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Sufism : The Path of Love
"Sufism is not concerned with knowledge. Its whole concern is love, intense, passionate love: how to fall in love with the whole, how to be in tune with the whole, how to bridge the distance between the creation and the creator." -Osho, "The Secret, #1"
ONLY BREATH
Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion or cultural system.
I am not from the East or the West, not out of the ocean or up from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not composed of elements at all.
I do not exist, am not an entity in this world or the next, did not descend from Adam or Eve or any origin story.
My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless. Neither body or soul.
I belong to the beloved, have seen the two worlds as one and that one call to and know, first, last, outer, inner, only that breath breathing human being. - Rumi
Image Courtesy : mitabhan.blog
Sufism : Falling in love with existence
Sufism is a vision. In fact to call it 'Sufism' is not right because it is not an 'ism' at all. Sufis don't call it 'Sufism'; it is the name given by the outsiders. They call their vision TASSAWURI, a love-vision, a loving approach towards reality. It is falling in love with existence. The person who thinks about existence is a little bit antagonistic because he creates a problem out of existence -- as if existence is challenging him and he has to decipher it, he has to decode the mystery, he has to destroy the mystery. He fights.
Sufis say: We and the existence are one. There is no need to fight. Persuade, coo, invite, love, befriend, and the existence itself starts revealing its mysteries. There is no need to rape it. The philosophic approach, the scientific approach, the intellectual approach, is a rape! It is forcing existence to reveal its heart. It is undressing existence by force and violence. The violence may be of scientific methods or of logical methods -- it doesn't matter -- but the violence is there. The philosopher has taken a standpoint as if nature is not ready to reveal its mysteries; it has to be forced. It is a violent approach.
Sufism says there is no need, the existence is waiting for you to come close so that it can reveal its heart. The existence is waiting for you to fall in love with it. If you are deeply in love with existence, it starts opening, it starts revealing its secrets. It has been waiting long for you to come close. There is no need to force it, there is no need to rape! You can fall in love.
A world-view is an aggressive stance, a vision is a love stance.
I said to you that Sufism is not a system, because all systems create bondage. They create prisons around you. Sufism is freedom. It does not create any system around you. It does not tell you to believe in a certain system. Yes, it talks about trust, but not of belief.
Trust is a totally different thing. Belief is belief in a theory, in a philosophy, in a world-view: you believe in Islam, you believe in Hinduism, you believe in Christianity. But when you trust, you trust in life. You don't believe in life, you trust in life; you believe in philosophies. Belief is a poor substitute for trust. And remember, belief is again from the head, trust is from the heart. Their qualities are different, altogether different, diametrically opposite. Never become part of a belief system: never become a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Jaina or a Buddhist. When you become part of a belief system you are becoming a slave.
If you can find a place, a space, where belief is not imposed on you but trust is helped, find that place. That is the right place where you can really grow and grow into freedom. There is no other growth -- growth in freedom is the only growth.
I said to you that Sufism is not a philosophy, but it is not anti-philosophy either. It simply takes no note of philosophies, anti-philosophies. It bypasses them, it is indifferent. It says: Why be bothered with words while reality is available? When you can drink the water, why be worried about the theories about water? When you can go in the sun and dance with the sunrays, why be bothered about theories? Why not have an experience, an authentic experience? Philosophy goes round and round; it is about and about. It never penetrates the core of truth. It thinks ABOUT truth, but to think about truth is to falsify. Truth has to be encountered, not thought about. Truth has to be LIVED not believed. Truth is not a conclusion: you don't arrive at truth by a syllogistic process. Truth is THERE! You are truth, the trees are truth, the birds are truth, the sun, the moon. The truth is all over the place, and you close your eyes and you think about truth? All thinking will take you astray.
There is no need to think. Live it! Only by living do you come to know it.
Sufism is not a way of thinking but a way of life, a way of living; not a philosophy of life but a way of life.
I said Sufism is not speculative. Speculation means that you think about things you have not known. Now this is foolish. Speculation means a blind man thinking about light, a deaf man thinking about music. When you think about God do you think you are in any way different from the blind man thinking about light? You have not seen God, you have not tasted anything divine, and you go on thinking. What will you do? Yes, mind is very clever and it can spin and weave beautiful systems, but those systems are just irrelevant. Good or bad, logical, illogical -- they are just irrelevant. They have no relevance to reality, they have no context in reality, they are mind games.
Sufism is not a mind game; that's why it is practical, absolutely practical. If you ask a Sufi about God, he will laugh, or he will sing a song which has no reference to God, or he will tell you a story in which God is never mentioned, or he will say something which seems absolutely unrelated to the question. He is simply saying, "Don't be foolish. Let us be practical." You ask about God and he will talk about prayer, not about God. A true Sufi will avoid the subject of God. He will talk about prayer; prayer is practical. You ask about paradise and he will talk about your misery and how to drop it -- that is practicalness. Because paradise is not somewhere else, when you have dropped your miserable ways, you are in paradise, or to be more true, you ARE paradise.
Sufis always talk about techniques, methods. They never talk about 'whats', they only talk about 'hows'. In that way they are as scientific as any scientist. Sufism is a glimpse of how religion should be. It is pointless to talk about God; create the ladder that takes you to God. It is utterly a waste of time talking about paradise; give methods so that paradise can be explored inside your being. It is an inner phenomenon, it is your inner space. And so is hell.
Sufism is not even a religion. Rather, it is religiousness. It has no church, it has no book -- Bible or Koran or Veda or Dhammapada. It has no book, no sacred book. It has no church. Sufism is a very, very free-floating religiousness. Anybody can be a Sufi -- a Hindu, a Christian, a Mohammedan. Anywhere, one can be a Sufi. It is a practical approach on how to create religiousness.
People think "How to belong to a religion?" Sufism says: That is foolish, stupid. The only meaningful question can be: how to create religiousness, how to transform one's own energy so it becomes religious? If you start belonging to a religion you will have only a label but you will not be religious, and your other world will be nothing but a projection of this world.
You can go and see the other-worldly people, and if you watch them closely and observe them you will be surprised: their other-worldliness is nothing but a projection of this-worldliness. In-their heaven they are hoping for the same pleasures, of course on a more permanent basis -- more intense, more alive -- but the same pleasures. In their hell they are afraid of the same pains and the same sufferings, more intense and more permanent. The difference is of quantity. The hellfire will be the same fire that is here, but maybe more intense, more fiery. It burns more, hurts more, wounds more, but it will be the same fire. And in paradise? It will be the same food -- more delicious, more nourishing -- but the difference is of quantity; and the quantity is not the real difference. A difference arises only when you move from a quantitative vision to a qualitative vision. When you start changing the quality of your life, that's what religiousness is.
A true religious person cannot be Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian. He's simply religious. Jesus is not Christian, he's religious; I call him a Sufi. Buddha is not Buddhist, he is simply religious; I call him a Sufi.
A Sufi is a person who has looked into the very essentials of religion and has discarded all that is non-essential.
I invite you into this benediction called Sufism, but you will be able to enter only if you have great sympathy. Listen with love; argumentation won't help. Sufism makes no effort to convince you. It simply makes itself available for all those who are ready to partake of it. It is an invitation open to all and sundry, but only those who are courageous enough to be non-argumentative will be able to enter into this world of Sufism. Sympathy has to be the foundation, participation has to be the base. Fall EN RAPPORT. And remember, argumentation is cowardly. All cowards argue, and all cowards can argue. It is only the courageous who take the jump into the unknown. The unknown cannot be argued about, obviously; that's why it is called the unknown.
You can argue about the known, you can come to conclusions about the known through thinking, but how are you going to come across the unknown? Thinking can give you only the old, that which has been known and experienced. Thinking cannot give you something that has never been experienced and never known. If you remain too obsessed with thinking you will be stuck. The unknown does not come from your past, the unknown enters from the future. The unknown does not come from your memory -- otherwise it would not be unknown. The unknown penetrates your memory but comes from some source we know nothing of, from some unknown source. Your memory has to give way: that's what I mean when I say listen sympathetically, get in tune. I'm not proposing a philosophical argument here. I will be simply telling you a story. With a story, you don't argue. With a story, you simply listen like a child. You enjoy its nuances, its turns, sudden turns. You simply start getting into its spirit, what the story wants to tell -- and it has much to say. And the deeper your empathy grows, the deeper the story will reveal itself to you.
Trust....
Let trust be YOUR approach towards Sufism. It is available only to those who trust. And remember again, only the courageous can trust. The cowardly always shrink back from the unknown.
-Osho, “The Wisdom of the Sands, Vol 1, #1”
Sufi meansA man of the heart, a man of love
There are religions and religions, but Sufism is the religion – the very heart, the innermost core, the very soul.
Sufism is not part of Islam; rather, on the contrary, Islam is part of Sufism. Sufism existed before Mohammed ever was born, and Sufism will exist when Mohammed is completely forgotten. Islams come and go; religions take form and dissolve; Sufism abides, continues, because it is not a dogma. It is the very heart of being religious.
You may not ever have heard of Sufism and you may be a Sufi – if you are religious. Krishna is a Sufi, and Christ too; Mahavir is a Sufi, and Buddha too – and they never heard about the word, and they never knew that anything like Sufism exists.
Whenever a religion is alive, it is because Sufism is alive within it. Whenever a religion is dead, it shows only that the spirit, the Sufi spirit, has left it. Now there is only a corpse, howsoever decorated – in philosophy, metaphysics, in dogmas, doctrines – but whenever Sufism has left, religion stinks of death. This has happened many times. This is happening already almost all over the world. One has to be aware of it, otherwise one can go on clinging to a dead corpse.
