---
section: Library
booktitle: "Take It Easy, Vol 2"
booktype: "Discourses"
bookcode: "EASY2"
dategiven: "11 May 1978 am"
place: " in Buddha Hall"
chapternum: "Chapter #13"
chaptertitle: "The Real Israel"
acode: "7805110"
shorttitle: "EASY213"
audio: "Yes"
video: "No"
esttime: "98mins"
displaytitle: "Take It Easy, Vol 2: Chapter #13"
---

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The first question
<p class="question">LAST NIGHT, IN A DREAM, I FOUND MYSELF ON A GIRDER HIGH IN THE AIR MOVING TOWARDS SOME DOOR OF SAFETY. THEN MY CLOTHES BEGAN TO GET CAUGHT ON SPLINTERS OF IRON, AND NEXT THE GIRDER BEGAN TO SPLIT. I TOLD MYSELF TO KEEP CALM, NOT TO LOOK DOWN, TO FORGET THE DANGER AND JUST DO ONE THING AT A TIME. THIS I WAS MANAGING AND YET NOT MANAGING. THEN I HEARD MYSELF SAY TO MYSELF, "WELL, YOU COULD ALWAYS WAKE UP." SO I DID.
COULD ONE WAKE UP OUT OF THE NIGHTMARE OF THE MIND JUST LIKE THAT?</p>


YES, SOMENDRA. THAT IS THE ONLY WAY TO WAKE UP -- there is no other. It is only a question of remembering that you CAN wake up. Nothing else is needed, no other effort, no method, no technique, no path. Just a remembrance that "This is my dream." A remembrance that "I have decided to dream it -- and the moment I decide not to dream it, I will be awake." Once your cooperation is withdrawn, the dream is nullified.


If you are living in misery, you are creating it. And nobody else can take it away from you unless YOU decide not to create it any more. Your hell is your work. All that you are is your self-creation. In a single moment, you can awake.


This is one of the greatest messages of Zen and Buddha, that time is not needed. If effort has to be made, then time is a must. But if one can awake without an effort, with just the idea, then time is not needed.


That's why you come across immensely beautiful and unbelievable Zen stories -- enlightenment happening so easily, one cannot believe it. A master hits the disciple, and in that moment the disciple is enlightened. What has happened?


Just the other day, I was telling you the story of Ananda. The moment his head touched the pillow he became enlightened -- all samadhi was his. What happened in that moment? Just the same.


Somendra, your dream is one of the most important dreams one can ever dream. It has a great spiritual significance -- it is a key dream. Don't just think about it as a dream and don't forget it. A key has been delivered to you in your dream. Now use it for the greater dream that you go on seeing the whole day with open eyes: wake up.

The second question
<p class="question">HOW DO YOU KNOW JESUS, BUDDHA, KRISHNA, ZARATHUSTRA AND LAO TZU?</p>


BECAUSE I AM THEM. And you are also them. Wake up and know. Krishna or Buddha or Christ are not part of history, they are part of your being. They are stages in your being. You need not go into history to know about Christ -- and those who do, they are being simply stupid.


You have to go inwards. You will not meet Christ in Israel, you will not meet Christ by going backwards twenty centuries. Just go within -- there is the real Israel. It is not a question of going INTO time, it is a question of going beyond time. And your consciousness exists beyond time this very moment.


The question is relevant. People go on wondering how I know about Ikkyu. I know nothing about Ikkyu, but I know about myself. And that is where I can know anybody who has ever become awakened. It is not a question of knowing Ikkyu as a person, or Krishna or Christ. They are not persons, they are the ultimate in awareness. If YOU are aware, you know them.


That's why I say to you: If sometimes you come across some of my statements about Christ which don't agree with the Bible, forget the Bible! Or correct it -- at least you can correct your copy. Because what I am saying is not a historical research. I am not proposing any thesis, I am simply saying that which has happened to me. It can't happen otherwise -- it could not have happened otherwise, ever. The taste of enlightenment is the same. To whom it happens, it makes no difference. In what time, what age, what country, it makes no difference. It is an eternal timeless experience.


Once you have known yourself, you have known all the Buddhas of the past. And not only that, but all the Buddhas of the future too -- even those who have not yet happened. In knowing yourself, you come to know all.

The third question
<p class="question">I DON'T FEEL COURAGEOUS, JUST VERY VERY LUCKY -- THAT SOMEHOW AGAINST ALL ODDS AND IN SPITE OF MY STUPIDITY, I AM HERE. AND THAT AFTER THREE AND A HALF YEARS YOU HAVE STILL NOT KICKED ME OUT. AND THAT I DON'T GET THE URGE TO LEAVE.
IT SEEMS TO ME THAT IT WOULD TAKE MUCH MORE COURAGE TO GO BACK INTO THE WORLD AND LIVE WITHOUT YOU AND WITHOUT ALL THAT YOU HAVE BROUGHT ME.
EVERY DAY I FEEL TRANSPORTED INTO YOUR BLISS, AT LEAST FOR MOMENTS, AND THE PEOPLE AROUND ME ARE A JOY TO BEHOLD. HOW CAN YOU SAY IT TAKES COURAGE? OR AM I NOT WITH YOU?

