Osho on Acceptance, Total Acceptance, Tathata

Osho - Acceptance is one of the most beautiful words. Buddhists, the followers of Buddha, have a term for it which is even deeper than the English word ‘acceptance’; it is tathata. tathata means saying ‘yes’ so totally that in your being there is no division. You become one in your yes. You say ‘yes’ so totally that there exists no ‘no’ inside you, no denial.

Tathata, or total acceptance, is not a majority decision. It is not parliamentary, it is total. It is not that the major part of your mind, the major part of your being decides, and the minor still goes on saying ‘no’. Then it is conflict — then who knows? Any day the majority may become a minority, and the minority may become a majority. It is bound to be so, because sooner or later the majority will be tired of saying ‘yes’ and will relax more and more, and the minority which says ‘no’ without doing anything will gather force and momentum. By and by the majority will be exhausted and the minority will collect energy. Not doing anything, sooner or later it will become the majority.
There is an inner politics. Acceptance, total acceptance, tathata, means without any political decision — total. There is nobody who says ‘no’ within you, not even a fragment, because even a fragment can be destructive. And even if part of you says ‘no’ you cannot receive the true teaching.
People come to me. They say: We surrender, and they don’t do what they are saying. If I say to them: Okay, change your dress to ochre, they say: It is difficult, I am not ready for it. Just the dress, and you are not ready to change it — and you are thinking of changing your soul, your being! And just a moment before the person was saying: I surrender to you. He does not know what surrender means; he does not know what he is saying, he is fast asleep. In his sleep he may have used the word ‘surrender’, but the moment I say: Change something, your dress, your name, he says: It is difficult, I love my name. Let my name remain the same. My name is beautiful, don’t change it. Even the name, which is nothing but a word — and you don’t come with a name when you are born, you come without a name, a nameless being; this is just a label attached to you — and you cannot even change the label. You are not ready for any change at all.
People ask me: Why do you change people’s name and dress? That is just the beginning. That’s how I start taking hold of you. That’s how I feel whether you are ready to change anything or not.
You would like to receive the true teaching without any change. You would like to receive the true teaching as you are. That is not possible. It is not possible because of the very nature of the true teaching. I cannot do anything about it, nobody can. It is in the nature of the very phenomenon; you receive it only when you accept it.
God is available, Truth is available, Light is available, but you are such a miser in receiving. You are not only a miser in giving, you are a miser in receiving also. A miser has to be a miser whatsoever he does. You cannot give; you cannot receive. What type of life have you got? Giving and receiving are two aspects of the same coin. If you can give, you can also receive. Hence, so much insistence on giving — giving to people whatsoever you can give — giving in love. There is so much insistence from all the religions to give; give more and more. Why? — so that you can become capable of receiving more and more.
Remember, it is just like inhalation and exhalation. If you exhale deeply, automatically you will inhale deeply. If you want to inhale deeply, you will have to exhale deeply — there is no other way. And life is a balance between exhalation and inhalation. If you are afraid of exhalation your breathing will become shallow. Then your inhalation cannot be very deep. it is impossible. Exhalation is giving, giving whatsoever you can give. And the more you give, the more you become capable of receiving. And when you give completely, utterly, totally, that is the moment of acceptance.
Source – Osho Book “Returning to the Source”

Beloved Osho, Why does everyone want to pretend to be what they are not

Question – Beloved Osho, Why does everyone want to pretend to be what they are not? What is the psychology behind it?
Osho – Narendra, everybody is condemned from his very childhood. Whatever he does on his own accord, out of his own liking, is not acceptable. The people, the crowd in which a child has to grow has its own ideas, ideals. The child has to fit with those ideas and ideals. The child is helpless.
Have you ever thought about it? — the human child is the most helpless child in the whole animal kingdom. All the animals can survive without the support of the parents and the crowd, but the human child cannot survive, he will die immediately. He is the most helpless creature in the world — so vulnerable to death, so delicate. Naturally those who are in power are able to mould the child in the way they want.
So everybody has become what he is, against himself. That is the psychology behind the fact that everybody wants to pretend to be what he is not. Everybody is in a schizophrenic state. He has never been allowed to be himself, he has been forced to be somebody else that his nature does not allow him to be happy with.
So as one grows and stands on his own legs, one starts pretending many things which he would have liked in reality to be part of his being. But in this insane world, he has been distracted. He has been made into somebody else; he is not that. He knows it. Everybody knows it — that he has been forced to become a doctor, to become an engineer; he has been forced to become a politician, to become a criminal, to become a beggar.
There are all kinds of forces around. In Bombay there are people whose whole business is to steal children and make them crippled, blind, lame, and force them to beg and each evening to bring all the money that they have gathered. Yes, food will be given to them, shelter will be given to them. They are being used like commodities, they are not human beings. This is the extreme, but the same has happened with everybody to a lesser or greater extent. Nobody is at ease with himself.
I have heard about a great surgeon who was retiring, and he was very famous. He had many students and many colleagues. They all gathered, and they were dancing and singing and drinking — but he was standing in a dark corner, sad.
One friend came up to him and asked, “What is the matter with you? We are celebrating and you are standing here so sad — don’t you want to retire? You are seventy-five; you should have retired fifteen years ago. But because you are such a great surgeon, even at seventy-five nobody can compete with you, nobody comes even close to you. Now, retire and relax!”
He said, “That’s what I was thinking. I am feeling sad because my parents forced me to become a surgeon. I wanted to be a singer, and I would have loved it. Even if I was just a street singer — at least I would have been myself. Now I am a world-famous surgeon, but I am not myself. When people praise me as a surgeon, I listen as if they are praising somebody else. I have been given awards, doctorates, but nothing rings a bell of joy in my heart — because this is not me. This being a surgeon has killed me, destroyed me. I wanted to be just a flute player, even if I had to be a beggar on the streets. But I would have been happy.”
In this world, there is only one happiness and that is to be yourself. And because nobody is himself, everybody is trying somehow to hide — masks, pretensions, hypocrisies. They are ashamed of what they are.
We have made the world a marketplace, not a beautiful garden where everybody is allowed to bring his own flowers. We are forcing marigolds to bring roses — now from where can marigolds bring roses? Those roses will be plastic roses, and in the heart of hearts the marigold will be crying, and with tears, feeling ashamed that “We have not been courageous enough to rebel against the crowd. They have forced plastic flowers on us, and we have our own real flowers for which our juices are flowing — but we cannot show our real flowers.”
You are being taught everything, but you are not being taught to be yourself. This is the ugliest form of society possible, because it makes everybody miserable.
I have heard of another great man, a great professor of literature who was being retired from the university. All the university professors had gathered, all his friends had gathered, and they were rejoicing. But suddenly they became aware that he was missing. One of his friends, an attorney, went out… perhaps he in was the garden. But what was he doing there? He was sitting under a tree.
The attorney was his closest friend, a boyhood friend. The attorney said, “What are you doing here?”
He said, “What I am doing here? Remember fifty years ago? — I came to tell you that I wanted to kill my wife. And you said, `Don’t do any such thing. Otherwise — fifty years in jail.’ I am thinking that if I had not listened to you, today I would have been out of jail, free. He said, “I am feeling so angry that a desire comes to me — why should I not at least kill you! Now I am seventy-five. Even if they put me in jail for fifty years they cannot keep me there for fifty years. Within five, seven years I will be dead. But you were not a friend; you proved to be my greatest enemy.”
To be what you don’t want to be, to be with someone you don’t want to be with, to do something you don’t want to do is the basis of all your miseries. And on the one hand the society has managed to make everybody miserable, and on the other hand the same society expects that you should not show your misery — at least not in public, not in the open. It is your private business.
They have created it — it really is public business, not private business. The same crowd that has created all the reasons for your misery finally says to you: “Your misery is your own, but when you come out, come out smiling. Don’t show your miserable face to others.”
This they call etiquette, manners, culture. Basically, it is hypocrisy. And unless a person decides that “Whatever the cost, I want just to be myself. Condemned, unaccepted, losing respectability — everything is okay but I cannot pretend anymore to be somebody else”… This decision and this declaration — this declaration of freedom, freedom from the weight of the crowd — gives birth to your natural being, to your individuality.
Then you don’t need any mask. Then you can be simply yourself, just as you are. And the moment you can be just as you are, there is tremendous peace that passeth understanding.
Source – Osho Book “Beyond Enlightenment”

