---
section: Library
booktitle: "The Old Pond ... Plop"
booktype: "Diaries"
bookcode: "POND"
dategiven: "28 January 1981 pm"
place: " in Chuang Tzu Auditorium"
chapternum: "Chapter #28"
chaptertitle: "None"
acode: "8101285"
shorttitle: "POND28"
audio: "No"
video: "No"
esttime: ""
displaytitle: "The Old Pond ... Plop: Chapter #28"
---

```style
.sutra {
  font-style: italic;
  white-space: pre-wrap !important;
}
```
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> [!info]
> Note
>
[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]


Man can function in two ways -- either ss a head or as a heart. And both are polar opposites to each other; their languages are different, their rhythm is different, their dimension is different, their whole world is different.


Head consists of logic, calculation, cleverness, cunningness; it is a prose style of life, mundane and superficial, but efficient, very useful to the society, because man functions through the head almost like a machine -- and that's what the society needs. The society is not in need of men, it needs machines. That's why it goes on replacing man by more and more machines. Sooner or later man will become absolutely irrelevant. He is already on the way out, because machines can do the same work more efficiently, more correctly. They are more reliable -- they don't go on strike, they don't create any labour trouble, they are never rebellious, disobedient, they don't know how to say no. Hence the society teaches every person to become a head -- that is a subtle politics.


All the schools, colleges and universities exist only to perpetuate that subtle politics. In the name of education what is really done is to reduce human being to mechanical devices. And of course those who are successful in that are rewarded, are respected, become rich, become famous.


The heart is neglected, ignored, because it seems of no use to the society. The heart consists of love instead of logic. The heart is intelligence and intelligence is never cunning. It need not be.


Cunningness is a poor substitute for intelligence. Call it cleverness, but it is the same thing, only with a better label.


The heart consists of such a great intelligence that it is impossible for it to be cunning; hence it becomes innocent. Intelligence is always innocent. It is only the stupid person who is cunning and clever. Intelligence is childlike, with the same purity, with the same wonder, with the same awe.


The heart consists of a poetic lifestyle. It has depth, infinite depth. It is not superficial. Because it has depth, because it has a certain interiority to it, it becomes unapproachable for the society. Only the person is capable of reaching his heart, nobody else can do it; hence it gives you an individuality.


The head gives you only a personality, and persona means a mask. The heart gives you your original face, and the whole status quo is afraid of the original face because the person who has the original face is bound to be rebellious. He cannot bow down to stupidities, superstitions, exploitation, oppression. He cannot humiliate himselF. He would rather die than live with compromise.


Hence society has made a certain strategy to lead the child's energy towards the head, bypassing the heart. And a man without heart cannot be noble. If you don't have something for which you can die you cannot be noble. You don't have any spine -- how can you be noble? You don't have any commitment to existence -- how can you be noble? You don't have any involvement with life -- how can you be noble?


Nobility needs that a person should be so totally independent, uncompromisingly independent, that whatsoever the consequence, come hail or hell, he is determined to remain himself. Very few people have shown that much courage -- a Jesus, a Buddha, a Socrates -- very few people, but they are the salt of the earth. If there is some nobility in existence it is because of these few people. They have contributed colour, beauty, benediction.


The heart is basically poetic, hence it is unpredictable, and society depends on predictability. society does not trust the poets, the musicians, the dancers, and never the mystics, because they are really far gone! (laughter) The poet is still hanging around the boundary; sometimes he is prose, sometimes he is poetry, sometimes calculation, sometimes intelligence. He is just living in a boundary world. He goes to both worlds, he is a visitor in both worlds; he moves between the heart and the head. But the mystic has completely dropped the head, he has chopped it off. He lives only through the heart. He is pure poetry, pure song, pure dance, for no other reason than the sheer joy of it!


And to me, that is the very essence of religiousness. Only that state is capable of knowing the truth. And the moment you know the truth you become the truth -- that's what nobility is:


Mind is encapsulated, closed. It is not vulnerable, it is not open. The brain is enclosed in a hard shell not only physiologically, but also metaphysically.


