The Secret 14

The first question:
Osho,
I keep meeting people who can see auras, and I feel I am missing. What can I do to share this sight?
God is not an experience. No experience as such is spiritual, all experiences are mind games. Beware of it. Whatever can be seen will be part of the illusory world. The seer is the truth, not the seen. You can see auras and you can see angels and you can see kundalini rising and you can see inner lights – but they are all seen. They are not you.
The seer is the witness, and only the witness is the truth. All else is a dream. And there are worldly dreams and there are otherworldly dreams; there are materialistic dreams and there are spiritualistic dreams. One thing has to be remembered always: whatever is seen is worthless – even if it is God. The God that is seen is worthless.
When all experiences disappear and you are left utterly alone – nothing to see, only emptiness in the hands, no experience at all, suddenly you realize yourself. Then you turn upon yourself, then you fall into your source. And that is not an experience, it is a realization. That is the difference between the words experience and realization. It is not that you have seen something, experienced something. Now you know who you are.
The great Sufi mystic Maghrebi says:
Don’t speak to us of visions and miracles, for we have long ago transcended such things.
We saw them all to be illusion and dreams, and dauntlessly we passed beyond them.
You will meet many people here who will go on playing these games. They are simply wasting their time. Avoid their company. I am going to attract all kinds of people, and particularly the people who are interested in spiritualism. They will bring all their diseases here. They will talk nonsense; they will talk about miracles, psychic experiences. And naturally, when somebody talks about such things, you start feeling as if you are missing. You are not missing a thing because he is only dreaming.
But he can create the feeling in you that you are lacking something, that your growth is not going well, that you are not growing as fast as you should grow. He will create the feeling of inferiority in you and that is dangerous. Once you start feeling inferior you become sad, depressed. You carry a heavy weight on your chest, and that will become a hindrance in your growth.
And there is every possibility that if you desire, you will start seeing these things. Desire creates dreams. If you start thinking that you are missing, soon your mind will project. The mind is always ready to give you anything that you desire, and particularly such things. If you desire money it will be difficult because it is not only a question of your own mind. If you desire to become the president of a country it may not be easy because there may be much competition. But if you want to see auras there is no competition, and nobody can hinder you, and you are not taking somebody else’s auras; you are creating your own. It is a private, idiotic world. This is the meaning of the word idiot: it means having a private world of your own experiences, which do not collaborate with reality.
I know a few people are here who enjoy a kind of leadership because they can gather a few people around themselves. They start talking about esoteric things. And whenever somebody talks about esoteric things, hidden truths that you are not aware of, he enjoys being a knower, and he reduces you to an ignorant person. It hurts. Soon you will also start talking and reading such nonsense books, and they are available in abundance.
Here, you are not to be with me to see auras, or to see lights, or to see kundalini energy rising, or the chakras opening. I am trying to hammer this truth into your heart continuously, that the only thing worth attaining is enlightenment, is nirvana, is the realization of who you are. Everything else has to be bypassed. And these things come on the way.
The mind tries to allure you to the very end. It gives beautiful psychedelic experiences, very colorful, enchanting. One can get stuck with them. LSD is nothing. If you go on working on your being you will find far deeper, far profounder-appearing experiences happening to you which no LSD can release.
Then the desire is to cling to them, and that very desire keeps you away from the ultimate truth. For the ultimate truth, everything has to be sacrificed, all so-called spiritual experiences, esoteric knowledge, miracles. Everything has to be dropped. One has to come to the ultimate experience – which is not an experience.
Language is inadequate to express it: that’s why it is called an experience. It is not an experience – because in an experience there is a division of the experiencer and the experienced, and in this experience, the ultimate, there is no division. You are the knower, you are the known, you are the seer, you are the seen, you are the experiencer, you are the experienced. Only you are.
That absolute, still point of pure existence is the goal. All else has to be sacrificed for it. Beware of such things.
I have heard…

A man was telling his friend about his recent trip to Europe and said, “You know, I went to Europe with my friend Seymour – you know Seymour, the cripple, the one with the crutches under each arm? Well, first we went to London where we visited the Tower of London. I climbed to the very top of it but poor Seymour, the cripple, the one with the crutches under each arm, he could not make it.
“Then we went to Paris, France, where again I climbed to the top of the Eiffel Tower but poor Seymour, the cripple, the one with the crutches under each arm, could not make it.
“But then we went to Rome and ended up with a private audience with the Pope. The Pope walked into the room, took one look at Seymour, the cripple, the one with the crutches under each arm, and walked over to him and placed a kiss on the right cheek of Seymour. As if by magic, Seymour threw his right crutch away.
“Then the Pope came over to Seymour’s left cheek and gave him a kiss – and again as if by magic, he threw his left crutch down.”
“What happened next?” his friend asked.
“Well, Seymour is a cripple, you know – he fell down right on his ass.”