Osho – Trust is the outcome of deep meditation. Fate is the outcome of your failures

Question – Beloved Osho, Could you please explain the difference between trusting existence and fatalism?
Osho – The difference between trust and fate is very subtle. On the surface it seems they mean exactly the same thing, but in reality they are diametrically opposite experiences.
Fate is a consolation. You are poor, and you see others getting richer and richer — some consolation is needed. You do everything and you do it honestly, truthfully, morally. You never use wrong means; still you are a failure. And you see others being dishonest, cunning, insincere, immoral, criminal, using all kinds of wrong means and succeeding, becoming richer, attaining power, prestige. How to explain it?
It is not new. Since the very beginning man has been puzzled by it. And he had to create some idea as a consolation. Fate, kismet, destiny, God — everything is written in the lines of your hand, in the lines of your forehead; everything is predetermined in your birthchart, you cannot do anything against it. The forces that have determined your life are too big. You are going to fail; it is better to accept your failure as destiny. It hurts less to say it is fate; it gives consolation. It is not your doing, it is not your failure — what can you do against the stars? You cannot determine your birth time and the day and the year.
You come into the world just like an actor, comes onto the stage fully prepared. He cannot change anything. Once in a while actors can change things, because a drama is a drama….
I have heard that in a village… All over India, every year at this time every village is playing the drama of the life of Rama, the Hindu god. And in the beginning… it is just like any film story: a triangle — two lovers, one woman. Sita is the woman, and Rama and Ravana are the two lovers. Rama is a young man. Ravana is very strong.
In those days, the daughters of kings particularly had the right to choose any device for selecting their husbands. Sita had asked… because in their family they had the bow that had belonged to the god, Shiva. It was such a big strong bow that even to pick it up needed a great wrestler; it was not easy for one person to raise it. As a device Sita chose that anybody who could raise the bow, and not only raise it but break it with his hands alone — it was a steel bow — that man she would choose as her husband.
Hundreds of kings, great wrestlers, archers… Rama was also present there. But nobody thought he would be of any use; he was too young. Everybody was worried that Ravana — who was a huge man, dangerous, had ten heads — was going to win. And everybody was worried — Sita’s father was worried, everybody concerned was worried that Sita would fall into the hands of this idiot. Somehow she had to be saved.
So just as the others were coming forward — and they could not even move the bow, raising it was out of question; they were becoming laughingstocks…. Before Ravana stood up, a man came running… it was a device to send Ravana back to his kingdom. He was the king of Sri Lanka. And the man said, “What are you doing here? Sri Lanka is on fire. Your whole kingdom is burning.”
Ravana forgot all about getting married to Sita. He rushed off to see what was happening in the kingdom first. It was a false strategy; there was no problem, Sri Lanka was perfectly okay. But by the time he came back, Rama had broken the bow, married Sita, and gone. This was a conspiracy, and Ravana could not forgive it. He was continuously in search of Sita, to steal her. Finally he stole her, and for three years he kept her imprisoned. That’s how the whole story goes.
In every village it is enacted every year. In this particular village, the man who played the part of Ravana was really in love with the girl who was playing the part of Sita. But they belonged to different castes; marriage was not possible.
Every year it was happening: the moment he would stand up, the man would come out shouting: “Sri Lanka is on fire!”
This time he was determined — because outside the drama they wouldn’t allow the marriage. They were not of the same caste and in India you cannot marry in another caste. And the man who played Ravana was in a lower caste; the girl was a brahmin. This time he thought, something has to be done.
The man came running and he said, “Sri Lanka is on fire!”
Ravana said, “Let it be. This year I am not coming!” Everybody laughed, nobody could believe it.
The prompter was behind the curtain: “What are you saying?”
And he said, “This year I am going to marry Sita!” And he went up — and it was just an ordinary bow, everybody had just pretended that it was so heavy that nobody could pick it up; it was just ordinary bamboo. He took it up, showed it to the audience, broke it, threw the pieces into the audience and told Sita’s father, “Bring your daughter! Enough is enough, and the story is finished!”
Even people who had fallen asleep woke up — “What is happening? Something new!” The director didn’t know what to do. For a moment there was silence.
And Ravana was shouting, “Where is Sita? Now fulfill the promise!”
And nobody could say to him, “You are not following the part that has been given to you” — because that would not be right to say in front of the public.
But the king — Sita’s father — was a very wise man. He said to his servants, “You idiots, this is not Shiva’s bow; this is the bow my children play with. Take it away. Bring the real bow.”
So the servants took away the broken parts. The curtain was pulled down, and they all jumped on Ravana and said, “You idiot, you are going to destroy the whole story.”
He said, “This time I am determined.”
So the police had to be called, and Ravana was sent to the police station: “Take him, because he is destroying our whole drama.”
In a drama it is possible that you can change things. But in life you don’t know exactly what is written in your fate, so whatever happens has to be accepted — “This must be written in my fate.”
The belief in fate is simply a consolation because we cannot accept our failure as failure.
And we cannot accept our failure for another reason — because it has implications for all our moral values: “We were honest, we were moral, we followed right means, we were truthful, and yet we failed. And the other person was dishonest, cunning, insincere, immoral, criminal, and yet he succeeded.”
Now, the whole moral system teaches that truth is going to win, that morality is going to win, that honesty is going to win. But in life we see that all the honest people are losing and immoral people are gaining. The cunning, the clever become powerful. The simple and the innocent are crushed. Our whole value system is at stake.
So it was necessary for the priests and the prophets to find a way in which your failure would not be your failure. “You cannot do anything, it is written in your fate. Your failure is not the failure of your sincerity, morality, honesty. And the other person’s success is not the success of wrong means, dishonesty, cunningness — it is his fate. And as far as fate is concerned, nothing can change it — neither honesty nor dishonesty. Yes, because you have been honest you will have a better fate in your future life. Because he has been dishonest, he will have a bitter fate in his future life.
So this was a beautiful consolation, and a beautiful defense — rational — for our moral system. But it is all bogus. The truth is, the man has succeeded because of dishonesty, not because of his fate. He has succeeded because of his immorality, he has succeeded because he does not care what kind of means he is using.
Existence gives you birth as tabula rasa. No fate is written; there is no destiny such that whatever you do, it has to happen. Existence is freedom. Fate is slavery. Freedom means it is up to you to decide what is going to happen. Fate is a bogus hypothesis. But trust is a totally different thing.
Trust is not fate. Trust simply means that “Whatever happens, I am part of existence and existence cannot be intentionally inimical to me. If sometimes that it feels it is, it must be my misunderstanding.”
I have always loved to remember a Sufi master Junnaid. He was the master of al-Hillaj Mansoor. He had a habit: after each prayer… and Mohammedans pray five times a day. After each prayer he would say to the sky, “Your compassion is great. How beautifully you take care of us, and we don’t deserve it. I don’t even have words to show my gratefulness, but I hope you will understand the unexpressed gratitude of my heart.”
They were on a pilgrimage, and it happened that for three days they passed through villages where orthodox Mohammedans would not allow them even to stay in the villages; there was no question of giving them food or water.
For three days without food, without water, without sleep — tired, utterly frustrated… The disciples could not believe that this man Junnaid, their master, still goes on saying the same things. Before, it was okay — but still he goes on saying, “You are great, you are compassionate, and I don’t have words to express my gratitude.”
On the third evening when he had finished his prayer, his disciples said, “Now it is time for an explanation. For three days we have been hungry, we have not had water, we are thirsty; we have not slept, we have been insulted continually, no place has been given to us, no shelter. At least today you should not say, `You are great, you are compassionate.’ For what you are showing your gratitude?”
Junnaid laughed. He said, “My trust in existence is unconditional. It is not that I am grateful because existence provides this and that and that. I am — that’s enough. Existence accepts me — that’s enough. And I don’t deserve to be, I have not earned it. Moreover, these three days have been of tremendous beauty because I had an opportunity to watch whether anger would arise in me, and it didn’t arise; whether I would start to feel that God had forsaken me, and the idea did not arise.
There has been no difference in my attitude towards existence. My gratitude has not changed, and it has filled me with more gratitude than ever. It was a fire test, and I have come out of it unburned. What more do you want? I will trust existence in my life and I will trust existence in my death. It is my love affair.
“It is not a question that somebody is rich and somebody is poor, that somebody is successful and somebody is not. It has nothing to do with anybody. It is my personal, intimate contact with reality. And there is great harmony. I am completely at ease and at home.”
Trust is the outcome of deep meditation. Fate is the outcome of your failures, and a mind consolation. They are totally different.
Source – Osho Book “Beyond Enlightenment”

