Equal in sorrow and in joy, self-composed; the same toward clod, stone, and gold।
Alike to the dear and the undear, steadfast; equal in censure and in self-praise।। 24।।
Equal in honor and dishonor; the same toward friend and foe।
Renouncing all undertakings, he is called one who has gone beyond the qualities।। 25।।
Geeta Darshan #9
Available in:
Read in Original Hindi (मूल हिन्दी)
Sutra (Original)
समदुःखसुखः स्वस्थः समलोष्टाश्मकाञ्चनः।
तुल्यप्रियाप्रियो धीरस्तुल्यनिन्दात्मसंस्तुतिः।। 24।।
मानापमानयोस्तुल्यस्तुल्यो मित्रारिपक्षयोः।
सर्वारम्भपरित्यागी गुणातीतः स उच्यते।। 25।।
तुल्यप्रियाप्रियो धीरस्तुल्यनिन्दात्मसंस्तुतिः।। 24।।
मानापमानयोस्तुल्यस्तुल्यो मित्रारिपक्षयोः।
सर्वारम्भपरित्यागी गुणातीतः स उच्यते।। 25।।
Transliteration:
samaduḥkhasukhaḥ svasthaḥ samaloṣṭāśmakāñcanaḥ|
tulyapriyāpriyo dhīrastulyanindātmasaṃstutiḥ|| 24||
mānāpamānayostulyastulyo mitrāripakṣayoḥ|
sarvārambhaparityāgī guṇātītaḥ sa ucyate|| 25||
samaduḥkhasukhaḥ svasthaḥ samaloṣṭāśmakāñcanaḥ|
tulyapriyāpriyo dhīrastulyanindātmasaṃstutiḥ|| 24||
mānāpamānayostulyastulyo mitrāripakṣayoḥ|
sarvārambhaparityāgī guṇātītaḥ sa ucyate|| 25||
Translation (Meaning)
Questions in this Discourse
First question:
Osho, it is commonly understood that in an enlightened person all passions are exhausted and they go beyond every kind of tendency. But in your talks yesterday and the day before you said that even after enlightenment their natural, inborn tendencies still function. They may even descend into lust, anger, and violence, although they themselves remain only as witnesses to it. Please explain this.
Osho, it is commonly understood that in an enlightened person all passions are exhausted and they go beyond every kind of tendency. But in your talks yesterday and the day before you said that even after enlightenment their natural, inborn tendencies still function. They may even descend into lust, anger, and violence, although they themselves remain only as witnesses to it. Please explain this.
In this regard, a few very fundamental things need to be understood.
First, ordinarily we have believed and heard that when a person attains dispassion, the fullness of knowing, all his tendencies become attenuated. This is both right and wrong. It is right when that person’s body falls—and that will be the last body. For one who has attained dispassion, this body is the final one. After this there is no possibility of assuming a new body, because the seeds of craving, the root-seeds, have been burnt to ash. So there will be no new birth.
Therefore it is right to say that the dispassionate person’s tendencies become zero. But in another sense it is also wrong. Because even after dispassion, one has to remain in this body for some days. Buddha remained in this body for forty years. Even after enlightenment the body will feel hunger; it will feel thirst. The body will fall ill. The body will want rest. The body will need oxygen. As long as the body is, all the needs appropriate to the body’s nature will be.
And these three gunas—sattva, rajas, tamas—are also qualities of the body. Just as hunger and thirst are felt by the body, in the same way the processes of sattva, rajas, and tamas continue. The difference will be that even when hunger arises, the Buddha knows, “This hunger has not arisen in me; it has arisen in the body.” Even when thirst arises, he knows, “I am the witness of this thirst; I am neither the enjoyer nor the doer.”
But the body will indeed feel thirst; the body will indeed feel hunger. Whatever properties belong to the body will continue—now in their purest form. With consciousness disentangled from them, the agitation that used to be created disappears. Hence the tendencies continue.
Buddha walks, stands, explains, speaks, sleeps, eats, wakes. All actions continue. But through these actions he does not get bound; that has been broken. He has no identification with these actions. They are happening around him; the center within is freed of them. Consciousness remains untouched and unstained.
Therefore the foundations of personality laid over births and births will function. Until this body falls, the body will remain active. But that activity becomes like this: you are riding a bicycle and you stop pedaling, and then due to the old speed and momentum the bicycle goes a little further. To the onlooker it will seem that if you have stopped pedaling, why does the bicycle not stop?
You have stopped pedaling, but you have been cycling for miles; the wheels have taken on a speed; that speed will run itself out. Now, even while you sit without pressing the pedals, the bicycle will keep moving. This movement that happens now—you are not making it happen; now the bicycle itself is moving. In this you are not the doer; you are only the witness. You sit on the bicycle and the bicycle is moving. And there will be a unique experience: that I am not moving it; the bicycle is moving. And the bicycle is moving because earlier I moved it.
Through births and births you have moved the body. And through births and births you have given speed to your qualities. All qualities have acquired momentum; they have caught their motion. Now they will go on. Until the motion is depleted, your body will go on. But this going-on is like the bicycle moving without pedaling.
To the onlooker it will seem: the bicycle is moving, therefore you must be moving it. His seeming is also fine. But you know that now you have stopped moving it. Now you are simply waiting for the bicycle to stop.
This inner state of feeling is hard for us to recognize because we are always supplying momentum. It doesn’t even occur to us how life can move without pushing it.
But life does move. It can move for a few days. And the joy of those few days is of another kind. You have lifted the oar and set it aside, and the boat flows on in its own current. You no longer have any longing that the boat should move…
And remember, you may say: if you have stopped pedaling, you can apply the brakes and get off the bicycle! You can jump off! If you have stopped pedaling, then what is the point of remaining seated?
This needs to be understood a little. For as long as the urge to stop something remains, it means that the urge to drive it is present in its opposite form. When desire itself ends, neither the wish to make it go remains, nor the wish to make it stop. Because to apply the brake would mean only one thing: that Buddha and Mahavira should commit suicide. There can be no other meaning. Now the body has no further purpose—so one should jump out of it? But in life, applying the brake can have only one meaning: that you commit suicide, self-slaughter.
Remember, the person who commits suicide has not become free of life. People commit suicide because they are bound to life. This will look upside-down. But observe those who commit suicide. The reason for their suicide is not that they have become free of life. Their constant reason is that life has not given them what they wanted from it. They are not liberated from life; they are disappointed with life. And we become disappointed precisely to the extent that we had tied ourselves with hopes. Someone thought heaven would be found in life, and if it is not found, there is sorrow—and such a person commits suicide.
The enlightened one has neither the desire that life should continue, nor any question of stopping it. Because he has no expectation of getting anything from moving, nor any expectation from stopping. He does not think, “If I keep going in life, some heaven will be obtained for me.” Nor does he think, “By stopping, some heaven will be obtained.” He knows, “I myself am heaven.” It has nothing to do with moving or stopping.
So if he even tries to apply the brake, understand that he is still pedaling. Because applying the brake is also part of pedaling. He is still doing something. His doership has not gone. He has not become a witness. He is still applying the brake. Yesterday he was pressing the pedal; now he is pressing the brake. But his doership is still connected to the bicycle.
And witnessing means that now he is not doing anything at all. Now whatever is happening, he knows it is happening through nature. That is what Krishna is saying.
Krishna says that the day one comes to know that the gunas are acting upon the gunas, and “I am separate; I am not doing anything; I am not the doer”—on the day such seeing becomes deep, that very day one attains the state beyond the gunas. That very day one becomes sat-chit-ananda-ghan, in that very moment.
Even the desire to stop is a part of the desire to go. Stopping too is a way of going, because stopping is also an action. So, about the person whose propensity has disappeared…
Remember, we always think in opposites; hence the difficulty. We think that the one whose propensity has gone will cultivate renunciation. But renunciation too is a form of propensity. To do something is the sense of doership; and to insist on doing nothing is also the sense of doership. If I say, “This I will not do,” it means that I accept that I could do it. I also accept that it is my doership: if I want, I can do it; if I want, I can refrain.
But witnessing means: neither can I do, nor can I not do. Neither is activity mine, nor is inactivity mine. Activity too belongs to the gunas and inactivity too belongs to the gunas. It is the gunas alone that are acting. They alone are moving; they alone will stop. So as long as they are moving, I will watch them moving. And when they stop, I will watch them stopped. As long as there is life, I am a witness of life; and when there is death, I will remain a witness of death. I will not become the doer.
Therefore do not think of inactivity as real inactivity. If there is the sense of doership in it, it is just activity standing on its head—its inverted form. Someone is running with the sense of doership; someone is standing still with the sense of doership—but the sense of doership is present.
Buddha has said somewhere: “I am now neither involved nor withdrawn; I am neither a householder now nor a renunciate; neither am I holding anything nor am I abandoning anything.”
Take this well to heart, because in many aspects of life this very snag arises.
We think: “We are doing something—let us not do it.” Our attention is on the act; our attention is not on the doer. Because in doing, I am the doer; and in not-doing, I am still the doer.
All the endeavor of the seers is that the sense of doership should dissolve. Let me allow it to happen; let me not do. Let what is happening, happen; let me not meddle in it at all. Wherever actions are going, wherever the gunas are going, let them go. Let me drop all my grip on them.
