JUST LIKE THAT - Talks on Sufi Stories

All gods that you can see are your creations.


‘Just like that’ is the transcribed version of Osho’s talks on selected Sufi stories. For the selection of stories Osho depends on Idries Shah’s ‘The way of the Sufi’. There are ten chapters in this book to comment on ten selected stories.It is the commentary of Osho that beautify this book.

An excerpt from ‘The Way Of The Sufi’:

Salih of Gazwin taught his disciples:
Whoever knocks at the door continually, it will be opened to him.
Rabiya, hearing him one day, said: ‘How long will you say, “it will be opened’? The door has never been shut’.

Osho says that when you have been knocking continuously, one day suddenly you become aware that the door is open. ‘It is not shut, why am I knocking? But this realization comes through knocking for years and years, and even for lives.

According to Sufis, all senses are superficial. So they say ‘never judge anything by sight or by hearing’.They also believe that Truth cannot be said, so they say’ don’t judge things by speech’ either..

Sufis say the mind is the disease.If you live through the mind you live in illusion, you live in your own projections and ideas. Layers of your thoughts hide you from reality and hide reality from you. Sufis believe in the universal mind and they want you to drop the individual mind as well as the communal and the social mind.


Some of Osho’s observations:

Whatsoever you think, you become. Thinking creates your identity.

Jesus was not murdered on the hill of Golgotha, he was murdered in the Vatican.

If you want to be alive, listen to life, not to knowledge. If you want to be alive, listen to your own heart.

A man of character is in bondage. He is a slave, a slave of a particular society he happened to be born in.

You live through the past - the Bible, the Vedas, the Koran still guiding you - the dead leading the alive. Mohammed, Manu and Marx, they still go on forcing you to move in certain directions. You are not an alive man yet, because the dead are still your leaders.

Everybody asks for attention because attention is food for the ego. So whenever people pay attention to you, you feel very important.

NOWHERE TO GO BUT IN

The road to heaven passes through hell


This book is a compilation of Osho’s replies to the queries of seekers and disciples mostly on spiritual and religious matters.‘There is nowhere to go but in‘ is a mystic statement. Osho says that the statement is unique and in this one statement all the Vedas, Upanishads and the Gita are contained. The contrarian thinking of Osho in each and every aspect of his replies to the queries makes this book rather beautiful. Some of his views spread over in all the sixteen chapters of this book are reproduced here.

The devotee and the enemy, they never care about truth. Devotion speaks falsely, exaggerate things. The enemy also tells lies and exaggerates.

Society is made up of great crowds of fools, mobs of unintelligent people, and the laws are framed by them.

A woman falls sick less often, remains healthier, and her resistance to illness is greater than that of a man.

It is not that God once created the universe, he is creating it every moment.

There is no way to go against nature, because there is nothing at all that is not nature. All that is, is nature. There is no way to be in conflict with nature, because who is it who is going to be in conflict when there is nothing other than nature.

Ordinarily people think that the priest belongs to the temple, lives in the temple, so he must have the greatest faith, but I can assure you the priest has no faith at all.

FLIGHT OF THE ALONE TO THE ALONE - Talks on the Kaivalya Upanishad

Upanishad is the key that opens the door to the divine.


The Kaivalya Upanishad is a search for the ultimate freedom, moksha.The Upanishad begins with a prayer. The sage of the Upanishad is praying for his sense organs to be nourished and strengthened and make them powerful so that he can experience what he cannot perceive when his senses are weak...He does not believe that the sense organs and the divine are opposed to one another. The sage says:

Brahman is the nucleus of all worldly activities in the waking, the dream and the sleep states.

The sage is saying that whatsoever you have done in your waking state, whatsoever you think yourself to be, you are not that. Then he also says that you are not what you have done in your dreams.

I am the brahman., the Upanishad says.

According to Osho everybody is ready to accept that he is the divine, but nobody is ready to accept that the other is the divine.This also means that the thief, the man who is blinded by lust, the greedy person who is sitting on a pile of money like a snake - all this worldly activity arises from the brahman.The Upanishad says something even more amazing.’I am this brahman’. So I am the one who is stealing through the thief, I am the greed in the greedy person and the lust, in the lecher’.. This is the realization of a true, religious consciousness.

