Sufis The People of Path Vol 1 14

The first question:
Osho,
I want to become enlightened. Why don’t you help me?
What do you think I am here for?
As far as my own work is concerned, it is finished. I am here just for you. And all that I can do, I am doing, and all that you can do to prevent it, you are doing. It is a tug-of-war. It is a conflict between the master and the disciple.
Remember, it is a conflict. The disciple remains contradictory in his desire. He wants to become enlightened, but he wants to become enlightened as he is. He does not want to change, that’s the contradiction. You would like to go to heaven, but as you are. That is impossible.
As you are, you cannot become enlightened. Great chunks of your being will have to be cut and thrown away. It will be almost like committing suicide. It is painful, it is immensely painful, because you have always thought of those chunks that have to be chopped away as your being. You have become so identified with them that you shriek and scream, that you escape: you shrink, you close yourself.
I understand the question and the desire. Yes, you would like to become enlightened, but you would like to become enlightened very cheaply, without going through any pain, any suffering. And growth comes through suffering. It comes through great pain, it is arduous, one has to pay for it. And the payment is not in money; the payment is very deep. The payment is your innermost sacrifice. The disciple has to disappear.
I go on helping, but a little cooperation is needed from your side.

A man met a pretty girl and fell in love with her. He took her rowing one day and she fell overboard. He grabbed her hair and a wig came off in his hands. He reached for her arm and an artificial arm came off likewise.
He said, “Listen, sweetheart, if I’m going to be able to help you, you must cooperate a little.”

That’s what goes on happening between me and you. You must cooperate a little. And I know that sometimes you cooperate, but your cooperation is also only cooperation in appearance. Deep down you remain resistant. Even while you surrender you go on watching from the corner of your eyes – how far to go? You go only so far, and you go with such absolute control so that if it is needed you can go back. Your surrender is not a journey of no return. And unless it is a journey of no return, it is impossible for me to help you.
And it is not that I don’t want to help you. There is no other reason why I am here. My work is complete, nothing is going to happen to me if I live twenty years, thirty, forty or a hundred years or a thousand years. All that had to happen has happened. Time has disappeared for me and so has the so-called life disappeared.
I am in this body so that you can see me. Even in the body very few can see; when I am not in the body, those who can see me will become even rarer. But you don’t cooperate. And you go on misinterpreting me.
For example, just two days ago a French sannyasin told me that she was confused, that she could not decide whether to go back to France or to stay a little longer. I looked into her…something would be possible if she could stay a little longer, maybe four to six weeks. She would have taken a great step toward satori. But if I had said to her, “Be here for four to six weeks because something is going to happen,” then my very prediction would have prevented it because then she would have become greedy, then she would have started expecting. And not only that, she would have started demanding, “Why is it not happening?” And that very idea: “Why is it not happening? When is it going to happen?” would have created a tension in her being and the happening would have become impossible.
So I cannot predict it because the very prediction will change the whole situation. I cannot say directly, “Remain here for four to six weeks, something is going to happen.” That is not possible; nothing will happen. Even if I say, “Be here for four to six weeks, it will be good for you,” a subtle desire may start in her being, a subtle hope. No, I cannot say anything to her directly, I have to be very indirect.
So I told her, “Be here for a few weeks” – she is a group leader – “run two or three groups here.” That had nothing to do with her own growth; I did not say anything directly about her own growth. She agreed, but I was watching and saw that the agreement was only fifty percent, not more than that. Just…just enough to stay. There was no joy in it; there was no happiness in it, that I had asked her to stay. She could not feel the gift and the blessing. Because the joy was not there, the possibility was cut almost to half.
Now, that which was going to happen could happen only in a celebration. Now she would not have been really here – she would have only been here because I said so. Now almost fifty percent of the possibility for the happening had disappeared.
Then yesterday morning I said that if you want to do something, even if it goes against me you need not feel guilty. She suddenly felt joy. She left! Now, there was no need to feel guilty – it was as if she was just waiting for something to be said. And although I had particularly said to her to stay she didn’t even wait to ask me, she didn’t even inform me. She simply left. She said to people, “Osho said that if you do something even against his advice, you need not feel guilty. So why should I feel guilty? I am going.”
Only one thing is good about it: she will never know what she has missed. How can you know? Many of you go on missing, but you will never know what you are missing. I only feel sad for you, I only feel great compassion when I see somebody missing. He may not even be aware that he is missing. He may have missed by just a few inches – home was very close. But he will never become aware, he will never be able to look back. How can he?
Now she has left. I could not say it directly to her, I had to be indirect. She could not understand my indirectness and she found a rationalization – that now Osho has said… What I said was simply to help you so that you don’t become burdened with guilt. I have not said to start doing whatever you want to do; I have not said to go against my advice. I simply said that if you sometimes feel like going and it is impossible for you to follow my advice… I am not saying that by not following my advice you will gain something, I am saying you will miss something – but there is no need to feel guilty. Missing is enough punishment. Why make it more with guilt?
Now she has missed, that is enough punishment. And she will never become aware of it, she will remain oblivious. She will become aware only one day when she comes to an understanding, to a window that opens the door – then she may be able to see that this window was very close, but that time she missed. Right now she will never be able to see. Only when she finds that this moment of growth has happened will she be able to see.
It is good that she will not feel guilty; but what about that which she has missed? I made that statement particularly for her, but there are also other fools who realized it as if it is a blessing. One dropped from the Enlightenment Group. “Now there is no need. Osho has said do it, but now there is no need. He has said you have to go on your own.”
And I will not be surprised if somebody even drops sannyas. There are always great fools everywhere. You go on misunderstanding, misinterpreting. Your ego is there; it is just watching. This French sannyasin has been listening to me for almost one month and this is the only thing that she has followed.
And you ask me, “I want to become enlightened. Why don’t you help me?” What else am I doing here? You don’t receive the help, that is true, but that is your responsibility. I can give, but if you refuse it that is your responsibility. I go on giving, I give unconditionally – I don’t put any conditions on you.
This is the first time in the whole history of human consciousness that sannyas is being given unconditionally. I don’t ask whether you are worthy or not. I am in such a hurry to give! I have so much to share. I don’t care a bit whether you are worthy to receive it or not. I am simply giving it to you because I have so much and I have to unburden myself. The cloud is so full that it wants to rain; it does not matter whether it is a desert, or it is wasteland, or it is fertile soil – it does not matter. The flower has bloomed and the fragrance is heavy on its heart, it has to be released. Whether somebody will appreciate it or not does not matter. I am giving sannyas to you without any conditions.
You are the most fortunate people ever. But that may not be of help, you can go on missing. You will have to learn new ways of being. You will have to learn how not to miss. You will have to learn how to keep your stupid mind from coming in and interpreting.

