Om Shantih Shantih Shantih

 

 

Question 1

Beloved Osho,

I am always intrigued by Eastern scriptures that begin with Om, Shantih Shantih Shantih and end with Om, Shanth Shantih Shantih.

Would you please talk about this?

 

 

Maneesha, the East has approached reality in an almost diametrically opposite way to the West. First, the simple meaning of the word should be understood, and then all the implications. All Eastern scriptures begin with OM, Shantih shantih shantih and they also end with the same.

 

OM is the symbol of the universal heartbeat; it is not a word. And as you come closer and closer to the universal heartbeat, the by-product is a deepening silence. Shantih means silence and it is always repeated three times because by the time you reach to the fourth, you are no more -- just the silence has remained. You have disappeared as an entity separate from the universe.

 

The West has not been able to begin even a single scripture with this intention. It is understandable. They never went into the deeper communion between your heart and the bigger heart of the universe. They have taken a wrong route, that of fighting, that of conquering, that of being victorious. They have chosen to be extroverts.

 

Their world is true, but they don't know anything about themselves.

 

The outside is true and the inside has not been explored.

 

THE BIBLE says, "In the beginning was the word." Now this can be said only by somebody who is absolutely ignorant, because the word means a sound with a meaning. These sounds made by the words are just sounds; you cannot call them words. The moment you say, "In the beginning was the word," unknowingly you have accepted that there is someone who gives meaning to it, but then the word is not in the beginning.

 

In the beginning is one who gives meaning to the word. And THE BIBLE says, "God was with the word." Anyone who wrote it must have felt uneasy that the world should begin only with a word. Immediately he needed someone to give meaning to it; hence the second statement that God was with the word.

 

If you look into things very impartially, deeply, you will be amazed how much they can reveal. Then he must have become aware to ask, "Who is first? God or the word?"

 

The third sentence then tries to make a compromise. It says, "God and the word were one." Nobody in the whole Eastern search will agree with it. The East has not experienced the beginning because naturally you cannot see the beginning: you are already there, the beginning has happened. In your being you have preceded the beginning, so there is no possibility of any witness of the beginning. But there is a possibility to be a witness of the end.

 

The Eastern meditators found as they entered into their inner being, they are first surrounded with a tremendously beautiful and musical sound. It is not the sound of any music being played, it is simply the heartbeat of the universe. And once they come in tune with the heartbeat of the universe, silence descends. They would like to dance and declare to the world about silence, but they can only say three times, "silence, silence, silence" -- and they are melting and merging.

 

Rather than their declaration of silence becoming louder, it is becoming more and more like a whisper and finally, they are not -- but they have witnessed the end. Now, it is a logical conclusion that the end and the beginning cannot be different.

 

The seed grows into a tree, blossoms, brings fruits and again seeds. In existence everything moves in a circle, the earth, the moon, the sun, the faraway millions of stars... all move in a circle that meets at a point.

 

The end and the beginning are the same.

 

That's why the Eastern scriptures begin with the declaration, Om -- the sound of the soundless, the very music of the heart of the universe. And as they go deeper, silence becomes the only reality. They want to declare silence to the world, but nobody has been able to go beyond the third because each time they say silence, it becomes more of a whisper.

 

I am reminded...

 

I had one doctor friend who was perhaps the most famous doctor in those parts. I told him, "I would like to experience something for which there is no reason. You can help me. I want to go slowly and deeply into the unconscious."

 

He said, "This is against medical practice. You don't have any reason, and I cannot use something without reason and make you unconscious."

 

But I persuaded him. I said, "Find any reason, and I am not going to tell anybody. Although, I have told it to the whole world."

 

He put me on his table, sent all the servants and nurses away because he was doing something against the medical code. While he was covering my head so that I could not breathe anything else, he said to me, "Do one thing. While you are going into the unconscious, go on saying one, two, three, four, five... as long as you can."

