Osho ~ Don't listen to the mind because mind means past; dead it is, already dead and gone.

Don't listen to the mind because mind means past; dead it is, already dead and gone.

It is non-existential. It is only the footprints of the events that are no more. Mind knows nothing of the present, it cannot know of the present. It has not any capacity to commune with the present because the present is always unknown. You cannot reduce-it to the past. And the fear of the mind is that the moment you encounter the present you have to be spontaneous, and the mind becomes useless. The mind has to be put aside.

That is the moment where meditation starts happening. To remain confined into the known is to be in the mind; to allow the unknown to enter into your being is the beginning of meditation, beginning of Zen. The present can be approached only through the no-mind. If you have any conclusions you are still carrying the past; conclusions come from the past prejudices come from the past. You have to put aside everything that you have known. You have to look into the present in a state of not knowing. The mind will tremble -- let it tremble. Let it die out of trembling. Don't listen to it.

The mind will create many doubts. That's why, Evi Huber, you say: There are doubts.... It is natural the mind will create many doubts. The mind will say "You are perfectly happy, you are perfectly comfortable. Why are you risking? For what? You may lose even that which you have; you may not gain anything. Don't risk!" Mind teaches you to be calculating, to be cautious.

And sannyas is for the gamblers; it is not for the businesslike, it is not for the calculators, it is not for the computers. It is for men, real men, authentic men who are always ready to listen to the challenge of the unknown, who are ready to go into the uncharted sea. There is no guarantee of the other shore; there cannot be any guarantee in sannyas.

Religion cannot provide any guarantee. And the moment any religion starts providing guarantees it is no more religion; it becomes part of certain vested interests. It becomes part of establishment; it loses all rebellion. Jesus cannot give you any guarantee; the Christian church can give you all kinds of guarantees. Buddha could not have given you any guarantee; the Buddhist church provides you all kinds of guarantees, here and hereafter, even in the other world.

The people who follow are always looking for guarantees, consciously, unconsciously; they are waiting for certain indications that truth should be ensured. "Then we can go into any adventure" -- but it is no more adventure if it is guaranteed.

Bliss cannot be guaranteed, truth cannot be guaranteed, ecstasy cannot be guaranteed. Yes, it can be said it happens. The man who has tasted it can say, "I have tasted it, and there is a possibility that you may also taste it. If I have tasted it, why not you?" But there is no guarantee: you may, you may not.

And the mind lives on these doubts. The mind says, "Who knows? This man may be deceiving. Maybe he is not deceiving, but he himself may be deceived. He may be hallucinating about ecstasy, samadhi -- dreaming, believing. Maybe he has auto-hypnotized himself or maybe he is just a fraud deceiving others, exploiting their gullibility." The mind will create all these questions, thousand of questions. In mind questions arise like leaves grow on trees; the mind goes on growing many and many questions every moment. No answer is of any help; out of every answer the mind will create many more questions.

Osho ~ Arhata and Bodhisattava

The teachings of Gautam Buddha have created two kinds of seekers: one is called Arhata and the other is called Bodhisattva.

The arhata is someone who makes every effort to become enlightened and once he is enlightened he completely forgets about those who are still groping in the dark. He has no concern with others. It is enough for him to become enlightened. In fact, according to the arhatas, even the great idea of compassion is nothing but again another kind of attachment -- and it has some significance to be understood.

Compassion is also a relationship; howsoever beautiful and great, it is also a concern with others. It is also a desire. Although it is a good desire it makes no difference. According to the arhatas, desire is a bondage whether it is good or bad. The chains can be made of gold or of steel, it doesn't matter; chains are chains. Compassion is a golden chain. The arhata insists that nobody can help anybody else at all. The very idea of helping others is based on wrong foundations. You can help only yourself.

It may occur to the ordinary mind that the Arhata is very selfish. But if you look without any prejudice, perhaps he also has something immensely important to declare to the world: Even helping the other is an interference in his life, in his lifestyle, in his destiny, in his future. Hence, arhatas don't believe in any compassion. Compassion to them is another beautiful desire to keep you tethered to the world of attachments. It is another name -- beautiful, but still just a name for a desiring mind.

Why should you be interested that somebody else becomes enlightened? It is none of your business. Everybody has absolute freedom to be himself. The Arhata insists on individuality and its absolute freedom. Even for the sake of good, nobody can be allowed to interfere in anybody else's life. Hence the moment he becomes enlightened, the Arhata does not accept disciples, he never preaches, he never helps in any way. He simply lives in his ecstasy. If somebody on his own can drink out of his well he will not prevent him, but he will not send an invitation to you.

If you come to him on your own accord and sit by his side and drink his presence, and get on the path, that is your business. If you go astray, he will not stop you. In a certain way this is the greatest respect ever paid to individual freedom -- to the very logical extreme. Even if you are falling into deep darkness, the arhata will silently wait. If his presence can help, it is okay, but he is not going to move his hands to help you, to give you a hand, to pull you out of a ditch. You are free to fall in a ditch and if you can fall in a ditch, you are absolutely capable of getting out of it.

The very idea of compassion is foreign to the philosophy of the Arhatas. Gautam Buddha accepted that there are a few people who will become Arhatas. And their path will be called Hinayana, "the small vehicle," the small boat in which only one person can go to the other shore. He does not bother to create a big ship and collect a crowd in a Noah's Ark and take them to the further shore. He simply goes himself in his small boat, which cannot even contain two. He is born alone in the world, he has lived and died millions of times alone in the world; alone he is going to the universal source.

Buddha accepts and respects the way of the Arhata -- but he also knows there are people who have immense compassion and when they become enlightened, their first longing is to share their joy, to share their truth. Compassion is their way. They also have some profound truth. These people are called bodhisattvas. They provoke and invite others to the same experience. And they wait on this shore as long as possible to help all seekers who are ready to move on the path, and who just need a guide; they need a helping hand.

The bodhisattva can postpone his going to the further shore out of compassion for blind people groping in darkness. Buddha had such a comprehensive and vast perception that he accepted both -- that this is simply the nature of a few people to be arhatas, and it is also simply the nature of a few other people to be bodhisattvas. And this is the standpoint of Gautam Buddha, that such is the case, nothing can be done about it -- an arhata will be an arhata and a bodhisattva will be a bodhisattva.

Their natures have different destinies, although they reach to the same goal finally. But after reaching the goal there is a parting of the ways. The arhatas don't stay on this shore even for a single moment. They are tired, they have been long enough in this wheel of Samsara, moving through birth and death millions of times. It has already been too much. They are bored and they don't want to stay even a single minute more. Their boat has arrived, and immediately they start moving towards the further shore. This is their suchness.

And there are bodhisattvas who can tell the boatman, "Wait, there is no hurry. I have lingered on this shore long enough -- in misery, in suffering, in anguish, in agony. Now all that has disappeared. I am in absolute bliss, silence and peace, and I don't see that there is anything more on the other shore. So as long as I can manage, I will be here to help people."

Gautam Buddha is certainly one of those people who can see the truth even in contradictions. He accepts both without making anybody feel lower or higher. But bodhisattvas call their path -- against the path of the arhatas -- Mahayana, "the great vehicle," the great ship. The other is just a small boat. Poor fellows, they simply go alone. And there has been a continuous conflict for twenty-five centuries after Gautam Buddha, between these two different approaches.

Source ~ "Bodhidharma: The Greatest Zen Master" by Osho

Tale 4 ~ 100 Tales for 10,000 Buddhas

At 2:00pm I reach the bungalow where He is staying. Lots of people have already arrived and are waiting to meet Him. His secretary comes, and people start going to his room, one by one. Mostly, everyone comes out within two or three minutes. Now the woman standing in front of me is going in; my turn is next. Just to see how she meets Osho, I peep in through the window when she walks in. Osho is sitting on a sofa and the floor is carpeted. The woman bows down to Osho, touches His feet and sits on the carpet. I say to myself, “This seems to be the right way to meet Him.” My heart is throbbing in excitement, and at the same time is gripped by some unknown fear. In a couple of minutes the woman comes out and I enter the room.

Osho greets me with a big smile. I simply forget everything and am pulled towards Him. I hug Him, and He receives it with such love that I feel it is not only I who has found Him, he has also found a lost child. He looks very happy and makes me sit next to Him on His left side, on the sofa. With His left hand He is caressing my back and places His right hand in my hands. I look in His eyes--they are full of love and light, and I feel that I have known this man for eternity. By His magical touch he is doing some miracle, and I come back to the normal state from that dying experience which had started when I had listened to His discourse the night before.

He asks me what I am doing in my life but I am unable to speak. He says, “Don’t be worried; everything will be okay”. By now I am able to talk, and I tell Him I am working in a transport company in Bombay.

He asks, “ Will you do my work?”

Not knowing what his work is , I simply nod my head.

He calls His secretary in and introduces me to him and tells me, “Keep in touch with him.”

In a couple of minutes I get up to leave, walk two or three steps and again look back at Him. He simply smiles, and I return and sit near his feet on the carpet.

He says, “Close you eyes,” and places His right foot on my heart centre. I feel some energy flowing through His foot and entering my body and my mind goes blank, I only hear the sound of my breath. It feels as if time has stopped. Maybe it is just a couple of minutes later that I hear His voice saying, “Come back... open your eyes slowly.” He slowly takes His foot away, and when I open my eyes He is sitting with His eyes closed. I slowly get up and slip out of the room with my heart dancing in joy. It is as if I have found some lost treasure.

Osho ~ Awareness in Sleep in Awareness

Osho : " The moment when you are dropping into sleep is the moment to encounter the unconsciousness. If you can remain out of sleep, then the unconscious will be real, because that is the line. The very line from where you drop into sleep is the line where you can encounter the unconscious.

