Osho Questions & Answers

Would you please explain the working of that unknown force which keeps the human mind attached to worldly things and habbits in spite of being fully aware that the ultimate result is nothing but misery ?

The awareness is not total, the awareness is just intellectual.

Logically you follow that "Whatsoever I am doing is leading me to misery," but this is not your existential experience. Just rationally you understand.

If you were reason alone then there would have been no problem, but you are "unreason" also. If you had only conscious mind then it was okay. You have unconscious mind also.

Conscious mind knows that you are going into misery every day by your own efforts; you are creating your own hell. But the unconscious is not aware, and the unconscious is nine times more than your conscious mind. And that unconscious goes on persisting in its own habits.

You decide not to be angry again because anger is nothing but poisoning your own system. It gives you misery. But next time, when someone insults you, the unconscious will put aside your conscious reasoning, will erupt, and will be angry.

And that unconscious has not known about your decision at all, and that unconscious remains the active force.

The conscious mind is not active, it only thinks. It is a thinker; it is not a doer.

So what has to be done? Just by thinking consciously that something is wrong, you are not going to stop it. You will have to work at a discipline, and through discipline this conscious knowledge will penetrate like an arrow into the unconscious.

Through discipline, through yoga, through practice, the conscious decision will reach into the unconscious. And when it reaches into the unconscious, only then it will be of any use. Otherwise you will go on thinking something, and you will go on doing something quite the contrary.

St. Augustine says that, "Whatsoever good I know -- and I always think to do it -- but whenever the opportunity to do it comes, I will always do whatsoever is wrong." This is the human dilemma.

And yoga is the path to bridge the conscious with the unconscious. And when we will go deeper into the discipline you will become aware how this can be done. This can be done.

So don't rely on the conscious, it is inactive. The unconscious is the active. Change the unconscious; only then your life will have a different meaning. Otherwise you will be in more misery.

Thinking something, doing something else, will constantly create chaos -- and by and by you will lose self-confidence. By and by you will feel that you are absolutely incapable, impotent, you cannot do anything. A self-condemnation will arise. You will feel guilty. And guilt is the only sin.

~ Osho

What do you know ?

"Life is such a mystery, no one can understand it, and one who claims that he understands it is simply ignorant.

He is not aware of what he is saying, of what nonsense he is talking. If you are wise, this will be the first realization: life cannot be understood.

Understanding is impossible. Only this much can be understood -- that understanding is impossible.

That is what this beautiful Zen anecdote says.

The master says, " I don't understand it myself." If you go and ask the enlightened ones this will be their answer. But if you go and ask the unenlightened ones they will give you many answers, they will propose many doctrines; they will try to solve the mystery which cannot be solved.

It is not a riddle. A riddle can be solved, a mystery is unsolvable by its very nature- there is no way to solve it.

Socrates said, "When I was young, I thought I knew much. When I became old, ripe in wisdom, I came to understand that I knew nothing."

OSHO

Osho on Love

It depends. There are as many loves as there are people. Love is a hierarchy, from the lowest rung to the highest, from sex to superconsciousness. There are many many layers, many planes of love. It all depends on you. If you are existing on the lowest rung, you will have a totally different idea of love than the person who is existing on the highest rung. Adolf Hitler will have one idea of love, Gautam Buddha another; and they will be
diametrically opposite, because they are at two extremes.

At the lowest, love is a kind of politics, power politics. Wherever love is contaminated by the idea of domination, it is politics. Whether you call it politics or not is not the question, it is political. And millions of people never know anything about love except this politics -- the politics that exists between husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends. It is politics, the whole thing is political: you want to dominate the other, you enjoy domination.
And love is nothing but politics sugar-coated, a bitter pill sugar-coated.

