---
section: Library
booktitle: "The Osho Upanishad"
booktype: "Discourses"
bookcode: "UPAN"
dategiven: "30 September 1986 pm"
place: " in"
chapternum: "Chapter #42"
chaptertitle: "Be a seeker, not a believer"
acode: "8609305"
shorttitle: "UPAN42"
audio: "Yes"
video: "Yes"
esttime: "135mins"
displaytitle: "The Osho Upanishad: Chapter #42"
---

```style
.sutra {
  font-style: italic;
  white-space: pre-wrap !important;
}
```
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<p class="question">BELOVED OSHO,
I UNDERSTAND PERFECTLY WELL WHY YOU ARE DRIVING US, SLOWLY SLOWLY, TO BE INDEPENDENT OF YOUR PHYSICAL PRESENCE, BUT I WONDER HOW.
THE OTHER DAY YOU SAID THAT YOU HAVE YOUR OWN METHODS. I TRUST YOU TOTALLY, AND I KNOW THAT YOU WILL NOT HURT THE DELICATE VEIL BETWEEN US AND YOU; AND IF YOU DO, IT IS BECAUSE SOMETHING IS MISSING IN OUR JOURNEY.
BUT I CANNOT AVOID THINKING AND BEING WORRIED: "HOW WILL HE" -- YOU -- "MOVE AWAY FROM OUR BEINGS?"
BELOVED ONE, YOU ARE THE KING OF THE WORLD NOW, AND YOUR COMING TO INDIA TO ME IS A TREMENDOUS ANALOGY TO JESUS COMING BACK TO JERUSALEM. IS IT TRUE?</p>


The moment you cross the boundaries of personality the consciousness is one.


It can be of Gautam Buddha, it can be of Jesus Christ, it can be of Chuang Tzu. These names are names of the personalities. These names have nothing to do with the beyond, with the pure consciousness. It is always the same: wherever superconsciousness exists, it is Jesus coming back to Jerusalem.
I understand your fear, because you do not understand my method.


It appears to you as if there is only one way of disappearing so that I am no more a hindrance to you, and that is by leaving you alone. That's why I have said I have my own methods.


I can merge in you; I can allow you to merge in me. We need not be two. We can become one, and the hindrance disappears.


The idea that the hindrance has to be removed is very crude; there is no need to remove it.
If you are ready, you can merge with me.
If you are afraid, I can merge with you.


The basic question is that the gate of the paradise is very narrow and only one can enter-two cannot enter together. Now, it is not my fault! -- simply old architecture...
<p class="question">BELOVED OSHO,
AS A CHRISTIAN I WAS TAUGHT, "JESUS LOVES YOU AND LIVES WITHIN YOU." I COULD NEVER FIND HIM -- NOT WITHIN ME, NOT WITHIN OTHERS, NOT IN CHURCHES -- NOT TO MENTION GOD, WHOSE HOUSE A CHURCH IS SUPPOSED TO BE.
NOW I'VE MET YOU. I FEEL YOUR LOVE; AND SEEING OTHERS, I FEEL SOMETHING IN THEM.
YESTERDAY I SAW YOU IN THE HOUSE. I DIDN'T EVEN HAVE TO LOOK FOR YOU; YOU WERE JUST THERE.
WHEN I TRUST, EVERYTHING GOES WONDERFULLY.
IS IT YOU WHO ENTERS ME, WHO COMES IN?</p>


It is your trust that creates miracles.
Nobody else can create a miracle for you, but your trust is the source of all miracles.


You were brought up as a Christian; that is a misfortune, but nobody can avoid it.


If you had not been brought up as a Christian, you would have been brought up as a Hindu, as a Mohammedan, as a Jew -- and all these diseases have the same quality of destroying you and your trust.
In fact, to destroy your trust is to destroy you.


Because you were brought up as a Christian, you were told that Jesus loves you, Jesus is in you. But these were words told to you, not your experiences. They were false; they never tallied with your own understanding, intelligence, intuition. Still, you had to believe in them because everybody else was believing in them. Not to believe in them would have created many kinds of troubles.


It is easier to go with the crowd; otherwise, the crowd can be very crude, very primitive. It respects people, gives them honor if they are obedient to its superstitions -- and naturally, everybody wants to be respected, honored. A natural instinct to be respected is exploited.


