Glimpses of a Golden Childhood
1984 in Lao Tzu House, Rajneeshpuram, USA

Chapter # 21
Chapter # 22
Chapter # 23
Chapter # 24

Chapter #21

Okay....
The man I was talking about, his full name was Pandit Shambhuratan Dube. We all used to call him Shambhu Babu. He was a poet, and rare in that he was not eager to be published. That is very rare in a poet. I have come across hundreds of the tribe, and they are all so eager to be published that poetry becomes secondary. I call any ambitious person a politician, and Shambhu Dube was not ambitious.
He was not an elected vice-president either, because to be elected you have to at least stand for election. He was nominated by the president, who was just holy cow-dung, as I have said before, and he wanted some men with intelligence to do his work. The president was an absolute cow-dung, and he had been in office for years. Again and again he had been chosen by other cow-dungs.
In India, to be a holy cow-dung is a great thing -- you become a Mahatma; and this president was almost a Mahatma, and as bogus as they all are, otherwise they would not be Mahatmas in the first place. Why should a man of creativity and intelligence choose to be a cow-dung? Why should he be at all interested in being worshipped? I will not even mention the name of the holy cow-dung; it is filthy. He had nominated Shambhu Babu as his vice-president, and I think that was the only good thing that he did in his whole life. Perhaps he did not know what he was doing -- cow-dungs are not conscious people.
The moment Shambhu Babu and I saw each other, something happened; what Carl Gustav Jung calls "synchronicity." I was just a child; not only that, wild too. I was fresh from the woods, uneducated and undisciplined. We had nothing in common. He was a man of power and very respected by the people, not because he was a cow-dung but because he was such a strong man, and if you were not respectful to him, some day you might suffer for it. And his memory was very, very good. Everybody was really afraid of him and so they were all respectful, and I was just a child.
Apparently there was nothing in common with us. He was the vice-president of the whole village, the president of the lawyers' association, the president of the rotary club, and so on and so forth. He was either the president or the vice-president of many committees. He was everywhere, and he was a well-educated man. He had the highest degrees in law, but he did not practice law in that village.
Don't be worried about the noisy devils working outside -- after all they are my disciples. If I initiate devils into sannyas what can you expect? I have been taking all the disciples from Beelzebub. That was the name Gurdjieff used to call the devil, Beelzebub. But I would like to tell Gurdjieff that Beelzebub is losing hundreds of disciples every day. But they have been with Beelzebub for so long that they have learned his technology. I am not against technology, I love it. That is why Beelzebub's disciples find it easy to become my disciples, very easy, because they continue the same work under me that they used to do for ugly Beelzebub.
So don't be worried if I am not. In fact all their noises give such a beautiful background to what I am saying to you... of course, a sort of Picasso background, a little nightmarish. But sometimes nightmares can be beautiful, and one can feel sorry when they are ended. And what they are doing may not sound beautiful, but they are doing my work. Naturally Beelzebub is very angry... they are his disciples and using all his technology for me.
Science is a little devilish. You are medically trained, so in a way you are part of Beelzebub's technology. Forgive those poor fellows -- they are doing their best, and as far as I am concerned, when I am speaking nothing matters.
I was saying -- look at the background, and the silence -- if one knows, then one can use Beelzebub as a servant.
I was telling you about Shambhu Dube, Shambhu Babu. He was a poet, but never published his poetry while he was still alive. He was a great story-writer too, and by chance a famous film director became acquainted with him and his stories. Now Shambhu Babu is dead but a great film has been made using one of his stories, MUGLE AZAM -- "The Great Mogul." It won many awards, both national and international. Alas he is no more. He was my only friend in that place.
Once it was decided that I would live there -- it was planned for only seven years but I actually lived there for eleven years. Perhaps they told only seven years to persuade me to stay; perhaps it was their intention from the beginning....
In India in those days, the educational structure began with four years of primary education -- it was a separate phenomenon, under the local authorities -- then three years more if you wanted to continue in the same direction. That is seven years; and then you would get a certificate.
Perhaps that was their intention and they were not lying to me. But there was another way too, and that is what actually happened. After four years you could either continue in the same line or change: you could go to the middle school. If you continued in the same line you never learned English. Primary education ended after seven years, and you were fully educated in only the local language -- and in India there are thirty recognized languages. But after the fourth year there was an opening and you could change gear. You could go to the English school; you could join the middle school as it was called.
Again, it was a four-year course, and if you continued in that line then three years later you became a matriculate. My God! What a wastage of life! All those beautiful days wasted so mercilessly, crushed! And by the time you were a matriculate, you were then capable of going to university. Again, it was a six-year course! In all, I had to waste four years in primary school, four years in middle school, three years in high school, and six years in university -- seventeen years of my life!
I think, if I can make any sense out of it, the only word that comes to me, in spite of Beelzebub and his disciples doing great work -- ex-disciples, I mean -- the only word that comes to me is "nonsense." Seventeen years! And I was eight or nine when I started this whole nonsense, so the day I left university I was twenty-six, and so happy -- not because I was a gold medallist but because I was free at last. Free again.
I was in such a hurry that I told my professor, "Don't waste my time. Nobody can convince me to enter these gates again. Even when I was nine years old my father had to drag me in, but now nobody can drag me. If anyone tries then I will drag him out." And of course I was able to drag the poor old man who was trying to persuade me not to leave.
He said, "Listen to me: it is rare to receive a scholarship for a Ph.D. Do your Ph.D., and I promise you that you will one day be able to have a D.Litt."
I said, "Don't waste my time, because my bus is leaving." The bus was standing there at the gate. I had to rush to catch it, and I am sorry that I could not even thank him. I had no time -- the bus was leaving, and my luggage was already on it, and the driver -- as drivers do -- was honking like mad. I was the only passenger not yet on the bus, and my old professor was almost on his knees persuading me not to leave.
Shambhu Babu was well-educated. I was uneducated when the friendship began. He had a glorious past; I had none. The whole town was shocked by our friendship, but he was not even embarrassed. I respect that quality. We used to walk hand in hand. He was my father's age, and his children were older than me. He died ten years before my father. I think he must have been about fifty at that time. This would have been the right time for us to be friends. But he was the only man to recognize me. He was a man of authority in the village, and his recognition was of immense help to me.
Kantar Master was never seen at the school again. He was immediately sent on leave, because there was only one month before his retirement, and his application for an extension had been canceled. This created a great celebration in the village. Kantar Master had been a great man in that village, yet I had had him thrown out in just a single day. That was something. People started respecting me. I would say, "What nonsense is this? I have not done anything -- I simply brought the man and his wrongdoing to the light."
I am surprised how he continued torturing small children his whole life; but that is what was thought to be education. It was thought then, and many Indians still think, that unless you torture a child he cannot be taught -- although they may not say so clearly.
So I said, "There is no question of respect, and as far as my friendship with Shambhu Babu is concerned, it is not a matter of age. He is my father's friend really. Even my father is amazed."
My father used to ask Shambhu Babu, "Why are you so friendly to that troublesome boy?"
And Shambhu Babu would laugh and say, "One day you will understand why. I cannot tell you now."
I was always amazed at the beauty of the man. It was part of his beauty that he could answer by saying, "I cannot answer. One day you will understand."
One day he said to my father, "Perhaps I should not be friendly to him, but respectful."
It shocked me too. When we were alone, I said to him, "Shambhu Babu, what nonsense were you telling to my father? What do you mean by saying that you should respect me?"
