WESTERN MYSTICS
The New Alchemy 09
Ninth Discourse from the series of 34 discourses - The New Alchemy by Osho.
You can listen, download or read all of these discourses on oshoworld.com.
The spiritual search starts as a seeking for eternal bliss, as a seeking for eternal liberation, as a seeking for divine light and divine life. But you remain the center. In the beginning it is self-centered: whatsoever you are seeking you are seeking for yourself.
This self-centeredness will ultimately prove a barrier, because you cannot be in total ecstasy if you are self-centered. This self-centeredness is a deep hindrance. But in the beginning it is bound to be so, it is natural that one should start the search for oneself. There is no other way – you cannot start for someone else.
It has to be self-centered in the beginning, but it must not be so in the end. In the beginning it is okay. In the end it is dangerous. A point comes where your self-centeredness must cease, only then will your being flower into total bliss.
It is just like this: you take a breath in, you inhale – this is half a breath. Then you have to exhale – that is the other half. And both breaths – inhaling and exhaling – make it a circle, a total breath. If you think only to inhale, and you see no point in exhaling – “What is the use?” – you will die. Inhaling, which is necessary for life, will become dangerous for life if there is no exhaling. The breath must be released.
The same happens when you start receiving blissful moments, when you start receiving ecstatic moments, when the eternal starts pouring on you. The first thing is inhaling: you will inhale blissfulness, but then, exhale it. Otherwise, you will die of your own blissfulness. That blissfulness will become poisonous. Exhale it, distribute it, give it to others.
When you feel that you are filled with bliss, express it. Share it, don’t try to conserve it within you. Don’t force it, don’t make it a point that it is your own. Don’t monopolize it. Allow it to be shared with everyone. Really, celebrate it in such a way that the whole of existence shares it. Just as a flower blooms and the perfume spreads – the winds take it away, far away, to the far comers of the earth – allow your perfume, your bliss, to be taken far away from you, to be shared, to be shared by existence itself.
Why? – because then bliss has become total: both inhaling and exhaling. It becomes a circle. And the more you distribute it, the more you get. The more you throw it away, the more you find it, because now you are in contact with the infinite source.
Don’t be a miser. Don’t be a miser, otherwise you will kill the whole process. In the beginning it is okay to be self-centered, but when the bliss starts happening, it is dangerous.
This sutra is concerned with this exhaling:
Out of the silence that is peace a resonant voice shall arise. And this voice will say: “It is not well; thou hast reaped, now thou must sow.” And knowing this voice to be the silence itself thou wilt obey.
You have reaped – you have reaped bliss, you have reaped ecstasy – now sow it for others. In the world, you sow first and then you reap. In the spiritual dimension, everything is just the reverse. First you reap, and then you sow.
You have reaped what Buddha has sown, what Jesus, Krishna and Mohammed have sown. They have sown seeds and you have reaped them. Now, sow them for others. And remember well that sowing is just exhaling. It is part of the whole process. You will remain half, incomplete, imperfect, unless bliss has started flowing from you toward all.
This is a very necessary law, and when you become silent, you hear it. No one else is saying it to you. Your own heart, your own innermost being gives you this indication. This teaching, this message is not from without, it is from your own innermost self. That’s why: thou wilt obey. There is no possibility of not obeying it, it is your own. But if you know it well, it will be easy.
It will be easy if you know that it is part of the process: that bliss should be distributed and shared, then it will grow more. If you don’t know about this law, your miserliness, your old self-centeredness may delay the completion of the process.
It can only be delayed, it cannot be disobeyed forever. But why delay it? So remember this: whenever you feel any moment of bliss happening, share it.
That’s why my insistence, so much insistence, that after meditation you must express your bliss, you must celebrate it. You must make it a point that whatsoever happens to you, allow it to be shared. Dance and sing. These are symbolic, just to serve as a continuous remembrance.
