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OSHO: INNOCENCE & BEAUTY

Question – Beloved Osho, What is Innocence, What is Beauty?

Osho – Ram Fakeer, to live in the moment is innocence, to live without the past is innocence, to live without conclusions is innocence, to function out of the state of not knowing is innocence. And the moment you function out of such tremendous silence which is not burdened by any past, out of such tremendous stillness which knows nothing, the experience that happens is beauty.

Whenever you feel beauty — in the rising sun, in the stars, in the flowers, or in the face of a woman or a man — wherever and whenever you feel beauty, watch. And one thing will always be found: you had functioned without mind, you had functioned without any conclusion, you had simply functioned spontaneously.

The moment gripped you, and the moment gripped you so deeply that you were cut off from the past. And when you are cut off from the past you are cut off from the future automatically, because past and future are two aspects of the same coin; they are not separate, and they are not separable either. You can toss a coin: sometimes it is heads, sometimes it is tails, but the other part is always there, hiding behind.

Past and future are two aspects of the same coin. The name of the coin is mind. When the whole coin is dropped, that dropping is innocence. Then you don’t know who you are, then you don’t know what is; there is no knowledge. But you are, existence is, and the meeting of these two is-nesses — the small is-ness of you, meeting with the infinite is-ness of existence — that meeting, that merger, is the experience of beauty.

Innocence is the door; through innocence you enter into beauty. The more innocent you become, the more existence becomes beautiful. The more knowledgeable you are, the more and more existence is ugly, because you start functioning from conclusions, you start functioning from knowledge.

The moment you know, you destroy all poetry. The moment you know, and think that you know, you have created a barrier between yourself and that which is. Then everything is distorted. Then you don’t hear with your ears, you translate. Then you don’t see with your eyes, you interpret. Then you don’t experience with your heart, you think that you experience. Then all possibility of meeting with existence in immediacy, in intimacy, is lost. You have fallen apart.

This is the original sin. And this is the whole story, the biblical story of Adam and Eve eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Once they have eaten the fruit of knowledge they are driven out of paradise. Not that somebody drove them out, not that God ordered them to get out of paradise, they themselves fell. Knowing they were no more innocent, knowing they were separate from existence, knowing they were egos… knowing created such a barrier, an iron barrier.

You ask me, Ram Fakeer, “What is innocence?”
Vomit knowledge! The fruit of the tree of knowledge has to be vomited. That’s what meditation is all about. Throw it out of your system: it is poison, pure poison. Live without knowledge, knowing that “I don’t know.” Function out of this state of not knowing and you will know what beauty is.

Socrates knows what beauty is, because he functions out of this state of not knowing. There is a knowledge that does not know, and there is an ignorance that knows. Become ignorant like Socrates and then a totally different quality enters your being: you become a child again, it is a rebirth. Your eyes are full of wonder again, each and everything that surrounds surprises. The bird on the wing, and you are thrilled! The sheer joy of seeing the bird on the wing — and it is as if you are on the wing.

The dewdrop slipping from a lotus leaf and the morning sun shining on it and creating a small rainbow around it, and the moment is so overwhelming… the dewdrop slipping off the leaf, just on the verge of meeting with the infinite, disappearing into the lake — and it is as if you start slipping, as if your drop starts slipping into the ocean of God.

In the moment of innocence, not knowing, the difference between the observer and the observed evaporates. You are no more separate from that which you are seeing, you are no more separate from that which you are hearing.

Listening to me, right now, you can function in two ways. One is the way of knowledge: chattering inside yourself, judging, evaluating, constantly thinking whether what I am saying is right or wrong, whether it fits with your theories or not, whether it is logical or illogical, scientific or unscientific, Christian or Hindu, whether you can go with it or not, whether you can swallow it or not, a thousand and one thoughts clamoring inside your mind, the inner talk, the inner traffic — this is one way of listening. But then you are listening from so far away that I will not be able to reach you.

I go on trying but I will not be able to reach you. You are really on some other planet: you are not here, you are not now. You are a Hindu, you are a Christian, you are a Mohammedan, you are a communist, but you are not here now. The Bible is there between me and you, or the Koran or the Gita. And I grope for you but I come across the barrier of the Koran, I grope for you but there is a queue of priests between me and you. This is the way of knowledge, this is the way of remaining deaf, of remaining blind, of remaining heart-less.

There is another way of listening too: just listening, nothing between me and you. Then there is immediacy, contact, meeting, communion. Then you don’t interpret, because you are not worried whether it is right or wrong. Nothing is right, nothing is wrong. In that moment of innocence one does not evaluate. There is nothing to evaluate with, no criterion, no a priori knowledge, no already-arrived conclusion, nothing to compare with. You can only listen, just as one listens to the running sound of water in the hills, or a solo flute player in the forest, or somebody playing on the guitar. You listen.

But the person who has come to listen as a critic will not listen. The person who has come simply to listen, not as a critic but to enjoy the moment, will be able to listen to the music. What is there to understand in music? There is nothing to understand. There is something to taste, certainly; there is something to drink and be drunk with, certainly, but what is there to understand?

But the critic, he is not there to taste, he is not there to drink — he is there to understand. He is not listening to the music because he is so full of mathematics. He is continuously criticizing, thinking. He is not innocent; he knows too much, hence he will miss the beauty of it. He may arrive at some stupid conclusions, but he will miss the whole moment. And the moment is momentous!

