The fifth gospel. It is not recorded in The Bible; it has just been found in
Egypt: Notes On Jesus, by Thomas. I have spoken about it because I immediately
fell in love with it. Thomas, in his Notes On Jesus, is so simple that he cannot
be inaccurate. He is so direct, immediate, that he is not, only Jesus is.
Do you know that Thomas was the first disciple to reach India? Indian
Christianity is the oldest in the world, older than the Vatican. And the body of
Thomas is still preserved in Goa - a strange place, but beautiful, very
beautiful. That′s why all the outsiders, called hippies, have become attracted
towards Goa. There is no other place... no other beaches so pure and beautiful
as in Goa.
The body of Thomas is still preserved, and it is a miracle how it is preserved.
Now we know how to preserve a body, to freeze it, but Thomas′ body is not frozen;
some ancient method that was used in Egypt, in Tibet, has been used in this case
too. Scientists have not yet been able to discover - such chemicals have been
used... or even whether any chemicals were used or not. Scientists are great!
They can reach to the moon, but they cannot make a fountain pen which does not
leak! About small things they are failures.
I am not a scientist. Yesterday, even when I said "Okay," it was not okay. I
simply said it because I love you and I did not want to cause any trouble. I
don′t know anything about machinery or chemistry, I only know myself. When
everything around me is going perfectly there is a transcendence. I know through
that transcendence that everything is going perfectly. If something is wrong, I
have to come down again.
Let me explain to you the whole Eastern concept of coming down. A man is born
only if something is wrong... if something is wrong with him. If nothing is
wrong he is not born; he moves to the source, disappears in the cosmos.
I have spoken about his statements, which are only fragments noted
down by his disciples, but I have spoken on him only to make it known to the
world that people like Dionysius should not be forgotten. They are the real
people.
The real people can be counted on your fingers. The real person is one who has
encountered the real, not only from the outside as an object, but as his own
subjectivity. Dionysius belongs to the great world of the buddhas. I refer again
to his few statements - I cannot call it a book; a book needs to be a little
more than just fragments.
I would have loved for him to have been born in the East. To be born
among Germans and then to write or speak about the ultimate is a difficult job.
But the poor man did it, and did it perfectly. Germans are Germans; whatsoever
they do, they do it perfectly. Even today it seems one German sannyasin is still
knocking. Perfection! Listen to his knocks, how beautiful they sound amidst all
this silence.
Eckhart was uneducated. It is strange that many of the mystics are uneducated.
There must be something wrong with education. Why are there not so many educated
mystics? Education must be destroying something, and that prevents people from
becoming mystics.
Yes, education destroys. Twenty-five years continuously, from the kindergarten
to the postgraduate courses in university, it goes on destroying in you
whatsoever is beautiful and aesthetic. The lotus is crushed under scholarship,
the rose is murdered by the so-called professors, teachers, vice-chancellors,
chancellors. What beautiful names they have chosen for themselves.
The real education has not begun yet. It has to begin. It will be the education
of the heart, not of the head; of the feminine in you, not the masculine.
It is a wonder that Eckhart, among the Germans, the most male chauvinist race in
the world, remained yet in his heart, and spoke from there. Uneducated, poor, of
no political status, of no economic status, of no status at all - just a beggar,
but so rich. Very few people have been so rich. Rich in his being - his BEING.
Write BEING in capital letters.
These two words, being and becoming, have to be understood. Becoming is a
process with no beginning and no end, a continuum. But being is not a process at
all, it simply is. Call it is-ness, and you will be very close to it. Being is
neither of time nor of space, it is a transcendence. Transcendence - again,
write TRANSCENDENCE in capital letters. Alas that you cannot write it in golden
letters. It is a word that should be written in gold, pure gold - not eighteen
carat but twenty-four carat, one hundred percent gold.
Eckhart said only a few things, but even those were enough to irritate the ugly
priesthood, the pope and the devils that surround him. They immediately stopped
Eckhart. They told him what to say and what not to say. It needs a madman like
me not to listen to these fools.
But Eckhart was a simple man; he listened, listened to authority. A German is
after all a German. When you say "Left turn" he turns left; when you say "Right
turn" he turns right.
I was expelled from army training at the university because when they said "Right
turn" I would think it over. Everybody would immediately turn except me. The
military officer was puzzled. He said, "What′s the matter with you? Can′t you
hear? Is something wrong with your ears?"
I said, "No, something is wrong with me. I don′t see the point. Why should I
turn left or right? There is no necessity, no reason. And these poor fools who
have turned to the right and then to the left will come to the same position
that I am in already."
Naturally I was expelled - and I was immensely happy. Everybody thought it was
bad luck, and I thought it was good luck. They whispered that something must be
wrong with me: "He was expelled and yet he is enjoying...." I threw a party with
wine and all.
Eckhart listened. A German cannot be really enlightened, it will be very
difficult. Vimalkirti (one of Osho′s German disciples) may be the first German
who became enlightened. But Eckhart was very close; one step more and the world
will end... and the opening, the opening of the doors, the opening to the beyond.
But he said - even though he was a German, and even under pressure from the
pope - he said beautiful things. Just a little bit of truth has entered into
his sayings, hence I include him.