He said, "I do respect you because I can see, but not very clearly, as if hidden behind a smokescreen, what you are going to be one day."
Even I had to shrug my shoulders. I said, "You are just talking rubbish. What can I be? I am already it."
He said, "There! That's what amazes me in you. You are a child, the whole village laughs at our friendship, and they wonder what we talk about together, but they don't know what they are all missing. I know," -- he emphasized it -- "I know what I am missing. I can feel it a little, but I can't see it clearly. Perhaps one day when you are really grown up, I may be able to see you."
And, I have to confess, after Magga Baba he was the second man who recognized that something immeasurable had happened to me. Of course he was not a mystic, but a poet has the capacity, once in a while, to be a mystic, and he was a great poet. He was also great because he never bothered to publish his work. He never bothered to read at any gathering of poets. It looked strange that he would read his poetry to a nine-year-old child, and he would ask me, "Is it of any worth? Or just worthless?"
Now his poetry is published, but he is no more. It was published in his memory. It does not contain his best work because the people who chose it, none of them were even poets, and it needs a mystic to choose from Shambhu Babu's poetry. I know everything he wrote. There was not much, a few articles, and very few poems, and a few stories, but in a strange way they all connect with a single theme.
The theme is life, not as a philosophical concept but as it is lived moment to moment. Life with a small "l" will do, because he would never forgive me if you wrote Life with a capital "L." He was against capital letters. He never wrote any word with capitals. Even the beginning of a sentence would always be written with small letters. He would even write his own name in small letters. I asked him, "What is wrong with capital letters? Why are you so against them, Shambhu Babu?"
He said, "I am not against them, but I am in love with the immediate, not the faraway. I am in love with small things: a cup of tea, a swim in the river, a sunbath.... I am in love with little things, and they cannot be written with capital letters."
I understand him, so when I say that although he was not an enlightened Master, not a master in any way, I still count him as number two, after Magga Baba, because he recognized me when it was impossible to do so, absolutely impossible. I may not have even recognized myself, but he recognized me.
When I entered his vice-president's office for the first time and we looked at each other, eye to eye, for a moment there was just silence. Then he stood up and said to me, "Please sit down."
I said, "There is no need for you to stand up."
He said, "It is not a question of need, and it makes me so happy to stand up for you. I have never felt that before -- and I have stood before the governor and all the so-called powerful people. I have seen the viceroy in New Delhi, but I was not mystified as I am by you, I confess. Please don't tell anybody."
And this is for the first time that I have ever told it. I have kept it a secret all these years, forty years. It feels like a relief.
This morning Gudia said, "You slept so late."
Yes, last night I slept, for the first time in many years, as I would like to sleep every night. During the whole night I was not disturbed even for a single moment. Usually I have to look at my watch once in a while just to see whether it is time to get up. But last night, after many years, I did not look at my watch at all.
I even had to miss Devaraj's concoction. That's what I call his special breakfast mixture. It is a concoction but it is really good. It is difficult to eat because it takes half an hour just to chew it, but it is really healthy and nourishing. We should make it available to everybody -- Devaraj's concoction for breakfast. Of course it is not fast, it is slow, very, very slow. Can we call it a "break-slow"? But then it would not sound right.
I had to miss breakfast today for two reasons: first, I had to keep Devageet's time, and still I was five minutes late, and I don't like to be late. Secondly, if I had started that concoction it would have taken so much time to eat that by the time I had finished, it would have been lunch time. There would have been no gap, which is needed. So I thought I would miss it. But I really enjoy it, and in missing it, I really miss it.
Last night was one of the rarest for the simple reason that yesterday I spoke to you about Shambhu Babu, and it relieved me of a weight. I also talked about my father and the continuous struggle and how it ended. I felt so unburdened.
Shambhu Babu was a man who could have become a realized one, but missed it. He missed because of too much intellectuality. He was an intellectual giant. He could not sit silently even for a single moment. I was present when he died. It is a strange destiny that I have to see everyone I love die.
I was not very far away when he was dying. He phoned just before to say, "Come quickly if you can because I don't think that I can last long. I mean," he said, "that I can't last even a few days."
I immediately rushed to the village. It was only eighty miles from Jabalpur, and I got there within two hours. He was so happy. He again looked at me with the same look as when we had first met, when I had been about nine years old. There was a very eloquent silence. Nothing was said, but everything was heard.
Holding his hands I told him, "Please close your eyes, don't strain."
He said, "No. The eyes are going to close very soon of their own accord, and then I won't be able to open them. So please don't ask me to close my eyes. I want to see you. Perhaps I may not be able to see you again. One thing is certain," he said, "that you are not coming back to life. Alas, had I listened to you! You always insisted on being silent but I continued to postpone. Now there is no time even to postpone."
Tears came to his eyes. I remained without saying anything, just with him. He closed his eyes and died.
He had such beautiful eyes, and such an intelligent face. I know many beautiful people but it is very rare to have the beauty of that man. It is not man-made, certainly not made in India. He was, and still is, one of my most loved ones. Although he has not yet entered into a body again, I am waiting for him.
This is a multi-purpose ashram. A few purposes are known to you, and a few are known only to me. This is one of the purposes unknown to the organizers of the ashram, that I am awaiting a few souls. I am even preparing couples to receive them. Shambhu Babu will be here before long.
There are so many memories concerning this man that I will have to refer to him again and again. But today, just his death.
Strange that I should talk about his death first and the other things later on. No, as far as I am concerned it is not strange, because to me the moment of death opens a man as nothing else does. Not even love can do that miracle. It tries to, but lovers prevent it, because in love two people are needed; in death only one is enough unto oneself. That's because there is no disturbance from the other. I saw Shambhu Babu dying with such a relaxed joyous attitude that I cannot forget his face.
You will be surprised to know that he had the face of -- guess who? -- almost the same face as the ex-president of America, Richard Nixon! But without the ugliness hidden in every cell and fiber of Nixon...! Otherwise Shambhu Babu would have been the president of India. He was far more intelligent than the so-called president of India, Sanjiva. But I mean photographically he looked very similar to Nixon in his younger days. Of course, when a different soul is there even the same face has a different aura, a different -- how to say it -- a different, altogether different significance. So please don't misunderstand me, because you all know Richard Nixon while only I knew Shambhu Babu, so misunderstanding is bound to happen.
Please forget that I said that they looked alike, just forget it. It is better that you don't know Shambhu Babu's face at all rather than you start thinking of him as Richard Nixon. But I must confess that I have a soft spot for Richard Nixon, just because he resembles Shambhu Babu. You have to forgive me that; I know he does not deserve it, but I cannot help it either. Whenever I see his picture all I see is Shambhu Babu, and not Nixon at all.
When Nixon became president of America, I said to myself, "Aha! So at least a man resembling Shambhu Babu has become president of America." I would have loved Shambhu Babu to be the president of America; of course that was not possible, but the resemblance consoles me. When Nixon did what he did, I felt ashamed, again, because he resembles Shambhu Babu. And when he had to resign the presidency I was sad, not because of him -- I had nothing to do with him -- but because now I would not see Shambhu Babu's face again in the newspapers.
Now, there is no problem because I don't read the newspapers any more. I have not read them for years. I used to finish reading four newspapers within one minute, but for more than two years I have not even looked at one. And I don't read any books. I simply don't read. I have become uneducated again, just as I always wanted to be. If my father had not dragged me into that school... but he did drag me. And what all those schools and colleges and university did to me took so much energy to undo, but I have succeeded in undoing it all.
