Vigyan Bhairav Tantra – Meditation Technique 68
“AS A HEN MOTHERS HER CHICKS, MOTHER PARTICULAR KNOWINGS, PARTICULAR DOINGS, IN REALITY.”
Osho – The key term is “IN REALITY.” You are also mothering many things, but in dreams — not in reality. You are also doing many things, but in dream — not in reality. Don’t mother dreams, don’t help dreaming to grow more in you; don’t give your energy to dreaming. Withdraw yourself from all dreams. It will be difficult because you have invested so much in your dreaming. If you suddenly withdraw yourself totally from dreaming, you will feel as if you are sinking and dying, because you have always lived in a postponed dream. You have never been here and now, you are always somewhere else. You have been hoping.
Have you heard the Greek parable of Pandora’s box? To revenge a certain deed on the part of a man, Pandora was sent a box, and the box had all the diseases that are now rampant in humanity. They were not there before, and when the box was opened the diseases were released. Pandora, being afraid after seeing the diseases, closed the box. Only one disease remained there and that was hope; otherwise man would have dissipated, all these diseases would have killed him — but because of hope he continued.
Why are you living? Have you ever asked? There is nothing to live for here and now. There is just hope. You are carrying a Pandora’s box. Why are you living right now? Why do you get up every morning? Why do you start the whole day again — again and again? Why this repetition? What is the reason? You cannot find any reason right now for why you are living, and if you find something it will be something in the future — a hope that something is going to happen: someday “something” is going to happen. You don’t know when that day will come; you even don’t know what it is that is going to happen — but someday “something is going to happen,” and so you go on prolonging yourself, you go on carrying yourself.
Man lives just in hope, and this is not life because hope means dream. Unless you live here and now, you are not alive. You are a dead weight, and that tomorrow which will fulfill all your hopes is never to come. When death will come, then only will you realize that now there is no tomorrow, and now you cannot postpone. Then you will feel disillusioned, cheated — but no one has cheated you; you are the master of the whole mess.
Try to live in the moment, in the present, and don’t cherish hopes, whatsoever their nature. They may be worldly, they may be other-worldly; it makes no difference. They may be religious — somewhere in future, in the other world, in heaven, in the NIRVANA, after death — but it makes no difference. Don’t hope. Even if you feel a subtle hopelessness here, remain here. Don’t move from the moment here and now. Don’t move! Suffer it, but don’t allow the hope to enter in.
Through hope dreaming enters. Be hopeless. If life is hopeless, be hopeless. Accept it, but don’t cling to any future event. Then suddenly there will be a change. Once you remain in the present moment, dreams stop — because then they cannot arise. The source has been withdrawn. You cooperate with them, you mother them; that is why they arise. Don’t cooperate with them, don’t mother them.
This sutra says “… MOTHER PARTICULAR KNOWINGS.” Why particular knowings? You also mother, but you mother particular theories, not knowings; particular scriptures, not knowings; particular hypotheses, systems, philosophies, world views — but never particular knowings. This sutra says throw them away. Scriptures, theories, they are of no use. Have your own experience which is real, your own knowings, and mother them. Howsoever trivial, a real knowing is something. You can base your life upon it. Whatsoever they are, always think of real, particular knowings that YOU have known.
Have you known anything? You know many things, but everything is borrowed. Someone has said them, someone has given them to you. Teachers, parents, society, they have conditioned your mind. You “know” about God, you “know” about love, you “know” about meditation. You don’t know anything really! You have not tasted anything, this all is borrowed. Someone else has tasted, the taste is not your own. Someone else has seen, but you have your eyes and you have not used them. Someone else has experienced — a Buddha has experienced, a Jesus has experienced — and you just go on borrowing their knowings. They are false! For you, they are of no use. They are more dangerous than ignorance, because ignorance is yours and the knowledge is borrowed.
It is better to be ignorant; at least the ignorance is yours. It is authentic, it is real, sincere and honest! Don’t go on with borrowed knowledge. Otherwise you will forget that you are ignorant, and you will remain ignorant.
This sutra says “… MOTHER PARTICULAR KNOWINGS.” Always try to know something in a way that is fresh, direct, immediate. Don’t believe in anyone. Your belief will lead you astray. Trust yourself — and if you cannot trust yourself, how can you trust anybody else?
Sariputta came to Buddha, and he said, “I have come to believe in you. I have come! Help me to build faith in you.”
Buddha is reported to have said, “If you don’t believe in yourself, how can you believe in me? So forget me. First have trust in yourself, believe in yourself. Only then can you have trust in someone else.”
So remember this: you cannot trust anybody if you cannot even trust yourself. The first trust is always within. Only then can it flow; only then can it overflow, it can reach to others. But how can you trust if you don’t know anything? How can you trust in yourself if you don’t have any experience? Try to trust in yourself. Don’t think that this experience of looking through others’ eyes is only with the absolute. It is with ordinary experiences also. But let them be your own. They will help you to grow, they will make you mature, they will make you ripened.
This is really strange: you look with others’ eyes, you live with others’ lives. You call a rose beautiful. Really, is it your feeling or just a teaching that is spread around you that a rose is beautiful? Is this your knowing? Have you known it? You say that moonlight is good, beautiful. Is it your knowing, or is it just that poets have been singing about it and you are repeating it? If you are like a parrot, you cannot live your life authentically. Whenever you assert anything and whenever you say anything, first check within whether it is your knowledge and your experience.
