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Question Is the childishness of senility anything to do with awareness? Is senility a disease of the west only? What is senility? Osho It has nothing to do with East or West. East and West may differ on the surface deep down there is no difference. Man is man maybe a few different patterns in the East and a few different patterns in the West, but they are on the surface; they are only skin deep. Just scratch a little and East and West both disappear. Deep down is humanity, one. This question is significant. Is the childishness of senility anything to do with awareness? And, What is senility? Senility is becoming old without becoming mature. Senility is growing old without growing up. Then, as the end result, the senile person becomes very childish because his child has never become a grown-up; he has always been hiding the child inside him. He was occupied in a thousand and one things of the world and the child was waiting and waiting. Now he has become retired, now all those occupations are gone and his energy also is weakening, so all those controls are also gone. Because when you control yourself and you pretend something that you are not and you hide something that you are, great energy is needed. The old man is naturally losing energy; his control is gone, he cannot control, so that which is hidden inside him surfaces: he again becomes childish. But remember, that is not what Jesus means when he says: Only those who are like children will be capable of entering into the kingdom of God. Child-likeness is not childishness. Child-likeness comes only when a person is not only growing in age but is growing up, is becoming integrated inside. It is not only a physiological phenomenon that he is sixty, but psychologically, spiritually, he has become a grown-up person, mature, ripe. Then, in the end, the person becomes child-like, innocent. Childishness is not a value, it is a disvalue. Child-likeness is a great value. To be child-like means that the circle is complete: the man has lived life, lived and loved, experienced all that was available and has come to conclude that there is nothing more valuable than innocence. He has known known that knowledge is futile, so he has dropped knowledge. He has known all the cunning ways of the world he has been cunning, he has been deceptive, he has been deceived, others have been cunning towards him he has known all that, but he has grown-up and he has come to conclude that that is just useless, meaningless. Deceiving, deceived all is a game; it does not lead you anywhere, it is a dream. He has dropped all those games. A really mature person is one who has no more obsessions with any game. He lives simply, innocently, without any pretensions and without any masks. That is the innocent person: a grown-up person become innocent, child-like. Simply getting old in age, one becomes senile, ugly, rotten; and one day, when your energies are gone, your childishness surfaces and the old person starts behaving in foolish ways. Remember, to be foolish is one thing and to be innocent is totally another. Sometimes they look similar, but they are not. An innocent person may sometimes look foolish, but he is not foolish. You can cheat him, but he is not foolish; and while you are cheating him he is feeling

compassion for you. One day you will understand that you were a fool, he was not a fool. A foolish person looks innocent, but is not innocent. He is also cunning, though his cunningness is not a very developed quality, his cunningness is not very complex. He is also cunning, but people are more cunning than him he is relatively less cunning, so he looks foolish. An innocent person looks similar to the foolish one, but he is not. Childishness is foolishness, stupidity: idiotic it is. Child-likeness is totally different: it is a flowering of innocence. St. Francis is child-like, Jesus is child-like, Lao Tzu is child-like. [A sannyasin who is leaving said: Two months ago, you said you might give me a special healing meditation. Ive been going to all the divine healings (that happen at each monthly camp) and they did much.] Osho You would like to become a healer? You will be able. It will be good for you. It will be good for others. Healing is a beautiful communication, deeper than any other communication. You can talk verbally, you can say to somebody, I love you, but words are just words empty. If you can simply shower your energy on the other person, you say in a very much deeper way I love you. That really heals. Thats what I mean when I say that compassion is therapeutic. So just start and there is no need to be worried about technique. Whenever you feel that you have the energy to share, just share. A few things to remember. The person should be lying down whenever you heal, because when a person is in a lying posture there is more possibility of entering his deepest core. When a person is lying down, he is more like a child. When he is sitting, he is less like a child; when he is standing, even less like a child. When he is lying down he feels relaxed automatically, because lying down is associated with sleep and with childhood when he was not capable of sitting, not capable of standing. So sleep and childhood these two things are deeply associated with lying. So let the person lie down and tell him to relax. The best way to help him to relax is to tell him to first do the opposite to become as tense as possible, to tense all over the body so that he deliberately becomes tense and every fibre of the body is stretched. Tell him to come to almost a mad climax of tension, and then when he cannot go any more, tell him suddenly to relax. Then he will fall into deep relaxation. Ordinarily if you say to somebody to relax, he listens to the word, he tries, but nothing happens, because how to relax? In fact if you say to a person to relax he becomes more tense than hewas before because now he tries to relax. He does not know what to do because you cannot relax. You can become tense, but you cannot relax. Relaxation is a by-product, is an after-effect, a consequence of utmost tension. So tell him to tense; that he knows how to do. That is not a problem everybody knows how to become tense. Tell him that he is facing his enemy or facing death and he has to escape, so become tense. Tell him to let his whole body become tense, vibrating with tension, and then suddenly tell him to relax. With this created tension, he can relax now. He will fall into deep

relaxation. Just two, three minutes of great tension will help him to relax. And when he is relaxing, start pouring your energy on him. It is good not to touch the body. In the beginning it is good not to. Just keep at least two inches away from the body, because if you touch the body suddenly, the modern mind has become afraid of touch so much that it becomes tense. People are very touchy about touch. If you touch them they become tense. The modern mind knows only one touch, and that is sexual. All touch has disappeared. We dont touch people ordinarily. If you see two men holding hands, you think they are gay, queer or that something is wrong with them. Foolish! They may be just friends. Nothing is wrong in touching each others body, but two men touching each other become afraid. You feel embarrassed if somebody embraces you. If he is a man you feel embarrassed. If she is a woman you feel sexually aroused. But in both the ways touch loses security, innocence. Even fathers and mothers dont touch and cuddle and hug their children. The only touch that children have come to know and associate with is when the father becomes angry and hits and slaps. That is the only touch. So when you touch somebody, you touch wrong associations sexual, homosexual, or somebody slapping and the other becoming afraid, scared, defensive, tense. So in the beginning, never touch. When you are healing a person, so much energy is pouring out that if you touch, it will be almost as if you are touching him with a live wire, a live electric wire He will become so afraid that his doors will close and if the doors are closed, you can go on showering and nothing will happen. Healing is possible not only because of your energy it is possible only when your energy enters the other person and becomes his energy. If it comes up to the door and returns, no healing happens. Thats why if a person does not trust you, never try healing never try, because it is not possible. If a person has doubts about you, forget about him. It is possible only in deep trust, and if you try on persons who wont trust you, you will become unconfident about your own energy. If you fail many times, then by and by you will think Nothing is happening. I dont have the energy. In fact every person has the energy to heal. It is something natural. It is not that a few people are healers and others are not, no. Every person born is a healer but has forgotten the capacity, or has never used it, or has used it in wrong associations and has come to feel that it never works. So in the beginning never try on just anyone. It is a very tempting thing, because people who dont believe say, Okay, now try on us. We are ready. You can show us how you can heal. Never make it an argument, because that will be very destructive to you, and when the person is not receptive, you will feel very tired. When the energy comes back, unwelcomed, unreceived, and falls back on you, you will feel very tired because you have exhausted your energy with no result, with no fulfillment. You have exhausted the energy but it has not been creative.

