Osho:

The darkness of loneliness cannot be fought directly. It is something essential for everyone to understand, that there are a few fundamental things which cannot be changed. This is one of the fundamentals: you cannot fight with darkness directly, with loneliness directly, with the fear of isolation directly. The reason is that all these things do not exist; they are simply absences of something, just as darkness is the absence of light.

Now what do you do when you want the room not to be dark? You don�t do anything directly with darkness -- or do you? You cannot push it out. There is no possible way to make any arrangement so that the darkness disappears. You have to do something with the light. Now that changes the whole situation; and that�s what I call one of the essentials, fundamentals. You don�t even touch the darkness; you don�t think about it. There is no point; it does not exist, it is simply an absence.

So just bring in light and you will not find darkness at all, because it was the absence of light, simply the absence of light -- not something material, with its own being, not something that exists. But simply because light was not there, you got a false feeling of the existence of darkness.

You can go on fighting with this darkness your whole life and you will not succeed, but just a small candle is enough to dispel it. You have to work for the light because it is positive, existential; it exists on it own. And once light comes, anything that was its absence automatically disappears.

Loneliness is similar to darkness.

You don�t know your aloneness. You have not experienced your aloneness and its beauty, its tremendous power, its strength. Loneliness and aloneness in the dictionaries are synonymous, but existence does not follow your dictionaries. And nobody has yet tried to make an existential dictionary which will not be contradictory to existence.

Loneliness is absence.

Because you don�t know your aloneness, there is fear. You feel lonely so you want to cling to something, to somebody, to some relationship, just to keep the illusion that you are not lonely. But you know you are -- hence the pain. On the one hand you are clinging to something which is not for real, which is just a temporary arrangement -- a relationship, a friendship.

And while you are in the relationship you can create a little illusion to forget your loneliness. But this is the problem: although you can forget for a moment your loneliness, just the next moment you suddenly become aware that the relationship or the friendship is nothing permanent. Yesterday you did not know this man or this woman, you were strangers. Today you are friends -- who knows about tomorrow? Tomorrow you may be strangers again -- hence the pain.

The illusion gives a certain solace, but it cannot create the reality so that all fear disappears. It represses the fear, so on the surface you feel good -- at least you try to feel good. You pretend to feel good to yourself: how wonderful is the relationship, how wonderful is the man or the woman. But behind the illusion -- and the illusion is so thin that you can see behind it -- there is pain in the heart, because the heart knows perfectly well that tomorrow things may not be the same... and they are not the same.

Your whole life�s experience supports that things go on changing. Nothing remains stable; you cannot cling to anything in a changing world. You wanted to make your friendship something permanent but your wanting is against the law of change, and that law is not going to make exceptions. It simply goes on doing its own thing. It will change -- everything.

Perhaps in the long run you will understand one day that it was good that it did not listen to you, that existence did not bother about you and just went on doing whatever it wanted to do... not according to your desire.

It may take a little time for you to understand. You want this friend to be your friend forever, but tomorrow he turns into an enemy. Or simply -- "You get lost!" and he is no longer with you. Somebody else fills the gap who is a far superior being. Then suddenly you realize it was good that the other one got lost; otherwise you would have been stuck with him. But still the lesson never goes so deep that you stop asking for permanence.

You will start asking for permanence with this man, with this woman: now this should not change. You have not really learned the lesson that change is simply the very fabric of life. You have to understand it and go with it. Don�t create illusions; they are not going to help. And everybody is creating illusions of different kinds.

I used to know one man who said, "I trust only money. I trust nobody else."

I said, "You are making a very significant statement."

He said, "Everybody changes. You cannot rely on anybody. And as you get older, only your money is yours. Nobody cares -- not even your son, not even your wife. If you have money they all care, they all respect you, because you have money. If you don�t have money you become a beggar."

His saying that the only thing in the world to trust is money comes out of a long experience of life, of getting cheated again and again by the people he trusted -- and he thought they loved him but they were all around him for the money.

"But," I told him, "at the moment of death money is not going to be with you. You can have an illusion that at least money is with you, but as your breathing stops, money is no longer with you. You have earned something but it will be left on this side; you cannot carry it beyond death. You will fall into a deep loneliness which you have been hiding behind the facade of money." There are people who are after power, but the reason is the same: when they are in power so many people are with them, millions of people are under their domination. They are not alone. They are great political and religious leaders. But power changes. One day you have it, another day it is gone, and suddenly the whole illusion disappears. You are lonely as nobody else is, because others are accustomed to being lonely. You are not accustomed... your loneliness hurts you more.

Society has tried to make arrangements so you can forget loneliness. Arranged marriages are just an effort so that you know your wife is with you. All religions resist divorce for the simple reason that if divorce is allowed then the basic purpose marriage was invented for is destroyed. The basic purpose was to give you a companion, a lifelong companion.

But even though a wife will be with you or a husband will be with you for your whole life, that does not mean that love remains the same. In fact, rather than giving you a companion, they give you a burden to carry. You were lonely, already in trouble, and now you have to carry another person who is lonely. And in this life there is no hope, because once love disappears you both are lonely, and both have to tolerate each other. Now it is not a question of being enchanted by each other; at the most you can p atiently tolerate each other. Your loneliness has not been changed by the social strategy of marriage.

Religions have tried to make you a member of an organized body of religion so you are always in a crowd. You know that there are six hundred million Catholics; you are not alone, six hundred million Catholics are with you. Jesus Christ is your savior. God is with you. Alone you may have been wrong -- doubt may have arisen -- but six hundred million people cannot be wrong. A little support... but even that is gone because there are millions who are not Catholics. There are the people who crucified Jesus. The re are people who don�t believe in God -- and their number is not less than Catholics, it is more than Catholics. And there are other religions with different concepts.

It is difficult for an intelligent person not to doubt. You may have millions of people following a certain belief system, but still you cannot be certain that they are with you, that you are not lonely.

God was a device, but all devices have failed. It was a device... when nothing is there, at least God is with you. He is always everywhere with you. In the dark night of the soul, he is with you -- don�t be worried.

It was good for a childish humanity to be deceived by this concept, but you cannot be deceived by this concept. This God who is always everywhere -- you don�t see him, you can�t talk to him, you can�t touch him. You don�t have any evidence for his existence -- except your desire that he should be there. But your desire is not a proof of anything.

God is only a desire of the childish mind.

Man has come of age, and God has become meaningless. The hypothesis has lost its grip.

What I am trying to say is that every effort that has been directed towards avoiding loneliness has failed, and will fail, because it is against the fundamentals of life. What is needed is not something in which you can forget your loneliness. What is needed is that you become aware of your aloneness, which is a reality. And it is so beautiful to experience it, to feel it, because it is your freedom from the crowd, from the other. It is your freedom from the fear of being lonely.