Mind has no windows, It is windowless, hence the mind is bound to be a fanatic. It may be a Hindu mind or a Mohammedan mind or a Christian mind -- it makes no difference mind is going to be fanatic. It is not available to see, to experience. It lives according to its prejudices, it is already contaminated, conditioned.


Mind is nothing but all your conditionings together it is whatsoever the society has given to you -- the parents, the teachers, the priests, the politicians, all the do-gooders, all the so-called well-wishers. And I am not suspecting their intentions -- their intentions may be good, perhaps they are good -- but the result is ugly, because those intentions are unconscious. Those people don't know what they are doing.


The last prayer of Jesus to god was: 'Forgive these people because they don't know what they are doing.' And this is true not only when you are crucified; this is true when you are brought up tool when you are educated, then too. When everybody is trying to help you to have a certain shape, a certain character, a certain morality, in fact they are crucifying you. The cross is invisible; they are cutting your nature, chopping your spontaneity, making you fit to some ancient prejudice which may be absolutely irrelevant today. It may not have been relevant ever, it may have been just an invention of the cunning and the clever, it may be a conspiracy between the priest and the politician to dominate the world, to subjugate people, to enslave humanity; but mind lives in this enclosed world, unavailable to the sun, to the rain, to the wind, unavailable to anything new.


Mind is old and reality is new every moment hence there is no communion between reality and mind.


To be in the mind is to be ignorant, to cling to the mind is to cling to one's ignorance. Meditation means coming out of the mind, getting out of the mind, making a few windows and doors into the mind, becoming less fanatic, more available to reality, more open to the new, less attached to the old and the dead. That's what meditation is. It is a revolution, from mind to no-mind, a radical transformation, a quantum leap.


The moment you become open, available, unprejudiced, the moment you are ready to so with the truth wherever it leads, the moment you are ready to sacrifice all your knowledge, superstitions, theologies, religions, political ideologies, just to go with the truth, you start growing a new quality in you. That quality is meditativeness, and that quality is so blissful that once you have tasted it you will not like to go back to the mind, because mind is an imprisonment and meditation is freedom. And only in freedom do you open up like a lotus flower.


With the mind you remain in darkness, just like a seed, carrying great potential but never giving it a chance to become actual. Meditation creates the situation, the climate, the soil, for all your seeds to row, to sprout, for all your buds to open and become flowers. Meditation is a spring and suddenly thousands of lotuses start blooming in your being.


To me that experience is godliness or nirvana. I don't believe in a personal god, I cannot believe in a personal god, because I have searched and I have found only godliness but no god. I have found love but no lover. I have found only qualities. Metaphorically it is okay to call it god, but I have found freedom, love, godliness, silence, awareness, beauty, truth. All these are qualities of one organic unity, different aspects of the same phenomenon, but the phenomenon is more like a verb than like a noun. It is more like energy exploding than like a person confined and limited; hence I don't teach prayer because prayer believes in a personal god. It is addressed to a personal god, it is ar I-Thou relationship. The Thou is absolutely needed.


I teach meditation because meditation is not a relationship at all, it has nothing to do with I or Thou, if the Thou is needed, then you will never be able to drop your I either, because prayer needs both! There must be one who is addressed, otherwise it looks insane. And if you have to address a god, you have to be there to address. So I and Thou are two aspects of the same coin, they are joined together intrinsically. You cannot drop one without dropping the other; either you have to keep both or you have to drop both.


Meditation drops both. It has nothing to do with Thou, it has nothing to do with I; it is moving into the very depth of your being, where only silence prevails. And that silence is so absolute that there cannot be any disturbance of the ego. Ego is noisy, ego is part of the mind. It cannot be part of meditation. hence I say emphatically that all the prayers of all the religions are head-oriented. They may talk about the heart but that is mere talk. Prayer basically is a head phenomenon, it is an address from the I to some unknown, invented Thou.


