Jin Sutra #35
Available in:
Read in Original Hindi (मूल हिन्दी)
Questions in this Discourse
First question: Osho, you say the same thing in countless ways. But when I listen to you, it feels as if I am hearing it for the first time. And I feel so much joy that I don’t feel like going back home. What should I do—what can I do—so that I can just keep listening to you!
There is only one thing to say, because there is only one truth to know. To tell the truth, there isn’t even one thing to be said. There is something to be known, not said. There is something to be awakened to, not listened to.
There is something that cannot be said—and that is what has to be said. The ways of saying change. And it is good that you remember I am saying the same thing. Don’t get tangled in the ways. Many people have—some in Hindu, some in Muslim, some in Jain. These are all ways, differences of saying. Expressions are different, articulations are different. What has been said is one. And what has been said is such that it cannot be said; therefore it has to be said in many ways—so that if one way misses, perhaps another way may catch; if the second misses, then the third. That is why I make new indications every day. Let the fingers be different; that to which they point is certainly one.
If you missed yesterday, do not miss today. This continuous, sustained pointing in one direction is like a stream falling from a mountain onto hard rocks. Water is very soft; the rock is very hard. Yet the stream keeps falling, keeps falling, keeps falling—one day the rock breaks, becomes sand, and flows away. The soft conquers the hard. The weak triumphs over the strong. Watching a waterfall cascading down a mountain, have you ever remembered the saying, “nirbal ke bal Rām”—the strength of the powerless is God? If it never occurred to you, then you have not really seen the waterfall. The waterfall wins, though it has no strength of its own; the rock loses, though it has all the strength.
The human mind is like a rock—very hard, ancient, centuries old, primeval, seemingly eternal. And the current of consciousness is like water, like a stream—just now sprung forth, just now dripping drop by drop. But the current of consciousness will win.
So day after day I tell you the same thing—that same stream, that same stream. The rock may not break the first day; on the second day it will. If not today, then tomorrow; if not tomorrow, then the day after. The rock has to break. The rock is old but lifeless; the stream is new but full of life. I change the ways, I change the words. And that is why I have taken words from all the scriptures. For once it became clear to me that it is one, all scriptures became mine. Now I see no difference between Mahavira and Mohammed, between Krishna and Christ. The difference is of ways. Both ways are dear.
Whichever way helps you understand is the dear way. Do not go by the way; attend to that which is hidden within the way. And once that One begins to be heard, even listening is no longer needed. Once that One begins to be seen, there is no longer any purpose in pointing it out. No one shows the way to those who have eyes; it has to be shown to the blind. No one gives medicine to the healthy; it has to be given to the ill. Wake up! Try to see that One which I am trying to show you. Then what I am saying is not of much value. Once it is understood, the finger becomes useless; the gaze fixes upon the moon. Scriptures become useless; the eyes are fastened upon Truth. From that very day there remains no question of listening and telling, no question of reading and teaching.
Kabir has said: “It is not a matter of writing and reading; it is a matter of seeing and seeing.”
But without indications your eyes will not turn that way. So beware lest my expression itself become an obstacle. Let it not happen that you start taking delight merely in listening. Let it not happen that the music of the words captures you. Let it not happen that listening becomes your unconsciousness. Let it not become entertainment. If it becomes awakening, good; if it becomes entertainment, you have missed. Then you came to me and yet remained far away. Do not cling to my words. Use them—and as soon as they have been used, throw them away, just as you throw away an empty, spent cartridge. There is no point in keeping it. Who carries a spent cartridge? And whoever does will someday get into trouble; it will be of no use. The day you have even a slight glimpse, that very day the words become spent cartridges.
It has been asked, “You say the same thing in countless ways. Yet whenever I listen to you, it feels as if I am hearing it for the first time.”
It feels that way because what I am trying to show you has not yet been seen by you. The day you truly see, it will no longer feel like that. Then, however new my words may sound—whether I speak through Mahavira or through Mohammed—you will quickly recognize that the message is the same. For now, you have not seen it. You have heard it many times; a faint shadow has settled in your inner consciousness that perhaps this is so—but only “perhaps.” It has not yet deepened into your own living experience.
Therefore whenever you listen to me, it seems new. But there is nothing new in it. How can truth be new? Truth is neither new nor old. Truth simply is. New and old do not apply to truth, because truth is beyond time. New and old exist within time. Truth is not something that was yesterday and will not be tomorrow, or only is today. Truth simply is. Today and tomorrow are happening within truth; truth is not happening within today and tomorrow. The moment this begins to deepen in you—when your rock breaks and the stream finds passage—you will not even remember what is old and what is new. Then what is, in fact, will surround you. The same that is outside you is inside you.
And the day this event happens, from that very day wherever you go you will not be able to go away from me. If you return home, you will return into me. If you come here, you will come to me. If you do not come, you will still come to me. A relationship will be forged that is beyond time and space. A bridge will be joined that is beyond the body. But until you have truly heard, you will have to come again and again, you will have to take the trouble of coming. If you do not want that trouble, then hurry—let the rock break. Listen! And not just listen—ponder, assimilate. Do not look only at my hand; look to where the hand is pointing. Try to grasp the invisible. Then, wherever you are and however you are, nothing will make a difference to the relationship between you and me. Whether I remain in a body or you remain in a body—or not—this bond is of a kind that does not break.
For now there will be difficulty in returning. Because when you go back, you go alone; you do not take me with you. I am ready to walk with you—you simply do not make space for me in your home. If you truly hear me, truly understand me, I come along with you. Distance from me disappears; duality disappears. You will go back filled with me. Until that happens, there will be much difficulty.
Why should I rise yet from this assembly of joy?
Even my eyes are not yet moist.
Why should I rise yet from this assembly of joy?
Even my eyes are not yet moist.
You will feel as if you have been made to rise out of season, before time—as if you were not yet to go and yet had to go. And if you go in that way, your home will become even more desolate than before. I do not want to make your home desolate; I want to make your home a temple. I want that when you go home, your home’s new form is revealed. I do not want to tear you away from home, from the world, from family life. That is the newness of my sannyas: I do not want to sever you from the world; I want to join you to the world in such a way that your connection with the world becomes a connection with the Divine. Let the world no longer be a barrier between you and the Divine; let it become a means.
If you can take me with you—even a little, just a little of my atmosphere, a little of my light, a few of my breaths—then when you go home it will not be the same home you left. Your wife and children will no longer remain merely wife and children; you will see a glimmer of the Divine in them too. One who has seen even a faint glimpse of the Divine begins to see Him everywhere. If he can see in a stone, will he not be able to see in a wife? If he can see in a stone, will he not be able to see in a husband? How strange that people run away from living beings and look for God in stones. If you cannot see Him here, how will you see Him in stone? And one who can see Him in stone—why would he run away? He will see Him everywhere.
If vision is truly born in you, you will never leave me. I will become your sky. I will surround you. Only then are you connected with me; only then are you my sannyasin. Otherwise the relationship remains of the mind, and then hindrances arise again and again. Whenever you have to go—and you will have to go. There are responsibilities; you will have to go. There are duties; you will have to go. You have given many trusts, many assurances; you will have to go. Because the Divine has given you some work to do; that work must be fulfilled. I do not teach escapism. Runaways are not sannyasins for me. There is some lack in the runaway: he could not see the Divine in the world; he is blind. He ran away from the very place where life could have been transformed, where revolution could have happened, where the challenge was.
No, I will send you back. Whether your eyes have become moist or not, you will have to go. Since you have to go, go after drinking me in. Not only your eyes—let your heart become wet. And it is in your hands. If you return thirsty, no one else is responsible. You cannot blame me. The river was flowing; you did not bend. You did not form your hands into a cup. You did not draw water from the river. Perhaps you were waiting for the river to rise to your throat. The river flowed past you, but you did not show the courage to bend. Only the courageous can bend. Only those who have a great resolve can surrender. Only the truly strong can show the courage to bow. The weak are afraid that bowing will expose their weakness. They stand stiff, rigid.
Psychologists say that the more a person is filled inside with an inferiority complex, the more he stands with a swagger so that no one will find out. If he bows—bows at someone’s feet, surrenders—people might say, “Hey, where did your strength go?” So the man full of inferiority keeps a posture of superiority. This is the sign of weakness. The strong bows, because bowing does not destroy his strength. Bowing increases strength. Bowing makes him fresher, newer, childlike. You must have seen: when a storm comes, big trees fall, while small blades of grass bend. The storm passes, and the grass stands up again. The storm can fell the trees, but it cannot uproot the grass. The grass has a strength the trees do not know—the strength of bending. The storm only freshens the grass, lightens it, shakes off the dust. They stand again! The great trees, once fallen, cannot return, cannot stand again.
Why do big trees fall? The storm does not make them fall—for if the storm were the cause, the small ones would have been gone long ago. No, the big trees stand rigid against the storm; that is why they fall. The small trees go along with the storm: if the wind goes east, they bend east; if it goes west, they bend west. The small trees say, “We are with you.” The big trees say, “We are against you,” and in that opposition they fall.
If you are with me, I will leave you refreshed. If you are totally with me, my storm will pass over you and make you greener, newer. And wherever you go, I will begin to beat in your heart. But if you are not with me and stand stiff—there are many kinds of stiffness. Someone has read the scriptures and stands stiff: “I know all this.” Someone has done a few fasts and stands stiff: “I am no ordinary man—I have fasted so much; I am an ascetic.” Someone has given some charity and stands stiff—watch this stiffness within. If this stiffness remains, you will not become moist. You will return dry. It may even happen—you might return even more broken. Then, having come to me, you will not become new; you will grow decrepit.
So when you are with me, bow. Cup your hands, drink. No one is stopping you. If you do not stop yourself, there is no other obstacle.
You have asked: What should I do so that I keep on listening to you? There is only one way—become like me. There is no other way. Because ultimately you will be listening only to yourself. In the end, it is oneself that has to be heard. Ultimately, in the very currents of your life, the resonance of your own veena will resound. By listening to my veena, recognize your own veena. Seeing the strings of my veena sway and tremble, allow the strings of your veena to vibrate as well. If, truly alert in my presence, you search out and awaken your sleeping treasure, you will go on hearing me. For then whatever you speak will be exactly what I am speaking. Whatever you do will be exactly what I am doing. And there is no other way.
