Readiness

Osho, will I know when I am ready to face you?

YOU WILL FACE ME; knowledge will come later on. Not the otherwise -- not that knowledge will come first and then you will face me. Knowledge will not precede; reality will precede. Knowledge is a shadow: it follows. Once you start thinking that knowledge precedes, you are in a mess. I will tell you one story: One evening a monk knocked at the doors of a Zen monastery. He wanted to stay over for the night. He was tired, hungry. I he host opened the door, but rather than greeting him by a hello or good evening, he encountered him with a Zen koan -- very famous. He said: "What is your original face, the face that you had before your father and mother were born? " The monk took off his sandal from his foot and hit the host hard on the face. The host stepped back, bowed down…

Question: OSHO, WILL I ONLY RECOGNIZE YOU WHEN I AM ENLIGHTENED? RECOGNITION IS POSSIBLE even before enlightenment, but it will remain vague; it will remain hidden behind a mist. Just as in the early morning, a winter morning, you can see that somebody is coming, but who he is you cannot exactly say. Something you can figure out, that a man is coming or a woman, but the mist is thick and it is difficult to figure out who the person is exactly. This type of recognition is possible; without it there will be no possibility of a Master and a disciple. How does one become a disciple? A vague recognition, a fragrance that has touched you, a love that has moved your heart, something of the beyond. It is a feeling, it is not knowing. You cannot be absolutely certain about it; it is mysterious.

Osho, in your discourses each day you create such immediacy that every hair stands on end. A flood seems to rise in the heart, and a state like a peak experience is created. Then you say that if we are ready, the happening can take place this very moment. Please clarify this readiness a little more.

If you listen only with the intellect, you will hear only what I have said; you will be deprived of the unsaid. What cannot be said—you will miss it. The flood comes from that. With the visible I have tied the invisible; alongside the symbols I have placed that for which there is no symbol; into the bundles of words I have held the void. If you listen with the intellect, the bundle will touch your hand, but what was inside it will be lost. The bundle was only for that content. The content will be lost. The subject-matter will be lost. The container—the empty can—will be in your hand. Then it will feel like a flood-like state. Listen; don’t think. Listen; there is no need to believe or disbelieve. I tell you, liberation can happen through listening alone, if you don’t raise the net of believing and not-believing. Because…

Beloved Osho, with my friend, meditation, I clean the skeletons from the closet. With my friend, trust, I enter the dark basement and sweep it clean of ancient dust. With my friend, the heart, I open all the windows and allow the fresh breezes in. With my friend, awareness, I light candles in every room. In the kitchen, my friend, patience, prepares the tea. In the garden, I sit with my friend, the master, and wait silently, for I know that the guest will soon be here. Osho, when the doorbell rings, will I be there to answer it?

The guest always comes; its coming is certain. The bell also rings. The door is also always opened, without fail. But the moment you open the door, you are not there. Existence is, being is, but you are not. The way you have known yourself up to now is no longer there, and what is there cannot be named, cannot be defined. It is all and everything... it is the very essence of existence. You will not be there as you think yourself to be. If you are there, then the guest cannot enter in. In fact, the guest can come only when it becomes a certainty that you are ready to disappear. Your disappearance is the appearance of that which you have been seeking all along. This is a paradox: when the sought is found, the seeker is lost. There are these words of Jesus -- in some sense…