Prayer Meditation - Osho Meditation

WHAT IS PRAYER?

Prayer is wonder, reverence. Prayer is receptivity for the miracle that surrounds you.

Prayer is surrender to the beauty, to the grandeur to this fantastic existence. Prayer is nonargumentative dialogue with existence. It is not a discussion... it is a love-dialogue. You don't argue... you simply whisper sweet nothings. When a man falls in love with a woman he whispers sweet nothings into her ear. When a man falls into love with existence... the same romance: prayer IS romance. It is fantasy; it is becoming available to the miraculous. Many people have lost the capacity to pray, because many people have lost the capacity to wonder. They have lost the capacity to be surprised. You go on seeing millions of wonders every day but you are not surprised at all. Your eyes are so full of dust and knowledge that you don't see anything. A seed is sprouting, and you don't see any wonder. A new leaf coming out of the tree, and you don't see any wonder. A bird singing, and nothing happens inside you. A peacock dances, and nothing dances inside you. A white cloud floats in the sky, and you remain untouched. Then prayer is impossible. Prayer needs a poetic heart, a loving heart. Approach reality more poetically -- don't be too much of a scientist, don't be too much of a rationalist. don't think that you know; nothing is really known -- ignorance is absolute, ignorance is ultimate. Once you understand that nothing is known, and ignorance is ultimate, you will again be full of those beautiful eyes you had when you were small children. I have heard... The husband was one of those cynical, sour guys whom nothing moved or impressed. To him, everything was just a big "so what?" He visited a psychiatrist, and after a short examination was given this diagnosis: "You are cold and blase. To you, everything means a big nothing. You are married, eh? Well, here's what you do. Ringling's circus is in the town: take your wife and see the show. Take a look at how red-blooded people live and act. Watch the performers who live dangerously; see how they pulsate and glow." The schnook took his wife to the circus. Out into the ring came the roaring lions and tigers. The wife was thrilled by the excitement, but the husband yawned and replied, "Yeah? So what?" Finally there came the grand finale where the daredevil was shot out of a cannon three hundred feet into the air, turned several somersaults, and then, pulling out a clarinet, began playing before hitting the net. The crowd roared its appreciation for the act, but the husband, after a few minutes of thought, turned to his wife and grunted in a bored manner, "A Benny Goodman he's not!" Prayer is the capacity to be amazed. prayer is the capacity that you had as children, and you have lost. Claim it -- reclaim it -- because with prayer you have lost all. The day your wondering eyes closed, God became nonexistential to you. Open your wondering eyes again, and you will find him pulsating again. He's very close by... he's all around you... he is within and without.

Osho - The Divine Melody,

Ch#6 - Chapter title:: You will awake praying - Question 5

am in Buddha Hall

Opposites

Tantra goes on working on all and every technique possible. Tantra is not for someone, it is for all. EVERY TYPE OF MIND CAN MOVE THROUGH TANTRA. Every type of mind cannot be Christian, every type of mind cannot be Hindu, every type of mind cannot be Buddhist. A particular type of mind will be attracted by Buddha, a particular type by Jesus, a particular type by Mohammed. Shiva contains all. Shiva can have an appeal for every type possible. The total, the whole has been included, it is not a partial standpoint. THAT'S WHY TANTRA HAS NO SECT.

You cannot create a sect around the whole; you can create a sect only around a fragment. You can live the whole, but you cannot create a sect. A sect can be created only when you are for something and against something else. If both the opposites are contained, how can you create a sectarian mind? SO TANTRA IS THE ESSENTIAL RELIGION, it is not a sect. Hence so many techniques.

People keep on coming to me and asking, "There are so many techniques, and one technique contradicts the other?' Yes, it contradicts the other -- because it is not meant for a particular mind. In these hundred and twelve techniques, ALL THE POSSIBLE TYPES OF HUMANITY HAVE BEEN INCLUDED.

You please don't be concerned with all the techniques, otherwise you will get confused. You simply find that which suits you, that which appeals to you. Towards it you will feel a deep affinity, an attraction; you will fall in love with it. Then forget all the remaining one hundred and eleven techniques. Forget them. YOU JUST STICK TO THE ONE THAT WORKS FOR YOU.

In these one hundred and twelve techniques, ONLY ONE TECHNIQUE IS FOR YOU. If you try many techniques you will get confused -- because to try so many techniques, you will need a very big mind which can absorb contradiction. That's not possible right now. One day it may become possible. You can become so complete, so total, that you can move easily with many techniques. Then there will be no problem. But then there will be no need also! Right now is the need. Find out your technique.

I CAN BE HELPFUL TO YOU in finding which technique will be suitable for you. And if you feel that other techniques are contradictory to the technique that suits you, don't think about them. They are contradictory. But they are not for you. At least they are not for you now. One day it may become possible that when you don't have the ego within, then you can move to the opposite without any problem. The ego creates the problem. It is stuck somewhere, it clings to something, it is not liquid, it cannot flow. And Shiva is flowing in all directions.

So remember, don't start thinking about these techniques: that this technique is against that. Shiva is not trying to create a system here, he is not a system-maker. Shiva is giving all the techniques without any systematizing. They cannot be systematized, because a system means that the contradictory, the opposite, must be denied. AND HERE THE OPPOSITE IS INCLUDED. It is both Apollo and Dionysus; it is both serious and laughing; it is immanent and transcendent both; it is earthly and unearthly both -- because it is all.

OSHO

Vigyan Bhairav TantraVol 2,

Ch #35: The search for the rhythm of the opposites

pm in Bombay, India

Vulnerability

Question 1
"A meditator who is vulnerable, passive, open and receptive, feels that with these characteristics he suffers due to the influence of the nonmeditative, negative and tense vibrations around him. Please explain how he can preserve his vulnerable psyche from the harmful vibrations."

If you are really vulnerable, nothing is negative for you – because the negative is your interpretation.

Nothing is harmful to you – because the harmful is your interpretation. If you are really open, then nothing can harm you, nothing can be felt as harmful. You feel something is negative and something is harmful because you resist, because you are against it, because there is no acceptance of it. This has to be deeply understood.

The enemy exists there because you are protecting yourself against him. The enemy is there because you are not open. If you are open, then the whole existence is friendly; it cannot be otherwise. Really, you will not even feel it as friendly – it is simply friendly. There is no feeling even that it is friendly, because that feeling can exist only with the contrary feeling of enmity.

Let me put it in this way: if you are vulnerable, it means you are ready to live in insecurity. Deep down it means you are ready even to die. You will not resist, you will not oppose, you will not stand in the way. If death comes, there will be no resistance. You will simply allow it to happen. You accept existence in its totality. Then how can you feel it as death?

If you deny, then you can feel it as the enemy. If you don’t deny, how can you feel it as the enemy?

The enemy is created by your denial. The death cannot harm you, because the harm is your interpretation. Now no one can harm you; it has become impossible.

This is the secret of Taoist teaching. Lao Tzu’s basic teaching is this: if you accept, the whole existence is with you. It cannot be otherwise. If you deny, you create the enemy. The more you deny, the more you defend, the more you protect, the more enemies are created. The enemies are your creation. They are not there outside; they exist in your interpretation.

Once you can understand this, then this question can never arise. You cannot say, ‘I am meditative, I am vulnerable, open. So now how am I to defend myself against negative vibrations around me?’

Nothing can be negative now. What does the negative mean? The negative means that which you want to deny, that which you don’t want to accept, that which you think is harmful. Then you are not open, then you are not in a meditative state.

This question arises only intellectually, this is not a felt question. You have not tasted meditation, you have not known it. You are simply thinking, and that thinking is just a supposition. You suppose, ‘If I meditate and become open, then I will be in insecurity. The negative vibrations will enter in me and they will be harmful. Then how am I to defend myself? This is a supposed question. Don’t bring supposed questions to me. They are futile, irrelevant.

Meditate, become open, and then you will never bring this question to me, because in the very opening, the negative will have disappeared. Then nothing is negative. And if you think that something is negative, you cannot become open. The very fear of the negative will create the closure. You will be closed; you cannot open. The very fear that something can harm you... how can you become vulnerable? That’s why I emphasize the fact that unless the fear of death disappears from you, you cannot become vulnerable, you cannot be open. You will remain closed in your own mind, in your own imprisonment.

But you can go on supposing things, and whatsoever you suppose will be wrong, because the mind cannot know anything about meditation, it cannot penetrate that realm. When it ceases completely, meditation happens. So you cannot suppose anything, you cannot think about it. Either you know it, or you don’t know it – you cannot think about it.

