Chapter 1 : Sutra 2
(Conceived of as) nameless, it is the origin of heaven and earth; the named is the mother of all things.
Existence is Nameless.
Tao Upanishad #2
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Read in Original Hindi (मूल हिन्दी)
Sutra (Original)
Chapter 1 : Sutra 2
(Conceived of as) having no name, it is the originator of heaven and earth; the named is the mother of all things.
(Conceived of as) having no name, it is the originator of heaven and earth; the named is the mother of all things.
Transliteration:
Chapter 1 : Sutra 2
(Conceived of as) having no name, it is the originator of heaven and earth; the named is the mother of all things.
Chapter 1 : Sutra 2
(Conceived of as) having no name, it is the originator of heaven and earth; the named is the mother of all things.
Translation (Meaning)
Questions in this Discourse
Osho, why has this silent experience of the Nameless been given dualistic names like Heaven and Earth, or consciousness and matter? Why has nonduality not been expressed?
Expression can only be of duality; nonduality remains inexpressible. So, at the most, in speaking, what can be done is two—in speech. The nearest to truth that speech can come is two—in speech. Outside speaking, only one remains. But language cannot say anything without breaking it into two.
If Lao Tzu is speaking, writing, he is committing the minimum mistake possible. Nothing more accurate can be done with words. And even if we want to deny this, we will still have to use words. Then we say “nondual”—not two. Yet to say “not two” we still use the two. Even to say “not,” one has to say it. The two will follow us. As long as we make the effort to speak, the two will follow us. Leave speaking, and the one remains.
You may say, “Why don’t we just say ‘one’?” But we don’t notice what happens. The moment you say “one,” immediately the thought of “two” arises. It is hard to find a person who says “one” and does not evoke the idea of “two”—in others or within himself. In truth, “one” has no meaning if “two” does not exist. “One” serves only as a step to reach “two,” nothing more.
Lao Tzu uses two because in words the maximum you can say is two. The many can be reduced—reduced—to two. Beyond that lies the wordless realm. Beyond that, not even as much as Lao Tzu says can be said. Not even “it is the One, the Nameless.” No expression can be given for that One. Whatever we say, the moment it is said, becomes two.
It is almost as if you put a stick into water and it appears bent. It doesn’t become bent; it appears so. If it actually became bent, there would be no problem—the bentness would be true. It doesn’t become bent; it only appears so. Take it out and it is straight again. It does not become straight; it always was. Put it back in the water, it appears bent again. And the person who has seen this a thousand times—when he puts it in the water the one-thousand-and-first time—should not hope, “I am so experienced now, it will no longer look bent.” It will look bent. Experience will give only this benefit: he will not believe that it is bent. It will still appear bent.
Just as in water the law of refraction applies, the rays change speed and bend, so the stick appears bent; in the same way, the moment you immerse truth in language, the refraction changes—and even a word that tries to say “one,” once it enters language, gets bent and begins to suggest “two.”
Lao Tzu knows that what he is saying is dual. But there is no other way. Even if Lao Tzu keeps silent and still wishes to convey, duality will arise. The very attempt to express creates duality.
Understand! Many times this has happened.
Someone went to Sheikh Farid and said, “Say something to me! But say only what is true—let there not be even a speck of untruth. Tell me that very truth to which the saints have pointed and said, ‘It cannot be told.’ Tell me that truth which is wordless.” What did Farid say? Farid said, “I certainly will—but first fashion your question in such a way that it has no words. Ask in the wordless, and I will answer in the wordless. But don’t do me this injustice: you ask in words and expect me to answer in silence. Go, make your question wordless. I promise I will answer in silence.”
The man went away. It was difficult. He thought and thought—for years. Sometimes Farid would pass through his village and knock at his door: “Well, brother, what of your question? Have you made it yet?” The man would say, “I try very hard, but without words the question will not form.” “Try more,” Farid would say. “When your effort is complete and you have made a wordless question, come to me. I have the answer ready.”
The man died; Farid also died. The man never went back to Farid; no one ever heard Farid’s answer. As Farid lay dying someone asked, “You have that prepared answer; the man is not coming—tell it to us, we are eager to hear!” Farid sat silent. They pleaded, “Please tell us!” Farid remained silent. They said, “Please—this is your last hour; the answer may go with you.” Farid said, “I am telling it—I am silent. That is my answer. But even if I say this much, that I am answering by silence, duality is created. It would mean ‘it can be told by silence and not without silence.’ Duality stands up, a distinction is made. So don’t make me say that I am answering through silence; I am silence—understand, and do not raise words.”
But how can one understand by silence alone?
Lao Tzu wrote only one book, and that too at the very end of his life. He had never written a book. All his life people pressed him—from ordinary folk to emperors—“Lao Tzu, write down your experience.” Lao Tzu would laugh and evade them. He would say, “Who has ever been able to write it? Do not push me into that foolishness. People have tried before. Those who know laugh at their attempts, for they failed. Those who do not know take their failures to be truth. Do not make me commit this error. Those who know will laugh at me: ‘Look, Lao Tzu too is doing the same—saying what cannot be said, writing what cannot be written.’ I will not do it.”
He kept refusing all his life. When death began to approach, the pressure of friends and the insistence of disciples grew heavy. Lao Tzu truly had great treasure—very few have had such wealth, very few have seen and known so deeply. Naturally, the insistence around him was justified: “Lao Tzu, write!”
When the insistence became too much and death did not yet appear, Lao Tzu slipped away one night—fleeing from those who were behind him: “Write! Speak! Say!” In the morning the disciples found his cottage empty. The bird had flown; the cage stood vacant. They were in a quandary. The emperor was informed, and Lao Tzu was stopped at the border. The emperor sent officers who detained him at the customs post where China ended. They said, “By order of the emperor, you cannot leave without paying the duty.” Lao Tzu said, “I am not taking anything for which I must pay duty! Why should I pay a tax? I am taking nothing.” The emperor sent word: “No man has ever tried to carry more wealth out of this land than you. Stay at the customs post and write down what you know.”
This book was written at that customs post. “Write it, and you may leave the country; otherwise you may not.” Under compulsion, under police guard, the book was written. Lao Tzu said, “All right. I have to go; I will write something.”
This Tao Te Ching is a unique book. No book has ever been written in this way. Lao Tzu was running away to avoid writing this very book. The emperor seems harsh; yet there was compassion too. Had this book not been! Others like Lao Tzu have existed who did not write. But what good does that do either? Those who don’t write at least attract no controversy; those who do write become controversial. We analyze each of their words for meaning—while the meaning lies outside the words. If ever there is a final accounting for humankind, it will be hard to say whether the wise will be counted among those who wrote or those who did not. Either way, whichever you choose, it is a choice within duality. Some choose silence against writing; some choose writing against silence. There is no escaping duality.
So when Lao Tzu uses words, duality will arise. That is why he knowingly says that the Nameless is the progenitor of Heaven and Earth, and the Named is the source of the myriad things.
Duality inevitably comes with words. Yet in the hope that, by means of words, one might be nudged toward the wordless, people like Lao Tzu use words. This is possible—because duality only appears; it is not. If it were, there would be no possibility.
Understand this: here I pluck a single string of a veena and let it go. Sound is born in this hall, it resonates, then slowly the sound begins to dissolve into silence. Can you tell the exact moment when the sound ends and silence begins? Can you draw a line and say, “Up to here the veena’s tone resounded, and beyond this it ceased”? Can you clearly draw a boundary between sound and no-sound? Or will you find that sound is lost in silence; the word becomes the void? If, with the plucked string of the veena, you attune the string of your mind, and as the audible tone falls into silence you too fall into that very silence, then soon you will find that by the support of sound you have reached soundlessness, by the support of the word you have reached the wordless.
It is in this hope that Lao Tzu, or Buddha, or Mahavira, or Krishna, or Christ speak—the hope that, perhaps with the support of their words, they may gently lead you into silence. As a device.
Buddha kept saying, “Whatever I speak is not to say what is, but to take you there.” Not to say what is—for that cannot be said. But you can be taken to where it is. Perhaps hearing my words you will set out on that journey, turn your face toward that dimension; perhaps one day you will fall into that great chasm, that abyss, where the Ultimate is witnessed.
But duality will enter everyone’s language. Buddha speaks of samsara and nirvana—duality. Mahavira speaks of matter and soul—duality. As for Shankara—he does not admit duality, yet without speaking of maya and Brahman nothing works. He says, “There are not two,” and still he must speak of maya and Brahman. For if there are not two, then what is he telling people? From what are we to be freed, if there are not two? If Brahman alone is, then we are already That—where is there to go? what is there to reach? what is there to do? So Shankara too must free you from something: ignorance, maya, avidya—then two stand up. Shankara was in a difficult spot—what to do?
Therefore Mahavira said plainly: there are two; let us proceed on that assumption. When the two disappear, you yourself will know there is One; we need not discuss it. Let us discuss only the two, and through the discussion of the two, take you to where both drop. Shankara said, “We will discuss only the One.” But he too landed in difficulty and had to discuss the two. Those who discussed the two, they too had to hint at the One.
Buddha says, “Leave the world, attain nirvana,” and in his final statement he says, “Samsara and nirvana are one.” This startled everyone. For two thousand years this statement has been a cause of restlessness for Buddhist monks and seekers. “Samsara is nirvana!” What could be more difficult than this? If samsara is nirvana, where then is there to go? what to leave? what to attain? Some Buddhist paths therefore deny that this statement could be Buddha’s—for Buddha says, “Leave the world and attain nirvana”; how could he call both one? They simply deny that it is his.
But those who know say, “This is precisely Buddha’s statement; the rest can be left.” When Buddha came to know, no difference remained between samsara and nirvana; then body and soul are not distinct; maya and Brahman are one; bondage and freedom are two forms of the same thing—bondage and freedom! But that is experience; the expression immediately becomes two.
To give expression, Lao Tzu says: Heaven and Earth, matter and consciousness.
