Master

Beyond mind, there is an awareness that is intrinsic, that is not given to you by the outside, and is not an idea -- and there is no experiment up to now that has found any center in the brain which corresponds to awareness. The whole work of meditation is to make you aware of all that is "mind" and disidentify yourself from it. That very separation is the greatest revolution that can happen to man.
Now you can do and act on only that which makes you more joyous, fulfills you, gives you contentment, makes your life a work of art, a beauty. But this is possible only if the master in you is awake. Right now the master is fast asleep. And the mind, the servant, is playing the role of master. And the servant is created by the outside world, it follows the outside world and its laws.
Once your awareness becomes a flame, it burns up the whole slavery that the mind has created. There is no blissfulness more precious than freedom, than being a master of your own destiny.

Osho From the False to the Truth Chapter 7

Commentary:
The Master in Zen is not a master over others, but a master of himself --and this self-mastery is reflected in his every gesture and his every word. He is not a teacher with a doctrine to impart, nor a supernatural messenger with a direct line to God, but simply one who has become a living example of the highest potential that lies within each and every human being. In the eyes of the Master, a disciple finds his own truth reflected. In the silence of the Master's presence, the disciple can fall more easily into the silence of his own being. The community of seekers that arises around a Master becomes an energy field that supports each unique individual in finding his or her own inner light. Once that light is found, the disciple comes to understand that the outer Master was just a catalyst, a device to provoke the awakening of the inner.

The “How” of Eating
      
  ...The second thing about food is that the state of our mind when we eat is much more important than what we eat. Food will affect you differently if you eat joyously, happily, or if you eat when you are filled with sadness and worry. If you are eating in a worried state, then even the best food will have a poisonous effect. And if you are eating with joy then it is possible that sometimes even poison may not be able to have its total effect on you. It is very possible. So what state of mind you eat in is important.
We live in worry for twenty-four hours a day. It is a miracle how the food we eat gets digested, how existence manages it in spite of us! We have no wish to digest it. It is absolutely a miracle how it gets digested. And how we remain alive! This is also a miracle! Our state of mind should be graceful and blissful.
But in our houses the dining table is in the most gloomy state. The wife waits the whole day for her husband to come home to eat and all the emotional sickness she has gathered in twenty-four hours comes out just when the husband is eating. She does not know that she is doing the work of an enemy. She does not know that she is serving poison on her husband’s plate.
The husband is also afraid and worried after the whole day’s work — he somehow dumps the food into his stomach and leaves. He has no idea that the act which he has finished so quickly and has run away from should have been a prayerful one. It was not an act which should have been done in a hurry. It should have been done in the same way as someone entering a temple, or as someone kneeling to pray, or as someone sitting to play his veena, or as somebody singing a song for the beloved.
This act is even more important: he is giving food to his body. It should be done in a state of tremendous blissfulness. It should be a loving and prayerful act.
The more happily and joyously and the more relaxed and without worry a person can take his meal, the more his food starts becoming the right food.
A violent diet does not only mean that a man eats non-vegetarian food. It is also a violent diet when a man eats with anger. Both of these things are violent. While eating in anger, in suffering, in worry, man is also eating violently. He does not realize at all that just as he is violent when eating the flesh of something else, so when his own flesh burns up inside due to anger and worry, violence is present there too. Then the food which he is eating cannot be non-violent.
The other part of right food is that you should eat in a very peaceful, a very joyful state. If you are not in such a state, then it is better to wait until you are and not to eat for a while. When the mind is absolutely ready, only then should one take his meals. For how long will the mind not be ready? If you are aware enough to wait then at the most it can remain hungry for only one day — but we have never bothered to listen to it.
We have made eating food a completely mechanical process. One has to put food into the body and then leave the dining table. It is no longer a psychological process; that is dangerous.
On the body level, the right food should be healthy, non-stimulating and non-violent; on the psychological level the mind should be in a blissful state, graceful and joyous; and on the level of the soul there should be a feeling of gratefulness, of thankfulness. These three things make food the right food.
We are eating food, we are drinking water, we are breathing — we should have a sense of gratefulness about all this. Towards the whole life, towards the whole world, towards the whole universe, towards the whole nature, towards the divine, there should be a feeling of gratefulness — “I have received one more day to live. Once more I have received food to eat. For one more day I am seeing the sun, seeing the flowers blossoming. I am again alive today.”
This feeling, this feeling of gratitude, should be there in all aspects of life — and very particularly with diet. Only then can one’s diet become the right diet.

