Intelligence is Meditation

 
So first think of the world as a dream, and then think of the dreamer also as a dream. First the object is a dream, then the subject is a dream. When the subject and the object are both dropped, when the dream disappears and also the dreamer, then there is no-mind.
This no-mind is the very origin of all.
This is what Udallaka was saying to his son. He was asking, ”Have you learned that one, by learning which all is learned and by forgetting which all is forgotten? Have you seen that one? Have you come to that one?” And the son was disturbed and he said, ”I have known all. But what are you talking about? My master never talked about this one.”
So Udallaka said, ”Then you go back, because all that you have brought is rubbish. You go back! In my family we have always been real brahmins.” By ’real’ brahmin he meant: We have known Brahma, we have known the truth; we are not just brahmins by birth only.
”You go back. You go back immediately!” The welcome was stopped, the music was stopped. With tears...but Udallaka sent his son back. He had come from the master’s house after many years and was immediately sent back not even one day’s rest. Very disturbed, the young man went back to the master. He said, ”But why didn’t you teach me that one my father asks about? Why? All these years wasted! And my father thinks that all of this is nonsense I don’t know myself. My father says, ’If you don’t know yourself, of what value is all your knowing? What are we going to do with your knowing of the Vedas? You can recite the Vedas, but what are we going to do with it? And in my family,’ my father says, ’We have always been real brahmins. Go back, and before I die become a real brahmin. Don’t come back unless you have become a real brahmin.’ So, sir, teach me that one.” The master laughed. He said, ”That one cannot be taught. Yes, it can be caught, but it cannot be taught. That’s why I had not taught it. But if you insist, then a situation can be created.” That’s what all masters do: they just create a situation.
This commune is a situation.
I cannot teach you truth, but I can create a situation in which you can start catching glimpses of it. My being here is a situation, my talking to you continuously is a situation. Not that I can teach you truth by talking, but it is just a situation in which sometimes a tremor goes into you; in which sometimes you catch hold of a vibe, and it thrills you and takes you far away on a long journey inwards. So the master said, ”I can create a situation. And this is the situation: you take hold of all the cows of the ashram” there were four hundred cows ”and you take them to the deepest forest. Go away as far as you can, as far as possible, so that you are absolutely inaccessible to other human beings. Then come back only when your herd has grown to one thousand cows and bulls. It will take many years, but you go. And remember, don’t see any human being. Cows will be your friends and your family; you can talk to them if you like.” And Swetketu went into the deepest forest where no human being had ever entered and he lived with his cows for many years. The story is of tremendous beauty. Naturally, what can you talk about with the cows? In the beginning he must have tried, and by and by thought that it was meaningless: the cows simply look at you, their eyes remain empty. There is no dialogue. Yes, in the beginning, just out of habit, he may have recited his Vedas, and the cows would have continued munching their grass. They would not be interested in the Vedas at all and they would not have praised him for being a great knower. He must have talked about astrology and the stars, but the cows were uninterested. What can you do with an audience of cows? By and by he stopped talking. By and by he started forgetting. By and by a great unlearning began.
Years passed. And, the story says, a moment came when the cows numbered one thousand. But by that time Swetketu had completely forgotten about going back. He had really forgotten how to count he had not been counting for so many years.
The cows became very disturbed; the time had come. Then one cow dared and she said, ”Listen, now that we are one thousand, it is time. The master must be waiting. We should go home, this is the time.” So when the cows said that it was time, Swetketu followed them.
When he came with those one thousand cows to the master’s house, the master came out to receive him and said to his other disciples, ”Look at these one thousand and one cows!” But the disciples said, ”There are only one thousand cows, and one is Swetketu.” The master said, ”He has disappeared, he is no longer there. He is a cow so innocent; look into his eyes.” This is the state of no-mind. And this has been the goal in the East this state where you are not, and in fact for the first time you are.
This state of death and this state of life, this state of the disappearance of the ego and the false, and the appearance of the true and the authentic this is the state we call realization, God-realization, self-realization. This is the state Saraha calls self-being, beyond thought, beyond mind.

Tantra means expansion. This is the state when you have expanded to the uttermost. Your boundaries and the boundaries of existence are no longer separate, they are the same. Less than that will not satisfy. When you become universal, you come home.
When you become all, when you become one with all, when you are as huge as this universe, when you contain all; when stars start moving within you and earths are born in you and disappear; when you have this cosmic expansion, then the work is finished.
You have come home. This is the goal of Tantra.
Enough for today.

Question 1 The first question the question is from Somendra:

Osho, What happens to my voice when you speak to me? What is the game?

When you are really in communion with me you cannot speak. When you are really listening to me you will lose your voice, because in that moment I am your voice. The communion that happens between me and you is not between two persons. It is not a discussion, it is not a debate, it is not an argument, it is not even a dialogue. The communion happens only when you are lost, when you are not there. At the highest peak it is not even an ’I-thou’ relationship. It is not a relationship at all. I am not, and there comes a moment to you also when you are not. In that moment two zeros disappear into each other.
That’s why, Somendra, whenever you come to me, you lose your voice. And it is not happening only to you, it is happening to all those who are really coming closer to me. How can you come closer to me and still keep your voice? How can you be near me and still be yourself? Your voice is the voice of you. When the ’you’ starts disappearing, naturally the voice also starts disappearing.
Secondly, there is nothing to say. When you are in love with me you know that if there is something to say, I will know. And if I don’t know it, then it is not worth saying, then it is not needed; then it must be some irrelevant, vagrant thought. It has no need even to be uttered, it will be a sheer wastage of energy. The mind goes on catching a thousand and one thoughts from everywhere, from all sources. All your thoughts are not yours; thoughts go on jumping from one head into another; even without talking, even without being conveyed, thoughts are continuously jumping from one head to another head. You catch hold of them, and for a moment you are possessed by the thought and you think it is something essential. When you come to me, suddenly those thoughts that you have caught from others disappear.
It happens to many sannyasins. They come ready with many questions, and then, just sitting in front of me, they are at a loss; those questions have disappeared. It is significant, meaningful. It shows that those questions were not yours, they were not truly yours. When you are in front of me really in front of me when you are looking at me, only that which is essential will be left; the nonessential will go. Sometimes all your thoughts can disappear: not only do you lose your voice, you lose your mind too. And that is the only way to be around a master. Go on losing your mind. Hang loose, relaxed, untense. There is nothing to say. There is much to listen to but there is nothing to say.
And then, thirdly, everything is going so well with Somendra. We only say things when things are not going well. I have heard....
A mother complained to several doctors of her five-year-old’s failure to speak. Examinations yielded the fact that he was a remarkably healthy child and she was told not to worry. But worry she did. One day, in a hurry, she burned his oatmeal but served it anyway. He tasted it, spat it out, and said, ”God, this stuff is awful. You must have burned it.”
Delighted, she said, ”You’re talking! Why haven’t you said anything before this?” He looked at her with some disdain and said, ”Well, everything has been alright up to now!” And everything has been alright up to now with Somendra. There is nothing to say.



The second question:

Osho, While in an art museum in Frankfurt recently, I entered one room with nothing but statues and carvings of Buddha. I put absolutely no faith in stone idols, but I was surprised to feel a very strong energy current in the room, similar to what I feel here in the lecture. Was I imagining things? And if so, how can I trust what I feel here with you?
The question is from Anand Samagra. The first thing to be understood: the Buddha statues have nothing to do with Gautam Buddha, you will be surprised to know; they are all false. They don’t resemble Buddha at all, but they have something to do with buddhahood not with Gautam Buddha, the person, they have something to do with buddhahood.
You can go into a Jaina temple and you will see twenty-four statues of twenty-four tirthankaras, the founders of Jainism, and you will be unable to make out any difference between them; they are all alike. To make a distinction Jainas make small symbols on them to know who is who, because they are all alike. So if somebody’s symbol is a line figure, then just underneath the feet is a small line figure; then they know whose statue this is. Somebody’s symbol is a snake, then they know whose statue this is. If those symbols were hidden, not even a Jaina could make any demarcation whose statue is this? Mahavira’s? Parswanatha’s? Adinatha’s? And you will also be surprised to know that they are exactly like Buddha no difference. In the beginning, when the West became acquainted with Mahavira, they thought it was nothing but the same story of Buddha, because the statue is the same, the philosophy is the same, the understanding is the same, the teaching is the same. So it was just the same thing, it was nothing different from Buddha; they thought Mahavira was another name for Buddha. And of course both were called buddhas ’buddha’ means ’the awakened one’. So Buddha was called Buddha and Mahavira was also called Buddha. And both were called jinas ’jina’ means the ’conqueror’, one who has conquered himself. Buddha is called ’the jina’ and Mahavira is called ’the jina’, so they thought they were the same person. And the statue was a great proof: they look absolutely alike. They are not photographic, they don’t represent a person; they represent a certain state. You will have to understand it, then the thing will be explained. In India three words are very important: one is tantra, which we are talking about, another is mantra, and the third is yantra. Tantra means techniques for expanding your consciousness. Mantra means finding your inner sound, your inner rhythm, your inner vibration. Once you have found your mantra, it is of tremendous help: just one utterance of the mantra and you are in a totally different world. That becomes the key, the passage, because once uttering that mantra, you fall into your natural vibe. And the third is yantra. These statues are yantras. Yantra means a certain figure which can create a certain state in you. A certain figure, if you look at it, is bound to create a certain state in you.
Have you not watched it? Looking at a Picasso painting you will start feeling a little uneasy. Concentrate on a Picasso painting for half an hour and you will feel very bizarre something is going crazy. You cannot look at a Picasso painting for half an hour. If you keep Picasso paintings in your bedroom you will have nightmares, you will have very dangerous dreams: being haunted by ghosts, tortured by Adolf Hitler and things like that; a war victim in a concentration camp things like that.
When you watch something, it is not only that the figure is outside; when you watch something, the figure creates a certain situation in you. Gurdjieff used to call this ’objective art’. And you know it: listening to modern pop music, something happens in you; you become more sexually excited. There is nothing but sound outside, but the sound hits inside, creates something in you. Listening to classical music you become less sexual, less excited. In fact with great classical music you almost forget sex; you are in a tranquility, a silence, a totally different dimension of your being. You exist on another plane.
Watching a Buddha statue is watching a yantra. The figure of the statue, the geometry of the statue, creates a figure inside you. And that inside figure creates a certain vibe. It was not just imagination that happened to you, Samagra, in the Frankfurt museum; those Buddha statues created a certain vibe in you. Watch the statue of Buddha sitting so silently in a certain yoga posture: if you go on watching the statue you will find something like that is happening within you too. If you are in company where ten persons are sad and you are the eleventh person, how long can you remain happy? Those ten persons will function like a yantra, a yantra of sadness; you will fall into sadness sooner or later. If you are unhappy and you go into company where people are joking and laughing, how long can you remain sad? Those laughing people will create laughter in you. They will change your focus, they will change your gear; you will start moving in a different direction. This happens every day knowingly, unknowingly.
When you watch a full moon, what happens to you? Or when you listen to the birds and look at the green trees, what happens to you? When you go into a forest and look at the greenery, what happens to you? Something green inside starts happening. Green is the color of nature, green is the color of spontaneity, green is the color of life; something green starts happening in you. The outer color reflects something inside, vibrates with something inside, creates something inside. Looking at a green tree you become more alive...you become younger! When you go to the Himalayas and you see the mountains, the snow-capped mountains...eternal snow which has never melted, the purest snow where no man has ever walked, uncontaminated by human society and human touch; when you look at a Himalayan peak, that uncorrupted, virgin snow creates something virgin in you. A subtle peace starts happening inside.

The outer is not the outer and the inner is not just the inner, they are joined together. So beware what you see, beware what you listen to, beware what you read, beware where you go because all that creates you. That’s what happened in Frankfurt. The Buddha statues, the many statues all around you, created a subtle geometry. You will be surprised: that is the basic reason why statues were created; they are not idols, as you think. The Christian and the Mohammedan and the Judaic idea has given a very wrong notion to the world. They are not idols, they are very scientific. They are not objects to be worshipped, they are geometries to be imbibed. It is a totally different thing.
In China there is one Buddha temple which has ten thousand Buddha statues all Buddha statues; wherever you look, the same figure. The ceiling has the same figure, all the sides have the same figure, the walls have the same figure. Ten thousand Buddha statues! Just think, sitting cross-legged in a Buddha posture and you are also surrounded by ten thousand Buddhas! It creates a geometry. From everywhere Buddha impinges upon you. From every nook and corner he starts surrounding you. You are gone; your ordinary geometry is no longer there, your ordinary life is no longer there. For a few moments you are moving on higher planes, at higher altitudes. That’s what is happening here. While listening to me something is created by my presence, by my words, by your attitude, by so many orange people around you. It is a situation, it is a temple. A temple is a situation; it is not just that you are sitting in a lecture hall. So many people listening to me with such love, gratitude, with such silence, with such sympathy, with such rapport...this place becomes holy. This place becomes a tirtha; it is sacred. When you come into this place you are riding on a wave, you need not make much effort. You can simply allow it to happen. You will be taken away, far away to the other shore. A marriage broker arranged with a family to bring over a girl he thought would be a fine match for their son. After dinner the girl left and the family began to attack the marriage broker. ”What kind of a girl did you bring? A monster! One eye in the middle of her forehead, the left ear way up here, the right ear way down there and the chin way back!”
The marriage broker interrupted. ”Look, either you like Picasso or you don’t!” Modern painting represents the ugly in existence. The ugly has become predominant for a certain reason. This century is one of the ugliest centuries: two world wars within fifty years, millions of people killed, destroyed...such cruelty, such aggression, such violence, such madness. This century is a nightmarish century. Man has lost track of his humanity. What man has been doing to man! Naturally this madness has erupted everywhere in painting, in music, in sculpture, in architecture everywhere the ugly human mind has created ugliness. Ugliness has become an aesthetic value. Now the photographer goes and looks for something ugly. Not that beauty has stopped existing; it exists as much as before, but it is neglected. The cactus has replaced the rose. Not that the cactus is something new; it has existed always, but this century has come to know that thorns seem to be more real than a roseflower. A roseflower seems to be a dream; it does not fit with us, hence the roseflower has been expelled. The cactus has entered your drawing-room. Just one hundred years ago nobody would have ever thought to bring a cactus home. Now if you are modern, your garden will be full of cactuses. The rose looks a little bourgeois; the rose looks a little out-of-date; the rose looks Tory, orthodox, traditional. The cactus looks revolutionary. Yes, the cactus is revolutionary like Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro. Yes, the cactus seems to be closer to this century.
The photographer looks for some ugly thing; he will go and photograph a beggar. Not that the beggar has not existed before, he has existed before; he is real, certainly real, but nobody has been making art out of him. We are feeling humble before the beggar, we are feeling apologetic before the beggar, we are feeling that something which should not be is still there; we want the beggar not to be there. But this century goes on searching for the ugly.
Still the sun penetrates the pines on a certain morning. The rays penetrating the pines create such a web of beauty.... It still exists, but no photographer is interested; that no longer appeals. Ugliness appeals because we have become ugly. That which appeals to us shows something about us.
Buddha is a roseflower, that is the highest possibility. And remember, it is not exactly a Buddha figure; nobody knows what Buddha looked like. But that is not the point. We were not interested in those days at least not in the East we were not interested in the ’real’ at all, we were interested in the ultimately real. We were not interested in the factual, we were interested in truth itself.
Maybe Buddha had a little longer nose, but if the artist thought that a little smaller nose would be more in tune with meditation, then he dropped that long nose of Buddha, he made it a little smaller. Maybe Buddha had a big belly, who knows? Japanese Buddha statues have big bellies, but Indian Buddhas don’t have big bellies different attitudes.

In Japan they think that a meditator has to breathe from the belly, from the navel. And when you breathe from the belly, the belly of course becomes a little bigger. Then the chest is not as protruding as the belly, the chest is relaxed. So Japanese Buddhas have big bellies. That too is for a certain reason: to indicate to you that belly-breathing is the right breathing. It has nothing to do with Buddha; nobody knows whether he had a big belly or not.
Indian statues don’t have big bellies, because Indian yoga does not insist on belly-breathing: the belly has to be in. That too has a certain different reason. If you want the sexual energy to move upwards, then it is better not to belly-breathe. When the belly is pulled in, the energy is sucked upwards more easily different techniques. Belly-breathing is also good for a certain meditator; it is very relaxing. But then the energy cannot move in the same way as it moves when the belly is pulled in. The Indian statues of Buddha have small bellies almost no bellies. Nobody knows exactly how Buddha looked. The statues are very feminine, very round; they don’t look masculine. Have you ever seen any statue with a mustache and beard? no. The people who painted Jesus were more realistic. The people who painted Buddha were not concerned with facticity, they were concerned with ultimate truth. They were not concerned how Buddha looked, they were concerned how buddhas should look. The emphasis was not on Buddha but on the people who would be looking at these statues how this statue was going to help those people.
So Buddha is not painted as old. He must have become old, he became eighty-two...he was very old, certainly, very old and ill. A physician had to follow him continuously. But no statue has painted him as old, ill, because that is not the point. We are not interested in the physical body of the Buddha, we are interested in his inner geometry; that inner quality of Buddha is always young, it is never old. And it is never ill, it is always in a state of wellbeing; by its very nature it cannot be ill. The body is young, the body is old, the body becomes crippled, the body dies. Buddha is not born, never dies; Buddha remains eternally young. Looking at a young statue something of youth will happen in you and you will feel something fresh. Now Indians would never have preferred Jesus to be pictured, painted, sculptured on the cross. It is ugly, it is sad. Even if it is historical it is not worth remembering, because whatsoever you think has happened, you tend to help it happen again. There is no obligation towards facts: we don’t owe anything to the past, we need not remember the past as it was. It is in our hands to choose the past to choose the past in such a way that a better future can be created.
Yes, Jesus was crucified, but if he were crucified in India, we would not have painted that. Even on the cross we would have painted a totally different thing. The Western painting is of Jesus in anguish, in sadness naturally, he is being killed. When you watch, when you concentrate, meditate, on Jesus, you will feel sad. It is not accidental that Christians say that Jesus never laughed. And it is not accidental that you are not allowed to dance and laugh and be gay in a church. Church is a serious affair: you have to be very serious...long faces. In fact when Jesus is crucified just there on the altar, how can you laugh and sing? In India you can sing and laugh and enjoy. Religion is a merriment, a celebration.
The whole point is that the Western mind is historical, the Eastern mind is existential. The West pays too much attention to mundane facts, the East never pays any attention to history. You will be surprised to know that until Western people came to India, India had not known anything like history. We have never written history, we have never bothered about it. That’s why we don’t know when exactly Buddha was born, when exactly he died. We have never paid much respect to facts. Facts are mundane: what does it matter whether he was born on Monday or Tuesday or Thursday? What does it matter, how does it matter? In fact it does not matter at all; any day will do and any year will do. That is not the point. The point is: Who was born? Who was this man in his innermost core?
History thinks about the periphery, myth thinks about the innermost core. India has written mythology but not history. We have puranas; puranas are mythology, they are not histories. They are poetic, mystic visions of how things should be, not how they are. They are the vision of the ultimate. And Buddha is the vision of ultimate samadhi.
Those Buddha statues you saw in the Frankfurt museum are the states of inner silence. When a person is absolutely silent he will be in that state. When everything is still and quiet and calm inside not a thought moves, not a small breeze blows; when everything has stopped, time has stopped then you will also feel to sit like a buddha. Something of the same geometry will happen to you. It is objective art less concerned with the reality of Buddha, more concerned with those people who will be coming and will be seeking buddhahood. The emphasis is different: what will happen to those who watch these statues and will kneel down before these statues and will meditate on these statues?

In India there are temples like Khajuraho where all sorts of sexual postures are sculptured. Many postures are so absurd that even a de Sade or a von Sacher-Masoch would not be able to imagine them. The most perverted person also could not imagine them. For example, the man and woman standing on their heads and making love it does not seem that anybody is going to try or imagine it. Why did they paint these pictures? They are examples of objective art.
These temples of Khajuraho were no ordinary temples; they were a kind of therapy, they exist as a therapy. Whenever somebody was suffering from some sexual perversion he was sent to Khajuraho. He had to watch and meditate on all those abnormal, bizarre things. He had something perverted in his mind; that perversion was inside the unconscious. What does psychoanalysis do? It tries to bring things from the unconscious to the conscious, that’s all. And psychoanalysis says that once something comes from the unconscious to the conscious it is released, you are free of it.
Now this was a great psychoanalysis, this Khajuraho. An abnormally perverted man is brought. He has repressed his perversions sometimes they erupt, but he goes on repressing. He knows that something is there like a wound, but he has never been able to see it face to face. He is brought to Khajuraho. He moves slowly, meditating on each statue, each bizarre posture. And one day, suddenly, one posture fits with his inner perversion. Suddenly from the unconscious the perversion surfaces to the conscious, and it is released without any Freud or Jung or Adler there just the temple will do. He is left in the temple. For a few weeks he can be there. For each meditator who really wanted to go into deep meditation in those days, it was good to visit a temple like Khajuraho.
On the walls of the temple are all these statues very abnormal, very crazy, very perverted. Inside the temple there is no sexual painting, no sexual statue at all, no sexuality at all. Inside is either Buddha’s statue, Shiva’s statue or Krishna’s statue.
What is the meaning of it? Why sex on the wall just outside, and inside no sex? It is a technique. First you have to move on the periphery so that you can become free of sex. When a person feels that now these sexual statues don’t attract him at all now he goes on sitting before them and nothing happens inside, he remains calm and quiet, no sexual arousal, no excitement; for weeks he waits, and no sexuality is felt then he is capable of entering the temple.
It is symbolic. Now his sexuality can go beyond. These temples were Tantra temples, one of the greatest experiments ever done. They are not obscene, they are not pornographic, they are spiritual a great experiment in spirituality, a great experiment in transforming human energy towards higher levels. But first the energy has to be freed from the lower level. And to free it there is only one way: to make it absolutely conscious, to bring all the fantasies of the unconscious mind to the conscious. When the unconscious is completely unburdened, you are free. Then you don’t have any blocks, then you can move inwards. Then you can go inside the temple, then you can meditate on Buddha, on Shiva, or Krishna. It was not imagination, Samagra, it was objective art which you stumbled upon unknowingly.

The third question:

Osho, What do you have that I haven’t got? (And I’m not talking about the ashram and car and secretary and all that stuff.)

You must be talking about ’all that stuff’, otherwise why do you mention it at all? The very mentioning of it shows the mind. You must have been afraid, the idea must have crossed your mind...and I don’t have any ashram, and I don’t have any car, and I don’t have any secretary; in fact I don’t have anything. Having is not the thing. Being...I am just here; being is my wealth, not having. If the ashram is here it is for you, not for me. If the secretary is there, it is for you, not for me. All that exists here is for you. It has not anything to do with me. I am enough alone.
But somewhere, deep in your mind, you must be too attached to things. When you formulate a question, remember, it shows much about you. A question is not only a question, it is very symbolic also. Several men in the smoking room were arguing as to who was the greatest inventor. One contended for Stevenson, who invented the railroad, another for Edison, another for Marconi, still another for the Wright brothers. Finally one of them turned to a small man who had been listening but who had said nothing. ”What do you think, Mr. Man?” ”Well,” came the reply with a knowing smile, ”the man who invented ’interest’ was nobody’s fool.” And the Jew is hidden in everybody; the Jew goes on thinking only of money, interest, things...having. The first thing: Change your focus from having to being. You can have the whole world and it is not going to help; you will remain a beggar. And I am not saying renounce the world, mind you. I am not saying renounce the world don’t jump to the opposite conclusion. I am saying you can have the whole world and you will not have anything, that’s all I am saying. I am not saying renounce it...because those who renounce, their mind also remains focused on having. You count money, they also count money. You say, ”I have got this many thousand dollars”; they say, ”I have renounced that many thousand dollars” but the counting continues. You are a bookkeeper and they are also bookkeepers. And bookkeeping is the world.
To know who you are is to become an emperor. To be is to be an emperor. To have is to be poor. There are two kinds of poor men in the world: those who have and those who have not. But both are poor, because those who have, they have nothing, and those who have not, of course, they have not got anything. Both are poor. Those who have, they are puzzled: ”What to do with it now?” They are stuck with it; they have wasted their whole life in having it, now it is there and they don’t know what to do with it. It has not satisfied anything, it has not brought any fulfillment, it has not brought any flowering. They have not come to celebrate life yet. God has not happened through it. It never happens through having.
You ask: ”What do you have that I haven’t got...?”
If you insist on speaking in terms of having, then you have got more than I have got. You have got infinitely more: greed, anger, lust, ambition, ego and a thousand and one things. What I have got? just nothing. Exactly, just nothing. If you think from the viewpoint of having, then I am the poorest man, because I have got just nothing. But if you think from the viewpoint of being, then I am the richest man because once you drop ego you don’t lose anything, you only lose a disease. When you drop greed you don’t lose anything, you only lose a disease. When you drop anger you don’t lose anything, you gain. Each time you drop things like this which you have, you become richer.
When greed disappears, there comes into existence sharing. When anger disappears, there comes into existence compassion. When hate, jealousy, possessiveness disappear, there comes into being love. I have got only myself. But that self expresses itself in many, many dimensions in sharing, in love, in compassion. So I can say you have more, much more, and yet I will say you are not yet. I am, and you are not. Question 4
The fourth question:
Osho, What do you mean when you say that man is a machine?
That man is a machine! Three scenes the first:
”Hello, Bernie old pal!” greeted Charlie, somewhat potted. ”Let’s go into a bar and celebrate the cigar habit.” ”What are you talking about?” asked Bernie.
”Listen,” Charlie went on, ”My wife wanted me to stop smoking. And her system is, when I feel like a cigar to get an O’ Henry candy bar instead.”
”Did you do that?” Bernie inquired.
”Yeah! And that’s why I am celebrating. I’m back on cigars that candy bar idea doesn’t work; believe me, I tried it. Every time I wanted a cigar I bought an O’ Henry candy bar. But you want to know something? I couldn’t keep it lit!” When I say that man is a machine, I mean man functions through habits, not through awareness. When I say that man is a machine, I mean man functions through his past, not through his spontaneity. The second scene....
A night worker had let his whiskers grow until his favorite baseball team won the pennant, much to the disgust of his young and pretty wife.
On the day his team clinched the pennant he laid off work, got himself a shave, went home early, and slipped into bed. In the darkness he took his wife’s hand and placed it upon his smoothly shaven face. She turned slightly while running her fingers over the now smooth chin, and said, ”Make it snappy, kid! Old Whiskers will be home any minute now.”
When I say that man is a machine, I mean man does not see what is the case, man does not look into the present moment, man is not responsive to reality. Man goes on living in old ideas, man lives through habits. The third scene....
One day Mulla Nasruddin read a small poem in a magazine. He loved it. The poem was: Sir, Why not buy a bunch or two
Of springtime flowers fair?
And take them home one cheerless day,
But carry them with care.
Just hand them to your wife and say,
”I thought of you in town today.”

