Chapter #1 Early Talks #1

[NOTE: This is a partly edited tape transcript of an unpublished early dialogue. It is for reference purposes only.]

Q. BUT WHEN YOU FUNCTION, AS IN THIS WAY, AND YOU ARE WITH PEOPLE WHO ARE TRAVELLING, MOVING, HOW CAN YOU MAINTAIN, OR HOW CAN YOU EVEN ACHIEVE, NIRVANA?

A: No, no! There is no question of maintenance! You have to maintain something if it is false. If it is, you don't maintain it. You go on moving, you breathe, you never maintain the breathing. How do you maintain your breathing? Talking, discussing, going and coming, the breathing is. You never become attentive to it. You are never aware of it; it is just going on. You are not maintaining it. [A lot of microphone disturbance; next sentence not really 'reliable'] When a state is true, so you don't have to maintain it. If a state moves it will maintain itself.

If it has not been achieved, then you have to maintain it, but how can you maintain a thing which you have not achieved? You have to maintain something which is a deception. If I become a sober man and sobriety is not my state, then I have to maintain it. Then it is a false deception, an acting. You have to maintain it, Because inwardly you are quite the contrary. Inwardly you are laughing, and outwardly you are serious. So the seriousness has to be maintained. But if you are serious, then even when you laugh, the seriousness will be there; the laughing itself becomes serious. Then you are not that laughing. Then you have laughed with a totally serious mind and that laughter itself has become serious. Acting has to be maintained.

And you really asked an essential question, because in our lives we are maintaining everything. Every type of face needs maintenance, because (LAUGHING) the face is not real. The face is from the outside, you are something from within: deep double role. This double personality will need maintenance. and the maintenance will create conflict. This conflict deteriorates your whole mind.

Then you cannot be spontaneous, then you cannot be real, yourself. You are at every moment something else, something else, something else. This will kill you! This will become a burden. And that is why the whole of life has become a burden. Life is just a joy. But the whole becomes a burden because you have to maintain so many faces. In the morning you are one person, by the evening someone else. In one moment you are one person, in the second moment you are someone else. To me you are someone, to somebody else, you are someone else. Thousands of faces! -- and the maintenance, and the conflict. This becomes burdensome; this is the burden. This is the sorrow, this is the suffering.

If you are really yourself, you need not maintain anything because you are yourself. Then you go on, you live... there is no burden and living has become just play, hmm? What they call in India, leela. Then it becomes leela. Then it becomes play; you do not need to maintain it.

Maintenance is not the problem. How to attain it? Once attained, attained forever. You cannot lose it then. There are so many mysteries in life, and one of the mystery is that you cannot lose that which you have attained. You cannot lose it. You can never lose it; there is no possibility. It is impossible. What you lose, lose; but you have not attained it. It was a false faith.

Nothing real can be gained and lost. It is gained and then it is.... Why, why this mystery? Because the real is really not an attainment; rather, it is a discovery. An attainment can be lost, but a discovery cannot be lost. It is something that was with you, without you knowing it -- now you know it. It was with you when you did not know it; it is with you when you know it. How can you lose it? No real state is ever lost. And no real state ever needs any maintenance on your part. It is maintained intrinsically, by swabhav: by your inner nature it is maintained.

And never try to maintain anything. Really just be a floating man, a floating mind. Don't maintain it. Just be a floating mind. Let everything come that comes, let everything go that goes. Never cling to it, never welcome it, never try to catch it; let it come and let it go; you be just at ease. The darkness comes: welcome. It goes: welcome. The light comes: welcome. It goes: welcome. Misery comes, happiness comes; everything comes and goes, you just be a witness and watch. And let them come and go. This letgo will make you attain to something that is not an attainment, but a discovery.

Truth is a discovery. It is neither invention... because invention can never be true. Invention means the untrue: you have invented it. The family is an invention; the husband is an invention; the wife is an invention. It is not there, you have invented it. All our relationships are an invention. Your wife becomes such a bondage; such a bondage because invented by man. Anything that you have not invented... Love is not an invention, but to be a husband is an invention. To be a lover is discovery; you have discovered something which has been there always.

So go on discovering yourself, what you are. Not in a cave... but in moment-to-moment communication, in moment-to-moment relationship: the inter-relationship. Go on seeing the trembling, watching...

