I Say Unto You Vol 1 10

The first question:
Osho,
Your last words at this morning’s talk were: “Meditate on this.” What do you mean? How does one who only knows how to think about things learn to meditate on things?
Knowing what thinking is, is the beginning of knowing what meditation is. Thinking is the negative part; meditation is the positive part. Thinking means mind in turmoil; meditation means mind in silence. But the turmoil is the beginning of silence, and only after the storm is there silence.
If you can think, you are capable of meditation. If a man can be ill, he can be healthy. Health becomes impossible only when you cannot even be ill. Then you are dead. Only a corpse cannot fall ill. If you can fall ill, then there is still hope. Then you are still alive. And so is the case with thinking and meditation. Thinking is the mind which is ill: not at ease, not reconciled with itself, disturbed, fragmented, divided. Meditation means the division no longer exists, the fragments have disappeared into oneness – you are at ease, at home.
It is the same mind: divided, it becomes thinking; undivided, it becomes meditation. If you can think, you are capable of meditation although meditation is not thinking. Thinking is an ill state of affairs, pathological. But one can transcend it, and the transcendence is easy; it is not as difficult as you think. The difficulty comes because you don’t really want to go into meditation. In meditation not only is thinking going to disappear; you are also going to disappear. Only an ill man is, a healthy man disappears. In health you are not; you exist only in illness, you exist only in pain, in suffering, in hell. You can’t exist in heaven because to feel one’s existence means to feel pain.
Have you not observed it? When you have a headache, then you have a head. When the headache disappears, the head disappears too. If your body is perfectly healthy and everything is running smoothly, humming smoothly, you don’t feel the body at all; you become bodiless. In the ancient Indian scriptures, health is described and defined as bodiless-ness: you don’t feel your body. How can you feel your body if it is not ill? Only illness creates knowledge; self-consciousness is created by it, self is created by it.
So meditation is not difficult if you really want to go into it. It is the simplest thing possible, the most simple, the most primal. In your mother’s womb you were in meditation. There were no distracting thoughts; you were not thinking about anything, you simply were. To regain that state of in the womb is what meditation is all about. When you see a person meditating, what do you see? He has disappeared into the womb again, he has made his whole body like a womb, and he has disappeared into it. Buddha sitting under the bodhi tree… What is he doing? He has moved back to the source. He is not there. There is nobody sitting under the bodhi tree. That’s what a buddha means: there is nobody sitting under the bodhi tree.
When Jesus goes to the mountains away from the multitude, where is he going? He is going inward, he is trying to make contact again with the original source, because from that original source is rejuvenation. From that original source there is again freshness, vitality, and the waters of life are flowing again – one is bathed, one is resurrected.
In the world, thinking is needed. In your inner being, thinking is not needed. When you are communicating with somebody, thought is a must. When you are just communing with yourself, what is the need of thought? Thought will be a disturbance.
Try to understand why thinking is needed and what thinking is. When there is a problem, thinking is needed to solve it. You have to go round about, look from every angle of the problem, think of all possible solutions. There are many alternatives, so one has to choose which one is the right one. And there is always the possibility of error, and there is always fear and anxiety – that is natural – and still there is no guarantee that you are going to succeed in finding the solution. One gropes in the darkness, one tries to find a way out of it. Thinking is the confronting of a problem. In life there are millions of problems and thinking is needed.
I am not saying thinking is not needed. When you relate to the outside it is needed. But when you are facing your own being, it is not a problem; it is a mystery. And let it be very clear what a mystery is. A problem is something that can be solved; a mystery, by its very nature, is something that cannot be solved. There is no way out of it, so there is no question of finding the way.
You are a mystery. It is never going to be solved, because you cannot go behind yourself. How can you solve it? You cannot stand outside yourself and tackle yourself as a problem, so how can you solve it? Who is going to solve whom? You are the solver, and you are the problem, and you are the solution. There is no division at all. The knower and the known and the knowledge are one – this is mystery.
When the knower is different from the known there is a problem. Then there is something objective; you can think of a way out, you can find out something which becomes knowledge. But inside yourself you are facing the eternal – the beginningless, the endless – you are facing the ultimate. You cannot think. If you think you will miss. Only through non-thinking will you not miss. You can see into it – with awe, with great wonder. You can go into it deeper and deeper, you can dive into it. You can go on digging, and the more you dig, the more you will understand that this is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved. So thinking is irrelevant. And when thinking is irrelevant, meditation arises. The failure of thinking is the arousal of meditation.
Science is thinking; religion is meditation. If you think about God it is philosophy; it is not religion. If you live godliness, then it is religion.
If you are looking at a lotus flower and thinking about it, then it is science, philosophy, aesthetics. But if you are simply looking at the lotus flower… The look is pure, uncontaminated by any thought, and the lotus flower is not thought to be a problem but just a beauty to be experienced… You are there, the lotus flower is there, and there is nothing in between, just emptiness, nobody is standing between you and the flower – it is meditation. Then the flower is not outside you because there is nothing to divide as the in and the out. Then the lotus flower is somehow within you and you are somehow within the lotus flower. You melt into each other; divisions are lost, boundaries become blurred. The lotus starts touching your heart, and your heart starts touching the lotus. There is communion. It is meditation.
