Osho Divine World

Books I Have Loved
Talks given from 1982
Miscellaneous
CHAPTER 1
1984 in Lao Tzu House, Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, USA
The guest, the host, the white chrysanthemum... these are the moments, the white roses, when no
one should speak.
Neither the guest,
nor the host...
only silence.
But silence speaks in its own way, sings its own song of joy, of peace, of beauty and blessings;
otherwise there would not have been a TAO TE CHING, nor would there have been a SERMON ON
THE MOUNT. I consider these to be the real poetries although they are not compiled in any poetic
way. They are outsiders. They are kept out. This is true in a way: they don’t belong to the norm, to
the standard, they don’t belong to any measurements; they are beyond all of them, hence they are
brushed over.
A few pieces in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s BROTHERS KARAMAZOV are pure poetry, and so are even
a few pieces from that madman Friedrich Nietzsche’s book, THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA. Even if
Nietzsche had not written anything else but THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA he would have served
humanity immensely, profoundly – more cannot be expected from any man – because Zarathustra
had been almost forgotten. It was Nietzsche who brought him back, who again gave him birth, a
resurrection. THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA is going to be the bible of the future.
It is said that Zarathustra laughed when he was born. It is very difficult to imagine a new-born baby
laughing. Okay, smiling – but laughing? One wonders at what, because laughter needs a context.
2
CHAPTER 1.
At what joke was the baby Zarathustra laughing? The cosmic joke, at the joke this whole existence
is.
Yes, write in your notes the cosmic joke and underline it. That’s good. I can even hear you underline
it. That’s beautiful. Do you see how good my hearing is? When I want to I can hear even the sound
of drawing a sketch, a leaf. When I want to see I can see in darkness, utter darkness. But when I
don’t want to hear, I pretend not to hear, just to give you the good feeling that everything is going
good.
Zarathustra at his birth, laughing! And that was only a beginning. He laughed throughout his whole
life. His whole life was a laughter. Even so people have forgotten him. The English have even
changed his name, they called him ’Zoroaster’. What a monstrosity! ’Zarathustra’ has the softness of
a rose petal, and ’Zoroaster’ sounds like a huge mechanical disaster. Zarathustra must be laughing
at his name being changed to Zoroaster. But before Friedrich Nietzsche, he was forgotten. He was
bound to be.
The Mohammedans had forced all the followers of Zarathustra to become Mohammedans. Only a
few, very few, escaped – to India, where else. India was the place where everybody could enter
without a passport or visa, without any trouble. Only very few followers of Zarathustra escaped the
Mohammedan murderers. There are not many in India, only one hundred thousand. Now, who
bothers about a religion of only one hundred thousand – who not only almost all live just in India, but
in and around only one city, Bombay. Even they themselves have forgotten Zarathustra. They have
compromised with the Hindus with whom they have to live. They escaped the well and fell into the
ditch – a deeper ditch! On one side the well, the other side the ditch. And through the middle goes
The Way – Buddha calls it the middle way – exactly in the middle, just like a tightrope walker.
Nietzsche’s great service was in bringing Zarathustra back to the modern world. His great disservice
was Adolf Hitler. He did both. Of course he was not responsible for Adolf Hitler. It was Hitler’s own
misunderstanding of Nietzsche’s idea of ’superman’. What could Nietzsche do about it? If you
misunderstand me, what can I do about it? Misunderstanding is always your freedom. Adolf Hitler
was a juvenile mediocrity, a retarded child, really ugly. Just remember his face – that small mustache,
those fearful eyes staring as though trying to make you fearful, and the tense forehead. He was so
tense that he could not even be friendly to anybody throughout his whole life. To be a friend one
needs to be a little relaxed.
Hitler could not love, although he tried in his dictatorial way. He tried, as many husbands do
unfortunately, to dictate, to order, to maneuver and manipulate women – but he was unable to
love. Love needs intelligence. He would not even allow his own girlfriend to be alone with him in his
room at night. Such fear! He was afraid that while he was asleep... one never knows, the girlfriend
may be a girl-foe; she may be an agent working for the enemy. He slept alone all his life.
How could a man like Adolf Hitler love? He had no sympathy, no feeling, he had no heart, no
feminine side to him. He had killed the woman within himself so how could he love the woman
outside? To love the outer woman you have to nourish the woman within, because only that which
is within is expressed in your actions.
I have heard that Hitler shot one of his girlfriends for just a small reason; he killed her because he
had said she should not go to visit her mother, but when he was out she went, although she was
Books I Have Loved 3 Osho
CHAPTER 1.
back before Hitler returned. He came to know through the guards that she had gone out. That was
enough to finish the love – not only the love, but the woman too! He shot her saying, ”If you disobey
me, then you are my enemy.”
That was his logic: who obeys you is your friend; who disobeys you is your enemy. Who is for
you is for you, and who is not for you is against you. It is not necessarily so – somebody may be
just neutral, neither being for you nor against you. He may not be your friend, but that does not
necessarily mean that he is an enemy.
I love the book THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA. I love very few books; I can count them on my
fingers....
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA will be the first on my list.
THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV is the second.
Third is THE BOOK OF MIRDAD.
Fourth is JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL.
The fifth book is TAO TE CHING by Lao Tzu.
The sixth is THE PARABLES OF CHUANG TZU. He was the most lovable man, and this is the most
lovable book.
Seventh is THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT – only THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT not the whole
Bible. The whole Bible is just bullshit except THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT.
Eighth... is my numbering right? That’s good. Then you can feel that I am still in my insanity.
The eighth, BHAGAVADGITA – the divine song of Krishna. By the way ’Christ’ is only a
mispronunciation of ’Krishna’ just as ’Zoroaster’ is of ’Zarathustra’. ’Krishna’ means the highest
state of consciousness, and the song of Krishna, the BHAGAVADGITA, reaches to the ultimate
heights of being.
Ninth, GITANJALI. It means ’an offering of songs’. It is the work of Rabindranath Tagore, for which
he got the Nobel prize.
And the tenth is the songs of Milarepa – THE ONE THOUSAND SONGS OF MILAREPA – that’s
how it is called in Tibetan.
No one spoke.
The host,
the guest,
nor the white chrysanthemum.
Books I Have Loved 4 Osho
CHAPTER 1.
Ahhh!... so beautiful... the white chrysanthemum. Aahhh, so beautiful. Words are so poor. I cannot
describe what is being brought to me.
The white chrysanthemum.
No one spoke.
The host,
the guest,
the white chrysanthemum.
Good. Because of this beauty, my ears are incapable of even hearing the noise, my eyes are filling
with tears.
Tears are the only words the unknown can speak,
the language of silence.
Books I Have Loved 5 Osho
CHAPTER 2
1984 in Lao Tzu House, Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, USA
I apologize because this morning I did not mention a few books that I should have mentioned. I was
so overwhelmed by Zarathustra, Mirdad, Chuang Tzu, Lao Tzu, Jesus and Krishna that I forgot a
few of the books which are even far more significant. I could not believe how I could forget Kahlil
Gibran’s THE PROPHET. It is still torturing me. I want to unburden – that’s why I say I am sorry, but
not to anybody in particular.
How could I forget the book which is the ultimate: THE BOOK of the Sufis! Perhaps I forgot because
it contains nothing, just empty pages. For twelve hundred years Sufis have been carrying THE
BOOK with tremendous respect, opening its pages and studying it. One wonders what they study.
When you face an empty page for a long time, you are bound to rebounce upon yourself. That is the
real study – the work.
How could I forget THE BOOK? Now who will forgive me? THE BOOK should have been the first
to have been mentioned not the last. It cannot be transcended. How can you create a better book
than one which contains nothing, and the message of nothingness?
Nothingness should be written in your notes, Devageet, as no-thing-ness; otherwise nothingness
has a negative meaning – the meaning of emptiness, and that’s not it. The meaning is ’fullness’.
Emptiness in the East has a totally different context... SHUNYATA.
I called one of my sannyasins Shunyo, but the fool goes on calling himself Doctor Eichling. Now,
can stupidity be greater? ’Doctor Eichling’ – what an ugly name! And he has shaved off his beard
just to be Doctor Eichling... because with a beard he was looking a little beautiful.
In the East shunyata – emptiness – does not mean emptiness as in the English language. It is
fullness, overfullness, so full that nothing is needed any more. That is the message of THE BOOK.
Please include it in the list.
6
CHAPTER 2.
First, THE BOOK of the Sufis.
Second, THE PROPHET by Kahlil Gibran. I could easily drop THE PROPHET for the simple reason
that it is only an echo of Friedrich Nietzsche’s THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA. In our world nobody
speaks the truth. We are such liars, so formal, so full of etiquette.... THE PROPHET is only beautiful
because it echoes Zarathustra.
Third, THE BOOK OF LIEH TZU. Lao Tzu I mentioned, Chuang Tzu I mentioned; Lieh Tzu I forgot,
and he is the very culmination of both Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu. Lieh Tzu is the third generation.
Lao Tzu was the master, Chuang Tzu was the disciple. Lieh Tzu was the disciple of a disciple,
perhaps that is why I forgot him. But his book is immensely beautiful and has to be included in the
list.
Fourth – and this is really amazing – I did not mention Plato’s DIALOGUES OF SOCRATES.
Perhaps I forgot because of Plato. Plato is not worth mentioning, he was just a philosopher, but his
DIALOGUES OF SOCRATES AND HIS DEATH is impossible to overpraise and should be included.
Fifth... I also forgot THE NOTES OF THE DISCIPLES OF BODHIDHARMA. When I talk of Gautam
Buddha I always forget Bodhidharma, perhaps because I feel as if I have included him in his master,
Buddha. But no, that is not right; Bodhidharma stands on his own. He was a great disciple, so
great that even the master could be jealous of him. He himself did not write a word, but a few of his
disciples, unknown because they did not mention their names, wrote some notes of Bodhidharma’s
words. These notes, though few, are as precious as the Kohinoor. The word Kohinoor, do you know,
means the light of the world. Noor means the light, kohi means of the world. If I had to describe
anything as Kohinoor, yes, I would indicate towards those few notes by the anonymous disciples of
Bodhidharma.
Sixth: I also forgot the RUBAIYAT. Tears are coming to my eyes. I can apologize for forgetting
everything else but not the RUBAIYAT. Omar Khayyam... I can only cry, weep. I can only apologize
with my tears, words won’t do. The RUBAIYAT is one of the most misunderstood and also one of
the most widely read books in the world. It is understood in its translation, it is misunderstood in its
spirit. The translator could not bring the spirit to it. RUBAIYAT is symbolic, and the translator was
a very straight Englishman, what in America they would call a square, not hip at all. To understand
RUBAIYAT you need a little bit of hip in you.
The RUBAIYAT talks of wine and women and nothing else; it sings of wine and women. The
translators – and there are many – are all wrong. They are bound to be wrong because Omar
Khayyam was a Sufi, a man of tasawuf, a man who knows. When he talks of the woman he is
talking about God. That is the way Sufis address God: ”Beloved, O my beloved.” And they always
use the feminine for God, this should be noted. Nobody else in the world, in the whole history of
humanity and consciousness, has addressed God as a woman. Only Sufis address God as the
beloved. And the ’wine’ is that which happens between the lover and the beloved, it has nothing
to do with grapes. The alchemy which happens between the lover and the beloved, between the
disciple and the master, between the seeker and the sought, between the worshipper and his God...
the alchemy. the transmutation – that is the wine. RUBAIYAT is so misunderstood, perhaps that is
why I forgot it.
Books I Have Loved 7 Osho
CHAPTER 2.
Seventh, MASNAVI of Jalaluddin Rumi. It is a book of small parables. The great can only be
expressed in parables. Jesus speaks in parables: so speaks the MASNAVI. Why did I forget it? I
love parables; I should not have forgotten it. I have used hundreds of parables from it. Perhaps it
has become so much of my own that I forgot to mention it separately. But that is no excuse, apology
is still required.
Eighth: the eighth is the ISA UPANISHAD. It is easy to understand why I forgot about it. I have drunk
it, it has become a part of my blood and bones; it is me. I have spoken on it hundreds of times. It
is a very small Upanishad. There are one hundred and eight Upanishads and ISA is the smallest
of them all. It can be printed on a postcard, on one side only, but it contains all the remaining one
hundred and seven, so they need not be mentioned. The seed is in the ISA.
The word Isa means divine. You may be surprised that in India we don’t call Christ ’Christ’, we call
him ’Isa’ – Isa, which is far closer to the original Aramaic Yeshua, in English Joshua. His parents
must have called him Yeshu. Yeshu is too long. The name traveled to India and from Yeshu became
Isu. India immediately recognized that Isu is so close to Isa, which means God, that it would be
better to call him Isa.
The ISA UPANISHAD is one of the greatest creations of those who have meditated.
Ninth... I forgot to say something about Gurdjieff and his book ALL AND EVERYTHING – perhaps
because it is a very strange book, not even readable. I don’t think there are any living individuals
except me who have read from the first page to the last. I have come across many Gurdjieff followers,
but none of them had been able to read ALL AND EVERYTHING in its totality.
It is a big book – just the opposite of the ISA UPANISHAD – one thousand pages. And Gurdjieff
is such a rascal saint – please allow me this expression, rascal saint – he writes in such a way
that it becomes impossible to read. One sentence may go running on for pages. By the time you
come to the end of the sentence you have forgotten its beginning. And he uses words he made up
himself, just like me. Strange words... for example when he was writing about kundalini, he called it
kundabuffer; that was his word for kundalini. This book is of immense value, but the diamonds are
hidden among ordinary stones. One has to seek and search.
I have read this book not once but many times. The more I went into it the more I loved it, because
the more I could see the rascal; the more I could see what it was that he was hiding from those who
should not know. Knowledge is not for those who are not yet capable of absorbing it. Knowledge
has to be hidden from the unwary, and is only for those who can digest it. It has to be given only to
those who are ready. That’s the whole purpose of writing in such a strange way. There is no other
book stranger than Gurdjieff’s ALL AND EVERYTHING, and it certainly is all and everything.
Tenth: I remembered this book but did not mention it because it was written by P.D. Ouspensky, a
disciple of Gurdjieff who betrayed him. I did not want to include it because of this betrayal, but the
book was written before he betrayed his master so finally I decided to include it. The name of the
book is IN SEARCH OF THE MIRACULOUS. It is tremendously beautiful, more so because it was
written by a man who was only a disciple, who himself had not known. Not only was he a disciple
but later on a Judas, the man who betrayed Gurdjieff. It is strange, but the world is full of strange
things.
Books I Have Loved 8 Osho
CHAPTER 2.
Ouspensky’s book represents Gurdjieff far more clearly than Gurdjieff’s own. Perhaps in a certain
state of being Gurdjieff had taken possession of Ouspensky and used him as a medium, just as I
am using Devageet as my medium. Right now he is writing the notes, and with my half-closed eyes
I am watching everything. I can watch even with closed eyes. I am just a watcher, a watcher on the
hills. I have no other work left but to watch.
Eleventh: This is a book written by an unenlightened man, neither master nor disciple: LEAVES
OF GRASS by Walt Whitman. But something has penetrated, come through the poet in him. The
poet has functioned as a bamboo flute, and the notes are not of the flute itself; they don’t belong
to the bamboo. Walt Whitman is just an American bamboo. But LEAVES OF GRASS is immensely
beautiful. Something overflowing from God has been caught by this poet. No American as far as I
know, except Walt Whitman, may have touched it – that too, partially; otherwise no American has
been so wise.
Don’t interrupt! – at least once in a while write your notes. Later you will repent that you missed this,
you missed that. Just write your notes. When the time is ripe I will say stop.
Is my time over? My time was over long ago; not today, more than twenty-five years ago. I am living
a posthumous life, just a P.S. to a letter. But sometimes the P.S. is more important than the whole
letter itself.
What a wonderful world. Even at these heights one can hear a giggle in the valley. In a way it is
good, it joins them together.
Alas it will soon be over.
Can we not make it last forever?
At least for now don’t betray me.
Man is the only coward.
Can’t disciples avoid being Judases?
When it is over you can stop.
So good... Alleluia!
Books I Have Loved 9 Osho
CHAPTER 3
1984 in Lao Tzu House, Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, USA
Now my work begins. What a joke! The joke of all jokes is that Sosan, the Chinese sage, was
knocking at the door of my consciousness. These mystics are too much. You can never know at
what moment they will start knocking at your doors. You are making love to your girlfriend, and
Sosan comes and starts knocking. They come all the time, anytime, they do not believe in any
etiquette. And what was he saying to me? He was saying, ”Why haven’t you included my book?”
My God, that is true! I have not included his book in my list for the simple reason that his book
contains all that is. If I include his hook then nothing else is needed, then no other book is needed.
Sosan is enough unto himself. His book is called HSIN HSIN MING.
HSIN has to be written not like the English ’sin’ but h-s-i-n. Now you know the Chinese: what a way
to commit a sin! Hsin... HSIN HSIN MING.
Okay Sosan, I include your book too. That becomes my first book today. I am sorry, it should have
been the first from the very beginning, but I have already talked about twenty others. It doesn’t
matter. HSIN HSIN MING whether I said it or not, is the foremost, the first. Write the FIRST,
Devageet, in capital letters.
HSIN HSIN MING is such a small book that if Sosan had known that one day, after him, Gurdjieff
would write a book called ALL AND EVERYTHING, he would have laughed, because that title
belongs to his own book. And Gurdjieff had to write one thousand pages, yet the few words of
Sosan are far more penetrating, far more significant. They go directly to your heart.
I can even hear the noise – not of those words going to your heart, but some mouse, some devil,
doing his work. Let him do his work.
10
CHAPTER 3.
Sosan’s book is so small, just like ISA UPANISHAD, and far more significant. When I say that my
heart breaks, because I would like ISA to be the ultimate book, but what can I do? – Sosan has
defeated it. Tears come to my eyes because ISA is defeated, and also because Sosan is victorious.
The book is so small, you can write it on your palm; but if you try, please remember... the left hand.
Don’t write it on the right hand, that will be sacrilege. They say, ”Right is right, and left is wrong.” I
say left is right, and right is wrong, because the left represents all that is beautiful in you, and Sosan
can enter only through the left. I know because I have entered thousands of hearts through the left
hand, through the left side, through their feminine, their yin – I mean the Chinese yin – I have never
been able to enter anybody through his yang. The very word is enough to prevent anybody: yang.
It seems to say ”Keep away!” It says ”Stop. Do not enter here. Keep off! Beware of the dog!”
The right is like that. The right belongs to the wrong side of your consciousness. It is useful, but
only as a servant. It should never be the master. So if you write Sosan’s HSIN HSIN MING, write it
on your left palm.
It is such a beautiful book, each word is golden. I cannot conceive of a single word that could be
deleted. It is exactly that which is needed, required, to say the truth. Sosan must have been a
tremendously logical man, at least while he was writing his HSIN HSIN MING.
I have spoken about it and I have never loved speaking more. The greatest moments of my speaking
were when I was speaking on Sosan. Speaking and silence together... speaking yet not speaking,
because Sosan can be explained only through no-speaking. He was not a man of words, he was a
man of silence. He spoke just the minimum. Forgive me Sosan, I forgot you. Just because of you I
remember a few more who can knock at my door and disturb my afternoon sleep, so it is better that
I should mention them.
First is Sosan’s HSIN HSIN MING.
Second is P.D. Ouspensky’s TERTIUM ORGANUM. It is a miracle that he wrote it before he had even
heard of Gurdjieff. He wrote it before he knew what he was writing. He understood it himself only
afterwards, on meeting Gurdjieff. His first words to George Gurdjieff were: ”Looking into your eyes
I have understood TERTIUM ORGANUM. Although I have written it, now I can say that it has been
written through me by some unknown agency I was not aware of.” Perhaps it was that rascal Gurdjieff
who wrote it through him, or maybe somebody else whom the Sufis call the Ultimate Rascal, who
has been doing miracles – miracles like TERTIUM ORGANUM.
The title means ’the third canon of thought’. The Sufis give that ultimate agency a name; it is not a
person but only a presence. I can feel that presence right now, here... this very moment. They call it
a certain name, because everything has to be given a name, but I will not say it, not in the presence
of this beauty, this splendor... of this exuberance... of this exaltation... of this ecstasy.
I said it is a miracle that Ouspensky could write TERTIUM ORGANUM, one of the greatest books
in any language of the world. In fact it is said, and rightly so – remember, I emphasize and repeat,
rightly so – that there are only three great books: the first is ORGANUM written by Aristotle; the
second is THE SECOND ORGANUM written by Bacon; and the third, by P.D. Ouspensky, TERTIUM
ORGANUM. ’Tertium’ means third. And Ouspensky has, very mischievously – and only a saint can
Books I Have Loved 11 Osho
CHAPTER 3.
be so mischievous – introduced the book by saying, without any ego, simply and humbly, that ”the
first exists but not before the third. The third existed even before the first came into existence.”
Ouspensky seems to have been spent, totally and utterly spent, into TERTIUM ORGANUM, because
he never could reach to the same height again. Even reporting Gurdjieff in IN SEARCH OF THE
MIRACULOUS he has not attained to the same height. When he betrayed Gurdjieff he tried finally
to create something better than TERTIUM. As his last effort he wrote THE FOURTH WAY but failed
utterly. The book is good, good for any university curriculum. You can see I have my own ways of
condemning a thing....
THE FOURTH WAY can be part of a regular curriculum in a university course, but more than that it
is nothing. Although he was trying to do his best it is the worst book that Ouspensky has written. It
was his last book.
That is the difficulty with all that is great: if you try, you miss. It comes effortlessly or not at all. It has
visited him in TERTIUM ORGANUM and he was not even aware of it. The words in TERTIUM are
so powerful one cannot believe that the author is unenlightened, that he is still looking for a master,
that he is still searching for the truth.
I was a poor student, working the whole day as a journalist – that is the worst job you can do, but
that’s what was available to me at the time – and I was in such need that I had to join a night college.
So the whole day I worked as a journalist, and at night I went to college. In a way my name belongs
to the night. Rajneesh means the moon: rajni means the night, eesh means God – God of the night.
So people used to laugh and say, ”This is strange: you work the whole day, and go to study at night.
Are you trying to fulfill your name?”
Now I can answer them, yes – write it in capital letters – YES, I have been trying to fulfill it my whole
life. What else can be more beautiful than to be the full moon? So as a poor student in those days,
I used to work the whole day. But I am a crazy man, rich or poor does not matter....
I have never liked to read books borrowed from others. In fact I hate even borrowing from a library,
because a library book is like a prostitute. I hate to see the marks, the underlining of other people. I
always love the fresh, the snow-white freshness.
TERTIUM ORGANUM was a costly book. In India, in those days, I was getting a salary of only
seventy rupees each month, and by coincidence the book cost exactly seventy rupees – but I
purchased it. The bookseller was amazed. He said, ”Even the richest man in our community cannot
afford it. For five years I have been keeping it to sell, and nobody has purchased it. People come
and look at it, then drop the idea of buying. How can you, a poor student, working the whole day
and studying at night, working almost twenty-four hours each day, how can you afford it?”
I said, ”This book I can purchase even if I have to pay for it with my life. Just reading the first line is
enough. I have to have it whatsoever the cost.”
That first sentence I had read in the introduction was, ”This is the third canon of thought, and there
are only three. The first is that of Aristotle; the second of Bacon, and the third, my own.” I was thrilled
Books I Have Loved 12 Osho
CHAPTER 3.
by Ouspensky’s daring, that he said, ”The third existed even before the first.” That was the sentence
that caught fire in my heart.
I gave the bookseller my whole month’s salary. You cannot understand, because for that whole
month I had to almost starve. But it was worth it. I can remember that beautiful month: no food, no
clothes – not even shelter; because I could not pay the rent I was thrown out of my small room. But
I was happy with TERTIUM ORGANUM under the sky. I read that book under a street lamp – it is a
confession – and I have lived that book. That book is so beautiful, and more so now that I know that
the man did not know at all. How could he have managed it then? It must have been a conspiracy of
the gods, something from the beyond. I cannot resist anymore from using the name the Sufis use;
they call it khidr. Khidr is the agency that guides those who need guidance.
TERTIUM ORGANUM is the second book.
Third: GEET GOVIND – the song of God. This book was written by a poet very much condemned
by Indians, because in GEET GOVIND, his song of God, he talks too much of love. Indians are so
against love that they have never appreciated this great work.
GEET GOVIND is something which should be sung. Nothing can be said about it. It is a Baul song,
the song of a madman. If you dance and sing it, you will understand it, there is no other way.
I am not mentioning the name of the man who wrote it. That is not important. X-Y-Z... not that I don’t
know his name, but I will not mention it for the simple reason that he does not belong to the world of
the buddhas. Yet he has done a great service.
Fourth: Now be patient, because I have to complete the list to ten. I cannot count more than that.
Why ten? – because I have ten fingers. That’s how the number ten came into existence: ten fingers.
Man started counting on his fingers so ten became the basic number.
Fourth: Kundkunda’s SAMAYASAR. I have never spoken about it. I decided to many times but
always dropped the idea. This is one of the greatest books the Jainas have produced, but it is very
mathematical; that’s why I have always dropped it. I love poetry. If it was poetic I would have spoken
on it. I have even spoken on unenlightened poets, but not on even enlightened mathematicians and
logicians. Mathematics is so dry. Logic is a desert.
Perhaps he is around here among my sannyasins... but he cannot be. Kundkunda was an
enlightened master, he cannot be born again. His book is beautiful, I can only say that much. I
will not say anything more because it is mathematical.... Mathematics too has its beauty, its rhythm,
that’s why I appreciate it. It has its own truth but it is very limited, and very right-handed.
SAMAYASAR means the essence. If by chance you ever come across Kundkunda’s SAMAYASAR,
then please never hold it in your left hand. Keep it in the right hand. It is a right-hand book, right in
every way. That is why I have declined up till now to speak about it. It is so right that I feel a little
aversion to it – of course with tears in my eyes, because I know the beauty of the man who wrote it.
I love Kundkunda, and I hate from my guts his mathematical expression.
Gudia, you can have a little more freedom because I have to talk about four books more. If you want
you can go out again.
Books I Have Loved 13 Osho
CHAPTER 3.
Fifth: J. Krishnamurti’s THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM. I love this man, and I hate this man.
I love him because he speaks the truth, but I hate him for his intellectuality. He is only reason,
rationality. I wonder, he may be a reincarnation of that goddamned Greek Aristotle. His logic is what
I hate, his love is what I respect – but his book is beautiful.
This was his first book after his enlightenment, and the last too. Although many other books have
appeared they are only poor repetitions of the same. He has not been able to create anything better
than THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM.
It is a strange phenomenon: Kahlil Gibran wrote his masterpiece THE PROPHET when he was only
eighteen years old, and struggled his whole life to create something better but could not. Ouspensky
could not go beyond TERTIUM ORGANUM even though he met Gurdjieff, lived and worked with
him for many years. And such is the case with J. Krishnamurti: his book THE FIRST AND LAST
FREEDOM is really the first and the last.
Sixth. The sixth is a book by another Chinese, THE BOOK OF HUANG PO. It is a small book, not
a treatise, just fragments. Truth cannot be expressed in a treatise, you cannot write a Ph.D. on it. A
Ph.D. is a degree that should be given to the fools. Huang Po writes in fragments. On the surface
they seem to be unconnected, but they are not. You have to meditate and then you can find the
connection. It is one of the most meditative books ever written.
In English THE BOOK OF HUANG PO is translated in the English way as THE TEACHINGS OF
Huang PO. Even the title is wrong. People like Huang Po don’t teach. There is no teaching in it. You
have to meditate, to be silent, to understand it.
The seventh is THE BOOK OF HUI HI. Again in English it is translated as THE TEACHINGS OF HUI
HI. These poor Englishmen, they think there is nothing more in life than teaching. These Englishmen
are all teachers. And be aware of Englishwomen; otherwise you will get caught with a schoolteacher!
Hui Hi and Huang Po are both masters. They impart, they don’t teach. Hence I call it THE BOOK
OF HUI HI, although you will not find it in the libraries. In the libraries you will find THE TEACHINGS
OF HUI HI.
Eighth: the last – at least for today, because one never knows about tomorrow. Other devils may
start knocking at my doors. I must have read more than any man alive on the earth, and remember,
I am not boasting but simply stating a fact. I must have read at least one hundred thousand books,
possibly more, but not less than that, because after that I stopped counting. So I don’t know about
tomorrow, but for the eighth today.... I am feeling a little guilty about GEET GOVIND because I
haven’t told you the name of the author. I will tell you, but first let me finish the eighth.
The eighth book that has impressed me immensely is a strange one, obviously; otherwise it would
not have impressed me at all. You will be shocked! Guess what the eighth book can be.... I know
you cannot guess it – not that it is in Sanskrit or Chinese, Japanese or Arabic. You have heard about
it, you may even have it in your home. It is the SONG OF SOLOMON in The OLD TESTAMENT.
This is a book I love wholeheartedly. I hate all that is Jewish except the SONG OF SOLOMON.
The SONG OF SOLOMON is very much misunderstood because of the so-called psychologists,
particularly the Freudians – the frauds. They have been interpreting the SONG OF SOLOMON in
Books I Have Loved 14 Osho
CHAPTER 3.
the worst possible way; they make it a sexual song. It is not. It is sensual, that’s true, very sensual,
but not sexual. It is so alive, that’s why it is sensual. It is so full of juice, that is why it is sensual...
but not sexual. Sex may be a part of it, but don’t misguide humanity. Even the Jews have become
afraid of it. They think that it has been included in the OLD TESTAMENT by accident. In fact this
song is the only thing worth preserving; all else is worth throwing into the fire.
