Om Mani Padme Hum

Om Mani Padme Hum

The Jewel in the Lotus

I know you find it difficult to follow the word chawal. It should be properly pronounced, but I’m not a proper man. It should be pronounced jew-el, but I pronounce it cha-wal. I pronounce it phonetically.

English is illogical; it is written in one way and spoken in another. My difficulty is that I have lived and been brought up using languages which are phonetic, which are written and spoken exactly the same. English is a little bit crazy. If Jesus could have read his words in the modern English version he would have beaten his head, he would have wept. He had said on the cross, ”Father, forgive these people” – the people who were crucifying him – ”because they know not what they are doing.” 

But I know perfectly well that seeing the English version he would not have said this. Impossible. Jesus spoke Aramaic, which is still spoken by a few people in the East. Gurdjieff had come in contact with those few people, and whatsoever Gurdjieff had said about Jesus is not from the modern English version of the New Testament, it is from those few people. He had heard the stories from those people. Those stories have been passed by word of mouth.
Aramaic is a primitive language; hence it has the poignancy, the beauty, which only a forest can have and never a Victorian English garden. It is impossible for a Victorian English garden. It is a pity to see trees pruned and cut according to measurement.

Jesus never knew what was going to happen to him, that he would be translated. No master can be translated. From Aramaic he was translated into Hebrew. Much was lost because he was fighting against those Jews, and when they translated him into Hebrew, in that very translation Jesus was lost.

Then he was translated into Greek. Perversion from perversion! Aramaic to Hebrew, Hebrew into Greek. Then he was translated into Roman. The very perversity - because the Jews and the Romans were the people who had killed him. And from Latin, that is Roman, he was translated into English. Still, the old English translation is far more beautiful, far more significant. The more modern it becomes, the less it contains, the more ugly it becomes.

Fortunately I was born to primitive people, in a village, uneducated. For nine years I remained uneducated. What a blessing! No modern child can afford it. It is against the law. You have to go to school. For nine years I was absolutely free from all education. It is because of that I could penetrate the ultimate, that I could come into contact with the unknown. Those nine years were beautiful, immensely beautiful. No education, no discipline, no morality.

From my earliest years I was brought up, again fortunately, by my grandfather, my mother’s father, not by my father. A father is bound to be a disciplinarian, because he is bound to be concerned about the future. My grandfather, maternal grandfather remember... because my father’s father was a totally different man. My mother’s father had no other child. My mother was the only child, and once my mother was married he showered all his love on me. I lived like a king. He used to call me Raja. Nobody has called me that since. Raja means the king.

Although my grandfather was not very rich, he was the richest man in his village. On each of my birthdays he would bring an elephant. I would sit on the elephant and throw coins all around. That was his great joy. In his days there were golden coins, not paper notes. That’s what I have been doing my whole life: throwing golden coins all along. I am still throwing, sitting on an elephant....

So when I say something and you do not understand, please forgive me. I come from a totally different context. I am really a foreigner. In my own country I am a foreigner. My whole vision is in a way primitive, and in a way original. Original means primitive, of the origins. 

This morning I said, ”the chawal in the lotus.” I know the right pronunciation, but what to do with a wrong man? – I will still pronounce it in my way. Coming in I asked Vivek, ”What is the right pronunciation, ’jewel’?” I can easily understand jewelry, jeweler, jewel, but forgive me... I will say ”the chawal and the lotus.”

I am a little bit stubborn, my type of people have always been so. If they are not stubborn they cannot work. To work with stupid people you have to be stubborn, really hard, steel hard. And this beautiful mantra, Om Mani Padme Hum, has been translated by the English fools. It seems unimaginable, but it has been translated. Even you will be shocked... they think it is something sexual! They think the mani represents the male sexual organ – look at the perversity of the socalled great psychologists - - and the lotus represents the female sexual organ! Now, you cannot make the meaning that they make of it.... Om Mani Padme Hum means to them male human organ into female human organ. Great! Great discovery! And these fools are thought to be scientists, biologists, psychologists, and all kinds of things, but they are just imbeciles, idiots.

I should not use the same word, fool, for them. They are not ordinary fools, they are idiots. An idiot is a fool who cannot be cured. A fool is an idiot who is already on the path to recovery. But I cannot call these people fools; they are idiots.

This morning, talking about Dostoevsky’s book I called it The Prince. Forgive me, it is not titled The Prince; that is my own title for it, on my own book. I have titled it The Prince but the printed title is The Idiot. I avoided mentioning the word idiot this morning because I wanted to make the distinction. 