A natural desire to live a comfortable, easy life is exploited, because if you start raising questions about beliefs, you will be continuously struggling with your neighbors, with your family, with your teachers, with your priest, with your husband, with your wife, even with your children. Your life will become a chaos. Nobody wants to make his life a chaos.


These are natural longings of every man, and these can be exploited very easily. And the best way to exploit is to give you beliefs -- beautiful beliefs, but they remain superficial. They never ring any bell in your heart.


"Jesus loves you" -- you hear the words, but nothing happens in your heart. "He will come to you, he will come to your rescue, he is your savior" -- but these are just empty words to you, and you go on carrying these empty words your whole life. They become more or less just part of the formalities; your religion becomes a formality, something of the same category as etiquette.


You have to live with so many people -- naturally, you have to adjust, to adapt, and not to create an unnecessary nuisance, not to become a target of their enmity. But this is not going to help your growth.


On the contrary, because these words, these beliefs remain empty for your whole life, deep down a suspicion settles that all religion is bogus. It is very difficult for an intelligent man not to come to this conclusion... a whole life of belief, and your hands are empty and your heart is empty. There have been no golden moments, no experiences that go beyond this world.


So you perform the ritual: you go the church just as you go to the Rotary Club, there is no difference at all. Perhaps going to the Rotary Club or Lions' Club or some other club, you feel more excited than going to church. Going to church seems to be a burden, a duty that has to be done.
Remember, 'duty' is a four-letter ugly word.


Love knows no duty. It does many things, but it loves to do them -- it is not duty.


The moment you utter the word "duty" it means there is no love. You have to do it because you have to do it; the pressure of the crowd is so much. But it is deep down a humiliation, an insult, a destruction of your self-respect.


Naturally, you live a so-called religious life -- Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan -- but absolutely superficial, it has no authenticity.


And the trick is very simple: they have substituted belief in place of trust.


Trust is something that grows in you. It is not imposed on you; it is not a plastic flower but a rose that grows, blossoms, releases its fragrance. Trust is the most poetic experience of life. But the basic necessity for trust to happen is that you should not be burdened with beliefs.


Beliefs are false coins; they look like trust, and they can deceive small children very easily. And once you have accepted those beliefs as trust, you will never try to find the distinction -- and the distinction is abysmal, unbridgeable.


If you love your children, don't give them any belief. Help them so that they can grow trust. If you don't know something, never lie to the children because sooner or later they are going to find that you lied -- and when a child finds that the father lied to him, the teacher lied, the priest lied, all possibilities of trust are destroyed. He could not have conceived that the people he has loved -- and has loved totally, because a child loves totally....


An innocent child, absolutely dependent on you, and you have the nerve to deceive him, to say things which he is going to find one day that you never knew. If he asks about God, if you are an authentic father, sincere, honest, you should say "I am seeking, I have not found yet." Give your child a desire to seek, a desire to search. Help him to go on a pilgrimage, and tell him, "It may be that you find it before I find it. Then don't forget me; then help me to find it. Right now, I don't know."


Your child will never disrespect you; your child will never come to a point when he will say that you were dishonest towards him, that you lied. And your child will have tremendous honor for you because you made him, his innocence, his questioning, into a search. You created a seeker, not a believer.


Real parents will not create Christians and Hindus and Mohammedans. Real teachers will not create believers, only authentic seekers.


I had to leave my professorship for a strange reason -- perhaps nobody has ever left for such a reason.


I had to teach Shankara, Bradley, Kant -- and I don't agree with these people, so I made it clear to my students: "For half an hour I will go into the minutest detail of Shankara's philosophy, unprejudiced, remaining absolutely aloof, and then in the remaining half hour I will give you my opinion, because I cannot teach you something which seems to me to be creating belief, not creating search. I will create doubt in you -- not faith, not belief."


The students were very much confused. I was doing the best that I could do when I was teaching them Shankara, Ramanuja, Nimbarka. I was as fair as anybody can be, but after half an hour I was just as critical -- creating doubt, creating questions, making it clear that their whole philosophy was not based on any foundation of experience. The students were in a difficulty.
They said, "What are we going to do in the examination?"


I said, "That is your problem. That is not my business; I have nothing to do with the examination. My function here is to teach you. The examination is your business, and that of your examiners."


