The ego wants something difficult to struggle with, to be challenged by, to conquer it.
The ego exists through constant challenge. If something is absolutely simple, the ego flops down. If you have nothing to do but sit quietly and silently and let things be, and let things move where they
are moving, no activity on your part, then there is no possibility that ego will exist.
Ego is just like cycling – you have to feed it continuously: this challenge, that challenge, this activity,
that activity – something has to be attained. The Everest has to be conquered, you have to reach
to the moon – something always in the future. You have to pedal, and then the ego exists. The ego
exists in activity... Inactivity, simply the cycle falls down, and the rider also. Immediately the whole
activity disappears and with it the ego.
[Osho]
Ego is very tricky. It always says... whenever you are in misery, it always says somebody else
has caused it. That's the trick how ego protects itself. If you are in misery, you never think that it
is you – it is always somebody else. Husband is in misery because the wife is creating; the wife is
in misery because the husband is creating the misery – ego always throws the responsibility on the
other – the father is in misery because of the son.
I have seen people who are in misery because they have children, and I have seen people – they
are in misery because they don’t have children. I see people in misery who are in love – their
relationship is causing them much trouble, turmoil, anguish – and I see people in misery who are
not in love, because without love they are miserable. It seems you are absolutely determined to be
in misery. Whatsoever the case, you create misery. But you never look within. Something must be
inside which causes it – that ego that you think you are, the idea of the self. Greater the idea of the
self, the greater will be the misery.
Once you find the cause is inside, the
point of transformation has reached to its maturity. Now you can turn over, now you can change –
you are ready. While you go on throwing responsibility on others no change is possible. Once you
realize that you are responsible for all the misery that you have created – you are your own hell –
that every moment a great turning happens. Immediately, you become your own heaven.
[Osho]
Zen Masters have been saying for centuries that if you meet a Buddha in mediation kill him immediately! Don’t
wait for a single moment. If you don’t kill him, he will kill you. And they are right.
Visions are beautiful, but if you start enjoying them too much they can be dangerous. Then you are
again stuck with some experience. And when you see Buddha it is really beautiful and it looks more
real than the real, and has such grace. Just by seeing the vision you feel so silent and peaceful
within. When you see Krishna with his flute, singing a song, who would like not to cling? One would
like to cling. One would like this vision to be repeated again and again. Then the Buddha has killed
you.
[Osho]
All experience is dream; only the experiencer
is true. And you have to come to a point where there is nothing to be seen, nothing to be heard,
nothing to be smelled, nothing to be touched – just vast space and you alone. Only the seer is left.
All the visitors have gone; guests gone, only the host has remained. When this moment comes,
then only is the real happening. Before it, all else is a dream.
[Osho]
Because you do not know how to keep your systems in balance, because you can’t handle reality, you succumb to positive thinking. You want to skip the negative and just think positive. What you pursue will not be the strongest point in you. What you try to avoid becomes the basis of your consciousness. Positive thinking can have some psychological relevance, but no existential relevance whatsoever.
[Jaggi]
Death will anyway happen, you do not have to support it. It is life that needs support. Life needs your support because life is a brief happening, death is a very big one, about life and death, if we use the analogy of light and darkness, you would understand better.
Light has been always glorified. If you say Divine, you say Divine light. You will not say Divine darkness. But you tell me, which is more all-encompassing? Light is a brief happening, it needs a source which burns. And whatever kind of light source, whether it is a light bulb, or the major source of light for you right now, the sun; both will burn out one day. Light is a brief happening. When there is no light, darkness is all-pervading. It is in the lap of darkness that light has happened.
Darkness has always been associated with evil in the West. But in India, when an ignorant person comes, we refer to Divine as light. When an evolved person comes, we refer to Divine as darkness. Because when a person is ignorant, if you say, “Divine is darkness,” he does not want to go there, because darkness is something that he has always feared. Death is something he always feared. Dark corners in the street are always something that he feared, isn’t it? But when a person has evolved beyond certain limitations, if he has tasted something beyond the physical, then we always refer to the Divine as darkness.
