Inner Child

Beloved Osho, listening to you has changed. I used to remember what you say; the words were important. Now I cannot follow anymore. I feel like a child whose daddy is talking to some visitors in a cozy atmosphere and I am sitting at his side -- contented, at home, no excitement, but everything is as it should be. No needs, no questions. Is this childish, beloved Osho? Am I missing some insight given in your words?

No. You are not missing anything, because I am not in my words. I am just around my words. Go on throwing my words away and collecting the nothingness that surrounds my words. Collect that music. Collect that hum. You will become more and more like a child. The day you have become completely, entirely a child -- that means you don't even remember that you are a child -- you simply are. When innocence has reached its peak, the purpose of existence in you is fulfilled. You were born a child; that's the way God has sent you into the world. You should go back more innocent than you came, more beautiful than you came, more silent, more ecstatic, more divine. Your life is a preparation for meeting the ultimate, and only a child is capable of meeting the ultimate. His truthfulness.... Remember one thing: even qualities are different.…

Listening to you today I became a child. I wanted to call out, 'but I am only three,' as I had done once, years ago at a dancing class. What to do?

In fact, while they are denying, they are simply protecting themselves. They are afraid. If this is true, then it will create a restlessness in them, a discontent -- a divine discontent. And they are afraid of that discontent, because that will change their whole life, their whole style. It will destroy their past. For that they don't have courage enough. For that they are not brave enough. For that they will have to lose many conveniences, much comfort, a settled life, security -- no, they don't want to go that far. It is better to say 'god is dead'. It is better to say 'god never existed'. It is better to say that people who talk about god are just poets, dreamers, day-dreamers; people who talk about samadhi, ecstasy, meditation, are just navel-gazers, escapists. It is better to condemn these people. That is very protective. Then you can avoid…

Beloved master, while watching the changing world outside and the movement of thoughts and emotions within, I become more aware of a presence that doesn't change. It is impossible to define what this is in words, but I do know that it is always the same presence; that when it comes, it is everywhere and nowhere at once; that nothing I'm thinking or feeling can connect with it; that it is so still it doesn't exist and so subtle that at times it is too alive to bear. I remember encountering this presence first as a child. Beloved master, am I rediscovering my lost innocence?

When you have to play a part, you have to be deeply involved in it. You have to become it. Everybody is playing some part, knowing perfectly well that this is not what he is supposed to be. This creates a rift, an anxiety, and that anxiety destroys all your possibilities of relaxing, of trusting, of loving, of having any communion with anybody -- a friend, a beloved, a master. You become isolated. You become, with your own decisions, self-exiled, and then you suffer. So much suffering in the world is not natural; it is a very unnatural state of affairs. One can accept once in a while somebody suffering, but blissfulness should be natural and universal. But you have to deserve it, and for deserving you don't have to do some great acts -- go to the moon or climb Everest. You have to learn small secrets. But there…

Beloved Osho, sitting close to you these last few mornings and looking into your eyes, I felt so much like a small child, full of innocence and excitement. Many times I wanted to wave my hand in the air wildly and shout: hello, hello, hello, my most beloved. Beloved master, can you talk about this blissful innocence that I am feeling and how it relates to meditation?

It is good to start with innocence, but remember there are two kinds of innocence: one is of the child and another is of the meditator. The meditator also becomes a child, but that is on such a different level, at such a great height -- as if the child is in the valley and the enlightened man who has again become a child is on the sunlit peak. The distance is tremendous. But there is a certain similarity, a thread running from the child to the heart of the sage. The child cannot understand the sage, but the sage can understand the child. Always remember it as a fundamental rule: the lower cannot understand the higher, but the higher can always understand the lower. And in your life, if anything can be compared with that high peak, it is your childhood. Try to rediscover it. Don't cover it with…