The Art of Dying

[Aianawa]

Tisa great arts indeed, a joy to behold to experience is deaths, yesterday I was in court for the sentencing of the person who killed my oldest son, has taken 15 moonths to complete, I watched my ex wife giving her victum impact statement and I cried as the other statements were read by differing people, I did not do one as I am not a victum of perfection nor the young man in court, he was in state care from a toddler to 16then in jail much after, has 3 wee daughters, I watched him dying as the emotions wrenched the room n ex wife also dying, thankfully all felt better including myself once it was all finally over, though a gut wrenching episode in my life and I aged through the process ( dying ), the ART for me was the experience, the way, know thyself I wish for all, as this would have killed me without it. Time factored by energy creats ART.

One night the poet, Awhadi of Kerman (a very great Muslim poet) was sitting on his porch bent over a vessel. Shams-e-Tabrizi, a great Sufi mystic, happened to pass by.

Shams-e-Tabrizi looked at the poet, at what he was doing. He asked the poet, 'What are you doing?'
The poet said, 'Contemplating the moon in a bowl of water.'

Shams-e-Tabrizi started laughing, with an uproarious laughter, a mad laughter. The poet started feeling uncomfortable; a crowd gathered. And the poet said, 'What is the matter? Why are you laughing so much? Why are you ridiculing me?'

Shams-e-Tabrizi said, 'Unless you have broken your neck, why don't you look directly at the moon in the sky?'

The moon is there, the full moon is there, and this poet was sitting with a bowl of water and looking into the bowl of water at the reflection of the moon.

Seeking truth in scriptures, seeking truth in philosophies, is looking at the reflection. If you ask somebody else how you should live your life, you are asking for misguidance, because that man can only talk about his own life.

And never, never, are two lives the same. Whatsoever he can say or impart to you will be about his own life -- and that too only if he has lived. He may have asked somebody else, he may have followed somebody else, he may have been an imitator himself. Then it is a reflection of a reflection. And centuries pass and people go on reflecting the reflection of the reflection of the reflection -- and the real moon is always there in the sky waiting for you. It is your moon, it is your sky, look directly. Be immediate about it. Why borrow my eyes or anybody else's eyes?

You have been given eyes, beautiful eyes, to see, and to see directly. Why borrow understanding from anybody? Remember, it may be understanding to me, but the moment you borrow it, it becomes knowledge to you -- it is no more understanding. Understanding is only that which has been experienced by the person himself. It may be understanding for me, if I have looked at the moon, but the moment I say it to you it becomes knowledge, it is no longer understanding.

Then it is just verbal, then it is just linguistic. And language is a lie.

Let me tell you an anecdote...

A chicken farmer, dissatisfied with the productivity of his flock, decided to use a bit of psychology on his hens.

Accordingly he purchased a gay-colored, talking parrot and placed him in the barnyard. Sure enough, the hens took to the handsome stranger immediately, pointed out the best tidbits for him to eat with joyous clucks, and generally followed him around like a bevy of teen-age girls following a new singing star sensation.

To the delight of the farmer even their egg-laying capacities improved.

The barnyard rooster, naturally jealous of being ignored by his harem, set upon the attractive interloper, assailed him with beak and claws, pulling out one green or red feather after the other. Whereupon the intimidated parrot cried out in trepidation, 'Desist sir! I beg of you, desist! After all, I am only here in the capacity of a language professor!'

Many people live their life as language professors.

That is the falsest kind of life. Reality needs no language, it is available to you on a non-verbal level. The moon is there; it needs no bowl and no water, it needs no other medium. You have just to look at it; it is a non-verbal communication. The whole of life is available -- you just have to learn how to communicate with it non-verbally.

That's what meditation is all about -- to be in a space where language does not interfere, where learned concepts don't come in between you and the real.

When you love a woman don't be bothered about what others have said about love, because that is going to be an interference. You love a woman, the love is there, forget all that you have learned about love. Forget all Kinseys, forget all Masters and Johnsons, forget all Freuds and Jungs. Please don't become a language professor. Just love the woman and let love be there, and let love lead you and guide you into its innermost secrets, into its mysteries. Then you will be able to know what love is.

And what others say about meditation is meaningless. Once I came upon a book written by a Jaina saint about meditation. It was really beautiful but there were just a few places by which I could see that the man had never meditated himself -- otherwise those places could not be there. But they were very few and far between. The book on the whole, almost ninety-nine per cent, was perfect. I loved the book.

Then I forgot about it. For ten years I was wandering around the country. Once in a village of Rajasthan, that saint came to meet me. His name sounded familiar, and suddenly I remembered the book. And I asked the saint why he had come to me. He said, 'I have come to you to know what meditation is.' I said, 'I remember your book. I remember it very well, because it really impressed me. Except for a few defects which showed that you have never meditated, the book was perfectly right -- ninety-nine percent right. And now you come here to learn about meditation. Have you never meditated?'

He looked a little embarrassed because his disciples were also there. I said, 'Be frank.
Because if you say you know meditation, then I am not going to talk about it. Then finished! You know. There is no need. If you say to me frankly -- at least be true once -- if you say you have never meditated, only then can I help you towards meditation.' It was a bargain, so he had to confess. He said, 'Yes, I have never said it to anybody. I have read many books about meditation, all the old scriptures. And I have been teaching people, that's why I feel embarrassed before my disciples. I have been teaching meditation to thousands, and I have written books about it, but I have never meditated.'

You can write books about meditation and never come across the space that meditation is. You can become very efficient in verbalizing, you can become very clever in abstraction, in intellectual argumentativeness, and you can forget completely that all the time that you have been involved in these intellectual activities has been a sheer wastage.

I asked the old man, 'How long have you been interested in meditation?' He said, 'My whole life.' He was almost seventy. He said, 'When I was twenty I took sannyas, I became a Jaina monk, and those fifty years since then I have been reading and reading and thinking about meditation.' Fifty years of thinking and reading and writing about meditation, even guiding people into meditation, and he has not even tasted once what meditation is!

But this is the case with millions of people. They talk about love, they know all the poetries about love, but they have never loved. Or even if they thought they were in love, they were never in love. That too was a 'heady' thing, it was not of the heart. People live and go on missing life. It needs courage. It needs courage to be realistic, it needs courage to move with life wherever it leads, because the paths are uncharted, there exists no map.

One has to go into the unknown.

Life can be understood only if you are ready to go into the unknown. If you cling to the known, you cling to the mind, and the mind is not life. Life is non-mental, non-intellectual, because life is total. Your totality has to be involved in it, you cannot just think about it. Thinking about life is not life. beware of this 'about-ism'. One goes on thinking about and about: there are people who think about God, there are people who think about life, there are people who think about love. There are people who think about this and that.

Mulla Nasrudin became very old and he went to his doctor. He was looking very weak so the doctor said, 'I can say only one thing. You will have to cut your love-life to half.'

The Mulla said, 'Okay. Which half? Talking about it or thinking about it?'

That's all. Don't become a language professor, don't become a parrot. Parrots are language professors. They live in words, concepts, theories, theologies, and life goes on passing, slipping out of their hands. Then one day suddenly they become afraid of death.

When a person is afraid of death, know well that that person has missed life. If he has not missed life there cannot be any fear of death. If a person has lived life, he will be ready to live death also.

The Art of Dying

[Aragorn]

[...] yesterday I was in court for the sentencing of the person who killed my oldest son [...]

Forgive my confusion, Brother, but I was under the impression that your son's death was an accident. Are you saying it was not so, and that there was foul play involved?

[turiya]

Tisa great arts indeed, a joy to behold to experience is deaths, yesterday I was in court for the sentencing of the person who killed my oldest son, has taken 15 moonths to complete, I watched my ex wife giving her victum impact statement and I cried as the other statements were read by differing people, I did not do one as I am not a victum of perfection nor the young man in court, he was in state care from a toddler to 16then in jail much after, has 3 wee daughters, I watched him dying as the emotions wrenched the room n ex wife also dying, thankfully all felt better including myself once it was all finally over, though a gut wrenching episode in my life and I aged through the process ( dying ), the ART for me was the experience, the way, know thyself I wish for all, as this would have killed me without it. Time factored by energy creats ART.

Death is not someplace far away in the future that only happens to others. It is always in this here-now. As, Life is always here-now. Die to the past, to Live in this moment. It is ever ongoing process.

[Aianawa]

Indeed death refines or defines or both as a process Turiya.

Hi Aragorn, long story, short >, he met him recently as such and was helping him, he was over the limit Alchohole wise and stole a car, my son was unaware this and left his car at others place and got in others car, he told police my son was driving, was impossible as he was wedged in passenger door n took lot of work to release body, when caught in lie he said there was others in car n they were driving etc etc blah blah, it was bad choices all round spose.

[Aianawa]

He got five years plus, I will be visiting him in the new year, my son saw something in him and I work with many that are in a similar process to the driver at a younger age, for now I will ho opono pono away.

For me life wise, this is mosly about the clearing and transmutation of Maldek n Mars N Earth N all, we are hugely luckey in our times.

[Elen]

He got five years plus, I will be visiting him in the new year, my son saw something in him and I work with many that are in a similar process to the driver at a younger age, for now I will ho opono pono away.

For me life wise, this is mosly about the clearing and transmutation of Maldek n Mars N Earth N all, we are hugely luckey in our times.

Great approach Vern!

[turiya]

Possess Nothing...

In that tremendous passion and intensity of life and death, you transcend duality, you transcend the dichotomy, you come to the One. That One is really the truth. You can call it God, you can call it life, you can call it truth, samadhi, ecstasy, or whatsoever you choose.

The Art of Dying

Discourse #2

The first question:

Question 1
HOW CAN WE PREPARE OURSELVES FOR DEATH?

DON'T accumulate anything whatever: power, money, prestige, virtue, knowledge, even the so-called spiritual experiences. Don't accumulate. If you don't accumulate you are ready to die any moment, because you have nothing to lose. The fear of death is not really fear of death; the fear of death comes out of the accumulations of life. Then you have too much to lose so you cling to it. That is the meaning of Jesus' saying:

Blessed are the poor in spirit.

I don't mean become a beggar, and I don't mean renounce the world. I mean be in the world but don't be of the world. Don't accumulate inside, be poor in spirit. Never possess anything -- and then you are ready to die. Possessiveness is the problem, not life itself.

