A great Sufi mystic, Jalaluddin Rumi, used to live with his one hundred disciples in a monastery. Few travellers came. The monastery was far away from any town, far away even from any roads, but people became interested – curious people can go anywhere: they go to the moon. Curious people are curious people, they can go anywhere. They became curious and they went there. It was far away from towns, off the road, but they took all the troubles of the journey and they reached the desert. The doors were not closed – because Rumi had never thought that anybody would come so far away – so they could watch what was happening inside…

Somebody was laughing loudly, madly, somebody was dancing, somebody was singing, somebody was standing on his head, people were doing a thousand and one things – and Jalaluddin Rumi was sitting just in the middle of it all, silent, with closed eyes.

So they thought, ’What is going on? Have these people gone mad? What are these lunatics doing here? And what is this man doing? He is simply sitting, with closed eyes. He should stop these people – it is dangerous; they may go beyond the limit.’ And somebody was raving like a maniac, and somebody was hitting the wall, and everything was going on.

They became very afraid. They became so afraid that they went away. But after one year curiosity took possession of them again and they thought ’We should go and see what is happening now. Things must have gone worse. Either they must have killed that Jalaluddin Rumi by now, because he was just sitting in the middle of it, or they must have committed suicide… murders must have happened!’ So they went again. They could not believe it: they were all sitting silently.

Only Jalaluddin Rumi was dancing.

But this was a worse situation because they thought at least he had been sane, now he also was insane. But they took pity on the man. They thought, ’It is natural – just to be amidst these mad people for so long, he must have gone out of his mind.’ They went away.

But after one year curiosity again took possession of them and they thought, ’We must go and see what is happening now.’

So they went there. There was nobody, only Jalaluddin Rumi was sitting alone – the whole group had disappeared. Now it was too much. What happened? They became too curious.

They went to Jalaluddin Rumi and they said, ’We want to ask what happened? Where are those nuts? What happened to them? And what are you doing sitting here alone?’

’So what has happened then? Things have completely changed.’ They thought, ’It seems this man has taken the madness of all, so that they have become silent and he is dancing.’

And Jalaluddin Rumi said, ’The work is done. Now they have gone into the wider world to find other nuts – to help them. The work is complete.’

Then they asked ’Why were you dancing last year when we came?’

He said, ’I was dancing because I was so happy that my disciples had achieved. It was dangerous, it was very arduous to release their madnesses, accumulated down the centuries, but they were really capable people. I was happy, that’s why I was dancing. Now they have gone to find other mad people. Now they will make a hundred monasteries all around the earth.’

Quote by Osho from Tao: The Pathless Path – Talks on extracts from ‘The Book of Lieh Tzu’,

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (1207 – 1273 CE), aka Jalaluddin Rumi, and Mawlānā, which means Our Master, is one of the Sufi world’s greatest poets and best known simply as Rumi.  His followers began a school of mysticism to encourage and celebrate his teachings – the Sufi branch known as the ‘Whirling Dervishes’ – the Mevlevi order.

A close friend of ours (my boyfriend/Shashwat) died on 9th Feb, 2018 in Pune. He had left this very precious album of Osho photos at link below with a sannyasin friend whom he met few months ago.

I thought you would like to see and maybe share on SN.

A gentle hug – Kavita.”

https://www.oshonews.com/2018/02/13/osho-in-jalandhar-1967-1968/

As one undrestands it, but one can be corrected, Leela were told some years ago by Pune HQ to drop the Osho bit, but declined, and have continued using it. Maybe somewhere along the line they got a reprieve? SN bloggers can tell us?

Someone we respect has said that Leela has next to nothing to do with Osho but was inspired by Veeresh.  Veeresh was certainly a lover of Osho and so are Tarisha and Devaraj the leading residents there,  but as a condition of using Osho as a prefix to a centre’s name one is usually required to offer daily Dynamic, Kundalini and White Robe – an idea that is looked upon by Leela inmates as quaint and only for people who live in the past !

