Question – BELOVED MASTER, YOU TELL US THAT AWARENESS IS ENOUGH. THEN WHY DISCOURSES, GROUPS, SANNYAS? Osho – Rick Ferris, how did you come to know that awareness is enough? I have to tell it again and again — that awareness is enough, that no discourse is needed. But even that has to be told to you: that nothing is needed. But you are so asleep, you won’t come upon the truth by yourself and you won’t come upon the truth even if repeated thousands of times.
Now see the trick of your mind: it is not that you have understood that awareness is enough. On the contrary, you have understood that discourses are not needed, groups are not needed, sannyas is not needed. See the tricky mind, the cunning mind… who goes on creating new hells for you. You missed the point and you have misinterpreted the whole thing. Discourses are to tell you that words won’t do, but even to tell that words won’t do, words are needed. There is no other way, because you understand only words.
Buddha used to tell a parable: A man had gone to the market. When he came back his house was on fire. His children were playing inside the house, absolutely oblivious of the fact that the house was on fire. It was a big house and they must have been in the innermost part of the house. He shouted from the outside, because he was afraid to enter the house, but the children wouldn’t listen. A great crowd gathered. Then he said to the children, “Come out! See what I have brought for you — many toys. The toys that you had asked me for, I have brought all, and beautiful toys!”
The children came running out of the house — and he had not brought a single toy! They started asking, “Where are the toys?” He said, “Look at the fire! I have not brought any toys, but this was the only way to bring you out of the house. The house is on fire! I was shouting that ‘The house is on fire!’ and you were laughing and giggling. You were thinking I am playing a joke or something. Yes, I have lied to you that I have brought toys for you, but the lie has worked as a strategy — it has helped you to come out. It has served a great purpose.”
Words are not enough, but because you understand only words, Rick Ferris…. Can you understand silence? Then you would not have been here. There is no need to be here. You could have sat by the side of a silent rock or you could have sat underneath a silent tree… and you would have understood all the buddhas. Then you will not read the Bible and the Koran and the Gita. You would have gone to the desert to feel the silence, the eternal silence of the desert.
And you would have understood all the Bibles, all the Korans, all the Gitas. But you have come here! You can understand only words. And I know truth cannot be communicated through words, but words can be used to bring you out of the house which is on fire. Words can bring you out of the world of words and dreams and desires in which you live. Words can be used in such a skillful way that they can lead you — or at least point you — towards silence; hence the discourses.
Groups are a little more rough. If you don’t listen to me, if you don’t understand words, then real hammers will be needed. I hammer you, but I hammer you with words. I don’t whip you, I only show you the shadow of the whip. If you listen, good; if you don’t listen, then you will need groups. There they use actual whips! To bring you to your senses they hit you hard. With great compassion they are cruel. They do everything that can be done to wake you up.
And sannyas? Sannyas is just to make a fool of you! You are too much in your knowledge, in your head. A little foolishness will do! You are too knowledgeable, too clever, too cunning. Sannyas is a surrender of all your cleverness, cunningness, knowledge. Sannyas is a madman’s path; I am a madman’s guide! But before you can really become sane you will have to drop your old kind of sanity — which is not sanity.
These are all devices — sannyas, groups, discourses — strategies. Not that only through these strategies you will know what truth is, but these will help you. If you are intelligent you will use them as a ladder, as a boat to the other shore. When you have reached the other shore, the boat has to be left behind. It is not that you have to sit in the boat forever and forever or that even when you have reached the other shore you have to carry the boat on your head, just out of sheer gratitude. You are utterly unaware, and great effort is needed to make you aware.
A guy went to the track and won three hundred dollars. Thinking his luck would hold he went back the next day ready to make a killing. As he was looking over the horses set to run in the last race he noticed a priest making signs over one of the nags. Thinking that he had really lucked in, the guy bet every nickel he had won and every cent he could scrape up on the horse. Naturally, the horse finished last.
Leaving the track he happened to bump into the very priest he had seen blessing the horse. “Father,” he said, “I am a ruined man! I saw you blessing that horse and I bet every cent I had on him.” The priest was horrified. “My son,” he said, “I was not blessing that horse, I was administering the last rites!”
I see your life as utterly ruined. You have been betting on dead horses! Your whole life is a mess — and arranging your life from the outside is not going to help. Some radical transformation of your consciousness is needed. The so-called religious people have been just doing the opposite. And that’s why you go to the churches, to the temples, to the synagogues — not to be awakened but to be helped to sleep better. You go there to listen to beautiful lullabies. You go there to be consoled. You go there to be comforted.
My work here is not to comfort you, is not to console you, is not to sing a lullaby by the side of your bed. My work is to wake you up. Everything is arranged in such a way — the discourses, the meditations, the groups, the sannyas… it is an attack on your sleep from all possible directions. In a single word it can be said: my work is to dehypnotize you.
For eight days and nights Schlossberg, the suit-maker, was unable to sleep. No medicine took effect, and in desperation, the Schlossberg family brought in a famous hypnotist. The hypnotist stared at Schlossberg and chanted, “You are asleep, Mr. Schlossberg. The shadows are closing about you. Soft music is lulling you into a state of lovely relaxation. You are asleep, you are asleep….”
“You are a miracle-worker!” sobbed the grateful son. He gave the hypnotist a big bonus and the man left in triumph. As the outside door closed, Schlossberg opened one eye, “Say,” he demanded, “is that schmuck gone yet?”
But these schmucks are your rabbis, your priests, your popes, your shankaracharyas, your imams, your Ayatollah Khomeiniacs…. And because you want more comfortable sleep and sweet dreams, their business prospers.
Sigmund Freud has said that it seems man cannot live without illusions. As far as the ordinary humanity is concerned he is right. Before Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche had the same insight. He said that the people who destroy people’s illusions are the real enemies of the people, because man cannot live without lies. “Truth is dangerous! Who wants truth?” says Friedrich Nietzsche. We want beautiful lies and illusions, sweet dreams.
This is true about ninety-nine point n
ine percent of humanity. Only very rarely a person starts searching for truth, but then he has to risk all his sleep and the dreams and the investments that he has made in his dreams. A Buddha, a Jesus, a Moses: these people are not to give you comforts. They shatter all your lies; howsoever comfortable they are, howsoever cozy they appear, they shatter them. They want you to know the truth. In the beginning it is bitter.
Buddha has said: Lies are sweet in the beginning, bitter in the end. In the beginning they look like nectar, in the end they prove fatal, poisonous. Truth is bitter in the beginning, sweet in the end. In the beginning it looks like poison, as if it is going to kill you; in the end it is elixir, it is nectar. It makes you capable to know the eternal, the deathless.