Little Danny, aged eight, came home with the often-repeated complaint, “Teacher is picking on me again!”
“Is that so!” said his mother angrily. “Enough is enough! She has been picking on you all year. Now it is going to stop! Tomorrow, Danny, I will go to school with you and we will have it out with her.”
The following morning the mother arrived with Danny and demanded an explanation from the teacher.
“That’s ridiculous,” the teacher replied in answer to the mother’s tirade. “Accusing me of picking on your child? I have never picked on any student. Besides,” she added, “you might as well know the truth. Your Danny is not very bright, and when I use the word bright I am being excessively kind. Let me show you what I mean. Danny,” she called, “tell us how much five and five is.”
“You see, Mom,” cried the boy, “she is picking on me again.”

Your interpretation… You will have to learn how to keep your stupid mind from coming between me and you. And there are a thousand and one ways for this mind to come in. And it is the only mind you have.
By being a disciple, what really happens? What really should happen? What is expected to happen? Being a disciple simply means that now you will start functioning from the master’s mind and not from your mind. And yes, that statement of yesterday remains right in its own way. I don’t make any impossible demands on you, but sometimes there are situations and you have limitations where it is possible that you may not be able to do something.
For example, this French sannyasin really had nothing to do back there in France; there was no responsibility waiting for her there. There was no problem. It was not a great demand on her to be here for four weeks – she had money, she had everything. There was no problem there that she had to go and solve – her father was not dying, her mother was not ill – there was no problem. So it was simply stupid.
I understand that sometimes your mother may be ill and dying and I told you to stay, but you have to go. But then you go with tears in your eyes. What I have said is only this: don’t create any guilt in yourself. Yes, man has limitations. Sometimes you may not be able to fulfill my advice – it’s okay. But it is only for the exceptional cases when you cannot fulfill my advice, and that too just to help you so that you don’t become burdened with guilt. Otherwise there is nothing… You have to feel that you have not been able to fulfill, that something has been missed, but it is not a question of guilt. You have missed something, that is enough punishment.
So if it happens sometimes, it’s okay, but it should not be the rule, it is just the exception. But whenever something feels good to your ego, you immediately jump upon it; otherwise you go on listening – completely deaf! You don’t listen to what I am saying, you only listen to that which you want to hear. And then you are very clever at twisting it.
From your very childhood you have been a twister. You have learned how to deceive, how to be pseudo; you have learned how to interpret things in such a way that they are always according to you. From the very childhood, somewhere near the age of three, a child starts learning to twist. He becomes a follower of Saint Twistopher. Twistopher – you may not have heard the name of the saint – is the patron saint of go-go girls and all kinds of twisters!
Twisting is one of the deep-rooted things in you: diplomacy, politics, cunningness. And once a child has learned twisting, he goes on twisting. And by and by it becomes his whole paraphernalia, his whole mechanism. Then he listens only to that which he wants to hear; he does not see that which he does not want to see; he becomes a chooser.
Scientists say that out of a hundred things, you only listen to two percent. And out of a hundred things, you see only two percent. But remember, then you live only two percent. To live only two percent is almost not to live at all. What kind of life is this? And this happens every day. I say something: you are sitting there with all your prejudices intact, all your cunningness intact, all your stupidity intact. Something enters you – immediately the twisting starts. Your mechanism starts functioning, clicking. By the time it reaches your consciousness it is no longer what was said, it is absolutely something else.
This is why it is difficult for you to receive help. Help is given all the time, it is showering on you, but you will have to become better receptors. You change, you try to change, but the change remains very superficial.
When I give sannyas to people sometimes they ask, “Why should one change one’s name, why should one change one’s clothes? Is not the change of the heart enough?” I also know that the change of the heart is enough, but I cannot expect that from you right now. Even to expect the change of clothes is more than enough. Even in that you will find cunning ways. You will find tricks.
Just a few days ago an Indian sannyasin came and I asked him, “What happened to your clothes?”
He said, “But this is orange.”
Then I had to look again because it looked white. Yes, it was orange, but so faint – my eyes are perfectly okay – that I had to look very, very carefully. Then I recognized that yes, a little tinge of orange was there. If a man of my sensitivity and vision cannot see it, then nobody will be able to see it! I was surprised. I asked him, “How do you manage to see it? You are so dense, I don’t think you can see it. You are so thick.”
I know that by changing the name or by changing the clothes nothing essential is happening, but you live in the nonessential. What can I do? I have to start from where you are.
It happened…

