Osho –
Dhammapada: The Way of The Buddha (Volume 4)
Chapter 2. Via
transcendence
Question 1:
Beloved Master,
Can intellectual activity be creative?
Anand Savita, intellect is
something pseudo, something false. It is a substitute for intelligence.
Intelligence is a totally different phenomenon - the real thing.
Intelligence needs tremendous
courage, intelligence needs an adventurous life.
Intelligence needs that you are
always going into the unknown, into the uncharted sea.
Then intelligence grows, it
becomes sharpened. It grows only when it encounters the unknown every moment.
People are afraid of the unknown, people feel insecure with the unknown. They
don't want to go beyond the familiar. Hence they have created a false, plastic
substitute for intelligence - they call it intellect.
Intellect is only a mental
game; it cannot be creative. Intellect is imaginative, but not creative.
Intelligence is creative. Intelligence creates because intelligence makes you
capable of participating with God. God is the source of all creativity. You can
be creative only when you are EN RAPPORT with God, when you are rooted in the
very existence, when you are part of divine energy. You cannot be creative on
your own; you can be creative only as a medium of God.
When the poet creates he is
only a medium, a hollow bamboo on the lips of God. And suddenly the hollow
bamboo is no longer a hollow bamboo - it becomes a flute. The emptiness of the
bamboo becomes full of song, dance, celebration.
Creativity means you have to
disappear, you have to allow God to be, you have to get out of the way.
Intellect is egoistic; intelligence is humble, egoless. The difference is
subtle; because both the words come from the same root, hence one can easily be
deceived. Beware, be alert! Intellect is not intelligence. Intelligence is
creative, intellect is only a pretender. In the name of creativity it goes on
producing rubbish.
You can go and look in the
universities and see what kind of creative work goes on there. Thousands of
treatises are being written; Ph.D.s, D.Phil.s, D.Litt.s, great degrees are
conferred on people. Nobody ever comes to know what happens to their Ph.D. theses;
they go on becoming rubbish heaps in the libraries. Nobody ever reads them,
nobody is ever inspired by them. Yes, a few people read them; they are the same
type of people who are going to write another thesis. The would-be Ph.D.s will
be of course reading them.
But your universities don't
create Shakespeares, Miltons, Dostoevskys, Tolstoys, Rabindranaths, Kahlil
Gibrans. Your universities create just junk, utterly useless. This is
intellectual activity that goes on in the universities. Intelligence creates a
Picasso, a Van Gogh, a Mozart, a Beethoven.
Intelligence is a totally
different dimension. It has nothing to do with the head; it has something to do
with the heart. Intellect is in the head; intelligence is a state of heart-
wakefulness. When your heart is awake, when your heart is dancing in deep
gratitude, when your heart is in tune with existence, in harmony with
existence, out of that harmony is creativity.
Savita, there is no possibility
of any intellectual creativity. It can produce rubbish, it is productive; it can
manufacture, but it cannot create. And what is the difference between
manufacturing and creating? Manufacturing is a mechanical activity. Computers
can do it - they are already doing it, and doing it in a far more efficient way
than you can hope from man. Intelligence creates, it does not manufacture.
Manufacturing means a
repetitive exercise; what has already been done, you go on doing again and
again. Creativity means bringing the new into existence, making a way for the
unknown to penetrate the known, making a way for the sky to come to the earth.
When there is a Beethoven or a
Michelangelo or a Kalidas, the skies open, flowers shower from the beyond. I am
not telling you anything about Buddha, Christ, Krishna, Mahavira, Zarathustra,
Mohammed, for a certain reason: because what THEY create is so subtle that you
will not be able to catch hold of it. What Michelangelo creates is gross; what
Van Gogh creates can be seen, is visible. What a buddha creates is absolutely
invisible. It needs a totally different kind of receptivity to understand.
To understand a buddha you have
to be intelligent. Not only that Buddha's creation is of tremendous
intelligence, but it is so superb, it is so supramental, that even to
understand it you will have to be intelligent. Intellect won't help even in
understanding.
Only two kinds of people
create: the poets and the mystics. The poets create in the gross world and the
mystics create in the subtle world. The poets create in the outer world: a
painting, a poem, a song, music, a dance; and the mystic creates in the inner
world. The poet's creativity is objective and the mystic's creativity is
subjective, totally of the interior. First you have to understand the poet,
only then can you understand one day - at least HOPE to understand one day -
the mystic. The mystic is the highest flower of creativity. But you may not see
anything that the mystic is doing.
Buddha has never painted a
single picture, has never taken the brush in his hands, has not composed a
single poem, has not sung a single song, nobody has ever seen him dancing. If
you watch him he is just sitting silently; his whole being is silence. Yes, a
grace surrounds him, a grace of infinite beauty, of exquisite beauty, but you
will need to be very vulnerable to feel it. You will have to be very open, not
argumentative. You cannot be a spectator with a buddha; you have to be a
participant, because it is a mystery to be participated in. Then you will see
what he is creating. He is creating consciousness, and consciousness is the
purest form, the highest form possible, of God's expression.