Martin Buber has written a book on prayer and he calls it I AND THOU, and he thinks that that is the ultimate in religion. I feel sorry for the old man -- he was a good man but he remained in the old Judaic, childish idea of I-Thou. He thinks that is prayer, he thinks that is the ultimate in religion.


It has nothing to do with religion. It is not even the beginning -- what to say about the ultimate? The ultimate of religion is total silence -- no prayer, no verbal communication, nothing has to be said; there is nothing to say and there is nobody to say it either -- and in that silence something opens of its own accord. We in the East have called it the lotus, because that is the most beautiful flower in the East. We have actually called it the one-thousand-petalled-lotus, sahasrar.


There is no lotus with one thousand petals, it is just a metaphor. One thousand simply represents infinity, a lotus with infinite petals, which go on opening, on and on and on, and there is no end to it.


There is a world outside, a big, vast, enormous world, but there is also a world inside, bigger than the outside world. If the outside world is infinite then the inside world is far more infinite (laughter). Mahavira has the right word for it; he calls it 'infinitely infinite', not only one-dimensionally infinite but multi-dimensionally infinite. 'Anantanant' -- that is his word.


A line can be infinite if it goes on and on and on, never ending; but from the same point you can drag many lines and all those lines can go on and on infinitely. That's how the inner world is: infinitely infinite.


The kingdom of the outside world is temporal. One can even become Alexander the great, but compared to the inner kingdom even Alexander the Great is just a beggar and nothing else. And it happened many times in Alexander's life -- the first time when he met Diogenes in Greece, he felt suddenly that he was a beggar. The comparison was so clear, unmistakably clear. Diogenes was a naked mystic, he had nothing. He had fewer possessions than even Gautam the Buddha. Gautam the buddha had at least three robes and one begging bowl. Diogenes lived naked, without a begging bowl, absolutely possessionless, but Alexander felt poor. The radiance, the richness, the blissfulness, the ecstasy surrounding Diogenes was so much, so tangible -- you could have almost touched it. The fragrance of the man was such that Alexander remembers later on 'That was the first time I felt belittled -- and that too before a poor man, the poorest that I have seen, but before that poorest man I was poor, he was not. I felt jealous.'


He even said to Diogenes 'If god gives me another chance to be born again I will ask him 'Make me Diogenes rather than Alexander the Great."'


The presence of Diogenes must have penetrated very deep, for Alexander was a very egoistic man. How can you account for his whole life if he was not egoistic? His only desire was to conquer the whole world.


Diogenes asked him 'What is the purpose? I wonder sometimes, why do you want to conquer the whole world? And even if you have conquered it, accepted that you have conquered it, then what?' Alexander said 'Then I will rest.' And he laughed, Diogenes laughed. He said 'This is sheer stupidity. You can see that I am resting without conquering the world, so why can't you do it right now?' And he was resting, he was taking a sunbath when Alexander went to see him, just lying naked under the sun, in the sand by the side of a river, listening to the music of the river. He said 'I am resting, relaxing, and who is preventing you? And I don't see the point -- how it is related with conquering the world. I have not conquered, and if I can rest -- and you are a man of logic, I know that you are a disciple of Aristotle, the father of logic -- then you can understand that there is no cause and effect relationship between conquering the world and relaxing.' And of course, Alexander could see the point.


He felt ashamed, looked down, could not answer -- he could see, it was absolutely logical, if a man can relax without conquering then why is it you cannot relax? It is not connected at all. He said 'I can understand. Can I help you in some way, I feel so obliged. Your presence has given me so much I would like to do something for you, and I can do anything, you just ask; nothing is impossible for me.'


Diogenes said 'But I don't have any desires so what can I ask for? But if you are really feeling to do something then just stand a little aside because you are blocking the sun (laughter), and I will be immensely thankful to you!' That's all he asked. It haunted Alexander his whole life: 'That man, what did he have?' And then when he came to India he met again two persons of the same calibre, of the same depth.


