|
My conclusions should not be made your conclusions.
|
Don't go asking for advice forever.
Take the reins of your life in your own hands
"Become more and more alive, authentic, responsive. Even if there is a possibility to go astray, go astray. Because there is no way to grow if you are so much afraid of committing errors. Errors are good. Mistakes have to be committed. Never commit the same mistake again, but never be afraid of committing mistakes. People who become so much afraid of committing mistakes never grow. They go on sitting in their place, afraid to move. They are not alive.
The mind grows when you face, encounter, situations on your own. You bring your own energy to solve them. Don't go asking for advice forever. Take the reins of your life in your own hands; that's what I mean when I say do your thing. You will be in trouble - it is safer to follow others, it is convenient to follow the society, to follow the routine, the tradition, the scripture. It is very easy because everybody is following - you have just to become a dead part of the herd, you have just to move with the crowd wherever it is going; it is none of your responsibility. But your mental body, your manumaya kosha, will suffer tremendously, terribly it will not grow. You will not have your Own mind, and you will miss something very, very beautiful and some - thing which functions as a bridge for higher growth.
Always remember, whatsoever I say to you, you can take it in two ways. You can simply take it on my authority, "Osho says so, it must be true" – then you will suffer, then you will not grow.
Whatsoever I say, listen to it, try to understand it, implement it in your life, see how it works, and then come to your own conclusions. They may be the same, they may not be. They can never be exactly the same because you have a different personality, a unique being.
Whatsoever I am saying is my own. It is bound to be in deep ways rooted in me. You may come to similar conclusions, but they cannot be exactly the same.
So my conclusions should not be made your conclusions. You should try to understand me, you should try to learn, but you should not collect knowledge from me, you should not collect conclusions from me. Then your mind-body will grow."
- Osho, "Yoga - The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 9, #1"
|
The depths and heights
I am talking about are my experiences
|
Question 2:
Osho,
Whilst you were speaking on Kahlil Gibran and Zarathustra, your words seemed to penetrate without my interpretation directly to the center of my being. I experienced an attunement, a communion happening as nectar that was filling my being. Sometimes, without sobbing, tears simply poured from my eyes, and after almost every discourse I felt for a long while in touch with something far beyond what I know of as myself. With questions and answers this does not happen. I still feel that special whatever it is that comes when sitting with you, but not with the depth of intensity I have just described. What is the difference?
The question you have asked raises many other questions too. I would like to cover all the implications in short, because it is important not only to you but for everyone else here.
The first thing: as far as I am concerned, the question-answer sessions are more significant because they relate to you, they relate to your growth. Certainly you are groping in darkness, trying to find a way. You cannot ask questions of the heights of Zarathustra, of Kahlil Gibran -- and I have to answer your reality.
Listening to Zarathustra and Kahlil Gibran is a good and great entertainment: you may sob and you may have tears and you may feel great, but it is all hot air! You remain the same -- nothing changes in you. I speak sometimes on Buddha, on Chuang Tzu, on Zarathustra, just to give you an insight into the heights people have reached, just to make you aware of those distant stars. They are not so distant as they look -- people like us have reached there. It is within your grasp.
That is the reason why, on Zarathustra and Buddha and Bodhidharma and a thousand others, I have spoken: to create a longing in you. But just the longing is not enough. Then I have to give you the path; then I have to sort out the mess that you are, and put your fragments, which are spread all over the space... to find out where your legs are and where your head is and put them all together, and somehow push you on the path.
The question-answer sessions are concerned with you, your growth, your progress -- the place where you are. And the discourses on Zarathustra or Kahlil Gibran are concerned with the places where you should be -- but you are not yet there.
So I disagree with you. I can understand that you enjoy the dream that is created when one is hearing about Buddha.... You have nothing to do; you are just listening to great poetry, listening to a great song, listening to great music, seeing a great dance. But you are not singing, you are not becoming the poetry, you are not becoming the dance. And I want you to become the dance; I want you to reach to the greatest heights that anybody has ever reached.
So I have to keep a balance, talking about the dreamlands and then talking about the dark caves where you are hiding, very reluctant to come out in the light. You want to hear about light and you enjoy, but you remain hiding in your dark cave. You want to hear about strange lands, beautiful stories and parables, but it is mere entertainment.
You should be more concerned when I am answering the questions, because they can change your reality. I have to do both jobs: create the longing, give a glimpse of the goal, and then clean the path and grease your parts -- because you have never moved in many many lives, you are sitting in a junkyard -- to put you back on the wheels and rolling.
