Man is a myth

Beasts do not understand the world To be a sorry place. Not so the wise Who the heavenly nectar drink While beasts hunger for the sensual.
The word beast is a translation of a Hindi or Sanskrit word, pashu. That word has a significance of its own. Literally pashu means the animal, the beast, but it is a metaphor. It comes from the word pash pash means bondage. Pashu means one who is in bondage.

The beast is one who is in bondage the bondage of the body, instincts, unconsciousness; the bondage of the society, mind, thought. The beast is one who is in bondage. Beasts do not understand the world... How can they understand? Their eyes are not free to see; their minds are not free to think; their bodies are not free to feel. They don’t hear, they don’t see, they don’t smell, they don’t touch they are in bondage. All senses are crippled, chained.... Beasts do not understand the world...how can they understand the world? The world can be understood only in freedom. When no scripture is a bondage on you, and no philosophy is a chain on your hands, and when no theology is a prison for you, when you are out of all bondages, then you can understand. Understanding happens only in freedom. Understanding happens only in an uncluttered mind. Beasts do not understand the world To be a sorry place.

And they cannot understand that the world is a sorry place. The so-called world created by the mind and by the body is a mirage. It appears so, it appears very beautiful, but it only appears it is not really so. It is a rainbow, so beautiful, so colorful; you come closer and it disappears. If you want to grasp the rainbow, your hand will be empty, there will be nothing; it is a mirage. But because of unconsciousness we cannot see it. Only with awareness the vision arises; then we can see where it is only a mirage and where it is truth. Any happiness that happens by any outer coincidence is a mirage, and you will suffer through it. It is a deception, it is an hallucination.
You feel that you are very happy with a woman or with a man? you are going to suffer. Sooner or later you will find that all happiness has disappeared. Sooner or later you will find maybe you were just imagining it, it has never been there. Maybe it was just a dream, you were fantasizing it. When the reality of the woman and the man is revealed, you find two ugly beasts trying to dominate each other. I have heard....

The best man was doing his utmost to make the groom brace up. ”Where is your nerve, old man?” he asked. ”You are shaking like a leaf!”
”I know I am,” said the groom, ”but this is a nerve-wracking time for me. I’ve got some excuse for being frightened, haven’t I? I’ve never been married before.”

”Of course you haven’t,” said the best man. ”If you had, you would be much more scared than you are!” As you look into life, as you watch life, as you learn more about it, by and by you will feel disillusioned. There is nothing...just mirages calling you. Many times you have been befooled. Many times you rushed, you traveled long, to find just nothing.
If you are alert, your experience will make you free of the world. And by the world, remember, I don’t mean, and neither does Saraha mean, the world of the trees and the stars and the rivers and the mountains. By the world he means the world that you project through your mind, through your desire. That world is maya, that world is illusory, that is created by desire, that is created by thought. When thought and desire disappear and there is just awareness, alertness, when there is consciousness without any content, when there is no thought-cloud, just consciousness the sky then you see the real world. That real world is what religions call God, or Buddha calls nirvana.

Beasts do not understand the world To be a sorry place. Not so the wise Who the heavenly nectar drink While beasts hunger for the sensual.
But when you are defeated in your hope, when you are defeated in your dream, you think maybe this dream was wrong, and you start dreaming another dream.... When you are not fulfilled in your desire, you think you didn’t make as much effort as was needed. Again you are deceived.
A woman sitting on a streetcar noticed that the man next to her kept shaking his head from side to side like a metronome. The woman’s curiosity got the best of her and she asked why he was doing it. ”So I can tell the time,” replied the fellow. ”Well, what time is it?” asked the woman. ”Four-thirty,” he said, still shaking his head.
”You’re wrong, it’s a quarter to five.”
”Oh! Then I must be slow!” the man answered as he speeded up.

That’s how it goes on: if you don’t achieve something, you think maybe you have not been making as much effort as was needed, or your speed was slow, your competitive spirit was not enough to compete with others; you were not aggressive enough, you were not violent enough; that you were lethargic and lazy; that next time you have to pull yourself up; that you have to pull yourself together next time you have to prove your mettle. It has nothing to do with your mettle. You have failed because success is not possible. You have not failed for reason of your effort, speed, aggression no. You have not failed because you were defective. You have failed because failure is the only possibility in the world. Nobody succeeds. Nobody can succeed! Success is not possible. Desires cannot be fulfilled. And projections never allow you to see the reality, and you remain in bondage. You also experience the same failure again and again, as I have experienced. You also experience the same failure again and again as Buddha or Saraha has experienced. Then what is the difference? You experience the failure, but you don’t learn anything from it. That is the only difference. The moment you start learning from it you will be a buddha.
One experience, another experience, another experience...but you don’t put all the experiences together, you don’t conclude! You say, ”This woman proved horrible, okay but there are millions of women. I will find another.” This woman proves a failure again, you again start hoping, dreaming you will find another: ”It does not mean that all women have failed if one woman has failed. It does not mean that one man has failed so all men have failed.” You go on hoping, you go on hoping.... The hope goes on winning over your experience, and you never learn.

One relationship becomes a bondage...you feel that something has gone wrong, next time you will make all the efforts not to make it a bondage. But you are not going to succeed, because success is not in the very nature of things here. Failure is the only possibility. Success is impossible.

The day you recognize that failure is the only possibility that all rainbows are false and all happinesses that glitter and shine from far away and attract you like magnets are just empty dreams, desires, you are deluding yourself the day you recognize the fact, a turning, a conversion, a new being is born. With a banging of doors and an angry swish of skirts, the hefty female entered the registrar’s office. 32

”Did you or did you not issue this license for me to marry John Henry?” she snapped, slamming a document on the table.
The registrar inspected it closely through his glasses. ”Yes, madam,” he said cautiously, ”I believe I did. Why?” ”Well, what are you going to do about it?” she screamed. ”He’s escaped!” All relationships are just beautiful on the surface; deep down they are a sort of bondage. I am not saying don’t relate to people: I am saying relate, but never think that any relationship is going to give you happiness. Relate! Of course you will have to relate, you are in the world. You have to relate with people, but no relationship is going to give you happiness because it never comes from the outside. It always glows from the inside, it always flows from the inside.

And Saraha says: The man who believes that it comes from the outside is a beast; he is a pashu, he is in bondage. And the man who recognizes the fact that it never comes from the outside, whenever it comes it comes from the inside, is free. He is a man; he is really a man, he is no more a beast. With that freedom man is born. Beasts do not understand the world To be a sorry place. Not so the wise Who the heavenly nectar drink... What is this heavenly nectar? It is symbolic of the honey that you have already in your mouth and you have not tasted it. You don’t have any time to taste it. The whole world is too much, and you are rushing from one place to another. You don’t have any time to taste the honey that is already there. That is the heavenly nectar; if you taste it, you are in heaven. If you taste it, then there is no death that’s why it is called ’heavenly nectar’ you become an immortal. You are an immortal. You have not seen it, but you are an immortal. There is no death, you are deathless. The sky is deathless; only clouds are born and die. Rivers are born and die, the sea is deathless. So are you.
Saraha says these sutras to the king. Saraha is not trying to convince him logically. In fact he is simply making his being available to him. And he is giving him a new gestalt to look at Saraha. Tantra is a new gestalt to look at life. And I have never come across anything more profound than Tantra. Enough for today.

 Love is death

The first question:
Osho, You are everything that I have ever wanted or could ever want. So why is there so much resistance in me towards you?
That’s why! If you have deep love for me, there will be deep resistance also. They balance each other. Wherever love is, there is resistance too. Wherever you are tremendously attracted, you would like to escape also from that place, from that space, because to be immensely attracted means you will fall into the abyss, you will no longer be yourself.
Love is dangerous. Love is a death. It is more deathly than death itself because you survive after death, but after love you don’t survive. Yes, somebody else is born, but you are gone. Hence the fear. Those who are not in love with me, they can come very close and there will be no fear. Those who love me, they will be afraid of taking each step; reluctantly they will take those steps, very hard it is going to be for them, because the closer they come to me the less will be their ego. That’s what I mean by death. The moment they have come really close to me, they are not just as I am not.

Coming closer to me is coming closer to a state of nothingness. So even in ordinary love there is resistance...this love is extraordinary; this love is unique. The question is from Anand Anupam. I have been watching her, she is resisting. The question is not just intellectual, it is existential. She has been fighting hard...but she cannot win. She is blessed because she cannot win. Her defeat is certain, it is absolutely certain. I have seen that love in her eyes; that love is so strong that it will destroy all resistance, that it will win over all efforts of the ego to survive. When love is strong the ego can try, but it is already a losing battle for the ego. That’s why so many people live without love. They talk about love, but they live without love. They fantasize about love, but they never actualize love, because to actualize love means you will have to destroy yourself utterly. When you come to a master, it is either utter destruction or nothing. Either you have to dissolve into me and you have to allow me to dissolve into you, or you can be here but nothing will happen. If the ego remains, then there is a China Wall between me and you. And a China Wall can be broken easily, but the ego is a more subtle energy.

