Words from the silences of your heart

Question 1:

Deva Sarito, life is such a mystery that the more you know the more you become aware of your ignorance. Or in other words, the more you know it, the less you know it. And the day you know it all, you know nothing.

It has been said that science starts from not knowing and ends in knowing - that"s exactly the meaning of the word "science": knowing. And religion starts from knowing and reaches to its climax in not knowing - because not knowing is another name of innocence. And if religion cannot bring you back your childhood, and the freshness of childhood, and the wondering eyes of childhood, it is not religion at all.

Whatever is happening to you is perfectly the way it should happen. You have every right to say what you have experienced, what you have felt, what changes you have gone through. It is most important to say it, because it is unfortunately the situation that people who know nothing about me even write books against me.

All over the world, in all the languages, people who have never come in contact with me, have never heard me, feel perfectly right in writing all kinds of lies and rumors and allegations without any foundation, without any factuality behind them. The negative person is always very articulate, because to say no, you don't need any intelligence; any idiot can do it. But to say yes needs tremendous courage, and a great intelligence. And the people who say yes, the people who feel yes, are always keeping their secret hiding in their heart. This creates a very unbalanced situation.

Those who don't know me go on writing anything, out of the blue.

Now there is an article in a German magazine, SPIEGEL, saying that I am trying to come to Germany and create a commune in Germany on the same lines as was created in America. So the government has to be aware, and the people of Germany have to be aware. Now, from where do these people get these ideas? I have not even dreamt about going to Germany. Even if they want me to be there, I will refuse. A few days ago in Israel, a Hebrew newspaper had an article saying that the people of Israel have to be clearly aware of the danger, because I am planning to come to Israel. And they say my strategy is that I will be converted to the religion of the Jews, and once I am a Jew, then I will declare that I am the incarnation of Moses!

What to do with these people? - and people read them, people believe them. And the people who know me, who have come into deep inner communion with me, who have experienced me, remain silent.

It is not new. It is part of a strange human psychology. The positive person is humble; even to say something he feels embarrassed, because he knows that whatever he is going to say is not going to be up to the experience that he had. It is going to fall very short; hence the embarrassment.

But the negative person has no fear, no embarrassment. He has not experienced anything. And to deny or to lie, or to create a fiction, is sensational. The people who have been writing against me ... all the publishers are eager to publish their books - without knowing what they are writing, all kinds of rubbish. And a few of my sannyasins who have been with me from the very beginning have written books just to answer those lies and allegations, with facts and figures, with solid arguments.

The publishers are not willing to publish them. They say there is no sensation in it. Lies have sensation; the truth is non-sensational. And the masses are interested in sensationalism, they are not interested in knowing the truth. Truth is simple and plain.

But this situation has to be reversed; there is a limit to everything. The positive people have to come out in the light, and tell with emphasis their own experiences and what they understand about me and my relationship to my people. Unless they come out and do it, they are in an indirect way helping the negative people. Because if those negative people are not contradicted, it becomes an argument in their favor - why are they not contradicted?

So I can understand, Sarito, that you have experiences to express but it is always bound to be something not absolutely the experience. It is going to be something far below. But still it will help people to understand both sides. The negative is articulate, but is meaningless; it is not going to help anybody. It can only prevent people from coming to me. And the people who are writing all those negative books and articles - they cannot help anybody either. So they are really public enemies.

The positive person has to come out so the negative people can be contradicted, and so that those who are in search of truth, in search of silence and peace, can feel a possibility: if they come here, maybe if it is happening to other people, it can happen to them also. You will be opening doors, and you will be giving invitations to new sannyasins, to new seekers.

So don't keep it as a secret. Don't enjoy it inside yourself; share it with as many people as possible, with all the news media, so that you can reach to the farthest corners of the world.

And the positive person has many problems which the negative does not have. First, the positive person starts thinking, "Perhaps my silence, my joy, my bliss, is just imagination." The negative person has no problem; he knows exactly that it is imagination, there is no problem about it! The problem arises only to the positive person - because it is not imagination.

Living here for years ... Imagination is a very momentary phenomenon; you cannot go on living in imagination for twelve years, fifteen years. It is possible to live in imagination for a few moments - imagination is not reality; imagination is just like soap bubbles. For a moment they can shine in the sun, create a rainbow, and then they are gone and all those rainbows disappear.

