Listen...!

I know you can hear, there is no trouble about it; but you cannot listen.

Listening is totally different from hearing.

Listening means hearing without mind; listening means hearing without any interference of your thoughts; listening means hearing as if you are totally empty.

If you have even a small trembling of thinking inside, waves of subtle thoughts surrounding you, you will not be able to listen, although you will be able to hear.

And to listen to the music, the ancient music, the eternal music, one needs to be totally quiet, as if one is not.

When you are, you can hear; when you are not, you can listen.

Experience is all

The ego is like darkness, a false entity. It only appears to be there, it has no positive reality. When the light of love comes, darkness goes out. If you have the real center — what Gurdjieff calls crystallisation or what Hindus call ATMAN or what Sufis call ROOH, spirit — if you really have it then each love will make it more and more clear, more and more transparent, more and more available. Each love affair will be a step — and you will be moving higher in crystallisation.

So this is the first thing to be understood: don’t choose the ego, always choose love. When it is a question between the real and the unreal, choose the real, even if sometimes the real brings inconvenience. It does bring inconvenience. We have chosen the unreal because it is convenient — for no other reason have we chosen it. There is just one reason: it is convenient. You will have to go through inconvenience. That inconvenience is what I call TAPASHCHARYA, austerity, SADHANA. That’s what it means to be initiated into a path.

Always choose the real, howsoever bad and howsoever painful and howsoever destructive it looks. Even if it feels like death, choose it — and you will be benefitted by it. Never choose the comfortable the convenient, the bourgeois, other-wise you will live the life of a hostile — if you are fortunate — or the life of a phony if you are not so fortunate, or, if you are not fortunate at all, the life of a zombie.

As you grow older you become more ignorant because you become aware of areas of which you
don’t know anything. The child is the least ignorant – he’s innocent. He has not entered on the path of knowledge, or ignorance – which is the same path. As you grow older, you start accumulating knowledge to hide your ignorance. You borrow knowledge to hide it, to cover it up; but the covered ignorance does not make you wise – it simply shows your stupidity. Your so-called wise people are full of nothing but ignorance – covered with beautiful, borrowed knowledge.

The authentic wise man is one who gets rid of all ignorance, and never allows himself to be burdened by borrowed knowledge; he gathers knowledge through his own experience. Your questions are tremendously helpful to get rid of your ignorance.

Now you can start searching for existential experiences of love, peace, silence, beauty, joy – which are all part of your own being. You don’t have to go to any library, and you don’t have to go to somebody wiser. You have simply to go to your own innermost source from where your life arises, from the same source that your light will also arise.

Wisdom is moving into experience in utter let-go.

But the secret of life is: if you bring your unconscious into the light, those hidden secrets which are functioning like wounds, like burdens that are heavy on you, evaporate. You need not do anything else – all that you need is a loving heart to listen to you.

Everybody has their own idea of love. And only when you come to the state where all ideas about love have disappeared, where love is no more an idea but simply your being, then only will you know its freedom. Then love is God. Then love is the ultimate truth. Let your love move through the process of meditation. Watch it: watch the cunning ways of your mind, watch your power-politics. And nothing else except continuous watching and observing is going to help.

What kind of trust is this, that you say it has been betrayed? My understanding of trust is that it cannot be betrayed. By its very nature, by its very definition, trust cannot be betrayed. It is impossible to betray trust. If trust can be betrayed, then it is not trust. Think over it.

When you say something to your woman or your man, look at it: what is the unconscious motive? Why are you saying it? Is there some motive? Then what is it? Be conscious of that motive, bring it to consciousness -- because this is one of the secret keys for transforming your life: anything that becomes conscious disappears. Your motives remain unconscious, that's why you remain in their grip. Make them conscious, bring them to light, and they will disappear.

