Desiderata

GUIDA SPIRITUALE

Chapter 2: Going Essential

Question 1

 

 

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The first question

Osho,

Question 1

CAN YOU TELL US MORE ABOUT THE ESSENTIAL?

Prem Samadhi,

Man is also a seed, a possibility, a potential, a hop, a promise. But the seed is not yet the flower. In essence it has the capacity of millions of flowers, but not in reality. Those flowers have to be actualized. The essential is that which you are born with, which is your very being.

That's exactly the purpose, or should be the purpose, of education: to help you to seek and search your essential, to help you to grow it. The word "education" means to draw out; that which is in has to be brought out, just as you draw water from a well. But something has gone basically wrong: the whole educational system is doing just the opposite of it. Rather than drawing anything out of you it forces, imposes things upon you.

That which is imposed upon you is non-essential; it creates your personality. The essential is your individuality; the non-essential is your personality. In other words, the essential is your very soul, your being; the non-essential is your ego. All that helps the ego is non-essential; all that helps you to become egoless is essential. Ambition is non-essential, greed is non-essential; desire, any kind of desire, is non-essential.

Meditativeness is essential. To be silent, to be still, just to be alert, aware: that is the first step, the door into the essential. And once you have found in deep, profound since what you are meant to be, you have found your destiny. And then life has a sense of direction not imposed by others but discovered by yourself.

The function of the Master is educative -- not informative but educative, educative in the original sense of the word. He is not to give you a certain character because that will be imposed upon you. He is not to make you a Christian or Hindu or a Buddhist. Hc has to help you to know what you can be, because that which you can be you already are essence, in the potential.

You can be a Christ, you can be a Buddha, you can be a Krishna, but you cannot be a Christian. Christianity is something imposed from the outside. You cannot be a Hindu. Nobody is born a Hindu; it is nobody's destiny to be a Hindu. It is the effort of others to lead you astray from your destiny. Nobody is born to be a communist or a fascist, but everybody is born with a certain direction in which hc will find fulfillment.

Maybe you are a painter, but you are functioning in the society as a doctor. You will remain unfulfilled your whole life, because you listened to the parents and the society and the greed and the ambition. Everybody was saying, "be a doctor. It is a good profession, respectable, and you will be able to earn more money than if you become a painter. Who knows? A painter may not be able to earn money at all, because painting is not something which has any utilitarian purpose. And by being a painter you may remain a beggar. You may never become famous, because painters never become famous -- only once in a while."

If you are a musician, a poet, you cannot fulfill the ambitions of your parents, of your society, of all the well-wishers. But one thing is certain: you will be tremendously happy whether you are known or unknown, whether you are poor or rich. YOU will have a tremendous contentment because you are fulfilling something very fundamental at the deepest core of your being. Unless you start moving in the direction of your essential you remain miserable.

Bliss is a consequence, a by-product. Whenever the river starts moving towards the ocean there is bliss. And one never knows what is hidden in you. No astrologer can help you, no palmist can help you. Except with deep meditation you will never be able to feel what is possible for you.

As I see it, almost everybody is in the wrong place. The person who would have been a tremendously happy doctor is a painter and the person who would have been a tremendously happy painter is a doctor. Nobody seems to be in his right place; that's why this whole society is in such a mess. The person is directed by others; he is not directed by his own intuition.

Meditation helps you to grow your own intuitive faculty. It becomes very clear what is going to fulfill you, what is going to help you flower. And whatsoever it is -- and it is going to be different for each individual... That is the meaning of the word "individual": everybody is unique. And to seek and search your uniqueness is a great thrill, a great adventure.

Samadhi, your question is significant in many more ways too, because it is not only a question of finding the essential in the individual. In life also we are burdened with the unessential, in religion too, in every dimension.

The religious person goes on doing certain rituals which are taught by others to him. He never finds his own religiousness, a quality which can not be imposed on you, a quality which can only be helped to grow in you. It is not like a plastic flower that can be given to you from the outside, by the priest. It is a real roseflower, and for that you have to be very alert, very aware.

The Christian goes to the church every Sunday. It is a formality; it does not make him religious, but it gives him a false sense of religiousness. The Hindu goes on chanting the Gita. It does not make him religious at all; on the contrary it prevents, because by reciting the Gita he becomes very knowledgeable. He becomes a parrot or a computer. He can recite the whole Gita, but he understands nothing because he has not experienced anything. He knows words; he has not encountered the meaning of those words. People go on being imitative.

For example, Mahavira lived naked; that was his individuality. Nobody else is supposed or expected to live naked, unless one finds it an inner, intuitive vision, unless one finds that that is the only way he can be true to his self. Then it is another matter. But the Jaina muni, the Jaina monk, practices nudity -- just an imitation, a carbon copy. And remember. imitation is always ugly because it creates a false person; it never gives you authenticity.

