Posts from Life is a dream. Auto-translated

I say that existence is enough in itself; it doesn't need a creator. It creates itself. So, instead of asking me if I believe in a creator, you should ask what my substitute for a creator-God is. My substitute is the omnipresent energy of creation. And, in my opinion, being creative is the most important religious quality. If you create a song, if you create music, if you create a garden, you are religious. Going to church is foolish, but creating a garden is a wonderful religion. In my opinion, creation is God.

But it would be better if you allowed me to replace the word "God" with "divinity," as I don't want to be misunderstood.

There is no personal God, but there is a wonderful energy – spreading, never-ending, expanding. This spreading, never-ending, expanding energy, the energy of creation, is the divine.

I know this; I don't believe in it. I have experienced it; I don't believe in it. I have touched it. I have breathed it. I have known it in the deepest core of my being;

and there is just as much of it in you as there is in me. Just look inward, a small turn of one hundred and eighty degrees – and you will realize the truth. Then you will not ask about belief.

Only blind people believe in light. Those who have eyes... they don't believe in light; they simply see it. I don't want you to believe in anything; I want you to have eyes, and if you have eyes, why settle for belief and remain blind? And you are not blind. Perhaps you are just keeping your eyes closed. Perhaps no one has told you that you can open your eyes. So you live in darkness and from the darkness you ask: "Is there light?"

I remember a small story from the life of the Buddha. A blind but very logical man was brought to Gautama Buddha. He was so logical that his village and all the wise men from his village were completely fed up with his logic. They couldn't prove to him that light exists. The whole village knew; everyone saw the light, only the blind logician couldn't see it. But he was a very logical man. He said: "Everything that exists can be touched. Bring light, I would like to touch it. Everything that exists, I can hit with something, and it will make a sound. Let me hear the sound of your light that you hit with something. If it has any smell, bring it to my nose, I will smell it. If it has any taste, I will try it. These four senses are with me." But you cannot taste light, you cannot extract a sound from it, you cannot feel its smell, you cannot touch it. And the blind logician laughed and said: "You just want to prove that I am blind, and therefore you invented this fantasy about light. There is no light. You are all blind, just like me; you are deceiving yourselves." Near this village, the Buddha was passing by, and the inhabitants thought: "Here is a wonderful opportunity; let's bring this logician to Gautama Buddha, maybe he can help." The Buddha listened to the whole story and said: "This blind man is right, and you are all wrong, because he doesn't need argumentation; he needs medicine to cure his eyes. And you brought him to the wrong person. Take him to a doctor."

The Buddha had his own personal doctor, provided by the great king Bimbisara to take care of the Buddha's body. So the Buddha said: "You don't need to go far to find a great doctor. There is one with me. You can show him to this blind man." And he left the doctor in this village, and he went on. After three months, the blind man's eyes opened. He was not really blind – just a small ailment; a small thin veil covered his vision. The veil was removed. The man began to dance. He fell at the feet of the Buddha and said: "If they had not brought me to you, my whole life would have passed in arguing against light. And they would not have been able to prove its existence."
Divinity is not something that documents can prove or disprove. It is something you can experience.
Osho

Awakening is the path to life, says Buddha. Become more awakened, and you will become more alive. And life is God – there is no other God. That is why Buddha talks about life and awareness. Life is the goal, awareness is the methodology, the technique to achieve it.

Have you seen a deer in the forest, how attentive it looks, how vigilantly it moves? Have you seen a bird on a tree – how intelligently it continues to observe everything that is happening around it? If you approach the bird, it will only let you get so close. If you take just one step beyond that, it will fly away. It has a certain vigilance regarding its territory. If someone invades this territory, it is dangerous. If you look around, you will be surprised: man seems to be the sleepiest animal on earth.

Awakening is the path to life. You are alive only in proportion to how aware you are.

Awareness is the difference between life and death. You are not alive just because you breathe, you are not alive just because your heart beats. Physiologically, life can be sustained in a hospital, without any consciousness. Your heart will continue to beat, and you will be able to breathe. But the Buddhas have a different definition.
Their definition is consciousness. They don't say you are alive because you can breathe, they don't say you are alive because you have blood circulating; they say you are alive only if you are awakened. Thus, apart from the awakened, no one is truly alive. You are corpses – walking, talking, doing something; you are robots. Awakening is the path to life, says Buddha. Become more awakened, and you will become more alive. And life is God – there is no other God. That is why Buddha talks about life and awareness. Life is the goal, awareness is the methodology, the technique to achieve it. The fool sleeps...

Everyone sleeps, so by "fool" is meant each of you. Don't be offended. Facts must be stated as they are. You act in your sleep; that is why you continue to stumble, continue to do things you don't want to do. You continue to do things you have decided not to do. You continue to do things you know are wrong, and you don't do things you know are right. How is this possible? Why can't you go straight? Why do you keep getting sidetracked and ending up in dead ends? Why do you keep getting lost?
Osho

Happiness has nothing to do with success, happiness has nothing to do with ambition, happiness has nothing to do with money, power, or prestige. Happiness is related to consciousness, not to character.

