Oshołs interaction with Mystics and Disciples



Oshołs interaction with Mystics and Disciples

J. Krishnamurti is enlightened, and he is not orthodox--but he has gone to the other extreme: he is anti-orthodox. Anti should be underlined....
He hates orthodoxy, he hates all that has passed in the name of religion. Remember the difference: I criticize it but I don't hate it. I don't even hate it! Krishnamurti has a relationship with it--I don't have any relationship with it--and that is where he has missed....
One time it happened, I was in Bombay, he was in Bombay, and he wanted to meet me. One of his chief disciples in India came to me and asked me--he knew me and he used to listen to me--"J. Krishnamurti wants to see you."
I said, "I have no problem--bring him."
But he said, "That is not the Indian way."
I said, "Krishnamurti does not believe in Indian or European or American ways."
He said, "He may not believe in them but everybody else does."
I said, "I am not going to meet everybody else. You say J. Krishnamurti wants to meet me: bring him. If I wanted to meet him, I would go to him, but I don't see the need."
But again and again his emphasis was: "He is older, you are younger"--l must have been only forty at the time, and Krishnamurti was almost double my age.
I said, "That's perfectly true, but I don't see any need to meet him. What am I going to say to him? I have no questions to ask, I have only answers to give. It will look very awkward if I start answering him when he has not asked anything. He will be expecting a question from me. That is impossible--I have never asked. I have only answers, so what can I do?
"And of course he is enlightened, so what is the need?--at the most we can sit silently together. So why unnecessarily take me ten or twelve miles?" And in Bombay ten or twelve miles sometimes means two hours, sometimes three hours. The roads are continuously blocked with all kinds of vehicles. Bombay is perhaps the only city which must have all models of cars. The ancientmost, that God used to drive Adam and Eve out of paradise--that too will be in Bombay. There is no other possibility; it cannot be anywhere else.
I said, "I am not interested in taking three hours, unnecessarily bothering.... And I have had such experiences before: it is absolutely futile. You go and ask him; if he wants to ask me something perhaps I may think about coming just because of his old age. But I have nothing to ask. If he just wants to see me, then he should take the trouble of coming here." Of course Krishnamurti was very angry when he heard it. He gets angry easily. That anger is due to his past; he is angry with the past....
In Bombay he has been speaking for his whole life, and he comes only one time a year, for two or three weeks. In a week he speaks only twice, or at the most thrice; still there are only three thousand people. And the strangest thing is that you will find almost the same people, most of them very old because for forty years they have been listening to him--the same old fogeys.
Strange: for forty years you have been listening to this man, and neither he seems to get anywhere nor you seem to get anywhere. It has become just a habit: it seems that he has to come to Bombay and you have to listen to him, every year. By and by old people go on dying and a few new people replace them, but the number has never gone beyond three thousand. The same is the situation in New Delhi; the same is the situation in Varanasi...because I have been speaking at his school in Varanasi.
At his school there I asked, "How many people come here?"
They said, "Fifteen hundred at the most, but they are always the same people."
What impact! And this man has made an arduous effort....
He is anti-orthodox, anti-tradition, anti-convention; but his whole energy has become involved in this hatred.
It is a hate relationship with the past, but it is a relationship all the same. He has not been able to cut himself totally from the past. Perhaps that would have released his energy; it would have opened his charismatic qualities, but that has not been the case.
The people who become interested in him are mere intellectuals remember, I say mere intellectuals--who don't know they have a heart too. These intellectuals become interested in him, but these intellectuals are not the people who are going to be transformed. They are just sophists, arguers; and Krishnamurti is unnecessarily wasting his time with these intellectual people of the world.
Remember, I am not saying intelligent people of the world--that is a different category. I am saying mere intellectuals who love to play with words, logic...it is a kind of gymnastics. And Krishnamurti just goes on feeding their intellect.
He thinks that he is destroying their orthodoxy, that he is destroying their tradition, that he is destroying their personality and helping them to discover their individuality. He is wrong, he is not destroying anything. He is just fulfilling their doubts, supporting their skepticism, making them more articulate--they can argue against anything. You may be able to argue against everything in the world, but is your heart for anything, just one single thing?
