the-golden-future-40

Osho,
When I visited Sarjano’s pizza parlor yesterday, I found him sobbing by a huge vat of spaghetti. He said that, in spite of your assurances, he feels it is all hopeless. He said, “I can-a never get-a enlightened-a. I’m-a too much-a attached-a to my past-a.“ I tried to cheer him up by saying that you were helping us to return to the source, and where there is sauce there must be spaghetti. But he was inconsolable. Beloved Master, please, can you help?
Maneesha, Sarjano need not become enlightened – he is already. Those who have been to his place have tasted enlightenment in his spaghetti.
It is true, he is too much attached to the past-a. I would like to suggest to him that in our place he should change these names a little bit – because I am against the past, I cannot allow any past-a here. So I have to rename his pasta; it will be called from tomorrow: futura. And his pizza should be called presenta. The language should be meaningful. Pizza reminds one of pee – that’s why I have never been calling it pizza. I have been always calling it “piesta” just to avoid that pee.
And Sarjano need not worry about enlightenment; those who are with me are already enlightened. They may recognize it, they may not recognize it – just out of humbleness….

A very large elephant was moving sedately through the African jungle when he caught sight of a mouse. He stopped in astonishment; he had never seen a mouse before. “My God,” he said, “you are small!” “Yes,” said the mouse, “I have been ill lately.”

Following an ancient custom, the rabbi of the local synagogue prostrated himself before the Ark of the Lord, “Oh Lord, forgive me, for I am as nothing.” Then the cantor followed, “Oh Lord, forgive me, for I am as nothing.” A little old man praying nearby in his tobacco-stained shirt and old shoes called out, “Oh Lord, forgive me, for I am as nothing.” The disgusted rabbi said to the cantor, “Look who thinks he is nothing!”

In the society where everything turns into ego, even humbleness – which should be egolessness – becomes a subtle ego in itself. But my people are not egoists; hence they need not be humble either – because humbleness and ego are two extremes of the same energy. My people are simple, they are just exactly in the middle; they follow the golden mean.
Nirvana, enlightenment, kaivalya, moksha, all great experiences, are not to be proclaimed. People will recognize them just by your joy, by your playfulness, by your presence. And Sarjano is playful, joyous – sometimes a little too much. Once in a while he goes to the extreme, but most of the time remains “normally mad.” I am going to visit his place one day. I have heard too much about it. He and Kuteer are both doing great things there.
Sarjano has made a great futura for me, a huge wristwatch with numbers and hands. He must have devoted so much time and so much love…and it came with the message: “Osho, I can only offer you this kind of watch.” You can see his humbleness, his love. He is one of my most beloved disciples.
You all have to remember that I have changed the names…. We are thinking about the new man and we are thinking about the future of humanity – and this is the last talk of this series. It is perfectly the right and ripe time to give Sarjano’s creativity new names: futura and presenta.

Osho,
You’ve been talking about love and freedom, and my girlfriend has gone off with another man. I look inside to see if there is anything resembling love that will willingly give the other freedom, and I can’t find anything except this black misery, which I am surprised to find myself enjoying. Do I have any of the new man in me or is it all old?
These are the blessings I have been talking about every day. After all, your girlfriend has left you. It happens only to very fortunate people and you know it!
You say you are enjoying it; it is just out of old habit that you are calling it “black misery.” You don’t see the contradiction: it is a pure white blessing, not black misery. It is black misery to the man with whom your girlfriend has gone! You should now pray and meditate for that poor fellow. Your girlfriend has done enough for you; now she will do the same to the other fellow.
You say, “I am surprised to find myself enjoying it.” Everybody will enjoy it, because everybody is tortured with our so-called relationships. They start very beautifully, very sweet, but they end up very soon in utter misery, in absolute darkness, and there seems to be no end to the night. That’s why my vision of a new man is that he will only relate with others, but there will be no relationship as such – no binding for tomorrow, no contract for the future. Today is enough unto itself; enjoy it. If tomorrow you find yourselves still together, it is good. If you find yourselves separating, separate with gratitude, because for one day you have given great joy and blissfulness to each other, and it is good that before things become bitter you should separate. At least in your memory those beautiful moments will always remain – fragrant, fresh, alive.

Wealthy Hymie and Becky are sitting in their luxurious New York penthouse watching television when there is a knock on the door. Hymie opens it and is confronted by a hooded six-foot burly figure. “Please,” says Hymie, “take my money, anything, but don’t hurt me.” “Sir,” said the hooded figure, “I am a rapist, not a thief.” “Thank God,” says Hymie and calls over his shoulder, “Becky, it is for you.”
Three months later, same scene: same knock on the door, same hooded figure, but this time Hymie closes the door on him saying, “I have already given.”

