Truth you already have, but somehow you have tricked yourself into lies... ~OSHO~

You call it a bit crazy! It is absolutely crazy! And I have to be a trickster with you. Try to understand. If somebody is in an illusion, you cannot bring him out by talking about the truth. An illusion can be destroyed only by another illusion. Poison is to be destroyed by other poison. If you have a thorn in your foot, another thorn will be needed to take it out. 

All Buddhas are tricksters. You don't need reality; reality is already there. You just need a shock so that you can open your eyes, so that your eyes pop open and you can see. You just need a trick. 

Somebody is fast asleep. What do you do? You shake him, you put an alarm, and when the bell starts ringing, what are you doing? You are simply creating a disturbance. That's what all devices are. You are fast asleep. Not that reality is not there -- reality surrounds you -- but you are fast asleep. 

I am not here to give you the truth. Nobody can give you the truth. Truth you already have, but somehow you have tricked yourself into lies. Now you will need bigger, stronger lies to crush your lies. All philosophies are lies, devices, to help you to come out of your lies. 

A man was brought to me. He was very much afraid of ghosts. They were just in his imagination -- they are always in your imagination -- but just to say to him, 'This is your imagination,' was not going to help. Everybody was saying that to him. 'You are just imagining. Where are the ghosts? We don't see them.' And he was seeing them continuously; they were surrounding him. Somebody was standing on the right, somebody was standing on the left, somebody was standing at the back -- they were following him everywhere. It was impossible for him to sleep, it was impossible to be alone, because they were torturing him. Now what to do? 

Everybody had been saying to him that this was imagination. The doctor had said to him that this was imagination, the psychiatrist had said that nothing could be done, he was simply imagining, he had no real problem. But whether he had a real problem or not, you cannot deny his problem. He had a problem -- 

real, unreal, is immaterial. For him it was real. He was suffering; his suffering was real. 

When he came to me, I looked to his right and I said, 'Perfectly right, the man is there!' He smiled at me; I was the first man who understood him. And I said, 'By your left side also I can see people, and they are following you. How do you survive with so many ghosts?' 

He said, 'Nobody listens to me' -- but he relaxed. He touched my feet. He said, 'You are the only person, otherwise I go on proving and nobody listens. They say, "It is all imagination. You are in a sort of delusion. Drop imagination. There are nothing like ghosts."' 

But I said, 'I can see. Who are these people?' His father was with him, his wife was with him, and they became afraid when I said, 'Yes, they are there.' And he said to his father, 'Now, listen to what Osho is saying. And you were thinking I am a fool.' Now he gained his confidence. 

What I was saying was a lie; there were no ghosts -- but that is not the point. The man was suffering from lack of confidence, the man was suffering from fear. Now, just by accepting his lie... I am also a liar, I am saying, 'Yes, they are there'... I helped him to regain his confidence. He looked better, he looked stronger. 

Maybe the ghosts are there, but he is not wrong. Maybe the ghosts are still there, but he is not a fool, not an idiot. And I told him, 'Nothing to be worried about. There are methods; we will deal with them.' 

He said, 'That's what I am asking people. Help me! Give me something to deal with them.' 'Don't be worried. And as I can see, they are not stronger than you.' Immediately his height was greater than before. He took a deep inhalation, his spine became erect. And I gave him just an ordinary locket, nothing in it, empty, and I told him, 'You just keep it with you. And whenever you feel they are there, you just hold it in your hand, and they will start becoming afraid; they will be frightened and they will start rushing. Don't be worried, just hold it in your hand.' 

He tried and he laughed. He said, 'They are doing that. They are running away 

from me. Now I'm not afraid.' 

Just two weeks time and he was a normal man. When he was normal and the ghosts had disappeared and he had regained his normality, I told him, 'Now, give me that locket, because it has nothing in it.' 

He said, 'What do you mean?' 

I said, 'There were no ghosts. The medicine was as false as the disease.' But then he could understand. He laughed,  he said,' But you tricked me out of it. If you had said the same thing to me fifteen days ago, I would have never listened to you, but now I know, and if you say, I believe.' I opened the locket; it was empty. I said, 'You can see; it is just empty. Just the idea that you have the power has helped. Now I would not like you to carry this locket forever, because now this will become a disease. If someday it is lost, you 

will start trembling, and those ghosts which have gone will come back because the locket is lost.' 

