---
section: Library
booktitle: "The Osho Upanishad"
booktype: "Discourses"
bookcode: "UPAN"
dategiven: "08 September 1986 pm"
place: " in"
chapternum: "Chapter #21"
chaptertitle: "Only the real can meet the real"
acode: "8609085"
shorttitle: "UPAN21"
audio: "Yes"
video: "Yes"
esttime: "106mins"
displaytitle: "The Osho Upanishad: Chapter #21"
---

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  font-style: italic;
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<p class="question">BELOVED OSHO,
BEING WITH YOU IN INDIA IS MUCH STRONGER THAN ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD. SITTING WITH YOU IN DISCOURSE FEELS LIKE BEING IN THE VERY HEART OF THE WORLD. SOMETIMES JUST SITTING IN THE HOTEL ROOM, CLOSING MY EYES, I FEEL THAT YOUR HEARTBEAT AND MINE ARE BEATING IN THE SAME RHYTHM.
WAKING IN THE MORNING, LISTENING TO THE SOUNDS AROUND -- THEY PENETRATE MUCH DEEPER THAN IN ANY OTHER PLACE. IT FEELS LIKE MEDITATION IS HAPPENING HERE NATURALLY, AND WITHOUT ANY EFFORT.
IS YOUR WORK DIFFERENT IN INDIA, OR IS THERE SOMETHING HERE LIKE A NATURAL BUDDHAFIELD?</p>


Latifa, India is not just geography or history. It is not only a nation, a country, a mere piece of land. It is something more: it is a metaphor, poetry, something invisible but very tangible. It is vibrating with certain energy fields which no other country can claim.


For almost ten thousand years, thousands of people have reached to the ultimate explosion of consciousness. Their vibration is still alive, their impact is in the very air; you just need a certain perceptivity, a certain capacity to receive the invisible that surrounds this strange land.


It is strange because it has renounced everything for a single search, the search for the truth. It has not produced great philosophers -- you will be surprised to know it -- no Plato, no Aristotle, no Thomas Aquinas, no Kant, no Hegel, no Bradley, no Bertrand Russell. The whole history of India has not produced a single philosopher -- and they have been searching for truth!


Certainly their search was very different from the search that has been done in other countries. In other countries people were thinking about truth; in India, people were not thinking about truth -- because how can you think about truth? Either you know it, or you don't; thinking is impossible, philosophy is impossible. It is absolutely an absurd and futile exercise. It is just like a blind man thinking about light -- what can he think? He may be a great genius, may be a great logician -- it is not going to help. Neither logic is needed nor genius is needed; what is needed is eyes to see.


Light can be seen but cannot be thought. Truth can be seen, but cannot be thought; hence we don't have a parallel word in India for 'philosophy'. The search for truth we call darshan, and darshan means seeing.


Philosophy means thinking, and thinking is circular -- about and about, it never reaches to the point of experiencing.


India is the only land in the whole world, strangely, which has devoted all its talents in a concentrated effort to see the truth and to be the truth.


You cannot find a great scientist in the whole history of India. It is not that there were not talented people, it is not that there were not geniuses. Mathematics was founded in India, but it did not produce Albert Einstein. The whole country, in a miraculous way, was not interested in any objective research. To know the other has not been the goal here, but to know oneself.


For ten thousand years millions of people persistently making a single effort, sacrificing everything for it -- science, technological development, riches -- accepting poverty, sickness, disease, death, but not dropping the search at any cost... it has created a certain noosphere, a certain ocean of vibrations around you.


If you come here with a little bit of a meditative mind, you will come in contact with it. If you come here just as a tourist, you will miss it. You will see the ruins, the palaces, the Taj Mahal, the temples, Khajuraho, the Himalayas, but you will not see India -- you will have passed through India without meeting it. It was everywhere, but you were not sensitive, you were not receptive. You will have come here to see something which is not truly India but only its skeleton -- not its soul. And you will have photographs of its skeleton and you will make albums of its skeleton, and you will think that you have been to India and you know India, and you are simply deceiving yourself.