But once love has arisen, then the ego is impotent and I have seen this love in Anupam’s eyes. It is there. It is going to be a great struggle, but good! because those who come very easily don’t come. Those who take a long time, those who fight inch by inch, only they come.
But nothing to be worried about.... The journey is going to be a long journey; Anupam will take time, maybe years, but nothing to be worried! She is on the right track. And she has crossed the point from where she could have gone back; she has crossed the point of no-return. So it is only a question of time. She is available to me. I never force anybody, because there is no need. And it is good to give them time and enough rope, so they come on their own. When surrender is out of freedom, it has a beauty.

But you can trust it is coming, it is on the way. In the deepest core of your being it has already happened; now it is just a question of time, so that the deepest core informs your superficial mind. In your heart you have already come to me; only in the mind there is struggle. At the center you have already come closer to me; only on the periphery there is fighting going on. The headquarters have really already surrendered. You must have heard about a Japanese soldier who was still fighting...the second world war was over, so many years had passed, and twenty years after the second world war he was still fighting he had not heard that Japan had surrendered. He was somewhere in the deepest forests of Indonesia, and still thinking that he belonged to the emperor of Japan and the fight was on.

He must have been mad; he was hiding and escaping and killing people, alone!
When just a few years ago he went back to Japan, he was given a hero’s reception. He is a hero in a way. He was unaware...but he must be a man of great will. He had heard from others not that he had not heard; how can you avoid for twenty years? that Japan had surrendered, the war had finished. But he insisted: ”Unless I receive an order from my commander, I will not surrender.” Now the commander was dead, so there was no way to receive an order from the commander, and he was going to fight his whole life. It was very difficult to catch hold of him, he was very dangerous but he was caught.
Exactly that is the case with Anupam. The headquarters have already surrendered, the commander is dead! Just on the periphery, somewhere in the forests of Indonesia you are fighting, Anupam. But sooner or later, howsoever mad you are, you will receive the news.

The second question:

Osho, I would like to become true, but what is it and how is it? I feel in a devil-circle, in a prison. I would like to come out, but how?
The first thing: you are not in a prison. Nobody is, nobody ever has been. The prison is make-believe. You are unconscious, certainly, but you are not in a prison. The prison is a dream, a nightmare, that you have managed to see in your sleep. So the basic question is not how to come out of the prison, the basic question is how to come out of the sleep. And there is a great difference in how you articulate the question. If you start thinking, ”How to come out of the prison?” then you will start fighting with the prison, which is not; then you will be moving in a wrong direction.

That’s what many people have been doing down the centuries. They think they are in a prison, so they fight with the prison: they fight with the guards. they fight with the jailer, they fight with the system. They fight with the walls! They go on filing the bars of the windows; they want to escape from the prison, they try to unlock the prison, but it cannot be done because the prison exists not. The jailer and the guard and the bars and the locks are all imagination.
You are in a deep sleep and you are seeing a nightmare. The basic question is how to come out of sleep. I have heard....
No durance vile could be more pathetic than that suffered by the drunk who was found wandering agonizedly around and around on the sidewalk outside the fence which encloses a public park, beating upon the bars and screaming: ”Let me out!”

That is your situation. You are not locked up, you are not imprisoned; you are simply drunk. You think that you are imprisoned. This is just a thought. And I know why that thought arises in your mind: because you feel yourself so limited from everywhere, out of the limitation the idea of prison arises. Wherever you move there is a limitation, you can go only so far and then you cannot go any further; then there must be a wall which is hindering you. So you infer that there is a wall all around...maybe not visible, maybe it is a glass wall made of very transparent glass: you can see through it, but whenever you move in any direction again and again you stumble and you cannot go beyond a certain point.
This gives you the idea of a prison, that you are imprisoned. But this limitation is also because of sleep. In sleep you become identified with the body, so the limitations of the body become your limitations. In sleep you become identified with the mind, so the limitations of the mind become your limitations.

You are unlimited. You are unbounded. As you are in your pure being, no limitation exists you are a god. But to know that godhood, don’t start fighting with the prison, otherwise you will never be a winner. And more and more you will be defeated, and more and more you will feel frustrated, and more and more you will lose self-confidence; more and more you will feel that it seems impossible to get out of it. Start by becoming more aware. Start by becoming more alert, more attentive. That is the only thing that has to be done. Being aware, you will start feeling that the walls that were too close are no longer so close; they are widening. Your prison is becoming bigger and bigger. The more your consciousness expands, the more you will see that your prison is no longer that small it is becoming bigger and bigger. More expansive consciousness, and bigger space is available to you to move, to be, to live, to love. And then you know the basic mechanism: less conscious, and the walls come closer; unconscious, and the walls are just touching you from everywhere. You are in a small cell, even a slight movement is not possible.

Remember this phrase: expansion of consciousness. With that expansion, you expand. One day, when your consciousness is absolute and there is not a lingering shadow of darkness inside, when there is no unconscious in you, all has become conscious, when the light is burning bright, when you are luminous from the inner awareness, then suddenly you see that even the sky is not your limit. There is no limitation to you. This is the whole experience of the mystics of all the ages. When Jesus says, ”I and my father in heaven are one,” this is what he means. He is saying: I have no limitations. It is a way of saying the same thing, a metaphorical way, a symbolic way: I and my father in heaven are not two but one I, staying in this small body and he, spread all over existence, are not two but one. My source and I are one. I am as big as existence itself. That is the meaning when the mystic of the Upanishad declares: ”Aham Brahmasmi: I am the absolute, I am God.” This is uttered in a state of awareness where no unconsciousness exists. This is the meaning when the Sufi Mansoor declares, ”Ana’l Haq: I am the truth.”

These great utterances are very significant. They simply say that you are as big as your consciousness, never more, never less. That’s why there is so much appeal in drugs, because they chemically force your consciousness to become a little wider than it is. LSD or marijuana or mescalin, they give you a sudden expansion of consciousness. Of course it is forced and violent and should not be done. And it is chemical, it has nothing to do with your spirituality. You don’t grow through it! Growth comes through voluntary effort. Growth is not cheap, not so cheap that just a small quantity of LSD, a very small quantity of LSD, can give you spiritual growth. Aldous Huxley was very wrong when he started thinking that he had attained through LSD the same experience as Kabir, or as Eckhart, or as Basho. No, it is not the same experience. Yes, something is similar; that similarity is in the expansion of consciousness. But it is very dissimilar too; it is a forced thing, it is a violence on your biology and on your chemistry. And you remain the same! You don’t grow through it. Once the influence of the drug wears off, you are the same man again, the same small man.

Kabir will never be the same again because that expansion of consciousness was not just a forced thing, he has grown to it. Now there is no going back. It has become part of him, it has become his being; he has absorbed it. But the appeal can be understood. The appeal has always been there, it has nothing to do with the modern generation. It has always been there...since the Vedas. Man has always felt tremendously attracted towards drugs. It is a false coin, it gives you a little glimpse of the real in a very unnatural way. But man is always seeking expansion; man wants to become great.

Sometimes through money he wants to become great yes, money also gives you a feeling of expansion; it is a drug. When you have much money, you feel your boundaries are not so close to you, they are far away. You can have as many cars as you want; you are not limited. If suddenly you want to have a Rolls Royce, you can have it, you feel free. When the money is not there, a Rolls Royce passes by, the desire arises...but the limitation.... Your pocket is empty, you don’t have any bank balance; you feel hurt the wall, you cannot go beyond it. The car is there; you see the car, you can have it right now, but there is a wall between you and the car, the wall of poverty. Money gives you a feeling of expansion, a feeling of freedom. But that too is a false freedom. You can have many more things, but that doesn’t help you grow. You don’t become more, you have more, but your being remains the same. So is power: if you are a prime minister or a president of a country you feel powerful the army, the police, the court, the whole paraphernalia of the state is yours. The boundaries of the country are your boundaries; you feel tremendously powerful. But that too is a drug.

Let me say to you: politics and money are as much drugs as LSD and marijuana, and far more dangerous. If one has to choose between LSD and money, LSD is far better. If one has to choose between politics and LSD, then LSD is far better and far more religious. Why do I say so? Because through LSD you will only be destroying yourself, but through money you destroy others too. Through LSD you will be simply destroying your chemistry, your biology, but through politics you will destroy millions of people. Just think: if Adolf Hitler had been a drug addict, the world would have been far better; if he had been on LSD or with a syringe in hand we would have felt blessed, we would have thanked God: ”It is very good that he remains in his house and goes on taking shots and is stoned. The world can go on easily without him.”

Money, politics, are far more dangerous drugs. Now this is very ironical: politicians are always against drugs, people who have money are always against drugs, and they are not aware that they themselves are drug addicts. And they are on a far more dangerous trip, because their trip implies others’ lives too. A man is free to do whatsoever he wants to do. LSD can at the most be a suicidal thing, but it is never murder, it is suicide. And one is free to commit suicide, at least has to be free to commit suicide, because it is your life; if you don’t want to live, it is okay. But money is murder, so is power politics murder; it kills others. I am not saying to choose drugs. I am saying all drugs are bad: money, politics, LSD, marijuana. You choose these things because you have a false idea that they will expand your consciousness. The consciousness can be expanded very simply, very easily, because in fact it is already expanded. You are just living in a false notion; your false notion is your barrier, is your prison.
You ask, ”I would like to become true....”