It is as if you pull up a tree and bring the roots to the sunlight: they will die, they can exist only in the darkness of the soil. Your motives also exist only in the darkness of your unconsciousness. So the only way to transform your love is to bring all the motivations from the unconscious into the conscious. Slowly slowly, those motives will die. And when love is unmotivated, then love is the greatest thing that can ever happen to anybody. Then love is something of the ultimate, of the beyond.

That is the meaning when Jesus says, "God is love." I say to you: Love is God. God can be forgotten, but don't forget love -- because it is the purification of love that will bring you to God. If you forget about God completely, nothing is lost. But don't forget love, because love is the bridge. Love is the process of alchemical change in your consciousness.

Charisma

Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
WHAT IS CHARISMA? ALL SORTS OF PEOPLE HAVE IT, BOTH AWARE PEOPLE AND
UNAWARE PEOPLE. ITS SUCH AN INTANGIBLE QUALITY, I CAN SAY WHEN SOMEONE IS CHARISMATIC BUT CAN’T DEFINE WHAT IT IS.

Sudha, charisma is a mystery. It happens only to those people who have centered their being,
concentrated their energies, who are no longer falling apart, who are consolidated, who have
become one – the very meaning of the word, ”individual.”

Every individual has charisma. But individual means that which is indivisible. You cannot divide that person into fragments; you cannot say to that person that ”this part is wrong in you, this part is right in you.” You cannot create a schizophrenic psychology in that person; he’s one and whole. This very phenomenon of being one, centered and whole, creates a magnetic pull.
Now, you cannot see a magnetic pull. You can see the magnet, you can see the small pieces of
metal which are moving towards the magnet, but you cannot see magnetism, you cannot see any
power.

All power is invisible. All energy is invisible.

Charisma is the energy of the consciousness which is settled in itself – at ease, at home – which
has arrived. Now there is nowhere to go. Utterly relaxed, with no tensions, with no anxieties, with no desires – in short, with no bickering, torturing the mind – one has arrived at the point called Being with a capital B. The moment you touch your Being, you are no more a separate entity from the universe – you have become part and parcel of this tremendously alive existence.

But the problem arises... if you see it in a Gautam Buddha, there is no problem. You can understand – the man has blossomed. You can see it. In his eyes you can see the depth; you can see in his gestures, the grace. You can see in his words an authority which can come only through experience, not through knowledge.

The problem arises when you find some charismatic qualities in an ordinary man who has never
meditated, who has never gone inwards, who is as ordinary as everybody else. But sometimes it
happens – you feel a magnetic pull. And because you have not arrived at your own center, it is very difficult for you to make a distinction between the man who is centered – hence, has a magnetic pull – and the man who is not so centered and yet you still feel a certain pull. You cannot make the distinction, for the simple reason that you have not experienced it in your own being.

The ordinary man sometimes has something similar to charismatic power, but you will be surprised to know it is not charismatic power at all. It is something just the opposite – it is overflowing sexual energy. In a charismatic experience, the energy in the person is at the highest center. It is at the seventh center, sahastrara, beyond which you enter into the infinite, beyond which you are no more and you are all. It is the same energy.

Man has seven centers, prominent centers. The energy is stored as a reservoir at the lowest center – naturally, because of gravitation. Water goes downwards because of gravitation; it pulls somewhere, but it is always the lowest place. Water cannot go upwards unless some effort is made. Unless some device is created to cancel the effect of gravitation, water is bound to go down and down and down.

The sex center is the lowest point in your being. All energy accumulates at the sex center. The
moment the child is born, he brings all his life energy, stored at the sex center. But the sad thing
is that 99.9 percent of people also die in the same situation – the energy is still at the sex center,
although it is no more that overflowing energy of a child; it is the dying energy of an old man. But it is still at the lowest center.