The more you possess, the more you are afraid to lose. If you don't possess anything, if your purity, if your spirit is uncontaminated by anything, if you are simply there alone, you can disappear any moment; whenever death knocks on the door it will find you ready. You are not losing anything. By going with death you are not a loser. You may be moving into a new experience.

And when I say don't accumulate, I mean it as an absolute imperative. I'm not saying don't accumulate things of this world but go on accumulating virtue, knowledge, and so-called spiritual experiences, visions -- no. I am talking in absolute terms: don't accumulate.

There are people, particularly in the East, who teach renunciation. They say, 'Don't accumulate anything in this world because it will be taken away from you when death comes.'

These people seem to be basically more greedy than the ordinary worldly people. Their logic is: don't accumulate in this world because death will take it away, so accumulate something that death cannot take away from you -- accumulate virtue, punya; accumulate character, morality, knowledge; accumulate experiences, spiritual experiences, experiences of kundalini, meditation, this and that; accumulate something that death cannot take away from you.

But if you accumulate, with that accumulation comes fear. Each accumulation brings fear in the same proportion...then you are afraid. Don't accumulate and fear disappears. I don't teach you renunciation in the old sense; my sannyas is an absolutely new concept. It teaches you to be in the world and yet to be not of it. Then you are always ready.

I have heard about a great Sufi mystic, Abraham Adam. Once he was the Emperor of Bokhara, then he left everything and became a Sufi beggar. When he was staying with another Sufi mystic he was puzzled because every day the man was continuously complaining of his poverty.

Abraham Adam said to him, 'The way you abuse it, it may be that you have bought your poverty cheaply.'
'How stupid you must be!' the man retorted, not knowing to whom he was talking, not knowing that Abraham was once the
emperor. He said, 'How stupid you must be to think that one buys poverty.'

Abraham replied, 'In my case, I paid my kingdom for it. I would even give away a hundred worlds for a single moment of it, for every day its value becomes more and more to me. No wonder then that I give thanks for it while you lament it.'

The purity of the spirit is the real poverty. The word 'sufi' comes from an Arabic word 'safa'. Safa means purity. Sufi means one who is pure in the heart.

And what is purity? Don't misunderstand me, purity has nothing to do with morality.

Don't interpret it in a moralistic way. Purity has nothing to do with Puritans. Purity simply means an uncontaminated state of mind, where only your consciousness is and nothing else. Nothing else really enters into your consciousness, but if you hanker to possess, that hankering contaminates you. Gold cannot enter into your consciousness.

There is no way. How can you take gold into your being? There is no way. Money cannot enter into you r consciousness. But if you want to possess, that possessiveness can enter into your consciousness. Then you become impure. If you don't want to possess anything, you become fearless. Then even death is a beautiful experience to pass through.

A man who is really spiritual has tremendous experiences but he never accumulates them.

Once they have happened he forgets about them. He never remembers, he never projects them into the future. He never says that they should be repeated or that they should happen again to him. He never prays for them. Once they have happened they have happened. Finished! He is finished with them and he moves away from them. He is always available for the new, he never carries the old.

And if you don't carry the old you will find life absolutely new, incredibly, unbelievably new at each step. Life is new, only the mind is old; and if you look through the mind, life also looks like a repetition, a boring thing. If you don't look through the mind.... Mind means your past, mind means the accumulated experiences, knowledge and everything.

Mind means that through which you have passed, but on to which you are still hanging.

Mind is a hang-over, dust from the past covering your mirror-like consciousness. Then when you look through it everything becomes distorted. Mind is the faculty of distortion.

If you don't look through the mind you will know that life is eternal. Only mind dies -- without mind you are deathless. Without mind nothing has ever died; life goes on and on and on forever. It has no beginning and no end.

Accumulate, then you have a beginning, and then you will have an end.

How to prepare yourself for death.... When I say 'how to prepare for death', I don't mean preparing for the death that will come in the end -- that is very far away. If you prepare for it you will be preparing for the future and again the mind will come in. No, when I say prepare for death, I don't mean the death that will come finally, I mean the death that visits you every moment with each exhalation. Accept this death each moment and you will be ready for the final death when it comes.

Start dying each moment to the past. Clean yourself of the past each moment. Die to the known so that you become available to the unknown.

With dying and being reborn each moment you will be able to live life and you will be able to live death also.

And that's what spirituality is really all about: to live death intensely, to live life intensely; to live both so passionately that nothing is left behind unlived, not even death.

If you live life and death totally, you transcend.

In that tremendous passion and intensity of life and death, you transcend duality, you transcend the dichotomy, you come to the One. That One is really the truth. You can call it God, you can call it life, you can call it truth, samadhi, ecstasy, or whatsoever you choose.

The Art of Dying, Chapter 2

[turiya]

Confusion is my method....

Question 2

AT TIMES YOU SEEM TO INTEND TO CONFUSE US ABOUT LOVE AND MEDITATION. SOMETIMES YOU STRESS THE ULTIMATE FUTILITY OF LOVE BUT ON OTHER OCCASIONS YOU PRONOUNCE MEDITATION AS BEING USELESS. AND SOMETIMES YOU SAY BOTH LOVE AND MEDITATION ARE FUNDAMENTAL PATHS OF ENLIGHTENMENT.

The questioner says, 'At times you seem to intend to confuse us'. No, you have not listened to me well. I am always confusing, not only at times. Confusion is my method.

What I am trying to do by confusing you is to uproot you from your mind. I would not like you to have any roots in the mind in the name of love or in the name of meditation or in the name of God. Your mind is very cunning. It can thrive on anything; on meditation, on love, it can thrive. The moment I see that your mind is thriving on anything, I immediately have to uproot you from it. My whole effort is to create a no-mind state in you. I am not here to convince you about anything.

I am not here to give you a dogma, a creed to live by. I am here to take all creeds away from you because only then will life
happen to you. I am not giving you anything to live by, I am simply taking all props away from you, all crutches.

The mind is very clever. If you say, 'Drop money' the mind says, 'Okay. Can I cling to meditation?' If you say to the mind, 'Renounce the world' the mind says, 'Okay. Can I now possess spiritual experiences?' If you say, 'Renounce the world' the mind says, 'I can renounce the world, but now I will cling to the idea of God.'

And nothing is a greater barrier to God than the idea of God.

The word 'God' has become a great barrier, the belief in God has become a great barrier. If you want to reach to God you will have to drop all ideas about God, all beliefs about God -- Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan. You will have to be absolutely silent,
unclinging, not-knowing. In that profound ignorance God reveals himself to you -- only in that profound ignorance.

My effort is totally different from your effort. What you are doing here is diametrically opposite to what I am doing here. My effort is to create a profound ignorance in you, so I will have to confuse you. Whenever I see that some knowledge is being gathered, I immediately jump on it and destroy it. By and by you will learn -- being close to me you are bound to learn -- that it is futile to accumulate because this man will not leave you in peace. If you cling to something he is going to take it away. So what is the point? One day you will simply listen to me, not clinging, not making any belief out of it, not creating a philosophy, a theology out of it -- simply listening as you listen to the birds, as you listen to the wind passing through the pines, as you listen to the river rushing towards the ocean, as you listen to the wild roar of the ocean waves. Then you don't create a
philosophy, you simply listen.

Let me be a wild ocean roaring in front of you, or a wind passing through the trees, or birds singing in the morning. I am not a philosopher, I am not imparting knowledge to you. I am trying to point to something which is beyond knowledge.

So the moment I see that you are nodding, the moment I see that you are saying, 'Yes, this is true', the moment I see that you are accumulating something, immediately I have to jump upon it and contradict it to confuse you. Confusion is my method, I am doing it all the time. I will not leave you to rest unless you drop that whole effort of philosophising, unless you start listening to me without any mind, out of the sheer joy of it, as you listen to music. When you start listening to me in that way then you will never feel confused.

You feel confused because first you cling to something, then in the next step I destroy it. You feel confused. You were making a house and again I come there and destroy it.

Your confusion is in fact created by yourself. Don't create that house then I cannot destroy it. If you create, I am going to destroy. If you stop creating houses -- card-houses they are -- if you stop creating houses, if you say, 'This man will come and destroy,' if you simply wait and listen and you don't bother to make any house to live in, then I cannot confuse you. And the day I cannot confuse you will be a great day of rejoicing for you. Because that very moment you will be able to understand me -- not by your intellect but by your being. It will be a communion, not a communication. It will be a transfer of energy, not of words. You will have entered into my house.

I will not allow you to create any house because that will be a barrier. Then you will start living in that house and I am trying to bring you into my house. Jesus says to his disciples, 'In my God's house there are many mansions.' I also say to you, 'I am taking you on a journey where a great palace is waiting for you.' But I see you making houses by the side of the road and I have to destroy them otherwise your journey will be destroyed and you will never reach the goal. You start worshipping anything. You are in such a hurry, you are so impatient, that whatsoever I tell you, you simply grab it.

I am not going to allow it to happen. So, be alert. If you are alert there will be no need to confuse you. In fact, if you are alert, whatsoever I do I cannot confuse you. The day you can say, 'Now, Osho, you cannot confuse me. Whatsoever you say I listen, I rejoice in it, but I don't make any conceptualization' is the day I cannot confuse you. Until that moment I am going to confuse you again and again and again.

The Art of Dying

[Kathy]

I find it extremely difficult to believe anyone who talks about anything like he has experienced it when that person has not. Who has ever come back from dying to tell us what it's like? Even those of us who have experienced near-death can only say what t it was like for themselves. The only thing I can say with certainty is that outside of the body it is glorious and free, and there is nothing at all to fear. First time it happened to me was when I was about 5 years old. And it happened after I had been given a smallpox vaccination which became grossly infected.

[turiya]

I find it extremely difficult to believe anyone...
Who has ever come back from dying to tell us what it's like?

Not to Believe in what Others say is what the Man's Teaching is all about.
The Experience of Death while one is Living is what Meditation is all about.



Question 7
WHY DO YOU PREFER TO CALL MEDITATION THE ART OF DYING
RATHER THAN CALLING IT THE ART OF GROWING?

Because I know your ego will like it very much if I called it the art of growing. The art of dying comes like a shock.

Let me tell you an anecdote.

