Life's Mysteries , livre ebook

An Introduction to the Teachings of OSHO

Life s Mysteries
Foreword by Khushwant Singh

PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
About the Author
Foreword
I On the Art of Living
I Have Heard that your Sannyasis Celebrate Everything....
What is the Aim of Life?
The Art of Being Fully Alive
What is Receptivity?
Is Spontaneity Compatible with Watching?
II On Love
How can I Love Better?
What Does it Mean, to Love Myself?
How to go Beyond Attachment?
III On Relationships
Why is it so Difficult to Relate?
Is it Possible to be Married and Free?
Who is a Real Friend?
Why this Habit of Escaping Aloneness?
IV On Tension and Relaxation
How Relaxation is Connected to Awareness
Is it Possible to Become Enlightened, Relaxed and Easy?
V On the Ego
Humbleness, Shyness and Fear
What is Ego?
How to Surrender the Ego?
VI On Meditation
What is Intelligence?
How Watching Leads to No-Mind
The Relationship Between Consciousness and Energy
VII On Right and Wrong
Is there such a thing as Right and Wrong?
Is Awareness Alone Enough to Guide One s Actions?
How to be Sure I m on the Right Path?
VIII On Freedom, Responsibility and Commitment
The Fear of Being Free
Commitment and Responsibility
Fear of Freedom is Crippling Me
IX On Creativity
How to Find Out My Creativity?
Is a Totally Satisfying Painting Possible?
X On Laughter and Celebration
You are Against Seriousness. . . .
XI On East and West
Silence, Celebration and Life
Is India a Natural Buddhafield?
Copyright
PENGUIN BOOKS
LIFE S MYSTERIES
Osho was born in Kuchwada. Madhya Pradesh on 11 December 1931. Rebellious and independent from childhood, he insisted on experiencing the truth for himself rather than acquiring knowledge and beliefs given by others.
At twenty-one, he reached, as he termed it, enlightenment , thereafter going on to complete his academic studies and spend several years teaching philosophy at the University of Jabalpur. Meanwhile, he also travelled throughout India giving talks and meeting people from all walks of life. By the late 1960s Osho had begun to develop his unique dynamic meditation techniques as modern man, according to him, is so burdened with the outmoded traditions of the past and the anxieties of modern-day living that he must go through a deep cleansing process before he can hope to discover the thought-less, relaxed state of meditation.
In the early 1970s, the first Westerners began to hear of Osho. By 1974 a commune had been established around him in Pune, and the trickle of visitors from the West was soon to become a flood. Osho spoke on virtually every aspect of the development of human consciousness, distilling the essence of what is significant to the spiritual quest of contemporary man, based not on intellectual understanding but tested against his own existential experience. His talks to disciples and seekers from all over the world have been published in more than six hundred volumes, and translated into over thirty languages.
Osho died on 19 January 1990. His commune in India continues to attract thousands of international visitors who come to participate in its meditation, therapy and creative programmes, or just to experience being in a Buddhafield .
Foreword
I met Rajneesh only once-that was some time in the early 1970s when he was living in Woodlands closetoKemp sCorner in Bombay. I had read about him in the papers and met a couple of his disciples who draped themselves in saffron robes and wore a medallion bearing his picture round their necks. He was still known as Acharya (teacher); honorifics Bhagwan (God) and Osho were some years away. I had no great desire to meet Rajneesh but was persuaded by his admirers that he was different from other teachers of the spiritual and that I might get answers to questions which bothered me. In this quest I had visited many ashrams and heard discourses by gurus and godmen. They had nothing very new to say. Most of their sermons were variations of the theme that God dwells within every human being and if people looked inwards they would find Illumination, Truth and Reality. It was no more than pouring new wine in old bottles. What I found more interesting than the teachings of these godmen was to study their impact on their followers. Why did they flock in their hundreds and thousands from all parts of the world to listen to their discourses and live in austerity prescribed by ashram rules? What was it that they got and I did not? I had no particular problem and went to see Rajneesh more out of curiosity than to learn anything. An appointment was set up. I was told not to wear any perfume or cologne (I never do) and not use perfumed soap for my bath that morning.