After you have gone from here, many things will happen if you continue meditation. But whenever something happens to you, don’t keep it to yourself. Share it. Even if you cannot do anything else, just smiling, smiling at a stranger, may be enough. Just taking the hand of a stranger in your hand and feeling the friend within him will do it, or sharing anything, just as a token. Or, if there is no one there and you are sitting under a tree, then dance and feel that you are dancing with the tree. Sing, and feel that you are singing with the birds. And sooner or later you will come to understand that when you share, even a tree is ready to share.
Some research has been done recently in a Russian university… A psychoanalyst, Pushkin, has come to conclude through many experiments that trees have similar emotions to man. Not only that – trees can be hypnotized. Not only that – if a person is hypnotized under a tree, and under hypnosis it is suggested to him, “You are very sad,” then the person becomes sad, and simultaneously the tree becomes sad.
These are experimental conclusions. There are now mechanical recording devices that can record whether you are sad or happy, whether you are depressed, whether you are angry, whether you are sexual, because with every emotion, a different electrical wave is released from your mind. That electrical wave can be recorded.
But this has been a very strange conclusion: that the same wave is recorded from the tree. You are dancing under a tree, happy… Your mind will give an indication that you are happy and it will be recorded. If the device is also connected to the tree, the tree records the same wave. So, Pushkin says that if you are dancing under a tree, very happy, the tree shares it. It is happy with you.
And if a tree can share it, why not birds? They are more alive. Why not animals? They are still more alive. And why not the whole of existence? Sooner or later we will find that even stones share. Their soul may be hidden very deep, but it is there, and one day we are going to find instruments that will give us indications that even a stone, a rock, has emotions.
So wherever you are, whenever you feel that some ecstatic emotion has happened to you, dance to its tune, sing to its tune, and share your happiness in whatsoever way happens to you, in whatsoever way you feel to share it. But share it! It will grow. With sharing, it grows. With miserliness – with not sharing – it dies away, it shrinks.
Death is shrinkage. Shrinking is death; life is expansion. Allow it to expand. And once you know the feeling of expansion you will follow, because it is your own innermost self dictating.
Thou who art now a disciple, able to stand, able to hear, able to see, able to speak, who hast conquered desire and attained to self-knowledge, who hast seen thy soul in its bloom and recognized it, and heard the voice of the silence, go thou to the hall of learning and read what is written there for thee….
To hear the voice of the silence is to understand that from within comes the only true guidance; to go to the hall of learning is to enter the state in which learning becomes possible. Then will many words be written there for thee, and written in fiery letters for thee easily to read. For when the disciple is ready the master is ready also.
To hear the voice of silence is to understand that from within comes the only true guidance. When you are silent, really silent after the storm has passed, when you have fallen into silence spontaneously – you have not cultivated it; it has come to you, it has arisen spontaneously in you. In this silence you will come to feel and understand and realize that now the true guidance is possible from your own innermost being. Now the master, the inner master will appear to you.
Your own innermost center is your real master. Outer masters can help, but their help is basically directed toward finding this inner one. And when the inner one is found, there is no need for the outer master. You have become master in your own right.
But this happens only when you have come to realize total inner silence, without any thought, without any word, without any imagination, without any ripple of any kind. When you have come to understand and feel a ripple-less silence, a thought-less silence, non-moving – this silence becomes your inner master. Now, out of this silence, guidance will be given to you.
For when the disciple is ready the master is also ready. When you are ready to receive the inner guidance, the inner guidance comes naturally, automatically. But the disciple must be ready.
What is meant by the disciple being ready? – it means to become totally receptive, humble, egoless, surrendered, in a deep let-go. When you are not saying anything but are just receptive to listen, when you are not imposing any theories upon truth – naked, vacant and ready to allow the truth to reveal itself in its own way; you are not in any way, consciously or unconsciously, forcing anything upon the truth; you have stopped forcing, you are ready to be carried away to wheresoever the truth leads you – then, you are a disciple.
