The fourth question

Question 4

OSHO,

WHY DO YOU CALL MORAJI DESAI A POLACK?

Sangit,

IT IS VERY RARE in life to come across perfection, but Morarji Desai is a perfect Polack. It is a rare phenomenon. Perfection is not easy.

I call him a perfect Polack because that's how he thinks. He thinks only in words; he has no experience, no experience about the ultimate. But he talks about it. Only a Polack can do that.

Just the other day I read this statement. He said he had one ambition to be fulfilled: to know God and attain the heights of truth. "I have not acquired the truth in totality yet," he said, "nor had Mahatma Gandhi."

Now these words are enough to prove what I mean by his being a perfect Polack.

In the first place any ambition is a barrier. Ambition for truth is a contradiction in terms. He is a politician and all politicians are Polacks. He is a politician, he knows only the language of ambition. He knows no other language. And the ambitious person suffers from an inferiority complex, otherwise he will not be ambitious. He knows perfectly well that he is mediocre, that he is stupid. Just to hide the fact of his stupidity he tries to create some status, some outside status. He wants to become the president, the prime minister -- that was his whole lifelong ambition to be the prime minister. The day he became prime minister, he said immediately, "This is one of my ambitions which is fulfilled. Now only one more is left, and that is God-realization. I want to know truth. That is now my only ambition."

It is okay if you are ambitious to be a president or a prime minister, but one cannot be ambitious about knowing truth. That is a contradiction in terms.

Truth is known only when all ambitions have been dropped -- the ambition for truth is included in it. When all ambitions and all desires have been dropped, suddenly truth is available. Truth is not somewhere far away that you have to reach to it, it is not a goal. It is already a given fact. It already exists in you. You can be ambitious for money, for power, for prestige, but you cannot be ambitious for truth. If you are ambitious for truth that means you are trying to find, search, seek -- and truth is inside you. It IS NOT to be sought because it is in the seeker himself. The moment all your outer seeking stops, the moment you have understood the futility of desire, the futility of ambition... In that state of non-ambitiousness, desirelessness, truth is revealed. And it is not revealed as something objective. It is your own interiority, it is your subjectivity.

Soren Kierkegaard says, "Truth is subjectivity" and he is right. Jesus says, "The kingdom of God is within you." The same thing expressed in a different way. Buddha says, "There is no God. There is no self to be sought, just go in, turn in -- a one-hundred-eighty degree turn -- and you will be surprised. The thing that you have been searching for for lives has always been inside you." God is hiding within you. He is not in the Himalayas.

Now to say that "I am ambitious... the only ambition to be fulfilled now is to know the truth" is to live in just words. He knows the word "ambition," he knows the word "truth." But he has not experienced any meditativeness. If he had experienced even a drop of the nectar of meditation, he would have dropped the word ambition, it would have been impossible to use that word. That word is ugly.

And then he says, " I want to know God" -- as if God is a person, as if God is something objective that you can know. There is no God to be known in that way. It is not a question of encountering God. You will not meet him somewhere. God is the name of absolute silence, the name of profound peace, a name -- just a name -- for overflowing love and bliss. God is nothing but godliness.

H.G. Wells says Gautam the Buddha was the most godless person and yet the most godly. H. G. Wells has a great insight there worth meditating upon: the most godless and the most godly.

All godly people have been godless. They have to be -- AES DHAMMO SANANTANO -- because this is the ultimate law. When you know, you know there is no God. Your very knowing, your awareness, your consciousness, is all that is.

But people who live in words go on talking about these things unconsciously.

One hundred Italian soldiers had only ninety-nine rifles with bayonets. Their sergeant said, "Everybody rush up the hill. You, Luigi, without a rifle, you just say, 'Bang, bang -- stick, stick.' "

They charged up the hill. Luigi came face to face with a six-and-a-half-foot-tall Polack.

Luigi shouted, "Bang, bang -- stick, stick."

The Polack said, "Tank, tank!"

This is how theologians go on talking: God-God, Self-Self, Truth-Truth! But there is nothing else.

"Why are you huffing and puffing, Zbigniew?"

"I have been on the slippery slide."

"Why should you be out of breath from sliding down the slide?"

"Ah, DOWN?"

He was trying to go up. That's what ambition is. Ambition means going up, and non-ambition means slipping down into a state of nothingness.

Pulpushki showed up one morning at work with a big smile on his face.

"Why you so happy?" asked a co-worker.

"Thursday I find wife in bed with the electric meter reader!" explained the Polack. "Friday, I catch her taking samples from a salesman on the living room sofa. Saturday morning, the milkman do business with her on kitchen table. But I fix them all. No one get last laugh on Pulpushki. I just phone Good Will and tell them to take up the furniture... the whole furniture of the house!"

Morarji Desai is a Polack, and a perfect Polack.