BRAVING THE ABYSS
      
 
Meditate, because this moment will be of significance for you. Whenever somebody dies, somebody you have been deeply related to, someone with whom you have been very intimate, somebody with whom you have been happy and unhappy, sad and angry, somebody with whom you have known all the seasons of life and somebody who has somehow become a part of you and you have become a part of him or her — when somebody like that dies, it is not only a death that occurs outside, it is a death that occurs inside also. [She] was holding a part of your being, so when she dies, that part in your being also dies. She was fulfilling something in you. She disappears and wounds are left.
We have many holes in our being. Because of those holes we seek the company of the other, the love of the other. By the other’s presence we somehow manage to fill those holes. When the other disappears, those holes are again there...yawning abysses opening. You may have forgotten about them, but you will feel them and the pain. So use these moments for a deep meditation because sooner or later those holes will be filled again. These holes will again disappear. Before it happens it is good to enter those holes, to enter that emptiness that she will leave behind her.
So use these moments. Sit silently, close your eyes, go inside. And just see what has happened. Don’t think about the future, don’t think about the past. Don’t go into the memories because that is futile. Just go in. What has happened to you? She is dead; now what has happened to you? What is happening to you? Just go into that process. That will reveal many things in you. You will be completely transformed if you can penetrate those holes. You will not try to fill them again, but still you can love.
One can love without in any way taking the other inside and fulfilling some deep need there. One can love as a luxury...because one has to share and one wants to share. Then love is no more a need; you are not hiding your wounds behind it.
So go into these wounds, go into this emptiness, go into this absence, and watch — that’s one thing.
The second thing: remember that life is really fleeting, slipping by...so momentary. We live in a magic world. We go on deluding ourselves. Again and again the delusion drops. Again and again reality erupts. Again and again somebody dies and you are reminded that life is not reliable, that one should not depend too much on life. One moment it is there, another moment it is gone. It is a soap bubble — just a small prick and it is gone. In fact the more you understand life, the more full of wonder you are about how it exists. Then death is not the problem; life becomes the problem. Death seems natural.
It is a miracle that life exists — such a temporary thing, such a momentary thing. And not only does it exist, people trust it. People depend on it, people rely on it. They put their whole being at its feet — and it is just an illusion, a dream. Any moment it is gone and one is left crying. With it is gone the whole effort, the whole sacrifice that you had made for it. Suddenly everything disappears. So watch this — this momentary, dream-like illusory life.
And death is coming to everybody. We are all standing in the queue, and the queue is continuously coming closer to death. She disappears; the queue is a little less. She had made space for one person more. Every person dying brings you closer to your own death, so every death is basically your death. In every death one is dying and coming closer to the full stop. Before it happens, one has to become as much aware as possible.
If we trust life too much, we tend to become unconscious. If we start doubting life — this so-called life which always ends in death — then we become more aware. And in that awareness a new sort of life starts, its doors open — the life which is deathless, the life which is eternal, the life which is beyond time.

Greed
    
 
Where does greed come from? Could you give me some tools to help me deal with it?
  