What is happiness? It depends on you, on whether you are in a state of consciousness or unconsciousness, on whether you are asleep or awake. Murphy has a famous aphorism. He says that people are of two kinds: people of the first kind always divide humanity into two kinds, and people of the second kind do not divide humanity at all. I belong to the first: humanity can be divided into two kinds, into the sleeping and the awakened – and, of course, a small intermediate group. Happiness depends on which area of consciousness you are in. If you are asleep, happiness for you will be pleasure.

Pleasure implies a sensation, an attempt through the body to achieve something unattainable – to force the body to achieve something it is not capable of. People try in every possible way to achieve happiness through the body. The body can only give you momentary pleasures, and each of these pleasures is balanced by pain in the same proportion, to the same degree. Every pleasure is followed by its opposite,

because the body exists in a world of duality... Just as night follows day, and life follows death, and death follows life – it is a vicious circle. Pleasure will be followed by pain, pain will be followed by pleasure. But you are never in a relaxed state. Being in a state of pleasure, you are afraid of losing it, and this fear poisons it. And when you are drowning in pain, of course, it causes suffering, and you make every possible effort to get out of it – only to fall back into it again.


The Buddha calls this the wheel of birth and death. We continue to spin with this wheel, clinging to this wheel... and the wheel continues to move.

Sometimes pleasure is at the top, sometimes pain, but we remain crushed between these two boulders. But a sleeping person knows nothing else. He knows only a few sensations of the body – food, sex; this is his world. He is constantly moving between them. These are the two ends of his body – food and sex. If he suppresses sex, he becomes addicted to food; if he suppresses the addiction to food, he becomes addicted to sex. The energy continues to move like a pendulum. And all that you call pleasure is at best only a release from tension. Sexual energy gathers, accumulates; you become tense and heavier, and you want to release it. For a sleeping person, sexuality is nothing more than a release, it is like a loud sneeze. It gives nothing but some relief – there was tension, now there is none. But it will accumulate again. Food gives only a small sensation of taste on the tip of the tongue; it is hardly worth living for. But many people live only to eat; very few eat to live.


What we call "happiness" depends on the individual. For a sleeping person, happiness is pleasurable sensations.

A sleeping person lives from one pleasure to another. He simply rushes from one sensation to another. He lives for small excitements; his life is very superficial. It has no depth, it has no quality. He lives in a world of quantity. There are also people who live in the intermediate state, people who are neither asleep nor awake, but are in a state of anticipation – a little sleep, a little wakefulness. Sometimes you experience something similar early in the morning – you are still in a dream, but you can't say that you are asleep, because from all over the house you hear sounds, you hear your partner making tea, the kettle boiling, or the children getting ready for school, you hear all these sounds, but you are still not awake. These sounds reach you vaguely, hazily, as if there is a great distance between you and everything that is happening around. This gives a feeling that it is still part of a dream. It is not part of a dream, but you are still in an intermediate state.

The same thing happens when you start to meditate. A non-meditating person sleeps, dreams; a meditating person begins to move from sleep towards awakening, but remains in a transitional state. Then happiness takes on a completely different meaning: it becomes more of a quality, less of a quantity; then it is more psychological and less physiological. A meditating person enjoys music more, enjoys poetry more, enjoys creating something more. These people enjoy nature, its beauty. They enjoy silence, they enjoy things they have never enjoyed before, and this enjoyment is much longer lasting.

Even when the music stops, something of it still lingers and continues within you.
And this is not relief.
The difference between pleasure and this quality of happiness is that it is not relief, but enrichment. You become more filled and as if you begin to overflow. When you listen to good music, it triggers a process in your being, and harmony arises within you – you become musical. Or, dancing, you suddenly forget your body; your body becomes weightless. Gravity loses its power over you. Suddenly you are in a different space: the ego loses its density, and the dancer melts and dissolves in the dance.

This is much higher, much deeper than the pleasure of food or sex. There is depth in it. But this is also not the ultimate.

The ultimate happens only when you are completely awake, when you are a Buddha, when all sleep has disappeared – and with it all the dream, when your entire being is filled with light, when there is no darkness left inside you. All the darkness has disappeared, and with the disappearance of this darkness, the ego has disappeared. All tensions have subsided, all anxieties, all longing have disappeared. You are in a state of total contentment. You live in the present; there is no longer any past or future. You are wholly here and now. This moment is everything.
Now is the only time, and here is the only space. And then – suddenly – the whole sky descends upon you. This is bliss. This is true happiness...
Osho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rF5pcIGAy5w - And how would I live a little longer, How would I stretch out the bliss...[/b]. (Agata Kristi _Astrologer_)

Death is not the opposite of life, but rather its complement. It is not the end of life, but merely a transition to a new state of being. Life continues after death, just as it existed before birth. Life is not limited to the brief period between birth and death; rather, birth and death are merely two points on the infinite continuum of existence. There is nothing to fear in death; it is simply a natural part of life. But we must learn to live fully and to die gracefully. There is an art to living, and there is an art to dying, and the latter is perhaps even more important than the former. Only those who know how to live well can truly know how to die well...
Osho

From the day my grandfather died, death became my... constant companion. On that day, I too died, for I realized with clarity: it doesn't matter if you live for seven years or seventy - he was seventy at the time - you will still die someday. (c) Osho

He was a good, kind man, and he died so simply. What was the meaning of his life? This question haunted me: what was the meaning of his life? What did he achieve? For seventy years, he remained a good man, but what was the point of it all? Life vanished without a trace, leaving nothing behind. My grandfather's death deeply troubled me. I began to contemplate serious questions even before his death. At the age of four, I started pondering issues that people usually only begin to consider towards the end of their lives. But I didn't want to waste time. I started asking questions to my maternal grandfather. He usually replied:
Oh, these questions! You have your whole life ahead of you, you are still very young, don't rush. - Grandfather, I've seen boys in the village die: they never asked such questions, they died without finding an answer. Can you guarantee that I won't die tomorrow or the day after? Can you guarantee that I will only die after I get answers to my questions?

