The Bible story is beautiful. God said to Adam, “Don’t cast the fruit of the tree of knowledge.” He played a trick on Adam. That was a way to provoke him, certainly. You cannot find a better way of provoking. The garden of God was very big. Left to himself Adam would not yet have discovered the tree. Just think. Such is the infinity of God’s garden that Adam, left to his own wits, would not have been able to discover the tree.
God must have known it. Christians don’t interpret it that way, but I know God played a trick. He befooled Adam. Immediately he said, “Remember, never eat the fruit of this tree,” this tree became a constant obsession. Now Adam will not be able to sleep well; in the night he will dream of the tree. And when God has said so, there must be something in it. And God himself eats from that tree! This is impossible. This is like a father who smokes and goes on telling the child, “Never smoke. This is very bad, and you will suffer.”
Of course Adam had to cast it, but God is the culprit. He has to be because he is the foundation of all. So if sin happens he has to be the criminal; if virtue happens he has to be the cause of it. All is his. Deepest, you will always find him there. And he must have been laughing since then.
Adam could not understand; a little psychology was needed. It is not a religious question; it is a psychological question. And even then God was not sitting silently and waiting, because Adam may be very obedient and may not eat; so he had to make other arrangements – the snake. God must have felt that Adam seems to be too docile, obedient, and a good boy; so he had to bring in a girl, Eve, and a snake. The snake provokes Eve and Eve provokes Adam. Now the thing becomes simple. Adam can throw the responsibility on Eve, Eve can throw the responsibility on the snake. And of course snakes don’t speak, they cannot write bibles and they cannot throw the responsibility on God. But the responsibility is his.
There is only one irreligion and that is to deny life, to deny love. And there is only one religion: to accept it in its totality and to move in it unafraid.
So this attitude is harmful.
“How? Why? What for? – Nothing is clear.” But why should it be clear? Why in the first place do you want it to be dear? And if it is absolutely clear, the whole point will be lost, the whole game will be lost. If everything is absolutely clear, then there is no alternative.
Then you cannot go astray. Then you will always do the right thing, if everything is absolutely dear. Then you cannot stumble, then you cannot move in the darkness and go far away from God.
But he wants you to go far away because only when you have gone very, very far away does a thirst arise to come back home.
In fact now modern psychology exactly says this: that every child has to go away from the mother. First the child is in the womb, then one day he has to come out of the womb.
That is the beginning of going far away from the mother. Now he is no longer part of the mother. Then the cord is cut; he starts functioning independently. But still he will cling to the mother, to the breast, because she is his whole being, still – out of the womb, but still he will go on clinging to the mother, he will remain in the motherly atmosphere. But then that too has to go. The child is growing. One day milk is stopped, the breast is taken away, and the mother forces the child to become more independent. Now he has to choose his own food and he has to chew his own food. Then still more – he has to go to the school or the boarding house. Then far away, far away he moves. Then one day he falls in love with a woman; that is the last step.
That’s why mothers can never forgive daughters-in-law. Impossible, because they are the last straw – they have taken their son completely. Now the son has become completely independent. He has his own family; he has started his own unit. Now he is no longer attached to the mother.
Exactly the same thing is happening in the world of consciousness. Man has to go away from the mother. And God is more a mother than a father, remember. Man is born out of the womb of God, then he takes care.
Just watch. He is taking more care of the trees, more care of the animals, more care of the birds – that is the womb. These people are inside the womb yet. He is not so careful about man; man has to become independent. Have you not observed that man is born the most helpless animal in the world? Because God is taking his help away, withdrawing himself. The trees exist in his womb, the birds exist in his womb, the animals exist in his womb. They are pre human.
That is the whole theory of rebirth, of evolution. In the East we say that every man has passed through all these stages. Once you were a lion, once you were a dog, once you were a tree, and once you were a rock also. Then you became a man. “Man” means you came out of the womb. The garden of Eden is the womb of God.
Adam was “expelled.” Hmm?… The word “expulsion” is not good. If we in the East had written the story of the Bible, we would have said, “God sent man farther away from himself – to grow.” Because it is difficult to grow if you continuously go on hanging around your mother. If you continuously go on living on her milk, it will be impossible to grow. You will remain childish.
And you have to fall in love with some woman, so much so that if the woman says, “Kill your mother,” you will start thinking of killing your mother. That’s how Eve persuaded Adam, “Eat this fruit.” What is the significance of the story? The significance is Adam chose Eve’s advice against God’s commandment. Simple. He said, “Okay, drop that old fellow. Don’t be worried.” He chooses foolish Eve’s advice.
And of course women are not very rational; they live by hunches. She has been advised – by a snake. Hmm?… Just look at the absurdity of it – just a hunch. But when a wife insists, the husband has to follow.