So never try it on somebody who challenges you. It is not a challenge. If somebody is ready to participate, to go with you, then it is a beautiful experience. So in the beginning never touch. When the person is relaxing more and more and you feel and I am saying feel not that you think. If you feel an urge arises to touch the person for example he has a stomach ache or a headache or something and you feel that just touching the head will be helpful then touch, but first let him get in tune with you. First just give an energy massage, not touching the body. Keep about two inches distance, because the persons body aura is about six inches away from his body. Keep about two, three inches away, so in a way you are touching his energy aura. You are not touching his or her physical body, but you are touching his subtle body and thats enough. For the energy to penetrate, thats enough. You have really touched him, but he will not be afraid about that. When you feel that the person is participating tremendously, when his trust is immense and you can see that he is flowing with you, and you can feel that your energy is being absorbed it is not rejected; he has become like a sponge and is soaking it up then you can touch. Then the touch becomes very very helpful; then it becomes a pinpoint. On that point the whole energy showers and enters deepest. After each healing it is better that if you can take a shower, do so. If it is not possible, then at least wash your hands immediately and shake them. It always happens that when you are passing your energy into the other person, his or her energy also sometimes passes into you; they overlap. Sometimes the person can be very very strong, even stronger than you. Sometimes the person may not be strong, but his illness may be very strong, so those vibrations of illness can enter you and can be destructive. They can make you m, tense. Healing is good but not at your own cost, because then it is foolish and you cannot heal much. Sooner or later you will become ill, badly ill, and your body will be confused very much. So it you can take a shower, good. If it is not possible, then just wash your hands immediately. Cold water is very good it helps your energy to shrink back, and then the contact is lost from any influences, impressions, vibrations, that could get into it. Then shake your hands. If you feel sometimes that you are really too full of the energy of the other person, jog, jump. Two or three minutes jogging will do. Then all the impressions and vibrations will fall away from you. Only this much and you will be able, mm? Good.

Osho Love is therapy, and there is no other therapy in the world except love. It is always love that heals, because love makes you whole. Love makes you feel welcome in the world. Love makes you a part of existence; it destroys alienation. Then you are no more an outsider here, but utterly needed. Love makes you feel needed, and to be needed is the greatest need. Nothing else can fulfill that great need. Unless you feel that you are contributing something to existence, unless you feel that without you the existence would be a little less, that you would be missed, that you are irreplaceable,

you will not feel healthy and whole. And prayer is the highest form of love. If love is the flower, then prayer is the fragrance. Love is visible, prayer is invisible. Love is between one person and another person, prayer is between one impersonal presence and the impersonal presence of the whole. Love is limited, prayer is unlimited. If you can pray, no other therapy is needed. Therapies are needed in the world because prayer has disappeared. Man was never in need of therapy when prayer was alive, flowing, when people were dancing in great gratitude, singing songs in praise of God, were ecstatic just for being, for being here, were grateful just for life. When tears were flowing from their eyes of love, of joy and when there were songs in their hearts, there was no need for therapy. Therapy is a modern need, a poor substitute for prayer. Psychoanalysis is a poor substitute for religion, very poor. But when you cannot get the best, then you settle for second-best or the thirdbest, or whatsoever is available. Because temples have become rotten, churches have become political, religion has been contaminated by the priests, man is left alone, uncared for, with nobody to support him. The very ground on which he has been standing for centuries has disappeared. He is falling in an abyss, feeling uprooted. Psychoanalysis comes as a substitute: it gives you a little bit of rooting, it gives you a little bit of ground to hold onto, but it is nothing compared to prayer. Because the psychoanalyst himself is in need, he himself is as ill as the patient, there is not much difference between the psychoanalyst and the patient. If there is any difference, that difference is of knowledge and that makes no difference at all. It is not a difference of being. If there is any difference it is quantitative, it is not that of quality, and quantity does not make much difference. The psychoanalyst and his patient are both in the same boat. In the o]d days there was a different kind of person moving in the world, the religious person the Buddha, the Christ. His very presence was healing. Because he was healed and whole, his wholeness was contagious. Just as diseases are contagious, so is health. Just as illnesses can be caught from others, so can you catch something of the healing energy from the other. But for that, the psychoanalyst will not be of much help. He may help a little bit to solve your problems intellectually. He may find out the causes of your problems and when you know the cause you feel a little better, you are not in ignorance but just by knowing the cause nothing is helped. You are suffering: the psychoanalyst will show that you are suffering because of your mother, because of your upbringing, because of your childhood. It makes you feel a little good: so it is not you who is the cause, it is the mother. Or, there is always something else you can put blame on. Psychoanalysis shifts the responsibility, makes you feel a little weightless, unburdened, but the problem is not solved. Just by knowing the cause, the cause does not disappear.

[A sannyasin who is leaving said: Two months ago, you said you might give me a special healing meditation. Ive been going to all the divine healings (that happen at each monthly camp) and they did much.] Osho You would like to become a healer? You will be able. It will be good for you. It will be good for others. Healing is a beautiful communication, deeper than any other communication. You can talk verbally, you can say to somebody, I love you, but words are just words empty. If you can simply shower your energy on the other person, you say in a very much deeper way I love you. That really heals. Thats what I mean when I say that compassion is therapeutic. So just start and there is no need to be worried about technique. Whenever you feel that you have the energy to share, just share. A few things to remember. The person should be lying down whenever you heal, because when a person is in a lying posture there is more possibility of entering his deepest core. When a person is lying down, he is more like a child. When he is sitting, he is less like a child; when he is standing, even less like a child. When he is lying down he feels relaxed automatically, because lying down is associated with sleep and with childhood when he was not capable of sitting, not capable of standing. So sleep and childhood these two things are deeply associated with lying. So let the person lie down and tell him to relax. The best way to help him to relax is to tell him to first do the opposite to become as tense as possible, to tense all over the body so that he deliberately becomes tense and every fibre of the body is stretched. Tell him to come to almost a mad climax of tension, and then when he cannot go any more, tell him suddenly to relax. Then he will fall into deep relaxation. Ordinarily if you say to somebody to relax, he listens to the word, he tries, but nothing happens, because how to relax? In fact if you say to a person to relax he becomes more tense than hewas before because now he tries to relax. He does not know what to do because you cannot relax. You can become tense, but you cannot relax. Relaxation is a by-product, is an after-effect, a consequence of utmost tension. So tell him to tense; that he knows how to do. That is not a problem everybody knows how to become tense. Tell him that he is facing his enemy or facing death and he has to escape, so become tense. Tell him to let his whole body become tense, vibrating with tension, and then suddenly tell him to relax. With this created tension, he can relax now. He will fall into deep relaxation. Just two, three minutes of great tension will help him to relax. And when he is relaxing, start pouring your energy on him. It is good not to touch the body. In the beginning it is good not to. Just keep at least two inches away from the body, because if you touch the body suddenly, the modern mind has become afraid of touch so much that it becomes tense. People are very touchy about touch. If you touch them they become tense. The modern mind knows only one touch, and that is sexual. All touch has disappeared. We dont touch people ordinarily.