And one thing more you have to understand, for yourself: you cannot imagine silence; that is not in the nature of things. You can imagine all kinds of thoughts, but you cannot imagine thoughtlessness.

Nobody has ever been able to do it, it is almost impossible. You cannot imagine blissfulness. You don't have any idea, how can you imagine it? Imagination needs some kind of experience; then you can project it. But blissfulness you don't know.

You can imagine misery perfectly well. You are so deeply rooted in misery that there is no problem.

You know it, you can imagine it, you can exaggerate it, you can magnify it a thousandfold; it is in your hands. But blissfulness you don't know. Anything that you don't know is not possible for you to imagine.

So if you are feeling silence, peace, bliss; if you are feeling changes happening in you, in your consciousness, it is not imagination.

Secondly, you are worried that it may be "some kind of arrogance in disguise." One who is aware that his experiences may be some kind of arrogance, has really gone beyond arrogance, because arrogance never recognizes itself. The egoist never recognizes that he is egoistic; the arrogant cannot even think that he is arrogant.

To be worried that perhaps it may be arrogance is part of humbleness. Only a humble person becomes concerned that he should not say anything, he should not do anything that may bring arrogance from the back door. He knows the misery of arrogance, he knows the pain and the anguish of arrogance. He does not want to get into that trap again. But if you are aware, arrogance cannot come close to you, just as when you have light in your house, darkness cannot come in.

Gautam Buddha used to say, "You should be like a house which has light inside. When the house, its doors, its windows, are showing light, thieves don't come close. But when the house is dark and there is no light, it is an opportunity for thieves." And by thieves he means all that destroys your beauty, your grandeur, all that takes away your treasures. Arrogance, ego, aggressiveness, superiority, the idea of being special - all are destroying you and your peace; they are destroying your nobodiness.

You cannot imagine nobodiness. It is almost like ... a beggar can dream of being a king - in fact beggars always dream, and in their dreams they fulfill the desires which they cannot fulfill in their actual waking lives. But nobody has ever heard of a king dreaming about himself being a beggar; that is unknown. Why should one dream of being a beggar? The hungry person can dream that he has been invited to a royal party; he can dream about delicious food - he has to, just to hide his hunger. But the man who is living in the palace and eating delicious food is not going to dream that he is hungry; that is just illogical, unpsychological.

We dream only of things which we don't have; we imagine things only which we don't have. But once you start having real experiences, those experiences start changing your lifestyle, your responses to situations; you can start feeling constantly within you a coolness, a grace, a gratitude towards existence, and out of this peacefulness, silence, beauty, all your actions arise ... they also have something of it. Your words come out from the silences of your heart; they also have some music from their original source.

It is a well-known fact: a man like Jesus was uneducated, but no rabbi in the whole history of Judaism, four thousand years - and Jewish rabbis are great scholars, unparalleled in any other religion - but no Jewish rabbi has spoken the way an uneducated carpenter"s son, Jesus, spoke.

And he knew nothing of scripture, he knew nothing of the art of oratory. Even those who were not in agreement with him had to say, "One thing we cannot deny: nobody has ever spoken the way he speaks."

And he is using simple words, ordinary words used by common people, but on his lips those ordinary words have a changed quality. They are coming from a depth; they are bringing some fragrance with them, they are bringing some authority of his experience. The same words are available ... all the Christian missionaries are repeating the same words every day. But you don't feel any impact, you don't see ... Why the difference?

The difference is that Jesus was speaking out of experience, and these people are speaking only out of their education. For Jesus, it was his life. For these missionaries, it is their salary; it is their livelihood, not their life. For Jesus, what he was saying was so important that he was ready to sacrifice his life, but not to compromise on any ground. But these missionaries, if somebody gives them a better salary, will change their religion immediately. These are professionals. Their words don't have any depth. Their words are not alive, but corpses. They look similar, they sound similar, but you can see when you hear a missionary ....

One of the most famous missionaries in both parts of the world, East and West, was Stanley Jones.

He used to live for six months in the East - he had a beautiful ashram in the Himalayas - and for six months he used to live in the West. I have come across many missionaries, but the caliber that Stanley Jones had, none of them have had. He was a genius. But even a genius cannot put life into words that are not his experience.

I told him ... because he used to stay very near to where I was a teacher in the university, and slowly we became very intimate. He was a sincere man. I said, "There is a difference - you may accept it, you may not accept it. These are the same words spoken by Jesus, which you speak every day in your sermons, but something is missing. They sound the same; they are exactly the same words.

