THE MANTRA SERIES
Sat Chit Anand 18
Eighteenth Discourse from the series of 30 discourses - Sat Chit Anand by Osho.
You can listen, download or read all of these discourses on oshoworld.com.
Osho,
You are running within me like silent water, merging me slowly into an inner smile!
Thank you for being with us.
The path of a seeker is full of beautiful spaces and is also full of desert-like moments. It is full of joy, just as you see in the morning when the sun is rising and the birds start singing and the flowers smile all over the earth. But it is not always so. There are moments of immense darkness. One feels lost, one does not know where one is, whether the night is going to end or not.
It is something to be very deeply understood: the path is up and down, it is not always ecstatic. And it is good that it is not always ecstatic, otherwise you will be utterly tired from ecstasy. You cannot smile twenty-four hours a day, you need a little rest, too. Those moments when one feels dark, lost, are moments to relax. And those moments when one feels a joy, a smile, are the moments to rejoice. But one should not start choosing. Both are equally acceptable, both are equally inevitable.
You need to understand this equality of both moments – dark and negative; light and positive. And you are not asking for only the joyous moments. You are not asking for anything at all. You are simply rejoicing in whatever existence gives to you. Whatever the gift – maybe a dark night or a joyous morning, tears or smiles – it does not matter. Your gratefulness remains the same. Only such a seeker, whose gratefulness never wavers, whatever happens, is equally rejoiced. He is equally thankful for it.
It is a little difficult… When things are going well, it is easy to be thankful. But real thankfulness is when things are not going well – then is the fire-test of your gratitude. And only through such moments does your gratitude become more and more solid, concentrated, centered. You start growing roots. It is very easy to feel thankful to God, to feel thankful to existence, when everything is good.
You are saying to me that you are thankful because I am with you. Your thankfulness should remain the same when I will not be with you. Only then is your thankfulness not situation-oriented, but centered in your being, not dependent on the outside, but springing from your inner being. It is yours only when no outer change can change it. For that you have to learn the art of choicelessness.
You are saying that I am running within you like silent water, merging you slowly into an inner smile. It is beautiful, but these are the moments for you to be reminded of the moments when the smile may not be there, when you may not hear the sound of the running water that is bringing the smile to you.
There are dark nights of the soul. But your real test – whether you are an authentic seeker or just a superficial curiosity-monger – is not the beautiful moment. The real test is the moment when everything seems to be lost, when everything seems to be against… If you can still smile and be thankful to existence, then things will start changing for you. Slowly, slowly there will be smaller gaps of darkness and longer spaces of light. As your choicelessness deepens, the dark moments will disappear.
A day comes when there is no night any more. A day comes when it is always dawn and the birds are singing and the flowers are blossoming and you have a smile that is not an effort, hence you cannot be tired of it. It is simply there, just like the fragrance of the flowers. They are not tired of it. Or just like breathing – twenty-four hours a day, seventy years continuously – you are not tired of it. Only after a choiceless state of consciousness, does one come to the moment when one can remain orgasmically blissful every moment, each moment. And that is our target.
I have been working with thousands of people. And the trouble is that when things are going well, they are very thankful. When things are not going well and I go on making them aware that there will be times when things will not be going well – it is just how existence functions, how existence creates a dialectic between the opposites for your growth – they become angry at me. Just as you are smiling and being thankful, they become revengeful, angry. And in both cases I am not involved at all.
When you are thankful, I am not involved; when you are angry and resentful, I am not involved. It is just you in both cases. This has to be deeply recognized: it is always you. You cannot throw the responsibility onto me. But if I accept your thankfulness, naturally you will tend to throw the responsibility of your resentment on me too.
So I always feel a little hesitant whenever I hear the words: “Thank you, Osho.” Then I know there is danger. I am getting into trouble, because what will you do when the smile disappears and tears come to your eyes – tears of sadness, of depression?
There are valleys and there are peaks. The path is long. When you are on the sunlit peaks, you shout with joy, thankful. But when you are in the dark, deep valleys, completely lost, you start being resentful. Remember: it is always your experience, don’t project it onto me. It is better to be independent and take the responsibility. It will make you mature; and it will save me from the trouble of your resentments, your anger. I have no problem: you can be resentful, you can be angry, it is all the same to me.
Whether you are thankful or ungrateful, it is all the same to me. I want you to learn the art of choicelessness, so that it becomes the same for you, too. And the beauty of thankfulness, when there is nothing to be thankful for, is just a great miracle, magic, a moment of tremendous transformation. It needs great intelligence. I hope you will prove to have that intelligence. I trust in everybody that they have the right intelligence to understand the deepest mysteries of life.
One day a Polack walks into a store and asks for some egg-ski, some milk-ski and bread-ski. The shopkeeper looks at him and says, “Are you Polish?”
“Yes,” replies the embarrassed Polack. “How did you know?”
“Simple,” says the shopkeeper, “you put ski on the end of all your words.”
The Polack walks out determined to improve his English. So for five years he goes to night school. When he is satisfied, he goes back to the market, walks into a store and with an impeccable English accent says, “My good man, please give me a dozen eggs, a bottle of milk and a loaf of bread.”
The shopkeeper looks at him and says, “Are you Polish?”
“My God!” exclaims the Polack. “How the hell do you know that?”
“Simple,” says the shopkeeper. “This is a hardware store.”
Osho,
I have listened thirty or forty times to the discourse on the inescapable.
Each time I feel I'm grasping it, but it escapes me. This discourse is so huge that it is inescapable.
Osho, please elaborate on your discourse.
That which is the authentic, the truth, is always beyond the grasp of the mind. If you can grasp only this much – that it is beyond the grasp of the mind – you have done more than is ordinarily possible for a human being. The mind is a very small thing and existence is tremendously big.
Existence is so oceanic, so infinite, so eternal. Our minds are so small that it is no wonder that whenever you come close to the truth, you feel that your heart has fallen into a certain harmony. Your being has moved from its sleeping state into a certain awakening, but your mind remains in a very stunned and shocked state. The truth is beyond the mind, but not beyond the heart – the heart can grasp it. But this is the trouble: the heart cannot say anything about it. Yes, it can dance, it can sing, but it cannot use any language. Language is confined to the mind.
And as far as your being is concerned, which is deeper than the heart, it can have the full comprehension of the truth. But the very comprehension of the truth by your being makes it utterly silent. The very understanding makes your being filled with the feeling of the mysterious, the unknowable. The being cannot even do what the heart can do. It remains just as if it is no more. All has become silent, although the silence is very much alive. It is not the dead silence of a graveyard, it is the silence of the starry night – immensely alive.
