The first question:
BELOVED OSHO
FREEDOM CAN BE WILLED, LOVE
NOT. PLEASE COMMENT.
Anand Akam, freedom can be
willed because it is your own decision to remain in a prison. It is your own
responsibility. You have willed your slavery, you have decided to remain a slave, hence
you are a slave. Change the decision, and the slavery disappears.
You have invested in your
unfreedom. Any moment you see the point, you can drop it; instantly it can be dropped.
Nobody has forced unfreedom on you, it is your choice. You can choose to be free, you can
choose to be unfree; you are so free that you can choose either. This is part of your
inner freedom -- not to choose it is part of your freedom. Hence it can be willed.
But love cannot be willed.
Love is a by-product of freedom; it is the overflowing joy of freedom, it is the fragrance
of freedom. First the freedom has to be there, then love follows. If you try to will love,
you will create only something artificial, arbitrary. A willed love will not be true love,
it will be phony.
And that's what people are
doing. Love cannot be willed, and they go on willing it. What can be willed, freedom, they
go on ignoring. They go on thinking that somebody else is responsible for their slavery
and their life of slavery. This is a very topsy-turvy conception of your own life. You are
upside-down.
Change the vision: will
freedom, and love will come of its own accord. When love comes on its own accord only then
it is beautiful, because only then it is natural, spontaneous.
Willed love will be a kind
of acting. You will be pretending -- what else can you do? You will be moving through
empty gestures -- what else is possible? You cannot be ordered to love somebody, you
cannot order yourself to love somebody. If it is not there, it is not there; if it is
there, it is there. It is something beyond your will. In fact it is just the opposite of
will: it is surrender.
When one is totally
dissolved into freedom and when one is really free, the ego disappears. The ego is your
bondage, the ego is your prison. In total freedom there is no ego found. Surrender
happens, you start feeling one with existence -- and that oneness brings love.
The second question:
BELOVED OSHO
MANY SEE THE WORK THAT GOES
ON AROUND YOU AS A MODEL FOR THE HOLISTIC APPROACH TO LIFE. PLEASE TALK ABOUT THIS.
Krishna Prem, the old man
is dying. And it is good news that the old man is on his deathbed, because the new can be
born only when the old is gone, utterly gone. The old has to cease. The old has existed
long, and the old man has been a curse, because he was rooted in very stupid conceptions
of life.
The old man was based on
superstitions. The most basic flaw in the concept of the old man was perfectionism: he
wanted to be perfect, and the very idea of perfectionism drives people crazy. The
perfectionist is bound to be a neurotic, he cannot enjoy life till he is perfect. And
perfection as such never happens, it is not in the nature of things. Totality is possible,
perfection is not possible.
That is the fundamental of
the holistic approach. And there is a tremendous difference between perfection and
totality. Perfection is a goal somewhere in the future, totality is an experience herenow.
Totality is not a goal, it is a style of life. If you can get into any act with your whole
heart, you are total. Totality brings wholeness and totality brings health and totality
brings sanity.
The perfectionist
completely forgets about totality. He has some idea how he should be, and obviously time
will be needed to reach that idea. It can't happen now -- tomorrow, day after tomorrow,
this life, maybe next life... so life has to be postponed.
That's what the old man has
been doing hitherto, postponing, postponing. The man in the past has not really lived; his
life was nothing but a sequence of postponements.
I teach you to live herenow
with no idea of the future at all. The future will be born out of your lived present. If
the present has been lived totally, the future will have even more totality to it. Out of
totality more totality is born.
But if you have an idea
what you want to be in the future, today you will live very partially because your main
concern becomes the future. Your eyes become focused on the future, you lose contact with
the real and the present -- and the tomorrow will be born out of the real with which you
are not in contact. The tomorrow will come out of today, and today was unlived.
The English word devil is
very beautiful. If you read it backwards it becomes lived. That which is lived becomes
divine, and that which is not lived becomes devil. Only the lived is transformed into
godliness; the unlived turns poisonous. Today you postpone, and whatsoever remains unlived
in you will hang around you like a weight. If you had lived it you would have been free of
it. It would not have haunted you, it would not have tortured you.
But man up to now has been
taught not to live but to hope -- hope that tomorrow things will be such that you will be
able to live, hope that tomorrow you will be worthy to live, hope that tomorrow you will
be Jesus Christ or Gautama the Buddha.
You are never going to be
Jesus the Christ or Gautama the Buddha, you are simply going to be yourself. You are not a
carbon copy of anybody else. It would have been ugly to be another Christ or another
Buddha; that would have been a great insult to your humanity. Man has dignity because man
has originality.
