Chapter #2

the mind is doubt – every mind, mind as such hence nobody should think that he is without doubt because whatsoever is done through the mind is bound to be doubt-full even the so-called beliefs are nothing but cover-ups for doubt one believes so that one can escape from doubt doubt is like a wound but belief is not a healing force it only covers the wound it deceives others but that is not very significant it deceives you – that is of real importance

to live in self-deception is to miss the whole point of life

there are only two ways to deal with doubt you can cover up your doubt with belief millions of people all over the world have been doing that for millions of years doubt remains and goes on growing like a cancerous thing the other way is to go into your doubt rather than hiding, deceiving encounter it, face it, dig it and that is the way to transcend it if one encounters one’s doubt one can immediately see that one is separate from one’s doubts they are there like objects, you are here the mirror that reflects them the awareness that encounters them this very experience takes you beyond doubt that is the state of faith, of trust and that is the beginning of sannyas

desiring includes all desires – the worldly, the other-worldly

material, the spiritual the mundane, the sacred so it is not a question of choosing either one drops the whole of desiring or one remains in the grip of it

the so-called religious people are still in the grip of it they may not desire money but they desire meditation they may not desire power but they desire god they may not desire things of the world but they desire the kingdom of the beyond it is the same desire it has come in from the backdoor again you have to be very watchful not to allow desire in any form to enter you because desire is bondage, desire is misery, desire is hell

the more full of desires one is the more frustrations one is breeding

because each desire will end in frustration whether it succeeds or fails makes no difference frustration is bound to happen, it is inevitable if the desire fails and out of one hundred desires ninety-nine are bound to fail because it is a competitive world you are not alone

many people are desiring the same things there are not enough things and people are many things are scarce and people are millions how many people can be presidents how many people can be prime ministers very few… but everybody wants to be hence ninety-nine per cent of desires are bound to fail, and then there will be great frustration

one per cent of desires may succeed but frustration comes all the same in fact more so because when a desire succeeds for the first time you become aware that you have wasted your whole life for it and nothing is attained money is there but your poverty remains untouched by it your inner emptiness remains the same in fact in contrast with the money that you have achieved your inner emptiness looks even emptier than before you have attained power outside but deep inside you know you are impotent impotent in the face of death one has to die, no power can save one

so whether a desire succeeds or fails it fails all the same this is one of the most fundamental truths to be understood once you see the point then you don’t go on changing horses because they are all the same the black horse and the white horse, devil and god it doesn’t make much difference it is just the difference between a black horse and a white horse they will all lead you into misery then one simply gets out of the whole trip one forgets desiring, one starts living

desiring is always somewhere else the fulfilment is in the future living is now here

these are the only two ways to create a style of life living in the future which is only so-called living because the future is non-existential and living in the present which is the only way of living, authentic living

time consists only of two tenses, not of three ordinarily it is divided into three parts the past, the present and the future that is existentially wrong grammatically it may be right linguistically it may be right but i have no concern with language and grammar my concern is with existence as far as existence is concerned time only consists of past and future the present is not part of time it is part of existence

existence is always now, it is never then it is never yesterday, never tomorrow it is this very moment and to go beyond time is the whole art of meditation

meditation is the transcendence of time past and future both and the plunging into the now, the here. the deeper you plunge into the now and the here the more you disappear because mind cannot exist without past and future mind is like a pendulum of a clock it moves from one opposite to the other from right to left, from left to right stop it in the middle and the clock stops

mind moves between past and future the clock of the mind stop it in the middle and the clock stops and the moment the mind is not there you are not then god is then freedom is then love is then flowering is then eternity is

there are many boundaries around us we are the centre of many concentric circles and we have to go beyond all those concentric circles only then can we find the centre the most important concentric circles are four

the first is the world of objects the majority of people is concerned with the world of objects money, power, prestige, respectability they remain very peripheral presidents, prime ministers queens, rotarians, lions you will find all Kinds of stupid people hanging onto the very outermost circumference and making much fuss about it

