This is the right moment to go inwards

 

Now comes the time of Sardar Gurudayal Singh. This is the greatest time after such serious discussion. A great laughter is absolutely necessary as an antidote.

 

Muffin Snuffler is suffering from what appears to be a case of shattered nerves. So after a long spell of heavy drinking and deep depression he finally decides to pay a visit to Doctor Mindbender, the psychiatrist.

The shrink asks Muffin a few questions and begins to get the picture.

“Mister Snuffler,” declares Doctor Mindbender, “you are in serious trouble. You are living with some terrible, evil thing – something that is possessing you from morning to night. You must find out what it is and destroy it!”

“Shhhhhh, doctor,” whispers Muffin, nervously. “Not so loud – she is sitting out in the waiting room!”

 

Things are looking bad for the members of the Catholic church. Their image is being damaged by stories of sex and perversion within the ranks of the priesthood. Their so-called celibacy is becoming a worldwide joke.

So Pope the Polack calls his press secretary, Bishop Benny Diction, and orders him to create a cover-up campaign.

“Well, Your Holiness,” says Benny, “I have already given this a lot of thought. I am convinced that we need to change our style of dress. Right now, people look at us and all they see is a bunch of dirty habits!”

“Yes,” says the pope, “perhaps you are right. So what should we do?”

“Simple!” replies Benny Diction. “What I have in mind is a complete change of image. We will cover the city with posters of a nun in a bikini!”

“What?” cries the Polack pope. “A nun in a bikini? How is that going to promote celibacy in the world?”

“Well,” explains Benny Diction, “the model for the photograph is going to be Mother Teresa!”

 

Big Bertha, the circus fat lady, marries Max the midget, and for a short time everything seems to be going just fine.

But then one day, Big Bertha arrives at Judge Grump’s divorce court wanting a divorce on the grounds that her husband is a midget.

“But surely you knew he was a midget before you married him!” exclaims Judge Grump. “Did you not realize the difficulties this marriage would involve?”

“How was I to know?” sobs Bertha. “Everything was great except for the sex.”

“Sex?” asks the judge. “What does his being a midget have to do with sex?”

“Well, judge,” replies Big Bertha, “when we are nose to nose, his toes are in, and when we are toes to toes, his nose is in! And when he really puts it in, he disappears altogether – and Oh, Your Honor! I get so lonely!”

 

Nivedano…

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano…

(Drumbeat)

Be silent. Close your eyes and feel your body to be completely frozen.

This is the right moment to go inwards.

Gather all your energy, your total consciousness, and rush towards your center of being – with an urgency as if this moment is going to be the last moment of your life. Unless such urgency is there, nobody gets to the center of his being.

Faster and faster… Deeper and deeper…

It all depends on your intensity. The distance is not big.

As you start coming closer to your center, a great silence descends over you, almost like soft rain falling. The coolness you can feel.

A little closer, and you start being surrounded by a great peace, what mystics have called the peace beyond understanding.

Just one step more, and you are at the center.

Suddenly you feel drunk with the divine. A great ecstasy arises in you; you become luminous, all darkness disappears. You are no more. You suddenly realize your original face.

In the East we have used Gautam Buddha’s face as the original face of everyone. It is only symbolic. You are encountering Gautam Buddha, not from the outside but from his innermost source. You have become his very heart.

Just remember one thing, and that is witnessing. That constitutes Buddha’s whole being. Call it awareness, call it total consciousness, call it what Buddha used to call sammasati, right remembering, but witnessing is the most important word out of all these.

Just be a witness that you are not the body. Be a witness that you are not the mind. And finally, be a witness that you are only a witness, nothing else.

At this moment you enter into the secretmost part of your center.

This is the beginning of a long pilgrimage, of disappearing into the cosmos. This is the door opening into the cosmos. We are one with the whole.

Just go on witnessing, and everything becomes deeper, deeper, deeper…

To make the witnessing more clear to you,

Nivedano…

(Drumbeat)

Relax.

Let go. But go on being a witness.

As your witnessing becomes more and more clear, you start melting like ice in the ocean. Gautama the Buddha Auditorium is turning into an ocean of consciousness. Ten thousand buddhas have melted into one consciousness, universal consciousness, eternal consciousness, immortal consciousness, consciousness beyond birth and death.

This is your authentic being.

What has disappeared was only a personality. Now, only the essential, existential, experiential has remained. And this existential consciousness is not only yours, it belongs to the cosmos. You are just dewdrops who have fallen from the lotus leaf into the ocean.

Rejoice in it.

You are the most fortunate people in the world. At this moment, when everybody is concerned with trivia, you are exploring the most majestic, the most splendorous experience; the most divine, sacred space you are entering in.

Collect all these experiences – this blissfulness, this witnessing, this silence… This is it. Get hold of it. And persuade the buddha to come with you.

He is your nature, he is your dharma, he is your ultimate secret.

Bring him with you.

These are the three steps of enlightenment: First, the buddha will come behind you as a presence. You will feel it, it will surround you, it is an energy field; it will change your whole behavior, it will give you a new sense of direction in life. It will give you a new morality, of your own, a spontaneity in existence. It will give you a love for life, a cheerfulness you have not known, and courage. The moment you know you are eternal, all weakness disappears, all inferiority disappears.

On the second step, the buddha comes in front of you – you become the shadow.

On the third step, your shadow withers away. You are no more, only the buddha remains. He is your eternity, he is your truth, he is your beauty, he is your godliness.

Nivedano…

(Drumbeat)

Come back. But come back with the same grace, with the same silence, with the same peacefulness. And sit down for a few seconds just to remember the path you have followed inwards. It is a golden path.

The center that you have reached, it is not only your center, it is the center of the whole existence.

At the center we all meet. The birds, the trees, the rivers, the mountains, everyone at the center meets. We are different on the circumference but we are one at the center.

And to know this oneness is enlightenment.

This evening has been beautiful on its own, but your intensity, your search, your inward journey, has made it a magical evening – an evening of transformation, of metamorphosis.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Osho, God is Dead, Now Zen Is the Only Living Truth, Ch 7, Q 4 end

Audio file thanks to Siddho