One day Mulla Nasrudin saw a crowd gathered around the town well. A Moslem priest
with a huge turban on his head had fallen into the water, and was calling for help. People
were leaning over and saying, 'Give me your hand, Reverend, give me your hand!' But the priest didn't pay attention to their offer to rescue him. He kept wrestling with the water and shouting for help.

Finally, Mulla Nasrudin stepped forward: 'Let me handle this!' He stretched out his hand
towards the priest and shouted at him, 'Take my hand!' The priest grabbed Mulla's hand
and was hoisted out of the pond.

People were very surprised and asked Mulla for the secret of his strategy. 'It is very simple, ' he said. 'I know this miser would not give anything to anyone, not even his hand.

I know this miser would not give anything to anyone, so instead of saying, "Give me your
hand" I said, "Take my hand, your Reverence." And sure enough, he took it.'

I know you would like it to be called the art of growing. Then your ego would feel perfectly good. 'So it is a question of growth; so I am going to remain and grow.' That's what the ego always wants.

I have knowingly called it the art of dying. Meditation is the art of dying. Then your ego will be shocked.

And it is also truer to call it the 'Art of Dying', because your ego is not going to grow, your ego is going to die in meditation.

These are the only two possibilities: either your ego goes on growing more, it becomes stronger, or, it disappears. If your ego goes on growing and becomes more and more strong, you are getting more and more into the mud. You are getting more and more into fetters, you are getting more and more into the imprisonment of it. You will be suffocated. Your whole life will become a hell.

The growth of the ego is a canceric growth. It is like cancer, it kills you. Meditation is not
growth of the ego, it is death of the ego.

[turiya]

One who is afraid of death will be afraid of life also...

Question 8

THE MORE YOU TALK ABOUT DEATH, THE GREATER MY DESIRE FOR LIFE. I HAVE JUST REALIZED THAT I HAVE NOT REALLY LIVED. WHILE I CAN UNDERSTAND THAT LIFE AND DEATH COME TOGETHER, THERE IS A YEARNING INSIDE ME THAT CRIES OUT FOR LIFE, LOVE AND PASSIONATE INTENSITY. I HAVE DISCOVERED I AM ANGUISHED AT THE THOUGHT OF SURRENDERING MY UNFULFILLED DESIRES. CAN ONE GIVE UP WHAT ONE HAS NEVER HAD? I FEEL I WOULD ONLY RETURN TO THE BODY AGAIN. ILLUSION OR NOT, TO MY GREAT AMAZEMENT I HAVE TO ADMIT THAT I STILL DESIRE, AND I HAVE NEVER FELT SUCH HUNGER.

When I say 'to die' I really mean: live intensely; I really mean: live passionately. How can you die unless you have lived totally? In total life there is death, and that death is beautiful. In a passionate, intense life, death comes spontaneously -- as a silence, as a profound bliss. When I say 'to die', I am not saying anything against life; in fact, if you are afraid of death you will be afraid of life also. That's what has happened to the questioner.

A man who is afraid of death will be afraid of life also, because life brings death. If you are afraid of the enemy and you close your door, the friend will also be prohibited. And you are so afraid of the enemy that you close the door; the enemy may enter so you close the door for the friend also. And you become so afraid that you cannot open for the friend, because who knows? The friend may turn out to be the enemy. Or, when the door is open, the enemy may enter.

People have become afraid of life because they are afraid of death. They don't live because at the highest points, peaks, death always penetrates into life. Have you watched this happening? The majority of women have lived a frigid life -- they are afraid of orgasm, they are afraid of that wild explosion of energy. For centuries women have been frigid; they have not known what orgasm is.

And the majority of men suffer because of that fear too -- ninety-five per cent of men suffer from premature ejaculation. They are so afraid of orgasm, there is so much fear, that somehow they want to finish it, somehow they want to get out of it.

Again and again they go into love-making and there is fear. The woman remains frigid and the man becomes so afraid that he cannot stay in that state any longer. The very fear makes him ejaculate sooner than is natural, and the woman remains rigid, closed, holding herself. Now orgasm has disappeared from the world because of the fear. In the deepest orgasm death penetrates; you feel as if you are dying. If a woman goes into orgasm she starts moaning, she starts crying, screaming. She may even start saying, 'I am dying.

Don't kill me!' That actually happens. If a woman goes into orgasm she will start mumbling, she will start saying that 'I am dying! Don't kill me! Stop!' A moment comes in deep orgasm where ego cannot exist, death penetrates. But that is the beauty of orgasm.

People have become afraid of love because in love also, death penetrates. If two lovers are sitting side by side in deep love and intimacy, not even talking.... Talking is an escape, an escape from love. When two lovers are talking that simply shows they are avoiding the intimacy. Words in-between give distance -- with no words distance disappears, death appears. In silence there is death just lurking around -- a beautiful phenomenon. But people are so afraid that they go on talking whether it is needed or not.

They go on talking about anything, everything -- but they cannot keep silent.

If two lovers sit silently, death suddenly surrounds them. And when two lovers are silent you will see a certain happiness and also a certain sadness -- happiness because life is at its peak, and sadness because at its peak death also comes in.

Whenever you are silent you will feel a sort of sadness. Even looking at a rose flower, if you are sitting silently and not saying anything about the rose flower, just looking at it, in that silence you will suddenly feel it is there -- death. You will see the flower withering, within moments it will be gone, lost forever. Such a beauty and so fragile! Such a beauty and so vulnerable!

Such a beauty, such a miracle and soon it will be lost forever and it will not return again.

Suddenly you will become sad. Whenever you meditate you will find death moving around. In love, in orgasm, in any aesthetic experience; in music, in song, in poetry, in dance -- wherever you suddenly lose your ego, death is there.

So let me tell you one thing. You are afraid of life because you are afraid of death. And I would like to teach you how to die so that you lose all fear of death. The moment you lose the fear of death you become capable of living.

I am not talking against life. How can I talk against life? I am madly in love with life! I am so madly in love with life, that because of it I have fallen in love with death also. It is part of life. When you love life totally how can you avoid death? You have to love death also. When you love a flower deeply, you love its withering away also: When you love a woman deeply, you love her getting old also, you one day love her death also. That is part, part of the woman. The old age has not happened from the outside, it has come from the inside. The beautiful face has become wrinkled now -- you love those wrinkles also.

They are part of your woman. You love a man and his hair has grown white -- you love those hairs also. They have not happened from the outside; they are not accidents. Life is unfolding. Now the black hair has disappeared and the grey hair has come. You don't reject them, you love them, they are a part. Then your man becomes old, becomes weak -- you love that too. Then one day the man is gone -- you love that too.

Love loves all. Love knows nothing else than love.

Hence I say love death. If you can love death it will be very simple to love life. If you can love even death, there is no problem.

The problem arises because the questioner must have been repressing something, must be afraid of life. And then repression can bring dangerous outcomes. If you go on repressing, repressing, one day you will lose all aesthetic sense. You lose all sense of beauty, sense of grace, sense of divinity. Then the very repression becomes such a feverish state that you can do anything which is ugly.

Let me tell you a beautiful anecdote. Chinmaya has sent this. He sends beautiful jokes!

This marine is sent to a distant island outpost where there are no women, but there is a large monkey population. He is shocked to see that without exception his fellow marines all make love with the monkeys. And he swears to them that he will never get that horny.

They tell him not to be closed-minded. But as the months passed by, the marine can hold out no longer. He grabs the first monkey he can and gets caught in the act by his buddies, who start laughing their heads off.

Surprised, he says to them, 'What are you guys laughing at? You keep telling me to do it!'

They answer, 'Yeah, but did you have to pick the ugliest one?'

If you repress, the possibility is that you may choose the ugliest life. Then the very fever is so much that you are not in your consciousness.

Then you are almost in neurosis.

Before the repression becomes too much, relax, move into life. It is your life! Don't feel guilty. It is your life to live and love and to know and be. And whatsoever instincts God has given to you, they are just indications of where you have to move, where you have to seek, where you have to find your fulfillment.

I know that this life is not all -- a greater life is hidden behind it. But it is hidden BEHIND it. You cannot find that greater life against this life; you have to find that greater life only by indulging deeply in this life.

There are waves on the oceans. The ocean is hidden just behind the waves. If, seeing the turmoil and the chaos, you escape from the waves, you will be escaping from the ocean and its depth also. Jump in, those waves are part of it. Dive deep and waves will disappear, and then there will be the depth, the absolute silence of the ocean.

So this is my suggestion for the questioner. You have waited long, now no more. Enough is enough.

Let me tell you an anecdote, an old Italian joke.

The Pope's personal waiter was delivering His Holiness' breakfast, when he slipped and threw the food all over the floor. 'Godammit!' he screamed as he fell.

His Holiness came out of the door of his room and said, 'No cursing in here, my son. Say instead, Ave Maria.'

The following morning as he attempted to deliver His Holiness' breakfast, the waiter slipped again, throwing the food on the floor. 'Godammit!' screamed the poor man.

'No, my son,' said the Pope. 'Ave Maria.'

On the third day the waiter was trembling with fear, but this time he remembered. 'Ave Maria!' he yelled out as soon as he started falling with the breakfast on the floor.

'No!' exclaimed the Pope. 'Godammit! This is my third day of skipping breakfast! Enough is enough!'

It is your life. There is no need going on skipping breakfast every day. And Ave Maria twice is good, but when it comes finally, it is Godammit!

The Art of Dying

[turiya]

By Dreaming, We Avoid the Real....

Question 9

I AM A PIECE OF ROCK IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MOUNTAIN. EVEN THIS I DON'T DARE TO REALISE. I DREAM INSTEAD. OSHO, WHY DID YOU TELL ME ABOUT RIVERS, THE OCEAN AND THE SKY? AND HOW COULD YOU GIVE ME SANNYAS? I AM A PIECE OF ROCK IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MOUNTAIN.

Everybody is a piece of rock. Unless you attain to your uttermost glory, you are bound to be a piece of rock. But nothing is wrong in being a piece of rock. The piece of rock is nothing but God fast asleep, snoring. A piece of rock is God asleep. Nothing is wrong in the piece of rock, it has to be awakened. Hence, I have given you sannyas.

You say, AND HOW COULD YOU GIVE ME SANNYAS?

