Meet with all your luggage 1 страница

in the Plaza after the Evening Meeting at 9:15 pm

on:

(*) Please eat dinner before we meet, as there is none provided on the first night.

SUPPLIES/MATERIAL ORDER

· gong and hammer

· big clock and a timer

· Japanese screens for the room and the interview space

· enough mattresses, pillows and Zen cushions

· meditation benches

· blankets, sheets (flat and fitting), pillow cases

· towels and towel racks

· clothes racks with hangers

· tissues (a lot)

· 2 Tibetan bells

· notebook

· mirror and stand for mirror

· silence badges and a bowl to put them in

· blindfolds

· a bowl for watches and the jewelry

· scissors, scotch tape

· safety pins, cotton labels and 2 markers

· 2 flash lights

· alarm clock (for assistants)

· mosquito machines

· different signs (reserved for...)

· 2 big bins for laundry (towels)

· table cloths (long black) for tables/benches in the room

KITCHEN ORDER

OSHO QUOTES

I USED TO ASK MYSELF “WHO AM I?”

I used to ask myself, "Who am I?" It is impossible to count how many days and nights I passed in this query. The intellect gave answers heard from others, or born of conditioning. All of them were borrowed, lifeless. They brought no contentment. They resonated a little at the surface, and then disappeared. The inner being was not touched by them. No echo of them was heard in the depths. There were many answers to the question, but none was correct. And I was untouched by them. They could not rise to the level of the question.

Then I saw that the question came from the center but the replies touched only the periphery. The question was mine, but the answers came from outside; the question arose from my innermost being, the replies were imposed from outside. This insight became a revolution. A new dimension was revealed.

The responses of the intellect were meaningless. They had no relevance to the problem. An illusion had shattered. And what a relief it was!

It seemed as if a closed door had been flung open, filling the darkness with light. The intellect had been providing the answers -- that was the mistake. Because of these false answers, the real answer could not arise. Some truth was struggling to surface. In the depths of consciousness some seed was seeking the way to break open the ground in order to reach the light. Intellect was the obstruction.

When this was made plain, the answers began to subside. Knowledge acquired from outside began to evaporate. The question went ever deeper. I did not do anything, only kept on watching.

Something novel was happening. I was speechless. What was there to do? I was, at the most, simply a witness. The reactions of the periphery were fading, perishing, becoming nonexistent. The center now began to resonate more fully.

"Who am I?" My entire being was throbbing with this thirst.

What a violent storm it was! Every breath quaked and trembled in it.

"Who am I?" - like an arrow, the question pierced through everything and moved within.

I remember -- what an acute thirst it was! My very life had turned into thirst. Everything was burning. And like a flame of fire the question stood forth, "Who am I?"

The surprise was that the intellect was completely silent. The incessant flow of thoughts had stopped. What had happened? The periphery was absolutely still. There were no thoughts, no conditionings of the past.

Only I was there -- and there was the question too. No, no -- I myself was the question.

And then the explosion. In a moment, everything was transformed. The question had dropped. The answer had come from some unknown dimension.

Truth is attained through a sudden explosion, not gradually.

It cannot be compelled to appear. It comes.

Emptiness is the solution, not words. Becoming answerless is the answer.

Someone asked yesterday -- and someone or the other asks every day -- "What is the answer?"

I say, "If I mention it, it is meaningless. Its meaning lies in realizing it oneself."

Seeds of Wisdom, #13

THE QUESTION OF “WHO AM I?”

[The enlightenment intensive group was present. One member says: It was the question of 'Who am I?' which was very agonising to me.]

It is agonising, because if you go deep into it, it creates the greatest ecstasy possible... but the way to ecstasy goes through agony. It is agonising because the moment you ask, 'Who am I?' you become aware that you don't know. Not knowing is very agonising, it hurts the ego: 'So I don't know even myself?' This is too much. 'I was always thinking I know everything, and I don't know even myself.'

This is unacceptable to the ego. The ego feeds on knowledge, information -- and this is very very sad: what else to claim you know if you don't know yourself? What is the point of claiming that you know anything else? The foundation -- that you know yourself -- is lacking.

The question 'Who am I?' is meant to bring you to your right senses.... It is to hit you hard so that you become aware that you don't know yourself. That is the agony of it -- as if you had much, and the question has taken it away from you. You used to think you are this and you are that -- and this simple question has taken all identities away. You are left in a vacuum.