You have been sleeping everyday, but you have not encountered sleep yet. You have not seen it: what it is, how it comes, how to drop into it. You have not known anything about it. You have been dropping daily, coming out of it, but you have not felt the moment when sleep comes to the mind and what happens.

So try this, and with three months effort, suddenly one day you will enter sleep knowingly: drop on your bed, close your eyes, and then remember, remember that sleep is coming and "I am to remain awake when the sleep comes".

It is very arduous, but it helps. One day it will not happen, another day it will not happen. Persist every day, constantly remembering that sleep is coming, and "I am not to allow it without nowing. I must be aware when sleep enters. I must go on feeling how sleep takes over, what it is."

One day sleep is there, and you are still awake. That very moment you become aware of your unconsciousness. And once you become aware of your unconsciousness you will never be asleep again during the day. Sleep will be there, but you will be awake simultaneously. A center in you will go on knowing; all around will be sleep, and the center will go on knowing. When this center is knowing, dreams become impossible. Then you are asleep in a different sense, and you will be awake in the morning in a different sense. A different quality comes by the encounter.

Note: I have tried this meditation and this phenomena has happened with me for some minutes. i have experience when sleep comes then our body temperature comes down and as if a black cloud has covered you. there are some 4-5 second time which is a transition period from waking state to dream state. if one can become aware in this transition period of 4-5 seconds then one can watch the dreams...

Osho ~ Mind ~ No Mind

"...Mind can exist only in one way -- in running, always running after something, but always running. In the running is the mind . The moment you stop, the mind disappears. Right now you are identified with mind. The only problem is being in the mind. And the only solution is to get beyond mind. I call it meditation...

...The mystics in the East have never bothered too much about the mind; they have developed methods to bypass the mind. Those methods are the techniques of meditation -- they are just to bypass the mind. Once we have bypass the mind, once bird's-eye view of your own mind, things start settling..."

...It was certain reason that mystics called meditation 'no-mind' because if you call it meditation, again the mind makes a goal out of it..."

Osho ~ Ecstacy ~ Aah

ECSTASY IS A LANGUAGE that man has completely forgotten. He has been forced to forget it; he has been compelled to forget it. The society is against it, the civilization is against it. The society has a tremendous investment in misery. It depends on misery, it feeds on misery, it survives on misery. The society is not for human beings. The society is using human beings as a means for itself. The society has become more important than humanity. The culture, the civilization, the church, they all have become more important. They were meant to be for man, but now they are not for man. They have almost reversed the whole process; now man exists for them.

Every child is born ecstatic. Ecstasy is natural. It is not something that happens only to great sages. It is something that everybody brings with him into the world; everybody comes with it. It is life's innermost core. It is part of being alive. Life is ecstasy. Every child brings it into the world, but then the society jumps on the child, starts destroying the possibility of ecstasy, starts making the child miserable, starts conditioning the child.

The society is neurotic, and it cannot allow ecstatic people to be here. They are dangerous for it. Try to understand the mechanism; then things will be easier.

You cannot control an ecstatic man; it is impossible. You can only control a miserable man. An ecstatic man is bound to be free. Ecstasy is freedom. He cannot be reduced to being a slave. You cannot destroy him so easily; you cannot persuade him to live in a prison. He would like to dance under the stars and he would like to walk with the wind and he would like to talk with the sun and the moon. He will need the vast, the infinite, the huge, the enormous. He cannot be seduced into living in a dark cell. You cannot make a slave out of him. He will live his own life and he will do his thing. This is very difficult for the society. If there are many ecstatic people, the society will feel it is falling apart, its structure will not hold anymore.

Those ecstatic people will be the rebels. Remember, I don't call an ecstatic person "revolutionary"; I call him a "rebel." A revolutionary is one who wants to change the society, but he wants to replace it with another society. A rebel is one who wants to live as an individual and would like there to exist no rigid social structure in the world. A rebel is one who does not want to replace this society with another society -- because all the societies have proved the same The capitalist and the communist and the fascist and the socialist, they are all cousin-brothers; it doesn't make much difference. The society is society. All the churches have proved the same -- the Hindu, the Christian, the Mohammedan.

Once a structure becomes powerful, it does not want anybody to be ecstatic, because ecstasy is against structure. Listen to it and meditate over it: ecstasy is against structure Ecstasy is rebellious. It is not revolutionary.

A revolutionary is a political man; a rebel is a religious man. A revolutionary wants another structure, of his own desire, of his own utopia, but a structure all the same. He wants to be in power. He wants to be the oppressor and not the oppressed; he wants to be the exploiter and not the exploited,he wants to rule and not be ruled. A rebel is one who neither wants to be ruled nor wants to rule. A rebel is one who wants no rule in the world. A rebel is anarchic. A rebel is one who trusts nature, not man-made structures, who trusts that if nature is left alone, everything will be beautiful. It is!

Source ~ "Ecstasy: The Forgotten Language" by Osho

Osho ~ Qualities of Seeker of Truth

Question – Beloved Osho, What are the qualities of the Seeker of truth?

Osho – Every child is born with an innate search for truth. It is not something learned or adopted later on in life. Truth simply means, “I am, but I do not know who I am.” And the question is natural — “I must know the reality of my being.” It is not a curiosity.

These are the three differences, or three categories the world can be divided into: there are things which are, but they do not know that they are; hence there is no opening for any enquiry. They are closed, their existence is windowless. Then there are animals who know that they are, but they don’t have the intelligence to enquire what it is that they are. Their windows are open, but their intelligence is not enough to look out and see the stars and the sky and the birds and the trees. Their windows — whether opened or closed — don’t make much difference.

Perhaps once in a while a rare animal uses the window. In Shri Raman Maharshi’s ashram… and he was one of the most significant people of this century. He was not a master; that’s why people don’t know him as they know George Gurdjieff or J. Krishnamurti. They don’t know him even as they know Sri Aurobindo or P.D. Ouspensky who were only teachers — profound teachers, but not mystics.

Raman Maharshi was a silent pool of energy. Every morning he used to sit for a silent satsang, communion. He never talked much, unless asked something. Then too his answer was very short — having profundity, but you had to look for it. There was no explanation in it. His literature is confined to two, three small booklets.

His teaching was mostly to be in silent communion with the disciples. Naturally, very few people were benefited by him. But every morning he was sitting, people were sitting, and a cow would come and stand outside, putting her neck through the window, and she would remain standing there while the satsang lasted. It must have continued for years. People came and went, new people came, but the cow remained constant… and at the exact time, never late. And as the satsang would disperse she would move away.

One day she did not appear, and Shri Raman said, “Today satsang cannot be held, because my real audience is absent. I am afraid either the cow is very sick or she has died, and I have to go and look for her.” He lived on a mountain in the south of India, Arunachal. The cow belonged to a poor woodcutter who lived near the ashram. Raman left the temple where they used to meet, went to the woodcutter and asked, “What happened? The cow has not come today for satsang.”

The woodcutter said, “She is very sick and I am afraid she is dying, but she goes on looking out of the door, as if she is waiting for someone. Perhaps she is waiting for you, to see you for the last time. Perhaps that is why she is hanging around a little longer.”

Raman went in and there were tears in the eyes of the cow. And she died happily, putting her head in the lap of Raman Maharshi. This happened just in this century, and Raman declared her enlightened, and told his people that a beautiful memorial should be made for her.

It is very rare for human beings to be enlightened; it is almost impossibly rare for animals to become enlightened, but the cow attained. She will not be born again. From the body of a cow she has bypassed the whole world of humanity, and she has jumped ahead and joined with the buddhas. So once in a while — there are a few instances only — it has happened. But that cannot be called the rule; it is just the exception.

Things are, but they do not know that they are. Animals are, they know that they are, but they don’t have the intelligence to ask who they are. And it is not something to be wondered about. Millions of human beings never ask the question — that is the third category.

Man is, is aware that he is, and is capable by birth to enquire who he is. So it is not a question of learning, cultivation, education; you bring the quest with yourself. You are the quest. Your society destroys you. It has very sophisticated ways and means to destroy your quest, to remove the question from your being, or at least cover it up. And the method it uses is this: before the child has even asked who he is, the answer is given. And any answer that has been given before the question has been asked is futile; it is going to be just a burden.

He is told that he is a soul, that he is a spirit, that he is not a body, that he is not material. Or, in communist countries he is told that he is a body, just material, and that only in the old days, out of fear and ignorance, did people believe that they have souls — that that is just a superstition. But in both cases, the child is being given an answer for which he has not asked. And his mind is delicate, pure… and he trusts his mother, his father — there is no reason for him not to trust.

He starts a journey of belief, and belief kills the quest. He becomes more and more knowledgeable. Then education is there, religious education is there, and there is no end to collecting knowledge. But all this knowledge is futile — not only futile, but poisonous, because the first step has gone wrong. The question was not asked, and the answer has been implanted in his mind, and since then he has been collecting more and more answers. He has completely forgotten that any answer that is not the finding of a question is meaningless.

So the only quality of a seeker of truth is that he does not believe, that he is not a believer, that he is ready to be ignorant rather than to be knowledgeable, because ignorance is at least natural, simple, innocent. And out of ignorance there is a possibility, almost a certainty, that the question will arise, that the journey will begin. But through knowledge you are lost in a jungle of words, theories, doctrines, dogmas. And there are so many, and they are so contradictory to each other, that soon you will find yourself more and more confused… more and more knowledgeable and more and more confused.