Sannyas is nothing but an effort to wake you, an effort to shake you, an effort to shock you into awareness. Sannyas is nothing but an alarm.

EVEN THIS I DON'T DARE TO REALISE -- that I am a piece of rock in the middle of the mountain -- I DREAM INSTEAD.
That's how the rock avoids its own growth, the rock avoids its own future -- by dreaming.

Dreaming is the barrier. By dreaming we are avoiding the reality, by dreaming we avoid the real. It is our escape. You don't have any other escape. This is the only escape route -- dreaming.

When you are listening to me, you can dream also. Sitting here you can have a thousand and one thoughts roaming around in your mind. You can think of the future or of the past. You can be for and against what I am saying, you can argue, you can debate with me
inside yourself. But then you are missing me. I am a fact here. You need not dream here, you can just be here with me. And tremendous will be the result of it.

But we go on dreaming. People are dreamers, and that is their way. When they are making love to a woman, they are dreaming; when they are eating, they are dreaming.

When they are walking on the road -- they have gone for a walk in the morning, the sun is rising, the day is beautiful, the people are getting up, life is coming back again -- they are dreaming. They are not looking at anything.

We go on dreaming. Dreaming functions as a blindfold, and we go on missing the reality.

OSHO, WHY DID YOU TELL ME ABOUT RIVERS, THE OCEAN AND THE SKY? Because those are your possibilities. The rock can fly; the rock can grow wings. I myself was a rock one day. Then I started growing wings.

So know, I know your possibility, you may not know it. Hence, I talk about the rivers, the ocean and the sky. The rock can
become a flower, the rock can become a river, the rock can become the ocean, the rock can become the sky -- infinite are your possibilities! Your possibilities are as many as God's possibilities. You are multi-dimensional.

That's why I go on talking about the rivers and the ocean and the sky. Some day or other a great thirst will possess you, a new passion will arise for the impossible and you will be able to fly into the sky. It is yours, claim it! You only look like a rock. Rocks also only
look like rocks. If they make a little effort, if they shake themselves a little, they will find wings are hidden there. They will find infinite possibilities opening, doors upon doors.

But dreaming functions as the barrier. Being a rock is not a problem: being too much in dreams is the problem. Start dropping dreams. They are futile, meaningless, a wastage and nothing more. But people go on dreaming, go on dreaming.... By and by people start
thinking that dreaming is their only life. Life is not a dream and dreaming is not life.

Dreaming is avoiding life.

Let me tell you an anecdote.

On his seventy-fifth birthday, Turtletaub rushed into a physician1s office. 'Doctor,' he exclaimed, 'I have got a date tonight with a twenty-two-year-old girl. You gotta give me something to pep me up.'

The M.D. smiled sympathetically and supplied the old man with a prescription. Later that night, out of curiosity, the medical man phoned his elderly patient, 'Did the medicine help?'

'It's wonderful,' replied Turtletaub. 'Seven times already.'

'That's great,' agreed the doctor. 'And what about the girl?'
'The girl?' said Turtletaub. 'She didn't get here yet!'

Don't go on dreaming, otherwise you will miss the girl. You will miss life. Stop dreaming, look at that which is. And it is already in front of you. It is already around, it is within and without. God is the only presence if you are not dreaming. If you are dreaming, then your dreams occupy your inner space.

They become the hindrances for God to enter into you. This dreaming we call maya. Maya means a magic show, a dream show. When you are not dreaming, when you are in a state of no-dream, the reality is revealed. The reality is already there, you are not to achieve it. You have only to do one thing: you have to put aside your dreams. And you will no longer be a rock, you can fly with me to the very end of the sky.

Receive my invitation, receive my challenge. That's what sannyas is all about.

The Art of Dying

[Dreamtimer]

As a person whose dreams have shown what's to come and how to avoid many troubles, I'll take this particular definition of dreaming as something very different from the actual nighttime sleeping reality.

When humans don't dream at night they become ill and can die. There's a disease which kills people as they become unable to achieve REM sleep.


The kind of dreaming spoken of above seems more to be like what this community calls 'asleep'.

[turiya]

So the mind creates a dream......

Just a small coin
10 May 1975 am in Buddha Hall

UWAIS AL-QARNI WAS OFFERED SOME MONEY. HE SAID: I DO NOT NEED IT AS I ALREADY HAVE A COIN.

THE OTHER SAID: HOW LONG WILL THAT LAST YOU? – IT IS NOTHING.

UWAIS ANSWERED: GUARANTEE ME THAT I SHALL LIVE LONGER THAN THIS SUM WILL SUFFICE ME AND I WILL ACCEPT YOUR GIFT.

Life is always in the now. There is no other moment to it. Only one moment exists – this moment – all else is just a projection of the mind. Only today is, and only today remains. Tomorrow never comes, it cannot come because it doesn’t belong to reality. Only today comes, goes on coming, because today belongs to reality.

Tomorrow is your dream. And you need a dream because you are not rooted in reality. This has to be understood. Why are dreams needed? When reality is available, why do you dream?

A man fasts. The whole day the body suffers; the hunger is there. He suppresses the hunger because he is on some religious fast, a religious ritual. To satisfy the ego he makes the body hungry – so that the ego can feel that he is religious, something special, not an ordinary man, a saint, a sage, not an ordinary sinner.

To feed the ego you make the body hungry. You starve the body. Ego is a dream – the body is the reality. The whole day you have been fasting; in the night you cannot sleep because the body goes on asking for food. It is a need, it is a necessity. You feel restless, you turn from one side to another, you cannot go to sleep. Food is a need, but rest also is a need.

So the mind creates a dream...
You are an honored guest in a great feast given by the king; you are eating delicious food, you go on eating.... Of course the body doesn’t get nourishment, but there is a false notion that you have eaten well; now you can go to sleep. In the morning you will be hungry, more than ever, but at least the dream helped you to rest and relax. One need, the need for food, could not be fulfilled, but another need, the need for rest, could be fulfilled through the dream.

If you are tense you will need dreams, because they help you to relax. If you are not HERE, you will need a dream of being THERE, because you have to be somewhere. If you cannot be here then you will feel suspended in the sky, uprooted, unanchored, just hanging in the middle. That will give you a very restless, uncomfortable feeling. So... a dream: ”I may not be here, but I am going to be there.” The dream helps you to rest and relax.

If you cannot be in the 'now', then you create a future. The future is needed. The future gives you a consoling sleep, it relaxes you. Millions of things are there which you cannot fulfill right now, and if there is no future you will be too much burdened by unfulfilled desires. A future is needed so you can at least say to yourself: ”If things are not as they should be, at least there is tomorrow. Don’t get panicky, things will be better tomorrow.” You can hope, because there is time. Hope needs space, desire needs space, ambition needs space to move.

Look at the trees – they don’t dream. They don’t need to, they are already here, in the now – fulfilled, flowering. Listen to the birds – they are singing NOW, they are not preparing to sing tomorrow. Except for man, nobody is preparing for tomorrow. This day is so beautiful, who bothers for tomorrow?

If this day is ugly and it is inconvenient to live with it, a beautiful dream of the future is needed as a substitute for reality. Otherwise you will feel so much anguish – intolerable. You will not be able to live! The more desire you have, the more future you need, the more ambitions the more future you need. For needs, this moment is more than enough. Today is enough. Jesus said to his disciples, ”Look at the lilies. Look in the field – the flowers are flowering, and they are so beautiful that even Solomon in all his grandeur was not so beautiful.”

Solomon is the greatest king in the mythology of Jews – the richest man ever on earth, and the wisest man also. The wisest, the richest, the greatest emperor in the world was not so beautiful as these ordinary lilies in the field. ”Look!” said Jesus to his disciples. ”These lilies must be carrying a secret within their hearts.” What is the secret? The secret is, lilies are here and now. Solomon may have been very very wise but he was not here and now.

All beauty is here, and all life is now.

Tomorrow is death, tomorrow is no life. But why do we live in the tomorrow? It looks absurd: How can you live in the tomorrow? – but you live there. You never live here; that’s why you look so dead.

How can one live in the tomorrow? Jesus said to his disciples, ”Take care of this moment. Live today, and tomorrow will take care of itself. Don’t worry for the morrow because the moment you are losing in worrying about tomorrow is the real moment. And tomorrow is never going to be there.”

For dreams you are losing life. Needs don’t need them, but desires need them. For example, you are hungry, you can eat; if you are thirsty, you can drink. There is not much trouble about it. There would have been no trouble and there would have been nothing like poverty in the world if man remained true to his needs. Then everybody has more than enough. The Earth has plenty. The sky is not poor, the rivers are rich, the oceans vast – life has tremendous treasures. Not a single bird sleeps without food, not a single tree remains thirsty. Everything is more than is needed. Life is affluent, very luxuriant – if you stick to the needs. But if you start desiring, then life becomes poor.

If you are hungry you can eat and feel satiated – and there is nothing like satiated hunger. It is a deep prayer, a gratefulness. I tell you, not by fasting will you become religious, but when hunger is satisfied. In that moment of satisfaction a gratefulness, a gratitude arises, a prayer. You feel fulfilled.

You can thank God. Never by fasting do you become religious. How can you become religious by destroying your body and being violent towards it? That is the way of the murderer, the torturer, the sadist, the masochist, the somehow perverted.

When you have eaten well, eaten rightly and the food suits you, in that moment a prayer arises, not only from your mind but from your body also. Satiety is a prayer. You were thirsty and you have drunk to the full. Now suddenly nothing is needed. You are absolutely perfect in that moment. You are a god, a fulfilled god. No thirst... what else is lacking?

If you stick to the needs – and this is my message, that a religious man sticks to his needs. He is never against needs and never for desires. Desires are false needs. For example, if you are hungry you can eat right now, but if you are desiring a Rolls Royce, how can you get it right now? If you are ambitious for a big palace – Rome is not built in one day, a big palace will need time. You will have to exploit money. You will not only have to exploit others you will have to exploit your own needs also, because you will have to accumulate money. You will sleep hungry, because tomorrow – the palace, and when the palace is ready, then you are going to eat. How can you eat without a palace?

Tomorrow comes the Rolls Royce, and there is nothing wrong in being a little hungry for a few days, starving your needs; otherwise how are you going to have a Rolls Royce?