That is why true saintliness becomes very difficult. Asceticism is not difficult, because asceticism cultivates inactivity. It is the opposite of activity. It is the opposite of the householder. There remains something to be done—the opposite thing remains to be done. Someone is committing violence; you are practicing nonviolence. Someone is collecting wealth; you are renouncing. Someone is building a palace; you are moving toward a hut. Someone is moving toward the city; you are moving toward the forest. There something remains to be done.
The mind wants work. If you stop collecting wealth, the mind will say, “Start distributing.” But do something. Keep doing, so the mind stays alive. Therefore the mind immediately catches hold of opposite actions.
Run after women; and if you are to stop that, the mind says, “Run away from women”—but keep running. Because the mind’s concern is not with woman; it is with running. Either run toward woman, or run with your back toward woman—but run. If you keep running, the sense of doership will remain. If running stops, the sense of doership will stop.
So the mind keeps us running even up to the point where there is no meaning left in running at all.
I have heard that Mulla Nasruddin went to his physician. By then he had become very old—his age was ninety. His body had become decrepit. He could barely see. With a stick in his hand he could only just manage to walk.
He said to his doctor, “I am in great dilemma and in great difficulty. Do something.” The doctor asked, “What is the trouble?” Nasruddin said, “I feel embarrassed to say it, but one must tell one’s doctor everything. I still chase women. I have become so old—when will this stop? I am still chasing women. I cannot see, I cannot walk—but I chase women!”
His physician said, “Nasruddin, don’t worry. This is no illness. This is a sign that you are still healthy—even at ninety you’re alive! You should not be unhappy about this.”
Nasruddin said, “That is not my trouble either. You have again misunderstood. The difficulty is that I do chase women, but I have forgotten why I am chasing. I chase women, but I can’t remember why. That’s my trouble: I no longer remember what I’m chasing for. And even if I catch a woman, what would I do? I don’t remember that.”
In life many of your activities one day reach the same place where you keep on doing, and both the meaning and the memory of why you are doing are lost. But the old momentum is there—the speed is there. Previously you have been running and running. Now the meaning of running is lost; the goal is lost; now no purpose remains. But the old habit is there; you go on running.
With the body and with the body’s qualities, this same event occurs. Even if the rope is burnt, its stiffness remains. In a piece of wood burnt to ash, the imprint of its old rigidity still remains.
Even if you awaken, even if you are filled with awareness, the old lines of the gunas remain all around. And the force of their old momentum is there; they keep moving. The difference is: you no longer give them new momentum. This is a revolutionary matter; not a small happening.
You no longer give them new momentum. You no longer take new relish in them. Now even if they move, they move because of their past. And the past’s power has a limit. If you don’t give it daily momentum, then today or tomorrow the old power will be exhausted. If you don’t give it daily strength…
You are running a car by filling it with petrol. The petrol that has been filled will be used up and the car will stop. If you keep pouring petrol every day, then there will be no end to its running out. Once you decide that you will no longer put petrol, the petrol already in the tank will carry you a short distance; you can go a hundred, a hundred and fifty miles.
Buddha attained enlightenment at forty, but the fuel he had accumulated over births and births kept the body going for another forty years. During those forty years the body functioned in its qualities; Buddha was only the watcher.
Keep in mind the distinction between the seer and the enjoyer, the seer and the doer, then there will be no difficulty. If you become the doer, the enjoyer, you are giving new momentum—you have begun to add fuel. If you remain only the seer, you are not giving new momentum. The old momentum has a limit; it will be cut off. And the day the old momentum is used up, the body will fall; the gunas will merge back into nature; and you into the sat-chit-ananda-ghan form of the Supreme.
First, ordinarily we have believed and heard that when a person attains dispassion, the fullness of knowing, all his tendencies become attenuated. This is both right and wrong. It is right when that person’s body falls—and that will be the last body. For one who has attained dispassion, this body is the final one. After this there is no possibility of assuming a new body, because the seeds of craving, the root-seeds, have been burnt to ash. So there will be no new birth.
Therefore it is right to say that the dispassionate person’s tendencies become zero. But in another sense it is also wrong. Because even after dispassion, one has to remain in this body for some days. Buddha remained in this body for forty years. Even after enlightenment the body will feel hunger; it will feel thirst. The body will fall ill. The body will want rest. The body will need oxygen. As long as the body is, all the needs appropriate to the body’s nature will be.
And these three gunas—sattva, rajas, tamas—are also qualities of the body. Just as hunger and thirst are felt by the body, in the same way the processes of sattva, rajas, and tamas continue. The difference will be that even when hunger arises, the Buddha knows, “This hunger has not arisen in me; it has arisen in the body.” Even when thirst arises, he knows, “I am the witness of this thirst; I am neither the enjoyer nor the doer.”
But the body will indeed feel thirst; the body will indeed feel hunger. Whatever properties belong to the body will continue—now in their purest form. With consciousness disentangled from them, the agitation that used to be created disappears. Hence the tendencies continue.
Buddha walks, stands, explains, speaks, sleeps, eats, wakes. All actions continue. But through these actions he does not get bound; that has been broken. He has no identification with these actions. They are happening around him; the center within is freed of them. Consciousness remains untouched and unstained.
Therefore the foundations of personality laid over births and births will function. Until this body falls, the body will remain active. But that activity becomes like this: you are riding a bicycle and you stop pedaling, and then due to the old speed and momentum the bicycle goes a little further. To the onlooker it will seem that if you have stopped pedaling, why does the bicycle not stop?
You have stopped pedaling, but you have been cycling for miles; the wheels have taken on a speed; that speed will run itself out. Now, even while you sit without pressing the pedals, the bicycle will keep moving. This movement that happens now—you are not making it happen; now the bicycle itself is moving. In this you are not the doer; you are only the witness. You sit on the bicycle and the bicycle is moving. And there will be a unique experience: that I am not moving it; the bicycle is moving. And the bicycle is moving because earlier I moved it.
Through births and births you have moved the body. And through births and births you have given speed to your qualities. All qualities have acquired momentum; they have caught their motion. Now they will go on. Until the motion is depleted, your body will go on. But this going-on is like the bicycle moving without pedaling.
To the onlooker it will seem: the bicycle is moving, therefore you must be moving it. His seeming is also fine. But you know that now you have stopped moving it. Now you are simply waiting for the bicycle to stop.
This inner state of feeling is hard for us to recognize because we are always supplying momentum. It doesn’t even occur to us how life can move without pushing it.
But life does move. It can move for a few days. And the joy of those few days is of another kind. You have lifted the oar and set it aside, and the boat flows on in its own current. You no longer have any longing that the boat should move…
And remember, you may say: if you have stopped pedaling, you can apply the brakes and get off the bicycle! You can jump off! If you have stopped pedaling, then what is the point of remaining seated?
This needs to be understood a little. For as long as the urge to stop something remains, it means that the urge to drive it is present in its opposite form. When desire itself ends, neither the wish to make it go remains, nor the wish to make it stop. Because to apply the brake would mean only one thing: that Buddha and Mahavira should commit suicide. There can be no other meaning. Now the body has no further purpose—so one should jump out of it? But in life, applying the brake can have only one meaning: that you commit suicide, self-slaughter.
Remember, the person who commits suicide has not become free of life. People commit suicide because they are bound to life. This will look upside-down. But observe those who commit suicide. The reason for their suicide is not that they have become free of life. Their constant reason is that life has not given them what they wanted from it. They are not liberated from life; they are disappointed with life. And we become disappointed precisely to the extent that we had tied ourselves with hopes. Someone thought heaven would be found in life, and if it is not found, there is sorrow—and such a person commits suicide.
The enlightened one has neither the desire that life should continue, nor any question of stopping it. Because he has no expectation of getting anything from moving, nor any expectation from stopping. He does not think, “If I keep going in life, some heaven will be obtained for me.” Nor does he think, “By stopping, some heaven will be obtained.” He knows, “I myself am heaven.” It has nothing to do with moving or stopping.
So if he even tries to apply the brake, understand that he is still pedaling. Because applying the brake is also part of pedaling. He is still doing something. His doership has not gone. He has not become a witness. He is still applying the brake. Yesterday he was pressing the pedal; now he is pressing the brake. But his doership is still connected to the bicycle.
And witnessing means that now he is not doing anything at all. Now whatever is happening, he knows it is happening through nature. That is what Krishna is saying.
Krishna says that the day one comes to know that the gunas are acting upon the gunas, and “I am separate; I am not doing anything; I am not the doer”—on the day such seeing becomes deep, that very day one attains the state beyond the gunas. That very day one becomes sat-chit-ananda-ghan, in that very moment.
Even the desire to stop is a part of the desire to go. Stopping too is a way of going, because stopping is also an action. So, about the person whose propensity has disappeared…
Remember, we always think in opposites; hence the difficulty. We think that the one whose propensity has gone will cultivate renunciation. But renunciation too is a form of propensity. To do something is the sense of doership; and to insist on doing nothing is also the sense of doership. If I say, “This I will not do,” it means that I accept that I could do it. I also accept that it is my doership: if I want, I can do it; if I want, I can refrain.
But witnessing means: neither can I do, nor can I not do. Neither is activity mine, nor is inactivity mine. Activity too belongs to the gunas and inactivity too belongs to the gunas. It is the gunas alone that are acting. They alone are moving; they alone will stop. So as long as they are moving, I will watch them moving. And when they stop, I will watch them stopped. As long as there is life, I am a witness of life; and when there is death, I will remain a witness of death. I will not become the doer.