Christianity has no Sufism now. It is a dead religion – the Church killed it. When `church’ becomes too much, Sufism has to leave that body. It cannot exist with dogmas. It can well exist with a dancing soul, but not with dogmas. It cannot exist with theology. They are not good companions. And with popes and priests it is impossible for Sufism to exist. It is just the opposite! Sufism needs no popes, no priests; it needs no dogmas. It is not of the head; it belongs to the heart. The heart is the Church, not an organized church, because every organization is of the mind. And once the mind takes possession, the heart has simply to leave that house completely. The house becomes too narrow for the heart. The heart needs the whole of the sky. Nothing less than that will do.
It cannot be confined in churches. The whole existence is the only church for it. It can throb under the sky. It can throb in freedom. But it dies when everything becomes a system, an organized pattern, a ritual – the state of Sufism simply disappears from there.
Christianity killed Jesus. Jews could not kill him. They crucified him, of course, but they failed. They could not kill him. He survived crucifixion. That is the meaning of resurrection – not that physically Jesus survived, but that the crucifixion proved futile. Jews could not kill him. They tried, but Jesus survived. Where Jews failed, Christians succeeded. They killed him with out any crucifixion. They killed him through prayer. They killed him through dogma. They killed him through organization. Followers succeed where enemies fail. Apostles succeed where enemies fail.
Christianity is now a dead religion because it cannot allow Sufism to exist within its soul. It is afraid of Sufism. Every dogma is always afraid, because Sufism means infinite freedom, no confinement, no limitations. It is more like love and less like a logical syllogism. It is more of a poetry, less of a prose. it is irrational.
That’s why every rational theology is afraid of it. Once you give an opening to the irrational, you don’t know where you are. And remember: God is also irrational, and it is beautiful that He is irrational – otherwise He would have been a professor of philosophy in some university, or a pope, or a priest, but not existence.
Sufism has died many deaths in many religions. Jainism is a dead religion. It flourished once beautifully and gave birth to such a great mystic as Mahavir. Then suddenly the river disappeared; only the dry riverbed has remained. No river flows now, no greenery on the bank. It has become a desert land, completely deserted. What happened? Jainist followers became too intellectual, mathematical, logical. Out of the mystery of Mahavir they created doctrines and arguments. They became too calculative, too clever, and the spirit was killed. In Christianity, Sufism had to leave because of too much church ritual. In Jainism, Sufism had to leave because of too much intellectual, theological, philosophical effort.
Remember this: Sufism is not a church. It doesn’t belong to any religion. All religions, when alive, belong to it. It is a vast sky of a particular quality of consciousness. How does it happen? How does one become a Sufi? Not by belonging to a particular order, but by dropping from the head to the heart, one becomes a Sufi.
You can exist in two ways. Either you can exist as a head-oriented person – you will succeed in the world. You will accumulate many riches, prestige, power. In politics you will be a successful man. In the eyes of the world you will become a pinnacle to be imitated. But in the inner you will fail completely, you will fail utterly – because into the inner the head-oriented person cannot enter at all. Head moves outwardly; it is an opening to the other. Heart opens inwardly; it is an opening to yourself. You can exist either as a head-oriented person, or you can exist as a heart-oriented person. When your energy, your life-energy, falls from the head towards the heart, you become a Sufi.
A Sufi means a man of the heart, a man of love; a man who doesn’t bother from where this universe comes, who doesn’t bother who created it, who doesn’t bother where it is leading; in fact, who doesn’t ask any questions — rather, on the contrary, he starts living. Existence is there: only fools bother about from where it comes. Only fools, I say. They may have shrouded themselves in very cunning philosophical words, but they are fools. A man who is wise lives the existence. It is here and now! Why bother from where it comes? What does it matter from where it comes? Whether somebody creates it or not is irrelevant. You are here, throbbing, alive – dance with existence! live it! be it! and allow it to happen in its total mystery within you.
And this is the miracle: a person who doesn’t bother from where it comes, a person who doesn’t ask questions, receives the answers. A man who is not curious, but celebrating whatsoever is there – whatsoever is the case he is celebrating it – suddenly becomes aware of the very source, and suddenly becomes aware of the very culmination. End and beginning meet in him – because he himself becomes the mystery. Now the mystery is not something which is there as an object that you have to go around and around and see and look at and observe. No, because that is not the way to know it. That is the way to miss it. You may go around and around, about and about, but you will never penetrate into it. How can you know? You are beating around the bush. Your attack is on the periphery. Rather, penetrate into it, go to its center – become it.
And you can become, because you are part of it. And you can become, because it is part of you.
And then suddenly all questioning dissolves. Suddenly the answer is there. It is not that you have come to a solution of your problems. No. There are no problems at all. When there are no problems at all, for the first time you become capable, capable of living the mystery that is life, capable of living God, capable of being gods.
A great Sufi – you must have heard his name, Al Hillaj Mansoor – was killed by Mohammedans, because he said, anal hak, I am God.’ When you penetrate into the mystery of life, it is not that you are an observer, because an observer is always an outsider – you become one with it. It is not that you swim in the river, it is not that you float in the river, it is not that you struggle into the river. No – you become the river. Suddenly you realize the wave is part of the river. And the contrary is also true: that the river is part of the wave. It is not only that we are parts of God – God is also part of us.
When Al Hillaj Mansoor asserted, ‘I am God,’ Mohammedans killed him. Sufism is always killed by religious people, so-called religious people – because they cannot tolerate it; they cannot tolerate a man asserting that he is God! Their egos feel offended. How can a man be a God? But when Al Hillaj says, ‘I am God,’ he is not saying, ‘I am God and you are not’; he is not saying, ‘I am God and these trees are not’; he is not saying, ‘I am God and these stones, rocks are not.’ Asserting that ‘I am God’ he is asserting that the whole is divine, sacred. Everything is divine.
So these people, fanatics, believers in dogmas – they said that God created man, so man can only be a creature, not a creator; and this is profanity, the very apex of profanity to assert that ‘I am God’ – they killed him. And what was Mansoor saying when they killed him? He said loudly to the sky, ‘You cannot deceive me! Even in these murderers I see you – you cannot deceive me. You are here in these murderers! And in whatsoever form you come, my God, I will know you, because I have known you.’
Sufism is not thinking about existence, it is being existence. It is not thinking, it is not doing something about existence. It is neither thought nor action. It is being.
And right now, without any effort, you can be a Sufi. If you stop thinking, and if you drop the idea of doing something, if you drop the idea of being a thinker and a doer, if you simply are content to be, suddenly you are a Sufi. And this will be my effort while I am talking about Sufism: not to indoctrinate you, not to make you more knowledgeable, but to make a Sufi out of you.
Sufis sing, they don’t give sermons, because life is more like a song and less like a sermon. And they dance, and they don’t talk about dogmas, because a dance is more alive, more like existence, more like the birds singing in the trees, and the wind passing through the pines; more like a waterfall, or clouds raining, or grass growing. The whole life is a dance, vibrating, throbbing, with infinite life.
Sufis like to dance; they are not interested in dogmas. And they tell beautiful stories. Life is more like a story, less like a history. And Sufis have created beautiful small stories. On the surface, you may miss. On the surface, it will look just like an ordinary anecdote. But if you penetrate deep, Sufi stories are very much pregnant – pregnant with significance, pregnant with the significance of the Ultimate. So I will tell you a few stories, discuss the stories, to help you penetrate into the deeper core. Just to make you understand a few things about the heart, to help you, your energy, your whole being, for a new journey toward the heart. To push you — because you will be afraid.
The heart is the most dangerous thing in the world.
Every culture, every civilization, every so called religion, cuts every child off from his heart. It is a most dangerous thing. All that is dangerous comes out of the heart. Mind is more secure, and with the mind you know where you are. With the heart, no one ever knows where one is. With the mind, everything is calculated, mapped, measured. And you can feel the crowd always with you, in front of you, at the back of you. Many are moving on it; it is a highway – concrete, solid, gives you a feeling of security. With the heart you are alone. Nobody is with you. Fear grips, fear possesses you. Where are you going? Now you no longer know, because when you move with a crowd on a highway, you know where you are moving because you think the crowd knows.
And everybody is in the same position: everybody thinks, ‘So many people are moving, we must be moving somewhere; otherwise, why so many people, millions of them, moving? They must be moving somewhere.’ Everybody thinks like that. In fact, the crowd is not moving anywhere. No crowd has ever reached any goal. The crowd goes on moving and moving. You are born, you become part of the crowd. And the crowd was already moving before you were born. And then a day comes when you are finish ed, you die, and the crowd goes on moving, because new ones are always being born. The crowd never reaches anywhere! – but it gives a feeling of comfort. You feel cozy, surrounded by so many people wiser than you, older than you, more experienced than you; they must know where they are moving – you feel secure.
The moment you start falling towards the heart… and it is a falling: falling like falling in an abyss. That’s why when somebody is in love, we say he has fallen in love. It is a fall – the head sees it as a fall – someone has gone astray, fallen. When you start falling towards the heart you become alone; now nobody can be with you there. You in your total loneliness. Afraid, scared you will be. Now you will not know where you are going, because nobody is there and there are no milestones. In fact, there is no concrete solid path. Heart is unmapped, unmeasured, uncharted. Tremendous fear will be there.
