Every film is unique, but this film begins in a very mysterious way.
Thousands of dollars appeared in my bank account with no strings attached, no demands or conditions.
Weeks later a letter explained that someone I'd never met would like me to visit a teacher: Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
and his spiritual community in Poona, India;
and if I chose to go, I might also take a camera and some film.
And I was told that the money came from someone who lived very simply
and yet it sent me all that they have.
No contract could have been more compelling.
But, why me?
I wondered what this Bhagwan had to teach?
I knew about the famous master teachers of history
but this Bhagwan was alive, my contemporary.
What is the power of such a teacher?
A person whose life transforms other people's lives.
I wasn't a religious seeker.
I pursued accomplishment, and love, pleasures of the mind and body.
And like most people, I had experienced brief moments
when I felt especially alive, in tune with everything.
sometimes those moments came with creative breakthrough or with a woman I loved
sometimes those moments came up while jogging, dancing, playing music or simply watching a sunset.
I experienced something special, something beyond the words,
and with that feeling came a sense of being a part of everything,
being absolutely whole.
I valued those times.
These were the spiritual moments in my life.
I wondered, were the great teachers
people who never came back from those peak moments?,
the reason to share with others.
I had my usual doubts, but I wanted to see for myself, just who is this Bhagwan Rajneesh and what's going on over the India.
* Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho)'s disciples during the first stage of a meditation session called: Chaotic Meditation. *
This is a meditation.
First heavy breathing and then crazy screaming, now this jumping and chanting.
It's called "Chaotic Meditation".
I'd been cramped in a airplane seat for 24 hours,
I needed to unwind.
These people encouraged me to blow off my head of steam, and let go of some of the madness.
They do every morning before dawn, to clear their minds.
* Second stage of meditation: they stop and remain in alertness, watching, feeling, listening. *
* Third stage of meditation: with loving and grateful attitude, they celebrate meditatively, dancing experience. *
Bhagwan is known as an enlightened teacher.
He has over hundred books in print
but he doesn't write them, they're just transcribed form his daily discourses.
Every morning he speaks for ninety minutes.
Those teachings attract highly educated people from the west.
He said that the real value of being with him has nothing to do with words.
"I am a drunkard.
You may believe it or not,
but I am a drunkard.
You can look into my eyes
and you can see it.
Religion
is a sort of intoxication.
This has to be understood
because without a deep intoxication,
your life will never have any meaning.
It will remain a superficial prose
and will never become a poetry.
You will walk but you will never be able to dance,
and unless you dance you have missed.
Unless you dance with such abundance,
with such forgetfulness
that you disappear in it,
that the dancer is lost,
and only the dance remains...
that the dancer is lost,
and only the dance remains...
only the dance remains...
that the dancer is lost, and only the dance remains...
that the dancer is lost,
and only the dance remains...
And only then will you be able to know
what life is."
For Bhagwan
what life is can't be figured out.
The endless thoughts and patterns of the mind
may be what's in the way.
Shaking and dancing can silence the mind.
Movement meditations are not rituals but techniques, that help people experience their life directly.
The clamor of words and even clever commentary can be suspended.
"I remember: Once Alexander the Great asked Diogenes,
You are so learned, you know so much.
Can’t you tell me something about God,
what God is?
Diogenes said, The moment you asked me, I thought that I knew.
But the more I tried to catch hold of it, the more it became elusive.
The more I thought about it,
the farther away it was,
and the only thing I can say to you,
is that those who think they know God, they know not.”
"God can be known only when you are not...
(when you are not,
(when you are not...
when you are not)
God can be known only when you are not...
when your ego is lost."
I guess I was raised with a strong ego, to have pride of my accomplishments,
to respect the victories of great men,
to believe the human being is with superior mind and ego
had conquered nature.
But these Indians showed me a more gentle, humble, respect for nature.
Anointing cows looks peculiar to me,
but this gesture celebrates the nobility of all life.
It was the Indian visitors
who blessed these cows given to Bhagwan.
It was his birthday and thousands had gathered from many distant parts of the world.
At this morning's meditation, they were mostly westerners and today's lecture was in English.
But this afternoon belongs to the Indians, and their love of ritual and celebration.
They turned everything into a dance.
Bhagwan's mother and father arrived and joined in a many Indian ceremonies.
Everything was so different from home.
But what an opportunity
to travel beyond my usual attitudes and judgements,
to just be here, with fresh eyes!
"Look!
I love human beings, but not humanity.
Humanity does not exist.
Only concrete human beings exist -
someone here, someone there,
but it is always someone.
Humanity is an empty word.
And just like that is Christ. Jesus exists,
sometimes in Gautam the Buddha,
sometimes in Mohammed the prophet,
sometimes in Krishna the fluteplayer -
somewhere here, somewhere there,
but it is always a concrete phenomenon.