the second concentric circle is of the body many live in the body, particularly women man hangs onto the first more, the most peripheral his concern is more about things, objects far-away objects what is happening in israel and what is happening in korea the woman is not so concerned about korea and israel she is most concerned about the colour of her hair, her eyelashes the proportion of her body

she looks at the male as being a little bit crazy you are unnecessarily worried about the stars and the speed of light what have you to do with it the real thing is the furniture the curtains, the pillows the kitchen, the bathroom

it looks more mundane to man it looks more earthly but in a way she is closer

but many men also remain there they have to because their wives are there their girlfriends are there they cannot go to israel they cannot go to the moon they cannot go to everest they are possessed by their women they won’t allow them to so they also have to be just very close near the kitchen, the bathroom maybe the woman looks at the mirror and they clean the mirror but they are not very far either

millions of people simply live at the physiological, the biological the chemical level of life closer than that is another concentric circle that of the mind: thoughts, ideas philosophers, theologians, thinkers, scientists these people live there closer than that is the concentric circle of the heart the poets, the painters the musicians, the dancers the aesthetic people live there but all are outside your real being

one has to transcend all these four boundaries only then does one encounter oneself then for the first time one stands face-to-face to oneself and that is the moment of great illumination when you see your centre you have seen all that is worth seeing you have seen god himself you have seen the truth there is nothing higher than that nothing deeper than that nothing more valuable than that

sannyas is the transcendence of all boundaries so that one day you can simply relax in your very centre that centre is consciousness awareness godliness

life is one energy but out of that one energy we can either create love or attachment love is heaven, attachment is hell we can create out of that energy bondage or freedom it all depends on us on how we work upon our energy

the lower is cheaper and easier to create hell does not need much intelligence it does not even need courage all that it needs is imitation because millions of people are doing the same thing all around you you can just imitate them your parents, your teachers, your leaders it is simple you will become a carbon copy you will live in the same kind of hell misery, anguish and you will give to your children, your heritage and they will repeat the same pattern this way it goes on and on from adam and eve up to you it has been going on in the same way

only very few people have been able to get out of the rut and those are the salt of the earth

a jesus, a buddha, a lao tzu a zarathustra, a kabir – very few people they can be counted on one’s fingers they are real miracles in existence because to get out of the rut of the crowd is really a great act of courage, intelligence, rebellion

the crowd lives in attachment attachment to money attachment to children attachment to parents attachment to wives, husbands attachment to this and that there are thousands of attachments and they think it is love because they think it is love they cannot get out of it so the first thing is to label things correctly to categorise things correctly

attachment is love standing upside-down attachment is love gone sour attachment is an ill state of love love is a healthy phenomenon attachment is sick, nauseating and everybody experiences it the more you become attached, the more miserable the more you allow others to become attached to you

the more miserable they become and of course we become infected with each other’s misery and it is never a simple addition it is always multiplication

a sannyasin has to learn what the causes of his misery are and you will find one of the most significant causes is attachment

don’t be attached to anything live live totally, live lovingly but don’t possess, don’t dominate and don’t allow anybody to possess or dominate you if you want to be really blissful and if you are blissful you can share love

love is a sharing of bliss attachment is a sharing of misery it is ugly, it is inhuman love brings freedom to you and also freedom to the person you love

let that be the criterion if it brings freedom it is love if it brings bondage it is attachment attachment has to be dropped

and love has to be grown the more loving you become the closer you are to god

jesus is right when he says god is love

man lives in words the words can be beautiful but they are all empty the word god is not god the word love is not love either you cannot be nourished by the word food and you cannot quench your thirst with the word water words are dangerous they can keep you in deception they can give you the feeling as if you know

millions of people think they know god because they know the word millions of people think they know love because they know the word

a sannyasin has to get beyond words to the real content he has to disperse words and to see what is hidden behind them that’s the exploration

just as one goes on peeling an onion one has to go on peeling words so one can come to the very core of them and the miracle is when you go on peeling words like an onion ultimately you come to emptiness, nothingness

is the ultimate sense of existence that is silence when all noise of the words has left you and there is only profound silence undisturbed, undistracted in that silence knowing happens seeing happens, being happens