A song is beautiful, a dance is
beautiful, because something of the divine is present in it.
But in a buddha the whole of
God is present. That's why we have called Buddha "Bhagwan," we have
called Mahavira "Bhagwan" - the whole of God is present.
But students won't be able to
see it. Disciples will be able to decipher a little bit, and devotees will be
able to drink out of it.
Intellectual activity can make
you experts in certain things, useful, efficient. But intellect is a groping in
the dark; it has no eyes, because it is not yet meditative. Intellect is
borrowed, it has no insight of its own.
The subject was lovemaking. For
weeks Arthur had successfully answered all the questions asked him on the
television quiz show. He was now eligible for the jackpot prize of one hundred
thousand dollars. For this one question he was allowed to call an expert.
Arthur of course chose a world-famous professor of sexology from France.
The jackpot question was,
"If you had been king during the first fifty years of the Assyrian empire,
which three parts of your bride's anatomy would you have been expected to kiss
on your wedding night?"
The first two answers came
quickly. Arthur replied, "Her lips and her neck."
Now, stumped for the answer to
the third part of the question, Arthur turned frantically to his expert. The
Frenchman threw up his hands and groaned, "Alors, mon ami, do not ask me.
I have been wrong twice already."
The expert, the knowledgeable,
the intellectual, has no insight of his own. He depends on borrowed knowledge,
on tradition, on convention. He carries libraries in his head, a great burden,
but he has no vision. He knows much without knowing anything at all.
And because life is not the
same ever - it is constantly changing, moment to moment it is new - the expert
always lags behind, his response is always inadequate. He can only react, he
cannot respond, because he is not spontaneous. He has already arrived to
conclusions; he is carrying ready-made answers - and the questions that life
raises are always new.
Moreover, life is not a logical
phenomenon. And the intellectual lives through logic; hence he never fits with
life and life never fits with him. Of course life is not at a loss; the
intellectual himself is at a loss. He is always feeling like an outsider - not
that life has expelled him; he himself has decided to remain outside life. If
you cling too much to logic you will never be able to be part of the living
process that this existence is.
Life is more than logic: life
is paradox, life is mystery.
Gannaway and O'Casey arranged
to fight a duel with pistols. Gannaway was quite fat, and when he saw his lean
adversary facing him he objected. "Debar!" he said, "I am twice
as large as he is, so I ought to stand twice as far away from him as he is from
me."
Absolutely logical, but how can
you do it?
"Be aisy now,"
replied his second. "I will soon put that right." And taking a piece
of chalk from his pocket he drew two lines down the fat man's coat leaving a
space between them.
"Now," he said,
turning to O'Casey, "fire away, and remember that any hits outside that
chalk line don't count."
Perfectly mathematical,
perfectly logical - but life is not so logical, life is not so mathematical.
And people go on living in their intellects very logically. Logic gives them a
feeling as if they know, but it is a big "as if," and one tends to
forget it completely. Whatsoever you go on doing through intellect, it is only
inference. It is not an experience of truth, but just an inference based on
your logic - and your logic is your invention.
Cudahy, grogged to the gills,
stood watching the Saint Patrick's Day parade.
Unconsciously he dropped his
lit cigarette into an old mattress that was lying at the curb.
Just then the grey-haired
members of the Women's Nursing Corps came strutting by. At the same time, the
smoldering mattress began giving off a dreadful smell.
Cudahy sniffed a couple of
times and declared to a nearby cop, "Officer, they are marching those
nurses too fast!"
Intellect may arrive at certain
inferences, but intellect is an unconscious phenomenon.
You are almost behaving
sleepily.
Intelligence is awakening, and
unless you are fully awake, whatsoever you decide is bound to be wrong
somewhere or other. It is bound to be so, it is doomed to be wrong, because it
is a conclusion arrived at by an unconscious mind.
To bring intelligence into
activity you don't need more information, you need more meditation. You need to
become more silent, you need to become more thoughtless.
You need to become less mind
and more heart. You need to become aware of the magic that surrounds you: magic
that is life, magic that is God, magic that is in the green trees and the red
flowers, magic that is in people's eyes. Magic is happening everywhere! All is
miraculous, but because of your intellect you remain closed inside yourself,
clinging to your stupid conclusions arrived at in unconsciousness or given to
you by others who are as unconscious as you are.
Savita, intelligence is
certainly creative because intelligence brings your totality into functioning -
not only a part, a small part, the head. Intelligence vibrates your whole
being; each cell of your being, each fiber of your life starts dancing, and
falls in a subtle harmony with the total.
That's what creativity is: to
pulsate in absolute harmony with the total. That's how one becomes a Buddha,
Christ, Zarathustra. These are the real creative people.