A Rolls Royce is neither a thirst nor a hunger, it is simply a foolish desire. When it is not there you will be waiting for it and destroying your life, and when it comes you will feel nothing has come. And you waited so long, and you killed yourself so much. The Rolls Royce is there, but you are already dead. There is no real need for it; that’s why it can never satisfy. Satisfaction comes out of real dissatisfaction.

Contentment comes out of real hunger, real thirst. You were dying, you could not do without it; only then contentment happens. Desires need the future; they cannot be fulfilled right now. If you want to be the president of a country, how can you be the president right now? You will have to pass long ladders of ambition, much time will be needed. By the time you reach, if death has not reached before, you will be already dead. People become presidents when they are already senile, past their sixties, becoming seventy, just ready for the grave. Then they enter the presidential house. And the whole life wasted, – for nothing. Even if your picture is in all the newspapers, what does it matter?

How does it satisfy? Birds are happy without newspapers, trees are happy without the radio and the television. If trees are happy and birds are happy, and they don’t bother a bit for the tomorrow, why can’t man be happy right now?

The whole of religion, real religion, is the message to drop desires and to fulfill needs. And needs are simple and beautiful. Thirst is beautiful – it comes out of nature – and then being satisfied is also beautiful. It gives a balance, a subtle tranquility. A silence happens to your whole existence.

You are at rest; no dream is needed.

If you live in the moment totally, then there is no need to worry for the future. A rightly lived childhood brings you to a right, ripe youth – flowing, vital, alive, a wild ocean of energy. A rightly lived youth brings you to the very settled calm and quiet life. A calm and quiet life brings you to a religious inquiry: What is life? Living is not enough, one has to penetrate the mystery. A calm and quiet life brings you to meditative moments. Meditation brings you to renounce all that is useless now, just junk, garbage. The whole life becomes garbage; only one thing remains always eternally valuable, and that is your awareness.

By the time of the seventieth year, when you are ready to die – if you lived everything rightly, in the moment, never postponing for the future, never dreaming for the future, you lived it totally in the moment whatsoever it was – nine months before your death you will become aware... you have attained that much awareness, you can see: now death is coming.

Many saints have declared their deaths, but I have not come across a single instance when the death was declared before nine months. Exactly nine months before, a man of awareness, uncluttered with the past... because one who never thinks of the future will never think of the past. They are together, the past and future are together, joined together. When you think of the future it is nothing but the projection of the past; when you think of the past it is nothing but trying to plan for the future. They are together. The present is out of them. A man who lives in this moment - now and here - is not cluttered with the past and not cluttered with the future. He remains unburdened. He has no burden to carry, he moves without weight. The gravitation doesn’t affect him. In fact, he doesn’t walk, he flies. He has wings....

Before he dies, exactly nine months before, he will become aware that death is coming. And he will enjoy and he will celebrate and he will say to people, ”My ship is coming, and I am only for a little while more on this bank. Soon I will be going to my home. This life has been beautiful, a strange experience. I loved, learned, lived much, I am enriched. I had come here with nothing and I am going with much experience, much maturity.”

He will be thankful to all that has happened – good and bad both, right and wrong both, because from everything he learned, not only from right, from wrong also. Sages that he came across, he learned from them; and sinners, yes, from them also – they all helped. People who robbed him helped, people who helped him helped, people who were friends helped, people who were enemies helped. Everything helped. Summer and winter, satiety and hunger, everything helped. One can be thankful to all.

When one is thankful to all and ready to die celebrating for this opportunity that was there, death becomes beautiful. Then death is not the enemy, it is the greatest friend, because it is the crescendo of life. It is the highest peak that life achieves. It is not the end of life, it is the climax. It looks like the end because you have never known life. To one who has known life it appears as the very crescendo, the very peak, the highest peak.

Death is the culmination, the fulfillment. Life does not end in it; in fact life flowers in it, it IS the flower.

But to know the beauty of death one has to be ready for it, one has to learn the art. That’s why I go on saying that I am here to teach you how to die. A master is a death. He allows you to die in him.

He helps you to die every moment to the past, and he helps you to live an uncluttered moment – this moment.

This small parable is beautiful. It says:

UWAIS AL-QARNI WAS OFFERED SOME MONEY....

Money is a symbol of the future. Why do you accumulate money? – for the future. Money is future, money is hidden future; that’s why people who don’t live in the present will always cling to money.

They can afford to lose love but they cannot afford to lose money, because love is not a promise for the future. It may be good right now but what will you do in your old age? Be miserly, accumulate money, because in the future money will be helpful.

Why are people so mad after money? It is a symbol of future. Money is future. Money is condensed future in a coin, in a note. It is a promise for the future. Every note says, ”I promise that this much amount of money whenever demanded will be given to you.” It is a promise for the future.

Misers never live here-now, they cannot. They live in their money. Uwais is an enlightened master. He was offered some money. It is a symbol, a symbol for the future. He was offered some future – let me put it that way.

HE SAID: I DO NOT NEED IT AS I ALREADY HAVE A COIN.

Already I have a coin, I don’t need it. Right now I am living, he said. And right now it is enough. I have a coin. What coin? This moment is the coin. It is a single coin, a very small coin. You can live it herenow, it is not of much use for the future. It is such a small coin, you will look foolish if you gather it for the future. A moment is so small, it is a coin. Time is a promissory note, a thousand rupee note, a one lakh rupee note, a one crore rupee note. Time is big money. A moment – it is just a drop, a small coin.

I DO NOT NEED IT AS I ALREADY HAVE A COIN, said Uwais.

The other must not have understood. Difficult, difficult when you talk to a man like Uwais. He has a different language, you have a different language; communication becomes impossible.

THE OTHER SAID: HOW LONG WILL THAT LAST YOU? – IT IS NOTHING.

And he was looking at the coin, thinking of the coin; he did not understand what Uwais is saying. He said, ”How long will it last you?” The present moment, how long can it last? It is such a small coin.

It will be finished.

”Don’t think of the moment,” say the wiser ones. They say, ”Think of the future.” Say the wiser ones: ”Don’t think of the immediate, how long will it last you? Think of the future.”

And I tell you, these ”wiser” ones are the poisoners of humanity. They have poisoned your mind completely... because the immediate is all that is there. The immediate moment is the only reality that is there. Howsoever small, it is the only reality. And your promissory notes, howsoever big amount they promise in the future, are simply promissory notes. The future never comes. No governor-general of the reserve bank can give you the guarantee for the future. Future? – who can guarantee it? who can predict it? How long will it last you? It is nothing, just a moment.

The wiser ones say, ”Don’t live the momentary life.” They say, ”Think of the future.” They say, ”Don’t live just here and now, look ahead! Think of the long range – not only of this world, of the other world also. Think of heaven and hell, moksha, Brahman, nirvana.” And I say to you, these wiser ones are poisoners. The real wisdom consists in being here and now because for the real wisdom that is the only existence, there is no other existence. It is the only existence there is.

UWAIS ANSWERED: GUARANTEE ME THAT I SHALL LIVE LONGER THAN THIS SUM WILL SUFFICE ME AND I WILL ACCEPT YOUR GIFT.

It is a beautiful dialogue. Uwais said: Guarantee me that I shall live longer, longer than this moment, this small coin. Can you guarantee me that I will live the next moment? Can you guarantee me that I will live tomorrow? If you cannot guarantee me that then please let me live today. If you cannot guarantee the next moment, then howsoever small this moment is please let me live it right now.

Once lost, it is lost forever, and you cannot guarantee the next. So why should I waste my small coin for bigger coins which cannot be guaranteed?

Future is never; only this moment is. Don’t listen to so-called wise ones who are really foolish. Listen to life! And listen to existence. It is better to go to the trees and listen how they live, go to the animals and watch how they live. Look all around, except at man. Man is perverted. Look at existence and see how existence lives – it lives moment to moment, with no planning for the future. That’s why it is so beautiful, it is so ecstatic. Its ecstasy knows no boundaries. From one moment it flows into the other, but it never thinks of the other. One moment lived totally automatically brings another moment, with more possibilities – because the other moment is not coming from somewhere else, it grows out of you as leaves grow out of trees.

If the tree has been healthy, lived really, then out of beautiful trees come beautiful leaves, beautiful flowers and fruits. It need not worry about them.

Have you seen any tree sitting like Rodin’s statue of ”The Thinker” with the hand on the head, wrinkles on the forehead, thinking how to bring fruits, how to flower this season again? where to go? who are the experts to ask? where to find a guru?

It doesn’t bother. Even if gurus come to them and talk to them they won’t listen. They will say, ”Go somewhere else, find some stupid human being. Here no gurus are needed. We are already okay, absolutely okay.”

When the time comes the tree flowers. When the time comes it is laden with fruits. When the time comes, fruits are ripe, ready to fall, die into the earth, create new seeds, new trees – and the circle goes on and on and on. It is eternal. From each moment is born another moment – it comes out of it. Live it as totally as possible, because through that totality another will be born.

Uwais said: GUARANTEE THAT I SHALL LIVE LONGER THAN THIS SUM WILL SUFFICE ME.

This small coin of the moment seems to be enough for me because who can guarantee that there is going to be another moment for me to live? If you can guarantee it, I will accept your gift.

Nobody can guarantee the future.Only the present is. Live it as deeply, as ecstatically, as dancingly as possible, because from it will come the next.... I don’t talk to you about the next life because I don’t talk about even the next moment. The next life will come, I know. It comes, it always comes, why bother...? You live this life totally and the next will come out of this. If this has been beautiful the next is going to be better than this.

This moment will decide the fate of the next moment that is going to follow. There is no other way.

Death is the only guarantee. This moment lived well is the only guarantee for the next moment which is going to follow it, because it is not following really, it is coming out of it, it is an outcome. You are growing each moment. Don’t leave gaps, otherwise those gaps will hang around you. They will be holes in your being. In those holes will be wounds, and they will color your whole life to come.

Die to the past. Die to the future and live in the present.

Death is the only message that I would like to give to you – and if you can allow, millions of things will become possible to you. Let me repeat the Sufi saying: Simply trust. Do not the petals flutter down just like that? Trust life.

Trust this moment here and now and allow things to take their own shape.
You need not worry, there is no need to worry. Trust life, simply trust.

Do not the petals flutter down just like that?

