OSHO on Transformation

A master in Zen is not simply a teacher. In all the religions there are only teachers. They teach you about subjects which you don't know, and they ask you to believe because there is no way to bring those experiences into objective reality. Neither has the teacher known them - he has believed them; he transfers his belief to somebody else.

Zen is not a believer's world. It is not for the faithful ones; it is for those daring souls who can drop all belief, unbelief, doubt, reason, mind, and simply enter into their pure existence without boundaries. But it brings a tremendous transformation.

Hence, let me say that while others are involved in philosophies, Zen is involved in metamorphosis, in a transformation. It is authentic alchemy: it changes you from base metal into gold. But its language has to be understood, not with your reasoning and intellectual mind but with your loving heart. Or even just listening, not bothering whether it is true or not. And a moment comes suddenly that you see it, which has been eluding you your whole life. Suddenly, what Gautam Buddha called "eighty-four thousand doors" open.

Osho Zen: The Solitary Bird, Cuckoo of the Forest Chapter 6

Tale 57 ~ 100 Tales For 10,000 Buddhas

As I come out of the room, I see Chaitanya Bharti standing there with his camera. I ask him if he will take a picture of me with Osho after discourse. He agrees to it. I tell him that after discourse I will go near Osho, where he should be available.

I sit down on the floor in the audience near the podium and close my eyes. I am in an “Aha” space. I have no clue of what is going on. There are about 400 to 500 people sitting in pin drop silence waiting to receive their master. In a couple of minutes I feel Osho’s presence near me and I open my eyes. He is right in front of me, standing with His folded hands, greeting His friends. I look upwards to see His face one more time to quench my unending thirst. He speaks nearly two hours, answering all kinds of questions.

After discourse, I walk towards Him and say, “Osho, I want to have a picture with you.” He immediately agrees to it and I stand next to Him on His right side, and Chaitanya Bharti clicks his camera in seconds. This picture is my real treasure. When I receive it in the mail from Delhi, I take it to show to Osho.

Osho gazes at the picture for a minute and signs it with the message; “One who lets go of everything is a real Sannyasin.”

Tale 58 ~ 100 Tales For 10,000 Buddhas

After wearing this orange dress for two days, I wash it and go to the morning discourse in my ordinary clothes. When He looks at me, I feel He is not happy about my wearing other clothes. There is a question in His look, “What has happened to the orange dress?”

I can’t understand it. How can I wear one dress for all these days?

After discourse, I am called in His room. I am scared as if I have committed some crime and I have to face the judge in the court. I enter in His room like a sheep. He is sitting on a chair with His eyes closed, and I sit on the floor near His feet. I feel relaxed, wrapped in His invisible fragrance. I can’t resist fazing at His radiant face. He opens His eyes and smiles at me. All my fear vanishes away.

He says, “You have to distribute all your other clothes to your friends and wear only orange.” I ask Him, “How can I go to the office in orange dress? People will laugh and think I have gone mad.” He laughs and says, “You are mad. Let people laugh, you can also laugh with them.” Seeing me confused, He says, “It is up to you. You decide whether you want to be a Sannyasin or not.” His voice is strong and He is really serious about Sannyas. He gets up and goes to the bathroom, leaving me in total confusion.

A special meeting is arranged in the evening in His living room, where He explains to us about His Neo-Sannyas movement. I leave the meeting with a heavy heart. I can’t digest this heavy dose. We have to live in our homes, continue our jobs and wear orange clothes and Mala around our neck. It sounds easy but does not seem practical. I am unable to sleep the whole night. When I visualize the whole scene of going to my home and office in orange clothes, my mind simply freaks out.

Lying in my bed, I can see my mind, wrestling with Osho. Finally, my love and trust for Osho wins and realizing its utter failure, my mind calms down and surrenders to the master. I whisper to myself, “Thy will be done, Oh Beloved of my heart.”

