[NOTE: This is a typed tape transcript and has not been edited or published, as of January 1993. It is for reference use only. It was previously combined with: The Last Testament, Vol.5, Discourse 18, and was intended, but not used, for the book: "The Light on the Path".]
QUESTION: MY HUSBAND (INAUDIBLE) IT WAS NECESSARY FOR THE WEST (INAUDIBLE)
ANSWER: Yes.
Q: (INAUDIBLE) I JUST WANTED TO THANK YOU FOR (INAUDIBLE)
A: I have not changed anything. I have simply said to inform the press, because the press was waiting outside, and it was something sensational for them. For all those people who have these news media in their friends(?), or in their minds, it will be very satisfying for them; they are looking for it. I simply gave them some food that they enjoy.
But I have not changed anything. The press is still sensational. It is not at the stature of literature, and I want it one day to become literature.
Q: (INAUDIBLE) EVERY COUNTRY HAS A (INAUDIBLE) DEMOCRACY (INAUDIBLE). ONE THING I'D LIKE TO ASK YOU: HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE (INAUDIBLE & LAUGHTER)
A: There is no ma(inaudible). Please, forgive me, I cannot answer for anybody else who is absent.
Q: (INAUDIBLE)
A: You have to ask the question to Osho.
Q: OSHO ...
A: Right!
Q: HOW DOES IT FEEL, OSHO, TO BE A MASTER ORATOR?
A: I am not a master orator. I have never learned oratory. I just know how to communicate simply, straightforwardly, with human beings. I am simply talking to you. I am not an orator. Orators are politicians; orators are missionaries. I am not a missionary; I am not trying to convince anything; I am not trying to attract voters to me. I am simply talking to you. And I know that if you can talk heart to heart, it reaches to the deepest core of human beings. But I am not an orator.
Q: (INAUDIBLE) THE PROCESS OF MEDITATION, AND IN THIS PROCESS OF MEDITATION, (INAUDIBLE) BUT IN MEDITATIONS (INAUDIBLE) SO I WOULD LIKE TO GET ENLIGHTENMENT FROM YOU ABOUT THIS SAYING OF ULTIMATE BEINGS (INAUDIBLE) HOW CAN ONE (INAUDIBLE) THE QUESTIONS OF MEDITATIONS AND BE IN THE ULTIMATE BEING AS YOU HAVE SAID IN THAT BOOK OF MEDITATIONS?
A: (inaudible) Meditation is the simplest thing in the world. But because it is a very simple thing, we find it difficult to understand. It is easier for human mind to understand difficult things. Simple things, obviously very simple, are the most difficult.
Meditation simply means that you are silent; that there are not thoughts in the mind; that there is an immense space with no clouds, thoughts. And in that space, there is only one thing left, which is the witness, or the consciousness. You can give it any name. Different meditators have given different names.
You can call 'aloneness'. That is the name given by Jainism; they call it kavalya. Kavalya means aloneness.
Gautam Buddha calls it nirvana, and nirvana means 'blowing off the candle'. When there is a candle, and you blow it off, suddenly there is darkness and absolute silence. In the same way, when you ego is no more there, just pure consciousness, there is immense silence, as deep as darkness.
And there are others who have called it 'ultimate consciousness', 'absolute truth'. These are simply words. Don't get puzzled into words. Let it remain very simple.
I repeat again: Meditation means you are without any thoughts, absolutely mind has stopped, time has stopped. You are surrounded by nothingness, but in the middle of the nothingness, there is a centre of cyclone. And that centre of cyclone is your reality.
You can give it any name. But make it simple! Big names unecessarily can create troubles for meditation. Keep it ordinary! I call it absolute ordinariness, absolute simplicity, innocence, just like a child who is born this very moment, opens his eyes, has no thoughts, is just a witness. And that is why many sages have said that meditation makes you a child again; you are reborn. It is so simple, just as a child.
But big words like absolute, ultimate, brahma, (indaudible), they can create trouble for you. They are given by philosophers to us, and a meditator need not be a philosopher, and a philosopher need not be a meditator. A philosopher deals with words, and the meditator deals with wordlessness. There are two different ways of approaching truth. The philosopher thinks about it. And the meditator experiences it; he does not think about it.
And my simple suggestion is: rather than thinking about it, please experience it. There are few things which can be experienced easily but cannot be explained so easily. They are just like a taste. You know what sweetness is. But it is a taste! If you have not tasted it, the word sweetness means nothing to you. Howsoever it can be explained in different ways it remains meaningless. You simply need just to sip a little tea and taste the sugar.