I cannot guarantee that, because death is not subject to me, just as life is not. - Then don't tell me to wait until I grow up. I want to know the answer immediately. If you know the answer, please tell me. If you don't know, then just tell me honestly. Soon he realized that it wouldn't work with me any other way. Saying "yes"... you start having a hard time, because you have to answer follow-up questions, delve into the topic - you can't fool me. Grandfather honestly admitted that he didn't know the answers to my questions.

I said to him:
You are old and may die soon. What have you been doing all your life? On the threshold of death, you will be left only with your ignorance. I am not asking you simple questions; they are very important to me. You go to the Temple. I ask you: why do you go there? What do you find there? You have been going there all your life and trying to persuade me to go with you. He built this Temple. One day, he realized that the whole answer was that "I built this Temple. If even I don't go there, then who will? But I will tell you frankly: yes, it was all in vain. I went there all my life, but I didn't find anything there." Then I said:

Try something else. Don't die with a question, die with an answer. But he died with a question. The last time we talked - it was ten hours before his death - he opened his eyes and said: - You were right: don't put anything off until tomorrow. I am dying with many questions. I admit that I gave you bad advice. You were right: you shouldn't put things off until tomorrow. If you have a question, look for the answer as soon as possible.

Death remains the only exception: everything else in the world has already been spoiled by man.

When someone dies, when someone you knew, loved, lived with, and who became a part of your life dies, something in you also dies. Of course, you will miss them, you will feel a void - that is natural. But that same void can be transformed into a door. For death is a door to God. Death is the only thing that man has not yet spoiled. Man has already spoiled everything, desecrated everything. Only death remains untouched, unspoiled, unsoiled by human hands. Man would gladly take possession of death too, but it remains unconquered, it does not yield to him. Death is elusive; it remains a mystery. Man is confused. He doesn't know what to do with death.

Man does not understand death; it cannot be subjected to scientific analysis, which is why it still remains unspoiled. Death remains the only exception: everything else in the world has already been spoiled by man. Make use of these moments. When death unexpectedly penetrates your consciousness, all of life seems meaningless. It truly is meaningless. Death reveals the truth. When you unexpectedly encounter death, it seems as if the ground is falling out from under your feet. Suddenly, you realize that the death of this person also means your own death. Every death is a death for each of us.
Osho

A person is born to achieve life, and whether they do so or not depends on them. They may miss it. They may breathe, eat, continue to age, they may continue to move towards the grave – but that is not life. It is a gradual dying, beginning at birth and ending at the grave, a seventy-year gradual death. And since millions of people around you are dying this gradual, slow death, you too begin to imitate them. Children learn everything from those who surround them, and we are surrounded by the dead. Therefore, first of all, you should understand what I mean by the word "life."

It must be more than just aging. It must be growing. And these are two different things. Every animal is capable of aging. Growing is the prerogative of human beings. And only a few people use this right. Growing is an instantaneous, ever-deepening immersion in the stream of life, it is moving away from death further and further – it is a movement not towards death. The deeper you go into life, the more you realize the immortality within yourself – you move away from death. There comes a moment when you can see that death is nothing more than a change of clothes, a change of home, a change of form – nothing dies, nothing can die.

Death is the greatest of all illusions.
As for growing, just observe a tree. When a tree grows, its roots grow downwards, into the depths. There is a balance: the higher the tree grows, the deeper its roots penetrate. A tree of great height with short roots cannot survive; they will not be able to hold such a huge tree. To grow in life means to delve into oneself – to where your roots are.

In my opinion, the first principle of life is meditation. Everything else comes after. And childhood is the best time. You age, and that means you are getting closer to death, which means it is becoming more and more difficult to enter into meditation. Meditation means entering into your immortality, entering into your eternity, entering into your divinity. And a child is most suited for this, because he is not yet burdened with knowledge, not burdened with religion, not burdened with education, not burdened with all sorts of nonsense. He is innocent. But, unfortunately, his innocence is condemned as ignorance. Ignorance and innocence are similar, but they are not the same. Ignorance is the absence of knowledge, just as is innocence. But there is also a huge difference that humanity has not yet paid attention to.

Innocence not only does not possess knowledge – but it does not strive to acquire it. It is completely satisfied, content with itself. A small child has no ambitions, no desires. He is so absorbed in the moment – a flying bird captures his attention so completely; just a butterfly, its beautiful colors – and he is enchanted; a rainbow in the sky – and he cannot imagine that there could be anything more important, more valuable than this rainbow. The night sky is filled with stars, myriads of stars for him.

