Freshness

Question: BELOVED MASTER, FROM WHERE DOES FRESHNESS COME? Prem Naren, it does not come from anywhere; it is always here. Existence is freshness itself. Existence is fresh because it is always now and here. It is not burdened by the past, it does not gather any dust from the past. It is never old. Time makes no impact on existence. Time does not exist as far as existence is concerned. Time exists only for the mind; it is a mind invention. In fact, time and mind are synonymous. Stop the mind, and time stops. Jesus is asked by someone, "What will be the most unique thing in your kingdom of God?" And Jesus says, "There shall be time no longer." A very unexpected answer: There shall be time no longer.

How can I feel life fresh day by day? Please explain.

LIFE is fresh but you are stale, and you become stale because you go on carrying the yesterdays. The past functions as a barrier between you and life. Die every moment to the past and then life can be felt and lived as fresh as it is. Life is never old; each moment it renews itself, rejuvenates itself, reorients itself. It is eternally fresh. But the mind cannot be fresh. The very mechanism of the mind does not allow it to be fresh. It has to bee old, it has to be dead. The moment you know something, it is already past. Knowledge is already dead. A bird sings in the tree. The moment your mind says 'beautiful', it is already old. It is no more in the present; it has already passed. The moment you say to someone 'I love you', it is already past. The moment the mind…

Osho, it is a great surprise that all our questions are old and stale, while your answers are so new and fresh. What is the secret?

Because you think your questions. Whatever comes out of thinking becomes stale. Thinking can only be of the old; there is no thinking of the new. How will you think the new? That which you have not known at all, with which you have no acquaintance—how will its form arise in your mind? You search from memory. Even if you put a little paint and polish on it, your questions cannot be new; they remain old, because whatever is born of the mind is old. Mind is the name of the old. Mind means the dead. Mind means what has passed. Mind means what has already been experienced. So whatever you have experienced, heard, read, thought—this is the mind’s storehouse. From that you search out your questions; therefore they will be old and stale. When I give you an answer, it has nothing to do with the mind. I do…

Now, a blind man can become a philosopher about light. He can think much about light. He can go on making great systems of thought about light. He can imagine, and he has much more freedom to imagine than the person who has eyes, because the person who has eyes knows what light is; he cannot imagine something contrary to reality. The blind man can imagine in every direction, in every possible way. He can be very imaginative and he can be very logical; he can make a systematic, logical philosophy about light out of his blindness, but it will be about light. And beware of the word 'about'. Unless somebody sees light, all that he is saying is nonsense. The mystics have always said that philosophy is nonsense because it is thinking. It is like a thirsty man thinking about water.