Life could be a real excitement, an ecstasy, but because of our ugly heritage it turns out to be a hell. And it is not enough that you change the woman or the man. Within a few days, the second man or the second woman will again end up in the same dark space.
Perhaps existence has a different design for man, and we have not listened to it. That different design is that we should remain strangers, meeting and separating without creating any kind of imprisonment for each other, any contract for the future, any promises. Without promises and without any contracts – if we can live life moment to moment and allow change, without any reluctance, without any resistance to it happening, joyously, life can become a celebration.
But man has listened more to stupid priests, ignorant philosophers, criminal politicians, rather than listening to his own heart and listening to existence itself in deep silence and meditation. Unless man follows his nature, his existence, his own heart without any inhibitions, life is going to remain gloomy; it cannot release the tremendous blissfulness it contains in itself.
The new man has to prove that we can live without any religion and without any morality, that we can live without any God and without any priests, that we can live simply according to our own heart, wherever it leads, just like a white cloud floating in the sky with no direction, with no goal, enjoying every moment wherever it is.
The old man was goal-oriented; hence religions became relevant, moralities became prevalent. The new man is going to be absolutely without any goals, totally in tune with the present moment, not listening to any dictates of God – which are all fictitious.
A little boy was sitting on the curb, crying, and an old man was passing by and came over to him. “What is the matter, little boy?” he asked. “Why are you crying?” “I am crying because I can’t do what the big boys do,” he said. The old man sat down on the curb and cried too.
Moses came down from the mountain where he had been negotiating with God on behalf of his people. He called all the people together to give them the message from God. “Well”, he said, “I have got some good news and some bad news. The good news is, I have got him down to ten commandments. The bad news is, adultery is still in there.”

Osho,
I was traveling in the Himalayas for seven weeks. The day I was to return to Pune, you answered a question I had sent in eight weeks before, about feeling hopeless. While you were answering it, I was receiving the answer experientially, waiting on the Varanasi train platform for twenty-eight hours. Each hour it was announced that the train would arrive in one hour; but each time there was no train – only more people, more heat, more noise, more smell, and more flies. I finally truly gave up hope, put my straw hat down over my eyes, and cried. When I looked up again, the flies looked psychedelic with the sun shining through their wings, the sound of the trains and the chai wallahs were music to my ears, and my heart was full of love for everyone. Osho, your sense of timing is uncanny. How do you do it?
Prem Indivar, it is a secret, but one day I can whisper it in your ears – just you have to keep the promise not to tell it to anyone else. You have to continue to say, “He has not said it to me yet.” And they will understand that I have already said it.

A man was standing exactly where you have been on the Varanasi station, seeing the train off, and he observed someone near him shouting at one of the departing passengers, “Good-bye, your wife was a great lay! Your wife was a great lay!” He was stunned.
After the train pulled away, he went over to the man who had done the shouting and asked, “Did I hear you correctly? Did you tell that man his wife was a great lay?” The other man shrugged his shoulders. “It is not really true,” he said, “but I don’t want to hurt his feelings.”

“What is the difference between America and England?” asked the teacher. “I know,” said Hymie. “America has Ronald Reagan, Johnny Cash, Bob Hope, and Stevie Wonder. England has Margaret Thatcher, no cash, no hope – and no wonder.”

So don’t be worried about what happened on the Varanasi station platform. This is usual in this country. I have been traveling for many years around the country; I must have waited on every platform. A few incidents will help you:
One day, for the first time in my life, I found the train coming exactly in time. That is absolutely a unique occasion in India. It simply does not happen. I was so much amazed and felt so grateful that I went to the driver to thank him and I told him, “This is my first experience that the train has come exactly in time. You must be the best driver in the country.”
He said, “Don’t make me feel ashamed.”
I said, “Why?”
He said, “This is yesterday’s train. It is exactly twenty-four hours late!”
Just at that time, when he told me that it is twenty-four hours late, I said, “My God.” The stationmaster was standing by my side. I asked him, “If trains are going to be late – and I have been traveling for twenty years – then what is the point of publishing timetables?”
He said, “You are a strange man. Without timetables how will we know how much the train is late?”
I said, “That’s right; I had not thought about it.”
He said, “Everything would get mixed up. The timetable is published so that you can know how much the train is going to be late.”
On another junction, just as you are saying…the train was announced again and again, “one hour late…two hours late.” I could not believe it when I heard that it is one hour late; then it became two hours late, then it became four hours late. I said, “My God, is it coming this side or is it going the other way? If it was one hour late, how it can be suddenly four hours late now?”
I went to the stationmaster and I asked, “In which direction is the train going?”
He said, “Don’t be angry. It is just to protect our lives that we cannot declare that it is forty-eight hours late; people will kill us. So we declare in installments; it keeps people calm and quiet that “just one hour more…okay two hours more…and by these installments we manage forty-eight hours.”
I said, “I can understand your great compassion; otherwise there would be many heart attacks, heart failures…if you start declaring it exactly right.” I have seen trains coming sixty hours late and I have been sitting on the platform for sixty hours, but it was always “two hours more…two hours more.” It can happen only in this country, which has learned to live patiently – nobody bothers. People accept it as if it is determined by fate; you cannot do anything about it.
But you went through a really beautiful experience – it was because of your patience. You say the moment you covered your face with your straw hat and cried…. It must have cleaned your eyes and it must have softened your heart, and when you looked again, the flies had a psychedelic color – their wings in the sun rays were tremendously beautiful. The noises on the platform suddenly became an orchestra. It was patience and it was crying that gave you a very new experience.
Ordinarily man has been brought up with the idea that crying is only for women, not for men, although nature has made tear glands of equal size behind the eyes of men and women, both. It is absolutely certain that nature intends men also to cry and weep and have tears. You may not have cried in your whole life. Crying was such a new experience to you, so relaxing, creating a kind of let-go, that everything around you which was disgusting just a few moments before became beautiful.
Crying is certainly one of the most important things for everybody to learn. There may be millions of people who have never cried. They don’t know the joy of it, how it relaxes, how it cleanses your eyes – not only the outer eyes but your inner vision – and how it makes trees look more green, the sound of words more clear. The noises in a marketplace certainly start changing into a harmony because you are in a harmony.
You dropped the hope, you cried over it, you became innocent like a child. You should learn something from that experience. The platform of Varanasi station turned, for you, into a religious experience.