The second job is difficult, and not very juicy either. But it is absolutely necessary.
Secondly, I have to remind you of one thing. When I was speaking on Zarathustra... it is a very complicated affair, because I was not speaking directly on Zarathustra; I was speaking on a Zarathustra who is an invention of Friedrich Nietzsche. All the great insights are given by Nietzsche to Zarathustra.
Zarathustra... many times his original books have been brought to me, and they are so ordinary that I have never spoken on them. Nietzsche has used Zarathustra only as a symbolic figure, just as Kahlil Gibran was using Almustafa, which was a completely fictitious name. Nietzsche has used a historical name, but in a very fictitious way. He is putting his insights into the mouth of Zarathustra.
So first you should remember it is Nietzsche's Zarathustra; it has nothing much to do with the original Zarathustra. And secondly, when I am speaking on it, I don't care what Nietzsche means, and I don't even have any way to know what he means; the way he used Zarathustra, I am using him! So it is a very complicated story. It is my Nietzsche, and via Nietzsche it is my Zarathustra. So whatever heights you are flying in have nothing to do with Zarathustra.
I have been speaking on hundreds of mystics, but it is always that I am speaking. And I know perfectly well that if by chance, somewhere, I meet these people, they are going to be very angry. They are going to be really enraged and say, "I never meant that." But my problem is, "How can I know what you had meant?" I can only mean what I mean. So whether it is Zarathustra or Buddha or Jesus or Chuang Tzu, once they pass through me they have my signature on them. You are always listening to me.
When I am answering your questions I am more concerned with your growth, with your actual problems; they are more earthly. So don't be deceived; many people have been deceived. I have been reminding you, but people's memories are not great.
I was speaking on Gautam Buddha in Varanasi and one Buddhist, a very renowned scholar in Buddhism, said to me, "I have been reading the same scriptures. But you have revealed such great depths and heights that I was never aware of; you have confirmed my faith in Gautam Buddha."
I said, "If you don't get angry with me... you should confirm your faith in me."
He said, "What?"
I said, "Yes, because whatever you were reading was perhaps exactly what Buddha meant, and the depths and heights I am talking about are my experiences."
But what to do? There are idiots all over the world. If you want Buddhist idiots to listen to you, you just have to say the name "Buddha" and that's enough; then you can say anything you want. If you want Hindus to listen to you, you have to talk about Krishna.
I am always talking about myself; I cannot talk about anybody else -- how can I? Five thousand years ago, what was Krishna thinking, what was in his mind?... but when they listen to me they think, "My God, we were not aware that Krishna had such depths, such heights." Krishna had nothing. Those heights and those depths are my experiences that I am hanging on anybody; these people function like hooks, I simply hang my idea on them.
And even great scholars... this man was Bhikshu Jagdish Kashyap; he was dean of the faculty of Buddhism in the University of Varanasi, a very learned man. But when I said this to him, he became a permanent enemy. I said, "What happened to the heights and to the depths?"
People are much more concerned with names. If I say to you that "Zarathustra said this," you listen with great attention. The very name Zarathustra looks so ancient, so prophetic, that he must have said something... and trust me, I know him, he is a poor guy. But don't tell this to anybody! This is just a private conversation with you. [....]
So don't be disturbed. If you want I can go on talking about any historical, mythological, fictitious figure; I can create my own fictions. Do you think all the stories that I have told you have happened? They should have happened! -- they are so significant. But if I tell you that I am just making up this story, you will not be very interested; you will not be flying high.
Once in a while I want you to fly high, but it is just an imaginary flight. Really, I want you to be one day actually on those heights but for that, practical work is needed, pragmatic work is needed.
Just for you to fly a little high....
-Osho, "The Golden Future, #9, Q2"
|
I say to you,
Don’t ask anyone for advice
"I don’t give any advice. And I say to you, don’t ask anyone for advice either. You ask advice only because you are not courageous enough to experience on your own. The moment you ask for advice, you become a slave. And if you follow it, you have committed suicide. I don’t want you to commit suicide. I want you to grow higher and higher into life, into love, into light."
- Osho, “From The False to The Truth”
A meditator needs no personal guidance.
"My own suggestion is to drop the idea of personal guidance. [....] To me, to be natural, to be spontaneous is enough. All guides have been misguides. [....] Nobody needs personal guidance, because all personal guidance is a beautiful name for dependence on somebody and he is going to distort you. [....]
