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Part VIII : Topics on which Osho speaks
Osho often gives whole discourses on one topic, too long to
include here. Besides destroying old religions, he develops earlier
subjects, such as the new man, and introduces his own 'religio':
The new man will not be like me in the sense that he will not
be my carbon copy. But in a way, in a very different way, he will
be like me. I am independent; he will be independent. I am my
own self; he will be his own self. I have never accepted anything
just as a belief unless I have experienced it. Then there is no
question of belief—I know it. So either I know something
or I don't know, there is nothing in between….
I have doubted everything. I have never accepted anything because
it is written in the holy scriptures, because the great founders
of religions have said it, because great saints verify it. I have
insisted my whole life that nothing else can prove it to me except
my own experience. And when it comes as your own experience, it
brings tremendous rejoicing, great blessings, flowering. Your
being finds its home. The wandering is finished, you have arrived.
Now my wandering and your wandering will be different. The point
where I started and the point where you will start will be different.
I will arrive to my own innermost core; you will arrive to your
innermost core. The ultimate experience of blossoming will be
the same, but the path will be totally different. Everybody has
to search and seek in his own way….
Yes, I am the new man and I am preparing the way for you to
become the new man. That's why I go on insisting that you keep
yourself intelligent, meditative, silent. Keep yourself alert,
aware. Change every stone on the path into a stepping-stone. Don't
think, "Now the stone is blocking the way." No stone
blocks the way. You just have to know that every stone can be
turned into a stepping-stone….
The new man will have communes, but the agreement will be freedom.
You can look into my eyes and you can see my silence, my depth.
You can feel my presence, my joy, my song. But you are not to
repeat anything. I am simply indicating to you that what has happened
to me can happen to you. There will be differences, there will
be uniquenesses. I may be just a marigold flower and you may be
a lotus—so don't imitate me. You may be a rose and I am
just a marigold, a very poor flower who has nothing. But whoever
named it marigold must have had great insight; it is the poorest
flower, but there is great merriness, great joy in it—and
it is pure gold, twenty-four carat….
I am the new man. You have to be the new man. I am not ordering
you, I am simply saying so loudly so you can hear. And we have
to create more opportunities for the new man for more people around
the world. last301
What is meditation?
It is the most important question as far as my religion is concerned.
Meditation is the very center of my whole effort.
It is the very womb out of which the new religion is going to
be born.
But it is very difficult to verbalize it. To say something about
meditation is a contradiction in terms. It is something which
you can have, which you can be, but by its very nature you cannot
say what it is. Still, efforts have been made to convey it in
some way. Even if only a fragmentary, partial understanding arises
out of it, that is more than one can expect.
But even that partial understanding of meditation can become a
seed. Much depends on how you listen. If you only hear, then even
a fragment cannot be conveyed to you, but if you listen….
Try to understand the difference between the two….
First try to understand the word "meditation." It is
not the right word for the state about which any authentic seeker
is bound to be concerned. So I would like to tell you something
about a few words. In Sanskrit we have a special word for meditation,
the word is dhyana. In no other language does a parallel word
exist; that word is untranslatable. It has been recognized for
two thousand years that this word is untranslatable, for the simple
reason that in no other language people have tried it or experienced
the state that it denotes; so those languages don't have that
word.
A word is needed only when there is something to say, something
to designate. In English there are three words: the first is concentration.
I have seen many books written by very well-meaning people but
not people who have experienced meditation. They go on using the
word "concentration" for dhyana—dhyana is not
concentration. Concentration simply means your mind focused on
one point; it is a state of mind. Ordinarily the mind is continuously
moving, but if it continuously moves you cannot work with the
mind on a certain subject….
So before I answer your question, What is meditation? you have
to understand what it is not. First: it is not concentration.
Second: it is not contemplation….
Whenever you can find time for just being, drop all doing. Thinking
is also doing, concentration is also doing, contemplation is also
doing. Even if for a single moment you are not doing anything
and you are just at your center, utterly relaxed—that is
meditation. And once you have got the knack of it, you can remain
in that state as long as you want; finally you can remain in that
state for twenty-four hours a day.
Once you have become aware of the way your being can remain undisturbed,
then slowly you can start doing things, keeping alert that your
being is not stirred. That is the second part of meditation. First,
learning how just to be, and then learning little actions: cleaning
the floor, taking a shower, but keeping yourself centered. Then
you can do complicated things.