The second question:
Osho,
Isn’t what you say beyond the boundaries of human capacities?
There are no boundaries to human capacities. All boundaries are our beliefs, there are no boundaries. Man is part of infinity, and the part is equal to the whole: that is the law of higher mathematics. In the world of lower mathematics, the part is never equal to the whole, the part is smaller than the whole, obviously. In the world of higher mathematics, the part is equal to the whole, never smaller than the whole – because the part is the whole. Just as the whole contains the part, the part contains the whole. They are not separate at all, nowhere separate. No boundary divides the part from the whole. It is one reality seen in two ways.
When you see a dewdrop, it is one way of seeing the ocean, that’s all – because the dewdrop contains all that the whole ocean contains. If one dewdrop is understood, if you have analyzed one dewdrop, you have known all the secrets of all the oceans, not only of this earth, but wherever the ocean exists, on other planets, on other earths. Scientists say there are at least fifty thousand planets where water exists, life exists. Wherever water exists, that one dewdrop has revealed to you the whole secret of all possible oceans. Analyzing one dewdrop, you will come to the truth of H₂O, and that contains all.
Man is a dewdrop, man contains the whole. There are no boundaries.
But if you believe in boundaries, then they are. Your belief creates them. You are as big as you believe yourself to be: “As a man thinketh, so he is.” And if you don’t believe in anything, you are infinite because no belief can be infinite. All beliefs are bound to be finite. The belief needs a definition, hence it will be finite – howsoever big, it will still be finite.
That’s why I tell you again and again, drop all beliefs. In dropping beliefs you will be dropping all definitions, all boundaries, all limitations. When a person has dropped all beliefs, all thoughts, all desires, there is nothing to create a boundary. He is the whole.
That is the moment when Mansoor shouted out of joy, “Ana’l haq! – I am the truth.”