Be open – and in the very opening of yourself, all that is negative in existence disappears. Even death is not negative then. Nothing is negative. Your fear creates the negativity. Deep down you are afraid; because of that fear you create safety measures. Against those safety measures the enemy exists.

Look at this fact – that you create the enemy. Existence is not inimical to you. How can it be? You belong to it, you are just a part of it, an organic part. How can existence be inimical to you? You are existence. You are not separate; there is no gap between you and the existence.

Whenever you feel that the negative, the death, the enemy, the hate, is there, and if you are open, unguarded, existence will destroy you, you feel that you have to defend yourself. And not only defend – because the best way to defend is to be aggressive, to offend. You cannot be simply defensive.

When you feel that you have to defend yourself, you become offensive, because to offend, to be aggressive, is the best way to defend yourself.

The fear creates the enemy, and then the enemy creates defence, and then defence creates offence.

You become violent. You are constantly on guard. You are against everybody. This point has to be understood: that if you are in fear, you are against everybody. Degrees may differ, but then your enemy and your friend are both your enemy. The friend is a little less, that’s all. Then your husband or your wife is also your enemy. You have made an arrangement, that’s all. You have become adjusted. Or it may be that you both have a common and a greater enemy, and against that common and greater enemy you both have become joined, you both have become one party, but the enmity is there.

If you are closed, the whole existence is inimical to you. Not that it is so. It appears to you that it is inimical. When you are open, the whole existence has become your friend. Now, when you are closed, even the friend is the enemy. It cannot be otherwise. Deep down you are afraid of your friend also.

Somewhere, Henry Thoreau or someone else has written that he prayed to God, ‘ I will take care of my enemies, but you take care of me from my friends. I will fight with my enemies, but protect me from my friends.’

Just on the surface is friendship; deep down is enmity. Your friendship may be just a facade to hide the enemy. If you are closed you can create only the enemy, because when you are open only then is the friend revealed. When you are open totally to someone, the friendship has happened. It cannot happen in any other way.

How can you love when you are closed? You live in your prison, I live in my prison, and whenever we meet, only the prison walls touch each other and we are hiding behind. We move in our capsules: the capsules touch each other, the bodies touch each other, but deep down we remain isolated.

Even while making love, when your bodies have entered into each other, you have not entered. Only bodies are meeting; you remain still in your capsule, in your cell. You are just deceiving yourselves that there is communion. Even in sex, which is the deepest relationship, communion is not. It cannot happen because you are closed. Love has become an impossibility. And this is the reason – you are afraid.

So don’t ask such questions; don’t bring false questions. If you have known openness, you cannot feel that something can be harmful to you. Now nothing is harmful. That’s why I say even death is a blessing. Your approach has become different. Now wherever you look, you look with an open heart – that open heartedness changes the quality of everything. And you cannot feel that something is going to be harmful; you cannot ask how to defend – there is no need. The need arises because you are closed.

But you can go on supposing questions. People come to me and they say, ‘Okay, if we have realized God, then what?’ They start with the question – if? There are no ‘ifs’. In existence you cannot raise such questions. They are absurd, stupid, because you don’t know what you are saying. ‘If I have realized God, then what?’

That ‘then what?’ never arises, because with the realization, you are no more, only the God is.
And with the realization, there is no future, only the present is. And with the realization, there is no worry, because you have become one with existence. So the question ‘then what?’ never arises.

This question arises because of the mind which is in constant worry, constant struggle, constantly thinking for the future.

Osho
Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 2,
Ch#14 - The fire of awareness
pm in Bombay, India

Because of Love

WHAT SHOULD I DO? – FOLLOW THE PATH OF ACTION, THE PATH OF KNOWLEDGE, OR THE PATH OF DEVOTION?

Follow all three. Act with love and awareness. Love with awareness, and let your love be creative.

Bring awareness not against love, but full of the juice of love. And let your awareness participate in existence, let it be creative.

These three are part of your being. This is the real trinity. And if you avoid one then something in you will be denied and will remain stuck. And remember that you can grow only as a total being. If you want to come to me you can come only if your whole being comes here. Your one hand cannot come, your one leg cannot come.

I have heard about a villager. He went to the capital city of his country for the first time and he asked the taxi-driver to take him to a certain place. Now it was a big place. The taxi-driver asked, ” Which part?” And the villager said, ” Part? I want to go whole.”

You cannot go in parts. You can go only when you are whole. Now action is a must; so is awareness, so is love. Why should you choose? – there is no need. All choosing will be committing suicide. Let all the three mix and meet and merge and become one. Be this trinity, be this TRIMURTI. These are the three faces of God.

Mulla Nasruddin’s mother-in-law died far away in Brazil. Telegraphically he was asked how the remains should be disposed of He replied, ”Embalm, cremate, bury. Take no chances.”

Osho
The Secret of Secrets,
Vol 2-CH#10-Because of love, we are together
am in Buddha Hall

You are a Paradise

YOU ARE FOCUSED ON THE OUTSIDE; that's why you go on missing what is happening inside. You think it is happening because of the master, so you are focused on the master. Then you become attached to the master -- that becomes your slavery.

When something like this happens, CLOSE YOUR EYES AND SEE WHAT IS HAPPENING WITHIN YOU, and soon you will find small clues... how it happens, in what situations. You were silent, you were relaxed, you were not thinking. Your mind was empty, and it came like a flood.

Then try it alone.

It is not happening with any other man, because WITH ANY OTHER MAN YOU ARE NOT SILENT. With any other man, you are constantly quarreling, fighting, nagging.

IT IS VERY DIFFICULT TO FIND A WOMAN WHO IS NOT BITCHY, and being bitchy do you think you will have ecstasy? You are bitchy, but the man will be the target. You think that he is the cause -- why did he come late? where has he been?

One day Mulla Nasruddin's wife was crying. As I entered their house, she started crying even more loudly. I said, "What is the matter?"

She said, "Now things have gone beyond control. This man" -- and she pointed towards Mulla Nasruddin, her husband -- "has been having affairs with women. There is no doubt about it, because many times I have found hairs on his coat which are not his hairs -- he is bald. The color is different."

I said, "Have you found any today?"

She said, "Not today -- that's why I am crying, because today I looked minutely and found that there was no hair. It means he has started having affairs with bald women. This is too much, I cannot tolerate this. With women who have hair it is okay, but with women who are bald...."

IT IS YOU WHO ARE FINDING THINGS which can make you joyous, which can make you miserable.

IT WAS NOT HAPPENING WITH THE MAN for a simple reason: first, you were always quarreling, always demanding. And these experiences are not such that they can be produced on demand -- "Bring one ecstasy just now." Nobody can do that -- except Delgado. But for that you will have to go through a small operation. In your skull he will make a small hole and put in an electrode. And he can give you a remote control -- just a small size, you can keep it in your pocket. AND THERE WILL BE NO NEED TO ASK ANYBODY; you can give yourself as many orgasms as you want.

But the danger is the same: what happened to the poor white mouse is going to happen to you, because THE EXPERIENCE IS SO BEAUTIFUL that you will not want to lose a single moment for anything else. Perhaps... the mouse is a small thing, died in one hour; you may take twenty-four hours. But more than that, you should not hope to survive.

Man can survive in misery for seventy-five years. But in ecstasy... seventy-five years in ecstasy? Impossible! Your organism is not made of steel; it will have a breakdown.

I can provide you an atmosphere in which it is easier to move into such spaces. IF YOU ARE INTELLIGENT, you will start looking inside yourself for why these spaces are happening. And you will start on your own, alone, so that you can have those experiences without me.

IF YOU ARE UNINTELLIGENT, then you will start clinging to me -- and that's how so many people in the world are being exploited. If you go to someone and say, "It is because of you, master... you are the lord of my heart..." you are giving that man a chance to exploit you and others.

Out of all the so-called spiritual teachers, masters, prophets, saviors, ninety-nine percent are simply frauds. But you are responsible, you have made them frauds.

I don't want anybody to cling to me, to be attached to me in any way.

MY WHOLE EFFORT IS TO GIVE YOU TOTAL FREEDOM, and methods so that whatever you want, you can create it within yourself. Not even God is needed, nothing is needed -- you are enough unto yourself.

This is the great blessing of existence to every human being. YOU ARE MADE WITH SUCH PERFECTION -- but you never explore it, it remains dormant.

JUST BECOME AN EXPLORER OF YOUR OWN INTERIORITY, of your own subjectivity, and you will find thousands of ecstasies, immense blessings, unimagined, undreamt of.

YOU ARE A PARADISE, but have you forgotten yourself. You are looking everywhere except within you, and that is the only place where you are going to find the treasure, the truth, the beauty.

