Trust

 

 

And the second thing to remember: trust is not belief either. Belief is again a trick of the mind to repress doubt. Man is born with many doubts, millions of doubts, and it is natural, it is a gift of God. Doubt is a gift of God, but it creates trouble for you. If you start doubting... and you can doubt EVERYTHING, and you have to live with people who believe. Your life will be in constant conflict, you have to compromise. If you are born amongst Christians you have to believe; if you don't believe you will be in trouble.

 

Why was Jesus crucified? - for the simple reason that he refused to believe; he tried to experience. In the Bible the major part of his life is completely missing; eighteen years are missing. And in a life of thirty-three years, eighteen years iS a maJor portion. He is mentioned first when he is twelve and then he is mentioned when he is thirty, and by thirty-three he is crucified.

 

What happened between the ages of twelve and thirty? Where was he? In these eighteen years he lived with many Masters, he moved in many mystery schools. Particularly, he lived with a secret school, that of the Essenes; his whole teaching comes from that secret school. But all those eighteen years were of deep meditation, experimentation; he went to the deepest core of his being. When he arrived when he himself came to know what truth is, there was trust -- it was not belief.

 

Trust has to be deserved, belief is a very cheap substitute. Belief means you are afraid of doubt, because doubt creates trouble, and doubt keeps you in a state of confusion. And you are not courageous enough to live in confusion, not courageous enough to live in a state of chaos, in anarchy -- and doubt creates that. So you immediately repress the doubt, and the way to repress is to believe.

 

The way to trust is DOUBT, and doubt to the very end. Go the whole way! Don't repress your doubt at any point, otherwise you will miss trust. Trust arises out of doubt, not by repressing but by experiencing doubt to its ultimate extreme.

 

When you go on doubting and doubting and doubting, a moment comes when all beliefs are destroyed by doubt, all faith evaporates in the heat of doubt, and all that is left is your being. Now there is nothing to doubt because you have doubted all and everything. When there is nothing to doubt, doubt dies, commits suicide, because there is nothing to keep it going on, nothing to nourish it any more.

 

That has been my way. I have not arrived through belief, I have arrived through doubt. It is better to begin as a great doubter than as a believer, because the believer will remain always pseudo; he will always remain superficial, shallow. Belief can never be more than skin-deep: scratch it a little bit and immediately the doubt is there. Trust needs a continuous hammering; doubt has to be used as a hammer. Until you reach to the rock bottom of it all... [....]

 

One has to go on and on doubting - until-a you sing-a it right!

 

Doubt is a sword: it cuts all beliefs, but it is a dangerous path. The path to truth is bound to be dangerous because truth is the ultimate peak. The higher you move towards Everest, the more you are entering into a dangerous arena. A single wrong step and you will be lost forever.

 

Truth liberates, but to reach truth you have to go through a very narrow passage, climbing towards the heights. It is dangerous. Hence millions of people decide to live in their dark valleys and they believe that "Everest exists and it is sunlit and there is tremendous beauty, because Jesus has reached there, Buddha has reached there.

 

We can believe in them. What need is there for us to go there? We can live in our dark valleys comfortably. There is no need to take any risk."

 

But without risk there is no truth, without risk there is no life. You have to learn to gamble, you have to be a gambler.

 

If you doubt and go on doubting, a moment comes when all that you have ever believed disappears, evaporates. It is almost a state of madness. One can fall any moment into the abyss that surrounds you. If one falls, it is a breakdown. If one keeps alert and aware, watchful, cautious, then it is a breakthrough.

 

Trust is the ultimate breakthrough: it helps you to know the truth on your own. And truth liberates only when it is YOURS; somebody else's truth cannot liberate anybody. It creates bondage and nothing else.

 

-Osho, “Guida Spirituale, #10, Q2”