Question 2:

Beloved Osho,

In being responsible, one has to choose. how does it fit together with choicelessness?

 

 

Again, the same stupidity.

 

Have you ever tasted choicelessness?

 

It is very easy to make questions which appear to be very relevant, but they only appear relevant to people who don't know the real experience. You cannot deceive me.

 

You are saying, "Being responsible means choosing." Who has told you that? And then, of course, the mind says, "Then choicelessness cannot fit with being responsible."

 

The first thing is becoming choiceless.

 

Live the life of a witness, without choosing, in a let-go.

 

Let things happen to you.

 

Do whatever spontaneously arises in you.

 

The question of choice is intellectual: to do this or to do that, and what will be more profitable, more beneficial; what is moral and what is immoral.

 

The question of choice is that of a blind man who is continuously groping with his stick to find where the door is, where the way is. But the man who has eyes, do you think he chooses? - "This is the wall, and this is the way, and I must choose the way because I want to get out"? You never think even - you simply get out! You have eyes. It is not a choice between the wall and the door.

 

The situation of the person who lives in awareness is exactly the same - he has eyes.

 

For thirty-three years I have not chosen a single thing. Whatever spontaneously arises, I go with it. And these thirty-three years have proved to me more than enough - that if you choose, you are bound to choose something wrong because choice means blindness.

 

It is just an accident if the blind man stands up and, without any choice, moves out of the door. He has to choose, he has to inquire, he has to find. He has to depend on others.

 

A man of awareness is independent. He does things because he feels like doing them. He enjoys doing them because it is coming out of his natural spontaneity.

 

But the religions have confused people really badly. They have, rather than making you aware, given ten commandments. They have decided what you have to choose and what you have not to choose.

 

They have given you responsibilities, they have given you duties.

 

A man of awareness needs neither duties nor responsibilities nor choices. Yet only he is capable of doing the right thing in the right moment.

 

I have heard a story of a small Christian school. The priest used to come once a week to pay a visit to the small children.

 

The last time he had come he had told them that, "Make it a point that at least within a week's time, you have to do something good."

 

One small boy asked, "But what is good? How are we going to know that this is good?"

 

Just the way priests have always done, the priest answered, "For example, a blind man wants to cross the road; help him. This is good, helping people is good."

 

And when he came this time to visit, he asked, "Have you done, in the last week, anything good?"

 

Three boys stood up. The priest said, "It is not great, but still something has started. Out of one hundred boys only three have done something good. They should be praised. One by one, please answer what good you have done?"

 

He asked the first boy, who said, "I helped an old blind woman cross the road. That was the example that you had given about good."

 

The priest said, "It is very nice of you, you are a real Christian."

 

He asked the second boy, "What did you do?"

 

He said, "The same. I helped a blind old woman cross the road."

 

The priest felt a little suspicious. In this small village, how could they manage to find two blind women? But it was possible, it was not impossible. He said, "You also have done a good job. You are also a good Christian. And what about the third?"

 

The third said, "I have also done the same thing. I helped a blind old woman cross the road."

 

Now this was too much! The priest said, "I know the whole town. Where could you get three women - old, blind?"

 

The three boys shouted simultaneously, "It was not three woman - it was one woman! And it was such a great struggle, because she never wanted to cross! But we all three.... She was screaming and beating - but to be a Christian one has to suffer. Finally we managed to get her across."

 

A blind man, a man who has no awareness, is bound to do something like that. They are doing it all over the world. It is not a story. It is a reality.

 

People are dying in thousands every day and all religious leaders are teaching against birth control, against abortion. Strange, their arguments are the same: that by birth control you are rejecting a God-given child; this is not being religious. But strange - when God gives you cancer, when God gives you tuberculosis, when God gives you homosexuality, and when he gives the final Nobel Prize, AIDS, then why are you rejecting them?

 

If everything is given by God, it should be accepted with gratitude, "Lord, you are great, you have given me cancer." And don't go to a hospital, don't go to a cancer expert, because that is against religion, it is against God. God gives you cancer, and you go to a surgeon to be operated upon?

 

You are behaving in a very anti-religious way. But nobody asks these people, "You accept...."

 

In fact, religions run hospitals, and manage eye banks where blind people's eyes can be operated upon. God has made someone blind, and you are serving God by making the man see again? No, these things don't arise in their minds. The only thing they are against is birth control. Why?

 

It has nothing to do with God. And even if God gives you a present, you have every right to return it, with thanks. What is wrong in it? If you don't need it.... He has already given many presents before and you have accepted, and you are suffering because of those presents.