Mulla Nasruddin did exactly that. He bought some flowers, but instead of entering the house as usual, he knocked. And when his wife opened the door, he just handed them to her. To his great surprise she burst out crying. ”Why, whatever is the matter?” he asked.
”Oh,” she replied, ”I’ve had an awful day. I broke the teapot, the baby has been crying, the cook has left, and now you come home drunk!”
That’s what I mean when I say that man is a machine. And you don’t become aware of it, because how can a machine become aware? You need somebody to hammer on your head continuously, in the hope that sometime the hammer will really hit you, shock you out of your habits, and for a moment you will be awake. That’s the whole purpose of a master: to go on hitting you from this side, from that side, from all the sides, and to go on changing techniques, situations, devices so that some day you are caught unawares. Even if for a single moment you become aware, you will know that your whole past has been a mechanical past. You will know only then but not by my saying it that man is a machine. You will know only then, when you have tasted one moment of awareness. Then your whole life will be simply known, seen, recognized as mechanical. Because even to know that it has been mechanical, you need something to compare it with. You don’t have anything to compare it with; you live amongst machines. Your father is a machine, your mother is a machine, your wife is a machine, your friends, your boss you live amongst machines. You are a machine. How to become aware?
Once Mulla Nasruddin’s wife told me that she was never aware that her husband was drinking until he came home sober one night. If a man is continuously drinking it is very difficult to know that he is drinking; you become accustomed to seeing him in that way.
You are a machine. It hurts that’s the purpose of calling you a machine. Let it hurt. If it doesn’t hurt then you are incurable. If it hurts, then there is a possibility. If it hurts, it means that somehow, deep down in the unconscious, you also feel that, yes, it is so.
Do you live in the present moment? Do you recognize things as they are right now? Or do you just go on seeing them through old eyes, old mind...memory? Don’t you have clichs? You immediately put things into certain boxes, readymade boxes. For example, if you are a Hindu and you meet a man and you were very interested in the man...the man looks beautiful and is very nice and you like his vibe. Then you ask things about him and he says, ”I am a Mohammedan.” Finished. All that nice vibe is no longer there, you have shrunken back. You have a box, a fixed box, that Mohammedans are not good. You are a Hindu; Mohammedans are bad. You immediately categorize him, you pigeon-hole him. Now you are no longer interested in the reality of the man. The reality was saying something else, but it was going against your pat categories and theories. I have heard....
A young woman went to the big town nearby to work there. They were very poor and the mother was old, and as the young woman was the only child she had gone to work to earn some money. After a few months she came back with lots of money. The mother was very happy; she asked, ”So now, tell me, what did you do there?” The daughter was really honest and replied, ”I have become a prostitute.” ”What!” the mother screamed and fainted. When she came to after half an hour the mother again asked, ”Tell me again what you have become?”
And the daughter said, ”I told you, mother, that I have become a prostitute.” The mother said, ”Thank God! I thought you said you had become a Protestant!” They were Catholics, of course.
Categorization goes on continuously in the mind. Watch: when you do something, do you respond to the fact herenow, or do you follow certain pat theories? When you do something, do you do it with attention, awareness, or do you just do it like a robot?
I talked the other day about three awarenesses: awareness one, awareness two, awareness three. This is the first awareness: to watch yourself, to watch your actions, to watch your reactions, to watch your responses. How are you behaving as a man or as a machine? And out of one hundred, ninety-nine times you will find that you are behaving like a machine. But if you start becoming a little alert, then you are becoming something more than a machine; the plus point is arising in you. That awareness will help you to become man. Only when you are aware are you man. Fully aware, you are fully man. Fully unaware, you are a machine.

The fifth question:

Osho, Since I have been here, everything I have wished for has happened for me. Now I have all I could possibly want and I feel like my heart is breaking. What is happening?
You have misunderstood. The heart is breaking out of joy, the heart is breaking out of delight, sheer delight. In a certain moment joy becomes unbearable. When joy is unbearable, then you are really joyful. Then joy is at the pinnacle, then joy is at the hundred-degree point. If you can bear this much joy, sooner or later you will start evaporating through this joy, you will start disappearing into the divine. Don’t be afraid, nothing wrong is happening to you; you are blessed.
But it happens, our ideas.... If you see somebody crying, you think that the person is sad, he must be in misery. You start consoling. Have you heard the expression ’tears of joy’? There are tears of joy too. So don’t be in a hurry to console maybe he is just being joyful. But we only know of people crying when they are unhappy; we don’t know about people crying when they are happy because people are not happy at all. So tears of joy are only in poems, found in poems not in the eyes.
But tears have nothing to do with sadness. It is an ugly state of humanity, a sad state of affairs, that men cry and weep only when they are sad, miserable. Tears have nothing to do with misery as such, tears come only when something is overflowing. It may be sadness, it may be joy, it may be love, it may be anger. You can watch women: when they become too angry they start crying. It is anger, not sadness. Watch a small child: if he laughs too much he starts crying. It is too much, unbearable; he starts overflowing into tears. Tears are just an indication that the cup is overfull they start overflowing.
You say: ”Since I have been here everything I have wished for has happened to me....” That’s why the joy is becoming unbearable; you are coming closer to home. ”Now I have all I could possibly want and I feel like my heart is breaking. What is happening?” The question is from Anand Pratima. Something tremendously beautiful is happening. Don’t try to analyze it and don’t try to think about it. Don’t try to interpret it, otherwise the mind can destroy the whole thing. It is mind trying to interfere with the heart. This question is from the mind. The heart is overfull with joy, that’s why it is breaking; it cannot contain it, the joy is too much. Let it break. That’s what I am here for, that’s why you have come to me. Let it break, let it go into pieces.
Out of joy, let it explode.
Let it disappear into infinity.

The sixth question:

Osho, Why am I always afraid of others’ opinions?

Because you are not, because you are not yet. You are nothing but a piled-up phenomenon of others’ opinions. Who are you? Somebody says you are beautiful so you are beautiful, and somebody says you are ugly so you are ugly, and somebody says you are wonderful so you are wonderful. And somebody says, ”I have never seen such a nasty person,” so you are a nasty person. And people go on saying, and you go on collecting all these things, and that is your image. That’s why your image is very contradictory, ambiguous: one person says you are beautiful, another says you are ugly. You want to forget this person’s idea that you are ugly, but you cannot forget it, it will be there. If you keep the opinion that you are beautiful you will have to keep the opinion that you are ugly too. Your image is very ambiguous, you don’t know exactly who you are. You are a hodge-podge, what we in India call a kedgeree, a mixture of so many things. You don’t have a soul yet. You don’t have any individuality, you don’t have any integrated center, you are just a junkyard of others’ opinions. That’s why you are afraid, because if others’ opinions change, you change; you are in the grip of their hands. And this is the trick society has used. Society has a technique: it makes you very ambitious for social respect. Through it, it manipulates you. If you follow the rules of society it respects you, if you don’t follow the rules of society it insults you tremendously, it hurts you very badly. And to follow the rules of society is to become a slave. Yes, it pays you great respect for being a slave, but if you want to be a free man the society becomes angry, it does not want to have anything to do with you.
To really be a free man and to exist in any society is very difficult. And I say it to you from my own experience. It is almost impossible to exist, because the society does not want any free man. The free man is a danger to the society’s existence. The society likes zombies, machines, robots always ready just to fall anywhere into a queue. Just call loudly to them, ”Attention!” and they start falling in line just mechanically. They don’t ask why, they are imitators.
Now the society pays them well: it gives them respect, it gives them prizes, awards, honors it has to, this is the trick. It never gives any award to those who are free, it never honors them. How can it honor them? they are enemies. A free man is an enemy in an unfree society, a moral man is an enemy in an immoral society, a religious man is an enemy in an irreligious society. In a world of materialism a spiritual man is always in difficulty: he does not fit in anywhere.

To fit in with others the society gives you as much as you want; it gives you a good image, it buttresses you. But if you don’t listen, then it starts changing its opinion. It can demolish you within seconds, because your image is in social hands. So this is the first thing to be understood. You ask: ”Why am I always afraid of others’ opinions?” Because you are not yet, you are nothing but others’ opinions, hence the fear: they can take back their opinions. The priest has said that you are a very good man. Now, if you behave, you will remain a good man. If you don’t behave according to him and he may be himself a neurotic, but you have to behave according to him if you don’t behave, if you do something on your own, the priest will look at you and say, ”Now you are going against morality, you are going against religion, you are going against tradition. You are falling into sin!” He will change his opinion of you and you were ’good’ because of his opinion.
Be yourself. Nobody can make you good and nobody can make you bad. Except yourself, nobody can make you good and nobody can make you bad. These false images are just living in dreams. A man was told by his doctor, ”You are going to make medical history, man. You are the only male ever recorded who has become pregnant!”
The man replied, ”This is terrible! Whatever will the neighbors say? I am not even married.” Now he is not interested in history and in setting a medical record, he is worried about what the neighbors will say because he is not even married.
We are continuously afraid. This fear will continue if you don’t drop collecting opinions. Drop them all opinions. Somebody believes that you are a saint? Drop it, because he is dangerous; he will manipulate you through his idea. Once you listen to him and you believe him, he becomes the master and you become the slave. Sometimes people come to me and say, ”You are a great saint.” I say, ”Sorry, excuse me. Never utter such a word to me, because I am not going to be manipulated by anybody. I am just myself saint or sinner, that doesn’t matter!” The man is thinking that he is trying to praise me. Maybe he is not even aware of what he is doing. Whenever you praise a person you become powerful. Whenever you praise a person and he accepts your praise, he has fallen a victim. Now you will control him. Now whenever he wants to do something, any innocent thing.... Just think: you call a certain man a saint, a mahatma, a great sage. Now one day he wants to smoke what to do? He cannot smoke, because what will happen to his sainthood? Now it seems too much to pay with sainthood just for a smoke; he cannot smoke because so many people call him a saint. Or he will become a hypocrite. He may start smoking behind the door and he will not say that he smokes, and he will condemn smoking like anything when he is in public. Then he will have two faces, the public and the private. Then he will be split. Never accept others’ opinions, good or bad. Just tell them, ”Sorry. Please keep your opinion to yourself. I am myself.” If you can remain that alert, nobody will ever be able to manipulate you, you will remain free. And freedom is joy. Freedom is difficult, remember, because society consists of slaves. Freedom is difficult, but freedom is the only joy there is. Freedom is the only dance there is, and freedom is the only door towards God. A slave never reaches to God, he cannot.

The seventh question:

Osho, It has been said that the English make the best servants in the world. When you gave me my name you translated it as ’in service of love’. I know now that it can also be translated as ’the servant of love’. I have wondered about this. Sometimes it seems that I am most in service of love when I am most myself and not intending to serve. Otherwise it seems more like subservience and that I am suffering from the English cultural disease of politeness, servility and helpfulness. Will you please comment? The question is from Ma Prem Dasi. Prem Dasi actually means ’the servant of love’. But while giving sannyas to her, I had knowingly translated it as ’in service of love’. The exact translation is ’the servant of love’. I translated it as ’in service of love’ for a certain reason.
I would like you to become more and more serving, but I would not like you to become servants. Servants don’t serve, only masters serve; servants do their duty. Duty is a four-letter, ugly word. They have to do it; there is no beauty in it, there is no joy in it. So be in service, but never be a servant; that is one thing. The second thing: When you become a servant you learn habits. Service is an ongoing process; to become a servant is to attain to a character, a dead character. People know you are a public servant, people know that that man is a servant.
For example, you are passing on a road, and you find a house is on fire and you rush into it, and you save a child who was going to die. But you don’t have to do it; you were not in search of some public service. You were just going for a morning walk and the house was on fire. You were not thinking about it at all; just the situation and the response.... You are in service. But a servant is dangerous, because if he cannot find somebody to serve, he will force somebody to be served.
I have heard about a Christian missionary who was teaching his students, the Sunday school students, small boys and girls...he was telling them to do one good thing, one good work, at least once a week. Next Sunday he inquired whether they had done any good job, had they done any public service, had they been of some help to somebody? Three boys stood up, and he was very happy. Out of thirty, at least three...but that too is a great percentage, because who listens?
So he asked the first boy, ”What did you do? Tell the whole class.” And the boy said ”Sir, I helped an old woman to cross the road.”
The missionary said, ”Very good. Always take care of old women.”
And then he asked another boy, and the boy replied, ”I also helped an old woman to cross the street.” Then the priest was a little puzzled...but he saw nothing to be puzzled about as there are so many old women; maybe he also got one woman.
So he asked the third, and the third said, ”I also helped an old woman to cross the street.” Then the priest said, ”But this seems too much you all three got old women?” They answered, ”No, there were not three, there was one. Only one woman was there, we all three helped.” So he said, ”But...three were needed? You are saying three were needed?” ”Even with six it would have been difficult because she didn’t want to go to the other side. It was very difficult, sir, but we did it, because something was to be done! She was very angry!” Never be a servant, otherwise you will be in search. And if you cannot find some place to serve, you will be very angry. These people are there all over the world, the public servants; they are the most mischievous people. They create much mischief...because when people don’t want to be served, then too they force their service. They have to force, they have an investment there. They cannot allow a beautiful world to exist because what will happen to them? Just think: no lepers left, no ill people left, no hospitals needed. And all have become enlightened no schools, no colleges and no universities needed.... What will happen to the public servants? They will start committing suicide. Nobody to serve! They need, they will manage somehow to create a situation where they can be of service; their whole prestige depends on it. It is an ego trip.
That’s why, knowing well.... I remember exactly when I gave sannyas to Prem Dasi: I was just going to translate it as ’the servant of love’, then I thought it would be wrong. The word means that, but I changed it and I told her ’in service of love’.
Be in service, but don’t make service your character. I love people who live characterlessly, who live moment to moment, who just respond to situations. Otherwise you will be in bondage. And you are right, Prem Dasi. You say: ”I am most in service of love when I am most myself and not intending to serve.” Perfectly true. It’s how it is. When you intend to serve, it is no longer beautiful, it is no longer love. When you are yourself, utterly yourself... out of that independence, out of that being, arises love and you serve people. And there is no feeling that you are a servant and they are masters. You simply serve because you have so much to give that you have to share: you flow in your sharing, in your love, in your compassion.

The last question:

Osho, Can prayer be sometimes harmful?
Never heard of it, except in one case. This is the story.
Two girls married on the same day and took their new husbands to the same honeymoon hotel. The four of them sat in the lounge thinking how obvious it would look if they all went to bed at the same early hour, but after a while it was decided that the girls should go out in the direction of the ’Ladies’ and then slip up to their rooms, and the men would have a last drink at the bar. After about ten or fifteen minutes the men would leave casually in the same manner and join the brides.
However, just as they were about to follow the girls, every light in the place failed which was disconcerting in a strange building. Nevertheless, each was convinced he could find his room, and so they set off. Harry groped upstairs and along the passages, counting doors in his careful way for he was a very careful man and found the room. Just to make sure, he struck a match and saw bits of confetti on the landing. Then quietly entering he carefully took off his clothes, put on his pyjamas, knelt down and said his prayers, climbed into bed and began to make love.
At that very moment all the lights came on and he saw that he was in the ’right’ room as it were, but on the wrong floor, and this was the other man’s bride! He grabbed his clothes and hurried off to his own room only to find that the other man was an atheist!


Mind, intellect, and the formed contents of that mind are It, so too are the world and all that seems from It to differ, all things that can be sensed, and the perceiver, also dullness, aversion, desire and enlightenment. Like a lamp that shines in the darkness of spiritual unknowing, it removes obscurations of a mind as far as the fragmentations of intellect obtain. Who can imagine the self-being of desirelessness? There’s nothing to be negated, nothing to be affirmed or grasped; for It can never be conceived. By the fragmentations of the intellect are the deluded fettered; undivided and pure remains spontaneity. If you question ultimacy with the postulates of the many and the one, oneness is not given, for by transcending knowledge are sentient beings freed. The radiant is potency latent in the intellect, and this is shown to be meditation; unswerving Mind is our true essence.
The Tantra vision is a direct approach towards God, towards reality, towards that which is. It has no mediators, no middlemen, it has no priests. And Tantra says the moment the priest enters, religion is corrupted. It is not the devil who corrupts religion, it is the priest. The priest is in the service of the devil. God can only be approached directly. There is no via media. You cannot go via somebody else because God is immediacy, God is herenow, already surrounding you. Within, without, only God is. There is no need to find somebody to help you to find God. You are already in it, you have never been away from it. Even if you want to, you cannot be away from it. Even if you make all the efforts, it is impossible to go away. There is nowhere else to go, and there is nothing else to be.
Tantra is not a religion in the ordinary sense because it has no rituals, it has no priests, it has no scriptures. It is an individual approach towards reality. It is tremendously rebellious. Its trust is not in the organization, its trust is not in the community; its trust is in the individual. Tantra believes in you. I have heard....
It happened in a Billy Graham revival meeting a guy was collecting donations and then he started to split with the money. Two policemen caught him redhanded; they brought him to Billy Graham. Naturally Billy Graham was very angry and said to the man, ”This money belongs to God, and what were you trying to do? Trying to cheat God?”
The man said, ”Sir, I took the money in an effort to get closer to God by eliminating the middleman, of course.”
The middleman is not needed at all. The real master never tries to become the middleman; he is not. He helps you not to reach to God, he helps you only to become aware of that which is already there. He is not a bridge between you and God, he is just a bridge between your unawareness and awareness. The moment you become aware, you are joined to God directly, immediately, without anybody standing between you and God. This Tantra vision is one of the greatest visions ever dreamed by man: a religion without the priest, a religion without the temple, a religion without the organization; a religion which does not destroy the individual but respects individuality tremendously, a religion which trusts in the ordinary man and woman. And this trust goes very deep. Tantra trusts in your body; no other religion trusts in your body. And when religions don’t trust in your body, they create a split between you and your body. They make you enemies of your bodies, they start destroying the wisdom of the body.
Tantra trusts in your body. Tantra trusts in your senses. Tantra trusts in your energy. Tantra trusts in you in toto. Tantra does not deny anything but transforms everything.
How to attain to this Tantra vision? This is the map to turn you on, and to turn you in, and to turn you beyond.
The first thing is the body. The body is your base, it is your ground, it is where you are grounded. To make you antagonistic towards the body is to destroy you, is to make you schizophrenic, is to make you miserable, is to create hell. You are the body. Of course you are more than the body, but that ’more’ will follow later on. First, you are the body. The body is your basic truth, so never be against the body. Whenever you are against the body, you are going against God. Whenever you are disrespectful to your body you are losing contact with reality, because your body is your contact, your body is your bridge. Your body is your temple. Tantra teaches reverence for the body, love, respect for the body, gratitude for the body. The body is marvelous, it is the greatest of mysteries.
But you have been taught to be against the body. So sometimes you are over-mystified by the tree, by the green tree; sometimes mystified by the moon and the sun, sometimes mystified by a flower but never mystified by your own body. And your body is the most complex phenomenon in existence. No flower, no tree has such a beautiful body as you have; no moon, no sun, no star has such an evolved mechanism as you have. You have been taught to appreciate the flower, which is a simple thing. You have been taught to appreciate a tree, which is a simple thing. You have even been taught to appreciate stones, rocks, mountains, rivers, but you have never been taught to respect your own body, never to be mystified by it. Yes, it is very close, so it is very easy to forget about it. It is very obvious, so it is easy to neglect it. But this is the most beautiful phenomenon. If you look at a flower, people will say, ”How aesthetic!” And if you look at a woman’s beautiful face or a man’s beautiful face, people will say, ”This is lust.” If you go to the tree and stand there, and look in a dazed state at the flower your eyes wide open, your senses wide open to allow the beauty of the flower to enter you people will think you are a poet or a painter or a mystic. But if you go to a woman or a man and just stand there with great reverence and respect, and look at the woman with your eyes wide open and your senses drinking the beauty of the woman, the police will catch hold of you. Nobody will say that you are a mystic, a poet; nobody will appreciate what you are doing.
Something has gone wrong. If you go to a stranger on the street and you say, ”What beautiful eyes you have!” you will feel embarrassed, he will feel embarrassed. He will not be able to say thank you to you. In fact he will feel offended. He will feel offended, because who are you to interfere in his private life? Who are you to dare? If you go and touch the tree, the tree feels happy. But if you go and touch a man, he will feel offended. What has gone wrong? Something has been damaged tremendously and very deeply. Tantra teaches you to reclaim respect for the body, love for the body. Tantra teaches you to look at the body as the greatest creation of God. Tantra is the religion of the body. Of course it goes higher, but it never leaves the body; it is grounded there. It is the only religion which is really grounded in the earth: it has roots. Other religions are uprooted trees dead, dull, dying; the juice does not flow in them. Tantra is really juicy, very alive. The first thing is to learn respect for the body, to unlearn all the nonsense that has been taught to you about the body. Otherwise you will never turn on, and you will never turn in, and you will never turn beyond. Start from the beginning. The body is your beginning. The body has to be purified of many repressions. A great catharsis is needed for the body, a great rechana. The body has become poisoned because you have been against it, you have repressed it in many ways. Your body is existing at the minimum, that’s why you are miserable.
Tantra says: Bliss is possible only when you exist at the optimum, never before it. Bliss is possible only when you live intensely. How can you live intensely if you are against the body? You are always lukewarm, the fire has cooled down. Down the centuries, the fire has been destroyed. The fire has to be rekindled. Tantra says: First purify the body purify it of all repressions. Allow the body energy to flow, remove the blocks. It is very diffi-cult to come across a person who has no blocks, it is very difficult to come across a person whose body is not tight. Loosen this tightness; this tension is blocking your energy, the flow cannot be possible with this tension. Why is everybody so uptight? Why can’t you relax? Have you seen a cat sleeping, dozing in the afternoon? How simply and how beautifully the cat relaxes. Can’t you relax the same way? You toss and turn in your bed; you can’t relax. And the beauty of the cat’s relaxation is that it relaxes utterly and yet is perfectly alert. A slight movement in the room and it will open its eyes, it will jump and be ready. It is not that it is just asleep. The cat’s sleep is something to be learned; man has forgotten. Tantra says: Learn from the cats how they sleep, how they relax, how they live in a non-tense way. And the whole animal world lives in that non-tense way. Man has to learn this, because man has been conditioned wrongly, man has been programmed wrongly.
From the very childhood you have been programmed to be tight. You don’t breathe...out of fear. Out of fear of sexuality people don’t breathe, because when you breathe deeply, your breath goes exactly to the sex center and hits it, massages it from the inside, excites it. Because you have been taught that sex is dangerous, each child starts breathing in a shallow way, hung up just in the chest. He never goes beyond that because if he goes beyond it, suddenly there is excitement; sexuality is aroused and fear arises. The moment you breathe deeply, sex energy is released. Sex energy has to be released, it has to flow all over your being. Then your body will become orgasmic. But afraid to breathe, so afraid that almost half the lungs are full of carbon dioxide.... There are many, many thousands of holes in the lungs and ordinarily fifty percent are never cleaned, they always remain full of carbon dioxide. That’s why you are dull, that’s why you don’t look alert, that’s why awareness is difficult. It is not accidental that Yoga and Tantra both teach deep breathing, pranayama, to unload your lungs of the carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide is not for you; it has to be thrown out continuously. You have to breathe in new, fresh air; you have to breathe more oxygen. Oxygen will create your inner fire, oxygen will make you aflame. But oxygen will also inflame your sexuality. So only Tantra can allow you real deep breathing; even Yoga cannot allow you real deep breathing. Yoga also allows you to go up to the navel not beyond that, not to cross the hara center, not to cross swadhishthan, because once you cross swadhishthan you jump into the muladhar. Only Tantra allows you total being and total flow. Tantra gives you unconditional freedom; whatsoever you are and whatsoever you can be, Tantra puts no boundaries on you. It does not define you, it simply gives you total freedom. The understanding is that when you are totally free, then much is possible. This has been my observation, that people who are sexually repressed become unintelligent. Only very, very sexually alive people are intelligent people. Now the idea that sex is sin must have damaged intelligence, must have damaged it very badly. When you are really flowing and your sexuality has no fight and conflict with you, when you cooperate with it, your mind will function at its optimum. You will be intelligent, alert, alive. The body has to be befriended, says Tantra.
Do you ever touch your own body sometimes? Do you ever feel your own body, or do you remain as if you are encased in a dead thing? That’s what is happening: people are almost frozen; they are carrying the body like a casket. It is heavy, it obstructs, it does not help you to communicate with reality. If you allow the electricity of the body flow to move from the toe to the head, if you allow total freedom for its energy the bioenergy you will become a river and you will not feel the body at all. You will feel almost bodiless. Not fighting with the body, you become bodiless. Fighting with the body, the body becomes a burden, and carrying your body as a burden you can never arrive to God.
The body has to become weightless so that you almost start walking above the earth; that is the Tantra way to walk. You are so weightless that there is no gravitation, you can simply fly. But that comes out of great acceptance. It is going to be difficult to accept your body. You condemn it, you always find faults with it. You never appreciate, you never love it, and then you want a miracle that somebody will come and love your body. If you yourself cannot love it, then how are you going to find somebody else to love your body? If you yourself cannot love it, nobody is going to love your body, because your vibe will keep people repelled. You fall in love with a person who loves himself, never otherwise. The first love has to be towards oneself; only from that center can other kinds of love arise. You don’t love your body, you hide it in a thousand and one ways. You hide your body’s smell, you hide your body in clothes, you hide your body in ornamentation. You try to create some beauty that you continuously feel you are missing, and in that very effort you become artificial. Now think of a woman with lipstick on her lips...it is sheer ugliness. Lips should be red out of aliveness, they should not be painted. They should be alive out of love, they should be alive because you are alive. Now just painting the lips, and you think that you are beautifying yourself. Only people who are very conscious of their ugliness go to beauty parlors, otherwise there is no need.
Do you ever come across a bird which is ugly? Do you ever come across a deer which is ugly? It never happens. They don’t go to any beauty parlor, and they don’t consult an expert; they simply accept themselves and they are beautiful in their acceptance. In that very acceptance they shower beauty upon themselves. The moment you accept yourself you become beautiful. When you are delighted with your own body, you will delight others also. Many people will fall in love with you because you yourself are in love with yourself. Now you are angry with yourself; you know that you are ugly, you know that you are repulsive, horrible. This idea will repel people; this idea will not help them to fall in love with you, it will keep them away. Even if they were coming closer to you, the moment they feel your vibration they will move away. There is no need to chase anybody, the chasing arises only because we have not been in love with ourselves. Otherwise people come...it becomes almost impossible for them not to fall in love with you if you are in love with yourself. Why did so many people come to Buddha, and why did so many people come to Saraha, and why did so many people come to Jesus? These people were in love with themselves. They were in such great love and they were so delighted with their being that it was natural for whosoever would pass to be pulled by them; like a magnet they would pull. They were so enchanted with their own being, how could you avoid that enchantment? Just being there was such a great bliss. Tantra teaches the first thing: Be loving towards your body, befriend your body, revere your body, respect your body, take care of your body. It is God’s gift: treat it well and it will reveal great mysteries to you. All growth depends on how you are related to your body.
And then the second thing Tantra speaks about is the senses. Again, the religions are against the senses; they try to dull the senses and sensitivity. And the senses are your doors of perception, the senses are the windows into reality. What is your eye? What are your ears? What is your nose? Windows into reality, windows into God. If you see rightly, you will see God everywhere. So eyes have not to be closed, eyes have to be opened rightly; eyes have not to be destroyed. Ears have not to be destroyed, because all these sounds are divine. These birds are chanting mantras. These trees are giving sermons in silence. All sounds are his, and all forms are his. So if you don’t have sensitivity in you, how will you know God? And you have to go to a church, to a temple to find him...and he is all over the place. In a man-made temple, in a man-made church, you go to find God? Man seems to be so stupid. God is everywhere, alive and kicking everywhere. But for that you need clean senses, purified senses.
So Tantra teaches that the senses are the doors of perception. They have been dulled, you have to drop that dullness; your senses have to be cleansed. Your senses are like a mirror which has become dull because so much dust has gathered upon it; the dust has to be cleansed.
Look at the Tantra approach about everything. Others say: Dull your senses, kill your taste! And Tantra says: Taste God in every taste. Others say: Kill your capacity to touch. And Tantra says: Flow totally into your touch, because whatsoever you touch is divine. It is a total reversal of the so-called religions, it is a radical revolution from the very roots.
Touch, smell, taste, see, hear as totally as possible. You will have to learn the language because the society has befooled you, it has made you forget. Each child is born with beautiful senses. Watch a child...when he looks at something he is completely absorbed, when he is playing with his toys he is utterly absorbed. When he looks, he becomes just the eyes. Look at the eyes of a child. When he hears, he becomes just the ears. When he eats something, he is just there on the tongue, he becomes just the taste. See a child eating an apple with what gusto! with what great energy! with what delight! See a child running after a butterfly in the garden...so absorbed that even if God were available he would not run that way. Such a tremendous, meditative state and without any effort. See a child collecting seashells on the beach as if he were collecting diamonds. Everything is precious when the senses are alive, everything is clear when the senses are alive.
Later on in life the same child will look at reality as if hidden behind a darkened glass. Much smoke and dust have gathered on the glass and you are hidden behind it and you are looking. Because of this, everything looks dull and dead. You look at the tree and the tree looks dull because your eyes are dull. You hear a song, but there is no appeal in it because your ears are dull. You can hear a Saraha and you will not be able to appreciate him, because your intelligence is dull.
Reclaim your forgotten language. Whenever you have time, be more in your senses. Eating, don’t just eat; try to learn the forgotten language of taste again try. Touch the bread, feel the texture of it; feel with open eyes, feel with closed eyes. While eating, chew it you are chewing God. Remember it! It will be disrespectful not to chew well, not to taste well. Let it be a prayer, and you will start a new consciousness arising in you. You will learn the way of Tantra alchemy. Touch people more. We have become very touchy about touch. If somebody is talking to you and comes too close, you start moving backwards. We protect our territory. We don’t touch and we don’t allow others to touch; we don’t hold hands, we don’t hug. We don’t enjoy each other’s being. Go to the tree, touch the tree. Touch the rock. Go to the river, let the river flow through your hands. Feel it! Swim, and feel the water again as the fish feels it. Don’t miss any opportunity to revive your senses. And there are a thousand and one opportunities the whole day. There is no need to have some separate time for it. The whole day is a training in sensitivity. Use all the opportunities. Sitting under your shower, use the opportunity feel the touch of the water falling on you. Lie down on the ground, naked, feel the earth. Lie down on the beach, feel the sand. Listen to the sounds of the sand, listen to the sounds of the sea. Use every opportunity; only then will you be able to learn the language of the senses again. And Tantra can be understood only when your body is alive and your senses feel.
Free your senses from habits. Habits are one of the root causes of dullness; find out new ways of doing things. Invent new ways of loving. People are very much afraid....
I have heard....
The doctor told the working chap that he could not complete his examination without a sample of urine. The small boy who was sent with the specimen spilled most of it while messing about. Fearing a good hiding, he topped it up with the urine of a cow in the field.
The doctor hastily sent for the farmer, who returned home to his wife in a furious temper and said, ”That’s you and your fancy positions! You would be on top, wouldn’t you? And now I am going to have a baby!” People have fixed habits. Even while making love they always make it in the same position the missionary posture. Find out new ways of feeling. Each experience has to be created with great sensitivity. When you make love to a woman or a man, make it a great celebration, and each time bring some new creativity into it. Sometimes have a dance before you make love, sometimes pray before you make love, sometimes go running into the forest, then make love. Sometimes go swimming and then make love. Then each love experience will create more and more sensitivity in you and love will never become dull and boring.
Find out new ways to explore the other, don’t get fixed in routines. All routines are anti-life: routines are in the service of death. And you can always invent there is no limit to inventions. Sometimes a small change and you will be tremendously benefited. You always eat at the table sometimes just go on the lawn, sit on the lawn and eat there, and you will be tremendously surprised: it is a totally different experience. The smell of the freshly-cut grass, the birds hopping around and singing, and the fresh air and the sun rays, and the feel of the wet grass underneath...it cannot be the same experience as when you sit on a chair and eat at your table. It is a totally different experience, all the ingredients are different.
Try sometimes just eating naked, and you will be surprised. Just a small change nothing much, you are sitting naked but you will have a totally different experience, because something new has been added to it. If you eat with a spoon and fork, eat sometimes with bare hands and you will have a different experience; your touch will bring some new warmth to the food. A spoon is a dead thing; when you eat with a spoon or a fork, you are far away. That same fear of touching anything even food cannot be touched. You will miss the texture, the touch, the feel of it. The food has as much feel as it has taste.
Many experiments have been done in the West on the fact that when we are enjoying anything, there are many things we are not aware of which contribute to the experience. For example, just close your eyes and close your nose and then eat an onion. Tell somebody to give it to you when you don’t know what he is giving whether he is giving you an onion or an apple. And it will be difficult for you to make out the difference if the nose is completely closed and the eyes are closed, blindfolded. It will be impossible for you to decide whether it is an onion or an apple, because the taste is not only the taste; fifty percent of it comes from the nose, and much comes from the eyes. It is not just taste, all the senses contribute. When you eat with your hands, your touch is contributing. It will be more tasty, it will be more human, more natural.
Find out new ways in everything. Let that be one of your sadhanas. Tantra says: If you can go on finding new ways every day, your life will remain a thrill, an adventure. You will never be bored. A bored person is an irreligious person. You will always be curious to know, you will always be on the verge of seeking the unknown and the unfamiliar. Your eyes will remain clear and your senses will remain clear, because when you are always on the verge of seeking, exploring, finding, searching, you cannot become dull, you cannot become stupid. No child is stupid; only later on do people become stupid.
Psychologists say that by the age of seven, stupidity starts. It starts nearabout the age of four but by the seventh year it is very, very apparent. Children start becoming stupid by the age of seven. In fact the child learns fifty percent of all the learning of his whole life by the time he is seven. If he lives for seventy years, then in the remaining sixty-three years he will learn only fifty percent fifty percent he has already learned. What happens? He becomes dull, he stops learning. If you think in terms of intelligence, by the age of seven a child starts becoming old. The moment the child thinks, ”I know,” he has started becoming old. Physically he will become old later on from the age of thirty-five he will start declining but mentally he is already on the decline. You will be surprised to know that your mental age, the average mental age, is twelve years. People don’t grow beyond that, they are stuck there. That’s why you see so much childishness in the world. Just insult a person who is sixty years of age and within seconds he is just a twelve-year-old child. And he is behaving in such a way that you will not be able to believe that such a grown-up person could behave in such a childish way. People are always ready to fall back. Their mental age is just skin-deep, hidden behind; just scratch a little and their mental age comes out. Their physical age is not of much importance. People die childish; they never grow. Tantra says: Learn new ways of doing things and free yourself of habits as much as possible. And Tantra says: Don’t be imitative, otherwise your senses will become dull. Don’t imitate! Find out ways of doing things in your own way; have your signature on everything that you do.
Just the other night a sannyasin who is going back was saying that love between her and her husband has disappeared. Now they are hanging together just for the children. I told her to meditate, to be friendly to the husband. If love has disappeared all has not disappeared; friendship is still possible be friendly. And she said, ”It is difficult. When a cup is broken it is broken.”
I told her that it seemed she had not heard that Zen people in Japan will purchase a cup from the supermarket, bring it home and break it first, then glue it together again to make it individual and special otherwise it is just a market thing. And if a friend comes and you give him tea in an ordinary cup and saucer, that is not good; that is ugly, that is not respectful. So they will bring a fresh new cup and break it. Of course then there is no other cup in the world exactly like it, there cannot be. Glued together, now it has some individuality, a signature. And when Zen people go to each other’s house or each other’s monastery, they will not just sip the tea. First they will appreciate the cup, they will look at it. The way it has been joined together is a piece of art the way the pieces have been broken and put together again.
The woman understood, she started laughing. She said, ”Then it is possible.” Bring individuality into things, don’t just be an imitator. To imitate is to miss life.

