Upanishads, Discourses on the Mandukya Upanishad, These discourses are based on the sutras of the Mandukya and Isa Upanishads. Philosophia Ultima Chapter 10: A Challenge to my Love, Question 2

The second question

Question 2

OSHO:

SUPPOSE YOU HAD EXPERIENCED ONLY NEGATIVE REACTIONS FROM OTHERS AND HAD RECEIVED NO LOVE IN YOUR LIFE, WOULD YOU STILL BE SUCH A LOVING, HAPPY MAN?

OR DOES HAPPINESS REQUIRE A CERTAIN RESONANCE AND RESPONSE FROM OTHERS OR FROM GOD?

EVEN JESUS CHRIST DID NOT DIE HAPPILY,

AS IT IS WRITTEN IN MATTHEW, CHAPTER 22:

"AT THE NINTH HOUR, JESUS CRIED LOUDLY,

'LORD, LORD, WHY HAVE YOU LEFT ME?' "

Holger

LOVE HAS NOTHING TO DO with what others do with you. Love is not a response to a certain positive situation. You are born with love -- love is the very stuff you are made of. You can go on giving it... it is a question of giving, not of getting. Of course, when you give it comes back -- it comes back millions of times more because the whole existence responds. But the basic idea, Holger, is not to get but to give.

The world is so loveless and full of hate for the simple reason that everybody wants to get love first -- that is their condition for giving. And if everybody wants love first, then who is going to give it? And because nobody gets it -- the first basic condition is not fulfilled -- then nobody ever thinks of giving it.

And remember, love is alive only when you give it. If you don't give it, it goes sour, it becomes dead, it becomes a dead weight on you. It becomes hatred -- it turns into its very opposite. It becomes fear, it becomes jealousy, it becomes possessiveness. Once your love is not alive then it turns into hundreds of monsters in you. And when you start giving those wrong vibes, naturally the whole existence reflects them back to you. Then one is in a vicious circle.

First you don't GIVE love -- love goes wrong, sour, bitter, becomes poisonous -- and then you give it: you give anger, you give violence, you give hatred. For that you don't make any condition! You give those things unconditionally. Any small excuse is enough, and if there are no excuses you invent excuses. Then more and more hatred rebounds, and when hatred rebounds on you, of course you have every right to give more hatred. Then love is completely lost.

You ask me:

OSHO, SUPPOSE...

I never suppose anything! Philosophy begins with suppositions -- I am not a philosopher. I am a very down-to-earth man, very pragmatic. I never suppose anything.

You say:

SUPPOSE YOU HAD EXPERIENCED ONLY NEGATIVE

REACTIONS FROM OTHERS...

In fact, that's what I have experienced -- and STILL I go on experiencing the negative emotions. In fact, it will be difficult to find you another man on the earth who receives so many negative reactions from others. But I enjoy it! I love it! By their negativity they are showing they are interested in me, by their negativity they are showing that they are not able to ignore me. By their negativity they are taking a certain standpoint about me. And if they are negative they can be positive too; by being negative they have given the indication that they are related to me.

Only the person who is neutral cannot be changed, cannot be transformed. Negativity can easily turn into positivity, hate can easily turn into love, just as love can turn into hate, but a person who is absolutely neutral neither hateful nor loving, is beyond any change -- he is rocklike.

So I immensely enjoy people's negativity and I take it as a challenge -- a challenge to my love. If I can still love them, only then do I know what love is. If I can love only people who love me, then it is business, a bargain. If I can even love people who don't love me, who certainly are hateful towards me, who would like to destroy me, then it is true love, it is unconditional love -- it makes no demands on them.

I have experienced as much negativity, Holger, as one can ever experience, and from my very childhood because my attitude has been that of a rebel. I have been disobedient, rebellious. I have annoyed almost everybody: my relatives, the people of my village, my teachers, my professors. I have annoyed everybody -- I enjoyed it! -- but I have never hated anybody. Even the people I annoyed, the people who took every kind of revenge on me... I have been expelled from colleges, from universities, but I have never hated anybody. Even the people who were the cause of my expulsion, my love for them has remained the same.

And they were puzzled by it, they were very much at a loss, because they were expecting that I would be angry. But I was never angry -- rebellious certainly, but angry never; disobedient certainly, but disrespectful never. With all my respects I disobeyed! I remained always'humbly yours' -- rebelling, fighting, annoying them, doing every kind of thing that they would not like, but always'sincerely yours'. About that even THEY were certain -- that I was sincerely respectful.