A meditator needs no personal guidance. A meditator, on the contrary, needs only one thing: the atmosphere of meditation. He needs other meditators; he needs to be surrounded by other meditators. [....]
Never ask for advice, because everybody is so unique and so different that there has never been any person like you before, nor is there going to be another person like you again. So really, no guidelines for you exist. [....]
I am not a counselor. Never even for a single moment in my life have I thought that somebody should be according to my ideas. I share my ideas, I share my experiences. [....]
My whole teaching is: Don't commit spiritual suicide.
You don't need anybody else to guide you, because whoever guides you will guide you wrongly. He cannot know your nature and he cannot look into your future. He has no eyes, and there is no possibility. How can you see in a seed the flowers that will come one day years after? All that can be done is that the seed should be given a right soil -- not right advice. Not that you have to be a lotus, or you have to be a rose.
Care should be taken that the seed is not destroyed, that when small leaves start growing out of it, they are not destroyed. That's the function of the master: not to guide you but just to protect you when you need protection, when you are so fragile, so new. Just growing, the new leaves coming out of the earth, entering into an unknown world where strong winds blow, heavy rain falls, there is every possibility that you may be destroyed.
The function of the master is not to lead you. The function of the master is to help you, to protect you, but only to the moment when you can stand on your own. Then slowly, slowly detach himself from you so that you can dance alone in the sky under the stars in your full glory."
-Osho, "The Invitation, #12"
From my words you can get burned
From my words you can get burned, but you will not be able to find any kind of theology, dogmatism. You can find a way to live but not a dogma to preach. You can find a rebellious quality to be imbibed, but you will not find a revolutionary theme to be organized.
My words are not only on fire.
I am putting gunpowder also here and there, which will go on exploding for centuries. I am putting more than needed -- I never take any chances. Almost each sentence is going to create trouble for anybody who wants to organize a religion around me.
Yes, you can have a loose community, a commune. Remember the word loose: everybody independent, everybody free to live his own way, to interpret me in his own way, to find whatsoever he wants to find. He can find the way he wants to live -- and everybody unto himself.
There is no need for somebody to decide what my religion is. I am leaving it open-ended. You can work out a definition for yourself, but it is only for yourself; and that too you will have to continuously change. As you understand me more and more, you will have to change it. You cannot go on holding it like a dead thing in your hand. You will have to change it, and it will go on changing you simultaneously.
-Osho, “From Personality to Individuality, #8“
You may start at first by just hearing my words
In my work, neither the master does anything nor the disciple -- but things happen. There is no doing on either side, but things happen. The master goes on creating devices without interfering with the individuals.
For example, I am talking to you. It is possible that you may start at first by just hearing my words, and then hearing my silences -- first the visible, and second, feeling the invisible presence.
This is only a device. I am not doing anything to you in particular. I am just available here and if by chance, by coincidence, you open your eyes, you wake up, you see something, you hear something, you feel something and it starts working on you.... I am not doing anything, you are not doing anything, but something starts happening.
-Osho, “The Osho Upanishad, #42, Q3”
Forget all about the words and their meaning.
Leave it for foolish people who only collect words
Question 2
So many times i can't understand your words because the sound of your words showers on me, your sound strikes me with energy, filling me, and as a shock, i feel in my spinal cord thrills, waves and vibrations. should i be carefully aware for the meaning of your words?
Then there is no need to be careful about the meaning of the words; that will be a disturbance. If you feel in tune with my sound, THERE is the meaning. If you feel you are being showered with a new energy, if you feel thrilled, pulsating in a new way you never knew before, if you feel a sort of new dimension arising in your being because of the sound of my words, then forget all about me. Then there is no need; you have got the meaning already. That showering is the meaning, that thrill in the spine is the meaning, that vibration that cleanses you is the meaning. Then there is no need to worry about the ordinary meaning of the words. Then you are getting a higher meaning, then you are reaching a higher altitude of meaning. Then you are really getting the content and not the container. The meaning of my words is just the container.
If this is happening to you, then my words are no longer words to you; they have become existential. Then they are alive, then they have become a transfer. Then something is transpiring between my energy and your energy. Then there is happening something like what Bauls call love.
Allow it. Forget all about the words and their meaning. Leave it for foolish people who only collect words and are never in contact with the content. The words are just like shells: hidden behind them, I am sending you great messages. Those messages cannot be understood by the intellect, those messages have to be decoded by your total being. That is what is happening -- the vibration, the pulsation, the thrill, the showering of a new energy -- your total being is decoding. This is real listening. This is really to be in contact with me, to be in my presence. [....]