Something like this is
happening right now, here. If you are a disciple you will be able to feel
something of it. If you are a devotee you will be able to drink out of this
source that has become available to you. And then creativity will come to you,
things will start happening on their own. Your heart will start pouring songs
of joy, your hands will start transforming things. You will touch mud and it
will become a lotus. You will be able to become an alchemist. But it is
possible only through great awakening of intelligence, great awakening of the
heart.
Question 2:
Beloved Master,
Everyone wants to love and to be loved.
Why? "first sight of love, last sight of wisdom." is it true?
Bal Krishna Bharti, love is
prayer groping towards God. Love is poetry born out of the sheer joy of being.
Love is song, dance, celebration: a song of gratitude, a dance of thankfulness,
celebration for no reason at all... for this tremendous gift that goes on
showering on us, for this whole universe, from the dust to the divine. Love is
not what you understand it to be, hence the question.
You ask, "Everyone wants
to love and to be loved. Why?"
Because love is religion at its
highest; love is the suprememost religion. Love is the search for God - of
course, an unconscious search in the beginning, stumbling, groping in the dark.
The direction may not be right, but the intention is absolutely right.
Love is not the ordinary thing
that you understand by it; it is not just a biological attraction between a man
and a woman. It is that too, but that is only the beginning, just the first
step. Even there, if you look deep down, it is not really an attraction between
man and woman, it is an attraction between masculine energy and feminine
energy. It is not an attraction between A and B; far deeper mysteries are
involved even in ordinary love affairs.
Hence nobody can define love.
Thousands of definitions have been tried - all have failed. Love remains
indefinable, very elusive, very mercurial. The more you want to grasp of it,
the more difficult it becomes, the farther away it goes. You cannot catch hold
of it, you cannot manage to know what exactly it is, you cannot control it.
Love remains unknowable. Man wants to know, because knowledge gives power. You
would like to be powerful over love, but that is impossible; love is far bigger
than you. You cannot possess it, you can only be possessed by it. Hence those
people who want to possess love never come to know anything of it.
Only those who are courageous
enough, only those who are gamblers, who can risk their very life and be
possessed by some unknown energy, are able to know what love is.
Love is the first step towards
God - hence it appears mad to those who are hung up in their heads. And because
people don't understand the whole mystery of love, because they try to
understand it through the mind... It can be understood only through the heart.
Remember: all that is great is available to the heart. The heart is the door to
all great values of life, to all ultimate values, and the head is only a useful
mechanism, a gadget - good in the marketplace but utterly useless in a temple.
And love is a temple, it is not a marketplace. If you drive love into the
marketplace it is reduced into ugly sexuality.
That's what people have done:
rather than raising love to God, they have reduced love into ugly, animalistic
sexuality. And the strange thing is, the same people - the priests, the
politicians, the puritans - the same people who have reduced love into an ugly
phenomenon, are against sex, are enemies of sex. And they are the people who
have destroyed a tremendously potential power!
Love is a lotus hidden in the
mud. The lotus is born out of mud, but you don't condemn the lotus because it
is born out of mud; you don't call the lotus muddy, you don't call the lotus
dirty. Love is born out of sex, and then prayer is born out of love, and then
God is born out of prayer. Higher and higher and higher one goes on soaring.
But the priests and the
puritans have reduced the whole phenomenon into sexuality.
And once love becomes sex it
becomes ugly, one starts feeling guilty about it. And it is because of that
guilt that this saying, this proverb: First sight of love, last sight of wisdom...
If you ask me, I will change it a little bit. I will say: First sight of love,
first sight of wisdom.
But it depends how you look at
it. If you look at the potential of it, at the highest possibility that it can
reach, then love becomes a ladder. If you look only at the mud and you are
utterly blind to the future of the mud, then certainly love becomes something
ugly and great antagonism arises in you. But to be antagonistic to love is to
be antagonistic to God.
On returning from his
honeymoon, Michael phoned his father at the office.
"Good to hear from you,
son. Tell me, how is married life?"
"Dad, I am really upset. I
think I married a nun."
"A nun?" asked the
startled father. "What do you mean?"
"Ah, you know, Dad, none
in the morning and none at night."
"Oh, that!" groaned
the older man. "Come for dinner Saturday and I will introduce you to the
mother superior."
Once love is reduced to
sexuality only, of course then the first sight of love is the last sight of
wisdom. But it depends on you: why reduce it to sexuality? Why not change the
baser metal into gold? Why not learn the alchemy of love? That's what I am
teaching here.
And the priests, who don't know
anything about love - because they have never loved, they have renounced the
world of love - they go on making great systems of thought against it.
The priest stood before a
hushed crowd of attentive villagers and spoke to them, "You must not use-a
the pill."
A lovely signorina stepped
forward and said, "Look, you no play-a the game, you no make-a the
rules!"
