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Part VI : Western seekers come to Osho
Each year an increasing number of Westerners are coming to Osho,
as centres are being set up around the world. Many of the hippies
coming to Osho have had spiritual experiences with lsd and other
drugs which led them to meditation. Several are in the helping
professions: social workers, therapists, psychiatrists. Osho experiments
with new therapy techniques
There are stories that a disciple would come to the master and
wait for thirty years, would not ask anything but just wait for
the master to ask, "For what have you come?" Thirty
years is too much - one life completely wasted - but waiting
for thirty years will do the work.
People from the West come to me and they say, "This very
evening we are leaving, so give us some key. How can we become
silent? But we don't have any time to stay - we must go."
They are thinking in terms with which they have become acquainted - instant
coffee - so they think there must be some instant meditation,
a key I can hand over to them and it is finished. No, there is
no key. It is a long effort, it is a deep patience. And the more
you are in a hurry, the longer it will take. So remember this:
if you are not in any hurry it may happen this very moment. When
you are not in a hurry the quality of mind is there, silence is
there. vedant05
Just a few days before one seeker was here from California. He
traveled long. He had come to meet me. And then he said, "Before
I meditate or before you tell me to meditate, I have heard that
whosoever comes to you you push into meditation, so before you
push me in, I have got questions." He had at least a list
of hundred questions. I think he has not left any that is possible - about
God, about soul, about truth, about heaven, hell and everything - a
sheet full of questions. He said, "Unless you solve these
questions first, I am not going to meditate."
He is logical in a way because he says, "Unless my questions
are answered how can I meditate? Unless I feel confident that
you are right, you have answered my doubts, how I can go in some
direction you show and indicate? You may be wrong. So you can
prove your rightness only if my doubts disappear."
And his doubts are such they cannot disappear. This is the dilemma:
if he meditates they can disappear, but he says he will meditate
only when these doubts are not there. What to do? He says, "First
prove there is God." No one has ever proved, no one can ever.
That doesn't mean that God is not there, but he cannot be proved.
He is not a small thing which can be proved or disproved. It is
such a vital thing, you have to live it to know it. No proof can
help.
But he is right logically. He says, "Unless you prove how
I can start? If there is no soul, who is going to meditate? So
first prove that there is a self, then I can meditate."
This man is committing suicide. No one will be ever able to answer
him. He has created all the barriers, and through these barriers
he will not be able to grow. But he is logical. What should I
do with such a person? If I start answering his questions, a person
who can create a hundred doubts can create millions, because doubting
is a way, a style of mind. You can answer one question through
your answer he will create ten because the mind remains the same.
He looks for doubts, and if I answer logically I am helping his
logical mind to be fed, to be more strengthened. I am feeding.
That will not help. He has to be brought out of his logicalness.
So I told him that, "Have you ever been in love?"
He said, "But why? You are changing the subject."
I said, "I will come to your points, but suddenly it has
become very meaningful to me to ask have you ever loved."
He said, "Yes!" His face changed.
I asked, "But you loved before or before falling in love
you doubted the whole phenomenon?"
Then he was disturbed. He was uncomfortable. He said, "No,
I never thought about it. I simply had fallen in love, and then
only I became aware."
So I said, "You do the opposite. First think about love,
whether love is possible, whether love exists, whether love can
exist. And first let it be proved, and make it a condition unless
it is proved you will not love anybody."
He said, "What you are saying? You will destroy my life.
If I make this a condition, then I cannot love."
"But," I told him, "This is the same you are doing.
Meditation is just like love. You have to know it first. God is
just like love. That's why Jesus goes on saying that God is love.
It is just like love. First one has to experience."
A logical mind can be closed, and so logically, that he will never
feel that he has closed his own doors of all possibilities for
all growth. yoga105
A Western friend is practising meditation. He is here with us.
