OSHO QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Osho: ‘The one who questioned all answers.’


[A sannyasin who has Hodgkin's disease and TB says: I'm really scared about the idea that I might die... I tried witnessing it and it just stays there... ]

No, no, witnessing won't help because you will be using witnessing just as a trick to avoid it. Just accept it and then it will disappear.

So what? One is going to die, so one is going to die. What can you do about it? Accept it, and simply by accepting it there is no problem in it. And then it will become a great experience.

Everybody dies but death comes to very few people this way. Death takes you very unawares: one day you are caught in it, it doesn't give you any chance to think about it. Then there is no opportunity to grow into it. You are fortunate; death is coming making much noise.

And it is a bogus death; it is not coming either.

It is just your fear... but the fear has to be accepted: yes, it is okay. If you are going to die, you are going to die. What difference does it make whether it is today or tomorrow or the day after tomorrow?

It does not make much difference. Some day one has to die... any day is a good day. Just by postponing it for a few years, what difference will it make?

It does not make any difference whether you live for fifty years or seventy years or one hundred years: one day one dies. So don't miss this opportunity. Accept it! -- It is perfectly okay. And the moment you accept you will suddenly feel that the fear has disappeared.

Fear is because of non-acceptance -- fear is not of death, remember.

What is there to fear in death? That's something strange -- that people go on being afraid. People should be afraid of life because life brings problems. Death brings no problems; it simply solves all problems.

So now accept it. And tonight, just relax. Entertain the idea of death.

If it is coming, let it be beautiful -- make it a joy; give it a good reception. At least get ready! I don't think it is coming but why not get ready?

Someday it will come, and then you can use that reception again. I may not be here to tell you next time. It is better you prepare now.

Accept it.

OSHO

 Osho: The one who questions all answers.


We have killed people's soul, utterly destroyed them. People are just zombies, just dead bodies walking around, managing somehow, dragging somehow, waiting only for death, and there is nothing else to happen.

Understand it, and if you love each other -- and that is my feeling, that you love; that's why I am saying this -- it is possible. Only if you love is this understanding possible.

You love each other, you understand each other, you give total freedom to each other. It is perfectly good sometimes if she moves with somebody and it is perfectly good when you want to move with somebody. You will find that you are becoming again fresh, young, green. Love will start flowing again... and then there is no need to separate.

The need to separate arises because you don't allow her to be free, she does not allow you to be free; then finally every marriage is on the rocks. Either accept this deadness or escape from it. And I think the people who accept it are impotent people but those impotent people have dominated the whole world.

And when a certain philosophy continues for many centuries it becomes part of our presuppositions; we don't think about it. Now nobody thinks about it; we simply accept it and we believe in it: it is part of our blood and bones.

It is very natural. If you live with a person for seven years and you are not fed up, then something is wrong; if you are not bored, then something is wrong.

You can live in the same room, you can sleep in the same bed, but you are not together -- that's pointless!

Sometimes when you feel like being together, be together. When you feel like moving alone, perfectly good; accept it with great love and understanding. And I don't see that there is any problem.

OSHO
 Osho: The one who questions all answers



I don't ask you to be prayerful -- prayer comes on its own when one is loving; and I don't ask you to go into a temple, because those are just outer things.

The inner temple consists of love.

And I don't ask you to think of a god. Only contemplate love and by and by you will see that god is becoming more and more visible to you. It is through love that we reach god; there is no other way.

The English word 'religion' is not as good as 'dharma', because religion gives the feel of a doctrine, a dogma, scripture, theology. Dharma exactly means 'the way'; it does not give the idea of a dogma.

Religion means Christianity, Islam, Hinduism; dharma does not mean, cannot mean, Islam, cannot mean Christianity, cannot mean Hinduism. Dharma means the essential of all religions, the very essence of religion... just the fragrance of all the religions, the core of it.

And if you want to know the core of religion, there is no other way to know it except through love.

Love is the bridge between the human and the divine.

The moment you are totally in love you are no more here. You are no more part of the world of things -- you are raised high; you move into another dimension, you are transported. When you fall from love you are again in the world of things. When you rise in love you are in the world of persons; that is the revolution.

When you are in this world without love you live among things; even persons are like things then. Your wife is a thing, your friend is a thing; you use them.

But when you rise in love even things are no more things. Even the chair has a personality, even the pillar is no more just a thing. You cannot neglect it, you cannot ignore it.

Then the whole existence is full of personality... throbbing with it. Everything has a soul because everything deep down exists in god, everything participates in god. How can it be otherwise? Everything partakes of god. In that very partaking it becomes a person.

OSHO

Osho: The one who questions all answers



Money is not power, prestige is not power, respectability is not power, political status is not power. These are ways to hide our deep-rooted inferiority complex from the world.

There is only one thing that makes a man really powerful -- that is love.

And another strange thing: when love makes you powerful you become humble. A powerful man is always humble. A powerful man is naturally, inevitably unpretending; he is not presumptuous.

He does not claim... he need not claim. He never tries to prove; he is so there is no point in proving.

