The second question

Question 2

OSHO, PLEASE, I WANT TO COME HOME.

Gyan Bhakti,

YOU HAVE COME. I AM YOUR HOME. Yes, it takes time to recognize it. It takes years sometimes to recognize that you have come home. First, because you don't know what your home is -- so how to recognize it? Second, it is so against your ingrained habits of the mind that the mind wants to ignore it rather than take note of it. The mind wants to ignore it because if it takes note of it, that taking note is very disturbing. It disturbs its whole edifice.

To recognize that you have come home means now no more effort is needed, means now there is nowhere to go, means that your old kind of life and all its activities are finished! Suddenly you will feel empty. Suddenly you will feel nobody, a nothingness -- that frightens. Hence one goes on repeating:

OSHO, I WANT TO COME HOME.

You HAVE come, Gyan Bhakti! To be here with me is TO be at home, because my whole approach is not that of improving you but just of shaking you, shocking you into awareness that you have never left the home in the first place.

The biblical story says Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden. I would like to tell you: they have never been expelled. You have heard a wrong rumour. They have only fallen asleep -- they ARE in the Garden of Eden, because there is no other place to be. The whole existence is God's, the whole existence is his garden. To where can he expel anyone?

Once a Christian missionary was talking to me and I asked him, "Where can he expel Adam and Eve to? Where?" And he was at a loss to answer -- because this whole kingdom is his. Yes, an ordinary king can expel his son, because his kingdom has a limitation. There are other kingdoms too; the son can be thrown out of the kingdom, out of the boundaries.

You can be expelled from India, from Germany, from Japan -- that is possible because there are other places available. But to where is God going to expel you? There is no other place. The Garden of Eden has no limits -- the whole existence is his garden.

Then the Christian missionary asked me, "Then what happened? How do you interpret the story?"

I said, "They have fallen asleep. By eating the fruit of knowledge they have fallen asleep, they have become minds -- and when one becomes the mind, one falls asleep as far as consciousness is concerned. By eating the fruit of knowledge, by becoming knowledgeable, they have become minds! The story is so simple and so significant. God told them not to eat from the tree of knowledge; that was the only order that was given to Adam and Eve: not to become minds, to remain innocent, not to become knowledgeable. But they could not resist the temptation. They became knowledgeable.

"Once you become knowledgeable, your consciousness goes through a shift: it moves from the heart to the head. The heart falls asleep and the head becomes awake. The head cannot know the mystery of God; the head is incapable of understanding that you are already in God, that you cannot be anywhere else."

Just descend from the head, come back to the heart, and you are back in the Garden of Eden. Hence my insistence on renouncing knowledge. Don't renounce the world -- the world is beautiful. Don't renounce your wife -- she is your life. That's exactly the meaning of the name 'Eve'.

The story is:

Adam was alone and felt very lonely, and God created Eve -- out of his ribs. That too is beautiful, that man and woman are only separate from the outside; deep down they are one. And then God asked Adam, "What are you going to call this woman? This new creature?"

And Adam said, "I will call her 'Haavvah', 'Eva', 'Eve'" -- these are all different names in different languages, but they all mean life.

And God asked, "Why?"

Adam said "Why? Because she is my life. Without her I was dead."

You need not renounce your wife -- she is your life. You need not renounce your husband, you need not renounce your children. But one thing you need to renounce -- that is knowedgeability. One thing you need to renounce -- that is your mind. And see the irony: people renounce the world, but they don't renounce their minds.

A Jaina renounces the world, becomes a naked monk, but still remains a Jaina. I have asked many Jaina monks, "This is ridiculous! You renounce the society, but you have not renounced the knowledge that the society has given to you. How can you still call yourself a Jaina?"

The Christian Catholic renounces the world, moves to the monastery, but remains a Christian Catholic. He carries the society with him in his mind and all that the society has put there. What kind of renunciation is this?