There is a difference between a student and a disciple. A student is hankering for information. A disciple is not hankering for information; his search is for knowledge, authentic experience. He is not interested in what others say; he is interested in what he can feel. The student will collect information. He will train his memory, and the more his memory is trained, the more information is accumulated, the more egoistic he will become. A student can never be humble, a scholar can never be humble. His basic search is egoistic.
Someone accumulates riches and someone else accumulates knowledge. There is no difference. Every accumulation feeds the ego. Whatsoever you accumulate, the greater the quantity, the more egoistic you will feel. So a student or a scholar is not a disciple. The very dimension is different.
A disciple is not in search of accumulation. Rather, on the contrary, he is ready to throw out all accumulations. If the truth happens, only in that emptiness he is ready to throw out all accumulations, all knowledge.
Socrates is reported to have said in his old age – he was a disciple – he is reported to have said, “Now I can say that I do not know anything. I am ignorant.”
It happened that a seer declared Socrates the wisest man in Athens. Those who heard the seer came running to Socrates and said, “Socrates, have you heard? The seer has said that you are the wisest man in Athens.”
Socrates said, “There must have been some error. Go back and tell the seer that Socrates says he knows nothing. He is absolutely ignorant.”
The people went back to the seer and told him, “Your prophecy has been denied by Socrates himself. He says, ‘I do not know anything. I am ignorant.’”
The seer laughed and he said, “Because of this I say he is the wisest man, because only a perfectly wise man can say, ‘I do not know.’”
Ignorant people always claim knowledge. The more ignorant, the more they claim they know. This is part of ignorance. A student, a pundit, a scholar all claim knowledge. They are not disciples.
And remember, if you are a student you can become a teacher but never a master. Only a disciple can become a master. If you are a student, a scholar, you can become a teacher – never a master. Only a disciple can become a master. Discipleship means egoless surrender. And once you surrender, your innermost self is revealed to you. That is the master who is waiting for you. He has been waiting for you for lives and lives.
In any moment of surrender, the master will be revealed to you. And that master is no one. It is your own innermost self, it is your own atma. So really, this can be said: when you are a perfect disciple you have become a master. You are no longer a disciple at all. Discipleship achieved, you are transformed into a master.
This self-centeredness will ultimately prove a barrier, because you cannot be in total ecstasy if you are self-centered. This self-centeredness is a deep hindrance. But in the beginning it is bound to be so, it is natural that one should start the search for oneself. There is no other way – you cannot start for someone else.
It has to be self-centered in the beginning, but it must not be so in the end. In the beginning it is okay. In the end it is dangerous. A point comes where your self-centeredness must cease, only then will your being flower into total bliss.
It is just like this: you take a breath in, you inhale – this is half a breath. Then you have to exhale – that is the other half. And both breaths – inhaling and exhaling – make it a circle, a total breath. If you think only to inhale, and you see no point in exhaling – “What is the use?” – you will die. Inhaling, which is necessary for life, will become dangerous for life if there is no exhaling. The breath must be released.
The same happens when you start receiving blissful moments, when you start receiving ecstatic moments, when the eternal starts pouring on you. The first thing is inhaling: you will inhale blissfulness, but then, exhale it. Otherwise, you will die of your own blissfulness. That blissfulness will become poisonous. Exhale it, distribute it, give it to others.
When you feel that you are filled with bliss, express it. Share it, don’t try to conserve it within you. Don’t force it, don’t make it a point that it is your own. Don’t monopolize it. Allow it to be shared with everyone. Really, celebrate it in such a way that the whole of existence shares it. Just as a flower blooms and the perfume spreads – the winds take it away, far away, to the far comers of the earth – allow your perfume, your bliss, to be taken far away from you, to be shared, to be shared by existence itself.
Why? – because then bliss has become total: both inhaling and exhaling. It becomes a circle. And the more you distribute it, the more you get. The more you throw it away, the more you find it, because now you are in contact with the infinite source.