Therefore do not think of inactivity as real inactivity. If there is the sense of doership in it, it is just activity standing on its head—its inverted form. Someone is running with the sense of doership; someone is standing still with the sense of doership—but the sense of doership is present.
Buddha has said somewhere: “I am now neither involved nor withdrawn; I am neither a householder now nor a renunciate; neither am I holding anything nor am I abandoning anything.”
Take this well to heart, because in many aspects of life this very snag arises.
We think: “We are doing something—let us not do it.” Our attention is on the act; our attention is not on the doer. Because in doing, I am the doer; and in not-doing, I am still the doer.
All the endeavor of the seers is that the sense of doership should dissolve. Let me allow it to happen; let me not do. Let what is happening, happen; let me not meddle in it at all. Wherever actions are going, wherever the gunas are going, let them go. Let me drop all my grip on them.
That is why true saintliness becomes very difficult. Asceticism is not difficult, because asceticism cultivates inactivity. It is the opposite of activity. It is the opposite of the householder. There remains something to be done—the opposite thing remains to be done. Someone is committing violence; you are practicing nonviolence. Someone is collecting wealth; you are renouncing. Someone is building a palace; you are moving toward a hut. Someone is moving toward the city; you are moving toward the forest. There something remains to be done.
The mind wants work. If you stop collecting wealth, the mind will say, “Start distributing.” But do something. Keep doing, so the mind stays alive. Therefore the mind immediately catches hold of opposite actions.
Run after women; and if you are to stop that, the mind says, “Run away from women”—but keep running. Because the mind’s concern is not with woman; it is with running. Either run toward woman, or run with your back toward woman—but run. If you keep running, the sense of doership will remain. If running stops, the sense of doership will stop.
So the mind keeps us running even up to the point where there is no meaning left in running at all.
I have heard that Mulla Nasruddin went to his physician. By then he had become very old—his age was ninety. His body had become decrepit. He could barely see. With a stick in his hand he could only just manage to walk.
He said to his doctor, “I am in great dilemma and in great difficulty. Do something.” The doctor asked, “What is the trouble?” Nasruddin said, “I feel embarrassed to say it, but one must tell one’s doctor everything. I still chase women. I have become so old—when will this stop? I am still chasing women. I cannot see, I cannot walk—but I chase women!”
His physician said, “Nasruddin, don’t worry. This is no illness. This is a sign that you are still healthy—even at ninety you’re alive! You should not be unhappy about this.”
Nasruddin said, “That is not my trouble either. You have again misunderstood. The difficulty is that I do chase women, but I have forgotten why I am chasing. I chase women, but I can’t remember why. That’s my trouble: I no longer remember what I’m chasing for. And even if I catch a woman, what would I do? I don’t remember that.”
In life many of your activities one day reach the same place where you keep on doing, and both the meaning and the memory of why you are doing are lost. But the old momentum is there—the speed is there. Previously you have been running and running. Now the meaning of running is lost; the goal is lost; now no purpose remains. But the old habit is there; you go on running.
With the body and with the body’s qualities, this same event occurs. Even if the rope is burnt, its stiffness remains. In a piece of wood burnt to ash, the imprint of its old rigidity still remains.
Even if you awaken, even if you are filled with awareness, the old lines of the gunas remain all around. And the force of their old momentum is there; they keep moving. The difference is: you no longer give them new momentum. This is a revolutionary matter; not a small happening.
You no longer give them new momentum. You no longer take new relish in them. Now even if they move, they move because of their past. And the past’s power has a limit. If you don’t give it daily momentum, then today or tomorrow the old power will be exhausted. If you don’t give it daily strength…
You are running a car by filling it with petrol. The petrol that has been filled will be used up and the car will stop. If you keep pouring petrol every day, then there will be no end to its running out. Once you decide that you will no longer put petrol, the petrol already in the tank will carry you a short distance; you can go a hundred, a hundred and fifty miles.
Buddha attained enlightenment at forty, but the fuel he had accumulated over births and births kept the body going for another forty years. During those forty years the body functioned in its qualities; Buddha was only the watcher.
Keep in mind the distinction between the seer and the enjoyer, the seer and the doer, then there will be no difficulty. If you become the doer, the enjoyer, you are giving new momentum—you have begun to add fuel. If you remain only the seer, you are not giving new momentum. The old momentum has a limit; it will be cut off. And the day the old momentum is used up, the body will fall; the gunas will merge back into nature; and you into the sat-chit-ananda-ghan form of the Supreme.
Second question:
Osho, it is not clear to me how the conscious witness can become identified with the inert three gunas!
Osho, it is not clear to me how the conscious witness can become identified with the inert three gunas!
You see your face in a mirror. The mirror is inert, yet it forms your reflection. You see the face and feel happy; you say, “This is me.” What appears in the mirror makes you exclaim, “This is me—how beautiful I am! How healthy I am!”
In your body, nature is at work; it is inert—but it functions like a mirror. In it you catch your own reflection. And in a mirror you still know it is only a reflection. But if the mirror were always attached to you—standing, sitting, whatever you did the mirror was always there; sleeping, traveling, it never left—you would forget that what appears there is only a reflection. You would begin to feel, “That is me.”
Exactly this is happening. You are finding your reflection in the qualities of your nature. And you find that reflection continuously. Not for a single moment does it withdraw. Because it never ceases, because the impact is constant, the idea arises, “This is me.” This feeling is possible because consciousness has the capacity to know truth. Precisely because consciousness can know the true, it is also capable of being deluded.
All our capacities are double-edged. You are alive because you are capable of dying. You are healthy because you are capable of falling ill. You can do right because you are capable of doing wrong. Understand this well.
Every capacity we have is two-sided. If you could not do the opposite, it would not be a real capacity. Suppose we told a person, “You have the right to do right, but you have no freedom to do wrong. You have freedom only to do the right.” Freedom would be finished. Freedom means there is freedom to do wrong as well; only then does the freedom to do right have any meaning.
Consciousness is free. Freedom is its quality—its very nature. And freedom means there are paths in both directions. I can err. I can go wrong. And because I can go wrong, there is the possibility of searching for what is right.
There are two ways: either I know myself as I am—that is the knowing of truth; or I join myself to what I am not—that is the way of becoming one with the false. Both paths are open.
Everybody thinks, “This freedom is dangerous—were it not there, it would be better.” But you do not know what you are thinking, what you are asking.
Everyone wishes, “If only I were always healthy and never fell ill—it would be wonderful.” But you are unaware. What you are asking is full of foolishness. If you could never fall ill, you would never come to know health. And if you could not be unhappy, there would be no experience of happiness. How would the sense of joy arise? And if truth were already in your hand and there were no way to move toward untruth, that truth would be worthless—you would never know its value. Truth has value because we can lose it.
Psychologists say love is possible in the world because love can be lost. And they say that the day we make man immortal—when death stops—on that very day all that is significant in life will be lost. Everything meaningful is poised upon death.
You can love because the one you love may die tomorrow. If you knew that everything is eternal—no one dies, no one can die—love would evaporate. Without death, there is no way for love. Without death, friendship becomes meaningless. Because there is death, friendship has such depth. If there were no death, all the things to which we give value would have no value. Value arises from the opposite.
So when a flower opens in the morning, its beauty lies not only in its blossoming. Hidden within the beauty is also this fact: by evening it will wither. And if it never withered, it would become a plastic flower. And if—even beyond that—it never perished at all, then looking at it would have no meaning.
All the mystery of life depends on the opposite. Truth has value because there is a way into untruth. Going to the divine has savor because the world brings sorrow.
People ask me, “Why on earth is God creating the world? Why is there a world at all?”
If there were no world, God would have no flavor, no relish. God creates his opposite so that you can lose him and find him. And there is joy in finding only that which can be lost. What cannot be lost becomes a burden on our head.
If God were such that you could never lose him, you would be more bored with God than with anything else. But there is no way to be bored with God, because in a single instant you can lose him. And the moment you are bored with the world, in that very instant you can dissolve back into God.
If you understand this rightly, many of life’s problems will become clear.
The first basic principle is that the human soul is freedom—absolute freedom, total freedom. This total freedom of consciousness is what we have called moksha, liberation. One who knows this is free; one who does not is bound.
But he is bound because he wants to be bound. And he will remain bound until the bondage becomes so painful that the impulse to break it, to be free of it, to rise beyond it, arises.
And in this world nothing happens untimely; it will happen in its own time. Time means: when you have ripened, it will happen. When the fruit ripens, it falls. As long as it is unripe, it hangs on. The day your suffering with the world ripens, that day you will at once break away and fall into the divine.
If you are stuck, it is not because there is some lack in your spiritual practice. You are stuck because you are not fully undergoing your suffering. You are not allowing yourself to ripen.
Think of a fruit that needs the sun to ripen, but hides itself in the shade so the sun won’t touch it—and then wonders, “Why am I unripe?” You are just such a fruit—hiding and protecting yourself on every side. And you are protecting yourself precisely from that pain by which you can become free.
Therefore I say again and again: go into the world totally so that you can come out of it. The only way out is to go all the way in—until nothing more remains there to be known.