The whole science of religion is nothing but an effort to create methods, devices, techniques to
cancel the effect of gravitation and allow the energy a freedom to rise upwards. As the energy starts rising upwards, you will see changes happening on their own accord. Your behavior will change, your actions will change, your directions in life will change. You will be surprised, and others will be surprised, too. What has happened? – they have seen your anger, they have seen your rage, they have seen your jealousy, they have seen your hate – suddenly you are radiating love.

If the energy reaches to the heart center, which is the fourth, your whole life becomes so sweet, so fragrant, and so beautiful – and you have only moved half way. If the energy moves still higher, and as the energy goes on moving higher, your charismatic power will become more and more apparent – even to those who are deaf and cannot hear, even to those who are blind and cannot see, even to those who are heartless and cannot feel. But the charismatic energy is so powerful that the blind has to see it and the deaf has to hear it and the heartless has to feel it. It all depends how high the energy has reached.

As the energy goes on moving, the sixth center is the third eye – between the two eyebrows, exactly in the middle. It is when the energy is at the sixth center that the presence of the person... It is not just that he is here; it is not just a physical presence. There is no word for it, but we can manage...it is spiritual presence that you start feeling. His body becomes less important, his words become faraway echoes, but his presence, pure presence becomes such a tremendous pull that you knowonly one experience which can give you some idea of it, and that experience is falling in love –irrationally. You cannot give any explanation, but you know. You cannot say but you feel.

And if the energy reaches the seventh, that is the point where one becomes awakened. The energy has come to the highest peak of evolution. Then that person is pure charisma.
Whatever he touches becomes gold.

After the heart center, the charisma will be felt by many but not by all.
The fifth center is in the throat. When the energy moves to the throat center, your words start having something of the charisma of your being because they arise out of your heart, they come from your interiority, they bring with them some fragrance from your innermost being.

Wherever he sits becomes a holy place.

Whatever he says becomes scripture. His actions take on a tremendous beauty. His inactions also open doors to the miraculous. He speaks the truth and even when he is silent, his silence also
speaks. Those who can understand the language of silence rejoice, are blissful, know perfectly well that this is the man they have been searching for centuries, for many lives.
Charismatic power is the same sexual energy transformed, purified. It was poison at the lowest
center; it has become nectar at the highest center. But at the lowest center also, it has a tremendous power. And you know that sometimes you feel a great attraction to an ordinary man.

Remember, that attraction is sexual, and sexual attraction is blind. But ordinarily people only know that attraction, so when by chance they come across a man who has some charisma, they don’t have any way to distinguish between the two.

That’s why Sudha is asking why sometimes in people who are awakened, and sometimes in people who are not awakened, this power is felt. It is not the same power – although it arises from the same energy. But from the lowest center it is crude, primitive, animal. Its influence will drag you into lower realms of being.

But if you find really a charismatic person, you are fortunate. Just to sit at his feet is enough, because he’s showering his energy whether anybody is there or not. If you are receptive, open, available, just being close to a charismatic person is the first taste of religion. I am calling it taste; I am not calling it understanding, I am not calling it knowledge. It is actually a taste. Your whole being feels it. Each fiber feels it – a nourishment, a nourishment which is divine.

Let us summarize:
The charismatic energy is divine nourishment flowing from those who have arrived home.

If you can laugh, you create ripples of laughter in existence. That is the real service.

Deep love creates deep fear. It looks like death because the I disappears, the you disappears — and it is a sort of death. And when you die, only then do you enter into the divine.
I have been continuously surprised by people who come to me and say they are afraid of love. What is the fear of love? It is because when you really love somebody your ego starts slipping and melting. You cannot love with the ego; the ego becomes a barrier. and when you want to drop the barrier the ego says, ‘This is going to be a death. Beware!’

This is the case with millions of people. They talk about love, they know all the poetries about love, but they have never loved. Or even if they thought they were in love, they were never in love. That too was a ‘heady’ thing, it was not of the heart. People live and go on missing life. It needs courage. It needs courage to be realistic, it needs courage to move with life wherever it leads, because the paths are uncharted, there exists no map. One has to go into the unknown.

