I and Thou

A lover knocked at the door of his beloved. A voice cried, "Who is there?" The person outside said, "It is I." He heard in reply, "This house has no place for two, 'I' and 'Thou'."

The closed door remained closed. The lover retreated into a forest. There he made penance, observed fasts, and offered prayers. After many years, he returned and again knocked on the closed door. Again the voice asked, "Who is there?"

This time the doors were thrown open, for his reply was, "It is thou."

This reply, "It is thou", is the essence of all religion. On the endlessly flowing river of life, "I" is the only bubble. "I" alienates the individual from existence. The bubble of "I" thinks itself distinct from the river, whereas in reality the bubble has no separate existence. It has no separate center, no separate life. It is the ocean. The ocean is its life. Its very existence is in and through the ocean. Even the idea of its being separate from the ocean is ignorance. Look into the bubble, and you find the ocean. Look into t he 'I', and you find brahman.

Where 'I' does not exist, 'Thou' too is absent. There is only 'being'. Only existence, pure is-ness is there. To awaken into this pure existence is nirvana.

Q: Does God not love me?

OSHO: Yesterday I went to a garden. Some friends were with me. One of them was thirsty. He lowered a bucket into the well. The well was very deep. It took some effort to pull the bucket up. But when it appeared at the top of the well it was empty. All the others laughed.

It seemed to me that the bucket was like the mind of a man. It had many cracks and holes. Of course, at first it was filled with water, but every drop ran out through the holes. Our mind too is full of holes. Offer the leaking mind to the existence as persistently as you wish, it will return to you empty. If you repair the bucket beforehand, my friends, it becomes easy to fill it with water. Of course, the leaking bucket may cause you to undertake many exercises in asceticism, but it will not quench your thirst.

Remember that the existence is neither sympathetic nor unsympathetic. It is your responsibility to keep your bucket intact. The well is always ready to offer you water. It will never deny you.

Q: Should I be God-fearing to be religious?

Is only one who fears God religious? Is it fear that brings one to love God? Is there no loving without fear?  Is love impossible in the absence of fear?

OSHO: Usually, those who are called religious are religious because of fear. Those who are called moral are also bound to fear.

Kant has said, "Even if there is no God, still it is necessary to accept him." Perhaps that is because the fear of God makes people good.

When I hear such statements, I cannot help laughing. Perhaps nothing else is so mistaken and untrue.

Religion has nothing to do with fear. Religion is born out of fearlessness.

It is impossible for love to co-exist with fear. How can fear give birth to love? Out of fear, only the pretense of love can be born. And what else but non-love can exist behind a counterfeit love? Love born out of fear is an impossibility.

Hence, religiousness and morality based on fear are false, not true. They weigh down, rather than elevate, the energy of the soul. Religion and love cannot be imposed on oneself, they have to be kindled and aroused within.

Truth is not founded on fear. Fear does not support the truth, it is opposed to it. The foundation-stone of truth is fearlessness.

The true flowers of religion and love can be grown only in the soil of fearlessness. Those planted in the soil of fear can only be artificial.

The realization of God happens only in fearlessness. Or to put it more correctly, the realization of fearless consciousness is the realization of God. The moment all fear disappears from the mind, what happens in that moment is the encounter with truth.

Q: Does God need temples and idols?

OSHO: Where is the religion in a temple? What a self- deceiver man is! He deceives himself by taking as gods the idols created by his own hands. He satisfies himself by taking the scriptures - the product of his own mind - as truth."

Whatsoever is the creation of man's own hands and mind is not religion. The idols sitting in the temples are not images of gods but of man himself. And what is written in the scriptures is but a reflection of man's own desires and thinking, not the truth seen within. It is not possible to express the truth in words.

It is not possible to have an idol of truth, because truth is boundless, infinite and formless. It has no form, no name, no attribute. The moment it is given a form it disappears.

In order to attain it, all idols and all physical conceptions have to be dropped; the whole cobweb of self-fabricated fallacies has to be swept away. That uncreated truth reveals itself only when man's consciousness is liberated from the prison which his own mind has created .

In fact, rather than building temples in order to reach the truth, we should demolish them; instead of sculpting idols, we should destroy them. We should drop our obsession with the form so that the formless may enter. The moment the manifest leaves our minds, the unmanifest appears.

