and she said "You coward! You come out and I will show you who is the master!"

He said, "Nobody can force me to come out! I am the master so I can sit anywhere I like!"

Now the wife is very fat and she cannot go under the bed, so I asked the wife, "What are you going to do now?"

She said, "You wait! Lunch time is coming closer -- he will have to come out! And under the bed he can go on talking about his mastery; above the bed I know who is the master!"

 

Help your poor husband. You must have destroyed him -- not knowingly, unknowingly; feminine strategies are very subtle. Revive him, bring him back from his grave. And only then will he be interested in you. And he will be grateful to you.

All couples should remember it: that by becoming a couple you are not becoming masters of each other -- just companions, friends. And don't take your relationship for granted; it has nothing to do with possessiveness. Men or women are not things to possess, they are people; they have to be respected. They are not means to be used. Husbands are using wives as means, wives are using husbands as means, and that's why the whole world seems to be so ugly and so insane and everybody seems to be so miserable.

There is no need for so much misery -- ninety-nine percent of it is our creation. One percent will of course remain because there are the limitations of the body. The body has to become old, sometimes it will be ill, some day it has to die, but that is only one percent. And if ninety-nine percent of misery can disappear, that one percent can be accepted, joyously accepted; there is no problem about it.

 



 

Question 4

OSHO,

I HAVE HEARD FROM MANY SANNYASINS THAT WE NEED TO DO NOTHING AT ALL; "LET OSHO DO IT." GURDJIEFF HAS TAUGHT THAT ONLY THROUGH ONE'S OWN EFFORTS, STEMMING FROM A DEEP WISH, DOES AN AWARENESS OF BEING GROW.

PLEASE SPEAK ON THIS FOR A SANNYASIN SUFFERING GROWING PAINS.

 

ANUBHUTI,

 

I KNOW YOU are not suffering growing pains, not at all, because you are not growing!

Anubhuti has been in Gurdjieff's work for many years -- not with Gurdjieff himself but with somebody who had been with Gurdjieff. Now, to be with a Master is a totally different matter. If you had been with Gurdjieff your understanding about Gurdjieff would have been totally different. But you have never been with a living Gurdjieff, you have been with somebody who has been with Gurdjieff -- and that somebody is not yet enlightened, that somebody is in the same boat as you are. But she -- the person Anubhuti has been with -- has conditioned your mind in a certain way: her own understanding of Gurdjieff.

Gurdjieff used to say that even the people who understood him the most had not understood him -- even a man like P.D. Ouspensky was rejected by Gurdjieff. In fact, the whole credit goes to P.D. Ouspensky for making Gurdjieff world-famous; nobody would have known about him without Ouspensky. It is through Ouspensky's books that Gurdjieff became well-known -- he might have died an obscure mystic. It was Ouspensky and his great capacity to philosophize, to argue, to write, that made Gurdjieff one of the greatest known Masters of the world.

But Gurdjieff was not happy even with Ouspensky's understanding of him: he used to say that Ouspensky had misunderstood him totally. Ouspensky was of course very angry, and finally he departed from Gurdjieff and became antagonistic. Even to mention Gurdjieff's name in Ouspensky's presence was an offense. No disciple of Ouspensky was allowed to mention Gurdjieff's name although what Ouspensky was teaching was Gurdjieff's teaching according to him. And if you read Ouspensky and Gurdjieff you will be more convinced by Ouspensky than by Gurdjieff because Gurdjieff is not a philosopher. He is not a good writer either -- his writing is so tedious, so boring that if you can finish his whole book that will show great will power. I have come across many people who have been deeply interested in Gurdjieff, but they have not read his books; they all have read Ouspensky, Nicoll and others.

Anubhuti, whatsoever you know about Gurdjieff is not about Gurdjieff; you don't know anything about him. Even the people who lived with him for many years were not capable of understanding him -- he was a very mysterious man. And to each disciple he was saying different things because each disciple's need was different. He said one thing to Ouspensky and another thing to Nicoll, just the opposite of it because their needs were so different that the same thing could not be said to them.

To a few people he said, "Surrender everything to me..."

 

It happened once:

A very rich Russian woman came to him and the first thing he asked was: "You surrender all your valuable ornaments to me immediately. If you want to be my disciple give all your diamonds and jewels." And she had really beautiful things with her; she was one of the richest women of those days. She became very afraid -- naturally. She went in her room to think over it, "What to do? Is it right to surrender everything? "

She was sharing the room with another woman one of her old acquaintances; she was also rich. She asked about the matter -- what to do.

The other woman said, "There is no problem -- the same thing happened with me. When I came he asked me, "Give all your valuables to me first. If you cannot sacrifice that much then forget all about me and my work; then your search is not authentic. You have to pay for it.' And I immediately surrendered then and there all my ornaments. And do you know what happened?" the woman said. "The next morning he came to my room and gave everything back to me!"

So the new woman was very happy. She went and surrendered everything -- and Gurdjieff never came back! She waited and waited, and she asked the other woman, "What is the matter? He has not Come back!"