Innocence is wealth, it is fullness, it is purity.
Ignorance is poor, it is like a beggar, it wants this, it wants that, it wants to possess knowledge, it wants to be respectable, it wants to be rich, it wants to be powerful. Ignorance goes the way of desire. But since neither contains knowledge, we have not yet understood their nature. We have come to believe that these two things are the same.

The first step in the art of life will be to distinguish between ignorance and innocence. Innocence should be supported, protected – because the child brings with him the greatest treasure, that treasure that the wise men acquire after strenuous efforts. The wise say that they have become children again, that they have been reborn.

In India, the true Brahmin, the true knower, calls himself "dwijemu" – twice-born. Why twice-born? What happened to the first birth? What is the need for a second birth? And what is he going to get in the second birth? "In the second birth, he will receive what was available in the first, but was destroyed, broken by society, by parents, by the people around him."

Every child is not filled with knowledge. His simplicity must somehow be eliminated – because simplicity will not help him in this world of competition. Because of it, he will look like a simpleton in the eyes of the world; his innocence will be used in all sorts of ways. Fearing society, fearing the world, we are forced to remake ourselves; we try to make every child smart, "cunning, filled with knowledge, so that he can acquire the most prestigious position in society. And the child, once he begins to grow in the wrong direction, continues to move in that direction – all his life goes in that direction.
Once you realize that you have missed life, the first thing you need to regain is innocence. Throw away your knowledge, forget your writings, forget your religions, your theology, your philosophy. Be born again, become innocent – and this is in your power. Cleanse your mind of all alien ideas, of everything borrowed, of everything that has come from traditions, customs, of everything that is given to you by others – by parents, teachers, university professors. Just get rid of it.

Become simple again, become a child again. And this miracle is possible with the help of meditation. Meditation is simply an unusual surgical method that cuts you off from everything alien and leaves only what is your true being. It burns away everything superfluous and leaves you naked, alone under the sun, in the wind. You become as if the first person who came to earth, who knows nothing, who must discover everything, who must be a seeker, who must go on a journey...
Osho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyA-3kuEDHA -

We drank life but did not become wiser.
We lived death but did not become younger.

Sweeper, dear sweeper. Sweep me off the pavement...
Oh God, you and I in the shade by the water
We walked the road of dreams
And now we wither like flowers
Dandelions, girls and boys

Eyes shine, la la laila
But this is poison, la la laila... (Agata Kristi - Dvornyk)

This is a crazy world. From your innocence, if it is childlike innocence, there are two paths. Either you will end up in this big madhouse called the world, or, if you move in a different direction, and this path is open to you, you may eventually become wise.

It is simply necessary to remember what the difference is between these two paths. The path that leads to the madhouse, the big madhouse called the world, is crowded. Avoid the crowd. You can be sure that the place where everyone is going is a trap. Common logic says: “This is the right way, because everyone is going that way, how can it be wrong?”
But I tell you: find a path that no one walks. And you have every chance of eventually becoming wise. Even your first step is already the right step towards ultimate realization. The crowd is followed by cowards. And I have never heard of a coward becoming enlightened. They can become Christian sheep, but they cannot become lions. And I want my people to be lions. Choose the path that leads you to greater and greater solitude. Choose an unconventional path, an unorthodox path. Choose a path that will be revolutionary at its core. Every step is a rebellion against all the past and the old. This rotten nonsense drives the whole world crazy.

And on this path, you are no longer a Christian. You cannot be, because being a Christian means being part of the crowd. You are no longer a Hindu, because you are no longer part of the crowd, you are a loner. Only individuals can become awakened. Crowds never achieve enlightenment. Only individuals, only people who have enough spirit and courage to be alone, can stop the movement of the mind and become rooted in their inner innocence.
The deeper you go into yourself, the purer the sources of consciousness you find. When you reach the very center of your being, you reach the center of the universe. Then wisdom blossoms. This is a rebirth, a resurrection. You die as the world wanted you to be, and you find exactly what existence wants from you. Existence gives you everything you ask for, everything you desire.

The so-called crazy world will only promise, but the promises will remain just words. People die in this world after a long life of despair and torment. If you want to die ecstatically, you will have to choose the path of solitude. This is also the path of meditation, because your absolute solitude is always within. Outside, you will always encounter the crowd – on any road. Maybe you have chosen a path that seems quiet, on which there is no movement, but you do not know what lies ahead. Everywhere you will find one or another crowd. Sometimes this crowd is larger – Catholics, for example – sometimes smaller, but you will encounter it. There is only one path that leads inward and on which you will not meet a single living soul. Here you will find only silence and peace. Then you will find yourself, and after that, even you will no longer be there.

Loneliness becomes so rich and dense that you cannot be there, you cannot have an “I,” an ego, a sense of separation from existence. Your “I” is nothing more than a feeling of separation. And when you discover that you are one with existence, no knowledge is needed. In your innocence, you will know everything significant, everything beautiful, everything true. But it will not be a repetition of any scriptures, it will not be borrowed. It will belong only to you, it will bear your signature.
And this is one of the greatest blessings in life – to have an experience that belongs entirely to you, that is not a copy. Only what is completely new, original, what arises from the very source of your being, can give you satisfaction, a sense of fulfillment, happiness, and a deep understanding of all the mysteries of life and being.

