The third sutra:

The second question:
Osho, I always agree with whatsoever you say then why is my life not changing? Maybe because of the agreement. If you agree with me, or if you disagree with me, your life will not change. It is not a question of agreement or disagreement, it is a question of understanding and understanding is beyond both agreement and disagreement.

Ordinarily, when you agree you think you have understood me. If you have understood me then there will be no question of agreement and disagreement. How can you agree with truth? or disagree? The sun has risen do you agree or do you disagree? You will say the question is irrelevant. Agreement, disagreement, is about theories, not about truth. So when you agree with me you are not really agreeing with me; you start feeling that I agree with your theory that you have already been carrying with yourself. Whenever you feel that Osho is in agreement with you, you feel that you agree with Osho. Whenever I am not in agreement with you then there is trouble, then you don’t agree with me. Or you don’t listen to that, you don’t hear that. You simply close yourself when I am saying something which does not agree with you. It is not a question of agreement and disagreement. Drop this! I am not here in search of any converts. I am not trying any philosophy, I am not here proposing any theology.

I am not seeking followers, I am seeking disciples and that is a totally different thing, utterly different. A disciple is not one who agrees: a disciple is one who listens, who learns. The very word disciple comes from learning, discipline. A disciple is one who is open to learn. A follower is closed. A follower thinks he has agreed; now there is nothing and no need to remain open he can close, he can afford to close. A disciple can never afford to close, there is so much to learn. How can you agree or disagree? And a disciple has no ego, so who will agree and who will not agree? A disciple is just an opening, there is nobody inside to agree or not agree. Your very agreement is creating the trouble. And nobody is ever transformed through agreement. Agreement is very superficial, very intellectual.

To be transformed one needs understanding. It is always understanding that transforms, that mutates. And when you understand, you are not to do anything; the understanding will start doing things. It is not that first you understand, then you practice, no. The very understanding, the very fact of understanding, goes deep into your heart, sinks, and there is transformation.

Transformation is a consequence of understanding. If you agree, then the problem arises: now what to do? I have agreed, now something has to be practiced. Agreement is very stupid, as stupid as disagreement. And then mind is very cunning! You never know what you mean by agreement....
A few scenes: first....

The boy’s mother had died when he was an infant, and his father had worked hard to raise him properly. Finally the boy went away to college. His first letter was a disappointment to his father. It was a disappointment, but the old man did not know exactly why. Surely there was nothing to despair of in the content. Perhaps something in the tone bothered him. The letter read: ”Dear Dad, Everything is fine. I like it here at college. I’m on the football team. I’m in the best fraternity on campus. I got an ’A’ on my first algebra exam....” After some thinking, the father was able to put his finger on the difficulty. He wrote back, ”Look, son, I don’t want to seem to be a silly old man, but there is something which would make me very happy. It isn’t that I think you’re ungrateful in any way.

But I’ve had to work very hard to raise you and send you to college and I never had a chance to go to college myself. What I mean is this: it would mean a lot to me if you would say, ’We did this and we did that,’ instead of ’I did this and I did that.’ It would help me to feel as if I had a part in it all.” The boy understood immediately and thereafter letters came in the form, ”Well, Dad, we won this big game last Saturday. We’ve got a date with a swell girl. We’re going to get an ’A’ in history.” The old man took earnest pleasure in this sharing of experience. Days were sunny for him.
One day a telegram arrived: ”Dear Dad, we got the Dean’s daughter in trouble. She had twins. Mine died. What are you going to do with yours?”

Mind is very cunning. Watch...when you agree with me, do you really agree with me? or do you find that I am agreeable to you? And then mind is very legal, mind is a lawyer: it can find ways to agree and yet remain the same. Not only that, but when you agree you start feeling as if now it is Osho’s duty to transform you what more can you do?...you are agreeing, you have done your part. What more can you do?...you have agreed, you have become a sannyasin, you have surrendered. What more can you do? Now if nothing is happening you start getting angry at me.

Then when I say something to you, it is not exactly the same thing that you hear. You hear in your own way, you hear with all your interpretations. You hear through your past, through memories, through knowledge, through your conditionings. You hear through the mind and the mind gives a color to everything that you hear. It immediately jumps on it, changes it, makes it agreeable to you: drops a few things, exaggerates a few other things, fills the gaps. Only part of what I have said remains in it and the part can never transform, only the whole.

But the whole can remain whole only when you are not making any effort to agree or disagree. When you are not making any effort to agree or disagree you can put the mind aside. If you are trying to make an effort to agree, how can you put the mind aside? It is mind which agrees or disagrees. Understanding is something bigger than mind. Understanding happens in your total being. It is as much in your head as in your toe. Understanding is something total. Mind is a very tiny part, but very dictatorial, and it goes on pretending that it is the whole.

Second scene....
There was the middle-aged businessman who took his wife to Paris. After traipsing with her from one shop to another, he begged for a day off to rest, and got it. With the wife gone shopping again, he went to a bar and picked up a luscious Parisienne. They got on well until the question of money came up: she wanted fifty American dollars, he offered ten. They couldn’t get together on the price, so they didn’t get together. That evening he escorted his wife to one of the nicer restaurants, and here he spotted his gorgeous babe of the afternoon seated at a table near the door.

”See, monsieur?” said the babe as they passed her. ”Look what you got for your lousy ten bucks!” Your understanding is your understanding. Your interpretation is your interpretation. You will look from your angle. Whatsoever you hear is your interpretation, always remember. Beware of it! It is not what I have said, it is what you have thought that you have heard and they are not the same things. You agree with your own echo, you don’t agree with me. You agree with your own idea. Then how can you change? The idea is yours, the agreement is yours, so there is no possibility of change.

You please stop agreeing, disagreeing. You just listen to me. Your method of agreement may be a sort of trick to protect yourself, so that you don’t get the shock. It functions like a buffer. I say something, you agree immediately the shock is avoided. If you were not agreeing with me it may have shocked you to your very roots, it may have shaken you to your very guts. I say something, you say, ”Yes, I agree.” With this agreement you cut off. Now there is no need to be shocked: you agree. If you were not agreeing or disagreeing.... It is the same thing with disagreement. The moment I say something and there is somebody who says, ”I don’t agree,” he has cut the energy. Now the energy will not go into his roots and will not shake him. We have created so many buffers around ourselves, protections. These protections will not allow you to change. To change, you will need to be shocked shocked tremendously, terribly. It is going to be painful: transformation is going to be painful. Agreement is very comfortable, so is disagreement. I don’t make much difference between agreement and disagreement; they are two aspects of the same coin.

The real person who wants to be near me and close to me, who wants to be really in contact with me, will not agree, will not disagree. He will simply listen to me pure listening, absolutely pure listening, with no interpretation. He will put himself aside. He will give me way.

The third scene.... The teacher had just finished giving her first-graders the basic facts of life. Little Mary raised her hand from a front-row seat. ”Can a six-year-old boy make a baby?” ”No,” said the teacher, smiling, ”that would be impossible. Any other questions, class?” Pause.... Mary again put her hand up. ”Can a six-year-old girl make a baby?” ”No,” said the teacher. Whereupon the little boy behind Mary leaned forward and whispered loudly in her ear, ”Ya see! I told ya, ya didn’t have nothin’ to worry about!”

All your agreements, all your disagreements, are just finding ways to remain the way you are, not to change. People’s whole lives are devoted to one work: how not to change. They go on saying, ”I don’t want to be miserable,” and they go on doing things which make them miserable. They go on saying, ”I want to change,” but I look deep down in them and they don’t want to change. In fact this express desire that they want to change is again a trick not to change, so they can say to the world, ”I am trying to change and I am saying loudly and shouting loudly I want to change, and still if nothing is happening what can I do?” You cannot change. The last thing I would like to say about this question you cannot change, you can only allow change to happen. Trying to change, you will never change. Who is trying? The old. Look at the inner logic of it: you are trying to change yourself. It is almost like pulling yourself up by your own shoe-strings. What can happen out of it? Nothing is possible. You cannot change yourself, because who is this one who is trying to change? It is your past. It is you.

You can allow a change to happen. What can you do to allow it? Please don’t agree and disagree with me. You just listen! You just be here. You just let my presence function as a catalytic agent. You just get infected by me. You just catch the disease that I have, the measles that I have. You just allow me, you don’t try to change yourself. This allowing is what surrender is all about.

A sannyasin is not one who has agreed with me. If he has agreed with me, then he is not a sannyasin, then he is a follower, just as Christians are followers of Christ. They have agreed with Christ, but that has not changed them. Just as Buddhists are followers of Buddha they have agreed with Buddha, but that has not changed them. Can’t you see the whole world is following somebody or other?

