The Perfect Master, Vol 1 Talks on Sufi Stories

That celebration is Sufism.
The dervish said:
"BUT THERE IS A STILL WORSE POSSIBILITY BEFORE YOU. BEWARE THAT YOU DO NOT BECOME LIKE THE DOCTOR IN THE STORY.
"IN ORDER TO TEST A PHYSICIAN'S KNOWLEDGE, A CERTAIN KING SENT SEVERAL HEALTHY PEOPLE TO BE EXAMINED BY HIM. TO EACH THE DOCTOR GAVE MEDICINE. WHEN THE KING SUMMONED HIM AND CHARGED HIM WITH THIS DECEIT, THE LEECH ANSWERED, 'GREAT KING! I HAD FOR SO LONG SEEN NOBODY BUT THE AILING THAT I HAD BEGUN TO IMAGINE THAT EVERYONE WAS ILL AND MISTOOK THE BRIGHT EYES OF GOOD HEALTH FOR THE SIGNS OF FEVER!'"
RAMAKRISHNA FALLING UNCONSCIOUS is a sign of great health, but the psychologist will say he has fallen into a kind of hysterical fit. And the hysterical fit and Ramakrishna's going into unconsciousness look alike from the outside. From the inside they are not alike.

Ramakrishna has moved from the small tiny consciousness to the primal consciousness. He is no more there as an 'I', as an individual. He is there as the source, as the goal. He is there as existence itself. He is one with the whole. When somebody falls into a fit, into a hysterical fit, he loses the consciousness that he has but he does not attain any other consciousness. From the outside it is the same.

If you see Buddha asleep and somebody else asleep, from the outside what difference are you going to see? They will look alike. But they are not. The other person who is asleep by the side of Buddha is deep in dreams, and Buddha's awareness burns bright as ever. As it is in the day, so it is in the night. There is no change. But from the outside it is the same.

When somebody dies and Buddha dies, what is the difference? Difference is from the inside; it is an inside story. Unless you are a Buddha you will never know it, because how can you know the inside of a Buddha without becoming a Buddha yourself? That is the only way to be an insider.

When Buddha dies, nothing dies. There is no clinging to life, there is no problem. Buddha simply slips out of the body -- just as you change your clothes, exactly like that. Do you think each time you change your clothes that you are dying? Exactly like that Buddha slips out of the old clothes, slips out of the cage, and his soul is free and the whole sky is available. He is utterly thrilled. He is blissful in his death, because his death is not an end but really a new birth. He is moving into a far greater life than there was before it. It is from life to more life.

When you die you are moving from life to no life. From the outside it is all the same. From the inside it is not.

This story is beautiful:
"IN ORDER TO TEST A PHYSICIAN'S KNOWLEDGE, A CERTAIN KING SENT SEVERAL HEALTHY PEOPLE TO BE EXAMINED BY HIM."
Strange this king must have been. But this is the way, this is the Eastern way to judge. The real doctor is not one who knows what disease is: the real doctor is one who knows what health is. Disease even quacks can know. Disease is not such a great phenomenon; it is on the surface. Anybody can learn about it. But health is very deep; it is not easily available. Only a wise physician knows what health is about.

Do you know? In ancient China this was a rule: that the physician was paid not for curing illness but for keeping people healthy. People had their own private physicians, just as they have now. But the physician was paid I this client did not fall ill. Each year the client would pay the physician because he had not been ill. Now we pay the physician when we are ill and he cures us. This is a totally different thing. The Chinese idea was far superior.

And our idea is dangerous too, because to pay the physician when you are ill and he cures you makes him interested in your illness, his investment becomes in your illness. He wants you to be ill so that he can cure you. The Chinese idea is far superior. His investment SHOULD be in your health, not in your disease, so he remains concerned that you should not fall ill -- because if a person falls ill he will not pay. The physician has to cure him without any fee; that is his responsibility. It is his fault!What was he doing the whole year?

And the Chinese have remained one of the healthiest races in the world, particularly in the past. Sooner or later this is going to be the case again. In Soviet Russia they are thing about it, to make it a rule: the physician has to be paid only when you remain healthy -- for the health.

That's why it is very difficult to find a sympathetic journalist, very difficult -- because he comes for one or two days and he looks around and he sees all kinds of things which he has never seen anywhere. He becomes worried. He has his prejudices that these are the things only mad people do. How can sane people do these things? So this is a mad place. When he sees you SO happy, he cant lot believe it, because happiness is impossible. Then you must be hypnotized; somebody has hypnotized you. That's why you are feeling happy -- this is a hallucination. You have fallen into an illusion.