There is only one arrangement, one method, to be free of suffering: suffer it completely. Ripen in it. You will fall by yourself.
This is what Krishna is saying: “Arjuna, you are unnecessarily troubled. The gunas are moving in their own rhythm. The gunas are ripening in their own course. Where you wish to flee from, by fleeing you will never be free—because you are seeking shade. By running away from this war you will save yourself from passing through that great agony which would become the cause of liberation. Pass through this war. Let this war happen. Do not stop it. Do not be afraid. Do not hesitate. Enter it fearlessly. Allow what has gathered around you to pierce you in its totality. Let this fire burn completely. Be wholly reduced to ash in it. From those ashes the sprout of your new life will emerge. From those ashes you will become capable of knowing the immortal.”
Whatever is in life is not without cause. Suffering, the world, bondage—they are not causeless. They have utility. And their great utility is that they point toward their opposite.
Your consciousness can be bound because your consciousness can be free. And it is in your hands. And when I say “in your hands,” you think, “Then why don’t I become free right now?” You do think, “Why don’t I become free this very moment!” But you are doing everything to remain bound.
A friend came to me. He said, “My mind is very restless; please give me some method for peace.” I asked him not to worry about peace first: “Tell me why you are restless. If I give you a method for peace while you keep arranging for restlessness, nothing will be resolved. It will only create more discomfort—like a man who presses the accelerator and the brake at the same time.”
That is why cars are designed—because we know human nature—so that you use the same foot for the accelerator and the brake. We fear you might try to do both at once. If you could press both together, trouble would arise. So to press the brake, your foot must come off the accelerator.
But with the mind we do not manage this. With the mind we try to do both things at once.
I asked that friend, “What is the trouble? Why are you restless?” He said, “The cause of my unrest is that my son does not obey me.”
Whose son obeys whom? The son is not the cause here. Why do you want him to obey? The son will live his own life. I asked, “Did you obey your father?”
Who obeys his father? A son will walk paths the father never walked. He will live in a different world from the one his father lived in. There is a difference of time between father and son; their paths will differ. Their circumstances differ; their ideas will differ. If the son is alive, he will go differently than the father. Only if the son is dead will he live by the father’s dictates.
Now the father’s misery is this: if the son is dead inside, he is disturbed; if the son is alive, he is disturbed. If the son is dead, he thinks the boy is as good as nonexistent.
You do not realize: if the son were to do exactly what you say—sit when you say sit, stand when you say stand, turn left when you say left, obeying your every word to the letter—you would beat your head and say, “What kind of son is this? He is useless—better not to have him at all.” The fact of being is known by difference.
So you are not unhappy because, as you say, “the son does not obey.” Why do you want him to obey? Your misery comes from you. You want to impose your ego. And you have come to me seeking peace! Let the son walk his way—where then is the unrest?
Then his wound was touched. He said, “What are you saying! If I let him go his way, he will ruin everything—waste all the wealth.”
I asked him, “How long will you guard your wealth? Tomorrow you will be gone—and it will be spent. Your son will spend it, or someone else will. Wealth is to be spent. So your misery does not come from your son; it comes from your grip on wealth. You will die unhappy, because at the last moment you will think, ‘What will happen to my wealth now!’ And someone or other will indeed spend it.
“In this world, whatever is made is unmade. There is nothing that does not perish. Your wealth will not be an exception.” So you are unhappy because you fear someone may squander it; you are restless for that—and at the same time you seek some trick for peace.
Accept that wealth is perishable—it will be spent. Accept that sons will go their own way. And that a father, because he gives birth, is not therefore the owner of his son’s life. Then tell me, where is the misery?
If the causes of restlessness are dropped, man becomes peaceful. There is no need to search for peace. Peace is man’s nature. Restlessness has to be acquired. We keep acquiring restlessness and then begin inquiring about peace.
We also do not want to forsake our investment in restlessness. We want the profits that come from it. And we also want the profits that may come with peace. But there is no way to have sweets in both hands.
Our link with the world—with the gunas, with the body, our identification—is there because we see a gain in it. We have created it knowingly. We have convinced ourselves that it is so. Then we hear the words of saints, we feel tempted: “How can we attain the state beyond the gunas?” So we begin to ask, “What should we do? How to be free of this?”
The fun is almost like this: you are holding on to something and asking, “How can I let go of it?” If it dawns on you that you are the one holding on, then to be free you need do nothing—just release your grip.
You take yourself to be one with the body—you are holding on. You consider this body beautiful. You expect enjoyment through this body. The pleasures you get—whatever they are: sex, delicious food, music—they come through the medium of the body. They are all pleasures. If they still appear to you as pleasures, how will you let go of the body? Because it is through the body that they are obtained. So you hold on to the very end.
There is a well-known story. When the American actress Marilyn Monroe died, a story began to circulate: when she reached the gate of heaven, Saint Peter—the gatekeeper of the Christian heaven—saw Monroe, her extraordinarily beautiful figure.
Saint Peter said, “There is a rule for entering heaven. There is a small bridge outside the gate; you must cross it. Below the bridge there is a bottomless abyss. In the very depths of that abyss lies hell. While crossing that bridge, if even one bad thought arises—‘bad’ meaning a thought tied to the body—you immediately fall from the bridge into hell.”
Monroe and Saint Peter started across the bridge. And what happened? After two or three steps, Saint Peter fell down! Seeing such a beautiful woman walking, some thought must have occurred to him!
Even at the very gate of heaven, if even the slightest thought of taking pleasure from the body arises, identification has happened. We become identified with whatever we imagine will give us pleasure.
As long as the idea persists that pleasure can be had from the body, you will remain attached. The day you understand that every pleasure through the body is only another form of pain—the day you discover that behind every bodily pleasure pain is hidden; that pleasure is only the top layer, no more than sugar coating over a bitter poison pill—on that very day identification will begin to crack.
You ask how the identification of consciousness with the inert three gunas is possible?
It is possible precisely because you are free. If you wish, you can create identification; if you wish, you can drop it. As long as you believe happiness comes from outside, this identification will not fall away. The day you know, “Bliss is within me—it is my nature,” that day the identification will dissolve.
Even when we search for God, for now we try to do it through the body. Even then we ask: “What posture should I take? How should I stand? How to worship? What scriptures to recite? Where should I go—Himalaya, Mecca, Medina, Kashi, Jerusalem? What should I eat? How should I sit, how should I rise—so that I may find God?”
Our linkage with the body has become so deep that we want to search for God through the body. We have no inkling that beyond the body there is a deeper being of ours. And that inkling will come only when, on every side, the body begins to show us suffering.
Buddha said one thing again and again, from morning till night, to his monks: life is suffering. He said it for one reason only—so that you may come to know the supreme life. When you see only suffering here, then there will be no obstacle at all to being free of it.
Where there is suffering, the mind begins to withdraw. And where there is pleasure, the mind moves naturally.
In your body, nature is at work; it is inert—but it functions like a mirror. In it you catch your own reflection. And in a mirror you still know it is only a reflection. But if the mirror were always attached to you—standing, sitting, whatever you did the mirror was always there; sleeping, traveling, it never left—you would forget that what appears there is only a reflection. You would begin to feel, “That is me.”
Exactly this is happening. You are finding your reflection in the qualities of your nature. And you find that reflection continuously. Not for a single moment does it withdraw. Because it never ceases, because the impact is constant, the idea arises, “This is me.” This feeling is possible because consciousness has the capacity to know truth. Precisely because consciousness can know the true, it is also capable of being deluded.
All our capacities are double-edged. You are alive because you are capable of dying. You are healthy because you are capable of falling ill. You can do right because you are capable of doing wrong. Understand this well.
Every capacity we have is two-sided. If you could not do the opposite, it would not be a real capacity. Suppose we told a person, “You have the right to do right, but you have no freedom to do wrong. You have freedom only to do the right.” Freedom would be finished. Freedom means there is freedom to do wrong as well; only then does the freedom to do right have any meaning.
Consciousness is free. Freedom is its quality—its very nature. And freedom means there are paths in both directions. I can err. I can go wrong. And because I can go wrong, there is the possibility of searching for what is right.
There are two ways: either I know myself as I am—that is the knowing of truth; or I join myself to what I am not—that is the way of becoming one with the false. Both paths are open.
Everybody thinks, “This freedom is dangerous—were it not there, it would be better.” But you do not know what you are thinking, what you are asking.
Everyone wishes, “If only I were always healthy and never fell ill—it would be wonderful.” But you are unaware. What you are asking is full of foolishness. If you could never fall ill, you would never come to know health. And if you could not be unhappy, there would be no experience of happiness. How would the sense of joy arise? And if truth were already in your hand and there were no way to move toward untruth, that truth would be worthless—you would never know its value. Truth has value because we can lose it.
Psychologists say love is possible in the world because love can be lost. And they say that the day we make man immortal—when death stops—on that very day all that is significant in life will be lost. Everything meaningful is poised upon death.
You can love because the one you love may die tomorrow. If you knew that everything is eternal—no one dies, no one can die—love would evaporate. Without death, there is no way for love. Without death, friendship becomes meaningless. Because there is death, friendship has such depth. If there were no death, all the things to which we give value would have no value. Value arises from the opposite.
So when a flower opens in the morning, its beauty lies not only in its blossoming. Hidden within the beauty is also this fact: by evening it will wither. And if it never withered, it would become a plastic flower. And if—even beyond that—it never perished at all, then looking at it would have no meaning.