Innocence is a good start, but remember that there are two kinds of innocence: one belongs to a child, the other to a meditator. The meditator also becomes a child, but at such a different level, at such a great height – as if a child is in a valley, and an enlightened person who has returned to childhood is on a sunlit peak. The distance is enormous. But there is some similarity, a thread leading from the child to the heart of the wise. The child cannot understand the wise, but the wise can understand the child. Always remember this as a fundamental rule: what is below cannot understand what is above, but what is above can always understand what is below.

And in your life, if something can be compared to that peak, it is your childhood. Try to enter it again. Do not hide it behind knowledge, so that you can forget it. Cast aside all the accumulated information in order to rediscover your innocence. As you get rid of your knowledge, you will get rid of the mind itself, because your mind is just a collective name for your knowledge. It is not something indivisible – just as we call the plants around us a “garden,” but the garden is just a collective name. If you go looking for a garden, you will not find it, you will always see individual trees, rose bushes, seasonal flowers, but you will not find the garden itself.

Remember, we are often misled by collective names. We begin to think that they are real, but this is not so. Society does not exist. Organized religion does not exist, there is only an appearance. There is no Christianity, no Islam, no Buddhism, they are all just an illusion. What exists is individual.
The mind does not exist, it is just a collective name for all your knowledge. Take them out gradually, and when you have extracted everything you know, you will not find any mind there, not even a container in which all this information was placed. There is no repository. Completely innocent, centered in themselves, understanding that life is a mystery, and that there is nothing that can be known, that knowledge is impossible in its nature, we are surrounded by the wonderful. And it is wonderful that we are surrounded by the wonderful, because it turns life into an endless delight, ecstasy.

You will never get tired of discovering new spaces within yourself. You will never get bored, because there is always something new as you go deeper. And the deeper you go into yourself, the closer you are to existence itself, because deep inside you are rooted in it. If a tree grows towards its roots, it will find the earth, it will find the ocean. It is rooted in the earth, drawing water from the ocean.

If we strive to the center… You will be surprised to learn that our center also puts down roots in existence, although they are invisible roots. Our consciousness is like air. It is invisible, but you can feel it. You feel when the air is cool, when it is hot. You can feel your consciousness in different ways: when it is pure, it is cool, when it is polluted, it is hot. Polluted by anger, polluted by greed, polluted by desires, polluted by goals – it burns, it is not relaxed, and then there is no peace inside. But when all these desires leave you, an extraordinary coolness appears, and it continues to grow.

As you approach yourself, you approach the universe. And the greatest moment in your life is the moment of accepting the mystery of existence as it is, without any questions. You have understood one thing: being is mysterious and will remain mysterious. No knowledge is needed. This means that you have become comfortable with the fact that the universe is mysterious, and you have become comfortable with the fact that you yourself are innocent.
This is a second birth. In India, we called this state dvija. And this is the essence of our search here.
Osho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYzLNgnraKc

What’s going on here? Is that a Wah-Gitar?

Baba Yaga Guitar.

Baba Yagg Gita.

lol


Why does humanity seem so driven to follow the path of global suicide?


The reason is clear. People have clearly realized that there is no meaning in their lives, that nothing happens except misfortune; that life has nothing to offer them but anxiety and inner pain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8EmyhHQcfI - two ships (Agatha Christie)

Individuals have committed suicide in all eras. And you will be surprised: the people who committed suicide were always slightly more rational than normal people. Among psychologists, suicides occur twice as often as among representatives of other professions. Artists, poets, and philosophers either go mad or commit suicide. Idiots never commit suicide; they never go mad.

Idiots never commit suicide because they cannot even think about meaning, significance, or purpose. They do not think at all; they simply live like vegetables. The higher the intelligence, the more dangerous it is, because it forces you to realize that the life you are living is simply hollow, completely empty. There is nothing to hold onto. You know that tomorrow will be a repetition of today, so what is the point of continuing?

Individuals committed suicide because only individuals reached a certain stage of intelligence where they pondered whether there was any meaning in life. And now, for the first time, millions of people across the Earth have reached a level of maturity where they feel that life is meaningless. This is precisely why humanity is moving toward global suicide. It seems there is no reason to continue — for what purpose? You have lived your life and found nothing. Now your children will live, and they will find nothing: generation after generation, in your hands there is only emptiness — no fulfillment, no satisfaction.

But, as far as I can see, this gives a person an invaluable opportunity. Only highly intelligent people committed suicide or went mad because they could not live in this crazy world. They could not adapt to all the various kinds of madness all around them. They felt themselves falling apart — that was their madness. But only such people also became enlightened.

Thus, here are three possibilities for intelligence. An intelligent person either goes mad because they cannot understand what is happening, why it is happening, or why they must do this or that. Or, seeing this situation, seeing that they are going mad, they commit suicide to end their life. This happens in most cases in the West.

In the East, people of the same kind tried to do something else — not madness, but meditation. The West is poor in this sense. It does not know the richness of meditation. It does not know that meditation can transform your entire vision of life; it can give you boundless meaning, beauty, and blessing. Then life becomes something sacred, and you cannot destroy it.