These are the people who don't
play the game but they make the rules. For centuries the priests have been
making rules. It is the priesthood all over the world that has condemned a
great potential source, in fact the only source, of energy. Once it is
condemned, you are condemned; your whole life will become meaningless. Once sex
energy is not allowed to grow to its natural heights you are going to live a
miserable life.
Bal Krishna Bharti, love is the
greatest gift of God. Learn the art of it. Learn the song of it, the
celebration of it. It is an absolute need: just as the body cannot survive
without food, the soul cannot survive without love. Love is the nourishment of
the soul, it is the beginning of all that is great, it is the door of the
divine.
Question 3:
Beloved Master,
I know that god is love, but then why am I
so afraid of him?
Sudharma, you don't know that
God is love. You have heard me saying again and again that God is love; hence
you have started repeating it. It is parrotlike. I know God is love, hence it
is impossible to be afraid of God. How can you be afraid of love?
Fear and love cannot exist
together; their coexistence is impossible. In fact, it is the same energy that
becomes fear that becomes love. If it becomes fear, there is no more energy
available to become love; if it becomes love, fear disappears. It is the same
energy! The same energy in a chaotic state is called fear; and when it becomes
a cosmos, when it is in deep accord, it is called love. You still don't know
that God is love.
You say, "I know that God is
love..."
You have heard, but you don't
know. This is information as far as you are concerned; it is not yet knowing,
it is not your own authentic experience. And remember always that unless
something becomes your own authentic experience, it is not going to transform
you; hence the problem.
You say, "I know that God
is love, but then why am I so afraid of him?"
You are bound to be afraid of
him because you don't KNOW that God is love. You have been told by the priests
for centuries that God is constantly watching you, that God wants you to be
this way and not that way, that these are the ten commandments of God, follow
them. And if you don't follow them, God has prepared for you a great hell.
The father preparing hellfire
for his own children? - impossible, even to conceive.
The priests have made God so
ugly just to dominate people, because people can be dominated only through
fear. Remember this: the whole trade secret of the priests, Hindu, Christian,
Mohammedan, Jaina, Buddhist - their philosophies differ but their trade secret
is the same. That trade secret is: always keep people afraid, trembling. If
people are afraid, they are ready to submit. If people are afraid, they are
ready to be slaves. If people are afraid, they cannot gather courage to rebel.
Fear keeps them impotent; fear is a psychological process of castration. For
centuries it has been done: fear has been the greatest weapon in the hands of
the priests and they have used it very liberally.
The Goldbergs' son, Jake,
refused to take school seriously. He never did homework and was constantly
playing hooky.
The principal suggested they
send him to a Yeshiva. The Goldbergs did, but after a few weeks he was
expelled.
The Goldbergs knew that
Catholic parochial schools were very strict, so they decided to send Jake to
one. They enrolled him in Christ-the-King School for Boys, and warned their son
to behave and to do his lessons, because this was his last chance. If he was
thrown out now he would be sent to a school for delinquents.
After a week of parochial
school, Jake came home with terrific grades. Miraculously he had been converted
into a well-behaved, serious student.
"How come you changed all
of a sudden?" asked Goldberg.
"Well," he answered,
"when I saw some man hanging on a cross in every room, I figured I had
better not be a wise guy anymore."
Make people afraid, keep them
always trembling. Let them know that God is dictatorial, a very angry God,
jealous, and is absolutely unable to forgive if you disobey.
Disobedience is the greatest
sin in the eyes of the priests; hence Adam and Eve were expelled. They had not
done much of a sin. What had they really done? Nothing much to talk about, but
priests have been talking about it for centuries. And God was so angry that not
only Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden of Eden, paradise - with them
the whole humanity!
You are suffering because Adam
and Eve disobeyed. You have not done anything wrong; you are suffering for
their sin because you are descendants. The sin is so great - not only the
persons are punished, but for thousands and thousands of years their
descendants have to be punished too.
And what was the sin really?
Why is so much fuss made about it? It was so innocent, it was so natural, that
I cannot conceive how Adam and Eve could have avoided it. If anybody is
responsible for it, God himself is responsible. There were millions of trees in
the Garden of Eden and there was only one tree which God did not want Adam and
Eve to eat from - only one tree, the forbidden. And the reason why it was
forbidden also seems to be very ugly. The reason is: if you eat the fruit of
the tree of knowledge, you will become like God and God is very jealous. Look
at the reason why the tree was prohibited. The reason is that if you eat from
the tree, from this tree, the tree of knowledge, you will become immortal, like
gods. You will know as much as God knows - and that is intolerable! So God has
protected that tree especially for himself - he must be eating from the tree of
knowledge - and prohibited Adam and Eve.
Now this is exactly what every
father goes on doing. He smokes and he prohibits the children: "Don't
smoke - this is bad. This is bad for you!" But because the father looks so
beautiful smoking, the children become enchanted. They would also like to be
like the father - and he looks so manly when he is puffing on his cigar, he
looks so proud!
