The first question:
Osho,
How do I find my way?
There is no way to be found, and there is no one to find it – and there is no need either. The very idea of the way misleads, misguides. The way is possible only if truth is far away. If there is a distance between you and the truth, then the way is needed to connect, to bridge.
But truth is not distant, truth is not there; truth is not even near. Truth is in you; truth is you. Truth is nearness, intimacy. That is the meaning when Jesus says, “God is love.” By love he means nearness, intimacy. Truth is already there in the innermost core of your being. The moment you start thinking of the way, you have started thinking of time, effort, will, struggle, seeking, searching, desiring, dreaming. You have created the whole world and the misery that automatically follows it. The very idea of truth being distant is false, utterly false. You have never left home. See it! Seeing it, the whole search disappears.
This is the Zen approach; hence Zen is a pathless path, a gateless gate, an effortless effort. These are immensely significant words: pathless path, gateless gate, effortless effort. All that is meant is that you are not to go anywhere. Relax. Rest into your being. Rather than thinking of going, think of coming. You have already dreamed enough; you have left your home in a dream. Now, don’t prolong this dream. Asking for a way, you are trying to convert your worldly dream into an otherworldly dream, that’s all. The materialist is trying to become a spiritualist, but the greed continues.
Remember one thing as a criterion: anything that creates future is bound to be against reality, because reality is always present – always and always, and forever. Reality knows no future. The mind creates the future, and creates it very cunningly, very cleverly.
Now, this is a clever question: “How do I find my way?” You may not be aware what you are getting into. You are getting into a dream, and now you will be exploited because now you will find people who will supply the way. Wherever there is a demand, somebody is bound to supply. That is an economic law, the law of demand and supply. You make a demand for the way, and immediately thousands of gurus are born – you have given birth to them and they are ready to supply you all that you need. That’s how the spiritual supermarket exists: you create it by your demand. You create the false, the pseudo-prophets, because when you ask for the way, the real master cannot give it to you because he is not your enemy, he is not there to exploit you. The real master’s work is to take all the ways, all the methods from you. His whole work consists of destroying your future. Once the future is destroyed you will find yourself here now – and now is the only real time.
Truth exists in real time, and you exist in unreal time; hence you never meet. It is like a person who has fallen asleep and is dreaming, fallen asleep in Pune and dreaming of Philadelphia. And you are sitting by the side of the man who has fallen asleep; he cannot see you, he cannot be aware of you, he cannot see the room, he cannot hear the birds singing outside, he cannot feel the wetness in the air. He is in Philadelphia; he is in an unreal time, in an unreal space. Because he is in an unreal time and unreal space – of his own creation and imagination and fantasy – he is missing the real. He is missing this room, this place; he is missing you who are there, alive, loving, but unavailable. You are so close and yet so far away, because he is in Philadelphia.
What is needed? Does he need a way? Has he to go to some airline and book to come back? Has he to travel back? Is there any need for a way? No, all that he needs is an awakening, a shock so he can be awakened, a shaking-up. You shake him, he will open his eyes, and suddenly Philadelphia has disappeared.
It happens exactly like that. In the close proximity of a master you are given constant shocks and shakings. He does not supply you with paths, ways, methods, he simply shocks you – he goes like a shiver in your spine.
And the sleep is no ordinary sleep; it is metaphysical sleep. You have slept for lives together. You have slept the whole past, and you have dreamed so much and you have invested in the dream so much, that it looks almost impossible to wake up – too risky, too costly, such a gamble. You can do it only if you fall in love with a master. If you fall in love with a master, risk is possible because people risk only when they are in love. Sannyas is a love affair.
When you are in love you are mad, and only the madman can come back; the clever and the cunning and the calculating will think so many things against coming back. In Philadelphia he has made a beautiful house, in Philadelphia he has found a woman, in Philadelphia he has children, in Philadelphia he has a good business, in Philadelphia he is respected, he has become the mayor; all his life consists of Philadelphia. Suddenly you wake him up and destroy it all. And the woman that he used to love and was so beautiful is no longer there, and the children… All have disappeared, and the mayor-hood and the business and the bank balance, all have gone. He will be angry with you.
Unless you are in love with a master, you will not allow him to wake you up – unless the love is so great that you can risk all. Once you are awake you will thank him, but before you are awake, many times you will be angry. It is happening every day here. I go on shaking you, shocking you. I say so many things – the purpose is basically to shock you, the purpose is to somehow make it impossible for you to go on sleeping, to go on dreaming. All the methods that we use here are not methods to attain truth – no, not at all. There is no method to attain truth. All those methods are nothing but efforts to wake you up, to bring you back home, where you really are. They are only to destroy your dream.