The whole of my effort is to help you not to be afraid, because only through the heart will you be reborn. But before you are reborn, you will have to die. Nobody can be reborn before he dies. So the whole message of Sufism, Zen, Hassidism – these are all forms of Sufism – is how to die. The whole art of dying is the base. I am teaching you here nothing except that: how to die.
If you die, you become available to infinite sources of life. You die, really, in your present form. It has become too narrow. You only survive in it – you don’t live. The tremendous possibility of life is completely closed, and you feel confined, imprisoned. You feel everywhere a limitation, a boundary. A wall, a stone wall comes wherever you move – a wall.
My whole effort is how to break these stone walls. And they are not made of stone – they are made of thoughts. And nothing is more like rock than a thought. They are made of dogmas, scriptures. They surround you. And wherever you go, you carry them with you. Your imprisonment you carry with you. Your prison is always hanging around you. How to break them?
The breaking of the walls will appear to you like a death. It is in a way, because your present identity will be lost. Whosoever you are, that identity will be lost. You will be that no more. Suddenly something else…. It was always hidden within you, but you were not aware. Suddenly a discontinuity. The old is no more there, and something utterly new has entered. It is not continuous with your past. That’s why we call it a death. It is not continuous: a gap exists.
And if you look backwards, you will not feel that whatsoever existed before this resurrection was real. No, it will appear as if you saw it in a dream; or it will appear as if you read it somewhere in a fiction; or, as if somebody else related his own story and it was never yours – somebody else’s. The old completely disappears. That’s why we call it a death. An absolutely new phenomenon comes into existence. And remember the word `absolutely’. It is not a modified form of the old; it has no connection with the old. It is resurrection. But resurrection is possible only when you are capable of dying.
Sufism is a death and a resurrection. And I call it the religion.
- Osho, "Until You Die, #1"
Image courtesy : pilgrimsofemptiness.com
Sufi meansA seeker who is moving on the path of love
Sufi means 'a seeker who is moving on the path of love.' God cannot be known through knowledge; knowledge is utterly meaningless. God can only be known through love. The way to god goes through the heart. It needs only an innocent heart, and you have it! And it is beautiful that your heart is still like a small child... it is rare.
The head is carrying many burdens, but that is irrelevant. The head is full of knowledge but that is not going to create any trouble for you because your heart is still throbbing with great energy; it can easily dominate the head. Once you allow the heart it will become the master and the head will become the servant. It can become it this very moment.
Be glad that god is not very far away from you -- just by the corner -- and a small change, a very small change is needed. You have to shift your focus from the head to the heart, that's all. So feel the heart more and more, and do things that nourish the heart -- music, painting, poetry, sculpture, nature -- anything that nourishes the heart. And when sitting silently, move to the heart, be there. Desert the head as many times as possible during the day. The head is only a mechanism -- very useful, has to be used. It has great utility but it is not the master of the house. And the master of the house is not dead.
-Osho, “The Tongue-Tip Taste of Tao, #10”
Sufi meansOne who is pure in the heart
The purity of the spirit is the real poverty. The word 'sufi' comes from an Arabic word 'safa'. Safa means purity. Sufi means one who is pure in the heart.
And what is purity? Don't misunderstand me, purity has nothing to do with morality. Don't interpret it in a moralistic way. Purity has nothing to do with puritans. Purity simply means an uncontaminated state of mind, where only your consciousness is and nothing else. Nothing else really enters into your consciousness, but if you hanker to possess, that hankering contaminates you. Gold cannot enter into your consciousness. There is no way. How can you take gold into your being? There is no way. Money cannot enter into you r consciousness. But if you want to possess, that possessiveness can enter into your consciousness. Then you become impure. If you don't want to possess anything, you become fearless. Then even death is a beautiful experience to pass through.
-Osho, “The Art of Dying, #2, Q1“
Sufi meansAwareness in life
The Sufis say that if a man has no awareness nothing can be taught. So the first thing to be taught will be awareness. And awareness takes a long time because you have lived many lives in unawareness. It has gone very deep in your blood, it has entered into your very texture, into every cell of your body; every fibre of your psyche is full of sleep.
This sleep has to be broken. Once this sleep is broken then... then the disciple is ready to learn. It will depend on how aware you are. The Master can pour in only that much.
A small parable....
There was a tradesman in a small village in the East who sat on his knees in his little shop, and with his left hand he pulled a strand of wool from the bale which was above his head. He twirled the wool into a thicker strand and passed it to his right hand as it came before his body. The right hand wound the wool around a large spindle. This was a continuous motion on the part of the old man who, each time his right hand spindled the wool, inaudibly said, 'la illaha illa'llah.' There could be no uneven movement or the wool would break and he would have to tie a knot and begin again. The old man had to be present every moment or he would break the wool. This is awareness, this is JIKR, this is life. Sufi means awareness in life, awareness on a higher plane than that on which we normally live.
-Osho, “Sufis - The People of the Path, Vol 1, #3”
La Illaha Ill Allah- There is no god but God. -
LA ILLAHA ILL ALLAH - There is no god but God. This is the fundamental essence of the way of the Sufis. This is the seed. Out of this seed has grown the Bodhi Tree of Sufism. In this small proclamation, all that is valuable in all the religions is contained: God is and only God is.
This statement makes God synonymous with existence. God is the very isness of all that is. God is not separate from his creation. The creator is in his creation; there is no duality, there is no distance, so whatsoever you come across is God. The trees and the rivers and the mountains, all are manifestations of God. You and the people you love, and the people you hate, all are manifestations of God.
This small statement can transform your whole life. It can change the very gestalt of your vision. The moment one recognizes that all is one, love arises on its own accord. And love is Sufism.
Sufism is not concerned with knowledge. Its whole concern is love, intense, passionate love: how to fall in love with the whole, how to be in tune with the whole, how to bridge the distance between the creation and the creator.
The so-called, organized religions of the world teach a kind of duality that the creator is separate from the creation, that the creator is higher than the creation, that there is something wrong with creation, it has to be renounced. Sufis don't renounce, they rejoice. And that's what I am teaching you here: Rejoice!
My sannyas is a way of rejoicing, not a way of renunciation.
Rumi has said:
If you are not one with the Beloved, Seek! And if you are in Union, Rejoice!
This assembly is a Sufi assembly. You are my Sufis, the Sufis of the new age. I am introducing you to the world of love. I am initiating you into the ways of love.
Sufis talk about two kinds of love. One they call muhabbah; it means the ordinary love, lukewarm, momentary, partial. One moment it is there, another moment it is gone. It has no depth, no intensity.
You call it passion, but it is not passionate. It is not such a flame which can burn you. You don't become aflame with it; it remains something under your control. You don't become possessed by it, you don't lose yourself in it. You remain in control.
The other kind of love, the real love?. the authentic love, Sufis call it ishq; ishq means love with total intensity. One is lost in it, one is possessed by it. One goes mad in it.
I have heard, the great Sufi Master Ruzbihan was once on the roof of his khaniqah while in a state of WAJD....
The khaniqah is the place where Sufis meet; it is a temple of love. It is a temple of madness, of utter rejoicing. This is a khaniqah. No other god than love is worshiped, no other prayer than love is preached. In a khaniqah, only those who are becoming aflame with love are invited, who are on the verge of madness.
Ruzbihan was on the roof of his khaniqah while in a state of wajd. Wajd is a moment when you are not and God is, a moment of absolute harmony. A window opens, and you can see the whole sky, you are no more confined within the walls of your body and mind. For a moment, a lightning happens and all darkness disappears. Wajd is a momentary samadhi, a glimpse, a satori. It comes and goes. Slowly, slowly, it establishes itself.
But even to know God for a moment is of immense beauty and benediction. Even to know for a single moment that you are not separate from existence, that there is no ego, that all is one - La illaha ill Allah - even to know this just as a passing experience, just like a breeze that comes and is gone - by the time you become aware of it, it is no more there, but it has been there, it has refreshed you, rejuvenated, resurrected you...
Ruzbihan was on the roof of his khaniqah in a state of wajd - in a state of oneness with existence...
... It happened that a group of young people was passing by in the alley below, playing musical instruments and singing...
They were singing:
"O heart, in the neighborhood of the Beloved there is no wailing, nor are the roof, door, or windows of her house guarded.
If you are ready to lose your soul, get up and come now, for the field is empty. "
They were completely unaware of Ruzbihan. They were just singing. They were even unaware of what they were singing, what they were saying. It is a Sufi provocation; it is a Sufi song. The moment Ruzbihan heard it - "If you are ready to lose your soul, get up and come now, for the field is empty"
- and he was in a state of wajd, of unity, oneness, unio mystica - his ecstasy was such that he was not there in that ecstasy at all; when Ruzbihan heard this, something possessed him, something from the beyond, and he flung himself from the roof...
... whirling and turning in the air, to the ground below.
On witnessing this, the group of young people cast away their instruments, left their former ways, entered the khaniqah, and became Sufis.
What happened to that group of young people? For the first time, they saw ecstasy, wajd, love, madness for God. For the first time, they came across a man who could risk his very life. This is ishq.
Ishq means you are ready to lose your life for your love. Ishq means love has become a higher value than life itself. Hence the people who are in love are thought to be mad by people who have not known love, are thought to be blind by people who have not seen through the eyes of love.
The intellectual condemns the ways of love; he is afraid. Love is dangerous. To go through the heart is risky because the heart is non-calculative, illogical.