Finally they reported to the vice-chancellor, that "We are getting into a mess. Naturally he is very fair about anybody he teaches, but when he comes to criticize, then it is something of his heart. When he teaches, it is only his mind; and when he criticizes, it is his heart. And our problem is that we are left in an absolute uncertainty: we cannot answer any question because we know that if we listen to him, Shankara is wrong. And if we write that Shankara is right, then we are not only betraying him, we are betraying ourselves too -- because we have also felt that the whole philosophical system is based on belief, not on experience."


The vice-chancellor told me, "It is a strange way of teaching. We have never heard...."


I said, "It has to be strange -- have you ever heard of me? -- I am doing my best. You should look at my situation: I am walking on a razor's edge. I am being fair to people whom I would like to crush completely; still, I am giving them as much support, reason, logic, as humanly possible. But I cannot lie to my students."


My vice-chancellor suggested, "You'd better resign; you are not supposed to be a professor. These people have come here to get some degrees to become clerks, to become teachers, to become station masters, postmasters. They are not interested in God, they are not interested in truth."
I resigned.


If every teacher, every parent is honest, there will be Christs and there will be Buddhas and there will be Mahaviras, but there will not be Christians, there will not be Buddhists and there will not be Jainas.
There is no need for believers.
When you can become a Christ yourself, why become a Christian?


Being a Christian means you are avoiding being a Christ. You are avoiding the crucifixion, you are avoiding the resurrection. You have found a very cheap escape -- you have become a Christian. You go to the church every Sunday... for six days there is no difference between Christians and Hindus and Mohammedans -- no difference, because there are only Sunday Christians, and that, too, for one hour. And you can see the difference: if you are a Christ there is a possibility you may be on the cross, but if you are a Christian, at the most you can have a beautiful, golden cross hanging around your neck, an ornament. Jesus did not have an ornament.


A single insight... that if you are carrying borrowed knowledge, please drop it. And drop it totally, not in installments -- because that is sheer wastage.
I am reminded of a beautiful incident.


One man came to Ramakrishna and he had brought one thousand golden coins to present to him. Ramakrishna said, "I don't need them, but I don't want to hurt you either, so I will accept them." He accepted the golden coins -- and in those days it was a lot of money, one thousand golden coins. And then he said, "Now, I have accepted them... now these coins are mine?"
The man said, "Yes, I have given them to you."


He said, "Now, take them and throw them into the Ganges" -- which was flowing just behind the temple where they were sitting.


The man was shocked, but now there was no way to refuse. They were no longer his coins, he had already given them. So he went with the coins to the Ganges... almost half an hour passed.


Ramakrishna said, "What happened to that man? Has he jumped with the coins into the Ganges? Just the shock was so much -- I had seen it in his face. Just go and look -- what has happened, what he is doing, why he has not come back."


Somebody went there, and came back and reported, "That man is throwing the coins one by one. A crowd has gathered, and he is counting 'one, two'... and slowly, and making the crowd bigger, and enjoying."


Ramakrishna went there, took hold of the man and he said, "What nonsense are you doing? I told you to throw the coins in the Ganges. Why are you counting?"


The man said, "Just old habit. I have collected them one by one, counting every day: 'Now I have that many... now I have that many'... this was my desire, to present one thousand golden coins to you."


Ramakrishna said, "When one is earning, counting is relevant. But when one is losing all, then throwing them one by one is sheer stupidity. Just throw them all! And if it is too much, you jump too."
A single insight, like a lightning.


But your Christianity is borrowed, your Hinduism is borrowed, it is not your experience -- hence, renounce it. And because it is just on the surface, renouncing it is so easy that it can be done in a split second. And you will feel immense freedom, an expansion of consciousness, an openness... eyes fresh, to look at things again with no prejudice.


And here with me, you can be as close with me as your knowledge is less.
If you are innocent, you will find existence loves you.


"Jesus loves you" is just an expression. "Buddha loves you" is just an expression, so that you can understand.


You may not understand that existence loves you, because existence seems to be so vast and you seem to be so small, and you cannot conceive how existence will love you. Jesus or Buddha or Mahavira are small windows: you can accept those small windows from where the rays of the sun enter and a pure breeze comes in, and you can see the sky.


But when the whole sky can be available to you, why get attached to any window? And at each window there is such a crowd that there is not much chance that you will be able to see from the window.