Go and see a rose, and by the evening the petals are fluttering down towards the earth, going to rest. They lived their day. They enjoyed, they enjoyed the strong wind, they took the challenge, they rose high to the sky. They have spread their fragrance to the four winds – the winds have taken it already to the corners of the earth. They loved the sun, they played with it a little while. Their day is over. Now they don’t cling. Now they don’t hesitate to fall. They are ready.

A beautiful life creates a beautiful death, because death is nothing but the whole life condensed again in a seed.

Now the petals are falling. Evening has come. The sun has set, the night will take over. The death has come, the petals are falling towards the earth. They don’t hesitate. They don’t know where they are going, they don’t know whether there is any earth down there or not – maybe it is a bottomless abyss – but they don’t doubt, they don’t hesitate.

When you have lived your life, trust arises. It arises – it is an afterglow of a lived life.

Petals falling, fluttering down towards the earth. Simply trust – do not the petals flutter down just like that? And everything – God, moksha, nirvana – everything, I say to you, becomes possible.

Just trust. Just like that.

Just Like That, Chapter 10

[turiya]

Walking the Tightrope...

Chapter #3

ONCE, WHEN THE HASIDIM WERE SEATED TOGETHER IN ALL BROTHERLINESS, PIPE IN HAND, RABBI ISRAEL JOINED THEM.

BECAUSE HE WAS SO FRIENDLY THEY ASKED HIM, 'TELL US, DEAR RABBI, HOW SHOULD WE SERVE GOD?'

HE WAS SURPRISED AT THE QUESTION, AND REPLIED, 'HOW SHOULD I KNOW?'
BUT THEN HE WENT ON TO TELL THEM THIS STORY.....

THERE WERE TWO FRIENDS OF THE KING, AND BOTH WERE PROVED GUILTY OF A CRIME. SINCE HE LOVED THEM THE KING WANTED TO SHOW THEM MERCY, BUT HE COULD NOT ACQUIT THEM BECAUSE EVEN A KING'S WORD CANNOT PREVAIL OVER THE LAW.

SO HE GAVE THIS VERDICT: A ROPE WAS TO BE STRETCHED OVER A DEEP CHASM, AND, ONE AFTER ANOTHER, THE TWO WERE TO WALK ACROSS IT. WHOEVER REACHED TO THE OTHER SIDE WAS TO BE GRANTED HIS LIFE.

IT WAS DONE AS THE KING ORDERED, AND THE FIRST OF THE FRIENDS GOT SAFELY ACROSS. THE OTHER, STILL STANDING ON THE SAME SPOT, CRIED TO HIM, 'TELL ME, FRIEND, HOW DID YOU MANAGE TO CROSS?'

THE FIRST CALLED BACK, 'I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING BUT THIS: WHENEVER I FELT MYSELF TOPPLING OVER TO ONE SIDE, I LEANED TO THE OTHER.'

EXISTENCE is paradoxical; paradox is its very core. It exists through opposites, it is a balance in the opposites. And one who learns how to balance becomes capable of knowing what life is, what existence is, what God is. The secret key is balance.

A few things before we enter into this story.... First, we have been trained in Aristotelian logic -- which is linear, one-dimensional. Life is not Aristotelian at all, it is Hegelian.

Logic is not linear, logic is dialectical. The very process of life is dialectic, a meeting of the opposites -- a conflict between the opposites and yet a meeting of the opposites. And life goes through this dialectical process: from thesis to antithesis, from antithesis to synthesis -- and then again the synthesis becomes a thesis. The whole process starts again.

If Aristotle is true then there will be only men and no women, or, only women and no men. If the world was made according to Aristotle then there will be only light and no darkness, or, only darkness and no light. That would be logical. There would be either life or death but not both.

But life is not based on Aristotle's logic, life has both. And life is really possible only because of both, because of the opposites: man and woman, yin and yang, day and night, birth and death, love and hate. Life consists of both.

This is the first thing you have to allow to sink deep into your heart -- because Aristotle is in everybody's head. The whole education system of the world believes in Aristotle -- although for the very advanced scientific minds Aristotle is out of date. He no longer applies. Science has gone beyond Aristotle because science has come closer to Existence.

And now science understands that life is dialectical, not logical.
I have heard....

Do you know that on Noah's ark, making love was forbidden while on board?

When the couples filed out of the ark after the flood, Noah watched them leave. Finally the tom-cat and the she-cat left, followed by a number of very young kittens. Noah raised his eyebrows questioningly and the tom-cat said to him, 'And, you thought we were fighting!'

Noah must have been Aristotelian; the tom-cat knew better.

Love is a sort of fight, love IS a fight. Without fight love cannot exist. They look opposite -- because we think lovers should never fight. It is logical: if you love somebody how can you fight? It is absolutely clear, obvious to the intellect, that lovers should never fight -- but they do. In fact, they are intimate enemies; they are continuously fighting. In that very fight the energy that is called love is released. Love is not only fight, love is not only struggle, that's true -- it is more than that. It is fight too, but love transcends. The fight cannot destroy it. Love survives fight but it cannot exist without it.

Look into life: life is non-Aristotelian, non-Euclidean. If you don't force your concepts on life, if you simply look at things as they are, then you will be suddenly surprised to see that opposites are complementaries. And the tension between the opposites is the very basis on which life exists -- otherwise it would disappear. Think of a world where death does not exist.... Your mind may say 'then life will be there eternally', but you are wrong.

If death does not exist life will simply disappear. It cannot exist without death; death gives it the background, death gives it colour and richness, death gives it passion and intensity.

So death is not against life -- the first thing -- death is involved in life. And if you want to live authentically you have to learn how to continuously die authentically. You have to keep a balance between birth and death and you have to remain just in the middle. That remaining in the middle cannot be a static thing: it is not that once you have attained to a thing -- finished, then there is nothing to be done. That is nonsense. One never achieves balance forever, one has to achieve it again and again and again.

This is very difficult to understand because our minds have been cultivated in concepts which are not applicable to real life. You think that once you have attained meditation then there is no need of anything more, then you will be in meditation. You are wrong.

Meditation is not a static thing. It is a balance.

You will have to attain it again and again and again. You will become more and more capable of attaining it, but it is not going to remain forever, like a possession in your hands. It has to be claimed each moment -- only then is it yours. You cannot rest, you cannot say, 'I have meditated and I have realised that now there is no need for me to do anything more. I can rest.' Life does not believe in rest; it is a constant movement from perfection to more perfection.

Listen to me: from perfection to more perfection. It is never imperfect, it is always perfect, but always more perfection is possible. Logically these statements are absurd.

I was reading an anecdote....

A man was charged with using counterfeit money to pay a bill. At his hearing, the defendant pleaded that he didn't know the money was phony. Pressed for proof, he admitted: 'Because I stole it. Would I be stealing money that I knew was counterfeit?'

After thinking it over, the Judge decided that made good sense, so he then tossed out the counterfeit charge. But he substituted a new charge -- theft.

'Sure, I stole it,' the defendant conceded amiably. 'But counterfeit money has no legal value. Since when is it a crime to steal nothing?'

No one could find any flaw in his logic, so the man went free.

But logic won't do in life. You cannot go free so easily. You can come out of a legal trap legally and logically because the trap consists of Aristotelian logic -- you can use the same logic to come out of it. But in life you will not be able to come out because of logic, because of theology, because of philosophy, because you are very clever -- clever in inventing theories. You can come out of life or you can go beyond life only through actual experience.

Now this story....

ONCE WHEN THE HASIDIM WERE SEATED TOGETHER IN ALL BROTHERLINESS, PIPE IN HAND, RABBI ISRAEL JOINED THEM. BECAUSE HE WAS SO FRIENDLY THEY ASKED HIM, 'TELL US, DEAR RABBI, HOW SHOULD WE SERVE GOD?'

A few things about Hasidism. First, the word 'hasid' comes from a Hebrew word which means pious, pure. It is derived from the noun 'hased' which means grace.

This word 'hasid' is very beautiful. The whole standpoint of Hasidism is based on grace. It is not that YOU do something -- life is already happening, you just be silent, passive, alert, receiving. God comes through his grace, not through your effort. So Hasidism has no austerities prescribed for you. Hasidism believes in life, in joy. Hasidism is one of the religions in the world which is life-affirmative. It has no renunciation in it; you are not to renounce anything. Rather, you have to celebrate. The founder of Hasidism, Baal-Shem, is reported to have said, 'I have come to teach you a new way. It is not fasting and penance, and it is not indulgence, but joy in God.'

The Hasid loves life, tries to experience life. That very experience starts giving you a balance. And in that state of balance, some day, when you are really balanced, neither leaning on this side nor leaning on that side, when you are exactly in the middle, you transcend. The middle is the beyond, the middle is the door from where one goes beyond.

If you really want to know what existence is, it is neither in life nor in death. Life is one extreme, death is another extreme. It is just exactly in the middle where neither death is nor life is, where one is simply unborn, deathless.

In that moment of balance, equilibrium, grace descends.

I would like you all to become Hasids, receivers of grace. I would like you to learn this science, this art of balance. The mind very easily chooses the extreme. There are people who indulge: they indulge in sensuality, sexuality, food, clothes, houses, this and that.

There are people who indulge -- they lean too much towards life, they fall down, they topple. Then there are people, who, seeing people toppling down from the tightrope of existence into indulgence, falling into the abyss of indulgence, become afraid; they start leaning towards the other extreme.

They renounce the world, they escape to the Himalayas. They escape from the wife, the children, the home, the world, the marketplace and they go and hide themselves in monasteries. They have chosen another extreme.

Indulgence is the extreme life; renunciation is the extreme death.

So there is some truth in Friedrich Nietzsche's comment upon Hinduism -- that Hinduism is a religion of death. There is some truth when Nietzsche says that Buddha seems to be suicidal. The truth is this: you can move from one extreme to another.

The whole Hasidic approach is not to choose any extreme, just to remain in the middle, available to both and yet beyond both, not getting identified with either, not getting obsessed and fixated with either -- just remaining free and joyously enjoying both. If life comes, enjoy life; if death comes, enjoy death. If out of his grace God gives love, life -- good; if he sends death, it must be good -- it is his gift.

