“Whatsoever you do, do it with awareness; this is meditation. Walking, walk attentively, as if walking is everything; eating, eat with awareness, as if eating is everything; rising, rise with awareness; sitting, sit with awareness; all your actions become conscious, your mind does not travel beyond this moment, it remains in the moment, settles in the moment — this is meditation.”

Meditation is not a separate process. Meditation is simply the name for life lived with awareness. Meditation is not an hour-a-day affair where you sit for one hour and then it is over till tomorrow. No, if twenty-three hours are empty of meditation and only one hour is meditative, then it is certain that the twenty-three hours will defeat the single hour. Non-meditation will win, meditation will lose. If you are living twenty-three hours a day without awareness, and only one hour with awareness, then you will never attain to the state of buddhahood. How can this single hour triumph over the other twenty-three hours?

There is something else that also has to be understood. How can one be aware for one hour if in the remaining twenty-three hours one is not aware? How can you be healthy for one hour if you are sick the other twenty-three hours of the day? Health and sickness are the result of an internal flow. If you are healthy for twenty-three hours of the day, you will be healthy for all twenty-four hours, because the internal flow cannot suddenly be broken for just one of those hours. The current that is flowing goes on flowing.

Meditation cannot come about just because you visit a temple or mosque or gurudwara.. If you were not awake in the shop, in the marketplace, or at home, how can you all of a sudden be awake in the temple? Nothing is going to come about suddenly, when it is not part of an internal flowing. This is why Buddha has said that meditation can happen only if you are meditative for twenty-four hours a day.

So understand well that meditation is not just one of life’s innumerable activities. It is not just one link in the chain of man’s endless doings. It is like the thread on which all the flowers of a garland have been strung. Meditation is a lifestyle, not an activity. If one is meditative in everything one is doing, if the thread is running through each of the flowers, only then a garland is created. The thread is not even visible, it is hidden underneath the flowers. Nor can the meditator be seen; he is present, but hidden behind all the activities being done through him. An individual is awakened the day when he begins to live meditatively. While he lives nonmeditatively, he sleeps.

Source: Nowhere To Go But In, OSHO

So first visualize. Use your eyes inwards and see the letters. Letters are more related to ears than eyes because they are sounds, but for us, because we are reading, reading, reading, they have become associated with eyes. Basically, they are associated with ears — they are sounds. Start with the eyes, then forget the eyes by and by. Then move away from the eyes to the ears. First imagine them as letters, then see them, hear them MORE SUBTLY AS SOUNDS, THEN AS MOST SUBTLE FEELINGS. And this is a very beautiful exercise.

When you say “A”, what is the feeling? You may not have been aware of it. What is the feeling inside you? Whenever you use any sound, what type of feeling comes into existence? We are so feeling-less that we have simply forgotten. When you see a sound, what happens inside? You go on using it and the sound is even forgotten. You go on seeing it. If I say “A”, you will see it first. In your mind, “A” will become visible; you will visualize it. When I say “A”, do not visualize it. Just hear the sound “A”, and then go and find out what happens in your feeling center. Does nothing happen?

Shiva says, move from letters to sounds, uncover sounds through the letters. Uncover sounds, and then, through the sounds also, uncover feelings. Be aware of how you feel. They say that man has now become very insensitive; he is the most insensitive animal on earth.

I was reading about one poet, a German poet, and he relates one incident of his childhood. His father was a lover of horses, so he had many horses at the house, a big stable, but he would not allow this child to go to the stable. He was afraid, as the child was very small. But when the father was not there the child would sometimes steal into the stable where he had a friend — a horse. Whenever the child would go in, the horse would make some sounds.

And the poet has written, “Then I also started making sounds with the horse, because there was no possibility of language. Then, in communication with that horse, for the first time I became aware of sounds — their beauty, their feeling.”

You cannot be aware with a man because he is dead. A horse is more alive, and he has no language. He has pure sound. He is filled with his heart, not with his mind. So that poet remembers, “For the first time, I became aware of the beauty of sounds and their meaning. This was not the meaning of words and thoughts, but a meaning filled with feeling.” If someone else was there, the horse would not make those sounds, so the child could understand that the horse meant, “Do not come in. Someone is here and your father will be angry.”

When there was no one, the horse would make the sounds meaning, “Come in. There is no one.” So the poet remembers that “It was a conspiracy, and he helped me very much, that horse helped me very much. And when I would go and love that horse, he would move his head in a particular way when he liked it. When he did not like it, he would not move his head in that way. When he liked it, then it was a certain thing, he would express it. When he was not in the mood, then he would not move in a certain way.”

And this poet says, “This continued for years. I would go and love that horse, and that love was so deep, I never felt any affinity with anyone else so deeply. Then one day when I was stroking his neck and he was moving and enjoying it ecstatically, suddenly for the first time I became aware of my hand, that I was stroking, and the horse stopped. Now he would not move his neck.” And that poet says, “Then for years I tried and tried, but there was no response, the horse would not reply. Only later on did I become aware that because I became aware of my hand and myself, the ego came in and the communication broke. I couldn’t recapture again that communication with the horse.”

What happened? That was a feeling communication. The moment ego comes, words come, language comes, thought comes, then the layer is changed completely. Now you are above sounds; then you were below sounds. Those sounds are feelings, and the horse could understand feelings. Now he couldn’t understand, so the communication broke. The poet tried and tried — but no effort is successful because even your effort is the effort of your ego.

He tried to forget his hand, but he couldn’t forget. How can you forget? It is impossible. And the more you try to forget it, the more you remember. So you cannot forget anything with effort. Effort will simply emphasize the memory more. The poet says, “I became fixed with my hand; I couldn’t move that horse. I would go up to my hand, and then there was no movement. The energy would not move into that horse and he became aware of this.”

How did the horse become aware? If I suddenly start speaking some other language, then the communication is broken, then you will not be able to understand me. And if this language were not known to you, you would suddenly stop because now the language is unknown to you. Thus, the horse stopped.

Every child lives with feeling. First come sounds, then those sounds are filled with feeling. Then come words, then thoughts, then systems, religions, philosophies. Then one goes farther and farther away from the center of feeling.

This sutra says, come back, come down — down to the state of feeling. Feeling is not your mind: that is why you are afraid of feeling. You are not afraid of reasoning. You are always afraid of feeling because feeling can lead you into chaos. You will not be able to control. With reason, the control is with you; with the head, you are the head. Below the head you lose the head, you cannot control, you cannot manipulate. Feelings are just below the mind — a link between you and the mind.

Then Shiva says, THEN, LEAVING THEM ASIDE, BE FREE. Then leave the feelings. And remember, only when you come to the deepest layer of feelings can you leave them. You cannot leave them just now. You are not at the deepest layer of feelings, so how can you leave them? First you have to leave philosophies — Hinduism, Christianity, Mohammedanism — then you have to leave thoughts, then you have to leave words, then you have to leave letters, then you have to leave sounds, then you have to leave feelings — because you can leave only that which is there. You can leave that step upon which you are standing; you cannot leave a step upon which you are not standing.

You are standing at the step of philosophy, the farthest away one. That is why I insist so much that unless you leave religion you cannot be religious.

This sutra, this technique, can be done very easily. The problem is not with feelings, the problem is with words. You can leave a feeling, just as you can undress — as you can get out of your clothes. You can throw off your clothes; you can leave feelings simply in that way. But right now you cannot do it, and if you try to do it, it will be impossible. So go step by step.

Imagine letters — A, B, C, D — then change your emphasis from the written letter to the heart sound. You are moving deep, the surface is left behind. You are sinking deep — then feel what feeling comes through a particular sound.

Because of such techniques, India could discover many things. It could discover which sounds are related to particular feelings. Because of that science, the MANTRA was developed. A particular sound is related to a particular feeling, and it is never otherwise. So if you create that sound within you, that feeling will be created. You can use any sound, and then the related feeling will be created around you. That sound creates the space to be filled by a particular feeling.

So do not use just any mantra, that is not good; it may be dangerous for you. Unless you know, or unless a person who gives you the mantra knows, what particular sound creates what particular feeling, and whether that feeling is needed by you or not, do not use any mantra. There are mantras which are known as death mantras. If you repeat them, you will die within a particular time. Within a particular period you will die, because they create in you a longing for death.

Freud says that man has two basic instincts: libido — eros — the will to live, the will to be, the will to continue, the will to exist. And thanatos — the will to die. There are particular sounds which, if you repeat them, the will to die will come to you. Then you would like just to drop into death. There are sounds which give you eros — which give you more libido, which give you more lust to live, to be. If you create those sounds within you, that particular feeling will overwhelm you. There are sounds which give you a feeling of peace and silence, there are sounds which create anger. So do not use any sound, any mantra, unless it is given to you by a master who knows what is going to happen through it.