If you keep me at a distance, separate, with a sense of difference, then you will have to return again and again to listen to me. That would become a bondage. I do not want you to create such a bondage. I want you to become perfectly free. But there is only one way: let that which happened to me happen to you—it can happen. If one seed has sprouted and become a tree, all seeds can become trees. You only need to find the right soil, and the courage to scatter yourself into it so that germination becomes possible.
You are sitting there hiding the Divine, suppressing it. Open it, let it unfold. There is no one here who was not born carrying the Divine. The Divine is our first form, and the last as well. The Divine is our seed, and our flower too.
There is something that cannot be said—and that is what has to be said. The ways of saying change. And it is good that you remember I am saying the same thing. Don’t get tangled in the ways. Many people have—some in Hindu, some in Muslim, some in Jain. These are all ways, differences of saying. Expressions are different, articulations are different. What has been said is one. And what has been said is such that it cannot be said; therefore it has to be said in many ways—so that if one way misses, perhaps another way may catch; if the second misses, then the third. That is why I make new indications every day. Let the fingers be different; that to which they point is certainly one.
If you missed yesterday, do not miss today. This continuous, sustained pointing in one direction is like a stream falling from a mountain onto hard rocks. Water is very soft; the rock is very hard. Yet the stream keeps falling, keeps falling, keeps falling—one day the rock breaks, becomes sand, and flows away. The soft conquers the hard. The weak triumphs over the strong. Watching a waterfall cascading down a mountain, have you ever remembered the saying, “nirbal ke bal Rām”—the strength of the powerless is God? If it never occurred to you, then you have not really seen the waterfall. The waterfall wins, though it has no strength of its own; the rock loses, though it has all the strength.
The human mind is like a rock—very hard, ancient, centuries old, primeval, seemingly eternal. And the current of consciousness is like water, like a stream—just now sprung forth, just now dripping drop by drop. But the current of consciousness will win.
So day after day I tell you the same thing—that same stream, that same stream. The rock may not break the first day; on the second day it will. If not today, then tomorrow; if not tomorrow, then the day after. The rock has to break. The rock is old but lifeless; the stream is new but full of life. I change the ways, I change the words. And that is why I have taken words from all the scriptures. For once it became clear to me that it is one, all scriptures became mine. Now I see no difference between Mahavira and Mohammed, between Krishna and Christ. The difference is of ways. Both ways are dear.
Whichever way helps you understand is the dear way. Do not go by the way; attend to that which is hidden within the way. And once that One begins to be heard, even listening is no longer needed. Once that One begins to be seen, there is no longer any purpose in pointing it out. No one shows the way to those who have eyes; it has to be shown to the blind. No one gives medicine to the healthy; it has to be given to the ill. Wake up! Try to see that One which I am trying to show you. Then what I am saying is not of much value. Once it is understood, the finger becomes useless; the gaze fixes upon the moon. Scriptures become useless; the eyes are fastened upon Truth. From that very day there remains no question of listening and telling, no question of reading and teaching.
Kabir has said: “It is not a matter of writing and reading; it is a matter of seeing and seeing.”
But without indications your eyes will not turn that way. So beware lest my expression itself become an obstacle. Let it not happen that you start taking delight merely in listening. Let it not happen that the music of the words captures you. Let it not happen that listening becomes your unconsciousness. Let it not become entertainment. If it becomes awakening, good; if it becomes entertainment, you have missed. Then you came to me and yet remained far away. Do not cling to my words. Use them—and as soon as they have been used, throw them away, just as you throw away an empty, spent cartridge. There is no point in keeping it. Who carries a spent cartridge? And whoever does will someday get into trouble; it will be of no use. The day you have even a slight glimpse, that very day the words become spent cartridges.
It has been asked, “You say the same thing in countless ways. Yet whenever I listen to you, it feels as if I am hearing it for the first time.”
It feels that way because what I am trying to show you has not yet been seen by you. The day you truly see, it will no longer feel like that. Then, however new my words may sound—whether I speak through Mahavira or through Mohammed—you will quickly recognize that the message is the same. For now, you have not seen it. You have heard it many times; a faint shadow has settled in your inner consciousness that perhaps this is so—but only “perhaps.” It has not yet deepened into your own living experience.
Therefore whenever you listen to me, it seems new. But there is nothing new in it. How can truth be new? Truth is neither new nor old. Truth simply is. New and old do not apply to truth, because truth is beyond time. New and old exist within time. Truth is not something that was yesterday and will not be tomorrow, or only is today. Truth simply is. Today and tomorrow are happening within truth; truth is not happening within today and tomorrow. The moment this begins to deepen in you—when your rock breaks and the stream finds passage—you will not even remember what is old and what is new. Then what is, in fact, will surround you. The same that is outside you is inside you.
And the day this event happens, from that very day wherever you go you will not be able to go away from me. If you return home, you will return into me. If you come here, you will come to me. If you do not come, you will still come to me. A relationship will be forged that is beyond time and space. A bridge will be joined that is beyond the body. But until you have truly heard, you will have to come again and again, you will have to take the trouble of coming. If you do not want that trouble, then hurry—let the rock break. Listen! And not just listen—ponder, assimilate. Do not look only at my hand; look to where the hand is pointing. Try to grasp the invisible. Then, wherever you are and however you are, nothing will make a difference to the relationship between you and me. Whether I remain in a body or you remain in a body—or not—this bond is of a kind that does not break.
For now there will be difficulty in returning. Because when you go back, you go alone; you do not take me with you. I am ready to walk with you—you simply do not make space for me in your home. If you truly hear me, truly understand me, I come along with you. Distance from me disappears; duality disappears. You will go back filled with me. Until that happens, there will be much difficulty.
Why should I rise yet from this assembly of joy?
Even my eyes are not yet moist.
Why should I rise yet from this assembly of joy?
Even my eyes are not yet moist.
You will feel as if you have been made to rise out of season, before time—as if you were not yet to go and yet had to go. And if you go in that way, your home will become even more desolate than before. I do not want to make your home desolate; I want to make your home a temple. I want that when you go home, your home’s new form is revealed. I do not want to tear you away from home, from the world, from family life. That is the newness of my sannyas: I do not want to sever you from the world; I want to join you to the world in such a way that your connection with the world becomes a connection with the Divine. Let the world no longer be a barrier between you and the Divine; let it become a means.
If you can take me with you—even a little, just a little of my atmosphere, a little of my light, a few of my breaths—then when you go home it will not be the same home you left. Your wife and children will no longer remain merely wife and children; you will see a glimmer of the Divine in them too. One who has seen even a faint glimpse of the Divine begins to see Him everywhere. If he can see in a stone, will he not be able to see in a wife? If he can see in a stone, will he not be able to see in a husband? How strange that people run away from living beings and look for God in stones. If you cannot see Him here, how will you see Him in stone? And one who can see Him in stone—why would he run away? He will see Him everywhere.
If vision is truly born in you, you will never leave me. I will become your sky. I will surround you. Only then are you connected with me; only then are you my sannyasin. Otherwise the relationship remains of the mind, and then hindrances arise again and again. Whenever you have to go—and you will have to go. There are responsibilities; you will have to go. There are duties; you will have to go. You have given many trusts, many assurances; you will have to go. Because the Divine has given you some work to do; that work must be fulfilled. I do not teach escapism. Runaways are not sannyasins for me. There is some lack in the runaway: he could not see the Divine in the world; he is blind. He ran away from the very place where life could have been transformed, where revolution could have happened, where the challenge was.
No, I will send you back. Whether your eyes have become moist or not, you will have to go. Since you have to go, go after drinking me in. Not only your eyes—let your heart become wet. And it is in your hands. If you return thirsty, no one else is responsible. You cannot blame me. The river was flowing; you did not bend. You did not form your hands into a cup. You did not draw water from the river. Perhaps you were waiting for the river to rise to your throat. The river flowed past you, but you did not show the courage to bend. Only the courageous can bend. Only those who have a great resolve can surrender. Only the truly strong can show the courage to bow. The weak are afraid that bowing will expose their weakness. They stand stiff, rigid.
Psychologists say that the more a person is filled inside with an inferiority complex, the more he stands with a swagger so that no one will find out. If he bows—bows at someone’s feet, surrenders—people might say, “Hey, where did your strength go?” So the man full of inferiority keeps a posture of superiority. This is the sign of weakness. The strong bows, because bowing does not destroy his strength. Bowing increases strength. Bowing makes him fresher, newer, childlike. You must have seen: when a storm comes, big trees fall, while small blades of grass bend. The storm passes, and the grass stands up again. The storm can fell the trees, but it cannot uproot the grass. The grass has a strength the trees do not know—the strength of bending. The storm only freshens the grass, lightens it, shakes off the dust. They stand again! The great trees, once fallen, cannot return, cannot stand again.
Why do big trees fall? The storm does not make them fall—for if the storm were the cause, the small ones would have been gone long ago. No, the big trees stand rigid against the storm; that is why they fall. The small trees go along with the storm: if the wind goes east, they bend east; if it goes west, they bend west. The small trees say, “We are with you.” The big trees say, “We are against you,” and in that opposition they fall.
If you are with me, I will leave you refreshed. If you are totally with me, my storm will pass over you and make you greener, newer. And wherever you go, I will begin to beat in your heart. But if you are not with me and stand stiff—there are many kinds of stiffness. Someone has read the scriptures and stands stiff: “I know all this.” Someone has done a few fasts and stands stiff: “I am no ordinary man—I have fasted so much; I am an ascetic.” Someone has given some charity and stands stiff—watch this stiffness within. If this stiffness remains, you will not become moist. You will return dry. It may even happen—you might return even more broken. Then, having come to me, you will not become new; you will grow decrepit.
So when you are with me, bow. Cup your hands, drink. No one is stopping you. If you do not stop yourself, there is no other obstacle.
You have asked: What should I do so that I keep on listening to you? There is only one way—become like me. There is no other way. Because ultimately you will be listening only to yourself. In the end, it is oneself that has to be heard. Ultimately, in the very currents of your life, the resonance of your own veena will resound. By listening to my veena, recognize your own veena. Seeing the strings of my veena sway and tremble, allow the strings of your veena to vibrate as well. If, truly alert in my presence, you search out and awaken your sleeping treasure, you will go on hearing me. For then whatever you speak will be exactly what I am speaking. Whatever you do will be exactly what I am doing. And there is no other way.
