Celebrate Guru Purnima With A Loving Tribute to a Disciple:
Osho sometimes mentions Vivek, his caretaker, in his discourses.
You can ask Vivek for two lives she has been falling in love; this is her second life with me. You ask her why, and it will be impossible to answer. She can cry or she can laugh or she can dance, but she cannot answer why
because there is no why in it.
Vivek was saying just the other day, and many times she has said it, that time flies so fast here that she cannot believe that she has been here for seven years. It looks as if just seven days ago she had come here.
Love is not a quantity. When somebody says, “I love you very much,” something is wrong, because love is not a quantity. You cannot love less and more. Either you love or you don’t love. The division is very clear-cut.
Just a few days ago a new book had come, and the first copy I always give to Vivek. I wrote ‘With love to Vivek’. She told me, “Why not much love?” I said, “That is impossible. I cannot write that” because to me, more or less is not possible. I can simply write ‘love’; ‘much love’ is absurd. Quantity is not a question, but simple quality.
Love affair is a love affair! It is not logical. When you love a person, you love his wholeness, you love him as he is. And to be with a Master the only way is to fall in total love. Hence you start liking everything of the Master yes, even his mispronunciations! Of course it is easy to love his beauty, his grace, his wisdom, but that is not enough unless you start loving him in his totality.
I know that if sometimes I don’t mispronounce a few words, you miss when I mispronounce I can see the joy!
Vivek goes on telling me every day, “Don’t say ‘aunt’, it is ‘ain’t’.” And whenever I come across it, just to be compassionate to you, I again say ‘aunt’.
And there is one more difficulty: there are a few things I cannot figure out. My whole life I have been unable to figure out what is left and what is right. In school when I used to go to the parade I used to write on my hands, “This is right, this is left.” So whenever this question of ‘aunt’ and ‘ain’t’ arises I am puzzled whether it is ‘aunt’ or ‘ain’t’, or vice versa!
My mind is just a mechanism. For me now it is absolutely useless: it is just for your sake that I go on feeding it a little bit. Just for your sake I am speaking, otherwise now there is no point for me. In fact there is no point for me even to breathe! It is only for you that I am breathing, speaking, living. Those who have eyes will be able to see it.
Everything is a device. Remember it: you have to see the device to grow beyond it.
And as far as the pronunciation is concerned, it is a miracle that I don’t mispronounce all the words, or that even when I mispronounce you can still understand&because language is very alien to my being now not English, but my own mother tongue is alien. I have become a stranger to my own mind; the distance is infinite between me and the mind. I am surprised myself that the mind goes on functioning. What I have known has been known in silence; no language can express it.
So it is just a miracle happening, that I go on speaking to you, conveying to you something which cannot be conveyed, expressing something which is inexpressible, saying the unsayable. And you have to forgive many things.
But everything is a device, remember&and as you get closer and closer to me, more and more subtle devices will be used. The day is not far off when we will be simply sitting in silence and there will be no question of language, words. Get ready for it, because that which I really want to communicate can only be communicated in silence.
Nothing can create enlightenment. You have fallen asleep, I am shouting. And sometimes I really have to shout. Just the other day Vivek was saying ‘You were shouting so much this morning that I am shaken, jarred; my nerves are on edge.’ Good, so I will have to do a little more shouting. Sooner or later how can you avoid waking up? How long can you avoid waking up?
One day just a few days ago Vivek asked me this question early in the morning: “Why do Jews have long noses?” I settled in my chair, in my posture. I made my towel comfortable, looked at the clock and I was just going to start a great discourse on the philosophy and the physiology of the Jewish nose. But then she became apprehensive and afraid. Naturally because once I take off, then it takes ninety minutes at least for me to land on the earth. So she said, “Stop! Stop! I happen to know the answer! You need not give me the answer!”
I was very shocked because I was already on the way. In a hurried way she said, “Because the air is free!”
It is a beauty. I loved it. It explains everything. The Jews have long noses because the air is free!
Just the other day Vivek was telling me a joke. She said, “Osho, do you know why the Jews have short necks?”
And I said (Osho shrugs his shoulders)
And she said, “Yes, that’s why!”
When you love, what you can say except shrug your shoulders? And if you go on shrugging your shoulders the whole day you will have a short neck!
You say: Someone has dared me to ask you this impertinent question What do you do with Vivek? Anything I could possibly understand through telling?
It will be difficult.
Vivek is so close to me that she is constantly on the cross. She has to be; it is difficult. To be so close to me is arduous. The more you are close to me, the more the responsibility. The more you are close to me, the more you have to transform yourself. The more you feel the unworthiness, the more you start feeling how to become more worthy and the goal seems almost impossible. And I go on creating many situations. I have to create them because only through friction does integration happen. Only through harder and harder situations does one grow. Growth is not soft; growth is painful.
You ask me, “What do you do with Vivek?”
I am killing her slowly. That is the only way for her to get a totally new being, to be reborn. It is a cross to be with me, and hard is the task.
Let me tell you one anecdote:
An unruly, problem son of a Jewish family was causing his parents much heartache by his behavior. He had been expelled from a state school, so finally, in desperation, they sent him to a Roman Catholic school. On his return from his first day, he went straight to his room and began to do his homework. His father came back from work and asked, “Momma, well, tell me the bad news.”
“No bad news, Poppa,” said momma. “He came in as quiet as a lamb, and is now in his room doing his homework yet.”
“Homework?” exclaimed Poppa. “He has never done homework in his life! He must be ill!” So Poppa went to the boy’s room and said, “What is this Momma telling me, that you are doing homework? Why this change of heart, all of a sudden?”
And the boy replied, “Poppa, I am the only Jewish boy in that school. On the wall opposite my desk is a picture of the last Jewish boy they had there. Oi, you should see what they did to him!”
Jesus crucified.
To be very close to me is to be on the cross. So Vivek has to do her homework, that’s all. That’s what I go on doing to her. Of course, she has to do more homework than any of you.
You can ask Vivek how arduous it is. Just a few days ago she was saying to me, “You are worse than Gurdjieff!” Now that is a great compliment. Gurdjieff was really very hard on his disciples, and she says, “You are worse than Gurdjieff!” But I can understand: I am hard, I have to be hard. The closer you come to me, the harder you will find me.