Adam is sent forth into the world, not expelled. How can God expel anybody? It is impossible; compassion will not allow it. And this is part of your growth that you should go away and you should commit mistakes, because only then, by and by will you become aware, alert. And with your own awareness, mistakes will start dropping. You will come back home. And you will always find God ready to welcome you.
God is your source, and is the source of all that happens to you.
Don’t ask, “How? Why? What for? – Nothing is clear.” Yes, it has to be that way. If everything is clear, there is no need to grow. Because nothing is clear, you have to grow in awareness, so things become clear.
Mulla Nasrudin was in the hospital; he had some eye trouble. After a week the doctor asked him, “Are the medicines helping you, Nasrudin?”
He said, “Certainly. I can see clearly, more dearly. For example, the nurse becomes remarkable and beautiful every day.”
When you can see clearly, of course the nurse becomes remarkable and beautiful. When you cannot see clearly, every woman is beautiful.
If everything is clear, then there will be no need to make your eyes clear. The whole thing is this, the whole game is this: things are not clear. So you have to bring more clarity to your mind so you can choose your path. Things are in chaos. You have to bring awareness within you so you can choose and move rightly into the chaos. Chaos is considerably there; it is meant to be there. It is not because of the devil the chaos is there; it is because of God.
It is like a jigsaw puzzle. Hmm?… If everything is clear then what is the point of the puzzle? You give a jigsaw puzzle to a small child, you mix all the parts, you confuse the child and then you tell him, “Now you work it out.” Working it out, he is really becoming more alert, absorbed, contemplative, meditative. If you give him a solved puzzle, what is the point of giving the puzzle to him ?
The world is a jigsaw puzzle and God goes on mixing and confusing it.
That’s what I am doing here with you. Somehow you try to fix your jigsaw puzzle, I again do something and mix you and confuse you. Because the more you have to work on the puzzle, the more aware you will become. You would like me to give you a certain catechism, like Christians give to their followers. A few people went to Osho – foolish people they are – they say, “It is very difficult, Osho, to find out from your books what you want. Just make a small book like Mao T’se-tung’s RED BOOK, just a small, handy book, which can be kept in a pocket – and that tells exactly what you want, in short.”
I am not going to give you a RED BOOK, because then what is the point? You like it, so finished. There is no need for any awareness. You just look into the RED BOOK and everything is clear. All RED BOOKS are worth being burned. Anything that solves your life’s puzzle is your enemy because the puzzle solved, you will plop into unconsciousness. The puzzle has to be made more complicated. That’s why if Lao Tzu cannot do; I bring Patanjali. If Patanjali cannot do; I bring Buddha. If he fails, Jesus, Mahavir. And then I find people – Tilopa, Naropa – nobody has bothered much about them. And I will go on puzzling you.
If amidst this confusion you become clear, not the things around you…. The clarity has to be inner. There are two types of clarities. One is just in the arrangement of things around you – the furniture arranged by an interior decorator, everything in its place – but then you are not clear. Things are systematic and they take the very opportunity to be clear from your hands. Then there is another clarity – things remain as they are, but you attain an intensity of awareness. You become more and more alert. You look at things deeply, you start seeing more clearly. Things are the same, but you are different. The change has happened to you, not in the world.
And that’s the difference between the communist, the socialist, the politician, and the religious man. They all are sorting out in the world – Marx, Mao, Stalin. They are all trying to fix the world, the puzzle, so you need not be worried. They are chewing food for you and they are trying to make you small babies so you can live on the breasts of the state – and everything is made clear by the government, everything nationalized, and everything is put in its right place. So you simply move without any worry on your part.
I am not in favor of any of that type of systematization in the outer world. The outer world has to remain a beautiful chaos so that you have to struggle for inner awareness. I hope you can see the point. If you are moving in a dark night alone, you move more alert, more cautious. If you are moving on a superhighway in full daylight, of course there is no need for awareness and alertness.
Have you ever been in a haunted house; in the night, alone? You will not be able to sleep.
Just a small noise – a dead leaf falls from the tree in the courtyard – and you will jump.
A cat jumps on the rat and you will jump. Just a breeze passes and you are standing with the torch in hand.
I have heard about one man who took a challenge and stayed in a haunted house. Just at the time when he was going to retire, sitting on the bed, he asked the waiter who had brought his milk, “Tell me one thing. Has anything exceptional happened here in the past few years?”
The man said, “Not for twenty years.”
The man felt relieved – twenty years before, something had happened. Then the waiter was leaving. He said, “Wait. Just tell me, what happened twenty years ago?”
The waiter said, “twenty years before, a very exceptional thing happened. One man stayed in the same bed you are staying in – and the next morning he came down for breakfast. Never again has it happened, and never before. We were not even waiting for him, but he came down the stairs.”
Now can you think of this man remaining unalert? Can you think of this man falling asleep? Even tranquilizers won’t help. Even if you give him morphia it may not work. His awareness will become a very crystallized thing.
Tags: Patanjali World Of Consciousness
