Silence is a song without words

The Osho Upnishad

Question 1:

BELOVED OSHO,

LAST NIGHT I WAS READING "THE BOOK OF MIRDAD". IT WAS SO BEAUTIFUL AND SO
STRONG THAT I COULDN'T STOP READING FOR HOURS. THEN SUDDENLY I FELT THAT MY
BREATH HAD CHANGED, AND I FOUND MYSELF ON THE EDGE OF CRYING, AND I DIDN'T
KNOW WHETHER IT WAS SADNESS, DESPERATION, BLISS, OR ALL THREE AT THE SAME TIME.

I TRIED TO FIND OUT BY READING THE WORDS AGAIN, BUT I REALIZED THAT MY MIND
DIDN'T REALLY UNDERSTAND THEM WHEN I LOOKED AT THEM. HOW IS IT POSSIBLE THAT
WORDS WHICH THE MIND DOESN'T UNDERSTAND CAN TOUCH ONE SO DEEPLY?

There are millions of books in the world, but THE BOOK OF MIRDAD stands out far above any other book in existence.

It is unfortunate that very few people are acquainted with THE BOOK OF MIRDAD for the simple reason that it is not a religious scripture. It is a parable, a fiction, but containing oceanic truth.

It is a small book, but the man who gave birth to this book... and mind my words, I am not saying "the man who wrote this book." Nobody wrote this book. I am saying the man who gave birth to this book - he was an unknown, a nobody. And because he was not a novelist, he never wrote again; just that single book contains his whole experience.

The name of the man was Mikhail Naimy.

It is an extraordinary book in the sense that you can read it and miss it completely, because the meaning of the book is not in the words of the book. The meaning of the book is running side by side in silence between the words, between the lines, in the gaps.

If you are in a state of meditativeness - if you are not only reading a fiction but you are encountering the whole religious experience of a great human being, absorbing it; not intellectually understanding but existentially drinking it - the words are there but they become secondary. Something else becomes primary: the silence that those words create, the music that those words create. The words affect your mind, and the music goes directly to your heart.

And it is a book to be read by the heart, not by the mind. It is a book not to be understood, but experienced. It is something phenomenal.

Millions of people have tried to write books so that they can express the inexpressible, but they have utterly failed. I know only one book, THE BOOK OF MIRDAD, which has not failed; and if you cannot get to the very essence of it, it will be your failure, not his.

He has created a perfect device of words, parables, situations. If you allow it, the book becomes alive and something starts happening to your being. And naturally, because you have never come to such a state, you are puzzled about what it is - sadness? blissfulness? There are tears, but those tears can be either of sadness or they can be of immense joy.

You have come to a point where you have never been before, so naturally you cannot categorize it. You cannot put a label on it according to your old experiences. But the name does not mean anything. What matters is that you have taken a step beyond yourself. You have never been in this space; you have entered into the unknown, and it is so unknown that you don't have the vocabulary even to give it a name.

Just see the point: It may look like sadness... because for the first time in your life you will become aware that up to now you have not been alive. Life has happened today.

And it brings a great sadness... you were alive - but knowing this new experience, your whole life becomes so mundane, so meaningless, that it is better to say that it was more death than life. And a sadness arises that, "Why could I not reach this space before?" It is so close - just a step beyond the boundaries of your old mind and the whole sky with all its stars becomes available. You were confined in such a small prison - and nobody was imprisoning you. You were the prisoner and you were the imprisoned. You were the jailer and you were the jailed. Naturally... a sadness, looking to the past.

But looking to the present... a great blissfulness, a peace that passeth understanding, a silence that is not just the opposite of sound... a silence which is absence of sound, not the opposite of sound.

A music without any instruments, a song without any words....

For the first time you start feeling that, "Up to now I have been living in the head; and only this moment the doors of my heart are open."

There is an old Chinese story. Because of the story a proverb has come into existence - that when the musician becomes perfect, he burns his instruments; they become not only useless, they become a nuisance because they only create noise. Only between the noise are there a few moments of music - why not have it all?

