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nner Truth: Love- A State of Being

Love is never a relationship; love is relating. It is always a river, flowing, unending. Love knows no full stop; the honeymoon begins but never ends.It is not like a novel that starts at a certain point and ends at a certain point. It is an ongoing phenomenon. Lovers end, love continues– it is a continuum. It is a verb, not a noun.

All of his discourses on various topics have been compiled in 650 books, but the teachings of enlightened mystic Osho can be summed up in one word, and that word is Love. He says: The highest state of love is not a relationship at all, it is simply a state of your being. Just as trees are green, a lover is loving. They are not green for particular persons, it is not that when you come they become green. The flower goes on spreading it’s fragrance whether anybody comes or not, whether anybody appreciates or not. The flower does not start releasing its fragrance when it sees that a great poet is coming by ‘Now this man will appreciate, now this man will be able to understand who I am.’ And it does not close its doors when it sees that a stupid, idiotic person is passing there—insensitive, dull, a politician or something like that. It does not close itself – ‘What is the point? Why cast pearls before swine?’ No, the flower goes on spreading its fragrance. It is a state of being, not a relationship…

Self in silence

There is an Arabian proverb: When you have spoken the word, it reigns over you. When it is unspoken you reign over it.
Words are very important tools of communication. The words delight us when they are used by the intelligent people with full awareness and the words bring calamities when they are used without awareness. The speech without awareness can be a dangerous weapon as it can harm people far and wide.
That’s why the enlightened masters such as the Buddha advised his disciples about right speech, saying that if we cannot perform right speech, we had better not speak, as it is said, “Silence is golden”.
It is certainly true that right speech brings happiness, harmony and wisdom to life. On the contrary, wrong speech brings conflict, division, confusion and suffering to life. The poet Robert Frost observed: Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it. This situation creates a huge conflict between the two halves. Those who have nothing to say have always been clamouring for the freedom to say it, as they think it is their birth right. And everybody in the modern world is fighting for what his birth right. With such endless fights about the birth right, the right expression gets lost in all kinds of noises between my right and your right, and the fights continue to erupt on regular basis.
Jesus Christ warned humanity: But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgement for every careless word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.
Osho says: Ordinarily we understand only words. We are prepared to understand only words, not silence. We are educated to understand language and all its complexities. Nobody helps us to go beyond language, to go beyond words, to reach the wordless space within us.
Silence is the explosion of intelligence. Silence means: you are just uncluttered spaciousness. It means you have put aside the whole furniture of the mind — the thoughts, the desires, the memories, the fantasies, the dreams, you have all pushed aside. You are just looking into existence directly. That is silence. And to be in tune with existence even for a single moment is enough to make you aware of things. One is that you, are eternal. Once you realise this, fear disappears. And the society exists through exploiting your fear; hence, it teaches you from the school to the university, it devotes almost one-third of your life in learning words, language, logic. It is not concerned at all that you should understand silence.
That’s the function of a Master: to undo all that the society has done to you, to help you to go beyond words. And you can experience it happening here—you can hear the silence. And when you hear it, there is immediate understanding. Understanding comes like a shadow following silence.
Osho concludes: To understand words and to hear words is very simple. Anybody can do it; just a little education about language is needed, nothing much. But a tremendous transformation is needed to hear silence and to understand silence… Silence is the basic requirement of understanding God, the basic requirement to know truth… Silence can be profane too. Silence can be sacred too. Silence has as many nuances, as many dimensions as your being has. It is multidimensional.

Inner Truth: The Feminine Mystery and its Power

Whenever some important visionary wants to bring out any change or transformation of India, he leads the country men with the slogan — Bharat mata ki jai, or Vandematram. People often wonder: Does such an entity as Bharatmata exist? Because we have never seen her!

There is no such entity anywhere in India in physical form. It exists in the collective psyche of the country’s men and women. That.s why the invoking works — and works wonders. That’s the inner secret of the eternal India — the imperishable India. India remains united under the influence of mysterious feminine power and it is in turmoil whenever it goes astray.

Osho contemplates : “Whether it is the birth of matter or whether it is the birth of consciousness; whether the earth is born or heaven, everything is born through the mystery that lies hidden in the depths of Existence. Therefore I have said that those who have looked upon God as mother – as Durga or Amba – their understanding is much deeper than those who look upon Him as Father. If God exists anywhere, He is feminine, for man does not have the ability and the patience to give birth to such a vast Universe. That which gives birth to the myriads of stars and moons must have a womb, without which it is impossible.

He adds: Have you ever seen the image of Kali? She is the mother, She is terrible! In one hand she holds a human skull! She is the mother – Her eyes are filled with the ocean of tenderness. Down below – She stands on the chest of someone! Someone lies crushed under Her feet! Why? Because that which creates, destroys also. Destruction is the other part of creation. Those were wonderful people who conceived this image. They were people with great imagination who could visualise great possibilities.
The words of the Chinese mystic Lao Tzu are conclusive:
The Tao is called the Great Mother
empty yet inexhaustible,
it gives birth to infinite worlds.