Arguably meditation has never been more than a inconsequential side show for the Veeresh inspired Humaniversity commune which inspires Leela,  but it needs to be the main plank in all its forms, including the work that goes on there for the designation of an “Osho” commune?

He writes in a book called 93 Rolls Royces:

Being with Osho on the ride is an example of my total trust in him. Much of the ride takes place on narrow, two-lane, low-speed-limit mountain roads. Osho loves to go fast and often crosses into the opposite lane, passing the driver in front of him, going around blind curves.

I make the conscious choice to follow him no matter what; to trust his knowing whether or not it is safe to pass. To trust whether he can sense whether another vehicle is coming the other way on the two-lane road. Often he is not able to physically see what is around the bend.

Approaching many of the blind curves, he does not pass – and there would often be a car coming the other way.

For me, being with Osho is always about the teaching, rather than the event itself. I am aware that it doesn’t really have to do with us being out there driving like crazies. It’s a teaching in trusting my inner knowing, regardless of the circumstances. The Master Sosan says, “Stop talking and thinking and there is nothing you will not be able to know.”

After leaving the Ranch, Osho takes the two-lane highway to the nearby town of Madras. On that road, he can really push the Rolls to the max. At one point we had a communication code between his car and the chase car using CB radios. I once got into trouble because I couldn’t use the existing code we had developed for telling him how fast he was going. Why? Because he was going faster than the code allowed – it was over 85, for sure.

I think the speedometer on the GMC only went to 85 in those days. He was burying the speedometer on the Rolls and I couldn’t say how fast he was going. So I said that over the air and got into hot water.

On another ride, I’ve got Harry (a cop with “real world” experience) in the car with me. He has a speed gun aimed on the Rolls to measure Osho’s speed, but throws it in the back seat, saying, “It’s the wrong instrument” for this job. I love Harry – a very cool guy.

One time the trunk opens on the ride. Osho stops at a stop sign and the trunk lid is bobbing up and down. I am in the chase car, so I radio ahead and say, “Wait there for a minute. I’m going to have to come up and close the trunk.”

The reason the trunk is open is because the battery is in the trunk. With so many Rollses, each car sits for quite a while before it comes up in the rotation. So, Avesh and Anandadas need to recharge the battery before a car is used. When they serviced the battery that day, they forgot to close the trunk lid securely. That’s why it’s bobbing up and down.

Only after the Ranch do I learn that the battery put in the cars at the factory is a “slave battery.” It’s the dealer’s responsibility to put a larger amperage battery in before delivery to the customer. For some reason – maybe because the Ranch wants the cars so quickly – that upgrade never happens.

Not only does the battery need to be charged from sitting, but it’s so small it requires constant recharging by the alternator. The alternator does not operate when the car is idling at low rpm, like when Osho drives slowly, greeting his disciples along the road. Occasionally, especially during the summer when Osho uses the air conditioning, the car stalls.

That happens during one summer festival, when there are thousands of visitors greeting Osho along the side of the road during his drive-by. I am up at the garages when the call comes in asking me to bring Osho another car. The car’s battery has died!

When I arrive on the scene, Osho emerges from his car and stands among a throng of his disciples, grinning, his arms raised, encouraging his people to continue singing and dancing. Talk about a security nightmare! Finally he makes his way to the replacement car and continues along his way.

Avesh deals with the problem by setting the idle higher. However, that means Osho has to ride his brakes, causing them to squeak. The easy solution would be to requisition larger batteries for the cars. It doesn’t happen. Why? I dunno. It’s not my business.

An even more frightening incident happens one day when Osho is in Madras. This time, Anandadas is in the chase car when Osho pulls away from the curb after stopping to have a snack in his car. He darts from his parking space across two lanes into traffic.

Because Anandadas can’t get behind him fast enough, a pickup truck pulls in behind Osho and has to slam on his brakes to avoid ass-ending the Rolls. Can you imagine if Osho had gotten ass-ended?