Upaya!

I am not in favor of repressing the lower. The lower has to be raised to the heights, the lower has to be given wings. With insight, with understanding, it is possible. If you deny the lower you will never be able to reach the higher, because the lower rung is a necessary step. Yes, go beyond it, but you can go beyond it only if you don't reject it. Use it, but remember not to become obsessed with it. These two things have to be remembered: one is, not to be obsessed with it, not to stop at it, and the second is, not to reject and deny it but to use it as a stepping-stone.

Be skillful. Buddha's word is UPAYA -- skill. And when he says "upaya," he means be very artful in transforming your life. It is only a potential, a seed, but it can become a great tree and it can blossom in its own time. And when a tree blossoms, when thousands of flowers have arisen on the tree branches, there is great joy in the being of the tree, great ecstasy.

You are also a seed -- become a tree. The seed may be ugly -- seeds almost always are; the roots may be ugly, but remember, it is on the roots that the tree has to grow. The roots have to be used; without roots there will be no flowering. Without physiological attraction there will be no psychological growth. And without psychological love affairs with art, music, sculpture, there is no possibility of spiritual love. Poets and painters and dancers and musicians are a necessary step towards becoming a buddha.

- Osho

Ποίηση...(;) και άλλα τέτοια

Το να γράφεις ποίηση είναι βουτιά στην άβυσσο. Αν μπορείς ακόμη να περιγράφεις αυτό που βρίσκεις, τότε δε βρίσκεσαι ακόμη εκεί. Δεν έχεις βουτήξει. Δεν έχεις χαθεί. Ακονίζεις τα περιγραφικά όπλα σου απο ασφαλή απόσταση. Δεν θες ειλικρινά να γράψεις ποίηση. Θές να γίνεις ποιητής. Ακόμη προσπαθείς. Η ποίηση λοιπόν, δε φτιάχνεται. Ούτε ο ποιητής. Αλλά εσυ μοιάζεις με διψασμένο πηγάδι. Αναζητάς τη βροχή γιατί αρνείσαι το νερό μέσα σου, και αυτό βαλτώνει. Και όσο περισσότερο βαλτώνει, τόσο εσυ κυνηγάς την ποίηση. Η ματαιότητα που νιώθεις είναι η ίδια ασυνειδησία και ανειλικρίνεια που σε καθοδηγούν. Γιατί γράφεις; Νομίζεις πως πρέπει να το ορίσεις; Αν το ορίσεις, χάθηκες. Δεν υπάρχει γιατί, αν είσαι εκεί. Οτιδήποτε ουσιαστικό είναι ολοκληρωμένο, αυτούσιο. Δεν παραπέμπει αλλού. Δεν έχει «γιατί». Η βάση του είναι το απόλυτο μυστήριο. Η ουσία μεταφέρεται σιωπηλά. Αυτή γεννά τις λέξεις που μες στο σκοταδισμό σου χαίρεσαι να αποκαλείς «ποίηση». Είναι απλά λέξεις. Η ουσία δεν αποκτάται, δεν κερδίζεται, δεν χάνεται. Δεν έχει αρχή, δεν έχει τέλος. Ούτε γεννιέται ούτε πεθαίνει. Μονάχα βιώνεται η δε βιώνεται. Οι λέξεις που διαβάζεις, που γράφεις, δεν είναι λάμπες που θα σου δείξουν κάποιο δρόμο. Δε θα σου δώσουν κάτι. Διάβασε, γράψε, χωρίς προσδοκία, χωρίς προσπάθεια, χωρίς μνήμη. Κάνε τη βουτιά στο απροσδιόριστο. Αν υπάρχει κάτι ουσιαστικό θα το αντιληφθείς, είτε το θέλεις είτε όχι. Γιατί είναι αυτό που είσαι. Δεν είναι κάτι εξωτερικό. «Και πως θα βουτήξω στο απροσδιόριστο;» θα με ρωτήσεις.. «Μα τι βλακείες κάθεσαι και λες;» Είναι αλήθεια. Η γλώσσα μας εξαπατά. Η γλώσσα όμως δεν είναι παρά μια αναγκαία συμβολική απεικόνιση μιας φανταστικής πραγματικότητας. Στο απροσδιόριστο δε βουτάς. Οχι «εσύ». Το απροσδιόριστο είσαι Εσυ. Αρα μην αρχίσεις να ψάχνεις τη ράμπα να βουτήξεις. Δεν ξέρεις τι ψάχνεις. Απλά χάνεσαι περισσότερο με το να αναβάλλεις. Φτάσε μέχρι εκεί που συνειδητοποιείς πως δεν μπορείς να βουτήξεις στην άββυσο, γιατί πολύ απλά ήσουν πάντοτε εκεί. Και τότε θα βρείς πως η ουσία δεν είναι παρά η άλλη όψη της αβύσσου. Κάτι που δε μπόρεσες ποτέ να δείς, γιατί ήσουν πάντοτε απασχολημένος με το να αρνείσαι την άβυσσο, να μη δέχεσαι το μυστήριο, να προσδιορίζεις το απροσδιόριστο. Δε βλέπεις πως χτίζεις όλο και ψηλότερους πύργους στην άμμο;