A young man made an application to change his name according to the provision of the law.
“What is your name?” the judge asked him as he appeared before the court.
“Bill Stinks, sir,” said the applicant.
“Well, I can understand why you want it changed, Bill,” said the judge laughing uproariously. “And what do you want it changed to?”
“William Stinks, sir,” replied the applicant.

But Bill Stinks or William Stinks, what does it matter? You remain stinking.
I know names don’t make much difference, but I take so much trouble to explain to you what your name means because I know that that’s where you exist – name and clothes and the form. The formless you have not seen even in your dreams. I have to start from where you are. And even there you deceive me. Stop deceiving, because deceiving me you are just deceiving yourself. And stop your mind from interfering between me and you. Let there be a communion.
Enlightenment is possible. If it is possible that it has happened to me, it is possible that it can happen to you. If it has happened to one human being, it is everybody’s potentiality.

The second question:
Osho,
What is love?
It is unfortunate that we have to ask this question. In the natural course of things everybody would know what love is. But I understand that nobody knows – or very rarely somebody knows – what love is. Love has become one of the rarest experiences.
Yes, it is talked about, filmed, stories are written about it, songs are composed about it, films are made, on the TV you will see it, on the radio, in magazines – a great industry goes on continuously supplying you with the idea of what love is. Many people are continuously involved in it, helping people understand what love is. Poets, authors, novelists, they all go on.
But still love remains an unknown phenomenon, and it should be one of the most known. It is almost as if somebody comes and asks, “What is food?” Would you not be surprised if somebody comes and asks, “What is food?” If somebody has been starved from the very beginning and he has never tasted what food is, the question would be relevant. So is this question.
You ask, “What is love?” Love is the food of the soul. But you have been starved. Your soul has not received love at all so you don’t know the taste. Your question is relevant, but it is unfortunate. The body has received food so the body continues; but the soul has not received food so the soul is dead, or is not born yet, or is always on its deathbed.
When a child is born he is fully born, he is fully equipped with the capacity to love and to be loved. Each child is born full of love and knows perfectly what it is. There is no need to tell the child what love is. But the problem arises because the mother and the father don’t know what love is. No child receives the parents that he deserves – no child ever receives the parents that he deserves. Those parents simply don’t exist on the earth. And by the time this child becomes a parent he will have lost the capacity to love.
It is almost like: in Mexico there is a small valley where children are born and within three months they all become blind. It is a small, primitive society. A fly exists there which is poisonous to the eyes, so the whole community is blind.
Every child is born with perfectly functioning eyes – but within three months there is an attack of the fly and the poison enters the system and the eyes go blind. Now, somewhere later in his life the child will ask, “What are eyes? What do you mean when you use the word eye? What is vision? What is seeing? What do you mean?” And the question will be relevant. The child was born with eyes, but they were lost somewhere on the way of so-called growth.
That’s what has happened to love. Every child is born with as much love as one can contain, with more love than one can contain, with overflowing love. A child is born as love; a child is made of the stuff called love. But the parents cannot give love. They have their own hangovers – their parents never loved them. The parents can only pretend; they can talk about love. They can say, “We love you so much,” but whatever they do is very unloving. The way they behave, the way they treat the child is very insulting; there is no respect.
No parent respects the child. Whoever thinks of respecting a child? A child is not thought to be a person at all. A child is thought to be like a problem. If he keeps quiet, he is good; if he is not a screamer, a primal therapist – good. If he simply keeps out of the way of the parents – perfectly good. That’s what a child should be.
But there is no respect and there is no love. The parents have not known what love is. The mother has not loved the husband, the husband has not loved the wife. Love does not exist there. Domination, possessiveness, jealousy, and all kinds of poisons are there which destroy love. Just as a certain poison can destroy your vision, so the poison of possessiveness and jealousy destroys love.
Love is a very fragile flower. It has to be protected, it has to be strengthened, it has to be watered; only then does it become strong. And the child’s love is very fragile – naturally – because the child is fragile, his body is fragile. Do you think a child left on his own will be able to survive? Just think how helpless man is. If a child is left on his own, it is next to impossible that he will survive. He will die. And that is what is happening to love. Love is left alone. The parents can’t love, they don’t know what love is, they have never flowed in love.
Remember your own parents. And remember, I am not saying that they are responsible. They are victims just as you are victims – their own parents were the same. And so on… You can go back to Adam and Eve and God the Father.
It seems that even God the Father was not very respectful toward Adam and Eve, was not respectful enough. That’s why from the very beginning he started commanding them, “Do this” and “Don’t do that” and he started doing all the rubbish that all parents do. “Don’t eat the fruit of this tree.” And when Adam had eaten the fruit, the father, God, was so angry in reaction that he threw Adam and Eve out of heaven.