The woman said, "I don't know what the matter is, but that was what happened with me. I don't know why he is not coming."

The woman became very distrustful, left Gurdjieff. and started spreading rumors about him: "That man is a charlatan. He is exploiting people."

The other woman asked Gurdjieff, "Why did you return everything to me and not to her?"

Gurdjieff said, 'You surrendered so immediately, without a thought, that there was no need to keep it. She thought over it, she asked you about it. Only when she was certain that her things would be returned to her did she give them to me. That was not surrender at all, that was calculation. And I don t want calculative people around me. If I had returned those things to her she would have stayed here. So I have killed two birds with one stone: we have that money -- we needed it for the work -- and we got rid of that stupid woman. And now she is spreading rumors about me, so other stupid people won't come to me."

 

Anubhuti, you are not going through growing pains, you are simply in a confusion because my work is totally different from Gurdjieff's work; it is bound to be so. Your problem now is what to do?

Anubhuti has entered many groups and left every group because they do not fit with her understanding of work; they are below her. She knows far better -- she has worked for years. But my work is totally different.

Gurdjieff depended on crystallization and my work is of dissolution; you have to dissolve, not to crystallize. Both are valid means; through both doors you can enter the ultimate. Either you have to enter through will power -- and that was Gurdjieff's work, or you have to enter through surrender -- that is my work.

 

You ask:

PLEASE SPEAK ON THIS FOR A SANNYASIN SUFFERING GROWING PAINS.

 

You are just trying to understand me with your Gurdjieffian jargon. That won't work. If you want to understand me you will have to put Gurdjieff aside. I love the man, I love him immensely, I respect the man, but my ways are totally different.

But old habits die hard...

 

An American teacher is tired of seeing her white students fight with the black ones who are forbidden to use the school bus. So one day she calls them together and says, "Boys, what are all these discriminations? I won't have any more of this! Remember, we are all equal. Everybody is equal black or white! So from now on we can think of ourselves as blue! Have you understood? We are all blue!

"And now, the light blues will go on the bus and the dark blues will go home on foot!"

 

Old habits...

 

Heaven is in a havoc. God asks St. Peter the reason for it and St. Peter replies, "Well, it's that man, Adolf Hitler. He is impossible. He keeps shouting at everyone, 'Jew! Jew!' But don't worry, I'll tackle him myself! "

After a while peace and harmony reign in Heaven again. Curious, God asks St. Peter, "How did you do it? "

"Well, it was easy," says St. Peter. "I just gave him a brush and now, instead of shouting, "Jew! Jew!' he is busy writing 'Jew' on all the clouds!"

 

Old habits...

 

You have come here, you have waited to come here for months, you have longed to be here, you have disappointed your so-called teacher, you have disappointed your whole group, but you are not here either. You are neither there nor here; you are in a limbo.

 

If you want to work according to Gurdjieff, escape from here as quickly as possible. If you want to work according to me then you will have to learn different ways.

 

You ask:

I HAVE HEARD FROM MANY SANNYASINS THAT WE NEED TO DO NOTHING AT ALL...

 

That is the most difficult thing in the world -- to do nothing at all. Don't think it is the easier way; it is the most difficult thing, to do nothing. You can do anything; the problem arises when you are told not to do anything.

 

SITTING SILENTLY,

DOING NOTHING,

THE SPRING COMES,

AND THE GRASS GROWS BY ITSELF.

 

Gurdjieff's work is work; my work is not work, it is play. And there is a great difference between the two. Gurdjieff wanted you to force yourself to the extreme; he was a hard taskmaster. I don't want you to be extremist, I want you to be exactly in the middle. I want you to be exactly in the middle, remember it, because only through that its balance possible, is equilibrium possible. You are not asked to do anything at all.

 

You say: And your sannyasins say, "LET OSHO DO IT." I don't do anything at all -- that is just d way of speaking. I don't do anything and I want my sannyasins not to do anything either. But their old habits are there so I tell them, "Leave it to me. I will do it!" I don't do anything at all -- I have never done anything in my life. I am the laziest man you can find in the world! Can't you see? -- I don't even walk a hundred yards! And I have told Laxmi, "In the new place the car has to come on top of the stage!" I am the laziest person in the world -- why bother with these steps? I don't do anything.

But my sannyasins are accustomed to doing, so just to help them I say, "Don't be worried, I will do it. Leave it to me." That is just an excuse for them to leave doing -- and then things start happening on their own. I want you to be natural.

Gurdjiee's work is extremist: it creates tension in you It depends on friction: it creates friction in you. My work is not work; it is relaxation, it is rest, it is becoming more and more silent, utterly silent. Even if you art doing something you are not to be the doer of it; you have not to take it seriously. Gurdjieff's work i.s serious. My work is not serious at all; it is playfulness, it is fun, it is dance, it is song. I don't call it work. Work is a dirty word, a four-letter dirty word here!