If you can listen, just listen, if you can see, just see, then this very moment you will know what innocence is. And I am not here only to explain to you what innocence is, I am here to give a taste of it. Have a cup of tea! I offer it to you, each moment it is being offered. Sip it — feel the warmth of the moment and the music of it and the silence and the love that overflows.

Be encompassed with it. Disappear for a moment with your mind — watching, judging, criticizing, believing, disbelieving, for, against. For a moment be just an openness, and you will know what innocence is. And in that you will know what beauty is.
Beauty is an experience that happens in innocence, the flower that blooms in innocence. Jesus says, “Unless you are like small children you will not enter into my kingdom of God.”

Source – Osho Book “The Book of Wisdom”

OSHO - EGO 2

I have told you a story that I love.... A Japanese king went to see Master Lin Chi. He touched the feet of the master and before he could say anything, Lin Chi said, "You idiot! You don't know even manners."
The king completely forgot for what he had come. He pulled out his sword, and Lin Chi laughed. He said, "You have forgotten your question. Now I remind you" -- because the king had sent his prime minister before him to inform Lin Chi that he is coming and his question is, "What is hell and what is heaven?" Now, when the sword was just about to fall on his neck, Lin Chi said, "Wait a minute! This is the door of hell."
The king was shocked. His hand stopped. He put back the sword in the sheath, and Lin Chi said, "That is the door of heaven. You had forgotten your question, but your prime minister told me. It was good that he told me before, otherwise you would have killed a poor man unnecessarily, and you would have suffered hell -- because hell is not anywhere else but in your ego. When I said, `You idiot!' what was the trouble? Why did you become so angry? Who was hurt? It is your ego that was hurt."
If you don't have any ego, it doesn't matter whether somebody says you are an idiot or somebody says you are a genius. It does not matter... they are their opinions. You know who you are -- you don't depend on other people's opinions. Your ego depends. Your ego keeps you a slave of the society in which you live. Ordinarily people think that their ego is something very precious. It is nothing but their slavery.
A man becomes independent and free and individual only when he has dropped his ego, when he is just a silent being, without any idea of "I" -- just a pure silence... THIS silence. And if in this silence you look inward, you will not find any "I," any ego, any self, but just a pure space.
This pure space is your spirituality. This pure space is your enlightenment. This pure space is your ultimate ecstasy.
The ego is preventing everything. Ego is making you a beggar, while you are an emperor of a great empire. Of course, that empire does not belong to the outside world; it is in your own being, but its vastness is as big as the universe itself. Your ego is keeping you encaged, imprisoned. Don't nourish it... and I am saying it because I know it is everybody's possibility not to nourish the ego and to get out into the open sky. Nivedano, learn to laugh at your own ego. The moment you are gripped by your ego, relax and have a good laugh.
And don't be worried... and I know you are crazy, you will not be worried what people think about you. But if you can laugh at your ego, that is the best way to kill it. Don't be serious about your ego, because that is very nourishing food for the ego. That's why all egoists are serious people.
The people who can laugh and enjoy and be playful are never egoists. It is on this particular point that I disagree with all the religions of the world. They have made people's egos very strong by teaching them to be serious about life.
My effort is to erase the tremendous impact of millions of years of religious training. On the one hand they say, "Drop the ego," and on the other hand they don't allow the childlike playfulness.... On the one hand they go on insisting, "Drop the ego," and on the other hand they don't have any sense of humor.
No religion in the world has accepted a sense of humor as one of the fundamental religious qualities. I accept it, and I want that no religion can possibly exist in the future unless it has as a fundamental quality the sense of humor. A religion without laughter... a God who cannot laugh and dance and sing is not worthy of being God. Send him to hell!

OSHO- EGO 1

What is the ego? Are we always functioning through the ego or are there moments when we are free of it?
MAN HAS NO CENTER separate from the center of the whole. There is only one center in existence; the ancients used to call it Tao, dhamma, god. Those words have become old now; you can call it truth. There is only one center of existence. There are not many centers, otherwise the universe would not be really a universe, it would become a multiverse. It is a unity, hence it is called the "universe"; it has only one center.

But this is to be meditated upon a little. That one center is my center, your center, everybody's center. That one center does not mean that you are centerless, that one center simply means that you don't have a separate center. Let us say it in different words. You can make many concentric circles on one center, many circles. You can throw a pebble in a silent lake: one center arises from the fall of the pebble and then many concentric circles arise and they go on spreading to the farthest shore -- millions of concentric circles, but they all have one center.

Each can claim this center as his own. And in a way it is his center, but it is not only his. The ego arises with the claim, "The center is mine, separate. It is not your center, it is my center; it is me." The idea of a separate center is the root of the ego.

When a child is born he comes without a center of his own. For nine months in the mother's womb he functions with the mother's center as his center; he is not separate. Then he is born. Then it is utilitarian to think of oneself as having a separate center; otherwise life will become very difficult, almost impossible.

TO SURVIVE, AND TO STRUGGLE for survival in the fight of life, everybody needs a certain idea of who they are. And nobody has any idea. In fact nobody can ever have any idea, because at the deepest core you are a mystery. You can't have any idea of it. At the deepest core you are not individual, you are universal.

