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2
OSHO,
WHY DO ALL THE AWAKENED ONES SAY THAT MAN IS ASLEEP? I DON'T AGREE. I THINK I AM FULLY AWAKE. WHAT DO YOU SAY?
Niraj,
It is impossible to understand what the awakened ones say unless you are also awakened. They speak your language -- they have to speak your language out of sheer necessity, because there is no other language -- but their meaning is totally different.
When the Buddhas say that you are asleep, they don't mean ordinary sleep. Of course, you are not ordinarily asleep, you are awake. You go to the marketplace, you go to the office, you do your things. Of course, in the night you sleep. But Buddhas say you are asleep twenty-four hours a day. Certainly they are not using the word "sleep" in the same sense which you are acquainted with; they mean something else, something totally different. They are talking about a metaphysical sleep. They are talking about an inner state of unconsciousness.
You walk, you talk, you do a thousand and one things, but like a zombie. You live mechanically. You don't live in awareness. When you listen to the awakened ones you are listening again through all the barriers that you have created in your sleep, through all the layers of your sleep. You go on misinterpreting them. Of course, you are right -- you are awake, Niraj. In that sense, all the Buddhas are wrong. They too know it. But when they say you are asleep they mean something more fundamental, not the ordinary sleep, not the ordinary awakening.
When they tell you, "Wake up!" they mean: Be totally conscious so that nothing unconscious and dark remains in your being, so that no nook or corner of your being remains dark and unconscious. Right now only a very small part is conscious -- one-tenth -- very fragile; nine-tenths of your being is unconscious. You are just like an iceberg: just a little fragment of it shows on the surface -- one-tenth, exactly one-tenth -- and nine-tenths is underneath the water.
When you listen to the awakened ones you will have to learn to understand their language, not according to you but according to them.
As the Prime Minister was waiting to board the special plane that
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