Source: Osho

You have been told continuously, “Live for humanity.” Where is humanity? Have you ever come across humanity? Do you think you are ever going to have an encounter with humanity? It is just like all those big, bombastic, bogus words: God, motherland, fatherland, Holy Ghost. They don’t exist, they are only projected. “Live for humanity” means don’t live for yourself.

Nobody has the guts to say to you directly, “Don’t live for yourself.” So they have found a cunning, clever, indirect way of saying the same thing: Live for God, live for humanity, live for man, live for the universe. Live for anything — XYZ — but please don’t live for yourself. And here is the root of the whole problem.

Your life is your life, and it can be lived only one way; there is no other alternative. And the only way that it can be lived has to be found by you. It is not all ready like a super-highway, ready-made, with millions of people moving on it, going towards their goal, and you have just to join the crowd.

No, there is no super-highway to existence.

There are only small footpaths which are walked in total aloneness.

And remember, even those footpaths are not ready-made, available for you so that you can go on number eleven footpath. They don’t exist other than when you walk upon them; it is through walking you create them. It is a very beautiful and mysterious way life has, that it does not make you like a railway train which runs on rails. A railway has no choice, it cannot just go anywhere it likes. Those rails are fixed, somebody else determines them. Those rails are the destiny — the train simply moves according to somebody else’s dictates.

Source: OSHO

The God Conspiracy: The Path from Superstition to Super Consciousness

It is not a question of thinking. In fact you think too much. It is a question of how to stop thinking and of seeing directly into every situation that you are facing. If there is no thought, there is no barrier, there is no dust in your eyes; you can see clearly.

And when this clarity is there, you don’t have the alternatives of good and bad. With this clarity there is a choiceless consciousness. You simply do what is good — not that you make any effort to do it. It comes effortlessly to the man of awareness, consciousness, alertness. He simply cannot imagine the bad, the evil. His whole awareness simply points him towards the good.

So your problem is not why there is such a resistance to thinking for yourselves. You cannot think for yourself, because the vision of good is not part of the mind. And you know only the mind, hence the whole problem arises. Because you know only the mind, you don’t have clarity. You have hundreds of thoughts moving continuously in your mind. It is a rush hour twenty-four hours; a crowd of thoughts goes on, clouds go on moving so fast that you are completely hidden behind the clouds. Your eyes are almost blind. Your inner sensitivity is completely covered by your thoughts.

Through the mind you cannot know what is good and what is bad. You have to depend on others. This dependence is absolutely natural because mind is a dependent phenomenon; it depends on others; its whole knowledge is borrowed.

All that your mind knows has come either from the parents, or from the priest, or from the teachers, or from the society. Just watch, and you will not be able to find a single thought that is original to you.

All is borrowed; mind lives on borrowed knowledge. In every situation it wants somebody to guide it. Your whole life is being guided by others. From the very beginning you are told what is right and what is wrong by your parents. Then your teachers, then your priests, then your neighbors… not that they know, they too have borrowed from others.

This borrowing goes on century after century, generation after generation. Every disease goes on being inherited by the new generation. It is just a replica of the older generation, a reflection, a shadow, but it does not have its own originality. It is because of this you need a god, an ultimate guide. You cannot depend on your parents, because you start seeing as you grow older their falsities, their lies. You start seeing that their advice is not perfect; they are fallible human beings. But the small child has believed in them as if they were infallible. It was not their fault, it was the small child’s innocence; it trusted the father, the mother, who loved him. But finally he comes to know as he grows towards a little maturity that what these people say is not necessarily true.

One day I was playing — I must have been five or six years old… A man used to come to see my father, an utterly boring man. And my father was growing tired of him. So he called me and told me, “I see that man is coming; he will waste my time unnecessarily and it is very difficult to get rid of him. I always have to go out, and say to him, `Now I have some appointment’ — unnecessarily I have to go out, just to get rid of him. And sometimes it happens that he says, `I am coming with you. So on the way we can have a good talk.’ And there is no talk, it is a monologue. He talks, and tortures people.”

So my father said, “I am going inside. You just remain playing outside. And when he comes, you simply say to him that your father is out.”

And my father used to teach me continuously, “Never speak an untruth.” So I was shocked. This was contradictory.

So when the man came and asked me, “Where is your father?” I said, “He is in, but he says that he is out.”

My father heard this from inside, and the man entered with me, so he could not say anything in front of him. When the man had gone, after two or three hours my father was really angry with me, not with the man.

He said, “I told you to tell him, `My father is out.’”

I said, “Exactly, I repeated the same thing. I told him the same thing: `My father says to tell you that he is out. But he is in, the truth is he is in.’ You have been teaching me to be true whatever the consequence. So I am ready for the consequence. Any punishment, if you want to give me, give. But remember, if truth is punished, truth is destroyed. Truth has to be rewarded. Give me some reward, so I can go on speaking the truth whatever happens.”

He looked at me and he said, “You are clever.”

I said, “That you know already. Just give me some reward. I have spoken the truth.”

And he had to give me some reward; he gave me a one rupee note. At that time one rupee was almost equal to twenty-five rupees today. You could live with a one rupee note for almost half a month. And he said, “Go and enjoy whatever you want to purchase.”

I said, “You have to remember it. If you tell me to speak a lie, I am going to tell the person that you have told me to. I am not telling a lie. And each time you contradict yourself, you will have to reward me. So stop lying. If you don’t want that man, you should tell him directly that you don’t have any time and don’t like his boring talk because he says the same things again and again. Why are you afraid? Why do you have to tell a lie?”

He said, “The difficulty is, he is my best customer.”

My father had a very beautiful clothes shop, and this man was rich. He used to purchase a huge lot for his family, relatives, friends. He was a very generous man — just being boring was his problem.

So my father said, “I have to suffer all the boredom because he is my best customer and I cannot lose him.”

I said, “That is your problem, that is not my problem. So you are lying because he is your best customer, and I am going to say this to him.”

He said, “Wait!”

I said, “I cannot wait because he must be told immediately that you go on suffering all his boring talk just because he is a good customer — and you will have to give me some reward.”

He said, “You are so difficult. You are destroying my best customer. And I will have to give you a reward too. But just don’t do that.”

But I did it. And I got two rewards, one from that boring man because I told him, “Truth should always be rewarded, so give me some reward because I am destroying one of the best customers of my father.”

He hugged me and he gave me two rupees. And I said, “Remember, don’t stop buying from my father’s shop, but don’t bore him either. If you want to talk, you can talk to the walls, to the trees. The whole world is available. You can just close your room and talk to yourself. And then you will be bored.”

And I told my father, “Don’t be worried. Look, one rupee I have got from you, two rupees I have got from your customer. Now one more rupee I am owed; you have to give it me, because I have told the truth. But don’t be worried. I have made him a better customer and he will never bore you again. He has promised me.”

My father said, “You have done a miracle!” Since that day that man never came, or even if he did come he would stay just for one or two minutes to say hello and he would go away. And he continued to purchase from my father’s shop.

And he said to my father, “It is because of your son that I continue. Otherwise I would have felt wounded, but that little boy managed both things. He stopped me boring you and he asked me, requested me, `Don’t stop shopping from my father’s shop. He depends on you.’ And he got two rupees from me and he was saying such a shocking thing to me. Nobody has ever dared tell me that I am a boring man.”

He was the richest man in the village. Everybody was in some way connected with him. People borrowed money from him, people have borrowed lands from him to work on. He was the richest man and the biggest landowner in that village. Everybody was somehow or other obliged to him, so nobody was able to say to him that he was boring.

So he said, “It was a very great shock, but it was true. I know I am boring. I bore myself with my thoughts. That’s why I go to others to bore them, just to get rid of my thoughts. If I am bored with my thoughts, I know perfectly well the other person will be bored, but everybody is under an obligation to me. Only this boy has no obligation and is not afraid of the consequences. And he is daring. He asked for the reward. He said to me, `If you don’t reward truth, you are rewarding lies.’”

This is why this society is in such a mad space. Everybody is teaching you to be truthful, and nobody is rewarding you for being truthful, so they create a schizophrenia. The Indian Government has the motto Satyameva jayate — “truth is always victorious.” That is their motto.

But every politician goes on lying to the people, giving promises which they know they cannot fulfill. And in every court is written satyameva jayate, truth is always victorious. But in every court it is not the truth that is victorious, it is the more efficient, more argumentative advocate who wins the case. It does not matter whether he is in favor of the criminal or against the criminal.