As far as I am concerned the basic quality of a seeker of truth is to cut himself away from all belief systems, from all borrowed knowledge — in other words, to have the courage to be ignorant rather than to have borrowed knowledge. Ignorance has a beauty; it is at least yours, authentic, sincere. It has come with you. It is your blood, it is your bones, it is your marrow.

Knowledgeability is ugly, absolute rubbish. It has been poured upon you by others, and you are carrying the load of it. And the load is such that it will not give you any opportunity to enquire on your own what truth is. Your collection of knowledge will answer immediately that this is truth. If you are filled with THE HOLY BIBLE, then the question will be answered by THE HOLY BIBLE. If you are filled with the VEDAS, then the question will come out of the VEDAS. But it will come from some source outside yourself; it will not be your discovery. And that which is not your discovery is not yours.

Truth brings freedom because it is your discovery. It makes you fully into man; otherwise you remain on the level of the animals: you are but you don’t know who you are. The search for truth is really the search for the reality of your being.

Once you have entered your being, you have entered into the being of the whole, because we are different on the periphery but at the center we meet — we are one. You can draw many lines from the periphery of a circle towards the center; those lines on the periphery have a certain distance from each other. But as they come closer to the center the distance goes on becoming less. And when they reach to the center the distance disappears.

At the center we are one. At the periphery of existence we appear to be separate. And to know the truth of your being is to know the truth of the whole. There is just one quality, one courage: not to be afraid of being ignorant. On that point there can be no compromise, no cheap borrowed knowledge to decorate yourself with as a wise man. That’s enough! Just be pure and natural, and out of that purity, naturalness, ignorance, innocence, the quest is bound to be born.

Every human being would be a seeker of truth if the society were not interfering with children. The class of children is the most harmed, oppressed, exploited, distorted class of all classes — and the most helpless. And you are taking advantage of the helplessness of small children. But you are also not responsible. The same has been done to you. It is difficult to find out who was responsible in the beginning. But as long as we can look back, this has been the situation: every generation corrupts the new generation, and anybody who wants to prevent this corruption is condemned as corrupting the youth.

Socrates was condemned for corrupting the youth, and all that he was doing was the simple process of removing borrowed knowledge and helping his disciples to be themselves and then “to know thyself.” If anybody has served truth the most sincerely it was Socrates. But he was condemned by the court, by the law, by the people who were in power, for corruption, for corrupting young minds.

Strangely, in the land of Socrates I was also condemned as corrupting people’s minds. It seems the technology of corrupting the youth has evolved immensely in two thousand years, because it took Socrates his whole life to corrupt, and I was only there for two weeks! And the archbishop was already threatening to burn my house, to stone me to death.

Why are they afraid? They know perfectly well that they have no foundations. So if anybody shows the young people that their knowledge is unfounded, that all their answers are bogus because they don’t even have questions, that they are only repeating things parrot-like but they don’t have any understanding of what they are saying… then anybody who has a little intelligence will be able to understand it immediately. Is this corruption of the youth?

To bring people to the quest of the truth — is this corruption?
It seems it is the greatest crime in the world in which — unfortunately — we are living.

Source ~ “Beyond Psychology” by Osho

Osho ~ Buddha Sutra ~ Life is easy for the Man who is without Shame

Osho – This Buddhist idea of shame has to be understood in contrast with the Christian idea of guilt. In the dictionaries they seem to be synonymous; they are not. Shame is a totally different phenomenon.

Guilt is imposed by others on you. It is a strategy of the priests to exploit. It is a conspiracy between the priest and the politician to keep humanity in deep slavery forever. They create guilt in you, they create great fear of sin. They condemn you, they make you afraid, they poison your very roots with the idea of guilt. They destroy all possibilities of laughter, joy, celebration. Their condemnation is such that to laugh seems to be a sin, to be joyous means you are worldly.

Christians say Jesus never laughed. What a lie! And they have been lying for centuries and with such theological acumen, with great scholarship. They have been lying very piously, very religiously. Have you ever come across a picture of Jesus or a statue in which he looks happy, blissful, joyous? Impossible! You can’t conceive of a joyful Jesus — after two thousand years of Christian propaganda the whole figure of Jesus has become distorted.

He was a man of great joy. He was a man who knew how to laugh and how to love and how to live festively. He loved eating and drinking. He must have danced, he must have joked with his friends, with his disciples. I cannot conceive of him not having a sense of humor, because it is impossible for me to conceive of a man being spiritual and without a sense of humor. A sense of humor is one of the most fundamental qualities of a religious man.

But the picture that Christians have depicted of Jesus is ugly. He is always sad, in deep sorrow — carrying the whole burden of the original sin committed by Adam and Eve. He has been depicted by the Christians as doing a great service to humanity. He is the savior — and how can the savior laugh? Laughter seems to be such an earthly quality. He has to be very serious, long-faced. They have destroyed the beauty of Jesus.

Jesus has to be resurrected. He was killed twice. First he was killed by the Jews and the Romans, and then he has been killed by the Christian priests. He got away from his first murder, but from the second he has not yet been able to escape. He is still a captive of the Vatican; he has to be freed from the Vatican.

These people who have made Jesus look so serious, so sad, so sorrowful — who have made him a martyr — have also created great guilt in humanity. Whenever you laugh you feel as if you are doing something wrong. Whenever you are happy you start looking guilty. How can you be happy? How can you laugh? How can you dance? How can you sing? The whole world is in such a suffering, and you are singing, and you are dancing? It seems that you must be cruel.

Krishna seems to be cruel to Christian eyes: playing on his flute, dancing, singing, celebrating. He seems to be a hedonist, a Zorba the Greek! Christians can’t conceive Krishna to be spiritual. And in fact, the word ‘christ’ is a derivation of the word ‘krishna’. Jesus must have the same qualities as Krishna; hence he has been called Christ. ‘Christ’ comes from ‘krishna’, and Krishna-consciousness simply means ecstatic consciousness.

But why does the priest go on creating guilt in man? There is a secret behind it. If you can make humanity feel guilty you remain powerful. The guilty person is always ready to serve those who are powerful. He is always ready to serve those who are puritans. He is always ready to be a slave to the priests. The guilty person cannot have courage enough to be a rebel — that is the secret. Only a blissful person can be rebellious. The priests must have found this secret long ago, because they have been practicing it for centuries and they have destroyed all the beauty of the human soul.

Remember, when Buddha says “shame” he does not mean guilt. Shame is a totally different phenomenon. Guilt is imposed by others; shame is your own experience. Shame is interior, guilt is from the outside. Shame is not because of others but because of your own understanding: “What am I doing to my own self? What am I doing to my life? How am I wasting it?” It has nothing to do with the priests, Christian, Hindu or Mohammedan. It has something to do with your awareness. It has nothing to do with the moral codes of a society. It has something to do with your consciousness, not with your conscience.

Guilt is part of conscience, and conscience is created by others. You have a Hindu conscience and a Mohammedan conscience and a Jaina conscience, but consciousness is simply consciousness. There is nothing like a Hindu consciousness or a Mohammedan consciousness.

Consciousness makes you aware of what you are doing to yourself. And when you see that you are destroying tremendously pregnant opportunities for growth, shame arises in you. You start feeling a deep anguish, and that anguish is helpful for growth, that pain is helpful to growth. It brings you, for the first time, a vision of the possible, a glimpse of the peaks.

Guilt simply says that you are a sinner. And the feeling of shame simply shows you that you need not be a sinner, that you are meant to be a saint. If you are a sinner it is only because of your unconsciousness; you are not a sinner because the society follows a certain morality and you are not following it.

All moralities are not moral, and something which is moral in one country is not moral in another country. Something moral in one religion is not moral in another religion. Something is moral today and was not moral yesterday. Morals change, morals are just arbitrary. But consciousness is eternal, it never changes. It is simply the absolute — the truth.

Once you have become a little more aware you start feeling what you have done to yourself and to others. That experience brings shame, and shame is good and guilt is bad. With guilt, deep down you know that it is all nonsense.

For example, in the Jaina religion to eat in the night is a sin. If you are born a Jaina and sometimes you eat at night, you will feel very guilty; knowing perfectly well — if you are intelligent enough you will know it — that this is foolish, there can’t be any sin in eating at night. But still your conscience will prick you, because the conscience is manipulated by the priest, by the outside powers who are dominating you.

Hence guilt creates a dual personality in you: on the surface you are one person and deep down you are another — because you can see the futility of it, the nonsense of it. You become split — guilt creates schizophrenia. And the whole of humanity suffers from schizophrenia for the simple reason that we have created guilt, so much and so deeply that we have divided every man in two.

One part of him is social, formal. He goes to the church and follows the rules as far as they are feasible. He maintains a certain front, a certain face, and from the back door he goes on living a totally different life — just the opposite of what he goes on preaching, just the opposite of what he goes on praising.

The idea of shame never creates any conflict within you, it never creates any split. It creates a challenge, it challenges you, it challenges your guts. It says to you, “Rise above — because that is your birthright. Reach to the peaks, they are yours. Those sunlit peaks are your real home, and what are you doing in these dark valleys, crawling like animals? You can fly — you have wings!”

Guilt condemns that which is wrong in you. The idea of shame makes you aware of that which is possible. Guilt goes on bringing in your past again and again — burdens you with the past. And the idea of shame brings the future to you, it releases your energies. They are totally different.

Source ~ “The Dhammapada, Vol 7" by Osho

Beloved Osho, Is it really true that God is also searching for me? Can I wait for him to find me?

Question – Beloved Osho, Is it really true that God is also searching for me? Can I wait for him to find me?