 

Now you have to say to him, "Please stop sending such presents. I have got enough, more than enough, and your presents are dying, one thousand a day in Ethiopia alone." Around the world the number will be far bigger.

 

No, it has nothing to do with God. It has something to do with the priest. All religions are interested in increasing their membership. The bigger the membership, the more power is in their hands.

 

Otherwise, this Polack pope - who is going to bother about him? If by a miracle all the Catholics disappear from the world, the Polack will go to Poland. What will he be doing?

 

He needs more Catholics. Already there are six hundred million Catholics, but he is not satisfied with that number. If people start birth control, abortion, then Catholics will not find orphans, will not find poor people, will not find beggars to convert into Catholicism.

 

Their vested interest is that there should be as many poor people in the world as possible, as many orphans as possible, as many suffering people as possible, because all this gives them their numbers. And every religion tries its own method.

 

For example, Mohammedans are allowed to have four wives. If a woman is allowed four husbands, the population is not going to increase, because one husband or four husbands will not make any difference, she can have only one pregnancy. So no religion has allowed four husbands to one woman, which would have been far better - the population would have been balanced.

 

But Mohammedanism allows four wives to every man. Now he can create four children every year.

 

Mohammed himself, as an example, had nine wives.

 

One Mohammedan king in India, the nizam of Hyderabad, had five hundred wives - almost a factory to produce Mohammedans. Mohammedans are just lagging a little behind the Christians. They are the number two religion and they want to be number one.

 

This is the politics of numbers. Don't drag in a non-existent God.

 

And they go on creating arguments, they say, "This is against life, anti-life - abortion or birth control."

 

But they don't understand the biology of man. In each lovemaking more than one million living people are released by the husband. Only one, perhaps - because the woman is not going to become pregnant every time - once in a while, perhaps once in a while one male sperm reaches in time to the female egg.

 

The time is very limited - only two hours - and the track that he has to run in proportion to his size, is two miles. A two mile track, running and jogging with no practice, no rehearsal, untrained, unskilled, not knowing at all what is happening - just seeing others are running, he also starts running.

 

Where they are going they don't know. Why they are going they don't know. Only one thing is certain, that they have to go fast, because others are going fast.

 

That's why there are so many idiots in the world, because intelligent people avoid crowds. And intelligent people ask first, "Why?" They stand by the side of the road and think it over: "Why are we running, what for?" And anyway, intelligent people are lazy. Seeing this big traffic jam they relax by the side and wait until everybody has gone, then perhaps they will also see what the matter is.

 

But life is only two hours for them; within two hours they will be dead. So in each lovemaking millions of people are dying. And a man, in his whole life - from fourteen till at least fifty - makes love so many times that a single man can fill the whole earth with its present population if all his living cells get a chance. But the trouble is the woman releases only one egg every month.

 

The woman has been a tremendous blessing to humanity. If she was also releasing one million eggs per month, then there would have been no elbow room anywhere. You would be always in a crowd, even in your bedroom! Just releasing one egg per month has resulted in such a huge crowd that the earth is not able to support it.

 

God is nowhere; otherwise, why this stupidity? If you count all stupidities, they will give you the idea that there is no God, because what is the point of releasing one million people in one lovemaking when perhaps only one is going to have the chance of being born? Why release one million, or more than one million, people?

 

God seems to be either just stupid, not knowing arithmetic.... Rather than saying that, because that is condemnatory - to call him an idiot who does not know even the basic three R's - it is far more compassionate to God to say that he does not exist. At least you relieve him of all kinds of stupidity, of all kinds of crime, of all kinds of murder, rape, suicide - because these are all his gifts.

 

The priests are not interested in you. They are not interested in your awareness, because a man of awareness will certainly see the point, that the world is already overpopulated. There is no need to convince him about it - that to bring more children into the world is to make it more poor, more hungry, more starving, more illiterate.

 

Is there a choice, for the man of awareness, to use birth control or not? There is no choice; his awareness is enough. He does what his awareness allows him to do.

 

And the only responsibility that you have is not towards the nation - because that has been the cause of all the wars in the world. In three thousand years five thousand wars have happened on this earth. Who could manage so many wars, and how? - continuously killing, murdering, because of your responsibility to the nation. You have been taught that if the need arises you have to die for the nation and you will be a martyr and your name will be written in golden letters in the history books.

 

I have never seen any name in any history book written in golden letters, particularly about those poor soldiers who have been killed. In fact, when they become ready to go to war their individuality is destroyed, their identity is destroyed. Their names become numbers!

