The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty 08

The first question:
Osho,
You say that it is enough for us to just be, that we don’t need to do anything to be in God. I have this gut-feeling that I need to do, to be worthy, to contribute, to give something. And you say that God is within me. I realize I am looking inside for some concept I got from the outside.
It is like looking down a well at night. I see reflections and I think it is the bottom, but it is only the surface. Even when I know that I need only let it wait, rather than look for anything, I am still waiting for my own concepts of what should happen. Please comment.
The first, most fundamental thing to be understood is that you are already in God. It is not a question of being in God; you are already there. Just as the fish is in the ocean, you are in God. God simply means existence, that which exists.
In ancient Hebrew, the word God stands for that which is. G stands for that, O for which and D for is – that which is. The word God is tremendously significant. It does not indicate a person, it simply indicates a presence. And the presence is everywhere. Life is synonymous with God, the universe is synonymous with God. To be is to be in God – there is no other way. To breathe is to breathe in God – there is no other way. To sleep is to sleep in God and to wake up is to wake up in God – there is no other way. You can choose to sleep, still you are in God. You can choose to forget God, still you are in God. You can choose to deny God, still you are in God. Not to be in God is the only impossible thing. I say, the only impossible thing.
So it is not a question of becoming worthy. But I am not saying don’t become worthy. I am not saying be lazy, lousy. I am not saying become an escapist. I am not saying don’t contribute to existence. But your contribution to existence should not be a means to reach the divine – that’s what I am saying. Your contribution to existence should be in gratefulness that you are in godliness. It should not be a means to reach because you are already there. It should be an overflowing of joy because you are already there. Be very clear about the distinction.
Share your joy, love, ecstasy. Make life as beautiful as possible; just out of thankfulness that existence has chosen you to be, that you are allowed to be, that you are given life. What else can you do? If you can sing a song, sing it with your totality. If you can paint, paint and put your whole heart in it. If you can dance, dance to abandon so you disappear completely in the dance and there is no longer any dancer, but only the dance remains. Let me remind you that these are not means to reach godliness – these are just our poor thanks, our heartfelt gratitude.
Prayer is true when it comes out of gratitude. Prayer is false when it is just a means to persuade, to seduce God, to ask for something from him. Even if you are asking God himself, your prayer is full of desire. When prayer is full of desire, it is too heavy, it can’t have wings. It can only grope in the darkness of the earth, it cannot soar high in the sunlit sky.
When prayer is without desire it has wings. When prayer is without weight, when it is out of thankfulness, not desiring anything but just to show your gratitude for all that existence has already done for you – it can reach the ultimate.
You say, “…that it is enough for us to just be? But my gut-feeling is that I need to do something to be worthy, to contribute, to give…”
It is not a gut-feeling. It is just what has been conditioned in you by society. Society has been telling you continuously, persistently, day in, day out, from your very childhood – in school, in college, at university, in church. The priest, the politician, the parent, the professor have all joined together in one single conspiracy: to give you the idea that as you are you are unworthy. You have to do something, you have to prove yourself, only then will you be worthy.
This is the strategy of society to exploit you; this is society’s ugly way to make slaves of you, not creators but slaves. In beautiful, sophisticated ways you have been conditioned. Beautiful words covering very ugly realities. The ugly reality is that society wants to use you as a slave, society wants to manipulate you, society wants to control you. It manages it in two ways.
On the outside is the state, the policeman, the magistrate. They enforce laws, but laws can never be absolute and man can always find ways to defy laws. Then society creates another safeguard. It creates a conscience in you, it goes on hypnotizing you, saying again and again that you have to be worthy.
The helpless child has no other way than to oblige, to surrender. His whole life is at stake and he cannot survive on his own. He has to depend on his parents. He has to watch continuously what they want, what they appreciate, what is rewarded by them. If he is rewarded by them, he is worthy, he feels good; if he is punished by them, he feels unworthy, he feels bad about himself.
Slowly, slowly the idea settles that just to be is not enough, sinks deep in your heart, becomes almost your second nature. Trees are enough, animals are enough, birds are enough – only man has this stupid idea that just to be is not enough. It is a very cunning tactic to destroy the freedom of the individual, to destroy the self-respect of the individual, to create a deep guilt feeling in the individual. It has gone deep, certainly – so deep that you misunderstand it as a gut-feeling. It is not a gut-feeling at all.
I am not against being creative, remember. I am all for it. I want my sannyasins to be creative, but for a totally different reason, with a totally different intention, with a totally new motive. I want you all to be creative. I don’t want you to escape to the monasteries. I want you to live in the world and live the whole spectrum of life fully. Bring your total potential to expression. Bloom in as many ways as possible because only then will you feel fulfilled.
But this has not to be as a means to attain something. This has to be just an expression of your joy, of your celebration. Then the quality changes. When you use something as a means, you are not really interested in it.
For example, if you are painting just to be appreciated, your focus is on appreciation, not on the painting; your heart is not there. You are already imagining, dreaming, how you will be appreciated. And because your constant worry is how to be appreciated, you will paint something which will not come out of you spontaneously, you will paint something which others are bound to like. You will paint it according to them. You will become a very poor painter. You will not allow your genius to come out because the genius is not easily appreciated, remember. The more talented you are, the more genuine your intelligence is and the less is the possibility of being easily appreciated. The greater possibility is that you will be condemned. Why? – because a genius brings something new to the world, so new that old criteria don’t fit with it. The old criteria are deep-rooted in the human mind and they cannot easily go away.
The genius has to create not only his poetry, his painting, his dance, his music. He also has to create new criteria by which to judge them.