Whenever thought is not functioning it is meditation. Listening to me sometimes becomes meditation to you. I say “sometimes” because sometimes you start thinking and then you lose track. When you are just listening, not thinking at all about what is being said – neither for, nor against, not comparing with your past knowledge, not being greedy to accumulate it for your future use, not trying to justify, rationalize, not doing anything at all… I am here, you are there, and there is a meeting. In that meeting is meditation, and then there is great beauty.
You ask me: “Your last words at this morning’s talk were: ‘Meditate on this.’” Yes. Whether I say it or not, that is my message every day – in the beginning, in the middle, in the end. That’s what I am saying: meditate on this. Meditate.
The English word meditation is not adequate for what we in the East mean by dhyana. Meditation again carries some idea of thinking. In English, meditation means to think about, to meditate upon something. Dhyana does not mean to meditate upon something. Dhyana simply means to be in the presence of something, just to be in the presence. If you are in the presence of a tree it is meditation on the tree. If you are in the presence of the stars then it is meditation on the stars. If you are here in the presence of me then it is a meditation. And when you are alone and you just feel your own presence, it is meditation.
From dhyana came the Chinese word ch’an; from ch’an came the Japanese word zen. They are all derivations of dhyana. Dhyana is a beautiful word. It is not translatable into English, because English has words like meditation, contemplation, concentration – they all miss the point.
Concentration means concentrating on one thing. Meditation is not a concentration, it is an absolutely de-concentrated state of consciousness – it is just the opposite. When you concentrate there is a tension, you start focusing, there is effort. And when you concentrate on one thing other things are denied, then you are closed for other things. If you concentrate on me, then what will you do with this plane passing by, and the noise? Then you will close your mind to it, you will focus on me, you will become strained because you have to deny this roaring airplane. You have to close your mind to it; then your mind is not open. A bird starts singing – what will you do? You will have to close yourself. That’s what is being taught in the schools and the colleges and the universities. It is concentration.
Meditation is not concentration; it is just openness, alertness, presence. You are listening to me, but you are not listening to me exclusively. You are simply listening. And the airplane goes roaring by – you listen to that too. And the bird starts singing and you listen to that too. There is no division; you don’t choose. All that happens in the surroundings is accepted: it becomes part of your listening to me. Your listening is not exclusive; it is inclusive of all.
So concentration is not meditation. Then the word meditation itself is not meditation, because in meditation somebody meditates on Jesus, somebody meditates on the Bible, somebody meditates on God. Again it is not meditation. If there is a God as an object and Jesus as an object, then there is a distinction between the knower and the known; there is duality. And in duality there is conflict, and in conflict there is misery. In non-duality conflict disappears, and when conflict disappears, hell disappears. Then there is joy.
So meditation is not meditating upon something, meditation simply means a different quality of your inner being. In thinking your mind goes on weaving, spinning thoughts. In meditation your mind is simply silent, utterly silent, not doing anything at all – not even meditating! Not doing anything at all. Sitting silently, doing nothing and the grass grows by itself. The spring comes, and the grass grows by itself. Meditation is a natural state of silence. It is not contemplation either.
In contemplation you think about “high thoughts,” spiritual things – not about mundane things, not about the market, not about the family, but high values, truth, beauty, bliss. But you contemplate on these. You try to think about these high values of life – then it is contemplation.
But meditation is not even that. Meditation is a state of stillness. And this state of stillness has not to be forced because it cannot be forced. If you force it, it will not be the right stillness. If you force it, you will be there forcing it; it will not be natural, it will not be spontaneous. So what has to be done?
One has to understand the ways of thinking. One has to understand the stupidity of thinking. One has to understand that thinking creates conflict, division, struggle; that thinking fragments you, that in thinking you start falling apart. One has to see what thinking does to you. In that very seeing arises meditation. In that very understanding, suddenly you feel breezes of silence coming to you. For a moment everything becomes still, utterly still, a standstill. And the taste of it will bring more of it. By and by you will know the knack of it. Meditation is a knack. It is not science, it is not even art – it is a knack. You have to learn it slowly, slowly, through your own experience. So when I say: “Meditate on this,” I mean don’t think upon it. Just close your eyes, be in silence. Let it be there.
For example, Jesus’ story: Jesus and the woman of Samaria are standing at that well, Jacob’s well, and Jesus is asking, “Give me some water to drink” – the dialogue that ensues, just let it be there.
Be utterly silent in front of this parable. Let this parable be like a lotus flower – it is! Just let it be there, throbbing, pulsating with a beating heart. Let it become alive in front of you, and then become silent. What can you do? You can only be silent. Let this drama be enacted in front of you. In deep silence you see it, and that will reveal to you the meaning of it. And that will reveal to you all the dialogues that have happened between any enlightened person and the disciple. And it will become not only Jesus’ parable, it will become a parable between you and me too. It is happening every day. That’s what I mean when I say: “Meditate upon this.”