There is a spiritual part. Your cameras cannot photograph it; your training, your education cannot capture it.


You can go to any country, and you are perfectly capable of meeting the people, the country, its history, its past -- in Germany, in Italy, in France, in England. But you cannot do the same as far as India is concerned. If you try to categorize it with other countries, you have already missed the point, because those countries don't have that spiritual aura. They have not produced a Gautam Buddha, a Mahavira, a Neminatha, an Adinatha. They have not produced a Kabir, a Farid, a Dadu. They have produced scientists, they have produced poets, they have produced great artists, they have produced painters, they have produced all kinds of talented people. But the mystic is India's monopoly; at least up to now it has been so.


And the mystic is a totally different kind of human being. He's not simply a genius, he is not simply a great painter or a great poet -- he is a vehicle of the divine, a provocation, an invitation for the divine. He opens the doors for the divine to come in. And for thousands of years, millions of people have opened the doors for the divine to fill the atmosphere of this country. To me, that atmosphere is the REAL India. But to know it, you will have to be in a certain state of mind.


Latifa, because you are meditating, trying to be silent, you are allowing the real India to come in contact with you. Yes, you are right; the way you can find truth in this poor country you cannot find anywhere else. It is utterly poor, and yet spiritually it has such a rich heritage that if you can open your eyes and see that heritage you will be surprised. Perhaps this is the only country which has been deeply concerned with the evolution of consciousness and nothing else. Every other country has been concerned with a thousand other things. But this country has been one-pointed, a single goal: how human consciousness can be evolved to a point where it meets with the divine; how to bring the human and the divine closer.


And it is not a question of one person but millions of people; not a question of a day or a month or a year, but thousands of years. Naturally, it has created a tremendous energy field around the country. It is all over the place, you just have to be ready.


It is not coincidental that whenever anybody is thirsty for truth, suddenly he has become interested in India, suddenly he has started moving towards the East. And it is not only today, it is as old as there are records.


Pythagoras, twenty-five centuries ago, came to India in search of truth. Jesus Christ came to India.


In THE BIBLE there is no record about Jesus between the ages of thirteen to thirty -- and that was almost his whole life, because he was crucified at thirty-three. So from thirteen to thirty, seventeen years are missing. Where had he been, and why are those days not recorded in THE BIBLE? They have been dropped deliberately, because that would have exposed the fact that Christianity is not a new religion, it is not an original religion -- that whatever Christ is saying he has brought from India.


It is tremendously intriguing. He was born a Jew, lived a Jew, died a Jew. He was never a Christian, he never even heard the words 'Christian' or 'Christ'. Why were the Jews so much against this man? Christians don't have an exact answer; neither do the Jews have an exact answer why -- because this man had done no harm to anybody. He was as innocent as you can imagine. But his crime was very subtle. The rabbis, the learned Jews, saw it clearly -- that he was bringing ideas from the East which were not Jewish. He was bringing something foreign, strange.


And if you look from this angle you can see why he says again and again, "It has been said to you by the prophets of old that if somebody is violent with you, angry with you, then you have to be ready. Your answer has to be a stone for a brick, an eye for an eye. But I say unto you that if somebody hits you, slaps you on the face, give him the other side of your face too." This is absolutely un-Jewish. He has learned it from the teachings of Gautam Buddha and Mahavira.


When he came to India -- and there are records still available of his visit -- Buddhism was still very alive, although Buddha was dead. Jesus came five hundred years after Gautam Buddha, but Buddha had created such a great storm that the whole country was drowned in it, was drunk with his idea of compassion, with his idea of forgiveness, with his idea of love. Jesus says, "It has been told by the old prophets" -- and who are the old prophets? -- they are all old, Jewish prophets: Ezekiel, Elijah, Moses -- "that God is a very violent God, that he never forgives."


They have even put words into God's mouth. In the OLD TESTAMENT God says, "I am not your uncle, I am not a nice man. I am very jealous and I am very angry. And those who are not with me are against me."


