Serenity

Beloved Osho, more and more easily do I feel filled with you during discourse, and thoughts tend not to intrude as much as they used to. Still, the fact remains that I don't carry the serenity and bliss that I feel in your presence into my daily activities. And until there is no difference between how I feel near you and away, I haven't got it, have I? It feels as if all other questions are simply a distraction to avoid this homework. Is this so?

Maneesha, the difference that you feel in my presence from when you are doing something alone is going to remain to the very last moment. The explosion will come, but there is no way to say when. The time will come certainly when there will be no difference: either you are in my presence or you are alone -- it will be the same. It becomes the same only when, in your aloneness also, you start feeling my presence. When you are doing other things, they are not distractions; you are doing them for me. Love is full of mysteries, but even this much is more than one can expect because it is a right becoming -- you have started feeling me. Now that feeling will continue to grow on its own; you have to be just nourishing it. Don't make it a problem. Rather accept it as a necessity…

Osho, while sitting near you and listening to your discourse continuously for an hour and a half, I become so absorbed in devotion and rasa that I don’t know where my sorrows, anxieties, and troubles disappear. An incomparable peace descends. But shortly after the discourse ends and your presence is gone, I again begin to be surrounded by worries and troubles. Please be gracious and tell me how the experience I have in your discourse and presence can remain for a longer time!

Attention is food. Remember: whatever you give attention to, you give life to. So don’t give attention to the wrong things. Here, listening to me, the heart becomes light, joyful, a coolness descends—you gave your attention toward me. Then you go home and start digging at your wounds again, unwrapping your poultices and bandages, poking your fingers into your aches. What is the need? Do this: while leaving here, keep the resolve not to touch those old wounds. The old habit will move your hand—bring it back! Then you’ll feel a difficulty: “If I don’t do that, what should I do?” There is so much around to give attention to. There are the songs of birds. I cannot speak to you as sweetly as they do. What they are saying to you, I want to say but cannot. Sit quietly and pour all your attention into them. An even deeper…

Osho, for the past few days, every day after the discourse, when I see you leaving, a sigh escapes from within and it feels as if another day has gone in vain. And then a deep feeling remains that one day this divine man will, in just the same way, slip out of my sight, and I will be left standing, simply watching.

Perhaps you have heard: Euclid was a great mathematician, the father of geometry. A wealthy man sent his son to learn geometry from him. The rich man’s son knew only one language: profit. Euclid began to explain what a point is, what a line is, what a triangle is. After a while the boy asked, “What will I get from this? What benefit is there? What will be the profit in knowing what a point and a line are?” Euclid looked at him and said to his wife, “Do this: after each lesson, when this young man is leaving, give him five coins.” The youth was delighted: “Wonderful! I learn what a point and a line are, and I get five coins!” But he did not see the fierce joke Euclid was playing. When his father heard, he beat his head: “Fool! You get to learn from a mathematician like…

Osho, the other day while listening to your discourse, a strange kind of vibration arose in the heart and along the auditory nerves; since then even ordinary sounds set off odd ripples and waves of bliss. Please tell me: is there something in the voice of enlightened ones that produces a special effect? Also, in your presence there is a particular, delightful fragrance; at times it is felt in the ashram and sometimes during meditation as well. In this regard, please say whether certain moments in time have their own special fragrance too.

I speak with the same purpose with which a musician plays the vina. He does not play to explain anything. Remember me as a vina player. My speaking is my vina. What I am saying to you—less am I speaking, more am I singing. If you understand its purpose, that is enough: listening to this instrument—as one sometimes, listening to a vina, falls into a trance—one begins to sway; something within begins to vibrate; something like a stone inside begins to melt and flow. For a moment a window, an opening, is there—sky is glimpsed. Like a flash of lightning—the darkness is gone—even if only for a moment; but then you know that light is, and you also know there is a path. It was revealed for a moment in the lightning’s flare, but revealed it was. Now no one can tell you there is no path; no one can…