You cannot like or dislike. It is not a question of your choice. Truth is! Whether you like it or not like it is irrelevant. You can choose lies but you cannot choose truth: truth is there. That’s why Krishnamurti insists so much on choiceless awareness. You cannot choose truth. Truth is already there! It has nothing to do with your choice, liking, disliking.
The moment you drop your choice, truth is there. It is because of your choice that you cannot see the truth. Your choice functions like a screen on your eyes. Your liking and disliking is the problem! Because you like something, you cannot see that which is; and because you dislike something you cannot see that which is. Through like and dislike you are having colored glasses on your eyes and you don’t see the real color of existence as it is. You say: ”I would like to become true....”

That’s how you remain untrue. You are true! Drop likes and dislikes! How can you be untrue? Being is true, to be is true. You are here, alive, breathing how can you be untrue? Your choice...by choice you have become a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan; by truth you are not Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian. By choice you have become identified with India, with China, with Germany; but by truth the whole belongs to you and you belong to the whole. You are universal.
The total lives through you, you are not just a part. The total lives through you as totality. Choose, like, dislike, and you go astray.

Now you say, ”I would like to become true” then in the name of truth also you will become untrue. That’s how a person becomes a Christian, because he thinks Christianity is true, and ”I would like to become true,” so he becomes a Christian. Please don’t become a Christian, don’t become a Hindu. You are a christ! Why become a Christian? Christhood is your nature. Christhood has nothing to do with Jesus; it is as much yours as Jesus’. Christhood is a state of choiceless awareness.
So please don’t start thinking in terms of desire: ”I would like to become true.” Now this is the way to become untrue. Drop this desire; just be, don’t try to become. Becoming is becoming untrue; being is truth. And see the difference! Becoming is in the future, it has a goal. Being is herenow; it is not a goal, it is already the case. So whosoever you are, just be that, don’t try to become anything else. You have been taught ideals, goals become! Always you have been forced to become something.

My whole teaching is: whatsoever, whosoever you are, that’s beautiful. It is more than enough; you just be that. Stop becoming and be!
And now naturally when you ask, ”I would like to become true, but what is it and how is it?”...once you start thinking in terms of becoming, then certainly you want to know what the goal is: What is it? What is this truth that I want to become? And then naturally, when ’goal’ comes there, ’how’ also comes: How to attain it? Then the whole technology, methodology....

I am saying you are that. The mystic in the Upanishad says: Tat-tvam-asi thou art that. Already you are that, it is not a question of becoming. God is not somewhere in the future; God is just now, this very moment, within you, without you, everywhere, because only God is, nothing else exists. All that exists is divine. So be! Don’t try to become. Then one thing leads to another...if you want to become, then naturally the idea arises: What ideal? What am I to become? Then you have to imagine an ideal, that you have to be like this: Christ-like, Buddha-like, Krishna-like. Then you will have to choose an image, and you will become a carbon copy.

Krishna has never been repeated. Can’t you see a simple truth? Krishna has never been again. Can’t you see a very simple truth, that Buddha is unrepeatable? Each being is unique, utterly unique so are you. If you try to become somebody, you will be a false entity, a pseudo-existence; you will be a carbon copy. Be the original! So, you can only be yourself; there is nowhere to go, nothing to become.

But the ego wants some goal. The ego exists between the present moment and the goal. See the mechanism of the ego: the bigger the goal you have, the bigger the ego. If you want to become a Christ, if you are a Christian, then you have a big ego maybe even pious, but it doesn’t make any difference. The pious ego is as much an ego as any other ego, sometimes even more dangerous than ordinary egos.

If you are a Christian, then you are on an ego trip. Ego means the distance between you and the goal. People come to me and they ask how to drop the ego. You cannot drop the ego unless you drop becoming. You cannot drop the ego unless you drop the idea, the ideal, the hope, the future. The ego exists between the present moment and the future ideal. The bigger the ideal, the farther away the ideal, the more space the ego has to exist, the more possibilities. That’s why a religious person is more of an egoist than a materialist. The materialist cannot have that much space as the religious person has. The religious person wants to become God! Now this is the greatest possibility. What more can you have as an ideal? The religious person wants to go to moksha, to heaven, to paradise...now what farther shore can you imagine?

The religious person wants to be absolutely perfect...now ego will exist in the shadow of this idea of perfection. Listen to me! I don’t say you have to become gods, I declare you are gods. Then there is no question of any ego arising, there is no space left. You are not to go to heaven, you are already there. Just have a good look around...you are already there! It is a nowness, paradise is a nowness. It is a function of the present moment. The ego thrives when you have goals and ideals. And there are a thousand and one problems with the ego. On the one hand it feels very good to have great ideals; on the other hand it makes you feel guilty, continuously feel guilty, because you are always falling short. Those ideals are impossible, you cannot attain them. There is no way to attain them, so you are always falling short. So on one hand the ego thrives; on another hand guilt...guilt is the shadow of the ego.

Have you watched this strange phenomenon? An egoistic person feels very much guilty about small things. You smoke a cigarette; if you are an egoist you will feel guilty. Now smoking is an innocent, stupid thing very innocent and very stupid, nothing worth feeling guilty about. But a religious person will feel guilty because he has an ego ideal that he should not smoke. Now that ideal that he should not smoke and the reality that he smokes create two things: the ideal gives him a good feeling that, ”I am a religious person. I know that one should not smoke; I even try, I try my best”...but he will also feel that he again and again falls.

He cannot reach to the ideal so he feels guilty. And the person who feels guilty will start making everybody feel guilty. It is natural: how can you just feel guilty alone? It will be too hard, it will be too burdensome. So a guilty person creates guilt all around. He makes everybody feel guilty for small things, for irrelevant things. If you have long hair, he will make you feel guilty. There is nothing much in it; it is one’s own life, if one wants to have long hair, good! If you are doing things in your own way he will make you feel guilty. Whatsoever you are doing he will find faults: he has to find faults, he is suffering from guilt. How can he suffer alone? When everybody is feeling guilty he feels at ease, at least one consolation, ”I am not alone in the boat everybody is in the same boat.”

The trick to make others feel guilty is to give them ideals. This is a very subtle trick: the parents give an ideal to the child to ”Be like this.” They have never been like ’this’, nobody has ever been. Now they give an ideal to the child this is a very subtle and cunning way to make the child feel guilty. Now again and again the child will feel, ”I am not coming closer to the ideal; in fact I am going farther away from it!” So it hurts; it keeps him down, depressed.

Hence you see so much misery in the world.... It is not actual, ninety percent is because of the ideals that have been imposed upon you. And they don’t allow you to laugh, they don’t allow you to enjoy. A man who has no ideals will never make anybody else feel guilty. Just the other night, a young man came and he said, ”I feel very very guilty about my homosexuality. It is unnatural.” Now if he had gone to Mahatma Gandhi or to the Vatican pope or to Puri’s shankaracharya, what would have happened? They would have really made him feel guilty. And he is ready to fall into the hands of any torturer. He is ready, he is himself inviting. He is calling the mahatmas to come and make him feel guilty. Alone he cannot do that job very well, so he is asking the experts. But he has come to a wrong person. I told him, ”So what! Why do you say it is unnatural?” He said, ”It is not unnatural?” He was surprised and shocked: ”It is not unnatural?” I said, ”How can it be unnatural? My definition of nature is, that which happens is natural. How can the unnatural happen in the first place?”

Immediately I could see he was coming out of the ditch; his face started smiling. So he said, ”It is not unnatural? It is not a perversion? It is not some sort of abnormality?”
And I told him, ”It is not!”
”But,” he said, ”animals they don’t become homosexual.”

I said, ”They don’t have that much intelligence! They live a fixed life; whatsoever biology allows, they live that way. You can go and see a buffalo eating grass; she only eats a certain grass, nothing else. You can put the choicest food...she will not bother, she will go on eating her grass. She has no alternatives; consciousness is very narrow, almost nil. Man has intelligence; he tries to find new ways to relate, to live. Man is the only animal who finds new ways.

Now to live in a house is unnatural, because no animal lives, so is it a perversion? Or to wear clothes is abnormal, because no animal wears clothes is it a perversion? To cook food is unnatural, no animal has ever done it! Is it wrong to eat cooked food? To invite people to your house for a drink or for lunch is unnatural because no animal ever invites any other animal, because animals in fact always go in privacy when they want to eat. You give something to a dog...he will immediately go into a corner and will keep everybody at the back, and will be in a hurry to eat. He will never invite, he will not call his friends, ”Come on!” That is natural to a dog, but you are not dogs; you are far superior. You have more intelligence, you have more possibilities. Man makes everything in his own way that is his nature.”

He was relieved. I could see a great burden, a mountain that was on his head, was gone. But I am not certain how long he will remain free and unburdened. Some mahatma may catch hold of him and again put the same idea that this is unnatural. Mahatmas are either sadists or masochists avoid! Whenever you see a mahatma, run as fast as you can before he puts some guilt in your mind.

Whatsoever you can be you are. There is no goal. And we are not going anywhere. We are simply celebrating here. Existence is not a journey, it is a celebration. Think of it as a celebration, as a delight, as a joy! Don’t turn it into a suffering, don’t turn it into a duty, a work. Let it be play! This is what I mean by becoming religious: no guilt, no ego, no trip of any kind...just being herenow...being with the trees and the birds and the rivers and the mountains and the stars. You are not in a prison. You are in God’s house, you are in God’s temple. Please don’t call it a prison, it is not. You have misunderstood, you have interpreted it wrongly. Listening to me also you can interpret many things wrongly, you go on interpreting.
Two scenes. One....

