A man who lives like a robot, howsoever efficient and successful, cannot be called a living person, as life and wakefulness are synonymous.

There is so much talk about digital revolution these days. And this has a tremendous appeal. Even small children are getting attracted to all digital things. Also, there is so much talk about artificial intelligence that is going to replace natural intelligence. They say it will prove million times more powerful than natural intelligence. But with all this revolution that is robotic, we cannot be sure whether we are going towards heaven or hell on earth. This could be very unhealthy, specially if it is controlled by pathological people. It is going to be a real menace.

Once Osho talked about sociologist Lewis Yablonsky, who had then coined an interesting word — “robopathology”. Any one who suffers from it is a “robopath”. “Robo” means a machine, an automaton; one who lives a mechanical kind of life, a repetitive kind of life; one who has no adventure; one who simply goes on dragging himself. He fulfils the day-to-day demands but he never fulfils the eternal demand, the eternal challenge. He will go to the office, to the factory, he will come home, he will look after the children and the wife, and he will do a thousand and one things — and do them very efficiently — but he will never be alive. He will live as if he is already dead.

A man who lives like a robot, howsoever efficient and successful, cannot be called a living person, as life and wakefulness are synonymous. Sleep is also a mini death, though a man can dream in the sleep that he is alive. But this aliveness is useless without awareness. A robot will not have such an aliveness that comes with the throbbing of the heart and a joy of awakening. Being fully awake is the real thing.

There is a Sufi parable. There was a tradesman in a small village, who sat on his knees in his little shop, and with his left hand he pulled a strand of wool from the bale which was above his head. He twirled the wool into a thicker strand and passed it to his right hand as it came before his body. The right hand wound the wool around a large spindle. This was a continuous motion on the part of the old man who, each time his right hand spindled the wool, inaudibly said, “La illaha illa’llah.” There could be no uneven movement or the wool would break and he would have to tie a knot and begin again. The old man had to be present every moment or he would break the wool.

This is the real awakening, what Sufis call Zikr — an awareness on a higher plane than that on which we normally live. It is a silsila — a tradition of masters and disciples. Out of such a small phenomenon the tradesman created so much awareness.

The modern man, who has to adjust with city-life, with all its maddening speed, traffic and noise, has become unnatural.

Off late, the people in the Western world are increasingly adopting mindfulness and meditation as part of their daily routine to acquire peace of mind.

But most of the people who meditate regularly wonder why they start falling sleep during such a process of self-exploration. As soon as their body and mind relax, some sort of sleepiness begins to possess their being. This is quite natural.

The modern man, who has to adjust with city-life, with all its maddening speed, traffic and noise, has become unnatural. So the first thing that the meditation does, in the moments of relaxation, is to give him some good sleep that his body needs urgently. The environment we live in is not so conducive to meditation — not enough oxygen and prana-energy to keep us fully awake while we meditate. And to meditate in air-conditioned rooms, may be suitable to most people, is not equal to meditating in a forest or gardens.

So the first requirement for meditation is to let our body regain its naturalness with letting it fall into sleep. The body will keep asserting and asking for more sleep. Be kind to your body. For a few days, you cooperate with it and it will cooperate with you. In the beginning, the body may be fidgety also. Don’t worry, continue with meditation. ultimately, it would be a rewarding experience. Recently, ABC news anchor Dan Harris has written a book, named Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics, in which he shared his own experience to highlight the benefits of meditation, which has become popular as Mindfulness.

Another neuroscientist Davidson suggests that one needs to part from his/her favourite gadgets and technology in order to achieve the benefits of meditation. Also, as one starts practising meditation, he would be easily able to manage things in spite of being busy. Today, meditation is being fully supported by the scientific researches highlighting the benefits of practising mindfulness to maintain a healthy body and mind.

Says Osho on this subject: “The world can come to a harmony if meditation is spread far and wide, and people are brought to one consciousness within themselves… My effort is to make meditation almost a science, so it is not something to do with religion, so anybody can practice it — whether he is a Hindu or a Christian or a Jew or a Mohammedan, it doesn’t matter. What his religion is, is irrelevant: he can still meditate. He may not even believe in any religion. He may be an atheist; still he can meditate. Meditation has to become almost like a wildfire. Then there is some hope….. It should be ecstatic. It should be enjoyable. It should bring a dance to people’s hearts.”

First of April is universally celebrated as the day of pranks and jokes to lighten up the atmosphere of seriousness of friendship and relationships. We are living in an era of “fake news” and instant social media circulation, which is not fun but irritation to many people. April Fool day is pure fun which is harmless and should be observed that way.

Osho lovers around the world have chosen this day to be dedicated to Mulla Nasruddin, a Sufi and also one of the oldest figures of Sufi anecdotes. Osho made him alive again by telling thousands of jokes in his name.

Spiritual discourses are often very serious and profound, and majority of people do not find it easy to grasp the essence. The enlightened ones and mystic masters create anecdotes, some times very funny and hilarious, weave them in their discourses, to make the profound  things easy to understand. For Mulla Nasruddin, the world is a cosmic joke — and he himself is part of that. Hindus call this world God’s Leela, a divine play.

Down the centuries the religion has been very serious affair for most of the believers. It has been too ritualistic and too grim. Being pious or holy became synonymous with seriousness. Hence, the so-called religion deprived people of their natural innocent laughter. By performing so many rituals people became egoistic, the priests and the religious followers started feeling holier than others. Others who were not doing the routine rituals became condemned as unholy or un-spiritual. So not to be condemned by the so-called holy people the ordinary people started performing their religious affairs just not to feel guilty. This conduct made them hypocrites and serious. The whole affair of religion became heavy and serious and most of the people have been living with that burden on their heart. They forgot to laugh and celebrate.