But the deeper you go, the further you are from language. Even dance is a language, even gestures are a language, even your eyes – without saying anything – can say much. But as you go deeper and deeper, there is the world of sat-chit-anand, there is the truth and consciousness and bliss. Everything becomes utterly silent. The mind is left far, far behind. The mind cannot hear even faraway echoes of what is happening in the being.
Yes, the mind can hear something of what is happening in the heart. The heart is very close to the mind, although deeper. The mind can feel that a certain harmony is arising, a certain peace, a certain joy. It can understand the heart dancing with abandon, but the mind cannot express it in language. So it has a certain feeling from the heart, just a cool breeze passing through the mind. It can have a little taste – something sweet is happening somewhere deep, but how to say it?
I have told you the story, which is an ancient story, especially made for such a question…
Two beggars live in a forest, near a city. Naturally they are enemies, because they are in the same profession and in competition. One is blind the other is lame. And they are always quarreling about their clients. You don’t know what beggars say about you. They have their clients, they have their territories.
I always used to give one rupee to a beggar whenever I went in or out of the railway station. And in those days I was traveling for almost twenty years continuously. One day I found that the old beggar was gone and a young man was standing there. I asked him, “What happened to the old man?”
He said, “I am his son-in-law.”
I said, “You may be his son-in-law, but what happened to the old man?”
He said, “He has given this territory to me in dowry. And he has moved to another place, to the bus stand.”
I said, “I had no idea that I was being given in dowry to somebody.”
And he said, “He has informed me about you, that you will give me one rupee. You are on my list.”
I said, “People don’t know that they are somebody’s property, that they can be given in dowry.”
Beggars are continuously fighting. There is great struggle and competition. And those two beggars had been enemies for years. But one day the forest caught fire. The blind man was perfectly able to walk and run, but it was dangerous. He could not see whether he was going in the right direction – where there was no fire – or whether he was running through the fire toward more.
The lame man could not run on his own. The fire was spreading so fast and the winds were so strong, but he could see that there was still a possibility to get out. There were a few places where the fire had not reached yet. But soon it would be reaching there. Soon, they would be covered by fire from all over the place. They both forgot all their antagonism, competition. This was not the time to fight, this was a time to unite.
The blind man took the lame man on his shoulders and they became one personality. Now they had both eyes and they had legs. The lame man could see and direct where they had to run – and fast – and which directions had to be avoided. And the blind man was strong enough to run, carrying the lame man on his shoulders. They came out of the forest without being injured.
This ancient story is about your mind and your heart. Your heart can see, but cannot say. Your mind can say, but cannot see. If you are capable of bringing your heart and mind closer, your love and logic closer, your experience and expression closer, perhaps the mind can also say something significant. It may not be complete, it may not be an entire expression, but it may be an indication in the right direction. It may be a finger pointing to the moon. It may not be the moon, but it can indicate toward the moon.
You have been listening to one of my discourses on the inescapable, and you say, “Each time I feel I have grasped it, but it escapes me.” The moment you feel “I am grasping it” or “I have grasped it,” that is the point where it escapes from your hands. There are things which you can grasp, but you cannot say “I am grasping it.” Remain silent. Rejoice in the moment, but don’t say anything.
It is almost like my open hand. I have the whole sky in my hand, but with my closed fist the sky has escaped. My closed fist is empty. The moment you say “I have got it,” you have closed your fist. You had got it, but you should have remained silent, utterly silent. The moment you say “I have got it, I am grasping it, this is it,” you have made it very small. It was too big, it cannot be confined to these small words. Your fist is too small and the sky is too big.
You can have the whole sky in your open hand; there is no problem. You can have the fragrance of all the flowers in the garden with the open hand, but if you close your fist there is nothing left – not even stale air. Fragrance cannot be grasped in your fist.
This is one thing which is fundamental for everyone to remember: when you feel that you are coming closer to something great, remember not to say anything – just rejoice in it. You are allowed to sing a song which has nothing to do with it; you are allowed to dance, enjoy – which has nothing to do with it. And your grasping will become deeper with your dance, with your song, with your music. Or you can simply sit silently.
Deep down, you are experiencing. Something is singing and your whole being is feeling a new sweetness, a new liveliness, a new love radiating around you. But beware not to say “I have got it.” The moment you say “I have got it,” you have missed it. Immediately, you will find, “It has escaped me.” Then you are in a vicious circle. Then you run after it, and the more you run the less is the possibility to understand it, to come closer to it.
It comes only when you are silent and relaxed. It comes only when you are not even looking for it. It just comes out of the blue, from nowhere – you don’t hear its footsteps. But when it comes, rejoice. Rejoicing is the only way to keep it around you. The deeper you can rejoice, the deeper you can take it in with your breathing, with your heartbeats – but don’t say a single word. Every word is a disturbance. It is a very shy experience. It does not allow itself to be exposed to the mind, to intellect, to reason, to logic. The moment you bring those in, it moves out through the back door.
One of the great mystics, Kabir, has the right symbol for it. He says it is like a shy, newly married girl. In the West, that girl has disappeared. But in the East, once in a while, you can find that shy, newlywed girl. With that girl Kabir symbolizes the experience of truth.
You have to be very sensitive and very alert, otherwise it will escape. It cannot expose itself to your logic: that is too harsh a world. It cannot expose itself to language: that is too primitive. Language has no grace; there is no possibility for the inescapable experience to be reduced to ordinary communication.
The moment you say “I have got it”… Why do you say it? If you have got it, enjoy it! Just old habits.
I have heard…
A drunkard entered into the pub. He could not believe his eyes. There were three men and a dog sitting around a table playing cards. He went around and around, again and again, watching.
“Is it really a dog or a man?” He was very drunk so he was suspicious, thinking, “It may be that I am seeing something which is not the case.” Going around, again and again, he managed to figure it out, “If I can see the three people as men, it is not possible that I see only the fourth man as a dog.”
Finally he said, “My God, this dog seems to be very intelligent. Is he playing cards with you three?”
The owner of the dog said, “Yes, he can play but he is not very intelligent.”
The drunkard said, “What are you saying?”
He said, “I am his owner, I know him. Whenever he gets a good hand he wags his tail. That’s where he exposes himself. Then the whole thing goes wrong as that is the time when he should not wag his tail. He is a great player, but the tail… Old habits. He becomes so joyful that he cannot stop. I have been telling him thousands of times, ‘You are a great player. You should not behave like a dog,’ but dogs are, after all, dogs!”
And that is the situation of the mind. The moment your heart feels something, the mind starts wagging its tail. It says “I have got it.” And just because of the old habit something tremendously important is spoiled.
An Englishman, an Arab and a Frenchman are sitting at a sidewalk cafe in Casablanca, when a gorgeous oriental woman walks past them.