It was there already, but it was hidden beneath the idols and the tangible. Just as we cannot see the empty space in a room stuffed with things - remove those things and the empty space is revealed; it has always been there.

Truth too is like this. Empty the mind and it is there.

Q: How to conquer sex? How to conquer anger?

Osho: This is a question so frequently asked nowadays. The mistake lies in asking the question.

The problem is not to conquer, it is to know. We know neither anger nor sex. This ignorance is what defeats us.

Knowing brings victory. When there is anger, when there is sex, we are not. There is no awareness, hence we are not. What happens in this state of unconsciousness is completely mechanical. When the unconsciousness releases its grip, remorse follows -- but that is futile. Because the one who now repents will fall asleep again as soon as sex catches hold of him. If he does not sink into sleep -- if he lets consciousness, wakefulness and right remembrance prevail - he will find that there is neither anger nor sex. The mechanicalness is broken and there is nothing to be conquered - the enemy has gone.

You may understand this better through a symbolic story. In the darkness, a rope is taken for a snake. Seeing it, some run away, some get ready to kill it. Both are mistaken because they both take the rope for a snake. Somebody goes near it and finds that there is no snake at all. He does not need to do anything more than approach it.

Man has only to approach himself. Whatever is within him, he must be familiar with it all. He does not have to fight with anything. And I say unto you that victory comes to him without a fight.

Right watchfulness towards one's own mind is the key to victory over life. 

How to be free from the fear of death?

Last night a man breathed his last. Today people mourn at his door.

At such moments a memory of an event in my childhood arises in my mind. It was my first visit to the burning ghats. The funeral pyre had been lit, and the people were chatting in small groups.

The village poet said, "I am not afraid of death. Death is a friend."

Since then I have heard this same assertion in different forms from different people. I have also looked into the eyes of those who say this and have found that these fearless words arise from fear.

Nothing changes just by giving death beautiful names. In fact, the fear is not of death, the fear is of the unfamiliar. What is unknown creates fear in us. It is necessary to become acquainted with death. This acquaintance brings one to fearlessness. Why? Because it is through acquaintance that one comes to know that there is no death to what is.

It is only the personality, which we have taken to be our "I", that shatters, that dies. It shatters because it is not. It is only a combination, a union of a few elements. As this union disintegrates, the personality shatters. This is what death is. Hence, as long as personality is taken to be one and the same as the true self, there is death.

Move deeper from the personality, and as you arrive at the true self, the deathless is attained.

The path of this journey, the penetration from the surface of personality to the core of the self, is religion.

It is in samadhi, enlightenment, that acquaintance with death happens. Just as darkness ceases to exist the moment the sun rises, so does death when samadhi is attained.

Death is neither an enemy nor a friend, it simply does not exist. One needs neither to fear it nor not fear it. One has only to know it.

Ignorance of it is fear, knowing it is fearlessness.

What is renunciation?

I had been to a village. I heard someone saying there: "Religion lies in renunciation, and renunciation is a hard and demanding discipline."

As I heard this, I recollected an incident from my early childhood. I had accompanied a picnic party to the bank of a river. The river was small but with a vast expanse of sand. On the sandy bank there lay many pebbles in luminous colors. I felt I had stumbled on a treasure. By the evening I had collected so many pebbles that it was not possible to bring them home with me. Tears came into my eyes when I had to leave them behind as I left, and I was surprised to see my companions' lack of interest in those pebbles.

That day they seemed to me to be great renouncers. When I think of it today, I see that there is no question of renunciation once you have known the stones as stones.

Ignorance is indulgence. Knowing is renunciation.

Renunciation is not a doing; it is not something to be done, it just happens. It is a natural result of knowing. Indulgence is mechanical: that too is not a doing - it is a natural result of ignorance.

Hence, the idea that renunciation is a hard and arduous task is meaningless. In the first place it is not an act - activities alone can be difficult and strenuous - it is an outcome. Secondly, in renunciation what apparently drops is worthless, and what is attained is priceless.

In fact, renunciation as such does not exist, because we gain immensely more than we drop. The reality is that we drop only our bondage, but we gain liberation; we drop only shells but we receive diamonds; we forsake only death but attain immortality; we leave only darkness but attain the light - eternal and infinite.

Where then is the renunciation? Dropping nothing and receiving everything cannot be called renunciation.