LISTEN, SAYS PYTHAGORAS. Down the ages the Masters have always been saying: Listen. But what you do at the most is you hear — you don’t listen. And there is a tremendous difference between these two words. Hearing is very superficial. You can hear because you have ears, that’s all. Anybody who has ears can hear. It is an ordinary phenomenon. Listening has a different quality to it. When you hear attentively, then it is listening. Hearing is only physical; when your soul also gets involved in it, then it becomes listening.

 

And to listen is to understand. Truth needs no proof. Truth is self-evident. All that is needed is the capacity to listen. The student hears; the disciple listens. The curious hears, because his inquiry is intellectual. But the one who is a seeker, whose inquiry is not only a kind of curiosity, whose inquiry is a question of life and death to him, he listens. Everything is at stake. How can you afford not to listen?

 

Listening means your body and soul function together in a deep harmony. You become all ears; your whole body functions as an ear — your legs, your hands, every cell of your body and your whole being inside is attentive. Something immensely important is imparted to you. Something is communicated and you would not like to miss it.

 

If you are a seeker, a disciple, only then do you know what listening is. When you hear with great love, intensity, passion, when you hear aflame, when you hear totally, when you hear in silence, it is listening.

 

Pythagoras says: LISTEN…! One of the great contemporaries of Pythagoras, Mahavira, has said that there are two ways to move into the world of truth. One is by RIGHT listening — just by right listening. Those who fail in right listening, for them the other is by right practice. You will be surprised. Right practice is needed for those who have failed in right listening. Otherwise, to listen to a man who has arrived is enough. To listen to a Buddha is ENOUGH. He IS fire, and in listening you will become afire. Something will jump from the enlightened person to the disciple; something mysterious will be communicated — a transmission beyond scriptures and beyond words. But for that, listening is needed.

 

I was travelling in this country for many years, almost for fifteen years, talking to millions of people, but they were hearing, not listening. I tried hard to help them to listen, but it was impossible. I had to stop travelling. Now I wait only for those who can listen.

 

You can see this silence, this presence of yours, this utter attentiveness, this being with me… this very moment a transformation starts happening. Something will be triggered in you. These moments are precious, and these moments are as precious as you are capable of listening.

 

If your mind is wandering somewhere else, then physically you will be hearing but you will not be able to listen. If many thoughts are moving inside you and there is great traffic, then you will be hearing. Those thoughts won’t allow what I am saying to reach you, AND they won’t allow what I am to reach you. When the mind has no thoughts, when the traffic inside has stopped, when the inner talk is discontinued, in that gap, in that silence, in that state of love and being, listening happens.

 

And to listen RIGHTLY IS to understand. There is no other effort needed. There is no need to practice truth because truth already is — if you understand, it is there; if you open your eyes, you have found it. Truth is not lost, you have only fallen asleep. If you listen, you will be awakened. Truth is where it has always been.

 

- Osho, “Philosophia Perennis, Vol 1, #1″