Just to understand the nature of greed is enough. You need not do anything else to get rid of it; the very understanding will clarify the whole mess.
Man is full if he is in tune with the universe; if he is not in tune with the universe then he is empty, utterly empty. And out of that emptiness comes greed. Greed is to fill it: by money, by houses, by furniture, by friends, by lovers — by anything, because one cannot live as emptiness. It is horrifying, it is a ghost life. If you are empty and there is nothing inside you, it is impossible to live.
To have the feeling that you have much inside you, there are only two ways: either you get in tune with the universe.... Then you are filled with the whole, with all the flowers and with all the stars. They are within you just as they are without you. That is real fulfillment. But if you don’t do that, and millions of people are not doing that, then the easiest way is to fill it with any junk.
I used to live with a man. He was a rich man and he had a beautiful house. And somehow he became interested in my ideas; he listened to a few of my lectures, and he invited me, saying, “Why live far away, out of the city? I have a beautiful house in the city and it is so big; you can have half of the house. And I am not going to charge you, I simply want your presence to be there in my house.”
I was living outside, in the mountains, but it was difficult to come from there to the university. From his house the university was very close. His house had a beautiful garden and was in the best locality of the city, so I accepted his invitation.
But when I went into his house I could not believe it; he had so much junk collected that there was no place to live. The house was big, but his collection was bigge...and a collection which was absolutely stupid. Anything that he could find in the market he would purchase. I asked him, “What are you going to do with all these things?”
He said, “One never knows, some day one may need it.”
“But,” I said, “where is one going to live in this house?” So much furniture of all ages...because the Europeans had left the country so they had to sell all their things. He could not have enough; he managed to purchase anything, things which he did not need. A car was standing in the porch which always remained standing because it was too old, broken. And I asked him, “Why don’t you throw it away? At least to clean up the place...”
He said, “It looks good in the porch.”
All the tires were punctured; it was of no use. Whenever you had to move it from here and there, you had to push it, pull it back. And it was there, rotting. He said, “I got it at a very reasonable price. It belonged to an old woman who used to be a nurse here and who has gone back to England.”
But I said, “If you were interested in purchasing a car then at least you should have purchased a car which moves.”
He said, “I am not interested in movement. My bicycle is perfectly good.” And his bicycle was also a marvel. You would know that he was coming from one mile away, the bicycle made so much noise; it had no mudguards, no chain cover; it must have been the oldest bicycle made. It had no horn.
He said, “There is no need for a horn. It makes so much noise that at least for one mile ahead people are already giving way. And it is a good thing, because it cannot be stolen.”
I said, “That is strange. Why can’t it be stolen?”
He said, “Nobody else can ride on it. It has been stolen twice, and the thief was caught immediately...because it makes so much noise, and everybody knows that it is my bicycle, so people caught the thief and asked him, `Where are you taking the bicycle?’
“I can leave it anywhere. I go to see a movie — I don’t put it on a bicycle stand, because then you have to pay money. I put it anywhere, and it is always there;when I come back it is always there. Everybody knows that it is a trouble. And even if you can get it to your home you cannot ride on it in the city — you will be caught. So it is better not to bother with it.”
He said, “It is a rare specimen.”
I said, “The way you describe it, it looks like it.”
And he had all kinds of things in his house...broken radios, because he could get them cheap. He was a Jaina and he had a broken statue of Jesus Christ on the cross.
I said, “What have you purchased it for?”
He said, “The woman gave it to me free when I purchased the car — she offered it to me as a present. I don’t believe in Jesus Christ or anything, but I could not refuse a piece of art.”
I said to him, “Half of the house from today you take to the other half; my part has to be empty.”
He was very happy to take everything. Already his house was so full you could not walk; you could not find your way. He took everything. He had so many kinds of furniture that he had piled up on the sofa; it was not used, because you cannot sit on a sofa that is touching the roof. And I asked, “Why?”
“He said, “you don’t understand 151; the price! And someday I may get married” — he was not married — “and I may have children and they may need all these things. You don’t be worried, everything will be of some use sometime.”
Even on the road, if he could find anything lying there which had been thrown by somebody, he would pick it up. One day he was walking with me from the garden to the house and he found a bicycle handle, and he picked it up. But I said, “What will you do with a bicycle handle?”
