Your hidden nature, your original face.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE SAW MAN’S ENERGY IN TERMS OF A LAKE THAT UP TO NOW HAS ”FLOWED OUT INTO GOD.” HE LOOKED FORWARD TO THAT DAY WHEN THE LAKE WOULD CEASE TO LEAK OUTWARDS, WHEN A DAM WOULD BE CREATED SO MAN’S ENERGIES COULD RISE HIGHER AND HIGHER.

IT SEEMS HE WAS ON THE RIGHT TRACK IN ASSESSING THE NEED FOR ONE TO GO IN, BUT THE DAMMING UP OF ENERGIES SOUNDS DANGEROUSLY LIKE THE IDEA OF THE ASCETICS.

WOULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT?

Friedrich Nietzsche is only a thinker, a philosopher of tremendous genius. But whatever he is saying is only a logical, rational, philosophical statement. It is not existential. So try to understand that a man who has not gone beyond the mind can still make certain statements which come very close to the truth. But even to be close is to be at a distance.

He is saying that up to now human energies have been just like a lake that has been flowing out into God, outwards. ”He looked forward to that day when the lake would cease to leak outwards; when a dam would be created so man’s energies could rise higher and higher.” He is coming very close to the point of meditation.

Your energies are going outward to objects, to money, to power – and finally, if you become religious, to paradise, to God, but they are all out. So your energies are leaking out and the ultimate result is a feeling of utter emptiness, hollowness, unworthiness, failure. He is only thinking that the day must come when people will start creating a dam to prevent the leakage, so the whole energy gathers inwards. And rather than spreading outwards in thin layers, it starts rising upwards like a pillar.

He is perfectly right, but it is not his experience. He is just imagining – someday.

I am providing you with that day which he was imagining. What is your meditation? Just taking all your energies from outside to the interiormost space. And as energies go on gathering, not only do they go higher, they also go deeper, simultaneously, just like the roots of a big tree. Roots go on going deeper and deeper, and the tree goes on higher and higher.

Exactly like that, your consciousness, your life energy, moves higher and lower simultaneously. It touches the very depth of the earth – that is materialism. And it touches the stars – that is your spirituality. Just as a tree cannot be without roots, any spirituality without roots in the earth is bound to fail.

The East knows perfectly that its spirituality has failed, and still they go on insisting that materialism is against spirituality. And because of this idea the whole East has suffered poverty, starvation. No science has been developed, no technology developed which can help people. And the West has suffered because they think only roots are enough, there is no need for the tree and the flowers and the fruits. What will you do with the roots?

So the West has roots very deep in the earth in technology, in science, in objective research, but it is feeling utterly empty inside. The East has huge trees and all the branches rising towards the stars, but they go on falling, because without roots you cannot keep the tree standing. Both need a great meeting point. East and West, materialism and spiritualism, the inner and the outer, the higher and the deeper – both have to come to a certain synchronicity, then man will be whole.

And Maneesha, your worry is unnecessary. You say, ”It seems he was on the right track in assessing the need for one to go in, but the damming up of energies sounds dangerously like the idea of the ascetics.”

He was not aware at all about meditation, so he used the word ‘damming’. But his word ‘dam’ should be taken symbolically from a philosopher who is still within the mind. The mind of Nietzsche must have been one of the greatest minds that has ever lived on the earth, because he could conceive something beyond the mind while living in the mind. Living in a dark cell with no opening, he can still visualize, in his dreams, the sunrise. He has not seen it. He can visualize in his dreams beautiful flowers, he has never seen them. His capacity to visualize is great and should be appreciated.

No, he is not an ascetic. He was absolutely against ascetics, so he cannot mean what you are worrying about. It sounds as if holding all your energies inwards is creating a prison for the energies so that they cannot flow outward. He could not use the right symbols because he had no experience.