The third question:
Osho,
In a recent article in the International Herald Tribune, William Borders, a longtime observer of this country for the New York Times’ office in New Delhi, wrote of how we are an embarrassment to “image-shy India.” What is it about India that makes Indians so concerned about their international image? And why cannot India be proud of you? Never has there been a religious leader in history that has received so much publicity abroad.
India is a very poor country. It has nothing to claim except its so-called spirituality. That’s its only ego. And each country needs a certain ego, otherwise the country need not exist. Each nation exists as an ego, and the ego needs some supports.
That’s why I am against all kinds of nationalism – because its root is ego. It divides people, it makes people fight each other. It creates antagonism, enmity. I am against all nationalism, against all nations.
I would like to see one world where all these egos, the Indian and the Japanese and the German and the English and the French, have disappeared because these are illnesses. The ego is like cancer, but even cancer needs something to feed upon, it cannot live on nothing. The ego needs something to nourish it.
The West can claim science, scientific knowledge, technology, great, beautiful cities, good roads, airplanes, man’s reaching the moon, and a thousand and one things. The West has many things to support its ego, India has nothing. It can only claim spirituality, and that’s its fear. That spirituality is also bogus.
It is very much afraid. If that spirituality is exposed as bogus, it has nowhere to stand, no shelter; it will fall flat on the ground. It respects, feels proud of, the people who go on claiming its spirituality and its spiritual greatness. It is proud of Vivekananda because he helps its ego to be strengthened. It is proud of Radhakrishnan. It is proud of Mahatma Gandhi. They all give support to its illusory idea of being spiritual.
How can it be proud of me? I am taking the last prop away from it. I am telling the world that this whole spirituality that India claims is bogus.
Yes, there have been a few spiritual people in India, as there have been everywhere. There is nothing to claim, nothing special to claim about it. Yes, Buddha has been here and Mahavira has been here and Krishna has been here. But so what? Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu and Lieh Tzu have been in China, and Zarathustra and Moses and Ezekiel and John the Baptist and Jesus and Mohammed and Saint Francis… You can go on counting hundreds of names from all over the world. It is nothing special to India. This land is in no way more spiritual than any other land – but then it hurts. Then there is nothing left to claim, and the Indian ego feels hurt.
They are angry with me because I am telling them, “Whatever you are claiming is just holy cow dung. You are not spiritual. In fact, you are only hypocrites, the greatest hypocrites in the world.” I have walked all over the country, from one corner to the other corner. I have watched the whole country very minutely. It is utterly materialistic, but it hides its materialism in a spiritual garb – and because of this spiritual claim, it cannot fulfill its materialist needs. Deep down it hankers for materialism and on the surface it goes on pretending. India has that haughty look of holier-than-thou. It goes on believing that it has the claim to being the spiritual master of the whole world. It is all nonsense.
Spiritual people have been everywhere, spiritual people will go on happening everywhere. No society is spiritual yet, only individuals are. No nation is spiritual yet. That’s why it cannot be proud of me.
Only one Western woman, Nivedita, had come with Vivekananda, and India was very proud. Now, thousands of women and men have come to me, but India cannot be proud of that. Why? – I am not supporting its chauvinistic claims in any way.
I am for one world. I am not an Indian and I am not a German and I am not a Chinese. I claim the whole world as mine, and I would like nations to disappear.
If India really feels it has some claim to being spiritual, then let India disappear first. That would be the proof. Let India disappear as a nation, let it become an international land. That would be the proof, the concrete proof. But people go on talking about nonviolence in India and go on preparing for war. They go on talking about brotherhood and the unity of all religions, and go on doing just the opposite of it.
Because I am exposing things as they are, because I am functioning like an x-ray, they are angry. Nobody likes x-rays because they reveal your bones, your skeleton, your skull. You have been thinking yourself so beautiful and all that comes out is just a skeleton? So this is you? You become angry, you become annoyed. Their annoyance with me is understandable. I understand it perfectly.
India has lived under slavery for a thousand years. It has become very, very afraid of becoming a slave again. It knows that it has the capacity to become a slave at any moment. One thousand years of slavery is enough to prove to the country that somehow we are missing some qualities. A great inferiority complex has arisen out of these one thousand years. And whenever a country or a man or a race suffers from an inferiority complex, it starts pretending to be superior. The superiority complex is a way to avoid one’s inferiority complex; it is a camouflage.
That’s what India is doing now. It wants to pretend, claim, prove to the world that it is spiritually very superior. It is afraid. It has nothing to claim. It is afraid, very fearful inside, and out of that fear it has to create a very bold face on the outside. Deep down there is a trembling that every day the country is going more and more into darkness, more and more into poverty and starvation. The future is bleak, there seems to be no future.
Now, how to avoid seeing this danger that is coming closer every moment? The only way is to look at the past; don’t look at the future, turn your back toward the future, look at the past. Talk of the golden days, ramrajya, when there were rivers of milk and butter and honey in the country – rivers! – and the whole country was a golden bird. Delight in that fantasy, which has no relevance to history, which has no truth in it. Yes, a few people have always been rich, but the major part of the country has always been poor.
But you can create your own past, nobody can prevent you. You can glory in your past, you can magnify it as big as you want. India delights in magnifying its past, in making it bigger and bigger, more and more golden, just to avoid the future that is coming every moment. And any moment it will grip the whole country.
It almost always happens that when a person is dying, he starts thinking of the beautiful old days of childhood just to avoid the death that is approaching. It is said that if somebody is drowning, he starts seeing his whole life revealed like a film. What really happens? He is dying, he is in pain, great anguish. He needs some consolation, he wants to forget about it all. Where to go? Except for the past, there is no other way.
So India continuously goes into the past. When a nation is young it thinks of the future. When a nation is old and rotten it thinks of the past.
And I go on saying continuously that the past the Indians think they had, they never had. They only believe in it, it is their fantasy; they paint it. They go on saying that in the old, ancient days people were so good that there was no need to lock their houses. There was no stealing, no thieves, no robbers. This is all nonsense. Then to whom was Buddha saying “Don’t steal”? Then who was he teaching? Us? Twenty-five centuries ago, was he talking to us? For forty-two years continuously, day in, day out, he was moving in the country and telling people, “Don’t steal. That is a great sin, you will suffer in hell. Don’t lie, otherwise you will suffer in hell. Don’t be violent. Don’t be jealous. Don’t murder. Don’t hurt. Don’t commit suicide.” To whom was he talking?