And perhaps you are pronouncing them better than Jesus. He was uneducated, you are a genius"

- and he was one of the best speakers - "and Jesus has nothing as far as the art of oratory is concerned. But his words had a life, his words had wings; they reached you as alive beings, not just corpses. Not just stuffed, dead birds, looking alive."

He was silent for a moment and he said, "Perhaps you are right. Whatever I am saying is my education, is my scholarship, is my lifelong learning. What Jesus was saying was not his learning; he never went to any school. What he was saying was his experience; his words were coming from a living source."

The positive person has to become assertive; he has to come into the light. Otherwise the world is left in the hands of the negative people, and these negative people are the cause of preventing others from seeking and searching.

I have always liked a story by Turgenev - a Russian novelist, one of the best the world has ever known. If you are going to choose ten great books, you will have to give one place to Turgenev without fail. Out of all the literature in all the languages in the world, he may claim more, but one is absolutely certain. He has written a small story, THE FOOL.

In a small village there was a very simple man. His simplicity was such that he almost looked like a simpleton, and the whole village condemned him as the idiot. Out of his simplicity he used to do things, and the cunning people all around condemned him. He became so much afraid even to say a single word, because whatever he would say, he would be immediately criticized, condemned. He became afraid of acting, of doing anything; his life became a hell. And at that time, a mystic passed through the village. The idiot reached the mystic and told his tragic story, asking, "You help me do something ...."

The mystic said, "Who says you are an idiot? You are a very simple, innocent being. Out of your innocence you do things which are going to be against the ideas of the cunning and the clever.

"You do one thing - I will be coming back on the same route within a month, so I can check whether it works or not - I will tell you a simple secret. From tomorrow morning, you become assertive, aggressive: Somebody says, "What a beautiful sunrise" and you immediately jump in and tell him, "What is there? What beauty are you talking about? What is beauty? Define it! I have seen many sunrises like this; it is just a mediocre sunrise - what is special in it? It happens every day." And nobody can define beauty, nobody can prove that the sunrise is beautiful. There is no argument, there is no way.

"Somebody is saying, "Look at that woman, how beautiful she is!" Immediately jump in. You just watch, wherever anybody is making a positive statement about higher values which cannot be proved, you ask for proof: "What do you mean by calling that ordinary woman, who is not even homely ... what beauty is in her? Where is it? - in her eyes, in her nose, in her hair? Where is the beauty? You have to clearly define it, and point to where it is!"" Now, beauty is not something that can be pinpointed.

After one month when the mystic returned, the idiot had become by that time the wisest man in the village. Somebody would say, "That is a holy book," and he would immediately ask, "What do you mean by holy, and what is holy in this book? The paper used is holy, or the ink used is holy, or the words used are holy? What is holy in it? These are the same words, the same ink, the same paper used in every book - what makes this book holy?" And there was no way to prove ....

And people became absolutely afraid in his presence. They would tremble, they would not say anything; the situation was completely reversed.

Before, he used to be afraid; now he was never afraid. And nobody even asked a question of him ... because the mystic had said, "If somebody asks a question, never answer, but ask a counter- question - because your answer can be criticized; don't be caught in that thing. Just ask a counter- question. Ask, "What do you mean by this question? Explain each single word and its meaning."

And harass him so much that even an ordinary sentence becomes a puzzle."

The mystic came; the idiot touched his feet and said, "Your strategy worked. Now I am the wisest man in this village."

He said, "Don't be worried - continue. You will be the wisest man in the whole surrounding area, as far as your name can reach! People will start coming to you just to have your blessings."

A small story, but with great significance. It says how even an idiot, by using negativity, can become wise.

But that is not true wisdom. True wisdom is always positive. True wisdom is always arising out of a yes, out of love, out of gratitude towards existence. True wisdom knows no "no." It does not have any contact with negative attitudes and approaches.

You are perfectly right. Just don't remain silent. Bring your silence into songs, bring your experience into expressions. Say to the world what you have known, without fear.

The last thing to be remembered:

The negative person is always restless, because he has nothing; he is empty, he is angry, he is unfulfilled. Out of his unfulfillment, angriness, emptiness, he becomes more and more revengeful, violent. The positive person, the person who has experienced something, becomes calm and quiet.

Naturally, he has no need to assert. He has no need to say anything; he is so deeply fulfilled that he does not want to waste his breath unnecessarily fighting. He simply remains settled in his own center.

