The thread of understanding

Question 1:

Anand Govind, the most difficult thing is to hear yourself.

Your mind is so full of others, there is so much noise, so much traffic of thoughts and feelings and emotions, that the still, small voice of your heart is drowned in it.

It took eight years for you to hear it. Still it is early. There are people who have not heard it even for eighty years; and most people die without hearing their own heart, without hearing that still, small voice.

I remember the moment when I asked you, "Have you anything to say to me?" because I felt in your eyes the stirring of your heart. But you could not hear it. You were certainly aware that there was something you wanted to say - but what it was, was very vague, nebulous.

Now it has become a condensed phenomenon, and your mind has also become more and more silent. You can hear the heart. Rejoice, and be grateful to existence, because you are fortunate, you are blessed. Most people are born with something to say, something to express, something to create, and their heart is continually knocking on the doors of their mind; but the mind is such a chaos, those knocks are not heard.

Once you have started hearing those knocks, it shows two things: your mind is becoming calm and quiet; and second, that you are becoming aware of the deeper things of life.

When I said to you, "I have heard you" - because I could see the tears almost in your eyes - that which was not apparent to you, to your mind, was visible in your eyes. Eyes say so much that language seems to be very poor in comparison. I heard exactly the same thing that you have now heard: I love you.

This is one of the most difficult phenomena: to hear the knock of love - because love does not make a noise; it does not make sounds while it reaches to your mind. It is an absolutely silent experience.

You never become aware of the passage from the heart to the mind. It is a long journey.

Physically your heart and mind are not so distant - a few inches only - but existentially your mind is one polarity, your heart another. And the distance is long. But love walks so silently - just the way spring comes: you cannot hear the footsteps, neither can you see the footprints. Suddenly it is there.

Before you hear it, before you become aware of it, the trees have become aware: they have started dancing. Flowers have become aware: they have opened their hearts to the new messenger. Birds have become aware: they have started singing their best songs.

If you have heard... and I trust what you are saying, because without hearing it you would have said anything else, but not "I love you." It is a dangerous thing too. It is almost like walking on the razor's edge, because love ultimately means dissolving and melting and disappearing. It is not an ego trip; it is moving towards nothingness, nobodyness. It will not make you somebody special; it will make you absolutely ordinary, just like the trees and the bushes and the rivers and the mountains.

But be careful, because love is not a solid thing that you can possess. On the contrary, love is an energy. You can be possessed by it. And most of the people in the world have killed their love in the effort of possessing it. The moment you possess love, you have destroyed it, you have made it a thing. Then you can decorate your sitting room with a golden cage and a dead lovebird. If you want it to be alive, you have to disappear - you cannot exist together.

You have heard, "I love you;" soon the "I" will disappear, only love will remain, because with the "I"

disappearing on the one hand, the "you" on the other hand also disappears. Hidden behind this message is still something more, and that is simply "love" - no "I," no "thou."

But people are so cunning... you cannot imagine. One of my sannyasins, Zareen, asked Swami Ajit Saraswati, who has been in contact with me for almost twenty years.... He was in the commune in America, and the day he departed from there, he promised me that he was simply going to spread my message.

But I have been here for so many days, and he has not been seen. Zareen was puzzled. She enquired of Ajit Saraswati when she met him, "Why are you not coming?" And this is how the cunning mind is: he said, "I love Osho. Osho is in my heart. There is no need to come to the ashram to see him."

Is this the language of love? It is the cunning mind which does not want to accept the truth, that Ajit Saraswati has proved to be a coward. He is afraid of the Hindu chauvinists, of which Poona is full.

Coming to me is risky, dangerous. It would have been far more credible if he had said the truth: I am a coward, and I cannot come because I am afraid of the society.

But instead of saying this, he says, "I love Osho so much. He is always in my heart" - that is why there is no need to come here. Then why does he go to his wife? - does he love her or not? Why does he go to his children? - does he love them or not? Why does he go to his friends? - is there any love, or not? Or am I the only exception?