I have heard....
Mulla Nasruddin had a very horny parrot. The parrot was continuously saying foul things, particularly whenever there was a guest, and Mulla was very worried; it was getting terrible. Finally somebody suggested to him that he take it to the vet. So he takes the parrot to a vet. The vet examines the parrot extensively and says, ”Well, Nasruddin, you have a horny parrot. I have a sweet, young, female bird. For fifteen rupees your bird can go in the cage with my bird.”
Mulla’s parrot is in the cage listening. And Mulla says, ”God, I don’t know...fifteen rupees?” The parrot says, ”Come on, come on, Nasruddin. What the hell?”
Touch people more. We have become very touchy about touch. If somebody is talking to you and comes too close, you start moving backwards. We protect our territory. We don’t touch and we don’t allow others to touch; we don’t hold hands, we don’t hug. We don’t enjoy each other’s being. Go to the tree, touch the tree. Touch the rock. Go to the river, let the river flow through your hands. Feel it! Swim, and feel the water again as the fish feels it. Don’t miss any opportunity to revive your senses. And there are a thousand and one opportunities the whole day. There is no need to have some separate time for it. The whole day is a training in sensitivity. Use all the opportunities. Sitting under your shower, use the opportunity feel the touch of the water falling on you. Lie down on the ground, naked, feel the earth. Lie down on the beach, feel the sand. Listen to the sounds of the sand, listen to the sounds of the sea. Use every opportunity; only then will you be able to learn the language of the senses again. And Tantra can be understood only when your body is alive and your senses feel.
Free your senses from habits. Habits are one of the root causes of dullness; find out new ways of doing things. Invent new ways of loving. People are very much afraid....
I have heard....
The doctor told the working chap that he could not complete his examination without a sample of urine. The small boy who was sent with the specimen spilled most of it while messing about. Fearing a good hiding, he topped it up with the urine of a cow in the field.
The doctor hastily sent for the farmer, who returned home to his wife in a furious temper and said, ”That’s you and your fancy positions! You would be on top, wouldn’t you? And now I am going to have a baby!” People have fixed habits. Even while making love they always make it in the same position the missionary posture. Find out new ways of feeling. Each experience has to be created with great sensitivity. When you make love to a woman or a man, make it a great celebration, and each time bring some new creativity into it. Sometimes have a dance before you make love, sometimes pray before you make love, sometimes go running into the forest, then make love. Sometimes go swimming and then make love. Then each love experience will create more and more sensitivity in you and love will never become dull and boring.
Find out new ways to explore the other, don’t get fixed in routines. All routines are anti-life: routines are in the service of death. And you can always invent there is no limit to inventions. Sometimes a small change and you will be tremendously benefited. You always eat at the table sometimes just go on the lawn, sit on the lawn and eat there, and you will be tremendously surprised: it is a totally different experience. The smell of the freshly-cut grass, the birds hopping around and singing, and the fresh air and the sun rays, and the feel of the wet grass underneath...it cannot be the same experience as when you sit on a chair and eat at your table. It is a totally different experience, all the ingredients are different.
Try sometimes just eating naked, and you will be surprised. Just a small change nothing much, you are sitting naked but you will have a totally different experience, because something new has been added to it. If you eat with a spoon and fork, eat sometimes with bare hands and you will have a different experience; your touch will bring some new warmth to the food. A spoon is a dead thing; when you eat with a spoon or a fork, you are far away. That same fear of touching anything even food cannot be touched. You will miss the texture, the touch, the feel of it. The food has as much feel as it has taste.
Many experiments have been done in the West on the fact that when we are enjoying anything, there are many things we are not aware of which contribute to the experience. For example, just close your eyes and close your nose and then eat an onion. Tell somebody to give it to you when you don’t know what he is giving whether he is giving you an onion or an apple. And it will be difficult for you to make out the difference if the nose is completely closed and the eyes are closed, blindfolded. It will be impossible for you to decide whether it is an onion or an apple, because the taste is not only the taste; fifty percent of it comes from the nose, and much comes from the eyes. It is not just taste, all the senses contribute. When you eat with your hands, your touch is contributing. It will be more tasty, it will be more human, more natural.

Find out new ways in everything. Let that be one of your sadhanas. Tantra says: If you can go on finding new ways every day, your life will remain a thrill, an adventure. You will never be bored. A bored person is an irreligious person. You will always be curious to know, you will always be on the verge of seeking the unknown and the unfamiliar. Your eyes will remain clear and your senses will remain clear, because when you are always on the verge of seeking, exploring, finding, searching, you cannot become dull, you cannot become stupid. No child is stupid; only later on do people become stupid.
Psychologists say that by the age of seven, stupidity starts. It starts nearabout the age of four but by the seventh year it is very, very apparent. Children start becoming stupid by the age of seven. In fact the child learns fifty percent of all the learning of his whole life by the time he is seven. If he lives for seventy years, then in the remaining sixty-three years he will learn only fifty percent fifty percent he has already learned. What happens? He becomes dull, he stops learning. If you think in terms of intelligence, by the age of seven a child starts becoming old. The moment the child thinks, ”I know,” he has started becoming old. Physically he will become old later on from the age of thirty-five he will start declining but mentally he is already on the decline. You will be surprised to know that your mental age, the average mental age, is twelve years. People don’t grow beyond that, they are stuck there. That’s why you see so much childishness in the world. Just insult a person who is sixty years of age and within seconds he is just a twelve-year-old child. And he is behaving in such a way that you will not be able to believe that such a grown-up person could behave in such a childish way. People are always ready to fall back. Their mental age is just skin-deep, hidden behind; just scratch a little and their mental age comes out. Their physical age is not of much importance. People die childish; they never grow. Tantra says: Learn new ways of doing things and free yourself of habits as much as possible. And Tantra says: Don’t be imitative, otherwise your senses will become dull. Don’t imitate! Find out ways of doing things in your own way; have your signature on everything that you do.
Just the other night a sannyasin who is going back was saying that love between her and her husband has disappeared. Now they are hanging together just for the children. I told her to meditate, to be friendly to the husband. If love has disappeared all has not disappeared; friendship is still possible be friendly. And she said, ”It is difficult. When a cup is broken it is broken.”
I told her that it seemed she had not heard that Zen people in Japan will purchase a cup from the supermarket, bring it home and break it first, then glue it together again to make it individual and special otherwise it is just a market thing. And if a friend comes and you give him tea in an ordinary cup and saucer, that is not good; that is ugly, that is not respectful. So they will bring a fresh new cup and break it. Of course then there is no other cup in the world exactly like it, there cannot be. Glued together, now it has some individuality, a signature. And when Zen people go to each other’s house or each other’s monastery, they will not just sip the tea. First they will appreciate the cup, they will look at it. The way it has been joined together is a piece of art the way the pieces have been broken and put together again.
The woman understood, she started laughing. She said, ”Then it is possible.” Bring individuality into things, don’t just be an imitator. To imitate is to miss life. I have heard....
Mulla Nasruddin had a very horny parrot. The parrot was continuously saying foul things, particularly whenever there was a guest, and Mulla was very worried; it was getting terrible. Finally somebody suggested to him that he take it to the vet. So he takes the parrot to a vet. The vet examines the parrot extensively and says, ”Well, Nasruddin, you have a horny parrot. I have a sweet, young, female bird. For fifteen rupees your bird can go in the cage with my bird.”
Mulla’s parrot is in the cage listening. And Mulla says, ”God, I don’t know...fifteen rupees?” The parrot says, ”Come on, come on, Nasruddin. What the hell?” Touch people more. We have become very touchy about touch. If somebody is talking to you and comes too close, you start moving backwards. We protect our territory. We don’t touch and we don’t allow others to touch; we don’t hold hands, we don’t hug. We don’t enjoy each other’s being.
Go to the tree, touch the tree. Touch the rock. Go to the river, let the river flow through your hands. Feel it! Swim, and feel the water again as the fish feels it. Don’t miss any opportunity to revive your senses. And there are a thousand and one opportunities the whole day. There is no need to have some separate time for it. The whole day is a training in sensitivity. Use all the opportunities. Sitting under your shower, use the opportunity feel the touch of the water falling on you. Lie down on the ground, naked, feel the earth. Lie down on the beach, feel the sand. Listen to the sounds of the sand, listen to the sounds of the sea. Use every opportunity; only then will you be able to learn the language of the senses again. And Tantra can be understood only when your body is alive and your senses feel.

Free your senses from habits. Habits are one of the root causes of dullness; find out new ways of doing things. Invent new ways of loving. People are very much afraid....
I have heard....
The doctor told the working chap that he could not complete his examination without a sample of urine. The small boy who was sent with the specimen spilled most of it while messing about. Fearing a good hiding, he topped it up with the urine of a cow in the field.
The doctor hastily sent for the farmer, who returned home to his wife in a furious temper and said, ”That’s you and your fancy positions! You would be on top, wouldn’t you? And now I am going to have a baby!” People have fixed habits. Even while making love they always make it in the same position the missionary posture. Find out new ways of feeling. Each experience has to be created with great sensitivity. When you make love to a woman or a man, make it a great celebration, and each time bring some new creativity into it. Sometimes have a dance before you make love, sometimes pray before you make love, sometimes go running into the forest, then make love. Sometimes go swimming and then make love. Then each love experience will create more and more sensitivity in you and love will never become dull and boring.
Find out new ways to explore the other, don’t get fixed in routines. All routines are anti-life: routines are in the service of death. And you can always invent there is no limit to inventions. Sometimes a small change and you will be tremendously benefited. You always eat at the table sometimes just go on the lawn, sit on the lawn and eat there, and you will be tremendously surprised: it is a totally different experience. The smell of the freshly-cut grass, the birds hopping around and singing, and the fresh air and the sun rays, and the feel of the wet grass underneath...it cannot be the same experience as when you sit on a chair and eat at your table. It is a totally different experience, all the ingredients are different.
Try sometimes just eating naked, and you will be surprised. Just a small change nothing much, you are sitting naked but you will have a totally different experience, because something new has been added to it. If you eat with a spoon and fork, eat sometimes with bare hands and you will have a different experience; your touch will bring some new warmth to the food. A spoon is a dead thing; when you eat with a spoon or a fork, you are far away. That same fear of touching anything even food cannot be touched. You will miss the texture, the touch, the feel of it. The food has as much feel as it has taste.
Many experiments have been done in the West on the fact that when we are enjoying anything, there are many things we are not aware of which contribute to the experience. For example, just close your eyes and close your nose and then eat an onion. Tell somebody to give it to you when you don’t know what he is giving whether he is giving you an onion or an apple. And it will be difficult for you to make out the difference if the nose is completely closed and the eyes are closed, blindfolded. It will be impossible for you to decide whether it is an onion or an apple, because the taste is not only the taste; fifty percent of it comes from the nose, and much comes from the eyes. It is not just taste, all the senses contribute. When you eat with your hands, your touch is contributing. It will be more tasty, it will be more human, more natural.
Find out new ways in everything. Let that be one of your sadhanas. Tantra says: If you can go on finding new ways every day, your life will remain a thrill, an adventure. You will never be bored. A bored person is an irreligious person. You will always be curious to know, you will always be on the verge of seeking the unknown and the unfamiliar. Your eyes will remain clear and your senses will remain clear, because when you are always on the verge of seeking, exploring, finding, searching, you cannot become dull, you cannot become stupid. No child is stupid; only later on do people become stupid.
Psychologists say that by the age of seven, stupidity starts. It starts nearabout the age of four but by the seventh year it is very, very apparent. Children start becoming stupid by the age of seven. In fact the child learns fifty percent of all the learning of his whole life by the time he is seven. If he lives for seventy years, then in the remaining sixty-three years he will learn only fifty percent fifty percent he has already learned. What happens? He becomes dull, he stops learning. If you think in terms of intelligence, by the age of seven a child starts becoming old. The moment the child thinks, ”I know,” he has started becoming old. Physically he will become old later on from the age of thirty-five he will start declining but mentally he is already on the decline. You will be surprised to know that your mental age, the average mental age, is twelve years. People don’t grow beyond that, they are stuck there. That’s why you see so much childishness in the world. Just insult a person who is sixty years of age and within seconds he is just a twelve-year-old child. And he is behaving in such a way that you will not be able to believe that such a grown-up person could behave in such a childish way. People are always ready to fall back. Their mental age is just skin-deep, hidden behind; just scratch a little and their mental age comes out. Their physical age is not of much importance. People die childish; they never grow. Tantra says: Learn new ways of doing things and free yourself of habits as much as possible. And Tantra says: Don’t be imitative, otherwise your senses will become dull. Don’t imitate! Find out ways of doing things in your own way; have your signature on everything that you do.
Just the other night a sannyasin who is going back was saying that love between her and her husband has disappeared. Now they are hanging together just for the children. I told her to meditate, to be friendly to the husband. If love has disappeared all has not disappeared; friendship is still possible be friendly. And she said, ”It is difficult. When a cup is broken it is broken.”
I told her that it seemed she had not heard that Zen people in Japan will purchase a cup from the supermarket, bring it home and break it first, then glue it together again to make it individual and special otherwise it is just a market thing. And if a friend comes and you give him tea in an ordinary cup and saucer, that is not good; that is ugly, that is not respectful. So they will bring a fresh new cup and break it. Of course then there is no other cup in the world exactly like it, there cannot be. Glued together, now it has some individuality, a signature. And when Zen people go to each other’s house or each other’s monastery, they will not just sip the tea. First they will appreciate the cup, they will look at it. The way it has been joined together is a piece of art the way the pieces have been broken and put together again.
The woman understood, she started laughing. She said, ”Then it is possible.” Bring individuality into things, don’t just be an imitator. To imitate is to miss life. I have heard....
Mulla Nasruddin had a very horny parrot. The parrot was continuously saying foul things, particularly whenever there was a guest, and Mulla was very worried; it was getting terrible. Finally somebody suggested to him that he take it to the vet. So he takes the parrot to a vet. The vet examines the parrot extensively and says, ”Well, Nasruddin, you have a horny parrot. I have a sweet, young, female bird. For fifteen rupees your bird can go in the cage with my bird.”
Mulla’s parrot is in the cage listening. And Mulla says, ”God, I don’t know...fifteen rupees?” The parrot says, ”Come on, come on, Nasruddin. What the hell?” Finally the Mulla says, ”All right,” and gives the vet the fifteen rupees. The vet takes the bird, puts him in the cage with the female bird and closes the curtain. The two men go and sit down. There is a moment of silence, and then suddenly, ”Qua! Qua! Qua!” Feathers come flying over the top of the curtain.
The vet says, ”Holy Gee!” runs over and opens the curtain. The male has got the female bird down on the bottom of the cage with one claw with the other claw he is pulling out all her feathers and shouting in delight, ”For fifteen rupees I want you naked, naked!” Then seeing the vet and his master, Mulla Nasruddin, he screams again in joy and says, ”Hey Nasruddin, isn’t this the way you also like your women?” Even a parrot can learn human ways, can become imitative, can become neurotic. To be imitative is to be neurotic. The only way to be sane in the world is to be individual, authentically individual. Be your own being. The third thing that Tantra says is: First, the body has to be purified of repressions. Second, the senses have to be made alive again. Third, the mind has to drop neurotic thinking, obsessive thinking, and has to learn ways of silence. Whenever it is possible, relax. Whenever it is possible, put the mind aside. Now you will say, ”It is easy to say, but how to put the mind aside? It goes on and on.” There is a way. Tantra says: Watch those three awarenesses. Awareness one: Watch. Let the mind go, let the mind be filled with thoughts you simply watch, detached. There is no need to be worried about it, just watch. Just be the observer, and by and by you will see that silent gaps have started coming to you. Then, awareness two: When you have become aware that gaps have started coming, then become aware of the watcher. Now watch the watcher and then new gaps will start coming the watcher will start disappearing, just like the thoughts. One day the thinker also starts disappearing; then real silence arises. With the third awareness, both object and subject are gone; you have entered into the beyond.
When these three things are attained body purified of repressions, senses freed from dullness, mind liberated from obsessive thinking a vision arises in you free from all illusion. That is the Tantra vision. Now the sutras:
Mind, intellect, and the formed contents of that mind are It, so too are the world and all that seems from It to differ, all things that can be sensed, and the perceiver, also dullness, aversion, desire and enlightenment. When you have come to a state of silence where both the observer and the observed have disappeared, then you will come to know what this sutra means:
Mind, intellect, and the formed contents of that mind are It...
Existence is one, it is all a unity. There are not two things in existence it is oneness, it is one ocean. All divisions are there because we are divided inside; our divisions inside are projected onto the outside, and things look divided. When the body is pure, the senses open and the mind is silent, inner divisions disappear; inside there is pure space. When there is pure space inside, you become capable of knowing that the outside is also the same pure space. It is the same sky outside and in. In fact there is no ’out’ and no ’in’ anymore, it is all one. Mind, intellect, and the formed contents of the mind are It.... Now you will recognize that even thoughts were not enemies, even desires were not enemies. They were also forms of the same divinity, of the same one existence. Now you will recognize that nirvana and samsara are not two. Now you will have a very, very deep laugh, recognizing that there is no difference between bondage and enlightenment; that to know and to be ignorant are not different, because division is not possible; that between a buddha and a man who is not yet enlightened there is no difference.
But this is only known by a buddha. For the unenlightened man there is a great difference. A buddha cannot think, because through thinking there is always division; through non-thinking divisions disappear. So too are the world and all that seems from It to differ, all things that can be sensed, and the perceiver, also dullness, aversion, desire and enlightenment.
All is It. This is It! This totality is what Tantra calls It.
Now Saraha is saying to the king: Don’t be worried. Whether in the palace or on the cremation ground, whether known as a learned brahmin or known as a mad dog, doesn’t matter: It is It. I have come to that indivisible experience where the perceiver and the perceived are one, where the observer and the observed are one. I have arrived. Now I can see that those divisions of good and bad, of the sinner and the saint, were meaningless. There is no difference between sin and saintliness.
This is why I call Tantra the greatest rebellious attitude in the whole history of human consciousness. Saraha is saying: Sir, for you divisions exist. This is a cremation ground and where you live is a palace. For me there is no division. In this cremation ground have been many palaces in the past which have disappeared, and your palace will sooner or later become a cremation ground. Don’t be worried, it is only a question of time. And if you can see, then there is no difference. It is the same reality, somewhere becoming a saint and somewhere becoming a sinner; it is the same It. Like a lamp that shines in the darkness of spiritual unknowing, it removes obscurations of a mind as far as the fragmentations of intellect obtain. Who can imagine the self-being of desirelessness?
Like a lamp...Saraha says now, the third awareness is born in me. It is like a lamp that shines in the darkness of spiritual unknowing. Now I can see for the first time that matter and mind are one, that out and in are one, that body and soul are one, that this world and the other world are one, that this contains that too. Since this light happened to me, Saraha says, now there is no problem. Whatsoever is, is good. Like a lamp that shines in the darkness of spiritual unknowing, it removes obscurations of a mind... All my obscurities, all my hindrances things that were obstructing my vision are removed. I can see reality directly. Repressions are no longer there, my energies are in a flow. I am not against my body, I am not inimical to my body, I am one with my body. The division is dropped. My senses are all open and functioning at the optimum. My mind is silent, there is no obsessive thinking. When I need to I think, when I don’t need to I don’t think. I am the master of my house. A light was born in me, and with that light, all obscurities have disappeared. Now nothing obstructs me, my vision is total. The wall that was around me has disappeared. That wall consists of three things: repressions in the body, dust in the senses, and thoughts in the mind. These are the three bricks that the China Wall around you is made of. Remove these bricks and the wall disappears. And when the wall is gone, you come to know the One.
...as far as the fragmentations of intellect obtain. Who can imagine the self-being of desirelessness? And, sir, you have come to ask me what is my experience? It is difficult for you even to imagine. It is difficult for me to say, it is difficult for you to understand. But I can show you the way for you to experience it also that is the only way. When you have tasted, only then will you know.
There’s nothing to be negated, nothing to be affirmed or grasped; for It can never be conceived. By the fragmentations of the intellect are the deluded fettered; undivided and pure remains spontaneity. Saraha says: I cannot say It is not, I cannot say It is. I cannot negate It, I cannot posit It. I cannot use no, I cannot use yes, because both fall short. It is bigger than both It contains both, and yet It is plus, it is transcendental to both. Those who say God is, degrade God they drag him down. Those who say God is not, certainly they don’t understand at all. They are both the same: one negates, one posits. The positive and the negative belong to the same mind, the same thinking mind. Yes and no are both parts of language, of thought. Saraha says: I cannot say God is, I cannot say God is not. I can only show you the way...where It is, what It is, how It is. You can experience It. You can open your own eyes and see It. Once it happened that a blind man was brought to Buddha. And the blind man was no ordinary blind man, he was a great academician, he was a great scholar, very skilled in argumentation. He started arguing with Buddha. He said, ”People say light exists and I say no. They say I am blind, I say they are deluded. If light exists, then, sir, make it available to me so that I can touch it. If I can touch it, or at least if I can taste it or I can smell it, or if you beat the light like a drum so that I can hear it.... These are my four senses, and the fifth sense which people talk about is just imagination. People are deluded, nobody has eyes.” It was very difficult to convince this man that light exists, because light cannot be touched, cannot be tasted, cannot be smelled, cannot be heard. And this man was saying that others were deluded, ”They don’t have eyes.” He was a blind man, but a great logician. He said, ”Prove that they have got eyes. What proof have you got?” Buddha said, ”I will not say anything, but I know a physician and I will send you to the physician. I know he will be able to cure your eyes.”
But the man insisted, ”I have come to argue about it!”
And Buddha said, ”This is my argument: Go to the physician.”
The man was sent to the physician; his eyes were cured, within six months he was able to see. He could not believe it; he was esctatically happy, he came dancing to Buddha. He was mad. He fell at Buddha’s feet and said, ”Your argument worked.”
Buddha said, ”Listen, it was no argument. If I had argued I would have failed, because there are things which cannot be argued about but can only be experienced.” God is not an argument, is not a syllogism. Nirvana is not an argument, it is not a conclusion; it is an experience. Unless you experience it, there is no way to even understand it what it is. If you don’t experience it, it is just absurd, meaningless. There’s nothing to be negated, nothing to he affirmed or grasped; for It can never be conceived. In fact there is nothing to grasp and nobody to grasp It; nothing to conceive and nobody to conceive It. Object and subject both disappear in It. The knower and the known both disappear in It. Then is the experience of the total, of the One, of the It.
By the fragmentations of the intellect are the deluded fettered; undivided and pure remains spontaneity. Says Saraha to the king: Sir, people are prejudiced about reality. They have ideas about reality, and reality is not an idea. God is not an idea. God is not the word god; it is not a theory, it is not a hypothesis. It is a taste of reality, it is an orgasmic experience with the total.
People are fettered because of their minds. They have certain ideas, attitudes, fixed philosophies; they look through those philosophies. That’s why they say Saraha has gone mad. They have a certain idea of what sanity should be, how sanity has to be. That’s why they think Saraha has gone mad: they are looking through certain prejudices.
...undivided and pure remains spontaneity.
But spontaneity is undivided and pure; it is primal innocence. Look at me, says Saraha. Look at my spontaneity. Don’t think about what people say, don’t think through certain prejudices of good and bad, virtue and sin, right and wrong. Just look at me! I am here, It is here. I am available; have a deep experience of my presence. If you can feel spontaneity, innocence, purity, only that will help you to go withinwards on the journey of Tantra.
If you question ultimacy with the postulates of the many and the one, oneness is not given, for by transcending knowledge are sentient beings freed. The radiant is potency latent in the intellect, and this is shown to be meditation; unswerving Mind is our true essence.
If you question ultimacy with the postulates of the many and the one, oneness is not given. If you question, you miss; reality cannot be turned into a question. Yes, it can be turned into a quest, but not into a question. And nobody can answer, only you can experience. That’s why I say it can be a quest, but it can never be turned into a question. A question is that which can be answered. A quest is that which can only be experienced. Only when you arrive do you arrive, there is no other way. There is no borrowed way. All knowledge is borrowed. Hence, says Saraha:
...for by transcending knowledge are sentient beings freed.
One has to be liberated from knowledge. Knowledge does not liberate you; it is your deepest, subtlest bondage. Through knowledge you are not available to reality. Drop all knowledge. Dropping all knowledge, knowing becomes pure, then you are no more clouded. Not knowing anything borrowed, your purity is intact; then your mirror has no dust on it. Then you start reflecting. Then reality is reflected as it is. Never move with knowledge, otherwise you move not. Never trust borrowed experiences.
Something happened to Buddha, but that is not your experience. Something happened to Christ, but that is not your experience. Something has happened to me, but that is not your experience. What I say is that, if you 186
hoard it, it will become knowledge. What I say is that, if it leads you on a quest, it will become knowing. Don’t hoard it in your memory. Hoarding knowledge in the memory only burdens you; it is not liberation. ...for by transcending knowledge are sentient beings freed. The radiant is potency latent in the intellect... And you have that potency which can flower into nirvana, which can become enlightenment. Each intellect is nothing but the intelligence hidden behind it. If you trust your intellect too much you will miss your intelligence. Now these two words have to be understood; they come out of the same root but their meaning is different. It is not necessary that an intellectual has to be intelligent. It is not necessary that an intelligent person has to be an intellectual. You can find nonintellectuals who are tremendously intelligent. Christ is not an intellectual, Kabir is not an intellectual, Meera is not an intellectual, but they are tremendously intelligent people. Intellect is a false substitute for intelligence. Intellect is borrowed, intelligence is yours. Intelligence is your pure capacity to see, intelligence is your innocent capacity to understand. Intellect is borrowed knowledge; intellect is a pseudo coin, a counterfeit.
You collect information from everywhere, you collect much knowledge, and you become knowledgeable. But your intelligence has not grown, your intelligence has not really exploded. In fact because of this intellectual effort your intelligence will remain burdened; knowledge will gather like dust on the mirror. Intellect is the dust. Intelligence is the pure quality of the mirror to reflect.
Says Saraha: The radiant is potency latent in the intellect...in each intellect there is potential intelligence; don’t overburden it with borrowed knowledge...and this is shown to be meditation. If you don’t burden it with knowledge, your intelligence becomes your meditation. A great definition of meditation: Intelligence is meditation. To live intelligently is to live meditatively. Of tremendous significance is this definition; it is really pregnant with great meaning. And to live intelligently is what meditation is. Meditation cannot be ’done’ in that way. You have to bring intelligence to your life.
You were angry yesterday, you were angry the day before yesterday. Now again the situation has come and you are going to be angry what are you going to do? Are you going to repeat it in an unintelligent way, a mechanical way, or will you bring intelligence to it? You have been angry a thousand and one times can’t you learn anything from it? Can’t you behave intelligently now? Can’t you see the futility of it? Can’t you see that every time you were frustrated by it? Each time anger has dissipated energy, distracted your energy, created problems for you and not solved anything.
If you see it, in that very seeing is intelligence. Then somebody insults you and there is no anger. In fact, rather than anger there is compassion for this man. He is angry, he is hurt, he is suffering. Compassion will arise. Now this intelligence is meditation: to look into one’s life, to learn out of experience, to learn out of existential experience, to go on learning, not borrowing.
Buddha says anger is bad. Now look at the difference: if you are a Buddhist you will believe him. Buddha says anger is bad, so anger must be bad; how can Buddha be wrong? Now whenever anger arises you will repress it because Buddha says that anger is wrong. This is functioning through knowledge, functioning through intellect. But what foolishness! You have been angry so many times is there any need to ask Buddha whether anger is wrong? Can’t you yourself see into your own experiences?
If you see into your own experiences, then you know what anger is. And seeing into that you are freed from anger. This is intelligence. Out of your intelligence you will become a witness to Buddha; you will say, ”Yes, Buddha is right. My experience proves it.” Not otherwise. Not: ”Buddha is right so I have to experience it” that is stupidity. But rather, if out of my experience I become a witness to Buddha, then I can say, ”Yes, he is right, because this is my experience too. But he is secondary; my experience comes first, it is primary. I am a witness to him, not a follower.”
You who are my sannyasins here, please become my witnesses, not my followers. Let what I am saying be proved through your experience. Then you have been with me, then you have loved me. Then you have lived with me. If you simply accumulate what I am saying and you become great theorizers about it, you learn to philosophize about it, then you have missed. Then you will become intellectuals. And to become intellectual is to commit suicide as far as intelligence is concerned.
Don’t become intellectuals. The real coin is available; why go on hankering for the counterfeit? Life is available to you as much as it was available to Buddha, as much as it is available to me; why not learn through it? To become intelligent is to be meditative. Yes, this is one of the greatest definitions of meditation I have come across. And I am a witness to it. That is the way one evolves spiritually. The radiant is potency latent in the intellect, and this is shown to be meditation; unswerving Mind is our true essence.
And the more intelligent you become, the more you will find your mind is no longer the old mind.