That expulsion is always there, and each parent threatens to expel the child, to throw him out. “If you don’t listen, if you don’t behave, you will be thrown out.” Naturally a child is afraid. Thrown out? Into the wilderness of this life? He starts compromising. The child by and by becomes a twister. He starts manipulating.
He does not want to smile, but if the mother is coming and he wants milk, he smiles. Now this is politics – the beginning, the ABC of politics. Deep down he starts hating because he is not respected; deep down he starts feeling frustrated because he is not loved as he is. He is expected to do certain things and only then will he be loved. Love has some conditions. He is not worthy as he is. First he has to become worthy, then the parents’ love will be possible.
So he starts becoming worthy and starts becoming false; he loses his intrinsic value. His respect for himself is by and by lost, he starts feeling that he is unworthy, that he is guilty. Many times the idea comes to the mind of the child, “Are these my real parents? Is it possible they have adopted me? Maybe they are deceiving because there seems to be no love.” A thousand and one times he sees the anger in their eyes, the ugly anger on the faces of the parents, and for such small things that he cannot see the proportion of it. Just for very small things he sees the parents’ rage. He cannot believe it. It is so unjust and unfair. But he has to surrender, he has to bow down, he has to accept it as a necessity. By and by his love capacity is killed.
Love grows only in love. Love needs a milieu of love – that is the most fundamental thing to be remembered. Only in a milieu of love does love grow. It needs the same kind of pulsation around. If the mother is loving, if the father is loving – not only to the child, if they are loving to each other too – if the home has a love atmosphere where love flows, the child will start functioning as a love-being. He will never ask the question, “What is love?” He will know it from the very beginning, it will become his foundation.
But that doesn’t happen. It is unfortunate, but it has not happened up to now. And you learn the ways of your parents – their nagging, their conflict. Just go on watching yourself. If you are a woman, watch. You may be repeating, almost repeating, the ways your mother used to behave. Watch yourself when you are with your boyfriend or your husband: What are you doing? Are you not repeating? If you are a man, watch. What are you doing? Are you not being your daddy? Are you not doing the same nonsense that he used to do? One day you were surprised: “How can daddy do this?” – and you are doing the same. People go on repeating: people are imitators; man is a monkey. You are repeating your daddy or your mummy, and that has to be dropped. Only then will you know what love is, otherwise you will remain corrupted.
I cannot define what love is because there is no definition of love. It is one of those indefinables like birth, like death, like God, like meditation. It is one of those indefinables – I cannot define it.
I cannot say that this is love; I cannot show it to you. It is not a visible phenomenon. It cannot be dissected, it cannot be analyzed; it can only be experienced. And only through experience do you know what it is. But I can show you the way to experience it.
The first step is: get rid of your parents. And by that I don’t mean any disrespect toward your parents, no. I will be the last person to say that. And I don’t mean get rid of your physical parents, I mean get rid of your parental voices inside, your program inside, your tapes inside. Efface them. And you will be simply surprised that if you get rid of your parents from your inner being, you become free. For the first time you will be able to feel compassion for your parents – otherwise not; you will remain resentful. Every person is resentful toward his parents.
How can you not be resentful when they have done so much harm to you – although not knowingly? They wished only good for you, they wanted to do everything for your well-being. But what could they do? Just by wanting, nothing happens; just by good wishes, nothing happens. They were well-wishers, that is true; there is no doubt about that. Every parent wants the child to have all the joys of life. But what can he do? He has not known any joy himself. He is a robot and, knowingly or unknowingly, deliberately or not, he will create an atmosphere in which the child will sooner or later be turned into a robot.
If you want to become a man and not a machine, get rid of your parents. And you will have to watch. It is hard work, arduous work; you cannot do it instantly. You will have to be very careful in your behavior. Watch when your mother is there, functioning through you – stop that, move away from it. Do something absolutely new that your mother could not even have conceived of.
For example, your boyfriend is looking at some other woman with great appreciation in his eyes. Now watch what you are doing. Are you doing the same as your mother would have done in the case of your father looking at another woman appreciatively? If you do that, you will never know what love is, you will simply be repeating a story. It will be the same act being played by different actors, that’s all; the same rotten act being repeated again and again and again. Don’t be an imitator, get out of it. Do something new. Do something that your mother could not have conceived of. Do something new that your father could not have conceived of. This newness has to be brought to your being, then your love will start flowing.
So the first essential is getting rid of your parents. The second essential is: people think that they can love only when they find a worthy man – nonsense! You will never find one. People think they will love only when they find a perfect man or a perfect woman. Nonsense! You will never find them because perfect women and perfect men don’t exist. And if they exist, they won’t bother about your love. They will not be interested.

