---
section: Library
booktitle: "Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2"
booktype: "Discourses"
bookcode: "PEREN2"
dategiven: "09 January 1979 am"
place: " in Buddha Hall"
chapternum: "Chapter #10"
chaptertitle: "Known, Unknown, Unknowable"
acode: "7901090"
shorttitle: "PEREN210"
audio: "Yes"
video: "No"
esttime: "106mins"
displaytitle: "Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2: Chapter #10"
---

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The first question
<p class="question">OSHO, WHICH IS THE REAL QUESTION?

Sudhir,</p>


SCIENTIFIC QUESTIONS ARE ALL REAL, because they are answerable. Religious questions are all unreal because they are unanswerable.


Religion is the concern with the unanswerable. To ask a religious question is basically wrong -- it is wrong because religion is the search for the mystery, not the search for the answer. Religion is diving deep into that which is basically unknowable -- not only unknown but unknowable.


These three words have to be understood: the known, the unknown and the unknowable. The known is that which we have accumulated in the past -- through experience, through experimentation. Whatsoever answers we have forced nature to give to us, that has become the known. That's what science is all about. And the remaining, for science, is only the unknown.


The basic hypothesis is this: that life is divided into only two categories -- the known and the unknown. Sooner or later the category of the known will become bigger and bigger, more and more things will be known. And it is assumed by sCience that one day there will be only one category -- the known. The unknown will disappear because we would have discovered all the answers.


It is here where religion differs. Religion says: There is a third category still -- the unknowable, which will always remain there, the mysterious. Love cannot be reduced to knowledge, neither can beauty nor joy -- what to say about God? Consciousness can never be reduced to the known. The ultimate will remain hovering beyond the known and the unknown. And it will go on calling forth those who have courage to go into the mysterious, into the uncharted.


Religion is the concern with the ultimate -- the ultimate concern. Concern with the unanswerable, concern with the unknowable. So all questions, Sudhir, about religion are wrong. No religious question is authentic, cannot be.


And the function of the Master is not to answer you: his function is to destroy your questioning, slowly slowly, to help you to come to a state of non-questioning. That's what trust is: the state of non-questioning, where no question exists at all. You are so silent that no questioning arises. You are deep in tune with reality then... and only then. When there is no question mark in your heart, the heart melts into the whole. The ego disappears with the question mark.


Do you know how the question mark arrived on the scene? It symbolizes the snake who seduced Eve to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge. The question mark is just a symbolic snake. The moment Eve asked a question, she fell from grace. And she provoked the same questioning in Adam.


Man has fallen by questioning: man can rise back by non-questioning. Adam and Eve are expelled because they questioned. Christ enters back into the Garden because he surrenders, trusts. At the last moment on the cross he did hesitate a little bit; it is very human. I love Christ for that -- it shows his humanity. For a moment, the questioning has come back -- with great force, with great vengeance. Maybe the last layer of questioning was there hiding somewhere in his unconscious. He asked God, "Have you forsaken me?" This is a question. "What are you doing to me?" This is a question. And the question essentially means doubt -- a doubt has arisen in his mind. He is being crucified -- it is very natural to feel that God has forsaken him: "God has stopped his grace coming to me, God is no more with me. I am alone, left all alone." But immediately he understood that this is the last question, the last doubt.


Seeing it, the last question disappeared, and immediately he said, "Thy will be done, thy kingdom come." This is trust. "Thy will, not mine." Now there can be no questioning. There is a tremendous surrender. Jesus transcended humanity in that moment. In that moment, Adam disappeared. In that moment, Jesus became a Buddha. And when there is no doubt and no question, and you are utterly silent, just a transparent silent lake, you start reflecting that which is. And God simply represents that which is.


I would like to remind you again: the ancient Hebrew word for God stands symbolically for that which is. 'G' means that, 'O' means which, 'D' means is -- that which is.


When the lake is silent, no waves, no ripples, the full moon reflects in all its beauty, in all its splendour. That is the religious consciousness. It is not after answers: it is after the experience of the mysterious. It is a totally different dimension from scientific questioning.


Science is a questioning, science is rooted in doubt. Religion is non-questioning, it is rooted in trust. And to change the gestalt from doubting to trust is conversion. Not that when a Hindu becomes a Christian it is conversion, no. Or when a Christian becomes a Hindu, no. This is not conversion. You are simply changing from one prison to another prison. When doubt disappears and trust arises, that is conversion, that is transformation.

The second question
<p class="question">OSHO, WHAT IS YOUR IDEA OF TRUE EDUCTION?</p>


THE EDUCATION THAT HAS EXISTED up to now has not been true. It has not served humanity; on the contrary, it has served the vested interests. It has served the past. The teacher has been an agent of the past. He functions as a mediator to give past beliefs, orientations, assumptions to the coming generation -- to contaminate, to pollute the new consciousness that is arising on the horizon.


That's why the teacher has been respected by all the societies. It serves the establishment. It reduces people to skillful robots, it reduces people to efficient machines. That's what education has been up to now.


And because of education, man's evolution has been very haphazard, zig-zag. But up to now there was no other way, because there was one thing in the past: knowledge grew SO slowly that it was almost the same for centuries. So the teacher was very very efficient in doing his job. Whatsoever was known was almost static; it was not growing.


But now there is a knowledge explosion. Things are changing so fast that the whole education system has become outdated, outmoded. It has to be dropped, and a totally new education system has to come into existence. Only now is it possible -- up to now it was not possible.


