| 
Part VII : Glimpses of Osho's Personal Life
Osho lives in seclusion and silence (apart from discourses and
darshans). Vivek is his personal caretaker, and a few sannyasins
help her with cooking and cleaning, etc. Occasionally Osho comments
on his personal life.
Just the other day somebody asked a question—'Osho, you
are getting so fragile and delicate and so sensitive to the smells
of hair oils and shampoos that it seems we will not be able to
see you unless we all go bald.' By the way, nothing is wrong with
being bald—bald is beautiful. Just as 'black is beautiful',
so 'bald is beautiful'. But that is true and you have to be careful
about it.
I am fragile, delicate and sensitive. That is my strength….
Just a delicate thread joins me with the body. And I am continuously
surprised that somehow the whole must be willing me to be here,
because I am no more here with my own strength, I am no more here
on my own. It must be the will of the whole to keep me here, to
allow me to linger a little more on this shore. Maybe the whole
wants to share something with you through me. trans211
You ask: Every time you come and go in the lecture, I am worried
you may miss a step and fall.
P.S. You look so drunk.
That's true. But I have been drunk for so long that you need
not be afraid. For twenty-five years I have been that way. In
the beginning it really was difficult to walk. I was very much
afraid myself that I might fall any moment. Somehow the body had
become so distant and there was such a gap—earth and sky
apart. It took time for me to settle down. Although everything
has settled down, that drunkenness is still there. This is God-drunkenness.
Once you have drunk from the spring of the divine you are never
in a state of being undrunk. Once is enough. A drop of it is enough
to drown you forever. You need not drink again and again; you
will never become thirsty again.
I can understand your question, but don't be worried. Somehow….
I call it 'somehow' because I am not managing it. I cannot manage
it because I am not there to manage it; it has managed itself.
Somehow I remain drunk and I remain aware.
Sufis have a particular principle about it—it will be
meaningful to understand it. They call it an oscillation between
the two states, ahwal. The two states are baka and fana: individuality
and dissolution of the individuality. Between these two there
has to be a kind of rhythm, a synchronisation. There are people
who are in their baka, but they don't know anything about fana.
Then there are people who are in their fana, but they forget how
to come back to baka. Both are lopsided.
A kind of balance is needed between the two—drunkenness
and awareness. One has to be drunkenly aware, or alertly drunk.
That is the highest alchemy—where opposites meet and they
become one. That is the greatest synthesis….
This has been one of the greatest problems on the path of the
ultimate ecstasy, and you will find this phenomenon in many ways.
You see Buddha. Buddha is drunk and alert together. Ramakrishna
is not alert. He is drunk. Something of the balance is missing.
If you ask me, I cannot tell you to make Ramakrishna a goal. When
Ramakrishna would get into his fana state, for days he would remain
almost unconscious. Once he remained unconscious in a coma for
six days. And when he came out of it he started crying, and he
started asking God, 'Take me back. Let me go into that again.'
He became like a child. It is better than the state of baka—this
ecstasy is good—but there is a higher stage to it. That
is Buddha's state. He is drunk and yet alert. One has never seen
him unconscious. He has managed the ultimate synthesis.
The way of ecstasy is also the way of sobriety, because it is
the science of the knowledge of states. As Sheik ibn Ajiba has
said, 'A drunkenness with consciousness of the state is higher
than drunkenness with forgetfulness. Ecstasy is not the goal but
the means; nevertheless an absolutely essential means.'
So you need not be afraid. I am drunk and alert together. My
drunkenness takes care that I don't become so much alert that
I am fixed in the baka. My awareness takes care that I don't become
fixed in the state of fana. They help each other like the two
wings of a bird—they are opposite and yet complementary.
With one wing you cannot fly, you will need both wings.
And that is my teaching. My whole effort here is to make you
alert and drunk together. Hence I go on telling you to dance and
abandon yourself in dance, and I go on teaching you ways of meditation,
awareness, vipassana—so that both can grow together. The
day you are drunk, suddenly you will find a light burning in you
which keeps you alert. And certainly, as Ajiba says, a drunkenness
with awareness is higher than a drunkenness with forgetfulness.
sufis204
People have been asking me how I go on sitting with my left
leg upon my right leg for hours. I can change but I don't see
any need. For years I have been sitting that way and now it has
become so comfortable that if I change it that will be a discomfort.
