Question was asked to Osho – A FEW TIMES RECENTLY I HAVE FELT THAT I COULD FLY, FELT CURIOUSLY EXONERATED FROM GRAVITY AND LOOKED WITH BOREDOM ON THE 150 POUNDS’ TRUTH OF MY BODY. IS THIS JUST CRAZINESS…?
Osho replied – No. You are a meetingplace of two dimensions. One dimension belongs to the earth, the dimension of gravity, which pulls you down – that 150 pounds’ truth of your body. Another dimension belongs to grace the dimension of God, the dimension of freedom, in which you can go on rising high and high and high and there is no weight in it.
Meditating, this will happen. Many times in deep meditation you will suddenly become aware as if the gravitation has disappeared that now nothing holds you down, that it is now up to you to decide whether to fly or not, that now it is up to you – if you want, you can simply fly into the sky… and the whole sky is yours.
But when you open your eyes, suddenly, the body is there, the earth is there, the gravitation is there. When you were with closed eyes meditating, you forgot your body. You moved in a different dimension, the dimension of grace.
These two things have to be understood: gravitation is the law which pulls you down; grace is the law which pulls you up. Science has not yet been discovered, maybe it is not going to discover it ever, the other law. It has discovered one law.
You have heard the story – it happened or not, that is not the point – that Newton was sitting in a garden, and one apple fell. Watching that apple fall, Newton started thinking, “Why does the apple fall towards the earth? Why directly towards the earth? Why not sideways? Why does it not start flying upwards?” The law of gravitation was discovered, that the earth has a pull and pulls everything towards it.
But Newton saw the fruit falling; he didn’t see the tree rising up. That’s where I have always…. Whenever I read the story. I always felt he saw the small fruit falling towards the earth; he didn’t see the tree rising upwards. You throw a stone. It falls back, true, but a tree goes on rising higher and higher. Something pulling the tree up. A stone is dead; the tree is alive. Life goes higher and higher and higher.
Man, in his consciousness, has reached the highest point on this earth. When you close your eyes to the world, when you are in a deep meditative mood, prayerful, blissful, ecstatic – suddenly, the body is not there. You have become aware of the inner tree of life, and it is going higher and higher, and suddenly you feel that you can fly.
Nothing is crazy in it, but please don’t try it. Don’t jump out of the window and don’t start flying. Then it will be crazy. A few people under LSD or marijuana have done that. Nobody has ever done it under meditation. That’s the beauty of meditation, and that is the danger of drugs. A few people under the impression, under a deep hypnotic impression of some chemical drug, have become aware of this grace, that they can fly. The body is forgotten – and they have tried. One girl in New York really did it. From the fortieth story of a building, she simply flew out of the window – then Newton starts, working. Then you are the tree no more: you become the fruit. Then you fall to the earth and you crash.
That is one of the dangers of drugs, because they can reveal to you certain truths – but you are not aware. You can commit something, you can do something which can be dangerous. But never has it happened in meditation, because meditation gives you two things together it gives you a new dimension and it gives you more awareness, so you know it is there, but you are also aware that the body is there. You are still spread in two dimensions.
One day, a very fat, stout gentleman was discussing his tennis technique. “My brain tells me to run forward speedily, start right away, slam the ball gracefully over the net.”
I asked him, “And then what happens?”
He said, “And then?” The fellow became very sad and said, “My body says, ‘Who, me?’”
Remember, you are both the body and the consciousness. You are spread in both the dimensions. You are the meeting point of the earth and the sky, of grace and gravity. Nothing is crazy in it. It is simply a truth.
And sometimes it is possible, because it has happened, and it is better. I should make you aware of it. Sometimes it is possible that actually your body rises a little higher. There is a woman in Bavaria who rises four feet high while meditating.
She has been put under scientific observation and has been found not to be deceiving in any way. She remains for a few minutes, four, five minutes, hanging in the air four feet high. This is one of the oldest experiences of yogis. Rarely it happens, but sometimes it has happened in the past. Sometimes it happens now also. Sometimes it can happen to some of you.
If the pull of the grace becomes too much and the balance is lost, then it happens.
It is not a very good thing. Don’t try, and don’t ask for it. It is an imbalance, and it is dangerous for life. When the pull of the grace becomes too much and the pull of the gravity is less it happens the body can rise high. Even then, don’t think yourself crazy, and don’t start feeling that something like insanity is happening to you.