He never looks so proud as when
he is puffing on his cigar, resting in his chair, reading the newspaper. The
children become attracted. When the father is not there they also sit on the
same chair, spread the same newspaper, although they cannot read, and start
puffing. And it gives them great joy because it gives them great ego.
In fact, to prohibit is to
invite. To say to children, "Don't do it!" is to ask for trouble.
I used to live with a family.
There was a problem: the father was a smoker, a chainsmoker - a very well-known
professor in a university. And he was afraid: he asked me, "What to
do?"
I said, "Do one thing..."
He had only one son growing up and he was afraid that sooner or later the son
would start smoking. I said, "If you listen to me, the best way is to give
the son cigarettes, offer him the cigarettes yourself and tell him to smoke as
much as he wants."
He said, "What are you
saying? Are you mad or are you joking?"
I said, "Then leave it to
me - I will manage it."
I offered the son a cigarette.
He said, "But you don't smoke."
I said, "That is another
matter - don't you worry about me. But YOU learn! It is one of the most
beautiful things in life!"
He again asked, "But then
why don't you smoke?"
I said, "You leave me out
of it - I am not a very intelligent person. Look at your father!
And if I am stupid, are you
going to be stupid?"
I had great difficulty in
convincing him because the question he was again and again asking was,
"You tell me to smoke, but why don't you smoke?"
I said, "You try, then you
will know!"
So he tried, and he knew, and
he threw the cigarette. And he said, "Now I know why you don't smoke. Then
why did you insist? Then why did you try to convince me? It is nauseating,
sickening!" He coughed and tears came to his eyes - and that was that, and
it was finished.
And I told his father never to
say to the child, "Don't smoke."
Remember the ancient story of
Adam and Eve. If I had been God I would have taken Adam and Eve to the tree of
knowledge and would have forced them to eat to the point that they should have
started vomiting, and that would have been the end of the whole story. But God
told them not to eat from this tree. That was an invitation - no serpent is
needed.
The serpent is an invention of
the priests so that God can be avoided; the responsibility can be thrown on the
poor serpent. The serpent is simply poor; the serpent has nothing to do with
it, the serpent is absolutely innocent. Have you ever seen any serpent
persuading any woman for anything? And why should the serpent be interested? If
he wanted to eat, nobody was prohibiting him. Why should he seduce Eve to eat
the fruit of the tree of knowledge? What is he going to gain if Eve and Adam
become knowledgeable? No, the serpent is an invention so that the
responsibility can be thrown on him.
But if you go deep into the
story it is simple: God is responsible. First you force an order on people, and
just your forcing creates a resistance in them, creates a great urge to
disobey. Then disobedience is sin; the greatest sin is disobedience. And then
you have to create hell and all kinds of punishments, and you have to keep
people afraid.
The story was invented by the
priests to make man afraid. The priests never wanted man to become intelligent,
because intelligent people are dangerous - dangerous to the status quo, to the
establishment, dangerous to the vested interests. The priests wanted the people
to remain utterly ignorant, unintelligent. For centuries they did not allow
people to read scriptures. In many religions women are still not allowed.
And still a very deep
conspiracy goes on. The conspiracy is that all the scriptures are in languages
which are dead; nobody understands them, only the priests. Priests remained
powerful for centuries because they were the only ones knowing. The scriptures
were in ancient Sanskrit, Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Latin - ancient languages
which are no longer spoken. There is even suspicion that there are a few
languages which were never spoken. For example, Sanskrit seems to be one of the
languages which has never been a spoken language. It has always been the
language of the scholars, not of the people; of the pundits, not of the masses.
In India there were two
languages: one was called Prakrit; PRAKRIT means "the natural," that
which is spoken by the people. And Sanskrit literally means "the
refined," "the aristocratic," which is spoken only by the scholars
and academicians in the universities. All the great scriptures were written in
Sanskrit.
It was left to Mahavira and
Buddha to speak for the first time in the language of the people - and the
brahmins of India have never been able to forgive these two persons for that
sin. To speak in the language of the people means the power of the priests is
gone. If people become knowers, if they know what is written in the scriptures,
they will not be so easily befooled. In fact, you can worship the Vedas only if
you don't understand them. If you understand them, ninety-nine percent is just
rubbish. One percent is pure gold, certainly, but ninety-nine percent is pure
rubbish. But if you don't understand them, all is gold. In darkness, anything
can be given to you with the words, "It is gold - worship it!" And
for centuries the Vedas have been worshipped.
Priests wanted you to worship
the scriptures, not to understand them - because if you understand the
scriptures, sooner or later, one thing is going to become clear to you:
that the scripture is not the
real source. Sooner or later, you are bound to stumble upon the truth that,
"Krishna is speaking from a meditative state, Christ is speaking from a
meditative state. What he is speaking is secondary - from where he is speaking
is primary. Unless I reach to that state of consciousness I will not be able to
understand the words, because those words in themselves are empty; the meaning
can only come through experience." Scriptures were prohibited; it was a
sin... Only the brahmins, the priests, the highest caste, were allowed to read
them - all over the world.