All your illusions are just illusions. They are illusions. You are not really ill; you have imagined illness. You have not really fallen away from god; you have only dreamed about it. You have never been expelled from the garden of Eden; you have only thought it that way. You are still in the garden of Eden. You still exist 

in the very heart of god. There is no way to get out of it. It is just your dream. How to destroy a dream? One has to be very very skillful about it. You cannot just say to people, 'This is your dream'. They won't listen. Their eyes are so full of dream they won't be able to see. You have to accept their reality, only then can 

you help. 

I have heard: 

Once upon a time a young woman dreamed that a handsome prince rode up to her, scooped her up in his arms, kissed her, and rode off into the night with her. 'Goodness!' she cried in a frightened voice. 'Where are you taking me?' 'You tell me,' answered the prince sharply. 'It is your dream.' 

It is your illusion that you have gone astray, now I have to bring you home. It is your dream that you have forgotten god, and I have to remind you. It is your dream that you think that you are miserable, and I have to remind you that you are not. 

But just by saying that this is all maya, illusion, you will not be helped. I have to be very skillful about it. I have to persuade you. I have to be really a salesman. I have to persuade you by and by. Hurry will not help. Impatience will not help. If I say too much to you, you will not be able to absorb it. 

One man asked me once, 'Osho, you go on talking every day, morning and evening. How is it possible?' 

I said, 'All lies! So what is the difficulty in it? If I am talking only truth, then there is not that much truth to talk every morning, every evening. That much truth does not exist!' 

You have some lie in your life; I create another lie, an antidote. Once both the lies come in contact, they cross each other, they cancel each other. You are left with the truth. 

I am not saying the truth. If you listen to me, my lie will kill your lie and the truth will be left behind. 

Truth is there. I cannot give it to you. Nobody can give it to you. You are truth, so all that I can do is to create antidote lies for you -- that's what all religions are. 

The day you will understand, you will laugh. 

When Bodhidharma attained to his enlightenment, it is said he started laughing. The laughter was mad, he could not contain. He was rolling on the ground. Other bodhisattvas gathered, other seekers gathered, and said, 'What is happening to you?' 

He said, 'It is absolutely ridiculous. I cannot believe that truth was never lost, that we had only imagined that we had lost. And then comes this Buddha, this trickster, and he says, "Come here! Behold! This is the truth!" and he hands you another lie. But it helped tremendously. Both the lies cancelled each other.' And of course, when you come against the lie created by a Buddha, you cannot win. Your lie is very amateurish. When a Buddha lies, it is perfect and professional. He lies very knowingly and deliberately.

A magician performed brilliantly in the salon of an ocean liner. On this ship was a parrot who hated the magician. Every time the magician did a trick, the parrot would scream, 'Phoney! Phoney! Take him away!' 

In the course of the voyage, the ship sank. The parrot and the magician ended up on a long plank. One day passed, they said nothing -- they were enemies. Two days passed, still they said nothing. Finally the parrot could down his suspicions no longer. He glared at the magician and squeaked, 'All right, wise guy. You and 

your damn tricks! What did you do with the ship?' 

One day it is going to happen between you and me... the whole ship, the whole ship you call sansar, the world. What I am doing is just sabotaging. 

OSHO

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OSHO, HOW CAN I LEARN THE SECRETS OF LIFE?

THERE ARE NO SECRETS IN LIFE. Or you can say: life is an open secret. Everything is available, nothing is hidden. All that you need is just eyes to see.

It is like a blind man asking: "I want to learn the secret of light." All that he needs is treatment of the eyes so that he can see. Light is available, it is not a secret. But he is blind -- for him there is no light. What to say about light? For him there is not even darkness -- because even to see darkness eyes are needed. A blind man cannot see darkness. If you can see darkness you can see light; they are two aspects of the same coin. The blind man knows nothing of darkness and nothing of light. Now he wants to learn the secrets of light. We can only help him, not by teaching him great truths about light -- they will be useless -- but by operating on his eyes.