OSHO
Beyond Enlightenment
Ch #21: The watermelon and the knife
pm

In Your Hands

TECHNIQUES ARE SHORTCUTS, REVOLUTIONS, BUT ARE NOT THESE AGAINST TAO, SWABHAV, THE NATURE?

They are. They are against tao, they are against swabhav. Any effort is against swhabhav, Tao; effort as such is against tao. If you can leave everything to swabhav, Tao, nature, then no technique is needed, because that is the ultimate technique. If you can leave everything to Tao, that is the deepest surrender possible. You are surrendering yourself, your future, your possibilities. You are surrendering time itself, all effort. This means infinite patience, awaiting.
If you can surrender everything to nature then there is no effort, then you don’t do anything. You just float. You are in a deep let-go. Things happen to you, but you are not making any effort for them – you are not even seeking them. If they happen, it is okay; if they don’t happen, it is okay – you have no choice. Whatsoever happens, happens; you have no expectations and of course, no frustrations.
Life flows by, you flow in it. You have no goal to reach, because with the goal effort enters. You have nowhere to go, because if you have somewhere to go, effort will come in; it is implied. You have nowhere to go, nowhere to reach, no goal, no ideal; nothing is to be achieved – you surrender all.
In this surrendering moment, in this very moment, all will happen to you. Effort will take time; surrender will not take time. Technique will take time; surrender will not take time. That’s why I call it the ultimate technique. It is a no-technique. You cannot practise it – you cannot practise surrender.
If you practise, it is not surrender. Then you are relying on yourself; then you are not totally helpless; then you are trying to do something – even if it is surrender, you are trying to do it. Then technique will come in, and with technique time enters, future enters.
Surrender is non-temporal; it is beyond time. If you surrender, this very moment you are out of time, and all that can happen, will happen. But then you are not searching for it, not seeking it; you are not greedy for it. You have no mind for it at all: whether it happens or not, it is all the same to you.
Tao means surrender – surrender to swabhav, to nature. Then you are not. Tantra and Yoga are techniques. Through them you will reach to swabhav, but it will be a long process. Ultimately after every technique you will have to surrender, but with techniques it will come in the end; with Tao, in Tao, it comes in the beginning. If you can surrender right now, no technique is needed, but if you cannot, and if you ask me how to surrender, then a technique is needed. So, rarely in millions and millions of men, one can surrender without asking how. If you ask ‘how’, you are not the right type who can surrender, because the ‘how’ means you are asking for a technique.
These techniques are for all those who cannot get rid of this ‘how’. These techniques are just to get rid of your basic anxiety about ‘how’ – how to do it. If you can surrender without asking, then no technique is needed for you. But then you would not have come to me, you could have surrendered any time, because surrender needs no teacher. A teacher can teach only technique.
When you seek, you are seeking technique; every seeking is a seeking for technique. When you go to someone and ask, you are asking for a technique, for a method. Otherwise there is no need to go anywhere. The very search shows that you have a deep need for technique. These techniques are for you. Not that without technique it cannot happen. It can happen, but it has happened to very few persons. And those few persons are also really not rare: in their past lives they have been struggling with techniques, and they have struggled so much with techniques that now they are fed up, they are bored. A saturation point comes when you have asked again and again ‘How? How? How? – and ultimately the ‘how’ falls. Then you can surrender.
In every way technique is needed. A Krishnamurti, he can say that no technique is needed – but this is not his first life. And he couldn’t have said this in his past life. Even in this very life many techniques were given to him, and he worked on them. You can come to a point through techniques where you can surrender – you can throw all techniques and simply be – but that too is through techniques.
It is against Tao, because you are against Tao. You have to be deconditioned. If you are in Tao then no technique is needed. If you are healthy then no medicine is needed. Every medicine is against health. But you are ill; medicine is needed. This medicine will kill your illness. It cannot give you health, but if the illness is removed, health will happen to you. No medicine can give you health.
Basically every medicine is a poison – but you have gathered some poison; you need an antidote. It will balance, and health will be possible.
Technique is not going to give you your divinity, it is not going to give you your nature. All that you have gathered around your nature it will destroy. It will only decondition you. You are conditioned, and right now you cannot take a jump into surrender. If you can take it, it is good – but you cannot take it. Your conditioning will ask, ‘How?’ Then techniques will be helpful.
When one lives in tao, then no yoga, no tantra, no religion is needed. One is perfectly healthy; no medicine is needed. Every religion is medicinal. When the world lives in total tao, religions will disappear. No teacher, no Buddha, no Jesus will be needed, because everyone will be a Buddha or a Jesus. But right now, as you are, you need techniques. Those techniques are antidotes.
You have gathered around yourself such a complex mind that whatsoever is said and given to you, you will complicate it. You will make it more complex, you will make it more difficult. If I say to you, ‘Surrender,’ you will ask, ‘How?’ If I say, ‘Use techniques,’ you will ask, ‘Techniques? Are not techniques against tao?’ If I say, ‘No technique is needed; simply surrender and God will happen to you,’ you will immediately ask, ‘How?’ – your mind.
If I say, ‘Tao is right here and now: you need not practise anything, you simply take a jump and surrender,’ you will say, ‘How? How can I surrender?’ If I give you a technique to answer your ‘how’, your mind will say, ‘But is not a method, a technique, a way, against swabhav, against Tao? If divinity is my nature, then how can it be achieved through a technique? If it is already there, then the technique is futile, useless. Why waste time with the technique?’ Look at this mind!
I remember, once it happened that one man, a father of a young girl, asked composer Leopold Godowsky to come to his house and give an audition to his daughter. She was learning piano.
Godowsky came to their house; patiently he heard the girl playing. When the girl finished, the father beamed, and he cried in happiness and asked Godowsky, ‘Isn’t she wonderful?’
Godowsky is reported to have said, ‘She is wonderful. She has an amazing technique. I have never heard anyone play such simple pieces with such great difficulty. She has an amazing technique.
Playing such simple pieces with such great difficulty, I have never seen anyone do before!’
This is what goes on happening in your mind. Even a simple thing you will make complicated, you will make difficult for yourself. And this is a way of defence, this is a defence measure, because when you create difficulty you need not do it – because first the problem must be solved and then you can do it.
If I say surrender, you ask how. Unless I answer your ‘how’, how can you surrender? If I give you a technique, your mind immediately creates a new problem. ‘Why the technique? Swabhav is there, Tao is there, God is within you, so why this endeavor, this effort?’ Unless this is answered, there is no need to do anything.
Remember, you can go on in this vicious circle continuously for ever and ever. You will have to break it somewhere and come out of it. Be decisive, because only with decision is your humanity born.
Only with decision do you become human. Be decisive. If you can surrender, surrender. If you cannot surrender, then don’t create philosophical problems; then use some technique.
In both the ways the surrender will happen to you. If you can surrender right now, it is okay. If you cannot surrender, then pass through techniques – that training is needed. It is needed because of you, not because of swabhav, not because of Tao. Tao needs no training. It is needed because of you. And the techniques will destroy you. You will die through the techniques, and the innermost nature will evolve. You have to be shattered completely. If you can shatter it in a jump – surrender.
If you cannot, then piecemeal – through techniques work on it.
But remember one thing: your mind can create problems which are tricks – tricks to postpone, to postpone decision. If the mind is not settled, you don’t feel guilty. You feel, ‘What can I do? Unless something is absolute, clearcut, transparent, what can I do?’ Your mind can create clouds around you, and your mind will not allow you to be transparent ever – unless you decide. With decision clouds disappear. Mind is very diplomatic, mind is political, and it goes on playing politics on you. It is very tricky, cunning.
I have heard, once Mulla Nasrudin came to visit his son and daughter-in-law. He had come for three days, but then he stayed for one week. Then the one week passed, and he stayed for one month.
Then the young couple started worrying – how to get rid of the old man? So they discussed how to get rid of him, and they hit upon a plan.
The husband said, ‘Tonight you prepare soup, and I will say that there is too much salt in it, it cannot be eaten, it is impossible to eat. And you have to say that there is not enough salt in it. We will argue and we will start quarrelling, and then I will ask my father what his opinion is, what he says. If he agrees with me, then you get mad and tell him to go away. If he agrees with you, I will get sore and I will tell him to go away immediately.’
The soup was prepared, and as it was planned, they started quarrelling and arguing. And then the climax came. They were just on the verge of hitting each other and Nasrudin was sitting silently watching. And then the son turned towards him and said, ‘Pa what do you say? Is there too much salt or not?’
So Nasrudin dipped his spoon in the soup, tasted it, meditated a moment upon the taste, and then said, ‘It suits me perfectly.’ He didn’t take any side. The whole plan was futile.
Your mind goes on working in this way. It will never take any side, because the moment you take a side, action has to be there. It will not take any side; it will go on arguing. It will never decide anything; it will be always in the middle. Whatsoever is said will be argued, but it will never become a decision. And you can argue ad infinitum; there is no end to it. Only decision will give you action, and only action will become transformation.
If you are really interested in a deep revolution within you, then decide – and don’t go on postponing.
Don’t be too philosophical; that is dangerous. For a seeker it is dangerous. For one who is not seeking really but just passing time, it is good, it is a good game. Philosophy is a good game if you can afford it. But I don’t see that anyone can afford it because it is wasting time.
So be decisive. If you can surrender, then surrender. Then there is no ‘how’ to it. If you cannot, then practise some technique, because only then through technique will you come to a point where surrender will happen.