I tell you: Renounce being a Christian, renounce being a Hindu, because this is renunciation of the mind. And don't renounce the world -- the world belongs to God. The world is beautiful, and it is tremendously beautiful if you can see it without the mind interfering.

Gyan Bhakti, you have come home, but you are still not able to wake up, you are still fast asleep -- you are still in the mind. Descend into the heart. You don't know how fortunate you are. You don't know how blessed you are. It is rare to find a home, because it is rare to be with an alive Master.

Yarkoni and Danberg, two Israeli soldiers, were bemoaning the years of hardship and fighting against the Egyptians.

"What we should do," suggested Yarkoni, "is declare war against the United States. They will beat us, and like they always do with all the countries they defeat, right away they will give us billions of dollars, plenty of food, houses, cars and factories."

"That's no good," sighed Danberg. "With our luck, we would win!"

You don't know how lucky you are. You have already won -- but it takes time to recognize the fact, it takes time for the news to reach from the heart to the head. And the distance is vast. Physiologically it is not much, but spiritually the distance is very immense. Maybe these two points are at the greatest distance in existence -- the heart and the head. Spiritually, not physiologically. Physiologically just one foot, two feet, but spiritually the distance is almost infinite. It takes time for the news to travel.

Your heart knows, Gyan Bhakti, that it has happened, but your head has not heard about it yet. And you live in the head. When I look into your heart, I can see that the heart has recognized.

This is what my experience is every day when I touch you, when you come close to me, when you allow my energy to melt into your energy -- this is my experience! that I see your heart has understood, but your head is still unaware. Your head is still resisting, your head is still fighting, your head is still persisting in its old routine, and your heart has already been transformed -- the flower has bloomed there.

Gyan Bhakti, start learning the language of feeling and forget the language of thinking. Start being more and more silent, because the chattering mind will not allow you to know that you have come home. The inner talk has to stop. In those gaps, in those intervals, the still small voice of the heart will be heard.

BUT FROM MY SIDE, I KNOW, I know absolutely: you have come. Whether you know it or not does not matter; sooner or later you will know. It is only a question of time. And there are many people like you, Gyan Bhakti, who have arrived and are not aware -- you are not alone, and they are still struggling in their heads, fighting, trying to escape, creating all kinds of barriers between me and themselves -- because the head will try in every possible way. It is very cunning: the head is very cunning. It cannot allow you easily to enter into the heart again; it cannot leave its domination over you.

I have heard:

A man and a little boy entered a barbershop together. After the man received the full treatment -- shave, shampoo, manicure, haircut, etc. -- he placed the boy in the chair.

"I am going to buy a green tie to wear for the parade," he said. "I will be back in a few minutes."

When the boy's haircut was completed and the man still had not returned, the barber said, "Looks like your daddy has forgotten all about you."

"That was not my daddy," said the boy. "He just walked up, took me by the hand, and said, 'Come on, son, we are gonna get a free haircut!'"

The mind's whole function is to be cunning. It is a strategy developed by you to compete with others, to deceive others, to be clever with others. And by and by, you become so skillful in deceiving others that you start deceiving yourself too -- and that's what the mind goes on doing: it deceives others, it deceives you.

Now, Gyan Bhakti, your mind is creating this problem. Your mind is saying, "Search for the home, seek God. Make efforts to become enlightened." Now the mind is creating new goals for you. Once the goal grips you, you are in the hands of the mind. If you can say to the mind, "I have arrived -- get lost! Now there is no more to go, nowhere to go. This is home. This is enlightenment," first the mind will look a little confused, because this is not the way you have ever behaved with it. It will look a little shocked. But if you go on saying the same thing again and again -- whenever the mind wants to create a desire to achieve something, you simply say, "Shut up!" -- slowly slowly it will understand that now you are beyond its power. Only then does it start stopping It will make all kinds of efforts. You have to be alert not to be caught in those efforts.

