Question 1:

Osho,

Tao is greater than mind. Then why do we keep choosing the mind instead of flowing with the Tao?

 

 

Prem Radha, It is precisely because of that. Tao is so vast that one is afraid to lose one’s identity in it. We are like dewdrops and Tao is like an ocean. The dewdrop is afraid, very much frightened to get closer to the ocean – one step in the ocean and he will be lost forever. He wants to cling to his identity; howsoever small, howsoever tiny, howsoever mediocre, but it is HIS identity, it is HIS personality. He is only because he is separate from the ocean.

 

That’s the way of the ego: the ego can exist only in separation. Separation creates misery because you become uprooted from the whole, but one is ready to suffer misery rather than to die and disappear into absolute bliss. People only talk about bliss, nobody really wants to be blissful. They talk about bliss as if they can remain the same and bliss can be added to them as they are. They want bliss also to be a kind of new possession so that their ego can feel more enhanced, more defined, more precious, more enriched.

 

But as the ego becomes more defined you become smaller. As you become smaller you become miserable because you start feeling suffocated, you start feeling closed from all the sides. Your prison cell becomes smaller and smaller – even to exist in it becomes impossible. But people are ready to suffer all kinds of misery, they are ready to sacrifice everything for the ego.

 

That’s why, Prem Radha, we cling to the mind. Mind is nothing but the process of the ego, the functioning of the ego. Mind is the boundary between you and the whole. It is a wall, not a bridge – no-mind is the bridge. Hence the emphasis of all the awakened ones to move from mind to no-mind. The ego can exist only if you remain in constant fight; a continuous struggle is needed, because it is a false entity. You have to maintain it; it is not something spontaneous, it is not something natural that can exist on its own. It needs competitiveness, it needs conflict; it needs all kinds of jealousies, possessiveness, hatred, war. It can exist only with all that is wrong.

 

Ego represents the unhealthy state of our being. It is assertive. To relax is against the ego, to be non-ambitious is against the ego. Just a moment of relaxation is enough and you will have the taste of Tao, because it is always there, it is never lost. You go on creating the walls, but all walls crumble in a split second. Hence, wherever it happens, in whatsoever situation it happens, you become frightened of that situation.

 

People have become afraid of love for the simple reason because love is the most potential force in existence – when the window in Tao opens on its own accord. Love means the wall disappears, the wall is no more, and the bridge arises. Of course it happens only between two persons, but even to let it happen between two persons gives you such joy, such orgasmic glow, such tremendous experience of the splendor of life that the ego is afraid.

 

The ego has created false substitutes for love. The ego is perfectly ready for marriage, but not for love. Marriage is a legal institution, a social institution produced by the cunning mind, by the cunning priests, by the vested interests. Love is natural. Love is dangerous for the ego. If love is allowed you will start tasting little bits of Tao, but that taste will create in you a longing to have more of it. It is so sweet, it is so exquisite, it is so beautiful! Then you will be ready to sacrifice all nonsense that goes with the ego. You will be ready to disappear into the whole.

 

It is love that will give you the courage to take the ultimate jump – first with a single person… But once the experience is there you cannot step back, you will have to go ahead; you cannot go back. First it is with a single person, but you cannot stop the process now. It is so ecstatic that if it is so beautiful with one single person, how much it will be with the whole…!

 

A Buddha is one who is in an orgasmic relationship with the whole. Tao is the ultimate orgasm, not between two individuals but between the part and the whole, between the dewdrop and the ocean. But the dewdrop has to disappear, but it loses nothing. Our all fears are unfounded; they are rooted in ignorance, but ego exploits the ignorance. Hence all societies have distorted the natural flow of love, because it can open the floodgates and then it will be uncontrollable. It is better to give people a false substitute. Marriage is that substitute. Hitherto, for five thousand years, man has lived with marriage and misery. You are not allowed to experience beauty. Your minds are from the very beginning distorted, channelized towards utilitarian ends. You are taught mathematics, you are taught geography, history.

 

Now history is all bunk, utterly useless. Why go on reading about the ancient idiots? For what purpose? It is better to forget all about them. Why bother about Genghis Khan, Tamburlaine, Nadir Shah, Alexander, Napoleon? For what? What these people have given to human consciousness?

 

They are like poisons; they have stopped in every possible way human progress, human evolution. And in your history books you will not find names of Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu, Ko Hsuan – not even in the footnotes. And these are the people who are the real foundations of human consciousness, these are the people who are the real hope. But you will not find their names even mentioned; on the contrary, historians will always create doubt in you whether Jesus ever existed, whether Krishna is a historical person or just a myth, whether Mahavira was a reality or just a fiction; did Buddha really walk on the earth or has been a projection of our dreams, of our desires?

 

Sigmund Freud says that these people are wish-fulfillments. We want that there should be people like these, but they have not really existed and even if they have existed they have not existed the way we have described them. That was the cause of the rift between Freud and his disciple Carl Gustav Jung; the rift was of tremendous significance. Freud is very pragmatic; Jung is far more poetic. Jung has tremendous trust in mythology and has no trust in history. And I absolutely agree with Jung about this.

 

All the mythologies of the world are closer to truth than your so-called histories. But we teach our children history, not mythology. We teach them arithmetic, not poetry. And the way we teach a little bit of poetry – we teach it in such a way that they become so fed up and bored with it that once the student leaves the university he will never read Shakespeare again, he will never look at Milton’s works again. The very names of Shakespeare, Milton, Kalidas, Baubhuti will create a kind of nausea in him. The professors have tortured him so much behind these names that he is finished forever.

