THE GOLDEN MEAN -OSHO

Question-OSHO What are you doing and why? how is it different from what we are doing and why? 

OSHO-I am not doing anything at all. I am not interested in any goal, in any plan, in any future. I am simply living moment to moment, spontaneously. Just as the flowers are there in the garden, doing nothing, just being there, or as the stars are in the sky, doing nothing, just being there, I am here. But there is no why and no what, simply because I don't even think of the coming moment. Whatever happens I allow it to happen.

You think I am speaking to you. As far as I am concerned, whatever comes to me I allow it to be spoken. I am just a mirror - a mirror does nothing. In language it seems as if a mirror also is doing something - it reflects. Linguistically, reflection is an action - but the mirror is not doing anything.

When you are in front of the mirror, it reflects you. When you have moved, the reflection disappears. The mirror is simply there, whatever comes in front of it is reflected in it.  That's why it is alost impossible for me to speak to you unless you ask a question - because I don't have anything to say.

Your question becomes a provocation to my consciousness. It is reflected, echoed, and goes back to you, but it is not my doing. What you are doing and why you are doing - how can I manage to know? That is your business, your problem. I can say about myself, and perhaps this is the difference: I know about myself, and you don't know about yourself.

You are doing things and you don't know why you are doing them, what you are doing....

You are living in darkness, in ignorance, in blindness. I know exactly that I am not doing anything. On my own I am just an empty mirror. If you want something to be echoed, you come in front of me, you ask a question. If some answer arises it is a simple happening - not a doing.

Just as water flows downwards, the sun rises, the birds start singing and the flowers start opening. The sun is not doing anything. It is not knocking on each bird's nest - "Get up and start singing..." Just the presence of the sun - and something happens all over existence. Life starts awakening, responding. I am simply a presence. You can draw as much as you want.

It all depends on your questions, your quest, your inquiry. I have to drop a few of your questions just because I don't want anybody to look silly asking a question which is stupid.

For example, one woman has been asking for three days continuously, "I love my ego, what should I do?" What is there to be done? If you love your ego, love is good, at least you love something. It is better than nothing! And you love your ego - then why are you worried about doing something?

Is not love enough? Do you want to do something more? Certainly you are worried that loving your own ego is taking you into a dangerous stage - it is going to become your hell. You know it, otherwise the question of what to do would not have arisen.

Every day I have read the question, and every day it has reminded me of a story.... An old woman died. She was very much afraid - afraid because in her whole life she had done nothing that she could think of as ever getting her into paradise. But strangely enough, a carrot appeared. And the carrot said, "You have forgotten. I am your only act which was virtuous and good. You once gave me to a beggar. I was rotten, and you were going to throw me away, and by a coincidence the beggar came before you were going to throw me, and you gave me to him. But even that much giving is rewarded by existence. I have been sent by God - just hold onto me and I will take you upwards to paradise."

The woman was thrilled, and holding the carrot she started rising. People had gathered, because they heard that she had died. And when they saw this carrot and the woman rising with the carrot... somebody jumped and took hold of the legs of the woman. And then it became a long line, so long that you could not see from one end to the other end.... But the woman was very angry: "So many people are going into paradise" - and the carrot was hers!

Just at the gate of paradise she shouted downwards to the long line that stretched towards earth, "You all get lost. It was my carrot!" And in saying this, she forgot. Speaking to the people and gesturing that "this was my carrot" - the carrot was lost. The carrot entered into paradise and the whole line of people fell back. Falling from paradise to the earth, none of them remained alive....

But just the idea of my carrot is enough to take you back from the very gates of paradise.

You are not at the gates of paradise, you are in love with the ego. So love it as deeply as possible so that soon it creates a hell for you. Only that hell will open your eyes - not my answer. I was dropping that question every day, because I don't want anybody to look stupid before so many people. It is insulting, and I don't want to insult anybody.

Just today another person has asked, "Do enlightened people overeat?" I wonder sometimes what goes on in people's minds - how they can manage such questions. How many enlightened people have you seen? Yes, there are people who overeat, but they are not the people who are enlightened - they are addicted to food, they cannot stop eating.

I was in America... There are thirty million people dying of starvation, and exactly thirty million people are dying of overeating - and man thinks he is a conscious being, intelligent, alert... Now this is a simple thing.

Those thirty million people should not overeat because they are killing themselves. And whatever is saved from them will save the thirty million people who are dying because they have nothing to eat. Sixty million people can be saved without doing anything, just a little understanding.

The enlightened person never goes to the extreme in any way. Neither does he fast and torture his body, nor does he overeat and torture his body in another way. Both are ways of torturing your body. You can torture it by not eating; you can torture it by overeating.

