The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty Talks on Kabir

OSHO, I ALWAYS DREAM OF SEX AND SEX AND SEX -- WHY?

ARE YOU A FOLLOWER of Morarji Desai? Something is basically wrong with you. Your dreams simply show that you are living a repressed life. Your dreams reflect how you are living your life. Your dreams are not just dreams -- they are reflections.

In the waking time you must be repressing sex; then, naturally, it is bound to assert itself in your dreams. Dreams only indicate that you are doing something wrong with your life. When your life is really harmonious, lived consciously, dreams disappear -- all kinds of dreams disappear. Your whole sleep becomes dreamless. That is the indication that the transformation is happening -- that happens to every meditator. As meditation goes deeper, dreams start disappearing.

But dreams show something about you. And you have to rethink, you have to rearrange your life. If you are dreaming only of sex, that simply shows you are sex-obsessed. And who is sex-obsessed? Whoever represses is bound to be obsessed by it. Your dreams cannot just be rejected as dreams -- as people do. They think they are just dreams, nothing to be worried about. Your dreams are symbolic. Your unconscious is trying to convey a certain message to you, that you are doing something wrong.

Ram Das, sex is part of life. You cannot deny it -- you can transcend it, but you cannot deny it. If you deny it, you will create unnecessary complexities -- it will become an obsession. And it will create perversions in your life.

Morarji Desai drinks his own urine -- not for no reason. It is a perversion. It is rooted in sexual repression. Sexual repression can take many kinds of perverted forms.

Angelo: "What-a happened?"

Antonio: "I dreamt-a I was eating a-spaghetti

Angelo: "Why is that so bad?"

Antonio: "I woke up and a-the string on a-my pyjamas was a-gone."
Now Italians go on and on with spaghetti, spaghetti, spaghetti. Dreams will reflect, dreams are reflections. If sex is reflected in your dreams, reconsider your life. Drop all the old nonsense. You must be a typical Indian, Ram Das. That's what goes on in the Indian mind continuously. Even your saints are full of obsessive sex, because all ways to transcend sex have been denied them.

You will be surprised to know that all kinds of sexual perversions were invented by monks and nuns. And these are the people who condemn. But psychologists say that homosexuality was invented by the monks and the nuns -- homosexuality is a religious phenomenon. And so are other things...

If you repress something, nature is going to take revenge on you And remember, you cannot fight with nature. You can Will nature, not by fighting with it but by being with it. You can persuade nature to be with you and help you. And nature is very compassionate. But once you start fighting, you are bound to lose. Nature is vast and you are very tiny. It is like a wave fighting with the ocean, a small leaf fighting with the whole tree -- it is stupid! The wave can win, but not against the ocean -- with the ocean.

And that's my basic teaching.

Sex can be transcended and should be transcended, but transcendence has to be not against nature but with nature, Through nature. Accept your sexuality -- it is part of you! and a tremendously important part. You are born out of sex. Each cell of your body is a sex cell. Sex energy is your life energy! -- respect it, it is a gift from God. Understand it. Be more and more meditative about it. But drop all prejudices, drop all condemnations. because when you carry a condemnation you cannot understand a thing. Drop all judgements. Sex is sex -- it is a pure natural energy. With great acceptance, love, respect, meditate over it. Go deeper and deeper into it to see what exactly it is. And in that very seeing you will be going beyond it.

The day one has known what sex energy really is, one has transcended. Sex disappears, but it disappears not by denying. But by understanding. And the disappearance is not really the destruction of the energy but a transformation. In existence nothing is ever destroyed, things are only transformed.

It is sex when it is transformed that becomes love. And it is love when it is transformed that becomes prayer. And it is prayer in its ultimate transformation that becomes God.
The fourth question
Question 4

OSHO, I DON'T ACCEPT YOUR CRITICISM OF SIGMUND FREUD. DO YOU ACCEPT A SANNYASIN WHO SOMETIMES SAYS NO TO WHAT YOU SAY? I AM NOT LESS NEUROTIC THAN FREUD, BUT I THINK THAT I CAN BECOME CREATIVE ONLY IF I LEARN TO ACCEPT THE NEUROTIC PART OF MYSELF. WHAT DO YOU SAY TO THIS?

WHO HAS CRITICIZED SIGMUND FREUD? I was simply stating a few facts! To state a fact is not a criticism. If I call a blind man a blind man, I may be rude but I am not criticizing. I may be blunt, I may not be polite, but I am not criticizing.

Freud was neurotic, and there are a thousand and one facts supporting this. Just look into Freud's biographies and you will come across those facts yourself. He was a homosexual. He wrote such stupid homosexual letters to a man that later on he asked the man again and again to destroy those letters, because when he became famous he was afraid that some day or other those letters would come to public notice.