Just remember this man, this madman Ruzbihan, jumping from the roof of the khaniqah just because a few people were singing a song and they said, "If you are ready to lose your soul, get up and come now, for the field is empty" - and he jumped, without hesitating for a single moment. This is madness.
The calculative mind is going to condemn it. But he was not hurt. He was so drunk, he was not even aware of what was happening. Nothing was happening to him, because he was not there: as if God jumped through him. He was possessed by God, he was utterly drunk.
Seeing him coming from the roof, turning, whirling in the air... They had seen many dervishes, whirling dervishes, but not a man like this. And when he came onto the ground, he was so innocent, he was so silent, his joy was such, seeing him, just seeing him, was enough for them to renounce their old ways. They threw down their instruments, entered the khaniqah, and became Sufis.
That's how you have become Sufis with me. You have also jumped from your roofs. To become a sannyasin is a quantum leap: it is a non-calculated step. It is only for the mad ones. But God is only for the mad ones. Those who calculate remain part of the marketplace. Calculation keeps you in the world.
One needs to be in such love that one is ready to risk all. That love is called ishq. You have all known muhabbah, the so-called ordinary love, which is just an emotion, a sentiment, superficial. One day you are in love, another day you are in hate. One day you love the person and you are ready to die for the person, and another day you are ready to kill the same person. One moment you are so nice, so beautiful, another moment you are so nasty, so ugly to the same person. This is not ishq, ishq has depth. This is only circumference. This is just a mask; this is part of your personality.
Ishq, passionate love for God, is not of the personality. It is of the essence. It comes from your center; from the very ground of your being it arises and possesses you. It is not within your control; on the contrary, you are in its control. Yes, you are drunk and you are mad.
Sufis have found ways and methods of how to create ishq. That is the whole sufi alchemy: how to create ishq in you, how to create such passion that you can ride on the wave of it and reach to the ultimate.
It is said about Majnu... The story of Majnu and Laila is a sufi story, a great love story. No other love story can be compared with it. There are many in the world, almost every country has its own love stories, but nothing compared to Laila and Majnu because it has a sufi message in it. It is not just an ordinary story of muhabbah, it is the story of ishq.
It is said that Majnu decided one day that, seeing Laila, he had seen all that was worth seeing, so what was the use of keeping his eyes open anymore? He decided that whenever Laila would come he would open his eyes; otherwise he would remain blind because there was nothing else worth seeing.
For months Laila could not come - the parents were against, the society was against - and Majnu waited and waited under the tree where they used to meet, with closed eyes. Days passed, weeks and months passed, and he would not open his eyes.
And the story says God took compassion on him. He came to Majnu and said, "Poor Majnu, open your eyes. I am God himself. You have seen everything in the world, but you have not seen me.
Look who is standing before you. "
Majnu is reported to have said, "Get lost. I have decided only to see Laila; nothing else is worth seeing. You may be God, but I am not concerned. Just get lost, don't disturb me."
Shocked, God said, "What are you saying? I have never come to anyone on my own. Seekers and devotees pray and search and practice - then too it is very, very difficult to see me - and I have come on my own and you have not even asked for me. I am coming just as a gift, and you are rejecting?"
And Majnu said, "If you really want to be seen by me, come as Laila, because I cannot see anything else. Even if I open my eyes I cannot see anything else. I look at a tree, and Laila is there. I look at the stars, and Laila is there. Laila is in my heart and she has possessed my whole heart, and whatsoever I see I see through my heart. I am sorry, but there is no possibility, because there is no space left in my heart for anything else. I am sorry. Excuse me, but go away. Don't disturb me."
This is ishq. Even God... yes, even God can be renounced.
When you love, when you really love, there are no conditions. It is unconditional. You love for the sheer joy of it. And love is absolute - it knows no wavering, it knows no hesitation.
Sufism is a great experiment in human consciousness: how to transform human consciousness into ishq. It is alchemy.
And this is what I am doing here with you. You may be aware, you may not be aware of it, but this whole experiment is to create in you as much love energy as possible. Man can be transformed into pure love energy. Just as there is atomic energy discovered by physics, and a small atom can explode into tremendous power, each cell of your heart can explode into tremendous love. That love is called ishq.
Sufism is the path of love.
Remember that it is a path, it is not a dogma. Mohammedans have a particular word for dogma: they call it shariat. Dogma, doctrine, religion, morality, philosophy, theology, all are contained in shariat.
Sufism is not a shariat, it does not depend on books. Sufis are not the people of books. Sufism is a tariqat: a methodology, a technique, a science, a path, a way to truth, to haqiqat, to that which is.
Remember the difference between shariat and tariqat.
Theology thinks about God. That is the very meaning of "theology"; it consists of two words, theo and logy: logic about God, contemplation, thinking, philosophizing, speculation about God. Sufism does not think about God, because, Sufis say, how can you think about God? Thinking is utterly inadequate. You can think about the world, but you cannot think about God. You can only be in love with God, so it is not a theology, but it is a method. It is an experiment in your consciousness, an experiment to transform it from gross energy into subtle energy, from material energy into divine energy.
Tariqat is the way by which the Sufi comes into harmony with the whole.
And two things are basic requirements to follow this method. One is FAQR :FAQR means spiritual poverty, simplicity, egolessness. When Jesus says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit," he is exactly talking about faqr. It does not mean poverty, it means spiritual poverty. Even a king can be spiritually poor, and even a beggar may not be. If the beggar is egoistic he is not spiritually poor, and if the king is egoless he is spiritually poor. Spiritually poor means there is nobody inside, utter emptiness, a silence prevails. This poverty has nothing to do with outer poverty. Outer poverty can be easily imposed; that is not going to help. An inner poverty is needed.
If you follow faqr, if you slowly, slowly dissolve the idea of separation from existence, the ultimate result is fana. Fana means a state of non-being, what Buddha calls nirvana. You simply disappear, but your disappearance is the appearance of God. If you are in the state of fana, then suddenly, out of the blue, another state is born, that is called baka. Baka, means being. Sufism is the bridge between fana and baka.
First you have to be dissolved as an ego, then you are born as God. The dewdrop has to disappear as a dewdrop, into the ocean; this is fana. But the moment the dewdrop falls into the ocean, it becomes the ocean; that is baka.
Non-being is the way to being, and love is the most adequate method to disappear.
That's why millions of people have decided not to love. If you decide in favor of the ego you will have to remain loveless. Love and ego cannot go together. Knowledge and ego go together perfectly well, but love and ego cannot go together, not at all. They cannot keep company. They are like darkness and light: if light is there darkness cannot be. Darkness can only be if light is not there. If love is not there the ego can be; if love is there the ego cannot be. And vice versa, if ego is dropped, love arrives from all the directions. It simply starts pouring in you from everywhere.
Just as nature abhors a vacuum, God also abhors a vacuum. You become a vacuum, and God rushes into you.
The first thing is faqr, and the second thing is zikr. Faqr means spiritual poverty, egolessness, simplicity, dissolving the idea of "I". And zikr means remembrance. Disappear as a person, then presence is left; in that presence, remember God, let God resound in you - La illaha ill Allah. Let this remembrance arise in your nothingness. In that purity of non-being let there be only one music heard - La illaha ill Allah. Repeat it, sway with it, dance with it, twirl, turn, whirl, and let this music fill you.
Each cell of your body should start repeating La illaha ill Allah, La illaha ill Allah, La illaha ill Allah....
And you will be surprised, it creates a kind of drunkenness. The very sound of this mantra is such, it is one of the most potential mantras ever invented by man, discovered by man. Just repeating it, and you will find that something inside you is becoming psychedelic, something in you is changing.
You are becoming light, you are becoming love, you are becoming divine. And not only that you will feel it, even others will feel it.
-Osho, "The Secret, #1"
- Sufi Whirling with Zahira -
The Sufi is not an escapist. He is utterly against escapism
The Sufi is not an escapist, that is not his climate. He is utterly against escapism. He believes in celebrating the world, celebrating existence, celebrating life. It is the very fundamental of Sufism that the creator can be reached only through the creation. You need not renounce his creation to get to him; in fact if you renounce his creation you will never get to him. Renouncing his creation, indirectly you have renounced the creator himself.
But renunciation still happens. It is not that the Sufi renounces the world, but that he attains to God – and the moment God is attained, the world disappears. Then there is nothing to renounce: then only God is. The Sufi does not escape from the world, but a moment comes when the world disappears and dissolves. The Sufi lives in the world and he finds that there is no world, only God is.
The Sufi is not an ascetic. He does not believe in inflicting pain on himself, he is not pathological. The Sufi lives life in an utterly normal way, with no perversions, with no obsessions. Although, slowly slowly, the quality of his life goes on changing, it is not that he tries to change it. His whole effort consists in remembering God, not in changing himself.
Let it sink deep in you; if you miss this point you will miss the whole point of Sufism. The Sufi concentrates on only one thing, remembrance of God – ZIKR. As that remembrance deepens, his obsession with the world lessens. As he comes closer and closer to the ultimate reality, the ordinary reality is no longer attractive; it starts receding back. Because when you find the real gold, how can you go on carrying the unreal gold? When you have found the real diamonds you will automatically drop the stones, colored stones, that you have been carrying all along.
The escapist says, ”Renounce your colored stones so that you can get to the real diamonds.” The Sufi says just the contrary: he says, ”Get to the real diamonds, and that which is not real will drop out of your life of its own accord.”