Just to feel that you don't know yourself, is so maddening. One wants to cling to something -- anything: name, form, body, mind, soul, some theory, some hypothesis, anything -- but one wants to cling to something, so that one is not lost in this emptiness. That's why the agony.

But if you persist, if you persevere, if you go deep into it and you accept that the agony is okay, by and by you will see that the agony has disappeared. The clouds are no more there... the smoke has gone far away. You are in a clearance; things are more clear. Not that you will know who you are. This question is not meant to bring an answer -- the answer never comes; it is just a device to destroy the false answers.

The real answer never comes, because a real answer never comes inwards. It is not that some day suddenly it will bubble up and you will know, 'Okay, so this is who I am' -- no! All knowledge will disappear, and then the agony will disappear. You will be so perfectly at ease within yourself, so rooted, so undisturbed, so tranquil and calm. Now there is no answer, you cannot verbalise -- but you know.

This knowing is totally different from knowledge. It has nothing to do with the mind. It is not of the mind. It is an experience -- or rather, experiencing. You have encountered your reality face -- to-face; you have seen it.

Not that you can say who you are -- nobody has ever been able to. Whosoever has come to the ultimate core of his being has never said who he is. It cannot be said -- but it is tremendously blissful to see it, to feel it, to be it. It is not an intellectual answer that arises, but an existential response.

You become a babe of bliss. You become a great blissful state. Old identities disappear, and a new identity is not formed. So agony is there -- and you have to pass through it; that is the price we pay -- and then there is ecstasy.

If there is no agony in asking 'Who am I?' then you are not asking the question rightly. You are just playing around... you are not penetrating deep -- it is not like an arrow.

But it has been good. You suffered this -- this is good. This is a good indication that you worked hard at it. It is painful. All growth is painful....

Blessed Are the Ignorant, Ch # 8

YOU HAVE TO KNOW YOURSELF DIRECTLY

– NOT VIA OTHERS

Self-knowledge means that you have come to understand one thing: that you have to know yourself immediately, directly -- not through others, not via others. There is no need to ask anybody; how stupid it is to ask somebody: Who am I? How can anybody answer it? Go withinwards -- that is the search of the bull. Go into your own energy; it is there. Just taste it, just merge with it.

Once you have understood that you have to seek your identity within yourself, in total aloneness, you are becoming free from the masses, from the crowd. Individuality is born, you are becoming an individual, unique. And remember: when I say 'individual' I don't mean an egoist. An egoist is always part of the masses. The ego is the total of all the opinions that you have gathered from others about you, and hence the ego is very contradictory. Sometimes it says you are not beautiful, very ugly; sometimes it says you are very beautiful, very lovely; sometimes it says you are a fool; sometimes it says you are a wise man -- because in so many situations so many things have been said to you about you, and you have gathered all of them.

The ego is always in trouble. It is a false entity. It appears as if it is, and it is not.

When you become individual.... The word is good: it means indivisible. Individual means that which cannot be divided, that which cannot suffer any split, that which cannot be two, dual or many, that which is absolutely one, no division exists; then you are an individual. It has nothing to do with the ego. Ego is a barrier towards it because ego is always divided, so much so that many times people come to me and I ask them: Are you happy? -- they shrug their shoulders. I ask them: Are you unhappy? -- again they shrug their shoulders. They are not definite about what state of mind they are in, because there are many states of mind together within them. They would like to say both yes and no to every question. [….]

The ego is many, it is never one. Because it has been collected from so many different people it cannot be one. You are one, the ego is many. And if you think that you are the ego, then you are on the path of madness. Once you understand this, you can see the footprints of the bull.

The Search, #4

ORDINARILY YOU FOLLOW THE CROWD

Ordinarily, you follow the crowd. It is convenient, it is comfortable; it is like a sedative. With the crowd you need not worry; the responsibility is with the crowd. You can leave all the questions to the experts. And you can depend on a long tradition, the wisdom of the ages. When so many people are there doing one thing, it is easier to imitate them than to do your own thing, because once you start doing your own thing, doubts arise: maybe... are you right or wrong? With a great crowd doing something, you become part of it. The question never arises whether you are right or wrong. "So many people can't be wrong," the mind goes on saying, "they must be right. And for so many centuries they have been doing the same thing; there must be some truth in it." If doubt arises in you, then doubt is your fault. For centuries and centuries a crowd has been doing a certain thing. One can follow easily, imitate. But once you imitate others, you will never be able to know who you are. Then self-knowledge becomes impossible.