If you keep me at a distance, separate, with a sense of difference, then you will have to return again and again to listen to me. That would become a bondage. I do not want you to create such a bondage. I want you to become perfectly free. But there is only one way: let that which happened to me happen to you—it can happen. If one seed has sprouted and become a tree, all seeds can become trees. You only need to find the right soil, and the courage to scatter yourself into it so that germination becomes possible.
You are sitting there hiding the Divine, suppressing it. Open it, let it unfold. There is no one here who was not born carrying the Divine. The Divine is our first form, and the last as well. The Divine is our seed, and our flower too.
Second question:
Osho, when I left home my mind was whirling with countless questions. By now I have heard three of your talks. And yesterday, after hearing the story of the bride in the palanquin, suddenly all the questions disappeared. And now the question is: why and how did this happen? Please explain.
Osho, when I left home my mind was whirling with countless questions. By now I have heard three of your talks. And yesterday, after hearing the story of the bride in the palanquin, suddenly all the questions disappeared. And now the question is: why and how did this happen? Please explain.
Wait a little—the new one will disappear too. Questions arise in haste; for one who can wait, they vanish on their own. Questions don’t really have answers. No question has an answer. Your understanding grows and the questions disappear. What grows is understanding, not answers to questions.
Keep this in mind.
A small child plays with toys. Then he grows up. When he was little, if you took his toys away, there was trouble. He couldn’t even sleep without them, couldn’t eat without them. The toys were everything—companions, the whole world. Then one day he suddenly leaves those toys in a corner and forgets them. They don’t even occur to him. What happened? The child grew. The time for toys passed. The intellect matured a little; understanding rose a little.
From the level of understanding at which questions arise, if you remain stuck there, there is no solution. Rise just a little above that level and the questions go. In truth, this is the meaning of satsang: your understanding rises above your questions. The questions remain below, settled. When your understanding is below the questions, questions exist. When your understanding rises above them, spreads its wings into the sky, the questions are left lying on the ground. Then no worry remains.
Remember this. The real issue is not the questions; the real issue is your state of consciousness. From a particular state of consciousness, a particular kind of question arises. If you try to solve the questions while maintaining that same state, they cannot be solved. This is what people usually do. It’s impossible. You make no transformation of consciousness. Consciousness remains the same. You ask a question, you get one answer. Your consciousness is unchanged; from that one answer ten new questions arise. Bring ten more answers, and a thousand questions will sprout.
It happened in a school. A small boy kept running off to the cinema. The teacher was exasperated. Ask him anything and he would just stand there bewildered. One day the teacher thought, “Let me ask something he can answer,” and tried simple English words: “What is the meaning of ‘dream’?” The boy stood dumbfounded—he couldn’t answer even that. To help him, the teacher asked the neighboring student, “What does ‘dream’ mean?” He said, “Svapna—dream.” He asked another, “What does ‘girl’ mean?” He said, “Ladki—girl.” Now it was obvious. The teacher asked the boy, “What does ‘dreamgirl’ mean?” The boy replied, “Hema Malini.”
There is a level—and it is hard to step out of it. In the end, all answers and all questions just become parts of your intellect. You won’t go beyond them. Therefore, real help does not lie in giving answers; real help lies in giving your intelligence new dimensions, new levels, new steps. The moment you rise a little above one level of mind, you suddenly find the matter is finished. The question no longer even seems meaningful—who then goes looking for an answer! The question simply drops.
With the sages you don’t get answers to questions; the questions drop. Problems are not solved; problems dissolve.
Wait a little. The one who has asked must be a simple-hearted person. The one who has asked must be sincere. They have listened to me only for three days. And after hearing yesterday about the bride in the palanquin, all their questions disappeared. They must be very simple-hearted. They probably don’t yet know their own wings. They can fly in the sky. As soon as a little height came, the questions went. Do not ask even this new question. Leave questions to the unwise. The wise have nothing to ask. The wise have to understand; there is nothing to ask. Wake up a little.
On hearing of the bride, as if a new door opened within them. It should open—if you are truly listening to me. These words are not just words. They are coming to you carrying a great deal. They come to you bearing a very deep message. They are symbols. If you allow these symbols to descend into your heart, who knows how many bonds they will unlock, how many knots they will untie.
If the mind is simple, if there is innocence in listening, if there are no bound prejudices, then questions cannot survive near me. They can survive only in two kinds of people: either in those who do not listen at all, who sit there inert like a stone; or in those who sit convinced that they already know, so there is no need to listen.
So the questions of the sluggish, those asleep in darkness, do not dissolve; nor do the questions of those possessed by the madness of scholarship—the ones who fancy they know.
Questions arise in two ways. One kind arises out of genuine inquiry. Another arises out of information. The inquirer’s question—if he just waits a little—falls of its own accord. But the question that arises from information is not going to fall; it will fall only when that borrowed information falls. Have you noticed? Some questions come out of your life—these are real questions. Some come out of your scriptural understanding—these are utterly false. Until your scripture drops, those questions will not drop. But to the friend who asked, I say: there is no need to ask. Be patient. They are not among those who have come to save themselves. They are among those who have come to be effaced.
To guard one’s heart, one’s very core,
to meet your gaze with our own,
to grasp every secret of love—
and yet to keep one’s hem unstained.
They are not of that kind. Their hem is already in my hand. And they are not of those who will try to pull free. I say to them: be patient. As other questions have fallen away, this one will also fall. As you begin to rise within, as what has to happen in you begins to happen, your questions will go on disappearing. There is a state of mind we can call questionless; that is the state of meditation. It is not that a meditator’s questions get solved; rather, all his questions drop. The urge to solve evaporates. The questions become pointless.
There is one thing that, already lost, is yet to be lost now.
There is one matter that, already happened, is yet to happen now.
Life is sleep—wakefulness is on its way:
even now asleep, it will keep sleeping still.
There is one thing that, already lost, is yet to be lost now.
You do not have an ego, and yet it seems—you do.
There is one thing that, already lost, is yet to be lost now.
It is already lost. In truth, to say “already lost” is not quite right—there never was such a thing. The pocket is already picked. From the very start it was cut. But you have not put your hand into the pocket. I am telling you: I want to snatch from you only that which you do not have. And I want to give you only that which you already have.
There is one thing that, already lost, is yet to be lost now.
There is one matter that, already happened, is yet to happen now.
And there is one thing that has already happened—indeed has always been so—your soul; but you do not know it. What you do not have, you imagine you have. And what you do have, you have no idea of. The revolution is only this much: to see what is not with me and what is with me. Just this little shift.
But with that slight revolution, the whole of life is transformed. Threading a needle is no great upheaval, yet Mahavira says: once the thread passes through the needle, then even if it falls, the needle is not lost. The moment it begins to dawn on you what you do not have, from the other side it will also become clear what you do have. Beggarhood has to be dropped. And I have to remind you of your emperorship. Hearing of the bride, you have had a little glimpse of the emperor within.
The body is the palanquin. The soul is the bride. The world is the palanquin. The Divine is the bride. And you are needlessly playing the wedding guest; you can be the groom. You are being jostled about for no reason in someone else’s procession.
How long will you keep joining other people’s wedding processions? Once you joined Mahavira’s, once Buddha’s, once Krishna’s—have you not understood yet? Mount the horse now, sit up! It has been long enough—guest, guest, guest—now be the groom! Your bride is waiting for you.
There is one thing that, already lost, is yet to be lost now.
There is one matter that, already happened, is yet to happen now.
Enough. I will not give an answer; I will not answer this friend. I expect more of them than any answer could give. Let them listen, drink in, come close and touch the air around me, dive deep—then all questions will be erased. This question too will disappear. Is it even a question—why did the questions fall? When the snake itself has gone, this sloughed skin will go too.
Keep this in mind.
A small child plays with toys. Then he grows up. When he was little, if you took his toys away, there was trouble. He couldn’t even sleep without them, couldn’t eat without them. The toys were everything—companions, the whole world. Then one day he suddenly leaves those toys in a corner and forgets them. They don’t even occur to him. What happened? The child grew. The time for toys passed. The intellect matured a little; understanding rose a little.
From the level of understanding at which questions arise, if you remain stuck there, there is no solution. Rise just a little above that level and the questions go. In truth, this is the meaning of satsang: your understanding rises above your questions. The questions remain below, settled. When your understanding is below the questions, questions exist. When your understanding rises above them, spreads its wings into the sky, the questions are left lying on the ground. Then no worry remains.
Remember this. The real issue is not the questions; the real issue is your state of consciousness. From a particular state of consciousness, a particular kind of question arises. If you try to solve the questions while maintaining that same state, they cannot be solved. This is what people usually do. It’s impossible. You make no transformation of consciousness. Consciousness remains the same. You ask a question, you get one answer. Your consciousness is unchanged; from that one answer ten new questions arise. Bring ten more answers, and a thousand questions will sprout.
It happened in a school. A small boy kept running off to the cinema. The teacher was exasperated. Ask him anything and he would just stand there bewildered. One day the teacher thought, “Let me ask something he can answer,” and tried simple English words: “What is the meaning of ‘dream’?” The boy stood dumbfounded—he couldn’t answer even that. To help him, the teacher asked the neighboring student, “What does ‘dream’ mean?” He said, “Svapna—dream.” He asked another, “What does ‘girl’ mean?” He said, “Ladki—girl.” Now it was obvious. The teacher asked the boy, “What does ‘dreamgirl’ mean?” The boy replied, “Hema Malini.”
There is a level—and it is hard to step out of it. In the end, all answers and all questions just become parts of your intellect. You won’t go beyond them. Therefore, real help does not lie in giving answers; real help lies in giving your intelligence new dimensions, new levels, new steps. The moment you rise a little above one level of mind, you suddenly find the matter is finished. The question no longer even seems meaningful—who then goes looking for an answer! The question simply drops.
With the sages you don’t get answers to questions; the questions drop. Problems are not solved; problems dissolve.
Wait a little. The one who has asked must be a simple-hearted person. The one who has asked must be sincere. They have listened to me only for three days. And after hearing yesterday about the bride in the palanquin, all their questions disappeared. They must be very simple-hearted. They probably don’t yet know their own wings. They can fly in the sky. As soon as a little height came, the questions went. Do not ask even this new question. Leave questions to the unwise. The wise have nothing to ask. The wise have to understand; there is nothing to ask. Wake up a little.