And this settlement becomes more and more and more and more - to a point that he completely forgets. Not only that he forgets misery, he forgets blissfulness - he becomes so accustomed to bliss ... he breathes bliss in and out, day in, day out. It becomes simply his very being; he forgets that he is blissful, that he is experiencing ecstasy. These are just as natural to him as breathing or heartbeats.

Before it happens, you should make an effort - just out of compassion - to show the way to others.

They are all groping in darkness; they want some door to open. They are tired of their chains and their handcuffs, and they want somebody to help them to be freed, somebody to say to them that "Yes, there is freedom." They have become so suspicious - perhaps there is nothing like freedom, nothing like blissfulness, nothing like ecstasy. And these negative people go on telling them that these are all imaginations, these are all hypnotic trances; these are not realities. But their innermost beings are thirsty, although their minds are filled and distracted and corrupted by the negative people.

Those who experience something that can be a valuable assurance and encouragement to anybody, anywhere - so that his hope arises again that some window can be opened, that there are doors which he has missed; that he has listened to wrong people, that he has been under the impact of negative darkness and he has not opened his eyes to the positive light - before you become completely satisfied, you have to help people.

You can do it only before you become so settled that you forget at all that you are blissful. Bliss can be experienced only in contrast to misery, and if you have been blissful for years, you have forgotten misery, how it used to be; now bliss has become your only experience. The gap - when you are dropping the misery and moving towards bliss, when you have seen the star for the first time - that is the moment when you should express yourself ... "Nobody needs to be a pessimist, nobody needs to drop his hopes. I have seen the star."

But it has to be done quickly, when you see it. When you become the star yourself, then it will be too late. You will not be able to say anything; even the desire to communicate will disappear.

I have heard the pope died, and went to heaven. Saint Peter asked him whom among the saints he would like to meet. "Saint Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ," said the pope.

Saint Peter leads him into a palatial hall. There in a far corner sits an old Jewish lady. The pope approaches her reverently, and sinks to his knees: "Oh, holy mother of God," he says, "all my life on earth I have been looking forward to this blessed moment. There is one question I want to ask you: What was it like to give birth to our Lord Jesus Christ?" The old lady wags her head and smiles.

"Well, actually we wanted a girl," she said.

The mother of Jesus Christ is bound to become accustomed to Jesus Christ - he is nothing special to her, her own son. She is disappointed, because they wanted a daughter and they have got a son who is a troublemaker! Because of him, they are condemned, and because of him, in their old age they have to go through great anguish and suffering because he is crucified.

When all the disciples had escaped, the mother was sitting there underneath the cross where Jesus was crucified, crying and weeping. And she must have been thinking it would have been better if a girl had been born. A son - and him too, a son who gets crucified in her old age. And he was so young, only thirty-three. He has given his parents nothing but anxiety. To the pope it is one thing - Jesus Christ is God - but to the old Jewish lady, the mother of Jesus, he was just a troublemaker, unnecessarily disturbing the peace, unnecessarily leaving them in their old age in immense misery because of the crucifixion.

If Jesus Christ is born to you, you will become accustomed. If bliss is born in your being, you will become accustomed. Before you become accustomed, spread the good news as far and wide as possible. There are millions of thirsty people - under the impact of negative, sensational, articulate people, they are suffering in a kind of limbo. They hear only the negative side of things. Naturally they become suspicious of whether any positive side exists at all, or if they are unnecessarily running after shadows and phantoms - because all these clever people are writing against the possibility.

For the new humanity, millions of changes are going to happen. One of the most major changes will be that the positive person has to become articulate. He has to say to the world what he is experiencing, without any fear, without any embarrassment, without any suspicions that it may be imagination. Even if it is imagination, it may do good.

But it is not imagination. You cannot imagine spiritual experiences; you don't have any notion what they are. Unless you know them, there is no way of imagining them, and when you have known them, there is no question of imagination.

The people in the world are in immense need of a few articulate, positive, assertive individuals. Not only their words will be helpful, but their presence - because their words can only be supported by their presence, by their actions, by their responses. There is no other kind of evidence. If people see that you are really living peace, that your life is a song of silence and each of your actions shows it, we can change the whole negative and sick psychology of man.

Otherwise ... these negative people have been predominant all through history - because it is very easy to be negative, anybody can do it. Anybody can say, even to Gautam Buddha, that "Whatever you are saying is all nonsense." And even a man like Gautam Buddha cannot produce any evidence of his enlightenment. If the person is adamant, stubborn, closed, there is no way.