That's why if you ask the Buddha, "Who are you?" he remains silent, he does not answer it. He cannot, because now he is no more separate. He is the whole. But in ordinary life even Buddha has to use the word 'I'. If he feels thirsty he has to say, "I am thirsty. Ananda, bring me a little water, I am thirsty."

To be exactly right, he should say, "Ananda, bring some water. The universal center is a little thirsty." But that will look a little odd. And to say it again and again -- sometimes the universal center is hungry, and sometimes the universal center is feeling a little cold, and sometimes the universal center is tired -- it will be unnecessary, absolutely unnecessary. So he continues to use the old meaningful word 'I'. It is very meaningful; even though a fiction, it is still meaningful. But many fictions are meaningful.

For example, you have a name. That is a fiction. You came without a name, you did not bring a name with you, the name was given to you. Then by constant repetition you start becoming identified with it. You know your name is Rama or Rahim or Krishna. It goes so deep that if all you three thousand sannyasins fall asleep here and somebody comes and calls, "Rama, where are you?" nobody will hear except Rama. Rama will say, "Who has come to disturb my sleep?" Even in sleep he knows his name; it has reached to the unconscious, it has seeped through and through. But it is a fiction.

But when I say it is a fiction I don't mean it is unnecessary. It is necessary fiction, it is useful; otherwise how are you going to address people? If you want to write a letter to somebody, to whom are you going to write?

A SMALL CHILD ONCE wrote a letter to God. His mother was ill and his father had died and they had no money, so he asked God for fifty rupees.

When the letter reached the post office they were at a loss -- what to do with it? Where to send it? It was simply addressed to God. So they opened it. They felt very sorry for the little boy and they decided to collect some money and send it to him. They collected some money -- he had asked for fifty rupees but they could collect only forty.

The next letter came, again addressed to God, and the boy had written, "Dear Sir, please next time when you send the money, send it directly to me, don't send it through the post office. They have taken their commission -- ten rupees!"

It will be difficult if nobody has a name. Although nobody has a name in reality, still, it is a beautiful fiction, helpful. Names are needed for others to call you, 'I' is needed for you to call yourself, but it is just a fiction. If you go deep into yourself you will find the name has disappeared, the idea of 'I' has disappeared; there is left only a pure am-ness, is-ness, existence, being.

And that being is not separate, it is not yours and mine; that being is the being of all. Rocks, rivers, mountains, trees, all are included. It is all-inclusive, it excludes nothing. The whole past, the whole future, this immense universe, everything is included in it. The deeper you go into yourself, the more and more you will find that persons don't exist, that individuals don't exist. Then what exists is a pure universalness. On the circumference we have names, egos, identities. When we jump from the circumference towards the center, all those identities disappear.

THE EGO IS just a useful fiction.

Use it, but don't be deceived by it.

You also ask, "Are we always functioning through the ego or are there moments when we are free of it?"

Because it is a fiction, there are moments when you are free of it. Because it is a fiction, it can remain there only if you go on maintaining it. A fiction needs great maintenance. Truth needs no maintenance, that is the beauty of truth. But a fiction? You have constantly to paint it, to give it a prop here and there, and it is constantly collapsing. By the time you have managed to prop up one side, the other side starts collapsing.

And that's what people go on doing their whole life, trying to make the fiction seem as if it is the truth. Have more money, then you can have a bigger ego, a little more solid than the ego of the poor man. The poor man's ego is thin; he can't afford a thicker ego. Become the prime minister or president of a country, and your ego is puffed up to extremes. Then you don't walk on the earth.

Our whole life, the search for money, power, prestige, this and that, is nothing but a search for new props, a search for new supports, to somehow keep the fiction going. And all the time you know death is coming. Whatsoever you make, death is going to destroy it. But still one goes on hoping against hope -- maybe everybody else dies, but not you.

And in a way it is true. You have always seen other people dying, you have never seen yourself dying, so it seems true also, logical also. This person dies, that person dies, and you never die. You are always there to feel sorry for them, you always go with them to the cemetery to say goodbye, and then you are back home again.

DON'T BE DECEIVED by it, because all those people were doing the same thing. And nobody is an exception. Death comes and destroys the whole fiction of your name, your fame. Death comes and simply effaces all; not even footprints are left. Whatsoever we go on making out of our life is nothing but writing on water -- not even on sand, but on water. You have not even written it, and it is gone. You cannot even read it; before you could have read it, it is gone.

But we go on trying to make these castles in the air. Because it is a fiction, it needs constant maintenance, constant effort, day and night. And nobody can be so careful for twenty-four hours. So sometimes, in spite of you, there are moments when you have a glimpse of reality without the ego functioning as a barrier.

Without the screen of the ego, there are moments -- in spite of you, remember. Everybody once in a while has those moments.

For example, every night when you fall deeply into sleep, and the sleep is so deep that you cannot even dream, then the ego is no more found; all the fictions are gone. Deep dreamless sleep is a kind of small death. In dreams there is a possibility that you may still manage to remember it. People go on managing to maintain their ego even in their dreams.

THAT'S WHY PSYCHOANALYSIS tries to go deep into your dreams, because there is less possibility of you maintaining your identity; more loopholes can be found there. In the daytime you are very alert and on guard, continuously there with a shield to protect your ego. In dreams sometimes you forget. But the people who have been studying dreams say that even in dreams the protection remains; it becomes a little more subtle.