The enlightened person follows the golden mean: he is always in the middle, never at the extreme. In Gautam Buddha's life there is a beautiful story.... He was passing through Shravasti - a very rich and famous city of those days - and the king of Shravasti was one of the most egoistic persons in every way. He was an extremist about everything.

He lived in extreme luxury. The whole day he was sleeping, and the whole night was a night of dining and wining and dancing and gambling - his whole life was upside down.

He had a beautiful palace. Even on the steps he had not made a railing. On each step there were naked young women standing to function as a railing so he could go on putting his hand from one naked young woman to another. This man heard of Buddha because so many people told him, "At least once you should listen to this man. There is some beauty, there is some truth, and there is some magnetic force in the man.

What he says is not theoretical, what he says seems to be coming from the very innermost being, his own experience. He does not quote authorities, he is not a scholar. He says what he has known, and he says it with such authority that it is impossible not to be touched by it."

So many said this to him, that finally he managed one day to get up early in the morning and go to listen to Gautam Buddha. Whatever the people had said was no exaggeration. In fact, the man was much more than the people had said about him. He had a certain gravitation that pulled you towards him. Shron stood up - that was the name of the king of Shravasti - touched Buddha's feet and said, "Please initiate me, I want to become a monk."

It was a surprise. Nobody had ever thought that this man would become a monk. Even Gautam Buddha told him, "You have heard me only once, you should take some time to think it over; there is no hurry." But that was not the type of Shron's personality. He said, "When I said, 'I want to be a monk,' I want to be a monk - and right now!"

He was an extremist. He became a monk. He renounced the kingdom.

Buddhist monks don't live naked, but Shron started living naked. People reported to Buddha that he seemed to be really a great ascetic. Buddha said, "You have not understood the man. He is simply an extremist." Buddhist monks eat one time a day. Shron would eat only once every two days. He defeated all the monks. He defeated even Gautam Buddha. When they were traveling, every monk would travel on the road, but Shron would always go by the side of the road. In the thorns, the rough stones, his feet would be bleeding. And people started respecting him immensely.

Even the other monks thought they were not so great in renunciation as Shron was. Even a few started thinking that they should be followers of Shron rather than Buddha.

After six months, Shron became black - he had been a beautiful man - because he was always standing naked in the hot sun. He destroyed his body by not eating, he destroyed his feet by walking over rough stones, thorns, bushes when there was a road available.

Within six months he was badly sick, and Gautam Buddha himself went to see him. It was a rare occasion because it was not reported that Gautam Buddha had ever gone to see any other sick monk before or after. The news went like wildfire amongst all the monks that certainly Shron was a great ascetic, otherwise Buddha would not have gone to see him just because he was sick.

But Buddha had gone for some other purpose. He did not ask Shron about his sickness. He said to him, "I have heard that when you were a king you used to play the sitar and you were a master artist. There was not anyone else in the whole country comparable to you - is that right?" Shron said, "Yes. I love to play the sitar, and I had devoted my whole life to the sitar. I had come to such a mastery that there was no competitor to me." Buddha said, "I have come to ask a few questions. One: when the wires of the sitar are too tight, will it give birth to great music?" Shron said, "To great music? It will not give birth to any music. Too tight wires will simply break." Buddha said, "And if the wires are too loose, will it give great music?" Shron said, "You are asking strange questions. When the wires are too loose they don't have tension enough to create music."

Then Buddha said, "What is the position in which the wires should be so that great music can be produced?" And Shron said, "They have to be in exactly the middle position where you can say they are not loose and they are not tight. And it is one of the secrets of the art to adjust the wires to the exact middle." Buddha said, "I don't have anything more to ask you. I have just come to remind you that life is also like playing on the sitar: if you are too loose you are lost, if you are too tight you are lost. Each extreme is a death, and to find the exact middle is the whole art. You were too loose living in utter luxury. Now you are too tight living in an unnecessarily ascetic way. Come into the middle, listen to me, for the wise have always followed the middle path, they are never at the extremes. Only fools are at the extremes."

So whatever the situation, the enlightened person will always be found exactly balanced in the middle. That's why it is difficult even to recognize the enlightened man. You can see the extremist very easily: he is fasting, he is standing naked in the hot sun, in the cold... you can recognize him. He is standing on his head, or he is standing on his feet for years and he does not sit down, does not lie down. And naturally you will recognize him because he is doing something which is unnatural.

The enlightened person will be absolutely natural - but this is to be understood that he will be very much unrecognizable. You will need immense insight and understanding. You will need some taste of meditation to experience the enlightened man, otherwise you will not understand him.