The nurseryman who spoke at the garden club meeting placed emphasis on the advantage to be gained by the use of old horse manure for fertilizing spring gardens. During the question and answer period, a city lady who had been taking notes raised her hand. The speaker nodded to her and she earnestly inquired: ”You said old horse manure was the best fertilizer. Would you mind telling me how old the horse should be?” The second....
A hillbilly-type woman brought her little boy to the county school. When questioned about her husband she confided, ”I never knew much about this boy’s father. He came through here, courted me and we got married. Soon afterwards I found out he was a hobosexual.”
”You mean homosexual,” came the correction.

”No, sir, I mean hobosexual. He was just a no-good, passionate bum.” Each one has his own interpretation of words. So when I am saying something, I don’t know what you are going to understand out of it. Each one has a private dictionary hidden in the unconscious. That private dictionary goes on infiltrating, changing, coloring.
I have been telling you to become free: you have misunderstood me, you thought you are in a prison.

Yes, I say become free immediately you interpret it as if you are in a prison, the whole emphasis has changed. My emphasis was on you: be free! Your emphasis has gone on the prison. Now you say, ”I am in a prison; unless I get out of the prison, how can I be free?” My emphasis was: Be free, and if you are free there is no prison. The prison is created by your habit of being unfree. Look! The emphasis has changed...and it seems that it almost means the same. When I say, ”Be free!” what difference is there if somebody says, ”Yes, I am in a prison?” A lot of difference, a great difference. The whole thing has changed. It is a totally different thing when you say, ”I am in prison.” Then the guard and the prison, they become responsible. Then unless they allow you, how can you get out of it? You have thrown the responsibility on somebody else.

When I was saying, ”Be free!” I was saying, ”You are responsible.” It is your thing to be free or not to be free. If you have chosen not to be free then there will be a prison, then there will be guards and the prisoner. If you have chosen to be free, the guards and the prison and everything disappears. Just drop the habit of being unfree. How can you drop it? Freedom and consciousness go hand in hand more conscious, more free; less conscious, less free. The animals are less free because they are less conscious. The rock is even less free because the rock has no consciousness, almost nil. Man is the most highly evolved being, at least on this earth. Man has a little freedom, then a buddha has absolute freedom...his consciousness....

So it is only a question of the degrees of consciousness. Your prison consists of the layers of your unconsciousness; start becoming conscious and there is no other prison.
And remember the mind is very cunning, it can always find ways to befool you; it has learned very many tricks to befool. The mind can just use another word and you may not even see the difference. The difference may be so subtle that it is almost synonymous and the mind has played a trick. So when I am saying something, please don’t interpret it. Just listen to it as attentively as possible; don’t change a single word, not even a single comma. Just listen to what I am saying. Don’t bring your mind into it, otherwise you will hear something else. Always be alert about the cunningness of the mind...and you have cultivated that cunningness. You have not cultivated it for yourself, but you have cultivated it for others. We try to befool everybody; by and by the mind becomes expert in befooling, then it starts befooling you. I have heard....

A journalist died. Naturally.... He was a journalist and even in the president’s house and the prime minister’s house he had been immediately welcomed and taken in; no appointment was ever needed, he was a great journalist. So he rushed towards heaven why should he go to hell? but he was prevented by Saint Peter. And Saint Peter said, ”Wait! No more journalists are needed here. We already have the full quota; we only need one dozen. In fact they are also useless because there is no newspaper being printed in heaven.” In fact there is no news! Nothing happens there, ever. Things are going so smoothly; how can news happen? And what news can you think about saints’ lives...they are sitting under their trees, bodhi trees, meditating.... So the newspaper is not much of a newspaper, but just to have it published, just as a formality, the newspaper is published and every day it is written ’ditto’...the same as before. ”We don’t need any journalists, you go to hell. And there are always more and more journalists needed because there is much news, and newspapers and newspapers...and new newspapers are being planned, I have just heard. You go there and you will have a great job and great joy!”

But the journalist wanted to be in heaven, so he said. ”You do one thing. I know journalists; if I can manage to get some journalist to go to hell, will his place be given to me?” Saint Peter took pity on him, he said, ”Okay, how much time do you need to convert a journalist to go to hell?” He said, ”Twenty-four hours, just twenty-four hours.”
So he was allowed into heaven for twenty-four hours. He immediately started circulating a rumor that, ”One of the greatest newspapers is being planned, and the chief editor is needed, the assistant editors are needed, the subeditors are needed, and great is the possibility but you will have to go to hell.” For twenty-four hours he went round and round. He met all the journalists, and after twenty-four hours when he went to Saint Peter to see whether anybody had left, Saint Peter simply closed the door and told him, ”Don’t go outside, because they all have left!”

But the journalist said, ”No, then I will have to go maybe there is something in it! You please don’t prevent me, I will have to go.”
He himself has spread the rumor, but when twelve persons have believed, then one starts believing it oneself. That’s how mind has become so cunning. You have been deceiving and deceiving...it has become such an expert in deception that it deceives you too.

The plaintiff in an accident-injury case, appearing in court in a wheelchair, won a huge settlement. Enraged, the lawyer for the defense advanced on the winner in his wheelchair. ”You’re faking and I know you’re faking,” he shouted. ”So help me God, I’m going to follow you around for the rest of your life until I get proof.” The lawyer knew it perfectly well, that that man was a fake, that wheelchair was a show; he was perfectly okay, there was nothing wrong in his body. So he said, ”So help me God, I’m going to follow you round for the rest of your life, until I get proof.”

”Be my guest,” responded the man in the wheelchair with a smile. ”Let me tell you my plans. First I’m going to London for some clothes, then to the Riviera for the sun, and after that, to Lourdes for the miracle.” Mind is so cunning, it can find a way out always. It can go to Lourdes.... But once you are playing these tricks on others, sooner or later you will be the victim yourself. Beware of your own mind; don’t trust it, doubt it. If you start doubting your mind, that is a great moment. The moment the doubt about mind arises, you start trusting the self. If you trust the mind, you doubt the self. If you mistrust the mind, you start trusting the self. That is the whole meaning of trusting a master. When you come to me, it is simply a technique to help you to doubt your own mind. You start trusting me: you say, ”I will listen to you, I won’t listen to my mind. I have listened to my mind long enough; it leads nowhere, it goes round and round.
It again and again takes to the same trip; it is a repetition, it is monotonous.” You say, ”I will listen to you.” A master is just an excuse to get rid of the mind. Once you have got rid of the mind there is no need to trust the master, because you will have come upon your own master. The master is simply a passage to your own master. Via the master it becomes easy; otherwise the mind will go on deceiving, and you will not know what to do with the mind. Listening to the master, trusting the master, by and by the mind is neglected. And many times you have to drop the mind, because the master is saying something which goes against it it always goes against it! Neglected, mind starts dying. Not trusted, mind starts dying. It comes to its right size. Right now it is pretending, right now it pretends as if it is your whole life. It is just a small, tiny mechanism: good to use, very dangerous to make your master.
The mind says, ”Become!” The master says, ”Be!” The mind says, ”Desire!” The master says, ”Delight!” The mind says, ”You have to go a long way”; the master says, ”You have arrived. You are Saraha you have shot the target already.”

The third question:

Osho, What do you think about civilization? Are you absolutely against it? There is no civilization anywhere, so how can I be against it? It exists not. It is just a pretension. Yes, man has lost his primitive, primordial innocence, but man has not become civilized because that is no way to become civilized. The only way to become civilized is to be based on your innocence, to be based on your primitive innocence to grow from there.

That’s why Jesus says: Unless you are reborn, unless you become a child again, you will never know what truth is.
This so-called civilization is fake, it is a pseudo coin. If I am against it I am not against civilization, because this is not civilization. I am against it because this is not civilization at all, it is fake. I have heard....

Someone once asked the former Prince of Wales, ”What is your idea of civilization?” ”It is a good idea,” he replied. ”Somebody ought to start it.” I love the answer. Yes, somebody ought to start it, it has not yet been started. Man is not civilized, man only pretends.

I am against pretensions. I am against hypocrisies. Man only shows that he is civilized; scratch him a little and you will find an uncivilized man. Scratch him a little and all that is good is just superficial, and all that is bad is very deep-rooted. It is a skin-deep civilization. Everything goes well, you are smiling and everything and somebody just throws a word at you, an insult, and you are mad, you are a maniac and you want to kill. Just a moment before you were smiling; and just a moment afterwards you are ready to kill, your murderous possibilities have surfaced. What kind of civilization is this?

A man can be civilized only when he has become really meditative. Only meditation can bring real civilization to the world. Only buddhas are civilized. And this is the paradox: buddhas are not against the primitive they use the primitive as the base, they use the childhood innocence as the base. And on that base a great temple is erected. This civilization destroys the innocence of childhood, and then it gives you just false coins. First it destroys your primal innocence...once primal innocence is destroyed you have become cunning, clever, calculating; then you are trapped, then this society goes on civilizing you.

First it makes you alienated from your own self. Once you are alienated, then it gives you false coins; you have to depend on it. Real civilization will not be against your nature, will not be against your childhood; it will be a growth upon it. It will not have any antagonism towards primitive innocence, it will be a flowering of it. It will go higher and higher, but it will be rooted in the primal innocence.