The question is from Arup.</p>


ARUP, IT TAKES COURAGE OR CRAZINESS. And you are crazy. Either crazy people can be with me, or courageous. Those who think logically, cleverly, calculatingly, they can't be with me. Courage is also an aspect of craziness. Craziness is much more than courage, but courage is also an aspect of it.


What IS courage? It means, in spite of all that your mind is saying, your logic is saying, your sanity is saying, you still go. You know the danger, you know the risk, still you go. In spite of all your knowing, you choose to go into a certain experience -- that is courage.


Courageous people are also crazy, although craziness has much more to it than courage. It is much more vital; it has more dimensions to it. And to go into the unknown, how can a man who remains calculating be with me? He will always calculate.


There are people here who are continuously calculating -- they take very calculated steps. But they will go on missing. Their steps cannot be vital enough, and their steps cannot be quantum leaps. Because they calculate, they remain within the boundaries of their knowledge -- they remain within the known. How can you calculate about the unknown? How can you think about that which you have not known yet? You have to throw all your knowledge to the winds, only then can you enter into it.


So sometimes it happens, fools arrive and the so-called wise lag behind.


In love, in prayer, in meditation, in God, a kind of crazy courage is a must. Once you have entered into that world, then no courage is needed. It is just the first triggering point. Once you have entered into the world of the divine, once you have tasted something of it, then Arup is right -- to leave it will be crazy, to leave it will need immense courage. In fact, to leave it will need great stupidity. And to go back into the world will be impossible -- it doesn't happen, it can't happen.
I have heard:


A man noticed that his car had a flat tire, so he stopped and proceeded to change the wheel. The car was parked in front of an insane asylum, and as he worked on the wheel change, one inmate watched him very closely through the fence. The motorist was careless and he accidentally dropped the wheel nuts down a nearby sewer grill. What to do?


After a while, the inmate called to the motorist and suggested using one nut from each of the other three wheels to hold on the fourth wheel.
"That's a very clever idea," said the motorist. "It makes me wonder why you are locked inside those walls."
"That's simple, too," said the inmate. "I am in here because I am crazy, not because I am stupid."


Arup, you are here because you are crazy. And now it is impossible to go away. That point has already been crossed. There is a point -- before that point, one can escape if one wants to escape. Once that point is crossed, then you are beyond recall. Then even if you go away from me, you will not be able to go away from me. Then wherever you are, you will find me within you. And wherever you live, you will live in my climate.


There comes a point of communion, a meeting of the souls. Once that has happened then the point of no return has arrived.


It is courageous, crazy -- even to think of God, to search for God, to devote and dedicate your life to God. To move into meditation is to move into nowhereness. And what is the utility of it? Nothing tangible in your hands, nothing you can show to the world that you have achieved.


The world will never know what you have achieved. It will remain an inner experience -- inexpressible, ineffable. Only YOU will know, or those who have arrived at that experience. They will be very few and far between. The whole world will laugh at you. They will think you have fallen into a trap, you are hypnotized, you are wasting your life. And the people who will say this are in the majority -- they have always been in the majority. They laughed at Christ, they laughed at Lao Tzu, they ridiculed Buddha, they were against Mahavir, they are against me.


And they will take all kinds of revenge on you; they will not allow you to live peacefully. This is very strange. Buddha was not trying to disturb anybody in any way, he could have lived peacefully with his disciples. But people wouldn't allow that.


What was Jesus doing? He could have moved with his disciples into the mountains, meditated, prayed, talked about God and the kingdom of God. What harm was he doing to people? But they were angry, they were in a rage, they were mad at him. They killed him.


Why does it happen again and again? If you are with me, the whole world is going to be against you. To be with me is risky. It is not a simple choice -- you are choosing me against the world. The world is big, the majority has all kinds of power. And they will be against you and they would like to destroy you -- although you are not doing anything to them. Why do they become so panicky?


There is a subtle phenomenon that happens. The moment anybody starts moving towards God, everybody who is living in the ordinary mundane world becomes afraid, because suddenly the presence of the seeker makes them feel that they are wasting their lives. Suddenly the joy on the faces of those who pray and meditate, suddenly the dance, the change, the transformation in people's lives, in their beings -- the laughter, the love -- and people who are running after money and power become suspicious about their own endeavours. What are they doing? Is it right?


A great doubt arises in them -- that's why they become so angry. You create doubt in their life. And they were living in such certainty, they were so absolutely certain that their life was the right life. And there comes a Christ or a Buddha, and his presence shakes them up. They can never again be so certain: doubt has entered into their being. They are angry because of that doubt.


Now, my sannyasins are not doing anything to anybody. You can't find more peaceful, more loving people than these; they are not doing any harm to anybody. But the society is going to be more and more against you. And the society is going to try in every way to prevent you. This is strange, very strange, but there is a subtle logic in it...