For example, I am speaking to you, but my meditation is not disturbed.
I can go on speaking, but at my very center there is not even
a ripple; it is just silent, utterly silent.
So meditation is not against action.
It is not that you have to escape from life.
It simply teaches you a new way of life:
You become the center of the cyclone.
Your life goes on, it goes on really more intensely—with
more joy, with more clarity, more vision, more creativity—yet
you are aloof, just a watcher on the hills, simply seeing all
that is happening around you.
You are not the doer, you are the watcher.
That's the whole secret of meditation, that you become the watcher.
Doing continues on its own level, there is no problem: chopping
wood, drawing water from the well. You can do all small and big
things; only one thing is not allowed and that is, your centering
should not be lost.
That awareness, that watchfulness, should remain absolutely unclouded,
undisturbed.
Meditation is a very simple phenomenon….
That's what I say to you: just go on playing with the idea. I
am using the word playing, because I am a nonserious man and my
religion is non-serious. Just go on playing—and you have
enough time.
Anytime—lying in your bed, if sleep is not coming, play
with the idea. Why bother about sleep?—it will come when
it will come. You cannot do anything to bring it; it is not in
your hands, so why bother about it? Something which is not in
your hands, forget about it. This time is in your hands, why not
use it? Lying in your bed, on a cold night under your blanket,
cozy and enjoying—just play with the idea. You need not
sit in the lotus posture. In my meditation you need not torture
yourself in any way. misery02
Consciousness experienced subjectively needs some inward journey.
No scientist is doing that. He wants to study consciousness in
white mice, in guinea pigs. This is very strange. The scientist
has the consciousness in himself, what is the need to go to a
white mouse? Go inwards!
And that's what I call the science of interiority, religio, meditation.
You move deeper, leaving your body, your mind, your heartbeat
far behind—and, still, you are. And you are more than you
have ever been, because you had known yourself filtered through
the heart, through the mind, through the body—thick layers.
So you had felt your consciousness in a very slight way.
But when you have reached to your own center—which is neither
chemical nor physical nor biological—you experience a totally
new reality. Immediately you become aware that it is not a by-product,
that it has its own existence. The body may die, but this consciousness
is so separate from the body that there is no possibility of its
dying with the body. The heart may stop, but you are so far away
from the heart, you are no longer identified with the heart. You
are part of an eternal life.
So when I talk about consciousness, I am talking about my own
experience of diving deep into my being. And when the physicists
talk about consciousness, they are talking not about experience
but about experiments that they are doing with white mice, guinea
pigs. Strange people! You have consciousness, the white mouse
is in a very backward state of life; why not find it within yourself?
Man is the highest expression of consciousness.
Science can never know the real being, the real soul, the real
consciousness, for the simple reason that it is object-oriented.
Hence, a totally different approach is needed, a science which
is subject-oriented.
You cannot put consciousness in a test-tube. Consciousness is
not something material; it is not something like a commodity.
It is not something that you can dissect and find out what elements
it is made of. It is a single, indivisible life. And the only
way to know it is to go within yourself. That is the purpose of
the commune. It is not a religion; it is the science of subjectivity.
So there is a total difference. What they are talking about is
absolutely irrelevant. What I am talking about is the real thing.
And you need not go anywhere, because it is within you. No lab
is needed, no instruments are needed. All that is needed is that
you learn how to relax, how to be silent, how to be just a witness.
And slowly slowly your mind stops its unnecessary chattering,
your heart stops its moods, feelings.
And suddenly you are your reality, your consciousness.
And it reveals all the mysteries. It is the golden key, the master
key, because it makes you aware not only of your consciousness,
it makes you aware that your consciousness is not separate from
other consciousnesses.
Consciousness is almost like an ocean. We are all in it, we are
all sharing the same consciousness. The trees, the animals, the
birds—they are all sharing the same consciousness in different
stages of growth.
You are fortunate to be a human being, because this gives you
an opportunity to turn in. bond24
And this is my whole work, I call it meditation.
That the unconscious should be changed into consciousness so that
nothing remains inside you that you don't know. That is the only
possibility that you may not fall into darkness and you may not
do things which are inhuman, that you will not go in the ways
of evil. The only possibility is that your whole mind is simply
consciousness—there is no unconscious part at all.