I used to have a vice-chancellor who was one of the biggest law experts in the world. He had three offices, one in London, one in New Delhi, and one in Peking. He was continuously running from one country to another country, and he never lost a single case. All the great cases in which millions of dollars were involved… all the maharajas of this country were his clients; but he was a drunkard.

He was fighting a case in the privy council in London, the highest appeals court for India under the British empire. The supreme court was here but if you wanted to go against the supreme court, the privy council was in London. And he was a privy council man; he was continuously fighting cases in the privy council.

That night he was at a party and drank too much. Next day he had a hangover, and was still a little drunk, but he had to go to the court. The case involved two districts of Rajasthan, Udaipur and Jaipur. Both the maharajas were fighting for a certain bit of land — to which district did it belong? It was thousands of acres of land. And under his hangover he forgot which party he was fighting for, Udaipur or Jaipur.

So he went on criticizing the maharaja of Jaipur; all his arguments were against the maharaja. Many times his secretary pulled his coat, but he simply wouldn’t listen. When it was lunchtime, the court stopped for an hour. Then the secretary said, “You have spoilt the whole case. You are for the maharaja of Jaipur and you are arguing against him. And you have created such a problem because the man who is against the maharaja of Jaipur, who is fighting you, another great expert, is at a loss what to do. All the arguments that he has prepared, you have already put against the maharaja of Jaipur.”

Now he was getting over his hangover; he said, “Don’t be worried. There is still time.”

After lunchtime he said to the court, “Before lunch I gave all the arguments that the opposite party can give. Now I am going to criticize the opposite party, argument by argument, because I am standing here for the maharaja of Jaipur.” And he criticized his own arguments so cleverly.

When he told me this… I used to go often to visit him. He loved me very much. He always told me: “You should join the law department, not philosophy.”

I said, “That is not my field.” But he loved my arguments.

He said, “It is a loss to the world of law and constitution. You have such arguments that you would become a world-famous legal expert.”

I said, “I am going to become a world-notorious illegal expert. Don’t be worried about me.”

But he loved me, so he told me that incident. It is not a question of truth at all, it is only a question of who is a better arguer.

On the one hand the government and all the religions and all the preachers go on saying, “You should tell the truth.” But society does not reward the truth. Just today I have received a threatening letter from a law firm in Madras that I have offended the religious feelings of their clients.

I have told my legal secretary, Anando, to write to them that in the first place there are no religious feelings. A religion is beyond feelings and beyond thoughts and beyond mind. There are only religious superstitions. A man of religion cannot be hurt. He knows the truth. It is the lies that you are living in that are hurt. Truth always hurts lies. So you should tell your clients to be really religious. Go beyond the mind, go beyond feelings, sentiments, emotions, thoughts and you will not be hurt.

But if you want to come to the court, you can. My whole life I have been fighting in courts on the same point that people’s religious feelings are hurt. I have been telling the judges, “If I am true and somebody’s feelings are hurt, do you think I have to be punished for it? That man needs psychological treatment. If his religious feelings are so weak, that shows that they are only beliefs. He does not know what religion is. And if truth hurts people, what do you suggest? Should I start lying?” And the judges would look all around — what to do? They cannot say I should start lying, so they are puzzled.

In the first court case they gave me a choice of the Bible, the Koran or Bhagavad Gita, whichever religion I belonged to. I was asked to take the book — all the books were on the table — and take the oath that I would speak only the truth and nothing else.

I said, “I cannot do that for one reason: all these three books are full of lies. To take an oath on a book which is full of lies is absolutely absurd; you are an intelligent man. Secondly, I cannot take the oath because I always speak the truth. Taking the oath will mean that I won’t speak the truth unless I take the oath. The implication is clear. You are telling me that I am an untruthful man. You are insulting me in your court. If I insult you, you will say that the court has been insulted. But you are insulting me by telling me to take the oath. I cannot take the oath because I simply speak the truth. There is no question of an oath.”

He looked at me and he said, “I can understand, but this creates a problem. Without taking the oath, the case cannot start.”

I said, “That is not my problem. Who wants to start it? It is the other party that is starting it. I can go home right now.”

He said, “I will make an exception for you because you are saying you will speak the truth.”

I said, “I am not saying that, I am saying I only speak the truth. And that’s the problem. These people are hurt by the truth. I have said that there is no God, and they are believers of God. Now they should prove that there is a God. That is their problem, not my problem. I simply repeat again, there is no God. Now they should prove the existence of God with evidence, with witnesses.”

“What do you think?” I asked the judge. “Do you believe in God? Do you have any evidence, any witness who has seen God? Can you say that you have seen God?”

He said, “It seems you are the judge here and I am the criminal.”

I said, “Truth is always victorious. It is just behind you. Read it.”

The case was dismissed. Hundreds of cases have been dismissed. But the society goes on rewarding a person who consoles you. It does not matter that he is consoling you by a lie.

Once it happened that a man died and his wife was really in despair, crying and crying. And one of my neighbors went to her and said, “Don’t be worried, the soul is immortal. Your husband has not died, it is just the body; his soul is immortal and cannot die. So don’t unnecessarily be in despair, be sad and cry, there is no need.”

I was listening, standing by his side. I thought, “Let me wait. When somebody dies in this fellow’s house, then I will go.” Two years later his father died. So I went immediately.

My father said, “Where are you going?” I said, “The same place you are going,” because he was going to participate in the funeral procession. A neighbor has died and he was an old friend. He said, “He was my old friend, but why are you going?”

I said, “I am going to take care of his son, because that idiot was telling a woman whose husband had died, `Don’t cry, the soul is immortal.’ Now I have to see whether he is crying or not.”

And he was crying. So I said, “Stop crying. You were telling that poor woman that the soul is immortal. What happened? Your father’s soul is not immortal? Stop crying.”

He said, “You are a strange person. I am in a deep sadness.”

I said, “What happened two years ago? When somebody else’s husband died, you told her great and beautiful things. All lies! Your tears prove you were lying. If you were true, there would be no tears. Your father’s soul is immortal.”

He said, “I know it. But what to do? I feel sad.”

I said to him, “That woman also knew it.”

All knowledge is borrowed; hence all knowledge that is borrowed is a lie. Deep down you are not in agreement with it. Deep down there is doubt.

So what you are asking is: If we don’t have a God, suddenly the problem arises, to whom do we have to look for guidance about what is good and what is bad? And you feel, you think, it is because there is a certain resistance to thinking. No, it is not as you think. It is not a question of resistance to thinking. Thinking cannot solve the problem.

For example, a man has fallen into a well. Now is it good or bad to pull him out? Can you decide that by thinking? You may think it is good to save the man; but if you save the man and tomorrow he commits a murder, then you will be responsible, at least fifty percent responsible, for the murder. If you had not saved the man, there would have been no murder.

There is a religious sect, Terapanth, in India, which says: Don’t interfere in anybody’s life. If somebody is drowning, you simply move on; don’t listen. He is shouting for help, “Save me!” Don’t listen, because he is suffering from his past evil acts.

If you interfere, you are committing two crimes. First, you are interfering in his personal life. He was suffering because of his personal evil acts. He has to suffer; you are preventing him. He will have to fall again some day. It is better to let him finish with the past evil acts. And secondly, by saving him you are taking an immense responsibility. He may rape a woman, he may kill somebody. He may turn out to be a thief or anything, and you will be responsible. So you have unnecessarily taken a responsibility on yourself which will disturb your own spiritual growth.”

So the followers of Terapanth — the head of the panth is Acharya Tulsi — say, “Don’t give any food to a beggar. He is a beggar because he is suffering from his past life’s karmas.” They don’t believe in charity, they don’t believe in compassion, they don’t believe that you should help anybody who is in trouble. You should keep aloof, otherwise you are taking responsibilities which will become too burdensome for you. The first task is to get rid of your own evil acts and now you are taking on other people’s responsibilities. You will never become enlightened. So the people following Acharya Tulsi have become absolutely inhuman; nothing matters.

Thinking cannot decide anything, because something may be good in one situation and the same thing may be bad in a different situation. Sometimes even poison can be medicine, and sometimes even medicine can be poison — you have to understand the changing flux of life.

So by thinking you cannot decide. It is not a question of deciding as a logical conclusion, it is a question of choiceless awareness. You need a mind without thoughts. In other words, you need a no-mind, just a pure silence, so you can see directly into things. And out of that clarity will come the choice on its own; you are not choosing. You will act just as a buddha acts. Your action will have beauty, your action will have truth, your action will have the fragrance of the divine. There is no need for you to choose.

You have to look for guidance because you don’t know your inner guide is hidden inside you. You have to find the inner guide, and that’s what I call your witness. That’s what I call your dharma, that’s what I call your intrinsic buddha. You have to awaken that buddha and your life will shower blessings, benediction. Your life will become so radiant with good, with godliness, more than you can possibly conceive.

