MEDITATION
THE SECRET OF SECRET VOL2
Love is the only friend
MEDITATION
THE SECRET OF SECRET VOL2
Love is the only friend
The first question:
Question 1
OSHO, WHILE IN THERAPY MYSELF, I SPENT MUCH TIME PRAYING. OVER THE YEARS I
FELT BETTER. I NEVER KNEW WHETHER IT WAS THE THERAPY OR THE PRAYER. AS A
THERAPIST I WANT TO URGE OTHERS TO PRAY BUT FEEL EMBARRASSED.
Sadananda,
love is therapy, and there is no other therapy in the world except love. It
is always love that heals, because love makes you whole. Love makes you feel
welcome in the world. Love makes you a part of existence; it destroys
alienation. Then you are no more an outsider here, but utterly needed. Love
makes you feel needed, and to be needed is the greatest need. Nothing else
can fulfill that great need. Unless you feel that you are contributing
something to existence, unless you feel that without you the existence would
be a little less, that you would be missed, that you are irreplaceable, you
will not feel healthy and whole.
And prayer is the highest form of love. If love is the flower, then prayer
is the fragrance. Love is visible, prayer is invisible. Love is between one
person and another person, prayer is between one impersonal presence and the
impersonal presence of the whole. Love is limited, prayer is unlimited.
If you can pray, no other therapy is needed.
Therapies are needed in the world because prayer has disappeared. Man was
never in need of therapy when prayer was alive, flowing, when people were
dancing in great gratitude, singing songs in praise of God, were ecstatic
just for being, for being here, were grateful just for life. When tears were
flowing from their eyes -- of love, of joy -- and when there were songs in
their hearts, there was no need for therapy.
Therapy is a modern need, a poor substitute for prayer. Psychoanalysis is a
poor substitute for religion, very poor. But when you cannot get the best,
then you settle for second-best or the third-best, or whatsoever is
available. Because temples have become rotten, churches have become
political, religion has been contaminated by the priests, man is left alone,
uncared for, with nobody to support him. The very ground on which he has
been standing for centuries has disappeared. He is falling in an abyss,
feeling uprooted. Psychoanalysis comes as a substitute: it gives you a
little bit of rooting, it gives you a little bit of ground to hold onto, but
it is nothing compared to prayer. Because the psychoanalyst himself is in
need, he himself is as ill as the patient, there is not much difference
between the psychoanalyst and the patient. If there is any difference, that
difference is of knowledge -- and that makes no difference at all. It is not
a difference of being. If there is any difference it is quantitative, it is
not that of quality, and quantity does not make much difference. The
psychoanalyst and his patient are both in the same boat.
In the o]d days there was a different kind of person moving in the world,
the religious person -- the Buddha, the Christ. His very presence was
healing. Because he was healed and whole, his wholeness was contagious. Just
as diseases are contagious, so is health. Just as illnesses can be caught
from others, so can you catch something of the healing energy from the
other. But for that, the psychoanalyst will not be of much help. He may help
a little bit to solve your problems intellectually. He may find out the
causes of your problems -- and when you know the cause you feel a little
better, you are not in ignorance -- but just by knowing the cause nothing is
helped. You are suffering: the psychoanalyst will show that you are
suffering because of your mother, because of your upbringing, because of
your childhood. It makes you feel a little good: so it is not you who is the
cause, it is the mother. Or, there is always something else you can put
blame on. Psychoanalysis shifts the responsibility, makes you feel a little
weightless, unburdened, but the problem is not solved. Just by knowing the
cause, the cause does not disappear.
Religion has a totally different orientation: it does not shift the blame
on others. In fact, it makes you feel responsible for the first time in your
life. Hence, psychoanalysis is a kind of bribery; it is a kind of lubricant.
It is a kind of help in your ego; strengthening your ego, throwing the blame
on others. It is a very dangerous game because once you start throwing the
blame on others you will never be transformed, because you will never feel
responsible. This is one of the greatest calamities that has happened to
this age.
Marx says that it is the society that is responsible for all the ills that
you are suffering. You are not responsible: it is the class-divided society,
it is the economic structure. Freud says it is not the economic structure
but the conditioning that has been given to you by the parents, by the
society, by education, by the priest, by the church. It is the conditioning:
that's why you are suffering; you are not responsible.
This is the old game. In the past it was called the 'game of fate': fate is
responsible, you are not responsible. This is the same game played with new
names and new labels, but the trick is that you are not responsible. Of
course, one feels a little bit happier, but nothing changes. Sooner or later
that happiness disappears because the cause remains where it was, the wound
remains. How does it matter who has wounded you? Just by knowing that your
mother has wounded you -- or your father or the society or the church -- how
does it matter? The wound is there, full of pus, growing, becoming bigger
every day. You can feel a Little bit good for the moment, unburdened: so you
are not responsible, you are just a victim. You can sympathize with
yourself. You can feel pity for yourself and you can feel anger for others,
for those who have created the wound, but this is not a way of
transformation: the wound is there and the wound will continue to grow. The
wound does not bother about what you think about it; your thinking makes no
difference to the wound.
Religion is a totally different approach: it makes you feel responsible. It
is against your ego. It says, "It is you! It is your responsibility to have
chosen a certain pattern of life. All patterns were available, no pattern
has been imposed on you." Buddha was born in the same society in which
others suffered, suffered hell, and he attained here-and-now the ultimate
state of bliss, so society cannot be responsible. Christ was born in the
same society in which Judas was born, in which everybody else was born, but
he attained to God.
Religion makes you feel responsible AND free. Freedom and responsibility
are two aspects of the same coin. If you are not ready to feel responsible,
you will never be free. You will remain in bondage, in the bondage of
others.