The Englishman drops his teacup and exclaims, “By Jove!”
The Arab murmurs reverently, “By Allah!”
The Frenchman smiles and breathes a soft “By tomorrow night.”
Just different habits.
It is Monday morning in Washington and Ed Meese comes into the president’s office looking very depressed.
“My God, Ed,” says Ronald Reagan. “You look terrible. What happened?”
“Well, Mr. President, sir,” replies Meese, “I had a terrible week. On Monday I crashed my car and had to pay ten thousand dollars to get it fixed. On Tuesday my daughter ran off to Pune. On Wednesday the stock market crashed. On Thursday I caught my wife in bed with the gardener. On Friday my son died, and on Saturday my house burned down.”
“Good Lord,” cries Reagan, “what a terrible week. Was there nothing positive in it?”
“Oh yes,” replies Meese. “On Sunday I got my AIDS test result.”
Osho,
Could you please speak of the mysteries of the heart?
That’s what I have been saying: the mysteries of the heart cannot be spoken of. You can experience, and then there is no need for any explanation, for any expression. We are accustomed to figure out everything rationally. It is an old, long, perhaps a million-year-old habit.
We feel a little uneasy if we cannot figure out something completely rationally, logically. That which remains unexpressed haunts us. The whole of science is born out of it. It is the haunting of the unknown; it becomes almost a nightmare. It is perfectly good for science to be haunted by the unknown because the unknown can be made into the known.
Outside your being there are only two categories – the known and the unknown. What is known today was unknown yesterday, what is unknown today may become known tomorrow, so those two categories are not really different. It is only a question of time, inquiry, adventure. Everything that is objective can perhaps one day be reduced into the single category of the known.
But in the inner world, the world of the heart you are talking about, there is a third category – the unknowable. That’s why science does not accept anything inside you. Science does not accept you at all because to accept you is to accept a mystery which is unknowable. And the scientific mind will become almost insane because the unknowable cannot be made known. That is simply the nature of it.
The mind wants everything to be known, just as Francis Bacon said – his was one of the most significant scientific minds – “Knowledge is power.” The mind wants power, and the way to power is to know more and more and, finally, to know everything. The unknown is beyond the mind’s power. You cannot dominate the unknown. How can you dominate it? You don’t know about it. The whole territory is in darkness. You have first to bring the territory into light, within your control.
The mind is a politician and the whole of science is a by-product of the mind. And you can see the connection: finally what the mind creates goes into the hands of the politicians.
What Albert Einstein created reached the hands of President Truman. When he wrote the letter to the then American president, Roosevelt, saying “I am working on splitting the atom,” he was welcomed immediately into America and given all the facilities. Now, Truman was the president. When he heard that Truman was going to drop those atom bombs that resulted from his researches… He had created them only for an emergency, such as if the fascist countries were going to win and destroy the whole democratic world, then as a last resort atom bombs could be used and the whole situation changed.
Without Albert Einstein, Germany was hindered in its atomic research. But because Einstein was a Jew and Germany was killing Jews by the millions – although he was not going to be killed because he was too important for Adolf Hitler’s victory and his idea of conquering the whole world – still, as a protest, he escaped from Germany and he wrote a letter to Roosevelt, a very famous letter. He was immediately welcomed, “Come, and you can have all the facilities that you want to work on the atom.”
Truman decided to drop atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki without any reason: there was no urgency, there was no emergency. Germany had already fallen and Japan was going to fall within two weeks at the most. There was no way for Japan to stand alone without Germany. Japan’s forces were already losing their morale and they knew perfectly well, “If Germany is gone, how long can we carry on?”
All Truman’s generals told him, “It is absolutely absurd to drop the atom bombs, because within two weeks or even before that Japan is going to kneel down before us.”
Now, it is absolutely ugly to destroy two huge cities. And they had nothing to do with the war. Small children, old parents, wives – they had nothing to do with it. They were simply citizens living in those cities.
Albert Einstein wrote another letter, hoping that just as his first letter was welcomed, the second would also be welcomed. He was utterly disappointed. But I could have told him that he should not write the second letter, that nobody would even answer it.
It was not answered because he was saying, “It is absolutely wrong, immoral, when a country is falling apart by itself… I have not done all this research for such a situation. If Japan had been winning, I would have been the first to suggest that it was time to drop the bomb, but Germany is finished, Japan is almost finished. Dropping the atom bomb on an enemy who is losing ground every day is absolutely absurd and inhuman, and I protest against it. Please don’t do it.” But nobody even answered, nobody even cared.
Einstein died in great sadness and depression. Once he was asked, “If you were given another chance to be born, would you not like again to be a physicist? Much that you have been doing has been left incomplete. Obviously you would like to complete it.”
Einstein replied, “Absolutely not. If I am given another chance, I would rather be a plumber than a physicist, because my whole life has been used by the politicians. I have been deceived.”
But the whole of science is in the same position. It is not a superficial phenomenon. The reasons are deeper – perhaps the scientists are not even aware. The mind is the politician and the whole of science is nothing but the search for power. And that’s what politics is – a search for power in another direction, and one day finally they are going to meet.
One day the scientist is going to need the support of the politician because scientific instruments, labs, are becoming so complicated and so costly that no scientist will be able to afford them, as in the old days. Galileo could work in his own house with a small lab of his own – private. That is no longer possible. A nuclear plant has to be supported by a great nation with a huge amount of money, and thousands of scientists have to be supported.
A single scientist cannot work… Things have become so complicated that all scientific research has finally to be subordinated to the politicians. And once you are in their hands – just servants – they are going to use whatever you produce for their own purposes. You may not be producing them for destruction. That is not the point. You are producing under politicians, with their money, with their power. You are simply a servant. You are not going to decide what is going to be done with your discoveries, with your inventions.
The politicians have their own ends, but I can see a very deep connection. It is the same mind that moves in the direction of science, a search for power; reduce the unknown into the known, and the mind becomes powerful. The politician is also on the same search, the search for domination, power. And if science can support this, then the politician is willing to manage all the money, all the manpower, all the intelligence that is needed by science. But whatever it produces will be used for more power, for more domination, for a world-conquering, destructive process.
The heart has nothing to do with the known or the unknown. The heart is concerned with the unknowable. You can experience it, you can have all of it – the whole mystery of it, but don’t ask for its demystification. That’s what we are always asking: the mystery should be explained in a logical and rational way, so we can become powerful over it.
This is an ego trip. Knowledge is an ego trip. The heart is the world of love, not of logic, and the heart is not at all concerned with any ego trips. It knows nothing of the ego. It is very humble, very simple, very childlike.
