Be inconsistent!

I dare to play, to try first one thing, then another. My statements are like the actors on the stage: let them contradict each other; they are not there to tell the truth, but to provoke it, to discover it.And I would like to tell you too: do not do anything merely for the sake of consistency. That is the shelter for fools and philosophers – which are the same people. Never do anything just for the sake of consistency. This is undesirable since it limits experimentation and exploration. Action, so as to be consistent with the past, develops into a programmatic addiction. It freezes you into stasis, halting the evolutionary march of becoming. You should retain all power over current behavior. None should be yielded to the past.

Acting consistent with precedent is a form of death and destroys all potential to grow into understanding.

Remember, what is consistency? It means my today has to be obedient to my yesterday – that is consistency. My present has to be obedient with my past – that is consistency. But then how am I going to grow? Then how am I going to move? If I remain consistent with the past, then there is no growth possible.

Growth means inconsistency: your today has to go beyond your yesterday, has to be inconsistent with it, has to use it as a stepping-stone, has not to be confined by it, and your tomorrow has to go beyond your today. If each day you go on moving away from your past, you will be growing, you will be reaching higher peaks.

Consistent people are stupid people. Their life is stagnant. They stink of death, they are like corpses: they go on rotting, they don’t live. Life is basically not a logical phenomenon but a dialectical phenomenon. Dialectics means thesis, antithesis, synthesis: your yesterday was a thesis, your today will be its antithesis and your tomorrow will be a synthesis. Again your tomorrow will create a thesis and the next day an antithesis and then synthesis – and so on it goes. You go on in a dialectical way. Life is a dialectical process; it is not a linear, logical process.

Life is a contradictory process. That’s why I cannot define myself – because today’s definition won’t be applicable tomorrow. I cannot define myself because it is like defining a cloud or an ocean or a growing tree or a child. I constantly change, because change is the very soul of life. Except change, nothing is eternal.

I am committed to change. Change is my God, because that is the only unchanging phenomenon in life. Hence I call it God. Everything else changes: life changes, death changes – only change remains. I worship change. I am in love with it. I cannot define myself once and forever. I have to define myself each moment of my life; and one never knows what each next moment is going to bring.

- Osho

Two Quotes

“Where there is to be creative action, it is quite beside the point to discuss what we should or should not do in order to be right or good. A mind that is single and sincere is not interested in being good, in conducting relations with other people so as to live up to a rule. Nor, on the other hand, is it interested in being free, in acting perversely just to prove its independence. Its interest is not in itself, but in the people and problems of which it is aware; these are “itself.” It acts, not according to the rules, but according to the circumstances of the moment, and the “well” it wishes to others is not security but liberty.”

― Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“The worst sin that can be committed against the artist is to take him at his word, to see in his work a fulfillment instead of an horizon.”

― Henry Miller

Essence of Man

There are two ways to deal with woman and world without compromising your true gifts or dribbling away the force of your deep being. One way is to renounce sexual intimacy and worldliness, totally dedicating yourself without distraction or compromise to the path you choose to pursue, free of the seemingly constant demands of woman and world.

The other way is to "fuck" both to smithereens, to ravish them with your love unsheathed, to give your true gifts despite the constant tussle of woman and world, to smelt your authentic gifts in this friction of opposition and surrender, to thrust love from the freedom of your deep being even as your body and mind die blissfully through a crucifixion of inevitable pleasure and pain, attraction and repulsion, gain and loss. No gifts left ungiven. No limit to the depth of being. Only openness, freedom, and love as the legacy of your intercourse with woman and world.

 If you are going to tryst with woman and world at all, better to go all the way and ravish them from the depths of your true core, blooming themopen with the wide gifts of your unrelenting heart. Otherwise, if you sheepishly penetrate them to gratify your own needs, your woman and the world will feel your lack of dedication, depth, and truth. Rather than yielding in love to your loving, they will distract you, suck your energy, and draw you into endless complications, so that your life and relationship become an almost constant search for release from constraint.