Let him come one day - he will have to come - but I am not going to see him, because I love him so much. He is in my heart. Why should I see him? Even Zareen was shocked - the way he used the word "love." Beautiful words can be destroyed by the cunning mind.

You have heard rightly, because I remember having heard it eight years ago. Now I am saying that you will also one day hear only love: no "I," no "thou" - just an oceanic feeling of love overwhelming you, for all that lives, for the whole existence.

Unless love spreads its wings to the whole sky and covers all the stars, it remains imprisoned - an imprisoned splendor. Do not imprison your love, because that is your very spirit.

Question 2:

Devageet, in the first place you never had any marbles. So you are absolutely safe; you cannot lose them.

And even if one has to lose his mind, one is losing the only barrier that divides him from existence.

The moment mind is lost, you suddenly find yourself in tune and in harmony.

That is what is happening to you. While dancing, singing madly, you are becoming aware... of the songs of the birds, of the dance of the peacocks, of the flight of the eagles. And you are all one.

Charles Darwin was only partially right when he said man has come from the monkeys. But he has stumbled upon a fragment of truth. In my vision, man contains in himself all the animals and all the trees and all the birds. When he dances, the peacock dances in him; when he sings, the nightingale sings in him; when he runs, a deer runs in him. When he is struck with the beauty of a sunrise, he has become a tree. When he dances in the rain, he knows something that goes on happening in the deepest souls of all the trees. When he becomes full of light, all the stars that have been hidden in him have become manifest.

Man is not only one of the species of animals. Man is an immense synthesis of all that is living - alive, dancing, singing, joyful.

Mind is rubbish. The sooner you lose it, the better. Then nothing prevents you from talking to the trees, dancing in the wind, having a dialogue with the stars. Of course, the world will say you are mad; but at least I am here - the majority of one - who says you have come home, you have become sane.

Question 3:

Anand Maitreya, you say, "The more I try to understand You, the more You baffle me." Stop trying to understand me. Just be with me.

Trying to understand is creating the problem. Just be here now - no need to understand. I am not a problem, neither am I a hypothesis.

I am a living presence.

Don't try to understand me.

Otherwise, if you love me you will feel baffled; if you don't love me you will become my enemy. Those are the two possibilities of trying.

If the friend and the enemy both can just be silent with me, understanding will arise on its own.

It is a by-product of a silent communion. You don't become knowledgeable, but you are so full of understanding. But this is a totally different kind of understanding. You have not made any effort; it has showered on you.

Any understanding that comes through your effort can be lost. Perhaps more effort and you may start seeing things in a different light. Perhaps less effort and you will lose the thread of understanding. So there is an understanding which should really only be called knowledgeability, that comes by effort; and there is an understanding which comes not by your effort, but when all efforts are forgotten.

Understanding is just like sleep. If you make efforts to go to sleep, it is very difficult to go to sleep.

Your very efforts are disturbing. And there are so-called wise people advising others to do this mantra, do this chanting, take a shower or a hot bath - and all these efforts will make you more and more awake.

When people ask me what to do when sleep is not coming, I say, "Go for a long walk in the dark night, alone. Forget all about sleep. If it is not coming, it means it is not needed. And after a long walk in the forest, in your aloneness, you will become relaxed. Or if you cannot go for a long walk, then just close your eyes. But don't make any effort to sleep; just wait for it. Watch from which door it comes. And you will find yourself in the morning waking up saying, ?My God, when did sleep come and from which door?'"

When you are not making any effort, you become relaxed. Effort creates tensions, and you cannot attain to understanding through tensions. Relaxation is the door. Just relax in my presence and there will be no question of bafflement, of any puzzle, of any problem. You will understand, but it will not come as knowledge. It will come more and more like love, which you know and yet you know not.

Millions of people have loved, but nobody has been able to define it, because love cannot be translated into knowledge. It is very shy.