Don’t be a miser. Don’t be a miser, otherwise you will kill the whole process. In the beginning it is okay to be self-centered, but when the bliss starts happening, it is dangerous.
This sutra is concerned with this exhaling:
Out of the silence that is peace a resonant voice shall arise. And this voice will say: “It is not well; thou hast reaped, now thou must sow.” And knowing this voice to be the silence itself thou wilt obey.
You have reaped – you have reaped bliss, you have reaped ecstasy – now sow it for others. In the world, you sow first and then you reap. In the spiritual dimension, everything is just the reverse. First you reap, and then you sow.
You have reaped what Buddha has sown, what Jesus, Krishna and Mohammed have sown. They have sown seeds and you have reaped them. Now, sow them for others. And remember well that sowing is just exhaling. It is part of the whole process. You will remain half, incomplete, imperfect, unless bliss has started flowing from you toward all.
This is a very necessary law, and when you become silent, you hear it. No one else is saying it to you. Your own heart, your own innermost being gives you this indication. This teaching, this message is not from without, it is from your own innermost self. That’s why: thou wilt obey. There is no possibility of not obeying it, it is your own. But if you know it well, it will be easy.
It will be easy if you know that it is part of the process: that bliss should be distributed and shared, then it will grow more. If you don’t know about this law, your miserliness, your old self-centeredness may delay the completion of the process.
It can only be delayed, it cannot be disobeyed forever. But why delay it? So remember this: whenever you feel any moment of bliss happening, share it.
That’s why my insistence, so much insistence, that after meditation you must express your bliss, you must celebrate it. You must make it a point that whatsoever happens to you, allow it to be shared. Dance and sing. These are symbolic, just to serve as a continuous remembrance.
After you have gone from here, many things will happen if you continue meditation. But whenever something happens to you, don’t keep it to yourself. Share it. Even if you cannot do anything else, just smiling, smiling at a stranger, may be enough. Just taking the hand of a stranger in your hand and feeling the friend within him will do it, or sharing anything, just as a token. Or, if there is no one there and you are sitting under a tree, then dance and feel that you are dancing with the tree. Sing, and feel that you are singing with the birds. And sooner or later you will come to understand that when you share, even a tree is ready to share.
Some research has been done recently in a Russian university… A psychoanalyst, Pushkin, has come to conclude through many experiments that trees have similar emotions to man. Not only that – trees can be hypnotized. Not only that – if a person is hypnotized under a tree, and under hypnosis it is suggested to him, “You are very sad,” then the person becomes sad, and simultaneously the tree becomes sad.
These are experimental conclusions. There are now mechanical recording devices that can record whether you are sad or happy, whether you are depressed, whether you are angry, whether you are sexual, because with every emotion, a different electrical wave is released from your mind. That electrical wave can be recorded.
But this has been a very strange conclusion: that the same wave is recorded from the tree. You are dancing under a tree, happy… Your mind will give an indication that you are happy and it will be recorded. If the device is also connected to the tree, the tree records the same wave. So, Pushkin says that if you are dancing under a tree, very happy, the tree shares it. It is happy with you.
And if a tree can share it, why not birds? They are more alive. Why not animals? They are still more alive. And why not the whole of existence? Sooner or later we will find that even stones share. Their soul may be hidden very deep, but it is there, and one day we are going to find instruments that will give us indications that even a stone, a rock, has emotions.
So wherever you are, whenever you feel that some ecstatic emotion has happened to you, dance to its tune, sing to its tune, and share your happiness in whatsoever way happens to you, in whatsoever way you feel to share it. But share it! It will grow. With sharing, it grows. With miserliness – with not sharing – it dies away, it shrinks.
Death is shrinkage. Shrinking is death; life is expansion. Allow it to expand. And once you know the feeling of expansion you will follow, because it is your own innermost self dictating.
Thou who art now a disciple, able to stand, able to hear, able to see, able to speak, who hast conquered desire and attained to self-knowledge, who hast seen thy soul in its bloom and recognized it, and heard the voice of the silence, go thou to the hall of learning and read what is written there for thee….