Osho on Receptivity – Receptivity is a state of No Mind

Qustion – Please Osho, What is Receptivity?
Osho – Ananda Vandana, Receptivity is a state of no-mind. When you are utterly empty of all thought, when consciousness has no content, when the mirror reflects nothing, it is receptivity. Receptivity is the door to the divine.
Drop the mind and be. In the mind, you are miles away from being. The more you think, the less you are. The less you think, the more you are. And if you don’t think at all, those are the moments when being asserts itself in its totality.
Receptivity simply means dropping the garbage that you go on carrying in your head. And much garbage is there, utterly useless. The mind means the past. Now the past is no more of any use; it has happened, and it is never going to happen again, because in reality nothing ever repeats.
Even when you think, feel, that this is the same situation, it is never the same situation. Each morning is a new morning, and each morning the sun that you encounter is the new sun. I am not talking about the material sun.
I am talking about the beauty, the benediction, the blessing that it brings every day – it is so utterly new. If you go on carrying pictures of the past, you will not be able to see the new. Your eyes will be covered with your experiences, expectations, and those eyes will not be able to see that which confronts you.
That’s how we go on missing life: the past becomes a barrier, encloses you, traps you, into something that is no more. You become encapsulated in the dead. And the more you become experienced, grown-up, the shell of the dead experience goes on becoming thicker and thicker around you. You become more and more closed.
Slowly slowly all windows, all doors, are closed. Then you exist, but you exist alienated, you exist uprooted. Then you don’t have a communion with life. You don’t have a communion with the trees and the stars and the mountains. YOU CAN’T have a communion, because a great China Wall of your past surrounds you.
When I say become receptive, I mean become a child again. Remember Jesus, who goes on saying to his disciples: Unless you are like small children you will not be able to enter into my kingdom of God. What he is saying is exactly the meaning of receptivity.
The child is receptive because he knows nothing; not knowing anything, he is receptive. The old man is not receptive because he knows too much; knowing too much, he is closed. He has to be reborn, he has to die to the past and become a child again – not in the body, of course, but the consciousness should always be like a child; not childish, remember, but like a child, grown-up, mature, but innocent.
And that’s how one learns, learns the truth that is presented to you every moment of your life, learns to know the Guest which comes and knocks on your doors every moment, day in, day out, year in, year out. But you are so surrounded by your own inner talk, by your own inner procession of thoughts, that you don’t hear the knock.
Do you hear the distant call of the cuckoo? Do you hear the birds chirping? This is receptivity. It is an existential state of silence, utter silence; no movement, nothing stirs, and yet you are not asleep, and yet you are alert, and yet you are absolutely aware. Where silence and awareness meet, mingle and become one, there is receptivity.
Receptivity is the MOST important religious quality. Become a child. Start, Vandana, functioning from the state of not-knowing, and then silence will come of its own accord, and great awareness. And then life is a benediction. The second question:
Source: from Osho Book “The Guest”

Osho on Sensitivity, Osho on How to Increase Sensitivity

 
Osho : KILL OUT DESIRE FOR SENSATION. We live for sensations, we hanker for sensations. We go on seeking newer and newer sensations; our whole life is an effort to obtain new sensations. But what happens? The more you seek sensations, the less sensitive you become. Sensitivity is lost.
It looks paradoxical. In sensations, sensitivity is lost. Then you ask for more sensations and the ’more’ kills your sensitivity more. Then you ask for even more, and finally a moment comes when all your senses have become dull and dead. Man has never before been so dull and dead as he is today. He was always more alive before, because there were not so many possibilities to fulfill so many sensations.
But now science, progress, civilization, education, have created so many opportunities to move further and further into the world of sensation. Ultimately, you turn into a dead person; your sensitivity is lost. Taste more foods – stronger tastes, stronger foods – and your taste will be lost. If you move around the world and go on seeing more and more beautiful things, you will become blind; the sensitivity of your eyes will be lost.
Change your love object every day – your girlfriend or boyfriend, your wife or husband. If you change them every day, your sensitivity to love will die. You are moving in a dangerous terrain. You will never move in depth; you will only be moving on the surface, the periphery. The more things you experience, the less your capacity to experience becomes. And then in the end, when everything around you has gone dead, you ask for the divine, you ask for bliss, you ask for truth. A dead man cannot experience the divine.
To experience the divine you need total sensitivity;. you need aliveness. Remember, only the similar can bring out the similar. If you want the divine – ’the divine’ means the most alive, the ever-alive, ever-young, ever-green – if you want to meet the divine, you will have to be more alive.
How to do it? KILL OUT ALL DESIRE FOR SENSATION. Don’t seek sensation; seek sensitivity, become more sensitive. The two are different. If you ask for sensations, you will ask for things; you will accumulate things. But if you ask for sensitivity, the whole work has to be done on your senses, not on things. You are not to accumulate things. You have to deepen your feelings, your heart, your eyes, your ears, your nose.
Every sense should be deepened in such a way that it becomes capable of feeling the subtle. We cannot even feel the gross, and we must become capable of feeling the subtle. The world appears to be gross only because we cannot feel the subtle. The invisible is hidden in the visible. Look at these trees. You look at the gross: the body of the tree. You never look, you never feel, the life within. The growth! The tree itself is not growing: the tree is just a body. Something else – the invisible – is growing in it.
And because of it, the tree grows The inner is growing and, because of it, the outer is growing. But you look only at the tree, so only the outer is seen. Look around you. Look into your friend’s eyes. You only look at the eyes, not at the one who sees through them. Touch your friend’s body. You touch only the gross; you never feel the subtle within.
Only the body, the external, is felt; because your eyes (your senses) have become so dull that they cannot feel the inner, the invisible. More sensitivity is needed. Ask for less sensations and grow in sensitivity. When you touch, become the touch. When you see, become the eyes. When you hear, your whole consciousness must come to the ears. Listening to a song, or listening to the birds, become the ears. Forget everything else so it is as if you are only the ears. Come to the ears with your total being. Then, your ears will become more sensitive.
When you are looking at something – a flower or a beautiful face or the stars – become the eyes. Forget everything else, as if the whole rest of your body has gone out of existence and your consciousness has become just eyes. Then your eyes will be able to look more deeply, and you will become capable of looking at the invisible also. The invisible can also be seen, but you need more penetrating eyes to see it.
KILL OUT ALL DESIRE FOR SENSATION, and grow in sensitivity. Think about the world less and about your senses more. Purify them. When you don’t ask for sensations they become purified. When you ask for more and more sensations, you are killing your senses.
The man who finds the divine is the man whose senses are totally alive. to their maximum capacity Then it is not only that you can see the divine. You can taste the divine. you can smell the divine. The divine can enter in you through any of the senses. Only when the divine enters you from all the senses does the ultimate realization happen. If you can only see the divine. it is just a partial realization. Then you are not really enlightened. You are only partially enlightened if you cannot touch the divine. if you cannot taste it.
To use such words looks illogical. To taste God? Is he a food? Yes he is everything. You can taste him, but then you need a very subtle capacity to taste. Your very food will become divine. Through food, the divine will be felt. The Upanishadic rishis have said that food is brahma. ”Anna is brahma.” They must have tasted him, they must have eaten him.
We go on thinking that God is a logical problem so we go on arguing about, and about, for or against. We go on arguing whether God exists or not. It is irrelevant. God is not a question of argument, of logic, of reasoning. God is really a question of sensitivity. If you don’t feel him, become more sensitive. No logical thinking will be of any help. Become more sensitive! If you are sensitive, he is there. He has always been there, but you are not sensitive. Things make you dull, sensations make you dull. Kill out desire for sensation.
Source : from Osho Book “The New Alchemy To Turn You On”