For example, you see in a dream that you have killed your uncle. If you go deep into it you will be surprised: you wanted to kill your father, but you killed your uncle. You deceived yourself, the ego played a game. You are such a good guy, how can you kill your own father? And the uncle looks like your father, although nobody really wants to kill their uncle. Uncles are always nice people -- who wants to kill one's uncle? And who does not want to kill one's own father?

There is bound to be great antagonism between the father and the son. The father has to discipline the son, he has to curb and cut his freedom and order him and force him to obey. And nobody wants to obey and be disciplined and given shoulds and should-nots. The father is so powerful that the son feels jealous. And the greatest jealousy is that the son wants the mother to be completely his own, and this father always comes in between, he is always there. And not only does the son feel jealous of the father, the father also feels jealous of the son because he is always there between his wife and him.

There is an antagonism between the father and the son, between the daughter and the mother -- a natural antagonism, a natural jealousy. The daughter wants to possess the father but the mother is there; she looks like the enemy.

Uncles are very beautiful people, but in a dream you will not kill your own father. Your moral conscience, part of your ego, will prevent you from doing such a thing. You will find a substitute; this is a strategy.

If you minutely observe your dreams you will find many strategies the ego is still trying to play. The ego cannot accept the fact: "I am killing my own father? I am such an obedient son, respectful towards my father, loving him so much -- and I am trying to kill my father?" The ego won't accept the idea; the ego shifts the idea a little bit to the side. The uncle looks almost like the father; kill the uncle, that seems easier. The uncle is only a substitute. This is what goes on even in dreams.

But in dreamless sleep the ego completely disappears, because when there is no thinking, no dreaming, how can you carry a fiction? But dreamless sleep is very small. In eight hours of healthy sleep it is not more than two hours. But only those two hours are revitalizing. If you have two hours of deep dreamless sleep, in the morning you are new, fresh, alive. Life again has a thrill to it, the day seems to be a gift. Everything seems to be new, because you are new. And everything seems to be beautiful, because you are in a beautiful space.

WHAT HAPPENED in these two hours when you fell into deep sleep -- what Patanjali calls sushupti, dreamless sleep? The ego disappeared. And the disappearance of the ego has revitalized you, rejuvenated you. With the disappearance of the ego, even though in deep unconsciousness, you had a taste of god.

Patanjali says there is not much difference between sushupti, dreamless sleep, and samadhi, the ultimate state of buddhahood -- not much difference, although there is a difference. The difference is that of consciousness. In dreamless sleep you are unconscious, in samadhi you are conscious, but the state is the same. You move into god, you move into the universal center. You disappear from the circumference and you go to the center. And just that contact with the center so rejuvenates you.

People who cannot sleep are really miserable people, very miserable people. They have lost a natural source of being in contact with god. They have lost a natural passage into the universal; a door has closed.

THIS CENTURY IS the first century which is suffering from sleeplessness. We have closed all the other doors; now we are closing the last door, the door of sleep. That seems to be the last disconnection from the universal energy -- the greatest danger. And now there are foolish people in the world who are writing books, and with very logical acumen, saying that sleep is not needed at all, it is a wastage of time. They are right, it is a wastage of time. For people who think in terms of money and work, people who are workaholics, for them it is a wastage of time.

Just as there is now Alcoholics Anonymous, soon we will need Workaholics Anonymous. People who are obsessed with work, they have to be constantly on the go. They cannot rest, they cannot relax. Even when they are dying, they will be doing something or other. These people are now suggesting that sleep is unnecessary. They are suggesting that sleep is really an unnecessary hangover from the past. They say that in the past, when there was no electricity and no fire, out of necessity people had to sleep. Now there is no need. It is just an old habit imbibed in millions of years; it has to be dropped. Their idea is that in the future sleep will disappear.

They are even creating new devices so that people can be taught things while they are asleep -- a new kind of education, so time is not wasted. It is the last torture that we are going to invent for children. We invented the school; we are not satisfied with that. Small children, imprisoned in schools....

IN INDIA, SCHOOLS and prisons used to be painted the same way, the same color. And they were the same type of building -- ugly, with no aesthetic sense, with no trees and birds and animals around them, so that children would not be distracted. Otherwise, who will listen to the foolish mathematics teacher when a cuckoo suddenly starts calling from the window? Or a deer comes into the class, and the teacher is teaching you geography or history.... Children will be distracted, so they have to be taken away from nature, away from society. They have to be forced to sit on hard benches for five hours, six hours, seven hours.

This goes on for years together. Almost one third of life is spent in schools. You have made slaves of them. In their remaining life they will remain workaholics; they will not be able to have a real holiday.

Now these people are thinking, why waste the night time? So children can be put into night education. They will be asleep in bed but their ears will be connected to a central school, and in a very very subtle subliminal way, messages will be put into their heads. They will be programmed.

And it has been found that they can learn more easily in this way than they learn while they are awake. Naturally, because when you are awake, howsoever you are protected, a thousand and one things distract your mind. And children are so full of energy that everything attracts them; they are continuously distracted. That is just energy, nothing else; there is no sin in it. They are not dead, that's why they are distracted.