Just be natural

There’s an ancient story, from the time of Confucius and Lao Tzu. Both were contemporaries. Confucius was younger than Lao Tzu but more popular as a philosopher. His thoughts influenced China in a very big way then and to this day his philosophy of life continues to dominate Chinese mentality. Lao Tzu was a mystic, like an Upanishdic sage of India, who had a transcendental wisdom of self-realisation. He had nothing to do with any philosophy, social morality or code of conduct. He was a simple man with profound understanding of life. But he could not influence people as much as Confucius could. He never bothered.

It has been reported that Confucius went to see Lao Tzu and asked, “What do you say about morality? What do you say about how to cultivate good character?” Lao Tzu laughed loudly and said, “If you are immoral, only then the question of morality arises. And if you don’t have any character, only then you think about character. A man of character is absolutely oblivious of the fact that anything like character exists. A man of morality does not know what the word “moral” means. So don’t be foolish! And don’t try to cultivate. Just be natural.”

Osho loves Lao Tzu: And this man (Lao Tzu) had such tremendous energy that Confucius started trembling. He couldn’t stand him. He escaped. He became afraid — as one becomes afraid near an abyss. When he came back to his disciples, who were waiting outside under a tree, the disciples could not believe it. This man had been going to emperors, the greatest emperors, and they had never seen any nersness in him. And he was trembling, and cold perspiration was coming, pouring out from all over his body. They couldn’t believe it — what had happened? What had this man Lao Tzu done to their teacher? They asked him and he said, “Wait a little. Let me collect myself. This man is dangerous.”

There is another significant Taoist story of that time: An old follower of Lao Tzu, who was 90 years old, was busy pulling water from the well, together with his young son. Confucius happened to pass by. He saw the old man and his young son yoked together, pulling water from the well. He was filled with compassion. He went up to the old man and said: “Do you not know, you foolish fellow, that now we harness horses or oxen to do this job? Why are you unnecessarily tiring yourself and this young boy?”

The old man said, “Hush! Pray speak softly lest my son hears! Come after some time when my boy goes for lunch.” Confucius was perplexed. When the youth left, he asked the old man, “Why would you not let your son hear what I said?” He replied, “I am 90 years old and yet I have the strength to work side by side with a youth of 30. If I engage horses to pull the water, my son will not have the same strength at 90 that I have now. So I pray to you, do not talk of this before my son. It is a question of his health. We have heard that in towns horses pull water from the well. We also know that there are machines that do this job as well. But then, what will my son do? What will happen to his health, his constitution?”

Osho concludes: Work and rest are interdependent. For example: We want to sleep soundly. He who wishes to sleep soundly needs to work hard. He who does not toil, cannot sleep soundly. Lao Tzu says, “Work and rest are both united. If you wish to relax, toil hard.”

Strive so hard that relaxation falls on you. Now if we think the Aristotalean way, work and rest are different and opposite. If I am fond of rest and comfort, and wish to sleep soundly, I shall just sit around the whole day and do nothing. But he who rests in the day, destroys his repose of the night. Rest has to be earned through labour. Or else you shall have to pass a restless night.

Confucius’ way of thinking is Aristotalean, therefore the West honoured Confucius very much these last 300 years. It is only now that Lao Tzu is rising in their esteem.

There is no shortcut

The recent issue of the New York Times, in one of its articles, tells us that meditation is exploding in popularity. There are classes to learn meditation in all its forms: mindfulness-based stress reduction, transcendental meditation, Zen and more. There are meditation events with power-networking opportunities built in. Drop by the Port Authority Trans-Hudson (commonly called PATH) in New York, and you can mingle with people in tech, film, fashion and the arts. Pay a visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and you get to do an early morning guided meditation with global leaders. As the editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post Arianna Huffington said, CEOs are increasingly coming out of the closet as meditators.

Another newspaper reported that researchers mapping the brain activity of tango dancers suggest that tango has the capacity to transport a person to the same mental state as people who meditate. One experiment, presented by the US National Library of Medicine, established that Argentine tango could be as effective as mindful meditation in reducing symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression.

The notion about the effect of meditation that it reduces stress, anxiety and depression has become prevalent all over the world. And it is a fact. It does. But in ancient time, this was not the original purpose of meditation. When the ancient sages were practising meditation, they were not thinking of freedom from stress or anxiety. They were meditating to attain self-realisation or illumination. It was self-enquiry or self-actualisation. Now the meditation is being sold on a very large scale to the corporate world by most of the modern gurus with temptations, with certain packages of decision-making, increasing the productivity of the workers in the factories, etc. The power of meditation is being exploited for the mundane achievements.

The people are being misled on a very large scale. For example, Patanjali yoga has been reduced to mere physical asanas for better health and nothing further or deeper and the same is being done to meditation. All kinds of new methods are being invented and promoted as the short-cut to happiness and ultimately the enlightenment by those who want to turn into a big business, comparable to yoga. These teachers are mostly flourishing in the West as well as in the Eastern countries such as India and Japan, the sacred home to Vipassana and Zen. The mystic saint Kabir had warned about such teachers: “Andha andham thelia dono koop padant (The blind led the blind and both have fallen into the well)”.

Describing this situation, Osho says: “The ordinary man is living a very abnormal life, because his values are upside down. Money is more important than meditation; logic is more important than love; mind is more important than heart; power over others is more important than power over one’s own being. Mundane things are more important than finding some treasures which death cannot destroy.”