So to follow is a way to avoid change. Please don’t follow me. You simply listen to what is happening here, you see what is happening here. You just look into me, and you give me way so my energy can start functioning on your energy. It is not a mind thing, it is a total affair...so that you can start vibrating in the same wavelength even for a few moments.
Those moments will bring change, those moments will bring glimpses of the unknown. Those moments will make you aware that there is eternity beyond time. Those moments will give you a feel of what it is to be in meditation. Those moments will allow you a little taste of God, of Tao, of Tantra, of Zen. Those moments will bring the possibility of change, because those moments will come, not from your past but from your future. Agreeing, it is your past which agrees with me. Opening, allowing, it is your future which opens opens with me. Your possibility of transformation is in your future. The past is dead and gone and finished. Bury it! It has no meaning any more. Don’t go on carrying it; it is unnecessary luggage. Because of this luggage, you cannot go very high.

What do you mean when you say, ”I agree with you”? It means your past agreeing, your past feeling good and nodding, and saying, ”Yes, that’s what I have always been thinking.” This is a way to avoid the future. Be aware.

Just being with me that is satsang, that is contact high. Just being with me, in spite of you a few rays will enter in your being and will start playing. And then you will become aware that whatever life you have lived was not life at all, that you have been in an illusion, that you have been dreaming. Those few glimpses of reality will shatter your whole past, and then there is transformation. It comes naturally of its own accord it follows understanding.

Question 3
The third question:

Osho, Sometimes as I watch people playing the same old games over and over, my eyes feel ancient and jaded and my heart weary and cynical. I guess it’s because I’m seeing more and more my own games and tricks and I hear your maddening voice between my ears saying, ”That’s okay just you have to accept and love yourself, and there is no problem.”
JUST???!
I think if you say this word again I will scream. Wasn’t I happier when I thought there was a goal? The question is from Ma Deva Anando. It is significant. The question can be that of almost everybody who is present. Listen to it. It simply shows a situation that every seeker has to pass. First, Anando says, ”Sometimes as I watch people playing the same old games over and over, my eyes feel ancient and jaded and my heart weary and cynical.”

Please don’t try to watch others that is none of your business. If they have decided to play the old games, if they want to play the old games, if they are happy in playing their old games, who are you to interfere? Who are you even to judge? This constant hankering to judge others has to be dropped. It does not help others; it harms you, it only harms you. Why should you be bothered? That has nothing to do with you. It is others’ joy if they want to remain the old and they want to move in the same rut, in the same routine. Good! It is their life and they have every right to live it their own way.

Somehow we cannot allow others to have their own way; in some way or other we go on judging. Sometimes we say they are sinners, sometimes we say they are bound to go to hell, sometimes we say they are this and that, criminals. If all that has changed, now a new evaluation that they are playing old games and ”I am tired”.... Why should you be tired of their games? Let them be tired of their games if they want; or if they don’t want, that too is their choice. Please don’t watch others.

Your whole energy has to be focused on yourself. Maybe you are condemning others for their old games just as a trick, because you don’t want to condemn yourself. It always happens, it is a psychological trick: we project on others. A thief thinks everybody is a thief that is very natural for him, that is a way to protect his ego. If he feels the whole world is bad he feels good in comparison. A murderer thinks the whole world is murderous that makes him feel good and at ease. It is convenient to think the whole world is murderous; then he can murder and there is no need to have any guilt feeling, there is no need to have any prick of conscience.

So we go on projecting on others whatsoever we don’t want to see in ourselves. Please stop that! If you are really tired of old games, then this is the old game the oldest. For many lives you have been playing it: projecting your defects onto others, and then feeling good. And of course you have to exaggerate, you have to magnify. If you are a thief, you have to magnify others’ images, that they are greater thieves than you. Then you feel good in comparison, you are a far better person.

That’s why people go on reading the newspapers. Newspapers help you very much. Early in the morning, before you have even taken your tea, you are ready for the newspaper. And the newspaper brings nothing like news, because there is nothing new. It is the same old rotten thing. But you feel good: somewhere somebody has been murdered, somewhere there has been a Watergate, and somewhere something else, and somewhere somebody has stolen, and somebody’s wife has escaped with somebody else...and so on and so forth. Watching all that, you relax; you feel, ”So, I am not so bad the whole world is going to the dogs. I am a far better person. I have not yet escaped with the wife of the neighbor. I have not killed anybody yet although I think of it, but thinking is not a crime where people are actually doing things.” You feel good. And the moment you feel good, you remain the same.

Please don’t watch others. It is not going to help you. You use your energy of observation on yourself. And there is something tremendously transforming in observation. If you observe yourself, things will start changing. If you start observing your anger, one day you will suddenly find the anger has no more energy the way it used to have; it is no longer so fiery. Something has gone dead in it. If you start watching yourself, you will see by and by the negative is dying and the positive is becoming more and more alive; that misery is disappearing and bliss is entering into your life; that you smile more, sometimes even for no reason; that a sense of humor is arising in you if you start watching.

That old depressed, long face is disappearing; a sense of humor is born. You start taking life more playfully if you watch; seriousness becomes more and more irrelevant. More and more you become innocent, trusting, less and less doubtful. I am not saying that your trust will always be respected. No, that is not the point. You may be deceived more, because when you are trusting you can be deceived more. But even when you are deceived, your trust will not be destroyed by it; in fact it may even be enhanced. You may start thinking that even if you are deceived somebody has taken a little money and deceived you you will be able to see that you have saved the far more valuable thing, that is trust; and something almost valueless, the money, is gone.

You could have saved the money and the trust would have gone that would have been a far greater loss, because nobody has ever been found to be happy just because of money. But because of trust, people have lived like gods on earth. Because of trust, people have enjoyed life so totally that they could feel grateful to God. Trust is a benediction. Money at the most can give you a little comfort, but no celebration. Trust may not give you much comfort, but will give you great celebration.

Now to choose comfort against celebration is simply stupid, because that comfortable life will be nothing but a comfortable death. Conveniently you can live and conveniently you can die. But the real taste of life is possible only when you are celebrating at the optimum, at the maximum, when your torch is burning from both ends together. Maybe only for a single moment...but the intensity of it, but the totality of it, but the wholeness of it! ...And this happens only through observation. Observation is one of the greatest forces of transformation. Start observing yourself. Don’t waste your energy for observation on others that is a sheer wastage! And nobody will ever thank you for it, it is a thankless job. And whomsoever you observe will feel offended, because nobody likes to be observed, everybody wants to have a private life.

Good or bad, stupid or wise, everybody wants to have his own private life. And who are you to interfere? So don’t be a peeping tom, don’t go to people’s keyholes, and don’t watch. It is their life. If they want and if they love to play the old game, let them play! So the first thing: please stop watching other people, turn the whole energy on yourself. Second, you say: ”I guess it’s because I’m seeing more and more my own games and tricks and I hear your maddening voice between my ears saying, ’That’s okay just you have to accept and love yourself, and there is no problem.’”

I have to repeat it: There is no problem. I have never come across a real problem not up to now. And I must have listened to thousands of people and their thousands of problems. I have not come across a real problem yet. And I don’t think that it is ever going to happen, because the real problem exists not. ’Problem’ is a created thing. Situations are there, problems are not there. Problems are your interpretations of situations. The same situation may not be a problem to somebody and may be a problem to somebody else. So it depends on you whether you create a problem or you don’t create a problem, but problems are not there. Problems are not in existence; they are in the psychology of man.

Just look next time you are having some trip and riding a problem. Just watch, just stand aside and look at the problem. Is it really there? or have you created it? Look deeply into it and you will suddenly see it is not increasing, it is decreasing; it is becoming smaller and smaller. The more you put your energy into observation, the smaller it becomes. And a moment comes when suddenly it is not there...and you will have a good laugh. Whenever you are having a problem, just look at it. Problems are fictitious, they don’t exist. Just go around the problem, look from every angle how can it be? It is a ghost! You wanted it, that’s why it is there.

You asked for it, that’s why it is there. You invited it, that’s why it is there. But people don’t like it: if you say their problem is not a problem, they don’t like it. They feel very bad. If you listen to their problems they feel very good. And if you say, ”Yes, this is a great problem,” they are very happy. That’s why psychoanalysis has become one of the most important things of this century. The psychoanalyst helps nobody maybe he helps himself, but he helps nobody else. He cannot. But still people go and pay. They enjoy he accepts their problems. Whatsoever absurd problem you bring to the psychoanalyst, he listens to it very sincerely and seriously, as if it is there. He takes it for granted that you are suffering greatly, and he starts working on it and analyzing it. And it takes years!

Even after years of psychoanalysis the problem is not solved because in the first place the problem has never been there so how can anybody solve it? But after years of psychoanalysis you get tired, and you get finished with the old problem; you want some new problem now. So one day you suddenly say, ”Yes, it is no longer there, it is gone,” and you thank the psychoanalyst. But it is simply time that has helped, that has healed. It is not psychoanalysis. But there are people who would not like simply to wait and watch. When you bring a mad person to a Zen monastery, they simply put him in a corner, in a small hut, far away from the monastery; they give him food and they tell him, ”Just be there, quiet.” Nobody goes to talk to him; food is supplied, his comforts are looked after, but nobody bothers about him. And what psychoanalysis does

in three years, they do in three weeks. Within three weeks the person simply comes out and he says, ”Yes, the problem is finished.”
For three weeks you are left with your problem how can you avoid seeing it? And no analysis is given so there is no diversion, you are not distracted. The psychoanalyst distracts you! The problem may have died on its own within three weeks, but it will not die now because with the support of the psychoanalyst it will live for three years, or even more. It depends how rich you are. If you are rich enough the problem can continue for your whole life. That means it depends on how much you can afford. Poor people don’t suffer from many problems. Rich people suffer; they can afford to. They can enjoy the game of having great problems. The poor person cannot afford and cannot enjoy that game.
Next time you are having a problem, look into it, look hard into it; no need for any analysis.