 

If a soldier dies or has not come back by the evening, on the notice board the next day there is a declaration that: "Number twenty-six is either dead or missing." Reading it, number twenty-six does not create in you the idea that number twenty-six had an old father, a sick mother, a loving wife waiting for him, children that he has to raise. Number twenty-six doesn't have any family.

 

Do you see the strategy? If a name is written, then many will feel that the same can happen to them.

 

Then who is going to take care of their families?

 

They have been given numbers. In the army a man has no name, no identity except a number. And remember, numbers are replaceable; people are not. Soon somebody else will be number twenty- six. But the man who was number twenty-six in the first place was unique. There was nobody else who could have replaced him.

 

Number twenty-six has no problem: no family, no children, no mother, no wife, no friends.

 

Responsibility to the nation means you are preparing, getting ready to fight against other nations.

 

And they also have the teaching: responsibility to their nation.

 

But forget all those promises that your names will be written in golden letters. In fact, so many people die in a war that they cannot make so many graves, they make collective graves. And they certainly make a memorial, dedicated to the anonymous soldier who died for the country. Anonymous!

 

No man of awareness can feel any responsibility towards the nations. In fact, he will be against any such attitude. That attitude has created wars, killings, unnecessary massacre.

 

The whole earth is one!

 

The man of awareness cannot see where the divisions are.

 

Just the other day one beautiful young journalist was asking me - he was from Switzerland - "Do you love Swiss people?"

 

He was shocked for a moment, because I said, "I hate... any divisions of humanity." Then he relaxed.

 

When he heard, "I hate..." I could see the change. He thought I was saying I hate the Swiss people.

 

I waited a little, and his breathing must have stopped at that moment - what kind of statement was I going to make? He would never have conceived that I would say I hate the Swiss people.

 

I don't hate the Swiss people. I hate divisions.

 

Why should there be Swiss people, and Swedish people, and German and Italian and Indian and American? Why?

 

It is one humanity.

 

The man of awareness will feel a responsibility towards the whole, not towards parts which are fighting against each other.

 

There is no choice. He simply finds it absolutely clear.

 

You have been taught responsibility to your family. But the family is a very small group. You have been made responsible to a very small group - which is not good.

 

There was a fight between my father and one of my neighbors, because the land between our house and the neighbor's house was in dispute as to whom it belongs. I told my father, "Remember, don't go to court against that man, because I am going to say in court that the land belongs to the neighbor."

 

He said, "You are going to say that? I am your father, and you will be witnessing against me?"

 

I said, "Yes - because I know perfectly well, and you know perfectly well that the land belongs to the neighbor. Of course, he has no documents - the documents belong to you, so you are going to win the case. But I am going to witness against the whole thing. I am going to say, 'Those documents are not authentic. The land belongs to the neighbor. It has belonged to him for centuries, to his forefathers. They have always used it. I don't know from where my father has got these documents.

 

We have never used that land.'"

 

He was very puzzled. He said, "This is strange. You don't feel any responsibility to the family?"

 

I said, "I feel responsibility, and this is my responsibility. And remember, I am small, perhaps my testimony will not carry weight, but I have convinced my grandfather too" - he was always a friend to me - "and he is also going to witness against you!

 

"Now two generations - one which is older than you, the other which is younger than you - are going to witness against you that these documents are not true. And my grandfather knows that the land never belonged to us - neither to his father, nor to his grandfather. So you simply withdraw the case, forget all about that land."

 

He said, "But this is strange. I know that you have great friendship with my father, and he will listen to you rather than to me. And if that old man is going to be a witness against me, it is better to withdraw the case and burn the documents, and forget all about that land." That land was significant for him. "But," he said, "you don't seem to have any responsibility to the family."

 

I said, "I only have responsibility. It is not addressed to the nation, to the family, to the religion, to the race."

 

Any responsibility addressed to something is no longer responsibility. Responsibility has to be choiceless. And your awareness can give you these two things together: choicelessness, responsibility.

 

But your question is just garbage. You have no experience of responsibility, you have no experience of choicelessness, you have no experience of awareness - and you are creating a very relevant question! With me, be existential, not intellectual.

 

That is the basic difference between me and all your old religions: I give you freedom, spontaneity, responsibility, choicelessness - but these things are not finite, addressed to small things, these things are infinite, unaddressed. Each moment you have to be aware, and you will find what your responsibility is. There will be no choice.

 

When I passed my matriculation exams, my whole family was in a great turmoil, because they all wanted... somebody wanted me to be a doctor, somebody wanted me to be a scientist, somebody wanted me to be an engineer - because in India these are respectable jobs, paying jobs. You become rich, you become well-known, you are honored. But I said, "I am going to study philosophy."