Is my hour over? So bad. You say ”Yes,” but what can I do? – this is the very beauty. Thank you
both.
Om Mani Padme Hum
How beautiful to stop at this beauty. No, no, no. This ”No” is what the Indians say when they attain
to enlightenment. Then they don’t want to be born again. They say ”No, no, no....” After this beautiful
experience, what is the point of continuing?
Books I Have Loved 15 Osho
CHAPTER 4
1984 in Lao Tzu House, Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, USA
Okay. Get ready for your notes.
The world would have lost much without people like Devageet. We would not have known anything of
Socrates if Plato had not written notes, nor of Buddha, nor Bodhidharma. Jesus too is known through
his disciples’ notes. Mahavira is said never to have uttered a single word. I know the meaning of
why it is said. It is not that he did not utter a single word, but that he never communicated to the
world directly; it was only through the notes of his disciples.
There is not a single case known where an enlightened person has written anything himself. As you
know, to me an enlightened person is not the last thing. There is still a transcendental state which
is neither enlightened nor not-enlightened. Now, in that state of consciousness it is only through
intimate communion – I am not using the word communication knowingly, but communion – a kind
of merger, that the disciple becomes just the hand of the master.
So get ready for your notes, because last time, although unwillingly, I was going to mention the name
of the poet-singer of GEET GOVIND. Somehow though I managed not to mention it. I pretended as
if I had forgotten it, but it is heavy on me. The whole day I felt a little concerned about Jaydeva – that
is the name of the poet-singer of GEET GOVIND.
Why was I not willing to mention his name? For his own sake. He was not even close to
enlightenment. I have mentioned Mikhail Naimy, the creator of THE BOOK OF MIRDAD; I have
mentioned Kahlil Gibran, and many others: Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Walt Whitman. They are not
enlightened, but very close, just on the verge; one push and they will be in, in the temple. They are
standing just at the door, not daring enough to knock... and the door is not locked. They can push
and it will open. It is already open, it just needs a push, just as they need a push. Hence I mention
their names.
16
CHAPTER 4.
But Jaydeva is not even close to the temple. It is a miracle how GEET GOVIND descended on him.
But no one knows God’s mysteries – and remember there is no God, it is only an expression. Nobody
knows the mysteries of existence, its abundance. Sometimes it pours on barren land, sometimes it
does not rain on fertile soil. It is simply so, nothing can be done about it.
Jaydeva is a barren land. GEET GOVIND, this tremendously beautiful poetry, the song of God,
descended upon him. He must have sung it, composed it, not knowing what he was doing. I don’t
see him anywhere near the temple, that is why I was unwilling to mention his name. It may even
make him more egoistic. That is why I said ”for his own sake,” but I felt it is not the poor man’s fault –
whatsoever he is, he is – but he has given birth to a beautiful child, and if I have mentioned the child
then let me mention the father’s name; otherwise people will think the child is a bastard. The father
may have been, but the child is not.
I feel a great relief because I am finished with Jaydeva forever. But there is a queue standing at the
door. You don’t know what a fix I am in. I had not thought of it before, because I am not a thinker
and I never think before I jump. I jump, and then I think. It was just by the way that I mentioned ten
beautiful books. I was not thinking so many others would start bugging me. So, ten more.
First: The FRAGMENTS of Heraclitus. I love this man. Let me mention it, just by the way, as a note
in the margin, that I love all, but I don’t like all. I like a few and I don’t like a few, but I love all. About
that there is no question. I love Jaydeva as much as I love Heraclitus, but Heraclitus I like too.
There are very few whom I can put in the same category as Heraclitus. In fact, even to say that is not
true; there is no one. Now I am saying what I really wanted to say always. There is no one, I repeat,
who can be put in the same category as Heraclitus. He is just far out – dangerously awakened,
unafraid of the consequences of what he was saying.
He says in these FRAGMENTS – again the notes of a Devageet, a disciple. Heraclitus did not write.
There must be something, some reason why these people do not write, but of that a little later.
Heraclitus says in the FRAGMENTS: ”You cannot step in the same river twice.” And then he says:
”No, you cannot step in the same river even once....” This is tremendously beautiful, and true too.
Everything is changing, and changing so fast that there is no way to step in the same river twice;
you can’t even step in the same river once. The river is constantly flowing; going, going, going to
the ocean, to the infinite, going to disappear into the unknown.
This is the first on my list this evening: Heraclitus.
Second: The GOLDEN VERSES of Pythagoras. He was one of the most misunderstood men,
obviously. If you know you are bound to be misunderstood, that is certain. To understand is
so dangerous, because then you will be misunderstood. Pythagoras was not understood even
by his own disciples, not even by those who wrote down the GOLDEN VERSES. They wrote it
mechanically... because not a single disciple of Pythagoras rose to his heights, not a single one
became enlightened. And the Greeks have completely ignored him. They have ignored their best:
Heraclitus, Socrates, Pythagoras, Plotinus. They had wanted to ignore Socrates too, but he was too
much. So they had to poison him, they could not just ignore him.
Books I Have Loved 17 Osho
CHAPTER 4.
But Pythagoras is completely ignored, and he has the same key as Gautam Buddha, Jesus, or any
other enlightened one. One thing more: neither Jesus nor Buddha nor Lao Tzu made so much effort
to find the key as Pythagoras. He worked the most. Pythagoras was the most authentic seeker. He
risked all and everything. He traveled all around the world that was known in those days; studied
under all kinds of masters; entered into all kinds of mystery schools and fulfilled their conditions. He
is a category in himself.
Third: A man who is not known much, not even by his own countrymen. His name is Saraha, and
the book is called THE SONG OF SARAHA; that is its Tibetan title. Nobody knows who wrote it
down. One thing is certain, Saraha never did, he just sang it. But it has the fragrance that the man
knew, that he had attained. The song is not the composition of a poet but a realization of a mystic.
It is just a few lines, but of such grandeur and beauty that the stars can feel ashamed.
THE SONG OF SARAHA is untranslated. I heard it from a Tibetan lama. I would have liked to have
heard it again and again but the lama stank so much that I had to say ”Thank you....” Lamas stink
because they never take a bath. The lama’s stink – and I am allergic to smells – was even too much
for me to hear the whole song! I was worried that I was going to have an asthma attack.
I have spoken much about Saraha; he is the original source of the school of Tantra.
Fourth: Tilopa, and the few notes from his song left behind by his disciples. I wonder, without these
disciples, how much we would have missed. These people who were just writing down whatsoever
was said by the master, not thinking whether it was right or wrong, just trying to put it into words as
correctly as possible. And it is a difficult task. A master is a madman, he can say anything, he can
sing anything, or he may remain silent. He may just make a few gestures with his hand, and those
gestures have to be understood. That was what Meher Baba did continuously for thirty years. He
remained silent, only making gestures with his hands.
Is my numbering incorrect, Devageet?
”No, Osho.”
So good... it feels so good to be correct sometimes. With numbers I am really good. It is a strange
coincidence that I asked at the right moment. I always get mixed up with numbers. I cannot count,
for the simple reason that I am facing the immeasurable, the unaccountable. The truth that I am
facing is neither in words, nor in numbers. The truth transcends all, and it is so wondrous that one
gets mixed up. Everything goes upside down, bizarre. So this is a great compliment that you said I
was right. But now please tell me, what was the number?
”Number five, Osho.”
Thank you.
Fifth: The man I am going to mention is not recognized as enlightened because there was nobody
to recognize him. Only an enlightened person can recognize another. This man’s name is D.T.
Suzuki. This man has done more than anybody else in the modern world to make meditation and
Zen available. Suzuki worked for his whole life to introduce to the West the innermost core of Zen.
Books I Have Loved 18 Osho
CHAPTER 4.
’Zen’ is only the Japanese pronunciation of the Sanskrit word dhyana – meditation. Buddha never
used Sanskrit; he hated it, for the simple reason that it had become the language of the priests, and
the priest is always in the service of the devil. Buddha used a very simple language, that used by his
people in the valley of Nepal. The name of his language is Pali. In Pali dhyana is pronounced ch’ana.
Simple, illiterate, ordinary people cannot appreciate the subtleties of any language. They make it
according to themselves. It is like a stone rolling down the river, it becomes round. That’s how
every word used by the people starts having a beautiful roundness, a particular simplicity. Dhyana
is difficult for the ordinary people to pronounce; they pronounced it ch’ana. When it reached China,
from ch’ana it became ch’an, and when it traveled to Japan it became Zen. You can see – it happens
everywhere – people always make words simple.
D.T. Suzuki’s book ZEN AND JAPANESE CULTURE is my fifth. This man has done so much service
for humanity that no one can transcend him. His work is immense. The whole world is indebted to
him and it will always remain so. Suzuki should be a household word. It is not... I am saying that it
should be. Very few people are aware, and those who are aware it is their responsibility to spread
their awareness far and wide.
Sixth: I am going to introduce a Frenchman to you. You will be surprised. Inside you are asking
yourself, ”A Frenchman? And being listed by Osho along with Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Suzuki? Has
he really gone mad?”
Yes, I have never been sane, not for these last twenty-five years, or a little more. Before that I too
was sane, but thank God – again remember it is just an expression, because there is no God, only
godliness. I don’t forget to mention it because there is every possibility that even my followers, my
disciples, will start worshipping God – or me as a God. There is no God, there never was.
Nietzsche is wrong when he says, ”God is dead!” – not because God is not dead, but because he
was never alive so how can he be dead? To be dead one has to first fulfill the condition of being
alive. That is where Sartre is wrong: he agrees with Nietzsche. I say ”Thank God!” – I used the word
because there is no other word to use in its place. But it is only a word, contentless. ”Thank God”
simply means it is good, that it is beautiful.
I am feeling so tremendously joyous that, Devageet, you will have to remind me again what was the
sixth book I was talking about.
”A Frenchman, Osho.”
Right. I have not mentioned the name yet. The book is Hubert Benoit’s LET GO. It should be on
the bookshelf of every meditator. Nobody has written so scientifically and yet so poetically. It is a
contradiction, but he has managed it. Hubert Benoit’s LET GO is the best that has come out of the
modern Western world. It is the best book of the century as far as the West is concerned. I am not
counting the East.
The seventh: Ramakrishna, his PARABLES. You know I don’t like saints very much. That does not
mean that I like them a little bit – I don’t like them at all. In fact, to be true I hate them. Saints are
phony, hocus-pocus, the stuff bullshit is made of. But Ramakrishna does not belong to them – again,
thank God! At least there are a few people who are saintly and yet are not saints.
Books I Have Loved 19 Osho
CHAPTER 4.
Ramakrishna’s PARABLES are very simple. Parables are bound to be simple. Remember the
parables of Jesus? – just like that. If a parable is difficult then it is no longer useful. A parable is only
needed so that it can be understood by all ages of children. Yes, I mean all ages of children. There
are children who are ten years of age, and there are children of eighty years of age, and so on... but
they are all children playing on the seashore, collecting seashells. Ramakrishna’s PARABLES is my
seventh book.
Eighth: THE FABLES OF AESOP. Now Aesop is not really a historical person; he never existed.
Buddha has used all those parables in his sermons. With Alexander coming to India, those parables
were brought to the West. Of course many things changed, even the name of Buddha. Buddha was
called The Bodhisattva.
Buddha has said there are two kinds of buddhas: one is the arhat, one who attains his buddhahood
and then does not care about anybody else; and the bodhisattva, who attains buddhahood and
then tries his hardest to help others on the path. ’Bodhisattva’ was the word carried by Alexander
as bodhisat, which then became Josephus; then from Josephus it became Aesop. Aesop is not a
historical person, but the parables are tremendously significant. That’s my eighth book today.
Ninth: Nagarjuna’s MULA MADHYAMIKA KARIKA. I don’t like Nagarjuna very much; he is too much
of a philosopher, and I am anti-philosophic. But his MULA MADHYAMIKA KARIKA, his KARIKAS for
short.... MULA MADHYAMIKA KARIKA means the essence of the path of the middle – the essential
middle path. In his KARIKAS he has reached the profoundest depths of which words are capable. I
have never spoken on it. If you want to speak on the essential, the best way is not to speak at all,
just to be silent. But the book is tremendously beautiful.
Tenth: my last for this evening is a strange book; ordinarily nobody would think I would include it at
all. It is the great work of Marpa, the Tibetan mystic. Even his followers don’t read it; it is not meant
to be read, it is a puzzle. You have to meditate over it. You have just to look at it and then suddenly
the book disappears – its contents disappear, and only the consciousness remains.
Marpa was a very strange man. His master Milarepa used to say, ”Even I bow down to Marpa.” No
master has ever said that, but Marpa was such....
Somebody once said to Marpa, ”Do you believe in Milarepa? If so then jump into this fire!”
Immediately he jumped! People ran from all sides to extinguish the fire knowing that Marpa had
jumped into it. When the fire was put out they found him sitting there in a buddha posture laughing
hilariously!
They asked Marpa, ”Why are you laughing?”
He said, ”I am laughing because trust is the only thing that fire cannot destroy.”
This is the man whose simple songs I count as the tenth – THE BOOK OF MARPA.
Is my hour over? I can hear you saying yes, though I know my hour has not even come yet. How
can it be over? I have come before my time, that’s why I am misunderstood.
But as far as you are concerned, you are right; my hour is over. And this is really beautiful. There is
no expression for it. It is so beautiful, it is better to end it now.
Books I Have Loved 20 Osho
CHAPTER 5
1984 in Lao Tzu House, Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, USA
Now the work begins.
”Athato brahman jigyasa – now the inquiry into the ultimate...” that’s how Badrayana begins his great
book, perhaps the greatest. Badrayana’s book is the first I am going to talk about today. He begins
his great book BRAHMAN SUTRAS with this sentence: ”Now the enquiry into the ultimate.” That’s
how all the sutras in the East begin, always with ”Now...athato,” never otherwise.
Badrayana is one of those who are bound to be misunderstood, for the simple reason that he is too
serious. A mystic should not be so serious, that’s not a good quality. But he was a brahmin living
thousands of years ago, living among brahmins, talking to brahmins, and brahmins are the most
serious people in the world. Do you know India has no jokes? Is it not strange for such a big country
to be without jokes? Such a long history without jokes! The brahmins cannot joke because the joke
seems too profane, and they are sacred people.
I can understand and forgive Badrayana, but I could not forget to mention that he is a little bit too
serious. I was hesitating whether to include him in my list of books. The hesitation was only because
of his seriousness. I did not hesitate about MIRDAD; I did not hesitate at all about even RUBAIYAT,
by Omar Khayyam. But I hesitated about Badrayana and his BRAHMAN SUTRAS, which in the East
is considered to be one of the greatest books – and it certainly is.
I have read many serious books, even that rascal saint George Gurdjieff’s ALL AND EVERYTHING,
but there is nothing to compete with Badrayana’s BRAHMAN SUTRAS as far as seriousness is
concerned. He is ultimate in his seriousness too. Alas, could he only have laughed a little!
Christians believe that Jesus never laughed. I refute it. I refute it absolutely! It is possible about
Badrayana; he may never have laughed. He is so serious, utterly serious. You could not create a
more serious book. Thousands of commentaries have been written on it to explain what he means.
21
CHAPTER 5.
Truth needs no commentary, but when you put it in a serious garb, naturally commentators follow,
and commentators always serve the devil. It is still a great book; in spite of Badrayana’s seriousness
it is great. Badrayana reaches to the highest, to the ultimate, with great acumen, with great efficiency,
the efficiency of a scientist.
In India a person is called an acharya, a master, only if he has written a commentary on three things:
first, the one hundred and eight UPANISHADS; second, SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA, Krishna’s
celestial songs; third, the most important of all, Badrayana’s BRAHMAN SUTRAS. I have never
spoken about him. I was called acharya for many years, and people used to ask me if I had written
all the commentaries – the GITA, the UPANISHADS and the BRAHMAN SUTRAS. I laughed and
said, ”I only tell jokes, I don’t write any commentaries whatsoever. My being called an acharya is a
joke, don’t take it seriously.”
BRAHMAN SUTRA. Brahman is known and understood as God, but it is not so. Brahman has
nothing to do with the Christian idea of God creating the world four thousand and four years before
Jesus Christ. When I say it I think that if Badrayana had heard, perhaps even he might have laughed,
he may have lost his seriousness. Brahman does not mean God; Brahman means godliness, the
divineness that pervades the whole existence... the whole, the holiness of the whole.
Sutra simply means a track. You cannot speak much about Brahman; whatsoever you may say
about it is only a track, a hint. But a hint can become a bridge, a track can become a bridge, and
Badrayana has made a bridge within his sutras.
I love the book in spite of Badrayana’s seriousness. I hate seriousness so much that I have to say
”in spite of Badrayana’s seriousness.” I still love him for creating one of the most significant books in
the world. The ’bibles’ are very far away from Badrayana’s SUTRAS, they don’t even come close to
it.
Second: Narada’s BHAKTI SUTRAS. Narada is just the opposite of Badrayana, and I love to put
opposites together. I would like to put Narada and Badrayana into the same room and enjoy
whatsoever happens between them. Narada always carried an ektara, a musical instrument with
only one string – ek means one, and tara means string. Narada always carried his ektara, playing
on it, singing and dancing. Badrayana would not have tolerated it at all. I can tolerate all kinds
of people. Badrayana would have shouted and screamed at Narada. Narada was not the kind of
person who would have listened to Badrayana; he would have continued to play, singing even more
loudly to irritate Badrayana. I would have enjoyed seeing them both together in the same room.
That’s why the second book I choose is Narada’s BHAKTI SUTRAS.
His sutras begin with ”athato bhakti jigyasa – now the inquiry into love....” To inquire into love is the
greatest exploration, the greatest inquiry. Everything else falls short, even atomic energy. You can
be a scientist even of the caliber of Albert Einstein, but you don’t know what real inquiry is unless
you love. And not only love, but love plus awareness... then it becomes inquiry into love, the most
difficult task in the world.
Let me repeat, it is the most difficult task in the world – love with awareness. People fall in love;
people become unconscious in love. Their love is only biological, it is gravitation. They are pulled
down towards the earth. But Narada is talking about a totally different love: love as meditation, as
Books I Have Loved 22 Osho
CHAPTER 5.
awareness. Or in scientific terms, love as levitation, against gravity. Leave gravitation for the graves;
levitate, arise! And when one starts rising to love, flying towards the stars, that is athato bhakti
jigyasa.
Why do you all look so worried? I love the devils – let them work, let them create as much noise as
they can. As far as I am concerned they cannot disturb me, and as far as you are concerned you
are already disturbed, what more can they do? So everything is perfectly okay, it is as it should be.
I have loved Narada’s book tremendously. I have talked about it, but not in English, because English
is not my language, and moreover it is too scientific, mathematical, modern. I have spoken of Narada
in Hindi, my mother tongue, in which I can sing more easily. It is closer to my heart.
One of my professors used to say, ”You cannot love in a foreign language, and you cannot fight
either.”
When it comes to fighting one wants to speak the language of the heart. When it comes to love it is
the same, only more so because it needs more depth.
When I speak in English I am bound to speak it wrongly, because it is a double work. I am still
speaking in Hindi and then translating it into English. A hard task. Speaking directly into English has
not happened to me, thank God! Remember, God does not exist; he is only created so that we can
thank someone. I hope somebody will translate what I have said about Narada.
I have spoken on many things in Hindi which I have not spoken on in English out of necessity,
because it was not possible. And vice versa too: I have spoken in English about many things which
were not possible to speak on in Hindi. My work has been a little strange. When all my books are
translated from Hindi to English, and from English to Hindi, you will be even more bewildered than
you are, more puzzled than you are – and I will have a good laugh. Whether I am in the body or
not, it does not matter; I will have a good laugh, I promise it, wherever I am! I am bound to be
somewhere in the cosmos. Seeing you puzzled, bewildered, shaking your heads, not being able to
believe, because I have spoken in both these languages in different dimensions.... I only chose to
speak in English because there is a dimension which cannot be expressed in Hindi.
The third book is Patanjali’s YOGA SUTRAS. Badrayana is too serious, Narada is too nonserious.
Patanjali is just in the middle, exactly in the middle: neither serious nor nonserious, the very spirit of
a scientist. I have spoken ten volumes on Patanjali so there is no need to say more about him. After
ten volumes it will he difficult to say anything more, to add anything more to it. Only one thing, that I
love the man.
Fourth: Kabir, THE SONGS OF KABIR. Nothing like it exists in the world. Kabir is incredibly
beautiful. An uneducated man, born a weaver – to whom nobody knows – his mother left him
on the bank of the Ganges. He must have been an illegal child. But it is not enough to just be legal;
he was certainly illegal, but he was born out of love, and love is the real law. I have also spoken
much on Kabir too, so there is no need to add anything except again and again to say, ”Kabir, I love
you as I have never loved any man.”
Is my numbering still right?
Books I Have Loved 23 Osho
CHAPTER 5.
”Yes, Osho.”
That’s great. Devils cannot disturb me at all!
Fifth: I now bring in a woman. I have been thinking again and again to bring in a woman but the
men were crowding at the door – very ungentlemanly! – and they won’t allow a woman in. And
the woman who has somehow managed to enter... my God, what a woman! Madame Blah-Blah
Blavatsky. That’s how I always call Blavatsky: Blah-Blah. She was great at writing blah-blah – writing
everything about nothing, making mountains out of molehills. And I knew she would be the first
woman to enter. She was a strong woman. She somehow managed to push aside all the Patanjalis,
Kabirs, Badrayanas, and enter with her seven volumes of THE SECRET DOCTRINE. That is my fifth
book. It is almost an encyclopedia, ENCYCLOPEDIA ESOTERICA. Nobody, I think, can compete
with Blavatsky as far as esotericism is concerned – except me of course; I can write seven hundred
volumes. That’s why I have avoided speaking on THE SECRET DOCTRINE: because if I speak on
the seven volumes of THE SECRET DOCTRINE, then, Inshallah, God willing, I will produce seven
hundred volumes, not less than that.
It has been reported to me that I have already spoken three hundred and thirty-six books. My God!
God is merciful – merciful because I don’t have to read them. I have not read any of them. But
Blavatsky would have immediately made something out of it. That’s what I call esotericism. Three
hundred and thirty-six: three-three-six, that means three plus three is six... sixty-six; six plus six
is twelve... one plus two... again three! The moment you come to three then you cannot stop the
esoteric; he has got the key. The esoteric will open doors you have never imagined. Three is enough
to open all doors, locked or unlocked.
Blavatsky, poor woman – I pity her and love her too, in spite of her face, which is not lovable, not even
likable, what to say of love! Her face could only be used to frighten children when they are doing
something nasty. Blavatsky had a very ugly face – but I pity the woman: in the world of men, made
by men, dominated by men, she is the only woman who asserted, dominated, and started the first
religion ever by any woman... Theosophy. She competed with Buddha, Zarathustra, Mohammed,
and I thank her for that. Somebody needed to do it. The man has to be put in his place. I thank her
for that.
THE SECRET DOCTRINE, although so full of esoteric bullshit, has many beautiful diamonds too
and many lotuses. There is much rubbish in it because she was a collector. She went on collecting
all kinds of rubbish from everywhere possible, without bothering whether it was useful or not. She
was great at putting all that useless nonsense in a systematic way. A very systematic woman. But
there are a few – sad to say only a few – diamonds here and there.
On the whole the book is not worth much. I am including it just so that a few women are included in
my list and I am not thought to be a male chauvinist. I am not. I may be a female chauvinist, but not
a male chauvinist at all.
Sixth, THE SONGS OF MEERA. After Blavatsky I have to include Meera just to make things beautiful
again, just to balance. Blavatsky is very heavy and it will take a few more women to balance her.
I will do that. Sixth is Meera’s SONGS; they are the most beautiful ever sung by any man or any
woman. It is impossible to translate them.
Books I Have Loved 24 Osho
CHAPTER 5.
Meera says: ”main to prem divani – I am madly in love, so madly loved that I am mad, mad, mad!”
Perhaps this may give you a little hint what kind of songs she sang. She was a princess, a queen,
but she renounced the palace to be a beggar on the streets. Playing her veena she danced in the
marketplace, from village to village, town to town, city to city, singing her heart out, pouring herself
totally. I have spoken of Meera in Hindi; someday some madman may translate what I have said.
Seventh: Another woman. I am just trying to balance that heavy Blah-Blah Blavatsky. She was
actually heavy, literally heavy, must have weighed three hundred pounds! Three hundred pounds,
and a woman! She would have thrown your so-called Muhammad Ali in a single moment. She
would have crushed the so-called greatest under her feet, leaving not a trace behind. Three hundred
pounds – a real woman! No wonder she could not find a lover, only followers. Naturally, obviously,
you cannot love such a woman. If she forces you, you can only follow. To balance Blavatsky, the
seventh, THE SONGS OF SAHAJO.
Another woman, Sahajo. Even the name is poetic, it means ’the very essence of spontaneity’. I
have spoken on Sahajo, again in Hindi because English does not allow me to be so poetic. I don’t
see much poetry in the English language, and what I see in the name of poetry looks so unpoetic
that I wonder why nobody rebels against it. Why are there no people to start English afresh, but
poetically? It is becoming more and more the language of the scientist, the technician, or to put it
better, of the technologist. It is a misfortune. Someday it can only be hoped that what I have said on
Sahajo will be known to the world at large.
Eighth: Another woman, because I have not yet balanced that heavyweight champion, Blah-Blah
Blavatsky. This woman will do it. She is a Sufi; her name is Rabiya al-Adabiya. Al-Adabiya means
’from the village of Adabiya’. Rabiya is her name, al-Adabiya is her address. That’s how the Sufis
named her: Rabiya al-Adabiya. The village became a very Mecca when Rabiya was still alive.
Travelers from all over the world, seekers from everywhere, came searching for Rabiya’s hut. She
was really a ferocious mystic; with a hammer in her hand she could have broken anybody’s skull.
She actually broke many many skulls and brought out the hidden essence.
Once, Hassan came to her searching, seeking. One morning while staying with her he asked for the
Koran for his morning prayer. Rabiya gave him her own book. Hassan was aghast; he said, ”This
is condemnable. Who has done this?” Rabiya had corrected the Koran! She had crossed out many
words in many places. She had even cut out whole passages. Hassan said, ”This is not allowed.
The Koran cannot be edited. Who can edit the prophet – the last messenger of God?” That’s why
the Mohammedans call him the last messenger – because there will be no more prophets after
Mohammed, so who can correct his words? He is correct, and not correctable.
Rabiya laughed and said, ”I don’t care about tradition. I have seen God face to face, and I have
changed the book according to my experience. This is my book,” she said; ”you cannot raise any
objection. It is my possession. You should be thankful that I allowed you to go through it. I have to
be true to my experience, not to anybody else’s.”
This is Rabiya, the incredible woman. I include her in my list. She is enough to put Madame
Blavatsky in her place. Again, Rabiya’s words are not written by her, but are just disciples’ notes,
like Devageet’s. Rabiya would say something out of context – nobody could figure out any context;
suddenly she would say something and it was noted down. So were the anecdotes she related and
the anecdotes that her life itself became. I love that.
Books I Have Loved 25 Osho
CHAPTER 5.
Meera is beautiful, but without salt, just sweet. Rabiya is very salty. As you know I am a diabetic,
and I cannot eat or drink too much of Meera – Devaraj won’t allow it. But Rabiya is okay, I can have
as much salt as I want. In fact I hate sugar, and I hate saccharin even more, the artificial sugar
created especially for diabetics – but I love the salt.
Jesus said to his disciples: Ye are the salt of the earth. I can say of Rabiya: Rabiya, you are the salt
of all the women that have existed and will ever exist on the earth.
Ninth: Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, his songs. He roamed around the known world of his day
with a single follower, Mardana. Mardana means manly – ’the really brave’. To be a follower one
has to be brave. Nanak used to sing while Mardana played on his sitar, and that’s how they roamed
around the world spreading the fragrance of the ultimate. His songs are so beautiful, they bring
tears to my eyes. Just because of his songs a new language was created. Because he wouldn’t
listen to any grammar, any rules of language, regulations, he created Punjabi just by his songs. It is
a tremendously strong language, just like the sharp edge of a sword.
Tenth. I have always wanted to speak of Shankaracharya – the first, not the present one – the
original Shankaracharya, the Shankaracharya. I had decided to speak on his famous book, VIVEK
CHUDAMANI – The Crest Jewel of Awareness. At the last moment... you know I am a madman; at
the last moment I decided not to speak on it. The reason was simple: the book is more logic than
love, and I would have had to suffer that logic. It is not a small book. It is a big book and I was going
to speak on it for eight months continuously. It would have been a long journey and it was better to
call it off, so I decided not to speak on it. But it has to be included among the great books that I am
counting.
VIVEK CHUDAMANI, by Shankaracharya, has of course here and there diamonds, flowers, stars.
But the brahmin rubbish in between is too much and too thick, I could not tolerate it. But the book
is great – you cannot renounce a mine of diamonds just because there are too many stones and so
much mud around.
Eleventh, and the last in the series: Hazrat Mohammed’s KORAN. The KORAN is not a book to be
read but a book to be sung. If you read it you will miss it. If you sing it you may God willing perhaps
find it.
The KORAN was not written by a scholar or a philosopher. Mohammed was absolutely illiterate,
he could not even sign his own name, but he was possessed by the spirit of God. Because of his
innocence he was chosen and started the song, and that song is the KORAN.