Avoid big words, and just sit silently whenever you can manage, in the middle of the night when the whole family has gone to sleep, and the whole city is silent, just sit in your bed silently. It need not be for hours; it may be just seconds. Just a single second of silence is as big as eternity itself.
But don't philosophise about it. Try to experience it. Experience is very simple; philosophising is very difficult and it leads nowhere.
Q: (INAUDIBLE) THERE ARE MANY OTHER THINGS....
A: No, no. Because there are many other people...(not clear what is question and what is Osho speaking)
Q: MY QUESTIONS HAVE NOT BEEN CLEAR.
A: You can come certainly because I can understand your question is personal.
Q: MR. BHAGWAN SHREE RAJNEESH, ... FEW QUESTIONS. ONE: WHY YOU HAVE TAKEN TO (INAUDIBLE) SO MANY PEOPLE THINK THAT YOU ARE NOT A BHAGWAN OR A GURU, YOU ARE A (INAUDIBLE)
A: That's perfectly right! There has never been any guru in the world. There have been only perfectly spiritual (inaudible). And I am one of the most successful!
Q: (INAUDIBLE) I WANT TO SUGGEST SOME (INAUDIBLE) BHAGWAN SHREE RAJNEESH (INAUDIBLE) THE DEMOCRACY (INAUDIBLE) COMMUNISM. BUT NOW YOU ARE SUPPORTER OF COMMUNISM, AND PLEASE CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT THIS (INAUDIBLE) Q: HE WANTS TO KNOW (INAUDIBLE) COMMUNISM RIGHT NOW (INAUDIBLE)
A: I am still the same. I have not changed anything. I have always criticised Soviet Union. And not because I am against communism but because, in the name of communism, Soviet Union has destroyed freedom, individuality, and made a whole country a big concentration camp.
I have always been against the dictatorship that exists in Soviet Union. I am not against all people becoming richer; all people having the EQUAL opportunity to grow. I believe in equal opportunity but I don't believe in equality.
Let me explain it. Equal opportunity should be available to every human being for education, for culture, for development. Equal opportunity for everybody to be unequal and to be unique. Somebody has become a painter, and somebody will become a musician. Both should get equal opportunity but that does not mean that both should remain equal and become equal. In fact, equal opportunity is real communism.
For real communism I have been against what exists in Soviet Russia. It is not real communism; it is simply a change of the structure. In place of the capitalists and rich people, now there are bureaucrats, communist dictators. The poor are still poor. After seventy years of the Revolution the poor are not rich at all. Only one thing has happened: now everybody is equally poor.
If you want this kind of equality, I am not a supporter of it. I want you to have equal opportunity but not equal poverty. And even after seventy years, it is under absolute dictatorial regime that the Soviet citizen has to exist. He has no freedom of speach; he has no freedom of writing; he has no freedom of movement.
Even a man like Sakarov who is one of the best minds available in the world today -- he has gone further into physics than Albert Einstein. He was the Director of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, the highest post in Soviet land for a scientist to achieve. He was given Nobel Prize, and Soviet government said to him, "You cannot accept it".
Sakarov said, "It is my freedom to accept it or not to accept. It is not the business of the government. It is my personal recognition. And I would not like to be interfered. And it is not doing any harm to you, or anybody."
Just because he accepted the Nobel Prize he has been thrown in Siberia, deprived of his post, all the facilities that he was given. And the best mind is rotting in Siberia, who could have given to humanity further insights into physics. Perhaps it will take centuries to produce another man of his quality. Just for a small difference with the government in which government was absolutely wrong! He was not doing any harm, simply accepting Nobel Prize!
But the Soviet government is such that you cannot go against it in any matter. It has reduced every individual into a robot. That is why I had always criticised it. And I am still criticising it.
What has changed is that I have always thought that America is democratic. It is not. That's why I have said that in America and Soviet Union there is nothing much to choose. America has only a face of democracy. Inside it is the same fascist mind which exists in Soviet Union. The change is in my attitude towards America not towards Soviet Russia.
My appreciation about America is being destroyed by America itslef. They have lost a friend. And I am going all over the world to expose them. And now they are becoming aware that it was a mistake to misbehave with me because they have taken an unnecessary risk. Now they are trying governments, for example they immediately pressured Germany that they should make a law I cannot enter Germany. Afraid that I have many sannyasins in Germany and six communes where thousands of sannyasins live together. They thought that once I leave America I may go to Germany.