The conspiracy still continues.
Still the prayers are done in dead languages, you don't know what you are
saying. How can you feel anything when you don't know what you are saying? How
can it come out of your feeling and out of your heart? Your prayer becomes just
like a gramophone record: ''His Master's Voice' - a repetition. And you hope
that by repeating dead rituals you will arrive somewhere. You will simply waste
your life.
And then great fear arises:
"I don't know from where I come, who I am, where I am going. All around is
darkness and darkness, infinite darkness, and not a single light in life."
Then you have to go to the priest and bow down to him. You have to ask for
guidance.
This is the trade secret: keep
people afraid. And you can keep people afraid only if you keep them ignorant.
Let them remain trembling, then they will always be ready to touch your feet,
ready to obey you - because you represent God, and disobeying you is dangerous,
very dangerous. They will be thrown in hell for eternity.
Greenberg, shabbily dressed and
carrying two paper bags, was stopped by a customs inspector.
"What have you got in
those bags?" the official asked.
"I got twenty-five
thousand dollars here, which I am bringing to Israel to donate."
"C'mon," sneered the
official, "you don't look like you got the price of a meal; how could you
be donating twenty-five thousand dollars to the state of Israel?"
"Well, you see, I had a
job in a men's room, and when the men came in I said to them, ''Give to help
Israel or I will cut off your balls.'" "Alright, so you got
twenty-five thousand dollars in one bag, but what is in the other bag?"
"Some men did not want to
donate."
That's what priests have been
doing: destroying your guts, destroying your courage, destroying your
self-respect, destroying your self-trust.
Sudharma, you say, "I know
that God is love, but then why am I so afraid of him?" You are still
surrounded by the nonsense that priests have stuffed your head with; you are
full of that rubbish. It takes time to get rid of it, it really takes a long
time, because it has been going on for centuries. It has been such a long long,
ugly history that it is a rare phenomenon to find a person who can escape out
of it.
My whole effort here is to help
you to escape out of it. I am against the whole business of priesthood. I want
you to stand face-to-face with God without any priests, without any priesthood.
God is yours, you are God's; there is no need of any mediator. The function of
the master is not to become a mediator between you and God. Just the contrary:
the function of the master is to withdraw all that comes in between you and
God. He himself at the last point withdraws; between you and your God he stands
no more. He stands only to a certain extent, while other things are being
removed. When everything else is removed, he removes himself; that is the last
thing the master does.
And the moment the master
removes himself, he no longer stands between you and God, that is the moment
you know that the whole existence is love. It is the stuff called love that the
universe is made of.
Jesus says: God is love. I say
to you: Love is God. When Jesus says: God is love, it is possible God may be
many more things too; love is only one attribute. When I say: Love is God, I
say love is the ONLY quality. There is nothing else in God except love; in fact
it is another name of love. You can drop the name "God," nothing will
be lost. Let love be your God.
But you will have to get rid of
the priests. You will have to get rid of your so-called religions, churches,
temples, rituals, scriptures. There is much garbage which has to be got rid of.
It is a great work, because you have been told that this is very precious. The
garbage has been imposed upon you as if it is gold and, because it has been
told to you so many times, you have become conditioned.
People become conditioned to
seeing certain things. When there is a certain conditioning, you look at things
through that conditioning and it appears like that.
Two men were sitting under a
tree; one was a Hindu, another was a Mohammedan.
Birds were singing, it was a
beautiful spring morning. They both listened for a time, then the Hindu said, "Can
you hear? All the birds are resounding the sound aum. I can hear it. I have
been practicing aum for thirty years, and now I have become capable of
deciphering it very easily. All the birds are resounding with the same sound:
the soundless sound, the ancient sound of the Hindus, OMKAR."
The Mohammedan laughed and he
said, "Nonsense! I have also been practicing my prayers. The birds are not
saying aum, they are saying amin."
Mohammedan prayers, Christian
prayers, end with amin; Christians call it amen,
Mohammedans call it amin. Hindu prayers end with aum. There is certainly a
truth somewhere, partially expressed by all the three. When the mind becomes
absolutely silent a certain sound is heard. If you are a Hindu you will
interpret it as aum, if you are a Mohammedan as amin, if you are a Christian as
amen, but nobody can say for certain what it is. In fact it can be interpreted
in so many ways - it is your interpretation that is imposed on it.
If you ask a real mystic, one
who is neither Hindu nor Mohammedan nor Christian, he will say, "Sit
silently by my side and listen. There is no need to interpret it at all,
because whatsoever we say about it will be our imposition, it will be our idea
imposed on the sound. Just listen, sit silently - I am listening to it, you
also listen. I know it, you will know it. There is no need to say anything
about it."