The major part of those letters was destroyed, but a few somehow survived. His whole life he was condemning homosexuality, and he had deep homosexual tendencies.

It happens almost always that whatsoever you condemn in others is really your inner problem. The other is just a scapegoat.
You say: I AM NOT LESS NEUROTIC THAN FREUD, BUT I THINK THAT I CAN BECOME CREATIVE ONLY IF I LEARN TO ACCEPT THE NEUROTIC PART OF MYSELF.
That is true. That's what I teach here: accept it! Freud never accepted his neurotic part. He not only never accepted it: he tried to deny it, he tried to cover it up.
Once Freud and Jung were travelling in a train, and they started talking about psychoanalysis. Suddenly Jung had a great idea -- he said, "You have psychoanalysed so many people, but you yourself are not psychoanalysed. It will be good if you also go through psychoanalysis. Somebody whom you have psychoanalysed and whose psychoanalysis is complete can psychoanalyse you!"

And Freud became so afraid -- even just the idea -- that he started trembling and he fainted. When he came back he said, "I cannot allow that -- I cannot allow myself to be psychoanalysed. That will expose me."

And Jung said, "Then you are already exposed."
Freud never accepted that he had any psychological problems. He tried to deny them, because the fear was that if you have psychological problems, how can you be the founder of psychoanalysis? He tried to prove that he was superhuman -- and he was not a Buddha, he was not an enlightened person. He suffered from the same jealousies, paranoia, as everybody -- in fact more than the ordinary, average person.

All his old colleagues left him by and by, and the reason was: he was so jealous -- anybody who was reaching closer to him, becoming famous, known, he would feel so jealous, so afraid, that a competitor was born, that he would start attacking him. He did that to Adler, to Jung, and to many others. ANYBODY, his OWN disciples -- he was afraid of his own disciples, that they would become competitors or they may prove themselves more important than he was. He could not conceive anybody being more important in the world of psychoanalysis.

This is a very poor kind of mind, a very ordinary, mediocre mind. And he was so political that the whole movement of psychoanalysis was continuously in a turmoil. Conspiracies were going on for and against -- for this, against that. He was making his followers fight with each other, because that is the only way: divide and rule. He was putting one follower against another. He was running psychoanalysis as a political thing.

I am not criticizing him. I have a great respect for the man -- in spite of all his faults he made a great breakthrough. In spite of all his human limitations he started a new dimension in human consciousness. He IS the founder of psychoanalysis, and Jung, Adler and others, nobody comes close to him; he was unnecessarily afraid. He was simply suffering from paranoia: nobody comes close to him! He was a giant among pygmies. But the giant was afraid of the pygmies. He was not aware of his own strength -- he was not aware at all; that is the problem.

Wolfgang, I am not against Freud. And you ask me:
DO YOU ACCEPT A SANNYASIN WHO SOMETIMES SAYS NO TO WHAT YOU SAY?

Yes, that's what I teach. When your consciousness says no, say no. When your consciousness says yes, say yes. I don't create a conscience in you. I am not creating followers here -- no, not at all -- but friends. Your no is as much respected as your yes. That's the only way to show respect towards you You may not respect yourself, you may have a self-condemnatory attitude, but for me you are all potential Buddhas. How can I disrespect a Buddha? -- even though the Buddha is potential, even though you are in the seed. But I can see the flower!

In Kirlian photography they have discovered one thing which is very significant: with very sensitive photoplates pictures can be taken of a bud, but the picture will show not the bud but the flower that is going to happen -- because before the bud opens, the energy field around the bud opens. Just a few hours before the bud really opens, its energy field opens. and Kirlian photography takes the photograph of the energy field. The bud has not opened yet, the bud is still a bud, but Kirlian photography can give you a picture of the future. It is not future for the sensitive plate -- for the sensitive plate it is already present.

Through Kirlian photography, illnesses can be caught before they happen to you. To be precise: a few illnesses have been caught six months before they happened -- there was no possibility to even suspect that the man was going to fall ill after six months from a certain illness -- there is no way to know about it. Nothing has happened yet in the body, but something has happened in the energy field that surrounds the body. And Kirlian photography can take the photograph of the energy field and can infer through the photograph that this man is going to have cancer after six months. Now Kirlian photography is going to become a tremendously powerful instrument in the hands of the future medicine. If we can know six months before, then much can be done -- then nobody need fall ill. The illness can be prevented even before it has happened.

And that's how I see you. Before my eyes you are not buds but flowers, before my eyes you are not seeds but fully grown trees -- great foliage, flowers, fruits. Before me you are Buddhas! Hence I call you 'friends'. Kabir calls his disciples: Friends, wake up!

You are accepted, Wolfgang, with all your nos, with all your yeses -- you are accepted as you are. I don't make any condition. If you are ready to become a sannyasin, who am I to prevent you? The chance has to be given to you to grow, to be.