Psychoanalysis makes you feel in bondage; it can't really help. Prayer
makes you free. Prayer means religion. Prayer means: you are responsible,
you have chosen a certain way of life. Now there is no need to make much
fuss about it. If you don't like it, drop it! It is up to you, it is
ABSOLUTELY up to you. And you can drop it in a single moment of awareness.
That's what SATORI is, SAMADHI is: dropping the whole nonsense in a single
moment of understanding. Seeing the point that "I am carrying it, and if I
don't want, there is no need to carry it; nobody can force it on me -- no
fate, no society, no church", it can be dropped. Your inner essence remains
free of your personality. Personality is just like clothing: you can drop
it, you can be naked any moment.
Your essence can be naked any moment. And when the essence is naked, you
are healed -- because the essence knows no illness. The essence is always in
the state of health, in the state of wholeness.
Prayer is the ultimate way of dropping all personalities -- Christian,
Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Indian, German, English. Prayer is the way to put
aside the whole paraphernalia of personality and just to be, pure, innocent.
In that purity and innocence one starts bowing down. You may not believe in
God; there is no need to believe in God. A believer is not a religious
person either. But when you are utterly nude in your essence, when you have
dropped all clothing -- you have dropped all that has been given to you, you
have disconnected yourself from the learned, from all that you have learned,
the taught, the cultivated -- suddenly you are in your pristine clarity, as
you were before your birth. Your original face is there. It is as fresh as
dewdrops in the early morning, as shiny as the stars in the night, with all
the grandeur of the flowers and the trees, and with all the simplicity and
innocence of children, animals, birds. In that moment you feel so joyous.
Out of joy you bow down -- not to a God, remember; there is no need to
believe in a God. You simply bow down out of gratitude. There is no object
in your bowing: you simply bow down because... to see such infinite joy
showering on you for no reason at all... and you are not worthy! You don't
deserve it! You have never earned it! How can you remain without giving a
heartful thank-you to existence? Your head bows down, you surrender. You lie
down on the earth in utter silence, your heart throbbing, pulsating with
ecstasy. Your breathing has a different rhythm to it, a different melody to
it. Your whole energy is dancing, streaming. You have fallen in harmony with
existence. This is what I call prayer -- not that which is going on in the
churches and the temples: that is parrot-like, it is formal. It has nothing
to do with real prayer. And this prayer heals, this prayer is real therapy.
Sadananda, you are right. This question arising in you is of tremendous
significance: whether you have been healed by therapy or by prayer?
You have been healed by prayer. Therapy has not helped anybody. At the
most, therapy can make you adjusted to the society. Prayer helps you to fall
in tune with existence itself. Society is man-made, its values are man-made,
hence they are different everywhere. In India there are different values, in
the West there are different values. Something that is perfectly okay in the
West is absolutely wrong in the East, and vice versa. These values are
man-created.
You live in a society; you have to adjust to the society. Psychotherapy is
in the service of the society you live in. When you start going out of the
society, you start becoming a little rebellious, the society pounces on you
and declares you ill. This is an ancient trick, one of the most dangerous
tricks that the society has played on you: whenever you are not falling in
line with the society, the society starts condemning you. In the past it
used to call you 'sinners', and then it prepared hells for you. Now, that
language is out of date: it calls you 'sick', 'mentally sick', 'a mental
case' That is a new condemnation.
In Soviet Russia, whenever somebody differs from communism, has his own
ideas about life, existence, society, he is immediately declared a
psychopath, a mental case. Once he is declared a mental case, now society is
able to manipulate him. You can give him electric shocks, insulin shocks,
drugs. You can force him to live in a mental asylum. And all that he has
done is: he has done a little bit of thinking. His sin is that he was not
obedient to the established order of the society; he was disobedient. Unless
the society forces him back, gives him a mind-wash, forces him to fall in
line, he will be kept in a hospital and will be treated as an ill man. This
is very humiliating, degrading, dehumanizing, but that's what has been done
all over the world, more or less.
Whenever a person is different from you, wants to live a different life,
wants to be free from the bondage you have created in the name of the
society, you declare him mad. Jesus was declared neurotic, Mansoor was
declared mad, Socrates was declared dangerous to the youth of the society:
"Kill them now!" Now the society can kill them without any prick of
conscience. In fact, the society is doing the right thing: first condemn
somebody, put a label on him; if you kill somebody without putting a label
on him, you will feel guilty; to avoid guilt declare him mad, and then it is
so easy to kill, so easy to destroy. Now we have the technology too -- to
destroy the mind, to give the mind a complete brainwash, and to force the
man to say yes to the established order, whatsoever it is: communist,
capitalist, fascist.
Therapy, the so-called therapy, is in the service of the established
society. It is in the service of death, of the past.
Prayer serves nobody. Prayer is freedom. Prayer is a way to commune with
the whole, and to commune with the whole is to be holy.
You say, "While in therapy myself, I spent much time praying. Over the
years I felt better. I never knew whether it was the therapy or the prayer."
It was CERTAINLY prayer.
"As a therapist I want to urge others to pray but feel embarrassed."
I can understand, Sadananda. Prayer has become a dirty word. To talk about
prayer is embarrassing. To talk about God is embarrassing: people think that
you are a little bit eccentric, crazy or something, but don't be afraid.
Drop this embarrassment, gather courage. Talk about prayer -- not only talk
about prayer, fall into prayer when the patient is with you. Let the patient
feel the climate of prayer.
Once Jesus' disciples asked him, "What is prayer?" He simply knelt down,
started praying, with tears coming from his eyes. His eyes raised towards
heaven, and he started talking to his Father -- which is just a symbol. He
started calling, 'Abba'. He created the climate: that is the only way to
show what prayer is, there is no other way.
If somebody asks, "What is love?", be loving. Hug him, hold his hand, let
your love flow towards him. That is the only way to say what love is. This
is the only way to define the indefinable.