The physical body is something that you have borrowed from this Earth and you have to shed it. There is no question about it. It does not charge you any interest, but it takes back every atom that it gave you. Nobody can carry a single atom from here, isn’t it? So, it is just a question of physical body - but it needs support. Because the only thing that people know is physical body, they do not want to let it go.
[Jaggi]
The whole fear about death has come simply because you have no idea what it is. You have formed ideas about everything, just about everything. But it does not matter what ideas you have formed about life, when you are confronted with the moment of death, you really do not know anything. That is one space of life which has remained uncorrupted by the human mind.
Human minds have corrupted love, relationships, God, Divinity - everything they have corrupted and twisted out whichever way they want. Death is one thing that they are still clueless about – though a lot of people would like to talk authoritatively about it. They know they are going to go to heaven; they are dead sure about it. If they are so sure, I don’t see what they are waiting for.
If you are so sure you are going to a wonderful place, a better place than this, then you must hurry up. But because you are not sure, you talk. You are not 100% sure where you will go, what will happen to you. Just to solace yourself, just to be able to psychologically handle life, you create all these things. But essentially, the very idea of death has come to you because people have been talking about it without knowing about it. Otherwise, if your societies did not speak about it, you would just know the way you are right now, your present existence, is not permanent. That you would know, but you would not have any other ideas about it. Even now you do not have any idea about it; you imagine that you have.
Your whole life, you are only living in your mind, not in this world. You are only thinking about life. You are not experiencing life. So you are a psychological existence; you are not an existential existence. Whatever happens in your mind is irrelevant, because you can make anything happen. You can imagine anything and think it is true. (Laughs). What happens in your mind, what you think and feel has nothing to do with the reality of life
[Jaggi]
Is death okay or not okay? Even these kinds of questions which are coming up are silly, because whether you say it is okay or not okay, anyway you will die. Every moment you are playing between life and death and life and death - actually it is so. This inhalation, exhalation... You inhaled, life happened. You exhaled and did not inhale again, death happened. Every moment in yoga we say inhalation is life, exhalation is death. You exhale, and if you do not take in the next inhalation it dislodges you from the body. So fragile. Something so fragile is the basis of your existence here. Death is walking with you every step. It is so close all the time.
There is nothing wrong with death; it has to happen. Only because there is death, there is life. You need to understand that the moment you are born, you have a death sentence upon you. When, where, and how is the only question, but you are on death row. Your death is confirmed. We do not know whether you will get educated or not; we do not know whether you will get married or not; we do not know whether you will know joy or not; we do not know whether you will know misery or not; but we know one day you will die. That one thing is guaranteed.
[Jaggi]
What you call as life right now, the process of life, you can also refer to it as death. You can say “I am living right now” or you can say “I am dying right now.” Actually, from the day you are born you are slowly dying. One day the process will be complete.
You may be thinking you are going many places, but as far as your body is concerned, without a moment’s distraction, it is going straight to the grave, nowhere else.
[Jaggi]
"Death is a cosmic joke. If you get the joke, when you fall on the other side, it will be wonderful. If you don’t get the joke, when you are here you fear the other side, and when the other side comes, you just don’t know what it is about. If death becomes a laughing matter in your life, life becomes an utterly effortless process– there is no need to restrain yourself in the process of life; you can live your life absolutely, totally."
I wouldn't think about it in terms of cheating and not cheating. what we need to understand is a game is a game only because of a certain set of rules. A certain set of rules means this is football, another set of rules means this is throw-ball, another set of rules means this is cricket, so it is a set of rules which makes the game. If you want to go onto the football field and carry the ball in your hand and runaway you could play rugby, you shouldn't be playing football.
So the moment you break the rule you're breaking the very fundamental of the game, so it's not about winning or losing you're just destroying the game, completely you'll destroy the game. A game is created only with a certain set of rules.
When you say I want to break the rule what you're saying is I want to destroy the game, such people should have no place in the game at all. They have no love for the game, they just want to somehow win that's all.