You will have to understand what I mean by 'the knowledge explosion'. Imagine a clock face with sixty minutes on it. These sixty minutes represent three thousand years of human history; or each minute, fifty years; or each second, approximately one year. On this scale there were no significant media changes until about nine minutes ago. At that time the printing press came in. About three minutes ago, the telegraph, photograph, and the locomotive. Two minutes ago, the telephone, rotary press, motion pictures, automobile, airplane and radio. One minute ago, the talking picture. Television has appeared in the last ten seconds, the computer in the last five, and the communication satellites in the last second. The laser beam appeared only a fraction of a second ago.


This is what some people call 'the knowledge explosion'. Change is not new; what is new is the DEGREE of change. And that makes all the difference, because at a certain point quantitative changes become qualitative changes.


If you heat water, up to ninety-nine point nine degrees it is still water -- maybe hot, but still water. Just point one degree more is needed and the water starts evaporating, and there happens a qualitative change. Just a few seconds before, the water was visible, now it is invisible. Just a few seconds before, the water was flowing downwards, now it is rising upwards. It has transcended the pull of gravitation, it is no more under the law of gravitation.


Remember, at a certain point the quantitative change becomes qualitative. And that's what has happened. Change is not new, it is not news; change has always been happening. But the RATE of change is immensely new; it has not happened like this before.


The difference between a fatal and a therapeutic dose of strychnine is only a matter of degree -- that's what Norbert Wiener says. The poison can function as a medicine in a smaller dose, but the same medicine will become fatal if you give a bigger dose. At a certain point it is no more medicine, it is poison.


Change is so tremendous now that the teacher cannot serve any more in the past style, education cannot serve any more in the past way. The past way was to help people to memorize. Education up to now has not been education in intelligence but only in memory, in remembrance. The past generation transferred all its knowledge to the new generation, and the new generation was to remember it. So people who had good memories were thought to be intelligent.


That is not necessarily so. There have been geniuses whose memory was almost nil. Albert Einstein didn't have a good memory. There have been people whose memory was miraculous, but they had no intelligence at all.


Memory is a mechanical thing in your mind. Intelligence is the consciousness. Intelligence is part of your spirit, memory is part of your brain. Memory belongs to the body, intelligence belongs to you.


Intelligence has to be taught now, because change is so fast that memory won't do. By the time you have memorized something it is already out of date. And that is what is happening: the education is failing, universities are failing, because they still go on persisting in the old way. They have learnt a trick; for three thousand years they have been doing this, and now they have learnt it so deeply that they don't know what else they can do.


Now, just giving old information to the children, which will not make them capable of living in the future but will hamper their growth, is dangerous. Now they need intelligence to live with the fast change that is happening.


Just one hundred years ago, there were millions of people who had never gone outside of their town, or never went more than fifty miles away from their town. Millions lived in the same place for ever, from birth to death. Now everything is changing. In America the average person lives only three years in one place, and that is exactly the time limit for marriage too -- three years. Then one starts changing one's town, one's job, one's wife, one's husband.


This is a totally new world that you are living in. And your education simply makes you walking encyclopaedias, but outdated. The difference is not new -- what is new is the degree of change.


On our clock face about three minutes ago there developed a qualitative difference in the character of change: change changed.


We have to teach intelligence now, so that we can make the children capable of living with the new things which will be happening every day. Don't burden them with that which is not going to be of any use in the future. The old generation has not to teach what it has learnt; the old generation has to help the child to be more intelligent so that he can be capable of spontaneously responding to the new realities which will be coming. The old generation cannot even dream about them, what those realities will be.


Your children may be living on the moon; they will have a totally different atmosphere to live in. Your children may be living in the sky, because the earth is becoming too populated. Your children may have to live underground or under the sea. Nobody knows how your children will have to live. They may live only on tablets, vitamin pills... they will be living in a totally different world. So it is of no use just to go on giving them encyclopaedic knowledge from the past. We have to prepare them to face new realities.


We have to prepare them in awareness, in meditativeness. Then education will be true. Then it will not serve the past and the dead; it will serve the future. It will serve the living.


In my vision, to be true the education has to be subversive, rebellious. Up to now it has been orthodox, up to now it has been part of the establishment. True education has to teach things which NO other institution does. It has to become the anti-entropy business.


The state, the establishment and all the institutions of the society, all prevent growth -- remember it. Why do they prevent growth? Because every growth brings challenge, and they are settled. And who wants to be unsettled? Those who are in power would not like anything new to happen, because that will change the power balance. Those who are in power would not like any new thing to be released, because the new thing will make new people powerful. Each new knowledge brings new power into the world. And the older generation would not like to lose its grip, its domination.


Education has to serve revolution. But ordinarily it serves the government and the priest and the church. In a very subtle way, it prepares slaves -- slaves for the state, slaves for the church. The real purpose of education should be to subvert outmoded attitudes, beliefs and assumptions which no more serve growth and man, and are positively harmful and suicidal.


An interviewer once asked Ernest Hemingway, "Isn't there any one essential ingredient you can identify which makes a great writer?"


Hemingway replied, "Yes, there is. In order to be a great writer a person must have a built-in shockproof, crap detector."


And that's what my idea of true education is. The children should be trained, disciplined, so that they can detect crap. A really intelligent person is a crap detector. He immediately knows, the moment he says something, whether it is significant or just holy cowdung.


