Weakness

 

 

Question

Osho,

There is a great sense of weakness and helplessness. Where is one to find strength from? The moments of realness are very small and the burden of habits is so great.

 

 

Really, it is not like this. It is not that you feel helpless and weak because you don’t have strength. You feel weak because there is a craving for more strength. It is comparative, it is relative.

 

It is not that you are weak. You are what you are: neither weak nor strong. But there is a craving to be more strong, to be more - in any dimension That craving is in terms of relativity, so it continues.

 

Wherever you are, howsoever you are, makes no difference. Even when you become stronger you feel weak because now your craving has gone further ahead. The same distance will be there between what you are and what you want to be, and you will still feel weak and helpless.

 

You have to understand the mechanism of why you feel weak. You feel weak because you create an image of strength. You create an end and put it somewhere in the future. Then you feel weak in comparison to it.

 

This weakness is just your creation. Even if you are the whole and soul of the universe - even if you are a god! - it will make no difference You will create the same distinction; the same distance will be created. You will feel weak because the same mind will be there. It will again project a better possibility.

 

Mind can always project, can always imagine a better possibility. No situation is such that you cannot imagine a better one. You can imagine a better one, always. And if you can imagine a better one, you will feel inferior in comparison to it.

 

So what to do? There have been teachers who have said. "Do not look in the future; look in the past." They say: "if you want to feel strong, do not create an image of strength but, rather, look into the past and see how weak you were. Then you will feel strong."

 

But the fallacy is the same and the foolishness is the same. It makes no difference. If you feel strong in comparison to some weak image of yourself or of someone else, it is impossible to escape the future. You cannot escape from it. If the past is there, the future will have to be there.

 

As far as I am concerned, I see what you are now. You cannot be more at this moment or less - only what you are, 'X', 'Y', 'Z' - whatever you are. In this moment, the whole universe, the whole existence, has culminated in you as you are.

 

If you go away from this point in any way, you create misery for yourself. Remain with the facticity of your being. You are this - this is the fact. Do not create any image to compare with this. This is the fact: I am this. If I am angry, this is the fact; this is the truth. If I am ready and daring and courageous enough to be with this fact then there is no weakness, no helplessness at all.

 

I am not going to say that you will feel strong. I am not going to say that! You will feel neither strong nor weak. And that is the moment of freedom: when you are neither weak nor strong. You just are.

 

When you are strong, the same process continues. Now more will be asked for. If you are weak more will be asked for and if you are strong more will be asked for. It makes no difference. The difference is only of degrees.

 

But whatever you are at this moment, be with it. Do not escape in your imagination. Then there is no helplessness. Then there is no weakness, there is no strength. When there is no comparison, you are authentically yourself. Their is neither any condemnation nor any appreciation. You are, and there is total acceptability.

 

When someone accepts oneself totally, one accepts the total existence. And unless you can accept yourself, you will never be able to accept anyone else. One who cannot accept himself finds it impossible to accept anyone else. Then the whole misery follows.

 

You love someone, but you cannot accept him. He can be still more lovely, he can be still more beautiful, he can be still more healthy. The 'more' is there and with the 'more' you condemn that which is; you are bound to condemn. Then you cannot love because love requires total acceptance.

 

You cannot accept yourself so how can you accept anyone else? Impossible! And this non- acceptance, this constant denial, creates misery.

 

Wherever you are, you are unhappy. Not because there is any fixed destiny for you to be unhappy:

 

it is only becaUse you have been using that faculty of the mind that imagines and not that faculty of the mind that remains with the fact.

 

Mind has both faculties: to observe what is or to imagine what is not. Imagination is needed. It helps in many ways, it creates all the possibilities for discovery. Use it this way; invent through it. But it is a misused, misdirected imagination if you begin to deny the facts and create a fiction. Then you will miss existence completely, constantly, continuously.

 

That is why you feel weak. One feels weak and helpless because one has an image to live up to. It is your creation! Destroy the image and be with the fact. Then there is an explosion. You feel neither weak nor strong; you just feel that YOU ARE There is a freedom from relativity, from comparison.

 

Any once you are free from comparing yourself with your own images, you will never compare yourself with anyone else. He is he and you are you, and every comparison is nonsense. Then there is a total acceptance of all that is. In this total acceptance is the ecstasy of life. Moment to moment you live it and feel the bliss of it.

 

So it is not a question of how to be strong. It is a question of how to be free from this craving. Why the craving? Why do you want to be something other than what you are? Why this craving to be someone else, to be somewhere else, to be something else? Why?