He said, “You don’t understand. I will show you.” I went with him. In his bathroom he had almost a bicycle — just a few things were missing. And he said, “All these things I have picked up from the road. And I go on joining them and putting them together. Now a few things are missing. The chain is not there, the seat is not there, but I will get them. Somebody is going to throw them away someday. Life is long, and what is the harm? It looks perfectly good in the bathroom.”
Greed simply means you are feeling a deep emptiness and you want to fill it with anything possible; it doesn’t matter what it is. And once you understand it, then you have nothing to do with greed. You have something to do with your coming into communion with the whole, so the inner emptiness disappears. And with it, all greed disappears. That does not mean that you start living naked; that simply means you do not live just to collect things. Whenever you need something you can have it.
But there are mad people all over the world, and they are collecting.... Somebody is collecting money although he never uses it. That is strange. In the commune, we had made a sticker for cars: “Moses earns, Jesus saves, Osho spends.”
A thing has to be a utility; if it is not a utility then there is no need for it.
But this thing can take any direction: people are eating; they are not feeling hungry and still they go on swallowing. They know that this is going to create suffering, they will be sick, but they cannot prevent themselves. This eating is also a filling-up process.
So there can be many directions and many ways to fill emptiness, although it is never full; it remains empty, and you remain miserable because it is never enough. More is needed, and the more and the demand for more is unending.
I don’t take greed as a desire; it is some existential sickness. You are not in tune with the whole, and only that tuning with the whole can make you healthy. That tuning with the whole can make you holy.
It is strange that the word health, and the word holy both come from wholeness. When you are feeling one with wholeness all greed disappears. Otherwise...what have religions been doing? They have misunderstood greed as a desire, so they try to repress it: “Don’t be greedy.” Then one moves to the other extreme, to renounce. One collects — the greedy person — and the person who wants to get rid of greed starts renouncing. There too there is no end.
Mahavira could never recognize Gautam Buddha as enlightened for the simple reason that he still carries three sets of clothes — just three sets of clothes, which are absolutely necessary. One you are using, one has to be washed, and one for emergency reasons...someday the clothes may not come from being washed or they are not dry, or it is raining the whole day. So three seems to be very essential...one emergency....
Mahavira is absolutely against greed. Now, that has taken to an extreme form; he is naked. Buddha carries a begging bowl. Mahavira cannot accept it because even a begging bowl is a possession, and an enlightened man, according to him, should not possess anything. A begging bowl...it is made of coconut. You cut the coconut in the middle...and there are special coconuts which are very big. You cut from the middle, you take all of the fruit out, and then two bowls are left, hard shells. That is the cheapest thing, because they are thrown away; you cannot eat them. To have a begging bowl and to call it being possessive is not right.
But when you see greed as a desire and you become stubborn, going against it, then everything is a possession. Mahavira lived naked, and instead of a begging bowl he used to make a bowl of his two hands. Now it was a very difficult thing: his two hands are full of the food and he has to eat just like the animals, because he cannot use his hands — so he has to use his mouth directly to take the food from the hands.
Everybody in the world eats sitting. But Mahavira’s idea is that when you eat sitting, you eat more. Now this is going to the opposite extreme. So he was teaching to eat food standing — standing, with the food in your hands; it is such a strenuous thing. You can take food only one time, so whatever can fit in your two hands at one time is one meal. You have to eat it standing, and everything has to be taken together, sweet, salty, and they all get mixed. That is Mahavira’s idea of making it tasteless, because to enjoy taste is to enjoy the body, is to enjoy matter.
To me, greed is not a desire at all. So you need not do anything about greed. You have to understand the emptiness that you are trying to fill, and ask the question, “Why am I empty? The whole existence is so full, why am I empty? Perhaps I have lost track; I am no longer moving in the same direction, I am no longer existential. That is the cause of my emptiness.”
So be existential.
Let go, and move closer to existence in silence and peace, in meditation.
And one day you will see you are so full — overfull, overflowing — of joy, of blissfulness, of benediction. You have so much of it that you can give it to the whole world and yet it will not be exhausted.
That day, for the first time you will not feel any greed — for money, for food, for things, for anything. You will live naturally, and whatever is needed you will find it. And you will live, not with a constant greed that cannot be fulfilled, a wound that cannot be healed.