Just a few days ago, Maneesha asked a question: "Osho, was the idea of moving to Kutch just a device?"


It was not, Maneesha. I wanted to move to Kutch, everything was planned. But the politics of the country made it almost impossible to move. It is because of the mischief of Morarji Desai that we could not move. But WHY should the prime minister of this country be interested where I am going, where my people are going, what we are doing? We are not making any politics -- my people are the most non-political in the world; we think politics is just stupidity.


But that's why. Suspicion arises, doubt arises: if I am right, then they are all wrong. And if this idea spreads... and it can spread like fire. Truth has a potential -- even if you crucify it, it spreads.


Jesus was not destroyed by crucifixion. In fact it helped: Jesus became a great force in the world because of the crucifixion. Truth cannot be killed. But it can be delayed.


People will be against you. Hence it is courageous to be with me. And I cannot give you anything -- except nothing. That's what Ikkyu says: "I would like to give you everything, but we Buddhas don't have anything else except nothing."


I can give you only nothing -- that is my present. And you will be risking your all. Your life, your respectability, your family, your finance -- you will be risking all. Risking all for nothing? You must be crazy.

The fourth question
<p class="question">MY PARENTS KEEP ON SAYING THEY WANT ME TO LEAD A 'USEFUL' LIFE AND DO SOMETHING 'USEFUL FOR SOCIETY'. AM I? ARE SANNYASINS?</p>


BARKHA, the society wants you to be reduced to a commodity. To say it politely they say, "Do something useful.' They are saying, "Be useful. Function as a commodity so that people can use you. Be a machine, efficient, functional."


The society has been doing that, down the ages -- reducing people to utilitarian commodities. But they talk as if they are saying it out of great love. And I am not saying that your parents are cheating you -- they may be simply repeating what THEIR parents have done to them. That's how it goes on, generation after generation: the same diseases are being handed on. THEIR parents must have told them, "Be useful -- otherwise you will be a nobody, a hobo. Do something for which society pays you. The more it pays, the more your work has been useful."


The utility of a certain thing is decided by money, how much money you can get out of it. Now, how much money can you get out of meditation? You cannot get any money out of meditation; you may even lose that which you have. While you are meditating, somebody may rob you. And you cannot do both things -- meditating and keeping an eye on your money bag -- that is impossible.


Love is not a utility. You can be as loving as possible, but you will not become famous because of your love. See: people become famous because of their violence, not because of their love. How much you have the power to kill -- that makes you famous. The more power you have to kill, the more important you are. Love? Who cares about love? It is good for poets to talk about it and painters to paint about it and mystics to sing about it. But these people are not the real people -- they are not the real society, they exist on the fringe. They are always on the outer fringe. The society somehow tolerates them, that's all. But the society does not need them.


One of the most calculating thinkers of the world, Plato, decided that in his ideal society called "Republic", poets would not be allowed; there would be no place for poets. Why was this man so much against poets? The only reason is, they talk nonsense.


Poetry cannot be reduced to any utility. Sannyas is poetry -- poetry in life, poetry as living.


Your parents must be worried, I can understand. They feel for you -- although their feeling is not ENLIGHTENED, still they feel for you. They must be worried: "What is going to happen to my child? If one goes on meditating and dancing and singing, then from where is the money going to come? And who is going to support you? How will you live? Where is the security?" They must be worried about you.


I can understand their sympathy, but their sympathy is ignorant. Life can be lived in a poetic way -- SHOULD be lived in a poetic way. Life should not be reduced to any utility, and yet you can earn enough. But always remember Jesus: "Man cannot live by bread alone." You should not become just a bread-producer, a bread-earner. Bread is needed, but bread is needed only so that you can sing a song. The bread is needed for the song, the song is not needed for the bread -- the bread is a means, it is not an end.


Once your perspective changes, life will have a totally different significance. It will not have utility but it will have significance, which is far more important. You will earn -- needs are not many, needs are very few. Any intelligent person can fulfill his needs very easily. But when needs become the whole life and you are nothing but a means, then needs cannot be fulfilled -- they become neurotic.


Neurotic needs are called desires. That's what Buddha calls them -- neurotic needs. Bread is needed, but you don't need a great treasure. Clothes are needed, but one need not be mad about clothes. One is not here just to go on collecting clothes. Yes, it is beautiful sometimes to put flowers in your hair, to have a garland of flowers or just a rose in your buttonhole. But you are mad if you are running after diamonds and wasting time. Any stone, any beautiful stone from the beach will do. A seashell will do.


There is no need to put your whole energy and life into things which are really unimportant, insignificant. But that's how people are living. They live for the bank balance. Once they have started living for the bank balance they completely forget what the use of the bank balance is; they go on increasing it.


Andrew Carnegie, one of the richest men of the world, was once asked: "You could have stopped earning any time, because you always had more than you needed." He said, "Yes, that's right -- but I could not stop. I had forgotten HOW to stop."


