Chapter-10 Paradise Regained

Beloved Osho,
Many times sitting in your presence I am overwhelmed by a very childlike feeling. It seems so familiar, yet from a long time ago. In these moments there feels no gap of you and me. I am like a child playing in your beautiful garden.
Beloved Osho, is this significant or am I already moving into my second childhood at the ripe old age of thirty-five?
p.s. you can scare me any time.
PremYatra, this great experiment through which you all are passing is basically to achieve your lost childhood again.
When I say “your lost childhood,” I mean your innocence, your eyes full of wonder, knowing nothing, having nothing, but yet feeling yourself at the top of the world. Those golden moments of wonder, joy, no tension, no worry, no anxiety, have to be regained, rediscovered. The sage is nothing but the circle that started in your birth coming full way, complete, back to the same point.

Of course the second childhood is far more valuable and significant than the first. In the first the innocence was there because of ignorance, so it was not pure and clear and in your possession; it was just a natural thing that happens to every childhood. The second childhood is your greatest achievement — it does not happen to all. The second childhood makes you innocent without ignorance, the second childhood comes through all kinds of experiences. It is mature, centered, ripe.
You should be blessed that you are feeling like that. The second childhood is just exactly the existential meaning of meditation, and from there on is the great pilgrimage of coming back home — which you have never really left, which is impossible to leave, because it is you. Wherever you will go, you will find yourself there.

It is not even a shadow which follows you because that will disappear if you are sitting in the shade. It will appear only when you are standing in the sunlight. Your shadow is not an eternal companion, and in times of darkness even your shadow itself leaves you. But in the times of light your shadow is back.
The same is the situation with friends, lovers: in the days of darkness they leave you just like the shadow; in the days of success, richness, they all come back. They are not really companions.
There is only one essential being in you which will be everywhere with you, without any condition. Even if you are in hell it doesn’t matter, it will be with you; if you are in heaven it doesn’t matter, it will be with you.
To find that essential core of your being is on the one hand utter innocence, and on the other hand is the greatest wisdom that has ever existed on the earth.
So your body may be becoming old, but if you are learning ways of being silent and peaceful and meditative and loving, you will not grow old. You will remain as young and as fresh as early morning dewdrops shining in the beautiful sunrise, looking far more precious than any pearls.

You should be happy and rejoice in your childhood. This is what Jesus meant when he said again and again, “Unless you are born again…” Even Christians have not got the meaning of his statement. They think literally that “unless you are born again” means that first you will have to die, and then you will be born, and on the judgment day Jesus will take you into paradise. That is not the meaning of the man.
What he is saying is: Unless you die right now as a personality and emerge as an innocent individuality, unscratched, unpolluted by the society and the people… This is your new birth, this is resurrection.
Enjoy your divine childhood, and when it is the right time I will scare you! You are too new; the childhood is not yet absolutely settled, and you can misunderstand if I scare you. Just wait…! That moment will also come. Right now your whole concern should be getting deeper into childhood.
I don’t scare anybody except Avirbhava, because she has a quality of a child. I don’t know why. Perhaps her father is dead, her mother is dead… I feel a tremendous feeling for her — and she is utterly innocent. So once in a while — not once in a while, almost every day — whenever I have the chance and she is close by, I try to do my best.

“I don’t want your son, Ernie, swimming in our pool anymore” says Mrs. Meyer to her neighbor, Mrs. Jones.
“But what has my poor little Ernie done?” asks Mrs. Jones.
“He is constantly peeing in the pool,” says Mrs. Meyer angrily.
“Don’t be so hard on him,” says Mrs. Jones, “all children of his age do that!”
“Maybe they do,” says Mrs. Meyer, “but not from the diving board.”
Childhood has its beauties, because it does not know the etiquette, the manners, and all kinds of crap. It is so simple and so innocent and so spontaneous.
A man walked into a bar and was amazed to see a dog sitting at a table with three men playing poker. The man went over and asked, “Can that dog really read his cards?”
“Sure he can,” said one of the men. “But he’s not much of a player. Whenever he draws a good hand he wags his tail!”
That is absolutely innocent… the poor dog cannot contain his joy.
Two cockroaches were munching delicacies on top of a garbage pile when one of them began telling of some new tenants in the nearby apartments.
“I hear,” he said, “that their refrigerator is spotless, their floors are gleaming, and there is not a speck of dust in the whole place.”
“Please, please,” said the other cockroach, “not while I’m eating!”
Such bad news…!

It will be a tremendous revolution the day we start learning the languages of birds, of bees, of cockroaches. They all have their ways of communicating. But then the heart feels a little sadness, because we have not been able to learn even to communicate with human beings, and we have been here for millions of years. What kind of stupidity is this, that we don’t know the whole humanity as belonging to us and we belonging to it? All that man has done is simply butchering, murdering, war. The same energy, the same effort would have made this world the greatest miracle in the whole universe.

But we don’t understand each other. We may even be speaking the same language, but understanding is not necessarily expected; what is expected is misunderstanding. So people are hiding themselves, hiding their childhood, hiding their innocence, protecting themselves from everybody with defense measures; otherwise you will see children young and old all playing in this garden of the earth, rejoicing, laughing, giggling. Why this seriousness? Man has not gained anything out of this seriousness; he has simply lost everything — but he continues to be serious.

I am absolutely against seriousness.
I call it a psychological sickness.
Only a playful, childlike, innocent behavior is the right behavior, is what I would like to call virtuous behavior, religious, spiritual… not only human but divine.
The moment you are as innocent as a child you have transcended humanity, you have entered into the world of godliness.
(Excerpted from: The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here, Chapter #16, Q-1)
[An elderly sannyasin says:…I was never really a child when I was one, but these last few days, I often feel like a little child… and I want to tease everybody. I want to do crazy things.]