Tantra uses ’mind’ with two meanings: mind with a small m that is your mind. And Mind with a big, capital M that is the essential Mind, the Buddha Mind.
The little, tiny mind enclosed in knowledge, in boundaries, in prejudices the mind that we call Hindu, the mind that we call Moslem, the mind that we call Jew, Christian; that mind, small, tiny mind, the mind that has been cultivated by the colleges and the universities; that mind, small mind, the mind that has been programmed by the society that mind Tantra calls the small mind.
When these barriers are broken, when these obscurities are removed, then you attain to the great Mind, the Buddha Mind Mind with a capital M. It is as big as the universe itself. It is universal. ...Unswerving Mind is our true essence. And that is the mind which is our true essence. Call it God, call it nirvana, or whatever you like, but this is our essence: to come to a state of absolute rest unswerving, unwavering; to come to a state of eternity where time has disappeared, where all divisions have disappeared, where subject and object are no more, where the knower and the known are no more, where there is only pure awareness awareness three. These sutras are not just to be crammed, otherwise you will be betraying Saraha, you will be betraying me. These sutras have just to be meditated upon and forgotten. Then whatsoever intelligence arises in you out of meditating on these sutras, use it in life. Moment to moment let that intelligence be sharpened again and again against so many experiences.
And that intelligence will become the door to the divine. That intelligence is the door. Enough for today. Tantric Transformation

Love makes no shadow

Osho, Yesterday when you spoke of intelligence becoming meditation, there was such a rush inside. It felt as if my heart would explode. It was as if you had said something I’d been waiting to hear. Can you elaborate? The question is from Krishna Prem. Intelligence is intrinsic to life. Intelligence is a natural quality of life. Just as fire is hot and air is invisible and water flows downwards, so is life intelligent. Intelligence is not an achievement; you are born intelligent. Trees are intelligent in their own way, they have enough intelligence for their own life. Birds are intelligent, so are animals. In fact what religions mean by God is only this: the universe is intelligent, there is intelligence hidden everywhere, and if you have eyes to see, you can see it everywhere.
Life is intelligence. Only man has become unintelligent. Man has damaged the natural flow of life. Except in man, there is no unintelligence. Have you ever seen a bird you can call stupid? Have you ever seen an animal you can call idiotic? No, such things happen only to man. Something has gone wrong. Man’s intelligence has been damaged, corrupted, has been crippled. And meditation is nothing but the undoing of that damage. Meditation will not be needed at all if man is left alone. If the priest and the politician do not interfere with man’s intelligence there will be no need for any meditation. Meditation is medicinal. First you have to create the disease, then meditation is needed. If the disease is not there meditation is not needed. And it is not accidental that the words ’medicine’ and ’meditation’ come from the same root. It is medicinal. Each child is born intelligent. And the moment the child is born we pounce upon him and start destroying his intelligence, because intelligence is dangerous to the political structure, to the social structure, to the religious structure. It is dangerous to the pope, it is dangerous to the shankaracharya of Puri, it is dangerous to the priest. It is dangerous to the leader, it is dangerous to the status quo, the establishment. Intelligence is naturally rebellious. Intelligence cannot be forced into any servitude. Intelligence is very assertive, individual. Intelligence cannot be converted into a mechanical imitation. People have to be converted into carbon copies; their originality has to be destroyed, otherwise all the nonsense that has existed on the earth will be impossible. You need a leader, because first you have to be made unintelligent; otherwise there would be no need for any leader. Why should you follow anybody? You will follow your intelligence. If somebody wants to become a leader, then one thing has to be done: your intelligence has to be destroyed somehow. You have to be shaken from your very roots, you have to be made afraid. You have to be made unconfident in yourself, that is a must. Only then can the leader come in. If you are intelligent you will solve your problems yourself. Intelligence is enough to solve all the problems. In fact whatsoever problems are created in life, you have more intelligence than those problems. It is a provision, it is a gift of God.
But there are ambitious people who want to rule, dominate; there are ambitious madmen they create fear in you. Fear is like rust: it destroys all intelligence. If you want to destroy somebody’s intelligence, the first necessary thing is to create fear; create hell and make people afraid. When people are afraid of hell they will go to the priest and bow down to the priest, they will listen to the priest. If they don’t listen to the priest...then hellfire. Naturally they are afraid. They have to protect themselves from hellfire, and the priest is needed, the priest becomes a must.
I have heard about two men who were partners in a business. Their business was very unique and they used to travel around the country. One partner would come to the town. In the night he would go around and throw coal tar on people’s windows, and then disappear by morning. After two or three days, the other would come. He used to clean off the coal tar; he would clean the people’s windows and people would pay, of course they had to pay. They were partners in the same business. One would damage, the other would come to undo it. Fear has to be created, and greed has to be created. Intelligence is not greedy. You will be surprised to know that an intelligent man is never greedy. Greed is part of unintelligence. You hoard for tomorrow because you are not confident that tomorrow you will be able to tackle your life; otherwise why hoard? You become misers, you become greedy, because you don’t know whether tomorrow your intelligence will be capable of coping with life or not. Who knows? You are not confident about your intelligence so you hoard, you become greedy. An intelligent person is not afraid, is not greedy. Greed and fear go together. That’s why heaven and hell go together. Hell is fear, heaven is greed.
Create fear in people and create greed in people make them as greedy as possible. Make them so greedy that life cannot satisfy them; then they will go to the priest and to the leader. Then they will start fantasizing about some future life where their foolish desires, stupid fantasies, will be fulfilled. Watch it. To demand the impossible is to be unintelligent.
An intelligent person is perfectly satisfied with the possible. He works for the probable, he never works for the impossible and the improbable, no. He looks at life and its limitations, he is not a perfectionist. A perfectionist is neurotic. If you are a perfectionist you will go neurotic.
For example, if you love a woman and you ask absolute fidelity, you will go mad and she will go mad. This is not possible: absolute fidelity means she will not even think, she will not even dream of another man. This is not possible. Who are you? Why has she fallen in love with you? because you are a man. If she can fall in love with you, why can’t she think of others? That possibility remains open. And how is she going to manage if she sees some beautiful person walking by and if a desire arises in her? Even to say, ”This man is beautiful,” is to desire the desire has entered. You only say that something is beautiful when it feels worthy of being possessed, of being enjoyed. You are not indifferent. Now if you ask absolute fidelity, as people have asked, then there is bound to be conflict and you will remain suspicious. And you will remain suspicious because you know your mind too: you also think of other women, so how can you trust that your woman is not thinking of other men? You know you are thinking, so you know she is also thinking. Now...distrust, conflict, agony. The love that was possible has become impossible because of an impossible desire.
People ask that which cannot be done. You want security for the future, which is not possible. You want absolute security for tomorrow. It cannot be guaranteed, it is not in the nature of life. An intelligent person knows that it is not in the nature of life the future remains open. The bank can go bankrupt, the wife can escape with somebody else, the husband can die, the children may prove unworthy. Who knows about tomorrow? You may fall ill, you may become crippled...who knows about tomorrow?
To ask security for tomorrow means to remain in constant fear; it is not possible, so fear cannot be destroyed. Fear will be there, you will be trembling; and meanwhile the present moment is being missed. With the desire of security in the future you are destroying the present, which is the only life available. And more and more you will become shaken, afraid, greedy.
A child is born. A child is a very, very open phenomenon, utterly intelligent, but we jump upon him, we start destroying his intelligence. We start creating fear in him. You call it teaching, you call it making the child capable of coping with life. You create fear in him. He is unafraid. And your schools, colleges, universities they all make him more and more unintelligent. They demand foolish things...they demand foolish things to be crammed in which the child and his natural intelligence cannot see any point for what? That child cannot see the point: why cram these things? But the university says, the college says, the home, the family, the wellwishers say, ”Cram! You don’t know now, but later on you will know why it is needed.” Cram history all the nonsense that man has been doing to other men, all the madness cram it! And the child cannot see the point: what does it matter when a certain king ruled England, from what date to what date? He has to cram those stupid things. Naturally his intelligence becomes more and more burdened, crippled; more and more dust collects on his intelligence. By the time a man comes back from the university he is unintelligent; the university has done its job. It is very rare that a man can come from the university yet intelligent, still remaining intelligent. Very few people have been able to escape the university, avoid the university, pass through the university and yet save their intelligence very rarely. It is such a great mechanism to destroy you. The moment you become educated, you have become unintelligent. Can’t you see this? The educated person behaves very unintelligently. Go to the primitive people who have never been educated and you will find a pure intelligence functioning.
I have heard....
A woman was trying to open a tin and she could not find the way to open it. So she went to look in the cookery book. By the time she looked into the book, the cook had opened it. She came back, and she was surprised. She asked the cook, ”How did you do it?”
He said, ”Lady, when you don’t know how to read, you have to use your intelligence!” Yes, it is right. When you don’t know how to read you have to use your intelligence, what else can you do? The moment you start reading...those three dangerous R’s, when you have become capable of them you need not be intelligent; the books will take care.
Have you watched it? When a person starts typing, his handwriting is lost, then his handwriting is no longer beautiful. There is no need, the typewriter takes care. If you carry a calculator in your pocket you will forget all mathematics, there is no need. Sooner or later there will be small computers and everybody will be carrying them. They will have all the information of an Encyclopaedia Britannica, and then there will be no need for you to be intelligent at all; the computer will take care.
Go to the primitive people, the uneducated people, the villagers, and you will find a subtle intelligence. Yes, they are not more informed, that is true, they are not knowledgeable, that is true, but they are tremendously intelligent. Their intelligence is like a flame with no smoke around it. The society has done something wrong with man for certain reasons. It wants you to be slaves, it wants you to be always afraid, it wants you to be always greedy, it wants you to be always ambitious, it wants you to be always competitive. It wants you to be unloving, it wants you to be full of anger and hatred, it wants you to remain weak, imitative carbon copies. It does not want you to become original buddhas, original Krishnas or Christs, no. That’s why your intelligence has been destroyed. Meditation is needed only to undo what the society has done. Meditation is negative: it simply negates the damage, it destroys the illness. And once the illness has gone, your wellbeing asserts itself of its own accord.
And in this century this has gone too far; universal education has been a calamity. And remember, I am not against education, I am against this education. There is a possibility of a different kind of education which will be helpful in sharpening your intelligence, not destroying it, which will not burden it with unnecessary facts, which will not burden it with useless rubbish knowledge which will not burden it at all, but rather will help it to become more radiant, fresh, young.
This education only makes you capable of memorizing; that education will make you capable of more clarity. This education destroys your inventiveness; that education will help you to become more inventive. For example, the education that I would like in the world will not require a child to answer in an old stereotyped way. It will not encourage the answer that is written in the books, it will not encourage repetition, parroting, it will encourage inventiveness. Even if the invented answer is not as right as the copied answer can be, still it will appreciate the boy who has brought a new answer to an old problem. Certainly his answer cannot be as right as Socrates’ answer. Naturally, a small boy...his answer cannot be as exact as that of Albert Einstein, naturally. But to ask that his answer should be as right as that of Albert Einstein is foolish. If he is inventive he is in the right direction: one day he will become an Albert Einstein. If he is trying to create something new naturally he has his limitations, but just his effort in trying to create something new should be appreciated, should be praised. Education should not be competitive, people should not be judged against each other. Competitiveness is very violent and very destructive. Somebody is not good at mathematics and you call him mediocre. He may be good at carpentry, but nobody looks at that. Somebody is not good at literature and you call him stupid and he will be good at music, at dance.
A real education will help people to find their life, where they can be fully alive: if a man is born to be a carpenter then that is the right thing for him to do, there is nobody to force anything else. This world can become such a great, intelligent world if a man is allowed to be himself, helped to be himself, supported in every way to be himself, and nobody comes in and interferes in fact nobody manipulates the child. If he wants to become a dancer, then that is good; dancers are needed, much dance is needed in the world. If he wants to become a poet, good; much poetry is needed, there is never enough. If he wants to become a carpenter or a fisherman, perfectly good. If he wants to become a woodcutter, perfectly good. There is no need for him to become a president or a prime minister; in fact if less people become interested in those targets it will be a blessing. Right now everything is topsy-turvy. One who wanted to become a carpenter has become a doctor, one who wanted to become a doctor has become a carpenter...everybody is in somebody else’s place. Hence so much unintelligence everybody is doing somebody else’s job. Once you start seeing it, you will feel why people are behaving unintelligently.
In India we have been meditating deeply and we have found one word swadharma, self-nature that carries the greatest implication for a future world. Krishna has said: Swadharme nidhanam shreyah it is good to die in your own self-nature, following your self-nature. Para dharmo bhayavah baha somebody else’s nature is very dangerous. Don’t become imitators. Just be yourself.
I have heard....
Bill always wanted to go moose-hunting, so he saved up enough money and went to the North Woods. There he was fitted out with necessary equipment and the storekeeper advised him to hire Pierre, the greatest moose-caller in the land.
”It’s true,” said the storekeeper, ”that Pierre is expensive, but he has a sexy quality in his call that no moose can resist.”
”How does that work?” asked Bill.
”Well,” said the other, ”Pierre will spot a moose at three hundred yards, then cup his hands and make his first call. When the moose hears that he will become excited with anticipatory desire and approach to two hundred yards. Pierre will then call again, putting a bit more oomph into it, and the moose will skip with eager glee to a distance of a hundred yards. This time Pierre really gives his call a sexy delivery, prolonging it a bit, which impels the moose, agitated with carnal intent, to come to a point only twenty-five yards away from you. And that is the time, my friend, for you to aim and shoot.”
”Suppose I miss?” wondered Bill.
”Oh, that would be terrible!” said the other.
”But why?” asked Bill.
”Because then poor Pierre gets mated.”
That has happened to man imitating, imitating. Man has completely lost the vision of his own reality. The Zen people say: Seek out your original face.
So says Tantra. Tantra says: Find out what is your authenticity. Who are you? If you don’t know who you are, you will always be in some accident always. Your life will be a long series of accidents, and whatsoever happens will never be satisfying. Discontent will be the only taste of your life. You can watch it around you. Why do so many people look so dull, bored, just somehow passing the days, passing tremendously valuable time which they will not be able to recover and passing with such dullness, as if only waiting for death. What has happened to so many people? Why don’t they have the same freshness as the trees? Why doesn’t man have the same song as the birds? What has happened to man? One thing has happened: Man has been imitating, man has been trying to become somebody else. Nobody is at his own home, everybody is knocking at somebody else’s door; hence discontent, dullness, boredom, anguish.... When Saraha says that intelligence is the very quality of meditativeness, he means this: An intelligent person will try just to be himself, whatsoever the cost. An intelligent person will never copy, will never imitate, he will never parrot. An intelligent person will listen to his own intrinsic call. He will feel his own being and move accordingly, whatsoever the risk. There is risk! When you copy others there is less risk. When you don’t copy anybody you are alone, there is risk!
But life happens only to those who live dangerously. Life happens only to those who are adventurous, who are courageous, almost daredevils only to them does life happen. Life does not happen to lukewarm people. An intelligent person trusts himself, his trust is absolute about himself. How can you trust anybody else if you cannot even trust yourself?
People come to me and they say, ”We want to trust you.” I ask them, ”Do you trust yourself? If you trust yourself then there is a possibility to trust me too, otherwise there is no possibility.” How can you trust me if you don’t trust yourself? You are the closest to yourself. You can trust me too if you trust yourself. If you trust yourself, then you will trust your trust in me; otherwise there is no possibility. Intelligence is trust in your own being.
Intelligence is adventure, thrill, joy.
Intelligence is to live in this moment, not to hanker for the future. Intelligence is not to think of the past and not to bother about the future. Past is no more, future is not yet. Intelligence is to make the uttermost use of the present moment that is available. The future will come out of it. If this moment has been lived in delight and joy, the next moment is going to be born out of it. It will bring more joy naturally, but there is no need to bother about it. If my today has been golden, my tomorrow will be even more golden. From where will it come? It will grow out of today. If this life has been a benediction, my next life will be a higher benediction. From where can it come? It will grow out of me, out of my lived experience. So an intelligent person is not concerned about heaven and hell, is not concerned about afterlife, is not concerned even about God, is not concerned even about the soul. An intelligent person simply lives intelligently, and God and soul and heaven and nirvana they all follow naturally.
You live in belief; belief is unintelligent. Live through knowing; knowing is intelligence. And Saraha is absolutely right: Intelligence is meditation. Unintelligent people also meditate, but certainly they meditate in an unintelligent way. They think that you have to go to the church every Sunday for one hour; that is given to religion. This is an unintelligent way to be related to religion. What has the church to do with it? Your real life is in the six days, Sunday is not your real day. You will live non-religiously for six days, and then you go to the church just for one or two hours whom are you trying to deceive? Trying to deceive God that you are a church-goer? Or if you try a little harder, then every day twenty minutes in the morning, twenty in the evening you do Transcendental Meditation. You sit with closed eyes and you repeat a mantra in a very stupid way Om, Om, Om which dulls the mind even more. To repeat a mantra mechanically takes your intelligence away; it does not give you intelligence. It is like a lullaby.
Down the centuries mothers have known this. Whenever a child is restless and does not want to go to sleep, the mother comes and sings a lullaby. The child feels bored; and the child cannot escape where to go? The mother is holding him on the bed. The only way to escape is in sleep, so he goes to sleep; he simply surrenders. He says, ”It is foolish to be awake now, because she is doing such a boring thing. Just a single line she goes on repeating!” There are stories that mothers and grandmothers tell to children when they don’t go to sleep. If you look into these stories, you will find a certain pattern of constant repetition. Just the other day I was reading a story told by a grandmother to a small child who does not want go to sleep, because he does not feel like sleeping right now. His intelligence says that he is perfectly awake, but the grandmother is forcing him. She has other things to do, the child is not important.
Children are very puzzled things look very absurd. When they want to sleep in the morning, everybody wants to wake them up. When they don’t want to go to sleep, everybody is forcing them to sleep. They become very puzzled: what is the matter with these people? When sleep comes, good that is intelligence. When it is not coming it is perfectly good to be awake.
So this old grandmother is telling a story. At first the child remains interested, but by and by.... Any intelligent child will feel bored; only a stupid child will not feel bored. The story is.... A man goes to sleep and dreams that he is standing before a great palace, and in the palace there are one thousand and one rooms. So he goes from one room to another one thousand rooms then he reaches the last room. And there is a beautiful bed, so he falls on the bed, falls asleep and dreams that he is standing at the door of a big palace which has one thousand and one rooms. So he goes into one thousand rooms, then he reaches the one thousand and first room...again there is a beautiful bed, so he goes to sleep and dreams that he is standing before a palace.... This is the way it goes! Now how long can the child remain alert? Just out of sheer boredom the child falls asleep. He is saying, ”Now be finished!”
A mantra does the same. You repeat Ram, Ram, Om, Om, Allah, Allah or anything. You go on repeating, you go on repeating. Now you are doing two jobs, both the grandmother’s and the child’s. Your intelligence is like the child, and your learning of the mantra is like the grandmother. The child tries to stop you, gets interested in other things, thinks of beautiful things beautiful women, beautiful scenes but you catch hold of him redhanded and bring him again to Om, Om, Om. By and by your inner child feels that it is futile to struggle; the inner child goes to sleep.
Yes, the mantra can give you a certain sleep, it is an autohypnotic sleep. There is nothing wrong in it if sleep is difficult for you if you suffer from insomnia it is good. But it has nothing to do with spirituality, it is a very unintelligent way to meditate. Then what is the intelligent way to meditate? The intelligent way is to bring intelligence into everything that you do. Walking, walk intelligently, with awareness; eating, eat intelligently, with awareness. Do you remember ever eating intelligently, ever thinking about what you are eating? Is it nutritious, has it any nourishment value? Or are you just stuffing without any nourishment?
Have you ever watched what you do? You go on smoking.... Then intelligence is needed: what are you doing? Just taking in smoke and throwing it out and meanwhile destroying your lungs? And what are you really doing? Wasting money, wasting health. Bring intelligence in while you are smoking, while you are eating. Bring intelligence in when you go and make love to your woman or to your man. What are you doing, have you really any love? Sometimes you make love out of habit then it is ugly, then it is immoral. Love has to be very conscious, only then it becomes prayer. While making love to your woman, what exactly are you doing? Using the woman’s body just to throw some energy that has become too much for you? or are you paying respect...are you loving to the woman, do you have some reverence for the woman? I don’t see it. Husbands don’t respect their wives, they use them; wives use their husbands, they don’t respect them. If reverence does not arise out of love, then intelligence is missing somewhere. Otherwise you will feel tremendously grateful to the other, and your lovemaking will become a great meditation.
Whatsoever you are doing, bring the quality of intelligence into it. Do it intelligently that’s what meditation is. And Saraha’s statement is of tremendous significance: Intelligence is meditation. Intelligence has to spread all over your life, it is not a Sunday thing. And you cannot do it for twenty minutes and then forget about it intelligence has to be just like breathing. Whatsoever you are doing small, big, whatsoever...cleaning the floor can be done intelligently or unintelligently. And you know that when you do it unintelligently there is no joy; you are doing a duty, carrying it somehow. I have heard an illustration of how love can be reduced to duty and destroyed.... It happened in a church school class of ninth-grade girls. The class was studying Christian love and what it might mean to them and their lives. They finally decided that Christian love meant ’doing something lovable for someone you didn’t like’. Children are very intelligent. Their conclusion is perfectly right. Listen to it again. They finally decided that Christian love meant ’doing something lovable for someone you didn’t like’. The teacher suggested that during the week they might test out their concept. When they returned the following week, the teacher asked for reports. One girl raised her hand and said, ”I’ve done something!” The teacher said, ”Marvelous! What did you do?”
”Well,” the girl replied, ”in my math class at school there is this glunky kid....” The teacher said, ”Glunky...?”
And the girl replied, ”Yes, you know...glunky. She’s got four eyes, and she’s all thumbs, and she’s got three left feet, and when she comes down the hall in school everyone says, ’Here comes that glunky kid again.’ She doesn’t have any friends and nobody asks her to parties, and...you know, she’s just glunky.” The teacher said, ”I think I know just what you mean. What did you do?” ”Well, this glunky kid’s in my math class and she’s having a tough time. I’m pretty good in math so I offered to help her with homework.”
”Wonderful!” said the teacher. ”So what happened?”
”Well, I did help her, and it was fun, and she just couldn’t thank me enough, but now I can’t get rid of her!” If you are doing something just as a duty you don’t love, you don’t love it and you are doing it just as a duty sooner or later you will be caught in it and you will be in a difficulty about how to get rid of it. Just watch in your twenty-four hour day: how many things are you doing that you don’t derive any pleasure from, that you don’t grow out of? In fact you want to get rid of them. If you are doing too many things in your life which you really want to get rid of you are living unintelligently. An intelligent person will make his life in such a way that it will have a poetry of spontaneity, of love, of joy. It is your life and if you are not kind enough to yourself, who is going to be kind enough to you? If you are wasting it, it is nobody else’s responsibility. I teach you to be responsible towards yourself. That is your first responsibility; everything else comes next everything else! Even God comes next, because he can come only when you are. You are the very center of your world, of your existence. So be intelligent, bring in the quality of intelligence. And the more intelligent you become, the more capable you will become of bringing more intelligence into your life. Each single moment can become so luminous with intelligence.... Then there is no need for any religion, no need to meditate, no need to go to the church, no need to go to any temple, no need for anything extra. Life in its intrinsicness is intelligent. Just live totally, harmoniously, in awareness, and everything follows beautifully. A life of celebration follows the luminousness of intelligence.

