Osho, You often advise us to follow two courses of action that seem to be incompatible with each other. First you tell us to be completely in the moment, without mind, to be our fear, our joy, or rage. Then you tell us to become detached from our egos, to watch what comes up within ourselves.
How can we do both? Please explain.
OSHO:
Lisa Christenson,
Logic is not necessarily existential; it is intellectual. But existence has no obligation... you see? Existence goes on its own way! It is not concerned with your question, it is not concerned with my answer. It is absolutely illogical.
Logic will see contradiction. If logic was all, then certainly there was difficulty. But logic is not all, just the way of the mind of looking at things. Mind divides in polar opposites; the division is not there in existence itself. Existence is undivided. The day and the night are one, the birth and death are one, the plus and the minus are one, the positive and the negative are one. But logically they are incompatibles. Existentially a totally different dimension opens up: they are not contradictory to each other but complementary.
This word has to be pondered over, meditated upon. Life is complementariness! The opposite is not really opposite; it helps, it supports its own so-called opposite. Without birth there is no possibility of death, and without death there can be no birth either. It is one phenomenon, two sides of the same coin.
Yes, I say, Lisa, that first you should be in the moment, totally one with whatsoever is happening, utterly one -- and then watch it. Certainly, if you only think about it, the problem will arise: how one can do both these incompatibles together? If you think then the problem is there, but if you do the problem disappears. Rather than thinking, you try, give it a try.
And how it happens is simple: if you are not identified totally with anything you cannot be DISidentified with it totally either. If you are only half-heartedly in it you can be only half-heartedly out of it. You were never totally in it, how can you be totally out of it? You have to become utterly absorbed in it, and in that very moment you can slip out of it as totally as you had slipped in.
It is as simple as coming into the house and going out of the house. If somebody was just philosophically thinking, then that too will seem incompatible. How to go in the house and come out of the house? These are incompatibles! And you are doing thousand and one incompatibles every moment...
It is the same breath that goes in and comes out, and you never for a single moment feel worried that something incompatible is happening. To be logical, either take the breath in and don't allow it to go out -- that will be logical -- or if it is out then don't allow it to come in.
Logic is perfectly okay with dead things, with matter. That is the difference between the objective and the subjective world, with matter and with consciousness. Logic is absolutely adequate with the material phenomenon, but absolutely inadequate as far as the consciousness is concerned.
Consciousness is a synthesis of the polar opposites. Consciousness is where thesis and antithesis meet, mingle, merge and become one. Consciousness is a state of orgasmic oneness where man and woman disappear and become one, where life and death are no more separate, where they are in such deep accord that you cannot draw a line where life ends, where death begins.
Rather than thinking about it, go into it. What I am saying is something existential, not intellectual. If you just listen to my words and follow them you will be in trouble.
Heraclitus has a tremendously pregnant statement. He says life moves through one opposite to another. Through the opposite, through the tension of the opposite, everything lives and becomes deeper. This is the secret. This is the hidden harmony.
Heraclitus is one of the greatest Buddhas of the world. In western philosophy his name is not part of the mainstream. The mainstream consists of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein, Moore. Heraclitus is something like an outsider for the simple reason that he is one of the greatest mystics. What Aristotle only thinks, Heraclitus knows. What Wittgenstein only thinks, Heraclitus experiences.
And what I am doing here is not helping you to become great philosophers. My whole approach is anti-philosophical, anti-logical. My approach is existential. You have to experience; except experience there is no proof of what I am saying. Don't listen to my words, listen to the intervals. Don't be too much obsessed with what I say, become more and more attuned with my silence. The moments when nothing is said are far more pregnant. My message is not in the words but beyond the words.
But I can understand, Lisa, your difficulty. That is the difficulty of all logical people -- and the whole world is trained for logic.
Here we are doing just a totally different thing. We are trying to undo what the society, the college, the university has done to you. They have made you obsessed with language and logic. Language certainly divides things; that's why truth cannot be said, it can only be showed. I am only indicating the way; I am not really leading you, I am just pointing the way.
Henry Miller has these beautiful lines:
"The real leader has no need to lead -- he is content to point the way. Unless we become our own leaders, content to be what we are in the process of becoming, we shall always be servitors and idolaters."
I am here just to point the way.
Don't start clinging to my fingers, look at the moon the fingers are pointing at. The fingers are irrelevant!
In an attractive little town just near Los Angeles, a group of the local intellectuals formed a club to study hypnosis, mesmerism, and the related sciences of the mind. The club took a definite place in the social life of the little city and many of the most prominent citizens were invited to join. The studio where the club meetings were held was most attractively decorated and there was a beautiful big crystal ball suspended from the ceiling in the very center of the room. The leader and teacher had a dynamic personality and he presided over the seances authoritatively and with great dignity.
One recent evening a seance was held, and the members took their seats in the large circle that had been formed as part of the seating arrangement. The lights were dimmed, and the crystal ball automatically began to swing back and forth as the professor mounted his little platform.
"Concentrate on what I am saying," began the leader. "Do exactly as I tell you to do. Keep your eye on the ball. Think about what I am saying. Follow my instructions faithfully. Do exactly what I tell you to do."
And then, with a terrific crash, the cord broke and the crystal ball fell and was smashed to pieces.
The leader shouted at the top of his voice, "Ah, shit!"
They say that it took over two weeks to clean up the studio.
Please remember, you are not to follow my words; you are to follow my silences, the pauses between the words, the gaps, the intervals. It is in those intervals that the communion happens, and then you will see the complementariness of the opposites. In those moments you will see there is no Master, no disciple. Something totally different takes place: a meeting, a merger, not unity but oneness. And the oneness is not mechanical either; it is organic, it is alive, throbbing.
In the East we have called these moments satsang, communion. Communion is not communication. This is not a discourse, this is not even a talk -- this is just a communion. Words are being used only to create silences, just as one uses a blackboard to write with white chalk on it. The blackboard is not the purpose; the purpose is the white writing. I am using words to create a blackboard so that I can write few moments of silences on it; that is the purpose.
If you become too much concerned with my words you will get into unnecessary trouble -- and you are already in so much trouble! Get out of it, Lisa!
(Excerpts from - The Wild Geese and the Water)