For example, Hindus denied Gautam Buddha while he was alive... they did not recognize that he was enlightened because their incarnations of God - Rama, Parasurama, Krishna, Shiva - none of them had renounced the world, none of them had renounced anything. They lived in immense luxury. They lived in marble palaces, moved in golden chariots... That seemed to be fitting for a god. But Gautam Buddha with a begging bowl, barefooted, moving on the street, not even using a vehicle - Hindus could not conceive what kind of a god he was, what kind of enlightenment he had attained. Krishna never did this, Rama never did this. They had no comparison in their own history. Naturally, they denied him.

Jainas also denied that Gautam Buddha was enlightened for the simple reason that Jainas are on the other extreme. Mahavira lived naked. He was a contemporary of Gautam Buddha; he lived naked. He did not carry even a begging bowl - that is also a possession.

Gautam Buddha had three pieces of clothing and one begging bowl - at least four things. For Mahavira that was too much possessiveness - he had nothing. He would beg with his hands.

He would make his hands the begging bowl. And the Jainas had a long history of twenty-four tirthankaras... the same ascetic ways, the same way of fasting for months at a time. In twelve years, Mahavira ate for only one year - not solidly for one year, but two months he would fast, two or three days he would eat, a few months he would fast, a week he would eat... In twelve years he ate only on three hundred and sixty-five days. He was fasting for eleven years.

Now Jainas cannot accept Gautam Buddha as enlightened, because he was eating every day. One meal every day - it was too much luxury.

I want you to understand that to understand the enlightened man is one of the most difficult things in the world, for the simple reason that he is in the middle. He is absolutely normal. The extremist is recognizable. The person who has asked the question may have seen Hindu monks with big bellies...

I have seen monks like Nityananda. It is difficult to say that Nityananda had a belly, it is better to say that the belly had Nityananda. The belly was bigger than Nityananda. The belly was all. The head and legs were joined to it, but they seemed to be secondary, not important. When he lay down the belly looked like Gourishankar - even Edmund Hillary would find it difficult to climb!

But this happens to Hindu monks for the simple reason that for centuries it had been thought a great virtue to serve the monks, to feed the monks, to bring as much delicious food as possible. So people would bring food, fruits, sweets - all kinds of things - and the monk...

This is to be understood - it is one of the secrets of human life that if you are repressing sex you will start eating more. If you have completely denied yourself love, then food will become your only love affair. And the reason is that the child, when he is born, comes in contact with the mother's breast. Simultaneously he feels the love of the mother and the mother's milk - the food. Food and love become associated from the first day.

That's why every businessman knows to give a good dinner to the party when you are doing business. Then the business can be done easily; negotiations can be made easily and will be more favorable. First feed the person, then he is in a loving mood, unconsciously. This is the psychology: with food, love is joined.

Take love away from the man and you will immediately see that he starts eating more, because he substitutes food for love. It happens that unmarried girls are never so fat, but when they become married, settled in life, a husband... Now there is no question of any competition, particularly in this part of the world, and they start becoming fat. They quarrel with the husband, they fight with the husband, they nag the husband. And you will be surprised that they nag the husband exactly when he is eating - unconsciously.

That is the most vulnerable time because that is the time he wants love and that is the time he is given hate. You can't torture in a better way. And the same man every day, and the same quarrel, the same fight... slowly, slowly you forget what love is. Then people start eating more and more. Women are more fat than men in the East, because women cannot move freely in the society and have love affairs, but men can have love affairs outside marriage.

In the West it is equal, but in the East women are more fat than men.

It shows that the men have a freedom which the woman has not. But with food she is free and the whole day she is in the kitchen. I am reminded of an anecdote....

One man's wife was getting so fat that it was becoming embarrassing for the husband to take her anywhere. Wherever he would go with the wife, she would immediately become the target of everybody's comment: "What kind of woman is this?" And particularly in the West, slim is thought to be beautiful. A fat woman may do in the East, but in the West - impossible!

In the East monks are fasting; in the West women are fasting. Everybody is on a diet. Why? - because the thinner you are, the younger you look, the better you look. The man asked the psychologist, "What to do? The wife does not listen." The psychologist said, "You do one thing." He gave him a naked picture of a very beautiful woman with a very proportionate body and told him, "Hang it inside the refrigerator so whenever your wife opens it, suddenly she will recognize what she is doing to herself. She should be like this woman.

Perhaps it will help - continuous remembrance again and again. Anything that she goes to the refrigerator for, she will see the naked woman, so beautiful..." After six months the psychologist met the man. He could not recognize him. What had happened?

