Economics

 

 

For thousands of years the monks, the nuns, have been leaving the world in search of silence. Of course they find a certain silence in the jungles and forests, in the monasteries -- but that is absence of noise, it is not true silence. True silence can only be found when you move inwards. It exists in your very interiority. Then it has infinite depth and infinite height. It is immeasurable. And to know it is to know all. To feel it is to feel God.

 

Love needs great courage. It is not for cowards. The coward can always ask to be loved but he cannot love. And the problem is, unless you love you cannot get love. And the world is full of cowards; everybody is asking, "Give me love." Every I is begging, "Give me love," every heart has become a begging bowl, "Give me love." But beggars are begging from other beggars -- how can they give? Nobody is ready to give.

 

It needs courage to share your being. And we are brought up in such a way that we become very miserly.

 

We know only one kind of economics, worldly economics. If you give your money you will lose it. You have to cling to it. You have to snatch it away from others. You have to give less and get more, then you are in profit.

 

But the inner economics is totally different, just the polar opposite of the outer: the more you give, the more you have; the less you give, the less you have; the more you give, the more the whole existence goes on pouring into you. You have to be constantly giving, sharing for the sheer joy of sharing.

 

It needs guts, but once you have experienced it, once you have come to know the inner mathematics, then there is no problem. The first step needs courage then there is no problem at all. Once you know that the more you give, the more you get, then it is very easy.

 

The first step in love cannot be taken by a coward. It needs somebody bold in spirit who can risk, because in the beginning it is a risk. Who knows whether you will get any response or not? Who knows? -- you may give your love and nothing may come in return. There is no guarantee. But that first step has to be taken in trust, then the second step is very easy and you can move thousands of miles. Then there is no problem at all; then the whole journey is very simple and life becomes more and more rich at each step.

 

And the richer you are inwardly the more aware you become of the existence of God. When you have reached to the ultimate peak of richness God penetrates you through and through, permeates you. Then you are divine, you are godly. Then God is not somebody outside you, it is something at the very core of your being -- an eternal light. But one has to go through this risk.

 

I teach only how to live dangerously, how to go into the uncharted sea, how to move into the unknown. And the person who moves into the unknown and into the unknowable is the only religious person. Others are only creating a deception of being religious -- deceiving others and deceiving themselves.

 

-Osho, "Just the Tip of the Iceberg, #15"