Question 2

Osho,

Because i am only a beginner in the search for reality, could you define for me the four terms: truth, god, spiritual, fact.

 

 

Ken Jones, if you are only a beginner in the search, please come back, don't go ahead. Don't become more of an expert in the spiritual search, because the experts are the losers. Don't become more knowledgeable, become more innocent. Drop all that you know, forget all that you know. Remain wondering, but don't transform your wondering into questions, because once the wonder is changed into a question, sooner or later the question will bring knowledge. And knowledge is a false coin.

 

From the state of wonder, there are two paths. One is of questioning — the wrong path — it leads you into more and more knowledge. The other is not of questioning but enjoying. Enjoy the wonder, the wonder that life is, the wonder that existence is, the wonder of the sun and the sunlight and the trees bathed in its golden rays. Experience it. Don’t put in a question mark, let it be as it is.

 

Remain ignorant if you ever want to become enlightened. Remain innocent, childlike, if you ever want a communion with existence and reality. Remain in wonder if you want the mysteries to open up for you. Mysteries never open up for those who go on questioning. Questioners sooner or later end up in a library. Questioners sooner or later end up with scriptures, because scriptures are full of answers.

 

And answers are dangerous, they kill your wonder. They are dangerous because they give you the feeling that you know, although you know not. They give you this misconception about yourself that now questions have been solved. “I know what The Bible says, I know what the Koran says, I know what the Gita says. I have arrived.” You will become a parrot; you will repeat things but you will not know anything. This is not the way to know — knowledge is not the way to know.

 

Then what is the way to know? Wonder. Let your heart dance with wonder. Be full of wonder: throb with it, breathe it in, breathe it out. Why be in such a hurry for the answer? Can’t you allow a mystery to remain a mystery? I know there is a great temptation not to allow it to remain a mystery, to reduce it to knowledge. Why is this temptation there? — because only if you are full of knowledge will you be in control.

 

Mystery will control you, knowledge will make you the controller. Mystery will possess you. You cannot possess the mysterious; it is so vast and your hands are so small. It is so infinite, you cannot possess it, you will have to be possessed by it — and that is the fear. Knowledge you can possess, it is so trivial; knowledge you can control.

 

This temptation of the mind to reduce every wonder, every mystery, to a question, is basically fear-oriented. We are afraid, afraid of the tremendousness of life, of this incredible existence. We are afraid. Out of fear we create some small knowledge around ourselves as a protection, as an armor, as a defense.

 

It is only cowards who reduce the tremendously valuable capacity of wondering to questions. The really brave, the courageous person, leaves it as it is. Rather than changing it into a question, he jumps into the mystery. Rather than trying to control it, he allows the mystery to possess him.

 

And the joy of being possessed, and the benediction of being possessed, is invaluable. You cannot imagine what it is, you have never dreamt about it — because to be possessed by the mystery is to be possessed by God.

 

Ken Jones, you say: "Because I am only a beginner...."

You are fortunate that you are only a beginner. There are many who have become experts; they will have to come back home, and it is going to be a long long arduous journey. They have accumulated so much knowledge that dropping it is going to be a difficult task. If you are really a beginner, be happy. You have not gone far away, you are just beginning. Come back.

There is no need to define these beautiful words, because they are not only words. You want me to define truth. Do you know, has anybody ever defined truth? Is it definable at all? What is a definition? A definition means a tautology -- you put the same words in a different way. What are your definitions, in fact? Synonyms.

Just look at your definitions and you will find you have been paraphrasing. But how can paraphrasing define anything? The second thing that you think is the definition, in its own turn needs another definition. Definitions are either tautologies or just stupid.

For example, ask what the mind is and the knowers, the knowledgeable, say, "It is not matter." And then ask them, "What is matter?" And they say, "It is not mind." What kind of defining is going on? Mind is not matter; this becomes a definition. Matter is not mind; this becomes a definition. Both remain indefinable; you have not defined anything, you have simply shifted the problem from one place to another.

You can befool only fools.

And the truth means the whole, all that is, the total. All that is -- how can you define it? It is unbounded, infinite. Definition means drawing a line around it, locating it, saying, "This is it." But there is no way to define truth, because there is no way to draw a line around it. It is infinite, it is eternal, it has no beginning, no end.

People who have tried to define truth say, "Truth is that which is." But that is tautology.

 

The question remains the same, the mystery remains unsolved. "Truth is that which is" -- what have you added? Have you made it a little simpler than before? You can call it "that which is" or you can call it truth, or you can call it God, but you are simply using names, words, labels, for something which is basically indefinable.

Truth cannot be defined, although it can certainly be experienced. But experience is not a definition. A definition is made by the mind, experience comes through participating. If somebody asks, "What is a dance?" how can you define it? But you can dance and you can know the inner feel of it.