And it is not only that Buddha was saying that. You can go as far back as possible; even in the Vedas the same teaching is available.
When a teaching is there, it means it had some relevance. Just as people are now, they were then. Buddha was not mad, Mahavira was not mad. If people were already nonviolent, peaceful, loving, to whom were they talking about nonviolence, who were they teaching? And it was not just once in a while. Their whole life they were doing only one thing: teaching people nonviolence. People must have been utterly violent.
Moral teaching has not changed, it is the same as it was before. That simply means people are the same as they were before. People were as possessive, as desirous of things, as they are now. Certainly, they desired different things because those things were available to them. They could not have desired an airplane, that is true, but they all desired beautiful golden chariots, they desired beautiful palaces. It is the same. The object of desire does not make any difference.
As far as I see, the ordinary man has always been the same. And as far as those few people who became enlightened are concerned, they have also always been the same. A buddha happening twenty-five centuries ago or today; it is the same. And the unenlightened person of five thousand years ago and of today is the same; there is no difference at all. There are only two kinds of people, the enlightened and the unenlightened. The unenlightened has persisted in his own way. The enlightened persons have always been the same wherever they have existed, their taste is the same.
But India is afraid of the future, which is coming with great speed. The population is growing every day. Each day brings more and more misery and more and more starvation, more and more people to be fed, clothed, sheltered. And the people who are already here are starving. The future seems to be absolutely dark.
Now, what to do in such a situation? The easiest way – although foolish, but it is the easiest – is to glorify the past, to keep yourself intoxicated with the past. Hence they are angry at me because I destroy their fantasies. I say, if the future is coming and it is bleak, it is better to see it. The sooner you do see, the better – because something can still be done. I don’t think that nothing is possible, but this ostrich-type mind which avoids seeing it will not be able to do a thing.
I want your eyes to be focused on the future. Forget the past; it is gone and gone forever, and there is no point wasting time with it. Stop reading your scriptures parrotlike. Don’t go on continuously repeating the old because it is not going to help in the future. For the future, you will need a new mind because the crisis that is coming on is so new. You will need a totally different approach.
Nobody wants to see it, and I would force people to see it because the sooner it is looked into, the better. Something can still be done. I don’t think that it is impossible, I am not a pessimist. The situation is bad, but I am an optimist. I hope something can be done. And maybe these are the moments when countries change, when people change. When a crisis comes, the very challenge can become a breakthrough. This opportunity has to be used.
But to face the future and not to be destroyed by it needs courage, needs intelligence, needs new orientations of the mind. That’s what I am trying to do. The Indian mind has to reorient itself.
For example, it should stop talking about distributing wealth. There is no wealth to distribute. It should start creating wealth. How to create wealth? Open the doors of the country to all countries, to international sources of wealth, so they can start pouring in. For thirty years this country has been doing just the opposite: preventing foreign money from coming into the country, afraid. Invite foreign money, make every guarantee that their money will be safe. And the whole world is interested because much money is lying around the world uselessly. That money needs to be used. But in the West, in fact, now there is no scope for spreading it.
India can become a really flowering country if wealth pours in from all the sources. But it is very afraid. It is afraid of America; if American wealth comes in, it is afraid that we may be overpowered by it. There is no need to be afraid. America is not interested in overpowering any country politically. America’s whole interest is how to create more wealth for itself. You can create wealth for yourself and for America too, both will be benefited.
But this country has been following a foreign policy of remaining neutral, which is wrong. You need friends. If you remain neutral you will not have any friends. This country needs all the friends possible. Neutrality creates suspicion in people. That means you are with nobody and nobody wants to be with you. This country has become isolated; these thirty years the country has remained like an isolated part of the world, closed.
Open your doors. Let the wind and the sun and the rain come in. Open your doors. Invite Western technology to help you to develop. Let the wealth pour in from every nook and corner, and make it certain that their wealth will be secure. But India is very much afraid and the fear is that if you take help from others, that again exposes your inferiority, so you have to do everything on your own. And this country has never been technological, so it has no technological mind. But you have to do it on your own. Even if you mess up everything you have to do it on your own, so you can keep a face in the world that “We are doing it on our own,” that “We don’t need anybody’s help.” This is an egoistic attitude.
This whole world now has to be interdependent. All ideas of independence and dependence are out of date. Forget about them. The world is now one organic unity; it is already one organic unity. Your nations are just fading realities, overshadowing the present and the future unnecessarily, just dead bodies, stinking. They have to be burned and thrown away.
This world now is one, and the question of dependence, independence does not arise. It is an interdependent world. Let this word become very significant; it is going to become significant in the future. The world is interdependent. There are a few things we can fulfill for others, there are a few things others can fulfill for us, and there is no question of ego involved.
We know the technology of the inner. If the West wants to understand meditation, we can help. We can make them astronauts of the inner. But Indians trying to reach the moon on their own? It will never be possible. It is impossible; the only way for the Indians to reach the moon will be to stand on each other’s shoulders and try!
Just as the West is ignorant of the inner world, the East is ignorant of the outer world. We can combine. A great friendship is needed. You can watch; it has happened already. Japan is more affluent than it ever was. Just because of the Second World War, it came in contact with American technology. Now it is one of the richest countries of the world. It is the richest in the East. It has happened very illogically because a country is destroyed in a war, and Japan was the first country in human history that was utterly devastated and destroyed. The atom bomb was tried on it. But out of that destruction Japan was born, a new Japan was born. America has helped it technologically.
And that has been the case in Germany too. The part that has come under American influence has become very rich, one of the richest countries in the world, and the part that has gone to the communist bloc remains as poor as ever.
I have heard…