You can be against everything--that won't change you.
Are you for something too?
That something is not coming from him.
He just goes on arguing.
And the trouble is--this is why I feel sorry for him--that what he is doing could have been of tremendous help, but it has not helped anybody. I have not come across a single person--and I have met thousands of Krishnamurti-ites, but not a single one of them is transformed. Yes, they are very vocal. You cannot argue with them, you cannot defeat them as far as argument is concerned. Krishnamurti has sharpened their intellect for years and now they are just parrots repeating Krishnamurti.
This is the paradox of Krishnamurti's whole life. He wanted them to be individuals on their own, and what has he succeeded in doing? They are just parrots, intellectual parrots.
This man, Raosaheb Patvardhan, who wanted me to see Krishnamurti, was one of his old colleagues. He came to know me just in 1965 when I spoke in Poona; he lived in Poona. He is no longer alive. I asked Raosaheb Patvardhan--he was a very respected man--"You have been so close to Krishnamurti all your life, but what is the gain? I don't want to hear that tradition is bad, conditioning is bad, and it has to be dropped--I know all that. Put that all aside and just tell me: what have you gained?"
And that old man, who died just six or seven months afterwards, told me, "As far as gaining is concerned, I have never thought about it and nobody ever asked about it."
But I said, "Then what is the point? Whether you are for tradition or you are against tradition, either way you are tethered to tradition. When are you going to open your wings and fly? Somebody is sitting on a tree because he loves the tree; somebody else is sitting on the same tree because he hates the tree, and he will not leave the tree unless he destroys it. One goes on watering it, the other goes on destroying it, but both are confined, tethered, chained to the tree."
I asked him, "When are you going to open your wings and fly? The sky is there. You have both forgotten the sky. And what has the tree to do with it anyway?"...
I don't hate any religion.
I simply state the fact:
Religions are nothing but crimes against humanity.
But I am not saying it with any hate in me. I have no love for them, I have no hate for them: I simply state whatsoever is the fact.
So you will find much similarity between what I am saying and what J. Krishnamurti is saying, but there is a tremendous difference. And the difference is that while I am talking to your intellect, I am working somewhere else...hence the gaps. Hence the discourse becomes too long! Any idiot can repeat my discourse in one hour--not me, because I have to do something else too.
So while you are waiting for my words, that is the right time:
You are engaged in your head, waiting.
And I am stealing your heart.
I am a thief! person07
*Note: Many people who were with Krishnamurti also came to be with Osho, this took place over many years, see also Parts VI to X.

One of India's greatest seers of this age, Raman Maharishi, had only one message to everyone. He was a simple man, not a scholar. He left his house when he was seventeen years old--not even well educated. It was a simple message. To whoever would come to him--and from all over the world people were coming to him--all that he said was, "Sit down in a corner, anywhere...."
He lived on a hill, Arunachal, and he had told his disciples to make caves in the hills; there were many caves. "Go and sit in a cave, and just meditate on, Who am I? All else is just explanations, experiences, efforts to translate those experiences into language. The only real thing is this question, Who am I?"
I have come in contact with many people, but I never came in contact with Raman Maharishi; he died when I was too young. I wanted to go, and I would have reached him, but he was really far away from my place, nearabout fifteen hundred miles. I asked my father many times, "That man is getting old and I am so young. He does not know Hindi, my language; I don't know his language, Tamil. Even if somehow I reach there--which is difficult...."
It was almost a three-day journey from my place to Arunachal...changing so many trains. And with each change of train, the language changes. As you move from the Hindi language territory, which is the biggest in India, you enter the language of Marathi. As you pass from Marathi, you enter the state of the Nizam of Hyderabad, where Urdu is the language. As you go further you enter Telugu-and Malayalam-speaking areas, and finally you reach Raman Maharishi who spoke Tamil....