If Lao Tzu is speaking, writing, he is committing the minimum mistake possible. Nothing more accurate can be done with words. And even if we want to deny this, we will still have to use words. Then we say “nondual”—not two. Yet to say “not two” we still use the two. Even to say “not,” one has to say it. The two will follow us. As long as we make the effort to speak, the two will follow us. Leave speaking, and the one remains.
You may say, “Why don’t we just say ‘one’?” But we don’t notice what happens. The moment you say “one,” immediately the thought of “two” arises. It is hard to find a person who says “one” and does not evoke the idea of “two”—in others or within himself. In truth, “one” has no meaning if “two” does not exist. “One” serves only as a step to reach “two,” nothing more.
Lao Tzu uses two because in words the maximum you can say is two. The many can be reduced—reduced—to two. Beyond that lies the wordless realm. Beyond that, not even as much as Lao Tzu says can be said. Not even “it is the One, the Nameless.” No expression can be given for that One. Whatever we say, the moment it is said, becomes two.
It is almost as if you put a stick into water and it appears bent. It doesn’t become bent; it appears so. If it actually became bent, there would be no problem—the bentness would be true. It doesn’t become bent; it only appears so. Take it out and it is straight again. It does not become straight; it always was. Put it back in the water, it appears bent again. And the person who has seen this a thousand times—when he puts it in the water the one-thousand-and-first time—should not hope, “I am so experienced now, it will no longer look bent.” It will look bent. Experience will give only this benefit: he will not believe that it is bent. It will still appear bent.
Just as in water the law of refraction applies, the rays change speed and bend, so the stick appears bent; in the same way, the moment you immerse truth in language, the refraction changes—and even a word that tries to say “one,” once it enters language, gets bent and begins to suggest “two.”
Lao Tzu knows that what he is saying is dual. But there is no other way. Even if Lao Tzu keeps silent and still wishes to convey, duality will arise. The very attempt to express creates duality.
Understand! Many times this has happened.
Someone went to Sheikh Farid and said, “Say something to me! But say only what is true—let there not be even a speck of untruth. Tell me that very truth to which the saints have pointed and said, ‘It cannot be told.’ Tell me that truth which is wordless.” What did Farid say? Farid said, “I certainly will—but first fashion your question in such a way that it has no words. Ask in the wordless, and I will answer in the wordless. But don’t do me this injustice: you ask in words and expect me to answer in silence. Go, make your question wordless. I promise I will answer in silence.”
The man went away. It was difficult. He thought and thought—for years. Sometimes Farid would pass through his village and knock at his door: “Well, brother, what of your question? Have you made it yet?” The man would say, “I try very hard, but without words the question will not form.” “Try more,” Farid would say. “When your effort is complete and you have made a wordless question, come to me. I have the answer ready.”
The man died; Farid also died. The man never went back to Farid; no one ever heard Farid’s answer. As Farid lay dying someone asked, “You have that prepared answer; the man is not coming—tell it to us, we are eager to hear!” Farid sat silent. They pleaded, “Please tell us!” Farid remained silent. They said, “Please—this is your last hour; the answer may go with you.” Farid said, “I am telling it—I am silent. That is my answer. But even if I say this much, that I am answering by silence, duality is created. It would mean ‘it can be told by silence and not without silence.’ Duality stands up, a distinction is made. So don’t make me say that I am answering through silence; I am silence—understand, and do not raise words.”
But how can one understand by silence alone?
Lao Tzu wrote only one book, and that too at the very end of his life. He had never written a book. All his life people pressed him—from ordinary folk to emperors—“Lao Tzu, write down your experience.” Lao Tzu would laugh and evade them. He would say, “Who has ever been able to write it? Do not push me into that foolishness. People have tried before. Those who know laugh at their attempts, for they failed. Those who do not know take their failures to be truth. Do not make me commit this error. Those who know will laugh at me: ‘Look, Lao Tzu too is doing the same—saying what cannot be said, writing what cannot be written.’ I will not do it.”
He kept refusing all his life. When death began to approach, the pressure of friends and the insistence of disciples grew heavy. Lao Tzu truly had great treasure—very few have had such wealth, very few have seen and known so deeply. Naturally, the insistence around him was justified: “Lao Tzu, write!”
When the insistence became too much and death did not yet appear, Lao Tzu slipped away one night—fleeing from those who were behind him: “Write! Speak! Say!” In the morning the disciples found his cottage empty. The bird had flown; the cage stood vacant. They were in a quandary. The emperor was informed, and Lao Tzu was stopped at the border. The emperor sent officers who detained him at the customs post where China ended. They said, “By order of the emperor, you cannot leave without paying the duty.” Lao Tzu said, “I am not taking anything for which I must pay duty! Why should I pay a tax? I am taking nothing.” The emperor sent word: “No man has ever tried to carry more wealth out of this land than you. Stay at the customs post and write down what you know.”
This book was written at that customs post. “Write it, and you may leave the country; otherwise you may not.” Under compulsion, under police guard, the book was written. Lao Tzu said, “All right. I have to go; I will write something.”
This Tao Te Ching is a unique book. No book has ever been written in this way. Lao Tzu was running away to avoid writing this very book. The emperor seems harsh; yet there was compassion too. Had this book not been! Others like Lao Tzu have existed who did not write. But what good does that do either? Those who don’t write at least attract no controversy; those who do write become controversial. We analyze each of their words for meaning—while the meaning lies outside the words. If ever there is a final accounting for humankind, it will be hard to say whether the wise will be counted among those who wrote or those who did not. Either way, whichever you choose, it is a choice within duality. Some choose silence against writing; some choose writing against silence. There is no escaping duality.
So when Lao Tzu uses words, duality will arise. That is why he knowingly says that the Nameless is the progenitor of Heaven and Earth, and the Named is the source of the myriad things.
Duality inevitably comes with words. Yet in the hope that, by means of words, one might be nudged toward the wordless, people like Lao Tzu use words. This is possible—because duality only appears; it is not. If it were, there would be no possibility.
Understand this: here I pluck a single string of a veena and let it go. Sound is born in this hall, it resonates, then slowly the sound begins to dissolve into silence. Can you tell the exact moment when the sound ends and silence begins? Can you draw a line and say, “Up to here the veena’s tone resounded, and beyond this it ceased”? Can you clearly draw a boundary between sound and no-sound? Or will you find that sound is lost in silence; the word becomes the void? If, with the plucked string of the veena, you attune the string of your mind, and as the audible tone falls into silence you too fall into that very silence, then soon you will find that by the support of sound you have reached soundlessness, by the support of the word you have reached the wordless.
It is in this hope that Lao Tzu, or Buddha, or Mahavira, or Krishna, or Christ speak—the hope that, perhaps with the support of their words, they may gently lead you into silence. As a device.
Buddha kept saying, “Whatever I speak is not to say what is, but to take you there.” Not to say what is—for that cannot be said. But you can be taken to where it is. Perhaps hearing my words you will set out on that journey, turn your face toward that dimension; perhaps one day you will fall into that great chasm, that abyss, where the Ultimate is witnessed.
But duality will enter everyone’s language. Buddha speaks of samsara and nirvana—duality. Mahavira speaks of matter and soul—duality. As for Shankara—he does not admit duality, yet without speaking of maya and Brahman nothing works. He says, “There are not two,” and still he must speak of maya and Brahman. For if there are not two, then what is he telling people? From what are we to be freed, if there are not two? If Brahman alone is, then we are already That—where is there to go? what is there to reach? what is there to do? So Shankara too must free you from something: ignorance, maya, avidya—then two stand up. Shankara was in a difficult spot—what to do?
Therefore Mahavira said plainly: there are two; let us proceed on that assumption. When the two disappear, you yourself will know there is One; we need not discuss it. Let us discuss only the two, and through the discussion of the two, take you to where both drop. Shankara said, “We will discuss only the One.” But he too landed in difficulty and had to discuss the two. Those who discussed the two, they too had to hint at the One.
Buddha says, “Leave the world, attain nirvana,” and in his final statement he says, “Samsara and nirvana are one.” This startled everyone. For two thousand years this statement has been a cause of restlessness for Buddhist monks and seekers. “Samsara is nirvana!” What could be more difficult than this? If samsara is nirvana, where then is there to go? what to leave? what to attain? Some Buddhist paths therefore deny that this statement could be Buddha’s—for Buddha says, “Leave the world and attain nirvana”; how could he call both one? They simply deny that it is his.
But those who know say, “This is precisely Buddha’s statement; the rest can be left.” When Buddha came to know, no difference remained between samsara and nirvana; then body and soul are not distinct; maya and Brahman are one; bondage and freedom are two forms of the same thing—bondage and freedom! But that is experience; the expression immediately becomes two.
To give expression, Lao Tzu says: Heaven and Earth, matter and consciousness.
Osho, it is said that whatever can be named cannot be the eternal and changeless truth. But the names given to the Ultimate are provisional, and through the practice of name-remembrance people have also attained the Nameless. Please explain why one cannot begin with a changing name and arrive at the changeless Nameless?
Lao Tzu prefers the leap, not the stairs. In a way even a stair is a series of little leaps. When you climb a staircase you are still taking small jumps, breaking the distance into twenty parts. Someone else takes the whole flight in one jump, crosses in a single leap what another divides into twenty steps. If you like, you can say he builds one big step out of twenty. Or, if you don’t want to call it a leap, no problem—say he makes one step out of twenty. Another breaks the same span into twenty small steps. We could just as well say he takes twenty little leaps. It depends on the person—on courage.
Lao Tzu is a leapist. He says: that which must be dropped—why hold it at all? From the changing to the changeless you can go only by letting go. Drop—and arrive.
Those who are stair-people, who believe in gradual progress—as most name-remembrance practitioners and saints have—like Meera or Chaitanya, they too reach where Lao Tzu reaches. But they say: yes, it must be dropped, but drop it slowly, step by step.
