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There are no peaks, no valleys; the whole idea is a fabricated. There is no higher, no lower; there is no hierarchy in existence at all. It is just one cosmic whole; it is an organic unity.

The egoist has always been trying to divide people into different categories: the ignorant, the enlightened; the sinners, the saints; the criminals, the virtuous; the notorious, the famous; the moral, the immoral. The game is the same: divide people and then try to belong to the higher category so you can pretend to be “holier than thou.”

Hence, I want it to be continuously remembered by you that there are no peaks, and there are no valleys; we all belong to one oceanic whole. The smallest blade of grass is as significant as the greatest star. They all participate in the same cosmic play; they all contribute to its beauty, to its joy, to its song, to its celebration. Existence will be less even if a small blade of grass is missing; there will be something lacking, there will be an emptiness.

My approach to life is non-divisive. My sannyasins are not my followers; they are not to imitate me; they are not to become me. So, don’t use such language; don’t use such concepts. Don’t say: “Bhagwan (Osho), you are calling from the peak. I am lost in the echoing valleys.”

The peaks and the valleys are part of one whole: the peaks cannot exist without the valleys; the valleys cannot exist without the peaks. So which is important? Both are interdependent. Life is neither dependent nor independent; life is a continuum of interdependence. It is beautiful wherever you are; it is lovely to be whatsoever you are.

The desire to be on the peaks is a wrong desire. All desires as such are wrong, and religious desires are far worse than any other desires for the simple reason that other desires can be fulfilled. Of course, even by their fulfillment you will not go beyond frustration; fulfilled or not fulfilled, frustration is inevitable. If your desire is fulfilled you will be frustrated –because now you will see you were chasing a shadow; you have got it and there is nothing in it. If your desire is not fulfilled you will be frustrated, because your whole life is wasted and you have not been able to fulfill a single desire. All your hopes are shattered.

Hopes are bound to be shattered. To hope is to hanker for hopelessness, to desire is to breed frustration. In worldly things at least there is a possibility of succeeding, failing, attaining, not attaining. But in spiritual matters there is no question of attainment at all because the goose is out! Nothing can be done about it; it is already out. The moment you start enjoying your valley you are on the peak – there is no other peak!

One day I suddenly decided, enough is enough. I dropped the idea of the peaks and started enjoying the valley, and I saw a miracle: the valley disappeared. In fact, from the very beginning there had been no valley, I was always on the peak – but because I was searching for a peak I could not see where I was.

Your eyes are focused far away, hence you miss the obvious. It is here, and your mind is there, arrowed into the blue sky. The reality surrounds you: it is closer than your very heartbeat, it is closer than your breathing, it is closer than the circulation of your blood, it is closer than your very marrow, it is closer than your very consciousness. It is your very core, your very being!

Don’t ask for the peak, otherwise you will go on missing it. The more you miss the more you will be in a vicious circle, because the more you miss the more you try to reach. The more you miss the greater the endeavor, the more you miss the more you become an American: “Try it again and again, try harder.” A simple conclusion: if you are missing, that shows you are not trying hard enough, so put your total energy into it. And you will still be missing; there is no way to make it. You are trying for the impossible and the impossible does not happen; it cannot happen, it has never happened – it is not in the nature of things.

Buddha said again and again, “Aes dhammo sanantano”: this is the nature of things. Listen to the nature of things and you will never be in misery; try to improve upon it and you will live in hell. Hell is our creation, and we create hell by trying to do the impossible. Heaven is our nature, it is our spontaneity, it is where we always are.

You have heard the biblical story that God threw Adam and Eve out of his kingdom, the Garden of Eden. It is basically wrong; it is wrong for two reasons.

First: the reason why he threw them out is very despotic – they had not obeyed him. He seems to be a very ordinary daddy, too ordinary, fanatic! A small, childish rebellion, which is part of nature, part of growth… We should be immensely grateful to Adam and Eve because they disobeyed.

That is the beginning of humanity, that is the beginning of revolution, that is the beginning of growth, of maturity, of freedom, of a sense of dignity. They revolted against being animals. All other animals were very good Catholics, all going to church every Sunday, reading the Bible, following the commandments, following every order without ever questioning it. They are still doing the same, hence dogs have remained dogs, eagles have remained eagles, buffaloes have remained buffaloes, donkeys, howsoever saintly and holy they look, have remained donkeys. Only man has grown; his growth started with the rebellion.