The old concept was to live
according to a certain pattern -- the Buddhist pattern, the Christian pattern, the Hindu
pattern. The old was not in favor of the individual, it was in favor of a certain pattern.
That pattern creates slavery.
I teach the individual, I
teach the unique individual. Respect yourself, love yourself, because there has never been
a person like you and there never will be again. God never repeats. You are utterly
unique, incomparably unique. You need not be like somebody else, you need not be an
imitator, you have to be authentically yourself, your own being. You have to do your own
thing.
The moment you start
accepting and respecting yourself you start becoming whole. Then there is nothing to
divide you, then there is nothing to create the split. Hitherto, man has been
schizophrenic. And I am not saying that a few people have been schizophrenic: the whole
humanity has been schizophrenic. Leave a few exceptions -- a Krishna, a Lao Tzu here and
there -- you can count them on your fingers. They don't constitute humanity, they are
exceptions, and the exceptions only prove the rule. But the greater part of humanity has
lived a schizophrenic life, a divided life, fragmentary.
And how did man become so
split? First thing: you are not acceptable as you are, so reject yourself. Rather than
respecting yourself, reject yourself; rather than respecting yourself, respect some idea,
some imaginary idea, of how you should be. Don't live the real, try to live the
"should" -- and then you are split, you have become two. You are that which you
are, but that you reject, repress. And you want to be that which you are not, and that
which you are not you love and you respect and you worship. You have become two.
Not only that you have been
split in two, you have been made many -- because you were taught that the body is your
enemy, that you have to get rid of the body. You were taught that many things in you have
to be cut off, that you are not as you should be, that great changes have to be done.
Naturally you started
rejecting your sex, you started rejecting your desires, you started rejecting your anger.
And all these rejected parts are energies to be transformed. They are not your enemies,
they are friends in disguise.
Anger transformed becomes
compassion, sex transformed becomes prayer, greed transformed becomes sharing. But in the
past it was told again and again, repeated down the ages, that you had to reject this,
reject that. If you listen to the old teachings you will be surprised -- you are rejected
almost ninety-nine percent. Only one percent, some imaginary soul of which you are not
aware at all, is accepted in you. And all that you are aware of is rejected.
These fragments do not
allow you to become one piece, and unless you become one piece there is no peace possible.
Unless you are a togetherness, integrated, crystallized, you will not know what God is --
because God speaks only to those who are real, God speaks only to those who are not a
crowd, not noisy.
When there are many in you,
you are a crowd, and the crowd is noisy. When you become one, there is silence. Only by
becoming one will you attain to silence, and in that silence you can hear the voice of
God, in that silence you can start feeling the presence of the divine. And when you are
one, you will be able to have a communion with the whole. By being a whole yourself, you
become capable of having a communion with the whole.
Man has lived very
partially -- in fragments, in guilt, in fear. A new man is needed, urgently needed. Enough
is enough: say goodbye to the old man. The old has created only wars, violence; it has
created sadists, masochists, it has created a very ugly human being. It has made people
pathological, it has not allowed a natural, healthy, sane humanity to be born.
Just the other day,
somebody asked, "Who is a masochist and who is a sadist?"
A masochist is a person who
loves to have a cold shower every morning, but takes instead a warm one. And the sadist is
a person who, if asked by a masochist, "Please, please, hit my head hard," says
"No!"
People are torturing
themselves and torturing others in every possible way. In the name of religion, in the
name of morality, in the name of nationality, people are torturing each other, killing
each other. Beautiful names have been found for very pathological, insane things.
Insanities are called "nationalities," insanities are called
"moralities" -- beautiful labels on very ugly things.
But it is time that we get
rid of it all. And if we don't get rid of it all soon enough, then the cup will be full.
Man is going to die if the new does not arrive; the old cannot survive. There is no
possibility for the old to survive, it has come to its tether's end. It has lived more
than expected.
I teach you a new man, a
new humanity, which will not think of the future and which will not live with shoulds and
oughts, which will not deny any natural instinct, which will accept its body, which will
accept all that is given by God with deep gratitude.
Your body is your temple,
it is sacred. Your body is not your enemy. It is not irreligious to love your body, to
take care of your body -- it is religious. It is irreligious to torture your body and to
destroy it. The religious person will love his body because it is the temple where God
lives.
You and your body are not
really two, but the manifestation of one. Your soul is your invisible body, and your body
is your visible soul. I teach this unity, and with this unity, man becomes whole. I teach
you joy, not sadness. I teach you playfulness, not seriousness. I teach you love and
laughter, because to me there is nothing more sacred than love and laughter, and there is
nothing more prayerful than playfulness.