I have undone everything that society did to me. I am again just an uneducated, wild boy from -- you don't use the word in English.... In Hindi, a man from a village is called a gamar. A village is called a gam, and the villager is called a gamar. But gamar also means "fool" and they have become intermixed, so much so that nobody now thinks that the word gamar means villager; everybody thinks it means fool.
I came from the village utterly blank, with nothing written on me. Even while I was away from that village I had remained a wild boy. I have never allowed anybody to write anything on me. People are always ready... not only ready but insistent that they write something on you. I had come from the village empty, and I can say now that all that has been written in between I have erased, and erased completely. In fact I have demolished the wall itself so you cannot write anything on it ever again.
Shambhu Babu could have done this too. I know he was capable of it, of becoming a Buddha, but it didn't happen. Perhaps his very profession -- he was a lawyer -- prevented it. I have heard of all kinds of people becoming buddhas, but I have never heard of any lawyer becoming a Buddha. I don't think anybody from that profession could become a Buddha unless he really renounced all that he had learned. Shambhu Babu could not gather that courage, and I feel sorry for him. I don't feel sorry for anybody else because I have never come across anybody else who was so capable and yet did not take the jump.
I used to ask him, "Shambhu Babu, what is the hitch?"
And he would always say the same thing: "How can I explain it? I don't know exactly what the hitch is, but there must be something preventing me."
I know what it was, but he also knew it although he never recognized that he knew it. And he knew that I knew that he knew it. He would always close his eyes whenever I would ask the question -- and I am a stubborn man; again and again I would ask him, "What is the hitch?"
He would close his eyes, just not to face me eye to eye, because that was the one situation where he could not lie. I mean he could not be a lawyer... liar. But now that he is dead I can say that even though he was not a Buddha, he was almost a Buddha, which I will never say about anybody else again. I will keep this special category, of almost-a-Buddha, for Shambhu Babu.

Chapter #22

I was just going to say "okay," but no. One day I said it lightly, just to be polite, and suffered much. Then everything went wrong. So now I'm going to say okay only when it is really okay, otherwise silence is better....
Okay.
I am reminded again of poor Sigmund Freud. He was waiting in his office for a rich, and of course Jewish, patient. How can you be rich without being a Jew? And psychoanalysis is the greatest business that any Jew ever founded. They missed Jesus, they could not afford to miss Sigmund Freud. Of course he is no comparison.
Freud was waiting and waiting, walking up and down his room. The patient was really rich, and psychoanalysis is treatment which goes on for years, unless the patient finds a far more articulate Jew, but he never gets out of the vicious circle.
Freud looked again and again at his gold watch, and then at the last moment, when he was really thinking of giving up, the patient appeared. His big car appeared on the horizon, and Freud was, of course, furious. Finally the car came to his porch, the Jew got out, and when he entered the office Sigmund Freud was really angry because he was fifty seconds late.
Freud said, "It's good that I heard your car at the porch at the right time, otherwise I was going to begin the session alone."
It is a professional joke. Only those who are in the profession of psychoanalysis will understand it. I will have to explain it to you because none of you is a psychoanalyst. The joke is that Freud said, "I would have started even without you" -- without the patient. Do you see the point? Let me be clearer, the joke has to be put aside. At a certain point, I have to begin.
Exactly at the time to say "okay" I'll say it, and not like Sigmund Freud, fully knowing the joke. Still, I cannot disappoint you. This is only an introductory note; now we take up the unending story.
Yes, it is unending. How can it end before I end? Somebody else will have to write the afterword. I cannot write it. Please excuse me for that; but I am preparing my people -- Devageet, Devaraj, Ashu, this trinity will do it. And remember, in my trinity there is a woman who will keep both the fellows fighting forever. But still they will manage to write the afterword. If they cannot manage, then Ashu can let them fight, and meanwhile she herself can write it.
This morning, by the way, I referred to Carl Gustav Jung's word "synchronicity." I don't like the man, but I like the word that he introduced. For that he should be given all possible credit. In no other language is there a word like "synchronicity," because it is an invented word, invented by Carl Gustav Jung.
But all words are invented by somebody or other, so there is nothing wrong in inventing a word, particularly when it really indicates an experience which has remained unlabeled for centuries. Just for this single word, "synchronicity," Jung should have received the Nobel prize, although he is a mediocrity. But so many mediocre people have received the Nobel prize; if one more receives it, what is wrong? And they also award the prize posthumously, so please, give this poor fellow Carl Gustav Jung a Nobel prize. I'm not joking. I am really thankful for this word because this is what has always eluded the grasp of the human intellect.
I was talking to you about my strange friendship with Shambhu Babu. It was strange on many counts. First, he was older than my father, or perhaps the same age; but as far as I remember, he looked older, and I was only nine years old. Now what kind of friendship is possible? He was a successful legal expert, not only in that small place, but he practiced in the high court and in the supreme court. He was one of the topmost legal authorities. And he was a friend of a wild, unruly, undisciplined, illiterate child. When he said, on that first meeting, "Please be seated," I was amazed.
I had not hoped that the vice-president would stand to receive me and would say, "Please be seated."
I said to him, "First, you be seated. I feel a little embarrassed to sit before you do. You are old, perhaps even older than my father."
He said, "Don't be worried. I am a friend of your father. But relax and tell me what you have come for."
I said, "I will tell you later on why I have come here. First...." He looked at me, I looked at him; and what transpired in that small fragment of a moment became my first question. I asked him, "First tell me what happened just now, between your eyes and mine."
He closed his eyes. I think perhaps ten minutes must have passed before he opened them again. He said, "Forgive me. I cannot figure it out, but something happened."
We became friends; that was sometime in 1940. Only later on, years afterwards, just one year before he died -- he died in 1960, after twenty years of friendship, strange friendship -- only then was I able to tell him that the word he had been searching for had been invented by Carl Gustav Jung. That word is "synchronicity"; that is what is happening between us. He knew it; I knew it; but the word was missing.
Synchronicity can mean many things all together, it is multidimensional. It can mean a certain rhythmic feeling; it can mean what people have always called love; it can mean friendship; it can simply mean two hearts beating together without rhyme or reason... it is a mystery. Only once in a while one finds someone with whom things fit. Just the jigsaw disappears. All the pieces that were not fitting are suddenly fitting of their own accord.
When I told my grandmother, "I have become friends with the vice-president of this town," she said, "You mean Pandit Shambhuratan Dube?"
I said, "You look a little shocked by it. What's the matter with you, Nani?"
Tears rolled down from her eyes. She said, "Then you will not find many friends in the world, that's why I am worried. If Shambhu Babu has become your friend then you will not find many friends in the world. Not only that; perhaps you may find friends, because you are young, but Shambhu Babu will certainly not find another friend in the world, because he is too old."
Again and again my grandmother will come into my story with her tremendous insight. Yes, I can see it now. Recapitulating, I can see what she had seen and wept over. I know now that Shambhu Babu never had any other friend. Except for me he was friendless.

I used to visit my village once in a while, perhaps once a year, or twice, not more than that. And as I became more and more involved in my own activity -- or you can call it inactivity... as I became more and more involved with the sannyasins, and the movement of meditation, my visits to the village became even rarer. In fact, the last few years before he died my only visits were when I passed through the village on the train.