 

If you go deep inside, you will come to know and understand that this constant craving to be somewhere else is because you have not yet learned how to be where you are. You have not gone through the discipline - if I may use the word - through the learning of how to be where you are. You know only one thing: to never be where you are but to always think about being somewhere else.

 

Why is this so? If you cannot be where you are then how can you be somewhere where you are not.

 

You are trying a more difficult,, a rather impossible thing. Try the possible instead, the only thing possible: try to be here.

 

Why are you never where you are, why are you always somewhere else? The mind has a trick, a very cunning trick. The trick has proven very useful so the mind goes on using it. To be where you are is to face reality. There will be problems. But to be where you are not is to go on dreaming, so there will be no problems. It is intoxicating!

 

If you love a woman and remain with her, it is going to create problems. But if you imagine a woman and live with her in your dreams, it is going to create no problems at all. You are alone. There is no one to create problems - you are somewhere else.

 

It is intoxicating to create dreams, because then vou are the god amidst your dreams. It is your world. The real world is not yours. On the contrary, you are just a minute part of the real world, nothing really.

 

In the real world, what am I? Nothing! But in my imaginary world, I am divine. I am the whole and soul My dreams are mine; the whole dreamy world is mine. I may do whatsoever I like. So the mind picks up the trick and whenever there is difficulty in the real world, you escape into dreams.

 

You learn the trick. And every moment there is difficulty in the real world. There is bound to be. So the mind goes on continually escaping somewhere else.

 

This is the reason why craving exists. Understand it, be aware of it, and by and by - whenever you feel that you are creating a dream again - you will just be aware. The dream will wither away and you will be thrown back to reality. Howsoever painful, be with the reality. Howsoever pleasant, do not be with the dream.

 

Dreams are pleasing. That is why we are with them. And reality is not pleasing. But through pleasant dreams, you are never going to get any bliss. Only through painful reality does one reach the blissful moment. If you want real bliss, you will have to pass through real pain, real suffering. That is the price to be paid.

 

If you do not pay the price then you can continue dreaming, but in the end you are paying more, and for nothing. In this way, you are not escaping reality. You are just thinking that you are escaping. You will suffer, you will continue suffering. Reality will be there, suffering will be there, pain will be there, only you have an opiate with you. That is the difference.

 

The human mind has always longed for intoxicating drugs. They are chemical ways to escape.

 

Dreams are just mental ways to escape.

 

You will be surprised that the more aboriginal races, primitive races, do not dream much. A dreamer amongst them is a phenomenon. In a primitive community, one who dreams becomes a prophet because ordinarily there is no dreaming. They live so much with reality that dreaming is not needed.

 

The more cultured a society, the more dreaming there is. Finally, just the night is not enough. You have to dream in the daytime also. Then there is a continuous circle of dreaming inside. Sometimes you are dreaming less, sometimes more - that is the only difference.

 

If you penetrate inside, you will see a film of dreams continuously going on there. Just close your eyes and there is a dream. It is not that you were without dreams when your eyes were open. A dream was there, it was running, but you were not there to see it. Close your eyes, relax and he dream is there. It is just waiting for you in order to continue. It is there, waiting.

 

This dreaming mind goes on creating better images. Then there is comparison, there is misery - you feel weak. This weakness is created by the mind. Otherwise no one is weak and no one is strong. Everyone is as he is.

 

Each individual is so individual that comparison is impossible. How can you compare? You do not compare yourself with a stone. You do not compare: a stone is a stone. But you compare yourself with another man. Why? - because you feel alike.

 

If you are a man. you will not compare yourself with a woman. The whole culture has trained your mind to feel that there is no reason to compare yourself with a woman. But you compare yourself with another man because you feel alike.

 

We compare only when we feel alike. No one will say that this tree is more beautiful than my wife. It is meaningless. And if you say it, your wife is not going to be angry about it. She will just laugh. But tell her that another women is more beautiful and misery is created.

 

The whole attitude of comparison is based on the feeling of alikeness. But no one is alike. It is not that one man and another man can be compared, no. They cannot be compared; they are absolutely different More different than a tree is to a woman. Nothing is alike, every existence is unique. But this uniqueness can only be felt when you do not escape into dreaming.

 

Remain with the facts and you will come to know that everyone is unique - that not only you are unique, but everyone is unique. Usually when you feel, "I am unique," you are still comparing. This uniqueness is in comparison to some - one: "I am unique." Ordinarily if someone says that he is unique it is still a comparison, but once dreaming stops and you live in reality you know that everything is unique. Every moment of time, every stone, every tree, every leaf of a tree is unique.

