Many readers have been wondering which are Osho’s most favourite mystics. It happened once the great Hindi poet, Sumitranandan Pant, asked, who are the 12 brightest shining stars in India? Osho gave him the list: Krishna, Patanjali, Buddha, Mahavira, Nagarjuna, Shankara, Gorakh, Kabir, Nanak, Meera, Ramakrishna and Krishnamurti. The poet further asked Osho, “Could you just give me seven names?” Osho said: Krishna, Patanjali, Buddha, Mahavira, Shankara, Gorakh and Kabir. The poet requested again to shorten the list to five?” Osho said: Krishna, Patanjali, Buddha, Mahavira and Gorakh. The poet was surprised that Gorakh was not being dropped. Osho said: “Because Kabir is merged into Gorakh. Gorakh is the root. Gorakh cannot be left out.” Then the poet said: “If only four are to be kept?” Osho said: Krishna, Patanjali, Buddha and Gorakh… The poet requested: “Just one more time… please choose three.”
Osho replied: “Now it is impossible. I cannot drop any of these four.”

These four individualities are like the four directions. These four are like the four dimensions of time and space. These four arms are like the four-armed aspects of God. In fact, there is only one, but that one has four arms. The poet wondered why Gorakh was not dropped. Osho remarked: “Gorakh cannot be dropped because Gorakh became a new beginning for this country… Gorakh is the first link of a chain. Through him a new type of religion was born. Without Gorakh, there could be no Kabir, no Nanak, no Dadu, no Vajid, no Farid, no Meera — without Gorakh none of these are possible. The basic root of all of them is in Gorakh. Since then the temple has been built high. On this temple many golden spires have been raised… but the foundation stone is the foundation stone.” He concluded: Gorakh had a rare individuality, similar to Einstein. Einstein gave such penetrating methods for investigating the truth of the universe, as no one before him had given. Yes, now they can be further developed, now a finer edge can be put on them. In the inner world the same situation exists with Gorakh.”

In my school days, one of my teachers, whenever he was unhappy with my progress, used to call me a Chinese. China had attacked India then. So I used to feel bad being addressed as one. I realised that it was something to do with how I looked: My deep small eyes.

Years later when I became a sannyasi, some friends started calling me the ferocious Buddha. This name is given to Bodhidharma, the first patriarch of Zen, who took Buddha’s message of meditation and compassion to China. Earlier many other disciples of Buddha had gone to China to spread Buddha’s teachings. They were scholarly people but none had been enlightened, so they did not have any great impact on the Chinese. Bodhidharma was the right person, really a Buddha, an awakened one, in his own right.

His master Prajnatara instructed him to go to China to spread Buddha’s essential message of enlightenment. The time was ripe for the real taste of realisation, of awakening to pass on to the seekers. The other quality of Bodhidharma, though superficial as far as spirituality is concerned, was his resemblance to the Chinese, though he belonged to south India. While Buddha looked very graceful and really gentle with finer feminine qualities, Bodhidharma looked wild and ferocious. With him started a new stream of enlightened mystics known as the Zen masters.

In Zen monasteries, there has been one serious question to meditate on: Why did Bodhidharma go to China? Zen Buddhists have been asking for centuries, “Why? Why did this Bodhidharma go to China?”

Osho gives a simple answer: “I know the reason — the Chinese are more joyous people than Indians, more delighted with life and small things, more colourful. It must be the reason why Bodhidharma travelled so long, crossed the Himalayas to seek and search for people who could laugh with him, and who were not serious, not great scholars and philosophers, and this and that. No, China has not created great philosophers like India has. It has created a few great mystics like Laozi and Zhuang Zhou, but they all are laughing Buddhas. It must be that Bodhidharma’s search in China was a search for people who were non-serious.”

Osho concludes: “My whole effort here is to make you light, non-serious, laughing. People come to me, particularly Indians and complain: ‘What type of sannyasis are you creating? They don’t look like sannyasis. A sannyasi, has to be a serious person, almost dead, a corpse. These people laugh and dance and hug each other. This is unbelievable! Sannyasis doing this?’” And I tell them, “Who else? Who else can do that? — only sannyasis can laugh.”

Today, I am delighted to be addressed as the ferocious Buddha. I do not get hurt. Rather I have a big laugh.

