Osho : Part Three
DO NOT KEEP RELIGION IN YOUR MOUTH. Let it go to your belly; let it be absorbed into your blood. You will never fill your belly if you keep a piece of bread in your mouth.
PEOPLE WORSHIP WORDS AND THINK THEY ARE TRUTH. They mistake a milestone for their destination and settle down beside it. Isn't man's great lethargy at the root of this self-deception? Only a lazy and insensitive man could accept empty words as truth and think of a stone idol as God.
I WATCH YOU REPEATING MANTRAS and incantations, muttering words you have memorized from the scriptures, and my heart is filled with sympathy for you. What are you doing? Do you take this drugging, this self-forgetfulness, this soul-destroying slumber for some kind of religious practice?
This chanting of mantras and the repetition of words will drown the mind in a pleasant kind of sleepiness but please do not confuse this drowsiness with meditation. There is a very wide gulf between sleep and meditation. In this sleep of self-forgetfulness you may have some sort of experiences, but these experiences are nothing but dreams. Your mind is a master at creating dreams. The may be highly pleasing to you, very satisfying to you, but they are not real just because they make you feel good.
But most people are not looking for truth at all, they are only seeking satisfaction. And so it is very easy to get caught up is any kind of illusion. The mind that is seeking satisfaction is likely to be satisfied with any sort of intoxication, with any kind of self-forgetfulness. This self-forgetfulness can easily be attained through so-called mantras, through recitation of the scriptures, through concentration. Repeating anything over and over again can subdue your consciousness.
Religion is not concerned with self-forgetfulness or with stupefaction. Not at all. Religion is the state of total sensitivity, of remembering the soul completely, of absolute wakefulness.
SALVATION IS NEITHER ACHIEVED BY PRAYER NOR BY WORSHIP. It is not even achieved by faith in religious teachings. Salvation is attained by leading a peaceful life. To remain peaceful in thoughts and deed is prayer and worship. It is also the only spiritual discipline that is necessary.
IF I STEP INTO A RIVER to bathe I leave my clothes on the bank. And the man who wants to wash himself clean in God must leave all of his clothes on the bank as well -- all of the apparel that masks his individuality, all of the garments that hide his personality. Only those who are stark naked have access to that great ocean -- only those who have nothing left at all. But blessed are they who can leave everything behind them. By doing so they receive much more than the sum-total of all.
HOW CAN YOU DESIRE NIRVANA OR MOKSHA? Nothing is more impossible that the desire for nirvana, than the desire for emancipation, because nirvana is the state where there is not desire at all. And if desire is the absence of liberation, if it is your unliberated state itself, then how can you desire moksha? But there are people who desire moksha. So it is only natural that their so-called spiritual renunciation becomes a form of bondage and chains them even more securely to the world.
moksha is attained naturally, without asking, without desiring, when the futility of desire is known, when desire is recognized as misery, when the bondage of desire is understood in the subtlest of its subtle forms. When the pointlessness of the race is understood, the race finishes. An understanding of what the pursuit of desire is all about is enough to be liberated from it. And then what remains is moksha.
AREN'T WE ALL JUST LIKE FLOUNDERING, FLAILING FISH that have been caught in a fishermans's net? It seems to me. And yet this is no reason to feel desperate, because I also see something else -- not only are we the fish, we are the net and the fisherman as well. And there is the door to freedom. We ourselves are the creators of all our bondages, of all our miseries. They are the creations of our own minds. And now, from this truth, don't you see the possibilities of salvation
WHAT IS RELIGION? If you wish to know religion you will have to forget about religions. Unless you can ignore religions you will never know religion.
AM I TO PROCLAIM GOD TO YOU? Is he not proclaimed all around you? Isn't nature itself God's clearest and loudest proclamation?
LOOK AT THE GANGES. It rushes to the ocean from the mountain peaks. It is the symbol of a righteous life because it has only one aim throughout its whole journey, and that is to unite with the ocean. It wants to lose itself, to lose its individuality in the universal sea. Its bliss lies in its merger with the ocean. And there, there is no difference, no loneliness; there, there are no petty boundaries. There it is complete. There it has attained its fullness. As long as it still exists as the Ganges it is incomplete.
Become like the Ganges. Seek an ocean. Let there be a single aim in life: the vast ocean; let there be one passion, one zeal: the limitless ocean; let there be a single song in your heart: the boundless ocean. And then just keep flowing.
If the currents of your being are impatient for the ocean your feet will find the path. The river's search for the ocean is its search to lose itself, because this is the only way it will truly find itself. In this single precept all spirituality, all religion and all yoga are united. This is the only bliss, the only truth that man can attain.
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