When I talk to you my words are like caged eagles; my words are in a prison. If you really listen to me, you will drop the cage and you will release the eagle. That is what is happening...the thrill. Then the freedom is released; then you become the eagle -- and higher and higher you rise. The earth is left very far behind. You can forget all about it. The ordinary is left very far behind. The shell is left, the container is left, and you have the whole sky open to you; you, your wings, and the sky, and there is no end to it. The eternal pilgrimage has started.
Forget all about words and their meanings, otherwise you will be more concerned with the cage and you will not be able to release the eagle within you.
-Osho, “The Beloved, Vol 1, #10, Q2“
You have to forget my words;
you have to remember the essence
Question 6
Osho,
I go on forgetting your words. what should i do?
Who has told you to remember my words? That's how it should be, exactly, precisely. You have to forget my words; you have to remember the essence, not the words. And the essence need not be remembered, it has only to be understood.
If you are listening to me rightly you need not remember what I have said. In fact, if you try to remember it you will miss the whole point. Then the words will be there and the essence will be missing. Go on forgetting the words otherwise you will be burdened by them, and you will lose track.
You just try to understand. When I say 'try to understand' I mean just be silently, passively, alertly listening. Don't judge and don't argue and don't decide whether I am saying something which is right or wrong. Just listen silently. If you become too worried whether I am saying something which is right or wrong then you are not listening. I am not saying that you should believe what I am saying, no. Just listen. And this is the beauty of pure listening -- if you can listen purely, whatsoever is true will get into your heart and whatsoever is untrue will drop. There is no need to be worried about it. The heart knows. It is almost natural. It is like if you are being given blood, your blood will refuse it if it is not of its own kind. A certain kind of blood will be needed, the same number of blood will be needed. If you have been operated upon and some skin has been transplanted, just anybody's skin will not do. Your body will reject it. The body knows. Your owl skin will have to be removed from some other part of the body then the body will accept it.
That's how it is. Truth is the food of the heart. When the truth is heard the heart simply accepts it. It is not a question of deciding whether it is true or not -- this is the way of the mind. The mind is continuously worried about whether it is true or not true, and because of this worry the mind earl never listen. The mild is deaf. It pretends to listen but it never listens. You just put your mind aside, let your heart listen to me, let your heart be diffused into me, let your heart be in tune with me. And if there is something true it will get home. If it is not you need not worry, it will disappear.
You need not be worried about my words. Be worried about me, not about my words. I am not propounding a philosophy here, I am simply giving myself to you.
-Osho, “Zen: The Path of Paradox, Vol 1, #10“
Don't get puzzled by my words.
Find me in my words!
The man of understanding will not become so obsessed with words. Words are not so meaningful as you think.
And you should not give very solid meanings to words. A solid word is a dead word. The word has to remain fluid. It has to change according to circumstances. It is a flow. But people use words like frozen things. And I can understand their difficulty, because the ordinary life will become impossible if words are not frozen. It will become impossible to deal with it. But as far as the higher world, the higher flights into the timeless, into the spaceless, are concerned, words are just very arbitrary.
So, please, don't get puzzled by my words. Find me in my words! Forget the words. Find me and forget the words. Use the words as approaches towards me; don't be hooked by them. Then they will not puzzle you and they will not confuse you.
-Osho, “The Perfect Master, Vol 2, #7, Q3“
Knowledge is not wisdom.
People go on collecting knowledge and get mixed up and start thinking that this knowledge is wisdom. Knowledge is not wisdom.
Wisdom comes through your growth of consciousness, and knowledge comes through collecting from the scriptures, from learned people, and making some sort of a system. But you remain the same; you don't go through any transformation.
Hence, the first sutra: NOT TO LET GO OF WISDOM IS STUPIDITY. Just drop your wisdom and with your wisdom gone, your stupidity will also be gone. If you cling to your knowledge, which you think is wisdom, you will remain stupid forever.
-Osho, “Bodhidharma: The Greatest Zen Master, #11“
I Teach ;
|
I Teach one world
- A new synthesis between East and West.
I Teach Zorba Buddha
- My message to humanity is: Create a new man
I Teach the Unique individual.
- Accept yourself, Love yourself, Respect yourself
- Every individual is unique and needs to be respected in his uniqueness.
- Nobody is superior, nobody is inferior, but nobody is equal either. People are simply unique, incomparable. You are you, I am I.