It is said, once it happened:
A great mystic, Farid, met
Kabir, another great mystic. For two days they sat silently together. Yes,
sometimes they laughed, giggled for no reason at all, and sometimes they hugged
each other and kissed, but not a single word was spoken. Almost a thousand
people had gathered - the disciples of both - with great expectations that
something will be communicated, and nobody wanted to miss such a great
opportunity. Kabir saying something to Farid is bound to be something rare, or
Farid saying something to Kabir is bound to be something which is only heard
once in a century.
But two days passed, and the
disciples became fed up and bored. And the more they were bored, the more the
mystics were giggling and laughing and hugging and kissing.
And then the time of departure
came; Farid had to leave. Kabir went out of the town to give him a farewell,
just to say goodbye. They again hugged, they again giggled, and then they
departed.
The disciples of Farid followed
Farid and the disciples of Kabir followed Kabir back home. When they were alone
they asked, the disciples of Farid asked, "What went wrong? You are
continuously talking to us - what happened? Why did you become dumb? For two
days why didn't you speak, and what is all this giggling?"
Farid said, "There was no
need to say anything, because I am hearing the same thing that he is hearing, I
am seeing the same thing that he is seeing, so what is the point of saying
anything to him? It would have been absolutely foolish on my part. When I can
see he is hearing the same, seeing the same, being the same, we are
encountering the same reality, what is the point of saying it?"
Then they asked, "Then why
did you giggle?"
And he said, "We giggled
because of you, because you were getting so bored! We were laughing at you. You
had come to hear us talk - you were foolish, you missed a great opportunity.
Two masters were there, utterly silent; two pools of silent energy, two doors
open simultaneously to God - and you missed. And you wanted some words, some
noise. You could have sat in silence, you could have become part of our
silence.
You could have fallen en rapport with us. You didn't do that -
you were bored, you were fed up, you were yawning. And just seeing you we
giggled, we laughed at what kind of fools we have gathered!"
Nothing can be said; when you
know, there is no way to express it. But if you want to express, then the word
that comes closest to God is ''love'. Even that is just approximate, but very
close. And the word ''God' has become associated with wrong people, with wrong
notions. In fact, many people feel offended the moment you utter the word
''God'. I have no attachment to that word; you can drop it.
But remember love; I cannot
tell you to drop that, because without love you will never reach God. Without
God you can love, and God is bound to come in whether you know or not, whether
you believe in God or not. Belief is not a requirement: love is an absolute
necessity, a must. Sudharma, you have heard me say God is love. Experience it,
and then all fear will disappear. And start dropping the priests and the
centuries of wrong conditioning. They have made you afraid.
In fact, priests are the
enemies of God, because the more people are afraid of God, the less is the
possibility of their knowing God ever - because fear is a wall, not a bridge.
Love is a bridge, not a wall.
Of course, fear helps the priests to live and exploit you, but it deprives you
of God. Priests are in the service of the Devil. If there is somebody like a
Devil, then priests are in HIS service; they are not in the service of God.
That's why so many religions
are there, yet the earth remains irreligious, utterly irreligious; so many
temples and so many churches and mosques, and yet you don't see the fragrance
of religion. You don't see people's faces full of grace, their eyes full of
silence, their feet dancing, their lives showing that God is. They may say that
they believe in God, but their life says something else, totally different.
Their life shows absolute irreligiousness; dishonesty, inauthenticity,
insincerity, hate, anger, greed - nothing of prayer, nothing of love, nothing
of compassion, nothing of meditativeness.
Sudharma, meditate, love - and
forget the priests, drive them out of your being. You are suffering from
hang-ups.
Question 4:
Beloved Master,
What is the definition of a pessimist?
Shivananda, a pessimist is an
optimist who has become frustrated with his optimism.
He hoped too much and failed,
he dreamed too much and could not achieve anything substantial.
The pessimist is an optimist
standing on his head; they are not different fellows - that's what I want to
make clear to you. Unless you have been an optimist you can never be a
pessimist. First you have to become an optimist.
And each child is brought up
with great optimism. All parents think that they have great children. Ask any
mother: she thinks she has the unique child; the most superior, rare,
incomparable. Each mother brags about the child. Parents bring up children with
great optimism that they are going to be Alexander the Greats or Jesus Christs
or Gautam Buddhas.
But slowly slowly life proves
just the contrary. Slowly slowly, the child becomes aware of his ordinariness.
He becomes aware that these great dreams, that these great ambitions, cannot be
fulfilled. And by the time one is coming closer to forty, forty-two, pessimism
starts settling - gloom, darkness...
Now medical science is aware
that most heart attacks happen nearabout forty to forty- four, between those
four years. Most people go mad between those four years, forty to forty-four.
Psychologists, psychoanalysts, are aware that that is the most dangerous time.
If you can remain sane beyond forty-four, that means you will remain sane. But
many people fall flat.