Vincent van Gogh, one of the greatest painters the world has ever known, was not appreciated in his time. He lived in utter poverty. His brother supported him, but wasn’t much in favor of his painting either because it was not paying – so what is the point of doing something which does not pay? On the contrary, because of his paintings people used to think that he was mad. He was painting in such a new way – as it had never been done before. He had his own vision. He was a genius. In his paintings, trees are so high that they reach to the stars; the stars are very small and the trees are very big. Now, who is going to appreciate this painting?
Any schoolchild can say, “This is nonsense. Stars are not so small, and trees – who has seen such big trees? Reaching above the stars?” But Vincent van Gogh used to say, “Whenever I see a tree, this is my feeling: the earth is trying to reach the stars, to transcend the stars, through the trees. These are the hands of the earth reaching for the unknown, for the transcendental. I love my earth, hence my stars are small and my trees are big. I am part of this earth, I am also a hand of my earth. To me stars are small.”
This is not a question of astronomy, physics, mathematics. It is a totally different vision. The trees are seen as ambitions of the earth, love affairs of the earth with the sky. But who is going to appreciate him? In one of his paintings the sun is painted black. Now who has ever seen a black sun? But he used to say that the sun that shines outside is black compared to the sun that is inside. It is a comparison. Kabir will agree. Kabir says, “When I saw the inner sun, I knew that the outer sun is just a black hole. When I saw my inner life, I knew that the outer life is nothing but another name for death.”
The moment the inner is known, suddenly the outer starts fading away. Now, van Gogh is talking in a mystic way – he is a mystic – but who will understand? It will take years for people to understand. Van Gogh lived and died unappreciated, unknown. He remained absolutely unknown.
You will be surprised to know that now each of his paintings is so valuable that no other painting can compete. Even Picasso’s paintings are not so valuable – millions of dollars for a single painting. In his day, in his whole life, he could not sell a single painting. He had to distribute his paintings to friends or to the man who used to give him a cup of tea in the morning, free of charge. Those same paintings now cost millions of dollars. People had discarded them, people accepted them out of politeness because as far as they were concerned it was all junk, so why collect it?
Vincent van Gogh committed suicide when he was only thirty-three. It was impossible to live; he could not earn a single pai. His brother used to give him enough money, just enough to exist, to survive. But he needed money to paint. He needed it for the canvas and the colors and the brushes. So the arrangement was that he used to get money every Sunday for one week. Every week, for three days he would eat and for four days he would fast, so that money could be saved to purchase canvases, colors, and other things that he needed.
To me, van Gogh’s fasting is far more significant than all the fasts that have been done by your so-called saints. This fasting has something beautiful in it, something spiritual in it. When your so-called saints go on a fast, it is a means. They are fasting so that they can reach heaven and enjoy all the heavenly joys. But van Gogh’s fasting has a totally different quality to it. That quality is his love to create.
And why did he commit suicide? He committed suicide… That too has a tremendous significance. It is no ordinary suicide. In fact, a man like van Gogh cannot do anything in an ordinary way. He committed suicide because he said, “Whatever I wanted to paint, I have painted. Now, just to exist is pointless. I have given that which I came to give. Now I can go back to the original source. There is no need to live in the body any longer. I have contributed.”
Years and years passed, and slowly, slowly he was appreciated. Now he is thought to be one of the greatest painters in the world. This has been so with all the geniuses. In their own time they are condemned – condemned by the masses, the crowd, the priests, the politicians. They are appreciated by only a very few people – sensitive, receptive, intelligent – who have the capacity to see something that is new, unknown, that has never happened before; only by very few people who can put their minds aside and look.
I would like you to be creative, but don’t be bothered about appreciation, don’t be bothered about gaining fame, a name through it. Whenever the motive is to gain something out of creativity, you are no longer interested in it. You become a technician and are no longer an artist. You may do a painting and do it perfectly, technically perfectly, but it will not have the soul, it will not be alive because you will not be there. You will be looking all around for the appreciators to come. And you will always paint accordingly, so that they can appreciate.
There are people who say only that which people want to hear. These people will be very famous, known, appreciated, respected, but they are mediocre people. The genius speaks that which arises in his heart; he does not care a bit whether anyone is going to like it or not. He says it straight, he says it direct and he never thinks of the results or the consequences.
Be creative in that sense and your creativity will become an offering to existence. Existence has given you so many gifts that something has to be done just in deep thankfulness. But remember, with no motive, not as a means but as an end unto itself. Art for art’s sake, creation for creation’s sake, love for love’s sake, prayer for prayer’s sake.
And that’s how one, slowly, slowly becomes religious. The religious person lives in the moment; he has no worry about the future, not even about the next moment. When it comes, it will come. He does not prepare for it. He lives this moment and out of this moment the next will be born. If this moment has been beautiful, if this moment has been a benediction, the next is going to be, of course, a deeper benediction, a greater blessing.
You say: “I have this gut-feeling that I need to do, to be worthy…” The need to do can be a gut-feeling because we have so much energy and it wants to dance, to paint, to sing, to do something. But, “I need to do to be worthy…” can’t be a gut-feeling. That is a feeling that has been put inside you – like scientists putting electrodes in the brain, so a person can be manipulated.
Society has been carrying on just like that down the ages. It creates a conscience in you: “Do this, this is right, approved, respected. Don’t do that; that is unworthy of you. You will be condemned if you do it.” A kind of division is created within you between right and wrong, between the “should” and the “should not.”
The problem is that no “should” can ever be a fixed phenomenon; it changes with life. No right is always right and no wrong is always wrong, so to decide beforehand is dangerous. I don’t teach you conscience. Conscience means right and wrong are like things, decided. This is a rose and that is a lotus; this is a stone and that is a diamond – decided, decided forever. Right and wrong are not things. They change. Life is a river like phenomenon. What is right today may not be right tomorrow.