Just the word "lonely" immediately reminds you that it is like a wound: something is needed to fill it. There is a gap and it hurts: something needs to be filled in. The very word "aloneness" does not have the same sense of a wound, of a gap which has to be filled. Aloneness simply means completeness. You are whole; there is no need of anybody else to complete you.

So try to find your innermost center, where you are always alone, have always been alone. In life, in death -- wherever you are you will be alone. But it is so full -- it is not empty, it is so full and so complete and so overflowing with all the juices of life, with all the beauties and benedictions of existence, that once you have tasted aloneness the pain in the heart will disappear. Instead, a new rhythm of tremendous sweetness, peace, joy, bliss, will be there.

It does not mean that a man who is centered in his aloneness, complete in himself, cannot make friends -- in fact only he can make friends, because now it is no longer a need, it is just sharing. He has so much; he can share.

Friendship can be of two types. One is a friendship in which you are a beggar -- you need something from the other to help your loneliness -- and the other is also a beggar; he wants the same from you. And naturally two beggars cannot help each other. Soon they will see that their begging from a beggar has doubled or multiplied the need. Instead of one beggar, now there are two. And if, unfortunately, they have children, then there are a whole company of beggars who are asking -- and nobody has anything to give.

So everybody is frustrated and angry, and everybody feels he is being cheated, deceived. And in fact nobody is cheating and nobody is deceiving, because what have you got?

The other kind of friendship, the other kind of love, has a totally different quality. It is not of need, it is out of having so much that you want to share. A new kind of joy has come into your being -- that of sharing, which you were not ever aware of before. You have always been begging.

When you share, there is no question of clinging. You flow with existence, you flow with life�s change, because it doesn�t matter with whom you share. It can be the same person tomorrow -- the same person for your whole life -- or it can be different persons. It is not a contract, it is not a marriage; it is simply out of your fullness that you want to give. So whosoever happens to be near you, you give it. And giving is such a joy.

Begging is such a misery. Even if you get something through begging, you will remain miserable. It hurts. It hurts your pride, it hurts your integrity. But sharing makes you more centered, more integrated, more proud, but not more egoistic -- more proud that existence has been compassionate to you. It is not ego; it is a totally different phenomenon... a recognition that existence has allowed you something for which millions of people are trying, but at the wrong door. You happen to be at the right door.

You are proud of your blissfulness and all that existence has given to you. Fear disappears, darkness disappears, the pain disappears, the desire for the other disappears.

You can love a person, and if the person loves somebody else there will not be any jealousy, because you loved out of so much joy. It was not a clinging. You were not holding the other person in prison. You were not worried that the other person may slip out of your hands, that somebody else may start having a love affair...

When you are sharing your joy, you don�t create a prison for anybody. You simply give. You don�t even expect gratitude or thankfulness because you are not giving to get anything, not even gratitude. You are giving because you are so full you have to give.

So if anybody is thankful, you are thankful to the person who has accepted your love, who has accepted your gift. He has unburdened you, he allowed you to shower on him. And the more you share, the more you give, the more you have. So it does not make you a miser, it does not create a new fear that "I may lose it." In fact the more you lose it, the more fresh waters are flowing in from springs you have not been aware of before.

So I will not tell you to do anything about your loneliness.

Look for your aloneness.

Forget loneliness, forget darkness, forget pain. These are just the absence of aloneness. The experience of aloneness will dispel them instantly. And the method is the same: just watch your mind, be aware. Become more and more conscious, so finally you are only conscious of yourself. That is the point where you become aware of aloneness.

You will be surprised that different religions have given different names to the ultimate state of realization. The three religions born outside of India don�t have any name for it because they never went far in the search for oneself. They remained childish, immature, clinging to a God, clinging to prayer, clinging to a savior. You can see what I mean: they are always dependent -- somebody else is to save them. They are not mature. Judaism, Christianity, Islam -- they are not mature at all and perhaps that is the reason they have influenced the greatest majority in the world, because most of the people in the world are immature. They have a certain affinity.

But the three religions in India have three names for this ultimate state. And I remembered this because of the word aloneness. Jainism has chosen kaivalya, aloneness, as the ultimate state of being. Just as Buddhism chose nirvana, no-selfness, and Hinduism chose moksha, freedom, Jainism chose absolute aloneness. All three words are beautiful. They are three different aspects of the same reality. You can call it liberation, freedom; you can call it aloneness; you can call it selflessness, nothingness -- jus t different indicators towards that ultimate experience for which no name is sufficient.

But always look to see if anything that you are facing as a problem is a negative thing or a positive thing. If it is a negative thing then don�t fight with it; don�t bother about it at all. Just look for the positive of it, and you will be at the right door.

Most of the people in the world miss because they start fighting directly with the negative door.

There is no door; there is only darkness, there is only absence. And the more they fight, the more they find failure, the more they become dejected, pessimistic ... and ultimately they start finding that life has no meaning, that it is simply torture. But their mistake is they entered from the wrong door.

So before you face a problem, just look at the problem: is it an absence of something? And all your problems are the absence of something. And once you have found what they are the absence of, then go after the positive. And the moment you find the positive, the light -- the darkness is finished.

The Path of the Mystic, chapter 19

Osho:

Pain and pleasure are intrinsic parts of life. People are so much afraid of pain that they repress pain, they avoid any situation that brings pain, they go on dodging pain. And finally they stumble upon the fact that if you really want to avoid pain you will have to avoid pleasure. That�s why your monks avoid pleasure -- they are afraid of pleasure. In fact they are simply avoiding all possibilities of pain.

They know that if you avoid pleasure then naturally great pain is not possible; it comes only as a shadow of pleasure. Then you walk on the plain ground -- you never move on the peaks and you never fall into the valleys. But then you are living dead, then you are not alive.

Life exists between this polarity. This tension between pain and pleasure makes you capable of creating great music; music exists only in this tension. Destroy the polarity and you will be dull, you will be stale, you will be dusty -- you won�t have any meaning and you will never know what splendor is. You will have missed life. The man who wants to know life and live life has to accept and embrace death. They come together, they are two aspects of a single phenomenon.

That�s why growth is painful. You have to go into all those pains that you have been avoiding. It hurts. You have to go through all those wounds that somehow you have managed not to look at. But the deeper you go into pain, the deeper is your capacity to go into pleasure. If you can go into pain to the uttermost limit, you will be able to touch heaven. To be free of pain the pain has to be accepted, inevitably and naturally.

Pain is pain -- a simple painful fact. Suffering however is only and always the refusal of pain, the claim that life should not be painful. It is the rejection of a fact, the denial of life and of the nature of things. Death is the mind that minds dying. Where there is no fear of death, who is there to die? Man is unique among creatures in his knowledge of death and in his laughter. Wonderfully then, he can even make of death a new thing: he can die laughing.

