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Chapter 8: Not Knowing is the Most Intimate
Question 4
Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Zen Ah, This!
The fourth question
Question 4
OSHO,
MOST RELIGIONS HAVE A NEGATIVE ATTITUDE TOWARDS WORK, AS IF IT IS A PUNISHMENT AND A LABOR AND NOT AT ALL SPIRITUAL. COULD YOU SPEAK TO US MORE ABOUT WORKING?
Parmananda,
THE BUDDHAS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN LIFE-AFFIRMATIVE, but the religions that arose afterwards have all been life-negative. This is a strange phenomenon, but there is something which has to be understood -- why it happened in the first place. And it happened again and again.
It seems that the moment a Buddha speaks he is bound to be misunderstood. If you don't understand him, that's okay, but people don't stop there: they misunderstand him -- because people cannot tolerate the idea that they don't understand. It is better to misunderstand than not to understand; at least you have some kind of understanding. All the Buddhas have been misunderstood, wrongly interpreted. And whatsoever they were standing for has been forgotten as soon as they were gone, and just the opposite was organized.
Jesus was a lover of life, a very affirmative person, but Christianity is life-negative. The seers of the Upanishads were absolutely life-affirmative people, they loved life tremendously, but Hinduism is life-negative, Buddhism and Jainism are life-negative.
Just look at the statue of Mahavira and you will see that he must have loved his body, he must have loved life and existence. He is so beautiful! It is said about Mahavira that it is possible that never before and never again has a more beautiful person walked on the earth. But look at the Jaina MUNIS, the Jaina monks, and you will find them the ugliest. What has happened?
Buddha is very life-affirmative. Of course, he does not affirm YOUR life, because your life is not life at all; it is death in disguise. He CONDEMNS your life, but he affirms the real life, the eternal life. But that's how he was misunderstood His condemnation of your false life was taken to be condemnation of life itself. And nobody bothered that he was affirming life -- real life, eternal life, divine life, the life of the awakened ones. That is true life. What life do YOU have? It is just a nightmarish experience. But the Buddhists -- the Buddhist monks and nuns -- have lived AGAINST life.
Parmananda, it is because of this misunderstanding, which seems to be inevitable.... I can see it happening with me. Whatsoever I say is immediately misunderstood all over the world. I really enjoy it! Strange, but somehow seems to be natural. The moment you say something you can be sure that it is going to be misunderstood, for the simple reason that people are going to interpret it according to THEIR minds. And their minds are fast asleep. They are hearing in their sleep; they can't hear rightly, they can't hear the whole thing. Only fragments they hear.
Even a man like P.D. Ouspensky, who lived with Gurdjieff for years, could not hear the whole teaching as it was. When he wrote his famous book IN SEARCH OF THE MIRACULOUS and he showed it to George Gurdjieff, his Master, he said, "It is beautiful, but it needs a subtitle: FRAGMENTS OF AN UNKNOWN TEACHING."
Ouspensky said, "But why? -- why fragments?"
He said, "Because these are only fragments. What I have told you you have not heard in its totality. And whatsoever you have written is beautiful...."
Ouspensky was really one of the most skillful writers the world has ever known, very artistic, very logical, a superb artist with words.
So he said, "You have written well, you have written beautifully, but these are only fragments -- and the fragments cannot reveal the truth. On the contrary, they conceal it. So call it: FRAGMENTS OF AN UNKNOWN TEACHING. The teaching still remains unknown. You just had a few glimpses here and there, and you have put all those glimpses together, you have somehow made a whole out of them, but it is not the truth, it is not the real teaching."
Ouspensky understood it. Hence the book still carries the subtitle: FRAGMENTS OF AN UNKNOWN TEACHING.
What to say about ordinary people? Ouspensky cannot be called an ordinary person; extraordinarily intelligent he was. If fact, it was because of him that Gurdjieff became famous in the world; otherwise nobody may have heard about him. His own writings are very difficult to understand. There are very few people in the world who have read HIS books -- they are very difficult to read. Gurdjieff writes in such a way that he makes it in every possible way difficult for you to grasp what he is saying, what he wants to say. Sentences go on and on...by the time the sentence comes to a full stop you have forgotten the beginning! And he uses words of his own invention which exist nowhere; nobody knows what the meaning of those words is. No dictionary has those words. In fact, they never existed before; he invented them.