And when the archer becomes a perfect master, he drops his bow and his arrows and forgets all about it. A strange proverb - because ordinarily we think that when we become perfect our instruments will also attain a perfection with us; their working will also become perfect.

The proverb comes from a story: A man had become a great archer, and he was confident that he had attained perfection. He never missed any target. He was able to kill flying birds without fail. He appeared before the emperor and told him, "It is time that you should declare me the greatest, the master archer of the empire. Otherwise I am ready for any challenge. If somebody doubts it, I am ready for a competition."

The king knew the man, and knew that what he was saying was not bragging, it was a simple fact. But the old servant of the king said, "Wait a minute before you say anything, because I have something to say before you decide." He was so old that he had served the grandfather of the king, the father of the king, the king himself, and there was a possibility that he would serve the fourth generation also.

The king had tremendous respect for the man. He said, "If you have something to say, you say it."

The old servant said, "This man knows nothing of archery yet. He can kill animals, he can kill birds, flying birds; he never misses any target. That's all okay, but that is not perfection and mastery. I know a man who is a perfect archer. He lives in the mountains, and because he became a perfect archer thirty years ago, he has completely forgotten about archery. After perfection, what is the point of remembering?"

The archer was puzzled: "What kind of archery is this, that the man has even forgotten archery? For thirty years he has not practiced - if I don't practice a single day, the next day I can see mistakes happening. Within two days, critics will see that mistakes are happening, and within three days anybody will be able to see that there are mistakes. Thirty years!"

And the old man said, "Unless you go to the forest and meet the great archer.... If he approves there is no question of any competition - I will ask the emperor to declare you the champion master of the whole kingdom."

The archer had to go and search in the mountains. On a very high peak, in a small cave, he found the old man. The archer was carrying his bow, his arrows. The old man looked at the bow, looked at the arrows, and he said, "These things I have seen once, I remember. What do you call these things?"

The man said, "You are a great archer? You don't even know the name of the bow and the arrows!"

The old man said, "This is a bow and arrows... and what is the function of it? What do you do with it?"

The archer said, "Come out and I will show you." And he killed with one arrow a faraway flying bird - just one arrow and the bird was on the earth.

The old man said, "This you call archery? I remember, when I was young I used to call this archery too. Now, come with me."

The old man must have been nearabout one hundred and twenty years old, not less than that - very frail. He took the young archer to a cliff which was hanging over a valley thousands of feet deep.

The archer stopped. He said, "I cannot go on that cliff! Just a small mistake and you are finished forever."

But the old man went to the very edge - his feet were half hanging off the edge of the cliff. He was standing with just half his feet on the edge and he said, "Come on - you are a great archer; you should know balance, because the secret of archery is balance. And if you are trembling so much inside, your arrow cannot be perfect, because your arrow will be going through your hands. And you are trembling. Come on! You are young, and as you see I am old, one hundred and twenty years old."

The man tried, one or two feet... and fell down on the rock. He said, "I have never been afraid of death. But I cannot do that."

That old man came back and he said, "If you cannot do this, forget all about archery. The day you can do this you will throw away the bow, you will throw away the arrows. Now look...." There were seven birds flying far away. And the old man simply looked at those seven birds one by one, and they all fell down on the earth.

He said, "When you have no trembling inside, just your eyes are enough; no arrows are needed. So go back, you are an amateur. I will come when the time has come, I will keep watch on you. I have my people in the city, in the capital; it was one of my people who sent you here. He was one of my disciples and I have a few more disciples who will keep watch. And if I am not alive, then I will tell them to inform the king when you are a perfect archer."

The young man was simply in great despair. He proved to be an amateur; he was thinking himself to be a champion master.

After five years.... The old man had said, "Learn inner balancing." I call it meditation; these are different names, in different countries. 'Inner balancing' means you are so balanced at your innermost center that there is no trembling at all. You are in such a silent, unmoving space, as if you are not.

After five years a man visited the archer. As they were entering the archer's house, he saw a big bow hanging on the wall. The guest asked, "What is that?"

And the archer said, "I used to remember, but fortunately I met an old man... now I have completely forgotten what it is."