It is only man who knows laughter; no other animal laughs. It is only man who knows death; no other animal knows death -- animals simply die, they are not conscious of the phenomenon of death. Man is aware of two things which no animal is: one is laughter, another is death. Then a new synthesis is possible. It is only man who can die laughing -- he can join the consciousness of death and the capacity to laugh. And if you can die laughing, only then will you give a valid proof that you must have lived laughing.

conclusion, the concluding remark. How you have lived will be shown by your death, how you die. Can you die laughing? Then you were a grown-up person. If you die crying, weeping, clinging, then you were a child. You were not grown-up, you were immature. If you die crying, weeping, clinging to life, that simply shows you have been avoiding death and you have been avoiding all pains, all kinds of pains.

Growth is facing the reality, encountering the fact, whatsoever it is. And let me repeat: Pain is simply pain; there is no suffering in it. Suffering comes from your desire that the pain should not be there, that there is something wrong in pain. Watch, witness, and you will be surprised. You have a headache: the pain is there but suffering is not there. Suffering is a secondary phenomenon, pain is primary.

The headache is there, the pain is there; it is simply a fact. There is no judgment about it -- you don�t call it good or bad, you don�t give it any value; it is just a fact. The rose is a fact, so is the thorn. The day is a fact, so is the night. The head is a fact, so is the headache. You simply take note of it. Buddha taught his disciples that when you have a headache simply say twice "Headache, headache." Take note. But don�t evaluate, don�t say, "Why? Why has this headache happened to me? It should not happen to me."

The moment you say, "It should not," you bring suffering in. Now suffering is created by you, not by the headache. Suffering is your antagonistic interpretation, suffering is your denial of the fact. And the moment you say, "It should not be," you have started avoiding it, you have started turning yourself away from it. You would like to be occupied in something so that you can forget it. You turn the radio or the tell on or you go to the club or you start reading or you go and start working in the garden -- you divert yourself, you distract yourself.

Now that pain has not been witnessed; you have simply distracted yourself. That pain will be absorbed by the system. Let this key be very deeply understood: If you can witness your headache without taking any antagonistic attitude, without avoiding it, without escaping from it; if you can just be there, meditatively there -- "Headache, headache" -- if you can just simply see it, the headache will go in its time.

I am not saying that it will go miraculously, that just by your seeing it will go. It will go in its time. But it will not be absorbed by your system, it will not poison your system. It will be there, you will take note of it, and it will be gone. It will be released. When you witness a certain thing in yourself it cannot enter into your system. It always enters when you avoid it, when you escape from it. When you become absent then it enters into your system.

Only when you are absent can a pain become part of your being -- if you are present your very presence prevents it from becoming part of your being. And if you can go on seeing your pains you will not be accumulating them. You have not teen taught the right clue, so you go on avoiding. Then you accumulate so much pain, you are afraid to face it, you are afraid to accept it. Growth becomes painful -- it is because of wrong conditioning. Otherwise growth is not painful, growth is utterly pleasant.

The Revolution, Chapter 6

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Do animals have to be reincarnated?

Osho:

The spring of life is available to everybody; otherwise how can you live? Your life is continuously being nourished by the spring of life. The trees are nourished by the spring of life, the flowers blossom ... but the juice comes from the spring of life. The whole existence is nothing but a manifestation of the springs of life.

But trees cannot become enlightened -- neither can mountains or oceans; neither can animals or birds. They all have the same source of life that you have. But man has a prerogative, a privilege, that he can become aware of his spring of life. This awareness is not possible in any other form in existence. It is man�s grandeur, it is his dignity.

Existence has given him the most precious opportunity. If he can create awareness, consciousness, more alertness, then his spring of life explodes into a new dimension. The dimension of life becomes the dimension of light, of knowing -- knowing the deepest roots of our being in eternity. And the moment we know our roots are eternal, we know our flowers are also going to be eternal. Enlightenment is a flowering.

The springs of life are seeds; enlightenment is a flower. The seed has come to its ultimate expression -- there is no further to go. Springs of life are the lowest rung of the ladder, and enlightenment is the highest rung of the ladder, although the ladder is the same. The change comes slowly, as you become more aware of who you are, of what life is -- not intellectually, not by reading through scriptures, but by reading the only holy scripture: your own being, and bringing your potential to its realization. So that which was hidden in the seed becomes an explosion in the flower, in the fragrance.

That fragrance is enlightenment. It comes from the sources of life, but it is not synonymous with it. The seed is not synonymous with the flower, although the flower comes from the seed. The seed is the womb, but the flower -- although connected with the seed, with the womb -- is a totally new experience. Awareness ordinarily is objective. You know others, you know the world, you know the faraway stars.

The moment awareness turns inwards and starts knowing itself -- in other words, the moment awareness is the object of its own knowing -- enlightenment blossoms with all its beauty, with all its immortal glory. Life is accepted by the scientist, but he is not yet capable of accepting the possibility of enlightenment. Life is accepted by the atheist, but he is also not capable of comprehending the ultimate explosion.

Just as for millennia we had no idea that matter is made of small atoms, which are not visible to the eyes ... they are so small that if you put one atom upon another atom, and then go on putting one on top of another, you will need one hundred thousand atoms, and then they will be as thick as a human hair. Such a small atom, one hundred thousand times thinner than a human hair, when it explodes, releases so much energy that a city like Hiroshima or Nagasaki disappears within seconds -- evaporates.

I have seen a picture sent by a friend from Japan ... just looking at the picture, one feels so sad about humanity, so hopeless. The picture is of a small girl, maybe nine years old. She is going from the ground floor to the first story with her bag and books -- perhaps to do her homework before she goes to sleep. She is just in the middle of the staircase when the atom bomb falls on Hiroshima.

Just a small atom exploding creates so much energy ... you can use it for destruction or you can use it for some creative purpose. Right now the scientists say we have come so far from Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- our new nuclear weapons are so great in their energy -- that the atom bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima look like children�s toys. If matter, in its smallest particle, contains so much energy, can you conceive how much energy may be available in the living cell of human beings?

Enlightenment is the explosion of a living cell. Certainly it is not destructive at all, but it transforms the whole man. In that way, it is destructive. It destroys the old man, it destroys the night, it destroys all that was constituting your personality: your jealousy, your anger, your hate, your lust, your greed -- all that is simply finished in a single moment. And the same energy that was involved in jealousy, hate, greed, ambition, and a thousand and one desires, is changed into totally new forms of energy: love, silence, peace, compassion, wisdom -- all that is the basic search of life itself. Life in itself is dormant, it is fast asleep.

Enlightenment is absolutely awake. But it is the same energy that was asleep that becomes awake. So they are not synonymous, but they are two extremes of the same energy. But this, if taken as an intellectual understanding, is not going to help you in any way. It has to become your own experience. You have to see that light. You have to see that explosion within your own being. You have to see the darkness disappearing. You have to see the new dawn of a new life -- a life of grace and gratitude, a life of beauty and blessings.