Take Nanak, for example—he is of the stairs. Nanak says: first begin with jap, with name-remembrance. And he keeps saying at the same time that it has no name; it has no name. That which is Alakh Niranjan has no name; that which is Akal is beyond time. Yet do name-remembrance. First, do it with the lips—this is the first step. Then close the lips and do it with the throat—the second step. Then leave the throat as well; remember from the heart—the third step. Then leave the heart too; let ajapa japa happen. Don’t you do it; let the chant happen on its own. And it does happen: first with the lips, then with the throat; then not even the throat—only the heart; and when it starts from the heart, then drop even that—then the Name begins to hum in every pore of the body, in your whole being. But even this is not the destination; you are still on the stairs. Then drop this too. Then ajapa—now no japa at all. But this letting go is done in four steps. Ajapa will come, the Nameless will arrive—but via four steps.
Lao Tzu says: if you are going to leave it, why so slowly? He says if you leave so slowly, it means you don’t really want to leave. You want to hold on, so you postpone—“Let me do it with the lips for now, then I’ll drop the lips. Then I’ll do it with the throat, then I’ll drop the throat.” If in any case you are to arrive at ajapa, Lao Tzu says: here and now! Why waste time? Drop—leap.
But it is not necessary that what Lao Tzu says is easy for everyone. Sometimes, to make someone let go, one must make them let go gradually. People are types—very, very different kinds.
If we tell someone that there is no path except the leap, no way at all to descend by stairs, it does not mean he will leap. If he is not a leaper, he won’t even descend by the stairs; he will simply sit. He will say, “This isn’t for me.” Yet there must be a path to the Divine for him too. So someone tells him, “Come by the stairs.”
What Lao Tzu is saying, he is saying for his own type. Keep this always in mind, otherwise you will continually find my talks difficult. My own personal nature is such that when I speak on Lao Tzu, I speak as Lao Tzu. Then I forget that there was ever a Chaitanya, ever a Meera, that Krishna ever spoke a Gita. That is closed for me in that moment.
So it is better that when I am speaking on Lao Tzu, you do not raise other questions in between. It will not help understanding; it will only harm. When I speak on Krishna, ask then—don’t bring Lao Tzu in. Because when I speak on Krishna, I have to speak as Krishna. Then don’t bring another into the middle. And I have no personal attachment; that is why I can be total with anyone. If I had a personal attachment, I could not be total with anyone. If I were attached to the view that one can arrive only through name-remembrance, I would never be able to explain Lao Tzu to you; it would be injustice.
No! I say Lao Tzu is absolutely right, precisely right. And still, when I speak on Chaitanya, I will say Chaitanya is absolutely right. One can arrive by the stairs too. But do not raise that now. Bringing it in will not make Lao Tzu any easier to understand. Forget it—forget it completely. If you sit to understand Lao Tzu, then understand the leap in its entirety.
Otherwise our mind behaves this way: when I sit to explain the leap, you bring up the stairs; when I sit to explain the stairs, you bring up the leap. You miss. It is the mind’s dishonesty. When I say, “Do kirtan,” you say, “What will kirtan do?” And when I say, “Throw everything away; burn the names and all that,” you say, “But you were saying it will happen through kirtan.” You did neither that nor this. You keep seeking a way to avoid.
Do whatever you can. But at least do this much: whatever I am explaining, understand it fully, authentically. Do not mix in the other. That is all foreign. For example, when it is Lao Tzu, do not bring in the matter of Name at all. Don’t raise sankirtan and kirtan. That is pure rubbish here; in Lao Tzu’s arrangement it has no use. It is like taking the wheel of a bullock cart and trying to fit it on a car. It’s not that a bullock cart won’t move—it moves just fine. And don’t go the other way either: trying to fit a car wheel onto a bullock cart. It’s not that it won’t move—it moves too. A system is dynamic within itself; outside itself it becomes useless.
For Lao Tzu, all this is beside the point. And Lao Tzu is right, not wrong. In fact, truth is so vast that it can contain truths opposite to itself. Truth is so great it can host even its opposites as guests. Untruth is very small; it cannot host its opposite. In the mansion of Truth, as Jesus has said, “There are many mansions in my Lord’s house.” Many rooms in my Lord’s house. And each single room is so large that for one Krishna, one Buddha, one Mahavira, one Lao Tzu—and a thousand such—one room is enough for each. And all those rooms are rooms in the Lord’s temple.
But when I show you the door to Lao Tzu’s chamber, don’t say, “This door is red; the door you showed yesterday to Krishna’s chamber was yellow. You used to say entry is through a yellow door; now you say it is through a red door!” And the fun is, you had not entered through the yellow door either, and now, taking cover behind the yellow door, you won’t enter through the red one.
Enter from anywhere! If it’s a leap, then leap. Those whose consciousness is young and full of courage—let them leap. Those who are frightened and afraid—who think, who knows, a leap might break their hands and feet—at least let them descend by the stairs. They too will arrive, sooner or later. But don’t just sit. The one who sits never arrives. And I am not saying everyone must leap. If your mind is not to leap, then don’t. It is not necessary that leaping means you will arrive; you could also break your limbs. It is not necessary that there is any glory in leaping. If it happens, do it; if it doesn’t, come down by the stairs.
But for whom the leap happens, why waste time on stairs? And remember, one who can leap can also fall on the stairs. The stairs will be too small for him—he can stumble, break a limb. Just as the stair-climber can break his limbs in a leap, the leaper can break his limbs on the stairs.
No—decide. Understand yourself. I will go on speaking of countless paths. Choose the door that feels your own and enter through it. Do not worry about understanding the next door. Wherever you feel it resonates, quietly enter from there. And in the end, upon reaching the center of the temple, you will find that those who entered by other doors have also arrived at the same place. Which door you entered from—no one asks in the inner sanctum of the temple. Did you come from the left or the right? Did you climb one step at a time, two at a time, or did you jump? When you reach within the temple, near the deity, no one will ask for an account—did you come slowly or swiftly? No one will ask. Nor will you yourself remember how you came. Once the traveler arrives at the destination, he immediately forgets the path. The path is remembered only so long as there is no destination.
Do not raise such questions; they will make it difficult to understand Lao Tzu. And they will not make it any easier to understand Chaitanya or Meera either. If you have come to understand Lao Tzu, then absorb him completely—understand what he is saying. He is absolutely right. Some have reached only by his way; some can reach only by his way. Some among you will be such who can reach only by his way. Understand fully—perhaps you are exactly that. If that flavor settles in your heart, the path will be made.
But our mind is always like this. Earlier I used to have people sit silently in meditation; they would come and say, “Nothing happens; we just sit.” The very same people, exactly the same, when I began to lead fast meditations, came and said, “That silent sitting was much better.” They themselves had told me that nothing happens there, time is wasted in silent sitting. Now they say, “That was very good; there was great joy in sitting silently.” At that time they said the opposite.
No, not joy—now they want to escape this. Then they were escaping that, saying, “Nothing happens there.” Now they look back and say, “Something did happen there.” Now they want to escape this.
If the intent is simply to keep escaping, there is no obstacle. Otherwise, when you sit to understand one thing, forget all else. Then be totally immersed in it, dive. Perhaps that very path will become the path for you.
And if there is anything else to ask, ask; we will take the sutra tomorrow.
Lao Tzu is a leapist. He says: that which must be dropped—why hold it at all? From the changing to the changeless you can go only by letting go. Drop—and arrive.
Those who are stair-people, who believe in gradual progress—as most name-remembrance practitioners and saints have—like Meera or Chaitanya, they too reach where Lao Tzu reaches. But they say: yes, it must be dropped, but drop it slowly, step by step.
Take Nanak, for example—he is of the stairs. Nanak says: first begin with jap, with name-remembrance. And he keeps saying at the same time that it has no name; it has no name. That which is Alakh Niranjan has no name; that which is Akal is beyond time. Yet do name-remembrance. First, do it with the lips—this is the first step. Then close the lips and do it with the throat—the second step. Then leave the throat as well; remember from the heart—the third step. Then leave the heart too; let ajapa japa happen. Don’t you do it; let the chant happen on its own. And it does happen: first with the lips, then with the throat; then not even the throat—only the heart; and when it starts from the heart, then drop even that—then the Name begins to hum in every pore of the body, in your whole being. But even this is not the destination; you are still on the stairs. Then drop this too. Then ajapa—now no japa at all. But this letting go is done in four steps. Ajapa will come, the Nameless will arrive—but via four steps.
Lao Tzu says: if you are going to leave it, why so slowly? He says if you leave so slowly, it means you don’t really want to leave. You want to hold on, so you postpone—“Let me do it with the lips for now, then I’ll drop the lips. Then I’ll do it with the throat, then I’ll drop the throat.” If in any case you are to arrive at ajapa, Lao Tzu says: here and now! Why waste time? Drop—leap.
But it is not necessary that what Lao Tzu says is easy for everyone. Sometimes, to make someone let go, one must make them let go gradually. People are types—very, very different kinds.
If we tell someone that there is no path except the leap, no way at all to descend by stairs, it does not mean he will leap. If he is not a leaper, he won’t even descend by the stairs; he will simply sit. He will say, “This isn’t for me.” Yet there must be a path to the Divine for him too. So someone tells him, “Come by the stairs.”
What Lao Tzu is saying, he is saying for his own type. Keep this always in mind, otherwise you will continually find my talks difficult. My own personal nature is such that when I speak on Lao Tzu, I speak as Lao Tzu. Then I forget that there was ever a Chaitanya, ever a Meera, that Krishna ever spoke a Gita. That is closed for me in that moment.
So it is better that when I am speaking on Lao Tzu, you do not raise other questions in between. It will not help understanding; it will only harm. When I speak on Krishna, ask then—don’t bring Lao Tzu in. Because when I speak on Krishna, I have to speak as Krishna. Then don’t bring another into the middle. And I have no personal attachment; that is why I can be total with anyone. If I had a personal attachment, I could not be total with anyone. If I were attached to the view that one can arrive only through name-remembrance, I would never be able to explain Lao Tzu to you; it would be injustice.