Osho – Sat Vijaya, it is absolutely true that just as you are seeking God or truth or the beloved, he is also seeking you. The search is never one-sided. And any search that is one-sided is never going to be fulfilled. But your question is, “Can I wait for him to find me?” — then he will also wait to search for you.

Search has to be from both sides; otherwise both sides will be waiting. Existence has a balance about everything. Your waiting is not enough; your longing, your search is categorically needed.
One of the Sufis’ sayings is: if you take one step towards God, he takes one thousand steps towards you. But at least one step on your side is absolutely necessary. And your one step is far more important than the one thousand steps of God, because by “God” is not meant any person; by God is meant the intelligence of this whole universe, the consciousness of the whole universe.

You have a very small proportion of consciousness. Your one step is far bigger than the one thousand steps of God, because existence has infinite intelligence. So waiting alone won’t do. Just waiting is a state which is not alive; there has to be tremendous longing, a thirst from every pore of your being. Unless God becomes a question of your life and death, the meeting is not possible.

Almost everybody will be prepared to wait — that means on your laundry list, God is the last item, when you have done everything of the world. And that is not possible, even in eternity; something or other will be left undone. God has to be your first priority. It has to become a kind of haunting in your heart. Breathing in, breathing out, there has to be a rememberance: whatever you are doing is nonessential, and the essential part is to go deep down in meditation.

Never think of God as someone outside you. That is a wrong beginning — because where will you search for him? The outside is so vast; you don’t have the address or the phone number. In the infinity of existence, in which direction will you search for him? How will you find that you are on the right path? Millions of paths… how are you going to choose? What will be the criterion?

Because of this misconception that God is outside, religions became organized around priesthood, around a holy book, around certain dogmas — because that at least gives you some feel for where you have to search: you have to go to the church, you have to do a certain prayer, you have to go to the synagogue, you have to find your path in the holy scriptures. The idea of God outside has led the whole of humanity into tremendous confusion.

He is within you. Better will be if I say: He is your within, your very interiority, your very center of being. You are on the periphery of your individuality. Move inwards.

First you will meet the thoughts. Don’t get involved in them, just ignore…. Buddha has used the word upeksha, ignoring, as a certain guaranteed method; otherwise you are going to get caught in the net of thoughts. Don’t fight, just go on your way as if mind is empty. And if you can ignore the mind it becomes empty.

The more attention you pay to the mind, the more nourishment you give to the thoughts. If you can pass the boundary of the mind without disturbing — and it is not an arduous thing, just a little knack of ignoring — then you will come into the world of feelings, emotions, moods, which are more subtle than the thoughts. You have entered from the mind and its territory into a deeper area of your being, the heart.

Continue the same method, ignore your sentiments, emotions, moods, as if they don’t belong to you. As you pass the boundary of the heart you enter the boundary of your own being. That is the temple of God. And the moment you enter the temple, certainly he takes those one thousand steps towards you.

Those one thousand steps are symbolic. He comes towards you as light, as the very essence of beauty, as blissfulness, as silence, as peace. And he comes with so much force, almost like a flood, that you are drowned in it.

You will find God, but you will have to lose yourself; that is the price. It is not much. How much do you think your cost-price is? In fact, any animal in the world is more costly than man. When man dies, nobody is ready to purchase him. When an elephant dies, then thousands of rupees…. When any animal dies, even the dead animal has some utility. It is only man who dies, and all that you can do is either burn him or bury him — just to get rid of him. Rather than bringing some money to you after death he withdraws ome money from your pocket.

So there is no need to be afraid if you are lost, drowned, because in the temple of God only one can exist — either you or he. Duality is not possible there, because duality is conflict. And the experience of God is that of immense harmony. That harmony can be achieved only if you allow yourself to be drowned in the flood that comes from all sides — of joy, of bliss, of ecstasy. The feel of dying in the flood of God is the most exquisite and the most sweet experience — the last, the highest, the greatest; there is nothing beyond it.

But it is not going to happen by just waiting. You will have to go inside your own being. He is present there always; he is your life, he is your all. You are just a small ray of light from that immense source. So when you get drowned in him, it is just that the ray has returned back to the sun. One has come home.
If God is understood the way I am telling you…. And I am not a thinker; it is not my hypothesis, it is my experience. I have passed through that death and I have found that it appears to be death from one side, but from the other side it is resurrection. You disappear as a small creature and become a vast creativity. You don’t lose anything and you gain everything.

But the organized religions don’t want you to be aware of this fact, because their whole business depends on an outside God. Then the priest is needed, the temple is needed, the mosque is needed, the church is needed; then the HOLY BIBLE is needed, then some interpreters are needed, and then all the millions of priests around the world become your mediators with a fictitious God somewhere in the sky.

The Vatican pope has declared it a sin to confess directly to God; you have to confess to the priest. And of course it has to be a catholic priest — only he is authorized to have a direct communication with God. You cannot pray directly, you cannot ask forgiveness directly.

Do you see the cunningness, the meanness, the whole strategy of exploitation? The priest becomes more important than God himself. On the one hand these people go on calling you children of God, and on the other, children cannot directly communicate with their father; a priest is needed as a mediator. The reality is, there is no God outside; it is the invention of the priest. And he has invented a great business. For centuries he has been exploiting men, whether they are Hindus or Mohammedans or Christians or Jews — it does not matter.

There is only one thing every religion insists: that a direct relationship with God is not possible. They don’t give any reasons why. I have seen trees praying directly to God; the rivers and the mountains and the stars don’t have any priests, the flowers and the birds don’t have any priests. Do you think this whole existence except man is not related to God? It is more related to God than man. It is only man who has gone astray.

Have you ever heard in any religion, in any country, a story that God expelled a few trees out of the garden of Eden? Or a few animals, or a few birds? It is only man who is expelled. The story is significant. It simply means that the whole of existence is rooted in God. Only because man has a thinking mind, he has wandered far away. Mind is capable of wandering anywhere — you can be sitting here and your mind may be wandering somewhere in America or somewhere in Germany, or somewhere in Japan, or maybe on the moon…. There are all kinds of lunatics.

It is very rarely that you are here, very rare to be in the place where you are. Your mind is always wandering somewhere else. It is never here, it is never now. This wandering mind has taken you away from your own inner being. And this has become a great opportunity for exploitation. All over the world, like mushrooms, priests and religions and holy books have appeared.

There are three hundred religions in the world. They differ on every point except one point, and that is, the priest is an absolute necessity. Any intelligent person can see that these religions are not for you, these religions are for the priesthood. They are parasites — catholic parasites, protestant parasites, Hindu parasites, they come in all sizes and all shapes!

My effort here is to make you free from the chains of the priesthood. The moment you are free from the chains of the priesthood, you are no longer Christian, no longer Hindu, no longer Jew. You are simply and purely human beings. You have already come very close to your home; the priest was distracting you.

An ancient story says that the old devil is sitting under a tree, having his morning tea, and a young disciple comes running, very much disturbed. He says, “What are you doing? You are sitting here, drinking tea, and our whole business is in difficulty. One man on the earth has found the truth!”

The old guy laughed. He said, “You are too young, you don’t know all the secrets. Don’t be worried, my people have reached there.” The young disciple could not believe his eyes, could not believe his ears. He said, “I am coming from there, I have not seen anyone of our people.”

The old devil said, “There is no need to send our people. I have created the priests. And they are surrounding the man. Now they have become a wall between the man and the people. Whatever the man says, the priest will interprete it and distort it.

“Truth has been found many times,” said the old devil, “but while priests exist, truth will be found and lost again, because the priests immediately start interpreting, making organized religions around the truth — churches, temples, mosques — and the truth is lost in their interpretations, in their commentaries.
“What commentaries can they make? They don’t know the truth. Truth needs no commentary, it is pure experience. Either you know it or you don’t know it. there is no third position. That’s why I’m so much at ease. Just sit down and have a cup of tea.”

The story is significant. Beware of the priests, beware of organized religions, beware of others telling you what is truth. Nobody can tell it to you. You will have to find it yourself.
And it is so close to you that you have not to go on a faraway journey. You have to go in silence, in profound peace, beyond words and beyond feelings, and suddenly you find the temple of consciousness. And as you enter into it you disappear.
Only God is. That is your authentic reality. God is your very soul.

Source: “Razor’s Edge” by Osho

Osho on God

"I love human beings but not humanity. Humanity does not exists, only concrete human beings exists, someone here someone there but it is always someone.

Humanity is a empty word and just like that is Christ. Jesus exists sometimes in Gautam the buddha, sometimes in Mohammed the prophet, sometimes in Krishna the flute player, somewhere here, somehwere there ... but it is always a concrete phenomenon.

Christ is abstract, it only exists in the books of philosophy and theology. Christ has never walked on earth or we can say it in another way Christ is the son of God, Jesus the son of man. Let me talk about Jesus the son of man, because only the son of man is real and only the son of man can grow and become the son of God. Only man can grow and become God. Because man is the seed, the source. God is the flowering.

God does not exists anywhere. When you flower God comes in existance. It comes into existance and disappears, comes into existance and disappears. When Buddha was here God existed. When Jesus was here God existed. When Jesus disappears God disappears, just when a flower disappears it disappears.

God is not somewhere.. always existing. Whenever a man realizes his essence, whenever a man really exists, whenever a man exists in totality, God exists in those rare moments.

So when you come and ask me "Where is God?", I can not show you. Unless you prove him into your own being, he will not be there. Untill you become him he is not. Everybody has to realize him in his own inner most shrine, in his own being. You carry him as a seed. It is up to you to allow it to grwo and become a great tree."

