Feeling

 

 

Change your inclination from the mind to the heart. That is the first change. Think less, feel more. Intellectualize less, intuit more. Thinking is a very deceptive process, it makes you feel that you are doing great things. But you are simply making castles in the air. Thoughts are nothing but castles in the air.

 

Feelings are more material, more substantial. They transform you. Thinking about love is not going to help, but feeling love is bound to change you. Thinking is very much loved by the ego, because the ego feeds on fictions. The ego cannot digest any reality, and thinking is a fictitious process. It is a kind of dreaming, a sophisticated dreaming. Dreams are pictorial and thinking is conceptual, but the process is the same. Dreaming is a primitive kind of thinking, and thinking is a civilized kind of dreaming.

 

Change from the mind to the heart, from thinking to feeling, from logic to love.

 

And the second change is from the heart to the being -- because there is a still deeper layer in you where even feelings cannot reach. Remember these three words: mind, heart, being. The being is your pure nature. Surrounding the being is feeling, and surrounding feeling is thinking. Thinking is far away from being but feeling is a little closer; it reflects some glory of the being. It is just as in the sunset the sun is reflected by the clouds and the clouds start having beautiful colors. They themselves are not the sun, but they are reflecting the light of the sun.

 

Feelings are close to being, so they reflect something of the being. But one has to go beyond feelings too. Then what is being? It is neither thinking nor feeling, it is pure am-ness. One simply is.

 

Thinking is very selfish and egoistic. Feeling is more altruistic, less egoistic. Being is no-ego, egolessness -- neither selfishness nor altruism but a spontaneity, a moment-to-moment responsiveness. One does not live according to oneself, one lives according to God, according to the whole.

 

Feeling is half, and no half can ever satisfy you. Thinking and feeling are both halves and you will remain divided. Being is total, and only the total can bring contentment.

 

And the ultimate, the fourth change, is from being to non-being. That is nirvana, enlightenment; one simply disappears, one simply is not. God is, enlightenment is. Light is, delight is, but there is nobody who is delighted. Neti neti: neither this nor that, neither existence nor nonexistence -- this is the ultimate state. Atisha is slowly slowly taking his disciples towards it.

 

Let me repeat: from thinking to feeling, from feeling to being, from being to non-being, and one has arrived. One has disappeared and one has arrived. One is no more, for the first time. And for the first time one really is.

 

-Osho, "The Book of Wisdom, #9“