Q. OSHO, HOW CAN YOU DO THIS WITHOUT DISCRIMINATING? BETWEEN LOVE AND MARRIAGE... DISCRIMINATING THE TWO.

A: No, no! You are not to discriminate. You are just to search for that which you have not invented, that which has come to you. Love comes to you, and if society changes, family cannot be. It is possible. A society can be without family, a society can be without husband and wife relationship. Mm?You know hippies? and other.... A society can be without any family. Without any familiar relationship, but a society cannot be without love. Animals are with love, there is no family, but love is there. So love is something that comes by nature, is instinctive. Family is something that comes through intellect.

So, one has to discover in his mind relationships, in his movement through life what is real that comes, or what is unreal that is imposed. If this search goes on, in every walk, in every aspect, then something -- a mind which witnesses -- will be discovered. Because through this discrimination; this is real, this is unreal.... Don't ask any scripture, don't ask any guru. Because if through asking, you cling to some theory, then you will begin to impose. Then you will say, "This is unreal because Geeta says so." It has become nonsense. You have lost the path.

Geeta says so, let it say. What you understand, a very little understanding, is so much valuable than so much great knowledge. Understanding is needed not knowledge. And this understanding comes through day to day movement; go on discovering, go on seeking what you are imposing, what you are finding. This discrimination will create a new force within you. The understanding mind -- that will be created, that will come in force, that will become a living entity.

That mind liberates. That mind by and by becomes a mirror. Then you neither discriminate, neither choose. There is no choice then. The mind knows and acts, and there is no gap between the knowing and the action. And there should not be any gap. The gap, the gulf, between knowing and the action is the most basic difficulty for a seeker. But that comes by and by. And in everything: the most little, the most small, the most trivial; there too, you have to be aware, and seeking and seeking.

Some friend comes to you, you greet him, then let it be known completely to you whether the greeting was authentic, real or just an imposition, just an acting. You laugh, somebody comes, says something and you laugh. Discover it within you whether the laugh is authentic, or just you are laughing to please him, or just as a social gesture. Are you really laughing? And you will know by and by: this laugh has been false, this laugh has been real; and the real laugh is a joy.

Real weeping too is a joy because it is authentic. So go on discovering as if is a long journey. This is so long and so much patience is needed and no tricks and no small... no shortcut. Through suffering, through seeking a mind comes to a state where everything becomes a clarity; the reason is attained. You will not rech some God. In the end there is no god waiting for you. In the end you will reach to yourself, but to a mind which is clear, a mind which is understanding, a mind which knows. A mind which is passively alert, not actively illusion-creative, but if someone asks, "what is truth?" then the whole search is diverted to a pseudo question.

If you ask what is truth, then you will be led into philosophy which is the most nonsense effort human mind can do. But if you ask, why the untruth? Why I come to untrue? Why I am not coming to the truth? Then you are asked something else. Another search begins, that search is religion.

Religion concentrates itself to the mind, to the subjectivity. Philosophy asks objective questions: What is truth? What is God? Go on asking, go on answering and you will remain the same because you never touch the mind. You accept it. The mind has been accepted. You have not changed it, you are not trying to transform it. With the same mind you go on asking and receiving answers and collecting answers so you can become a scholar. But not a knower. Then you know so many answers, but not the answer. You know so many things, but not the thing.

I want that you must understand a very dangerous path leads through this question, "what is truth?" A very dangerous and very useless, endless and meaningless quest, because the real question is not what is truth? The real question is what are you? Who is on the path to seek? If he is pseudo, false; if he is an actor, if he is not authentic, then go on searching. An unauthentic mind, how it can reach to the truth?

Truth comes to a true a mind. It comes by itself to a true mind. You can know only that which you are; you cannot know that which you are not. If you are untrue, untruth will be coming; if you true, truth is bound to come. The same is attracted to the same. An untrue mind repels the true; it seeks but it repels. So if an untrue can collect definitions, philosophies, systems, but that is not the real seeking.