Fall in prayer while you are helping your patient. Just kneel down. The
first time the patient may feel strange, a little weird -- "What is
happening?" -- because he has come with a certain idea that he would have to
lie down on the Freudian couch and he would talk all kinds of nonsense, and
the psychoanalyst would listen very attentively, as if he is delivering a
gospel or a revelation. He has come with certain expectations; he will not
be able to believe what is happening. But if prayer is there it is bound to
have effects: it is such a potential force. Whenever there is one person
praying, he creates a vibe of prayer around himself. And patients
particularly are very sensitive people -- that's why they have become
patients. Remember it! They are more intelligent than the common lot, hence
they are ill! The common lot is so insensitive, so dull, so thick-skinned.
It goes on carrying all kinds of nonsenses without being disturbed by them.
It goes on living this so-called, meaningless life without ever becoming
aware of its meaninglessness, its utter stupidity and absurdity. Remember
always that the patient is a person who is more sensitive than the common
lot, more alert, has more heart to feel. Hence he finds it difficult to
adjust to the society.
The society exists for the lowest because it exists for the mass, the mob,
the crowd. The society is a herd-phenomenon. Whenever there is somebody who
is a little more intelligent, has a slightly higher I.Q., has some more
potential for love and for poetry, he will feel a little maladjusted. He
will not feel at home. Seeing the beggar on the street, he will suffer;
seeing all kinds of exploitations going on, he will suffer; seeing the state
of humanity and its degradation, he will suffer -- and all this will become
too much. He will start cracking underneath this burden.
Remember that the patient is more intelligent, more sensitive, more
vulnerable. Hence he is a patient. If you create the climate of prayer
around him, maybe the first time he will think you a little weird, but don't
be worried. Everybody knows that psychoanalysts are a little weird.
I have heard....
"I got insomnia real bad," complained a psychotherapist to his physician.
"Insomnia," said the doctor, "is insomnia. How bad can it be? What do you
mean, 'real bad insomnia'?"
"Well," said the psychotherapist. "I got it real bad. I can't even sleep
when it is time to get up!"
Or this story:
A young doctor who was studying to be a psychoanalyst approached his
professor and asked for a special appointment. When they were alone in the
professor's office, the young man revealed that he had had a considerable
amount of trouble with some of his patients. It seemed that in response to
his questions. these patients offered replies which he could not quite
understand.
"Well," said the older man, "suppose you ask me some of these questions."
"Why, certainly," agreed the young doctor. "The first one is, what is it
that wears a skirt and from whose lips comes pleasure?"
"Why," said the professor, "that's easy. A Scotsman blowing a bagpipe."
"Right," said the young doctor. "Now the second question. What is it that
has smooth curves and at unexpected moments becomes uncontrollable?"
The older doctor thought for a moment, and then said, "Aha! I don't think
that's too difficult to answer. It's a major league baseball pitcher."
"Right," said the young man. "Now, Professor, would you mind telling me
what you think about two arms slipped around your shoulders?"
"A football tackle," replied the professor.
"Right again," said the young doctor. "But you would be surprised at the
silly answers I keep getting."
So, Sadananda, don't be worried. You can pray, you can go into prayer. The
first time, maybe the patient will think you a little eccentric. And in
orange, and with the mala -- you are eccentric! Don't be worried! You are
allowed to do anything once you are a sannyasin. This is a certificate.
But if you can create a climate of prayer, soon you will find the patient
participating with you. He may feel, for the first time, something of the
unknown and the beyond. And if he can again feel something of the unknown,
his life will start having meaning, significance. If he can have a little
contact with the transcendental, just a little contact, his life will never
be the same again. Just a little opening into the beyond, a little window,
and the light coming in and the sky and the clouds and the stars -- just a
little window and you have transformed his whole being.
Use your therapy too; but the real help will come from prayer. Use therapy
as a stepping-stone to prayer.
The second question:
Question 2
I AM IN LOVE, AND I FEEL LIKE A MOTH DYING INTO A CANDLE FLAME. AM I MEANT
SOMEHOW TO EXTRICATE MYSELF AND BE AWARE AND ALONE, OR TO DIE INTO THE
FLAME. IN JOY, IN AGONY, IT GOES ON AND ON...
Madhuri, die! because to die in love is to be reborn. It is not death, it
is the beginning of true life. To die without love is death. To live without
love is death. To be in love is to know something of God, because as Jesus
says, "God is love." I have even improved upon it: I say love is God.
Die, Madhuri, die. Utterly. Abandon yourself. Be lost.
There is no need to protect yourself against love, because love is not the
enemy. Love is the only friend. Don't protect yourself. Don't hide from
love. Don't be afraid of love. When love calls, go with it. Wherever it
leads, go with it, go in trust.
Yes, there will be moments of agony, because they are always there when
there are moments of ecstasy. They come together, it is one package; just
like day and night, summer and winter, they come together. But when there is
ecstasy of love, one is ready to pay -- whatsoever agony it brings, one is
happy to pay.
And remember, nothing is free. We have to pay for everything. The more you
can pay, the more you will get. If you want to move to the higher peaks of
the Himalayas, you take the risk of falling into the valleys. Those who
cannot take the risk of falling into the deep abysses surrounding Himalayan
peaks will never know the joy of rising higher and higher.
Love is the highest peak of consciousness, the Everest of consciousness,
and sometimes one slips and falls. And naturally, when you are moving on a
height, you fall very deep. It hurts. When you know light and you fall into
deep darkness, it hurts. But once you have known those peaks, you are ready
to go into any valleys for those peaks. A single moment of ecstasy is
enough: one can suffer for it in hell for eternity, then too it is worth
having.
Meditate on these words of Kahlil Gibran:
When love beckons to you, follow him,
though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.
But if in your fear
you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness
and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
into the seasonless world where you shall laugh,
but not all of your laughter,
and weep,
but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love
possesses not nor would it be possessed: for love is sufficient unto love.