You can be a renunciate and live alone, apart from woman and world. But if you choose a life of sexual and worldly intercourse, you will feel trapped by woman and world unless you are free in the midst of "true fuck," yielding yourself into the giving, holding nothing back, dissolving all time in the open of love. Through thick and thin, this is the way of the superior man.

Failure = Success ?

If you want to succeed, double your failure rate.

Trust.

“If you want to learn anything, learn trust - nothing else id needed. If you are miserable, nothing else will help - learn trust. If you don't feel any meaning in life and you feel meaningless, nothing will help - learn trust. Trust gives meaning because trust makes you capable of allowing the whole descend upon you.”

Kindness

“People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.
If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway.
If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway.
The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway.
For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.”

- Mother Teresa (which I find abhorring, but still, the above rings ever true, true true!)

How this house was built

Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.
- Mark Twain

Clarity

The mind has no clarity. It is clouded by so many thoughts; it is incapable of decision because it is incapable of clarity. Once mind is silent, once there is a state of no-mind, being is very sharp and clear. There is no question of either/or, there is no question of choosing; whatever the being does is choiceless. It simply does that which the clarity allows it to do. It is always right. Just as mind is always wrong, being is always right. But the West has not recognized being. Hence, in the muddy waters of the mind, Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, Alfred Adler and their progeny -- they are all just making the water more muddy. They have themselves not known that there is something in their innermost core which cannot go mad, which is sanity itself. Existence speaks through it -- it is the voice of life itself.

You are what you do; so do what you are

You are what you do; so do what you are!

Don't follow this with the mind, you'll get tangled up in arguments again.

This is not an argument. Embrace that which arises naturally in you, follow it unquestioningly.

Take no credit, take no blame. Simply be and act spontaneously.

Happy and Alert

"And if you are happy and alert, there is no need to be worried about how not to commit the same mistakes -- you will not commit."

- Osho

change

Outer circumstances don’t need so much effort to be changed but the inner lethargy is centuries old. The unconsciousness is so primitive, its roots are so deep, that it needs a total determination on your part, a tremendous determination, a commitment, a deep involvement. You have to risk all. Unless that happens it is impossible to change yourself, you will remain the same.

Hit the line. Hard.

"In life, as in a football game, the principle to follow is: Never flinch.Never foul. Hit the line hard."

- Theodore Roosevelt

.:.

Just the morning sun, the beginning of a new day, the fragrance of fresh flowers, the darkness disappearing and the whole sky becoming available again – suddenly the song bursts forth for no particular reason.

The divinity of existence

Don’t make life a question of argumentation, or truth a question of arguments, or love a question of arguments, or joy a question of arguments. Live, experience, because that is the only way to know. Argument is not the way to know.

Knowing is only through experiencing.

Truth contains its own contradictions—and that's the richness of truth, that's its vastness, that's its beauty.

Don’t make life a question-answer game. Make it more authentic, and anything that feels right to you, try to experiment with it. There are millions of people who know what is right, millions of people who know what is good, millions of people who know what has to be done. But they just know, they never try to transform their knowing into action, into actuality. And unless your knowledge becomes your actual experience, it is simply a burden and not a freedom. It keeps you loaded with good thoughts, but good thoughts are useless. Unless they grow within you, they have roots in your heart, they are part of your being, they are simply wasting your time and your life.

Don’t be like the crowd that exists on the earth. They all have beautiful theories, beautiful dogmas, great philosophies, magnificent theologies, but all in their heads. They have not tasted anything, and they will die without actually knowing anything. Their whole lives will be simply a long desert where nothing grows, where nothing happens, where nothing is realized.

And I say unto you: Unless God is realized, your life has been a wastage. And that is your capacity, your potential — the realization of the divinity of existence. Just a little taste and your whole life will become full of such glory, such ecstasy, such splendor that you cannot even dream about it.

Listen...!

I know you can hear, there is no trouble about it; but you cannot listen.

Listening is totally different from hearing.

Listening means hearing without mind; listening means hearing without any interference of your thoughts; listening means hearing as if you are totally empty.

If you have even a small trembling of thinking inside, waves of subtle thoughts surrounding you, you will not be able to listen, although you will be able to hear.

And to listen to the music, the ancient music, the eternal music, one needs to be totally quiet, as if one is not.