The second question:
Osho,
When you speak of the need for trust in order to let go of the ego, I feel that’s where I’m stuck, for my distrust is a tangible thing. It feels painful, but I can’t let go of it. Early this year, for a brief period, I felt high energy and with it, open, loving and trusting. But now that energy has gone, and with it, the openness.
Always remember that when I am saying something, I am not giving you an order to do it. If you take it that way you have already missed the point. I am simply making it clear to you. Don’t be in a hurry to practice it. Whatsoever I am saying has nothing to do with practicing it. You just have to understand it. Around me, the only thing that is going to help you is clarity, transparency.
When I am talking about the ego, don’t jump ahead. Don’t start thinking, “How to drop this ego? Yes, Osho is right. This ego is creating the trouble, so how to drop it?” You have not attained to clarity; you have gone into greed. You have become ambitious. Rather than understanding what was being said to you, you made it a desire. And now you will be in trouble. While I am talking about the ego, listen meditatively and totally. Just see the point of what is being said. There is no hurry; there is nothing to be done, nothing to be practiced. Don’t bring tomorrow in, don’t even bring the next moment. Don’t bring in the future because with the future comes the desire, and with the desire all hell is let loose. While listening to me, if you start thinking how to do it: “Yes, it looks beautiful. And if I can do it there will be great joy in me. How to do it?”… And while you are thinking how to do it, I am talking about the ego, and you are not listening any longer.
The ego can be dropped only when your clarity is complete, entire. You cannot drop it. You are it! How can you drop it? But while listening totally, silently, meditatively, you are not – there is clarity. In that clarity something will click. You will see it so one hundred percent that the very seeing will become a transformation. Not that tomorrow you will have to drop it. No, tomorrow you will not find it there. Not that the next moment you have to go home and practice how to drop the ego…
I am not teaching you yoga exercises. These are not yoga postures that you have to prepare and rehearse and practice and discipline yourself with. What I am doing here is sharing my enlightenment with you, my clarity with you. I have a clarity, I am inviting you to come and share in my clarity. In that very sharing something will change in you, that sharing is alchemical. Next moment you will be surprised: the ego is not there. Not that you have to drop it. You understood the point, you understood the foolishness of it, the ridiculousness of it, the absurdity of it; now, what is there to leave and what is there to renounce? Ego is not some entity in you that you have to drop. It is not something like cancer that you have to operate on or be operated for. It is just an illusion.
It is as if you see a rope on a dark night and you think it is a snake. And you become very frightened and you start running, and you are breathless and perspiring. Then I come across you, and I say to you, “I know perfectly well it is not a snake; it is a rope. Come along with me.” And you go on asking or thinking, “How to kill that snake?” I am saying, “It is not a snake. Come along with me and see. Here is the light and the lamp; we will go together and have another look. And I know, I have been there; I have known that rope. Once I also used to know it as a snake, and I also used to get very frightened just like you, so I understand. I am not laughing at your misery, I feel compassion because I know; I was in the same situation myself. But come along with me.”
You are asking, “Osho, how to kill that snake? Should we take a gun with us, or will just a stick do? Or – there are rocks around – can we use the rocks and kill the snake?” I am constantly saying there is no snake, there is only a rope. But you are not listening, and you ask, “When we have reached there, what are we to do?” Even if you are not saying it in so many words, deep inside you are thinking it. You are still afraid, and you are not walking courageously; you are hiding behind me. You say, “Who knows? It may be a snake after all. How can I trust this man? Maybe he is mad, because I have seen it with my own eyes. It is a snake and a very dangerous one.” This is the situation when I say the ego is a shadow. You have certainly seen it, but it is not an entity. You have certainly suffered from it, yet it is an illusion.
I can understand your problem. You say, “How can one suffer from something which is not?” It looks very logical: how can one suffer from something which is not? If one suffers, then the logical mind says the cause of suffering must be there because the effect is there. But can’t you suffer from a rope, thinking it a snake? Have you not suffered in your dreams? Have you not suffered through your own delusions, projections? You have suffered. Many a time you have suffered from a cause which doesn’t exist, but which can create the effect.
You can fall ill if somebody says that the water you have drunk just now is poisonous – you can start vomiting. And if so many people say that yes, it is poisonous, if the whole town says it is poisonous, if the whole world says it is poisonous, then… Then your illusion is supported, nourished more and more.
This is what is happening! You are suffering from an illusion called the ego. The whole world says, “Yes, it is there.” And not only the world – your so-called religious people, mahatmas, saints also say, “It is very dangerous, this ego. It has to be dropped, it has to be crushed and killed. It is the enemy.” And they devise techniques, strategies to kill it. The whole world believes in it. The people who are worldly believe in it and the people who are called spiritual believe in it. Somebody follows it, somebody fights with it, but they both believe in it. As far as the belief is concerned, they both agree.
What I am doing is a totally different thing. I am saying: “The ego exists not.” I am not saying that you drop it. How can you drop it? It is not there in the first place. And if you start dropping a thing which is not, you will be in trouble. You will not be able to drop it, and so you will become very miserable. And you will make hard efforts to drop it, and you will again and again find that you have not dropped it. Then, more and more frightened, more and more miserable, you will start feeling very inferior: you cannot do a simple thing – dropping the ego?