When love beckons to you, follow him, follow to the very end, follow to the
point where you disappear completely. Become a moth. Yes, love is a flame...
and the lover is a moth. Learn much from the moth: it has the secret, it
knows how to die. And to know how to die in love, in ecstasy, dancing, is to
know how to be reborn on a higher plane. And each time you die a higher
plane is reached.
When you can die ultimately and utterly, not holding back even a little bit
of yourself, then that very death takes you into God. That is resurrection.
The third question:
Question 3
WHY ARE YOU NOT CONSISTENT IN YOUR STATEMENTS?
I cannot be. The purpose of my statements is totally different than that of
ordinary statements. I am not telling the truth, because truth cannot be
told.
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Then what am I doing here?
If you take my statements as true or untrue, you will miss the whole point.
I am using the statements to awaken you. They are neither true nor untrue.
They are either useful or useless, but they have nothing to do with truth.
They have a certain utility.
It is just as if you are fast asleep, and I start ringing a bell; there is
nothing of truth or untruth in ringing the bell. To ask the question would
be utterly irrelevant. But there is something useful in it: if it helps you
wake up, it has been useful.
Buddha is reported to have said, "Truth is that which has utility." Truth
is a device. It does not state anything about existence, it is just a device
to provoke something which is fast asleep in you.
Now I cannot be consistent, because I have tO provoke so many people --
different types of minds, different types of sleeps are there. I can ring a
bell: it may help somebody tO wake up, to somebody else it may look like a
lullaby and he may fall asleep even more deeply. To somebody it may be a
provocation into awakenedness, to somebody else it may simply give a
beautiful dream: that he is in a temple and bells are ringing, and he is
enjoying, and the prayer is going on, and the incense is burning. He has
created a dream, he has not come out of his sleep. He will need something
else -- maybe a hit on the head, or cold water thrown on him, or a good
shaking. Different people need different approaches to be provoked, to be
awakened.
My statements are not about truth. I am not a philosopher! I am not trying
to give you any philosophy. I'm just trying all possible ways to wake you
up. If one way fails, I try another -- but I cannot leave you alone. So one
day I will say one thing, another day I may say another thing. You miss the
point if you don't understand the purpose of my statements.
Just the other day I had answered Habib's two questions about Carl Gustav
Jung. He missed the whole point. I felt sorry for Habib: he missed the whole
thing, he felt offended. And he could not even wait and meditate for a few
hours: I finished at () :45 and he wrote a letter at 9:55. He could not wait
a single minute to meditate over it. He thought I am against Jung.
Why should I be against Jung? -- he has not done anything wrong to me.
But poor Habib; he missed the point. He thinks I am against
Jung, so he has to defend Jung. He wrote in the letter that he would like
to have a public or private discussion with me, debate.
Now you cannot discuss with a madman! It will be utterly useless, Habib. It
will be pointless, it will drive you crazy.
I have heard...
Once it happened, an Egyptian king went mad. He was a great chess player.
All medicines were tried, all physicians worked on him, but nothing, no
help. And he was drowning and drowning in madness.
Then one fakir came, a Sufi mystic, and he said, "Wait! If you can bring a
great chess player, it will be of great help. He has to play chess with this
mad king."
Now who would like to play chess with a madman? But the king was ready to
offer as much money as was asked for. A chess player was ready; so much
money! And the mystic was right: after one year the king was perfectly sane.
But the chess player went mad.
So if you have a discussion with me, beware, you will go mad! -- because I
am not a consistent man. I am not logical either, I am absurd.
And Habib missed the point. If he was a Freudian I would have attacked
Freud, if he was a Marxist I would have attacked Marx, and if he was a
Rajneeshian, I would have attacked Rajneesh! It is not a question of Jung!
Jung comes nowhere into it. The attack is on Habib's ego! Because the ego is
Jungian, so poor Jung has to be attacked
Now tomorrow somebody comes and he is a Freudian, and I will attack Freud.
And I will say, "He is nothing compared to Jung -- a pygmy!" And then
naturally I become inconsistent, because you miss the whole point! I have
nothing to do with Freud or Jung. Who cares? My effort is to provoke you, to
show you the point. It is not that Habib is feeling offended because I have
criticized Jung; he is feeling offended because his ego is hurt. If he can
see it, then my statements were useful. If he cannot see it, then the arrow
missed the point. Then I will have to use some other device.
I have to destroy your ego-structures. Hence, don't ask me again and again
why my statements are not consistent. I have only one consistency: that is
of being inconsistent. I am consistently inconsistent; that's the only
consistency that I have. And I have infinite freedom; a consistent man
cannot have infinite freedom. I can play, I can joke, I can enjoy shattering
your egos, destroying your structures. I'm not serious about these things. I
dare to play, to try first one thing, then another. My statements are like
the actors on the stage: let them contradict each other; they are not there
to tell the truth, but to provoke it, to discover it.
And I would like to tell you too: do not do anything merely for the sake of
consistency. That is the shelter for fools and philosophers -- which are the
same people. Never do anything just for the sake of consistency. This is
undesirable since it limits experimentation and exploration. Action so as to
be consistent with the past develops into a programmatic addiction. It
freezes you into stasis, halting the evolutionary march of becoming. You
should retain all power over current behavior. None should be yielded to the
past. Acting consistent with precedent is a form of death, and destroys all
potential to grow into understanding.
Remember, what is consistency? It means my today has to be obedient to my
yesterday -- that is consistency. My present has to be obedient with my past
-- that is consistency. But then how am I going to grow? Then how am I going
to move? If I remain consistent with the past, then there is no growth
possible.
Growth means inconsistency. Your today has to go beyond your yesterday, has
to be inconsistent with it, has to use it as a stepping-stone, has not to be
confined by it. And your tomorrow has to go beyond your today. If you go on
moving away from your past each day, you will be growing, you will be
reaching higher peaks.
