He was always sleepy. And always ready to sleep. Everywhere. At the biggest mass meetings, at all the concerts, at every important convention, he could be seen sitting asleep.

You must have known that man because you are that. And you must have come across that man many, many times, because how can you avoid him? — it is you.

And he slept in every conceivable and inconceivable pose. He slept with his elbows in the air and his hands behind his head. He slept standing up, leaning against himself so that he should not fall down. He slept in the theater, in the streets, in the synagogue. Wherever he went, his eyes would drip with sleep.

Had he been a Hindu he could have even slept standing on his head in shirshasan. I have seen Hindus sleeping that way. Many yogis become efficient in sleeping standing on their head. It is difficult, arduous; it needs great practice — but it happens.

Neighbors used to say that he had already slept through seven big fires, and once, at a really big fire, he was carried out of his bed, still asleep, and put down on the sidewalk. In this way he slept for several hours until a patrol came along and took him away.
It was said that when he was standing under the wedding canopy and reciting the vows, “Thou art to me….” he fell asleep at the word ‘sanctified’ — try to remember him — and they had to beat him over the head with brass pestles for several hours to wake him up. And he slowly said the next word and again fell asleep.

Remember your own wedding ceremony. Remember your honeymoon. Remember your marriage. Have you ever been awake? Have you ever missed any opportunity where you could have fallen asleep? You have always fallen asleep.

We mention all this so that you may believe the following story about our hero.
Once, when he went to sleep, he slept and slept and slept; but in his sleep it seemed to him that he heard thunder in the streets and his bed was shaking somewhat; so he thought in his sleep that it was raining outside, and as a result his sleep became still more delicious. He wrapped himself up in his quilt and in its warmth.

Do you remember how many times you have interpreted things through your sleep? Do you remember sometimes you have fixed the alarm clock, and when it goes off you start dreaming that you are in the church and the bells are ringing. A trick of the mind to avoid the alarm, to avoid the disturbance that the alarm is creating.

When he awoke he saw a strange void: his wife was no longer there, his bed was no longer there, his quilt was no longer there. He wanted to look through the

window, but there was no window to look through. He wanted to run down the three flights and yell ‘Help!’ but there were no stairs to run on and no air to yell in. And when he wanted merely to go out of doors, he saw that there was no out of doors. Everything evaporated!

For a while he stood there in confusion unable to comprehend what had happened. But afterward he bethought himself: I will go to sleep. He saw, however, that there was no longer any earth to sleep on. Only then did he raise two fingers to his forehead and reflect: Apparently I have slept through the end of the world. Isn’t that a fine how-do-you-do?

He became depressed. No more world, he thought. What will I do without a world? Where will I go to work, how will I make a living, especially now that the cost of living is so high and a dozen eggs costs a dollar twenty and who knows if they are even fresh, and besides, what will happen to the five dollars the gas company owes me? And where has my wife gone off to? Is it possible that she too has disappeared with the world, and with the thirty dollars’ pay I had in my pockets? And she is not by nature the kind that disappears, he thought to himself.

You will also think that way one day if you suddenly find the world has disappeared. You don’t know what else to think. You will think about the cost of eggs, the office, the wife, the money. You don’t know what else to think about. The whole world has disappeared! — but you have become mechanical in your thinking.

And what will I do if I want to sleep? What will I stretch out on if there isn’t any world? And maybe my back will ache? And who will finish the bundle of work in the shop? And suppose I want a glass of malted, where will I get it?
Eh, he thought, have you ever seen anything like it? A man should fall asleep with the world under his head and wake up without it!

This is going to happen one day or other — that’s what happens to every man when he dies. Suddenly, the whole world disappears. Suddenly he is no longer part of this world; suddenly he is in another dimension. This happens to every man who dies, because whatsoever you have known is just the peripheral. When you die, suddenly your periphery disappears — you are thrown to your center. And you don’t know that language. And you don’t know anything about the center. It looks like void, empty. It feels like just a negation, an absence.

As our hero stood there in his underwear, wondering what to do, a thought occurred to him: To hell with it! So there isn’t any world! Who needs it anyway?

Disappeared is disappeared — I might as well go to the movies and kill some time. But to his astonishment he saw that, together with the world, the movies had also disappeared.

