Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
. Both are right, but they appear to be contradictory; hence the confusion. On the one hand
I am saying that when you are one with existence, you come to realization -- and to be
one with existence means you disappear, you are no more. And on the other hand I am
telling you to be yourself, to be authentically your original face; only then can you
experience realization.
I can see your dilemma. You feel that they are both right -- that is significant to
remember -- that you feel that they are both right, but your mind is not convinced, your
thinking is not convinced. Your thinking creates questions: How can they both be right?
Mind functions in an either/or way: either this can be right or its opposite can be right.
Both together cannot be right -- as far as mind, its logic, its rationality, is concerned.
If mind is either/or, then the heart is both/and. The heart has no logic, but a sensitivity, a
perceptivity. It can see that not only can both be together; in fact, they are not two. It is
just one phenomenon, seen from two different aspects. And there is much more than the
two -- that's why I say "both/and."
And the heart is always right. If there is a question of choosing between the mind and the
heart... because mind is a creation of the society. It has been educated. It has been given
to you by the society, not by existence.
The heart is unpolluted.
It is pure existence:
Hence it has a sensitivity.
Look from the viewpoint of the heart, and the contradiction starts melting like ice.
I say to you, be one with the universe; you have to disappear and let the existence be.
You just have to be absent so that the existence can be present in its totality. But the
person who has to disappear is not your reality, it is only your personality. It is just an
idea in you. In reality you are already one with existence; you cannot exist in any other
way.
You are existence.
But the personality creates a deception, and makes you feel separate. You can assume
yourself to be separate -- existence gives you total freedom, even against itself. You can
think of yourself as a separate entity, an ego. And that is the barrier that is holding you
back from melting into the vastness that surrounds you every moment.
It has no closed doors, all its doors are open. Sometimes you do feel a certain door open -
- but only for a fragment of a moment; your personality cannot afford more. Those
moments you call moments of beauty, moments of ecstasy.
Looking at a sunset, just for a second you forget your separateness. You are the sunset.
That is the moment when you feel the beauty of it. But the moment you say that it is a
beautiful sunset, you are no longer feeling it; you have come back to your separate,
enclosed entity of the ego. Now the mind is speaking.
And this is one of the mysteries, that the mind can speak -- and knows nothing; and the
heart knows everything -- and cannot speak.
Perhaps to know too much makes it difficult to speak.
The mind knows so little, it is possible for it to speak. Language is enough for it, but is
not enough for the heart.
But sometimes, under the impact of a certain moment -- a starry night, a sunrise, a
beautiful flower -- and just for a moment you forget that you are separate. And even
forgetting it releases tremendous beauty and ecstasy. When I say you have to disappear for the realization of the ultimate, I do not mean you; I
mean the you that you are not. I mean the you that you think you are.
And the second statement, that only in feeling one with existence, totally dissolved in it,
do you realize yourself, you realize truth... there is no contradiction for the heart, because
this "you" that you realize when you are one with existence is not the old you. That was
your personality, and this is your individuality. That was given by the society, and this is
nature, reality, a gift of existence. You can forget it, but you cannot destroy it.
The other you, the false you -- you can create it, but you cannot make it real. It will
remain a shadow, a painted face. It will never become your original face.
When I was a professor in the university, in the professors' campus there used to be a
small street. Very few bungalows were there and those were the best bungalows -- for the
deans and the vice-chancellor and the heads of the departments. So very silent, empty, no
traffic... and the street was not long. It went just half a mile and then there was an end, a
dead end, and a deep valley.
Whenever there was rain... I loved to walk in the rain. The last house had made it a
point... because they saw it happening again and again, that whenever it rains I am certain
to appear on the street. And that was the last house; then the valley was there.
They thought I must be mad -- without umbrella, soaking with water, with a beard, long
hair, and walking so slowly and at ease... as if there is no problem of the rain. And then I
used to stand by the side of a big bodhi tree, just at the very end of the street.
The bodhi tree has many beauties. One of the beauties is that its leaves are such that when
it is raining you can stand underneath it and save yourself from the rains: the leaves
prevent the water from reaching to you. And it has very thick foliage, so the water goes
on gathering on the leaves. And the leaves are like cups, so they hold much.
So if you are suddenly caught in the rain, and don't want to spoil your clothes, the bodhi
tree protects you longer than any other tree. But the other beauty is -- which was more
important for me -- that when the rain has stopped, then under the bodhi tree, rain starts! -
- because how long can it contain all that water? Sooner or later it becomes weightier,
and leaves start... So when the whole world is silent, under the bodhi tree it is raining.