But the guest said, "I have heard that you are an archer."

The man said, "Forget all about it. When a man is young he has all kinds of stupid ideas. I also had my stupidities, but due to the compassion of the old man in the mountains I survived, I moved on."

That very day the king called him and declared him to be the champion master archer of the kingdom.

"But," he said, "I know nothing of archery. What are you doing?"

The king said, "I am not doing anything. These are instructions from your master. Of course you could not be the champion master. The old man has left his body, with the message, 'While I am alive he cannot be a champion. And the poor fellow wanted to be a champion so desperately, but if I am alive in the kingdom it is impossible. I will never come to the capital to contest; the whole idea is childish. But there are my disciples who will not allow it to happen any other way. Only my death... and it is worth it, to make him happy.'

The old man is dead. The message has come that you should be declared the champion."

The king said, "Just out of curiosity I would like to see how far your eyes can function as arrows."

The man looked into the sky. Nine birds - a whole flock - came down to the earth.

And the king said, "That old man was never wrong."

This is archery.

A musician when he is perfect forgets his instruments; now silence is his music.

THE BOOK OF MIRDAD is one of the greatest devices that have been created down the ages. Don't read it like any other book. Don't read it like SHRI BHAGAVADGITA or THE HOLY BIBLE. Read it as beautiful poetry, as music spread on the pages. Read it as a message from a master of meditation.

The words are code words.

Don't look for their meaning in the dictionary.

Their meaning is when they strike something in your heart.

That's why you felt, reading MIRDAD, that your breathing changed. It has to be understood very carefully: your breathing changes with each of your emotions. When you are angry, watch: you will have a different kind of breathing, unrhythmic, chaotic. When you are in love, just holding the hand of your beloved, your breathing will be different - peaceful, silent, musical, harmonious. And these are small things; I am just giving you examples to understand.

When you are sitting with the master, the breathing becomes so harmonious that sometimes you may think it has stopped. There will be moments when suddenly you become aware - "Has my breathing stopped?" Because it will be so silent that even you cannot feel its movement.

There was one very significant man in south India, Brahma Yogi, but he got distracted. He was able to bring his breathing to such a harmonious state that doctors declared him to be dead. Because if there is no breathing... and not just for a second or two; he was capable for ten minutes. Medical science has its own limits. For ten minutes, no sign of breathing....

In Oxford, in Cambridge, in Calcutta University, in Rangoon University; he went all over the world.

He forgot completely the mission of his life, that he had been meditating to attain to his innermost self. That's how people get distracted - he became an entertainer, a showman. He earned much, he became world famous. And the doctors everywhere were shocked. In every medical college of importance in the world he was examined with all their refined instruments. They had to declare that the man was dead, and after ten minutes he would start breathing again.

It was not that he was not breathing for ten minutes; he was breathing, but the breathing had gone so slow that it was beyond the instruments' capacity to capture its movement.

This happened to you reading MIRDAD, that you felt your breathing was changing. It was beautiful.

And because your breathing changed, that's why you came to a point where you were indecisive.

Whether you were sad or silent, blissful, ecstatic, you could not decide, because the thing was so new and you had no category to put it in.

But I will tell you: You were sad, sad because you have wasted your whole life - and this space was so close; you were just to reach and it was going to be available to you. You were sad, just like a beggar will be sad who comes to know that he is the emperor and there has been some mistake; the beggar is sitting on the throne and the emperor is begging in the streets. All those years of begging... a shadow, a sadness.

You also felt silence, because THE BOOK OF MIRDAD has been created by a man who knows the inner workings of human consciousness. He was not a writer; hence, nobody ever bothered to give him a Nobel prize. He was alive in this century, he was our contemporary. His book has not been translated into many languages for the simple reason that the book is unique - it is not a book, it is a device. And it is not meant to be read, it is meant to create a certain atmosphere around you. If you are ready, available, receptive, the atmosphere will be created and there will be great silence.

And silence is always blissful.

So you got very much confused: There was sadness because of the past; there was silence because of the present - and silence is always bringing flowers of blissfulness.

