..And when there is no questioning, there is a totally new quality to your consciousness. That quality is called wonder. Wondering is not questioning, it is feeling mystified by existence. Questioning is an effort to demystify existence; it is an effort not to accept the mystery of life. Hence we reduce every mystery to a question. The question means the mystery is only a problem to be solved, and once solved, there will be no mystery.

My effort in answering you is not to demystify existence but to mystify it more. Hence my contradictions. I cannot be consistent, I am not answering you. I cannot be consistent, because I am not here to make you more knowledgeable. If I am consistent, you will have a body of knowledge — very satisfying to the mind, nourishing, strengthening, gratifying.

I am deliberately inconsistent, contradictory, so that you cannot make any body of knowledge out of me. So if one day you start gathering something, another day I take it away. I don’t allow you to gather anything. Sooner or later, you are bound to be awakened to the fact that something totally different is transpiring here. It is not that I am giving you some dogma to be believed in, some philosophy to be lived by, no, not at all. I am utterly destructive, I am taking everything away from you.

Slowly slowly your mind will stop questioning. What is the point? When no answer answers, then what is the point? And the day you stop questioning is a day of great rejoicing, because then wondering starts. You have moved into a totally new dimension; you are again a child.

Jesus says, “Unless you are like small children you will not enter into my kingdom of God.” He means unless you are ignorant again, innocent again, unquestioning and wondering, certainly.

Hence there is a difference between the question of a child and a grown-up person. The difference is of quality. The child asks, not to be answered; he is simply being articulate about his wonder. So if you don’t answer the child he forgets about his question and he starts asking another question. His purpose is not to be answered, his purpose is simply that he is talking to himself. He is being articulate about his wonder, he is trying to figure out what it is — the wonder, the mystery. He is not hankering for an answer, so no answer will satisfy him. If you give him an answer he will ask another question about the answer. His wondering continues.

When a grown-up person — educated, sophisticated, well-read, informed — asks a question, he asks it out of his knowledge, to gather more knowledge. The mind always hankers for more and more. If you have money, it hankers for more money; if you have prestige, it hankers for more prestige; if you have knowledge, it hankers for more knowledge. Mind lives in the “more.” And this is the way you go on and on avoiding reality. Reality is a mystery, it is not a question to be asked. It is a mystery to be lived, a mystery to be experienced, a mystery to be loved, a mystery to be dissolved in, to be drowned in. I am answering you, not to answer but to simply destroy the question. I am not a teacher. The teacher teaches you; the master does not teach you, he helps you unlearn…

Get out of the mind if you want to live. Get out of the mind if you want to live this moment. The mind cannot live in this moment, because first it has to decide, and the moment is lost in thinking. And by the time the mind has decided — if it ever decides — that moment is gone already. You are always lagging behind. Mind is always running after life, and lagging behind and missing it continuously.

Many of you must have dreamed something like this: Anand Maitreya continuously dreams that he is going to catch a train, and in the dream he always misses it. Many people, I think almost everybody, has dreams of that kind — that you are just going to make it, just going to make it… and you miss it. By the time you reach the platform, the train has left. You see it leaving, but it is too late; you cannot get on it. Anand Maitreya’s dream is a very significant dream and a very universal one. This is simply how the mind functions; this dream symbolizes the mind: it is always missing the train. It is bound to be so, because mind takes time to think, and time cannot stop for you; it goes on and on slipping out of your hands.

You never have two moments together in your hands, only one single moment. It is such a small moment that there is no space for thinking to move, no space for thoughts to exist. Either you can live it, or you can think. To live it is to be enlightened, to think is to miss. Enlightenment is not a goal, Strandberg, that you have to decide whether to accept it or not. It is not a goal. Enlightenment is the realization that we have only the present moment to live. The next moment is not certain — it may come, it may not come. In fact, the tomorrow never comes. It is always arriving and arriving, but never arrives. And the mind lives in the tomorrows… and life is possible only in the present.

Jesus says to his disciples, “Look at the lilies in the field, how beautiful they are! Even the great Solomon was not so beautiful attired in all his grandeur as these poor lily flowers.” And what is the secret? The secret is that they think not of the morrow. They live now, they live here.

To live now is to be enlightened, to live here is to be enlightened, to be a lily is to be enlightened this very moment! Don’t think about what I am saying. Don’t think about it, just be here. This is the taste of enlightenment. And once you have tasted it, you will want to taste it more and more.

Don’t make a goal out of it; it is not a goal, it is the most ordinary state of consciousness. It is nothing extraordinary, it is nothing special. Trees are enlightened, and the birds are enlightened, and rocks are enlightened, and the sun and the moon are enlightened. Only man is not, because only man thinks and goes on missing. The moment you realize that you are missing because you are brooding too much, then small glimpses start happening. Small gaps in the traffic of the mind, small gaps when there is no traffic: those are the moments of meditation. They can happen anywhere.

Source:

  Listen to complete discourse at mentioned below link.

Discourse Series: The Book of Wisdom Chapter #2

Chapter title: The Enlightenment of the Lilly 12 February 1979 am in Buddha Hall

References:

Osho has also spoken on ‘Creativity, Love, Compassion, Meditation, Nature’ in many of His discourses. Some of these can be referred to in the following books/discourse titles:

1. Ah, This!
2. And The Flowers Showered
3. Beyond Enlightenment
4. Beyond Psychology
5. The Art of Dying
6. Be Still and Know