Osho
Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 2
CH#18 - In your hands
pm in Bombay, India

Positive-Negative

IF YOU ARE POSITIVE, THEN NOTHING IS NEGATIVE FOR YOU. If you are negative, then everything will be negative for you.

YOU ARE THE SOURCE OF ALL THAT EXISTS AROUND YOU, you are the creator of your own world. And we are not living in one world, remember. There are as many worlds as there are minds. Each mind is living in its own world, it creates the world.

So if everything looks negative and everything looks destructive and everything looks inimical, against you, it is because you do not have the positive center in you... IF YOU FEEL NEGATIVITY ALL AROUND YOU, IT SIMPLY SHOWS YOU ARE NEGATIVE WITHIN. The world is just a mirror, and you are reflected in it.

I WAS STAYING IN A REST HOUSE, in a village rest house. It was a very poor village, but the village was filled with many dogs. They all gathered in the night around the rest house. It may have been their usual habit. The rest house was a good place -- big trees, shadow, and they might have been resting there every night. So I was staying there, and one minister of a particular state was staying there. The minister became very much disturbed because the dogs were barking, creating much nuisance. Half the night passed and the minister couldn't sleep, so he came to me.

He said, "Are you asleep?" I was fast asleep, so he came near me, made me wake up and asked me, "PLEASE TELL ME HOW YOU COULD FALL INTO SLEEP AMID SUCH NOISES ALL AROUND. At least twenty to thirty dogs are there, and they are fighting and barking and doing everything that dogs ordinarily do. So what to do? I cannot sleep, it will be difficult for me. The next day I have to go again on a tour. I will leave early in the morning. Sleep doesn't seem to come, and I have tried all the methods I have learned and heard about -- chanting mantra, praying to God, etc. I have done everything, but nothing happens, so what to do now?" So I told him, "THOSE DOGS ARE NOT GATHERED HERE FOR YOU OR TO DISTURB YOU. They are not even aware that a minister is staying here; they do not read newspapers. They are completely ignorant; they are not here purposefully. They are not concerned with you. They are doing their work. Why you are getting disturbed?" So he said, "Why I should not? How not to? With so much barking, how can I go into sleep?"

So I told him. "Do not fight with the barking. You are fighting: that is the problem -- not the noise. The noise is not disturbing you, YOU ARE DISTURBING YOURSELF BECAUSE OF THE NOISE. You are against the noise, so you have a condition. You are saying, 'If the dogs stop barking, then I will sleep.' The dogs won't listen to you. You have a condition. You feel that if the condition is fulfilled, then you can sleep. This condition is disturbing you. Accept the dogs! Do not make a condition that 'If they stop barking then I will sleep.' Just accept. "Dogs are there and they are barking: DO NOT RESIST, DO NOT FIGHT, do not try to forget those noises. Accept them and listen to them: they are beautiful. The night is so silent, and they are barking so vitally. Just listen. This will be the mantra -- the right mantra: just listen to them."

So he said, "Okay! I do not believe that this will help, but as there is nothing else to do, I will try." HE FELL ASLEEP, AND DOGS WERE STILL BARKING. In the morning he said, "This is miraculous. I accepted them, I withdrew my condition. I listened. Those dogs became very musical, and their barking, their noise, was not disturbing. Rather, it became a sort of lullaby, and I fell into deep sleep because of it."

IT DEPENDS ON YOUR MIND. If you are positive, then everything becomes positive. If you are negative, then everything turns negative, everything turns sour. So please remember this -- not only about noises, but about everything in life: If you feel that something negative exists around you, go and find the cause within. It is you. You must be expecting something, you must be desiring something, you must be making some conditions.

EXISTENCE CANNOT BE FORCED TO GO ACCORDING TO YOU, it flows in its own way. If you can flow with it, you will be positive. If you fight with it, you will become negative and the whole thing, the whole cosmos around you, will turn negative.

IT IS JUST LIKE A PERSON WHO IS TRYING TO FLOAT UPSTREAM, then the stream is negative. If you are trying to float upstream in a river, then the river will seem negative and you will feel that the river is fighting you -- that the river is pushing you downwards. The river is trying to move you downstream, not upstream, so it will seem as if the river is fighting you. The river is completely unaware of you, blissfully unaware. And it is good; otherwise the river will go to a madhouse. The river is not fighting with you, you are fighting with the river. You are trying to float upstream.

I WILL TELL YOU ONE ANECDOTE. A great crowd gathered around Mulla Nasrudin's house, and they said, "What are you doing? You wife has fallen into the stream and the river is in a flood. Go immediately. Otherwise the stream will take your wife to the sea." The sea was just near, so Mulla came running to the bank, jumped into the stream and started swimming upstream to find where his wife was.

So the crowd screamed, "What are you doing, Nasrudin? Your wife couldn't have gone upstream. She has gone downstream." So Mulla said, "Do not disturb me, I know my wife very well. If anyone else had fallen into the stream, he would have gone downstream. Not my wife, however. She must have gone upstream. I know my wife well, I have lived with her forty years."

The mind is always trying to go upsteam, to move upstream. FIGHTING WITH EVERYTHING, YOU CREATE A NEGATIVE WORLD AROUND YOU. Obviously, this has to happen. The world is not against you. Because you are not with the world, you feel it is against you. Float downstream, and then the river will help you to float. Then your energy will not be needed. The river will become a boat, it will take you. You will not lose any energy floating downstream because once you float downstream you have accepted the river, the current, the flow, the direction, everything. Then you have become positive to it. When you are positive, the river is positive to you.

OSHO
Vigyan Bhairav TantraVol 1,
Ch #26: Tantra: an acceptance of the peaks and the valleys
pm in Woodlands, Bombay

Live II

The second question:
Question 2
THE HUMAN CIVILIZATION IS COLLAPSING ALL AROUND THE WORLD. WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY ABOUT IT?
Rejoice in its collapse!

The third question:
Question 3
WHY IS IT THAT ’GOING WITH THE FLOW’ MAKES ME FEEL GUILTY? PLEASE TALK ABOUT GUILT .
IT IS THE GUILT FACTOR THAT MAKES FLOATING SO UNATTRACTIVE.

PADMA, GUILT IS ONE OF THE GREATEST PROBLEMS everybody has to encounter. The whole past of humanity has been guilt-ridden. And each generation goes on giving its diseases to the new generation. And they go on becoming more and more. Naturally. They accumulate with each generation. And each new generation is more burdened than the previous one.

But guilt has been one of the basic strategies of the priests to exploit people. The priest cannot exist without guilt. When you feel guilty, remember, the priest is around you. When you feel guilty, remember, the priest’s hands are around your neck – he is killing you. Guilt is a strategy to exploit people, to turn people into slaves. Try to understand the mechanism of it. Only that understanding will help you to get out of it. What exactly is guilt?

First: it is a condemnation of life; it is a life-negative attitude. You have been told something is basically wrong with life; you have been told that you are born a sinner. You have been told that nothing good can come out of life or out of you or out of anybody else. Nothing good is possible on this earth! Good is with God. And you have to find a saviour – a Christ, a Krishna – you have to find a saviour who can save you from yourselves, who can take you to God.

Life is not worth living – -avoid living! If you live, you will get deeper and deeper into sin – life is sin. Avoid life. Withdraw yourself from life. And whenever you feel you are attracted towards life, guilt arises. You start feeling you are going to do something wrong.

And life is immensely beautiful. It has great attraction, gravitation to it. It is natural to be attracted by life. It is natural to be in love. It is natural to enjoy, it is natural to laugh, it is natural to dance. But ALL that is natural has been condemned. You have to go against nature – that has been the teaching down the ages.