[Jaggi]
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
The ego wants something difficult to struggle with, to be challenged by, to conquer it. The ego exists through constant challenge. If something is absolutely simple, the ego flops down. If you have nothing to do but sit quietly and silently and let things be, and let things move where they are moving, no activity on your part, then there is no possibility that ego will exist.
Ego is just like cycling – you have to feed it continuously: this challenge, that challenge, this activity, that activity – something has to be attained. The Everest has to be conquered, you have to reach to the moon – something always in the future. You have to pedal, and then the ego exists. The ego exists in activity... Inactivity, simply the cycle falls down, and the rider also. Immediately the whole activity disappears and with it the ego.
[Osho]
^ Top
Ego is very tricky. It always says... whenever you are in misery, it always says somebody else has caused it. That's the trick how ego protects itself. If you are in misery, you never think that it is you – it is always somebody else. Husband is in misery because the wife is creating; the wife is in misery because the husband is creating the misery – ego always throws the responsibility on the other – the father is in misery because of the son.
I have seen people who are in misery because they have children, and I have seen people – they are in misery because they don’t have children. I see people in misery who are in love – their relationship is causing them much trouble, turmoil, anguish – and I see people in misery who are not in love, because without love they are miserable. It seems you are absolutely determined to be in misery. Whatsoever the case, you create misery. But you never look within. Something must be inside which causes it – that ego that you think you are, the idea of the self. Greater the idea of the self, the greater will be the misery.
Once you find the cause is inside, the point of transformation has reached to its maturity. Now you can turn over, now you can change – you are ready. While you go on throwing responsibility on others no change is possible. Once you realize that you are responsible for all the misery that you have created – you are your own hell – that every moment a great turning happens. Immediately, you become your own heaven.
[Osho]
^ Top
Zen Masters have been saying for centuries that if you meet a Buddha in mediation kill him immediately! Don’t wait for a single moment. If you don’t kill him, he will kill you. And they are right.
Visions are beautiful, but if you start enjoying them too much they can be dangerous. Then you are again stuck with some experience. And when you see Buddha it is really beautiful and it looks more real than the real, and has such grace. Just by seeing the vision you feel so silent and peaceful within. When you see Krishna with his flute, singing a song, who would like not to cling? One would like to cling. One would like this vision to be repeated again and again. Then the Buddha has killed you.
[Osho]
^ Top
All experience is dream; only the experiencer is true. And you have to come to a point where there is nothing to be seen, nothing to be heard, nothing to be smelled, nothing to be touched – just vast space and you alone. Only the seer is left. All the visitors have gone; guests gone, only the host has remained. When this moment comes, then only is the real happening. Before it, all else is a dream.
[Osho]
^ Top
Because you do not know how to keep your systems in balance, because you can’t handle reality, you succumb to positive thinking. You want to skip the negative and just think positive. What you pursue will not be the strongest point in you. What you try to avoid becomes the basis of your consciousness. Positive thinking can have some psychological relevance, but no existential relevance whatsoever.
[Jaggi]
^ Top
Death will anyway happen, you do not have to support it. It is life that needs support. Life needs your support because life is a brief happening, death is a very big one, about life and death, if we use the analogy of light and darkness, you would understand better.
Light has been always glorified. If you say Divine, you say Divine light. You will not say Divine darkness. But you tell me, which is more all-encompassing? Light is a brief happening, it needs a source which burns. And whatever kind of light source, whether it is a light bulb, or the major source of light for you right now, the sun; both will burn out one day. Light is a brief happening. When there is no light, darkness is all-pervading. It is in the lap of darkness that light has happened.
Darkness has always been associated with evil in the West. But in India, when an ignorant person comes, we refer to Divine as light. When an evolved person comes, we refer to Divine as darkness. Because when a person is ignorant, if you say, “Divine is darkness,” he does not want to go there, because darkness is something that he has always feared. Death is something he always feared. Dark corners in the street are always something that he feared, isn’t it? But when a person has evolved beyond certain limitations, if he has tasted something beyond the physical, then we always refer to the Divine as darkness.