Osho on reasons for Men Insensitivity, Osho on Insensitive Men

Question : What are the reasons for man’s insensitivities and how to remove them?
Osho : When the child is born the child is helpless. The human child, particularly, is totally helpless. He has to depend on others to be alive, to remain alive. This dependence is a bargain. The child has to give many things in this bargain, and sensitivity is one. The child is sensitive; his whole body is sensitive. But he is helpless, he cannot be independent; he has to depend on parents, on family, on society; he will have to be dependent.
Because of this dependence and helplessness, the parents, the society, go on forcing things on the child, and he has to yield. Otherwise he cannot remain alive, he will die. So he has to give many things in this bargain. The first very deep and significant thing is sensitivity: he has to leave it. Why? Because the more the child is sensitive, the more he is in trouble, the more he is vulnerable. A slight sensation, and he begins to cry.
The cry has to be stopped by the parents, and they cannot do anything. But if the child goes on feeling every detail of sensation, the child will become a nuisance. And children do become nuisances, so parents have to curtail their sensitivity. The child has to learn resistance, the child has to learn control. And by and by the child has to divide his mind into two. So there are many sensations which he just stops feeling because they are not ”good” – he is punished for them.
The child’s whole body is erotic. He can enjoy his fingers, he can enjoy his body; the whole body is erotic. He goes on exploring his own body; it is a great phenomenon for him. But the moment comes in his exploration when the child gets to the genitalia. Then it becomes a problem because the father and mother are all repressed. The moment the child, boy or girl, touches the genitalia, the parents become uneasy. This is to be observed deeply.
Their behavior suddenly changes, and the child notes it. Something wrong has happened. They start crying, ”Don’t touch!” Then the child starts feeling that something is wrong with the genitalia, he has to suppress. And the genitals are the most sensitive part of your body – the most sensitive, the most alive part of your body, the most delicate. Once the genitalia are not allowed to be touched and enjoyed, you have killed the very source of sensitivity.
Then the child will become insensitive. The more he will grow, the more he will be insensitive. So first there is a bargain – necessary, but evil. And the moment one begins to understand, this bargain has to be thrown and you have to regain your sensitivity. The second reason for this bargain is because of security.
I was with a friend for many years; I lived in his bungalow. From the very first day I observed that he would not look at his servants. He was a rich man, but he would never look at his servants, he would never look at his children. He would come running into the bungalow, then he would go running from his bungalow to his car. So I asked him, ”What is the matter?”
He said, ”If you look at your servants they start feeling friendly, and then they start asking about money and this and that. If you talk with your children, then you are not the master, then you cannot control them.” So he created a facade of insensitivity around himself. He was afraid that if he talked with a servant, if he should feel that the servant was ill, if he sympathized, then he would have to give some money or some help.
Everyone learns sooner or later that to be sensitive is to be vulnerable to many things. You pull yourself in, you create a barrier around yourself that is a safeguard – a safety measure. Then you can go on through the streets… beggars are begging and there are dirty, ugly slums, but you do not feel anything, you do not really see. In this ugly society one has to create a barrier around himself, a wall – a subtle, transparent wall – behind which he can hide.
Otherwise, one is vulnerable, and it will be very difficult to live. That is why insensitivity sets in. It helps you to be in this ugly world without being disturbed; but there is a cost – and the cost is very much. You are at ease in this world without being disturbed, but then you cannot enter into the divine, into the total, into the whole. You cannot enter the other world.
If for this world insensitivity is good and for that world sensitivity is good, that creates the problem. If you are really interested in entering that world, you will have to create sensitivity, you will have to throw away all these walls, these securities. Of course, you will become vulnerable. You will feel much suffering, but that suffering is nothing in comparison to the bliss you can reach through sensitivity. The more sensitive you become, the more you will feel compassion. But you will suffer because all around you there is hell.
You are closed – that is why you cannot feel it. Once you become open, you will be open to both – to the hell of this world and the heaven of that world. You will become open to both. And it is impossible to remain closed at one point and open at another, because really, either you are closed or you are open. If you are closed, you are closed for both. If you are open, you will be open for both. So remember this: a buddha is filled with bliss, but also filled with suffering.
That suffering is not of his own, it is for others. He is in deep bliss, but he suffers for others. And Mahayana Buddhists say that when Buddha reached to the door of nirvana, the gatekeeper opened the door – this is a myth, and very beautiful – the doorkeeper opened the door, but Buddha refused to enter. The doorkeeper said, ”Why are you not coming in? For millennia we have been waiting for you. Every day the news comes that ‘Buddha is coming, Buddha is coming!’ The whole of heaven is waiting for you. Enter! You are welcome!”
Buddha said, ”I cannot enter unless everyone else has entered before me. I will wait! Unless every single human being has entered, heaven is not for me.”
Buddha has a suffering for others. As for himself, he is now deep in bliss. See the parallel? You are deep in suffering, and you go on feeling that everyone else is enjoying life. Quite the contrary happens to a Buddha. He is now in deep bliss, and he knows that everyone else is suffering. These methods are the methods to remove this insensitivity. We will discuss more about HOW to remove it. Enough.