Nobody has ever been able to drop the ego. Let it be remembered: nobody has ever been able to drop the ego. What do I mean by it? Has Buddha not dropped it? Has Jesus not dropped it? No, not at all! They have only understood that it is not. They have seen through and through and they laughed. They were simply running from something which is not there. In that understanding it disappears. Many times it disappears in your life too – in spite of you. Sometimes in deep love it is not. Hence, the joy of love. It is not really the joy of love, it is the joy of the disappearance of the ego. Sometimes in prayer, sometimes in meditation, sometimes seeing nature – watching the sea or sometimes just looking at the stars – it happens, and there is great benediction. One is showered.
But it comes only for moments because you don’t understand even then what is happening. Again it is lost. When it is lost you become very miserable, and you start thinking how to get it again, how to go into that space again. It was not that you had gone into that space. It was simply that, because you became so enchanted with the stars, for a moment you forgot your old obsession: the obsession of the ego. You became so enchanted with the stars that you forgot the rope and the snake. It was just forgetfulness. But how long can you remain enchanted with the stars? Sooner or later you will have to come back, and the rope is there – waiting as a snake! Again you are frightened.
Sometimes in love with a woman or a man, looking into the eyes of a beloved, it disappears. But for how long? The honeymoon cannot be very long. Sooner or later… You know those eyes, you know that woman, you know that man, and then by and by you start settling back into your old so-called reality – and the rope, which looks like a snake to you, is there. This is the situation.
You say – the question is from Bodhiprem – “When you speak of the need for trust in order to let go of ego…” You misunderstand me. You are saying: “When you speak of the need for trust in order to let go of the ego…” You are saying that I say to you: “Trust so that you can drop the ego!” I am not saying that. I am saying that if you trust, the ego is dropped. It is not like cause and effect – that your trust will be the cause, and the ego will be dropped as an effect. I am saying that the moment you trust, the ego is not there. In trust the ego is not found.
But you are so concerned with the ego that you say, “Okay. If you say in trust it is not found, I will trust in order that the ego is not found.” You are bringing in that “in order.” Please be very careful, because what is being said to you is immensely significant. Don’t change it. Don’t interpret it. Let it be as it is said to you. I am not saying: “Trust in order – so that – the ego can be dropped”; otherwise your trust will be a means and the dropping of the ego will be an end. Naturally the end will be in the future, and the means has to be practiced. You will have to practice for years or for lives, and when you really have come to gain trust, then you will be able to drop the ego. No!
I am saying that this very moment, if trust is there, the ego is not there! They don’t exist together. It is as if the room is dark and I tell you, “Take this lamp.” And you say, “If I take this lamp into the room, how long will it take for the darkness to disappear? If I go into the room and practice light there, how long will it take for the darkness to disappear?” You need not practice anything. Simply take the light there and you will not find darkness. They don’t exist together.
What is trust? It is the highest kind of love. It is the purest love. It is uncontaminated love – uncontaminated by any desire. If you trust me with a desire, it is not trust. Then you are using me. If you think by trusting in me you will attain to nirvana, moksha, the kingdom of God, then you don’t trust me. You are using me; you have made me a means. That is not very respectful. If you trust me, this is your kingdom of God – this trust. There is nothing else, there is nowhere to go. This is your nirvana. In this very trust, darkness has disappeared, and the light is burning bright.
Bodhiprem says: “When you speak of the need for trust in order to let go of ego…” Now he is creating a great problem. “…I feel that’s where I’m stuck.” You are stuck because of your misunderstanding, unclarity. It is not the ego that is obstructing you; it is the unclarity. It is because you have not been present to me; it is because you have not been listening to me without desire. It is not the ego that you are stuck with, it is your unintelligence.
Now that will hurt you because it is okay to be stuck with ego, but to be stuck with unintelligence? That will hurt very much: “Am I unintelligent?” You can accept the idea that you are an egoist, but to accept the idea that you are unintelligent is very difficult. Your ego will say, “You – and unintelligent, Bodhiprem? You are the most intelligent person in the world!” That’s what Bodhiprem must be saying right now.
But be patient; try to understand. We are stuck because of our unintelligence. Call it sleep, call it ignorance, call it whatsoever you want to call it, but basically it is unintelligence. An intelligent person… And I don’t mean that there are intelligent persons and there are unintelligent persons. Every unintelligent person carries the potential of being an intelligent person. Unintelligence is just the seed which has not broken its shell yet. Once the shell is broken and the seed starts sprouting, it becomes intelligence. So unintelligence is not against intelligence; it is the very womb that intelligence arises out of. But let me tell you that a spade is a spade. Even if it hurts, one has to understand it. It is unintelligence which hinders us. Intelligence becomes freedom. You have not understood me. Out of your unintelligence you are creating desires.
“…for my distrust is a tangible thing.” It is not distrust because you have not even known trust, how can you distrust? Let it be very clear to you. Distrust is possible only when you have known trust. You have not known trust, so distrust is impossible. So what is it then? It is untrust, not distrust – and that is a different thing. It is untrust. What is the difference?
Untrust simply means you have never tried trust so you are afraid, frightened. Everybody is frightened when there is something new one is going to do, when one enters an uncharted sea, or goes into a jungle where there are no longer any maps available, no milestones. And there is every possibility that you will never come across any other human being that you can ask where to go and how to find the way.
I have heard, it happened in a jungle…