If you see two men holding hands, you think they are gay, queer or that something is wrong with them. Foolish! They may be just friends. Nothing is wrong in touching each others body, but two men touching each other become afraid. You feel embarrassed if somebody embraces you. If he is a man you feel embarrassed. If she is a woman you feel sexually aroused. But in both the ways touch loses security, innocence. Even fathers and mothers dont touch and cuddle and hug their children. The only touch that children have come to know and associate with is when the father becomes angry and hits and slaps. That is the only touch. So when you touch somebody, you touch wrong associations sexual, homosexual, or somebody slapping and the other becoming afraid, scared, defensive, tense. So in the beginning, never touch. When you are healing a person, so much energy is pouring out that if you touch, it will be almost as if you are touching him with a live wire, a live electric wire He will become so afraid that his doors will close and if the doors are closed, you can go on showering and nothing will happen. Healing is possible not only because of your energy it is possible only when your energy enters the other person and becomes his energy. If it comes up to the door and returns, no healing happens. Thats why if a person does not trust you, never try healing never try, because it is not possible. If a person has doubts about you, forget about him. It is possible only in deep trust, and if you try on persons who wont trust you, you will become unconfident about your own energy. If you fail many times, then by and by you will think Nothing is happening. I dont have the energy. In fact every person has the energy to heal. It is something natural. It is not that a few people are healers and others are not, no. Every person born is a healer but has forgotten the capacity, or has never used it, or has used it in wrong associations and has come to feel that it never works. So in the beginning never try on just anyone. It is a very tempting thing, because people who dont believe say, Okay, now try on us. We are ready. You can show us how you can heal. Never make it an argument, because that will be very destructive to you, and when the person is not receptive, you will feel very tired. When the energy comes back, unwelcomed, unreceived, and falls back on you, you will feel very tired because you have exhausted your energy with no result, with no fulfillment. You have exhausted the energy but it has not been creative. So never try it on somebody who challenges you. It is not a challenge. If somebody is ready to participate, to go with you, then it is a beautiful experience. So in the beginning never touch. When the person is relaxing more and more and you feel and I am saying feel not that you think. If you feel an urge arises to touch the person for example he has a stomach ache or a headache or something and you feel that just touching the head will be helpful then touch, but first let him get in tune with you. First just give an energy massage, not touching the body. Keep about two inches distance, because the persons body aura is about six inches away from his body. Keep about two,

three inches away, so in a way you are touching his energy aura. You are not touching his or her physical body, but you are touching his subtle body and thats enough. For the energy to penetrate, thats enough. You have really touched him, but he will not be afraid about that. When you feel that the person is participating tremendously, when his trust is immense and you can see that he is flowing with you, and you can feel that your energy is being absorbed it is not rejected; he has become like a sponge and is soaking it up then you can touch. Then the touch becomes very very helpful; then it becomes a pinpoint. On that point the whole energy showers and enters deepest. After each healing it is better that if you can take a shower, do so. If it is not possible, then at least wash your hands immediately and shake them. It always happens that when you are passing your energy into the other person, his or her energy also sometimes passes into you; they overlap. Sometimes the person can be very very strong, even stronger than you. Sometimes the person may not be strong, but his illness may be very strong, so those vibrations of illness can enter you and can be destructive. They can make you m, tense. Healing is good but not at your own cost, because then it is foolish and you cannot heal much. Sooner or later you will become ill, badly ill, and your body will be confused very much. So it you can take a shower, good. If it is not possible, then just wash your hands immediately. Cold water is very good it helps your energy to shrink back, and then the contact is lost from any influences, impressions, vibrations, that could get into it. Then shake your hands. If you feel sometimes that you are really too full of the energy of the other person, jog, jump. Two or three minutes jogging will do. Then all the impressions and vibrations will fall away from you. Only this much and you will be able, mm? Good. [A sannyasin, returning to the West, says she is confused.] Osho Confusion remains, and one has to learn to live with it because life cannot be sorted out; it is so big. The confusion arises because of our impossible effort to sort everything out; it is too big for that! There is no way to know everything so something or other always remains unknown. That unknown goes on creating confusion. So one has to learn to live with it, then by and by it disappears and instead of confusion a totally different new thing arises and thats what is called wonder. It is the same energy that becomes confusion or wonder. When a child has the same energy he simply feels wonder because he is not in any way concerned about solving anything; he is ready to accept the mystery of it. He has no conflict between the known and the unknown; he does not make any distinction between the real and the dream.

Sometimes it happens that a child may have been playing with a toy in his dream and when he awakes he cries for the toy and asks, Where has it gone? We go on saying that it was just a dream but he says, But where is it now? He makes no distinction between the dream and the real, he does not make distinctions. If you dont make distinctions confusion cannot arise. So the more a person is trying to solve things, the more confused he will become. Intellectual people become more confused than emotional people. Then there are gut people also. They never become confused: they simply like things as they come. The moment we think about life as if it is a problem, we are in confusion. The moment we start thinking that it is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived, that there is no way to know and whatsoever we know will remain very very limited; the unknown will remain unlimited. We can create a small candlelight around ourselves but the whole existence remains dark. How can you be unconfused? You will remain confused if you dont accept that darkness, if you dont accept the mystery of life. Yes, there are problems and there are many things which one would like to sort out, but they cannot be sorted out. This is what I call learning to live with it. Once you start learning to live with it, by and by confusion disappears, because confusion is an interpretation, and instead of confusion the same energy becomes more and more full of wonder. You are simply surprised by the mystery of life, you are simply surprised that nothing can be solved. You are simply surprised that it is not a puzzle; it is a mystery. And the mystery is more fundamental than us because we come out of it. The mystery was there before we came in, the mystery will be there when we are gone, so the mystery is infinite. We are just small waves of the ocean. Confusion arises and the wave sometimes goes mad. It is not an accident that great thinkers in the West a Friedrich Nietzsche or a Mayakovsky people who were really of great intelligence have almost always gone mad. Now my feeling about Nietzsche is that had he been in India he would have become a buddha. His intelligence is superb, incomparable but he simply went into a madhouse, a mad asylum, and died as a madman. In India the same energy would have been transformed with a totally different outlook. He would have become a poet. He had that quality and unconsciously many of his writings are more poetic than philosophic: Thus spake Zarathustra is great poetry, as great as Bhagavadgita. But he went mad, because a wrong notion exists in the western mind that everything has to be clear-cutly solved; everything has to be reduced to statistics. No comer of mind should be left in the dark. Everything should finally be decided in black and white, only then can we be at ease. Then there is confusion. Become a child: dont try to solve it it is too big and in trying to solve it you will miss your life. Those beautiful moments which could have been of tremendous joy will be lost in trying somehow to manage the problems of life, to solve the confusions of life, the riddles of life, and it will be a burden rather than being a celebration. Dont be cerebral, dont be in the head. Start enjoying more, laughing more. Start approaching the mystery of life more innocently with no concept of finding the answer.

