Religion Is Awareness

Question was asked to Osho – WHAT IS PATANJALI’S METHODOLOGY OR YOUR TECHNIQUE OF BECOMING A SELF-CONTAINED INDIVIDUAL?

IN THIS CONNECTION KINDLY EXPLAIN HOW SUCH A SPIRITUAL MAN LITERALLY LIVES FROM MOMENT TO MOMENT.

HOW TO CULTIVATE THIS HABIT OF LIVING FROM MOMENT TO MOMENT IN PRACTICAL, EVERYDAY LIFE?

This whole question must be from someone who has not understood me at all. It seems to be from somebody absolutely new. But, still, many people are new, and it will be helpful to understand it.

“What is your technique of becoming a self contained individual?” I am not interested in making you a self-contained individual at all, because that is impossible. You are so interconnected with the whole, how can you become self-contained? That is the ego’s effort, to become self contained. To become absolutely independent of all: that is the ego trip, the ultimate ego trip.

No, you cannot become self contained. You can become the whole contained, but not self-contained.

You can contain the whole and you can be contained by the whole, but you cannot become self-contained. How can you divide yourself from the universe, separate? You cannot exist even for a single moment.

If you don’t breathe, you will not be able to be alive. And you cannot hold your breath in; it has to go out. It has to come in again. It is a constant movement between you and the whole. Those who know, they say it is not that you breathe; on the contrary, the whole breathes you.

Just watch your breath silently sometimes. There may come one day, one moment when suddenly your attention will shift to a new mysterious experience. First when you watch your breath – your kurma-nadi, what Buddha calls anapanasati yoga – when you watch your breath, you think you are breathing. By and by you will see, you will have to see because that’s the truth: you are not breathing.

You are not needed to breathe; that’s why even in sleep you go on breathing. Even if you become unconscious, even if you are in a coma, you go on breathing. You are not breathing; otherwise sometimes you will forget and you will drop dead. You never forget, because it is not needed.

The breathing goes on by itself, on its own accord. One day you will see, “I am breathing” is nonsense; on the contrary, “breathing is breathing me.”

And then one day you will have another revolutionary, a radical, turn of your consciousness. You see that you exhale out, you inhale in: one day you will see your exhalation is God’s inhalation, your inhalation is God’s exhalation. The whole exhales: that is the moment when you feel you are inhaling. The whole inhales: that is the moment when you feel you are exhaling.

Who are you? And what nonsense you are asking – how to become self-contained. Without the sun you will not be. If the sun disappears, you will disappear; the whole of life will disappear. We are interconnected. The whole existence is one, and everything is interconnected. Independence is not possible. I am not for dependence, because when independence is not possible, how can dependence be possible? My word is “interdependence”; that’s what is true and real.

So the first thing, don’t think in terms of self containment. “Self” is your disease. Drop it! So the whole, becomes available to you. And only then can you live from moment to moment, otherwise you cannot. If you are protecting, guarding, defending yourself, how can you live moment to moment?

You will have to prepare for the future. You will have to prepare for tomorrow. Who will take care of you? You are a self-contained individual – who will take care of you tomorrow? You will have to look at the bank balance. You will have to prepare. You cannot live moment to moment.

Only a person who has come to realize, “I am not, the whole is,” can live moment to moment – because then there is no other way to live. The future is not yet there, and if this moment the whole has been protecting me, mothering me, helping me, then the whole will take care tomorrow also, as it has taken care up to now. It will take care. And if the whole decides that I am not needed, and I dissolve, perfectly okay – because who am I to object?

This is what a religious man is: a deep surrender, a total surrender to the whole. Then he lives moment to moment.

“In this connection kindly explain how such a spiritual man literally lives from moment to moment.” He does not live; he allows God to live through him. Then one is spiritual.

A worldly man lives his life; a spiritual man does not live his life – he allows God to live through him.

He becomes a vehicle. He says, “Come. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. Come, pass through me, live through me, be through me. I am empty and ready. I am just like a hollow bamboo. Come, make a flute out of me; sing a song out of me. Sing your silence or your song, but celebrate through me. I am ready and waiting for you, and available.”

A spiritual man is a great availability. He says to God, “Whenever you are willing, I am ready. I will wait, and I will keep patience. There is no hurry, also. If you are engaged somewhere else; and much work is there, do it. I can wait for eternity.”