A dog starts barking, somebody starts fighting outside, somebody plays a trick on the teacher or somebody tells a joke -- and there are a thousand and one things which go on distracting them. But when a child is asleep -- and deeply asleep, when dreams are not there -- there is no distraction at all. Now that dreamless sleep can be used as part of pedagogy.

IT SEEMS WE ARE in every way ready to disconnect ourselves from the universal source of being. Now, these children will be the ugliest possible, because even when there was a possibility of being lost completely beyond the ego, that has also been taken away. The last possibility of ego disappearance is then no longer available. When they could have been in contact with god, they will be taught some rubbish history. The dates when Genghis Khan was born -- who bothers, who cares? In fact if Genghis Khan had never been born, that would have been far better. That's what I wrote in my paper, and my teacher was very angry. I had to stand for twenty-four hours outside the class, because I had written, "It is unfortunate that he was born. It would have been very fortunate if he had not been born at all."

But kings and emperors, they go on and on being born just to torture small children; they have to remember the dates and the names for no reason at all. A better kind of education will drop all this crap. Ninety percent of it is crap, and the remaining ten percent can be very much improved. And then life can have more joy, more rest, more relaxation.

BECAUSE THE EGO is a fiction, it disappears sometimes. The greatest time is dreamless sleep. So make it a point that sleep is very valuable; don't miss it for any reason. Slowly slowly, make sleep a regular thing. Because the body is a mechanism, if you follow a regular pattern of sleep the body will find it easier and the mind will find it easier to disappear.

Go to bed at exactly the same time. Don't take it literally -- if one day you are late you will not be sent to hell or anything! I have to be cautious, because there are a few people here who are health freaks. Their only disease is that they are continuously thinking of health. If they stop thinking of health they will be perfectly well. But if you can make your sleep a regular thing, going to bed at almost the same time and getting up at almost the same time... the body is a mechanism, the mind is too, and it simply slips into dreamless sleep at a certain moment.

THE SECOND GREATEST source of egoless experiences is sex, love. That too has been destroyed by the priests; they have condemned it, so it is no longer such a great experience. Such a condemnation for so long, it has conditioned the minds of people. Even while they are making love, they know deep down that they are doing something wrong. Some guilt is lurking somewhere. And this is so even for the most modern, the most contemporary, even the younger generation.

On the surface you may have revolted against the society, on the surface you may be a conformist no more. But things have gone very deep; it is not a question of revolting on the surface. You can grow long hair, that won't help much. You can become a hippy and stop taking baths, that won't help much. You can become a dropout in every possible way that you can imagine and think of, but that won't help really, because things have gone too deep and all these are superficial measures.

For thousands of years we have been told that sex is the greatest sin. It has become part of our blood, bone and marrow. So even if you know consciously that there is nothing wrong in it, the unconscious keeps you a little detached, afraid, guilt-ridden, and you cannot move into it totally.

IF YOU CAN MOVE into lovemaking totally, the ego disappears, because at the highest peak, at the highest climax of lovemaking, you are pure energy. The mind cannot function. With such joy, with such an outburst of energy, the mind simply stops. It is such an upsurge of energy that the mind is at a loss, it does not know what to do now. It is perfectly capable of remaining in function in normal situations, but when anything very new and very vital happens it stops. And sex is the most vital thing.

If you can go deeply into lovemaking, the ego disappears. That is the beauty of lovemaking, that it is another source of a glimpse of god -- just like deep sleep but far more valuable, because in deep sleep you will be unconscious. In lovemaking you will be conscious -- conscious yet without the mind.

Hence the great science of Tantra became possible. Patanjali and yoga worked on the lines of deep sleep; they chose that path to transform deep sleep into a conscious state so you know who you are, so you know what you are at the center. Tantra chose lovemaking as a window towards god.

THE PATH OF YOGA is very long, because to transform unconscious sleep into consciousness is very arduous; it may take many lives. And who knows, you may or may not be able to persist for so long, persevere for so long, be patient for so long. So the fate that has fallen on yoga is this, that the so-called yogis go on only doing body postures. They never go deeper than that; that takes their whole life. Of course they get better health, a longer life -- but that is not the point! You can have better health by jogging, running, swimming; you can have a longer life through medical care. That is not the point. The point was to become conscious in deep sleep. And your so-called yogis go on teaching you how to stand on your head and how to distort and contort your body. Yoga has become a kind of circus -- meaningless. It has lost its real dimension.

I have the vision of reviving yoga again in its true flavor, in its true dimension. And the goal is to become conscious while you are deeply asleep. That is the essential thing in yoga, and if any yogi is teaching anything else it is all useless.

BUT TANTRA HAS CHOSEN a far shorter way, the shortest, and far more pleasant too! Lovemaking can open the window. All that is needed is to uproot the conditionings that the priests have put into you. The priests put those conditionings into you so that they could become mediators and agents between you and god, so that your direct contact was cut. Naturally you would need somebody else to connect you, and the priest would become powerful. And the priest has been powerful down the ages.

Whosoever can put you in contact with power, real power, will become powerful. God is real power, the source of all power. The priest remained down the ages so powerful -- more powerful than kings. Now the scientist has taken the place of the priest, because now he knows how to unlock the doors of the power hidden in nature. The priest knew how to connect you with god, the scientist knows how to connect you with nature. But the priest has to disconnect you first, so no individual private line remains between you and god. He has spoiled your inner sources, poisoned them. He became very powerful but the whole humanity became lustless, loveless, full of guilt.