The enlightened mystics appear in this world with a certain message for the seekers of the truth. After attaining their self-realisation, they feel a certain passion in their heart to share it with all the people groping in the dark. The better word for this passion is compassion, or one can say that this is something that this whole existence wants them to do. While doing this job assigned by God or existence to them, they realise that not everybody is interested in listening to them. Most of the people have other important things to do, listening to the mystics is not their priority. But even then they feel compelled to continue doing what they are supposed to do, just like a man of eyes feels compelled to show the path to a blind man.

There is a very interesting Sufi story. Bayazid was a famous mystic and a master. Once he was passing through a certain isolated area where a huge cemetery existed. There he came upon a heap of skulls. He had no fear of death or the spirits of people who were buried there. He took one skull in his hands. He had always assumed that all skulls are almost the same, but they were not the same. He was surprised to notice that there were some skulls whose ears were joined together; there was a passage. There were a few other skulls whose ears were not joined together; there existed a barrier between the two. There were a few more skulls and their ears were not joined together but they were joined to the heart with some kind of a passage running to the heart.

Seeing all these strange skulls, Bayazid prayed to Allah and asked Him, “Please help me understand the mystery. What is the hidden meaning of all this?” Allah heard his prayer and responded, “In the world, there exist three types of people: one, who hear through one ear; it never reaches anywhere. As a matter of fact, they don’t hear at all, only the sound vibrates and disappears. There is another type, who do hear, but only momentarily — they hear through one ear, and it disappears through the other ear. The message gets lost. There are a few other evolved souls, who hear through both the ears and the message enters their heart.”

Allah said further, “Bayazid, you have been chosen by me to guide other seekers of truth. So I wanted you to learn something important so that your work becomes easier. I brought you to this heap of skulls just to remind you that when you are conveying my message to people, remember to talk only to those people who are capable of taking the message to their hearts. Don’t waste your time and energy on those who are not capable of listening and allowing the message to reach their heart. Treat your life as precious, because you have a precious message to deliver.”

Osho says: The story may be true or not; that is irrelevant. I looked into thousands of people, and I found that only a very few are there who will take the seed to the heart, who will become soil to it, who will absorb it. And others are just curiosity-mongers, just entertaining themselves.

Maybe the entertainment is religious, but it is meaningless. Sincerity is a must on the path of self-realisation.

Most of us live our life being lost in our thoughts, carrying some kind of a smoke-screen created by our desires. We meet people, talk to them, relate to them and so many other activities continue as needed. We may be paying very little attention to such activities, as these routine activities do not require much attention.

Waking up daily, having breakfast and getting ready to go to office or business is a regular affair. It is a pattern that has become automatic. Only one per cent of our energy and attention may be required to maintain this on a daily basis. What happens to the rest of the energy? We have been giving this energy to a certain master within us, which was originally a slave to do everything utilitarian and useful for us.

This slave was very obedient in the early days of its role and we kept trusting it, gradually leaving everything that was important to it. In the course of time, it got all the power from us and evolved into a monster. This monster is our own mind created by us, having got all the energy from us for so many years, has evolved into an independent entity. Now it is so powerful that it does not listen to us anymore. It is busy churning more and more thoughts throughout the day and weaving dreams in the night while we are sleeping.

Most of the time these dreams do help us sleep, and we are not able to sleep without their stories. The night ends and the smoke-screen created by dreams at night takes a different shape during the hours when we are awake. We think we are awake, but we continue to live as if we are asleep. We move around, we do things in some sort of somnambulism; there is not much awareness.

Yes, there is awakening in the morning, but it is not much of an awakening. Everything is being done in a mechanical way. We may be doing things impulsively or instinctively, with an inbuilt programme, while our mind keeps receiving all the fuel from our desires, to go on in its independent business. It is busy without any real business and keeps us busy, consuming and exhausting all our energy all the time.

In one of his discourses on Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Osho explains a certain method of meditation to break the spell of mind. He says: Just as you have the impulse to do something, stop. You can try it anywhere. You are taking your bath — suddenly order yourself to “stop!” and stop. Even if it is only for a single moment, you will feel a different phenomena happening within you. You are thrown to the centre and suddenly everything stops. When the body stops totally, your mind stops too