OSHO, WHY IS THE NEW GENERATION SUCH A PROBLEM TO THE PARENTS?

It is a momentum, a gathering momentum. You are standing on the shoulders of the Buddhas -- the whole part is yours. For example, in my being Buddha is a part,Jesus is a part, Abraham is a part, Krishna is a part, Mohammed is a part... in that way Buddha was poorer than me, Jesus was poorer than me. And some future enlightened person will be richer than me, because I will be part of his being but he cannot be part of my being. Evolution goes on gathering momentum.

Each child should be more intelligent than the parents -- but that brings trouble, because that is what offends the parents. Parents would like to pretend that they are all-knowing. In the past it was easy to pretend because there was no other way to impart knowledge to the children than by the oral communication from the parents.

For example, a carpenter's son would learn all that he would ever learn through the father. The father would not only be the father but the teacher also. And the son would always be in awe and respect of him, because the father knew so much -- he knew everything about all kinds of trees and wood and this and that, and the son knew nothing. He would have tremendous respect.

Age used to be respected: the older a man was in the ancient days, the more wise, of course, because of his experiences. But now we have invented better means of communication. The father is no more the teacher; now the teaching profession is a totally different profession. The child goes to the school. The father had gone to the school thirty or forty years before. In these thirty, forty years there has happened a knowledge explosion. The child will learn something which the father is not aware of, and when the child comes home, how can he feel any awe? -- because he knows more than the father, he is more up to date than the father. The father seems to be out-moded.

This is the problem, and this is going to be so more and more, because our expectations are old and we still want the child to respect the parents as he used to respect them in the past -- but the whole situation has changed. You will have to learn something new now: start respecting the child. Now, the new has to be respected more than the old. Start learning from the child because he knows better than you. When your son comes from the university, he certainly knows better than you.

That has been my experience at university. One of my philosophy professors used to talk such nonsense, and the reason was that he had been to university thirty years before. In those days, when he was a student, Hegel and Bradley, they were the most important figures in the world of philosophy. Now nobody cares about Hegel and Bradley. Now Wittgenstein and G. E. Moore have taken their place.

This professor had no idea of Wittgenstein, no idea of G.E. Moore. He was so outmoded that I had to tell him. "You are so old, so useless, that either you start reading what is happening now in philosophy or you stop teaching!"

Naturally, he was angry -- I was expelled from the university. He wrote a letter to the vice chancellor and said, "Either I am going to teach or this student is to remain in the university. but we cannot both remain together -- he is trouble."

He was not ready to read Wittgenstein. In fact, I can understand his problem: even if he had read he would not have understood. Wittgenstein is a totally different world from Hegel. And he used to talk about Hume and Berkeley... which are rotten names, no more of any significance -- part of history, part of footnotes.

This is the problem. You ask me, Narayana:
WHY IS THE NEW GENERATION SUCH A PROBLEM TO THE PARENTS?
They are not really a problem: your expectation that they should respect you, that they should respect you as children have always respected their parents -- it is impossible. You start respecting them. You start respecting the new. Age in itself cannot now be any reason for respect. Intelligence, consciousness, they should be respected. And if you respect your children, they will respect you. But only if you respect your children will they respect you. The old way was that you go on humiliating the children, you go on insulting them in every possible way, and they have to respect you -- now this cannot be so any more.
The preacher's wife, while shopping, noticed a sign in the butcher's shop: "Dam Ham on Sale." Slightly taken aback by such a name, she confronted the butcher about the use of profanity, but was reassured when he explained that this was a new breed of hogs being raised up by Hoover Dam, hence the name 'Dam Ham'. She decided to take some home and fix it for her family that evening.

When her husband arrived home, she was cooking and he asked, "What's for dinner? '

"Dam ham," she replied.

The minister, who had never heard such language in his house, began to reproach her, but after she explained he felt a little embarrassed for doubting his wife.

That evening as they sat down to dinner with their six-year-old son, the minister said grace and then asked, "Pass the dam ham, please."

The little kid looked up, his eyes got big, and he said, "Now you are talking, Dad. Pass the fucking potatoes too!"

Chapter #12

Chapter title: Who Am I?

22 April 1979 am in Buddha Hall

ShortTitle: FISH12

Audio: Yes

Video: No

Length: 102 mins

The first question

HOW TO SACRIFICE THE EGO?

The ego is a kind of absence. Because you don't know yourself, hence the ego. The moment you know yourself, no ego is found. The ego is like darkness; darkness has no positive existence of its own; it ii simply the absence of light. You cannot fight with darkness, or can you? You cannot throw darkness out of the room; you cannot take it out, you cannot take it in. You cannot do anything with darkness directly. If you want to do anything with darkness, you will have to do something with light. If you put the light on, there is no darkness; if you put the light off, there is darkness.