Osho realizes how scary that incident has been for Anandadas. Back at the Ranch, Osho asks Avesh and me to meet with him in his room. He gives us a bottle of wine to give to Anandadas along with a message for him “not to worry” about Osho getting hurt on the ride.

Then Osho relates a story about a time when he was in India and his driver went off the road and the car rolled onto its side. Osho was in the back seat and could smell gasoline. He nudged the driver and told him to get out of the car, saying, “The car’s going to explode.” The driver said, “I can’t. I’m dead!” Osho said, “You’re not dead. If you were dead, you wouldn’t be able to hear me!”

Finally, the driver got out and was able to help Osho out. Osho tells Avesh and me to “tell Anandadas, ‘If I was going to die in a car accident, I would have died then.’ So, not to worry about me on the ride.” To me, it’s another example of Osho’s profound compassion for a disciple.

On another occasion, on one of the back roads, I am the driver for the chase car and Bob, one of the original Ranch property managers, is riding with me. He is not armed. We are stopped by two carloads of goofy teenage kids, one in front of us, one behind us, and they slow down to the point Osho has to stop.

We are pinned in. They jeer and give him the finger. Just being goofs, but to me it is very disturbing, to say the least, that helpless kind of feeling. Osho doesn’t seem disturbed, but Vivek looks quite upset. We are helpless to do anything about it.

After about ten minutes or so, after blowing off steam, the teenagers pull away and let us move on. To me it is totally unacceptable to be in a situation like that. So I go to Vidya, complaining that the ride is unsafe and not properly equipped to deal with such an episode, or worse.

I go with a list of complaints and an ultimatum that I would quit unless they follow my recommendations, such as having an armed person on the ride, a camera with telephoto lens, binoculars. They don’t adopt my recommendations fast enough, plus nobody is taking my advice on things, so I quit the ride.

Later they do implement my recommendations, but they go totally overboard: to having three chase cars, to Osho being wired to a machine reading out his vital signs, to having a car with not only a doctor but also a lawyer. Three cars on the ride, one for security, one for medical, one for legal.

By that time I am long finished with the ride and just focused on my painting work. At first going on the ride was fun – like an escape from the Ranch. But eventually it got so intense that it wasn’t fun anymore. As time went on, and Osho’s safety was more threatened, I was glad to be done with it. I wasn’t on the ride more than ten times.

Anyway, by the end it is decided Osho won’t go outside the Ranch on his rides. Sannyasin crews develop the pine forest road for him, so our Master can speed around the Ranch without getting hassled!

After all is said and done, I like to think I have a positive impact on Osho’s safety on the ride, through my bitching and moaning. To say the least, I am really a pain in the ass to all the powers that be on the Ranch. This I know. The real issue is the safety of our Master. It is something of a miracle that he emerges from his driving adventures unscathed!

Born in 1945, Deva Peter was raised in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He trained and worked as a professional auto mechanic, welder, boat builder and custom car painter. He took sannyas in Poona, in February 1981 and was invited to the Ranch that year. Osho’s Rolls-Royces were the most extraordinary custom paint jobs Peter completed. He currently enjoys retired life with Avalon (Ma Devagarbha) in Colorado, living close to their daughter, her husband, and two granddaughters, who are the light of his life. phaykus (at) outlook.com

However this link shows her answering a question about Osho’s physical presence which SN thought worthy.

Radha says in replying to a question about experiencing  Osho as an ordinary man and describing this:

I wish I could, and I have tried. But even in the times when I have been lucky enough to be close to him physically, I never felt – he was always talking about and also said, ‘I am an ordinary man’, I know it is true – I just cannot bring myself to describe… because whenever I went close to him all I could feel was an ocean of light and love.

Any time I have been close and touched him, I could not even fathom the depth of the void that I felt: an enormous emptiness in a body, laughter, very funny, and very dangerous – you would never know what was coming next. That’s the only thing that I can tell you.

