Substitute For Reality

Question to Osho: HOW TO BE PASSIVELY ALERT? HOW TO BE NEITHER EXTROVERT NOR INTROVERT? HOW TO BE AND YET NOT TO BE?

PLEASE REPLY NOT THROUGH WORDS BUT THROUGH VOID.

Then you will have to ask through the void. If you want my silent answer, you will have to ask silently. If you cannot ask silently, I can answer silently, still, but you will not understand it. First you have to learn the language of silence. So if you want to receive something from me in silence, then prepare for yourself – and ask the question in silence.

No need to write it. Because I can give you only as much as you are capable of receiving.

And don’t ask crazy questions, because I can answer in a very crazy way.

Let me tell you one anecdote.

A mother thought her little girl should be examined for any possible abnormal tendencies, so she took the tot along to the psychologist. Among other questions the doctor asked were: “Are you a boy or a girl?”

The little girl answered, “A boy.”

Somewhat taken aback, the doctor asked, “When you grow up are you going to be a man or a woman?”

“A man,” she answered.

Afterwards as they were returning home the mother said, “Why did you give those strange answers to the questions that man asked you?”

The little girl drew herself up with dignity and said, “If he was going to ask me crazy questions, I was going to give him crazy answers – he could not kid me.”

Remember this. If you want to receive an answer in total silence, then learn how to be silent. Then you need not ask, you need not even formulate the question inside you, you need not even come to me because then physical closeness is not needed. Wherever you are you will be able to receive my answer. And that answer is not going to be mine or anybody else’s; it will be your own heart’s answer.

I have to give you answers because you don’t know how to ask. I have to give you answers because you have not yet become capable of receiving the answer from your own being. Once you learn silence, you become tremendously capable. Just be silent and all questions disappear. Not that you receive an answer: simply, questions disappear, you don’t have any questions to ask.

Buddha used to say to his disciples, “For one year, just keep quiet and be silent. After one year, whatsoever you want to ask, you can ask.” But after one year, they will not ask because questions wither away.

The more silent you become, the less questions arise because questions are part of a noisy mind. Questions are not coming out of your life, out of your existence and being. They are coming out of a mad mind. When the maddening drops a little, noise stops a little, and the traffic disappears in the mind – along with the traffic and the noise – questions also disappear. Suddenly there is silence.

Silence is the answer.

Question 3

Question to Osho – OSHO, I DREAM A LOT, BUT YOU RARELY APPEAR IN MY DREAMS.

NEHRU, JAIPRAKASH, AND DINKAR STILL FREQUENT THE SCENE; AND THAT MISCHIEVOUS TRAIN WHICH EACH TIME GOES AWAY WITH MR LUGGAGE BUT LEAVES ME BEHIND.

ONCE YOU DROVE ME IN YOUR JEEP ALONG A BUMPY RIVERSIDE.

AND LAST NIGHT SAW YOU MARRYING A NUMBER OF WOMEN, GOOD ONES, TOGETHER AND SAID TO MYSELF THAT YOU WOULD MANAGE THEM WITH EASE AND GRACE.

OSHO, WOULD YOU PLEASE SAY WHAT IT ALL MEANS FOR THE DREAMER HIMSELF?

It is from Swami Maitreya. A beautiful question, and a beautiful and significant dream. It shows much about him.

First thing, in his past he was a politician, and he had much promise. He had been a colleague of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Jaiprakash Narayan, and Ramdhari Singh Dinkat.

For many years he was a Member of Parliament. Somehow he got hooked with me, and all his dreams of becoming a great politician, a great political force, disappeared. But the past still clings.

These dreams, in which Nehru, Jaiprakash, and Dinkar appear, are very indicative. They show that political ambition is still lurking somewhere inside the unconscious. He has not yet been able to get rid of it totally. He is sincerely with me, he is authentically with me, but the past still clings. He wants to get rid of it; that’s why the past does not come in the day. It comes in the night when he is fast asleep and helpless. Then the mind starts playing old tricks again and again and again.

I don’t come much in his dreams, because I am already here. I am here in reality, so what is the point of creating a dream about me? Remember, dreams are only about things which are not present; either they were in the past or you would like them to be in the future. Whosoever is part of your reality in the present will never come in your dreams.

Your own wife will never come in your dreams; neighborhood wives, they will enter.

Your own husband will not come in your dreams; there is no point; but other people will appear.

A dream is a substitute for reality. It is complementary. If you have eaten well, enjoyed your food, loved it, and you are satisfied, you will not think and dream of eating again in the night; the dream will not come. Fast one day, and then you will have dreams of food, beautiful, delicious food. You are being invited by the Royal Family to the palace, and you are eating and eating and eating.

A dream simply indicates that which is missing in your life; that which is already there is never part of a dream. That’s why an enlightened person never dreams, because he is not missing anything. Whatsoever he wanted has happened and there is no more to it. He has no past, no future, to interfere with the present. His present is total. Whatsoever he is doing, he is enjoying it utterly. He is so content that there is no need for any complementary dream.

Your dreams are your dissatisfactions; your dreams are your discontents; your dreams are your unfulfilled desires.

Maitreya has been a politician, and the mind still carries. And that’s why: “… and that mischievous train which each time goes away with my luggage but leaves me behind.”

That too Comes in his dreams many times; that is part of many people’s dreams. A train: somehow you reach the train – willy-nilly, running, anyhow you manage to reach the platform – and the train leaves. And his difficulty is more: his luggage is also in the train, and he is left alone standing on the platform without any luggage. That’s what has happened to him. Nehru has gone into the train, Dinkar has gone into the train, J.P. has gone into the train; and they have taken his luggage also and he is standing on the platform, empty. Those ambitions, political ambitions, are still lurking in the unconscious.

That’s why I am not coming into his dreams. I am already here. I am not; an ambition. I may come into his dreams when I am gone – when he has missed another train. One he has missed, and he has missed it absolutely. There is no way of going back, because a certain understanding has arisen in him. He cannot go back, he cannot become a politician again.

There is no going back, but the past can cling; and the more it clings, he may miss another train.

And of course “Once you drove me in your jeep along a bumpy riverside.” It is a jeep, and along a bumpy riverside – it is very bumpy. To be with me is to be always in danger, in insecurity. I don’t give you any security; in fact I take all your securities away from you. I make you almost empty – nothing to hold, nothing to cling to. I leave you alone.

Fear arises.

Now Maitreya is completely left alone – no money, no power, no prestige? No political status. Everything gone, he is just a bhikkhu. I have made a beggar of him; and he was rising high. He was rising higher and higher. He would have been a Chief Minister somewhere by now, or he may have been in the Central Cabinet. He was very promising.

All those dreams disappeared. Now they go on being created and haunting him; they are ghosts.

He will have to recognize the fact that going back is not possible. He has reached the point of no return. So now it is unnecessary to carry that load. Out of habit the mind goes on carrying it. Drop it. Recognize, see deeply into it. Don’t be deceived by it.