Sannyas is renouncing your dreams, renouncing your sleep. But this is possible only if you love the man, if you love the master so much that you say, “Okay, if he is going to hell, we are going with him. Hell will be heaven with him. Without him we are not going to heaven.” Only then can you be awakened. Don’t ask for any way.
That’s why Jesus says a very strange statement: “I am the way.” And Christians have missed the point; they have interpreted it in such a way that the whole thing has gone wrong. When Jesus says, “I am the way,” he is simply saying, “Meet a master and fall in love. Follow a master.” He is not saying anything about Jesus, he is simply saying to his disciples, “I am the way. Fall in love with me so that I can awaken you, because you will be able to bear awareness only if you are in tremendous love; otherwise, you will not be able to forgive the man, and you will want to fall asleep again and you will start dreaming again.” When Jesus says “I am the way,” his “I” contains all the masters of the world – past, present, future. That “I” has nothing to do with Jesus as such, that “I” is the “I” of all the masters.
It is exactly what Krishna said to Arjuna, his disciple, “Leave all aside. Come to my feet – surrender to me.” That’s all. One starts thinking, “How can it be so easy?” It is easy because you have never left the place. It is easy because you are already there.
The master is not giving anything. He is simply taking away that which you don’t have and he is giving you that which you already have. The work of the master is almost like magic. That’s why in the old days the master was thought to be a magician. He takes away things which you don’t have and he gives you things which you already have – this is magic.
Don’t ask for a way. I am the way. Look into my eyes. Get into this enchanted space that I am. Yes, it is an enchanted space. Martin Heidegger calls it “enchanted regioning,” not just region but “regioning,” because region makes it look static and it is dynamic. He does not call it space because space seems static. And it is not a noun; it is a verb, a living verb.
A master is a dynamo. A master is a flow, an overflow, a river. Get into it! And you need not even swim, the river is already moving. You can just relax with the river, and one day you will find that you have arrived. That day can be this moment – it all depends on your courage, on the intensity of your love.
There is no need for any way. And if you try to find a way, you will find not one, you will find many and you will be distracted by all those ways for millions of lives. You try one way and it fails, then you try another way and that fails, and you try another… They are all bound to fail, they are doomed to fail because you are trying to do something which is absolutely absurd.
It is like searching for the horse on which you are riding. You can rush in all directions – and you can have a very beautiful horse, a very powerful horse, and he can take you to the farthest corners of the earth – but still you will not find the horse because you are already riding on it.
Let me awaken you. Allow me to take your dreams away. What more way do you need? I am the way.

The second question:
Osho,
Sometimes running here and there, talking, laughing, working, reading, writing, and dreaming, the fact is, when the door closes behind and the eyes are shut, it is dark. Thoughts or no thoughts, feelings or no feelings, it is dark. Morning or night, any time inside, it is dark.
Looking inside for the looker, it is dark. Is “I” darkness?
Who is writing this question?
Yes, “I” is darkness, the ego is darkness, and if you look within and the looker is there, it will remain dark. Morning or evening won’t make any difference; thoughts or no thoughts won’t make any difference because the “I” itself is the essential thought, the fundamental thought – the looker. It contains all thoughts and all feelings. You can look, but you have already divided yourself in two: the looker and the looked-upon. And this division is darkness, this duality is darkness, this split is darkness.
Oneness is luminous, oneness is light; twoness is darkness. So, whenever a meditator goes in, first he always encounters darkness, and that darkness is frightening. Who wants to go into that darkness? One becomes afraid, one wants to escape from it. In the beginning it is always so, but if you go on and go on and go on, and you even stop asking for light… Why should you ask? If it is dark, it is dark. And darkness is perfectly right – and when darkness is perfectly right, darkness is absolutely bright.
Accept it. Love it. Embrace it. Feel one with it. And the moment the split disappears – when there is no looker and the looked-upon, no observer and the observed – then suddenly there will be light, and a light which needs no fuel, a light which is eternal.
But if you are divided, that light won’t happen to you. So what is to be done? You have to love this darkness, you have to fall into this darkness and disappear. Don’t search for the light. The search for the light will keep you distant, unloving, unavailable to the darkness, and that will be a barrier to light. Don’t search for light. If it is dark, it is dark. This is what Buddha calls tathata. If it is dark, it is dark. Don’t ask for something else, let it be dark, enjoy it. What is wrong with darkness?
But we are conditioned in such a way that we cannot enjoy a few things. We have been brought up in such a way that we can enjoy only light, not darkness. Now this is missing something tremendously beautiful and something tremendously alive.