auto kai telos.kala perasame.

Imitation is easy, it remains on the surface. It is not a commitment, commitment goes to the heart.

...the world consists of miserable people, and nobody is courageous enough to let the whole world go against him; it is too dangerous, too risky.

They feel cheated; you have something that is not available to them. Why are you happy? So we have learned down the ages a subtle mechanism: to repress happiness and to express misery. It has become our second nature.

Be happy, respect happiness, and help people to understand that happiness is the goal of life -- SATCHITANAND. The Eastern mystics have said God has three qualities. He is sat: he is truth, being. He is chit: consciousness, awareness. And, ultimately, the highest peak is anand: bliss. Wherever bliss is, God is. Whenever you see a blissful person, respect him, he is holy. And wherever you feel a gathering which is blissful, festive, think of it as a sacred place.

When you are enjoying, dancing, loving, or just sitting doing nothing, you are simply happy for no reason at all. And happiness needs no reason. If you are looking for reasons, you will never be happy. Happiness needs no cause; it cannot be caused. You cannot make it part of the world of cause and effect. It is absolutely illogical. If you want to be happy, be happy! Don't wait, don't arrange -- there is no need for any arrangement. You are capable of being happy just as you are. Nothing is lacking. If you can learn this much from me, you have learnt all, my whole art.

Darshan, that is why it is so difficult to be happy and so easy to be miserable. One thing more: misery needs no talents, anybody can afford it. Happiness needs talents, genius, creativity. Only creative people are happy.

Let this sink deep in your heart: only creative people are happy. Happiness is a by-product of creativity. Create something, and you will be happy. Create a garden, let the garden bloom, and something will bloom in you. Create a painting, and something starts growing in you with the growing painting. As the painting comes to the finish, as you are giving the last touches to the painting, you will see you are no more the same person. You are giving the last touches to something that is very new in you.

Meditation is to help you to enjoy so tremendously that you disappear in that enjoyment. If you remain, misery remains. Let me say it in this way: you are the misery. If you are, seriousness continues. Wherever you are, immediately you create a serious, somber climate around you; something is already dying. You are your death. You are the disease.

The miserable mind says time is needed. The miserable mind lives in time, depends on time. Happiness has nothing to do with time. Just now, just herenow, please try to see the point. It is a question of seeing it. If you become a little alert you can see it right now. It is a realization.

Right now, who is barring your path? And if you are thinking that before you can be happy you have to find a perfect wife... it looks logical: how can you be happy without a perfect wife? But have you ever heard about any perfect wife? Have you ever heard about any perfect husband, a perfect house or a perfect car? All illusions.