You should notice this: in the East, the suicide rate is very low compared to the West; the percentage of people going mad is very low compared to the West. Furthermore: in the East, those who go mad are actually not very intelligent people. They are psychologically ill. It was not intelligence that led them to madness; something was missing in their minds. Perhaps the food was wrong, or there wasn't enough of it for their minds to mature. Their vegetarian diet lacks certain proteins absolutely necessary for the growth of intelligence.

Thus, madness in the West and in the East is completely different. In the East, it is something psychological: people lack certain things, their growth is stunted, their minds were unable to grow as they should have.

The people who commit suicide in the East are also different from those who commit suicide in the West. In the East, people commit suicide due to hunger or poverty because they cannot manage to continue living — and life becomes such a torment. There is a qualitative difference between them.

But intelligent people in the East always turned to meditation. Every time they felt that there was no meaning in life, they tried to find meaning within themselves; this is precisely the path of meditation. They tried to find the very source of life and love, and they found it. Everyone who looks inside inevitably finds it. It is not far away; it is right inside you. You carry it within you all the time!

The Western intelligentsia seeks meaning outside, but there is no meaning outside. Western people seek a state of bliss externally. Remember, beauty is in the eye of the beholder; it is not external. The same is true regarding meaningfulness, the state of bliss, and blessing. It is within your vision, within you. When you have it, you can project it onto all existence. But first, you must find it within yourself.

If Jean-Paul Sartre, Marcel, Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, and people like them had been born in the East, they would have become enlightened beings. But in the West, they all ended up immeasurably burdened by spiritual pain and longing. They found that everything is accidental and meaningless, that there is no meaning in life, that joy is only a place, only a hope; in reality, it does not exist.

The West needs meditation. The East needs medicine; it is physically ill. The West is spiritually ill. Once we clearly understand this problem... Now it is not the East that is dangerous to the world; at most, its people may die of hunger, as they do in Ethiopia. But that is not dangerous for the world. In fact, in a certain sense, the starving East helps the world through its mortality. It reduces the world's population. This makes everyone richer, even if you don't know it yourself. A thousand inhabitants of Ethiopia die every day — perhaps you do not see that they contribute to your comfort, but they do, because if the world's population decreases, people can live in greater comfort, with more ease and joy. The problem does not come from the East; the problem comes from the West. The problem is that the Western intelligentsia has become sated with life, and therefore there is no truly strong resistance from the intelligentsia against nuclear weapons or a third world war. In fact, it seems deep down the Western mind hopes in one way or another that it will happen soon, because life is meaningless. If, instead of risking suicide yourself, politicians manage to destroy the whole world at once, it will be much easier. You won't have to face the dilemma of to be or not to be. You won't have to decide whether to destroy yourself or not, or wonder if perhaps tomorrow everything will be different.

Suicide is an individual responsibility, but in a global war, in a nuclear war, all your personal responsibility disappears. It is not your action; it just happens.

Why doesn't the Western intelligentsia truly fight against nuclear weapons? Why do scientists — part of the intelligentsia — still serve governments? The simplest way out would be if all the scientists who create nuclear weapons resigned. They should say: "Enough. We cannot create a weapon that will destroy life on Earth." And poets, philosophers, artists — it seems they do not protest. They simply remain spectators. There is a specific reason behind this. People of the Western part of humanity have turned into spectators — in every respect. You don't play football; there are twenty-four professionals for that, and their job is to play football. Millions of people are just spectators, and they get so excited... jumping in their seats, yelling, screaming. If they aren't at the stadium, they sit at home before a TV screen and make the same gestures. Someone else plays; you are only a spectator.

The average American watches television from five to six hours a day: for six hours he is just a spectator, not a participant. Then there are movies where you are spectators, boxing matches where you are spectators. It seems you have lost touch with life. You simply see how others live; your life consists only of watching. Someone participates in the world chess championship, and you watch. Can you really not play chess yourself? Can you really not play football yourself?

This is not far off, it's already happening... soon you won't make love to your wife or your girlfriend — someone else will do it, and you will watch, jumping: "Yes! Great! A little more!"

You give your entire life to others so they can live it for you, and then you ask where all the meaning went, why you don't feel alive, why there is no significance in your life. Spectators cannot have significance — only participants who are totally involved, intensely involved in every action.

Therefore, perhaps the Western intelligentsia simply remains in the position of TV viewers, waiting for a third world war to appear on the program schedule. Listening to the radio, reading newspapers... Are you going to do something yourself or not?

It is precisely action that makes your juices flow. If you just watch, your own juices will dry up. You will become simply a skeleton.

I am surprised that the West constitutes a strong, educated, rational majority in the world, but no one does anything, takes no measures. AIDS is spreading — and you just watch. Your governments pile up nuclear weapons, preparing a funeral pyre for you — and you just watch..
.Osho

Many questions can be asked about these sheets, but I'd rather boil them down to one: what exactly is going on here?

Philosophizing. Forget about it.

Man lives in misery; he has lived in misery for centuries. Few human beings can be found who are not miserable. This happens so rarely that it seems almost unbelievable. That is why people do not believe that human beings like the Buddha ever existed at all. This is exactly what Sigmund Freud says: people like the Buddha are "wishful thinking."