I don't teach you
renunciation, as it has been taught down the ages. I teach you: Rejoice, rejoice, and
rejoice again! Rejoicing should be the essential core of my sannyasins.
Yes, Krishna Prem, my
approach to life is holistic, because to me, to be whole is to be holy.
The third question:
BELOVED OSHO
DO I RIGHTLY UNDERSTAND YOU
THAT IF YOU AND YOUR BELOVED CAN TRANSMUTE YOUR SEXUAL ENERGY INTO SPIRITUALITY, THAT THIS
RELATIONSHIP WILL NOT BE SATISFYING EITHER? YOUR SEEMING CONTRADICTIONS ON LOVE CONFUSE
ME.
Nellie, confusion is my way
of working on you. I confuse you so that clarity becomes possible. People are very much
certain, they already think they know. And because of their certainty they are closed. If
you already know, then there is no need to seek and search. For what? If you already know,
then you can keep your doors and windows closed.
People are much too
certain, and that is a great problem. They have to be made uncertain again, they have to
be shaken in their certainties; their dogmas and creeds have to be taken away. Hence
confusion arises. What is confusion? -- when you start losing grip on your old certainty.
You were feeling that you know, and suddenly you start feeling that you don't know. You
were thinking you have the answer, and suddenly you become aware that the question is
there and the answer was just imposed.
It happens to every new
disciple here -- and Nellie is a new sannyasin; just the other day she has become a
sannyasin. For a few days you will become more and more confused. It is a good sign, it
means you are listening to me.
There are a few people who
go on listening to me and are never confused. That simply means they have not heard; their
ears are full of wax, they are deaf. There are people who not only don't become confused,
but listening to me they become even more certain. That means they have heard something
else that was not said.
Two moving-men were struggling with a big crate in a doorway. They pushed and
tugged until they were exhausted but it would not move.
Finally, the man on the
outside said, "We had better give up, we will never get it in."
The fellow on the inside
said "What do you mean, get it in? I thought you were trying to get it out!"
If you become confused by listening to me, that means you have heard me. The more
intelligent you are, the more confused you will become. And I use contradiction as a
technique, I go on contradicting myself.
Why do I contradict myself?
I am not teaching a philosophy here. The philosopher has to be very consistent --
flawless, logical, rational, always ready to argue and prove his statements. I am not a
philosopher. I am not here giving you a consistent dogma to which you can cling. My whole
effort is to give you a no-mind.
Be perfectly clear about
it. My effort is not to strengthen a certain mind, my effort is just the opposite of it:
to give you a state of no-mind -- a state which has no knowledge, a state which functions
from not knowing, a state of innocence.
I use contradiction as a
device. I say one thing, out of your old habit you cling to it; the next day I have to
contradict it. When I contradict it you have to drop it. But you may start clinging to the
new thing that I have said; I will have to contradict it again.
This will go on, you will
go on clinging to this, to that. One day suddenly you will become aware what is happening.
I don't allow you any certainty, nothing to cling to. And if I contradict, what is the
point of clinging at all? Then why not wait? I will contradict, and then you will have to
leave it, and it is painful. Once you cling to a thing and then you have to leave it, it
is painful, it creates anxiety.
So those who have listened
to me for a long time, listen simply. They simply listen, they don't cling. They know
perfectly well, now that they are aware of the game, that tomorrow I will contradict. So
why carry it for twenty-four hours? The pain of carrying the weight, and then the pain of
dropping it... slowly slowly it dawns in your awareness that there is no need to cling;
this man contradicts. This man is consistently inconsistent.
Once you have understood
that, you listen to me as one listens to music. You listen to me as one listens to the
wind passing through the pine trees, you listen to me as one listens to the birds singing
in the morning. You don't say to the cuckoo, "Yesterday your song was
different," and you don't go to the roseflower and say, "Last season the flowers
were bigger" -- or smaller -- "why are you contradicting yourself?"
You don't say to the poet,
"In one of your poems you said this, and in another poem you have said something
else." You don't expect a poet to be consistent, so you don't ask. Poetry is not a
theory, it is not a syllogism, it is a song.
I am not a philosopher.
Always remember that I am a poet, not a philosopher. Remember always that I am not a
missionary, but a musician playing on the harp of your heart. Songs will go on changing...
you need not cling to anything, then there will be no confusion at all.
The people who are always
hankering for consistency can never enter into the mystery of life. Consistency is
something manmade, it is arbitrary. Existence is not consistent. And now even physicists
agree with the poets and the mystics.
You must be aware that
modern physics believes in the theory of uncertainty; modern physics believes in the
illogical behavior of atoms, of the unpredictability of the behavior of electrons. It was
such a shock to the modern physicists, because they had always believed that matter
behaves consistently. The whole foundation of science has been shaken; these twenty years,
it has been such a shock. People have not yet become aware of it, because the theories are
so complicated and so subtle that they will never become part of common knowledge. And
they are so against common sense -- they look more like fairy tales, stories written for
children.
