Talks Given from 12/04/86 Pm to 04/05/86 Am

Beyond Psychology

Talks given from 12/04/86 pm to 04/05/86 am

English Discourse series

44 Chapters

Year published: 1988

Ch 6 appears in the book "Socrates Poisoned..." Ch 29

Beyond Psychology

Chapter #1

Chapter title: Truth is the greatest offender

12 April 1986 pm in

Archive code: 8604125

ShortTitle: PSYCHO01

Audio: Yes

Video: Yes

Length: 86 mins

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

IN THE POONA YEARS, I REMEMBER YOU SO OFTEN USING THE PHRASE, "BE IN THE MARKETPLACE, BUT NOT OF IT." I THOUGHT THIS MEANT THAT WHEN I WAS AWAY FROM YOU, I WOULD NEED TO CONSTANTLY REMIND MYSELF THAT I WAS NO LONGER PART OF THE MARKETPLACE MENTALITY -- I WAS A SANNYASIN.

RECENTLY, DROPPED INTO THE SO-CALLED NORMAL REALITY OF BARGAIN-HUNTING AND FLAT-FINDING, OF SUPERMARKETS AND SKINHEADS, I REALIZED YOUR PEOPLE AREN'T PART OF THE MARKETPLACE; THAT NOW THERE IS NO NEED TO REMIND OURSELVES -- WE ARE VERY OBVIOUSLY AND IRREVOCABLY A RACE APART.

ONLY WEEKS AGO, MY QUESTION WAS ABOUT HELPING YOUR VISION TO BE REALIZED. NOW, AFTER MY RECENT EXPERIENCE OF THE WORLD, AND SEEING ITS TREATMENT OF YOU, I DON'T EVEN HAVE THE ENERGY TO TALK TO PEOPLE ABOUT YOU. DOES THIS MEAN THEY ARE TOO FAR GONE -- OR AM I?

The way the world has treated me is absolutely natural, you should not feel offended by it. If they had been respectful, understanding, and loving towards me, that would have been a shock. Their treatment is absolutely expected.

You have not gone far away, they have gone far away and they have been going on and on for millions of years. The distance between the real man and the man that exists in the world has become almost unbridgeable. They are so far away from their own reality, they have forgotten the way back home.

They have forgotten what was the purpose of their being here.

There is an ancient parable... A very wise king wanted his son -- the only son, who was going to be his successor -- to be a wise man before he succeeded him and became the king of a vast kingdom. The old man chose a way which was very strange: he sent the son away from the kingdom, told him that he was abandoned, that he should forget completely that he was a prince -- "He is no longer a prince and I am not going to make him my successor."

All his beautiful clothes, ornaments -- everything was taken away. He was given the clothes of a beggar and sent away in the middle of the night in a chariot to be thrown out of the kingdom. And there were strict orders that he should not be allowed back in the kingdom from anywhere.

Years passed; the prince really became a beggar. He really forgot that he was a prince. In fact there had been no effort on his part to forget -- he was a beggar. He was begging for clothes, for food, for shelter, and he had slowly accepted the condition he was in.

After many years, one day he was sitting outside a hotel, begging. It was hot summer and he wanted enough money to purchase a pair of shoes -- secondhand of course -- because the earth was almost like fire, and to walk without shoes was becoming impossible. He had wounds on his feet, and he was crying out for just a few coins. At that very moment a golden chariot stopped before the hotel, and a man descended. The man said, "Your father has called you back. He is very old and dying, and he wants you to be his successor."

In a single split second the beggar disappeared. The man was totally different; you could see it in his face, his eyes... the clothes were of the beggar still, but the man was totally different. A crowd gathered -- the same crowd before whom he had been spreading his hands for a few coins -- and they all started showing great friendship. But he was not even paying attention to them. He went up to the chariot, sat in the chariot and told the man who had come to get him, "First take me to a beautiful place where I can have a good bath, find clothes worthy of me, shoes, ornaments... because I can go before the king only as a prince."