At the Christian window, half of humanity is hanging around; just the Catholics are seven hundred million. Don't torture poor Jesus.


I had to stop to go to Punjab for a small reason. You know Punjabis, and particularly the Sikhs... they are loving people, and it was difficult for me. At the stations they would come, and I would have to hug so many people -- and hugging a sardar is like hugging a wolf. And there is a limit, but sardars don't know any limit: you may leave, but they go on. When I started feeling that these people were going to fracture my ribs, I finally stopped going to Punjab. This love was too much.


Seven hundred million Catholics.... You should think of poor Jesus, too. First you crucified him, and now you are torturing him for two thousand years, hugging, hugging.
Just come under the open sky.


Drop these windows, because every window is so crowded and the queue is so long, and the hierarchy is such that you don't have much chance... in hundreds of lives perhaps, you may come close to the window.


Why not come out in the open? The moment you are not a Christian, not a Hindu, not a Mohammedan, you come into the open and you understand for the first time that the whole existence is made of the stuff called love. It is not that it is loving towards you; it is made of the stuff called love. It has nothing to do with you especially; it is simply love energy, a love phenomenon, an ocean of love.


Here, you are close to me, and at least while you are in front of me you forget your knowledge, your prejudices, your beliefs. And suddenly your eyes are clear, and you can see things which were always available but you were blind -- blinded by your prejudices, blinded by your opinions, blinded by your beliefs.


Let me repeat again: it is your trust that has created the miracle that you have seen Christ in me.


These are just names. The reality is nameless, so whichever name you prefer makes no difference.


And you have felt love from me, you have felt love from the sannyasins here. The love that you had been taught from the very beginning has become for the first time a reality -- not in a church, not with a bishop, with a cardinal, not with the Christians, but here -- with people who have dropped all kinds of nonsense, who are simply human, natural, whose very presence is love.


It is not that they are making an effort to love anybody; there is no effort here. It is just that when you are unburdened of beliefs, a trust arises which is natural to your being -- and that trust has the aroma of love. And whoever comes close to you feels that you are a very loving being. You may not even be aware that you are loving; you may not be even thinking of love, but your very presence becomes love.


And this is one of my basic principles: that unless your very presence becomes love, all talk about love is empty.


So if you have found love in me, love in my people, remember: it is not the fulfillment of what you were taught in your childhood as a Christian. For so many years you missed this love because of that teaching. If that teaching had not been there, this love would have happened long before. It is our intrinsic nature.


Everybody is full of love. If there are no hindrances, the springs of love start flowing in all directions, without any address.
<p class="question">BELOVED OSHO,
GURDJIEFF CALLS WHATEVER IS HAPPENING BETWEEN MASTER AND DISCIPLE "OBJECTIVE DOING" AS FAR AS THE MASTER IS CONCERNED. HE SAYS THAT ONLY A MASTER CAN DO SOMETHING.
PLEASE COMMENT.</p>


My approach towards life and George Gurdjieff's approach are very different.


I love Gurdjieff as one of the great masters history has produced, but it is not my path.


I will explain to you what he is saying, first according to him, second, according to me.


Gurdjieff had a division between subjective and objective actions: ordinary, unconscious people act subjectively; alert, conscious, crystallized beings act objectively. Now, this is a totally different language and a different philosophy, so you have to understand it clearly.


Sometimes you see somebody, and for no reason you feel a certain dislike. Or sometimes you feel a deep liking, but you cannot give any reasons. These are unconscious, subjective emotions -- there must be reasons, but they are hidden in your unconscious mind and you will behave according to these reasons.


According to Gurdjieff, unconscious people are not doing anything; they are almost robots, machines. Their unconscious mind is driving them, and they are doing it; they cannot answer exactly why they did it.
Objective action needs awareness.


Gurdjieff's father died. He was only nine years old. The father called him... he was an extraordinarily intelligent child. The father said, "I have nothing to give to you. I am a poor man, I am not leaving any inheritance. I have condensed my whole life's experience in a simple statement, so that you can remember it. You are too young: right now you may understand it, you may not understand it -- but you can remember; you are intelligent enough to remember it. Later on you may be able to understand it and when you understand it, start behaving accordingly."