And Jesus says, "I say unto you that God is love." From where did he get the idea that God is love? Nowhere in the world has there been any record of God being love, except in the teachings of Gautam Buddha.


For those seventeen years Jesus was wandering through Egypt, India, Ladakh, Tibet. And that was his crime -- that he was bringing strange ideas to the Jewish tradition. And they were not only strange, they were absolutely against it.


You will be surprised to know also that finally he died in India, and Christian records are simply avoiding the fact. If they are right, that he was resurrected, then what happened after resurrection? Where is he? Because there is no record of his death.


In fact, he was never resurrected. He in fact never died on the cross, because the Jewish cross is the most crude way of killing a person. It takes almost forty-eight hours to kill a person, because the hands are nailed, the legs are nailed, and just drop by drop the blood goes out. If the man is healthy -- there are records that people have survived for more than sixty hours -- forty-eight is average. Jesus was brought down from the cross after six hours. Nobody has ever died on a Jewish cross in six hours: nobody can die.


It was a conspiracy with Pontius Pilate. He was not a Jew, he was a Roman viceroy, because Judea was under the Roman Empire. And he was not at all interested in killing this innocent young man. He was feeling guilty that he was playing a part in this ugly and cruel drama; without his signature this man could not be killed. And it was a political thing, because the whole Jewish majority was madly after Jesus -- he should be crucified. Pontius Pilate was in a dilemma: if he leaves this man alone he makes an enemy of the whole country, which was Jewish. That would not be diplomatic. If he kills this man, he will have the support of the whole country, but in his own conscience it would be a wound: an innocent man who has done nothing wrong is being killed just because of a political situation.


So he arranged with the disciples that the crucifixion would be delayed as long as possible on Friday. Because Friday evening, as the sun sets, Jews stop all kinds of work. Then on Saturday nothing is done, that is their holy day. The crucifixion was to happen in the morning on Friday, but it was delayed -- and bureaucracy can delay anything.


Jesus was crucified in the afternoon. And before sunset he had to be brought down alive, although he was unconscious, because blood had gone out of his body and he was weak. And then the guard at the cave in which his body was put... The Jews were going to crucify him again after their holiday was over, but the guard was Roman -- and this is how it became possible for the disciples to take Jesus out, and out of Judea.


Why did Jesus want to come to India? -- because in his youth, for years he had been in India. He had tasted the spiritual, the cosmic, the ultimate so closely that he wanted to go back there. And as he was healed, he returned to India and he lived one hundred and twelve years.


His grave is still there, in Kashmir. The inscription is in Hebrew... in India there are no Jews. The inscription says Joshua. That is Jesus' name in Hebrew; Jesus is Greek for Joshua. "Joshua came here" -- the time, date -- "a great master, lived with his disciples in silence, lived long, one hundred and twelve years, and used to call himself The Shepherd." Hence the place itself became known as "the village of the shepherd." You can go to the village, it exists still -- Pahalgam; that is the Hindi translation of 'the village of the shepherd'.


He wanted to be here so that he could grow more; he wanted to be here with a small group so that they could grow, and silently. And he wanted to die here, because to live here has a beauty if you know how to live, and to die is also tremendously significant if you know how to die.


Only in India has the art of dying been explored, just as the art of living has been explored; they are both part of one single process.


And still more surprising is the fact that even Moses died in India, and the graves of Moses and Jesus are in the same place. Perhaps Jesus had chosen the place near to the great master Moses. But why did Moses die in Kashmir?


Moses had taken the Jews out of Egypt to find the land of God, Israel. It took forty years, and when they reached Israel he proclaimed, "This is the land, the promised land of God. I am too old, and I would like to retire. You, the young generation" -- because since he started from Egypt almost all the people of his generation had died. New children had been born, the young had become old; the original group that started was no more. Moses was feeling almost like a stranger.


He gave the power to rule and to manage to the young people, and he disappeared from Israel. It is strange: Jewish scriptures don't make any mention of his death, of what happened to him. But we have the grave. Again the inscription is on the grave in Hebrew, and for four thousand years a Jewish family has been taking care, generation by generation, of these two graves. Why did he want to come to India -- just to die? Yes, it is one of the secrets: If you can die in a buddhafield, in a field where the vibrations are not only human but divine, your death itself becomes a celebration, a liberation.