The man had become so fat. The psychologist asked, "What happened? You were talking about your wife that she is so fat - that something has to done. And within six months you have managed a feat which people could not manage in six years." The husband said, "It is all your doing, because of this beautiful picture." The psychologist said, "I don't understand." And the man said, "It is so simple to understand: it did not work on my wife, it worked on me. I started to go to the fridge to see the picture. And when one is so close to ice cream and this and that, one naturally takes something. My wife is the same, now I am her equal. But this is your doing - that stupid picture! I thought you were a psychologist."

An enlightened man is so full of love, is so full of compassion, that it is impossible for him to overeat. And he is not only compassionate to you, he is compassionate to his own body too. He cannot torture it by fasting, he cannot torture it by overeating. He will always remain in the middle. And in the middle is all the wisdom, all the truth, all the beauty of existence.



OSHO~The Sword and the Lotus-The golden mean

Loving and Love in Marriage

Question : If love becomes destroyed in Marriage, how are we to Live if we wish to share love and thoughts on a day-today Basis, and also raise Children with both a Mother And a Father?

Osho : I have never said that love is destroyed by marriage. How can marriage destroy love? Yes, it is destroyed in marriage, but it is destroyed by you, not by marriage. It is destroyed by the partners. How can marriage destroy love? It is you who destroy it, because you don't know what love is. You simply pretend to know, you simply hope that you know, you dream that you know, but you don't know what love is. Love has to be learned; it is the greatest art there is. If people are dancing and somebody asks you, 'Come and dance,' you say, 'I don't know.'

You don't just jump up and start dancing and have everybody think that you are a great dancer. You will just prove yourself to be a buffoon. You will not prove yourself to be a dancer. It has to be learned -- the grace of it, the movement of it. You have to train the body for it. You don't just go and start painting just because the canvas is available and the brush is there and the colour is there. You don't start painting. You say, 'All requirements are here, so I can paint. You can paint -- but you will not be a painter that way.

You meet a woman -- the canvas is there. You immediately become a lover -- you start painting. And she starts painting on you. Of course you both prove to be foolish -- painted fools -- and sooner or later you understand what is happening. But you never thought that love is an art. You are not born with the art, it is nothing to do with your birth. You have to learn it. It is the most subtle art. You are born only with a capacity. Of course, you are born with a body; you can be a dancer because you have the body.

You can move your body and you can be a dancer -- but dancing has to be learned. Much effort is needed to learn dancing. And dancing is not so difficult because you alone are involved in it. Love is much more difficult. It is dancing with somebody else. The other is also needed to know what dancing is. To fit with somebody, it is a great art. To create a harmony between two persons... two persons mean two different worlds. When two worlds come close, clash is bound to be there if you don't know how to harmonise.

Love is harmony. And happiness, health, harmony, all happen out of love. Learn to love. Don't be in a hurry for marriage, learn to love. First become a great lover. And what is the requirement? The requirement is that a great lover is always ready to give love and is not bothered whether it is returned or not. It is always returned, it is inthe very nature of things. It is just as if you go to the mountains and you sing a song, and the valleys respond. Have you seen an echo point in the mountains, in the hills?

You shout and the valleys shout, or you sing and the valleys sing. Each heart is a valley. If you pour love into it, it will respond. The first lesson of love is not to ask for love, but just to give. Become a giver. And people are doing just the opposite. Even when they give, they give only with the idea that love should come back. It is a bargain. They don't share, they don't share freely. They share with a condition. They go on watching out of the corner of their eye whether it is coming back or not. Very poor people... they don't know the natural functioning of love.

You simply pour, it will come. And if it is not coming, nothing to be worried about -- because a lover knows that to love is to be happy. If it comes, good; then the happiness is multiplied. But even if it never comes back, in the very act of loving you become so happy, so ecstatic, who bothers whether it comes or not? Love has its own intrinsic happiness. It happens when you love. There is no need to wait for the result. Just start loving. By and by you will see much more love is coming back to you. One loves and comes to know what love is only by loving.

As one learns swimming by swimming, by loving one loves. And people are very miserly. They are waiting for some great beloved to happen, then they will love. They remain closed, they remain withdrawn. They just wait. From somewhere some Cleopatra will come and then they will open their heart, but by that time they have completely forgotten how to open it. Don't miss any opportunity of love. Even passing in a street, you can be loving. Even to the beggar you can be loving. There is no need that you have to give him something; you can smile at least. It costs nothing -- but your very smile opens your heart, makes your heart more alive.

Hold somebody's hand -- a friend or a stranger. Don't wait that you will only love when the right person happens. Then the right person will never happen. Go on loving. The more you love, the more is the possibility for the right person to happen, because your heart starts flowering. And a flowering heart attracts many bees, many lovers.You have been trained in a very wrong way. First, everybody lives under a wrong impression that everybody is already a lover. Just being born, you think you are a lover. It's not so easy.