Perfection is a mind-demand, an ego-trip. Life is beautifully imperfect. Once you understand this, you start enjoying right now. And the more you enjoy, the more you become capable of enjoying.

Let me tell you: happiness needs no cause -- happiness needs only a habit of enjoying, just a natural quality, a capacity to enjoy. Nothing else is needed. And that capacity comes only by enjoying; by nothing else can it come. If you enjoy, you become more capable of enjoyment. The more you become capable, the more you enjoy. And this goes on and on; it reaches a higher and higher crescendo, a higher and higher peak.

You belong to the halfhearted because you have not loved life totally. Never think about my meditations as something other than life; never make them the opposite of life. I am not trying to give you coins other than life itself. I am not trying to make you convinced of some journey other than life. Life is the journey. Life is the goal.

Religion is not a separate journey. It is, really, to move in life so totally that life starts revealing all its secrets -- God, its innermost secret. Once you love and live life, it reveals more and more. Suddenly, one day, it reveals its secretmost center: God. Loving life, one day you love God. Living life, one day you live God.

So don't be halfhearted. Be totally in life. And I am not here to distract you from your life. It has already been done. The whole of humanity is suffering because of that. Religions have proved a calamity because they tried to make goals opposite to life, diametrically opposite to life.

Every moment comes out of this moment. The next moment will come out of this moment. If you have lived this moment totally, loved, delighted, the next moment will come out of this moment, and you will be born out of this moment. The next moment will open more possibilities and it will make you more capable.

....

Don’t start with a conclusion, otherwise you have started wrongly from the very beginning. Go without a conclusion! That’s what I mean when I say again and again: Go without knowledge if you want to find truth. The knowledgeable person never finds it. His knowledge is a barrier.

Choose the unknown

Zen says truth has nothing to do with authority, truth has nothing to do with tradition, truth has nothing to do with the past - truth is a radical, personal realization. You have to come to it.

Knowledge is certain; the search for personal knowing is very, very hazardous. Nobody can guarantee it. If you ask me if I can guarantee anything, I say I cannot guarantee you anything. I can only guarantee danger, that much is certain. I can only guarantee you a long adventure with every possibility of going astray and never reaching the goal. But one thing is certain: the very search will help you to grow.

I can guarantee only growth. Danger will be there, sacrifice will be there; you will be moving every day into the unknown, into the uncharted, and there will be no map to follow, no guide to follow. Yes, there are millions of dangers and you can go astray and you can get lost, but that is the only way one grows.

Insecurity is the only way to grow, to face danger is the only way to grow, to accept the challenge of the unknown is the only way to grow.

Going astray, you will learn something, you will become richer. You can come back and you will be happy that you went astray, because there are many things which can be learnt only by going astray. There are things which can be learnt only if you are courageous enough to make mistakes. Remember only one thing: don't make the same mistake again.

The beauty of facing life unprepared is tremendous. Then life has a newness, a youth; then life has a flow and freshness. Then life has so many surprises. And when life has so many surprises boredom never settles in you.

Remain in wonder if you want the mysteries to open up for you. Mysteries never open up for those who go on questioning. Questioners sooner or later end up in a library. Questioners sooner or later end up with scriptures, because scriptures are full of answers. And answers are dangerous, they kill your wonder.

My suggestion is that whenever you have to choose, always choose the unknown, because the known you have already lived. Never miss the unknown. Always choose the unknown and go headlong. Even if you suffer, it is worth it -- it always pays.

Laugh at yourself!