The rebellion was simple – every child has to go through it. A moment comes when the child has to say no, he has to insist on the no. In fact, unless a child learns to say no he will never be able to say yes; his yes will be impotent without a background of no. A fundamental no is needed as a blackboard; only on that fundamental blackboard of no can he write a beautiful yes. God denied man his fundamental right to say no, and in that very denial he denied man’s ultimate growth to say yes. The whole story is fanatical, ugly.

Second: where can you drive man out to? All of existence is the Garden of Eden! There is no other place, there is no other space, there is no other time. The whole universe is divine, so wherever you are you are in the Garden of Eden.

The idea has been implanted in man that you have to reach the Garden of Eden. You are in the garden, and the idea that you have been thrown out of the garden and that you have to get back to the garden is creating your whole trouble, your whole misery, your whole anguish. Not recognizing where you are, you are hankering for something which is not possible, because this is the place. “This very body the buddha; this very place the lotus paradise.” There is no other buddhahood, and there is no other lotus paradise.

The word paradise comes from the Persian firdaus; firdaus means a garden – the same story, the Garden of Eden. Everybody is searching for a paradise. You can give it different names – nirvana, enlightenment, samadhi, Kingdom of God, ultimate truth – you can go on giving it different names. But you will still be missing – missing not because you have been thrown out of the garden, but missing because you are in the garden and you have fallen into a deep dream-like state. The dream consists of your desires to reach somewhere else, to reach to the peaks.

My insistence is that you are already there. Just sit silently and look around; sit silently and look within. You have never been anywhere else! Aes Dhammo Sanantano – this is the nature of things – you cannot be anywhere else.

A rose is a rose is a rose, there is no other possibility. But you can drive a rose crazy – you can put the idea into the mind of the rose that “You have to be a rose. What are you doing here? Wasting time, wasting a great opportunity. God has given you an opportunity to be a rose. What are you doing here? Swaying in the wind, dancing in the sun, taking life as fun? Be serious, be somber, become holy! Read the Koran, the Gita, the Bible,” and you will have driven the rose crazy.

It is good that roses don’t understand your language. It is good that they don’t care a bit about what you are saying. It is good that they go on doing their thing without bothering at all about your politicians, your priests, your professors. That’s why they are so beautiful, so innocent. Your priests cannot be so beautiful, they cannot be so innocent; they are bound to be cunning.

After checking into the large motel complex, the evangelist read in his room for several hours, then sauntered over to the bar where he struck up a conversation with the pretty hat check girl. After she had finished working they shared a few drinks and then retired to his room. But when the evangelist began removing her blouse she seemed to have second thoughts. “Are you sure this is alright?” she asked. “I mean, you are a holy man.” “My dear,” he replied, “it is written in the Bible.” She took him at his word, and the two spent a very pleasant night together. The next morning, however, as the girl was preparing to leave, she said, “You know, I don’t remember the part of the Bible you mentioned last night. Could you show it to me?” In response, the evangelist took the Gideon Bible from the nightstand, opened the cover and pointed to the flyleaf on which someone had inscribed, “The hat check girl screws.”

These are your priests, your evangelists, your great spiritual leaders! They are neurotic and they are driving the whole of humanity neurotic. Avoid all spiritual nonsense – and spiritual nonsense is real nonsense; all other nonsense is very ordinary, very mundane. In fact, with mundane matters you cannot be too nonsensical – reality will prevent it, science will prevent it, your own sense of pragmatism will prevent it. But with religious nonsense there are no checks. There is no reality, no criterion so that you can judge, so you can fly off into all kinds of esoteric bullshit. Your priests are such bullshitters; for centuries they have been bullshitting you! You are crawling in holy cowdung! It is time to get out of it.

The way you are is the only way you can be. Accept it – not only accept it but rejoice in it, love it, and the peak will start opening up within your very heart. Suddenly you will find you are awake in the Garden of Eden, immediately. It is not a question of going anywhere, just of being here.