Turn it! Never ask what is true, ask how the mind becomes such that the true comes to it. You see the distinction? You understand the distinction? The question is not, where is the sun?; the question is, how to open the window so the sun may come in. It is there, it has been always there. If your window is closed, it will be there. But the window is closed; so sun is not, the darkness is. And someone asks in the darkness, what is the light? What is the sun? Where to seek it? Where to go? And goes on circling, circling that very dark room, because your mind is the dark room. So you cannot go outside it. You will have to break some windows, some doors in this mind. If you go on with this mind through lives, you will be asking the same: what is light? What is light? And the mind is dark and there is no window, there is no opening, there is no door, and goes on asking. And in the darkness, it consoles itself by collecting some answers. Geeta, Ramayan, Quran, Bible it collects.... And in darkness it is consolated that I am knowing, knowing, knowing, by and by I will come to know; I have known so much answers. But the mind is dark, and there is no opening.

So I say throw your scriptures and throw you rules. And break your mind so that the light may come in; it is ever-ready, ever-waiting. The moment the window is open, the light comes. And the whole dark corner is changed, something else has come in and then you can never lose it.

So concentrate on your mind, not any objective truth. Make your search concentrated on your mind; the mind is the problem. And then there is no philosophy; and there comes religion. Religion is existential, experimental. Philosophy is speculative: what is truth?...

[Tape break here: change in sound, background noise, and His voice indicates an entirely new setting.]

... Then you become totally independent. It is independence one needs. Outwardly will be gained in any occupation. But an occupation like gardening or farming will do much good. Bodily, mentally and spiritually -- on all layers of life, it will be helpful. Because you will be independent, totally independent, and when you are occupied in some work if you maintain simultaniously an awareness... while doing, acting, working; simultaneously there must run a current of awareness within you. Then the occupation itself becomes an object of meditation.
[Tape side B]

Rather to choose some artificial object of awareness, it is better to choose some type of occupation which is in both ways helpful; helpful as an object for meditation, and helpful as to your maintenance, economic maintenance and independence. It will do much good. If you go somewhere to some farm, and to remain there working for three or four hours per day, and then for twenty hours you are completely free... To remain unoccupied for twenty-four hours, necessarily means to be dependant on someone, to some institution or to some person, or to live on some charity. But that charity or that institution or some person automatically, they create a sort of bondage....

QUESTIONER: OBLIGATION.

Osho: Obligation. An obligation is so heavy that it necessarily creates a situation where independence is lost and it's particular type of anxiety is created. And that anxiety is so much inner that it obstructs the inner current of awareness. So it is double. Better to go to some farm or some garden, but it is better if you choose farming or gardening than any other occupation. Because other occupations are so much involved; and either (way) you will be mechanical or other types of routine work. And routine work which is the same every day creates boredom. And that boredom too becomes an obstruction in the inner current of awareness. But an occupation like farming -- it is so living, it is so new every day, it is not a work, rather it is a pleasure: to be growing plants and all that atmosphere that surrounds it, that natural atmosphere. All that helps so much that it is better to be occupied.

Q: ALSO COULD I ASK YOU ABOUT MEDITATION PRACTICE BY... I CANNOT UNDERSTAND [THE WAY IN WHICH] IT SHOULD HELP.

A: Hm mm. To be meditation means an effort to be aware. To be aware of the whole process of life, but in the beginning one can chose some object like breathing. It is a very natural object to be aware: The ingoing and the outgoing of the breath. Be aware constantly: the breath has gone out, it has come in; and the rhythm and the process and the in and out going phenomena, be aware of it. The moment you will be aware, you feel a certain change, a certain chemical change within your mind. Because when you become aware of the breathing process, mind becomes silent. The silence is automatically created. Because your total mind is engaged in seeing, in witnessing the breathing. And the rhythmic circle of breath creates an inner music. That inner music too leads you to more and more silent and sweeter moments within. When you are walking or bathing or eating or doing anything, doing farming, be aware of your breath. But this awareness, this effort of awareness should not be a strain; it should be effortless. The very effort should be effortless. It should not be strenuous, it should not become a tension, you should not do it upto an anxiety is created or a strain is created or you feel some inner tension in doing it. The effort should be effortless. It means do it without any strain.

Q: IF YOU CANNOT KEEP IT UP, THEN YOU JUST WAIT UNTIL THE MOMENT ARRIVES AND YOU CAN KEEP... I FIND WHEN I'M TRYING TO PRACTICE AWARENESS, IT DOES NOT LAST VERY LONG.