All the mystery of life depends on the opposite. Truth has value because there is a way into untruth. Going to the divine has savor because the world brings sorrow.
People ask me, “Why on earth is God creating the world? Why is there a world at all?”
If there were no world, God would have no flavor, no relish. God creates his opposite so that you can lose him and find him. And there is joy in finding only that which can be lost. What cannot be lost becomes a burden on our head.
If God were such that you could never lose him, you would be more bored with God than with anything else. But there is no way to be bored with God, because in a single instant you can lose him. And the moment you are bored with the world, in that very instant you can dissolve back into God.
If you understand this rightly, many of life’s problems will become clear.
The first basic principle is that the human soul is freedom—absolute freedom, total freedom. This total freedom of consciousness is what we have called moksha, liberation. One who knows this is free; one who does not is bound.
But he is bound because he wants to be bound. And he will remain bound until the bondage becomes so painful that the impulse to break it, to be free of it, to rise beyond it, arises.
And in this world nothing happens untimely; it will happen in its own time. Time means: when you have ripened, it will happen. When the fruit ripens, it falls. As long as it is unripe, it hangs on. The day your suffering with the world ripens, that day you will at once break away and fall into the divine.
If you are stuck, it is not because there is some lack in your spiritual practice. You are stuck because you are not fully undergoing your suffering. You are not allowing yourself to ripen.
Think of a fruit that needs the sun to ripen, but hides itself in the shade so the sun won’t touch it—and then wonders, “Why am I unripe?” You are just such a fruit—hiding and protecting yourself on every side. And you are protecting yourself precisely from that pain by which you can become free.
Therefore I say again and again: go into the world totally so that you can come out of it. The only way out is to go all the way in—until nothing more remains there to be known.
There is only one arrangement, one method, to be free of suffering: suffer it completely. Ripen in it. You will fall by yourself.
This is what Krishna is saying: “Arjuna, you are unnecessarily troubled. The gunas are moving in their own rhythm. The gunas are ripening in their own course. Where you wish to flee from, by fleeing you will never be free—because you are seeking shade. By running away from this war you will save yourself from passing through that great agony which would become the cause of liberation. Pass through this war. Let this war happen. Do not stop it. Do not be afraid. Do not hesitate. Enter it fearlessly. Allow what has gathered around you to pierce you in its totality. Let this fire burn completely. Be wholly reduced to ash in it. From those ashes the sprout of your new life will emerge. From those ashes you will become capable of knowing the immortal.”
Whatever is in life is not without cause. Suffering, the world, bondage—they are not causeless. They have utility. And their great utility is that they point toward their opposite.
Your consciousness can be bound because your consciousness can be free. And it is in your hands. And when I say “in your hands,” you think, “Then why don’t I become free right now?” You do think, “Why don’t I become free this very moment!” But you are doing everything to remain bound.
A friend came to me. He said, “My mind is very restless; please give me some method for peace.” I asked him not to worry about peace first: “Tell me why you are restless. If I give you a method for peace while you keep arranging for restlessness, nothing will be resolved. It will only create more discomfort—like a man who presses the accelerator and the brake at the same time.”
That is why cars are designed—because we know human nature—so that you use the same foot for the accelerator and the brake. We fear you might try to do both at once. If you could press both together, trouble would arise. So to press the brake, your foot must come off the accelerator.
But with the mind we do not manage this. With the mind we try to do both things at once.
I asked that friend, “What is the trouble? Why are you restless?” He said, “The cause of my unrest is that my son does not obey me.”
Whose son obeys whom? The son is not the cause here. Why do you want him to obey? The son will live his own life. I asked, “Did you obey your father?”
Who obeys his father? A son will walk paths the father never walked. He will live in a different world from the one his father lived in. There is a difference of time between father and son; their paths will differ. Their circumstances differ; their ideas will differ. If the son is alive, he will go differently than the father. Only if the son is dead will he live by the father’s dictates.
Now the father’s misery is this: if the son is dead inside, he is disturbed; if the son is alive, he is disturbed. If the son is dead, he thinks the boy is as good as nonexistent.
You do not realize: if the son were to do exactly what you say—sit when you say sit, stand when you say stand, turn left when you say left, obeying your every word to the letter—you would beat your head and say, “What kind of son is this? He is useless—better not to have him at all.” The fact of being is known by difference.
So you are not unhappy because, as you say, “the son does not obey.” Why do you want him to obey? Your misery comes from you. You want to impose your ego. And you have come to me seeking peace! Let the son walk his way—where then is the unrest?
Then his wound was touched. He said, “What are you saying! If I let him go his way, he will ruin everything—waste all the wealth.”
I asked him, “How long will you guard your wealth? Tomorrow you will be gone—and it will be spent. Your son will spend it, or someone else will. Wealth is to be spent. So your misery does not come from your son; it comes from your grip on wealth. You will die unhappy, because at the last moment you will think, ‘What will happen to my wealth now!’ And someone or other will indeed spend it.
“In this world, whatever is made is unmade. There is nothing that does not perish. Your wealth will not be an exception.” So you are unhappy because you fear someone may squander it; you are restless for that—and at the same time you seek some trick for peace.
Accept that wealth is perishable—it will be spent. Accept that sons will go their own way. And that a father, because he gives birth, is not therefore the owner of his son’s life. Then tell me, where is the misery?
If the causes of restlessness are dropped, man becomes peaceful. There is no need to search for peace. Peace is man’s nature. Restlessness has to be acquired. We keep acquiring restlessness and then begin inquiring about peace.
We also do not want to forsake our investment in restlessness. We want the profits that come from it. And we also want the profits that may come with peace. But there is no way to have sweets in both hands.
Our link with the world—with the gunas, with the body, our identification—is there because we see a gain in it. We have created it knowingly. We have convinced ourselves that it is so. Then we hear the words of saints, we feel tempted: “How can we attain the state beyond the gunas?” So we begin to ask, “What should we do? How to be free of this?”
The fun is almost like this: you are holding on to something and asking, “How can I let go of it?” If it dawns on you that you are the one holding on, then to be free you need do nothing—just release your grip.
You take yourself to be one with the body—you are holding on. You consider this body beautiful. You expect enjoyment through this body. The pleasures you get—whatever they are: sex, delicious food, music—they come through the medium of the body. They are all pleasures. If they still appear to you as pleasures, how will you let go of the body? Because it is through the body that they are obtained. So you hold on to the very end.
There is a well-known story. When the American actress Marilyn Monroe died, a story began to circulate: when she reached the gate of heaven, Saint Peter—the gatekeeper of the Christian heaven—saw Monroe, her extraordinarily beautiful figure.
Saint Peter said, “There is a rule for entering heaven. There is a small bridge outside the gate; you must cross it. Below the bridge there is a bottomless abyss. In the very depths of that abyss lies hell. While crossing that bridge, if even one bad thought arises—‘bad’ meaning a thought tied to the body—you immediately fall from the bridge into hell.”
Monroe and Saint Peter started across the bridge. And what happened? After two or three steps, Saint Peter fell down! Seeing such a beautiful woman walking, some thought must have occurred to him!
Even at the very gate of heaven, if even the slightest thought of taking pleasure from the body arises, identification has happened. We become identified with whatever we imagine will give us pleasure.
As long as the idea persists that pleasure can be had from the body, you will remain attached. The day you understand that every pleasure through the body is only another form of pain—the day you discover that behind every bodily pleasure pain is hidden; that pleasure is only the top layer, no more than sugar coating over a bitter poison pill—on that very day identification will begin to crack.
You ask how the identification of consciousness with the inert three gunas is possible?
It is possible precisely because you are free. If you wish, you can create identification; if you wish, you can drop it. As long as you believe happiness comes from outside, this identification will not fall away. The day you know, “Bliss is within me—it is my nature,” that day the identification will dissolve.
Even when we search for God, for now we try to do it through the body. Even then we ask: “What posture should I take? How should I stand? How to worship? What scriptures to recite? Where should I go—Himalaya, Mecca, Medina, Kashi, Jerusalem? What should I eat? How should I sit, how should I rise—so that I may find God?”
Our linkage with the body has become so deep that we want to search for God through the body. We have no inkling that beyond the body there is a deeper being of ours. And that inkling will come only when, on every side, the body begins to show us suffering.
Buddha said one thing again and again, from morning till night, to his monks: life is suffering. He said it for one reason only—so that you may come to know the supreme life. When you see only suffering here, then there will be no obstacle at all to being free of it.
Where there is suffering, the mind begins to withdraw. And where there is pleasure, the mind moves naturally.
Third question:
Osho, Krishna repeatedly uses the expression satchidanandghan Paramatma. What is this satchidanandghan Paramatma?
Osho, Krishna repeatedly uses the expression satchidanandghan Paramatma. What is this satchidanandghan Paramatma?
You! Krishna is pointing toward you. To that which is your consciousness, from where you are hearing me; from where you are seeing me; to that inner seat within you, the empty space, the void.
One is me here, speaking. And one is you, listening. Your ears are not listening; the ears only carry the words to where you are listening. One is me, sitting here, and you are seeing me. Your eyes are not seeing me; the eyes only carry my reflection to that within you where you are seeing.