Consistent people are stupid people. Their life is stagnant. They stink of
death. They are like corpses: they go on rotting, they don't live. Life is
basically not a logical phenomenon but a dialectical phenomenon. Dialectics
means thesis, antithesis. synthesis: your yesterday was a thesis, your today
will be its antithesis and your tomorrow will be a synthesis. Again your
tomorrow will create a thesis and the next day an antithesis. and then
synthesis -- and so on it goes. You go on in a dialectical way. Life is a
dialectical process; it is not a linear, logical process. Life is a
contradictory process.
That's why I cannot define myself -- because today's definition won't be
applicable tomorrow. I cannot define myself because it is like defining a
cloud or an ocean or a growing tree or a child. I constantly change, because
change is the very soul of life. Except change, nothing is eternal.
I am committed to change. Change is my God, because that is the only
unchanging phenomenon in life. Hence I call it God. Everything else changes:
life changes, death changes -- only change remains. I worship change. I am
in love with it. I cannot define myself once and forever. I have to define
myself each moment of my life; and one never knows what each next moment is
going to bring.
To be with me is to be in a constant flux, in a constant movement. Those
who are not daring enough sooner or later have to drop out of this journey
that I am taking you on. Those who are not courageous enough, who don't have
guts to accept the unknown future and to remain available to the unknowable
and the mysterious, and who are in a hurry to have a dogma, a belief system,
a philosophy -- so that they can stop growing, so that they can cling to the
dogma, so that they can become fanatics about the dogma; those who are
constantly in search of a certain orthodoxy in which nothing will ever
change -- these are the dead people, cowards. They can't become my people.
I'm bringing you a totally different kind of religion; it has never
happened before in the world. All the religions in the world were believers
in permanence; I believe in change. All the religions of the world were
dogmatic; I am absolutely non-dogmatic, anti-dogmatic. All the religions of
the world were reduced into philosophical statements. When I will be gone, I
will leave you in such a mess -- nobody will ever be able to reduce what I
was saying, really. Nobody will be able to reduce it into a dogma
You cannot pinpoint me. You cannot fix me. I am not a thing. I am a river,
a cloud which is constantly changing its form. My idea of consistency is
rooted in this continual change, this dynamic dance called life. Yes, to me
God is a dancer, constant movement; that is the beauty of God. In fact I
would not like to call God a dancer but dance itself -- because even the
word 'dancer' would be false: it gives an idea of a certain entity -- just
dance, just cloud.
There is an ancient Christian mystic treatise, THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING. No
other book has such a beautiful title: 'The Cloud of Unknowing'. That is the
definition of God: 'cloud' and 'of unknowing'.
You cannot make knowledge out of the experience of God. In fact, the more
you experience God, the less and less you will know. The day God has
happened to you totally, you will not be found there. The knower has gone,
disappeared. The dewdrop has slipped into the ocean, or... the ocean has
slipped into the dewdrop.
I am not burdened by my yesterday. It has already been changed by today. I
live in the present because there is no other way to live. All other ways
are ways of death.
So please, don't ask about consistency. You have to learn, you have to
understand my inconsistency. You have to understand my contradictions. The
basic thing is that my statements are not saying ANYTHINg about truth. My
statements are just provocations. I am urging you to discover, I am not
delivering you the truth! Truth is not a thing to be given to you; it is not
a commodity. It is untransferable. I am simply creating a desire and a
longing, an intense longing in you to search and seek and explore. If I am
very consistent, you will stop seeking. You will think, "What is the need?
Osho knows, I can believe in him." That's what Christianity has been doing,
Buddhism has been doing, Jainism has been doing. "Buddha knows, so what is
the need? We can believe. He is not deceiving. he cannot lie. He has stated
the truth. What more truth are we going to discover? He has stated the
truth; we can believe in it." You need not worry about your own exploration.
And this is one of the most fundamental things about truth: that unless it
is YOURS, it is not. My truth cannot be your truth; there is no way. My
truth cannot be transferred to you.
Truth is absolutely individual. All the Buddhas have wanted to give it to
you, I want it to be given to you, but there is no way. All that can be done
is to provoke an inquiry in you, such a tremendous desire to know that you
drop all your luggage, unnecessary luggage, and you start moving into the
journey; that you gather courage to come out of your securities,
conveniences, ideologies, philosophies, orthodoxies; that you gather courage
to come out of your mind and to go into the unknown... the cloud of
existence. One has to disappear into
So I am not going to oblige you by giving you a dogma. No, I will go on
contradicting myself each day, every moment. Slowly slowly you will see
there is no point in clinging to any of my ideas. And in that very moment
you will become aware: there is no need to cling to ANY IDEA WHATSOEVER --
mine, Buddha's, Jesus', anybody's. All ideas have to be dropped.
And when there is no idea in your mind, you will find God there. When all
philosophies have disappeared, then religion wells up in your being like a
spring.
The fourth question:
Question 4
WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO ASK THE REAL QUESTION? AND WHY DO I FEEL SO
STUPID ABOUT THIS AND ANY OTHER QUESTION?
Bhagwato, the real question cannot be asked. Only unreal questions can be
asked. That's why whenever you will ask a question you will feel a little
bit stupid -- because deep down you will know it is unreal. And only the
unreal can be asked! The real question cannot be asked. Why? -- because to
find the real question you will have to go so deep into your being; you will
have to go to the very center of your being. Unreal questions exist on the
periphery. Unreal questions are millions, the real question is only one, but
it exists at the center. If you want to ask the real question you will have
to go to the center of your being. And the problem is when you are at the
center of your being, you know the real question, but immediately you know
the real answer too.
The real question contains the real answer in it. They are instant,
together. Simultaneously they happen. So that's why the real question can
never be asked. If you don't know the real question, how can you ask? If you
know the real question immediately you know the real answer too. They are
not two separate things but two aspects of the same coin: on one side the
real question, on the other side the real answer.