I have experienced all kinds of negative reactions from others; that has not destroyed my love. In fact, on the contrary, it has made my love more integrated; it has made my love so centered and grounded that now I can say nothing can shake it, nothing can change it. Even if somebody ki]ls me I will die loving him.

You say:

SUPPOSE YOU HAD EXPERIENCED ONLY NEGATIVE

REACTIONS FROM OTHERS

AND HAD RECEIVED NO LOVE IN YOUR LIFE,

WOULD YOU STILL BE SUCH A LOVING, HAPPY MAN?

Yes, I would be still the same. Whatsoever I am is not dependent on anybody else, it is my independence. It is the way I love to be, I enjoy to be; it has nothing to do with others. What others are doing with me or have done with me has nothing to do with what I am -- they have not created me. I have DISCOVERED myself, nobody has created me. And a love that is created by others can be taken back. If it is only possible in a certain situation, the moment the situation changes your love will wither away. My love cannot wither away -- because you have not created it.

Yes, I have received much love, but that has happened only because I loved, not before it. It was not a condition for the arousal of my love, it was only a response of existence.

All my sannyasins who have gathered around me from all over the world love me immensely, but that is not the cause of my love for them. Just the opposite is the case: because I have loved they have come to me; it is my love that has brought them to me. Now you will see me surrounded by so many loving people, but they have come to me because a certain magnetic love is in existence here; they are pulled by it. They are ready to do anything. I never ASK them to do anything for me, but they are ready to do anything. They will be ready to die for me, although I would not like ANYBODY to die for me. All that I would like is for them to LIVE for me. Love cannot ask anyone to die, love can only ask: live in celebration!

But I have experienced and I go on experiencing all kinds of negativities. Millions of people would like me to be destroyed immediately, but that does not make any difference to my love. Love is something eternal, it is not temporal. It has nothing to do with time, nothing to do with others.

You say:

DOES HAPPINESS REQUIRE A CERTAIN RESONANCE

AND RESPONSE FROM OTHERS OR FROM GOD?

No, not at all. If it is dependent on others, then it is only pleasure and very momentary. And soon you will be frustrated by it because it will destroy your freedom; you will become dependent.

And remember: freedom is a higher value -- higher than love. If love helps freedom only then is it of any value; if it destroys freedom then soon you will be tired of it, it will become a burden on you. If love becomes an imprisonment, howsoever beautiful, cozy, secure, comfortable, still you would not like to live in that prison. You would like to live under the sky, in the open, you would like to live in the unknown, you would like to live dangerously, because there you will have the ecstasy of freedom -- the freedom of the bird on the wing, the freedom of the flowers.

Love is valuable only if it is in tune with freedom, but it can be in tune with freedom only if it is not given by others -- not even by God -- because if it is given by others it makes you a slave. And not only that: if it is given by others to you, you start CLINGING to others, you start expecting it, and every expectation brings a thousand and one frustrations. And that's what happened to Jesus Christ.

You say:

EVEN JESUS CHRIST DID NOT DIE HAPPILY,

AS IT IS WRITTEN IN MATTHEW...

"AT THE NINTH HOUR, JESUS CRIED LOUDLY,

'LORD, LORD, WHY HAVE YOU LEFT ME?'"

According to me, up to this moment when Jesus cries to God, "Why have you forsaken me?" he is only Jesus not Christ. He became Christ only in the last moment. That's why Christianity has been a dead religion from the very beginning, because Christ became a Christ only on the cross, at the last moment. He had no time to give his message, no time to sow the seeds, no time to help people to become enlightened.

Buddha lived for forty-two years after his enlightenment; naturally he managed to help thousands of people. He was the most fortunate Master up TO NOW -- underline it! -- because hundreds of his disciples became enlightened before he left the world. He didn't die unhappily, he died fulfilled -- fulfilled he was because he was enlightened and also fulfilled as a Master.

Krishnamurti is fulfilled as an enlightened man but is very much frustrated as a Master, and as his death is coming closer and closer and he is becoming older he is becoming more and more annoyed -- annoyed because nothing is happening. Not a single human being has become enlightened. If Buddha up to now is the most fortunate enlightened man, then J. Krishnamurti is the most unfortunate!

Jesus had no time. Up to this cry he was only Jesus, because this cry shows -- you are right, Holger -- that he died unhappily, but you are not aware that something after this cry happened, just a few seconds later. You are missing those few seconds; those few seconds transformed his whole being. Up to this statement he is certainly a miserable man, and the misery is coming from expectations; otherwise why should he say, "Lord, Lord, why have you left me?"