Beloved Osho, Why does everyone want to pretend to be what they are not

Question – Beloved Osho, Why does everyone want to pretend to be what they are not? What is the psychology behind it?
Osho – Narendra, everybody is condemned from his very childhood. Whatever he does on his own accord, out of his own liking, is not acceptable. The people, the crowd in which a child has to grow has its own ideas, ideals. The child has to fit with those ideas and ideals. The child is helpless.
Have you ever thought about it? — the human child is the most helpless child in the whole animal kingdom. All the animals can survive without the support of the parents and the crowd, but the human child cannot survive, he will die immediately. He is the most helpless creature in the world — so vulnerable to death, so delicate. Naturally those who are in power are able to mould the child in the way they want.
So everybody has become what he is, against himself. That is the psychology behind the fact that everybody wants to pretend to be what he is not. Everybody is in a schizophrenic state. He has never been allowed to be himself, he has been forced to be somebody else that his nature does not allow him to be happy with.
So as one grows and stands on his own legs, one starts pretending many things which he would have liked in reality to be part of his being. But in this insane world, he has been distracted. He has been made into somebody else; he is not that. He knows it. Everybody knows it — that he has been forced to become a doctor, to become an engineer; he has been forced to become a politician, to become a criminal, to become a beggar.
There are all kinds of forces around. In Bombay there are people whose whole business is to steal children and make them crippled, blind, lame, and force them to beg and each evening to bring all the money that they have gathered. Yes, food will be given to them, shelter will be given to them. They are being used like commodities, they are not human beings. This is the extreme, but the same has happened with everybody to a lesser or greater extent. Nobody is at ease with himself.
I have heard about a great surgeon who was retiring, and he was very famous. He had many students and many colleagues. They all gathered, and they were dancing and singing and drinking — but he was standing in a dark corner, sad.
One friend came up to him and asked, “What is the matter with you? We are celebrating and you are standing here so sad — don’t you want to retire? You are seventy-five; you should have retired fifteen years ago. But because you are such a great surgeon, even at seventy-five nobody can compete with you, nobody comes even close to you. Now, retire and relax!”
He said, “That’s what I was thinking. I am feeling sad because my parents forced me to become a surgeon. I wanted to be a singer, and I would have loved it. Even if I was just a street singer — at least I would have been myself. Now I am a world-famous surgeon, but I am not myself. When people praise me as a surgeon, I listen as if they are praising somebody else. I have been given awards, doctorates, but nothing rings a bell of joy in my heart — because this is not me. This being a surgeon has killed me, destroyed me. I wanted to be just a flute player, even if I had to be a beggar on the streets. But I would have been happy.”
In this world, there is only one happiness and that is to be yourself. And because nobody is himself, everybody is trying somehow to hide — masks, pretensions, hypocrisies. They are ashamed of what they are.
We have made the world a marketplace, not a beautiful garden where everybody is allowed to bring his own flowers. We are forcing marigolds to bring roses — now from where can marigolds bring roses? Those roses will be plastic roses, and in the heart of hearts the marigold will be crying, and with tears, feeling ashamed that “We have not been courageous enough to rebel against the crowd. They have forced plastic flowers on us, and we have our own real flowers for which our juices are flowing — but we cannot show our real flowers.”
You are being taught everything, but you are not being taught to be yourself. This is the ugliest form of society possible, because it makes everybody miserable.
I have heard of another great man, a great professor of literature who was being retired from the university. All the university professors had gathered, all his friends had gathered, and they were rejoicing. But suddenly they became aware that he was missing. One of his friends, an attorney, went out… perhaps he in was the garden. But what was he doing there? He was sitting under a tree.
The attorney was his closest friend, a boyhood friend. The attorney said, “What are you doing here?”
He said, “What I am doing here? Remember fifty years ago? — I came to tell you that I wanted to kill my wife. And you said, `Don’t do any such thing. Otherwise — fifty years in jail.’ I am thinking that if I had not listened to you, today I would have been out of jail, free. He said, “I am feeling so angry that a desire comes to me — why should I not at least kill you! Now I am seventy-five. Even if they put me in jail for fifty years they cannot keep me there for fifty years. Within five, seven years I will be dead. But you were not a friend; you proved to be my greatest enemy.”
To be what you don’t want to be, to be with someone you don’t want to be with, to do something you don’t want to do is the basis of all your miseries. And on the one hand the society has managed to make everybody miserable, and on the other hand the same society expects that you should not show your misery — at least not in public, not in the open. It is your private business.
They have created it — it really is public business, not private business. The same crowd that has created all the reasons for your misery finally says to you: “Your misery is your own, but when you come out, come out smiling. Don’t show your miserable face to others.”
This they call etiquette, manners, culture. Basically, it is hypocrisy. And unless a person decides that “Whatever the cost, I want just to be myself. Condemned, unaccepted, losing respectability — everything is okay but I cannot pretend anymore to be somebody else”… This decision and this declaration — this declaration of freedom, freedom from the weight of the crowd — gives birth to your natural being, to your individuality.
Then you don’t need any mask. Then you can be simply yourself, just as you are. And the moment you can be just as you are, there is tremendous peace that passeth understanding.
Source – Osho Book “Beyond Enlightenment”

Osho – Trust is the outcome of deep meditation. Fate is the outcome of your failures