I don’t understand Arabic, but I understand the KORAN because I can understand the rhythm and
the beauty of the rhythm, of the Arabic sounds. Who cares about the meaning! When you see a
flower do you ask, ”What does it mean?” The flower is enough. When you see a flame, do you ask,
”What does it mean?” A flame is enough. Its beauty is its meaning. Its very meaninglessness, if
rhythmic, is meaningful.
So is the KORAN, and I am thankful that I am allowed by God – and remember, there is no God,
this is only an expression. Nobody is allowing me. Inshallah, thank God I am allowed to end this
series with the KORAN, the most beautiful, the most meaningless, the most significant but yet the
most illogical book in the whole history of humanity.
Books I Have Loved 26 Osho
CHAPTER 6
1984 in Lao Tzu House, Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, USA
Now the postscript. In the last session, when I said this is the end of this series of fifty books that I
wanted to include in my list, it was only arbitrary. I don’t mean the end, but the number. I had chosen
fifty because I thought it would be a good number. Anyway one has to decide, and all decisions are
arbitrary. But man proposes and God disposes – God, who is not.
When I said this is the end of the series, the crowd that was bugging me – Jaydeva of GEET
GOVIND, Madame Blah-Blah Blavatsky of THE SECRET DOCTRINE, and the whole company,
many of whom I know but don’t even want to recognize, what to say of including them in my list.
Hearing that this is the end, they all dispersed.
Then, to my utter joy, I saw the meaning of Jesus’ saying: Blessed are the meek, for theirs is the
kingdom of God. He also says: Blessed are those who stand at the end, the last, who don’t try to
push – in short, who are not pushy, who just stand and wait. When the crowd dispersed I saw those
blessed few; hence the postscript.
Even I myself could not believe that I had not included Gautama the Buddha’s DHAMMAPADA.
Gautam Buddha was sitting there silently in the last row. I love the man as I have loved nobody
else. I have been speaking on him throughout my whole life. Even speaking on others I have been
speaking on him. Take note of it, it is a confession. I cannot speak on Jesus without bringing Buddha
in; I cannot speak on Mohammed without bringing Buddha in. Whether I mention him directly or not
that’s another matter. It is really impossible for me to speak without bringing Buddha in. He is my
very blood, my bones, my very marrow. He is my silence, also my song. When I saw him sitting
there I remembered. I cannot even apologize, it is beyond apologizing.
DHAMMAPADA literally means ’the path of truth’, or even more accurately ’the footprints of truth’.
Do you see the contradiction?
27
CHAPTER 6.
Coming in
going out
the waterfowl
leaves no trace behind,
nor it needs a guide.
Truth is unspeakable. There are no footprints. Birds flying in the sky don’t leave any footprints... and
buddhas are birds of the sky.
But buddhas always speak in contradictions, and it is beautiful that at least they speak. They
cannot speak without contradicting themselves, they cannot help it. To speak of truth is to contradict
yourself. Not to speak is again to contradict, because even when you are trying not to speak, you
know that your silence is nothing but an expression, without words maybe, but an expression all the
same.
Buddha gave the name DHAMMAPADA to his greatest book, and there are contradictions upon
contradictions. He is so full of contradictions that believe me, except me nobody can defeat him. Of
course he would enjoy being defeated by me, just as a father once in a while enjoys being defeated
by his own child. The child sitting on his father’s chest victorious, and the father has simply allowed
him to win. All the buddhas allow themselves to be defeated by those who love them. I allow my
disciples to defeat me, to go beyond me. There cannot be anything more joyous than seeing a
disciple transcend me.
Buddha begins with the very name DHAMMAPADA – that’s what he is going to do: he is going
to say the unsayable, to utter the unutterable. But he uttered the unutterable so beautifully that
DHAMMAPADA is like an Everest. There are mountains and mountains, but not one rises to the
height of Everest.
I saw Buddha sitting. I saw others also, the most beautiful ones, the meekest – not like Blavatsky
hammering on the door shouting ”Let me in!” I saw Mahavira naked... because truth is naked,
standing in utter silence. His disciples were holding his book, not he himself.
Second: JIN SUTRAS – The Sutras of the Conqueror. Jin is a beautiful word, it means conqueror:
one who has conquered himself.
I have spoken of these sutras in many volumes, but they are as yet untranslated into English. One
thing I would like to say: that I include the JIN SUTRAS in the postscript.
Nobody has been so silent as Mahavira, nor as naked. Only silence can be so naked. Remember,
I am not saying nude, I am saying naked. Both words are totally different. ’Nude’ is pornographic;
’naked’ is just utterly open, vulnerable, uncovered. A child is not nude, but only naked. Mahavira in
his nakedness is so beautiful.
Books I Have Loved 28 Osho
CHAPTER 6.
It is said that he never spoke his sutras to anyone; only the intimate ones sitting by his side heard
these sutras within themselves. They simply heard. It is one of the most miraculous things.... There
was an inner circle of eleven intimate disciples around Mahavira, and when they all simultaneously
heard the same word, then they thought that the word was worthy to be recorded, although Mahavira
had not said anything openly, but in some subtle way, through a vibe.
The JIN SUTRAS were written in a totally different way from any other book in the whole world.
The master remained silent, and eleven disciples simultaneously hear – emphasize the word
simultaneously – the same word, then they record it. That’s how the JIN SUTRAS were born. What
a birth for a book! One cannot conceive of a more beautiful beginning, and they certainly contain
the highest light man is capable of, and the whole science of conquering oneself.
Third... I saw a man whom I could not recognize. ”Strange,” I thought. ”Through thousands of
lives I have been a traveler on many paths, with many people, in many schools. Who is this man?
He is so unrecognizable.” He was not a master, that’s why I could not recognize him, but he was
meek enough to be included. I have always loved his book. I cannot in any way find any reason
why I forgot to include it in the list of fifty-one. The man was a Greek, Kazantzakis, the author of
ZORBA THE GREEK. I don’t even know how his name is pronounced but ZORBA THE GREEK is
a masterpiece. The man who produced it is not a Buddha, nor a Mahavira, but is capable of being
either at any moment. He is almost ready, ripe, just waiting as if for his season.
Zorba is one of my love affairs. I love strange people. Zorba is a very strange man – not even a
real man, only fictitious, but to me he has become almost a reality because he represents Epicurus,
Charvaka, and all the materialists of the world. He not only represents them, but represents them in
their best form.
In one place Zorba says to his boss, ”Boss, you have everything but still you are missing life, because
you don’t have a little madness in you. If you can manage a little madness you will know what life is.”
I can understand him; not only him, but I can understand all the Zorbas down the ages, with their
’little madness’. But I don’t believe in a little of anything. I am as mad as one can be, totally mad.
If you are only a little mad, of course you will understand only a little of life, but it is better than not
knowing at all.
Zorba, poor Zorba, illiterate Zorba, a laborer... he must have been huge, strongly built, and a little
mad. But he gave great advice to his master: ”Be a little mad,” he said. I say being a little mad won’t
do; be totally mad! But you can allow total madness only in meditation, otherwise you will freak
out. You won’t be able to consume it; on the contrary, it will consume you. If you don’t know what
meditation is you will be burned. Hence I have coined a new name: Zorba the Buddha.
Zorba the Buddha is my synthesis. I love Kazantzakis for creating a great work of art, but I feel
sorry for him too because he is still in darkness. Kazantzakis, you need a boss, a little of meditation;
otherwise you will never know what life is.
Fourth, I saw one of the most beautiful fellows. I have talked about him, but not mentioned him in
the list of fifty, the arbitrary list. The name of the man is al-Hillaj Mansoor. Al-Hillaj has not written a
book but only a few statements, or rather declarations. People like al-Hillaj only declare, not out of
any egoism – they don’t have any ego, that’s why they declare, ”ana’l haq!”
Books I Have Loved 29 Osho
CHAPTER 6.
Ana’l haq! is his declaration and it means ”I am God, and there is no other God.” Mohammedans
could not forgive him; they killed him. But can you kill an al-Hillaj? It is impossible! Even while they
were killing him he was laughing.
Somebody asked, ”Why are you laughing?”
He replied, ”Because you are not killing me, you are killing only the body, and I have said again and
again that I am not my body. Ana’l haq! I am God himself.” Now these men are the very salt of the
earth.
Al-Hillaj Mansoor has not written any book; just a few of his declarations have been collected by
his lovers and friends. I will not even say followers, because men like al-Hillaj don’t even accept
followers, imitators – they only accept lovers, friends.
I am sorry, I forgot about him completely. That is not good of me. But, al-Hillaj, you should
understand my difficulty. I have read more books than you may have heard of. I have read more
than one hundred thousand books. Now, to find only fifty out of them all is really a difficult job. I have
chosen only a few, and naturally I have had to leave out many, with tears in my eyes. I would have
liked to choose them too... but I put you on record in the postscript.
Fifth: This man is known only to very few people, for the simple reason he never wrote and he never
spoke. Mahakashyapa. All that is known of him is this anecdote.
One day, Buddha came to his morning discourse with a lotus flower in his hand. He sat silently
looking at the flower, not saying a single word. The assembly of ten thousand sannyasins was
bewildered. This was unheard of. In the first place Buddha, who had never before come with
anything, comes with a lotus flower; secondly, he used to speak immediately, but today minutes and
hours have passed, and he is just looking at the flower. Many must have thought he must have gone
mad. Only one man did not agree. He laughed. That man was Mahakashyapa.
Buddha raised his eyes, laughed, and called Mahakashyapa to him, gave him the flower, and told the
assembly that the sermon was over, saying, ”I have given to you what you are entitled to, and I have
given to Mahakashyapa what he deserves, and rightly so. I have talked to you for years in words,
and you never understood. Today I have spoken in silence, and the laughter of Mahakashyapa has
shown that he has understood.” In this mysterious way the successor was found. Mahakashyapa
became Buddha’s successor. A strange way....
The disciples of Mahakashyapa have written a few things about him which can be called his book.
But really he has not written them, nor have his disciples signed them. They are anonymous. But
whatsoever was written is of immense beauty. A few fragments, just like pieces of the full moon:
if you can put them together there will be the full moon again. The secret to put them together is
meditation.
The tradition that followed Mahakashyapa is Zen. He is the first patriarch of Zen, of dhyana.
Strange... not even Buddha, but Mahakashyapa is the first. ... Because Buddha spoke for forty
years, Mahakashyapa never spoke; the only noise that he ever made was that of laughter. If you
can call it speaking, that’s another matter. In a way it is speaking – it is saying that the whole
existence is a joke. It is saying to Buddha, ”What a joke!”
Books I Have Loved 30 Osho
CHAPTER 6.
The moment you understand that the whole existence is a joke, you have understood. There is no
other understanding, no other enlightenment. Everything else is pseudo.
Can you, Devageet, remind me of the number? – because even in the posthumous record, the
postscript, I have to make it ten. What is the number you said?
”Number six, Osho.”
Good. It is so beautiful that I said posthumous. I am really dead, that’s why I allow you to call me
Blessed One. If I am not dead then to call me the blessed one is not right.
The word posthumous came to me accidentally. I was going to say postscript, but sometimes truth
comes out accidentally. It is not arranged, ordered, it just erupts like a volcano. I was not going to
say it, but it came out on its own. Truth has its own ways. I am really a posthumous man; I died long
ago.
Sixth, I saw Hermann Hesse. He was not an enlightened one, what to say about those who have
gone beyond enlightenment. He was just an ordinary human being, but in a poetic flight he has
written one of the greatest books in the world, SIDDHARTHA.
Siddhartha is really the name of Gautama the Buddha, given to him by his parents. He became
known as Gautam Buddha. Gautama was his family name; Buddha simply means ’the awakened’.
Siddhartha was the real name given by his parents in consultation with the astrologers. It is a
beautiful name. Siddhartha also means ’one who has attained to the meaning’. Siddha means ’one
who has attained’; artha means ’the meaning’. Combined together Siddhartha means ’one who has
come to the meaning of life’. The astrologers, the parents, the people who gave him this name must
have been wise people – if not enlightened, at least wise... worldly-wise at least.
Hermann Hesse’s SIDDHARTHA repeats the story of Buddha in a different way, but in the same
dimension, with the same meaning. It is unbelievable that Hermann Hesse could write it but could
not become a siddha himself. He remained a poor writer – yes, a Nobel prizewinner, but that does
not matter that much. You cannot give a Nobel prize to a buddha; he will laugh and throw it away.
But the book is immensely beautiful, and I include it.
Seventh: It is not known that even in the very traditional, orthodox Judaism there have been a few
utterly enlightened masters – even some who have gone beyond enlightenment. One of them is
Baal Shem Tov. I cannot forgive myself for not including him, and there is nobody to whom I can ask
forgiveness.
Baal Shem Tov. Tov was the name of his town. His name simply means ’Baal Shem from the town
of Tov’; so let us call him simply Baal Shem. I have spoken about him because when I was speaking
about Hassidism, I have not left anything essential unspoken. I have spoken of Tao, of Zen, of
Sufism, of Hassidism. I am not a man of any tradition so I am free to move in any direction I decide
to. I don’t even need a map. Let me remind you again:
Coming in,
going out,
Books I Have Loved 31 Osho
CHAPTER 6.
the waterfowl
leaves no trace behind,
nor it needs a guide.
Baal Shem Tov has not written any treatise – treatise is a dirty word in the world of mysticism – but
he told many beautiful stories, so beautiful that I would like to relate one of them to you just as an
example so you can taste the quality of the man.
A woman comes to Baal Shem. The woman is childless; she wants a child. She bugs Baal Shem
continuously saying, ”If you bless me everything is possible. Bless me please. I want a child.”
Finally, tired – yes, even Baal Shem can get tired of a nagging woman – he says, ”Do you want a
boy child or a girl?”
The woman was tremendously happy; she said, ”A boy, of course.”
Baal Shem said, ”Then listen to this story. My mother was also childless, and she bugged and
nagged the rabbi of the town continuously to bless her. Finally the rabbi said, ’First bring me a
beautiful cap.’ My mother,” Baal Shem said, ”made a beautiful cap and went to the rabbi.”
The cap was so beautiful that Baal Shem’s mother said, ”I don’t want anything in return, just to see
you in this cap is so beautiful. I am tremendously gratified. You are not obliged to me, I am obliged
to you. Thank you, rabbi.”
”And my mother went away. That’s how she became pregnant,” Baal Shem said, ”and I was born.”
The woman said, ”Great. So tomorrow I will come with a beautiful cap.”
The next day she returned with a very beautiful cap. Baal Shem accepted and did not even say
”Thank you.” The woman waited and waited, then she said, ”What about the child?”
Baal Shem said, ”Forget all about the child! The cap is so beautiful, I am obliged to you. I must say
thank you to you. Do you remember the story I told you? The woman did not ask anything in return,
that’s why she conceived a child, and a child like me” – like Baal Shem.
”But you have come with the desire to get something. Just because of this cap do you want a child
like Baal Shem? Forget all about it,” he said, ”and don’t come again – ever.”
There are many things that can be said only through stories. Baal Shem has said the fundamental:
Do not ask and it shall be given. Do not ask – that is the basic condition.
The Hassidism that arose out of Baal Shem’s stories is the most beautiful flowering that has ever
happened. Jews have done nothing comparable to Hassidism. Hassidism is a small current, but is
still alive, still flowing.
Books I Have Loved 32 Osho
CHAPTER 6.
Eight: Farid. This is the man I have spoken of before – but not in English, in Hindi. Farid, the Sufi
mystic, a contemporary of Kabir, Nanak and others. I love him. In his songs he calls himself Farida.
He always addresses himself, never anybody else. He always starts, ”Farida, are you listening?
Farida, be awake! Farida, do this, do that!” In Hindi, when you use the name Farid it is respectable.
When you use the name Farida it is not respectable; one only calls the servants in that way. Farid
calls himself Farida of course because he is the master; the body is the servant.
The great king Akbar used to come to Farid to listen to his songs. Akbar once received a gift, a very
precious gift, a pair of golden scissors studded with diamonds. Gudia would have loved them – any
woman would. Akbar also loved them, so much so that he thought they would be a good present
for Farid. He came and gave the precious scissors to Farid. Farid looked at them, turning them this
way and that, then returned the gift to Akbar saying, ”This is of no use to me. If you want to give
something to me as a gift, bring a needle.”
Akbar was puzzled. He said, ”Why a needle?”
Farid said, ”Because the function of scissors is to cut things into pieces, and the function of a needle
is to join pieces together. My function is not that of the scissors, it is that of the needle. I join things
together, I synthesize.”
Farid would not have agreed with Sigmund Freud, nor with psychoanalysis, because psychoanalysis
is the golden scissors, going on cutting everything to pieces. He would have agreed with Assagioli
and psychosynthesis. Join, put things together, to oneness. Do you see my tears? They are for
Farid... Farida... yes, for Farida. There can be no homage for him. He will understand the tears,
not the golden scissors. Alas, could Akbar have fallen to the feet of Farid and wept, that would have
been the real gift to the master.
Farid has not written a book, but his songs have been written down by his people. His songs are
tremendously beautiful, but you have to listen to them sung by a Punjabi. He lived in the Punjab,
and his songs are in Punjabi, not even in Hindi. Punjabi is very different from Hindi. Hindi is mild, the
language of a businessman. Punjabi is like a sword, the language of a soldier. It is so penetrating.
When you hear Farid’s songs sung in Punjabi your heart starts breaking.
When I used to travel in the Punjab, I used to ask people, ”Can you sing Farid for me?” – and once
in a while I found a singer who was ready, who knew how to sing Farida. And all those beautiful
singers... all those beautiful moments.... Punjabi has a quality of its own. Every language has a
quality of its own. But Punjabi is certainly a sword, you cannot sharpen anything more.
Ninth. I am in a hurry because my hour may be nearly over, or already over, because I have seen
Gudia entering. What a sad thing that the hour follows the same law whether it is yours or mine. It
should not be chronological, it should be relative. My hour should not follow the same law, it should
not belong to the Einsteinian world of relativity. It should be endless. But I know it cannot be, so I
am in a hurry, and you know when I am in a hurry then too I am relaxed.
Ninth, another poet, another singer, another dancer, of a totally different quality: Shiva, and his book
VIGYAN BHAIRAV TANTRA. I have spoken about it. It is very small, only one hundred and twelve
sutras. You can easily write it on one page of a book, or at the most two pages. I have spoken on it
Books I Have Loved 33 Osho
CHAPTER 6.
in five volumes, thousands of pages – THE BOOK OF THE SECRETS. I cannot say any other book
exists as condensed as VIGYAN BHAIRAV TANTRA – the book of Shiva. Each sutra is a method
unto itself.
Devageet, please don’t interrupt. Let me finish my work. They call the man in the chair the patient;
they should teach the doctors to be patient. Ashu, you are not a doctor so you need not worry. No
woman ever worries, she makes others worry; that’s another matter. Look, even Gudia is laughing,
which is rare for a proper Englishwoman!
Good. Laughter is always good. I love it, but I have to continue my work whether you laugh or cry; it
does not matter to this man in this chair. I am as hard as rock and as soft as a lotus, but I am both
together. For the sake of clarity let me tell you: first I am a rock; with this I will break your skull. I
cannot be a lotus for you, but what you are doing is so beautiful.
Tenth, I always had the idea of speaking on Uma Swati and his book. Uma Swati is a mystic, but
a very dry mystic – just like my lips at this moment, without any moisture. He has written a very
dry but true description of the ultimate. His book is called TATVA SUTRA. Tatva means ’the ultimate
reality’. Tat means ’that’ – the ultimate. ’This’ is the immediate, and ’that’ is the ultimate.
Devageet, stop interrupting. I know you know more about your machinery. I also know more about
your consciousness – and that’s what matters.
TATVA SUTRA is beautiful and I would have spoken about it but again and again I have postponed.
It is too mathematical, like Kundkunda’s SAMAYASAR. That’s how all Jaina mystics are – dry, utterly
dry.
Laxmi has really chosen a place – Kutch! Mahavira, Kundkunda, Uma Swati, all of these fellows
would have loved it in the Kutch. But for me, what a misfortune! I have always wanted to live in the
Himalayas, but for the sake of my people I have to leave the very idea of being in the Himalayas.
It did not happen to Buddha, Bodhidharma, to Basho; it did not happen to Omar Khayyam, to Kahlil
Gibran, to Mikhail Naimy, but it has happened to me. I know there must be a secret in it. It can only
be that I have to make Kutch as beautiful as the Himalayas. One thing is certain: that wherever I
am, I am going to create the most beautiful spot in the world, whatsoever the challenge.
Eleventh, and the last for the postscript... I mean for today. One never knows about tomorrow. The
last is something so beautiful that I must have been really sane to have forgotten it. Mind you, I am
not saying insane, I am saying sane. I must have been sane to have forgotten it. If I was insane
enough then it would have been impossible to forget it. Then it would have been the first to be
remembered, not the last. It is the SONG OF NAROPA.
I have never spoken about it because I never thought that anything could be said about it, but it has
been in my heart. I only mention it so that those who love me should start searching for it... the
poetry, the song, the dance of Naropa. And it is mine too.
Om Mani Padme Hum
The jewel in the lotus.
Books I Have Loved 34 Osho
CHAPTER 6.
Thank you both, with all my joy.
Books I Have Loved 35 Osho
CHAPTER 7
1984 in Lao Tzu House, Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, USA
Okay. I have heard your notebook open. Now it is my hour, and my hour does not consist of sixty
minutes. It can be anything – sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety, one hundred... or beyond numbers even.
If it is my hour then of course it has to be consistent with me, not vice versa.
The postscript continues.
The first name today is one not even heard in the West: Maluka. He is one of the most significant
mystics in India. His full name is Malukdas, but he only called himself Maluka as if he were a child
– and he was a child really, not ’as if’.
I have spoken on him in Hindi, but it will take a long time for it to be translated into other languages
for the simple reason that Maluka is so strange, so mysterious. You will be surprised that in a country
like India, which is full of commentators, scholars, pundits, nobody has even bothered to comment
on Malukdas because it is so difficult. He had to wait for me. I am his first commentator, and who
knows, maybe the last too.
Just an example:
Ajgar karai na chakari panchhi karai na kam das maluka kahi gaye sab ke data ram.
Now I will try to translate it. It will not be exactly the same but I am not responsible for it. The poor
English language cannot contain such richness. Maluka says: The snake never goes out to work at
a job, nor does the bird ever work. And, says Maluka, there is no need, in fact, because existence
provides for all. He was a man Zorba would have liked. He was the man with a little madness and a
lot of meditation.
He was so deep in meditation that he says:
36
CHAPTER 7.
Mala japon na kar jibhya japon na ram, sumiran mera hari karain main paya bisram.
He says: I don’t chant the name of God, nor do I use a rosary for worship. I don’t worship at all –
who cares for such stupid things! He continues: In fact, God remembers my name, there is no need
for me to remember him.... Do you see? A little madness and a lot of meditation. Malukdas is one
of the men of whom I can say without any hesitation that he has gone beyond enlightenment. He
has become the picture on the tenth card of the Ten Zen Bulls.
Second, the book of the Sikhs: GURU GRANTHA SAHIB. It was not written by one single man so I
cannot tell you who the author is. It is a compilation from generation to generation. It was compiled
from all sources, as no other book in the world. THE OLD TESTAMENT is only Jewish, THE NEW
TESTAMENT is only Christian, BHAGAVADGITA IS only Hindu, DHAMMAPADA is only Buddhist,
JIN SUTRAS only Jaina; but GURU GRANTHA SAHIB is the only book in the world taken from all
the sources possible. Its sources come from Hindu, Mohammedan, Jaina, Buddhist, Christian. Such
openness, no fanaticism.
The title GURU GRANTHA means ’the book of the masters’, or ’the master book’. In it you will find
Kabir, Nanak, Farid, and a long line of mystics belonging to different traditions, different schools, as
if thousands of rivers are meeting in the ocean. GURU GRANTHA is like an ocean.
I will translate only one sentence of Nanak. He is the founder, so of course his words are compiled
in GURU GRANTHA. He was the first master of the Sikhs; then followed a line of nine other masters.
Sikhism was produced by ten masters. It is a rare religion because every other religion was created
by only a single master.
Nanak says: The truth, the ultimate truth is unspeakable, so please forgive me, I will not speak about
it but only sing it. If you can understand the language of music, then perhaps a chord in your heart
may be touched. The transmission of the lamp is beyond words.
GURU GRANTHA SAHIB... the Sikhs call it SAHIB because they respect the book so much, almost
as if it is alive, as if it were the very spirit of the master. But a book is a book, and the moment the
masters depart the book is dead, the word is dead. So they are carrying a beautiful corpse, just as
all the other religions are doing. Remember, by the way, that religion is alive only once in a while,
alive only in the presence of a master. When the master is no longer alive it becomes a creed, and
a creed is an ugly thing.
The Dutch parliament has appointed a commission to inquire into ’cults and creeds’. Obviously I
am the first on their list of inquiries. I have informed my people in Holland to tell the commission,
”We are not going to cooperate with you because in fact we are neither a cult nor a creed; we are a
religion. If you want to look for cults and creeds, then there are many: the Christian, the Judaic, the
Hindu, the Mohammedan, and so on ad infinitum.” In fact I was going to say ad nauseam....
The commission has become very worried. They wrote a letter to the orange people in Holland
saying, ”Please cooperate with us.” Our people have again asked what to do. I told them, ”I have
already told you what to do. Unless they appoint a commission to inquire into the very spirit of
religion, do not cooperate.”
Books I Have Loved 37 Osho
CHAPTER 7.
Look at the absurdity: the Dutch parliament is dominated by the Christian Democratic Party, and the
people who are appointed to serve on the commission are all Christian Democrats. Now, it is they
who are the creed, they are a cult. My people are not a cult. I am still alive and kicking! A religion
exists only when a master is breathing. His breath is what religion is made of.
GURU GRANTHA has compiled the sayings of ten living masters, ten enlightened ones. I say that
no other book can be compared to it. It is incomparable. Nanak says, ”Ek omkar satnam – only one
thing is true, the name of the inexpressible.” In the East we call it omkar, om – only that is true. The
sound of the soundless... the silence that pervades after the sound has left...ek omkar satnam.
Third: The book by Mabel Collins, LIGHT ON THE PATH. Anybody who wants to travel towards the
heights has to understand LIGHT ON THE PATH. It is a small book as far as quantity is concerned,
just a few pages, but as far as quality is concerned it is one of the biggest, the greatest books. And,
wonder of wonders, it has been written in the modern age. Nobody knows who the author Mabel
Collins is. The author never even writes the name Mabel Collins in full, but only M.C. It is just by
chance that I have come to know the full name through a few friends of M.C.
Why M.C.? I can understand the reason. The writer is only a vehicle, and more particularly so in the
case of LIGHT ON THE PATH. Perhaps the Sufi, Khidr – I have told you about him: the spirit who
leads people, guides people, helps people – was behind M.C.’s work too.
M.C. was a Theosophist. He or she would – I don’t know whether the author is a man or woman, it
does not matter anyway – or may not have liked to have been guided by Khidr, the Sufi idea of the
ultimate guide. But M.C. would be immensely happy if I use the parallel Theosophical name: they
call it K.H. Any name will do. What you call it does not matter... Master K.H. or the mystic Khijra, it is
all the same. But the book is immensely helpful. Whosoever wrote it, whosoever guided the writer,
that’s beside the point; the book itself stands like a golden tower.
Fourth: I am perfectly okay, don’t be worried just because I am numbering correctly. Once in a while
it happens just by accident. Fourth is the Kashmiri woman Lalla. The Kashmiris love Lalla so much
that they say out of respect for her that they have only two words: one is Allah and the other is Lalla.
The Kashmiris are ninety-nine percent Mohammedans, so when they say they know only two words,
Allah and Lalla, it is important.
Lalla never wrote a book. She was illiterate, but so courageous.... She remained naked all her life
– and remember this was hundreds of years ago in the East – and she was a beautiful woman.
Kashmiris are beautiful; in India they are the only really beautiful people. They are the lost tribe
Moses was searching for. They are basically, originally Jews.
When Moses was leading his people towards Israel... and one wonders what that madman was
doing: why to Israel? But madmen are after all mad, there is no explanation. Moses was searching
for a place for his people. He wandered for forty years in the desert, and then found Israel.
Meanwhile he had lost one of his tribes. That tribe had reached Kashmir.
Sometimes at least it is fortunate to be lost. Moses could not find them. Do you know that in his
search for the lost tribe Moses finally reached Kashmir... and he died there. His tomb is not in Israel,
it is in Kashmir.
Books I Have Loved 38 Osho
CHAPTER 7.
Strange, Moses died in Kashmir, Jesus died in Kashmir. I have been to Kashmir many many times,
and I know it to be a place where one says, ”Aahhh, could I die this very moment, here and now...!”
It is so beautiful that to live afterwards will not be worthwhile.
Kashmiris are beautiful people – poor, but immensely beautiful. Lalla was a Kashmiri woman,
illiterate, but she could still sing and dance. So a few of her songs have been saved. She, of
course, could not be saved, but her songs have been. I include them in my postscript.
Fifth: Another mystic, Gorakh, a tantrika, a man so versed, so efficient in all the methods of Tantra
that anybody in India who knows many businesses is known as doing gorakh-dhandha. Gorakhdhandha means ’in the business of Gorakh’. People think one should stick to one’s own business.
Gorakh moved in all directions, in all dimensions.
Gorakh’s full name was Gorakh-nath. It must have been given by his disciples, because nath means
lord. Gorakh has given all the keys possible to enter into the inner mysteries. He has said everything
that can be said. He is, in a way, a full stop.