Trust

T R U S T

I need to trust so badly, I want especially to be able to trust you, and I suffer because I don’t.

People who trust themselves can trust others. People who don’t trust themselves cannot trust anybody. Out of self-trust, trust arises. If you are distrustful about yourself, then you cannot trust me; you cannot trust anybody. If you don’t trust yourself, how can you trust your trust? It is going to be your trust. Maybe you trust in me, but it is your trust: you trust in me and you don’t trust yourself. So it is not a question about me, it is a deep question about yourself.

Who are these people who cannot trust themselves? Something has gone wrong somewhere. First, these are the people who don’t have a very good self-image; they are condemnatory towards themselves. They always feel guilty and always feel wrong. They are always defensive and always trying to prove that they are not wrong, but they feel deep down that they are wrong. These are the people who have missed, somehow, a loving atmosphere.

Psychologists say that the person who cannot trust himself is bound to have some deep-rooted problem with the mother. The mother-child relationship somewhere did not happen as it should. Because the mother is the first person in the child’s experience; if the mother trusts the child, if the mother loves the child, the child starts loving the mother and trusting the mother. Through the mother the child becomes aware of the world. The mother is the window from where he enters existence.

By and by, if there exists a beautiful relationship between the child and the mother, a response, a deep sensitivity, a deep transfer of energies, a flowering...then the child starts trusting others also. Because he knows the first experience was beautiful, there is no reason to think that the second is not going to be beautiful. There is every reason to believe that the world is good.

If in your childhood there was a deep milieu of love around you, you will become religious, trust will arise. You will trust, trust will become your natural quality. Ordinarily, you will not distrust anybody unless somebody tries hard to create distrust in you; only then will you distrust. But distrust will be exceptional. One man deceives you and tries hard to destroy your trust. Maybe trust in that man is destroyed, but you will not start distrusting the whole humanity. You will say, “This is one man, and there are millions of men. Just for one man, why distrust all?”

But if the basic trust is lacking, and something has gone wrong between you and your mother, then distrust becomes your basic quality. ]Then ordinarily, naturally, you distrust. There is no need for anybody to prove. You distrust man, and then if somebody wants you to trust him he will have to work hard, very hard. And even then, you will trust him conditionally. And even then, that trust will not be very comprehensive. It will be very narrow; it will be arrowed at one person. That is the problem.

In the old times people were very trusting. Shraddha, trust, was a simple quality. There was no need to cultivate it. In fact, if somebody wanted to become a great skeptic, doubting, then great training was needed, great conditioning was needed. People were simply trustful because love relationships were very, very deep. In the modern world love has disappeared, and trust is nothing but the climax of love, the cream of love. Love has disappeared. Children are born into families where the father and mother are not in love. Children are born; the mother does not care, is not bothered about what happens to them. In fact, she is annoyed because they are a disturbance, and they are disturbing her life. Women are avoiding children, and if they happen it seems like an accident. And there is a deep negative attitude. The child gets that negative attitude; he is poisoned from the very beginning. He cannot trust the mother.

...A philosophy is not born out of the blue. A philosophy comes from your own existence, your own lived experience. If the child has been deep in love with the mother and the mother has showered her love, that is the beginning of all trust for the future. Then the child will make more loving relationships with women, will make more loving relationships with friends, one day will be able to surrender to a master and, finally, will be able to dissolve himself completely into God. But if the basic link is missing then the foundation is missing. Then you try hard, but it becomes more and more difficult. That’s what I feel about the questioner.