A pretty mess I’ve made here, thought our hero, and began smoothing his mustache. A pretty mess I’ve made here, falling asleep! If I hadn’t slept so soundly, hc taunted himself, I would have disappeared along with everything else. This way I’m unfortunate, and where will I get a malted? I love a glass in the morning. And my wife? Who knows who she’s disappeared with? If it is with the presser from the top floor, I’ll murder her, so help me God.

Who knows how late it is?
With these words our hero wanted to look at his watch but couldn’t find it. He searched with both hands in the left and right pockets of the infinite emptiness but could find nothing to touch.

I just paid two dollars for a watch and here it’s already disappeared, he thought to himself. All right. If the world went under, it went under. That I don’t care about.

It isn’t my world. But the watch! Why should my watch go under? A new watch. Two dollars. It wasn’t even wound.

And where will I find a glass of malted? There’s nothing better in the morning than a glass of malted. And who knows if my wife..I’ve slept through such a terrible catastrophe, I deserve the worst. Help, help, he-e-e-lp! Where are my brains? Where were my brains before? Why didn’t I keep an eye on the world and my wife?

Why did I let them disappear when they were still so young?

And our hero began to beat his head against the void, but since the void was a very soft one it didn’t hurt him and he remained alive to tell the story.

This is a story of human mind as such. You create a world around you of illusions. You go on getting attached to things which are not going to be with you when you die. You go on being identified with things which are going to be taken away from you.

Osho – in series “A Sudden Clash of the Thunder”

The post The Great Sleep – A Jewish Spiritual Story by Osho appeared first on Spiritual Growth Events.

THERE WAS A MAN OF WEI, TUNG-MEN WU, WHO DID NOT GRIEVE WHEN HIS SON DIED.

HIS WIFE SAID TO HIM:

“NO ONE IN THE WORLD LOVED HIS SON AS MUCH AS YOU DID, WHY DO YOU NOT GRIEVE NOW HE IS DEAD?”

HE ANSWERED:

“I HAD NO SON, AND WHEN I HAD NO SON I DID NOT GRIEVE. NOW THAT HE IS DEAD IT IS THE SAME AS IT WAS BEFORE, WHEN I HAD NO SON. WHY SHOULD I GRIEVE OVER HIM?”

Osho – A Sudden Clash of Thunder

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But the man spoke so indistinctly and muffed his punchline so badly that the story was not funny at all, and except for the Mulla no one laughed. But the Mulla laughed heartily.

“Why did you laugh, Nasrudin?” I asked him afterwards when the stranger had left.

“I always do,” replied Nasrudin. “If you don’t laugh, there is always the danger of their telling it over again.”

People have their own reasons. Even laughter is businesslike; even laughter is economic, political. Even laughter is not just laughter. All purity is lost. You cannot even laugh in a pure way, in a simple way, childlike.

And if you cannot laugh in a pure way, you are losing something tremendously valuable. You are losing your virginity, your purity, your innocence.

Osho – A Sudden Clash of Thunder

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Nobody could believe him. Lazarus is dead! And the sisters of Lazarus said, “He is now stinking — he cannot come back. His body is deteriorating.”

But Jesus went to the grave where the body was preserved for him to come. The stone was pulled aside. In the dark cave Jesus called out, “Lazarus, come out! ” And it is said he came out.

It may not have happened that way; it may be just a parable — but it is a beautiful parable about man. When I look into your eyes, that’s all I can say: “Lazarus, come out!” You are dead and stinking. You are not yet alive. You are born, but you need to be reborn. Your first birth has not been of much help. It has brought you to a certain extent, but that is not enough. You have to go a little further. The birth that has already happened to you is only physical — you need a spiritual birth.

It is said: One professor of Jerusalem university went to see Jesus. Of course, he went in the night. His name was Nicodemus; he was a very rich, respectable man, a great scholar, well known in the Jewish world. He was afraid to go to Jesus in the daylight, because what will people think? He was known to be a great, learned man, wise — what will they think? that he has gone to this carpenter’s son to ask something? He was older than Jesus — could almost have been Jesus’ father. No, it was not possible for him to go in the daylight. Cunning and clever, he went in the night when there was nobody else. And Jesus asked him, “Why didn’t you come in the day?”

He said, “I was afraid.”

Jesus must have laughed. He said, “Nicodemus, for what have you come? What do you want of me?”