A Zen master asked his disciple, “What is God?”
The disciple bowed down, remained silent. The master blessed him and said, “This is good. I am happy.”
Next day, again, the master asked the disciple, “What is God?”
Of course, now he had learned, so he bowed down, an even deeper bow. He remained quiet, even closed his eyes and the master hit him hard on the head and said, “Stupid!”
The disciple was puzzled. He said, “But what has happened? Yesterday you were so happy and the answer is the same. Even better than yesterday!”
The master said, “That is where you went wrong; yesterday was yesterday, today is today. Now you are simply repeating a ready-made formula. Now you are not being true, not being spontaneous, not being responsible. Now you have learned a trick. How can the same answer be right today?” Twenty-four hours have passed, so much water has gone down the Ganges!

Existence is dynamic, it is not static. It is not a stagnant pool. It is a constant continuum, flow. No answer can ever be fixed; that’s where society deceives you. It gives you fixed answers. With fixed answers one thing is good and that’s why we cling to them. They give you a sort of certainty, security, safety. You can remain certain that you are right.
But life goes on changing. And your “right” remains fixed. Your whole life becomes a misery because your answers never fit the questions. Your whole life is an effort to put square plugs in round holes – and your whole life you go on trying. It is very frustrating. The reason is that you never see that life is changing.
The really conscious person changes with life. The really conscious person cannot afford to be consistent. Consistency is part of a mediocre mind. I am not saying be deliberately inconsistent; I am simply stating a fact, that to be consistent means to be stupid, to be consistent means to remain with the past, blind to the present. If you look at the present, you have to change with life.
Hence you will find a thousand and one contradictions in Jesus’ statements and so is the case with Gautam Buddha. That has always been the case with the enlightened people because they don’t have any ready-made answer. You hanker for the ready-made answer so you can jump upon it, you can hold it tight in your hand and be certain.
You suffer from uncertainty – and uncertainty is the nature of life. Certainty it is part of death. Be certain and you will be dead. Remain flowing, remain uncertain, remain available to the changing circumstances and you will remain more and more alive.
To be totally alive means to live in the moment with no past interfering at all. Then you respond to the moment and the response comes from your consciousness, not from your conscience. Conscience is a deception, conscience is a social trick. Society has created the conscience. The function of the master is to destroy your conscience so that your consciousness can be freed.
Your gut-feeling is not a gut-feeling. You have been deceived. There is no need to do anything to be worthy. You are already worthy. If you were not worthy, you would not be here at all. Existence has given you birth, has created you, so must have seen some worth in you. If you are unworthy, then existence is not a very original creator, not much of a creator at all. How can it create an unworthy person?
Society makes you unworthy because that is the only way to exploit you – to make you feel unworthy. You will try hard to become worthy because that is the only way to gain self-respect. And to become worthy you will follow the dictates of society. Society creates fear in you – fear of being unworthy, of being condemned, of being left alone, of being no one, of being anonymous. Then you are ready to yield, to bow down, to any kind of nonsense.

Simon’s parents were in despair when he flunked out of school. They tried sending him to every school in the city – private, public, progressive, military academy – but he took no interest. Finally they tried a Catholic school. When Simon came home with his first report card, his parents were surprised to see a straight A report.
“What happened?” they asked him.
“Well,” he replied. “When I saw that poor guy nailed to the cross everywhere I looked, I knew they meant business!”