You are asking, “Could you please speak of the mysteries of the heart?” I can manage, I am managing even this very moment for you to experience something of the mysterious, of the unknowable. It is surrounding you here. In this silence you can have a taste, you can enter the mystery of the heart, but slip down from the head. Don’t ask for any explanation. Just be a little child who does not ask anything, who accepts everything.
Do you remember your childhood? It will help. Mostly we forget all about our real childhood. Do you remember the time when you were only two years old? You don’t. People start remembering only from about four years old. That is the end of childhood. You have become part of the society. You have started learning its alphabet, its manners.
Parents feel very happy when a child starts being mannerly, starts talking with people the way grown-ups should talk. Parents feel immensely happy but they don’t know what they have destroyed. They have destroyed a mysterious world – the world of fairies, the world of the wonderlands. The child was living in an innocence that they have completely erased.
That’s why if you go backward trying to remember, you will be finally stuck somewhere around the age of four. Perhaps the women may be stuck at the age of three, because girls are one year ahead of boys. They mature sooner. They become civilized one year earlier. They behave better.
Experienced mothers have told me that even in their pregnant state, after the third or fourth month, they can feel whether it is a girl or a boy because the boy starts playing football. The girl remains quiet, relaxed, but the boy starts kicking here and there. That is going to be his lifelong thing. He is starting to rehearse before he comes out. Girls are quieter. Boys cannot even sit quietly for a few moments; they need continuous occupation, something has to be done. And this remains a lifelong thing.
Because the girls are more centered and more silent, they start learning social manners earlier than the boys. Boys have many other occupations – so many things have to be done, so they are always diverted. In schools, in colleges, in universities, they can’t compete with the girls. Girls are always coming first in the class, are always getting the gold medals. It is very strange that all their gold medals are used only for finding a good husband. That means a rich husband – a doctor, an engineer, somebody with the possibility of being a professional success. But boys cannot compete with girls for the simple reason that their minds are diverted into so many directions that they cannot concentrate.
If you go backward you will be stuck either at the age of four or at the age of three. But you don’t remember what happened in those three or four years because nothing logical happened, nothing rational happened, you did not ask for any explanation. You simply enjoyed the beautiful colors of the flowers, you enjoyed running after butterflies, you enjoyed collecting seashells, colored stones. And you were so immensely happy for no reason at all. Just because you had collected some seashells you thought, “What can be more beautiful? What more could Alexander the Great brag about?” You had the whole world in your hands because you had collected a few wildflowers. You were enjoying very much, rejoicing, but you have forgotten all that authentic childhood.
The mystic has to learn to be a child again, and because you have been a child, the second childhood is not difficult. It is already there deep down in your being. It has to be rediscovered. I will not say “discovered,” I would refer to it as “rediscovery” as you have known it already. And once you enter that magic circle of your childhood, you will know the mysteries of the heart. But nobody can speak about them.
It is good that nobody can speak about them, otherwise you will never discover them yourself. You will remain with the explanations, with the ideologies. Hung up in the head, you won’t enter the mysteries themselves. But now nature leaves no alternative: either you have to go into the heart yourself or you have to remain a superficial human being without any significance, without any grandeur.
Be a child again. That is the whole psychology of meditation.
Miss Goodbody, the pretty young school teacher, noticed that little Ernie had a gleam in his eye and his gaze followed her all around the room. He obviously had a crush on her, so she called him aside after school.
“Ernest,” she begins, “your grades have been slipping lately and I notice that you are not paying attention in class. Is something distracting you?”
“Yes, Miss Goodbody,” says Ernie in a soft voice.
“By any chance,” she asks compassionately, “is it me?”
Little Ernie nods and the teacher smiles. “That’s very sweet,” says Miss Goodbody, “I’m very flattered. And to tell you the truth, I hope to have a husband one day who is as bright and cute as you.”
“Then why not me?” asks Ernie.
“Well,” says Miss Goodbody, “I don’t want a child.”
“Okay,” replies Ernie, “I promise to be super-careful.”
Just start being a little more poetic, start loving more the things of the heart – music, painting, sculpture. Arrange your life not around the head but around the heart, in friendship, in love, in compassion. Rather than going after explanations, go after experiences, and you will be preparing the right path toward the heart.
One day, it explodes in tremendous luminosity and fills your whole being with a light of the beyond. And then you don’t need any explanation. The experience itself is yours – what is the point of any explanation? Explanations are for those who are utterly poor as far as experience is concerned. I don’t want my people to be poor. I want you to be as rich as possible – and the only riches are of the heart.
Once you are richer in the heart, a new dimension opens toward the being. You cannot bypass the heart. From the head there is no direct route to the being. First you have to come into the heart, and then only can you pass deeper into being. And from being, there is the ultimate quantum leap into the cosmic, into the ultimate, into the absolute. You disappear just like a dewdrop in an ocean.
Moishe is employed as a groom working in the Czar’s stables. One day the crown prince comes rushing into the stable. “Moishe,” he calls, “get the finest carriage ready. The princess is coming home, I just received a telegram. The best harness with the bells and feathers.”
While he is getting everything ready, Moishe notices that one of the horses has an erection. “Hey!” he says to the horse. “Who had the telegram, you or the prince?”
Moishe must have been an innocent person. These innocent people are not counted at all by our so-called sophisticated society. We don’t pay any respect to children. We don’t pay any respect to those whose eyes are still filled with wonder. We have created a world just out of the head, denying everything else, even the existence of the heart.
Ask the physiologist and he will say there is no mystery in the heart – it is just a pump, no heart is there. It is simply a pumping station for the blood – what kind of mysteries are you asking about? A pumping station is a pumping station. The physiologist will not accept that you are feeling a deep love arising in your heart. He will laugh. He will say, “In a pumping station? Love arising?” He will not accept that because of love you are having heartache – not possible. There may be some malfunctioning in the mechanism, but it can’t be love.
Science cannot accept the existence of love. Neither can it accept the existence of your heart, nor the existence of your soul, nor the existence of any mysteries which are beyond logic. Maybe today they are beyond, but tomorrow they are going to be explained away.
I say unto you that science is a very incomplete approach to life. Our society is very lopsided because it has not taken note of the inner which is as big as the outer. There is a vast universe outside you and there is a universe similarly vast inside you. You are just standing between two infinities, two eternities. And because you are standing just in between these two wonderlands, you have the opportunity to enjoy both.
I am not against the outer. I am against the emphasis that only the outer exists and there is no inner. The inner is far more important because it is your very being. By not knowing it, not experiencing it, not going deeper into it, your life will remain empty, just a long, long, drag – boredom, depression. Nothing will flower in you, no songs will be heard within your being, no sunrises, no flowers, no stars. And all that was possible, you just never moved inward.
