The first question

Question 1

OSHO

WHEN MY CHILDREN KNEW I WAS COMING TO SEE YOU, THERE WAS NO REQUEST FOR GIFTS. THERE WAS ONLY ONE THING THEY WANTED FOR ME TO BRING BACK SOME OF YOUR JOKES. THEY TOLD ME THAT ALL THE STUFF BETWEEN THE JOKES WAS GOOD FOR GROWN-UPS, BUT FOR THEM JUST THE JOKES. SO COULD YOU TELL US SOME JOKES FOR THEM? NATHAN, TWELVE YEARS; ANDREW, ELEVEN YEARS; ROSEMARY, TEN YEARS; AND BENJAMIN, FIVE YEARS. THEY ARE SUCH LOVELY INTELLIGENT PEOPLE, BUT I HAVE A SOFT SPOT FOR BENJAMIN BECAUSE HE IS QUITE CRAZY -- HE WANTS TO TAKE SANNYAS!

AND MY WIFE IS ALSO QUITE CRAZY, BUT THE OTHER WAY. SHE HIDES MY RED TAILOR-MADE SUITS AND THREATENS TO CUT OFF THE SLEEVES IF I WEAR THEM, AND SHE HIDES YOUR PICTURES! FIRST THE PHOTOGRAPH FALLS DOWN, THEN IT IS BACKSIDE-UP, THEN IT IS ON A SHELF THEN SHE CANNOT REMEMBER WHERE IT IS. SO I WEAR PINK SHIRTS AND MEDITATE IN YOUR PRESENCE WITHOUT A PHOTOGRAPH. SO PERHAPS YOU COULD TELL HER A STORY TOO.

Ananda Prabhu,

EVERY CHILD IS INTELLIGENT far more intelligent than the so-called grown-ups. The grown-ups are only "so-called"; it is very rare to come across a person who is really a grown-up person. The most fundamental quality in a really grown-up person is that he still keeps the innocence of the child alive, the wondering eyes of the child, the enquiring heart of the child; the purity, the clarity of the child will remain intact in him. He has defeated the society. He has not allowed anybody to destroy his intelligence.

People only grow in age; they don't grow up. Growing up is something vertical, growing in age is something horizontal. You remain on the same plane; just time passes by. And of course time helps you to collect many experiences, knowledge, words, information, and you start thinking that you know. And that is the greatest calamity that can happen to any man: not knowing and believing that you know. It means now the doors for knowing are closed forever.

Socrates is a grown-up person. He said: "I know only one thing, that I know nothing." His childhood is absolutely unpolluted. The time that has passed by has not been just dust gathering on the mirror. On the contrary, it has helped to sharpen his sword; it has not been like rust on the sword. Knowledge is rust: it destroys your intelligence and gives you poor substitutes -- knowledge is a poor substitute for intelligence.

Remember, one can be very intellectual and yet unintelligent. The child is not intellectual. He does not know anything about the great philosophers, the great scriptures; he is not a scholar. He knows nothing! But out of that state of not-knowing he functions. Hence he is always full of wonder and awe; he looks at the world feeling that it is a mystery. The more you know, the more you destroy the mystery.

The whole function of our so-called schools, colleges and universities is to de-mystify the universe. Even scientists brag about it, that they are doing a great service to humanity by de-mystifying the universe. In fact, they are creating more and more boredom in the world.

No child is ever bored; he is always finding something or other which is immensely interesting for him. He can get absorbed in any small thing -- a butterfly, a flower, a stone, a rock -- anything will do. He immediately becomes aware of something extraordinary in it. That is insight, that is intelligence.

If we help children in every possible way to remain as intelligent as when they come into the world, then there will be many grown-up people. Right now you can count the grown-up people in the whole world on your fingers very easily -- because everybody has been manipulated, has been poisoned. It needs a totally different society, a totally different vision of life in which the child is respected.

For centuries we have respected the old man: the older the man is, the more we respect him. Why do you respect the old man? just because he has existed for a hundred years? Just existing is not enough for respect; living is a totally different matter. Existing is very ordinary; living has a totally different flavor to it.