That which is hidden within, amidst all the senses; that which is the center among all the senses, which itself is not a sense; that inner center of consciousness from which all awareness arises, because of which the senses look out and recognize—Krishna is pointing to that. That is satchidanandghan Paramatma.
Understand the word. Satchidananda—sat, chit, ananda—is made of three very important words.
Sat means that whose being alone is real; all else is dreamlike. In truth, that which has existence is sat; whatever else you see around you is not truly real. Everything is a flowing stream, a long current of dream—worth no more than imagination. You don’t even notice how things there are changing. Nothing there has any real being; change is all there is. That which truly is will never be transformed.
Indian seers gave one hallmark of truth: that which never transforms, which forever remains what it is; which never changes, whose nature admits no alteration, in whose nature is stillness—eternal stillness—that is truth. Whatever changes is not truth. To change means there is no substance within it. Surface things that keep changing.
There is within you a center that stands forever unchanged. When you were a child, it was the same. You grew young; it is the same. It did not become young; only your body did. Youth is a play of qualities. Tomorrow you will grow old; still it will not become old. That old age too will be a play of bodily qualities.
One day you were born; it was not born. One day you will die; it will not die. It is forever the same. It was as it is even before birth, and it will remain so after death. It is the base. Upon it all things come and go, but it remains incessantly as it is.
That fundamental base is called sat.
The second word is chit. That base is not only there; it is conscious, filled with awareness. Awareness is its hallmark. No device can make it unconscious. Even when you pass out, it does not. Only your qualities become unconscious. Alcohol is not poured into chit; it is poured into the body. When you are given morphia, chloroform—whatever is happening is happening in the body, in the body’s properties. That inner chit has no way of being rendered unconscious.
In Tantra there are very old practices using poisons, alcohol, all kinds of intoxicants—ganja, bhang, opium. They are used to test and verify that whatever the intoxication, it touches only the body, not me. A tantrika will not accept that you are steadfast, beyond the gunas, until you are given every kind of poison and you remain aware. If you lose awareness, he says you have not gone beyond the gunas. Awareness must remain unbroken, the inner stream of wakefulness must not snap.
That inner stream in you never breaks. In no one does it break. But you are unfamiliar with it. Inside, someone is always awake—by its very nature. Consciousness is its nature.
But you have taken yourself to be the body. So when the body becomes unconscious, you conclude you are unconscious. That is your belief. Because of that belief you conclude you have passed out. You do not pass out.
If you know hypnosis, you will know the whole trick is simply that whatever the hypnotist suggests, you believe. If you believe, it begins to happen. Belief becomes fact.
If the hypnotist says he has placed a live coal in your hand while your eyes are closed, then puts a coin there and says, “A burning coal,” you will fling the coin away in panic—because you accepted it as a coal. The astonishing thing is you will not only fling it; a blister will form on your palm, though there was no coal. Your hand behaves exactly as you believed.
In the West much work is being done on hypnosis. It shows that human consciousness gets possessed by what it accepts. Give water in the hypnotic state and say it is alcohol; you will become intoxicated and pass out.
Some experiments are almost unbelievable. In Harvard University they hypnotized a patient and suggested that his blood sugar was rising. He was hypnotized, blood drawn, tested—normal sugar. Blood sugar is a big matter; unless he eats a lot of sugar or is injected with glucose, the blood sugar cannot go up. No glucose was given, no sugar, nothing—only suggestion that his blood sugar is rising. And it rose—up to five hundred—only by suggestion. As the suggestion deepened, so did the sugar level rise.
Such is a capacity of consciousness: whatever it accepts, events begin to happen accordingly. Our belief that “I am the body” is why we have become the body.
Psychologists say that children who are told from childhood, “You are stupid,” become stupid. We make hundreds of children stupid with our own hands. Millions remain dull because at home parents say they are dull; in school teachers say so. The suggestion is repeated, it sinks in—“If everyone says it, it must be true.” This is a kind of hypnosis. Then they remain dull.
Children who from childhood receive the idea that they are talented, gifted, virtuous—such tendencies begin to grow in them. They become what they take themselves to be. Belief becomes your life.
You think you sleep at night, so you feel you slept. Only the body sleeps; you never sleep. It is only your assumption, taught since childhood, therefore it seems so. You may wonder how belief alone can do this!
Among Amazon tribes, when a woman goes into labor, the husband too cries, beats his chest, screams. One cot for the wife, one for the husband! Both undergo labor pains.
This has been happening for thousands of years. When Christian missionaries first reached the Amazon, they could not believe this madness—“The man must be faking.” We have no idea what the husband has to do with the wife’s labor pains! But investigation showed the pain was real: the husband felt it. Because in the Amazon there is a belief that the child is the act of both husband and wife; why should the wife alone suffer? It is half-and-half; when labor comes both will suffer. Examination showed real bodily strain and tension in the man matching the woman’s.
It is a matter of belief. Because they believe it, it happens.
In “civilized” lands women suffer pain in childbirth—only in civilized lands. In uncivilized, they do not; among primal tribes not at all. In Burma there are tribes where women keep working in the fields; the child is born; there is no midwife, no nurse, no hospital. The baby arrives, she puts the child in a basket and returns to work, and at dusk goes home with the child. In those Burmese forests there is simply no notion that a woman must suffer pain; hence, there is no pain.
Much of what you undergo is mostly your beliefs.
The inner hidden God has a second characteristic: chit. It has never become unconscious, nor slept. That is not its nature. So if you take yourself to be unconscious, sleeping, hypnotized—that is your belief. According to the belief, functioning will continue.
The whole search of religion is that beliefs drop and what is true reveals itself—as it is; and what we have assumed falls away.
The third element is ananda. Sat, chit, ananda. This third too is the realized discovery of the wise: that the inner hidden element is sat, it is chit, and it is supreme bliss. It needs no pleasures; it is itself bliss. If you are miserable and seeking pleasure, that is your delusion.
Man’s nature is bliss. The day we become acquainted with our nature, we meet satchidananda.
And this satchidananda has been called God. God is not some person sitting somewhere making the world. God is the element hidden within you, playing within you, unfolding your life. It is your own hide-and-seek. The day you become alert, the day you are tired of running outside and say, “Stop the game”…
As children build houses of sand on the riverbank, fight and quarrel—Buddha often used this parable: children on the riverbank are building houses. Sand-houses that fall at any moment: a child’s kick, someone stands too hard and they collapse. Then a big quarrel, even a fight: “You broke my house! I made it with such effort.”
Then evening descends, the sun is setting, someone from the bank calls, “Children, go home; your mothers are calling.” The very children whose houses were damaged, who were ready to fight—now they jump on their own sand-houses, demolish them, and race toward their real homes. Evening came; the sun sank; the mother’s call. For those very houses for which they fought and struck each other, they themselves leap upon them and erase them.
Just so, Buddha would say: whatever we are building around us are sand-houses—our play.
No harm either. You are savoring it, building it. Your trouble is you cannot fully savor it; you cannot even complete it. If you complete it, the erasing will also be fun. In the evening when you erase, there should be something to erase! But you never manage to complete it, and evening never quite arrives; the noon lingers. Everything remains half-done.
Enter the world wholly; whatever game you play, play it totally. While playing, awareness will dawn that “Enough now.”
Often you too glimpse, “Now this is too much.” It comes to you many times—“What am I doing? How long will I keep this up?” Then you make yourself forget—“Such talk of quitting the game is not right; it will break the arrangement of life.” And you resume.
These glimpses tell you the game is indeed a game. The real home is hidden elsewhere. When this appears utterly futile, when weariness and sorrow thicken, then you will glance back into yourself.
That which is hidden behind—Krishna again and again calls that satchidanandghan Paramatma. It is a pointing toward you. It is hidden within all; it is everyone’s center.
One is me here, speaking. And one is you, listening. Your ears are not listening; the ears only carry the words to where you are listening. One is me, sitting here, and you are seeing me. Your eyes are not seeing me; the eyes only carry my reflection to that within you where you are seeing.
That which is hidden within, amidst all the senses; that which is the center among all the senses, which itself is not a sense; that inner center of consciousness from which all awareness arises, because of which the senses look out and recognize—Krishna is pointing to that. That is satchidanandghan Paramatma.
Understand the word. Satchidananda—sat, chit, ananda—is made of three very important words.
Sat means that whose being alone is real; all else is dreamlike. In truth, that which has existence is sat; whatever else you see around you is not truly real. Everything is a flowing stream, a long current of dream—worth no more than imagination. You don’t even notice how things there are changing. Nothing there has any real being; change is all there is. That which truly is will never be transformed.
Indian seers gave one hallmark of truth: that which never transforms, which forever remains what it is; which never changes, whose nature admits no alteration, in whose nature is stillness—eternal stillness—that is truth. Whatever changes is not truth. To change means there is no substance within it. Surface things that keep changing.
There is within you a center that stands forever unchanged. When you were a child, it was the same. You grew young; it is the same. It did not become young; only your body did. Youth is a play of qualities. Tomorrow you will grow old; still it will not become old. That old age too will be a play of bodily qualities.
One day you were born; it was not born. One day you will die; it will not die. It is forever the same. It was as it is even before birth, and it will remain so after death. It is the base. Upon it all things come and go, but it remains incessantly as it is.
That fundamental base is called sat.
