1987: “PUNE TWO"
After spending five months in Bombay
and resuming his daily schedule of talks in the home
of one of his disciples, on December 30, 1986, Osho
returns to the commune in Pune, which has been maintained
by Indian sannyasins in his Jive-year absence. When
he first arrives, local government officials and an
organization headed by the Hindu fundamentalist Vilas
Tupe (see assassination attempt on page 246) stage a
number of hostile actions against Osho and the commune.
After a few months, however—with the support of
Pune's Mayor Dhole Patil and with the help of friends
in the Indian government and judiciary—the commune
is allowed to function more or less normally, with relatively
few incidents of overt harassment or interference. Just
yesterday I received another letter from the mayor of
Pune: With my deepest love and pleasure I wish to state
that Osho, presently residing at 17 Koregaon Park, Poona,
in my home constituency, is undoubtedly an enlightened
person. His authoritative views on religion are most
needed in these turbulent times. He is one of the well-versed,
great mystics and a spiritual master of our time. His
conduct and loving behavior cannot and has never created
any legal problems, nor has he ever been found guilty
in any provisions of criminal law. In fact, his teachings
are conducive to creating a very peaceful and tranquil
atmosphere in the present circumstances when the country
as a whole is passing through a very disturbed state.
By the end of 1987, thousands of sannyasins and visitors
are coming through the commune gates every day. Osho
continues to suffer periods of ill health, plagued by
pain in his bones and joints, difficulties with his
vision and sensitivity to light, lack of appetite, and
recurring ear infections. He is often unable to appear
for his daily talks for days or weeks at a time. And
in his talks, he often refers to the fact that he will
not be physically present forever, and urges his listeners
to make meditation their first priority. In March, he
begins a "stop exercise" as he enters and
leaves the meditation hall, where he leads the gathering
in dancing with wild music and then suddenly stops for
a few moments before resuming the dance. I am trying
to get you to come back home. You have gone far away,
wandering after ephemeral things, wandering after dreams.
And I want you to come back home—because that
which can give you contentment, that which can give
you fulfillment is not out there, it is in here; it
is not in any other time, but now. And the feeling of
a stop—a total stop—is nothing but an experience
of herenow. I can give you only the taste, and once
you have got the taste, then you will be in search of
it. Then there is no way to prevent you. The most fundamental
thing is a taste. You have heard words, beautiful words,
but they have not driven you into a mad search. I want
to give not only words to you, but some content. And
that is possible only by giving you some taste. And
the time is ripe. For so many of my sannyasins, the
first flowers of spring have started showing. More and
more flowers will be blossoming. And you have to be
very impatiently patient—with a deep longing,
but without any demands. Because I cannot be here forever.
And I have waited long enough; now it is time that I
should start giving you the taste. Words I have given
you many—that was a preparation. Seeds I have
sown many, and now that the spring is very close, you
have to be courageous, and total, and intensively with
me—in my silence, in my joy. It is time that the
duality between you and me is dropped. Those who are
intelligent should drop it immediately. Those who are
a little less intelligent will take a little time. I
have a little time more to linger on your shore . .
. but it cannot be very long. I CANNOT BE ALWAYS WITH
YOU. I WOULD LOVE TO, BUT EXISTENCE does not allow it.
Existence gives only so much rope, and it is good; otherwise
you will start taking me for granted. One day I will
not be among you. It is good that once in a while I
am absent, so you can start learning that what happens
in my absence is your reality. When I am with you, you
become overwhelmed with me. You forget yourself. And
you have not to forget yourself! You have to remember
yourself, because only through remembrance will you
be able to transform yourself. It is natural that you
miss my presence; hence I am not condemning it. But
you are in search of something beyond—beyond the
normal, the natural— something transcendental.
You have to learn the way, and the way has to be traveled
alone. I cannot come with you. I can show you the way,
I can show you the moon. But my fingers are not the
moon, and I cannot continue to show you the moon. Sooner
or later you have to forget my fingers and you have
to look at the moon yourself. You have to follow the
path alone. Naturally when I was not coming daily, morning
and evening, to be with you, you started feeling a kind
of breakdown. It was not a breakdown; it was simply
that your reality was surfacing. It had not been getting
the opportunity to surface. I was so much with you that
you had gone into the shadow, into the background. I
had become more real to you than yourself. When I was
not coming, in my absence your reality was exposed to
you. It is good, because unless you know what you are,
where you are, your pilgrimage cannot begin. So those
days were of great importance. Remember: whatever you
find within yourself, however much rubbish it may be,
it is your reality. It can be cleaned, it can be dropped;
you can move away from it. But before anything can be
done about it, you have to know it. That is the first
and the most significant thing. My APPROACH TO YOUR
GROWTH IS BASICALLY TO MAKE YOU INDE-pendent of me.