The electrons jump from one
spot to another, and between the two they don't exist. Now, can it be believed? An
electron jumping from spot a to spot b, and between the two he is not? And I am using
"he" knowingly, deliberately, because you cannot use "it" any more. A
great mystery... they call it a quantum leap. A special word has been coined -- quantum,
because in the middle it is not found.
It is as if from New York
you come to Poona, but in the space between the two you are not. You simply disappear from
New York and you appear in Poona. Now there is a possibility some day.... Right now it is
science fiction, but the possibility is there that one day it may happen that there will
be no need to take long journeys, wasting time. Time has limitations.
For example, if you want to
go to the nearest star it will take four years -- the nearest star! And that too only if
you go with the speed of light. And it is immense, the speed of light: one hundred and
eighty-six thousand miles per second. If you go at this speed, which seems almost
impossible, then it will take four years to reach the closest star.
And then there are stars
which are a hundred years, two hundred, one thousand, two thousand, one million, two
million years away. There are stars so far away that we have not been able to detect them
yet.
How can journeys be made to
faraway stars? The only possibility is if one day we manage to do what the electron is
already managing to do... a machine in which you enter here and you disappear, and another
machine on the star, one million years away, and you appear there. Between the two, no
traveling time is lost: you simply dematerialize here and you materialize somewhere else.
It is a possibility. If the electron can do it, why not man? Man is nothing but millions
and millions of electrons, so the possibility is there.
Even to think of it seems
to be mind-blowing. But modem physics says electrons are behaving in a very mysterious way
-- illogical, unpredictable, confusing.
I am not a philosopher who
is trying to make a system of thought. I am a mystic who is trying to convey the mysteries
that have become available to me. I will confuse you.
It is like a friend of mine who is a jigsaw puzzle
fiend. One day his kids were playing with his puzzles and they put his Marilyn Monroe
puzzle back in the same box with his Revolutionary War puzzle.
I asked him how he made out
with things all mixed up.
"Oh," he said,
"I did all right. But I never realized that George Washington had such sexy
legs."
Life is a very mixed puzzle. Whatsoever you make out of it is going to be
arbitrary, you cannot figure it out in reality. My suggestion to my sannyasins is to
forget all about figuring out what it is. Rather, live it; rather, enjoy it! Don't analyze
it, celebrate it.
So, Nellie, you will have
to put up with me, you will have to tolerate my contradictions. They appear as
contradictions only to you. From my side I am simply talking mysteries, and mysteries are
bound to be illogical. But your question is relevant and significant.
You ask: "Do I rightly
understand you that even if you and your beloved can transmute your sexual energy into
spirituality, that this relationship will not be satisfying either?"
Yes, it will not be
satisfying either. In fact, it will create in you the greatest discontent that you have
ever felt, because it will make you aware how much is possible. It will make you aware of
the tremendous moment of that orgasmic unity, of that spiritual transmutation. But it will
remain only momentary. With the outer, nothing can become permanent. And once the moment
is gone, the higher was the peak, the lower will be the valley, and you will fall deep
down in darkness.
But it will make you aware
of one thing, that if male and female energy can have a meeting which is nontemporal, then
there will be eternal contentment.
How to manage it? Out of
this question the whole science of Tantra was born. How to do it? It can be done. It
cannot be done with the beloved outside -- it cannot be done without the beloved outside,
remember that too, because the first glimpse comes from the beloved outside. It is only a
glimpse, but with it comes a new vision that, deep down inside yourself, there are both
the energies present -- male and female.
Man is bisexual -- every
man, every woman. Half of you is male and half of you is female. If you are a woman, then
the female part is on top and the male part is hidden behind, and vice versa. Once you
have become aware of this, then a new work starts: your inner woman and inner man can have
a meeting and that meeting can remain absolute. There is no need to come back from the
peak. But the first vision comes from the outer.
Hence Tantra uses the outer
woman, the outer man, as part of inner work. Once you have become aware that you have a
woman inside you or a man inside you, then the work takes on a totally new quality, it
starts moving in a new dimension. Now the meeting has to happen inside; you have to allow
your inner woman and man to meet.
In India we have had that
concept for at least five thousand years. You may not have seen the statues of Shiva as
ardhanarishwar: half man, half woman. That is the picture of everybody's being, inner
being. You must have seen shivalinga: it symbolizes the male. But shivalinga is placed in
the female sexual organ, it is not alone; they are together. That again represents the
inner duality, the inner polarity, but the polarity can meet and merge.