A: Mm, It will not last in the begining. It will not last for very long in the beginning, but go on doing it. Whenever you become conscious that you are not doing it, do it. If you forget it, let it be forgotten, again when you remember it, do it. Do not repent that the current was lost. Oh no, there is no repentance. Whenever you become conscious, four or five times in the day when you become conscious, do it. When you forget it, let it be forgotten. Again you will become conscious, and this becoming conscious and doing it without any repentance, without any strain just leave when you will remember it. And how much time you remember it, doesn't matter. Even for some seconds or some minutes, if you remember it, that is enough. By and by the stretch will become longer, by and by you will remember more, by and by the gaps between two remembrances will be lesser. And in a certain period -- it depends how you do it -- in a certain period, you will remember it constantly. But don't long for it. Just be thankful, if you remember only for few seconds, just be thankful. That is enough. Enough for today. Again tomorrow the stretch will become longer, gap will be shorter and the intensity will go deeper and in a certain period, you will remember it without any strain. It will go on simultaneously with your all work, with your all activities. You will be doing everything outside, and there will be the remembrance within. You will be aware. That awareness will continue.

That continuity comes by itself if you just go on doing it. But never repent for it. That it was not as much longer as I longed for. There is no question of longing. As much as it comes, be thankful for it. It is enough.

This will do, this will create that effortless effort. Effortless effort. Whenever you remember, for a single moment, be aware and let it go. Don't cling to it. Don't forcibly do it. Force cannot be helpful. It should be spontaneous without any effort, without any strain. Even for a single moment, if it comes in a day, even for a single moment, it will become a seed within you and the seed will go on growing and growing and growing. And someday you will find that the remembrance has become part and parcel of your conscious mind. Then in the longer run, even in the night when you are asleep, sometimes, some moment will come that you will remember even in the sleep and you will become aware. Then the continuity will penetrate in the sleep and then a circle will be created. But that requires time and patience and a loving gratefulness. Don't be repentful for those moments when you were not aware, but be grateful for those moments when you were aware. Emphasize those living moments when you are aware, don't think about those moments which have gone without any awareness.

It will be created; it is not difficult. When it is created, one knows how foolish one was; it was so simple, it was so easy, it was so natural. But when it is created, then one knows. Before that it seems so difficult, but the difficulty is not with the process. The difficulty lies with our impatience. We are so impatient, we ask for everything without any preperation. We ask just here and now. Even... it can come just here and now, but that needs infinite patience. If you have infinite patience, then this very moment can become a moment of explosion. But our whole mind, our whole make-up of the mind is based on impatience. That impatience creates an inner barrier. Then, meditation should not become a part and parcel of our desire.

Because you cannot be meditative with a desiring mind. Because a desiring mind creates another current of desire against the current of awareness. Desire is part and parcel of unconscious mind. So if you desire too much, even if you desire for God, even if you desire for liberation, even if you desire for meditation, samadhi, this too will become a barrier. So don't desire. Just be curious to know, to know what is meditation. Don't make meditation to a means towards anything else. Meditation should be the end. We want to know the complete total silent mind. Why? Because we have known the [1 word unquick] mind, we have known the non-silent mind, we have known the mind with desire, we have known the mind with a longing and a clinging, and we have suffered for it. The suffering has been so much. We have known this and the suffering. Now we want to know the opposite mind and also to know what comes with it.

We do not know so we cannot desire, we do not know what will be the outcome of a silent mind. But we have known the non-silent mind, we have known the suffering that comes with it, the darkness, the dukhha, but we do not know what pleasure, what bliss will come with the mind when it becomes meditative, aware and silent. But we want just to know the opposite. We have suffered this much long, for so many lives. We want to know what is the other mind. That other mind is too our mind, but it has remained inactive because of the activity of this mind. So this mind becomes silent, that mind it is deeper, inner, much more inner, will explode and a new type of vision, a new type of life will come out of it.

But don't desire it. The desire... Because every type of desire is part and parcel of this mind which we want to transcend. So if you desire, this mind goes on working again. And this mind goes on creating patterns of suffering again. Let this mind go. Because we have suffered. Let this mind go because we are suffering. And let the new mind come, with no desire, with no particular longing, let it come. And see what happens.
Much happens.