The puritans have poisoned your natural sources of life; they have made you against yourself! They have created a split in you. They could not corrupt the body, but they have corrupted the mind. So the mind exists according to the priests, and the body exists according to nature – and there is no meeting. The body desires the joys of life – all joys. The body is life-affirmative and the mind is life-negative. The mind represents the priests – Christian, Hindu, Jain. The mind goes on talking in the language of the priests; it goes on saying ”This is wrong!” If you are eating food and you enjoy the taste, Mahatma Gandhi speaks from your mind: ”This is wrong – don’t enjoy the taste. To enjoy taste is sin.”

In Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram one of the basic disciplines was ASWAD – no taste. You have to eat just to fulfill bodily needs, but you should not take any taste, you should not enjoy the flavour of the food, the smell of the food. You should destroy the food so it doesn’t taste, and you should destroy your tongue too so it loses sensitivity to taste. When you lose taste, you have become a mahatma.

The same has been true about other things: if you fall in love with a woman, you are falling in sin, something wrong is happening. If you see the beautiful face of a woman or a man, and you are thrilled, fascinated, great guilt arises what are you doing? This is irreligious!
And if you are a married man, then more so. You have a wife, you have committed yourself to her.

Now, even to appreciate the beauty of another woman is impossible. You will go home feeling guilty.

You have not done anything! You had just seen a beautiful woman pass by. Now, this is an ugly state of affairs. You will feel guilty; you will feel defensive. When you go back home you will try to hide yourself. You will not allow your wife to know that on the road you saw a beautiful woman and it was a great joy to see her – because if you say that, there will be trouble. And why create trouble?

You will lie. And when you lie you will feel guilty again because you are lying, and one should not lie to one’s own wife. Now, so on and so forth.... One guilt creates another, and so on and so forth, ad nauseam. It goes on and on. There is no end to it. Then you become guilt-ridden; you carry a Himalaya of guilt on your heart.

And EACH thing has been condemned.
You will not get rid of the guilt unless you understand the whole mechanism of it – how it is through guilt that the priest has dominated humanity, how the priest has created a slavery, and a subtle slavery. You don’t have chains on your hands, you don’t have chains on your feet, but you have chains deep inside your soul.

To be free of guilt is to be free of all priesthood. To be free of guilt is to be free of all past. And to be free of guilt is to become one, because then the split disappears. To be free of guilt is to drop schizophrenia. And then there is great joy, because you are no longer fighting with yourself. You start living!

How can you live if you are continuously fighting? You cannot live if you go on fighting with yourself.You can live only when the fight has been dropped. Then life has its own rhythm, its own melody.

And life is such a blessing. And only in that harmony, when you are one, with NO guilt, with NO repression, with no taboos, with NO inhibitions, with NO priest interfering in your life – Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian – when you are on your own, uninterfered with, your own master, then only can you contact God.

The priest has made it impossible! If you cannot contact life, how can you contact life abundant?
If you cannot contact flowers, how can you contact the one who has created them? If you Cannot contact beauty, joy, love, how can you contact the one from where all beauty, love and joy comes, flows? Impossible. The priest has made it impossible.

The priest is the cause why the earth has become irreligious. Without destroying priesthoods and the old churches and old religions, the world will remain irreligious.
I teach you a new religion! Not Christianity, not Hinduism, not Jainism, not Buddhism. I teach you a new kind of religiousness – guilt-free, tabooless, non-repressive. I teach you a religion of joy, acceptance, naturalness, spontaneity.

Padma, you ask: WHY IS IT THAT ’GOING WITH THE FLOW’ MAKES ME FEEL GUILTY?
BECAUSE GOING WITH THE FLOW MAKES YOU FEEL HAPPY – that’s why. And you cannot allow happiness. Happiness has become associated’ with guilt. Go back, Padma, to your childhood – you will find causes there. Just remember, go backwards; try to find out when it happened.

A small child knows nothing of guilt; he is wild and primitive. That’s why to see a small child is such a joy. He is as yet uncrippled, he is as yet uncivilized. He has not been introduced to the disease called civilization – that’s why he has so much energy, so much flow. The child is streaming, vibrating; he is a great dynamo; he is all dance. He cannot contain himself – he has so much that he is overflowing.

You cannot make a child sit silently. Why? Because the energy is so much, uncontainable.
The child wants to enjoy everything, and the parents are guilt-ridden. The child wants to shout and he enjoys shouting; that is his expression, that is his creativity. That shout, if helped and not destroyed, will become his song – that is the beginning of the song. But we stop him. We say, ”Don’t shout! This is ugly, this is bad, this is unmannerly. This is not done in the society. You belong to a famous family, you belong to a great, respectable family – you should not do this. This is okay for the urchins, but not for you. You represent us: look how serious we are. We never shout – and you are shouting?”

And the child was enjoying the shouting so much. In fact, when you stop him shouting you have condemned his joy – that’s what he will understand deep down, existentially. What will happen to him? He cannot understand why shouting is wrong; he has as yet no mind to understand that kind of rubbishness. He was enjoying – that he understands; that shouting brings such joy, such flow.

He feels so high, he feels so turned on. Just by shouting, his energy starts moving, he becomes a riverlike flow, he becomes a roaring phenomenon, a tidal wave.
Now you say, ”Don’t shout – this is bad.” What are you saying actually? How will the child translate it? The child will think, ”My joy is not accepted.”

The child does not want to go to sleep; he is feeling so alive and you force him and you drag him to the bed. He is trying to get away from you and he is saying, ”I am NOT feeling like sleep. I DON’T want to go to sleep. I want to play a little more!” But you don’t listen. You say, ”It is time and you have to go to sleep.”

Now what are you doing to the child? You are rejecting – you are rejecting his instinctive understandings. He does not feel like going to sleep right now – how can he be made to sleep?
There is no way! You can force him; he will lie there underneath the blanket and will weep and cry and will feel rejected, will feel unaccepted by the family, will feel guilty about why he cannot go to sleep when the mother wants him to. Now, what can he do? The sleep is not coming. And in the morning when he is feeling sleepy, you drag him out and you say, ”Get out! It is time to get up.” And he wants to sleep a little more.

Now you interfere – wherever he feels joy, you interfere. Naturally, you make him feel again and again that his joy is wrong.
That gets deep into your bloodstream. That’s what has happened to you, Padma. So whenever you are going with the flow it means something is wrong. You are feeling happy? you immediately hear your mother’s voice: ”Padma, what are you doing? Feeling happy? Betraying me? Betraying your dad, betraying your family? Look how serious we are – and is it good to betray your mother? Look at what long faces we have – and what are you doing? flowing with the flow? going with the flow?

Never has it happened in our family! And it should not happen. ”
You start feeling guilty. Just watch when you start feeling guilty, listen silently... you will find your parental voices, your mother, your father, your teacher, saying, ” This is not right.”
While you make love to a man, you will feel guilty, because your mother has told you that this is wrong, this is the greatest sin. When you start making love to a man, something in you feels it is not right – -the mother is standing there, the father is standing there, and it looks so embarrassing with the parents standing... and you are making love to a man?! What are you doing? Stop it! You may not stop, but you will not go totally into it – which is far worse than stopping. It is better to stop! You cannot stop either, because then your whole nature feels discontented. And you can not go totally in it because your mind says this is wrong. So you go half-heartedly, half way, and you exist in a limbo.

You never go to the totality of it – SO YOU NEVER FEEL SATISFIED. Out of it you only gather more frustration; you again find you have failed once more, that’s all. It has not happened this time again.

And you start wondering whether this orgasm is just an invention, whether some masochistic people have invented it, or some sadistic people have invented it, just to make people feel tortured – because it is not happening to me!

You will be surprised: this is the first century after at least five thousand years that a few women are feeling orgasm. For five thousand years, women have NOT felt orgasm. That too is happening only in the Western hemisphere. I have not come across a single Indian woman who feels orgasm – she has not even heard about the word. In Indian languages we don’t have any word for orgasm – because the thing has not existed so the word was never needed. Even in the West, only ten, twelve percent of women are feeling orgasm. This is ugly!

And what to say about men? Do you think men feel orgasm? Ejaculation is not orgasm. Orgasm is a very very different phenomenon. So man can deceive himself easily because he can feel ejaculation, so he thinks he has orgasm – that is not so. Ejaculation is a very local phenomenon, just the triggering of a physical mechanism – a release, a relief, nothing more.

Orgasm is ecstasy. Orgasm is getting lost into timelessness. Orgasm is when your whole body vibrates with some unknown energy that you have never come across. Orgasm is when you are very close to God.

