Beyond Psychology
Beloved Osho,
You say freedom is the greatest value for you. You also say
your attitude to life is that of Let-Go. It seems to me that you used your
freedom to choose to give up the freedom to decide anything, in favour of
letting existence take care of you. Is the ultimate in freedom actual total
enslavement?
No, I have not chosen anything.
I have not chosen, out of my freedom, to allow the existence to take
care of me. Freedom is choiceless. In freedom I have discovered, not
chosen.
With the eyes free, with the consciousness free, I have discovered that
let-go is the way existence functions. There was no question of choice
- whether to be with existence or not. It was not either/or, but just
the realization that this is the only way existence works. I relaxed
with it.
The people who are not living a life of let-go are choosers, because
they are going against nature, against existence; they have to choose.
The ego is a chooser. When you are completely free of ego, of self, when
you are simply freedom, you see it happening that the fight is
disappearing and let-go is taking its place. You are nothing more than a
watcher. If you choose it, then it is not let-go. How can it be let-go
if you choose it?
It happened...
One man came to Gautam Buddha, and he wanted to
surrender himself unto Buddha's feet. Buddha looked at him and said, "You
cannot surrender."
He said, "Why? Everybody else is allowed, and I am not allowed - what
is my disqualification?"
Buddha laughed and he said, "There is no question of disqualification.
Just the nature of surrender is such that you cannot do it - it
happens. If you do it, it is your doing; it is not surrender. And if you
do it, you can take it back. It is never total; you are outside of it.
It was your action, so you can decide any moment: no more surrender! But
if it happens then it takes all of you, the whole of you, leaving
nothing behind which can ever do anything against it."
Simple things... but they become complicated because our mind is
accustomed only to doing. And these are not mind things. Surrender,
let-go - these are not mind things. For the mind it is impossible to
think of them. It can agree to surrender, it can agree to let-go, but it
has to be the master, doing it, and it has to be an act - and that's
where everything goes wrong.
Surrender is once and forever; let-go is once and forever - just as
death is once and forever, because nothing is left that can change the
course of things. All has been taken in. You are no longer there to have
a second thought.
Just the other day I was shown a statement of Rajen, one of our
therapists, who is doing as much damaging work as possible. His
statement was, "Up to now I was helping Osho's work through surrender;
now he has given me freedom. I will still continue to do his work but my
work will be different. My work will be to help people to be free of
Osho."
Now, in the first place if he was really surrendered, then there is no
going back: you cannot do anything about it anymore. It has happened,
and you are dissolved in it.
Secondly, I cannot give you freedom, because if I give you freedom I can
take it back. Freedom has to be your realization - and that would have
come through surrender, on its own. Surrender flowers into freedom,
because in surrender the self is gone, and all the hell that the self
creates is gone. Your whole energy is now available to blossom.
I cannot give freedom to anyone.
Freedom is not a commodity that I can hand over to you; it has to happen
at the innermost core of your being. Surrender only removes the
hindrances. You surrender only that which is blocking the way for
freedom to come to you.
So on the second point also he is wrong. And then on the third he goes
really stupid, saying that now his work will be to help people to be
free of Osho. The whole world is free of me - that is not helping them!
But what he means... He is now persuading sannyasins not to be
sannyasins. And he thinks he is helping people to be in a state of
freedom.
There are things which only happen.
Let-go is not an action on your part, but just an understanding of the
fact that this is the only way the universe functions, and if you are
not functioning in this way, you are going to remain in misery. You are
not being punished, you are simply being foolish. The old religions have
given the idea to people that if you do wrong, you will be punished; if
you do right, you will be rewarded - because they were all dependent on
doing, and that's their basic fallacy.
Religion begins when you cross the boundary of doing and enter into the
world of happening. Then let-go happens, because you see that this is
the only way things work. If you go against it, you are miserable.
Nobody is punishing you; you are simply being stupid. If you try to get
out through the wall and hit your head, do you think it has been a
punishment? And there is the door, always available for you to get out.
Knowing about the door, you try to get out through the wall and smash
your face. Old religions call it punishment. It is not punishment, it is
simple foolishness. And the person who goes out of the door into the
garden, in the sun, in the air, is not being rewarded; he is just being
intelligent.
So if you ask me, I will say intelligence is the reward; unintelligence
is the punishment. In its ultimate form: unintelligence is hell,
intelligence is heaven.