Wholeness

Osho, we are incomplete. However much we search outside or inside, how will the Whole ever be seen? How will we find the Whole?

It’s true. You are incomplete; all your seeking will remain incomplete. But non-seeking can be complete. Whatever you seek, you will be the seeker; it will be a search of your own hand, it will be like you. Whatever you make will carry your imprint. Whatever you construct, whatever you create, will be incomplete. If the maker is incomplete, how can the creation be complete? Quite right. Whatever you think will be incomplete. Whatever ideas you entertain will be fragmentary. Whatever conclusions you draw can never be whole and total. If you have faith, it will be incomplete; if you doubt, that too will be incomplete. You go into the world—half-and-half; you enter the temple—half-and-half. Because you are incomplete. That’s right. Then is there no way? God is complete and you are incomplete. And whatever you do will be incomplete—prayer incomplete, sadhana incomplete, samadhi incomplete. So how will you find…

Questioner. I have a question in regard to wholeness. You say that emptiness is the basic characteristic of wholeness. Buddha had attained to absolute emptiness. Should he not be called whole? And why is emptiness not multidimensional in itself?

In the meantime the Master went his own way. He bathed himself in the morning, dug holes in the garden and watered the plants, ate his meals and went to bed at night. In two days' time the visitor was annoyed and again he said, "I am here to learn meditation. I have nothing to do with what you do from morning to night." The Master smiled and said, "I don't teach doing, I teach being. If you see me digging holes, then know it is how meditation digs. When you see me eating, then know it is how meditation eats. I don't do meditation, I am meditation itself." Now the visitor became worried and said, "It seems I came to a madman. I was always told that meditation is doing, I had never heard someone can be meditation itself." To this the Master simply said, "It is difficult to…

Osho, there was a question about perfection. In the morning you said you regard emptiness as the fundamental hallmark of perfection. Then Buddha too was the ultimate void. So can he not be called complete? And along with that, is emptiness itself not multidimensional?

A few points. First, Buddha arrived at emptiness—as I was just saying, Buddha arrived at emptiness. That was his achievement; he attained it. He became empty. The emptiness that is attained becomes one-dimensional. It acquires a direction. It becomes dependent on the attainer. Understand it this way. In fact, whatever I negate within myself, whatever I cut off and set aside, will be finished, removed from within me. A certain kind of emptiness will be available. But that emptiness will come as the absence of something. There is another emptiness that we do not bring about; it is born in the very awareness of our being. We are emptiness—we do not become empty. Emptiness is our nature. That is how we are. The day emptiness is our nature—no discipline, no practice, no attainment—on that day emptiness becomes multidimensional. We have not emptied out anything to become empty; we have simply…

Beloved Osho, for years I have contemplated what seems to me to be the basic message for well-being: love yourself. When I was a therapist, all day hearing, "I hate myself; I feel sorry for myself; I am proud of myself; I want to destroy myself," I started wondering -- who is this self? I love when you say there is no self. That seems so freeing. Could you please say more?

The whole therapeutic movement has gone wrong on that point: Love thyself. Socrates used to say, "Know thyself." And there have been masters, particularly Sufis, who say, "Be thyself." But there is only one person in the whole history of man, Gautam Buddha, who said, "There is no self. You are an emptiness, utter silence, a non-being." His message was much opposed by all the traditions, because they all depended in some way or other on the idea of the self. There may have been differences on other points, but on one point they were all totally in agreement -- and that was the existence of the self. Even people like George Gurdjieff, who used to talk about a very novel idea -- that you are not born with a self, you have to earn it: "Deserve thyself" -- finally, he also ends up with the self. Gautam Buddha does…