 

This uniqueness is felt because you are living with your facticity. Then there is no comparison. Then you never feel weak or strong, foolish or wise, beautiful or ugly. There is nothing to compare with; you are alone.

 

Think in terms of this attitude: if everyone dies and only you have remained on earth, will you feel foolish or wise, beautiful or ugly? If you are alone then there is no comparison. You are the same as you were with others, but because there is no comparison you cannot say that "I am wise."

 

If you live with your facticity - with your being, as it is - you become alone amidst the crowd. You become just an island, alone, and there is no one to be compared with. All comparison falls. Then you have a freedom that is completely unknown to you now. In that freedom, you can be whatsoever you are.

 

That is the only freedom I know: to be whatsoever you are. Otherwise there is misery, layers and layers of misery and worlds and worlds of hell. You go on creating them continuously.

 

Everyone lives in a multi-dimensional hell. We do not only compare in one dimension; we are continuously comparing in multi-dimensions. Someone is more healthy, someone is more beautiful, someone is more wise, someone is more strong, someone is more wealthy. Multi-dimensions of comparison! Everyone compares himself with everyone else and lives in a multi-dimensional hell.

 

Everywhere is hell. The mind is such that no one can go through the continual comparison and reach to any heaven, to any blissful state of mind. Not even an emperor can. He may have everything - the whole world in his hands - but a beggar who is singing just passes by his side and he feels miserable. He cannot sing like that beggar sings. His whole kingdom, his whole world, all his victories become useless. Just a beggar singing by the corner of the road and the emperor is no more an emperor; he has become miserable. He cannot sing like that! The same mind, in different situations, will create hell through different routes.

 

So remain with the fact and do not ask how to be stronger, what is the method to be stronger, how not to feel helpless. If you are helpless, then feel helpless. Why create another possibility? And this is the miracle: if you can be at ease with your helplessness then you are no longer helpless. If you are ready to accept that you are helpless, if you are ready to live with this helplessness, then where is the helplessness? It is gone. You can never feel helpless now.

 

This is the dynamics of the mind: if you feel helplessness and you try to reach some point that is opposite to it, you are never going to be beyond it. Do not try to be the opposite. Just be with your helplessness and it withers away; it is nowhere to be found.

 

It is found only in the opposite - and it is the mind that creates the opposite. This is not good. See the mechanism, see the stupidity of it. I am helpless, I am weak. Then my mind says: be strong.

 

But how can a weak man be strong? If I can be strong then I am not weak.

 

But I am weak. My mind says, "You are weak. Now find some way to be strong." How can I find a way? How can I be strong when I am weak? Through weakness, how can strength be achieved? I will have to endeavour to be strong. The weak, the weakness, will endeavour to be strong.

 

How is it possible? It is impossible. I am helpless, I am ignorant, and the ignorance tries to be knowledge. How can ignorance be knowledge?

 

Look at it in this way: if a madman tries not to be mad, he will be more mad. How can a madman not be mad? If he tries not to be mad, the madness is doubled. If madness can try not to be mad, then anything is possible in the world.

 

But this is the case with all of us. Weakness trying to be strong, ignorance trying to be wisdom, ugliness trying to be beautiful - everyone trying for the opposite and knowing very well what they are. If we can be aware of this phenomenon...

 

If you are weak, how can you be anything but weakness? There is nowhere to go. Accept it, do not try for the opposite. It is a fact: you are weak. Accept it.

 

And the moment there is no struggle, are you weak? Can you say you are weak? The moment the struggle drops, you are not weak. Create the opposite and you will remain the same. Accept it, and you are transformed.

 

This is the contradiction of all mysticism. Socrates says, "people call me wise because I am the only one who has become aware of his ignorance." And Lao Tzu says, "You cannot defeat me because I am already defeated. None can defeat me. My victory is settled because I have accepted defeat."

 

Come to defeat me. You will not have to try. I am already defeated so how can you defeat me? You can only have the pleasure of defeating me if I struggle with you. I lie down and request you to come and sit on me. I am defeated; you will be victorious. But you will look childish and foolish, because the whole pleasure of victory is in the fighting, in subduing someone. And I am already subdued...

 

There is a saying of Mansoor: "Death is impossible for me, because I have accepted it." It will be so, it is so. Death exists because of your fear of death. It cannot exist it you accept it, if you are ready to meet it, to invite it and embrace it.