My people have to drop that guilt completely. While making love, think of prayer, meditation, god. While making love, burn incense, chant, sing, dance. Your bedroom should be a temple, a sacred place. And lovemaking should not be a hurried thing. Go deeper into it; savor it as slowly and as gracefully as possible. And you will be surprised. You have the key.

God has not sent you into the world without keys. But those keys have to be used, you have to put them into the lock and turn them.

LOVE IS another phenomenon, one of the most potential, where the ego disappears and you are conscious, fully conscious, pulsating, vibrating. You are no more an individual, you are lost into the energy of the whole.

Then, slowly slowly, let this become your very way of life. What happens at the peak of love has to become your discipline -- not just an experience but a discipline. Then whatsoever you are doing and wherever you are walking... early in the morning with the sun rising, have the same feeling, the same merger with existence. Lying down on the ground, the sky full of stars, have the same merger again. Lying down on the earth, feel one with the earth.

Slowly slowly, lovemaking should give you the clue for how to be in love with existence itself. And then the ego is known as a fiction, is used as a fiction. And if you use it as a fiction, there is no danger.

THERE ARE A FEW other moments when the ego slips of its own accord. In moments of great danger: you are driving, and suddenly you see an accident is going to happen. You have lost control of the car and there seems to be no possibility of saving yourself. You are going to crash into the tree or into the oncoming truck, or you are going to fall in the river, it is absolutely certain. In those moments suddenly the ego will disappear.

That's why there is a great attraction to move into dangerous situations. People climb Everest. It is a deep meditation, although they may or may not understand this. Mountaineering is of great importance. Climbing mountains is dangerous -- the more dangerous it is, the more beautiful. You will have glimpses, great glimpses of egolessness. Whenever danger is very close, the mind stops. Mind can think only when you are not in danger; it has nothing to say in danger. Danger makes you spontaneous, and in that spontaneity you suddenly know that you are not the ego.

Or -- these will be for different people, because people are different -- if you have an aesthetic heart, then beauty will open the doors. Just seeing a beautiful woman or a man passing by, just for a single moment a flash of beauty, and suddenly the ego disappears. You are overwhelmed.

Or seeing a lotus in the pond, or seeing the sunset or a bird on the wing -- anything that triggers your inner sensitivity, anything that possesses you for the moment so deeply that you forget yourself, that you are and yet you are not, that you abandon yourself -- then too, the ego slips. It is a fiction; you have to carry it. If you forget it for a moment, it slips.

And it is good that there are a few moments when it slips and you have a glimpse of the true and the real. It is because of these glimpses that religion has not died. It is not because of the priests -- they have done everything to kill it. It is not because of the so-called religious, those who go to the church and the mosque and the temple. They are not religious at all, they are pretenders.

Religion has not died because of these few moments which happen more or less to almost everybody. Take more note of them, imbibe the spirit of those moments more, allow those moments more, create spaces for those moments to happen more. This is the true way to seek god. Not to be in the ego is to be in god.