Question – Beloved Osho, Could you please explain the difference between trusting existence and fatalism?
Osho – The difference between trust and fate is very subtle. On the surface it seems they mean exactly the same thing, but in reality they are diametrically opposite experiences.
Fate is a consolation. You are poor, and you see others getting richer and richer — some consolation is needed. You do everything and you do it honestly, truthfully, morally. You never use wrong means; still you are a failure. And you see others being dishonest, cunning, insincere, immoral, criminal, using all kinds of wrong means and succeeding, becoming richer, attaining power, prestige. How to explain it?
It is not new. Since the very beginning man has been puzzled by it. And he had to create some idea as a consolation. Fate, kismet, destiny, God — everything is written in the lines of your hand, in the lines of your forehead; everything is predetermined in your birthchart, you cannot do anything against it. The forces that have determined your life are too big. You are going to fail; it is better to accept your failure as destiny. It hurts less to say it is fate; it gives consolation. It is not your doing, it is not your failure — what can you do against the stars? You cannot determine your birth time and the day and the year.
You come into the world just like an actor, comes onto the stage fully prepared. He cannot change anything. Once in a while actors can change things, because a drama is a drama….
I have heard that in a village… All over India, every year at this time every village is playing the drama of the life of Rama, the Hindu god. And in the beginning… it is just like any film story: a triangle — two lovers, one woman. Sita is the woman, and Rama and Ravana are the two lovers. Rama is a young man. Ravana is very strong.
In those days, the daughters of kings particularly had the right to choose any device for selecting their husbands. Sita had asked… because in their family they had the bow that had belonged to the god, Shiva. It was such a big strong bow that even to pick it up needed a great wrestler; it was not easy for one person to raise it. As a device Sita chose that anybody who could raise the bow, and not only raise it but break it with his hands alone — it was a steel bow — that man she would choose as her husband.
Hundreds of kings, great wrestlers, archers… Rama was also present there. But nobody thought he would be of any use; he was too young. Everybody was worried that Ravana — who was a huge man, dangerous, had ten heads — was going to win. And everybody was worried — Sita’s father was worried, everybody concerned was worried that Sita would fall into the hands of this idiot. Somehow she had to be saved.
So just as the others were coming forward — and they could not even move the bow, raising it was out of question; they were becoming laughingstocks…. Before Ravana stood up, a man came running… it was a device to send Ravana back to his kingdom. He was the king of Sri Lanka. And the man said, “What are you doing here? Sri Lanka is on fire. Your whole kingdom is burning.”
Ravana forgot all about getting married to Sita. He rushed off to see what was happening in the kingdom first. It was a false strategy; there was no problem, Sri Lanka was perfectly okay. But by the time he came back, Rama had broken the bow, married Sita, and gone. This was a conspiracy, and Ravana could not forgive it. He was continuously in search of Sita, to steal her. Finally he stole her, and for three years he kept her imprisoned. That’s how the whole story goes.
In every village it is enacted every year. In this particular village, the man who played the part of Ravana was really in love with the girl who was playing the part of Sita. But they belonged to different castes; marriage was not possible.
Every year it was happening: the moment he would stand up, the man would come out shouting: “Sri Lanka is on fire!”
This time he was determined — because outside the drama they wouldn’t allow the marriage. They were not of the same caste and in India you cannot marry in another caste. And the man who played Ravana was in a lower caste; the girl was a brahmin. This time he thought, something has to be done.
The man came running and he said, “Sri Lanka is on fire!”
Ravana said, “Let it be. This year I am not coming!” Everybody laughed, nobody could believe it.
The prompter was behind the curtain: “What are you saying?”
And he said, “This year I am going to marry Sita!” And he went up — and it was just an ordinary bow, everybody had just pretended that it was so heavy that nobody could pick it up; it was just ordinary bamboo. He took it up, showed it to the audience, broke it, threw the pieces into the audience and told Sita’s father, “Bring your daughter! Enough is enough, and the story is finished!”
Even people who had fallen asleep woke up — “What is happening? Something new!” The director didn’t know what to do. For a moment there was silence.
And Ravana was shouting, “Where is Sita? Now fulfill the promise!”
And nobody could say to him, “You are not following the part that has been given to you” — because that would not be right to say in front of the public.
But the king — Sita’s father — was a very wise man. He said to his servants, “You idiots, this is not Shiva’s bow; this is the bow my children play with. Take it away. Bring the real bow.”
So the servants took away the broken parts. The curtain was pulled down, and they all jumped on Ravana and said, “You idiot, you are going to destroy the whole story.”
He said, “This time I am determined.”
So the police had to be called, and Ravana was sent to the police station: “Take him, because he is destroying our whole drama.”
In a drama it is possible that you can change things. But in life you don’t know exactly what is written in your fate, so whatever happens has to be accepted — “This must be written in my fate.”
The belief in fate is simply a consolation because we cannot accept our failure as failure.
And we cannot accept our failure for another reason — because it has implications for all our moral values: “We were honest, we were moral, we followed right means, we were truthful, and yet we failed. And the other person was dishonest, cunning, insincere, immoral, criminal, and yet he succeeded.”
Now, the whole moral system teaches that truth is going to win, that morality is going to win, that honesty is going to win. But in life we see that all the honest people are losing and immoral people are gaining. The cunning, the clever become powerful. The simple and the innocent are crushed. Our whole value system is at stake.
So it was necessary for the priests and the prophets to find a way in which your failure would not be your failure. “You cannot do anything, it is written in your fate. Your failure is not the failure of your sincerity, morality, honesty. And the other person’s success is not the success of wrong means, dishonesty, cunningness — it is his fate. And as far as fate is concerned, nothing can change it — neither honesty nor dishonesty. Yes, because you have been honest you will have a better fate in your future life. Because he has been dishonest, he will have a bitter fate in his future life.
So this was a beautiful consolation, and a beautiful defense — rational — for our moral system. But it is all bogus. The truth is, the man has succeeded because of dishonesty, not because of his fate. He has succeeded because of his immorality, he has succeeded because he does not care what kind of means he is using.
Existence gives you birth as tabula rasa. No fate is written; there is no destiny such that whatever you do, it has to happen. Existence is freedom. Fate is slavery. Freedom means it is up to you to decide what is going to happen. Fate is a bogus hypothesis. But trust is a totally different thing.
Trust is not fate. Trust simply means that “Whatever happens, I am part of existence and existence cannot be intentionally inimical to me. If sometimes that it feels it is, it must be my misunderstanding.”
I have always loved to remember a Sufi master Junnaid. He was the master of al-Hillaj Mansoor. He had a habit: after each prayer… and Mohammedans pray five times a day. After each prayer he would say to the sky, “Your compassion is great. How beautifully you take care of us, and we don’t deserve it. I don’t even have words to show my gratefulness, but I hope you will understand the unexpressed gratitude of my heart.”
They were on a pilgrimage, and it happened that for three days they passed through villages where orthodox Mohammedans would not allow them even to stay in the villages; there was no question of giving them food or water.
For three days without food, without water, without sleep — tired, utterly frustrated… The disciples could not believe that this man Junnaid, their master, still goes on saying the same things. Before, it was okay — but still he goes on saying, “You are great, you are compassionate, and I don’t have words to express my gratitude.”
On the third evening when he had finished his prayer, his disciples said, “Now it is time for an explanation. For three days we have been hungry, we have not had water, we are thirsty; we have not slept, we have been insulted continually, no place has been given to us, no shelter. At least today you should not say, `You are great, you are compassionate.’ For what you are showing your gratitude?”
Junnaid laughed. He said, “My trust in existence is unconditional. It is not that I am grateful because existence provides this and that and that. I am — that’s enough. Existence accepts me — that’s enough. And I don’t deserve to be, I have not earned it. Moreover, these three days have been of tremendous beauty because I had an opportunity to watch whether anger would arise in me, and it didn’t arise; whether I would start to feel that God had forsaken me, and the idea did not arise.
There has been no difference in my attitude towards existence. My gratitude has not changed, and it has filled me with more gratitude than ever. It was a fire test, and I have come out of it unburned. What more do you want? I will trust existence in my life and I will trust existence in my death. It is my love affair.
“It is not a question that somebody is rich and somebody is poor, that somebody is successful and somebody is not. It has nothing to do with anybody. It is my personal, intimate contact with reality. And there is great harmony. I am completely at ease and at home.”
Trust is the outcome of deep meditation. Fate is the outcome of your failures, and a mind consolation. They are totally different.
Source – Osho Book “Beyond Enlightenment”

Osho – Trust is the outcome of deep meditation. Fate is the outcome of your failures