And down the centuries, seekers have been coming to this land from all over the world. The country is poor, the country has nothing to offer, but to those who are sensitive it is the richest place on the earth. But the richness is of the inner.


Latifa, you are right. Just be more open, more relaxed, more in a state of let-go, and this poor country can give you the greatest treasure that is possible for human beings.
<p class="question">BELOVED OSHO,
BEING WITH YOU IN THESE DAYS HAS BEEN LIKE A SHOWER OF LOVE, GRATITUDE, LIKE AN OPEN OCEAN. BEING AWAY FROM YOU HAS BEEN SOMETIMES SO HARD AND SO DEEP AT THE SAME TIME.
CAN YOU PLEASE SAY SOMETHING ONCE AGAIN ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MASTER AND DISCIPLE?</p>


Not only once again, but I will say a thousand and one times, again and again, something about the relationship between the disciple and the master. Because there are so many aspects, and whenever I say something, it covers only one aspect.


One thing, the most important to remember, is that it is not a bondage, a contract, that basically it is a meeting of two free individuals, a meeting out of freedom.


If at any point you start feeling that it is a bondage, you have gone astray. It is simply two fellow travelers walking on the road with no bondage, with no promises, with no expectations.


One knows the road -- he has walked down the road, up and down many times -- sometimes alone, sometimes with others. He can walk on the road with closed eyes, he is so much acquainted with the path.
The other is new, he is not acquainted with the road.


The only thing that exists between these two people is a certain kind of love, trust. And that too is based on experience -- because the disciple can see that the master is always right. There are so many crossroads, but he is always finding the right road; there so many pitfalls, but the master is always making him aware that a pitfall is ahead -- "Be a little more alert." Slowly slowly, walking with this man, a trust grows. It is not a belief, it is based on experience.


He has seen again and again that if this man were not there he would have gone somewhere else. There were so many beautiful paths, bypaths; the desire to move on them was there. But this man is not only aware of the path, he is also aware of the desires of the fellow traveler. He goes on telling him, "No, don't think that way, that desire will be disastrous." So many chances to see the validity, the clarity, the experience of the man, create trust. So it is not simply a belief, it is not faith. It is existential, it is experimental, it is scientific.


The relationship between the master and the disciple is one of the most existential relationships -- not based on imagination, not based on fiction, not based on opinion, not based on what others say but based on what you see, your experience. And it goes on deepening. A moment comes when to doubt this man becomes impossible -- not that the master says, "Don't doubt." On the contrary, the master says, "Don't miss any opportunity to doubt because that is how you are going to sharpen your intelligence. Doubt, and doubt totally." And the master can say it because he knows that doubt is meaningless against truth.


Against fiction, doubt is dangerous; doubt can kill the fiction -- but doubt only enhances the true.


The relationship between a master and disciple is of immense intelligence. It is not as people ordinarily think -- that they will become slaves, mentally dependent, that they will lose their individuality; that they will not be allowed to doubt, that doubt will be prohibited and belief will be nourished, no. With a real master, the situation is totally different. Doubt is nourished, because the master is not afraid -- you can doubt as much as you can, but you will have to accept the truth in spite of your doubts. It is not spiritual slavery, but independence.


The master's effort is to give you more individuality. Yes, he takes away your personality. You have to understand the distinction clearly: individuality is your self nature, and personality is just a mask. And the mask has to be removed, your original face has to be discovered. If you are unreal, you cannot reach reality.
Only the real can meet the real.


You want ultimate freedom? Then your first step has to be freedom; the last step can be freedom only if the first step was freedom. If the first step was not freedom, it is impossible for the last step to be freedom -- because it is the same thing growing.


The relationship between the master and the disciple is a scientific lab in which the false has to be burned and the original has to be discovered. And it is the original that we are all missing. That is our misery, that is our pain, that is our anguish -- that we do not know who we are. All that we know is so stupid.
A Sufi story will help you.