Living means living out of AGNOSIA, living out of a state of not-knowing, living life as a mystery. That is the only way to live it. Others only exist, others only survive.

A grown-up person moves in a deep harmony. His body, his psychology, his spirituality are always attuned; they all move together. This does not happen to the people who only grow in age. Their bodies become older but their minds remain retarded.

At the time of the First World War, psychologists became aware for the first time of this fact, because for the first time on a large scale they tried to observe, experiment, to know how many people are really psychologically grown-up. And they were amazed, shocked: the average psychological age of human beings is only twelve years. The body may be eighty years old and the mind is lagging far behind. In fact, there seems to be no connection... the gap of seventy years or eighty years. And the eighty-year-old person pretends to know because he thinks he is eighty years old, and he stopped growing when he was only twelve years of age. Really he should be counted only as twelve years of age, not eighty. And as far as the spirit is concerned he may be still in the womb of the mother; he may. never have come out of the womb.

These three together, in deep harmony, create beauty, grace, light, love. When they are all in accord, life is an orchestra -- but they are in discord. The spirit is almost non-existent. Hence George Gurdjieff used to say, "I have come across very few people who have any soul."

Ordinarily everybody believes that he HAS a soul because the religions have been telling for centuries that everybody has a soul. Everybody only has a potential for being a soul, but that potential is not actualized, not realized. It is Still a seed; it has not come to be a tree. It has not reached the point where spring comes and flowers open up and one feels fulfilled, contented.

A grown-up person is a flowering. His life is not divided; his life is an organic unity. He moves in a kind of absolute unity; nothing is lagging behind, nothing has gone far ahead.

And this disunity that we see in the world is multidimensional. The soul is in the womb; the mind, the psychology is somewhere hung up at the age of twelve, and the body is eighty or ninety years old. This is only one kind of discord; there are many kinds of discord.

The head goes on becoming bigger and bigger, and the heart goes on shrinking. They lose all synchronicity. And when the head becomes too much, man is a monster.

If you watch, if you observe within yourself, you can see it. I am only stating a fact. You will not feel any heart in you. You will see your head is heavy, full of junk, but your heart is only a word. You have read about it in poetry, in novels. It seems to be a fiction, a myth. In fact, physiologists say there is no heart. What you call the heart, from where the love arises, does not exist for the scientist. What exists is only a blood-purifying system. Your heartbeat has nothing to do with the heartbeat the poets have been talking about, the mystics have been praising; it is something else.

But scientists are right in a way, because the people they observe DON'T have any hearts. They have not observed a Buddha or a Meera, they have not observed Chuang Tzu or Kabir. They have never come across a man of the heart, so what they know is only about lungs.

The mystics are talking about something ELSE which is not grown-up in you. It is something behind your physical heart.which has not started functioning. It starts functioning only when you shower much energy on it, when your energy starts moving it. But your whole energy goes to the head.

Our structure of education is such that we bypass the heart. In fact, we try to ensure in every possible way that nobody's energy should enter the heart, because once the heart starts functioning it becomes difficult for the head to take possession of you.

And the society needs only heads and hands. That's why the society is divided into two kinds of people: the heads -- the people who work with their heads, the so-called intelligentsia -- and the hands, the people who are laborers. The society does not believe in the heart because the heart has no utilitarian purpose. You cannot produce commodities out of the heart; you cannot make people rich; you cannot create bigger houses, sophisticated machines; you cannot reach the moon. So what is the purpose of it? Its purpose is totally different: it is non-utilitarian. It brings joy, but joy the society is not interested in. The society wants people who are efficient robots. A joyful person is not a robot. The society does not want you to be loving; it wants you to be calculating.

A lover is never a calculator; he is always risking. He is not a good businessman. He lives in a totally different world; he sees things from a different perspective. For him flowers are far more important than all your scientific gadgets, stars are far more important than all your political ideologies, rivers and mountains are far more significant than all your churches and temples.