That’s really a miracle, really a miracle! To feel like a child again is a great conversion. Allow it… don’t feel shy about it. Tease people! It will be difficult because of your age, your mind and your experience, but don’t be bothered. Put your age and mind aside. If you can, you will suddenly feel a new energy arising in your body. Your age will be reduced by at least twenty years. You can become younger immediately and you can live longer. So allow it; it is beautiful.
That’s what Jesus means when he says, ‘Those who are like children, only they will be able to enter my kingdom of God.’ One has to become a child again and then life is complete. In childhood we start and in childhood we end. If one dies without becoming a child, his whole life circle is incomplete. He will have to be born again.

That is the whole eastern idea of rebirth. If you can be reborn — reborn in this life — there is no need to be born again. If you can really become a child in this body, there is no need to be born into the world again. You can live in the heart of God. There is no need then to come back. You have learned the lesson and completed the circle.
My whole effort here is this: to help you to be a child again. It is difficult, it is very difficult, because your whole experience, your whole pattern, your whole character resists and says, ‘What are you doing? It looks foolish!’ But be foolish and let it assert itself. You will feel so unburdened, so new, and as fresh as a dew drop. That freshness is something of the spirit, because your body is old but your consciousness can be new and young.

So it is somewhat of a miracle. If you allow it, it will grow and you will be able to see things again as a small child with no ideas, no verbalisations, with no mind. Then the world is so luminous. Life is like a rainbow — so many colours, so many sounds. It is a great orchestra — but only a child can feel it because we have so many ideas. Those ideas act as blinkers.
Even when we see the moon, our ideas about the moon are standing between us and the moon. The moon is never really available to you — so many layers, so many screens. If you allow this child to grow again, it will be a death and a resurrection. The old will disappear by and by and will be replaced by a totally new consciousness and then you will be able to see that a rose is a rose is a rose.

You will be able to penetrate into the facticity of things with no words, no verbalisations, no philosophy, no metaphysics, no religion. A child knows none. He simply looks direct. His being is immediate. He is full of presence, available, open.
Allow it. This is something very significant, but you can lose it. If you don’t help it, it can be lost easily because your whole personality will be against it. You will have to consciously work a way for it, to allow it. Your whole past will be there like a rock and this new phenomenon will just be like dripping water, a small stream, which can become a river if you help; otherwise the rock is too big. But ultimately, if one goes on helping, the softer, the more water-like, the stronger one is, the more the rocklike things disappear.

In the long run the rock is always defeated by the water. The old man is always defeated by the child. Death is always defeated by life. One should remember that, and one should always help the softer, the younger and fresher things.
Make friends with children and follow them around. Whatsoever they do, you do. They will enjoy it. Children are very receptive and they always understand. They will immediately understand that you look old but you are not. Just mix with children and forget about big people.

(Excerpted from: A Rose is a Rose is a Rose, Chap-1)

*****

[The sannyasin adds: If I stayed much longer I would be no age at all.]
You would be! So very good…. Keep on being young and a child. That is the most valuable thing — if one can persist in being a child. And keep the image of a child of three years old… because it is between three and four that civilisation enters.

Up to the third year a child lives in a totally different world: in the mysterious, in the wonderful, in the fantastic. The child lives in the psychedelic. All is full of colour and potentiality and poetry, and everything thrills him. It does not matter what it is — just pebbles on the seashore. Everything has immense beauty. The child has eyes for it. He is open from everywhere, he is not yet closed. He is not yet sophisticated and destroyed… he is still primitive.
It is always good to go for a walk with a three or two-year-old child and to commune with him, to see what he is doing, to see how he walks and how he becomes interested in everything. A butterfly or a flower or a dog barking and the child is involved with each moment so totally. Only the child knows how to live, or when one again becomes a child, one knows how to live. In between there is only misery and hell.

So keep this idea of a two or three-year-old. Let that be your reality and your chronological age just a social phenomenon, just a facade. Just from the outside be grown-up; from the inside remain a child. And when you are alone, drop all your grown-upness; it is not needed. Behave like a child. And it will be good — play with small children.
Sometimes take them, go for a walk on the seashore or anywhere — in a garden — and just behave like them; don’t force them to behave like you. Just follow them and you will find new insights arising in you.
You are close to a second birth, that’s why you are feeling this. And when a man is born again, when one attains to a second birth in life, all is attained; there is nothing else to attain.
Don’t allow anything to hinder it, because nothing is more valuable than this. And always remember jesus. He goes on saying to his disciples, ‘Unless you are a child again, you will not enter into the kingdom of god.’ Heaven is only for the innocent. For the clever and cunning and the calculating there is only hell.

Sometimes it will be very frightening to feel like a child because then you become so vulnerable, so open, and anybody can hurt you. You become so helpless again… but that helplessness is beautiful. To be vulnerable is beautiful; to be hurt sometimes is beautiful. Just to avoid those hurts we become hard, we gather a crust, very steel-like, an armour. It is safe but it is dead.
So good, indivar.You are going in a really beautiful space! Remain in it, and invite it again and again.
Whenever you have an opportunity just become a child. In your bathroom, sitting in your tub, just be a child. Have all your toys around you!…
Much has to be done there — many people need helping. So just go on doing. You have become a channel for me and many people are coming; go on helping them. And remain unworried about everything. I will take care!
(Excerpted from: Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There, Chapter #1)