A Jew suggested in the Jewish parliament: “The only way for us to become rich is to declare war against America.”
Now, Israel declaring war against America – the whole parliament laughed. “Have you gone mad?” they said. “How can we win?”
The man said, “There is no need to win. If we are defeated, American technology will be available just as it has been available to Japan and Germany. If we are defeated, we will become the richest country in the world. And if by chance, by luck, we are not defeated and we become the winners, then certainly we will be the richest country in the world. So we have nothing to lose either way. If we win, we win. If we are defeated, then too we are victorious.”

India needs Western technology, and India needs to be aware that you cannot become rich on your own. You don’t know how. For five thousand years you have become accustomed to poverty. You have taken it for granted, it has become your way of life. You have even started praising it. You think to be poor is somehow spiritual, to be ill is somehow spiritual.
It happens: when a country has remained poor for thousands of years, it starts claiming something special in its poverty. It happens to you individually too. If a man is poor and cannot get rich, he starts bragging, “I don’t want to become rich.” The grapes are sour. “Who bothers to become rich? I am happy in my poverty; poverty has something special in it. In fact, you are missing something, I am not missing.” These are the rationalizations.
I would like to see India holding hands with the West in deep friendship, helping it toward the inner search, which is becoming more and more passionate every day in the West, which always becomes so whenever a country becomes affluent. Now the West wants to know, “Who am I?” We have all the technology for it. For five thousand years we have done only that and nothing else. We can release a new energy, a new impetus and momentum for spiritual growth, just as the West can release a great energy to the East for materialistic growth.
But for that you will have to drop your stupid anti-materialist attitudes. You will have to come down to the earth. You will have to become earthy, sensuous, intelligent. I teach a sensuous religion. That’s why Indians are against me. I teach an earthy religion, rooted in the earth. Yes, raise your branches into the sky, let your flowers bloom into the clouds, but get your roots deep into the earth, otherwise there will be no flowering. A real religion cannot be only of the sky, and it cannot be only of the earth. A real religion is always a meeting of the earth and the sky.
I am a meeting of the earth and the sky, and that is the problem. They cannot be proud of me; they think I am a Charvaka, a materialist like Epicurus, that my philosophy is to “Eat, drink, and be merry.” Yes, that too is part of my philosophy, but just a part. I am not against eating, drinking, and merrying. Eat, drink, and be merry – but that’s not all. When you have eaten enough, and drunk enough, and you have “merried” enough, then something higher is waiting. And only then is something higher possible. When the earthly part in you is satisfied, contented, then the sky claims you, then the unknown claims you, then begins the real pilgrimage of the soul.
I am earthy. I teach a sensuous religion, a religion which is not against the body, which is not against matter, which is not against the world. My religion is big enough; it contains all. It is inclusive, it includes all. It does not exclude anything. It is as inclusive as God himself.
God includes all, certainly. The earth must be in God, otherwise how can the earth exist? And God must be in the earth, otherwise how can the earth remain alive?
I am teaching a new religion because in the old days, India became too hung up in the sky, with the clouds. It forgot how to grow roots in the earth. It becomes angry, it is annoyed; it cannot be proud of me. I appear to be an enemy who is going to destroy its great tradition, as if I am against its spirituality. I am not, but the spirituality is possible only if it is based, founded, in a scientific materialism.
And you ask why it is so “image-shy.” It is so image-shy because it knows its hypocrisies. Only a hypocrite is image-shy. The true person never is. The true person can stand naked under the sun; he is available, he has nothing to fear. He is as he is and he has never pretended otherwise. But a person who pretends is always afraid because his image is false. He is afraid: if somebody looks deeper, comes closer, the image will be gone, the reality will be found – and the reality is just the contrary.
Only the hypocrite is afraid of being found out. India is very afraid – afraid that its image can be shattered very easily. It is a very poor, impotent image that can be shattered so easily. It seems it has no soul, no vitality in it. When you are true you are ready and available. You need not be worried. You are rooted in your being, you trust yourself. India does not trust itself, that’s why it is afraid.
Just think: I am the only one of my type. India has thousands of mahatmas and they are afraid I will destroy their image – and what are your thousands and thousands of mahatmas doing? They are creating your image. Thousands of mahatmas are creating it, and only one madman is destroying it. Why are they afraid? How can I destroy it?
But they know that even those thousands creating the image can be defeated by a single person because their image is just a dream. It is not true, it is not real. They are too apprehensive. If the world comes to know the reality of the Indian mind, what will happen to the bragging –what they have been doing down the ages, that “We are the most spiritual people of the world”?
Why should they be afraid? Why should a single man like me be feared? But the reason is clear: when truth is there it can destroy lies. Even if the lies are repeated by millions of people, a single truth is enough to shatter those lies. Otherwise, give me freedom, as you have given freedom to your other mahatmas. Let me do my experiment, you go on doing your experiment, and whoever is true is going to win. Why be so afraid? If I am untrue, my untruth will undo me. If you are true, you will win.
The Indian government has its motto: Satyameva Jayate – Truth Is Always Victorious. Then why be afraid? Truth will be victorious.
Just the other day, Neervana received a letter from the Indian embassy in America. He had applied for a visa. The letter has refused the visa and the reason given is: “If you had asked for the visa to visit and stay in an institution other than the Osho Ashram, you would have received it, but we cannot give it to you for this. You have asked to stay in a wrong kind of institution.” Satyameva Jayate: Truth Is Always Victorious.
Why are you so afraid? Let people come and see. It is better that they come and see the untruth of my being, and then they will not come to me at all.
And you have thousands of others who are supported by the government, who are supported by the masses. I am not supported by anybody. Neither do the masses support me nor does the government. I am not supported by anybody, I exist on my own. My people exist on their own. We don’t live on anybody’s charity.
Why be afraid of us? But the reason is there: even a small ray of truth is enough to destroy the whole ocean of darkness.

The fourth question:
Osho,
Why are you so hard on politicians?
I will tell you a story. That’s my answer.

A man bought a very well-bred and expensive young donkey, but upon his return home with it, found it resisted all his efforts to saddle it, let alone carry his goods. Finally, in frustration, he took it to a donkey trainer of some renown.
“This hayburner cost me a packet and won’t do a damn thing. You reckon you can help?”
Without answering, the trainer seized a length of 3 x 2 and smote the beast squarely between the eyes, knocking it back on its haunches.
“A thousand bloody dollars and you attack it with a piece of wood?” shrieked the distraught owner.
“Listen,” replied the other calmly, “when you are dealing with a donkey, the first thing you gotta do is get his attention.”