These are logical conclusions for him, because he comes with a prejudice. And people have prejudices AND prejudices, layers upon layers of prejudices. That's why it is VERY difficult to make them understand. They have always been misunderstanding people like me and their work. And the reason is what the doctor says:
"GREAT KING! I HAD FOR SO LONG SEEN NOBODY BUT THE AILING THAT I HAD BEGUN TO IMAGINE THAT EVERYONE WAS ILL AND MISTOOK THE BRIGHT EYES OF GOOD HEALTH FOR THE SIGNS OF FEVER!"
The dervish said to the seeker, "You have fallen into the first trap of being negative. Now there is a worse possibility for you -- don't become like this doctor! You say, 'I can know who is not spiritual.' This is the first step. The second step will be a logical conclusion. Slowly slowly, seeing everybody as NOT spiritual, the natural conclusion will arise that there is NOBODY who is spiritual -- all are fake, all are pseudo, deceivers, hypocrites, charlatans.

"If that decision is taken you are doomed, because then there is no hope. Because when you say NOBODY IS spiritual, you have denied your own possibility of becoming spiritual. When you say, 'NO Buddha has ever existed,' you have cut your whole future. If you say there has never been any flowering in the world, then, of course, how can you allow you self to flower? That is a worse possibility."

The dervish is right. Remember these two things from this story. One: look positively -- rather than finding who is not spiritual try to find who IS spiritual. Rather than looking for thorns, look for roses. And rather than looking for the darkness, look for the stars; rather than looking for diseases, look for health. Always move positively. Then there is a possibility that out of a hundred you may be able to find that one, that oasis in the desert. And with that oasis your life will be transformed. That is your Master. Being with him you will also become an oasis.

Sufism is the path of VIA POSITIVA. Zen transcends mind through the negative; Sufism transcends mind through the positive. Both transcend mind, both go beyond it, so both reach to the same goal.

But, let me repeat, Zen moves through a desert land; Sufism moves into dark, shadowy, but green flowering valleys. You choose! but not from the head. Feel... pulsate with both. And wherever you feel that your inner music starts flowing, then that is it. You have found your key.
The Perfect Master, Vol 1

Chapter #4

Chapter title: Via Confusiva

24 June 1978 am in Buddha Hall

ShortTitle: PERF104

Audio: Yes

Video: No

Length: 112 mins

The first question:

OSHO, WHATEVER YOU SAY SEEMS TO BE RIGHT FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF WHAT YOU ARE SAYING AT THAT MOMENT. BUT IT MAY BE CONTRADICTORY. YOU DRAW THE LISTENERS IN ONE DIRECTION CONFIRMING A PARTICULAR POINT, AND AT THE SAME TIME YOU GO VIA THE BACK DOOR TO THE OPPOSITE POINT. IT IS A SPIRAL -- THE LISTENER HARDLY REALIZES WHAT MAY BE HAPPENING. IS THIS NOT FOOLING THE LISTENER -- UNLESS HE REALIZES THAT THE REAL ANSWER LIES BEYOND YOUR SPOKEN WORDS?

The moment can contain only the moment. So whatsoever I say at the moment belongs to the moment. It is a flower of THAT moment. If it is raining, I say it is raining. Later on it may not be raining. The clouds may disperse. It may become sunny.

Yes, my statement is contradicted by another moment -- but it is contradicted only if it was claiming that it has to be true for ever.

I am not giving you dogmas. A dogma is a statement with the claim that it is true for ever. I give you only momentary flowers. I am not giving you a system that will remain for ever and for ever true. That is what has happened in the past, and man has suffered enough because of it.

What Buddha said was HIS response to HIS moment. What Mohammed said was HIS response to the life that he encountered. It can't be true for ever. And if it has to be true for ever, then life will never change, then life will become stagnant. That's why people who believe in dogmas become stagnant. Their life is no more a flow, they are not river like. They become frozen. Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, Buddhists, they are frozen people. They have lost track of all that goes on constantly changing .

Except change, nothing is eternal.

If I was creating a dogma here, then I would never contradict myself. You would be happy with that! because you would have something to cling to. You have not come here to become enlightened, Gourishankar -- you have come here to become knowledgeable. My effort is not to impart knowledge to you: my effort is to awaken you. I can't allow you to cling to any statement -- hence I contradict. I am always in a hurry to con-tradict, so you don't have any time to cling to anything. I want to take all knowledge away from you. I want you to be left alone, in utter emptiness and its purity, and its virginity.

