Question 5:

Osho,

When I sit in your lecture I feel your silence and feel I become part of it. This is a wordless process in melting more and more into silence. At the same time, there are words from you. I hear them, and suddenly a connection happens from the silence to the words, and I feel golden, golden gratefulness about your beloved, wonderful words. the silence and the words are one. Please can you say something about this process — if it is really possible that words can say the wordless.

 

 

Yes, the word can say the wordless but only to the chosen few, only to those who are absolutely silent. The word coming out of silence carries around it the wordless silence.

 

Now the question is at the receiving end — if it is received by a mind full of words and chattering, then the silence and the wordlessness is destroyed, you only hear the word. But if you are silent, you hear the word and you also hear the wordless; you hear the sound, and you also experience the soundlessness.

 

In Mahavira’s life a strange thing is reported. It is very difficult to say that it can be factual, historical. Particularly in the outside world, it will look absolutely absurd and irrational.

 

But here, I can tell you the story. And I can tell you that it may have happened — because it is happening here, so there is no reason why it could not have happened in Mahavira’s time. Time is irrelevant, but it can be told only to those chosen few people who have experienced something similar.

 

It is said that Mahavira never spoke. Although there are scriptures — but Mahavira never spoke, he just remained silent. He had eleven disciples who were deep in silence, and there was something transferred from Mahavira in silence to the disciples. And these eleven disciples have written the scriptures; they told the people what Mahavira was saying.

 

So whenever it is said that Mahavira said this, remember, what he said is not a direct statement. Mahavira never spoke, he was silent. But something transpired between him and his chosen group of disciples, and those disciples became his spokesmen. They went around spreading his message.

 

What is the guarantee that they heard the right thing? What is the guarantee that they did not imagine that they were hearing? What is the guarantee that they are not saying things of their own? There is a guarantee, and the guarantee is that all the eleven heard the same thing.

 

All the eleven had to immediately write down what they heard, and because all eleven could not have imagined the same thing, it becomes an absolute guarantee: they have heard, silence has spoken to them. From silence to silence there has been a communion.The followers of Mahavira cannot prove this.

 

I have asked many Jaina monks, “Can you prove this?”

 

And they said, “Those were the days of truth, and this is the age of darkness. Now it cannot be proved; neither can it be experienced.”

 

To them it is simply a belief, and most often they don’t mention it because it is embarrassing. If somebody raises a question, they don’t have the right answer. But in this mystery school it is happening, so there is no question of the story about Mahavira being a fiction.

 

As my sannyasins are growing in silence, moving deeper into meditation — as their masks are falling down, as they are becoming more and more innocently connected with me — first it will happen that they will hear my words, and along with my words, the wordless message.

 

And at the second step, there will be no need for me even to use the word. I can simply sit here, and you can hear the wordless message. And before I leave this body, I want it to become an existential experience not only to eleven people but to thousands of people. Only that can give credibility to Mahavira’s story. In twenty-five centuries Mahavira’s disciples have failed, they have not been able to bring any rationality — because it is not a question of reason, it is a question of meditation.

 

And you will be surprised that Mahavira’s whole life is the life of meditation, and in Jainism meditation is simply forgotten. The whole religion has become a ritual.

 

So it is true: you can hear the wordless side by side with my words. And soon you will be able to hear the wordless even without the words. And that day will be a day of great celebration — when I can speak to you without speaking.

 

A silent meeting, a communion with no noise, a music with no sounds… nothing is said but everything is heard, understood, immediately experienced.

 

- Osho, “Beyond Enlightenment, #21, Q5”