Question – Beloved Osho, Could you please explain the difference between trusting existence and fatalism?
Osho – The difference between trust and fate is very subtle. On the surface it seems they mean exactly the same thing, but in reality they are diametrically opposite experiences.
Fate is a consolation. You are poor, and you see others getting richer and richer — some consolation is needed. You do everything and you do it honestly, truthfully, morally. You never use wrong means; still you are a failure. And you see others being dishonest, cunning, insincere, immoral, criminal, using all kinds of wrong means and succeeding, becoming richer, attaining power, prestige. How to explain it?
It is not new. Since the very beginning man has been puzzled by it. And he had to create some idea as a consolation. Fate, kismet, destiny, God — everything is written in the lines of your hand, in the lines of your forehead; everything is predetermined in your birthchart, you cannot do anything against it. The forces that have determined your life are too big. You are going to fail; it is better to accept your failure as destiny. It hurts less to say it is fate; it gives consolation. It is not your doing, it is not your failure — what can you do against the stars? You cannot determine your birth time and the day and the year.
You come into the world just like an actor, comes onto the stage fully prepared. He cannot change anything. Once in a while actors can change things, because a drama is a drama….
I have heard that in a village… All over India, every year at this time every village is playing the drama of the life of Rama, the Hindu god. And in the beginning… it is just like any film story: a triangle — two lovers, one woman. Sita is the woman, and Rama and Ravana are the two lovers. Rama is a young man. Ravana is very strong.
In those days, the daughters of kings particularly had the right to choose any device for selecting their husbands. Sita had asked… because in their family they had the bow that had belonged to the god, Shiva. It was such a big strong bow that even to pick it up needed a great wrestler; it was not easy for one person to raise it. As a device Sita chose that anybody who could raise the bow, and not only raise it but break it with his hands alone — it was a steel bow — that man she would choose as her husband.
Hundreds of kings, great wrestlers, archers… Rama was also present there. But nobody thought he would be of any use; he was too young. Everybody was worried that Ravana — who was a huge man, dangerous, had ten heads — was going to win. And everybody was worried — Sita’s father was worried, everybody concerned was worried that Sita would fall into the hands of this idiot. Somehow she had to be saved.
So just as the others were coming forward — and they could not even move the bow, raising it was out of question; they were becoming laughingstocks…. Before Ravana stood up, a man came running… it was a device to send Ravana back to his kingdom. He was the king of Sri Lanka. And the man said, “What are you doing here? Sri Lanka is on fire. Your whole kingdom is burning.”
Ravana forgot all about getting married to Sita. He rushed off to see what was happening in the kingdom first. It was a false strategy; there was no problem, Sri Lanka was perfectly okay. But by the time he came back, Rama had broken the bow, married Sita, and gone. This was a conspiracy, and Ravana could not forgive it. He was continuously in search of Sita, to steal her. Finally he stole her, and for three years he kept her imprisoned. That’s how the whole story goes.
In every village it is enacted every year. In this particular village, the man who played the part of Ravana was really in love with the girl who was playing the part of Sita. But they belonged to different castes; marriage was not possible.
Every year it was happening: the moment he would stand up, the man would come out shouting: “Sri Lanka is on fire!”
This time he was determined — because outside the drama they wouldn’t allow the marriage. They were not of the same caste and in India you cannot marry in another caste. And the man who played Ravana was in a lower caste; the girl was a brahmin. This time he thought, something has to be done.
The man came running and he said, “Sri Lanka is on fire!”
Ravana said, “Let it be. This year I am not coming!” Everybody laughed, nobody could believe it.
The prompter was behind the curtain: “What are you saying?”
And he said, “This year I am going to marry Sita!” And he went up — and it was just an ordinary bow, everybody had just pretended that it was so heavy that nobody could pick it up; it was just ordinary bamboo. He took it up, showed it to the audience, broke it, threw the pieces into the audience and told Sita’s father, “Bring your daughter! Enough is enough, and the story is finished!”
Even people who had fallen asleep woke up — “What is happening? Something new!” The director didn’t know what to do. For a moment there was silence.
And Ravana was shouting, “Where is Sita? Now fulfill the promise!”
And nobody could say to him, “You are not following the part that has been given to you” — because that would not be right to say in front of the public.
But the king — Sita’s father — was a very wise man. He said to his servants, “You idiots, this is not Shiva’s bow; this is the bow my children play with. Take it away. Bring the real bow.”
So the servants took away the broken parts. The curtain was pulled down, and they all jumped on Ravana and said, “You idiot, you are going to destroy the whole story.”
He said, “This time I am determined.”
So the police had to be called, and Ravana was sent to the police station: “Take him, because he is destroying our whole drama.”
In a drama it is possible that you can change things. But in life you don’t know exactly what is written in your fate, so whatever happens has to be accepted — “This must be written in my fate.”
The belief in fate is simply a consolation because we cannot accept our failure as failure.
And we cannot accept our failure for another reason — because it has implications for all our moral values: “We were honest, we were moral, we followed right means, we were truthful, and yet we failed. And the other person was dishonest, cunning, insincere, immoral, criminal, and yet he succeeded.”
Now, the whole moral system teaches that truth is going to win, that morality is going to win, that honesty is going to win. But in life we see that all the honest people are losing and immoral people are gaining. The cunning, the clever become powerful. The simple and the innocent are crushed. Our whole value system is at stake.
So it was necessary for the priests and the prophets to find a way in which your failure would not be your failure. “You cannot do anything, it is written in your fate. Your failure is not the failure of your sincerity, morality, honesty. And the other person’s success is not the success of wrong means, dishonesty, cunningness — it is his fate. And as far as fate is concerned, nothing can change it — neither honesty nor dishonesty. Yes, because you have been honest you will have a better fate in your future life. Because he has been dishonest, he will have a bitter fate in his future life.
So this was a beautiful consolation, and a beautiful defense — rational — for our moral system. But it is all bogus. The truth is, the man has succeeded because of dishonesty, not because of his fate. He has succeeded because of his immorality, he has succeeded because he does not care what kind of means he is using.
Existence gives you birth as tabula rasa. No fate is written; there is no destiny such that whatever you do, it has to happen. Existence is freedom. Fate is slavery. Freedom means it is up to you to decide what is going to happen. Fate is a bogus hypothesis. But trust is a totally different thing.
Trust is not fate. Trust simply means that “Whatever happens, I am part of existence and existence cannot be intentionally inimical to me. If sometimes that it feels it is, it must be my misunderstanding.”
I have always loved to remember a Sufi master Junnaid. He was the master of al-Hillaj Mansoor. He had a habit: after each prayer… and Mohammedans pray five times a day. After each prayer he would say to the sky, “Your compassion is great. How beautifully you take care of us, and we don’t deserve it. I don’t even have words to show my gratefulness, but I hope you will understand the unexpressed gratitude of my heart.”
They were on a pilgrimage, and it happened that for three days they passed through villages where orthodox Mohammedans would not allow them even to stay in the villages; there was no question of giving them food or water.
For three days without food, without water, without sleep — tired, utterly frustrated… The disciples could not believe that this man Junnaid, their master, still goes on saying the same things. Before, it was okay — but still he goes on saying, “You are great, you are compassionate, and I don’t have words to express my gratitude.”
On the third evening when he had finished his prayer, his disciples said, “Now it is time for an explanation. For three days we have been hungry, we have not had water, we are thirsty; we have not slept, we have been insulted continually, no place has been given to us, no shelter. At least today you should not say, `You are great, you are compassionate.’ For what you are showing your gratitude?”
Junnaid laughed. He said, “My trust in existence is unconditional. It is not that I am grateful because existence provides this and that and that. I am — that’s enough. Existence accepts me — that’s enough. And I don’t deserve to be, I have not earned it. Moreover, these three days have been of tremendous beauty because I had an opportunity to watch whether anger would arise in me, and it didn’t arise; whether I would start to feel that God had forsaken me, and the idea did not arise.
There has been no difference in my attitude towards existence. My gratitude has not changed, and it has filled me with more gratitude than ever. It was a fire test, and I have come out of it unburned. What more do you want? I will trust existence in my life and I will trust existence in my death. It is my love affair.
“It is not a question that somebody is rich and somebody is poor, that somebody is successful and somebody is not. It has nothing to do with anybody. It is my personal, intimate contact with reality. And there is great harmony. I am completely at ease and at home.”
Trust is the outcome of deep meditation. Fate is the outcome of your failures, and a mind consolation. They are totally different.
Source – Osho Book “Beyond Enlightenment”