His trouble is anger. He is so filled with anger that it overflows
at the slightest excuse. I advised him to vent his anger on a
pillow. He was surprised! "That is madness!" He exclaimed.
"On a pillow?" I told him, "You start and see,
it is not so bad. If you could vent your anger on a human being
and not see the foolishness of it. It is not more foolish to take
it out on a pillow I assure you." He tried the first day
and came and gave me a complete report. He felt a little awkward
in the beginning. After five or seven minutes when the momentum
built up, he started hitting the pillow hard as if it were alive.
Not only did the pillow become alive but it assumed the form of
the person he hated most. He remembered this foe and all that
had happened ten years ago. He had wished to beat him up but could
not. He says he felt to laugh, he felt very uneasy too but he
enjoyed it also!
Since the last three days he is beating up his pillow. Today he
has given the final report and it is very astonishing.
The full report is like this: The very first day all the faces
of people he had wanted to hit and could not, began to come up.
The next day all faces disappeared. There was no one before him,
there was plain anger alone. He saw the anger coming out from
within him and there was no one to receive it at the other end - pure
anger. Then it occurred to him that all this was already within
him, he only needed excuses to throw out the poison within him.
Then an understanding arose. He saw anger in a new form. Now the
responsibility of anger, shifted from the other person. Now he
knew that there was a fire within him that needed to come out.
Now the responsibility shifted on him - it no longer was objective,
it became subjective. It was no longer that the other abused and
the anger arose. Now he understood that he was wanting to be angry
and was looking out for excuses. If no one had abused him, he
would have found some other excuse. He would have even gone to
the extent of inciting someone to abuse him! And the simple reason
for all this was, that there was something within him that was
pressing for release. It was necessary to be rid of it.
The next day in the course of these beatings that he carried out
three to four times a day, it became absolutely clear to him that
the anger was not because of another but was within him. Today
was his third day. He told me: "I am shocked at myself".
As soon as the realisation came that the anger is not on someone,
that the anger is already within myself, something departed from
within - everything was peaceful. Now I have become absolutely
weak and incompetent to be angry. If you abuse me now, I shall
be unable to express anger. At least I find myself incapable of
doing so at this moment. Some load has come off me and I feel
empty within."
Understanding means: Whatever happens within you is with your
full consciousness and in your full awareness - Whatever happens.
Then many things will stop happening by themselves. What stops
happening, is sin; and what keeps happening even in your full
consciousness is virtue. Understanding is the test. Whatever can
go on with understanding is virtue. What does not go along with
understanding, is sin. What can be activated in ignorance alone,
is sin and that which cannot be activated in ignorance, is virtue.
So understanding means only this: that whatever happens within
me, happens with my full knowledge and nothing slips from my consciousness.
way103
Today I have come to know, through the partner of the friend
who was carrying out the pillow-meditation lately, that he had
taken out a knife and torn the pillow into pieces! I had not told
him to do this! It sounds funny - such madness! But we do
not laugh when a living person is stabbed in anger though the
passion gratified is the same as when ripping open a pillow! Whether
it is a pillow or a human being - that is immaterial. More
pleasure is derived from stabbing the pillow however, for there
are no limitations.
Close yourself in your room and when your overriding trait catches
hold of you, allow it to manifest itself to the full. Consider
it as meditation. Give it complete expression. Allow it to come
out of every pore of your body. Then reflect on it - you will
laugh! You will even be surprised at what all you can do! Your
mind will also wonder how you could ever do all that - and
that too when you are alone! If there was someone present, then
it was excusable!
You will feel restless the first or second time. The third time
you will be in full form. And when you indulge in it whole-heartedly,
you will get a strange experience. You will find that outwardly
you are doing all this but within, a consciousness stands and
watches. This is impossible when the other is concerned but by
yourself, it becomes easy. All around the flames of anger will
surround you, you will stand in the centre - alone and apart.
And once a person observes his anger apart from himself, once
someone observes his sex or his greed or his fear thus, a ray
of knowledge begins to emit in his life.