I have heard about a man who remained a bachelor his whole life because he was in search of a perfect woman. When he was seventy, somebody asked, “You have been traveling and traveling from Kabul to Kathmandu, from Kathmandu to Goa, from Goa to Pune; you have been searching. Could you not find a perfect woman? Not even one?”
The old man became very sad. He said, “Yes, once I came across one: once I came across a perfect woman.”
Then the inquirer said, “Then what happened? Why didn’t you get married?”
He became very, very sad. He said, “What to do? She was looking for a perfect man.”

Remember, when two beings are perfect, their love need is not the same as your love need. It has a totally different quality.
You don’t even understand the love that is possible for you, so you will not be able to understand the love that happens to a buddha or the love that is flowing from me toward you – you will not be able to understand it. First you have to understand the love that is a natural phenomenon. Even that has not happened. First the natural, and then the transcendental.
So the second thing to remember is: never be in search of a perfect man or a perfect woman. That too has been put into your mind – that unless you find a perfect man or a perfect woman you will not be happy. So you go on looking for the perfect, and you don’t find the perfect, so you are unhappy. And you have a reason to be unhappy.
To flow and grow in love needs no perfection. Love has nothing to do with the other. A loving person simply loves, just as an alive person breathes and drinks and eats and sleeps. Exactly like that a really alive person, a loving person, loves. You don’t say, “Unless there is perfect air, unpolluted, I am not going to breathe.” You go on breathing even in Los Angeles; you go on breathing in Mumbai. You go on breathing everywhere where air is polluted, poisoned. You go on breathing. You cannot afford not to breathe just because the air is not as it should be. If you are hungry you eat something – whatever it is.
In a desert, if you are dying of thirst, you will drink anything. You will not ask for Coca-Cola, anything will do – any drink, just water, even dirty water. People are known to have drunk their own urine. When one is dying, one does not bother what it is: anything to quench the thirst. People have killed their camels in the desert to drink water because camels store water inside them. Now, this is dangerous because they will have to walk for miles. But they are so thirsty that first things first – first the water, otherwise they will die. Even if the camel is there – what are they going to do? The camel will take the corpse to the town. They will not be alive.
An alive man simply loves. Love is a natural functioning.
So the second thing to remember is: don’t ask for perfection, otherwise you will not find any love flowing in you. On the contrary, you will become very unloving. People who demand perfection are very unloving people, neurotic people. Even if they can find a lover or a beloved they demand perfection and the love is destroyed because of that demand.
Once a man loves a woman or a woman loves a man, demands immediately enter. The woman starts demanding that the man should be perfect, just because he loves her. As if he has committed a sin! Now he has to be perfect, now he has to suddenly drop all of his limitations, just because of this woman. Now he cannot be human. Either he has to become superhuman or he has to become pseudo, false, a cheat. Naturally, to become superhuman is very difficult, so people become cheats. They start pretending and acting and playing games. In the name of love, people are just playing games.
So the second thing to remember is: never demand perfection. You have no right to demand anything from anybody. If somebody loves you, be thankful, but don’t demand anything because he has no obligation to love you. If somebody loves, it is a miracle. Be thrilled by the miracle.
But people are not thrilled. They will destroy all possibilities of love for small things. They are not so interested in love and the joy of it; they are more interested in other ego trips. Be concerned with your joy, be utterly concerned with your joy, be only concerned with your joy. Everything else is nonessential.
Love as a natural function, as you breathe. And when you love a person don’t start demanding; otherwise from the very beginning you are closing the doors. Don’t expect anything. If something comes your way, feel grateful. If nothing comes, there is no need for it to come, there is no necessity for it to come. You cannot expect it.
But see people – see how they take each other for granted. If your woman prepares food for you, you never thank her. I’m not saying that you should verbalize your thank-you, but it should be in your eyes. But you don’t bother, you take it for granted – that is her work. Who told you? If your man goes and earns money for you, you never thank him. You don’t feel any gratitude. That’s what a man should do. That’s your mind.
How can love grow? Love needs a climate of love; love needs a climate of gratitude, thankfulness. Love needs a nondemanding atmosphere, a non-expecting atmosphere. This is the second thing to remember.
And the third thing is: rather than thinking how to get love, start giving. If you give, you get; there is no other way. People are more interested in how to grab and get. Everybody is interested in getting and nobody seems to enjoy giving. People give very reluctantly, they give only to get; if ever they give, they give only to get, and they are almost businesslike. It is a bargain. They always go on watching that they should get more than they give: that it is a good bargain, good business. But the other is also doing the same.
Love is not a business, so stop being businesslike. Otherwise you will miss your life and love and all that is beautiful in it – because all that is beautiful is not at all businesslike. Business is the ugliest thing in the world, a necessary evil. But existence knows nothing of business. Trees bloom, it is not a business; the stars shine, it is not a business and you don’t have to pay for it and nobody demands anything from you. A bird comes and sits at your door and sings a song and he will not ask you to give a certificate or something. He has sung the song and then happily he flies away, leaves no traces behind. That’s how love grows. Give, and don’t wait to see how much you can grab.
Yes, it comes, it comes a thousandfold, but it comes naturally, it comes on its own. There is no need to demand it. When you demand, it never comes. When you demand, you have killed it. So give. Start giving. In the beginning it will be har, because your whole life you have been trained not to give but to get. In the beginning you will have to fight with your armor. Your musculature has become hard, your heart has become frozen, you have become cold. In the beginning it will be difficult, but each step will lead to a further step, and by and by the river starts flowing.
First get rid of your parents. With getting rid of your parents you get rid of the society, with getting rid of your parents you get rid of civilization, education, everything, because your parents represent all that. You become individual. For the first time you are no longer part of the mass, you have an authentic individuality; you are on your own. This is what growth is. This is what a grown-up person should be.
A grown-up person is one who needs no parents. A grown-up person is one who needs nobody to cling to or lean on. A grown-up person is one who is happy in his aloneness – his aloneness is a song, a celebration. A grown-up person is one who can be happily with himself. His aloneness is not loneliness. His solitariness is solitude, it is meditative.
One day you had to come out of your mother’s womb. If you had remained there longer than nine months you would have been dead – not only you, your mother would have also been dead. One day you had to come out of your mother’s womb. Then one day you had to come out of your family atmosphere – another womb – to go to school. Then one day you had to come out of your school atmosphere – another womb – to go into the bigger world. But deep down you are still a child. You are still in the womb; layers upon layers of womb are there. That womb has to be broken.
This is what in the East we have called the second birth. In the East a person who has become independent is called a dwij, twice born. He has attained a second birth; he is completely free of parental impression. And the beauty is that only such a person feels grateful to the parents. The paradox is that only such a person can forgive his parents. He feels compassion and love for them, he feels for them tremendously because they have also suffered in the same way. He is not angry, no, not at all. He may have tears in his eyes, but he is not angry, and he will do everything to help his parents to move toward such a plenitude of aloneness, such a height of aloneness.
Become individuals, the first thing. The second thing: don’t expect perfection, and don’t ask and don’t demand. Love ordinary people. Nothing is wrong with ordinary people. Ordinary people are extraordinary. Each human being is so unique; have respect for that uniqueness.
Third: give, and give without any condition – and you will know what love is. I cannot define it. I can show you the path, how to grow it. I can show you how to put in a rosebush, how to water it, how to give fertilizers to it, how to protect it. Then one day, out of the blue, comes the roseflower and your home is full of the fragrance. That’s how love happens.