The New Dawn

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On the evolution of the master-disciple relationship?

Osho:

There are relationships and relationships, but none is comparable to the relationship that exists between the master and the disciple. All other relationships are conditional, even the best. For example, a love relationship is still demanding. The only relationship which is unconditional, undemanding, is that which exists between the master and the disciple.

In fact, it is so rare, so unique, that it should not be categorized with other relationships. It is the poverty of language that makes us call something a relationship which is not a relationship. It is a merger, it is a meeting -- for no reason at all.

The disciple is not asking anything, and the master is not promising anything; yet there is thirst in the disciple and there is promise in the master. It is a closeness in which nobody is higher and nobody is lower -- yet the disciple is a woman, always a woman, because the disciple is nothing but an opening, a womb, a receptivity. And the master is always a man, because the master is nothing but a giving, a giving for no other reason than that he is so full. He has to give. He is a rain cloud.

Just as the disciple is in search, the master is also in search. The disciple is in search of where he can open himself without any fear, without any resistance, without holding anything back -- totally. And the master is also in search of such a human being who can receive the mysterious, who is ready to be pregnant with the mysterious, who is ready to be reborn.

There are many teachers, and there are many students. The teachers have borrowed knowledge. They may be very scholarly, very knowledgeable, but inside themselves there is darkness; their knowledge is hiding their ignorance. And there are students who are in search of knowledge.

The master and the disciple is a totally different thing.

The master does not give you knowledge, he shares his being.

And the disciple is not in search of knowledge, he is in search of being. He is, but he does not know who he is. He wants to be revealed to himself, he wants to stand naked before himself.

The master can only do a simple thing, and that is to create trust. Everything else happens. The moment the master is capable of creating trust, the disciple drops his defenses, drops his clothes, drops his knowledge. He becomes just a child again -- innocent, alert, alive -- a new beginning.

The ordinary father and mother have given birth to your body -- that is one life, which will end in death. Your father and mother are responsible for your birth and for your death. The master also gives a new birth, but it is the birth of consciousness, which knows only a beginning -- and there is no end to it. All that is needed is an atmosphere of absolute trust -- and in that trust, things start happening on their own; neither does the disciple do them nor does the master. The disciple receives them. The master is the vehicle of the universal forces -- just like a hollow bamboo that can become a flute. But the song is not of the hollow bamboo; the hollow bamboo can have the credit only of not destroying the song, of allowing it.

The master is a medium of the universal consciousness.

If you are available, suddenly the universal consciousness stirs in you the sleeping, dormant consciousness. The master has not done anything. The disciple has not done anything. It is all a happening.

The ancient stories are significant, to be remembered. Seekers went through hundreds of teachers until they came to a man in whose presence suddenly the trust was there -- they had arrived. Masters were moving..... There is a beautiful story.

Gautam Buddha comes into a town. The whole town has gathered to listen to him but he goes on waiting, looking backwards at the road -- because a small girl, not more than thirteen years old, has met him on the road and told him, "Wait for me. I am going to give this food to my father at the farm, but I will be back in time. But don�t forget, wait for me."

Finally, the elders of the town say to Gautam Buddha, "For whom are you waiting? Everybody important is present; you can start your discourse." Buddha says, "But the person for whom I have come so far is not yet present and I have to wait."

Finally the girl arrives and she says, "I am a little late, but you kept your promise. I knew you would keep the promise, you had to keep the promise because I have been waiting for you since I became aware... maybe I was four years old when I heard your name. Just the name, and something started ringing a bell in my heart. And since then it has been so long -- ten years maybe -- that I have been waiting."

And Buddha says, "You have not been waiting uselessly. You are the person who has been attracting me to this village." And he speaks, and that girl is the only one who comes to him: "Initiate me. I have waited enough, and now I want to be with you." Buddha says, "You have to be with me because your town is so far off the way that I cannot come again and again. The road is long, and I am getting old." In that whole town not a single person came up to be initiated into meditation -- only that small girl.

In the night when they were going to sleep, Buddha�s chief disciple Ananda asked, "Before you go to sleep I want to ask you one question: do you feel a certain pull towards a certain space -- just like a magnetic pull?" And Buddha said, "You are right. That�s how I decide my journeys. When I feel that somebody is thirsty -- so thirsty that without me, there is no way for the person -- I have to move in that direction."

The master moves towards the disciple.

The disciple moves towards the master.

Sooner or later they are going to meet.

The meeting is not of the body, the meeting is not of the mind. The meeting is of the very soul -- as if suddenly you bring two lamps close to each other; the lamps remain separate but their flames become one. Between two bodies when the soul is one, it is very difficult to say that it is a relationship. It is not, but there is no other word; language is really poor. It is at-oneness.

Osho Upanishad, Session 16, Question 3

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Is revenge something related to anger or something else, and how can we overcome this problem?

Osho:

Only the ego can be touched. It is very touchy. If somebody just looks at you in a certain way, it is touched. He has not done anything. If somebody smiles a little, it is touched; if somebody just turns his head and does not look at you, it is touched. It is very touchy. It is like a wound, always open, green. You touch it and the pain arises. A single word, a single gesture -- the other may not even be aware of what he has done to you, but he has touched it.

And you always think the other is responsible, that he has wounded you. No, you carry your wound. With the ego your whole being is a wound. And you carry it around. Nobody is interested in hurting you, nobody is positively waiting to hurt you; everybody is engaged in safeguarding his own wound. Who has got the energy? But still it happens, because you are so ready to be wounded, so ready, just waiting on the brink for anything.

You cannot touch a man of Tao. Why? -- because there is no one to be touched. There is no wound. He is healthy, healed, whole. This word �whole� is beautiful. The word �heal� comes from �whole�, and the word �holy� also comes from �whole�. He is whole, healed, holy.

Be aware of your wound. Don�t help it to grow, let it be healed; and it will be healed only when you move to the roots. The less the head, the more the wound will heal -- with no head there is no wound. Live a headless life. Move as a total being, and accept things.

Just for twenty-four hours, try it -- total acceptance, whatsoever happens. Someone insults you, accept it, don�t react, and see what happens. Suddenly you will feel an energy flowing in you that you have not felt before. Somebody insults you: you feel weak, you feel disturbed, you start thinking of how to get your revenge. That man has hooked you, and now you will move round and round. For days, nights, months, even years, you will not be able to sleep, you will have bad dreams. People can waste their whole life over a small thing, just because someone insulted them.

Just look back into your past and you will remember a few things. You were a small child and the teacher in the class called you an idiot, and you still remember it and you feel resentment. Your father said something. Your parents have forgotten, and even if you remind them, they will not be able to remember it. Your mother looked at you in a certain way and since then the wound has been there. And it is still open, fresh; if anybody touches it, you will explode.