God is the ultimate dance. You will have to learn ecstatic dancing to experience God. God is the dance where the dancer disappears. Then the experience arrives, showers on you, and you KNOW. But that knowing is not knowledge, that knowing is wisdom.

Truth cannot be defined. Lao Tzu says if you define it you have already made it untrue. He lived a long life; it must have been really long because the story is that for eighty-two years he lived in his mother's womb, so when he was born he was already eighty-two years old. Then if he lived for at least eighty-two more years, he must have lived very long. But he never wrote a single word.

His whole life his disciples were again and again asking, requesting, "Write something. You are getting older and older and older, and one day you will have to leave the body. Leave your last testament." But he would laugh and not say a thing, or he would keep silent as if he had not heard.

Then when he became very old, he started moving towards the Himalayas. He said to his disciples, "Now I am going to the Himalayas, never to return again. My whole life I have been a wanderer, and the Himalayas are the best place to die. I lived beautifully, I lived the most ecstatic life possible. I would also like to die most ecstatically, most aesthetically. I would like to die in the silence of the Himalayas, in those beautiful mountains."

When he was leaving the border of China, the guard at the border prevented him. He said, "I won't allow you to leave the country unless you write something."

 

He must have been a very perceptive man, the guard. The world is in his debt for one of the greatest things that has ever been written -- the Tao Te Ching. There is no other book comparable to it.

Finding no way to avoid it, because the guard wouldn't allow him to go and he wanted to leave the country as fast, as quickly, as possible -- death was coming closer and he wanted to die in the silence of the Himalayas -- compelled to write, he sat in the guard's room for three days and completed the book, Tao Te Ching.

But the first thing that he wrote was, "Tao cannot be said. Once said, it is no more Tao."

You can understand what he means. He is saying that if you read the first statement, there is no need to go any further. "Truth cannot be said. Once said, it is no more true" -- this is his declaration. Now, if you understand, the book is finished. What can be said about the truth? Yes, it can be lived, experienced. You can love, live, be -- but definition is not possible. If you want definitions you will have to go to a university. Professors define what truth is, and each professor of philosophy defines it in his own way, and there are millions of definitions, and all are false. No definition can ever be true.

What to say about truth -- even the small experiences of life cannot be defined. What is love? Or what is the taste of sugar on your tongue? How to define it? What is beauty when you see it in a lotus flower?

One of the greatest modern philosophers, G.E. Moore, has written a book, Principia Ethica, in which he tries to define what good is. Of course, that is the first question in the world of ethics: what is good? And for two hundred or two hundred and fifty pages, he tries hard this way and that, and cannot define it. And he was one of the most perceptive people this century has produced.

Defeated, tired, exhausted, in the end he says good is indefinable. It is as indefinable as the color yellow. If somebody asks, "What is yellow?" -- there is a marigold flower, and somebody asks, "You call it yellow? What is yellow?" -- how are you going to define it? What more can you say? Yellow is yellow, good is good, beauty is beauty. But these are tautologies; you are not defining anything, you are simply repeating words.

What is truth? There is no way to define it.

I am not teaching philosophy to you, I am sharing my truth with you. Don't ask for definitions. If you have the courage, then take a plunge into the experience that is made available here: take a jump into meditation, and you will know. And still, even when you know, you will not be able to define it.

And you ask, "What is God?"

That is another name for truth -- the lover's name. "Truth" is the name given by the meditator to totality. "God" is the name given to totality, to truth, by a lover, by a devotee. Both arrows point to the same phenomenon, but the lover can't think in terms of abstract words. "Truth" is very abstract: you cannot hug truth, can you? You cannot kiss truth -- or can you? You cannot say hello to truth, you cannot hold hands with truth. "Truth" is impersonal; it is the word given by the meditator who does not want to bring any personality into it.

"God" is the name given out of love, out of a personal relationship with existence. The lover wants to say "Thou," the lover wants to say "Hi," the lover wants to have a communion, a dialogue. It is the same totality, but the lover makes it personal. Then truth becomes God.

And you ask, "What is spiritual?"

To be in relationship with truth or God is to be spiritual. Remember, to be in relationship -- not to talk about spirituality, not to follow a certain creed, dogma, church, but to be in direct immediate relationship with existence is spirituality. To be in tune with the whole, to feel the harmony and the joy and the sheer celebration of being here, that is spirituality. It has nothing to do with going to the church or the temple, it has nothing to do with reciting the Koran or The Bible or the Gita. It has nothing to do with any kind of worship ritual, it has something to do with communion -- communion with the trees, communion with the stars, communion with the rivers, communion with all that is. It is communion with this multidimensional expression of God, it is having a dialogue with the whole. The quality of mad love is needed, then you are spiritual. Spirituality is not a head trip; it is a heart-to-heart dialogue, and ultimately a being-to-being dialogue.