To know the real is enough, the unreal is renounced in that very knowing. And because the unreal is renounced in that very knowing, it leaves no scars and wounds on you. The ascetic suffers from great wounds. He is not ripe yet, otherwise the fruit would have fallen without leaving any scar on the body of the tree. If the fruit is unripe and you pluck it, it hurts the tree, it hurts the fruit; both will remain wounded.
Have you not seen the beauty of a ripe fruit fallen of its own accord? Silently, spontaneously. The tree may not even become aware that the fruit has disappeared, the fruit may not become aware that the tree is no more there. Sufism is the simplest way possible. The Sufi lives a simple life. But the simplicity is not cultivated, because a cultivated simplicity is no longer simplicity; it is already complex. When you cultivate something, there is motivation, there is desire, there is longing; you are hankering for something.
By cultivating something, you are trying to become something. Becoming is desire. And how can desire be simple? So cultivation is never simple. A practiced sannyas, a practiced simplicity, can never have beauty. In the first place it is not simplicity at all. You can go and see so many saints in this country, or in other countries: their simplicity is cultivated, calculated, motivated. They are desirous of God, they are greedy for God, hence they are ready to pay the price.
The Sufi says: God is available, it is already available. All that you need is an uncomplicated mind, all that you need is a state of no-motivation. All that you need is to fall into the silence of this moment, no trying to achieve something tomorrow. And what is your afterlife? It is the prolonged shadow of the tomorrow. So those who are thinking to attain to heaven or to nirvana after death are very greedy people. They are not religious at all.
Sufism does not believe in any fairy-tales of the other world, of heaven and hell. And it is not that heaven does not exist, but that is not the concern of the Sufi. The Sufi lives totally in the moment. His simplicity comes out of his understanding, not out of cultivation; he does not practice it. Seeing life, he becomes aware of the austerity of a roseflower, how simple it is, and the beauty of its austerity. He becomes austere like a roseflower: it is not poor, the roseflower is simple and rich. What more richness can there be? The roseflower is simple and in utter luxury – what more luxury can there be?
The Sufi lives in the moment, blooms in the moment like a roseflower, simple yet rich. The poverty is not imposed; he is poor in spirit. And what does it mean to be poor in spirit? It simply means there is no ego, that’s all; not that he is attached to poverty. Beware of that. There are people who are attached to wealth and there are people who are attached to poverty. But it is the same attachment.
I have heard: The story is told of a dervish who went to visit a great Sufi master. Seeing his affluence, the dervish thought to himself, ”How can Sufism and such prosperity go hand in hand?” After staying a few days with the master, he decided to leave. The master said, ”Let me accompany you on your journey!”
After they had gone a short distance, the dervish noticed that he had forgotten his KASHKUL, the begging-bowl. So he asked the master for permission to return and get it. The master replied, ”I departed from all my possessions, but you can’t even leave behind your begging-bowl. Thus, we must part company from here.”
The Sufi is not attached to wealth or to poverty; he is simply not attached to anything. And when you are not attached to anything, you need not renounce. Renunciation is the other side of attachment. Those who understand the foolishness of attachment don’t renounce. They live in the world but yet they are not of the world. To willfully insist upon being in poverty is still an attachment: remember it. And to willfully insist upon ANYTHING is again an ego trip.
The Sufi lives simply, the Sufi lives without any will of his own. If it happens to be a palace, he is happy; if it happens to be a hut, he is happy. If it happens to be that he is a king, it is okay; if it happens to be that he is a beggar, that too is perfectly okay. He has no preference. He simply lives in the moment, whatsoever God makes available to him. He does not change anything. This has to be understood, because for centuries religions have been teaching you renunciation. For centuries religions have lived with a great inclination towards escapism.
The Sufi has a totally different approach, far healthier, far more whole, far more human, far more natural. Because whenever you escape from something it is out of fear, and out of fear there is never any transformation. When something drops of its own accord – not that you drop it, but simply that it has become nonessential, unimportant – then there is freedom. Freedom is never out of fear, freedom is out of great awareness. The Sufi lives in the world, mindful of God. He lives in the world, but he remembers God. He moves in the marketplace, but his heart is throbbing with a certain remembrance. The ZIKR continues. He does not become forgetful in the world; that is his work.
Escape or no escape, if you are forgetful you will miss God anywhere you are, in e marketplace or in the monastery. If you are not forgetful, if you are mindful, alert and aware, then God is everywhere – as much here as anywhere else, as much now as then. There is no question of going anywhere; one can simply relax here and fall into a kind of watchful silence. And then life is simple and uncluttered. Yes, that is what simplicity is: not a cultivated character but a life which is uncluttered by the nonessential, by the unimportant, by the mundane, by the trivial.
And again let me repeat that the Sufi does not believe in any fairy-tales, so there is no question of being motivated. He does not believe in the tomorrows. All that he knows of time is now, all that he knows of space is here. These sounds of the birds are divine for him. There is no other God separate from this existence. The dancer is in the dance, so he has no idea of a personal God sitting somewhere above the clouds. His God is an impersonal presence.
Feel it now, this very moment. The presence is here, as it is everywhere else. All that is needed is your falling into a kind of attunement, your falling inwards into a kind of at-one-ment. Then the cawing of the crows and the cuckoo calling from far away... and all is silent. In that silence you start becoming aware of the impersonal presence that surrounds you.
A young bank clerk stole five thousand pounds from the bank and was unable to reimburse it when caught. In despair he went up to the cliff with the intention of committing suicide. As he was about to jump he was tapped on his left shoulder, and upon turning around he spied an especially ugly lady who claimed to be his fairy godmother, and granted him three wishes.
His first wish was to replace the five thousand pounds, which was granted. His second wish was to be the owner of a large mansion, and his third, the owner of a Rolls Royce. All these were granted to him by his fairy godmother.
Feeling very pleased with himself, he turned back to make his way home to get the five thousand pounds, the mansion and the Rolls Royce. His fairy godmother stopped him and requested that he, too, grant her a single wish. He was only too happy to oblige, whereupon she asked him to make love to her.
He was repelled by her, but obliged because of the wishes she had granted him. He made love to her in a great hurry and pulled his trousers up and was about to leave when she stopped him yet again.
This time she asked, ”How old are you, young man?”
His reply was, ”I am thirty-five years of age – but why do you ask?”
She said, ’You still believe in fairy godmothers?”
The person who believes in a personal God is still immature. There is nothing like that. That personal God is nothing but your idea of a father, projected and magnified. You are childish. When you pray, if you think you are praying to a personal God you are simply being stupid. There is nobody listening to your prayer. And yet God is. But God is not a person, God is an impersonal presence. God is this whole, the totality of all that is. Hence prayer can only be a silence. You cannot address God – prayer can only be an utter silence.
If you are silent now, it is a prayerful moment. This is what prayer is all about. When everything stops: no thought moves in your head, your breathing slows down, a moment comes when there is almost no breath. In that state of silence you are connected, you are plugged into reality. You are more separate; you are one. That oneness is prayer.
- Osho, "Unio Mystica, Vol 1, #7"
The way of the Sufi is the way of dance, song, celebration.
Question : Why do the sufis dance?
Yes, it is a pertinent question. Buddhists only sit silently. Why do Sufis dance? Zen people only meditate, sitting silently, not doing a thing, doing nothing — just sitting silently? spring comes, and the grass grows by itself. But Sufis dance.
These are the two different paths, because there are two types of energy in the world: the positive and the negative, male and female, yin and yang. Zen people use the negative energy; they use the passive path. Sufis use the positive energy; they use the active path. They are very vibrant people. Their meditation is not of passivity; their meditation is that of ecstasy.
Both are ways you can reach to the same goal, because the goal is exactly in the middle. The positive is one extreme, the negative the other extreme. Between the positive and the negative there is a middle point, exactly in the middle, from where transformation happens — one transcends the world and everything — from where one enters into God and becomes God.
If you feel that you are on the negative pole already, a passive type, then follow Zen and start moving deeply in your passivity, and one day you will reach the middle. Or if you feel that you are an active person, full of energy, youth, positivity, that sitting silently is very difficult, unnecessarily a torture, then dance, follow the Sufis’ way.
And I go on speaking on Zen and Sufism again and again so that all kinds of people are helped here. You have to choose. You have to watch yourself, your energy, and then you choose. Both are valid ways, both lead to the same goal.
Rumi says, “Hey I Drink this fine fiery wine, these needles of fire, and fall so drunk that you will not wake on the Day of Resurrection.”
The way of the Sufi is the way of the drunkard, the dancer, who becomes almost intoxicated in his dancing, who is transported through his dance. He is inebriated; his dance is psychedelic.
It is said that Mohammed once said to Ali, “You are of me, and I am of you. ” When he heard this, Ali became ecstatic and involuntarily started dancing. What else can you do, when a man like Mohammed says to you, “You are of me, and I am of you”? How to receive this? Ali did well.
And remember, it is not anything that he did. It was involuntary. He started dancing; out of ecstasy the dance started flowing.
Another time, Mohammed said to Jafar, “You are like me in both looks and character. ” Here again, in wajd, Jafar started dancing. What else to do? When Mohammed must have looked into the eyes of Jafar, wajd, samadhi, was created, the transfer beyond the scriptures happened. How to receive this? How not to dance? It would have been impossible not to dance. Jafar danced.
It is said, “The enrapturing of the Sufi by God, or rather the ‘pull’ of God, keeps the Sufi continually in spiritual, inner dance and movement….” It is not that the Sufi dances — God keeps dancing in him. What can he do?”