A man, an explorer, was lost for three days – hungry, almost going crazy, running from this place to that and reaching nowhere. Early in the morning on the fourth day he saw another man sitting under a tree. He was overjoyed; he forgot all those three days of suffering, when in the night he could not sleep because of the wild animals. And in the day searching and searching and there was no way to find out how to get out of this jungle. It had appeared endless.
Naturally, if you were that explorer you also would have been overjoyed, you would have become full of joy at seeing another human being. Now…
He rushed, hugged the man, and said, “I am so happy!”
And the man who was sitting under the tree said, “For what?”
And this explorer said, “Just seeing you because for three days I have been lost.”
And the man said, “So what? I have been lost for seven days!”

Now, even if you can find a human being – who is himself lost – what is the point of finding him? Now you will both be lost together, that’s all. Maybe even more lost because now there will be two persons continuously conflicting. Up to now you were alone, at least free to move on your own. Now you have a marriage partner, now there are going to be more problems because he would like to go north and you would like to go south – each will create fear in the other: “Maybe the other is right and I am going wrong?” And each may create guilt in each other.
It is a natural fear of the unknown that creates untrust; it is not distrust. Distrust means that you trusted and you were cheated; you trusted, and because of your trust you were deceived, then distrust comes. But trust has never cheated anybody, it cannot. And I am not saying that through trust people cannot cheat you. Remember, I am saying trust never cheats anybody. Sometimes it has happened that a disciple has become enlightened because he trusted the master, and the master himself was not enlightened. This strange thing has been happening down the ages many times.
It happened in a Tibetan mystic’s life…

The mystic went to a master who was a fraud – and frauds exist in the world of spirituality more than anywhere else, because there it is very easy to cheat since they deal in invisible things you cannot see. They say, “Here is God. Look into my hand.” If you don’t see, they say you don’t trust. If you see, they say, “Then, perfectly okay.” Can’t you see? And you say, “Yes, sir,” and you are not seeing. When you deal in invisible goods it is very simple to cheat. In the marketplace there are frauds, but not so many. There cannot be so many because they deal in visible goods. There is some way, some criterion to judge whether the thing is right or wrong. But in religion there is no way to judge. So out of one hundred, ninety-nine percent are frauds. It is the best way to cheat people, nothing like it.
This mystic went to the master, and the master was a cheat. But this young man trusted – trusted utterly. He thought his master was enlightened, and whatsoever the master said, he followed one hundred percent. It was rumored around the place that the master was such a great man that even if you repeated his name and walked on the water, you could walk. Nobody had tried it before. And even if somebody had tried, he must have sunk. Then there is always the rationalization that your trust is not total, so you cannot catch hold of the master: “Your trust is not entire, that’s why you sank.”
This young man walked on water – and he really walked. It became his usual thing. When you can walk on the water, who bothers to go to the bridge, or things like that? People started coming to see him and the other disciples – particularly the senior ones – became very disturbed. They tried in secret but they all sank. So, even the master was puzzled. One day, in secret, the master himself tried, thinking: “When my disciples can walk on the water just by trusting in me, then what can’t I do? I can do anything! I am the greatest master in the world, my disciples are walking on water. Jesus used to walk on water and my disciples are walking on water, so I must be greater than Jesus!”
So he went – in secret of course because he was afraid. He had never tried: “Who knows?” And he knew perfectly well that he was a fraud. The disciple had deep trust in him but he had no trust in himself. How could he have any trust? He knew perfectly well that he went on deceiving people. He walked and sank.
Then he called the young man and said, “How do you do it?”
He said, “I simply say your name – ‘Master, I want to go to the other side’ and you take me. And recently I have started flying from one peak of the mountain to the other because I said, ‘When it is possible on water, why not in air?’ So one day I tried and said, ‘Master, take me from this side to the other side,’ and you took me. Now I can do anything. Just your name…”
The master had to fall at his feet. He said, “Initiate me; you know the secret. I am an ordinary man, and last night I tried walking and I sank.”