Osho – What is Tathata — Total Acceptance

Question – Beloved Master, What is Tathata — Total Acceptance?
Osho - Dharmesh, tathata is one of Buddha’s most significant contributions to the world. Tathata means total acceptance: whatsoever the situation is, don’t fight with it. Accept it wholeheartedly, because it is through total acceptance that transcendence happens. If you fight with it you will be unnecessarily wasting your energy. Accepting it you preserve your energy. Accepting it you become capable of understanding it, because only one who accepts can understand; one who rejects cannot understand.
Anything that you reject, anything that you become inimical to, you become incapable of understanding — because we avoid that which is rejected. We are really afraid of it so we keep it at the back and we escape from it; we find ways and means to escape from it. And if you try to escape from something, how are you going to understand it? And without understanding there is no liberation, no transformation.
Buddha says “tathata” — accept it totally. Whatsoever is the case, accept without denying, without condemning, and in that acceptance many things happen, many doors open. The first is: your energy is preserved, which is a great blessing. In fighting you dissipate energy, your energy leaks, you remain always energyless. And to go to the heights you will need great energy, you will need vitality. If you want to reach to the sun, the journey is long and arduous. You cannot go to the sun, you cannot fly that far away, without energy in you.
The man who is fighting his sex, anger, greed, jealousy, possessiveness — and there are a thousand and one things to fight — remains entangled in his fight; he cannot go anywhere. He is constantly disturbed and distracted by these things. He fights with one, represses one, something else raises its head — because he is one and the enemies are many. You fight anger, you will become greedy. The whole energy you repress from anger turns into greed. You fight greed, you will become very sexual. You fight sex, you will become very angry. You repress one thing, and the same thing with a new face, with a new mask, arrives from the back door. You will go insane.
That’s how the whole of humanity has gone insane. The insanity is so pervasive, that’s why we don’t think that people are insane. Everybody is insane! It is very rare that there is a sane person. To be sane in this insane society is really a great work of understanding, courage, rebellion.
If you drop all the conditionings that the society has imposed on you, only then will you be able to remain sane. Otherwise society turns everybody into an insane person. The society turns everybody according to its own mode, mold, pattern, structure. It gives you ideas, ideologies, religions. It poisons you from the very beginning; when you are in your mother’s womb the poisoning starts.
Now they are finding scientific ways of conditioning the child which is in the mother’s womb. Yes, certain things can be done to condition the child. For example, they have tried using a certain type of tight belt on the mother’s belly; that belt is made in such a way that it keeps the child in a tight situation. And they have discovered that these children are very obedient; when they are born they are more obedient than other children, because for nine months they have lived almost in a tight corner, in a prison.
In Soviet Russia they are trying the belt on many women. Now, the poor child who is not even born yet is already being conditioned, prepared for a certain society. He will be obedient. Certain music can reach to the womb. A soothing kind of music which lulls the child is helpful to create a slave. And so many drugs are available which can drug the child even before he is born — he is born drugged. He will live his whole life in a kind of unconsciousness; but that’s how the society wants him to live. Conscious people have proved dangerous; a Jesus, a Buddha, a Zarathustra, these people have proved dangerous.
The story is that the first thing that Zarathustra did when he was born was, he laughed loudly. Can you think of a more rebellious child? Children are not supposed to laugh when they are born; they are supposed to cry, but not supposed to laugh. He must have shocked his parents and the neighborhood and the people who had heard his laughter. Why did he laugh? And such a person is not reliable, not reliable at all — this is a dangerous man! He has done his first act of rebellion. He has already said that “I am not going to be a part of the crowd — enough is enough. Many children have cried, I don’t follow them. I will start my life with laughter.”
Whether it really happened or not is not the question. In fact it is difficult to laugh immediately after you are born, but the story is significant because it says something about Zarathustra’s whole philosophy of life: it is that of great rebellion. Zarathustra is one of the greatest teachers of the world — he has accepted life in its totality. He is not a renunciate, he is against renunciation. That’s why the few Zarathustra followers that have survived had to escape their original motherland, Persia. They had to leave, because Mohammedans were coercing them, converting them; they converted Persia into a Mohammedan country. Persia is now known as Iran.
A few people escaped who were not ready to accept this coercive violence. They came to India; they live in Bombay and around Bombay — the Parsis. They are the only followers of Zarathustra; they are very life-affirmative people. Hence many Parsis have become interested in me; to them I have a great appeal because I also affirm life. I am not in favor of escaping. It is because of Zarathustra’s total affirmation of life that Friedrich Nietzsche loved him tremendously and wrote his great book, THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA. He wrote the book to appreciate life and the love for life. He could not find any other master so life-affirmative as Zarathustra; a man who begins his life with laughter, whose whole life is a laughter. There is no pessimism, not even a strain of pessimism in him.
That’s exactly the meaning of tathata — accept the whole of life as it is. In your acceptance you will be preserving your energy, and you have inexhaustible sources of energy if you accept. Secondly: when you accept everything, your life becomes cheerful. Nobody can make you miserable, nothing can make you miserable.
A man with three hairs on his otherwise bald head came into a hair saloon and asked to get his hair shampooed and braided. The hairdresser got on with his job but just as he was about to finish combing it, one of the hairs fell out.
The hairdresser was very embarrassed but the man only said, “Well, what to do? I guess I will have to part my hair in the middle!”
The hairdresser very carefully put one hair to the right side and was about to put the other to the left side when that one fell out too. The hairdresser could not apologize enough but the man took it really cool.
“Well,” he said, “I guess now I will have to run around with my hair all ruffled up.”
This is tathata, this is total acceptance! You cannot disturb such a man. He is always contented, he always finds a way to be contented. It is a great art. And a man who is always contented and always finds a way to remain contented has the capacity to see things transparently.
Discontent clouds your eyes and your vision; contentment makes your eyes unclouded and your vision clear. You can see through and through, you can understand things as they are.
Tathata is also translated as suchness; that too is one of its meanings. You see things as they are in their suchness; you don’t impose any idea of your own on them.
And that is a miracle, a magic key. If you can see anger as it is, without any judgment, you will be surprised: seeing anger without judgment, without condemnation, without saying it is bad or good, should be or should not be, without bringing any “shoulds” in… if you can see your anger as it is, with no prejudice for or against, a miracle happens: anger disappears and its energy becomes absorbed in you. Just by pure insight you transform anger, greed, jealousy. And all that goes on dragging you hither and thither, keeps you running, never allows you rest and relaxation, is absorbed; more energy becomes available to you.
And slowly slowly, when there is no anger — not that you have rejected it but you have absorbed it, digested it — no greed, no jealousy, no possessiveness, no sexuality… you have digested all these phenomena in you. You are becoming greater and greater and you have energies available to rise higher; you have fuel enough to keep your fire burning bright and without smoke.
Dharmesh, tathata is a method of transforming your energies into your friends. Ordinarily you are taught such stupid ways that your own energies become your enemies and you are constantly fighting with yourself. Now there can be no greater stupidity than this; this is the most stupid act in the world that people go on doing — fighting with themselves. You cannot win, you cannot defeat. You will remain quarreling with yourself, you will destroy yourself in quarreling your whole life. You will die, and you will never know what life was. You will never know the glories of life, the grandeur of life and the tremendous gift that life was, and could have been if you had lived with right mindfulness, with tathata, with acceptance.
Source – Osho Book “The Dhammapada, Vol4″