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There is none, there exists none. The answer is no answer. The wise man drops questioning. The moment you drop questioning there is no confusion; suddenly it disappears. The confusion is created by our questioning mind. My whole effort here is to create an unquestioning consciousness a great trust, a deep acceptance, a reverence for life. In fact, the very effort to solve it is disrespectful. It means we want to reduce god to a syllogism. We want to reduce love into chemistry. We want to reduce everything into the manageable and wherever we find that things are unmanageable, beyond us, cannot be grasped, we are in confusion. Turn this confusion into mystery it is the same energy, and mystery is such a joy! Confusion is such a disease, confusion creates hell! Wherever you are, continue to meditate. And let this be your approach: create more wonder in life, remain surprised, and remain available for more and more surprise. Let each moment be an encounter with the mysterious. Continue to meditate and help my people wherever you are. Question Is the childishness of senility anything to do with awareness? Is senility a disease of the west only? What is senility? Osho It has nothing to do with East or West. East and West may differ on the surface deep down there is no difference. Man is man maybe a few different patterns in the East and a few different patterns in the West, but they are on the surface; they are only skin deep. Just scratch a little and East and West both disappear. Deep down is humanity, one. This question is significant. Is the childishness of senility anything to do with awareness? And, What is senility? Senility is becoming old without becoming mature. Senility is growing old without growing up. Then, as the end result, the senile person becomes very childish because his child has never become a grown-up; he has always been hiding the child inside him. He was occupied in a thousand and one things of the world and the child was waiting and waiting. Now he has become retired, now all those occupations are gone and his energy also is weakening, so all those controls are also gone. Because when you control yourself and you pretend something that you are not and you hide something that you are, great energy is needed. The old man is naturally losing energy; his control is gone, he cannot control, so that which is hidden inside him surfaces: he again becomes childish. But remember, that is not what Jesus means when he says: Only those who are like children will be capable of entering into the kingdom of God. Child-likeness is not childishness. Child-likeness comes only when a person is not only growing in age but is growing up, is becoming integrated inside. It is not only a physiological phenomenon that he is sixty, but psychologically, spiritually, he has become a grown-up person, mature, ripe. Then, in the end, the person becomes child-like, innocent.

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Childishness is not a value, it is a disvalue. Child-likeness is a great value. To be child-like means that the circle is complete: the man has lived life, lived and loved, experienced all that was available and has come to conclude that there is nothing more valuable than innocence. He has known known that knowledge is futile, so he has dropped knowledge. He has known all the cunning ways of the world he has been cunning, he has been deceptive, he has been deceived, others have been cunning towards him he has known all that, but he has grown-up and he has come to conclude that that is just useless, meaningless. Deceiving, deceived all is a game; it does not lead you anywhere, it is a dream. He has dropped all those games. A really mature person is one who has no more obsessions with any game. He lives simply, innocently, without any pretensions and without any masks. That is the innocent person: a grown-up person become innocent, child-like. Simply getting old in age, one becomes senile, ugly, rotten; and one day, when your energies are gone, your childishness surfaces and the old person starts behaving in foolish ways. Remember, to be foolish is one thing and to be innocent is totally another. Sometimes they look similar, but they are not. An innocent person may sometimes look foolish, but he is not foolish. You can cheat him, but he is not foolish; and while you are cheating him he is feeling compassion for you. One day you will understand that you were a fool, he was not a fool. A foolish person looks innocent, but is not innocent. He is also cunning, though his cunningness is not a very developed quality, his cunningness is not very complex. He is also cunning, but people are more cunning than him he is relatively less cunning, so he looks foolish. An innocent person looks similar to the foolish one, but he is not. Childishness is foolishness, stupidity: idiotic it is. Child-likeness is totally different: it is a flowering of innocence. St. Francis is child-like, Jesus is child-like, Lao Tzu is child-like. Question Osho, What is Wisdom? Osho Stephen Crane writes: I met a seer, he held in his hands the book of wisdom. Sir, I addressed him, let me read."Child he began. Sir, I said, think not that I am a child, for already I know much of that which you hold. Ah, much! he smiled. Then he opened the book and held it before me. Strange, that I should have gone so suddenly blind. Wisdom is not knowledge. The knowledgeable person cannot see it, he is blind. Only the innocent person can see it, only a child, one who knows nothing, one who functions from the state of not knowing, can know what wisdom is. Wisdom has nothing to do with knowledge, not at all; it has something to do with innocence. Something of the purity of the heart is a must, something of the emptiness of being is needed for wisdom to grow. Only those who are like small children will be able to enter into my kingdom of God. Yes, Jesus is right. Knowledge comes from without, wisdom wells up within. Knowledge is borrowed, wisdom is original. Wisdom is your insight into existence not Buddhas insight, not Atishas insight, not my insight, but your insight, absolutely your insight into existence.