It has happened many times, because it is not really a question of whether the man you trust is cheating you or not, the question is that trust never cheats. You cannot be cheated because of your trust. If the trust is infinite you are impossible to cheat. Nobody can cheat you. Your trust will protect you. Your trust will become your very experience. Your trust will become your boat. Your trust will take you to the other shore, but remember, what you have is not distrust. You can’t have distrust; you have never trusted. Distrust can come only as an experience that trust failed. But trust never fails, so distrust is just a word; untrust is true.
You have never tried, so only just a little courage is needed to try. Give it a try. Be a little courageous. Slowly, slowly go beyond the limitations that you have created around yourself – step by step. And the more you go beyond the barriers that you have created around yourself, the bigger you become, the more expansion comes to your consciousness. Then you will see that you can go as far as you want because every move beyond the limitation brings more joy, more freedom, more being.
“…for my distrust is a tangible thing.” It is not distrust; it is only fear which is tangible. “It feels painful, but I can’t let go of it.” There is no need to let go of it. Meditate on it; see exactly what it is. We go on giving names to things, which we have not even watched correctly, and once you give a wrong name you will be in a trap. The wrong name will never allow you to see the thing as it is. Don’t be in a hurry to name a thing and categorize a thing and pigeonhole a thing. There is no need. Just watch what it is. If you watch, you will find it is untrust, not distrust. If you watch, you will find it is simply a lack of courage – fear, not distrust and tangible, no.
Then things will be different. When you know it is fear, when the disease is known rightly, a right medicine is possible. When you go on calling your TB cancer, then you go on treating cancer and the TB is never treated. Diagnosis is far more important than medication. And this is the problem: people don’t worry about diagnosis and they are simply ready to jump upon any medicine. They are ready to take any medicine without bothering at all what exactly their disease is. That is ninety percent of the problem; medicine is only ten percent. Diagnosis is needed and that’s why a master can be helpful: to diagnose things.
I would like to remind you that it is untrust not distrust, that it is fear and, in a way, natural. It exists in everybody. So don’t start feeling yourself a coward; it is natural. The fear of the unknown exists in everybody. And one has to go slowly, slowly beyond the known – just a few steps, so that if it becomes too much you can come back. But once you have started going…
It is the same fear as that of a new bird which is ready to go into the sky and is afraid, sitting just on the edge of the nest. The wings are there, he can fly, but he has never flown before. So an untrust – not distrust, untrust: “Maybe I cannot make it, maybe I will fall; can I really go into this beautiful sky?” He flutters his wings, tries to gather courage, and still remains there, hanging. And the mother pushes him. The mother goes on flying around the nest to show him: “Look, I can fly, why can’t you? You come from me, you are just like me. Look at my wings – you have far more beautiful wings. My wings are old, yet I can fly. Your wings are young. You can go far away, farther than me. You just see!” And the mother goes on flying, comes back to the nest, looks into the eyes of the child, pushes him, nags him.
That’s what I go on doing – nagging. Sometimes, if it is really needed, she really, physically, pushes him, throws him out of the nest. And he starts, in a haphazard way of course because he has never done it before, not in a very skillful way, not very aesthetic, not very artistic – it is natural. Just a few seconds fluttering around and he comes back to the nest. Still the fear is there, but now trust has started to come. Now he knows that he is not very skillful but he has wings; then skill can be learned. Now, next time he will not need the mother’s push. Next time he will tell the mother, “Just sit here and watch, I am going to take a trip!” And he takes off, first around the nest, then around the tree, then he starts going to other trees, and then one day he has gone.
This is the way a disciple moves. It is fear and is natural. I understand it. Don’t be worried about it, and don’t misname it otherwise things will be difficult. You will go on fighting with distrust and the problem is fear, not distrust. And you will go on fighting with ego, and the problem is unintelligence, not ego.
“Early this year, for a brief period, I felt high energy and with it, open, loving and trusting. But now that energy has gone, and with it the openness.” Now, understand something. It has happened to you that you have been out of the nest; you have been on a small trip. Maybe it was very small, but you have tasted it! Now, watch how it happened that time and why it is not happening now.
There are a few things. First: when it happened for the first time you were taken unawares; you were not waiting for it, and it happened. Now because it has happened, you are waiting and desiring. That desire may be one of the barriers. These things come on their own; they are happenings. Happiness is a happening. You cannot bring them by force, by coercion, by violence; you cannot bring them into your life. They come on their own. You just have to be open for them to come. Your door should remain open; when the breeze comes, enjoy it. But you cannot go out and force the breeze to come in.
The first time it happened. It is always easy the first time and the second time it is difficult. It is not only so with you, it is so with everybody. When people come here come for the first time they are not expecting. They don’t know what is going to happen, they are simply open. They only know that something may happen: “So keep the doors open.” When for the first time they come and fall in love with me, there is a kind of honeymoon. They are utterly in tune with me, shocked into a new kind of awareness, feeling a new hope; again feeling alive – dullness has disappeared – again a door opens. Otherwise they were thinking that there is nothing in life, there is no meaning. The poetry has disappeared long ago. Again they start pulsating, again there is hope, again they can feel that there is still some possibility. They become expectant.
Without any expectation, just expectant, something is possible. What, they don’t know. And with the first impact their mind is not able to cope with it, so the mind becomes silent. The thing is so new that they cannot control it: meditation, listening to me, and the whole family around here dressed in orange… The whole vibe simply turns them on and things start happening. The moment things start happening, the problem arises. They start desiring more, and the moment you desire, things stop. When the “more” comes, the mind has come back; the greed has come back. You are no longer in the present, you have moved into the future. And when you ask that the same thing should be repeated again and again, you are hanging with the past. Now you are no longer here.
Listening to me, by and by their mind becomes knowledgeable; they become great knowers. That too becomes a barrier. Listening to me, become more and more unknowing. That is the whole effort here. I want to take all your knowledge away from you. I want to destroy it. I want you to be ignorant, innocent, because in innocence all is possible. With knowledge, nothing is possible. But listening to me again and again and again, you become knowledgeable – even about these things: that one has to be ignorant. It becomes your knowledge. Not that you become ignorant, you start teaching others to become ignorant. “One has to be innocent”– this becomes your knowledge. You don’t become innocent; you become knowledgeable about innocence. You start talking about innocence, what innocence is and how it should be brought about. You become experts. But you miss the point. And then things close. The honeymoon is over and the dark night of the soul starts.
Bodhiprem is in the dark night of the soul. But try to understand it, and in the very understanding it will start disappearing. The morning is not far away. Next time when it happens… And it will happen, it will happen only when you are tired of your desire and you forget about it. It will happen only when the past is so far away and distant that you start thinking: “Maybe it had never happened in the first place. Maybe I was dreaming. I was in a kind of hallucination.” Or, “I had read it in a book, or maybe I got deceived by Osho, or something. I was hypnotized.” When it becomes so distant that you cannot really think it had happened to you, you will lose the grip on the past.
If it had not happened, what is the point of desiring more of it? How can you desire more of something which has not happened to you? Then the future will disappear. This dark night of the soul becomes darker, darker, darker… A moment will come when all hope disappears. And with that disappearance of hope, and of the past and of the desire for the future, all that you have gathered around here – the knowledge – will look meaningless. You will think, “So it doesn’t work. It is meaningless.” You will start dropping that knowledge too.
Then – the morning! Then, suddenly, one day you see it is there again. The sun has risen and the fragrance is coming from many, many unknown flowers. You are full of it again. And the second time it will be deeper than the first. Now, I would like you to remember, when it happens the second time don’t make the same mistake that you made the first time. Next time when it comes, enjoy it, feel thankful and grateful, and when it goes, say “Good-bye” and don’t be bothered by it. It will come and go many times before it settles permanently. It will come and go many times. So it is not going to be solved within two or three times; it may come many times. And if you go on making the same mistake again and again, then it may go on coming and going for many lives. Next time, be a little more alert – don’t desire, don’t expect. When it comes feel thankful because you have not earned it; it is a gift.
A gift cannot be desired; a gift cannot be earned. It comes to you as a gift. But it happens with gifts too. If somebody gives you a gift every birthday and now your birthday is coming, you are thinking, “Now what is he going to give me?” And naturally you desire more than the last time. The last time he had given you a bicycle, now you want a car. And if the car does not come, you will be very angry. In fact, if a bicycle comes, then too you will be very angry: “What to do with the bicycle? One is enough. Now again a bicycle?” And if even the bicycle does not come, you will be in a rage. You don’t understand the point that it was a gift. You cannot expect it – it was a gift. When it comes you have to be thankful, when it does not come you cannot demand it. Gifts cannot be demanded.
Godliness comes as a gift. Light comes as a gift. Love comes as a gift. Life itself is a gift! You cannot demand it. That’s what you did, Bodhiprem; deep down you started demanding it. And hence you missed it. Next time it comes… This dark night of the soul will not be forever; the morning is coming closer. But when the morning comes closer, the night becomes darker and darker. And one has to pass through it. When it comes this time, just enjoy it. And if you just enjoy it, it will become long. It may never go. If you have learned the secret of enjoying a gift it may never go. I am not saying that it will never go. I am simply saying that if you have learned the art of not desiring, not clinging, not demanding, it may never go. But if it goes, then don’t ask, then accept. Then relax into the dark night of the soul again.
It happens many times because man goes on committing the same mistake again and again. But slowly, slowly the understanding dawns, and one day one sees the point that God is available if you don’t desire. God is available in desirelessness. If you desire, you lose.