Moving inward is the path to the divine. Moving outward takes you toward objects. But you are not an object. You are a deep subjectivity and this subjectivity has to be explored. That is the ultimate mystery.
You are running within me like silent water, merging me slowly into an inner smile!
Thank you for being with us.
The path of a seeker is full of beautiful spaces and is also full of desert-like moments. It is full of joy, just as you see in the morning when the sun is rising and the birds start singing and the flowers smile all over the earth. But it is not always so. There are moments of immense darkness. One feels lost, one does not know where one is, whether the night is going to end or not.
It is something to be very deeply understood: the path is up and down, it is not always ecstatic. And it is good that it is not always ecstatic, otherwise you will be utterly tired from ecstasy. You cannot smile twenty-four hours a day, you need a little rest, too. Those moments when one feels dark, lost, are moments to relax. And those moments when one feels a joy, a smile, are the moments to rejoice. But one should not start choosing. Both are equally acceptable, both are equally inevitable.
You need to understand this equality of both moments – dark and negative; light and positive. And you are not asking for only the joyous moments. You are not asking for anything at all. You are simply rejoicing in whatever existence gives to you. Whatever the gift – maybe a dark night or a joyous morning, tears or smiles – it does not matter. Your gratefulness remains the same. Only such a seeker, whose gratefulness never wavers, whatever happens, is equally rejoiced. He is equally thankful for it.
It is a little difficult… When things are going well, it is easy to be thankful. But real thankfulness is when things are not going well – then is the fire-test of your gratitude. And only through such moments does your gratitude become more and more solid, concentrated, centered. You start growing roots. It is very easy to feel thankful to God, to feel thankful to existence, when everything is good.
You are saying to me that you are thankful because I am with you. Your thankfulness should remain the same when I will not be with you. Only then is your thankfulness not situation-oriented, but centered in your being, not dependent on the outside, but springing from your inner being. It is yours only when no outer change can change it. For that you have to learn the art of choicelessness.
You are saying that I am running within you like silent water, merging you slowly into an inner smile. It is beautiful, but these are the moments for you to be reminded of the moments when the smile may not be there, when you may not hear the sound of the running water that is bringing the smile to you.
There are dark nights of the soul. But your real test – whether you are an authentic seeker or just a superficial curiosity-monger – is not the beautiful moment. The real test is the moment when everything seems to be lost, when everything seems to be against… If you can still smile and be thankful to existence, then things will start changing for you. Slowly, slowly there will be smaller gaps of darkness and longer spaces of light. As your choicelessness deepens, the dark moments will disappear.
A day comes when there is no night any more. A day comes when it is always dawn and the birds are singing and the flowers are blossoming and you have a smile that is not an effort, hence you cannot be tired of it. It is simply there, just like the fragrance of the flowers. They are not tired of it. Or just like breathing – twenty-four hours a day, seventy years continuously – you are not tired of it. Only after a choiceless state of consciousness, does one come to the moment when one can remain orgasmically blissful every moment, each moment. And that is our target.
I have been working with thousands of people. And the trouble is that when things are going well, they are very thankful. When things are not going well and I go on making them aware that there will be times when things will not be going well – it is just how existence functions, how existence creates a dialectic between the opposites for your growth – they become angry at me. Just as you are smiling and being thankful, they become revengeful, angry. And in both cases I am not involved at all.
When you are thankful, I am not involved; when you are angry and resentful, I am not involved. It is just you in both cases. This has to be deeply recognized: it is always you. You cannot throw the responsibility onto me. But if I accept your thankfulness, naturally you will tend to throw the responsibility of your resentment on me too.
So I always feel a little hesitant whenever I hear the words: “Thank you, Osho.” Then I know there is danger. I am getting into trouble, because what will you do when the smile disappears and tears come to your eyes – tears of sadness, of depression?
There are valleys and there are peaks. The path is long. When you are on the sunlit peaks, you shout with joy, thankful. But when you are in the dark, deep valleys, completely lost, you start being resentful. Remember: it is always your experience, don’t project it onto me. It is better to be independent and take the responsibility. It will make you mature; and it will save me from the trouble of your resentments, your anger. I have no problem: you can be resentful, you can be angry, it is all the same to me.
Whether you are thankful or ungrateful, it is all the same to me. I want you to learn the art of choicelessness, so that it becomes the same for you, too. And the beauty of thankfulness, when there is nothing to be thankful for, is just a great miracle, magic, a moment of tremendous transformation. It needs great intelligence. I hope you will prove to have that intelligence. I trust in everybody that they have the right intelligence to understand the deepest mysteries of life.
One day a Polack walks into a store and asks for some egg-ski, some milk-ski and bread-ski. The shopkeeper looks at him and says, “Are you Polish?”
“Yes,” replies the embarrassed Polack. “How did you know?”
“Simple,” says the shopkeeper, “you put ski on the end of all your words.”
The Polack walks out determined to improve his English. So for five years he goes to night school. When he is satisfied, he goes back to the market, walks into a store and with an impeccable English accent says, “My good man, please give me a dozen eggs, a bottle of milk and a loaf of bread.”
The shopkeeper looks at him and says, “Are you Polish?”
“My God!” exclaims the Polack. “How the hell do you know that?”
“Simple,” says the shopkeeper. “This is a hardware store.”
Osho,
I have listened thirty or forty times to the discourse on the inescapable.
Each time I feel I'm grasping it, but it escapes me. This discourse is so huge that it is inescapable.
Osho, please elaborate on your discourse.
That which is the authentic, the truth, is always beyond the grasp of the mind. If you can grasp only this much – that it is beyond the grasp of the mind – you have done more than is ordinarily possible for a human being. The mind is a very small thing and existence is tremendously big.
Existence is so oceanic, so infinite, so eternal. Our minds are so small that it is no wonder that whenever you come close to the truth, you feel that your heart has fallen into a certain harmony. Your being has moved from its sleeping state into a certain awakening, but your mind remains in a very stunned and shocked state. The truth is beyond the mind, but not beyond the heart – the heart can grasp it. But this is the trouble: the heart cannot say anything about it. Yes, it can dance, it can sing, but it cannot use any language. Language is confined to the mind.
And as far as your being is concerned, which is deeper than the heart, it can have the full comprehension of the truth. But the very comprehension of the truth by your being makes it utterly silent. The very understanding makes your being filled with the feeling of the mysterious, the unknowable. The being cannot even do what the heart can do. It remains just as if it is no more. All has become silent, although the silence is very much alive. It is not the dead silence of a graveyard, it is the silence of the starry night – immensely alive.
But the deeper you go, the further you are from language. Even dance is a language, even gestures are a language, even your eyes – without saying anything – can say much. But as you go deeper and deeper, there is the world of sat-chit-anand, there is the truth and consciousness and bliss. Everything becomes utterly silent. The mind is left far, far behind. The mind cannot hear even faraway echoes of what is happening in the being.