You thought there must be something in the words, so you read those words again. But you could not find it; in those words there was nothing, they were ordinary words. From where was this experience happening?

It was happening because you are on the path.

You are part of a mystery school.

You are a seeker.

It would not have happened to you if you were not on the path. It happened to you because you were getting ready for this happening, and THE BOOK OF MIRDAD simply triggered what was already going to happen. It would have happened even without THE BOOK OF MIRDAD, perhaps a little later.

The man on the path may find in his life.... Listening to music sometimes it happens. The musician may be an ordinary man; he may not know anything about silence and blissfulness, but his music can trigger something in you. It may be triggered by seeing a sunset; now the sunset is not aware of you at all. It may be triggered by the perfume of a rose.

But remember one thing: Just because THE BOOK OF MIRDAD helped you in reaching a new space in yourself, don't tell others to read it - because they will find it just ordinary fiction, beautiful.

They may even destroy your connection that has been created unknowingly; you were not ready for this experience. So one thing: Don't tell others, "Read THE BOOK OF MIRDAD, it brings such beautiful experiences." It may not bring them anything.

Secondly, because it has brought you a beautiful experience this time, don't read it again and again in order to get it. Because this time you were not expecting anything; next time you will be full of expectations. You will be waiting and watching for when it happens - it will not happen. Once in a while it is possible, but the basic condition to be fulfilled is, no expectations.

And I say to you, because it happened with THE BOOK OF MIRDAD it can happen through many other avenues. You are ready, you just need a little push. Be available to all those situations where that push is possible, but without any expectation. Just to enjoy... a beautiful dance, beautiful music, a beautiful painting; just sitting by the side of the sea and the music of the waves, the continuous music, or looking at the moon - anything may help, but don't expect.

THE BOOK OF MIRDAD can be of immense help if you don't expect, and it is a book worth reading thousands of times. You cannot understand its oceanic meaning in one reading, because in each page, each turn, each chapter, each line, there is a possibility - because the man who wrote it....

I understand that man. He was one of the greatest men of this century. He lived unknown to the world, but just this one book makes him the greatest writer not only of this century but of all the centuries.

I myself might have never come across his book... because it was published in the beginning of this century and then it was never published again, it never became a best seller. It was not available in the libraries because at the most only three thousand copies were in existence all over the world. I became aware of the book in a strange way.

I was a student in the university, but on Sundays I used to go to a market in the city where stolen things were sold. I was not interested in anything else, just stolen books. I got THE BOOK OF MIRDAD as a stolen book. Somebody's whole library... three hundred books in all, and all the books were beautiful. And for those three hundred books a man was asking only a hundred rupees, so I immediately gave him a hundred rupees.

The man said, "But remember one thing: these are stolen books, and if the police come here I am going to tell them your name, because on each book is the name of the man to whom these books belong and he is a well-known man." He was a retired professor of literature.

I said, "Don't be worried."

And the police finally came and they said, "This is not good. You were told by the man that these are stolen books, still you purchased them."

I said, "I don't repent, and I don't want to talk to you. I would like to meet the owner."

They said, "For what?"

I said, "I can settle things with him very easily. He is a retired professor, old. Just take me to him" - so they took me to the old professor.

I closed the doors and said to the professor, "You are already so old, what are you going to do with those books? You will be dead soon, and you have found the right man for your books."

He said, "You are strange! You have purchased my stolen books and you have come to convince me that you have done the right thing?"

I said, "Yes, I say I have done the right thing. You have used them. You cannot read any more; your eyes are no longer in a situation to read. If you just want to keep three hundred books on your shelf, I can bring five hundred books, six hundred books. But don't ask for those three hundred books, particularly for THE BOOK OF MIRDAD. That I cannot return to you, stolen or not stolen."

The old man looked at me and he said, "Did you like THE BOOK OF MIRDAD?"

I said, "I not only liked it - I have read thousands of books; none is comparable to it."

He gave me fifty rupees back. He said, "You have wasted fifty rupees - you are a student; you don't have much money, I know about you. You keep the books. And I agree with you that the books have reached to the right man, and the person who has stolen them needs to be rewarded. I am going to die any day, you are right, and then I don't know where those books will go.