He has attained an experience.
He has recognised one of his powers and now it is impossible for
him to be deceived through this particular energy. We become the
masters of that power which we recognize. The energy that we clearly
perceive, no longer enslaves us; whereas the power we do not recognize,
keeps us enslaved.
So you can take the pillow to be your beloved or you can take
it to be the Kohinoor diamond. You can look upon it as your enemy
before whom you tremble. It makes no difference who you are or
what you are. way105
Recently a mother had come to me all the way from New York with
her daughter. There was a lot of struggle between the two. The
mother was under the impression that she loved her daughter very
much. She had come two months before also. Then she had told me
that she loved her children so much that she would even give her
life for them. I told her to think over again for this was not
natural. She insisted that she loved her three daughters so, it
would be hard for me to imagine! I again told her to think it
over.
At this she began to cry and beat her breast. She said, "You
are cruel, take back your words, for I really and truly love my
children." The louder she screamed the more adamant I became.
"Whom are you trying to convince by this - me or your
own self?" I asked her. "If you love them, you love
them. There the matter should end. There is no need to make an
exhibition like this! Since you cry and scream so much and beat
your breast I tell you again. Look within and try to understand
yourself. Your crying will have no effect on me; but it is bound
to affect you."
If you want to love you must know how to cry and beat your breast
or else how can others know what you feel? The louder you cry
the better you can convey your feeling and that is why women can
easily prove that they love whereas a man finds it difficult.
"This will not work with me," I told her.
So this time she brought her eldest daughter along with her. She
said, "Now look at us." I did and within fifteen days
as much enmity as can exist between two individuals, manifested
itself in full between these two.
Enmity exists between a mother and daughter; society, family,
hides it. As the daughter grows into a young girl, the mother
starts becoming her enemy. This is absolutely natural. This is
our animal heritage. As the son grows up and becomes a young man,
the father is filled with jealousy. This is not a matter to be
discussed. All fathers and all sons know it. As the boy grows
up, he tries to push the father out. Verily, he has to make a
place for himself. Looking at the daughter in the full bloom of
youth, the mother feels she lost hers on account of her. No one
is the cause for loss of youth. Without children too, she would
have become old. But she does not think of this. Every man that
enters the house first looks at the young girl and then at the
old mother. This is very painful.
The custom of sending a married daughter off to her husband's
home was initiated by women and since the woman always has her
way, the man had to give in. Daughters had to be sent away from
the house. Even if the father takes more interest in his daughter,
which is very natural, the mother is filled with jealousy. Then
the daughter no longer looks a daughter in the mother's eyes but
a sheer woman.
For fifteen days I tried my best to bring out all their maladies
from within. I instigated them both against each other. Their
fever reached such a pitch that they were ready to fall on each
other's throat. Then I made them both sit with me and told them
to bring out whatever was within them. Then the disease that came
out of them was such no mother or a daughter could ever imagine.
This is so within each mother and each daughter. But we suppress
these feelings and dress our wounds. We spread flowers without
when there is nothing but dirt and filth within....
You will be shocked to know the jealousy, the disgust, the invectives
the mother and daughter expressed against each other. So much
so, that I found myself in a fix. I was afraid that if their problem
is not solved quickly - they had to return to New York soon - there
would be chaos. Then I had to carry out processes to remove all
their hatred. There they sat - the mother and daughter - and
they said such things to each other as a daughter has never ever
openly told her mother or a mother, her daughter, but which they
both have always thought about each other from times immemorial.
You could never dream a mother telling her daughter, "You
are my enemy. You always try to snatch away the man who tries
to love me." And the daughter says, "You are a harlot!"
When the mother asked, "Do you hate me?" She said, "I
do, I do, I hate you, this very moment!" The mother said,
"You are nobody to me. I cannot bear the very sight of you!"