Osho ~ Deja Vu

Deja vu in itself is a reality, because you are not here for the first time; nobody is here for the first time. all are eternal pilgrims, journeying, journeying from one life to another. And all that you have experienced, you have experienced many times; it can't be new. Existence moves in a circle, not in a line.

It is like the rotating wheel of seasons: you have seen many springs and again the spring comes. Again you hear the sound of the birds and it reminds you of other springs. You see flowers blooming and it reminds you of other blooming. And they were almost alike. I say ;almost;-- I don't say that it is an exact repetition; nothing is ever repetition exactly. But it is so approximately alike that it is very difficult to make a distinction--hence deja vu. You again see the clouds floating in the sky and the sun and the birds and the trees. The spring has come again with all its joy . . . and you have seen those springs many times!

So somewhere deep in your unconscious you are carrying all the memories of all the past lives. It is very possible that again and again you will come to situations which are alike and suddenly you feel as it has happened before. And it has happened before! May be the actors were different, but how can they be very much different? Human beings are human beings after all.

For example, just listening to me, you can be surrounded by a sense of deja vu -- you can start feeling you have listened to me before, the same way. I may not have been with you before but you may have listened to some other Master. And they have all the same look in the eyes, the same scent to their being, the same song to sing. Words differ but the rhythm, the constantly running underground rhythm is the same. So right now you can be caught in a deja vu.

You have listened to many more people before. It is not possible that you have come for the first time to a Master. . . How is it possible? For millennia you have been searching. It is impossible not to have come across . . . You may have come across a Jesus or a Buddha or a Krishna or a Rinzai or a Bodhidarma. Down the ages in so many lives how can you avoid not coming across a Buddha? It is not possible!

You may not have met me before -- that's possible; that's not a problem--but someone very much like me. you may have looked with the same love at some other Master, with the same trust, with the same open heart, and again it is happening! You may have drunk from some other Master in the same way with such sensitivity and receptivity. . . and again it is happening! It can bring to your memory the floating fragrances of past lives, the nostalgia . . .

Deja vu happens to everybody but how strong it can be depends--the strength depends on what type of barrier exists between this life and the past lives and other lives. If it is a China wall. very thick, it is very difficult for things to cross over. And even if they cross, they become distorted. The wall distorts them and by the time they reach you the moment is lost . . .

And it can be very very weird sometime because when you go into it you can start feeling as if you are in a dream. You can start feeling as if you are living a fantasy, not reality . . . as if those people around here not there; may be it is just a memory. And that makes for a kind of weirdness.It can be scary too, it can frighten to; it depends on your interpretation . . .

No, deja vu is a reality, because we have lived so many lives and we have loved in so many ways. We have been angry in so many ways with so many people. We have been friends and enemies, and all that is happening to you now has happened many many times before.

Osho ~ "Don't Just Do Something, Sit There"

Osho ~ Books I Have Loved ~ Chapter 4

1984 in Lao Tzu House, Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, USA

Okay. Get ready for your notes.

The world would have lost much without people like Devageet. We would not have known anything of Socrates if Plato had not written notes, nor of Buddha, nor Bodhidharma. Jesus too is known through his disciples’ notes. Mahavira is said never to have uttered a single word. I know the meaning of why it is said. It is not that he did not utter a single word, but that he never communicated to the world directly; it was only through the notes of his disciples.

There is not a single case known where an enlightened person has written anything himself. As you know, to me an enlightened person is not the last thing. There is still a transcendental state which is neither enlightened nor not-enlightened. Now, in that state of consciousness it is only through intimate communion – I am not using the word communication knowingly, but communion – a kind of merger, that the disciple becomes just the hand of the master.

So get ready for your notes, because last time, although unwillingly, I was going to mention the name of the poet-singer of GEET GOVIND. Somehow though I managed not to mention it. I pretended as if I had forgotten it, but it is heavy on me. The whole day I felt a little concerned about Jaydeva – that is the name of the poet-singer of GEET GOVIND.

Why was I not willing to mention his name? For his own sake. He was not even close to enlightenment. I have mentioned Mikhail Naimy, the creator of THE BOOK OF MIRDAD; I have mentioned Kahlil Gibran, and many others: Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Walt Whitman. They are not enlightened, but very close, just on the verge; one push and they will be in, in the temple. They are standing just at the door, not daring enough to knock... and the door is not locked. They can push and it will open. It is already open, it just needs a push, just as they need a push. Hence I mention their names.

But Jaydeva is not even close to the temple. It is a miracle how GEET GOVIND descended on him. But no one knows God’s mysteries – and remember there is no God, it is only an expression. Nobody knows the mysteries of existence, its abundance. Sometimes it pours on barren land, sometimes it does not rain on fertile soil. It is simply so, nothing can be done about it.

Jaydeva is a barren land. GEET GOVIND, this tremendously beautiful poetry, the song of God, descended upon him. He must have sung it, composed it, not knowing what he was doing. I don’t see him anywhere near the temple, that is why I was unwilling to mention his name. It may even make him more egoistic. That is why I said ”for his own sake,” but I felt it is not the poor man’s fault – whatsoever he is, he is – but he has given birth to a beautiful child, and if I have mentioned the child then let me mention the father’s name; otherwise people will think the child is a bastard. The father may have been, but the child is not.

I feel a great relief because I am finished with Jaydeva forever. But there is a queue standing at the door. You don’t know what a fix I am in. I had not thought of it before, because I am not a thinker and I never think before I jump. I jump, and then I think. It was just by the way that I mentioned ten beautiful books. I was not thinking so many others would start bugging me. So, ten more.

First: The FRAGMENTS of Heraclitus. I love this man. Let me mention it, just by the way, as a note in the margin, that I love all, but I don’t like all. I like a few and I don’t like a few, but I love all. About that there is no question. I love Jaydeva as much as I love Heraclitus, but Heraclitus I like too.

There are very few whom I can put in the same category as Heraclitus. In fact, even to say that is not true; there is no one. Now I am saying what I really wanted to say always. There is no one, I repeat, who can be put in the same category as Heraclitus. He is just far out – dangerously awakened, unafraid of the consequences of what he was saying.

He says in these FRAGMENTS – again the notes of a Devageet, a disciple. Heraclitus did not write. There must be something, some reason why these people do not write, but of that a little later. Heraclitus says in the FRAGMENTS: ”You cannot step in the same river twice.” And then he says: ”No, you cannot step in the same river even once....” This is tremendously beautiful, and true too.

Everything is changing, and changing so fast that there is no way to step in the same river twice; you can’t even step in the same river once. The river is constantly flowing; going, going, going to the ocean, to the infinite, going to disappear into the unknown.

This is the first on my list this evening: Heraclitus.

Second: The GOLDEN VERSES of Pythagoras. He was one of the most misunderstood men, obviously. If you know you are bound to be misunderstood, that is certain. To understand is so dangerous, because then you will be misunderstood. Pythagoras was not understood even by his own disciples, not even by those who wrote down the GOLDEN VERSES. They wrote it mechanically... because not a single disciple of Pythagoras rose to his heights, not a single one became enlightened. And the Greeks have completely ignored him. They have ignored their best: Heraclitus, Socrates, Pythagoras, Plotinus. They had wanted to ignore Socrates too, but he was too much. So they had to poison him, they could not just ignore him.

But Pythagoras is completely ignored, and he has the same key as Gautam Buddha, Jesus, or any other enlightened one. One thing more: neither Jesus nor Buddha nor Lao Tzu made so much effort to find the key as Pythagoras. He worked the most. Pythagoras was the most authentic seeker. He risked all and everything. He traveled all around the world that was known in those days; studied under all kinds of masters; entered into all kinds of mystery schools and fulfilled their conditions. He is a category in himself.

Third: A man who is not known much, not even by his own countrymen. His name is Saraha, and the book is called THE SONG OF SARAHA; that is its Tibetan title. Nobody knows who wrote it down. One thing is certain, Saraha never did, he just sang it. But it has the fragrance that the man knew, that he had attained. The song is not the composition of a poet but a realization of a mystic. It is just a few lines, but of such grandeur and beauty that the stars can feel ashamed.

THE SONG OF SARAHA is untranslated. I heard it from a Tibetan lama. I would have liked to have heard it again and again but the lama stank so much that I had to say ”Thank you....” Lamas stink because they never take a bath. The lama’s stink – and I am allergic to smells – was even too much for me to hear the whole song! I was worried that I was going to have an asthma attack.

I have spoken much about Saraha; he is the original source of the school of Tantra.

Fourth: Tilopa, and the few notes from his song left behind by his disciples. I wonder, without these disciples, how much we would have missed. These people who were just writing down whatsoever was said by the master, not thinking whether it was right or wrong, just trying to put it into words as correctly as possible. And it is a difficult task. A master is a madman, he can say anything, he can sing anything, or he may remain silent. He may just make a few gestures with his hand, and those gestures have to be understood. That was what Meher Baba did continuously for thirty years. He remained silent, only making gestures with his hands.

Is my numbering incorrect, Devageet?

”No, Osho.”

So good... it feels so good to be correct sometimes. With numbers I am really good. It is a strange coincidence that I asked at the right moment. I always get mixed up with numbers. I cannot count, for the simple reason that I am facing the immeasurable, the unaccountable. The truth that I am facing is neither in words, nor in numbers. The truth transcends all, and it is so wondrous that one gets mixed up. Everything goes upside down, bizarre. So this is a great compliment that you said I was right. But now please tell me, what was the number?

”Number five, Osho.”

Thank you.