It is almost like light. Your room is dark, just bring light in. Even a small candle will do, and the whole darkness disappears. And once you have a candle you know where the door is. You don’t have to think about it: “Where is the door?” Only blind people think about where the door is. People who have eyes and the light is there, they don’t think. Have you ever thought, “Where is the door?” You simply get up and go out. You never give a single thought to where the door is. You don’t start groping for the door or hitting your head against the wall. You simply see, and there is not even a flicker of thought. You simply go out.

Exactly the same is the situation when you are beyond mind. When there are no clouds and the sun is bright in the sky, you don’t have to think, “Where is the sun?” When there are clouds covering the sun, you have to think about it.

Your own being is covered with thoughts, emotions, feelings, and they are all mind-products. Just put them aside, and then whatever you do is good — not that you follow certain scriptures, not that you follow certain commandments, not that you follow certain spiritual leaders. You are in your own right the guide of your life. And that is the dignity of man, to be the guide of his own life. That makes man a lion, transforms him from a sheep which is always looking for somebody else to defend it.

But this is not only your problem, this is the problem of almost the whole of humanity. You have been programmed by others as to what is right and what is wrong.

So when there is no God, there is no holy scripture and there is no son of God like Jesus Christ to save you, and there is no meaning in the pope who represents Jesus Christ who is the son of God who does not exist! Can you be a son of someone who does not exist? To be a son of someone who does not exist simply means you are a crackpot — and the pope is representing the crackpot, Jesus Christ. And he goes on saying that he is infallible.

And each pope has contradicted other popes. In these twenty centuries there have been many instances when one pope acted in a certain way and another pope demolished that and changed the rule. Both cannot be right. Both cannot be infallible. Both can be fallible, but both cannot be infallible, one has to be fallible. But if one pope is fallible, then what is the guarantee that other popes will not be fallible?

And the pope is elected. Do you elect a buddha? By election you decide who is a buddha? Then your politicians will become buddhas, and your buddhas will not have any votes, because your buddhas will not go begging for votes. A buddha is unconcerned whether you think him a buddha or not.

The pope is elected. And you will be surprised to know that even Jesus Christ, three hundred years after his death, was elected as a divine being by a conference under the Emperor Constantine. The conference is known as the Niscene Council. It was by election, by voting, that it was decided that Jesus is holy.

You cannot decide by election that Jesus is holy. You cannot decide by election whether Albert Einstein is right or wrong — by election, by people who don’t know any mathematics, who don’t know any physics. People who don’t have any experience of the holy are voting for or against Jesus, whether he is holy or not. After three hundred years, people who have not known Jesus and people who have no idea and no experience of holiness, they are deciding by election!

It was just because of the power of Emperor Constantine; he forced people to vote for Jesus Christ as a holy man. Because they could not go against the emperor, they had to vote. And then the second thing he wanted them to vote on was: although Jesus Christ was holy and was a messiah, he failed in his mission. “I am the real messiah.” Constantine said to the conference, “You now vote for me. I am the real messiah and a successful one.” He turned the whole Roman empire to Christianity. That’s why the Vatican exists in Italy. Italy’s old name was the Roman Empire, and under Constantine the whole of the Roman empire was converted to Christianity. Of course he was far more successful than Jesus.

You can’t think Jesus was a success. He was crucified, poor fellow. Do you call this success? Crucifixion? On either side two criminals… even they were laughing. They were crucified, but they had committed crimes so there was no question; they knew that this was absolutely justified.

And Jesus told those two… first, to one he said, “Don’t be worried, you will be coming with me to paradise. And I am the son of God so I will help you to enter into paradise.” Then he told the other, and both started laughing. They said, “You cannot save yourself! And you are not a criminal, we know. You have not committed any crime, and you are being crucified. You cannot save yourself and you are promising us that you will save us?”

But Constantine forced the council of Niscene to accept him as the real messiah — and certainly Constantine was successful; he converted the whole of the Roman empire to Christianity.

Jesus had only twelve apostles, uneducated, carpenters, fishermen, uncultured — not a single rabbi, not a single learned man was ever his follower. No educated, no cultured people ever gathered around him.

But the viceroy of the Roman empire — Judea was under the Roman empire — Pontius Pilate, heard about him from his wife. Just by chance she was passing when Jesus was preaching to a crowd, so she stopped her chariot. From her chariot she heard Jesus and she loved what he was saying. Those sayings were beautiful. She told her husband, “This man has something, some quality. I have never heard any man speaking with such authority, such beautiful sayings. And he is uneducated and very young,” — he was only thirty years at that time. By thirty-three he was crucified.

So Pontius Pilate could not go as a viceroy to listen to him, but in disguise as a soldier he just passed that way and stood under a tree far away, listening to what this man was saying. And his wife was right.

Pilate was a very educated man, but he had never heard anybody speaking with such authority; such beautiful words from an uneducated man! So he was very favorable to Jesus and wanted somehow to save him from crucifixion, but the Jews were too much against him — not that he had committed any crime, but because he was claiming something which the Jews could not accept. He was claiming, “I am your last prophet for whom you have been waiting for centuries. I have come.”

And he was a carpenter’s son, and there was even a difficulty believing that he was his own father’s son, because he was born just four months after the marriage. That is how the whole story begins about the Virgin Mary and the Holy Ghost. The whole thing was that the girl was already pregnant when she married Joseph the carpenter. It was not the Holy Ghost, it was some unholy neighbor. And he was not God’s son; he was not even the son of his own father!

But if you tell the truth, if you call him “the bastard” then Christians are going to be hurt in their religious feelings. And I am simply telling the truth! They have to prove where the Holy Ghost is, and what is the logic behind calling him holy if he is raping virgin girls?

But people feel hurt because they don’t know what authentic religiousness is. You are living with ideas, borrowed, so when God is no longer there, Jesus is no longer there, popes are no longer there, who is going to guide you?

If God is not there, then all your Hindu incarnations of God are phony. When God himself is not there, how can he be incarnated in Krishna, in Ram…?

These are just arch-egoists proclaiming something which they cannot prove. Not a single incarnation of God has been able to prove on what grounds he is calling himself an incarnation. Self-styled, so-called incarnations of God, self-styled prophets and messiahs, they have all created your morality, your religion, and you have been depending on them. And you think from these people can come the truth?

Truth can only arise within you. Nobody else can give it to you. And with truth comes beauty, followed by good. This is the authentic trinity of a truly religious man: truth, beauty, good. These three experiences happen when you enter into your own subjectivity, when you explore the interiority of your being.

You have been living in the porch outside your being; you have never gone in. Once you go in you will find your buddha, your awareness, your choiceless consciousness. Then you don’t have to decide what is good and what is wrong. That choiceless consciousness takes you towards the good without any effort. It is effortless.

And because it is effortless it brings you great joy. When there is effort… have you ever thought about it? Effort simply means repression. Otherwise there is no need of any effort. Do you make any effort to feel hungry? Or do you make any effort to feel thirsty? When you are thirsty you know you are thirsty, when you are hungry you know you are hungry.

But you have to make an effort to be celibate. All efforts are futile, against nature. I declare unto you there has never been a single man who was celibate, unless he was impotent. But the impotents don’t count.

I say it on the grounds that nobody can go against nature. Those who try to go against nature have to make an effort. All effort is against nature, and all relaxation is in tune with nature. To be in tune is to be religious, to be in tune with the universe. And you don’t have to look for any guide. That very tuning turns you into a beautiful flower, fragrant. It is not an effort on your part, it is simply a natural growth.

But all your religions are against nature. It is very strange — and you have never thought about it — but all these religions say God created nature. Yet, if God created nature, then to be against nature means to be against God. It is such a simple argument, it does not need much intelligence. If God has created existence, then to be in tune with existence is the only way of being religious — to be in tune with God’s existence.

But, strangely, all religions teach you to be against nature. Fast! But fasting is not natural. Perhaps once in a while, but that too is needed only if you have been unnatural with your stomach. If you have been stuffing unnecessary things in your stomach, once in a while you may need to fast. But if you have been natural, eating only that amount which is needed by your body — not a single thing more — you will never need to fast in your whole life.

All religions teach you not to sleep for eight hours, which is natural. They are teaching you to cut your sleep. Saints sleep only three hours, two hours; the greater the saint, the less the sleep.

One day a woman came to me, the wife of a sardar, a Sikh (AT THIS SARDAR GURUDAYAL SINGH LAUGHS HEARTILY.) It was not the wife of Sardar Gurudayal Singh because he does not believe in wives, he believes in girlfriends.