The fifth question:
Osho,
I frequently hear you speak about rebellion. The priests and nuns and relatives that shaped my training are now old and dried up. Most are dead. It seems worthless to rebel against those helpless old people.
I am now the priest and the doctrines. I feel that to rebel against anything outside myself is a waste of time and just simply not to the point. This makes the situation much more frustrating and entangled. It seems the self must rebel against the self. I accept that it is not the essential self – the original face – that has to do the rebelling. It is the trained self – the subterfuge. But that is the only “self” I have or know with which to do the rebelling. How does the subterfuge rebel against the subterfuge?
The rebellion I am talking about is not to be done against anybody. It is not really a rebellion, but only an understanding. You are not to fight with the outer priests, nuns, parents, no. And you are not to fight, either, with the inner priests, nuns, parents. Because outer or inner, it doesn’t matter, they are separate from you. The outer is separate, the inner too is separate. The inner is only the reflection of the outer.
You are perfectly right in saying, “It seems worthless to rebel against those helpless old people.” I am not telling you to rebel against those old, helpless people. I am not telling you, either, to rebel against all that they have put inside you. If you rebel against your own mind it will be a reaction, not a rebellion. Note the difference: a reaction is out of anger, a reaction is violent. In a reaction you become blind with rage. In a reaction you start moving to the other extreme.
For example, if your parents have been teaching you to be clean and take a bath every day, and this and that, and you have been taught from the very beginning that cleanliness is next to God, and one day you start rebelling, what will you do? You will stop taking a bath. You will start living in filth.
That’s what hippies go on doing all over the world. They think this is rebellion. Now they have moved to the other extreme. They were taught cleanliness is next to God; now they are thinking that filthiness is next to God, dirtiness is next to God. From one extreme they have moved to another. This is not rebellion. This is rage, this is anger, this is revenge.
While reacting to their parents and their so-called ideas of cleanliness, they are still attached to the same idea. It is still haunting them. It is still powerful over them, it is still dominant, it is still decisive. It still decides their life, although they have become the opposite of it, but it decides. They cannot take a bath easily; they are reminded of their parents who used to force them to take a bath every day. Now they don’t take a bath at all. Who is dominating them? Their parents, still. What their parents have done to them, they still have not been able to undo. This is reaction, this is not rebellion.
Then what is rebellion? Rebellion is pure understanding. One simply understands what the case is. Then one is no longer neurotically obsessed with cleanliness, that’s all. One doesn’t become unclean. Cleanliness has its own beauty. One should not be obsessed by it – because obsession is illness.
For example, a person continuously washing his hands the whole day: he is neurotic. Washing the hands is not bad, but just washing his hands the whole day is mad. But if he moves from washing his hands the whole day to non-washing – he stops washing forever – then he is trapped again in another kind of madness, the opposite kind.
The man of understanding washes his hands when it is needed. When it is not needed, he is not obsessed with it. He is simply natural, spontaneous about it. He lives intelligently, that’s all.
For example, if you don’t watch very minutely, there is not much difference between obsession and intelligence. If you come across a snake on the road and you jump, naturally you jump out of fear. But this fear is intelligence. If you are unintelligent, stupid, you will not jump out of the way, and you will unnecessarily invite danger into your life. The intelligent person will jump immediately – the snake is there. It is out of fear, but this fear is intelligent, positive, life-serving.
But this fear can become obsessive. For example, you cannot sit in a house. Who knows? It may fall. And houses have been known to fall, that is true. Sometimes they have fallen, you are not absolutely wrong. You can argue, “If other houses have fallen, why not this one?” Now you are afraid to live under any roof; it may fall. This is obsession. Now it is becoming unintelligent.
It is good to be aware that you eat clean food. But I know a man, a great poet…

Once he traveled with me. His wife told me, “Now you will know how difficult it is to live with this man.”
I said, “What is the matter?”
She said, “You yourself will know.”
He would not drink any tea, any water, anywhere. It was so difficult because he would say, “Who knows if there are germs in the tea or the water?” He would not eat in a hotel. It was such a problem. We had to travel for thirty-six hours in the train, and he was starving and thirsty, and he would not drink water.
I tried in every way to persuade him.
He said, “No. Who knows, if there are germs, then? It is better,” he said, “to starve for thirty-six hours and not to eat. I am not going to die, don’t be worried.”
But I could see the man was torturing himself. It was hot summer and he was thirsty. And I tried in every station; I brought soda, I brought Coca-Cola, and everything.
He said, “Forget all about it. I cannot take anything unless I am absolutely certain. What is the certainty? What is the guarantee?”
And he is not absolutely wrong, that is true. You know India, and you know Indian stations and Indian hotels. You know. He is right, but now this is carrying the logic too far.
Then I told him, “Stop breathing too!”
He asked, “Why?”
I said, “Who knows, what is the guarantee? Stop breathing! Either drink this water or stop breathing!” Then he was brought to his senses because I was really angry. “Why do you go on breathing? Who knows, there may be germs; there are germs everywhere.”
He drank a cup of tea, but the way he drank! His face… I cannot forget. It has been ten years now, but I cannot forget his face – as if I was killing him! I was murderous – and he was obliging me.
And at the next station, he got down and he said, “I cannot travel with you; I will go back home.”
I asked, “What is the matter?”
He said, “You were so angry, and it seemed that you would start beating me or something. And you said, ‘Don’t breathe anymore.’ How can I stop breathing?”
I said, “I was just giving you an argument, that if you can breathe, then why not drink the water? It is the same Indian water as the Indian air. Don’t be worried.”
He refused to travel with me. I had to travel alone. He went back, and since then I have not seen him.