Osho – A man of understanding can transform even poison into nectar

Osho: The very first foundations of a life of spiritual endeavour are love of oneself and spiritual harmony. Surely you will be confounded to hear this, because you have been often advised to suppress something within you. But I say that there is nothing within you that needs suppression or extirpation. There are certain drives within every man that need to be harnessed, not extirpated; certain forces that must needs be awakened and loved, not suppressed. They should be controlled and directed along the proper course. But those who consider them hostile can never be successful in transforming them. A man of understanding can transform even poison into nectar, but one who has no understanding whatever is sure to turn his nectar into poison. I call understanding nectar and deficiency in it poison.
We see that putrefying things, things that emit foul smell, are used as fertilizers. Just now some one presented me with a bunch of flowers. How fragrant they are! When their fragrance stirred my heart, I remembered the source of this fragrance. The foul smell of the muck has been transformed into an endearing fragrance in its course through the seeds and stems. If you simply heap up the manure in your yard, the foul smell will vitiate the whole atmosphere, but if you spread it over your garden round your house, it will be filled with pleasing smell. What you call “foul smell” is only the undeveloped form of “fragrance,” not hostile to it. A discordant note is nothing but the undeveloped and disarranged form of the harmonious notes that blend so well in perfect music.
There is nothing in human life which deserves to be shattered to pieces, to be annihilated. But there is much in human life, to be sure, which should be transformed, sublimated and raised up. Man possesses certain powers which are intrinsically neutral. They are neither auspicious nor inauspicious, neither good nor bad. They are neutral. They assume the form in which we utilize them. What is called sexual potency, the power of passionate lust against which the so-called spiritual leaders have waged an interminable war is but a neutral potentiality, because that power, when transformed, evolves itself into a divine force. It is the primordial creative power, and what it is competent to do depends upon how you use it. What it can be, does not depend on it alone but on our understanding and on the art of living our lives. Does it not, on being transformed, attain the nature of brahmacharya, the power of the celibate?
This brahmacharya is not hostile to the power of lust; verily it is its sublimation. similarly the power that manifests itself in fury becomes peace, calmness and quiescence. It is only a question of transformation. In our life the process of creation possesses greater importance than the process of destruction. If this fact is clearly understood, the question of a struggle with, or a hostility towards the Self, will scarcely arise, for the creation of the Self is possible only in an atmosphere of self-love. I would also like to add the the physical body should not be excluded from the Self.