When you have energies rising like a pillar and going deeper into the ultimate depth, you will have both the worlds together – the inner world and the outer world, because the inner and the outer are two aspects of the same energy. Of course you will not be flowing towards God, which is a fiction. You will be flowing towards a real ocean of consciousness – we are making an effort to create that ocean of consciousness – and you disappear into it.

It is not ascetic. Certainly he was not an ascetic, so he cannot mean it. But a man without eyes who is talking about the light – and he comes so close to it! – is worth praising. He has no eyes to see, so he has no idea what light is, but just thinking about it, he comes very close. Also he cannot make exactly the right statement, it is only approximately right, but no other philosopher has come even that close. His beauty is great.

It is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh.

Late one afternoon at the Pearly Gates of Heaven, Saint Peter is inspecting twenty married women who have just arrived for judgment.

”Now, girls,” says Saint Peter. ”If any of you was ever unfaithful to your husband on earth, please take one step forward! And remember, no lying, and no cheating! I have ways of checking up on you!”

Immediately, nineteen of the wives move forward, but one woman remains standing alone. Saint Peter nods quietly to himself and walks over to the telephone. He dials up Hell.

”Hello! Satan!” exclaims Saint Peter. ”I am sending down twenty unfaithful wives to you – but be careful. One of them is completely deaf!”

One morning the phone rings in the office of Doctor Shelby Nameless. ”Good morning,” says Doctor Nameless, cheerfully.

”It may be a good morning for you,” snaps Brenda Chubbs, at the other end. ”But ever since you have been treating my husband, Buster, I have not had a single good morning!”

”I am sorry to hear that, Mrs. Chubbs,” says the doctor. ”What seems to be the problem?”

”Well,” grumbles Brenda, ”before he came to you, he was a perfect husband and father. But now he has become a rat. He used to tell me how pretty I am – now he calls me an ugly old bitch! He used to love our family life, but now he is critical about my housekeeping, hates the kids, and chases after any loose woman who happens to walk by! I think you have been giving him hormone injections which have completely altered his personality!”

”Hmm,” says Doctor Nameless, ”I want you to know, Mrs. Chubbs, that I have not been giving your husband injections of any kind. All I did was fit him with a pair of contact lenses!”

It is Sunday afternoon at the Holy Orthodox Church of the Blessed Bleeding Virgin on the Greek island of Crete. Bishop Cretin is preaching a sermon to the remaining four old ladies in his flock.

”And I am telling you,” thunders Cretin, ”that the morals of today are being horribly corrupted. Just yesterday I went to see a movie called BAMBI GOES BERSERK, which is filled with disgusting scenes of murder, rape, fornication, cannibalism, homosexuality and other perversions of the worst kind! If anything shows the need for censorship, then this movie is it! Now, ladies, are there any questions?”

”Yes,” cry all the old hags, in unison. ”Where is it playing?”

Nivedano...
(Drumbeat)
(Gibberish)
Nivedano...
(Drumbeat)

Be silent...

Close your eyes, and feel your body to be completely frozen.

This is the right moment to go inwards. Gather all your energies, gather your total consciousness and rush towards your center of being with an urgency, as if this is the last moment of your life.

Only with such urgency have people become enlightened.

Faster and faster...
Deeper and deeper...

As you come closer to your center, a great silence descends over you. It is falling almost like soft rain, cool, very tangible, and very mysterious.

Gautama the Buddha Auditorium has become absolutely silent, as if there is no one here at all.

A little deeper, closer to your being. And suddenly you are surprised, great fountains of peace burst all around you.

A little closer, and there arises for the first time a divine drunkenness, a deep ecstasy, a blissfulness you have never known before.

One step more, and you are at the very center. Suddenly you see you are no more.

At the center is your hidden nature, your original face.

We have used Gautam Buddha’s face as a symbol for everybody’s original face. So let me say, you have disappeared, only buddha is. In other words, you are no more, only existence is. And this is the greatest experience, the highest peak of consciousness and the greatest depth, simultaneously.

