Question 1:

Osho,

What is the source of your infinite spring of giving?

 

 

The source is always the same. We are just like rays of the same sun.

 

The source of existence is what we call God; it is better to call it the ultimate source.

 

From there everything comes, and to there everything returns.

 

But the man who starts thinking himself separate from the source is bound to become miserly. Not knowing that he is part of the source, he becomes very small, afraid to give.

 

Then his mathematics is: if you give you will have less; if you go on giving, one day you will be a beggar.

 

Not knowing about the infinite source is the cause of our miserliness. And to be a miser is to be in misery, because the person who cannot give becomes incapable of receiving. The person who cannot give becomes closed -- he is afraid to give. He has to be very cautious to keep his windows and doors closed, tightly closed, so nothing escapes from him. But these are the same doors from where things come. If you keep your doors closed, the sunrays will not reach you, the wind will not come to you; you will not be able to see the stars and the flowers, and the fragrance will not float into your being. The miserly person is bound to be in misery -- he is cut off. He lives as if he were a tree without roots, ungrounded, uprooted. His life is nothing but a process of slow dying; he does not know anything of abundant life.

 

Jesus says to his disciples, "Come, follow me and I will give you abundant life." What does he mean by abundant life? He simply means that if your ego can be surrendered, if you can drop the idea of being separate from existence, in that very dropping you become open -- open to give, open to receive. And the ultimate miracle is: the more you give, the more you receive; the more you give, the more you become worthy of receiving.

 

It is like a well. You can lock up the well, you can cover it up in fear -- maybe in the coming year there are not going to be any rains. It is better, advisable, to preserve the water in your well, to prevent your neighbors, to prevent everybody from drinking or taking water from your well. You can keep the well closed, but when the time of need arises you will be surprised: the well water will no longer be worth drinking, it will have become poisoned. And, moreover, the well will have lost its springs.

 

If you go on drawing water from the well, the springs go on feeding it. The more you draw the water, the bigger the springs which go on opening up. Your well is just a small window in the ocean, a faraway window; it is connected with the ocean. If you create a vacuum in the well, if you go on emptying it, then the waters will be rushing in from all sides to fill it up. Nature abhors a vacuum -- physically, spiritually, on every dimension and plane.

 

Be empty, and you will be surprised: the emptier you are, the more full you will be.

 

Hence, by giving you don't have less; by giving you have more. By giving you don't become a beggar; by giving you become an emperor.

 

Gautam the Buddha came to visit Vaishali, one of the big, beautiful capitals of those days. The king of Vaishali was very egoistic: he was not willing to go to receive Buddha in his capital.

 

His chief minister was an old man his father's age. He had looked after the king's affairs for his whole life since he was just a child, because when the king was a child his father had died. He was almost like a father to him, and the king had great respect for the old man. The old man said, "If you don't go to receive Buddha, then take my resignation!"

 

The king was puzzled, he could not believe it. Why this insistence? He said, "Why should a king go to receive a beggar?"

 

The old man laughed and he said, "It is just the opposite! You are the beggar and he is the king, and the beggar has to go to receive the king. He is the king because he has given; he is the king because he goes on giving. The more he has given the more he has. Either see the point or here is my resignation, because I cannot serve a fool!"

 

The king understood the point. He went, he fell at the feet of Buddha and he said, "Excuse me, forgive me! I had always thought that you were just a beggar; now I can see that I am a beggar because I go on clinging to whatsoever small things I have got. By not clinging you have declared your real power, your mastery."

 

Clinging shows that you are not really the master but a slave.

 

The king asked Buddha, "Bless me, so that one day I can also become an emperor like you."

 

This poem by Robert Graves is beautiful. Poets come far closer to the truth than the philosophers, the theologians, the priests, the scholars, the so-called learned people. Poets are a little bit crazy; that's why they can have a few glimpses of the beyond. They are not logical; hence they can comprehend something which is bigger than logic. Theologians, philosophers, scholars -- they are just fools hiding their foolishness. And it is because of these so-called learned people that the world has become so poor physically, spiritually, in every way.

 

Just the other day I was reading a news item from Pakistan. It says that great scholars of morality are nowadays busy banishing the word ISHQ, love, from prose and poetry prescribed for university students in Pakistan.

 

Ishq is far more significant than the word "love." Love is only one of the dimensions of ishq. "Love" means of the world. "Ishq" has two aspects: either it can be an ordinary love, the love between a man and a woman, or it can be a love between man and existence.