You talk about love but the deep desire is to exploit the other. And I am not saying that you are doing it deliberately or consciously. People are falling in love with horses, dogs, animals, machines, things. Why? Because to be in love with human beings has become an utter hell, a continuous conflict -- nagging, always at each other's throats. This is the lowest form of love. Nothing is wrong with it if you can use it as a steppingstone , if you can use it as a meditation.

If you can watch it, if you try to understand it, in that very understanding you will reach another rung, you will start moving upwards. Only at the highest peak, when love is not a relationship any more, when love becomes a state of your being, the lotus opens totally and great perfume is released -- but only at the highest peak. At its lowest, love is just a political relationship. At its highest, love is a religious state of consciousness. I love you too, Buddha loves, Jesus loves, but their love demands nothing in return.

Their love is given for the sheer joy of giving it; it is not a bargain. Hence the radiant beauty of it, hence the transcendental beauty of it. It surpasses all the joys that you have known. When I talk about love, I am talking about love as a state. It is unaddressed: you don't love this person or that person, you simply love. You are love. Rather than saying that you love somebody, it will be better to say you are love. So whosoever is capable of
partaking, can partake.

Whosoever is capable of drinking out of your infinite sources of being, you are available -- you are available unconditionally. That is possible only if love becomes more and more meditative. `Medicine' and `meditation' come from the same root. Love as you know it is a kind of disease: it needs the medicine of meditation. If it passes through meditation, it is purified. And the more purified it is, the more ecstatic.

Nancy was having coffee with Helen.
Nancy asked, "How do you know your husband loves you?"
"He takes out the garbage every morning."
"That's not love. That's good housekeeping."
"My husband gives me all the spending money I need."
"That's not love. That's generosity."
"My husband never looks at other women."
"That's not love. That's poor vision."
"John always opens the door for me."
"That's not love. That's good manners."
"John kisses me even when I've eaten garlic and I have curlers in my hair."
"Now, that's love."

Everybody has their own idea of love. And only when you come to the state where all ideas about love have disappeared, where love is no more an idea but simply your being, then only will you know its freedom. Then love is God. Then love is the ultimate truth. Let your love move through the process of meditation. Watch it: watch the cunning ways of your mind, watch your power-politics. And nothing else except continuous watching and observing is going to help.

When you say something to your woman or your man, look at it: what is the unconscious motive? Why are you saying it? Is there some motive? Then what is it? Be conscious of that motive, bring it to consciousness -- because this is one of the secret keys for transforming your life: anything that becomes conscious disappears. Your motives remain unconscious, that's why you remain in their grip. Make them conscious, bring them to light, and they will disappear.

It is as if you pull up a tree and bring the roots to the sunlight: they will die, they can exist only in the darkness of the soil. Your motives also exist only in the darkness of your unconsciousness. So the only way to transform your love is to bring all the motivations from the unconscious into the conscious. Slowly slowly, those motives will die. And when love is unmotivated, then love is the greatest thing that can ever happen to anybody. Then love is something of the ultimate, of the beyond.

That is the meaning when Jesus says, "God is love." I say to you: Love is God. God can be forgotten, but don't forget love -- because it is the purification of love that will bring you to God. If you forget about God completely, nothing is lost. But don't forget love, because love is the bridge. Love is the process of alchemical change in your consciousness.

Osho Quotes: be a fool, drop the ego.

A fool is one who goes on trusting; a fool is one who goes on trusting against all his experience. You deceive him, and he trusts you; and you deceive him again, and he trusts you; and you deceive him again, and he trusts you. Then you will say that he is a fool, he does not learn. His trust is tremendous; his trust is so pure that nobody can corrupt it. Be a fool in the Taoist sense, in the Zen sense. Don't try to create a wall of knowledge around you. Whatsoever experience comes to you, let it happen, and then go on dropping it. Go on cleaning your mind continuously; go on dying to the past so you remain in the present, herenow, as if just born, just a babe. In the beginning it is going to be very difficult. The world will start taking advantage of you...let them. They are poor fellows. Even if you are cheated and deceived and robbed, let it happen, because that which is really yours cannot be robbed from you, that which is really yours nobody can steal from you. And each time you don't allow situations to corrupt you, that opportunity will become an integration inside. Your soul will become more crystallized.