The only thing you have to remember at this point is buddha consists of only one element, consciousness, awareness, witnessing – different names of witnessing.

Just witness the way a mirror mirrors – no judgment, no appreciation, no identification.

Witness you are not the body.

Witness you are not the mind.
And witness you are only a witness.

Nivedano...
(Drumbeat)

Relax... but go on keeping the witness as clear as possible.
Buddha used to call this witness, sammasati, right remembering. You have remembered you are a buddha. You are not the body, you are not the mind. You are only a pure consciousness.

And as your witnessing deepens, you start melting like ice in the ocean. Gautama the Buddha Auditorium is turning into an ocean, and you are disappearing into it just like ice melting. No waves, no ripples – such silence!

You are at the very center of existence. You can now feel your heartbeat to be in tune with the universal heartbeat.

Absolutely unknown, unacquainted, flowers are showering over you.
The whole existence is rejoicing with your entry into the beyond. Going beyond the mind is going into the very cosmos.

Mind is your prison. To go beyond it is your freedom.

Collect as many experiences as you can: all the flowers, all the fragrances, the silence, the serenity, the tranquillity, the calmness, the peace that passeth understanding, and the divine ecstasy, the great splendor that you are a buddha, that you are one with the cosmos.

At this moment you are the most fortunate people in the whole world. The whole world is concerned with trivia. I am calling you the most blessed ones because you are concerned with the ultimate, with the essential, with the eternal.

God is dead, and the only living truth is Zen.

Zen simply means what you are experiencing at this moment: a pure mirrorlike innocence.

One thing you have to remember: don’t forget to persuade the buddha to come along with you. He has to come, it is your nature, and he has been hiding at the center for centuries, perhaps for millennia. And he has been waiting for you to invite him. Invite! Welcome! Request!

Unless the buddha comes into your day-to-day life, in your actions, in your gestures, in your words, in your silences... His grace, his presence has to be felt.

Unless you are completely possessed by the buddha, and all these experiences of silence and beautitude, and blissfulness and divine ecstasy start overflowing you in all your actions...

In your very presence an energy field is created around you; you for the first time become a mystery unto yourself, a shrine, a holy land; the place where buddha grows comes to its full flowering.

This very body is the buddha, and this very earth is the lotus paradise.

Nivedano...
(Drumbeat)

Come back... but come back as a buddha, with the same peace, with the same serenity, with the same silence.

Sit down for a few seconds just to remember the golden path that you have traveled, the experiences that you have encountered.

Some fragrance must have come with you.
Some silence must be hanging around you.
Some peace will be overflowing you.
Some drunkenness you will still be feeling.

And remember that just behind you there is a new presence standing, the presence of the buddha, the awakened one.

There have been thousands of buddhas. The buddha is no one’s monopoly, it is everybody’s birthright.

These are the three steps to become a buddha.

The first step: the buddha comes because you have invited him, following you like a shadow just behind you.

The second step: as you become more and more attuned with the buddha, he comes in front of you. You become the shadow behind the buddha. And as you become a shadow you are starting to disappear. The shadow has no existence.

The third step: you have disappeared completely, you don’t exist even as a shadow. You are absorbed into the buddha. You have merged into that ultimate consciousness. You have become one with the universe.
This is the only existential truth.

I don’t teach any philosophy. I teach you existence, truth, beauty, and grandeur. It all happens at the third step without any effort – the metamorphosis from a man into a new man.

The new man is the superman of Friedrich Nietzsche, and it is the awakened one, the buddha of the Eastern mystics.

My effort is to bring East and West into a meeting, not only a meeting but into a merger, a deep synchronicity between materialism and spirituality, between Zorba and the buddha. When you are both – the Zorba as far as the outside world is concerned, and a buddha, as far as the inner world is concerned – you are a whole man. And the whole man is the only holy man. There is no other possibility.

God is Dead, Now Zen is the Only Living Truth 162 ♡♥Osho♡♥