But the world continues, so do I. The world knows no full stop, neither do I. I will die only in the
middle of a sentence; then people will wonder forever what I was going to say, how I was going to
complete the sentence. I respect Gorakh-nath. I have spoken much about him. One day it will be
translated, so I need not waste any more time on this fellow.
Sixth: It is very rare that a man, a single man, produces two masterpieces, but that is the case with
Hubert Benoit. I don’t know how the French pronounce it... and they are so snobbish about their
pronunciation, and I am so sloppy! But I don’t care – what does it matter if a word here and there is
mispronounced? My whole life I have been mispronouncing.
This man Hubert Benoit – I have mentioned his first book, LET GO. In fact that was his second book.
Before writing LET GO he had written another book called THE SUPREME DOCTRINE. I would like
to include that too; otherwise I will feel really sad not to have mentioned it. It is a tremendously
beautiful book but very difficult to read, and much more difficult to understand. But Benoit tried his
best to make it as simple as possible.
Seventh. A great esoteric number, seven. I want it to be given to a really esoteric fellow, Shiva, the
Hindu concept of Ultimate Goodness. Many books carry the name of Shiva; many of them are not
true, they are just using the name to become respectable. But this book is one of the most authentic,
SHIVA SUTRA. I have spoken on it in Hindi; I am thinking of speaking on it in English too. I have
even decided the date, but you know me....
This book SHIVA SUTRA contains the techniques of all meditations. There cannot be any other
technique that is not included in this book. SHIVA SUTRA is the very bible of meditators.
Ashu, I know why they are laughing. Let them laugh. I know I am speaking very, very slowly, that’s
why they are laughing. But I am enjoying it and they are enjoying their laugh. So good, Ashu... only
once in a while one can find such a good woman. There are many beautiful women in the world but
good women are, my God, very difficult to find. Let the fools laugh. I will speak as slowly as I want.
I was talking about SHIVA SUTRA. This book is like no other, it is unique, incomparable.
Books I Have Loved 39 Osho
CHAPTER 7.
Eighth: The most immensely beautiful work of an Indian mystic, Gaurang. The word gaurang itself
means ’the white one’. He was so beautiful... I can see him standing right before me, just white, or
rather snow-white. He was so beautiful that all the girls in the village fell in love with him. And he
remained a bachelor. One cannot get married to millions of girls. One of them is too much; millions,
my God! – that will kill anyone! Now you know the secret of why I am a bachelor.
Gaurang used to dance and sing his message. His message was not of words, but much more –
of a song. Gaurang has not written a book; his lovers – and there were many, too many in fact –
they collected his songs. Those songs are one of the most beautiful collections; I have never come
across anything like it before or after. What to say about them... just that I love them.
Ninth: Again another Indian mystic, you may not have heard about him. He was called Dadu, which
means the brother. He was so loving that people forgot his real name and simply remembered him
as Dadu, the brother. There are thousands of songs that Dadu sang, but they were not written down
by him, they were collected by others, just like a gardener collects flowers long fallen.
What I say about Dadu is true about all saints. They are averse to writing. They sing, they speak,
they dance, they indicate, but they don’t write. To write something is to make it very limited. A word
is a limitation; only then can it be a word. If it is unlimited it will be the sky, containing all the stars.
That’s what a saint’s experience is.
Even I myself have not written anything... just a few letters to those who were very intimate to me,
thinking, or perhaps believing, that they will understand. I don’t know whether they understood or
not. So my book A CUP OF TEA is the only book that can be said to have been written by me. It is
a compilation of my letters. Otherwise I have not written anything.
Dadu’s songs have been collected. I have spoken on him. He reaches to the very heights one can
aspire to.
Tenth, and the last. The last today is one of the strangest men that has ever walked on the earth,
Sarmad. He was a Sufi, and he was murdered in a mosque by order of the Mohammedan king.
He was murdered simply because of a particular Mohammedan sutra, one of their prayers. The
prayer is: ”Allah la il allah – Allah, God, is the only God.” And that is not enough for them; they want
something more. They want to declare to the world that Mohammed is the only prophet of God:
”Allah la il allah; mohammed bismillah. God is the only God, and Mohammed is the only prophet of
God.”
Sufis deny the second part, that Mohammed is the only prophet of God. That was the sin of
Sarmad. Obviously nobody can be the only prophet; nobody absolutely can be the only one –
neither Mohammed, nor Jesus, nor Moses, nor Buddha. Sarmad was killed, murdered, butchered,
by the Mohammedan king of India, in conspiracy with the Mohammedan priests. But he laughed,
and said, ”Even after my death I will say the same thing: Allah la il allah – God is the only God.”
The great mosque in Delhi, Jama Masjid, where Sarmad was killed, is still standing, a monument
to this great man. He was killed in a very inhuman way: just his head was cut off. His head rolled
down the steps of the Jama mosque. The thousands who had gathered there heard the head rolling
down the steps clearly shouting, ”Allah la il allah – God is the only God....”
Books I Have Loved 40 Osho
CHAPTER 7.
I don’t know whether the story is true or not, but it must be. It has to be. Even truth has to
compromise with a man like Sarmad. I love Sarmad. He has not written any book, but his statements
have been compiled and the most significant is: God is the only God, and there is no prophet, there
is no one between you and God. There is no mediator, God is immediately available. Just all that is
needed is a little madness and a lot of meditation.
I was going to say something then, but I will not say it... it is unsayable. It has never been said
before, and I should not say it either.
It is still beautiful
like a sunset...
the birds are coming home,
the first stars are coming,
their colors are in the sky.
Can you see
the smile on my face?
Books I Have Loved 41 Osho
CHAPTER 8
1984 in Lao Tzu House, Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, USA
Be a Junnatha – a seeker. The P.S. continues.
The first book is Friedrich Nietzsche’s WILL TO POWER. He never published it while he was alive. It
was published posthumously, and meanwhile, before it was published, many of your so-called great
men had already stolen from the manuscript.
Alfred Adler was one of the ’greatest’ psychologists. He is one of the trinity of psychologists: Freud,
Jung and Adler. He is simply a thief. Adler has stolen his whole psychology from Friedrich Nietzsche.
Adler says: Man’s basic instinct is the ’will to power’. Great! Who was he trying to deceive? Yet
millions of fools are deceived. Adler is still counted as a great man. He is just a pygmy, only to be
forgiven and forgotten.
George Bernard Shaw steals his whole basic philosophy from Nietzsche. Great G.B.S. – Nobel
prizewinner, George Bernard Shaw. Whatsoever he says is contained in only a few sentences of
Nietzsche’s WILL TO POWER.
Even a so-called great Indian saint was not far behind Adler and Shaw. His name is Shri Aurobindo.
He is worshipped by millions all over the world as the greatest sage of the age. He stole his idea of
superman from the manuscript of WILL TO POWER. Shri Aurobindo was only a mediocre scholar,
nothing much to brag about.
Nietzsche’s book was not published until many years after his death. His sister prevented it. She was
a great businesswoman. She was selling other books which were already published, and waiting
for the right moment when WILL TO POWER could best be sold. She was not concerned about
Nietzsche, his philosophy, or his contribution to humanity.
42
CHAPTER 8.
Why didn’t Nietzsche himself publish the book while he was alive? I know why. It was too much
even for him. He was not an enlightened man. He was afraid, afraid of what was going to happen to
him if he published. And the book is pure dynamite! He always kept it under his pillow, even while
asleep. He was afraid it may fall into the wrong hands. He was not a brave man as people usually
think of him, he was a coward. But strange are the ways of existence: sometimes even a coward is
showered with stars, and that’s what happened to Nietzsche.
Adolf Hitler stole his whole philosophy from Nietzsche. Hitler was incapable of doing anything right;
he was such an idiot, he should really have been in India, not in Germany, and become a disciple
of Muktananda. I can suggest a beautiful name for him: Swami Idiotananda! That’s what he was,
the suprememost idiot of human history. He thought he understood Nietzsche. It is very difficult
to understand Nietzsche; he is so subtle, so deep, and so profound. It is beyond the reach of any
idiotananda.
Friedrich Nietzsche kept his best book to be published only after his death. I have already counted
one of his books, THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA, but even that pales before WILL TO POWER. It
is not a philosophical treatise, written systematically, it is just maxims, paragraphs. You have to find
the connection. It is not there written for you to read. Hence, even though it is published it is not read
much. Who bothers! Who wants to make any effort? – and WILL TO POWER needs tremendous
effort to understand it. It is the very essence of Friedrich Nietzsche’s soul. And he was a madman!
To understand it is to transcend it too.
This is the first book I would like to mention today.
Second: Again I am going to mention P.D.Ouspensky. I have already mentioned two of
his books: one, TERTIUM ORGANUM, which he wrote before he met his master, Gurdjieff.
TERTIUM ORGANUM is well known particularly among mathematicians because Ouspensky was a
mathematician when he wrote it. The second book, IN SEARCH OF THE MIRACULOUS, he wrote
after he had lived with Gurdjieff for many years. But there is a third book by him which was written in
between – after TERTIUM ORGANUM and before he met George Gurdjieff. This book is very little
known, and its name is A NEW MODEL OF THE UNIVERSE. It is a strange book, very strange.
Ouspensky searched for a master all over the world, particularly in India, because people in their
foolishness think that masters are only found in India. Ouspensky searched in India and searched
for years. Even in Bombay he searched for a master. In those days he wrote this tremendously
beautiful book, A NEW MODEL OF THE UNIVERSE. This is a poet’s vision, because he knows not
what he is talking about. But what he is talking about comes very, very, very close to the truth... but
only close, remember, and even a hair’s breadth is enough to keep you away. He remained away.
He searched and searched....
In this book he describes his search. The book ends strangely, in a cafeteria in Moscow, where
he meets Gurdjieff. Gurdjieff was certainly the strangest master who ever lived. He used to write
in cafeterias. What a place to write! He would sit in a cafeteria – people eating, talking, children
running hither and thither, the noise from the street, the honking of horns, and Gurdjieff sitting by
the window surrounded by all this nonsense, writing his book ALL AND EVERYTHING.
Ouspensky saw this man and fell in love. Who could resist it? It is utterly impossible to see a master
and not fall in love, unless you are utterly dead, made of stone, or made of synthetic material – a
Books I Have Loved 43 Osho
CHAPTER 8.
pre-fab man! The moment he looked at Gurdjieff... strange: he saw that these were the eyes that
he had been looking for all over the earth, on the dusty, dirty roads of India, and this cafeteria was
just beside his house in Moscow! Sometimes you may find what you are seeking just nearby.
A NEW MODEL OF THE UNIVERSE is poetic, but comes very close to my vision; that is why I
include it.
Third: Sanai, and his beautiful statements. People like Sanai don’t argue, they only state. They
need not argue, their very existence is the proof; no other argument is needed. Come, look into my
eyes, and you will know that there is no argument, only a statement. A statement is always true. An
argument can be clever but is rarely true.
Sanai is one of my love affairs. I cannot, even though I would like to, exaggerate him. It is impossible.
Sanai is the very essence of Sufism.
Sufism is an English word for tasawuf. Tasawuf means ’pure love’. ’Sufism’ comes from suf, meaning
wool, and a Sufi means a person wearing a woolen robe. Sanai used to wear a black cap – a white
robe and a black cap. No logic, no reason, just a mad person like me. But what can you do, these
people have to be accepted as they are. Either you love them or hate them. Love or hate, they don’t
give you any alternative. You can be for them or against them, but you cannot be indifferent to them.
That’s the miracle of mystics. Being close to me you know perfectly well that one who comes to me
becomes either a friend or a foe. Nobody can come to me and go without becoming a friend or a
foe. Look! I can also compose poetry sometimes. A madman is capable of doing anything.
Sanai only states without arguing about it. He simply says it is so. You cannot ask why; he will say,
”Shut up! There is no why!”
You don’t ask a roseflower, ”Why?”
You don’t ask the snow, ”Why?”
You don’t ask the stars, ”Why?”
Then why do you ask people like Sanai?
They are of the world of stars, flowers, snow.
They don’t argue.
I love Sanai. I had not forgotten him; I was not going to mention him just because I wanted to keep
him only for myself, in my heart. But in a postscript you can even pour out your heart.
That is the way my father used to write me letters. The letter would be very short – there was nothing
much to write – then he would write a P.S. Again I would wonder what he had left out of the letter,
and he would say something really significant. Then the P.S. would not be enough. There would
be another P.P.S. ”My God,” I would think, ”what has he forgotten?” Again there would be something
really beautiful that could not have been written in the letter. A P.S. is a more intimate phenomenon,
and a P.P.S. even more so.
Books I Have Loved 44 Osho
CHAPTER 8.
My father is no more, but I remember him in such moments, when I suddenly see that I am behaving
just like him. When I see his picture, I know that when I too am seventy-five, God willing, then I will
look just like him. And it is so good to feel that I will not betray him, that I will represent him even to
my very last breath.
Devaraj – I am not mistakenly saying Devaraj for Devageet; I mean Devaraj – you should remember
it. My body functions exactly like my father’s even in its illnesses. I am proud of it. My father suffered
from asthma, so when I suffer from asthma I know this body comes from my father, with all its faults,
flaws and errors. He was a diabetic, so am I. He loved to talk, and I have done nothing else all my
life than talk. In every way I have been his son.
He was a great father – not just because he was my father but because even though he was a father,
he touched the feet of his son and became his disciple. That was his greatness. No father has done
it before, and I don’t think it is going to happen again on this rotten earth. It seems impossible. The
father becoming the disciple of the son? Buddha’s father hesitated; my father never hesitated for a
moment.
Now it would have been very easy for Buddha’s father to become his disciple, because Buddha was
what the so-called religions expect, a saint. It is very difficult for any father to become a disciple of
a man like me. I am not a saint by any accepted criteria, and I am happy about it because I hate
to be categorized. I will turn away from heaven itself if I see the so-called saints there. I have seen
enough of them on the earth itself. I am not a saint. I am a totally different kind of man – what I call
Zorba the Buddha.
Yet, knowing my notoriety, knowing perfectly well all the condemnation being thrown at me from all
the so-called respectable places, he became my disciple. That is courage, immense courage. Even
I was surprised when he touched my feet for the first time. I wept – in my room of course, so nobody
could see it. I feel those tears still in my eyes. When he asked to be initiated I could not believe it.
At that moment I was just silent. I could not say yes or no, I was simply silent, shocked, surprised.
Yes, you have the right expression in your language: ’taken by surprise’ – and taken so powerfully.
What was the number? Not you Ashu; you go beyond numbers. Let me linger a little more on the
numbers.
”The next one is number four, Osho.”
Next one is number four – good. You are clever. You did not say third, you said, ”The next one is
number four.” You know you cannot cheat me. You understand perfectly that if you say third then I
will continue with the third next. Okay, once in a while I allow my disciples to have their own way.
Fourth: The fourth name is Dionysius. I have spoken about his statements, which are only fragments
noted down by his disciples, but I have spoken on him only to make it known to the world that people
like Dionysius should not be forgotten. They are the real people.
The real people can be counted on your fingers. The real person is one who has encountered the
real, not only from the outside as an object, but as his own subjectivity. Dionysius belongs to the
great world of the buddhas. I refer again to his few statements – I cannot call it a book; a book needs
to be a little more than just fragments.
Books I Have Loved 45 Osho
CHAPTER 8.
Fifth... I come to one of the strangest moments in this series. There is a book called AT THE FEET
OF THE MASTER. The name of the author as given is Jiddhu Krishnamurti, but Krishnamurti says
he does not even remember having written it. It was written long, long ago, back when Krishnamurti
was only somewhere between nine and ten years old. How can he remember all that time ago when
it was published? But it is a great work.
I want to disclose for the first time to the world who the real author is: Annie Besant! Annie Besant
wrote the book, not Krishnamurti. Then why did she not call it her own work? There was a reason
behind it. She wanted Krishnamurti to be known to the world as a master. It was just a mother’s
ambition. She had brought up Krishnamurti, and she loved him just as any mother loves her own
child. Her only desire in her old age was that Krishnamurti become a world teacher, jagatguru. Now,
how could Krishnamurti be declared a world teacher if he has nothing to say to the world? In this
book, AT THE FEET OF THE MASTER, she tried to fulfill that demand.
Krishnamurti is not the author of that book. He himself says he does not remember ever having
written it. He is a sincere man, true and honest, but the book is still being sold in his name. He
should prevent it. He should make it clear to the publishers of the book that he is not the author of it.
If they want to publish it, then publish it anonymously. But he has not done that. That’s what makes
me say he is still in the ninth picture of the ten cards of Zen, the Ten Zen Bulls. He cannot deny it,
he simply says he cannot remember. Deny it! Say it is not your work.
But the book is beautiful. In fact anybody would be proud to have written it. Those who want to travel
the path and be in tune with a master must study AT THE FEET OF THE MASTER. I say study, not
read, because one reads fiction, or spiritual fictions like Lobsang Rampa and his dozens of books,
or the books of so many fictitious people. There are many around today, because there is a need, a
market. Anybody can be a master now....
Baba Freejohn... I laugh. What a degradation! Even Freejohn, who has now changed not himself,
only his name.... He no longer calls himself baba. He used to call himself baba because he was
a disciple of Baba Muktananda. In India, out of love a master is called baba, so he started calling
himself baba. But then, realizing that it was imitative, he dropped it. He now calls himself Dada
Freejohn. It is the same; whether dada or baba, it is all nonsense. But these people are all around.
Beware of them. Unless you are totally clear, there is every possibility of being caught in somebody’s
net.
Sixth, by another Sufi mystic, Junnaid, the master of al-Hillaj Mansoor.... Al-Hillaj became world
famous because he was murdered; hence Junnaid fell into shadow. But the few sentences,
fragments, that have survived from Junnaid are really great. Otherwise how could he have produced
a disciple like al-Hillaj Mansoor? Only a few stories, verses and statements remain, all of them
fragmentary. That is the way of the mystic: he does not even bother to connect them into a whole.
He does not make a garland of flowers, but only heaps them. It is up to you to choose.
Junnaid said to al-Hillaj Mansoor, ”What you have known, keep it to yourself. Do not shout ana’l haq!
so loudly. If you say it, you will say it in such a way that nobody can hear you.”
Everybody has been unjust to Junnaid. They thought he was a little afraid. It is not so. It is easy
to know the truth, it is easy to declare it; it is immensely difficult to keep it in your heart undeclared,
unpronounced. Let those who want come to the well of your being, to your silence.
Books I Have Loved 46 Osho
CHAPTER 8.
Seventh is a book by a man Junnaid would have loved: Meher Baba. He was silent for thirty years.
Nobody has been silent for so long. Mahavira was silent for only twelve years, that was the record.
Meher Baba broke all records. Thirty years of silence! He used to make gestures with his hands, as
I do when I speak, because there are a few things which can only be said through gestures. Meher
Baba dropped the words, but he could not drop the gestures. We are fortunate that he did not drop
gestures too. The intimate ones who lived with him started writing notes through his gestures, and
the book that was published after thirty years of Meher Baba’s silence has a strange title, as it should
have. The title of the book is GOD SPEAKS.
Meher Baba lived in silence and died in silence. He never spoke, but his silence was itself his
statement, his expression, his song. So it is not really strange to title the book GOD SPEAKS.
There is a Zen book which says: The flower does not speak. It is wrong, absolutely wrong. The
flower speaks too. Of course it does not speak in English or Japanese or Sanskrit; it speaks in the
language of flowers. It speaks through its perfume. I know it well because I am allergic to perfume.
I can hear a flower speaking from miles away, so I am speaking from my own experience. It is not
a metaphor. I say again, a flower speaks too, but its language is that of flowers. GOD SPEAKS,
however it sounds, is true about Meher Baba. He spoke without speaking at all.
Number please, Devageet?
”Number eight, Osho.”
We have traveled long; just a little more patience.
Eighth is a very unknown book. It should not be unknown because it was written by George Bernard
Shaw. The book is called MAXIMS FOR A REVOLUTIONARY. All his other books are well known
except for MAXIMS FOR A REVOLUTIONARY. Only an insane man like me can choose it. I have
forgotten everything else he has written – it is all rubbish, just garbage.
By the way, one of my sannyasins here is called Bodhigarbha. Garbha means pregnant; the name
means ’pregnant with a buddha, ready to be born as a buddha’. Some people call him Bodhi
Garbage – I love it. It is far truer: Bodhi Garbage – yes, if you can attain to buddhahood, to bodhi,
even garbage will become divine; otherwise everything is garbage already.
I love George Bernard Shaw’s small book MAXIMS FOR A REVOLUTIONARY – forgotten by
all, but not by me. I choose strange things, strange people, strange places. MAXIMS FOR A
REVOLUTIONARY seems to have descended on George Bernard Shaw... because otherwise he
was just a skeptic. He was not even a saint, not enlightened nor even thinking about enlightenment.
He may not have even heard the word; he belonged to a totally different world.
By the way, I can tell you that he loved a girl. He fell in love and wanted to marry her, but the girl
wanted to become enlightened. She wanted to seek the truth, so she went away to India. That
woman was none other than Annie Besant. Thank God G.B.S. could not persuade her to become
his wife; otherwise we would have missed a tremendously powerful woman. Her insight, her love,
her wisdom... yes, she was a witch. I really mean she was a witch. I don’t mean bitch, I mean witch.
’Witch’ is really a beautiful word; it means wise.
Books I Have Loved 47 Osho
CHAPTER 8.
This is a man’s world. When a man becomes wise he is called a buddha, a christ, a prophet; when
a woman becomes wise she is called a witch. Look at the unfairness of it. But the original meaning
of the word is beautiful.
MAXIMS FOR A REVOLUTIONARY begins... the first maxim is: There are no golden rules, this is
the first rule. Now, even this small statement is of tremendous beauty. There are no golden rules....
Yes, there are none; this is the only golden rule. For the remainder you will have to study the book.
Remember, whenever I say study I mean meditate over it. Whenever I say read it, meditation is not
required. Only acquaintance with the language will do.
NINTH... am I right, Devageet?
”Yes, Osho.”
So good to hear once in a while that I am right. I have not heard it for at least forty years. Nobody in
my family ever said it. I was always wrong. And I thank God that I was wrong, not ’right’ according
to them, but wrong according to myself. None of my teachers ever said I was right. I was always
wrong.
It was a daily routine, almost the usual practice, that I was sent to the headmaster to be punished.
The captain of the class would take me to the headmaster, who used to then ask me what I had
done that day. But by and by the headmaster stopped asking. I would go there and he would punish
me, slap me on the face, and that was all. He did not even ask what wrong I had done.
Once it happened – and still I laugh at the incident – that the captain of the class did something
wrong. My teacher jokingly sent the captain to the headmaster with me. I had to take the captain
to the headmaster for him to be punished, but before I could say anything he had already punished
me! I laughed, and he said, ”What is the matter?”
I said, ”Today you were meant to punish the other fellow. I have come with him. He did not bring me,
I have brought him, and you have already slapped my face!”
The headmaster said, ”Sorry.”
I said, ”I don’t believe in words. Let me slap you!” – and I really slapped him.
Now the old man is in his grave. I feel sorry that I slapped him, but I didn’t slap him too hard... just
very softly, just like a breeze passing through the pine trees.
It is so good to hear just once that I am right. Just to hear it again.... Is it the eighth number? Now
you must be in difficulty. No, I know already it is the ninth. Okay.
Ninth. My choice for the ninth is Hui Neng, the Chinese successor to Bodhidharma. THE
TEACHINGS OF HUI NENG are as yet unknown, and untranslated outside Japan.
Hui Neng is one of the pinnacles, the very crescendo a man can rise to. Hui Neng does not say
much; he only gives hints, just a few hints. But they are enough. Like footprints, if you can follow
Books I Have Loved 48 Osho
CHAPTER 8.
you will reach. What he says is essentially not different from Buddha or Jesus, but the way he says
it is his own, authentically original. He says it in his own way, and that proves he is not a parrot, not
a pope or a priest.
Hui Neng can be summarized very easily, but can only be realized by those who can risk all. He can
be summarized very easily because all that he says is: Do not think; be. But to realize it one will
need many lives, unless one is utterly intelligent; then, this very moment, herenow, it can become a
reality in you. It is already a reality in me, why can’t it become a reality in you? Except you, nobody
is preventing it.
Tenth, and at last the last. I am afraid – that’s why I remained a little bit hesitant, to say or not to say
– Mulla Nasruddin! He is not a fictitious figure, he was a Sufi and his grave still exists. But he was
such a man that he could not resist even to joke from his grave. He made a will that his gravestone
will be nothing but a door, locked, and the keys thrown away into the ocean.
Now this is strange! People go to see his grave: they can go round and round the door because
there are no walls, there is just a door standing there, no walls at all! – and the door is locked. The
man Mulla Nasruddin must be laughing in his grave.
I have loved no one as I have loved Nasruddin. He is one of the men who has brought religion and
laughter together; otherwise they have always stood back to back. Nasruddin forced them to drop
their old enmity and become friends, and when religion and laughter meet, when meditation laughs,
and when laughter meditates, the miracle happens... the miracle of all miracles.
Just two minutes for me.
I always love to stop when things are at their climax.
Books I Have Loved 49 Osho
CHAPTER 9
1984 in Lao Tzu House, Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, USA
Now is my time. I don’t think anybody has spoken in a dentist’s chair. I feel privileged. I see buddhas
envious of me.
The P.S. continues....
The first book today: THE DESTINY OF THE MIND by Haas. I don’t know how his name is
pronounced: h-a-a-s – I pronounce it Haas. The book is not very well known for the simple reason
that it is so profound. I think this fellow Haas must be a German; even so he has created a book of
immense significance. He is not a poet, he writes like a mathematician. He is the man who gave me
the word philosia.
Philosophy means ’love of wisdom’; philo is love, and sophia is wisdom, but it cannot be applicable
to darshan, the Eastern way of looking at the whole. Philosophy is harsh.
In his book DESTINY OF THE MIND, Haas uses for darshan not the word philosophy but philosia.
Philo still means love, but osia means truth, the real, the ultimately real – not love of knowledge or
wisdom, but love for the truth, palatable or unpalatable, it does not matter.
This is one of those books which has brought East and West closer – but just closer, books cannot
do anything more. For the meeting to happen a man is needed, not a book, and Haas was not
that man. His book is beautiful, but he himself is just ordinary. For the real meeting a Buddha, a
Bodhidharma, a Jesus, a Mohammed or a Baal Shem is needed. In short, meditation is needed, and
I don’t think that this man Haas ever meditated. He may have concentrated – Germans know much
about concentration, concentration camps... great! I have been holding meditation camps and they
have been holding concentration camps! Concentration is German, meditation is not. Yes, once in
50
CHAPTER 9.
a while even in Germany a meditator has happened, but that is not the rule, only the exception, and
the exception always proves the rule. I know Eckhart, and I know Boehme....
My second name today is Eckhart. I would have loved for him to have been born in the East. To
be born among Germans and then to write or speak about the ultimate is a difficult job. But the
poor man did it, and did it perfectly. Germans are Germans; whatsoever they do, they do it perfectly.
Even today it seems one German sannyasin is still knocking. Perfection! Listen to his knocks, how
beautiful they sound amidst all this silence.
Eckhart was uneducated. It is strange that many of the mystics are uneducated. There must
be something wrong with education. Why are there not so many educated mystics? Education
must be destroying something, and that prevents people from becoming mystics. Yes, education
destroys. Twenty-five years continuously, from the kindergarten to the postgraduate courses in
university, it goes on destroying in you whatsoever is beautiful and aesthetic. The lotus is crushed
under scholarship, the rose is murdered by the so-called professors, teachers, vice-chancellors,
chancellors. What beautiful names they have chosen for themselves.
The real education has not begun yet. It has to begin. It will be the education of the heart, not of the
head; of the feminine in you, not the masculine.
It is a wonder that Eckhart, among the Germans, the most male chauvinist race in the world,
remained yet in his heart, and spoke from there. Uneducated, poor, of no political status, of no
economic status, of no status at all – just a beggar, but so rich. Very few people have been so rich.
Rich in his being – his BEING.
Write BEING in capital letters.
These two words, being and becoming, have to be understood. Becoming is a process with no
beginning and no end, a continuum. But being is not a process at all, it simply is. Call it is-ness, and
you will be very close to it.
Being is neither of time nor of space, it is a transcendence. Transcendence – again, write
TRANSCENDENCE in capital letters. Alas that you cannot write it in golden letters. It is a word
that should be written in gold, pure gold – not eighteen carat but twenty-four carat, one hundred
percent gold.
Eckhart said only a few things, but even those were enough to irritate the ugly priesthood, the pope
and the devils that surround him. They immediately stopped Eckhart. They told him what to say and
what not to say. It needs a madman like me not to listen to these fools. But Eckhart was a simple
man; he listened, listened to authority. A German is after all a German. When you say ”Left turn” he
turns left; when you say ”Right turn” he turns right.
I was expelled from army training at the university because when they said ”Right turn” I would think
it over. Everybody would immediately turn except me. The military officer was puzzled. He said,
”What’s the matter with you? Can’t you hear? Is something wrong with your ears?”
I said, ”No, something is wrong with me. I don’t see the point. Why should I turn left or right? There
is no necessity, no reason. And these poor fools who have turned to the right and then to the left will
come to the same position that I am in already.”
Books I Have Loved 51 Osho
CHAPTER 9.
Naturally I was expelled – and I was immensely happy. Everybody thought it was bad luck, and I
thought it was good luck. They whispered that something must be wrong with me: ”He was expelled
and yet he is enjoying....” I threw a party with wine and all.