He must have been hoping, expecting that some miracle would happen -- that God would come down, something would save him at the last moment. The cross would suddenly change into a golden throne, hands from the sky would appear, and he would be saved. And at least one hundred thousand people had gathered to see the miracle.

There was no difference as far as expectations were concerned. Those people had gathered to see the miracle because they had heard so much about Jesus -- that he walked on water, that he cured blind people, that he made the unhealthy healthy, that he had even raised a dead man, Lazarus, back to life. All that must have been sheer bullshit! Lazarus was his old friend -- must have been pretending, may have been doing some yoga exercise, PRANAYAMA -- holding the breath in. Yogis are known to do that very easily.

One yogi, Brahmayogi of South India, even gave demonstrations in Oxford, in Harvard, in Calcutta universities. For ten minutes even doctors had to certify that he was dead. He collected all those certificates from all the universities, from all the great experts who know when to declare a man dead, and he proved all of them wrong because after ten minutes he would start breathing again. He had become capable of stopping the breath for ten minutes. There are PRANAYAMA exercises, breathing exercises: you can stop breathing for a certain period of time, and in those moments you are as dead as one can be.

Lazarus must have been a yogi -- he did well!

Brahmayogi also used to do another thing: he used to drink any kind of poison and he was capable of surviving. But in Rangoon he died, because he was capable of containing the poison for only thirty minutes, not more than that. He had learnt the yoga strategy of not allowing the poison to mix with the bloodstream. There ARE methods.... Yoga is a ten-thousand-year-old science; it has made many discoveries within the body, and these things are possible. And this is not an old story -- it happened only in 1920, just sixty years ago.

But in Rangoon... you know, the traffic in the East is very strange. How people manage to go to their offices and come back home every evening is a miracle -- a far bigger miracle than walking on water! You can see it in the Poona streets.... such crazy traffic that he got stuck. When he was coming back to his hotel from the university there was a traffic jam and he had to remain stuck in the traffic jam for more than thirty minutes. He came unconscious into the hotel and he died. The strategy was not workable for more than thirty minutes; that was as long as he was capable of containing the poison.

Lazarus must have been a friend indeed. And Jesus walking on the water must have known the rocks, where they were! In my own village I used to walk on water -- I knew the rocks!

People had gathered to see: "How the greatest miracle ever will happen." I can forgive the people, but I cannot forgive Jesus -- even HE was expecting, and nothing was happening. He was crucified and nothing happened, and everything was just going on without any miracle.

"Lord, Lord, why have you left me?"

Expectation brings frustration. This statement is enough proof that he was not yet a Buddha, not yet a man who has no expectations from life, no desires. He was still as unenlightened as the people who had gathered there -- but he was certainly a very intelligent man. He immediately understood the point and immediately corrected it. He raised his eyes towards the sky and said, "Forgive me. Let THY kingdom come, let THY will be done."

The moment he said, "Let THY will be done," he became Christ. Before that he was only Jesus, son of Joseph and Mary, son of man. The moment he said, "Let thy kingdom come, let thy will be done," he surrendered his ego with all its expectations, his mind with all its desires. That YES, that total YES! And it could only be total at the last moment when he was dying. What was there to hold back? He totally surrendered; that was let-go. In that let-go he became Christ.

So, Holger, I will not say he died unhappily -- he died blissfully. But you are right as far as it goes up to this statement, Matthew, Chapter 22; he is miserable, very miserable. But in the last moment the miracle happened -- the REAL miracle -- not that he was saved but that he surrendered. Resurrection IS NOT the miracle, surrender is the miracle "Thy will be done." The moment he said it totally there was no problem, no misery, no expectation, no frustration. He was at ease, at home. He was one with the universe. He attained to the fourth state, the TURIYA. He became awakened. He died an awakened man, but he could not give the message.

So Christianity is based on the teachings of Jesus -- which are bound to be faulty, which are bound to be erroneous, which are bound to carry many flaws. And now I have decided to tell you what flaws they have! After THIS moment there is no flaw, no error -- but he did not say anything at all! He died in absolute silence, blissfully.

That is the only moment which is precious in Jesus' life: for the first time he was absolutely free. When there is no desire there is freedom. For the first time he was absolutely free, because when there is no ego there is freedom.

Freedom does not mean freedom of the self: freedom means freedom FROM the self. And it brings immense bliss and benediction.

Upanishads

PHILOSOPHIA ULTIMA

Chapter-10

A Challenge to my Love