Whenever a wave of such divine rapture strikes the heart of the Sufi, it creates great waves in the lake of his inner being….” He is just a receptacle. To say that the Sufi is dancing is not right. The Sufi is being danced. He cannot help it, he is helpless. Something is pouring into him and it is too much; it starts overflowing in his dancing and singing.
“This, in turn, causes his body to move. Upon seeing such movement non-Sufis have often supposed that the Sufi is dancing. In reality, however, it is the waves of the ocean of God that are tossing and turning the anchorless vessel that is the heart of the Sufi.”
On the surface, from the outside, the Sufi seems to be dancing. But he is not dancing, because there is no dancer. It is pure dance. God has taken possession of him. The Sufi is drunk, intoxicated. His state is that of non-being. He is anchorless. The waves of the ocean toss and turn. First his inner being is stirred, great joy arises there; and then it starts spreading towards his body.
That’s what you are doing with Aneeta; that’s what is happening to Aneeta. You are participating in something immensely beautiful in Sufi dancing. Remember it: forget the dancer and be the dance.
The way of the Sufi is the way of dance, song, celebration.
- Osho, “The Secret, #14, Q7”
The Path of Prayer, of Love
There are two types of people. Just as physically there are men and there are women, psychologically the same distinction also, the same division exists. But a man may be physically a man and may not be psychologically a man; he may have a feminine psyche. Hence things become complicated. A woman may have a masculine psyche. There is no necessity that the body should decide the psyche.
The woman, the feminine quality I call the moon type, and the masculine quality I call the sun type. Their paths are bound to be different. Of course the goal is the same; they reach the same peak but they follow different paths.
The feminine psyche follows the path of love. Sufism is basically a feminine approach towards existence. The masculine spirit will not find any appeal in Sufism, in the path of love; it will be more attracted to Zen, the path of meditation. The path of love is more of feelings, emotion; it is greener. The path of meditation has the beauty of a desert, the silence, the infinity of a desert.
And if you have been in the desert at night, there is nothing more beautiful than that: the total silence -- no birds, no animals, no trees, no people, and the stars seem so close that you can touch them, and the air is so pure, so unpolluted, so transparent. The path of meditation is the path of the desert. It is not an accident that many meditators have moved to the deserts, for the simple reason that it corresponds to their inner work.....
-Osho, Dance Til the Stars Come Down From the Rafters, #4
♦
The path of prayer does not analyse; it does not try to be aware or alert. On the contrary, the path of prayer dissolves itself completely into the prayer. You should not witness, you should not be a watcher; you should be drunk like a drunkard and lost, completely lost.
On the path of prayer, love is the goal. You should be loving; you should be so full of love that your ego dissolves into your love, melts into your love. On the path of prayer, God is a necessary hypothesis. I call it a hypothesis because it is a need on the path of prayer but it is not a need on the path of meditation.
On the path of meditation no God is needed, hence the influence and the appeal of Zen in the West. God has become almost incomprehensible. The very word 'God' looks dirty. The moment you say 'God' you put people off. Hence the appeal of Zen in the West. Christianity is dying because that hypothesis has been used too much, has been exploited too much. The other, just the opposite, is needed.
On the path of prayer you are to be drunk; on the path of meditation you have to be alert. In both the ways the ego disappears. If you are fully alert there is no ego because in full awareness you become so transparent that you don't create any shadow. If you are fully drunk, in deep love with God, again you disappear -- because in LOVE you cannot be. The ultimate is the same: the ego disappears. And when the ego is not there you come to know what truth is.
-Osho, “Dang Dang Doko Dang, #1”
♦
On the path of love, many things happen of their own accord. It is not the path of effort. The path of love is the path of surrender. You don't do much -- rather, on the contrary, you simply allow yourself to be available for things to happen. You are in a receptive passivity.
The path of effort is to be active, to be searching, to be seeking. Some way or other ego is involved in it -- it is an ego trip. On the path of love one surrenders. One is not even to search or seek. One waits... one is patient, and whenever the time is ripe, things start happening. Love is trust that it is going to happen if one can wait enough.
On the path of love many things grow. Prayer grows... without any effort. The lover comes to know about prayer not through any scripture, not from the church. Those prayers that come from the scriptures and the church are going to be pseudo, false, because they have not grown out of your heart. They are plastic. You have purchased them in the market. They are not real flowers. That is not the way of growing real flowers. One has to become the soil. Roses come but one has to become the manure. One has to die for those roses to come. On the path of love, prayer grows. Suddenly one day you find that the rose is blooming, it has bloomed, and you are full of the fragrance. And that fragrance is always new. It is not the prayer that Jesus did or Krishna did. It will be your prayer -- it will come out of your being; it will have your colour, your form, it will have your signature on it. It will be authentic.
On the path of love celebration grows of its own accord, and dancing and singing, and life is no more a struggle but a let-go. And there are things which happen only when you are in a let-go. All that is great happens only when you are in a let-go. If you are in an effort to conquer, you will conquer only small things.
-Osho, “Don't Look Before You Leap, #27”
♦
Become so receptive, become a womb, become feminine. The path of love is the path of the feminine. Whosoever follows it, man or woman, has to become feminine. The path of love is not aggressive, the path of love is not of active search and seeking; the path of love is a passive receptivity. One waits like a woman waits for the lover. One is a womb ready to become pregnant with God.
Remember this metaphor of the womb. On the path of love you have to become a womb - utterly silent and passive, not doing anything, just being.
One who looks is not looking. In looking there is no one - looking is a state of emptiness, as listening is. Truly listening, we are nothing; truly looking, we are nothing. It is not a matter of doing, but of
being. 'The way to do is to be' says Lao Tzu. The way to do is to be - no other doing is needed on the path of love. Just be; calm and collected, just be. Wait. Let your eyes be full of tears, let your heart be full of passion - but wait. Be aflame - but wait. There is no need to go anywhere, there is nothing to be done - just being. The way to do is to be.
But this frightens people; emptiness frightens people.
I have heard, Pascal confessed: 'The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me.'
That's why people are so full of unnecessary things. They go on clinging to rubbish. 'The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me.' Without, there are infinite spaces, utterly silent. And within you there are infinite spaces, utterly silent. And between these two silences you go on creating noise. That noise keeps you separate from God.
Let that noise disappear, and these two silences become one. In that becoming one, is the meeting with the Beloved. Those who know will not be afraid, those who have tasted a little bit will not be afraid.
Leonardo Dan Vinci said: 'Amongst the greatest things which are to be found among us, the Being of Nothingness is the greatest.'
Buddha said the same thing again and again: To be nothing is to be all. To be totally empty is to be totally full.
A great Zen artist, Hakusai, at the end of a long life, joyously exclaimed 'At last I do not know how to draw!' This is knowing how to draw - this is responding from innocence, from a state of not-knowing.
One starts living when one does not know how to live - as the grey seal in the blue wide way does not know how to swim, and the white gull, ignorant of how to fly, does not try nor worry whence and where and to what end it lives and flies and dies.
On the path of love, knowledge is not needed, but a state of innocence. Doing is not needed, practicing is not needed, but a state of loving. Eyes full of tears and the heart full of prayer - wordless prayer, silent prayer.
All that men strain and strive to become is at best as unnecessary as painting red roses red. At worst it is unnatural - striving to be spiritual, by whatever means, is putting legs on a snake. It is not needed at all, it is unnecessary. Don't try to put legs on a snake. You may think you are being very compassionate, but you will destroy the snake, you will kill the snake. The snake need not have any legs.
All that men strain and strive to become is at best as unnecessary as painting red roses red. At worst it is unnatural - striving to be spiritual, by whatever means, is putting legs on a snake. One cannot strive to be natural, for striving is unnatural. On the path of love there is no striving, no effort, no practicing of anything. No yoga postures, no religious rituals, but just an innocent heart unburdened of all knowledge, unburdened of all borrowed rituals. To see this is to cease to strive. Empty of every wish to be other than we are, we are already other than we were. All that the religions have reached after is already given in grace - if we will have the grace to see it.
Yes, it is already given in grace. Only one thing is needed, a grace to SEE it. On the path of love one simply relaxes and becomes graceful. A great dignity arises out of no-striving; a great calmness surrounds the bhakta, the devotee, the lover. The lover becomes utterly beautiful - something of the beyond starts filtering into him and through him.
All that the religions have reached after is already given in grace - if we will have the grace to see it. There is nothing to be done but to see that there is nothing to be done, and no one to do it. Yes, remember, the doing creates the illusion that you are a doer. Doing stopped, the doer automatically disappears. And when there is no doing and no doer you have arrived; you have arrived home.
To see this is emptiness. All that the religions do to be rid of the self is like shouting at an echo to stop. The ego need not be dropped - stop doing, and it disappears of its own accord. In love, the ego melts and disappears. Trying to drop the ego is stupid - the more you try to drop it, the more you will find it. It is like shouting at an echo to stop - the more you shout, the more you will be echoed. You will be in a vicious circle.
The path of love knows no striving, no doing, no practicing, no discipline, no methodology. It knows tears, it knows passion, it knows a silent awaiting. God comes to you, you need not go to Him. He has always been coming to you, He goes on knocking on your door. But you don't listen, you are so full of your inner noise. He is everywhere but you don't see - you are blind because of your beliefs.
Let these beliefs go and let this noise disappear and God will find you. And when God finds you there is great celebration.