No! I say Lao Tzu is absolutely right, precisely right. And still, when I speak on Chaitanya, I will say Chaitanya is absolutely right. One can arrive by the stairs too. But do not raise that now. Bringing it in will not make Lao Tzu any easier to understand. Forget it—forget it completely. If you sit to understand Lao Tzu, then understand the leap in its entirety.
Otherwise our mind behaves this way: when I sit to explain the leap, you bring up the stairs; when I sit to explain the stairs, you bring up the leap. You miss. It is the mind’s dishonesty. When I say, “Do kirtan,” you say, “What will kirtan do?” And when I say, “Throw everything away; burn the names and all that,” you say, “But you were saying it will happen through kirtan.” You did neither that nor this. You keep seeking a way to avoid.
Do whatever you can. But at least do this much: whatever I am explaining, understand it fully, authentically. Do not mix in the other. That is all foreign. For example, when it is Lao Tzu, do not bring in the matter of Name at all. Don’t raise sankirtan and kirtan. That is pure rubbish here; in Lao Tzu’s arrangement it has no use. It is like taking the wheel of a bullock cart and trying to fit it on a car. It’s not that a bullock cart won’t move—it moves just fine. And don’t go the other way either: trying to fit a car wheel onto a bullock cart. It’s not that it won’t move—it moves too. A system is dynamic within itself; outside itself it becomes useless.
For Lao Tzu, all this is beside the point. And Lao Tzu is right, not wrong. In fact, truth is so vast that it can contain truths opposite to itself. Truth is so great it can host even its opposites as guests. Untruth is very small; it cannot host its opposite. In the mansion of Truth, as Jesus has said, “There are many mansions in my Lord’s house.” Many rooms in my Lord’s house. And each single room is so large that for one Krishna, one Buddha, one Mahavira, one Lao Tzu—and a thousand such—one room is enough for each. And all those rooms are rooms in the Lord’s temple.
But when I show you the door to Lao Tzu’s chamber, don’t say, “This door is red; the door you showed yesterday to Krishna’s chamber was yellow. You used to say entry is through a yellow door; now you say it is through a red door!” And the fun is, you had not entered through the yellow door either, and now, taking cover behind the yellow door, you won’t enter through the red one.
Enter from anywhere! If it’s a leap, then leap. Those whose consciousness is young and full of courage—let them leap. Those who are frightened and afraid—who think, who knows, a leap might break their hands and feet—at least let them descend by the stairs. They too will arrive, sooner or later. But don’t just sit. The one who sits never arrives. And I am not saying everyone must leap. If your mind is not to leap, then don’t. It is not necessary that leaping means you will arrive; you could also break your limbs. It is not necessary that there is any glory in leaping. If it happens, do it; if it doesn’t, come down by the stairs.
But for whom the leap happens, why waste time on stairs? And remember, one who can leap can also fall on the stairs. The stairs will be too small for him—he can stumble, break a limb. Just as the stair-climber can break his limbs in a leap, the leaper can break his limbs on the stairs.
No—decide. Understand yourself. I will go on speaking of countless paths. Choose the door that feels your own and enter through it. Do not worry about understanding the next door. Wherever you feel it resonates, quietly enter from there. And in the end, upon reaching the center of the temple, you will find that those who entered by other doors have also arrived at the same place. Which door you entered from—no one asks in the inner sanctum of the temple. Did you come from the left or the right? Did you climb one step at a time, two at a time, or did you jump? When you reach within the temple, near the deity, no one will ask for an account—did you come slowly or swiftly? No one will ask. Nor will you yourself remember how you came. Once the traveler arrives at the destination, he immediately forgets the path. The path is remembered only so long as there is no destination.
Do not raise such questions; they will make it difficult to understand Lao Tzu. And they will not make it any easier to understand Chaitanya or Meera either. If you have come to understand Lao Tzu, then absorb him completely—understand what he is saying. He is absolutely right. Some have reached only by his way; some can reach only by his way. Some among you will be such who can reach only by his way. Understand fully—perhaps you are exactly that. If that flavor settles in your heart, the path will be made.
But our mind is always like this. Earlier I used to have people sit silently in meditation; they would come and say, “Nothing happens; we just sit.” The very same people, exactly the same, when I began to lead fast meditations, came and said, “That silent sitting was much better.” They themselves had told me that nothing happens there, time is wasted in silent sitting. Now they say, “That was very good; there was great joy in sitting silently.” At that time they said the opposite.
No, not joy—now they want to escape this. Then they were escaping that, saying, “Nothing happens there.” Now they look back and say, “Something did happen there.” Now they want to escape this.
If the intent is simply to keep escaping, there is no obstacle. Otherwise, when you sit to understand one thing, forget all else. Then be totally immersed in it, dive. Perhaps that very path will become the path for you.
And if there is anything else to ask, ask; we will take the sutra tomorrow.
Osho, in the thought-free state you describe, consciousness would have to be passive in its very being. So if the conscious mind becomes completely thoughtless and inactive, what difference remains between that and inert existence? When there is nothing to do and mere being is the goal, is there any difference between such a state and dead stillness? What purpose could the existence of consciousness have for us? Please explain the difference between the existence of a wooden chair and a thought-free, inactive human existence.
You have neither ever been a wooden chair, nor have you ever been a thought-free human being. You have seen neither of the two. Yet we think there must be a difference between them—or perhaps there is no difference. How a wooden chair experiences, you have no idea. Whether it experiences at all, you don’t know. How a thought-free person experiences, you don’t know either. Still the question arises. It is perfectly natural. All our questions are like this: about what lies outside our experience we fabricate questions. No answer to them can be conclusive; only experience can be.
So first let us understand experience a little, and then look at the answer.
When all thoughts fall silent, consciousness remains, but self-consciousness does not. Awareness remains, but not self-awareness. This will be hard for us, because apart from self-consciousness we have never known any other consciousness. When we say, “I am conscious,” we mean, “I am.” Our sense of being conscious only means we know that we are. Although we have no idea who we are, what we are—nothing—only “I am.”
This self-awareness, this self-consciousness, is a disease. The crystallization of this self-awareness is called ego. To strengthen it we try a thousand ways. You dress in very fine clothes unlike anyone else’s—what happens? Self-awareness is reinforced. In ordinary clothes it is difficult to be self-conscious; in extraordinary clothes you become self-conscious. You ride in a chariot while others walk on the road—you become self-conscious. You sit on an elephant while others are on the ground—you become self-conscious. You are “somebody.” This dense sense of being is an illness; it is anxiety, tension, restlessness.
When a person’s thoughts become zero, he will be conscious but not self-conscious. He will be utterly aware—awareness in every pore, awareness flowing all around him—but in that awareness there will be no center called “I”—centerless. There will be no center named “me.”
But without experience it is hard even to conceive it. Our only experience is of that central “I,” throbbing like a wound at the core. That is all we know. Hence unconsciousness feels good; a drink feels good, because self-consciousness sinks. For a while you forget the wound. After deep sleep you feel fresh in the morning because in deep sleep the disease dropped for a while. You listen to music for an hour, you forget—and it feels good. The illness called “I” is dissolved for a little while.
But we have never known pure awareness. We have known only this concentrated ego, this condensed “I.” Ego is a sickness of consciousness.
When thoughts fall to zero, when there is silence and no-thought, then awareness is complete, but “you” are not, “I” am not. Only “am” is. If we break the statement “I am” into two and drop the “I,” only “am” remains—am-ness. Not “I am”—am-ness. Not “I am”; simply “am.” In this “am” there is no trace of “I.” And because there is no “I,” there is no “you” either. As “I” drops on this side, “you” drops on the other.
Therefore, when we are self-conscious we are persons; when we are only consciousness, we become the whole. When “I am” is there, I am separate and the world is separate. I become an island, apart. When there is only “am,” the “I” is lost; I become a continent. The moon and stars begin to move within my being. The sun rises within me; flowers bloom within me. Friends, enemies—all that yesterday had names—begin to happen within me. I expand. The old expression for this is: I become Brahman. Brahman means I expand; I expand so much that everything comes within me, nothing remains outside.
So long as there is self-awareness, everything is outside and you are separate. When only awareness remains, everything is inside—there is no outside. For consciousness there is no outside; there is only insideness.
But without tasting it, how will it even occur to you? We cannot think of an inside that has no outside. In our experience, if there is an inside of a house there must be an outside. We do not know the house of the vastness where there is nothing outside it. When only awareness remains and thoughts disappear, everything comes inside.
Then the question: what difference would there be between the inert and the conscious? You ask, what difference between a chair and us?
This question arises now because now you see a difference between a chair and yourself. In that vast awareness, the chair too will be within you, a part of you—just as conscious as you are. The chair will be alive—just as alive as you are. Even now the chair is alive, but the dimension of its aliveness is so different that you cannot be acquainted with it. Nothing is outside consciousness; everything is within it. And there is nothing of which consciousness is outside—awareness dwells within all things, but in many, many modes. If we understand a little of these modes, it will come to our mind.
If I throw a stone across the wall, it does not go through; it falls on this side. But if I throw it through air, it passes through the air. The wall has one mode; the air another. Yet there are things that pass through walls: X-rays pass through walls. For them the wall behaves like air. For an X-ray, the wall does not behave like a wall but like air. The X-ray would not even know whether there was a wall in between or air, whether it was stone or air—it passes through both. For an X-ray the wall is like air, though for a stone it is not. The stone will say: wall is one thing, air another.
I am saying that how things appear depends on our consciousness. If we are self-centric, the chair is separate and I am separate. If the self breaks, then just as wall and air are the same for an X-ray, so for that awareness both are one—no difference remains.
But only if you know it. If you do not, then? Until X-rays were known, no one would agree that a picture of your intestines could be taken from outside. Who would agree? How could it be? The photographer would say you are mad. If we take a photograph, your skin will come—not the bones inside. He too uses rays, but ordinary ones. Yet there is a kind of ray that passes through the skin and reaches the bone. When we came to know of that ray, we knew it was possible.