The next question it is related:

Osho, Is it not good to serve people out of a sense of duty?
No, not at all, it is ugly. When you do something only out of duty, without love, you are harming yourself and you are harming the other too, because if you are not doing it out of love you will feel that the other has to be grateful, you will feel that you have obliged the other. You will wait for a return in fact you will make a demand, gross or subtle: ”Now, you do something for me, I have done so much for you.”

When you do something out of love you do it without any idea of any return. It is not a bargain, you do it because you are happy doing it; the other is not obliged. Not that love is not returned, love is returned a thousandfold but only love is returned, never duty. In fact if you are doing a duty toward somebody, he will never be able to forgive you. You can see it in children: they are never able to forgive their parents. Their parents must have been doing a great duty. It is difficult to forgive those people who have been doing duty. Respect arises for those people who have loved you, not out of any sense of duty but just out of sheer joy. See the difference. A mother loves you just because she feels love for you; whether you return it or not is irrelevant. There is no bargain in it; it is not a contract, it is not business. If you don’t return it she will never mention it, she will never think about it. In fact she has attained to so much joy while loving you, what more can she expect? A mother always feels that she could not do as much as she wanted to do. But if the mother is doing it out of duty, then she feels she has done too much and you have betrayed her, you are not returning her love. And she will constantly hammer the fact into your head that she has done this and that, and that she has carried you for nine months in her womb...and she will relate the whole story again and again. That does not help to create love, it simply helps divorce. The children become very, very angry.
I know of a young boy.... I was staying with the family, and the mother brought the boy in front of me. They wanted me to teach the boy something because he was very ungrateful. I knew the family very well; I knew the father and the mother, so I knew why he was ungrateful. They had done all that they could do, but always only out of a sense of duty.
I told them, ”You are responsible. You have never loved the boy, he feels hurt. You have never allowed him to feel worthy. Your love is not love, it is just like a hard rock on the heart of the boy. Now he is growing up and is capable of rebelling against you, that’s why he’s rebelling.”
The boy looked at me with such gratitude...he started crying. He said, ”Whosoever comes to the family, any guest, any friend, I’m always brought into the court everybody has to teach me. You are the first man.... This is exactly the case. These people have been torturing me and my mother goes on saying, ’For nine months I carried you in my womb.’ And I say to her, ’But I had not asked you to. That had nothing to do with me, it was your business, you decided. Why didn’t you get an abortion? I would not have interfered. Why did you get pregnant in the first place? I had not applied for it!’” And I knew he was angry, but he was right. Now you ask: ”Is it not good to serve people out of a sense of duty?” No, in fact if you serve people out of a sense of duty you will become their torturers, you will become very dominant over them. It is a way to dominate, it is political.
Start by massaging their feet and soon you will be at their necks, soon you will kill them. And naturally, when you start massaging their feet they spread their feet, they say ”Perfectly okay” and they don’t know what is going to happen.
All public servants sooner or later become politicians. That is the right way to start your political life: become a public servant. Serve people out of sense of duty, and then sooner or later you can jump on their heads, then you can exploit them. Then you can crush them, and they cannot even utter a cry because you are public servants. To become masters of people, the beginning is in public service.
My whole approach here is to make you alert to these traps. These are trips, ego trips. In the name of humbleness, humility, service, you are going on an ego trip. Do, but only do out of love; otherwise, don’t do. Please don’t do. It is better if you don’t do anything.
You will be able to do, because nobody can remain undoing continuously. Energy is created, and you have to give it but give it out of love. When you give out of love you feel grateful to the other because he has accepted your love, he has accepted your energy, he has shared with you, he has unburdened you. Do only when you can feel grateful to the person you have done something for, not otherwise. Question 3
The third question: Osho, Why does jealousy always follow love as a shadow? Jealousy has nothing to do with love. In fact your so-called love also has nothing to do with love. These are beautiful words which you use without knowing what they mean, without experiencing what they mean. You go on using the word love: you use it so much that you forget the fact that you have not experienced it yet. That is one of the dangers of using such beautiful words: ’God’, ’love’, ’nirvana’, ’prayer’ beautiful words. You go on using them, you go on repeating them, and by and by the very repetition makes you feel as if you know. What do you know about love? If you know anything about love you cannot ask this question, because jealousy is never present in love. And wherever jealousy is present, love is not present. Jealousy is not part of love, jealousy is part of possessiveness. Possessiveness has nothing to do with love. You want to possess; through possession you feel strong, your territory is bigger. And if somebody else tries to trespass on your territory, you are angry. Or

if somebody has a bigger house than your house, you are jealous. Or if somebody tries to dispossess you of your property, you are jealous and angry. If you love, jealousy is impossible, it is not possible at all. I have heard....
Up in the frozen Yukon, two trappers stopped at the last outpost to get supplies for the long dark winter. After they had loaded their sleds with flour, canned foods, kerosene, matches and ammunition, they were ready to mush off for six months in the wilds.
”Wait a minute, boys,” the storekeeper called to them. ”How about taking one of these?” And he showed them a large board curved like an hourglass.
”What is it?” asked one of the trappers.
The storekeeper winked. ”It’s called a love board. You can hug it when you get lonely.” ”We’ll take two!” exclaimed the men.
Six months later one of the trappers, bearded and haggard, returned.
”Where’s your buddy?” asked the storekeeper.
”Had to shoot him,” muttered the trapper. ”Caught him messin’ around with my love board!” Jealousy has nothing to do with love. If you love your woman, how can you be jealous? If you love your man, how can you be jealous? If your woman is laughing with somebody else, how can you be jealous? You will be happy; it is your woman who is happy. Her happiness is your happiness how can you think against her happiness? But look, watch. You laughed at this story but it is happening everywhere, in every family. The wife even becomes jealous of the newspaper if the husband goes on reading it too much. She comes and snatches it away, she becomes jealous. The newspaper is substituting for her. While she is present, how dare you read your newspaper? That is an insult! When she is there you have to be possessed by her totally, not even a newspaper.... The newspaper becomes a competitor, so what to say about human beings? If the wife is present and the husband starts talking to another woman and looks a little happy which is natural...people get tired of each other; anything new and one feels a little thrilled now the wife is angry. You can know well that if a couple is going by and the man looks sad, then he is the husband married to that woman. lf he looks happy, he is not married to the woman, she is not his wife.
Once I was traveling in a train and there was a woman in the same compartment. At each station a man would come in...sometimes he would bring bananas, sometimes he would bring tea and ice cream and this and that. I asked her, ”Who is this man?”
She said, ”He’s my husband.”
I said, ”I can’t trust that, I can’t believe it. How long have you been married?” She became a little disturbed, she said, ”Now that you insist, we are not married. But how did you come to know?”
I said, ”I have never seen any husband coming in at every station. Once the husband gets rid of the wife, he will come in at the last station hoping that she has dropped out somewhere in the middle. Each station bringing things...this and that...and rushing again and again from his compartment....” She said, ”You are right, he’s not my husband. He’s my husband’s friend.” ”That’s right then there is no problem...!”
You are not really in love with your woman, or with your man, or with your friend. If you are in love then his or her happiness is your happiness. If you are in love then you will not create any possessiveness. Love is capable of giving total freedom. Only love is capable of giving total freedom. And if freedom is not given, then it is something else, not love. It is a certain type of egoistic trip. You have a beautiful woman; you want to show everybody all around the town that you have a beautiful woman just like a possession. Just as when you have a car and you are in your car you want everybody to know that nobody has such a beautiful car, the same is the case with your woman. You bring diamonds for her but not out of love. She is a decoration for your ego. You carry her from one club to another, but she has to remain clinging to you and go on showing that she belongs to you. Any infringement of your right and you are angry, you can kill the woman...whom you think you love.
There is great ego working everywhere. We want people to be like things. We possess them like things, we reduce persons to things. The same is the attitude about things also. I have heard....
A rabbi and a priest were neighbors and there was a certain amount of ’needle’ between them. If the Cohens had their drive done up, Father O’Flynn had his relaid...and so it went on. One day the priest had a new Jaguar, so the rabbi bought a Bentley. When the rabbi looked out of his window it was to see the priest pouring water over the top of the car bonnet. He opened the window and shouted, ”That’s not the way to fill the radiator, you know.”
”Aha!” said the priest, ”I’m christening it with holy water that’s more than you can do to yours.” A little while later the priest was taken aback to see the rabbi lying in the road, hacksaw in hand, sawing the last inch off his car’s exhaust pipe.
That is the mind continuously in competition. Now he is doing circumcision. He has to do something. That is the way we are living, the way of the ego. The ego knows no love, the ego knows no friendship, the ego knows no compassion. The ego is aggression, violence.
And you ask: ”Why does jealousy always follow love as a shadow?”
Never. Love makes no shadow at all. Love is so transparent that it makes no shadow. Love is not a solid thing, it is transparency. No shadow is created out of love. Love is the only phenomenon on the earth which creates no shadow.

The fourth question:

Osho, What is repression?
Repression is to live a life that you were not meant to live, repression is to do things which you never wanted to do; repression is to be the fellow that you are not. Repression is a way to destroy yourself, repression is suicide very slow of course, but very certain, a slow poisoning. Expression is life; repression is suicide. This is the Tantra message: Don’t live a repressed life, otherwise you live not at all. Live a life of expression, creativity, joy. Live the way God wanted you to live; live the natural way. And don’t be afraid of the priests. Listen to your instincts, listen to your body, listen to your heart, listen to your intelligence. Depend on yourself, and go wherever your spontaneity takes you and you will never be at a loss. And going spontaneously with your natural life, one day you are bound to arrive at the doors of the divine. Your nature is God within you. The pull of that nature is God’s pull within you. Don’t listen to the poisoners, listen to the pull of nature. Yes, nature is not enough: there is a higher nature too but the higher comes through the lower, the lotus grows out of the mud. Through the body grows the soul. Through sex grows samadhi. Remember, through food grows consciousness. In the East we have said: Annam Brahma food is God. What type of assertion is this, that food is God? God grows out of food: the lowest is linked with the highest, the shallowest is linked with the deepest.
Now the priests have been teaching you to repress the lower. And they are very logical. Only they have forgotten one thing that God is illogical. They are very logical and it appeals to you, that’s why you have listened down the ages and followed them. It appeals to reason that if you want to attain to the higher, don’t listen to the lower. It looks logical: if you want to go high then you cannot go low. Then don’t go low, go high it is very rational. The only trouble is that God is not rational.
Just the other day Dhruva was talking to me. In his Sahaj group sometimes he comes to some moments when the whole group falls silent out of nowhere, out of the blue. And those few moments of silence are of tremendous beauty. And he was saying, ”They are so mysterious, those moments. We are not managing them, we don’t think about them, they simply come sometimes. But when they come the whole group immediately feels the presence of something divine, of something higher, something greater than everybody else. And everybody immediately becomes aware that something is present, something mysterious. And everybody falls silent in those moments.” Now his logical mind thought, ”It will be good if I can do the whole group in silence.” He must have started thinking, ”If those few moments few and far between are so beautiful, then why not do the whole group in silence?” I said, ”There you go logical, and God is not logical. If you remain silent, those moments will never come again.”
There is a polarity in life. The whole day you work hard, you chop wood, then in the night you go into your deepest sleep. Now the logical thing is you can think logically, it is mathematical next morning you can think, ”The whole day I worked so much and was tired, still I could come to such a deep sleep. If I practice rest the whole day, I will go into an even deeper sleep.” So the next day you simply lie down in your rest-chair, you practice rest. Do you think you are going to have a good sleep? You will lose even ordinary sleep. That’s how rich people suffer from insomnia.
God is not logical. God gives sleep to the beggars who have been working the whole day, moving from one place to another in the hot summer, begging. God gives good sleep to laborers, to stonecutters, to woodcutters. The whole day they have been tired ...out of that tiredness they fall into deep sleep. This is the polarity. The more you are exhausted energy-wise the more is your need for sleep, because you can only get more energy from deep sleep. If you exhaust your energy you create a situation in which you will fall

into deep sleep; God has to give you deep sleep. If you don’t work at all, then there is no need. You have not used even the energy that was given you, so what is the point of giving you any more? Energy is given to those who use it.
Now Dhruva is logical. He thinks, ”If we do the whole group in silence....” But even those few moments will be missed, and the whole group will become very, very chattering inside. Of course from the outside they will remain silent, but their minds will go crazy inside. Right now they are working hard, they are expressing their emotions, catharting, bringing everything up, throwing everything out; they become exhausted. There come a few moments when they are so exhausted that there is nothing else to throw out. In that moment, suddenly, there is a contact; a silence descends.
Out of work is rest, out of expression is silence. This is how God works. His ways are very irrational. Now if you really want to be secure you will have to live a life of insecurity. If you really want to be alive you will have to be ready to die at any moment. This is God’s illogic! If you really want to be authentically true, then you will have to risk. Repression is a way to avoid the risk.
For example, you have been taught never to be angry and you think that a person who is never angry is bound to be very loving. You are wrong. A person who is never angry will not be able to love either. They go together, they come in the same package. A man who really loves will sometimes be really angry. But his anger is beautiful, it is out of love. His energy is hot, and you will not feel hurt by his anger. In fact you will feel grateful that he was angry.
Have you watched it? If you love somebody and you do something and the person is really angry, frankly angry, you feel grateful because he loved you so much that he can afford anger. Otherwise why...? When you don’t want to afford anger, you remain polite. When you don’t want to afford anything, you don’t want to take any risks, you go on smiling; it doesn’t matter. If your child is going to jump into the abyss, will you remain unangry? Will you not shout, will you not be a boiling energy? Will you go on smiling? It is not possible. There is a story....
Once it happened in Solomon’s court that two women came who were fighting for one child. Both claiming that the child belonged to them. It was very difficult how to decide? The child was so small that he could not say anything.
Solomon looked and he said, ”One thing I will do I will cut the child in two and divide the child. That is the only way possible. I have to be just and fair; there is no proof either way that the child belongs to A or to B. So I as the king have decided: Cut the child in two and give half to each. The woman who was holding the child continued to smile, she was happy. But the other woman became simply mad, as if she would kill the king! She said, ”What are you saying? Have you gone mad?” She was in a rage. She was no longer an ordinary woman, she was anger incarnate, she was fire! And the woman said, ”If this is justice, then I leave aside my claim; let the child remain with the other woman. The child belongs to her, he is not my child!” Angry, yet tears flowing down her face.
And the king said, ”The child belongs to you. You take it. The other woman is just bogus, false.” The other woman could not afford anything and the child was being killed! In fact she continued to smile, it did not matter to her.
When you love you can be angry. When you love you can afford it. If you love yourself and that is a must in life, otherwise you will miss your life you will never be repressive, you will be expressive of whatsoever life gives. You will be expressing it its joys, its sadness, its peaks, its lows, its days, its nights. But you have been brought up to become bogus, you have been brought up in such a way as to become hypocrites. When you feel angry, you go on smiling a painted smile. When you are in a rage you repress the rage. When you feel sexuality you repress that and you go on chanting your mantra. You are never true to what is within you.
It happened....
Joe and his little daughter Midge took a trip to an amusement park; en route they stopped for a huge meal. At the park they came to a hotdog stand and Midge exclaimed, ”Daddy, I want....” Joe stopped her and bought her a hotdog with all the trimmings. At the popcorn stand Midge yelled, ”Daddy, I want....” Joe cut her short and stuffed her with popcorn.
When they came to the ice cream vendor, little Midge once more shouted, ”Daddy, I want....” Joe stopped her again, but this time said, ”You want, you want! I know what you want ice cream!” ”No, Daddy,” she pleaded, ”I want to vomit.”
That’s what she was wanting from the very beginning but who listens?

Repression is not listening to your nature. Repression is a trick to destroy you. Twelve skinheads, botherboys, walk into a pub with their Levi jackets on and all their equipment. They walk up to the landlord and say, ”Thirteen pints of bitter, please.”
”But there are only twelve of you.”
”Look, we want thirteen pints of bitter.”
So he gives them the beer and they all sit down. There’s a little old fellow sitting in a corner and the skinhead leader walks over to him and says, ”Here you are, dad, here’s a pint of beer for you.” The little fellow says, ”Thank you, thank you you are generous, son.” ”It’s all right, we don’t mind helping cripples.”
”But I’m not a cripple.”
”You will be if you don’t buy the next round.”
That’s what repression is: it is a trick to cripple you. It is a trick to destroy you, it is a trick to weaken you. It is a trick to put you against yourself: it is a way of creating conflict within you, and whenever a man is in conflict with himself, of course he is very weak.
The society has played a great game: it has put everybody against himself. So you are continuously fighting within yourself, you don’t have any energy to do anything else. Can’t you observe it happening in you? Continuously fighting.... The society has divided you into a split person, it has made you schizophrenic and it has confused you. You have become driftwood: you don’t know who you are, you don’t know where you are going. You don’t know what you are doing here, you don’t know why you are here in the first place. It has really confused you. And out of this confusion are born great leaders: Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, Josef Stalin. And out of this confusion arises the Vatican pope, and out of this confusion a thousand and one things arise. But you are destroyed. Tantra says be expressive but remember, expression does not mean irresponsibility. Tantra says: be expressive intelligently and no harm will happen to anybody from you. A man who cannot harm himself will never harm anybody. And a man who harms himself is a dangerous man in a way. If he is not even in love with himself, he is dangerous, he can harm anybody. In fact he will harm.
When you are sad, when you are depressed, you will create other people around you who are sad and depressed. When you are happy you would like to create a happy society, because happiness can exist only in a happy world. If you are living joyfully you would like everybody to be joyful. That is true religion: Out of your own joy, you bless the whole existence.
But repression makes you false. It is not by repression that anger, sex, greed are destroyed, no. They are there just the labels are changed. They go into the unconscious, they start working from there, they go underground. And of course when they are underground they are more powerful. The whole psychoanalytic movement tries to bring what is underground to the surface. Once it becomes conscious, you can be freed of it. A Frenchman was staying in England and a friend asked him how he was getting on. He said he was doing very well, except for one thing. ”When I go to a party, the hostess, she does not tell me where is the ’pissoir’.” ”Ah, Georges, you mean she does not tell you where the toilet is? That’s just our English prudery. Actually she will say, ’Do you want to wash your hands?’ and that means the same thing.” The Frenchman made a mental note of this, and the next time he went to a party the guests standing around heard the hostess remark, ”Good evening, Monsieur Du Pont, do you want to wash your hands?” ”No thank you, madame, I have just washed them up against the tree in the front garden.” That’s what happens...just the names change. You become confused, you don’t know what is what. Everything is there just the labels change, and that creates a sort of insane humanity. Your parents, your society have destroyed you; you are destroying your children. Now this is a vicious circle. Somebody has to come out of the vicious circle.
If you understand me rightly, then my sannyas is an effort to bring you out of the vicious circle. Don’t be angry at your parents they could not do better than they have done. But now become more conscious, and don’t do the same thing to your children. Make them more expressive, teach them more expression. Help them so that they become more authentic, so that they can bring out whatsoever is inside them. And they will be tremendously grateful forever, because there will be no conflict within them. They will be in one piece, they will not be in fragments. And they will never be confused, they will always know what they want. And when you know exactly what you want, you can work for it. When you don’t know what you really want, how can you work for it? Then anybody takes hold of you, anybody gives you any ideas...and you start following him. Any leader comes, anybody who can convince you argumentatively, and you start following him. You have followed many people, and they have all destroyed.

Follow your nature. Each generation destroys the other. Unless somebody becomes very alert, aware, the destruction is bound to happen.