The second word is chit. That base is not only there; it is conscious, filled with awareness. Awareness is its hallmark. No device can make it unconscious. Even when you pass out, it does not. Only your qualities become unconscious. Alcohol is not poured into chit; it is poured into the body. When you are given morphia, chloroform—whatever is happening is happening in the body, in the body’s properties. That inner chit has no way of being rendered unconscious.
In Tantra there are very old practices using poisons, alcohol, all kinds of intoxicants—ganja, bhang, opium. They are used to test and verify that whatever the intoxication, it touches only the body, not me. A tantrika will not accept that you are steadfast, beyond the gunas, until you are given every kind of poison and you remain aware. If you lose awareness, he says you have not gone beyond the gunas. Awareness must remain unbroken, the inner stream of wakefulness must not snap.
That inner stream in you never breaks. In no one does it break. But you are unfamiliar with it. Inside, someone is always awake—by its very nature. Consciousness is its nature.
But you have taken yourself to be the body. So when the body becomes unconscious, you conclude you are unconscious. That is your belief. Because of that belief you conclude you have passed out. You do not pass out.
If you know hypnosis, you will know the whole trick is simply that whatever the hypnotist suggests, you believe. If you believe, it begins to happen. Belief becomes fact.
If the hypnotist says he has placed a live coal in your hand while your eyes are closed, then puts a coin there and says, “A burning coal,” you will fling the coin away in panic—because you accepted it as a coal. The astonishing thing is you will not only fling it; a blister will form on your palm, though there was no coal. Your hand behaves exactly as you believed.
In the West much work is being done on hypnosis. It shows that human consciousness gets possessed by what it accepts. Give water in the hypnotic state and say it is alcohol; you will become intoxicated and pass out.
Some experiments are almost unbelievable. In Harvard University they hypnotized a patient and suggested that his blood sugar was rising. He was hypnotized, blood drawn, tested—normal sugar. Blood sugar is a big matter; unless he eats a lot of sugar or is injected with glucose, the blood sugar cannot go up. No glucose was given, no sugar, nothing—only suggestion that his blood sugar is rising. And it rose—up to five hundred—only by suggestion. As the suggestion deepened, so did the sugar level rise.
Such is a capacity of consciousness: whatever it accepts, events begin to happen accordingly. Our belief that “I am the body” is why we have become the body.
Psychologists say that children who are told from childhood, “You are stupid,” become stupid. We make hundreds of children stupid with our own hands. Millions remain dull because at home parents say they are dull; in school teachers say so. The suggestion is repeated, it sinks in—“If everyone says it, it must be true.” This is a kind of hypnosis. Then they remain dull.
Children who from childhood receive the idea that they are talented, gifted, virtuous—such tendencies begin to grow in them. They become what they take themselves to be. Belief becomes your life.
You think you sleep at night, so you feel you slept. Only the body sleeps; you never sleep. It is only your assumption, taught since childhood, therefore it seems so. You may wonder how belief alone can do this!
Among Amazon tribes, when a woman goes into labor, the husband too cries, beats his chest, screams. One cot for the wife, one for the husband! Both undergo labor pains.
This has been happening for thousands of years. When Christian missionaries first reached the Amazon, they could not believe this madness—“The man must be faking.” We have no idea what the husband has to do with the wife’s labor pains! But investigation showed the pain was real: the husband felt it. Because in the Amazon there is a belief that the child is the act of both husband and wife; why should the wife alone suffer? It is half-and-half; when labor comes both will suffer. Examination showed real bodily strain and tension in the man matching the woman’s.
It is a matter of belief. Because they believe it, it happens.
In “civilized” lands women suffer pain in childbirth—only in civilized lands. In uncivilized, they do not; among primal tribes not at all. In Burma there are tribes where women keep working in the fields; the child is born; there is no midwife, no nurse, no hospital. The baby arrives, she puts the child in a basket and returns to work, and at dusk goes home with the child. In those Burmese forests there is simply no notion that a woman must suffer pain; hence, there is no pain.
Much of what you undergo is mostly your beliefs.
The inner hidden God has a second characteristic: chit. It has never become unconscious, nor slept. That is not its nature. So if you take yourself to be unconscious, sleeping, hypnotized—that is your belief. According to the belief, functioning will continue.
The whole search of religion is that beliefs drop and what is true reveals itself—as it is; and what we have assumed falls away.
The third element is ananda. Sat, chit, ananda. This third too is the realized discovery of the wise: that the inner hidden element is sat, it is chit, and it is supreme bliss. It needs no pleasures; it is itself bliss. If you are miserable and seeking pleasure, that is your delusion.
Man’s nature is bliss. The day we become acquainted with our nature, we meet satchidananda.
And this satchidananda has been called God. God is not some person sitting somewhere making the world. God is the element hidden within you, playing within you, unfolding your life. It is your own hide-and-seek. The day you become alert, the day you are tired of running outside and say, “Stop the game”…
As children build houses of sand on the riverbank, fight and quarrel—Buddha often used this parable: children on the riverbank are building houses. Sand-houses that fall at any moment: a child’s kick, someone stands too hard and they collapse. Then a big quarrel, even a fight: “You broke my house! I made it with such effort.”
Then evening descends, the sun is setting, someone from the bank calls, “Children, go home; your mothers are calling.” The very children whose houses were damaged, who were ready to fight—now they jump on their own sand-houses, demolish them, and race toward their real homes. Evening came; the sun sank; the mother’s call. For those very houses for which they fought and struck each other, they themselves leap upon them and erase them.
Just so, Buddha would say: whatever we are building around us are sand-houses—our play.
No harm either. You are savoring it, building it. Your trouble is you cannot fully savor it; you cannot even complete it. If you complete it, the erasing will also be fun. In the evening when you erase, there should be something to erase! But you never manage to complete it, and evening never quite arrives; the noon lingers. Everything remains half-done.
Enter the world wholly; whatever game you play, play it totally. While playing, awareness will dawn that “Enough now.”
Often you too glimpse, “Now this is too much.” It comes to you many times—“What am I doing? How long will I keep this up?” Then you make yourself forget—“Such talk of quitting the game is not right; it will break the arrangement of life.” And you resume.
These glimpses tell you the game is indeed a game. The real home is hidden elsewhere. When this appears utterly futile, when weariness and sorrow thicken, then you will glance back into yourself.
That which is hidden behind—Krishna again and again calls that satchidanandghan Paramatma. It is a pointing toward you. It is hidden within all; it is everyone’s center.
Osho's Commentary
And he who is constantly established in the sense of the Self, who regards pleasure and pain alike; who is even-minded toward clod, stone, and gold, and is patient; who sees the pleasant and unpleasant as the same and remains equal in praise and blame; who is equal in honor and dishonor, and equal toward friend and foe—he is called the one who, in all undertakings, is without the pride of doership; he is said to be beyond the gunas.
Let us understand each word.
Who is constantly established in the sense of the Self…
One who unceasingly remembers one thing: I am within. One who does not identify with his images; who does not link himself with the reflections seen in mirrors; who keeps remembering the awareness within, and remembers that this awareness is what I am; I am this consciousness, and I will not connect this consciousness with anything else—such a state is called the sense of the Self (atma-bhava).
I am only consciousness. Whatever this consciousness reflects, I will not relate myself to it. However this consciousness appears in any object…
At night the moon rises; it appears in the lake as well. If you look in the lake and take it to be the moon, you will be in difficulty. If you dive into the water to search for the moon, you will be lost. And sorrow is certain—because a slight breeze will come and the moon will shatter into pieces.
Wherever we look at life, things break and scatter, because we are seeing reflections.
Mulla Nasruddin was passing by a well one night during Ramadan. He peered into the well; the moon’s reflection was there. It was deep; there was no ripple, so the moon was perfectly clear.
He was alone; desert road; no one around. Nasruddin said, “This is a big problem—the moon is stuck in this well! Until it shows in the sky, people will die fasting. It’s Ramadan; it is absolutely necessary to pull it out. And there’s no one to help.”
He searched out a rope somewhere, made a loop, lowered it to snare the moon. The moon didn’t get caught; some rock edge on the well did. He hauled with great force—struggling alone. “There’s no one to help! And the moon seems heavy—and stubbornly clinging to the rope, not coming up!”
With a great heave the rope broke—Mulla crashed to the bottom, hurt his head, blacked out for a moment. When he opened his eyes, the moon was in the sky. Mulla said, “Well, thank God! It’s out now. People won’t go hungry in Ramadan for nothing. A little head injury—no matter. Rope broke—no matter. But we freed the moon from the well.”
The day you are established in the Self, you too will feel that where we were trying to find ourselves till now, we were never there. Where we tied ropes, made plans, did practices to attain the soul—we were not there. The moon is always in the sky; it is never entangled in a well—though it appears in wells.
Atma-bhava means: see the moon in the sky, not in the wells. It means: my consciousness is within me, not bound to anything else, not hidden anywhere else. I am nowhere else; I am in me. Therefore all search elsewhere is futile and will lead to sorrow; failure is certain—because it will not be found there.
Or if you call it success—to tie ropes, tug at the moon, and when your head splits and you look up to see it in the sky—if you think you freed the moon, then something like this happened to Buddha.
When Buddha attained enlightenment, someone asked, “What did you gain?” Buddha said, “I gained nothing—only saw that nothing had ever been lost.”