On hearing of the bride, as if a new door opened within them. It should open—if you are truly listening to me. These words are not just words. They are coming to you carrying a great deal. They come to you bearing a very deep message. They are symbols. If you allow these symbols to descend into your heart, who knows how many bonds they will unlock, how many knots they will untie.
If the mind is simple, if there is innocence in listening, if there are no bound prejudices, then questions cannot survive near me. They can survive only in two kinds of people: either in those who do not listen at all, who sit there inert like a stone; or in those who sit convinced that they already know, so there is no need to listen.
So the questions of the sluggish, those asleep in darkness, do not dissolve; nor do the questions of those possessed by the madness of scholarship—the ones who fancy they know.
Questions arise in two ways. One kind arises out of genuine inquiry. Another arises out of information. The inquirer’s question—if he just waits a little—falls of its own accord. But the question that arises from information is not going to fall; it will fall only when that borrowed information falls. Have you noticed? Some questions come out of your life—these are real questions. Some come out of your scriptural understanding—these are utterly false. Until your scripture drops, those questions will not drop. But to the friend who asked, I say: there is no need to ask. Be patient. They are not among those who have come to save themselves. They are among those who have come to be effaced.
To guard one’s heart, one’s very core,
to meet your gaze with our own,
to grasp every secret of love—
and yet to keep one’s hem unstained.
They are not of that kind. Their hem is already in my hand. And they are not of those who will try to pull free. I say to them: be patient. As other questions have fallen away, this one will also fall. As you begin to rise within, as what has to happen in you begins to happen, your questions will go on disappearing. There is a state of mind we can call questionless; that is the state of meditation. It is not that a meditator’s questions get solved; rather, all his questions drop. The urge to solve evaporates. The questions become pointless.
There is one thing that, already lost, is yet to be lost now.
There is one matter that, already happened, is yet to happen now.
Life is sleep—wakefulness is on its way:
even now asleep, it will keep sleeping still.
There is one thing that, already lost, is yet to be lost now.
You do not have an ego, and yet it seems—you do.
There is one thing that, already lost, is yet to be lost now.
It is already lost. In truth, to say “already lost” is not quite right—there never was such a thing. The pocket is already picked. From the very start it was cut. But you have not put your hand into the pocket. I am telling you: I want to snatch from you only that which you do not have. And I want to give you only that which you already have.
There is one thing that, already lost, is yet to be lost now.
There is one matter that, already happened, is yet to happen now.
And there is one thing that has already happened—indeed has always been so—your soul; but you do not know it. What you do not have, you imagine you have. And what you do have, you have no idea of. The revolution is only this much: to see what is not with me and what is with me. Just this little shift.
But with that slight revolution, the whole of life is transformed. Threading a needle is no great upheaval, yet Mahavira says: once the thread passes through the needle, then even if it falls, the needle is not lost. The moment it begins to dawn on you what you do not have, from the other side it will also become clear what you do have. Beggarhood has to be dropped. And I have to remind you of your emperorship. Hearing of the bride, you have had a little glimpse of the emperor within.
The body is the palanquin. The soul is the bride. The world is the palanquin. The Divine is the bride. And you are needlessly playing the wedding guest; you can be the groom. You are being jostled about for no reason in someone else’s procession.
How long will you keep joining other people’s wedding processions? Once you joined Mahavira’s, once Buddha’s, once Krishna’s—have you not understood yet? Mount the horse now, sit up! It has been long enough—guest, guest, guest—now be the groom! Your bride is waiting for you.
There is one thing that, already lost, is yet to be lost now.
There is one matter that, already happened, is yet to happen now.
Enough. I will not give an answer; I will not answer this friend. I expect more of them than any answer could give. Let them listen, drink in, come close and touch the air around me, dive deep—then all questions will be erased. This question too will disappear. Is it even a question—why did the questions fall? When the snake itself has gone, this sloughed skin will go too.
Third question:
Osho, while listening to your discourse my eyes start closing, my ears begin to go deaf, and even if I try I can’t manage the situation. My heart longs that, when the Divine is before me, I keep gazing at you and drink the nectar of your words. But it just doesn’t happen. Please tell me how I can listen to you consciously.
Osho, while listening to your discourse my eyes start closing, my ears begin to go deaf, and even if I try I can’t manage the situation. My heart longs that, when the Divine is before me, I keep gazing at you and drink the nectar of your words. But it just doesn’t happen. Please tell me how I can listen to you consciously.
Where is the question of listening consciously! Listen in abandon. Why bring in consciousness at all! Listen, intoxicated. What is there to manage? Listen, staggering like a drunk. For the one who has asked, talk of awareness will not help. For him only talk of intoxication will help. That is exactly what is happening—on its own. Needlessly your intellect is creating a complication.
As you listen, the eyes begin to close—this clearly means that listening is happening and the eyes are closing because what I am saying can only be seen within. If you want to see me, you will see me only with closed eyes. If you keep the eyes open, you will see the palanquin, not the bride. You are listening; that is why the eyes are closing. Now don’t make any effort to open them. If you want to force them open, you can, but you will miss. Just when the nectar reaches your hands, you will be deprived. You are listening; that is why the ears begin to go deaf—because what I am telling you is not just words, but also the silence hidden within the words. The ears beginning to go deaf means the ears are saying: let the words stay outside; let only the silence enter. The ears are working very intelligently, with great care. The eyes too are working very intelligently, with great care. Now don’t bring your intellect in between. Let the eyes close, let the ears close. This is precisely my indication: go within. Don’t try to cling to me. Don’t think, “My eyes are closing, my ears are closing—my outer support is slipping.” No. This means you are coming close to the shore. You are going within—that is where the shore is.
And what will you hear with awareness? These are not matters to be heard with awareness. These are to be heard in ecstasy, drunk with love—
Let me drink, let me drink, for in your crimson goblet
there is still something more, still something more, still something more, O cupbearer.
Drink now—drink so that nothing at all remains in the cup. Don’t be afraid. This talk of awareness is the talk of the clever mind. You are getting scared: “What is happening? The eyes are closing, the ears are going deaf. Am I going mad?” Without going mad, has anyone ever reached the Divine? It takes the courage to go mad.
The heart leaps up at the sound of its own footsteps—
now the steps are not far from the destination.
Hide it as you may, even hidden it is not concealed.
You are a strange thing—neither near nor far.
The Divine is not far. And don’t even assume it is near. It is neither near nor far—because the Divine is within you. Even in nearness a little distance remains. However near, there is still a gap. The Divine is you. Your very being is the Divine.
When the eyes close, it means the inner journey has begun. Curtains lift. To see the world, you have to keep your eyes open. To see yourself, you have to close your eyes. Real seeing is available only with closed eyes. Have you looked at the images of Mahavira? If you want to see the right image of Mahavira, don’t look in a Shvetambara temple—there a mistake has crept in. Look in a Digambara temple—there Mahavira’s eyes are closed. In the Shvetambara temples Mahavira’s eyes are shown open—that is a mistake. Perhaps the one who opened Mahavira’s eyes in the Shvetambara temple was a person like you. Listening to me your eyes close, and you try to open them. But to understand Mahavira’s truth the eyes must be closed—because the Divine toward whom Mahavira is moving is within.
When the eyes close, the whole outward journey ends; all the energy turns inward. The Ganges flows back toward Gangotri, toward the source. Open eyes—perhaps the Shvetambaras found Mahavira’s eyes so beautiful that they wished to go on looking at them. With closed eyes, what will you see? So they kept Mahavira’s eyes open. That those eyes were worthy of seeing is true; that they were very beautiful is true; that worship and adoration arose toward those eyes is true. But this is a human weakness. Mahavira’s eyes would have been closed when he knew himself. And only when he knew himself did he become Mahavira; before that he was not Mahavira. Your eyes too will close. The ears too will close. All the senses will close—because the senses are the doors through which energy moves outward. When all the senses close, all the energy returns within. Mahavira called this pratikraman—the turning back of energy. When, with eyes open, you look out, that is aggression; when, with eyes closed, you move within, that is pratikraman—returning home. As in the evening the birds return to their nests, so when your life-energy starts returning to the innermost within, the eyes, the ears, everything will close.
So if, while listening to me, your eyes are closing—let them. Don’t insert your cleverness. Don’t bring your arithmetic into it. Don’t create interference. If the ears are closing, let them. Your intellect may not understand the hint, but your eyes and ears have understood. Your very being has caught the point. Don’t raise obstacles and obstructions in it.
No—don’t bring up awareness at all. Intoxication is right. The question is from Anand Vijay. For him, intoxication will be right. Ask for wine, not awareness. Ask for more ecstasy, not cleverness.
O fearless minstrel, another song!
O bountiful cupbearer, more wine!
O fearless minstrel, another song!
O bountiful cupbearer, more wine!
In the world there are two paths, two gates. One is the path of meditation; the other is the path of love. On the path of meditation, awareness is an essential step. On the path of love, intoxicated abandon is an essential step. For Anand Vijay, the path is love. Through love, meditation will happen—through abandon, through drowning, through ecstasy. For the meditator, even love happens through awareness. Keep this in mind. And make it clear to yourself what suits you. If feelings of love arise naturally in your heart, then forget about awareness. Ask instead:
O fearless minstrel, another song—
sing something more so I may drown even deeper. Play me more so I may sink even more.
O bountiful cupbearer, O generous saqi—more wine. Pour!
On the path of love, of devotion, there is dance, song, drowning—absorption, totality. On the path of meditation, there is alertness, wakefulness. Choose your path exactly, and don’t be afraid that if you go by one you will miss the other. In the end, the two meet. At the peak of the mountain all paths come together. One who walks by meditation ultimately attains love too; the one who walks by love ultimately attains meditation too. But the roads are very different.
As you listen, the eyes begin to close—this clearly means that listening is happening and the eyes are closing because what I am saying can only be seen within. If you want to see me, you will see me only with closed eyes. If you keep the eyes open, you will see the palanquin, not the bride. You are listening; that is why the eyes are closing. Now don’t make any effort to open them. If you want to force them open, you can, but you will miss. Just when the nectar reaches your hands, you will be deprived. You are listening; that is why the ears begin to go deaf—because what I am telling you is not just words, but also the silence hidden within the words. The ears beginning to go deaf means the ears are saying: let the words stay outside; let only the silence enter. The ears are working very intelligently, with great care. The eyes too are working very intelligently, with great care. Now don’t bring your intellect in between. Let the eyes close, let the ears close. This is precisely my indication: go within. Don’t try to cling to me. Don’t think, “My eyes are closing, my ears are closing—my outer support is slipping.” No. This means you are coming close to the shore. You are going within—that is where the shore is.