Once you get into things it becomes almost impossible to stop. Now he knew that he had more than he needed and there was no need to go on earning. But he worked from the morning till late in the night. Even the day he died he was working -- late, up to twelve in the night he worked, and by twelve-thirty he died. And he was ill, and the doctors were saying, "You need rest."


But how can you rest? The whole life becomes money-oriented -- money means utility.


An intelligent person knows that money is not the goal. And remember, I am not against money, but money is not the goal. There are two kinds of people: those who are for money, and those who are against money. Both are unintelligent. An intelligent person is neither for nor against. He knows that money has some utility, it fulfills certain needs -- you need clothes, you need a shelter, you need food, so it is perfectly all right. But you need not make money your god.


Barkha, you say: MY PARENTS KEEP ON SAYING THEY WANT ME TO LEAD A 'USEFUL' LIFE AND DO SOMETHING 'USEFUL FOR SOCIETY'.


This is a very strange logic. This is being told to everybody.


I have heard: A mother was saying to her child, "Serve others. Service is religion. God has created you to serve others." And the child must have been an intelligent child -- he said, "Okay, so God has made me to serve others. Why has he made others? To serve me? This looks so absurd. I can serve MYself, they can serve THEMselves -- that seems so simple!"

"Do something useful for the society"? What is useful? Become a teacher in a school? Yes, that is useful -- you can destroy beautiful new children in the name of education. That is utilitarian -- you can condition them. Teachers are the vehicles for the past to destroy the future. That's what education is all about. The dead trying to control the living: that's what education is. The teacher is just a vehicle. That's why he is respected so much.


The respect has a reason in it: he is the door from which the past enters into the present. All your dead parents and their parents and their parents, they are all working through the teacher to destroy a small child. They have not lived themselves, they wasted their life -- now they don't want this child to live. They want to also mould this child into a certain pattern. They would like him to become a clerk, then it is useful for the society. Or they would like the child to become a soldier, then it is useful for the society. Or they would like the child to become an atomic physicist, then it is useful for the society.


Create war, it is useful. Exploit people, it is useful Destroy people, it is useful.


Your parents must love you, that's why they are worried. Feel thankful for their love, but beware: their love is ignorant. It has no light in it, it is dark, it is dangerous. Feel grateful that they think of you, but don't be trapped by them.


What utility has a rose-flower? And what utility have these birds who are singing? this cuckoo far away, calling you -- what utility? What utility do stars have? and the mountains? and the rivers?


Existence is a celebration. It is not a marketplace, it is a festival, it is a carnival of joy. It is dance, it is song, it is love. It has no utility. It is not a means to any other end, it is an end unto itself.


That's what I teach you: Be joyous, be a celebrant. Love life utterly, live life utterly. And of course that is taken for granted that you will be intelligent enough to provide bread and butter for yourself. And that is not such a big problem -- it can be very easily arranged, with very little effort. One need not waste one's whole life for it.


So, Barkha, make your parents understand what is happening here to you. My people are not going to be beggars; I am against begging. The new commune is not going to beg for anything -- it will be a productive commune, it will itself produce whatsoever it needs. But it will not reduce people to utilities. All that is done is done only so that you can celebrate, so that you can sing, so that you can dance.


Dance is the goal. Everything else has to be just a part. And if YOU are joyous, you help people to be joyous. If you can laugh, you create ripples of laughter in existence. That is the real service. I don't think that if you become a soldier or you go and become part of an army, you are serving society. You are dangerous -- you are an enemy, you are destructive. You are in the service of death, not in the service of life. If you are creating atom bombs, you are not serving anyone.


Do you know? Before Albert Einstein died, somebody asked him, "If another chance is given to you and God is willing for you to come back to the earth, what would you like to become?" He opened his eyes, and said, "One thing is certain -- never again a physicist, never again a scientist! I would rather become a plumber."


There is a reason, great experience in it, great repentance in it. Albert Einstein knows perfectly well that he has wasted his life and he has been the cause of Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- that he has been even more dangerous to humanity than Adolf Hitler. There is a possibility that any day the whole world may disappear and the reason and the cause will be Albert Einstein. But when he was discovering atomic energy he thought he was being of great use to the society.


Please avoid being so useful to the society. Plant a rosebush -- enough of the Hiroshimas and Nagasakis. Water a small plant: let there be a little more green in the world, a little more red in the world, a little more gold in the world. Play on a guitar: let there be a little more music in the world, a little more harmony in the world. Love. Love for love's sake.

The fifth question
<p class="question">I HAVE BEGUN TO FEEL THAT THERE IS ANOTHER WAY TO MISS THE POINT: RATHER THAN BEING TOO SERIOUS (WHICH I CAREFULLY AVOID) I HAVE BECOME TOO SILLY. I DECIDED THAT I AM TOO INTELLIGENT TO TAKE LIFE SERIOUSLY, SO I MOVED TO THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE PENDULUM.
I HAD BEEN FEELING QUITE COMFORTABLE AND DIFFERENT IN THAT SPACE, BUT NOW I'M FEELING VERY VERY CONFUSED. THE ONLY THING I CAN SEE IS THAT I AM STILL MISSING THE POINT.
PLEASE HELP ME.</p>


SARJANO, THAT'S HOW THE MIND FUNCTIONS -- it moves from one extreme to another. That is the mind's way to avoid change; that is the mind's trickery, deception. And it is really a very subtle deception, because it seems such a great change. When you move from one polarity to another, naturally it seems such a great change. What change can be more great than this?