"... this man I find tremendously insightful. On the whole he is a mess, but in fragments he has such penetrating insight, which is rarely available anywhere else. He says, ′Before you can reach heaven, you have to reach to hell. Unless you have fathomed hell completely, there is no way to heaven.′"
Here′s the 17 minutes Google video in which Osho explains this:
I don′t know how to pronounce his name, but who cares! That is how it is written:
B-o-e-h-m-e. Germans must pronounce it differently, that much I am certain. But
I am not a German. I don′t have to compromise with anyone in any way. I have
always called him "Boomay." Even if he comes to me and says, "That′s not exactly
my name," I will say, "Get lost! To me this is your name, and this is going to
be your name, Boomay."
Strangely, whenever Arpita comes into my room I smell Boehme, I suddenly
remember Boehme. Maybe it′s just an association, because he was a shoemaker and
Arpita is my shoemaker. But Arpita, you are blessed that you remind me of Boehme,
one of the most beautiful Germans ever. Again, he was utterly poor. It seems one
has to be poor to be wise; that has been the case up to now. But not after me.
After me you have to be rich to be enlightened. Let me repeat it: you have to be
rich to be enlightened.
Jesus says the rich will not enter into his kingdom of God. He was talking in
the old way. I say emphatically that only the richest will enter into the
kingdom of God. And remember, what I am saying is the same as what Jesus was
saying, it is not contradictory. The ′poor′ in Jesus′ terminology and the ′rich′
in my terminology mean exactly the same. He calls a man poor who has lost
himself, his ego, and that is the man I call rich. The more egoless you are the
richer you are. But in the past, very rarely was a man like Boehme born into a
rich family, particularly in the West.
It is not so in the East. Buddha was a prince, Mahavira was a prince; the
twenty-four tirthankaras of the Jainas were all kings. Krishna was a king, Rama
was a king. All were rich, immensely rich. It signifies something; it signifies
the richness I am talking about. A man is rich when his ego is lost. When he is
no more, he is.
Boehme says a few things, just a few. He could not say many
things, so don′t be afraid. The one thing I would like to mention is: The heart
is the temple of God. Yes, Boehme, it is the heart not the head.
There is a scientific record about a very rare man in the West, Swedenborg. He
wrote a letter to Wesley, a famous priest, and told him, "In the world of the
spirits, I have heard the rumor that you want to see me." Wesley was surprised
because he was thinking to see him, but he had not said so to anybody. He could
not believe it. He wrote a letter saying. "I am simply amazed. I don′t know what
you mean by the world of spirits, I don′t know what you mean that you have heard
the rumor, but this is certain that I have been thinking to see you - and I
have not said this to anybody I will be coming on such and such date, because I
am going for a tour, and three, four months afterwards I will be coming to you."
Swedenborg wrote to him, "That is not possible because, exactly on that date, I
have heard the rumor in the world of the spirits that I am going to die." And
exactly on that date he died.
Swedenborg was staying with a few friends at a holiday resort, and suddenly he
started crying, "Fire! Fire!" They could not believe what he was saying. They
ran out. There was no fire - nothing a small village, a seaside village. They
asked him what he meant - and he was perspiring as if there was fire, and he
was so trembling. Then he said. "Nearabout three hundred miles away a town is on
fire." A horseman was sent immediately. He was right. The town was on fire, and
at that moment the people of the town became aware, when he said. "Fire! Fire!"
The queen of Sweden became interested in this man. She said, "Can you say
something to me which can give me proof that you move in the world of the
spirits?" He closed his eyes and he said, "In your palace," where he had never
been because he had never been called before to the palace and it was not a
public place where anybody could go.... He said, "In a certain room," the number
of the room, "in a certain drawer, which is locked, and the key will be found in
another room, open it. Your husband has left a letter for you." The husband had
been dead for almost twelve years. "And this is the message on the letter...."
He wrote the message. The room was found, the key was searched for and found,
the drawer was opened, and there was a letter and exactly those were the words
that Swedenborg had written on the piece of paper.
Patanjali says if nirodh is accomplished it becomes samadhi. If samadhi is
attained, one becomes one-pointed, consciousness becomes a sword, a sharp,
one-pointed thing with knowledge of past and future. Because then for you time
disappears and you become part of eternity. Then past is not past for you and
future is not future for you. Then for you all the three are available
simultaneously.
But this is not a miracle. This is a simple Law, a basic Law. One has to
understand and use it.
Nicoll was a disciple of Gurdjieff, and unlike Ouspensky, he never betrayed, he was not a Judas. A true disciple to the very last breath and beyond it too. The commentaries of Nicoll are vast - I don′t think anybody reads them - thousands and thousands of pages. But if one takes the trouble one is immensely benefited. In my opinion Nicoll′s Commentaries should be considered as one of the best books in the world.
(Osho in Books I Have Loved)
Maurice Nicoll, one of the disciples of George Gurdjieff, and one of the most
significant disciples, says ′As we cease to invent ourselves, so we cease to
invent other people. We begin to feel a common existence which is without
passion, and is simply what it is, without further definition.′
When you stop inventing yourself - your ego is your invention - when you stop
creating a false pseudo personality around you, when you just start being just
whatsoever you are, when you start relaxing into existence...′As we cease to
invent ourselves, so we cease to invent other people.′ Both things go together.
If you are inventing yourself, you will be inventing others too. You go on
creating a very beautiful image of yourself and, correspondingly, you go on
creating beautiful images of other people. Neither your image about yourself is
true, nor is your image about other people true. So you live in a kind of
illusion, and again and again you are frustrated, because nothing comes
according to your image. It cannot come - your image is just your invention, it
is not the truth.
Maurice Nicoll is right. He says: When we stop inventing ourselves, we stop
inventing others, and then suddenly there is a common ground, a common existence.
Passion disappears, and when passion disappears, compassion appears.