Baal-Shem is right when he says, 'I have come to teach you joy in God.' Hasidism is a celebrating religion. It is the purest flowering of the whole Judaic culture. Hasidism is the fragrance of the whole Jewish race. It is one of the most beautiful phenomena on the earth.

ONCE WHEN THE HASIDIM WERE SITTING TOGETHER IN ALL BROTHERLINESS...

Hasidism teaches life in community. It is a very communal approach. It says that man is not an island, man is not an ego -- should not be an ego, should not be an island. Man should live a life of community.

We are growing a Hasidic community here. To live in a community is to live in love; to live in a community is to live in commitment, caring for others.

There are many religions which are very, very self-oriented: they only think of the self, they never think of the community. They only think of how I am going to become liberated, how I am going to become free, how I should attain moksha -- MY moksha, MY freedom, MY liberation, MY salvation. But everything is preceded by MY, by the self.

And these religions try hard to drop the ego but their whole effort is based on the ego. Hasidism says if you want to drop the ego, the best way is to live in a community, live with people, be concerned with people -- with their joy, with their sadness, with their happiness, with their life, with their death. Create a concern for the others, be involved, and then the ego will disappear on its own accord.

And when the ego is not, one is free. There is no freedom of the ego, there is only freedom FROM the ego.

Hasidism uses community life as a device. Hasids have lived in small communities and they have created beautiful communities, very celebrating, dancing, enjoying the small things of life. They make the small things of life holy -- eating, drinking. Everything takes the quality of prayer. The ordinariness of life is no longer ordinary, it is suffused with divine grace.

ONCE WHEN THE HASIDIM WERE SITTING TOGETHER IN ALL BROTHERLINESS....

This is the difference. If you see Jaina monks sitting, you never see any brotherliness -- it is not possible. The very approach is different. Each Jaina monk is an island, but the Hasids are not islands. They are a continent, a deep brotherliness.

Remember it. The community I would like to grow here should be more like the hasidim, less like Jaina monks, because a man alone, confined to himself, is ugly. Life is in love, life is in flow, in give and take and sharing.

You can go to a Jaina monastery or a Jaina temple where Jaina monks are sitting -- you can just watch. You will see exactly how everybody is confined to himself; there is no relationship. That is the whole effort: how not to be related. The whole effort is how to disconnect all relationship. But the more you are disconnected with community and life, the more dead you are. It is very difficult to find a Jaina monk who is still alive. And I know it very deeply because I was born a Jaina and I have watched them from my very childhood. I was simply surprised! What calamity has happened to these people? What has gone wrong? They are dead. They are corpses. If you don't go near them already prejudiced, thinking that they are great saints. if you simply go, observing without any prejudice, you will be simply puzzled, confused. What illness, what disease has happened to these people? They are neurotic. Their concern about themselves has become their neurosis.

Community has completely lost meaning for them -- but all meaning is in community.

Remember...when you love somebody, it is not only that you give love to them -- in giving, you grow. When love starts flowing between you and the other, you both are benefitted. And in that exchange of love your potentialities start becoming actualities.

That's how self-actualisation happens. Love more and you will be more; love less and you will be less. You are always in proportion to your love. The proportion of your love is the proportion of your being.

ONCE WHEN THE HASIDIM WERE SEATED TOGETHER IN ALL BROTHERLINESS. PIPE IN HAND...

Can you think of any saint pipe in hand?

...PIPE IN HAND, RABBI ISRAEL JOINED THEM.

Ordinary life has to be hallowed, has to be made holy, even a pipe. You can smoke in a very prayerful way. Or, you can pray in a very unprayerful way. It is not a question of what you do...you can go into the temple, you can go into the mosque, but still you can pray in a very unprayerful way. It depends on you; it depends on the quality you bring to your prayer. You can eat, you can smoke, you can drink, and you can do all these small things, mundane things, in such gratitude that they become prayers.

Just the other night a man came. He bowed down and touched my feet. The way he was doing it was, I Could see, very unprayerful. He was an Indian so he was doing it just out of duty, it seemed. Or he was not even conscious of what he was doing -- he must have been taught. But I could feel, I could see his energy was absolutely unprayerful. And I was wondering why he had come. He wanted to become a sannyasin. I never refuse but I wanted to refuse him. I thought for a moment what to do. If I refuse, it doesn't look good -- but the man was absolutely wrong. Finally I said, 'Okay, I will give you sannyas' -- because I cannot refuse, I cannot say no. I find that word very difficult to use.

So I gave him sannyas, and then everything became clear. Immediately after sannyas he said, 'I have come to your feet, now help me. I am posted' -- he is in the army -- 'I have been posted somewhere in Palanpur. Now, Osho, with your spiritual power, help me to be transferred to Ranchi.'

My spiritual power has to be used for his transfer to Ranchi. Now what type of concept does he have of spiritual power? Now everything was clear. He was not interested in sannyas -- that taking sannyas was just a bribery. He must have thought that if he asks for the transfer without sannyas it won't look good. So first become a sannyasin and then ask.

Just to think in these terms is unprayerful, unspiritual. And that man thinks he is very spiritual. He says he is a follower of Paramahans Yogananda and the way he said it was so egoistic, he felt so good, so superior -- 'I am a follower of Paramahans Yogananda; I am a disciple. And I have been working on myself for many years...and that's why 'I want to go to Ranchi.' Ranchi is the centre of Paramahans Yogananda's disciples.

Now this man is absolutely unspiritual. His whole approach is unspiritual, unprayerful.

The point that I want to make clear to you is this: that it does not depend on what you 'do'. You can touch my feet in a very unprayerful way -- then it is meaningless; but you can smoke and you can do it in a prayerful way and your prayer will reach to God.

It is very difficult for people who have very fixed concepts about religion, spirituality, but I would like you to become more liquid. Don't have fixed concepts. Watch.

...PIPE IN HAND, RABBI ISRAEL JOINED THEM. BECAUSE HE WAS SO FRIENDLY THEY ASKED HIM, 'TELL US DEAR RABBI, HOW SHOULD WE SERVE GOD?'

Yes, only in deep friendliness can something be asked. And only in deep friendliness can something be answered. Between the Master and the disciple there is a deep friendship. It is a love affair. And the disciple has to wait for the right moment and the Master has also to wait for the right moment; when the friendship is flowing, when there is no hindrance, then things can be answered. Or even, sometimes, without answering them, they can be answered; even without using verbalisation the message can be delivered.

HE WAS SURPRISED AT THE QUESTION, AND REPLIED, 'HOW SHOULD I KNOW?'

In fact, that is the answer of all those who know. 'How should I know?' 'How to serve God? You are asking such a great question, I am not worthy to answer it,' said the Master. 'How should I know?'

Nothing can be known about love; nothing can be known about how to serve God -- it is very difficult.

BUT THEN HE WENT ON TO TELL THEM THIS STORY....

First he says, 'How should I know?' First he says that knowledge is not possible about such things. First he says that he cannot give you any knowledge about such things. First he says that he cannot make you more knowledgeable about these things -- there is no way. But then he tells his story.

A story is totally different to talking in terms of theories. A story is more alive, more indicative. It does not say much but it shows much.

And all the great Masters have used stories, parables, anecdotes. The reason is that if you say something directly, it kills much. A direct expression is too crude primitive, gross, ugly. The parable is saying the thing in a very indirect way. It makes things very smooth; it makes things more poetic, less logical, closer to life, more paradoxical. You cannot use a syllogism for God, you cannot use any argument, but you can tell stories.

And the Jewish race is one of the richest races on the earth for parables. Jesus was a Jew and he has told a few of the most beautiful parables ever uttered. Jews have learnt how to tell stories. In fact, Jews don't have much philosophy but they have beautiful philosophical parables. They say much; without saying, without hinting anything directly, they create an atmosphere. In that atmosphere something can be understood. That is the whole device of a parable.

BUT THEN HE WENT ON TO TELL THEM THIS STORY....

First he said, 'How should I know?' First he simply denies knowledge of any possibility of knowing about it. A philosopher says, 'Yes, I know' and a philosopher proposes a theory in clear-cut statements, logical, mathematical, syllogistic, argumentative. He tries to convince. He may not convince but he can force you into silence.

A parable never tries to convince you. It takes you unawares, it persuades you, it tickles you deep inside.

The moment the Master says, 'How should I know?' he is saying to them, 'Relax, I am not going to give any argument for it, any theory for it. And you need not be worried that! am going to convince you about something. Just enjoy a little parable, a little story.' When you start listening to a story, you relax; when you start listening to a theory, you become tense. And that which creates tension in you cannot be of much help. It is destructive.

BUT THEN HE WENT ON TO TELL THEM THIS STORY....

THERE WERE TWO FRIENDS OF THE KING, AND BOTH WERE PROVED GUILTY OF A CRIME. SINCE HE LOVED THEM THE KING WANTED TO SHOW THEM MERCY, BUT HE COULD NOT ACQUIT THEM BECAUSE EVEN A KING'S WORD CANNOT PREVAIL OVER THE LAW.

SO HE GAVE THIS VERDICT: A ROPE WAS TO BE STRETCHED OVER A DEEP CHASM, AND, ONE AFTER ANOTHER, THE TWO WERE TO WALK ACROSS IT. WHOEVER REACHED TO THE OTHER SIDE WAS TO BE GRANTED HIS LIFE.

A parable has an atmosphere, a very homely atmosphere -- as if your grandmother is telling you a story when you are falling asleep. Children ask, 'Tell us stories.' It helps them relax and go into sleep. A story is very relaxing and does not create any pressure on your mind; rather, it starts playing with your heart. When you listen to a story, you don't listen from the head -- you cannot listen to a story from the head -- you listen from the head you will miss. If you listen from the head there is no possibility of understanding a story; a story has to be understood from the heart.

That's why races and countries which are very 'heady' cannot understand beautiful jokes. For example, Germans! They cannot understand. They are one of the most intelligent races of the world but they don't have any good stock of jokes.

A man was telling a German -- I have just overheard this in the ashram -- a man was telling a German that he had heard a very beautiful German joke.
The German said, 'But remember, I am a German.' So, the man said, 'Okay, then I will tell it very, very slowly.'

lt is very difficult. Germany is the country of the professors, logicians -- Kant, Hegel, and Feuerbach -- and they have always been thinking through the head. They have cultivated the head, they have created great scientists, logicians, philosophers, but they have missed something.