Create fear, create as much fear as you can. That has been the policy of society. Hells have been created just to ensnare you; heavens have been created just to reward those who follow the dictates. All are imaginary. There is no hell, no heaven. But the rewards and punishments are subtle strategies. They have worked up to now and they have destroyed all human dignity.
This is not a gut-feeling in you. Your gut-feeling and the conscience created by society have got mixed up. The gut-feeling is to do something – yes, that is a gut-feeling. When the energy is there, one wants to do something; that is natural. The energy wants to be expressed. But with the motive to be worthy, it is the conscience part which is getting mixed with your gut-feeling. Be clear about it.
You have been messed around by society in every possible way. You have been confused so much that you have to depend on someone. Either you go to the priest – in the old days you used to go to the priest. In India they still go to the priest. In the West the new priest has arisen: the psychotherapist, the psychiatrist, the psychologist – go to him.
The miracle is that the priest is just like you, maybe even more in a mess than you are, but still you go to him to find good advice. Yes, he repeats good advice like a parrot. Your psychotherapist, your psychiatrist, your psychoanalyst, may be in deeper anxiety, in more tensions than even you are.
Just the other night one of my sannyasins was asking me, “Osho, you told me last time when I came here, ‘Look for the lighter side of life, count the roses, ignore the thorns. They are there, take note of them, but don’t pay too much attention to them.’ But my psychoanalyst has said, ‘This is dangerous, this is going to repress your emotions.’ So I am puzzled – what to do?”
I said to him, “Just wait a few days, your psychoanalyst will be here…” But I was not aware that this sannyasin himself is a psychoanalyst. Later on Vivek told me that he is a psychoanalyst. Now, one psychoanalyst going to another psychoanalyst – for what? And that one may be going to someone else.
The founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, was one of the most pathological persons you can imagine. He was very superstitious. You will laugh if you look in his biography; how such a man could become the founder of psychoanalysis, how such a man could be trusted and that what he was saying was true.
One of his friends gave him the idea that just as each woman has a twenty-eight-day cycle when her menstruation comes, each man has a twenty-three-day cycle. There is some truth in it; not twenty-three days, but exactly twenty-eight days. Now much more research has been done on it.
Those four, five days when a woman goes through her period are sad, depressive, dull, negative. In exactly the same way, the man goes into a negative state each month for four, five days. Of course, his period is not very visible, but it is there; it is a psychological fact. It should be there because men and women are not very different.
So his friend’s idea was on the right track. Sigmund Freud suddenly got an idea – lying in his bed, he was thinking about twenty-eight and twenty-three and suddenly an idea flashed in his mind: twenty-eight plus twenty-three means fifty-one. He could not sleep the whole night. He became certain by the morning that he was going to live fifty-one years – a very great gut-feeling. He started talking about it; twenty-eight plus twenty-three – fifty-one years and he will die.
His fifty-first year came and passed and he did not die. Something else had to be found. The day he was expecting to die, his phone number was changed and the end of the phone number was sixty-two. So he said, “Look, another indication. Now I am going to die at sixty-two.” But that day came and passed.
But people like Sigmund Freud are not easy. They will find something or other. He was staying in a hotel and the number of the room was eighty-two, so he said, “Look, another indication from above. At eighty-two I am going to die; that is absolutely certain.”
That day also passed. He died when he was eighty-three. Such superstitious people… He was so afraid of death, that’s why he was so concerned about it. He was so afraid of death that five times in his life he fainted publicly because someone started talking about death. He used to faint and fall flat on the ground – just the idea of death. And such a pathological, neurotic person became the founder of psychoanalysis.
He used to project himself. Whatever was true for him he thought was true for every human being. That is the very limit of his nonsense. All that he has said about man is not about man. It is about Sigmund Freud. Sigmund Freud is a single individual; he does not represent man. No one represents man. No one can ever represent man.
So maybe a few people are helped by psychoanalysis, a very few people. Rarely have I seen a person who has been helped by psychoanalysis – but those are the people who are of the same type as Sigmund Freud.
Now much research has happened and it has been found that even those people who are helped are not helped by psychoanalysis but by something else. In one experiment, twenty-five people were given psychoanalysis for six months and twenty-five people were just kept waiting and told, “Soon your psychoanalysis will start.” They were all suffering from the same kind of illness. The result was very surprising.
The twenty-five who were given psychoanalysis were helped a little bit, but the twenty-five who were kept waiting were helped far more. Just waiting helped them far more. In fact, this secret has been known in the East. It has been practiced for centuries. If you take someone who has a mental disorder and place him in a Zen monastery – he is then put in isolation for three weeks, where no one talks to him. This is just the opposite of psychoanalysis; no one talks to him, no one listens to him. He is just kept isolated, in absolute silence. Someone goes and puts food there for him and returns. He has to live with himself for three weeks. And miracles have been happening down the ages.
Just putting him there for three weeks in isolation, slowly, slowly with no psychoanalysis, no therapy, just isolation, he cools down. In fact, he was suffering too much from people – the stress of being in a crowd continuously.
Psychoanalysis may not be the real cause of help, but the length of time the psychoanalysis continues – two, three, four years. It continues as long as you can afford it; it depends on you. If you have enough money, it can continue your whole life. In fact, psychoanalysis never comes to a termination. It cannot because the mind is very inventive. It goes on inventing more and more rubbish. It starts enjoying, slowly, slowly because the more rubbish it brings up, the more happy the psychotherapist feels. Seeing him happy, it obliges him more.
Whatever the expectations of the psychotherapist are, the patient fulfills them. Patients are really patient people, very obliging, courteous. They are good people. That’s why they are suffering. They are not hard people – not hardware but software. Because they are soft they are suffering. The hard guys are not suffering. The hard guys make others suffer. The soft guys become victims. Three, four years lying down on the couch, talking nonsense, waiting, waiting, waiting – it helps one to unwind, one becomes a little more relaxed. And someone is listening to you very attentively, at least pretending that he is listening very attentively.
My own observation is that the attention of the psychotherapist is of immense value. This is a world where no one gives you any attention. If the husband wants to talk to the wife she says, “There is so much work to be done in the kitchen. The dishes have to be washed and I have no time.” If the wife wants to talk to the husband, he is tired from the whole day at the office; the work, the traffic, and he wants to watch the TV.
A survey says that in America the average husband–wife communication in is only thirty-three minutes per day. And that is the average. In that thirty-three minutes you can count fighting, nagging, pillow-throwing and every kind of thing. Out of twenty-four hours, only thirty-three minutes between husband and wife?
A great need has arisen that someone should listen to you. Hence the psychotherapist helps. He is a professional listener. That is the only quality he has, the only qualification really. Anyone can start the business – no other qualification is needed. If you know only one thing: how to sit there by the side of the person being attentive and listening… Just listening attentively will help. The person starts feeling, “I have some worth. Someone…” And the more he has paid, the more it helps because the person who is listening is no ordinary psychotherapist, not run-of-the-mill. “He is someone special, very famous, world-known. And listening so attentively to me?” The very idea gives worth, “Then I must be saying something immensely beautiful.”
He may be bringing up gibberish. That’s what in psycho-babble is called “free association” – bring up anything that comes to your mind. If such gibberish is being listened to so attentively, a great need is fulfilled. The person feels worthy, he feels important, he feels he is someone.
Remember, this society has messed you up so much that man as such is almost on the verge of going insane. All love, communication, friendship has disappeared; all aesthetic sensitivity has disappeared. People have become like zombies. They talk to each other yet they don’t talk, they don’t meet.
This society is an ill society. When I say “this society” I mean all the societies that exist in the world are more or less, in this way or that, ill. For centuries in the past, we have been creating a model of man which is wrong. We are giving people ideals and saying “Unless you fulfill these ideals you will never be worthy.” And those ideals are impossible. We are giving people ideas of being perfect. Once the idea of being perfect enters one’s being, it turns one into a neurotic.
Accept your limitations, accept your imperfections. That’s what it means to be a human being. Accept yourself as you are – with joy, not in helplessness because existence accepts you. This is my basic teaching: existence accepts you; accept yourself, love yourself. Let there be a great upsurge of self-love. Out of that love, you will start becoming creative. A person who loves himself is bound to become creative. I am not saying he will become famous, I am not saying that he will be a Picasso or an Ezra Pound or a Pablo Neruda, no. He may be, he may not be. But that is irrelevant. The real thing is to enjoy creativity. Whatever you do, do it with joy, bring your total intelligence to it, be meditative in it.
You say, “And you say that God is within me. I realize I am looking inside for some concept I got from the outside.” You will never find that kind of God within you. You will have to drop all the concepts that have been given to you from the outside because God is not a person. No picture of God exists, no statue is possible. Godliness is an experience. If you have the idea of a God which your parents and society have given you, you will go inside with that idea and it will be a hindrance. It will not allow you to see that which is. And godliness is that which is. It needs no concepts to see. Concepts blind you. Drop all concepts.
If you really want to go in, go as an agnostic. This word is beautiful. You must have heard the word gnostic. Gnostic means one who knows – gnosis means knowledge. Agnostic means one who knows not; agnostic means one who knows only one thing, that he knows not. Be an agnostic – that is the beginning of real religion.
Don’t believe, don’t disbelieve. Don’t be a Hindu, a Jaina, a Christian, otherwise you will go on groping in darkness forever and forever. Unless you drop all ideologies – all philosophies, all religions, all systems of thought and go inside empty, with nothing in your hand, with no idea – how can you have an idea of God? You have not known him. Just go – with a great desire to know, but with no idea of knowledge; just go with an intensity to know, with a passionate love to know what is there, but don’t carry any ideas given to you by others. Drop them outside. That is the greatest barrier for the seeker on the path of truth.
God is there but you cannot see because your eyes are blinded by the concepts given to you. God is not a Jew, so if you have a Jewish idea of God, you will not find him.
I have heard a beautiful story about a Sufi mystic, Farid…

