/lit/ - Literature

>>16705787
>deluded osho poster

Our so-called wise people are in the same boat. They are not a bit different from you. The people you go to for advice - the pundits, the priests, the scholars - are themselves in the dark. Of course they are more informed than you, but it is not a question of information. Wisdom comes through transformation, not through information.

Bodhidharma says:

When you observe your delusions, you will know that they are baseless and not dependable. In this way you can cut confusion and doubt. This is what I call wisdom.

When you observe your delusions as delusions you are finished with them. The moment you know that something is a dream you are free of it. Nothing else is needed to be done.

That's why I insist for my sannyasins that there is no need to go anywhere else. Live in the world, but become aware. Just becoming aware is being a sannyasin. No need to renounce, no need to escape anywhere. Become aware and you will see what is illusion, what is dream. And whatever is known as illusion disappears. Nothing else needs to be done.

A frank female rebel named Glutz
Disdained any ifs, ands, or buts.
When they asked what she'd need
to be totally freed
of her hang-up, her answer was, "Nuts!"

Everybody is in need of nuts, because everybody is nuts. Mad people are in need of other mad people, because only mad people can support your illusions. You support their illusions, they support your illusions. That is what is called friendship, love, in the ordinary world: companionship.

A friend in need is a friend indeed. And when is the need? When your illusions start disappearing he helps you to hold on, to cling hard to them. He does not allow you to let go of your illusions. Whatever happens, he helps you to remain the same as you have always been. He does not allow you to change.

Life is trying to change you every moment, but you have so many friends, protectors, parents, family, teachers. The whole management of the government, the church, is such that it helps you to remain as you are. It is a great conspiracy to keep people dreaming, because nobody wants you to be awake.

It is dangerous because people who have become awakened have always proved dangerous to the status quo, to the established church, state, society, to the establishment as such. The awakened people have always proved a kind of nuisance because they start helping other people to become awake.

Pain is a part of growth and is very necessary. Nobody can grow without pain, so if you want to grow, you have to accept it. If you don't grow, pain may not be there, but suffering will be. And that is the difference between suffering and pain.

Pain is beautiful because it has a potential to grow, and it is something on the way. Suffering is ugly, impotent, barren - nothing comes out of it. One goes on suffering and suffering and suffering, but nothing comes out of it; it is absolutely barren. Always choose pain, but never choose suffering. And that is the difference - you understand me? In the dictionary there may be no difference between pain and suffering, but in life there is a tremendous difference. Pain is beautiful - accept it, be courageous. Nothing is going to happen out of suffering so never accept it.

Karl Marx, in his book, The Communist Manifesto, has beautiful lines at the end - in a different context, but they have significance. He says, "Proletariat of the world, unite." Poor people of the world unite, because you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. So why wait?

I will not say that to the poor people, but I will say to the spiritually poor people, "You have nothing to lose and everything to gain."

The ordinary poor person has much to lose - Karl Marx is wrong on that point. He has his freedom, his individuality. Karl Marx had never thought about these things. He thought only about money - that the poor man has no money - but the poor man has an individuality of his own. He has freedom and freedom of expression. At least he is not a slave. He may be a beggar but he has something to lose, and in the Soviet Union he has lost it. He has lost his freedom, he has lost his individuality. And what has he gained? In seventy years, he is just as poor as ever.

But to the spiritually poor_the spiritual proletariat have nothing to lose. And there is no question of being united. I say, "Spiritual proletariat, meditate. You have nothing to lose but everything to gain."

And it is not a question of being united because we are not going to fight with anyone. Unity is needed for fighting. Spirituality is not a fight; it needs no unity. That's why I say there is no need for organized religions.

What is the need for organization? Each individual has to inquire into himself - the truth, the reality. Organization cannot help. It can hinder certainly, it does hinder. Its interest is not that people should become spiritual giants. Its effort is that people should remain retarded so that they can be sent into religious wars, crusades, jihads, killing each other - and they are all killing each other for religious reasons.

Religion has nothing to do with killing, nothing to do with fighting, nothing to do with conquering lands. It has something to do with inquiring into your own inner space. It is an individual phenomenon - with no organizations, no unity.

You have nothing to lose. You don't have individuality - you can get it through meditation. You don't have freedom - because your mind is your slavery. You can get freedom if you can put your mind aside.

A gossip-creating animal. Aristotle has defined man as a rational being. Man is not rational and it is good that he is not. Man is ninety-nine per cent irrational. It is good that he is because through irrationality all that is beautiful and lovely exists. Through reason, mathematics; through “irreason,” poetry. Through reason, science; through “irreason,” religion. Through reason, the market, money, rupees, dollars; through “irreason,” love, singing, dancing. No, it is good that man is not a rational being. Man is irrational.

Many definitions have been tried. I would like to say that man is a gossip-creating animal. He creates myths and all myths are gossip, puranas. He creates religions, myths, stories about existence. Since the very beginning of humanity, man has been creating beautiful mythology. He creates God. He creates that “God created the world.” He creates beautiful myths. He weaves, goes on weaving newer and newer myths around and around. Man is a myth-creating animal. Life will be absolutely boring if there is no myth around it.