When all this invective came out in an hour's time, I told them
to sit silently with their eyes closed. Thus they sat for five
minutes and both were crying. Then they both clung to each other.
That night they slept on one cot. The next day the mother said,
"It was like a honeymoon night. After years, I was able to
be loving to my daughter again." But I told her to beware
for this love will only gather hatred. Wherever there is (dwandwa)
duality, we tend to gather the opposite.
Lao Tzu says, "The saint is beyond the opposites. He is apart
from both of them. They are neither harsh nor compassionate."
way116
An American youth of the Peace Corps came to me. He is one of
the four hundred who have come to India to establish peace. He
took sannyas. I asked him, "Is it not to save yourself from
your own restlessness that you are trying for peace for others?"
He was taken aback. "What do you say? You are absolutely
right but how did you know? There is so much conflict in my family!
I can't get on with my father, I cannot get on with my mother
or my brothers. Things had reached such a peak that there would
have been bloodshed. Either I would have killed my father or he
would have killed me! Therefore it was necessary to run away from
home. I heard there was need for peace in India so I joined the
Peace Corps and came here. Ever since then I have plunged whole-heartedly
into my work."
All the organisations that are out to serve society, also all
reformers and leaders, are those who are not satisfied with lesser
conflicts. They look for bigger spans and amplitudes. And they
look for problems that defy solutions. You cannot dwell longer
on problems that are easily solved, you have to then move on the
fresh problems. So we look for permanent problems that can never
be solved. We are people who have no knowledge of tranquility
and whose whole make-up is of restlessness. We create restlessness
with each movement of ours - sitting, standing, walking, talking.
Even our silence is filled with restlessness. way109
Once a young man, a Jesus freak, came to me. He was living as
poor a life as possible, without shoes, with rotten clothes. And
he was travelling on foot all over India. From the Himalayas he
was going to the south, and just living by begging.
When he passed the town I was in somebody told him about me and
he came to see me. And I said, "What are you doing? What
is this nonsense?"
He said, "You call it nonsense? Jesus says 'Blessed are the
poor in spirit.'"
I said, "He does not say that just by not wearing shoes you
become poor in spirit or just by begging you become poor in spirit.
As far as I can see you are tremendously egoistic." The moment
I said this he became very angry, almost ready to fight.
I said, "Sit down. That's what I am saying - that you
are not humble. Your humbleness is just a strategy of the ego
and you are using Jesus' words in a totally wrong context; you
have not understood them."
But that's what Christians down the ages have been doing with
the words of Christ. And that is going to be done to almost all
enlightened people and their teachings. Hence my effort is to
be as direct as possible, so there is less possibility of misunderstanding.
I don't want to be metaphorical, I don't want to use parables
because they can be interpreted in many ways. I don't want to
use traditional words, or if I have to use them because there
are no other words available then I want to make my meaning as
clear as possible, as definite as possible. In that sense I am
very logical and mathematical.
I call meditation the greatest richness because it makes you aware
of your own infinite treasure. It makes you a master of the kingdom
of god. And the only key to that kingdom is through meditation,
through silence, watchfulness, awareness. gwind28
Many hippies have visited me. I felt really sorry for them. They
were going on a right path, but somewhere the path turned to the
polar opposite. Their resentment was so strong that they started
doing exactly the opposite of what they were taught to do. They
dropped out of schools, out of colleges, out of universities,
because it was not their own choice.
But do you know what happened to the hippies? You don't find them
after the age thirty-five. They come back to the society, become
again what they have been taught. Their long hair disappears,
their beards disappear, their mustaches disappear. All the hippies
who have reached nearabout the age of forty are now perfectly
accepted gentlemen in the society. They are good businessmen,
good salesmen, successful. false25
I have changed many hippies; now you cannot recognize them. Even
they may have forgotten that the first time when they came to
me...Just going from Kathmandu to Goa - just in between,
by the way - they had stopped to see what was happening there,
what was cooking there. And then they thought, "This guy
seems to be far out" - and they stayed forever. They
forgot about Goa, they forgot about their hippie ideology; and
when they became sannyasins they became totally new persons with
new JUSTIFY">I have changed many hippies; now you cannot
recognize them. Even they may have forgotten that the first time
when they came to me...Just going from Kathmandu to Goa - just
in between, by the way - they had stopped to see what was
happening there, what was cooking there. And then they thought,
"This guy seems to be far out" - and they stayed
forever. They forgot about Goa, they forgot about their hippie
ideology; and when they became sannyasins they became totally
new persons with new values.