To hear the voice of the silence is to understand that from within comes the only true guidance; to go to the hall of learning is to enter the state in which learning becomes possible. Then will many words be written there for thee, and written in fiery letters for thee easily to read. For when the disciple is ready the master is ready also.
To hear the voice of silence is to understand that from within comes the only true guidance. When you are silent, really silent after the storm has passed, when you have fallen into silence spontaneously – you have not cultivated it; it has come to you, it has arisen spontaneously in you. In this silence you will come to feel and understand and realize that now the true guidance is possible from your own innermost being. Now the master, the inner master will appear to you.
Your own innermost center is your real master. Outer masters can help, but their help is basically directed toward finding this inner one. And when the inner one is found, there is no need for the outer master. You have become master in your own right.
But this happens only when you have come to realize total inner silence, without any thought, without any word, without any imagination, without any ripple of any kind. When you have come to understand and feel a ripple-less silence, a thought-less silence, non-moving – this silence becomes your inner master. Now, out of this silence, guidance will be given to you.
For when the disciple is ready the master is also ready. When you are ready to receive the inner guidance, the inner guidance comes naturally, automatically. But the disciple must be ready.
What is meant by the disciple being ready? – it means to become totally receptive, humble, egoless, surrendered, in a deep let-go. When you are not saying anything but are just receptive to listen, when you are not imposing any theories upon truth – naked, vacant and ready to allow the truth to reveal itself in its own way; you are not in any way, consciously or unconsciously, forcing anything upon the truth; you have stopped forcing, you are ready to be carried away to wheresoever the truth leads you – then, you are a disciple.
There is a difference between a student and a disciple. A student is hankering for information. A disciple is not hankering for information; his search is for knowledge, authentic experience. He is not interested in what others say; he is interested in what he can feel. The student will collect information. He will train his memory, and the more his memory is trained, the more information is accumulated, the more egoistic he will become. A student can never be humble, a scholar can never be humble. His basic search is egoistic.
Someone accumulates riches and someone else accumulates knowledge. There is no difference. Every accumulation feeds the ego. Whatsoever you accumulate, the greater the quantity, the more egoistic you will feel. So a student or a scholar is not a disciple. The very dimension is different.
A disciple is not in search of accumulation. Rather, on the contrary, he is ready to throw out all accumulations. If the truth happens, only in that emptiness he is ready to throw out all accumulations, all knowledge.
Socrates is reported to have said in his old age – he was a disciple – he is reported to have said, “Now I can say that I do not know anything. I am ignorant.”
It happened that a seer declared Socrates the wisest man in Athens. Those who heard the seer came running to Socrates and said, “Socrates, have you heard? The seer has said that you are the wisest man in Athens.”
Socrates said, “There must have been some error. Go back and tell the seer that Socrates says he knows nothing. He is absolutely ignorant.”
The people went back to the seer and told him, “Your prophecy has been denied by Socrates himself. He says, ‘I do not know anything. I am ignorant.’”
The seer laughed and he said, “Because of this I say he is the wisest man, because only a perfectly wise man can say, ‘I do not know.’”
Ignorant people always claim knowledge. The more ignorant, the more they claim they know. This is part of ignorance. A student, a pundit, a scholar all claim knowledge. They are not disciples.
And remember, if you are a student you can become a teacher but never a master. Only a disciple can become a master. If you are a student, a scholar, you can become a teacher – never a master. Only a disciple can become a master. Discipleship means egoless surrender. And once you surrender, your innermost self is revealed to you. That is the master who is waiting for you. He has been waiting for you for lives and lives.
In any moment of surrender, the master will be revealed to you. And that master is no one. It is your own innermost self, it is your own atma. So really, this can be said: when you are a perfect disciple you have become a master. You are no longer a disciple at all. Discipleship achieved, you are transformed into a master.