OSHO is a registered trademark of Osho International Foundation,

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the journey of being human. Copyright © 2012 by OSHO International Foundation,

New York, www.osho.com/copyrights. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States
of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010.

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The material in this book is questions and Osho’s responses selected from various talks
by Osho given to a live audience. All of Osho’s talks have been published in full as books,
and are also available as original audio recordings. Audio recordings and the complete
text archive can be found via the online OSHO Library at www.osho.com.

ISBN 978- 0-312-59547- 0 (trade paperback)

ISBN 978-1- 4299- 4254- 6 (e-book)

First Edition: April 2012

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 1
The Journey of Being Human

Man is the only conscious being on the earth; that is his glory and that
is his agony, too. It depends on you whether it will be agony or glory.
Consciousness is a double-edged sword. You have been given something
so valuable that you don’t know what to do with it; it is almost like a
sword in the hands of a child. The sword can be used rightly, can
protect, but the sword can harm, too. Anything that can become a bless-
ing can also become a curse; it depends how you use it.

I have heard you say that life itself is so fulfilling, so over-

flowing, so blissful—then what is it that makes a person
miserable?
Life is overflowing, life is blissful, but man has lost contact with
life. He has become too self-conscious. That self-consciousness
functions as a barrier, and one remains alive yet not truly alive. Self-
consciousness is the disease.
The birds are happy, the trees are happy, the clouds and the rivers
are happy, but they are not self-conscious. They are simply happy.
They don’t know that they are happy.
 The Journey of Being Human

Buddha is happy, Krishna is happy, Christ is happy, but they are

pure consciousness. They are happy, but they don’t know that they
are.
There is a similarity between unconscious nature and supracon-
scious beings. Unconscious nature has no self, and the supraconscious
beings also have no self. Man is just in between. He is no longer
an animal, no longer a tree, no longer a rock, and yet not a buddha.
Hanging in between is the misery.
Just the other day a new seeker wrote me a letter, saying, “Osho,
I don’t want to become a sannyasin, I don’t want to become super-
human like Buddha or Christ. I simply want to become just human.
Help me to become just human.”
Now, this is too ambitious, and it is impossible. Just to be hu-
man is impossible. Try to understand it. Because that means you are
saying, “Let me just remain the process, in the middle.” Man is not
a state, man is only a process. For example, if a child says, “I don’t
want to become a youth, I don’t want to become old. Let me just
remain a child”—is it possible?
The child is already becoming a youth, he is on the way. Child-
hood is not a state; you cannot remain in it, you cannot stick to
it, it is a process. Childhood is already going, youth is already coming.
And so is youth going; howsoever hard you try to remain young,
your efforts are doomed to fail because youth is already turning into
old age.
Just to be human, you ask—you ask the impossible. You are too
ambitious. You can become a buddha, that is simpler. You can be-
come a god, that is simpler. But to say that you would like to just
remain human is impossible because humanity is just a passage, a

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 The Journey of Being Human

voyage, a journey, a pilgrimage. It is a process, not a state. You can-

not remain human. If you try too hard to remain human, you will
become inhuman. You will start falling. If you don’t go ahead, you
will start slipping backward . . . but you will have to go somewhere.
You cannot remain static.
To be human simply means to be on the way of being a god, and
nothing else. God is the goal. To be human is the journey, the way.
The way can never be permanent, it cannot become eternal. Other-
wise it will be very tiring. The goal will never arrive then, and you
will be just on the journey, on the journey, on the journey.
To hope is to be human. But to hope means to hope to go be-
yond. To hope means to desire beyond. To hope means to hope to
surpass, to transcend. This is really the state of a human being—
that he is always surpassing, going, going . . . somewhere else is the
goal.
The person who has asked it must be a beautiful person, in fact
ready for sannyas—but he does not understand what he is saying.
Man is miserable because man has to be miserable. It is nothing
of your fault, it is nothing like that you are in some error. To be hu-
man is to be miserable, because to be human is to be in the middle—
neither here nor there, but hanging in limbo. Anguish arises because
of the tension.
One home is lost—the home where birds are still singing, ani-
mals still moving, trees still flowering—the Garden of Eden. That one
home is lost. Adam has been turned out; Adam has become human.
When Adam was in the Garden of Eden he was an animal; he was
not an Adam, he was not a man. God turned him out of the garden.
That very expulsion became humanity.