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When you are able to see with no dust of knowledge on the mirror of your soul, when your soul is without any dust of knowledge, when it is just a mirror, it reflects that which is. That is wisdom. That reflecting of that which is, is wisdom. Knowledge gratifies the ego, wisdom happens only when the ego is gone, forgotten. Knowledge can be taught; universities exist to teach you. Wisdom cannot be taught, it is like an infection: you have to be with the wise, you have to move with the wise, and only then will something start moving inside you. The movement in the disciple is not caused by the master, it is not under the law of cause and effect. It is what Carl Gustav Jung calls synchronicity. The master is so full of silence, so overflowing with innocence, that his presence triggers a process in you, simply triggers a process in you. Nothing is transferred; your inner being starts remembering that I also have the same treasure as my master, I had simply forgotten about it. I had moved into the without, keeping the within at the back. The treasure was not lost but only forgotten; I had fallen asleep. And the asleep person at the most can dream that he is awake. But that too is a dream. That dream is knowledge. The person who is asleep and thinks that he knows that is knowledge. But the person who really awakes is wise. Knowledge is a false, plastic substitute for wisdom. Wisdom is true knowledge rather knowing than knowledge, because it has no full point to it. It goes on growing, it goes on flowing. The man of wisdom goes on learning; there never comes a stop. Dont be knowledgeable, be wise. Osho Deva means divine, and akal means two things: one is timelessness and another is deathlessness. One word has both the meanings because in the eastern mind particularly in the indian consciousness time and death are synonymous. Whatsoever happens in time is going to die. In time, the eternal is not possible. Time is the field for the impermanent, the flux, the changing. Whatsoever is born in time will have to die. Nothing can be permanent in the flux of time. You cannot step in the same river twice. Everything is fleeting and nothing is staying. Time is basically the field of death. So akal means both things time and death. and akal means no time, no death. Once your consciousness transcends time, it has transcended death too. Once you can have a glimpse of something within your being which is not temporal, which is not born in time, which has nothing to do with time, which stands outside time, then you know that you cannot die. and that certainty is a radical change, because that certainty changes your whole pattern of life, your whole attitude, your total approach. Ordinarily, whatsoever you are doing, you are surrounded by the fear of death. You may not look at it, but that doesnt make much difference. You may avoid it you may look at some other things. You may remain occupied in something else so that you need not look at death,

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but it is there; whether you look or not makes no difference. Your look is irrelevant it is there. It is constantly eating at your roots. Each moment death is happening. Each moment you have died a little more, a little more, a little more drop by drop. One day suddenly you find that you are exhausted nothing is left. Time has flown out of your hand. Death is not something that happens aker seventy, eighty, ninety years death starts the moment you are born. Even a one-day-old child has died. He has died already at least one day. One day is less. The arrow of time has started moving towards death. So whether you look or not, death is surrounding you you are like an island, surrounded by death from everywhere. And it affects you. If you love, you cannot love totally, because death is there how can you love totally? How can you love when death is there? It looks impossible to love when death is there. How can you see the beautiful when death is there? How can you look into a rose flower and be charmed by its beauty how? Because death is there already the petals of the rose are falling. Death is happening in you, in the rose everywhere and how can you be happy when death is there? It is impossible to be happy, to be loving, to celebrate, to sing, to dance death is there! Once you have entered a moment of no time, death disappears. That moment we call akal. You may have heard the famous slogan of the sikhs:Sat shree akal. That means Only the deathless is true everything else is false. That is their mantra. Only the timeless is true everything else is false; And unless you have attained to the timeless, you have been just collecting pebbles and seashells on the seashore. You have been playing with toys you have been childish. Meditation is the door to timelessness. When thinking stops, when there is no thought moving on the screen of your mind, suddenly the timelessness akal -is there. Because with the disappearance of thoughts, time disappears. Time cannot exist without thoughts; it needs thoughts to be there. Once the screen is empty and your mind projector is not Working, not functioning even for a single moment you have dropped into the interval. In the pause between the two notes, silence absolute silence, and then you have the first taste of your being. So keep alert about it, mm? Whenever you are sitting silently, just wait for the moment, the pause between two notes. Relax silently, wait for it. One day it comes. It can come any day it can come right this moment. It knows no barrier. Just a readiness, a receptivity, an openness is enough, and a heart who can accept, receive. So be feminine, and any time it is going to happen. Sometimes it can happen in dancing, in meditating. Sometimes it can simply happen when you are sitting. It can happen any moment because no time is against it all time is the same. Each moment is sacred, and it can happen in any moment, so just be alert. Im not saying to make much effort for it, because if you make effort you will become tense. Im saying to simply be alert. Be alert in a feminine way passive, watching, waiting, but not doing anything in particular for it. And the day you realise any moment which you feel was

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beyond time, when time had stopped then come immediately to tell me. Mm? it is going to happen any day! Source Osho Book The Buddha Disease Question What is Death, and what exists after death? Osho If you think about what is, you will pervert i t. If you think about it, then you will impose your own conceptions on it. What is can be revealed only when there is no conception, no thought, no theory in you; when your mind is totally vacant; when your mind has become an emptiness, a nothingness; when your mind is just a womb, a receiver. When nothing from your mind is imposed, when your mind is naked and empty, only then is what is revealed because there is no one to pervert it no one to imagine anything, no one to dream anything, no one to project anything. One must approach reality completely vacant and empty, without any preconceived thoughts, without any prejudices, without any preconceptions of what is to be there. You must go into nowhere, you have to go into nothingness. Only then does your mind become just a receiver, a receptivity. And then, what is is revealed. Even after that, when you have to assert it, express it, you will not be able to. You wont be able to express what has been known. Language is not adequate, words are not enough Something so vast, something so multidimensional, something so unimagined, something so unknown, has come over you that vou can be struck dumb. The greater the realization, the less the possibility of expressing it. The truth has never been said. It has been known, it has been lived, but never said. No word, no scripture, has expressed it. They have tried, endeavoured, taken pains to express it, but it has remained unexpressed, unknown. You can come to it only when you do not come with your scriptures; you can come to it only when you do not come with your theologies; you can come to it only when you do not come with your questions. A mute quest is required, not a verbal questioning. And you can come to it at any moment. When you are under a tree just sleeping, relaxing, doing nothing you can come to it. Near a seashore just sitting, doing nothing and it can overwhelm you. Under the starry sky just existing, just being; just present, not doing anything it can penetrate you. That is why there are glimpses of it in love. When you are in love, words cease, thinking ceases. When you are in love, something becomes silent in you. Then there is no communication and still there is a communication. You are silent, but communicating. In your silence, something comes to you and something goes out of you. Religion points toward total silence. One must be silent to hear the creative process: one must be totally silent to know that-which-is. Every moment we are thinking and thinking. This thinking creates a barrier.