You ask me: “How may I come to you?”

There is no need. You have to come to you, not to me. I am not here to create a new kind of neurosis. There are enough alternatives available! – Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Jainism, Buddhism…three hundred religions in the world. You can choose your own kind of neurosis; they come in all shapes, in all sizes. You can easily pick any kind of fanaticism, neurosis, and that will keep you engaged your whole life – but simply engaged. It will not give you time or space to dance, to sing, to celebrate.

All kinds of goals basically create deep down in you a split – hypocrisy. You are that which you are, and you start trying to be that which you are not. In the beginning it is only an effort to be that which you are not; slowly, slowly you start pretending that you are becoming that which you are not, because to encounter failure continuously is very humiliating. At least you can pretend to others, you can wear masks, you can create a certain persona, a personality, a garb, a facade, and you can start living behind that facade. And people will look only at your mask and they will believe it. Once they start believing it, you will start believing it – because they are believing that you are holy, that you are saintly, that you are this and you are that.

It is a very strange game: you start it, and soon you will be caught in it yourself – in your own lie! Once you are caught in your own lie you will try to hide the truth, to evade the truth, to repress the truth; you will begin investing more and more in your lie. You may be a marigold and you may invest your whole life in being a rose. You may be a rose and you may invest your whole life in being a diamond – which you cannot be. This is the sheer stupidity of the experience humanity has been living with for centuries.

Hence what I say hurts. It is not a question of small dimensions; it is a question of immense dimensions. For thousands of years man has lived a hypocritical life, utterly false, pseudo, and now to shatter his whole investment, to shatter his whole mind, certainly hurts. Hence everybody is going to be against me except for just a few people who are intelligent enough to wake up.

“My so-called liberal mother is really such a prude,” the high school cheerleader sadly told her locker partner. “She said that I could only pet with my dates if they didn’t touch me below the waist.” “Oh, that’s too bad,” her schoolmate commiserated. “What do you intend to do about it?” “Well,” the cheerleader giggled, “the first thing I’m going to do is learn to stand on my head.”

That’s what your religious people have been doing: sirshasana – the art, the yoga of standing on your head. It certainly fulfills something: the ego. Whenever you can do something unnatural or at least pretend that you are doing it, it fulfills the ego. Nature cannot fulfill the ego. If you eat and enjoy eating, what is there to brag about? If you make love and you enjoy it, what is there to brag about? But if you become a celibate then there is something to brag about; if you fast then you have something which nobody else has. Then you can feel superior, higher, greater, bigger, chosen. The unnatural has an attraction – although it destroys your whole life – but the attraction is in the ego. And unless we drop this whole game of the ego, hypocrisy cannot disappear from the world.

Rabbi Goldstein had just moved into his apartment and decided he should get acquainted with his neighbor across the hall. When the door was opened, he was pleasantly surprised to be confronted by a young damsel considerably more than passably fair and considerably less than fully clad. Though justifiably flustered by this smiling apparition, the rabbi nevertheless managed a remark singularly appropriate to the occasion: “Hi, I’m your new sugar across the hall – can I borrow a cup of neighbor?”

You can try to be unnatural, but your nature will assert itself in a thousand and one ways; it will come up again and again. You will have to hush it; you will have to repress it.

It was eight a.m. at a Las Vegas gambling palace and two lone bettors were still standing by a dice table awaiting further competition, when a lusciously endowed brunette attired in a suit happened by. “Although it’s quite early in the day,” she announced, “I feel lucky this morning. I’d like to roll the dice once for twenty thousand dollars. Would the two of you care to take me up on the wager?” “Sure, lady,” answered one of the men, “we’ll take your action.” “I hope you gentlemen won’t mind,” she then said, “but the only way I can get lucky is to roll the dice without my panties on.” So saying, the lissome lovely proceeded to remove her slacks and panties. With a shout of “Mamma needs a new pair of pants!” she rolled the dice, gave a squeal of delight and yelled, “I win!” She then picked up her money, her slacks and her underwear and made a hasty exit from the room. The two men exchanged double takes, and one of them blurted out, “Hey, what did she roll anyway?” “How the hell should I know?” snapped the other. “I thought you were watching the dice!”

