AND
IN 1986,
HE EMPHASIZES AGAIN THAT THE OUTER SYMBOLS OF sannyas
are unimportant:
Man's mind is a very immature mind. It starts clinging
with outer symbols. That has happened to all the religions
of the world. They all started well, but they all
went astray. And the reason was that the outer was
emphasized so much that people completely forgot the
inner. To fulfill the outer was such life-absorbing
task that there was no space left even to remember
your inward journey, which is basically the meaning
of religiousness.
I want my people to understand it clearly. Neither
your clothes nor your outer disciplines nor anything
that has been given to you by tradition and you have
accepted it just on belief is going to help. The only
thing that can create a revolution in you is going
beyond the mind into the world of consciousness. Except
that, nothing is religious.
To begin with, and with a world that is too much obsessed
with outer things, I had to start sannyas also with
outer things—change your clothes to orange,
wear a mala, meditate—but the emphasis was only
on meditation. But I found that people can change
their clothes very easily, but they cannot change
their minds. They can wear the mala, but they cannot
move into their consciousness. And because they are
in orange clothes, wearing a mala, having a new name,
they start believing that they have become a sannyasin.
Sannyas is not so cheap. Hence it is time and you
are mature enough that beginning phase is over. If
you like the orange color, the red color, perfectly
good—it cannot do any harm, but it is not a
help either. If you love the mala, if you love the
locket with my picture on it, it is simply your ornament,
but it has nothing to do with religion. So now I reduce
religion to its absolute essentiality. And that is
meditation.
THE DAY I STARTED INITIATING PEOPLE, My ONLY FEAR
WAS, "WILL 1 be able to someday change my followers
into my friends?" The night before, I could not
sleep. Again and again I thought, "How am I going
to manage it? A follower is not supposed to be a friend."
I said to myself that night in Kulu Manali in the
Himalayas, "Don't be serious. You can manage
anything, although you don't know the ABC of managerial
science."
I recall a book by Bern, The Managerial Revolution.
I read it not because the tide contained the word
revolution, but because the title contained the word
managerial. Although I loved the book, naturally I
was disappointed because it was not what I was looking
for. I was never able to manage anything. So that
night in Kulu Manali I laughed.
THE
WOODLANDS
Osho moves to a large apartment in the Woodlands complex
in Bombay, where he lives until March 1974. Now that
Osho is settled, he is able to work more closely with
individuals. He meets people individually or in small
groups, and gives regular talks, including his talks
on the one hundred and twelve meditation techniques
of the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, which he calls "The
Book of Secrets." Sannyasins and other seekers
meet every morning on a nearby beach to do Dynamic Meditation
together. In addition, Osho still occasionally hosts
meditation camps in the countryside. More and more Westerners
begin to arrive to meet him, and many are initiated
into sannyas.
I am more emphatically interested in meditation than
in discussions. These discussions are just to give you
a push, to satisfy you in an intellectual way, just
to give you a feeling that whatsoever you are doing
is very intellectual, rational. It is not.
So whatsoever I have been saying is in a way quite the
opposite of what I have been trying to pull you into.
My approach, as far as these discussions are concerned,
is rational, just to satisfy you, just to give you some
toys to play with so that you can be persuaded into
something else. That something else is not rational;
that is irrational.
Our meditation is just a jump into irrational existence.
And existence is irrational—it is mystic, it is
a mystery. So please don't cling to what I have said
to you; rather, cling to whatsoever I have persuaded
you to do. Do it, and someday you will realize that
whatsoever I have said is meaningful. But if you go
on clinging to what I have said, it may give you knowledge,
it may make you more knowledgeable, but you will not
attain to knowing. And whatsoever I have said may even
become a hindrance.
1971: FROM ACHARYA TO BHAGWAN
In May 1971, Osho changes his name from Acharya Shree
Rajneesh to Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and for the first
time publicly acknowledges that he is enlightened.
Many people have asked me why I kept silent about the
fact I became enlightened in 1953. For almost twenty
years I never said anything about it to anybody, unless
somebody suspected it himself, unless somebody said
to me on his own, "We feel that something has happened
to you. We don't know what it is, but one thing is certain:
that something has happened and you are no more the
same as we are—and you are hiding it."