And what will you hear with awareness? These are not matters to be heard with awareness. These are to be heard in ecstasy, drunk with love—
Let me drink, let me drink, for in your crimson goblet
there is still something more, still something more, still something more, O cupbearer.
Drink now—drink so that nothing at all remains in the cup. Don’t be afraid. This talk of awareness is the talk of the clever mind. You are getting scared: “What is happening? The eyes are closing, the ears are going deaf. Am I going mad?” Without going mad, has anyone ever reached the Divine? It takes the courage to go mad.
The heart leaps up at the sound of its own footsteps—
now the steps are not far from the destination.
Hide it as you may, even hidden it is not concealed.
You are a strange thing—neither near nor far.
The Divine is not far. And don’t even assume it is near. It is neither near nor far—because the Divine is within you. Even in nearness a little distance remains. However near, there is still a gap. The Divine is you. Your very being is the Divine.
When the eyes close, it means the inner journey has begun. Curtains lift. To see the world, you have to keep your eyes open. To see yourself, you have to close your eyes. Real seeing is available only with closed eyes. Have you looked at the images of Mahavira? If you want to see the right image of Mahavira, don’t look in a Shvetambara temple—there a mistake has crept in. Look in a Digambara temple—there Mahavira’s eyes are closed. In the Shvetambara temples Mahavira’s eyes are shown open—that is a mistake. Perhaps the one who opened Mahavira’s eyes in the Shvetambara temple was a person like you. Listening to me your eyes close, and you try to open them. But to understand Mahavira’s truth the eyes must be closed—because the Divine toward whom Mahavira is moving is within.
When the eyes close, the whole outward journey ends; all the energy turns inward. The Ganges flows back toward Gangotri, toward the source. Open eyes—perhaps the Shvetambaras found Mahavira’s eyes so beautiful that they wished to go on looking at them. With closed eyes, what will you see? So they kept Mahavira’s eyes open. That those eyes were worthy of seeing is true; that they were very beautiful is true; that worship and adoration arose toward those eyes is true. But this is a human weakness. Mahavira’s eyes would have been closed when he knew himself. And only when he knew himself did he become Mahavira; before that he was not Mahavira. Your eyes too will close. The ears too will close. All the senses will close—because the senses are the doors through which energy moves outward. When all the senses close, all the energy returns within. Mahavira called this pratikraman—the turning back of energy. When, with eyes open, you look out, that is aggression; when, with eyes closed, you move within, that is pratikraman—returning home. As in the evening the birds return to their nests, so when your life-energy starts returning to the innermost within, the eyes, the ears, everything will close.
So if, while listening to me, your eyes are closing—let them. Don’t insert your cleverness. Don’t bring your arithmetic into it. Don’t create interference. If the ears are closing, let them. Your intellect may not understand the hint, but your eyes and ears have understood. Your very being has caught the point. Don’t raise obstacles and obstructions in it.
No—don’t bring up awareness at all. Intoxication is right. The question is from Anand Vijay. For him, intoxication will be right. Ask for wine, not awareness. Ask for more ecstasy, not cleverness.
O fearless minstrel, another song!
O bountiful cupbearer, more wine!
O fearless minstrel, another song!
O bountiful cupbearer, more wine!
In the world there are two paths, two gates. One is the path of meditation; the other is the path of love. On the path of meditation, awareness is an essential step. On the path of love, intoxicated abandon is an essential step. For Anand Vijay, the path is love. Through love, meditation will happen—through abandon, through drowning, through ecstasy. For the meditator, even love happens through awareness. Keep this in mind. And make it clear to yourself what suits you. If feelings of love arise naturally in your heart, then forget about awareness. Ask instead:
O fearless minstrel, another song—
sing something more so I may drown even deeper. Play me more so I may sink even more.
O bountiful cupbearer, O generous saqi—more wine. Pour!
On the path of love, of devotion, there is dance, song, drowning—absorption, totality. On the path of meditation, there is alertness, wakefulness. Choose your path exactly, and don’t be afraid that if you go by one you will miss the other. In the end, the two meet. At the peak of the mountain all paths come together. One who walks by meditation ultimately attains love too; the one who walks by love ultimately attains meditation too. But the roads are very different.
The fourth question:
Osho, what question could I ask, and what answer could you give! You are the question and the answer too. In love, should there be a question, or an answer, or silence?
Osho, what question could I ask, and what answer could you give! You are the question and the answer too. In love, should there be a question, or an answer, or silence?
Couldn’t help asking!
The urge to ask is like that. It’s a kind of itch. Ever had an itch? Just that sort of itch. Even when you don’t want to scratch, still the hand rises unknowingly and the scratching begins.
Now, the one who asked the question has, in the very first line, said that it should not be asked.
‘What question can I ask, and what answer can you give!’ For the moment, cleverness is holding. ‘You are both the question and the answer.’ Then the slip happened. He scratched the itch. ‘In love, should there be a question, an answer, or silence?’ The question surfaced after all!
We can try to be other than we are for a little while—a moment or two—and then we quickly relapse.
I have heard: Mulla Nasruddin’s wife was praising Mulla to the skies. Such lucky days are rare when a wife praises her husband! But Mulla was very afraid, because such good fortune usually means some mischief! She’ll make me spend money, or there must be some motive behind it. At last the motive became clear. The wife said, “Now that’s enough. You must search—find a boy for the girl. This year must not go empty.” Mulla said, “What can I do? I keep searching, but apart from donkeys I can’t find anyone!” The truth slipped from the wife’s mouth: “If my father had kept thinking like that, I would have remained unmarried!”
You can’t keep it up for long. Very soon the reality comes out. You did want to ask. Cleverness held for a little while—two lines it managed; in the third it limped, and you asked.
Understand this a little. Understand this about the mind. What a limping mind it is! If truly there was nothing to ask, there was no need to write this question at all. And if there was something to ask, there was no need to show off cleverness. Why nurture such a conflict? Why be double like this? In such doubleness there is danger. In this way you will break again and again, be torn into fragments. You will be something and display something else. You will speak something, while inside there will be something else. This is humanity’s greatest sorrow. If you need to ask, ask. If you don’t, then don’t. This see-sawing between the two is dangerous.
But since you ask: in love, is there the question, the answer, or silence? In love there is neither question, nor answer, nor silence. Love is neither silent nor speaking. Love is a great paradox. Love does not speak, because what should be said cannot come into words. And love is not silent either, because there is so much to say that cannot be spoken. So love is brimming over. It longs to flow. It wants to break the banks and shores.
Have you seen two lovers sitting close? They do not speak—not because there is nothing to say. They do not speak because there is too much to say—how to say it? And what there is to say is such that, if you speak it, it becomes soiled. Words make it ugly. It can only be communicated in silence. It can only be said by remaining quiet. But the silence is eloquent. Silence is a language.
Words are noise, a spectacle;
in the ocean of feeling they are sugar-candy that melts.
Do not speak the heart’s secret with your lips;
silence alone is the language of feeling.
Yet silence is a language. Silence too speaks—speaks with great depth. If you have never heard silence, you have heard nothing. You have remained unfamiliar with the music of life. Have you listened to the hush of night—how full of speech it is! In the trees there is no wind, no gusts, not even a leaf moves. Even in this very moment there is no breath of air, not a leaf is stirring—yet are the trees mute, quiet? The flowers are in bloom; they are speaking. There are no words, no noise—yet there is expression.
In China there is a saying: when a musician becomes completely skillful, he breaks his vina, for then the instrument begins to hinder the music. Even the notes of the vina start to feel like clamor. And when the archer becomes perfect in archery, he breaks his bow and arrows, because then they obstruct the mark.
Life’s ultimate peaks are peaks of paradox.
Words are noise, a spectacle;
in the ocean of feeling they are sugar-candy that melts.
Do not speak the heart’s secret with your lips;
silence alone is the language of feeling.
Weep—your tears will speak. Dance—your gestures will tell. Hum. Yesterday evening it so happened. Vani, a sannyasin, has come from Germany. I asked her, “Is there something you want to say?” And I felt she had so much to say; her heart was full. She had come from so far, and could stay only for a day or two. She cannot remain long. Every two or three months she rushes here. Even if time allows only two or three days, sometimes only a single day—she comes from Germany to Poona even for a single day! Once she stayed only five hours. So she comes to say something, to make some offering.
I asked, “Do you want to say anything?” She said, “No, nothing at all.” But on her face, in her eyes, in her heart, much was brimming. So I told her, “Well then, do not say it—be silent.” She closed her eyes, and she began to utter wordless sounds, as a tiny child of two or four months sobs and cries. A baby of two or four months knows no language, so whatever comes is babble, without meaning. Like a little child she began to sob, to cry. Broken, fragmented sounds without any meaning started coming out of her. In that moment she became a small child. In that moment she poured out her heart in a way that can never be poured through language—because language is very clever, of the intellect.
In the ocean of feeling they are sugar-candy that melts;
words are noise, a spectacle.
Do not speak the heart’s secret with your lips;
silence alone is the language of feeling.
Her language melted like sugar-candy into the ocean of feeling. Something began to boil; a soft humming began to rise. She herself did not know what was happening—beyond her power, beyond her control. As if some very pure language—as a human being might have spoken for the first time on the earth. Or as little children speak at the very beginning—anything—aba, baa, baa, baa... She began to utter such sounds. All broken.
But she said what had to be said. I heard what had to be heard. She was joined through feeling; she built a bridge.
Ah, the triumph of love’s vagabonds:
what if we are lost—at least we have found Him.
In that moment she was lost; but in that very losing she appeared. The lover loses himself and finds the Divine.
Ah, the triumph of love’s vagabonds—
such is the success of wandering love. Love is always a vagabond. Love has no house, because the whole existence is its home. Love is a nomad.
Ah, the triumph of love’s vagabonds:
what if we are lost—at least we have found Him.
The lover loses himself, and finds Him. Words are lost, the mind is lost, the ego is lost.
In the ocean of feeling they are sugar-candy that melts;
words are noise, a spectacle.
Do not speak the heart’s secret with your lips;
silence alone is the language of feeling.
Knowledge is only the intellect’s pastime;
meditation, so long as it is pageantry, is the court of pretense.
Do not uselessly bang your head on temples;
the only religion of man is love.