The vested interests are against the heart, hence they have put it aside. They have created a shortcut: your sexual energy moves directly to the head without passing through the heart. That's why your psychological age remains nearabout twelve, because that is the time when sexual maturity starts happening -- twelve, thirteen, fourteen. That is when you become sexually mature and that is where the society stops you, because once the energy is ready to move it starts moving it towards the head. That is the most important time in the life of a man, between twelve and fourteen. That is the time when either you move through the heart or you move through no-heart directly to the head. And every society takes care, before the energy starts working in the heart, to stop it -- to close that door completely, forever.

Psychologists have not been able to explain why the psychological age should be nearabout twelve -- this is the reason. They don't yet have any explanation for it, but this is the reason: because your sexual energy is the only energy you have got, and the moment it becomes ripe there is danger -- because it can become love. If allowed a natural course it is bound to become love; it will move through the heart. And, in fact, once it moves through the heart, once the heart opens up, the head can never be the master; it will remain a slave, because a higher value has entered in your being. Now logic can never be supreme, it will always be secondary. And it is good that logic should be a servant to love; then it is beautiful. But love is a dangerous energy.

All the social institutions are afraid of love because the whole society depends on unloving institutions. Our society is rooted in marriage; marriage is an unloving institution. Marriage has been invented against love. That's why parents never like their daughter or their son to fall in love. They would like to choose the right wife, the right husband, for their son or daughter. THEY would like to choose, and how can they choose? They will choose through the head. They will say to the children, "You don't know. You have not experienced life -- we have experienced life, so we know what is right and what is wrong." For centuries, all over the world, marriage was arranged by parents at a very early stage so the child was not even aware of it, what was happening.

My mother got married when she was seven; she was not aware of what was happening. My father must have been nearabout ten; he was not aware of what was really happening. He enjoyed the whole thing -- because he was riding on the horse and so many people were following him, so of course he enjoyed it! And when the marriage procession came to my mother's home she was puzzled because she was not allowed to come out and see what was happening there. And the whole crowd was there, the whole village was there; only she was not allowed. She could not understand: "What is the matter? Why can't I go?" Of course she was interested: "What is happening outside? Music, band, horse, procession!" It was enough to get interested in.

Now, marrying a girl of seven years is a very dangerous strategy of the society. If child marriages happen, love has been prevented forever. They will grow like brother and sister and they will start accepting each other and the convenience that they give to each other. They will LIKE each other, but never love. And liking is not loving; they are not synonymous. You may like a person very much, but you may not love them, and you may not like a person very much but you may love them. Love is a strange phenomenon; it is illogical. Liking has a logic about it: you can give reasons why you like a person, but you cannot give any reason why you love a person; it is irrational.

To prevent love, child marriages were prevalent all over the world. To prevent love, pseudo love was taught: "You have to love your mother because she is your mother!" But there is no necessity. She may be a mother; that does not mean that the child HAS TO love her.

That's what the DESIDERATA says: Never feign affection. But we have been doing that for centuries. You have to love your mother -- just because she happens to be your mother; you have to love your father -- just because he happens to be your father. You have to love your brothers and your sisters. And in a child these things can be easily forced -- he is helpless. And then you can force him to marry. And then, of course, the husband has to love the wife, the wife has to love the husband. This whole love is pseudo! It has never happened. You are simply fulfilling a formality.

That's why people remain retarded psychologically at the age of twelve, or somewhere between twelve and fourteen. The head becomes the suprememost center. That's why there is so much misery in the world, because without love bliss is impossible. That's why there is so much irreligiousness in the world, because without love there is no God. Logic cannot prove God, only love proves God. Knowledge can never prove God, only innocence experiences it.

Ananda Prabhu, your children are beautiful. They have understood what is most important.

Another sannyasin has just asked: "I write questions, but the moment I have written the question I immediately see the answer, and then both the question and the answer become unimportant. And I can never ask because they become unimportant. Why does this happen?" she asks.

This happens because you take life too seriously. You want your question to be very important. That will give you a reflected glory; that will make you important. You don't want to ask an ordinary question; you want to ask something very important. And of course you will never be able to ask one. Any question is bound to be unimportant; no question is important -- or ALL questions are important.