In truth, consciousness too has dimensions. The awareness in which we live has no spread; we are contracted within ourselves. The chair is separate, the neighbor is separate; everything is separate, we are separate. Separation is the character of our present consciousness. As soon as its form changes—as soon as thoughts recede, a qualitative change occurs—then separateness falls away; the distances in between collapse. Everything begins to appear as one, and each thing appears alive in a new way.
When Aldous Huxley took LSD for the first time—it so happens this relates to your question—there was a chair in front of him where he sat. Soon after taking LSD he was astonished: it was as if rays began to stream from the chair. The ordinary, dead-looking chair began to emit rays. Unique colors appeared. He was amazed. He had never beheld such beauty and glory in a chair. When he wrote the book in which he describes this, he said, “I was astonished! That day, for the first time, I realized a chair could be like this.” But then, it was not this chair; it was another form altogether—colors so exquisite no diamond could produce them; so alive one could not sit on it; so beautiful that he had never seen sun, moon, or stars so beautiful.
Then Huxley wrote that that day it occurred to him: LSD itself does nothing; it is a consciousness-expanding drug. For a few moments your awareness expands a little. And with just that small expansion, the chair became alive! So Huxley wrote, “Now I can believe those who looked at a stone and bowed as if before God; their consciousness must have had some other expansion.” He also wrote, “Now I can believe someone like Van Gogh, who painted a chair.” Why paint a chair? Can you imagine sitting down to paint and choosing a chair? And a unique painter like Van Gogh labors for months to paint a chair—must he be mad? Is a chair worth painting? But Huxley said that until then he had never understood why Van Gogh painted a chair; then he understood Van Gogh must have seen this chair in another moment of consciousness, which he then painted.
Yet even then our colors are very pale. The colors you see after LSD are colors you have never seen. But LSD itself does nothing; it just gives a slight expansion to your ordinary awareness, as if you pumped a little more air into a balloon and it grew bigger. With that slight expansion, all colors change. Ordinary pebbles by the roadside begin to shine like diamonds and pearls.
If LSD exerts such influence on the whole West today, if the new generation is so enamored, there is no other reason: the whole world becomes exquisitely beautiful, filled with sensations we had never known. An ordinary hand can seem like the hand of God. Ordinary clothes take on a luster and splendor beyond imagination. All this—LSD opened a new idea: if consciousness expands even a little, the world becomes entirely different.
But when a consciousness like Mahavira’s or Lao Tzu’s expands completely—not a little, completely—when all the obstructing causes of ego have fallen and the expansion is total—then what difference remains between a chair and you? It will be hard for you to grasp, because the chair you know is not the real chair, and the “you” you know is not the real you. If you sit down to reckon between two counterfeits, nothing can come to mind.
Become real, and you will give the chair a chance to be real too—for a false man cannot see the real chair. Then new doors... Huxley titled his book: New Doors of Perception—new doors of seeing—through LSD. And LSD is only a chemical shift: it lasts six, eight, twelve hours and then fades—and even that is slight. But for those who have known the divine, whose self-consciousness has dropped—not consciousness, self-consciousness—and who have become aware, all distances fall away, and every particle of existence...
If Mahavira walks carefully, it is not, as the Jains think, because he is worried to save an ant or that a mosquito might die. The mosquito that appears to you does not appear to Mahavira; otherwise he too could not be so concerned. The ant that appears to you—if that is what appeared to him, he too could not be so concerned.
In truth, for the first time the Brahman is seen in the ant—something we never see. It is not that Mahavira chooses to walk carefully; there is simply no other way—one has to walk that way. The mosquito is not a mosquito; the ant is not an ant. The same life has manifested in them as is manifest within Mahavira. A doorway to another world opens. Once those doors open, you no longer live in this world. So do not ask questions from this world; this world’s questions have no consistency, no relevance to that world.
Our questions are almost like asking me: when I fall asleep and dream, what relation is there between my room and me in the dreaming state?
There is none. Is there any? You can sleep in this room and be in London in a dream. You can sleep shut inside a room and be under the open sky, beneath the moon and stars, in a dream. What relation do you have with this room while asleep?
No. The moment you sleep, you enter another dimension of consciousness. The room remains where it is, in its own dimension; you go into another world. If in a dream you want to go outside, you don’t need to open the door. Naturally you might ask: in a dream, if I want to go out, should I keep the key with me? To see the dream properly, should I wear glasses? No. You will not need glasses, however weak the eyes. You are entering another dimension where such glasses are not needed—nor even these eyes. You need not open this door, and you will be outside.
But tell someone who has never dreamed that there is a state where you go out without opening the door—he will say, “Forgive me, are you in your right mind?” Tell a man who has never dreamed that there is a condition where you sit in no airplane, board no train or ship, and yet in a moment you go from here to London—no vehicle needed, no door to open, no key needed—you just go and arrive. He will ask if your mind is all right. He who has not dreamed will ask, “Won’t you bump into the closed door? How will the lock open without a key?” All his questions are logical—and still you will laugh. You will say, “You do not know dreaming. In that realm such questions do not apply.”
As soon as thoughts drop and thought-free awareness is born, you enter another realm altogether. In that realm nothing of this world’s ways applies—no thing, no rule. What appears inert here becomes conscious there. What appears dead here becomes alive there. Where there were doors here, there will be walls there; where there were walls here, there will be doors there. None of this world’s questions is applicable; hence the questions we keep raising have no meaning.
The only meaningful question is: how to enter that realm? If you think that sitting in this realm you will understand that realm through questions, you are mistaken. It is not possible.
Enough for today. Anything more to ask? Good.
So first let us understand experience a little, and then look at the answer.
When all thoughts fall silent, consciousness remains, but self-consciousness does not. Awareness remains, but not self-awareness. This will be hard for us, because apart from self-consciousness we have never known any other consciousness. When we say, “I am conscious,” we mean, “I am.” Our sense of being conscious only means we know that we are. Although we have no idea who we are, what we are—nothing—only “I am.”
This self-awareness, this self-consciousness, is a disease. The crystallization of this self-awareness is called ego. To strengthen it we try a thousand ways. You dress in very fine clothes unlike anyone else’s—what happens? Self-awareness is reinforced. In ordinary clothes it is difficult to be self-conscious; in extraordinary clothes you become self-conscious. You ride in a chariot while others walk on the road—you become self-conscious. You sit on an elephant while others are on the ground—you become self-conscious. You are “somebody.” This dense sense of being is an illness; it is anxiety, tension, restlessness.
When a person’s thoughts become zero, he will be conscious but not self-conscious. He will be utterly aware—awareness in every pore, awareness flowing all around him—but in that awareness there will be no center called “I”—centerless. There will be no center named “me.”
But without experience it is hard even to conceive it. Our only experience is of that central “I,” throbbing like a wound at the core. That is all we know. Hence unconsciousness feels good; a drink feels good, because self-consciousness sinks. For a while you forget the wound. After deep sleep you feel fresh in the morning because in deep sleep the disease dropped for a while. You listen to music for an hour, you forget—and it feels good. The illness called “I” is dissolved for a little while.
But we have never known pure awareness. We have known only this concentrated ego, this condensed “I.” Ego is a sickness of consciousness.
When thoughts fall to zero, when there is silence and no-thought, then awareness is complete, but “you” are not, “I” am not. Only “am” is. If we break the statement “I am” into two and drop the “I,” only “am” remains—am-ness. Not “I am”—am-ness. Not “I am”; simply “am.” In this “am” there is no trace of “I.” And because there is no “I,” there is no “you” either. As “I” drops on this side, “you” drops on the other.
Therefore, when we are self-conscious we are persons; when we are only consciousness, we become the whole. When “I am” is there, I am separate and the world is separate. I become an island, apart. When there is only “am,” the “I” is lost; I become a continent. The moon and stars begin to move within my being. The sun rises within me; flowers bloom within me. Friends, enemies—all that yesterday had names—begin to happen within me. I expand. The old expression for this is: I become Brahman. Brahman means I expand; I expand so much that everything comes within me, nothing remains outside.
So long as there is self-awareness, everything is outside and you are separate. When only awareness remains, everything is inside—there is no outside. For consciousness there is no outside; there is only insideness.
But without tasting it, how will it even occur to you? We cannot think of an inside that has no outside. In our experience, if there is an inside of a house there must be an outside. We do not know the house of the vastness where there is nothing outside it. When only awareness remains and thoughts disappear, everything comes inside.
Then the question: what difference would there be between the inert and the conscious? You ask, what difference between a chair and us?
This question arises now because now you see a difference between a chair and yourself. In that vast awareness, the chair too will be within you, a part of you—just as conscious as you are. The chair will be alive—just as alive as you are. Even now the chair is alive, but the dimension of its aliveness is so different that you cannot be acquainted with it. Nothing is outside consciousness; everything is within it. And there is nothing of which consciousness is outside—awareness dwells within all things, but in many, many modes. If we understand a little of these modes, it will come to our mind.
If I throw a stone across the wall, it does not go through; it falls on this side. But if I throw it through air, it passes through the air. The wall has one mode; the air another. Yet there are things that pass through walls: X-rays pass through walls. For them the wall behaves like air. For an X-ray, the wall does not behave like a wall but like air. The X-ray would not even know whether there was a wall in between or air, whether it was stone or air—it passes through both. For an X-ray the wall is like air, though for a stone it is not. The stone will say: wall is one thing, air another.
I am saying that how things appear depends on our consciousness. If we are self-centric, the chair is separate and I am separate. If the self breaks, then just as wall and air are the same for an X-ray, so for that awareness both are one—no difference remains.
But only if you know it. If you do not, then? Until X-rays were known, no one would agree that a picture of your intestines could be taken from outside. Who would agree? How could it be? The photographer would say you are mad. If we take a photograph, your skin will come—not the bones inside. He too uses rays, but ordinary ones. Yet there is a kind of ray that passes through the skin and reaches the bone. When we came to know of that ray, we knew it was possible.