You say, "Every day You are becoming more and more mysterious." This is a good symptom. That means you are slowly, slowly coming closer and closer to me. The closer you come to me, the more mysterious you will find me.

And that moment will also come, Maitreya, when not only I will be mysterious; you will also be mysterious. And when two mysteries meet, they are not two. There is no demarcation line between two mysteries. Two mysteries always become one, just like two zeros always become one; two nothingnesses always become one.

You are asking, "What is this unending mystery?"

This is life.

This is love.

This is a deep laughter.

Question 4:

Nivedano, don't feel that you fall short of something intelligent to say. All that is really intelligent, is impossible to say. And it is not just a coincidence that whatever you say sounds like poetry, although you are not a poet.

There are poets and there are poets. There are poets who compose poetry; they are composers.

Their poetry is shallow. It is only a linguistic and grammatical game. They know the technique of how to create the fallacy of something being poetry. And there are poets who are not even aware of their poetry. They are not composers; but their hearts are so full of love and beauty and truth that whatever they say becomes poetry. It may have the form of prose; that does not matter.

You have to understand this: there are poems which have only the form of poetry, but they are really prose. And there are pieces of prose which have the form of prose, but are really poetry.

Poetry and prose are not a question of form; it is a question of content. Even silence can be poetry.

Listen to this silence... this silence can defeat any Shakespeare, any Kalidas, any Milton. These birds are not composing poetry. Just the beautiful sun and the beautiful trees are making them explode into singing. They don't know the art of composing poetic pieces. Do you think peacocks go to a school to learn dancing - kathak? - or cuckoos go to a school of music? What can a school of music teach a cuckoo? A cuckoo is already cuckoo enough.

Whatever your heart is pouring is poetry: "You are all the rivers reaching to the ocean, where the sky seems to disappear into the earth, that "there" which is here. At dawn I bathe in the warmth of Your compassionate love and understanding, and when dust settles one can see the vast firmament reflected in Your eyes, where the distant echoes of unforgettable melodies can be heard in the silence of Your songs. You are truth, You are love, You are beauty. And yet all of this, for the one who finds it, is said to be but nothingness."

It is said to be but nothingness because anything less than nothing will not do justice to all the songs and the beauty and the truth that are born out of it. What is the womb of a woman, except nothingness? But out of that womb life arises. And where does life disappear after death? You burn the body. Life moves back into nothingness to rest.

"A little rest on the wind," says Almustafa to Almitra, "and another woman will bear me as a child."

Birth is from nothingness, and death takes you back into nothingness. Nothingness is a rest - the ultimate rest. And all that is beautiful in the world, created by man, has come out of nothingness.

When Picasso was asked.... He was going to the beach with his canvas and colors and brushes, to paint. One of his girlfriends was with him, and she asked, "What you are going to paint today?" He said, "I don't know." The girl was certainly puzzled. She said, "Then who knows?" He said, "That too I don't know."

The girl said, "Are you going to paint or not?" He said, "Why unnecessarily torture me? I will wait on the beach. If the painting comes out of nothing and wants to be born, I will be a womb to it. I am ready to be a mother to it, but I am not a painter in the sense of one who has a certain idea in the mind and then brings that idea to the painting."

It happened once: a man purchased one of the paintings of Picasso for one million dollars. Of course he wanted to be sure that it was an authentic original, that it was not somebody else's painting, a fake painting - and there are thousands of fake paintings in the world.

But the critic who was helping him to find the best painting in the museum told him, "Don't be worried, because at the time Picasso painted this painting, I was present with him. I am a friend of his. I was a guest in his house. And if you still don't believe me, you come with me to Picasso."

He took the man to Picasso. Picasso looked at the painting, and he said, "It is not original."

The critic could not believe it. He said, "What are you saying? You painted it in front of me."

Even Picasso's secretary said, "That critic is right. You have forgotten. It is your painting, your signature."