In the Malayan language, they have a word, lattah. It is very beautiful. The word means: people imitate others because they are frightened; out of fear people imitate others. Have you watched? If you are sitting in a theater and suddenly the theater is on fire and people start running, you will follow the crowd -- wherever the crowd is going. It happens when a ship is sinking, the greatest problem becomes this: that the whole crowd runs towards one direction, they all gather together on one corner, which helps the ship to sink sooner.

Whenever you are in fear, you lose individuality. Then there is no time to think and meditate, then there is no time to decide on your own; time is short and a decision is needed. In times of fear people imitate others. But ordinarily, also, you live in lattah, you live in a constant frightened state. And the crowd does not like you to become different, because that creates suspicion in others' minds also. [….]

Out of fear you go on following others. Out of fear you cannot becomean individual. So if you are really in search of the bull, then drop fear, because the search is such that you will be moving in danger, you will be taking risks. And the society and the crowd is not going to feel good. And the society will create all sorts of troubles for you, so that you can come back and become normal again. [….]

Man is the only escapist animal. If there is fear, then rather than encountering it he goes in another direction -- prays to God, asks for help. Feeling poverty, inside poverty, rather than encountering it he goes on accumulating wealth, so that he can forget that he is poor inside. Seeing that he does not know himself, rather than encountering this ignorance he goes on collecting knowledge, becomes knowledgeable, like a parrot, and goes on repeating borrowed things.

These are all escapes. If you really want to encounter yourself, you will have to learn how not to escape. Anger is there; don't escape from it. Whenever you feel angry, you start doing something to become occupied. Of course, if your energy moves in another direction, anger is repressed. It cannot get any energy from you; it falls back into the unconscious. But it will take revenge; sooner or later it will find an opportunity again and will come up out of all proportion to the situation.

If sex arises in you, you start doing something else, you start chanting a mantra. But these are all escapes. And remember: religion is not an escape. The religions that you know are all escapes; but the religion I am talking about is not an escape -- it is an encounter. Life has to be encountered. Whatsoever comes before you, you have to look into it deeply, because that same depth is going to become your self-knowledge.

Behind anger are the footprints of the bull. Behind sex are the footprints of the bull. If you escape from sex, anger, greed, this and that, you will be escaping from the footprints of the bull -- and then it will be impossible to find who you are. The Search, #4

WHY DOES MAN GO ON THINKING?

Thinking is like waves on the surface of consciousness, and the question is to know the depth. You can go on chasing the waves, you will not attain to anything. Your life will be a sheer wastage.

But why does man go on thinking? When it is a question of getting into one's own being, why does he keep clinging to the surface? It is out of fear; depth needs courage. You will have to dive deep. Who knows what there is in the depth? You may disappear, you may not be able to come back again, you may melt. And the depth is dark, very dark. On the surface there is light, and on the surface there are many people just like you; you are not lonely. In the depth you will be alone. The deeper you go the more alone you will be. At the very center of your being there is just aloneness and nothing else. There you cannot take your friends, crowds, people. Unless one is ready to go on this lonely pilgrimage, one continues thinking.

Thinking is a substitute, a substitute for something which is totally different -- deepening. Thinking needs talents, deepening needs only courage. In the world of thinking you can prove your ego very easily. If you are articulate, a little logical, cunning, clever, calculating, you can become a great man.

But in the depth no talent is needed; all that is needed is immense courage to be alone. [….]

We remain on the periphery, and the center is not far away, and you have not to travel long to reach the center. It can happen this very moment -- because it is your center. You may be keeping your back to it; just a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn and it is there. It has always been there, but you have not yet gathered enough courage to face yourself. So you get involved in so many things: in relationships, in business, in power politics, in ambitions. You go on getting involved in something or other just to avoid one single fact -- and that is you. This creates a double-bind. Because you are avoiding yourself you start creating a false self. One cannot live without a self; at least a nominal self, a nominal center is needed, otherwise you will fall apart, into pieces. Because you avoid the real self you have to create a false self; that is the ego.

The ego is a make-believe illusion, but very utilitarian. It gives you some idea of your being centered, although that idea is very chaotic. The ego cannot really give you the idea of being centered, although that idea is very chaotic, the ego cannot really give you the feeling of being centered. In the first place it is only a combination of many opinions that have been expressed about you by others. Somebody has said you are very great and somebody has condemned you. Now both the ideas are there. Somebody has said you are beautiful and somebody has said that you are ugly; now both the ideas are there.