People who try to prove are the people who know they are not. The man of power is unassuming. The really powerful man is one who has no need to prove to anybody that he is powerful.

He knows he is powerful -- he will not feel insulted; nobody can insult him.

People can insult you only because deep down you know their insults are true. But when you know they are not true, then they don't relate to you, they don't refer to you; they are just pointless, meaningless.

So love gives power but in a very new way. The quality is different: the quality is that of a humble man.

Jesus is powerful but so humble. His disciples were waiting thinking that he might show them some miracle when he was crucified.

But Jesus simply died. Nothing happened. That is the miracle! He didn't try to prove; that's the miracle. If he had done something he would have been an ordinary man on a power trip. No, he simply relaxed and died; he died like such an ordinary man.

That is real power.

OSHO

Osho: ‘The one who questioned all answers.’

In Zen, they say that if you want to become a real painter, for twelve years learn painting then for twelve years forget all about it. Throw the canvas, throw the brush, throw the colours and forget all about painting.

For twelve years do something else -- gardening, farming, anything will do -- and after twelve years start painting again. And then there will be something original... because when you don't know the technique you may be original but you will be amateurish and your art cannot be very valuable; it will be childish, juvenile.

When you only know the technique your art will have the technical quality in it but it will not have the genuineness of the heart. The technique has to be known and then forgotten so the technique enters in your bloodstream -- it becomes part of you; you don't know what it is.

First you learn, then you unlearn. Now you are again like a child but not really a child; you have all the expertise hidden in your bones.

It will work but it will not work any more like a technology. It will not dominate you, it will not be predominant, it will not be dictatorial. It will simply serve you, and it will serve in a very unconscious way... and then original things are born.

So everything has to be learned and then forgotten, unlearned. Then one is innocent and yet technically correct; that is the right process.

Start being a little more inventive, intuitive, liquid... go by the feeling. Do not attach much importance to the technique and do not follow a rigid pattern.

Become more innovative.

OSHO


A fifteen-year-old tells Osho he left school, in the West, because he had some problems there.

Osho: “Very good, the earlier the problems start, the better, so one can start solving them.”

The boy said: “I always imitate people -- talk the way they do, make the same gestures as them, the body says. It just happens.”

Osho: “Do it more perfectly, that's all, make it an art. If it is unconscious it is bad, so do it very consciously and you can become a great actor. It can become a great experience because your consciousness will grow: you will have to be aware when you are studying someone.

Select one sannyasin each day to imitate. Make it perfect, in fact, improve it. Do it so well that the  person feels as if he is imitating you! Let imitating happen through you.

And remember when I say, 'Let things happen', I don't mean don't do, otherwise how will they happen?

I am simply saying that while you are doing things let them happen through you. I'm not saying to just sit silently and let things happen; then how will they happen?

And when I say, 'Let things happen', I don’t mean that you become lazy and drop all doing; then nothing happens. Never be lazy.

When I say to let things happen, I mean let things happen through you. They cannot happen from anywhere else, they will not happen out of the blue. You will have to do but you need not become a doer. Doing will be there, the doer will disappear  -- that's the whole point -- and then you are never trapped.

And sometimes you would like to do too much because in that moment it may be your natural desire to do. Then go into it -- just don't become a doer; don't pay too much attention to doing.

Doing is okay; just remember that you are not to become an ego. Don't say, 'I have done this'. Keep the attitude, 'It has happened through me; god has done it'.

When you imitate say, 'God is imitating through me; I was instrumental'. That's all... it is simple.

OSHO


'Tat Twam Asi', intellectually there is no way to understand it; it has nothing to do with intellect and it is not a philosophical statement. It is just an exclamation, a realisation.

It is not a theory -- it has no logic behind it; it is very illogical but it is an experience, an existential moment when you see it as: 'That Art Thou'.

It is a realisation that you are not separate from existence. 'That' means the existence; you and the existence that surrounds you are not separate.

But this is an experience; there is no way to understand it intellectually.

Intellectually you are separate... in fact it is intellect that makes you separate, so how can you understand it intellectually? It is asking the very disease to prescribe the medicine. It is intellect that makes us separate.

When you are deep in your sleep, you are 'Tat Twam Asi'. You don't know you are separate; you are that, that is you.

When you are awake and intellectually functioning it is very difficult to think that you are that. How can you be this rock and how can you be this tree and how can you be me? You are certainly separate. If I am killed you will not be killed; if I die the whole existence is not going to die, so how can you be one with it? You are certainly separate.

Intellect creates separation, so intellect is the instrument to separate thou from that.

Now you are trying the absurd: you are trying to understand intellectually; then it becomes just a philosophy. Even if you understand intellectually it is of no use.

Intellectual understanding is not an understanding at all. The only understanding that can be called understanding is non-intellectual, intuitive.

Get absorbed in things.

Sometimes dancing, become the dance and you will know.

Not that somebody will shout at you 'Tat Twam Asi'... not that it will come like that statement written somewhere inside your mind. No god is going to give it to you as a commandment, nothing will happen, but you will simply know.

So start getting absorbed; that is my suggestion.

OSHO