Any kind of dependence is a slavery, and the spiritual
dependence is the worst slavery of all. I have been
making every effort to make you aware of your individuality,
your freedom, your absolute capacity to grow without
any help from anybody. Your growth is something intrinsic
to your being. It does not come from outside; it is
not an imposition, it is an unfolding. All the meditation
techniques that I have given to you are not dependent
on me—my presence or absence will not make any
difference—they are dependent on you. It is not
my presence, but your presence that is needed for them
to work. It is not my being here but your being here,
your being in the present, your being alert and aware,
that is going to help.
POISONED IN RONALD REAGAN 'S AMERICA
After
a period of seven weeks during which doctors were unable
to cure Osho of an ear infection and he was very ill,
he appears on November 6, 1987, to announce that his
doctors believe he was poisoned with thallium during
the time he was imprisoned in the United States. My
personal physician, Dr. Amrito, immediately informed
all sannyasin doctors around the world and asked them
to contact the best experts about poisoning, because
his own analysis was that unless I have been poisoned
there is no possibility to explain why my body has lost
all resistance. And as this idea became stronger in
his mind, step by step he started searching into the
matter and he found all the symptoms that can happen
only if some kind of poison has been given to me. Since
those twelve days in the American prisons, all sleep
has disappeared. Many things started to happen in the
body that were not happening before: disappearance of
all appetite, food seeming to be absolutely without
taste, a churning feeling in the stomach, nausea, a
desire to vomit... no feeling of thirst, but a tremendous
sense as if one is uprooted. Something in the nervous
system also seems to have been affected. At times there
has been a sensation of tingling all over the body which
was very strong—particularly in both my hands—and
a twitching of the eyelids. The day I entered the jail
I was one hundred and fifty pounds; today I am only
one hundred and thirty pounds. And just three months
ago, the bone in my right hand started hurting tremendously.
These are all symptoms of certain poisons. Dr. Amrito
immediately informed all the doctors who are my sannyasins
to approach all the best poison experts in the world.
And one of the doctors, Dr. Dhyan Yogi, immediately
took my blood samples, urine samples, samples of my
hair, and went to England, to Germany, to the best experts.
The European experts suggest that after two years there
is no poison that can be detected in the body, but all
the symptoms show that a certain poison has been given.
The European experts in England and Germany have suggested
thallium, which is part of a family of poisons of heavy
metals. It disappears from the body in eight weeks'
time but leaves its effects and destroys the body's
resistance against diseases. And all the symptoms that
I have told you are part of thallium poisoning. These
seven weeks you were not aware . . . you were simply
thinking I was sick. Dr. Premda, my eye surgeon, had
immediately rushed from Germany with the best medications,
but nothing helped against the poisons except my meditations—the
only medicine that can transcend all that belongs to
matter. These seven weeks I have been lying in darkness
almost the whole day and night, silently witnessing
the body and keeping my consciousness unshadowed by
anything. I was struggling with death, it was a fight
between death and your love. And you should celebrate
that your love has been victorious.
It would have been immensely painful for me to leave
you in this beautiful state when you have started growing
upward. I would like my people to transform themselves
and through them I would like to bring authentic civilization
and humanity to this beautiful planet. There is only
one religion, and that is the religion of love. There
is only one god, and that is the god of celebration,
of life, of rejoicing. This whole earth is one and the
whole humanity is one. We are parts of each other. I
have no complaint against those who have poisoned me.
I can forgive them easily. They certainly do not know
what they go on doing. It is said that history repeats
itself. It is not history that repeats itself; it is
the unconsciousness of man, the blindness of man that
repeats itself. The day man will be conscious, alert,
and aware there will not be any repetition anymore.
Socrates will not be poisoned, Jesus will not be crucified,
Al-Hillaj Man-soor will not be murdered and butchered.
And these are our best flowers, they are our highest
peaks. They are our destinies, they are our future.
They are our intrinsic potential that has become actual.
I am sure you will not have any anger in your hearts
or any hatred for anyone, but just an understanding
and a loving forgiveness. That is the only authentic
prayer. And only this kind of prayerfulness can raise
humanity to higher levels of consciousness. I have absolute
inner certainty: They may have been able to poison my
body, my nervous system, but they cannot destroy my
consciousness, they cannot poison my being. And it was
good that they have given me a chance to see myself
beyond my body, beyond my mind. These seven weeks have
been a fire test. Without your knowing you have always,
each moment of these seven weeks, been a tremendous
help to me. Without your love it would not have been
possible for me to overcome the poison, because without
your love there would be no need for me even to struggle.
I am fulfilled and absolutely contended; I have arrived
home. But I see you are stumbling, groping, and it will
be very heartless and uncompassion-ate for me to leave
you in this situation. I would like in all your lives
a sunrise, the birds singing and the flowers opening.
Other than that, I don't have any reason to be here
at all. Remember it: I am here for you. That remembrance
will help you not to go astray. That remembrance will
help you to be aware of the uncivilized world in which
we are living, in this madhouse that we call humanity.