The principle he gave was, strangely, very simple. He said, "If somebody insults you and you feel angry, don't act out of anger, because in that way you are becoming a slave. That man is your master: he insulted you, he manipulated your anger, he managed you in how to act. You think you are behaving on your own -- you are not. So if somebody insults you, just tell him, 'I will think it over, and after twenty-four hours I will come and answer you.' And this has to be your lifestyle about everything: don't be in a hurry, take twenty-four hours' time to think."


Gurdjieff was very intelligent. He started behaving exactly like that from the next day. Somebody would insult him -- and people were shocked when he would say, without any anger, as if nothing had happened, as if you had proposed a certain theoretical problem for him, "Please give me twenty-four hours just to think it over. It is possible that you may be right; then I will not come back. If you are not right, then I will see whether it is worth coming back to answer you or not -- but twenty-four hours are absolutely necessary. My dying father has told me, and I have to follow him."


People were simply at a loss to understand what this boy was saying. And for twenty-four hours he would think it over: most of the time, the people who had insulted were right. So he would go just to thank them: "You were right, and I have come just to thank you. And please remember, whenever you find anything wrong in me, don't hesitate, just tell me. Tell me as harshly as you can."


He became phenomenal. In his young age, people started looking at him as if he were a sage. Or he would come and say, "Whatever you said was not right, but it is not worth quarreling about it; it is below me. So I have come only to remind you: you can say anything you want, but say something that is a proof of your superiority, of your intelligence. This was such that it is even below me, and I am just a child. I don't want to answer it."


And sometimes he would not come at all, and people would find him afterwards and say, "You did not turn up."


He would say, "It was so meaningless. It was not even worth coming to say to you that it was meaningless, it was so meaningless."


Gurdjieff remembers later on that that simple statement of his father changed his whole life. He started behaving objectively: emotions, sentimentality disappeared. Because you cannot remain for twenty-four hours angry; these things are momentary. And most often it happens that somebody insults you and you become hot and you become angry and you do something, and later on you repent: it was not worth it, you unnecessarily made a scene. It would have been better if you had remained calm and quiet; it would have shown your integrity, your strength. You proved to be very weak.


Gurdjieff divided everything into subjective and objective. For example, all the paintings and music of modern times he calls subjective. His statement is that the modern paintings are like vomiting: you are subjectively filled with a certain idea and you paint it. You are not concerned with the people who will see it and what the effect will be on those people, whether it is going to be beneficial or not. You are not concerned at all. Your whole concern is how to unburden yourself: you are feeling sick, you will feel relieved.


And that's why you will see so many paintings, particularly the most ultra-modern paintings... you cannot keep them in your bedroom, they will drive you crazy. Just look at them long enough and you will start feeling nauseous. Because they have come out of a nausea, naturally, their effect will be nauseating. These are subjective paintings, subjective stories, subjective fiction, subjective poetry. There is no concern at all for the person who will be reading the poetry.
Objective art is a totally different thing.


For example, Gurdjieff used to say that the Taj Mahal is objective art. On the full moon night, if you sit silently near the Taj Mahal watching its beauty, you will fall into a deep serenity, into meditativeness. The whole architecture, the stone work, everything, has been made in such a way that it will create in you a peace that passeth understanding.


So when he says that a disciple cannot do anything... because a disciple is one who is asleep. For example, if you are all asleep here, what can you do? Only the person who is awake can do something.
The master is awake.
I am reminded of an old story.


A master had two disciples. He had many disciples but two were the chief disciples, and there was great competition between the two over who was going to be the successor.


It was a hot afternoon and the master was taking a nap, and both the disciples were massaging his feet. One disciple was on the right leg, another was on the left. The master turned, and the right foot went on top of the left foot. The disciple who was in charge of the left foot said to the other disciple, "Remove your foot! Remove it. Otherwise I will take my staff and hit the leg so that it will never be of any use at all."


The disciple said, "Nobody can touch my foot -- and it is my foot, and it will do whatever it wants to do. You think only you have a staff? I have my staff here. If you hit my leg, I will hit your leg."


They were shouting and fighting, and the master woke up and listened to their talk. He said, "Just wait a minute! You idiots, both legs are mine! And you were going to make me crippled for my whole life."
But this is how the unconscious man behaves.


Gurdjieff's idea is that as far as doing is concerned, only the master can do something -- because he is awake, and you are asleep. This is his approach, and it is perfectly right in its own context.