People think that Buddhas were probably invented, that people like Gautama Buddha were a dream of humanity. Their misery is so great, and they are so deeply mired in it, that they see no possibility of escaping from it. This is exactly what Sigmund Freud says: people like the Buddha are "wishful thinking." We ourselves want to be such people, we want to escape suffering, we want to possess the same silence, the same peace, the same blessing — but it did not happen. And Freud says that there is no hope; this cannot happen by the very nature of things. Man cannot become happy.

Freud should be listened to very carefully and very deeply; his opinion cannot simply be dismissed. He was one of the most perceptive minds that ever existed, and when he says that happiness is impossible, when he says that hoping for happiness means hoping for the impossible, — he knows what he is talking about. This is not a philosopher's conclusion. He was led to this conclusion by his own observations of human misery. Freud was not a pessimist, but observing thousands of human beings, penetrating deeper and deeper into their psyche, he realized that man is constructed in such a way that there is a built-in mechanism creating a miserable existence.

At most, a man can live comfortably, but never — in ecstasy. At most, we can make life a little more convenient — with the help of scientific technologies, through social changes, improving economic conditions and other things — but man will still remain miserable. How can Freud believe that such a person as Buddha ever existed? Such serenity seems simply a dream; Buddha appeared to humanity like a sleep.

This idea arises because the Buddha is so rare, so exceptional. He does not belong to the general rule.
Why does man remain in such misery? The miracle is that everyone wants to be happy. Not a single person can be found who wants to be miserable, and yet everyone lives in misery. Everyone wants to be happy, blissful, peaceful, quiet. Everyone wants to be in joy, everyone wants to celebrate — but this seems impossible. Perhaps there must be some very deep reason, so deep that Freudian analysis could not reach it, so deep that logic could not penetrate it.

One of the fundamentals must be understood. Man wants happiness; that is exactly why he is miserable. The more you want to be happy, the more miserable you become. This seems very absurd, but this is precisely the root cause. And if you understand the process of how the human mind functions, you will be able to realize it.

Man strives to be happy; thereby he creates suffering. If you want to escape suffering, you will have to escape from your own striving for happiness — and then no one will be able to make you miserable. This is exactly what Freud overlooked. He could not understand that the cause of misery could be the very striving for happiness.
How does this happen? Why do you strive for happiness at all? And what does this striving for happiness bring you?
By beginning to strive for happiness, in the same instant you move away from the present, you move away from the existential; you have already moved into the future — which is nowhere, which has not yet arrived. You have moved into dreams, and dreams can never bring fulfillment. Your striving for happiness is a dream, and a dream is unreal.

With the help of the unreal, no one has ever managed to achieve the real. You took the wrong train.
The striving for happiness simply shows that at this very moment you are not happy. The striving for happiness simply shows that you are a miserable being. And a miserable being projects life into the future, imagining that one day — on some day, in some way — it will be happy. Your projection stems from suffering; it carries within itself the very seeds of suffering. It comes from you; it cannot be different from you. It is like your child — its face looks like yours; its blood flows in your veins. It will be a continuation of you.

Today you are unhappy. You create a projection, imagining that you will be happy tomorrow, but tomorrow is a projection of you and everything that you are today. You are unhappy — tomorrow will arise from this misery, and you will be even more unhappy. Of course, from greater misery you will again wish for greater happiness in the future. Now you are caught in the trap of a vicious circle: the more miserable you become, the more you desire happiness; the more you desire happiness, the more miserable you become. Thus the dog chases its own tail.

In Zen there is a specific name for this. Zen people say that it is like whipping a cart. If your horses are not moving and you continue to drive the cart, it will not help. You are miserable, and then everything you can dream of, everything you can project, will only bring even more suffering.

Therefore, the first thing to do is to stop creating dreams, to stop projecting. The first thing to do is to be here and now. Whatever happens, just be here and now — and a great revelation awaits you.

This revelation consists in the fact that no one can be miserable in the Here-and-Now.
Have you ever been miserable here and now? In this very moment — is there any possibility of being miserable right now? You can think about yesterday and become miserable. You can think about tomorrow and become miserable. But right in this very moment — in this pulsating, trembling, real moment — can you be miserable right now? Without any past, without any future?

You can bring misery from the past, from memory. Yesterday someone insulted you, and perhaps you still carry the wound, perhaps you still carry the grudge, perhaps you still feel miserable because of it: "Why? — why did this happen to me? Why did this person insult me? I did so much good for him, I always helped him, was always a friend, — and he insulted me!" You are playing with something that is no longer there. Yesterday has gone irrevocably.

Or you can be miserable because of tomorrow. Tomorrow you will run out of money — where will you live then? What will you eat? Tomorrow you will run out of money! — now misery enters. It comes either from yesterday or from tomorrow, but it is never here and now. Right in this moment, in the now, misery is impossible.
That is all you need to know so that you can become a Buddha. Then no one will block your path. Then you can forget all the Freuds; then happiness is not only possible, but has already happened. It is right before you, and you do not see it because you continue to look around.

Happiness is where you are — where you are, there is happiness. It surrounds you; it is a natural phenomenon. It is exactly like the air, exactly like the sky. Happiness should not be sought; it is the very substance of which the universe consists. Joy is the very substance of which the universe consists. But you should look straight ahead, you should look at what is immediately close. Looking around, you see nothing.
You are missing out because of yourselves. You are missing out because your approach is flawed.