You were eating too much, and then you start fasting. Naturally you think this is a great change. But the mind has deceived you. Whether you eat more or you fast, you remain obsessed with eating. You have not changed. Your concentration is still on food -- you are still thinking of food, fantasizing about food. On the surface you have moved so much, it seems a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn: you were eating too much and now you are fasting. You were running after women continuously, chasing -- and now whenever a woman passes by, you simply close your eyes and say, "Hare Ram, Hare Ram..." You think you have changed! You are the same, you have just moved to the opposite polarity. The mind has deceived you -- you are still obsessed by women, you are still thinking of the woman, you are obsessed.


But this has been happening -- and not only with you, Sarjano. Millions have been deceived by this cleverness of the mind. People move to the monasteries... There are monasteries where no woman has ever been allowed in, for thousands of years -- not even a small girl has ever been allowed in. But the people who live in these monasteries continuously think of women and nothing else. They can't think of anything else; their whole mind becomes possessed by the thought of feminine energy. And these are the people who think that they have changed. They have not changed.


Mind's greatest and most clever trick is, when you want to change, when you insist for change, it goes from one polarity to another. It says, "Look -- what more do you want? I give you all."


Sarjano is an intellectual author. He must have been very serious, authors are serious people. Then, listening to me, trying to understand me, coming closer to me -- and he is in love with me -- something started happening. He had a small satori experience, and that day he decided, "No more seriousness." He moved to the opposite pole, he became silly. He started writing very silly letters to me. And he must have been thinking that he is turning Zen...


Then when I said that this is stupid, naturally he became confused. Now where to go? Seriousness was wrong, now silliness is wrong -- now where to go? I have closed both the doors. That is one of the devices. I would like you to be exactly in the middle -- neither serious nor silly, neither for money nor against money, neither obsessed with eating nor obsessed with fasting. I would like you to be just in the middle.


Buddha has called his way 'the middle path' -- MAJJHIM NIKAYA. And that is one of the most important things to be understood: when you are exactly in the middle, you transcend the polarity. The exact middle is the transcendence point. Then you are no more serious and no more silly, then you are simply conscious. Then all modes disappear, patterns disappear; then one is simply aware.


I can understand your confusion, Sarjano. First I closed one door, the door of seriousness. You immediately turned to another door, the door of silliness. Now I have closed that door too. Naturally you are feeling suffocated -- where to go? You cannot go to the first, you cannot go to the second, and there is no other door. And I know it, there is no other door.


Now be just exactly in the middle. And if you can come to that balance which I mean by saying 'exactly the middle' you will be surprised: all doors disappear, you are transported into another world. You are no more in the mind. Mind means excess, mind means exaggeration.
I have heard:


An old maid married a farmer. The first night produced no sexual activity, and none occurred for over a year.


One day as she was watching the farmer plowing in a distant field, he threw down the plow and came running into the house. He rushed up to her, tore off her clothes, and laid her right on the living-room floor.


Things seemed promising at that point, but about a year went by with no more sex. Again, one day as she was watching him with the plowing, he threw down the plow and came running towards the house.


Rather than have all her clothes torn off again, she undressed and found a comfortable place to lie down on the floor.


The farmer burst in, took one look at her and shouted, "Get up, you sex fiend, the barn is on fire!"


These people who live in polarities... One year fasting, and then this mad love-making. One year of no anger, and then a murder. One year of living in celibacy, and then you are BOUND to fall into indulgence. And the indulgence will come like a revenge -- it can't be natural. Your life will move like a pendulum, you will always remain torn apart. And then indulgence will again take you into celibacy -- and it is a vicious circle, it can go on for ever.


You have dropped seriousness, there is no need to choose silliness. That is the same thing! Now you are just standing on your head.


And Zen can give that feeling to many people. There is a kind of Zen becoming prevalent in the West which is not real Zen, it is just another extreme. People enjoy it just because of the extremity of it.


For example, you have always heard that Jesus is God and Jesus has to be worshipped. And Jesus has not to be even thought of as human, he is born of a virgin. He lived a superhuman life -- all those miracles are just to prove that. For twenty centuries, the whole effort of Christian theology has been this, to prove that Jesus is divine, is not human.


People have become tired in the West -- tired of Jesus, tired of the Virgin Mary, tired of the miracles, tired of this superhuman bombastic exaggeration. Then suddenly they come across Zen statements. A master says, "If you meet Buddha on the way, kill him immediately." This looks beautiful, far-out. That's what people are really hankering to do. Enough! -- twenty centuries of worship, one is fed up. One would LIKE to kill Jesus.