But one has to ask many unreal questions before one becomes aware of this,
Bhagwato. You should feel blessed that you are aware of the phenomenon: that
the real question is so difficult to ask, IMPOSSIBLE to ask. This is a good
sign, a milestone. Even to ask "Why is it so difficult to ask the real
question?" shows that you are moving in the direction of the real question.
It shows that now you can detect immediately when you come across a false
question. You have become capable of knowing the false as the false; this is
the first step towards knowing the true as the true. Before one can know
truth, one will have to know untruth utterly and absolutely.
And that's why you say, "And why do I feel so stupid about this and any
other question?"
All questions are stupid questions. But I am not saying don't ask them;
just by not asking you will not become wise. Stupid questions have to be
asked so they can be dropped. And dropping stupid questions is dropping
stupidity. And slowly slowly, one becomes aware that "All my questions are
useless. Why am I asking? Even if I get the answer, how is it going to
change my life?"
Once I was staying in a village. Two old men came to me -- one was a Hindu,
another was a Jain. The Jains don't believe in the existence of God. Both
were friends, almost lifelong friends. Both must have been nearabout
seventy, and both had quarreled for their whole lives -- whether God exists
or not? The Hindu insisted that He exists and would quote the Vedas and
Upanishads and Gita, and the Jain would insist that He does not exist and
would quote Mahavir and Neminath and Parshwanath and his TEERTHANKARAS. And
they argued and argued to no end, because these questions are so
meaningless, so futile, you can go on arguing, ad infinitum; there is no end
to it. Nobody can prove absolutely, nobody can disprove absolutely either.
The questions are so utterly useless: nothing can be proved definitely this
way or that, so the question goes on hanging.
Hearing that I was staying in the guesthouse outside the village, they came
to see me. And they said, "Our whole lives have been a conflict. We are
friends, in every way we are friendly, but about this question of God we
immediately start quarreling. And we have quarreled the whole life. Now you
are here: give us a definite answer so this quarrel can be stopped, and we
can at least die in ease."
I asked them, "If it is proved definitely that God is, how is it going to
change your life?" They shrugged their shoulders. They said, "We will live
as we are living."
"Or, if it is proved," I told them, "that God definitely does not exist,
how is it going to change your life?" They said, "It is not going to change
our lives at all, because we both live exactly the same life. We are
partners in a business. He believes in God, I don't believe in God, but as
far as our lives are concerned we have the same pattern. His God does not
make any difference, my no-God does not make any difference."
Then I said, "This is a futile question."
Which question is futile? One whose answer is not going to make a change in
your life. It is useless. People ask, "Who created the world?" How is it
going to change your life? Anybody -- A, B, C, D, -- anybody; how is it
going to change your life? "Is there life after death?" -- how is it going
to change your life?
Can't you see theists and atheists all living the same kind of life, the
same rotten kind of life? Can't you see the Catholic and the communist
living the same kind of life, the same lies, the same falsehood, the same
masks? Can't you see the Protestant and the Catholic living the same life?
Can't you see the Hindu and the Mohammedan living the same life, with no
difference at all? All differences are only verbal. No verbal difference
makes any difference in their existence. They have been discussing about
useless questions.
But why do people ask useless questions? -- to avoid going in. They pretend
that they are great inquirers: they are interested in God, they are
interested in the after-life, they are interested in heaven and hell. And
the real thing is: that they are not interested in themselves. To avoid
that, to avoid seeing this fact, that "I am not interested in my own being,"
they have created all these questions. These questions are their strategies
to avoid their central question: Who am l?
True religion consists in the inquiry: 'Who am I?' And nobody else can
answer it. You will have to go digging deeper and deeper into your being.
One day, when you have reached the very source of your life, you will know.
That day, the real question and the real answer will have happened
simultaneously.
The fifth question:
Question 5
I AM OFTEN ABLE TO ACHIEVE THE STATE -- OR WHAT SEEMS LIKE THE STATE --
WHICH YOU CALL 'BEING A HOLLOW BAMBOO' -- SILENT, WATCHING, EMPTY. THE ONLY
PROBLEM IS THAT THERE IS NO BLISS IN THAT EMPTINESS: IT IS JUST NOTHING. CAN
I EXPECT SOMETHING TO FILL IT ONE OF THESE DAYS?
Mariel Strauss, it is because of this idea that you are missing the whole
beauty of nothingness: this desire to fill it. You are not-really a hollow
bamboo, because in this hollow bamboo this desire is there, and this desire
is enough to fill the hollow bamboo, to block its emptiness.
This desire to fill it one day, this expectation that "Some day, God will
come and fill my emptiness"' this very idea is preventing you from really
becoming a hollow bamboo. Drop this desire. Forget all about filling your
hollow bamboo -- then you are a hollow bamboo. And when you are a hollow
bamboo, it is immediately full of God. But not that you have to desire it;
if you desire it you will go on missing it.
This is one of the basic paradoxes to be understood about religious
inquiry. Understand it as deeply as possible, let it sink deeply into your
heart, because this is not only Mariel Strauss' problem, this is everybody's
problem. Anybody who goes on in the search for truth, for being, for God, or
whatsoever you call it, will have to come across it.
You can feel that you are empty, but deep down, lurking somewhere is the
desire, the hope, the expectation that "Now, where is God? It is getting
late and I have remained a hollow bamboo so long. What is the point? This is
just nothingness."
There is condemnation when you say "This is JUST nothingness." You are not
happy with this hollow bamboo-ness. You are not happy with this emptiness;
there is condemnation. You have managed somehow, because you have heard me
saying again and again that the moment you are a hollow bamboo God will
descend in you: "Become empty, and you will become full." You want to become
full, so you say "Okay, we will become empty. If that is the only way to
become full, we will even try that." But this is not true emptiness. You
have not understood the point.