The station master was my sannyasin, so of course the train would stay as long as I wanted it to. They -- and by "they" I mean my father, my mother, Shambhu Babu, and many others who loved me -- would come to the station. That would be my only visit; ten, twenty, at the most thirty minutes. The train could not be delayed any longer because other trains had to come. They would be waiting outside the station.
But I can understand his loneliness. He had no other friends. Almost every day he wrote a letter to me -- that is very rare -- and there was nothing to write. Sometimes he would just send the empty paper inside an envelope. I would understand even that. He was feeling very lonely, and would like to have my company. I tried my best to be there as much as it was practical, because to me it was really a drag to be in that village. It was just for him that I suffered that village.
After he died I rarely, very rarely went there. I now had an excuse, that I could not come because it reminded me of Shambhu Babu. But really there was no point in going there. When he was there, there was a point. He was just a small oasis in a desert.
He was absolutely unafraid about all kinds of condemnation that came to him because of me. To be associated with me, even in those days, was not a good thing. It was dangerous. They told him, "You will lose all the respect of the community, and it is the community that made you from vice-president into the president."
I said to him, "You can choose, Shambhu Babu: be the president of this stupid village or be my friend."
He resigned his mayorship, and his presidency. He didn't say a single word to me; he simply wrote his letter of resignation there, in front of me. He said, "I love something in you which is indefinable. The presidency of this stupid town means nothing to me. I am ready to lose everything, if it comes to that. Yes, I am ready to lose everything."
They tried to persuade him not to resign, but he would not take it back.
I told him, "Shambhu Babu, you know perfectly well I hate all these presidencies, vice-presidencies, whether they are municipal or national. I cannot say to you, `Take back your resignation,' because I could not commit that crime. If you want to take it back you are free to do so."
He said, "The seal is closed. There is no point in going back, and I am happy that you did not try to persuade me."
He remained a lonely man. He had enough money to live like a rich man, so when he resigned his presidency he also resigned from the bar. He said, "I have enough money, why bother? And why law? -- with all the legalities and continuous lying in the name of truth."
He stopped his profession. These were the qualities I loved in him. Without thinking for a single moment, he resigned, and the next day he dropped out of the bar association. For him, I had to visit the village once in a while, or call him to my place, just to be with me for a few days. Once in a while he used to come.
He was a real man, not afraid of any consequences. He once asked me, "What are you going to do? -- because I don't think that you can remain in the university as a professor for long."
I said, "Shambhu Babu, I never plan. If I drop out of this work I hope some other work will be there waiting for me. If God..." and remember the "if," because he was not a theist, that was another quality I loved in him; he used to say, "Unless I know, how can I believe?"
I said to him, "If God can find work for all kinds of people, animals, trees, I think He will be able to find some kind of work for me too. And if He cannot find any it is His problem, not mine."
He laughed and said, "Yes, that is perfectly right. Yes, it is His problem if He is there, but the point is: if He is not there, then what?"
I said, "I don't see any problem for me then either. If there is no work I can take a deep breath and say goodbye to existence. It is enough proof that I am not needed. And if I am not needed then I am not going to impose myself on this poor existence."
Our talks, could they all be recapitulated; our arguments, could they all be again reproduced, would make even better dialogues than Plato. He was a very logical man, just as logical as I am illogical. And that is the most baffling thing: that we were the only friends for each other in the town.
Everybody asked, "He is a logician, you are utterly illogical. What is the bridge between you both?"
I said, "It will be difficult for you to understand because you are neither. His very logic brings him to its very brink. I am illogical, not because I was born illogical -- nobody is born illogical; I am illogical because I have seen the futility of logic. So I can go with him according to his logic and yet, at a certain point, go ahead of him and then he becomes afraid and stops. And that is keeping our friendship, because he knows he has to go beyond that point, and he knows nobody else who can be of any help to him. You all" -- I meant the people of the town -- "think that he is a help to me. You are wrong. You can ask him. I am a help to him."
You will be surprised but one day a few people went to his house to inquire, "Is it true that this small boy is some sort of guide or help to you?"
He said, "Certainly. There is no doubt about it. Why have you come to ask me? Why don't you ask him? -- he lives next door to your house."
The quality is very rare, and my grandmother was right when she said, "I am afraid that Shambhu Babu is going to be without a friend. And," she said, "as far as you are concerned, my fears are there, but you are still young, perhaps you may find a few friends."
Her insight was really so clear. You will be surprised to know that in my whole life I have not had any friend except for Shambhu Babu. If he had not been there I would never have known what it means to have a friend. Yes, I have had many acquaintances -- in school, in college, at university; there were hundreds. You might have thought they were all friends, they may even have thought the same; but except for this man, I have not known a single person whom I could call a friend.
To be acquainted is very easy. Acquaintance is very ordinary, but friendship is not part of the ordinary world. You will be surprised to know that whenever I became ill -- and I was eighty miles away from the town -- I would immediately receive a phone call from Shambhu Babu, very much concerned.
He would ask, "Are you okay?"
I would say, "What's the matter? Why are you so worried? You sound sick."
He said, "I am not sick but I felt that you were, and now I know that you are. You cannot hide it from me."
It happened many times. You will not believe it, but it was just for him that I had to take a private number. Of course there was a phone for my secretary to take care of all my arrangements around the country. But I had a secret, private phone just for Shambhu Babu, so that he could inquire if he felt concerned, even in the middle of the night. I even made it a point that if I was not in the house, perhaps traveling somewhere in India, and I was sick, I would phone him myself just to say, "Please don't be worried because I am sick." This is synchronicity.
Somehow a deep, deep connection existed. The day he died I went to him without hesitation. I did not even inquire. I simply drove to the town. I never liked that road, and I liked driving, but that road from Jabalpur to Gadarwara was really a sonofabitch! You will not find a worse road anywhere. Our road, connecting Lao Tzu House to Buddha Hall, is a superhighway by comparison. What do they call them in Germany? Autobahn?
"Yes, Osho."
Okay, if Devageet says it is right, then it must be right. Our road is an autobahn compared to the road from the university to Shambhu Babu's house. I just rushed... a feeling in the guts.
I was a speedy driver. I love speed, but on that road you cannot go more than twenty miles an hour; that's the maximum possible. So you can conceive what kind of a road it must be. By the time you arrive, if you are not dead then you are something close to it! There is just one good thing: before you enter the town you come across the river. That is its saving grace; you can take a good bath, you can swim for half an hour to refresh yourself, and give your car a good bath too. Then, when you reach the town nobody thinks you are a holy ghost.
I rushed. Never in my life have I been in such a hurry. Not even now, although now I should be in a hurry because time is slipping out of my hands and the day is not far off when I will have to say goodbye to you all, although I may have liked to linger a little longer. Nothing is in my hands except the arms of this chair, and you can see how I am clinging on to them, feeling them to see whether I am still in the body. There is no need to worry... there is still a little time.
That day I had to hurry, and it proved true because if I had been just a few minutes later I would never have seen Shambhu Babu's eyes again. Alive, I mean -- I mean looking at me just the way he had looked that first time. I wanted to see that first look for the last time... that synchronicity. And in that half an hour before he died there was nothing but pure communion. I told him he could say whatever he wanted to say.
He sent everybody else away. Of course they were offended. His wife and sons and his brothers did not like it. But he clearly said, "Whether you like it or not, I want you all to leave immediately because I don't have much time to waste."
Naturally afraid, they all left. We both laughed. I said, "Anything you want to say to me, you can say."