The wife came to me, and said, “My husband is going bananas.”

I said, “What happened to your husband?”

She said, “He has been following a so-called saint who teaches him stupid things, and he follows…”

The saint had told her husband, “First you should start living on pure food.”

And what is pure food according to the Hindu mind? — the only pure food is milk. And in fact it is one of the most impure things in the world because it comes out of blood; it is really a transformation of blood. That’s why when you drink milk you start looking red. It is an impure thing, the worst thing you could think of. But Hindus believe that drinking milk is the purest thing.

And it is against nature. Have you seen any grown-up animal living on the milk of the mother? Just in the beginning, when the child of any animal cannot digest solid food — it is only a question of weeks — he has to depend on the mother’s milk. Once he starts eating solid food, he completely forgets about the mother’s milk. It was a temporary phenomenon.

It is only man who goes on drinking milk even when he can digest solid food. And the milk is not from his mother, because the mother cannot manage to give you milk for your whole life. Just four or five years are enough to destroy her breasts. A whole life! You are seventy years old and drinking mother’s milk. You will kill the poor woman! She may be already dead, and you are chewing on the dead body… So you are not able to do that, and no other woman will allow you to. Even your own wife will not allow it. Once in a while it is okay… but every day? In the middle of the night you start crying, “I want some milk”? The wife is not a cow… A few wives are, but very rarely!

You are drinking milk from other animals — cows and sheep and goats — and you don’t understand the chemistry. The cow’s milk is for her children, not for you. You are depriving her children — that is one act against nature. And secondly, her milk is for the bulls. So her milk has immense sexuality, and your saints are drinking milk and trying to be celibate. This is such a contradiction… that they exactly become bulls!

The cow’s milk is not for you, it is for a bull. It has the strength to create a bull. So firstly you are depriving her children, which is an act of violence. Secondly, you are drinking something which is not meant for you, and it is going to create exactly the opposite of what you are trying to do. Why the pure food? So that you can be celibate!

So that woman, poor woman, told me, “First, that saint told him to live only on milk, and be celibate. So his whole sexuality went into his head; the whole day he is just thinking about sex and nothing else.”

That is the situation of all your saints’ minds. You just need to open a little window in their head and inside you will see Marilyn Monroe standing naked, Sophia Loren standing naked, queues of women… I hope someday we will be able to create windows in the head so people can look.

When you are repressing sex it is going to become cerebral. It will go into the head, because the actual sex center is in the brain. So it will create fantasies, sexual imagination… now you will go to the saint for another bit of advice: “What to do? My whole mind is just whirling with one thought, women.” The saint then says you have to cut down your sleep.

So this saint told the poor woman’s husband, “Cut your sleep.” He was sleeping for only two hours, so now the whole day he felt sleepy. He could not go to work, because the work he was doing was dangerous. He was working in a gun carriage factory. So if he was sleepy he might get killed by the mechanisms all around. He may do something wrong and explode the whole factory, so even his officers told him, “First you get cured of your… the whole day you look sleepy. We won’t allow you…”

So he again went to the saint. That’s how you keep on going to the guides and the rabbis and the bishops and the priests and the saints. They go on giving you advice which is not a cure, which is really creating more and more diseases. So the saint said to him, “If you are feeling sleepy the whole day it means…” In Hindu philosophy it is called tamas. Your past lives have been of pure darkness; they are surfacing. The darkness is surfacing. Tamas is coming up. So you have to continue the whole day repeating the name of Rama — that is the Hindu God.

So now he continuously repeats, “Rama, Rama, Rama.” Even walking on the street he has to repeat it. Now the repetition has become so automatic that he does not hear the horns of the trucks or the buses or the cars. He is so full of his own “Rama, Rama, Rama…”

So the wife was afraid that he would be killed. People had reported to her that he was going straight for a truck, and the truck was honking the horn but he wouldn’t listen. So she said, “I have come to you. You have to help. And he does not allow anybody else to sleep, so we are all getting sick. He gets up at three o’clock in the morning. He goes to bed at one o’clock in the night, so up to one o’clock, `Rama, Rama, Rama…’ through the whole house. The children are crying, `Our examinations are coming close and this man won’t let us sleep.’ And by three o’clock he’s back. Even the neighbors are coming to say, `This is too much, we cannot tolerate it. From three o’clock, “Rama, Rama” — and he shouts!’” So she said, “Something has to be done.”

I said, “Certainly. You bring him to me.”

But he wouldn’t listen, because he was continuously repeating, “Rama, Rama,” in front of me! I said, “Shut up!”

He said, “But it is the name of God.”

I said, “Who told you?”

He said, “My saint.”

I said, “He knows exactly that Rama is the name of God?”

He said, “His own master has told him.”

I said, “It is just a tale told from one idiot to another idiot… and you are the last in the line. There is nothing holy in it, there is nothing divine in it; it is an ordinary name. There are millions of people in India who have Ram in their name — do you think they are all gods?”

He said, “No.”

I said, “What is your name?” And by chance his name was Sardar Ram Singh. “You are an idiot! You are just repeating your own name.”

He said, “I never thought about it.”

I said, “You have never thought about anything! What else is your master telling you? Because you are not sleeping well, that’s why the whole day you are feeling sleepy. And because you are trying to be celibate, the mind is continuously thinking of sex. And because you are thinking of sex, your master says to you that your food must be impure so drink cow’s milk. That will make you more sexual; you become a bull. Soon, Sardar Ram Singh, you will become a bull!”

He said, “My God! So what am I to do?”

I said, “First, stop drinking milk. Just be a normal human being. Yes, you can drink a little bit in your tea in the morning, but not the whole day. How much milk are you drinking? Your body seems so fat.”

The wife said, “The whole day he is drinking, to make himself celibate. His job has gone, and whatever small balance he had in an account is wasted in purchasing two cows, and he drinks all the milk of two cows!”

I said, “You brought him at the right time. Soon he would have turned into a bull. He is just on the verge.” So I said to him, “Sell those cows and start eating like a human being. And sleep like a human being. And there is no need to repeat `Ram, Ram…’

“You can do one thing. In the morning, say `Ram’ and then say, `Ditto — applicable for twenty-four hours.’ It is just a small thing. You can write it on a page: Ditto, applied for the twenty-four hours. Next day again you say one time, `Ram,’ and `Ditto.’”

He said, “This is a great secret! I was getting bored and tired, and I was getting deaf because I was continuously repeating, repeating, repeating. Even those two hours in sleep I was continuously repeating inside, `Ram, Ram…’” Because if you are repeating for twenty-two hours then you cannot leave it just for two hours in sleep; it will go on in an undercurrent.

I said, “You will be okay within two weeks. Not much is needed, just be normal and natural. And stop going to that stupid man you think is a saint.”

He said, “Then can I come to you?”

I said, “No. You don’t need anybody outside; you have to go within yourself. First, for two weeks get saner; then you can come to me and I will tell you how to meditate. And you don’t have to meditate the whole day; just one hour before sunrise. And there is no need to shout, because you are not praying for the neighbors, and there is no God to listen howsoever loud you shout. No God is there to listen to it. Have you ever received any answer?”

He said, “No, I have never received any answer, only condemnation from everybody. My children are against me, my wife is against me, all the neighborhood is against me, my boss is against me. I have got into such trouble with this religion…”

I said, “Everybody is in the same situation, more or less.”

All religions are driving people bananas.

And they give you advice that seems to be very significant because all the scriptures are repeating it down the ages. It is so ancient you cannot doubt it.

You don’t need anybody to tell you what is good and what is wrong. All that you need is an awakening within you of a consciousness which makes you see things as they are. Then there is no question of choice.

Nobody chooses the bad consciously. It is the unconscious, the darkness within you, that chooses the evil.

Consciousness brings light to your whole being; you become full of luminosity. You cannot do anything that is harmful to anybody. You cannot do anything that is harmful to your own body. You become suddenly aware that you are one with this whole universe.

So your actions become good, beautiful, graceful; your words start having a certain poetry, your silence becomes so deep, so blissful, that your bliss starts overflowing to others.

This overflowing of bliss is the only significant sign of a man who is awakened. Just being with that man, just his presence, is enough to give you a taste of the beyond.

But it is not according to anybody else, only according to your own awareness.

And when I say God is dead, all that is left for you is your own consciousness. And your consciousness is part of an oceanic consciousness that surrounds you. Once you become aware of your inside, you will become aware that, all over, that same consciousness is throbbing, dancing. In the trees, in the rivers, in the mountains, in the oceans, in people’s eyes, in their hearts, it is the same song, it is the same dance — and you participate in it. Your participation is good. Your non-participation is bad.