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 The Journey of Being Human

Man is expelled from one home so that he can search for an-
other home—bigger, higher, deeper, greater. One home is lost, there
is a nostalgia; man wants to become animal. It is very difficult to
forget that Garden of Eden; it was so beautiful. And there are mo-
ments we become animal-like—in deep anger, in violence, in war.
That’s the enjoyment of being angry.
Why do you feel so happy in being angry? Why do you feel such
a rush of energy in destroying something? Why in wartime do people
look more radiant, more healthy, more sharp, more intelligent?—as
if life is no longer a boredom. What happens? Man falls back. Even
for a few days, a few months, man again is an animal. Then he knows
no law, then he knows no humanity, then he knows no god. Then he
simply drops his self-consciousness, becomes unconscious, and mur-
ders, kills, rapes— everything is allowed in war. That’s why man
needs war continuously. After each ten years a big war is needed,
and small wars have to be continued all the time. Otherwise it will
be difficult for man to live.
Man becomes a drunkard, becomes a drug addict. Through drugs,
man tries to reclaim the lost home, the lost paradise. When you are
under the influence of LSD, you are back in the Garden of Eden—
from the back door. LSD is the back door of the Garden of Eden.
Again life seems psychedelic, colorful; again trees look luminous as
they must have looked to Adam and Eve, as they must be right now
for birds and tigers and monkeys. The green has a luminosity to it.
Everything looks so beautiful. You are no longer human, you have
fallen back. You have forced your being to fall back; hence tremen-
dous appeal exists in alcoholic beverages and drugs. Since the very
beginning of human history, man has been after drugs.
In the Vedas they called it soma, now they call it LSD, but it is

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not a different thing. Sometimes it was ganja, bhang, now it is mari-

juana and other things, but it is the same old game.
Chemically it is possible to fall back, but you cannot really go
back. There is no going back; time does not allow that. One has just
to go forward.
You cannot move backward in time. The reverse gear does not
exist. When Ford made his first car, there was no reverse gear. Only
later on they realized that it was very difficult to come back home.
You had to take long turns, travel unnecessary miles; then you could
come back. Then the reverse gear was added as a later thought. But in
time, there is no reverse gear; you cannot go back.
Man has dreamed about it, fantasized about it. There are science
fiction stories in which man can go back into time. H. G. Wells had
an idea of a time machine, where you sit in the machine and you put
it in the reverse gear and you start moving backward. You are
young, you become a child, then you become a baby, then you are in
the womb. Backward you start moving. But no time machine exists.
It exists only in poets’ minds, in fantasies.
To go back is not possible. There is only one possibility—to go
ahead.
Man has to remain in anguish. There are only two ways— either
make it possible to go back, or to go beyond humanity. Humanity is
a bridge. You cannot make a house on it. It has to be passed. It is
not to be lived upon.
When the Mohammedan mogul emperor, Akbar, built a special
city, Fatchpur Seekeri, he asked his wise men to find something, a
maxim to put on top of the bridge that joined the city to the rest of
the world. They looked, they searched, and they found a saying of
Jesus. It does not exist in the Bible; it must have come from some

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 The Journey of Being Human

other source, from Sufis. There were many Sufis in Akbar’s court.
The saying is: “The world is like a bridge— don’t make your house
on it.” The saying is still there on the bridge; it is beautiful. That’s
how it is.
Humanity is a bridge. Don’t try to be just human, otherwise you
will become inhuman. Try to become superhuman; that is the only
way to be human. Try to become a god; that is the only way to be
human. There is no other way. Have your goal somewhere in the stars,
only then you grow.
And man is a growing phenomenon, a process. If you don’t have
any goal, growth stops. Then you are stuck, then you become stag-
nant and stale. That’s what has happened to millions of people in
the world. Look at their faces—they look like zombies, as if they
are asleep or drugged, stoned.
What is happening to these people’s hearts? They don’t show
any freshness, aliveness, no spurt of life, no flame . . . dull. What is
happening to them? They have missed something. They are missing
something. They are not doing that for which they are made, they
are not fulfilling that destiny which has to be fulfilled.
A man is here to become superman. Let superman be your goal.
Then only will you be able to be man, and at ease.
The more you will be transforming into a superman, the more
you will find you are not in anguish, not in anxiety. The buds are
coming soon, there will be great rejoicing. Soon there will be blos-
soms. You can wait, you can hope, you can dream.
When you are not going anywhere, when you are trying just to
be human, then the river has stopped flowing. Then the river is not
going toward the ocean. Because to go to the ocean means to have a
desire to become the ocean. Otherwise why go toward the ocean?

