Sufism Beyond Islam
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 Hassidism is. These are only different names of the same ultimate relationship with God.
The relationship is dangerous. It is dangerous because the closer you come to God, the more and more you evaporate. And when you have come really close you are no more. It is dangerous because it is suicidal…but the suicide is beautiful. To die in God is the only way to live really. Until you die, until you die voluntarily into love, you live an existence which is simply mediocre; you vegetate, you don’t have any meaning. No poetry arises in your heart, no dance, no celebration; you simply grope in the darkness. You live at the minimum, you don’t overflow with ecstasy.
That overflow happens only when you are not. You are the hindrance. Sufism is the art of removing the hindrance between you and you, between the self and the self, between the part and the whole.
-Osho, "Sufis - The People of the Path, Vol 1, #1"
You are divine but you have not known it yet. In fact, it is because you are divine that it is so difficult to know it. It is at the very heart of your being. If it were something outside of you, you would have encountered it by now. If it were something objective, you could have seen it. But it is not outside and it is not an object – it is your subjectivity. It is not something to be seen, it is hidden in the seer. It is a witnessing. Unless you go behind yourself you will not be able to know it.
There are three things in the world. One is the world of the object – the things that surround you. Closer to it, when you come towards yourself, is the world of thoughts, dreams and desires. That too surrounds you. That’s what you ordinarily call the inner world. It is not inner, it is still outer. There are two kinds of outsides: one that you see with open eyes and one that you see with closed eyes. But both are outside because whatsoever can be seen must be outside. To be seen, it has to be outside, it has to be different from you. The object has to be different from the subject.
And then there is the third, the world of your innermost core, your subjectivity – from where you go on seeing. To come to that is to realize one’s divinity. One has to become a witness to objects and to thoughts, and by witnessing, by and by, a moment comes when the turning happens. When there is no object and no thought left in your consciousness, when your consciousness is pure, it takes a turn – a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. When there is nothing to be seen, the seer starts seeing itself.
Remember, I am only using words, and they are not adequate any more.
‘The seer starts seeing himself’ are not the right words because, again, the words indicate a division: the seer and the seen. And now there is no division – there is only you and you and you; there is not something that is seeing and something that is being seen. It is pure consciousness.
Divinity means pure consciousness. You will first have to go from the world of objects to the world of thoughts, and then you will have to take another step – you will have to drop thinking, let thoughts disappear, let there be nothingness. And in that nothingness the turning happens. You cannot do it. You can do only two things: you can close your eyes to the world and you can close your consciousness to the constant traffic of thoughts. That’s all you have to do. Then the third thing happens on its own. Suddenly you are aware that you are a God. Awareness is what God is.
But when you are aware, in a sense you have disappeared, you are no longer there. The old ego is no longer there. You cannot even say ‘I’ – because the ‘I’ depends on things and thoughts, the ‘I’ is constituted of things and thoughts. When all the bricks of things and thoughts have disappeared, the building of the ‘I’ also disappears. There is pure emptiness. That’s what Buddha calls anatta, no-selfness. At the very core of the self, at the innermost shrine, you will not find yourself – and that’s how one finds oneself. When the self is lost, the self is found.
-Osho, "Sufis - The People of the Path, Vol 1, #16, Q1"
This is one of the paradoxes of spiritual life: the more one dissolves into the divine, the more unique one becomes. The dissolution is not of the individuality but of the self: the dissolution is not of the uniqueness but of the ego. The more you are an ego, the more you are like others, because everyone is an egoist.
The ego is the most ordinary thing in the world. Everyone is an egoist; even a newborn child is an egoist – a perfect egoist. So it is not anyone’s achievement; it is not extraordinary. Really, it can be said that to be just ordinary is the most extraordinary thing possible – because no one feels just ordinary. So to feel oneself extraordinary is just the most ordinary thing. Everyone feels like that. So ego is not something unique.
If you have an ego, it is not something unique. Really, egolessness is the most unique thing, the most uncommon, rare. It happens only sometimes. Centuries pass, and rarely the event happens that someone becomes egoless – a Buddha, a Jesus. But when we say that someone becomes egoless, it does not mean that he is not. Really, for the first time, now he is – authentically grounded into the very being. He is no longer an ego.
So take it from a different root: ego is a false phenomenon – just an appearance, not a reality. It is not something grounded in the being – just a dream, a thought, just a mental construction. So the more you belong to the ego, the less you belong to the existence. The more you concentrate on your ego, the less and less you are authentic. You become false – an existential lie.
When we talk about becoming empty, nothing, valley-like, we mean that there is no ego – but you are! Let me say it in this way: I say “I am,” but when the ego dissolves there remains the pure ‘am-ness’. The ‘I’ is no longer there, but ‘am-ness’ is there, and for the first time pure, total, uncontaminated. The ego contaminates it.
The word ‘personality’ and the word ‘individuality’ must not be confused, they are totally different. They do not mean any similar entity; they are not the same at all. Personality belongs to the ego, individuality to the being. Personality is just a façade. The ego is the center and the personality is the circumference. It is not individuality at all.
This word "personality" is very meaningful. It is derived from the Greek word "persona". "Persona" means a mask. In Greek drama, the characters, the actors, will use masks to hide their faces so the real face is hidden and the masked face becomes the reality. "Personality" means a mask -- that which you are not but only appear to be.
So we have many faces; really, no one has one personality. Mm? -- we have multi-personalities. Everyone has to change faces the whole day. You cannot remain with one face. It will be so difficult because every time you face someone else you have to use another face. Before your servant you cannot have the same face as you have before your master. Before your wife you cannot have the same face as you have before your beloved. So, continuously, we have a flexible system of changing faces.