Don’t analyze it, because analysis is a way of diversion. When you start analyzing you don’t look at the problem. You start asking why? from where? how did it come?...in your childhood, your mother’s relationship with you, your father’s relationship with you? You have gone astray, now you are not looking into the problem itself. Freudian psychoanalysis is really a mind-game, and played with great expertise. Don’t go into the causes! There is no need...because there is no cause. Don’t go into the past; there is no need because that will be going away from the present problem. Look into it as a herenow thing, just enter into it. And don’t think about causes, reasons. Just watch the problem as it is. And you will be surprised that looking hard into it, it starts dispersing. Go on looking into it and you will find it has gone. Problems are not there. We create them because we cannot live without problems.

That is the only reason why we create them. To have a problem is to have an occupation; one feels good, something is there to do. When there is no problem you are left alone, empty what to do next? All problems finished.... Just think: one day comes God and says, ”No problems anymore finished! All problems gone.” What will you do? Just think of that day. People will be stuck. People will start getting very angry about God. They will say, ”This is not a blessing! Now what are we supposed to do? No problems?” Then suddenly the energy is not moving anywhere; then you will feel stagnant. The problem is a way for you to move, to go on, to carry on, to hope, to desire, to dream. The problem gives so many possibilities to remain occupied.

And to be unoccupied, or to be capable of unoccupation, is what l call meditation. An unoccupied mind who enjoys a moment of unoccupation is a meditative mind.
Start enjoying some unoccupied moments. Even if the problem is there you feel it is there, I say it is not, but you feel it is there put the problem aside and tell the problem, ”Wait! Life is there, the whole life is there. I will solve you, but right now let me have a little space, unoccupied by any problem.” Start having a few moments unoccupied. Once you have enjoyed them you will see the fact that problems are created by you because you were not capable of enjoying the unoccupied moments, so problems fill the gap. Have you not watched yourself? Sitting in a room, if you have nothing to do you start feeling fidgety, you start feeling uncomfortable, you start feeling restless. You will turn the radio on, or you will turn the TV on, or you will start reading the same newspaper you have read three times since the morning. Or if there is only one way, you will fall asleep so that you can create dreams and again remain occupied. Or you will start smoking....

Have you watched it? Whenever you are not having anything to do, it becomes very difficult to be, just to be. I will say again: There is no problem, Anando. Look into the fact of it, that there is no problem in life. If you want to have it, it is your pleasure you enjoy with all my blessings. But the truth is, there is no problem. Life is not a problem at all, it is a mystery to be lived and enjoyed. Problems are created by you because you are afraid to enjoy life, and you are afraid to live life. Problems give you a protection against life, against joy, against love. You can say to yourself, ”How can I enjoy? I am having so many problems, how can I enjoy? I am having so many problems, how can I love a man or a woman? I am having so many problems, how can I dance and sing? Impossible!” You can find some reasons not to sing, not to dance. Your problems give you a great opportunity to avoid.

Look into the problems and you will find they are fictitious. And even if you are having a problem and you feel it is real, I say it is okay. Why do I say it is okay? because the moment you start feeling it is okay, it will disappear. The moment you say to a problem, ”It is okay,” you have stopped giving energy to it. You have accepted it. The moment you accept a problem, it is no more a problem. A problem can be a problem only when you go on rejecting it: when you say it should not be so...and it is, and it should not be so the problem is strengthened.

That’s why I say it. People come to me with their big problems and I say, ”It is okay, it is very good, you accept it.” And I say, ”Just you have to accept and love yourself.” And I understand, Anando says, ”It is very maddening, your voice continuously saying, ’That’s okay...and there is no problem.’”

”JUST???!” And Anando says, ”I think if you say this word again I will scream.” You have been screaming your whole life whether you scream or not is not the point, you have been screaming your whole life. You have not done anything else up to now. Sometimes loudly, sometimes silently, but you have been screaming. That’s how I see people: screaming people their heart is screaming, their being is screaming. But that will not help. You can scream, but that will not help.

Try to understand rather than screaming. Try to see what I am telling you. And what I am telling you is not a theory, it is a fact. And I am saying it because I have known it that way. If it can happen to me that there is no problem, why cannot it happen to you? Take the challenge of it! I am just as ordinary a man as you are; I don’t claim any extraordinary miraculous powers. I am very ordinary, just as you are. The only difference between me and you is you don’t say okay to yourself and I have said an absolute okay to myself that is the only difference. You are continuously trying to improve yourself and I am not trying to improve myself. I have said: Incompletion is the way life is. You are trying to become perfect and I have accepted my imperfections. That is the only difference.

So I don’t have any problems. When you accept your imperfection, from where can the problem come? When whatsoever happens you say it is okay, then from where can the problem come? When you accept limitations, then from where can the problem come? The problem arises out of your nonacceptance. You cannot accept the way you are, hence the problem. And you will never accept the way you are, so the problem will always be there. Can you imagine yourself some day accepting, totally accepting the way you are? If you can imagine, then why don’t you do it right now? Why wait? For whom? For what?

I have accepted the way I am, and that very moment all problems disappeared, that very moment all worries disappeared. Not that I became perfect, but I started enjoying my imperfections. Nobody ever becomes perfect, because to become perfect means to become absolutely dead. Perfection is not possible because life is eternal. Perfection is not possible because life goes on and on and on there is no end to it. So the only way to get out of these so-called problems is to accept your life as you find it right this moment, and live it, enjoy, delight in it. The next moment will be of more joy because it will come out of this moment; and the next to that will be of even more joy, because by and by you will become more and more joyous. Not that you will become joyous through improvement, but by living the moment.

But you will remain imperfect. You will always have limitations, and you will always have situations where if you want to create problems you can immediately create. If you don’t want to create problems, there is no need to create them. You can scream, but that won’t help. That’s what you have been doing. That has not helped. Even primal therapy has not proved of much help. It allows people to scream yes, it feels a little good, it is a tantrum therapy. It allows you to vomit. It feels a little good because you feel a little unloaded, unburdened, but then within a few days that euphoria disappears; again you are the same, again accumulating. Again go to the primal therapy you will feel good for a few days again the same....

Unless you understand that one has to stop creating problems, you will go on creating problems. You can go into an encounter group, you can do primal therapy, you can do thousands of other groups, and after each group you will feel tremendously beautiful, because you dropped something that was on your head but you have not dropped the mechanism that creates it. You have dropped something which you were having, but you have not dropped the very factory that goes on creating it. Again you will create, it will not be of much use. It will give you a respite, a rest....

But if you really understand the thing, the thing is that you have to stop creating problems; otherwise you can go from one group to another group, from one psychoanalyst to another psychoanalyst, from one psychiatrist to another psychiatrist, from one therapy to another therapy...and everybody will give you a little respite, a little rest, and again you are doing the same thing.

My whole effort here is to cut the problem from the very roots. Please don’t create problems. They are not, they exist not.
And the last thing Anando says, ”Wasn’t I happier when I thought there was a goal?” Yes, you were happier, and you were more miserable too because your happiness was in the hope, it was not a true happiness. So I say you were happier and miserable too. Miserable, you were here in the present, and happy you were in the future but how can you be in the future? The goal is in the future. Unhappy you were here, happy you were there. ’There’ exists not it is all here. It is always here, everywhere it is here! ’There’ exists only in the dictionary. So it is with ’then’ it is always now, then exists not. Yes, you were happier in your dreams of thinking of a goal, of thinking of a beautiful future. But why does a person think about a beautiful future? because he is miserable in the present.

I don’t think about a beautiful future, I cannot conceive how it can be more beautiful! How can it be more beautiful than it is right now, this moment? How is existence going to be more happy and joyous than it is this moment? Have a look how can it be more happy, more joyful? But that’s a trick, again a trick of the mind: to avoid the present we go on thinking about the future so that we need not see the present. And the present is all there is.

So you are right, you were happier happier in your dreams. Now I have shattered all your dreams. Happier in your hopes now I am trying in every way to create the state of hopelessness, so there is no hope left. I am trying to bring you to the present. You have been wandering in the future, I am pulling you back to herenow. It is hard work. And to take goals away, one feels very angry. You are sometimes very angry with me. I have taken your hope, your dreams or I am trying! You are clinging to them. You are so addicted to your hope that you even start hoping through me.

You start hoping through me: ”Osho will do this.” This man is not going to do anything! You start hoping that, ”Now I am with Osho so there is no need to be afraid. Sooner or later I am going to become enlightened.” Forget all about it! Enlightenment is not a hope! It is not a desire and it is not in the future. If you start living right this moment, you are enlightened. I am trying to make you enlightened every day, and you say, ”Tomorrow.” Then as you will...but tomorrow it will never happen. Either it is now or never! Become enlightened right now! And you can become because you are...simply deluded, simply thinking that you are not.