Darkness has its own joy, light has its own joy, and the person who understands will enjoy both. He will not create any conflict and he will not choose. Darkness has silence in it, which no light can ever have. Darkness has stillness in it, utter stillness, which no light can ever have. And darkness has infinity: it is unbounded; it knows no boundaries. Light always has boundaries to it, it is never infinite; it is finite. Light comes and goes; darkness abides, darkness is eternal. It is because of this experience that in India we have painted Krishna as dark – his other name, Shyam, means dark, “the black one.”
Darkness has depth. Whiteness is shallow; whiteness always looks superficial. Start enjoying darkness. Feel its infinity, feel its spaciousness, feel its eternity. Be touched by it and be moved by it – it is so velvety it has a beauty of its own. And unless you are capable of loving darkness, you have not earned the right to know light.
The light that you know is the outside light; it is against darkness. And the light that you will know when you transcend inner darkness will not be against darkness. It will contain all that darkness has – and something more, and plus. Remember it, the light outside is not the true light. The true light will have all the qualities of this light and all the qualities of this darkness and still will be more than the sum total of them. It is a great splendor where dualities meet and merge into each other, where dualities pour all their beauty into each other and a new beauty arises – the beauty of unity, integration.
So, remember, whatsoever you know about light and darkness, both have to be left behind. When you close your eyes, you have left the light outside; now you enter darkness. Love it! Sing a song with it. Have a dance with it. Don’t fight with it, don’t be afraid of it, don’t keep a distance from it. And don’t go on looking for light. Forget about light. This darkness is there; it has to be enjoyed. One has to be grateful to existence for this darkness, this silence, this stillness, this velvety expanse. And then one day, the observer and the observed are no longer two.
When you love something, the duality disappears. If you love darkness you become darkness. And when there is no duality, there comes a luminousness of a totally different quality: it is not the light that comes from the sun, and it is not the light that comes from electricity, and it is not the light that comes from the moon. You have come to the very source of all light and all darkness, then you have come to the very root, the very ground, of being.
It is beautiful that the darkness is arising in you. You have taken a great step. Now, don’t go on fighting with it, otherwise the next step will be hindered. That’s what I was saying the other day: if the myth of Sisyphus were written by a Zen master it would have been totally different – the gods would have been defeated. You cannot punish a Zen master. Sisyphus would have enjoyed, would have danced, would have been ecstatic – because there is no goal so there is no failure. When the rock starts slipping back toward the valley, he would have listened to the sound echoing, re-echoing, in the valleys. He would have enjoyed it, and he would have started the downward journey with great joy because he knows the beauty of the valley also.
Yes, there is beauty in the hilltop, the sunlit hilltop, and the openness of the sky, but there is beauty in the valley too: the shelter, the security, the beautiful birds, and the rivers, and the friends, and the pub. Sisyphus would have come back dancing from the hill, thinking of the pub and his friends and beloved. His children must have been waiting, and his woman – and it was time. He would have had a beautiful, restful night, and in the morning he would have begun again, he would have taken the rock back to the top – another day, another challenge, another day, another adventure. And in the morning he would have started again, whistling a song. The story would have been totally different.
The Greeks could not envision it. The logical mind cannot envision it; an illogical mind is needed to envision that beauty. Yes, when you go in and there is darkness, don’t become the Greek Sisyphus, remember what I am telling you. Love the darkness; it is a gift, all is a gift from existence. Feel grateful to existence that it has given you such a beautiful darkness of your own – so virgin, so pure, uncontaminated. Relax into it, and as you relax, it disappears. When you have relaxed totally, it is no longer found. Then you have arrived at the very source of all darkness and all light, but that source has a totally different quality of light. It is not this light – it has something of it. It is not this darkness – it has something of it, but it is immensely vast. That’s why the mystics have always felt it difficult to say what it is.
It is ineffable, inexpressible, indefinable.
But you have taken a great step: going into darkness is a great step. Zen people call it “the great doubt,” and the Christian mystics call it “the dark night of the soul.” But the morning is arriving, just following; the dark night of the soul has the morning following just on its heels, just following like a shadow. Don’t be too worried about the darkness, don’t become too obsessed by it, otherwise, you will miss the morning that is following it, coming just on its heels.
This is the way to look at life. And then thorns are no longer thorns – they also have a beauty of their own. Then the cactus is as beautiful as any rose, and your heart expands when you can see the beauty of a thorn. To see the beauty of a rose is not much – anybody can see it; nothing is required of you. The rose is so obviously there, even a stupid person can see the beauty of it. But to see the beauty of the thorn, great intelligence is needed; much is required of you. It is a challenge. Unless you have found beauty everywhere, you will not find truth. Unless you are at home everywhere, you will never be at home.