Yes, the mind can hear something of what is happening in the heart. The heart is very close to the mind, although deeper. The mind can feel that a certain harmony is arising, a certain peace, a certain joy. It can understand the heart dancing with abandon, but the mind cannot express it in language. So it has a certain feeling from the heart, just a cool breeze passing through the mind. It can have a little taste – something sweet is happening somewhere deep, but how to say it?
I have told you the story, which is an ancient story, especially made for such a question…
Two beggars live in a forest, near a city. Naturally they are enemies, because they are in the same profession and in competition. One is blind the other is lame. And they are always quarreling about their clients. You don’t know what beggars say about you. They have their clients, they have their territories.
I always used to give one rupee to a beggar whenever I went in or out of the railway station. And in those days I was traveling for almost twenty years continuously. One day I found that the old beggar was gone and a young man was standing there. I asked him, “What happened to the old man?”
He said, “I am his son-in-law.”
I said, “You may be his son-in-law, but what happened to the old man?”
He said, “He has given this territory to me in dowry. And he has moved to another place, to the bus stand.”
I said, “I had no idea that I was being given in dowry to somebody.”
And he said, “He has informed me about you, that you will give me one rupee. You are on my list.”
I said, “People don’t know that they are somebody’s property, that they can be given in dowry.”
Beggars are continuously fighting. There is great struggle and competition. And those two beggars had been enemies for years. But one day the forest caught fire. The blind man was perfectly able to walk and run, but it was dangerous. He could not see whether he was going in the right direction – where there was no fire – or whether he was running through the fire toward more.
The lame man could not run on his own. The fire was spreading so fast and the winds were so strong, but he could see that there was still a possibility to get out. There were a few places where the fire had not reached yet. But soon it would be reaching there. Soon, they would be covered by fire from all over the place. They both forgot all their antagonism, competition. This was not the time to fight, this was a time to unite.
The blind man took the lame man on his shoulders and they became one personality. Now they had both eyes and they had legs. The lame man could see and direct where they had to run – and fast – and which directions had to be avoided. And the blind man was strong enough to run, carrying the lame man on his shoulders. They came out of the forest without being injured.
This ancient story is about your mind and your heart. Your heart can see, but cannot say. Your mind can say, but cannot see. If you are capable of bringing your heart and mind closer, your love and logic closer, your experience and expression closer, perhaps the mind can also say something significant. It may not be complete, it may not be an entire expression, but it may be an indication in the right direction. It may be a finger pointing to the moon. It may not be the moon, but it can indicate toward the moon.
You have been listening to one of my discourses on the inescapable, and you say, “Each time I feel I have grasped it, but it escapes me.” The moment you feel “I am grasping it” or “I have grasped it,” that is the point where it escapes from your hands. There are things which you can grasp, but you cannot say “I am grasping it.” Remain silent. Rejoice in the moment, but don’t say anything.
It is almost like my open hand. I have the whole sky in my hand, but with my closed fist the sky has escaped. My closed fist is empty. The moment you say “I have got it,” you have closed your fist. You had got it, but you should have remained silent, utterly silent. The moment you say “I have got it, I am grasping it, this is it,” you have made it very small. It was too big, it cannot be confined to these small words. Your fist is too small and the sky is too big.
You can have the whole sky in your open hand; there is no problem. You can have the fragrance of all the flowers in the garden with the open hand, but if you close your fist there is nothing left – not even stale air. Fragrance cannot be grasped in your fist.
This is one thing which is fundamental for everyone to remember: when you feel that you are coming closer to something great, remember not to say anything – just rejoice in it. You are allowed to sing a song which has nothing to do with it; you are allowed to dance, enjoy – which has nothing to do with it. And your grasping will become deeper with your dance, with your song, with your music. Or you can simply sit silently.
Deep down, you are experiencing. Something is singing and your whole being is feeling a new sweetness, a new liveliness, a new love radiating around you. But beware not to say “I have got it.” The moment you say “I have got it,” you have missed it. Immediately, you will find, “It has escaped me.” Then you are in a vicious circle. Then you run after it, and the more you run the less is the possibility to understand it, to come closer to it.
It comes only when you are silent and relaxed. It comes only when you are not even looking for it. It just comes out of the blue, from nowhere – you don’t hear its footsteps. But when it comes, rejoice. Rejoicing is the only way to keep it around you. The deeper you can rejoice, the deeper you can take it in with your breathing, with your heartbeats – but don’t say a single word. Every word is a disturbance. It is a very shy experience. It does not allow itself to be exposed to the mind, to intellect, to reason, to logic. The moment you bring those in, it moves out through the back door.
One of the great mystics, Kabir, has the right symbol for it. He says it is like a shy, newly married girl. In the West, that girl has disappeared. But in the East, once in a while, you can find that shy, newlywed girl. With that girl Kabir symbolizes the experience of truth.
You have to be very sensitive and very alert, otherwise it will escape. It cannot expose itself to your logic: that is too harsh a world. It cannot expose itself to language: that is too primitive. Language has no grace; there is no possibility for the inescapable experience to be reduced to ordinary communication.
The moment you say “I have got it”… Why do you say it? If you have got it, enjoy it! Just old habits.
I have heard…
A drunkard entered into the pub. He could not believe his eyes. There were three men and a dog sitting around a table playing cards. He went around and around, again and again, watching.
“Is it really a dog or a man?” He was very drunk so he was suspicious, thinking, “It may be that I am seeing something which is not the case.” Going around, again and again, he managed to figure it out, “If I can see the three people as men, it is not possible that I see only the fourth man as a dog.”
Finally he said, “My God, this dog seems to be very intelligent. Is he playing cards with you three?”
The owner of the dog said, “Yes, he can play but he is not very intelligent.”
The drunkard said, “What are you saying?”
He said, “I am his owner, I know him. Whenever he gets a good hand he wags his tail. That’s where he exposes himself. Then the whole thing goes wrong as that is the time when he should not wag his tail. He is a great player, but the tail… Old habits. He becomes so joyful that he cannot stop. I have been telling him thousands of times, ‘You are a great player. You should not behave like a dog,’ but dogs are, after all, dogs!”
And that is the situation of the mind. The moment your heart feels something, the mind starts wagging its tail. It says “I have got it.” And just because of the old habit something tremendously important is spoiled.
An Englishman, an Arab and a Frenchman are sitting at a sidewalk cafe in Casablanca, when a gorgeous oriental woman walks past them.
The Englishman drops his teacup and exclaims, “By Jove!”
The Arab murmurs reverently, “By Allah!”