“I need to trust so badly”...yes, because trust is nourishment. Without trust you remain hungry, you remain starved. Trust is the most subtle nourishment for life. If you don’t trust you cannot really live. You are always in fear; you are surrounded by death, not by life. With a deep trust inside, the whole view changes. Then you are at home and there is no conflict. Then you are not a stranger in the world. Then you are not an alien, you are not a foreigner. You belong to the world, the world belongs to you. The world is happy that you are; the world is protecting you. This feeling of a deep protection gives courage, and gives courage to move into unknown paths.

When the mother is in the home the child has courage. Have you watched it? He can go out on the road, he can move into the garden, and he can do a thousand and one things. When the mother is not there he simply sits inside, he is afraid. He cannot go out; the protection is not there, the protective aura is not there. The atmosphere is totally alien.

If you have lived a childhood of a deep showering of love and trust on you, you gather a beautiful self-image about yourself. And if your parents have been really in deep love with each other, and they were very happy in you because you were the culmination of their love, the crescendo of their love, the actualization of their love; if they were deep in love, then you are the song that is born out of their love. You are the proof, the evidence that they loved each other. You are their creation: they feel happy about you, they accept you, and they accept the way you are. Even if they try to help you, they try to help you in a very loving way. Even if they say sometimes, “Don’t do this,” you don’t feel offended and you don’t feel insulted. In fact, you feel cared about.

But when the love is missing and the father and mother go on saying, “Don’t do this,” and, “Do this,” by and by the child starts learning that, “I am not accepted as I am. If I do certain things, I am loved. If I don’t do certain things, I am not loved. If I do some other things, I am hated.”

So he starts shrinking. His pure being is not accepted and loved. The love is conditional; trust is lost. Then he will never be able to have a beautiful self-image. Because it is mother’s eyes which reflect you for the first time, and if you can see happiness there, a bliss, a thrill, a great ecstasy just watching you, you know you are valuable, you know you have intrinsic value. Then it is very easy to trust, very easy to surrender, because you are not afraid. But if you know that you are wrong, then you are always trying to prove that you are right.

People become argumentative. All argumentative people basically are people who don’t have good images of themselves. They are very defensive, very touchy. If there is some argumentative person, and you say that, “This thing you have done wrong,” he immediately jumps on you, becomes very angry. He cannot even take a small friendly criticism. But if he has a good image about himself he is ready to listen, he’s ready to learn, he’s ready to respect others’ opinions. Maybe they are right, and even if they are right and he is wrong, he is not worried because that doesn’t matter. He remains good in his eyes.

People are touchy. They don’t want criticism, they don’t want somebody to say to them to do this; they don’t want somebody to say to them not to do that. And these people think they cannot surrender because they are very powerful. They are just ill, neurotic. Only a powerful man or woman can surrender — weaklings, never. Because in surrender they think their weakness will be known to the whole world.

They know they are weak, they know their inferiority complex, so they cannot bow down. It is difficult for them, because bowing down will be accepting that they are inferior. Only a superior person can bow down; inferior persons can never bow down. They cannot respect anybody because they don’t respect themselves. They don’t know what respect is, and they are always afraid of surrender because surrender means weakness to them.

So if you feel it difficult to trust, then you have to go back. You have to dig deep into your memories. You have to go into your past. You have to clean your mind of the past impressions. You must be having a great heap of rubbish from your past; unburden it. This is the key to do it: if you can go back not just as memory, but as a reliving.

Make it a meditation. Every day, in the night, for one hour just go back. Try to find out all that has happened in your childhood. The deeper you can go the better — because we are hiding many things that have happened, but we don’t allow them to bubble up into consciousness. Allow them to surface. Going every day, you will feel deeper and deeper. First you will remember somewhere when you were at the age of four or five, and you will not be able to go beyond that. Suddenly, a China Wall will face you. But go. By and by, you will see that you are going deeper: three years, two years.