As far as my work is concerned, neither can the disciple do anything nor can the master do anything, because it is not a question of being asleep or being awake. The disciple is asleep; certainly he cannot do anything except dream. The master is awake; hence, he cannot interfere. Even to wake you is an interference in your life which a wakeful person cannot do. It is your life; he cannot trespass. Waking you up, disturbing your dream or your sleep, is a trespass.


In my work, neither the master does anything nor the disciple -- but things happen. There is no doing on either side, but things happen. The master goes on creating devices without interfering with the individuals.


For example, I am talking to you. It is possible that you may start at first by just hearing my words, and then hearing my silences -- first the visible, and second, feeling the invisible presence.


This is only a device. I am not doing anything to you in particular. I am just available here and if by chance, by coincidence, you open your eyes, you wake up, you see something, you hear something, you feel something and it starts working on you.... I am not doing anything, you are not doing anything, but something starts happening.


You must have seen, and you must have wondered: a woman gives birth to a child, the first child; she has no experience, but in the night, perhaps a dozen times... a small movement on the part of the child and the mother wakes up. And there may be clouds, thunder, the house may be on fire and she will not wake up, but just the child... something... perhaps the blanket has slipped off the child's body and she wakes up. It seems that she is asleep for the whole world, but not for the child. There is a link -- you can call it telepathic -- a subtle link, so that every movement in the child is immediately transferred to the mother's heart.
Something similar happens between the master and the disciple.


The master is there with his immense presence, and the disciple -- although he is asleep, he is not unconscious. He has somehow stumbled and found the place where the master is, perhaps from a faraway country.


Already there are three hundred sannyasins here from faraway countries, and we are preventing them because we don't have any space, we don't have any arrangement for them. So every center around the world is trying to prevent people: "Don't go, because right now there is no arrangement for you, and you will not be able to see Osho more than once or twice a week."


But still, three hundred sannyasins have arrived. We are preventing them, the Indian government is preventing, the American government is preventing, other governments are preventing -- still, they have come. And soon you will find Bombay full of my sannyasins. You are not seeing them because I have allowed them not to use red clothes, not to use the mala.
For a few years, the sannyas movement has to go underground.


There must be some part of them which is awake, some part of them which is not only awake but is capable of finding the way, and they have reached here. Now, being with me, that small part that has brought them here will become bigger, stronger, nourished, and things will start happening.


Gurdjieff is a great doer. His whole philosophy is a philosophy of action.


My whole approach is of relaxing and allowing the existence to do whatever is right.
Trust the existence.
And existence has never betrayed anyone.
<p class="question">BELOVED OSHO,
WHENEVER I HEAR SANNYASINS TALK ABOUT THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO YOU, I HEAR THEM SAY THAT THEY HAVE FALLEN IN LOVE WITH YOU.
FOR ME, SOMETHING ELSE SEEMS TO BE TRUE. MOSTLY, I AM AFRAID OF YOU AND OF WHAT YOU ARE GIVING. IS THERE SOMETHING WRONG WITH ME? AM I NOT A SANNYASIN?</p>


Nothing is wrong with you. You are just not understanding what is happening.


The others who are saying that they have fallen in love with me may be simply talking. You have really fallen in love with me; hence the fear.


When you are not in love, you can talk about it easily. You can discuss and gossip about it and there is no problem.


But you are in trouble -- you have fallen in love, hence you are afraid of coming closer. Otherwise, why should you be afraid of coming closer?
Love is fire, and if you come close you will be consumed by the fire.


Love consumes, transforms, brings the death of the old and the birth of the new.


You are a sannyasin, but you are not very clear about your own heart. Your heart is throbbing with love. Your head is full of fear. You are watching your head, but you are not looking at your heart. Forget the head.


I am reminded of a great Sufi mystic, Sarmad. The story is strange -- it may be true, may not be true -- but it is significant. And I don't care whether it is factual or not. All that I care about is whether it signifies something, and it signifies something tremendously beautiful.
Sarmad was killed in New Delhi....


Mohammedans have a mantra; every Mohammedan is expected to repeat it. The mantra is simple: There is only one God. That's what the mantra means: There is only one God, one prophet, one message -- the prophet is Mohammed, the message is KORAN. This is the meaning of the mantra.