Osho, Why did I get married to a woman who hates me? I hate her too.
How am I supposed to know why you got married to a woman you hate and who hates you? Maybe this is just a guess you got married because you hate each other.
There are two types of marriages: love marriages and hate marriages. Love marriages are very rare; in fact they don’t happen. The so-called marriages are hate marriages. At least about women it is very true. If they want to torture you they will marry you, because there is no surer way to torture you. That is the best way. I have heard....
Mulla Nasruddin had gotten himself in a very awkward situation. He had been carrying on with no less than three women at the same time, promising each one that he would marry her. Lately they’d been pressing him to make good his vow. At his wits’ end, he consulted his lawyer.
”I suggest,” said the lawyer, ”that you let me notify all the newspapers that you have committed suicide. After that we’ll hold a mock funeral...that should take care of your troubles.” They went into action immediately. While the lawyer phoned the newspapers, Mulla made the necessary arrangements with the undertaker. It was a very impressive funeral. At the proper time everyone filed solemnly around the coffin to bid a last farewell to the deceased. And then his three girlfriends entered. ”Poor Nasruddin,” sighed the first girl as she gazed down at the body, ”he was a louse, but I’ll sure miss him.” ”Good-bye, Nasruddin,” wept the second girl, ”too bad things didn’t work out better.” But the third girl was enraged. ”You dirty rat! dying on me after you promised we’d be married. For that I’m gonna shoot you myself, even though you are dead! At least I’ll have that satisfaction!” She then pulled a revolver out of her purse and leveled it at the prone figure.
”Hold it! Don’t get so excited!” cried the corpse, sitting up. ”You, I’ll marry!” I don’t know why you got married to a woman who hates you and whom you hate. But watch out: you must be in a very deep mess. But everybody is, so don’t feel worried. This is the natural, usual condition of humanity. Everybody is in a mess. Nobody knows why one is going to do a certain thing. Sometimes you get married to a woman because her face is appealing. But what has marriage to do with the face? After two or three days the honeymoon will be over and you will never look at the face again. And you never married the real woman, you only married a face, a certain figure, and the figure has nothing to do with it. Or maybe you liked the voice of the woman, the singsong voice, and you got married...people get married for foolish reasons. Now the singsong voice has nothing to do with it; the singsong voice will not prepare your food, it will not make your bed. After a few days, you will forget the voice.
The reality you will have to live with has nothing to do with these things. A certain woman has a certain figure, a certain curve but what has a curve to do with life? A certain woman has a certain way of walking and it appeals to you. But can you waste your life, your married life, on such flimsy things? It is not possible. Life needs more realistic approaches, more realistic foundations. But you go on doing superficial things like this. The reason is that you are not aware. It is not only a question of marriage, it is a question of your whole life. That’s what you go on doing...you go on doing things on the spur of the moment, not seeing deeply that life needs more awareness, more responsibility, more understanding, more intelligence. Start being more intelligent, and you will be less and less in trouble. Be more watchful.
Become a witness.
Enough for today.
Tantric Transformation
Chapter 9 No-Mind is the Door
Audio:Yes Video:No Length:95 mins
Once in the realm that’s full of joy the seeing mind becomes enriched and thereby for this and that most useful; even when it runs after objects it is not alienated from itself.
The buds of joy and pleasure and the leaves of glory grow. If nothing flows out anywhere the bliss unspeakable will fruit.
What has been done and where and what in itself it will become, is nothing: yet thereby it has been useful for this and that. Whether passionate or not the pattern is nothingness.

If I am like a pig that covets worldly mire, you must tell me what fault lies in a stainless mind. By what does not affect one, how can one now be fettered?
There are two ways to approach reality: the way of the intellect and the way of intelligence. The way of the in-tellect is to theorize about it, is to think about it, is to speculate about it. And all speculation is meaningless because how can you speculate about that which you don’t know? How can you even think about that which you don’t know?
The unknown cannot be thought, there is no way to think about the unknown; all that you go on thinking is the known that goes on repeating in your mind. Yes, you can create new combinations of old thoughts, but just by making new combinations you are not going to discover the real. You will be deceiving. Intellect is the greatest deceiver in the world. Through intellect man has deceived himself down the ages. Through intellect you explain away the reality, you don’t explain it. Through intellect you create such a dust around yourself that you cannot see the reality at all; you are cut off from the existential, and you are closed in your words, in your thoughts, in your arguments. You are lost in your scriptures no man has ever been lost anywhere else. It is in the jungle of the scriptures where men get lost. Tantra is the way of intelligence, not of intellect. It does not answer any questions; it does not explain anything at all, it is non-explanatory. It is not a questioning, it is a quest. It is not inquiry about the truth, it is an inquiry into the truth. It penetrates reality. It tries to destroy all the clouds that surround you so that you can see the reality as it is.
Tantra is to go beyond thinking. That’s why love has been so much praised by the tantrikas. That’s why the love orgasm has become a symbol for the ultimate reality: the reason is that it is only in the love orgasm that you lose your mind for a few moments. That is the only state of no-mind which is available to the ordinary man, that is the only possibility for you to have a glimpse of reality.
Hence, sexual orgasm has become tremendously important on the path of Tantra. Not that it gives you ultimate reality, but at least it gives you a chance to peek beyond the mind. It gives you a small window...very momentary; it does not stay long, but still that is the only possibility for you to have some contact with reality. Otherwise you are always surrounded by your thoughts and the thoughts explain nothing. All explanations are simply nonsense. Now I would like to tell you a joke. You know I don’t tell many of them.... The joke has to do with this fella standing on the corner a colored fella. And he’s standing on the corner and he looks up and he says, ”Lord!” he is on a personal basis he says, ”Lord, why did you make me so dark?” And the Lord thinks, and the Lord broods, and the Lord tries to philosophize some answer is needed and the Lord says, ”My boy, the reason I made you so dark is so that when you’re running through the jungle, the sun won’t give you sunstroke.”
The colored fella says, ”Yeah, yeah, I go for that. But Lord, why did you make my hair so coarse?” The Lord replies, ”Well, the reason I did that, my boy, is so that when you’re running through the jungle in quest of the wildebeest and the water buffalo and the lion, your hair won’t get caught in the brambles.” ”Yeah, yeah...but, Lord, why did you make my legs so long?”
The Lord answers, ”The reason I made your legs long, my son, is so that when you’re loping through the jungle in quest of the wildebeest and rhinoceros and the bull and the elephant, you would run very swiftly. Do you have any further questions?” The colored fella says, ”Yeah, Lord! What the hell am I doing here in Poona?” No explanations help. No explanation ever explains anything. Now the Lord God must have been at a loss.... Man’s reality is a mystery. There is no answer that can answer it, because it is not a question in the first place. It is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved.
And remember the distinction between a problem and a mystery: a mystery is existential, a problem is intellectual. The mystery is not created by the mind, so the mind cannot solve it either. The problem is created by the mind in the first place, so the mind can solve it. The problem is created by the mind, so the mind can solve it, there is no problem in it. But the mystery of life this existential mystery that surrounds you, these trees, these stars, these birds, people, you yourself...how can you solve them through the mind? The mind is a very, very recent arrival. Existence has lived without the mind, long, long.... The mind is just an addition, it has just happened. Scientists say that if we divide human history into twenty-four hours, into one day, then mind came just two seconds ago...just two seconds ago! If this is going to be the measurement twenty-four hours, the whole history then mind entered only two seconds ago. How can it solve? What can it solve? It has not known the beginning, it has not known the end; it has come just now in the middle. It has no perspective. If one really wants to know what this unknown is, one has to drop out of the mind, one has to disappear into existence. That is the Tantra way. Tantra is not a philosophy, Tantra is absolutely existential. And remember,

when I say that Tantra is existential, I don’t mean the existentialism of Sartre, Camus, Marcel, and others. That existentialism is again a philosophy, a philosophy of existence, but not the Tantra way. And the difference is vast. The existential philosophers in the West have only stumbled upon the negative: anguish, angst, depression, sadness, anxiety, hopelessness, meaninglessness, purposelessness all the negatives. Tantra has stumbled upon all that is beautiful, joyful, blissful. Tantra says: Existence is an orgasm, an eternal orgasm going on and on and on. It is forever and forever an orgasm, an ecstasy.
They must be moving in different directions. Sartre goes on thinking about existence. Tantra says: Thinking is not the door. It leads nowhere, it is a blind alley; it brings you only to a cul-de-sac. Philosophy is great if you are just fooling around, then philosophy is great; you can make mountains out of molehills and you can enjoy the trip. Just the other day I was reading a very, very philosophical piece. Meditate over it.... A most peculiar thing occurred to me, and I am going to tell it to you on the chance that it may have occurred to you too at one time or another, and on hearing me you will handle the situation better when it occurs again. Yesterday I was in a restaurant and I ordered some lunch. I was with a small group of people around this table having a little lunch. It wasn’t...you know, six, seven people around this table.... I don’t know, eight people...nine...about forty people having lunch...a small group of people. With my lunch I ordered a glass of milk. Now I like milk. You know how I feel about buttermilk, but milk I like. Milk I adore. I like fresh, cold milk. If it’s warm...yuck! If I can taste it, I don’t like it. Anyway the milk came. And I was just about to drink it when I noticed that floating at the top of the milk was the littlest, teeniest black speck. And I am here to tell you that nothing in this world mattered but that little black speck! It became the most important thing in my life for the next few minutes. First of all I wasn’t gonna let that damn thing down in me, I’ll tell you! You know, who knows these days what it was? It could have been a solid chunk of strontium 90, you know. Or maybe a large typhoid colony. Anyway I didn’t want to swallow it. Now I’ve seen black specks before I’m a sophisticated man, I’ve lived and I’m sure you’ve seen them too. You can see them any place. However, I think you spot them mostly in sugar bowls. Once in a while you catch one lurking about in a bowl of flour. Oatmeal is loaded with black specks; I think oatmeal is mostly black specks, if you want to know the truth. But that’s neither here nor there.... Now the thing that bothered me about this black speck was that I didn’t know where it came from. That’s what bothered me. I knew where the milk came from and that bothered me too, you know, but at least I knew where it came from. So I decided to get the black speck out of the milk.
Do you know how hard that is to do? Those black specks are smart as hell, they can smell a spoon a mile off! The minute you pick up the spoon they start running around the glass, don’t they? You pick them up and they jump out...and you’ve got to be very careful or they get wise and they dive for the bottom, and you have to sit there like a fool waiting for it to float back up again.
Now there’s one thing you can do: if you just take the tip of your finger and you touch the speck very gently, it’ll stick to your finger along with a large blob of milk and you’ll have it out. But you know, when you’re with a group of people you don’t want to put your finger in your milk. You know, some wise guy is bound to say, ”Say! How come you’re putting your finger in your milk?” What are you going to say, ”I’m trying to get a black speck out”? You know, you have no answer.
Now there’s another thing you can do. You can drink the milk very carefully, keeping your eye on the speck all the time. The minute it starts to move towards you, you quit! You fool the little devil! But that’s only possible if the speck is on the far side of the glass. In this case it was close to me, waiting...so what do you do? You twist the glass...and the damned thing stays right there!
Well, I’m going to tell you what I did, so that when it happens to you you can handle the situation in a similar fashion. I got up and walked around to the other side of the table, and I drank it over there! He never even knew it!
Philosophy is creating mountains out of molehills. You can go on and on, there is no end to it. For at least five thousand years man has been philosophizing about each and every thing: about the beginning, about the end, about the middle about each and every thing. And not a single question has been solved; not a single, not the smallest question has been solved or dissolved. Philosophy has proved to be the most futile of efforts...but still man continues, knowing perfectly well that it never delivers anything. Why? It goes on promising, but never delivers anything. Then why does man continue with this effort?
It is cheap. It does not require any involvement, it is not a commitment. You can sit in your chair and go on thinking. It is a dream. It does not require that you should change in order to see reality. That’s where courage is needed, adventurous courage is needed. To know the truth, you are moving into the greatest adventure there is.

You may be lost, who knows? You may never come back, who knows? Or you may come back utterly changed, and who knows whether it will be for the good or not?
The journey is unknown, the journey is so unknown that you cannot even plan it. You have to take a jump into it. Blindfolded, you have to take a jump into it, in the dark night, with no map, without knowing where you are going, without knowing what you are going for. Only a few daredevils enter into this existential quest. So Tantra has only appealed to a very few people, but those were the salt of the earth. Saraha is one of them. Now the sutras. These are the last four sutras of Saraha’s Royal Song. Once in the realm that’s full of joy the seeing mind becomes enriched and thereby for this and that most useful; even when it runs after objects it is not alienated from itself. The king must have told Saraha what people were saying about him. They were saying about him that he was indulging in the senses, he was indulging in pleasures. He was no longer a sannyasin; his renunciation was false, he had fallen. He had asked permission of the king to become a Buddhist monk, and he had become a Buddhist monk. He had lived the controlled and disciplined life of a Buddhist monk. And then came this revolutionary woman, this arrowsmith woman, and she transformed his whole being, his whole life and his whole style. She destroyed his character. She allowed him freedom freedom to be, freedom to be from moment to moment, with no past, with no future.
Naturally the ordinary, common people started thinking that he had fallen from grace, he had betrayed. And he had been a great brahmin and was a great scholar; they had hoped for much from him, that he would bring some knowledge to the country, and now he had become like a mad dog. A thousand and one stories must have been spread around the country about him, and the king must have told him what people thought about Saraha. The king was hurt; he had loved the man, he had respected the man but the king was also of the same world, his ways of thinking were similar to those of the people. He had no insight into reality or into himself. Saraha says to the king: Once, even once, if you know what joy is, you will forget all these stories. Once, even once, if you have any taste of what life is, you will forget all this nonsense of character, virtue, respectability. You can continue to live a respectable life only if you are dead, you can live in a respectable way if you have not yet contacted life. Life is a radical phenomenon. It is a chaos a very creative chaos, but it is a chaos all the same.
Saraha says:
Once in the realm that’s full of joy the seeing mind becomes enriched... But the question is of experiencing it.
Saraha says: I cannot explain what has happened to me, but I can say this much: if you taste it even once you will be transformed. The taste transforms. I am not going to convince you in any argumentative way, I have no philosophy, says Saraha. I have a certain experience, I can share that experience with you, but the sharing cannot be just from my side. You will have to move from your dogmatic standpoint, you will have to come with me into the unknown. I can take you to that window from which existence is clear, transparent, but you will have to hold my hand and come to that window.
That’s what a master is meant to do: he holds the hand of the disciple and takes him to that opening from which he has looked into God. In a metaphorical way, he lends his eyes to you. Once you have tasted, then there is no problem, then that very taste will go on pulling you. Then the pull is so tremendous that you cannot remain where you have been staying and vegetating.
Once in the realm that’s full of joy the seeing mind becomes enriched... But a seeing mind is needed to taste that joy a mind which is not burdened with blinkers too much, a mind which is open.
Now this is the problem with people who are too attached to philosophies, religions, scriptures, theories, dogmas: the problem is that they have too many blinkers, layer upon layer. Their eyes are lost behind curtains and curtains and curtains. Those curtains have to be peeled away just as you peel an onion. All those curtains have to be removed; then you have a seeing mind.
Right now, whatsoever you have is a non-seeing mind. It only pretends that it sees; it only says, believes, that it sees. Your eyes see not, your ears hear not, and your hands touch not because you have lost that sensitivity, that flow which can make your eyes seeing eyes, which can make your ears hearing ears. That’s why Jesus has to say again and again to his disciples: If you can see, see it! If you have eyes, see it! If you have ears, listen to it, hear it! He was talking to people who were not blind and who were not deaf. They had as much of a capacity to see as you have and a capacity to hear as you have; they were normal people. But why did he insist again and again: If you have eyes...? Was he always talking to blind people like you? But what did he mean when he said: If you have eyes...? Why this ’if’? It is a great ’if’, because people appear

to have eyes and yet they don’t have. And that appearance is very dangerous, because they go on believing that they have eyes.
Have you ever looked at anything without your thoughts coming in, interfering, distracting, interpreting? Have you ever seen a roseflower without language coming in, without your mind immediately saying, ”It is a roseflower, it is a beautiful flower”...this and that? The moment you say it is a roseflower you are not seeing this flower. Then all the roseflowers that you have seen and heard about are standing in a queue, and this real roseflower is at the farthest end. The moment you say it is a roseflower, you are pulling a curtain over your eyes. Language is the greatest curtain. Can’t you see this flower just as it is without calling it a rose, without even calling it a flower? What is the need? Can’t you just look into this reality without any idea, without any cloud moving around you? Can’t you be, for a moment, without language? If you are without language for a moment, you will have the seeing mind. Start trying it sometimes. Sitting by the side of a tree, just look at the tree and don’t think what tree it is. And don’t think that it is a tree, and don’t think that it is beautiful or ugly; don’t bring your mind in at all. Just watch. Whatever it is X, Y, Z let it be whatsoever it is. Don’t judge. Jesus says: Judge ye not. Language is a judgment. With the judgment come all the prejudices. With the judgment comes your whole past. And whenever past comes in, you are removed from the present. I was reading.... There was a man who owned a garage, and he had a cat. One day he was filling a customer’s car with petrol when he spilled some in the cat’s milk. The cat drank it all up and began to run round the place at sixty miles an hour. Then suddenly it stopped dead.
The customer said, ”Has the cat died?”
”No,” said the garage owner, ”I think it’s run out of petrol.” A garage owner has his language, his past, his prejudice. He understands things in a certain way. He says, ”No, I think it has run out of petrol.” And this is happening constantly. It happened....
It happened while Sarvesh, our ventriloquist sannyasin with the talking puppet, was here and he was giving a show in the Radha Auditorium. The puppet was telling all sorts of jokes about different religions and races and everything. Then he said, ”Well now, let’s tell a joke about Germans.” So a German sannyasin not Haridas, mind you stood up and said, ”I will not have you telling jokes about Germans! We are not as thick as you think, you know.”
”Be calm, sir,” said Sarvesh. ”Please be calm and sit down. It is nothing personal.” ”I’m not talking to you,” said the German, ”I’m talking to the little fella on your knee!” Your mind is your mind. It is always there thick or thin, good or bad, it is always there. Intelligent or unintelligent, it is always there. Knowledgeable or ignorant, it is always there. Educated, uneducated, it is always there. German, Indian, American, it is always there. And reality is not German, and reality is not American, and reality is not Indian, so when you come with German eyes, with Indian eyes, with American eyes, with Hindu eyes, with Mohammedan eyes, with Christian eyes, you miss reality.
Start.... This will give you a great preparation for the jump into Tantra. Start...whenever you are sitting, moving, walking, talking, try again and again to remain with the real, the uninterpreted, unjudged real. And slowly, slowly, doors open. Slowly, slowly, a few moments start coming to you which are not moments of the mind non-linguistic visions of reality, non-mental visions of reality and those will prepare you. Says Saraha:
Once in the realm that’s full of joy the seeing mind becomes enriched... So the first thing is the seeing mind, and the second thing is, don’t avoid joys. Approach them with an open heart, with receptivity, with a welcoming being; absorb them. Wherever joy is, God is. That is the Tantra message in short: Wherever joy is, God is.
And joy has three planes. The first is what we call pleasure. Pleasure is of the body. The second is happiness. Happiness is of the mind. The third is bliss. Bliss is of the spirit, spiritual. But they all share one reality and that reality is joy. Joy converted into the language of the body becomes pleasure, joy received through the body becomes pleasure. Joy received through mind becomes happiness. Joy received neither through mind nor through body received without body, without mind becomes bliss. These are the three layers of joy. Joy is the only reality.
Joy is God!
Joy is the stuff which existence is made of.
Saraha says: Be available to joy wherever it comes from. Never deny it. Don’t condemn it. When it is of the body, so what? Then God is knocking at your body. When you are eating and you feel a certain joy, you enjoy your food, it is God; you are swallowing him. When you hold the hand of a woman or a man or a friend

or anybody, with tremendous love and there is a thrill in your body energy, there is a dance, a deep dance in your body energy; when you are stirred like electricity something vibrates, renovates, rejuvenates you, something which makes you more alive than you have ever been before it is joy, it is God coming through the body. When listening to music you feel tremendously happy, it is joy through the mind. Looking at a flower without touching it and without bringing your mind into it, a moment comes when there is bliss subtle, silent, profound benediction. But all are different manifestations of joy.
’Joy’ is one of the most beautiful words in the English language. It covers the whole range of all kinds of happiness. Tantra says that the first thing is to be available to joy. You will be surprised: why this insistence. Are we not available to joy? Yes, it is sad to say, but it is so: you are not. Nobody is. We are more receptive to suffering; we are more ready to suffer than we are ready to be joyful; we are more available to misery than to joy. There is something in it. Joy takes away your ego, and misery gives you your ego in a very strong way. Misery creates ego, and joy takes it away. Any moment of joy, and you are lost in it. The joy moment is not an ego moment; the misery moment is a very condensed ego moment. When you are miserable, you are; when you are joyful, you are not.
So let me repeat: Because we are egoists we are more available to suffering, misery, sadness, unhappiness. We create a joyless life around ourselves. We convert all opportunities of joy into sadness because that is the only way for the ego to exist. The ego can exist only in hell. In heaven the ego cannot exist. You have been told down the centuries that if you become egoless you will enter into heaven. I say to you: If you become egoless heaven enters in you. Heaven is not a geographical thing somewhere, it is not that you go there. When you are egoless, you are heaven. When you are egoful, you are hell. It is not that hell is there somewhere at the bottom of existence and heaven is somewhere at the peak of existence these are just metaphors. Heaven and hell are states of being.
When you are, you are in hell. When you are not, you are in heaven. And that’s why if you are too attached to your ego and you want to feel yourself that you are separate, different, unique, this and that...then you will remain miserable. Now the paradox: the ego creates misery and the ego wants to be joyful. The ego seeks, is very greedy about joy; it wants to have all the joys possible and the ego creates misery. Now you are trapped. The more misery the ego creates, the more interested the ego becomes in joy. But it cannot create joy: joy is not its function. This insight is a Tantra insight.
And one moment of joy...even once, says Saraha, is enough to change you, sir, he says to the king. One moment, once, will be enough argument and proof of what type of life I am living, what type of being I am. Once in the realm that’s full of joy the seeing mind becomes enriched... And mind is never enriched by philosophizing. By theories it is not enriched, by knowledge it is not enriched only by experience. A rich mind means one which has experienced something of the real, something of the truth. There is only one richness that is of truth. And there is only one poverty, and that is of lies. If you don’t know the truth you live in lies, illusions, projections, dreams.
...and thereby for this and that most useful; even when it runs after objects it is not alienated from itself. Why do people ordinarily run towards objects? Somebody wants a car and somebody wants a house and somebody wants money and somebody wants power why are people running after objects? What is the base, the fundamental reason for their hankering and hectic activities? You will be surprised...Tantra says: They want to run away from themselves. They are not running towards objects, they simply want to run from themselves. Objects are excuses, they help you to turn your back upon yourself. You are afraid of yourself, there is great fear about yourself.
It happens here every day: whenever a person comes closer to meditation he becomes scared. Why? because when you look into yourself, you will not find anybody there. Pure nothingness, abyss abysmal nothingness. You start trembling, you are standing on a precipice...just a wrong step and you are finished. One starts running from oneself. People are running not for things, people are running from themselves. They are not running for something, they are running from something. And that something is their own being. So whenever you are occupied you feel good. Whenever you are unoccupied you feel very restless, very restless. Nothing to do, you start falling upon yourself. If something is there to be done, you are engaged; engaged you can forget that abyss which goes on calling from your inside. That abyss is what God is. To come to terms with that abyss, to become friendly with that abyss, is the first step towards reality. ...and thereby for this and that most useful; even when it runs...
Saraha says ordinary people are running after things because they want to avoid themselves. But a man who has come to know what truth is, even if that man is going towards objects, don’t be deceived, because he will also enjoy. In fact he is the only person who will enjoy.

You are running after things because you want to avoid yourself. He has nowhere anything to avoid, he is not escaping from anywhere he can enjoy things. In fact only he can enjoy things. How can you enjoy things? because you are constantly afraid of your own being.
Saraha says: If you see a tantrika enjoying a woman or enjoying a good meal or drinking wine, don’t judge him because he looks just like any other ordinary man; he is not. The difference is very deep, the difference is very essential. On the surface they both look alike. How can you differentiate whether a man who is running after a woman is ordinary or a tantrika? It is very difficult from the outside, because from the outside they look almost the same.
Take a few examples: Two dancers are dancing. One dancer is dancing only to perform, to feel the ego that he is a great dancer. It is a performance. He is looking into people’s eyes to see what they are thinking. He is waiting for their applause, he is hoping they are going to applaud him. They will help his ego strengthen a little more. And there is another dancer on the same stage, dancing because he enjoys it. He is not performing. He not even bothering about whether people are applauding or not, whether people are there or not. He is absorbed, utterly absorbed in his dance. Will it be possible for you to make a distinction from the outside? It will be very difficult. More is the possibility that you will not be able to make any distinction. It is possible you may even think that the performer is a great dancer, because he is speaking the same language of the ego which you understand. The nonperformer may look a little crazy. The nonperformer will be so spontaneous that unless you know the language of spontaneity you cannot understand him.
To understand anything, you have at least to know the language. A tantrika sitting by the side of a woman, holding her hand, and an ordinary man holding the hand of a woman how will you make a distinction between the two? The ordinary man is trying to escape from himself. He wants to get lost in this woman so that he can forget himself. He himself is not in love with himself, that’s why he is loving this woman so that his reality can be forgotten. He is using this woman like an alcoholic beverage: this woman makes him drunk and he forgets about himself. It helps, it gives him a certain relaxation. He is, for a few moments at least, not in his usual anxieties. And the tantrika, holding the hand of the woman in tremendous joy.... It is not that he wants to escape there is nowhere to escape, and there is no one to escape. He is holding the hand of this woman just to share something of tremendous value with her. You cannot share everything with everybody. There are a few things which you can share only in love, there are a few things which you can share only in trust. People ask me why I don’t talk to the masses. I don’t talk to them because I have something to share, and that can be shared only in deep trust, that can be shared only in deep love. I can only talk with people who are in love with me. Otherwise it is meaningless: they will not understand, they will misunderstand. There is no way to make it understood. It can be communicated only when you are ready to respond. When your hearts are ready, open, I can play on your hearts and a great music can be born. But if you come closed, untrusting, doubting, then I cannot create that music. It is impossible, because you won’t allow me to enter into your innermost core of being and play on your heart. If you won’t allow me, then the music will not be created.
And then you want to know whether the music exists...and the only way to make you aware that it exists is to create it in you. You say, ”Yes, I will trust if I can experience the music.” The problem is that you cannot experience the music unless you trust. It has to be created, only then can you know that it is. But before it can be known, trust is a basic requirement.
The tantrika is holding the hand of a woman. He can hold anybody’s hand, but he will not be able to convey the energy that has happened to him; he can convey it very easily to somebody who loves. And it can be conveyed only in certain moments....
There are certain moments when two people come so close that the energy can jump from one to the other. You know those moments if you have loved anybody, you will know they are not there twenty-four hours a day. Even if you love a woman... your wife or your child, your husband, then too you know that for twenty-four hours a day those moments are not there; they happen rarely. Sometimes they happen...sometimes, something...and you fall together. Sometimes you feel that the other has moved very, very close, your peripheries are overlapping. That is the moment when something can be conveyed.
Now Saraha says: If you look from the outside, sir, you will see us tantrikas just as ordinary people hankering for things, the ordinary joys of life. We are not.
And, he says:
Once in the realm that’s full of joy the seeing mind becomes enriched and thereby for this and that most useful...