So don’t ask how. The moment you ask how, you start hoping. So don’t ask how, and don’t say, ”Yes, we will become.” I am not saying that. I am saying you are.
The goose is out! The goose has never been in. One just has to be alert in the moment. Just a single moment of alertness, a shock, and you are free.
Every day I am trying to make you enlightened, because I know you are enlightened. But if you want to go on playing the game of samsara, you can go on playing.
Happier certainly you were and miserable too. I have taken your happiness because you cannot hope anymore. If you allow me a little more, I will take your misery too. But first the happiness has to go, because misery exists as a shadow to the hope of happiness. So first the hope of happiness has to go, only then the shadow will go. So you can scream if you want to scream, but I will repeat a thousand and one times: Anando, there is no problem. Just you have to accept and love yourself yes, JUST.

Question 4

The fourth question:

Osho, Isn’t Tantra a way of indulgence?
It is not. It is the only way to get out of indulgence. It is the only way to get out of sexuality. No other way has ever been helpful for man; all other ways have made man more and more sexual. Sex has not disappeared. The religions have made it only more poisoned; it is still there, in a poisoned form. Yes, guilt has arisen in man, but sex has not disappeared. It cannot disappear because it is a biological reality. It is existential; it cannot simply disappear by repressing it. It can disappear only when you become so alert that you can release the energy ’capsuled’ in sexuality. Not by repression is the energy released, but by understanding. And once the energy is released, out of the mud, the lotus.... The lotus has to come up out of the mud, it has to go higher and repression takes it deeper into the mud, it goes on repressing it. What you have done up to now, the whole humanity, is repressing sex in the mud of the unconscious. Go on repressing it, sit on top of it, don’t allow it to move; kill it by fasting, by discipline, by going to a cave in the Himalayas, by moving to a monastery where a woman is not allowed. There are monasteries where a woman has never entered for hundreds of years; there are monasteries where only nuns have lived and a man has never entered. These are ways of repressing. And they create more and more sexuality and more and more dreams of indulgence.

No, Tantra is not a way of indulgence. It is the only way of freedom. Tantra says: Whatsoever is has to be understood, and through understanding changes occur of their own accord. So listening to me or listening to Saraha, don’t start thinking that Saraha is supporting your indulgence. You will be in bad shape if you accept that. Listen to this story....
An elderly gent named Martin went to a doctor for an examination: ”I want you to tell me what’s wrong, doctor. I feel some pains here and there, and I can’t understand it. I’ve lived a very clean life no smoking, drinking or running around. I’m in bed, alone, at nine o’clock every night. Why should I feel this way?” ”How old are you?” asked the doctor.
”I’ll be seventy-four on my next birthday,” said Martin.

The doctor answered, ”After all, you’re getting on in years, you’ve got to expect things like that. But you’ve lots of time left yet. Just take it easy and don’t worry. I suggest you go to Hot Springs.” So Martin went to Hot Springs. There he met another gent who looked so old and decrepit that Martin felt encouraged by the comparison. ”Brother,” says Martin, ”You sure must have taken good care of yourself, living to such a ripe old age. I’ve lived a quiet, clean life, but not like you, I’ll bet. What is your formula for reaching such a ripe old age?”

So this shriveled old guy says, ”On the contrary, sir. When I was seventeen my father told me, ’Son, you go and enjoy life. Eat, drink and be merry to your heart’s content. Live life to the fullest. Instead of marrying one woman, be a bachelor and have ten. Spend your money for fun, for yourself, instead of on a wife and kids.’ Yeah wine, women and song; life lived to the full. That’s been my policy all my life, brother!” ”Sounds like you got something,” said Martin. ”How old are you?”
The other answered, ”Twenty-four.”

Indulgence is suicidal, as suicidal as repression. These are the two extremes that Buddha says to avoid. One extreme is repression, the other extreme is indulgence. Just be in the middle: neither be repressive, nor be indulgent. Just be in the middle, watchful, alert, aware. It is your life neither has it to be repressed, nor has it to be wasted; it has to be understood.

It is your life take care of it! Love it! Befriend it! If you can befriend your life it will reveal many mysteries to you, it will take you to the very door of God.
But Tantra is not indulgence at all. The repressive people have always thought that Tantra is indulgence. Their minds are so much obsessed.... For example, a man who goes to a monastery and lives there without ever seeing a woman how can he believe that Saraha is not indulging when he lives with a woman? Not only lives, but practices strange things...sitting before the woman naked...the woman is naked, and he goes on watching the woman...or even while making love to the woman he goes on watching.... Now you cannot watch his watching, you can watch only that he is making love to a woman.

And if you are repressive, your whole repressed sexuality will bubble up. You must start going mad! And you will project all that you have repressed in yourself on Saraha and Saraha is not doing anything like that. He is moving in a totally different dimension. He is not really interested in the body. He wants to see what this sexuality is, he wants to see what this appeal of orgasm is, he wants to see what exactly orgasm is; he wants to be meditative in that peak moment, so that he can find the clue and the key. Maybe there is the key to open the door of the divine. In fact it is there.

God has hidden the key in your sexuality. On the one hand, through your sex, life survives; that is only partial use of your sex energy. On another hand, if you move with full awareness in your sex energy, you will find that you have come across a key that can help you to enter into eternal life. One small aspect of sex is that your children will live. The other aspect, a higher aspect, is that you can live in eternity. Sex energy is life energy.

Ordinarily we don’t move further than the porch, we never go into the palace. Saraha is trying to go into the palace. Now the people who came to the king must have been suppressed people, as all people are suppressed. The politician and the priest have to teach suppression, because it is only through suppression that people are driven insane. And you can rule insane people more easily than sane people. And when people are insane in their sex energy, they start moving in other directions: they will start moving towards money or power or prestige. They have to show their sex energy somewhere or other; it is boiling there, they have to release it in some way or other. So money-madness or power-addiction become their releases.

This whole society is sex-obsessed. If sex-obsession disappears from the world, people will not be moneymad who will bother about money? And people will not be bothered by power. Nobody will like to become a president or a prime minister. For what? Life is so tremendously beautiful in its ordinariness, it is so superb in its ordinariness, why should one want to become somebody? By being nobody it is so delicious, nothing is missing. But if you destroy people’s sexuality and make them repressed, so much is missing that they are always hankering: somewhere there must be joy here it is missing.

Sex is one of the activities given by nature and God in which you are thrown again and again to the present moment. Ordinarily you are never in the present except when you are making love, and then too only for a few seconds.
Tantra says one has to understand sex, to decode sex. If sex is so vital that life comes out of it, then there must be something more to it. That something more is the key towards divinity, towards God.

Question 5
The fifth question:

Osho, What is wrong with me? I understand what you say, I read your books and enjoy them tremendously, but still something very essential is missing.
Meditate on these beautiful words of Wordsworth:
The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending we lay waste our powers. Little we see in Nature that is ours, We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon. This sea that bares her bosom to the moon, The winds that will be howling at all hours And are upgathered now like sleeping flowers, For this, for everything, we are out of tune It moves us not....

That’s what is missing. It moves us not.... We are out of tune with existence. This world is too much with us...getting and spending, we lay waste our powers. Little we see in Nature.... How can you find God and how can you find bliss if you don’t look into nature? Nature is manifested God. Nature is God’s body, God’s form, God’s temple. We have given our hearts away.... That’s what is missing. For this, for everything, we are out of tune it moves us not....

So just reading and listening to me will not help much. Start feeling. Listening, feel too, not only listen. Listening, listen too through the heart. Let it sink into your feeling aspect. That is the meaning when all the religions say shraddha faith, trust is needed. Trust means a way of listening from the heart, not through doubt, not through logic, not through reasoning, not through discursive intellect, but through a deep participation through the heart.

As you listen to music, listen to me that way. Don’t listen to me as you listen to a philosopher; listen to me as you listen to the birds. Listen to me as you listen to a waterfall. Listen to me as you listen to the wind blowing through the pines. Listen to me, not through the discursive mind, but through the participant heart. And then something that you are continuously feeling is missing will not be missed. The head has become too much of an expert; it has gone to the very extreme. It is a good instrument. Yes, as a slave the head is wonderful; as a boss it is very dangerous. It has gone to the very extreme, it has absorbed all your energies; it has become dictatorial.

Of course it works, but because it works you have started depending on it too much. And one can always go to the extreme, and mind tends to go to the extreme. Young Warren was very ambitious, and when he got a job as an office boy he was determined to learn everything possible so that he could impress the boss and get ahead. One day the boss called for him and said, ”Tell the traffic department to book me a passage on the Queen Mary, sailing on the eleventh.” ”Excuse me, sir,” said the lad, ”but that ship doesn’t sail until the twelfth.” The boss looked at him, impressed. Then he said, ”Have the purchasing department put an immediate order for a six months’ supply of aluminium.”