I could not manage to see Raman, but I met many people who had been his disciples, later on when I was traveling. When I went to Arunachal I met his very intimate disciples, who were very old by then, and I did not find a single person who had understood that man's message.
It was not a question of language, because they all knew Tamil; it was a question of a totally different perspective and understanding. Raman had said, "Look withinwards and find out who you are." And what were these people doing when I went there? They had made it a chant! They would sit down, chanting, "Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?"--just like any other mantra.
There are people who are doing their japa, "Rama, Rama, Rama," or "Hari Krishna, Hari Krishna, Hari Krishna...." At Arunachal they were using this same technology for a totally different thing, which Raman could not have meant. And I said to his disciples, "What you are doing is not what he meant. By repeating, 'Who am I?' do you think somebody is going to answer? You will continue to repeat it your whole life and no answer will be coming."
They said, "On the one hand we are doing what we have understood him to mean. On the other hand we cannot say you are wrong, because we have been wasting our whole life chanting, 'Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?'"--in Tamil of course, in their language--"but nothing has happened."
I said, "You can go on chanting for many more lives; nothing is going to happen. It is not a question of chanting 'Who am I?' You are not to utter a single word, you have simply to be silent and listen. At first you will find, just like flies moving around you, thousands of thoughts, desires, dreams--unrelated, irrelevant, meaningless. You are in a crowd, buzzing. Just keep quiet and sit down in this bazaar of your mind."
Bazaar is a beautiful word. English has taken it over from the East, but perhaps they don't know that it comes from 'buzzing': a bazaar is a place which is continuously buzzing. And your mind is the greatest bazaar there is. In each single mind in such a small skull, you are carrying such a big bazaar. And you will be surprised to know that so many people reside in you--so many ideas, so many thoughts, so many desires, so many dreams. Just go on watching and sitting silently in the middle of the bazaar.
If you start saying, "Who am I?" you have become part of the bazaar, you have started buzzing. Don't buzz, don't be a buzzer; simply be silent. Let the whole bazaar continue; you remain the center of the cyclone.
Yes, it takes a little patience. It is not predictable at what time the buzzing will stop in you, but one thing can be said certainly: that it stops sometime or other. It depends on you how much of a bazaar you have, for how many years you have carried it, for how many lives you have carried it, how much nourishment you have given to it, and how much patience you have to sit silently in this mad crowd around you--maddening you, pulling you from every side. person06

Just in this century, one of the most important men was Meher Baba. He remained silent his whole life. Although he again and again announced that he was going to speak at a certain date, when the date came it was postponed.
His closest disciple, Adi Irani, used to come to see me. All Meher Baba's books are written by Adi Irani. His name is not on those books as the author; the author is Meher Baba.
I asked him, "Why, again and again, do you declare that this year Meher Baba is going to speak? This has been going on for thirty years, and people gather on that date and he does not speak."
He said, "I don't have any explanations."
I said, "My own experience says that perhaps he has forgotten language."
Adi Irani was not aware of Mahavira and his state that had happened after twelve years of silence. Perhaps he was trying, but he was failing again and again. The silence is so much, and the words are so small they cannot contain it. The truth is so big and the language is so trivial.
I told Adi Irani, "Drop the hope that he will ever speak."
And he did not speak; he died without speaking. But with Adi Irani he had a telepathic, non-linguistic communion.
I asked Adi Irani, "Do you feel sometimes suspicious whether what you are saying is exactly what he means?"
He said, "Not for a single moment. It comes with such force; it comes with such inner certainty that even if he says, `That is not right,' I am not going to listen. How it happens I don't know, but just sitting by his side, something starts becoming so solid, so absolutely certain that there is not even a slight doubt about it. I know it is not from me, because I have no idea what I am saying. I could not have said it, left alone by myself.
"Certainly it is coming from him; and it is not coming as language. I am not hearing the words, but I am feeling surrounded by a certain energy, a presence, which becomes words within me. The words are mine, but his presence triggers them. The meaning is his, I am only a hollow bamboo flute. He sings his songs; my only function is not to hinder. Just let him sing his song. I am totally available to him as a vehicle."