And he writes in such a boring way that if you suffer from insomnia they are good, those books. You read three...four pages at the most you can read and you are bound to fall asleep. I have never come across a single person who has read his books from the beginning to the end.
When for the first time his first book was published -- ALL AND EVERYTHING -- one hundred pages were open and the remaining nine hundred pages were not cut yet. And with a note the book was sold saying, "Read the first hundred pages, the introductory part. If you still feel like reading, then you can open the other pages. Otherwise return the book and take your money back." Even to read those hundred pages is very difficult.
It was a device. It needs great awareness to read. The book is not written to inform you about something; the book is only a device to make you aware. You can read it only if you are very conscious, if you have decided consciously, "I have to go through it from the beginning to the end, and I am not going to fall asleep, and I am not going to stop, whatsoever happens, and whatsoever my mind says I am going to finish it."
If you make that decision...and it is very difficult to keep it for one thousand pages of such nonsense. Yes, here and there there are beautiful truths, but then you will come across those truths only if you go through much nonsense. Gems you will find, but they are few and far between. Once in a while you will come across a diamond, but for that you will have to read fifty, sixty very boring pages.
I have seen thousands of books, but Gurdjieff is extraordinary Nobody have I seen who can create such boring stuff. But he is deliberately doing it; that was his method.
If you went to see him, the first thing he would tell you was to read fifty pages of his book loudly in front of him. That was the greatest task! You don't understand a single word, a single sentence, and it goes on and on and on, and he sits there looking at you. You have to finish fifty pages, then you can be accepted as a disciple. If you cannot manage this simple feat, then you are rejected.
Ouspensky made him famous in the world, but even Ouspensky could not get to the very core of his teaching -- only fragments. And he understood only in part.
And remember always: truth cannot be divided into fragments; you cannot understand only parts of it. Either you understand the whole of it or you don't understand it at all. But it is very difficult to recognize the fact that "I don't understand." And knowledgeable people -- scholars, professors -- they cannot accept that they don't understand, so they go on misinterpreting.
And the most fatal misinterpretation has been that all affirmative teachings have been turned into negative ones. In fact, you live in a negative darkness. When Buddha speaks he speaks from a positive state of light; by the time his words reach you they have reached into a negative darkness. Your negative darkness changes the color of those words, the meaning of those words, the connotations of those words, the nuances of those words. And then YOU create the church. You create Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Jainism; you create all kinds of "isms" and you create all kinds of religions.
Yes, Parmananda, most religions have a negative attitude towards work because they are against life. Hence they can't be FOR work, they can't be creative. They teach renunciation of life -- how can they teach creativity? And they teach that life is a punishment, so how can they say life is spiritual? You are being punished for your past life karmas, that's why you are born. It is a punishment -- just as in Soviet Russia if you are punished you are sent to Siberia.
In the days of the British Raj in India, if somebody was to be really punished they used to send him to faraway islands: Andaman, Nicobar. The climate is bad, not healthy at all; no facilities to live, nothing grows, hard work. That was punishment.
All these life-negative religions have been telling you, directly or indirectly, that this earth is like Andaman and Nicobar, or like Siberia, and you are prisoners. You have been thrown here, thrown into life, to be punished. This is utter nonsense.
Life is not a prison, it is a school. You are sent here to learn, you are sent here to grow. You are sent here to become more conscious, more aware. This earth is a great device of God.
This is my approach towards life: life is not a punishment but a reward. You are rewarded by being given a great opportunity to grow, to see, to know, to understand, to be. I call life spiritual. In fact, to me, life and God are synonymous.
Next: Chapter 8: Not Knowing is the Most Intimate, Question 5
Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Zen Ah, This!
| ENERGY
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GAIN ENERGY APPRENTICE
LEVEL1
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THE ENERGY BLOCKAGE REMOVAL
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