That's what Friedrich Nietzsche did when he declared, "God is dead." What he was saying was, "Enough! We have heard about you enough. Now it is time: we want to get rid of you."


So when you come across Zen statements like "If you meet the Buddha on the way, kill him immediately" it is such a relief. But you don't know who said this. The man who said this had been worshipping Buddha for thirty years. And the day he said it, that day he had also worshipped in the morning. And after he said it, by the evening he was worshipping again. The disciples who had heard him say this could not believe it -- and when they saw him worshipping again they asked, "What are you doing? Just today you said, 'If you meet Buddha on the way, kill him.' Now why are you worshipping?"


And he said, "Because I love him. And because he even ALLOWS himself to be killed, my love grows more. He does not want me to cling to him, because that will become a barrier. He wants me to drop him too. Hence my gratitude is even more.


But if you just see the statement taken out of its context, it becomes silly. You hear of a Zen master just hitting a disciple on the head with his staff and a great satori happens. Now these stories are becoming very prevalent in the West. And people think this is beautiful -- just a single hit. But you don't know; the man had been meditating for twenty-six years. That was the last thing, he was ready for it. Those hits from the master have to be DESERVED -- one has to be worthy of them, one has to be capable of receiving them.


Zen masters use words for Buddha which no other tradition has ever used. And that is possible only because their love is tremendous.


It is said that when Buddha was born he declared: "There is no one higher than me, above or below." And Ikkyu is reported to have said, "If I had been there I would have killed this guy immediately and thrown him to the dogs."


And Ikkyu was worshipping Buddha, morning and evening, with tears in his eyes -- dancing around his statue, bringing flowers for him. If you don't know Ikkyu's whole context you will miss the point. He is saying it out of great love -- his love is so great that it can be said. He is not offending Buddha. Buddha will understand -- he will smile, he will know.


But Ikkyu is not being silly. He is neither serious nor silly, he is simply spontaneous. When he feels like worshipping he worships. When he feels like throwing him out he throws him out too...


He used to live in a hut, and there was no Buddha statue there. A few soldiers were passing by and they stayed the night in Ikkyu's hut. And they saw the man, and the beauty of the man -- he was a Buddha himself.


And they said, "You look so much like a Buddha, and yet you don't have a Buddha statue here? We have a picture -- we will present it to you." But Ikkyu said, "Take your picture with you, because the place is already much too crowded. Don't you see? It is such a small hut, we both cannot live here! Only one can live here."


But they could not understand. They laughed, and they still said, "You keep this picture, this will not take much space." So he kept it. He hung the picture on a pole and told Buddha, "Now be here. And don't ask for any reverence from me and don't ask for any worship. I am not going to take care of you, and I am not asking any favours from you! This place is already much too crowded, and you know it! But if you insist, be here."


And next morning, he is worshipping. Tears in his eyes...


Now, to understand this man is difficult, difficult because we don't know the spontaneity. That moment was THAT moment, this moment is this moment. And he is so one with Buddha, he can throw all formalities to the wind.


But if you throw the formalities to the wind -- knowingly, with effort, deliberately, just so that you don't look serious -- you have missed the point.


Now, Sarjano, you have tried to be serious, you have tried to be silly. Please don't try anything any more: just be. Just be natural, as you are. And sometimes you will be silly and sometimes you will be serious -- it is okay. Just be simple, don't try to be anything in particular. If you try to be anything in particular you will go on missing the point. If you don't try to be anything in particular, you have got it.

The sixth question
<p class="question">WHAT IS AWARENESS?

A story:</p>


GENERAL GEORGES METAXAS, the late dictator of Greece, was invited to pilot a new flying boat while he was inspecting a Mediterranean air base. He flew it himself, and all went fine until the commander who was accompanying him observed that he was about to make a landing on the air dome.
"Excuse me, General, but as this is a flying boat, wouldn't it be better to come down on the ocean?"
"Oh, of course, Commander, I don't know what I was thinking of!" Metaxas recollected himself and made a successful landing on the water. As he got up from the controls, he said, "Commander, I certainly appreciate the tact you used saving me from that incredible blunder I almost made."


Saying that, he opened the door and stepped out into the sea.

The seventh question
<p class="question">PLEASE HELP ME TO UNDERSTAND WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THIS RELATIONSHIP. I AM SO ATTACHED AND SO RESISTING, SO ECSTATIC AND SO WRETCHED AND HIDDEN. I SEE NO WAY BEYOND THE CONTRADICTIONS. YOUR GUIDANCES TO ME REMAIN A SEEMINGLY IMPOSSIBLE MYSTERY. OSHO, WHAT IS IT, A DEPTH I'M NOT FALLING IN?
P. S. IS A RELATIONSHIP A SORT OF KOAN?

The question is from Madhuri.</p>


YES, MADHURI, THE BEST KOAN THERE IS IS LOVE, is relationship. That's how it is being used here. A relationship is a puzzle with no clue to it. Howsoever you try to manage it, you will never be able to manage it. Nobody has ever been able to manage it. It is made in such a way that it simply remains puzzling. The more you try to demystify it, the more mysterious it becomes. The more you try to understand it, the more elusive it is.