One can become obsessive about anything. Anything that may be intelligent within boundaries may become neurotic if you stretch it too far. Reaction is moving to the other extreme. Rebellion is a very deep understanding, profound understanding, of a certain phenomenon. And rebellion always keeps you in the middle, it gives you balance.
You are not to fight with anybody, the nuns and the priests and the parents, outside or inner. You are not to fight with anybody – because in a fight you will not know where to stop. In a fight you lose awareness; in a fight you start moving to the extreme. You can watch it.
For example, just sitting with your friends, by the way, you say, “That movie I went to yesterday was not worth seeing.” You may have mentioned it just by the way, but then somebody says, “You are wrong. I have also seen the movie. It is one of the most beautiful pictures ever made.” Now you are provoked, challenged; you become argumentative. You say, “It is worthless, the most worthless thing!” And you start criticizing. If the other also insists, you become more and more angry, and you start saying things you have not even thought about. And later on if you go backward and see the whole phenomenon that happened, you will be surprised that when you mentioned that it was not worth going to, it was a very mild statement – but by the time you finished with the argument, you had moved to the extreme. You had used all that was possible, all the nasty words that you know. You could condemn in any way; you used all your skill of condemnation. And you were not ready to do it in the beginning. If nobody had opposed you, you might have forgotten all about it, you might never have made such strong statements. It happens: when you start fighting you tend to move to the extreme.
I am not teaching you to fight with your conditioning. Understand them. Become more intelligent about them. Just see how they dominate you, how they influence your behavior, how they have shaped your personality, how they go on affecting you from the back door. Just watch! Be meditative. And one day, when you have seen the working of your conditioning, suddenly a balance is attained. In your very understanding you are free.
Understanding is freedom, and that freedom I call rebellion.
The real rebel is not a fighter, he is a man of understanding. He simply grows in intelligence, not in anger, not in rage. You cannot transform yourself by being angry against your past. Then the past will continue to dominate you, then the past will remain the center of your being, the past will remain your focus. You will remain focused, attached to the past. You may move to the other extreme, but still you will be attached to the past.
Beware of it. That is not the way of a meditator, that is not the way of a sannyasin. Sannyas is rebellion – rebellion through understanding. Just understand.
You pass by the side of a church and a deep desire arises in you to go inside and pray. Or you pass by the side of a temple and unconsciously you bow down to the deity of the temple. Just watch. Why are you doing these things? I am not saying to fight. I am saying to watch. Why do you bow down to the temple? – because you were taught that this temple is the right temple, that the deity of this temple is the real image of God. Do you know? Or have you just been told and you have been following it? Watch!
Seeing that you are just repeating a program that has been given to you, that you are just playing a tape in your head, that you are being automatic, robotlike, you will stop bowing. Not that you will have to make any effort, you will simply forget all about it. It will disappear, it will leave you without any trace.
In reaction there is a trace. In rebellion there is no trace, it is utter freedom.
And you also ask, “Who is to fight with whom?” That question arises only if it has to be a fight. Because it is not going to be a fight, the question does not arise.
You have to be just a witness. And the witnessing is your original face, the one who witnesses is your real consciousness. That which is witnessed is conditioning. The one who witnesses is the divine source of your being.

The sixth question:
Osho,
I want to give birth to a buddha. That’s my only desire in life, to become the mother of a buddha. Is it possible?
First become a buddha, then maybe a buddha will be born out of you. But the desire to give birth to a buddha is utterly futile. That is again an ego trip: “I should become the mother of a buddha.” The very desire will be the hindrance.
Yes, you can become a mother of a buddha, but the first requirement is to become a buddha. It has also happened that a buddha is born to a woman who is not a buddha. But one thing is certain, she was not desiring it. She may not have been a buddha, but she was not desiring a buddha. A buddha can be born to a woman if there is no desire, if the woman is innocent. Desire makes you cunning.
Now, this desire is again an ambition. Somebody wants to become the president of a country, somebody wants to be the richest man in the world, you want to become the mother of a buddha. Why? All becoming, all desire for the future, is an extension of the ego. If there is such a desire, it will destroy your whole life. And then it is futile too – because I have never heard, it is not reported anywhere in any scripture of the world, that a woman wanted to give birth to a buddha and she succeeded. Buddhas were born, but they were born to women who were completely innocent, unaware. If you deliberately want to do it, there is no possibility.
Become meditative, become more silent, more still, more loving, more compassionate. Befriend existence, trust life, live in the moment, and then whatever happens is good. If God wills a buddha through you, good; if he does not will a buddha through you, that too is perfectly good.
And even if a child born to you becomes a buddha, how is it going to help you? How is it going to make you free? It is not going to help you at all, you will remain in the same rut. You will go on moving in the same vicious circle of life and death. Gautam Buddha’s mother has not yet become a buddha; Mahavira’s mother is still moving in the same vicious circle, has not yet attained, so that is not going to help you in any way.
Remember, when a soul enters a woman’s womb, it can enter only if the womb is suitable for it, if the womb is somehow harmonious with the rhythm of the soul. To give birth to an Adolf Hitler a different kind of mother is needed; to give birth to a buddha, certainly a different kind of mother is needed – because the womb attracts only something harmonious to it and the soul, a higher soul, can enter only in a higher womb.
Drop all these desires. Start becoming a buddha on your own. And then it is possible because after all, buddhas need wombs. Nothing is wrong with your womb, but create a holy womb. Always remember the old proverb: “The tree is known by the fruit.” Only a mango tree can give mango fruits. You can know about the tree by the fruits. You cannot give birth to something which you are not.
I have heard…

An elderly widower had himself fitted out with a full set of monkey glands, and a short while later remarried.
A year passed, and the night was an eventful one. Outside the bedroom door the rejuvenated husband paced up and down, up and down. At last a door opened and the nurse appeared, but before the man could stop her she had brushed past and was on her way downstairs. After a time the doctor came out.
“Oh, tell me, doctor, tell me,” exclaimed the anxious husband, “is it a boy or a girl?”
“We don’t know yet,” answered the doctor.
“Don’t know yet?”
“No, we have not been able to get the little devil down off the chandelier.”