In those years not more than ten people asked me, and
even then I avoided them as much as I could unless I
felt that their desire was genuine. I told them only
when they had promised to keep it a secret. And they
all fulfilled their promise. Now they are all sannyasins,
but they all kept it a secret. I said, "You wait.
Wait for the right moment. Only then will I declare
it."
I have learned much from the past buddhas. If Jesus
had kept a little quieter about being the Son of God
it would have been far more beneficial to humanity.
I had made it a point that until I stopped traveling
in the country I was not going to declare it; otherwise
I would have been killed—I would not be here.
Once I had finished with traveling, mixing with the
masses, moving from one town to another . . . and there
was not a single bodyguard. It would have been no problem
to kill me, it would have been so simple. But for almost
twenty years I kept absolutely silent about it. I declared
it only when I saw that now I had gathered enough people
who could understand it. I declared it only when I knew
that now I could create my own small world and I was
no longer concerned with the crowds and the masses and
the stupid mob.
1973-1975: ACTIVE MEDITATIONS AND MUSIC
Osho brings a five-piece conga drum band to a July 1973
meditation camp, and when he finally settles in Pune
he works with disciples to compose music to accompany
each of the active meditations he has developed.
Your mind is in chaos. That chaos has to be brought
out, acted out. Chaotic music can be helpful, so if
you are meditating and chaotic music is played, it will
help to bring out your chaos. You will flow in it, you
will become unafraid of expression. And this chaotic
music will hit your chaotic mind within and will bring
it out. It helps.
Rock, jazz, or other music that is chaotic in a way
also helps something to come out, and that something
is repressed sexuality. I am concerned with all your
repressions. Modern music is more concerned just with
your repressed sex, but there is a similarity. However,
I am not concerned only with your repressed sex; I am
concerned with all your repressions, sexual or not sexual.
. . .
This state of mind is neurotic. The whole society is
ill. That is why I so much insist on chaotic meditation.
Relieve yourself, act out whatsoever society has forced
on you, whatsoever situations have forced on you. Act
them out, relieve yourself of them, go through a catharsis.
The music helps.
1974-1981 "PUNE ONE"
On March 21, 1974, exactly twenty-one years after his
enlightenment, Osho moves to Koregaon Park in Pune,
where two residences in adjoining properties of six
acres have been purchased. He holds interviews on the
lawn only with sannyasins arriving or leaving and no
longer meets with individuals seeking advice or private
interviews.
It is very deliberately that I have become inaccessible.
I was very accessible, but then by and by I began to
feel that I couldn't help; it became almost impossible
to help. For example, if I give you one hour, you talk
rubbish. If I give you one minute you say exactly the
thing that is needed—that's how mind functions.
If I am available to you the whole day, I am not available
at all. If you have to wait eight days or ten days,
that waiting is needed for a certain tuning in yourself,
for certain significant problems to arise.
Sometimes I see that if you have a problem and you can
come immediately, you will bring me trivia. During the
day there are a thousand and one problems arising—they
are not significant, but in the moment they appear significant.
If you have to wait just one hour, the problem changes—then
you bring another problem. If you are allowed to bring
all your problems you will be in a mess, because you
yourself will not be able to know what is needed, what
is significant. So this is part of the whole process.
THE WAY OF THE WHITE CLOUDS
In May 1974, Osho gives a series of discourses in English,
in which he explains his approach, his view of the master-disciple
relationship, and his vision for the development of
his work in Pune. The discourses are published under
the title My Way: The Way of the White Clouds and attract
many seekers from the West.
A white cloud drifts wherever the wind leads—it
doesn't resist, it doesn't fight. A white cloud is not
a conqueror, and still it hovers over everything. You
cannot conquer it, you cannot defeat it. It has no mind
to conquer—that's why you cannot defeat it.
Once you are fixed to a goal, purpose, destiny, meaning,
once you have got that madness of reaching somewhere,
then problems will arise. And you will be defeated,
that is certain. Your defeat is in the very nature of
existence itself.
A white cloud has nowhere to go. It moves, it moves
everywhere. All dimensions belong to it, all directions
belong to it. Nothing is rejected. Everything is, exists,
in a total acceptability. Hence I call my way "the
way of the white clouds." The white cloud's way
is a pathless path, a wayless way. Moving, but not with
a fixed mind—moving without a mind . . .