That's why my moment IS FOR the moment. It does not claim anything beyond it. Each statement that I make is only FBI)r THIS moment. Enjoy it! Just enjoy the rose that has bloomed this mowing -- be full of its fragrance, sing it, dance with it, cele-brate it. You are fortunate you have been able to see THIS flower. But don't hope that you can keep it for ever. Unless it is a plastic flower it can't be eternal. Only false things can be eternal, artificial things can be eternal.

The reality is changing, it is flux, it is a river. Tomorrow I don't know what I will say. I don't remember what I said yesterday. I am in no way concerned with my past, and not concerned with my future either. This moment is ALL for me. Nothing else exists beyond it. I am UTTERLY disconnected from the past... and have no plans for the future. When the tomorrow comes we will see. And what I am saying to you now is not going to become an obligation for me to go on saying it for ever. I have no obligation to confirm my past again and again. Yesterday is gone, so are the statements that were made yesterday.

But I understand YOUR problem. Your problem is: Then in what to believe? How to believe? But who is telling you to believe in anything? Rejoice! Don't believe. Can't you see the difference? The emphasis is different. I am not telling you to believe in anything.

Of course, if I am telling you to believe in something, then I have to persist again and again with the same thing; I have to say it again and again. That will be a kind of hypnosis. When something is repeated constantly, you become hypnotized by it. I am not here to hypnotize you. I am here for just the opposite thing: to dehypnotize you -- not only of the statements that I have made in the past but of the statements of all the enlightened people that have ever existed.

I have to destroy your knowledge, your belief. I have to destroy anything that you can cling to. Only nothing has to be left there....

One sannyasin has done well. He has called my path VIA CONFUSIVA -- that's right. That's perfectly right. It is neither VIA NEGATIVA nor VIA POSITIVE -- it is VIA CONFUSIVA.

If you can be so much confused that you drop ALL belief, out of that confusion will come clarity. When do you feel confused? When exactly? Whenever one of your beliefs is attacked -- you become suspicious: Now what to believe in? Whenever a doubt arises... but how is a doubt possible if there is no belief?

The man of no-belief cannot doubt either. There is nothing to doubt. 13y destroying your belief I am destroying the very pos-sibility of doubt. Can you see the point? Doubt is a shadow of belief. It looks like the opposite -- it is not. Only believers can doubt. If you believe in God, doubt can arise. But if you don't believe in God, from where can doubt arise? how can doubt arise? A man without any kind of belief will be without any kind of doubt too. That is clarity.

When I say something and it goes against your belief, doubt arises: Now what to choose? You have put so much at stake with your belief, you have lived with it for so long, and now suddenly doubt arises! It shakes you up. It makes you frightened.

And if I go on saying contradictory things every day, great courage is needed to listen to me, Gourishanker, a great heart to contain, great love to understand me, and an intense desire to know, a passionate desire to know: "Whatsoever the cost, I am going to know. If all beliefs are to be destroyed and all systems have to be dropped and all religions to be thrown into the fire, I am ready. But I am going to know."

When this passionate desire is there, you will meet with me. Then you will understand my contradictions. It is a device. It is creating a situation. I will not allow my people any possibility to believe in anything, not even in me. When ALL belief has gone, what is left? You are just like a mirror reflecting all the moods of life, reflecting all the climates. Summer comes and you are summer... and winter comes and you are winter... and day comes and you are day... and the night comes and you are night.

This I call totality. And to live in totality is to live in God.

All that I am saying is not a kind of doctrinizing -- it is not at all. Its purpose us totally different. But the purpose is SO different, that's why such questions arise. When you go to listen to somebody else, he is there to propound a philosophy; he is explaining his philosophy to you. I am not explaining because I have no philosophy. I am utterly anti-philosophic.

When you go to a priest he is there to explain to you a certain dogma that he believes in; he is there to convert you. I am not here to convert you: I am here just to destroy you.

So remember: all statements are of the moment, just as all flowers are of the moment. Spring comes... and there are so many flowers. And then the spring is gone, and you never go to nature and say, "You look very contradictory. Where are the flowers? And how can you go on contradicting yourself in this way?"

Tao is contradictory. It has to be. That is the dialectics of life. But you never go to nature! If a cuckoo is calling and then suddenly it stops for no reason at all, you don't go to the cuckoo and say "Why have you stopped? This is so contradictory! Calling so beautifully, and then falling into silence? Either be silent or go on calling -- be consistent!" But you don't say that.

In the rains the trees are green. In the summer the leaves will disappear and branches will be standing bare, naked, dry, against the sky. But you don't go to the trees saying "How dare you be so contradictory!"