Eckhart listened. A German cannot be really enlightened, it will be very difficult. Vimalkirti may be
the first German who became enlightened. But Eckhart was very close; one step more and the
world will end... and the opening, the opening of the doors, the opening to the beyond. But he said
– even though he was a German, and even under pressure from the pope – he said beautiful things.
Just a little bit of truth has entered into his sayings, hence I include him.
Third, another German: Boehme. I don’t know how to pronounce his name, but who cares! That is
how it is written: B-o-e-h-m-e. Germans must pronounce it differently, that much I am certain. But
I am not a German. I don’t have to compromise with anyone in any way. I have always called him
”Boomay.” Even if he comes to me and says, ”That’s not exactly my name,” I will say, ”Get lost! To
me this is your name, and this is going to be your name, Boomay.”
Strangely, whenever Arpita comes into my room I smell Boehme, I suddenly remember Boehme.
Maybe it’s just an association, because he was a shoemaker and Arpita is my shoemaker. But
Arpita, you are blessed that you remind me of Boehme, one of the most beautiful Germans ever.
Again, he was utterly poor. It seems one has to be poor to be wise; that has been the case up to
now. But not after me. After me you have to be rich to be enlightened. Let me repeat it: you have to
be rich to be enlightened.
Jesus says the rich will not enter into his kingdom of God. He was talking in the old way. I say
emphatically that only the richest will enter into the kingdom of God. And remember, what I am
saying is the same as what Jesus was saying, it is not contradictory. The ’poor’ in Jesus’ terminology
and the ’rich’ in my terminology mean exactly the same. He calls a man poor who has lost himself,
his ego, and that is the man I call rich. The more egoless you are the richer you are. But in the past,
very rarely was a man like Boehme born into a rich family, particularly in the West.
It is not so in the East. Buddha was a prince, Mahavira was a prince; the twenty-four tirthankaras of
the Jainas were all kings. Krishna was a king, Rama was a king. All were rich, immensely rich. It
signifies something; it signifies the richness I am talking about. A man is rich when his ego is lost.
When he is no more, he is.
Boehme says a few things, just a few. He could not say many things, so don’t be afraid. The one
thing I would like to mention is: The heart is the temple of God. Yes, Boehme, it is the heart not the
head.
Fourth: A man, Idries Shah. I will not mention any of his books because all of them are beautiful. I
recommend every one of this man’s books.
Don’t be afraid, I am still insane. Nothing can make me sane. But one book by Idries Shah towers
above all the others. All are beautiful, I would like to mention them all, but the book THE SUFIS is
just a diamond. The value of what he has done in THE SUFIS is immeasurable.
Don’t interrupt, this is going beautifully.
Books I Have Loved 52 Osho
CHAPTER 9.
Talking, for me, is so easy. I can even talk while asleep, and very rationally too. Good. Whenever
I recognize something like this I always appreciate it. And this is beautiful – this is what you will
understand if you can understand Idries Shah’s book THE SUFIS. He is the man who introduced
Mulla Nasruddin to the West, and he has done an incredible service. He cannot be repaid. The West
has to remain obliged to him forever. Idries Shah has made just the small anecdotes of Nasruddin
even more beautiful. This man not only has the capacity to exactly translate the parables, but even
to beautify them, to make them more poignant, sharper. I include all of his books.
Is my number right?
”Yes, Osho.”
Fifth, I am going to include another man, Alan Watts, with all his books. I have loved this man
immensely. I have loved Buddha for different reasons; I have loved Solomon for a different reason.
They are enlightened, Alan Watts is not. He is an American... not a born American, that’s his only
hope; he just emigrated there. But he has written tremendously valuable books. THE WAY OF ZEN
should be counted as one of the most important; THIS IS IT is a tremendous work of beauty and
understanding – and from a man who is yet unenlightened; hence it is more appreciable.
When you are enlightened, whatsoever you say is beautiful; it has to be. But when you are not
enlightened and groping in the dark, and yet can find a small window of light, that’s tremendous,
fantastic. Alan Watts was a drunkard, but still he was very close.
He was once an ordained Christian priest – what a misfortune! – but he renounced it. Very
few people have the guts to renounce the priesthood, because it provides so many things of the
world. He renounced all that and became almost a hobo. But what a hobo! – it reminds one of
Bodhidharma, Basho, or Rinzai. Alan Watts cannot remain long without becoming a buddha. He
died long ago; by this time he must be leaving school... must be ready to come to me! I am waiting
for all these people. Alan Watts is one of them – I am waiting for him.
Sixth.... Just now, by the way, I mentioned the name Rinzai. My sixth is his SAYINGS, the collection
of his sayings. Is my number correct?
”Yes, Osho.”
That’s good. You whispered something to Ashu, so I wondered. Excuse me for interrupting you. You
are concentrating so much on your notes.
Rinzai... his Chinese name is Lin Chi; in Japanese it is Rinzai. I choose the Japanese, Rinzai.
Rinzai looks more beautiful, more aesthetic.
THE SAYINGS of Rinzai are just dynamite. For instance he says: You fools, you followers of Buddha,
renounce him! Unless you renounce him you will not find him. Rinzai loved Buddha that’s why he
said this. He also said: Before you use the name Gautam Buddha, remember that that name is not
the reality. The buddha outside in the pagoda is not the real buddha. It is within you... of whom you
are completely unaware, of whom you have never heard. That is the real buddha. Get rid of the
outer buddha so you can get the inner. Rinzai says: There is no doctrine, no teaching, no Buddha.
And remember, he was not an enemy of Buddha but a follower, a disciple.
Books I Have Loved 53 Osho
CHAPTER 9.
It was Rinzai who took the flower of Zen away from China to Japan. He transmitted the spirit of Zen to
the Japanese language, and not only to the language but to the culture itself, to flower arrangement,
to pottery, to gardening and whatnot. One man, one single man, transformed the whole life of a
nation.
Seventh: The seventh is not an enlightened man like Rinzai, but very close. Hazrat Inayat Khan,
the man who introduced Sufism to the West. He did not write a book, but all his lectures have been
collected into twelve volumes. Here and there they are beautiful. Forgive me, I cannot say they are
all beautiful, but here and there, once in a while, particularly when he is talking about a Sufi story,
he is beautiful.
He was also a musician; in that way he was really a maestro. He was not a master in the spiritual
world, but in the world of music he certainly was. But once in a while he flew to the spiritual, he rose
beyond the clouds... to fall back with a thud, of course. He must have suffered from... Devaraj, what
do you call it? Multi-fracture? Multiple fractures, perhaps that’s the right word.
Eighth: The son of Hazrat Inayat Khan. His name is well known to the seekers in the West: Hazrat
Vilayat Ali Khan. He is a beautiful man. He is still living. The father is dead, Vilayat is alive, and
when I say alive I really mean it – not only breathing... breathing of course, but not only breathing.
All his books are also included hereby. Vilayat Ali Khan is also a musician, just like his father, only of
a higher quality, of a greater depth. He is more profound... and – listen to this pause – more silent
too.
Ninth: Again I want to include another book by Kahlil Gibran, JESUS, THE SON OF MAN. It is one
of the books which is almost ignored. Christians ignore it because it calls Jesus the son of man.
They not only ignore it, they condemn it. And of course, who else cares about Jesus? If Christians
themselves are condemning him, then nobody else cares about it.
Kahlil Gibran is a Syrian from very close to Jerusalem. In fact in the hills of Syria, people – a few
people at least – still speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Amid those high- reaching cedars,
anyone, even a fool, is bound to be amazed, mystified. Kahlil Gibran was born in Syria under the
cedars reaching towards the stars. He comes very close in representing the real man Jesus – closer
than the four so-called disciples who wrote the gospels. They are more gossips than gospels. Kahlil
Gibran is closer, but Christians were angry because he calls Jesus the son of man. I loved the book.
The book related different people’s stories about Jesus: a laborer, a farmer, a fisherman, a taxcollector – yes, even a tax-collector – a man, a woman, all possibilities. It is as if Kahlil Gibran is
asking many people about Jesus – the real Jesus, not the Christian Jesus; the real Jesus, made of
flesh... and the stories are so beautiful. Each story needs to be meditated upon. JESUS, THE SON
OF MAN is my ninth selection for today.
Tenth: Another book by Kahlil Gibran, THE MADMAN. I cannot leave it out, although I confess I
wanted to. I wanted to leave it out because I am that madman about whom he is talking. But I
cannot leave it out. He talks so meaningfully, so authentically about the very innermost core of the
madman. And this madman is no ordinary madman, but a Buddha, a Rinzai, a Kabir. I wonder – I
have always wondered – how Kahlil Gibran could manage it. He himself was not the madman, he
himself was not the enlightened one. He was born in Syria, but lived unfortunately in America.
Books I Have Loved 54 Osho
CHAPTER 9.
But there are wonders and wonders, questions without answers. How did he manage? Perhaps he
did not manage it himself... perhaps something, someone – what Sufis call Khidr, and Theosophists
call K.H., Koothumi – must have taken possession of him. He was possessed, but not always. When
he was not writing he was a very ordinary man, in fact more ordinary than the so-called ordinary man:
full of jealousy, anger, passions of all kinds. But once in a while he became possessed, possessed
from above, and then something started pouring through him... paintings, poetry, parables.
Books I Have Loved 55 Osho
CHAPTER 10
1984 in Lao Tzu House, Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, USA
Okay, how many books have I talked about in the postscript – forty?
”Thirty, I think, Osho.”
Thirty? Good. Such a relief, because so many books are still waiting. You could understand my
relief only if you had to choose one book out of a thousand, and that’s exactly what I am doing. The
postscript continues.
The first book, Jean-Paul Sartre’s BEING AND NOTHINGNESS. First I must mention that I don’t
like the man. I don’t like him because he is a snob. He is one of the most snobbish people of this
century. I call him a snob because he has become the leader of Existentialism without knowing at
all what it means to be existential. But the book is good – not for my disciples but for those who have
gone a little bit nuts, just a little bit. It is unreadable.
If you are a little bit nuts it will bring you to your senses. It is a great work in that sense – medicinal.
Devaraj, note it: medicinal. It should be prescribed in all mad asylums. Each madman should be
forced to read it, study it. If it cannot bring you to sanity nothing can. But only to first-degree nuts,
like philosophers, professors, mathematicians, scientists – but only the first degree, not those very
advanced in madness.
The existentialism of which Jean-Paul Sartre is the representative is a mockery. Without ever
knowing anything of meditation he talks about ’being’, and he talks about ’nothingness’. Alas, they
are not two: being is no-thingness; that is why Buddha has called being, anatta – no-self. Gautama
the Buddha is the only man in history to call self ’no-self’. I love Buddha for a thousand and one
reasons; this is only one of the reasons. The thousand I cannot count because of the shortage of
time. Perhaps one day I may start talking about those one thousand reasons too....
56
CHAPTER 10.
But Jean-Paul Sartre I dislike – just dislike, not even hate, because hate is a strong word; I save it
for the second book. Jean-Paul Sartre knows nothing of existence, but he has created a jargon, a
philosophical jargon, intellectual gymnastics. And it really is gymnastics. If you can read ten pages
of BEING AND NOTHINGNESS, either you will become sane or insane. But to read ten pages is a
difficult task. When I was a professor I gave it to many of my students, but nobody ever completed
it. Nobody could even read ten pages – one page was too much; in fact one paragraph itself was
too much. You cannot make any head or tail of it. And there are a thousand pages or more. It is a
big book.
I remember it in my postscript because though I dislike the man, I may dislike his philosophy... yes,
I will call it philosophy, even though he wanted it to be called anti-philosophy. I cannot call it antiphilosophy for the simple reason that every anti-philosophy ultimately proves to be only another
philosophy. Existence is neither philosophical nor anti-philosophical. It is.
I include the book because he has done such a tremendous task. It is one of the most monumental
books ever written, with such skill, such logic. And yet the man was just ordinary, a communist
– that’s another reason why I dislike him. A man who knows existence cannot be a communist,
because he will know that equality is impossible. Inequality is the way things are. Nothing is equal
and nothing can ever be equal. Equality is only a dream, a dream of stupid people. Existence is
multidimensional inequality.
Second: I will wait... Devageet’s ink has run out. What a fountain pen you have! My God, it seems
it must have belonged to Adam and Eve! What a noise it makes! But one cannot expect anything
else in this Noah’s Ark.
The second – because the noise has stopped – the second is Martin Heidegger, TIME AND BEING.
I hate this man. He was not only a communist, but a fascist too, a follower of Adolf Hitler. I cannot
believe what the Germans can do! He was such a talented man, a genius, and yet a supporter
of that retarded imbecile Adolf Hitler. I am simply amazed. But the book is good – again not for
my disciples, but for those who are very advanced in their madness. If you are really advanced in
madness, read TIME AND BEING. It is absolutely un-understandable. It will hit you like a hammer
on the head. But there are a few beautiful glimpses in it. Yes, when somebody hits you on the head
with a hammer, even during the day you start seeing stars. This book is just like that: there are a
few stars in it.
The book is not complete. Martin Heidegger had promised to bring out a second part. He continued
to promise again and again throughout his whole life, but he never produced the second part, thank
God! I think he himself could not understand what he had written, so how to continue it? How to
bring out the second part? And the second part was going to be the culmination of his philosophy.
It was better not to produce it, and not to become a laughingstock. He died without producing the
second part. But even the first part is good for advanced insane people – and there are many; that
is why I am talking about these books and including them in my list.
Third: This is for the real adepts in madness, who have gone beyond all psychiatry, psychoanalysis,
who are unhelpable. This third book is again the work of a German, Ludwig Wittgenstein. Just listen
to its title: TRACTATUS LOGICO PHILOSOPHICUS. We will just call it TRACTATUS. It is one of
the most difficult books in existence. Even a man like G.E.Moore, a great English philosopher, and
Books I Have Loved 57 Osho
CHAPTER 10.
Bertrand Russell, another great philosopher – not only English but a philosopher of the whole world
– both agreed that this man Wittgenstein was far superior to them both.
Ludwig Wittgenstein was really a lovable man. I don’t hate him, but I don’t dislike him. I like him
and I love him, but not his book. His book is only gymnastics. Only once in a while after pages and
pages you may come across a sentence which is luminous. For example: That which cannot be
spoken should not be spoken; one should be silent about it. Now this is a beautiful statement. Even
saints, mystics, poets, can learn much from this sentence. That which cannot be spoken must not
be spoken of.
Wittgenstein writes in a mathematical way, small sentences, not even paragraphs – sutras. But for
the very advanced insane man this book can be of immense help. It can hit him exactly in his soul,
not only in the head. Just like a nail it can penetrate into his very being. That may wake him from
his nightmare.
Ludwig Wittgenstein was a lovable man. He was offered one of the most cherished chairs of
philosophy at Oxford. He declined. That’s what I love in him. He went to become a farmer and
fisherman. This is lovable in the man. This is more existential than Jean-Paul Sartre, although
Wittgenstein never talked of existentialism. Existentialism, by the way, cannot be talked about; you
have to live it, there is no other way.
This book was written when Wittgenstein was studying under G.E.Moore and Bertrand Russell.
Two great philosophers of Britain, and a German... it was enough to create TRACTATUS LOGICO
PHILOSOPHICUS. Translated it means Wittgenstein, Moore and Russell. I, on my part, would rather
have seen Wittgenstein sitting at the feet of Gurdjieff than studying with Moore and Russell. That
was the right place for him, but he missed. Perhaps next time, I mean next life... for him, not for
me. For me this is enough, this is the last. But for him, at least once he needs to be in the company
of a man like Gurdjieff or Chuang Tzu, Bodhidharma – but not Moore, Russell, not Whitehead. He
was associating with these people, the wrong people. A right man in the company of wrong people,
that’s what destroyed him.
My experience is, in the right company even a wrong person becomes right, and vice-versa: in a
wrong company, even a right person becomes wrong. But this only applies to unenlightened men,
right or wrong, both. An enlightened person cannot be influenced. He can associate with anyone
– Jesus with Magdalena, a prostitute; Buddha with a murderer, a murderer who had killed nine
hundred and ninety-nine people. He had taken a vow to kill one thousand people, and he was going
to kill Buddha too; that’s how he came into contact with Buddha.
The murderer’s name is not known. The name people gave to him was Angulimala, which means
’the man who wears a garland of fingers’. That was his way. He would kill a man, cut off his fingers
and put them on his garland, just to keep count of the number of people he had killed. Only ten
fingers were missing to make up the thousand; in other words only one man more.... Then Buddha
appeared. He was just moving on that road from one village to another. Angulimala shouted, ”Stop!”
Buddha said, ”Great. That’s what I have been telling people: Stop! But, my friend, who listens?”
Angulimala looked amazed: Is this man insane? And Buddha continued walking towards
Angulimala. Angulimala again shouted, ”Stop! It seems you don’t know that I am a murderer,
Books I Have Loved 58 Osho
CHAPTER 10.
and I have taken a vow to kill one thousand people. Even my own mother has stopped seeing me,
because only one person is missing.... I will kill you... but you look so beautiful that if you stop and
turn back I may not kill you.”
Buddha said, ”Forget about it. I have never turned back in my life, and as far as stopping is
concerned, I stopped forty years ago; since then there is nobody left to move. And as far as killing
me is concerned, you can do it anyway. Everything born is going to die.”
Angulimala saw the man, fell at his feet, and was transformed. Angulimala could not change Buddha,
Buddha changed Angulimala. Magdalena the prostitute could not change Jesus, but Jesus changed
the woman.
So what I said is only applicable to so-called ordinary humanity, it is not applicable to those who are
awakened. Wittgenstein can become awakened; he could have become awakened even in this life.
Alas, he associated with wrong company. But his book can be of great help to those who are really
third-degree insane. If they can make any sense out of it, they will come back to sanity.
Fourth: Before I utter the name of the fourth, I feel tremendously thankful to existence.... Now I am
going to talk about a man who was beyond numbers, Vimalkirti. The name of his book is NIRDESH
SUTRA. Our Vimalkirti was not the only Vimalkirti; in fact I had given him the name because of
this Vimalkirti of whom I am going to talk to you. His statements are called VIMALKIRTI NIRDESH
SUTRA. NIRDESH SUTRA means ’guidelines.’
Vimalkirti was one of the most wonderful men; even a Buddha could be jealous of this man. He
was a disciple of Buddha, but never became a disciple formally, he was never initiated by Buddha
outwardly. And he was such a terrible man that all Buddha’s disciples were afraid of him. They never
wanted him to become a disciple. Just to see him on the way, or to greet him, was enough for him to
say something shocking. To shock was his method. Gurdjieff would have loved him – or who knows,
even Gurdjieff may have been shocked. The man was really terrible, a real man.
It is said he was sick and Buddha asked Sariputta to go and see the old man and ask about his
health. Sariputta said, ”I have never said no to you, but this time I say it, and I say it emphatically:
No! I don’t want to go. Send somebody else. That man is really terrible. Even on his deathbed he
will create trouble for me. I don’t want to go.”
Buddha asked everybody, and nobody was ready to go except one man, Manjushree, the first of
Buddha’s disciples to become enlightened. He went, and that is how this book came to be created.
It is a dialogue. Our Vimalkirti was given the name because of this man. The original Vimalkirti was
dying on his bed, and Manjushree was asking him questions, or rather answering his questions.
That’s how the VIMALKIRTI NIRDESH SUTRA was born – a really great work.
Nobody seems bothered about it because it is not a book of any particular religion. It is not even
a book of the Buddhists, because he was never a formal disciple of Buddha. People pay so much
respect to the form that they forget the spirit. I recommend the book to all true seekers. They will
find a mine of diamonds.
Fifth, I want to bring J.Krishnamurti back to your notice again. The name of the book is
COMMENTARIES ON LIVING. There are many volumes of it. It is made of the same stuff stars
are made from.
Books I Have Loved 59 Osho
CHAPTER 10.
COMMENTARIES ON LIVING is his diary. Once in a while he writes something in his diary... a
beautiful sunset, an ancient tree, or just the evening... birds coming back home... anything... a river
rushing to the ocean... whatever he feels, he sometimes notes it down. That’s how this book was
born. It is not written systematically, it is a diary. Yet to just read it is enough to transport you to
another world – the world of beauty, or far better, beautitude. Can you see my tears?
I have not read for some time, but just the mention of this book is enough to bring tears to my eyes.
I love the book. It is one of the greatest books ever written. I have said before that Krishnamurti’s
FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM is his best book, which he has not been able to transcend – of course
not as a book, because COMMENTARIES is only a diary, not a book in the real sense, but all the
same I include it.
Sixth... is my number correct?
”Yes, Osho.”
So good to hear ”Yes, Osho.” Just to hear yes is so good, so nourishing, so vitalizing. I cannot be
thankful enough for it. And I have thousands of sannyasins around the world singing ”Yes, Osho,
yes!” I must consider myself the most fortunate man who has ever been on the earth, or any other
planet.
Sixth... the sixth book is again called COMMENTARIES, an immense work of five volumes by
Maurice Nicoll. Remember, I have always pronounced his name Morris Nickoal. Just this evening I
asked Gudia what is the real, exact, proper English pronunciation – because he was an Englishman.
She said, ”Nickle.”
I said, ”My God! My whole life I have been calling him Nickoal, just because of the spelling: N-i-c-ol-l. I wonder how it can be pronounced Nickle. Nickoal seems to be just the right pronunciation. But
right or wrong, if Gudia says so – she is properly English – then I will say okay. I will call him Morris
Nickle... and his COMMENTARIES.
Nicoll was a disciple of Gurdjieff, and unlike Ouspensky, he never betrayed, he was not a Judas. A
true disciple to the very last breath and beyond it too. The commentaries of Nicoll are vast – I don’t
think anybody reads them – thousands and thousands of pages. But if one takes the trouble one is
immensely benefited. In my opinion Nicoll’s COMMENTARIES should be considered as one of the
best books in the world.
Seventh: Again a book by another disciple of Gurdjieff, Hartmann. The book is OUR LIFE WITH
GURDJIEFF. Hartmann – I don’t know the exact pronunciation... because I can hear a little giggle
somewhere. But don’t be bothered about the pronunciation. Hartmann and his wife were both
disciples of Gurdjieff. Hartmann was a musician and played for Gurdjieff’s dances. Gurdjieff used
dances as meditations, not only for the disciples but even for the people who saw the disciples
dancing.
In New York, when he performed for the first time, Hartmann was playing the piano, the disciples
were dancing, and the moment when Gurdjieff shouted ”Stop!” – it was a stop exercise. Not you
Devageet, you go on writing. When Gurdjieff shouted ”Stop!” the dancers really stopped, in the
Books I Have Loved 60 Osho
CHAPTER 10.
middle of a dance! They were just on the edge of the stage. They all fell on top of one another on
the floor, but still nobody moved! The audience was awestruck. They could not believe that people
could be so obedient. Hartmann wrote the book OUR LIFE WITH GURDJIEFF and it is a beautiful
description by a disciple. It will be helpful to anyone who is on the way.
What is the number?
”That was number seven, Osho.”
Good, you are hearing.
Eighth... and do you see my way of teaching? And do you see that even when I try to annoy you it
is just to teach you something of which you may not be aware right now? But someday you will feel
grateful.
Seventh... is that right?
”It is number eight, Osho.”
So good to be corrected by a disciple, immensely good. A master always feels blessed if a disciple
corrects him. And it is only a question of numbers. When I am trying to correct you all, at least I can
allow you to have a little pleasure as far as numbers are concerned. So what is the number now?
”It is number eight, Osho.”
Good. Sometimes I want to laugh.... Eighth? Good.
The eighth book I am going to talk about is written by Ramanuja, a Hindu mystic. It is called SHREE
PASHA. It is a commentary on BRAHMAN SUTRAS. There are many commentaries on BRAHMAN
SUTRAS – I have already talked about Badrayana’s BRAHMAN SUTRAS. Ramanuja comments on
him in a way which is unique.
The original book is very dry, absolutely desertlike. Of course the desert also has its beauty and its
truth, but Ramanuja in his SHREE PASHA makes it a garden, an oasis. He makes it juicy. I love the
book Ramanuja has written. I don’t like Ramanuja himself because he was a traditionalist. I hate
the traditionalists, the orthodox, from my guts. I consider them to be fanatics – but what can I do,
the book is beautiful; once in a while even a fanatic can do something beautiful. So forgive me for
including it.
Ninth. I have always loved the books of P.D. Ouspensky, though I have never loved the man himself.
He looked like a schoolmaster, not like a master, and can you love a schoolmaster? I tried while
I was in school and failed; in college, and failed; in university, and failed. I could not do it, and I
don’t think anybody can love a schoolmaster – particularly if the schoolmaster is a woman; then it
is impossible! There are a few fools who even marry women who are schoolmasters! They must
be suffering from the disease called by the psychologists ’masochism’; they must be searching for
someone to torture them.
Books I Have Loved 61 Osho
CHAPTER 10.
I don’t like Ouspensky. He was exactly the schoolmaster, even when he was lecturing on the
teachings of Gurdjieff. He would stand before a blackboard with a chalk in his hand, with a table and
chair in front, exactly like a schoolteacher, with specs and all, nothing was missing. And the way he
taught! – I can see why so few people ever became attracted to him, although he was bringing a
golden message.
Secondly, I hate him because he was a Judas. I cannot love anybody who betrays. To betray is to
commit suicide, spiritual suicide. Even Judas had to commit suicide just within twenty-four hours
of Jesus being crucified. Ouspensky is not my love affair, but what can I do? – he was a capable
writer, talented, a genius. This book I am going to mention was a posthumous publication. He never
wanted it to be published during his lifetime. Maybe he was afraid. Maybe he thought it may not
prove up to his expectations.
It is a small book, and its name is THE FUTURE PSYCHOLOGY OF MAN. He wrote in his will that
the book should only be published when he was no more. I don’t like the man, but I must say, in
spite of myself, that in this book he almost predicted me and my sannyasins. He predicted the future
psychology, and that is what I am doing here – the future man, the New Man. This small book must
become a necessary study for all sannyasins.
Tenth... am I still right?
”Yes, Osho.”
Good.
The book I am going to talk about is a Sufi one, THE BOOK OF BAHAUDDIN. The original Sufi
mystic, Bahauddin created the tradition of Sufism. In his small book everything is contained. It is
like a seed. Love, meditation, life, death... he has not left anything out whatsoever. Meditate over it.
Enough for today.
Books I Have Loved 62 Osho
CHAPTER 11
1984 in Lao Tzu House, Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, USA
Okay. How many books have I referred to in the P.S. up to now?
”There have been forty books in the P.S., Osho.”
Good. I am a stubborn man.
First, Colin Wilson’s THE OUTSIDER. It is one of the most influential books of this century – but the
man is ordinary. He is a scholar of tremendous capacity, and yes, there are a few insights here and
there – but the book is beautiful.
As far as Colin Wilson is concerned, he himself is not an outsider; he is a worldly man. I am an
outsider, that’s why I love the book. I love it because although he is not part of the dimension that
he talks about, he writes very very close to the truth. But remember, even if you are close to truth
you are still untrue. You are either true or untrue, there is nothing in between.
The book, THE OUTSIDER, represents a great effort on the part of Wilson to understand from the
outside the world of the outsider; from the outside to look into the outsider, just as if someone is
peeping through your keyhole. He can see a little bit – and Colin Wilson has seen. The book is
worth reading – just reading, not studying. Read it and throw it into the dustbin, because unless
a book comes from a real outsider it is going to be just a far, far away echo... echo of the echo,
reflection of the reflection.
The second, THE ANALECTS OF CONFUCIUS. I don’t like Confucius at all, and I don’t feel any
guilt about not liking him. I feel really relieved that it is now on record. Confucius and Lao Tzu were
contemporaries. Lao Tzu was a little older; Confucius had even gone to see Lao Tzu and came
63
CHAPTER 11.
back trembling, shaken to the very roots, perspiring. His disciples asked, ”What happened in the
cave? ... Because you were both there and nobody else.”
Confucius said, ”It is good that nobody witnessed it. That man, my God, he is a dragon! He would
have killed me, but I escaped. He is truly dangerous.”
Confucius is reporting truly. A man like Lao Tzu can kill you just to resurrect you; and unless one is
ready to die one cannot be reborn. Confucius escaped from his own rebirth.
I have already chosen Lao Tzu, and forever. Confucius belonged to the very ordinary, mundane
world. But let it be noted that I don’t like him; he is a snob. It is strange he was not born in England.
But anyway, China in those days WAS England. In those days England was just barbarious, there
was nothing of value there.
Confucius was a politician, cunning, clever, but not really intelligent; otherwise he would have fallen
at the feet of Lao Tzu, he would not have escaped. He was not only afraid of Lao Tzu, he was afraid
of silence... because Lao Tzu and silence are the same.
But I wanted to include one of Confucius’ most famous books, just to be fair. ANALECTS is his most
important book. To me it is just like the roots of a tree, ugly but very essential – what you call a
necessary evil. ANALECTS is a necessary evil. In it he talks about the world and worldly matters,
politics and all. One disciple asked him, ”Master, what about silence?”
Confucius was irritated, annoyed. He shouted at the disciple and said, ”Shut up! Silence? – silence
you will have in your grave. In life there is no need for it, there are many much more important things
to do.”
This was his attitude. You can understand why I don’t like him. I pity him. He was a good man. Alas,
he came so close to one of the greatest, Lao Tzu, and yet missed! I can only shed a tear for him.
Third: Kahlil Gibran wrote many books in his mother tongue. Those that he wrote in English are
well known: the most famous, THE PROPHET and THE MADMAN... and there are many others.
But he wrote many in his own language, few of which are translated. Of course translations cannot
be the same, but Kahlil Gibran is so great that even in translation you can find something valuable.