When you are, you can hear; when you are not, you can listen.

Experience is all

The ego is like darkness, a false entity. It only appears to be there, it has no positive reality. When the light of love comes, darkness goes out. If you have the real center — what Gurdjieff calls crystallisation or what Hindus call ATMAN or what Sufis call ROOH, spirit — if you really have it then each love will make it more and more clear, more and more transparent, more and more available. Each love affair will be a step — and you will be moving higher in crystallisation.

So this is the first thing to be understood: don’t choose the ego, always choose love. When it is a question between the real and the unreal, choose the real, even if sometimes the real brings inconvenience. It does bring inconvenience. We have chosen the unreal because it is convenient — for no other reason have we chosen it. There is just one reason: it is convenient. You will have to go through inconvenience. That inconvenience is what I call TAPASHCHARYA, austerity, SADHANA. That’s what it means to be initiated into a path.

Always choose the real, howsoever bad and howsoever painful and howsoever destructive it looks. Even if it feels like death, choose it — and you will be benefitted by it. Never choose the comfortable the convenient, the bourgeois, other-wise you will live the life of a hostile — if you are fortunate — or the life of a phony if you are not so fortunate, or, if you are not fortunate at all, the life of a zombie.

As you grow older you become more ignorant because you become aware of areas of which you
don’t know anything. The child is the least ignorant – he’s innocent. He has not entered on the path of knowledge, or ignorance – which is the same path. As you grow older, you start accumulating knowledge to hide your ignorance. You borrow knowledge to hide it, to cover it up; but the covered ignorance does not make you wise – it simply shows your stupidity. Your so-called wise people are full of nothing but ignorance – covered with beautiful, borrowed knowledge.

The authentic wise man is one who gets rid of all ignorance, and never allows himself to be burdened by borrowed knowledge; he gathers knowledge through his own experience. Your questions are tremendously helpful to get rid of your ignorance.

Now you can start searching for existential experiences of love, peace, silence, beauty, joy – which are all part of your own being. You don’t have to go to any library, and you don’t have to go to somebody wiser. You have simply to go to your own innermost source from where your life arises, from the same source that your light will also arise.

Wisdom is moving into experience in utter let-go.

But the secret of life is: if you bring your unconscious into the light, those hidden secrets which are functioning like wounds, like burdens that are heavy on you, evaporate. You need not do anything else – all that you need is a loving heart to listen to you.

Everybody has their own idea of love. And only when you come to the state where all ideas about love have disappeared, where love is no more an idea but simply your being, then only will you know its freedom. Then love is God. Then love is the ultimate truth. Let your love move through the process of meditation. Watch it: watch the cunning ways of your mind, watch your power-politics. And nothing else except continuous watching and observing is going to help.

What kind of trust is this, that you say it has been betrayed? My understanding of trust is that it cannot be betrayed. By its very nature, by its very definition, trust cannot be betrayed. It is impossible to betray trust. If trust can be betrayed, then it is not trust. Think over it.

When you say something to your woman or your man, look at it: what is the unconscious motive? Why are you saying it? Is there some motive? Then what is it? Be conscious of that motive, bring it to consciousness -- because this is one of the secret keys for transforming your life: anything that becomes conscious disappears. Your motives remain unconscious, that's why you remain in their grip. Make them conscious, bring them to light, and they will disappear.

It is as if you pull up a tree and bring the roots to the sunlight: they will die, they can exist only in the darkness of the soil. Your motives also exist only in the darkness of your unconsciousness. So the only way to transform your love is to bring all the motivations from the unconscious into the conscious. Slowly slowly, those motives will die. And when love is unmotivated, then love is the greatest thing that can ever happen to anybody. Then love is something of the ultimate, of the beyond.

That is the meaning when Jesus says, "God is love." I say to you: Love is God. God can be forgotten, but don't forget love -- because it is the purification of love that will bring you to God. If you forget about God completely, nothing is lost. But don't forget love, because love is the bridge. Love is the process of alchemical change in your consciousness.

