Hassidism, The Art of Dying Chapter 4: Let It Be So, Question 4

The fourth question:

Question 4

BELOVED OSHO, YOU ARE REALLY MISCHIEVOUS. YOU TELL US THAT YOU WANT TO BREAK OUR HOUSES SO THAT WE CAN ENTER IN YOUR HOUSE BUT I HAVE SEEN IT. YOUR HOUSE HAS NO FLOOR, NO WALLS, NO CEILING. SO I GO ON LOOKING FROM THE PORCH GRABBING ONTO A PILLAR, AFRAID TO BE SUCKED IN.

That's true. My whole effort is to trick you in; to trick you in for something you have never desired.

A disciple and the Master are in a great conflict; a great struggle goes on. And the disciple can win only if he is unfortunate. If the Master wins it the disciple is blessed, very fortunate. The struggle is because the disciple has come to the Master for wrong reasons -- maybe he has come to seek some sort of spiritual ego. He has failed in life; money, power, prestige, respectability, success in the marketplace, ambitions in the political world -- he has failed there. He could not attain to the very peak of his egoistic journey; he could not become a president or a prime minister -- now life is running out of his hands and he wants to be somebody. It is very, very uncomfortable to remain a nobody.

Finally people start seeking and searching into the dimension of religion. There it seems easier. There it seems easier to attain to a certain ego, a certain crystallisation of the ego. At least you can become a Rajneesh sannyasin -- so simple. And you can feel great. You can feel that you have become special.

The so-called religious people are trying to attain something which they have not been able to attain in the world -- sometimes they try by austerities, asceticism. Somebody fasts for days together, he becomes special -- nobody can fast that much. He may be a masochist, he may be a self torturer -- he has to be. Or he may be suicidal. He has to be. But he starts getting respect from people -- he is a great mahatma. He fasts so much; he is against the body, he is against comfort. He can lie down on a bed of thorns, or he can stand for years.

Or he can sit on a pillar in the desert for years -- just sitting there on a pillar. Very uncomfortable. He cannot sleep, he cannot rest -- but then he attracts people. Suddenly he has become very important. Even those prime ministers and presidents that he wanted to become and failed to, start coming to him because they think that if such a great ascetic can bless them, they can rise more in the world of power. He feels very gratified, contented. Now the ego is at the supermost. Even kings and prime ministers and presidents are coming to him.

The disciple comes for wrong reasons. Or a disciple comes to attain a certain sort of peace because he is in much turmoil. Why does he want to attain to peace? He wants to attain to peace so that he can work out his ambitions in a better way.

Just the other day I was looking at an advertisement of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Transcendental Meditation. It promises everything: a good job, proficiency in your work, health, mental health, physical health, longevity; everything that a man can desire, it promises. It is a long list. Economic, spiritual, social, physical, psychological -- all these benefits -- just for sitting for twenty minutes and repeating something stupid. Coca-cola, coca-cola -- or something like that.

So simple! That's why it is said that you should not tell your mantra to anybody -- otherwise they will laugh! It has to be kept private. If you say to somebody that I repeat coca-cola, coca-cola, they will think you have gone mad. So a mantra has to be kept absolutely private. You will keep it private anyway because it will look so absurd to tell it to anybody.

Just twenty minutes repeating any nonsense word and you get so many benefits? It appeals to the mediocre mind immediately. This Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's meditation is neither meditation nor transcendental; it is simply an effort to exploit the gullible, to exploit the people who are searching and seeking for everything, searching for a panacea, searching for a remedy.

When you come to a real Master he says there is no remedy, he says there is no panacea. And he does not say that he will make you peaceful and healthy and this and that and then you can go into the world and rush after your ambition in a more efficient way. No, he will say you are disturbed, you are in a turmoil BECAUSE of the ambition. Drop the ambition. A real Master can only promise you that he will take away your ambition, he will take away your ego. He can only promise that he will kill you. You have come to be protected, you have come to attain to some security, you have come to find some props -- but a real Master is one who takes your props, prop by prop, away from you. One day you simply collapse. And in that very collapse, out of the ashes, arises a new being. That new being has nothing to do with you. That new being is so new it is discontinuous with you. It has no past, it has no future, it has only a pure presence, herenow.

The question is from Krishna Radha. She is right. YOU ARE REALLY MISCHIEVOUS. I am. So beware of me. And if you can escape in time, good. Otherwise how long can you cling in the porch? If you have entered the porch it is not very far from the house.

And the porch is also imaginary because the house has no floor, no roof, no wall -- how can such a house have a porch? Just think about it. The porch is just imaginary.

I help you to see the porch so you can at least enter the porch -- then the journey becomes easier. I sometimes promise you things which you ask for, simply to help you to be here a little longer. Your very understanding will tell you by and by that you were asking for foolish things. And then one day suddenly you will find that the porch has disappeared and, of course, that the house had never existed.

But the house that has no walls to it and no roof and no floor is the house of God -- because the very sky is its roof and the very earth is its floor and the no-boundaries are its boundaries.

Yes, I am not taking you into any house which has boundaries because then that house will prove again another imprisonment, it will be another prison. Maybe a little more comfortable, a little more decorated, maybe furnished in a little more modern way and a modern style, but still a prison.

My house is a house of freedom. It is exactly what Radha says -- YOUR HOUSE HAS NO FLOOR, NO WALLS, NO CEILING, SO L AM LOOKING FROM THE PORCH GRABBING A PILLAR. Look again. The pillar exists not. Because you want to grab, you believe in the pillar. Look again. Open your eyes. There is no pillar and there is no point in grabbing. Relax. Let go. And suddenly you disappear and you become the infinity, you become the space. That is what God is -- space, no boundaries.

My house is the house of God, it is not a man-made temple.

I have heard an anecdote.

Two office workers had a drink or two at a midtown bar after the labours of the day. One offered a third round, but his friend refused, saying he'd better get home and explain to his wife. 'Explain what?' asked the friend. 'How do I know? I'm not home yet.'

Don't go on standing in the porch. You will not know by standing in the porch. Come home. disappear in this infinity that I am making available to you. Only then will you know. And there is no need for any explanation then, no need for any theory then, no need for any rationalisation then -- because the experience itself is self-evident proof. You have lived in small houses and small dark cells up to now and you cannot believe that one can live in such absolute freedom. You have lost the capacity to be free.

That capacity has to be relearned, that capacity has to be reclaimed. I am not here to discipline you, I am not here to give you principles -- my whole effort is to give you an unprincipled Life, a spontaneous, undisciplined life. The only gift that I can present to you is freedom. And freedom has no walls to it, it is as infinite as the sky. Claim the whole sky -- it is yours.

Hassidism

THE ART OF DYING

Chapter-4

Let It Be So