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 The Journey of Being Human

Going toward the ocean means merging into the ocean, becoming
the ocean.
Godliness is the goal. You can be human only if you go on mak-
ing all efforts, all possible efforts, to become divine. In those very
efforts, your humanity will start shining. In those very efforts, you
will become alive.
Life is fulfilling, but you are not in contact with life. Old contact
is lost, new has not been made. You are in a transmission, hence you
are so dull, hence life looks so mediocre, sad, boring— even futile.
Says Jean-Paul Sartre: Man is a useless passion—futile, impo-
tent passion, unnecessarily making much fuss about life, and there
is nothing in it . . . meaningless is life. The more you become en-
closed in your self, the more life becomes meaningless. Then you are
miserable. Then misery has some other payoffs.
When you are happy you are ordinary, because to be happy is just
to be natural. To be miserable is to become extraordinary. Nothing
is special in being happy—trees are happy, birds are happy, animals
are happy, children are happy. What is special in that? It is just the
usual thing in existence. Existence is made of the stuff called happi-
ness. Just look!— can’t you see these trees? . . . so happy. Can’t you
see the birds singing? . . . so happily. Happiness has nothing special
in it. Happiness is a very ordinary thing.
To be blissful is to be absolutely ordinary. The self, the ego, does
not allow that. That’s why people talk too much about their miser-
ies. They become special just by talking about their miseries. People
go on talking about their illnesses, their headaches, their stomachs,
their this’s and that’s. All people are in some way or other hypo-
chondriacs. And if somebody does not believe in your misery, you
feel hurt. If somebody sympathizes with you and believes in your

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 The Journey of Being Human

misery—even in your exaggerated version of it—you feel very happy.

This is something stupid, but has to be understood.
Misery makes you special. Misery makes you more egoistic. A
miserable man can have a more concentrated ego than a happy man.
A happy man really cannot have the ego, because a person becomes
happy only when there is no ego. The more egoless, the more happy;
the more happy, the more egoless. You dissolve into happiness. You
cannot exist together with happiness; you exist only when there is
misery. In happiness there is dissolution.
Have you ever seen any happy moment? Watched it? In happiness,
you are not. When you are in love, you are not. If love has ever made
its abode in your heart, even for a few moments, you are not. When
you see the beautiful sun rising, or a full moon night, or a silent lake,
or a lotus flower, suddenly you are not. When there is beauty, you are
not. When there is love, you are not.
Hearing someone, if you feel there is truth, you simply disappear
in that moment. You are not, truth is. Whenever there is something
of the beyond, you are not; you have to make space for it. You are only
when there is misery. You are only when there is a lie. You are only
when there is something wrong. You are only when the shoe does
not fit.
When the shoe fits perfectly, you are not. When the shoe fits
perfectly, you forget the feet, you forget the shoe. When there is no
headache, there is no head. If you want to feel your head, you will
need a headache, that is the only way.
To be is to be miserable. To be happy is not to be. That’s why
Buddha says there is no self. He is creating a path for you to become
absolutely blissful. He is saying there is no self so that you can drop

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it. It is easy to drop something when it is not. It is easy to drop some-

thing when you understand that it is not, it is just imagination.

Mulla Nasruddin was telling his friends in the tavern one

day about his family. “Nine boys,” he said, “and all good ex-
cept Abdul. He learned to read.”

Now when a person learns to read, difficulties arise; now the self
is arising. In villages, people are more happy. They are closer to ani-
mals than in big cities—they are far away. In primitive societies, the
aboriginals are more happy. They are closer to trees and nature than
in London, Tokyo, Mumbai, New York. Trees have disappeared,
only asphalt roads—absolutely false— concrete buildings, all man-
made.
In fact, if suddenly somebody from outer space comes to Mumbai,
New York, Tokyo, London, he will not fi nd any signature of god
there. All is man-made. Looking at Tokyo or Mumbai, one will
think man made the world. These concrete buildings, these asphalt
roads, this technology—all is man-made. The farther away you go
from nature, the farther away you go from happiness . . . the more
and more you are learning to read.
God expelled Adam because he ate from the tree of knowledge—
he started learning to read. God threw Adam out—he became knowl-
edgeable. A man is bound to be more miserable if he is more
knowledgeable. The misery is always in exact proportion with your
knowledgeability.
Knowledgeability is not knowing. Knowing is innocence; knowl-
edgeability is cunningness. It is very difficult for an educated person

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not to be cunning. It is almost impossible, because the whole train-

ing is cunning. The training is of logic, not of love. And the training
is for doubt, not for trust. And the training is to be suspicious, not
to be trusting. And the training is that everybody is trying to deceive
you, so be aware. And before somebody else tries to cheat you, cheat—
because that is the only way to be protected.
Says Machiavelli: The best way to defend oneself is to be aggres-
sive. You see, all the governments of the world call their military
orga nization, army, the “defense.” They are all arrangements for
attack, but they call it “defense.” Even Hitler called his military his
“defense.” Nobody down the ages has ever said, “I am attacking.”
They say, “We are defending.” They all follow Machiavelli. They all
respect Mahavira, Mohammed, Moses, and they all follow Machia-
velli. As far as respect is concerned, go to the temple, read the Bible.
But as far as actual life is concerned, read The Prince, read Machiavelli,
read Chanakya.
In Delhi, the Indian capital where politicians live, they call it
Chanakya Puri—the city of the Machiavelli. Chanakya is the Indian
counterpart of Machiavelli, even more dangerous than Machiavelli.
The more a person becomes educated, the more Machiavellian, cun-
ning.

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