And don't think that if you are
sane even beyond forty-four... that does not mean that you are very
intelligent. It may only be that you are very dull and it takes a long time for
you to understand. It may only be that you are very insensitive. It may only be
that you are foolhardy, that you don't listen to life, what life is saying,
that you go on hoping.
But sooner or later, a person
starts feeling that life has gone down the drain. Optimism turns sour and
becomes pessimism. Optimism, that hopefulness, turns upside-down; a
hopelessness settles in. Then everything looks dark and dismal. First you used
to count the roses, now you start counting the thorns. First you used to say,
"How beautiful this roseflower and what a miracle! It grows amongst
thousands of thorns." You were poetic, you had some aesthetic sense; you
still believed that life is going to be a fulfillment.
But soon the day comes when the
roses start fading away and you start counting the thorns, and you cannot
believe in the roses anymore. You start saying, "It is impossible!
The rose must be a dream, the
rose must be maya, illusion, hallucination.
How is it possible amongst thousands of thorns, how is a rose possible?"
It looks contradictory, it looks illogical, it cannot happen in the nature of
things. You start counting nights; before, you used to count days.
The optimist says, "There
are two days, and between two days just a small night to rest." And the
pessimist counts the nights; he says, "There are two long nights -
nightmares, ugly dreams, tortures - and just a small day sandwiched between the
two."
Life is the same: you can count
the days or you can count the nights. If you count the days you are an
optimist, if you count the nights you are a pessimist, but there is really no
difference.
The optimist can become a
pessimist, the pessimist can become an optimist. They are not contraries; they
are two points on the same spectrum.
One has to go beyond both,
Shivananda. A sannyasin has to go beyond both - neither hope nor hopelessness.
No need to count days, no need to count nights. Be a watcher!
No need to count thorns, no
need to count roses. Be a watcher...
I don't teach you optimism. In
the West it is very fashionable nowadays; it is called "positive
thinking." That is a new name for optimism; the old name has become a
little too out of fashion, out-of-date. The new name is positive thinking. I
don't teach you positive thinking, because positive thinking carries the
negative in its wake.
I teach you transcendence -
neither positive nor negative. Be a watcher: witness both.
When there is day, witness the
day, and when there is night, witness the night - and don't get identified with
either. You are neither the day nor the night; you are the transcendental
consciousness. Become more and more centered there in that transcendence.
True religion is not positive,
nor is it negative. It is neither via negativa nor via positiva; it is via
transcendence.
One September morning after
Labor Day, Levin and Ostrow met for lunch. They had not seen each other for
several months.
"I have just lived through
a summer I never thought I would see," said Levin. "June was a
disaster - never have I seen a June like that. When July came, I realized that
June was terrific, because with July I went right into the cellar. July was so
bad..."
"For heaven's sake!"
interrupted Ostrow. "Why are you coming to me with these piddling matters?
You wanna hear real trouble? I got it. Yesterday my only son came home, told me
he is gonna marry another fella. My boy is a homosexual! What could be worse
than that?"
"I will tell you,"
said Levin, "August!"
Just wait! There are people who
are continuously looking for the negative - and if you look for the negative
you will find it, because the negative is there in the same proportion as the
positive. If you look for the positive, you will find the positive. But by
finding the positive you cannot destroy the negative; the negative is there,
side by side.
They are always together like
negative and positive poles of electricity. You can't have electricity with one
pole, you will need both.
Life needs both: thorns and
roses, days and nights, happiness/unhappiness, birth/death.
Be a witness to it all and you
will know something that is beyond birth, beyond death; something that is
beyond darkness and beyond light; something that is beyond happiness, beyond
unhappiness. Buddha has called it peace, nirvana.
Question 5:
Beloved Master,
I cannot trust anybody. Why?
Sargam, I will just tell you a
story. Meditate over it.
The hired boy gets the youngest
girl in the farmer's family to go out into the hayloft with him. She comes back
and tells her sister, "Say, the hired boy sure knows some good
tricks!"
The sister goes out to the
hayloft too, and comes back saying the same, followed by the mother, and
finally the farmer himself who has heard his wife's remark that, "The
hired boy certainly knows some tricks."
When the boy sees the farmer
coming, he thinks fast and begins doing cartwheels and acrobatic tricks all
over the walls of the barn. The farmer watches him and then goes back and tells
his assembled wife and daughters, "Guess you are right. That boy sure
knows some fancy tricks."
"God almighty!" cry
the wife and daughters. "Did he fuck you too?"
Sargam, meditate over it. If
you can't trust anybody that means you must be deceiving others. It is not a
question of others, it is a question of you. You must be deceiving, and if you
are deceiving, how can you trust? You can trust only if you allow others to
trust you.
It is better to be deceived
than to deceive, because if you deceive, you lose the greatest treasure of your
life: you lose the capacity to trust. And let me repeat: the capacity to trust
is the greatest treasure of life, because without it neither love is possible,
nor prayer is possible, nor God is possible.
Enough for today.