He said, "I have nothing to say to you. Just hold my hands. Let me feel you. Fill me with your presence, I beg you." He went on, "I cannot go on my knees and touch your feet. It is not that I would not like to do it, just that my body is not in a position to get out of bed. I cannot even move. I have just a few minutes longer."
I could see that death was almost on his doorstep. I took his hands, and said a few things to him, to which he listened very attentively.
In my childhood I have known only two people who really made me aware what real attention is. The first, of course, was my Nani. I am even feeling a little sad to put her alongside Shambhu Babu, because her attention, although similar, possessed many more dimensions. In fact I should not have said two people. But I have already said it; now let me explain to you as clearly as possible.
With my Nani, every night it was almost a ritual, just as my sannyasins are waiting every night and every morning.
Do you know that every morning I wake up and hurry to my bathroom to take a bath and get ready because I know everybody must be waiting. Today I did not have my breakfast simply because I knew it would delay you all. I had slept a little longer than usual. Every evening I know you all must be getting ready, taking your shower, and the moment I see the light in your dental room, I know the devils have arrived and now I must hurry.
And the whole day you are busy. Your time is packed the whole day. You could say that I am a completely retired man -- not tired, retired... and not retired by anybody else. That is my way of life -- to live relaxedly, not doing anything from morning to evening, from evening to morning. Keeping everybody else busy without business, that is my whole work. I don't think there is anybody in the world -- or has ever been before, or will ever be after -- who is so without business of any kind, like me. And yet, just to keep me breathing I need thousands of sannyasins to be continuously working. Can you think of a greater joke?
Just today I was telling Chetana that Vivek has gone on holiday. After ten years the poor girl certainly deserves it. It is not much to ask in ten years. Mathematically it is one day every two years.
I said to her, "You can go, happily."
She has gone to England. I said to her, "I will be happy for you to enjoy these few days."
I was telling Chetana, "Next year perhaps I too can go on holiday for a few days. But the problem is I cannot go alone. I need my whole staff, and cannot do without any one of them. My whole staff is far bigger than the president of America's. It is a poor man's staff; it has to be bigger than his. And not the president of any country, but of the richest country. Why? -- because my staff does not consist of servants, it consists of my lovers, and I cannot do without any of them."
That's the only problem, and I told Chetana. But she was happy. She was so happy that I don't think she even bothered about my problem. Of course she was happy, because if my staff is going on holiday with me then she is bound to be there. And Chetana... once there was a time when I used to do my own laundry, but it certainly wasn't as good as yours. I cannot give you a better recommendation than that, because although I did the best that I could, it was just a job to be done and finished as soon as possible. To you it is a prayer, a love affair, not just work to be done. I don't think there is anybody in the whole world who has better laundered clothes than mine.
So Chetana was happy, thinking, "Great, we are all going on holiday." But I have to take so many people that Vivek was right. When we were leaving Bombay, there was so much preparation -- particularly for her because she had to be concerned with my body, my food, and small details like that. I don't think she could sleep the whole time, she was so concerned that nothing should be left behind, and that everything should be available on the journey. Vivek was right when she told me, "Osho, you are like a huge mountain of gold which has to be taken from one city to another."
I said to her, "That is true, exactly true. Just one thing has to be remembered -- that the mountain, although golden, is alive and conscious too. So be very careful."
You see my difficulty, Chetana? Now, if I go on holiday even for a week, or for a weekend, how much will you have to prepare? We would have to make everything exactly as it is here in Lao Tzu House -- it is a huge task. But because you were so happy I thought it would be worth doing. Just to make even a single person happy I can do anything whatsoever. That has been my whole life's very substance.

Chapter #23

Now, my work upon you....
I was telling you about a certain relationship that happened between a child of about nine years of age and an old man of perhaps fifty. The difference in age was great, but love can transcend all barriers. If it can happen even between a man and a woman, then what other barrier could be bigger? But it was not, and cannot be described as just love. He could have loved me like a son, or like his grandson, but that was not it.
What happened was friendliness, and let it be on record: I value friendliness higher than love. There is nothing higher than friendliness. I know you must have noticed that I have not used the word "friendship." Up till yesterday I was using it, but now is the time to tell you of something greater than friendship -- friendliness.
Friendship can also be binding, in its own way, like love. It can also be jealous, possessive, afraid that it may be lost, and because of that fear, so much agony and so much struggle. In fact people are continuously fighting those whom they love -- strange, just strange... unbelievably strange.
Friendliness rises higher, to all that man knows and feels. It is more a fragrance of being, or you can say a flowering of being. Something transpires between two souls, and suddenly there are two bodies, but one being -- that is what I call flowering. Friendliness is freedom from all that is small and mediocre, from all that we are acquainted with, in fact, too acquainted with.
I can understand why my Nani shed tears for my being friendly with Shambhu Babu. She was right when she had said to me, "I am not bothered for Shambhu Babu -- he is old enough, soon death will take him over." And it is strange, but he died before my grandmother, exactly ten years before, and yet my grandmother was older than him.
I am still amazed at that woman's intuition. She had said, "He will die before long, then what about you? My tears are for you. You have to live a long life. You will not find many people of such quality as Shambhu Babu. Please don't make his friendship your criterion, otherwise you will have to live a very lonely life."
I said, "Nani, even Shambhu Babu is below my criterion, so you need not worry. I am going to live a life according to my vision, wherever it may lead. perhaps nowhere, but one thing is certain," I told her, "that I absolutely agree with you that I will not find many friends."
And it was true. In my school days I had no friends. In my college days I was thought to be a stranger. In university, yes, people always respected me, but that is not friendship, what to say of friendliness. It is a strange fate to have always been respected from my very childhood. But if my Nani were alive now she could have seen my friends, my sannyasins. She would see thousands of people with whom I have a synchronicity. But she is dead; Shambhu Babu is dead. The flowering has come at a moment when all those who were really concerned about me are no more.
She was right in saying that I would live a lonely life, but she was wrong too, because just like everybody else, she thought loneliness and aloneness are synonymous; they are not. Not only are they not synonymous, they are poles apart.
Loneliness is a negative state. When you cannot be with yourself and beg the company of the other -- then it is loneliness. Whether you get the company or not will not make any difference at all, you will remain lonely. All over the world, in every house, you can see the truth of what I am saying. I cannot say every home, I say every house. A home very rarely exists. A home is where loneliness has been transformed into aloneness, not into togetherness.
People think that if two people are together, then loneliness is finished. It is not so easy. Remember it, it is not so easy; in fact it becomes more difficult. When two lonely people meet loneliness is multiplied, not only doubled, remember; it is a multiplication, and very ugly. It is like an octopus, a continuous fight in different names, for different reason. But if you put all these covers aside, underneath you will see nothing but naked loneliness. It is not aloneness. Aloneness is the discovery of one's self.
Many times I told my grandmother that being alone is the most beautiful state one can dream of. She would laugh and say, "Shut up! Nonsense. I know what it is -- I am living a lonely life. Your Nana is dead. He deceived me: he died without even telling me that he was going to die. He died without even communicating to me where he was going, and to what. He betrayed me." She was bitter about it. She then told me, "You left me too. You went to university, and you only visit once or twice each year. I wait for months just for the day you will be back home. And those one or two days are over so quickly. You don't know what loneliness is -- I know."
Although she was crying, I laughed. I wanted to cry with her but could not. Instead of crying, I laughed.
She said, "Look! You don't understand me at all."
I said, "I do understand, that's why I am laughing. Again and again you go on insisting that loneliness and aloneness are one, and I say definitely and absolutely, they are not the same. And you will have to understand aloneness if you want to get rid of your loneliness. You cannot get rid of it just by being sorry for yourself; and don't be angry with my grandfather."