I Teach a religion which is religionless
- A kind of religiousness I teach. Prayer I teach, meditation I teach, love I teach; but no theology, no dogmas, no doctrine, no scripture.
I Teach you to be selfish.
- To live without sacrificing anything.
- I teach you to be selfish - which is natural.
I Teach you rejoicing, not renunciation
- To be life-affirmative.
- I teach affirmation of life, no escape, no condemnation but rejoicing in all that is
I Teach you doubt
- Doubt makes you assert your individuality.
- To me there is nothing greater than doubt, because it can lead you to everything that is true. There is nothing more criminal than belief, because it is going to lead you into more and more lies.
I Teach you freedom.
- Never, never for a single moment lose your freedom. And never destroy anybody else's freedom.
I Teach Love and Meditation
- Love is the passage to go out, meditation is the passage to go in.
- Love and meditation are the two basic essentials. Meditation means to be oneself, and love means to share one's own being with somebody else. Meditation gives you the treasure, and love helps you to share it. These are the two most basic things, and all else is non-essential.
- This is the ultimate polarity: meditation means the art of being alone, and love means the art of being together.
I Teach you the mystery of life
- Life blooms only when it is rooted in the mysterious
I Teach acceptance, not change.
- I would like you just to be the one that you are. There is no need to go anywhere and to be somebody else. All that is needed to be blissful is already given you. It has already happened
I Teach totality
- Not perfection, not perfectionist ideals
- Be total in whatsoever you are doing but don't bother about perfection. Once perfection starts haunting you, you will never be at peace, you will never be at home. You will constantly create a nightmarish life. You will create hell for yourself because everything will look imperfect; nothing will be satisfying. And this idea has been forced into the human consciousness so deep}y that it is creating havoc.
I Teach you responsibility.
- Maturity is accepting the responsibility of being oneself, whatsoever the cost. Risking all to be oneself, that's what maturity is all about
I Teach you to be alone
- The real lover is one who knows how to be alone... who not only knows how to be alone but who celebrates his aloneness.
I Teach you disobedience.
- Obedience needs nothing - no intelligence, no guts. Obedience needs nothing. Disobedience needs everything,
I Teach you experience.
- I want you to become existential, not philosophical. And the only way to be existential is love.
- Each mistake makes you more intelligent
I Teach rebellion!
- Come out of the masses. Stand alone like a lion and live your life according to your own light. Find the light and it will show you the path.
I Teach intelligence.
- It is only through intelligence that one can become aware.
- Enlightenment is always through surrender, but surrender is achieved through intelligence.
I Teach richness, luxury, affluence.
- I am not a worshiper of poverty, because poverty is the source of all sins. I would like the whole earth to become richer and richer, more affluent and more affluent. I would like everybody to have all that technology can provide now. Nobody need live starved, beggarly, dirty.
I Teach my people to live intensely, totally, wholly.
- I am not an ascetic. I am living herenow in paradise. And I teach you also to live herenow in paradise: this very earth the paradise, this very body the Buddha. I am not against life's pleasures; they are beautiful. I am not against all that life can shower on you. Its beauties, its joys, its blessings have to be received gratefully. I am not in any way condemnatory of anything
I Teach you laughter.
- I am against all seriousness.
- Seriousness supports the ego, seriousness is the climate in which the ego can thrive. Nonseriousness is the death of the ego.
I Teach this earth.
- I teach love for the world. Love this earth - it is really beautiful. it is utter splendour. Love from the smallest, the dewdrop, to the greatest star. Let this whole existence be your love object, let it be your beloved.
I Teach blissfulness
- Be blissful -- whatsoever the cost.
I Teach you the immediate
- Living moment to moment, without carrying the past.
- I teach you how to live here and now.
I Teach the commune
- Not the family. The commune is the alternative to the family. The family conditions the child in the first place. Secondly, it is the cause of all kinds of insanities.
I Teach creativity
- To be creativity means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty
I Teach non-doing
- With doing comes misery -- with non-doing there is happiness. And that's my whole teaching: don't do anything. Let things happen -- don't be the doer. Don't think much of the past, of the future. Don't think much -- be in the present.
- I am a non-doer. And that is my whole teaching to you, that even while you are doing something you remain a non-doer. Doing is not against your being a non-doer. The non-doer is your witnessing self.
I Teach no-mind
- Only no-mind can be without any duality, because it is empty. The no-mind is choicelessness. The no-mind is pure awareness. It is just the empty sky.
- Meditation means how to create the state of no-mindedness
|
|