And by the way, I would like you to remember that Meher Baba comes from the same heritage as Zarathustra.*
It is the fate of all the mystics to be misunderstood by their own people. Neither Zarathustra was understood by his own people, nor Meher Baba was understood by his own people. It seems something like a law of nature, that you cannot tolerate the idea that someone who comes from you has reached home, and you are still wandering.It hurts the ego. zara213
*Note: Zoroastrians, known in India as Parsis

The Gospel of Ramakrishna is a strange man's book. He calls himself 'M'. I know his real name, but he never allowed anyone to know it. His name is Mahendranath. He was a Bengali, a disciple of Ramakrishna.
Mahendranath sat at Ramakrishna's feet for many many years, and went on writing down whatsoever was happening around his master. The book is known as The Gospel of Ramakrishna, but written by M. He never wanted to disclose his name, he wanted to remain anonymous. That is the way of a true disciple. He effaced himself utterly.
The day Ramakrishna died, you will be surprised, M died too. There was nothing more for him to live for. I can understand...after Ramakrishna it would have been far more difficult to live than to die. Death was more blissful than to live without his master.
There have been many masters, but there has never been such a disciple as M to report about the master. He does not come into it anywhere. He was just reporting--not about himself and Ramakrishna, but only about Ramakrishna. He no longer exists in front of the master. I love this man and his book, and his tremendous effort to efface himself. It is rare to find a disciple like M. Ramakrishna was far more fortunate in this than Jesus. I know his real name because I have traveled in Bengal, and Ramakrishna was alive at the end of the last century, so I could find out the name of this man Mahendranath. books16

Ramakrishna.... His words were not reported correctly, because he was a villager and used the language of a villager. All those words which people think should not be used by any enlightened person have been edited out. I have wandered in Bengal, asking people who are still living how Ramakrishna used to speak. They all said he was terrible. He used to speak as a man should speak--strong, without fear, without any sophistication. glimps06

I have been in contact with Ramakrishna's disciples. They feel a little embarrassed that Ramakrishna had to be a disciple to a master, that only then he became enlightened. They simply don't want that part. They would like Ramakrishna himself to be the origin, the source of a new tradition--the Ramakrishna order.
And in Bengal there are thousands of sannyasins who belong to the Ramakrishna order, and there are many more who are not monks but who are deeply devoted to Ramakrishna--but they are all concerned with the wrong Ramakrishna. And whenever I said this they were very much shocked.
In the beginning they used to call me to speak at their conferences, and when I started focusing on this point they stopped inviting me--because I was destroying their whole joy. They were not people who wanted to sit silently doing nothing, and the spring comes and the grass grows by itself. They wanted chanting, ritual, dancing, an image of God, a belief in God. transm43

Bhuribai is very closely connected with me. I have come to know thousands of men, thousands of women, but Bhuribai was unique among them.
Bhuribai's mahaparinirvana--her death attaining the highest liberation--happened just recently. Count her with Meera, Rabiya, Sahajo, Daya--she is qualified to be among these few selected women.
But as she was illiterate, perhaps her name won't ever become known. She was a villager, she belonged to the country people of Rajasthan. But her genius was unique; without knowing scripture she knew the truth.
It was my first camp. Bhuribai was a participant in it. Later she also participated in other camps. Not for meditation, because she had attained meditation. No, she just enjoyed being near me. She asked no question, I gave no answer. She had nothing to ask, there was no need to answer. But she used to come, bringing a fresh breeze along with her.
She became inwardly connected to me in the very first camp. It happened. It wasn't said, it wasn't heard. The real thing happened!
She attended the first lecture...the words and events of the camp that Bhuribai participated in are collected in a book called The Path of Self-Realization. It was the first camp; only fifty people participated. It was in Muchala Mahavir, an isolated uninhabited ruin in far Rajasthan. Kalidas Bhatiya, a High Court advocate, was with Bhuribai. He served her. He had left all: law practice, law court. He washed Bhuribai's clothes, he massaged her feet. Bhuribai was aged, some seventy years old.
