Question 3

I feel so much resistance against meditation and I don't have this desire for god that you speak about. Is this the right place for me?

 

 

If you feel much resistance against meditation it simply shows that deep down you are alert that something is going to happen which will change your total life. You are afraid of being reborn. You have invested too much in your old habits, in the old personality, in the old identity.

 

Meditation is nothing but trying to clean your being. trying to become fresh and young, trying to become more alive and more alert. If you are afraid of meditation it means you are afraid of life, you are afraid of awareness, and the resistance comes because you know that if you move into meditation, something is bound to happen. If you are not resisting at all it may be because you don't take meditation very seriously. you don't take meditation very sincerely. Then you can play around. What is there to be afraid of?

 

It is exactly because you are resisting that this is the right place for you. This is precisely the right place for you. The resistance shows that something is going to happen. One never resists without any cause. You must be living a very dead life. Now you are afraid that something is becoming alive, something is changing. You resist. Resistance is an indication, resistance is a very clear indication that you have suppressed much. Now in meditation that suppression will surface, it will be released. You would also like to be released of the burden but in that burden there are investments.

 

For example, you may be carrying pebbles in your hands but you think they are diamonds. And then I tell you, 'Clean yourself. Drop these pebbles. They have become a burden and you cannot move because of them.' You would like to be unburdened but then you are afraid that your diamonds will be lost. And they are not diamonds. Look again at your diamonds. If they were really diamonds, you should be happy. If they were really diamonds, you would not have come to me at ail. There is no need. If you have come, it shows that you are seeking.

 

You may say that you are not interested in God -- I am also not interested in God -- but you are interested in yourself. Are you interested in yourself? Forget all about God. If you are interested in yourself. then this is precisely the place for you. If you are interested in your own being, in your own wholeness and health; if you are interested in becoming a blossomed flower, then forget all about God -- because in that blossoming you will know what God is. When your fragrance is released then you will know what God is. God is your ultimate flowering, your final flowering; your destiny fulfilled is what God is all about.

 

A woman seeing Turner's pictures said once, 'Making a lot of fuss over him, are they not? I never saw anything in him myself.'

 

And another woman said to Turner himself, 'But you know, Mr. Turner I never see sunsets like yours.'

 

She received the mild yet devastating reply, 'No. Don't you wish you could?'

 

When a Turner paints a sunset of course he sees a sunset in a totally different way to you. He brings all his sensitivity, his whole being, to see it. In fact, you may not have ever seen a sunset the way a painter looks at it. Turner says rightly, 'Don't you wish you could?'

 

I'm here. I know you can't see what I am talking about, but don't you wish you could? I know that many things I am saying are almost nonsense to because to see them you will have to attain different eyes, you will have to clarify your being; to see them you will have to pacify your turmoil within. I know you cannot see the green that I am seeing in the trees. Your green is bound to be very dusty because your eyes are full of dust.

 

It happened once, that a man was staying with a friend at somebody's house. The host and the guest were standing near the window -- the window was closed -- and in the neighbor's house, clothes were hanging out to be dried.

 

The host said, 'These people are very dirty. Look at their clothes.'

 

The man looked, he came closer to the window and he said, 'Those clothes are not dirty. Your window glass is covered with dust.'

 

They opened the windows and it was so. Those clothes were not dirty.

 

Life is tremendously beautiful. It is Divine. When we say 'Life is God' we simply say that life is so tremendously beautiful that one feels a reverence for it. That's all. Life is so tremendously beautiful that one feels like worshipping it. That's all we mean when we say 'Life is God.' When we say 'Life is God' we only mean, 'Don't see that life is ordinary. It is extraordinary. There is tremendous potentiality. Just open your eyes.' I have never seen a person who is not interested in God -- although he may not know it -- because I have never seen a person who is not interested in happiness. If you are interested in happiness, you are interested in God; if you are interested in being blissful, you are interested in God.

 

Forget all about God. You just try to be blissful, and one day, when you are dancing in your inner bliss. when the inner juices are flowing, suddenly this life is no longer ordinary. Everywhere some unknown force is hiding and you will see God in the flowers and in the stones and in the stars. I talk to you just to plant a seed, a song, a star. If you can become happy, you become religious. A happy person is a religious person -- let that be the definition. A religious person is not one who goes to the church or the temple if he is unhappy, he cannot be religious. A religious person is happy. Wherever he is, he is in the temple. A happy person carries his temple around him. I know it because I have been carrying it. I need not go to any temple. Where I am is my temple. It is a climate. It is my own inner juice overflowing. God is nothing but you realized, reached, fulfilled.

 

Yes. I say to you, I have never seen a man who is not interested in God. There cannot be. That man is not possible. Even people who say they don't believe in God, who are atheists, are not uninterested in God. They are interested. Their denying, their saying that they don't believe may be just a trick of the mind to protect themselves; because once you allow yourself to be possessed by God you disappear, only God remains. So people who are afraid of being, of disappearing, of moving into non-being, people who are too egoistic and cannot allow their drop to drop into the ocean, say there is no ocean. That is the trick of their mind so that they can protect themselves. They are fearful people, afraid, scared of life.

 

If you are interested in being happy, this is the place for you. And you are already here. Nobody has brought you, nobody has forced you, you have come on your own. Some inner search that you may not be aware of has brought you here. Maybe something is in the heart and your head does not know anything about it. There are desires of which the head is completely unaware -- the head is concerned only with rubbish. The heart may have brought you here. Break that resistance -- and when you are here, be really here. Don't miss this opportunity.

 

In the New Testament the Greek word for sin is 'antinomic' or 'anomeia'. It means to miss the point; or, as in archery, to miss the mark. The word 'sin' comes from a root which means to miss the point, to miss the mark. If you are here and you miss me, that will be a sin. If you are here then why waste time? Be totally here. Drop the resistance. Or if you cannot be totally here, then go away from here. But go totally away. Then never again remember me, otherwise that will be a sin.

 

The word 'sin' is beautiful. It has been badly corrupted by Christianity. It has nothing to do with guilt, nothing to do with something bad, evil. It has nothing to do with morality but it has something to do with consciousness. If you are here, be consciously and totally here; your unconscious heart has brought you here. Groping in the dark you have come to me, now don't miss this opportunity. Either be totally here, or go away. Turn your back against me and never remember me again; because going away, if you remember me, then you will not be totally there -- wherever you are going. Wherever you are, be totally there, that's the only way to open the secrets and mysteries of life.

 

And don't be worried about whether you are interested in the concept of God or not. In fact, people who are too interested in the concept of God will not be able to know him.

 

I have come across a very beautiful book, written somewhere in the Middle Ages by a certain man known as Dionysius Exegius. His book is 'Theologica Mystica'. He says in that book that the highest knowledge of God is through what he calls in Greek 'agnostos', which means unknowing. You must have heard the word 'agnostic', it comes from the same root, agnostos. Agnostos means unknowing. And this Dionysius says that God is known only by unknowing. No need to be worried about the concept; no need to ac-cumulate knowledge, theories, doctrines about God; forget all about the word and the theory. You be simply interested in your happiness, in your bliss, and one day you will find God has entered in you. It is another name for ultimate bliss.

 

- Osho, "Ancient Music in the Pines, #4, Q3"