So I used to go to the end of the street and rest under the bodhi tree. That was another
madness to the people of the house. Only in the beginning few minutes of rain can the
bodhi tree protect you; after, that is dangerous, the most dangerous. The rain has stopped,
but it will not stop under the bodhi tree for at least one hour.
The children of the house, the wife, daughters, sons -- they all will gather in the verandah
and look at me. And it became an absolute thing to them, that both things happen together
-- rain, and my coming to their house.
The house was given to one of the most important physicists, the head of the physics
department. And he was very much interested in me, because once in a while I was
making statements which were bringing physics and mysticism closer than ever. Perhaps
the same statement can be made by the physicist as is being made by the mystics.
He was a very humble man. He had been teaching all over the world in different
universities. Whenever I was giving a lecture in the students' union -- because almost
every week, once or twice... He was an absolute audience -- he would come, certainly.
Many other professors used to come, but he was the most regular. And we became
friends. He was very old. He had worked with Albert Einstein, and after Albert Einstein's death
he came to America in his place -- because he was his closest colleague, and nobody
could have taken that place except him.
We became such great friends that he said, "Sometime I would like you to come to my
house; I would like to introduce you to my wife and my children." I had no idea that
those were the people who knew me already, and I knew them already.
When I reached their house they all started giggling, and he was very angry. He said, "I
have brought a friend. Accepted that he is very young and I am very old, and the
friendship looks strange, but our conceptions about reality are very close, and you should
not behave like this -- you have never behaved like this."
But the wife said, "You don't know this man."
And I said to him, "She is right: we have been well-acquainted for almost two years."
He said, "What! You are acquainted with my wife and children?"
I said, "Not actually, but a sort of acquaintance is there." And then I told him, "I come
here on this street when it is raining; I love rains, and these people love to see me -- a
madman. And don't think they are unmannerly -- that you are introducing me and they
are laughing and giggling... even your wife cannot contain herself."
This physicist met some sannyasin in America, and sent me a message: "The last person I
want to see is you, and I am coming back to India as soon as possible just to see you. And
the reason is that I feel you are perfectly right that the way of the heart in seeing things is
far closer to reality than the way of the mind."
But before he could come to India, he died. I feel that I must have been in his thoughts
when he died.
We are one as far as our reality is concerned.
We look separate as far as our fabricated egos are concerned.
So when I say dissolve your "you," I mean your own creation, or the creation of the
society in you. And just feel the silence of the moment when you are not; then you will
feel so much in tune with clouds and the ocean and the mountains.
The day you drop it completely is the greatest day in your life, because this brings you
the whole universe. You lose nothing -- you lose only a false idea -- and you attain
everything: the whole universe, the infinite universe with all its beauties, with all its
treasures.
But before you can drop the false "I" you have to find your real "I"; otherwise dropping
the false "I", you will feel you are becoming empty.
That's why I say become an individual, be yourself.
That simply means that, feeling your reality you will be -- without any trouble -- capable
of dropping the false. In fact the false will drop itself. As the real comes in, the false goes
out. And the real is from one standpoint, individual -- individual against personality. The
personality was just hodgepodge; something was put by your mother, something was put
by your father, something by your neighbors, friends, wife, teachers, priests, leaders... It
was a patchwork, it was not indivisible.
It was almost falling apart -- any moment, a small accident and it will fall apart -- it had
no soul connecting all its parts. It had no wholeness, it was only parts.
Against `personality' I use the word `individuality' in the meaning of indivisibility.
Individual means indivisible: you cannot divide it, there are no parts -- it cannot fall apart. It is solid rock, it is one piece. Seen in comparison with personality... but that is
only one aspect.
Seen from the universal, you are no longer individual either. Even that much demarcation
disappears. You are the whole. The winds, the trees, the moon are not separated
anywhere; neither are you. You are breathing every moment. Existence is not separate
from you, even when you think you are separate.
And when you know that you are not separate, it is a tremendous realization. Then all
fear of losing your face, all fear of losing your personality -- which is always slipping --
disappears. You have come to the origins. You have come to the eternal, to the universal.
This is what I call enlightenment.
You have become full of light and clarity.
Now you live the whole mystery of existence.
Seeing a roseflower, you become it. You don't see it from outside; you feel it from its
innermost being. Its petals are yours, its perfume is yours. You are not an observer -- you
are it.
Krishnamurti used to say again and again -- his whole life he was saying it; I don't think
the people who were listening were really listening to him. This is his most repeated
observation: that the observed becomes the observer, or the observer becomes the
observed.
You don't see a sunset setting far away; you are in it, you are part of all those beautiful
colors. And to live existence in such deep empathy is the richest experience man is
capable of.
Trust your feeling.
Never trust your mind -- your mind is the Judas.
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