Sannyasnews sometimes feels that whilst our bloggers are sincere, they are also often rather “serious”.Its good to keep things light, and a good laugh does.  The Sufis made a good contribution to this with Mulla Nasruddin. Osho often used those stories in his commentaries.

“Mulla Nasruddin is a Sufi figure, one of the oldest figures of Sufi anecdotes, and he shows whatsoever I have been saying here: that the world is a cosmic joke — he represents that. He is a very serious joker, and if you can penetrate him and understand him, then many mysteries will be revealed to you.Mulla Nasruddin illustrates that the world is not a tragedy but a comedy. And the world is a place where if you can learn how to laugh you have learned everything. If your prayer cannot become a deep laughter which comes from all over your being, if your prayer is sad and if you cannot joke with your god, then you are not really religious. Christians, Jews and Mohammedans are very serious about their god; Hindus are not, they have joked a lot. And that shows how much they believe — because when you cannot joke with your god you don’t believe in him. You feel that through your humor, your joke, he will be insulted. Your belief is shallow, it is not deep enough. Hindus say that the trust is so much that they can laugh; the trust is so much that just by laughing it cannot be broken. One Buddhist, Bodhidharma, one of the greatest followers of Buddha, used to say to his disciples, “Whenever you take the name of Buddha immediately rinse out your mouth, because this name is dangerous and it makes the mouth impure.” Another Buddhist monk, Bokuju, used to tell his disciples, “While meditating, if this fellow Gautam Buddha comes in kill him immediately, because once you allow him then he will cling to you and it will be difficult to be alone.” And they were great followers, they loved Buddha — but they could laugh. Why? The love was so intimate, so close, that there was no danger that something might be taken wrongly. But Christians have always been afraid, so immediately anything becomes blasphemy — anything. They cannot take anything humorously, and if you cannot take anything humorously, if you cannot laugh at yourself, at your god, then you are ill, you are not at home, and your god is something to be feared. In English we have a word, God-fearing, for religious people. A God-fearing person can never be religious, because if you fear God you cannot love him. Love and fear cannot exist together. With fear, hate can exist, love cannot; with fear, anger can exist, love cannot; with fear you can bow down but you cannot surrender; with fear there can be a relationship between a slave and a master but there cannot be a love relationship. Hindus, Buddhists have a totally different attitude, and that attitude is different because they think the whole existence is a cosmic play, you can be playful. Sufis are very playful; they created Mulla Nasruddin. And Mulla Nasruddin is an alive figure, you can go on adding to him — I go on adding. If some day he meets me there is bound to be difficulty, because I go on creating around him. To me he is a constantly alive figure, in many ways symbolic — symbolic of human stupidity. But he knows it and he laughs at it, and whenever he behaves like a stupid man he is just joking at you, at human beings at large. And he is subtle enough. He will not hit you directly, he hits himself; but if you can penetrate him then you can look at the reality. And sometimes even great scriptures cannot go as deep as a joke can go, because the joke directly touches the heart. A scripture goes into the head, into the intellect; a joke directly touches the heart. Immediately something explodes within you and becomes your smile and your laughter. Nasruddin must have attained enlightenment, or he is already an enlightened figure, there is no need to attain. I go on using him just to give you a feeling that to me religion is not serious. So I go on mixing Mulla Nasruddin with Mahavira — which is impossible, poles apart. I go on mixing Mulla Nasruddin with the Upanishads, because he gives a sweetness to the whole serious thing. And nothing is serious, nothing should be serious.” To me, to laugh wholeheartedly is the greatest celebration that can happen to a man — to laugh wholeheartedly, to become the laughter. Then no meditation is needed, it is enough. OSHO Vedanta: Seven Steps to Samadhi Chapter #13

An excerpt from Chapter 2, Life Awakening Center (Jivan Jagruti Kendra) of Laherubhai’s book ‘Blessed Moments with Osho’.

Just today a letter has arrived from Germany. Our sannyasins are doing a meditation called The Four Directions. The letter says, “In your commune people are doing a meditation called The Four Directions, and we have the copyright over it.”