The Frenchman smiles and breathes a soft “By tomorrow night.”
Just different habits.
It is Monday morning in Washington and Ed Meese comes into the president’s office looking very depressed.
“My God, Ed,” says Ronald Reagan. “You look terrible. What happened?”
“Well, Mr. President, sir,” replies Meese, “I had a terrible week. On Monday I crashed my car and had to pay ten thousand dollars to get it fixed. On Tuesday my daughter ran off to Pune. On Wednesday the stock market crashed. On Thursday I caught my wife in bed with the gardener. On Friday my son died, and on Saturday my house burned down.”
“Good Lord,” cries Reagan, “what a terrible week. Was there nothing positive in it?”
“Oh yes,” replies Meese. “On Sunday I got my AIDS test result.”
Osho,
Could you please speak of the mysteries of the heart?
That’s what I have been saying: the mysteries of the heart cannot be spoken of. You can experience, and then there is no need for any explanation, for any expression. We are accustomed to figure out everything rationally. It is an old, long, perhaps a million-year-old habit.
We feel a little uneasy if we cannot figure out something completely rationally, logically. That which remains unexpressed haunts us. The whole of science is born out of it. It is the haunting of the unknown; it becomes almost a nightmare. It is perfectly good for science to be haunted by the unknown because the unknown can be made into the known.
Outside your being there are only two categories – the known and the unknown. What is known today was unknown yesterday, what is unknown today may become known tomorrow, so those two categories are not really different. It is only a question of time, inquiry, adventure. Everything that is objective can perhaps one day be reduced into the single category of the known.
But in the inner world, the world of the heart you are talking about, there is a third category – the unknowable. That’s why science does not accept anything inside you. Science does not accept you at all because to accept you is to accept a mystery which is unknowable. And the scientific mind will become almost insane because the unknowable cannot be made known. That is simply the nature of it.
The mind wants everything to be known, just as Francis Bacon said – his was one of the most significant scientific minds – “Knowledge is power.” The mind wants power, and the way to power is to know more and more and, finally, to know everything. The unknown is beyond the mind’s power. You cannot dominate the unknown. How can you dominate it? You don’t know about it. The whole territory is in darkness. You have first to bring the territory into light, within your control.
The mind is a politician and the whole of science is a by-product of the mind. And you can see the connection: finally what the mind creates goes into the hands of the politicians.
What Albert Einstein created reached the hands of President Truman. When he wrote the letter to the then American president, Roosevelt, saying “I am working on splitting the atom,” he was welcomed immediately into America and given all the facilities. Now, Truman was the president. When he heard that Truman was going to drop those atom bombs that resulted from his researches… He had created them only for an emergency, such as if the fascist countries were going to win and destroy the whole democratic world, then as a last resort atom bombs could be used and the whole situation changed.
Without Albert Einstein, Germany was hindered in its atomic research. But because Einstein was a Jew and Germany was killing Jews by the millions – although he was not going to be killed because he was too important for Adolf Hitler’s victory and his idea of conquering the whole world – still, as a protest, he escaped from Germany and he wrote a letter to Roosevelt, a very famous letter. He was immediately welcomed, “Come, and you can have all the facilities that you want to work on the atom.”
Truman decided to drop atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki without any reason: there was no urgency, there was no emergency. Germany had already fallen and Japan was going to fall within two weeks at the most. There was no way for Japan to stand alone without Germany. Japan’s forces were already losing their morale and they knew perfectly well, “If Germany is gone, how long can we carry on?”
All Truman’s generals told him, “It is absolutely absurd to drop the atom bombs, because within two weeks or even before that Japan is going to kneel down before us.”
Now, it is absolutely ugly to destroy two huge cities. And they had nothing to do with the war. Small children, old parents, wives – they had nothing to do with it. They were simply citizens living in those cities.
Albert Einstein wrote another letter, hoping that just as his first letter was welcomed, the second would also be welcomed. He was utterly disappointed. But I could have told him that he should not write the second letter, that nobody would even answer it.
It was not answered because he was saying, “It is absolutely wrong, immoral, when a country is falling apart by itself… I have not done all this research for such a situation. If Japan had been winning, I would have been the first to suggest that it was time to drop the bomb, but Germany is finished, Japan is almost finished. Dropping the atom bomb on an enemy who is losing ground every day is absolutely absurd and inhuman, and I protest against it. Please don’t do it.” But nobody even answered, nobody even cared.
Einstein died in great sadness and depression. Once he was asked, “If you were given another chance to be born, would you not like again to be a physicist? Much that you have been doing has been left incomplete. Obviously you would like to complete it.”
Einstein replied, “Absolutely not. If I am given another chance, I would rather be a plumber than a physicist, because my whole life has been used by the politicians. I have been deceived.”
But the whole of science is in the same position. It is not a superficial phenomenon. The reasons are deeper – perhaps the scientists are not even aware. The mind is the politician and the whole of science is nothing but the search for power. And that’s what politics is – a search for power in another direction, and one day finally they are going to meet.
One day the scientist is going to need the support of the politician because scientific instruments, labs, are becoming so complicated and so costly that no scientist will be able to afford them, as in the old days. Galileo could work in his own house with a small lab of his own – private. That is no longer possible. A nuclear plant has to be supported by a great nation with a huge amount of money, and thousands of scientists have to be supported.
A single scientist cannot work… Things have become so complicated that all scientific research has finally to be subordinated to the politicians. And once you are in their hands – just servants – they are going to use whatever you produce for their own purposes. You may not be producing them for destruction. That is not the point. You are producing under politicians, with their money, with their power. You are simply a servant. You are not going to decide what is going to be done with your discoveries, with your inventions.
The politicians have their own ends, but I can see a very deep connection. It is the same mind that moves in the direction of science, a search for power; reduce the unknown into the known, and the mind becomes powerful. The politician is also on the same search, the search for domination, power. And if science can support this, then the politician is willing to manage all the money, all the manpower, all the intelligence that is needed by science. But whatever it produces will be used for more power, for more domination, for a world-conquering, destructive process.
The heart has nothing to do with the known or the unknown. The heart is concerned with the unknowable. You can experience it, you can have all of it – the whole mystery of it, but don’t ask for its demystification. That’s what we are always asking: the mystery should be explained in a logical and rational way, so we can become powerful over it.
This is an ego trip. Knowledge is an ego trip. The heart is the world of love, not of logic, and the heart is not at all concerned with any ego trips. It knows nothing of the ego. It is very humble, very simple, very childlike.
You are asking, “Could you please speak of the mysteries of the heart?” I can manage, I am managing even this very moment for you to experience something of the mysterious, of the unknowable. It is surrounding you here. In this silence you can have a taste, you can enter the mystery of the heart, but slip down from the head. Don’t ask for any explanation. Just be a little child who does not ask anything, who accepts everything.