I am going to refer to a few translations today. The third is Kahlil Gibran’s THE GARDEN OF THE
PROPHET. It is a translation, but it reminds me of the great Epicurus.
I don’t know that anybody except me has ever called Epicurus great. He has been condemned down
the ages. But I know that when the masses condemn a man there is bound to be something great
in him. Kahlil Gibran’s book, THE GARDEN OF THE PROPHET reminds me of Epicurus because
he used to call his commune The Garden. Everything a person does represents him. Plato called
his commune The Academy – naturally; he was an academician, a great intellectual philosopher.
Epicurus called his commune The Garden. They lived under the trees, under the stars. Once the
king came to see Epicurus because he had heard how these people are immensely happy. He
wanted to know, he was curious as to why these people were so happy: What could be the cause?
– because they didn’t have anything. He was puzzled, because they were really happy, they were
singing and dancing.
Books I Have Loved 64 Osho
CHAPTER 11.
The king said, ”I feel very pleased with you and your people, Epicurus. Would you like a gift from
me?”
Epicurus said to the king, ”If you come again, you could bring a little butter, because for many years
my people have not known butter. They are eating just bread without butter. And one thing more: if
you come again please don’t stand like an outsider; at least for the time you are here become part
of us. Participate, be one of us. Dance, sing. We don’t have anything else to offer you.”
Kahlil Gibran’s book reminds me of Epicurus. I am sorry that I have not mentioned Epicurus, but I
am not responsible for it. His book was burned, destroyed by the Christians. All the copies that were
available were destroyed hundreds of years ago. So I cannot mention his book, but I have brought
him in through Kahlil Gibran and his THE GARDEN OF THE PROPHET.
Fourth... good... another translation of Kahlil Gibran, THE VOICE OF THE MASTER. It must have
been a very beautiful book in the original, because even in translation here and there are traces of
beauty, footprints. But that is bound to be so. The language that Kahlil Gibran spoke is very close
to the language of Jesus. They are neighbors. Kahlil Gibran’s home was Lebanon. He was born in
the hills of Lebanon, under the cedars. They are the greatest trees in the world. Looking at a cedar
of Lebanon you can believe van Gogh, that trees are the desire of the earth to reach the stars. They
are hundreds of feet high and thousands of years old.
Kahlil Gibran represents Jesus in some way; he belongs to the same dimension, although he was
not a christ. He could have been. Just like Confucius, he also missed. There were people alive in
Gibran’s lifetime to whom he could have gone, but the poor fellow was roaming in the dirty streets
of New York. He should have gone to Maharshi Ramana, who was still alive, who was a christ, a
buddha.
Fifth is Maharshi Ramana’s book. It is not much of a book, just a small pamphlet titled WHO AM I?
Ramana was neither a scholar nor was he educated very much. He left home when he was only
seventeen and never returned. Who returns to the ordinary home when one has found the real
home? His method is a simple inquiry into your innermost core by asking, ”Who am I?” He is really
the founder of the enlightenment intensive, not some American fellow – or fella – who pretends to
be the inventor of it.
I have said it is not a great book, but the man is great. Sometimes I mention books which are great,
written by a little man, very mediocre. Now I am mentioning a really great man who wrote a very
small book, just a few pages, a pamphlet. Otherwise he was always silent; he spoke very little, just
once in a while. Kahlil Gibran would have been immensely benefited if he had gone to Maharshi
Ramana. Then he would have heard THE VOICE OF THE MASTER. Maharshi Ramana would also
have been benefited by Kahlil Gibran, because he could write like nobody else. Ramana was a poor
writer; Kahlil Gibran was a poor man but a great writer. Both together would have been a blessing
to the world.
Sixth, THE MIND OF INDIA, by Moorehead and Radhakrishnan. Moorehead knew nothing of India,
neither did Radhakrishnan, but strangely they wrote a beautiful book, very representative of the
whole Indian heritage. Just the peaks are missing, as if a bulldozer had been going on and on
Books I Have Loved 65 Osho
CHAPTER 11.
destroying all the peaks of the Himalayas and making a plain. Yes, both of these fellows have done
the work of a bulldozer. If somebody knows the spirit of India – I cannot call it the mind – then the
title of the book should be THE NO-MIND OF INDIA.
But although the book does not represent the highest, it still represents the lowest, and the lowest is
the majority, ninety-nine point nine percent. So it really represents almost all of India. It is beautifully
written but it is only guesswork. One was an Englishman, the other an Indian politician – a great
combination! And both together they wrote this book THE MIND OF INDIA.
Seventh. Now at the very end of our long list I introduce you to two books of which I think you must
have already tasted: Lewis Carroll’s ALICE IN WONDERLAND, and the eighth is ALICE THROUGH
THE LOOKING GLASS. Both are nonserious, that’s why I love them. Both are written for children,
that’s why I immensely respect them. Both are full of beauty, grandeur, mystery and small parables
which can be understood on many many levels. I have always loved one parable, for example....
Alice comes to the King – or perhaps it was the Queen, it does not matter – and the King asks Alice,
”Did you meet my messenger coming towards me on the way?”
Alice says, ”I met nobody, sir.”
The King then says, ”Then he must have reached here by now.”
Alice could not believe her ears, but just out of respect, amazed, Alice still remained silent, quite an
English lady.
Gudia, are you there? Just the other day you were asking me, ”Is there still an English lady in me,
Osho?” Just a little bit, nothing much – nothing to worry about. And a little bit is good.
Alice must have been a perfect English lady. Out of formality she did not even giggle. She had said
that she had met nobody, and the King thinks that she had met somebody called Nobody. My God,
he thinks that Nobody is a man, that Nobody is somebody...! Again Alice says, ”Sir, did I not tell you
that I met nobody? Nobody is nobody!”
The King laughed and said, ”Yes, of course nobody is nobody, but why has he not arrived yet?”
Such beautiful small parables in both the books, ALICE IN WONDERLAND and ALICE THROUGH
THE LOOKING GLASS. And the most strange fact to remember is that Lewis Carroll was not the
real name... because he was a mathematician and a schoolmaster; hence he used a pseudo-name.
But what a calamity, the pseudonym has become a reality to the whole world and the real man is
completely forgotten. It is strange that a mathematician and schoolmaster could write such beautiful
books.
You will wonder why I am including them. I am including them because I want to say to the
world that to me, Jean-Paul Sartre’s BEING AND NOTHINGNESS and Lewis Carroll’s ALICE IN
WONDERLAND are all the same. It does not matter. In fact, if I have to choose between the two I
will choose ALICE IN WONDERLAND and throw BEING AND NOTHINGNESS in the ocean, so far
away in the Pacific that nobody will find it again. To me these two small books have great spiritual
value. Yes, I’m not joking... I mean it.
Books I Have Loved 66 Osho
CHAPTER 11.
Ninth... again and again I come back to Kahlil Gibran. I have loved him and would have liked to help
him. I have even waited for him, but he is not born yet. He will have to seek for some other master
in the future. THE WANDERER is my choice for this number.
THE WANDERER, by Kahlil Gibran, is a collection of parables. The parable is the oldest method
of saying that which is profound; that which cannot be said can always be said in a parable. It is a
beautiful collection of small stories.
What a con-man I am! Even with closed eyes I am watching Devageet not only trying to say things
– he is even using his leg, which is not very gentlemanly, and behind the back of a master...! What
to do, this is how the world is.
This is beautiful, Ashu. Just remind me of the number.
”We were talking about number nine, Osho.”
Tenth: Another book by Kahlil Gibran, THE SPIRITUAL SAYINGS. Now I must object, even though
the objection is against Kahlil Gibran whom I love. He cannot be allowed to write ’spiritual sayings’.
Spiritual? – although the book is beautiful it would have been better if he had called it BEAUTIFUL
SAYINGS. Beautiful, not spiritual. To call it spiritual is just absurd. But still I love the book, just as I
love all absurdities.
I am reminded of Tertullian, whose book – forgive me – I have not included. It was impossible for
me to include them all, but at least I can mention his name. Tertullian’s famous saying is: credo quia
absurdum – I believe because it is absurd. I don’t think there is another saying in all the languages
of the world which is more pregnant than this one. And Tertullian is a Christian saint! Yes, when I
see beauty I appreciate it – even in a Christian saint.
Credo quia absurdum – this should be written in diamonds, not even in golden letters. Gold is too
cheap. This saying: I believe because it is absurd, is so valuable. Tertullian could have written a
book entitled SPIRITUAL SAYINGS but not Kahlil Gibran.
Kahlil Gibran should meditate. It is time for him to meditate, as it is time for me to stop speaking...
but I cannot for the simple reason that I have to complete the number fifty.
Tenth... am I right, Devageet?
”Actually we’ve done fifty. That was number ten, Osho.”
Then I will do fifty-one, because I cannot leave this one out. It is impossible, number or no number.
You can do the same as I did: do a misnumbering somewhere, and come to the same number as I
am coming to.
Eleven, Samuel Beckett’s WAITING FOR GODOT. Now nobody knows what ’Godot’ means, just
as nobody knows what ’God’ means. In fact Beckett did a great job inventing the word Godot for
God. Everybody is waiting for nothing because God does not exist. Everybody is waiting, waiting,
waiting... and waiting for nothing. That’s why even though the number was complete I wanted to
include this book WAITING FOR GODOT.
Books I Have Loved 67 Osho
CHAPTER 11.
Now wait just for two minutes.... Thank you.
Books I Have Loved 68 Osho
CHAPTER 12
1984 in Lao Tzu House, Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, USA
Okay, now this is the post-postscript. It is hard to understand my difficulty. As far as I can remember
I have always been reading and doing nothing, day in, day out, for almost half a century. Naturally,
to select is almost an impossible task. But I have undertaken it during these sessions, so the
responsibility is yours.
First, Martin Buber. I would not have been able to forgive myself if Martin Buber was not included.
As a penance I include his two books: first, TALES OF HASSIDISM. What D.T. Suzuki did for Zen,
Buber has done for Hassidism. Both have done a tremendous service for seekers. But Suzuki
became enlightened; sorry to say, Buber could not.
Buber was a great writer, philosopher, thinker, but all those things are toys to play with. Still, I pay my
respects to him by including his name, because without him the world would not have even known
the word Hassid.
Buber was born into a Hassidic family. From his very childhood he was raised among Hassids. It
was in his very blood, bones, in his marrow, so when he relates it it sounds so true, although he is
only describing what he has heard, nothing more. He has heard correctly; that must be on record.
Even to hear correctly is very difficult, and then to report to the world at large is even more difficult,
but he has done it beautifully.
Suzuki is enlightened, Buber is not – but Suzuki is not a great writer, Buber is. Suzuki is an ordinary
writer. Buber towers very high as far as the art of writing is concerned. But Suzuki knows, and
Buber knows not; he is only relating the tradition in which he was brought up... of course, relating
authentically.
TALES OF HASSIDISM should be read by all seekers of truth. These tales, small stories, have such
a flavor. It is different from Zen, it is also different from Sufism. It has its own flavor, unborrowed from
69
CHAPTER 12.
anyone, uncopied, unimitated. The Hassid loves, laughs, dances. His religion is not of celibacy, but
of celebration. That’s why I find a bridge between my people and the Hassids. It is not accidental that
so many Jews have come to me; otherwise, I am always shattering the heads of the Jews as much
as I can... and still they know that I love them. I love the essential in Judaism, that is Hassidism.
Moses had not heard of it of course, but he was a Hassid; whether he knew it or not does not matter.
I declare him to be a Hassid – and so I declare Buddha, Krishna, Nanak and Mohammed. Hassidism
came after Baal Shem. The word does not matter, the spirit matters.
Martin Buber’s second book, I AND THOU, is his most famous work, the book for which he was
given the Nobel prize. Forgive me, but I disagree with it completely. I mention it because it is a
beautiful work, written artistically, with great profundity and sincerity. But still there is no soul in it,
because the soul was missing in Buber himself. How could the poor man manage to bring it into his
book, his masterpiece?
I AND THOU is very much respected by the Jews because they think it represents their religion. It
does not represent any religion at all, neither Jew nor Hindu; it only represents the ignorance of the
man called Martin Buber. But the man was certainly an artist, a great genius. When a genius starts
writing about something of which he knows nothing, he can still produce a masterpiece.
I AND THOU is basically wrong because Buber says it is a dialogue between man and God. I
AND THOU...! Nonsense! There cannot be any dialogue between man and God, there can only be
silence. Dialogue? What will you talk to God about? The devaluation of the dollar? or Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini? What are you going to have a dialogue with God about? There is nothing you
can talk about. You can simply be in a state of awe... utter silence.
There is no ’I’ and there is no ’Thou’ in that silence; hence I refute not only the book but even the
title. I AND THOU...? That means one remains still separate. No, it is like a dewdrop slipping from a
lotus leaf into the ocean. The dewdrop disappears, or in other words becomes the ocean, but there
is no I and Thou. Either there is only I or there is only Thou. But when there is no I, there cannot be
any Thou, it won’t have any meaning. If there is no Thou, there can be no I either, so in fact there is
only silence... this pause.... My being silent for a moment says much more than what Martin Buber
tries to say in I AND THOU, and fails. But even though it is a failure, it is a masterpiece.
Third... Martin Buber was a Jew, and other Jews are standing in the queue. My God, what a long
line, and poor Devageet and Ashu... after all, they have to eat too, they can’t just live on my words.
So I will be quick. I will try to disperse as many as I can. But a few are very stubborn, and I know
they won’t go away unless I say something about them.
The man second to Martin Buber is one of the most stubborn – not more stubborn than me. Perhaps
I was a Jew in one of my past lives; must have been. This man is Karl Marx. The book he is holding
in his hand is DAS KAPITAL.
This is the worst-written book ever. But in a way it is a great book, because it dominates millions of
people. Almost half the world is communist, and the other half you cannot be certain about. Even
people who are not communist, deep down they feel that there is something good in communism.
There is nothing good in it. It is the exploitation of a great dream. Karl Marx was only a dreamer
– not an economist, not at all – just a dreamer; a poet, but a poet of third-rate quality. He is not
Books I Have Loved 70 Osho
CHAPTER 12.
a great writer either. Nobody reads DAS KAPITAL. I have come across many famous communists,
and I have asked them, looking deep into their eyes, ”Have you read DAS KAPITAL?” Not a single
one has said yes.
They said, ”Only a few pages.... We have so many other things to do, we cannot read such a big
book.” Thousands of pages, and all rubbish, written neither logically nor rationally, but as if someone
had gone insane. Karl Marx goes on writing anything that happens in his mind. Sitting in the British
Museum, surrounded by thousands of books, he went on writing and writing. You know, it was
almost an everyday ritual that he had to be dragged out of the museum at closing time. He had to
be forced to leave; otherwise he would not go. Once in a while he was even taken out unconscious.
Now this man has become a god! There is something like an unholy trinity: Karl Marx, Friedrich
Engels, and of course Lenin – these three people have become almost like gods to millions of
people on the earth. It is a calamity, but I still mention the book – not that you should read it, but so
that you do not. Underline what I have said: Do not read it. You are already in a mess. Enough of it.
No need for DAS KAPITAL.
Fourth: Remember that Marx is also a Jew. This is a whole line of Jews. Fourth, Sigmund Freud,
another Jew. His great work is LECTURES ON PSYCHOANALYSIS. I don’t like the word analysis,
nor do I like the man, but he managed to create a great movement just like Karl Marx. He is also
one of the dominant figures of the world.
Jews have always dreamed of dominating the world. They are really dominating. The three most
important men who can be said to be dominating this age are Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Albert
Einstein. All three are Jews. The Jews have achieved their dream, they are dominating. But Marx
is wrong as far as economics is concerned; Freud is wrong because mind is not to be analyzed, but
to be put aside so that you can enter into the world of no-mind.
Albert Einstein is of course right in his theories about relativity, but he proved himself to be utterly
foolish when he wrote a letter to President Roosevelt proposing to make the atom bomb. Hiroshima
and Nagasaki – the thousands of people who died there, burned alive, are all pointing towards Albert
Einstein. It was his letter that started the process of making atom bombs in America. He could never
forgive himself; that is the good part of the man. At least he realized that he had committed one of
the greatest sins possible. He died in utter frustration. Before he died he said, ”I would never, never,
never again like to be born a physicist, but only to be a plumber.”
And he was one of the greatest minds in the whole history of man. Why was he so frustrated with
being a physicist? Why? For the simple reason that he was not conscious of what he was doing. He
became aware only when it was too late.... That is the way of unconscious man: he becomes aware
only when it is too late. The conscious man is aware beforehand.
Fifth... I have so many Jews waiting it is so difficult: whom to choose and whom not to choose? And
you know Jews are not easy people to deal with. I should rather drop the whole line than bother. So
I will start with something else. Be finished with the Jews, at least for the moment. Disperse all of
you! I am talking to the Jews, not to you.
Fifth: I was worried that I may not be able to mention Gurdjieff’s book MEETINGS WITH
REMARKABLE MEN. Thank God for this P.P.S. This is a great work.
Books I Have Loved 71 Osho
CHAPTER 12.
Gurdjieff traveled all over the world, particularly in the Middle East and India. He went up to Tibet;
not only that, he was the teacher of the late Dalai Lama... not the present one – he is a fool – but
the previous one. Gurdjieff’s name in Tibetan is written as Dorjeb, and many people thought that
Dorjeb was someone else. He is none other than George Gurdjieff. Because this fact was known
to the British government – that Gurdjieff had been in Tibet for many years; not only there, but had
been living in the palace at Lhasa for many years – they prevented him from staying in England. He
originally wanted to stay in England but was not allowed.
Gurdjieff wrote this book MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE MEN as a memoir. It is a tremendously
respectful memory to all those strange people he had met in his life – Sufis, Indian mystics, Tibetan
lamas, Japanese Zen monks. I must mention to you that he did not write of them all; he left many
out of the account for the simple reason that the book was going to be in the marketplace and it had
to fulfill the demands of the market.
I don’t have to fulfill anybody’s demands. I am not a man who worries at all about the market,
hence I can say that he left out the really most remarkably significant people from his account. But
whatsoever he wrote is still beautiful. It still brings tears to my eyes. Whenever something is beautiful
my eyes fill with tears; there is no other way to pay homage.
This is a book that should be studied, not just read. In English you don’t have a word for path; it is a
Hindi word which means reading and reading the same thing every day for your whole life. It cannot
be translated as reading, particularly in the West where you read a paperback and once you have
read it you throw it away or leave it on the train. It cannot be translated as study either, because
study is a concentrated effort to understand the meaning of the word, or words. ’Path’ is neither
reading nor study, but something more. It is repeating joyously, so joyously that it penetrates to your
very heart, so it becomes your breathing. It takes a lifetime, and that’s what is needed if you want to
understand real books, books like Gurdjieff’s MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE MEN.
It is not a fiction like DON JUAN – a fictitious man created by an American fellow, Carlos Castaneda.
This man has done a great disservice to humanity. One should not write spiritual fictions for the
simple reason that people start thinking that spirituality is nothing but a fiction.
MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE MEN is a real book. A few of the people Gurdjieff mentions are
still alive; I have met a few of them myself. I am a witness to the fact those people are not fictitious,
although I cannot forgive even Gurdjieff for leaving out the most remarkable people he met.
There is no need to compromise with the marketplace; there is no need to compromise at all. He
was such a strong man, I wonder why he compromised, why he omitted the really important people.
I have met a few people that he omitted from the book, who themselves told me that Gurdjieff had
been there. They are very old now. But still the book is good – half, incomplete, but valuable.
Sixth: I have always loved a book whose author is unknown; he is anonymous, although it is known
to have been written by a disciple of Kabir. It does not matter who wrote it, but whoever did so must
have been enlightened; that much can be said without any hesitation.
It is a small book of poems, very poorly written. Maybe the man was not very educated, but that too
does not matter. What matters is the matter in it. Yes, the matter matters – the content. The book is
Books I Have Loved 72 Osho
CHAPTER 12.
not even published. The people who have it in their possession are against publishing it, and I can
understand their feelings and completely agree with them. They say that when a book is published
it becomes part of the marketplace, and they do not want it to be published. If anyone wants the
book he can come and write it down in his own handwriting. So there are many handwritten copies
around in India, but they have all promised not to publish it. Publication certainly does something to
a book; it becomes mechanical, it loses something while going through the press. It loses its spirit;
it comes out as a corpse.
There was no name to this book; because it was never published no title was needed. I asked the
people who have the original copy, ”What do you call it?”
They replied, ”THE GRANTHA.”
Now, THE GRANTHA will have to be explained to you. It is an ancient word from when books were
written on leaves, not on paper. Certain leaves can be used for writing and when you tie those
leaves together that is called a GRANTHA. ’Tying down’ is the exact meaning of THE GRANTHA –
’tying down the leaves’.
The book has a few immensely valuable statements. I will just acquaint you with a few. One, it says:
That which can be said, don’t bother about it, it can’t be true. Truth cannot be said. Second: God is
only a word – significant, but not existent. God is only a symbol representing an experience, not an
object. Third: Meditation is not mentation, it is not of the mind. On the contrary, to drop the mind is
to meditate. And so on and so forth.
I wanted to mention THE GRANTHA because it is nowhere mentioned and it has never been
translated.
Seventh... am I still correct in my numbers?
”Yes, Osho.”
I am against Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels but I must appreciate the book by these two men, THE
COMMUNIST MANIFESTO – and remember, I am not a communist! You cannot find a more anticommunist man than me, but still I love this small book, THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO. I love the
way it is written – not the content but the style.
You know I have multidimensional likes and I will appreciate even style. Buddha would have closed
his eyes and ears, Mahavira would have run away: style...? But I am in my own category. Yes, I love
the style THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO is written in, and I hate the content. Do you understand
me? One can love the dress and yet hate the person. That’s actually the case with me. The last
sentence in THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO is: Proletariat of the world unite. You have nothing to
lose but your chains, and you have a world to win.
Do you see the style? The strength of saying the thing: Unite! You have nothing to lose but your
chains, and a world to win. That’s what I say to my sannyasins, though I do not say unite, I say: Just
be – and you have nothing to lose but your chains.
Books I Have Loved 73 Osho
CHAPTER 12.
And I don’t say that you have to win the world – who cares, who bothers! Can you persuade me
to become Alexander the Great or Napoleon Bonaparte or Adolph Hitler or Joseph Stalin or Mao
Tse-tung? There is a long line of all these idiots and I don’t want to have anything to do with them.
I don’t say to my sannyasins: Win – there is nothing to win. Just be – that is my manifesto. Be,
because in being you have already achieved all.
Eighth... am I still right?
”Yes, Osho.”
Good. Are you still managing? Have you preplanned? – because I don’t hear you whispering today.
Whisper a little, it feels good.
Eighth, the book by Marcel, THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS. I am not a religious man in the ordinary
sense; I am religious in my own way. So people will wonder why I am including books which are not
religious. They are, but you have to dig deep, and then you will find their religiosity. The myth of
Sisyphus is an ancient myth, and Marcel used it for his book. Let me relate it to you.
Sisyphus, a god, was thrown out of heaven because he disobeyed the supreme God and was
punished. The punishment was that he had to carry a big rock from the valley to the top of a
mountain which was so small at the summit that each time he reached it with the huge rock and
tried to put it down, the rock started rolling down to the valley again. Sisyphus has to go down to
the valley again to carry the rock, huffing and puffing, perspiring.... A meaningless job... knowing
perfectly well it will slip again, but what to do?
This is the whole story of man. That’s why I say if you dig you will find pure religion in it. This is
the situation of man, and has always been so. What are you doing? What is everybody else doing?
Carrying a rock to a point where it always and always slips back to the same valley, perhaps even
a little deeper every time. And next morning, after breakfast of course, you carry it again. And you
know while carrying it what is going to happen. It slips again.
The myth is beautiful. Marcel has introduced it again. He was a very religious person. In fact, he
was the real existentialist, not Jean-Paul Sartre, but he was not a slogan-monger so he never came
to the front. He remained silent, wrote silently, died silently. Many people in the world do not know
that he is no more. He was such a silent man – but what he has written, THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS,
is very eloquent. THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS is one of the greatest works of art ever produced.
Ninth: I am reminded again and again, I don’t know why, that I have to include Bertrand Russell.
I have loved him always, also knowing perfectly well that we are poles apart – in fact diametrically
opposite to each other. Perhaps that’s the reason. Opposite poles attract each other. Do you see
again tears in my eyes? They are for Bertrand Russell – Bertie as he was known to his friends. His
is the ninth book, THE HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY.
Nobody had previously done such a work as far as Western philosophy is concerned. Only a
philosopher could do it. Historians have tried, and there are many histories of philosophy, but none
of the historians was a philosopher. This is the first time a philosopher of the category of Bertrand
Russell has also written a history – THE HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY. And he is so
Books I Have Loved 74 Osho
CHAPTER 12.
sincere that he does not call it THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, because he knows perfectly well
that he knows nothing of Eastern philosophy. He simply, humbly states what he knows, also stating
that it is not the whole history of philosophy but only the Western part, from Aristotle to Bertrand
Russell.
I don’t love philosophy, but Russell’s book is not only a history but a work of art. It is so systematic,
so aesthetic, such a beautiful creation, perhaps because basically Russell was a mathematician.
India still needs a Bertrand Russell to write of Indian philosophy and its history. There are many
histories, but they are written by historians, not philosophers, and obviously a historian is only
a historian; he cannot understand the profundity and the inner rhythm of the moving thought.
Radhakrishna has written a HISTORY OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY, perhaps hoping it will become
something like Bertrand Russell’s book, but it is a theft. The book was not written by Radhakrishna,
it was the thesis of a poor student of whom, he, Radhakrishna, was the examiner, and he stole the
whole thesis. There was a case against him in the court, but the student was so poor that he could
not fight the case. He was given enough money by Radhakrishna to be hushed up.
Now, such people cannot do justice to Indian philosophy. A Bertrand Russell is needed by India,
by China... particularly these two countries. The West is fortunate to have a revolutionary thinker
like Bertrand Russell, who could and did write the most beautiful narrative describing the whole
progression of Western thought from Aristotle to himself.
Tenth. The tenth book that I am going to talk about now is again not a so-called religious book. It is
religious only if you meditate over it... if you don’t read it, but meditate over it. It is as yet untranslated
being still in the original Hindi, THE SONGS OF DAYABAI.
I was feeling a little guilty because I had mentioned Rabiya, Meera, Lalla, Sahajo, and I have left
only one more woman worth mentioning: Daya. Now I feel relieved.
THE SONGS OF DAYA. She was a contemporary of Meera and Sahajo, but she is far more profound
than either of them. She is really beyond numbers. Daya is a little cuckoo – but don’t be worried....
In fact in India the cuckoo is called koyal, and it does not have the meaning of being nuts. Daya is
really a cuckoo – not nuts, but a sweet singer like the Indian koyal. On an Indian summer night, the
distant call of the cuckoo; that’s what Daya is... a distant call in the hot summer of this world.
I have spoken on her; perhaps someday it will be possible to translate it. But I am afraid it may not
be possible, because how can one translate these poets and singers? The East is pure poetry, and
the West and all its languages are all prose, pure prose. I have never come across real poetry in
English. Sometimes I listen to the great classical Western musicians... the other day I was listening
to Beethoven, but I had to stop in the middle. Once you have known Eastern music then there is
nothing comparable to it. Once you have heard the Indian bamboo flute then everything else is just
ordinary.
So I don’t know whether these singers, poets and madmen of whom I have spoken in Hindi will ever
be translated, but I cannot resist mentioning their names. Perhaps the very mentioning will create
the situation for their being translated.
Books I Have Loved 75 Osho
CHAPTER 13
1984 in Lao Tzu House, Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, USA
The first book today is Irving Stone’s LUST FOR LIFE. It is a novel based on the life of Vincent
van Gogh. Stone has done such a tremendous work that I don’t remember anybody else doing the
same. Nobody has written so intimately about somebody else, as if he is writing from his very own
being.
LUST FOR LIFE is not just a novel, it is a spiritual book. It is spiritual in my sense, because to me
all dimensions of life have to be incorporated into a single synthesis; only then one is spiritual. The
book is written so beautifully that the possibility that even Irving Stone will be able to transcend it is
remote.
After that book he wrote many others, and my second book today is also by Irving Stone. I count
it second because it is secondary, not of the quality of LUST FOR LIFE. It is THE AGONY AND
THE ECSTASY, again based on another life in the same way. Perhaps Stone was thinking that he
would be able to create another LUST FOR LIFE, but he failed. Although he failed, the book stands
second – not to any other but to his own. There are hundreds of novels written on the lives of artists,
poets, painters, but none of them reaches even to the height of the second book, what to say of the
first. Both are beautiful, but the first is of transcendental beauty.
The second book is a little lower, but it is not the fault of Irving Stone. When you know that you
have written a book like LUST FOR LIFE, the ordinary human instinct is to imitate oneself, to create
something of the same order, but the moment you imitate it cannot be the same. When he wrote
LUST he was not imitating, he was a virgin island. When he wrote THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY
he was imitating himself, and that is the worst imitation. Everybody does it in their own bathroom,
looking in the mirror.... That’s what one feels about his second book. But I say even though it is only
a reflection in the mirror, it reflects something of the real; hence I count it.
76
CHAPTER 13.
I was just asking Gudia whose life Irving Stone had written about in THE AGONY AND THE
ECSTASY, because as far as I am concerned I have completely forgotten. That too is very rare;
I don’t forget easily. I forgive easily but I don’t forget easily. Whose life did he write about, do you
know, Devaraj? Was it Gauguin?
”It was Michelangelo, Osho.”