With the outer, the merger
will be only for the moment. Then great frustration and great misery... and the higher the
moment, the deeper will be the darkness that follows it. But the meeting can happen
inwardly.
First learn that the peak
is possible, and then feel grateful to the woman who has given you the peak, feel grateful
to the man. Tantra worships the woman as the goddess and the man as the god. Any woman who
helps you to attain to this vision is a goddess, any man that helps you to attain to this
vision is a god. Love becomes sacred because it gives you the first glimpses of the
divine. Then the inner work starts. You have worked without, now you have to work within.
Tantra has two phases, two
stages: the outer, the extrovert Tantra, and the inner, the introvert Tantra. The
beginning has to be always from the without; it is because we are there, so we have to
start from the place we are and then move inwards. When the inner man and woman have met
and melted, and when you are no more divided inside, you have become one -- integrated,
crystallized, one -- you have attained. This is enlightenment.
But right now everything is
upside down. You have completely forgotten the inner; the outer has become your whole
life. This is as if somebody is standing on his head and has forgotten completely how to
stand on his feet again. Now, standing on your head your life will be really difficult. If
you want to go somewhere, if you want to do something, everything will become very very
difficult, almost impossible.
And that is what is
happening. People are upside down, because the without has become more important than the
within. The without has become all-important, and the within is completely ignored,
forgotten.
The real treasure is
within. From the without, you can get only hints of the inner treasure; from the without,
only arrows pointing to the innermost core of your being; from without, only milestones.
But don't cling to a milestone, and don't think that this is the goal and you have
arrived.
Remember that the ordinary
man is living a very abnormal life, because his values are upside down. Money is more
important than meditation, logic is more important than love, mind is more important than
heart. Power over others is more important than power over one's own being. Mundane things
are more important than finding some treasures which death cannot destroy.
Larry went to an Italian restaurant, and just as the waiter was about to serve, he
tripped and dumped a whole bowl of minestrone right in Larry's lap.
Was Larry angry? Was he
even slightly ruffled?
He simply looked up with
great dignity and disdain and said, "Waiter, I believe there is a soup in my
fly."
Things are completely upside down. The fly is not in the soup, the soup is in the
fly. And that's why there is so much misery. Everybody seems to be simply running after
shadows, knowing perfectly well that there is nothing to happen, that nothing is ever
going to happen, but what else to do? Standing by the side of the road when everybody is
rushing looks silly. It is better to go on rushing with the crowd.
Let this sink deep in your
heart: that unless the within becomes more important than the without, you are living a
very abnormal life. The normal person is one whose within is the source of everything that
he is doing. The without is only a means, the within is the end.
The love affair that you
have with a woman or a man is a means to the end. The end is having a love affair with
your inner woman or inner man. The outer has to be used as a learning situation; it is a
great opportunity.
I am not against the outer
love affair, I am all for it, because without it you will never become aware of the inner.
But remember, don't get stuck in the outer.
The fourth question:
BELOVED OSHO
WHY IS THERE SUCH AN
EXPRESSION AS "THE DIRTY OLD MAN"? I AM GETTING ON AND I SUSPECT PEOPLE ARE
BEGINNING TO THINK ABOUT ME IN EXACTLY THOSE WORDS.
It is because of a long, long repressive society that the dirty old man exists. It
is because of your saints, your priests, your puritans, that the old dirty man exists.
If people are allowed to
live their sexual life joyously, by the time they are nearing forty-two -- remember, I am
saying forty-two, not eighty-four -- just when they are nearing forty-two, sex will start
losing its grip on them. Just as sex arises and becomes very powerful by the time one is
fourteen, in exactly the same way by the time one is forty-two it starts disappearing. It
is a natural course. And when sex disappears, the old man has a love, has compassion, of a
totally different kind. There is no lust in his love, no desire, he wants to get nothing
out of it. His love has a purity, an innocence; his love is a joy.
Sex gives you pleasure. And
sex gives you pleasure only when you have gone into sex; then pleasure is the end result.
If sex has become irrelevant -- not repressed, but because you experienced it so deeply
that it is no more of any value.... You have known it, and knowledge always brings
freedom. You have known it totally, and because you have known it, the mystery is
finished, there is nothing more to explore. In that knowing, the whole energy, the sexual
energy, is transmuted into love, compassion. One gives out of joy. Then the old man is the
most beautiful man in the world, the cleanest man in the world.