People have reached to the point where they were born from the womb. There have been people who have reached into the memories of the womb, and there are people who have reached beyond that, into the other life when they died.

But if you can reach to the point where you were born, and you can relive that moment, it will be of deep agony, pain. You will almost feel as if you are being born again. You may scream as the child screamed for the first time. You will feel suffocated as the child felt suffocated when for the first time he was out of the womb — because for a few seconds he was not able to breathe. There was great suffocation: then he screamed and the breath came, and his passages became open, his lungs started functioning. You may have to move to that point.

From there you come back. Go again, come back, every night. It will take at least three to nine months, and every day you will feel more unburdened, more and more unburdened, and trust will arise simultaneously, by the side. Once the past is clear and you have seen all that has happened, you are free of it. This is the key: if you become aware of anything in your memory, you are freed from it. Awareness liberates, unconsciousness creates a bondage. Then trust will become possible.

Psychologists have come across this — that love is food. Just twenty years ago, if somebody had said that love was subtle vitality, then scientists would have laughed. They would have thought, “You are a poet, you live in illusion and dreams. Love and food? — all nonsense.” But now scientific researchers say, “Love IS food.” When a child is given food, that nourishes his body; and if love is not given, then his soul is not nourished. His soul remains immature. Now there are ways to measure whether a child is being loved or not, whether the warmth he needs is being given to him or not. You can give a child all the nourishment he needs, all medical care he needs, in a hospital. Just remove the mother; give him milk, medicine, care, everything, but don’t hug him, don’t kiss him, don’t touch him.

Many experiments have been done. The child, by and by, starts shrinking into himself. He becomes ill, and in most of the cases he dies, for no visible cause at all. Or, if he survives, he survives at the minimum: he becomes an imbecile, an idiot. He will live, but he will live just on the fringe. He will never be deep in life; he has no energy. To hug the child, to give your body’s warmth to him is food, is very subtle food. Now this is being recognized, by and by.

Let me make you one prediction: after twenty or thirty years, psychologists will come to reveal that trust is even a higher food, of a greater potency — higher than love.... Like prayer. Trust is prayerfulness, but it is very subtle. You can feel it. If you have trust, you will suddenly see that with me you are going on a great adventure, and your life starts immediately changing. If you don’t have trust, you will stand there. I go on talking, I go on pulling you; you are stuck — somehow you go on missing me. Let your trust arise. That trust will be a bridge between me and you. Then ordinary words become luminous, then just my presence can become a womb, and you can be reborn.

People who trust because they are afraid, because they want somebody to hang to, to cling to, they are afraid and they want somebody’s hand, they look at the sky and they pray to God just to feel unafraid. Have you watched? Sometimes passing through a dark street in the night you start whistling, or you start singing — not that it is going to help. But it helps in a way. Singing, you become warmer. Singing, you become occupied; fear is repressed. Whistling, you start feeling good. You forget that it is dark and it is dangerous, but it makes no real change in reality. If there is fear and danger it is still there. In fact, it is more, because a person who is engaged in singing can be robbed more easily because he will be less alert. He will be less cautious while whistling. He is creating an illusion around him with whistling. If your trust arises out of fear, it is better not to have that trust. It is false. I have heard....

Mulla Nasrudin climbed into a barber’s chair and asked, “Where is the barber who used to work on the next chair?”

“Oh, that was a sad case,” the barber said. “He became so nervous and despondent over poor business, that one day when a customer said he did not want a massage, he went out of his mind and cut the customer’s throat with a razor. He is now in the state mental hospital. By the way, would you like a massage, sir?”

“Absolutely!” said Mulla Nasrudin.

Out of fear you can say ‘absolutely’, but that will not be trust. Trust is born out of love, and if you find that you cannot trust, then you have to work hard. You have a very loaded past, wrongly loaded. You have to clean it, clear it.