Buddha can help the person if he is open, vulnerable, receptive, ready to feel Buddha"s presence, ready to feel his fragrance, ready to become part of his silence. But most of the people in the world are living under the impact of negative people. This impact has created such an unconscious state ... people go on falling more and more into unconsciousness, into darkness.

Sometimes I think that the Eastern idea has some psychological significance. It may not be true factually and historically, but psychologically ... nobody has explored the idea. Just as Charles Darwin proposed the idea of evolution, the East has believed for thousands of years in a contrary idea of involution, not evolution; that man is not growing higher, but falling lower; that the first golden age was in the very beginning.

It is worth understanding the whole idea as a psychological interpretation - not as history, not as science, but as psychology.

The first age, according to the Eastern mystics is called satyuga, the age of truth, the golden age.

In a way we can see that each man passes through that golden age again when he is a child. When the whole humanity was in its childhood, then the idea becomes very relevant. Children have to learn to speak lies; otherwise, they simply speak the truth, without any learning. Truth is not to be learned, it is just out of your innocence.

Lying needs learning, cleverness, cunningness, calculativeness.

Truth needs only innocence.

So the first age in the Eastern calculation was satyuga, the age of truth. They have called it "the golden age." Their description is tremendously significant. Describing satyuga they say it was like a table with four legs, absolutely balanced. Satyuga had four legs, which kept it absolutely balanced.

Then things started falling down.

The theory is exactly against Charles Darwin - I call it "involution." One leg dropped. The table became very unbalanced; life became unbalanced. Things were no longer the same as they had been - peaceful, silent, tranquil. With three legs, all balance was lost - but still, the table can be converted into a tripod. A tripod has three legs; some balance is still possible. This second age is called treta, because of three legs - treta means three. The English word "three" comes from the Sanskrit root, tre, and treta also comes from the same root. Life was no longer golden. Innocence was lost - that was the leg that was missing - people became more clever, more cunning.

Then as days went by, things went down more. The third age is called dwapar. One more leg dropped; only two legs remained. All balance was lost. Dwapar is the same as the English word two. Dwapar comes from the Sanskrit root, dwa. Dwa has moved through many languages, reaching a few languages as twa ... and by the time it reached the English language, it became two. But it is the same word. Life became ugly, more barbarous, with more exploitation, more negativity.

And we are in the fourth - one leg has fallen again; now we are standing only on one leg. The fourth is called kaliyuga, the age of darkness. And it seems certainly true that we are living in an age of darkness and unconsciousness. We are preparing for our own suicide - what more unconsciousness can there be? The future seems to be absolutely meaningless. It seems that every day the end of life is coming closer; the night goes on becoming darker and darker.

Even small children have been found in thousands taking drugs; it is no longer the new generation, it is no longer young people - school kids are taking drugs. School kids have been found murdering other children, school kids have been found raping girls - and not as an exception. In America they had a survey, and they could not believe ... the government tried hard to repress it, not to let it be known to the world, but it leaked out.

The most advanced nation, most powerful, most scientifically, technologically advanced, is going through the darkest period in the whole of human history.

This unconsciousness can be broken only if the people whose life has become meditation, whose life has become a pure love, whose life has become a compassion, start waking up other sleeping people: "It is time - get ready. As the night becomes darker, the dawn is closer, but if you go on sleeping, dawn or no dawn, your night continues. Your eyes are closed, your darkness continues."

Otherwise, a new dawn for the whole human race, a new innocence, a new childhood, a new satyuga - the age of truth - a new golden age is possible. But the positive people have to take the bold step of expressing themselves. They have not been doing that for the whole of history. They have enjoyed their experience, and they have thought their work was finished.

I want you to remember always:

When you have something to share, don't stop there; share it. Humanity is in need, as it has never been in need, of people who can create new hope for a new dawn.

A Jew comes to an inn, very late at night, and is forced to share a room with a Russian officer. Not wanting to meet him, he asks the innkeeper to wake him up very early in the morning because he has to catch the first train.

The Jew undresses and goes to bed, and is awakened by the innkeeper when it is still dark outside.

He dresses quickly and goes out, and to his surprise, all the soldiers salute him. When he mounts the train he looks at the mirror and realizes he is wearing a uniform. "Damn the innkeeper," cries the Jew. "He woke up the wrong man!"

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.