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What it is to Live
Rightly Continued... You are not to decide who is right and who is wrong. That is their problem. Whether Jesus is enlightened or not, whether Gautam Buddha is enlightened or not, is not your problem. Your problem is whether you are enlightened or not! There is no way to decide about Jesus, Gautam Buddha, Mahavira, but there is absolute certainty about you. You can decide yourself. You know perfectly well you are not enlightened. Is this the time, when you are not enlightened, to decide about others... wasting your life, your time, your energy? And still you cannot come to any conclusion, because they all have their arguments. Christians say Jesus is crucified to save humanity; he gives his own life. And in the Christian context it looks perfectly right. But looked at from the Hindu, Jaina, Buddhist or Tao context it is absurd. According to these four religions, the crucifixion of Jesus is possible only if he had done some great evil acts in his past life. Otherwise crucifixion is not possible. What to say of the crucifixion? Jainas say that Mahavira is naked, walks barefooted and that even thorns on the way, seeing that Mahavira is coming, get out of his way. They simply jump out of his way because his karmas are finished! He cannot have even that much suffering, because suffering needs some cause, and he has destroyed all the causes. The thorn has to move. The Buddhists say that when Buddha sits underneath a tree, it may not be the season for the tree to blossom, but it simply blossoms abundantly. It has to because the existence of an enlightened man is so rare, so precious, that the tree even forgets that this is not the season to blossom. But who cares about the season? When an enlightened person is sitting underneath, the tree is so joyous; it is her way of singing and dancing and celebrating. Now Buddhists cannot believe that Jesus comes to a tree, a fig tree – for three days he has been hungry, and because there are no figs on the tree, he is very angry. Although he is called the prince of peace and he talks about loving your enemies just like yourself, he behaved in such a retarded way with the fig tree. He cursed it ”because you are not welcoming me and my friends who have been hungry for three days. Where are the fruits?” But it was not the season. What could the poor fig tree do? And to curse a tree which is incapable of producing fruits out of season is simply nonsense. It simply shows a man in absolute anger, almost insane. He is behaving like a retarded child, who because he stumbles on a table, starts beating the table as if the table had struck him. That’s what Jesus is doing – cursing the fig tree because there are no fruits. No Eastern religion can accept Jesus and his behavior. But Christians cannot accept the thousand and one things in the Eastern prophets. Mahavira standing naked simply shows that he is an exhibitionist. You will know exactly. Just tomorrow stand on the road naked. Nobody is going to worship you. Immediately the police will be called and you will be taken to the police station, because to stand naked on the road is illegal and criminal. Sigmund Freud has decisively given his testimony that when you want to show your naked body to people it is exhibitionism, and that is a mental disease. And there are other things which go along with it. There are mad people all around the world who pull their hairs out; Mahavira used to do that. He never got shaved by a barber, because he never wanted to be dependent on anybody. He never used a poor razor blade, because he never wanted to use any technology. So the only way was to pull his own hairs, beard, mustache. Every year he would do it, and thousands of his followers, with tears in their eyes, would watch it thinking what great austerity he was showing. But according to Sigmund Freud, this man had some streak of insanity. And these people who were standing there, dropping all their jobs, closing their shops, tears in their eyes... they are also psychologically sick. According to psychoanalysis, these people are sadists; they enjoy somebody torturing himself. And the person who tortures himself – and I don’t think in the whole history of man anybody has tortured himself more than Mahavira – is a masochist. He loves to torture himself, and he loves to show how much he is torturing himself. He will attract only the sadistic people – those who want to see somebody torturing himself. They want to torture, but they are not brave enough to do it because that is risky and dangerous. But when somebody is doing it on his own, this is a beautiful moment not to be missed. If you go on analyzing these people you will never come to any conclusion, you will get more and more confused. My suggestion is that it is none of your affair whether they were enlightened or insane, it is their problem. Your problem is basically to look within yourself, where you are. And if you are in misery, in suffering, in anxiety, in anguish; if you are missing something in life, if you are discontented, if you don’t see any meaning anywhere and you are simply dragging yourself towards death... The darkness goes on growing darker, every day death goes on coming nearer – is this the time to get into great theological problems? It is the time to change your being. You don’t have much time. You will be surprised to know that one of the great masters of this age, George Gurdjieff, has stated something which has never been stated in the whole history of man by any mystic, by any master. He has said to his disciples, ”Don’t remain in the illusion that you all have souls. You are not born with souls. You are soulless. Only very few people have been able to create a soul. Those who create a soul may survive death, but the majority are simply vegetables. You will die completely; nothing will be left behind.” It was very shocking, because all the mystics down the