The third question:
Osho,
How can a disciple know that he has been chosen by a master? Where are his freedom and responsibility?
It is a difficult question. “How can a disciple know that he has been chosen by a master?” The moment you start feeling an urge to surrender, an urge to bow down, an urge to fall in love, an urge to efface yourself… In the beginning it is a very, very small, still voice. You will have to be very silent and quiet to hear it, but it is there. Once the master has chosen you, something deep inside starts vibrating. But you may be full of the noise, clamor, of the constant chattering of your mind, and you may not hear it.
Sit silently. Calm down. Look within, and you will find a new kind of vibe in the heart, a new kind of thrill. It has never been there before. It is almost like falling in love. When the master has chosen you, you are falling into a love affair. It goes higher than your ordinary love affair, it goes deeper than your ordinary love affair; it goes far out.
But in the beginning it is almost like a love affair. How do you know when you fall in love? Can it be answered? How do you know? You pass a woman, a stranger – you have never seen her before, she has never seen you before. For a single moment you look into each other’s eyes and something has become aflame. How do you know about it?
It happens exactly the same way when you look into the eyes of a master, and it can happen even with a photograph. You can ask Aneeta. She has been in love with me, without seeing me, for months – just by looking into the eyes of my photograph. That’s why I go on sending as many of my photographs as possible to the far corners of the world. I’m not going anywhere, but my eyes can travel, and wherever somebody has the capacity to listen to his heart or her heart, looking into my eyes something will start happening. I may be thousands of miles away, that doesn’t matter.
You look into my eyes, you feel my vibe, and if you feel like falling… It will be mad! All love is mad! It will be crazy. If you are very, very rational then you will miss it. You will rationalize it away, you will explain it away.
That is my feeling about the questioner. It has happened to the questioner, but the questioner is trying to avoid it, he is trying not to see it. It has happened. The questioner has not yet become a sannyasin. I have chosen already, now it is for you to listen. Sit silently and listen, and it comes very loud and very clear. It is a still, small voice, but if you are silent it is very clear and very loud. You cannot deny it.
“How can a disciple know that he has been chosen by a master?” If you start feeling like going crazy around a man; if you start feeling that something clicks; if you start feeling that you are falling into a kind of new rhythm, a new wavelength; if doors start opening, new dimensions open, new flowers bloom; if you feel the unknown at the door, if you feel the strange unknown knocking at the door, then the master has called you, the master has chosen you. Now it is for you to open the door.
Courage will be needed. Religion is only for the courageous, for the brave. It is not for cowards. And cowards can always rationalize easily, they can find ways and means to avoid, but the real reason is fear. And remember, with a master there is going to be fear.