A Sufi mystic comes to a great fair. All the caravanserais are full; he goes from one place to another, it is becoming midnight, he is tired. One manager of a caravanserai has compassion for him and says, "I can arrange something, but I cannot give you an individual room. In one of the rooms one person is there; he is well known to me, so I can persuade him just to let you also sleep there. Now, where will you go? If you are willing, I can ask."


The mystic was so tired. He said, "Anywhere, just let me lie down. The whole day I have been walking. Give me something to eat, and ask your friend."


The friend said, "I have no objection." A bed was brought in. When the mystic came in, the man looked at him and he felt he was a little bit of a strange type of man -- he was going to bed with his shoes, hat, coat, everything on him. But it was not right to interfere with a stranger, so he kept quiet. And then the mystic was tossing and turning, sleep was difficult. How can you sleep with shoes on, and your hat and coat on? And because of his tossing and turning, the other man was also not able to sleep.


He said, "Listen, neither are you sleeping nor are you allowing me to sleep. And the simple reason is -- just take those shoes off, take your hat and your coat off. Relax, then you can sleep. This is not the way to sleep."


The man said, "I know, but the difficulty is that these are the things I am acquainted with. If I see my face in the mirror in the morning and the hat is missing, a doubt may arise -- 'Who is this man?' These are my symbols. And the trouble is... if I was alone in the room, I would have locked the room from inside and taken everything off and gone to sleep. But the trouble is, you are also here. Things can get mixed up, and in the morning it will be difficult for me -- who is who? You are simply sleeping naked" -- it was a hot country -- "and I would also like to sleep naked. But two naked persons in the morning -- how are you going to make the distinction who is who?"


The other man laughed. He said, "You have a real problem, but I will suggest a solution to you. Somebody who must have been staying here before us, their child has left a small balloon, so I will tie the balloon on your leg. You can sleep naked -- just remember that the balloon is tied onto your leg, so in the morning when you see the balloon, you will know perfectly who you are."


The man said, "Simple solution, good." He undressed, took the balloon, tied it to one of his legs, and went to sleep. They both slept.


The other man, just before morning, took the balloon away from the mystic and tied it on his own leg and went back to sleep. Then a servant knocked on the door for breakfast. The mystic looked at his leg. He said, "My God, it feels as if I am myself, but what about the balloon?" And then he looked at the other man; the balloon was there.


He shook the man and he said, "What I was afraid of has happened -- the balloon is on your leg, so certainly you are me. Now who is going to tell me who I am? And deep down I know, that balloon or no balloon, I am the same man. But now there is great confusion!"


Our identities are no more than that balloon -- a certain name which has been given to you, a certain respectability which has been given to you. You are a husband, you are a wife, you are a father, you are a brother, you are this, you are that. All these identities are different balloons hanging around you, giving you a certain feeling that you know who you are. But if all these balloons are taken away then do you know who you are? You will feel you are yourself, but who are you?


The master's whole function is to take away balloons, one by one, from your personality, and still not let you fall into a confusion. The moment all balloons are taken away, people go mad because they don't know who they are.
What is insanity?


I had gone to see one madhouse, and one man was just going right, left, right, left, right, left. I asked, "What is he doing?"


They said, "He used to be a captain in the army. The whole day he is just going right, left, right, left -- a desperate effort to remember who he is. He wants to find his identity."
It is certainly a tremendous anguish not to know yourself.


The whole function of the lab that exists between the master and the disciple, the whole craftsmanship of the master, is that he should take your false identities with such articulateness, with such art, that you don't fall into insanity. On the contrary, rather than falling below mind into madness, he helps you to go beyond mind into meditation.
Madness and meditation have a similarity:
One is below mind, the other is above mind.
Both are out of the mind.
One is a breakdown, another is a breakthrough.


Without the master there is every possibility you will go into a nervous breakdown if you lose your identity. The master goes on supporting you, goes on taking your personality layer by layer. And you allow him to take your identities away because of his love and trust; you know that he cannot harm you. You are ready to risk.