So I am the white cloud, and the whole effort is to
make you also white clouds drifting in the sky. Nowhere
to go, coming from nowhere, just being there this very
moment—perfect.
I don't teach you any ideals, I don't teach you any
oughts. I don't say to you be this, become that. My
whole teaching is simply this: Whatsoever you are, accept
it so totally that nothing is left to be achieved, and
you will become a white cloud.
A NEW PHASE"
In June 1974, Osho introduces the first meditation camp
in Pune with the announcement that a new phase of his
work will begin. From now on he will work only with
authentic seekers. And for the first time, Osho does
not lead the meditations in person. Instead, his empty
chair is brought into the meditation hall.
This camp is going to be different in many ways. This
night I start a completely new phase of my work. You
are fortunate to be here because you will be witnesses
to a new type of inner work. I must explain it to you
because tomorrow morning the journey starts.
. . . Another new thing, I will not be there; only my
empty chair will be there. But don't miss me, because
in a sense I will be there, and in a sense there has
always been an empty chair before you. Right now the
chair is empty because there is no one sitting in it.
I am talking to you but there is no one who is talking
to you. It is difficult to understand, but when the
ego disappears, processes can continue. Talking can
continue, sitting and walking and eating can continue,
but the doer has disappeared. Even now, the chair is
empty. But I was always with you up till now in all
the camps because you were not ready. Now I feel you
are ready. And you must be helped to get more ready
to work in my absence, because knowing that I am physically
present you may feel a certain enthusiasm that is false.
Just knowing that I am present you may do things that
you never wanted to do; just to impress me you may exert
yourself more. That is not of much help, because only
that can be helpful which comes out of your being. My
chair will be there, I will be watching you, but you
feel completely free. And don't think that I am not
there, because that may depress you, and then that depression
will disturb your meditation.
And this too has to be remembered: I cannot always be
in this physical body with you; one day or another the
physical vehicle has to be dropped. My work is complete
as far as I am concerned. If I am carrying this physical
vehicle, it is just for you; someday, it has to be dropped.
Before it happens you must be ready to work in my absence,
or in my nonphysical presence, which means the same.
And once you can feel me in my absence you are free
of me, and then even if I am not here in this body the
contact will not be lost.
It always happens when a buddha is there: His physical
presence becomes so meaningful, and then he dies and
everything is shattered.
My chair can be empty; you can feel my absence. And
remember, only when you can feel my absence can you
feel my presence. If you cannot see me while my physical
vehicle is not there, you have not seen me at all.
This is my promise: I will be there in the empty chair,
the empty chair will not really be empty. So behave!
The chair will not be empty, but it is better that you
learn to be in contact with my nonphysical being. That
is a deeper, more intimate touch and contact.
That is why I say a new phase of my work starts with
this camp—and I am calling it a samadhi sadhana
shibir. It is not only meditation, it is absolute ecstasy
that I am going to teach to you. It is not only the
first step, it is the last.
COMMENTARIES AND RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS
From July 1974, Osho continues to give discourses every
morning until 1981, speaking alternate months in Hindi
or English. He comments on the teachings of enlightened
mystics in many spiritual traditions: Tao, Zen, Christianity,
Hassidism, Sufism, the Bauls, Hindu mystics, Tibetan
Buddhism, Tantra, etc. On alternate days he answers
questions submitted to him by his audience. Each series
of ten days is published as one book—over two
hundred and forty books in seven years.
You have to search for your own path; each one has to
search for his own path. I will make all the paths available
to you, so you can see and feel. And when the right
path happens you will immediately see great joy arising
in you. That is indicative; that shows that your climate
has arrived, that this was the time you were waiting
for, that this is your spring.
I AM PROCLAIMING A NEW RELIGION—THE ESSENTIAL
RELIGION. In Islam it is known as Sufism, in Buddhism
it is known as Zen, in Judaism it is known as Hassidism—the
essential core. But I speak your language, I speak the
way you understand, the way you can understand. I speak
a very religionless language. I speak as if I am not
religious at all. That's what is needed in this world.
This twentieth century needs a religion completely free
from all kinds of superstitions, utterly nude, naked. |