The idiot is incurable. The fool is available, ready, ready to change. The idiot is hard, very hard. For anything to penetrate into the head of an idiot is impossible. An idiot’s head is covered with steel, nothing can penetrate him. That is why I called the book The Prince.

I also remembered Mikhail Naimy’s book The Book of Mirdad. That book is just unbelievable. I feel jealous of only one man, Mikhail Naimy. Jealous not in the ordinary sense, because I cannot feel jealous in that sense; jealous in the sense that he has written it already, otherwise I would write it. I would have written it... it is of the same heights I am flying to. 

From these heights I can see the whole existence as a play, as celebration, without any reason or rhyme, without any meaning. Yes, that’s what I would like you to know too. People celebrate Christmas; they should celebrate all the year round. To celebrate only once in a while simply shows that your life is not a life of celebration, it is not a joy.

Everyone can go mad except me because I am already mad. I have been mad for almost one fourth of a century, and if you all help me I may make the century. I can make it... not on my own; on myown I am just Humpty Dumpty, but if you all help me I can make the century very easily. My father lived seventy-five years; my father’s father, eighty; my father’s father’s father, ninety. Why can’t I beat them in this race? If you all put your energies together you can help a buddha make millions of buddhas in the world. I am mad; otherwise just to think of one buddha is enough, and I always think of millions of buddhas. Less than that is not enough. I always think big. We have to create millions of buddhas, only then a new man can be born. Only then can we make Christians disappear and Christs appear. The beginning of the buddhas will be the death of the Buddhists.

I am a beginning and also an end. I am an end... end in the sense that after me there can be no Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Mohammedanism. After me there is no possibility of any ideology. With me ends the old and begins the new -the New Man. Man with no ideology, no religion, no philosophy, no concept to live, but only a joy to live, a celebration.

This is the place spoken of in Jonathan Livingston Seagull, spoken of by Khalil Gibran in The
Prophet. It is so tremendously beautiful I would like to dance... so beautiful. I would like to be a Baul again. Yes, in one of my lives, not in this life of course, I was a Baul, a mad singer playing an ektara.

You have never been here, but I know you can go a little further. How do I know? I am a con-man. You cannot con me. I have conned so many con-men.

Even when I can no longer hear a man, I can hear a woman. This is strange but it is so... because as you go higher the male is left behind, but the female is heard; in fact can be heard only then. Before that who hears a woman? Who hears a wife? That is one of the reasons why I have chosen the women to lead my whole organization, and not the man. I am a man and it would have been logical to choose other men, as it has always been done. Lao Tzu chose Chuang Tzu to be his  successor. Chuang Tzu was beautiful, I have nothing against him....

Again, Jesus chose the twelve disciples, and among those twelve there was not a single woman. And yet on the cross when he was dying only three women were there. There was Magdalena... yes, I call her Magdalena, not Magdalene, because Magdalene looks less feminine than Magdalena. I have named some houses in the ashram after Magdalena. Sheela was asking me, ”Isn’t the real name Magdalene, not Magdalena?” I said, ”Don’t be worried about the real. What I say, follow it.”

Magdalena was there. Mary, Jesus’ mother was there, and Magdalena’s sister was there. All the so-called apostles were absent. But still Jesus chose Peter to be his successor. Lao Tzu was at least right in choosing Chuang Tzu even though Chuang Tzu was a man. But Jesus was not right in choosing Peter.... As you can see, my eyes, my ears and my hands are all so full of Jesus. 

Your laughter is so good, so beautiful.
Flowers are made of it.
Stars are born out of it.
of this flower.
Can there be
so much
goodness...?

I am such a con-man. Even my ears are trained, they hear only what they want to hear. My eyes are trained, they see only what they want to see – for the simple reason that I want to live the way I want. I have always lived according to my own way, right or wrong, I don’t care. If there is a God, and I have to face him, he will have to answer to me, not me answer to him. I have lived my own way. I am not answerable to anybody. When you live according to somebody else you are always confused, and answerable to them; always trying to fulfill their expectations. 

I don’t expect anything from anybody, nor do I want anybody to expect from me. Freedom is my slogan. It is freedom that brings truth. J. Krishnamurti’s first book is called The First and Last Freedom. In fact after that he has not said anything new. That book contains his testament; since then he has been dead. It happens to many people. Khalil Gibran died at the age of eighteen when he wrote The Prophet. In fact he lived many, many years afterwards and wrote many books, but The Prophet remains unsurpassed. Krishnamurti’s title is good: 

The First and Last Freedom. What is the first and last freedom? To be oneself, totally, utterly, without any consideration for any consequences. 