Enjoy emptiness, cherish it, nourish it. Let your emptiness become a dance,
a celebration. Forget all about God -- to come or not is His business. Why
should you be worried? Leave it to Him. And when you have completely
forgotten about God He comes, IMMEDIATELY He comes. He always comes when you
are utterly unaware of His coming, you don't even hear His footsteps. One
moment He was not there, and suddenly another moment He is there. But your
emptiness has to be total. And a total emptiness means no expectation, no
future, no desire.
You say, "I am often able to achieve the state..."
You must be forcing it, you must be trying hard, you must be cultivating
it, you must be imagining it. It is imaginary, it is not true.
"... or what seems like the state..."
And deep down you also know that it is not the real state. You have managed
somehow to create a kind of emptiness in yourself. It is a forced emptiness.
"... which you call 'being a hollow bamboo' -- silent, watching, empty..."
It is not what I call the state of being a hollow bamboo; it is not. If it
were, then there would be no desire for God, because there is no desire. It
does not matter what you desire; God, money, power, prestige, it matters
not. Desire is desire, its taste is always the same. Desire leads you away
from the present, from the herenow into the future, somewhere else. Desire
does not allow you to relax into the moment. It takes you away from your
being.
So what you desire does not matter: you can desire presidency of a country,
or you can desire money, or you can desire sainthood, or you can desire God,
you can desire truth -- desire is desire. Desire means you are torn apart
between that which you are and that which you would like to be. This is
anguish, this is anxiety. And this anxiety will not allow you to become a
hollow bamboo.
To be a hollow bamboo means: a state of desirelessness. Then you are
utterly empty, and then that emptiness has a clarity in it. Then that
emptiness has a splendor in it, a purity in it. Then that emptiness has a
holy quality to it. It is so pure, it is so innocent that you will not call
it 'just emptiness' or 'just nothingness'. That emptiness is God itself!
Once you are empty, once you are herenow, with no desire taking you away
from your reality, God is. God means 'that which is'.
God is already the case; your desiring mind does not allow you to see it.
Your desiring mind makes you a monkey: you go on jumping from one branch to
another branch. You go on jumping, you are never in a state of rest. This
desire and that desire, and one desire creates another desire, and it is a
continuum.
When there is no desire where can you go? When there is no desire where is
the future? When there is no desire where is time? Where is past? When there
is no desire where is mind? Where is memory? Where is imagination? All gone!
lust cut one single root which is the chief root of the tree of mind: cut
desire and just be. In that state of being you are a hollow bamboo. And the
moment you are a hollow bamboo, reality bursts upon you, as if it has been
always waiting but you were not available to it. It floods you!
The last question:
Question 6
IS NOT LIFE STRANGER THAN FICTION?
It has to be, because fiction is only a partial reflection of life, a very
finite reflection of life. Life is infinitely complex. Life has no
beginning, no end; it is always on and on, it is going on and on. It is a
pilgrimage with no goal. Fiction is just a reflection of a small part of it.
Fiction is like a small window in your room. Yes, when the sky is full of
stars, you see a part of the sky through the window, but the sky becomes
framed by the window. The sky itself has no frame to it -- it is infinite,
it knows no boundaries -- but your window gives a frame to it.
A fiction is a framed part of the sky. Howsoever strange, mysterious,
unbelievable the fiction may be, it is very pale compared to real life. Real
life is the mystery of mysteries... never possible to explain it. And the
fiction arises out of the human mind. The mind is a mirror: it reflects a
few things. If you have a good mirror, a creative mirror, you can create
poetry, you can create music, you can create fiction, you can write, you can
paint; but all that you will paint and all that you will create and all that
you will write will remain a very tiny atomic part of reality -- and not
really a part but a REFLECTION of the part in your mind.
To see life as it is is mind-blowing. To see life as it is is psychedelic.
To see life as it is is to become expanded in consciousness.
The fiction has to begin somewhere. Of necessity, it has to begin
somewhere. It will have the first page, and somewhere it has to end; it
cannot go on and on. You can lengthen it, make it very long, like Tolstoy's
WAR AND PEACE -- it can go on and on and on, and it is very very tiring and
lengthy. But still a moment comes when you have to put the last full stop.
You cannot go on forever.
But life goes on forever. One wave turns into another wave, one tree
creates other trees, one man gives birth to children -- it goes on: there is
no beginning and there is no end.
Art is only a poor imitation. Hence, the artist remains in imagination. The
artist remains in dreams; he is a dreamer, a good dreamer -- a dreamer who
dreams in color, not just black and white -- but still a dreamer.
A mystic is one who has dropped all dreams, who has thrown away away this
mirror of the mind and looks directly into life without any medium
interfering. Then he sees the eternal progressing. Then in a single moment
he sees all eternity, and in a single atom he can see the whole reflected.
Just think: you contain your mother, your father, your father's father,
your mother's mother, and so on and so forth. You contain Adam and Eve -- if
there was a time when things began. I don't think there was a time when
things began. Adam and Eve is again a fiction, a religious fiction. Things
never began, things have always been.
You contain the whole past. All the dreams of your father and your mother
are contained in your cells, and all the dreams of their fathers and their
mothers, and so on and so forth; all the dreams of the whole humanity have
preceded you; and not only of humanity, but all the animals that have
preceded humanity; and not only all the animals, but all the trees that have
preceded all the animals; and not only the trees, but all the rocks and all
the mountains and rivers that have preceded trees. You contain all of that
in you. You are vast!
And so is the case with the future -- you contain the whole future too: the
children that will be born and the poems that will be written -- not only
the Shakespeares of the past but the Shakespeares of the future too, the
dreams that have been seen and the dreams that will be seen. All the poets
and all the painters are in you, ready to be born, all the scientists, all
the mystics. The whole future, the eternal future...