The word orgasm comes from ORGIA – it was a religious ceremony, a pagan ceremony, when people became ecstatic, so ecstatic, that their whole body was full of divine energy, and they were bursting with energy, and they were lost in that energy – that was called ORGIA. It was a religious pagan ceremony; it was something like Tantra. It was Dionysian. The word ’orgasm’ comes from that ceremony.

Men also rarely feel it. When your whole body throbs, not only your sexual organ but your whole body throbs, from toe to head you become a sexual orgasm, you become a sexual organ.... That is the symbol of Shiva; you must have seen in India the Shiva-linga. You may sometimes be wondering, ”Where are the eyes and where is the nose and where is the mouth and where are the legs? and what kind of image is this?”

This is the symbol of orgasm: when the whole body turns into a sexual organ. From eyes, mouth, body, mind – all disappear into sexuality, into sensuality, into a kind of immense sensitivity. That is the meaning of Shiva-linga.

Orgasm has become impossible because you cannot go totally with the flow. And with orgasm becoming impossible, a thousand and one diseases have become prevalent in man. Wilhelm Reich is right that if we can bring orgasm back to humanity, almost ninety percent of mental diseases will IMMEDIATELY disappear – like dewdrops in the morning when the sun comes.
Ninety percent of mental diseases exist because man has forgotten how to be rejuvenated with God, how to fall into divine energy, and come back again resurrected. Those blocked energies are creating problems. But now... first the priest created the guilt, now the psychoanalyst is against Wilhelm Reich – because, the psychoanalyst, where will he go if ninety percent of mental diseases disappear? If Reich is right, then what about the Freudians and the Adlerians and the Jungians and others – what will happen to them? Reich was condemned as mad, was forced into imprisonment – and he was one of the greatest geniuses of this age, who had a real insight. But this is what we always do: we crucify! He died condemned as a madman in a prison.
Man has not changed much Two thousand years have passed, but we go on doing the same as we did with Jesus. Now, this man was releasing a very very significant truth – that man’s mental illnesses will continue and will go on becoming bigger and bigger, and soon it will be impossible to treat man. Out of four, three persons are already abnormal, and the fourth is just on the way, any moment.... This is not a good situation!

Reich is right that something has to be done. First the priest was involved, now the modern priest is the psychoanalyst. First the priest had the investment in making people feel guilty; he created guilt.

Because of guilt, he stopped people’s being orgasmic. And now the psychoanalyst is enjoying the results – his profession is flourishing like anything. His is the most needed profession, and the most respected.

Physicians are no more needed as much as the psychoanalyst is needed, because the body is getting better and better every day and mind is getting worse and worse every day.
Guilt has created human pathology. In the future, the priest is not needed, neither is the psychoanalyst needed. Both those professions are anti-human; they should go. But they can go only if man is freed of guilt, otherwise they cannot go.

So, Padma, even if you feel guilty, go with the flow. Ignore the guilt. Let the guilt be there; in spite of it, go with the flow! The more you go with the flow, the more you will become able to catch yourself and avoid getting caught into the trap of guilt you will be able to catch yourself in time. You will be able to slip out of that guilt prison.
One has to get out of it, otherwise life will be a long, sad, meaningless anguish.

The fourth question:
Question 4
OSHO, IF ONE WERE TO MAKE ONLY ONE NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION, WHAT WOULD YOU SUGGEST?

ANURAG, THIS AND ONLY THIS CAN BE THE NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION: I resolve never to make any resolutions because all resolutions are restrictions for the future. All resolutions are imprisonments. You decide today for tomorrow? You have destroyed tomorrow.

Allow the tomorrow to have its own being. Let it COME in its own way! Let it bring its own gifts.
Resolution means you will allow only this and you will not allow that. Resolution means you would like the sun to rise in the west and not in the east. If it rises in the east, you will not open your windows; you will keep your windows open to the west.

What is resolution? Resolution is struggle. Resolution is ego. Resolution is saying, ”I cannot live spontaneously.” And if you cannot live spontaneously, you don’t live at all – you only pretend.
So let only one resolution be there: I will never make any resolutions. Drop all resolutions! Let life be a natural spontaneity. The only golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

Osho
Walk Without Feet, Fly Without Wings and Think Without Mind -
Ch#5 : Playfulness is Heaven
am in Buddha Hall
[part 2 of 2]

Live

The first question:
Question 1
I LIVE IN THE LAND OF SERIOUSNESS, IMPRISONED IN ITS BORDERS. CAN YOU DRAW ME A ROAD-MAP TO YOUR LAND OF LEELA? HAVE I A DEFECTIVE GENE? I CANNOT FIND MY LAUGHTER OR LIGHT-HEARTEDNESS. I SEE IT AROUND ME, BUT DO NOT FEEL IT IN ME.

SARJANA, THERE CANNOT BE ANY MAP TO THE LAND OF PLAYFULNESS. All maps lead to seriousness. Playfulness is when all maps have been burnt down. There is no way to playfulness, because playfulness is not a goal and cannot be a goal. When you forget about goals, when you are not going anywhere, when the very idea of going is dropped, then herenow playfulness starts growing in you, happening in you.

Playfulness is not then and there: it is herenow. So how can there be a road-map? You are not to go: you are just to be.

Seriousness is goal-oriented. And even when a serious person starts playing, he transforms the quality of the play – it becomes a game; it is no more play. That is the difference between a game and a play. When a play becomes serious, it becomes a game.

People go to see wrestling, people go to see bull-fights or American football – ugly, violent, inhuman. The people who are going to see these things are immature, a little perverted too. The spectators are as ungrown as the gladiators. And both are in some way catharting; in the name of the game, they are throwing their rubbish, they are simply vomiting their violence.

This is a very violent, violent world! That’s why love cannot exist here. When human beings will really be human beings, things like bullfighting and wrestling will be unheard of, they will become part of history. Just to imagine that thousands of people have come to see a bullfight looks so ugly, disgusting. But people are serious. They change the play also into seriousness.

A play is something in which a goal is not at all concerned. The very being together is beautiful! for the sheer joy of it! In a better world, with more understanding, games will disappear – there will only be plays. There will be nobody as a winner, nobody as the defeated – because the very idea of defeating and winning is inhuman. There is no NEED for it! Why can’t we enjoy the sheer togetherness? There should be no counting, no marking. There should not be any result out of it.
If you are in love with playing football, play football! Just play it! Don’t look for the result. If the result comes in, you become serious, the play is destroyed; it has become almost businesslike. Enjoy the sheer outpour of energy. Enjoy the moment – don’t sacrifice it for anything else.

That’s what LEELA is, playfulness is. But you are in love and it becomes serious, and you start thinking of marriage and you start thinking of having children and you start thinking of having a family – and the whole thing has gone ugly! If these things happen, let them happen as by-products, not as results. Yes, if you love a woman, you would like to be with her – this is marriage! There should be no other marriage. There should not even be the idea, because the VERY idea makes things down-to-earth; the poetry is destroyed. It becomes mundane; the romance is destroyed.

But the moment you are in love, immediately your mind starts weaving and spinning... about family, how to have a family of one’s own. Why should you need ’a family of one’s own’? People possess things and people possess people too. If you possess things, it can be forgiven, but how can it be forgiven when you start possessing people? You say ’my wife’, ’my husband’, ’my child’ – what have you DONE to call this child yours? Who are you? How do you come in? Can you create a child?
Can you create the child according to your own desire?
A child comes from the unknown, is a gift. You are not the creator, how can you be the possessor?

It IS NOT according to you that the child takes shape and form and being. You were longing for a beautiful child and you are hit with a lulu and still you call it ’my child’. You have been just a passage in the great play of existence.

Just as there are liberation movements, women’s lib movement, so a new movement should be mounted: children’s liberation movement. Nobody should be allowed to possess children.
Possessiveness should not be allowed! Nobody should say ’my child’. All children are of God. You can only be a caretaker, not more than that. And you should be grateful that you have been chosen to be a caretaker of a new life evolving. That is more than enough! Enjoy the game of it! of being a caretaker of an evolving life, but don’t start possessing.

But our mind is possessive. The possessiveness has gone to the very roots, and that has been the greatest hindrance in human growth.

When love is possessive it becomes exclusive. Then ’this woman is mine, and exclusively mine!’ – then she cannot laugh with anybody else, then she cannot hold hands with anybody else, then she cannot look into the eyes of somebody else. What nonsense! Why? Who am I to possess? And how can love be possessive?