But you are misunderstanding me for the simple reason that you have your own understanding. Either you will have to drop the understanding that you are carrying with you or you will have to drop me. You will have to choose. You cannot ride on these two horses.

 

A beautiful looking tomcat is strolling down the road. On the way to the park, he meets a little white tomcat.

"Hey, Tommy, where are you going?" asks the little cat.

"I'm going to the park to fuck around!" answers big Tommy,

"What's that? Something like fish?" asks the little one.

"Come with me and you'll find out!" says Tommy.

Soon the two tomcats come to the big fountain in the park, and there sits Jolly, the most beautiful cat in town, her golden fur shining in the sun. She sees the big tomcat coming closer with a mischievous smile on his cat face. "I'm in trouble!" she exclaims, jumps up, and starts running around the fountain.

"Come on, boy! cries Tommy and he starts running after her. One round, two rounds, three rounds. "Come on, faster!" Tommy screams. Round and round the fountain they run.

The little white cat, hardly keeping up with Tommy, exhausted, gasping for air, trembling on his little legs, cries: "Hey, Tommy, listen -- I'll fuck one more round and that's enough for me!"

 

You say: GURDJIEFF HAS TAUGHT THAT ONLY THROUGH ONE'S OWN EFFORTS, STEMMING FROM A DEEP WISH, DOES AN AWARENESS OF BEING GROW.

 

That is true, but then you have to follow the whole Gurdjieffian method, and for that you will need a Gurdjieff; without a Gurdjieff it is impossible to do it. Without a living Master no method, howsoever beautiful it is, works. In fact it is the .'MASTER, HIS PRESENCE, that is the real thing, not the methods. With an alive Master everything works; with a dead Master nothing works. Let it be settled forever in your consciousness.

That's why beautiful methods later on are found to be bogus. It is not the methods, it is the Master, it is the man behind them, it is the golden touch, the magical touch of the Master, it is his charisma that works.

When I am gone, then Sufi Dancing will continue and there will be Kundalini and there will be Chaotic Meditation, and all the things will continue in the same routine way, but something will be missing -- something which was the very soul of them. Then they will be just rituals.

That is how the Christian Church goes on, Hindus go on, Mohammedans go on, Buddhists go on. And these methods did work once. They worked when Jesus was alive, they worked when Krishna was alive they worked when Buddha was alive. Being with a living Master is what works; it is not the method.

That's the difference between science and religion: religion is magic. Science depends on method; religion depends on Masters, on the presence of those who have become awakened.

Only if you can get attuned with me here is something possible -- even the impossible is possible. But you will have to get attuned with me. Gurdjieff will be a hindrance.

If you choose Gurdjieff, choose Gurdjieff, but remember you are choosing a dead Master. You can go on repeating his methods your whole life -- nothing is going to happen through them.



 



 

Question 5.

OSHO,

WHAT IS THE SECRET OF REMAINING HAPPY AND MARRIED?

 

SARJAN,

 
I can only tell you the secret of being happy -- marriage is irrelevant. If you live together with somebody out of love, out of gratitude, good; if it goes on happening your whole life, good. If it disappears one day, depart from each other in deep gratitude, in the remembrance of the love that was once there -- it has enriched you. Rather than clinging to each other in anger, in frustration, in rage, and being violent to each other and destructive, it is better to depart with grace. One should know how to fall in love and one should also know how to fall out of it gracefully.

 

 

ENERGY ENHANCEMENT

THE CORE ENERGY TECHNIQUES !!

 

CLICK BELOW TO GO TO

ESPANOL, Pulse Aqui!!           FREE YOGA BOOK            ENQUIRIES, JOIN SOL MAILING LIST
EE ESSENTIAL INFO EE LEVEL 1 EE LEVEL2 EE LEVEL3 TESTIMONIALS EE TEACHERS EE RESIDENTIAL
EE SPAIN INDIA EE India Tour EE TAJ MAHAL YOGA SACRED DANCE REIKI MASTERY YOGA TEACHER TRAINING
EE Shockwave EE BOOK Download ONLINE COURSE VIDEO COURSE EE KUNDALINI TALKS EE TEACHER TRAINING Sacred Dance
Taoism  Buddhism Zen Zen2 Meditation Alchemy Psychology
Dance Hinduism Pearl of Great Price Kundalini  Taoism and the Tao Taoist Orbits Taoist Alchemy
Greek Myth Hercules Pollution PollutionFood Merlin Gurdjieff Sufi Whirling
Taoist Techniques Ouroboros Enlightenment Buddhism BuddhistMetas BuddhismMeta Zen Master Hogen
EESYNTHESIS LORD OF THE RINGS Kundalini Kriyas What is Kundalini? THE MATRIX MASLOW AMERICAN BEAUTY
EE Machu Pichu, Peru and Brazil - Iguazu Falls The Energy Enhancement Dark Poetic Book The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali The 37 Practices of the Bodhisattva The Western Mystery Tradition

Sacred Dance VIDEO PERFORMANCES by Devi Dhyani

Take your time, this site has much new wonderful information.