Rupi Kaur, a young pop star of poetry, writes in her book Milk and Honey, “We are all born so beautiful. The greatest tragedy is being convinced we are not…”

This unfortunately is the experience of most of the children being brought up in a society, which is strangely very judgmental. Most of us have gone through this unpleasant experience in our early life when we were dependent on our family and teachers. With all good intentions they mould the growing child into their idea of perfection. The children are not given an environment of love and acceptance to grow as they are supposed to grow, or to allow their natural potential to manifest. In thousand and one ways, they are made to feel unwelcome if the children are not obedient. The family and society want the children to be blindly obedient. They seem to have some kind of vested interest. It may be their unconscious conditioning.

Osho points out that the educator, from kindergarten to university, is in the service of the vested interests, is in the service of the establishment. His whole purpose is to destroy every child in such a way, to cripple every child in such a way, that he adjusts to the established society. There is a fear. The fear is that if the child is left unconditioned from the very beginning he will be so intelligent, alert and aware, that his whole lifestyle will be of rebellion. And nobody wants rebels; everybody wants obedient people.

An obedient child will get more love and respect than the other children who will get rejected directly or indirectly. The rejected children, if they are courageous, become rebellious later on. This happens almost everywhere that the young people when they grow up to be strong and powerful, they become revengeful and destructive. This is what we see happening all around us. It is cathartic.

The solution is that the children need to be helped to be themselves. They have to be supported according to their nature, that needs love and nourishment, and no judgement and condemnation.

Osho says: “A real father, a real mother, real parents will be a blessing to the child. The child will feel helped by them so that he becomes more rooted in his nature, more grounded, more centred, so that he starts loving himself rather than feeling guilty about himself, so that he respects himself.”

Remember, unless a person loves himself he cannot love anybody else in the world unless a child respects himself he cannot respect anybody else. That’s why all your love is bogus and all your respect is pseudo, phoney. When you don’t respect yourself, how can you respect anybody else?

We can remember the words of wisdom of Lao Tzu, the Chinese mystic to Confucius: “All you good people of the world relax and be peaceful. Stop all talks of goodness and you will find that if you are strong enough to let go of goodness also, evil will fall of itself…”

There are gurus and gurus in the world — so many of them. Sometimes the people who are searching for a guru become really confused about who would be a right guru for them. On the other side, the gurus are also searching disciples. And this is the reason some gurus prefer to declare themselves as “sadguru” or their disciples declare their master as sadguru. The word “Sadguru” means the true guru. The amazing thing is that every disciple considers his master as sadguru. This happens out of love for the guru or it could happen because of ignorance or blind faith. It could also happen out of the feeling of pride or the feeling of ego, that my guru has to be the greatest, he cannot be lesser than any guru. Generally speaking, this is the way we see the world of gurus and their disciples or followers.

But there is another world of gurus, which is very unknown, secret and mysterious — the world of Sufi gurus. Osho, in one of his discourses on Unio Mystica, talks about this phenomenon with an interesting story: An American seeker came to Dhaka, Bangladesh. He had heard about a great Sufi master. He was in a hurry to meet the master. He enquired from many people, but nobody had heard of this master. At the airport he went from one person to another but nobody had heard of him. He became suspicious and very depressed. He had come from so far, and he had heard so much about the Sufi master who lives in Dhaka, Bangladesh and nobody even knows his name! But as the last try, he asked a taxi driver. The taxi driver said, “Come, sit in the taxi and I will take you to him.” He could not believe it, so suddenly because nobody knew about the master the other moment.

The taxi driver said, “Don’t be worried, I know him. In fact, I am him.” And that’s how it turned out to be. He himself was the Sufi master, but he was working as a taxi driver — just an ordinary life.

The Sufis function that way. Somebody is a weaver, somebody may be a potter, somebody may be making carpets. Do you know what Gurdjieff used to do in the West? His business was carpet selling He was a carpet salesman, that was his business. If you had seen him you would have never recognised that a great master was there. That’s how the Sufis have existed, down the ages. They don’t stand out, there is no need.

The same is the case with Zen. The Zen masters also are ordinary people and teach ordinariness. It is the ego which is always hankering to be extraordinary. The ego is always discontented with being ordinary; it wants to be extraordinary at any cost. It hurts to be ordinary. But once we learn to be happy being ordinary, we accept ourselves as we are, it stops hurting, we experience a certain joy in just being ordinary.

Osho reminds us: Once you have accepted the ordinariness, in your very ordinariness arises an extra ordinariness. Your ordinariness becomes luminous, radiant. Then each moment is a gift, and each moment brings its own joy, its own peace, its own beautitude.

Recently, during my flight to Washington DC, I checked the in-flight entertainment menu. I was surprised to see information in Hindi language also. There was a listing of meditation music for relaxation. I became curious to find out how it was mentioned in Hindi. The word meditation was translated as “Chintan”. I understood that it as a literal translation of the word from dictionaries as I know meditation is dhyan and not chintan. For most people in the world, specially those who have not practised or experienced meditation, as taught by Gautam Buddha and other luminous mystics, meditation means contemplation or concentration on some philosophical subject.

The philosophers are thinkers, mere thinkers. Give them any subject and they would use their mind and contemplation to focus on the subject. They will skilfully use their expertise of linguistic knowledge, but basically it is coming from their churning of the mind. They may even appear to be more impressive than the mystic saints — and most of the time they are. In reality, they are farthest from the truth, as this exercise does not match the existential experience or realisation which is deeper than the mind. For example, love and prayer; these things do not happen in the mind, they happen in the heart and soul. This is the realm of experience and realisation. Out of nowhere love descends into a human heart as something wondrous which has nothing to do with thinking or contemplation, may have nothing to do with any logic. It may be totally irrational. And on a higher level, this may be the case with prayer or bhakti or devotion. All that is divine, not just a product of thought and mind, is nourishing to our soul, very significant to our being. Our mind is just a useful instrument for mundane things, but it is not all. There are many things that are beyond the sphere of mind and they are very significant to us.

Talking about the reality of our being, Osho explains: “You are not the mind, you are beyond mind. You have become identified, that’s true, but you are not the mind”. And this is the purpose of meditation: to give you small glimpses that you are not the mind. If even for a few moments the mind stops, you are still there! On the contrary, you are more, overflowing with being. When the mind stops it is as if a drainage, which was continuously draining you has stopped. Suddenly you are overflowing with energy. You feel more! If even for a single moment you become aware that the mind is not there but “I am,” you have reached a deep core of truth.