Osho,
Why is it that whenever I come to ask a question, questions of great significance, that I knew were there before, elude me. I would like to ask about enlightenment and meditation, but when I get down to writing them, the questions lose all reality for me. The significance and depth of things always frightens me. Could it be that I am avoiding the deep treasures of my being?
The questions about enlightenment and about meditation are not yet your deep search. You are not avoiding anything through them. On the contrary, when you try to write the question about enlightenment or meditation it loses all reality to you because it has no reality for you – it is a borrowed question. You hear so much about enlightenment here, about meditation; naturally you become curious. But curiosity is not inquiry, and unless a search becomes so authentic that it becomes a question of life and death, the question cannot have reality. You can ask it, but it will remain phony – to you and to me.
I can see through your questions, because my basic effort is not to answer the question but to answer the questioner. And in an effort to answer the questioner, I have to destroy the question. All my answers are an effort to destroy your question.
I am not giving you the answer.
I am simply taking away the question, so you can be more empty, more silent, so that you can find the answer yourself.
My answer cannot be your answer.
My experience cannot be your experience.
The teachers in the schools, in the colleges, in the universities, give you answers relevant to your questions; they are not concerned with the questioner at all. It may be anybody, X, Y, Z. Their answer will remain the same if the question is the same. But my answer will not remain the same if the questioner is different, because no two persons can ask the same question. Their words may be the same, the construction of their questions may be the same, but the meaning cannot be the same – because the sources out of which those questions are arising are different.
It is perfectly right to understand that enlightenment and meditation are still not your authentic search. Rather than borrowing those questions from others, look into yourself. Find out your own questions. They may not be very big and great; they may be mundane. Somebody’s girlfriend escapes, somebody’s boyfriend is pretending that he is paralyzed. They may be stupid, they may be absurd, but they will be real and I would like to answer them, because I can destroy them and bring you out of an absurdity, of some mundane situation….
Yes, one day it will be possible for you to ask questions of a higher reality – about enlightenment, about meditation, about consciousness, about being, about the ultimate – but they have to come from your innermost core; otherwise answering them is simply wasting not only your time, not only my time, but everybody else’s time unnecessarily.
It is perfectly right that you should start asking what is significant to you. Here, nobody is going to laugh at your question, nobody is going to ridicule you, nobody is going to condemn you, because this is a gathering of seekers to help each other – fellow travelers. If somebody falls, all the hands around him should help him to be again on his feet. It is not a question of laughing; it is a question of your love, of your compassion, of your fellowship.

A Jewish matron, showing off to her friend at an art gallery, was pointing out the paintings, “That’s a Rembrandt,” she said.
“It is a Velasquez, Madam,” corrected the guide.
“Then that is a Goya.”
“A Rubens, Madam.”
“A Turner.”
“No, Madam, a Constable.”
“Well, that is definitely a Picasso,” she said.
“No, Madam, it is a mirror.”

Your questions have to be authentically yours, they have to mirror you. Don’t pretend that you know about Rembrandt, Rubens, Goya…just a cheap mirror will do; just look at your own face. Questions should come from your own reality; then they can be dissolved, and you can be put on a journey of transformation.

A man stalking through the jungle, hunting wild animals, suddenly stumbles across a beautiful woman lying naked in the forest. She says to him seductively, “I am game,” so he shoots her.

People have to behave according to their own understanding. Now that idiot shot the beautiful woman because he understood only one meaning of the word game; his understanding was that of an ignorant hunter. But one cannot do otherwise.
You have to act according to your own reality.
Even your questioning is a significant act. Don’t borrow your questions; don’t take them from the atmosphere. If everybody else is interested in a certain thing, it does not mean you have to be interested also. This is not a crowd. Here we respect the individual.
And that is my message for the new man: that he will be an individual, not a cog in the wheel. He will not belong to any crowd – political, religious, social, racial, national. He will not belong to anyone.
He will be alone, standing like a beautiful Himalayan peak in his own individuality. He can have friends, he can have fellow travelers, fellow seekers, but he cannot belong to any ideology – which forces him to be blind, to be a believer, which forces him to toe the line of a certain concept.
He will keep himself absolutely free from the crowd; he will not be a sheep, he will be a shepherd. Everyone will be a shepherd – not only Jesus Christ…!