This civilization is nothing but a maddening affair. Can’t you see the whole earth has become a big madhouse? People have lost their souls, people are no longer people; they have lost their self, they have lost their individuality. They have lost all! They are just pretenders; they have masks, they have lost their original faces. I am all for civilization but this is not civilization, that’s why I am against it. I would like a man really civilized, really cultured. But that culture can only grow; it cannot be forced from the outside, it can come only from the within. It can spread towards the periphery, but it should rise, it has to rise, at the center. This civilization is doing just the opposite, it forces things from the outside. There is a nonviolent preaching all over the world: Mahavira, Buddha, Jesus, they all teach nonviolence. They teach nonviolence because they have enjoyed nonviolence. But followers? they have never enjoyed any moment of nonviolence. They know only violence. But they are followers so they pretend to be nonviolent, they force a nonviolence upon themselves, they 40

create a character. That character is just around them. It is an armor. Deep down they are boiling like volcanoes ready to erupt, and on the surface they smile the false smile, the plastic smile. This is not civilization. This is a very ugly phenomenon. Yes, I would like the nonviolence to come from within, not to be cultivated from the outside but helped. That is the root meaning of the word education. It is almost like drawing water from a well: education means to draw out, that is the root meaning of the word education. But what has education been doing? It never draws anything out, it forces in. It goes on forcing things in the head of the child; it is not worried about the child at all, it does not think about the child. The child is just used as a mechanism into which more and more information has to be fed. This is not education. The child’s soul has to be brought out. That which is hidden in the child has to be brought out. The child has not to be patterned; his freedom should be left intact and his consciousness has to be helped to grow. More information is not more education! More awareness is education, more love is education. And education creates civilization. This civilization is false, its education is false; that’s why I am against it. I am against it because it is not really a civilization.

Question 4
Osho, I laugh so much at your jokes. I would like to ask one question: Why does a joke create so much laughter? One thing: You have never been allowed to laugh, your laughter is repressed. It is like a repressed spring any excuse is enough and it comes out. You have been taught to be sad...long faces...you have been taught to be serious.
If you are serious nobody thinks that you are doing something wrong; it is accepted, it is the way things have to be. But if you are laughing, laughing too much, then people will start feeling embarrassed by you. They will start thinking something is weird: Why is this man laughing? And if you are laughing without any reason, then you are mad; then they will take you to the psychiatrist, then they will hospitalize you. They will say, ”He laughs without any reason!” Only mad people laugh without any reason.

In a better world, in a more civilized world, in a really civilized world, laughter will be accepted as natural. Only when a person is sad will we hospitalize him. Sadness is illness, laughter is health. So because you have not been allowed to laugh, any small excuse.... Jokes are excuses to laugh, you can laugh without being called mad. You can say, ”Because of the joke....” And a joke has a mechanism: it helps you uncoil.

The whole mechanism of a joke is very complex; in a way simple-looking, deep down very complex. A joke is not a joke...it is a difficult phenomenon. In a few words, in a few lines, it can create such a change in the whole climate. What happens? When a joke is told, first you start expecting that there is going to be some laughter. You are ready for it, you autohypnotize yourself; you become alert. You may have been dozing and sleeping, but now there is a joke, you become alert. Your backbone is straight, you listen attentively, you become more aware. And then the story goes on in such a way that it creates more and more tension in you. You want to know the conclusion. The joke goes on one plane and there seems to be nothing much like a joke in it, and then there is a sudden turn....

That sudden turn releases your spring. You become tense and tense because you are waiting and waiting and waiting...and you see that there seems to be nothing much in it. And then suddenly it is there! And it is so suddenly there, so out of the blue, that you forget your seriousness, that you forget who you are, that you become a child again in that suddenness and you laugh. And your repressed laughter is released. Jokes simply show that the society has forgotten how to laugh. In a better world, where people will be laughing more, we will miss one thing: the joke. There will be no need; people will be laughing and people will be happy. Why? Each moment will be a moment of laughter. And if you can see life, it is all joke! But you are not allowed to see. Blinkers have been put on your eyes; you are only allowed to see so much. You are not allowed to see the ridiculousness of it. It is ridiculous!

Children can see it more easily, that’s why children are laughing more easily and more loudly. And they create embarrassment in parents, because they can see the whole nonsense of it. And the blinkers are not yet fixed. The father goes on saying to the child, ”Be true, always be true!” And then a man knocks on the door, and the father says, ”Go and tell him that father is not at home.” Now the child...the father cannot see what is happening, but the child laughs. He cannot believe what is happening, it is so ridiculous! And the child goes to the stranger knocking on the door and he says, ”Father says he is not at home.” He takes the whole juice out of it, he enjoys every bit of it.
We live with blinkers. We are cultivated in such a way that we don’t see the ridiculousness of life; otherwise it is ridiculous. That’s why sometimes even without a joke, in some small thing...for example, President Ford slipped and fell on the ground. Why did people who were standing there have a good laugh? They may not have shown it, but they had a good laugh.

Just think...if a beggar slips on a banana peel, nobody will bother. But a president of a country slips on a banana peel, the whole world will laugh. Why? because the banana peel brought things right! That banana peel showed to the president that he is as much a human being as a beggar is. The banana peel makes no difference at all: come beggar, come president, come prime minister, makes no difference a banana peel is a banana peel, it does not bother.

If an ordinary man falls, you will have a little laughter but not much, because he is an ordinary man; he never tried to prove that he is more than life-size, so there is not much laughter. But if a president slips on a banana peel, suddenly the ridiculousness of it, the reality of it, that this man was thinking that he is at the top of the world...whom were you trying to befool? Even a banana peel is not befooled. And you laugh. Watch...wherever you laugh, the ridiculousness of life has entered through your blinkers, you are again a child. A joke brings you back your childhoodness, your innocence. For a moment it helps the blinkers to slip from the eyes.
Listen to a few jokes....

One of the local men was found dead under unusual circumstances, therefore a coroner’s jury was impaneled and the foreman called the woman in whose bed the man had died to testify. The foreman assured her that all present knew each other, and that she should just tell in her own words what had happened. The woman related that she and the man, now deceased, had met in the local pub, and when ’time’ was called had gone on to her place to have another drink. One thing led to another and they ended up in bed together. Suddenly she noticed a strange look in his eyes which she described to the coroner’s jury in these words: ”Coming, I thought, but going he was.”
And the second....

An old deacon having occasion to spend a night at a hotel was assigned a room containing three single beds, two of which already had occupants. Soon after the light was extinguished, one of these began to snore so loudly as to prevent the deacon from getting to sleep. The tumult increased as the night wore away, until it became absolutely fearful. Some two or three hours after midnight the snorer turned in bed, gave a hideous groan and became silent.

The deacon had supposed the third gentleman asleep, but at this juncture he heard him exclaim, ”He is dead! Thank God, he is dead.”
And the last is a very precious one meditate over it.... One day when Jesus was walking through a village, he came upon an angry mob who had backed a woman up against a wall and were getting ready to stone her. Raising his hand Jesus quieted the mob, and then said solemnly, ”Now let the one who is without sin cast the first stone.” Immediately a little old lady picked up a big rock and hurled it at the woman. ”Mother,” said Jesus between gritted teeth, ”you exasperate me.”
Question 5
And the last question:
Osho, It is obvious that you are in love with orange, but then why don’t you yourself wear orange? I...and in love with orange? God forbid! I hate it! That’s why I force you to wear it it is a sort of punishment for not being enlightened yet!
Enough for today.

To a fly that likes the smell Of putrid meat, The fragrance Of sandalwood is foul. Beings who discard nirvana Covet coarse samsara’s realm.
An ox’s footprints filled with water Will soon dry up; So with a mind that’s firm But full of qualities That are not perfect, These imperfections Will in time dry up.
Like salt sea water that turns sweet When drunk up by the clouds, So a firm mind That works for others, Turns the poison of Sense-objects into nectar.
If ineffable, Never is one unsatisfied, If unimaginable, It must be bliss itself. Though from a cloud One fears the thunderclap, The crops ripen When from it pours the rain.
Man is a myth, and the most dangerous myth, because if you believe that man exists then you don’t try to evolve the man at all, there is no need. If you believe that you are already a man, then all growth stops. You are not already a man, you are just a potentiality to be. You can be, you may not be, you may miss. Remember, it can be missed.

Man is not born; it is not a given fact, you cannot take it for granted. It is just a possibility. Man exists as a seed, not as a tree not yet. Man is not yet actual, and the difference between the potential and the actual is great.

Man as he exists is just a machine, yet he works, yet he succeeds in the world, yet he lives a so-called life and dies. But remember, he exists not. His function is that of a mechanism, he is a robot. Man is a machine. Yes, this machine can grow something in it which can go beyond mechanism. This machine is no ordinary machine; it has tremendous potentiality to go beyond itself. It can produce something transcendental to its own structure. Sometimes it has produced...a Buddha, a Christ, a Gurdjieff sometimes it has produced a man. But don’t you believe that you are already a man. If you believe, your belief will be suicidal because once we believe that something is already there then we stop looking for it, then we stop creating it, then we stop discovering it, then we stop evolving it.