Your ego is a patchwork: all the opinions that have been expressed about you, good and bad, favorable, unfavorable, are collected there. Out of these ideas you have created a kind of person in your mind, an image: "Who am I?" This image is very hodge-podge; that's why your life remains a chaos, a mess. And because this image has come from the outside, from people who don't know your center -- can't know your center, because even you don't know your center, how can they? it is always something which is opposite to your real center -- you become two persons instead of one. You become a duality. You are something and you believe yourself to be something else. You do one thing; you think you are doing it because of this motivation, but there is some other motivation of which you are completely unaware. You can never become integrated. You will go on becoming more and more schizophrenic.

I have heard...

There is a story about a spinster who had a habit of checking under the bed to see if it was safe to go to sleep. For years she went through this ritual of checking to make sure nobody was hiding there. After many years of doing this, one day she looked and, lo and behold, there was a man hiding under her bed.

She screamed from excitement and said, "So finally you are here! "

On the surface you are one thing, in the depths just the opposite. On the surface you may be a saint, in the depth a sinner. On the surface you may be very moral and deep down you may be carrying all kinds of immoral desires. On the surface you may look always very happy, smiling, and deep down you may be just despair and nothing else.

This distance goes on growing and becomes bigger and bigger as you grow in life and in experience. By the time you die you don't die as one man, you die as a crowd. The child is born as a single individual, but by the time he is eighty and ready to die, certainly he will be two persons. More possibility is that he will be more than two -- three, four, five, six, ten -- nobody knows. He can be a crowd.

You just watch yourself and you will not find a single self in you but many selves. You are multi-psychic, you have many minds, and each mind is fighting with your other minds. There is great competition inside, continuous quarrel. And in that quarrel, in that conflict, you are dissipating energy; and when you dissipate energy in constant civil war you lose zest for life. You lose all possibilities to be ecstatic, you lose joy.

The Secret, # 70

THE ONLY RIGHT QUESTION: “WHO AM I?”

Truth has to be discovered by everybody in his own being. You are truth! "[….] But how can you declare this unless you have reached to the very core of your being? Because we ask such questions, we are supplied with answers.

There is one economic law: wherever there is a demand there will be a supply. Ask a stupid question and you will get a thousand and one stupid answers. [….]

The only right and religious question is one: that is, who am I? Because nobody can answer it, that's why it is the only valid question -- only you can answer it. Nobody can say who you are, only you; and you too only when you go deep into yourself, beyond all the labels that are sticking on your surface: that "I am a doctor", that "I am an engineer", that "I am a businessman", that "I am a professor"; that "I am a Christian", that "I am a Hindu", that "I am a Catholic" or a communist, socialist; that "I am Indian", or German or Japanese.

When you start penetrating all these labels that have been stuck on you -- they are many, layers upon layers; if, you throw away one layer of labels you will find another layer of labels there -- you will have to peel all these labels off. Man has become almost like an onion: you have to peel all the layers off, and then only one day you reach to the center. That center is nothingness. Sufis call it fana: all is gone, all that you had believed in, all that you had trusted in, all those labels gone. You are no more a Hindu and no more a Mohammedan. You are no more a communist, no more a socialist. You are no more this or that -- neti-neti, neither this nor that. You have abandoned all those labels. You are not even a man or a woman, because consciousness cannot be man or woman. You are neither white nor black, because that is only the pigment in the body. You are not the body either. Why? -- because you can be conscious of the body. I can see my hand; that means the seer must be separate from the seen. I can observe my thoughts, so I am not my thoughts. I can watch my feelings, so I am not my feelings either. You go on, "I am not this thing, I am not that thing." You go on and on, then a moment comes: all things have been dropped. You are a no-thing; that means nothing.

Nothing is not a state of emptiness. Remember, nothing is not a state of emptiness, nothing simply means no-thing. You are a consciousness, not a thing. And the consciousness cannot be reduced to anything whatsoever. It is irreducible. The consciousness cannot be made an object, it always remains your subjectivity. The deeper you go, the deeper you will find it is standing beyond and beyond and beyond. It is always the beyond, the transcendental.

The Secret, # 7

THE DECISION SHOULD BE TOTAL

The night Buddha achieved enlightenment, he sat under the tree and he said: "I will not rise from this tree again in my life if I don't attain enlightenment. Finished!" he said, "I am finished with doing anything for it. I am going to sit here -- this tree is going to become my death." A total decision. At that moment he dropped the 'decidophobia' completely -- a total decision. Just meditate on it! And that very night, by the morning he became enlightened.