Now when you are fitted with monkey glands, what more can you expect? Create a climate within you, create a spring within you. Become meditative, more and more meditative. And the first requirement of becoming meditative is not to desire at all, not even for God. Not to desire at all – that is the most fundamental principle of meditation.
Desire always leads you into tense states of mind. Desire is tension; non-desire is relaxation. Forget all about the Buddha, and giving birth to a buddha. Why should you get in such trouble? Become a buddha; you owe it to yourself. Your only responsibility is toward yourself. If a buddha wants to be born, he will find a way; that is his problem. He will find a way and a womb. Why should you be worried?
But don’t waste your time in unnecessary desires. And watch. The mind is so cunning, it can give you such beautiful desires, such spiritual desires, that you almost forget they are also desires – and desires are desires. All desires are the same.
Now, there are many women here – that’s why I have answered this question – who are hoping that someday I will permit my sannyasins to give birth to buddhas. They go on writing letters to me: “Osho, should I get sterilized or not? If someday you feel that I am ready to give birth to a buddha, then what, if I am sterilized? Should I wait?”
Don’t bother. Buddhas will find their ways, and there are so many women in the world. If you feel that it is going to help you on your own spiritual path, in your own growth, then be sterilized. Nothing to be worried about. If you feel this will keep you away from unnecessary troubles and unnecessary responsibilities, it is perfectly good. Your only responsibility is toward yourself.
Become a buddha! I am here to help you to become buddhas. Don’t bother about becoming fathers and mothers of buddhas. There are many other foolish people who can do this.

The last question:
Osho,
Why do the Sufis dance?
Yes, it is a pertinent question. Buddhists only sit silently. Why do Sufis dance? Zen people only meditate, sitting silently, not doing a thing, doing nothing. Just sitting silently, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself. But Sufis dance.
These are the two different paths – because there are two types of energy in the world: the positive and the negative, male and female, yin and yang. Zen people use the negative energy, they use the passive path. Sufis use the positive energy, they use the active path. They are very vibrant people. Their meditation is not of passivity, their meditation is that of ecstasy.
Both are ways you can reach the same goal because the goal is exactly in the middle. The positive is one extreme, the negative the other extreme. Between the positive and the negative there is a middle point, exactly in the middle, from where transformation happens – one transcends the world and everything – from where one enters God and becomes God.
If you feel that you are on the negative pole already, a passive type, then follow Zen and start moving deeply into your passivity, and one day you will reach the middle. Or if you feel that you are an active person, full of energy, youth, positivity, that sitting silently is very difficult, unnecessarily a torture, then dance, follow the Sufis’ way.
I go on speaking on Zen and Sufism again and again so that all kinds of people are helped here. You have to choose. You have to watch yourself, your energy, and then choose. Both are valid ways, both lead to the same goal.
Rumi says:
Hey! Drink this fire, drink this fine fiery wine,
these needles of fire, and fall so drunk
that you will not wake up on the Day of Resurrection!
The way of the Sufi is the way of the drunkard, the dancer, who becomes almost intoxicated in his dancing, who is transported through his dance. He is inebriated, his dance is psychedelic.
It is said that Mohammed once said to Ali, “You are of me, and I am of you.” When he heard this, Ali became ecstatic and involuntarily started dancing. What else can you do, when a man like Mohammed says to you, “You are of me, and I am of you”? How to receive this? Ali did well.
And remember, it is not anything that he did. It was involuntary. He started dancing, out of ecstasy the dance started flowing.
Another time, Mohammed said to Jafar, “You are like me in both looks and character.” Here again, in wajd, Jafar started dancing. What else to do? When Mohammed looked into the eyes of Jafar, wajd, samadhi, must have been created, the transfer beyond the scriptures happened. How to receive this? How not to dance? It would have been impossible not to dance. Jafar danced.
It is said…
The enrapturing of the Sufi by God, or rather the “pull” of God, keeps the Sufi continually in spiritual, inner dance and movement.
It is not that the Sufi dances; God keeps dancing in him. What can he do?
Whenever a wave of such divine rapture strikes the heart of the Sufi, it creates great waves in the lake of his inner being.
He is just a receptacle. To say that the Sufi is dancing is not right. The Sufi is being danced. He cannot help it, he is helpless. Something is pouring into him and it is too much, it starts overflowing in his dancing and singing.
This, in turn, causes his body to move.
Upon seeing such movement, non-Sufis have often supposed that the Sufi is dancing.
In reality, however, it is the waves of the ocean of God that are tossing and turning the anchorless vessel that is the heart of the Sufi.
On the surface, from the outside, the Sufi seems to be dancing. But he is not dancing because there is no dancer. It is pure dance. God has taken possession of him. The Sufi is drunk, intoxicated. His state is that of nonbeing. He is anchorless. The waves of the ocean toss and turn. First his inner being is stirred, great joy arises there, and then it starts spreading toward his body.
That’s what you are doing with Aneeta, that’s what is happening to Aneeta. In Sufi dancing, you are participating in something immensely beautiful. Remember, forget the dancer and be the dance.
The way of the Sufi is the way of dance, song, celebration.
Enough for today.