Nasruddin says, “We pulled the moon out; freed it into the sky.” Buddha says, “I gained nothing, because nothing had ever been lost. What I came to know had always been within me. Only my eyes were wandering without, hence I could not recognize it. If you must say, I lost something: I lost ignorance. But I gained nothing—for knowledge was always my nature.”
Established in the Self, he regards pleasure and pain alike…
Whoever is established in the Self—pleasure and pain become equal; equanimity becomes his shadow.
Why do we see pleasure and pain as different? Because that which we want appears as pleasure; that which we want to avoid appears as pain. Even though our pleasures become pains and pains become pleasures, still we do not become aware. What you want today appears as pleasure, and tomorrow after getting it you want to drop it and it appears as pain.
Mulla Nasruddin was passing with his wife by a church. Big arrangements were on—flowers, lamps, red carpet at the door—some welcoming ceremony. The wife asked, “Nasruddin, in this church—what’s going to happen?” A wedding was being prepared. Nasruddin said, “In this church? The beginning of a divorce!”
Marriage is the beginning of divorce. Every pleasure is the beginning of pain. But pain takes a while to be seen; at first everything looks like pleasure. Whatever we grasp appears pleasant, whatever we want to release appears painful.
For one established in the Self, there remains no craving to grasp anything and no urge to avoid anything—therefore pleasure and pain become equal; the distinction between them drops. He has no choice between them.
Equal means: no choosing. If pain comes, he accepts it; if pleasure comes, he accepts it. He does not go mad at pain, nor at pleasure. Neither disturbs him. As morning comes and evening comes, so pleasures come and go, pains come and go. He stands afar, untouched.
Established in the Self, equal in pleasure and pain; equal toward clod, stone, and gold; patient; equal toward the pleasant and unpleasant; equal in praise and blame.
All dualities have become equal for him—love and non-love; gold and clay; friend and foe; praise and blame. He does not see the opposite as opposite. He has recognized that pleasure and pain are two ends of the same thing; that praise hides blame, today praise—tomorrow blame; today blame—tomorrow praise. Between friendship and enmity he sees no gap; both are degrees of the same thing.
This comes only to one established in the Self. He sees clearly that the duality is created by his own choosing.
Buddha said, “I make no friends—because I do not want to make enemies.”
If you make friends, enemies are certain. You cannot choose half. We try to choose halves; hence our misery. If you choose friend, accept enemy also. If you choose pleasure, accept pain too.
But such acceptance, suchness, is possible only for the one established in himself—who can stand within and see pain and pleasure both impartially. Standing within, he becomes like a scale whose two pans are in perfect balance, whose pointer is steady in atma-bhava.
Equal in honor and dishonor; equal toward friend and foe. He who, in all undertakings, is free of the pride of doership is called beyond the gunas.
The key is to be established in the Self. One who abides in the Self becomes equal in the dualities. One who abides in the Self is freed from doership. He does not feel, “I am doing anything.” Hunger will arise, but he will not be hungry.
There is a sweet story in Krishna’s life—mentioned in Jain scriptures.
Krishna’s wife Rukmini said, “A supreme renunciate is lodged across the river. It is the rainy season; the river is in flood; no food can reach him. Do something.” Krishna said, “Do this: go to the riverbank and pray to the river—this story is very sweet—pray: ‘If that renunciate across the river is a lifelong faster, then O river, give way.’”
Rukmini wasn’t convinced, but since Krishna said so, she thought, “Let me try; no harm—maybe a miracle will happen.” With her companions she carried many sweets and foods to the river and prayed. She had no faith—but a miracle! The river parted at once. She said only, “If that renunciate across is a lifelong faster, give way.” The river split. Full of disbelief, Rukmini reached the other shore. The feast she had brought for that dispassionate ascetic could feed fifty people. The lone ascetic ate it all.
After the meal, it struck her: “We forgot to ask Krishna how to return! The river is flowing again. The old key won’t work now—this man ate before our eyes, and not a small amount! Surely he cannot be a lifelong faster. The old key is useless. And we can’t ask Krishna. There is only one way: ask the ascetic for a key to get back!”
He asked, “By what key did you come?” She said, “Krishna told us—but now it’s useless.” The ascetic said, “It’s not useless; it will work. Tell the river: ‘If this ascetic is a lifelong faster, give way.’”
Earlier she hadn’t believed; now there was not even any reason to believe—on the contrary, there was clear disbelief. But there was no other way. So she prayed—and the river gave way.
In a near-stupor Rukmini reached Krishna and said, “This is beyond belief. We ourselves saw the ascetic eat. The claim that he is a lifelong faster cannot stand!”
Krishna said, “That is exactly what you could not understand. Hunger belongs to the body. Once one knows this, then food also goes only into the body. Knowing this, his fast is never broken.”
If hunger is not yours, eating is not yours. We feel “I eat, I do” because hunger seems ours.
Try a small experiment. From tomorrow, remember: when hunger arises, it is the body’s; when thirst arises, it is the body’s. When you drink, it goes into the body; when thirst is quenched, it is the body’s thirst that is quenched; when hunger is satisfied, it is the body’s hunger that is satisfied. While eating, in hunger, in thirst, while drinking—keep this remembrance.
If you can keep this remembrance even for a few days, you will have a unique experience: it will become clear that you are a perpetual faster. There, no hunger has ever happened; no hunger can reach there. In consciousness there is no way for hunger.
In America there is a man engaged in a strange research. His conclusions are not easy to trust, but his results are clear. He says there was a time in human history when no one ate food. Jain scriptures mention such a time: their first Tirthankara, Adinatha, introduced food and farming. Before that, no one ate; people did not feel hunger.
This sounds like a story. But that American researcher has scientific grounds. He claims eating is merely a long habit, and that food does not give the body energy; at most, it sets in motion the energy already present, like water falling on the paddles of an old mill—it turns the paddles, but the paddles are there already. He says the body has energy; food entering and being excreted simply keeps certain inner paddles moving; no new energy is gained. A person could live without eating.
There are cases where some people lived without food for forty or fifty years—their weight did not drop, they never fell ill; they remained very healthy. In Bavaria today there is a woman, Therese Neumann—she has not eaten for thirty years; not an ounce of weight lost; never sick in those thirty years; no question of excretion either; her intestines have shrunk, the stomach shut down, yet her body is perfectly healthy and she appears younger than her years. What could be the reason?
It is possible that eating is merely a wrong habit of humankind, and one day humans may be freed from food.
One thing is certain: whether the body needs it or it is only a habit, the consciousness within needs neither. That inner consciousness is filled with supreme energy; its source is eternal; it does not have to receive fuel day by day.
That is why we call it satchidanandghan Paramatma. Its energy is connected to the original source—eternal, inexhaustible—hence it needs no daily refueling.
Consciousness has no need of food. Whether the body needs it or not may be debated; time will tell. But for consciousness there is no need at all. Consciousness is a faster.
If this feeling begins to form, doership will slowly fall away. Whenever you begin anything, you will know: the body’s qualities are initiating this, not I.
You will give the body what it needs—neither more nor less. Right now we do only two things: either too little or too much—because we don’t know what is just enough. We are so entangled with the body we cannot be impartial. Animals are more impartial than we are.
If a dog has an upset stomach, he won’t eat, whatever you try. But however ill you are, you will eat—perhaps even more in illness, “for strength.” No animal will make this mistake, because animals know that to eat in illness is to give the body extra work. The body already has the work of illness; that is enough; to give it new work is dangerous.
If no food is given, the illness ends sooner, because the body devotes itself to expelling the disease; the whole energy flows to ending it. You, by feeding, make the body expend energy in digestion; food will increase disease, not reduce it.
No animal will agree; even an ordinary dog we don’t consider very “intelligent”—he won’t eat; he will eat grass and vomit—to empty the stomach, so that energy is not wasted digesting but is available to fight illness.
The body has a natural arrangement to combat disease. It can overcome all illness. If modern man cannot, the reason is he keeps the body’s energy engaged with food.
We cannot be impartial; we eat more in illness. Our natural discernment has weakened; we don’t sense how much to eat, when to eat, when not to eat. We have no intuitive feel: how much, how little; when to act and when not; where to stop.
All because we are too joined to the body; the impartiality that comes from standing at a distance is lost. The witness brings that impartiality; atma-bhava brings it. You will be able to stand apart and see.
Remember: many problems remain unsolved only because you cannot step back.
If someone comes to you with a problem, the advice you give is almost always right—because it is his problem; you see from a distance. If the same problem comes to you, your intelligence does not work. Like a surgeon—he won’t agree to operate on his own wife, unless he wishes to kill her, because he knows the closeness will make his hand tremble; he cannot be impartial. He will ask a friend to operate.
Without impartiality, everything trembles; with it, you remain steady; understanding is clear; things appear distinct, without haze.
As atma-bhava grows, as you see and abide as consciousness apart from the body, you will find things happen only as much as needed.
Stopping at need; not going an inch beyond. Then there is no bondage for you. You will give the body what it needs to function; the body will complete its activity and end. The day its activity completes—like the lamp whose oil runs out—the lamp will go out. With the going out of this bodily lamp, the great sun will arise in your life. Bound to this little lamp, your eyes cannot see the sun.
Krishna says: one established in the Self, free of the pride of doership in all undertakings, is called beyond the gunas. Becoming gunatita is the supreme attainment.
Enough for today.