In truth, consciousness too has dimensions. The awareness in which we live has no spread; we are contracted within ourselves. The chair is separate, the neighbor is separate; everything is separate, we are separate. Separation is the character of our present consciousness. As soon as its form changes—as soon as thoughts recede, a qualitative change occurs—then separateness falls away; the distances in between collapse. Everything begins to appear as one, and each thing appears alive in a new way.
When Aldous Huxley took LSD for the first time—it so happens this relates to your question—there was a chair in front of him where he sat. Soon after taking LSD he was astonished: it was as if rays began to stream from the chair. The ordinary, dead-looking chair began to emit rays. Unique colors appeared. He was amazed. He had never beheld such beauty and glory in a chair. When he wrote the book in which he describes this, he said, “I was astonished! That day, for the first time, I realized a chair could be like this.” But then, it was not this chair; it was another form altogether—colors so exquisite no diamond could produce them; so alive one could not sit on it; so beautiful that he had never seen sun, moon, or stars so beautiful.
Then Huxley wrote that that day it occurred to him: LSD itself does nothing; it is a consciousness-expanding drug. For a few moments your awareness expands a little. And with just that small expansion, the chair became alive! So Huxley wrote, “Now I can believe those who looked at a stone and bowed as if before God; their consciousness must have had some other expansion.” He also wrote, “Now I can believe someone like Van Gogh, who painted a chair.” Why paint a chair? Can you imagine sitting down to paint and choosing a chair? And a unique painter like Van Gogh labors for months to paint a chair—must he be mad? Is a chair worth painting? But Huxley said that until then he had never understood why Van Gogh painted a chair; then he understood Van Gogh must have seen this chair in another moment of consciousness, which he then painted.
Yet even then our colors are very pale. The colors you see after LSD are colors you have never seen. But LSD itself does nothing; it just gives a slight expansion to your ordinary awareness, as if you pumped a little more air into a balloon and it grew bigger. With that slight expansion, all colors change. Ordinary pebbles by the roadside begin to shine like diamonds and pearls.
If LSD exerts such influence on the whole West today, if the new generation is so enamored, there is no other reason: the whole world becomes exquisitely beautiful, filled with sensations we had never known. An ordinary hand can seem like the hand of God. Ordinary clothes take on a luster and splendor beyond imagination. All this—LSD opened a new idea: if consciousness expands even a little, the world becomes entirely different.
But when a consciousness like Mahavira’s or Lao Tzu’s expands completely—not a little, completely—when all the obstructing causes of ego have fallen and the expansion is total—then what difference remains between a chair and you? It will be hard for you to grasp, because the chair you know is not the real chair, and the “you” you know is not the real you. If you sit down to reckon between two counterfeits, nothing can come to mind.
Become real, and you will give the chair a chance to be real too—for a false man cannot see the real chair. Then new doors... Huxley titled his book: New Doors of Perception—new doors of seeing—through LSD. And LSD is only a chemical shift: it lasts six, eight, twelve hours and then fades—and even that is slight. But for those who have known the divine, whose self-consciousness has dropped—not consciousness, self-consciousness—and who have become aware, all distances fall away, and every particle of existence...
If Mahavira walks carefully, it is not, as the Jains think, because he is worried to save an ant or that a mosquito might die. The mosquito that appears to you does not appear to Mahavira; otherwise he too could not be so concerned. The ant that appears to you—if that is what appeared to him, he too could not be so concerned.
In truth, for the first time the Brahman is seen in the ant—something we never see. It is not that Mahavira chooses to walk carefully; there is simply no other way—one has to walk that way. The mosquito is not a mosquito; the ant is not an ant. The same life has manifested in them as is manifest within Mahavira. A doorway to another world opens. Once those doors open, you no longer live in this world. So do not ask questions from this world; this world’s questions have no consistency, no relevance to that world.
Our questions are almost like asking me: when I fall asleep and dream, what relation is there between my room and me in the dreaming state?
There is none. Is there any? You can sleep in this room and be in London in a dream. You can sleep shut inside a room and be under the open sky, beneath the moon and stars, in a dream. What relation do you have with this room while asleep?
No. The moment you sleep, you enter another dimension of consciousness. The room remains where it is, in its own dimension; you go into another world. If in a dream you want to go outside, you don’t need to open the door. Naturally you might ask: in a dream, if I want to go out, should I keep the key with me? To see the dream properly, should I wear glasses? No. You will not need glasses, however weak the eyes. You are entering another dimension where such glasses are not needed—nor even these eyes. You need not open this door, and you will be outside.
But tell someone who has never dreamed that there is a state where you go out without opening the door—he will say, “Forgive me, are you in your right mind?” Tell a man who has never dreamed that there is a condition where you sit in no airplane, board no train or ship, and yet in a moment you go from here to London—no vehicle needed, no door to open, no key needed—you just go and arrive. He will ask if your mind is all right. He who has not dreamed will ask, “Won’t you bump into the closed door? How will the lock open without a key?” All his questions are logical—and still you will laugh. You will say, “You do not know dreaming. In that realm such questions do not apply.”
As soon as thoughts drop and thought-free awareness is born, you enter another realm altogether. In that realm nothing of this world’s ways applies—no thing, no rule. What appears inert here becomes conscious there. What appears dead here becomes alive there. Where there were doors here, there will be walls there; where there were walls here, there will be doors there. None of this world’s questions is applicable; hence the questions we keep raising have no meaning.
The only meaningful question is: how to enter that realm? If you think that sitting in this realm you will understand that realm through questions, you are mistaken. It is not possible.
Enough for today. Anything more to ask? Good.
Osho, yesterday you said that if one finds God, it will be immediately recognized: “I have seen this.” You also said there is nothing else, and what is, is That. And today you said that matter and consciousness are not two, but one—of one taste. So that God who is of one taste—does that very state equal “something beyond”?
Both are true. That one-taste state is indeed God. But that very one-taste state goes on spreading beyond and beyond; it never comes to an end.
Imagine I leap into an ocean. I can say, “I have entered the ocean,” but I still cannot say, “I have entered the whole ocean.” At most I can say, “From one shore I touched a corner.” The ocean is beyond. Where I stand, a wave or two touches me; the ocean is infinite.
So when someone knows the Divine, he knows in just this way: all that is, is the Divine. But at the very same time he also knows that, just as much as I am knowing, it is not only that much—there is more beyond, still beyond. And however much anyone may know, this beyondness does not end; it remains. This is its mystery; this is its secret. However much one may know, however far one may travel, one still finds no trace of the opposite shore. Of the shore from which we embarked, only that much is known. However far one goes, the other shore is nowhere to be found.
And a curious thing happens—which is hard to grasp. When one returns, he finds that the shore he left is no longer there either. It is not that one shore still remains; that shore exists only so long as you stand upon it. Once you have leapt into the ocean, the farther shore is never found; and if you return to search for your own shore—the spot where you stood—that too is no more.
What is, is the Divine. But what is keeps spreading ever beyond, beyond and beyond. However far we go, we find it stretches farther beyond.
And no one has ever reached a place from which he could say, “Only up to here!” Nor will anyone ever reach such a place. It is logically impossible. Because if someone were to arrive at a last station and say, “This is the end; only up to here is God,” then the great question arises: What is after this? There would have to be something after. No boundary stands alone; a boundary requires an other. The fence around your house—if your house stood alone, it would be difficult to make a fence. It is because of the neighbor’s plot that the fence is possible. If there is nothing on the far side, no boundary can be drawn. And God is alone—meaning: that which is alone is what we call God; what is existence itself.
Therefore we will never reach a spot where we can say, “Only up to here,” for that could happen only where something other begins. Every beginning is the end of something, and every end is the beginning of something. If some other thing were to begin, we could find God’s end. But there is no other thing anywhere that could begin.
Scientists too are in great difficulty; for them there is the same hitch: surely the world must end somewhere. God may not yet be their question, but the universe—where does it complete? And if it completes, then what? Immediately the question arises: at the boundary… So scientists say, another universe will begin. But that solves nothing. Suppose we gather together all the universes that could begin, and then ask: where do they end? They cannot end.
Truth, or Being, is infinite in this sense.
Therefore God is what is. And along with that, that which spreads beyond is also included. That which is beyond and beyond is included within this. These are not two.
Hence we can never say, “This alone is God.” We can only say, This too is God; and beyond this, more beyond. What we know is God; what we do not know is God. What someone has known is God; what no one has known is God. And also that which perhaps no one will ever know. He is not only unknown, but unknowable also. For we call “unknown” that which can someday be made known—unknown today, known tomorrow. The Divine is also unknowable. There is that which will never be known. That which will always remain over, always remain in the background—we must include that too.
So we must say: this is God, indeed; what lies beyond this is also God. And that which forever remains beyond is also God.
We will talk again tomorrow.
Imagine I leap into an ocean. I can say, “I have entered the ocean,” but I still cannot say, “I have entered the whole ocean.” At most I can say, “From one shore I touched a corner.” The ocean is beyond. Where I stand, a wave or two touches me; the ocean is infinite.
So when someone knows the Divine, he knows in just this way: all that is, is the Divine. But at the very same time he also knows that, just as much as I am knowing, it is not only that much—there is more beyond, still beyond. And however much anyone may know, this beyondness does not end; it remains. This is its mystery; this is its secret. However much one may know, however far one may travel, one still finds no trace of the opposite shore. Of the shore from which we embarked, only that much is known. However far one goes, the other shore is nowhere to be found.
And a curious thing happens—which is hard to grasp. When one returns, he finds that the shore he left is no longer there either. It is not that one shore still remains; that shore exists only so long as you stand upon it. Once you have leapt into the ocean, the farther shore is never found; and if you return to search for your own shore—the spot where you stood—that too is no more.
What is, is the Divine. But what is keeps spreading ever beyond, beyond and beyond. However far we go, we find it stretches farther beyond.