I have heard one story about a Sufi mystic, Baba Shaikh Farid:

Once a young man approached Farid and Farid was taking his bath in the Ganges river, and the man asked him how he might find God. Baba Shaikh Farid took hold of him, led him into the water, and when they had gone deep enough, he forced him under the water. The young man nearly drowned before the holy man released him.

"Why did you do that?" he gulped incredulously.

"When you long for God as much as you wanted air while you were underwater," replied Baba Shaikh Farid, "you will find him."

The desire should become so intense that you put all that you have at the stake. The passion to seek should be so total that not a single doubt is allowed to make you waver. The very intensity will bring truth. It can happen in a single moment! -- just you need to become a total intensity of inner fire.

The decision should be total. It is arduous, of course, but everybody has to pass through that arduousness once. One has to pay for truth, and there is no other way to pay for it -- you have to put your whole being on the altar. That is the only sacrifice that is needed.

The Search, # 6

TO BE CONSCIOUS IS TO GO THROUGH A DEEP SURGERY

The greater masses of the world are not interested in consciousness.

They are more interested in unconsciousness.

You will be surprised because you may not have heard them saying that they are interested in unconsciousness, but you can see them drinking alcohol -- all kinds of narcotics are being used, all kinds of drugs are being used. And there are other kinds of unconsciousnesses which are not produced by chemical drugs.

For example, in a movie, for three hours, for what are you searching? You are searching for three hours of unconsciousness. [….]

Consciousness is painful, because you will have to drop so much which you have carried your whole life thinking it very valuable. [….]

You will have to face again your original face which you have lost far back. You have become somebody else. You have been somebody else so long, that now to face your original face is going to shatter you completely.

To be conscious is not a game.

To be conscious is to go through a deep surgery.

And the problem is, you are the surgeon, and you are the patient. [….]

Consciousness is self-surgery. [….] Nobody can do it for somebody else; you can only do it for yourself.

This is the fundamental of spiritual surgery: you can only be successful on yourself.

Howsoever painful it is... but there is no other way. Yes, it pays tremendously if you can pass through the test. It is like entering in a house where nobody has entered for years … you will raise so much dust.

And that dust is not simple dust, it covers your wounds. It has helped you to forget yourself. It has made you unconscious of yourself. It is not like taking off your clothes, it is more like peeling off your skin.

But once you succeed, then all the pain seems to be just nothing, because the bliss that descends on you is incomparable; the pain that you suffered looks so tiny and so meaningless. But that is in the end.

Gautam the Buddha used to say, "My path in the beginning is tremendous pain; in the end, tremendous blissfulness. But patience is needed." […]

All that you can do is to pass through this suffering, to pass through this dark night of the soul.

Reach to the dawn of your being.

Blossom. Let your blissfulness explode.

From Darkness to Light, # 7

GET OUT OF THE MIND

Mind is very mathematical; that's why mind has become so powerful. That's why it is so difficult to get out of the mind. So much is invested in it: your whole efficiency, your whole caliber, your whole career -- everything depends on the mind. And in meditation you have to come out of it. Hence many times you decide to come out, but deep down you go on clinging.

Mind pays in many ways. Particularly in the world, if you exist with no-mind you will not be able to compete, you will not be able to struggle violently; you cannot become a part of the cut-throat rat race which is continuously going on. In this crowd of mad people, you will not be able to participate. [….]

So if you are really in search of the bull, you will have to take this risk of getting out of the mass. And you can get out of the mass only if you can get out of the mind, because the mass has created your mind.

The mind is the inner mass. The mass has created a mechanism inside you; from there you are controlled. The society believes in certain things; those beliefs the society has inculcated in you. Deep down, when you were almost unaware, it hypnotized you into a certain role. If you do something against it, immediately conscience will say no. That conscience is not really conscience; that's a substitute, a social trick, politics. The society has created certain rules inside your mind, and if you go against them, immediately from your inside comes the voice of the society: Don't do it. It is wrong. It is a sin. The society will force you from the inside to feel guilty.

If you want to get out of the so-called conscience, and achieve a real and authentic conscience, then a great effort is needed. And the whole effort is going to be this: a shift of consciousness from mind to no-mind, from conscience to consciousness.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-23