He who understands love has understood everything. You ask: In love, should there be questions, answers, or silence? In love let there be only love—that is enough. No answers, no questions, no silence. In love, only love—this is enough. Learn silence.
Hush, O heart—it is not good to shout in a full assembly.
Courtesy is the first refinement among the refinements of love.
Do not proclaim love by shouting. In shouting, love is destroyed. Love is a very delicate filament. It can be destroyed even by silence—let alone by speech! Love is a paradox. A paradox. There, speaking and not speaking meet. There, the finite and the infinite meet. There, the world and the divine touch each other. There, I and thou dissolve and melt. No—love has no questions. And love has no answers either. Love is enough.
Try to understand it this way. When you are happy, you never ask, Why am I happy? But when you are miserable you certainly ask, Why am I miserable? When you are healthy, do you go to the physician’s door to ask, Tell me, why am I healthy? But when you are ill you do go. You have to go and ask, Why am I ill? Illness requires that its cause be found. Has anyone ever sought the cause of health? Has anyone been able to say why a person is healthy? Till now no one has—not Ayurveda, not Allopathy, not Unani—no one has been able to say why a person is healthy. A person simply is healthy. Yes, where health is absent, there will be some cause. A spring flows. If it does not flow, some stone must be obstructing it. A seed sprouts, becomes a tree. If it does not sprout, does not become a tree, there must be some hindrance—the soil is stony, or there was no water. A child grows, matures, becomes youth. If he does not grow, something is wrong.
Bliss is natural. There are no questions for bliss. Suffering is unnatural. Suffering means: what should not have been. Happiness means: what ought to be. Happiness is that which we accept without seeking a cause. And suffering is that which we cannot accept even with a cause. Even if someone gives a cause—what use is it? You go to the doctor; he says you have cancer. Even if he tells you the reason why you have cancer—what is the point then? What will you do with the cause?
Happiness is accepted even without a cause. Sorrow is not accepted even with a cause. Therefore we have to search for the cause of sorrow—because unless the cause is known, how will we remove the sorrow? That which is to be removed, its cause must be found. That which is not to be removed, there is no need to look for its cause. One lives it.
Love is supreme health. Love is a glimpse of the divine in the mirror of your being. No one asks why love is. Love simply happens. It is accepted—an effortless acceptance. There is no answer, no question. Nothing to speak, and nothing can be spoken. But this does not mean love is a void. Love is a great fullness—the ultimate fullness. When the vessel is empty, there is sound. Half-full, there is sound. When the vessel is completely filled, sound disappears. In the same way, when someone is filled with love—the vessel of life—everything is lost.
Care only that love be. Become so filled that nothing remains to be said, nothing remains to be asked. Become so quiet that not a single question mark remains within you. For the question mark is a kind of disease. A question pricks like a thorn. He whose heart is lined with question marks, with whys—he lives in hell. His life is a dream of sorrow.
Keep removing questions, dropping them. And many people have piled up utterly useless questions. Who created the world? What has that to do with you!
Therefore Mahavira did not ask the question, Who created the world? He said, It has always been—stop this nonsense about making. Because asking Who made it? will not solve anything. If I say A made it, you will ask, Who made A? Then B made A. You will ask, Who made B? Nothing will be resolved.
So Mahavira says: beginningless, endless. No one created it—do not get into this entanglement. His whole point is: do not get entangled. It is. Be content with that. Know its mystery; live its mystery. Do not make it a question—live it. Dive into it, descend into it. Let life not be a problem but a mystery. Let it not become a question, but a prayer. Life is not to be turned into a philosophy; life is to be made a temple of love.
Hence Mahavira said: do not ask this—From where has the soul come? Mahavira says: it has always been. Do not ask futile questions. All the wise have tried to cut away useless questions. If they have given answers, it is only so that you may be freed from useless questions. If they kept silent, it was also so that you might be freed from useless questions.
Buddha would not answer at all—if someone questioned, he would remain silent. He would say, You too become silent. In such silence I found; in silence you too will find.
When the mind is utterly still, raises no questions, then all doors open. Questions themselves are the locks fixed upon the doors of your life!
The urge to ask is like that. It’s a kind of itch. Ever had an itch? Just that sort of itch. Even when you don’t want to scratch, still the hand rises unknowingly and the scratching begins.
Now, the one who asked the question has, in the very first line, said that it should not be asked.
‘What question can I ask, and what answer can you give!’ For the moment, cleverness is holding. ‘You are both the question and the answer.’ Then the slip happened. He scratched the itch. ‘In love, should there be a question, an answer, or silence?’ The question surfaced after all!
We can try to be other than we are for a little while—a moment or two—and then we quickly relapse.
I have heard: Mulla Nasruddin’s wife was praising Mulla to the skies. Such lucky days are rare when a wife praises her husband! But Mulla was very afraid, because such good fortune usually means some mischief! She’ll make me spend money, or there must be some motive behind it. At last the motive became clear. The wife said, “Now that’s enough. You must search—find a boy for the girl. This year must not go empty.” Mulla said, “What can I do? I keep searching, but apart from donkeys I can’t find anyone!” The truth slipped from the wife’s mouth: “If my father had kept thinking like that, I would have remained unmarried!”
You can’t keep it up for long. Very soon the reality comes out. You did want to ask. Cleverness held for a little while—two lines it managed; in the third it limped, and you asked.
Understand this a little. Understand this about the mind. What a limping mind it is! If truly there was nothing to ask, there was no need to write this question at all. And if there was something to ask, there was no need to show off cleverness. Why nurture such a conflict? Why be double like this? In such doubleness there is danger. In this way you will break again and again, be torn into fragments. You will be something and display something else. You will speak something, while inside there will be something else. This is humanity’s greatest sorrow. If you need to ask, ask. If you don’t, then don’t. This see-sawing between the two is dangerous.
But since you ask: in love, is there the question, the answer, or silence? In love there is neither question, nor answer, nor silence. Love is neither silent nor speaking. Love is a great paradox. Love does not speak, because what should be said cannot come into words. And love is not silent either, because there is so much to say that cannot be spoken. So love is brimming over. It longs to flow. It wants to break the banks and shores.
Have you seen two lovers sitting close? They do not speak—not because there is nothing to say. They do not speak because there is too much to say—how to say it? And what there is to say is such that, if you speak it, it becomes soiled. Words make it ugly. It can only be communicated in silence. It can only be said by remaining quiet. But the silence is eloquent. Silence is a language.
Words are noise, a spectacle;
in the ocean of feeling they are sugar-candy that melts.
Do not speak the heart’s secret with your lips;
silence alone is the language of feeling.
Yet silence is a language. Silence too speaks—speaks with great depth. If you have never heard silence, you have heard nothing. You have remained unfamiliar with the music of life. Have you listened to the hush of night—how full of speech it is! In the trees there is no wind, no gusts, not even a leaf moves. Even in this very moment there is no breath of air, not a leaf is stirring—yet are the trees mute, quiet? The flowers are in bloom; they are speaking. There are no words, no noise—yet there is expression.
In China there is a saying: when a musician becomes completely skillful, he breaks his vina, for then the instrument begins to hinder the music. Even the notes of the vina start to feel like clamor. And when the archer becomes perfect in archery, he breaks his bow and arrows, because then they obstruct the mark.
Life’s ultimate peaks are peaks of paradox.
Words are noise, a spectacle;
in the ocean of feeling they are sugar-candy that melts.
Do not speak the heart’s secret with your lips;
silence alone is the language of feeling.
Weep—your tears will speak. Dance—your gestures will tell. Hum. Yesterday evening it so happened. Vani, a sannyasin, has come from Germany. I asked her, “Is there something you want to say?” And I felt she had so much to say; her heart was full. She had come from so far, and could stay only for a day or two. She cannot remain long. Every two or three months she rushes here. Even if time allows only two or three days, sometimes only a single day—she comes from Germany to Poona even for a single day! Once she stayed only five hours. So she comes to say something, to make some offering.
I asked, “Do you want to say anything?” She said, “No, nothing at all.” But on her face, in her eyes, in her heart, much was brimming. So I told her, “Well then, do not say it—be silent.” She closed her eyes, and she began to utter wordless sounds, as a tiny child of two or four months sobs and cries. A baby of two or four months knows no language, so whatever comes is babble, without meaning. Like a little child she began to sob, to cry. Broken, fragmented sounds without any meaning started coming out of her. In that moment she became a small child. In that moment she poured out her heart in a way that can never be poured through language—because language is very clever, of the intellect.
In the ocean of feeling they are sugar-candy that melts;
words are noise, a spectacle.
Do not speak the heart’s secret with your lips;
silence alone is the language of feeling.
Her language melted like sugar-candy into the ocean of feeling. Something began to boil; a soft humming began to rise. She herself did not know what was happening—beyond her power, beyond her control. As if some very pure language—as a human being might have spoken for the first time on the earth. Or as little children speak at the very beginning—anything—aba, baa, baa, baa... She began to utter such sounds. All broken.
But she said what had to be said. I heard what had to be heard. She was joined through feeling; she built a bridge.
Ah, the triumph of love’s vagabonds:
what if we are lost—at least we have found Him.
In that moment she was lost; but in that very losing she appeared. The lover loses himself and finds the Divine.
Ah, the triumph of love’s vagabonds—
such is the success of wandering love. Love is always a vagabond. Love has no house, because the whole existence is its home. Love is a nomad.
Ah, the triumph of love’s vagabonds:
what if we are lost—at least we have found Him.
The lover loses himself, and finds Him. Words are lost, the mind is lost, the ego is lost.
In the ocean of feeling they are sugar-candy that melts;
words are noise, a spectacle.
Do not speak the heart’s secret with your lips;
silence alone is the language of feeling.
Knowledge is only the intellect’s pastime;
meditation, so long as it is pageantry, is the court of pretense.
Do not uselessly bang your head on temples;
the only religion of man is love.
He who understands love has understood everything. You ask: In love, should there be questions, answers, or silence? In love let there be only love—that is enough. No answers, no questions, no silence. In love, only love—this is enough. Learn silence.
Hush, O heart—it is not good to shout in a full assembly.
Courtesy is the first refinement among the refinements of love.
Do not proclaim love by shouting. In shouting, love is destroyed. Love is a very delicate filament. It can be destroyed even by silence—let alone by speech! Love is a paradox. A paradox. There, speaking and not speaking meet. There, the finite and the infinite meet. There, the world and the divine touch each other. There, I and thou dissolve and melt. No—love has no questions. And love has no answers either. Love is enough.