The evolution of human consciousness is nothing but a long history of struggle against the veneration of crap. People go on worshipping, venerating crap. Ninety-nine percent of their beliefs are just lies. Ninety-nine percent of their beliefs are anti-human, anti-life. Ninety-nine percent of their beliefs are so primitive, so barbarous, so utterly ignorant, that it is unbelievable how people go on believing in them.


The true education will help you to drop all nonsense -- howsoever ancient, respectable, revered. It will teach you the real. It will not teach you any superstition but how to live more joyously. It will teach you life-affirmation. It will teach you reverence for life and for nothing else. It will teach you how to be deeply in love with existence. It will not be only of the mind, it will be also of the heart.


It will also help you to become a no-mind. That is the dimension that is missing from education. It simply teaches you to become more and more entangled in mental concepts, lost in mind. M;nd is good, useful, but it is not your wholeness. There is heart too, which is in fact far more important than the mind -- because the mind can create better technology, can give you better machines, better roads, better houses, but cannot make you a better man. It cannot make you more loving, more poetic, more graceful. It cannot give you the joy of life, the celebration. It cannot help you to become a song and a dance.


The true education has to teach you the ways of the heart too. And the true education has also to teach you the transcendental. Mind is for science, heart for art, poetry, music, and the transcendental for religion. Unless an education serves all these things, it is not true. And no educational system has yet done it.


It is not surprising that many young people are dropping out of your colleges, your universities -- because they can see it is all crap, they can see it is all stupid.


No other institution can do it, only education can do it: universities should sow the seeds of revolution. They should sow the seeds of mutation -- because a NEW man has to arrive on the earth.


The first rays have already reached. The new man is arriving every day and we have to prepare the earth to receive him -- and with the new man, a new humanity and a new world. And there is no other possibility except education to receive the new man, to prepare the ground for him. And if we cannot prepare the ground for him, we are doomed.


The experiments we are doing here are really an effort to create the new kind of university. The government is against it, the society is against it, the churches -- Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian -- all are against it. The priests, the politicians, all are against it. The herd, the crowd mind is against it.


But this is natural; one should not be surprised about it. We are doing something subversive, we are doing something very rebellious. But this has to be done, and this has to be done all over the earth in many places. This experiment has to be done in every country. And only a few will take the challenge, but those few will be the heralds. Those few will declare the new age, the new man, the new humanity, the new earth: brave new world.
Walt Whitman has written:

When I heard the learn'd astronomer;


When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;


When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide and measure them;


When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;


Till rising and gliding out, I wander'd off by myself,


In the mystical moist night air, and from time to time
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.


The new education, the true education, has not only to teach you mathematics, history, geography, science; it also has to teach you the real morality: aesthetics. I call aesthetics the real morality: sensitivity to feel the beautiful, because God comes as beauty. In a roseflower or in a lotus, in the sunrise or in the sunset, in the stars, the birds singing in the early morning, or the dewdrops, a bird on the wing.... True education has to bring you closer and closer to nature because only by coming closer and closer to nature will you be coming closer and closer to God.


God is not separate from this world: God has become the world. You have heard it said again and again that God created the world. I say to you: God became the world. Now there is no other God except the world. The creator is in his creativity. God is just a creative force; he is creativity. Drop the idea that he is a creator. Think of him, contemplate on him, as creativity itself. He is spread all over:


Where two lovers meet, he is. And where your eyes see beauty, he is. And when you are simply overwhelmed by the starry night, he is. When you look deep into the eyes of a woman or a man, he is.
The true education will also be true religion.


Science is the lowest form of consciousness; art, higher than science; religion, the highest peak. Religion is the philosophia PERENNIS -- the perennial philosophy.

The third question
<p class="question">OSHO, WHY IS GOD CALLED 'HE 'AND NOT SHE '?</p>


IT IS BECAUSE OF the whole stupid past of humanity -- the whole chauvinistic past. Man has dominated, man has crushed the woman. And by crushing the woman, by destroying the woman, man has destroyed all grace from the earth.


It is not only the woman that has been destroyed -- man has destroyed nature, because nature is woman. Man has destroyed the earth because the earth is woman. Man has destroyed ALL that is feminine! But beauty is feminine and love is feminine and celebration is feminine, music is feminine... wherever you will find any grace it is bound to be feminine. Even when you look at the Buddha, he will look more feminine than masculine. Wherever truth arrives, it comes with great grace, with great beauty.


But that's how man has lived, and it is man who has created the religious books, it is man who has created the churches, and the ideologies and the theologies. Of course, he calls God 'he'. Of course he says, "God created man in his own image" -- not woman, but man. Woman is just a rib taken out of the man, a supplement, an appendant, just a later thought -- because man was feeling so alone. He needed a woman to give him comfort, warmth, coziness. So woman was created only as a device to be exploited by man, but God created man in his own image and woman is just an afterthought. He had never planned woman in the beginning -- an afterthought. Seeing man lonely, sad, he created woman to be exploited, to be used. It is a device.


Man has given these ugly ideas to the world. Up to now man has dominated the world, hence he calls God 'he' -- otherwise 'she' would be far better because 'she' contains 'he', but 'he' does not contain 'she'. 'She' would be far better. But those who have known, they have neither used 'he' nor have they used 'she' -- they have used 'it', and that is the best.