Yes, there is a potentiality, but the potentiality has to be trained, disciplined. A seed exists, but it has to come to flower. You can go on carrying your seed; no bee will be coming. Have you ever seen bees coming to the seeds? Don't they know that seeds can become flowers? But they come when they become flowers. Become a flower, don't remain a seed. Two people, separately unhappy, create more unhappiness for each other when they come together. That's mathematical.

You were unhappy, your wife was unhappy and you both are hoping that being together you both will become happy? This is... this is such ordinary arithmetic -- like two plus two makes four. It is that simple. It is not part of any higher mathematics; it is very ordinary, you can count it on your fingers. You both will become unhappy.

You don't love me any more?' asked Mulla Nasrudin's wife. 'You never say anything nice to me any more like you used to when we were courting.' She wiped a tear from her eye with the corner of her apron. 'I love you, I love you,' retorted Mulla Nasrudin. 'Now will you please shut up and let me drink my beer in peace?'

Courting is one thing. Don't depend on courting. In fact before you get married, get rid of courting. My suggestion is that marriage should happen after the honeymoon, never before it. Only if everything goes right, only then marriage should happen. Honeymoon after marriage is very dangerous. As far as I know, ninety-nine percent of marriages are finished by the time the honeymoon is finished. But then you are caught, then you have no way to escape. Then the whole society, the law, the court -- everybody is against you if you leave the wife, or the wife leaves you. Then the whole morality, the religion, the priest, everybody is against you.

In fact society should create all barriers possible for marriage and no barrier for divorce. Society should not allow people to marry so easily. The court should create barriers -- live with the woman for two years at least, then the court can allow you to get married. Right now they are doing just the reverse. If you want to get married, nobody asks whether you are ready or whether it is just a whim, just because you like the nose of the woman. What foolishness! One cannot live by just a long nose. After two days the nose will be forgotten.

Who looks at one's own wife's nose? I have heard:A certain ward was staffed completely by nurses who looked as though they were finalists in the Miss World Contest, but every time one of the patients saw them, he stared intently and said, 'Rubbish! 'The man in the next bed could not understand it at all. 'Gorgeous nurses like these to look after you and all you can say is "Rubbish". Why?'

'I was not thinking of the nurses,' said the other sadly, 'I was thinking of my wife.'  The wife never looks beautiful, the husband never looks beautiful. Once you are aquainted, beauty disappears. 

Two persons should be allowed to live together long enough to become aquainted, familiar with each other. And even if they want to get married, they should not be allowed. Then divorces will disappear from the world. The divorces exist because marriages are wrong and forced. The divorces exist because marriages are done in a romantic mood. A romantic mood is good if you are a poet -- and poets are not known to be good husbands or good wives. In fact poets are almost always bachelors.

They fool around but they never get caught, and hence their romance remains alive. They go on writing poetry, beautiful poetry. One should not get married to a woman or to a man in a poetic mood. Let the prose mood come, then settle. Because the day-to-day life is more like prose than like poetry. One should become mature enough. Maturity means that one is no more a romantic fool. One understands life, one understands the responsibility of life, one understands the problems of being together with a person.

One accepts all those difficulties and yet decides to live with the person. One is not hoping that there is only going to be heaven, all roses. One is not hoping nonsense; one knows reality is tough. It is rough. There are roses, but far and few in between; there are many thorns. When you have become alert to all of these problems and still you decide that it is worthwhile to risk and be with a person rather than to be alone, then get married. Then marriages will never kill love, because this love is realistic. Marriage can kill only romantic love.

And romantic love is what people call 'puppy love'. One should not depend on it. One should not think about it as nourishment. It may be just like ice-cream. You can eat it sometimes, but don't depend on it. Life has to be more realistic, more prose. And marriage itself never destroys anything. Marriage simply brings out whatsoever ishidden in you -- it brings it out. If love is hidden behind you, inside you, marriage brings it out. If love was just a pretension, just a bait, then sooner or later it has to disappear.

And then your reality, your ugly personality comes up. Marriage simply is an opportunity, so whatsoever you had to bring out will come out. I am not saying that love is destroyed by marriage. Love is destroyed by people who don't know how to love. Love is destroyed because in the first place love is not. You have been living in a dream. Reality destroys that dream. Otherwise love is something eternal, part of eternity. If you grow, if you know the art, and you accept the realities of love-life, then it goes on growing every day.