Charisma

Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
WHAT IS CHARISMA? ALL SORTS OF PEOPLE HAVE IT, BOTH AWARE PEOPLE AND
UNAWARE PEOPLE. ITS SUCH AN INTANGIBLE QUALITY, I CAN SAY WHEN SOMEONE IS CHARISMATIC BUT CAN’T DEFINE WHAT IT IS.

Sudha, charisma is a mystery. It happens only to those people who have centered their being,
concentrated their energies, who are no longer falling apart, who are consolidated, who have
become one – the very meaning of the word, ”individual.”

Every individual has charisma. But individual means that which is indivisible. You cannot divide that person into fragments; you cannot say to that person that ”this part is wrong in you, this part is right in you.” You cannot create a schizophrenic psychology in that person; he’s one and whole. This very phenomenon of being one, centered and whole, creates a magnetic pull.
Now, you cannot see a magnetic pull. You can see the magnet, you can see the small pieces of
metal which are moving towards the magnet, but you cannot see magnetism, you cannot see any
power.

All power is invisible. All energy is invisible.

Charisma is the energy of the consciousness which is settled in itself – at ease, at home – which
has arrived. Now there is nowhere to go. Utterly relaxed, with no tensions, with no anxieties, with no desires – in short, with no bickering, torturing the mind – one has arrived at the point called Being with a capital B. The moment you touch your Being, you are no more a separate entity from the universe – you have become part and parcel of this tremendously alive existence.

But the problem arises... if you see it in a Gautam Buddha, there is no problem. You can understand – the man has blossomed. You can see it. In his eyes you can see the depth; you can see in his gestures, the grace. You can see in his words an authority which can come only through experience, not through knowledge.

The problem arises when you find some charismatic qualities in an ordinary man who has never
meditated, who has never gone inwards, who is as ordinary as everybody else. But sometimes it
happens – you feel a magnetic pull. And because you have not arrived at your own center, it is very difficult for you to make a distinction between the man who is centered – hence, has a magnetic pull – and the man who is not so centered and yet you still feel a certain pull. You cannot make the distinction, for the simple reason that you have not experienced it in your own being.

The ordinary man sometimes has something similar to charismatic power, but you will be surprised to know it is not charismatic power at all. It is something just the opposite – it is overflowing sexual energy. In a charismatic experience, the energy in the person is at the highest center. It is at the seventh center, sahastrara, beyond which you enter into the infinite, beyond which you are no more and you are all. It is the same energy.

Man has seven centers, prominent centers. The energy is stored as a reservoir at the lowest center – naturally, because of gravitation. Water goes downwards because of gravitation; it pulls somewhere, but it is always the lowest place. Water cannot go upwards unless some effort is made. Unless some device is created to cancel the effect of gravitation, water is bound to go down and down and down.

The sex center is the lowest point in your being. All energy accumulates at the sex center. The
moment the child is born, he brings all his life energy, stored at the sex center. But the sad thing
is that 99.9 percent of people also die in the same situation – the energy is still at the sex center,
although it is no more that overflowing energy of a child; it is the dying energy of an old man. But it is still at the lowest center.

The whole science of religion is nothing but an effort to create methods, devices, techniques to
cancel the effect of gravitation and allow the energy a freedom to rise upwards. As the energy starts rising upwards, you will see changes happening on their own accord. Your behavior will change, your actions will change, your directions in life will change. You will be surprised, and others will be surprised, too. What has happened? – they have seen your anger, they have seen your rage, they have seen your jealousy, they have seen your hate – suddenly you are radiating love.

If the energy reaches to the heart center, which is the fourth, your whole life becomes so sweet, so fragrant, and so beautiful – and you have only moved half way. If the energy moves still higher, and as the energy goes on moving higher, your charismatic power will become more and more apparent – even to those who are deaf and cannot hear, even to those who are blind and cannot see, even to those who are heartless and cannot feel. But the charismatic energy is so powerful that the blind has to see it and the deaf has to hear it and the heartless has to feel it. It all depends how high the energy has reached.