I have told Neelam, my secretary, to write to them, “Things can be copyrighted, thoughts cannot be copyrighted, and certainly meditations cannot be copyrighted. They are not things of the marketplace.”

Nobody can monopolize anything. But perhaps the West cannot understand the difference between an objective commodity and an inner experience.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has copyrighted transcendental meditation and just underneath in a small circle you will find written TM – that means trademark!

For ten thousand years the East has been meditating and nobody has put trademarks upon meditations. And above all, that transcendental meditation is neither transcendental nor meditation… just a trademark.

I have told Neelam to reply to these people, “You don’t understand what meditation is. It is nobody’s belonging, possession. You cannot have any copyright. Perhaps if your country gives you trademarks and copyrights on things like meditation, then it will be good to have a copyright on stupidity. That will help the whole world to be relieved… Only you will be stupid and nobody else can be stupid; it will be illegal.”

I am going to direct my people here that they do the meditation called The Four Directions. But there are eight directions not four! Start doing the meditation Eight Directions – and certainly under eight directions, their four directions also come in.

But apart from their stupid letters and their stupid government which gives copyrights for such inner experiences, the truth is that consciousness cannot be either four directions or eight directions.

Consciousness is a circle: no directions. It is neither directing to the north nor directing to the south.

It simply is a circle. So my suggestion to you is that the best will be to call it ‘No Directions’.

We are going to sue those idiots who think they have a copyright over consciousness, in the courts in Germany. Then we can get a copyright over enlightenment. Then nobody can become enlightened, unless we license him.

Osho, Om Shantih Shantih Shantih, Ch 26 (excerpt)

Am I the only one who sees that there are two Osho’s?  At least two, as different one from the other as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Superman and Clark Kent. Doesn’t anybody else see that?

There is the Osho who gives discourses and the Osho who gives darshans. The Osho who gives discourses was majestic, Olympian, an eagle in flight, a bard whose poetry never ceases to amaze me. In contrast, the Osho who gives darshans is a kind of waddling duck, a nice old guy, a jolly super-daddy who pats you on the head and says “very good” and gives suggestions which, in the light of what he says in lecture, are nonsense. Someone once asked Osho, “When you say ‘very good’, do you really mean very good or do you mean ‘bullshit’?! And Osho smiled enigmatically at the questioner and said, “Very good!”:

I am, and have always been, in rapturous love with Osho’s words. I hear every lecture at least twice, as part of my work: the first time in discourse, the second time when I write my summary – and then I go over it once again, when I index and cross-reference its contents. Can there be anyone else who listens to Osho as much as I do? And, I never get tired of it. Even when Osho gives what I think of as his ‘yoga nidra’ lectures, the lectures in which he drones on and on and throws in every irrelevant spiritual and esoteric fact you can think of (so that he might as well be reading us the Ipswich telephone directory for all it matters) – even then I love it. But darshan? Darshan is something else.

I feel totally lost in darshan. I can’t make heads or tails of it. I haven’t a clue. I go, and suddenly I am again confronted by the stomach-sickening fact that I am not happy and that being happy is what it’s all about. I go to darshan and the yearning in me is never satisfied; if anything, it grows stronger. Then darshan ends, Osho leaves, and immediately there are peals of delighted laughter, gurglings of joy, rapturous embraces, and I walk out frustrated, lost, angry, because everybody seems so blissed out and I’m not.

That’s how I feel about darshan. And then how does it happen that I, of all people, am asked to write the introduction to a darshan diary? Before I get to that, I want to sum up how I’ve felt about darshan up to this point.