In the East particularly, God is neither 'he' nor 'she' -- he is Ardhanarishwar, half man, half woman. And that's why in the Indian scriptures he is called 'it'. He contains both and yet he is transcendental to both.


I also call God 'he', but remember I am simply using a word that has become current. I can call him 'she' but that will only create a little trouble. Or I can call him again and again 'he and she', but that will make it look a little ugly. I go on calling him 'he' because I have to use the language that is available. But remember, I have no respect for the male chauvinistic ideologies.


All the bishops and the cardinals were standing in a sacred silence around the dead Pope's bed, when suddenly he tossed, stretched and opened his eyes.


Praising the Lord for the miracle, they eagerly questioned the Pope, "So tell us, how is the Lord?"
"Well," said the Pope, "first of all she was black...."

Not only she, but black too!

The fourth question
<p class="question">OSHO, WHAT IS SURRENDER AND HOW TO DO IT TO GOD? PLEASE ELUCIDATE.

B. R. Agnihotri,</p>


SURRENDER IS NOT SOMETHING THAT YOU CAN DO. If you do, it will be false and pseudo -- because the DOER will be there. And the doer has to be surrendered. What else is there to surrender? The idea of the doer and the idea of doing. The EGO has to be surrendered.


So this is the fundamental thing to be understood: you cannot do it, because if you do it you will remain behind it, and whatsoever you have done you can undo -- because you are still there. One day you can surrender; another day you can say, "No, I am not ready to surrender. I take it back. I resign. I withdraw." And what can God do? He cannot go to any court.


Surrender is not something that you can do -- it happens. That is the first thing to be understood -- it is a happening not a doing. How does it happen? When you are silent it happens, because when you are silent you are not. You are nothing but the continuous procession of thoughts in you.


It is like if you take a burning torch in your hand and you move it fast in a circle you will see a fire circle. The fire circle is false, it doesn't exist -- there is only the torch. Stop moving it and there is only the torch. But it moves so fast that it creates an illusion of a circle. Exactly like that: your thoughts are moving so fast that they are creating the illusion of an ego. Let the thoughts slow down a little and you will be surprised: there is nobody inside you. And let the thoughts disappear and you have disappeared with them.


In that silence is surrender. THAT SILENCE IS SURRENDER! Not that you DO it, but that suddenly you are not. When you are not, surrender is.


You ask me, Agnihotri: WHAT IS SURRENDER AND HOW TO DO IT TO GOD?


YOU CANNOT do it, first. Second, surrender is disillusionment with the ego. It has nothing to do with God; it has something to do with the ego. If you start looking towards God you have taken a wrong step from the very beginning. What God will you look at? You don't know any God. You cannot know God before you have become a surrender. Only in surrender is God known, so what God will you surrender to? It will be a Hindu God, or a Mohammedan God, or a Christian God -- it will be just a belief, a hypothesis. And God is not hypothetical. God is a tremendous experience, not an impotent belief.


No idea of yours represents God, because no idea can represent the infinite, the eternal. All ideas are inadequate. Your God may have four heads, three heads, four hands, one thousand hands, but those are all just man's imaginations -- poetic, beautiful, but nothing to do with truth. God is not a person at all! Those who have known have known that he is not a person at all.


When you are in surrender, you will not know God -- you will know godliness. The whole existence will be full of godliness, overflowing with godliness. But remember the word 'godliness' -- a quality, like fragrance surrounding the flower, but not something objective you can hold, cling to. Not anything objective that you can see.


God is not known as a person or as an object: God is known as an overflowing of joy, an overflowing of energy, and not objective energy but subjectivity. God is known as the innermost core of your nothingness, the very hub of the wheel of your nothingness.


When you disappear, God is -- not as a person, not as an object, but as a totality. You are not separate from it: you are one with it.


You cannot surrender to God. If you surrender to God, what God? that must be borrowed. Your parents must have told you what temple to go to, how to pray, what words to use -- Sanskrit, Hebrew, Arabic -- what mantras -- from the Veda, the Koran, the Talmud. Your parents must have told you! And their parents told them, and so on and so forth.


You are just living with rumours, and those rumours have passed through so many ignorant people that those rumours have become utter lies. Even if you hear it from a Buddha, the moment he has said anything and you have heard it, it is no more the same thing. He was saying something else, and you are BOUND TO hear something else. Even a Buddha, who knows the truth, cannot transfer it to you; it is untransferable. No verbal communication is possible.


So what about your parents and the priests? Those who have not even known, they are teaching you what God is. And you go on carrying those stupid ideas about God. And you go on trying to surrender. In the first place, those Gods are false; in the second place, surrender is not something to be done. And this is where millions of people are caught: a false God, and the idea that you have to surrender, that it is something you can do. Both are wrong. The God is false, and the doer is false.


Forget all about the Gods that you have heard of and look within, be more and more silent and quiet, cool and calm. And let thoughts be watched, become a witness to your thoughts. Slowly slowly, the more you become a witness, the more they slow down. This is a simple process. The more you are unconscious, the greater is the speed of thoughts; the more you are conscious, the more everything slows down.


And when everything slows down, you can start seeing the truth -- that there is no ego, that it was a fire circle created by the fast moving torch. Now the torch is moving slowly you can see there is no circle, there is nobody inside. And to feel it, that there is nobody inside, a silent space....