 

They all said, "This is nonsense! No man of sense will go and study philosophy. What will you do after that? Six years wasted in the university studying things which are of no use. They don't have any value, you will not even get a small service, a small job."

 

And they were right. In India, if you apply for the smallest job, like a clerk in the post office which needs only matriculation as qualification, and you have a master's degree in philosophy, you top the university, you have a gold medal - you will be refused. Only because of these things! These are DISqualifications, you are a difficult person! A clerk should not be a philosopher; otherwise there are bound to be difficulties.

 

So they said, "You will suffer your whole life. Think it over."

 

I said, "I never think, you know that. I simply see. And there is no question of choice, I know what I am going to study. It is not a question of weighing which job will be more profitable. Even if I become a beggar, I am going to study philosophy."

 

They were at a loss. They all asked me, "But what is the reason that you want to study philosophy?"

 

I said, "The reason is that my whole life I am going to fight against philosophers. I have to know everything about them."

 

They said, "My God! This is your idea? We have never imagined that a man should study philosophy because he is going to fight philosophers his whole life." But they knew that I am crazy. They said, "Something like this was expected." Still they persisted: "There is time, you can still think about it.

 

The universities will be opening in one month; you can still think."

 

I said, "One month, one year, one life makes no difference, because I don't have any choice. It is my choiceless responsibility."

 

One of my uncles, who was a graduate from the university, said, "It is absolutely impossible to talk with him - he uses words which don't seem to carry any meaning. Choicelessness... responsibility...

 

awareness - what do these things have to do with life? You will need money, you will need a house, you will need to support a family...."

 

I said, "I am not going to have a family. I am not going to have a house and I am not going to support anybody!" And I have not supported anybody and I have not made any house. I am the poorest man in the world!

 

They could not manage to force me to become a doctor, engineer, scientist, but they all were angry.

 

And when I became a wandering teacher around the country, doing the job for which I had studied logic and philosophy because I wanted to be perfectly acquainted with the enemy, soon there was not a single man who was ready to accept my challenge. Then my family started feeling guilty, feeling that it was good that they were not able to make me a doctor, engineer, scientist. I had proved that they were wrong.

 

They started asking me, "Forgive us."

 

I said, "There is no problem, because I never took all your advice seriously. I never bothered!

 

Whatever I was going to do, I was going to do in spite of everything going against me! So don't feel guilty. I have never taken your advice seriously; I was hearing you, but not listening. I had a decision in me, a decisiveness."

 

The process is very simple.

 

Meditate, become more aware and then you will see: choices disappear, a choicelessness arises.

 

And it is such a tremendous joy to have a choiceless spontaneity. It is such a freedom. Choice is such a burden.

 

I had a friend who was utterly miserable. I asked him, "What is the reason for your misery? I don't see any point - you are healthy, you are young, you are in a very well-paid position. Why should you be so miserable?"

 

He said, "The misery is that I am caught in a choice."

 

I asked, "What kind of choice?"

 

He said, "There are two women. One is beautiful but poor, the other is so ugly but tremendously rich. I have to decide to whom to get married. And this has been going on for two years. I have been postponing it, persuading them both, 'Wait, soon....' They are both waiting, and I have to show love to both.

 

"I hate the poverty of the one, I hate the body of the other. I am almost caught in such a situation that I don't see any way out."

 

I said to him, "Every choice brings misery. If you marry the beautiful woman, soon there will be trouble, because the woman wants to go on shopping - that is the only game the woman knows - and you don't have money. You cannot afford that woman, I know her. She would like to have a beautiful house, a car, servants, cooks. Because she knows she is so beautiful, she can get anybody as her husband.

 

"If you marry her, her beauty will be finished within three days. The same face - how long can you see it, how long can you think it is beautiful? And you will not be able to fulfill any of her demands, so it is going to be a constant conflict.

 

"Then you will start feeling, 'It would have been better if I had married the other woman. Within three days her ugliness would have disappeared the same way as the beauty has disappeared. And after three days there would have been just paradise.'" - the woman was immensely rich.

 

"But if you marry her, then too you will be in trouble. Marrying an ugly woman - you hate even to see her face; you will be creating a hell for yourself.

 

And the ugly woman is very possessive because she knows her husband will be flirting with other women. She is so ugly this will be a simple, logical conclusion, so she will be always on your neck.

 

And you will have to be just a servant, because all the money that she has will reduce you to a slave."

 

So he said, "What am I supposed to do? Either way I am in difficulty."

 

I said, "My suggestion is, you start coming to my school of meditation" - I had a school there.