He said, "I have not forgotten anything. But this is not original, because I have painted the same painting before. That time it came from the beyond. I had no idea what I was painting - only as the painting went on growing did I become aware of it. And that original painting is in a certain museum, you can go and see; you will not find any difference between the two.

"This second painting I had to paint because somebody was there who was insisting on buying a painting, and I had no painting. And you cannot provoke the beyond according to your desires; it comes to you on its own. Sometimes months pass and I cannot paint a single thing. And sometimes for months I am painting and painting; the sky goes on pouring like rain.

"So, because the man was rich and I was in need of money and he wanted a painting, I remembered this painting and I painted it. So you are right that I painted it. But listen to me: this is only a copy, it is not original. I will not count it as an original Picasso. The original Picasso always comes from the beyond - Picasso is only a medium. In this painting Picasso was the technician, not the painter."

So all the beauty and truth and silence and unforgettable melodies that you hear... trust me, they are coming out of nothingness. I don't speak. I am just a hearer amongst you.

"Beloved master, forgive me if, in the attempt to thank existence for all these blessings of Your presence here, I fall short of something intelligent to say, and sound like a poet without poetry." Don't feel sorry - feel blessed that you cannot say anything intelligent, intellectual. On the contrary, your heart comes in and creates poetry.

You know perfectly well you are not a poet by profession; but poetry is not the monopoly of the professionals. The greatest poetry is born not from the professionals, but from those amateur wanderers who don't know what they are doing.

The moment a person becomes an expert, professional, he does not look at the beyond. He simply goes on painting, or creating poetry, or music, or a sculpture through his own mind. It is man-made.

And unless something is coming from beyond the man, from beyond the mind - something that is transcendental - it is not poetry.

Don't feel sorry; instead rejoice - that you wanted to say something intelligent, but instead you are talking like a poet without knowing what poetry is. No poet knows what poetry is. Professors of poetry know what poetry is, but they never create a single poem. It is a very strange world, where experts are superficial and where amateurs touch the very depth of existence or the very height of the Himalayas.

"I just don't know anymore." That's great! Ignorance is a cousin-sister of innocence. There is not much difference: ignorance is asleep, innocence is awake. The moment you understand that you don't know anymore, you are coming very close to the innocent heart. Just a little more awareness and you will be awake.

"It is all so vast that this heart can only repeat on and on: Thank You." In fact, every heart in its every beat is doing the same to existence. You have not understood it, because you don't know the language of the heart. This is the beginning of understanding the language of the heart. Each beat is nothing but a 'thank you'.

One Zen master used to wake up every morning and call loudly, "Bokuju, are you still here?" - that was his own name. And his disciples were very much ashamed: "If somebody hears, they will think you are mad. Why do you do it?"

He said, "In the night, when I go to sleep, I say, ?Bokuju, one does not know whether tomorrow morning you will be able to see the sunrise again... the song of the birds, the vast sky, the dance of life.' So when I wake up, the first thing, I want to do is to make certain that Bokuju is still here." So he used to call, "Bokuju, are you still here?" - and then he would say, "Yes, sir!" Then only would he get out of bed.

His disciples said, "This is absolutely insane." He said, "It may be, in your eyes, but not in my eyes - because I am not Bokuju. Bokuju is the name of my body and my personality. After a deep sleep I want to know whether the body is still there or not; otherwise, who is going to get up? And when I hear ?Yes, sir!' then I say, ?That's perfectly good: one day more to live, one day more to sing, one day more to love, one day more to dance.'"

You are right. Because of the poverty of language, of the poverty of philosophy, of the poverty of religion, one cannot do anything better than what for thousands of years.... One does not know who said it first:

Buddham Sharanam Gachchhami - I go to the feet of the awakened one.

Sangam Sharanam Gachchhami - I go to the feet of the commune of the awakened one.

Dhammam Sharanam Gachchhami - I go to the ultimate truth of the awakened one.

This is the only prayer possible, because this is nothing but thankfulness, gratitude.

Okay, Vimal?

Yes, Osho.