Osho The Book of Wisdom, Chapter 16

OSHO: quotes on Samadhi

1. Patanjali says sleep is just next to samadhi. A good sleep, a deep sleep, and samadhi, are different only in one sense: samadhi has awareness, sleep has no awareness.
2. Patanjali says that sleep and samadhi, deep sleep and samadhi, are similar. Because in samadhi the individual disappears and in deep sleep also the individual disappears. In deep sleep you become part of the unconscious, collective unconscious. In samadhi also you become part of the collective superconsciousness.
3. In samadhi the ego is dropped. Now you don’t have any limitation, no definition, you are merged with the whole — but merged with the whole in a tremendous awareness. You are not asleep. Worries have disappeared, because worries exist only with the ego. So there are two ways to drop the worries — either become part of a group, or become part of the superconscious plane.
4. In deep lovemaking you can attain first glimpses of samadhi — or in music, or in dancing, or looking at the sunset, or just sitting silently not doing anything. But remember, whenever you are a doer you are missing, because the doer carries his ego. The doer is the ego. Whenever you are a non-doer there is a possibility you may fall into line with the whole, you may fall into harmony with the whole — what Buddha calls the way, the dhamma. You will become one with the dhamma, and suddenly a rush of bliss — it rains all around, your whole being becomes saturated with a new benediction that you have not known before.
5. In India we make a difference. When an ordinary man dies, it is death. When someone who has attained enlightenment dies, it is samadhi, it is not death. And the word “samadhi” is immensely significant. Samadhi means: one who has attained the ultimate harmony with existence.
6. In India many religions don’t cremate their saints; everybody else is cremated. But a few religions — for example, Kabir panthis — don’t cremate their saints because their bodies have been in contact with such a great soul that they have become living memories of something so great that to destroy them is not right. So their bodies have to be buried just as Christians and Mohammedans do: a samadhi, a grave, is made. It is not called a grave, it is called samadhi — the same word that is used for the ultimate state of consciousness. Because the man had attained samadhi, his grave is no ordinary grave; it is a symbol of samadhi, of the ultimate consciousness.
7. Sleep, according to Patanjali, is very close to samadhi. The only difference is that in samadhi your body is asleep but your consciousness is awake Now to me, both sleep and samadhi are the same My consciousness is awake twenty-four hours a day Whether my body is awake or asleep makes no difference to my consciousness.
8. Pragya is a by-product of samadhi, of enlightenment. Pragya means wisdom. Unless you become enlightened, you cannot have wisdom, you can have only knowledge. And pragya does not mean knowledge, it means wisdom. It is a by-product of samadhi, enlightenment.
9. Samadhi is just like the total opening of the lotus, and satori is the beginning of the opening of the petals. Satori is the beginning, samadhi is the climax.
10. Satori is half awake, half asleep. Samadhi is full awareness. But if you are half awake, it won’t take long for you to be fully awake. Just a little hit of the master’s staff on your head, and you will jump out of the bed.
11. Your glimpse of first enlightenment — in Japan they call it satori — is strong. It may be fragile, it may be new. It will be difficult to protect it, but it has a strength of its own. If you support it totally, it is going to take over your whole being. Satori is going to become samadhi. Satori is the first glimpse of samadhi, and samadhi is when your whole being is afire. You don’t have to remember, you are it. But this is possible only if you cultivate it in all your day-to-day affairs.
12. Samadhi one enters only once and then one never comes out of it. There is no way out. There is no exit, there is only entrance. I have entered Samadhi. Now wherever I am, whatsoever I am doing, it is all happening in Samadhi. Now there is no way to come out of it. Samadhi is not a state, is not a mood in which you go and then you can come out. Samadhi is your very being. Now where can I leave my being? It is my very nature. Now where can I leave my nature. I am it!
13. Meditation has two parts: the beginning and the end. The beginning is called dhyana and the end is called samadhi. Dhyana is the seed, samadhi is the flowering. Dhyana means becoming aware of all workings of your mind, all the layers of your mind — your memories, your desires, your thoughts, dreams — becoming aware of all that goes on inside you. Dhyana is awareness, and samadhi is when the awareness has become so deep, so profound, so total that it is like a fire and it consumes the whole mind and all its functionings. It consumes thoughts, desires, ambitions, hopes, dreams. It consumes the whole stuff the mind is full of.
14. Samadhi is the state when awareness is there, but there is nothing to be aware inside you; the witness is there, but there is nothing to be witnessed. Begin with dhyana, with meditation, and end in samadhi, in ecstasy, and you will know what God is. It is not a hypothesis, it is an experience. You have to LIVE it — that is the only way to know it.
15. The word samadhi means all problems are solved, all questions are dissolved. You have come to a space which knows no questions, no problems, which is eternally blissful. This is the place which can be called godliness, because you are one with the whole existence.
16. Samadhi means when sushupti, dreamless sleep, becomes alert, awake. When you are asleep as far as the body is concerned, you are asleep as far as the mind is concerned, because there is no disturbance of any dream, there is no tension in the body — but beyond the mind, the no-mind is fully alert. He knows that the mind is without any dreams, he sees it, it is without any dreams, he sees it the body is absolutely relaxed. And this seeing, this alertness, continues twenty-four hours. Then sushupti becomes samadhi.
17. It is just like clouds: clouds move. They can be so thick that you cannot see the sky hidden behind. The vast blueness of the sky is lost, you are covered with clouds. Then you go on watching: one cloud moves and another has not come into the vision yet — and suddenly a peek into the blueness of the vast sky. The same happens inside: you are the vast blueness of the sky, and thoughts are just like clouds hovering around you, filling you. But the gaps exist, the sky exists. To have a glimpse of the sky is SATORI, and to become the sky is SAMADHI. From satori to samadhi, the whole process is a deep insight into the mind, nothing else.

OSHO: jealousy

1. Jealousy is comparison. And we have been taught to compare, we have been conditioned to compare, always compare. Somebody else has a better house, somebody else has a more beautiful body, somebody else has more money, somebody else has a more charismatic personality. Compare, go on comparing yourself with everybody else you pass by, and great jealousy will be the outcome; it is the by-product of the conditioning for comparison.
2. Comparison is a very foolish attitude, because each person is unique and incomparable. Once this understanding settles in you, jealousy disappears.
3. Whenever you have a sexual urge in your mind, a sexual happening in your being, whenever you feel sexually attracted and related to somebody, jealousy enters because you are not in love. If you are in love, jealousy never enters.
4. Sex creates jealousy but it is a secondary thing. So it is not a question of how to drop jealousy; you cannot drop it because you cannot drop sex. The question is how to transform sex into love, then jealousy disappears.
5. If jealousy is there, know well there is no love.
6. If you go on condemning, your condemnation shows that somewhere there is a wound, and you are feeling jealous — because without jealousy there can be no condemnation. You condemn people because somehow, somewhere, unconsciously you feel they are enjoying themselves and you have missed.
7. Heaven and hell are not realities but ways of living. You can live in jealousy — that’s how people live. You can live in competition, you can live in conflict, you can live in ambition. That’s how you have been brought up to live. This is the way to hell!
8. Awareness is the fire; love is the gold; jealousy, possessiveness, hatred, anger, lust, are the impurities.
9. What is envy? It is nothing but passive jealousy. Maybe jealousy is too strong a phenomenon; envy is a little passive. The difference may be of degrees, but it is not of quality, it is only of quantity. Envy can become jealousy at any moment; envy is just jealousy in progress. Mind has to drop all envies and jealousies.
10. Just think: you cannot find a single misery for which you are not responsible. It may be jealousy, it may be anger, it may be greed — but something in you must be the reason that is creating the misery.
11. When jealousy disappears, there is a deep friendliness towards all.
12. In pure awareness the mind cannot drag you down into the mud, into the gutter. In anger, in hatred, in jealousy, the mind is absolutely impotent in the face of awareness. And because the mind is absolutely impotent, your whole being is in a profound silence — the peace that passeth understanding.
13. You know your inside, and you know the others’ outside: that creates jealousy. They know your outside, and they know their inside: that creates jealousy. Nobody else knows your inside. There you know you are nothing, worthless. And the others on the outside look so smiling. Their smiles may be phony, but how can you know that they are phony? Maybe their hearts are also smiling. You know your smile is phony, because your heart is not smiling at all, it may be crying and weeping. You know your interiority, and only you know it, nobody else. And you know everybody’s exterior, and their exterior people have made beautiful. Exteriors are showpieces and they are very deceptive.
14. Because of jealousy you are in constant suffering; you become mean to others. And because of jealousy you start becoming phony, because you start pretending. You start pretending things that you don’t have, you start pretending things which you CAN’T have, which are not natural to you. You become more and more artificial. Imitating others, competing with others, what else can you do? If somebody has something and you don’t have it, and you don’t have a natural possibility of having it, the only way is to have some cheap substitute for it.
15. The jealous man lives in hell. Drop comparing and jealousy disappears, meanness disappears, phoniness disappears. But you can drop it only if you start growing your inner treasures; there is no other way.