If you are a child, if you have the innocence of a child, then all questions are important -- not only questions about God but questions about the dog also have the same value. A child can ask, "Why does the dog start barking when the moon rises in the sky?" Dogs are very much against the moon! On a full-moon night they will bark and bark their hearts out. They go crazy! A child can ask it; when you are a grown-up you cannot ask such a question. It looks so unimportant -- what has it to do with YOU? If the dog barks, let him bark! And what will people think if you ask such a question? It seems unimportant -- it seems unimportant because of the ego. You want to ask questions about God.

Hence, particularly in India, I have experienced people whose problems remain unasked, and they go on asking metaphysical questions because that gives them importance.

They will come and they will ask, "Does God exist?" -- as if that is something they are really interested

in! What will you do if he exists?

When I was traveling around the country, thousands of times I had to tell people, "Are you really interested in God? What will you do if he exists? Is it going to make any difference in your life whether God exists or not? Is it a life and death problem for you?"

They would say, "No, but we are curious whether God is or not." And sooner or later, when they became a little more acquainted with me, their real problems would come up: anger, jealousy, possessiveness. They are real problems, but they hurt the ego. To ask, "Why am I jealous?" is to recognize your jealousy, is to declare that you are jealous. Nobody wants that. Everybody is jealous, everybody is possessive, but everybody thinks it is not so. "It is not so with me -- it may be so with others."

Nobody wants to look at his real face; people avoid themselves as they avoid nobody else. That's why everybody else will be able to see your faults except you. You minimize your faults and you maximize others' faults; you have double standards. When it comes to your fault you rationalize it; when it comes to somebody else's fault you don't accept any rationalization. You magnify it as much as you can; you make it look as big as you can, because your fault brings your ego down. The other person has a bigger fault; the bigger it is the better, because that helps you to feel, "How nice I am! How simple, how humble I am! And look at these people -- they are all full of faults, they are all full of fallacies, superstitions, stupidities. I am not THAT bad!" That gives you a good feeling.

The sannyasin has asked, "Why does it always feel unimportant?" It is bound to feel unimportant, because you are asking out of your knowledge, not out of a real enquiry.

Ananda Prabhu, your children are far more intelligent. Children are always authentic because they are not worried about the ego; otherwise they would not have said this

to you. They asked you, "When you come back, bring a few jokes."

A serious person cannot ask that. A serious person will ask, "Bring some great philosophy, great religion. Bring some truth for me." But children are simple and innocent. They simply open their hearts and they say whatsoever their real need is.

If everybody is like a child, the whole quality of human consciousness will go through a transformation. We can bring a new humanity very easily. Jesus is right when he says: Unless you are like small children you will not enter into the kingdom of my God.

First joke for Benjamin:

There's the story about the fellow who each day walked to work and passed a window where he saw a lady hitting a boy over the head with a loaf of bread. The fellow decided it was none of his business and walked on. He saw the same thing happen every day for five months. Each day the lady was hitting the boy with a loaf of bread.

Then one morning he saw the woman toss an entire chocolate cake into the boy's face. Astonished, he peered into the open window and asked why.

"Oh," the lady said, "it's his birthday!"

Second, for Rosemary:

Charlie the cat was scampering all over the neighborhood, down alleys, up fire-escapes, down cellars. A lady who knew Charlie's little owner, Johnny, knocked on his door. "Your cat is running around like mad!"

"I know," said Johnny. "He has just been neutered and he is rushing around cancelling engagements!"

Third, for Andrew:

It happened in Naples. The teacher asked little Pierino, "Pierino, tell-a me, who was-a the first-a man?"

"I don't-a know-a nothing!" replied the little boy. "I didn't-a see nothing, and I will die before-a confessin'!"

And fourth, for Nathan:

Two children are playing, imitating the sounds of different animals. Suddenly Johnny says to his friend, "My grandfather is really good at imitating a wolf. Just listen!"