In this posture I completely forget my legs; there is no need
for me to remember about them. But if I want to change I can change,
there is no problem in it.
Once you live consciously, every act starts taking on a different
quality: the quality of relaxedness, restfulness. A religious
man can be religious twenty-four hours a day. dark17
In Zen, when a meditator goes very deep, the only way to find
whether he is alive or dead is to bring a mirror in front of his
nose. You cannot hear his breathing, but on the mirror the breathing
leaves a little vapor. That remains the only sign that he is alive.
The heart starts going into a subtler rhythm, the pulse becomes
so slow, almost invisible.
Before quartz watches with batteries came into existence, I
was in a difficulty. Automatic watches function perfectly, but
they depend on your pulse. Your pulse goes on giving them movement,
and the movement of your hands. The moment you put them away,
within two or three hours they stop.
I have tried almost all the best watches in the world which
are automatic, but on my hand they don't go even for three hours.
From the moment I put them on my hand, within five or ten minutes
they stop, because everything is so silent. And unless I have
to move my hands…and that is only when I am speaking to
you; otherwise my hands are in complete relaxation with my body.
Finally they said that no automatic watch is going to work on
me so I have to use either the winding watch, which is an older
version, or a quartz watch which runs on a battery. satyam23
You may be able to know what time it is without looking at the
clock, but an enlightened person cannot—because for him
time has disappeared. For him there is no more time! For him there
is only eternal now. Nothing moves. All has stopped. His clock
has stopped! Now there exists no calendar in him any more. He
has to look to know what time it is. You can feel the time because
your clock, inside clock, is working; you can have a certain inference
about what time it must be. And within minutes you will be right;
at the most, within ten minutes you will be right. Your mind can
calculate. You know what time is; you know how much it feels when
one hour passes by.
But to the enlightened consciousness, nothing passes. All simply
is…and always is. There is no way to infer what time it
is. Hence, I have to look at the clock again and again.
Sometimes Vivek becomes very much puzzled, because just five
minutes before I had looked at the clock and I look again. And
she says, "Just five minutes before you had looked, and you
are looking again." And I can understand her puzzlement:
anybody can infer, any child can infer, that only five minutes
have passed. But nothing is passing for me. Even for the day I
have to inquire what day today is, what date today is. easy107
I am not following the clock at all. But I have come to understand
my body. I have come to feel its needs. I have learned much by
listening to it. And if you also listen and you become attentive
to your body, you will start having a discipline which cannot
be called a discipline.
I have not forced it on myself. I have tried all sorts of things
in my life. I have been continuously experimenting just to feel
where my body fits perfectly. Once I used to get up early, at
three o'clock in the morning. Then at four o'clock, then at five
o'clock. Now I have been getting up at six for many years. By
and by I watched what fits with my body. One has to be very sensitive….
You have to find your own body, its way, what suits—that's
right for you. And once you have found it, you can easily allow
it, and it will not be enforced because it will be in tune with
the body, so there is nothing as if you are imposing it; there
is no struggle, no effort. Watch, while eating, what suits you.
People go on eating all sorts of things. Then they get disturbed.
Then their mind gets affected. Never follow anybody's discipline,
because nobody is like you, so nobody can say what is going to
suit you.
That's why I give you only one discipline and that is of self-awareness,
that is of freedom. You listen to your own body. The body has
a great wisdom in it. If you listen to it, you will always be
right. If you don't listen to it and you go on enforcing things
on it, you will never be happy; you will be unhappy, ill, ill
at ease, and always disturbed and distracted, disoriented.
This has been a long experimentation. I have eaten almost all
sorts of things, and then by and by I eliminated all that was
not suiting me. Now whatsoever suits, I eat only that. Vivek is
in trouble, because she has to cook almost the same thing every
day and she cannot believe how I go on eating and go on enjoying
it. Eating is okay—but enjoying it?…
But whatsoever I'm doing is not enforced, it is spontaneous.