So, in darkness be at home. Whatsoever arises in you has to be accepted with joy, as a gift. And I know it is difficult sometimes to think that this is a gift when you are ill, when it is all dark, when you are miserable, when love is broken. How can you see the beauty of it when a beloved dies? Death has happened – it is difficult to see the beauty. That only shows that you have a very, very narrow definition of beauty, that you have imposed some definition on reality. Drop that imposition. Let reality be freed.

Just the other day I was reading about a Hasid mystic, Zusia, one of the most beautiful Hasid mystics. He was going into the hills and he saw many birds, caught by a man, in a cage. Zusia opened the cage because birds are meant to fly and all the birds flew away. And the man came rushing out of his house and asked, “What have you done?”
Zusia said, “Birds are meant to fly. Look how beautiful they look on the wing.”
But the man thought otherwise; he gave Zusia a good beating. His whole day’s work had been destroyed, and he had been hoping to go to the market and sell the birds, and there were many, many things to be done – and now Zusia had destroyed the whole thing. He gave him a really good beating, but Zusia was laughing, and Zusia was enjoying, and the man was beating him. Then he thought that Zusia must be mad.
Zusia started moving… When the man had finished, Zusia asked, “Have you done it, or would you like to do a little more? Are you finished? Because now I have to go.” The man could not answer. What to answer? This man was simply mad. Zusia started singing a song. He was very happy – happy that the birds were flying in the sky and happy that he was beaten and yet it didn’t hurt, happy that he could receive it as a gift, happy that he could still thank life. There was no complaint. Now, he had transformed the whole quality of the situation.

This has to be learned. Slowly, slowly a man has to become so wide that all is accepted, yes, even death. Only then does the song burst forth. Yes, even the darkness, only then does the light arrive. The moment you have accepted the night totally and there is no seeking and hankering for the morning, the morning has come. This is how it comes, this is the way of its coming.

The third question:
Osho,
The more I look into myself, the more I find that I'm such a narcissist, and my only and real concern is not enlightenment, liberation and all that, but beauty. I want to make myself and the world as beautiful as possible. And the beauty of beauties seems not to be. Am I an okay student of your aesthetics?
Yes, that’s what others have called enlightenment, liberation, moksha. Not to be is the most beautiful thing. To be is to be limited, and all limitations have ugliness. Limitation is ugliness; it is poor, it is poverty. Not to be means unlimited, infinite; it is richness, it is superabundance.
And remember, these three centers have always been the centers of the religions: satyam, shivam, sundaram. Satyam means truth, shivam means good, sundaram means beauty.
There are religions which have been centered on the concept of truth. There are religions which are centered on the concept of good. And there have to be religions now that will be centered on the concept of beauty – and beauty is the highest. Satyam is the first center, shivam is the second, sundaram is the third and the highest.
Truth is the first, the lowest. You will be surprised that truth is the lowest step. Why? Because truth is a logical concept – dry, heady, it smells of logic chopping. Truth makes a person dry, desert-like, and the religions which have depended on truth, have become very, very dry. Jainism is very dry: the Jaina scriptures look more like books of mathematics, logic. You will not find any oasis there, it is all desert, as if the idea of beauty had not been heard of at all.
The second step, a little better, is that of good. It is not only a question of a logical confusion, but of living it. It is not only philosophy, but life. The West has not got rid of the first step yet. The Greek mind was very much rooted in the idea of truth, and the Western mind has remained rooted there, it has not moved from there. All Western philosophies think of truth, and naturally they become just logic chopping, argumentative. In the West the philosopher need not live his truth; all that is needed is that he should be consistent in his statements, but not that he should be consistent in his life.

There was a philosopher in Greece who lived long, he lived for ninety years, and he was teaching suicide and telling people that suicide is the only logical thing to do. This was possible in Greece because you don’t ask the philosopher to live it himself; all that you inquire and all that you require of him is that whatsoever he says he should prove logically. And he was proving it logically: it is very simple to prove that life is meaningless, what else can be simpler? To prove that life has any meaning is almost impossible. To prove that life is meaningless is obvious.
But when the philosopher had become very old and was on his deathbed, somebody asked, “Sir, you lived a really long life, and your whole life you have been teaching that suicide is the right, logical conclusion. Why didn’t you commit suicide?”
He said, “How could I? I had to teach my philosophy, I had to spread my message. How could I? If I could live a little longer I would try to live a little longer, because the message, the word, has to be spread.”

