Spiritually Laid Back

My motive is direct and temporary: you arrive seeking understanding, while I am only interested in making it crystal clear that there is nothing to understand.

As long as you want to understand, so long there will be this awkward relationship between two individuals. I am always emphasizing that somehow the truth has to dawn upon you that there is nothing to understand. As long as you think, accept, and believe that there is something to understand, and make that understanding a goal to be placed before you, demanding search and struggle, you are lost and will live in misery. UGK

… If you go on trying to suppress the past, trying to live in what you call "the present", you will drive yourself crazy. You are trying to control something over which you have no control. It is just not possible to control thought without becoming neurotic, for it is not just your personal, petty little past that is in the way, but the entire past of mankind, the entire memory of every human being, every form of life, and every form of existence. It is not such a simple, easy thing to do. If you try to control the natural flow of the river through all these artificial means–building a dam so to speak–you will inundate and destroy the whole thing. That is why you find thoughts welling up inside you despite your efforts to control, observe, and be aware of them. Once this is understood, then you are never concerned whether thoughts are there or not. When there is an actual need for thought to function, it is there; when there is no need for thought to function, it is not there. You don’t even know, and have no way of finding out, whether you are thinking or not. Your constant utilization of thought to give continuity to your separative self is you. There is nothing there inside you other than that. What you call the "you" is nothing other than the continuity of thought. If that artificial continuity is not there, neither are you. The "you" wants only to function on a different, "higher" level, and not to come to an end. You want to be transformed, to become something else, while continuing. The only way the self can do that is to add more and more experiences to those it has already accumulated.

 
People are looking for enlightenment. You say you are not, but it is the same. Whether you want a new car or simple peace of mind, it is still a painful search. The secular leaders tell you one way, the holy men another way. It makes no difference: as long as you are searching for peace of mind, you will have a tormented mind. If you try not to search, or if you continue to search, you will remain the same. You have to stop. You don’t stop searching because such an act would be the end of you.

You are lost in a jungle, and you have no way of finding your way out. Night is fast approaching, the wild animals are there, including the cobras, and still you are lost. What do you do in such a situation? You just stop. You don’t move….

As long as there is that hope that you can somehow or the other get out of the jungle, so long will you continue what you are doing–searching–and so long you feel lost. You are lost only because you are searching. You have no way of finding your way out of the jungle.

Q: So if one could just stop….

U.G.: No, that’s not it at all. You still expect something to happen. That expectation is part of the problem. That is why you are pursuing these questions. Your expectations are part of your desire to change everything. Nothing needs changing; you must accept life as it is. Through "change" you hope and expect to be born again. What the hell for? This life is enough. There is no peace in this life, no lack of unhappiness, so you wait until your next life to be happy. It’s not worth it. You may very well not be born again. After all, it is only a hopeful theory to you. You may as well find out for yourself if it is possible to be at peace with yourself now.

The future is created by hope, that is the only future that exists. The hope of achieving your goal, the hope of attaining enlightenment, the hope of somehow getting off the merry-go-round — that is the future. The point from which you project yourself into the future appears to you to be the present, the now. But this is mistaken. There is only the past in operation, and that movement creates the illusion of present and future. You may find what I am saying here logical, or illogical, and you may accept or reject it. But it will in any case be the past that is doing so, for that is all that is in operation within you. It is the past that has projected these goals–God, enlightenment, peace of mind, whatever–and has placed them in the future, out of reach. So happiness is always in the future, tomorrow. A happy man wouldn’t be interested in seeking happiness. A well-fed man is not in search of food.

Q: Surely real understanding, of which we are all more or less capable, takes place not in the future, but now, in the present.

U.G.: There is only the past. You have been told by holy men who talk of enlightenment and such nonsense that the past has got to come to a stop before you are free to operate in the "present" and so realize your potential or future possibilities. This I deny.

First of all, why should you be interested in attempting to stop the past from interfering with the present? Be very clear that this idea that the past must die, that time must have an end, has been put into you by those self-appointed guardians of your so-called soul — the priests, holy men, and saviors of mankind. It is not yours at all. You need to be very clear also about the implications of ending the influence of the past. It is really a dangerous, calamitous thing. In your search to find the end of time, the past, you must use the past. So you only succeed in perpetuating the past. This is a fact, like it or not. Anything you do–having kinder thoughts, behaving selflessly, approaching life negatively rather than positively, listening to holy men, listening to me — is only adding momentum to the past. All the techniques and methods of achievement at your disposal are from the past, and, therefore, useless. Luckily, there is absolutely nothing to be achieved.

Seeking means separation. Seeking means suffering. You can go on seeking, and it is all in vain. It is doomed from the very beginning, because deep inside you is the one you are seeking. The sought has become the seeker — that is the discontinuity. And when all seeking drops, withers away, and you have no more hopes, then suddenly you are there where you always wanted to be. Then suddenly you are centred.

Seeking leads you astray. And the more you seek, the more frustrated you feel. The more frustrated you feel, the more you seek. It becomes a vicious circle, self-supporting… goes on and on. There is no end to it — it can continue for eternity. One has to understand the very fallacy of search.