”May I suggest,” answered Warren, ”that the order be placed tomorrow, because the price will be reduced. In addition, order only one month’s supply because the trend of the market indicates the price will go lower.” ”Very good, young man, you’re on the ball. Send Miss Kate in to take some dictation.” ”Miss Kate is out today,” the boy replied.
”What’s the matter, is she sick?”
”No, sir, not until the ninth.”

Now this is knowing too much, this is going too far! And that’s what has happened to the human mind: it has gone too far, it has crossed its limit. And it has absorbed all the energy so nothing is left for the heart. You have completely bypassed your heart. You don’t go through the heart, you don’t move that way anymore. Heart is almost a dead thing, a dead weight that’s what is missing.

You can listen to me through the head, and of course you will understand whatsoever I am saying and still you will not understand anything, not a single word, because this is an understanding of a totally different kind. This is an understanding which is more akin to love than to knowledge. If you are in love with me, only then.... If you have started feeling for me, only then.... If an affection is growing between me and you, if it is a love affair, only then....

Question 6

And the last question:
Osho, How do you define a good speech?
Difficult to say...I have never delivered a single speech in my life. You are asking a wrong person. But I have heard a definition that I liked and I would like you to know it....
A good beginning and a good ending make a good speech if they come really close together, the beginning and the end. Of course the best speech has no middle at all, and the very best is never delivered. And I have always been delivering the very best...the undelivered one. I have never delivered a single speech in my life, because I deal in silence, not in words. Even when you hear words, that was not the purpose. Even 22
when I use words, the words are used only as necessary evils because they have to be used, because you cannot understand silence yet.

I am not talking to you. I have nothing to say, because that which I have cannot be talked, it cannot be discoursed about. But you don’t understand anything else but words, so I have to suffer, I have to use words which are meaningless. And I have to say things which should not be said in the hope that by and by you will start looking more directly into me...by and by you will not listen to the words but to the message. Remember: the medium is not the message, the words are not my message. The message is wordless. I am trying to hand you the undelivered speech. It is a transfer beyond words, so only those who are joined with me through their hearts will be able to receive it.
Enough for today.

This honey is yours

As a cloud that rises from the sea Absorbing rain, the earth embraces, So, like the sky, the sea remains Without increasing or decreasing.
So from spontaneity that’s unique, Replete with the Buddha’s perfections, Are all sentient beings born, And in it come to rest. But it is neither concrete Nor abstract.
They walk other paths And so forsake true bliss, Seeking the delights That stimulants produce. The honey in their mouths, And to them so near, Will vanish if at once They do not drink it. Beasts do not understand the world To be a sorry place. Not so the wise Who the heavenly nectar drink While beasts hunger for the sensual.

Everything changes...and Heraclitus is right: you cannot step in the same river twice. The river is changing, so you are changing too. It is all movement, it is all flux; everything is impermanent, momentary. Only for a moment it is there, and then gone, and you will never find it again. There is no way to find it again. Once gone, it is gone forever.

And nothing changes that too is true. Nothing ever changes. All is always the same. Parmeneides is also right; he says there is nothing new under the sun. How can there be? The sun is old, so is everything. If you ask Parmeneides, he will say you can step in any river you want, but you will be stepping in the same river always. Whether it is the Ganges or the Thames does not make any difference, the water is the same, it is all H20. And whether you step in the river today or tomorrow or after millions of years, it will be the same river. And how can you be different? You were a child, you remember it. Then you were a young man, you remember that too.

Then you became old; that too you remember. Who is this one who goes on remembering? There must be a non-changing element in you unchanging, permanent, absolutely permanent. Childhood comes and goes; so comes youth and is gone, so old age but something remains eternally the same. Now let me say to you: Heraclitus and Parmeneides, both are right; in fact they both are right together. If Heraclitus is right, it is only half the truth; if Parmeneides is right, that too is only half the truth, and half the truth is not the true thing. They are stating half-truths. The wheel moves and the hub does not move. Parmeneides talks about the hub, Heraclitus talks about the wheel but the wheel cannot exist without the hub. And what use is a hub without the wheel? So those two contradictory-looking half-truths are not contradictory but complementary. Heraclitus and Parmeneides are not enemies but friends. The other can stand only if the complementary truth is there, otherwise not.

Meditate on the silent center of a cyclone....
But the moment you state something, it can at the most only be half the truth. No statement can cover the whole truth. If any statement wants to cover the whole truth, then the statement will have to be, of necessity, self-contradictory, then it will have to be, of necessity, illogical. Then the statement will look crazy. Mahavira did that: he is the craziest man because he tried to state the whole truth and nothing but the whole truth. He drives you crazy, because each statement is immediately followed by its contradiction. He developed a sevenfold way of making statements. One is followed by its contradiction, that is followed by its contradiction...so on and so forth. He goes on contradicting seven times, and only when he has said seven different things contradictory to each other seven times, then he says, ”Now the truth is told perfectly” but then you don’t know what he has said.
If you ask him, ”God is?” he will say, ”Yes,” and he will say, ”No,” and he will say, ”Both,” and he will say, ”Both not,” and so on and so forth he goes.... Finally you don’t come to any conclusion. You cannot conclude. He does not give you any chance to conclude; he leaves you hanging in the air. This is one possibility, if you are insistent on saying the truth.

The other possibility is that of Buddha: he keeps silent, knowing that whatsoever you say will be only half. And half is dangerous. He does not say anything about ultimate truths. He will not say the world is a flux, and he will not say that the world is permanent. He will not say that you are, and he will not say that you are not. The moment you ask anything about the absolute truth, he prohibits. He says, ”Please don’t ask, because by your question you will put me into trouble. Either I have to be contradictory, which is going crazy; or I have to utter a half-truth, which is not truth and dangerous; or I have to keep quiet.” These are the three possibilities. Buddha had chosen to keep silent.
This is the first thing to be understood about today’s sutras, then with this context it will be easy to understand what Saraha is saying.

The first sutra: As a cloud that rises from the sea Absorbing rain, the earth embraces, So, like the sky, the sea remains Without increasing or decreasing.
He is saying to the king: Look at the sky. There are two phenomena, the sky and the cloud. The cloud comes and goes. The sky never comes and never goes. The cloud is there sometimes, and sometimes it is not there; it is a time phenomenon, it is momentary. The sky is always there; it is a timeless phenomenon, it is eternity. The clouds cannot corrupt it, not even the black clouds can corrupt it. There is no possibility of corrupting it; its purity is absolute, its purity is untouchable. Its purity is always virgin, you cannot violate it. Clouds can come and go, and they have been coming and going, but the sky is as pure as ever; not even a trace is left behind. So there are two things in existence: something is like the sky and something is like the cloud. Your actions are like the cloud, they come and go. You? you are like the sky: you never come and you never go. Your birth, your death, are like the clouds, they happen. You? you never happen; you are always there. Things happen in you, you never happen.

Things happen just like clouds happen in the sky. You are a silent watcher of the whole play of clouds. Sometimes they are white and beautiful and sometimes they are dark and dismal and very ugly. Sometimes they are full of rain and sometimes they are just empty. Sometimes they do great benefit to the earth, sometimes great harm. Sometimes they bring floods and destruction, and sometimes they bring life, more greenery, more crops. But the sky remains all the time the same: good or bad, divine or devilish, the clouds don’t corrupt it. Actions are clouds, doings are clouds.
Being is like the sky.

Saraha is saying: Look at my sky! Don’t look at my actions. It needs a shift of awareness, nothing else, just a shift of awareness. It needs a change of gestalt. You are looking at the cloud, you are focused on the cloud, you have forgotten the sky. Then suddenly you remember the sky. You unfocus on the cloud, you focus on the sky; then the cloud is irrelevant, then you are in a totally different dimension. Just the shift of focusing...and the world is different. When you watch a person’s behavior, you are focusing on the cloud. When you watch the innermost purity of his being, you are watching his sky. If you watch the innermost purity, then you will never see anybody evil, then the whole existence is holy. If you see the actions, then you cannot see anybody holy. Even the holiest person is prone to commit many faults as far as actions are concerned. If you watch the actions you can find wrong actions in Jesus, in Buddha, in Mahavira, in Krishna, in Rama. Then even the greatest saint will look like a sinner.

There are many books written about Jesus, he is the object of thousands of studies. Many are written in favor of him which prove that he is the only begotten son of God. Of course they can prove it. Then many are written to prove that he is just a neurotic and nothing else and they can also prove it. And they are talking about the same person. What is happening? How do they manage? They manage well. One party goes on choosing the white clouds, another party goes on choosing the black clouds and both are there, because no action can be just white or just black. To be, it has to be both.

Whatsoever you do will bring some good into the world and will bring some bad into the world whatsoever you do. Just the very choice that you did something many things will be good and many things will be wrong after that. You think of any action: you go and you give some money to a beggar you are doing good, but the beggar goes and purchases some poison and commits suicide. Now your intention was good but the total result is bad. You help a man he is ill, you serve him, you take him to the hospital. And then he is healthy, well, and he commits murder. Now without your help there would have been one murder less in the world. Your intention was good, but the total result is bad.