One night he dreamed that, by the grace of Allah, he had reached paradise. And the whole of paradise was decorated with millions of lights and flowers everywhere – some celebration was going on – with great music. He inquired, “What is going on?”
They replied, “This is God’s birthday and we are celebrating it. You have come at the right time.”
So he stands underneath a tree to see what is happening because a great procession had started moving on the road. A man was sitting on a horse. He inquired, “Who is that man?” and they replied, “Don’t you know him? He is Hazrat Mohammed.”
Millions and millions of people were behind him and he asked, “Who are these people?”
The reply was, “They are Mohammedans, followers of Mohammed.”
Then came Jesus, with millions following him. Then came Krishna on his golden chariot and again millions were following him. And so on and so forth. The procession continued, continued, continued.
Finally, in the end, an old man came on an old donkey, with no one behind him; he was just alone. Looking at this man, Farid started laughing. It was hilarious. No one was following him and why should he be riding on his donkey? He asked, “Who are you, sir? I have seen Mohammed, Christ, Krishna, Mahavira, Buddha. Who are you? You look like a kind of joke. No one is following you.”
The old man was very sad and replied, “Yes, I am God. This is my birthday. But some people have become Mohammedans, some have become Christians, some have become Jews, some have become Hindus – there is no one left to be with me.”
Out of shock, Farid woke up. He said to his disciples the next day, “Now I am no longer a Mohammedan. The dream I had has been a great revelation. Now I am no longer part of any organized religion. I am simply myself. I would like to be with God, at least one person will follow him.”