This is samsara, and that is nirvana. Saraha says: This enriched mind enriched by joy becomes useful for both this and that, for samsara and nirvana, for the outer and the inner, for the bodily and the spiritual, for the visible and the invisible. It becomes capable and useful for both this and that. This a great statement. Ordinarily so-called spiritual people think that either your mind can be useful in the world or in God. Their thinking is that of either-or. Tantra says: This thinking is dividing life into lower and higher, into material and spiritual, into samsara and nirvana. This division is wrong because life is indivisible. And really, if you are intelligent you will not only be able to enjoy God, you will be able to enjoy very ordinary things too. You will be able to enjoy a rock as much as you will be able to enjoy God.
See into this great, profound statement: When the mind is really intelligent and enriched by joy, you will be able to enjoy bliss, you will be able to enjoy happiness, you will be able to enjoy pleasure too because it all belongs to God the lowest as much as the highest.
...and thereby for this and that most useful; even when it runs after objects it is not alienated from itself. And Saraha says: Even if you find me running, that running after objects is your interpretation. I am not running, because there is nowhere to run and nobody to run.
This state where one has attained to his inner clarity is such that one can enjoy everything from food to God, from sex to samadhi. There is no division; there should not be, there need not be. Tantra gives you both worlds. Tantra is not an either-or standpoint, it is this and that both; it is very comprehensive. All religions look poor in that way, because they take away the world and they force an unnecessary choice on you. They say: Either choose the world or God. They put God in opposition to the world. Tantra is the only total religion the only total religion. No religion has been born on the earth which has such a total vision. Both, Tantra says, there is no question of choice; it is all yours. You can be in the marketplace, and you can enjoy the marketplace; and yet you can be beyond it, and you can enjoy the beyond too. It does not force you to choose. All choice is destructive. And because of these religions of the ’either-or’ standpoint, the world has remained worldly.
Who bothers about God? God is so far away, is not so real. And then one thinks, ”Later on.... One can postpone God, but life is running by enjoy it first.” These religions which have forced choice on man have forced man to remain worldly. Out of a million, one will become religious. An unnecessarily hard choice he has to renounce the world, he has to move out of his family, away from friends; he has to go against all his love. You force him unnecessarily.
And then another problem arises. These people who are ready to choose God against the world are more or less perverted people who have failed in life somehow; who have somehow not been intelligent enough to understand life; who are somehow stupid, who are somehow sadistic, masochistic; people who are somehow neurotic, egoistic. They can escape from the world, they can start torturing themselves; that’s what up to now asceticism has been. Torture yourself, be violent with yourself, kill yourself. Slowly, slowly poison your being. These people are not healthy people.
So out of a million, one person becomes interested in choosing God. And out of hundreds of so-called religious people, ninety-nine seem to be neurotic. So out of a hundred million, one person becomes a Buddha or a Christ or a Krishna. This is sheer wastage.
Just think of a garden where ten million trees are growing and only one tree flowers. Will you call that gardener a gardener? In fact you will come to the natural conclusion about it that it is not because of the gardener that the tree has flowered; it must be in spite of him. Ten million trees he has planted and only one tree has flowered and has become fruitful. It cannot be because of the gardener; it must be because it somehow escaped the gardener, the gardener could not destroy it. Somehow the gardener has neglected it, somehow the gardener has forgotten about it. Maybe...ten million trees, and he has forgotten about it. So it has been missed and has flowered. Each tree is potentially fruitful, potentially capable of blooming; and each man is capable of becoming a god. Tantra creates a totally new religion. It says that there is no need to choose: wherever you are, exactly there God can be experienced. It is not against the world, it is for God. And its God is so vast that the world can be included. And to me it seems very, very relevant that the creation should be included in the creator. It should not be against. What type of logic is this which says that the creation is against the creator? If it is God who has created you, if it is God who has created your body, your sexuality, your sensuality, then it cannot be against God. George Gurdjieff used to say that all the religions are against God. And he was right except for Tantra, he was right. All the religions are against God. If you are against God’s creation, you are indicating that you are against God. If you are against the painting, are you not saying that you are against the painter? If you are against the poetry are you not saying, in an indirect way, that you are against the poet?

If God is the creator, then the creation is his and must have his signature everywhere. Yes, it is there, and Tantra says that God’s signature is everywhere. You just need seeing eyes, a seeing mind and a little receptivity for joy, and it will start happening.
The buds of joy and pleasure and the leaves of glory grow. If nothing flows out anywhere the bliss unspeakable will fruit.
The key...the secret. These are the last sutras of Saraha. He is giving the ultimate touch to whatsoever he has said up to now. He is giving the final statement.
He says: Pleasures are of the body. Pleasures are outgoing pleasure needs the other, pleasure hankers for the object, pleasure is an extroverted journey. Good! There is nothing wrong in it. And then: Joy is an introverted journey. Joy is more interested in oneself, joy is more subjective. For pleasure, the other is needed; for joy, you are enough.
Pleasure is bodily, joy is psychological. But they both remain buds unless the third, the ultimate in joy, happens: bliss. That bliss is the one-thousand-petaled lotus, the highest peak of your consciousness. When that opens, then all buds bloom.
Now this has to be understood. An ordinary person can have only a very limited joy through the body, but a tantrika will have tremendous joy through his body. It will not just be a bud, it will be a flowering. An ordinary person can have a certain joy in music, in meditation, in dance, but a tantrika will have infinite joy. When you have known the last, the last starts being reflected in everything you do. If you have known God, then wherever you walk, you are walking on holy ground. Then whatsoever you see, you are seeing God. Then whomsoever you meet, you are meeting God.
Always remember: your highest experience is reflected in your lowest experiences. Without the highest experience the lower is very mundane. That’s the problem. That’s why people cannot understand tantrikas when they say that even in sex samadhi is possible. They cannot understand, and it is understandable why they cannot understand. They don’t know samadhi. They know very ordinary, ugly sex. They know only frustration through it. They only know lust through it.
The English word ’love’ is very meaningful. It comes from a Sanskrit root lobha. Lobha means greed, lust. The ordinary love is nothing but lust and greed. How can the ordinary man understand that in love the ultimate can be reflected? But when you have known the ultimate, the highest, then the lowest is linked with it. Then anything stirs it, then anything becomes a message from it.
It is like this. You come across a handkerchief on the road; it is an ordinary handkerchief, not worth more than one rupee. But one day you fall in love with a woman, and you come across a handkerchief on the street the same handkerchief, worth one rupee but now it belongs to the woman you love. Now its worth is tremendous, now it is not just one rupee. If somebody were going to offer you one thousand rupees you would not be willing to give this handkerchief this belongs to the woman that you love. Now this ordinary handkerchief has something which was not there before: it reminds you of your beloved.
It is exactly like that. When you have known samadhi, then even sexual orgasm reminds you of samadhi, then everything reminds you of samadhi. Then the whole existence becomes so full and crowded with God.... The buds of joy and pleasure and the leaves of glory grow.
The buds are of joy and pleasure, and the leaves are of glory. But ordinarily you will just see leaves unless the highest has happened. When the highest happens then you see that even the ordinary leaves of your life are not ordinary leaves: it is through them that the ultimate flowering has happened. And now you know that the same sap flows to the ultimate flower, to the buds of joy and pleasure; and to the leaves too the same sap flows. They all help together toward the one-thousand-petaled lotus.
Leaves of glory means leaves of grace, gratitude. You start feeling the glory of existence; your life is glorious. It is no longer ordinary, it is luminous with God.
If nothing flows out anywhere...
And when does this one-thousand-petaled lotus open? It opens when nothing flows out. Now look: First, pleasure is when your energy is flowing out bodily pleasure. Joy is when your energy is flowing in subjective, psychological joy. And when does bliss happen? when your energy is not flowing anywhere, it is simply there. You are not going anywhere, you are simply there; you are just a being. Now you don’t have any goals, now you don’t have any desires to fulfill, you don’t have any future. You are just herenow. When the energy has become just a pool, not going anywhere, not flowing anywhere; no goal to be attained, nothing to be sought; you are just here, tremendously here, totally here; this now is all the time that is left for you, and this here is all the space. Then suddenly this gathering of energy, which is not moving anywhere, not distracted by body or mind, becomes a great rush in you. And... the one-thousand-petaled lotus opens.

If nothing flows out anywhere the bliss unspeakable will fruit.
And then comes the fruit. So joy and pleasure are the buds, grace and gratitude and glory are the leaves, and this ultimate flowering of bliss is the fulfillment, the fruition. You have come home. What has been done and where and what in itself it will become, is nothing... And now you know that whatsoever has been done or not done was just a dream. Now you know that karma, action, means nothing. You were just drawing lines on water; they go on disappearing. Nothing is left. Nothing really happens. All is. Nothing happens.
What has been done and where and what in itself it will become, is nothing... Saraha is saying: Look, sir. What I am doing and what I have done and what has happened is all meaningless now that I know it is just a dream.
...yet thereby it has been useful for this and that.
But, he says, it is true it has helped for this and that. Even while it was a dream, it was helpful it brought me to this reality. I have stepped over that dream, but now I know it was a dream, now I know it was false. I have not done anything, because nothing is ever done; it is all a dream, but it has helped it has brought me to this ultimate fruition.
This samsara and that nirvana have both been enriched by that dream. The dream was not just futile, it was helpful, utilitarian. But not true.
Let me tell you one anecdote....
There was a hunter walking through the jungle and he met a snarling tiger coming towards him on the path. He reached for his gun...to his horror he saw that he had no bullets. The tiger was coming nearer, it was going to attack.
”What can I do? I’m going to be eaten up,” thought the hunter, terror freezing him on the spot. Just as the tiger was about to spring, the hunter had a strange feeling. ”I do believe all this is only a dream,” he said to himself. ”If I try hard enough, I’m sure I’ll wake up.” So he pinched himself hard and shook himself and blinked. In a moment the tiger was gone; the tiger had disappeared, the hunter was safe in his own bed. What a relief! He still trembled with fright, but now he laughed too. How real that tiger had seemed! Thank goodness it was only a dream.
When he felt calm again, the hunter got up and made himself a cup of tea. He still felt tired, so he sat outside his hut in a deckchair and smoked his pipe for a while. He really felt quite sleepy, so he tipped his hat over his face and closed his eyes. ”I could sleep all day,” he said.
After a time he heard growling. ”Bless me,” said the hunter, ”I must have dropped off to sleep again. There’s that tiger coming back. Go away, you silly tiger, I’m tired of dreaming about you!” The tiger growled again, and came nearer.
”I’m not afraid of you. You’re only a dream,” said the hunter. Then he got up from his chair, walked up to the tiger, and punched it hard on the nose.
”What a funny man!” thought the tiger. ”Men usually run away from me.” And of course seeing this strange man, the tiger escaped.
As the tiger was escaping the man became alert to the fact that he was fully awake and the tiger was not a dream, it was a reality.
But what happened? The dream helped him even to tackle the real tiger. Naturally the tiger must have become very puzzled. This has never happened! What type of man is this that he gets up and hits me in the face just like that?
All is dream, but dreams can help to understand reality even to overcome reality. Says Saraha:
What has been done and where and what in itself it will become, is nothing: yet thereby it has been useful for this and that. Whether passionate or not the pattern is nothingness.
Says Saraha: Whether you are living a life of passion or a life of no passion, those who know, know well that deep down neither passion nor non-passion makes any difference. Deep down it is pure nothingness. It is just like a movie projected on an empty screen. A beautiful scene is projected and you are thrilled with its beauty; a horror scene is projected and you start trembling. But Saraha says: The day you understand, there remain nothing but shadows on an empty screen. The sinner is a projection, so is the saint. The good is a projection, so is the bad. On the empty screen of reality all is projected by the mind. So Saraha says: Sir, don’t be puzzled too much by what people say. I know it is just an empty screen. Whether Saraha is a very great man of character or a characterless bum, whether Saraha is respected by people or is condemned and reviled does not matter it is an empty screen, people are projecting their ideas.
 
I have come to know this nothingness. And this experience of nothingness, and the experience of the onethousand- petaled lotus are two aspects of the same phenomenon. On the one hand you attain to ultimate bliss, on the other hand you know now that everything is just an empty dream. There is nothing to leave and nowhere to go; nobody to leave and nobody to go anywhere. It is not only that things are empty, you are also empty. It is all emptiness inside, outside just exactly like a dream. What happens in a dream? You create...it is fantasy. The last sutra:
If I am like a pig that covets worldly mire, you must tell me what fault lies in a stainless mind. By what does not affect one, how can one now be fettered?
Says Saraha: If I am like a pig, it is okay. If people say that Saraha has become a pig, a mad dog, that’s perfectly okay. It does not make any difference whether they say that Saraha has become a great saint or they say that he has become a pig that covets worldly mire.
...you must tell me what fault lies in a stainless mind.
What I do makes no difference; inside I know nothing, inside I know only nothingness. My purity is uncontaminated by what I do; doing does not affect my being at all. So you tell me, sir: ...what fault lies in a stainless mind. By what does not affect one, how can one now be fettered?
And these things don’t affect me this way or that. Neither am I detached, nor am I attached. I let things happen whatsoever happens. I have no longer any plan, and I have no longer any style to impose upon life. I live spontaneously whatsoever happens, happens, and I have no judgment. And I don’t say, ”It should have been this way.” I have no ’shoulds’, I have no ’should nots’.
Just meditate over this state: No ’shoulds’, no ’should nots’; no plan, no frustration, no repentance because nothing ever goes wrong. How can anything go wrong when you don’t have any idea of right? This is ultimate freedom, ultimate liberation.
How can anything go wrong? The wrong can happen only if you have a certain notion of the right. If you don’t have any notion, you don’t have any ideology, you don’t have any ideals, Saraha says, ”By what does not affect one how can one now be fettered?”
And the last sentence of the sutra is of great beauty. When you really come home and you see what is, you will not feel that you have become liberated. On the contrary you will feel: How ridiculous that I ever thought that I was not liberated! The difference is great.
If when you come home, when you come to know what is, you start feeling very, very enhanced and you are in a very great euphoria, and you say, ”Now I have become liberated,” that means you are not yet liberated. That means you still think the bondage was real, that means you are still in a dream...now in another dream. One dream was of bondage, this other dream is of liberation but another dream again. Saraha says: When you really become liberated liberated from all right and from all wrong, liberated from all good and all bad then you are not only liberated from bondage, you are liberated from liberation itself. Then suddenly you start laughing: How ridiculous! The bondage cannot happen in the first place, the bondage had never happened! It was just a belief; I had believed in it, and I had created it through my belief. It was a dream, now the dream is over.”
That’s why the last sentence ends on a question mark. Have you ever seen any scripture ending on a question mark? This is the only one. I have not come across any other.
Scriptures begin with a question mark and end with an answer. That’s how a logical treatise should go. The introduction can be a question, not the epilogue. But this beautiful song of Saraha ends on a question mark. If I am like a pig that covets worldly mire, you must tell me what fault lies in a stainless mind. By what does not affect one, how can one now be fettered?
He does not declare that he is enlightened, he does not declare that he is liberated, he does not declare that he has come home. He simply says: I laugh at the very idea that I had gone anywhere. I had never gone anywhere. I have always and always been at my home. I have always been here and now, only I was dreaming so the dreams created the illusion that I had gone somewhere. Now the dream has disappeared, and I am where I have always been. That’s why he says: How can one now be fettered?
Nobody is there to be fettered, nothing is there to fetter. The bondage has disappeared, so has disappeared the man who was in bondage. When the world disappears, the ego disappears together; they are part of the same game. Inside is ego, outside is the world. They cannot live apart, they are always together. When one disappears the other disappears simultaneously. Now the ego is not there and the world is not there. Saraha is propounding Buddha’s greatest insight. Buddha says there is no substance and there is no self. Substance is not there, all is empty. And the self is not inside you, there also all is empty. To come to see this
emptiness...awareness floating in emptiness pure awareness, unbounded awareness.... This awareness is emptiness itself, or this emptiness is awareness itself. This emptiness is luminous with awareness, full of awareness. Tantra is a great insight into things as they really are. But remember, finally: it is not a philosophy, it is an insight. And if you want to go into it, you will have to go not through the mind, but without the mind. No-mind is the door to Tantra. Non-thinking is the way to Tantra. Experiencing is the key to Tantra. Enough for today.
Tantric Transformation
Chapter 10 Just a remembrance
Audio:Yes Video:No Length:89 mins
Question 1 The first question:
Osho, Why is it that whenever I leave your lecture I quickly become disillusioned with myself because I am unable to live up to the ideals you put forward in your lecture?
What are you talking about? Ideals?...that’s exactly what I go on destroying! I am not putting any ideals before you. I am not giving you any fantasies about the future; I am not giving you any future at all, because the future is a trick to postpone the present. It is a trick to avoid yourself, a way to escape from yourself. Desire is a deception, and ideals create desires. I am not giving you any ’should’ or any ’should not’, either positive or negative. I am simply telling you to drop all ideals and be.
But I can understand your question. You make an ideal out of it, you start thinking, ”How should I be?” You start thinking, ”What should I do to be?” I am trying to take away the ideals and you make an ideal out of it: how to drop all ideals. You misunderstand me, you misinterpret me. You don’t hear what I am saying, you go on hearing what I am not saying at all. Listen more carefully.
It has always happened. We don’t know what Buddha said exactly, because the people who reported were people just like you. We don’t know what Jesus has said, because the people who reported were again people like you. The report certainly says what they heard, but it doesn’t say anything about what he said. And these can be diametrically opposite things.
I speak a totally different language. You reduce it to some other thing to your language; you come in and you start interfering.
You ask: ”Why is it that whenever I leave your lecture I quickly become disillusioned with myself...?” You become disillusioned with yourself because you don’t know who you are, and you have a certain image of yourself. That image is not you, that image cannot be you; that image is a mind construction. You have created an image of yourself you think this is what you are. And when you listen to me and I start pulling your legs, you become disillusioned; your image is broken, your image is not left intact as it was. But you are not broken. In fact the image is not allowing you to have space, it is not allowing you to be. The image has to be thrown out so you can have enough space to grow. The image has become too huge, too powerful; it has taken over your whole house and you are living on the porch, it does not allow you to come in. And the image which you have made out of ideals goes on condemning you, the creation goes on condemning the creator. Look at the foolishness of it, the ridiculousness of it. You create an image, very beautiful naturally when you are creating you create a beautiful image and then because of that image you start looking ugly in comparison. You create a very, very great image that you are a saint, and then you find yourself doing things which are not very saintly. Now you feel condemned. The image is yours, and against the image your act looks stinking. What I am saying here, what Saraha is saying to the king, is that the image has to be completely dropped. The moment you drop the image and you forget about the image, then what is right and what is wrong? Then who is a sinner and who is a saint? Then you don’t have anything to compare with. Then suddenly you are at ease. The comparison disappears...and the condemnation disappears. The comparison disappears...and the ego disappears, the ego of the sinner and the ego of the saint. Without the ideal there can exist no ego at all. It exists through the ideal, via the ideal. The ideal is a must for the ego.
Either you think that you are a sinner you create an ego, an identity or you think you are a saint; then you create an ego, an identity. But both can only come into existence through the ideal. If the ideal is not there, who are you? saint or sinner? good or bad? ugly or beautiful? Who are you? You are simply yourself, without any judgment, without any justification, without any condemnation. You are simply there in your reality; that’s what I am calling ’being’.
Now you must be becoming disillusioned again and again, because your grip on the image becomes a little loosened. Whenever your grip on the image is a little loosened, you become afraid. The ideal is creating an illusion, and whenever I start taking the ideal away, you feel disillusioned. Be utterly disillusioned, and don’t create the illusion again the illusion of the ideal and then see how life attains to a sublime silence. Then see how

tremendous acceptance arises, how great benediction simply surrounds you for no reason at all. It is yours, just for the asking. You are not to do anything.
You are acceptable to God as you are.
This is my whole message, and this is the whole of Tantra: You are accepted as you are! But you go on rejecting yourself. The ideal makes it possible for you to reject, the ideal makes it possible for you to be unkind to yourself, cruel, aggressive to become a self-torturer. My effort here is to help you to become sane. This idealism creates insanity, it has turned the whole earth into a madhouse. And you say: ”I become disillusioned with myself because I am unable to live up to the ideals you put forward in your lecture.”
What are you talking about? What ideals? I am not saying, ”You should do this.” I am not saying, ”You should be like this.” I am simply saying, ”Whatsoever you are, be.” I am trying to take all ’becoming’ from you. I am trying to help you to see the point that you are already at home; you have never to go anywhere, and you have nowhere to go. It is already the case God is showering on you. Samadhi is already the case. Wherever you are, you are in nirvana.
This is enlightenment...this moment with no ideals, with no desires, with nowhere to go. This moment utterly relaxed in it, herenow is the moment of God, the moment of truth.
But you listen to me and you start parroting, you listen to me and you start repeating words. You don’t follow the meaning, you follow the letter and not the spirit.
I have heard.... A certain tough old sea captain bought a young parrot at a foreign port, being assured it was a marvelous learner, and hung it on the bridge. Coming back through the Bay of Biscay, a fearful black cloud came over and the skipper remarked, ”It’s gone bloody dark all at once!” Soon after the cloud burst in a dreadful torrent and the captain said to the mate, ”It’s bloody hissing down!” The storm got worse, the ship lurched and developed a leak, so that one of the men called up, ”What shall we do to be saved?” He got the reply, ”Pump, you lousy shower! Pump, you poxed-up beggars! Pump!” The ship and all were lost. A wet, swearing, washed-up parrot alone survived, and after some adventures finished up with a dear spinster, who was just expecting the vicar. As a precaution she threw a cloth over the cage, so that the vicar was greeted with, ”It’s bloody dark all at once!” The lady was livid and put the parrot immediately under the cold-water tap, at which he shrieked, ”It’s bloody hissing down!” ”No, no, Miss Fantight! You mustn’t be so cruel to God’s creatures. Rather bring him to church on the Sabbath and expose him to good influences.” This was done and the parrot behaved like an angel, even joining in the hymns. The vicar, beaming at his own success, rose to announce his text, ”Brethren, today we ask: What shall we do to be saved?” and down the aisles rang the parrot’s clear tones, ”Pump, you lousy shower! Pump, you poxed-up beggars! Pump!”
Don’t become parrots. You can repeat what I am saying but that is not the point at all. Understand what I am saying. Repetition will create troubles for you. A slight change of tone, of emphasis, a slight change of a single comma, a full point, and all is lost. Listen to the meaning.
And there are different ways of listening. One way is listening from the mind; then you memorize. And you have been taught how to listen through the mind, because all your schools, colleges, universities, teach you how to cram. They give you a wrong notion as if memory is knowledge. Memory is not knowledge, memory is simply parroting. You will know the letter, you will know the word, but it will be empty; inside there will be no significance, no meaning in it. And that word is dangerous which has no meaning in it. There is another way to listen, and that is from the heart. Listen through the heart. Listen as if you were not listening to an argument, but to a song. Listen as if you were not listening to a philosophy, but to a poem. Listen as you listen to music. Watch me as you watch a dancer. Feel me as you feel a lover. Then the letter will be there; it will be used as a vehicle, but it will not be the real thing. The vehicle will be forgotten, and the meaning will enter into your heart and will remain there. And it will change your being, it will change your vision of life. Question 2
The second question:
Osho, How did Tantra grow out of Buddhism, which as far as I know views sex as a hindrance to meditation? It is related to the first question.
What Buddha said must have been misunderstood. Yes, he said that to go into meditation one has to go beyond sex. Now the people who heard him thought he was against sex naturally so: he said you have to go beyond sex. They started thinking that sex must be a hindrance then, otherwise why do you have to go beyond sex? They started fighting with sex rather than going beyond it; their whole emphasis changed. They started fighting with sex, and Buddhism became one of the most ascetic religions of the world.

Can’t you observe his tremendous grace in the statue of Buddha or in his pictures can it come out of ascetism? Is it possible that this beautiful being, this graceful face, this love, this compassion can come out of ascetism? Ascetics are people who torture themselves, and when a person tortures himself he starts torturing others too, with a vengeance. When a person is in misery himself, he cannot see anybody else being happy; he starts destroying others’ happiness too. That’s what your so-called mahatmas go on doing: they can’t see you happy, so whenever you are happy, they immediately come and say, ”There must be something wrong, a happy person means a sinner.” You can observe it in yourself also, because down the centuries your so-called mahatmas and saints have conditioned you to feel guilt whenever you feel happy. Whenever you are miserable, everything is okay. But if you are feeling great joy, you start feeling a little uneasiness somehow it doesn’t seem to be right. Have you not watched it in yourself? From where does it come? Happiness ...and not right? And misery is okay. Something very antagonistic to life very life-negative, very life-denying has entered into the bloodstream of humanity. And it has come through those so-called ascetics. These ascetics are neurotic people: they are masochists, they torture themselves. Their only joy is in creating more and more misery.
Buddha is not a masochist cannot be. Buddha looks so beautiful, so joyful, so happy, so tremendously blissful. Those who were hearing him have misunderstood somewhere. Yes, he says to go beyond sex one has to go beyond it because it is only the first rung of the ladder. But he is not saying to go against it. Going beyond is not necessarily going against. In fact the contrary is the case: if you go against sex you will never be able to go beyond it. Going beyond comes only through going through. You have to understand sex, you have to befriend sex.
Something, somewhere, got misinterpreted. Saraha comes as a right interpretation of Buddha. And Saraha must have watched what a calamity had happened to thousands of people who were following Buddha: rather than going beyond sex they had become obsessed with it. When you are continuously fighting with something you become obsessed with it.
You can watch it: a person who believes in fasting becomes obsessed with food. Mahatma Gandhi was obsessed with food, continuously thinking about food what to eat and what not to eat. As if that seemed to be the only important thing in life what to eat and what not to eat. Ordinary people are less obsessed, they are not thinking about it too much. Do a three-day fast and think about what goes on in your mind. You will think about food continuously. Now going beyond food is good, but fasting cannot be the way, because fasting creates an obsession with food. How can it be the way to go beyond it? If you really want to go beyond food you have to eat rightly. You have to eat the right food, you have to eat it in a right way at the right time. You have to find out what suits your body, what is nourishing.
Yes, that will take you beyond food, you will never think about food. When the body is nourished you don’t think about food. So many people think about food because in some way or other they are fasting. You will be surprised when I say that. You may be eating too much ice cream that is a sort of fast because it is not nourishing, you are simply throwing rotten things inside you. They don’t satisfy; they fill you but they don’t fulfill you. You feel stuffed but not contented.
Wrong food will create discontent, and your hunger will not be satisfied because hunger needs nourishment, not food. Remember, hunger is for nourishment, not for food. And hunger does not bother much about taste. The basic thing is whether it suits your body, whether it gives your body the needed energy. If it gives the needed energy then it is okay. If taste goes with right nourishment you will be tremendously satisfied. And remember, I am not against taste, I am all for it. But just taste cannot be nourishing. And just food without taste is unintelligent, stupid. When you can have both, why not? An intelligent person will find nourishing food, tasteful food. It is not such a big problem. Man can go to the moon and cannot find a nourishing food for himself? Man has done miracles and cannot satisfy his hunger? This does not seem to be the right situation. No, man has not looked into it.
There are people who believe in fasts they destroy the body. And then there are people who go on stuffing any rubbish they destroy the body. Both are in the same boat: both are fasting, and both are continuously obsessed. One is obsessed through indulgence, the other is obsessed through repression. Just in the middle is transcendence. So is the case with sex, and so is the case with everything in life. Saraha must have become aware that the people who say that Buddha has said to go beyond sex were not going beyond at all. Rather they were becoming more and more obsessed with it and falling deeper into its mire.
There was a young nun who went to the Mother Superior in some distress, and after a great deal of beating about the bush admitted she was pregnant.
”Who was it? Who was this wicked, wicked man?” said the Mother Superior. ”Oh, Reverend Mother, I wouldn’t commit a carnal offense with a man!” exclaimed the nun.