"And I have loved those books, cherished those books. My whole life I have collected the best books.

And the moment you said THE BOOK OF MIRDAD you closed the deal. You just take these fifty rupees, and whenever you need more - because I don't have anybody; no wife, no children, and enough pension and I don't have any expenses - you are always welcome to come to me. If you don't have money to purchase books I am here.

"Your love for MIRDAD has made you a man of my family. I have loved MIRDAD my whole life, and I have tried hundreds of my friends, but nobody could get him. And you are ready to fight for a stolen book, you are ready to go to the court for a stolen book. There is no need. I was in search of you.

"It is strange," he said, "that THE BOOK OF MIRDAD has found you itself."

That's how I found the first copy of THE BOOK OF MIRDAD. It needs to be in every house, it is so precious.

And it has touched your heart.

Just don't start having expectations, and it will help you on the way immensely.

Question 2:

BELOVED OSHO,

UNENLIGHTENED ENLIGHTENMENT SEEMS TO BECOME MORE AND MORE POPULAR
THESE DAYS, PARTICULARLY AMONG THERAPISTS. HAVING RECOVERED FROM THAT
DISEASE, I SAY THAT CLAIMING ENLIGHTENMENT WITHOUT HAVING ATTAINED IS THE
GREATEST BETRAYAL; AND INFLUENCING OTHERS THROUGH AUTHORITY BASED ON THIS
FALSENESS IS THE GREATEST CRIME POSSIBLE.

PLEASE COMMENT.

Gunakar, you are a hundred percent right.

Before I answer your question, I would like to introduce you to the people here. They may not know you, and without knowing you it will be difficult for them to understand the proper context of the question.

Gunakar is one of my most beloved sannyasins. He is immensely talented... a keen intelligence, and an authentic search. He had come to me many years ago, and he has remained with me in many ups and many downs.

The biggest problem with him was that he is a German, and a German finds it easier to be a master than to be a disciple, naturally.

So while he was here with me in India he was intelligent enough to understand that he is not a master, and he worked as a disciple. But whenever he would go back to Germany, the trouble would arise: in Germany he would become enlightened.

There are no outer criteria for enlightenment, so he would get a few Germans to support him also as the enlightened master. And once he got into the trip then it was not only that he would sit silently - that is very difficult for a German - he had to do something. Now that he was enlightened, he started enlightening the whole world: writing letters to prime ministers, presidents, all the ambassadors of all the countries, to the UNO, convincing them that except for enlightenment there is no way out.

And when he would be going full-fledged, I would send him a message, "Come back to India because you have done enough. A little rest will be good." And coming back to India, his enlightenment would disappear. Sitting in front of me, he had to become a disciple again. He started feeling very strange because it happened once, twice, thrice....

Then he said, "This is a strange thing. We think Osho helps people to become enlightened. I become enlightened when I am in Germany, and whenever I go back to Osho he finishes my enlightenment - I am back to zero!" So for almost six years, he had not come.

Who wants to lose enlightenment? You come to me to be enlightened, and poor Gunakar had to come here to lose enlightenment.

But a false thing is a false thing, an imagination is an imagination.

You can brag, you can deceive, you can become a con man, but deep down you will know what you are doing.

And finally he realized, in Germany, that once a man becomes enlightened he cannot become unenlightened; that is impossible, that has never happened in the whole of history - except to Gunakar. There is no other precedent. And he is intelligent enough and courageous enough; he dropped it himself.

The last time, I was watching what was happening. I was inquiring about how things were going, how far his enlightenment had reached. The last time I inquired of a German sannyasin in America; he said, "A strange phenomenon has happened. I met Gunakar. I had never thought of it..." Because he had a beautiful castle on the Rhine River in a very scenic place, really worthy of an enlightened man, and disciples would come to the castle....

The German sannyasin told me, "I met him in a restaurant in a sannyasin commune. When he was enlightened he was not moving like ordinary people in ordinary places. And he was not only in the restaurant, he was washing plates, serving; he was working there!"