The physical body is something that you have borrowed from this Earth and you have to shed it. There is no question about it. It does not charge you any interest, but it takes back every atom that it gave you. Nobody can carry a single atom from here, isn’t it? So, it is just a question of physical body - but it needs support. Because the only thing that people know is physical body, they do not want to let it go.
[Jaggi]
^ Top
The whole fear about death has come simply because you have no idea what it is. You have formed ideas about everything, just about everything. But it does not matter what ideas you have formed about life, when you are confronted with the moment of death, you really do not know anything. That is one space of life which has remained uncorrupted by the human mind.
Human minds have corrupted love, relationships, God, Divinity - everything they have corrupted and twisted out whichever way they want. Death is one thing that they are still clueless about – though a lot of people would like to talk authoritatively about it. They know they are going to go to heaven; they are dead sure about it. If they are so sure, I don’t see what they are waiting for.
If you are so sure you are going to a wonderful place, a better place than this, then you must hurry up. But because you are not sure, you talk. You are not 100% sure where you will go, what will happen to you. Just to solace yourself, just to be able to psychologically handle life, you create all these things. But essentially, the very idea of death has come to you because people have been talking about it without knowing about it. Otherwise, if your societies did not speak about it, you would just know the way you are right now, your present existence, is not permanent. That you would know, but you would not have any other ideas about it. Even now you do not have any idea about it; you imagine that you have.
Your whole life, you are only living in your mind, not in this world. You are only thinking about life. You are not experiencing life. So you are a psychological existence; you are not an existential existence. Whatever happens in your mind is irrelevant, because you can make anything happen. You can imagine anything and think it is true. (Laughs). What happens in your mind, what you think and feel has nothing to do with the reality of life
[Jaggi]
^ Top
Is death okay or not okay? Even these kinds of questions which are coming up are silly, because whether you say it is okay or not okay, anyway you will die. Every moment you are playing between life and death and life and death - actually it is so. This inhalation, exhalation... You inhaled, life happened. You exhaled and did not inhale again, death happened. Every moment in yoga we say inhalation is life, exhalation is death. You exhale, and if you do not take in the next inhalation it dislodges you from the body. So fragile. Something so fragile is the basis of your existence here. Death is walking with you every step. It is so close all the time.
There is nothing wrong with death; it has to happen. Only because there is death, there is life. You need to understand that the moment you are born, you have a death sentence upon you. When, where, and how is the only question, but you are on death row. Your death is confirmed. We do not know whether you will get educated or not; we do not know whether you will get married or not; we do not know whether you will know joy or not; we do not know whether you will know misery or not; but we know one day you will die. That one thing is guaranteed.
[Jaggi]
^ Top
What you call as life right now, the process of life, you can also refer to it as death. You can say “I am living right now” or you can say “I am dying right now.” Actually, from the day you are born you are slowly dying. One day the process will be complete.
You may be thinking you are going many places, but as far as your body is concerned, without a moment’s distraction, it is going straight to the grave, nowhere else.
[Jaggi]
^ Top
"Death is a cosmic joke. If you get the joke, when you fall on the other side, it will be wonderful. If you don’t get the joke, when you are here you fear the other side, and when the other side comes, you just don’t know what it is about. If death becomes a laughing matter in your life, life becomes an utterly effortless process– there is no need to restrain yourself in the process of life; you can live your life absolutely, totally."
[Jaggi]
^ Top
I wouldn't think about it in terms of cheating and not cheating. what we need to understand is a game is a game only because of a certain set of rules. A certain set of rules means this is football, another set of rules means this is throw-ball, another set of rules means this is cricket, so it is a set of rules which makes the game. If you want to go onto the football field and carry the ball in your hand and runaway you could play rugby, you shouldn't be playing football.
So the moment you break the rule you're breaking the very fundamental of the game, so it's not about winning or losing you're just destroying the game, completely you'll destroy the game. A game is created only with a certain set of rules.
When you say I want to break the rule what you're saying is I want to destroy the game, such people should have no place in the game at all. They have no love for the game, they just want to somehow win that's all.
[Jaggi]
^ Top
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
This poem is from the collection Gitanjali .
^ Top