”Well, it wasn’t fathered by a woman, was it?” said the Mother Superior, beginning to lose her temper. ”No indeed, Blessed Mother. It was fathered by one of the holy angels,” simpered the nun. ”Holy angels! What is this nonsense?”
”Yes, Blessed Mother, he came down to me in the middle of the night in my sleep, and when I asked who he was he said, ’St. Michael,’ and showed me his name on his vest to prove it.” Once you are against something you will find ways to get out of it, you will find some back door. Man is cunning. If you repress something the cunning mind will find some other way. That’s why you dream about sex...your saints dream too much about sex, they have to. In the day they can deny, but in the night...when they are conscious they can repress, but when they are asleep, then in the dream sex takes great, fantastic colors, it becomes psychedelic. And then in the morning they feel guilty, and because they feel guilty they repress more. And when they repress more the next night they have an even more beautiful dream of sex or horrible, according to them. It depends on how you interpret it whether it is beautiful or horrible. A ’difficult’ schoolgirl of fifteen was sent to the psychologist, who asked her a number of very personal questions. He was sure that sex lay at the bottom of the trouble and asked her, ”Do you suffer from sexy or erotic dreams?” ”Certainly not!”
”Are you sure?”
”Quite sure,” said the girl. ”In fact I enjoy them.”
It depends on you whether you call them beautiful or horrible. In the night they are beautiful, in the morning they become horrible. In the night you enjoy them, in the morning you suffer. There is a vicious circle created, and your so-called saint goes on moving in this vicious circle: the day he suffers, the night he enjoys; the day he suffers, the night he enjoys and he is torn between these two.
And if you look deep down into yourself you will find it easily. Whatsoever you repress will remain there, you cannot get rid of it. The repressed remains, only the expressed disappears. The expressed evaporates, the repressed remains and not only remains, it becomes more and more powerful. As time passes by it becomes more and more powerful.
Saraha must have looked at what had happened two hundred years after Buddha: wrong interpretations, and people were almost obsessed with sex. Out of that obsession of the Buddhist monks and nuns, Tantra was born as a rebellion a rebellion against Buddhism, not against Buddha. Through that rebellion Saraha brought Buddha’s spirit back. Yes, one has to transcend sex, but the transcendence happens through understanding. Tantra believes in understanding. Understand a thing totally and you are free of its clutches. Anything not understood rightly will remain as a hangover.
So you are right. You ask: ”How did Tantra grow out of Buddhism, which as far as I know views sex as a hindrance to meditation?” Precisely because of that. It is a rebellion against Buddhism, and it is for Buddha. It goes against the followers, but not against the master. The followers were carrying the letter, and Saraha brings back the spirit.
Saraha is a reincarnation of the same enlightenedness as Buddha was. Saraha is a buddha. Question 3 The third question:
Osho, What does it mean: ’The honeymoon is over’?
The honeymoon is over means that the fantasy part of your love is finished. Honeymoon is a fantasy. It is a projection, it is not reality; it is projected dream. ’The honeymoon is over’ means that the dream is over, and now starts the marriage, the reality. The higher the honeymoon, the greater will be the disillusionment. That’s why love-marriages don’t succeed. Marriages succeed, but not love-marriages. The love-marriage cannot succeed; failure is intrinsic to it. A love-marriage is a fantasy, and the fantasy cannot win over reality. There is only one way to remain in fantasy and to remain always in a honeymoon, and that is to never meet your beloved. Then it is possible: you can have it for your whole life but never meet the beloved, never meet your lover.
The greatest lovers in history were those who were not allowed to meet: Laila and Majnu, Shiri and Farihad these are the great lovers. They were not allowed; the society created so many obstacles that they remained always in a state of honeymoon. It is just like when food is there but you are not allowed to eat it, so the fantasy continues. If you are allowed to eat it, then the fantasy disappears. Love-marriage cannot succeed. What do I mean by ’not succeed’? In the sense that people want it to succeed, it cannot succeed. Marriage is successful, but then there is no love. That’s why in the past all the societies of the world, out of experience, decided in favor of marriage and against love. Indian society is one of the most ancient societies of the world. It has existed for at least five thousand years, or more than that. Out of this long experience India decided for marriage without love, because a marriage without love can succeed because it has no honeymoon part in it; from the very beginning it is very realistic, down-to-earth. It does not allow any dreaming. In India the partners themselves are not allowed to choose. The boy is not allowed to choose the girl, the girl is not allowed to choose the boy; the parents choose. Naturally they are more down-to-earth, more experienced. And naturally they cannot fall in love. They think of other things: finance, prestige, respectability, family. They think of thousands of things, but they don’t think of one thing love. Love is not brought into the matter at all. They go to the astrologer, they ask the astrologer and inquire into everything but not love. Love has not to become an ingredient in it.
Two unknown people, the man and the woman, are put together by the parents, by the society, and left together. Naturally, when you live with a person a sort of liking arises. But that liking is just like the liking you have for your sister, it is not love. Because you were born into a certain family you have not chosen your sister, neither have you chosen your brother; they were not chosen by you, it was accidental that you were born to the same parents you have a certain liking. Living together for long, a thousand and one associations, and one starts liking or disliking. But it is never love and never hate; it never goes to extremes, it is very balanced. The same is the case with marriage, arranged marriage. The husband and wife live together, and by and by they start feeling for each other.
Another thing the society does: the society does not allow any extramarital sex, so naturally the husband has to make love to the wife, and the wife has to make love to the husband. If you are allowed only one food to eat and no other food is allowed, how long can you wait? You have to eat it. This is the trick of the society. If extramarital sex is allowed, then there is every possibility that the husband may not want to make love to the wife, the wife may not like to make love to the husband. Just out of hunger and with no other outlet they start making love to each other. Out of desperation they start becoming associated with each other. Then children are born...and more ties: religious, social ties. Then the children and the responsibility...and the family starts rolling. Love-marriage is bound to fail because the love-marriage is a poetic phenomenon. You fall in love and you start dreaming about the woman or the man, and you reach to a peak, a climax of dreams. Those dreams continue until you meet the woman, until you meet the man. Then you come together, you become satisfied; those dreams start disappearing. Now for the first time you start seeing the other as he or she is. When you see your wife as she is, when you see your husband as he is, the honeymoon is over. This is the meaning of the phrase ’the honeymoon is over’. And it does not happen only in marriage, it happens in many sorts of relationships. It happens here with me. You come to me and you can have a honeymoon, you can start fantasizing about me. I have no part in it, I am not a party to it. It is something that you do all alone. But you start fantasizing, desiring: this is going to happen and that is going to happen, and Osho will do this and Osho will do that. Then one day the honeymoon will be over. In fact I always like to wait till the honeymoon is over, then I start working, never before it, because I don’t want to become a party to your fantasies. I only start working when I see that now the honeymoon is over and you are back on the earth. Now something real can be done.
In fact I always like to give sannyas when the honeymoon is over. To give sannyas during the honeymoon is dangerous, very dangerous, because the moment the honeymoon is over you will start feeling against me, you will start rebelling against sannyas, you will start reacting. It is better to wait. In every relationship in friendship, in a master-disciple relationship in any kind of relationship there is a part which is of fantasy. That fantasy is just your mind: repressed desires are flying into dreams. In a better world, with more understanding, marriage will disappear, and with marriage will disappear the honeymoon too. Now listen. There have been societies...for example the Hindu society it has killed the honeymoon by killing love, and only marriage exists. In America they are killing marriage and saving love and the honeymoon; only the honeymoon exists, not marriage it is disappearing. But to me both are deep down in conspiracy. The honeymoon can exist only if there is some repression, otherwise there is nothing to project. And if there is something to project, then love fails again and again. Then the social pundits come in and they start making arrangements for marriage because love fails: it drives people crazy and does not help them to live their lives, it makes them suicidal, it makes them neurotic, schizophrenic, hysterical. So the social pundit has to come in, the priest and the politician have to come in and arrange for marriage, because love is too dangerous. And that’s how the society has moved between these two polarities.
Sometimes when people get fed up with marriage, as they have got fed up in America, they start thinking of love. When people get fed up with love, as sooner or later they will find they are already finding it so then they start moving towards marriage. Both are polarities of the same game.

To me a different kind of society is needed where marriage and romance both disappear. Marriage disappears, because to make two people live together by legal enforcement is immoral. To force two people to live together when they don’t want to live together is against nature and against God. Ninety-nine percent of social diseases will disappear if people are not forced.
Listen to this....
A man went to his solicitor and said, ”I am very rich, so money is no object, but I want to be rid of my wife, who is a bitch, without being had for murder. So tell me what to do.” ”Buy her a strong horse and it may throw her.”
A month later the man came back and said his wife was now the best horsewoman in the district. ”Try,” said the lawyer, ”buying her a Honda, and send her up the mountains in it.” The man did this, but she drove like Stirling Moss, putting in danger everybody but herself. The husband told the solicitor he was desperate.
”Then buy her a Jaguar.”
The man was back in a week, delighted. ”Name your fee,” he said. ”It worked.” ”What happened, then?”
”Well when she opened the cage door to feed the jaguar, it bit her bloody head off!” Marriage creates a thousand and one complexities and solves nothing. Yes, it succeeds: it succeeds in making people slaves. It succeeds in destroying people’s individuality. Don’t you see it all around? An unmarried man has a certain individuality and a married man starts losing his individuality; he becomes more and more of a type. The unmarried woman has a joy, something flowing. The married woman becomes dull, uninterested, bored. This is ugly, to force people into boredom. People are here to be happy, people are here to enjoy and celebrate. This is ugly!
Marriage has to go. But if you choose fantasy and love, you will again fall into the same trap of marriage, because love never succeeds, never succeeds the way marriage succeeds financially, security-wise, for children, for society, for this and that love never succeeds as marriage succeeds. So love is bound to create other kinds of troubles. And love exists because of repressed desires. When marriage disappears and desires are not repressed, love will disappear automatically.
A real society of human beings will not know anything of marriage and will not know anything of the honeymoon. It will know only of joy, of sharing with people. As long as you can share, good; if you cannot share, goodbye. Marriage disappears and with it disappears the ugly divorce. Marriage disappears and with it disappears the fantasy of the honeymoon.
When you are free to love, to meet, to be with people, the honeymoon will disappear. Laila and Majnu, and Shiri and Farihad will not be possible nobody is obstructing the way. You can meet any woman and you can meet any man, whomsoever you desire and whosoever desires you; nobody else is barring the way. Then what is the need for fantasy? If all kinds of food are available, whatsoever you want to eat is available, and nobody is standing there like a policeman or a magistrate or a priest, making you afraid and scared that if you eat this food you will go to hell, if you eat that food only then can you go to heaven...and that food you don’t want to eat and that food leads you to heaven, and the food that you want to eat leads you to hell. Anything that gives you joy leads to hell and anything that makes you miserable leads to heaven.
When nobody is standing in between you and your desires, when desire is free, there will be no repression. Without repression the honeymoon will disappear. The honeymoon is a by-product: it exists with marriage. It is like bait. You go fishing, you use bait. Honeymoon is a bait, it takes you into marriage. That’s why women are very, very insistent about marriage because they know. They are more down-to-earth, more empirical than men. Men have remained dreamers, they think of stars and moons, and women only laugh at their ridiculous desires. The woman knows she is very down-to-earth she knows that within ten, twelve, fifteen days, two to three weeks, the honeymoon will disappear ...then what? She insists on marriage.
A man was asking his woman he was in love and he asked her in the night, ”Love or something?” And the woman said, ”Marriage or nothing.”
He asked again, ”Love or something?”
And she said, ”Marriage or nothing.”
Love is not reliable, it comes and goes; it is a whim, a mood. If love remains, that simply means repression is still there.
Then in a different society there will be joy. ’Love’ will not be so important a word as ’delight’, ’celebration’. Two people want to share their energies; if they are both willing then there will be no hindrance. There will be
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only one limitation, that if the other is not willing then it is finished; then it never starts. All other limitations should be dropped.
And now science has made it possible for the problem of children to be very easily solved. In the old days people were not so fortunate, you are more fortunate; the problem of children can be solved. You can stay with a woman until the day you think that now you have lived together long enough and your love, your joy with the woman goes on increasing, your joy with the man goes on increasing, and now there is no possibility of your becoming separate, you have found your soul mate the day you feel that, you can have children. Otherwise there is no need to have children.
And in a better society, children should belong to the communes. The family has to disappear. There should be communes of people: a commune of painters, where painters painter men and painter women live together and enjoy their togetherness, a commune of poets, a commune of carpenters, a commune of goldsmiths; communes of different kinds of people who live together, rather than families. The family has been a calamity. It is better when many people live together who possess everything in common and who share their love with each other. But there should not be any restriction.
Love should never become a duty; only then is it joyful. The moment it becomes a duty it is dead, heavyweight, and it creates a thousand and one problems which cannot be solved directly. That is the whole situation in the world. You can go to the psychoanalyst, you can come to a master, you can meditate, you can do this and that but your basic problem is not touched.
Your basic problem remains somehow connected with your sex energy, and you go on tackling it somewhere else. You go on cutting the leaves, pruning the leaves, and you never cut the root. People are miserable because people are fed up with each other. People are sad because they don’t enjoy the company of each other. People are simply burdened: they are doing their duties, the love is not there. Marriage and the honeymoon both come in the same package; they both have to go. Then there can be a non-repressed humanity, a fully expressive humanity, a fully expressive human being who knows nothing except joy, and who decides according to joy.
Joy should become the criterion. That’s what Tantra is all about: Joy should become the criterion.

The fourth question:

Osho, I love Ma Prem Savya. I want her to be with me until I die. Is this a good last desire? The question is from Prem Aniket.
The first thing: no desire is the last if you are still living. No desire is the last desire if you are still living who knows about the next moment? And how can you manage to know the next moment? How long you have known Savya? A few weeks...before those few weeks you had not even dreamed about her. If this can happen, this can happen again. After three weeks, you may meet another woman.
Until you are dead no desire is the last desire; each desire creates another desire. Desire is a continuum. Only two things, death or enlightenment, stop desires. And certainly neither of them has happened yet, Aniket; neither death has happened nor enlightenment.
It is good to understand desire. Each desire brings in new desires, one desire creates ten desires. It is just like out of one small seed comes a big tree, thousands of branches and millions of leaves. Out of one desire, the seed, many desires arise.
You cannot say anything about the future; you should not say, the future remains open. This is one of the greatest efforts of man ridiculous, but man goes on making it. One: he wants to reform the past, which cannot be done. Whatsoever has happened has happened, there is no way to redo it; you cannot even touch it here and there. You cannot make it better, you cannot make it worse. It is simply beyond you. It has happened, it has become actual, and that which has become actual cannot even be touched. The past is finished, it is complete the way it is; you cannot go back and you cannot rearrange it. It is good; otherwise, if you could rearrange the past, if you could go back, you would go mad. Then you would never come to the present again, the past is so long. It is good that the doors of the past are closed. But man, the stupid mind of man, goes on thinking of reforming, reformulating, doing something here and there. Don’t you think about it sometimes: you had not said something, and you start thinking that would have been better? You had not done something would that have been better? And in your fantasy you try to say that and do that. But you are simply wasting time; now nothing can be done, it has slipped out of your hands.
The past cannot be reformed, and the future cannot be predicted. That too man goes on doing: he wants to predict the future. The future is that which has not happened. The future remains open; openness is what the future is. The future is indeterminate. It is not actual, it is only probable; nothing is certain about the future. There is no certainty about the future. But man is foolish: again he goes to the astrologers, consults the I Ching, 216
tarot cards, shadow readers. Man is so foolish that he tries to find ways somehow so that he can know beforehand what the future will be. But if you can know about it beforehand it is already past, it is no longer the future. Only the past can be known, the future remains unknown. That is the intrinsic quality of the future unknownness. All is possible and nothing is certain that’s what future is. All has happened, nothing more can happen that’s what past is. And the present is just a passage from the actual to the potential, from the closed to the open, from the dead to the alive.
Now you ask: ”Is this a good last desire?” You would like that it should be your last desire, but then you would have to commit suicide, either actually or metaphorically. You will have to commit suicide if you want it to be your last desire. Either go and jump in front of a train, or into the sea, or into an abyss actually commit suicide then you can have this as the last desire. Or psychologically commit suicide, which is what many have done. Don’t look at any other woman again; close your eyes, become afraid. Cling to whomsoever you love and don’t go here, there, astray; don’t even think, don’t even dream...that is psychological suicide. But in both ways you will not be able to live, because you will not have any future to live. If you really want to live and you want to live; in fact that’s what you are asking: you want to live with Savya. To live you have to be alive.
Don’t think in terms of ’the last desire’. And why, why would you like it to be the last? Why can’t you share your energies someday with some other women? Why be so miserly? Why be so inhuman? Are not other women as divine as Savya? Has not God appeared in many, many forms, millions of forms around you? Why cling to one form? Why this clinging?
This clinging comes out of repression, because you have repressed your desires. Then one day you find a woman who is loving towards you and you cling. You are afraid to lose her, because you know all those long nights when you were alone. If now this woman goes, again you will be alone. Now this woman is afraid of her loneliness herself; she clings to you. She is afraid that someday you may move towards somebody else; you may not look towards her, and she will be left alone. Long have been those nights of loneliness; now, no more. ”We have found each other, we should cling to each other; we should possess each other and we should guard each other, so nobody goes anywhere.”
But out of this guarding, look what has happened: people are bored. You want a lover, not a guard; you want a beloved, not a jailer. You want to flow, not to be imprisoned. Look at the contradictory desire: you want to live and love, but whatsoever you do disturbs your love, destroys your love, creates hindrances to the flow. You want to love and live, and you want to be joyously alive, but whatsoever you do goes against it, is against it. Why should this be the last desire? I am not saying that this should not be the last desire, remember. Don’t misunderstand me. I am not saying this should not be the last desire, I am saying, simply saying, why should it be the last desire? If it happens that you remain together, if it happens that you never find a more beautiful woman, a more loving woman good, you are fortunate. If it happens that Savya never finds another man who is more loving, more alive than you fortunate. But if she finds a more loving man who can make her more joyful, who can bring her to greater peaks of ecstasy, then what? Should she cling to you? Then she is going against herself. Why should she cling to you?
And if she clings to you, she will never be able to forgive you, because it will be because of you she had to miss that ecstatic man; she will always be angry with you. That’s why wives are angry, husbands are angry. That anger has a natural base to it. The anger is not about mundane things; it is not about the tea not being hot enough, it is not that. Who bothers when you love a woman whether the tea is hot or not? When love is hot everything is hot. When love has gone cold everything seems cold. It is not that your slippers were not there where they should be when you got up. When you love a woman who bothers? But when love disappears, that heat disappears. Then you are angry, and the anger is such that you cannot say it and the society does not allow it. The anger is such that you cannot be true about it. Maybe you have repressed it so deeply that you don’t even become aware of it, you are not even conscious of it that you are angry because now, because of this woman, other women have become unavailable to you...because this woman goes on surrounding you and is constantly watching you...because this man goes on watching you and does not allow you to move and have your life in your own way, the way you want it now.
Your past promises have become prisons. Then you are angry. And the anger has nothing to do with anything in particular, it is a general anger, so you cannot even say where it is, why it is, how it is. Then it jumps on any excuses the tea is not hot, the food is not as you would like it to be. This clinging creates anger. And we are not here to be unnecessarily in anger. Why? For what? For what purpose? If Savya meets some beautiful person and suddenly feels that now she has found the right person, then what should she do? She should cling to you? She should not betray you? These words are ugly: ’betray’.... In
fact if she remains with you she is betraying her own being, if she remains with you she is betraying her love, she is betraying her joy, she is betraying God. Now God has called from another door; she is betraying God. And she will never be able to love you anymore; that is not possible. God has called from somewhere else. Some other eyes have become the doors and windows, some other form has become alive and attractive. What can she do now? She can avoid seeing that person, but how will she be able to forgive you? Now anger will start erupting. Now she will be angry for no reason at all, and the anger will destroy your love. It has already flown. Remember, love is a breeze. Just see...no breeze right now, the trees are silent. What can they do? They cannot create the breeze. Whenever it comes, it comes. When it comes, they will dance with joy. When it has gone, it has gone. They have to wait. Love is like a breeze. When it comes, it comes who knows from what direction, from what person, from whom.
This is the Tantra liberation. Tantra is a dangerous philosophy, it is a dangerous religion. It has not yet been tried on a larger scale, man has has not yet been courageous enough to try it on a larger scale only a few individuals, few and far between, have tried it, and they have suffered very much because the society does not allow...the society thinks this is absolute sin. But Tantra says to live with a woman with whom your love flow has ceased, with whom you are no longer joyful, is sin. It is rape to make love to a woman you don’t love. It is rape to make love to a man you don’t love; it is prostitution.
This is the Tantra attitude about life. Tantra believes in joy because Tantra says joy is God. Remain true to joy and sacrifice everything to joy. Let joy be the only God, and sacrifice everything whatsoever is needed. Remain flowing. You say: ”I love Ma Prem Savya. I want her to be with me until I die....” Are you thinking to die very soon? Who knows how long you may live? Why are you thinking about the future in the first place? To think about the future is to miss the present. You think that you are thinking great things...you have read such things by foolish poets. Poets are almost always foolish; they don’t have a real experience of life, they only dream. Now look: you think this is great love that you want to live with her until you die. This is not great love, you are afraid. In fact right now you are not enjoying it, that’s why you are spreading into the future. Right now you are missing it, so you want to have it anyhow maybe not today, then tomorrow, the day after tomorrow that’s why the fear arises. You would like to be with her for your whole life, so that somehow you can manage. But why not now? If it can ever be had, it can be had right now. You don’t know how to live right now, so you think about the future. And time is a great illusion. Only now exists. Tomorrow again it will be today. The day after tomorrow again it will be today. After one year again it will be today. It will always be today. God is always in the present. If you want to live, live right now. Why think of the future? Let your love be so intense, like a flame, that it burns you totally right now.
And now you are thinking ”until I die....” Who can say? At least I am not going to say anything about it, because I would like you to remain free and I would like Savya also to be free. Meet as two free individuals, meet as two freedoms. And let the meeting be there while the freedom lasts. When your meeting starts corrupting freedom, separate; the time has come to say goodbye. Feel grateful for the days that you lived with the woman or with the man. Feel tremendously grateful that those days were made available to you through the other. Feel grateful for all that experience. But what can you do? With tears in your eyes, with gratitude, with love, with friendship, with compassion separate. The breeze is no longer blowing this way. What can you do? Feel helpless, but become separate. Don’t cling, otherwise you will destroy each other. If you really love the other person, the moment love has disappeared you will make the other free. At least this much love is due...to make the other free, so that somewhere else, in some other pasture, love can flower and bloom. At least this much you can do for the other, that the love if it has disappeared between you can flower and bloom somewhere else with somebody else. Love is God. It is irrelevant where it happens, between whom it happens between A and B, or C and D, or E and G. It is irrelevant where it happens. If it happens, it is good. The world has become so loveless because we cling to people when love stops. The world will be so full of love if people don’t cling, and remain free.
Be free in your love. Meet out of freedom, and when the freedom is destroyed, let that be an indication that love has disappeared because love cannot destroy freedom: love and freedom are two names for the same thing. Love cannot destroy freedom. If freedom is being destroyed then something else is pretending to be love jealousy, hatred, domination, safety, security, prestige, social respectability something else has come in. Before it enters and corrupts you and poisons you too much, escape from it.

The fifth question:
Osho, I want to take sannyas and I have been waiting for it for years, but I am afraid I may get into some trouble because of it. What should I do?
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I can only promise that you will get into troubles, I cannot say that you will not get into troubles. In fact, it is a device to create chaos in your life. But there are two kinds of troubles: destructive troubles and creative troubles. Avoid destructive troubles, because they simply destroy. There are creative troubles which create, which bring you to a higher plane of consciousness. Troubles you have enough already. Certainly I am not going to add any more troubles of that kind.
It happened....
There was a woman in a railway carriage who was joined by a man who had with him a crowd of dirty and ill-behaved kids. Before they had gone very far he gave one of his kids a fearful belting. ”Look here,” said the woman, ”you stop beating that child or I’ll get you into trouble.” ”You’ll do what?”
”I said, I’ll get you into trouble!” the woman shouted.
”Listen, lady, my wife has run off with a black man taking every penny I’ve got; I’m on my way to leave these kids with a relative who drinks; the girl in the corner is fifteen and eight months pregnant. That kid over there has messed his pants, the baby has thrown the flask out of the window, and the one I’ve just beaten has swallowed our tickets. For being off work, I’ve got the sack. Did you say you were going to get me into trouble what more trouble?”
No, I am not going to put you into more trouble of the same kind you have been living in your whole life. I will introduce new kinds of troubles into your life. Be courageous.
And you have waited long you say you have been thinking about it for years.... There was this football match between the mice and the insects. At half-time the score was six-all, and at the end it was eleven-ten to the mice. So the insects went to the centipede’s cave and said, ”Why haven’t you been at the match?” ”I’ve been putting my boots on,” said the centipede. How long will you be putting your boots on? Soon the match will be over! Please do things faster.

Question 6
The sixth question:
Osho, Can’t I take the jump myself, alone? Is a master absolutely needed? Two fellows, Pete and Dave, are working on the scaffolding. A man comes past looking for new acts for the Variety Club, and he’s just under the building when all of a sudden he sees Pete doing a triple somersault off the top of the scaffolding, followed by a backflip, another double somersault, and landing on his feet. The fellow on the ground thinks that’s tremendous, so he goes up to Pete and says, ”Would you like to come and do an act for me?”
”Yes, all right.”
”How much do you want for it?”
”A hundred pounds.”
”A hundred pounds?”
”Well there’s fifty for me, and fifty for Dave who hit me on the foot with a hammer.” Alone you will not be able to go. You will need a master to hit you. The journey is so unfamiliar, the journey is into an abyss. Unless somebody really pushes you hard you are not going to take the jump, you will have to be hammered.

And the last question:
Osho, What is nirvana?
Nirvana is this story...this ancient Buddhist story. An exceptionally beautiful young woman, Enyadatta, enjoyed nothing quite as much as gazing at herself in the mirror. She was a little crazy too, as human beings are. When she looked into her mirror one morning, the figure in the glass had no head. Enyadatta became hysterical and rushed around yelling, ”My head is gone, where is my head? Who has my head? I shall die if I don’t find it!” Even though everyone assured Enyadatta that her head was on her shoulders, she refused to believe them. Every time she looked in the mirror, her head wasn’t there, so she continued her frenzied search, shouting and crying for help. Fearing for her sanity, Enyadatta’s friends and relatives dragged her home and tied her to a pillar so she wouldn’t hurt herself.
Enyadatta’s friends continued to reassure her that her head was still on her shoulders and slowly she began to wonder whether they might not be telling the truth. Suddenly one of her friends gave her a sharp clout on the head. She cried out in pain, and her friend exclaimed, ”That’s your head! There it is!” Enyadatta immediately realized that she had somehow deluded herself into thinking she had no head, when in fact she always had it.
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So is nirvana. You have never been out of it, you have never been away from it. It is in you, you are in it. It is already the case, you have just to become a little more alert. You need a clout on the head. The head is there: you cannot see it because you are looking in the wrong direction or in a wrong mirror. You cannot see it because you don’t have the clarity to see. Otherwise nirvana is not some goal somewhere, it is not the after-life, it is herenow.
Nirvana is the stuff you are made of.
It is in each cell, it is in each fiber of your being.
It is you.
Just a remembrance is needed.
Just a remembrance....
Enough for today.

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