We need more wandering philosophers around the world, wandering
teachers around the world so that young people can belong to them
and learn something - and live something. socrat23
One girl came to me just two or three days ago, and she said,
"I was in Goa" - she is my sannyasin - and she
said, "I took lsd and then I became certain that enlightenment
had happened to me, so I threw your mala into the sea, because
now there is no need. I changed the dress, because I am now enlightened,
so what is the use of orange or the mala or anything?"
This is a sort of madness. Enlightenment is not so cheap. But
in the West they are making everything cheap. I go on hearing
that there are three week intense enlightenment growth groups - in
three weeks you are enlightened!
A poet may have dreamed, may have taken hashish. And scientists
say that poets have some difference, some chemical difference
from ordinary persons - they have some hashish in their blood,
really, so they can imagine more, they can dream more, they can
go on dream trips more than others. So they write, but their writing
is imaginative, it is not objective. It may help them as a catharsis,
that they are unburdened.
But there is another type of literature, totally different,
which is objective. These Upanishads were not written for the
joy of the writer, they were written for those who were going
to read them - they are objective. What they will do to you
if you contemplate on them has been planned; every single word
has been put there, every single sound has been used. If someone
contemplates on it, then the state of the writer will be revealed
to him; the same will happen to him if he contemplates. These
scriptures are called holy; that's why. vedant08
You ask: Can LSD be used as a help in meditation?
LSD can be used as a help, but the help is very dangerous; it
is not so easy. If you use a mantra, even that can become difficult
to throw, but if you use acid, LSD it will be even more difficult
to throw.
The moment you are on an LSD trip you are not in control. Chemistry
takes control and you are not the master, and once you are not
the master it is difficult to regain that position. The chemical
is not the slave now, you are the slave. Now how to control it
is not going to be your choice. Once you take LSD as a help you
are making a slave of the master and your whole body chemistry
will be affected by it....
LSD can be used to bring you to meditation only if your body
has been prepared for it. So if you ask if it can be used in the
West, I will say that it is not for the West at all. It can be
used only in the East - if the body is totally prepared for
it. Yoga has used it, tantra has used it, there are schools of
tantra and yoga that have used LSD as a help, but then they prepare
your body first. There is a long process of purification of the
body. Your body becomes so pure and you become such a great master
of it that even chemistry cannot become your master now. So yoga
allows it, but in a very specific way.
First your body must be purified chemically. Then you will be
in such control of the body that even your body chemistry can
be controlled....
In tantra, particularly in "leftist" tantra, they
use alcohol to help meditation. It looks absurd; it is not. The
seeker will take alcohol in a particular quantity and then will
try to be alert. Consciousness must not be lost. By and by the
quantity of alcohol will be raised, but the consciousness must
remain alert. The person has taken alcohol, it has been absorbed
in the body, but the mind remains above it; consciousness is not
lost. Then the quantity of alcohol is raised higher and higher.
Through this practice a point comes when any amount of alcohol
can be given and the mind remains alert. Only then can LSD be
a help.
In the West there are no practices to purify the body or to increase
consciousness through changes in body chemistry. Acid is taken
without any preparation in the West. It is not going to help;
rather, on the contrary, it may destroy the whole mind.