Gurdjieff used to say, ”Do not consider others....” It is absolutely right. The moment you consider others you are no more yourself. But to live in freedom is difficult too because you have to live with people who are full of expectations, and they are very touchy! If their expectations are not fulfilled they are miserable, and the miserable create misery for you, they cannot do otherwise. You can only give that which you have, and they have only misery.
So I say do not consider, let the world go on its way, you move on your own.

When you are yourself,
there is truth,
there is beauty,
there is grace,
there is ecstasy.
Om Mani Padme Hum

This mantra is tremendously powerful. Thousands of years and millions of people chanting it have made it so sharp, so penetrating, that just to repeat it again and again can create all the chemistry: 

Om Mani Padme Hum

Om Mani Padme Hum
 

IT IS AN AMAZING THING that all religions of the world agree on the sound of the soundless sound, OM. That’s the only agreement between all religions, and there are three hundred religions. Why? Why do they all agree only on this point? They agree because when you come to such a height you hear it... it resounds all over... vibrates... OM....
 

Om Mani Padme Hum
Om is the most significant sound ever uttered by man.
Om Mani Padme Hum
Om Mani Padme Hum....

I love this mantra. I love no other mantra like it because there is none parallel to it. There cannot be. No other people have touched these heights continuously for hundreds of years. 

Don’t look at my
legs, and my toe....
The foolish toe,
what does it know;
it is not the Tao
it is only a toe.

I know the worry is because of your love for me. But don’t take indications from toes. Listen to the whole. I cannot be harmed. I am beyond harm. Nothing can be taken away from me. I cannot lose anything. What a grandeur! To be in a state of not losing anything because you don’t have anything.

I live like a king; in fact no king has ever lived like me. I can truly say what I mean and mean what I say. I am beyond the clouds, in open sky, unlimited, unbounded. I am not saying anything of the ego. It is just a joy. I rejoice in my people, that’s what I mean when I say I am proud. I am not comparing with anything, because there are not other people on the earth to whom my people can be compared. It is a rare moment in the history of humanity that only my people are the religious people.

The bureaucracy, the government, the politics, the stupidity... they are synonymous in my language. They may not be synonyms in the dictionary, but I don’t have a dictionary any more. For the past few months now I have not read any book. I have stopped reading for the simple reason that what is beautiful has already been understood. Now it is pointless to read. I don’t even read the Vedas, the Bible, the Koran. There is nothing that can be added to my experience, so I have stopped. Why waste your vision, your eyesight? It is not worth it.

When my doctors started saying that if I still wanted to study I would have to use spectacles, I said, ”To hell with all books, because I hate spectacles.” I hate all kinds of specs because they obstruct, they come in between. I want things face to face, directly, immediate. So I have stopped reading books. And the library is so rich, and so big, containing all that is great. But it no longer matters to me, I have gone beyond the words.

I am not silent because I don’t want to say anything to you, but because what I see is really
spellbinding. It is really... this is the moment when one says, ”Aahhh!” and this is the meaning of Om. But you have to experience it; you have to live it. There is no other way to know it. To be is to know. To be is the only way – Tao, the way. Tao does not mean anything else, it simply means the way to be poetic again, to be a singer again, a Baul, a dancer, a mad dancer – because if when you dance you take care of your steps, then it is not a real dance. When all is forgotten, the steps and all, when only the dance remains, the whirling he whirling Jalaluddin Rumi knew  just the whirling....

Twelve hundred years ago Rumi created the whirling dervishes, the dancing Sufis. He himself danced for thirty-six hours!

I am a simple man. This is so beautiful.... Basho where are you? Come write again... paint... Basho,
again say:

The ancient pond
A frog jumps
and the silence... Om
Om Mani Padme Hum.
This is beauty...
Beauty,
and beauty is God.
I am facing God.
I am touching him.
So immensely vast.
Om Mani Padme Hum
Om Mani Padme Hum
 

At this moment I can create Tolstoy... Dostoevsky... Leonardo... Turgenev... Lao Tzu... Chuang Tzu... Buddha... Mahakashyap... Bodhidharma... Kabir... Jesus ....

The silence is so beautiful.

There are beauties and beauties

on every plane,

on every level.

Even in the mud a lotus can flower.

Om Mani Padme Hum.

Notes of a Mad Man 

Osho