 

His interest has not been encouraged, he has not become more poetic; he has lost all interest in poetry. He has not been supported to be creative, he has not been helped to learn how to poetize. The scholars are so clever in destroying all that is beautiful by their commentaries, interpretations, by their so-called learning. They make everything so heavy that even poetry with them becomes non-poetic.

 

I myself never attended any poetry class in the university. I was called again and again by the head of the department, that ’You attend other classes, why you don’t come to the poetry classes?” I said, ”Because I want to keep my interest in poetry alive. I love poetry, that’s why. And I know perfectly well that your professors are absolutely unpoetic; they have never known any poetry in their life. I know them perfectly well. The man who teaches poetry in the university goes for a morning walk with me every day. I have never seen him looking at the trees, listening to the birds, seeing the beautiful sunrise.”

 

And in the university where I was, the sunrise and the Sunset were something tremendously beautiful. The university was on a small hillock surrounded by small hills all around. I have never come across… I have traveled all over this country; I have never seen more beautiful sunsets and sunrises anywhere. For some unknown mysterious reason Saugar University seems to have a certain situation where clouds become so colorful at the time of sunrise and sunset that even a blind man will become aware that something tremendously beautiful is happening.

 

But I have never seen the professor who teaches poetry in the university to look at the sunset, to stop even for a single moment. And whenever he sees me watching the sunset or the sunrise or the trees or the birds, he asks me, ”Why you are sitting here? You have come for a morning walk – do your exercise!”

 

I told him that, ”This is not exercise for me. You are doing exercise; with me it is a love affair.” And when it rains he never comes. And whenever it rains I will go and knock at his door and tell him, ”Come on!”

 

He will say, ”But it is raining!”

 

I said, ”That’s the most beautiful time to go for a walk, because the streets are absolutely empty. And to go for a walk without any umbrella while it is raining is so beautiful, is so poetic!”

 

He thinks I am mad, but a man who has never gone in the rains under the trees cannot understand poetry. I told to the head of the department that, ”This man is not poetic; he destroys everything. He is so scholarly and poetry is such an unscholarly phenomenon that there is no meeting ground between the two.”

 

Universities destroy people’s interest and love for poetry. They destroy your whole idea of how a life should be; they make it more and more a commodity. They teach you how to earn more, but they don’t teach you how to live deeply, how to live totally. And these are the ways from where you can get glimpses of Tao. These are the ways from where small doors and windows open into the ultimate. You are told the value of money but not the value of a rose flower. You are told the value of being a prime minister or a president but not the value of being a poet, a painter, a singer, a dancer. Those things are thought to be for crazy people. And they are the ways from where one slips slowly into Tao.

 

Prem Radha, Tao is certainly greater than mind – Tao is greater than everything. Tao is God, Tao is the whole. But we are very much afraid of losing ourselves, and we keep on feeding our egos in thousand-and-one ways.

 

We are doing two things in our life: closing all windows and doors to the sun, to the moon, to the stars, to the wind, to the rain, to the birds, to the trees, to love, to beauty, to truth. We are closing all the windows, we are creating a grave around ourselves with no doors and no windows. We are becoming Leibnitz monads, windowless capsules. Our life is encapsulated. That is one part that we go on doing. And the second part is to go on making the walls thicker and thicker. That is done by competition, ambition: have more and more; whether you need or not, that is not the point at all. Do you think the richest people in the world need more money now? They have more than they can use, far more. But the desire for more does not stop, because it is not a question that they need money; the question is to go on making the walls of the ego thicker and thicker. They are continuously in competition with each other. Competition creates conflict. Conflict keeps your ego alive.

 

A beatnik was boppin’ down the sidewalk just a-poppin’ his fingers and feeling good, when a Jaguar pulled up at the intersection.

 

”Hey, daddy cool, wanna drag?” said the beatnik.

 

”Sure,” laughed the sportscar driver, amused.

 

The light turned green and off they shot, the beatnik in the lead, running like hell. The driver was amazed! He looked at his speedometer: twenty, thirty, not until forty miles per hour did he finally overtake the beatnik.

 

Then he looked in his rearview mirror and noticed that the beatnik had suddenly disappeared. Concerned, he went back to find him lying in the ditch all bruised and battered.

 

”Hey,” said the man, ”you were doing great: I could not believe it – what happened?”

 

”Like man,” groaned the beatnik, ”I mean, you ever had a sneaker blow out on you at forty-five miles an hour?”

 

Prem Radha, one has to decide one thing once forever: whether one wants to live the life of the ego, which is more like death than like life, or one wants to live the life of Tao, which is death in a sense and resurrection in another sense. It is both a crucifixion and a resurrection. The dewdrop disappears, but it becomes the ocean. It loses nothing, it only gains.

 

Sannyas means that you have decided to live the life of Tao, that you will not cling to the mind, that you will let it go, that you will not nourish it anymore, that you will not support it in any possible way, that you will go on finding how you have been supporting it and withdrawing your support. When all supports are withdrawn it falls on its own accord. And the moment the ego falls and disappears is the greatest moment in life. That’s the moment of enlightenment, the moment of awakening, the moment when you become a Christ or a Buddha or a Krishna.

 

- Osho, “Tao: The Golden Gate, Vol 2, #6, Q1″