And the German sannyasin asked him, "Gunakar, what happened to the enlightenment?"

And he said, "I am not enlightened, I am just a dishwasher."

When this was told to me, I really felt tremendously happy for him because to be a dishwasher in reality is better than to be a Gautam Buddha in dream.

And this time he has come not as an enlightened man. This time has a beauty: he has come just as himself - open, available, ready. All those past days when he used to come, he was tight. It was bound to be, because he was afraid - he would come to me and I was going to tell him, "Gunakar, just get down. You are not supposed to be enlightened yet. Wait!" He was tight, he was tense, afraid.

And he could not live there either, because the inner thirst was there, still unfulfilled. That bogus enlightenment was not going to help. So he had to come, but with a tenseness.

This time he has come relaxed, with nothing to lose. He is an ordinary man.

And to be ordinary is to be something immensely beautiful. It means relaxed, it means non-tense, it means ready to grow.

This is the background.

He is saying, "I am out of this disease of getting false enlightenment, pretending to be really enlightened, teaching people." Now he can understand what harm such people must be doing - because I am not there.

And the whole sannyas movement has the greatest numbers in Europe, particularly in Germany.

That's why the German government is the most afraid of me.

I have not applied for any visa. Still, their parliament has decided that IN CASE I apply, I am not to be allowed in Germany. Their fear is that I have the biggest number of sannyasins in Germany, and these are not just the masses but the intelligentsia. Gunakar is a law expert, somebody is a scientist, somebody is a painter, an artist, somebody is a mathematician - Germany has tremendous qualities - and strangely enough, they have all become attracted to sannyas.

And the fear of the German government is that if I come to Germany the people who are not yet sannyasins - the young generation, young intellectuals - are bound to become sannyasins.

And every government is afraid of any movement that creates individuals, that creates values of freedom, love, silence, peace, rejoicing.

So it is a good chance for a few people - there are two, three persons I have been told about who have become enlightened - knowing that I cannot come into Germany. The Indian government is being pressured by the American government that no sannyasins should be allowed to reach to me.

So it is a good opportunity for these people: they have become enlightened, they are gathering followers.

And Gunakar is right, that it is one of the greatest crimes to claim enlightenment when you are not - because this is the greatest deception that you can give to humanity. It is the ugliest phenomenon.

You can be a con man, cheat people out of their money, their belongings, their houses, their wives, their husbands, anything; that is immaterial, that does not matter much. But a con man as far as enlightenment is concerned is cheating you about your consciousness, about your very being. He is doing some kind of violence, which is invisible but which is the worst that can be done by any criminal.

All those three therapists will come back, because soon they will realize that they are doing something which is not only harming others but is harming their own growth. If you are not enlightened and you claim that you are, then you stop progressing towards enlightenment. You are already enlightened; what is the need?

All kinds of cheats, thieves can be forgiven, but the people who are playing with your consciousness, with your being, cannot be forgiven.

Somebody takes away your money: perhaps he is not doing harm to you, perhaps he is unburdening you. Perhaps from today he will be continuously feeling guilty. And what is he going to do with the money?

I have heard... one poor tailor had the habit of purchasing one lottery ticket every month. He had been doing that for thirty years; it had become almost a routine. In the beginning he used to hope that some day he would win the lottery. By and by he had completely forgotten that there was any connection between winning the lottery and purchasing the ticket.

But old habits die hard. So he went on purchasing the ticket, and one day suddenly a black Rolls Royce limousine came and stopped in front of the poor tailor's shop. People came out, carrying big bags full of notes. He said, "What is the matter? What is happening?"

They said, "You have won! Your number has come up."

He could not believe it. But he was immensely happy, that at last.... he has won ten lakh, a million rupees; now there is no need to be a poor tailor.

He closed the shop and threw the key in a well - because what is the need now? He is not going to open the shop again. Ten lakhs for a poor tailor - it is enough for ten lives!

But it was not enough even for two years, because what will you do? - he started drinking, he started gambling, he started going to the prostitutes. He was a healthy man; within two years all money was gone, all health was gone, and he was asking people, somebody, to help him to find the key to his shop.