Marriage becomes a tremendous opportunity to grow into love. Nothing can destroy love. If it is there, it goes on growing. But my feeling is, it is not there in the first place. You misunderstood yourself; something else was there. Maybe sex was there, sex appeal was there. Then it is going to be destroyed, because once you have loved a woman, then the sex appeal disappears -- because the sex appeal is only with the unknown. Once you have tasted the body of the woman or the man, then the sex appeal disappears.

If your love was only sex appeal then it is bound to disappear. So never misunderstand love for something else. If love is really love.... What do I mean when I say 'really love'? I mean that just being in the presence of the other you feel suddenly happy, just being together you feel ecstatic, just the very presence of the other fulfills something deep in your heart... something starts singing in your heart, you fall into harmony. Just the very presence of the other helps you to be together; you become more individual, more centered, more grounded. Then it is love.

Love is not a passion, love is not an emotion. Love is a very deep understanding that somebody somehow completes you. Somebody makes you a full circle. The presence of the other enhances your presence. Love gives freedom to be yourself; it is not possessiveness. So, watch. Never think of sex as love, otherwise you will be deceived.

Be alert, and when you start feeling with someone that just the presence, the pure presence -- nothing else, nothing else is needed; you don't ask anything -- just the presence, just that the other is, is enough to make you happy... something starts flowering within you, a thousand and one  lotuses bloom... then you are in love, and then you can pass through all the difficulties that reality creates. Many anguishes, many anxieties -- you will be able to pass all of them, and your love will be flowering more and more, because all those situations will become challenges. And your love, by overcoming them, will become more and more strong.

Love is eternity. If it is there, then it goes on growing and growing. Love knows the beginning but does not know the end.

Jiddu Krishnamurti - Our problems arise because we are conditioned

Question: Do you have a technique which I can learn from you, so that I, too, can carry your message to those who are full of sorrow?

Jiddu Krishnamurti : Sir, what do you mean by carrying a message? Do you mean repeating the words - propaganda? The very nature of propaganda is to condition the mind. Every form of propaganda - the Communist propaganda, the religious propaganda, and so on - is to condition the mind, is it not? If you learn a technique as you call it, a way, and you learn it by heart and repeat it, you will be a good propagandist; if you are keen, clever, if you are capable of using words, you will condition those that hear you in a new way instead of the old way, but it is still conditioning; it is still limited. And that is our problem, is it not?

Our problems arise because we are conditioned. Our education conditions us. Is it possible for the mind ever to be free from conditioning? You can only discover that state. You cannot say whether it is possible or not possible. When you ask, "Have you a technique?" what do you mean? Perhaps you mean a method, a system, which you learn like a schoolboy and repeat it. Sir, surely the problem is something much more fundamental, radically different, is it not? There is no technique to learn. You do not have to carry my message, what you carry is your message, not mine, sirs.

This existence, this misery, this confusion is your problem. If you understand it, if you can understand the experience of a conditioned mind and go beyond, then you will be the person who is teaching; then there will be no teacher and no disciple. But then, you have to understand yourself, not learn my technique or carry my message.

Sir, what is important is to understand that this is our world, that together we can build this world happily, that we - you and I - are related together, that what you do and what I do inwardly matters, that how we think is important, and that thought, which is always conditioned, will not solve our problem. What will solve our problem is to understand the ways of our thinking.

The moment we understand how we think, there will be a radical change inwardly; we will no longer be Hindus, Christians, Communists, socialists, or capitalists; we shall be human beings, human beings with passion, with love, with consideration. That cannot come about by merely learning a technique or carrying somebody's message.

You cannot have love through technique. You can have sensation through a technique, but that is not love. Love is something that cannot be told, that cannot be carried across through newspapers or through techniques or through propaganda. It must be felt, it must be understood. But if you repeat love, love, love, it has no meaning. You will know of that love when the mind is quiet, when the mind is free from its conditioning, from its anxieties, from its fears. And it is that love which is the true revolution that will alter the whole process of our being.

Jiddu Krishnamurti, First Talk in Bombay 1953

Beloved Osho, I’m afraid that the world is going to end before I get enlightened. What can I Do?

You seem to be very much in a hurry. If you understand me, there is no problem — right now you can become enlightened. At least right now the world has not ended. There are thousands of people in the world trying for enlightenment, but their very trying is the barrier. It postpones enlightenment.

For ninety years J. Krishnamurti has been working, first upon himself, then upon others. And now he is getting immensely frustrated. Nobody is to be blamed, he himself has made it a difficult job. He is obsessed with reading detective novels; he has made the search for enlightenment a very sensational, puzzling, difficult detective story. My Krishnamurti Lake is doing far better: just the other day somebody became enlightened there.

You are asking me, “The world is going to end, what am I supposed to do?” Have I to answer you? Can’t you understand? Krishnamurti Lake is not far away.