The evolution of life is to become more and more conscious, but the consciousness is always other oriented: you are conscious of some thing, some object. Yoga means to be evolving in the dimension where there is no object and only consciousness remains. Yoga is the method of evolving toward pure consciousness; not being conscious of something, but being consciousness itself.

When you are conscious of something, you are not conscious of being conscious. Your consciousness has become focused on something; your attention is not at the source of consciousness itself. In yoga the effort is to become conscious of both the object and the source. The consciousness becomes double arrowed. You must be aware of the object, and you must be simultaneously aware of the subject. Consciousness must become a double arrowed bridge. The subject must not be lost, it must not become forgotten when you are focused on the object.

This is the first step in yoga. The second step is to drop both the subject and the object and just be conscious. This pure consciousness is the aim of yoga.

Even without yoga man grows toward becoming more and more conscious, but yoga adds something, contributes something, to this evolution of consciousness. It changes many things and transforms many things. The first transformation is a double-arrowed awareness, remembering yourself at the very moment that there is something else to be conscious of.

The dilemma is this: either you are conscious of some object or you are unconscious. If there are no outside objects, you fall into a sleep; objects are needed in order for you to be conscious. When you are totally unoccupied you feel sleepy — you need some object to be conscious of — but when you have too many objects to be conscious of, you may feel a certain sleeplessness. That is why a person who is too obsessed with thoughts cannot go into sleep. Objects continue to be there, thoughts continue to be there. He cannot become unconscious; thoughts go on demanding his attention. And this is how we exist.

With new objects you become more conscious. That is why there is a lust for the new, a longing for the new. The old becomes boring. The moment you have lived with some object for a while, you become unconscious of it. You have accepted it, now your attention is not needed; you become bored. For example, you may not have been conscious of your wife for years because you have taken her for granted. You no longer see her face, you can’t remember the color of her eyes; for years you have not really been attentive. Only when she dies will you again become aware that she was there. That is why wives and husbands become bored. Any object that is not calling your attention continuously creates boredom.

In the same way, a mantra, a repeated sound vibration, causes deep sleep. When a particular mantra is being repeated continuously, you are bored. There is nothing mysterious about it. Constantly repeating a particular word bores you, you cannot live with it anymore. Now you will begin to feel sleepy, you will go into a sort of sleep; you will become unconscious. The whole method of hypnosis, in fact, depends upon boredom. If your mind can be bored with something then you go into a sleep, sleep can be induced.

Our whole consciousness depends on new objects. That is why there is so much longing for the new — for new sensations, a new dress, a new house — for anything that is new, even if it is not better. With something different, you feel a sudden upsurge of consciousness.

Because life is an evolution of consciousness — this is good. As far as life is concerned, it is good. If a society is longing for new sensations, life progresses, but if it settles down with the old, not asking for the new, it becomes dead; consciousness cannot evolve.

Source: OSHO, Meditation: The Art of Ecstasy

When Pontius Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth?” Jesus remained silent. Not only that, the story says that when Pontius Pilate asked the question, “What is truth?” he did not wait to listen for the answer. He left the room and went away. This is very strange. Pontius Pilate also thinks that there cannot be an answer for it, so he didn’t wait for the answer. Jesus remained silent because he also knows it cannot be answered.

But these two understandings are not the same, because these two persons are diametrically opposite. Pontius Pilate thinks that it cannot be answered because there is no truth; how can you answer it? That is the logical mind, the Roman mind. Jesus remains silent not because there is no truth, but because the truth is so vast, it is not definable. The truth is so huge, enormous, it cannot be confined in a word, it cannot be reduced to language. It is there. One can be it, but one cannot say it.

For two different reasons they behaved almost in the same way: Pontius didn’t wait to hear the answer, he knew already that there is no truth. Jesus remains silent because he knows truth, and knows that it could not be said.

Chidvilas has asked this question. The question is absolutely significant. There is no question higher than that, because there is no religion higher than truth. It has to be understood; the question has to be analyzed. Analyzing the question, trying to understand the question itself, you may have an insight into what truth is. I will not answer it, I cannot answer it; nobody can answer it. But we can go deep into the question. Going deep into the question, the question will start disappearing. When the question has disappeared you will find the answer there at the very core of your heart — you are truth, so how can you miss it? Maybe you have forgotten about it, maybe you have lost track of it, maybe you have forgotten how to enter into your own being, into your own truth.

Truth is not an hypothesis, truth is not a dogma. Truth is neither Hindu nor Christian nor Mohammedan. Truth is neither mine nor yours. Truth belongs to nobody, but everybody belongs to truth. Truth means that which is: that is exactly the meaning of the word. It comes from a Latin root, verus. Verus means: that which is. In English there are a few words which are derivations of the Latin root verus: was, were — they come from verus. In German, war — that comes from verus. Verus means that which is, uninterpreted. Once the interpretation comes in, then what you know is reality, not truth. That is the difference between truth and reality. Reality is truth interpreted.

So the moment you answer the question, “What is truth?” it becomes reality; it is no longer truth. Interpretation has entered into it, the mind has colored it. And realities are as many as there are minds; there are multi-realities. Truth is one because truth is known only when the mind is not there. It is mind that keeps you separate from me, separate from others, separate from existence. If you look through the mind, then the mind will give you a picture of truth. That will be only a picture, a photograph of that which is. And of course, the photograph depends on the camera, on the film used, on the chemicals, on how it has been developed, how it has been printed, who has done it. A thousand and one other things enter in; it becomes reality.

The word reality is also beautiful to be understood. It comes from the root, res; it means thing or things. Truth is not a thing. Once interpreted, once the mind has grabbed it, defined it, demarked it, it becomes a thing.

When you fall in love with a woman there is some truth — if you have fallen absolutely unaware, if you have not ‘done’ it in any way, if you have not acted, managed, if you have not even thought about it. Suddenly you see a woman, you look into her eyes, she looks into your eyes, and something clicks. You are not the doer of it, you are simply possessed by it, you simply fall into it. It has nothing to do with you. Your ego is not involved, at least not in the very, very beginning, when love is virgin. In that moment there is truth, but there is no interpretation. That’s why love remains indefinable.

Soon the mind comes in, starts managing things, takes possession of you. You start thinking about the girl as your girlfriend, you start thinking of how to get married, you start thinking about the woman as your wife. Now these are things; the girlfriend, the wife — these are things. The truth is no longer there, it has receded back. Now things are becoming more important. The definable is more secure, the indefinable is insecure. You have started killing, poisoning the truth. Sooner or later there will be a wife and a husband, two things. But the beauty is gone, the joy has disappeared, the honeymoon is over.

The honeymoon is over at that exact moment when truth becomes reality, when love becomes a relationship. The honeymoon is very short, unfortunately — I’m not talking about the honeymoon that you go for. The honeymoon is very short. Maybe for a single moment it was there, but the purity of it, the crystal purity of it, the divinity of it, the beyondness of it — it is from eternity, it is not of time. It is not part of this mundane world, it is like a ray coming into a dark hole. It comes from the transcendental. It is absolutely appropriate to call love God, because love is truth. The closest that you come to truth in ordinary life is love.

Chidvilas asks: “What is truth?”

Asking has to disappear; only then do you know.

If you ask, “What is truth?” what are you asking? If I say A is truth, B is truth, C is truth, will that be the answer? If I say A is truth, then certainly A cannot be the truth: it is something else that I am using as synonymous with truth. If it is absolutely synonymous, then it will be a tautology. Then I can say, “Truth is truth,” but that is silly, meaningless. Nothing is solved by it. If it is exactly the same, if A is truth, then it will mean truth is truth. If A is different, is not exactly truth, then I am falsifying. Then to say A is truth will be only approximate. And remember, there cannot be anything approximate. Either truth is or it is not. So I cannot say A is truth.

I cannot even say, “God is truth,” because if God is truth then it is a tautology — “Truth is truth.” Then I’m not saying anything. If God is different from truth, then I am saying something, but then I am saying something wrong. Then God is different, then how can he be truth? If I say it is approximate, linguistically it looks alright, but it is not right. ‘Approximately’ means some lie is there, something false is there. Otherwise, why is it not a hundred percent truth? If it is ninety-nine percent truth then something is there which is not true. And truth and untruth cannot exist together, just as darkness and light cannot exist together — because darkness is nothing but absence. Absence and presence cannot exist together, truth and untruth cannot exist together. Untruth is nothing but the absence of truth.