And no one has ever reached a place from which he could say, “Only up to here!” Nor will anyone ever reach such a place. It is logically impossible. Because if someone were to arrive at a last station and say, “This is the end; only up to here is God,” then the great question arises: What is after this? There would have to be something after. No boundary stands alone; a boundary requires an other. The fence around your house—if your house stood alone, it would be difficult to make a fence. It is because of the neighbor’s plot that the fence is possible. If there is nothing on the far side, no boundary can be drawn. And God is alone—meaning: that which is alone is what we call God; what is existence itself.
Therefore we will never reach a spot where we can say, “Only up to here,” for that could happen only where something other begins. Every beginning is the end of something, and every end is the beginning of something. If some other thing were to begin, we could find God’s end. But there is no other thing anywhere that could begin.
Scientists too are in great difficulty; for them there is the same hitch: surely the world must end somewhere. God may not yet be their question, but the universe—where does it complete? And if it completes, then what? Immediately the question arises: at the boundary… So scientists say, another universe will begin. But that solves nothing. Suppose we gather together all the universes that could begin, and then ask: where do they end? They cannot end.
Truth, or Being, is infinite in this sense.
Therefore God is what is. And along with that, that which spreads beyond is also included. That which is beyond and beyond is included within this. These are not two.
Hence we can never say, “This alone is God.” We can only say, This too is God; and beyond this, more beyond. What we know is God; what we do not know is God. What someone has known is God; what no one has known is God. And also that which perhaps no one will ever know. He is not only unknown, but unknowable also. For we call “unknown” that which can someday be made known—unknown today, known tomorrow. The Divine is also unknowable. There is that which will never be known. That which will always remain over, always remain in the background—we must include that too.
So we must say: this is God, indeed; what lies beyond this is also God. And that which forever remains beyond is also God.
We will talk again tomorrow.
Osho's Commentary
Until a name is given, every form remains a limb of the infinite Existence. The moment a name is given, it breaks off — becomes separate and apart. Name is the boundary of separation. To name means to separate. Until there is no name, all is one. The moment a name is given, things shatter and stand apart.
Lao Tzu says: the Nameless is the begetter of heaven and hell, the primal source. And name — or the named — is the mother of all things.
First, understand this: if man were not on the earth, there would be no differences among things. Between the rose flower and the rose thorn there would be no distinction. In truth there isn’t. The rose’s thorn is joined to the rose’s blossom as your eyes are joined to your heart. Nor would there be any separation between earth and sky. Where does earth end and sky begin — who can point that place out? They are joined, two ends of one continuum. Where does the sea begin and the land begin — hard to say — if man were not. The spread of land is within the ocean; the spread of the ocean is within the land. That is why wherever you dig a well, water appears. And if you go deeper into the sea, you will meet land. In the sea there is a little more water, a little less earth; in the land a little less water, a little more earth. But without earth there can be no water; and without water there can be no earth.
If we remove man, there are no divisions among things — all are interconnected and one. With the arrival of man, things become separate. They do not become separate in themselves — they appear separate to man. If I look at you from the outside, your hands seem separate to me, your eyes seem separate, your ears, your feet seem separate. But within you, in your being, there is no division anywhere. Eyes and ears and hands and feet — all are conjoined, expansions of the same one. The energy flowing in the hand is not other than the energy that sees through the eye. It is the hand that sees through the eye; it is the eye that touches through the hand. Within you there is not even a hair’s breadth of distance. But from the outside, with naming, distance begins. Say “eye,” and the eye is cut off from the ear. Say “hand,” and the hand is separated from the foot. Give a name — and you have drawn a boundary and made division.
Lao Tzu says: so long as we do not name That, That — the Nameless — is the source of all Existence. And to Existence he gives two names to make it understandable: heaven and hell, heaven and earth.
In human experience, in human perception, pleasure and pain are the two deepest felt states. If we leave aside naming and speak of the felt sense of Existence, it will appear either like pleasure or like pain. And even pleasure and pain are not two separate things. If we drop naming completely, pleasure will be seen as containing pain, and pain as containing pleasure. But we proceed by naming everything. When a sense of happiness is arising within me, if I do not say, “This is happiness,” then every experience of happiness has its own pain within it. This will be a little difficult to grasp. Every experience of happiness carries its own sting. Love has its own ache. Pleasure has its bite, its prick, its thorn — if we do not name it. If we give it a name, we separate pleasure from pain. Then the pain that is in pleasure we overlook — taking it not to be part of pleasure. And the pleasure that is in pain we also overlook — assuming it is not part of pain. For within our words there is no room for pleasure-in-pain, nor pain-in-pleasure.
Just today I was saying to someone that if we enter into experience itself, it is very difficult to distinguish love from hate. In words the distinction looks sharp. What could be more opposite? Where love is, there is no hate; where hate is, there is no love — so say the definers. But enter the living experience and you will see hate turning into love, love turning into hate. In truth, there is no love we have known that does not carry a portion of hate within it. Therefore whom we love, we also hate. Yet the trouble is with words. In speech, love contains only love; hate is dropped. If we enter experience and look within, we find: whom we love, we also hate — in experience, not in words. And whom we hate, we can hate only because we love; otherwise hate would not be possible. Even with the enemy there is a kind of friendship, a kind of attachment; and with the friend there is a subtle distance, a subtle enmity.
The obstacle is the word. Our words are solid — they do not take in their opposites. Existence is very fluid, liquid; it continually takes its opposites within. In our naming, birth does not include death; but in Existence, birth carries death within it, is suffused with it. In our naming, illness has no room for health. But in Existence only the healthy can fall ill. If you are not healthy, you cannot be sick. The dead do not become ill. To be ill, one must be alive; to be ill, one must be healthy. Illness can occur only along with health. And if you can know, “I am ill,” you know it only because you are healthy. Otherwise, who would know? How would it be known? I am saying: where Existence is, our opposites fall away and only the expansion of the one remains. Where we have named, there things split into two; a dichotomy, a duality is created — instantly. Here the name is given, there Existence is fragmented. Naming is the process of fragmentation. Leaving name is the way to know the unfragmented.
But we cannot remain even for a moment without naming. Without naming there is great restlessness. We look — and with the very act of looking we name. We hear — and with the very act of hearing we name. A flower appears, and the mind, along with seeing, names it: a rose; beautiful or ugly; known or unknown; familiar or unfamiliar. Instantly the rose is lost and a net of words arises over our consciousness. Then, looking through that net of words, Existence appears broken.
Lao Tzu says: the Nameless is the begetter of existence, the source of the whole; and name is the mother of all things.
Therefore we cannot give any name to Paramatman; for the moment we name, Paramatman becomes an object. Whatever we name becomes a thing. If we give a name even to the Atman, it becomes a thing. And if we refrain from giving a name even to a stone, the stone becomes Atman. If we can refrain from naming, if the mind does not fabricate names, and we can look even at a stone without word and without name, then Paramatman will be revealed in the stone. And if we look at a heart throbbing with love and give it names — my son, my mother, my wife — then that heart that was pulsing with life will also become a piece of stone. Give a name — consciousness becomes an object. Drop the name — objects become conscious.
So Lao Tzu, to explain, divides Existence in two — heaven and earth. By earth he means matter; by heaven he means experience, sensitivity, chaitanya, consciousness. The Nameless is the begetter of all matter and all consciousness. Heaven is a lived experience; earth is a state. In the days when Lao Tzu used these words in China, earth meant what we call matter, and heaven meant what we call consciousness. For the felt sense of heaven is available only to consciousness. Matter implies inertia; heaven implies consciousness. The Nameless is the primal source of all consciousness and all matter. And the mother of all “things” is the process of naming.
We live in the world of things. We do not live in the world of matter, nor in the world of heaven — of consciousness. We live in things. See it rightly — cast your eyes a little around you — and you will understand. We live in things — we live in things. Not merely because there is furniture in your house; not because there is a house, money, doors and walls — those are things, yes. But among those doors and walls, that furniture and those objects, the people who live there — they too, almost, become things.
I love someone; I want my love to remain the same tomorrow. I want the one who gave me love today to give me love again tomorrow. But only a thing can be relied upon for tomorrow; a person cannot. A chair I placed in my room will likely be found at the same place tomorrow — predictable, reliable. It can be depended upon; it has no consciousness, no freedom. But the one I loved today — will tomorrow’s love be the same? If the person is alive, if consciousness is there, it cannot be made certain. It may be, it may not be. But I want it to be exactly the same tomorrow as today. Then I will have to erase the person and make a thing out of them — then it becomes reliable.
So I will turn my lover into a husband; or my beloved into a wife. I will take the support of law and society. And tomorrow morning, when I demand love, the wife or the husband will not be able to refuse — because vows have been taken, contracts sealed; everything is fixed. To refuse would be to deceive, to fail in duty. The one I bound for tomorrow’s love, I have made into a thing. And if even a little consciousness shows itself, if a little personhood asserts itself, there will be difficulty, struggle, quarrel.
Hence all our relationships turn into conflict. For we expect thing-like predictability from persons. Try as one may, a person cannot become a thing — try as one may. Yes, in trying, one becomes more and more inert. Yet still, something of consciousness keeps stirring within — it keeps creating trouble. Then the whole life becomes an attempt to suppress that consciousness and to load on a dead weight of thinghood.
And if I have truly suppressed a person and made them into a thing — or someone has suppressed me and made me into a thing — then another accident happens: if someone really becomes a thing, the very meaning of loving them is lost. There is no meaning in loving a chair. The joy was that consciousness was there. This is man’s dilemma, man’s duality: he wants from a person the kind of love that can only be had from things; and he does not want love from things, for what meaning is there in loving things? Thus an impossible demand goes on haunting the mind: to receive from a person the love that things give. This is impossible. If the person remains a person, then such love is impossible; and if the person becomes a thing, our savor is lost. In both cases, nothing but frustration and melancholy will be gained.