In India we don't have many jokes; there is a great poverty of spirit. You cannot find a specifically Hindu joke, no. All the jokes that go on in India are borrowed from the West. No Indian joke exists. I have not come across any. And you can rely on me because1 have come across all the jokes of the world! No Hindu joke, as such, exists. What is the reason? Again, very intellectual people. They have been weaving and spinning theories; from Vedas to Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan they have been just weaving and spinning theories and theories and they have got into it so deeply that they have forgotten how to tell a beautiful story or how to create a joke.

The Rabbi started telling this story -- the disciples must have become relaxed, must have become relaxed and attentive. That's the beauty of a story: when a story is told you are attentive and yet not tense. You can relax and yet you are attentive. A passive attentiveness arises when you listen to a story. When you listen to a theory you become very tense because of you miss a single word you may not be able to understand it. You become more concentrated. When you listen to a story you become more meditative -- there is nothing much to be lost. Even if a few words are lost here and there, nothing will be lost because if you just have the feel of the story you wi11 understand it, it does not depend so much on the words.

The disciples must have relaxed, and the Master told this story.

SO HE GAVE THIS VERDICT: A ROPE WAS TO BE STRETCHED OVER A DEEP CHASM, AND, ONE AFTER ANOTHER, THE TWO WERE TO WALK ACROSS IT. WHOEVER REACHED TO THE OTHER SIDE WAS TO BE GRANTED HIS LIFE.

Now, this sentence is very pregnant --

WHOEVER REACHED TO THE OTHER SIDE WAS TO BE GRANTED HIS LIFE.

JESUS says many times to his disciples, 'Come unto me if you want life in abundance. If you want life in abundance, come to me.' But life in abundance happens only to people who go beyond birth and death, who go beyond the duality, to the other shore. The other shore, the other side, is just symbolic of the transcendental. But it is just a hint. Nothing is particularly said, just a hint is given.

And then the story moves on.

IT WAS DONE AS THE KING ORDERED, AND THE FIRST OF THE FRIENDS GOT SAFELY ACROSS.

Now these are the two types of people. The first simply got safely across. Ordinarily we would like to enquire how to go on a rope. A tightrope stretched over a chasm -- it is dangerous. Ordinarily we would like to know the ways, the means, the method, how to go. We would like to know how? The technique -- there must be a technique. For centuries people have walked on tightropes. But the first one simply walked without enquiring, without even waiting for the other.

This is the natural tendency: to let the other go first. At least you will be able to watch and observe and that will be helpful for you. No, the first simply walked. He must have been a man of tremendous trust; he must have been a man of undoubting confidence. He must have been a man who has learnt one thing in life: that there is only one way to learn and that is to live, to experience. There is no other way.

You cannot learn tightrope-walking by watching a tightrope-walker -- no, never. Because the thing is not like a technology that you can observe from the outside, it is some inner balance that only the walker knows. And it cannot be transferred. He cannot just tell you about it; it cannot be verbalised. No tightrope-walker can tell anybody how he manages.

You ride a bicycle. Can you tell anybody how you ride it? You know the balance; it is a sort of tightrope-walking, just on two wheels straight in one line. And you go fast and you go so trustingly. If somebody asks what the secret is, can you reduce it to a formula, just like H20? Can you reduce it to a maxim? You don't say, 'This is the principle, I follow this principle,' you will say, 'The only way is for you to come and sit on the bike and I will help you to go on it. You are bound to fall a few times and then you will know the only way to know is to know.' The only way to know swimming is to swim -- with all the dangers involved in it.

The first man must have come to a deep understanding in his life -- that life is not like a textbook. You cannot be taught about it, you have to experience it. And he must have been a man of tremendous awareness. He did not hesitate, he simply walked, as if he had always been walking on a tightrope. He had never walked before; it was for the first time.

But for a man of awareness everything is for the first time, and a man of awareness can do things -- even when he is doing them for the first time -- perfectly. His efficiency does not come out of his past, his efficiency comes out of his present. Let this be remembered.

You can do things in two ways. You can do something because you have done it before -- so you know how to do it, you need not be present, you can simply do it in a mechanical way. But if you have not done it before, and you are going to do it for a first time, you have to be tremendously alert because now you don't have any past experience. So you cannot rely on the memory, you have to rely on awareness.

These are the two sources of functioning: either you function out of memory, out of Knowledge, out of the past, out of mind; or you function out of awareness, out of the present, out of no-mind.

The first man must have been a man of no-mind, a man who knows that you can simply be alert and go on and see what happens. And whatsoever happens is good. A great courage.

...THE FIRST OF THE FRIENDS GOT SAFELY ACROSS. THE OTHER, STILL STANDING ON THE SAME SPOT, CRIED TO HIM, 'TELL ME, FRIEND,HOW DID YOU MANAGE TO CROSS?'

The second is the majority mind, the mass mind. The second wants to Know first how to cross it. Is there a method to it? Is there a technique to be learnt? He is waiting for the other to say.

'TELL ME, FRIEND, HOW DID YOU MANAGE TO CROSS?'

The other must be a believer in knowledge. The other must have been a believer in others' experiences.

Many people come to me. They say, 'Osho, tell us. What happened to you?' But what are you going to do about it? Buddha has told it, Mahavir has told it, Jesus has told it -- what have you done about it? Unless it happens to you it is futile. I can tell you one more story and then you can join that story also in your record of memories, but that is not going to help.

Waiting for others' knowledge is waiting in vain because that which can be given by the others has no worth, and that which is of any worth cannot be given and cannot be transferred.

THE FIRST CALLED BACK, 'I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING BUT THIS....

Even though he had crossed he still said, I don't know anything but this....' Because, in fact, life never becomes knowledge; it remains a very suffused experience, never knowledge. You cannot verbalise it, conceptualise it, put it into a clear-cut theory.

'I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING BUT THIS: WHENEVER I FELT MYSELF TOPPLING OVER TO ONE SIDE, I LEANED TO THE OTHER.'

'This much only can be said: that there were two extremes, left and right, and whenever I felt that I was going too much towards the left and the balance was getting lost, I leaned towards the right. But again I had to balance because then I started going too much to the right and again I felt the balance was getting lost. Again I leant towards the left.'

So he said two things. One, 'I cannot formulate it as knowledge. I can only indicate. I don't know exactly what happened but this much I can give as a hint to you. And that is not much; in fact, you need not have it. You will come across the experience yourself.

But this much can be said.' Buddha was asked again and again, 'What has happened to you?' And he would always say, 'That cannot be said but this much I can say to you -- I can say in what circumstances it happened. That may be of some help to you. I cannot tell about the ultimate truth but I can tell how, on what path, with what method, in what situation I was when it happened, when the grace descended on me, when the benediction came to me.'

The man says,

... WHENEVER I FELT MYSELF TOPPLING OVER TO ONE SIDE, I LEANED TO THE OTHER.'

'That's all. Nothing much to it. That's how I balanced, that's how I remained in the middle.' And in the middle is grace.

The Rabbi is saying to his disciples, 'You ask how we should serve God?' He was indicating with this parable: remain in the middle. Don't indulge too much and don't renounce too much. Don't be only in the world and don't escape out of it. Go on keeping a balance. When you feel that now you are falling into too much indulgence, lean towards renunciation, and when you feel that now you are going to become a renunciate, an ascetic, lean back again to indulgence. Keep in the middle.

On the road in India you will find boards saying 'Keep to the Left' -- in America you will find 'Keep to the Right'. In the world there are only two types of people: a few keep to the left, a few keep to the right. The third type is the very pinnacle of consciousness. And there the rule is 'Keep to the Middle'. Don't try it on the road but on life's way keep to the middle: never to the left, never to the right. Just to the middle.

And in the middle there will be glimpses of balance. There is a point -- you can understand, you can feel it -- there is a point when you are not leaning to either extreme, you are exactly in the middle. In that split-second suddenly there is grace, everything is in equilibrium.

And that's how one can serve God. Remain in balance and it becomes a service to God; remain in balance and God is available to you and you are available to God.

Life is not a technology, not even a science; life is an art -- or it would even be better to call it a hunch. You have to feel it. It is like balancing on a tightrope.

The Rabbi has chosen a beautiful parable. He has not talked about God at all; he has not talked about service at all; he has not really answered the question at all directly. The disciples must have themselves forgotten about the question -- that's the beauty of a parable. It doesn't divide your mind into a question and an answer, it simply gives you a hunch that this is how things are.

Life has no 'know-how' about it. Remember, life is not American, it is not a technology. The American mind, or to be more specific, the modern mind, tends to create technologies out of everything. Even when there is meditation the modern mind immediately tends to create a technology out of it. Then we create machines, and man is getting lost, and we are losing all contact with life.

Remember, there are things which cannot be taught but which can only be caught. I am here, you can watch me, you can look into me and you will see a balance and you will see a silence. It is almost tangible, you can touch it, you can hear it, you can see it. It is here.

I cannot say what it is, I cannot specifically give you techniques how to attain to it. At the most I can tell you a few parables, a few stories.

They will be just hints. Those that understand will allow those hints to fall into their hearts like seeds. In their time, in the right season, they will sprout and you will understand me really only on the day you also experience the same that I am experiencing. I have crossed to the other shore, you are shouting from the other side, 'Tell me, friend, how did you manage to cross?' I can tell you only one thing,

'I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING BUT THIS: WHENEVER I FELT MYSELF TOPPLING TO THE ONE SIDE, I LEANED TO THE OTHER.'

Keep to the middle. Keep continuously alert that you don't lose the balance, and then everything will take care of itself.

If you can remain in the middle, you remain available to God, to his grace. If you can remain in the middle you can become a Hasid; you can become a receiver of grace. And God is grace. You cannot do anything to find him, you can only do one thing: not stand in his way. And whenever you move to an extreme you become so tense that that very tension makes you too solid; whenever you are in the middle, tension disappears, you become liquid, fluid. And you are no longer in the way. When you are in the middle you are no longer in God's way -- or let me tell you it in this way: when you are in the middle you are not. Exactly in the middle that miracle happens -- that you are nobody, you are a nothingness.

This is the secret key. It can open the lock of mystery, of existence to you.

The Art of Dying, Chapter 3