You are the center of the cyclone. The cyclone is the mind. When you have seen the center, suddenly SURRENDER HAS HAPPENED. without any effort on your part. Because the ego is not found -- that is surrender.

You ask me: WHAT IS SURRENDER?


To find in oneself that there is nobody is surrender. And in surrender, one finds God. Here the ego disappears, and immediately godliness appears all over. Then everything is divine, everything vibrates with godliness. Then life is utter benediction.

The fifth question
<p class="question">WHY ARE YOU AGAINST CULTIVATING A MORAL CHARACTER?</p>


FIRST TO CULTIVATE ANYTHING is to become pseudo. Cultivation means you will be creating something around yourself WHICH YOU ARE NOT. Cultivation means you will create a split, cultivation means you will create a facade. Cultivation means you will live in a camouflage: you will be one thing and you will pretend to be something else; you will do one thing and you will say another thing.


Cultivation means you will repress -- that's why I am against cultivation. Cultivation does not create true morality; it creates only ugly puritans. It creates only the so-called righteous; it creates people who are pretenders. It creates the attitude of holier-than-thou, that's all. It gives a great ego satisfaction.


And it also creates a prison. When you cultivate something, you are imprisoned in it, because deep down you are just the contrary. For example, you are violent -- you can cultivate non-violence. What will be the result? On the surface there will be a thin layer of non-violence, only on the surface; it will not even be skin-deep. Scratch any non-violent man just a little bit and you will find violence arising. Beware of non-violent people; they are the most dangerous people if you scratch them.


If you scratch a violent person he may not be so violent, because he does not carry a long long repressed violence in him; he does not accumulate. He explodes once in a while so there is no accumulation. But the non-violent person, the Gandhian, the so-called religious person, beware of him; he is a dangerous person. He is carrying great explosive forces in himself. Just a little scratch will prove to be a spark and he will explode; he can prove murderous, he can be very dangerous. And when you create non-violence around yourself and inside you are boiling with violence, you live in a prison.


A newspaper was running a competition to discover the most high-principled, sober, well-behaved local inhabitant. Among the entries came one which read: "I don't smoke, touch intoxicants, or gamble. I am faithful to my wife and never look at other women. I am hard-working, quiet and obedient. I never go to the theater or the cinema. I go to bed early every night and rise at dawn. I attend chapel regularly every Sunday without fail. I have been like this for three years... but just wait till next spring when they let me out of here!"


Just look at your so-called moral people -- they are living in a prison. And they all have to become diplomatic. They all have to have backdoors to their lives, otherwise they will go crazy. Cultivated morality arouses only two alternatives: one is to go mad -- if the person is sincere he will go mad -- the other alternative is that he will be a hypocrite. And naturally people choose to be hypocrites rather than going mad, and I cannot condemn them either. That is more intelligent.


That's why you see such hypocrites all over the place around the world. They are everywhere -- pretenders. You know them. They live a totally different life behind the walls. They have two lives: their real life is underground. They are living in such inner conflict that they cannot be happy. And the person who is not happy will not allow anybody else to be happy either. These people are sad, they have long faces; they are tense, they live in constant conflict and anguish, and they would like everybody to live like that. Naturally, they will condemn all joy, they will condemn all laughter. They will condemn EVERYTHING that is playful, that is fun. They will reduce you to utter seriousness, and seriousness is illness, it is pathological.


Life is available only to those who are playful. Life is not for the serious; for the serious is the grave. Life is for those who are festive, who know how to celebrate.


I am against cultivating a moral character, because cultivating a moral character does not give you real morality. That's why I am against it. The real morality has not to be cultivated: it comes as a shadow of being more aware. It is a consequence of consciousness.


If your conscience is not a consequence of your consciousness, then your conscience is ugly, dangerous, poisonous. Then your conscience is nothing but the policeman that the society has implanted in you. Then your conscience is nothing but your parental voice, the priests shouting inside you, "Don't do this -- do that!" You are not free, you are not a free man: you are controlled from within -- a very subtle strategy to control humanity. That's what your so-called conscience is.


The real conscience does not come from the outside: it wells up within you; it is part of your consciousness. I don't say cultivate morality: I say become more conscious -- and you will be moral. But that morality will have a totally different flavour to it. It will be spontaneous; it will not be ready-made. It will be moment-to-moment alive, flowing, changing. It will reflect all the colours of life. It will be appropriate to the moment; it will be responsible. You will respond to the situation with full awareness -- not because Moses has said to do it, not because Jesus has said to follow it, but because your own God inside feels this is the way to respond. Then you are functioning from the very source of consciousness, and that is true morality. It has not to be cultivated. The cultivated means the false.


That's why I say the real man of character has no character. The real man of character is characterless. The real man of character cannot afford to have a character, because the character means that which you have learnt in the past; character means the past. And you have to respond to the present moment. Your character will come between you and the present. It will force you to behave according to the past pattern, and when you behave according to the past pattern you are never appropriate.


So your so-called moral people are never appropriate, they cannot be. They miss the moment. They function out of the past so they cannot relate to the present. And there is only one life, ONLY one life: to relate to the present.


I think that what we are observing is a very subtle phenomenon, a subtle approach. It may be as successful as a college friend I once knew. He met a girl at a football game, and they hit it off so well that he took her to a show. That went fine, so he asked her to dinner. They enjoyed a leisurely dinner at a good hotel and followed that with a night club and dancing.