Christ is abstract.
It exists only in the books of philosophy and theology;
Christ has never walked on the earth.
Or, we can say it another way:
Christ is the son of God, Jesus the son of man.
Let me talk about Jesus the son of man,
because only the son of man is real,
and only the son of man can grow
and become the son of God.
Only man can grow and become God;
because man is the seed, the source;
God is the flowering.
God does not exist anywhere.
When you flower, God comes into existence -
it comes into existence and disappears...
it comes into existence and disappears.
When Buddha was here, God existed.
When Jesus was here, God existed.
When Jesus disappears, God disappears -
just as when a flower disappears, it disappears.
God is not somewhere, always existing.
Whenever a man realizes his essence,
whenever a man really exists,
whenever a man exists in totality,
God exists in those rare moments.
So when you come and ask me, 'Where is God?' I cannot show you.
Unless you prove him into your own being,
he will not be there.
Until you become him he is not.
Everybody has to realize him
in his own innermost shrine, in his own being.
You carry him as a seed.
It is up to you
to allow it to grow and become a great tree."
"Jesus
is a revolution in the world of religion.
He is the first poor man who declared,
'I am the son of God' -
that even a poor man who has nothing to renounce, can renounce,
because the real renunciation
is not of wealth, but of the ego.
The real renunciation is not of wealth,
let me repeat it, but of the ego.
It is not a question of renouncing what you have,
it is a question of renouncing what you are.
You can have much
and you can renounce that.
But if the ego continues
you remain ordinary,
you remain superficial."
Groups like this allow people who have been meditating alone
to experiment, to experience themselves in relationship to others.
Bhagwan does not encourage people
to repress their desires, nor does he allow them to lose touch with their frustrations.
Rather, he teaches people how to use their bodies,
to go beyond the mind, with expressions of love.
"Once you start meditating,
a very fragile quality,
a very delicate quality of consciousness is born in you.
A flower of the unknown starts opening -
it is delicate.
And whenever you go into the crowd
you lose something.
Whenever you move with others,
they push you off center.
You don't find yourself in it, you simply miss the other.
Your aloneness becomes sad.
Your 'aloneness' is not 'aloneness',
it is a 'loneliness'.
'Loneliness' is when you desire
others;
'aloneness' is when you enjoy yourself.
The crowd pulls you down,
it has a gravitation of its own.
You are infected by it.
Whenever you come back home from the crowd,
you come lesser than you had gone.
Something has been lost.
You need to be alone with yourself,
so that you become together again,
so that you again become centered,
rooted.
You need a higher altitude to purify yourself.
So whenever you go to pray,
don't start saying something.
God already knows what you are going to say.
And what can you say, what do you have to say?
It will be all nonsense,
It will all be nothing but
desires,
demands,
and deep down, complaints.
And there is no need to say anything,
you can just be silent.
A prayer is not talking,
it is listening.
You can miss the point - if you start thinking about God, then you are not alone.
If you start talking to God,
then in your imagination you have created the other.
And then your God is doing nothing;
he is just a projection.
And in that projection you will find all
the others that you have ever known:
your father will be there - whenever you say to God, 'Father,' your father will be there,
a part of you projected.
Or you say, 'Mother,' your mother will be there.
All words
are your words,
so whatsoever you say will be your projection.
A prayer is not to say anything.
It is to be simply silent, open,
ready to listen - it is a listening.
And there is no need to believe in God
because that too is a projection.
The only need is to be alone, to be capable of being alone -
and immediately, you are with God.
Whenever you are alone, you are with God.
To say 'with God' is not exactly right
because that shows that you are here and God is there.
It would be better to say that
whenever you are alone, God is, and you are not,
and there is prayer.
Prayer is a fragrance
that arises whenever you are ready to be alone.
Whenever you are not afraid to be alone,
it arises.
Something opens within you
like a lotus,
and that lotus is in tune with the whole around you.
You dissolve,
you meet and merge,
boundaries disappear.
You are no more an island,
you have become part of the continent.
God is, you are not.
God is, and you are not.
(and you are not...
you are not)."
So many thoughts are triggered by what I see!
My mind prefers to be busy with those thoughts.
Rarely will it dissolve into silence
or allow me to see things as if for the first time.
Extreme physical activity had often enabled me to forget what was on my mind
so I tried this 'Chaotic Meditation'.
I found I had to wear a blindfold,
otherwise, with a glimpse of something, my mind would begin talking to itself,
and usually that constant chatter overwhelmed what was really happening.
How rarely do we look at something
and experience it
without labeling or comparing,
without attitude or judgment?
Can we let our minds go?
I've got lost in the rhythms dancing at parties,
and I've screamed my head off with others at sporting events,
but the release was always limited to those brief moments.
