I don't want to give you a very fixed meaning, I simply want to give you a very liquid, vague, cloudy glimpse. Then you have to search and seek and find. The conclusion has to be yours. I can give you a few clues on how to meditate. That's all that I am doing here... just clues on how to meditate, not conclusions!

Don't lean upon me. I am not going to give you a single conclusion, because once a conclusion is given by somebody else it loses all truth, it becomes a falsehood. It may be true for me, but the moment I give it to you it becomes false. In the very transfer it loses all truth. To me it was a real rose; by the time it reaches you it is a plastic flower.

This is the problem of language, the great problem that has always been faced by all the mystics of all the ages of all the lands. Language is good enough to convey mundane reality: it is utterly impotent in conveying the sacred reality.

But some ways have to be found, because it has to be conveyed. A parable, a story, is a subtle way, a delicate way, an indirect way. The story does not hit, it simply triggers a process in you. It is not like a stone that hits you hard. It is like the fragrance of a flower that comes and surrounds you and caresses you.

-Rajneesh

The ultimate truth cannot be expressed in words. No word is adequate to express it. Hence metaphors have to be used, similes have to be used, just to give you a little indication, a little taste.

It is difficult to show you the truth directly, so some indirect ways and means have to be devised.

Parables have to be told, stories, because stories don't say anything directly, they only give you subtle hints, delicate hints.

-Rajneesh

When you begin with an untrue enquiry, you will never come to a true conclusion.

That is one of the greatest problems every seeker has to face. Don't start with what you have heard, start with what you have felt. Can't you feel the beauty of existence and the mystery of existence?

Can't you feel this utter poetry of existence? Have you to go into the Vedas to feel the poetry of existence? Have you to go into the Bible? Have you to ask Buddha, Christ, Krishna? Can't you yourself see? Don't you have eyes to see and ears to hear and a heart to feel? Then what are you doing here? What are you? Are you alive or not?

-Rajneesh

Real religion consists of the obvious. The obvious, the ordinary, is the mysterious. The obvious, that which is always with you, has always been with you, will always be with you, is God. Between you and God there is no distance at all. Not even a single step is needed to be taken.

If you understand it, you have understood all the religions, all the scriptures.

But the ego will create trouble. Ego is never interested in simple things because on simple things it cannot soar high. The more a thing is difficult, the better for the ego. That's why religions became interested in unnecessary difficulties. They are called austerities, asceticism; they are nothing but food for the ego. They have not helped anybody to know the truth. In fact they have been the greatest barriers.

-Rajneesh

ONCE UPON A TIME THERE LIVED a very poor man in a village in Italy. He desperately wanted to know the answer to the mystery of existence, so he decided to work very hard and travel to the Himalayas and find a guru. He worked long arduous hours and at the end of twenty years he had saved his fare.

He had been on a ship for about two weeks when a tremendous storm blew up and he was shipwrecked, and found himself on a desert island. He spent the next twenty years on the island when one day he managed to finally attract the attention of a tanker. They picked him up and took him to Bombay where he caught a plane. He had managed to salvage some of his money when shipwrecked.

However, during the flight he was hijacked by the hijackers. But the hijackers decided to set him free in the desert. He walked to a village and waited for the bus to take him to the Himalayas.

Within a few months the bus came and he caught it to the foothills of the Himalayas. He then spent a long time on foot but finally managed to arrive at the guru's cave. He then asked the guru his question about the mystery of life.

The guru replied, "Life is a river."

The man went crazy, threw his arms up and shouted at the guru, "For fifty years I have been trying to get to you. I had to work very hard for the fare. I was shipwrecked and then hijacked, and bloody hell - now you tell me life is a river?!"

And the guru said, "Isn't it?"

Life is not a problem or a puzzle to be solved. Life is a mystery to be loved and to be lived. And the mystery is not something far away, the mystery is something that is very obvious, herenow. The mystery is the this-ness of existence; hence the answer of the guru, "Life is a river."

He must have been sitting on the bank of the river watching the river go by. In that moment his consciousness was full of the river, there was nothing else but the river.

-Rajneesh