So no answer is possible, hence Jesus remained silent. But if you look at it with deep sympathy, if you look into the silence of Jesus, you will have an answer. Silence is the answer. Jesus is saying, “Be silent, as I am silent, and you will know” — not saying it in words. It is a gesture, it is very, very Zen-like. In that moment when Jesus remained silent, he comes very close to the Zen approach, to the Buddhist approach. He is a Buddha in that moment. Buddha never answered these questions. He had eleven questions listed: wherever he would move his disciples would go around and declare to people, “Never ask these eleven questions of Buddha” — questions which are fundamental, questions which are really significant. You could ask anything else, and Buddha was always ready to answer. But don’t ask the fundamental, because the fundamental can only be experienced. And truth is the most fundamental; the very substance of existence is what truth is.

Go into the question. The question is significant, it is arising in your heart: “What is truth?” — a desire to know that which is, is arising. Don’t push it aside, go into it. Chidvilas, whenever it happens again, close your eyes, go into the question. Let the question become very, very focussed — “What… is… truth?” Let there arise a great concentration. Forget everything, as if your whole life depends on this simple question, “What is truth?” Let it become a matter of life and death. And don’t try to answer it, because you don’t know the answer.

Answers may be coming — the mind always tries to supply answers — but see the fact that you don’t know, that’s why you are asking. So how can your mind supply you an answer? The mind knows not, so tell the mind, “Keep quiet.” If you know, then there is no need for the question. You don’t know, hence the question.

So don’t be befooled by the mind’s toys. It supplies toys: it says, “Look, it is written in the Bible. Look, it is written in the Upanishads. This is the answer. Look, this is written by Lao Tzu, this is the answer.” The mind can throw all kinds of scriptures at you: the mind can quote, the mind can supply from the memory. You have heard many things, you have read many things; the mind carries all those memories. It can repeat in a mechanical way. But look into this phenomenon: that the mind knows not, and all that mind is repeating is borrowed. And the borrowed cannot help.

It happened at a railway crossing. The gates were closed, some train was to pass, and a man was sitting in his car, waiting for the train to pass, reading a book. A drunkard who was just sitting by the side of the gate came close, knocked on the air-conditioned car’s window. The man opened the window and said, “What can I do for you? Do you need any help?”

And the bum said, “Yes, for two days I have not eaten anything at all. Can you give me two rupees? That will be enough for me, just two rupees.”

The man laughed and said, “Never borrow and never lend money,” and showed the book to the bum and said, “Shakespeare — Shakespeare says so. Look.”

The bum pulled out of his pocket a very dirty paperback and said to the man, “You sonofabitch — D. H. Lawrence.”

Beware of the mind. The mind goes on quoting, the mind knows all without knowing at all. The mind is a pretender. See into this phenomenon: this I call insight. It is not a question of thinking. If you think about it, it is again the mind. You have to see through and through. You have to look deeply into the very phenomenon, the functioning of the mind, how the mind functions. It borrows from here and there, it goes on borrowing and accumulating. It is a hoarder, a hoarder of knowledge. Mind becomes very knowledgeable, and then whenever you ask a question which is really important the mind gives a very unimportant answer to it — futile, superficial, rubbish.

A man bought a parrot from a pet shop. The shop-owner assured him the bird would learn to say hello within half an hour. Back home he spent an hour ‘helloing’ to the parrot, but not a word from the bird. As he was turning away in sheer despair, the bird said, “Number engaged.”

A parrot is a parrot. He must have heard it in the pet shop. And this man was going on and on, “Hello, hello, hello,” and the bird was listening, and waiting for him to stop. Then he could say, “Number engaged!”

You can go on asking the mind, “What is truth, what is truth, what is truth?” And the moment you stop, the mind will immediately say, “Number engaged” or something. The mind will give you an answer. Beware of the mind.

The mind is the devil, there is no other devil. And it is your mind. This insight has to be developed — of looking through and through. Cut the mind in two with a sharp blow of the sword. That sword is awareness. Cut the mind in two and go through it, go beyond it! And if you can go beyond the mind, through the mind, and a moment of no-mind arises in you, there is the answer — not a verbal answer, not a scripture quoted, not in quotation marks, but authentically yours, an experience. Truth is an existential experience.

The question is immensely significant, but you will have to be very respectful towards the question. Don’t be in a hurry to find any answer, otherwise some rubbish will kill the answer. Don’t allow your mind to kill the question. And the way of the mind to kill the question is to supply answers, unlived, unexperienced.

You are truth! But it can happen only in utter silence, when not a single thought moves, when the mind has nothing to say, when not a single ripple is in your consciousness. When there is no ripple in your consciousness, your consciousness remains undistorted. When there is a ripple, there is a distortion.

Just go to a lake. Standing on the bank, look down at your reflection. If there are waves, ripples on the lake, and wind is blowing, your reflection is shaky. You cannot figure out what is what — where is your nose and where are your eyes — you can only guess. But when the lake is silent and the wind is not blowing and there is not a single ripple on the surface, suddenly you are there. In absolute perfection, the reflection is there. The lake becomes a mirror.

Whenever there is a thought moving in your consciousness it distorts. And there are many thoughts, millions of thoughts, continuously rushing, and it is always rush-hour. Twenty-four hours a day it is rush-hour, and the traffic goes on and on and on, and each thought is associated with thousands of other thoughts. They are all holding hands and linked together and interlinked, and the whole crowd is rushing around you. How can you know what truth is? Get out of this crowd.

That’s what meditation is, that’s what meditation is all about: a consciousness without mind, a consciousness without thoughts, a consciousness without any wavering — an unwavering consciousness. Then it is there in all its beauty and benediction. Then truth is there — call it God, call it nirvana, or whatsoever you like to call it. It is there, and it is there as an experience. You are in it and it is in you.

Use this question. Make it more penetrating. Make it so penetrating; put everything at stake so that the mind cannot befool you by its superficial answers. Once the mind disappears, once the mind is no longer playing its old tricks, you will know what truth is. You will know it in silence. You will know it in thoughtless awareness.

Source: OSHO, The Heart Sutra

Children, as they are, are never focused; their consciousness is open from all sides. Everything is coming in, nothing is being excluded. The child is open to every sensation, every sensation is included in his consciousness.

And so much is coming in! That is why he is so wavering, so unstable. A child’s unconditioned mind is a flux–a flux of sensations–but he will not be able to survive with this type of mind. He must learn how to narrow his mind, to concentrate.

The moment you narrow the mind you become particularly conscious of one thing and simultaneously unconscious of so many other things. The more narrowed the mind is, the more successful it will be. You will become a specialist, you will become an expert, but the whole thing will consist of knowing more and more about less and less.

The narrowing is an existential necessity; no one is responsible for it. As life exists, it is needed, but it is not enough. It is utilitarian, but just to survive is not enough; just to be utilitarian is not enough. So when you become utilitarian and the consciousness is narrowed, you deny your mind much of which it was capable. You are not using the total mind, you are using a very small part of it.

And the remaining — the major portion — will become unconscious.

In fact, there is no boundary between conscious and unconscious. These are not two minds. “Conscious mind” means that part of the mind that has been used in the narrowing process. “Unconscious mind” means that portion that has been neglected, ignored, closed. This creates a division, a split. The greater portion of your mind becomes alien to you. You become alienated from your own self; you become a stranger to your own totality.

A small part is being identified as your self and the rest is lost. But the remaining unconscious part is always there as unused potentiality, unused possibilities, unlived adventures. This unconscious mind–this potential, this unused mind–will always be in a fight with the conscious mind; that is why there is always a conflict within.

Everyone is in conflict because of this split between the unconscious and the conscious. But only if the potential, the unconscious, is allowed to flower can you feel the bliss of existence; otherwise not.

If the major portion of your potentialities remains unfulfilled, your life will be a frustration. That is why the more utilitarian a person is, the less he is fulfilled, the less he is blissful. The more utilitarian the approach– the more one is in business life–the less he is living, the less he is ecstatic. The part of the mind that cannot be made useful in the utilitarian world has been denied.

The utilitarian life is necessary but at a great cost: you have lost the festivity of life. Life becomes a festivity, a celebration, if all your potentialities come to a flowering; then life is a ceremony. That is why I always say that religion means transforming life into a celebration. The dimension of religion is the dimension of the festive, the nonutilitarian.

The utilitarian mind must not be taken as the whole. The remaining, the greater–the whole mind–should not be sacrificed to it. The utilitarian mind must not become the end. It will have to remain there, but as a means. The other–the remaining, the greater, the potential–must become the end. That is what I mean by a religious approach.

With a nonreligious approach, the businesslike mind, the utilitarian, becomes the end. When this becomes the end, there is no possibility of the unconscious actualizing the potential; the unconscious will be denied. If the utilitarian becomes the end, it means that the servant is playing the role of the master.

Intelligence, the narrowing of the mind, is a means toward survival, but not toward life. Survival is not life.