bibles, korans, gitas cannot give it to you – they are all words, they are beautiful they were spoken by beautiful people but that does not make any difference even if buddha says the word rose it does not become a rose even if jesus says the word fire it does not become fire but beautiful people can be so hypnotic that you start believing in their words

christians, hindus, mohammedans, buddhists are all doing the same they have all forgotten the reality

and are clinging to the labels they are all clinging to the cages maybe they are golden cages but the bird, the alive bird, the singing bird is no more there

the search of sannyas is for the alive, the singing bird

man has two alternatives two possible orientations one is character, the other is consciousness

character is imposed from the outside it is a political and social strategy to dominate the person consciousness is individual, character is social all societies are against consciousness and for character because they can manipulate character it is within their grasp they can paint it according to their own investment they can cut you into shape to fit with their mechanism they can make you obedient through it they can make you a slave

and that is the desire of all the establishment

but the real master never gives you character he gives you consciousness consciousness is a discovery of your own being no discipline is imposed on you in fact all discipline is disposed of you are allowed to be yourself, authentically as god means you to be one has to discover one’s nature one’s spontaneity, one’s original face that is consciousness the very discovery makes you more and more conscious the deeper you go into it the more conscious you become a point comes when you are just a flame of light and in that light whatsoever you do is right in that light wrong is impossible and right is inevitable then a totally different kind of character comes like a shadow following consciousness i call that character religious, spiritual

the so-called character in the world is just political, social it has no value at all so go beyond the ordinary character

so that you can find the real character and the way to find the real is through consciousness

the master cannot say anything about truth truth is inexpressible it is beyond all indications it cannot even be pointed at because it is not an object – it is all over so when you point at it in a direction you are already falsifying because it is not in one direction it is the whole space no gesture is capable of capturing it hence the only way is to go beyond language to go beyond scriptures, to go beyond indications to go beyond all possible symbols, metaphors and just to be in tune with the master just in a silent communion nothing is said, nothing is heard and yet it happens

say something and it will be misunderstood try to understand it and you have already misunderstood it neither saying is going to help nor listening is going to help the master is silent, the disciple is silent

slowly slowly the two silences merge and become one and when the two silences become one you hear

the Sound of one hand Clapping

that is beyond alI expression and that is the moment of enlightenment it is a transmission beyond the words beyond indications, beyond scriptures just a flame jumping into another heart a quantum leap from a lit lamp to an unlit lamp the lit lamp loses nothing and the unlit gains everything it is a transmission of light a transmission of the lamp

so the disciple has to learn only one thing how to sit in silence, in tremendous love waiting waiting for the moment when it comes not desiring, not expecting not asking, not demanding just waiting that is the very soul of sannyas the word waiting

truth is beyond discussion it cannot be discussed either you see it or you don’t see it it cannot be proved no argument can support it or destroy it it is not a question of philosophical debate

because it is not intellectual at alI hence the most futile exercise in the world is philosophy it is just hair-splitting, absolutely pointless the most stupid thing that one can get involved in is philosophy

after thousands of years of philosophical analysis not a single conclusion has been reached not a single truth has been arrived at that is enough reason for philosophy being dropped, completely dropped it is an exercise in utter futility

this is where sannyas takes a totally different route sannyas basically means mysticism it is not philosophical, it is existential we are not searching to know about truth we are not trying to know about truth we are trying to be the truth and to be the truth is the only way to know it there is no other way unless you have tasted it totally so totally that it has become part of your blood, bone and marrow you will not know it unless you have become it there is no knowing of it

truth cannot be an object it becomes your very subjectivity truth is subjectivity, your very innermost core it is self-discovery; hence one has to drop all the patterns of argumentation all the methods of analysis all doubts, all beliefs, all systems of thought theistic, atheistic catholic, protestant, hindu, mohammedan one has to get rid of the whole fabric of the mind the whole junk has to be burned so that one is simply in a state of not-knowing and in that very state of not-knowing the flower of knowing opens up in the east we have called the flower the one-thousand-petalled lotus

[!info] Copyright 1964-1990 Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)