Osho once said, in discourse, “I enlighten you every morning in lecture and I unenlighten you every evening in darshan.”  Maybe he didn’t say quite that but that’s what it sounded like to me as I heard it via the filters of my own particular schizophrenia. And how can you reconcile the Bhagwan who, in the morning, tells us that there are no cures, that the only thing to do is be aware, with the Bhagwan who, in the evening, consoles people by saying things like, “Your headache or the pink spots before your eyes, or your depression or your tral-di-lah will be gone by Thursday, December the 29^th.” Or commiserates and gives Miss Lonely-hearts type advice on how to get along with your spouse or ‘mate’. Or who says, for the umpteenth time, “What groups have you done? You would like to do a few groups?”, as though he were an Armenian rug peddler. (How many times have I heard him say, “Help my people there,” and “Will it be easy to pronounce?”)

A darshan diary is a curious form of literature. I don’t read them, I grope through them. I become a Peeping Tom, looking furtively for people I secretly love. Here they all are: tycoons and beggars, B-girls and mathematics professors, all baring their souls. I whirl the pages: oh, here’s whoozit’s, what did he say to Bhagwan? What was what’s-his-name’s name before he took sannyas? What did Bhagwan say to you-know-hoo, that French girl who works in Mariam Canteen and who’s got something about her that…? (I wish Maneesha would include an index of names so you could see at a glance who was in the book and who wasn’t – but maybe she figures that would de-mystify it all.) And the photographs. I like photographs of the kids most of all, you can see how fast they change. I love all these people. And it’s amazing how every one of them, even the people I can’t stand, become beautiful and worthwhile when sitting before Osho.

A darshan diary is a pageant, a festival. I am lucky to have seen the form of the darshan evolve over the years. I had my first darshan in Bombay; we sat together, just him and me in his room all alone without anybody else there, not even Laxmi; and he stroked my hand for what seemed about half an hour and asked me a few totally pointless questions. At Mount Abu, I recall, when I took leave of him, there was one other person in the room, a man – I can’t now remember who. Then, in the early days in Poona, there were maybe a dozen persons present, and it felt really strange to have to talk in front of so many people. Now here is the time when ashramites (mostly) bring him their emotional problems – the time this book is about; and so many people coming, and taking sannyas – a time when the groups are as large as sixty people.

I enjoyed this book. I read it slowly, unlike the way I usually read books. I read it without trying to learn anything, and so I probably learned a lot. It seems that when you drop trying to learn (I seem to be on the verge of it) you can dig the scenes stages in this book and relate to Osho as the convivial host of a courtly carnival. There is the scene where Meera, the Japanese translator, tells Osho that the swami who has just taken sannyas is planning to stay for another five days, then announces, after a quick huddle in Japanese, that he is planning to stay forever! Then, after further hurried consultations, she says he is leaving in five days – but that his heart will stay forever! Then there is Ekkehard, a German to whom Osho decides to give the same name. But how to spell it? No one in the vicinity is sure, so Osho has Ekkehard open his eyes and spell his name. “Double k?” exclaims Osho, “That is certainly wrong. There are two or three spellings, but that one I never heard. I will make up my own!” It is at times like a Marx Brothers movie – can you imagine any other master initiating a new disciple by telling him a shaggy dog story like, “Do you put your beard under the blanket at night or on top if it?”

Osho:  Your words are always so crystal-clear, but when I try to live them I am stuck in six feet of mud. I try and try and I fail and fail or think I do, until there is nothing left but something inside me that says “Osho Osho” . Is that what it’s about? Just giving up – is that what surrender is? It’s clear that I don’t know and that I shall probably never know.

A glimpse into this darshan diary is a glimpse into his world, a world of immense, unbelievable courage, and a truth so deep that it almost makes the ocean blush. For seven years now, even when I denied him, Osho has lighted my way. Where would I be, where would we all be, if it weren’t for Osho’s world and Osho’s light? If you already know that world and that light, this book can bring you closer; if you don’t know it, perhaps it can light your way to the open door.