Sufis repeat it, but only half; they simply say, "There is only one God" and full-point; they don't go beyond that. They don't say that there is one prophet, one holy message, Hazrat Mohammed is the prophet and KORAN is the message; that they don't say.


The emperor was Mohammedan. The priest, the high priest informed the emperor about Sarmad: "He is a heretic, because he is not repeating the whole mantra, and his disciples are also repeating only half the mantra. And that half of the mantra has nothing to do with Mohammedanism, because to say that there is only one God... that has nothing to do with Mohammedanism. The real Mohammedanism comes in the second part, that Hazrat Mohammed is the only prophet and the KORAN is the only message. And this Sarmad is simply teaching his disciples that the first part is enough, that the second part is unnecessary and there is no need to repeat it."


Sarmad was called to the palace and the emperor asked him, "What is your mantra?"
He repeated the mantra: "There is only one God."
The king said, "Are you not aware that this is only half?"
He said, "No, this is full. Anything added to it will be unnecessary."


The emperor said, "That means your head has to be cut off immediately, so that everybody knows what will be the result if half of the mantra is left out."


So from Jama Masjid -- from the top there are many steps -- his head was cut. Before his head was cut Sarmad said to the thousands of people who had gathered, his disciples and others -- and this is what is significant in the story -- he said, "What you are cutting is the place of your half of the mantra, and what you are leaving with me -- my heart -- is the place of my half of the mantra. 'There is only one God' -- that is my heart. And 'Mohammed is the only prophet and KORAN the only message' is just your head. Cut my head -- but even without my head, my heart will repeat the mantra, because that mantra has nothing to do with the head."
His head was cut, and thousands of people heard....


The head was rolling down on the steps, and the dead body was standing on top of the steps, and from nowhere in the body the sound was coming, "There is only one God."


I say this may not be factual, because it is difficult for the heart to speak -- and particularly when the head is cut!


There are some other stories of that kind in the world, but this is the most significant. The others may have some fact -- this seems to be non-factual, but many books of that time repeated that it happened, that there were eyewitnesses who heard it.


Life is mysterious. Sometimes things can happen which may not be immediately explainable.


A similar story is told about Rana Sanga, a great warrior who was fighting -- and his fighting method was his own.


When warriors fight in the war, in one hand they have their sword, and in the other hand a protective shield. That was not the way of the man, Rana Sanga. He used to fight with two swords, one in each hand, and with no protective shield. And he used to rush into the army of the enemy like a whirlwind, cutting this way and that way. It was almost impossible to see him, to see where he was. He was simply cutting heads; heads were falling all along the way, and he was doing it so fast.


The story is that the last time, when he died... he had cut many heads, and somebody cut his head but he was in such a momentum that, without the head, he went on! That seems to be possible. There was such a momentum -- perhaps he never understood that his own head was no more there. Just the hands were so expert....


It is just like when you are bicycling and coming down a hill: you need not do the pedaling; you can just sit, and just from the momentum the bicycle will go on. When you have come down the hill, the bicycle will go for one mile even on the plain road without your pedaling, just from the momentum.


Perhaps Rana Sanga had such a momentum, was in such a mood, and was doing his work so totally that he never became aware that his own head had been cut, and he went on cutting. This is possible. This story too had its eyewitnesses. And these people are not very ancient; Sarmad and Rana Sanga have both lived within the span of the past two thousand years.


But Sarmad's story has a significance -- it may not be factual -- and the significance is that the head has its own way: it is always afraid of death, it is always afraid of love. These two things -- love and death -- are the most fearful objects for the head.


Perhaps these two things are not two; perhaps they are two sides of the same coin.


But the heart is immensely willing to be drowned in love, even if that drowning in love means death. Even if it is at the risk of life that love becomes possible, the heart is ready.


You have fallen in love. Now only your head is afraid. Others, your friends who are saying that they have fallen in love, are just talking through their heads; they are not afraid.


You should be alerted. If you want to escape, escape soon, because tomorrow escape may not be possible. Once you find that your heart is pulling you towards love, then the head cannot prevent it. The head has no power; it is simply a chatterbox, it goes on chattering. Its only function is to chatter.


The heart cannot chatter and cannot say anything, but it makes it possible for miracles to happen.
If you are still here, perhaps you cannot escape.