There is no expression in
any language as the clean old man. I have never heard it. But this expression, the dirty
old man, exists in almost all languages. The reason is that the body becomes old, the body
becomes tired, the body wants to get rid of all sexuality -- but the mind, because of
repressed desires, still hankers. When the body is not capable, and the mind continuously
haunts you for something which the body is incapable of doing, really the old man is in a
mess. His eyes are sexual, lusty; his body dead and dull. And his mind goes on goading
him. He starts having a dirty look, a dirty face; he starts having something ugly in him.
It reminds me of the story of the man who overheard
his wife and her sister discussing his frequent out-of-town business trips. The sister
kept suggesting that the wife should worry about her husband being unchaperoned at those
posh resort convention hotels with so many attractive, unattached career women around.
"Me worry?" said
the wife. "Why, he'd never cheat on me. He's too loyal, too decent... too old."
The body sooner or later becomes old; it is bound to become old. But if you have
not lived your desires they will clamor around you, they are bound to create something
ugly in you. Either the old man becomes the most beautiful man in the world, because he
attains to an innocence the same as the innocence of a child, or even far deeper than the
innocence of a child -- he becomes a sage. But if desires are still there, running like an
undercurrent, then he is caught in a turmoil.
A very old man was arrested while attempting to sexually molest a young woman.
Seeing such an old man, eighty-four, in court, the magistrate reduced the charge from rape
to assault with a dead weapon.
If you are becoming old,
remember that old age is the climax of life. Remember that old age can be the most
beautiful experience -- because the child has hopes for the future, he lives in the
future, he has great desires to do this, to do that. Every child thinks that he is going
to be somebody special -- Alexander the Great, Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong -- he lives in
desires and in the future. The young man is too much possessed by the instincts, all
instincts, exploding in him. Sex is there. Modern research says that every man thinks once
at least about sex every three seconds. Women are a little better, they think of sex every
six seconds. It is a great difference, almost double; that may be the cause of many rifts
between husbands and wives.
Once every three seconds
sex somehow flashes in the mind. The young man is possessed by such great natural forces
that he cannot be free. Ambition is there, and time is running fast, and he has to do
something and he has to be something. All those hopes and desires and fantasies of
childhood have to be fulfilled; he is in a great rush, in a hurry.
The old man knows that
those childish desires were really childish. The old man knows that all those days of
youth and turmoil are gone. The old man is in the same state as when the storm has gone
and silence prevails. That silence can be of tremendous beauty, depth, richness. If the
old man is really mature, which is very rarely the case, then he will be beautiful. But
people only grow in age, they don't grow up. Hence the problem.
Grow up, become more
mature, become more alert and aware. And old age is the last opportunity given to you:
before death comes, prepare. And how does one prepare for death? By becoming more
meditative.
If some lurking desires are
still there, and the body is getting old and the body is not capable of fulfilling those
desires, don't be worried. Meditate over those desires, watch, be aware. Just by being
aware and watchful and alert, those desires and the energy contained in them can be
transmuted. But before death comes, be free of all desires.
When I say be free of all
desires I simply mean be free of all objects of desires. Then there is a pure longing.
That pure longing is divine, that pure longing is God. Then there is pure creativity with
no object, with no address, with no direction, with no destination -- just pure energy, a
pool of energy, going nowhere. That's what buddhahood is. Atisha calls it bodhichitta,
buddha consciousness.
The fifth question:
BELOVED OSHO
WHY IS INDIA SO POOR?
The so-called saints are responsible. Down the ages, India has lived with a wrong
philosophy -- a philosophy that teaches other-worldliness, a philosophy that teaches that
the world is illusion and only the other world is true. You have not seen the other world,
the true world; you have to believe. And the world that you have seen, and see every day
and experience every day, is illusory, is maya.
This foolish philosophy is
the root cause of India's poverty. If the world is illusory then why care about science,
why care about technology? What is the point? If the world is illusory, poverty is also an
illusion, the beggar on the street is also an illusion, the starving person is also an
illusion.
The West has lived with the
idea that only this world is real. Hence it has become rich, at least outwardly rich. The
West has denied the other world: God is dead. And the West started becoming rich only when
it started dropping the idea of the other world; then its whole energy was focused on this
world. It became rich materially, but it became poor spiritually.
The other world is also
real, and real on a higher plane. The East became poor materially. The other world is
real, but the other world can only be based on the reality of this world. This world
functions as a foundation. So maybe, once in a while, a person in India was able to become
inwardly rich. But the millions, the masses, remain outwardly poor. And because there is
no foundation, they have remained inwardly poor too.
These attitudes have been
two halves of one whole. The new man I talk about, and the new humanity, will not be
Eastern or Western. It will not believe in this world only or in that world only, it will
believe in the totality of man. It will believe in the body of man, it will believe in the
soul of man; it will believe in the material, it will believe in the spiritual. In fact
the new humanity will think of spirituality and materiality as two aspects of one
phenomenon. Then the world will be rich in both ways, within and without.