That's how by and by I became aware of my body's needs. I always
listen to my body. I would never impose my mind on the body. Do
likewise and you will have a happier, a more blissful life. trans104
If you have to eat the same food every day, like I do, you will
get fed up. Even my kitchen people who prepare the food, they
are utterly fed up with it. Except me, everybody is fed up. My
gardeners are fed up because they have to grow the same vegetables.
Vivek, Astha, Nirgun, Pragya—they are all fed up—they
have to prepare exactly the same every morning, every evening.
There is no difference between my lunch and supper. And there
is no dinner ever. Dinners don't exist in my life at all—just
supper and lunch, the same, exactly the same. And I can understand
they get fed up preparing, preparing the same thing every day.
Unless you are enlightened you are bound to get fed up. Unless
you are enlightened you are bound to get fed up. I, of course,
enjoy it every time—because I go on forgetting about the
morning, so I am again tremendously excited. When Vivek brings
the food I immediately look: "What have you prepared?"
And she looks very embarrassed. And I don't miss a single moment,
I start eating. Because who cares what I had eaten yesterday and
the day before yesterday? I don't carry all these psychological
memories, so each time it is new. ultima03
I was worried about my old parents when they came and stayed
here—I was worried that it would be too much for them. But
I was very happy when they went to take their meals with Krishna
Mohammed and Radha—I was so happy! That was a great step!
Otherwise, they are orthodox Jains.
In my childhood I had a Mohammedan friend. It was very difficult
for me to invite him some time for tea or for food, very difficult.
And even if I would insist, my family would allow, but then we
would have to sit outside the house to eat…. feet04
You ask: why do you always carry a towel? And why don't you
drop it now?
The first thing: the towel has been with me for almost twenty-five
years. It is a silver jubilee year!
And I am very surprised by the question because only last night
I decided to drop it….
I decided just last night.
But it is good that you have asked. It is a long history how
the towel started to be with me, and before I part company with
it I had better tell the story to you.
When I started living in Jabalpur, there were so many mosquitoes—don't
laugh, because you have nothing in Poona compared with Jabalpur;
that's nothing—I had to chase them with the towel the whole
day. It was impossible to sit still….
In fact, mosquitoes are old enemies of meditators. Whenever
you meditate, whether the Devil comes to tempt you or not, the
mosquitoes will always come.
For eighteen years I was in Jabalpur. My towel became my constant
companion. When I left Jabalpur and came to Bombay I was thinking
of leaving it, but then people started spinning esoteric theories
about it. So just to save the theoreticians I continued using
it.
Now it is a superstition. The word 'superstition' comes from
a root which means: something that was useful sometimes but the
circumstances have now changed, it is no longer useful. But it
continues. This towel is a superstition and I have continued carrying
it just for your sake—because there are theoreticians, esoteric
people around who have to have something to base their theories
upon.
One woman, one of my beautiful sannyasins from the Phillipines,
told me that she had found out the truth about my towel. I asked
what it was. She said, "You are a nobody, you live in nothingness,
you have to hold something otherwise you will disappear."
I said, "Right! Absolutely right!"
Just three things I had: my lungi, my robe and my towel. My
lungi is gone, you can see. Parijat helped me to renounce it.
Parijat is my official seamstress—appointed by His Holiness,
Osho Shree Shree Shree Rajneeshji Maharaj! She made the robe so
beautifully that the lungi became almost absurd with it. It started
looking like a bullock cart by the side of a Cadillac. So out
of necessity I had to drop it.
Now here goes my towel. The only thing left is my robe. Please
never ask any question about it!…
And here goes Bhagwan's towel. It is all that I have. So I must
remind you again: never ask any question about my robe.
I will throw the towel. Whosoever it lands upon becomes its proud
owner, but nobody must raise their hands or try to catch it. Hmmm?
You just be in a meditation, absolutely passive. That is the way
God also descends! If you try to catch it you cannot be the owner
of it.
uddin. It will be difficult to locate him because he is a very
subtle and invisible man. But he's the best. If you cannot locate
him then you can go to the next best person, Swami Yoga Chinmaya.
He will decide the dispute—who the owner is. And if it cannot
be decided then you can always divide it.
Remember that you are not to catch it. If you try to catch it,
you miss the opportunity. Let it land on you.
Here goes Bhagwan's towel…! art10
|