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If you are listening to me and still thinking within yourself, then there will be no communication. When I am answering you, if you are still creating new questions comparing what I am saying, thinking about whether it is right or not then we are poles apart. Then there is no communication. Your thinking has come between us as a barrier, and that barrier cannot be crossed. If you are just listening and that is the miracle: to be just listening! then even this communication that is happening right now between us can become a communication of what is. If you are just here present, doing nothing then something from my eyes, from my hands, from the friends who have gathered here, from the whole situation that exists right here, can become an awakening and you can come into contact with what is. And you ask, What is death? One cannot know before dying. How can one know? You can think about it, but that will not be death, that will not be real. One has to die to know death and one has to live to know life. Do not think about death. While life is, live! Know life! And if you know it then you will know death also, because death is pinnacle: the peak of life, the completion of life. So do not ask what death is. It will come, and you will go through it. But it is possible to go through death and still not know it. We are passing through life and still we have not known it. We are asking, What is death? while we are alive. The reverse can also happen: when we are dying we may be asking, What was life? A dying person asks what was life and a living person asks what is death! A living person can come to know life. Know it, be one with it. Absorb it, drink it completely eat it! Then death comes. When yon have known the day, the night comes. When you have known the days awakening, you will have to know the nights relaxation and sleep. It is there. It is coming, it is hiding somewhere. It will come, but do not ask about it. Know what is here and now. Become a knower, a seer, so that when death comes, you will know it also. A person who knows life, ultimately knows death also. And when he knows both, he knows that life is not against death nor is death against life. When he knows both, he knows that something unknown has come into being and that something unknown has left. Birth has been a door and death, too, has been a door, Something (the existence) has come in, and something has gone out. Nothing begins, nothing ends. There are births beyond birth and there will deaths beyond death. There will be births beyond death and there will be deaths beyond birth. The process is endless, the voyage is eternal. Know what is, do not ask what will be. How can you know it? You can only think about it and create theories. Theories are important, meaningless. Feelings are potent, meaningful, so while you are alive, feel life. Then you will become capable of feeling death when you die. It is as blissful to know death as to know life. It is as blissful to awaken in the morning as it is to go into deep sleep at night. Both are blissful. But you must know them while they are happening; you cannot know them beforehand. And if you ask someone, then what you know is second-hand not a first hand knowledge, not a felt knowledge, not a realized knowledge, not a knowledge that has penetrated your ultimate being, that has come to you through your

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innermost core. The real knowledge always comes through seeing, through knowing firsthand. First know life; do not ask what death is. Know life, and by knowing life you will come to know death also. What you are transcends both. You are neither life nor death. You have been living, you will be dying your being transcends both. Do not identify yourself with life. If you identify yourself with life then you will think of death as your enemy. Know life and then you know that you are beyond unidentified, someone who has come to life. And you will know death too as a door going back, returning to the source. Life comes, death comes, but the source remains beyond both. Source Osho Book The Eternal Quest Osho on Sutra WHEN KNOWLEDGE IS DESTROYED THE DREAM IS SEEN Osho If knowledge of the soul does not penetrate you, and if the flame within does not get its fuel, then dreams arise in your life; then desires arise, and your life loses its way and staggers there in the darkness. Then you live in illusion, in desires; then you merely keep thinking and weaving webs of fantasy. I asked Nasruddin, Mulla, where do you intend to go for your vacation this year? I only go on vacation every three years, he replied. What do you do in the remaining two years? One year we spend in musing over the previous vacation and reliving it in our minds, and one year we spend in planning the next vacation. At least Nasruddin goes on a trip every three years, but you do not go at all! Half your life is spent in thinking of the past and the other half in thinking about the future. The journey never begins. Either you roam around the byways of your memory, which is a dead dream, or you wander in your imagination which is a dream of the future, which is still to come. You are divided in these two. The present is in the middle, and that is where life is but you miss it! Knowledge, awareness, will awaken you, here and now, to this very moment. Knowledge will bring you into the present. The past will fade. It has in fact faded. It is you who senselessly persist in carrying the ashes. The future is yet to be. You cannot make it happen. It comes when it comes, but the present is now. That which is present is reality, truth. To dream is to wander in that which is not present. Remember the sutra: WHEN KNOWLEDGE IS DESTROYED THE DREAM IS SEEN. When knowledge is absent, when the soul is not awakened, you are lost in dreams. The past and the future become everything for you, and the present has no meaning; but in fact it is the present that is everything. As you begin to awaken, the past and the future will get less and less and the present will begin to have more and more meaning for you. The day you are fully awakened there will be only the present. Then there is no past, no future. When there is no past and no future all

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diseases of the mind, all its repetitions and circles, are destroyed. Then you are here in the present, pure, immaculate, innocent, fresh like the morning dew. Then you are here in the present, like the lotus flower. If you are present in your entirety at any given moment, that moment you are God. Because you are not present in this moment you are the mind and the body but not the soul. Meditation is an effort to drag you from the past and future into the present. You have to go neither backward nor forward; you have only to be here. To be here and now totally peaceful and aware is meditation! Through this is born knowledge and through knowledge you reach the highest peak and attain the bliss of the final samadhi. He who loses this, loses all! He who attains this, attains all! Source Osho Book The Great Path

II. Osho One of the basic sutras of Lao Tzu is that life is based on the rule of opposites. Life does not oppose its contradictions. Rather, it works in collaboration with its counter-forces. Ordinarily it appears that if your enemy dies you will be a happier man, but you do not know that with the death of your enemy something within you, which existed entirely on account of the enemy, also dies. Therefore it happens many times that you lose much more by the death of an enemy than by the death of a friend. The opposition of the enemy awakens the challenge within you, and the mutual hostility gives rise to and nourishes those qualities within you which would have otherwise remained dormant. That is why Lao Tzu has said: Any friend will do, but choose your enemies wisely. Friends do not influence our lives as much as enemies do because a friend can be disregarded but we cannot afford to neglect an enemy. We can forget a friend but an enemy is never forgotten. It never dawns on us, however, that an enemy can so influence our life. Mahatma Gandhi would never have become a mahatma had it not been for the British. It was the opposition of the British Rule that brought him into being. Great men are born when a country is in great trouble. It is the calamity that causes great men to be born, not vice versa. The hour of calamity. the hour of tension, produces great men. Hitler has written, No leader is born without a great conflict. Therefore the greater the leader, the greater should be the battle. You cannot name a single leader who was born in times of peace. So he who desires to be a great leader has to make arrangements for a great conflict. Life works on the law of the opposites where the contradiction is visible and the collaboration on which it actually works is not. Let us examine this from different aspects in