I am part of this Tao. I am not a philosopher. So all my statements are of the moment, for the moment. Remember it. There is no need to believe in them. Enjoy them! Relish them! While the flower is there, drink its beauty. It will be gone soon. Before it is gone, celebrate its being.

Celebrate me! Rather than believing in me, celebrate me. That is the difference -- the difference of emphasis. Let my presence be a feast to you. It should not become a prison. It should not become a definition of your mind. It should not fill you with ideas but with dance and song.

If you want to remember me, never remember me as a philosopher, as a priest -- no, never. Those are dirty words for me. Remember me as a poet. You never go to the poet and say to him, "You are contradictory," because you understand. A poet has no obligation to be consistent. He can sing a thousand songs of different moods. When he is sad, he sings a sad song; and when he is happy, he sings a happy song. You don't go to him....

My being is more that of a poet. And if you really want to feel my presence, you will also have to learn the way of poetry. Art to me is the greatest religion -- the religion of the future. A esthetics to me is prayer.

And second: there is no opposite for me. It looks contradictory to you; for me it is not. For me there are no contradictions at all, because each contradiction is nothing but a complement. There is no way to really contradict. The night does not contradict the day. It only gives rest to the day energy to be revived again in the mowing. If there was no night, there would be no day again. It is through the night that the day lives, regains vitality. And it is through the day that the night is born. It is through life that death arrives, and it is through death that life comes back again and again. They are not enemies: they are friends, partners in the same game, complement Aries.

So if you understand me with great love, you will see that those contradictions look like contradictions to you because your understanding is small. When your understanding is a little greater, when you have moved to a little higher stage of consciousness, those contradictions won't look like contradictions -- they will be complement Aries . They will make whatsoever I am saying very rich. It makes them rich.

If you talk only of Zen, it has a kind of richness. If you talk only about Sufis, it has another kind of richness. But when you talk about both Sufis arid Zen, your richness is immense. It is more than the sum total of Zen and Sufism. It is not only Zen plus Sufism: it is Zen multiplied by Sufism -- it is multi-dimensional.

Hence I go on speaking through different windows. Some-times I stand at the window that opens to the east and I talk about the east and the sun that rises and the morning. And sometimes I stand at the window that opens to the west and I talk about the evening and the sunset and the beauty of it. And I go on changing because there are many many doors to the divine.

Jesus says: There are many mansions in my God's palace. There are millions of possibilities. That is the infinity of God, that you cannot exhaust him. But to take note of ALL possibilities certainly makes you infinitely richer.

So there are no opposites for me, but only complementaries.

Don't take my answers as answers. I am not a schoolteacher. I have no answers to give you. That which I have to give you is the sense for the mysterious and the miraculous.

But I understand. It is difficult -- I speak one language, you speak another language. When I say 'language' I don't mean English, German or French. I mean... my language comes from my being, your language comes from your being. We may be speaking the same language on the surface, but deep down it is almost untranslatable, what I am saying to you. It is impossible to translate it into your language. Then why am I saying it at all?

I am just crazy. I cannot resist. It is overflowing. There is no way to prevent it. I have to say it -- just like a cloud is burdened with rainwater and it has to rain! Whether you are able to soak it in or not, that is not the point. Rocks may not be able to soak it in. Or, some soil may be able to soak it in and will be full of greenery and beauty will arise. But that is all undecided. It is an open thing. It may happen, it may not happen. It depends how you let me in.

For instance, Gabriel Marcel was trying to explain his ideas about God, grace and transcendence. He continually met resistance from the audience, from other philosophers: "But what do you mean by that? But surely you don't mean this? How is it possible that...? Isn't it true that...? etc, etc.... "

After a while Marcel became exasperated, and the audience as a whole restless. Finally, someone in the audience asked Marcel why he did not simply say what he meant. Since he had been trying to do just this for some time, he merely replied, "Perhaps I can't explain this to you, but if I had a piano here I could play it."

And because there was no piano, no communication was possible.

Yes, exactly that's what is happening here. What I am trying to say to you is a kind of music that I have heard. It has not been heard verbally. It is in the sound of the running water. It is in the wind passing through the pine trees. It is in the songs of the birds. It is in the silence of darkness. It is in the dancing rays of the sun. It is all over the place! But it is a music. And unless you are capable of understanding this music, you will not be able to understand me. You will go on misunderstanding me.

So you may feel that there is some kind of be fooling going on. When I say something, it looks so clearly, so absolutely right -- and the next moment I contradict it. Then whatsoever I say to contra-dict it looks again right. But again I will contradict it!