Newton is not all truth. There are greater truths than Newton. And gravitation is not the only dimension; there are many more dimensions.
Man is an infinity, and we have started believing only in part of it. So whenever anything from another dimension enters, we start feeling that something is going wrong. In fact, in the West, many people who are thought to be mad, neurotic, psychotic, and who are in the mad asylums, in mad hospitals, are not really mad.
Many of them have had some glimpses of the unknown, but the society does not accept that unknown, does not recognize it. Immediately, whenever a person has some glimpse of the unknown, he’s thought to be crazy, because he becomes somebody strange. We cannot believe him.
There are books written on Jesus in which it is said that he was a neurotic because he used to hear God and his voice. There are books written about Mohammed that he was mad he must have heard the Koran in delirium – because who is there to talk to you? – And he heard God speaking and God said, “Write!” and he started writing. Because it is not your experience, it is a natural tendency of the mind to say that he must have gone into some madness, must be in delirium, must have been in a high fever, because such things happen only when you are not in your senses.
Yes, these things happen in madness also, and these things happen in supersanity also, in superconsciousness also. Because the mad person falls below the normal level of consciousness, he loses control of his mind. Losing the control of one’s mind, one becomes available to the unknown forces. A yogi, a mystic, achieves samyama, control of his consciousness. He rises high and goes beyond the normal – again, the unknown becomes available to him. But the difference is that the madman is a victim of the unknown and the mystic is a master of the unknown. Both start talking in the same way, and you can misunderstand. You can get confused.
Don’t think of yourself crazy. It is perfectly okay. But don’t try it. Enjoy it, allow it; because once you start thinking that it is crazy, you will stop it; and that stopping will disturb your meditation. Enjoy it, as in a dream you fly. Close your eyes; in meditation go wherever you want. Rise higher and higher into the sky, and many more things soon will become available to you – and don’t be afraid. It is the greatest adventure – greater than going to the moon. Becoming an astronaut of inner space is the greatest adventure.
Another question to Osho – YOU TOLD ME TO BE MYSELF. I DON’T UNDERSTAND. HOW CAN I BE MYSELF IF I DON’T KNOW MYSELF?
Whether you know or not, you cannot be other than yourself. To be yourself, knowledge is not needed. A rosebush is a rosebush. Not that the rosebush knows that it is a rosebush. A rock is a rock. Not that the rock knows that it is a rock.
Knowledge is not needed. In fact it is because of knowledge that you are missing to be yourself.
You ask, “You told me to be myself. I don’t understand. How can I be myself if I don’t know myself?” Knowledge is creating the problem. Look at the rosebush.
She is not confused. Every day it goes on being a rosebush. Not even for a single day does it become confused. It does not start some morning growing marigolds; it goes on being a rosebush. It is not confused, at all.
Knowledge is not needed for being. In fact you are missing your being because of knowledge. Unnecessarily, knowledge creates a problem.
I was reading about a certain man named Dudley. To celebrate Uncle Dudley’s seventy-fifth birthday, an aviation enthusiast offered to take him for a plane ride over the little West Virginia town where he had spent all his life. Uncle Dudley accepted the offer.
Back on the ground, after circling over the town twenty minutes, his friend asked, “Were you scared, Uncle Dudley?”
“No,” was the hesitant answer, “but I never did put my full weight down.”
In an airplane, whether you put your full weight down or not, the weight is carried by the airplane.
Whether you know yourself or not is not the point. Knowledge is disturbing you.
Just think if there was a rock also on that airplane with Uncle Dudley, the rock would have put the whole weight down. And do you think Uncle Dudley can do something, can help in some way? Is there any possibility that he will be able not to put his whole weight on the airplane? He is also putting the whole weight, but he is unnecessarily worried. He could have rested, he could have relaxed just like the rock, but the rock has no knowledge and Uncle Dudley has knowledge.
The whole problem of humanity is that humanity knows, and because of knowing, the being is unnecessarily forgotten.
Meditation is how to drop knowledge. Meditation means how to become ignorant again. Meditation means how to become a child again, a rosebush, a rock. Meditation means how just to be and not to think.
When I say to you to be yourself, I mean meditate. Don’t try to be anybody else.