They said, "You are an idiot. Why did you throw away the key in the first place?"

He said, "I was thinking that ten lakhs would be enough. I am alone, there is nobody else. I was so poor that I could never get married. But my God, these ten lakhs have given me such hell - from one prostitute to another prostitute, finding myself every morning lying in the gutter completely drunk, the hangover, the headache.... I never had any headache in my life; these two years I have suffered hell. If I meet these people who came in that black Rolls Royce I will kill them."

"But," the people said, "that was not their fault! you have been purchasing the tickets."

Some young man jumped into the well, tried to find the key and the key to the shop was found.

People collected some money for the tailor's medicine and for his doctor; the poor man really had suffered badly.

But again he started purchasing that ticket! Old habits die really hard. And he was continually condemning the lottery: "I don't want to win."

"But why do you go on purchasing the ticket?"

He said, "If I don't purchase, it seems something is missing - I cannot sleep well, I cannot work well.

It has become such a routine. You can imagine, thirty years.... But you can be certain that it cannot happen again. In thirty years it happened only once. In another thirty years I will be dead and it cannot happen again."

But by chance it happened again. The next year, the same black Rolls Royce stood before his house. He said, "My God, why are you against me? Have I to suffer that hell again?"

The whole neighborhood gathered. They said, "If you don't want to suffer, you can reject the money, you can donate it."

He said, "Never! It is my earning."

He locked the door to his shop and he said, "Now, I really drop the key. There will be no need for it because I cannot survive these two years any more. I don't have enough health... and again those scenes, those nightmares." And he went on the same routine again.

After two years he was a completely shattered man. Back to the shop! He asked the neighbors, "Somehow find my key, and I promise you that I will never accept any money from these idiots who have been killing me."

They said, "Never accept? That means you will purchase, you will go on purchasing the ticket?"

He said, "As far as the ticket is concerned, that I cannot stop."

People get into a certain routine.

Gunakar, it is good that you got out of it without me. It was good that you stayed in Germany and didn't come to me for these six, seven years. It has been a great realization to you - that imagination is not going to help, and that any claim about inner realization which is false is the greatest crime in the world.

Those people who are doing it will also realize it; help them to realize. Go to them and tell them that you have passed this disease: "Now stop purchasing this ticket. You know perfectly well that you are not enlightened." And tell them, "If you are enlightened, go to Osho. If you have guts, go to him.

And if your enlightenment still remains in front of him, then you can be certain that it is there. But if it disappears and comes back only in Germany, it is not of any worth."

Enlightenment made in Germany is simply useless!

Question 3:

BELOVED OSHO,

AN OLD HERMIT LIVING IN THE MOUNTAINS SAID, WHEN ASKED WHY HE WAS UP THERE
AND HOW LONG HE HAD BEEN THERE, "A LONG TIME AGO THERE WERE TWO BULLS
FIGHTING BY THE SEASHORE. THEY FOUGHT AND FOUGHT, AND FINALLY DISAPPEARED
INTO THE OCEAN. AND FROM THAT DAY TO THIS, I CANNOT REMEMBER A SINGLE THING."

I REALLY LOVE THE WAY THE OLD HERMIT EVOKED SUCH A VIVID IMAGE OF THE DUALITY
OF THE MIND, AND THEN ITS DISAPPEARANCE INTO ENLIGHTENMENT.

WOULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT ON THIS?

There is nothing to comment on; the story is so simple, so beautiful, so clear.

Your mind is a duality. Because of its constant fight, you cannot know your oneness. The moment that fight disappears you have come home. Then who bothers to remember how many days, how many years, how many lives - all that concern was of the mind.

Your inner being has no calendars.

Its existence is eternal; it is eternity itself.

When you find such beautiful stories, and when you can understand them yourself, don't make a question out of them. You should bring questions which you cannot find answers for. You should bring questions which are torturing you and there is no way out.

Whatever I can say on this story will be simply elaboration, but it will not give you any more insight.

The story is complete in itself.