This was the only time I defended my Nana against her. "What could he do? He has not betrayed you -- although you may feel betrayed, that's another matter. Death or life are in nobody's hands. He died as helplessly as he was born... and don't you remember how helpless he was? He was calling again and again, `Stop the wheel, Raja, can't you stop the wheel?' In that constant asking us to stop the wheel what was he asking? He was asking for his freedom.
"He was saying, `I don't want to be born against my will, and I don't want to die against my will.' He wanted to be. He may not have been able to say it correctly, but that's exactly how I translate what he said. He just wanted to be -- without any interference, without being forced into birth or being forced into death. That's what he was against. He was only asking for freedom."
And do you know, the Indian word for the ultimate is moksha. Moksha means "absolute freedom." There is no word in any language exactly like moksha, particularly not in English, because English is so dominated by Christianity.
Just the other day I received a photo album from one of the German centers. The album consists of all the pictures of that beautiful place and its opening ceremony. Even the Christian priest from the nearby church participated in the ceremony. I liked what he said:
"These people are beautiful. I have been watching them working harder than anybody works nowadays, and so joyously that it is a joy to see them... but they are a little bit crazy."
What he said was right, but why he said, "They are a little bit crazy," is not right. Yes, they are crazy, far more than he could conceive, but the reason why he said it was ugly -- the "why" not the "what." He called them crazy because they believe that there are many lives, lives after lives. That was his reason for calling them crazy.
In fact, if anyone is crazy then it is not my people but those who think that my people are crazy. I reserve that right for myself. I can call them crazy because when I say it, I say it out of love and understanding. It is not a condemnatory word for me; for me it is an appreciation. All the poets are crazy, all the painters are crazy, all the musicians are crazy; otherwise they would not be the poets, the musicians and the painters. If this is so about the painters, the musicians and the dancers, then what about the mystics? They must be the craziest. And my sannyasins are on the way to being the craziest because I know no other way to be really sane in this insane world.
My grandmother was right in saying I would not have friends, and she was also right in saying that Shambhu Babu would not have friends. About Shambhu Babu she was absolutely right; about me, only to the point when I started initiating people into sannyas. She was alive for just a few days after I initiated the first group of sannyasins in the Himalayas. I had particularly chosen the most beautiful part of the Himalayas, Kulu-Manali -- "the valley of the gods" as it was called. And certainly it is a valley of gods. It is so beautiful that one cannot believe it, even when one is standing in the valley itself. It is unbelievably true. I had chosen Kulu-Manali for the first initiation of twenty-one sannyasins.
That was just a few days before my mother... my grandmother died. Excuse me again, because I go on again and again calling her "mother" and then correcting it. What can I do? I had known her as my mother. My whole life I have tried to correct it and not been able to. I still don't call my mother "mother." I still call her bhabhi, not mother, and bhabhi only means "elder brother's wife." All my brothers laugh at me. They say, "Why do you go on calling mother bhabhi? -- because bhabhi means elder brother's wife. Certainly your father is not your elder brother." But what can I do? I knew my grandmother as my mother from my earliest years, and those early years are the most important years of life. It is what I think the scientists call "an imprint."
When a bird comes out of its egg and looks at its mother, with that first look he is imprinted. But if the bird comes out and you have removed the mother and replaced her with something else, a different imprint happens.
It actually happened this way that the word "imprint" came into use. A scientist was working on what happens when a bird first comes out of the egg. He removed everything from the surroundings but he completely forgot that he himself was there. The bird came out, looked around and could see only the boots of the scientist who was standing there watching.
The bird came to the boots and very lovingly started playing with them. The scientist was amazed but later on he was in trouble because the bird was continuously knocking on his door, not for him, but for his boots. He had to keep his boots near the bird's house. And the strangest thing you can imagine happened: when the bird became mature he first made love with the boots. He could not fall in love with a girl bird, and there were many available. But he had a certain imprint of how his love-object should be. He could only love a beautiful pair of boots.
I lived with my grandmother for years and thought of her as my mother. And it was not a loss. I would have liked her to be my mother. If there were any possibility of my being born again, although there is none, I would choose her to be my mother. I am simply emphasizing the point. There is no possibility of my being born again, the wheel has stopped long ago. But she was right when she said that I would not have friends. I did not have friends in school, high school, college or at university. Although many thought they were my friends, they were just admirers, at the most acquaintances, or at the very most followers, but not friends.
The day I started initiating, my only fear was, "Will I be able to someday change my followers into my friends?" The night before, I could not sleep. Again and again I thought, "How am I going to manage it? A follower is not supposed to be a friend." I said to myself that night in Kulu-Manali in the Himalayas, "Don't be serious. You can manage anything, although you don't know the A-B-C of managerial science."
I recall a book by Bern, THE MANAGERIAL REVOLUTION. I read it, not because the title contained the word "revolution," but because the title contained the word "managerial." Although I loved the book, naturally I was disappointed because it was not what I was looking for; I was never able to manage anything. So that night in Kulu-Manali I laughed.
One man -- I will not tell you his name because he betrayed me, and it is better not to mention somebody who betrayed me and is still alive -- was sleeping in my room. He was awakened by my laughter, and I said to him, "Don't be worried. I cannot be more mad than I already am. You go to sleep."
"But," he said, "just one question, otherwise I cannot go to sleep: Why did you laugh?"
I said, "I was just telling myself a joke."
He laughed and went to sleep without even asking what the joke was.
I knew that very moment what kind of seeker he was. In fact, like a flash of lightning I saw that this man was not going to be with me very long. So I did not initiate him into sannyas, although he insisted. Everybody wondered, because I was insisting for others to "take the jump" yet resisting all persuasion from that man. He wanted to take the jump and I said, "Please wait."
Within two months it was clear to everybody why I had not given sannyas to him. Within two months he had left; leaving is not a problem, but he became my enemy. To be my enemy is inconceivable to me -- yes, even to me. I cannot believe how anybody can be an enemy to me. I have not harmed anybody in my life. You cannot find a more harmless creature. Why should anybody be my enemy? Must be something to do with the person himself. He must be using me as a screen.
I would have liked to initiate my grandmother, but she was in the village of Gadarwara. I even tried to contact her, but Kulu-Manali is nearly two thousand miles from Gadarwara.
"Gadarwara" is a strange name. I wanted to avoid it, but it had to come anyway, this way or that, so it is better to be finished with it. It means "the village of the shepherd"; it is even stranger, because the place in Kashmir where Jesus is buried is called Pahalgam, which also means "the village of the shepherd." In the case of Pahalgam it is understandable, but why my village? I have never seen any sheep there, nor any shepherds. Why is it called "the village of the shepherd"? There are not many Christians there either; in fact, only one. You will be surprised, he is the father of a small church, and I used to be his only listener.
He once asked me, "It is strange: you are not a Christian so why do you come exactly on time, every Sunday without fail?" He went on, "Whether it rains or there is a hailstorm, I have to come because I think that you must be waiting, and you are always here. Why?"
I said, "You don't know me. I just love to torture people, and to listen to you torturing yourself for one hour, saying things you don't mean, and not saying things that you do mean, is such a joy to me. I would come even if the whole village were burning. You can rely on me: I would still be here exactly on time."