So you contain the whole past, you contain the whole future. The whole
converges upon this small, tiny moment. And so is the case with space, as it
is with time. You contain the whole of space in you, all the trees and all
the stars.
A great Indian mystic, Swami Ramateerth, started saying things which look
mad when he attained to enlightenment. People started thinking that he had
gone bizarre, because he started saying, "I see stars moving within me, not
outside, but inside. When I see the morning sun rising, I see it rising in
me, not outside."
Now this looks like a kind of madness. It is not. He was saying something
tremendously significant. He was saying: I am part of the whole and the
whole is part of me. So everything is within that is without, and everything
is without that is within. All that has happened is in me, and all that is
going to happen is in me, and all that is happening is in me.
To feel this, to see this, is to be in prayer, in awe, in wonder. Will you
not be grateful to be part of this mysterious existence? Will you not feel
grateful to have something to do with this splendor? Will you not feel
grateful, thankful for all that surrounds you and all that is contained in
you?
To see this mysterious existence, to feel it in the deepest core of your
heart, and immediately a prayer arises -- a prayer that has no words to it,
a prayer that is silence, a prayer that doesn't say anything but feels
tremendously, a prayer that is like music with no words, celestial music, or
what Pythagoras used to call 'the harmony of the stars', the melody of the
whole. When that music starts rising in you, that's what the SECRET OF THE
GOLDEN FLOWER IS all about. Suddenly a flower bursts open in you, a golden
lotus. You have arrived, you have come home.
This is what I am provoking you towards, this is what I am trying to awake
in you -- this desire, this longing, this thirst, this appetite. Once you
are possessed by this hunger, for the first time you will become aware of
the benediction and the beautitude of existence. You will not feel
meaningless, you will not feel accidental. You will not feel at all as
Jean-Paul Sartre says, that "Man is a useless passion"; no, not at all. You
will feel yourself tremendously significant, because you are part of an
infinite significance, and you are to contribute something by your being
here.
You will become creative, because that is the only way to be really
thankful to God -- to be creative, to make this existence a little more
beautiful than you had found it. The day you leave, this will be your only
contentment: if you have made the existence a little more beautiful. When a
Buddha leaves he leaves in tremendous contentment because he knows he is
leaving the existence behind with a little more poetry in it, with a little
more awareness in it, with a little more prayer in it.
Remember that when you leave the world, you can die in contentment only if
you have made this world a little more worth living in, a little more
meaningful, a little more dancing, celebrating. If you have added a little
festivity to it, a little laughter, a little sense of humor; if you have
been able to light a small lamp of light, and you have been able to disperse
a little darkness from the world, you will die in utter joy. You are
fulfilled. Your life has been of fruition and flowering. Otherwise people
die in misery.
Jean-Paul Sartre is right for the majority of the people, but that majority
is living in ignorance, unconsciousness. That majority is not really yet
able to declare its humanity. Only a Buddha or a Krishna or a Zarathustra or
a Jesus can claim that they are human beings. They are human beings because
they have bloomed. Their whole beings have come to flowering. Now nothing is
left, all is fulfilled.
Create this longing, this thirst. You have the seed; all that you need is a
thirst. That thirst will become the occasion for the seed to sprout. You
have the potential; all that you need is a tremendous longing. If you become
aflame with longing you will be purified. The baser metal of your life will
be transformed into a higher metal, into gold. This is all that alchemy is
about.
And the SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER is an alchemical treatise.
THE TAOIST "SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER" IN TWO VOLUMES..
MeditationSECRETOFSECRETVOL1AnimusAnimaCh1.htm
MeditationSECRETOFSECRETVOL1AtomicMomentCh3.htm
MeditationSECRETOFSECRETVOL1BeyondIndolenceDistractionCh15.htm
MeditationSECRETOFSECRETVOL1BornJoyCh6.htm
MeditationSECRETOFSECRETVOL1CreateBalanceCh12.htm
MeditationSECRETOFSECRETVOL1EmptyEyesCh2.htm
MeditationSECRETOFSECRETVOL1LakeVoidCh16.htm
MeditationSECRETOFSECRETVOL1ListeningHeartCh13.htm
MeditationSECRETOFSECRETVOL1MeanBusinessHereCh4.htm
MeditationSECRETOFSECRETVOL1NewManCh14.htm
MeditationSECRETOFSECRETVOL1OneAgain1Ch5.htm
MeditationSECRETOFSECRETVOL1OneAgainCh5.htm
MeditationSECRETOFSECRETVOL1RealAlwaysCh8.htm
MeditationSECRETOFSECRETVOL1RidingMiracleCh9.htm
MeditationSECRETOFSECRETVOL1TurningKeyCh7.htm
MeditationSECRETOFSECRETVOL1WholeHolyCircleCh11.htm
MeditationSECRETOFSECRETVOL2AlonenessultimateCh6.htm
MeditationSECRETOFSECRETVOL2ContemplationemptinessCh11.htm
MeditationSECRETOFSECRETVOL2EmptinessmattersettledCh9.htm
MeditationSECRETOFSECRETVOL2FestiveDimensionCh15.htm
MeditationSECRETOFSECRETVOL2GoldenfloweropeningCh3.htm
MeditationSECRETOFSECRETVOL2LittlebitskyCh1.htm
MeditationSECRETOFSECRETVOL2LoveonlyfriendCh2.htm
MeditationSECRETOFSECRETVOL2LovetogetherCh10.htm
MeditationSECRETOFSECRETVOL2MoongathersthousandCh7.htm
MeditationSECRETOFSECRETVOL2PositiveandnegativemeetCh13.htm
MeditationSECRETOFSECRETVOL2SpiritheavenCh5.htm
MeditationSECRETOFSECRETVOL2SuredigmanCh8.htm
MeditationSECRETOFSECRETVOL2TaoHappeningCh12.htm
MeditationSECRETOFSECRETVOL2WordscontainitCh4.htm
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