Throw out all that is not yours — it is of no use — and cherish and mother all that is yours, because only through that will you grow. “MOTHER PARTICULAR KNOWINGS, PARTICULAR DOINGS, IN REALITY.” Always remember “in reality.” Do something. Have you done anything ever, or have you been just following others, just following orders? “Love your wife”: have you really loved her? Or are you just doing a duty because it has been said, because it has been taught, “Love your wife — or love your mother, love your father, love your brother,” so you are loving and you are following! Have YOU really loved any time when you were there? Was it ever the case that no teaching was working and no other was being followed? Were you ever authentically in love? You can deceive yourself; you can say, “Yes!” But find out before you say anything. If you have loved, you would be transformed; the particular act of love would have changed you. But it has not changed you because your love is false. And the whole life has become false. You go on doing things that are not your own. Do your own thing and mother it.
Buddha is good, but you cannot follow him. Jesus is good, beautiful, but you cannot follow him. And if you will follow, you will become ugly. You will be a carbon copy. You will be false, and you will not be accepted by the existence. Nothing false is accepted. Love a Buddha, love a Jesus, but don’t be their carbon copies. Don’t imitate. Always allow your own self to move in its own way. You will become Buddha-like one day, but the path will be basically your own. One day you will become a Jesus, but you will have traveled along a different route, you will have experienced different things. One thing is certain: whatsoever may be the route and whatsoever may be the experience, it must be authentic, real, and your own. Then you will reach one day. Through falsity you cannot reach the truth; falsity will lead to more falsity.
Do something, remembering well that it is you who are doing it without following anybody. Then even a very small act, just a smile, may become a source of SATORI, a source of SAMADHI, cosmic consciousness. You come back to your home and smile at your children. That smile is false; you are pretending. You are smiling because a smile is expected. It is a painted smile. Nothing else is smiling in you but the lips. They are manipulated; the smile is mechanical. And you can become so habituated in this that you may completely forget how to smile. You may laugh, but the laughter may not be coming from your center.
Always remember, no matter what you are doing, observe whether your center is involved in it or not, because if it is not involved it is better not to do a thing. Don’t do it! No one is forcing you to do anything. Don’t do it! Preserve your energy for the moment when something real happens to you; then do it. Don’t smile, preserve the energy. The smile will come, and then it will change you completely. Then it will be total. Then every cell of your body will smile. Then it will be an explosion — nothing painted.
And children know, you cannot deceive them. The moment you can deceive them, they are no more children. They know when your smile is false, they can detect it; anyone who is real will detect it. Your tears are false, your smile is false. These are small acts, but you are made up of small acts. So don’t think to do something big — that then you will do this. If you are false in small things you will always be false.
It is easy to be false in big things. If you are false in small things, it is very easy to be false in big things, because big things because big things are always on exhibition. They are for others to see, so you can very easily be false. You can be a saint if saintliness is respected. Then you are on exhibition — just an exhibition piece. You can be a saint because it is respected and ego-fulfilling, but everything will be false. Just think, if a society changes its attitudes as they have been changed in Soviet Russia or in China, immediately, saints disappear — because there is no respect for them.
I remember one of my friends, a Buddhist BHIKKHU who went to Soviet Russia in Stalin’s days. He told me that whenever somebody would shake hands with him, suddenly the man would shrink and would say, “You have the hands of a bourgeois.” He had very beautiful hands. As a BHIKKHU he had never done anything; he was a beggar, a royal beggar, so there had been no labor. His hands were very smooth, beautiful, feminine. In India, whenever someone touched his hands he would say, “So beautiful!” In Russia, whenever someone would touch his hands, he would shrink away, and the condemnation would come into his eyes and he would say, “So you have bourgeois hands, the hands of an exploiter.” He came back and told me, “I felt so condemned there that I longed to be a laborer.”
Saints disappeared from Russia because now there is no respect. All that saintliness which was there was only on exhibition; it was a showpiece, painted. Only real saints can exist now in Russia. For unreal ones there is no possibility because you will have to struggle there to be a saint, and the whole society will be against you. In India, the easiest way to survive and exist is to be a saint. Everyone respects you. You can be false, and falsity pays.
Remember this: from the very morning, when you open your eyes, try to be real and authentic. Don’t do anything which is false. Only for seven days, go on remembering. Don’t do anything which is false. Whatsoever is lost, let it be lost. Whatsoever you lose, lose it. But remain real, and within seven days a new life will be felt within you. The dead layers will be broken and a new living current will come to you. You will feel alive again for the first time — a resurrection.
“MOTHER DOINGS… MOTHER KNOWINGS…. IN REALITY” — not in dream. Do whatsoever you like to do, but think — really, are you doing it, or is your mother doing it through you or your father doing it through you? Because dead men, dead parents, societies, old generations gone long ago are still functioning within you. They have created such conditionings that you go on fulfilling THEM — and they were fulfilling their dead fathers and mothers, and you are fulfilling your dead fathers and mothers, and no one is fulfilled. How can you fulfill someone who is dead? But the dead are living through you.
Always observe when you do something, whether your father is doing it through you or you are doing it. When you get angry, is it your anger or is it the way your father used to be angry? You are just imitating. I have seen patterns going on, being repeated. If you marry, your marriage is going to be just approximately the same as your father’s and your mother’s. You will act like your father, your wife will act like her mother, and you will create the same mess again. When you get angry, observe: are you there or someone else? When you love, remember, are you there or someone else? When you speak something, remember, are you speaking or your teacher? When you make a gesture, remember, is it yours or is someone else present in your hand? It will be difficult, but this is SADHANA. This is what spiritual effort means.
And leave all falsities. You may feel a certain dullness for a time being, because all your falsities will drop and the real will take time to come and assert itself. There will be a period of a gap. Allow that period, and don’t be afraid and don’t become scared. Sooner or later your false selves will drop, masks will drop, and your real face will come into being. Only through that real face can you encounter God. That is why this sutra says, “AS A HEN MOTHERS HER CHICKS, MOTHER PARTICULAR KNOWINGS, PARTICULARS DOINGS, IN REALITY.”