This book is the transcribed version of Osho’s talks on Kaivalya Upanishad.
According to him, Upanishad is the key that opens the door to the divine. Osho goes through various topics like sin and virtue; renunciation , sanyas and power; knowledge, ignorance and ego; trust, love and witnessing; yoga and meditation during the course of his talks on ‘kaivalya Upanishad.’ Some of Osho’s interesting observations found in this book are :

A sad man wants to see the whole world sad ,because that is what makes him happy.

You have a great interest in saying that others are wrong. You have a great interest in proving that others have made a mistake.

We have five senses, so we think that creation has stopped at five senses. Those who have four senses, for them, the creation comes to a stop with those four senses, those who have three think that creation is complete with three.

Stupidity, unintelligence, in itself, has an irrepressible courage. Hesitation enters with understanding and intelligence.

Enlightenment: The Only Revolution - On the Great Mystic Ashtavakra

To say no gives pleasure because one feels powerful in saying no.

A scholarly debating conference on the scriptures was going on in the court of the king Janaka. The scholars of the whole country were present in the court . Ashtavakra’s father was also present there. He was on the verge of his defeat and the message came to Ashtavakra that his father was losing.. Receiving the message Ashtavakra went to the palace to see his father. As he entered the court, everybody started laughing. He was a strangely crippled boy of 12 years and his body was awkwardly bent and deformed in eight places. They were all laughing and joking about him. Ashtavakra went directly to the king and said ‘It seems you have gathered shoemakers here, chamars’ -They can only see my skin, my body. They don’t see me. My body is twisted, but I am not’.Janak was impressed. He felt guilty that he too had laughed.. The whole conference was dissolved, and the king told Ashtavakra,’ From tomorrow you come and teach me. I want to be your disciple’. Thus Janaka as a diciple put his questions to Ashtavakra,. and Ashtavakra explained. These are the songs of Ashtavakra, better known as ‘Ashtavakra Gita’ (‘Ashtavakra Samhita’ as some call it).
Ashtavakra’s key teaching is rest and relaxation. There is nothing to do .Ashtavakra’s saying is just this: The divine is not attained by running, it is attained by stopping. . You cannot find truth by seeking because truth is hidden in the one who is seeking. All of Ashtavakra’s sutras give this one message that it is not to be attained, it is already attained. .Ashtavakra also says that practice is bondage, methods are bondage, doing itself is bondage. He also gives the message to be free of all projections, all beliefs, all imagination, all interpretations, all practices and rituals’.

This book is all about Ashtavakra and’ Ashtavakra Gita’. Osho’s beautiful commentary on this ‘Gita’ make ‘Enlightenenment’ rather unique. In this book Osho observes:

If an ignorant person does ask, he asks just to prove you wrong, because the ignorant presumes he already knows and wants to see whether you know or not. The ignorant person asks to test you.

He who considers himself free is free, and he who considers himself bound is bound.

What has been suppressed will flare up again. Whatever you have forced down will come again and again.

When you mix the higher with the lower there is no harm to the lower, but the higher is harmed.

Interesting jokes, parables anecdotes and small stories including that of Mulla's are aplenty in this book. One such Mulla story is like this:

Mulla Nasruddin came home drunk one night. As he was returning, he thought hard how to keep his wife from knowing. What should he do? He thought, ‘Let me read the Koran. Has anyone heard of a drunk reading from the Koran? If I read the Koran, then it will be clear that I am not drunk. Have drunkards ever read the Koran?
He got home, lit a lamp and sat reading the Koran. Finally his wife came and gave him a good jerk, saying ’stop this nonsense! What are you doing , sitting here with this suitcase open?’

More Mulla Stories

A case was being heard in court. The judge asked Mulla Nasruddin, ‘How did you recognize your own buffalo from among these hundreds of identical looking water buffaloes?’
Mulla replied, ‘What is so difficult about it,your honour? In your court,hundreds of lawyers in black coats are standing around, but still I can recognize my own lawyer, can’t I?

***

Once Mulla Nasruddin boarded a bus. Absorbed in thought he took a seat and lit a cigarette. ‘It is clearly written that smoking is forbidden on the bus,’ the conductor angrily said: ‘Didn’t you read it? Don’t you know how to read?’
I read it, but there is so much written in the bus. Which of them should I do? Nasruddin said. “Look at this: it says here, ‘Always Wear Handloom Saris!”