 

Strangely, I could not go beyond three. I tried hard. I was aware of the fact that I had only come up to three, and the four would not come. Later on I told him, "This was my reason to be put into the unconscious state. I wanted to see why every scripture stops at three."

 

I asked him to tell me how I was saying one, two, three. He said, "One was clear, two was not so clear, three was almost a whisper, and beyond that you never uttered anything."

 

This was my way through a scientific experiment to see why all the scriptures stop with three. They begin with the same and they end with the same.

 

The beginning we cannot know: we are already here; the beginning has happened. But the end we can know -- the disappearance into absolute silence. But if we know the end, we can conclude with absolute certainty that this is how the beginning must have started: from silence, not from words.

 

Silence is the beginning and silence is the end, and if you are a meditator, silence is the middle.

 

Silence is the whole fabric of existence.

 

Maneesha, this is not a hypothesis, nor is it a philosophical idea. It is the experience of thousands of mystics who have entered into their own being. First they have heard Om, and as the Om becomes overwhelming, silence follows. We are made of sound and silence.

 

Sound is our mind; silence is our being.

 

Sound is our trouble; silence is our liberation.

 

It has been discovered by some unknown explorer of the inner, it has been followed by thousands of people -- but you are not to repeat it. That's where the masses have got lost.

 

They think that by repeating Om, shantih shantih shantih they are doing some spiritual meditative act. In each temple in the East you will find a metal disc, and everybody who enters into the temple hits the disc with a steel rod. The whole temple becomes full of sound and then slowly, slowly the sound also disappears.

 

In Tibet, they have even made a very special thing, a small pot of metal with a rod -- with great calculation it has been made. When I first saw it, I could not believe that it was possible, but the thing was in front of me.

 

One of my friends in Patna was a great collector of all kinds of things. He was continually telling me whenever I was in Patna, "Come to my museum." Even the prime minister and the president and everybody had visited. He was a very rich man and had gathered things from other lands -- strange things. But when he said to me that he had recently received a metal pot which repeated Om, shantih shantih shantih, I could not resist....

 

Patna is a strange city. It is not spread in all directions, it has only one main street running by the Ganges -- because the Ganges is so beautiful everybody wants to be around it. So Patna is a very long city, perhaps twenty miles. And he used to live thirteen miles away from my place -- but I went to see the pot. It was really a great experience.

 

The pot is made of many metals, and you move the rod in the pot round and round for a certain number of times... then you stop. And suddenly, the sound comes from the pot, Om, shantih shantih shantih. These things may be beautiful, creative, but they are not in any way religious. Every Hindu temple is resounding with the sound, everybody is praying, but they have misunderstood the whole thing. It is not your repeating Om that is going to lead you to the reality; it is your becoming utterly quiet, and from your very being arises the sound Om.

 

You are just a witness, you are not a doer.

 

And as the sound settles, you feel silence, silence, silence.... Then everything disappears, there remains only a universal reality of which you are just a part. Just as a dewdrop disappears in the ocean, you disappear in the ocean of existence.

 

The East has found this to be the only spiritual experience, not God, not your holy scriptures, not your prophets; they are all creating fictions. Not even your prayers because they are nothing but your desires. The only thing that is really significant is to be quiet, centered, grounded, in the very life source, in your very being. This sutra of Om, shantih shantih shantih is heard when you are at your very center. It is not by your repeating it that you will reach to it. It is not exactly the same either. We have invented it... approximately, just to communicate what has happened: something similar, but far deeper; something similar, but far more delicate; something similar, but not the same.

 

The mystics' writings start exactly the way the universe has started, and they end exactly as the universe finally goes to rest. There is a statement relevant to this sutra by Gautam Buddha. It is very significant. He says that it is absolutely foolish to think the way all the theologians of the world think about the beginning -- how the world began.

 

I can see the significance of a statement that you can never come to a conclusion about how the world began -- because you were not there. How can you be before the world began? -- you are part of the world. So all that you say about the beginning is just imagination, hypothesis, guesswork.

