Question 3

Osho,

The more i try to understand you, the more you baffle me. every day you are becoming more and more mysterious. what is this unending mystery?

 

 

Anand Maitreya, you say, "The more I try to understand You, the more You baffle me." Stop trying to understand me. Just be with me.

 

Trying to understand is creating the problem. Just be here now -- no need to understand. I am not a problem, neither am I a hypothesis.

 

I am a living presence.

 

Don't try to understand me.

 

Otherwise, if you love me you will feel baffled; if you don't love me you will become my enemy. Those are the two possibilities of trying.

 

If the friend and the enemy both can just be silent with me, understanding will arise on its own. It is a by-product of a silent communion. You don't become knowledgeable, but you are so full of understanding. But this is a totally different kind of understanding.

 

You have not made any effort; it has showered on you.

 

Any understanding that comes through your effort can be lost. Perhaps more effort and you may start seeing things in a different light. Perhaps less effort and you will lose the thread of understanding. So there is an understanding which should really only be called knowledgeability, that comes by effort; and there is an understanding which comes not by your effort, but when all efforts are forgotten.

 

Understanding is just like sleep. If you make efforts to go to sleep, it is very difficult to go to sleep. Your very efforts are disturbing. And there are so-called wise people advising others to do this mantra, do this chanting, take a shower or a hot bath -- and all these efforts will make you more and more awake.

 

When people ask me what to do when sleep is not coming, I say, "Go for a long walk in the dark night, alone. Forget all about sleep. If it is not coming, it means it is not needed. And after a long walk in the forest, in your aloneness, you will become relaxed. Or if you cannot go for a long walk, then just close your eyes. But don't make any effort to sleep; just wait for it. Watch from which door it comes. And you will find yourself in the morning waking up saying, `My God, when did sleep come and from which door?'"

 

When you are not making any effort, you become relaxed. Effort creates tensions, and you cannot attain to understanding through tensions. Relaxation is the door. Just relax in my presence and there will be no question of bafflement, of any puzzle, of any problem. You will understand, but it will not come as knowledge. It will come more and more like love, which you know and yet you know not.

 

Millions of people have loved, but nobody has been able to define it, because love cannot be translated into knowledge. It is very shy.

 

You say, "Every day You are becoming more and more mysterious." This is a good symptom. That means you are slowly, slowly coming closer and closer to me. The closer you come to me, the more mysterious you will find me.

 

And that moment will also come, Maitreya, when not only I will be mysterious; you will also be mysterious.

 

And when two mysteries meet, they are not two. There is no demarcation line between two mysteries. Two mysteries always become one, just like two zeros always become one; two nothingnesses always become one.

 

You are asking, "What is this unending mystery?"

 

This is life.

 

This is love.

 

This is a deep laughter.

 

- Osho, "The Rebellious Spirit, #4"