Question 1:

Can you give me a message to take to the western world so that people there might understand you and your followers?

 

 

Joey Simons, my message is very simple. That's why it is difficult to understand. I teach the obvious; it is not complex at all. Because it is not complex there is nothing much to understand in it. It has to be lived, experienced. My message is not verbal, logical, rational. It is existential, so those who want to understand it intellectually will only misunderstand it.

 

Still, there are a few fundamentals I would like to tell you. One: up to now man has lived only half- heartedly. In the East, in the West, man has remained lopsided. Neither has the Eastern man been whole nor has the Western man been whole. The West has chosen the body, is body-oriented; the East has chosen the soul, is soul-oriented; and man is both, a great harmony of both. Man is both and a transcendence. Neither in the East nor in the West has man been accepted totally. We have not yet dared to accept man in his totality.

 

That is one of the most fundamental things I want everybody to understand about my teaching: I teach the whole man. The very idea of East and West is nonsense; that too is because of the ancient division. All divisions have to be dissolved.

 

I teach one world. East and West have to disappear; both are schizophrenic. The West is right- handed, the East is left-handed; the West is active, the East is passive; the West is extrovert, the East is introvert - but man is both and beyond both.

 

To be total, one has to be as capable of being extrovert as of being introvert. To be total, one has to be capable of breathing out and breathing in. Inhalation is as much needed as exhalation. In fact, they are not two; exhalation-inhalation IS ONE process.

 

The West has chosen the outside world, matter, has become very scientific, has created great technology; but man is crushed underneath that technology because man has not grown simultaneously. Man is lagging far behind. Science has gone far ahead, and the science that man has created is now destroying man himself.

 

Man's inner world has remained poor in the West, man is spiritually starved in the West. And the same has happened in the East from the other extreme: man has completely denied his body, his world. The East has insisted on denying all that is outside you, renouncing the manifested world and just going in, remaining at your center. The East is spiritually rich but materially very poor and starved. The East has suffered, the West has suffered.

 

My message is: now it is time that we should drop this division of the outer and the inner, of the lower and the higher, of the left-handed and the right-handed. We should drop this division between man and woman, between East and West. We should create a whole man who is capable of both.

 

That's why I am going to be misunderstood everywhere. The Eastern religious person is angry with me because he thinks I am teaching materialism, and the Western rational thinker is angry with me because he thinks I am teaching spiritual mumbojumbo. EVERYBODY is angry at me, and that is natural; I can understand it.

 

I am teaching the whole man - from the lowest rung of the ladder to the highest rung, from sex to samadhi, from the body to the soul, from matter to God. My trust is total.

 

I would like to tell you that up to now man has not trusted. Not even in the East has man trusted.

 

In the East man has doubted the world; hence in the East the world is called illusory, MAYA. In the West man has doubted God, soul; they are thought to be just hallucinations, pathologies. To the really Western mind Jesus looks like a neurotic, psychologically ill, needs psychiatric treatment. To the East the West looks animalistic. "Eat, drink, and be merry" - that seems to be the understanding of the East about the West, that that is the only Western philosophy: be like animals, gross.

 

The West has doubted the inner world, the East has doubted the outer world. Both have lived in doubt and their trust has been half-hearted.

 

My trust is total. I trust the outer, I trust the inner - because outer and inner are both together. They cannot be separated. There is NO God without this world; there is no world without God. God is the innermost core of this world. The juice flowing in the trees is God, the blood circulating in your body is God, the consciousness residing in you is God. God and the world are mixed together just like a dancer and his dance; they cannot be separated, they are inseparable. So I don't say the world is illusion; that is nonsense. The world is as real as consciousness. Neither do I say that the inner world is neurosis, madness, hallucination; it is not. It is the very foundation of reality.

 

I teach the whole man. I am not a materialist or a spiritualist. My approach is wholistic - and the whole man can only be holy.

 

Because of this there is going to be great misunderstanding about me, and anybody can pick things, find faults with me, and it is very easy. The spiritualist can call me Epicurean, a follower of Charvaka - and he is not absolutely wrong because half of me is Epicurean. I accept Epicurus and Charvaka because they teach the body and the joys of the body and the exhilaration of the body. And there is exhilaration in the body, and the moment you drop that, you become serious and sad.

 

That's why the Eastern saint looks so sad, no joy. They talk about bliss but it doesn't show on their faces. They look utterly miserable. They look utterly dead - because they are afraid of the outer, and one who is afraid of the outer will be afraid of love because love is an outgoing process. Love means the other, love means relating, love means communicating with the other. Love means the relationship between I and thou. The East denies the other, hence the East is against love. And if you are against love you will lose dance.

 

Without love, there is no dance in life and no song. Without love there is no poetry. Life becomes dull, a drag. Without love you can live, but only at the minimum. It will be almost like vegetating.

 

And that's what is happening to the Eastern spirituality; go into the monasteries, go into the ashrams.

 

That's why my ashram looks so utterly different - because people are dancing, singing, holding hands, hugging, loving, joyous; this is not the Eastern concept of an ashram. An ashram has to be absolutely joyless; it has to be more like a cemetery than like a garden. But the moment you stop love, all that is flowing in you stops, becomes stagnant.