Osho on Let Go – Letting go means your masks will slip down

Question – Beloved Osho, I have heard you say, “Let Go — no Effort is needed.” but i am afraid of letting go because then i slip into my old patterns. please comment.
Osho – It is one of the difficulties. Letting go, one can slip into old patterns, old conditionings. Still, take the risk.
The fear has some validity; you can fall back into your old patterns. But don’t be afraid, just remain watchful; and meanwhile, if it happens that way…. It is not necessarily so that it will happen to everybody, to fall into old patterns. Only those friends who have forced themselves into the new discipline will find it happening, that if they let go they will become their old selves.
But it will be good, because that will show you that whatever you were thinking you had become, you have not become. It was just an enforced, controlled, suppressed, inhibited phenomenon. Letting go will make it clear to you.
So it is going to help both kinds of people. Those who have grown up into the new lifestyle by letting go, they will go higher. Those who have forced themselves into the new lifestyle, and in whom there has been a resistance somewhere, a part fighting against it — if they let go, that part is going to take over. That too is good. You will become aware that what you were thinking you are, you are not.
Watch the old pattern, and now don’t try to repress it. It has to be dropped — not repressed. Repression is through discipline, and dropping is through witnessing. Watch the old pattern as a witness. Don’t get identified with it.
And as you move from the new lifestyle that you have forced, if you continue to watch and remain in a let-go, even when you see the old pattern emerging, that too will disappear, because that too is forced, forced by society. That too is not natural. And when everything forced has disappeared, only then are you your natural being.
To me, to be natural is to be spiritual. All the religions have been teaching something very idiotic: to be natural is against spirituality. So everybody has repressed the natural self and has been pretending to be a spiritual self — which he is not. All the religions together have conspired against humanity to create hypocrites.
My effort is to create the natural man — human, with no guilt, accepting all the frailties, failures the human being is prone to. In this deep acceptance of your natural being is the seed of your transformation. And when it comes by itself then it is a growth. When you force it, it is not a growth, it is just wearing a mask. And even before a mirror you can befool yourself wearing a mask: you can start thinking that this is your face. Letting go means your masks will slip down, your personality will slip down, your ego will slip down.
Go on till all these things disappear, till the moment you find a crystal-clear naturalness, a spontaneity of being. So there is no need to be afraid. Most of you will find that whatever you have does not go — it is growth. A few of you will find that you have just managed something — it has not been a real growth; you have been pretending. Then you will fall into the old pattern.
This time don’t make the same mistake again. Remain watchful and go on in the same process of letting go. Your old patterns are also false; they will also disappear. If the let-go is complete it will leave you in your natural self, in your authentic being. And to me that is the beginning of self-realization, the beginning of your enlightenment.
But it can begin only when you have found the natural source of your being. Your pretended selves, your hypocrite patterns, your masks — they cannot become enlightened. Only your original face can become enlightened. So to be original and natural is the most important thing for a traveler on the path.
Source – Osho Book “Light on the Path”

Osho on Surrender, Osho on the Path of Surrender

 

Question – On the path of surrender, How does the Seeker come to the right technique out of One hundred and twelve methods?
Osho – On the path of will there are methods – these one hundred and twelve methods. On the path of surrender, surrender itself is the method, there are no other methods – remember this. All methods are non-surrendering, because a method means depending on yourself. You can do something; the technique is there, so you do it. On the path of surrender, you are no more, so you cannot do anything.
You have done the ultimate, the last: you have surrendered. On the path of surrender, surrender is the only method. All these one hundred and twelve methods require a certain will; they require something to be done by you. You manipulate your energy, you balance your energy, you create a center in your chaos.
You do something. Your effort is significant, basic, required. On the path of surrender only one thing is required – you surrender. We will go deep into these one hundred and twelve methods, so it is good to say something about surrender because it has no method.
In these one hundred and twelve methods there will be nothing about surrender. Why has Shiva not said anything about surrender? Because nothing can be said. Bhairavi herself, Devi herself, has reached Shiva not through any method. She has simply surrendered. So this must be noted. She is asking these questions not for herself, these questions are asked for the whole humanity. She has attained Shiva.
She is already in his lap; she is already embraced by him. She has become one with him, but still she is asking. So remember one thing, she is not asking for herself; there is no need. She is asking for the whole humanity. But if she has attained, why is she asking Shiva? Can she herself not speak to the humanity? She has come through the path of surrender, so she doesn’t know anything about method.
She herself has come through love; love is enough unto itself. Love doesn’t need anything more. She has come through love, so she doesn’t know anything about any methods, techniques. That is why she is asking.
So Shiva relates one hundred and twelve methods. He also will not talk about surrender because surrender is not a method really. You surrender only when every method has become futile, when you cannot reach by any method. You have tried your best. You have knocked on every door and no door opens, and you have passed through all the routes and no route reaches. You have done whatsoever you can do, and now you feel helpless.
In that total helplessness surrender happens. So on the path of surrender there is no method. But what is surrender and how does it work? And if surrender works, then what is the need of one hundred and twelve methods? Then why go into them unnecessarily? – the mind will ask. Then okay! If surrender works, it is better to surrender.
Why go on hankering after methods? And who knows whether a particular method will suit you or not? And it may take lives to find out. So it is good to surrender, but it is difficult. It is the most difficult thing in the world.