OSHO on Suffering

1. You would like to live a life where there is no suffering, but that life is not possible if you continuously carry the ego with you. You cannot make a life around you so that suffering disappears. If you carry the ego, again and again you will bump into some reality which will hurt the unreal. Whenever there is an encounter between reality and unreality, the unreal causes suffering.
2. Use every opportunity in life for raising your intelligence, your consciousness. Ordinarily what we are doing is using every opportunity to create a hell for ourselves. Only you suffer, and because of your suffering, you make others suffer. And when so many people are living together, and if they all create suffering for each other, it goes on multiplying. That’s how the whole world has become a hell. It can be instantly changed. Just the basic thing has to be understood, that without intelligence there is no heaven.
3. If you really want to get rid of misery and suffering then you will have to understand — you don’t have a self. Then it will be not just a small relief but a tremendous relief. And if you don’t have a self, the need for the other disappears. It was the need of the unreal self to go on being nourished by the other. You don’t need the other. And listen carefully: when you don’t need the other, you can love. And that love will not bring misery. Going beyond needs, demands, desires, love becomes a very soft sharing, a great understanding. When you understand yourself, that very day you have understood the whole of humanity. Then nobody can make you miserable. You know that they are suffering from an unreal self, and they are throwing their misery on anybody who is close by. Your love will make you capable of helping the person you love to get rid of the self.
4. Opposites are complementaries. If you can suffer your suffering in totality, in great intensity, you will be surprised: Saul becomes Paul. You will not be able to believe it when it happens for the first time, that your own suffering absorbed willingly, welcomingly, becomes a great blessing. The same energy that becomes hate becomes love, the same energy that becomes pain becomes pleasure, the same energy that becomes suffering becomes bliss.
5. The moment you become identified with your suffering you want to discard it, you want to get rid of it, it is so painful. But if you are a witness then suffering loses all thorns, all stings. Then there is suffering, and you are a witness to it. You are just a mirror; it has nothing to do with you. Happiness comes and goes, unhappiness comes and goes, it is a passing show; you are just there, a mirror reflecting it. Life comes and goes, death comes and goes; the mirror is not affected by either. The mirror reflects but remains unaffected; the mirror is not imprinted by either.
6. Remember, one who enjoys more is bound to suffer more because he becomes very sensitive. But suffering is not bad. If you understand it rightly, suffering is a cleansing. If you understand it rightly, sadness has a depth to it which no happiness can ever have. A person who is simply happy is always superficial. A person who has not known sorrow and has not known sadness, has not known the depths. He has not touched the bottom of his being; he has remained just on the periphery. One has to move within these two banks. Within these two banks flows the river.
7. Each suffering should be started in celebration. Then you change the quality of suffering itself. Each suffering should be welcomed through celebration; then the suffering is no more suffering.
8. Suffering is there. It is part of life and part of growth; nothing is bad in it. Suffering becomes evil only when it is simply destructive and not creative at all; suffering becomes bad only when you suffer and nothing is gained out of it. But I am telling you the divine can be gained through suffering; then it becomes creative. Darkness is beautiful if the dawn is coming out of it soon; darkness is dangerous if it is endless, leads to no dawn, simply continues and continues and you go on moving in a rut, in a vicious circle. This is what is happening to you.

   Just to escape from one suffering you create another; then to escape from another, another. And this goes on and on and all those sufferings which you have not lived are waiting for you. You have escaped but you escape from one suffering to another, because a mind which was creating a suffering will create another. So you can escape from this suffering to that, but suffering will be there because your mind is the creative force.Accept the suffering and pass through it; don’t escape. This is a totally different dimension to work in. Suffering is there: encounter it, go through it. Fear will be there, accept it. You will tremble, so tremble. Why create a facade that you don’t tremble, that you are not afraid? If you are a coward, accept it.