It is a greater koan than any koan that Zen masters give to their disciples, because their koans are meditative -- one is alone. When I give you the koan of relationship it is far more complicated, because you are two -- differently made, differently conditioned, polar opposites to each other, pulling in different directions, manipulating each other, trying to possess, dominate... there are a thousand and one problems.


While meditating, the only problem is how to be silent, how not to be caught in thoughts. In relationship there are a thousand and one problems. If you are silent, there is a problem. Just sit silently by the side of your wife and you will see -- she will immediately jump upon you: "Why are you silent? What do you mean?" Or speak, and you will be in trouble -- whatsoever you say, you are always misunderstood.


No relationship can ever come to a point where it is not a problem. Or if sometimes you see a relationship coming to a point where it is no more a problem, that simply means it is not a relationship any more. The relationship has disappeared -- the fighters are tired, they have started accepting things as they are. They are bored; they don't want to fight any more. They have accepted it, they don't want to improve upon it.


Or, in the past, people tried to create a kind of harmony forcibly. That's why, down the ages, women were repressed -- that was one way of sorting things out. Just force the woman to follow the man, then there is no problem. But it is not a relationship either. When the woman is no more an independent person the problem disappears. But the woman has also disappeared. Then she is just a thing to be used; then there is no joy, and the man starts looking for some other woman.


If you ever come across a happy marriage, don't trust it on the surface. Just go a little deeper and you will be surprised. I have heard about one happy marriage...


A hillbilly farmer decided it was time to get married, so he saddled his mule and set off for the city to find a wife. In time, he met a woman and they were married. So they both climbed up on the mule and started back for the farm. After a while, the mule balked and refused to move. The farmer got down, found a big stick, and beat the mule until it again began to move.
"That's once," the farmer said.


A few miles later, the mule balked again, and the entire scene was repeated. After the beating, when the mule was moving again, the farmer said, "That's twice."


A few miles later, the mule balked for a third time. The farmer got down, got his wife down, and then took out a pistol and shot the mule in the eye, killing it instantly.
"That was a stupid thing to do!" the wife shouted. "That was a valuable animal and just because he annoyed you, you killed him! That was stupid, criminal..." and she went on like this for some time. As she stopped for breath, the farmer said, "That's once."


And it is said, after that they lived for ever in married happiness.


That is one way of solving things, that's how it has been done in the past. In the future, the reverse is going to be tried -- the husband has to follow the wife. But it is the same thing.


A relationship is a koan. And unless you have solved a more fundamental thing about yourself, you cannot solve it. The problem of love can be solved only when the problem of meditation has been solved, not before it. Because it is really two non-meditative persons who are creating the problem. Two persons who are in confusion, who don't know who they are -- naturally they multiply each other's confusion, they magnify it.


Unless meditation is achieved, love remains a misery. Once you have learnt how to live alone, once you have learnt how to enjoy your simple existence, for no reason at all, then there is a possibility of solving the second, more complicated problem of two persons being together. Only two meditators can live in love -- and then love will not be a koan. But then it will not be a relationship either, in the sense that you understand it. It will be simply a state of love, not a state of relationship.


So, Madhuri, I understand your trouble. But I tell people to go into these troubles because these troubles will make you aware of the fundamental problem, that you, deep inside your being, are a riddle. And the other simply is a mirror. It is difficult to know your own troubles directly, it is very easy to know them in a relationship. A mirror becomes available: you can see your face in the mirror, and the other can see his face in your mirror. And both are angry, because both see ugly faces. And naturally both shout at each other, because their natural logic is, "It is YOU, this mirror, which is making me look so ugly. Otherwise I am such a beautiful person."


That's the problem that lovers go on trying to solve, and cannot solve. What they are saying again and again is this: "I am such a beautiful person, but you make me look so ugly."


Nobody is making you look ugly -- you ARE ugly. Sorry, but that's how it is. Be thankful to the other, be grateful to the other, because he helps you to see your face. Don't be angry.


And go deeper into yourself, go deeper into meditation. But what happens is that whenever a person is in love he forgets all about meditation. I go on looking at you -- whenever I see a few persons missing, I know what has happened to them. Love has happened to them. Now they don't think that they are needed here. They will come only when love creates much trouble and it becomes impossible for them to solve it. Then they will come and ask, "Osho, what to do?"


When you are in love, don't forget meditation. Love is not going to solve anything. Love is only going to show you who you are, where you are. And it is good that love makes you alert -- alert of the whole confusion and the chaos within you. Now is the time to meditate! If love and meditation go together, you will have both the wings, you will have a balance.


And the vice versa also happens. Whenever a person starts moving deep in meditation, he starts avoiding love, because he thinks if he goes into love his meditation will be disturbed. That too is wrong. Meditation will not be disturbed, meditation will be helped. Why will it be helped? Because love will go on showing you where there are still problems, where they are. Without love, you will become unconscious of your problems. But becoming unconscious does not mean that you have solved them. If there is no mirror, that does not mean that you don't have any face.


