Послания любви. 365 писем Ошо - Бхагаван Раджниш (Ошо)

and what is the mind except that?

Go in and find out.

Do not ask anybody,

do not go to the scriptures,

go in and find out.

Do not think about it

because that is absurd –

how can you think against the mind?

Any conclusion out of thinking

can only strengthen the mind.

Do not think because thinking

is stopping, halting and freezing.

Thinking is the disease.

Go in and find out – immediately.

A moment’s thinking

and you are again in the old rut.

A moment’s thinking

and you are as far from the real as is possible.

290. Love.

We kneel down to ourselves

because we kneel down to the gods we make

out of our experience, or out of our desires and dreams,

or out of our so-called logic and foolish arguments.

This is neither humility nor prayer,

rather, on the contrary, this is

the most egoistic attitude possible.

The truly religious mind is one which just kneels down –

not to anyone, not to any image in particular.

This kneeling down is nothing but

a flowering of one’s total nothingness.

Then this kneeling down becomes an inner way of life,

and unless prayer is such, prayer is not.

One cannot pray, one can only be prayerful.

291. Love.

You cannot run away from the self

because you are the self –

how can you run away from it?

It is like running from one’s own shadow:

all your efforts are bound to be futile.

Rather, stop and see it,

witness it, be aware of it.

Face the shadow and then – where is it?

It has never been, really.

You created it by not facing it

and you strengthened it by running from it.

Is it not time now to stop the game?

292. Love.

Search – and the ego is always somewhere behind.

Search – and in every act the ego is the motivation.

But if one can find that this is so

and can realize it,

one goes beyond it, because the very realization

is the going beyond.

Brother, said Mulla Nasruddin to a neighbor,

I am collecting to pay the debt of a poor man

who cannot meet his obligations.

Very commendable said the other, and gave him a coin.

Who is this person?

Me, said Nasruddin as he hurried away.

A few weeks later he was at the door again.

I suppose you are calling about a debt,

said the trusting neighbor.

I am.

I suppose someone can’t pay a debt

and you want a contribution?

That is so.

I suppose it is you who owes the money?

Not this time.

Well, I am glad to hear it.

Take this contribution.

Nasruddin pocketed the money.

Just one thing, Mulla –

what prompts your humanitarian sentiments

in this particular case?

Well, you see…I am the creditor!

293. Love.

Knowledge is through experiencing.

Mere information is not knowledge,

on the contrary it cannot give the clarity

which knowledge gives to the mind

and may confuse one more

because a confused mind is still more burdened with it.

Two men had played chess

regularly together for several years.

They were quite evenly matched

and there was keen rivalry between them.

Then one man began to beat his rival nearly every time they played

and the other man was completely at a loss

to understand this phenomenon.

On the contrary, he was expecting his game to improve

because he was reading a four-volume set

on How to Play Chess.

After much thought he came up with an idea.

He sent the books to his friend as a gift –

and it was not long before they were evenly

matched again!

294. Love.

There is no proof of the divine in the world

for it is hidden deep, deep, deep inside.

But in you there is the absolute proof,

for it is deep, deep, deep, inside.

Go in and discover it.

Thinking about it will not help:

action is needed,

action turned on oneself –

so act.

That is, turn in.

Man is like a sealed book

written before he was born,

and ordinarily he carries it unopened inside himself

until he dies.

One who opens it knows that he is not

and only the divine is.

295. Love.

Truth is aristocratic.

It cannot be decided by votes or numbers

because truth is enough in itself,

it needs no help or support;

it even needs no proof because truth is self-evident.

A certain man was believed to have died

and was being prepared for burial

when he revived.

He sat up but he was so shocked at the scene around him that he fainted.

He was put in a coffin

and the funeral party set off for the cemetery.

Just as they arrived at the grave

he regained consciousness,

lifted the coffin lid

and cried out for help.

It is not possible that he has revived, said the mourners,

because he has been certified as dead

by competent experts.

But I am alive! shouted the man.

He appealed to a well-known and impartial scientist

and jurisprudent who was present.

Just a moment, said the expert.

He then turned to the mourners, counting them:

Now we have heard what

the alleged deceased has had to say;

you fifty witnesses tell me what you regard as the truth.

He is dead, said the witnesses.

Bury him, said the expert.

And so he was buried.

296. Love.

Choice is the root cause of all anguish.

Choose and you always choose hell –

even when you choose heaven.

And who chooses hell directly?

Yet everyone lives in hell.

What a trick!

The gates of heaven open into hell!

Then what is to be done?

Nothing at all,

because in doing nothing

you can rest content with all things as they are,

and you have knocked at the right door

without even knocking!

297. Love.

Silence is benediction

but not the silence you can create,

because you are the noise

so you cannot create silence.

But you can create the illusion of it,

and this illusion is created by all sorts of

auto-hypnotic techniques.

So never use auto-suggestions to be silent;

rather, be aware of the constantly chattering mind,

and be aware, not to make it still but to understand it.

This very understanding flowers into a silence

which is not just absence of noise

but a positive bliss.

298. Love.

To explore truth one must be free of one’s prejudices –

that is, from oneself.

Otherwise one goes round and round in circles,

because the known can never

be the door for the unknown;

and the known is the mind,

so mind becomes the barrier.

Look attentively at this fact.