And this is one of the greatest contribution of the East to the
world. Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, Alfred Adler and other
psychologists in the West, only in this century have been able
to find that there is something like unconscious.
In the East for five thousand years we have been aware of the
unconscious. Not only that, we have been aware how to transform
it into consciousness. The West has accepted now that there is
a unconscious but it has not yet been able to find how to transform
it into consciousness. The East has the methods but the ego of
the Western psychology prevents it to accept the methods which
are already available.
Thousands of people have been meditating with me and have come
to the same experience of illumination that the darkness disappears,
that one becomes full of light. And after that it is impossible
to fall. last504
One question is there: "Osho, You have taken God away, now
there is only existence. Existence means nature; it is harsh,
it is indifferent, it doesn't care. If there is no God then I
feel very much afraid."
Naturally, you will feel very much afraid because your God was
nothing but a way to hide your fear. It was fear-oriented. It
was just to keep your fear suppressed. Take God away and fear
springs up. It is there; even when you are putting the rock of
God on the spring, it is still there. You know perfectly well
that it is there, alive, ready to burst forth any moment—just
waiting for its chance, an opportunity.
Your whole life you have believed in God, and I have just said
that there is no God—and that's enough! Perhaps for fifty
years you have believed in God, found consolation in it, then
just an ordinary man like me says there is no God, and fifty years
conditioning disappears and fear arises! Whom are you trying to
deceive?
If I can do this, anybody can do this. lust anybody meeting you
on the road can whisper in your ear, "There is no God"—finished!
Your God is dead! Your fear is more alive than ever. ignor24
Are You a messiah?
No, Sheela, absolutely no. The whole idea is fundamentally wrong.
It is not only that I am not a messiah, there has never been anyone
who was and there will never be anybody who will be. You will
have to go deep into the concept of it. The idea of a messiah
is a secondary idea. First you have to believe in God as a person,
then only can you start thinking of God sending special messengers,
messiahs.
To me there is no personal God at all who can send a messiah….
These people are megalomaniacs. It is a certain mind disease.
You want to be superior, higher than everybody else. You would
like to be a president of a country, a prime minister of a country,
a king, a queen, but it is difficult—there is so much competition.
And only one man can become a president in the whole country and
the whole country is burning, deep down, everybody desiring to
be higher, above everybody else's head, to be somebody special,
unique. Now, these kinds of people can find very easy ways. Now,
to declare oneself a messiah…there is no election for it,
you don't need anybody's sanction for it. You can write a book
in which you can declare that you are the messiah. This is a circular
argument. The book is true because it is written by a messiah,
and you are the messiah because it is written in a true book.
What other evidence has Jesus for being a messiah, except his
own statements? What do Christians have to prove that Jesus is
a messiah?—because it is written in the New Testament, and
the New Testament is nothing but this man's statements. Do you
see the circular argument? They are true because they are from
the messiah, and he is a messiah because it is written in the
true book.
Jesus was not such a bad man that he should be crucified—his
only crime was that he declared himself a messiah. That too is
nothing to be bothered about. If somebody thinks he is a messiah,
he's doing no harm to anybody; let him enjoy. But the Jews could
not tolerate it. So I will have to go deep into the whole concept
and its history.
Moses is responsible for Jesus' crucifixion. Nobody has said it
before because the distance between Moses and Jesus is three thousand
years. But I say to you, Moses is responsible for Jesus' crucifixion—for
two reasons. First, he declares that a messiah is going to come
and he will solve all your problems, all your difficulties. This
was pure politics….
I am not a messiah. I don't give you any hope.
And I would like emphatically for you to remember that nobody
else can redeem you—the whole idea is wrong. You have created
your bondage, how can I make you free?
You throw your bondage and be free.
You love your chains and you want me to redeem you. You are asking
an absurdity. You are the cause of your miseries, sufferings,
and you want me to redeem you from your sufferings and miseries.
And you will go on sowing the same seeds, continuing, being the
same old person, watering the same causes. Who can redeem you?
And why should anybody redeem you? It is not my responsibility
to redeem you. I have not made you what you are; you have made
yourself what you are.