And that's my function of being with you, and the function of this Buddhafield, to remind you continuously that you have arrived, that God is available right now to you, this very moment showering on you. God is in the air and in the sun and in the flowers and in the song of the birds. God is in this silence between me and you, in these words between me and you, in this communion. This silence, this presence, this love that goes on flowing between me and you, is God! This love is the home.

But beware of the mind. In fact, in all the traditions, mind has been given different names. One tradition calls it 'the Devil', another tradition calls it 'Satan', but it is in fact nothing but a metaphor for the mind.

Jesus goes to the mountains, meditates, and then encounters the Devil. Do you know, who that Devil is? It is not somebody outside you, with two horns popping out of his head and with a long tail and hooves -- these are just stories written for children, for grown-up children of course, but all stories. You have to decode them.

Who is this Devil who tempts Jesus in the mountains? It is the mind. The Devil is an ancient metaphor for the mind. It goes on watching you, what you are doing. If you are nourishing to it, then it is okay; if you are going away from it, it starts creating trouble for you. If one strategy does not work, it immediately changes its strategy. And it is really very clever.

Just the other day you heard Kabir's sutras. He said: I repressed sex and it became anger; I repressed anger, it became greed; I repressed greed, it became pride. It is the same mind! If you start fighting with it, it goes on changing its colours -- just to deceive you. And, yes, it deceives.

When repressed sex becomes anger, you are at a loss to understand that this is sex and nothing else -- now pretending as anger. Anger looks so different from sex, in fact it looks like the polar opposite. Sex is love: anger is hate -- how can they be the same? The mind has taken just the polar opposite to hide itself You will need great intelligence to decipher, otherwise you will be deceived. And then anger will torture you.

And if you repress anger, it becomes greed. Now who can ever think logically that anger can become greed? They don't seem to be connected at all. Unless you are a real observer of your inner happenings you will not be able to see the connection. Mind jumps to such new faces, takes such new masks! And then you repress greed and it becomes pride, and you go on ad infinitum....

Mrs. Fleishman and Mrs. Rutkin were rocking on the porch of their Catskill Mountain Hotel.

"Oh, my God! exclaimed Mrs. Fleishman. "Look at that boy. Did you ever see such a big nose? Such a crooked mouth? And look -- he is cockeyed too!"

"That," said Mrs. Rutkin, "happens to be my son."

"Well," said Mrs. Fleishman, "on him, it is very becoming!"

Mind is a diplomat, it is a politician -- it is a devil. Unless you are really alert and watchful, it can go on deceiving you for lives -- it has been doing that for lives; it can go on doing it for lives still. But a little intelligence, just a little intelligence, a little candle of light inside you of watching, of silently watching and seeing what the mind is doing, and slowly slowly your intelligence will become stronger. And mind becomes impotent as intelligence grows.

Intelligence is not intellect; intellect is part of mind, intelligence is part of the heart. Intelligence is always part of the heart, it is not intellectuality. I don't mean by 'intelligence' your so-called intelligentsia -- it has nothing to do with intelligence. Your intelligentsia is knowledgeable. They may have big university degrees, much knowledge, but they know nothing. All their knowledge is borrowed, all their knowledge is parrotlike, it is mechanical. They go on talking about it, but it does not affect their life. It has no relationship with their own source of being; it does not well up within their own heart. When I talk about intelligence I always mean the heart -- something happening in you, not coming from the outside. If it comes from the outside, it creates intellect; if it comes from within, it is intelligence. Help your intelligence to grow.

And I am creating this context, this opportunity, this space, and I am giving you all kinds of challenges. And as the commune grows the challenges will grow. Those challenges are meant for a certain purpose, they are deliberate -- they are meant to provoke your intelligence into activity, to bring your intelligence above your intellect. Only new situations which your intellect cannot cope with, only such spaces which your knowledge has not heard about, can help to bring your intelligence to the surface.