In India, religions have centered on the second concept: good. In India this is a basic question: if somebody is saying something, the first thing that people ask is, “Are you living it?” Unless you give a proof by your life, it is all meaningless; it is all gibberish. If you say something, then live it. If you say, “God is,” then live life as if “God is.” If you say bad karma, bad action, will bring bad consequences and you are caught doing some bad thing, you have refuted your philosophy. Then nobody will listen to you. You may be as logical as possible, but nobody is going to follow you. Your life has to be consistent with your logic; what you say has to be lived. That is the second state.
Religions of the past have either been of the first or of the second. The third, the highest stage, is evolving: the religion of beauty. That’s why I say the first is logical, the second is ethical, and the third is aesthetical. The third is nothing but aesthetics. The man who is trying to be good has to impose goodness on himself, he has to practice and cultivate it. Deep down there is a split, and that split will remain.
You think celibacy is good: logically you have arrived at the point that celibacy is good, that sexuality is just a waste of life energy, and that it is also stupid, and that it is also animal-like, and that unless you transcend sexuality, you will not be able to transcend your body, because the body is the body of sex. It consists of sex, it is made of sex cells; it has been produced through sex and it wants to reproduce through sex. The body is the field of sex – you will never know the soul, the nonsexual part of you. Logically you arrive at the conclusion that celibacy is good. Now, what are you going to do? If you are a Greek then this is enough, you have done all that you can do. You go on living in sexuality and you go on talking about celibacy. But if you are a Hindu this is not enough. You start trying to be celibate. You impose patterns, you do exercises, you cultivate a certain structure around yourself so that celibacy is supported and sex is destroyed. This can be done, one can cultivate oneself; one can condition oneself so deeply that on the surface sex disappears. But what about the unconscious, what about the deeper stream of your life energies? Sex reappears there, and contaminates your sources.
The third, the religion of beauty, will have a totally different grounding. It will not believe in cultivation, because cultivation brings hypocrisy, and hypocrisy is ugly. It will not believe in creating a character, because when you create a character it is never true character – because it has not arisen out of your innermost sources. It has been put there from the outside; it is nothing but a conditioning, hypnosis or autohypnosis, but it has not bloomed in your being. It is not your fragrance; it is ugly.
To see a person who is boiling inside with anger and on the surface showing that he is a sage, is the ugliest thing in the world because this duality, this schizophrenia, this split makes him continually struggle within himself. He is never at ease, never at rest. He cannot be, he cannot afford to be. If he rests, all that he has repressed will start raising its head. If he relaxes, immediately the character disappears, and whatsoever he has condemned as characterlessness takes possession of him. This type of man cannot even go for a holiday. He has to continuously guard himself, he becomes his own prisoner and his own jailer. His life is a life of misery.
That’s why your so-called saints who live in the second kind of religion are so sad. You don’t know their misery; their misery is far deeper than your misery. Your misery is superficial; their misery is very deep. Their misery is the constant fight with themselves. They have divided themselves in two: the controller and the controlled. And the fight is unending, sometimes one part will win and sometimes another part will win. And it will always remain inconclusive because both are you. It is like making your right hand fight with your left hand. You can go on, you will be exhausted by it, but there is going to be no conclusive victory. And it is all a game. You can give a little more energy to the right, and the right wins, and you can give a little more energy to the left, and the left wins. When you want the right to win, you make the left pretend to be weak; when you want to let the left win, you let the right pretend to be weak. It is all pretension; it is all hypocrisy.
The first kind of religion creates heady people – just verbal, logical. The second kind of religion creates people who are hypocrites – divided, split, neurotic. The world has suffered from these two kinds of people too much.
In the third there is a totally different perspective. The religion is of beauty. If the religion is of beauty, it cannot allow any split in you because all beauty is organic beauty – it arises out of unity. One has to be one: no repression, no character, no morality. That’s what religion is. That’s why Zen people go on saying there is no morality, no good, no bad, no paradise, no hell.
You become afraid. Many questions have come today asking: “If there is no morality then what will happen? People will become very immoral.” Do you think they are moral now? Have your morality and the preaching of the ages helped in any way? Somebody has asked, “There are murderers in the world, killers in the world. If there is no morality, and morality is not taught, what will happen then?”
And the morality has been here for ten thousand years or longer. What has happened? Are there fewer murderers? Are they on the decrease? They are on the increase. And the morality has been here, from Moses to Mahatma Gandhi. The morality has been here and the moral teachers have been here. Where is morality? There are more and more crimes every day. More and more jails, more and more police, more and more armies are needed every day. And morality has been there. Do you think it has helped? It has not helped; in fact it has aggravated the situation. It has not helped people to become moral; it has only helped them to become hypocrites.