My function here is not that of a messiah who simply says, "Believe
in me and you are redeemed"…a very simple strategy:
"You have nothing to do with your personality change, transformation;
you have nothing to do at all, you just believe in me. Don't let
any doubt arise." Now, this is the whole strategy of belief.
You cannot avoid doubt; wherever belief exists, doubt is simply
suppressed. If there is no doubt you don't need any belief. It
is because of the doubt that you need belief, to suppress it,
to cover it. And the condition is that there should be no doubt;
you should believe in me without any doubt and I will redeem you.
Neither can you fulfill the condition, nor can you ask me, "Why
am I not redeemed?" The condition is such that it cannot
be fulfilled. And I am free to say that you have not fulfilled
the basic condition; the contract has not been fulfilled from
your side, what can I do? You agreed to believe in me indubitably,
which is absolutely impossible. Nobody can do it, it is not in
the nature of things.
Belief always exists hand in hand with doubt. It exists for doubt.
I have no belief at all in anything because I don't have any
doubt at all about anything. If there is no doubt, there is no
need for belief. The disease is not there; medicine is not required.
You go on pouring belief, more belief; but you are simply suppressing
doubt deeper and deeper into your unconscious. And the deeper
it goes, the more dangerous it is because you will become unaware
of it. One day you will think that you believe, that you are a
believer, that you have attained to faith—because your doubt
has gone so deep in your dark unconscious that you cannot see
it anymore. I would like you to see your doubt clearly. Rather
than repressing it by any belief system, bring it out into the
conscious mind, face it. And just by facing your doubt, it dissolves.
No belief is needed, it simply evaporates.
Doubt is not to be substituted with a belief. If you substitute
it with a belief, then you are in a very strange dilemma: just
scratch your belief a little bit—and there is doubt flowing,
fully alive. The belief is skin deep and underneath your blood
is flowing.
So basically my standpoint is: you are responsible for whatsoever
you are. If you are miserable, you are responsible. Don't throw
the responsibility on anybody else; otherwise you will never be
free of it…because how can you be free if I am responsible
for your misery? Then, unless I free you, you cannot be free;
it is in my hands. And if it is in my hands, it can be in somebody
else' hands.
Those who are with me have to understand, howsoever hard and
painful it is, that you and you alone are responsible for everything
that is happening to you, has happened to you, will happen to
you. Once you accept all your responsibility in its totality,
you become mature. You stop throwing tantrums, and you stop seeking
for messiahs. Then there is no need for any Jesus to save you.
Nor can any Jesus save you—he was exploiting your situation….
I am not to be included in any ego game—messiah, avatara,
paigambara, tirthankara; I have nothing to do with these people.
I am just an ordinary man, just like everybody else. If there
is any difference, it is not of quality; it is only of knowing.
I know myself; you don't know.
It is just like I am standing and looking at the sunrise and
you are standing by my side with closed eyes. The sun is rising
for you too, just as it is rising for me. It is so beautiful and
so colorful—not only for me, for you too. But what can the
sun do? You are standing with closed eyes. That is the only difference.
Is it much of a difference?
You just have to be shaken and told, "Just open your eyes.
It is morning, the night is over." unconc04
Many questions have come to me, asking why I insistently destroy
people's belief and faith in God. It is pure arithmetic: without
destroying God I cannot help you to destroy your ego. If there
is no God and existence can remain flowing, moving, growing, expanding;
nobody is controlling it, nobody is maintaining it, it is autonomous….
That's what I mean when I say there is no God. I am saying existence
is autonomous. Trees are growing of their own accord, birds are
flying of their own accord, the sun is rising of its own accord.
And it is beautiful that nobody is behind this beautiful existence,
turning it into a puppeteer's show. That's what the religions
teach—all the religions without exception—that you
are only a puppet. With God there, you cannot be anything more
than a puppet. The strings are in his hand….
I want you to be silent, meditative, searching inside yourself,
looking…is anyone there? And you will be surprised—there
is no one, just pure existence, autonomous. There is no entity
in you. You are part and parcel of the whole existence. You are
connected to the trees and to the rivers and to the ocean in a
thousand and one ways—visible, invisible. You are not separate.
false18
Even the very intelligent people in America I came across, and
I was surprised, I could not believe that a well educated man,
a professor in the university, tells me that Bible is the word
of God. I asked him, "Do you know that Hindus believe Vedas
are the words of God, Mohammedans believe that the Koran is the
word of God, and all the religions have their own holy book. On
what criterion you choose which one is right? Because they are
all contradicting each other. And on what grounds you can say
that Bible is the word of God?"