Just the other day a young man came and he said that he had been interested in Gurdjieff, but he was always afraid. I looked into his eyes and I asked him, “Are you not afraid of me?”
For a single split-second he looked into my eyes and he said, “Yes, I am afraid of you too.”
Then I told him, “I have chosen you, and a courageous man…”
He immediately bowed down, surrendered, and said, “Osho, give me sannyas.”

Fear is bound to be there; one has to go in spite of the fear. Fear is bound to be there because a master is going to be your death. A master is going to kill you utterly. Only then when you are burned completely does the new arrive; on the ashes of the old the new arrives.
Enlightenment is a phoenix phenomenon. You have to burn yourself completely – the master will be your fire. So there will be fear; and sometimes you will start listening for the knock, for the whisper, but the fear will be louder. Naturally, the fear will be yours, the knock will be of the master. If you are too afraid and cowardly you will close and shut yourself down so that the whisper is no longer heard.
And then you ask, “Where are his freedom and responsibility?” You are not, and right now you cannot have any responsibility and any freedom. These are only just whimsical ideas. One who has arrived at his center can have freedom and can have responsibility; one who has become awakened can have freedom and can have responsibility. They are part of being integrated. You cannot have any responsibility and you cannot have any freedom; your freedom is just a wish and your responsibility is just an idea.
But these ideas can go on befooling you. B. F. Skinner has written a book, Beyond Freedom and Dignity. I am in total disagreement with him. Whatever he is saying is utter nonsense, but it is true about ninety-nine percent of people. He is wrong only about a few people, rare people – a Buddha, a Jesus, a Mohammed, a Mansoor, a Jalaluddin Rumi. Yes, he is wrong about these people, but these people are rare; you don’t find them every day, in every nook and corner of life. They are very rare flowers – incredible when they are, but unbelievable when they are gone. They look like metaphors, not real, like myths, not historical.
Skinner is right about you – about ninety-nine percent of the people he is right. Ninety-nine point nine percent, I should say. There is no freedom and there is no dignity; you function as a machine.
How can a machine be responsible? And whatever you think is your responsibility is just a trick of the society implanted in you. The man who was in charge of burning the Jews in Adolf Hitler’s Germany, and who burned millions of Jews, was doing a responsible job – that’s what he said before the court. “I was a responsible man, and whatever order was given to me I obeyed with full responsibility. I followed the order. I have not done anything on my own, I was simply obedient. That was my responsibility.”
I can understand – a machine is a machine, it can only follow orders. How can it be responsible? When I use the word responsible, I mean able to respond. Now, you are going to burn ten thousand Jews – and those big ovens where the Jews were burned, those concentration camps, were made with such scientific accuracy that within a second ten thousand people would simply evaporate. And they were surrounded by glass walls. They could not see out, but from the outside you could see them. And the men who were responsible for burning them were standing around and watching. Ten thousand Jews – small children, women who had not done anything wrong to anybody, were just evaporating.
And a person is doing a responsible job. What kind of responsibility is this? Can’t he see the point that these ten thousand people are simply dying for nothing, for no reason? They have committed no crime. To be a Jew is not a crime. They were punished unnecessarily, for nothing. And he thinks he is responsible? To whom is he responsible? – to Adolf Hitler, not to this rare situation where ten thousand people are being burned. He can stop, he can say, “No, I will not do this! I would rather like to be killed myself if that is going to happen. Or if I am thrown out of my job that is nothing, but I am not going to kill these ten thousand innocent people.”
That would have been responsibility: ability to respond. What kind of responsibility is this? An order comes that you should burn these people, and everybody is doing “his responsibility.” The typist who typed the order, the one in charge who signed the order, the man who will push the button – they are all doing their jobs responsibly. And nobody seems to be really responsible – just machines. This is what I call robopathology.
And you ask me, “Where are his responsibility and freedom?” You can’t have any freedom because you are not yet. Freedom is only when you are, and you are only when you are awake. You are fast asleep: What kind of freedom can you have? You can dream about it.
You don’t have any freedom. Your whole life is just accidental – just accidental. You go on thinking that you have chosen out of your freedom. All nonsense.