-Osho, "The Ultimate Alchemy, Vol 1, #2"
The games of the ego are very subtle. And if one is trying to drop the ego they become more and more subtle. And if one has really decided to drop it anyhow, the ultimate strategy that the ego can use to protect itself is to become egolessness; is to pretend humility, humbleness; is to show that ‘Now there is no need to fight with me, I am not at all’.
The ego is one of the most fundamental problems man has to face. The ways of the ego have to be understood rightly otherwise you will never be able to get rid of it. And until you get rid of the ego there is no possibility of meeting God. It is the ego that functions as a barrier between you and reality.
The ego functions as a barrier because it is one of the most unreal things possible. The ego is a fiction, it is not a fact. It is maintained by conditioning, hypnosis; it is maintained by a thousand and one props. It is a fiction – because existence is one. It can have only one center, it cannot have millions of centers.
What is the ego? The ego is the idea that ‘I am the center of the universe’. That is what ego is – reduced to the basic – the idea that ‘I am the center of the universe’. ‘I’ cannot be the center of the universe but everybody has the idea that ‘I am the center of the universe’.
And the second part of the ego is: it is separative, it is a fiction that separates you from the totality. It gives you the idea that you are independent, that you are an island. And you are not. Existence is a vast infinite continent. There are no islands. You are not separate and you are not independent.
And remember, when I say you are not independent I don’t mean that you are dependent – because the very idea of dependence will again presuppose the ego. There is nobody to be independent and there is nobody to be dependent. We live in interdependence, in mutual existence, in mutuality. We are parts of each other, members of one another. The trees are penetrating you and the rocks are penetrating you and the rivers are penetrating you – and you are penetrating the rivers and the trees and the rocks. The farthest star is connected with you. And when you blink your eyes you change the quality of total existence. All is infinitely interconnected, interwoven. Nobody is separate.
So nobody can be independent and nobody can be dependent. Independence and dependence are both aspects of the same coin called ego. A real person is neither. A real person simply does not exist as a person. He has no boundaries. He exists as God, not as a person.
-Osho, "Sufis: The People of the Path, Vol 1, #9"
When you alone are left, a passive alertness, doing nothing, just being, suddenly the reality bursts into an explosion. And it is not going to be according to any ideology, not Hindu nor Christian nor Mohammedan. All ideologies are transcended. Ideologies are very narrow. Reality is infinitely vast. It cannot be contained by any idea. It cannot be contained by any concept. It cannot be present.
Mind is too narrow a thing: it cannot surround reality, it has to dissolve into reality.
When you are not a mind, reality is. And reality is God. And that God -- you will not find that it fits with Hindus or it fits with Christians. It fits with nobody. It cannot. Hence I go on insisting that religion is not Christian, not Hindu, not Buddhist. Religion knows no adjectives, religion knows no labels. It is life itself, in its tremendous vitality, in its unlimited expanse, in its endless, beginningless flow.
-Osho, "Just Like That, #5"
The work of the Sufi takes years. Sufis don’t preach. They teach, certainly, but they don’t preach. And when they teach, they teach methods, not principles. To follow a method one needs to be really in search – because sometimes it takes twelve years, sometimes twenty years, sometimes your whole life. And sometimes many lives are needed. The people who are in search of instant enlightenment cannot have a contact with a Sufi. That’s why Sufis go on hiding themselves. They don’t declare themselves, they remain invisible. They are available only to those who really search, who really seek. It is very difficult to find a Sufi Master, and he may be living just in your neighbourhood. He may be doing such an ordinary thing you cannot believe it. He may be a weaver or he may be a shoemaker or he may be running a hotel, or any kind of work. You cannot even suspect that a Sufi Master lives just at the corner. And you may come across him every day and you will have no idea who this man is – unless you are a seeker. If you are a seeker then by and by you will be led to him. In fact, if you are a seeker he will start choosing you. He will be watching you. He will not allow you to watch him; he will be watching you, he will be seeing. And if he feels that here is a seeker, then by and by he will make it possible for you to see him. He can become visible if he wants to.
-Osho, "Sufis: The People of the Path, Vol 1, #1"
The baraka, the grace, is always flowing from the Master. If you are ready you will receive it. If you are open you will be filled by it. If you are closed you will miss it. The Master’s very existence is a baraka, a grace. Vibrations are constantly spreading around his being. And it is not only that you have to be in the physical presence of the Master. If you love, then you can be on another planet and it will not make any difference. You can drink from your Master’s fountain wherever you are.
-Osho, "Sufis: The People of the Path, Vol 1, #9"
Sufism is pre-Islam and yet it is a unique new phenomenon too. It is the essential core of Islam and yet it is a rebellion against the establishment of Islam too. That’s how it is always. Zen is also both – it is the essential core of Buddhism and a rebellion against the establishment. [....]
The essential religion will always go against the established religion. Sufis are the very heart, but the heart is bound to be against the mind, the intellect. The priest lives in the head; the man of prayer lives in the heart. They are two polarities, their languages are different. Their languages are so different that the priest cannot understand the language of the heart at all. He can spin theories; he has great expertise as far as doctrines are concerned. He has a very legal mind and is very knowledgeable. But as far as the heart is concerned there is a wasteland in his heart; nothing grows, nothing flowers, nothing flows.
The head cannot understand the heart. The heart can understand the head because the heart is deeper than the head. The man of the heart can understand the man of the head and can feel compassion for him, but the man of the head cannot understand the man of the heart. The lower cannot understand the higher; the higher can understand the lower. The man who is sitting in the valley cannot understand the man who is sitting on the top of the hill. But the man who is sitting on the top of the hill can understand the man who is living in the valley.
So people of the heart are very compassionate. They understand. They understand why the priest is against them; they understand why the majority of humanity is not able to fall in rapport with them.
-Osho, "Sufis: The People of the Path, Vol 1, #2, Q1"