And his answer was so stupid. He said, "Because it is written
in the Bible. "
I said, "It is like a man who told to his friends that my
wife is the most beautiful woman in the world."
The friend said, "But how you came to know about it?"
He said, "My wife said it to me herself." last502
Why do you make such inflammatory epithets…such as "Pope
the Polack," "Christ the crackpot," "Mother
Teresa, the criminal."…
It works in many ways. Those are my devices. First, I am talking
to my own people. They are not hurt by what I am saying about
pope the Polack, Teresa the Terrible, Christ the Crackpot—nobody
is hurt. On the contrary, they start looking at things in a totally
new way—the way I want them to look at them.
I want outside people to get hurt, shocked. I want them to be
angry, hate-full, because it is a very fundamental principle of
psychology that if you can create hate in a man, it is very easy
to change it into love. Love and hate are not as different as
people think, and certainly they are not opposites. They are two
polarities of one energy, just like darkness and light.
So without going anywhere, just sitting in my room, I can manage
to give shocks all around the world, shake people in their sleep,
in their slumber. Because to me their Christianity is a kind of
opium, and their Hinduism is a kind of marijuana, and so on, so
forth. These people need to be shaken really badly.
And I will go on throwing ice-cold water in their eyes as long
as they don't open their eyes and jump out of bed. It is not a
question of persuasion.; you don't persuade a sleeping person
to wake up, because between a person who is awake and a person
who is asleep there is no possibility of communication. So whether
they hear me or not, I want them to be hate-full against me. That's
enough—I have done my job. All these people….
And there are almost one million sannyasins around the world.
Even in Soviet Russia, even in East Germany, I have my sannyasins.
Of course, they are underground sannyasins. From where are these
people coming? First they were shocked, first they were hurt,
but their shock and their hurt started a great question, a great
quest in their minds. They became suspicious about their own conditioning:
Perhaps Christ was a crackpot. Let us give it another thought.
And the pope is certainly a Polack, there are no two opinions
about it. You cannot find a thicker head than pope the Polack's,
because the world is suffering from overpopulation, and he is
preaching around the world against birth control, against the
pill, against abortion. This man—if I call him a criminal
I am not condemning him, only describing him. Perhaps he is the
greatest criminal alive. And the same is my attitude about the
Hindu leaders, shankaracharyas, Mohammedan leaders like Ayatollah
Khomeini—I call him Khomeiniac—because these are the
people who are insisting for more and more population on the earth.
Ethiopia is dying, India is dying; soon the whole third world
will be dying of starvation. And who will be responsible for it?
Mother Teresa will be responsible for it, the pope will be responsible
for it. In the eyes of the future, these people will be as criminal
as the popes of the middle ages are criminal in our eyes….
One infallible pope burns the woman alive, declares her a witch;
another infallible pope declares Joan of Arc a saint. The bones
are pulled out of the gave and worshipped.
Now these idiots—or you want me to be polite with them?
And they are dragging the whole world towards poverty. They have
a vested interest in poverty; they have to be exposed. Mother
Teresa wants more and more orphans in the world; otherwise who
is going to give her Nobel prizes and all kinds of awards and
titles? She is roaming around the world—I don't know when
she finds time for serving humanity—receiving rewards, awards,
titles, opening functions, conferences. I can't think when she
serves humanity. All she is doing is collecting Hindu and Mohammedan
orphans and converting them into Catholics. This is sheer politics
of numbers; she is a cunning politician. It is not even right
to call her a woman—she has no heart. She is simply a puppet
in the hands of the Vatican. last121
Are You especially against Christianity?
I hate to favor Christianity with any special attention but unfortunately
it deserves it. It is the ugliest manifestation of religion on
the earth, for many reasons….
I am saying this to make it clear to you that it is Christianity
which is responsible for giving science the incentive to war….
I am not paying special attention to Christianity, but it deserves
it. It has done so much harm, so much nuisance. It is impossible
to believe that people still go on keeping it alive. The churches
should be demolished, the Vatican should be completely removed.