That's exactly what is being done here. This is an operation theater. The moment you become a sannyasin you are getting ready for the operation table, and you have to pass through many surgical operations. That's what all the therapies are. And if you survive all the therapies, then I am there finally to finish you off!

The moment the ego disappears, all the secrets are open secrets. Life is not like a fist; it is an open hand.

But people enjoy the idea that life has secrets -- hidden secrets. Just to avoid their blindness they have created the idea of hidden secrets, of esoteric knowledge which is not available to anybody, or is available only to great adepts who live in Tibet or in the Himalayas, or who are no more in their bodies, who live only in astral bodies and appear only to a few chosen people. And all kinds of nonsense has been perpetuated down the ages for the simple reason that you want to avoid seeing, recognizing the simple fact of your blindness. Rather than saying, "I am blind," you say, "Life's secrets are very hidden; they are not easily available. You will need great initiation."

Life is not esoteric at all. It is written on each leaf of each tree, on each pebble on the seashore; it is contained in each ray of the sun -- whatever you come across is life in all its beauty. And life is not afraid of you, so why should it hide itself? In fact, you are hiding, continuously trying to hide yourself. You are closing yourself against life because you are afraid of life. You are afraid to live -- because life requires a constant death.

One has to die every moment to the past. That is a great requirement of life -- simple if you understand that the past is no more. Slip out of it, snap out of it! It is finished. Close the chapter, don't go on carrying it! And then life is available to you.

But you remain in the past; the past goes on hanging around you, the hangover never ends. And rather than coming to the present, the hangover of the past pushes you towards the future. So either you are in the memories or you are in your imagination. These are the two ways to miss life; otherwise there is no need to miss life. Just drop out of memories and out of imagination. Past is no more, future is not yet; both are non-existential. All that exists is the present, the now. Now is God.

Enter the doors of the now and all is revealed -- instantly revealed, immediately revealed. Life is not a miser: it never hides anything, it does not hold anything back. It is ready to give all, totally and unconditionally. But you are not ready.

You ask: HOW CAN I LEARN THE SECRETS OF LIFE?

It is not a question of learning; it is more a question of unlearning. You have already learned too much: the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Gita, the Koran, the Bible, the Talmud. Thousands of scriptures are there inside you, clamoring, making noise, fighting with each other; all kinds of ideologies constantly trying to attract your attention. Your mind is a mess! It is overcrowded, it is a multitude. Unlearn! All that you have accumulated up to now as knowledge, unlearn it.

Zen people are right when they say: NOT KNOWING IS THE MOST INTIMATE.

Unlearning is the process that can bring you to that beautiful space of not knowing. And then observe. Observe life without any knowledge interpreting it. You have become so accustomed to interpretation.

The moment you see the sunset, immediately, habitually, you repeat words that you have heard from others: "What a beautiful sunset!" You don't mean anything by it; you are not even looking at the sunset. You have not allowed it to penetrate to your heart. You are not feeling any wonder.

You are not in a state of awe. You have not fallen on your knees. You are not looking with unblinking eyes, absorbing. Nothing of that. Just a casual remark: "What a beautiful sunset!" Just a way of speaking, a mannerism, showing that you are cultured, sophisticated, that you know what beauty is, that you have a great aesthetic sense, that you have great sensitivity towards nature. You are not looking at the sunset. Have you ever looked at the sunset? If you had looked you would not have asked this question; the sunset would have told you all.

Have you ever looked at a roseflower? Yes, you say, "It is beautiful!" You may repeat the famous saying: "A rose is a rose is a rose," but you are not seeing the rose. You are full of words, all kinds of jargon -- poetic, philosophic -- but between you and the roseflower there is such a wall, a China Wall. Behind that wall you are hiding.

And you are asking: HOW CAN I LEARN THE SECRETS OF LIFE?

And life goes on utterly nude, utterly naked, absolutely available. All that is required is a not-knowing state, an empty space which can absorb it, which can receive it. Only when you are in a state of not knowing are you a host, and then life becomes a guest.

Just observe, with no evaluation. Don't say "good," don't say "bad"; don't say "beautiful," don't say "ugly." Don't say anything at all! Without saying anything, without bringing your mind in, just watch with utterly empty eyes, like a mirror. Reflect the moon, the stars, the sun, the trees, the people, the animals, the birds. And life will pour itself into your being. And it is an inexhaustible source of energy. And energy is delight.