Do you remember your childhood? It will help. Mostly we forget all about our real childhood. Do you remember the time when you were only two years old? You don’t. People start remembering only from about four years old. That is the end of childhood. You have become part of the society. You have started learning its alphabet, its manners.
Parents feel very happy when a child starts being mannerly, starts talking with people the way grown-ups should talk. Parents feel immensely happy but they don’t know what they have destroyed. They have destroyed a mysterious world – the world of fairies, the world of the wonderlands. The child was living in an innocence that they have completely erased.
That’s why if you go backward trying to remember, you will be finally stuck somewhere around the age of four. Perhaps the women may be stuck at the age of three, because girls are one year ahead of boys. They mature sooner. They become civilized one year earlier. They behave better.
Experienced mothers have told me that even in their pregnant state, after the third or fourth month, they can feel whether it is a girl or a boy because the boy starts playing football. The girl remains quiet, relaxed, but the boy starts kicking here and there. That is going to be his lifelong thing. He is starting to rehearse before he comes out. Girls are quieter. Boys cannot even sit quietly for a few moments; they need continuous occupation, something has to be done. And this remains a lifelong thing.
Because the girls are more centered and more silent, they start learning social manners earlier than the boys. Boys have many other occupations – so many things have to be done, so they are always diverted. In schools, in colleges, in universities, they can’t compete with the girls. Girls are always coming first in the class, are always getting the gold medals. It is very strange that all their gold medals are used only for finding a good husband. That means a rich husband – a doctor, an engineer, somebody with the possibility of being a professional success. But boys cannot compete with girls for the simple reason that their minds are diverted into so many directions that they cannot concentrate.
If you go backward you will be stuck either at the age of four or at the age of three. But you don’t remember what happened in those three or four years because nothing logical happened, nothing rational happened, you did not ask for any explanation. You simply enjoyed the beautiful colors of the flowers, you enjoyed running after butterflies, you enjoyed collecting seashells, colored stones. And you were so immensely happy for no reason at all. Just because you had collected some seashells you thought, “What can be more beautiful? What more could Alexander the Great brag about?” You had the whole world in your hands because you had collected a few wildflowers. You were enjoying very much, rejoicing, but you have forgotten all that authentic childhood.
The mystic has to learn to be a child again, and because you have been a child, the second childhood is not difficult. It is already there deep down in your being. It has to be rediscovered. I will not say “discovered,” I would refer to it as “rediscovery” as you have known it already. And once you enter that magic circle of your childhood, you will know the mysteries of the heart. But nobody can speak about them.
It is good that nobody can speak about them, otherwise you will never discover them yourself. You will remain with the explanations, with the ideologies. Hung up in the head, you won’t enter the mysteries themselves. But now nature leaves no alternative: either you have to go into the heart yourself or you have to remain a superficial human being without any significance, without any grandeur.
Be a child again. That is the whole psychology of meditation.
Miss Goodbody, the pretty young school teacher, noticed that little Ernie had a gleam in his eye and his gaze followed her all around the room. He obviously had a crush on her, so she called him aside after school.
“Ernest,” she begins, “your grades have been slipping lately and I notice that you are not paying attention in class. Is something distracting you?”
“Yes, Miss Goodbody,” says Ernie in a soft voice.
“By any chance,” she asks compassionately, “is it me?”
Little Ernie nods and the teacher smiles. “That’s very sweet,” says Miss Goodbody, “I’m very flattered. And to tell you the truth, I hope to have a husband one day who is as bright and cute as you.”
“Then why not me?” asks Ernie.
“Well,” says Miss Goodbody, “I don’t want a child.”
“Okay,” replies Ernie, “I promise to be super-careful.”
Just start being a little more poetic, start loving more the things of the heart – music, painting, sculpture. Arrange your life not around the head but around the heart, in friendship, in love, in compassion. Rather than going after explanations, go after experiences, and you will be preparing the right path toward the heart.
One day, it explodes in tremendous luminosity and fills your whole being with a light of the beyond. And then you don’t need any explanation. The experience itself is yours – what is the point of any explanation? Explanations are for those who are utterly poor as far as experience is concerned. I don’t want my people to be poor. I want you to be as rich as possible – and the only riches are of the heart.
Once you are richer in the heart, a new dimension opens toward the being. You cannot bypass the heart. From the head there is no direct route to the being. First you have to come into the heart, and then only can you pass deeper into being. And from being, there is the ultimate quantum leap into the cosmic, into the ultimate, into the absolute. You disappear just like a dewdrop in an ocean.
Moishe is employed as a groom working in the Czar’s stables. One day the crown prince comes rushing into the stable. “Moishe,” he calls, “get the finest carriage ready. The princess is coming home, I just received a telegram. The best harness with the bells and feathers.”
While he is getting everything ready, Moishe notices that one of the horses has an erection. “Hey!” he says to the horse. “Who had the telegram, you or the prince?”
Moishe must have been an innocent person. These innocent people are not counted at all by our so-called sophisticated society. We don’t pay any respect to children. We don’t pay any respect to those whose eyes are still filled with wonder. We have created a world just out of the head, denying everything else, even the existence of the heart.
Ask the physiologist and he will say there is no mystery in the heart – it is just a pump, no heart is there. It is simply a pumping station for the blood – what kind of mysteries are you asking about? A pumping station is a pumping station. The physiologist will not accept that you are feeling a deep love arising in your heart. He will laugh. He will say, “In a pumping station? Love arising?” He will not accept that because of love you are having heartache – not possible. There may be some malfunctioning in the mechanism, but it can’t be love.
Science cannot accept the existence of love. Neither can it accept the existence of your heart, nor the existence of your soul, nor the existence of any mysteries which are beyond logic. Maybe today they are beyond, but tomorrow they are going to be explained away.
I say unto you that science is a very incomplete approach to life. Our society is very lopsided because it has not taken note of the inner which is as big as the outer. There is a vast universe outside you and there is a universe similarly vast inside you. You are just standing between two infinities, two eternities. And because you are standing just in between these two wonderlands, you have the opportunity to enjoy both.
I am not against the outer. I am against the emphasis that only the outer exists and there is no inner. The inner is far more important because it is your very being. By not knowing it, not experiencing it, not going deeper into it, your life will remain empty, just a long, long, drag – boredom, depression. Nothing will flower in you, no songs will be heard within your being, no sunrises, no flowers, no stars. And all that was possible, you just never moved inward.
Moving inward is the path to the divine. Moving outward takes you toward objects. But you are not an object. You are a deep subjectivity and this subjectivity has to be explored. That is the ultimate mystery.