We have created such a strange humanity – the whole rationale of all this mad earth, this mad humanity, is religious, spiritual. Search for the truth, search for God, search for the peaks, and you have lost yourself in the search.

There is only one search – to find yourself – and for that you need not go anywhere else. For that you have to withdraw from all your desires, ambitions, goals. You have to come back home. You are not to become me. I am not your enemy – I cannot tell you to become me. If you try to become me you will only be a carbon copy, a hypocrite, you will only be an imitation.

Those who have gathered around me are not my followers, not my imitators – just companions, fellow celebrants, dance partners! Existence to me is a carnival; it is just a festival. It is for those who know how to dance. And the dance need not wait for tomorrow – tomorrow never comes – the dance has to be now, here, this very moment. This very silence has to become the dance!

So don’t hanker for any peaks, just be where you are totally, utterly, and the goose is out! Hanker for the peaks, and the goose is in the bottle. Those peaks are the bottle, those goals are the bottle. They keep you encapsulated; they keep you imprisoned. The future is your bondage and the present is your freedom.

Here I differ totally from Jesus, from Buddha, from Krishna, from Mahavira, from everybody else. Knowingly, unknowingly, they have created a pattern of imitation for humanity. I want to destroy this whole pattern, this whole status quo. I want you to be just yourself. Whatsoever you are, you are beautiful as you are; you need not be somebody else to be beautiful.

That’s the only way to enjoy, but it is up to you. If you want to suffer…and there are people who love suffering, they cannot live without suffering; their only joy is in suffering and more suffering. The more they suffer the more they feel that they are doing something great. Then it is up to you; don’t make any fuss about it, then go to the peaks. But the peaks won’t satisfy you, because from those peaks you will again be looking far ahead for further peaks.

The headmistress of a girls’ boarding school was abruptly awakened one night by one of her students, a rather mature-looking sixteen-year-old. “Miss Forbes,” she cried, “I’ve just been raped!” “Now, be calm, Melissa,” the headmistress told her firmly. “The first thing you must do is to go to the refrigerator and eat half a lemon.” “Half a lemon?” asked the surprised student. “Will that keep me from getting pregnant?” “No,” admitted the headmistress, “but it will get rid of that silly grin.”

That’s what religious people have been doing: removing all your smiles, making you look as sad as possible, as long-faced as possible.

Christians say Jesus never laughed. If it is true, then whatsoever he has said is wrong. If what he has said is right then this cannot be true, because the man continuously says, “Rejoice! I say to you again and again rejoice!” And Christians say he never laughed! Laughter seems to be mundane for them, laughter seems to be worldly; it is not good for holy people. Holy people have to be continuously sad; hence they have created a long tradition of sad, ill, sick, pathological people whom they worship.

The more pathological you look the more you will be worshipped. The more you are a sadist and a masochist the more you will be worshipped. Torture yourself and teach others to torture themselves – they call it asceticism – become a monk, renounce the world…

The word monk means one who lives alone, escapes from people. In fact it is in relationships where you find the opportunities to grow; it is love that is a challenge to growth; it is friendship that brings you to your real flavor. It is life – in all its adventures and challenges – that helps you to become mature, integrated.

Monks remain retarded; they remain stupid. They are bound to remain stupid – they have been taken out of the soil of life. At the most they are greenhouse plants: bring them into the world and they will immediately shrink and die. They are very afraid people, continuously trembling, afraid of hell, which does not exist, greedy for heaven, which does not exist – and between hell and heaven missing everything that exists.

The inexperienced young man had heard that a good way to arouse sexual desire in a girl, who proved impervious to the more usual forms of wooing, was to forthrightly place her hand on his organ. Having parked with a date for more than an hour in the local lovers’ lane with nothing to show for it but some sisterly kisses, he decided to try this new technique. The response was instantaneous: the girl berated him with the longest stream of invectives he had ever heard. Stunned, he tried to reply, but she refused to listen, insisting instead that he take her home at once. As he pulled up in front of her house, she again started shouting imprecations. Finally out of breath, she demanded, “Well, do you have anything to say for yourself?” “Yes, I have,” was his pained reply. “Please let go.”