Tonight, just try to find out what your heart says. Your mind is saying -- which is very indicative -- that the heart is in love; otherwise, mind is not afraid.
<p class="question">BELOVED OSHO,
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TRUSTING AND BEING NAIVE?</p>


Shunyo, the difference is vast, yet the dividing line is very subtle.
Being naive means being ignorant.
Trusting is the most intelligent act in existence.
And the symptoms to be remembered are these: both will be cheated, both will be deceived, but the person who is naive will feel cheated, will feel deceived, will be angry, will start distrusting people. His naiveness will sooner or later become distrust. And the person who trusts is also going to be cheated, is also going to be deceived, but he is not going to feel hurt. He will simply feel compassionate towards those who have cheated him, who have deceived him, and his trust will not be lost. His trust will go on increasing in spite of all deceptions. His trust will never turn into distrust of humanity.
These are the symptoms.
In the beginning they both look the same. But in the end, the quality of being naive turns into distrust, and the quality of trusting goes on becoming more trusting, more compassionate, more understanding of human weaknesses, human frailties. The trust is so valuable that one is ready to lose everything, but not the trust.
<p class="question">BELOVED OSHO,
HOW CAN THIS WORLD, WE PEOPLE, HAVE SUCH A BEAUTIFUL OSHO AMONGST US?</p>


It should not be a question.
The question should be: when everybody has the potential to become enlightened, how is it possible that so few people have ever achieved it?


It is like a garden in which you have millions of rose bushes, and once in a while one rose bush brings one roseflower. What should the question be? Should this roseflower be the question, or should the question be: How is it possible that there are millions of rose bushes and only one roseflower, and that too, after centuries?


Something is wrong with our gardening. Something is wrong; perhaps the garden is in the wrong hands. Perhaps enough water is not made available. Perhaps it is in the interests of the powerful people that many roses should not be in the world.


I remember, I used to have a beautiful garden and a very intelligent gardener. Every year he used to win the first prize in the city competition for growing the biggest roseflowers. I asked him, "How do you manage it? -- because whatever you are doing, any gardener can do; every gardener is doing it. I don't see you doing anything special."


He said, "I cannot be dishonest with you, but please don't tell anybody my secret. I am your servant. I will tell you the secret." He told me the secret.


I said, "This is absolutely wrong! No more participation in the competition."


What he was doing was that he was not letting many flowers grow on the bushes -- he would cut the buds and just leave one bud. Naturally, the whole juice which was going to create hundreds of roses will create only one roseflower.


I said, "This is murderous. Just to win a competition, you are killing hundreds of flowers."


And naturally I would have never become aware of it, because he used to do it in the night so that nobody would ever know the secret, Naturally, if you cut all the buds and leave only one bud, that bud is going to get more juice, out of all proportion, and is going to become a big roseflower.


Perhaps our whole way of life is such that only once in a while a Gautam Buddha blossoms. Perhaps the society does not allow it; it goes on cutting the buds.


So the real question is that amongst so many people, five billion people in the world, you don't have even five Gautam Buddhas. This is shameful, this is ugly. It seems there is a conspiracy against human evolution, against the evolution of consciousness.


I am doing everything to make it clear what the conspiracy is and who the conspirators are. And because these are the people who are in power, they want to stop my voice from reaching the people. Because if the people come to understand and realize that they have been continuously cheated, for centuries -- not from small things, money and power, but even from their souls, from their consciousness; that they have been prevented from their potential of becoming enlightened just to serve some vested interests -- there is going to be a tremendous rebellion in the whole world.


I do not call it revolution, I call it rebellion. Each individual has to rebel -- there is no need to make a party, there is no need to make a collective organization. Each individual can manage to protect himself from the conspirators and allow his consciousness to grow, and to become the blessed one.


In a really human world, the situation will be just the opposite: almost everybody will be a conscious human being. Only rarely will there be someone who is lagging behind and is asleep; that will be a rare case.
Gautam Buddha should be the rule, not the exception.
And I don't see any difficulty at all.
<p class="question">BELOVED OSHO,
WHAT IS THE FEAR BEHIND WANTING TO BE DECLARED ENLIGHTENED BY THE MASTER?</p>


Dhyan Om, it is very simple: you are not enlightened yet.
You will have to wait a little, because there is a long queue ahead of you!
			

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