He said, “I would like to know how I can know God, how I can know the truth.”

Jesus said, “You will have to be reborn.”

Nicodemus could not understand. Jokingly he said, “What do you mean? Have I to enter again into a woman’s womb? Are you joking or something? Are you kidding or something?”

Jesus said, “No, I mean it — I mean what I say. You have to be reborn. You are such a coward. This is not life. You don’t have any courage. You will have to be reborn! You will have to become a new man, because only that new man can come to truth and realize it. Even to see me you have come in the night. How will you be able to go and see the truth? How will you encounter God? You will have to go naked. You will have to go in deep humility. You will have to drop all your respectability, all your scholarship. You will have to drop your ego — that’s what to be reborn means.”

The first birth is only a physical birth; don’t be satisfied with it. It is necessary but not enough. A second birth is needed. The first birth was through your mother and father; the second birth is going to be out of the mind. You have to slip out of the mind and that will be your rebirth — you will be reborn.

And, for the first time, trees will be greener than they are, and flowers will be more beautiful than they are, and life will be more alive than you have ever known it, because you can know it only to the extent that you are alive. You cannot know life if you are not alive. Whatsoever you are, you know life only up to that extent.

Osho – “A Sudden Clash of Thunder”

The post Lazarus, Come Out! A Christian Spiritual Story by Osho appeared first on Spiritual Growth Events.

There was a great sage who would not initiate anybody, who would not make anybody a disciple. And his fame spread far and wide, and thousands of people would come every year to his hilltop and they would touch his feet and they would cry and weep and they would say, “Accept us! Initiate us into the truth you have achieved! Open the door of your temple to us also — we are thirsty.”

But he would say, “You are not worthy, you don’t deserve. First become worthy of me!” And his conditions were such that nobody was ever able to fulfill them: Be truthful for three years, not a single lie; for three years be celibate, not even a thought of a woman or a man — and so on and so forth.

Those conditions were impossible! And those conditions are such that the more you try to fulfill them, the more you will feel it is impossible. You can be a celibate if you don’t bother too much about it; but if you think too much about celibacy then you will be surrounded by many, many women in your mind.

Many people had tried and nobody was successful, so nobody was initiated.

Then the man was dying. Just three days before he died, many people had gathered and he told his closest people, “Now you go, and whosoever wants to be initiated I will initiate — only three days are left!”

The people knew him well and they said, “What about your conditions?”

He said, “Forget all about those conditions! In fact, I was not ready to initiate anybody; hence, I was insisting too much on the conditions. Now I am ready! and I am full and I want to share. Now forget all about the conditions — whosoever wants to come, fetch them! And be in a hurry because only three days are left.”

He initiated any and everybody, whosoever came. People could not believe it! They asked, “What are you doing? We are sinners!”

He said, “Forget about it. I was not a saint up to now — that was the only trouble. I had nothing to initiate you into. There was no door — I was standing outside the door myself. But now the door has opened — now I have to share. Now there is no question of any conditions.”

When you are aware, you are not in need of love. When you are not in need of love, you become capable of love. This is the paradox. When you are in need you are not capable.

Osho – “A Sudden Clash of Thunder”

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I have heard, there is a famous story of a wise man who was called by Alexander the Great. And Alexander asked him, “I have heard that you have come to know what God is, so please tell me. I have been in search, and people say you have attained, so enlighten me about God, what God is.”

It is said the wise man said, “You give me at least twenty-four hours to think over it.”

Twenty-four hours passed, and Alexander was waiting very eagerly. The wise man came and he said, “Seven days, will be needed.”

And then seven days passed, and Alexander was very impatient. The wise man came and he said, “One year will be needed.”

Alexander said, “What do you mean, one year will be needed? You know or you don’t? If you know, you know — tell me. Why waste time?”

The wise man laughed and he said, “The more I ponder, the more it becomes unknowable. The more I know, the more difficult it becomes to say that I know. Twenty-four hours I tried and tried, and it started slipping from my hands. It is very elusive — it is like mercury. Then I asked for seven days — that didn’t help. Now, at least one year — and I am not certain that I will be able to bring a definition.”

The wise man did well. He must have been really wise, because there is no way to define the REAL Self.

Osho – “A Sudden Clash of Thunder”

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