So certainly Christians have nothing to do with that village. Only one Christian lived there and his church was not much of a church either -- just a small house. Of course a cross had been placed on it, and under it was written: "This is a Christian Church." I had always wondered why that village was called "the village of the shepherd," and when I went to Jesus' grave in Pahalgam, in Kashmir, the question became even more pertinent.
Strangely, Pahalgam has almost the same structure as my village. It may be just a coincidence. When you cannot figure something out you say, "Perhaps it is a coincidence" -- but I am not the type of man to leave a thing so easily. I looked into the matter as far as I could at that time, but now I can look as far as I want.
Gadarwara was also visited by Jesus, and outside the village is the place where he stayed. Its ruins are still honored. Nobody remembers why it is honored. There is a stone on which it says that at one time a man called Isu visited this place, and stayed there. He converted the people of the village and the surrounding area, then he returned to Pahalgam. The archaeological department of India placed that stone there, so it is not very old.
I had to work really hard on that stone just to clean it. It was difficult because nobody had cared for it. The stone was inside a small castle. The castle was no longer habitable, and it was dangerous to even enter. My grandmother used to try to prevent me from going inside because it could collapse at any moment. She was right. Even with just a small wind the walls would start swaying. The last time I saw it, it had collapsed. That was when I had gone to Gadarwara for my grandmother's funeral. I also went to pay a visit to the place where a man called Isu had once stayed.
Isu is certainly nothing but another form of the Aramaic Yeshu, from the Hebrew Joshua. In Hindi
Jesus is called Isa, and lovingly, Isu. Perhaps one of the men whom I love the most had been there, in that village. Just the idea that Jesus too had walked those streets was so exhilarating, was such an ecstasy. This is just by the way. I cannot prove it in any historical way, whether it is so or not. But if you ask me in confidence, I can whisper in your ear, "Yes, it is true. But please don't ask me more...."

Chapter #24

I was saying to you that friendship is a higher value than love. Nobody has said it before. And I also say that friendliness is even higher than friendship. Nobody has even mentioned that. I will certainly have to explain.
Love, howsoever beautiful, remains earthbound. It is something like the roots of a tree. Love tries to rise above the earth and all that it implies -- the body -- but it falls again and again. It is no wonder that people say somebody has "fallen in love." This phrase exists in all languages, as far as I know.
I have tried to explore the matter by asking many people from various countries. I wrote to all the embassies asking whether they have a phrase in their language which is exactly the equivalent of "falling in love." They all replied, "Of course."
And when I asked, "Do you have a phrase or something similar to what I call `rising in love'?" they either laughed, giggled, or started talking about something else. If I asked by letter, then they never replied. Certainly nobody replies to a mad-man who is asking, "Is there a word in your language for `rising in love'?"
No language has that kind of word, and it cannot be just coincidence. In one language maybe, even two perhaps, but it cannot be a coincidence in three thousand languages. It is not just by chance that all languages have conspired together to make the phrase in three thousand ways always to mean "fall in love." No, the reason is, love is basically of the earth. It can jump a little bit, or rather you could call it jogging....
I have heard that jogging is in fashion, particularly in America. So much so that just the other night I received a gift from a lady who loves my books. She sent me a jogging suit. Great idea! I loved it. I told Chetana, "Wash it, and I will use it."
She said, "Are you going to jog?"
I said, "In my sleep! I will use it as my sleeping robe." And, by the way, you probably know that all my sleeping robes are jogging suits already. I like them, because in my sleep I can still jog and exercise, or wrestle with Muhammad Ali the great, and do all kinds of things -- but only in my sleep, under my blanket, in absolute privacy.
I was telling you that love, once in a while, jumps and feels as if it is free from the earth; but the earth knows better. Soon he comes back to his senses with a thump, if not with broken bones. Love cannot fly. It is a peacock, with beautiful feathers -- but remember, they are not able to fly. Yes, the peacock can jog.
Love is very earthly. Friendship is a little higher, it has wings; not just feathers, but the wings of a parrot. You know how parrots fly? From one tree to another, or maybe from one garden to another, from one grove to another, but they don't fly towards the stars. They are poor flyers. Friendliness is the highest value, because friendliness has no gravitation at all. It is just levitation, if you allow me to use that word. I don't know whether the pundits of English will allow "levitation." It only means "against gravity." Gravitation pulls downwards, levitation pulls upwards. But who cares about the pundits? -- they are very grave, they are already in their graves.
Friendliness is a seagull -- yes, like Jonathan, it soars beyond the clouds. This is just to connect with what I was saying to you....
My grandmother wept because she thought I would not have friends. In a way she was right, in another way she was wrong. She was right as far as my school, college, and university days were concerned, but wrong as far as I am concerned. Because even in my schooldays, although I did not have friends in the ordinary sense, I had friends in a very extraordinary sense. I told you about Shambhu Babu. I have told you about Nani herself. In fact these two people spoiled me, and spoiled me in such a way that there was no going back. What was their strategy?
My Nani comes first, chronologically too; she was so attentive to me. She listened to all my nonsense, my gossip, with such rapt attention that even I believed I must be saying the very truth.
The second was Shambhu Babu. He again listened with unblinking eyes. I had never seen anyone listen without blinking; in fact I know of only one other person, and that is me. I cannot watch a film for the simple reason that when I do I forget to blink. I cannot do two things together, particularly if they are so divergent as looking at a film, and blinking. Even now it is impossible for me. I don't watch films because two hours without blinking gives me a headache and tired eyes, so tired that they cannot even sleep. Yes, tiredness can be so great that even sleep seems to be too much effort. But Shambhu Babu used to listen to me without blinking. Once in a while I would tell him, "Shambhu Babu, please blink. Unless you blink I will not say anything more."
Then he would blink quickly two or three times and say, "Okay, now continue and don't disturb me."
Bertrand Russell once wrote that there would come a time when psychoanalysis would become the greatest profession. Why? Because they are the only people who listen attentively, and everybody needs someone to listen to them at least once in a while. But to pay a psychoanalyst to listen to you -- just think of the absurdity of it, paying a person to listen to you. Of course he doesn't really listen at all, he pretends. That is why I was the first man in India to ask people to pay to listen to me. That is just the opposite to psychoanalysis, and that makes sense. If you want to understand me then pay for it. And in the West people are paying just to be listened to.
Sigmund Freud, being the perfect Jew, created one of the greatest inventions in the world -- the psychoanalyst's couch. It is really a great invention. The poor patient lies on the couch, just like me here -- but I am not the patient, that's the difficulty.
The patient is writing the notes; Doctor Devageet, he is called. He is called doctor, but he is not like Sigmund Freud. He is not here as a doctor. Strangely -- with me everything is strange -- the doctor is lying on the couch, and the patient is sitting in the doctor's seat. My own doctor is sitting here, just by my feet. Have you ever seen any doctor sitting at his patient's feet? Here, it is a totally different world. With me everything goes rightside up -- I cannot say upside down.
I am not a patient, although very patient; and my doctors are not doctors, although perfectly qualified as doctors -- they are my sannyasins, my friends. That's what I am talking about, what friendliness can do, a miracle. It is alchemy. The patient becomes the doctor, the doctor becomes the patient -- this is alchemy.
Love cannot do it. Love, although good, is not enough. And eating too much of even a good thing is bad for you -- it gives you diarrhea or cramps in the stomach, and whatnot. Love can do everything except go beyond itself. It goes lower and lower. It becomes bickering, nagging, fighting. Every love, if naturally followed to its logical end, is bound to end in divorce. If you don't follow logically, that's another matter; then you are stuck. To see any person stuck is really terrible; you should do something about it. But these stuck people, if you do something about it, they will both fight you together, tooth and nail.