William Blake is right when he says: Energy is delight. And when life pours its energy into your being it rejuvenates you, it revitalizes you; you are constantly reborn. A real, alive person is born again and again every MOMENT. He is fresh, he is always young. Even when he dies he is fresh and young. Even in the moment of death, life is pouring more and more energy into him. His way of approaching life -- without mind -- helps him to see not only life but death too. And when you are able to see life, you are able to see death. And to see death means there is no death; all is life, and eternal, beginningless, endless. And you are part of this infinite celebration.

Just watch, be alert, and function from a state of innocence. Your question seems to be knowledgeable.

You say: HOW CAN I LEARN THE SECRETS OF LIFE?

You are still asking like a student, a schoolboy.

Life is ready every moment to embrace you. YOU are hiding away from life because you are afraid. You want life on your terms. You want life to be Hindu or Mohammedan or Christian, and life cannot do that. You want life according to the Gita or the Koran, and life cannot do that.

Don't put conditions on life. Putting conditions on life is ugly, violent, stupid. Remain unconditionally open...and suddenly some bells in your heart start ringing, in tune with the whole. A music arises, a melody is born. You are no more separate as a learner, as a knower. Finally you are not even separate as an observer; the observer and the observed become one ultimately.

That is the moment of enlightenment, of Buddhahood, when you are part of this whole, an intrinsic part, inseparable. Then you ARE life -- what is the need to learn anything? You ARE it; you are not separate from it. Who is going to learn and about what? You are life. Then experiencing arises: not knowing but experiencing, not knowledge but wisdom.

Just observe. Nothing is hidden -- just observe. And slowly slowly you will start going with life. Slowly slowly you will not remain separate, you will follow life. And to follow life is to be religious. Not to follow Christ, not to follow Buddha, but to follow life is to be religious.

OSHO

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It is very easy to think about love. It is very difficult to love... ~ OSHO ~

Mm… mm. It is difficult to love real people because a real person is not going to fulfil your expectations. He is not meant to. He is not here to fulfill anybody else’s expectations. He has to live his own life. And whenever he moves somewhere which goes against you or is not in tune with your feelings, emotions, your being, it becomes difficult.

It is very easy to think about love. It is very difficult to love. It is very easy to love the whole world. The real difficulty is to love a single human being. It is very easy to love God or humanity. The real problem arises when you come across a real person and you encounter him. To encounter him is to go through a great change and a great challenge.

He is not going to be your slave and neither are you going to be a slave to him. That’s where the real problem arises. If you are going to be a slave or if he is going to be a slave, then there is no problem. The problem arises because nobody is here to play a slave – and nobody can be a slave.

Everybody is a free agent… the whole being consists of freedom. Man is freedom.

So remember – the problem is real. It has nothing to do with you personally. The problem has to do with the whole phenomenon of love. Don’t make it a personal problem, otherwise you will be in difficulty. Everybody has to face the same problem, more or less. I have never come across a person who has no difficulty in love. It has something to do with love, the very world of love.

The very relationship brings you to such situations where problems arise… and it is good to pass through them. In the East people have escaped just seeing the difficulty in it. They started denying their love, rejecting their love. They became loveless and they called it non-attachment.

By and by they became deadened. Love almost disappeared from the East and only meditation remained. Meditation means that you are feeling good in your loneliness. Meditation means that you are related only to yourself. Your circle is complete with yourself; you don’t go out of it.

Of course ninety-nine percent of your problems are solved – but at a very great cost. You will be less troubled now. The eastern man is less anxious, less tense… almost lives in his own inner cave, protected, with eyes closed. He does not allow his energy to move. He makes a short circuit… a small energy movement inside his being and he is happy. But his happiness is a little dead. His happiness is not a jubilation… it is not a joy.

At the most you can say that it is not unhappiness. At the most you can say something of the negative about it, as if you say that you are healthy because you don’t have any illness. But that is not much of a health. Health should have something positive, a glow of its own – not just absence of disease. In that way even a dead body is healthy because it has no illnesses.