Love is always inclusive; it can never be exclusive. If I love the woman, I will love to see her happy in a thousand and one ways, with a thousand and one people. I would like her to be happy. That will be my joy. If she is happy dancing with somebody, I should not feel jealous – I love her! how can I feel jealous? I should be thrilled that she is happy. But when you claim that she is your wife, then you cannot allow this. You start crippling her. She starts paralyzing you in revenge. You both become destructive to each other.

Love is the greatest creative energy, but up to now it has been a misfortune, the greatest misfortune. People have not been killed because of hatred: people have been killed because of love. Life has become so bitter, not because of anger: it has become so bitter because of love.
You fight for the love of a woman or a man; you fight for the love of your family or clan. You fight for the love of your ideology or religion; you fight for the love of your mother-country or father-country, father-land, motherland. You go on fighting for your love! All murders, all killings – all kinds of sufferings exist because of your so-called love.

Something is basically wrong with your love – your love is a fixated love; it is not a flowing play. It is serious, it is exclusive, it is possessive. It is full of stupidity.
One should be able to see all this – and just SEEING it, you start relaxing. You see the point of it and you start relaxing, and a new awareness arises in you.

Just.... I am surprised when I come across a man whose wife has died – and he is still crying and in anguish: his beloved has died. Why be so monopolistic? There are so many beautiful women still alive! This makes no sense. Your husband has died and for your whole life you will remain in a nightmare – because you cannot love anybody else? Your love is so tiny? so fixated? it was a kind of obsession? It was neurotic, it was not healthy. Otherwise, when the husband is dead, yes, there will be sadness, but you will say goodbye and you will move. You will not sacrifice your life – because sacrificing your life is dangerous. If you sacrifice your life and you become a martyr, you will take revenge on life; you will create guilt in your children, you will create guilt all around. And you WILL suffer! And when a person suffers, he creates vibes of suffering all around.

No, this makes no sense! The world is full of so many people, why should you be so fixated? But the fixation comes from the very beginning: the moment a child says ’my mother’, and the mother feels very happy, the fixation has started. Now the child will remain obsessed his whole life.

And when the child is small, he is naturally dependent on the mother – and mothers and fathers have exploited that dependence immensely. He is helpless, he cannot survive on his or her own; he HAS to look up to the mother and the father. His helplessness is exploited. He knows if the mother is gone, he will be dead. If the mother is no more available, he will be dead, he will not be able to survive.

This idea goes on and on getting deeper and deeper.... And the mother helps it, because the mother enjoys the ego trip that ”You cannot survive without me.” She threatens many times, ”Listen to me, otherwise I will leave and go forever, or I will die – and THEN YOU will know!”
And the child is shaken to the very roots – he cannot survive without the mother.

This becomes, by and by, a conditioning. Later on it will be reflected in all his relationships. He will think the same about his wife: if the wife is no more, he will not be able to survive. This will become unconscious. He will think the same again and again about everything: ”If this job is gone, then I am finished. If this house is no more with me, then where will I be? If this bank balance is no more with me, then where will I be?” His whole life he will think in terms of fixation, and his whole life will be a long long, unnecessary suffering. He is no more a child, but he remains childish because of the conditioning.

Love, and immediately you turn it into bitterness because you become serious about it. You start thinking of the future. Think of the future – marriage, children, security – and you have destroyed the play and it has become a game, and a very dangerous game. And you will be a loser – nobody is ever a winner.

With play, everybody is a winner. With seriousness, nobody is ever a winner – all are losers.
You come to meditate here and you become serious about it. And I go on insisting: Don’t become serious. Meditation can happen only in playfulness, in utter playfulness, when you are not searching and seeking for anything, when you are simply dancing or singing or chanting; when you are not asking, when the activity is all and all in itself, no future is provoked, no future is involved in it... then it happens. Meditation is a happening. You cannot snatch it from God’s hands. You cannot desire it and you cannot have it. You can only do one thing: you can become an empty receiving end – an;d that’s what happens when you are playful.

Meditation is fun! Even the word looks absurd with meditation – meditation and fun? Down the ages, you have been taught that this is the seriousmost thing: go into the church and become serious – even if you don’t have one, create a long face, then you will look as if you are in the church. Don’t laugh, don’t dance, don’t be playful! – it is a serious affair. You are facing God.

This God seems to be somehow very strange! He cannot allow laughter, He cannot allow dance, He cannot allow love, He cannot allow joy. The Gods of the past were very revengeful, jealous Gods, violent Gods; ready to crush you and destroy you, ready to throw you into hell-fire. Even the idea of God was ugly.

Here with me, you will have to learn a new language: meditation is fun, prayer is love and laughter; and the temple, the church, the mosque, is the place to enjoy, the place to be drunk with life; the place to dance and hold hands, the place to share what God has given to you, the place to be absorbed utterly into the moment. That is the meaning of fun, that is the meaning of laughter, that is the meaning of joy: to be utterly absorbed in the moment as if no other moment exists. So how can you ask for a result? Result needs another moment in the future.

Become like small children – dancing, singing, shouting – and God will come to you unawares.
Suddenly one moment, you will find He is surrounding you; suddenly you will find you are not holding the hands of a woman – God is holding your hands; you are not holding the hands of a man – it is God. Looking into the eyes of the other, playfully, joyously, suddenly you will fall into a depth unknown to you, unknown to your mind. You will start disappearing into a deep abyss.
That’s what God is! God is not in the scriptures – it is in the eyes of people, and in the flowers and in the rivers and in the moons. God is written all over the place! Don’t go to the scriptures. And if you cannot find God in alive trees, green and red and gold, if you cannot find God there, you will not find Him in the Bible, the Koran and the Vedas. How can you find Him there if you cannot find Him here? Once you have found it here, you will find it anywhere... then He is everywhere.

Once found, God is everywhere – but you will have to find Him in life, in playfulness.

Playfulness makes you alive to the maximum. Seriousness cripples you. You become shrunken, frozen. You become closed, you become isolated. You become egoistic. That’s why seriousness has been so much cherished by people because seriousness gives you the ego, and playfulness takes the ego away.

You ask me, Sarjana: I LIVE IN THE LAND OF SERIOUSNESS, IMPRISONED IN ITS BORDERS.

YOU CAN EXIST ONLY IN THE LAND OF SERIOUSNESS – you as an ’I’; and you can exist only imprisoned in the borders of seriousness – as an ’I’. If you want to be playful, you will have to drop the idea of ’I’. The ’I’ cannot be playful; it resists play, because play is death to it. The ’I’ is always serious.
Have you not watched it? When you laugh, just have a look inside: the ’I’ disappears. That’s why egoistic people cannot laugh – impossible! When you are dancing, a moment comes when the ’I’ disappears. But egoistic people cannot dance; they cannot allow the ’I’ to disappear ever. Naturally, they will remain imprisoned, they will be prisoners. But this is your choice!
If you want the ego, you will have to accept the prison, you will have to accept the boundaries. If you want a bigger and still bigger ego, the prison will become smaller and smaller, and the walls of the prison will come closer and closer. If you want to become the greatest ego in the world, you will be nothing but a prison, you will be surrounded by China Walls from everywhere, you will live in a straitjacket, behind iron walls.

But if you want to be alive, then the ego has to be dropped. Ego is a distraction from life.

I LIVE, you say, IN THE LAND OF SERIOUSNESS, IMPRISONED IN ITS BORDERS. CAN YOU DRAW ME A ROAD-MAP TO YOUR LAND OF LEELA?
And you are again asking about a road-map – that is a serious thing. I have none. If you want road-maps you will have to go to the churches and to the priests – they have. Actually! – in Indian temples there are maps of heaven, hell, and how to reach there, and what you will find... the whole geography! Who is who, and where God lives, and where the great saints live – everything you will find.

They have charted all the maps – all imaginary! because God cannot be caught in any map. And heaven is not a map, neither is hell; they are not geographical at all – they are psychological states.

When you are serious, you are in hell; seriousness is hell, playfulness is heaven.

You ask me: CAN YOU DRAW ME A ROAD-MAP TO YOUR LAND OF LEELA? HAVE I A DEFECTIVE GENE?
No – nobody has a defective gene. And a defective gene does not create the problem: the problem comes from the ego. And the ego has nothing to do with the body; the ego is a mind attitude.

You have a mind and that is your defect. I will not say that you have a defective mind – mind is the defect. You will have to drop the mind. And dropping it, suddenly you will find you have always been in the land of leela; not for a single moment had you left it – nobody can leave it. We can just forget about it. We can become serious and we can forget about it.