Love and meditation should go hand in hand. That is one of the most essential messages that I would like to share with you: Love and meditation should go hand in hand. Love and meditate, meditate and love -- and slowly slowly you will see a new harmony arising in you. Only that harmony will make you contented.

The last question
<p class="question">IS PSYCHOLOGY OF ANY USE, OR NOT?</p>


IT DEPENDS. If you really want to change, it is of no use. If you only want to pretend that you are changing, then it is of much use. If you only want to play around with the game of change, then it is of much use. Then you can go on unearthing your dreams, desires, associations, and you can go into many many kinds of therapies -- and now there are many available in the world. In fact life is too short to finish all the therapies...


You can go shopping -- many alternatives are available. If you become tired of Freud then you can go to Jung, if you become tired of Jung then you can go to Adler -- and so on and so forth. If you become tired of individual therapies then you can go to group therapies. But this is just playing the game of transformation. You are not really into it, it is a facade.


If you are REALLY interested in transforming yourself, then do what Somendra did in his dream: wake up. There is no need to go on analyzing the dream.
Now if you look at Somendra's question...

LAST NIGHT IN A DREAM I FOUND MYSELF ON A GIRDER HIGH IN THE AIR, MOVING TOWARDS SOME DOOR OF SAFETY.


You can go to a psychoanalyst and he will start analyzing each word. What is the meaning of the symbol, girder, high in the air? It is phallic.


Now you will be in trouble. Now he has produced something, an idea in your mind -- now you will start thinking, "Phallic...?" He has turned, twisted, the dream into a sexual dream. It has nothing of sexuality in it, it is a simple spiritual dream. But psychology does not believe in spirituality, it only believes in sex. Everything has to be reduced to sex.

LAST NIGHT IN A DREAM I FOUND MYSELF ON A GIRDER HIGH IN THE AIR...


High in the air? Go to the Adlerians and they will say, "You must be suffering from an inferiority complex, Somendra. People who suffer from an inferiority complex, they always think of flying high, going high. That is a kind of substitution."


Now the analyst has opened another track. Now you will start becoming worried about the inferiority complex: "How to drop the inferiority complex?"

LAST NIGHT IN A DREAM I FOUND MYSELF ON A GIRDER HIGH IN THE AIR, MOVING TOWARDS SOME DOOR OF SAFETY.


Door of safety? Then you must be feeling very insecure. Now, these are such obvious explanations. And if you go to some outlandish psychotherapist he may find some outlandish ideas...

THEN MY CLOTHES BEGAN TO GET CAUGHT ON SPLINTERS...


He may suggest, "Always dream in the nude -- otherwise you may get into trouble."


And there can be a thousand and one explanations, all futile. The simple thing is that a dream is a dream. And the most important thing is to know that you can always wake up, that at any moment you can disconnect yourself from the dream.


THIS very moment, you can disconnect yourself from the dream. And the whole dream disappears, girder and all. All the interpretations are just imaginary. They can be made to look very valid; great arguments have been proposed for them and against them. And people are not even becoming aware that when you go to one psychoanalyst he gives one explanation -- go to another, he gives another; go to a third, he gives another. And ALL explanations seem to be right. They are all rationalizations. And they don't help at all, they don't transform your being.
I have heard:


A great psychologist told his assistant that today three applicants were coming in to be interviewed for the secretarial opening, and to please pay close attention to what was going on -- this was to be an experiment in psychological insight.


The first woman came into the office and provided the usual information -- name, experience, etcetera. Then the psychologist nudged his assistant for attention and asked her what two and two was. Her reply was, "Well, if you add them together, the answer is four." She was asked to wait while the other applicants were interviewed.


The second woman was brought in. After all the information was given, the psychologist again nudged his assistant and asked her what two and two was. Her reply was, "If you write them two two, one behind the other, the answer is twenty-two." She was asked to wait outside.


Then the third woman was brought in. After all the preliminaries, the assistant was again nudged for attention, and again the same question was asked about two and two. "Well," she replied, "if you add them, the answer is four, but if you write them one behind the other, the answer is twenty-two."


Asking her to wait also, the psychologist asked the assistant if he understood what had been going on. (This is psychology!) The assistant said he understood everything except the two-and-two question.
"That simple question, that one simple question, lends much psychological insight into each of them," replied the great man. "The first woman was very positive. Two and two are certainly four. The second one was more imaginative. A two written after a two is certainly twenty-two. And finally, the third woman answered both ways, so she is positive WITH imagination."
"Okay," said the assistant. "I can understand that -- but which one would you pick?"
"That's simple," said the boss. "The one with the big tits, of course."


Psychology seems to lead nowhere. It just goes round and round with great explanations, with great rationalizations, and finally you are the same.

And the really really last question
<p class="question">WHAT IS YOUR MESSAGE IN SHORT?</p>


Take it easy.
		

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