A spiritual man is not one who is living his life. But in India, or in other countries also, that is the idea: that a spiritual man is one who lives a very disciplined life. This is not the definition of a spiritual man; and don’t become a victim of it, because if you start living your life you will be constantly in a fight with the whole. Don’t swim in the river, don’t try to push it. Float with it, go with it – go with it to the ocean. It is already going; there is no need to worry. Drop all worries, don’t try to swim upstream; otherwise you will be exhausted. But that’s what is thought about a religious man, a spiritual man – one who is giving a great fight to God.

Gurdjieff used to say, “All your so-called religions are against God.” And he was right. These are subtle strategies of the ego. Beware of them.

I am here not to make you enemies of God. I am here to teach you how to float with him, how to be friendly with him, how not to resist him. I am here to break down all your strategies – your morality, your ethics, your disciplines. These are all strategies, how you protect yourself, how you are trying to be independent and self contained. I am here to destroy and annihilate you completely.

And when your strategies are taken away, you will disappear. In your disappearance appears the spiritual man. There is nothing that you can do by your efforts. It is your absolute, utter failure! When the religious man enters in you, when you become religious and spiritual. You cannot succeed to be a spiritual man.

“How to cultivate this habit…?” Religion is not a habit. Spirituality is not a habit, it is awareness; and a habit is just the opposite of awareness. A habit is unconscious. But many people do that. For example, you smoke cigarettes; it becomes a habit. When do you say it has become a habit? When it has become so automatic you cannot drop it; then you say it has become a habit. Now if you don’t smoke, you feel great disturbance. You feel an urge so tremendous that you cannot withhold it, you have to go with it; now it has become a habit. The same way, you try to make prayer also your habit. You pray every day; then by and by it becomes just like smoking. If you don’t pray, you feel something is being missed. You call it religious. Then why not call smoking religious? What is wrong with smoking?

Smoking is a mantra. What do you do in a mantra? You repeat a certain sound; you say, “Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram….” That’s what smoking is. You take the smoke in, you take it out, you take it in, you take it out, you take it in, you take it out: it becomes a mantra. It is already a “Transcendental Meditation,” TM.

No, religion has nothing to do with habits. You must be thinking that religion has something to do with good habits, not bad habits – smoking is a bad habit, prayer is a good habit. But all habits are unconscious, and religion is becoming conscious.

It is possible that you may become so habituated to doing good that it may become impossible for you to do bad, but that doesn’t make you a spiritual man. It makes you a very convenient man. It makes you a very good citizen of the world, it makes you a very good member of the society, but not a religious man. Society played tricks with you. You can go on doing good, go on doing good, because you cannot do bad. It has become habitual. But habit is not virtue. Awareness.

And sometimes it happens that the situation is not the same, but you are habituated to doing something – you go on doing it without looking at the situation. Sometimes something is bad and the same thing can be good at other times. In one situation one response is virtuous; in another situation the same response can be a sin. But if you have become habituated, you behave like a robot, automaton.

I will tell you one story, one of the most beautiful ones I have ever come across.

Mr. Ginsberg died and went to heaven and was greeted by the recording angel with great jubilation.

“We have all been waiting for you, Ginsberg, for you have been a good man. Look at your record here” – and the recording angel opened a gigantic ledger and ran his finger down one page after another. “Look at that: good deed – good deed – good deed – good deed. Ginsberg, you are loaded with good deeds.”

But as he turned the pages the recording angel grew solemn and his face took on a look of anxiety.

Finally, he closed the ledger and said, “Ginsberg, we are in trouble.”

“Why?” asked Ginsberg in alarm.

“I had not realized it, but you have nothing but good deeds. You have no sins at all.”

“But isn’t that the whole idea?” asked Ginsberg.

“In a manner of speaking, it is,” said the recording angel. “But in actual practice, we always get a few sins. That fellow there – a good man – committed only one, but it was a real whopper. Now if you come in with no sins at all, it will create envy and hard feelings, there will be murmurings and backbitings. In short, you will bring dissension and evil into heaven.”

“So what to do? What am I to do?” said poor Ginsberg.

“I tell you what,” said the recording angel, “this is irregular, but maybe I can get away with it. I will erase the last page of your record and you will have six more hours of life. You will have another chance. Please, Ginsberg, commit a sin – and a real one – and then come back.”

No sooner said than done, Ginsberg suddenly found himself back in his hometown. He had a few hours in which to commit a sin and get away from his perpetual good deeds, and he was desperately eager to do so because he wanted to go to heaven. But what kind of sin could he commit? He had been so virtuous, he scarcely knew what sin was.