And we are all engaged in making one another into things. What we call family, society, is less a gathering of persons and more a collection of things. If we search into the roots of this condition, we will meet precisely what Lao Tzu says. Wherever there is name, the person will dissolve, consciousness will be lost, and the thing will remain. If I say even this much to someone — that I am your lover — I have become a thing. I have given a fixed name to a living event — which could have grown and widened, spread and become new; who knows what it might have been tomorrow? The moment I give it a name, I draw a boundary. Tomorrow I will prevent it from being otherwise than what I have named it.
Tomorrow morning when anger arises, I will say, “I am a lover; I should not be angry.” Then I will suppress the anger. And when anger is there and is suppressed, the love that will be shown will be false and hollow. The lover who is incapable of anger will be incapable of love — because whom I cannot call so much my own that I may even be angry with them, I will never be able to call so much my own that I may truly love them.
But I have said, “I am a lover!” Then what will happen tomorrow morning when anger comes? I will have to deceive. Either I swallow anger, push it down, hide it — and on the surface keep displaying love. That love will be false; the anger will be real. The real will be repressed within; the imitation will accumulate on the surface. Then I will become a false thing, not a person. And this suppressed anger will take its revenge; it will jolt me each day; it will repeatedly break out. Then, naturally, hatred will arise toward the very one we have loved. And toward the one we desired, a movement of escape will begin.
The mistake was naming. Lao Tzu says: the mistake is in naming. When I said, “I am your lover,” did I truly understand what it means to be a lover? I gave a fixed name to a momentary experience. Had I looked within, perhaps I would not have named it. Perhaps silence would have been right. Perhaps speaking was the mistake.
An American president, Coolidge, spoke very little — exceedingly little. No politician has been so sparing of words. About a year before his death, a friend asked, “Coolidge, you have spoken so little all your life — what is the reason?” Coolidge said, “There is never a penalty for what is not spoken; one never has to repent what was not said. For what I did say, I have had to repent a lot. I did not know this much at first,” Coolidge said. “If life were given again, I would remain absolutely silent. I learned slowly through experience. Now I can say: whenever I spoke, I paid a penalty; for what I did not speak, I have suffered no pain.”
You may think he meant abuses bring punishment. No — abuse obviously brings penalty; too obvious. But even when one says, “I love you,” punishments follow.
In truth, to give a word, to give a name, is to invite penalty — because we have made a thing where there was no thing, where there was a fluid personhood. Where there was a flowing stream, we tried to hammer a wall in mid-current. Now there will be trouble, now there will be pain. Life will try to flow like a river; and the planks of our naming will obstruct. Life is vast: no plank of name can hold — it will be swept away. But then behind it remain the bite of pain, regret, and sorrow.
Lao Tzu says: do not name at all. The moment a name is given, things are born.
Imagine for a moment that here, all of us sitting together, we suddenly forget language — just for one hour! Will there be any difference between earth and sky? Between darkness and light? Between you and your neighbor? Will Hindu and Muslim be different? Will there be distance between woman and man? If for an hour we forget all language, all distances will instantly fall for that hour. A unique world will open — vastness overflowing. No boundaries anywhere. Things will spread, but they will not stop at edges. You will not feel that someone is sitting next to you — to feel that, language is needed. You will not feel “neighbor” — language is needed for that. You will not feel “friend”; you will not feel “enemy.” Only a vast Existence will remain.
Within that Existence two intimations — intimations, not names — will remain, which Lao Tzu calls: heaven and earth. Or, speaking in today’s idiom: matter and consciousness. Two expanses remain — of matter and of consciousness. This will be felt; this too will not be named — it will be felt. All other names are for “things.” A thing may be matter, a thing may be a person. If we name the person, he becomes a thing. If we name matter, it too becomes a thing. If I say, “This chair,” it has become a thing. If I say, “wife, husband, son,” they too become things. A son can be possessed; a chair can be possessed. Ownership can be laid over a son; ownership can be laid over a chair.
But life cannot be owned. Nor can matter truly be owned. For you do not know: when you were not, this chair still was; when you will not be, it will still be. And the one you call “my son” — if tomorrow his breath stops, you will carry him to the cremation ground and burn him. And when his breath is stopping, you will not be able to say to the sky, “He is my son. How can his breath stop without my permission?” Nor will you be able to say to your son, “You are undisciplined, reckless — you did not even ask me and you stopped breathing. You should have asked me before dying. I am your father! I gave you birth!”
But at the moment of death the son will not be able to ask, nor will the father’s permission be needed. Existence accepts no ownership. Even at birth it was only your illusion that you gave birth. Existence accepts no one’s ownership, nor do things accept ownership. But with name, ownership arises; with name, the thing is made. The other end of “thing” is ownership. Wherever there is ownership, a thing will be there. Whether of a person or of matter makes no difference. Wherever someone says, “mine!” ownership stands up; there Existence is lost and things appear. We live surrounded by things. Lao Tzu says: the begetter of all these things is the process of naming — the naming. This very habit of giving names.
I have always said, in connection with Lao Tzu: Lao Tzu goes walking in the morning with a friend. For years they have been companions. The friend knows Lao Tzu always remains silent. A guest has come to the friend’s house; he brings him along for the walk. On the way the guest feels very troubled, very restless — neither Lao Tzu speaks, nor does his host. At last he cannot bear it. He says, “What a beautiful morning!” But neither the host looks nor replies, neither does Lao Tzu look nor reply. The guest becomes even more uneasy — better he had remained silent.
They return. On returning, Lao Tzu whispers in his friend’s ear, “Do not bring your companion again — he seems too talkative.” The friend is a bit astonished: not that much was said — in an hour and a half, just one sentence — “The morning is very beautiful.”
In the evening the friend comes and says to Lao Tzu, “Forgive me, I stopped bringing him. But I too am uneasy. He didn’t say too much — only that the morning is beautiful.” Lao Tzu says, “Give a name — and things are destroyed. The morning was beautiful only until your companion spoke.”
It will be hard to understand. Lao Tzu says: the morning was beautiful until your companion spoke. Until then, in that beauty there were no boundaries. It did not seem to end anywhere. There was no limit to it. But the moment your friend said, “Beautiful morning,” everything shrank into smallness. His words imposed borders upon the boundless. Your friend intruded upon the whole. And where there was so much beauty, to speak was ugliness. Where beauty overflowed, speech was only a disturbance. So I tell you: your friend has no taste of beauty; he only started a conversation. If he had tasted beauty, a speaking man would fall silent. How can silence speak? The impact of beauty — when beauty closes in from all sides, the life-breath falls silent. Even if the heart beats, it is not noticed. Everything becomes still. But we were silent, and your friend spoke. He knows nothing of beauty, nothing of the morning. He was only searching for a peg to hang conversation upon.
We all search. Whoever we meet, we begin with the weather — anything to start a talk. It is only a pretext. In truth, silence is so difficult that at any excuse we begin to speak.
The next time you start a conversation, remember — you will immediately see these are only excuses. No concern with morning, or sun, or clouds, or rain — no concern at all. But something must begin, because two people have forgotten the art of being silent together.
Freud, after the experience of his entire life, wrote: “At first I thought we speak to say something; now my experience is that we speak to hide something.” There are things that would be revealed in silence; with talk we cover them up.
Sit in silence with a person for an hour — you will come to know them more than by talking for a year. In talking, a man erects a net around himself to hide. You will not be able to see his eyes; you will be entangled in his words. You will not see how he rises, how he sits; his gestures will not come to your awareness. Words, only words, will surround you.
Have you noticed, when you remember someone afterwards, do you recall anything other than words? Do you remember how that person looked at you? Do you remember how he touched your hand? Do you remember the fragrance of his body? The way of his eyes? How he entered the room? How he sat, how he stood?
Nothing is remembered. Only what he said. He is not a man in memory — he is a gramophone. Your memory of him is only of words. Of his whole being you know nothing. How amazing! Even if you close your eyes and try to see your mother’s face, you will not be able to be certain what her face is like.
You may at once deny what I say — how could it be? Go home and try. Close your eyes and see what your mother’s face is like. You will find that as long as you did not look closely, there was some vague sense, “it is like this.” But as you look closely, it becomes hazy, the outline disappears — even your mother’s face you cannot hold. For which son has ever truly seen his mother?
And if a memory does arise, it will be because of a photograph — not because of your mother. It may come due to a picture. There is a picture hanging at home; that will come to mind. But see the difference: the mother who was present does not come to mind. You grew by her blood, you were held in her lap, you ran with her, sat with her, spoke, did everything — she does not come to mind. The picture hanging on the wall comes to mind! The picture is a thing; the mother is a person. But the person is not remembered; the picture is. Why? What is the reason?
In truth, we keep avoiding contact with the living; and we also prevent the other from knowing our living core. The whole life becomes a defense. And language arranges that defense with great skill.
A French scientist lived twelve years among Eskimos in Siberia. Twelve years is a long time. Eskimos are among those few peoples on earth who have not yet gone mad because of language. An Eskimo speaks five or ten words in a day — enough. If he is hungry, he does not say, “I am hungry”; he says only — “Hunger!” And the emphasis is less in saying; his hand says “hunger,” his eyes say “hunger,” his whole body says “hunger.”
He was in great difficulty. I was reading the scientist’s memoirs. He wrote: “My first six months were as if I had fallen into hell — they simply do not speak. And I was boiling to talk. But whom to talk to? I would go alone and speak aloud to myself.”
You all talk to yourselves too. Watch people walking on the road — almost all are having conversations with themselves. Sometimes the talk gets heated even — in solitude. Hands and feet move; the head jerks; gestures appear. Outside you are speaking; inside you are speaking; not a moment’s gap in which you drop the name, drop the word, and your movement enters Existence.
But after six months of great trouble, strange experiences began for the scientist. For the first time in life wordless gaps appeared — intervals without words. Then he came to know that the Eskimos are living in another kind of world.
The world Lao Tzu speaks of, the kind of people he hints at, the possibilities he points to — it is the possibility of wordless experience. With the word, the world of things arrives. When the word recedes, the world of things recedes; only Existence remains.