So in the East we have tried to live without love, to renounce the world – that means to renounce love – to renounce the woman, the man, and all possibilities where love can flower. Jain monks, hindu monks, buddhist monks, are not allowed to talk to a woman when they are alone; not allowed to touch a woman, not really allowed to even see face to face.

 When a woman comes to ask something they have to keep their eyes down. They have to look at the tip of their nose so they don’t see the woman even by mistake. Because who knows, something might click… and one is almost helpless in the hands of love.

They don’t stay in people’s homes and they don’t stay long in one place because attachment, love, becomes possible. So they go on moving, wandering, and avoiding – avoiding all relationships. They have attained a certain quality of stillness. They are undisturbed people, undistracted by the world, but not happy, not celebrating.

 In the West just the opposite has happened. People have tried to find happiness through love and they have created much trouble. They have lost all contact with themselves. They have moved so far away from themselves that they don’t know how to come back.

They don’t know where the path is, where their home is. So they feel meaningless, homeless, and they go on making more and more love efforts with this woman, with that man – heterosexual, homosexual, autosexual. They go on trying every way and again they feel empty, because love alone can give you happiness but there will not be any silence in it.

And when there is happiness and no silence, again something is missing. When you are happy without silence your happiness will be like a fever – excitement… much ado about nothing. That feverish state will create much tension in you, and nothing will come out of it, just running, chasing. And one day one comes to realise that the whole effort has been baseless because you have been trying to find the other, and you have not yet found yourself.

 Both these ways have failed. The East has failed because it tried meditation without love. The West has failed because it tried love without meditation. My whole effort is to give you a synthesis, the whole – which means meditation plus love. One should be able to be happy alone and one should also be able to be happy with people.

One should be happy inside and one should also be happy in relationships. One should make a beautiful house inside and outside too. You should have a beautiful garden surrounding your house and a beautiful bedroom too. The garden is not against the bedroom; the bedroom is not against the garden.

So meditation should be an inner shelter, an inner shrine. Whenever you feel that the world is too much for you, you can move into your shrine. You can have a bath in your inner being. You can rejuvenate yourself. You can come out resurrected; again alive, fresh, young, renewed… to live, to be. But you should also be capable of loving people and facing problems, because a silence that is impotent and cannot face problems is not much of a silence, is not worth much.

Only a silence that can face problems and remain silent is something to be longed for, to be desired. So these two things I would like to tell you: First start doing meditation … because it is always good to start from the nearest centre of your being, and that is meditation. But never get stuck in it.

Meditation should move, flower, unfold and become love. So for the second thing, do a few groups here. And don’t be worried… don’t make it a problem – it is not. It is simply human; it’s natural. Everybody is afraid – has to be. Life is such that one has to be. And people who become fearless, become fearless not by becoming brave – because a brave man has only repressed his fear; he’s not really fearless.

A man becomes fearless by accepting his fears. It is not a question of bravery. It is simply seeing into the facts of life and realising that these fears are natural. One accepts them! The problem arises because you want to reject them. You have been taught very egoistical ideals – ’Be brave’. What nonsense! Foolish! How can an intelligent man avoid fears? If you are stupid you will not have any fears.

Then the bus driver goes on honking, and you stand in the middle of the road unafraid. Or a bull comes charging at you and you stand there unafraid.

 But you are stupid! An intelligent man has to jump out of the way. If you become an addict and start looking everywhere for the snake, then there is a problem. If there is nobody on the road and then too you are afraid and start running, there is a problem; otherwise, fear is natural.

 So when I say that you will get rid of your fear, I don’t mean that there will be no fears in life. You will come to know that ninety percent of your fears are just imagination. Ten percent are real so one has to accept them. I don’t make people brave. I make them more responsive, sensitive, alert, and their alertness is enough. They become aware that they can use their fears also as stepping stones. So don’t be worried, mm?

Saurabh means a very great lake, a very silent lake, and deva means divine… a divine lake. And become one, mm? Become more and more silent, and always keep this image of a deep silent cool lake inside.

Remember it, and when you go to sleep at night just feel as if you are sitting by the side of a very great lake… you cannot see the other shore. It is so silent that there are no ripples on it. Just go on remembering it, feeling it – the coolness of it, the peace, the silence – and fall asleep. Do that every day, just for two or three minutes before you go to sleep, and much will happen through it.

OSHO

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