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order to understand it better. If we were to remove Ravana from the epic of RAMAYANA, nothing would remain of the epic except Rama; and with him alone, it would not be possible to construct the narrative. Rama could have existed on this earth without Ravana, but then the Rama of the epic would have been lost completely. It is the very challenge of opposition to Ravana that brings out the resilience and temperance of Ramas character and reveals the brilliance of his personality. Ravana made a great contribution towards the exaltation of Rama. It would not have been possible for either Rama or Ravana to be born without each other. They grOw with each others support. This is the truth, but those who view things superficially see them to be enemies, opposed to each other. The profound reality of life is, however, that they are partners. It is not necessary that they themselves should be aware of this, but on a very subtle plane these seeming opposites are partners, co-sharers, collaborators and friends. Not only is life not formed without the opposites but it does not develop without the opposite. The opposite is inevitable. Freud has discovered a priceless truth. He says: We also hate those whom we love. This was a startling discovery even for Freud himself. It was a terrible blow for all mankind especially for lovers. Lovers cannot believe they are capable of hatred towards those whom they love. The fact is, however, that all lovers know this within themselves, though they may not admit it. Therefore, Freud was resisted for a long time. Ultimately he could not be proven wrong. Gradually, the truth was accepted. Those whom we love we also despise, for love cannot stand without hatred. If you love somebody and you analyse it honestly, you will find yourself loving and hating alternately. You hate in the morning, love in the afternoon, hate in the evening and again love at night. Your love is periodical. The one you quarrelled with in the morning and decided it was impossible to live with, you again reconcile with and swear you would be lost without. The ancient prophets of love have declared that love is complete and perfect only when there is no strife between the lover and the beloved. Freud however says that the greater the love, the greater the strife between the lovers. If there is no strife between two lovers, according to Freud they are not in love; they are just fooling themselves. If you do not fight with your wife (or husband), it means your relationship has vanished long ago, so much so that there is no need for strife any more. Freud is not talking about the spiritual love. He is talking about that which passes for love in our society, what we generally know as love. In this so-called love that we know, strife is an inevitable part. But lovers (and married couples) want there to be no strife, no conflict, in their relationship. Then, love would be bliss. But they are not aware of the facts of life. The day strife ends, love will end also. In fact, conflict cannot be ended by the sort of love we indulge in. Conflict exists because of expectations great expectations. The greater the love, the more the expectation. The greater the expectation, the greater the frustration. And when there is frustration, there is conflict. If there are no expectations if there is no demand on the lover, if there are no hopes pinned on the other, all conflicts will stop immediately. Then we accept life as it is.

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But Freud says, Great lovers cannot live in peace. Another unique personality of the West, De Sade, has said, Love is an illness. He calls love an illness because we invite love, and hatred is there instead. Love and hatred are two sides of the same coin. Therefore, hatred will go on side by side with love. Hatred cannot stand on its own. If you think you have hatred towards someone, you are mistaken because of the simple fact that hatred cannot exist alone. You can hate only that person for whom you still have some measure of love. If you try and analyse your feelings about someone you really hate, you will find some strings of love that unknowingly tie you to him. If all ties of love are broken, all means of hatred have also vanished. Hence, we are tied to both our friends and our foes. For the friend there is love outside and hate within; for the foe there is hate without and love within. Our ties with both are however the same. This may be difficult to understand, because we have great expectations for love. Let us try to understand this from different angles. A man toils all day long. Now, according to our reasoning, a man who has toiled throughout the day should find it impossible to relax all night. He who is used to working all day should pass his nights also in work. The fact is however that he who toils throughout the day sleeps profoundly at night. The man who does not exert himself throughout the day should find no difficulty in relaxing at night because his experience of relaxing throughout the day should be good practice for sleeping at night. But a person who relaxes in the day finds it difficult to sleep at night. Actually, he who toils all day long accumulates the opposite aspect (relaxation). He who relaxes, accumulates the opposite of relaxation. So he who relaxes in the day toils at night by changing sides time and again. He cannot sleep. We cannot escape the opposite. The opposite is always standing by. If you wish to sleep at night, you shall have to exert yourself in the day. The greater the exertion, the deeper the sleep. So a very interesting thing happens: Those who work very hard, and have no time for relaxation, attain the height of relaxation. And those who have all the means to relax to them, relaxation is a vexing problem Do what they may, they cannot relax. Unfortunately, we live by our superficial standards. We say: we must relax in the day in order to know how to relax at night. This is straight and simple logic. But it has nothing to do with life. This is just the same as saying we should not have any conflict with those whom we love. But life exists in opposites just like electricity exists because of its negative and positive poles. If we take away one, the other gets lost simultaneously and there cannot be any electricity. But it is very difficult to accept the opposite. He who accepts the opposite is a Sannyasin according to me. Lao Tzu calls such a person, wise. To accept the opposite means that if, today, you have come and paid respect to me, I should accept the fact that at some level within you, disrespect is also gathering towards me. This fact cannot be escaped. If I accept your respect, I should also be prepared to receive disrespect from your hands at a later date. If I accept your obeisance with full knowledge of

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this fact, your reverence will give me no pleasure. Similarly, your disrespect will not make me unhappy either. Deep within your reverence, I shall spy the seed of irreverence; and deep within your irreverence, I shall see the spark of reverence. If a man hurls a shoe at me, why should he take so much trouble if he is not concerned with me? Surely there is some connection between him and me somewhere. The shoe he throws at me is much more expressive than the garland that another person puts round my neck. This mans leaning towards me is great. his restlessness is acute. He is bound to do something or other for me. If I become aware of the trouble he is taking for me, the sting of his disrespect will not hurt me. And if I become aware of the other side of the coin when I am honoured and respected, the illusion of reverence will vanish Then respect and disrespect appear to be two sides of the same coin. He to whom this becomes clear, transcends both sides. Life is bound by opposites from all directions. When we see one side of life, we forget the other. It is this error that is the greatest misfortune of mankind. When we are looking at one aspect of life, we become completely oblivious of the other. When we look at a flower, we never glance at the thorn; when we look at the thorn, we forget the flower. And the flower and the thorn grow on the same tree, the same branch. They are fed by the same channel, they are alive because of the same roots. The same gardener waters them and the same sun sends its rays towards them They come from the same existence. Deep within, they are one. But when we look at the flower, we forget the very existence of the thorn; and the more forget the thorn, the sharper it pricks. Then, when the thorn pricks, the flower vanishes from our vision and we are only aware of the pain of the thorn. We even forget that it was because of the flower that we had to suffer the prick of the thorn. We enjoyed the aroma of the flower and the prick was the result. Our vision is always partial. Partial vision is ignorance. Partial vision is not wrong, but it is not complete. It sees only one half of reality. The other half seems so contradictory that we cannot relate the one to the other. On the face of it, it is difficult to relate the opposites. You can never imagine that a person who clings to your neck, today and vows that you are aU that means anything to him in the world and life would be meaningless without you, would thrust a knife into you. Logic needs consistency. But here, there is no consistency. How can this very person kill you? But the reality of life is that he can. This is the very depth of life. He who has no relationship with you does not bother to kill you. He is not interested in you. Can you make someone an enemy without first making him your friend? Also, one who becomes your sworn enemy could not have just been a slight acquaintance. The proportion is equal: the greater the friendship, the greater the enmity. Machiavelli, in his book THE PRINCE, has written, The greater the intimacy, the more cautious you should be of your friend. This is cunning advice, but it has some truth in it. The thicker the friendship, the more vigilant we should be because the danger is greater. Machiavelli says, If you do not want your enemies to know the facts, take care that your friends do not know them. He has also said, Do not treat your enemy in a way that you may