And fourth, you ask, "What is a fact?"

A fact is the truth seen with unawareness, seen with blindness, seen with closed eyes, seen unintelligently, unmeditatively. Then the truth becomes a fact.

For example, you come across a buddha. If you look at him unconsciously he is just a fact, a historical fact; he is born on a certain day and is going to die on a certain day. He is the body that you can see with your eyes; he is a certain person, a personality. History can take note of him, you can have a picture of him.

But if you look, not with unconsciousness but with great consciousness, with awareness, with great light, silence, then the fact is no longer there -- there is truth. Then Buddha is not somebody who is born on a certain date, he is somebody who is never born and is never going to die. Then Buddha is not the body, the body is just an abode. Then Buddha is not the confined being that appears to you, he represents the total, the whole. Then Buddha is a ray of the infinite, a gift of the beyond to the earth. Then suddenly the fact has disappeared; now there is truth.

But history can take no note of truth; history consists of facts. In India we have two different systems. One we call history; history takes note of the facts. Another we call purana, mythology; it takes note of the truth. We have not written histories about Buddha, Mahavira or Krishna, no. That would have been dragging something immensely beautiful into the muddy unconsciousness of humanity. We have not written histories about these people, we have written myths. What is a myth? A myth is a parable, a parable that only points to the moon but says nothing about it -- a finger pointing to the moon, an indication, an arrow, saying nothing.

Go to a Jaina temple and you will be surprised. You will find twenty-four statues of twenty-four great enlightened masters, the twenty-four TIRTHANKARAS. And the most striking thing will be this, that they all look absolutely alike. This is impossible -- there are not even two persons absolutely alike in the world, not even twins are absolutely alike. So how was it possible -- and the time span is big, thousands of years -- for twenty-four tirthankaras to be exactly alike?

This is not history. These statues don't depict the real persons, no, not at all. They are not pictorial representations. Then what are they? They represent something of the inner, they represent something of meditativeness, they represent something of inner stillness, something of the being. Those twenty-four statues are just representations, visible representations, of something which is invisible.

Sitting before these statues, if you silently go on watching, you will be surprised. Something starts happening inside you. The statue is a form of objective art; it synchronizes with the inner form of your being. The posture of the statue synchronizes with your posture. If you sit in the same posture -- with erect spine, half-opened eyes, just looking at the tip of your nose, doing nothing, as if you are also a marble statue, all white, within and without -- then you will know that you are not facing ordinary statues, you are confronting great symbols. This is mythology.

Mythology is bound to be poetic, because only poetry can give a few glimpses of the unknown.

It is said that wherever Buddha moved, trees would start blooming out of season. Now, this is poetry, pure poetry; it did not happen as a fact. But this shows something; there is no other way to say it. It says whenever Buddha is contacted, even trees start blooming out of season -- so what to say about man?

It is said that wherever Mohammed would move in the desert's hot sun, and there was fire everywhere, a small cloud, a white cloud, would go on moving above him just to give him shade like an umbrella. This is poetry, beautiful, but it is not a historical fact. A man like Mohammed is protected by existence, a man like Mohammed is in every way cared for by existence. One who has surrendered to existence is bound to be cared for by existence. One who has trusted totally, how can existence be uncaring about him? To say this, there is this metaphor of the cloud just hanging over his head wherever he would go.

Jesus dies on the cross, and then after three days is resurrected. This is poetry, not history. This is not fact, this is truth. It simply says that those who die in God and for God attain to eternal life. Those who are ready to die for God are resurrected on another plane of being; they lose the physical body but they gain the luminous body. They are no more part of the earth but they become part of the sky; they disappear from time but they appear in eternity.

But all the religions have been trying to prove that these are facts. And in trying to prove that these are facts they have simply proved that they are fools. These are not facts, these are symbolic truths.

Whatsoever you see around you is a fact. You see a tree, a green tree, full of sap and flowers -- it is a fact. But if you meditate and one day suddenly your eyes open, open to the real, and the tree is no more just a tree -- the green of it is nothing but God green in it, and the sap running through it is no more a physical phenomenon but something spiritual -- if one day you can see the being of the tree, the God of the tree, that the tree is only a manifestation of the divine, you have seen the truth.

Truth needs meditative eyes. If you don't have meditative eyes, then the whole of life is just dull dead facts, unrelated to each other, accidental, meaningless, a jumble, just a chance phenomenon. If you see the truth, everything falls into line, everything falls together in a harmony, everything starts having significance.

Remember always, significance is the shadow of truth. And those who live only in facts live an utterly meaningless life.

 

- Osho, “The Book of Wisdom, #10, Q2”