 

Buddha says that the mystic is not interested in how the world began, his interest is in how it ends, because in that very ending you will find the beginning too. But without finding the ending, you can only guess and argue and fight about the beginning -- and it is all futile. The philosopher's work is absolute nonsense. The mystic is very earthbound, very pragmatic, very realistic. Buddha says, "First find how it ends" -- and it is to be found within you.

 

You cannot wait for the whole world to end. That way it never ends. It is always there -- beginningless, endless. But within you how did the world begin? And within you how does the world end?

 

Those who remain clinging with the world are the materialists. Others start looking inside and try to find how everything ends, and still you are -- but just a pure consciousness, just a pure awareness.

 

The flower disappears.

 

Only fragrance remains.

 

I agree with Gautam Buddha that if you have found the fragrance within you, you know the whole secret of existence, because every individual is a miniature universe. What is happening on a vast scale in the universe is happening on a very small scale within you.

 

If you have tasted a simple dewdrop, you have tasted all the rivers and all the oceans and all possibilities of water anywhere. And you are the dewdrop.... Rather than running here and there, just taste yourself.

 

The East has approached reality in a very different way. And certainly because it has reached in a different way, it has produced a different kind of enlightened people.

 

The West has produced popes -- and the worst is a Polack pope. And now, the Nobel Prize committee is nominating him for a Nobel Prize! A Polack and a Nobel Prize...? In this way the Polack is not given respect; in this way the Nobel Prize loses all nobility, all grace.

 

And what experience has the Pope? What is his authority? He represents Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ himself does not seem to be enlightened. Because an enlightened person does not bother about saying, "God is my father... I am the only begotten son of God...." Who cares? We have seen thousands of enlightened people in the East. None of them has claimed that he is the only begotten son of God. That would be laughed at for centuries: "That man has gone mad!"

 

So in the first place he represents Jesus Christ -- who seems to be a lunatic. Either his nuts and bolts are loose, or too tight. He does not show the grace of a Gautam Buddha. Neither does he show the dance of a Meera nor the grace of a Mahavira.

 

What he goes on talking about he has gathered from the society -- because he is uneducated. And popes, hundreds of popes in these two thousand years have represented him. It is a hierarchy: the pope, Jesus, God... you cannot go unless you follow the proper channel! And I have always wondered that even the intelligent people in the West never think what is the contribution of these popes? A man who is a representative of God must show something, some sensitivity, some grace, some blissfulness; some fragrance should surround him. But the pope is elected!

 

It is so hilarious that people elect somebody as enlightened. Enlightenment is not an election campaign. Many candidates can stand up and say, "I am enlightened."

 

Enlightenment is an inner opening of the rose. Those who are in search of the truth of their being, will immediately be pulled towards the man of enlightenment.

 

It is not dependent on anybody's election or nomination. It does not represent even God or anybody. It simply declares its own heart and invites and welcomes anybody -- any wayfarer who wants to share this juice, this music of the eternal Om, one who is in search of finding a living silence and a dancing silence.

 

This sutra contains the whole -- the beginning and the end. But it starts from the end and reaches to the beginning. The statement of Gautam Buddha was: "Ignorance has no beginning and enlightenment has no end, and both make a circle." You know you have been utterly ignorant of yourself because now you are so alert, so full of joy, so much is dancing in your every cell, every fiber. This is an experience; it is not a hypothesis, and it has never been argued.

 

There have been Hindu mystics, there have been Buddhist mystics, there have been Jaina mystics... but as far as this sutra is concerned they have never quarreled about it, they have never argued. This is simply accepted because it is the experience, it is not theoretical guesswork. It is not philosophy. It is philosia, it is darshan.

 

They have seen it within, in their own being and there is no way not to agree with others who have also seen it. But by repeating it one is simply being stupid.

 

One has to come to an inner space where it explodes on its own and you are just a witness. Then it transforms your being, gives it beauty and grace, gives it sincerity and truth.

 

-Osho, “Om Shantih Shantih Shantih, #1, Q1”