 

That is the reason why the Upanishads speak in paradoxes. They say that if you want to enjoy, renounce; if you want to be in bliss, then be happily miserable. Then opposite must not be denied.

 

Somewhere it must be accepted and assimilated, you must not be against it. Create a space in you in which the opposite is also accepted. Then both will negate each other and you will be free.

 

Weakness denied creates the concept of strength. When weakness is accepted, there is no opposite to it.

 

For the first time in history, the sons and daughters of the wealthy have become hippies, seeking the opposite. Rockefellers cannot conceive that their whole effort to create so much wealth also creates an alternative community of beggars. Why? - because the mind seeks the opposite.

 

It is not that you seek strength because you are weak. When you get strong, you will begin to seek weakness. You will begin to create illusions about weakness just as you are now creating illusions about strength.

 

Whatsoever you want, if it could be given to you this very moment, the next moment you would reject it. If it is not given - that is the reason you continue to dream of it. Win the one you love and love withers. Get the thing you seek and you begin to ask for the opposite. It is not only that when you are weak there is a craving for strength. When strength is there, you begin to feel the beauty of weakness.

 

The mind begins to interpret, to glorify the opposite. For example, as far as the bliss of begging is concerned, no beggar has ever known it. But emperors have known it when they have become beggars. It is a miracle, it is really a miracle! No beggars has known it. He has known only misery and more misery. But Buddha has known the bliss, Mahavir has know it. When they became just beggars they knew the bliss of begging.

 

Is there bliss in begging? There cannot be. Beggars are there, they have always been there, and they have never known it. They cannot believe that it is even possible, that Buddha became blissful by becoming a beggar. How is it possible? The beggar cannot conceive of it because he has not known the other pole. But from the opposite pole, things appear to be different.

 

Someone asked Mulla Nasrudin, "Is your house on the left side of the road or on the right?"

 

Nasrudin closed his eyes, went into deep meditation, contemplated and then said. "Sometimes it is on the right and sometimes on the left. It depends. When I go there from here, it is on the left. When I come from the other direction, it is on the right. It seems to change sides. I have seen it in different places."

 

Where is bliss? On the left or on the right? In weakness or in strength? In begging or kingdoms?

 

Where is it? It depends on where you are coming from: "I have seen it in different places - sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right."

 

The Mulla was walking. He asked a man, "Where is the other side of the road?"

 

The man said. "Are you a fool? That is the other side of the road."

 

The Mulla said. "This is very surprising. When I was on that side, someone said the other side is here. Either I am a fool or this whole city is crazy! I have asked so many persons. When I am on that side, they say the other side is here. When I come to this side, they say the other side is there.

 

Tell me, please, where is the other side?"

 

The other side cannot be found. The moment you are on the other side it is not the other side. You can have illusions about the side that is not there, but you cannot have illusions about the fact. You can only have illusions about a fiction; the other side is always a fiction. Somewhere, far off dreams are possible - you can project. But your dreams are never on this side, where you are.

 

If you become aware of both sides, you transcend. Then there is no other side. Then you stop asking where the other side is. In that transcendence of duality, of sides, of opposites, is freedom - total freedom, infinite freedom. And with infinite freedom, there is infinite energy.

 

So it is not that knowledge can be acquired against ignorance, no. If your knowledge is the opposite of ignorance, it will just be a camouflage. It will just be a covering to hide something. The ignorance will remain inside and you will cover it with knowledge.

 

'Knowing' is when there is neither knowledge nor ignorance. I would have preferred it if Socrates had said something more. He said, "People call me wise because I have become aware of my ignorance." He has left one side - the side which claims knowledge - and has come to the other side which claims ignorance. He will have to leave this side also. Only then can he be perfectly wise:

 

when he can say, "I am neither. I have known both and I am neither. Neither am I ignorant nor am I wise."

 

It is very easy to transfer your mind to the opposite pole and remain there. Both sides must fall down. Then there arises that consciousness which is really you. It is beyond the two sides. One has to pass through both sides. One has to suffer; one has to move to the extremes. Not asking for the opposite, but remaining where you are, right this moment.

 

Sometimes you will be one thing, sometimes you will be the opposite. Learn how to be with that which you are right now. Sooner or later you will be on the other side so don't bother about it. When you are there, be there. When you are here, be here. Do not bother about it just now, because then you will be missing something that has to be learned. If you cannot learn it here, then when you are at the other extreme the same mind will be there: you will be somewhere else - again and again and again.