Before I left America they immediately passed a law in Germany that I cannot enter. I have never been in Germany; I have never committed any crime. Why a parliament should make a law about a man that he cannot enter in the country ever?
Now they are pressurising other governments that I should not be allowed to enter there. But they are wrong. Their pressure is making few governments feel offended. And two South American governments have invited me, that I should come there and make my communes there. Those governments I had no idea, and I had never thought about those countries, small South American countries. But just the idea that America should pressurise them has created a revolt in those countries. They have some dignity. And I feel there will be other countries with dignity to invite me.
America cannot prevent me from exposing it to the world that it is not the alternative to Soviet Union. That if there is going to be a Third World War it is not going to be between Soviet Union and America, it is going to be between America and the whole world. Because, you will be surprised to know, America has protected itself. It has put billions of dollars in a very special arrangement to protect the whole United States against nuclear weapons. Now America is the only country who has a protection against nuclear weapons. If any nuclear missile goes towards America, within seven minutes it will be turned back -- America has network invisible around it -- and where it will fall nobody knows; it will fall somewhere.
Now the whole world has to be united because America is thinking only saving itself: 'Let the whole world go to hell!' If this is the attitude of America, that they want to protect only America against the whole humanity, then the whole world has to think again, one time more, that 'We should be united against this protection!' Either the whole world should be protected or nobody should be protected. This is very dangerous.
It means America is now in a position to have a Third World War. And America would like it to have as quickly as possible before Soviet Union develops some protection around itself. Soviet scientists are working hard day and night for protection. So now only two countries will be protected, sooner or later, and the whole world will be unprotected. They will fight and we will die! It is a strange kind of war!
I have not changed my attitude towards Soviet Union. I have changed my attitude certainly towards America.
Q: BHAGWAN, (INAUDIBLE) YOU ARE COMING HERE. YOU ARE COMING FROM (INAUDIBLE) AND VISITORS CAN BE (INAUDIBLE) TO OUR COUNTRY (INAUDIBLE) EVERYBODY IS ASKING IF BHAGWAN IS STAYING WITH US FOREVER, WE CAN PROVIDE YOU A POOR MAN (?) HOUSE. (APPLAUSE)
A: I would love it. To be in a hut will be a palace for me. Just I will be worried only the king may become jealous of me. Say if(?) the king is happy for me having a hut in Nepal, I am absolutely willing.
Osho's Commentary
QUESTION: MY HUSBAND (INAUDIBLE) IT WAS NECESSARY FOR THE WEST (INAUDIBLE)
ANSWER: Yes.
Q: (INAUDIBLE) I JUST WANTED TO THANK YOU FOR (INAUDIBLE)
A: I have not changed anything. I have simply said to inform the press, because the press was waiting outside, and it was something sensational for them. For all those people who have these news media in their friends(?), or in their minds, it will be very satisfying for them; they are looking for it. I simply gave them some food that they enjoy.
But I have not changed anything. The press is still sensational. It is not at the stature of literature, and I want it one day to become literature.
Q: (INAUDIBLE) EVERY COUNTRY HAS A (INAUDIBLE) DEMOCRACY (INAUDIBLE). ONE THING I'D LIKE TO ASK YOU: HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE (INAUDIBLE & LAUGHTER)
A: There is no ma(inaudible). Please, forgive me, I cannot answer for anybody else who is absent.
Q: (INAUDIBLE)
A: You have to ask the question to Osho.
Q: OSHO ...
A: Right!
Q: HOW DOES IT FEEL, OSHO, TO BE A MASTER ORATOR?
A: I am not a master orator. I have never learned oratory. I just know how to communicate simply, straightforwardly, with human beings. I am simply talking to you. I am not an orator. Orators are politicians; orators are missionaries. I am not a missionary; I am not trying to convince anything; I am not trying to attract voters to me. I am simply talking to you. And I know that if you can talk heart to heart, it reaches to the deepest core of human beings. But I am not an orator.
Q: (INAUDIBLE) THE PROCESS OF MEDITATION, AND IN THIS PROCESS OF MEDITATION, (INAUDIBLE) BUT IN MEDITATIONS (INAUDIBLE) SO I WOULD LIKE TO GET ENLIGHTENMENT FROM YOU ABOUT THIS SAYING OF ULTIMATE BEINGS (INAUDIBLE)
HOW CAN ONE (INAUDIBLE) THE QUESTIONS OF MEDITATIONS AND BE IN THE ULTIMATE BEING AS YOU HAVE SAID IN THAT BOOK OF MEDITATIONS?