The hypocrite is the most immoral person there is, because he pretends one thing and he is something else. He has a face to show to people and hides behind a different reality. He lives through masks. He lives in misery, and he creates misery around himself. He has destroyed the natural, the spontaneous in man because he believes in cultivation, in civilizing. He believes that people should be forced to be good.
Now, there is no way to force anybody to be good. In fact if you force somebody to be good, you are forcing him to be bad. If he has any guts he will rebel against you. If he has any intelligence he will react against you, he will become just the opposite of what you wanted him to be.
Your morality, and the religions that preach it, have only created rebellions in the world. They have created reactions in people; people have gone to just the opposite end. If a person has any strength, power, dignity, he will go against them because it is so humiliating to follow orders, to be obedient. Unless obedience comes from your inner being out of love and trust, it is ugly. But when it comes from within your heart it is not obedience at all, because you are not following anybody else, you are following yourself.
If you fall in love with Christ and then there is obedience, it is a totally different kind of thing. You are in love; it is coming out of love. Christ is not forcing it on you. He is not saying, “Do this, and if you don’t you will suffer in hell.” He is not manipulating you. He loves you, and whatsoever he has gained, attained, whatsoever he has known, experienced, he shares with you. It is for you to choose or not to choose.
That’s what I am doing here. No morality is taught here. No character is imposed here. I simply share my joy with you. If that joy becomes infectious – you start feeling enchanted by it, you are attracted by it, it becomes a magnetic force in you and you start living it – that is your business. You have chosen it; nobody was in any way manipulating you.
When your life blooms from your sources, it is beautiful, it has beauty, sundaram, it is aesthetic. Then there is no possibility of hypocrisy.
The world has become too false because of moral teachings. That falsity has to be taken away. I said to you that if you have any guts you will rebel against all commandments. A true master cannot command. His presence commands – that is a totally different thing – but he never commands directly. He will never give you things like the Ten Commandments. He gives his love, and out of love things start happening.
Love is such a potential force.
There are people who are weak, who have no guts, and there are people who are mediocre. They will not rebel; they will yield to the pressure of society, the preacher, the priest, the religion, the church. They will yield. In their yielding they will be cowards, by yielding they will become even more cowardly. In their yielding they will become ugly. See the point: if you yield out of fear you become ugly, because how can fear be beautiful? And if you rebel you become angry, and how can anger be beautiful? In both ways the preachings of the moralists and the puritans have been destructive to humanity.
No more of it! The future belongs to a totally different quality of religion. Zen is just a herald – much more will be coming – it is just the first ray, a first insight. People need not be in anger, and people need not live out of fear. People have to live out of their natural, spontaneous being. People have to be themselves; then there is beauty.
Why are trees so beautiful? Have you ever seen an ugly tree? You will be surprised, ponder over it: have you ever seen an ugly tree? Have you ever seen an ugly peacock or an ugly dove or an ugly deer? Have you ever seen an ugly tiger? Then why do you come across ugly men and ugly women? Why? Something has gone wrong with man; something has been done to man’s naturalness.
The whole of nature is beautiful because it is natural, because there are no priests and no churches and no moralists going around teaching trees to be of character, to be good, or teaching birds to be this way or that, giving disciplines and commandments. Man has to come back to his innocence. That is the message of Zen.
You say: “The more I look into myself the more I find that I’m such a narcissist. My only and real concern is not enlightenment, liberation and all that, but beauty.” But that’s what enlightenment is. You are not a narcissist. Don’t use such words because they can become condemnatory, and once a condemnation enters in your being you start becoming ugly. Don’t label yourself, and don’t be labeled by others. Remain free of labels because labels are dangerous. Once you use a certain word about yourself you tend to think that you are that. Avoid words and look into reality. Now, to use the word narcissist is dangerous. You have already condemned, you have already accepted that something is wrong with you. Once you accept that something is wrong with you, you cannot be at ease with yourself. Nothing is wrong.
This concern for beauty is concern for enlightenment. Enlightenment makes people beautiful. Have you ever conceived of any person more beautiful than Buddha or Yoka or Bodhidharma or Huineng? Just think of Buddha for a moment. Such beauty has never walked on the earth, such grace…
H. G. Wells used to say that Buddha is the greatest godless man of human history, and the godliest. And he was true – the most godless and the godliest. Never has such a beauty walked, never has such a beauty been found residing in anybody. From where did it come? It came from his enlightenment; from his insight that all is good, from his insight that there is no need to go anywhere as all is here, from his insight that one has to drop all longing for truth, meaning… That longing makes one ugly, that longing makes one tense, that longing creates anguish. That insight happened and he became godly, he immediately became godly. Then there was infinite beauty, then there was splendor, he became part of the trees and the birds and the mountains and the stars and the rivers. He became again natural; he became again innocent.