As the energy goes on moving, the sixth center is the third eye – between the two eyebrows, exactly in the middle. It is when the energy is at the sixth center that the presence of the person... It is not just that he is here; it is not just a physical presence. There is no word for it, but we can manage...it is spiritual presence that you start feeling. His body becomes less important, his words become faraway echoes, but his presence, pure presence becomes such a tremendous pull that you knowonly one experience which can give you some idea of it, and that experience is falling in love –irrationally. You cannot give any explanation, but you know. You cannot say but you feel.

And if the energy reaches the seventh, that is the point where one becomes awakened. The energy has come to the highest peak of evolution. Then that person is pure charisma.
Whatever he touches becomes gold.

After the heart center, the charisma will be felt by many but not by all.
The fifth center is in the throat. When the energy moves to the throat center, your words start having something of the charisma of your being because they arise out of your heart, they come from your interiority, they bring with them some fragrance from your innermost being.

Wherever he sits becomes a holy place.

Whatever he says becomes scripture. His actions take on a tremendous beauty. His inactions also open doors to the miraculous. He speaks the truth and even when he is silent, his silence also
speaks. Those who can understand the language of silence rejoice, are blissful, know perfectly well that this is the man they have been searching for centuries, for many lives.
Charismatic power is the same sexual energy transformed, purified. It was poison at the lowest
center; it has become nectar at the highest center. But at the lowest center also, it has a tremendous power. And you know that sometimes you feel a great attraction to an ordinary man.

Remember, that attraction is sexual, and sexual attraction is blind. But ordinarily people only know that attraction, so when by chance they come across a man who has some charisma, they don’t have any way to distinguish between the two.

That’s why Sudha is asking why sometimes in people who are awakened, and sometimes in people who are not awakened, this power is felt. It is not the same power – although it arises from the same energy. But from the lowest center it is crude, primitive, animal. Its influence will drag you into lower realms of being.

But if you find really a charismatic person, you are fortunate. Just to sit at his feet is enough, because he’s showering his energy whether anybody is there or not. If you are receptive, open, available, just being close to a charismatic person is the first taste of religion. I am calling it taste; I am not calling it understanding, I am not calling it knowledge. It is actually a taste. Your whole being feels it. Each fiber feels it – a nourishment, a nourishment which is divine.

Let us summarize:
The charismatic energy is divine nourishment flowing from those who have arrived home.

If you can laugh, you create ripples of laughter in existence. That is the real service.

Deep love creates deep fear. It looks like death because the I disappears, the you disappears — and it is a sort of death. And when you die, only then do you enter into the divine.
I have been continuously surprised by people who come to me and say they are afraid of love. What is the fear of love? It is because when you really love somebody your ego starts slipping and melting. You cannot love with the ego; the ego becomes a barrier. and when you want to drop the barrier the ego says, ‘This is going to be a death. Beware!’

This is the case with millions of people. They talk about love, they know all the poetries about love, but they have never loved. Or even if they thought they were in love, they were never in love. That too was a ‘heady’ thing, it was not of the heart. People live and go on missing life. It needs courage. It needs courage to be realistic, it needs courage to move with life wherever it leads, because the paths are uncharted, there exists no map. One has to go into the unknown.

Upaya!

I am not in favor of repressing the lower. The lower has to be raised to the heights, the lower has to be given wings. With insight, with understanding, it is possible. If you deny the lower you will never be able to reach the higher, because the lower rung is a necessary step. Yes, go beyond it, but you can go beyond it only if you don't reject it. Use it, but remember not to become obsessed with it. These two things have to be remembered: one is, not to be obsessed with it, not to stop at it, and the second is, not to reject and deny it but to use it as a stepping-stone.

Be skillful. Buddha's word is UPAYA -- skill. And when he says "upaya," he means be very artful in transforming your life. It is only a potential, a seed, but it can become a great tree and it can blossom in its own time. And when a tree blossoms, when thousands of flowers have arisen on the tree branches, there is great joy in the being of the tree, great ecstasy.

You are also a seed -- become a tree. The seed may be ugly -- seeds almost always are; the roots may be ugly, but remember, it is on the roots that the tree has to grow. The roots have to be used; without roots there will be no flowering. Without physiological attraction there will be no psychological growth. And without psychological love affairs with art, music, sculpture, there is no possibility of spiritual love. Poets and painters and dancers and musicians are a necessary step towards becoming a buddha.