A: (inaudible) Meditation is the simplest thing in the world. But because it is a very simple thing, we find it difficult to understand. It is easier for human mind to understand difficult things. Simple things, obviously very simple, are the most difficult.
Meditation simply means that you are silent; that there are not thoughts in the mind; that there is an immense space with no clouds, thoughts. And in that space, there is only one thing left, which is the witness, or the consciousness. You can give it any name. Different meditators have given different names.
You can call 'aloneness'. That is the name given by Jainism; they call it kavalya. Kavalya means aloneness.
Gautam Buddha calls it nirvana, and nirvana means 'blowing off the candle'. When there is a candle, and you blow it off, suddenly there is darkness and absolute silence. In the same way, when you ego is no more there, just pure consciousness, there is immense silence, as deep as darkness.
And there are others who have called it 'ultimate consciousness', 'absolute truth'. These are simply words. Don't get puzzled into words. Let it remain very simple.
I repeat again: Meditation means you are without any thoughts, absolutely mind has stopped, time has stopped. You are surrounded by nothingness, but in the middle of the nothingness, there is a centre of cyclone. And that centre of cyclone is your reality.
You can give it any name. But make it simple! Big names unecessarily can create troubles for meditation. Keep it ordinary! I call it absolute ordinariness, absolute simplicity, innocence, just like a child who is born this very moment, opens his eyes, has no thoughts, is just a witness. And that is why many sages have said that meditation makes you a child again; you are reborn. It is so simple, just as a child.
But big words like absolute, ultimate, brahma, (indaudible), they can create trouble for you. They are given by philosophers to us, and a meditator need not be a philosopher, and a philosopher need not be a meditator. A philosopher deals with words, and the meditator deals with wordlessness. There are two different ways of approaching truth. The philosopher thinks about it. And the meditator experiences it; he does not think about it.
And my simple suggestion is: rather than thinking about it, please experience it. There are few things which can be experienced easily but cannot be explained so easily. They are just like a taste. You know what sweetness is. But it is a taste! If you have not tasted it, the word sweetness means nothing to you. Howsoever it can be explained in different ways it remains meaningless. You simply need just to sip a little tea and taste the sugar.
Avoid big words, and just sit silently whenever you can manage, in the middle of the night when the whole family has gone to sleep, and the whole city is silent, just sit in your bed silently. It need not be for hours; it may be just seconds. Just a single second of silence is as big as eternity itself.
But don't philosophise about it. Try to experience it. Experience is very simple; philosophising is very difficult and it leads nowhere.
Q: (INAUDIBLE) THERE ARE MANY OTHER THINGS....
A: No, no. Because there are many other people...(not clear what is question and what is Osho speaking)
Q: MY QUESTIONS HAVE NOT BEEN CLEAR.
A: You can come certainly because I can understand your question is personal.
Q: MR. BHAGWAN SHREE RAJNEESH, ... FEW QUESTIONS. ONE: WHY YOU HAVE TAKEN TO (INAUDIBLE) SO MANY PEOPLE THINK THAT YOU ARE NOT A BHAGWAN OR A GURU, YOU ARE A (INAUDIBLE)
A: That's perfectly right! There has never been any guru in the world. There have been only perfectly spiritual (inaudible). And I am one of the most successful!
Q: (INAUDIBLE) I WANT TO SUGGEST SOME (INAUDIBLE) BHAGWAN SHREE RAJNEESH (INAUDIBLE) THE DEMOCRACY (INAUDIBLE) COMMUNISM. BUT NOW YOU ARE SUPPORTER OF COMMUNISM, AND PLEASE CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT THIS (INAUDIBLE)
Q: HE WANTS TO KNOW (INAUDIBLE) COMMUNISM RIGHT NOW (INAUDIBLE)
A: I am still the same. I have not changed anything. I have always criticised Soviet Union. And not because I am against communism but because, in the name of communism, Soviet Union has destroyed freedom, individuality, and made a whole country a big concentration camp.
I have always been against the dictatorship that exists in Soviet Union. I am not against all people becoming richer; all people having the EQUAL opportunity to grow. I believe in equal opportunity but I don't believe in equality.
Let me explain it. Equal opportunity should be available to every human being for education, for culture, for development. Equal opportunity for everybody to be unequal and to be unique. Somebody has become a painter, and somebody will become a musician. Both should get equal opportunity but that does not mean that both should remain equal and become equal. In fact, equal opportunity is real communism.