ages have been telling you just the opposite – that you are born with a spiritual being, you are just not aware of it. So learn the art of awareness and you will discover it. Why did Gurdjieff say that that is absolutely wrong – ”The reality is that nobody is born with a soul. The soul is something to be created with arduous effort and intelligence, and very few succeed. Only those go on living in a future life, others disappear with death, they did not use the opportunity.” I have often been asked what the truth is, whether what Gurdjieff said is true or what all the mystics of all the ages have said is true. Both are true. The mystics of the past have told you the truth simply, but man is so unconscious and cunning. Listening to the truth, whether you do anything or not, you always have the hidden potential of becoming an enlightened person. The sleepy people thought, ”Then there is no hurry. First, do other things which tomorrow you may not be able to do” – and there are a thousand and one things in the world which attract your attention. As far as the soul is concerned, it is always there. You can have it today, you can have it tomorrow, you can have it in the next life. It is only a question of time – and anyway, you have it. It is just a question of becoming aware. So why not do other things which you don’t have and just by becoming aware you won’t get? By becoming aware you won’t become rich. On the contrary, you may become poor, because you will start trusting people and people will start cheating you. You may start being compassionate and people will take advantage of it. I was coming from Indore, and going to Nagpur.... In the middle, at the junction Khandava, I had to change trains. I had almost two hours to wait, so I waited in the old train which had brought me to Khandava. I was sitting alone in the compartment when one beggar came towards me and he said, ”My wife has died.” I said, ”That’s very bad,” and gave him one rupee. He looked at me. He could not believe – he looked at the rupee – whether it was authentic or fake. I said, ”Don’t be worried. It is absolutely authentic. It is not like your wife.” He said, ”What do you mean?” I said, ”I don’t mean anything. Just by the way, I reminded you that it is not like your wife, it is a real rupee.” He went away, but he remained puzzled. After five to ten minutes he came back again. Last time he had a coat and a cap; this time he had dropped the coat and the cap, thinking that now he would not be recognized. But as he came I asked, ”What happened? Has somebody else died?” He said, ”What? How did you know? My father has just died.” I said, ”I knew it, and I would like you to know that I am going to be here for two hours, so you can let your relatives die – as many as you want. And it is not costly for me. Take one rupee and finish another relative.” He said, ”It is a sad thing and you are making a joke of it.” I said, ”It is really sad: first your wife died, and within ten minutes your father died. You just go home to find... somebody else must have died!” He said, ”If you say, I will go.” ”But you should go and you should come back, because somebody is bound to be dead. I am here for two hours.” Within ten minutes he was back. He said, ”You seem to be very prophetic. I went home and my mother has died.” And I said, ”Take one rupee. How many relatives do you have in all, the total?” He said, ”What do you mean?” I said, ”I can give you advance money. You let them die, because it is such a torture for you”... the poor man running home, coming back... again somebody will die.... ”Your whole family is going to die today, so you just tell me the whole number – how many people have you got still alive?” At that moment something happened in the man and he said, ”No. I cannot take advance money. This is too much. This is too much, because I have been cheating people. Every day my wife dies. Today you have killed three of my people and now you are giving me the advance for everybody. No, that is too much. I cannot do that.” And he asked me did I not feel cheated. I said, ”No, I am enjoying! Just sitting here alone – I have nothing else to do, and you are such an entertainment. I am enjoying the whole scene. I was simply wondering how many relatives you could invent. You must have a joint family: uncles and their wives and their children. You just count them all and I am ready to give one rupee for each.” He took the three rupees that I had given to him and he said, ”Please take them back. I cannot cheat you.” I said, ”What happened? What is the trouble? You have been doing this business your whole life, and I am just another man who passes in these trains, and you cheat.” He said, ”No, you are not one of them. You... you are making me feel so bad that it is not only a question of cheating you. I am showing my ugliness too – that just to get some money, every day I have to kill my people. No, I cannot take, and you please take these three rupees back. If you don’t take it, I am not going to leave from here. You will have to take these three rupees back, because my wife is alive, my father is alive and my mother is alive.” Then I said, ”Take them just as a celebration because they have not died, they are alive. If I can give for the dead, why cannot I give for the living ones? I give them more joyously; don’t you feel guilty.” The more aware you become, the more loving you will be, the more compassionate you will be. You will not be cunning, you will not be cheating, and everybody around you will take advantage of you. Naturally, the whole world of sleepy people decided that the soul is something which you need not bother about – even death cannot take it away! It is with you always, whatever you do. Be a sinner, be a saint, but the soul is your eternal possession. It can be postponed; you can do other things first. Seeing this, Gurdjieff told a lie out of compassion, out of sheer compassion. He wanted to shock you that