And if dancing you can reach to the ultimate, laughing, if you can reach to the ultimate, then why unnecessarily go with a British face? There are other faces also! Don’t be serious.

But death…the very word makes people serious.

I want you even to dance in your death, to dance and celebrate even in the death of your loved ones. Life and death both should be part of a single festival without any discontinuity.

Your second question is: “You are like an exotic flower or rare species of creature whom I have watched and listened to and tried to find words to describe for the past fourteen years. To hear you talk of the state you are in is to feel endlessly in awe. One of the most intriguing things about you is that you are always so absolutely present and at the same time so totally absent. Would you please comment?”

Maneesha, totality has two sides: the presence and the absence.

You cannot be totally present if you cannot be totally absent at the same time, simultaneously – you cannot choose one. Just the very word total includes presence and absence both.

Your understanding is accurate. You have felt rightly that I am present – at the same time I am not present. This has to be your state also. Only then – the meeting, the communion.

Once in a while you have, for a moment, come to the place where you meet me – but soon your mind takes you away. You come very close to the waters and yet you remain thirsty. Your mind takes another route which goes away from the waters.

In this silence you are both: totally present and totally absent.

This presence, this absence, this totality has to become your whole life.

Just because you could get the feel of an ultimate fact, Zen master Niskriya will have to reward you. Such an understanding should not go without reward.

Master Niskriya!

Bring your staff…

[Master Niskriya gently taps Maneesha’s head.]

Right!

One hit to yourself also…

Good!

Your third question, Maneesha, is very simple. I wonder how you missed the simplicity of it. You say:

“Osho, Okay, I’m going to lighten up. For a master of Yaa-hoo and Yaa-boo what could possibly be taboo?”