Krishnamurti himself will not help you. He has been just on the border of enlightenment. One step more… but that one step is missing. And the reason is that he was forced to become enlightened. For twenty-five years in his early life…. The theosophical idiots found him. He was nine years old, the son of a poor, very poor father; the mother had died, he had one brother. The father was in much difficulty. He was just a small clerk in some office; to look after these two children, and do the work — it was becoming maddening.

So when the Theosophists told him they would like to adopt his two children — one was Nityananda and the other was Krishnamurti — he happily handed over the children to Annie Besant, knowing that at least they would be taken care of, given a good education. The theosophical movement in those days was the top movement of the world. Very important, significant, powerful people had become involved in it.

The Theosophists started making these two poor boys enlightened — it had never been done before… so much hammering that Nityananda died. My feeling is that the Theosophists were responsible for his death. They tortured these two boys as much as possible: wake up in the morning at three o’clock; go to the river, take a cold bath, then chant mantras… spiritual teaching that went on deep into the night.

Both escaped them finally, because it was absolutely inhuman — Nityananda in one way, Krishnamurti in another. Nityananda died — he must have been of a weaker constitution. Krishnamurti survived.

The Theosophists were going to declare Krishnamurti the world teacher. When he was twenty-five they gathered in Holland to declare him the world teacher, with great hope: “The man who can deliver the whole world from misery has arrived. He is the Christ, he is the Buddha; he contains all the hopes of the past humanity.”

Krishnamurti stood up to declare himself to be the world teacher, but on the contrary, he simply said, “I am nobody’s teacher. I am fed up with teachers! And just forgive me, I am not jagadguru, the world teacher. And I dissolve this whole organization that you have created around me.” A special organization called The Star of the East, a branch of the Theosophical Society, was created for Krishnamurti. He dissolved the organization. The people were simply shocked; they had worked so hard to make him enlightened, and this man freaked out at the crucial moment.

Since then he has been going around the earth alone. But those twenty-five years are still heavy on him; that’s why he cannot take that one step. He is not freed from those dead Theosophists. They are long dead, the movement has almost disappeared, but what happened in those twenty-five years in the beginning is holding him back.

Remember always: love is an attachment; hate is a bigger attachment, far more solid. Compassion is very delicate, but cruelty is very hard. He is still fighting with the ghosts of the Theosophists. All his life he has been fighting and fighting with those ghosts — who are dead, there is no need to fight with them. One should be simply free of them, but being free means you don’t hate them. Hate imprisons you.

He has become so afraid of the master and disciple phenomenon…. It is his experience — I can forgive him, I can understand him. What happened to him through his masters was so ugly that he has been teaching everybody that you don’t need any master.

This is a contradiction. If they don’t need any master, why are you bothering them? Who are you? You have assumed, unknowingly, the role of a master, of a teacher. What have you been doing for ninety years? — teaching people: Beware of teachers! If the people had really understood you, they would have left you, because, “What is the need? Why should we listen to you? This is what a teacher and a student, a master and a disciple do.”

The master knows, the disciple does not know. The master imparts his knowledge to the disciples. Krishnamurti has been doing that, and I am amazed how blind people are. They don’t say to him, “Shut up! If we don’t need any master, then who are you to bother us? For ninety years you have been bothering people, and not a single person has become enlightened out of this whole effort.”

He has created a different kind of effort: “Don’t make effort, don’t accept any master, don’t be open to any teaching.” All kinds of egoists have surrounded him for all these years, because the egoist feels great that he need not be open, he need not listen, he need not be concerned about masters and teachers; he is enough unto himself.

It is true, you are enough unto yourself, but you don’t know it! Somebody has to hammer it on your head. But things can backfire. That’s what has happened in Krishnamurti’s case: a man of tremendous intelligence, fighting with ghosts, and continuing teaching, telling people there is no master, telling people, “You are enough unto yourself” — this can be misunderstood.

You are enough unto yourself if you relax and settle in your being; otherwise you are the greatest enemy of yourself. If you go on making an effort to become enlightened…. And man is so strange: if you tell him that no effort is needed, he starts making “no effort”!

Krishnamurti has never criticized any individual by name. Although he has criticized principles, doctrines, he has not criticized Gautam Buddha, Jesus Christ, Moses, Mohammed. Just the other day I received the information that he has criticized me. This is great! He has always pretended that it is not worth his while to criticize Jesus, Mohammed, Mahavira; it is something below him. That attitude is ugly.

But he could not restrain himself about me, for the simple reason that I have told my sannyasins, “Wherever he is, just go and sit in the front line.” And you ask me why I have chosen red clothes for you?