Fifth: The man I am going to mention is not recognized as enlightened because there was nobody to recognize him. Only an enlightened person can recognize another. This man’s name is D.T. Suzuki. This man has done more than anybody else in the modern world to make meditation and Zen available. Suzuki worked for his whole life to introduce to the West the innermost core of Zen.

’Zen’ is only the Japanese pronunciation of the Sanskrit word dhyana – meditation. Buddha never used Sanskrit; he hated it, for the simple reason that it had become the language of the priests, and the priest is always in the service of the devil. Buddha used a very simple language, that used by his people in the valley of Nepal. The name of his language is Pali. In Pali dhyana is pronounced ch’ana. Simple, illiterate, ordinary people cannot appreciate the subtleties of any language. They make it according to themselves. It is like a stone rolling down the river, it becomes round. That’s how every word used by the people starts having a beautiful roundness, a particular simplicity. Dhyana is difficult for the ordinary people to pronounce; they pronounced it ch’ana. When it reached China, from ch’ana it became ch’an, and when it traveled to Japan it became Zen. You can see – it happens everywhere – people always make words simple.

D.T. Suzuki’s book ZEN AND JAPANESE CULTURE is my fifth. This man has done so much service for humanity that no one can transcend him. His work is immense. The whole world is indebted to him and it will always remain so. Suzuki should be a household word. It is not... I am saying that it should be. Very few people are aware, and those who are aware it is their responsibility to spread their awareness far and wide.

Sixth: I am going to introduce a Frenchman to you. You will be surprised. Inside you are asking yourself, ”A Frenchman? And being listed by Osho along with Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Suzuki? Has he really gone mad?”

Yes, I have never been sane, not for these last twenty-five years, or a little more. Before that I too was sane, but thank God – again remember it is just an expression, because there is no God, only godliness. I don’t forget to mention it because there is every possibility that even my followers, my disciples, will start worshipping God – or me as a God. There is no God, there never was.

Nietzsche is wrong when he says, ”God is dead!” – not because God is not dead, but because he was never alive so how can he be dead? To be dead one has to first fulfill the condition of being alive. That is where Sartre is wrong: he agrees with Nietzsche. I say ”Thank God!” – I used the word because there is no other word to use in its place. But it is only a word, contentless. ”Thank God” simply means it is good, that it is beautiful.

I am feeling so tremendously joyous that, Devageet, you will have to remind me again what was the sixth book I was talking about.

”A Frenchman, Osho.”

Right. I have not mentioned the name yet. The book is Hubert Benoit’s LET GO. It should be on the bookshelf of every meditator. Nobody has written so scientifically and yet so poetically. It is a contradiction, but he has managed it. Hubert Benoit’s LET GO is the best that has come out of the modern Western world. It is the best book of the century as far as the West is concerned. I am not counting the East.

The seventh: Ramakrishna, his PARABLES. You know I don’t like saints very much. That does not mean that I like them a little bit – I don’t like them at all. In fact, to be true I hate them. Saints are phony, hocus-pocus, the stuff bullshit is made of. But Ramakrishna does not belong to them – again, thank God! At least there are a few people who are saintly and yet are not saints.

Ramakrishna’s PARABLES are very simple. Parables are bound to be simple. Remember the parables of Jesus? – just like that. If a parable is difficult then it is no longer useful. A parable is only needed so that it can be understood by all ages of children. Yes, I mean all ages of children. There are children who are ten years of age, and there are children of eighty years of age, and so on... but they are all children playing on the seashore, collecting seashells. Ramakrishna’s PARABLES is my
seventh book.

Eighth: THE FABLES OF AESOP. Now Aesop is not really a historical person; he never existed. Buddha has used all those parables in his sermons. With Alexander coming to India, those parables were brought to the West. Of course many things changed, even the name of Buddha. Buddha was called The Bodhisattva.

Buddha has said there are two kinds of buddhas: one is the arhat, one who attains his buddhahood and then does not care about anybody else; and the bodhisattva, who attains buddhahood and then tries his hardest to help others on the path. ’Bodhisattva’ was the word carried by Alexander as bodhisat, which then became Josephus; then from Josephus it became Aesop. Aesop is not a historical person, but the parables are tremendously significant. That’s my eighth book today.

Ninth: Nagarjuna’s MULA MADHYAMIKA KARIKA. I don’t like Nagarjuna very much; he is too much of a philosopher, and I am anti-philosophic. But his MULA MADHYAMIKA KARIKA, his KARIKAS for short.... MULA MADHYAMIKA KARIKA means the essence of the path of the middle – the essential middle path. In his KARIKAS he has reached the profoundest depths of which words are capable. I have never spoken on it. If you want to speak on the essential, the best way is not to speak at all, just to be silent. But the book is tremendously beautiful.

Tenth: my last for this evening is a strange book; ordinarily nobody would think I would include it at all. It is the great work of Marpa, the Tibetan mystic. Even his followers don’t read it; it is not meant to be read, it is a puzzle. You have to meditate over it. You have just to look at it and then suddenly the book disappears – its contents disappear, and only the consciousness remains. Marpa was a very strange man. His master Milarepa used to say, ”Even I bow down to Marpa.” No master has ever said that, but Marpa was such....

Somebody once said to Marpa, ”Do you believe in Milarepa? If so then jump into this fire!” Immediately he jumped! People ran from all sides to extinguish the fire knowing that Marpa had jumped into it. When the fire was put out they found him sitting there in a buddha posture laughing hilariously!

They asked Marpa, ”Why are you laughing?”

He said, ”I am laughing because trust is the only thing that fire cannot destroy.”

This is the man whose simple songs I count as the tenth – THE BOOK OF MARPA.

Is my hour over? I can hear you saying yes, though I know my hour has not even come yet. How can it be over? I have come before my time, that’s why I am misunderstood.

But as far as you are concerned, you are right; my hour is over. And this is really beautiful. There is no expression for it. It is so beautiful, it is better to end it now.

Osho ~ Books I Have Loved ~ Chapter 2

1984 in Lao Tzu House, Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, USA

I apologize because this morning I did not mention a few books that I should have mentioned. I was so overwhelmed by Zarathustra, Mirdad, Chuang Tzu, Lao Tzu, Jesus and Krishna that I forgot a few of the books which are even far more significant. I could not believe how I could forget Kahlil Gibran’s THE PROPHET. It is still torturing me. I want to unburden – that’s why I say I am sorry, but not to anybody in particular.

How could I forget the book which is the ultimate: THE BOOK of the Sufis! Perhaps I forgot because it contains nothing, just empty pages. For twelve hundred years Sufis have been carrying THE BOOK with tremendous respect, opening its pages and studying it. One wonders what they study. When you face an empty page for a long time, you are bound to rebounce upon yourself. That is the real study – the work.

How could I forget THE BOOK? Now who will forgive me? THE BOOK should have been the first to have been mentioned not the last. It cannot be transcended. How can you create a better book than one which contains nothing, and the message of nothingness?

Nothingness should be written in your notes, Devageet, as no-thing-ness; otherwise nothingness has a negative meaning – the meaning of emptiness, and that’s not it. The meaning is ’fullness’. Emptiness in the East has a totally different context... SHUNYATA.

I called one of my sannyasins Shunyo, but the fool goes on calling himself Doctor Eichling. Now, can stupidity be greater? ’Doctor Eichling’ – what an ugly name! And he has shaved off his beard just to be Doctor Eichling... because with a beard he was looking a little beautiful. In the East shunyata – emptiness – does not mean emptiness as in the English language. It is fullness, overfullness, so full that nothing is needed any more. That is the message of THE BOOK. Please include it in the list.

First, THE BOOK of the Sufis.

Second, THE PROPHET by Kahlil Gibran. I could easily drop THE PROPHET for the simple reason that it is only an echo of Friedrich Nietzsche’s THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA. In our world nobody speaks the truth. We are such liars, so formal, so full of etiquette.... THE PROPHET is only beautiful because it echoes Zarathustra.

Third, THE BOOK OF LIEH TZU. Lao Tzu I mentioned, Chuang Tzu I mentioned; Lieh Tzu I forgot, and he is the very culmination of both Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu. Lieh Tzu is the third generation. Lao Tzu was the master, Chuang Tzu was the disciple. Lieh Tzu was the disciple of a disciple, perhaps that is why I forgot him. But his book is immensely beautiful and has to be included in the list.

Fourth – and this is really amazing – I did not mention Plato’s DIALOGUES OF SOCRATES. Perhaps I forgot because of Plato. Plato is not worth mentioning, he was just a philosopher, but his DIALOGUES OF SOCRATES AND HIS DEATH is impossible to overpraise and should be included.

Fifth... I also forgot THE NOTES OF THE DISCIPLES OF BODHIDHARMA. When I talk of Gautam Buddha I always forget Bodhidharma, perhaps because I feel as if I have included him in his master, Buddha. But no, that is not right; Bodhidharma stands on his own. He was a great disciple, so great that even the master could be jealous of him. He himself did not write a word, but a few of his disciples, unknown because they did not mention their names, wrote some notes of Bodhidharma’s words. These notes, though few, are as precious as the Kohinoor. The word Kohinoor, do you know, means the light of the world. Noor means the light, kohi means of the world. If I had to describe anything as Kohinoor, yes, I would indicate towards those few notes by the anonymous disciples of Bodhidharma.

Sixth: I also forgot the RUBAIYAT. Tears are coming to my eyes. I can apologize for forgetting everything else but not the RUBAIYAT. Omar Khayyam... I can only cry, weep. I can only apologize with my tears, words won’t do. The RUBAIYAT is one of the most misunderstood and also one of the most widely read books in the world. It is understood in its translation, it is misunderstood in its
spirit. The translator could not bring the spirit to it. RUBAIYAT is symbolic, and the translator was a very straight Englishman, what in America they would call a square, not hip at all. To understand RUBAIYAT you need a little bit of hip in you.