He came home, and he came as a prince. He said to his father, "Just one thing I want to ask: Why did I have to be a beggar for so many years? I had really forgotten... If you had not called me back, I would have died as a beggar, never remembering that once I was a prince."

The father said, "This is what my father did to me. It was not done to harm you, but to give you the experience of the extremes of life -- the beggar and the king. And between these two, everybody exists.

"That day I told you to forget that you were a prince; now I want you to remember that being a prince or being a beggar are just identities given by others. It is not your reality, it is not you -- neither the king, nor the beggar. And the moment you realize that you are not what the world thinks of you, you are not what you appear to be, but you are something so deeply hidden in yourself that except for you, nobody else can see you, then a man becomes wise. Knowing it, wisdom follows.

"I was angry with my father and I know you must have been angry with me. But forgive me, I had to do it to make it clear to you: don't get identified with being a king, don't get identified with being a beggar, because in a split second these identities can be changed. And that which can be changed is not you. You are something eternal, something unchangeable."

People have gone far away from their reality, and to remind them of their reality hurts them. Their treatment of me is nothing but an expression of their wounded heart. They don't want to see those wounds; they don't want to be reminded of anything else which they have tried so hard to forget, to forgive. Somehow they have managed a certain identity in the world... and here comes a man who shatters it completely.

It is natural they should be angry with me. It is natural they will stone me. It is natural they will do everything that they have always done with people like me. That does not mean that you have to lose hope, that you have to become pessimistic, that you have to stop even talking about me. That way you are not helping them, and that way you are not helping yourself either.

Their behavior should not be taken into account at all. They are absolutely asleep. We are trying something which goes against their sleep, and naturally they feel disturbed and react. This is absolutely acceptable. But how long can they react? It is a question of a great challenge.

Losing hope means you have lost the game.

I am not going to lose the game.

To my very last breath I will go on doing the same, whatever their reaction. It is only by bringing their reaction to the surface that there is a possibility of change. It will take time, because millions of years have taken them away from themselves. You should have patience with them. They need your compassion, they need your patience.

They will come home; they want to come home, but it goes against their ego to recognize that they are not at home already. It goes against their ego to recognize that they are false, that they are phony.

But their reaction -- their throwing stones at me, or throwing knives at me, or putting me in jails, or crucifying me -- is going to change them. This is the only way that they will start thinking about what they are doing and why they feel offended. You feel offended only when something truthful about you is told, something which you have been hiding. You are never offended by lies.

Truth is the greatest offender.

Their very disturbance, their fear that I will destroy their morality, I will destroy their religion, I will destroy their tradition, shows one thing: they don't have religion, they don't have morality, they don't have any tradition. They are managing to believe that they have, but it is only a belief which can be easily destroyed; otherwise what happened in Greece?

I was just a tourist for four weeks in a country thousands of years old. The Greek Orthodox church is the oldest church in the world -- the Vatican is not that old. Jesus and his sayings were first translated into Greek; that's why he became "Christ," and his followers became "Christians." These are Greek words.

Now, this country -- which for two thousand years has been perpetually propagating Christianity, teaching every child a conditioning -- is afraid of a tourist who is going to be there for only four weeks. The archbishop was disturbed so much that he threatened that my house would be burned, that I would be stoned if I was not removed immediately from the country, because my presence would destroy the morality of the country, it would destroy the religion of the country, the family, the church, the tradition -- just in four weeks!

If I can manage to do that in four weeks, then whatever I am destroying deserves to be destroyed. It simply means that it is phony. People are not really in it -- they are just pretending. Only pretensions can be destroyed in four weeks; realities cannot be destroyed. But the archbishop of the oldest church of Christianity is so much afraid, and he goes on saying things which are absolute lies. But that's what I have been telling you again and again -- that all your religions are based on lies, and hence they are afraid.