The ego can exist only if you take yourself and everything seriously.
Nothing kills the ego like playfulness, like laughter.
When you start taking life as fun, the ego has to die, it cannot exist anymore.
Ego is illness, it needs an atmosphere of sadness to exist.
Seriousness creates the sadness in you.
Sadness is a necessary soil for the ego.
Hence your saints are so serious, for the simple reason that they are the most egoistic people on the earth.
They may be trying to be humble, but they are very proud of their humbleness.
They take their humbleness very seriously.
The real saint cannot be serious.
The really religious person has to be a celebrant.
Just look around...
Look at the trees - are they serious?
Look at the birds, listen to them - are they serious?
Look at the stars, the moon, the sun - are they serious?
Existence is utterly non-serious, it goes on dancing.
It is an eternal celebration, it is a festivity!

....

Buy why does success fail? It fails because you were searching
not for wealth, you were searching not for power, you were
searching not for security and safety; you were not searching for
a house, you were searching for something else. You were
searching for the eternal home, from where there is no going away.
You were searching for eternal rest, you were searching for a peace
which lasts forever, non-temporal. That is what the search is: a
search for the home.

Either/Or

Mind is never decisive. It is not a question of your mind or somebody else's mind; mind is indecisiveness. The functioning of the mind is wavering between two polar opposites and trying to find which is the right way.

Mind is the wrong thing, and through the wrong thing you are trying to find the right way. It is as if by closing your eyes you are trying to find the door. Certainly you will feel yourself hanging between the two -- to go this way or that; you will be always in a condition of either/or. That's the nature of mind.

With the mind, that is the problem -- it is not your problem -- and the better mind you have, the more will be the problem. Lesser minds don't come across that problem so much. It is the genius mind that is opposed, with two polarities, and cannot choose. And then he feels in a limbo.

What I have been telling you is that it is the nature of the mind to be in a limbo. It is the nature of the mind to be in the middle of polar opposites. Unless you move away from the mind and become a witness to all the games of the mind, you will never be decisive. Even if you sometimes decide -- in spite of the mind -- you will repent, because the other half that you have not decided for is going to haunt you: perhaps that was right and what you have chosen is wrong. And now there is no way to know. Perhaps the choice was better that you had left aside was better. But even if you had chosen it, the situation would not have been different; then this which would have been left aside would haunt you.

Mind is basically the beginning of madness.
And if you are too much in it, it will drive you mad.

- Osho

So much in this small quote

Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery.

- Henry Miller

Keith Jarret's words of wisdom

Try to imagine
the first musician.
He was not playing for an audience,
or a market, or working on
his next recording,
or touring with his show,
or working on his image.

He was
playing out of need,
out of his need for the music.
Every year the number of
musicians who remember why
they play music in the first place
gets smaller and smaller.

Beyond right and wrong

The man who lives with fixed ideas lives a dead life. He is never spontaneous and he is never in a right relationship with the situation that exists. He is never response-able; he functions out of his old conclusions which are no longer relevant, he does not look at the situation itself.

There is nothing right or wrong.
It all depends on your standpoint.

If somebody wants to decide absolutely, he will be
paralyzed; he will not be able to act.
If you want to act only when you have an absolute decision
about what is right, you will be paralyzed.
You will not be able to act. One has to act, and to act in a
relative world. There is no absolute decision, so don't wait for it.
Just watch, see, and whatever you feel is right, do it.

Any action that happens through awareness is right;
any action that happens through unawareness is wrong.

Whatsoever you are doing, do it with such consciousness
as if it is a question of life and death; as if a sword is hanging over you.

But see the emphasis! The emphasis is not on the action itself,
the emphasis is on the source — awareness or unawareness.
If you act fully aware, then whatsoever you do is right.
If you move mechanically and do things unconsciously
as if you are a sleepwalker, a somnambulist,
then whatsoever you do is wrong.
Awareness is right, unawareness is wrong.

- Osho

Beholding the mind

Bodhidharma :

The most essential method, which includes all methods, is beholding the mind.

Ramana Maharshi :

You are the mind or think that you are the mind. The mind is nothing but thoughts. Now behind every particular thought there is a general thought, which is the `I', that is yourself. Let us call this `I' the first thought. Stick to this `I'-thought and Question it to find out what it is. When this Question takes strong hold on you, you cannot think of other thoughts.