The RUBAIYAT talks of wine and women and nothing else; it sings of wine and women. The translators – and there are many – are all wrong. They are bound to be wrong because Omar Khayyam was a Sufi, a man of tasawuf, a man who knows. When he talks of the woman he is talking about God. That is the way Sufis address God: ”Beloved, O my beloved.” And they always use the feminine for God, this should be noted. Nobody else in the world, in the whole history of humanity and consciousness, has addressed God as a woman. Only Sufis address God as the beloved. And the ’wine’ is that which happens between the lover and the beloved, it has nothing to do with grapes. The alchemy which happens between the lover and the beloved, between the disciple and the master, between the seeker and the sought, between the worshipper and his God...the alchemy. the transmutation – that is the wine. RUBAIYAT is so misunderstood, perhaps that is why I forgot it.

Seventh, MASNAVI of Jalaluddin Rumi. It is a book of small parables. The great can only be expressed in parables. Jesus speaks in parables: so speaks the MASNAVI. Why did I forget it? I love parables; I should not have forgotten it. I have used hundreds of parables from it. Perhaps it has become so much of my own that I forgot to mention it separately. But that is no excuse, apology is still required.

Eighth: the eighth is the ISA UPANISHAD. It is easy to understand why I forgot about it. I have drunk it, it has become a part of my blood and bones; it is me. I have spoken on it hundreds of times. It is a very small Upanishad. There are one hundred and eight Upanishads and ISA is the smallest of them all. It can be printed on a postcard, on one side only, but it contains all the remaining one hundred and seven, so they need not be mentioned. The seed is in the ISA.

The word Isa means divine. You may be surprised that in India we don’t call Christ ’Christ’, we call him ’Isa’ – Isa, which is far closer to the original Aramaic Yeshua, in English Joshua. His parents must have called him Yeshu. Yeshu is too long. The name traveled to India and from Yeshu became Isu. India immediately recognized that Isu is so close to Isa, which means God, that it would be better to call him Isa.

The ISA UPANISHAD is one of the greatest creations of those who have meditated.

Ninth... I forgot to say something about Gurdjieff and his book ALL AND EVERYTHING – perhaps because it is a very strange book, not even readable. I don’t think there are any living individuals except me who have read from the first page to the last. I have come across many Gurdjieff followers, but none of them had been able to read ALL AND EVERYTHING in its totality.

It is a big book – just the opposite of the ISA UPANISHAD – one thousand pages. And Gurdjieff is such a rascal saint – please allow me this expression, rascal saint – he writes in such a way that it becomes impossible to read. One sentence may go running on for pages. By the time you come to the end of the sentence you have forgotten its beginning. And he uses words he made up himself, just like me. Strange words... for example when he was writing about kundalini, he called it kundabuffer; that was his word for kundalini. This book is of immense value, but the diamonds are hidden among ordinary stones. One has to seek and search.

I have read this book not once but many times. The more I went into it the more I loved it, because the more I could see the rascal; the more I could see what it was that he was hiding from those who should not know. Knowledge is not for those who are not yet capable of absorbing it. Knowledge has to be hidden from the unwary, and is only for those who can digest it. It has to be given only to those who are ready. That’s the whole purpose of writing in such a strange way. There is no other book stranger than Gurdjieff’s ALL AND EVERYTHING, and it certainly is all and everything.

Tenth: I remembered this book but did not mention it because it was written by P.D. Ouspensky, a disciple of Gurdjieff who betrayed him. I did not want to include it because of this betrayal, but the book was written before he betrayed his master so finally I decided to include it. The name of the book is IN SEARCH OF THE MIRACULOUS. It is tremendously beautiful, more so because it was written by a man who was only a disciple, who himself had not known. Not only was he a disciple but later on a Judas, the man who betrayed Gurdjieff. It is strange, but the world is full of strange things.

Ouspensky’s book represents Gurdjieff far more clearly than Gurdjieff’s own. Perhaps in a certain state of being Gurdjieff had taken possession of Ouspensky and used him as a medium, just as I am using Devageet as my medium. Right now he is writing the notes, and with my half-closed eyes I am watching everything. I can watch even with closed eyes. I am just a watcher, a watcher on the hills. I have no other work left but to watch.

Eleventh: This is a book written by an unenlightened man, neither master nor disciple: LEAVES OF GRASS by Walt Whitman. But something has penetrated, come through the poet in him. The poet has functioned as a bamboo flute, and the notes are not of the flute itself; they don’t belong to the bamboo. Walt Whitman is just an American bamboo. But LEAVES OF GRASS is immensely beautiful. Something overflowing from God has been caught by this poet. No American as far as I know, except Walt Whitman, may have touched it – that too, partially; otherwise no American has been so wise.

Don’t interrupt! – at least once in a while write your notes. Later you will repent that you missed this, you missed that. Just write your notes. When the time is ripe I will say stop.

Is my time over? My time was over long ago; not today, more than twenty-five years ago. I am living a posthumous life, just a P.S. to a letter. But sometimes the P.S. is more important than the whole letter itself.

What a wonderful world. Even at these heights one can hear a giggle in the valley. In a way it is good, it joins them together.

Alas it will soon be over.

Can we not make it last forever?

At least for now don’t betray me.

Man is the only coward.

Can’t disciples avoid being Judases?

When it is over you can stop.

So good... Alleluia!

Osho ~ Books I Have Loved

1984 in Lao Tzu House, Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, USA

The guest, the host, the white chrysanthemum... these are the moments, the white roses, when no
one should speak.

Neither the guest,

nor the host...

only silence.

But silence speaks in its own way, sings its own song of joy, of peace, of beauty and blessings;
otherwise there would not have been a TAO TE CHING, nor would there have been a SERMON ON
THE MOUNT. I consider these to be the real poetries although they are not compiled in any poetic
way. They are outsiders. They are kept out. This is true in a way: they don’t belong to the norm, to
the standard, they don’t belong to any measurements; they are beyond all of them, hence they are
brushed over.

A few pieces in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s BROTHERS KARAMAZOV are pure poetry, and so are even
a few pieces from that madman Friedrich Nietzsche’s book, THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA. Even if
Nietzsche had not written anything else but THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA he would have served
humanity immensely, profoundly – more cannot be expected from any man – because Zarathustra
had been almost forgotten. It was Nietzsche who brought him back, who again gave him birth, a
resurrection. THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA is going to be the bible of the future.

It is said that Zarathustra laughed when he was born. It is very difficult to imagine a new-born baby
laughing. Okay, smiling – but laughing? One wonders at what, because laughter needs a context.
At what joke was the baby Zarathustra laughing? The cosmic joke, at the joke this whole existence
is.

Yes, write in your notes the cosmic joke and underline it. That’s good. I can even hear you underline
it. That’s beautiful. Do you see how good my hearing is? When I want to I can hear even the sound
of drawing a sketch, a leaf. When I want to see I can see in darkness, utter darkness. But when I
don’t want to hear, I pretend not to hear, just to give you the good feeling that everything is going
good.

Zarathustra at his birth, laughing! And that was only a beginning. He laughed throughout his whole
life. His whole life was a laughter. Even so people have forgotten him. The English have even
changed his name, they called him ’Zoroaster’. What a monstrosity! ’Zarathustra’ has the softness of
a rose petal, and ’Zoroaster’ sounds like a huge mechanical disaster. Zarathustra must be laughing
at his name being changed to Zoroaster. But before Friedrich Nietzsche, he was forgotten. He was
bound to be.

The Mohammedans had forced all the followers of Zarathustra to become Mohammedans. Only a
few, very few, escaped – to India, where else. India was the place where everybody could enter
without a passport or visa, without any trouble. Only very few followers of Zarathustra escaped the
Mohammedan murderers. There are not many in India, only one hundred thousand. Now, who
bothers about a religion of only one hundred thousand – who not only almost all live just in India, but
in and around only one city, Bombay. Even they themselves have forgotten Zarathustra. They have
compromised with the Hindus with whom they have to live. They escaped the well and fell into the
ditch – a deeper ditch! On one side the well, the other side the ditch. And through the middle goes
The Way – Buddha calls it the middle way – exactly in the middle, just like a tightrope walker.

Nietzsche’s great service was in bringing Zarathustra back to the modern world. His great disservice
was Adolf Hitler. He did both. Of course he was not responsible for Adolf Hitler. It was Hitler’s own
misunderstanding of Nietzsche’s idea of ’superman’. What could Nietzsche do about it? If you
misunderstand me, what can I do about it? Misunderstanding is always your freedom. Adolf Hitler
was a juvenile mediocrity, a retarded child, really ugly. Just remember his face – that small mustache,
those fearful eyes staring as though trying to make you fearful, and the tense forehead. He was so
tense that he could not even be friendly to anybody throughout his whole life. To be a friend one
needs to be a little relaxed.

Hitler could not love, although he tried in his dictatorial way. He tried, as many husbands do
unfortunately, to dictate, to order, to maneuver and manipulate women – but he was unable to
love. Love needs intelligence. He would not even allow his own girlfriend to be alone with him in his
room at night. Such fear! He was afraid that while he was asleep... one never knows, the girlfriend
may be a girl-foe; she may be an agent working for the enemy. He slept alone all his life.

How could a man like Adolf Hitler love? He had no sympathy, no feeling, he had no heart, no
feminine side to him. He had killed the woman within himself so how could he love the woman
outside? To love the outer woman you have to nourish the woman within, because only that which
is within is expressed in your actions.