After much thinking, he recalled that if one had sexual relations with a woman not one’s wife, that was sin. It also seemed to him that a certain unmarried woman past her first youth had often cast meaningful glances at him, which, being virtuous, he had, of course, ignored.

He would ignore them no longer. And time was running fast. With determined steps, he walked to the house of the young lady, Miss Levine, and knocked. She opened the door, saw him standing there, and said in surprise, “Why, Mr. Ginsberg, I had heard you were sick, and feared you were dying, but you look completely yourself.”

“I am perfectly well,” said Ginsberg. “May I come in?”

“Of course,” said Miss Levine eagerly, and locked the door behind him.

What happened afterwards was inevitable. In almost no time, they were clearly sinning and Mr. Ginsberg, with the vision of a waiting heaven, made up in enthusiasm for what he lacked in experience.

Anxious to make the sin a real good one, and something that would thoroughly satisfy the recording angel, Ginsberg took pains not to hasten. He kept matters going till an inner feeling told him his time was nearly up.

Anticipating heaven with Lyrical joy, Ginsberg rose and excused himself. “Miss Levine,” he said, “I must leave now. I have an important engagement.”

And Miss Levine, smiling up at him from bed, murmured softly, “Oh, Mr. Ginsberg, darling, what a good deed you have done for me today.”

What a good deed! So poor Ginsberg.

Don’t get so habituated; too good. Don’t get so habituated; don’t become so mechanical. Don’t ask, “How to cultivate this habit of living from moment to moment?” It is not a habit at all; it is an awareness.

There is nothing else. The past is gone; the future has not come yet. Can you live in the past, that which is gone? How can you live in it? Can you live in the future, that which is not yet? How can you live in it? It is a simple understanding, a tacit understanding, that the only possible life is in the present. There is no need to make a habit of it. It has nothing to do with religion; it has something to do with simple, mere intelligence. The past is gone, how can you live in it? The future has not come yet, how can you live in it? Just a little intelligence is needed.

Only the present is there. All that is there is the present; there is no other way. So live it if you want to live it. If you think of the past and the future, you waste it. And when it will become past, you will start thinking about it. And when it was the future, you were planning for it. And when it comes, you are not there. You either move in memories or you move in imaginations.

Drop memory and imagination. Be here now. And it is not a question of habit. How can you be here-now just by habit? Habit comes from the past – habit drags you to the past. Or you can make it a discipline – but then you are making it for the future. You are waiting: “Today I will cultivate the habit, and tomorrow I will enjoy it.” But again you are in the future.

Habit is not the question, not at all relevant. Just become alert. If you are eating, eat – just eat. Let your whole being be absorbed in it. If you are making love, become a Shiva and let your consort be Devi. Love, and let all the gods watch and come and go – don’t be worried. Whatsoever you are doing…. Walking on the street, then just – walk. Enjoy the breeze, the sun, the trees – the present.

And remember, I am not telling you to practice. It can be done immediately, without any practice.

It can be done immediately; just a little intelligence is needed. Habits, cultivations, are for stupid people. Because they cannot live intelligently, they have to take the help of habits, disciplines, this and that. If you are intelligent – and I can see you are intelligent, I see you are a promise – there is no need. Just start! Don’t ask how. Right now, start. Are you listening to me? Just listen. Many of you will be thinking, not listening, comparing notes with your own prejudices.

The person who has asked the question is not listening. I can say it with absolute certainty – not knowing who has asked. Where does my certainty come from? Because I can understand the mind from the question. He must be getting angry and annoyed.

People ask questions to be solaced, consoled, but I am not here to console you. I am here to disturb you so totally that you drop – out of sheer disgust with your strategies you drop. And I am absolutely certain, as much certain as it happened once: Sheikh Farid, a mystic, a Sufi mystic, was invited by the king. He went there, and the king said, “I have been hearing many miracles about you, and if you really claim that you are a great saint and mystic, then show me some miracle, because spiritual men always are miraculous.”

Farid looked into the eyes of the king and said, “I can read your thoughts, and just for an instance I can say that this is the thought right now in your mind: that you can’t believe it. I can read your thoughts, and right now I can read that you cannot believe it. You are saying inside, ‘I can’t believe it.’ Am I right or not?”

The king said, “You caught me.”

The man who has asked the question must be feeling very much annoyed. Then you miss, because through annoyance you cannot listen to me; you cannot be here-now.