Osho changed it all. He says: Religion cannot be anything other than a celebration of life. And the serious person becomes handicapped: he creates barriers. He cannot dance, he cannot sing, he cannot celebrate. The very dimension of celebration disappears from his life. He becomes desert-like. And if you are a desert, you can go on thinking and pretending that you are religious but you are not. You may be a sectarian, but not religious. You can be a Christian, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Jain, a Mohammedan, but you cannot be religious. You believe in something, but you don’t know anything. You believe in theories. A man too much burdened by theories becomes serious. A man who is unburdened, has no burden of theories over his being, starts laughing.

According to Osho: Laughter is far more sacred than prayer, because prayer can be done by any stupid person; it does not require much intelligence. And Sufis are very playful; they created Mulla Nasruddin. And Mulla Nasruddin is an alive figure, you can go on adding to him — I go on adding.

Today the world media is talking about the possibility of Aliens descending on the Earth. This possibility excites people in both the positive and the negative way. Most of us feel certain thrill that we would be able to see how the life evolved on other planets and how we would relate and communicate with life on other planets. There is another group of people on Earth who is very suspicious and full of fear, thinking that Aliens will attack the earth and kill us. The Scientific American news says …that we will eventually discover life beyond the bounds of our planet. To true believers, what may be more uncertain is whether or not such news would cause global panic—which depends on how our minds, so greatly influenced by our Earthly environment and society, would perceive the potential threat of something utterly outside our familiar context.

Express, UK newspaper comments: Humanity “will take it well” when aliens are found according to an expert, which comes after 100 planets orbiting stars outside of our solar system were discovered and could be home to extraterrestrial life.

And a reader says: The bigger question should be will Aliens be sympathetic to Humans if there are found to be highly developed people from another world? And it’s all very well talking about microbes and stuff but would we be wise to import unknown critters, no matter how seemingly humble, into our already polluted world I wonder?

New York Times reports: In a separate study, 500 different participants were asked to write about their own hypothetical reactions and humanity’s hypothetical reaction to an announcement that extraterrestrial microbial life had been discovered. Participants’ responses also showed significantly more positive than negative emotions, both when contemplating their own reactions and those of humanity as a whole.

In India, nobody is even bothered about life on other planets, or the possibility of Aliens descending on the earth. We have our own Aliens amongst us, who were born in Mother India, and flourished here escaped with all the wealth they could manage to loot. So there is no need to worry or fear the possibility of any invasion by Aliens from other planets–we are fully capable of giving birth to Aliens on our holy land.

Hindustan Times tells us: “An 18-month-old girl was raped on Monday afternoon by her father’s friend who was tasked with babysitting her at their home in an urban village in south Delhi.” Such things are very alien to our culture, and such things are rampant in India. Just look around and you will find so many Aliens walking around in the human form. The population explosion has given birth to more Aliens here than humans.

In such a situation, there is a real urgency to meditate and create a loving atmosphere in which all of us live like human beings. Osho suggests: Now is the time to meditate. If love and meditation go together, you will have both wings, you will have a balance. Love and meditate, meditate and love, and slowly, slowly you will see a new harmony arising in you. Only that harmony will make you contented.

Let us be Humans first.

The divine resides in our body. But we have made this abode of the divine contaminated by feeding it with all kinds of junk. There’s no sense of balance in our eating habits. Most of the time we eat out of greed or anxiety to fill some emptiness within us. This emptiness may have some psychological reasons. We may not be getting nourishment of love as a child gets from his mother or a lover gets from his beloved. The food becomes a substitute and we start eating more than our body needs. This way our body suffers tremendously. The more we eat, the more we feel empty, as the psychological emptiness cannot be filled with anything other than love. A loveless life makes us fat. It has also been proved psychologically that without love-nourishment, people do become fat. And as soon as they fall in love they start losing weight. Love is the inner nourishment. We need to love ourselves and love each other — that’s the surest way to be healthy.

On the other hand, many so-called saints have been teaching us to ignore our body, and let it starve. This is another extreme. They teach that the more you feed it, the more it will demand. They themselves fast because they are afraid, because if they give food to their body, the body creates extra amount of energy which becomes difficult to handle. So they become scared and miserly. And they live a loveless life. They forget that they need abundance of energy, overflowing energy, to love and celebrate life in all its colours.

There’s a poem by Kabir:  There is neither body nor mind: And where is the place that shall still the thirst of the soul? You shall find naught in that emptiness. Be strong, and enter into your own body… Elaborating on the poem, Osho comments: “Kabir is a great lover of the body — and all the great mystics have been lovers of the body — because the body is the real temple of God. And if you find somebody condemning the body, know from the very beginning that he knows nothing. If somebody is against the body, he has not known anything at all. He does not even know the ABCD of spirituality.

He has not even begun. If he condemns the body he is still afraid of the body. If he condemns the body he is a dualist: he thinks himself separate from the body. If he condemns the body he still has great lust and greed in him. If he condemns the body, it means the body still tempts him too much and he shivers and trembles before the body. He is antagonistic to the body because he has not yet been able to understand what this beautiful phenomenon is that we call the body. The body is the temple of God. God is enshrined in it; God is embodied in it.”