You are still the children playing on the sea beach. You are still the children searching for sea-shells on the beach. You are still the children collecting wild flowers. You are still the children trying to catch hold of a butterfly. That purity of childhood is still there; it has not been taken away from you – it has only been superimposed by seriousness, ego, mind. It is there! The rock is blocking the fountain, but the fountain has not disappeared. Remove the rock and the fountain flows again in all its splendour.

You say: I CANNOT FIND MY LAUGHTER OR LIGHT-HEARTEDNESS.
Seeking, you will never find it. Finding, or the effort to find it, is a serious thing. IT IS HERE! – you need not find it. Start enjoying it! Start being cheerful this very moment! Don’t try to find it, because if you try to find it you will remain serious. How can a seeker be non-serious?
You are searching for happiness and laughter and joy – you have to be serious, otherwise how will you search? Meanwhile you will remain serious, and the seriousness is getting stronger every moment. Tomorrow again you will search; but one day has passed – twenty-four hours’ more conditioning of seriousness is on you. You will find less laughter tomorrow; the day after tomorrow it will become even more difficult... and so on and so forth. And you will always be searching and seeking and trying to find.

Just be cheerful THIS moment! Just see the point of it! Don’t postpone it – these are tricks of postponing, Sarjana. You don’t WANT to be happy; you still want to remain unhappy. You still want some new excuse to be unhappy. Now this is the excuse: ”I am searching for happiness, I am searching for joy. Right now I am unhappy. I will be happy when I have found – but how can I be happy right now? I will have to find, and the journey is long and the path is arduous, an uphill task.”

So you can be happy with your unhappiness right now, and tomorrow we will see... and tomorrow never comes.

Don’t try to postpone – these are tricks the mind goes on playing upon you. Be happy! Have a good laugh! Have a good dance!

In the beginning it may look a little awkward, because you have not laughed for so long. The lips may have lost their elasticity. But it will come... just give a little opportunity for the lips to learn it again. They cannot lose it. Maybe forgotten – it will be revived again.

One can never forget how to laugh. It is like swimming: you cannot forget it. Once you have known it, you cannot forget. You may not go to the river for fifty years; after fifty years, suddenly, you can swim. You will not even need to remember it.
And you have been laughing when you were a child. Every child is born laughing, and there are very very few fortunate people who die laughing. One who can die laughing has arrived. But if you want to die laughing, you will have to live laughing.

Once an old Parsi came to see me and he said, ”Do you know? We have a beautiful story about Zarathustra – that he was born laughing.”
I said, ”That is nothing special – every child is born laughing.”
Zarathustra is simply a symbol. Every child is born alive, full of joy! great energy, great love for life, great curiosity, infinite wonder, awe for small things. Every child is born an adventurer, an explorer.

And every child is born with great courage to go into the unknown. We cripple him. We stop him.
We prevent him. We start cultivating – and whatsoever we call cultivation is nothing but destroying all the possibilities, allowing only small holes for him to live in, taking his whole sky away and giving him a very small corner in the world.

He was born as all men, all women, all animals, all trees, all rivers, all mountains are. And what do we do with the child? We take all that he has brought away from him; we make him a doctor, an engineer, a businessman, a soldier, a politician – we confine him. He was born as all, as infinity; all the alternatives were open. We close all the alternatives and leave only one alternative open. We have killed him! We allow only a minute part of him to live.

Just think of a businessman: he simply lives as a businessman. Morning, afternoon, evening, night, he lives as a businessman. He dreams of business, he talks of business, he reads of business – his whole life has become business. What have you done to this man? What misfortune has happened to this man? He cannot be anything else! He does not know how to relax. He does not know how to slip out small hole in which he has started living – he calls it businessman, doctor, engineer, professor.

A man should be liquid; he should be able to be all. You should not live only as you – you should live as all humanity, past, future, present. You should live as a totality; multi-dimensional you should live, not one-dimensional, not linear. To live like a line is to live a very poor life.

There is no need! But we have all become focussed in small corners, tethered in small corners we call our minds, egos, this and that. And we are so much obsessed with those small places, caves – -dirty and dark, dismal and sad. But we have become accustomed to those places and we are afraid of the open air and we are afraid of the open sky and the sun and the sand, and we never go out of those small spaces. Hence, laughter has disappeared.

Life has disappeared! – how can laughter live without life? Your spirit is dead. And this is a miracle, that your so-called spiritual people are the MOST spiritless people – and you call them spiritual. My definition of the word ’spiritual’ is: one who is spirited, one who lives a passionate life, with intensity; who lives at the maximum, not at the minimum; who does not live a lukewarm life.

Be courageous! and laughter will follow. Be courageous and live intensely! and you will not need to ask how to be playful. Out of the maximum, playfulness happens of its own accord – because when you live at the maximum you start overflowing. That overflowing of energies is what playfulness is – there is no map to it, there is no technique to it. Just understanding.

Osho
Walk Without Feet, Fly Without Wings and Think Without Mind -
Ch#5 : Playfulness is Heaven
am in Buddha Hall
[part 1 of 2]

Path

YOU CANNOT BE BORN INTO A RELIGION: you have to choose. Religion has nothing to do with blood, bones, birth -- nothing!

Someone is born a Buddhist. He may be a feeling type, but he will follow Buddha. Then his whole life will be wasted. Someone is born an intellectual type. He may be born a Mohammedan, or he may be born into a devotional cult. His life will be wasted and he will become false.

THE WHOLE WORLD IS IRRELIGIOUS because religion is foolishly associated with birth. There is no relationship at all. You have to choose consciously, because first you have to understand your type and then you have to choose.

THE WORLD WILL BE DEEPLY RELIGIOUS the day we allow everyone to choose his religion, method, technique, path.

But religion has become organizational, politically organizational. That is why THE MOMENT A CHILD IS BORN, WE FORCE RELIGION UPON HIM; we condition him into a religion. The parents are afraid that he may move into another organization.

BEFORE HE BECOMES CONSCIOUS, he must be destroyed, crippled, forced. Before he becomes conscious and can think about things, his mind must be conditioned so that he cannot think freely. You cannot think freely, because whatsoever you think has been preconditioned....

YOUR MIND IS FUNCTIONING LIKE A COMPUTER. The information has been fed, evaluation has been fed. You are already based on some non-sensical concepts, traditions. You cannot throw them away easily. That's why religion is just a word.

Very few people can become religious, because very few people can rebel against their own conditionings. ONLY A REVOLUTIONARY MIND CAN BECOME RELIGIOUS -- a mind which can see a thing, the facts of it, and then decide what to do.

BUT FEEL YOUR TYPE, try to feel your type. It is not difficult. The first thing: IF YOU FEEL CONFUSED, you are the intellectual type. IF YOU FEEL CERTAIN, TRUSTING, then proceed with the different techniques which require trust as a basic thing. And secondly, remember, never do both the techniques. That will create more confusion in you. Nothing is wrong; both are right; RamaKrishna is right, Buddha is right.

Remember one thing: IN THIS WORLD, MANY THINGS CAN LEAD YOU TO TRUTH -- MANY PATHS. There is no monopoly. Even contradictory paths, absolutely contradictory paths, can lead you to the same point.

THERE IS NO "ONE" PATH. On the contrary, if you go deep and analyze, you will come to know that there are as many paths as there are travelers -- because each individual has to proceed from the point where he is standing already. He cannot use a ready-made path.

BASICALLY, YOU CREATE YOUR PATH BY YOUR MOVEMENT. There is no ready-made path already there; there are no highways, ready-made. But every religion tries to force on you this idea that the path is ready and you have just to travel over it. That's wrong. This inner search is more like sky than earth.

A BIRD IS FLYING: HE WILL LEAVE NO FOOTPRINTS IN THE SKY. The sky will remain a vacuum. The bird has flown -- he has not left any footprint. No bird can follow in his footprints, the sky is again empty. Another bird, any bird who has to fly, will create his own path.

CONSCIOUSNESS IS LIKE SKY, NOT LIKE EARTH. A Mahavir moves, a Buddha moves, a Meera moves, a Mohammed moves... You can see their movement, you can see their achievement -- but the moment they move, the path disappears. You cannot follow, dead-like, you cannot imitate; YOU HAVE TO FIND YOUR OWN PATH.

FIRST THINK ABOUT YOUR TYPE AND THEN CHOOSE METHODS. In these one hundred and twelve methods, many are for the intellectual type, many are for the emotional type. But don't think that because you are a mixed type, you have to follow both. That will create more confusion, and you will be divided so deeply that you may even go mad, schizophrenic, split. Don't do that.

OSHO

Vigyan Bhairav TantraVol 1,

Ch #24: Doubt or faith, life or death; the bases of different paths

pm in Woodlands, Bombay