The third question:
Osho,
Why are there so many religions?
Because there are so many people, because there are so many languages, because there are so many types of people – and because there are so many ways to approach God. It is a rich world. It would have been a very poor world if there was only one religion. Just think of a world where only the Bible exists, and no Vedas and no Gita and no Koran. Think of a world where only the Koran exists.
Now, one friend goes on asking every day why I don’t speak on the Koran. I don’t speak for a certain reason. The Koran is a beautiful song, the music of it is ultimate, but there is nothing in it to discuss. In that way it is poor. You cannot sing Buddha’s message, but you can discuss it. In that way it is rich. Buddha’s message can be discussed. You can go on, layer upon layer, deeper and deeper and deeper, and there is no end to it. But you cannot sing it. In that way it is dry. You cannot put it to music, you cannot make a melody of it, but it has great philosophical insight. The Koran is beautiful as a song. It has to be sung to be known. But as far as insight is concerned, it is poor; there is no insight in it. That’s why I don’t discuss it, because there is nothing to discuss in it.
If I have to discuss it, I will have to say many things against it, because the Koran is not a pure religious book. It has politics, it has sociology, society, law, marriage. It is the whole code. Only five percent of it is religious; ninety-five percent is about other things because it is the only book of the Arab people.
It is just like the Vedas. Only a few sentences here and there reach to the peak, other sentences are ordinary because it was the only book the Aryans had, it was their all. Their science was in it – whatsoever of science existed in those days – their religion was in it, their philosophy was in it, their poetry was in it, their business was in it, their economics was in it, their agriculture was in it. There was everything – it was their Encyclopedia Britannica. And so is the Koran. It is the only book. The Arab people had no other book, so the Koran functioned as their all. It talks about marriage – how many wives a husband should have; it talks about food – what you should eat, what you should not eat, it talks about prayer, the ritual – how you should do it.
Now you will not find things like that in Buddha’s sutras. That will look so absurd: Buddha talking about how many wives you should have. What has Buddha to do with it? You can have as many as you want, and a wife can have as many husbands as she wants. What is the point of talking about it? Buddha is not giving a social code; he is giving the science of spiritual evolution. So when you talk about Buddha, there is so much to talk about and go into. Each word can become a deep well and you can draw infinite water out of it. But the Koran is rich in another sense. It is a poor man’s book for uneducated people – not philosophic, not theological – but people who loved life, who loved the small things of life. It has great song in it.
If some day I decide to share the Koran with you, then the only way is that somebody will have to sing the Koran, and you will listen and I will also listen, because there is nothing to speak about. If one has to speak about something, then there are far more beautiful things. The Koran should be sung and listened to. It is music, it is pure music. It should not be discussed logically, it should not be analyzed logically. Then it looks very poor.
You don’t analyze music. If you analyze music it loses its beauty. You don’t analyze poetry. If you analyze poetry it becomes prose – something has disappeared from it, then there are ordinary words. You can have all the words that are in Shakespeare, you can have all the words in a box, but not in the same order as they are in Shakespeare, then you will not have poetry. The whole art of poetry is that those words are put in a certain order, and because of that certain order something transcendental descends. Those words simply create a net to catch hold of the transcendental. You need not look at the net at all. If you start analyzing the net – if you cut the net and you see what the net is made of, you will not catch the transcendental in it. The fish of the transcendental will escape. You need not cut and dissect the net; the net has only to be used.
So is the Koran: it is music, it is poetry. And it is good, I say, that Buddha exists – that is a different approach; that poetry and the Koran exist – that is another approach; and that the Bible exists. And there are Moses and Zarathustra and Jesus; different people bring different angles into the world, they open different windows into godliness. It is perfectly good that there are so many religions; nothing is wrong with it. If something is wrong, then it comes from arrogance, not from so many religions. Then it comes from the arrogance of a Hindu when he says, “Only my religion is right,” or when a Jew says, “Only my religion is right,” or when a Christian says, “Only those who go through Jesus will reach, nobody else.” This is arrogance, this is stupidity; this should be dropped. There are many languages and different ways of expressing things.