India has to get rid of its
otherworldly obsession. It has to learn to love this world too, it has to learn that this
world is also real. The very moment that happens will be a great change in India's life.
But the saints, the so-called saints, still go on teaching that this world is unreal. And
the poor people are consoled by it, so they go on clinging to the philosophy. If the world
is unreal, this consoles: there is nothing to be worried about, it is only a question of a
few years, then you will enter into the real world. So why bother?
The Eastern mind remains
unscientific because of this basically wrong philosophy; science can be created only if
the world is accepted as real. And if science is there, then technology is there, and
technology is the only way to create riches. The so-called saints are responsible, and the
so-called leaders, the politicians, are responsible, because the politicians go on
teaching anti-scientific attitudes to the country. Gandhi's philosophy is anti-scientific.
You will be surprised to know that he was against railway trains, the post office, the
telegraph, modern medicine. He was against the basic technologies which can help the
country. And he still remains the father figure, he still dominates the Indian mind,
particularly the Indian politician's mind.
India has to get rid of
Gandhi, otherwise it cannot become rich. But Gandhi also consoles, because he praises the
poor man. He calls the poor man daridra narayan: he says that God is in the poor man, the
poor man is divine. His teaching is that the rich man is something wrong and the poor man
is something right. Poverty has some spirituality in it, according to him.
If you praise poverty as
spirituality, naturally the poor person's ego is gratified. Hence the poor people in India
go on worshipping Gandhi; every town has his statue. The poor man has nothing else to feel
gratified about. This idea gives him great contentment, that he has something spiritual in
him, his poverty is spiritual.
There is nothing spiritual
in poverty. Poverty is ugly, unspiritual, irreligious. The poor man is the cause of all
that is wrong in the world, because out of poverty all kinds of sins and crimes arise. The
poor man has not to be gratified, he has to be made aware, "Do something and get out
of your poverty." If you go on praising the poor man he will become more and more
poor to become more and more spiritual. The poorer he is, the more divine.
A farm laborer got a wire from home; it announced that his wife had just given
birth to quintuplets. He decided it was time to look for a better-paying job.
"Tell me," said
the employment agent at the firm where he applied, "Do you have any sales ability?
Can you type, run a computer or drive a truck?"
Sadly he answered,
"No."
The interviewer asked,
"Then what can you do?"
He reached into his pocket,
brought out the telegram and said, "Here, read this."
India's whole creativity consists in bringing more and more children into the
world. There is no reason to be surprised by India's poverty. Every day thousands are
born. Medicine has helped people to live long, medicine has helped people to die later and
later. The deathrate has tremendously changed: just thirty years ago, out of ten children
born in India nine were going to die before the age of one. Now nine live, only one dies.
The deathrate has been changed but the birthrate remains the same.
Now there are only two
possibilities: either drop the birthrate or raise the deathrate. There are only two
possibilities: either kill people in some way or other.... And that's what happens again
and again -- natural calamities kill people, great diseases spread and kill people, wars
come and kill people. But they are all lagging behind; they are not able to cope with
modern medicine. Unless the birthrate declines there is no possibility for India to see
good days. But the Indians are accustomed to having many children. It is very manly, it is
thought to be a great blessing from God: the more children you have, the more blessed you
are.
These foolish ideas have to
be changed, but it is very difficult to change them. Because I am against all these ideas,
the Indian masses are against me. They want to be supported... their saints go on saying
to them that a child is a gift of God, their saints go on blessing them. Now each child
brings a new curse; it is no longer a blessing.
The politicians are afraid
that if they force birth control on the country then the people won't vote for them, so
they cannot enforce birth control. So they deliver sermons on brahmacharya, celibacy; they
themselves are not celibate, and they go on teaching people celibacy. And people love
these ideas, these are the ideas they have loved for centuries so they feel very good:
this is their culture, their culture is being praised. This is the right way to control
population -- celibacy.
And how many people are
going to do it? That is not the point at all. A cultural idea, praised for centuries,
feels very ego-satisfying.
Celibacy is not going to
work. Birth control will have to be brought in. If people willingly accept it, good. If
they don't accept it willingly, then it has to be forced on them. People cannot be left to
destroy the whole country. But if you talk about enforcing birth control they say then you
are not a democrat.
You stop people by force in
many things: thieves are not allowed to steal -- is it non-democratic? Thieves should be
allowed, given freedom -- democracy means freedom! Murders are not allowed. Now giving
birth to so many children is far more of a crime than stealing; in fact it is a far bigger
crime than murder.