If you have a certain idea of God, you will not be able to see it. Your very idea will become a barrier. Drop all ideas that you have gathered from without; only then can you go within.
You say: “It is like looking down a well at night. I see reflections and I think it is the bottom, but it is only the surface. Even when I know I need only let it wait, rather than look for anything…”
True, stick with that insight. If you are looking for something you will not be able to see because the very idea of looking for something means that you have an idea of what you are looking for. To look for something is a kind of blindness.
Seeing happens only when you are not looking for anything in particular; you are just there, open, available. So whatever is, is revealed. Don’t look for godliness if you want to see it. Just wait – let and wait. Godliness is a happening. If you are silent, open, loving, conscious toward your own being, it is going to happen. Any moment, when you are in the right tuning with existence, it will happen.
Godliness is there, you are there; just right tuning. That’s what I am teaching you: right tuning. Dropping all ideologies helps you to be rightly tuned. Once you are in tune with existence – that is bliss. You have come home.

The second question:
Osho,
Is it time that I should become a sannyasin?
It is already late! You have already waited too long. I have known you for years, you have known me for years. What are you waiting for? The meeting should happen now. And still you are asking, “Is it time that I should become a sannyasin?”
Are you dead? If you have any life in you, then this is the time. Now is the time. Remember Kabir – just the other day Kabir was saying: “Now, wake up.” Wake up in the now, wake up here! Don’t postpone.

Branigan was driving down the road. By the way the car weaved in and out of traffic, you could tell that he was pickled to the gills.
“Where do you think you’re going?” asked the motorcycle cop who finally stopped him.
“I’m coming home – hic – from a New Year’s Eve party!”
“Are you kidding?” asked the cop. “New Year’s was three weeks ago!”
“I know,” said Branigan. “That’s why I figured I better be getting home now.”

Isn’t it time to be getting home now? You have waited already too long, too many lives. Sannyas is nothing but a passionate jump into the inquiry for the truth, a passionate search from where we come, where we’re going and who we are. That’s what sannyas is all about.
But you seem to be almost in a kind of sleep; that’s how everyone is. The worldly dreams still seem to be important to you, hence the question. The world still seems to intoxicate you; money, power, prestige, are still haunting you. You cannot be a sannyasin unless you are utterly frustrated with the world. Remember, I am not teaching escapism from the world. I teach transcendence, not escape. Be in the world, but don’t be of it.
A sannyasin is a person who lives in the world, but lives meditatively – and meditation creates a distance. You can go on doing all kinds of things, but you don’t become intoxicated, you don’t become identified with them. To live in awareness, without any intoxication with money, power, prestige, is the way of the sannyasin.

Hallihan and Flannigan were having a few at a new tavern in town. After an hour of heavy imbibing, Hallihan asked the bartender for the washroom.
“Go to the door, left of the elevator,” said the barkeeper, “then walk down two steps and there you are.”
Hallihan forgot to turn left. He opened the elevator door, took one step and fell down the shaft.
Ten minutes later, Flannigan followed Hallihan and saw him lying at the bottom of the shaft.
“Look out for the second step,” shouted up Hallihan. “It’s a son of a bitch!”