So whether to judge by the intention or to judge by the result? And who knows about your intention? Intention is internal... maybe deep down you were hoping that when he got healthy he would commit a murder. And sometimes it happens your intention is bad and the result is good. You throw a rock at a person, and he was suffering from migraine for many years, and the rock hit his head and since then the migraine has disappeared

now what to do? What to say about your act? moral, immoral? You wanted to kill the man, you could only kill the migraine.
That’s how acupuncture was born. Such a great science! so beneficial! one of the greatest boons to humanity but it was born in this way. A man was suffering from headaches for many years. And somebody, his enemy, wanted to kill him. Hiding behind a tree, the enemy shot an arrow; the arrow hit the man’s leg, he fell down, but his headache disappeared. The people who were looking after him, the doctor of the town, were very much puzzled as to how it happened.

They started studying. By chance, by coincidence, the man had hit one acupuncture point just on the leg; some point was touched on the leg by the arrow, was hit by the arrow, and the inner electric flow of the man’s body energy changed. And because the inner flow of the electricity changed, his headache disappeared. That’s why when you go to the acupuncturist and you say, ”I have a headache,” he may not touch your head at all. He may start pressing your feet or your hand, or he may needle your hand or your back. And you will be surprised: ”What are you doing? because my head is wrong, not my back!” But he knows better. The whole body is an interconnected electric phenomenon; there are seven hundred points, and he knows from where to push the energy to change the flow. Everything is interconnected...but this is how acupuncture was born. Now the man who shot the arrow at his enemy, was he a great saint or was he a sinner?

Difficult to say, very difficult to say. If you watch the actions, then it is up to you. You can choose the good ones, you can choose the bad ones. And in the total reality, each act brings something good and something bad. In fact, this is my understanding, meditate on it: whatsoever you do, the goodness of it and the badness of it are always in the same proportion. Let me repeat: it is always in the same proportion because good and bad are two aspects of the same coin. You may do good, but something bad is bound to happen because where will the other aspect go? You may do bad, but good is bound to happen because where will the other aspect go? The coin exists with both aspects together, and a single aspect cannot exist alone.
So sinners are sometimes beneficial and saints are sometimes very harmful. Saints and sinners are both in the same boat! Once you understand this then a change is possible; then you don’t look at the actions. If the proportion is the same whether you do good or bad, then what is the point of judging a man by his actions? Then change the whole emphasis, then move to another gestalt the sky.

That’s what Saraha is saying to the king. He is saying: Right you are! People have told you and they are not wrong. I run like a mad dog. Yes, if you just watch the action you will be misguided, you will not be able to understand me. Watch my inner sky. Watch my inner priority, watch my inner core; that’s the only way to see the truth. Yes, I live with this woman and ordinarily living with a woman means what it means. Now Saraha says: Watch! This is no ordinary living! There is no man-woman relationship at all. It has nothing to do with sexuality. We live together as two spaces, we live together as two freedoms; we live together as two empty boats. But you have to look into the sky, not into the clouds.
As a cloud that rises from the sea Absorbing rain, the earth embraces, So, like the sky, the sea remains Without increasing or decreasing.

And another thing he reminds him of: Watch the sea. Millions of clouds rise out of the sea, so much water evaporates, but the sea does not decrease because of that. And then the clouds will rain on the earth, and rivulets will become great rivers, and many rivers will be flooded, and the water will rush back towards the ocean, towards the sea...all the rivers of the earth will pour down their water into the sea, but that does not make the sea increase the sea remains the same. Whether something is taken out of it or something is poured into it makes no difference; its perfection is such that you cannot take anything out of it and you cannot add anything to it. He is saying: Look! the inner being is so perfect that your actions may be those of a sinner, but nothing is taken away. And your actions may be those of a saint, but nothing is added unto you. You remain the same. It is a tremendously revolutionary saying, it is a great statement.

He says: Nothing can be added to man and nothing can be deleted from man, his inner perfection is such. You cannot make man more beautiful and you cannot make man ugly. You cannot make him more rich, you cannot make him poor. He is like the sea. In one of the Buddhist sutras, Vaipulya Sutra, there is a statement that there are two very costly jewels in the ocean: the one prevents it from becoming less when water is drawn from it, and the other from becoming too large when water flows in it. Two great jewels are there in the ocean, and those two great jewels prevent it; it never becomes less and it never becomes more, it just remains the same. It is so vast, it does not matter how many clouds arise out of it and how much water evaporates. It is so vast, it does not matter how many rivers fall into it and bring great amounts of water. It just remains the same. So is the inner core of man. So is the inner core of existence. Increase and decrease is on the periphery, not at the center. You can become a man of great knowledge or you can remain ignorant; that is only on the periphery. No knowledge can make you more knowing than you already are. Nothing can be added to you. Your purity is infinite, there is no way to improve upon it.

This is the Tantra vision. This is the very core of the Tantra attitude that man is as he is, there is no hankering for improvement. Not that man has to become good, not that man has to change this and that; man has to accept all and remember his sky! and remember his sea! And by and by an understanding arises, when you know what is a cloud and what is the sky, what is a river and what is the sea. Once you are in tune with your sea, all anxiety disappears, all guilt disappears. You become innocent like a child.
The king had known Saraha: he was a great man of knowledge and now he is behaving like an ignorant man. He has stopped reciting his Vedas, he no longer does his rituals that his religion prescribes he no longer even meditates. He does nothing that is ordinarily thought to be religious. What is he doing here living on a cremation ground, dancing like a madman, singing like a madman, and doing many untraditional things? Where has his knowledge gone?

And Saraha says: You can take all my knowledge away, it does not make any difference because I am not lessened by it. Or you can bring all the scriptures of the world and pour them into me; that doesn’t make any difference because I don’t become more because of that. He was a very respectable man, the whole kingdom had respected him; now suddenly he has become one of the most unrespectable men. And Saraha is saying: You can give me all the honors that are possible, and nothing is added unto me. And you can take all the honors, and you can insult me, and you can do whatsoever you want to destroy my respect nothing is happening. All the same, I remain the same. I am that which never increases and never decreases. Now I know that I am not the cloud, I am the sky.

So I am not much worried whether people think the cloud is black or white, because I am not the cloud. And I am not the small river, the tiny river, or a tiny pool of water...I am not a cup of tea. Storms come in the cup of tea very easily, it is so tiny. Just take one spoonful out of it and something is lost, pour one more spoonful and it is too much and there is a flood.

He says: I am the vast sea. Now take whatsoever you want to take, or give whatsoever you want to give either way it does not matter.
Just look at the beauty of it! The moment nothing matters, you have come home. If something still matters, you are far away from the home. If you are still watching and being cunning and clever about your actions you have to do this and you have not to do this and there are still shoulds and should-nots, then you are far away from home. You still think of yourself in terms of the momentary and not in terms of the eternal. You have not yet tasted God.
Like the sky and like the sea...are you.

The second sutra:
So from spontaneity that’s unique, Replete with the Buddha’s perfections, Are all sentient beings born, and in it come To rest. But it is neither concrete nor abstract.
So from spontaneity that’s unique.... First, in Tantra spontaneity is the greatest value, to be just natural, to allow nature to happen...not to obstruct it, not to hinder it; not to distract it, not to take it in some other direction where it was not going on its own. To surrender to nature, to flow with it not pushing the river, but going with it all the way, wherever it leads this trust is Tantra. Spontaneity is its mantra, its greatest foundation. Spontaneity means you don’t interfere, you are in a let-go. Whatsoever happens, you watch, you are a witness to it. You know it is happening but you don’t jump into it, and you don’t try to change its course. Spontaneity means you don’t have any direction. Spontaneity means you don’t have any goal to attain. If you have some goal to attain you cannot be spontaneous. How can you be spontaneous if suddenly your nature is going one way and your goal is not there? How can you be spontaneous? You will drag yourself towards the goal. That’s what millions of people are doing dragging themselves towards some imaginary goal. And because they are dragging themselves towards some imaginary goal, they are missing the natural destiny, which is the only goal! And that’s why there is so much frustration and so much misery and so much hell, because whatsoever you do will never satisfy your nature.

That’s why people are dull and dead. They live, and yet they live not. They are moving like prisoners, chained. Their movement is not that of freedom, their movement is not that of dance; it cannot be because they are fighting, they are continuously in a fight with themselves. There is a conflict each moment: you want to eat this, and your religion does not prescribe it; you want to move with this woman, but that will not be respectable. You want to live this way, but the society prohibits it. You want to be in one way, you feel that that is how you can flower, but everybody else is against it.

So do you listen to your being or do you listen to everybody else’s advice? If you listen to everybody’s advice, your life will be an empty life of nothing but frustration. You will finish without ever being alive, you will die without ever knowing what life is.

But the society has created such conditioning in you that it is not only outside, it is sitting inside you. That’s what conscience is all about. Whatsoever you want to do, your conscience says, ”Don’t do it!” The conscience is your parental voice; the priest and the politician speak through it. It is a great trick. They have made a conscience in you: from the very childhood when you were not aware at all of what was being done to you, they have put a conscience in you. So whenever you go against the conscience, you feel guilty. Guilt means you have done something which others don’t want you to do. So whenever you are natural you are guilty, and whenever you are not guilty you are unnatural. This is the dilemma, this is the dichotomy, this is the problem.