I arrived at Woodlands at the appointed time and was shown into a large, airy room lined with books. I was told to wait a few minutes for the Acharya. I went round the bookshelves. Most of the collection was in English; a few in Sanskrit and Hindi. I was baffled by the range of subjects: religion, theology, philosophy, history, literature, biographies, autobiographies down to books on humour and crime. It occurred to me that I had not seen books in ashrams I had visited. Some had libraries meant for the use of disciples but most consisted of books on religious subjects or tracts summarizing sermons of their gurus. Other gurus read very little beyond Hindu scriptures, the Vedas, the Upanishads and the epics, and rarely bothered to read books on Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity or Islam. Rajneesh had. Consequently while others had only their religions or what they vaguely learnt at second hand, Rajneesh had studied them from original sources and evolved an eclectic faith of his own. Jain Mahavira and the Buddha knew Hinduism but nothing else. I am not sure what Zarathustra knew when he elevated the flame into a symbol of purity. We are on better ground to dig into the material on which Jewish prophets built the edifice of the Hebrew faith. We know that Christianity, and following Christianity, Islam heavily borrowed from the teachings of the prophets of the Old Testament. Islam boasts that its founder Prophet Mohammed was totally unlettered. The theology of the latest of the great religions of India, Sikhism, is largely based on Vedanta. None of the early teachers laid claim to erudition. Rajneesh was perhaps the first of the great teachers who had carefully examined tenets of other faiths: he could rightly claim to be the only teacher who was a scholar of comparative religions. That fact in itself entitled him to be heard with respect.
Enter Rajneesh. An average-sized Indian-a frail, sallow complexioned man in his forties. A wispy, flowing beard greying on the sides. A woollen cap on his head; a light, saffron-coloured gown hanging down to his ankles. What struck me most were his eyes: large and mesmeric. A bright smile as he answered my greetings joining the palms of his hands: Namaskar.
We took our seats. What can I do for you? he asked me. Voice-gentle. Accent-markedly Indian.
Nothing very much, I replied. I do not have any problems.
Then why have you come to see me? You are wasting your time. And mine.
It was not a very auspicious start for a dialogue. I blurted out, I am curious. I want to know why so many people come to see you. What is it they get from you?
They have problems, he replied. I try to solve them as best I can. If you have no problems, there is nothing I can do for you.
I quickly thought of a problem. I am an agnostic, I do not believe in the existence of God. Nevertheless I am unable to come to terms with the phenomenon of death. I know it is inevitable but I cannot accept the notion of rebirth nor of the Day of Judgement. To me death is a final full stop. Yet I fear it and am afraid of dying. How can I overcome this fear which is present at the back of my mind all the time?
He paused for a while before replying. You are right there is no escape from death nor any warning when it will strike. Keep reminding yourself of these facts and expose yourself to the dead and the dying. Your terror of it will lessen. It is not such a frightful event. Beyond that there is little you can do about it.
It made perfect sense to me because that was what I had been doing for some years: visit cremation grounds and cemeteries, sit by the bodies of friends and relatives who had died. For the time it did help me to overcome the horror of death. But it came back. At the time I met Rajneesh I did not know that he subscribed to the theory of birth, death and rebirth. If I had known I would have questioned him further. Though not much impressed by his answer to my question I came away with the impression that here was one man who did not bamboozle me with the jargon gurus, swamis, acharyas and mullahs use. I could relate to him. We were on the same wave-length.
I tried to find out more about his background and his message. I was fortunate in befriending a young and attractive Italian girl, Gracia Marciano, an ardent disciple of Rajneesh. She was only in her twenties, grey-eyed with copper-coloured hair. She tied it in a saffron-coloured head-band and wore a loose saffron shirt and lungi. She also sported a Rajneesh medallion round her neck. Every time she came to see me in my office, she brought some literature on Rajneesh and his teachings. She quickened my interest in Rajneesh. About Gracia I will have more to say later. First, something about Rajneesh s life.
Rajneesh was the eldest of eleven children of a cloth merchant. He was born in a small town, Kuchwada in Hoshangabad district of Madhya Pradesh, on 11 December 1931. His childhood name was Chandra Mohan. The family were Jains and so his full name was Chandra Mohan Jain. He spent his childhood years away from his parents living with his Naana and Naani (mother s parents). He was a precocious child, good at studies but ever up to mischief: his teachers, tired of his pranks, were co