He goes to his grandfather, whispers something in his ear, and the old man starts howling, "Oooh! Oooh! Oooh! "

Astonished, the friend asks Johnny where his grandfather had learned to imitate a wolf so well.

Says Johnny, "Well, all I do is ask him how long it has been since he last fucked!"

And, Ananda Prabhu, as far as your wife is concerned, she certainly is crazy -- but she loves me. In fact, she is afraid of falling into my love. The love is there, but she is afraid also. Hence all her maneuvers -- hiding your orange clothes, hiding my photographs is nothing but an unconscious effort to hide herself from me. But she cannot hide for long!

There is a Sufi story:

A Sufi Master wrote a small book which was outrageous in many ways to the traditional, orthodox mind. And then he told one of his disciples, "Go to the IMAM, the greatest priest, and give this book to him as a present from me. And watch, watch carefully what happens. And come and report to me EXACTLY what happens, without any interpretation of your own."

This was a device, a double-edged sword. It was a device for the disciple to see whether he could report exactly what happened without changing it, coloring it, interpreting it. His commentary was not needed; he had to just be absolutely factual, a pure, detached observer, as if he was not concerned at all.

He went there very alert, he knew that this was a kind of test. He presented the imam the book; he was sitting in the garden. It was a winter morning and he was enjoying the sun. His wife was sitting there.

When he presented the book, the imam asked, "Who has written this?"

He told his Master's name. The imam suddenly became so enraged that he threw the book outside the gate and said, "This type of nonsense, this type of outrageous, irreligious, sacrilegious thing cannot enter into my house! Get out immediately and never come here again! Your Master is a danger to the society. He is creating chaos, he is destroying our religion!"

For a moment the disciple was losing his detachment, because great anger was arising in him, but he remembered that the Master had said that he had to be just a reporter; he had not to bring his emotions in, his sentiments in.

Just when he was leaving, the wife of the imam said, "You could have thrown it out a little later on when the man had gone. There was no need to be so enraged -- it doesn't fit you, your status. Or, you have such a big library in which there are all kinds of books -- you could have put that book there also. If you don't want to read it there is no need to read it. And I have seen all kinds of books -- religious, irreligious, belonging to our religion, belonging to other religions -- in your library, so why can't this book also be a part of the library?"

Again the disciple felt an emotion arising, that the woman was more compassionate, more loving, more human. But suddenly he became aware that he had not to bring his attitude into it at all; he had just to report. He came back and he just reported, but when he was reporting, at the last moment he forgot and he said, "One thing I must say, that the imam's wife is a very nice, beautiful woman, and she even seems to understand you. Maybe one day she can be converted to your path."

The Master said, "Wait! Who has asked about your commentary, about your interpretation? You should simply report. And as far as your commentary is concerned, it is absolutely wrong. If you ask me, then I will say this imam is sooner or later going to be trapped by me, but his wife will never be a part of our commune, NEVER, because his wife is indifferent. She says, 'YOU can put it in the library.' The imam HATES me -- hate can be transformed into love -- but the wife is just indifferent: she does not love me, she does not hate me. She is not interested in me at all. She says, 'There is no need to throw it out.' But the way the imam became enraged shows his emotion; soon he will feel that it was not right. And I tell you: go again and see what has happened to the book -- the imam must have taken it back into his home, he must be reading it now. A man who becomes so enraged is already interested. He cannot avoid reading it -- he HAS to read it."

And the disciple went again. And wonder of wonders! The Master was right: the imam was reading the book....

Your wife may show anger, may show hatred. Don't be worried about it. She is already getting interested; she is not indifferent. She is a little upside-down, but that is not a big problem -- doing a headstand! We can put her right-side-up.

The fifth joke, for your wife:

Astonished to find the new nurse, Miss Flack, pursuing the patient down the corridor with a bowl of boiling water, the head of the hospital, Dr. Killcare, buttonholed the young intern on duty and asked what was going on.

"I told her to prick the patient's boil," the youthful sawbones said, "but that Miss Flack is such a dummy, she gets everything backwards!"