You cannot be! You can try, and you can deceive yourself and you can promise yourself and you can hope that someday you will become somebody else, but you cannot become. These are only illusions that you can go on having. These are dreams. They are not going to become realities ever. You will remain yourself whatsoever you do.
Why not relax? Uncle Dudley, put your full weight on the airplane. Relax.
In relaxation, suddenly you will start enjoying your being, and the effort to be somebody else will stop. That is your worry, how to be somebody else, how to be like somebody else, how to become like a Buddha, how to become like Patanjali.
You can only be yourself. Accept it, rejoice in it, delight in it. Relax.
Zen Masters say to their disciples, “Beware of Buddha. If you meet him on the way, kill him immediately.” What do they mean? They mean there is a human tendency to become imitators. In the English language, there is a book, IMITATION OF CHRIST. Never before and never after was such an ugly title given to any book. Imitation? But, in a way, that title is very symbolic. It shows the whole mind of humanity. People are trying to imitate, to become somebody else.
Nobody can become a Christ, and in fact there is no need – God will be bored if you become Christ. He wants somebody new, something original. He wants you, and he wants you to be just yourself.
Question to Osho – WHEN YOU TALK OF TAKING THE JUMP, I FEEL THAT I WANT TO TAKE THE JUMP, BUT I ALSO FEEL THAT I AM NOT AT THE EDGE FROM WHICH THE JUMP IS TAKEN.
I SEE YOU SHAKING US BUT CANNOT FEEL IT. HOW DO I COME TO THE EDGE? HOW CAN I LET YOU TEACH ME?
Osho replied – Everybody is always on the edge because each moment, if you dare, the jump is possible. Each moment gives you the edge; and when you ask how to come to the edge, you are being clever. Don’t try to be clever. Your question is a trick so you can console yourself that you are not a coward because the edge is not there, so “from where to take the jump?” So first the edge has to be found – and it will never be found, because it is right in front of you. Wherever you are standing, you are always at the sharp edge from where you can take the jump. And you ask a very clever question: that – first teach me how to find the edge.
Just look in front of you. Just look. Wherever you are that doesn’t matter.
And you say, “I see you shaking us but I cannot feel it.” The problem is not that you are asleep. If you are asleep, it is easy to shake you up out of your sleep. You are pretending that you are asleep; then it becomes impossible. You can see that I am shaking, but nothing is happening. How can you see if you are asleep?
Let me tell you one anecdote. It happened one summer afternoon. The father had promised the children to go for a walk, and he didn’t want it. For months he was waiting for this day to rest, so he played, he pretended, that he is fast asleep: The rather played possum while his youngsters tried their best to rouse him from a Sunday-afternoon nap to take them for a promised walk, but in vain. They did all sorts of things to wake him. They shook him, they shouted at him, but to no avail. All efforts failed. They even became afraid, what had happened. And the father was pretending to be asleep. Finally, his four-year-old daughter pried open one of his eyelids, peered carefully, then reported, “He is still in there.”
And I know you are also in there.
And you also know that you are pretending.
It is up to you. You can prolong the game as far as you like, because it is at your cost. I am not worried by it. If you want to pretend, okay. Perfectly okay. Do it.
But I can see… I can see all of you pretending to be asleep – afraid of getting up, afraid of realizing your being, afraid to move.
Just see the truth of it. Don’t ask about ways how you can find the edge. You are standing on it.
Don’t try to be clever, because in the inner world to he clever is to be stupid. In the inner world to be stupid is to be clever. In the inner world, those who are ignorant achieve faster than those who are knowledgeable. In the inner world, those who are innocent – and ignorance is innocence…. Ignorance is beautiful; ignorance is tremendously beautiful and innocent.
Just realize what I am saying! I know you are listening. I can peer into your eyes: I can open your eyelids. I have been doing so every day, and I can see you are still in there. You are not dead, you are not asleep. You are pretending that you are asleep.
And whenever – it is up to you – whenever you decide not to pretend. I am there to help you. I cannot push you against yourself. That is not allowed. God does not allow it, because it gives you total freedom; and total freedom includes everything – to go astray, to fall asleep, to commit sin, to deny God, to commit suicide, to destroy yourself. Total freedom includes all. And God loves freedom, because God is freedom.
Tags: Glimpses Of The Unknown Patanjali