Just think: an ill person, a seriously ill person, thinks he is healthy. Why should he go to the doctor? Why should he take any medicine? Why should he go under treatment? Why should he be willing to go to the hospital? He believes he is healthy, he’s in perfect health...and he is dying! His belief will kill him. That’s why I say this myth is very dangerous, the most dangerous myth ever evolved by the priests and the politicians: that man is already on the earth. These millions of people on the earth are just possibilities, and unfortunately, the majority of them are never going to become actual; unfortunately, many of them will die as machines.

What do I mean when I say man is a machine? I mean that man lives out of the past. Man lives out of a dead structure, man lives out of habit, man lives a life of routine. Man goes on moving in the same circle, in the same rut, again and again and again. Can’t you see the vicious circle in your life? The same things you have been doing every day: hoping, being angry, desiring, being ambitious, being sensual, sexual, being frustrated, again hoping...again the whole circle moves.... Each hope leads to a frustration, never is it otherwise; and after each frustration, a new hope, and the circle starts moving.

In the East we call it the wheel of samsara. It is a wheel, the spokes are the same. And you are deluded by it again and again, you again start hoping. And you know you have hoped before, you have hoped millions of times, and nothing happens out of that hope. Just the wheel goes on moving, and goes on killing you, goes on destroying your life. Time is running out of your hands. Each moment that is lost is lost forever, and you go on repeating the old.

This is what I mean when I say man is a machine. I agree with George Gurdjieff absolutely; he used to say that you don’t yet have a soul. He was the first man to say it so drastically, that you don’t yet have a soul. Yes, the soul can be born in you, but you will have to give birth to it; you will have to become capable of giving birth to it.
Down the centuries the priests have told you that you have already that soul, that you are already that man. That is not so; you are only potentially so. You can become actually too, but the myth has to be destroyed. See the fact of it: you are not a conscious being; and if you are not a conscious being, how can you be a man? What is the difference between a rock and you? What is the difference between an animal and you? What is the difference between a tree and you? The difference is that of consciousness. But how much consciousness do you have?...just a flicker here and there. Just sometimes, in rare moments, you become conscious; and that is only for seconds and again you fall back into unconsciousness. Yes, sometimes it happens, because it is your potentiality.

Sometimes it happens in spite of you...one day the sun is rising and you fall into tune with existence and suddenly it is there: the beauty of it, the benediction of it, the fragrance of it, the light of it. Suddenly it is there and you have a taste of what it would be, what it can be, what it is. But the moment you become alert that it is there, it is already gone. Only a memory is left. Only for rare moments: sometimes in love, sometimes watching a full moon, sometimes a rising sun, sometimes sitting in a silent mountain cave, sometimes looking at a child playing, giggling; yes, sometimes in music.... But these moments are rare. If an ordinary man, the so-called man, achieves seven moments of awareness in his whole life, that will be too much. Rarely, very rarely, just a ray enters, and then it is gone. And you are back to your trivial life, dull and dead. And this is not so only with ordinary people, it is so with your so-called extraordinary people.

Just the other day I was reading about Carl Jung, one of the greatest psychologists of this age...but sometimes one wonders whether to call these people psychologists or not. He was a very restless man, absolutely restless. He could not sit silently for a single moment; he would turn and toss, he would do something or other. If there was nothing to do, he would smoke his pipe, and he was a chain-smoker. Then he had a heart attack and the doctors said to stop smoking, an absolute stop. Now it was very difficult. He started feeling his restlessness too much, he started feeling crazy. He would walk up and down in the room, he would go outside, for no reason; he would sit in this chair and the other. And then he recognized the fact that the pipe had been very, very helpful. It was a release, a sort of release of his restlessness. So he asked the doctors, ”Can I put the empty pipe in my mouth? Is it allowed?” an empty pipe! ”That will help me.”

He was allowed, and then for years he used to put the empty pipe in his mouth, just pretending that he was smoking. And then he would look at the pipe, would keep the pipe in the hand, would play with the pipe. And this is about a great psychologist of this age! What unconsciousness! So much in the grip of the habit, so much in the grip of the unconscious! it looks very childish. And then we go on finding rationalizations; then we go on pretending to ourselves, then we go on protecting and defending ourselves as to why we are doing this. At the age of forty-five Carl Jung fell in love with a woman. He was a married man with a very loving wife. Nothing was wrong, but it must have been the restlessness. It almost always happens that nearabout the age of forty-five one starts feeling that the whole life is gone. Death is coming closer, and because of death coming closer, either you become spiritual or you become more sexual.

These are the only two defenses: either you turn in search of truth, of the eternal which will have no death, or you start drowning yourself in more erotic fantasies. And particularly intellectuals those who have lived their whole lives through the head are more victims at the age of forty-five. Then the sexuality takes revenge. It has been denied; now death is coming closer and then one never knows whether you will be here again or not, whether life will be there or not. Death is coming here and you have lived a life of the head. Sexuality erupts with a vengeance.

Carl Gustav Jung fell in love with a young woman. Now it was very much against his prestige. The wife was disturbed, and the wife had loved him tremendously and trusted him. He rationalized it beautifully. Look at his rationalization that’s how unconscious man goes on living. He will do something unconsciously, then will try to rationalize it and will try to prove that it is not unconscious: ”I am doing it very consciously in fact, it has to be done.”

What did he do? He suddenly developed a theory that there are two types of women in the world: one, the mother type, the caring type, the wife type; and the other, the mistress type, the beloved, who becomes an inspiration. And man needs both and a man like Carl Gustav Jung certainly needs both. He needs inspiration too. He needs a caring woman; that his wife is fulfilling she is loving, a mother type. But that doesn’t fulfill his need he needs inspiration too, he needs a romantic woman too, a mistress who can take him into deep dreams; that is a must for him. Jung developed this theory...this is a rationalization. Now he never developed the other part of it, that men are two types. That’s where you can find that it is a rationalization. If it was a real insight then the other part, that men are two types, the father type and the lover type...then Jung’s wife needs two! If Jung thinks that he is a lover type, then she needs the father type; if Jung thinks he is a father type, then she needs a lover type. But that he never developed. That’s how you can see it is not an insight; it is just a tricky mind, a rationalization.

We go on rationalizing. We do things unconsciously, we do them without knowing why we are doing them. But we cannot accept the fact: it is very humiliating to accept that, ”I have been doing something of which I am not aware and I don’t know why.” Beware of rationalizations.
And how can such people be beneficial to others? It is a well-known fact that many of Carl Jung’s patients committed suicide. Why? They had come to be helped, why did they commit suicide? Something must be basically wrong. His analysis is just lousy. He is a very arrogant man, very egoistic, continuously ready to fight. Maybe his whole psychoanalysis developed only as his arro-gance against Sigmund Freud. Maybe it is again just a rational-ization, because he himself seems to be suffering from the same problems he is thinking to help others about.

Jung was always afraid of ghosts; even in his old age he was afraid of ghosts. He did not publish his most important book while he was alive because he was afraid that people would come to know the facts. So his memoirs were published, but he made certain that they should be published only when he was dead. Now what type of truth and authenticity is this? He was so much afraid of being found wrong, or in the wrong, that he never allowed any fact to be disclosed about his life while he was alive. I was reading one anecdote....
A man came to a psychiatrist and proceeded to unfold before the doctor his life story, covering his childhood experiences, his emotional life, his eating habits, his vocational problems, and everything else he could think of. ”Well,” said the doctor, ”it doesn’t seem to me as though there is anything wrong with you. You seem as sane as I am.”

”But, doctor,” protested the patient, a note of horror creeping into his voice, ”it’s these butterflies. I can’t stand them. They’re all over me.”
”For heaven’s sake,” cried the doctor, recoiling, ”Don’t brush them off on me!” The patients and the doctors, all are in the same boat. The psychoanalyst and the analyzed are not very far apart. It is a game. Maybe the psychoanalyst is more clever, but it is not that he knows the reality, because to know the reality you will have to become tremendously conscious; there is no other way. It is not a question of intellectual thinking, it has nothing to do with your philosophizing. To know reality one has to grow into awareness. Gurdjieff used to talk about a future psychology. He used to say that psychology still exists not, because how can it exist? Even man exists not! When man is not there, how can there be a science about man? First the man has to exist, then the science about the man can exist. Right now whatsoever exists is not psychology. Maybe it is something about the machine that man is.

Psychology can exist only around a buddha. With consciousness, Buddha lives. You can find what his psyche is, what his soul is. Ordinary man lives without a soul. Yes, you can find something wrong in his mechanism, and that wrong can be put right. What we know as psychology today is nothing but behaviorism. And in that sense, Pavlov and Skinner are far truer than Freud and Jung, because they think man is a machine. They are true about the man that exists, although they are not absolutely true because they think this is the end, man cannot be otherwise. That is their limitation: they think man can only be the machine. They are true as far as the present-day man is concerned man is a machine but they think that man cannot be otherwise. There they are wrong. But Freud and Jung and Adler are more wrong because they think man is already on the earth; all that you need is to study man and you will know. But man is not there. It is a very unconscious phenomenon. Man is a myth. Let that be one of the most basic insights. It will help you to come out of the lie, out of the deception.