You have taken many second steps, many, many times. You have fallen many, many times. Aren’t you frustrated yet? Aren’t you finished with the world yet? Are you still carrying some hope deep down in your heart? Are you still expecting that the world is going to deliver something to you? It has never happened – it hasn’t happened to anyone. And it is not going to happen to you.
The world only promises, it never delivers the goods. That’s its illusoriness and that’s why in the East we call it maya. Maya does not mean that it is not there. It is very much there, but it only promises. It never gives anything.
I have heard a story…

A man worshipped for many, many years – he must have tortured God as much as possible. Every morning, afternoon, evening he cried and wept, prayed and prayed. Finally, God had to appear and said, “What do you want? Be finished! Just take it and forgive and forget all about me.”
The man said, “I want something; a power, so that whatever I need is immediately fulfilled.”
So God gave him a box, a golden box – exactly like the magic box that I give to you – and said to him, “Whenever you are in need you can ask. Whatever you ask, the box will immediately give it to you.”
The man forgot all about God, he even forgot to thank him. God waited a little, but the man was no longer interested in him. He was looking at the box and started asking, “Give me ten thousand rupees!” Suddenly ten thousand rupees appeared and he was very happy.
And it continued. Whatever he wanted came out of the box. One day, a sadhu – a wandering monk – stayed with the man. The sadhu, the wandering monk, also had a box – bigger than the man’s – exactly the same shape. The man became interested. He said, “What is this?”
The sadhu said, “This is a magic box. You ask anything and it gives you double.”
“Double?” The man asked, “If I ask ten thousand rupees,” he said, “it gives twenty thousand!”
He fell at the feet of the monk and said, “You are a monk, you have renounced the world – can’t you exchange? I have a small box. It gives only whatever you ask.”
So they changed the boxes. It was late at night, so the man thought, “In the morning I will try out this new box.” In the morning he tried; he asked for ten thousand rupees.
The box said, “Why not twenty thousand?”
The man replied, “Okay, twenty thousand.”
The box said, “Why not forty thousand?”
And the man said, “Okay, forty thousand.”
And the box said, “Why not eighty thousand?”
Then he became afraid because nothing was coming out. He rushed to see the monk, but he had left; he had disappeared in the night.

In the East, we have called the world “maya,” illusory. It is like that box of the monk. You ask anything and it says, “Okay, you can have double.” But it never delivers any goods; it only promises. The world is almost like the politicians – they promise but they never fulfill.
Aren’t you finished yet? Haven’t you seen it happening many times? Each time you are living an illusion, hoping, dreaming and sooner or later disillusion comes in, frustration comes in. But rather than seeing the reality of this world, you immediately jump on another illusion and immediately start dreaming again.
Sannyas is seeing the reality of the world; that it never fulfills, that it cannot fulfill, that it is beyond its capacity to fulfill. One turns in. We have been beggars begging from this and that door. When one turns in, begging disappears and one becomes an emperor. Then all is yours.
You needn’t even ask for it. It is simply yours. This whole existence is yours. Its whole beauty, its whole splendor, its starry nights, its sunsets and sunrises, its flowers and birds – all is yours. Not in the sense that you possess it, but in the sense that you can enjoy it.
A sannyasin learns how to enjoy; the worldly man learns only how to possess. Remember these two things, they are basic. The worldly man only thinks of how to possess more. He never enjoys because he is concerned with possessing more and more and more. The sannyasin enjoys. Whatever he has he enjoys. And he enjoys the whole existence which need not be possessed.
Do you think that first you have to possess the starry night in order to enjoy it? Do you think that first you have to possess all the birds in order to enjoy their songs? This existence need not be possessed. And you can still enjoy. It is yours if you want to enjoy, it is not yours if you want to possess. To possess it is aggressive; it is aggression on existence. To enjoy it is prayerful.

The last question:
Osho,
Will you recognize me at the final judgment day?
It all depends on you. Remember to be in orange and with the mala because it is going to be difficult to recognize you. Just think of all the men and women that have existed. They will all be there. There is going to be much difficulty in recognizing people, so just remember that thing.

A timid, conservative, unmarried shopkeeper suddenly came into a small fortune. Overnight, this mild-mannered, mincing little man had all the money he could possibly use.
Bravely he snapped his fingers, clicked his heels and decided to become a swinger. He bought expensive, mod clothes, had his hair styled, rented a lavish beach villa in Florida and got a dark, virile tan.
Driving home from the Rolls Royce dealer in his new car, wearing his flashiest sports clothes and swingiest sunglasses, he was suddenly struck dead by a lightning bolt. Right there in the Florida sun – a fatal lightning bolt.
Up at the pearly gates, the shopkeeper angrily faced Saint Peter. “Why would you pick on me like that? I have been a good man all my life. The Lord has always watched over me.”
“He was trying to watch over you,” explained Saint Peter. “He just didn’t recognize you.”