-Osho, “The Revolution, #7” ♦
Prayer is the highest form of sex energy, higher than love. It is the fragrance; very subtle, all grossness gone. The Bhakta or the Sufi works on prayer. If, following prayer, love enters, it is allowed. There is no problem about it. Even if, following love, sex enters, it is allowed -- but the whole attention is focused on prayer. So if a Bhakta falls in love with somebody, it is a form of prayer. The other is divine, the other is a god or goddess. He makes love sacred. The Baul is just in the middle of the Tantrika and the Bhakta or Sufi. He is a bridge.
There are difficulties with the Tantrika. The difficulty is: it is very gross, and the possibility is that you may be lost in that grossness. It may overpower you. Sex is tremendous energy, wild energy, very stormy, and you are moving in an ocean. The ocean is in deep storm, and you have a very small boat, and it is very dangerous. It is very easy to enter on the path of Tantra, it is very difficult to come out of it. If a hundred enter, only one may survive -- because you are playing with wild energy. The energy is so great that you may be overpowered by it; the very possibility is there.
-Osho, “The Beloved, Vol 2, #2, Q2”
A Sufi need not be a Mohammedan.
"Once a learned Mohammedan came to me and asked, "You are not a Mohammedan, then why do you speak on Sufism?"I told him, "I am not a Mohammedan, obviously, but I am a Sufi all the same.
A Sufi need not be a Mohammedan. A Sufi can exist anywhere, in any form – because Sufism is the essential core of all religions. It has nothing to do with Islam in particular. Sufism can exist without Islam; Islam cannot exist without Sufism. Without Sufism, Islam is a corpse. Only with Sufism does it become alive.
Whenever a religion is alive it is because of Sufism. Sufism simply means a love affair with God, with the ultimate; a love affair with the whole. It means that one is ready to dissolve into the whole, that one is ready to invite the whole to come into one’s heart. It knows no formality. It is not confined by any dogma, doctrine, creed or church. Christ is a Sufi, so is Mohammed. Krishna is a Sufi, so is Buddha. This is the first thing I would like you to remember: that Sufism is the innermost core – as Zen is, as Hasidism is. These are only different names of the same ultimate relationship with God. [....]
Sufism is the art of removing the hindrance between you and you, between the self and the self, between the part and the whole.
Sufism is a special kind of magic, a rare kind of magic. It can be transferred only from person to person, not from a book. It cannot be transferred by scriptures. It is also just like Zen -- a transmission beyond words. The Sufis have a special word for it -- they call it silsila. What Hindus call parampara they call silsila. silsila means a transfer from one heart to another heart, from one person to another person It is a very, very personal religion.
- Osho, "Sufis - The People of the Path, Vol 1, #1"
In prayer you are not: in prayer God is.
Question 2 What is prayer?
Prayer is one of the indefinables, because prayer is the fragrance of love.
Even love is indefinable. Love is a flower, tangible, you can see it, you can touch it, you can smell it, you can feel it. You can close your eyes and you can touch the texture of the flower, the softness of it, you can see the beauty of it; it is visible. But prayer is the fragrance released to the winds, offered to the sky. It becomes even more indefinable because you cannot see it, you cannot touch it.
You can only have a very subtle relationship with it, not one of words, not one of philosophy, not one of theology—only the silence of your heart, the utter silence of your heart, can have a little glimpse of it, of what it is.
What goes on in the name of prayer is not prayer; it is desire disguised. You go to the temple or to the church and you pray to God; your God is part of your imagination. Your God is not true God; it is a Christian God, it is a Hindu God, it is a Mohammedan God. And how can God be Christian, Hindu or Mohammedan? It is a God that you have created, or your priests on behalf of you. It is a toy, it is not true.
Bowing down before a statue made by man, manufactured by man — and you think you are in prayer? You are simply being stupid, you are simply showing utter ignorance. This statue has been purchased in the marketplace, and God is not a commodity and God cannot be made. It is God who has made us—how can we make God? But we are worshipping, praying to man-made Gods.
And what are your prayers? They are also your desires. You want this, you want that; you are trying to use God as a means. You have been told certain prayers from your very childhood and you have crammed it all; you have been forced to cram it. It has become a habit, a mechanical routine; you go on repeating it but your heart is not in it. Your prayer is a corpse, it breathes no more.
Yes, when Jesus called God ‘Abba’ he meant it. When you call God ‘Father’ you don’t mean anything. And between ‘Abba’ and ‘Father’ there is a great difference. ‘Father’ is an institution, legal, social; ‘Abba’ is a heart-to-heart relationship. Jesus looked at existence as the source of our life.
A disciple asks Jesus, “What is prayer?” Jesus falls on his knees and starts praying. The disciple says, “I am asking what prayer is, I am not asking you to pray!” And Jesus says, “There is no other way. I can pray, you can participate. I invite you to be a part of my prayer. I cannot say what prayer is, but I can go into prayer – because prayer is a state of being, not something that you do.”
Leo Tolstoy has written a beautiful story:
Three men became very famous saints in Russia.
The highest priest of the country was very much disturbed—obviously, because people were not coming to him, people were going to those three saints, and he had not even heard their names. And how could they be saints?—Because in Christianity a saint is a saint only when the church recognizes him as a saint. The English word ‘saint’ comes from ‘sanction’; when the church sanctions somebody as a saint, then he is a saint. What nonsense! that a saint has to be certified by the church, by the organized religion, by the priests—as if it has nothing to do with inner growth but some outer recognition; as if it is a title given by a government, or a degree, an honorary degree, conferred by a university.
The high priest was certainly very angry. He took a boat because those three saints used to live on the far side of a lake. He went in the boat. Those three saints were sitting under a tree. They were very simple people, peasants, uneducated. They touched the feet of the highest priest, and the priest was very happy. He thought, “Now I will put them right—these are not very dangerous people. I was thinking they would be rebels or something.”
He asked them, “How did you become saints?”
They said, “We don’t know! We don’t know that we are saints either. People have started calling us saints and we go on trying to convince them that we are not, we are very simple people, but they don’t listen. The more we argue that we are not, the more they worship us! And we are not very good at arguing either.”
The priest was very happy. He said, “What is your prayer? Do you know how to pray?”
They looked at each other. The first said to the second, “You say.” The second said to the third, “You say, please.”
The priest said, “Say what your prayer is! Are you saying Our Lord’s Prayer or not?”
They said, “To be frank with you, we don’t know any prayer. We have invented a prayer of our own and we are very embarrassed—how to say it? But if you ask we have to say it. We have heard that God is a trinity: the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. We are three and he is also three, so we have made a small prayer of our own: ‘You are three, we are three: Have mercy on us!’ ”
The priest said, “What nonsense! Is this prayer? You fools, I will teach you the right prayer.” And he recited The Lord’s Prayer.
And those three poor people said, “Please repeat it once more, because we are uneducated, we may forget.”
He repeated it and they asked, “Once more—we are three, repeat it at least three times.”
So he repeated it again, and then very happy, satisfied, he went back in his boat.
Just in the middle of the lake he was surprised, his boatman was surprised: those three poor people were coming running on the water! And they said, “Wait! Please one more time—we have forgotten the prayer!”
Now it was the turn of the priest to touch their feet, and he said, “Forget what I have said to you. Your prayer has been heard, my prayer has not been heard yet. You continue as you are continuing. I was utterly wrong to say anything to you. Forgive me!”
Prayer is a state of simplicity. It is not of words but of silence.
Martin Buber, the great Jewish philosopher, has said that prayer is an I/thou relationship.
It is not. He does not know anything about prayer. An I/thou relationship? In prayer there is no I and in prayer there is no thou. A prayer is not a dialogue between I and thou; a prayer is a merger. The I disappears into the thou, the thou disappears into the I. There is nobody to say anything and there is nobody to say anything to.
The river disappearing into the ocean is prayer. The dewdrop slipping from the lotus leaf into the lake is prayer. Seeing the early morning sun and you are silent, and something starts rising in you too—that is prayer. A bird on the wing, and you are on the wing; you forget that you are separate—that is prayer. Wherever separation disappears, prayer appears. When you become one with the whole of existence, that is prayer.
Ego is a state of no-prayer: egolessness is a state of prayer. It is not a dialogue, it is not even a monologue. It has nothing to do with words; it is wordless silence. It is an open, silent sky; with no clouds, no thoughts. In prayer you are not Hindu or Christian or Mohammedan. In prayer you are not: in prayer God is.
-Osho, “Be Still and Know, #4, Q2”
How To Pray
Question 1 How should i pray? i don't know how to properly express this love that i feel into prayer.
PRAYER is not a technique, it is not a ritual, it is not a formality. There is no pattern to it. It is a spontaneous outpouring of the heart, so don't ask how, because there is no how and there cannot be any how to it. Whatsoever happens in the moment is right.
If tears come, good. If you sing, good. If you dance, good. If nothing comes and you simply remain silent, good. Because prayer is not in the expression; it is not in the container, it is in the content. Sometimes silence is prayerful, sometimes singing is prayerful. It depends on you, it depends on the heart. So if I say sing, and you sing because I have told you to sing, then the prayer is false from the very beginning. Listen to your heart, feel your moment, and let it be. And whatsoever happens is good.
Sometimes nothing will happen, but that is what is happening. You allow it, you don't impose your will on it. When you ask how, you are trying to impose your will, you are trying to plan. That's how prayer has been missed. That's how all the churches and religions have become rituals. They have a set prayer, a set form: the authorized version, the approved. But how can anybody approve prayer? How can anybody give you an authorized version?