For real communism I have been against what exists in Soviet Russia. It is not real communism; it is simply a change of the structure. In place of the capitalists and rich people, now there are bureaucrats, communist dictators. The poor are still poor. After seventy years of the Revolution the poor are not rich at all. Only one thing has happened: now everybody is equally poor.
If you want this kind of equality, I am not a supporter of it. I want you to have equal opportunity but not equal poverty. And even after seventy years, it is under absolute dictatorial regime that the Soviet citizen has to exist. He has no freedom of speach; he has no freedom of writing; he has no freedom of movement.
Even a man like Sakarov who is one of the best minds available in the world today -- he has gone further into physics than Albert Einstein. He was the Director of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, the highest post in Soviet land for a scientist to achieve. He was given Nobel Prize, and Soviet government said to him, "You cannot accept it".
Sakarov said, "It is my freedom to accept it or not to accept. It is not the business of the government. It is my personal recognition. And I would not like to be interfered. And it is not doing any harm to you, or anybody."
Just because he accepted the Nobel Prize he has been thrown in Siberia, deprived of his post, all the facilities that he was given. And the best mind is rotting in Siberia, who could have given to humanity further insights into physics. Perhaps it will take centuries to produce another man of his quality. Just for a small difference with the government in which government was absolutely wrong! He was not doing any harm, simply accepting Nobel Prize!
But the Soviet government is such that you cannot go against it in any matter. It has reduced every individual into a robot. That is why I had always criticised it. And I am still criticising it.
What has changed is that I have always thought that America is democratic. It is not. That's why I have said that in America and Soviet Union there is nothing much to choose. America has only a face of democracy. Inside it is the same fascist mind which exists in Soviet Union. The change is in my attitude towards America not towards Soviet Russia.
My appreciation about America is being destroyed by America itslef. They have lost a friend. And I am going all over the world to expose them. And now they are becoming aware that it was a mistake to misbehave with me because they have taken an unnecessary risk. Now they are trying governments, for example they immediately pressured Germany that they should make a law I cannot enter Germany. Afraid that I have many sannyasins in Germany and six communes where thousands of sannyasins live together. They thought that once I leave America I may go to Germany.
Before I left America they immediately passed a law in Germany that I cannot enter. I have never been in Germany; I have never committed any crime. Why a parliament should make a law about a man that he cannot enter in the country ever?
Now they are pressurising other governments that I should not be allowed to enter there. But they are wrong. Their pressure is making few governments feel offended. And two South American governments have invited me, that I should come there and make my communes there. Those governments I had no idea, and I had never thought about those countries, small South American countries. But just the idea that America should pressurise them has created a revolt in those countries. They have some dignity. And I feel there will be other countries with dignity to invite me.
America cannot prevent me from exposing it to the world that it is not the alternative to Soviet Union. That if there is going to be a Third World War it is not going to be between Soviet Union and America, it is going to be between America and the whole world. Because, you will be surprised to know, America has protected itself. It has put billions of dollars in a very special arrangement to protect the whole United States against nuclear weapons. Now America is the only country who has a protection against nuclear weapons. If any nuclear missile goes towards America, within seven minutes it will be turned back -- America has network invisible around it -- and where it will fall nobody knows; it will fall somewhere.
Now the whole world has to be united because America is thinking only saving itself: 'Let the whole world go to hell!' If this is the attitude of America, that they want to protect only America against the whole humanity, then the whole world has to think again, one time more, that 'We should be united against this protection!' Either the whole world should be protected or nobody should be protected. This is very dangerous.
It means America is now in a position to have a Third World War. And America would like it to have as quickly as possible before Soviet Union develops some protection around itself. Soviet scientists are working hard day and night for protection. So now only two countries will be protected, sooner or later, and the whole world will be unprotected. They will fight and we will die! It is a strange kind of war!
I have not changed my attitude towards Soviet Union. I have changed my attitude certainly towards America.
Q: BHAGWAN, (INAUDIBLE) YOU ARE COMING HERE. YOU ARE COMING FROM (INAUDIBLE) AND VISITORS CAN BE (INAUDIBLE) TO OUR COUNTRY (INAUDIBLE) EVERYBODY IS ASKING IF BHAGWAN IS STAYING WITH US FOREVER, WE CAN PROVIDE YOU A POOR MAN (?) HOUSE. (APPLAUSE)
A: I would love it. To be in a hut will be a palace for me. Just I will be worried only the king may become jealous of me. Say if(?) the king is happy for me having a hut in Nepal, I am absolutely willing.
(Applause and cheering Jai!)