It will go on reminding you that we have to give birth
to a new man and to a new humanity. This is the tremendous
challenge. Those who have guts and intelligence and
a desire and a longing to touch the farthest stars. . . only those very few people have been able to understand
me, have been able to become my fellow travelers. I
don't have any followers—I have only lovers and
friends and fellow travelers. I would like you all to
reach to the same beatitude, to the same blissfulness,
to the same ecstasy that has become my very heartbeat.
It is also the heartbeat of the whole universe.
THE WORLD ACADEMY OF SCIENCES FOR CREATIVITY
On January 17, 1988, Osho talks about a vision for the commune that involves the creation
of a meeting place where people can explore both the
outer science of matter and the inner science of meditation.
It is a proposal he has talked about often in the past,
but now he refines it even more. I want this ashram
slowly to develop into a World Academy of Sciences for
Creativity. This will be perhaps the greatest synthesis
ever. Your search for religious truth in no way hinders
your search for the objective reality, because the areas
are absolutely separate; they don't overlap. You can
be a scientist and a meditator. In fact, the more you
go deeper into meditation, the more clarity, the more
intelligence, the more genius you will find flowering
in you, which can create a totally new science. The
old science was created as a reaction against religion.
The new science I'm talking about is not a reaction
against anything, but an overflowing energy, intelligence,
creativity. Politics corrupted science because its own
interest was only war. Religions could not accept science
because they were all superstitious, and science was
going to demolish all their gods and all their superstitions.
Science has passed these three hundred years in a very
difficult situation, fighting on the one hand with religion
and on the other hand unconsciously becoming a slave
to the politicians. I want this place to grow and I
am making arrangements for a world academy of sciences
and arts totally devoted to life-affirmative goals.
The science that can create Hiroshima and Nagasaki and
destroy thousands of people, birds, trees—without
any reason, just because the politicians wanted to see
whether atomic energy works or not—the same science
can create more food, more life, better health, more
intelligence in all fields of life. But it should be
taken out of the hands of politicians and it should
not bother about religions. Nobel Prize winners, eminent
scientists, artists of different dimensions will constitute
the academy, and they will make efforts to change science's
whole trend of being destructive. Our sannyasins—and
there are many who are scientists, artists, physicians— will help the academy. We will arrange scholarships,
and people from all over the world can come and study
a new way of science, a new way of art that affirms
life, that creates more love in humanity, and that prepares
for the ultimate revolution.
That ultimate revolution is a single world government—because
while the world does not have one government, you cannot
stop wars. Each nation has to have its own military,
its own defenses, its own weapons, and there is competition
as to who has more destructive power. But once there
is one world government there is no need of any armies,
air forces, or navies; all these can be transformed
into services dedicated to life, to the whole of humanity.
And the World Academy of Sciences will be the first
step, because if we can take scientists from all over
the world slowly out of the grip of the politicians,
all the power of the politicians will be finished. They
are not powerful; the scientist is the power behind
them. And the scientist is in a difficulty, because
there is no institute in the world that will give the
scientist enough of the resources that he needs to work
with. The days are long gone when Galileo could make
a small lab in his own house, and scientists could work
independently without any support from outside. Now
science is so complex and has grown so many branches—and
each branch has become a science in itself—that
unless he is supported by a government or a very powerful
institution that has money, that has intelligence, that
has dedicated students, the scientist cannot work. It
seems existence is arranging for the money that we will
need to create the academy. Another very important man
in Japan, who holds many foundations for humanitarian
services, is also coming to see whether it is possible
to bring money from those many foundations to create
this world institute. And it will have support from
all over the world, from all the scientists without
exception, because now everybody is seeing that they
are serving death, not life. We can have the greatest
library for scientific research and we can have sannyasins
working, studying. The synthesis will be that everybody
who is working in the institute will also be meditating,
because unless meditation goes deep in you, your love
sources remain dormant. Your blissfulness, your joy
remain unblossomed. Man is not for science, science
is for man. But scientists are in a difficulty. They
cannot work individually; they have to work under a
government. The government's interest is war, and no
religion is going to support them because their findings
go on destroying religious superstitions. There is an
immense vacuum that I want to fill by creating a world
academy absolutely devoted to life, love, laughter—absolutely
devoted to creating a better humanity, a better and
more pure, healthy atmosphere, to restoring the disturbed
ecology. We are finding sources of money to purchase
the whole of Koregaon Park. And one thing is good about
India: things are cheaper, and people can come from
every country, be here for three or four months, and
then in eight months back in their country they can
earn enough and come back. There is no need for them
to work here. Here is their temple of meditation. And
I want all the dimensions— the best musicians
to teach you music, the best artists to teach you painting,
the best poets to teach you the experience of poetry
and the expression of it. I am an incurable dreamer.
But I can say to you that whatever I have dreamed in
my life, I have managed it, without doing anything.
Just a proposal to existence . . . |