Survival is a necessity–to exist in the material world is a necessity–but the end is always to come to a flowering of the potential, of all that is meant by you. If you are fulfilled completely, if nothing remains inside in seed form, if everything becomes actual, if you are a flowering, then and only then can you feel the bliss, the ecstasy of life.

The denied part of you, the unconscious part, can become active and creative only if you add a new dimension to your life–the dimension of the festive, the dimension of play.

So meditation is not a work, it is a play. Praying is not a business, it is a play. Meditation is not something to be done to achieve some goal–peace, bliss–but something to be enjoyed as an end in itself.

The festive dimension is the most important thing to be understood–and we have lost it totally. By festive, I mean the capacity to enjoy, moment to moment, all that comes to you.

We have become so conditioned and habits have become so mechanical that even when there is no business to be done, our minds are businesslike. When no narrowing is needed, you are narrowed. Even when you are playing, you are not playing, you are not enjoying it. Even when you are playing cards, you are not enjoying it. You play for the victory and then the play becomes a work; then what is going on is not important, only the result.

In business the result is important. In festivity, the act is important. If you can make any act significant in itself, then you become festive and you can celebrate it.

Whenever you are in celebration, the limits, the narrowing limits are broken. They are not needed, they are thrown. You come out of your straitjacket, the narrowing jacket of concentration. Now you are not choosing; everything that comes, you allow. And the moment you allow the total existence to come in, you become one with it. There is a communion.

This communion–this celebration, this choiceless awareness, this nonbusinesslike attitude–I call meditation.

The festivity is in the moment, in the act, not in the bothering about the results, not in achieving something.

There is nothing to be achieved, so you can enjoy that which is here and now.

You can explain it in this way: I am talking to you; if I am concerned about the result, then the talk becomes a business, it becomes a work. But if I talk to you without any expectations, without any desire about the result, then the talk becomes a play. The very act, in itself, is the end. Then narrowing is not needed. I can play with the words, I can play with the thoughts. I can play with your question, I can play with my answer; then it is not serious, then it is lighthearted.

And if you are listening to me without thinking about getting something out of it, then you can be relaxed; then you can allow me to be in communion with you and your consciousness will not be narrowed. Then it is open– playing, enjoying.

Any moment can be a business moment, any moment can be a meditative moment; the difference is in the attitude. If it is choiceless, if you are playing with it, it is meditative.

There are social needs and there are existential needs that are to be fulfilled. I will not say, “Do not condition children.” If you leave them totally unconditioned, they will be barbaric. They will not be able to exist. Survival needs conditioning but survival is not the end, so you must be able to put your conditioning on and take it off–just like clothes. You can put them on, go out and do your business, and then come home and take them off. Then you are.

Source: OSHO

Listen to your body. Yes, there are days when the body says, “Go on a fast!” — then go. But there is no need to listen to the scriptures. The man who wrote that scripture has not written it with you in his mind, not at all. He could not have conceived of you. You were not present to him, he was not writing about you. It is as if you fall ill and you go to a dead doctor’s house and look into his prescriptions, and find a prescription and start following the prescription. That prescription was made for somebody else, for some other disease, in some other situation.

Remember to trust your own organism. When you feel that the body is saying don’t eat, stop immediately. When the body is saying eat, then don’t bother whether the scriptures say to fast or not. If your body says eat three times a day, perfectly good. If it says eat one time a day, perfectly good.

Start learning how to listen to your body, because it is your body.

You are in it; you have to respect it, and you have to trust it.

It is your temple; it is sacrilegious to impose things on your body. For no other motive should anything be imposed! And this will not only teach you trust in your body, this will teach you, by and by, a trust in existence too — because your body is part of existence. Then your trust will grow, and you will trust the trees and the stars and the moon and the sun and the oceans: you will trust people.

But the beginning of the trust has to be trust in your own organism.

Trust your heart.

A sannyasin is one who trusts in his own organism, and that trust helps him to relax into his being, and helps him to relax into the totality of existence. It brings a general acceptance of oneself and others.

Trust gives a kind of rootedness, centering. Then there is great strength and power, because you are centered in your own body, in your own being. You have roots in the soil.

Otherwise you see people uprooted, like trees that have been pulled up from the soil. They are simply dying, they are not living. That’s why there is not much joy in life. You don’t see the quality of laughter; the celebration is missing.

In your very body, in your very being, this very moment, the divine is there — and you have not celebrated it. You cannot celebrate.

Celebration has to happen first in your own home, at close quarters.

Then it becomes a great tidal wave and spreads all over existence.

The Heart Sutra

Confronting oneself in aloneness is fearful and it is painful, and one has to suffer it. Nothing should be done to avoid it, nothing should be done to divert the mind and nothing should be done to escape from it. One has to suffer it and go through it. This suffering and this pain is just a good sign that you are near a new birth, because every birth is preceded by pain. It cannot be avoided and it should not be avoided because it is part of your growth.

But why is this pain there?

This should be understood because understanding will help you to go through it, and if you go through it knowingly you will come out of it more easily and sooner.

Why is there pain when you are alone? The first thing is that your ego gets ill. Your ego can exist only with others. It has grown in relationship, it cannot exist alone. So if the situation is one in which it can exist no more, it feels suffocated; it feels just on the verge of death. This is the deepest suffering. You feel as if you are dying. But it is not you who is dying, only the ego, which you have taken to be yourself, with which you have become identified. It cannot exist because it has been given to you by others. It is a contribution. When you leave others you cannot carry it with you.

So in aloneness all that you know about yourself will fall; by and by it will disappear. You can prolong your ego for a certain period — and that too you will have to do through imagination — but you cannot prolong it for long. Without society you are uprooted; the soil is not there from where to get food. This is the basic pain.

You are no longer sure who you are: you are just a dispersing personality, a dissolving personality. But this is good, because unless this false you disappears the real cannot emerge. Unless you are completely washed and become clean again the real cannot emerge.

This false you is occupying the throne. It must be dethroned. By living in solitude all that is false can go. And all that is given by society is false. Really, all that is given is false; all that is born with you is real. All that is you by yourself, not contributed by someone else, is real, authentic. But the false must go and the false is a great investment. You have invested so much in it; you have been looking after it so much; all your hopes hang on it. So when it starts dissolving you will feel fearful, afraid and trembling: “What are you doing to yourself? You are destroying your whole life, the whole structure.”

There will be fear. But you have to go through this fear; only then will you become fearless. I don’t say you will become brave, no. I say you will become fearless.

Bravery is just part of fear. Howsoever brave you are, the fear is hidden behind. I say “fearless.” You will not be brave; there is no need to be brave when there is no fear. Both bravery and fear become irrelevant. They are aspects of the same coin. So your brave men are nothing but you standing on your head. Your bravery is hidden within you and your fear is on the surface; their fear is hidden within and their bravery is on the surface. So when you are alone you are very brave. When you think about something you are very brave, but when a real situation comes you are fearful.

One becomes fearless only when one has gone through the deepest fear of all — that is the dissolving of the ego, the dissolving of the image and the dissolving of the personality.

This is death because you don’t know if a new life is going to emerge from it. During the process you will know only death. Only when you are dead as you are, as the false entity, only then will you know that death was just a door to immortality. But that will be at the end; during the process you are simply dying.

Everything that you cherished so much is being taken away from you — your personality, your ideas, all that you thought was beautiful. All is leaving you. You are being denuded. All the roles and robes are being taken away. In the process fear will be there, but this fear is basic, necessary and inevitable — one has to pass through it. You should understand it but don’t try to avoid it, don’t try to escape from it because every escape will bring you back again. You will move back into the personality.

Those who go into deep silence and solitude, they always ask me, “There will be fear, so what to do?” I tell them not to do anything, just to live the fear.

If trembling comes, tremble. Why prevent it? If an inner fear is there and you are shaking with it, shake with it. Don’t do anything. Allow it to happen. It will go by itself. If you avoid it …and you can avoid it. You can start chanting “Ram, Ram, Ram”; you can cling to a mantra so that your mind is diverted. You will be pacified and the fear will not be there; you have pushed it into the unconscious. It was coming out — which was good, you were going to be free from it — it was leaving you and when it leaves you, you will tremble.

That is natural because from every cell of the body and of the mind, some energy that has always been there pushed down is leaving. There will be a shaking and a trembling; it will be just like an earthquake. The whole soul will be disturbed by it. But let it be. Don’t do anything. That is my advice. Don’t even chant. Don’t try to do anything with it because all that you can do will again be suppression. Just by allowing it to be, by letting it be, it will leave you — and when it has left, you will be altogether a different man.

Source: The Book of Secrets , OSHO