Evil

Osho, since evil exists, how can we eradicate it by meditation alone?

It is like someone saying: There is illness—how will we get rid of it by merely taking medicine? Show me some direct way to remove the illness. A man says, I have a cough, a cold, a fever; I have TB, cancer. The doctor hands him a bottle. The man says, Have you gone mad? Here I am dying of cancer and you hand me a bottle? What will this bottle do? He says, I am dying of cancer and you give me red-colored water to hold? What will this red-colored water do? But it does not occur to him that cancer or disease is not going to be pulled out and placed outside directly. To remove cancer or illness, to bring about a change, something opposite has to be introduced. We are ill; by applying what is opposite to the illness, the illness will be cut off. It is…

Osho, why do Shankara and you, before telling us to sing the praises of Govinda, always address us as fools?

Edison said, people say I know a great deal. My condition is like that of a small child on the seashore who has gathered a few shells and conches. That is the extent of my knowledge—just a few shells in my fists—while the vast ocean lies there, unknown to me. Your little knowledge seems very big to you! You have lit a small lamp; its flickering light falls a little around you, a small area gets illuminated—and you call this knowledge! And the infinite lies there filled with darkness; you have no awareness of it! When you understand your foolishness, you will say, “Is this knowledge—the flicker of a tiny lamp!” The infinite lies ahead to journey through, to explore, to search—and I, clutching these shells in my hands, am posing as a wise man! Then you will drop even this “knowledge.” And the day you know that you are…

A friend has asked: Yesterday I said that in the past there have been teachers who called life insubstantial. That friend says, Osho, no one has called life insubstantial; they have called the world insubstantial.

Those who run away from women dream of women day and night. Twenty-four hours the woman pursues them. Waking, sleeping, even remembering Ram, the image of woman trails behind. They did not call woman hell because of woman herself; they said, “Woman is the gate of hell” frightened by the pursuing fantasy and desire. No woman can be saved from man by leaving men, no man can be saved from woman by leaving women. But if the vision changes, there remains neither man nor woman. The world is not insubstantial; nor is the family, nor wives and children. If anything is insubstantial, it is my vision—my focal point, my way of seeing. It is great fun to put the blame on the other and spare oneself. But this is not the fun of a religious person. Those who have abused women have ceased to be religious precisely because they abuse…

Another friend has asked: Osho, what is the relationship between the method of meditation and jati-smaran (recollection of past lives)?

But the one who becomes skilled in this—who can fully awaken any day’s memory up to the age of five—will find that the memories begin to awaken completely. And you should test it. As today passes, note down some events and lock them up. After two years, try to recall today. Most of it will have been forgotten. Then remember—and after remembering, break the lock and compare whether what you recalled matches what you had written. You will be amazed—astonished—that besides what you wrote, many more details have come back which you did not even note at the time. They will all be there in memory. Buddha called this alaya-vijnana. There is a corner of the human mind he called the storehouse of consciousness. Like a junk room in the house where we keep all the odds and ends, there is a storehouse that collects memories—where everything from birth after…