Should I keep waiting for the waters to become clear?

Osho, I have been listening to you for years. I have been with you a long time. From time to time I have heard many different statements from you, even mutually contradictory ones, yet no question has ever arisen in my mind about them. And in spite of them you have always remained one and indivisible in my vision and in my heart. Kindly shed some light on this.

You can be with me in two ways: through thought and intellect, or through the heart and feeling. If you are with me through the intellect and thought, there will be great difficulty. Day after day you will find contradictory statements. Every day you will have to sort them out, and still you will not succeed. The intellect never really resolves anything. Even where things are simple, the intellect tangles them up. And my words are very tangled. Even where everything is clear, the intellect creates problems. And I speak of paths filled with mist. Even if there were only one path, the intellect would find contradictions; here there are countless paths—contradictions upon contradictions. There is hardly a statement I have not refuted a thousand times. So if you are with me through the intellect, only two things are possible: either you will go mad and drop the intellect, or…

For the last twelve years I have been waiting for the waters of my mind to clear, but the carts of situations and surroundings keep passing through them constantly. This will go on throughout life. Should I still keep waiting?

Waiting is important, necessary, but not enough. Together with awaiting one should know how to sit at the bank of the stream of the mind. If we sit in the current of the river and wait, there will be no results. Our very being in the river will bring up the dirt. The art of standing aside from the river is meditation. Awaiting is a necessary part of meditation but it, in itself, is not meditation. He who cannot wait cannot meditate; but he who thinks awaiting is meditation is also wrong. Meditation is the art of sitting on the bank. The mind has its own stream of thoughts. No matter how hard you try to watch it with patient awaiting, you shall never be able to step out of the mind. Nor will the stream of the mind clear. Your very presence pollutes the mind. Step out of the…

You made me altogether confused and lethargic. I am like mad. At the moment I feel no trust even. Now tell me what should I do? Where should I go?

A madman can never know that he is mad. Go to the madhouse, inquire. No madman can say, "I am mad." Every madman believes that except him the whole world is mad -- that is the definition of madness. You can never come across a madman who says. "I am mad." If he has that much wisdom to say that he is mad, he is already a wise man; he is no longer mad. Madness never accepts. Mad people are very. very reluctant. Even to go to the doctor they are reluctant: they say, "Why? For what? Am I mad? There is no need -- I am perfectly right. You can go." Mulla Nasrudin went to a psychiatrist and he said. "Now something must be done -- things have gone beyond me. My wife has gone completely mad, and she thinks that she has become a refrigerator." Even the psychiatrist…

But slowly slowly it is going to happen... I can see it happening. You are going perfectly well; just don't be impatient. There are a few things which grow only in patience. In the soil of patience the greatest flowers bloom. And the flower of non-doing, wu-wei, is unique. It is the whole secret of tao: speaking without speaking, doing without doing, walking without walking, being without being. Then all is quiet and all is silence and all is joy. You have disappeared: god is. As a doer, you are: god is not. It is not accidental that in the modern world god has disappeared, because for the first time man has become too obsessed with doing -- technology, methodology, science: do this, do that. We have created such a smoke of doing around ourselves that it is impossible for god to exist.

Beloved Osho, there is a confusion in me that keeps coming again and again. The message I have got from you more and more is to relax with myself, to watch and wait, but I also feel this urgency to wake up now; and then another part screams, "but how?" what do I need to do? Do I need to `push' myself through this wall? Could you make this clear to me?

And your urgency is simply another name for impatience. You are hiding your impatience behind a beautiful word, urgency. What urgency is there? You cannot force things to happen before their time. The spring will come and the flowers will blossom, but you cannot force the spring. The rain will come, the clouds will cover the sky, the whole thirst of the earth will be gone -- but you cannot force it, you have to be patient. And this is the beauty, that the more patient you are, the quicker is the coming of the spring. If you can be absolutely patient, this very moment spring can come. Your urgency is creating a trouble for you because it is making you more and more confused, more and more restless, in a hurry. I can understand; the whole Western tradition has taught you only one thing, and that is speed. I…