Sensations

 

 

We live for sensations, we hanker for sensations. We go on seeking newer and newer sensations; our whole life is an effort to obtain new sensations. But what happens? The more you seek sensations, the less sensitive you become. Sensitivity is lost.

 

It looks paradoxical. In sensations, sensitivity is lost. Then you ask for more sensations and the 'more' kills your sensitivity more. Then you ask for even more, and finally a moment comes when all your senses have become dull and dead. Man has never before been so dull and dead as he is today. He was always more alive before, because there were not so many possibilities to fulfill so many sensations. But now science, progress, civilization, education, have created so many opportunities to move further and further into the world of sensation. Ultimately, you turn into a dead person; your sensitivity is lost. Taste more foods — stronger tastes, stronger foods -- and your taste will be lost. If you move around the world and go on seeing more and more beautiful things, you will become blind; the sensitivity of your eyes will be lost.

 

Change your love object every day -- your girlfriend or boyfriend, your wife or husband. If you change them every day, your sensitivity to love will die. You are moving in a dangerous terrain. You will never move in depth; you will only be moving on the surface, the periphery. The more things you experience, the less your capacity to experience becomes. And then in the end, when everything around you has gone dead, you ask for the divine, you ask for bliss, you ask for truth. A dead man cannot experience the divine. To experience the divine you need total sensitivity;. you need aliveness. Remember, only the similar can bring out the similar.

 

If you want the divine -- 'the divine' means the most alive, the ever-alive, ever-young, ever-green -- if you want to meet the divine, you will have to be more alive. How to do it? KILL OUT ALL DESIRE FOR SENSATION. Don't seek sensation; seek sensitivity, become more sensitive.

 

The two are different. If you ask for sensations, you will ask for things; you will accumulate things. But if you ask for sensitivity, the whole work has to be done on your senses, not on things. You are not to accumulate things. You have to deepen your feelings, your heart, your eyes, your ears, your nose. Every sense should be deepened in such a way that it becomes capable of feeling the subtle.

 

We cannot even feel the gross, and we must become capable of feeling the subtle. The world appears to be gross only because we cannot feel the subtle. The invisible is hidden in the visible. Look at these trees. You look at the gross: the body of the tree. You never look, you never feel, the life within. The growth! The tree itself is not growing: the tree is just a body. Something else -- the invisible -- is growing in it. And because of it, the tree grows The inner is growing and, because of it, the outer is growing. But you look only at the tree, so only the outer is seen.

 

Look around you. Look into your friend's eyes.

 

You only look at the eyes, not at the one who sees through them. Touch your friend's body. You touch only the gross; you never feel the subtle within. Only the body, the external, is felt; because your eyes (your senses) have become so dull that they cannot feel the inner, the invisible.

 

More sensitivity is needed. Ask for less sensations and grow in sensitivity. When you touch, become the touch. When you see, become the eyes. When you hear, your whole consciousness must come to the ears. Listening to a song, or listening to the birds, become the ears. Forget everything else so it is as if you are only the ears. Come to the ears with your total being. Then, your ears will become more sensitive.

 

When you are looking at something -- a flower or a beautiful face or the stars -- become the eyes. Forget everything else, as if the whole rest of your body has gone out of existence and your consciousness has become just eyes. Then your eyes will be able to look more deeply, and you will become capable of looking at the invisible also. The invisible can also be seen, but you need more penetrating eyes to see it.

 

KILL OUT ALL DESIRE FOR SENSATION, and grow in sensitivity. Think about the world less and about your senses more. Purify them. When you don't ask for sensations they become purified. When you ask for more and more sensations, you are killing your senses.

 

The man who finds the divine is the man whose senses are totally alive. to their maximum capacity Then it is not only that you can see the divine. You can taste the divine. you can smell the divine. The divine can enter in you through any of the senses. Only when the divine enters you from all the senses does the ultimate realization happen. If you can only see the divine. it is just a partial realization. Then you are not really enlightened. You are only partially enlightened if you cannot touch the divine. if you cannot taste it.

 

To use such words looks illogical. To taste God? Is he a food? Yes he is everything. You can taste him, but then you need a very subtle capacity to taste. Your very food will become divine. Through food, the divine will be felt. The Upanishadic rishis have said that food is brahma. "Anna is brahma." They must have tasted him, they must have eaten him.

 

We go on thinking that God is a logical problem so we go on arguing about, and about, for or against. We go on arguing whether God exists or not. It is irrelevant. God is not a question of argument, of logic, of reasoning. God is really a question of sensitivity. If you don't feel him, become more sensitive. No logical thinking will be of any help. Become more sensitive! If you are sensitive, he is there. He has always been there, but you are not sensitive. Things make you dull, sensations make you dull. Kill out desire for sensation.

 

-Osho, "The New Alchemy: To Turn You On, #3"