Seek and you will never find. Do not seek and it is there.

But it is very difficult to stop searching and seeking. It is very difficult to drop hope, because then it seems as if the whole thing is futile. If there is no hope, why should one live? For what? Where is the meaning? The meaning is herenow — it is not in the seeking. But the mind goes on saying that if you don’t seek, if you don’t make effort, if you don’t go for it, it is not going to happen.

The mind is nothing but hope and desire and passion for the future. The mind is a disease, a fever, a feverish state. You will have to understand it: the problem is the mind. And once you understand how it functions, how it projects a desire into the future and then starts rushing towards it…. And it goes on projecting like an horizon. It goes on rushing. It gives activity to you but no happiness; it keeps you occupied. But it is a slow suicide and nothing else.

So I would like you to ponder over the very mechanism of seeking, the mind, the process of the mind. Once you start looking at the mind and how it functions, then the whole game becomes clear. Then one day in that very clarity, the mind disappears as if it had never existed. It disappears like a dream — and suddenly you are continuous again.

It is just like a dream. Tonight you will sleep. When you are asleep and you start dreaming, you are discontinuous with the world in which you have been living while awake. In sleep you are no more the same person. You are no more the mother, the wife, the beloved. You lose all the identity that you had before. A discontinuity happens. You start dreaming of something else — unfulfilled desires. repressed desires.

In the morning you are awake again. Now you are discontinuous with the dream-world, but continuous with the waking world. Exactly the same is the case. We are dreaming in God. We are in God, but in a dream. That dream is the mind, and because of this mind we have become discontinuous with our own nature, with our own reality. Any day that you are awake, you are continuous again. In fact you have always been continuous. Even while asleep and dreaming, underneath the continuity remains, but on the surface one becomes discontinuous.

With God we are continuous, but we are not aware of it. As far as our conscious mind is concerned, we are discontinuous, and that creates suffering, because there is a deep urge to be united, to be one, to be in unison with existence. This mind creates a barrier: it always divides, separates — so seeking is separation. The more you seek, the more separated you become. Even if you are seeking unity, that seeking will separate you. And seeking is suffering because the more you seek, the more frustrated you feel.

The real religion starts the day one comes to understand that this mind is the root cause of separation. God is herenow. It is already the case. You are not to achieve it and you are not to produce it; it has not to be manufactured. It is already the case… it has already happened. He is and He has always been, and He will always be.

Somehow we have got involved in dreams. That dream I call the world. And in that world we are all strangers and outsiders because our real home is somewhere else. But if you try it, in the beginning you will have to pass through a transitory period of tremendous hopelessness. You will miss your mind very much because that has been your whole life. For many lives that has been your whole occupation. You will miss it terribly. Those are the days of austerity. Those are the days of real sadhana — to accept it, to remain empty.

Even if it feels as if one is dropping into nothingness, one goes on dropping into that abyss. One makes no effort to come out of it, because that effort will mean bringing in the mind again. One simply goes on drowning in that emptiness. And one day when you are completely drowned, you will find that emptiness is not emptiness. It was just a wrong interpretation of the old mind. That nothingness was not nothingness.

That’s what Buddha calls nirvana — the great nothing. Tremendous is its beauty and immense is its grandeur… infinite is its benediction. But one has to prepare to go into that nothingness.

That’s my message for you. Drop seeking. Drop searching. Drop mentation. Dropping mentation is meditation.And accept nothingness. Be nobody. And in that very nobodiness, something will sprout. Be nothing and in that very nothingness, God flowers.

All that we can do is to be nothing. Then the continuity happens on its own accord. What we are doing is just the opposite. We are trying to become somebody. And that becoming somebody is the cause of discontinuity. Only God is, so we cannot become somebody. If we are trying to become somebody, we are fighting with God. All ego is a fight against God, because only He can have the authentic ‘I’. He is the centre of existence. All small ‘i’s’ are just competitive — competing with the ultimate ‘I’.

So the moment you become nobody, the moment you are ready to become a nothing, suddenly God erupts in you; your continuity is there again. And then you laugh, a great humour arises, because then you see the whole ridiculousness. This is what you were searching for — and it was because of the search that you were not getting it! The whole drama seems to be a great joke.

So don’t be serious. Bring a little sense of humour into your life. Let the ridiculous have a space within you. And by and by, rather than planning what to become, just be. Whatsoever is the case, enjoy it. Be joyous in it, celebrate it. OSHO

You know, I’ve been everywhere in the world, and have found that people are exactly the same. There is no difference at all. Becoming is the most important thing in the world for everybody — to become something. They all want to become rich, whether materially or spiritually, it is exactly the same. Don’t divide it; the so-called spiritual is the materialistic. You may think you are superior because you go to temple and do puja, but the woman there is doing puja in the hope of having a child. She wants something, so she goes to the temple. So do you; it is exactly the same. For sentimental reasons you go, but in time it will become routine and become abhorrent to you. UGK