Well-Being

Questioner: you say that all the so-called individual wells are one and they are already joined with the ocean which is emptiness. If so, what need is there to go through any sadhana or spiritual discipline in order to be one with the emptiness or the void?

So the question invariably arises in our minds, "Why go where I will die and disappear? Why go there at all, if death is certain?" But if this death is a certainty, it is what it is. And how on earth will you save yourself through such self preserving efforts? If it is true that you will die on entering the ocean, how are you going to save yourself as a well, and for how long? If, in your view, becoming such a huge ocean amounts to dying, how are you going to survive as a tiny well and for how long? Soon its walls will crumble; soon its water will evaporate, and soon it will be covered with dirt and dust. When you are not to survive as a vast ocean, how will you survive as a petty well? And for how long? This is how the fear of…

Question: BELOVED OSHO, HOW COME EVERYTHING IS GOING SO WELL? Gandharaj, the question is not a laughing matter. It touches something of tremendous value in human misery, in human anguish, in human reality. It creates laughter because it looks absurd to ask why things are going so well. We have become accustomed to things never going so well. We are well acquainted with the misery, the pain, the darkness, the meaninglessness, the whole tragedy of human existence. It has gone to our very bones, blood and marrow; we accept it as if it is our nature. If things are going wrong, it seems natural. If things are not going wrong, then something must be wrong -- how come things are going so well? We have forgotten the language of well-being, we have forgotten the taste of blissfulness. We have forgotten our own nature.

My function here is to remind you of your heart, to take you slow4 slowly towards your heart, to create love energy in you, to help you to become more heartful. All the devices that are being used here -- either they are to bring awareness in you or they are to bring love in you. If one is achieved, the other is achieved automatically. But you follow the path of love: be a Sufi! And remember, my sannyas has nothing to do with the old idea of sannyas; it is just the very opposite of it. The old sannyas was and is life-negative. My sannyas is life-affirmative. To me life is God, to me there is no other God than life. And if life is God, then love is the only prayer possible. And if life is God, then today is important, not tomorrow.

Osho, upon reaching the goal the wise man finds that it is impossible to know the self, because there the knower, the known, and knowledge become one. In that state, why do they still tell us, “Know yourself”? What do they mean by it?

Certainly, in that ultimate state the knower is lost, knowledge is lost, and the known is lost. This trinity dissolves into a single current. Ganga, Yamuna, Saraswati—all three disappear; only the ocean remains. The one who went in search is no longer there; that which he went to search for is also no longer there. And yet, something remains. What remains is greater than the three; it is more than the three. What is lost was rubbish. What remains is the very essence. Still the wise say to you, “Know yourself.” Are they inviting you to be erased? If it were only erasing, and nothing were gained, the invitation would never be given. From one side, there is disappearing; from the other side, there is being. That which you presently are will fall away, and your real being will remain. Your false, counterfeit “being” will vanish; your eternal substance, your…