Part of the Introduction to The Open Door (1.12. – 31.12.1977)

Deva Ashoka (aka William Ross) was a psychotherapist for 20 years. Born in Vienna, Austria, his family left for the USA at the beginning of WW2. He was a filmmaker in New York, a marketing consultant in Italy, and later moved to London where he studied with R. D. Laing, Gerda Boyesen and Caron Kent. He started the Kaleidoscope personal growth center, led bio-energy and awareness groups all over Europe. He was with Osho in Mt. Abu and in early Pune days, and in 1978 came to live permanently at the ashram. In 1984 he moved from Rajneeshpuram to Seattle where he lived with Judy Ford until his death in 1993. He wrote several books, among them Words from the Masters: A Guide To The God Within, and The Wonderful Little Sex Book. 

I was lucky enough to be around at the beginning of this lecture series in Poona one, (1979) , when Osho was unable to give lecture -  it was never fully clear why..   Whether intended or not, I found this an excellent preparation for the times when Osho would no longer be around in person.  It was also a terrific reminder to many who were addicted to his physical presence, that this could be an error.  (I myself had friends who basically did very little else (at that time) but be in Poona, and simply go to Osho’s lectures every day, and where possible darshan in the evenings, and do very little else except eat!)

An empty chair was placed on the podium, and we sat in silence for those ten days, in a satsang type atmosphere that included some interludes of music.

I later learned that the “Empty Chair” was a symbol in both Greek and Hindu spiritual practice and thought.

To me at the time it was novel, and it felt just right as a teaching device.

When Osho himself in person returned to the podium he answered a question about this, which is partly below:

Osho’s answer:

Yes, Subhuti, that’s the only way to introduce the Buddha to you. Silence is the only language he can be expressed in. Words are too profane, too inadequate, too limited.

Only an empty space…utterly silent…can represent the being of a Buddha.

There is a temple in Japan, absolutely empty, not even a statue of the Buddha in the temple, and it is known as a temple dedicated to Buddha. When visitors come and they ask, “Where is the Buddha? The temple is dedicated to him…” the priest laughs and he says, “This empty space, this silence – this is Buddha!”

Subhuti, you are right: “An empty chair….” Yes, only an empty chair can represent him.

This chair is empty, and this man talking to you is empty. It is an empty space pouring itself into you. There is nobody within, just a silence.

Osho’s Empty Chair

I am not a person. The person died long ago. It is a presence – an absence and a presence. I am absent as a person, as an individual; I am present as a vehicle, a passage, a hollow bamboo. It can become a flute – only the hollow bamboo can become a flute.

I have given myself to the whole. Now whatsoever the will of the whole…if he wants to speak through me, I am available; if he does not want to speak through me, I am available. His will is the only will now. I have no will of my own.

This chair, Subhuti, is certainly empty. And the day you are able to see this chair empty, this body empty, this being empty, you will have seen me, you will have contacted me.

Buddhism is not the religion of prayer, it is the religion of meditation. And that’s the difference between prayer and meditation: prayer is a dialogue, meditation is a silence.

Prayer has to be addressed to somebody – real, unreal, but it has to be addressed to somebody. Meditation is not an address at all; one has simply to fall into silence, one has simply to disappear into nothingness. When one is not, meditation is.

And Buddha is meditation – that is his flavor. These ten days we remained silent, we remained in meditation. The real thing has been said. Those who have not heard the real thing, now for them I will be speaking.

These ten days were not only of silent meditation – these ten days were of music, silence, and meditation. Music is my contribution to it. Buddha would not have allowed it. On that point we would have quarreled. He would not have allowed music; he would have said that music is a disturbance. He would have insisted on pure silence, he would have said that is enough. But that is where we agree to disagree.

To me, music and meditation are two aspects of the same phenomenon. And without music, meditation lacks something; without music, meditation is a little dull, unalive.

Without meditation, music is simply noise – harmonious, but noise. Without meditation, music is an entertainment. And without music, meditation becomes more and more negative, tends to be death-oriented.

Hence my insistence that music and meditation should go together. That adds a new dimension – to both. Both are enriched by it.

I started these Buddha lectures with a ten-day silence deliberately. It was a device to start with silence – Buddha would have been very happy. He must have shrugged his shoulders a little bit because of the music, but what can I do? It can’t be helped.