One man he met was a Brahmin, a great mystic, and he wanted the Brahmin mystic to give him the ancientmost scriptures of the world, the Vedas. The Brahmin said 'You come in the morning, and in the morning, early in the morning as the sun rises I will give them to you.' And the story is that the whole night he went on reciting the Vedas before his two young sons. There was a fire, he would recite a page and throw the page into the fire. By the morning when Alexander returned, the last page was being read and thrown. He saw the last page being thrown and consumed by the fire, and the old Brahmin said 'You can take these two sons of mine, they remember everything! Those books I could not give to you. That was not possible because the person who had given them to me has made me promise that they be given only to the initiates. These two boys are initiates and they remember everything, so you are not missing anything. Whatsoever you want they will reply. The whole night I have been working for you -- you can keep these boys.'


Alexander could not believe, such memory! He asked other Brahmins 'Is it true?' And the other Brahmins came and examined those two boys -- and Vedas are big scriptures, thousands of sutras -- and they had to agree that those two boys remembered every single word. 'How is it possible?' he asked the old man. He said 'There is no difficulty because these two boys know what meditation is. It is not a memory of the mind -- that has limitations. It is a totally different kind of memory that comes not through intellect but through intelligence, that comes not through cramming, repeating something, but that comes only through understanding. These are great meditators. I have prepared them for meditation. They listened in silence, in absolute silence -- there was no disturbance. They listened to it from their very interiority. There was not a single thought when they were listening to me, hence there is no distraction. They can repeat, whatsoever you want they will answer.'


That was his second experience that there is a way of understanding which is not of the mind, which is not to be taught. There is a way of life which can only be caught and not taught. They were so silent that they simply drank whatsoever was told -- that is the way of a disciple, that is the way of a sannyasin, he simply drinks. It is not a question of argumentation, deciding whether it is right or wrong, it is not a question of pros and cons.
He was amazed, could not believe.


And the third person he came across he remembers was Dandamis, another naked man who reminded him again of Diogenes. He wanted this Dandanis to go with him. Dandamis laughed. He said 'You cannot order a sannyasin. I am like the wind, wherever it blows, it blows. You cannot order me to go here or to go there. I follow my own insight. Nobody can force me to do a single act.'


Alexander was angry. He took out his sword and he said 'If you say no I will cut off your head.' Dandamis laughed, the same laughter. Again he remembered Diogenes -- the same laughter coming from the same depth. And Dandamis said 'You can cut off my head -- that's perfectly okay, I have no objection about it -- but let me tell you, when the head is cut and falls down, you will see it falling down and I will also see it falling down. You will be seeing it from the outside, I will be seeing it from the inside, and I tell you, to see it happen from the inside is a real miracle. What you will be seeing is nothing.'


Now it is difficult to kill such a man. Again Alexander remembers in his memoirs 'I came across a man who was ready to die laughing! He must have gained something which is far more valuable than life itself. He must have known something which is immortal, he must have entered into eternity, otherwise how can he say 'I will see it falling, my own head, and I will enjoy it!'


So there is a world outside -- the extrovert lives in it; it is the world of time and death, change, flux. But there is another world too -- the mystic lives in it -- the world of your own interiority, of your own subjectivity. That is meditation.


Mind lives outside meditation is of the inner, and it opens the door or the kingdom, within. And for the first time one really becomes rich; a richness that cannot be taken away, a richness that cannot be stolen, a richness that cannot be burned, a richness for which you don't need any insurance -- it is insured by existence itself -- a richness which belongs to the eternal, the immovable and the deathless. That is the goal of sannyas.


Sannyas is a deep search to really become emperors of the inner world. And everyone is capable of it. If we miss, then it is our own stupidity, our own irresponsibility, our own negligence. Nobody else is responsible for it. It is our choice!


By becoming a sannyasin you are choosing a new adventure, the real adventure of life.
			

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