 

A Meditator’s Diet



Man is the only species whose diet is not predictable. The diet of all other animals is certain. Their basic physical needs and their nature decides what they should eat and what they should not; how much they should eat, how much they should not; when they should eat and when they should stop. But man is absolutely unpredictable, he is absolutely uncertain. Neither his nature tells him what he should eat, nor his awareness tells him how much he should eat, nor his understanding decides when he should stop eating.

As none of these qualities of man are predictable the life of man has gone in some very uncertain directions. But if there is even a little understanding — if man starts living with even a little intelligence, with even a little thoughtfulness, opening his eyes even a little — then it is not at all difficult to change to a right diet. It is very easy; there can be nothing more easy. To understand right diet we can divide it into two parts.

The first thing: what should a man eat and what should he not eat?

Man’s body is made of chemical elements. The whole process of the body is very chemical. If alcohol is put into a man, then his body will be affected by the chemical — it will become intoxicated, unconscious. Howsoever healthy, howsoever peaceful the man may be, the chemistry of the intoxication will affect his body. Howsoever saintly a man may be, if he is given poison then he will die.

Any food which takes man into any kind of unconsciousness, any kind of excitement, any kind of extremity, any kind of disturbance, is harmful. And the deepest, ultimate harm is when these things start reaching the navel.

Perhaps you are not aware that in naturopathy all over the world, mud packs, vegetarian food, light food, water-soaked cloth strips and tub baths are used to heal the body. But no naturopath has yet understood the point that the effects of water-soaked cloth strips, mud packs, or tub baths, on the body are not so much because of their special qualities but because of how they affect the navel center. And the navel center then affects the rest of the body. All these things — the mud, the water, the tub bath — affect the dormant energy in the navel center and when this energy arises, health starts arising in the person’s life.

But naturopathy is still not aware of this. Naturopathy thinks that perhaps these beneficial effects are coming from the mud packs or the tub baths or the wet strips on the stomach! They do have benefits, but the real benefits are coming from the awakening of energy in the dormant centers of the navel.

If the navel center is mistreated, if a wrong diet, wrong food is used, then slowly, slowly the navel center becomes dormant and its energy becomes weaker. Slowly, slowly that center starts falling asleep. Finally it almost goes to sleep. Then we don’t even notice it as any center.

Then we notice only two centers: one is the brain where thoughts are constantly moving, and the other is a little bit of the heart where emotions are moving. Deeper than this we have no contact with anything. So, the lighter the food is, the less it creates heaviness on the body, the more valuable and significant it will be for the beginning of your inner journey.

For a right diet the first thing to remember is that it should not create excitement, it should not be intoxicating, it should not be heavy. After eating rightly you should not feel heaviness and drowsiness. But perhaps all of us feel heaviness and drowsiness after our meals — then we should know that we are eating wrongly.

Some people get sick because they do not get enough food and some people get sick because they get too much food. Some people die of hunger and some people die of overeating. And the number of people dying of overeating has always been more than the people dying of hunger. Very few people die of hunger. Even if a man wants to remain hungry there is no possibility of him dying for at least three months. Any person can live without food for three months. But if a man overeats for three months then there is no possibility of his survival.

Our wrong attitudes towards food are becoming dangerous for us. They are proving to be very costly. They have taken us to a point where we are somehow just alive. Our food does not seem to create health in us, it seems to create sickness. It is a surprising situation when food starts making us sick. It is as if the sun rising in the morning creates darkness. This would be an equally surprising and strange thing to happen. But all the physicians in the world are of the opinion that most of the diseases of man are because of his wrong diet.

So the first thing is that every person should be very aware and conscious about his eating. And I am saying this especially for the meditator. It is necessary for a meditator to remain aware what he eats, how much he eats, and what its effects are on his body. If a man experiments for a few months with awareness, he will certainly find out which is the right food for him, which food gives him tranquility, peace and health. There are no real difficulties but because we do not pay any attention to food, we are never able to discover the right food.”

Life is such a mystery that if we really become silent, total, loving, it will change many things in you - in the body, in the mind, in the soul.

Osho