Along toward midnight, they were having a snack at a table for two and he said to her, "You know, I have had a wonderful time ever since I met you this afternoon. I think we have hit it off swell together, don't you?"
"Sure," she agreed. "I have enjoyed it too."
"I would like to have breakfast with you in the morning." And he looked at her eagerly, "May I?"
"Yes," she answered, "I would like that very much."
"All right, what will I do: call you or nudge you?"


These are the roundabout ways, diplomatic ways. The so-called moral people cannot go direct in anything; they always go roundabout. They always have to be cautious, because they have to keep their masks; they cannot drop their masks. And one lie leads into another ad infinitum, and slowly slowly a person becomes just a bundle of lies.


The true man of character is authentic, is whatsoever he is. He is utterly nude, naked; he is not hiding. I would like the new humanity to be of those who are brave. Long we have lived like cowards; long long, we have suffered like cowards. It is time now to come into the open, under the sun -- to be sincere, to be authentic, to be whatsoever you are. There is NO need to hide, because every other human being is just like you. There are neither saints nor sinners but only human beings.


The whole dichotomy of the saints and the sinners is the by-product of the cultivated character. And you will be surprised that sinners are more innocent than your so-called saints. You will see in the eyes of sinners more the quality of childlikeness, more sincerity, more innocence, more truth, than you will ever find in the eyes of your so-called saints. Their eyes will be cunning -- they have to be because cultivation brings cunningness.


I would like a totally different humanity in the world, where saints and sinners have disappeared, where there are only authentic people, open to the wind, open to the rain, open to the sun... open!


This will be hated by the society very much. This will be a great problem for the society, because the open person immediately makes you uneasy if you are closed, because the open person immediately hits at the very root of your being. The open person immediately makes you feel inferior, ugly, false. The open person immediately makes you feel unintelligent, stupid.


That's why Socrates is poisoned -- an open person. Not a saint, but a man of tremendous awareness. A sage not a saint. Jesus is crucified -- a sage not a saint -- because he was not fulfilling the expectations of the society. He was moving with thieves -- now saints don't move with thieves. He was moving with socially condemned people: gamblers, drunkards, prostitutes. He was at ease with humanity at large, with everybody. This was not tolerable. The rabbis, the saints of those days, the moralistic people, the puritans, could not tolerate it. He HAD to be crucified.


This has been happening down the ages. Now this has to be stopped! You have crucified enough. And now we have to explode in such a tidal wave on the earth that even if they crucify, they cannot find so many crosses. One Jesus can be crucified, one Socrates can be poisoned....


My effort is to create so many open people that it becomes almost impossible to crucify and to poison them. To give the quality of openness, simpleness, innocence, to SO many people -- only then can the quality of this rotten society be changed, can it be made alive. It is dull, dead. Life no more circulates in its veins.


I am against the cultivated moral character because it is neither moral nor healthy. I am against character because character creates only an armour around you; it is a defence measure, it does not allow you to be open. And a person who is not open lives in a grave.
And NATURALLY he becomes cunning.


A man walks into a bar in New York City with a parrot on his shoulder and says, "Anyone who can guess the weight of this bird gets a blow job."


One very large, rough looking customer, sitting with a group of friends, decides to toy with this man and proceeds to yell, "That bird weighs two hundred and fifty pounds."
First man: "Oh, we have a winner already!"


People become cunning. They can't say what they want. They can't be true; they are always hiding, playing games, deceiving others and deceiving themselves. This is not the true way to live this tremendously beautiful life. This is not the way to appreciate this gift from God. One should live authentically. Authenticity is morality -- and by 'authenticity' I don't mean following somebody else's commandments but living according to your own light.


Be a light unto yourself, that's all. That is my only message, and it will bring character and a character which will not be a prison. It will bring morality, and a morality which will not be hypocrisy. And it will bring a totally new kind of life to you: responsible, alive, innocent, playful... it will open the doors of the mysterious to you.


And if you ARE authentic, available, then God showers on you from all directions. It will bring great benediction to you -- not the cultivated character but the uncultivated, spontaneous consciousness.

The sixth question
<p class="question">WHY DO YOU THINK THAT THE POLITICIANS ARE STUPID?</p>


DON'T THINK: THEY ARE You can look at the world, you can look at the history, and you will find proofs in abundance. What they have done to man, just watch it, what they continuously go on doing. Just LOOK at their games.


Scientifically, the earth has to be one now -- scientifically it is one. Nations should not exist any more. It is because of the existence of nations that seventy percent of man's energy, seventy percent of man's creativity, goes into war and becomes destructive.


Just think of a world where no war exists. It will be utterly affluent. If that seventy percent energy is released in creativity nobody will be poor, nobody will be in a state of starvation, nobody need be ill. It is because of your politicians that nations go on existing. And because of nations, the world remains helpless.


There are countries, when they grow too much wheat they have to drown it in the ocean. And on the other hand, people are starving, dying. What kind of world is this? There are countries which have been using wheat as coal in the railway trains. And people are dying! What kind of world is this? What kind of people are managing this world?


In three thousand years, five thousand wars -- it seems as if we are here only to fight, only to destroy each other. And so much energy is put into war efforts; if that energy is allowed to be creative we can make a paradise now.


Now science has made it feasible, practical -- it is no more a utopia. Paradise CAN happen on the earth; people can live in absolute affluence. And when a society lives in affluence it naturally becomes religious -- because whenever you have seen all that the outer can give, a natural desire, a longing arises to explore the inner.