You say: “I want to make myself and the world as beautiful as possible.” Now beauty is not a thing that you can do anything about. If you start doing anything about it you will make it ugly. That’s how the world has become so ugly. Don’t try to make the world beautiful. And don’t try to make yourself beautiful, because if you try to make yourself beautiful that beauty will be false. What will you do? Will you search for cosmetics, beautiful clothes? Is that going to help? You can have a certain haircut, you can have beautifully manufactured clothes, you can have a beautiful house decorated aesthetically, but is it going to make you beautiful? Is it going to help you in any way?
Beauty is not of the outside, beauty is of the inner; it is within you. Let me remind you again, Martin Heidegger is right when he says it is a releasement, it has to be released. You have to open up, and the fragrance will be released. You are a bud and you have to become a flower, that’s all. Don’t think in terms of making the world beautiful otherwise you will become a missionary, and a missionary is one of the ugliest things in the world. And don’t think of making yourself beautiful. It is not a question of making or doing at all. It is a question of being.
Be! In your stillness, in your silence, in your meditativeness – when you simply are – there, and only there, is beauty. In that ecstasy of simple being, of pure being, is beauty. In that silence beauty takes form. The song becomes audible, the form becomes visible; the unknown becomes known.
Don’t say that you are not interested in enlightenment, because if you are not interested in enlightenment you will never be beautiful. Watch the words that you use because words have become very, very important; people live by them, and live according to them.
Beauty is there – that is the persistent message of Zen. Release it! You are not to become beautiful, you are beautiful; all that is needed is to remove the rocks. Who is hindering the path? This constant chattering in the mind makes you a cripple, this constant effort to be something – to be richer, to be more beautiful, to be more enlightened – this constant search for more makes you ugly, makes you greedy. Forget about more, enjoy that which you have. In that contentment is beauty. That contentment is beauty. Enjoy that which is available; don’t hanker for that which is not available. Mind is always hankering for that which you don’t have, and mind is never interested in that which you have. You can only enjoy that which you have. Nobody can enjoy that which one has not.
Now, look at the dilemma. Mind always says, “Have that because that is beautiful. To be there will be good, it will be great, fantastic.” But when you reach there, the mind has already moved ahead. Now it says, “Go there. That woman is beautiful, not this.” This is never beautiful – always that, the faraway, the distant, the unavailable. Search for it. By the time you arrive there, you are finished. The mind has no interest in that which is. It starts hankering again for something more, something else. Mind keeps you in constant misery, constant discontent, in a feverish state, hungry, thirsty, and for no reason at all. You have all that can give you contentment. You have all that can make you supersaturated.
Be here. Enjoy this moment and all that is contained in this moment, and suddenly you will find that beauty is released. And not only will you find that beauty is released, others will become aware that something has happened: “Something has happened in the deepest being of this man.” He has become luminous, transparent. Even an ordinary homely face becomes utterly beautiful when there is silence inside. And even a very, very shapely face becomes ugly when there is only anxiety and anguish and anger and frustration inside – because the face continuously shows that which is hidden in you, your eyes go on reflecting that which is in your heart.
Be still, and be beautiful – there is no other way.

The fourth question:
Osho,
For quite a long while now, I feel as if I am sitting between two chairs; between the reality of my mind and your reality. With patience and acceptance, I wait. But what is this “cutting the root” of all misery? I do not understand. Where is the root? What is it?
Those two chairs… They have to disappear; the duality has to disappear. The duality is the root of all misery.
You say: “For quite a long while now, I feel as if I am sitting between two chairs; between the reality of my mind and your reality.” Now these two realities will drag you in two opposite directions, even if you are sitting in the middle there will be a subtle drag. And you cannot know my reality if your mind is still there. Then my reality is just your idea about my reality, not my reality. My reality is possible only when your mind has disappeared. But then it is not my reality; it is as much yours as mine or anybody else’s. It is the reality – neither mine, nor yours. That is the root.
Now you are sitting patiently, but look deep down; you are waiting, waiting for something to happen. Patiently, but still in that patience impatience is hidden. Patience may be on the surface, but look inside and you will find some impatience. Maybe you have repressed it, you have silenced it, but it is there. It will assert itself. Whenever it can assert itself, it will. It will disturb your surface again and again.