- Osho

Ποίηση...(;) και άλλα τέτοια

Το να γράφεις ποίηση είναι βουτιά στην άβυσσο. Αν μπορείς ακόμη να περιγράφεις αυτό που βρίσκεις, τότε δε βρίσκεσαι ακόμη εκεί. Δεν έχεις βουτήξει. Δεν έχεις χαθεί. Ακονίζεις τα περιγραφικά όπλα σου απο ασφαλή απόσταση. Δεν θες ειλικρινά να γράψεις ποίηση. Θές να γίνεις ποιητής. Ακόμη προσπαθείς. Η ποίηση λοιπόν, δε φτιάχνεται. Ούτε ο ποιητής. Αλλά εσυ μοιάζεις με διψασμένο πηγάδι. Αναζητάς τη βροχή γιατί αρνείσαι το νερό μέσα σου, και αυτό βαλτώνει. Και όσο περισσότερο βαλτώνει, τόσο εσυ κυνηγάς την ποίηση. Η ματαιότητα που νιώθεις είναι η ίδια ασυνειδησία και ανειλικρίνεια που σε καθοδηγούν. Γιατί γράφεις; Νομίζεις πως πρέπει να το ορίσεις; Αν το ορίσεις, χάθηκες. Δεν υπάρχει γιατί, αν είσαι εκεί. Οτιδήποτε ουσιαστικό είναι ολοκληρωμένο, αυτούσιο. Δεν παραπέμπει αλλού. Δεν έχει «γιατί». Η βάση του είναι το απόλυτο μυστήριο. Η ουσία μεταφέρεται σιωπηλά. Αυτή γεννά τις λέξεις που μες στο σκοταδισμό σου χαίρεσαι να αποκαλείς «ποίηση». Είναι απλά λέξεις. Η ουσία δεν αποκτάται, δεν κερδίζεται, δεν χάνεται. Δεν έχει αρχή, δεν έχει τέλος. Ούτε γεννιέται ούτε πεθαίνει. Μονάχα βιώνεται η δε βιώνεται. Οι λέξεις που διαβάζεις, που γράφεις, δεν είναι λάμπες που θα σου δείξουν κάποιο δρόμο. Δε θα σου δώσουν κάτι. Διάβασε, γράψε, χωρίς προσδοκία, χωρίς προσπάθεια, χωρίς μνήμη. Κάνε τη βουτιά στο απροσδιόριστο. Αν υπάρχει κάτι ουσιαστικό θα το αντιληφθείς, είτε το θέλεις είτε όχι. Γιατί είναι αυτό που είσαι. Δεν είναι κάτι εξωτερικό. «Και πως θα βουτήξω στο απροσδιόριστο;» θα με ρωτήσεις.. «Μα τι βλακείες κάθεσαι και λες;» Είναι αλήθεια. Η γλώσσα μας εξαπατά. Η γλώσσα όμως δεν είναι παρά μια αναγκαία συμβολική απεικόνιση μιας φανταστικής πραγματικότητας. Στο απροσδιόριστο δε βουτάς. Οχι «εσύ». Το απροσδιόριστο είσαι Εσυ. Αρα μην αρχίσεις να ψάχνεις τη ράμπα να βουτήξεις. Δεν ξέρεις τι ψάχνεις. Απλά χάνεσαι περισσότερο με το να αναβάλλεις. Φτάσε μέχρι εκεί που συνειδητοποιείς πως δεν μπορείς να βουτήξεις στην άββυσο, γιατί πολύ απλά ήσουν πάντοτε εκεί. Και τότε θα βρείς πως η ουσία δεν είναι παρά η άλλη όψη της αβύσσου. Κάτι που δε μπόρεσες ποτέ να δείς, γιατί ήσουν πάντοτε απασχολημένος με το να αρνείσαι την άβυσσο, να μη δέχεσαι το μυστήριο, να προσδιορίζεις το απροσδιόριστο. Δε βλέπεις πως χτίζεις όλο και ψηλότερους πύργους στην άμμο;