People continuously ask me why Indians don't come here. The reason is simple: they are not interested in the inner. They cannot yet AFFORD to be interested in the inner, they are so poor. Their whole life consists in searching for food, employment -- how can they be interested in meditation?


Meditation is the ultimate in luxury, remember it. It is the last luxury. When all else is fulfilled, one starts thinking of meditation. When the outer is explored and known and finished, a chapter closes. Then you turn in. If the outer is still there, unknown, you cannot turn in.


You cannot become a Buddha, because you are not yet finished with, tired of the outer. You are tremendously interested in it. Just think of a hungry man: if you talk about meditation to him, it will be just insulting him. It will be humiliating him. He is hungry, he needs bread -- and you say to him, "Man cannot live by bread alone"? He will kill you! He needs bread, and you talk about God?


The East is turning communist every day for a simple reason: because unless the East becomes rich there is no other way -- it has to become communist.


Marx was absolutely wrong in prophesying that the richest country would become communist first. The poorest country can become communist first. Russia was one of the poorest countries, China is again one of the poorest countries. Now the third number is India. Marx's whole logic failed. He was thinking the richer a country is, the more possibility there is of conflict between the poor and the rich.


But he was not aware that when the whole society becomes richer, the poor is no longer poor either. He goes on becoming richer and richer. In fact the poor man of America is far richer than the rich man of India. He has better medical care, better housing, better cars, radio, television. Even the richest is poor compared to him -- the richest in India is poorer. He is still hankering.


People ask me why Indians are not here. They cannot be here because we are REALLY interested in meditation. They go to Satya Sai Baba because meditation is not the question there -- miracles are happening. They can hope. They are ill: maybe Satya Sai Baba, by his miracle, can take their illness away. Maybe they are unemployed: by his blessing they will be employed. They are poor: by his blessing they will become rich. They go to Satya Sai Baba -- he deals in things which they need. And they are really surprised when Swiss-made watches appear out of nowhere. That is their real object -- they want Swiss-made watches.


Stupid people, and stupid are their saints. Now a saint playing games, magic games, ordinary magic games! We have sannyasins -- Avinash can do it, Sarvesh can do it -- just small games, of no value at all, of no religious value at all. Maybe entertaining.


But here we are interested in meditation, in the inner journey. Hence people are coming from the faraway corners of the world -- but not the Indian masses. Yes, a few chosen Indians come -- those who are interested in exploring the inner -- but only a chosen few. Those who are really intelligent and want to get rid of all kinds of stupidities, they come. But the masses cannot be interested; they will not understand what is happening here.


So in the masses, thousands of rumours about me go on spreading. And the yellow newspapers, they go on circulating all kinds of lies. Or even sometimes when they print the truth, they give it such a colour and such an interpretation that it becomes a lie.


Look at the world, what the politicians have done to it. It CAN become a paradise. Everybody is in tremendous need of going in, but first the outer things have to be fulfilled. And those outer things CAN be fulfilled, but nations have to disappear, boundaries have to disappear. Now politicians won't allow that -- because with the boundaries, they will disappear. They can exist only with nations. They can exist only if the people are kept in terribly bad conditions.


You will be surprised... you can see it happening in Iran. In fact the emperor of Iran has worked hard to make the country rich, educated, cultured. And because he has succeeded, he is in trouble. Now people are rich, now people are educated, now people have ambitions. Now the politicians want to capture the country. The emperor cannot exist for long. He must be crying and weeping, because what is happening is his own doing.


It happened once, the king of Ethiopia was told by a group of scientists visiting his country, "We can improve the health of your people. The basic problem with your people is that they are drinking dirty water. That's why they are ill, lethargic, no energy. This can be changed very easily -- just purer water has to be made available."


And do you know what the king of Ethiopia said? He said, "Then after that, revolution. I don't want anything to do with it. Let them be as they are."


And in a way he is telling a truth. If people remain poor and starved, they cannot be revolutionaries. They cannot hope for better things, they cannot be ambitious for better things. The politician exists there only because people are in such a terrible state that they cannot do anything to fight with the politician; otherwise they will throw him away.


Once a country starts becoming a little richer, then people start becoming aware of many things they have never been aware of. When people are poor they think of fate, past karma. When they start becoming richer they forget all about fate and past karma -- they know that they are being exploited, they know that they are being KEPT poor. They become angry, they become rebellious.


No politician wants the country to be really rich -- although they say that the country should be rich, but that is only talk. They don't want the country to be rich, they don't want the country to be educated, they don't want people to think on their own. They don't want people to be REALLY religious; they want them to be Hindus and Christians and Mohammedans, but not really religious -- because to be really religious means to be revolutionary. They don't want people to think at all, so they can go on and on living in slavery, not able to think of better things, of better possibilities.


You ask me: WHY DO YOU THINK THAT THE POLITICIANS ARE STUPID?


They are -- because they are keeping the whole world in stupidity. They are not only stupid, they are stupidly cunning. And remember, only stupid people are cunning. You may not have thought of it that way. An intelligent person is never cunning; intelligence is enough, he need not have any cunningness. The stupid person has to substitute for his intelligence; he has to become cunning.


And the politicians are hungry, hungry for power -- power-mad. Their only joy is to dominate. They talk about service only to dominate people.