The color red has something mysterious about it — just show a red flag to a bull and you will know. You can show a blue flag, nothing will happen; a green flag, nothing will happen. But show a red flag to a bull and he will rush towards you to kill you. Krishnamurti must have been a bull in his past life. The moment he sees my red people he forgets all his philosophy, he starts immediately criticizing me. But this is the first time he has used my name.

And what criticism has he given? — very childish. He has said against me that I am convincing people that enlightenment is their sheer inheritance, it is a gift of existence — just as life is a gift. I have always respected Krishnamurti, his intelligence, his courage to dissolve a great organization. But I cannot help it, I have to say the truth to you: he is just on the borderline, he is not yet enlightened. He can be any moment.

You should not be afraid of the third world war. For you there is enough time. But he is ninety; for him there is not much time. He should come to Krishnamurti Lake and get enlightened!

Osho Book “From the False to the Truth”

I WILL NOT HAVE SUCCESSORS

Beloved Osho,

You have often said you will have no successors. But won't all those who love you be your successors in that we carry you in our blood and bones and so you are part of us forever?

Maneesha,

The concept of the successor is bureaucratic. The very idea of succession is not the right idea in the world of consciousness. That's why I have said I WILL NOT HAVE SUCCESSORS. But you are right in saying that YOU WILL CARRY IN YOUR BONES AND IN YOUR BLOOD MY LOVE, MY INSIGHT. But don't use the word 'successor', rather use the words 'YOU WILL BE ME'.

Why be so far away, a successor, when you can be me? Be so empty that I can make a home in you, that your emptiness can absorb my emptiness, that your heart can have the same dance as my heart. IT IS NOT SUCCESSION, IT IS TRANSMISSION.

THE VERY IDEA OF SUCCESSION IS POLITICAL. Only one person can be a successor, so there is bound to be competition, ambition. There is bound to be a subtle struggle to be closer to the Master, to force others away. It may not be on the surface but, underneath, the problem will remain in the disciples: "Who is going to be the successor?"

I destroy the whole conception. Every disciple who has loved has become one with the Master. THERE IS NO NEED OF ANY COMPETITION, NOR ONE SUCCESSOR. It is for everybody who has offered himself in deep gratitude, who has become one in a certain sense with the Master's presence. There is no need of any competition: thousands can have the same experience, millions can have the same experience.

TO AVOID POLITICS IN RELIGION, I HAVE SAID THAT I WILL NOT HAVE SUCCESSORS. I want religion to be absolutely devoid of ambition, competition, being higher than another, putting everybody lower than oneself. With me you are all equal. And I trust and love you, that you will prove this equality. In equals there is no competition, there is a combined effort.

YOU WILL ALL CARRY MY MESSAGE, but nobody will be higher or lower, NOBODY WILL BE A SUCCESSOR. All will be my lovers and they will carry me.

I am reminded of a case: RAMAKRISHNA HAD A CANCER OF THE THROAT. In the last stage it became impossible even to drink water. All his disciples said, "Why don't you ask in your prayers for God to remove this cancer? We know that if you ask, your prayer will be heard. And if your prayer cannot be heard, then all prayers are false."

Ramakrishna was such a man that if his prayer is not heard, it can only mean there is no God, or God is deaf. If Ramakrishna's prayer is not answered, then nobody else in the whole world should hope that his prayer will be answered -- so they insisted again and again. But Ramakrishna said, "It does not look right. I close my eyes because you insist. But I cannot ask anything from existence. PERHAPS CANCER IS RIGHT -- OTHERWISE WHY IT SHOULD BE GIVEN TO ME? I cannot be wiser than existence."

The disciples in despair asked Ramakrishna's wife, Sharada, "Unless you tell him, he will not listen to anyone. And you have to be absolutely insistent." Sharada told Ramakrishna. He said, "I knew that my disciples would bring you, and I cannot refuse you because I have never refused. And you have never asked anything; this is the first time in your whole life you are asking for something, and in these last moments how I can refuse you? I will try." He closed his eyes, and after a few seconds he opened them and started laughing. Sharada said, "What happened? Did you ask?"

He said, "I asked. But the answer came: 'Why do you insist on your own throat? Drink from all the throats of your disciples. WHY INSIST ON BEING IDENTIFIED WITH YOUR OWN BODY? Why not merge into all your lovers?' That's why I started laughing because I knew this would be the answer. You unnecessarily made me look stupid before existence."

If the disciple loves the Master, if there is trust, and trust founded on experience, HE WILL CARRY SPONTANEOUSLY THE MASTER'S MESSAGE. There is no need to say anything, he will be his Master's message.

OSHO