Bhuribai had come, and Kalidas Bhatiya and ten or fifteen of her devotees came. A few people recognized her. She listened to my talk, but when the time to sit in meditation came, she went to her room. Kalidas Bhatiya was surprised, as they had come for meditation. He ran over there and asked Bhuribai, "You listened so attentively to the talk; now when the time to do it has come, why did you leave?" Then Bhuribai said, "You go, you go! I understood it."
Kalidas was very surprised. If she has understood, then why doesn't she meditate?
He came and asked me, "What's the matter, what's going on? Bhuribai says she understands, so why doesn't she meditate? And when I asked her she said, 'You go, ask Baapji himself"--Bhuribai was seventy years old, but still she called me Baapji, father--"'You go, ask Baapji.' So I have come to you," Kalidas said. "She doesn't say anything, she smiles. And when I started to go, she added, 'You don't understand a thing. I understood it!"'
Then I said, "She is right, because I explained meditation--it is non-doing. And you went and told Bhuribai to come and do meditation. She will just laugh--doing meditation? How to do it, when it is non-doing? I explained also that meditation is just becoming quiet, so she must have thought it's easier to be quiet in her room than in this crowd. She understood well. And the truth is she doesn't need to meditate. She knows silence. Although she doesn't call it meditation, because meditation has become a scholarly word. She's a simple direct village woman, she says, chup!--silence!"
When she returned home after the camp, she asked someone to write this sutra on the wall of the hut:
Silence the means, silence the end, in silence, silence permeates.
Silence, the knowing of all knowing: understand it, you become silence.
Silence is the means, silence is the end, in silence only silence permeates. If you would understand, if you want to understand, then only one thing is worth understanding-silence. The moment you know it, you become silent. There is nothing else to do: Silence, the knowing of all knowing.
Her disciples told me, "She doesn't listen to us. If you tell Bai, she'll accept what you say. She'll never refuse you, she'll do what you say. You tell her to have her life's experience written down--she can't write because she's unschooled. Still, whatever she has known, have it written down. Now she's old, the time for her to depart is coming now. Have it written down; it will be helpful for people coming later."
I asked, "Bai, why don't you have it written down?"
Then she replied, "Baapji, if you say so, it is good. When I come to the next camp, you yourself can release it. I'll bring it written down."
At the next camp her disciples waited eagerly, with great excitement. She had put the book in a chest and had it sealed. She had a lock put on it and brought the key.
Her disciples lifted the chest on their heads and brought it to me. They asked me to open it. I opened it and took out a booklet, a tiny little booklet of some ten or fifteen pages; and tiny--about three inches long by two inches wide. And black pages without any white!
I said, "Bhuribai, you have written well. Other people write, but they blacken the page only a little bit. You wrote so there's no white left at all." She had written and written and written.
She said, "Only you can understand. They just don't get it. I told them, 'Look. Other people write. They write a little--they are educated, they can write only a little. I am unschooled, so I wrote on and on, wrote out the whole thing. I didn't leave any space.' And how to have someone else write it? So I just went on writing, went on marking and marking and marking--made the whole book totally black! Now you present it."
And I did present it. Her disciples were very surprised.
I said, "This is real scripture. This is the scripture of scriptures. The Sufis have a book, it is a blank book. They call it The Book of the Books. But its pages are white. Bhuribai's book has gone beyond this. Its pages are black."
Bhuribai never used to say anything. When someone used to come and ask her, "What should I do?" she would just make the gesture of touching her finger to her lips--"Just remain silent. Nothing else needs to be done."
Her love was amazing. She had her own way, unique! She doesn't have to return to this world. She has gone forever. In silence, silence permeates. She has dissolved. The river has diffused into the ocean. She didn't do anything, she just remained silent. And whoever went to her house she served them. She served them in every way--and silently, quietly.
She was an amazing woman. early08

You don't know thousands of enlightened people who have lived and died because they had no special talents so that they became visible to the ordinary man. They may have had something unique; for example they may have had the immense quality of being silent, but that would not be noticed much.