 

You cannot celebrate without love. How can you celebrate without love? And what will you celebrate, and with what?

 

Mulla Nasruddin was saying to me one day, "I have lived a hundred years. I have celebrated my hundredth birthday, and I have never chased a woman in my life, and I have not ever been drinking.

 

I have never played cards, gambled. I don't smoke. I eat simple, vegetarian food."

 

I asked him, "But then how did you celebrate your hundredth birthday? How can you celebrate?

 

With what? And for what? Just living for a hundred years can't be a celebration."

 

You have not lived if you have not loved.

 

The East is against love. That's why Eastern spirituality is sad, dull, dead. No juice flows through the Eastern saint. He is afraid of ANY flow, any vibration, any pulsation, any streaming of his energy.

 

He is constantly controlling himself, repressing himself. He is sitting upon himself, on guard. He is against himself and against the world. He is simply waiting to die, he is committing a slow suicide.

 

That's why my ashram is going to be misunderstood. This will look like the Ashram of a Charvaka, this will look like the garden of Epicurus.

 

The Western man has loved - there is laughter and there is dancing and there is song - but the Western man has lost ALL idea of who he is. He has lost track of consciousness, he is not aware.

 

He has become more and more mechanical because he denies the inner. So laughter is there but laughter cannot go deep, because there is no depth. The depth is not accepted. So the West lives in a shallow laughter and East lives in a deep sadness. This is the misery, the agony that has happened to man.

 

My message is: it is time now, man is mature enough to come out of these half-hearted, lopsided patterns. These programs have to be dropped and changed. One should accept the outer and the inner both, and totally, and with no conditions at all. Then there will be consciousness and there will be love, and they will not be contradictory to each other but complementary. Love will give you joy, consciousness will give you crystallization. Consciousness will make you aware of who you are, and love will make you aware of what this world is. And between these two banks, the river of life flows.

 

I teach the whole man. This is one of the most fundamental things to be understood - then all else will become easy, then things will be simple. This is the base. I teach the world and I teach God, and I teach them in the same breath. I want to bring Epicurus and Buddha as close as possible.

 

Buddha is sitting under his tree; you cannot conceive of Buddha dancing. Epicurus is dancing in his garden; you cannot conceive of Epicurus sitting silently under a tree, meditating.

 

I would like Epicurus and Buddha to become one. Life should be a rhythm of dance and silence, of music and sound and silence. Life should be a rhythm of going out as far as possible and going in as far as possible, because God is both.

 

Close your eyes and you see God, open your eyes and you see God, because God is all there is.

 

Joey, you ask me, "Can you give me a message to take to the Western world so that people there might understand you and your followers?"

 

The people who are with me are not my followers. They are my lovers, but not my followers. They are my friends, but not my followers. They are my disciples, but not my followers.

 

And what is the difference between a disciple and a follower? A follower believes; whatsoever is said, he makes a dogma out of it. The disciple learns, experiments, and unless he finds the truth himself he remains open.

 

I am not giving any dogma to my friends here, to my sannyasins. All that I am doing here is helping them to understand themselves. All I am doing here is helping them to be themselves.

 

A follower imitates. A Christian has to imitate Christ and a Buddhist has to imitate Buddha - and all imitators are pseudo. I want my friends to be authentic. How can you follow me? I am so different from you and you are so different from me. You are so unique. There has never been a person like you and there will never be again. God only creates one person once. He is very innovative, He does not repeat, He does not make man on an assembly line. It is not like Fiat cars or Ford cars:

 

you can see thousands and thousands alike, exactly alike. God always creates the unique.

 

Go into the garden: you will not find two grass leaves the same. Not even identical twins are the same.

 

So how can you follow anybody? All following is wrong.

 

So my second message: man has not to follow anybody. Understand certainly, learn certainly, listen certainly, remain open, but follow your own inner spontaneity. Follow your own being. I help people here to be themselves. Just as in my garden I help the roses to be roses and the lotus to be a lotus.

 

I don't try so that the lotus be a rose. The world is rich because there is variety. The world would be ugly if only roses grew and no other flower. Thousands of flowers grow, and the world is beautiful.

 

Each person has to be authentically himself, utterly himself So the sannyasins who are here with me are not my followers. They love me. Through their love they have come close to me. Their love has brought me here, their love has brought them here; because of love we are together. But I am not the leader and they are not the followers. And I am not creating a cult, I am not creating a church. The sannyasins are just a commune of friends, not a church. We don't have any dogma that everybody has to believe in. There is nothing to be believed in, but millions of things to be experimented with. My ashram is a lab; we experiment here.

 

That too is creating great trouble, because man has forgotten to experiment. We are experimenting in a multi-dimensional way. We are experimenting with Tao, we are experimenting with Sufism, we are experimenting with Jainism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity; we are experimenting with Tantra, Yoga, alchemy. We are experimenting with all the possibilities that can make the human consciousness rich and a human being whole. That is creating trouble, because when the follower of Yoga comes he cannot understand why Tantra should be experimented with; he is against Tantra.