The master's art is to prepare you to risk. And once you have risked, once you have become naked of personality, a pure individuality -- and still can retain your intelligence, your sanity -- the dark night of the soul is over, the morning is very close. Soon you will see the dawn.


Go on asking me again and again, because the relationship has so many aspects I cannot cover them in one answer.
<p class="question">BELOVED OSHO,
YOU ARE THE WILD, RAGING FALLS THAT POUR FROM THE MOUNTAINS. YOU ARE THE SUMMER RAINS THAT FALL FROM THE SKY.
OSHO, MY BELOVED, YOU ARE THE CURRENTS OF THE OCEAN. AND I AM HERE, BUT A TEACUP, AVAILABLE TO YOU.
TO LOOK INTO YOUR EYES AND TO WATCH YOU SMILE TO SIT IN YOUR PRESENCE AND TO BATHE IN YOUR GRACE.... I CAN'T TAKE MY EYES FROM YOU, OSHO I WANT NOT TO MISS ONE GESTURE, ONE LOOK I WANT NOT TO LOSE ONE WORD, ONE SMILE.
THANK YOU, OSHO, FOR THIS MOMENT WITH YOU THANK YOU, EXISTENCE, FOR THIS MASTER WITH ME.</p>


This is not a question, this is an answer.
If you can feel thankfulness towards existence, nothing else is needed; you have known the very essence of prayer, the very juice of all meditations.
Just two tears fallen in deep gratefulness are enough.


The journey is not long; it is long because we never take the first step. An ancient Chinese saying is, "One step is half the journey. In two steps the whole journey is over." And what is that first step? -- gratefulness.


And see the beauty of the word and the reality behind it, of gratefulness. It is neither Christian nor Hindu nor Mohammedan; it is neither male nor female, neither white nor black -- just a sheer joy that we don't deserve.


And so much is given by the unknown, and it goes on giving to us. Not to take it for granted is the beginning of religion. And to start being grateful is the first step towards the temple.


The second step is not even possible to translate into language. It comes automatically after the first. Thousands of efforts have been made to give it some word, some definition, some explanation; all have failed.


One great mystic, Rinzai, was sitting by the riverside on the sand. A man approached who had been looking for him. He had gone to Rinzai's place and they said, "You may find him somewhere by the side of the river. This is the time he sits there."


The man reached, he asked Rinzai, "I have come from a long distance to know -- in short, because I am not a scholar and I am a simple man. Just give me the essential teaching."
Rinzai closed his eyes and sat silently.


The man said, "Have you heard me or not? I have asked a question, and instead of answering me you have closed your eyes."


Rinzai said, "That was the answer, the shortest: just close your eyes and be silent -- you wanted the shortest answer."
The man said, "This is too short. Just a little longer will do."
So Rinzai wrote on the sand with his finger, "Meditation."


The man said, "That does not help much, it is the same. Again, close your eyes and sit silently -- that is the meaning. Can't you give me a little more?"
Rinzai wrote in big capital letters, "Meditation."
The man said, "Are you crazy or what? -- because it is the same thing."


Rinzai said, "If I do anything more than that, I will move beyond the limits of truth. Then it will be a lie. If you want lies, I can elaborate, but truth is finished. The moment I sat silent with my closed eyes, that was all."


So the first step is gratitude, and the second step will be an absolute silence -- not even gratitude, because that too is a subtle disturbance.
Just nothingness is the second step, and you have arrived.
<p class="question">BELOVED OSHO,
IT FEELS TO ME LIKE AFTER ALL THESE YEARS OF BEING WITH YOU AND WORKING, RIGHT THIS MOMENT THERE IS NOTHING ELSE TO DO BUT TO RELAX AND LET LIFE TAKE OVER. IS IT SO -- OR AM I JUST GETTING LAZY?</p>


It is both. It is so, and you are getting lazy!
But to be lazy is my whole teaching.
I am the lazy man's guide to enlightenment.
			

> [!info]
> Copyright 1964-1990 Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)
>