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The sixth question:

This morning, sitting by your stage after lecture, I felt as if I was sitting at your feet and you were sharing a beautiful story of waterfalls and trees and happiness. You were smiling and there was so much joy and yet when you left only minutes earlier there was a stunned feeling of having been hit over the head with a very big stick, hard. Bhagwan (Osho), what are you doing to us? Are you telling us beautiful stories or hitting us over the head or what?

Those stories are just a preparation for the hit. I am doing both.

First I have to tell stories to you – beautiful stories of trees and mountains and clouds, beautiful stories about the other shore, beautiful stories of buddhahood and bodhisattvahood.

And when I see that now you are lost in the stories and I can hit and you will not be angry, then I hit. The stories only just prepare the ground, but the basic work is a hammer on your head. I have to destroy you.

Naturally the work is such that first I have to persuade.

First I have to seduce you to come closer and closer and closer; only then the hammer can descend on you. Otherwise you will escape. Those stories don’t allow you to escape, they keep you close to me.

Those beautiful stories function like a glue between me and you, and when I see the right time has come I hit – and when I hit, I hit passionately.

The Diamond Sutra

Chapter 4

OSHO

The Sound of Silence

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