Darkness is only the absence of light -- so is ego: absence of self-knowledge. You cannot sacrifice it.

It has been told to you again and again: "Sacrifice your ego" -- and the statement is patently absurd, because something that does not exist cannot be sacrificed. And if you try to sacrifice it, something which is not there in the first place at all, you will be creating a new ego -- the ego of the humble, the ego of the egoless, the ego of the person who thinks he has sacrificed his ego. It will be a new kind of darkness again.

No, I don't say to you: Sacrifice the ego. On the contrary, I say: Try to see where the ego is. Look DEEP into it; try to locate it, where it exists, whether it exists at all or not. Before one can sacrifice anything one must be certain about its existence.

But don't be against it from the very beginning. If you are against it, you cannot look deep into it. There is no need to be against anything. The ego is your experience -- maybe it is just apparent, but it is still your experience. Your whole life moves around the phenomenon of the ego. It may be a dream.

But to you it is so true.

There is no need to be against it. Dive deep into it, go into it. Going into it means bringing awareness into your house, bringing light into darkness. Be alert, watchful. Watch the ways of the ego, how it functions, how it manages at all. And you will be surprised: the deeper you go into it, the less it is found. And when you have penetrated to the very core of your being, you will find something totally different which is not ego, which is egolessness. It is self, supreme self -- it is God. You have disappeared as a separate entity; you are no more an island, now you are part of the whole.

In that experience of being one with the whole, the ego IS sacrificed, but that is only a way of speaking, a metaphor. Don't take it literally.

Try to understand the ego. Analyse it, dissect it, watch it, observe it, from as many angles as possible. And don't be in a hurry to sacrifice it, otherwise the greatest egoist is born: the person who thinks he is humble, the person who thinks that he has no ego.

That is again the same story played on a more subtle level. That's what the religious people have been doing down the ages: pious egoists they have been. They have made their ego even more decorated; it has taken the colour of religion and holiness. Your ego is better than the ego of a saint; your ego is better, far better -- because your ego is very gross, and the gross ego can be understood and dropped more easily than the subtle. The subtle ego goes on playing such games that it is very difficult. One will need absolute awareness to watch it.

The ego of the sinner is more easily dropped than the ego of the saint. And the saint can always manage to pretend. And his ego is so polished, so decorated, so holy, so sanctified by tradition, by convention, by the crowd, that he may almost forget about it.

The real search is not to make your ego humble; that is ego standing upside-down, ego doing SHIRSHASAN -- headstand. Avoid it. Rather, follow a totally different path: meditate on the phenomenon of ego, enquire what it is. And as the enquiry deepens, the ego disappears. Enquiring into the ego you will come to the self.

And remember: the self has nothing to do with the ego, because the self has nothing to do with you at all. The self is always the supreme self: AHAM BRAHMASMI! -- I am God! At that point, you are not, only God is: Tat-tvam-asi -- thou art that. At that point, there is no distinction between thou and that. The dewdrop has disappeared into the ocean and has become the ocean itself.

But no sacrifice -- the non-substantial cannot be sacrificed, it can only be understood. And in the very understanding is the disappearing. And this disappearance is beautiful, because it does not leave any traces behind, no scars, no wounds.
The second question
Question 2

OSHO, WHAT IS RATIONALIZATION? I AM ASKING THIS QUESTION BECAUSE MY HUSBAND IS A PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY AND WHATSOEVER I SAY HE ALMOST ALWAYS SAYS IT IS NOTHING BUT A RATIONALIZATION.

RATIONALIZATION IS A TRICK OF THE MIND to deceive not only others but yourself too. Your husband may be practising rationalization himself. Whenever he says to you, "This is a rationalization," it may be nothing but a rationalization on his part. He wants to avoid, he wants to escape; he does not want to answer directly. He condemns you.

And of course he uses a big, very big word: rationalization. And naturally the wife is cowed down -- there must be something wrong. And the husband knows, and he is a professor of philosophy, so he is bound to know. He is practising rationalization himself.

Rationalization is not true reasoning; it is a strategy, a pretension. It pretends to be rational but it is not.

"Booze killed me mother," answered Kehoe, "and booze killed me father -- I am drinking for revenge!"

Monday -- was invited to dine at the Captain's table.

Tuesday -- spent the day with the Captain.

Wednesday -- Captain made ungentlemanly proposals to me.

Thursday -- Captain said he would sink the ship if I did not agree to his proposals.

Friday -- saved five hundred lives.

Today Acharya Vinoba Bhave is going to start his fast unto death -- because he wants a total ban on cow slaughter. He calls it his religious duty. How can this be a religious duty? This is blackmail; this is threatening the country. And from where has he got the idea? He says that his mother appeared in his dream and told him, "This is the work that you have to do."