 

Do not ask for the opposite. And when I say do not ask for the opposite, I do not mean to suppress the opposite. If you suppress it in any way, you have already asked for it. Just be aware of this dualism of the mind, the dynamics of the mind - that the mind works in this way. Just be aware, that's You are feeling weak. Be weakness, wholeheartedly. You feel ignorant. Be ignorant, wholeheartedly.

 

This is how God is existing within you, when you are weak; this is how God is existing within you when you are ignorant. This is how existence, destiny, is in you at this moment: as you are. What can you do? Who are you to do anything? You are that which you are.

 

Do not divide yourself. But we are divided. When I say, "There is anger and it should not be," or "There is violence and it should not be," who is dividing whom? I am angry and in my thoughts I divide myself in two. I say that I am someone else - some supreme self, some superconscious being - and this anger is just like a disease; it must not be there.

 

When you are angry, find out if there are two things: the angry one and the anger. Don't think about it afterwards. Afterwards there will be two because by then the anger has become a part of memory; it is a dead thing. When it's happening while you are angry, just close your eyes and see whether there is someone who is angry or where there is simply anger. is there just energy that has become anger, or is there someone who is above the anger, beyond the anger, different from the anger?

 

Do not stick to ready-made answers. They say, "Yes - there is a soul, there is a self, there is a witnessing self." Rather, experiment. When you are in anger, know that there is something that is beyond anger. If you find that something, then you will not find anger. And if you find anger, then you will not find anything that is beyond it.

 

What does that mean? It means that there is only one: if there is anger then there is nothing beyond anger; if there is something beyond anger then there is no anger. It is the same energy: one energy, transforming itself in many ways. When it is anger then there is nothing left behind. You are totally angry. If you are witnessing then nothing is left to be angry - you are a witness.

 

But in memory, retrospectively, you can make it two. Sometimes there is anger and sometimes there is witnessing. Then you think that there are two, that there is a lower self that is to be condemned and destroyed and a higher self, a supreme self, that is to be saved and made free. This misconception comes to you retrospectively, when you think about anger. It is not there at the moment of anger.

 

When anger is a memory, when non-anger is a memory, you can divide them opposite to one another and you can choose how you wish to be. But you are falling into a very pseudo-phenomenon.

 

When you are in love, find out if there is any lover or if there is only love - energy transformed into love. You will never find any lover. If you say. "I am the lover," then there is no love at all. You will not find even the ashes of love. Nothing will be left, not even smoke. The lover will be there but then there will be no love. And if you find love there then investigate. Investigate, and you will not find the lover at all because love is only an energy. Only in memory are you a lover. In fact, in reality, you are love.

 

So if you are weak, find out if there is someone beyond this weakness who is saying to be strong.

 

Search within. If there is weakness then there is no one who is beyond weakness. And if you find someone within who is beyond weakness, then there is no weakness. They never coexist. Only in memory do they coexist.

 

Human ignorance continues because of memory. All teachings are bound to be based on memory because teaching is just the memory that is carried over by the society. Scriptures are memory.

 

That is why we call them smriti or shruti. Smriti means that which hag been memorized throughout the ages and shruti means that which has been heard. They both mean the same: smriti is on the part of one who relates and shruti is on the part of one who listens. The whole teaching is out of memory.

 

The scriptures divide you in two. They say, "Do not be angry," but the sentence is very false. It implies that you are something different from the anger: "Do not be angry!"

 

This creates duality. You begin to think: "Do not be angry? How to not be angry?" How to not be helpless, how to not be weak? Do not be weak! But the secret is that if you want to follow this inscription, this injunction to not be weak, then you have to accept your weakness If you want to follow the inscription not to be angry then be totally angry and you will be aware that 'you' are not there. The awareness will have such intensity that it transforms the whole thing.

 

Physicists say that even atomic particles behave differently when they are being observed. It is possible. Sooner or later it will be proven that when you are looking at a tree it behaves differently, because the observer becomes a part of the phenomenon. It behaves differently because you have become a part of it. Atomic particles behave differently when observed: they zig-zag; they change their route when observed. It seems as if they feel that someone has been observing them.

 

Imagine that you are passing a lonely street. No one is there. Then someone leans out of his window and you become different. You may not even be aware that you have become different, but those two eyes that are observing you from the window have become part of you. You cannot be the same. The whole situation has become different. Two more eyes - a consciousness that is aware of you, conscious of you - and something becomes different in you.