Drop the mind. Cut the root. Duality is the root, because in the duality you are always in tension: to be this or to be that? Your mind will say, “What are you doing? You are disappearing; you are losing your individuality. This is suicide; this is not surrender. What are you doing here? It is called surrender. Surrender is only good as a word – it is suicide, you are committing suicide.” The mind will go on harping on the same thing again and again, and it will try to pull you. And I will go on saying to you, “Drop the mind. Surrender totally. Wait, and don’t wait for anything, simply wait.”
Patience should mean the absence of impatience, not patience which has silenced impatience. I will go on saying these things, and I will go on shouting as loudly as possible so that you can hear it in your dreams, so it can go on vibrating inside you even in your sleep: “Cut the root of all misery.” You will continuously be in trouble.
The duality has to go. Let those two chairs disappear. And remember, your mind is creating the other thing that you call, “my reality.” That too is your mind creating. My reality and your reality are not two. My reality is your reality. It is the same reality as that of the rock and the river; it is not different at all.
When Buddha got the insight sitting under the Bo tree, he said, “This very moment, it is not only that I have become enlightened but the whole of existence has. This rock I am sitting on and this tree I am sitting under – all have become enlightened.” What does he mean? He is saying, “Now the reality is indivisible. Now it is one, it is all one.”
Cut the root of misery. The root of misery is in “I” and “thou,” the root of misery is in “me” and “you.” The root of misery is that we go on always and always dividing, and it is all one. See the oneness, disappear in this oneness, and you have cut the root.

The last question:
Osho,
While I was listening to your reply to Kalika's question (which I too was experiencing for the last few days) and looking at the sky, I saw the clouds of unhappiness vanishing. In that moment of happiness, for the first time I experienced depth and clarity in the sky. Similarly, yesterday while offering my pranams, I closed my eyes and found the window of my heart opening – full of bright sunlight pouring in. I felt that through the window of the heart one can see unto you, and also that through you truth reveals. Is that so?
It is so, but the mind immediately raises questions. It is not only you who had seen the window opening. When I passed you I also saw the window opening. You were in a transformed state, you were not in an ordinary kind of mind; your eyes had a different shine. I also saw something happening to you, something of immense importance. For a moment you had fallen in tune with my heart, for a moment you vibrated with my vibe, your beat was rhythmic with my beat. For a moment you breathed through me and I breathed through you. That moment was immense. That moment was great.
But mind immediately jumps over it; hence the question, “Is that so?” The mind cannot believe it, the mind cannot trust it, the mind will say, “You must be imagining. What are you talking about? What nonsense! ‘The window of the heart,’ have you ever heard of anything like that? There is nothing; no window in the heart. In fact there is no heart, but just a pumping system inside, just a blood purifying mechanism. What heart are you talking about, and what window? You must have fallen in a trance; you must have been hypnotized. Otherwise, you see the sky every day – it is the same sky. What clarity and what depth? You must have dreamed, you must have hallucinated.”
The mind cannot trust – it is against the mind’s existence to trust such phenomena, so the mind immediately raises questions. Many times, many of you come very close to me. Sometimes it happens on a mass scale. Sometimes there are moments when all of you – almost all of you – are in a transformed state, in samadhi, just being one with me. But that moment slips. You cannot contain it; it is too much; you have to spill it. It is frightening too, because you see yourself disappearing and evaporating. And you cling…back to your old reality, and you raise a thousand and one questions. You raise great dust, great clouds of smoke so that you can feel settled again. The sky is no longer clear, there is no depth, the luminosity is lost, you are back into your old self and the mind is at ease. And the mind says, “Look, this is reality, that one cannot be real. And that one happens only for moments, and happens with this man. Maybe he is a magician, maybe he is a hypnotist; maybe he is doing something. The real is that which remains.” Mind says, “The real is that which remains forever. The ordinary sky is the real sky, and the ordinary beating of the heart is the real heart. You must have hallucinated.”
The mind will say these things again and again, and the window will open again and again. If you don’t listen to the mind it will open more often, you will see the light pouring in more often. Slowly, slowly the gestalt changes; that reality which happens for only moments becomes abiding, and this reality which looks very real because you have lived it this way for so many lives, slowly, slowly becomes unreal.
That is the meaning when Shankara says: “This world is illusory.” Not that these trees are illusory or these walls are illusory, or these rocks are illusory, what he means is that the way you have perceived it up to now is illusory because you are asleep.
That moment you were awake was a small mini satori, very small. Just for a moment, a split moment, the window opened. But even that is enough proof that there is a window, that there is a different kind of opening, that there is a way of knowing reality which is totally different, qualitatively different. You are fortunate; you are blessed. Let it come more and more. Allow it more and more. Even if it sometimes frightens you, take the challenge; risk all. Go into this adventure, this adventure is life.
Enough for today.

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