Osho on 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, it has to be renounced. Sufi′s 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 . . .
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 depht. 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 a passion that you can ride on the wave of it and reach to the ultimate.
Khwajah Esmat Bokhari says¹:
This is no Kaaba
For idiots to circle
Nor a mosque
For the impolite to clamor in.
This is a temple of total ruin.
Inside are the drunk from pre-eternity
to the Judgment Day,
Gone from themselves.
We are not creating a Kaaba here for idiots to circle, not a mosque for mobs to clamor in. We are creating a scientific energy field, where your energies can be transformed into their optimum potential. And when a man is really aflame with love, God has happened. And only with the happening of God can you be contented and can you be blissful. Only with the happening of God does misery disappear and do hells become non-existent . . .
And when I said this is a Sufi assembly, I literally meant it.
See this silence, this grace, this benediction that is showering on you?
See this stillness? See this faqr ?
In this moment there is no ego in you, but only a pure silence. The personality has disappeared, there is only presence, and the light rises to the highest heavens. Wherever the wild ones meet, the mad ones meet, wherever there is simplicity and love, and wherever there is prayer, zikr , remembrance of God, this miracle happens. You may not be able to see it. It is happening.
I am not just teaching you about God. I am not interested in giving you knowledge about God. I am sharing my God with you; it is a sharing. I want to challenge your God which is asleep inside you, to provoke it. And that is the work Sufis have been doing down the ages: provoking the potential into the actual.
-Osho, "The Secret #1"
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.
-Osho, "Until You Die #1"