I knew an enlightened man who was in Bombay when I was in Bombay and his only talent was to make beautiful statues out of sand. I have never seen such beautiful statues. The whole day he would make them on the beach, and thousands of people would see them and would be amazed. And they had seen Gautam Buddha's statues, Krishna's, Mahavira's, but there was no comparison. And he was not working in marble, just with the sea sand. People would be throwing rupee notes; he was not at all bothered. I have seen others taking the notes away; he was not concerned about that either. He was so absorbed in making those statues. But those statues didn't last. Just an ocean wave would come and the Buddha was gone.
Before his enlightenment he was earning that way, moving from one city to another city and making sand statues. And they were so beautiful that it was impossible not to give something to him. He earned much, enough for one man.
Now he had become enlightened but he had only one talent: to make sand statues. Of course he will not make sand statues that don't indicate towards enlightenment--but that is the only offering he can give. Existence will use that. His statues are more meditative. Just sitting by the side of his sand statues you could feel that he has given a proportion to the statue, a certain shape, a certain face that creates something within you.
I asked him, "Why do you go on making Gautam Buddha and Mahavira? You can earn more--because this country is not Buddhist and Jainas are very few. You can make Rama, you can make Krishna."
But he said, "They will not serve the purpose; they do not point to the moon. They will be beautiful statues--I have made all those statues before--but now I can make only that which is a teaching, even though it will be invisible to millions of people, almost to all."
Whenever I used to come to Bombay...When I came permanently he had died, but before that whenever I used to come I made it a point to go and visit him. He worked on Juhu beach at that time. It is silent there the whole day. People only came in the evening and by that time his statue was ready. The whole day, no disturbance.
I told him, "You can make statues. Why don't you work in marble? They will remain forever."
He said, "Nothing is permanent"--that is a quotation of Buddha--"and these statues represent Gautam Buddha better than any marble statue. A marble statue has a certain permanence and these statues are momentary: just a strong wind and they are gone, an ocean wave and they are gone. A child comes running and stumbles on the statue, and it is gone."
I said, "Don't you feel bad when you have been working the whole day, and the statue was just going to be complete, and then something happens and the whole day's work is gone?"
He said, "No. All of existence is momentary; there is no question of frustration. I enjoyed making it, and if an ocean wave enjoys unmaking it, then two persons enjoyed! I enjoyed making it, the wave enjoyed unmaking it. So in existence there has been a double quantity of joy--why should I be frustrated? The wave has as much power on the sand as I have; perhaps it has more."
When I was talking to him he said, "You are a little strange because nobody talks to me. People simply throw rupees. They enjoy the statue, but nobody enjoys me. But when you come I feel so blissful that there is somebody who enjoys me, who is not concerned only with the statue but with its inner meaning, with why I am making it. I cannot do anything else. My whole life I have been making statues; that is the only art I know. And now I am surrendered to existence; now existence can use me."
These people will remain unrecognized. A dancer may be a buddha, a singer may be a buddha, but these people will not be recognized, for the simple reason that their way of doing things cannot become a teaching. It cannot help people really to come out of their sleep. But they are doing their best; whatever they can do, they are doing.
The very few people who become masters are those who have earned in their many lives a certain articulateness, a certain insight into words, language, the sound of words, the symmetry and the poetry of language. It is a totally different thing. It is not a question of linguistics or grammar, it is more a question of finding in ordinary language some extraordinary music, of creating the quality of great poetry in ordinary prose. They know how to play with words so that you can be helped to go beyond words.
It is not that they have chosen to be masters, and it is not that existence has chosen them to be masters. It is just a coincidence: before enlightenment they had been great teachers and they became masters because of enlightenment. Now they can change their teaching into mastery--and certainly that is the most difficult part.
Those who remain silent and disappear peacefully with nobody knowing them have an easy way, but a man like me cannot have an easy way. It was not easy when I was a teacher--how can it be easy when I am a master? It is going to be difficult. mystic14

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