Don�t help this wound to grow. Don�t make this wound your soul. Go to the roots, be with the whole. For twenty-four hours, just twenty-four hours, try not to react, not to reject, whatsoever happens.

If someone pushes you and you fall to the ground -- fall! Then get up and go home. Don�t do anything about it. If somebody hits you, bow down your head, accept it with gratitude. Go home, don�t do anything, just for twenty-four hours. And you will know a new upsurge of energy that you have never known before, a new vitality arising from the roots. And once you know it, once you have tasted it, your life will be different. Then you will laugh at all the foolish things you have been doing, at all the resentments, reactions, revenges, with which you have been destroying yourself.

Nobody else can destroy you except you; nobody else can save you except you. You are the Judas and you are the Jesus.

Enough for today.

The Empty Boat, Chapter 10

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I am so afraid that the world soon will come to an end...

Osho:

The word "responsibility" has been continuously used in a wrong way. It gives a feeling of burden: you have to do it, it is a duty; if you don�t do it you will feel guilty. I want to remind you that the word `responsibility� has none of those connotations. Break the word in two -- response-ability -- and you enter a totally different meaning of the word, in a different direction. Response-ability is not a burden. It is not a duty; it is not something you have to do in spite of yourself.

Response-ability simply means spontaneous response. Whatever situation arises, joyously you respond to it, with your totality, with your intensity. And this response will not only change the situation, it will also change you.

There are two words to be remembered: one is "reaction" and one is "response-ability." Most people react, they don�t respond. Reaction comes from your memory, from your past experiences, from your knowledge; it is always inadequate in a fresh, new situation. And existence is continuously fresh. So if you act according to your past, that is reaction. But that reaction is not going to change the situation, it is not going to change you, and you will be in utter failure.

Response is moment-to-moment. It has nothing to do with memory, it has something to do with your awareness. You see the situation with clarity; you are clean, silent, serene. Out of this serenity, spontaneously you act. It is not reaction, it is action. You have never done it before, but the beauty of it is that it will suit the situation, and it will be a joy to you to know that you are capable of being spontaneous.

There are very few joys in life greater than spontaneity. Spontaneity means to be in the moment; it means acting out of your awareness, not acting according to your old conditionings. Those days are gone -- those conditions, conceptions are absolutely invalid.

Commitment is not necessary, because commitment is bound to become old; it will not correspond to the fresh moment. Commitment is a slavery to the past. And action you don�t have to do. If your heart is full of love, full of compassion, full of meditation, action will happen. When action happens on its own accord it is such a beautiful flower. Instead, you force yourself with unnecessary burdens -- responsibility, commitment, action -- and you don�t understand that the global crisis is so big and you are so small, what action can you take?

I don�t have any responsibility, I don�t have any commitment, and I don�t have any action to do to save this beautiful planet -- these are unnecessary burdens. Enjoy the moment, grow into your consciousness, be more spontaneous, more compassionate, more loving -- no commitment, no great megalomania of saving the whole planet. Rejoice in it, and out of this rejoicing, action comes -- again, as spontaneous -- you don�t have to act. "Sometimes it feels difficult to move into activity." Not just sometimes, you will always feel difficulty in moving into activity. But a pure action, uncontemplated, suddenly grips you...and you are not doing any charitable work, you are simply enjoying it.

If we can make more people lovable, celebrating, more spontaneous, the global crisis can be avoided. But don�t take it seriously, be playful about it. If existence wants this planet not to exist, who are we to prevent it? Every day stars disappear into black holes and every day new stars are born from white holes. One thing has to be remembered, that anything that is born is going to die. This planet has been here for near about four thousand million years. Perhaps it has become old, perhaps nothing can be done to save it. It needs rest, and get more beautiful, so beautiful that existence becomes absolutely incapable of thinking to destroy it. It is not a burden, it is not a commitment. And as long as existence lets this planet continue, enjoy it, make it more juicy...each act of your life.

According to me that is the only way to avoid a global suicide. Silence and being meditative are enough; they are far greater forces than your small activity. And out of your silence perhaps some action may arise which will be helpful in making the planet more glorious, more splendorous. What I am trying to say is, prove to existence that this planet is so precious that to allow it to be destroyed will be sheer nonsense. Existence will have to wait again for fifty million years to bring such people, such consciousnesses as Buddha, Lao Tzu....

Do you see my point? Make it so valuable that even existence withdraws, and destroys all that is being prepared for global suicide. You don�t have to act! You have simply to meditate, be silent, be loving, fill the whole world with laughter.

I say unto you, laughter is far more powerful than any nuclear weapon. Fill the whole universe with love. And I say unto you, a world filled with love is not going to decide for war.

No action is needed.

I have been condemned by people who don�t understand the intrinsic mysteries of life. They think that I am making people inactive, telling them to meditate, to be silent. They don�t know that I am making people spontaneously active -- out of love, out of beauty, out of blissfulness. That will create the greatest barrier to the destruction of the planet.

A man of silence is not inactive; his energies have moved into a totally new dimension of spontaneity, of response-ability, of love, of joy, of creativity, and his whole being is so precious that he creates around him a contagious preciousness.

If we have a few million people in the world who are playful, who are not burdened, it doesn�t matter. If existence wants this planet to disappear, perhaps there is some significance in it. We will try to enjoy while we are here, while this planet exists. If our joyfulness, our playfulness, our flutes, our guitars, our sensitivity changes the intelligence of the universe and cancels the decision -- this is not the planet to be destroyed, this is the planet to be nourished more -- if it happens, good; if it does not happen then that too is perfectly good.

Do you remember when you were not -- were you angry, sad? Before your birth, do you remember any problem, any trouble? After your death you will be in the same position as you were before your birth.

Existence is beautiful, but if it disappears, if the whole cosmos decides for it to disappear, you will not miss it; you will not be there at all. So don�t make it a fear, a duty, a responsibility to be done. Don�t feel guilty that you are so small -- what can you do? However small you are, you can love, you can dance, you can celebrate whatever moments are available. And this will be action from inaction.

Osho: Hari Om Tat Sat, Chapter 12

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Why do I lose focus?

Osho:

The ability to concentrate is not something to feel blessed about. It is a frozen state of mind, a very narrow state of mind. Useful, of course, useful -- for others. Useful in scientific inquiry, useful in business, useful in the market, useful in politics -- but absolutely useless for yourself. If you become too attuned with concentration you will become very, very tense. Concentration is a tense state of mind; you will never be relaxed. Concentration is like a torch, focused, and consciousness is like a lamp, unfocused.