So please remember, don’t forget it. Be in orange and with the mala so that I can recognize you.
But why are you worried about the Last Judgment Day? I teach you about the immediate and you ask about the Last Judgment Day. I teach you that the immediate is the ultimate and you ask about the Last Judgment Day. In reality there is no day which can be the last. The world never begins, never ends. It is a continuum.
Secondly, the very word judgment is ugly. God is not a judge, God is a lover – and the lover cannot be a judge. Jesus said to his disciples, “Judge ye not.” Why? – the moment you judge you start destroying the other. Who are you to judge? The moment you judge you start comparing. And who are you to compare?
Each individual is unique; each individual brings variety to existence. The world will not be better if there are only saints, saints, saints. It will be a very boring world if there are only saints, saints, saints. The sinners also contribute something. They make it a little salty, they bring a little taste to life.
God is not a judge, he is a lover – and how can love judge? Be assured that in the eyes of God there is no sinner, no saint. In the eyes of God all are alike. When his sun rises, it rises for the sinners too, as much as for the saints. When his roses bloom, they give their fragrance to the saints as much as the sinners. No distinction is ever made. Just simple observation will show you that existence makes no distinctions. All right and wrong, all good and bad, are human creations, are man-made concepts and ideas.
Each society has created its own ideas of good and bad – and they go on changing. They are utilitarian, remember. One thing can be a sin in one society and may not be a sin in another society. The same thing can be a great virtue in one society and may be thought just the opposite in another society.
If a person beats his own body so that blood oozes out, what will you call him? Will you call him a saint or a sinner? It depends. There has been a Christian sect that believes in beating your body so that blood comes out and the more blood you can bring out of your body, the greater a saint you are.
In Russia, before Communism, there was a sect, a great sect of Christians, who used to cut off their genital organs. Women used to cut off their breasts. And they were thought to be great saints. What do you think about them? – you will think them pathological, mentally ill, deranged.
There are ideas and ideas, but all ideas are human. Don’t be worried. There are people who are worried about small things – they have been made to worry. Someone smokes and is afraid that he will be thrown in hell. If you have smoked too much, one thing is certain, that you will not be sent to hell because there is too much smoke there and you have already done it to yourself.
Smoking may be bad for your health, but is not a sin. You cannot be thrown in hell for smoking. But there are people who think even drinking tea… In Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram, drinking tea was a sin. If you were caught drinking tea, there was a great fuss about it. Mahatma Gandhi might have gone for a three-day fast to purify his soul and his disciples’ souls because people are drinking tea.
Down the ages Buddhist monks have been drinking tea. Tea is part of their meditation – and there seems to be something in it because tea has some chemicals which can keep you awake more easily. It can be a help in meditation. If you are trying to be alert, tea can be a help.
In fact, tea was discovered by Buddhist monks. It is their discovery because it was discovered in a monastery in China called Ta. That’s why it is called tea. That “ta” can be pronounced also as “cha.” That’s why in Marathi it is called “cha” and in Hindi it is called “chai.” But it is from the monastery of Ta. The man who is reputed to have grown the first tea plants was no other than Bodhidharma, the great Bodhidharma. The story is beautiful…

He was meditating – and such a meditator happens only once in a while. For nine years he sat facing the wall – just the wall. Nine years looking at the wall and doing nothing else. Naturally, sometimes he used to fall asleep. If you look at the wall that long, what else is there to do? He didn’t want to go to sleep, so he tore off his eyelids and eyelashes and threw them away – so now there was no way he could close his eyes. The story is that out of those eyelids, those pieces of skin and the eyelashes, the first tea plant grew.

This is a beautiful story. It simply says one thing: that tea can keep you awake. It will not allow you and your eyes to close.
Buddhists drink tea with religious ritual. In Japan, they have tea ceremonies. Tea is not an ordinary thing for them because it keeps you awake and gives you energy to remain more alert. They have made a very prayerful, graceful ritual out of it: the tea ceremony. In each Zen monastery there is a separate tea temple – the most beautiful place – maybe surrounded by a lake, rocks, sand, trees. When you enter the temple, you have to enter in a certain manner, you have to sit there in a certain posture, and it takes hours.
The tea will be prepared, the samovar will start humming and everyone will sit in silence listening to the humming of the samovar. Slowly, the fragrance of the tea will reach your nostrils and you have to drink that too. The tea is served – with great grace, with great beauty, art. It is served in beautiful cups, handmade with great love and care. Everyone starts sipping the tea. It is done very prayerfully and everyone remains silent, no gossiping, no chattering – as if there is no one. They bow down to each other with great respect and disperse without saying a word.
In one country, tea is so religious, so spiritual; in Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram it was a sin. It depends. These are all human ideas. You shouldn’t be worried about these things.
My message is simple. Live alert, spontaneously, totally. Forget all about the Last Judgment Day. I recognize you today and that’s enough. Today is enough unto itself.
Enough for today.