Things have changed,
situations have changed. Now to bring an unnecessary child into the world is far more a
crime than killing a person. It is not a question of democracy, it is a question of
survival. Democracy is good, but democracy can exist only if the country can survive. The
country is dying, starving. Unless birth control is enforced totally, this country cannot
be rich.
My attitude is very clear,
my approach is absolutely clear, but the country's old mind is not ready to listen. People
come to me and they say, "What you are doing for India's poverty? Why don't you run
hospitals, and why don't you distribute free food from the ashram?"
This has been done for at
least ten thousand years. Ashrams have been distributing free food for ten thousand years:
it has not helped. How it is going to help if one more ashram goes on distributing free
food? There are so many hospitals -- it has not helped; how it is going to help if we run
a few more hospitals?
That is not my approach. I
want to cut the very root of the problem, I am not interested in pruning the leaves. But
people are duped and dulled by the saints, by the leaders, by the moralists.
Karl Marx seems to be
right, at least in a certain sense, that religion has been used as an opium to dupe people
and dull their intelligence. Real religion is not opium, but real religion is rare. It
exists only when there is a living master -- otherwise priests go on pretending that they
have the keys of religion. They don't have any keys; all that they do is serve the
politicians.
There is a conspiracy
between organized religion and the state -- between church and state. Together they
dominate people, together they reduce people into slavery. If the people are poor it is
easier to force them into slavery; if people are poor it is easier to give them beliefs,
superstitions. If people are poor they are always afraid of hell and always greedy for
heaven. The priest can dominate them and the politician can also dominate them because
they are so poor.
In poverty, people lose
intelligence. Intelligence needs a certain nourishment. It is a well known scientific fact
that if certain vitamins are missing in your food you will not be intelligent. And I am
really worried, because those are the vitamins which are missing in Indian food. Indian
food is very deficient -- hence you see the intelligence is on a very low level. Even the
so-called intelligentsia of India doesn't seem to be very intelligent. Intelligence is
needed to transform this country, its poverty.
And that's what my work is
here: to create more intelligence through meditation; to create more intelligent people by
destroying their superstitions, beliefs; to create more alert people, so they can be more
responsive to the real situation that exists in the country and in the world.
Only in this way can we cut
the very root of the problem.
The last question:
BELOVED OSHO
WHY AM I HERE?
This is a very philosophical question, Kirtan.
There is a story about two
big beefy American football players in philosophy class, sitting at their final
examination. The exam question was just one word: "Why?"
All the students began
writing madly, filling exam book after book. The two football players looked at each other
and shrugged. The first wrote two words on his exam paper: "Why not?" and left
the room. The second fellow wrote one word: "Because" and left with his friend.
Not knowing what to do, the
professor gave the first fellow the grade of A, and the second fellow the grade of A
minus.
This is really a philosophical question: "Why am I here?"
I don't know. Why not? Or
-- because.
Three newly deceased candidates for heaven sit in the
waiting room of Saint Peter's office. Finally Saint Peter returns from lunch and asks the
receptionist to send in the first candidate.
"How did you die, and
why do you think you are eligible for heaven?" Saint Peter asked.
"Well," said the
man, "for some time I suspected my wife was cheating on me. This morning a neighbor
called and confirmed the awful truth. He told me a guy had entered our apartment a half
hour ago and had not come out. Furiously I rushed home, burst into the apartment, and
found my wife lying naked on the bed. I started to search the apartment in a jealous rage.
I looked through the whole flat -- under the bed, in the closets, behind curtains,
everywhere.
I found no one. Finally,
out of sheer frustration and blind rage, I picked up the refrigerator, carried it out onto
the back porch and threw it down into the back yard, three stories below. The exertion and
excitement must have been too much for me, I must have died right then and there of a
heart attack."
"Well," said
Saint Peter, "that's a very unusual way to die, but entirely moral. Admitted. Send in
the next candidate."
The second candidate told
an even more surprising story. "Saint Peter," he said, "if you will excuse
the expression, I swear to God I was minding my own business taking a nap in the hammock
out in the back yard. I heard a noise and looked up just in time to see a fullsize
refrigerator falling on me from the third floor."
"Hmmm," said
Saint Peter. "Most tragic and most circumstantial. But, again, entirely proper and
moral. Admit this man and send in the next candidate."
"Saint Peter,"
said the third candidate, "I know you are not going to believe a word I say, I just
know it. I got called to this lady's apartment to fix her refrigerator. I was working on
it when all of a sudden she screamed, 'Here comes my husband! For God's sake, hide!' So
help me, Saint Peter, the last thing I remember was climbing into the refrigerator and
closing the door."
Kirtan, I don't know why
you are here. Why not? Because!
Enough for today. |