 

This happens whenever you are observed. That is why everyone talks, everyone speaks, but if you are put on a pedestal and a crowd is there to listen to you, something changes in you and you cannot talk. You have been talking your whole life, never have you found any difficulty. What has happened now? A crowd of eyes are observing you; you are not the same. So much observation! Something has changed within you; you are different. Suddenly you do not find anything coming to your mind.

 

It has become vacant.

 

Observation changes that which is observed. If you can observe anger, it has a mutative effect. It changes the whole thing. Observe your anger. Then there is a mutation, a sudden change. There is no anger: only you are there. Both cannot be there together.

 

So whatsoever the fact is, be with it, observe it. Do not move into imagination.

 

Mind has two faculties: imagination and observation. Ordinarily we use only one faculty:

 

imagination. That is the only difficulty for us, the only problem - the faculty of imagination that is within us. It has become completely unbalanced; it has gone insane. It must be balanced by observation.

 

If you can observe yourself, then you can allow your imagination complete freedom. It cannot create any problem for you, it will be creative and helpful. But the observer must be there. If the observer is not there and only imagination is there then you are bound to encounter difficulties and problems, complexities, and conflicts. Let the observer come in. By the very presence of the observer, the nature of imagination changes.

 

As it is now, your imagination is destructive. Comparison is destructive; it is violence. You only create images to condemn yourself. But once the observer is there, imagination changes its nature.

 

It becomes creative. Then it is not creating images for the future. It becomes a help in observation.

 

Because life is so rich, we have never known it. But if you observe it with a very imaginative mind, with a very sensitive mind, with a very creative mind, things have a beauty that we have not known before. A very ordinary flower becomes something supreme, becomes something ultimate.

 

Observation must be there, total observation, and then the imagination can begin to work with the observation: to penetrate more and more, to dig more and more - not in the future, but in the here and now.

 

Imagination has the power to take you somewhere. If you just allow it to go, it will move into the future. It will go to the moon and to planets and to stars and anywhere. This is one dimension of movement: Call it the dimension of time.

 

Ordinarily our imagination travels only in one dimension: the dimension of time. It goes into the future or the past. It moves in time. With observation, there is a change. Imagination begins to move in space not in time. That is the change that observation creates. The arrow of imagination moves from 'there and then' to 'here and now'. Space is always here and now: it has no expansion in time.

 

So imagination has two dimensions to develop in. Without observation, it goes from the past to the future and from the future to the past. With observation, it goes into space.

 

If you look at a flower - the moment you look, all the flowers you have ever seen come into your imagination.

 

If you say how beautiful the flower is, you are not really saying it about this flower. You are saying it about the many associations that have created within you a feeling, a memory that this flower is beautiful. Your imagination has moved in the dimension of time.

 

It can also move into the future, imagining a more beautiful flower that is possible. More is possible.

 

With some labor and effort, a bigger flower is possible: more beautiful, with more colors - more alive. Now you have moved into the future.

 

You are not with this flower that exists at the crossroads of the future and the past. You just by pass it. Either you go to the past or to the future. But with observation, your imagination can move deep into this flower - this very flower, this fact. This flower has a depth that we have not known before because we travel in time, and time cannot reach to the depths.

 

Depth is spatial, it is part of space. If time is dropped... With observation, time stops. You cannot observe in the future, cannot observe in the past - you can observe only that which is in the present.

 

Observation is nontemporal. The stops completely and there is only space to move in now, infinite space. A very small flower has infinite space within it. Move in it. You are entering infinite space; the flower is just a door. Through the flower, you enter the whole existence. The flower is just a symbol, just a beginning, just a starter. You move deep into space - not into time. The flower creates awe in you and your imagination becomes creative. With that imagination, one can penetrate deep into existence. Then, everything has a depth.

 

We never penetrate the depth, not even with persons. Even when you love someone you are with him but you are remembering the love that has past or you are imagining the love that is going to be. Never do you move in the space that the person is in, here and now. The person is a space. I will not say that he has a space: he is a space, a universe in which to move.

 

But you are not moving in it. You have the hand of your beloved or your lover in your hand, but your hand has gone dead. You are not there. You are thinking of events of the past, you are imagining things for the future. And the space which you call your lover or beloved is here, the door is just nearby. If you can move in the space, through your lover, you reach to the ultimate of existence.

 

If you move deeply through anything you come to the ultimate, but the movement should not be in time; the movement should be in space. And that movement in space, that movement of the imagination, comes with observation.

 

-Osho, "The Eternal Quest, #13"