The archbishop was sending telegrams to the president of the country, to the prime minister, to other ministers, and he was saying that I had been sent specially from hell to destroy the Christian Orthodox church in Greece. Can you believe a sane man saying something like that? And he holds the highest post, so even the president is afraid, the prime minister is afraid, and they have to do something criminal because that man can provoke the masses against them.

But I enjoyed the whole thing for the simple reason that it shows that truth has really a strength and power of its own. Truth has an authority which lies cannot have. You may have been conditioning people with those lies for centuries, but just a ray of light, just a small truth, can destroy that whole structure.

So there is no need to be hopeless. Talk to people -- and if they are offended, rejoice. It means whatever you have said has disturbed their conditioning, and they are trying to protect it. You cannot disturb an unconditioned man. You can say anything about him, but you cannot disturb him.

Now my sannyasins are in the world, and I have told them to mix with the world so that they can spread the truth more easily. You are fortunate -- just our people, a small minority in the world of five billion people, is enough to create a wildfire. But don't be in a hurry and don't be impatient. And there is no need ever to be in a state of losing hope. Truth is intrinsically indefatigable, intrinsically impossible to defeat.

It may take time, but there is no scarcity of time. And there is no need that the revolution should happen before our eyes. It is contentment enough that you were part of a movement that changed the world, that you played your role in favor of truth, that you will be part of the victory that is going to happen ultimately.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

WHY IS MONEY SUCH A LOADED ISSUE? IT SEEMS AS THOUGH WHEN WE HAVE MONEY, EITHER WE FEEL GUILTY ABOUT IT, AND THUS COMPELLED TO SPEND IT, OR INSECURE, AND THEREFORE WANT TO HOLD ONTO IT.

OBVIOUSLY IT AFFECTS A MULTITUDE OF AREAS THAT REVOLVE AROUND THE PIVOT OF POWER AND FREEDOM. THE CURIOUS THING IS THAT EVEN TO DISCUSS THE SUBJECT OF MONEY IS SOMEHOW AS MUCH A TABOO AS DISCUSSING SEX OR DEATH AT THE DINNER TABLE. PLEASE COMMENT.

Money is a loaded subject for the simple reason that we have not been able to work out a sane system in which money can be a servant to the whole humanity, and not the master of a few greedy people.

Money is a loaded subject because man's psychology is full of greed; otherwise money is a simple means of exchanging things, a perfect means. There is nothing wrong in it, but the way we have worked it out, everything seems to be wrong in it.

If you don't have money, you are condemned; your whole life is a curse, and your whole life you are trying to have money by any means.

If you have money it does not change the basic thing: you want more, and there is no end to wanting more. And when finally you have too much money -- although it is not enough, it is never enough, but it is more than anybody else has -- then you start feeling guilty, because the means that you have used to accumulate the money are ugly, inhuman, violent. You have been exploiting, you have been sucking the blood of people, you have been a parasite. So now you have got the money but it reminds you of all the crimes that you have committed in gaining it.

That creates two kinds of people: one who starts donating to charitable institutions to get rid of guilt. They are doing "good work," they are doing "God's work." They are opening hospitals, and schools. All they are doing is trying somehow not to go mad because of the feeling of guilt. All your hospitals, and all your schools and colleges, and all your charitable institutions are outcomes of guilty people.

For example, the Nobel prize was founded by a man who earned money in the first world war by creating all kinds of destructive bombs, machines. The first world war was fought using the means supplied by Mr. Nobel. And he earned such a huge amount of money... Both the parties were getting war material from the same source; he was the only person who was creating war materials on a vast scale. So whoever was killed, was killed by him. It doesn't matter whether he belonged to this side or to that side; whoever was killed was killed by his bombs.

So in old age, when he had all the money in the world a man can have, he established the Nobel prize. It is given as a peace award -- by a man who earned the money by war! Whoever is working for peace receives a Nobel prize. It is given for great scientific inventions, great artistic, creative inventions.