My whole effort here is to teach you consciousness, not concentration. And this is the point to be remembered: if you become conscious, any moment you want to concentrate on a particular problem, you can. It is not a problem. But if you become too focused with concentration the vice versa is not true: you cannot relax. A relaxed mind can always concentrate. easily, there is no trouble about it. But a focused mind becomes obsessed. narrow. It is not easy for it to relax and leave the tension. It remains tense.

If you meditate. first concentration will disappear and you will be feeling a little at a loss. But if you go on, by and by you will attain to an unfocused state of light -- that�s what meditation is. Once meditation is attained. concentration is child�s play -- whenever you need to, you can concentrate. There will be no problem about it and it will be easy and without any tension.

Right now, you are being used by society. Society wants efficient people. It is not worried about your soul, it is worried about your productivity. I am not worried about your productivity: man has already too much, more than he can enjoy -- there is no need to go on producing more. Now there is more need to play around more and there is more need to be more conscious. Science has developed enough. Now, whatsoever science is doing is almost futile. Now, going to the moon is simply useless. But tremendous energy is wasted. Why? Because scientists are now obsessed -- they have to do something. They have learned a trick of concentration and they have to do something. They have to produce, they have to go on producing something -- they cannot relax. They will go to the moon, they will go to Mars, and they will persuade people that whatsoever they are doing is tremendously important. It is absolutely useless. But this happens.

Once you become trained in a certain thing, you go on in that line, blind, unless a cul de sac comes and you cannot go on anymore. But life is infinite. There comes no cul de sac. You can go on and on and on.

And now scientific activity has almost become ridiculous.

Religious activity is totally different. It is not worried about being more efficient; the whole point is how to be more joyful, how to be more celebrating. So if you 90 with me, by and by, concentration will relax. And in the beginning you will feel afraid because you will see your skill disappearing, your efficiency disappearing. You will feel you are losing something that you have gained with so much effort. In the beginning it will happen. The ice is melting and becoming water. The ice was solid, something concentrated; now it is water -- loose, relaxed, flowing in all directions. But anytime you need ice, the water can be turned into ice again. There is no problem -- just a little more cooling is needed.

This is my own experience. Whatsoever I say, I say from my own experience -- the same has happened to me. First, concentration disappeared; but now I can concentrate on anything. There is no problem. But I don�t remain in concentration; I can concentrate and relax -- whenever the need arises. Just as whenever the need arises, you walk; you don�t sit on the chair and go on moving your Legs. There are a few people who go on moving because they cannot sit relaxed -- you will call this man restless!

Legs in perfect order are needed so that whenever you need to, you can walk, you can run. But when there Is no need, you can relax, and the legs will no longer be functioning.

But your concentration has become almost as focused as if you are continuously preparing for an Olympic! Runners in an Olympic cannot relax. They have to run a particular amount every morning and evening; they are continuously on the go. If they relax for a few days they will lose their skill. But I call all Olympics political, ambitious, foolish. There is no need.

Competition is foolish. There is no need. If you enjoy running -- perfectly good. Run. and enjoy. But why compete? What is the point of competition? Competition brings illness, unhealthiness; competition brings jealousy, and a thousand and one diseases.

Meditation will allow you to concentrate whenever the need arises, but if there is no need you will remain relaxed, flowing in all directions like water.

Feel blissful, blessed. What is the point of uttering logical sentences! Utter nonsense; make sounds, gibberish, like birds... Like trees! (At this moment a nearby tree decided, with the help of a passing breeze, to illustrate Osho�s words by shaking its branches and causing hundreds of leaves to fall with loud rustling sounds to the ground.) Look! This way! Is this logical? The tree is enjoying. Delighting. Simply shedding away the past.

Delight. Sing. Utter sounds. Forget all logic! And by and by you will become more alive. Less logical of course that is the price one has to pay -- but you become dead if you become more logical and you become more alive if you become less logical.

Life is the goal, not logic. What are you going to do with logic? If you are hungry, logic is not going to feed you; if you need love, logic is not going to hug you; if you are thirsty, logic will tell you that water is H20! It is not going to give you water, real water. No. It simply functions in formulas, maxims.

Look at life, and by and by you will understand that life has its own very logical logic. Be attuned to it and that will become the door for your ecstasy, samadhi, nirvana.

Ancient Music in the Pines Chapter 8

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Osho:

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I have glimpses of how psychological, existential pain is created by the ego. It is homemade, and it can be unmade. But what about physical pain: why is it there? Is it a necessary part of dying? I do not feel I am afraid of death as much as I am afraid of physical pain, senility, old age.

Osho:

Psychological pain can be dissolved; and only psychological pain can be dissolved. The other pain, the physical pain, is part of life and death; there is no way to dissolve it. But it never creates a problem. Have you ever observed? -- The problem is only when you are thinking about it. If you think of old age you become afraid, but old people are not trembling. If you think of illness you become afraid, but when the illness has already happened, there is no fear, there is no problem. One accepts it as a fact.

The real problem is always psychological. The physical pain is part of life. When you start thinking about it, it is not physical pain at all; it has become psychological. You think about death; there is fear. But when death actually happens there is no fear. Fear is always about something in the future. Fear never exists in the present moment. If you are going to the front in a war, you will be afraid, you will be very apprehensive. You will tremble, you will not be able to sleep: many nightmares will haunt you. But once you are on the front -- ask the soldiers -- once you are on the front, you forget all about it. Bullets may be passing and you can enjoy your lunch; and bombs may be falling and you can play cards.

You can ask Gurudayal. He has been in the war, he has been to the front, he has been a soldier; he knows: the fear is about the future. Then the problem is not physical -- because the fear exists in your psychology. When the pain is actual, physical, there is no problem about it. Reality never comes as a problem; it is only the ideas about reality that create the problem.

So the first thing to be understood is: if you can dissolve the psychological pain, no problem is left. Then you start living in the moment. "Psychological" means: of the past, of the future, never of the present. Mind never exists in the present. In the present reality exists, not the mind. Mind exists in the past and the future, and in past and future reality does not exist. In fact, mind and reality never come across each other. They have never seen each other�s face. Reality remains unknown to mind, and mind remains unknown to reality.

There is an old fable.... Darkness approached God and said, "Enough is enough! Your sun goes on haunting me, chasing me. I can never rest; wherever I go to rest he is there, and I have to run away again. And I have not done any wrong to him. This is unjust. And I have come to you to get justice." It was perfectly right; the complaint was true. And God called the sun and asked the sun, "Why do you go on chasing this poor woman, darkness? What has she done to you?" The sun said, "I don�t know her at all. I have never seen her. You just call her in front of me; only then can I say something. I don�t remember ever having done any wrong to her, because I don�t know her. We are not familiar. Nobody has ever introduced us to each other, we are not even acquainted. It is for the first time from you that I am hearing about this woman, this darkness. You call her!"