Osho on Empathy – Man has forgotten about empathy completely

Question – Beloved Master, Is Empathy the current that brings about the awareness of our each and every relatedness, and Vice Versa?
Osho – The experience of empathy is very rare. You know what sympathy means, you also know what apathy means; but empathy you do not know. Sympathy and apathy are opposed to each other. Empathy is beyond both. To help you understand it, let me tell you an incident in Ramakrishna’s life.
He was in a boat, going to the other shore of the Ganges near Calcutta. And just out of nowhere — he was surrounded by his disciples — he started screaming, “Don’t beat me!” Tears started flowing from his eyes, and one could see that his body was getting distorted as if somebody was beating him badly. The disciples could see nobody there, but he was in immense torture.
When they reached to the other shore, they found a fisherman with a big crowd surrounding him. He had been beaten by a few people. And the strangest thing was that the same bruises and scratches that had come up on his back, had come up on Ramakrishna’s back too — exactly the same.
It was a very mysterious phenomenon. They asked Ramakrishna what it was. He said, “This is empathy. You feel so one with the other that your separate identities lose their boundaries. The other’s thirst becomes your thirst, the other’s hunger becomes your hunger, the other’s joy becomes your joy. The other is no longer other: some secret passage has opened between two beings, a deep connectedness.”
Man has forgotten about empathy completely, but he knows about sympathy. Sympathy is not something great. When somebody is in misery you sympathize; but if you look inside you will find you are feeling great because you are not in misery, somebody else is. At least in this situation you are superior. You can sympathize — you can afford it.
Apathy is your everyday experience. You pass people as if they don’t exist. The servant comes in your room — you don’t wave at him, you don’t smile at him. You don’t even take any note that somebody has come in the room. You remain exactly the same as you were before — no recognition of the other’s existence. This is your everyday experience.
Sympathy once in a while — when somebody goes bankrupt, when somebody’s house is burned, the whole neighborhood is sympathetic. And these are the same people who were jealous of his beautiful house. How can it be? The same people who were jealous of his beautiful house suddenly have become so sympathetic because his house is burned. It is a mask; underneath they are feeling great joy, this was the day they were waiting for. His beautiful house was continuously a torture for their heart. Now, sympathizing with the man, they are in a higher position. They are really feeling good.
So remember perfectly well, whenever you sympathize with somebody — watch the inner workings of your mind; it is not friendly. It is not out of your goodness, out of your compassion, but just the opposite. It is your hate, your jealousy, your violence — but now there is no need to show it, the man is finished on his own. Now you can have this beautiful experience and a good night’s sleep by sympathizing with him, by being a real Catholic. Sympathy is not a great quality. It is phony.
Apathy is inhuman. And remember, when you are apathetic towards anybody, your heart is becoming harder. You are not doing any harm to the person, you are simply being self-destructive. The more apathetic you are, the more your heart will lose its great qualities. It will become just a pumping mechanism for breathing, but not a bridge for feeling. Empathy has almost disappeared from human beings. It is certainly the only quality that joins you with the life current within other human beings, animals, trees — with the whole existence. It is pure religiousness. But no religion teaches empathy. All religions teach is sympathy, and sympathy is not the real thing.
But in animals and in trees, empathy is still pure, alive. There have been experiments on animals…. A child of some animal is taken deep into the ocean. The mother is on the shore, miles away; but when they start torturing the child, the mother starts feeling the same — the way Ramakrishna did. When they stop torturing the child, the mother stops being tortured. There is some connection between the mother and the child, which, even miles away, remains — some invisible connection.
The child has been in the mother’s womb for nine months. He is nothing but an extension of the mother. Whatever he has is the gift of his mother; his blood, his bones, his flesh, his very life is ninety-nine percent from the mother, only one percent from the father.
The father does not feel empathy, but the mother feels it. The experiments have been done thousands of miles away, and still it has affected the mother. The father remains unaffected. The father is really not a relative; he has performed just an arbitrary function. Any syringe could have done it — but syringes don’t feel empathy. The father is an unnatural institution.
The mother’s situation is totally different. The child is her own extension. Every small thing that has happened in the nine months when the child was in the mother’s womb has affected the child, even the dreams of the mother. If she was sad, the child was sad, because he was just part of her. If she was happy, the child was happy.
If you see this whole world so sad, so unhappy, so miserable, one of the reasons is that mothers are not aware when they are pregnant that they are carrying a tremendous responsibility: they are going to create a new being. Now it is not only a question of themselves, somebody else is growing within them; and they should be alert not to get into fights, into anger, into hatred, into jealousies. They should listen to great music, they should read great poetry. They should see nature and its beauty.
At least for nine months they should be as silent and meditative as possible. This will change two lives! The child will come in the world with a rejoicing heart; and nine months of silence and meditativeness, music and poetry, is certainly going to change the mother too. It is going to be mutual. She will be grateful to the child her whole life, the child will be grateful to her — and this link continues, there is no way to cut it.
But this is a natural phenomenon. In animals it has not been disturbed, but in man it has been utterly disturbed. Even in trees it exists. It has been found… now there are scientific experiments available: there are certain mechanisms like cardiograms which can be attached to a tree, and the cardiograms start making the graph of how the tree is feeling right now. An early morning sun, a beautiful breeze, the whole night’s rest, birds singing — it is paradise; and there is a tremendous harmony in the cardiogram, the graph is harmonious.
Then you tell the gardener to come with an axe to cut one of the branches of the tree. The gardener comes with the axe — and he is far away, but the graph starts going berserk, it loses its harmony. The branch has not been cut yet; cutting it is only in the mind of the gardener, but even with the mind of the gardener the tree has a certain relatedness. The scientist runs to the gardener and says, “There is no need to cut the tree, but still come with the axe.”
Now the mind of the gardener is changed; he is not to cut the branch, just to bring the axe. Everything on the outside is the same, but the graph immediately comes back to its harmony. And the most surprising thing is — this is quite mysterious — this sensitivity of the tree is far more than that of human beings. Even thoughts are affecting it. It is so receptive that even small waves of thoughts passing by it are caught in its net of sensitivity.
But even more surprising is, when they have attached the instruments to another tree, they were surprised to know that when the gardener was instructed to go and cut a branch of the first tree, even a second tree, which was not going to be cut, lost its harmony. That means it is not only sensitive to the gardener’s mind, it is also sensitive to the neighboring tree. Its neighboring tree is going to be cut — that hurts it. And when the gardener was stopped, the chaotic pattern of the graph disappeared from both trees. They were in tune and in harmony.
Man thinks he has evolved. In certain ways, yes, but in certain other ways he has lost much. His evolution is only of reason, intellect, but he has lost, on the way, his heart. And the heart is the most significant thing. A thousand and one rationalities cannot give you that which a single heart full of sensitivity can give you.
Empathy is relating to people through the heart. But this is possible only if the mind is silent, if there are no thoughts in the mind and it gives way, opens the door to the heart. But ordinarily you are so full of thoughts there is no way to be sensitive.
Even when you love someone, you say, “I think I have fallen in love.” That too, is a thought: you think. Your love is also dependent on your thinking. You cannot do anything directly from the heart. Your mind has been trained, educated, conditioned in every possible way and your heart has been ignored in every possible way. By and by, you have forgotten that the heart is far more valuable than the mind. Your mind has become everything.
The heart is not a Christian, is not a Hindu, is not a Mohammedan, is not a communist — but the mind is. Different ideologies make the mind different. The mind is American, the mind is Russian, the mind is Indian, the mind is Chinese. But the heart? Have you ever thought about the heart? Is the heart also American, Indian, Russian? The heart knows no boundaries, but it has been put into a state of nonfunctioning.
Your whole energy has been diverted by the educational system, by religious teaching, by political ideologies. It has been forced to go directly to the head and bypass the heart. Slowly slowly you start living without the heart. And to live without the heart is not to live at all.
The head is only a mechanism, a biocomputer. And soon there will be better computers than the greatest genius’ head. It is already not of much use. A mathematical problem that Albert Einstein could solve in three or four days’ arduous work can be solved by the computer in a single second. Soon you will see that the head is being replaced by the computer. That’s how things change in the world.
Machines replace human beings because they function better. They don’t go on strike, they don’t make unions, they don’t demand more wages. They simply go on working day in, day out; they don’t even need rest. And they produce a thousand times more than man can. Naturally, man is being replaced everywhere by machines, technology.
The day is not very far away when you will be paid if you are ready to remain unemployed. If you insist on employment you will not be paid. You can’t have both the things together, employment and pay. If you remain unemployed you can be paid.
Naturally, people cannot live only with employment, they need the necessities of life; they will choose to remain unemployed and receive the pay. But the implications are very great. When millions of people are unemployed, have nothing to do, there is bound to be more crime, more rapes, more divorces, more thefts, more murders, more suicides. Man cannot just sit — unless he happens to be a sannyasin. Either people will have to learn to sit silently, doing nothing, and let the grass grow by itself, or they will be a constant nuisance to each other.
Mind is already finished. Man has to evolve a new system of education which directs his energies towards the heart. Machines cannot have hearts, the computers cannot have hearts. The computers cannot fall in love with each other, nor can they elope with somebody’s wife.
The heart knows something which the mind is not aware of. It knows the way of empathy. The heart can connect itself to the whole existence. And that will bring it great ecstasies, immense joy — as if constantly flowers go on showering on you from nowhere.
Your question is significant, but I don’t think you understand what you have asked; empathy is not your experience. Once in a while lovers, great lovers, have felt it. Once in a while great disciples and masters have felt it.
Gautam Buddha had a disciple, Ananda, who remained with him till his very last breath — almost forty-two years without a single break, day in, day out, twenty-four hours a day. His relationship with Gautam Buddha was not of the mind. The relationship between the master and the disciple has not to be of the mind. If it is of the mind, then it is the relationship between teacher and student. If it is of the heart, then it is the relationship of master and disciple.
Slowly slowly their hearts came closer, became almost one. It is said that before Buddha asked for water, Ananda was ready. Before Buddha said that he was feeling cold, Ananda was already bringing the blanket. A very underground way had opened — no need to say anything.
Many times Buddha would say, “Ananda, why have you brought this water? I had not asked you.”
Ananda said, “It does not matter whether you ask or not, I felt the thirst, that my master is thirsty; I felt my master is cold. I don’t know how, because it is not a question of my mind. Just the feeling — and so strong a feeling that I cannot go against it. If you are not thirsty, don’t drink.”
Buddha laughed and he said, “No. I was just inquiring how you managed to know it. I was feeling thirsty, I was just going to say. I was feeling cold, and I was just going to say — but you don’t allow me even to say a thing!” Even in the night — if Gautam Buddha was not able to sleep because there were mosquitoes, Ananda could not sleep either. The moment Buddha awoke in the morning — exactly, simultaneously, immediately, Ananda awoke.
With lovers it has happened that before your beloved says something you know it. It is already heard by you, although it has not been said. So only in very rare cases is empathy still alive. But it has been a great loss to humanity. It is because of the loss of empathy that we have become unspiritual beings. It has to be regained.
Getting it back will give you a totally new, luminous existence. And then you will not feel as an island apart from everybody else, but just part of an infinite continent. And just to feel it is so relaxing, to feel that you are one with the trees, and one with the rivers, and one with the stars. Then for the first time you will know what beauty is, what bliss is, what life is. All that you have to do is to behead yourself.
Meditation is nothing but a subtle way of beheading! Your head remains in its place, but loses all its content, becomes hollow. When the head is empty, the heart is full. When the head is full, the heart is empty, because you have only that much energy. You can’t have both. Up to now, humanity has chosen the head. And you can see the consequence: the whole earth has become a madhouse.
My sannyasins have to change the whole direction of their life force towards the heart. And then you will see a new intensity, a new totality — something that was so close and yet of which you were unaware. Empathy is an experience of the heart. Yes, it is the life current, it is life itself.
Source – Osho Book “From Bondage to Freedom”