There is no need of these people. Whatever they have done they
have done wrong. Other religions have also done wrong, but proportionately
they are nothing compared to Christianity.
It has been exploiting the poverty of people to convert them to
Christianity….
And if I have been criticizing Christianity it is not without
reason. The most important thing is that I am speaking within
a Christian context. If I were speaking in a Hindu context, I
would not be criticizing Christianity, I would be criticizing
Hinduism, or in a Buddhist context I would be criticizing Buddhism.
It would be useless to criticize Christianity in a Buddhist context
because those people would love it.
I am a person who impresses people and creates enemies, not
friends—that is not my policy. I would love the whole world
to be my enemy. But all these people are so cowardly that they
cannot honestly even accept that they are enemies. Every day dozens
of letters are received; they are praying for me, that God should
forgive me. These fools! They should pray to me that I should
forgive God and them. Why should God forgive me? If there is going
to be any trouble I am ready to take it.
One thing is certain: whether God forgives me or not, I am not
going to forgive Him. So they should pray to me, not to God. They
don't understand what they are saying. They go on writing letters,
"We pray to God that He should forgive you for what you are
saying."
There is no God. I am speaking against nobody. That's why I am
enjoying it, because if there was a God do you think I would enjoy
it? It would be trouble. It is sheer enjoyment—no trouble
at all. person18
Just now I had this news: pope the polack, addressing the youth
in Latin America, said, "My dear ones, beware of the devil.
The devil will tempt you with drugs, alcohol, and most particularly
premarital sex."
Now, who is this devil? I have never met him, he has never tempted
me. I don't think any of you have ever met the devil, or that
he has tempted you. Desires come from your own nature, it is not
some devil who is tempting you. But it is a strategy of religions
to throw the responsibility on an imaginary figure, the devil,
so you don't feel you are being condemned.
You are being condemned, but indirectly, not directly. He is
saying to you that you are the devil, but he has not the guts
even to say that. So he is saying that the devil is something
else—a separate agency, whose only function is to tempt
people….
I would like to say to you: don't be tempted by the popes. These
are the real evil ones. They will spoil your whole life. They
have spoiled the lives of millions of people. misery11
Just the other day, Sheela brought me the latest message to humanity
from pope the polack, a message of one hundred and thirty-nine
pages. Naturally it has to be one hundred and thirty-nine pages
because he has not left a single stupid thing unsaid. You will
be surprised that he has found some new sins which are not mentioned
in the Bible. Only a polack can do that; otherwise what were all
those Old Testament prophets, and then Jesus doing?
The polack has found new sins, but those sins are worth consideration.
One of the sins that he speaks of is the idea of class struggle:
to believe in the idea of class struggle is a sin, a major sin.
Now whether you believe in the class struggle or not, the class
struggle is there. There is a struggle between the rich and the
poor. It is not a question of your belief….
And this pope, the polack, says, "The idea of class struggle,
the very idea is a sin." This is a great discovery! And why
does he say it? The fear of communism—he is not courageous
enough to say that to believe in communism is a sin because the
whole philosophy of communism is based on the idea of class struggle….
And another thing even more marvellous: he says that nobody
can have a direct contact with God; that is a sin. You have to
go via the Catholic priest; you cannot confess directly, that
is not possible. God is not going to hear you. Your confession
is useless.
Can you see the strategy? The strategy is very complicated, but
simple to understand. The Catholic priest lives on your confessions.
The whole function of the priest disappears if you can have a
direct contact with God; then what is the need of the priesthood?…
True religion teaches you that you are part of this existence,
already connected with it, already one with it.
The pope is teaching that you are not connected, that you are
a lost soul; only through the priest can you be saved. ignor25
Just think: in the Christian heaven, what are the angels doing
for eternity? Just playing on their guitars—"alleluia,
alleluia, alleluia"—for eternity? Yes, in the afternoon
for the drive—by it is okay, but for eternity! This is too
much. And it is not entertainment, it is torture. I think people
in hell may be enjoying more variety of things because really
juicy people are all in hell. Only dry bones are in heaven….
I can challenge God to throw me into hell, with no problem,
with no fear, because I will manage to have a commune there. And
it would be really a great commune because such colorful people
would be there. person28
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