Try to understand it this way. When you are happy, you never ask, Why am I happy? But when you are miserable you certainly ask, Why am I miserable? When you are healthy, do you go to the physician’s door to ask, Tell me, why am I healthy? But when you are ill you do go. You have to go and ask, Why am I ill? Illness requires that its cause be found. Has anyone ever sought the cause of health? Has anyone been able to say why a person is healthy? Till now no one has—not Ayurveda, not Allopathy, not Unani—no one has been able to say why a person is healthy. A person simply is healthy. Yes, where health is absent, there will be some cause. A spring flows. If it does not flow, some stone must be obstructing it. A seed sprouts, becomes a tree. If it does not sprout, does not become a tree, there must be some hindrance—the soil is stony, or there was no water. A child grows, matures, becomes youth. If he does not grow, something is wrong.
Bliss is natural. There are no questions for bliss. Suffering is unnatural. Suffering means: what should not have been. Happiness means: what ought to be. Happiness is that which we accept without seeking a cause. And suffering is that which we cannot accept even with a cause. Even if someone gives a cause—what use is it? You go to the doctor; he says you have cancer. Even if he tells you the reason why you have cancer—what is the point then? What will you do with the cause?
Happiness is accepted even without a cause. Sorrow is not accepted even with a cause. Therefore we have to search for the cause of sorrow—because unless the cause is known, how will we remove the sorrow? That which is to be removed, its cause must be found. That which is not to be removed, there is no need to look for its cause. One lives it.
Love is supreme health. Love is a glimpse of the divine in the mirror of your being. No one asks why love is. Love simply happens. It is accepted—an effortless acceptance. There is no answer, no question. Nothing to speak, and nothing can be spoken. But this does not mean love is a void. Love is a great fullness—the ultimate fullness. When the vessel is empty, there is sound. Half-full, there is sound. When the vessel is completely filled, sound disappears. In the same way, when someone is filled with love—the vessel of life—everything is lost.
Care only that love be. Become so filled that nothing remains to be said, nothing remains to be asked. Become so quiet that not a single question mark remains within you. For the question mark is a kind of disease. A question pricks like a thorn. He whose heart is lined with question marks, with whys—he lives in hell. His life is a dream of sorrow.
Keep removing questions, dropping them. And many people have piled up utterly useless questions. Who created the world? What has that to do with you!
Therefore Mahavira did not ask the question, Who created the world? He said, It has always been—stop this nonsense about making. Because asking Who made it? will not solve anything. If I say A made it, you will ask, Who made A? Then B made A. You will ask, Who made B? Nothing will be resolved.
So Mahavira says: beginningless, endless. No one created it—do not get into this entanglement. His whole point is: do not get entangled. It is. Be content with that. Know its mystery; live its mystery. Do not make it a question—live it. Dive into it, descend into it. Let life not be a problem but a mystery. Let it not become a question, but a prayer. Life is not to be turned into a philosophy; life is to be made a temple of love.
Hence Mahavira said: do not ask this—From where has the soul come? Mahavira says: it has always been. Do not ask futile questions. All the wise have tried to cut away useless questions. If they have given answers, it is only so that you may be freed from useless questions. If they kept silent, it was also so that you might be freed from useless questions.
Buddha would not answer at all—if someone questioned, he would remain silent. He would say, You too become silent. In such silence I found; in silence you too will find.
When the mind is utterly still, raises no questions, then all doors open. Questions themselves are the locks fixed upon the doors of your life!
Fifth question:
Osho, while listening to you, many times you begin to appear colorful, and yet like an emptiness. The wall behind your chair also looks colorful, and I become filled with a strange joy. What is all this?
Osho, while listening to you, many times you begin to appear colorful, and yet like an emptiness. The wall behind your chair also looks colorful, and I become filled with a strange joy. What is all this?
In life we hardly accept anything simply.
There was a great painter, Picasso. He was painting. Someone asked, What is this? Picasso slapped his own head and said, Nobody goes and asks the flowers, nobody asks the birds—why are you after me? No one asks the rainbows, What is it? Why?
There is meaning in Picasso’s words. He is saying: This is the arising of my joy. What it is, why it is—I don’t know.
There was a great Western thinker-poet, Coleridge. A professor asked him, I teach your poetry in the university, but the meanings slip from my grasp. What is the meaning? Coleridge said, You’ve come a little late. When I wrote it, two people knew the meaning. Now only one knows. The professor said, Surely that one is you. You wrote the poem—at least tell me. Coleridge said, That one is not me. When I wrote it, God and I knew. Now only God knows. Now even I don’t. I myself wonder what it means; many times I am amazed. Good you’ve come; many times I thought I should go and ask the university professors—they are the ones who explain meanings to people!
If while listening to me you experience an aura around me, why must you immediately make it into a question? Why the compulsion to seek an answer? Isn’t it enough to drink that aura, to sink into it, to be absorbed? If you see a rainbow of colors around me, why do you hastily turn it into a question? A question means doubt. To be without questions means trust.
If there is trust in your mind, you will accept what you see: All right, it is so, a rainbow has arisen. And you will be delighted, and your delight will be boundless. You will be exhilarated; you will begin to fly to some faraway world. In a new sky your wings will open. But instantly the question arises: Who knows what this is? Some trick? Some magic? Have I been hypnotized? Is it my imagination? Am I dreaming? But have you ever noticed—when you make it a question, the rainbow will not stay for you. While you are forming the question, the rainbow vanishes. The window that opened for a moment and gave a possibility of a transcendental glimpse—you missed it. You remained standing in thought.
Protect yourself a little from questions. In your free time, ask them—when nothing is happening in life, ask as many questions as you like. But when something is happening, don’t bring the question in between. Because it raises a wall. That very wall becomes a curtain over your eyes. What is, is. Do not circle around facts; enter into them.
This silvery shade, this net of stars across the sky—
like a Sufi’s reverie, like a lover’s thought.
Ah, but who knows, who understands the heart’s state?
O grief of heart, what shall I do? O wildness of heart, what shall I do?
This silvery shade, this net of stars across the sky—like a Sufi’s tasavvur, like a Sufi sunk in the intoxication of meditation; like a lover’s vision, as one absorbed in the feeling of his beloved. So it is. This silvery shade, this net of stars in the sky. All this is mysterious—the supreme mystery. Do not raise questions. Slowly taste the mystery. Savor it. You will be surprised. If, while I sit here, for a moment I disappear for you and a web of colors appears, do not raise a question then—that is not a moment for questioning. It is a moment to go down into those colors. Ask later, tomorrow. Tell the mind, We’ll think later; for now let us taste. And in that very taste the answer will be revealed. Tomorrow there will be no need to ask.
And once you learn the knack of entering those colors—if you descend even a single step into this depth—then you won’t need to see those colors only around me. If you look at any tree with the same peace and love with which you looked at me, then around that tree too a sea of colors will begin to surge. It is surging; you lack the eyes. Existence is veiled by no curtain; only you are blind. Even by a small flower you will see dimensions of aura opening. Once you understand that to look at anyone with quietude and love is essential for seeing truth, then you will see as it is. Until now you have seen very little. You have seen as if many curtains had been hung and behind them the lamp is hidden, and only tiny rays manage to reach you. As each curtain is removed, the net of rays grows.
When, in looking at me, there is suddenly an explosion of aura, when colored waves spread all around, it simply means that in that moment there are very few curtains over your eyes. Do not now raise questions to weave new curtains. Say to the questions: Out of the way! In free time, when nothing is happening, we’ll wrestle with you. Now let it be. The call has come. Let us enter this rainbow. Let us drown. Let us take the plunge. We’ll ask questions in empty hours; do not waste a meaningful moment in questioning. For the moment the question stands up, you will find the colors begin to fade. The question has raised doubt again. The very meaning of question is doubt. The question arises out of doubt.
A question does not arise from trust. Trust silently accepts. Trust is so vast that whatever happens, it is not startled. Even if the unusual happens, it accepts. Trust has no boundary. Doubt is very small, petty, mean. If something occurs a little beyond the limits of doubt, doubt becomes restless, upset. No—these are not the moments to raise doubt. And if you do not raise it at such moments, then your very tasting will become the answer.
I lay my life at your feet—
I do not know what has happened.
This is the state of trust. When a rainbow arises near me, lay your life down.
I lay my life at your feet—
I do not know what has happened.
There is no need to know. Let what is happening, happen. Who has ever known truth by knowing-about? The knowers fell far behind. The knowers got lost in books. The knowers drowned in questions and died. No—no one has known by knowing. Lose yourself, efface yourself, melt. This is the meaning of satsang.
As in the morning, in the presence of the sun, ice begins to melt—so in someone’s presence you begin to melt: satsang. I am present here; if you are ready to come even a little closer, you will melt. From that melting, new happenings will take place. New ripples, new surges will rise. New colors, new fragrances, new tastes. You will find as if you begin to spread, to grow, to become vast.
Those who have deeply researched chemical substances—LSD, marijuana, and others—say that under their influence the curtain over man’s eyes is removed. Aldous Huxley, a great American thinker, wrote that when he first took LSD he was astonished. Before him stood an ordinary chair. But as the effect deepened, colors began to burst from the chair—astonishing colors, unknown, unfamiliar; colors never seen before—not merely ordinary, but luminous, with beams of radiance streaming from within the colors themselves.
He was amazed. He squinted, he shook himself, splashed cold water on his face—nothing helped; the chair kept becoming more and more colorful. He looked around—everything was colorful: books, table, doors. His wife walked in. He has written in his memoirs: the sound of her footsteps—such music I had never heard. I looked at my wife—never had I seen such radiance. Now, to see beauty in one’s own wife is very difficult! In another’s wife it is very easy; in one’s own—very difficult.
Mulla Nasruddin was being conscripted into the army—by force. He was trying to escape. All the tests were done; he was healthy in every way—how to get out? Finally he said, My eyes are bad. The doctor asked, Do you have any proof that your eyes are bad? He pulled a photograph from his pocket and said, Look—this is my wife’s photo. It is clear from this that my eyes are bad. Who would marry this woman!