I remember just a few weeks ago, a man came from England to take sannyas, and you know an English gentleman -- he was so stuck, as you say, up to his very neck. You could not see anything, he was so stuck in the mud. You could only see a few of his hairs, only a few because he was a bald man, just like me. If he had been completely bald it would have been far better; at least nobody would notice him. I tried to pull him out, but how can you pull out a man with only a few hairs showing from the mud? I have my own ways.
I asked his friend and his friend's wife to help the poor man. They said to me, "He wants to separate from his wife." I had seen his wife too, because she had insisted that she had to be present when he took sannyas. She wanted to see how he was being hypnotized. I had allowed her to be present because there is no hypnotism practiced here. In fact she even became interested herself. I invited her too, saying, "Why don't you become a sannyasin?"
She said, "I will think about it."
I told her, "My own principle is `Jump before you think,' but I cannot help, so you think about it. If I am still around by the time you have thought about it, I will be ready to help you."
But I told the friend and his wife -- who are both my sannyasins, and are of those few who are really close to me -- to help their friend. I told them to make every arrangement for his wife and her children so she should not be at a loss but spiritually her husband should not suffer any more. Even if he has to leave everything to his wife, let it be so. I alone am enough for him.
I had seen the man, and had seen his beauty. He had a very simple, childlike quality, the same fragrance you find when it rains for the first time and the earth rejoices -- the fragrance and the joy. He was happy to be a sannyasin.
Just the other day I received a message saying that he is continuously sleeping, just because of his fear of his wife. He does not want to wake up. The moment he wakes up, he again takes sleeping pills. I told the friend to tell him, "This sleeping is not going to help. It may even kill him, but it will not help him or his wife either. He must face the truth."
Very few people face the truth, that what they call love is only biological, and ninety-nine percent of love is biological. Friendship is ninety-nine percent psychological; friendliness is ninety-nine percent spiritual. The one percent left in love is for friendship; the one percent left in friendship is for friendliness. And the one percent left in friendliness is just for that which has no name. In fact the UPANISHADS have called it exactly that: "Tat tvam asi -- Thou are that." Tat... what am I going to call it? No, I am not going to give it any name. All names have betrayed man. All names without exception have proved to be enemies of man, so I don't want to give it a name.
I simply indicate with my finger towards that. and whether I give it a name or not, it has no name. It is namelessness. All names are our inventions. When are we going to understand a simple thing? A rose is a rose is a rose; whatsoever name you call it, it makes no difference at all because even the word "rose" is not its name. It is simply there. When you drop the language between you and existence, suddenly -- the explosion! -- the ecstasy!
Love can help, hence I am not against love. That would be as if I am against using a staircase. No, a staircase is good, but walk carefully, particularly on an old staircase, and remember: love is the oldest. Adam and Eve fell from it; but there was no need to fall, no necessity, I mean. If they had chosen -- and once in a while one wants to fall too, then it is just your choice; but to fall out of freedom is one thing, and to fall as a punishment is totally another.
If I were to write the BIBLE again... I would not do such a stupid thing, believe me. I am saying IF I were to write then I would make Adam and Eve fall, not as a punishment but as a choice, out of their own freedom.
What is the time?
"Five past eight, Osho."
That's good, because I have not even begun. The beginning takes a long time.
Love is good, just good, but not enough, not enough to give you wings. For that, friendship is needed, and love does not allow it. So-called love, I mean, is very against friendship. It is very afraid of friendship because anything higher is a danger, and friendship is higher.
When you can enjoy the friendship of either a man or a woman, then you know for the first time that love is a cheat, a deception. Alas, then you realize how much time was wasted. But friendship is only a bridge. One should pass over it; one should not start living on it. A bridge is not for living on. This bridge leads to friendliness. Friendliness is pure fragrance. If love is the root, and friendship the flower, then friendliness is the fragrance, unseen by the eye; you cannot even touch it; you cannot hold it in your hand, particularly if you want to keep it in your closed fist. Yes, you can have it on your open hand, but not in your closed hand.
Friendliness is almost what, in the past, mystics have called prayer. I don't want to call it prayer for the simple reason that the word is associated with wrong people. It is a beautiful word, but to be in the wrong company contaminates; you start stinking of your company. The moment you say "prayer" everybody becomes alert, afraid, attentive; as if a general had called his soldiers to attention, and they have all suddenly become statues.
What happens when somebody mentions a word like "prayer," "god" or "heaven"? Why do you become closed? I am not condemning you, I am simply saying -- or rather bringing to your notice that these beautiful words have been immensely dirtied by the so-called "holy ones." They have done such an unholy job, I cannot forgive them.
Jesus says, "Forgive your enemies" -- that I can do -- but he does not say, "Forgive your priest." And even if he did say it I would say to him, "Shut up! I cannot forgive the priests. I can neither forgive them nor forget them, because if I forget them then who is going to demolish them? And if I forgive them, then who is going to undo what they have done to humanity? No, Jesus, no! Enemies I can understand -- yes, they should be forgiven, they don't understand what they are doing -- but priests? Please don't say that they don't understand what they are doing. They understand exactly what they are doing. That is why I cannot forgive, nor can I forget. I have to fight to my very last breath."
Love takes you, it is a step; but only if it takes you towards friendship is it love. If it does not take you towards friendship, then it is lust, not love. If it takes you to friendship, be thankful to it but don't allow it to encroach upon your freedom. Yes, it has helped, that does not mean that now it has to hinder too. Don't carry the boat on your shoulders just because it carried you to the other shore.
Don't be foolish! I mean -- excuse me, Devageet, that word I have reserved for you -- I mean, don't be idiotic. But I go on forgetting. Again and again I use the wrong word, "foolish," for others, when it is a special word for Devageet. Particularly in this Noah's Ark -- that's my name for this cabin.
Love is good -- transcend it, because it can lead you to something better: friendship. And when two lovers become friends, it is a rare phenomenon. One wants to cry just out of joy, or celebrate, or if one is a musician, play on the guitar, or if one is a poet, then write a haiku, a Rubaiyat; but if one is not a musician or a poet, one can still dance, one can still paint, one can sit silently and look at the sky. What more can be done? Existence has done it already.
Ashu, now look at the time....
"Eight twenty-five, Osho."
Look at your watch.
"Eight twenty-seven, Osho."
Eight twenty-seven? Look, I am a Jew -- I still saved a few minutes. I believe your watch, but I will speak just a few minutes longer.
From love to friendship, and from friendship to friendliness -- that can be said to be my whole religion. Friendship is again a "ship," a relation-ship, a certain bondage... very subtle, more subtle than love, but it is there; and with it all the jealousies and all the diseases of love also. They have come in a very subtle form. But friendliness is freedom from the other, hence there is no question of relationship.
Love is towards the other, so is friendship. Friendliness is only an opening of your heart to existence. Suddenly, at a particular moment, you may be opening it to a man, to a woman, a tree, to a star... at the beginning you cannot just open it to the whole of existence. Of course in the end you have to open your heart to the whole, simultaneously, unaddressed to anybody. That is the moment. let us just call it the moment. Let us forget the word enlightenment, Buddhahood, Christ-consciousness, just let us call it THE MOMENT -- write it in capitals.
It has been so good. I know there is time, but it has been so beautiful, and with anything beautiful -- more should never be asked for. The more destroys.