Michelangelo? A great life. Then Stone has missed much. If it had been Gauguin then it would
have been okay, but if it is Michelangelo then I am sorry; even I cannot forgive him. But he writes
beautifully. His prose is like poetry, although the second book is not of the same quality as LUST
FOR LIFE. It cannot be for the simple reason that there has never been a man like Vincent van
Gogh. That Dutch fellow was just inimitable! He stands alone. In the whole sky full of stars he
shines alone, separately, uniquely in his own way. To write a great book on him is easy, and it would
have been so on Michelangelo, but Stone was trying to imitate himself; hence he missed. Never be
an imitator. Do not follow... not even yourself.
Just be
moment to moment
not knowing
who you are...
and where you are.
That’s what it means
to be my people.
Poor Chetana, I have told her that my clothes have to be snow-white. She is my washerwoman. She
does whatsoever she can, whatsoever is possible.
Today I am immeasurably happy finding myself again in the Himalayas. I wanted to die in the
Himalayas just as Lao Tzu did. It is wonderful to be alive in the Himalayas, it is even more wonderful
to die in the Himalayas. The snow, wherever it is, represents the purity of the Himalayas, the
virginity.... Tomorrow never comes, so there is no need to worry. With me it is always today, and this
very moment we are in that world of the Himalayas.
Michelangelo must have liked white marble; he has carved a statue of Jesus out of it. No other man
has carved such beautiful images, so it should not have been difficult for Stone to write a beautiful
story about Michelangelo. But he missed the point only because he was imitating himself. Alas, if
he could have forgotten his first book, he would have produced another LUST FOR LIFE.
Third, Leo Tolstoy’s RESURRECTION. For his whole life, Leo Tolstoy was concerned, immensely
concerned with Jesus; hence the title, RESURRECTION. And Leo Tolstoy has really created a
tremendous work of art. It has been a bible to me. I can still see myself when I was young
Books I Have Loved 77 Osho
CHAPTER 13.
continuously carrying Tolstoy’s RESURRECTION with me. Even my father became worried. ”It
is okay to read a book,” he said to me one day, ”but why do you go on carrying this book the whole
day? You have read it.”
I said, ”Yes, I have read it, not only once but many times. But I am going to carry it with me.”
My whole village knew about it, that I was continuously carrying a certain book called
RESURRECTION. They all thought I was mad – and a madman can do anything. But why was
I carrying RESURRECTION the whole day? – and not only during the day, but during the night too.
The book was with me by my bed. I loved it... the way Leo Tolstoy reflects the whole message of
Jesus. He succeeds far more than any of the apostles except Thomas – and about that I am going
to talk just after RESURRECTION.
The four gospels particularly included in The Bible miss the whole spirit of Jesus. RESURRECTION
is far better. Tolstoy really loved Jesus and love is magic, particularly because when you love
someone time disappears. Tolstoy loved Jesus so much that they become contemporaries. The gap
is big, two thousand years, but it disappears between Tolstoy and Jesus. It rarely happens, very
very rarely, that’s why I used to carry that book in my hand. I no longer carry that book in my hand,
but in my heart it is still there.
Fourth, the fifth gospel. It is not recorded in The Bible; it has just been found in Egypt: NOTES ON
JESUS, by Thomas. I have spoken about it because I immediately fell in love with it. Thomas, in his
NOTES ON JESUS, is so simple that he cannot be inaccurate. He is so direct, immediate, that he
is not, only Jesus is.
Do you know that Thomas was the first disciple to reach India? Indian Christianity is the oldest
in the world, older than the Vatican. And the body of Thomas is still preserved in Goa – a strange
place, but beautiful, very beautiful. That’s why all the outsiders called hippies have become attracted
towards Goa. There is no other place... no other beaches so pure and beautiful as in Goa.
The body of Thomas is still preserved, and it is a miracle how it is preserved. Now we know how to
preserve a body, to freeze it, but Thomas’ body is not frozen; some ancient method that was used in
Egypt, in Tibet, has been used in this case too. Scientists have not yet been able to discover – such
chemicals have been used... or even whether any chemicals were used or not. Scientists are great!
They can reach to the moon, but they cannot make a fountain pen which does not leak! About small
things they are failures.
I am not a scientist. Yesterday, even when I said ”Okay,” it was not okay. I simply said it because I
love you and I did not want to cause any trouble. I don’t know anything about machinery or chemistry,
I only know myself. When everything around me is going perfectly there is a transcendence. I know
through that transcendence that everything is going perfectly. If something is wrong, I have to come
down again.
Let me explain to you the whole Eastern concept of coming down. A man is born only if something is
wrong... if something is wrong with him. If nothing is wrong he is not born; he moves to the source,
disappears in the cosmos.
Books I Have Loved 78 Osho
CHAPTER 13.
The day before yesterday everything functioned perfectly. It did not happen yesterday. First I said
”Okay”; that was not true. But I can lie because I love – I did not want to disappoint you. At the end
too I said, ”Great, you can end it,” but there was nothing to end because it had not even begun. I
have to tell you this so it is not repeated again. Please don’t force me to lie. I am not British, not
an Englishman; even for etiquette’s sake it is hard for me, really hard to lie. Help me so that I can
say the truth. At this moment things are going really beautifully – and I am not speaking like an
Englishman – really beautifully.... You know me, the seducer.
Fifth – another book by Leo Tolstoy. One of the greatest in all the languages of the world, WAR AND
PEACE. Not only the greatest but also the most voluminous... thousands of pages. I don’t know that
anybody reads such books except myself. They are so big, so vast, they make you afraid.
But Tolstoy’s book has to be vast, it is not his fault. WAR AND PEACE is the whole history of human
consciousness – the whole history; it cannot be written on a few pages. Yes, it is difficult to read
thousands of pages, but if one can one will be transported to another world. One will know the taste
of something classic. Yes, it is a classic.
Sixth. Today it seems I am surrounded by Russians. The sixth is Maxim Gorky’s THE MOTHER. I
don’t like Gorky; he is a communist, and I hate communists. When I hate I simply hate, but the book
THE MOTHER, even though written by Maxim Gorky, I love it. I have loved it my whole life. I had so
many copies of that book that my father used to say, ”Are you mad? One copy of a book is enough,
and you go on ordering more! Again and again I see a postal package and it is nothing but another
copy of THE MOTHER by Maxim Gorky. Are you mad or something?”
I said to him, ”Yes, as far as Gorky’s THE MOTHER is concerned, I am mad, utterly mad.”
When I see my own mother I remember Gorky. Gorky must be counted as the suprememost artist of
the whole world. Particularly in THE MOTHER he reaches to the highest peak of the art of writing.
Nobody before and nobody after.... He is just like a Himalayan peak. THE MOTHER is to be studied,
and studied again and again; only then slowly it seeps through you. Then slowly slowly you start
feeling it. Yes, that’s the word: feeling it – not thinking, not reading, but feeling. You start touching it,
it starts touching you. It becomes alive. Then it is no longer a book, but a person... a person.
The seventh is another Russian, Turgenev, and his book FATHERS AND SONS. This has been one
of my love affairs. I have loved many books, thousands of books, but none like Turgenev’s FATHERS
AND SONS. I used to force my poor father to read it. He is dead; otherwise I would have asked him
to forgive me. Why did I force him to read the book? That was the only way for him to understand
the gap between himself and me. But he was really a wonderful man; he used to read the book
again and again just because I said. It wasn’t once he read it, but many times. And not only did he
read the book, but at least between him and me the gap was bridged. We were no longer father and
son. That ugly relationship of father and son, mother and daughter, and so on... at least with me
my father dropped it, we became friends. It is difficult to be friends with your own father, or your own
son; the whole credit goes to him, not to me.
Turgenev’s book FATHERS AND SONS should be read by everyone, because everyone is entangled
in some kind of relationship – father and son, husband and wife, brother and sister, ad nauseam...
yes, it creates nausea. The whole business of ’family’ in my dictionary should mean ’nausea’. And
yet everybody is pretending, ”How beautiful....” Everybody is pretending to be English, British.
Books I Have Loved 79 Osho
CHAPTER 13.
Eighth, D.H. Lawrence. I always wanted to talk about his book, but I was afraid whether my
pronunciation was right or not. Please don’t laugh about it. My whole life I have called it THE
PHONIX because that is how it is spelled. Just this morning I asked Gudia, ”Be good to me Gudia”
– which is rare! ”What is the pronunciation of this word?”
She said, ”Pheenix!”
I said, ”My God! Pheenix? And my whole life I have wasted calling it phonix...!” That is my eighth
book, THE PHOENIX. Okay, I will change my pronunciation at least to make it appear to be English.
THE PHOENIX. This is a wonderful book, one which is written only once in a while... only once after
decades, or even centuries.
Ninth, another book by D.H. Lawrence. THE PHOENIX is great, beautiful, but not my ultimate
choice. My ultimate choice is his book PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS, which is
rarely read. Now, who is going to read this book? The people who read novels are not going to read
it, and the people who read psychoanalysis will not read it because they don’t consider Lawrence to
be a psychoanalyst. But I read it. I am neither a fan of novelists, nor mad about psychoanalysts. I
am free from both. I am absolutely free. I love this book.
My eyes are beginning to collect dewdrops. Please don’t interrupt.
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS has been and will be one of my most beloved
and cherished books. Although I don’t read anymore, if I were to read again that would be the
first book that I would read. Not the Vedas, not The Bible, but PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE
UNCONSCIOUS... and do you know, the book is against psychoanalysis.
D.H. Lawrence was really a revolutionary, a rebel. He was far more revolutionary than Sigmund
Freud. Sigmund Freud is middle class. I will not say more than that, so don’t wait. In saying ’middle
class’ I have said everything mediocre. That is the meaning of middle class: just in the middle.
Sigmund Freud is not a rebel in the real sense; Lawrence is.
Good. Don’t be worried about me and my tears. It is good to have tears once in a while, and I have
not wept for so long.
Tenth: Arnold’s LIGHT OF ASIA. I have to talk about two more books, and even if I die I will complete
my discourse.
Eleventh. My eleventh choice is BIJAK. BIJAK is Kabir’s selection of songs. BIJAK means ’the seed’
– and of course the seed is subtle, very subtle, invisible. You cannot see it unless it sprouts and
becomes a tree.
Don’t interrupt. Do you want to continue? – that’s the question. Never ask me, ask yourself. If you
don’t want to continue, simply inform me, that’s enough. It is really so difficult to ride on two horses,
and that is what I am doing. Moreover one is a mare and one is a stallion. Now what to do – two
different directions....
Books I Have Loved 80 Osho
CHAPTER 13.
Twelfth. Because of this situation I choose the book by Herbert Marcuse, ONE DIMENSIONAL
MAN. I am against it, but he has written a beautiful book. I am against it because I know a man is
fulfilled only when he is multidimensional, when he is spread in all dimensions possible, not onedimensional. ONE DIMENSIONAL MAN is the story of modern man; it is my twelfth choice.
The thirteenth book is the mysterious book of the Chinese, I CHING.
Fourteen, and last. This book is a Hindi novel which has not yet been translated into English.
Strange to be mentioned by a man like me, but it is worth mentioning. The Hindi title is NADI KE
DWEEP, which may be translated as ISLANDS OF A RIVER, and it was written by Satchidanand
Vatsyayana. This novel is for those who want to meditate; it is a meditator’s novel. No other novel,
neither by Tolstoy nor Chekhov, can be compared to it. It is unfortunate that it is written in Hindi.
Just wait. It is so beautiful that I want to enjoy rather than say anything. To talk at this height is so
difficult. No interruptions please....
Books I Have Loved 81 Osho
CHAPTER 14
1984 in Lao Tzu House, Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, USA
I have come to know, Devageet, that you freaked out this morning. Once in a while freaking is a
good exercise, but freaking out I don’t support. It is a common variety – what they call the garden
variety. Freak in! If you are going to freak at all, why out? why not in? If you freak in then you
become an Osho freak, and that is something of worth. You are on the path of being an Osho freak,
but you move very cautiously; I should say scientifically, rationally.
I don’t even allow you to write your notes, I interrupt. Instead of saying sorry I shout at you, even
when you are not interrupting, saying ”Don’t interrupt, Devageet!” I know that can freak out anyone.
But you know I am a madman, and when you are dealing with a madman you have to be really
generous – not only polite, but really loving.
When you are not interrupting and I say, ”Don’t interrupt!” I must mean something. There must be
some idea in your mind. Perhaps you are not even aware of your own idea of interrupting. It gives
such pleasure to interrupt. And of course, you are the boss here. In this cabin at least, you are
Noah. I am just a passenger without a ticket. But I can see things even in your unconscious, and
when I say ”Don’t interrupt,” of course it looks outrageous. Nobody has heard you interrupting me,
not even you – but I have heard it. I have heard the whispering in the unconscious.
Great ideas are coming to me today; otherwise I am a poor man, I don’t have great ideas. Please
don’t freak out. In short, always freak in.
The P.P.S. continues; this was just a note in brackets.
The first book today is THE ART OF LIVING by Lin Yutang. It is a Chinese name. I am reminded
of one of my own books, THE ART OF DYING. Lin Yutang knows nothing of life because he knows
82
CHAPTER 14.
nothing of death. Although he is a Chinese, he is a corrupted Chinese, a Christian. That’s what
corruption is. Corruption makes you a Christian. Corruption corrupts, and you are a Christian.
Lin Yutang in his book THE ART OF LIVING writes beautifully about many things – except death.
That means that life is not included. Life can come in only if you allow death in, not without. They are
two sides of the one coin. You cannot have one side and reject the other. But he writes beautifully,
artistically – he is certainly one of the greatest writers of the modern age – but whatsoever he writes
is only imagination, pure, pure imagination... just dreaming about beautiful things. Sometimes
dreams can be beautiful. All dreams are not nightmares.
THE ART OF LIVING has nothing to do with life and nothing to do with art either, but still it is a great
book. It is great in the sense that you can be absorbed by it. You can be lost in it, just like one is lost
in a thick forest: stars in the sky, trees all around, and no path, no way, nowhere to go. It leads you
nowhere. Still I found it to be one of the great books. Why? – because just reading it you forget the
past and the future and become part of the present.
I don’t know whether Lin Yutang ever knew anything of meditation. Unfortunately he was a Christian;
hence he never went to a Taoist monastery, nor a Buddhist temple. Alas, he cannot know what he
is missing. Instead he was just reading THE BIBLE, one of the most third-rate books in the world
– except for two small pieces in it: THE SONG OF SOLOMON in THE OLD TESTAMENT; and in
THE NEW TESTAMENT, THE SERMON ON THE MOUNTAIN. If these are taken out THE BIBLE
is just garbage. Alas, could he not have known something of Buddha, Chuang Tzu, something of
Nagarjuna, Kabir, al-Hillaj Mansoor... something of these madmen; only then would his book have
been authentic. It is artistic, but not authentic. It is not sincere.
Second – another book by Lin Yutang, THE WISDOM OF CHINA. He has the art of writing so he can
write anything, even THE WISDOM OF CHINA, although he knows nothing of Lao Tzu, who contains
the whole wisdom not only of China but of the whole world. Of course Lin Yutang includes a few
sentences of Lao Tzu, but those sentences are those which coincide with his Christian upbringing.
In other words they are not Lao Tzuian at all. He quotes Chuang Tzu, but naturally his selections
are very rational, and Chuang Tzu is not a rational man; he is the most absurd man who has ever
lived.
Chuang Tzu is one of my love affairs, and when you talk about someone you love you are bound to
use extremes, exaggerations, but to me they don’t sound like that. I could give the whole kingdom
of the world to Chuang Tzu for any single parable that he wrote – and he wrote hundreds. Each
is a SERMON ON THE MOUNTAIN, a SONG OF SOLOMON, a BHAGAVADGITA. Each parable
represents so much, and so richly, that it is immeasurable.
Lin Yutang quotes Chuang Tzu but quotes him like a Christian, not like a man who understands.
But he is certainly a good writer, and THE WISDOM OF CHINA should be put alongside those
very few books that represent a whole country, like Bertrand Russell’s HISTORY OF WESTERN
PHILOSOPHY, or Moorehead and Radhakrishnan’s MIND OF INDIA. It is history, not mystery, but
beautifully written, correctly written, grammar and all.
He is not only a Christian but was brought up in a convent school. Now, can you think of any
greater misfortune that can befall a child than a convent school? So Lin Yutang is right in every
Books I Have Loved 83 Osho
CHAPTER 14.
way according to the Christians, and wrong in every way according to this madman who is speaking
about him. But even so I love him. He is talented. I cannot say he is a genius, forgive me, but he is
talented, immensely talented. Don’t ask more than that. Genius he is not – and I cannot be polite, I
can only be true. I can absolutely be true.
Third, a book I wanted to avoid but it seems I cannot. It goes on poking its nose in. Of course it is a
Jewish book; otherwise how can you get such a long nose? THE TALMUD.
Why did I want to avoid it? If I say anything against the Jews – as I have always done and will go on
doing.... But for the moment I don’t want to say anything against the Jews; only for the moment, just
as if one is on holiday. That is why I wanted to avoid this book.
There is only one beautiful sentence in it, that’s all, so I can quote it. It says: God is terrible. He
is not your uncle, he is not nice. Only this sentence: God is not nice, and is not your uncle – this I
love. This is really great. Otherwise the whole book is gibberish. It is altogether very primitive, to be
thrown away. Just save this one sentence when you are throwing it away. Write it in your bedroom:
God is not your uncle, he is not nice – remember! That will bring you back to your senses when you
start doing stupid things to your wife or to your husband, your children, to your servants... or even to
yourself.
Fourth: I was born in a family which belongs to a very small section of Jainism. It follows a madman
who must have been just a little bit less mad than me. I cannot say more mad than me!
I am going to talk about his two books, which are not translated in English, not even into Hindi,
because they are untranslatable. I don’t think that he is ever going to have any international audience
– impossible. He believes in no language, no grammar, nothing whatsoever. He speaks exactly like
a madman. The fourth is his book, SHUNYA SVABHAVA – The Nature of Emptiness.
It is just a few pages, but of tremendous significance. Each sentence contains scriptures, but very
difficult to understand. You will naturally ask how I could understand him. In the first place, just as
Martin Buber was born into a Hassid family, I was born into this madman’s tradition. His name is
Taran Taran. It is not his real name, but nobody knows his real name. Taran Taran simply means
The Savior. That has become his name.
I have breathed him from my very childhood, listened to his songs, wondered what he meant. But
a child never cares about the meaning. The song was beautiful, the rhythm was beautiful, the
dance was beautiful, and it is enough. One needs to understand such people only if one is grown
up; otherwise, if from their very childhood they are surrounded by the milieu, they will not need to
understand and yet deep down in their guts they will understand.
I understand Taran Taran – not intellectually, but existentially. Moreover I also know what he is talking
about. Even if I had not been born into a family of his followers I would have understood him. I have
understood so many different traditions – and it is not that I have been born into all of them. I have
understood so many madmen that anybody could go mad just by making an effort to understand
them! But just look at me: they have not affected me at all. They have remained somewhere below
me. I have remained transcendental to them all.
Books I Have Loved 84 Osho
CHAPTER 14.
Still I would have understood Taran Taran. I may not have come into contact with him, that is possible,
because his followers are very few, just a few thousand, and found only in the middle parts of India.
And they are so afraid because of their being in such a minority that they don’t call themselves the
followers of Taran Taran, they call themselves Jainas. Secretly they believe, not in Mahavira as the
rest of the Jainas believe, but in Taran Taran, the founder of their sect.
Jainism itself is a very small religion; only three million people believe in it. There are two main
sects: the Digambaras, and the Svetambaras. The Digambaras believe that Mahavira lived naked,
and was naked – the word digambara means ’sky clad’; metaphorically it means ’the naked’. This is
the oldest sect.
The word svetambara means ’white clad’, and the followers of this sect believe that although
Mahavira was naked he was covered by the gods in an invisible white cloth. This is a compromise
just to satisfy the Hindus.
The followers of Taran Taran belong to the Digambara sect, and they are the most revolutionary of
the Jainas. They don’t even worship the statues of Mahavira; their temples are empty, signifying the
inner emptiness. It would have been almost impossible to have come to know Taran if not for the
chance that I was born into a family who believed in him. But I thank God, it was worth the trouble to
be born into that family. All the troubles can be forgiven just for this one thing, that they acquainted
me with a tremendous mystic.
His book SHUNYA SVABHAVA says only one thing again and again, just like a madman. You know
me, you can understand. I have been saying the same thing again and again for twenty-five years.
I’ve said again and again: Awake! That’s what he does in SHUNYA SVABHAVA.
Five: The second book of Taran Taran, SIDDHI SVABHAVA – The Nature of Ultimate Realization, a
beautiful title. He says the same thing again and again: Be empty! But what can the poor fellow do?
Nobody can say anything else. ”Be awake, be aware....”
The English word beware is made up of two words: be aware – so don’t be afraid of the word beware,
just be aware, and the moment you are aware you have come home.
There are many books by Taran Taran, but these two contain his whole message. One shows you
who you are – pure emptiness; the second, how you can reach to it: by becoming aware. But they
are very small books, only a few pages.
Sixth... I always wanted to talk about this book but was afraid that I was going to miss because
there was no time. I did not plan, just as always I go unplanned. I had thought to talk about only fifty
books, but then came the P.S. and it continued and continued. Again fifty titles were completed, but
there were still so many beautiful books that I had to continue and start the P.P.S. That is why I can
now talk about this book. It is Dostoevsky’s NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND.
It is a very strange book, as strange as the man was. Just notes – like Devageet’s notes, fragmentary,
on the surface unrelated to each other, but really related with an undercurrent of aliveness. It has to
be meditated upon. I cannot say anything more than this. It is one of the most ignored great works
of art. Nobody seems to take note of it, for the simple reason that it is not a novel, just notes, and
Books I Have Loved 85 Osho
CHAPTER 14.
they too seem to the unmeditative to be unrelated. But to my disciples it can be of great significance;
they can find treasures hidden in it.
Go on whispering... I’m not saying anything. Really I should not even have said that. That too is a
kind of interruption. I should be more alert. But it is very difficult to be more alert than I am. More
alertness does not exist at all, so what can I do? At the most I can ignore it. I have heard even your
giggle... but please don’t freak out, freak in.
Seventh, one book that comes to me out of nowhere. I was not going to talk about it at all, but it is
there. Don’t be afraid, and don’t freak out later on. This is a book written by Ludwig Wittgenstein –
not really written as a book, but again as notes. It was posthumously published as PHILOSOPHICAL
INVESTIGATIONS. It is really a penetrating study of all the profound problems of man. Of course,
the woman is included; otherwise from where will the man find his profound problems? His real
problem is the woman. Socrates is reported to have said: If you get married to a beautiful and good
woman – which is rare – you will be fortunate.
This book PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS by Ludwig Wittgenstein – I have loved it, its clarity,
transparency, its impeccable rationality. I loved it all and all, and I would like everyone on the path
to go through it... not in the way people in the therapy groups grow and ’go through it’ – not in pain.
That is what many sannyasins think, that going through suffering is necessary; it is not, that is your
choice. You can go through blessings, blissfulness... it’s up to you.
So I don’t mean ”Go through it” in the same sense as the so-called humanist therapists mean.
When I say ”Go through it” I mean dance through it, love through it. I may be right literally, but
grammatically I may be wrong. And of course I am wrong, because I can hear your giggle. Sorry,
Devageet, because I can still hear.... But this is an interruption on my part – and I don’t want anybody
to freak out, particularly people who are so close to me, and people who don’t know that today I am
here, tomorrow I may not be.
Devageet, one day this chair will be empty and you will be crying and weeping that you freaked out.
And I can stop at any moment; then you will regret it. You know it already, but you have forgotten.
For seven years I have been speaking continuously, but one day – you are a witness to it – I can
suddenly stop. I can stop at any moment, perhaps tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. So don’t be
disturbed at all, and whatsoever I do, even if I irritate you and annoy you, it is for your sake, because
I have nothing to gain out of it. I have nothing to gain in the whole world. I already have that which
man longs for and lives thousands of lives for.
Eighth: The eighth is the book.... I can hear you crying Devageet, and it is good once in a while.
And crying with your master.... My eyes are full of tears, and you are crying. There is some kind of
communion happening. Hence for the eighth book I have chosen Assagioli’s PSYCHOSYNTHESIS.
Sigmund Freud has done great work in creating psychoanalysis, but it is only half. The other half
is PSYCHOSYNTHESIS done by Assagioli – but it too is only half, the other half. My work is the
whole: Psychothesis.
Psychoanalysis and psychosynthesis, both of these
sciences are worth studying. PSYCHOSYNTHESIS is very rarely read because Assagioli is not
Books I Have Loved 86 Osho
CHAPTER 14.
a towering figure like Freud; he has not been able to reach the same heights. But he should be read
by all sannyasins. It is not that he is right and Freud is wrong; both are wrong taken separately. They
are right only when they are put together. And that’s my whole work: to put all the pieces together
like a jigsaw.
Ninth.... I have always appreciated Kahlil Gibran; I would like to appreciate him once more before
I condemn him. Don’t worry, I am not just saying the word condemn lightly, I am really saying it.
Ninth is Kahlil Gibran’s book PROSE POEMS – beautiful. Nobody in the modern world, except
Rabindranath Tagore, can write such prose poetry.
It is strange that both are foreigners to the English language. Perhaps that is why they can write
such poetic language. They come from different languages: Kahlil Gibran from Arabic, which is
immensely poetic, pure poetry; and Rabindranath from Bengali, which is even more poetic than
Arabic. In fact if you see two Bengalis fighting you will be surprised because you will think that
they are exchanging loving words among themselves. You will not be able to conceive that they are
fighting. Even in fighting the Bengali is poetic.
I know it from my own experience. I was in Bengal and saw people fighting – sheer poetry! I was
amazed. When I came to Maharashtra I saw people just talking, gossiping, and I was worried: were
they fighting? Should the police be informed? Marathi is such a language that you cannot say sweet
nothings in it. It is harsh, hard. It is a fighting language.
It is strange that the English have appreciated both Kahlil Gibran and Rabindranath, but they have
not learned anything from them. They have not learned the secret of their success. What is the
secret of their success? Their ’poeticness’.
Tenth: This is a book by Kahlil Gibran which I never wanted to condemn publicly, because I love the
man. But I have to do it so that it is on record that I can condemn a man even though I love him, if
his words do not represent the truth.
The book is THOUGHTS AND MEDITATIONS. Now, I cannot agree with it, and because of it I
know that Kahlil Gibran never knew what meditation is. In this book ’meditations’ are nothing but
’contemplations’; only then can they go with thoughts. Ashu, you don’t have to go with thoughts, you
have to go with meditation – with me, not with Kahlil Gibran. So go higher. Unless you achieve it
I am going to stop talking like this very soon. I want to affirm my transcendence in every way. No
buddha has done it before. I want to be a pioneer.
I am against this tenth book because I am against thought. I am also against it because Kahlil
Gibran uses the word meditation in the Western sense. In the West meditation simply means to
think about something concentratedly. That is not meditation. In the East meditation means to not
think at all. It has nothing to do with ’about this or that’, it is non-objective. There is no object in
it, only pure subjectivity. Soren Kierkegaard said: The innermost core of man is pure subjectivity.
That’s what meditation is.
Books I Have Loved 87 Osho
CHAPTER 15
1984 in Lao Tzu House, Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, USA
Okay. The first book I am going to talk about in this P.P.S. is one nobody would think I would ever
talk about. It is Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography, MY EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH. Talking about
his experiments with truth is really wonderful. This is the right time.
Ashu, you go on and on; otherwise I will start condemning Mahatma Gandhi. Go on and on so I can
be soft on the poor man. Until now I have never been. Perhaps you can help me to be a little soft
even to Mahatma Gandhi... although I know it is almost impossible.
But I can certainly say a few beautiful things. One: nobody has written their autobiography with such
sincerity, with so much authenticity. It is one of the most authentic autobiographies ever written.
Autobiography is a very strange thing: you are writing about yourself. Either you start bragging or
you start being too humble – just another way of bragging. I will talk about that in my second book.
But Mahatma Gandhi is neither of these two things; he is simple, just stating factually, just like a
scientist... utterly unconcerned that it is his autobiography. He says everything one would like to
hide from others. But the very title is wrong. One cannot experiment with truth. One can know it or
one can not know it, but one cannot experiment with it.
The very word experiment belongs to the world of objective science. One cannot experiment with
subjectivity, and that’s the truth. Note that:
Subjectivity is irreducible to any object of experimentation, observation.
Subjectivity is the most mysterious phenomenon in existence, and its mystery is that it always goes
back and back. Whatsoever you observe, it is not ’it’... it is not subjectivity. Subjectivity is always the
88
CHAPTER 15.
observer and never the observed. You cannot experiment with truth, because experiment is possible
only with things, objects, not with consciousness.
Mahatma Gandhi was a sincerely good man, but he was not a meditator. And if one is not a
meditator, howsoever good one is it is all useless. He experimented his whole life and achieved
nothing. He died as ignorant as ever. It is unfortunate, because it is very difficult to find a man of so
much integrity, sincerity, honesty, and a tremendous desire to know the truth. But that very desire
becomes a barrier.
Truth is known by people like me, who don’t even bother about it, who are unconcerned even about
truth itself. Even if God knocks on my door, I am not going to open it. He will have to find his own
way to open it. Truth comes to such lazy people. Hence I have called myself The Lazy Man’s Guide
to Enlightenment. Now I can add one thing more so it can become complete: I am the lazy man’s
guide to enlightenment, and to non-enlightenment too! That is going beyond enlightenment.