I have heard that Hitler shot one of his girlfriends for just a small reason; he killed her because he
had said she should not go to visit her mother, but when he was out she went, although she was
back before Hitler returned. He came to know through the guards that she had gone out. That was
enough to finish the love – not only the love, but the woman too! He shot her saying, ”If you disobey
me, then you are my enemy.”

That was his logic: who obeys you is your friend; who disobeys you is your enemy. Who is for
you is for you, and who is not for you is against you. It is not necessarily so – somebody may be
just neutral, neither being for you nor against you. He may not be your friend, but that does not
necessarily mean that he is an enemy.

I love the book THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA. I love very few books; I can count them on my
fingers....

THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA will be the first on my list.

THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV is the second.

Third is THE BOOK OF MIRDAD.

Fourth is JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL.

The fifth book is TAO TE CHING by Lao Tzu.

The sixth is THE PARABLES OF CHUANG TZU. He was the most lovable man, and this is the most
lovable book.

Seventh is THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT – only THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT not the whole
Bible. The whole Bible is just bullshit except THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT.

Eighth... is my numbering right? That’s good. Then you can feel that I am still in my insanity.
The eighth, BHAGAVADGITA – the divine song of Krishna. By the way ’Christ’ is only a
mispronunciation of ’Krishna’ just as ’Zoroaster’ is of ’Zarathustra’. ’Krishna’ means the highest
state of consciousness, and the song of Krishna, the BHAGAVADGITA, reaches to the ultimate
heights of being.

Ninth, GITANJALI. It means ’an offering of songs’. It is the work of Rabindranath Tagore, for which
he got the Nobel prize.

And the tenth is the songs of Milarepa – THE ONE THOUSAND SONGS OF MILAREPA – that’s
how it is called in Tibetan.

No one spoke.

The host,

the guest,

nor the white chrysanthemum.

Ahhh!... so beautiful... the white chrysanthemum. Aahhh, so beautiful. Words are so poor. I cannot
describe what is being brought to me.

The white chrysanthemum.

No one spoke.


The host,

the guest,

the white chrysanthemum.

Good. Because of this beauty, my ears are incapable of even hearing the noise, my eyes are filling
with tears.

Tears are the only words the unknown can speak,

the language of silence.

Osho ~ A Sufi is not a escapist.

Osho - The Sufi is not an escapist, that is not his climate. He is utterly against escapism. He believes in celebrating the world, celebrating existence, celebrating life. It is the very fundamental of Sufism that the creator can be reached only through the creation. You need not renounce his creation to get to him; in fact if you renounce his creation you will never get to him. Renouncing his creation, indirectly you have renounced the creator himself.

But renunciation still happens. It is not that the Sufi renounces the world, but that he attains to God – and the moment God is attained, the world disappears. Then there is nothing to renounce: then only God is. The Sufi does not escape from the world, but a moment comes when the world disappears and dissolves. The Sufi lives in the world and he finds that there is no world, only God is.

The Sufi is not an ascetic. He does not believe in inflicting pain on himself, he is not pathological. The Sufi lives life in an utterly normal way, with no perversions, with no obsessions. Although, slowly slowly, the quality of his life goes on changing, it is not that he tries to change it. His whole effort consists in remembering God, not in changing himself.

Let it sink deep in you; if you miss this point you will miss the whole point of Sufism. The Sufi concentrates on only one thing, remembrance of God – ZIKR. As that remembrance deepens, his obsession with the world lessens. As he comes closer and closer to the ultimate reality, the ordinary reality is no longer attractive; it starts receding back. Because when you find the real gold, how can you go on carrying the unreal gold? When you have found the real diamonds you will automatically drop the stones, colored stones, that you have been carrying all along.

The escapist says, ”Renounce your colored stones so that you can get to the real diamonds.” The Sufi says just the contrary: he says, ”Get to the real diamonds, and that which is not real will drop out of your life of its own accord.”

To know the real is enough, the unreal is renounced in that very knowing. And because the unreal is renounced in that very knowing, it leaves no scars and wounds on you. The ascetic suffers from great wounds. He is not ripe yet, otherwise the fruit would have fallen without leaving any scar on the body of the tree. If the fruit is unripe and you pluck it, it hurts the tree, it hurts the fruit; both will remain wounded.

Have you not seen the beauty of a ripe fruit fallen of its own accord? Silently, spontaneously. The tree may not even become aware that the fruit has disappeared, the fruit may not become aware that the tree is no more there. Sufism is the simplest way possible. The Sufi lives a simple life. But the simplicity is not cultivated, because a cultivated simplicity is no longer simplicity; it is already complex. When you cultivate something, there is motivation, there is desire, there is longing; you are hankering for something.

By cultivating something, you are trying to become something. Becoming is desire. And how can desire be simple? So cultivation is never simple. A practiced sannyas, a practiced simplicity, can never have beauty. In the first place it is not simplicity at all. You can go and see so many saints in this country, or in other countries: their simplicity is cultivated,
calculated, motivated. They are desirous of God, they are greedy for God, hence they are ready to pay the price.

The Sufi says: God is available, it is already available. All that you need is an uncomplicated mind, all that you need is a state of no-motivation. All that you need is to fall into the silence of this moment, no trying to achieve something tomorrow. And what is your afterlife? It is the prolonged shadow of the tomorrow. So those who are thinking to attain to heaven or to nirvana after death are very greedy people. They are not religious at all.

Sufism does not believe in any fairy-tales of the other world, of heaven and hell. And it is not that heaven does not exist, but that is not the concern of the Sufi. The Sufi lives totally in the moment. His simplicity comes out of his understanding, not out of cultivation; he does not practice it. Seeing life, he becomes aware of the austerity of a roseflower, how simple it is, and the beauty of its austerity. He becomes austere like a roseflower: it is not poor, the roseflower is simple and rich. What more richness can there be? The roseflower is simple and in utter luxury – what more luxury can there be?

The Sufi lives in the moment, blooms in the moment like a roseflower, simple yet rich. The poverty is not imposed; he is poor in spirit. And what does it mean to be poor in spirit? It simply means there is no ego, that’s all; not that he is attached to poverty. 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. This has to be understood, because for centuries religions have been teaching you renunciation. For centuries religions have lived with a great inclination towards escapism.

The Sufi has a totally different approach, far healthier, far more whole, far more human, far more natural. Because whenever you escape from something it is out of fear, and out of fear there is never any transformation. When something drops of its own accord – not that you drop it, but simply that it has become nonessential, unimportant – then there is freedom. Freedom is never out of fear, freedom is out of great awareness. The Sufi lives in the world, mindful of God. He lives in the world, but he remembers God. He moves in the marketplace, but his heart is throbbing with a certain remembrance. The ZIKR continues. He does not become forgetful in the world; that is his work.

Escape or no escape, if you are forgetful you will miss God anywhere you are, in e marketplace or in the monastery. If you are not forgetful, if you are mindful, alert and aware, then God is everywhere – as much here as anywhere else, as much now as then. There is no question of going anywhere; one can simply relax here and fall into a kind of watchful silence. And then life is simple and uncluttered. Yes, that is what simplicity is: not a cultivated character but a life which is uncluttered by the nonessential, by the unimportant, by the mundane, by the trivial.

And again let me repeat that the Sufi does not believe in any fairy-tales, so there is no question of being motivated. He does not believe in the tomorrows. All that he knows of time is now, all that he knows of space is here. These sounds of the birds are divine for him. There is no other God separate from this existence. The dancer is in the dance, so he has no idea of a personal God sitting somewhere above the clouds. His God is an impersonal presence.

Feel it now, this very moment. The presence is here, as it is everywhere else. All that is needed is your falling into a kind of attunement, your falling inwards into a kind of at-one-ment. Then the cawing of the crows and the cuckoo calling from far away... and all is silent. In that silence you start becoming aware of the impersonal presence that surrounds you.

A young bank clerk stole five thousand pounds from the bank and was unable to reimburse it when caught. In despair he went up to the cliff with the intention of committing suicide. As he was about to jump he was tapped on his left shoulder, and upon turning around he spied an especially ugly lady who claimed to be his fairy godmother, and granted him three wishes.

His first wish was to replace the five thousand pounds, which was granted. His second wish was to be the owner of a large mansion, and his third, the owner of a Rolls Royce. All these were granted to him by his fairy godmother.

Feeling very pleased with himself, he turned back to make his way home to get the five thousand pounds, the mansion and the Rolls Royce. His fairy godmother stopped him and requested that he, too, grant her a single wish. He was only too happy to oblige, whereupon she asked him to make love to her.

He was repelled by her, but obliged because of the wishes she had granted him. He made love to her in a great hurry and pulled his trousers up and was about to leave when she stopped him yet again.
This time she asked, ”How old are you, young man?”
His reply was, ”I am thirty-five years of age – but why do you ask?”
She said, ’You still believe in fairy godmothers?”

The person who believes in a personal God is still immature. There is nothing like that. That personal God is nothing but your idea of a father, projected and magnified. You are childish. When you pray, if you think you are praying to a personal God you are simply being stupid. There is nobody listening to your prayer. And yet God is. But God is not a person, God is an impersonal presence. God is this whole, the totality of all that is. Hence prayer can only be a silence. You cannot address God – prayer can only be an utter silence.

If you are silent now, it is a prayerful moment. This is what prayer is all about. When everything stops: no thought moves in your head, your breathing slows down, a moment comes when there is almost no breath. In that state of silence you are connected, you are plugged into reality. You are more separate; you are one. That oneness is prayer.

Source - Osho Book "Unio Mystica, Vol 1"