Originality

Osho, there is a difference between word and style. Has any man in the world ever been able to say something original, something new?

All they had was stale—memorized words; there was no experience. For those who have words, experience is always original, forever original. For those who have only scriptures, living experience is always original. But for those who have experience, the gap between old and new collapses. Understand this last point. As I said of all dualities—happiness and misery, peace and restlessness, freedom and bondage—so also this duality of new and old. Truth is neither new nor old. A thing is called new only if someday it can become old; and old means it must once have been new. What is new today will be old tomorrow; what is old today was new yesterday. Truth is neither new nor old, because it can become neither old nor new. Therefore we call truth eternal, we call it timeless, that which always is. So in relation to truth, nothing can be “original.” But in…

Osho, it is all right when you say everything is auspicious and beautiful; but what will happen to us—those of us who are attached to your physical body?

Yog Vidya! Attachment is not inauspicious. Attachment is not ugly. Attachment is like freshly mined gold—yet impure. It will pass through fire, be refined, become pure. Attachment is love in its impure form. Attachment needs to be transformed, refined. I am not against attachment. I am not against anything. But every phenomenon has higher possibilities—more auspicious, more beautiful forms. The seers of the Upanishads prayed: O Lord, lead us from darkness to light. Tamaso ma jyotir gamaya! If I were to say it, I would say: O Lord, lead us from light to more light. Because darkness too is only a form of light. Light is hidden even in darkness. Morning is born out of the night; the sun rises from it. In the womb of night the sun is nurtured and grows. The whole beauty of the dawn is impossible without the night. The Upanishadic seers say: O Lord,…

Question: Anando has asked: OUR BELOVED MASTER, WHAT IS IT TO BE ORIGINAL? IS THE AWAKENED MAN, THE MAN OF ZEN, THE ONLY TRULY ORIGINAL MAN? Anando, to be original simply means just as you were born -- fresh, uncluttered by any garbage, theology, religion, politics, etiquette, manners. As you grow up, around you much garbage grows. The society helps to grow it; the whole educational system exists to support it. By the time you are still young, you have already lost your original home. You know so much, but you don't know anything in fact. You pretend so much, you may even believe in your pretensions, but that does not make them true. The whole society up to now has been creating hypocrites. The original man is just the polar opposite of the hypocrite. He is simply natural, unpredictable. The hypocrite is predictable.

The eyes cannot approach it, neither can speech nor mind. We do not, therefore, know it, nor do we know how to teach it. It is different from what is known and it is different from what is unknown. Thus we have heard from our predecessors who instructed us about it. What speech cannot reveal but what reveals speech -- know thou that alone as brahman and not this -- anything objective -- that people worship here. What mind does not comprehend but what comprehends the mind -- know thou that alone as brahman and not this that people worship here.

God is not indubitable. Remember this: God is not indubitable. He can be doubted -- not only doubted, he can be disproved. And really, when someone doubts God you cannot prove his existence. You can only convince those who are already convinced, but you cannot convert a new man; that is impossible. Not a single atheist can be converted because he needs proof and you cannot prove God. God is not indubitable. He can be doubted, rejected. The whole hypothesis can be said to be false. There is no proof that can help. So Descartes goes on discussing, inquiring, and he says that unless he comes to a point, to something in existence that is indubitable.... Not that it can be proved -- no. Rather, it cannot be doubted. And ultimately he comes to the self and says that the self is a greater reality than God. It is, because…