Tantra is an effort to make you more conscious The very word Tantra means expansion of awareness. It comes from a Sanskrit root tan: tan means expansion. Tantra means expansion of consciousness and the basic fact and the most fundamental fact to be understood is that you are fast asleep. You have to be awakened. Tantra believes in school methods: that has to be understood also. In that sense Gurdjieff is one of the greatest tantrikas of this age. For example, if one is asleep, there is very little possibility that one can become awake alone. Look at it in this way: on the New Year day you think as you have always thought...and many New Year days have passed, and always you have taken a vow that never again will you smoke; and again the New Year has come and you start thinking this time it is going to happen. You take a vow that you will never smoke, but you don’t go and tell it to others, you are afraid to. To say it to others is dangerous because you know yourself, many times you have broken your vows; then it is very humiliating. So you keep it to yourself. Now there is only one possibility out of a hundred that the vow will be kept; ninety-nine possibilities are that it will be broken sooner or later.

You are an unconscious being; your vow does not mean much. But if you go and you tell everybody in the town friends, colleagues, children, wife...you go and tell everybody, ”I have taken a vow that I am not going to smoke,” there are more possibilities, at least ten percent, that you will not smoke. First there was only one possibility, now there are ten possibilities. Ninety percent the possibility is that you will smoke, but non-smoking has more ground, more solidity; from one percent it has gone to ten percent. But if you join a group of non-smokers, if you join a society of non-smokers, then the possibility is even more: ninety-nine percent is the possibility that you will not smoke. What happens?
When you are alone you don’t have any support from outside you are alone, you can fall asleep easily. And nobody knows, so you are not worried either. When all know, their knowing will function to keep you more alert. Now your ego is at stake, your respect and honor are at stake. But if you join a society of non-smokers, then the possibility is even more, because you live through habits. Somebody takes his cigarette box out of his pocket, and suddenly you start looking in your pocket. You are just mechanical: somebody is smoking and you start thinking how beautiful it was to smoke. Nobody smokes, and you are in the society of non-smokers, then nobody will remind you; and the habit by and by will disappear, out of no use. If a habit is not used, by and by it disappears; it tends to become dead, it loses its grip on you.

Tantra says: man can become awake only through group methods, through schools. That’s why I insist so much for sannyas. Alone, you don’t stand a chance. Together, much more possibility. It is as if ten persons are lost in a desert and it is very dangerous in the night: the enemies can kill them, the wild animals can kill them, the robbers can come, the murderers can come it is very difficult. Now they decide on a group method, they say: ”Each one will be awake for one hour.” To think that each one will be capable of remaining awake for eight hours in the night is to ask too much from an unconscious man, but each one will remain awake for one hour. And before he starts falling asleep he should make somebody else awake, then there is more possibility that at least one of the group will be awake the whole night.

Or as Gurdjieff used to say: You are in a prison and you want to come out of the prison. Alone there is not much chance; but if all the prisoners become a group, then there is much more chance they can throw the guard, they can kill the guard, they can break the wall. If all the prisoners are together, then there is much more chance that they can come out into freedom.

But the chances will increase even more if they are in contact with a few people who are outside the prison, who are already free. That is the whole meaning of finding a master: finding somebody who is already outside the prison. He can be of tremendous help, for many reasons. He can supply necessary things, things which will be needed for you to come out of the prison; he can send instruments, files, so that you can break out of the prison. He can watch from the outside and he can inform you when the guards change; in that interval there is a possibility to get out. He can inform you when the guards fall asleep in the night. He can make arrangements so that the guards are drunk on one particular night, he can invite the jailer to his house for a party; he can do a thousand and one things which you cannot do from the inside. He can find support for you from the outside. He can create an atmosphere so that when you are released from the jail you will be accepted by the people, you will be sheltered, taken into houses. If the society is not ready to accept you from the outside, you may come out of the jail but the society will deliver you back to the prison authorities. To be in contact with someone who is already awake is a must. And to be together with those people who are all thinking to become awake is also a must. This is the meaning of a school method, a group method. Tantra is a group method. It says: Be together, find out all the possibilities. So many people can be together and they can pool their energies. Somebody is very intelligent and somebody is very loving both are half, but together they become more of a unity, more wholeness.

Man is half, woman is half. Except for Tantra, all the seekers have tried to do without the other. Man has tried alone, women have tried alone. Tantra says: Why not be together, join hands together? The woman is half, the man is half together they are a greater energy, a more whole energy, a healthier energy. Join together! Let yin and yang function together. There will be more possibility of getting out of it. Other methods use fight and conflict. Man starts fighting with women, starts escaping from women; rather than using the possibility of the help he starts thinking of the woman as the enemy. Tantra says this is sheer foolishness, you are wasting your energy unnecessarily fighting with the woman, because there are greater things to be fought about! It is better to keep company with the woman; let her help you, and you help her. Go together as one unit and you have more chances to stand against the unconscious nature. Use all possibilities; then only there is some chance that you can evolve into a conscious being, you can become a buddha.

Now the sutras...these are very significant sutras.
First sutra:
To a fly that likes the smell of putrid meat The fragrance of sandalwood is foul. Beings who discard nirvana Covet coarse samsara’s realm.
First thing: just as I said, man is a machine. Man lives out of habit, out of the past, out of memories; man lives out of knowledge that he has known, acquired before. So he goes on missing the new, and the truth is always the new. He is like a fly that likes the smell of putrid meat, the foul and fetid odor; the fragrance of sandalwood is foul to that fly. She has a certain cast of memory, a certain past; she has always thought that the putrid smell of meat is fragrance. That is her knowledge, that is her habit, that is her routine that is her dead past. Now suddenly she comes across sandalwood: the fragrance of sandalwood will look to the fly as if it is a very foul and fetid odor.
Don’t be surprised...that’s what is happening to you. If you have lived too much in the body then even coming closer to a man who lives in his soul and you will feel something is wrong. Coming to a buddha, you will not feel the fragrance; you may even start feeling a bad smell. Your interpretation...otherwise why did people murder Jesus? Jesus was sandalwood! and people simply killed him. Why did people poison Socrates? Socrates was sandalwood! But the flies they understand their own past, they interpret according to their past. One day I was reading....

A prostitute, the most famous prostitute of Athens, once came to Socrates. And a few people were sitting there, just a few people, just as here a few people are sitting, and Socrates was talking to them. The prostitute looked around and said to Socrates, ”Why? such a great man like you, and only so few people listening to you? I had thought the whole of Athens would be here! And I don’t see the most respectable, the most honored the politicians, the priests, the intellectuals I don’t see them here. What is the matter? Come, Socrates, some day to my house; you will find them standing in a queue!” Socrates said, ”You are right because you cater to a universal demand. I don’t. I attract only a few, a chosen few. Others cannot feel my fragrance, they avoid! Even if they come across me, they escape, they are afraid. It is a totally different fragrance,” said Socrates. The prostitute must have been of tremendous intelligence. She looked into the eyes of Socrates, bowed down, and said, ”Socrates, accept me as one of your friends,” and never left, became part of that small school.

Must have been a woman of great awareness...so sudden a change, she understood it so immediately! But Athens killed Socrates, they did not like the man. The man looked very dangerous. Against him there were many charges. One was that he destroys people’s beliefs, he destroys young people’s minds, that he is anarchic, that if he is allowed to live any longer the society will be uprooted. He is a dangerous enemy. What was he doing? He was doing something totally different: he was trying to create a state of no-mind. But the people thought, ”He destroys people’s minds.” They are also right, the flies. Yes, young people were tremendously attracted to Socrates because only young people can be attracted to such things. Only youth has that courage. Even if old people come to me or to Socrates, they are young people only; that’s why they come, otherwise they cannot come. An old, rotten mind cannot come to me. Maybe the body is old, but if an old man comes to me or an old woman, she comes only because she still has the youth of her soul, she is still young somewhere; she is still able to understand the new, to learn the new. They say you cannot teach an old dog new tricks...it is very difficult; the old dog knows old tricks and he goes on repeating them. It is very difficult to teach anything to an old mind.

And these things are so radically different, so diametrically opposite to all that has been taught to you, that unless a man is really young he cannot even listen. So young people were attracted. That was a sign that something of the eternal, something of the eternal youngness of the universe was pouring through Socrates. When Jesus is alive you will find young people following him. You will not find young people going to see the pope; old people, dead people, long, long ago dead...they go to see the pope. When the original Shankaracharya was alive you would find young people all around him. But to the shankaracharya of Puri only dead bodies, corpses listen. Alive persons? you cannot find them.
You can go and look into any temple and you will find old women and old men; youth is not there. In fact whenever a religion is really there, youth is attracted; when truth is there, youth is attracted. When there are only lies left doctrines, dogmas, creeds then old people come. When youth is attracted, that means truth is young and youth is attracted. When truth is old, almost dead, then dead people are attracted. Old people are attracted only because of the fear of death. In old age even atheists become theists...afraid. When a young man is attracted towards something, it is not because of the fear of death because he does not know any death yet; it is because of tremendous love for life. And that is the difference between real religion and unreal religion. Unreal religion is fear-oriented. Real religion is love-oriented. You must have heard...in all the languages of the world that ugly word exists: Godfearing. That must have been coined by dead, dull, old people. Godfearing? How can one fear God? And if you fear God, how can you love him? Out of fear, only hatred can arise, never love. Out of fear you can be against God, because he will be your enemy; how can you love him? And if you love him, how can you be afraid? Have you ever been afraid of the person you love? Have you ever been afraid of your mother if you love her? Have you ever been afraid of your woman if you love her? If you love, there is no fear: love casteth out all fear. God-loving...romantically in love with God...ecstatically in love with God....