If you listen to your own naturalness, you feel guilty; then there is misery. You start feeling you have done something wrong, you start hiding, you start defending yourself, you start continuously pretending that you have not done it. And you are afraid somebody is bound to catch you sooner or later. You will be caught...and anxiety, and guilt, and fear...and you lose all love with life.

Whenever you do something against others you feel guilty. And whenever you do something that others say you never feel happy doing it, because it has never been your own thing to do. Between these two is man caught. I was just reading one anecdote....

”What’s this double jeopardy that the constitution is supposed to guarantee one against?” asked Roland of his lawyer friend Milt. Said the other, ”It is like this, Rollie: if you are out driving your car and both your wife and her mother are sitting in the backseat telling you how to drive, well that’s double jeopardy. And you have a constitutional right to turn around and say, ’Now, who in hell’s driving this car, dear, you or your mother?’” You may be at the wheel, but you are not driving the car. There are many people sitting in the back seat your parents, your parents’ parents, your priest, your politician, the leader, the mahatma, the saint, they are all sitting in the back seat. And they all are trying to advise you: ”Do this! Don’t do that! Go this way! Don’t go that way!” They are driving you mad, and you have been taught to follow them. If you don’t follow them, that too creates such fear in you that something is wrong: how can you be right when so many people are advising? And they are always advising for your own good! How can you alone be right when the whole world is saying,”Do this!” Of course they are in the majority and they must be right.

But remember: it is not a question of being right or wrong, the question basically is of being spontaneous or not. Spontaneity is right! Otherwise you will become an imitator, and imitators are never fulfilled beings. You wanted to be a painter, but your parents said, ”No! because painting is not going to give you enough money, and painting is not going to give you any respect in society. You will become a hobo and you will be a beggar. So don’t bother about painting. Become a magistrate!” So you have become a magistrate. Now you don’t feel any happiness. It is a plastic thing, this being a magistrate. And deep down you still want to paint. While sitting in the court you are still, deep down, painting. Maybe you are listening to the criminal, but you are thinking about his face, what a beautiful face he has got, and what a beautiful portrait would have been possible. You are looking at his eyes and the blueness of his eyes, and you are thinking of colors...and you are a magistrate! So you are constantly at unease, a tension follows you. And by and by you will also start feeling you are a respectable man and this and that. You are just an imitation, you are artificial. I have heard....

One woman gave up smoking when her pet parrot developed a persistent cough. She was worried; naturally she thought it must have been the smoke...that she went on smoking continuously in the house and that it didn’t suit the parrot. So she took the parrot to a vet. The vet gave the bird a thorough checkup and found that it didn’t have pneumonia or psittacosis. The final diagnosis was that it had been imitating the cough of its cigarette-smoking owner! It was not smoke, it was just imitating: the woman was coughing and the parrot had learned coughing. Watch! Your life may be just like a parrot. If it is like a parrot then you are missing something tremendously valuable you are missing your life. Whatsoever you gain will not prove of much value, because there is nothing more valuable than your life.

So Tantra makes spontaneity the first virtue, the most fundamental virtue. So from spontaneity that’s unique...now one more thing Tantra says, and that has to be understood very, very minutely. The spontaneity can be of two types: it can be only of impulsiveness, but then it is not very unique; if it is of awareness, then it has that quality of being unique, the Buddha quality.
Many times listening to me you think you are becoming spontaneous, while you are simply becoming impulsive. What is the difference between being impulsive and being spontaneous? You have two things in you, the body and the mind. The mind is controlled by the society and the body is controlled by your biology. The mind is controlled by your society because the society can put thoughts into your mind; and your body is controlled by millions of years of biological growth.

The body is unconscious, so is mind unconscious; you are a watcher beyond both. So if you stop listening to the mind and to the society, there is every possibility you will start listening to the biology. So sometimes you feel like murdering somebody, and you say, ”I am going to be spontaneous Osho has said ’Be spontaneous!’ so I have to do it, I have to be spontaneous.” You have misunderstood that is not going to make your life beautiful, blissful. You will be continuously in conflict again, now with outside people. By spontaneity Tantra means a spontaneity full of awareness. So the first thing: to be spontaneous is to be fully aware. The moment you are aware, you are neither in the trap of the mind nor in the trap of the body. Then real spontaneity flows from your very soul from the sky, from the sea your spontaneity flows. Otherwise you can change your masters: from the body you can change to the mind, or from the mind you can change to the body. The body is fast asleep; following the body will be following a blind man. And the spontaneity will just take you into a ditch. It is not going to help you. Impulsiveness is not spontaneity. Yes, impulse has a certain spontaneity, more spontaneity than the mind, but it has not that quality which Tantra would like you to imbibe. That’s why Saraha says: So from spontaneity that’s unique.... He adds the word unique unique means not of impulsion but of awareness, of consciousness.

We live unconsciously. Whether we live in the mind or in the body does not make much difference we live unconsciously.
”Why did you tear out the back part of that new book?” asked the long-suffering wife of an absent-minded doctor.
”Excuse me, dear,” said the famous surgeon, ”The part you speak of was labeled ’Appendix’ and I took it out without thinking.”
His whole life taking out the appendix from everybody’s body...must have become an unconscious habit. Seeing ’Appendix’ he must have taken it out. That’s how we are existing and working. It is an unconscious life. An unconscious spontaneity is not much of a spontaneity....

A drunk staggered from a tavern and started walking with one foot in the street and one on the sidewalk. After a block or two a policeman spotted him. ”Hey,” said the cop, ”you’re drunk!” The drunk sighed with relief. ”Gosh!” he said, ”Is that what’s wrong? I thought I was lame.” When you are under the influence of the body, you are under the influence of chemistry. Again...you are out of one trap but you are again in another trap. From one ditch you are out; you have fallen in another ditch. When you really want to be out of all ditches and in freedom, you will have to become a witness of body and mind both. When you are witnessing, and you are spontaneous out of your witnessing, then there is unique spontaneity.

So from spontaneity that’s unique, Replete with the Buddha’s perfections... And Saraha says: The real spontaneity is replete with Buddha’s perfections. What are Buddha’s perfections? Two: pragyan and karuna wisdom and compassion. These are Buddha’s two perfections. If these two are there, reflecting in your spontaneity, then it is unique.
Wisdom does not mean knowledge. Wisdom means awareness, meditativeness, silence, watchfulness, attentiveness. And out of that attentiveness, out of that silence, flows compassion for beings. The whole world is suffering. The day you start enjoying your bliss you will start feeling for others too. They can also enjoy; they are just standing at the door of the shrine and are not entering in, and are rushing outwards. They have the treasure, the same treasure that you have attained; they are carrying it, but they are not using it because they are not aware of it.

When one person becomes enlightened, his whole being becomes full of compassion towards all beings. The whole existence is filled by his compassion. Rivers of compassion start flowing from him and start reaching to everybody else to men, to women, to animals, to birds, to trees, to rivers, to mountains, to stars. The whole existence starts sharing his compassion.

These two are the qualities of Buddha: that he understands, and that he feels and cares. When your spontaneity is really of awareness, you cannot do anything against compassion; you cannot murder. People come to me and they ask, ”Osho, you say to be spontaneous, but sometimes I want to murder my wife then what?” You cannot murder. How can you murder? Yes, not even your wife...you cannot murder. When your spontaneity is alert, when it is luminous, how can you even think of murder? You will know that there is no possibility: nobody is ever murdered. The being is the sky; you can only disperse the cloud, but you cannot murder. So what is the point? And how can you murder if you are so alert and so spontaneous? Compassion will flow side by side, in the same proportion. As you become aware, in the same proportion there is compassion.

Buddha has said: If there is compassion without awareness, it is dangerous. That’s what is in the people we call do-gooders. They have compassion, but no awareness. They go on doing good, and that good has not even happened to their own beings. They go on helping others, and they themselves need much help. They themselves are ill, and they go on helping other people...it is not possible. Physician, heal thyself first! Buddha says: If you have compassion without awareness, your compassion will be harmful. Do-gooders are the most mischievous people in the world. They don’t know what they are doing, but they are always doing something or other to help people.

Once a man came to me...he had devoted his whole life, forty, fifty years he is seventy. When he was twenty, he came under the influence of Mahatma Gandhi and become a do-gooder. Gandhi created the greatest lot of do-gooders in India; India is still suffering from those do-gooders and it seems difficult to get rid of them. This man, under Mahatma Gandhi’s influence, went to a primitive tribe in Bastar and started teaching the primitive people forty years’ effort, fifty years’ effort. He had opened many schools, high schools, and now he was opening a college.