 

He said, "Meditation? I am talking about marriage, not about meditation. You are strange! My problem is marriage."

 

I said, "I understand your problem. That's why I am telling you to come to the meditation class, because only meditation can take you out of this catch, out of this fix, out of this misery."

 

He said, "Okay, I will try. There is no harm, I am not going to lose anything."

 

I said, "There is nothing to be lost, everything to be gained."

 

He was in such deep misery that he wanted to come out of the misery, so he put all his effort into meditation - really total. And one day I saw his face changing, and I asked him, "What is happening to you?"

 

He laughed. He said, "I am finished with both! In fact, now I don't want to get married at all."

 

I said, "From where have you got this idea?"

 

He said, "It is not an idea. Becoming more silent and more silent and more silent, I have touched the space you call meditation. Now I am utterly content with myself. I don't need anybody else to make me complete - I am complete."

 

And the man has remained the same. All these years I have been getting information about him, asking other friends whether he has got married or not. They said, "No, he simply meditates. He has left his job. He said, 'I have earned enough money, I can live on the interest alone. I simply want to meditate. I simply want to go deeper into the mystery of life.'"

 

And as you go deeper, all choices disappear. There is an immense freedom in choicelessness. And there is great illumination, light, in awareness.

 

Meditation is the method to create more awareness, more consciousness, and a responsibility - unaddressed. Whenever, wherever you feel it, go totally into it.

 

It happened I was traveling from Bombay to Calcutta. It was a long journey, but I enjoyed trains rather than airplanes because that was the only time I could rest. From Bombay to Calcutta it takes forty-eight hours by train, the fastest train. So I was hoping to just relax and enjoy for forty-eight hours, because once I entered Calcutta there would be at least five meetings a day, and there was not going to be any rest.

 

As I entered my air-conditioned cabin, there was another man - it was a car for two persons. That man must have been watching through the window what was happening outside. Hundreds of people had come to give me a send-off - so many roses and garlands. He must have been looking through the window.

 

In the air-conditioned class in India - I don't know about America - you can see out from the glass, but you cannot see in; it is one-way. So I was not aware that somebody was watching. I was outside on the platform surrounded by the crowd. But so many people were touching my feet and putting garlands, that that man became certain that I was a great religious leader.

 

As I entered the cabin, he fell on the ground, touched my feet, kissed my feet. And he said, "I have always been searching for a great teacher. Perhaps you are the man."

 

He was a brahmin. I told him, "Yes, I am the man, but there is a difficulty. I am a Mohammedan."

 

He said, "My God! And I have kissed your feet!"

 

I told him, "You go to the bathroom and have a good gargle. And what can I do? - you never asked me, you simply fell on the ground and touched my feet and kissed my feet. I would have told you, but you never gave me any chance."

 

He rushed into the bathroom, took a shower, because a BRAHMIN...! In India that is the highest Hindu caste, the caste of the priests. They don't consider anybody even to be touchable.

 

He came back. He was looking very miserable, even after the shower. And I said, "I was just joking!

 

Can't you see me? Can't you understand? Have you forgotten all those Hindus outside?" - because in India you can recognize very well who is who. Mohammedans have different caps, different kind of clothes; Hindus have different caps, different kind of clothes. It is not difficult.

 

I said, "You are just unnecessarily bothering."

 

He fell again. He kissed my feet this time really hard. He said, "I was suspecting while I was taking the shower... this man does not look like a Mohammedan. And I am relieved of a great difficulty; otherwise I would have repented my whole life."

 

I said, "You will have to repent. Can't you see my beard?"

 

He said, "What do you mean?"

 

I said, "Exactly what you understand. I am a Mohammedan."

 

The man rushed back to the bathroom and then he told the conductor, "Please change my room - that man may disturb my whole night; he keeps changing his idea of who he is."

 

The conductor said, "But what do you have to do with him? Let him change his idea. You have your seat, you have your place reserved. There is no problem."

 

I came out. I said, "There is no problem, but this man thinks I am a Mohammedan."

 

The conductor said, "You think he is a Mohammedan? I know him!"

 

The man said, "Then there is no problem."

 

And I tortured him so much that finally he said, "Whoever you are, I am your disciple! I have dropped the idea of choosing between Hindu and Mohammedan. One thing is certain that you are SOMETHING!"

 

Just meditate, be aware.

 

Choices will disappear.

 

And a new kind of responsibility will arise which will not be imposed by the outside, which will be your own fragrance.

 

- Osho, “From Death to Deathlessness, chapter27 Anonymous Graves, #27, Q2”