But that is possible only for the young mind. Whether the young mind is in the young body or in the old body, that is irrelevant but it is possible only for the young mind. Now Socrates is punished because he attracted young people. Buddha is punished because he attracted young people. But always remember: whenever a religion is born, young people rush from all corners of the world.

They should be the symbol that something has happened. When old people are rushing somewhere, you can be certain nothing is happening there, that is not where the action is! Where young people are going, that is the place where action is. But:
To a fly that likes the smell of putrid meat, The fragrance of sandalwood is foul. Beings who discard nirvana Covet coarse samsara’s realm.
Truth is the unknown, the mysterious. You cannot approach it through your past habit. You can approach it only when you are naked of all habits.

The Christian priest’s robe is called the habit it is a beautiful use of the word habit. Yes, I say, when you are nude of all habits, naked of all habits, all dresses are dropped, you function not through memory but through awareness... These are two different functions. You function through memory, then you don’t see that which is; you go on seeing that which you have seen before. You go on interpreting the present in terms of the past, you go on imposing something which is not there; you go on seeing things which are not, and you go on not seeing things which are. Memory has to be put aside. Memory is good, use it, but truth has never been known through memory. How can you know truth through memory? You have never known truth in the past. Truth is not known. Truth is a stranger. You will have to put all memory aside; you will have to say to your mind, ”Keep quiet, let me see without you! Let me look only with clarity, not with clouded eyes: no thoughts, no beliefs, no scriptures, no philosophies, no religions. Let me look directly, immediately! Let me look herenow, let me look into that which is confronting me.” Only then you are in tune with the mystery of truth. And remember: truth never becomes a memory. Even when you have known it, it never becomes a memory. Truth is so vast, it cannot be contained by the memory. And whenever it will again be there, and you will know it, it will again be new. It is never old, it is always new, it is always fresh. That is one of its qualities, that it never becomes old. It is always young.
So if you want to know the truth, Saraha says to the king, ”Sir, if you really want to know the truth of what has happened to me, you put aside your mind. I know you are just like a fly; you have lived a life of body and mind, you don’t know anything beyond them. I am standing here; I am beyond both. And there is no way to explain it to you according to your mind; no, it cannot be explained. If you really want to experience it, you can experience it, but it cannot be explained.”

God cannot be defined. God cannot be explained. Please remember: never explain it, because if you explain it you will be explaining it away. God cannot be contained by any thought. But God can be lived, God can be loved. You can become gods! that is possible but the mind cannot contain God. Mind is a very small container, it is like a teaspoon and you want to have the Pacific Ocean in the teaspoon? Yes, you can have a little salty water in your teaspoon, but that won’t give the idea of the Pacific, of the vastness. Storms won’t happen in your teaspoon, great waves will not arise. Yes, it will taste like it, but it will not be an ocean. Saraha says: If you want to see me, sir, you will have to put your mind aside. You have a fly’s mind. You have certain habits of thinking, of feeling, you have certain habits of living. You have lived a life of body and mind, and at the most whatsoever you have known up to now is just heard by you, you have read scriptures.... Saraha himself was reading scriptures to the king before, he knows it well. He knows what the king knows: his knowledge is just information. Saraha says: It has happened to me! But to see it you will need a different quality of seeing. Mind never meets the truth, never encounters the truth. The ways of the mind and the ways of the truth are absolutely separate. It is a separate reality. Hence the insistence of all the mystics of the world to attain to a state of no-mind. That’s what meditation is all about: a state of no-mind, a state of nonthinking yet fully aware, luminous with awareness. When there is not a single thought, your sky is clean of all clouds, and then the sun shines bright.
Ordinarily we are clouded with so many thoughts, desires, ambitions, dreams, that the sun cannot shine. It hides behind those dark clouds: desire is a cloud, thought is a cloud, imagination is a cloud, and one needs to be unclouded to know that which is.

Saraha says: Beings who discard nirvana Covet coarse samsara’s realm. Samsara means to live as body, as mind, as ego. Samsara means to live outwards, samsara means to live with things. Samsara means to live with the idea that all is matter and nothing else. Samsara means three poisons: power, prestige, pull to live in the world with the idea of having more power, more prestige, more money, more pull...this and that; to live in things and for things. That is the meaning of the word samsara the world. Just watch yourself: have you ever lived with persons or do you live only with things? Is your wife a person or a thing? Is your husband a person or a thing? Do you treat your husband as a person, as a superbly, intrinsically valuable person, or just as a utility, that he is the provider of bread and butter, or that she is the housekeeper, looks after the children? Is your wife an end unto herself, or is she just a utility, a commodity to be used? Sometimes you use her sexually, sometimes you use her in other ways but using the person means the person is a thing to you, not a person.

A person cannot be used; only things can be used. A person cannot be purchased; only things can be purchased. A person has such tremendous value, such divinity, such dignity how can you use a person? Yes, he can give out of her or his love, but you cannot use. And you have to be thankful. Have you ever been thankful to your wife? Have you ever been thankful to your father, to your mother? Have you ever been thankful to your friends? Sometimes you are thankful to a stranger but never to your own people, because you take them for granted. To live with things is to live in samsara.
To live with persons is to live in nirvana.

And once you start living with persons, things start disappearing. Ordinarily even persons are reduced to things, and when a person starts becoming meditative even things start becoming persons; even a tree becomes a person, a rock becomes a person. Everything by and by starts having a personality, because God is spread all over existence.
Saraha says: Sir, you have lived in samsara and you cannot understand the way of nirvana. If you really want to understand it you will have to live it, there is no other way. To know, you will have to taste something of it. And I am here, standing before you, and you are asking for explanations! Nirvana is standing in front of you, and you are asking for theories? Not only that you must be utterly blind you have come to persuade me to come back to your samsara! A fly is persuading me to leave the forest of sandalwood and its fragrance for the putrid smell of meat.

”Have you gone mad?” said Saraha to the king. ”Let me persuade you to come to my world rather than you persuading me to come to your world. I have known your world and I have known this new reality too; I can compare. You have known only your world; you don’t know my reality, you can’t compare.” When a buddha says this world is illusory, meditate over it, because he has known this world too. When some atheist, materialist, some communist says that the world of nirvana is just illusory, there is no need to bother about it at all, because he has not known it. He knows only this world; you cannot trust his assertions about the other world. He has never meditated, he has never entered into it.
Look at it: of all those who have meditated, not a single one has denied the inner reality. Not a single one! Without exception, all the meditators have become mystics. Those who have not meditated, they know only the world of the fly and the world of the foul and fetid odor of putrid meat. They live in the rotten world of things, but they know only that, and certainly their statements cannot be trusted. A Buddha can be trusted, a Christ can be trusted, a Mahavira can be trusted; they have known both. They have known the lower and the higher, and by knowing the higher they say something about the lower which has to be meditated upon. Don’t reject it outright.

For example: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, they have never meditated, and they say there is no God. Now it is almost as if a man has never gone to the lab of the scientist and says something about science. A man who has never gone into the lab and says that the theory of relativity is just mumbo-jumbo, it cannot be relied upon. You have to go to the lab, you have to go into higher mathematics, you have to prove it! Just because you cannot understand it you cannot be allowed to deny it.
There are very few people who understand the theory of relativity. It was said when Einstein was alive that there were only twelve persons alive who understood his theory, all over the world. And there are a few people who think that is an exaggeration, that number is not right: even twelve persons were not there who understood his theory correctly. But because of that you cannot say it is not right; you cannot take a vote about it, you cannot defeat it in an election. You will have to go through the same processes. Now Marx saying there is no God is simply making a stupid statement.... Never meditated, never contemplated, never prayed his statement is irrelevant. Those who have meditated, those who have dug a little deeper into their being, they have come to the same truths.
Beings who discard nirvana Covet coarse samsara’s realm.

Saraha is saying: You discard nirvana and you go on rushing after illusions. You have come to persuade me, sir? Look at me, how ecstatic I am! Look at me; I am not the same person who had left your court, I am totally a different person.
He is trying to bring the king’s awareness to the present moment, and he succeeded. He must have been a man of great presence. He pulled the king out of the world of the flies, out of the world of putrid meat. He pulled him to the world of sandalwood and its fragrance.

The second sutra:
An ox’s footprints filled with water Will soon dry up; so with a mind that’s firm But full of qualities that are not perfect, These imperfections will in time dry up. He says: Look! An ox has walked, and there is a footprint on the land, and the footprint is filled with water, rainwater. How long will it be there? Sooner or later it will evaporate, and the ox’s footprint filled with water will not be there anymore. But the ocean is always. Although the water in the ox’s footprint is also from the ocean, still something is different. The ocean always remains, never increasing, never decreasing. Great clouds arise out of it, it never decreases. Great rivers pour their waters into it, it never increases. It remains always the same. But this small footprint of an ox is full of water right now; within hours or days it will be gone, it will dry up. So is the skull of the human mind: it is just an ox’s footprint, such a small thing. Just a little water is there don’t trust it too much, it is already drying up, it will disappear. The skull is a very small thing...don’t think that you can contain the universe in the skull. And it can only be temporary, it can never be the eternal.

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