Gurdjieff :

Remember your self always and everywhere. Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave.

Osho :

This technique is one of the most helpful, and it has been used for millennia by many teachers, masters. Buddha used it, Mahavira used it, Jesus used it, and in modern times Gurdjieff used it. Among all the techniques, this is one of the most potential. Try it. It will take time; months will pass. When Ouspensky was learning with Gurdjieff, for three months he had to make much effort, arduous effort, in order to have a glimpse of what self-remembering is. So continuously, for three months, Ouspensky lived in a secluded house just doing only one thing – self-remembering.

Thirty persons started that experiment, and by the end of the first week twenty-seven had escaped; only three remained. The whole day they were trying to remember – not doing anything else, just remembering that ”I am.” Twenty-seven felt they were going crazy. They felt that now madness was just near, so they escaped. They never turned back; they never met Gurdjieff again. Why? As we are, really, we are mad. Not remembering who we are, what we are, we are mad, but this madness is taken as sanity. Once you try to go back, once you try to contact the real, it will look like craziness, it will look like madness. Compared to what we are, it is just the reverse, the opposite. If you feel that this is sanity, that will look like madness.

But three persisted. One of the three was P. D. Ouspensky. For three months they persisted. Only after the first month did they start having glimpses of simply being – of ”I am.” After the second month, even the ”I” dropped, and they started having the glimpses of ”am-ness” – of just being, not even of ”I”, because ”I” is also a label. The pure being is not ”I” and ”thou”; it just is. And by the third month even the feeling of ”am-ness” dissolved because that feeling of am-ness is still a word. Even that word dissolves. Then you are, and then you know what you are. Before that point comes you cannot ask, ”Who am I?” Or you can go on asking continuously, ”Who am I?”, just continuously inquiring, ”Who am I ? Who am I?”, and all the answers that will be provided by the mind will be found false, irrelevant.

You go on asking, ”Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?” and a point comes where you can no more ask the question. All the answers fall down, and then the question itself falls down and disappears. And when even the question, ”Who am I?” disappears, you know who you are. Gurdjieff tried from one corner: just try to remember you are. Raman Maharshi tried from another corner. He made it a meditation to ask, to inquire, ”Who am I?” And don’t believe in any answers that the mind can supply. The mind will say, ”What nonsense are you asking? You are this, you are that, you are a man, you are a woman, you are educated or uneducated, rich or poor.”

The mind will supply answers, but go on asking. Don’t accept any answer because all the answers given by the mind are false. They are from the unreal part of you. They are coming from words, they are coming from scriptures, they are coming from conditioning, they are coming from society, they are coming from others. Go on asking. Let this arrow of ”Who am I?” penetrate deeper and deeper. A moment will come when no answer will come.

The non-dual nature of knowledge and action

How can knowledge and action be separated? This is the original substance of knowledge and action, which have not been separated by selfish desires. In teaching people, the Sage insisted that only this can be called knowledge. Otherwise, this is not yet knowledge. This is serious and practical business... I have said that knowledge is the direction for action and action the effort of knowledge, and that knowledge is the beginning of action and action the completion of knowledge. If this is understood, then when only knowledge is mentioned, action is included, and when only action is mentioned, knowledge is included... But people today distinguish between knowledge and action and pursue them separately, believing that one must know before he can act. They will discuss and learn the business of knowledge first, they say, and wait till they truly know before they put their knowledge into practice. Consequently, to the last day of life, they will never act and also will never know. This doctrine of knowledge first and action later is not a minor disease and it did not come about only yesterday. My present advocacy of the unity of knowledge and action is precisely the medicine for that disease.

— Wang Yang Ming (1472-1529)
Instructions for Practical Living, I.8a

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What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.

- John Ruskin