 

When the follower of Tantra comes he cannot see why Yoga should be experimented with; he is against Yoga.

 

I am not against anything. I am for all. I am UTTERLY for all. I claim the whole human heritage, and whatsoever is good in any tradition is mine, and whatsoever can make man richer is mine. I don't belong to any tradition, all traditions belong to me.

 

So this is a new experiment; it has never been done before in such a way. This is the synthesis of all the paths. So I am teaching a synthesis. And my feeling is that the man who has only been experimenting with Yoga will remain partial, will grow only in part - as if a man's hand has become too big and the whole body remains small; he will be a monster... unless he can experiment with Tantra also, because Tantra is complementary to Yoga.

 

Remember, this is one of my basic insights: that in life there are no contradictions. All contradictions are complementaries. Night is complementary to the day, so is summer to winter, so is death to life. They are not against each other. There is nothing against, because there is only one energy, it is one God. My left hand and my right hand are not against each other, they are complementary.

 

Opposites are just like wings of a bird, two wings - they look opposite to each other but they support each other. The bird cannot fly with one wing.

 

Tantra and Tao have to be experimented with together.

 

Now Yoga has a great insight into discipline, and Tao has a great insight into spontaneity. They are opposite on the surface, but unless your discipline makes you more spontaneous and unless your spontaneity makes you more disciplined, you will not be whole. Yoga is control, Tantra is uncontrol; and both are needed. A man has to be so capable of order that if the need arises he can function in utter order. But order should not become a fixation, otherwise he will become a robot.

 

He should be able to come out of his system, his discipline, whenever the need arises. And he can be spontaneous, floating, in a let-go. That he can get only through Tantra, from nowhere else.

 

I am bringing all the opposites into my sannyasins' lives as complementaries. Yogis will be against me because they cannot see how sex and love can be a part of a seeker's life. They are afraid.

 

They are afraid of sex because sex is the most spontaneous thing in your life. It has to be controlled.

 

They know that once sex is controlled, everything else is controlled, so their basic attack is on sex.

 

Tantra says if your sex is not spontaneous your whole life will become robot-like. It has to be in freedom. And both are right, and both are right together! - this is my approach. I will look absurd because my approach is very illogical. Logic will always insist: either be a Yogi or be a Tantrika. I believe in life, I don't believe in logic; and life is both together.

 

A great discipline is needed in life, because you have to live in a world with so many people. You have to live in discipline; otherwise life would become a chaos. Life would become impossible if you couldn't live in a discipline. But if you only live in discipline and you forget spontaneity and you become the discipline and you are not capable of getting out of it, then again life is lost. You have become a machine. Now, these are the two alternatives that have been available to man up to now:

 

either become a chaos - which is not good - or become a machine - which is not good either.

 

I want you to be alert, conscious, aware, disciplined, and yet capable of spontaneity. When you are working, be disciplined. But work is not all. When you are playing, forget all discipline.

 

I used to stay in a Calcutta house with a High Court judge. His wife told me, "My husband only listens to you. You are the only person who can bring something into his life. Our whole family is tired with his attitude. He remains the magistrate even in the house." She said, "Even in bed he remains the judge of the High Court. He expects me to call him, 'My Lord'. He is never spontaneous, and in everything he makes rules and laws. The children are tired. When he enters into the house the whole house falls silent, all joy disappears. We all wait for him to go to the court."

 

Now I know that man: he is a good judge, a very conscientious magistrate, very sincere, honest - and these are good qualities - but he has become a machine. If he comes home and remains the magistrate, that is not good. One has to relax too. One has to play with children, but he cannot play with children; that would be coming down too much. Even with his wife he remains on the high pedestal, far away; he still remains the magistrate.

 

This is what has happened to the followers of Yoga: they cannot be playful, they cannot rejoice in anything, they cannot participate in celebration - because they cannot relax.

 

And Tantra alone creates chaos. Tantra alone makes you very, very selfish. You don't care about anybody. You forget that you are part of a great whole, that you belong to a society, that you belong to existence and you are committed to this existence; without it you will be nowhere. You have to fulfill some demands from the side of existence, from the side of society. If you become utterly chaotic, then you cannot exist. Then nobody can exist.

 

So there has to be a great understanding between chaos and mechanicalness. Exactly in the middle there is a point where I would like my sannyasins to be, exactly in the middle; capable of going to both the extremes when needed, and always capable of moving away from there. I teach this fluidity, I teach this liquidity.

 

I don't teach fixed life patterns, dead gestalts. I teach growing life syntheses, growing patterns, growing gestalts, and always capable of comprehending the other, the opposite. Then life is beautiful.

 

And one can know truth only when one has been able to transform the opposites into complementaries. Then only is one's life symmetrical. There is balance - positive and negative are both equally balanced. In that balancing is transcendence. In that balancing one knows the beyond, one opens up to the beyond. The Golden Flower blooms.

 

-Osho, "The Secret of Secrets, Vol 2, #10, Q1"