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regret some day when he becomes your friend, because an enemy can become a friend any day. Life changes every moment. Nothing is stable. Life swings from one extreme to the other. The opposites are united in the profound depths of existence; but on its surface they are far apart. He who sees only the surface of life cannot understand Lao Tzu because he talks of the ultimate polarity of existence. Source Osho Book The Way of Tao, Volume 2 Question Beloved Master, What is Happiness? Osho Jayananda, it depends. It depends on you, on your state of consciousness or unconsciousness, whether you are asleep or awake. There is one famous maxim of Murphy. He says there are two types of people: One, who always divide humanity in two types, and the other, who dont divide humanity at all. I belong to the first type. Humanity can be divided in two types: the sleeping ones and the awakened ones and, of course, a small part in between. Happiness will depend on where you are in your consciousness. If you are asleep, then pleasure is happiness. Pleasure means sensation, trying to achieve something through the body which is not possible to achieve through the body, forcing the body to achieve something it is not capable of. People are trying, in every possible way, to achieve happiness through the body. The body can give you only momentary pleasures, and each pleasure is balanced by pain in the same amount, in the same degree. Each pleasure is followed by its opposite because body exists in the world of duality, just as the day is followed by night and death is followed by life and life is followed by death. It is a vicious circle. Your pleasure will be followed by pain, your pain will be followed by pleasure. But you will never be at ease. When you will be in a state of pleasure you will be afraid that you are going to lose it, and that fear will poison it. And when you will be lost in pain, of course, you will be in suffering, and you will try every possible effort to get out of it just to fall again back into it. Buddha calls this the wheel of birth and death. We go on moving in this wheel, clinging to the wheel and the wheel moves on. Sometimes pleasure comes up and sometimes pain comes up, but we are crushed between these two rocks. But the sleepy person knows nothing else. He knows only a few sensations of the body food, sex. This is his world; he goes on moving between these two. These are the two ends of his body: food and sex. If he represses sex he becomes addicted to food: if he represses food he becomes addicted to sex. Energy goes on moving like a pendulum. And whatsoever you call pleasure is, at the most, just a relief of a tense state. Sexual energy gathers, accumulates; you become tense and heavy and you want to release it. The man who is asleep, his sexuality is nothing but a relief, like a good sneeze. It gives you nothing but a certain relief. A tension was there, now it is no more there; but it will accumulate again. Food gives you only a little taste on the tongue; it is not much to live for. But many people are living only to eat; there are very few people who eat to live. The story of Columbus is well-known. It was a long trip. For three months they saw nothing but water. Then one day Columbus looked out at the horizon and saw trees. And if you think

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Columbus was happy to see trees, you should have seen his dog! Thats why the Siberian dogs are the fastest in the world: because the trees are so far apart. But this is the world of pleasure. The dog can be forgiven, but you cannot be forgiven. During their first date, the young man, looking for ways to have a good time, asked the young lady if she would like to go bowling. She replied that she did not care to go bowling. He then suggested a movie, but she answered that she did not care for them. While trying to think of something else he offered her a cigarette which she declined. He then asked if she would like to dance and drink at the new disco. She again declined by saying she did not care for those things. In desperation he asked her to come to his apartment for a night of lovemaking. To his surprise she happily agreed, kissed him passionately and said, You see, you dont need any of those things to have a good time! It depends on people what can be called happiness. To the sleeping, pleasurable sensations are happiness. He lives from one pleasure to another pleasure. He is just rushing from one sensation to another sensation. He lives for small thrills. His life is very superficial; it has no depth, it has no quality. He lives in the world of quantity. Then the people who are in between, who are neither asleep nor awake, who are just in a limbo, a little bit asleep, a little bit awake. You sometimes have that experience in the early morning: still sleepy, but you cant say you are asleep because you can hear the noise in the house, your wife preparing tea, the noise of the samovar or the milkman at the door or children getting ready to go to school. You can hear these things, but still you are not awake. Vaguely, dimly these noises reach to you, as if there is a great distance between you and all that is happening around you. It feels as if it is still a part of the dream. It is not a part of the dream, but you are in a state of in-between. The same happens when you start meditating. The nonmeditator sleeps, dreams; the meditator starts moving away from his sleep towards awakening. He is in a transitory state. Then happiness has a totally different meaning: it becomes more of a quality, less of a quantity; it is more psychological, less physiological. He enjoys music more, he enjoys poetry more, he enjoys creating something. He enjoys nature, its beauty. He enjoys silence. He enjoys what he had never enjoyed before, and this is far more lasting. Even if the music stops, something goes on lingering in you. And it is not a relief. The difference between pleasure and THIS happiness is: it is not a relief, it is an enrichment. You become more full, you become a little overflowing. Listening to good music, something is triggered in your being, a harmony arises in you you become musical. Or dancing, suddenly you forget your body; your body becomes weightless. The grip of gravitation over you is lost. Suddenly you are in a different space: the ego is not so solid, the dancer melts and merges into the dance. This is far higher, far deeper than the joy that you gain from food or sex. This has a depth. But this is also not the ultimate. The ultimate happens only when you are fully awake, when you are a buddha, when all sleep is gone and all dreaming is gone, when your whole being is full of light, when there is no darkness within you. All darkness has disappeared and with that darkness, the ego is gone. All tensions have disappeared, all anguish, all anxiety. You are in a state of total contentment. You live in the present; no past, no future anymore. You are utterly herenow. This moment is all. Now is the only time and here is the only space. And then suddenly the whole sky drops into you. This is bliss. This is REAL happiness. Seek bliss, Jayananda; it is

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your birthright. Dont remain lost in the jungle of pleasures; rise a little higher. Reach to happiness and then to bliss. Pleasure is animal, happiness is human, bliss is divine. Pleasure binds you, it is a bondage, it chains you. Happiness gives you a little more rope, a little bit of freedom, but only a little bit. Bliss is absolute freedom. You start moving upwards; it gives you wings. You are no more part of the gross earth; you become part of the sky. You become light, you become joy. Pleasure is dependent on others. Happiness is not so dependent on others, but still it is separate from you. Bliss is not dependent, is not separate either; it is your very being, it is your very nature. To attain it is to attain to God, to nirvana. Source: from Osho Book Dhammapada Vol 10