 

Banishing the word, the very word "ishq," from all prose and poetry prescribed for the university courses is such a foolish idea. And these are the great scholars of morality! I was puzzled because if you banish the word "ishq," then particularly in the language that is spoken in Pakistan -- that is the official language of Pakistan, Urdu -- there will not be anything left at all, because the whole of Urdu poetry and prose is centered on the word "ishq." All the great poets, from Mir and Ghalib to Iqbal, will have to be banished. In fact, no other language of the world has such beautiful poetry as Urdu. Urdu is tremendously expressive. In just two small lines, Urdu can say more than any other language can manage to say in a whole page. It is very telegraphic, and it is full of love.

 

Banish the word "love" and you banish all the great poets, all the great mystics. You will have to banish all the Sufis because they talk about love. And they are not only banishing poetry and prose devoted to love, even the word love, "ishq," has to be removed -- even the mention of the word!

 

These are the fools who have been dominating humanity for centuries. They would like to destroy even the possibility of love. There is a certain logic in it, because humanity up to now has existed in a very insane way. It has continuously been preparing for war.

 

There are only two periods in history: either people are fighting -- that is war time, hot war -- or people are preparing for the war that is going to happen sooner or later. You can call it peace time, but it is not peace time at all; it is only a gap between two wars. It is needed because unless you prepare, how are you going to fight? It is cold war.

 

The whole of human history up to now can be divided into two periods: hot war and cold war. And because man has been continuously fighting, destroying, murdering, there is no possibility of growing roses of love. We have to make factories for war; we have to create soldiers, not lovers.

 

My sannyasins are lovers, not soldiers.

 

They herald a new beginning.

 

To me, love is synonymous with God.

 

These words of Graves are tremendously significant:

 

THOSE WHO DARE GIVE NOTHING ARE LEFT WITH LESS THAN NOTHING....

 

They look a little crazy because they are illogical, they are unmathematical -- but they are absolutely true. They transcend ordinary economics and its laws; they indicate a meta- economics.

 

THOSE WHO DARE GIVE NOTHING ARE LEFT WITH LESS THAN NOTHING....

 

Beware! While the time is there, give, give as much as you can, give whatsoever you can.

 

Sing a song, share a joke, dance! Give whatsoever you can give. It costs you nothing, but it will bring you more and more joys.

 

Existence goes on repaying you tremendously. Whatsoever you give to existence, it returns a thousandfold; it comes back to you. You give one flower, and a thousand flowers shower on you. Don't be clingers. If you really want to be rich, if you want to have an enriched inner world, then learn the art of giving.

 

THOSE WHO DARE GIVE NOTHING ARE LEFT WITH LESS THAN NOTHING; DEAR HEART, YOU GIVE ME EVERYTHING, WHICH LEAVES YOU MORE THAN EVERYTHING -- THOUGH THOSE WHO DARE GIVE NOTHING MIGHT JUDGE IT LEFT YOU NOTHING.

 

GIVING YOU EVERYTHING, I TOO, WHO ONCE HAD NOTHING, AM LEFT WITH MORE THAN EVERYTHING AS GIFTS FOR THOSE WITH NOTHING WHO NEED, IF NOT OUR EVERYTHING, AT LEAST A LOVING SOMETHING.

 

I don't have any other source than you have, but you are not ready to accept that source; it goes against your ego. You want to be an island unto yourself, and that is your misery, that is your poverty. Your soul will remain undernourished. You will not know how beautiful existence is, how blissful every moment can be, what an ecstasy it is just to breathe and to be.

 

Give, give for giving's sake.

 

Share for sharing's sake.

 

Don't ask anything in return, because then it becomes a business -- and love is not a business. In fact, there is no need to be worried whether anything returns or not, because the very giving is such an ecstasy that who cares whether anything returns or not? Be obliged to the person who receives anything from you. Don't think that he has to be obliged to you. That is wrong, that is absolutely wrong. That is still clinging to the miser's mind.

 

You can be as vast as God himself, but your vastness is possible only if you start giving.

 

And it is not a question of what you give; just a smile or just a gesture of love is enough.

 

It costs nothing to be loving, to be kind, and still it brings you a great harvest -- thousands of flowers start blossoming in your being.

 

Chandrikanta Bharti, you ask me, "What is the source of your infinite spring of giving?"

 

I am not the source, I am not at all, because the more you are, the less is the flow from the source; the less you are, the more the flow from the source.

 

When YOU are not at all, then you are just a hollow bamboo which becomes a flute on the lips of God. Then the song starts flowing. And to sing the song of God, to allow God to sing a song through you, is the greatest joy of life.

 

-Osho, “Come Come Yet Again Come, #3, Q1”