Be alert to the vicious circle of the mind –

and then there is transcendence.

The known must cease for the unknown to be.

The known must go for the unknown to come in –

and this cessation of the known is meditation.

299. Love.

The more deeply you go within yourself

the less you will find yourself –

and yet that is the very heart of your being.

And vice versa also:

because the more you go without

the more you will find yourself –

and yet that is the very heart of your non-being.

These are the two ways in which you can go.

The first is the way of meditation,

and the second is the way of the mind.

300. Love.

Be ordinary, so ordinary that you come to be

virtually nobody –

and there is the opening,

and there is the explosion.

Only when you are not are you the extraordinary!

But do not think about it

and do not crave it,

and if the craving comes – be aware and laugh.

It will be stopped by awareness

and the created energy will be used by the laughter,

and after the laugh you will feel a deep relaxation.

Then begin to dance or sing

and the negative state of the mind

will be transformed into the positive.

The craving to be someone, somebody,

is absolutely negative

because the ego is the negation of being.

The ego is the principle of negation,

and if the negative is negated then you are positive.

The ego is the source of all inferiority,

but the trick is subtle

because the ego promises superiority

and in the end only results in inferiority.

Decode this secret and understand it very clearly.

One who thinks in terms of superiority

will always remain inferior

because these are two aspects of the same coin.

Sow the seeds of superiority

and you will reap the crop of inferiority.

Begin with the longing for superiority

and you will end up with nothing but inferiority

and all the hell that is involved in it.

Begin with humbleness, with humility,

and you are nearer to the divine.

In fact you are divine

but the ego will not allow you any gap

to look into your own divinity.

On the contrary

it will go on creating new, imaginary heavens

only to make way for new hells.

Enter heaven and you are entering hell!

Beware of this, and beware of your so-called self –

the creator of all the agonies that exist on earth.

Be a no-self and you will be that which you are already

and have been always –

that which is bliss eternal,

and freedom,

and the cosmic being, the brahman.

Tat tvam asi – that art thou, my love.

301. Love.

Man is unaware of himself.

He does not know what is happening to him,

nor does he know the state of his being.

A man cut down a tree one day.

A Sufi who saw this taking place said:

Look at this fresh branch which is full of sap, and happy

because it does not know yet that it has been cut off.

But his companion said:

Yes, it may be ignorant of the damage it has suffered,

but it will know in due time.

Hearing this the Sufi laughed and said:

Meanwhile you cannot reason with it.

This reverence is the state of man.

This ignorance is the state of man –

and meanwhile you cannot reason with him!

Or can you?

But this is irrelevant.

If you can reason with yourself that is more than enough!

302. Love.

In life everything is whole, and organically whole.

You cannot divide it

or take it in parts.

Love is like that

and meditation is also like that.

Even death is like that.

That is why I say:

Death is not dead but organically one with life.

You cannot die partially!

– either you die or you do not die.

Nor can you die gradually.

Please remember this always

when you are in meditation or in prayer or in worship.

A very valuable dachshund

owned by a wealthy woman was run over.

The policeman sent a man

to tell the woman of her misfortune.

But break the news gently, he said.

She thinks a lot of this dog.

The man rapped on the mansion door

and when the woman appeared, he said: Sorry, lady,

but part of your dog has been run over.

303. Love.

Artificial and outward discipline have no use –

the inner and natural discipline is enough.

But what is the inner discipline?

In one word: acceptance –

total acceptance.

And acceptance can be only total

because partial acceptance

is just a contradiction in terms.

If you live – live!

If you die – die!

If you suffer – suffer!

And then there is no problem

and no anxiety

and no anguish –

and what freedom!

A Zen master was once asked:

It is terribly hot, how shall we escape it?

Why not go, answered the master,

to the place where it is neither –

neither hot nor cold?

Where is that place?

And then the master laughed and said:

In summer we sweat and in winter we shiver.

304. Love.

How can a man learn to know himself? inquires Goethe,

and then answers:

Never by reflection but only by action.

John Burroughs doubts this.

He says:

Is not this a half-truth? –

because one can only learn his powers of action by action

and his powers of thought by thinking.

But I say that

man is always more than all his actions and

all his thoughts,

and unless that more is known no one knows himself.

That more can be known neither

by action nor by reflection

because they both belong to the periphery

and that more is eternally the center.

It can only be known through witnessing action

and thought both:

not by them but by witnessing them.

And witnessing is meditation.

305. Love.

There is no answer to man’s ultimate questions

because the questions are absurd,

and moreover there is no one to answer them.

Existence is silent and has always been so,

so do not ask

but be silent and live it and know it,

because there is no knowing except living.

The search for answers is meaningless.

A patient in a mental hospital

placed his ear to the wall of his room, listening intently.

Quiet! he whispered to an orderly and pointed

to the wall.

The attendant pressed his ear against the wall, listened, and then

said: I don’t hear anything.

No, replied the patient.

It’s awful, it’s always been this way!

306. Love.

The mind lives in a logical somnambulism,

and it feeds on arguments and words.

You cannot come out of it gradually

or logically or rationally.

Rather, take the jump,

illogical and irrational —

and the jump can be nothing else than that.

It cannot be calculated

or conceptualized or predetermined

because it is going into the unknown

and the unchartered

and the unpredictable,

and ultimately not only into the unknown

but into the unknowable also.