Prayer has to arise in you, it has to flower in you. And each moment has its own prayer, and each mood has its own prayer. Nobody knows what is going to happen to your innermost world tomorrow morning. How can it be fixed? A fixed prayer is a false prayer: this much can certainly be said. A ritualized prayer is no longer prayer: this can be said in absolute terms. An unritualized, spontaneous gesture -- that's what prayer is.
Sometimes you may feel very sad, because sadness also belongs to God. Sadness is also divine. There is no necessity to always be happy. Then sadness is your prayer. Then let your heart cry and let your eyes pour down tears. Then let sadness be offered to God. Whatsoever is there in your heart, let it be offered to the Divine Feet -- joy or sadness, sometimes even anger.
Sometimes one is angry with God. If you cannot be angry with God, you have not yet known love. Sometimes one is really in a deep rage. Then let anger be your prayer. Fight with God -- He is yours, you are His, and love knows no formality. Love can survive all fights. If it cannot survive a fight, then it is not love. So sometimes you don't feel like praying; then let that be your prayer. You say to God, "Wait! I'm not in the mood, and the way you are doing things, it is not even worth praying." But let it be a spontaneous pouring of your heart.
Never be inauthentic with God because that is the way of not being with Him. If you are insincere with God -- deep down you are complaining, and on the surface praying? -- then God will see the complaint, not the prayer. You have been false. He can look directly into your heart. Whom are you trying to deceive? The smile on your face is not going to deceive God; your truth will be known to Him. He can only know your truth; lies don't exist for Him. So let the truth be there. You simply present your truth to Him and say that today you are angry, you are angry with His world, you are angry with Him, you are angry with your life: "I hate it! And I cannot pray, so you will have to remain without my prayer today. I suffer much; now you suffer."
Talk to Him as one talks to one's lover, one's friend, one's mother. Talk to Him as one talks to a small child.
I was staying with a family, and the mother ordered the small child to pray. He was very interested, and he was not ready to go to sleep, and he wanted to be with me a little longer. But the family was very disciplinarian, so they said, "Now it is nine o'clock. You go and sleep, and don't forget your prayer." He was angry; I could see it. He went into his room. I followed just to listen to what he was going to pray. In the darkness I heard him say, "God, make bad people good and good people nice." He knows his mother is good, his father is good, but not nice.
I have heard about another child. He was staying in a guest house with the family. The first night he prayed. He always used to sleep with a small light on, but there was no light and the electricity had gone. Suddenly, as he prayed the electricity disappeared. He was just getting into his bed, and he told his mother, "Let me get up again and let me pray again more carefully, because the night is going to be dark." First he had just prayed by the way, but now the night was going to be dark and there was no light and he was more afraid. He said, "Let me pray again. Let me get out, and let me pray more carefully, because now there is more danger."
Listen to children's prayer and become a child.
All the religions say that God is Father. In fact, the emphasis should be that man is the child. That is the real meaning when we call God 'the Father'. But we have forgotten; God is the Father but we are not His children. Forget whether He is Father or not. You just be a child -- spontaneous, true, authentic. Don't ask me and don't ask anybody how to pray. Let the moment decide, let the moment be decisive, and the truth of the moment should be your prayer.
That's my answer: the truth of the moment, whatsoever it is, unconditionally, should be your prayer. And once you allow the truth of the moment to possess you, you will start growing, and you will know tremendous beauties of prayer. You have entered on the path. But if you simply go on repeating a certain prayer, a technique, then you will miss. You will never enter on the path, you will just remain outside.
-Osho, “The Beloved, Vol 2, #6, Q1
Osho on Sufism
The word 'sufi' comes from an Arabic word 'safa'. Safa means purity. Sufi means one who is pure in the heart.
- Osho, "The Art of Dying, #2"
Sufi is not different from Bhakta. Sufi is the Bhakta on the Mohammedan path; Bhakta is the Sufi on the Hindu path. There is no difference between a Bhakta and a Sufi, so we will not discuss that The difference is only of terminology. The Sufis use the Mohammedan terminology, the Bhakta uses the Hindu terminology. The difference is not of any importance; it is just language.
- Osho, "The Beloved, Vol 2, #2"
Curiosity is not enough. You have to be ready. Sufis say that a master accepts you not because of your inquiry, he accepts you because of your preparation -- and that is a totally different thing.
- Osho, "Just Like That, #8"
Sufis are very careful. It is not easy to find a Sufi master; he may take months or sometimes years to find -- and perhaps the master is just living in front of your house. The Sufis wait for the right moment.
- Osho, "Beyond Enlightenment, #30"
Nobody can come to the Sufi master unless somebody from his company introduces him, unless somebody takes the responsibility that the person is ready, somebody brings him, introduces him: "He is ready. He needs your grace."
- Osho, "Beyond Enlightenment, #30"
The Sufi is rebellious because the Sufi has seen it. And naturally he will always find it difficult to explain it to people. That's why Sufis don't believe in explanations. If you go to a Sufi he starts giving you methods, not doctrines. That's why they are called the people of the path. They give you a method. They say, heart, opens your being, you will know. ' They will not give you a single doctrine, a single principle -- they have none. They have only methodology. It is very scientific. They give you the taste. It is hard, arduous work.
- Osho, "Sufis: The People of the Path, Vol 1, #2"
The Sufis were the true Mohammedans -- but Al-Hillaj Mansoor was murdered, and Sarmad was killed. Then Sufis had to go underground; there was no other way. And "going underground" can be understood to mean that they started behaving normally. With the society they will behave exactly the way the society expects from everybody. If you want to see a Sufi mystic, it is very difficult -- and it may be that he is just sitting in front of you. He may be a shoemaker, or he may be a carpenter; he may be a potter -- he may be anybody ordinary. You may have passed the man many times. You may have enquired in the whole village, "I have heard there is a Sufi mystic in this village" -- but even the village people don't know who the Sufi mystic is. They will say, "We don't know any Sufi here."
- Osho, "The New Dawn, #7"
Sufism is an effort to delude you of all your belief systems, of all words. That's why in Sufism the Master is not a teacher. The Master is more like an artisan, an artist, a painter, a carpenter maybe, a weaver. 1he Master is more like one who knows a certain skill which cannot be taught through words, which can only be taught through experience. So in Sufism there is no teacher. There are Masters but no teachers. And in Sufism the disciple is not a student, the disciple is an apprentice.
- Osho, "Sufis: The People of the Path, Vol 1, #15"
A Sufi Master has no teaching, he is his teaching. A Sufi Master does not philosophise about reality, he exposes his heart to the disciple. Even if he sometimes uses words, those words are only indicators -- just like arrows being used on milestones -- just indicators that you have to go on and on. As the disciple becomes more and more attuned with the Master then less and less words are needed. Then the presence of the master is enough.
- Osho, "Sufis: The People of the Path, Vol 1, #15"
A real Sufi has such presence that he does not ask for attention. The unreal Sufi can be immediately judged if he asks for attention.
- Osho, "The Perfect Master, Vol 2, #3"
Sufism is not a doctrine, hence it is not intellectual. It is existential. It is total. Intellect is only a tiny part. But somehow this calamity has happened, that the intellect has become dictatorial, that it has usurped all the power that you have, that it has become totalitarian, that it has become the master. Sufis say the intellect is a great servant, a good servant, very useful, but a bad master. It can't be the master.
- Osho, "The Perfect Master, Vol 2, #3"
Sufis say that your prayers should be in the middle of the night, when even your household people are fast asleep. Nobody should know that you pray. Your prayer will be just a whisper between you and the unknown; you should not be an exhibitionist.
- Osho, "The New Dawn, #7"
A Sufi is just the opposite of a philosopher. A Sufi is one who is not concerned with words at all. A Sufi is one who is not interested in scriptures at all. A Sufi is one who is interested in going into existence itself. He does not want to bother about the word "beauty", he wants to experience beauty itself. He is not concerned about the word "water", he is thirsty and he wants to drink water. His interest is in drinking, his interest is existential.
- Osho, "The Secret, #7"
Sufis talk about love, of paradise, of the garden of paradise. They think of God as the Beloved. They talk about wine; wine is their symbol. They talk about drunkenness; they are drunkards, drunkards of the divine. They abandon themselves in dance and song. They feast, they celebrate. That seems absolutely logical. Enough of the desert -- they have to balance it by an inner garden.
- Osho, "The Perfect Master, Vol 1, #3"
On the surface, from the outside, the Sufi seems to be dancing. But he is not dancing, because there is no dancer. It is pure dance. God has taken possession of him. The Sufi is drunk, intoxicated. His state is that of non-being. He is anchorless. The waves of the ocean toss and turn. First his inner being is stirred, great joy arises there; and then it starts spreading towards his body.
- Osho, "The Secret, #14"
Once you understand the art of nonidentification, you have learned all that Sufis can teach you. Gurdjieff introduced Sufi essentials into the West. He was the man who brought to the West the secrets of the Sufis. His whole teaching depends on one word, and that is nonidentification. Don't get identified with anything because consciousness is always transcendental. It cannot be reduced to anything.
- Osho, "Just Like That, #9"
Sufis work with their hands -- carpetmaking, shoemaking, carpentry, or anything whatsoever, but with their hands. Hand and head are the two poles, and if your energy is moving through the hands, the head by and by subsides. And if for years, twelve years -- such a long time! -- you are simply working with the hands, you completely forget the head. There is no need of it. The head becomes nonfunctioning, and that is what is needed for a disciple: the head must be in a nonfunctioning state. Thinking should stop. The mind should become like a no-mind. Not filled with thoughts, dreams, ideas. Completely empty.
- Osho, "Just Like That, #1"
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