Osho Story on Attachment and Renunciation

Osho : Beware of that. There are people who are attached to wealth and there are people who are attached to poverty. But it is the same attachment.

I have heard: The story is told of a dervish who went to visit a great Sufi master. Seeing his affluence, the dervish thought to himself, ”How can Sufism and such prosperity go hand in hand?” After staying a few days with the master, he decided to leave. The master said, ”Let me accompany you on your journey!”

After they had gone a short distance, the dervish noticed that he had forgotten his KASHKUL, the begging-bowl. So he asked the master for permission to return and get it.

The master replied, ”I departed from all my possessions, but you can’t even leave behind your begging-bowl. Thus, we must part company from here.”

The Sufi is not attached to wealth or to poverty; he is simply not attached to anything. And when you are not attached to anything, you need not renounce. Renunciation is the other side of attachment. Those who understand the foolishness of attachment don’t renounce. They live in the world but yet they are not of the world.

To willfully insist upon being in poverty is still an attachment: remember it. And to willfully insist upon ANYTHING is again an ego trip. The Sufi lives simply, the Sufi lives without any will of his own. If it happens to be a palace, he is happy; if it happens to be a hut, he is happy.

If it happens to be that he is a king, it is okay; if it happens to be that he is a beggar, that too is perfectly okay. He has no preference. He simply lives in the moment, whatsoever God makes available to him. He does not change anything.

Source: from book” Unio Mystica, Volume 1” by Osho

Meditation is death

Question: Our Beloved Master, our love for music, poetry, dance, our love for love itself – doesn't that suggest an urge in us to disappear? If that is so, why does meditation, the art of disappearing, not come more naturally to us?

Osho: Maneesha, music, poetry, dance, love are only half way. You disappear for a moment, then you are back. And the moment is so small...
Just as a great dancer, Nijinsky, said, "When my dance comes to its crescendo, I am no more. Only dance is." But that happens only for a small fragment of time; then again you are back.
According to me, all these – poetry, music, dance, love – are poor substitutes for meditation. They are good, beautiful, but they are not meditation. And meditation does not come naturally to you, because in meditation you will have to disappear forever. There is no coming back. That creates fear.
Meditation is a death – death of all that you are now. Of course there will be a resurrection, but that will be a totally new, fresh original being which you are not even aware is hidden in you.
It happens in poetry, in music, in dance, only for a small moment that you slip out of your personality and touch your individuality. But only because it happens for a small moment, you are not afraid; you always come back.
In meditation, once you are gone in, you are gone in. Then, even when you resurrect you are a totally different person. The old personality is nowhere to be found. You have to start your life again from ABC. You have to learn everything with fresh eyes, with a totally new heart. That's why meditation creates fear.
The Upanishads say that the master is a death. It is an incomplete sentence. The master is a death but also a rebirth, a resurrection. A master is nothing but meditation. A master simply gives you a meditation; he cannot do anything else. He gives you the meditation to die and to be reborn.
A meditator can play music and it will have a totally different significance. A meditator can write poetry, but then the poetry will not be only a composition of words. It will express something inexpressible. A meditator can do anything, but he will bring to it a new grace, a new beauty, a new significance.
Music, poetry, dance or love can become hindrances to meditation if you stop at them. First comes meditation, and then you can create great poetry and great music. But you will not be the creator; you will be just a hollow bamboo flute. The universe will sing songs through you, will dance dances through you. You will be only an address – c/o you. Existence will express itself, and you will be just a hollow bamboo.
Meditation makes you a hollow bamboo; then whatever happens through that hollowness, that empty heart belongs to existence itself.
Then Existence sings songs.

Rinzai: Master of the Irrational, Discourse 1