You will have to see deeply into all these things. If man is made aware of all these things, within these coming twenty-five years the earth can be a totally new phenomenon.


e. e. cummings has said: "A politician is an arse upon which everyone has sat except a man."


And that is true: the politician is not yet man -- barbarous. The desire to dominate others is ugly; it is violence, pure violence and nothing else. To reduce people to slaves is the greatest violence possible. And that is the desire of every politician: to dominate, to dominate absolutely.


Once a politician is in power, he becomes a totalitarian, he becomes dictatorial. He talks about democracy, but behind the democracy is dictatorship. It is always so. When the politician is not in power he is democratic; when he is in power all democracy disappears. It remains a mask, and all kinds of ugly desires start coming to the surface.


Politicians are stupid, and people allow them because PEOPLE are stupid. Spread intelligence into people, spread thinking into people. Make people more aware of what is happening to their life -- it is THEIR life, and they have to do something about


A politician had to stop his car right in front of a mental institution, because it broke down . For a very long time he fiddled around with it, trying this and that, but he couldn't get his car to work. When he was ready to give up, a man came out from the hospital, took a look at what he was doing, and then just moved one screw, and the car started.


The politician was quite surprised. "I thought you were mad," he said.
"Yes, of course I am mad," answered the other. "But I am not stupid!"


Politician: Tell me, how do you know when a person is insane? Psychiatrist: Well, firstly I ask them questions that an average person can answer easily. For example: If Captain Cook made five trips around the world and was killed on one of them, which one was it?


Politician: Er... well.... Couldn't you ask me a question on another subject? I'm not very good at history.


I'm not saying they are stupid -- they ARE. I'm simply stating a fact. And my fact is so simple, you can find millions of proofs for it on your own. I need not give you proofs, the whole history is a proof. Every day newspapers bring thousands of proofs. The state of the world, this hell that we are living in, is the proof.

The last question
<p class="question">OSHO, IS IT ALWAYS WRONG TO THINK LOGICALLY?</p>


NOT ALWAYS If you are a scientist you have to think Logically; there is no other way to think. You have to move logically, step by step. That is the only way to deal with the objective world. I am not against logic.


If you are working with the objective world, logic is the only way, doubt the only procedure, questioning the only method. But if you are dealing with the subjective, then you have to reverse all the processes -- then to be illogical is the way, to be non-questioning is the method. Trust is the whole process, the whole procedure.


These are two dimensions of your being: outgoing, ingoing. When you are going outwards, it is one kind of movement; when you are going inwards, the road is the same but it is a totally different kind of movement -- your direction is opposite. When you are going closer to the object you have to be logical; when you are coming closer to yourself, you have to transcend logic.


And reality is both: objective and subjective. So the whole man will be logical when he is dealing with objects, when he is working in the lab, when he is a mathematician or a biologist or a chemist or a physicist or a physician -- he will be utterly logical. But logic will not be his only way of life. When he comes out of the lab, with his children, with his wife, with the friends, he will not be logical -- he will be loving. Logic knows no love. And when he is sitting in prayer or meditating, he will forget all about questioning. He will fall into a deep trust with existence.


The real man is capable of both. Up to now there have existed only half men. One who is logical becomes incapable of going into the direction which is not logical; he is obsessed with logic. Then he is not using logic, he is obsessed with logic; then he is not the master, logic has become the master. He is encaged. He will remain half. He will miss the other half which is very valuable, immensely valuable -- more valuable than the logical because it is inner. He will not know anything of his subjectivity: he will not know who he is.


And not knowing yourself, whatsoever you know is not much use. Self-knowledge is the foundation of all true wisdom.


And there have been people who have gone into their own being; they become illogical, and they become incapable of logic. That's what happened in the East: people became incapable of logic. They can sing a beautiful song in the temple, and they can dance to abandon. But logical procedure has completely disappeared from the Eastern hemisphere.


That's why science could not grow here. In the West, logic has become the only way of life, so love has disappeared, prayer has disappeared, meditation has disappeared. Now there is no need for the East to be East or the West to be West. Now we can say to Rudyard Kipling that the meeting is happening.


East and West have to dissolve into each other so that we can create a whole man. The whole man will be logical AND illogical; he will use both as two wings.

You ask me: IS IT ALWAYS WRONG TO THINK LOGICALLY?


No, not always wrong. Sometimes that is the only thing; in some dimensions that is the only way to think.


A couple of newly-weds were on their wedding night at the motel, and prepared for bed for the first time. The bride was waiting expectantly in bed while the groom undressed. As he removed his shoes, she was shocked to notice that he had no toes. She looked at him inquiringly and he said not to worry, "I had tolio when I was a child."
Tolio? The woman had never heard such a word.


As he removed his pants and was standing in his undershorts, she saw he had no knees. Again shocked, she looked at him. "Don't worry," he said, "when I was a teenager, I had kneesles."
Kneesles? Again, the woman had not heard that word.


As he removed his undershorts, the bride snapped, "Don't tell me you had smallcox."


It is perfectly right to be logical sometimes -- it is absolutely right. But one should be available to the world of the illogical too; one should remain available to both dimensions. Then life is rich. Then you are capable of inhaling and exhaling, both. Then you are capable of meditating and concentrating, both. Then you are capable of mathematics and music, both. Then you are capable of love and of aloneness, both.
This is my idea of a whole man.
			

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