Aldous Huxley saw radiant beauty in his own wife. When the intoxication wore off, all was gone. He was so impressed by LSD that he spent his life trying to show that the Vedic soma was LSD. He even tried to prove that in the future, what happened to Mahavira, Buddha, Kabir, Meera, Christ will not require twenty or thirty years of practice. Those were bullock-cart roads—very long. Now it is the jet age. LSD is the sadhana of the future.
He was that impressed: Life so colorful, so incandescent, so musical, so radiant! So certainly LSD must be doing something. LSD does nothing. And nothing real is going to happen through LSD. LSD only knocks down the curtain over your eyes with a jerk. But the curtain comes back, because the cause of the curtain is not removed by LSD.
It is as if someone forcibly opens a sleeping man’s eyes, pulling up the lids. For a moment the eyes open—he sees something—then they close again. A sleeping man is a sleeping man. And if you take LSD again and again, day after day the colors will diminish. As a medicine loses its effect, so does a drug. Then a larger dose is needed; the old dose no longer works. A day will come when nothing will happen from LSD. If you force open a man’s eyes at midnight every day, on the first day he may startle and see a little; on the second day he will see less; on the third, even less. After a month, you can open his eyes—they will remain open, and he will see nothing. He has become accustomed.
The influence of intoxicants over human beings has persisted because through them one gets a glimpse—however slight—of mystery. The effect of intoxication is not without cause.
And all the spiritual teachers of the world have urged people to avoid intoxicants—and that too is right. Because intoxication deceives. It does not give truth; it gives a false glimpse of truth.
Here, if while listening to me, sitting near me with a heart full of prayer and meditation, the curtain over your eyes shifts, do not raise questions then. Let the curtain fall away completely. Take a leap and go in. Become a part of that rainbow. Lose yourself in that radiance. Perhaps when you return you will never again be the one you were. Perhaps you will return new. Perhaps around you too the same spread of colors, the same flood of colors will begin to be experienced.
God is the name of seeing all the colors of life. The name of seeing the total form of life. The name of living fully the supremely delightful, miraculous form of life. God is not the search for serious, sad faces; he is the search for those who dance and sing.
Enough for today.
There was a great painter, Picasso. He was painting. Someone asked, What is this? Picasso slapped his own head and said, Nobody goes and asks the flowers, nobody asks the birds—why are you after me? No one asks the rainbows, What is it? Why?
There is meaning in Picasso’s words. He is saying: This is the arising of my joy. What it is, why it is—I don’t know.
There was a great Western thinker-poet, Coleridge. A professor asked him, I teach your poetry in the university, but the meanings slip from my grasp. What is the meaning? Coleridge said, You’ve come a little late. When I wrote it, two people knew the meaning. Now only one knows. The professor said, Surely that one is you. You wrote the poem—at least tell me. Coleridge said, That one is not me. When I wrote it, God and I knew. Now only God knows. Now even I don’t. I myself wonder what it means; many times I am amazed. Good you’ve come; many times I thought I should go and ask the university professors—they are the ones who explain meanings to people!
If while listening to me you experience an aura around me, why must you immediately make it into a question? Why the compulsion to seek an answer? Isn’t it enough to drink that aura, to sink into it, to be absorbed? If you see a rainbow of colors around me, why do you hastily turn it into a question? A question means doubt. To be without questions means trust.
If there is trust in your mind, you will accept what you see: All right, it is so, a rainbow has arisen. And you will be delighted, and your delight will be boundless. You will be exhilarated; you will begin to fly to some faraway world. In a new sky your wings will open. But instantly the question arises: Who knows what this is? Some trick? Some magic? Have I been hypnotized? Is it my imagination? Am I dreaming? But have you ever noticed—when you make it a question, the rainbow will not stay for you. While you are forming the question, the rainbow vanishes. The window that opened for a moment and gave a possibility of a transcendental glimpse—you missed it. You remained standing in thought.
Protect yourself a little from questions. In your free time, ask them—when nothing is happening in life, ask as many questions as you like. But when something is happening, don’t bring the question in between. Because it raises a wall. That very wall becomes a curtain over your eyes. What is, is. Do not circle around facts; enter into them.
This silvery shade, this net of stars across the sky—
like a Sufi’s reverie, like a lover’s thought.
Ah, but who knows, who understands the heart’s state?
O grief of heart, what shall I do? O wildness of heart, what shall I do?
This silvery shade, this net of stars across the sky—like a Sufi’s tasavvur, like a Sufi sunk in the intoxication of meditation; like a lover’s vision, as one absorbed in the feeling of his beloved. So it is. This silvery shade, this net of stars in the sky. All this is mysterious—the supreme mystery. Do not raise questions. Slowly taste the mystery. Savor it. You will be surprised. If, while I sit here, for a moment I disappear for you and a web of colors appears, do not raise a question then—that is not a moment for questioning. It is a moment to go down into those colors. Ask later, tomorrow. Tell the mind, We’ll think later; for now let us taste. And in that very taste the answer will be revealed. Tomorrow there will be no need to ask.
And once you learn the knack of entering those colors—if you descend even a single step into this depth—then you won’t need to see those colors only around me. If you look at any tree with the same peace and love with which you looked at me, then around that tree too a sea of colors will begin to surge. It is surging; you lack the eyes. Existence is veiled by no curtain; only you are blind. Even by a small flower you will see dimensions of aura opening. Once you understand that to look at anyone with quietude and love is essential for seeing truth, then you will see as it is. Until now you have seen very little. You have seen as if many curtains had been hung and behind them the lamp is hidden, and only tiny rays manage to reach you. As each curtain is removed, the net of rays grows.
When, in looking at me, there is suddenly an explosion of aura, when colored waves spread all around, it simply means that in that moment there are very few curtains over your eyes. Do not now raise questions to weave new curtains. Say to the questions: Out of the way! In free time, when nothing is happening, we’ll wrestle with you. Now let it be. The call has come. Let us enter this rainbow. Let us drown. Let us take the plunge. We’ll ask questions in empty hours; do not waste a meaningful moment in questioning. For the moment the question stands up, you will find the colors begin to fade. The question has raised doubt again. The very meaning of question is doubt. The question arises out of doubt.
A question does not arise from trust. Trust silently accepts. Trust is so vast that whatever happens, it is not startled. Even if the unusual happens, it accepts. Trust has no boundary. Doubt is very small, petty, mean. If something occurs a little beyond the limits of doubt, doubt becomes restless, upset. No—these are not the moments to raise doubt. And if you do not raise it at such moments, then your very tasting will become the answer.
I lay my life at your feet—
I do not know what has happened.
This is the state of trust. When a rainbow arises near me, lay your life down.
I lay my life at your feet—
I do not know what has happened.
There is no need to know. Let what is happening, happen. Who has ever known truth by knowing-about? The knowers fell far behind. The knowers got lost in books. The knowers drowned in questions and died. No—no one has known by knowing. Lose yourself, efface yourself, melt. This is the meaning of satsang.
As in the morning, in the presence of the sun, ice begins to melt—so in someone’s presence you begin to melt: satsang. I am present here; if you are ready to come even a little closer, you will melt. From that melting, new happenings will take place. New ripples, new surges will rise. New colors, new fragrances, new tastes. You will find as if you begin to spread, to grow, to become vast.
Those who have deeply researched chemical substances—LSD, marijuana, and others—say that under their influence the curtain over man’s eyes is removed. Aldous Huxley, a great American thinker, wrote that when he first took LSD he was astonished. Before him stood an ordinary chair. But as the effect deepened, colors began to burst from the chair—astonishing colors, unknown, unfamiliar; colors never seen before—not merely ordinary, but luminous, with beams of radiance streaming from within the colors themselves.
He was amazed. He squinted, he shook himself, splashed cold water on his face—nothing helped; the chair kept becoming more and more colorful. He looked around—everything was colorful: books, table, doors. His wife walked in. He has written in his memoirs: the sound of her footsteps—such music I had never heard. I looked at my wife—never had I seen such radiance. Now, to see beauty in one’s own wife is very difficult! In another’s wife it is very easy; in one’s own—very difficult.
Mulla Nasruddin was being conscripted into the army—by force. He was trying to escape. All the tests were done; he was healthy in every way—how to get out? Finally he said, My eyes are bad. The doctor asked, Do you have any proof that your eyes are bad? He pulled a photograph from his pocket and said, Look—this is my wife’s photo. It is clear from this that my eyes are bad. Who would marry this woman!
Aldous Huxley saw radiant beauty in his own wife. When the intoxication wore off, all was gone. He was so impressed by LSD that he spent his life trying to show that the Vedic soma was LSD. He even tried to prove that in the future, what happened to Mahavira, Buddha, Kabir, Meera, Christ will not require twenty or thirty years of practice. Those were bullock-cart roads—very long. Now it is the jet age. LSD is the sadhana of the future.
He was that impressed: Life so colorful, so incandescent, so musical, so radiant! So certainly LSD must be doing something. LSD does nothing. And nothing real is going to happen through LSD. LSD only knocks down the curtain over your eyes with a jerk. But the curtain comes back, because the cause of the curtain is not removed by LSD.
It is as if someone forcibly opens a sleeping man’s eyes, pulling up the lids. For a moment the eyes open—he sees something—then they close again. A sleeping man is a sleeping man. And if you take LSD again and again, day after day the colors will diminish. As a medicine loses its effect, so does a drug. Then a larger dose is needed; the old dose no longer works. A day will come when nothing will happen from LSD. If you force open a man’s eyes at midnight every day, on the first day he may startle and see a little; on the second day he will see less; on the third, even less. After a month, you can open his eyes—they will remain open, and he will see nothing. He has become accustomed.
The influence of intoxicants over human beings has persisted because through them one gets a glimpse—however slight—of mystery. The effect of intoxication is not without cause.
And all the spiritual teachers of the world have urged people to avoid intoxicants—and that too is right. Because intoxication deceives. It does not give truth; it gives a false glimpse of truth.
Here, if while listening to me, sitting near me with a heart full of prayer and meditation, the curtain over your eyes shifts, do not raise questions then. Let the curtain fall away completely. Take a leap and go in. Become a part of that rainbow. Lose yourself in that radiance. Perhaps when you return you will never again be the one you were. Perhaps you will return new. Perhaps around you too the same spread of colors, the same flood of colors will begin to be experienced.
God is the name of seeing all the colors of life. The name of seeing the total form of life. The name of living fully the supremely delightful, miraculous form of life. God is not the search for serious, sad faces; he is the search for those who dance and sing.
Enough for today.