you have misused the old mystics’ simplicity, their innocent statements about truth. He shocked his disciples by saying, ”You have to do something urgent. This is the most important thing to do, the first priority. You cannot postpone it even for a single moment.” To make it such an intense longing in you, he had to lie. And he helped many people to go into deep, arduous training, self-discipline, to become aware. Because if somebody declares that you don’t have a soul, naturally, you will forget all about your factory and your shop, and all about your children and all about your wife. Your first priority will be how to attain your innermost being, because all these things that you have will be taken away. And if you don’t have a soul, death will be total, nothing will survive. I don’t want to say to you that you don’t have a soul. But still, I want you to understand and not misinterpret what I am saying. You have a soul as much as anybody else has ever had. In fact there is no possibility of any communism other than the communism of spirituality. Only spirituality is equally the same. The greatest was Gautam Buddha, and you are no different in potential. He has actualized it, he has recognized it; your potential is lying dormant. And the methods that all the religions have been teaching to you are methods of fighting; they don’t lead anywhere. They simply spoil your joys of life. They poison everything enjoyable in this life. They have created a sad humanity. I would like a humanity full of love and full of song and full of dance. So I want it to be clearly understood that my method is the second, and by the second method I mean you are not to fight the current and go upstream – that is stupid. You cannot fight, the current of nature is too big and too strong. The best way is to learn from a dead body. Dead people know a few secrets which living people don’t know. Living people, if they don’t know how to swim, drown. This is very strange. By the time they are dead, they surface again. When they were living, they went down; when they died, they came up. Certainly, the dead person knows something which the living person does not know. What happened? Why do the river and the ocean behave differently with the dead person? The dead person is in absolute let-go. He is not even swimming. He is not doing anything. The best swimmer simply floats. The ultimate swimmer just goes like a dead body with the current, wherever the river leads – it always leads to the ocean. Every river leads to the ocean, so you need not be worried whether you are in a holy river or not. Holy or unholy, every river is destined to reach sooner or later to the ocean. You just go on floating with the river. And this I call trust – trusting in existence that wherever it is leading, it is leading to the right path, to the right goal. It is not your enemy. Trust in nature that wherever it is taking you, there is your home. If the whole of humanity learns relaxation rather than fighting, learns let-go rather than making arduous effort, there will be a great change in the quality of consciousness. Relaxed people, simply moving silently with the flow of the river, having no goals of their own, having no egos... In such a relaxed floating you cannot have any ego. Ego needs effort – you have to do something. Ego is a doer, and by floating you have become a non-doer. In this inaction, you will be surprised how your anxieties and miseries start dropping away and how you start becoming contented with whatsoever existence gives to you. One Sufi mystic was traveling.... And every evening he would thank existence: ”You have done so much for me and I have not been able to repay, and I will never be able to repay it.” His disciples were a little disgusted, because sometimes life was so arduous. The Sufi mystic was a rebellious person. It happened this time that for three days they had no food, because every village they passed refused because they were not orthodox Mohammedans. They had joined a rebellious group of Sufis. They wouldn’t give them shelter for the night, they were sleeping in the desert. They were hungry, they were thirsty, and it was the third day. At the evening prayer, the mystic again said to existence, ”I am so grateful. You have been doing so much for us and we cannot ever repay it.” One of the disciples said, ”This is too much. Now for three days please tell us what existence has done for us? For what are you thanking existence?” The old man laughed. He said, ”You are still not aware of what existence has done for us. These three days have been very significant for me. I was hungry, I was thirsty; we had no shelter, we were rejected, condemned. Stones were thrown at us, and I was watching within myself – no anger arose. I am thanking existence. Its gifts are invaluable. I can never repay them. Three days of hunger, three days of thirst, three days of no sleep, people throwing stones... and yet I have not felt any enmity, any anger, any hatred, any failure, any disappointment. It must be your mercy; it must be existence supporting me. ”These three days have revealed so many things to me which would not have been revealed if food had been given, reception had been given, shelter had been given, stones had not been thrown – and you are asking me for what I am thanking existence? I will thank existence even when I am dying, because even in death I know existence is going to reveal mysteries to me as it has been revealing in life, because death is not the end but the very climax of life.” Learn to flow with existence so you don’t have any guilt and any wounds. Don’t fight with your body, or nature, or anything, so you are at peace and at home, calm and collected. This situation will help you to become more alert, more aware, more conscious, which finally leads to the ocean of ultimate awakening – nirvana. Source: "The Sword and the Lotus" - Osho |
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