The case remains pending -- because God could not call darkness before the sun. They cannot exist together, they cannot encounter each other. When darkness is, the sun cannot be; when the sun is, the darkness cannot be. Exactly the same is the relationship between mind and reality: the psychology is the problem, the reality never is a problem. You just dissolve your psychological problems -- and they are dissolved by dissolving the center of them all: the ego. Once you don�t think yourself separate from existence, problems simply evaporate, as dewdrops disappear in the morning when the sun rises, not even leaving a trace behind. They simply disappear.

Physical pain will remain, but again I will insist that it has never been a problem to anybody. If your leg is broken, it is broken. It is not a problem. The problem is only in imagination: "If my leg is broken, then what am I going to do? And how am I to avoid, or how am I to behave and work my way so my leg is never broken?"

Now, if you become afraid about such things you cannot live, because your legs can be broken, your neck can be broken, your eyes can go blind. Anything is possible; millions of things are possible. If you become obsessed with all these problems which are possible....

I am not saying they are not possible. They are all possible. Whatsoever has happened to any human being, ever, can happen to you. Cancer can happen, TB can happen, death can happen; everything is possible. Man is vulnerable. You can just go outside on the road and you can be hit by a car. I am not saying don�t go outside on the road. You can sit in a room and the roof can fall. There is no way to save yourself totally and perfectly. You can be lying down on your bed, but do you know that ninety-seven percent of people die on a bed? That is the most dangerous place! Avoid it as much as you can; never go to bed. Ninety-seven percent of people die in bed. Even travelling by airplane is not so dangerous; it is more dangerous to be in bed. And remember, more people die in the night... so, remain trembling. Then it is up to you. Then you will not be able to live at all.

Psychological problems are the only problems. You can become paranoid, you can become split, you can become paralyzed because of fear -- but this is nothing to do with reality. You see a blind man walking on the road perfectly well; blindness in itself is not the problem. You can see beggars -- their legs broken, their hands gone, and still laughing, still gossiping with each other, still talking about women, making remarks, singing a tune.

Just watch life: life is never a problem. Man has tremendous capacity to adjust to the fact, but man has no capacity to adjust to the future. Once you try to protect yourself and secure yourself in the future, then you will be in a turmoil, in a chaos. You will start falling apart. And then there are millions of problems -- problems and problems and problems. You cannot even commit suicide, because the poison may not be the right poison. In India you cannot rely on anything! They may have mixed something into it; it may not be poison at all. You may take it and you will lie down... and you will wait and wait and wait -- and death is not coming. Then everything creates a problem.

Mulla Nasrudin was going to commit suicide. He came across an astrologer on the street, and the astrologer said, "Mulla, wait. Let me see your hand." He said, "What do I have to do now with astrology? I am going to commit suicide! So there is no point; now there is no future." The astrologer said, "Wait. Let me see whether you can succeed or not." Future remains. You may not succeed, you may be caught by the police, you may misfire. There is no way to be certain about the future -- not even about death, not even about suicide. What to say about life? Life is such a complex phenomenon; how can you be certain? Everything is possible and nothing is certain.

If you become afraid, this is just your psychology. Something has to be done to your mind. And if you understand me rightly, meditation is nothing but an effort to look at reality without the mind -- because that is the only way to look at reality. If the mind is there it distorts, it corrupts. Drop the mind and see reality -- direct, immediate, face to face. And there is no problem. Reality has never created any problem for anybody. I am here, you are also here -- I don�t see a single problem. If I fall ill, I fall ill. What is there to be worried about? Why make a fuss about it? If I die, I die.

A problem needs space: in the present moment there is no space. Things only happen, there is no time to think about it. You can think about the past because there is distance; you can think about the future, there is distance. In fact, future and past are created just to give us space so that we can worry. And the more space you have, the more worry. Now in India they are much more worried because they think, "Next life... and... and" -- ad infinitum -- "what is going to happen in the next life?" A person is doing something and he does not think only about the consequences that are going to happen here now; he thinks, "What karma am I going to gather for my future life?" Now he will become even more worried; he has more space. And how is he going to fill that space? -- he will fill it with more and more problems. Worry is a way to fill the empty space of the future.

The questioner says, "I have glimpses of how psychological, existential pain is created by ego. It is homemade, and it can be unmade."

Just understanding it intellectually won�t help; you have to do it. Do it, and then the next question will disappear. Do it, and then you will find there is not any problem left. "But what about physical pain?" Now this is how problems arise. Intellectually you have understood one thing, but that doesn�t make any sense. The next question immediately brings your reality to the surface: you have not understood. It is as if a blind man goes on groping with his stick; he finds his path by it. And then we say, "Your eyes can be cured, but then you will have to drop your walking stick. It is not needed." The blind man will say, "I can understand that my eyes can be cured, but how can I walk without my stick?" Now, intellectually he has understood that eyes can be cured, but existentially, experientially, he has not understood it -- otherwise the next question wouldn�t arise.

Sometimes people come to me and they ask one question, and I say, "You go on; you ask the next too." Because one question may not show the reality; they may be just showing their intellectual understanding. But with the next question they are bound to be caught. They are bound to be, because with the next question, immediately they will miss. The first part of the question is perfect, but you have got the point only through the mind. It is not yet chewed well, it is not yet digested. It has not become blood, bones, marrow. It is not yet part of your existence. Otherwise you can never ask, "What about the physical pain?" -- because the very question is psychological. Physical pain is not a problem -- when it is there, it is there; when it is not there, it is not there.

A problem arises when something is not there and you want it to be there, or when something is there and you don�t want it to be there. A problem is always psychological: "Why is it there?" Now this is all psychological. Who is to say why it is there? There is nobody to answer. Only explanations can be given, but those are not really answers. Explanations are simple. It is very simple: pain is there because pleasure is there. Pleasure cannot exist without pain.

If you want a life absolutely painless, then you will have to live a life absolutely pleasureless. They come together in one package. They are not two things really; they are one thing -- not different, not separate, and cannot be separated.

That�s what man has been doing through the centuries: separating, to somehow have all the pleasures of the world and not have any pain; but this is not possible. The more pleasures you have, the more pain also. The bigger the peak, the deeper will be the valley by the side. You want no valleys and you want big peaks. Then the peaks cannot exist; they can exist only with valleys. The valley is nothing but a situation in which a peak becomes possible. The peak and the valley are joined together. You want pleasure and you don�t want pain.

For example: you love a woman or you love a man, and when the woman is with you you are happy. Now, you would like to be happy whenever she is with you, but when she goes away you don�t want the pain. If you are really happy with a woman when she is with you, how can you avoid the pain of separation when she is gone and she is no longer there? You will miss her, you will feel the absence. The absence is bound to become pain. If you really want that you should not have any pain, then you should start avoiding all pleasure. Then when the woman is there don�t feel happy; just remain sad, just remain unhappy -- so that when she goes, there is no problem.

