State

Why has the state not disappeared after seventy years?

Gorbachev himself, before he does any act against communism, needs a great training in meditation. And after that, whatever he will do will be right. I can see the man is certainly intelligent and has good intentions for humanity, is a peace-loving person, but he has no depth of meditation. These are all superficial mind values, which don't go deep enough. They are only skin deep -- scratch just a little and all those values disappear. Meditation brings transformation from the inside. It is not an imposition of morality and commandments from outside. Anything that comes from outside is worthless -- morality, religion, spirituality, whatever you call it. Only that which blossoms within you like a lotus has ultimate value. Out of that arising of consciousness, you cannot do evil. Your every action will be spontaneous; it will come from your deepest being, and the deepest being cannot do any…

Your second question is: "Osho, you are like an exotic flower or rare species of creature whom I have watched and listened to and tried to find words to describe for the past fourteen years. To hear you talk of the state you are in is to feel endlessly in awe. One of the most intriguing things about you is that you are always so absolutely present and at the same time so totally absent. Would you please comment?" maneesha, totality has two sides: the presence and the absence.

You cannot be totally present if you cannot be totally absent at the same time, simultaneously -- you cannot choose one. Just the very word `total' includes presence and absence both. Your understanding is accurate. You have felt rightly that I am present -- at the same time I am not present. This has to be your state also. Only then -- the meeting, the communion. Once in a while you have, for a moment, come to the place where you meet me -- but soon your mind takes you away. You come very close to the waters and yet you remain thirsty. Your mind takes another route which goes away from the waters. In this silence you are both: totally present and totally absent. This presence, this absence, this totality has to become your whole life. Just because you could get the feel of an ultimate fact, Zen master…

Beloved Osho, I am puzzled that I feel in your presence a beautiful absence, not in the sense of emptiness, but rather a quality of overflowingness. Can you say something about this sense of absence?

I said, "I will do it properly. You accept this as an original character certificate, and I will get exactly the same from my professor -- so that will be a carbon copy of the original; the original I am giving to you. I will not sign it, I will put my professor's signature, and because I have loved his handwriting, even he himself cannot make a distinction, whether he has signed it or I have signed it." He said, "Finish it somehow, just do it." So I signed the character certificate in the name of my professor, Dr. S. S. Roy, and I made a copy of it, and I went to S. S. Roy and I said, "The original I have given to the education minister. Now you give me a carbon copy of it." He said, "What do you mean? I have heard always that the original…

For excample, the mind believes that you are a person, and you are not; you are only a presence, not a person. A person is a static thing, defined, well-defined, structured, with a name, form, label. A presence is an undefined, vague cloud. You can feel it but you cannot say what it is. The person is definable -- you can pinpoint it; the presence cannot be pin-pointed. This is a great experience, to know that you don't know who you are. This is the beginning of a transformation. This is what I call real knowing. It is not knowledge, it is knowing. It is not information, it is transformation. The person is dissolving and the presence is arising. The presence is vast, infinite. The person is really a false entity that we have created to cling to. It will be very difficult to live as a presence.