What is the significance of intoxication in your words?

Osho, the one whom you look upon even once with a bliss-intoxicated glance—Osho—he will never again take a wine-cup into his hands for the rest of his life. Osho, why is there such intoxication in your words?

Dinesh! Look at the spring! Do not get entangled only in the flower. Right beside the flower stands the spring—look at spring. It has wrought the miracle. On a green tree a red flower has appeared—and an even greater marvel is happening. The flower is gross; subtler than the flower, fragrance arises. The flower is laden with the earth’s gravity, but fragrance is free of the earth’s gravity. If the flower falls, it falls toward the earth; the fragrance is “falling” toward the sky. A miracle is occurring. But behold this invisible spring. And so it happens. The Divine comes and stands by a Tilopa, a Saraha. But you only see the veena being played; you do not see His fingers. Have you ever seen love? Yet the one upon whom love showers is visible—his gait changes, his style and manner change; his life-style is transformed; eyes that yesterday were…

Question: Fourth question: Osho, for an hour to an hour and a half after the daily discourse, a kind of intoxication descends. In that time, far from talking, I don’t even feel like looking at anyone. A strange smile spreads on my face. Sometimes tears come, and then I want to be alone. If anyone disturbs me at that time, I feel irritable. Please say something. It’s going well. This is exactly how it should be. This is no temple; this is a tavern. If the intoxication doesn’t come here, then nothing has happened. If you don’t get blissfully drunk here, you’ve missed. There is no preaching on scriptures going on here; here wine is being poured. Here it’s the work of drunkards. The weak have no passage here. Here, drink me. And drown here so deeply that you lose all your senses.

Osho, you sit in the tavern and, every morning and evening, you pour brimming goblet after goblet of wine. I do get intoxicated by your wine, but I don’t lose consciousness. What should I do?

That is why even a Sufi like Omar Khayyam has been misunderstood. Whatever notion you have about Omar Khayyam is wrong. The wine he spoke of is not the wine sold in taverns. The beloved he praised is not flesh-and-bone. He called the Beloved—God. And he called wine—devotion. Fitzgerald, who first translated Omar Khayyam into English, because of whom Omar became world-famous, did not understand him. Fitzgerald thought wine meant wine. He was a Western man. He took two plus two to be four. He took “wine” as wine and “beloved” as beloved. The subtle intention of the Sufis fell into a great misunderstanding. On the basis of Fitzgerald’s version the whole world translated him, and the mistake spread everywhere. Today taverns are named “Omar Khayyam.” Nothing could be more foolish. Temples should bear Omar Khayyam’s name—not taverns. Because the tavern he spoke of is of another kind. There is…

Osho, you have titled this series of talks “Sahaj Yoga.” Do “sahaj” and “yoga” not seem mutually opposed?

Anand Maitreya! They don’t just seem opposed, they are opposed. But no ultimate truth of life can manifest without contradiction. Life is made of opposites—darkness and light, day and night, woman and man, negative electricity and positive electricity, birth and death. The very structure of life is woven of opposites. Hence the opposites are not only opposed; they are complementary to each other. If you have labored hard all day, you will be able to sleep deeply. Labor and rest are opposites, yet only the one who has worked can rest deeply—and the one who has not worked cannot. So the opposites are not only opposed, they complete each other. And only the one who has rested deeply at night can rise in the morning and engage in work again. One who has not rested through the night will not be able to work in the morning. Look closely at…

Beloved Osho, modest though my experience of awareness is, when it is happening I feel intoxicated. It is a far more subtle, but headier drunkenness than anything that makes one unconscious. Is this a case of illusion or a case of divine wine?

You may have heard about sleepwalkers who get up in the middle of the night and without waking, with open eyes, without stumbling, reach directly to the kitchen, find the fridge, open it, eat anything to their heart's content, and in the day they are dieting! And the doctor is puzzled and they themselves are puzzled -- "What is the matter? The more I diet the more my weight is going up." And there are almost ten percent of people capable of somnambulism. They can walk in their sleep, they can do things, and in the morning they will be disturbed: "Who has done this?" And not just ordinary people; there are cases on record of very great geniuses. Madame Curie, one of the first women ever to receive a Nobel Prize, was struggling for three years to solve a mathematical problem, and was becoming almost hopeless. Every angle, every…