Just the other day I was reading about a poet, a famous poet who was writing about his life, and he remembered his father telling him a story. His father told him: “When I was young, unmarried, I was traveling in a train. I felt an urge to smoke, so I searched for the cigarettes in my pocket. There were five other people and there were only six cigarettes. I offered the cigarettes to everybody, the five people took one each and thanked me. Then I put the empty packet into my pocket.
When I reached the station where I was to get down, I left the station and was about to hire a taxi. Then suddenly I again felt an urge to smoke. I looked into my pocket. It was empty. So I went back into the station to purchase some cigarettes and at the counter, at the cigarette counter, I fell in love with a woman – the woman who was selling the cigarettes.” And that became the poet’s mother – they became married.
Now the poet says, “If one of the passengers in the compartment had been a nonsmoker, I would not have been born at all. Just one cigarette was enough to prevent me from being born because my father would not have gone back if there had been one cigarette left. Then my mother and my father would never have met.”

Of course he would have become married to some other woman. But from some other woman this poet could not have been born. This poet needed this man and this woman to meet, otherwise he would never have been born.
How many poets are not born? Do you know? It is difficult to say. Life is just like that – accidental. What freedom, what responsibility are you talking about? To be free, you first need to be, then your every act is conscious. Then you are not a victim of unconscious, accidental situations. Then whatever you do there is consciousness, witnessing. Then life is no longer accidental, then life has a sense of direction, then life has integrity. And from that integrity, from that center of integration, you respond.
You need to become a disciple because you don’t yet have that integrity. Otherwise, what is the point of becoming a disciple? To become a disciple means to come close to a man who is integrated and whose integration can also function as a catalytic agent for your integration. It means to come close to a man, to come into the presence of a man who is no longer a machine, who is awakened – so that his awakening can create ripples of awakening in you. To become receptive to such a man, to remain available to such a man, is all that is meant by becoming a disciple.
But right now don’t go on deceiving yourself that you have any kind of freedom or responsibility. It hurts when I say this. It hurts your ego, you don’t feel good. You, and not free! You, and not responsible! What nonsense is Osho talking about? I know it hurts, but if you try to understand, if you try to be sympathetic to what I am saying to you, if you look without prejudice and without ego, you will see the point of it. And that very seeing will become a transformation in your life.

And the last question:
Osho,
Why do I remember God only when I am suffering?
You don’t remember God. When you are suffering your remembering God is just meaningless. Just because you want to avoid suffering, you remember God as a protection. You are not interested in God, you are only interested in how to avoid the suffering. So that’s why when you are happy you forget all about God. But know well, only when you remember God in happiness is there remembrance, otherwise not. In suffering everybody remembers God – even an atheist. That’s why even atheists start becoming theists as they become older. And at the point of death almost every atheist becomes a theist; when the real suffering of death comes then all your philosophy of atheism disappears. But that is not real, authentic prayer, authentic remembrance.
Religious people are those who remember when they are happy because they remember in gratitude. When you see a roseflower, that will be the right moment to remember God. The roseflower is enough proof to remember him, enough of an indication, enough of a cause, an occasion.
When you see a child smiling, or when a bird flies into the sky, when a bird is on the wing or the sun rises or a lonely star in the morning is just on the verge of disappearing – if you know what beauty is, you will remember God in beautiful moments. If you know what love is, you will remember God when you make love. If you know what joy is, you will remember God when you are full of joy – because those are the moments in which to thank him. Then even if you remember him in your suffering it will be a true remembrance, otherwise not. If you remember only in suffering, you don’t remember God; you simply want to get help from him. You simply want to use the word God, you want to use God, that’s all.
I have heard…

There was a man whose wife had a pet parrot – and a very religious parrot – but it died. She was very upset. Her good-natured husband went off to the pet shop to get another bird, but nothing the man had on offer would do. One was too expensive, one was too dull, another too big. Finally the pet shop man was fed up and the customer made for the exit. In the doorway he saw a parrot he really fancied.
“How much for this chap?” he asked.
“That’s a very special parrot. I don’t really want to part with it, but if I do, it is two hundred pounds.”
“What is so special about it?”
“Well, you see sir, she is the only parrot in Great Britain that lays square eggs.”
The caller was not disposed to believe this, but the vendor took him into the back room and showed him a dish of eggs, each a perfect cube.
“It’s a deal. I will be taking the bird with me,” he said.
While the shopkeeper was making out the bill an uneasy thought struck the man, thinking of his wife, and he said, “I suppose the parrot can talk as well? Does he know anything religious, prayer or something?”
“Well, sir, she can… She knows how to call to Christ. But so far she only seems to have one expression.”
“Ah, indeed. What is that?”
“Ooo-ooo Kee-rist!”

In suffering, your remembrance is like that. It has nothing to do with Christ, nothing to do with God. Drop it; it is meaningless. Start a new approach. While you are full of joy, dancing, singing, then remember! Let God be associated with your positive moments first. It is from there that it will sink deep into your heart. Let God be not a sad affair but a celebration. Let God be a blessing, a benediction.
Enough for today.