Mahavira was naked not because anybody had told him to be naked. He felt the immense urge to be just like a child and he followed his urge, and he suffered for his urge. He was chased from one village to another, mad dogs were put after him, he was stoned, because people thought he was destroying their morality, that he was a dangerous man.

In an orthodox country like the India of twenty-five centuries ago, a man walking naked would have been certainly a nuisance to people, to their conventional way of living, to their traditional style of thinking. Krishna has not lived naked, Rama has not lived naked, no Hindu avatara has lived naked. This man is destroying the whole tradition, culture, religion. Of course he has to be punished.

But Mahavira was immensely blissful. The Jaina muni does not seem to be blissful at all because he is simply an imitation. He is really torturing himself, forcing himself to be naked, because in his mind now the greed has arisen: unless he looks like Mahavira he is not going to attain the ultimate liberation.

Now nakedness has become an essential thing, which it is not. Nakedness is not an essential thing. Buddha attained without being naked, Jesus attained without being naked, you can attain. And I am not saying that Mahavira did not attain by being naked. He attained, but these are individual things.

Buddhist monks go on following the Buddha. They sit the same way, they talk the same way, they behave the same way. That is not going to help at all. That is not going to make you religious. That is not going to make you another Buddha. You are being simply stupid. And the more stupid you are the better you can imitate, because imitation needs no intelligence. In fact, only a mediocre mind can be imitative. The more intelligent you are, the more you want to be simply yourself, whatsoever it is. Now the whole thing goes non-essential. For Buddha it was essential to sit that way; that was his intuitive feeling.

When Buddha dropped the ideas imposed on him by others, his followers left him. He had five followers -- before he became very famous he had only five followers; that is before he became enlightened. Those five followers were very devoted to him for the simple reason that he was going just like any other Hindu ascetic, only with great stubbornness, doing all kinds of austerities, following all kinds of rules and regulations given in the scriptures. He was so particular about everything that these five followers thought that he was the greatest Master.

Then one day he understood the whole stupidity of it: he is not following his own intelligence, he is simply following others who may be right, may not be right. One thing is certain: that they were a different kind of people and he is not of that kind. He was suffering, but he was thinking that it is necessary to suffer this; this pain is necessary to grow.

The day he realized it he dropped all ascetic practices; he relaxed. That was the first time he ate in the night and he ate food offered by an untouchable woman. All five followers immediately left him, thinking that he had gone astray. First, eating in the night is not right; secondly, the food offered by an untouchable, a poor woman, is not acceptable to a holy man. He is no more holy.

And that very night Buddha became enlightened. Those five fools missed his enlightenment. That very night he became enlightened. And he became enlightened for the simple reason that for the first time he relaxed into his being and simply followed his essential core.

All religions are destroyed by the non-essential. Your whole life is destroyed by the non-essential. But nobody else can decide for you what is essential and what is non-essential.

Remember that, Samadhi. I cannot say exactly, "This is essential and this is non-essential." Each individual has to discover it. Each individual has to be a light unto himself or herself.

All that I can suggest is: be silent so that you can hear the still small voice of your heart. And it is always speaking, but you are so noisy you go on missing its message.

 

Next: Chapter 2: Going Essential, Question 2

 

Energy Enhancement                Enlightened Texts                Desiderata                 Guida Spirituale

 

 

Chapter 2

 

  • Discourses on the Desiderata, Guida Spirituale Chapter 2: Going Essential, Question 1
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  • Discourses on the Desiderata, Guida Spirituale Chapter 2: Going Essential, Question 2
    Discourses on the Desiderata, Guida Spirituale Chapter 2: Going Essential, Question 2, THE SHANKARACHARYA OF SHARDAPEETH, DWARKA, IS REPORTED TO HAVE SAID THAT YOUR IDEAS ABOUT SPIRITUALITY DO NOT CONFORM WITH THE SANATAN DHARMA WHICH GIVES GREAT IMPORTANCE TO SELF-CONTROL AND PRESCRIBES RULES OF CONDUCT GIVEN IN THE ANCIENT SCRIPTURES. THE SHANKARACHARYA ALSO REMARKED THAT WHEREVER YOU AND YOUR ASHRAM WILL MOVE, IT WOULD SPOIL THE SPIRITUAL ENVIRONMENT OF THAT PLACE. OSHO, THIS IS PERHAPS THE FIRST TIME THAT THE SHANKARACHARYA HAS OPENLY CRITICISED YOU AND THE ASHRAM. WOULD YOU KINDLY SAY SOMETHING? at energyenhancement.org

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  • Discourses on the Desiderata, Guida Spirituale Chapter 2: Going Essential, Question 4
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