That is the trouble for the modern age. All the old myths have been dropped. Foolish rationalists argued against them too much. They have been dropped because if you argue against a myth, the myth is indefensible. It cannot defend itself. It is very vulnerable, it is very delicate. If you start fighting with it, you will destroy it, but by destroying it, you will destroy something beautiful in the human heart. It is not the myth, the myth is just symbolic – deep are the roots in the heart. If you kill the myth, you kill the heart.

Now all over the world, those same rationalists who killed all the myths feel that there is no meaning in life. No poetry, no reason to be happy, no cause to celebrate. All festivity has disappeared. Without myth, the world will be just a marketplace, all temples will disappear. Without myth, all relationships will be bargains and there will be no love in them. Without myth you will be alone in a vast emptiness.

Unless you are enlightened you cannot live that way, otherwise you will feel meaningless. Deep anxiety will arise and anguish will enter your being. You will start committing suicide. You will start finding some way or other – drugs, alcohol, sex, anything – to drown yourself, so you can forget yourself because life seems to be meaningless.

Myth gives meaning. Myth is nothing but a beautiful gossip, but it helps you to live. Unless you become so capable of living without any gossiping, it helps you to travel, to journey in the world. It gives a human atmosphere around you, otherwise the world is very stony. Just think: Indians go to the rivers, to the Ganges and worship. That is a myth, otherwise the Ganges is just a river. But through a myth the Ganges becomes the mother and when a Hindu goes to the Ganges it is a tremendous delight to him.

You ask: "What is spirituality?" First one should ask, "Who am I?" First one should ask, "What is this consciousness in me?" But we make a philosophical question out of an existential one. The existential is forgotten and the philosophical becomes very significant: "What is spirituality?"

Spirituality is not something that can be defined, is not something that can be answered; it is something that you have to explore. And the right beginning will be, don't ask such stupid questions. Start with something sensible. Ask, "Who am I?"

And I cannot answer that question. You have to ask within yourself, "Who am I?" Go on using that question as a digging instrument within your being. Just as a person digs a well, one has to dig a well in oneself because there are layers and layers of conditioning, layers and layers of knowledge. Unless you have thrown all those layers out you will not know your own being, your own center.

The Indian mind is the most rotten in the world because it is the most ancient in the world. It has existed for at least ten thousand years; it has forgotten how to die. It does not know how to live; it has forgotten to die. It is in a kind of limbo, it is in a kind of coma breathing; not dead, not alive either. And it asks great questions, but those questions arise out of borrowed knowledge. "What is spirituality? What is enlightenment?" All bullshit! There is no spirituality. There is no enlightenment. To know this is to be enlightened. To be just ordinary: to live, to enjoy, to love, to dance, to sing, to create the very ordinary existence with an extraordinary intensity, with passion, that is enlightenment.

In India, in the ancient Rig Veda, there is talk of soma. Scientists think that soma is something like LSD. Scientists think it must have been a kind of mushroom that has disappeared from the Himalayas because of the change in the climate or something. Or maybe it has not disappeared, maybe people have just forgotten about it. It may be still growing somewhere in the deep valleys of the Himalayas and we have simply forgotten what it is. Maybe the ancient seers knowingly helped humanity to forget about it; it may have proved too dangerous.

Aldous Huxley says that soma was the ultimate drug, and in the future when we will have discovered the ultimate LSD we will again call it soma. But you will be surprised to know that in Sanskrit soma is another name for moon. Hence, Monday in Hindi is called somwar, the day of the moon. Soma is another name for the moon; it is not a mushroom, it is not some kind of LSD, it is not a drug. It is a secret science of getting in communion with the moon. And just as the ocean is affected by the moon, if you can get the energy back from the moon, you will be surprised: great juice, great nectar, showers on you - you can be drunk without getting drunk on any drug.

The moon can affect you to the very core of your being, and it will make you cool and calm because the moon is the feminine energy. Just as when you embrace a woman that you love and suddenly you feel great calm and quietude arising in you, exactly the same happens on a greater scale when energy returns to you from the moon.

The moon is the feminine principle, just as the sun is the masculine principle. The moon is yin, the sun is yang. The moon can mother you. There is no need to go in search to the Himalayan valleys for some mushroom; that mushroom is always there in the sky - it is the moon. You have to learn the secret of how to get energy back from the moon. There have been secret methods to get energy from the moon and from the sun too.

>>15027637
You are here with me - this is trust. When I am no longer here, your children may be with me. That will be faith. Trust happens only with a living master, faith happens with dead masters who are no longer there. The first disciples have the religion.

By and by, the second and third generation loses the religion, it becomes a sect. You simply follow because you are born into it. It is a duty, not a love. It is a social code. It helps, but it hasn't gone deep in you. It brings nothing to you; it is not a happening. It is not a depth unfolding in you - it is just a surface, a face. Just go and look in the church: the Sunday people attend, they even pray. But they are just waiting for it to finish.

A small child was sitting in church. He was just four years old and had come for the first time. His mother asked him how he liked it.

He replied, "The music is good, but the commercial is too long."

It is a commercial when you have no trust. Shraddha is right trust; faith is wrong trust. Don't take religion from somebody else. You cannot borrow it; that is a deception. You are getting it without paying for it, and everything has to be paid for. And to attain asampragyata samadhi is not cheap. You have to pay the full cost, and the full cost is your total being.