But, continuing to die for the past and never thinking about the future, try to be miserable — you are doomed to fail! You will not succeed in being miserable; your failure is absolutely certain and predictable. You will not manage it — no matter how skilled you are at remaining miserable, no matter how much you practice, you cannot create misery in this very moment.
Osho

Is it really true that there is nothing more? My life seems so meaningless and empty. I keep thinking that there must be something more. I want there to be something more...

There is something immeasurably more, but your "wanting" becomes an obstacle to achieving it. Desire surrounds you like a wall: unwillingness becomes a door. This is one of the most paradoxical, but also one of the most fundamental laws of life: desire, and you will miss it; do not desire, and everything will be yours.

Jesus says: seek and you shall find. Buddha says: do not seek, lest you miss it. Jesus says: ask, and it will be given to you. Buddha says: do not ask, otherwise it will never be given to you. Jesus says: knock, and the door will be opened. Buddha says: wait... watch... the door is not closed at all. If you start knocking, that very knocking will show that you are not knocking on the door – you are knocking on the wall, because the door is always open.
Jesus is enlightened just as much as Buddha is – because there can be no question of greater or lesser enlightenment.

So where does this difference come from? The difference comes from the people to whom Jesus addresses himself. He speaks to people who are uninitiated, uninitiated in the mysteries of life. Buddha speaks to a group of a completely different kind – to initiates, to adepts, to those who know how to understand the paradoxical. The paradoxical means mysterious. You say: "My life seems so meaningless and empty..." It seems so meaningless and empty because you are constantly craving more. Let go of this craving, and then you will undergo a radical transformation. Emptiness disappears immediately when you stop asking for more.
Emptiness comes as a side effect when you ask for more, it follows the desire for more like a shadow. Let the desire disappear, and then look around – the shadow is gone.

It is in the demand for more that our mind consists – in the constant demand for more. No matter how much you have, the mind will ask for more again. And because it continues to ask for more, you continue to feel empty, to feel that you are missing out on a lot. See the essence: this emptiness is created by the desire for more. This emptiness does not exist, it is only apparent, but it looks quite real when you are caught in the web of desire.

See that desire is the cause of your emptiness. Observe your desire, and in observation it disappears – and with it, the emptiness disappears. Then a deep realization comes. You feel so full that you feel like you are about to overflow. You have so much that you begin to share, you begin to give – giving out of pure joy of giving, without any other reason. You become like a cloud full of rain: it must pour out somewhere. It will rain even on rocks where nothing grows; it will rain unconditionally. It will not ask if this is the right place to pour out. It is so burdened with rainwater that it must pour out in order to be free from the burden.

When desire disappears, you are so full of bliss, so full of contentment, so full of fulfillment that you begin to share. This happens by itself. And then there is meaning in life, there is significance. Then there is poetry, beauty, grace. Then there is music, harmony – your life becomes a dance.
This emptiness and meaninglessness is your own creation, and you can fix it. You say: "I keep thinking that there must be something more." This is what creates the difficulty. And I am not saying that there is nothing more, there is more – immeasurably more than you can even imagine. I have seen it, I have heard it, I have experienced it – there is infinitely more! But you will never touch it if desire continues. Desire is a wall, non-desire is a bridge. Bliss is a state of non-desire, suffering is a state of desire.

You say: "I want there to be something more." The more you want it, the more you will miss it. The choice is yours. If you want to remain unhappy, desire more, more and more, and you will miss more and more. This is your choice, remember, this is your responsibility. No one is forcing you. If you really want to see what is, do not crave the future, do not crave more. Just see what is.

The mind constantly asks, desires, demands, and creates disappointment because it lives in expectations. The whole world suffers from a feeling of meaninglessness, and the reason is that man asks for more than he has ever asked for before. For the first time, man desires more than he has ever desired.

Science has given him so much hope, so much support to desire more.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the whole world was full of great optimism, because science was opening new doors, and everyone thought: "The golden age has come, it is enough to turn the corner. We have reached it. In our lifetime, we will see that paradise has descended on earth." Naturally, everyone began to desire more, more and more.
Paradise did not descend on earth. On the contrary, the earth has become hell. Science unleashed desire, supported your desires. It supported your hopes that these desires could be fulfilled. And the result was that the whole world lives in a state of deep unhappiness. It has never been like this before. This is very strange, because for the first time, a person has more at his disposal than ever before.

For the first time, a person has more security, more protection, more scientific technology, more comfort than ever before. But there is also more meaninglessness. Man has never been in such despair, in such desperate effort to get more.

Science gives you desire; meditation gives you insight into desire. This insight helps to let go of desire. And then, suddenly, what was hidden until now becomes apparent, becomes manifest. Something bursts forth within you, and everything you ever wanted is fulfilled... everything and more. More is available than you could ever imagine, more than anyone can imagine. The unimaginable descends upon you. But prepare the ground. Prepare the right ground. Non-desire is what this right ground is called.
Just be in a receptive mood. You are aggressive – you want more, and this is a subtle aggression. Be receptive, open, accessible... and then all possible miracles await you.
Osho ("The Book of Awareness")

So, what’s the discussion about? Are we talking about cutting down trees?

Cut out?

Yes.