Two patients at an asylum passed the swimming pool early in the morning. A nurse, thinking she was unobserved at that hour, was bathing in the nude. As she climbed out, one inmate said to the other, “Boy! Wouldn’t she look good in a bathing suit!”

There are different visions.

“Hey man,” one hippie said to another, “Turn on the radio.”
“Okay,” the second hippie answered. And leaning over very close to the radio, he whispered, “I love you.”

Now that is a hippie’s way of turning things on. Beware! Don’t say this to Pankaja. If you say this to her in her ear, whisper, “I love you,” you will turn her off, not on. She is very afraid of somebody saying to her, “I love you.” She is afraid of love. She is afraid of being turned on: the fear that if you are turned on, then you don’t know where you are going and what is going to happen.
Just few days ago she came to me to tell me about her fear, and I told her and the people who had gathered for that evening’s darshan to spread the rumor, that whosoever comes around Pankaja should just come close to her and say in her ear, “I love you.” She simply gets shocked when you say, “I love you.” Even when I said to her, “I love you,” she was shaken. Just the very idea of love, the very word… What to say about the experience? The very word pierces her heart.
Now, there are people who are waiting for somebody to come and say “I love you,” and there are people who are afraid – different people, different approaches, and each has its own validity.
Now she cannot move on the path of prayer because there God comes and whispers in your ear, “I love you.” Now that is not for her. She has to go through meditation. Buddha will be her way, not Christ, because Christ says: “Love is God.” That will be difficult for her. It is just an example of what I am talking about. Everybody has different visions, different dreams, different pasts, different experiences. God cannot come alike to everybody, and it is very good that there are so many religions. That means that everybody can have his own way, everybody can choose. This is a rich world. It is not monotonous.
The problem is not that there are many religions, the problem is that people are arrogant, stupid. A really religious person is one who loves his way toward God, and who loves your way toward God too, howsoever opposite to his it may be. And remember, I am not saying that he tolerates your way. Toleration is a very intolerant word! When you say, “I tolerate Mohammedans” – toleration? Mahatma Gandhi used to teach toleration in India. Toleration is very intolerant. It gives you a feeling of superiority; that you are a man of tolerance, as if the other is not worthy. But still you tolerate: that the other is very low, but still you tolerate because you are such a liberal man. Such compassion is in your heart, you tolerate. Of course, you know that the other is not as right as you are, but still you tolerate because you believe in democracy. You believe that if somebody wants to go wrong, he has to be given freedom: “Okay, go.”
Toleration is not a good word and I don’t want you to become tolerant. I want you to become lovers. You love your way, you are moving on your way; love those who are moving on their ways, and their ways too because all ways are moving toward God. Tolerance is not a right thing. Love! Don’t have any notions that you are higher than and superior to others. That’s what is happening in the world.
There are people who cannot bear the presence of the other: Christians who cannot bear the presence of the Jews, Jews who cannot bear the presence of the Christians. These people are thought to be very orthodox, conventional, out of date. The modern mind says, “This is not right.” The modern mind says, “We tolerate.” Christians say: “Yes. Hindus are also right – not as right as we are, but still right, better than nothing, better than not being religious.”
Mahatma Gandhi used to write books, articles proving that the Koran is also right, that the Bible is also right. But the way in which he proves it is very cunning. The way he proves it is through the “right thing”: the criterion is the Gita. Now whatsoever corresponds with the Gita in the Koran is also right. Whatsoever corresponds in the Bible with the Gita is also right. And what about that which is against the Gita? He never talks about it. The real problem arises there. There is no problem if the Gita says one thing and the same thing is being repeated in the Koran; then it is only a question of a language difference. You can simply say that the Koran is also right; it is saying the same thing as the Gita. It has been decided that the Gita is right; now, whatsoever corresponds with the Gita is right. This is a cunning approach.
What about the things in which the Koran is against the Gita? I say then too the Koran is right! And what to say about the Bible where it is against the Gita? Then too, I say, the Bible is right. The Gita has no monopoly; the Gita is a path. And whatsoever the Gita says is right on that path. It is as if you are going in a bullock cart. Somebody else is moving in a car. Now what do you say about these two vehicles? Something is right in the bullock cart: the wheels of the bullock cart are right on the bullock cart. The bullock cart will not move without those wheels. But those same wheels are wrong on a car. If you put those wheels on a car, the car will not move at all. Those wheels are right on the bullock cart; the bullock cart has its own unity. And the mechanism that is in the car is right in the car – it has its own organic unity.
Each religion is an organism. My hand is right on my body, it may not be right on your body – it may be too short, or too long. Lenin had very small legs. It was very difficult for him to sit on chairs because they would never reach the ground, so special chairs had to be made for him. Somebody asked him, “What do you think about your legs?”
He said, “I am not in any trouble. They are perfectly okay for me. I can move, I can walk. They are perfectly right in my organism – small or big is not the point – but on somebody else’s body they may create trouble. Your head is perfectly right on you, on somebody else’s body it may not fit. It may be ugly, they may not go together.”
Each religion is an organic unity. You need not tolerate it. You have to love it; somebody is moving on that way. Somebody is going by bullock cart and you are going in your car. Can’t you just say, “Hello”? Do you have to tolerate the bullock cart? Can’t you say, “Hello! I am also going”? Somebody enjoys the bullock cart, and the bullock cart has its own joys which no car can have. The bullock cart moves more naturally, in tune with nature. The car goes too fast to appreciate nature. The airplane goes so fast that it is not a journey at all. From one point to another you jump so fast that you have missed the whole journey. And somebody is walking – not even in the bullock cart – he wants to enjoy walking. That too is perfectly good.
To me, all religions are perfectly good because every religion is an organic unity. Its goodness is in itself; it is not comparable to anything else.

The fourth question:
Osho,
Can’t a religious man be a politician?
Never heard of it! It is impossible because religion is love, intelligence, awareness, meditation, desirelessness, non-ambition. And politics is just the opposite: ugly ambition, violence, aggression.
Politics is the desire to rule over others, and religion is the desire to free oneself from others and to free others from oneself. Religion is freedom. Politics is a kind of slavery. When you seek power, what in fact are you seeking? You are seeking power over others; you want to reduce them to nobodies. You want to reduce them to slaves, serfs. When you are searching for religion, what are you searching for? You are simply searching for a way out of your imprisonment into freedom. Those who love freedom, make others free also, and those who love slavery and want others to make others slaves, become slaves to their own slaves.
Politics is cunningness; religion is innocence. They can’t go together. Yes, politicians pretend to be religious, because that helps; that is part of their strategy. But don’t be deceived by it.

Three politicians – one English, one German and one Indian – all died and went to heaven at the same time. On their arrival, St. Peter asked the Englishman how many lies he had told during his professional career. The Englishman admitted to twelve lies and was told that he had to run round heaven twelve times. When asked the same question, the German politician said that he could remember telling twenty lies, and he was told to run round heaven twenty times.
St. Peter then turned to the Indian, Gandhian, politician, only to find that he had disappeared. “Where’s he got to?” he asked an angel standing nearby.
“Oh, he’s gone back to get his bicycle,” said the angel.

Now the Gandhian politician is trying to be religious in politics, and they have proved to be the most mischievous people in the whole history of world politics – the ugliest. Because of the mask of being religious, they can go on playing all sorts of nonsense behind the mask. Remember that the very desire for power is an ugly desire. It makes you ugly. In a religious consciousness there is no desire to have any power over anybody. That brings beauty; it brings freedom not only to you, but freedom for others too.
The politician is interested in the ordinary world; the religious person is interested not in the ordinary world, but the extraordinary that is hidden in the ordinary. The religious person is searching for the invisible in the visible, for the soul in the body, for godliness in matter. Their searches are different, utterly different.
A poet can be religious. A religious person can be a poet. But a religious person cannot be political, and a political person cannot be religious – they exclude each other. And if by chance somebody is really religious and is in politics, he will never succeed. He will be a failure, an utter failure; you will never hear of him. Only people who are cunning succeed in politics. People who can cheat, and can cheat with smiles on their faces, people who can kill, and kill “for your own sake.” People who can kill, exploit and still can manage to prove that they are serving their people – they succeed.

The last question:
Osho,
What is presence of mind?
This story…

A woman was driving her car at about sixty miles an hour in a built-up area when she noticed in her rear-view mirror that a motor-cycle policeman was following her. Instead of slowing down, she thought that she could shake him off by increasing her speed to seventy miles an hour.
Looking through her mirror again, she saw that there were now two motor-cycle policemen following her. She stepped up her speed to eighty miles an hour and, when she looked again, there were three policemen on her tail.
Suddenly she saw a garage up ahead and, pulling into it, she got out and dashed into the ladies’ toilet. Ten minutes later she ventured out, and there were the three policemen waiting for her. Without batting an eyelash, she said coyly, “I’ll bet you thought I wouldn’t make it.”

Enough for today.