Bhagwan teaches awareness by letting go,
he takes people when they've surrendered to that spontaneity,
he takes them deep into that openness,
that vulnerability,
that freedom from their minds.
and fills them with the love of who they are.
And then he connects that love
to the universe.
People come to me and say, "Everything has become beautifully silent:
meditation is growing,
the anger has disappeared,
the sex has become a faraway thing,
as if it never belonged to me.
But
is it all true?,
or am I simply imagining?"
They come to me and they say,
"We talk to our friends and they say,
'Beware.
This man has hypnotised you'."
It is their experience
that they have become silent,
that the anger has disappeared,
that the sex has become less and less a boss,
more and more a servant,
and it is up to them - they can fire the servant any day,
and there is not even a union
to protest and fight against them!
But they become suspicious
- a doubt arises:
"Am I imagining?
Am I hypnotised?
Am I dreaming all this?"
They cannot believe even when the experiences are happening to them.
How can they believe that it has happened to somebody else?
If you could believe it right now, the world disappears
and only God is.
Because the world is not more than a dream.
With doubt, the dream continues;
with trust, suddenly
you are awake.
Be not afraid - at least, be not afraid.
If you cannot dance,
if you cannot celebrate,
if you cannot sing a song,
then at least,
be not afraid;
be of good cheer.
Be of good cheer.
Be happy! I have come to you.
And you are crying out for fear!
Dance!
Celebrate!
You should move in it
without any fear of consequences and without any expectations.
You should take a jump, you should dare.
On the evening of his birthday, thousands of visitors had a brief opportunity to be with Bhagwan,
he had tought them not to blindly worship holly people, instead
he encourge them to really express their feelings,
and many treated him with great respect and deep gratitude.
By many other reasons,
he would be meeting with an intimate group of people,
responding to their individual questions and acomplishments,
"Bhagwan - this is all very interesing, but I am full of questions,
what is the meaning of all this?
what do you want?"
- All nonsense questions.
Come to the basic question,
the most fundamental question: Who am I?
Who?
You are god, you are Brahma,
you are pure consciousness, you are The ultimate truth,
the eternal soul,
the deathless being.
Those answers
can destroy your very search.
A seeker has to be aware of ready-made answers.
They are available; from every side they are being supplied to you.
Remain with the question.
Don′t do anything,
and don′t go anywhere;
and don′t start believing in any answer.
Remain with the question.
That is one of the most difficult things to do
- to remain with a question,
and not to seek the answer;
because the mind is very cunning,
it can supply a false answer.
It can console you;
it can give you something to cling to;
and then the question is not answered
but suppressed.
Then you go on believing in the answer,
and the question remains deep down
in your unconsciousness
like a wound.
The healing has not happened.
If you remain with the question,
I′m not saying that you will receive the answer,
Nobody has ever received any answer.
If you remain with the question,
by and by the question disappears.
Not that the answer is received;
there is no answer.
There cannot be, because life is a mystery.
It is not a puzzle,
it cannot be solved,
it is a mystery.
My mind is still full of questions,
but my camera has led me into experience
with intuition
and feeling.
Filming has become a movement to awareness,
It's become my meditation.
¡Beautiful!
- that′s how it should be -
Mind is the questioner.
When there is no questioning,
the mind has also disappeared
- pure consciousness -
just the sky without any clouds,
the flame without any smoke:
That′s what God is,
that′s what a Buddha is,
that′s what a Christ is.
God is not the answer.
God is the state of being where the question has disappeared.
God is the state of no-mind.
Remain with the question.
I am here to help you to remain with the question,
I am not going to give you any answer,
you already have too many.
I am not going to burden you any more.
I am to teach you how to unlearn the answers that you have learned,
so that the question becomes crystal pure;
so the question becomes authentic and yours;
so the question arises from your innermost being.
Not that you have to verbalize it.
Let it be like your breathing;
Let it be there,
silent.
One day, if you have lived enough with the question,
it starts disappearing.
It evaporates,
just as when the morning comes and the sun rises,
and the dewdrops start disappearing.
When the consciousness has become a fire,
an intense light,
the question starts disappearing.
You cannot say who you are,
but you know.
You can dance it;
you cannot answer it.
You can smile it;
you cannot answer it.
You will live it, but you cannot answer it.
Before I travel from San Francisco to Poona,
I thought I understood the relationship between myself and my camera,
and what I photograph.
Now I know that that relationship can be much more subtle,
mysterious, intimate,
than I had ever let it be before.
To be with a master teacher is an adventure,
a challenge.
I had to be willing to let go of all those habits and attitudes that had defined me.
I had to be willing to let go of all those habits and attitudes that had defined me
My questions have not been answered
and my mind is only sometimes silent.
But for the first time, the mysteries of life can be a joy.
Between East and West the filmmaker is lost,
and only the film remains.