There are many problems. Once you have been on an LSD trip you
have a glimpse of something you have never known, something you
have never felt. If you begin to practice meditation it is a long
process, but LSD is not a process. You take it and the process
is over; then the body begins to work. Meditation is a long process - you
have to do it for years, only then will the results be forthcoming.
And when you have experienced a shortcut, it will be difficult
to follow a long process. The mind will crave to return to using
the drugs. So it is difficult to meditate once you have known
a glimpse through chemistry; to undertake something that is a
long process will be difficult. Meditation needs more stamina,
more trust, more waiting, and it will be difficult because now
you can compare.
Secondly, any method is bad if you are not in control all the
time. When you are meditating you can stop at any moment. If you
want to stop, you can stop this very moment; you can come out
of it. You cannot stop an LSD trip: once you have taken LSD you
have to complete the circle. Now you are not the master.
Anything that makes a slave of you is ultimately not going to
help spiritually, because spirituality basically means to be the
master of oneself. So I wouldn't suggest shortcuts. I am not against
LSD, I may sometimes be for it, but then a long preliminary preparation
is necessary. Then you will be the master. But then LSD is not
a shortcut. It will take even longer than meditation. Hatha yoga
takes years to prepare a body - twenty years, twenty-five
years, then a body is ready; now you can use any chemical help
and it will not be destructive to your being. But then the process
is far longer.
Then LSD can be used; I am in favor of it then. If you are prepared
to take twenty years to prepare the body in order to take LSD,
then it is not destructive. But the same thing can be done in
two years with meditation. Because the body is more gross, mastery
is more difficult. The mind is more subtle so mastery is easier.
The body is further away from your being, so there is a greater
gap; with the mind the gap is shorter....
If the mastery is of the mind then you can change the body,
but the preparedness of the body belongs to the body alone. Hatha
yoga invented many methods so that the process could be completed,
but then even greater methods were discovered: how to control
the mind directly - raja yoga. With these methods the body
can be a little helpful, but there is no need to be too concerned
with it. So hatha yoga adepts have said that LSD can be used,
but raja yoga cannot say LSD can be used, because raja yoga has
no methodology to prepare the body. Direct meditation is used.
Sometimes it happens - only sometimes, rarely - that
if you have a glimpse through LSD and do not become addicted to
it, that glimpse may become a thirst in you to seek something
further. So to try it once is good, but it becomes difficult to
know where to stop and how to stop. The first trip is good, to
be on it once is good; you become aware of a different world and
then you begin to seek, you begin to search, because of it - but
then it becomes difficult to stop. This is the problem. If you
can stop, then to take LSD once is good. But that "if"
is a great one....
With the first you are the master; with the second you are not.
The first will try to take a second, and then it will go on continuously;
then it is no longer in your hands. To begin anything is easy
because you are the master, but to end anything is difficult because
then you are not the master.
So I am not against LSD, and if I am against it, it is conditional.
This is the condition: if you can remain the master, then okay.
Use anything, but remain the master. And if you cannot remain
the master, then do not enter into a dangerous road at all. Do
not enter at all; it will be better. artof12
When Japanese started coming to me for sannyas I was a little
bit puzzled - because all over the whole world when you want
to say yes, you move your head up and down. And the Japanese,
when they want to say yes, move the head from side to side - which
means "no" all over the world, that is the sign for
no - but that is their sign for yes, and the head moving up
and down is their sign for no.
So when I would ask them something I would be very much puzzled;
I could not believe that...They had come to take sannyas.
They were sitting before me and I was asking "Are you ready
for sannyas?" and they would shake..."Then why have
you come? You have traveled here from Japan unnecessarily and
you are sitting here in front of me just for that purpose, and
you are saying no?"
Then my interpreter said to me, "You are not understanding;
that person is saying yes. In Japan, the head moving from side
to side is yes; the head moving up and down is no." So you
have to remember it when you are talking with the Japanese. Otherwise
there is going to be great confusion - you will say something,
they will understand something else. They cannot speak but they
can understand. upan39
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