If somebody greets you and you feel happy, then when somebody insults you you will feel unhappy. This trick has been tried. This has been one of the most basic tricks that all of the so-called religious people have tried: if you want to avoid pain, avoid pleasure. But then what is the point? If you want to avoid death, avoid life -- but then what is the point of it all? You will be dead. Before death, you will be dead.

If you want to be perfectly secure, enter into your grave and lie down there. You will be perfectly secure. Don�t breathe, because if you breathe there is danger... because there are all sorts of infections.... There is danger, so don�t breathe, don�t move... just don�t live. Commit suicide; then there will be no pain. But then why are you searching for it? You want no pain and all pleasure. You demand something impossible: you want that two plus two should not be four. You want them to become five, or three, or anything, but never four. But they are four.

Whatever you do, howsoever you deceive yourself and others, they will remain four. Pain and pleasure go together like night and day, like birth and death, like love and hate.

Osho, The Discipline of Transcendence,Volume 4, Chapter 2

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Osho, I can feel myself moving from anger into sadness. I don�t know whether I should try and get the anger out or just let it explode inside.

Osho:

Anger and sadness are both the same. Sadness is passive anger and anger is active sadness. Because sadness comes easy, anger seems to be difficult. because you are too much in tune with the passive.

It is difficult for a sad person to be angry. If you can make a sad person angry, his sadness will disappear immediately. It will be very difficult for an angry person to be sad. If you can make him sad, his anger will disappear immediately.

In all our emotions the basic polarity continues -- of man and woman, yin and yang, the male and the female. Anger is male, sadness is female. So if you are in tune with sadness, it is difficult to shift to anger, but I would like you to shift. Just exploding it within won�t help much because again you are seeking some way of being passive. No. Bring it out, act it out. Even if it looks nonsense, then too. Be a buffoon in your own eyes, but bring it out.

If you can float between anger and sadness, both become similarly easy. You will have a transcendence and then you will be able to watch. You can stand behind the screen and watch these games, and then you can go beyond both. But first you have to be moving easily between these two. otherwise you tend to be sad and when one is heavy, transcendence is difficult.

Remember, when two energies, opposite energies, are exactly alike, fifty-fifty, then it is very easy to get out of them, because they are fighting and cancelling each other and you are not in anybody�s grip. Your sadness and your anger are fifty-fifty, equal energies, so they cancel each other. Suddenly you have freedom and you can slip out. But if sadness is seventy percent and anger thirty percent, then it is very difficult. Thirty percent anger in contrast with seventy percent sadness means forty percent sadness will still be there and it will not be possible; you will not be capable of easily slipping out. That forty percent will hang over you.

So this is one of the basic laws of inner energies -- to always let the opposite polarities come to an equal status, and then you are able to slip out of them. It is as if two persons are fighting and you can escape. They are so engaged with themselves that you need not worry, and you can escape. Don�t bring the mind in. Just make it an exercise.

You can make it an everyday exercise; forget about waiting for it to come. Every day you have to be angry -- that will be easier. So jump, jog. scream, and bring it. Once you can bring it for no reason at all, you will be very happy because now you have a freedom. Otherwise even anger is dominated by situations. You are not a master of it. If you cannot bring it, how can you drop it?

Gurdjieff used to teach his disciples never to start by dropping anything. First start by bringing it in, because only a person who can create anger on demand can be capable of dropping it on demand -- simple mathematics. So Gurdjieff would tell his disciples to first learn how to be angry. Everybody would be sitting and suddenly he would ay, "Number One, stand up and be angry!" It looks so absurd.

But if you can bring it.... And it is always available, just by the comer, you just have to pull it in. It comes easily when anybody provides an excuse. Somebody insults you -- it is there. So why wait for the insult? Why be dominated by the other? Why can�t you bring it yourself? Bring it yourself!

In the beginning it looks a little awkward, strange, unbelievable, because you have always believed in the theory that it is somebody else whose insult has created the anger. That�s not true. Anger has always been there; somebody has just given an excuse for it to come up. You can give yourself an excuse. Imagine a situation in which you would have been angry, and become angry. Talk to the wall and say things, and soon the wall will be talking to you. Just go completely crazy. You have to bring anger and sadness to a similar status, where they are exactly proportionate to each other. They will cancel each other out and you can slip away.

Gurdjieff used to call this "the way of the sly man" -- to bring inner energies to such a conflict that they are engaged together cancelling each other, and you have the opportunity to escape. Try it, mm?

Osho, Get Out of Your Own Way, Chapter 4

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Yet Osho has this "warning" ...

Over a thirty-five year period hundreds of thousands of people from every walk of life were drawn to Osho. They asked questions, he answered. They read sutras to him, and he talked about them. The talks were recorded, and later filmed on video, transcribed into hundreds of books and translated into dozens of languages.

In the process, every tradition in the history of consciousness has been revisited for contemporary people. As each is teased apart and explained in the modern context, we can find the essential thread running through our history down to each one of us today. From the meaning of life and death to the struggles of power and politics, from the challenges of love and creativity to the significance of science and education. What is this mystery called existence? Where did meditation come from? Can we learn anyt hing from Taoism? What is happiness? Why am I discontented? Where did my guilt come from? What is hope? Who am I?

Here you will find the spiritually incorrect mystic at work, demolishing our sacred cows, one by one, in exquisite detail. With compassion and humor our insanities are laid out before us, leaving us with that uniquely human option of growing up rather than simply growing old.

Each talk is given extemporaneously and has its own context. When answering questions, Osho's primary purpose is always to answer the questioner rather than the question. It is the individual and his or her transformation that is important, not just the words.

And finally a note of caution from the author:

"Always remember, whatsoever I say to you, you can take it in two ways. You can simply take it on my authority, 'Because I say so, it must be true' -- then you will suffer, then you will not grow. Whatsoever I say, listen to it, try to understand it, implement it in your life, see how it works, and then come to your own conclusions. They may be the same, they may not be. They can never be exactly the same because you have a different personality, a unique being. Whatsoever I am saying is my own. It is bo und to be in deep ways rooted in me. You may come to similar conclusions, but they cannot be exactly the same. So my conclusions should not be made your conclusions. You should try to understand me, you should try to learn, but you should not collect knowledge from me, you should not collect conclusions from me. Then your mind-body will grow.

"My message is not a doctrine, not a philosophy. My message is a certain alchemy, a science of transformation."

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{Excellent library of his works ... subscribe ?? ...}

The articles seem to have addresses like http://osho.com/LibArchive/HaveATaste/YourQuestion.cfm?Nr=32 and I randomly select "22" ... which is the "meaning of life" ... numbers go up to at least 55 but not so far as 73 ...

I imagine there's a LOT more ... esp for those who subscribe ...

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Osho Website

Meaning of Life - also has links to numbers 1 through 70 ... the content may alter so i have merely labelled them 1 through 70 ...