He came to me, he wanted my support for the college. I said, ”Just tell me one thing. Fifty years you have been with them: can you say certainly that education has been good, that they are better than they were when they were uneducated? Can you be certain that your fifty years’ work has made them more beautiful human beings?” He was a little puzzled. He started perspiring; he said, ”I never thought that way, but maybe you have something. No, they are not better. In fact with education they have become cunning, they have become just as other people are. When I reached them fifty years ago, they were tremendously beautiful people. Yes, uneducated, but they had a dignity. Fifty years ago there was not a single murder. And if sometimes it used to happen, then the murderer would go to the court and report.

There was no stealing; and if sometimes somebody did steal, he would come to the chief of the tribe and confess that, ’I have stolen because I was hungry, but punish me.’ There were no locks fifty years ago in those villages. They had always lived in a very silent, peaceful way.” So I asked him, ”If your education has not helped them, then think again. You started doing good to others without knowing what you were doing. You just thought education has to be good.” D. H. Lawrence has said that if man has to be saved, then for one hundred years all universities should be closed completely closed! For one hundred years nobody should be given any education. For one hundred years all schools, colleges, universities, gone; a gap of one hundred years. And that is the only way to save man, because education has made people very cunning cunning to exploit more, cunning to use others more as means, cunning to be immoral.

”If you don’t know what you are doing, you can think that you are doing good, but good cannot happen.” Buddha says: Compassion is good when it follows awareness, otherwise it is not good. Compassion without awareness is dangerous, and awareness without compassion is selfish. So Buddha says: A perfect buddha will have both, awareness and compassion. If you become aware and you forget about others and you say, ”Why should I bother? Now I am happy” you close your eyes, you don’t help others, you don’t help others to become aware then you are selfish, then a deep ego still exists.

Awareness kills half the ego, and the other half is killed by compassion. Between these two the ego is utterly destroyed. And when a man has become a no-self, he has become a buddha. Saraha says: So from spontaneity that’s unique, Replete with the Buddha’s perfections, Are all sentient beings born, And in it come to rest. But it is neither concrete nor abstract. He says: From such unique spontaneity we are born, out of such godliness we are born. And again we go back to this godliness to rest. In the meantime, in the middle of these two, we become too much attached to the clouds. So all that is needed is not to be attached to the clouds. That is the whole of Tantra in one word: not to be attached to the clouds, because clouds are there only for the moment. We come out of that source, that innocent source, and we will go back to rest in that innocent source. In the middle of these two there will be many clouds don’t get attached to them. Just watch. Remember that you are not the clouds. ...are all sentient beings born, and in it come to rest.
We are out of God. We are gods. And again we go to God. In the meantime we start dreaming a thousand and one dreams of being this and that.
God is the most ordinary reality. God is your source. God is your goal. God is right now, here! In your very presence, God is it is God’s presence. When you look at me, it is God looking at me, it is nobody else. A shift, a change of focus, from the cloud to the sky, and suddenly you will fall silent, and suddenly you will feel full of bliss, and suddenly you will feel benediction surrounding you.
But it is neither concrete nor abstract.

It is neither mind nor body, this godliness. Mind is abstract, body is concrete; body is gross, mind is subtle. Body is matter, mind is thought. This inner godliness is neither. This inner godliness is a transcendence. Tantra is transcendence.

So if you think you are a body, you are clouded, then you are identified with a cloud. If you think you are a mind, again you are clouded. If you think in any way that makes you identified with body or mind, then you are missing the mark.

If you become awake, and suddenly you see yourself only as a witness who sees the body, sees the mind, you have become a Saraha: the arrow is shot. In that change of consciousness it is just a small change of gear the arrow is shot, you have arrived. In fact you had never left.


They walk other paths and so forsake true bliss, Seeking the delights that stimulants produce. The honey in their mouths, and to them so near, Will vanish if at once they do not drink it. If you are not becoming one with the sky with which you are really one, then you are walking other paths. There are millions of other paths; the true path is one. And in fact the true path is not a path; the sky never goes anywhere. Clouds go...sometimes west and sometimes east and south and this way and that, and they are great wanderers. They go, they find paths, they carry maps, but the sky is simply there. It has no path, it cannot go anywhere. It has nowhere to go. It is all in all.
So those who remember their sky-being, they are at home, at rest. Except for these few beings, few buddhas, the others walk so many paths and so forsake true bliss.
Try to understand this. It is a very profound statement. The moment you are walking on any path you are going astray from your true bliss, because your true bliss is your nature. It has not to be produced, it has not to be achieved, it has not to be attained.

We follow paths to reach somewhere...it is not a goal, it is already there. It is already the case. So the moment you start moving, you are moving away. All movement is movement away. All going is going astray. Non-going is arriving. Not going is the true path. Seek and you will miss; don’t seek, and find. They walk other paths and so forsake true bliss, Seeking the delights that stimulants produce. There are two types of bliss. One is conditional; it happens only in certain conditions. You see your woman, you are happy. Or you are a lover of money and you have found a bag full of hundred rupee notes by the side of the road, and there is happiness. Or you are an egoist and a Nobel prize is awarded to you, and you dance, there is happiness. These are conditional, you have to arrange for them. And they are momentary. How long can you be happy with a conditional happiness? How long can the happiness remain? It comes only like a glimpse, for a moment, and then it is gone. Yes, when you find a bag full of hundred rupee notes you are happy, but how long will you be happy? Not too long. In fact for a moment there will be a surge of energy and you will feel happy and the next moment you will become afraid are you going to be caught? Whose money is this? Has somebody seen?

And the conscience will say, ”This is not right. It is a sort of stealing. You should go to the court, you should go to the police, you should surrender the money to the police! What are you doing? You are a moral man....” And anxiety and guilt...but you have brought it home, now you are hiding it. Now you are afraid: maybe the wife will discover it, maybe somebody has really seen, somebody may have looked who knows? somebody may have reported to the police. Now the anxiety....
And even if nobody has reported and nobody has seen, what are you going to do with this money? Whatsoever you are going to do will again and again give you a moment of happiness. You purchase a car, and the car is in your porch, and for a moment you are happy. Then...? Then the car is old; next day it is the same car. After a few days you don’t look at it at all.
A momentary happiness comes and goes; it is like the cloud. And it is like the river, a very tiny river: a small rain and it is flooded; rain stopped, and the flood is gone to the sea, again the tiny river is tiny. It floods for one moment and then is empty the next. It is not like the sea which is never more, never less. There is another kind of bliss that Saraha calls the true bliss. It is unconditional. You are not to manage certain conditions, it is there! You have just to look into yourself and it is there. You don’t need a woman, you don’t need a man; you don’t need a big house, you don’t need a big car; you don’t need to have much prestige and power and pull nothing. If you close your eyes and just go inwards, it is there.... Only this bliss can be always and always. Only this bliss can be eternally yours. Seeking, you will find momentary things. Without seeking, you will find this eternal one. They walk other paths and so forsake true bliss, Seeking the delights that stimulants produce. The honey in their mouths, and to them so near, Will vanish if at once they do not drink it.

The honey is in your mouth, and you are going to seek it in the Himalayas, in some mountains? You have heard stories: there is much honey available in the Himalayas, and you are going to seek it? And the honey is in your mouth!

In India the mystics have always talked about the musk deer. There is a certain kind of deer which has musk in his navel. When the musk starts increasing it happens only when the deer is really in sexual heat.... The musk is a natural trick, a biological trick when the musk starts releasing its fragrance, the female deer become attracted to the deer. They come through the musk, through the smell.

Smell is one of the most sexual senses that’s why man has killed his nose. It is a dangerous sense. You don’t smell really. In fact the word itself has become very much condemned. If somebody has good, beautiful eyes, you say he sees well; if somebody has perfect ears for music, you say he hears well; but you don’t say he smells well. Why? In fact to say that he smells means something just the opposite: it means that he stinks, not that he has the capacity to smell. The capacity is lost.

Man does not smell. And we try to hide our sexual smells by perfuming, by cleansing; by this and that we hide! We are afraid of the smell, because smell is the closest sense to sex. Animals fall in love through the smell. The animals smell each other, and when they feel that their smell suits, only then do they make love; then there is a harmony in their being.
This musk is born in the deer only when he is in sexual heat and he needs a female. The female will come to find him. But he is in trouble, because he starts smelling the musk and he cannot understand that it is coming from his own navel, from his own body. So he runs mad, tries to find out from where this smell is coming naturally so. How can he think? Even man cannot think from where bliss comes, from where beauty comes, from where joy comes. The deer can be forgiven, poor deer. He goes on rushing here and there in search of the musk, and the more he rushes, the more the fragrance is spread all over the forest; wherever he goes, there is the smell. It is said that sometimes he becomes almost mad, not knowing that the musk is within him. And so is the case with man: man goes mad seeking and searching sometimes in money, sometimes in respect, this and that. But the musk is within you, the honey is in your mouth. And look at what Saraha is saying: The honey in their mouths, and to them so near, will vanish if at once they do not drink it. And then he says: At once drink it! Don’t lose a single moment, otherwise it will vanish. Now or never! At once! time has not to be lost. This can be done immediately, because there is no need for any preparation. It is your innermost core; this honey is yours, this musk is hidden in your navel. You have brought it from your birth, and you have been searching and seeking in the world.

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