I feel for the man, although I have always criticized him for his politics, his sociology, and his whole
stupid idea of turning the wheel of time backwards – you can call it the spinning wheel. He wanted
man to become primitive again. He was against all technology, even against the poor railways, the
telegraph, the postal system. Without science man will be a baboon. The baboon may be very
strong... but a baboon is a baboon. Man has to go ahead.
I object even to the title of the book because it is not only a title, it summarizes his whole life. He
thought because he had been educated in England, he was a perfect Indian Englishman – utterly
Victorian. These are the people who go to hell, the Victorians! He was full of etiquette, full of
manners, full of all kinds of English stupidities. Now Chetana must be hurting. Chetana forgive me.
It is just by chance that you are here, and you know me – I always find something to hit people with.
But Chetana is fortunate: she is not an English lady, she is an Osho freak! And she comes from
a poor English family, that’s very good. Her father was a fisherman, simple. She is not snobbish;
otherwise English ladies, more than gentlemen, always keep their noses up, as if they are always
watching the stars. They really stink – stink of snobbishness!
Mahatma Gandhi was educated in England; perhaps that messed him up. Perhaps he would have
been better if he had remained uneducated, and then he would not have experimented with truth,
he would have experienced truth.
Experimenting with truth? Absurd! Ridiculous! If one wants to know the truth one has to experience
it.
Second: Saint Augustine’s CONFESSIONS. Augustine was the first person to have written his
autobiography without fear, but he went to the other extreme. That’s why I appreciated Gandhi.
In his CONFESSIONS Augustine confesses too much – even the sins he had never committed! –
just for the sheer joy of confessing. What a joy! For the sheer joy of saying to the world that ”there is
not a sin which I have not committed. I have committed every sin man is capable of.”
That is not true. No man can commit all the sins. No man is capable of that, not even God himself.
What to say of God, even the devil himself will start thinking how to enjoy those things that Augustine
is confessing! Augustine exaggerated!
Books I Have Loved 89 Osho
CHAPTER 15.
Exaggeration is one of the common diseases among saints. They exaggerate everything, even their
sins; then, naturally, they become capable of exaggerating their virtues. That is the second part of
the story. When you exaggerate your sins, certainly against that background even your small virtues
look very big, very bright – lightning in the dark clouds. Those dark clouds help immensely to show
the lightning. Without sins you cannot become a saint. The greater the sins, the greater the saint –
simple arithmetic!
But I still include the book because it is written beautifully. I am such a man, please note, let it be on
record, that even if you lie beautifully I will appreciate it for its beauty. Not for its being a lie – who
cares whether it is a lie or not! Its beauty makes it worth enjoying, appreciating.
CONFESSIONS is a masterpiece of lies. It is full of lies. But the man did his job almost perfectly. I
say almost because there is always the possibility somebody may do the job even better. But he has
done it almost ninety-nine percent perfectly; there is not much scope left for anyone else. Yes, after
him many tried, even a great man like Leo Tolstoy. I talked about his books RESURRECTION and
WAR AND PEACE. Throughout his whole life he was trying to write his own confessions; in that he
could not succeed. Augustine seems to be unsurpassable even for a man like Tolstoy. But, Tolstoy,
please don’t freak out; I am going to put you on my list.
Third: Leo Tolstoy’s ANNA KARENINA, a small but immensely beautiful novel. You must wonder
why I should include a novel in my list. Just because I am crazy! I like all kinds of things. ANNA
KARENINA is one of my most loved books. How many times I have read it I can’t remember. I mean
the number of times – I remember the book perfectly well, I can relate the whole book.
Look! Ashu heaved a great sigh; she must have become worried: Now this madman is going to
relate the whole of ANNA KARENINA! No, Ashu, don’t be worried, I am not going to. I have to do
many other things. Perhaps sometime, but not now.
If I was drowning in the ocean and had to choose just one novel out of all the millions of novels in the
world, I would choose ANNA KARENINA. It would be beautiful to be with that beautiful book. It has
to be read and read again; only then you can feel it, smell it, and taste the flavor. It is no ordinary
book.
Leo Tolstoy failed as a saint, just as Mahatma Gandhi failed as a saint, but Leo Tolstoy was a
great novelist. Mahatma Gandhi succeeded as – and will remain forever – a pinnacle of sincerity. I
don’t know of any other man in this century who was so sincere. When he wrote to people ’sincerely
yours’ he was really sincere. When you write ’sincerely yours’, you know, and everybody else knows,
and the person to whom you are writing also knows, that it is all bullshit. It is very difficult, almost
impossible, to really be ’sincerely yours’. That’s what makes a person religious – sincerity.
Leo Tolstoy wanted to be religious but could not be. He tried hard. I feel great sympathy with
his effort, but he was not a religious person. He has to wait at least a few more lives. In a way
it is good that he was not a religious man like Muktananda; otherwise we would have missed
RESURRECTION, WAR AND PEACE, ANNA KARENINA, and dozens more beautiful, immensely
beautiful books. Then he would have been another Swami Idiotananda, and nothing else.
Fourth, Ajit Sarasw... Ajit Mukherjee. He has done a great service for Tantra. I am going to include
his two books.
Books I Have Loved 90 Osho
CHAPTER 15.
Fourth: Ajit Mukherjee’s THE ART OF TANTRA, and fifth, his other book THE PAINTINGS OF
TANTRA – or perhaps THE TANTRA PAINTINGS. The man is still alive, and I have always loved him
for these two books, because they are masterpieces – the paintings, the art, and the commentaries
he has made on the paintings. His introductions are immeasurably valuable.
But the man himself seems to be just a poor Bengali. Just a few days ago he met Laxmi in Delhi. He
came to see her and confessed that he wanted to give his whole Tantra collection to me. He must
have had one of the most valuable and richest collections of Tantra paintings and Tantra art. He
said to Laxmi, ”I wanted to give it to him because he is the only man who will be able to understand
it and know the meaning of it, but I was too afraid.” He said, ”Just to be associated with him in any
way may create trouble for me, so I finally donated my whole collection of a lifetime to the Indian
government.”
I have loved these two books – but what to say about this man: Ajit Mukherjee or Ajit Mouse? Such
fear! – and with such fear is it possible to understand Tantra? Impossible! What he has written is
only intellectual. It is not, and cannot be, of the heart. He has no heart. I know even a mouse has a
heart as far as physiology is concerned – but it is not a heart, it is only lungs. It is only man who has
something more than lungs... a heart; and the heart grows only in the climate of courage, in love, in
adventure. What a poor man! Still I appreciate his books. The mouse has done a tremendous work.
These two books will always remain of immense significance to Tantra, and to seekers of truth. But
forget and forgive Ajit Mouse – I mean Ajit Mukherjee.
Please remember that I am not against you, Ajit Mukherjee, nor anybody else. I am not an enemy
to anybody in the world, although there are millions of people who regard me as their enemy. That
is their business; I have nothing to do with it. Ajit Mukherjee, I love you because you have served
Tantra well. Tantra needs many scholars, philosophers, painters, writers, poets, so that the ancient
wisdom can become alive again, and you have helped a little.
Sixth – this is the book I have always wanted to talk about; it is even scheduled for my morning
talks in English. I have already spoken on it in Hindi and it can also be translated. The book is by
Shankaracharya – not the present fool, but Adi Shankaracharya, the original one.
The book is one thousand years old, and is nothing but a small song: ”BHAJ GOVINDAM MOODH
MATE – O Idiot....” Now, Devageet, listen carefully: I’m not talking to you, that is the title of the book.
BHAJ GOVINDAM – sing the song of the Lord – MOODH MATE, O Idiot. O Idiot, sing the song of
the Lord.
But idiots don’t listen. They never listen to anybody, they are deaf. Even if they listen they don’t
understand. They are imbeciles. Even if they can understand, they don’t follow; and unless you
follow, understanding is meaningless. Understanding is understanding only when it is proved by
your following.
Shankaracharya has written many books but none of them is so beautiful as this song: BHAJ
GOVINDAM MOODH MATE. I have spoken much on these three or four words, almost three hundred
pages. But you know how I love to sing songs; if I have the opportunity I will go on endlessly. But
here I wanted to at least mention the book.
Books I Have Loved 91 Osho
CHAPTER 15.
Seventh, another book by Ludwig Wittgenstein. He is also one of my love affairs. The name of
the book is PHILOSOPHICAL PAPERS. It is not a book, but rather a collection of articles which
appeared at different times. Each article is beautiful. Wittgenstein could not do otherwise. He had
that capacity to produce beauty without being illogical, and also to write poetry in prose. I don’t think
he ever thought of himself as a poet, but I declare him to be a poet of the first order. He is in the
same category as Kalidas, Shakespeare, Milton or Goethe.
Seventh: Paul Reps’ ZEN FLESH, ZEN BONES. It is a great work – not original in that he has not
created it, but although not original it is far more significant than just a translation. It is a category in
itself. In one way it is original, in another way a translation. It is a translation of old Zen anecdotes
and original writing. I know because I have seen almost all the books written on and about Zen, and
nothing compares to Paul Reps’ book. He has caught a glimpse. He has the same flavor as Basho
or Rinzai.
The man is still alive somewhere in California. He has in this small book not only collected Zen
anecdotes but also VIGYAN BHAIRAV TANTRA – the one hundred and twelve sutras of Shiva to
Parvati, his beloved, in which Shiva talks about all the keys possible. I cannot conceive that there
can be anything more to meditation than VIGYAN BHAIRAV TANTRA. One hundred and twelve keys
are enough – they seem to be enough; one hundred and thirteen will not look like a right number.
One hundred and twelve looks really esoteric, beautiful.
This book is very small, you can carry it in your pocket; it is a pocketbook. But you can also carry
the Kohinoor in your pocket... although the Kohinoor is studded in the British crown, and you cannot
carry that in your pocket. But the most beautiful thing about Paul Reps is that he has not added
a single word of his own – which is incredible. He has simply translated, just translated – and
not only translated, but he has brought the flower of Zen to the English language. That flower is
not found in any other English writer on Zen. Even Suzuki has not been able to do it, because
he was a Japanese. Although enlightened he could not bring the flavor of his enlightenment to
his English books. Suzuki’s English is beautiful but very unenlightened, perhaps electrified but
absolutely unenlightened.
Paul Reps has done an almost impossible task, being an American, and yet, I repeat, and yet getting
the full flavor of Zen. And not only getting it for himself but bringing it in ZEN FLESH, ZEN BONES
for the whole world too. The world should remain grateful to him forever, although he is not an
enlightened person. That is why I say he has done an almost impossible task.
Ninth... I am waiting for you to rise a little higher, because I am going to talk about something which
belongs to the heights, the ultimate heights. Good... but don’t stop. Good does not mean stop, it
simply means go on, go on... CHARAIVETI, CHARAIVETI.
By the way, the book I am going to mention as the ninth is Christmas Humphries’ ZEN BUDDHISM.
Originally he wanted to call it GO ON, GO ON – as a translation of CHARAIVETI, CHARAIVETI –
or WALK ON, WALK ON. But after all an Englishman is an Englishman; he finally dropped the idea
and called the book ZEN BUDDHISM.
The book is beautiful, but the title is ugly because Zen has nothing to do with any ’ism’, Buddhism
or any other. ZEN BUDDHISM is not right as a title. Just ZEN would have been enough. Humphries
Books I Have Loved 92 Osho
CHAPTER 15.
writes in his diary that he had chosen CHARAIVETI, CHARAIVETI as his first preference for the title,
but then he thought it was too long. WALK ON, WALK ON... GO ON, GO ON. He changed the title
and made it something ugly: ZEN BUDDHISM. But the book is beautiful. It has introduced millions
of Westerners to the world of Zen. It has served tremendously.
This man Humphries was a disciple of D.T.Suzuki, and he has served the master as nobody else
has, particularly in the West. He remained devoted to Suzuki his whole life.
Gudia was saying to me yesterday that she had told Devageet that ”if you live with Osho like me
even for only one month, then you will know what it is – hard.” I know it is certainly hard. To be with
an enlightened person is hard – and to be with one who has gone beyond that is even harder.
But Humphries proved to be really a disciple; he remained true and loyal and obedient to Suzuki to
the very end of Suzuki’s life and his own. He did not waver for a single moment. You can find that
unwavering spirit in his book.
Tenth... the last for this session. It is a very small book, known only to a very few people in the
world, but it needs to be declared from the housetops to each and everyone. It is THE SONGS OF
CHANDIDAS – a Bengali madman, a Baul. The word Baul means a madman. Chandidas danced
and sang from village to village and nobody knows who collected his songs. It must have been
someone with a great and generous spirit, so generous that he has not even mentioned his name.
THE SONGS OF CHANDIDAS... I feel in such awe. Just the name of Chandidas and my heart starts
throbbing with a different beat. What a man he was, and what a poet! There have been thousands
of poets, but Chandidas is of the same category as Solomon, not less than that. If Solomon can be
compared to anybody then it is to Chandidas.
Chandidas’ songs sing of strange things – of God who does not exist. Chandidas also knows that
God does not exist, but he sings about him because God only represents existence. God does not
exist; he is existence.
Chandidas also sings of meditation, although nothing can be said about meditation – but still he says
something, something which cannot be ignored. He says: Meditation is equivalent to no-mind. What
a tremendous formula! Albert Einstein would have been jealous of Chandidas. Alas, Einstein knew
nothing of Chandidas nor of meditation. One of the greatest men of this age, he was absolutely
unaware of meditation. He was aware of everything except himself.
Chandidas sings songs of love, of awareness, of beauty, of nature. And there are a few songs which
are not concerned with anything at all; just sheer joy, the very joy of singing – the meaning is not at
all important.
That is my tenth and last book today.
Books I Have Loved 93 Osho
CHAPTER 16
1984 in Lao Tzu House, Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, USA
How many books have I talked about in the P.P.S? Hmmm?
”Forty, Osho.”
Forty?
”Yes, Osho.”
I am a stubborn man you know. I am going to end it at fifty whatsoever happens; otherwise I will
start another P.P.P.S. My stubbornness has really repaid me: it has helped me to fight all kinds of
nonsense that the world is full of. It has been of tremendous help in saving my own intelligence
against the mediocrity that surrounds everyone everywhere. So I don’t feel at all sorry that I am
stubborn; in fact, I thank God that he has made me this way: utterly stubborn.
The first book is by Bennett, an Englishman, a perfect Englishman. The book is about an absolutely
unknown Indian mystic, Shivpuri Baba. The world has come to know about him only through
Bennett’s book.
Shivpuri Baba was certainly one of the rarest flowerings, particularly in India where so many idiots
are pretending to be mahatmas. To find a man like Shivpuri Baba in India is really either luck or else
a tremendous work of research. There are five hundred thousand mahatmas in India; that is the
actual number. To find a real man among this crowd is almost impossible.
But Bennett was fortunate in many ways. He was also the first man to discover Gurdjieff. It was
neither Ouspensky nor Nicoll, nor anyone other than Bennett. Bennett found Gurdjieff in a refugee
camp in Constantinople. Those were the days of the Russian Revolution. Gurdjieff had to leave
94
CHAPTER 16.
Russia; on the way he was shot twice before he escaped. Our styles are different, but in a strange
way destiny may play the same game again....
Gurdjieff in a refugee camp! – just thinking of it, I can’t believe humanity can fall so low. Putting a
Buddha, or Gurdjieff, Jesus or Bodhidharma in a refugee camp.... When Bennett discovered him,
Gurdjieff was standing in a food queue. The food was given only once a day, and the queue was long.
There were thousands of refugees who had left Russia because the communists were murdering
people without any consideration who they were murdering, or for what. You will be surprised to
know they murdered almost ten million Russians.
How did Bennett discover Gurdjieff? Gurdjieff sitting among his disciples would not be difficult to
recognize, but Bennett recognized him in dirty rotten clothes, unwashed for many days. How did he
recognize him in that queue? Those eyes – you cannot hide them. Those eyes – whether the man
is sitting on a golden throne, or standing in a refugee camp, they are the same. Bennett brought
Gurdjieff to the West.
Nobody thanks poor Bennett for it, and there is a reason. It is because he was a wavering kind of
person. Bennett never betrayed Gurdjieff while he was alive. He did not dare. Those eyes were too
much; he had twice seen their tremendous impact. He reports in his book on Gurdjieff – which is
not a great book, that is why I am not going to count it, but I am just referring to it – Bennett says: I
came to Gurdjieff tired and exhausted after a long journey. I was sick, very sick, thinking I was going
to die. I had come to see him only so that before I die I could see those two eyes again... my last
experience.
He came to Gurdjieff’s room. Gurdjieff looked at him, stood up, came close and hugged him. Bennett
could not believe it – it was not Gurdjieff’s way. If he had slapped him that would have been more
expected, but he hugged him! But there was more to the hug. The moment Gurdjieff touched
him, Bennett felt a tremendous upsurge of energy. At the same time he saw Gurdjieff turning pale.
Gurdjieff sat down; then with great difficulty stood up and went to the bathroom, saying to Bennett,
”Don’t be worried, just wait for ten minutes and I will be back, the same as ever.”
Bennett says, ”I have never felt such a wellbeing, such health, such power. It seemed I could do
anything.”
It is felt by many people who take drugs – LSD or marijuana and other drugs – that under their impact
they feel they can do anything. One woman thought she could fly, so she flew out of a window on
the thirtieth floor of a New York building. You can conclude what happened. Not even pieces of the
woman were found.
Bennett says, ”I felt I could do everything. At that moment I understood the famous statement by
Napoleon: Nothing is impossible. I not only understood it but felt I could do anything I wanted. But I
knew it was Gurdjieff’s compassion. I was dying, and he had saved me.”
This happened twice... again a few years later. In the East this is called ’the transmission’; the energy
can jump from one flame to another lamp which is dying. Even though such great experiences
happened to him, Bennett was a wavering man. He could not waver and betray like Ouspensky, but
when Gurdjieff died, then he betrayed. He started looking for another master. What a misfortune! – I
Books I Have Loved 95 Osho
CHAPTER 16.
mean misfortune for Bennett. It was good for others, because that was how he came to find Shivpuri
Baba. But Shivpuri Baba, howsoever great, is nothing compared to Gurdjieff. I cannot believe it of
Bennett. And he was a scientist, a mathematician... only that gives me the clue. The scientist has
almost always behaved foolishly outside his own specific field.
I always define science as ’knowing more and more about less and less’, and religion as ’knowing
less and less about more and more’. The culmination of science will be knowing everything about
nothing, and the culmination of religion will be knowing all – not knowing about all, simply knowing;
not about, just knowing. Science will end in ignorance; religion will end in enlightenment.
All the scientists, even the great ones, have proved foolish in many ways outside their specific field.
They behave childishly. Bennett was a scientist and mathematician of a certain standing, but he
wavered, he missed. He started looking for another master again. And it is not that he remained
with Shivpuri either.... Shivpuri Baba was a very old man when Bennett met him. He was almost
one hundred and ten years old. He was really made of steel. He lived for almost one and a half
centuries. He was seven feet tall and one hundred and fifty years old and still there was no sign that
he was going to die. He decided to leave the body – it was his decision.
Shivpuri was a silent man, he did not teach. Particularly a man who had known Gurdjieff and his
tremendous teaching would find it very ordinary to be with Shivpuri Baba. Bennett wrote his book
and started searching again for a master. Shivpuri Baba was not even dead yet.
Then, in Indonesia, Bennett found Mohammed Subud, the founder of the movement called Subud.
Subud is a short form of sushil-buddha-dharma; it is just the first letter of these three words. What
foolishness! Bennett started introducing Mohammed Subud, a very good man, but not a master...
nothing even compared to Shivpuri Baba; no question arises about Gurdjieff. Bennett brought
Mohammed Subud to the West, and started introducing him as the successor to Gurdjieff. Now
this is utter stupidity!
But Bennett writes beautifully, mathematically, systematically. His best book is SHIVPURI BABA.
Although Bennett was a fool, even if you allow a monkey to sit at a typewriter once in a while he may
come upon something beautiful – perhaps a statement which only a buddha could make – just by
knocking the typewriter keys here and there. But he will not understand what he has written.
Bennett continued in this way. Soon he became disillusioned with Mohammed Subud and started
searching for yet another master. Poor fellow, his whole life he was searching and searching
unnecessarily. He had already found the right man in Gurdjieff. He has written about Gurdjieff,
and what he says is beautiful, efficient, but his heart is dark, there is no light in it. Still, I count his
book as one of the best. You can see that I am impartial.
Second: this is a strange book, nobody reads it. You may not even have heard about it, yet it was
written in America. The book is LISTEN LITTLE MAN, by Wilhelm Reich. It is a very small book, but
it reminds one of the SERMON ON THE MOUNT, TAO TE CHING, THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA,
THE PROPHET. In reality Reich was not of that status to write such a book, but he must have been
possessed by some unknown spirit.
LISTEN LITTLE MAN created much antagonism towards Reich, particularly among the professional
psychoanalysts, his colleagues, because he was calling everyone ’little man’ – and he was thinking
Books I Have Loved 96 Osho
CHAPTER 16.
he was so great? I want to tell you: he was! Not in the sense of a buddha, but in the same sense
as Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, Assagioli. He belongs to the same category. He was a great
man – of course still a man, not superman, but great. And it was not out of his egoism that this book
was born; he could not help it, he had to write it. It is almost like when a woman is pregnant, she
has to give birth to the child. He carried this small book within himself for years, resisting the idea
of writing it because he knew perfectly well it was going to create hell for him. And it did. After that
book he was condemned from every corner.
To create anything great in this world is a crime. Man has not changed at all. Socrates he kills,
Reich he kills. No change. They condemned Reich as mad and imprisoned him. He died in jail,
condemned, reduced to a madman. He had the capacity to rise beyond the clouds, but he was not
allowed. America still has to learn to live with people like Socrates, Jesus, Buddha.
This book should be meditated upon by all my sannyasins. I recommend it without any conditions at
all.
Third is a book written by Bertrand Russell and Whitehead together. Nobody reads it. The title is
PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA. Just the name is enough to make people afraid, and the book must be
the most difficult in existence. Hence, I worked on that book as much as possible. Anything difficult
always allures me. The book is enchanting and challenging, but I will not recommend it to my
sannyasins. Avoid it! I went through those thousands of pages and found nothing but mathematics.
Unless you are interested in mathematics, particularly higher mathematics... that is another matter.
I wanted to include it because it is a masterpiece – of mathematics.
Fourth... is that the number?
”Yes, Osho.”
You will be surprised that my fourth choice is Aristotle’s POETICS. I am a born enemy of Aristotle.
I call the man Aristotle-itis... a kind of disease, incurable. Devaraj, there is no medicine for it.
Asheesh, your migraine is nothing! Thank God you are not suffering from Aristotlitis; that is a real
cancer.
Aristotle is thought to be the father of Western philosophy and logic. He certainly is, but only of
philosophy and logic, not of the real thing. The real thing comes from Socrates, Pythagoras, Plotinus,
Diogenes and Dionysius, but not from Aristotle. But it is strange: he wrote a beautiful book – and
this is one of the books not studied by the Aristotelian scholars – POETICS. I had to search for it
among his many books. I was just looking to see whether I could find something beautiful in this
man too, and when I found POETICS, a book of just a few pages, I was thrilled. The man also had a
heart. He had written everything else from his head, but this book was from the heart. Of course it
is about the essence of poetry – poetics – and the essence of poetry cannot be anything other than
the essence of love. It is the fragrance not of intellect but of intuition. I recommend this book.
Fifth. There are so many books standing before me that it is very hard to choose, but I choose Ross’
THREE PILLARS OF ZEN. Many people have written about Zen – including Suzuki, who knew it the
most – but THREE PILLARS OF ZEN is the most beautiful book written about Zen. Remember my
emphasis, about, because Ross has no experience of it. In fact, that makes it even more wonderful:
Books I Have Loved 97 Osho
CHAPTER 16.
that without any experience, just from studying books and visiting monasteries in Japan, she wrote
a masterpiece.
There is only one thing I want to say to Ross: in Zen there are not three pillars, not even a single
pillar. Zen has no pillars. It is not a temple, it is pure no-thing-ness. It needs no pillars at all. If she
publishes the book again she should change the title. THREE PILLARS OF ZEN looks good, but it
is not true to the spirit of Zen. But the book is written in a very scientific way. Those who want to
understand Zen intellectually cannot find a better book.
Sixth: My choice for the sixth is a strange man’s book. He calls himself ’M’. I know his real name,
but he never allowed anyone to know it. His name is Mahendranath. He was a Bengali, a disciple of
Ramakrishna.
Mahendranath sat at Ramakrishna’s feet for many many years, and went on writing down whatsoever
was happening around his master. The book is known as THE GOSPEL OF RAMAKRISHNA, but
written by M. He never wanted to disclose his name, he wanted to remain anonymous. That is the
way of a true disciple. He effaced himself utterly.
The day Ramakrishna died, you will be surprised, M died too. There was nothing more for him to
live for. I can understand... after Ramakrishna it would have been far more difficult to live than to
die. Death was more blissful than to live without his master.
There have been many masters, but there has never been such a disciple as M to report about
the master. He does not come into it anywhere. He was just reporting – not about himself and
Ramakrishna, but only about Ramakrishna. He no longer exists in front of the master. I love this
man and his book, and his tremendous effort to efface himself. It is rare to find a disciple like
M. Ramakrishna was far more fortunate in this than Jesus. I know his real name because I have
traveled in Bengal, and Ramakrishna was alive at the end of the last century, so I could find out the
name of this man Mahendranath.
Seventh. There was an Indian mystic just at the beginning of this century. I don’t think he was an
enlightened man, because he committed three mistakes; otherwise his collected works are beautiful,
pure poetry... but those three mistakes have to be remembered. Even a man like Ramateertha can
also commit such stupid mistakes.
He was in America. He was a man with charisma and he was worshipped. When he went back to
India he thought he should first go to Varanasi, the citadel of the Hindu religion, the Jerusalem of
the Hindus – their Mecca. He was certain that if the Americans have respected him so much, then
certainly the brahmins of Varanasi are going to worship him like a god. He was wrong. When he
spoke in Varanasi one brahmin stood up and said, ”Before you proceed further, please answer my
question. Do you know Sanskrit?”
Ramateertha had been talking about the ultimate reality, and this brahmin had asked him, ”Do you
know Sanskrit? If you don’t then you have no right to speak about ultimate reality. First go and study
Sanskrit.”
There was nothing wrong with the brahmin; all over the world brahmins are like that. What surprises
me is that Ramatirtha started to study Sanskrit. That shocks me. He should have told the brahmin,
Books I Have Loved 98 Osho
CHAPTER 16.
”Get lost, along with all your Vedas and your Sanskrit! I don’t care. I know the truth, why should I
bother to know Sanskrit?”
Ramateertha did not know Sanskrit, that is true, and there is no need either – but he felt the need.
That is the first thing I want you to remember. His books are very poetic, exhilarating, ecstatic, but
the man is missing somewhere.
Secondly: when his wife came to see him from faraway Punjab he refused. He had never refused
any other woman, why did he refuse his own wife? Because he was afraid. He was still attached. I
feel sorry for him: renouncing his wife, yet still afraid.
Third, he committed suicide – although Hindus don’t call it that, they call it ’dissolving oneself in the
Ganges’. You can give beautiful names to ugly things.
Except for these three things Ramatirtha’s books are valuable, but if you forget these three things
you may start thinking of him as if he is enlightened. He speaks as if he was an enlightened man,
but it is only ’as if’.
Eighth: G.E.Moore’s PRINCIPIA ETHICA. I have loved this book. It is a great exercise in logic. He
spends two hundred or more pages just considering one question: What is good? – and coming to
the conclusion that ’good’ is indefinable. Great! But he did his homework, he did not just jump to the
conclusion as mystics do. He was a philosopher. He went step by step, gradually, but he came to
the same conclusion as the mystics.
Good is indefinable, so is beauty, so is God. In fact all that is of any worth is indefinable. Note it: if
anything can be defined that means it is worthless. Unless you come to the indefinable, you have
not come to anything worthwhile.
Ninth... I have left THE SONGS OF RAHIM from my list but I cannot any longer. He was a
Mohammedan, but his songs are written in Hindi so Mohammedans don’t like him, they don’t take
any note of him. Hindus don’t like him because he was a Mohammedan. I may be the only person
who respects him. His full name is Rahim Khan Khana. His songs are of the same height and same
depth as Kabir, Meera, Sahajo or Chaitanya. Why did he write in Hindi? Being a Mohammedan
he could have written in Urdu, and Urdu is a far more beautiful language than Hindi. But he chose
knowingly; he wanted to fight the Mohammedan orthodoxy.
Tenth, Mirza Ghalib, the greatest Urdu poet – and not only the greatest Urdu poet, but perhaps there
is no other poet in any language of the world who can be compared with him. His book is called
DIVAN. DIVAN simply means a collection of poems. He is difficult to read, but if you can make a
little effort it pays immensely. It is as if each line contains a whole book. And that is the beauty of
Urdu. I say no other language can contain so much in such a small space. Just two sentences are
enough to contain a whole book. It is magical! Mirza Ghalib is the magician of that language.
Eleventh, and the last – Alan Watts’ THE BOOK. I have been saving it. Alan Watts was not a buddha,
but he could be one day. He has moved closer to it. THE BOOK is tremendously important. It is his
testament, his whole experience with Zen masters, Zen classics. And he is a man of tremendous
intelligence; he was also a drunkard. Intelligence plus wine have really created a juicy book. I have
loved THE BOOK and I have saved it for the last.
Books I Have Loved 99 Osho