TWO PATHS TO THE DIVINE

There are two paths to the divine: one is awareness, the other is love. Through awareness you come to a point where time is transcended. Through awareness you fall into the now. There is no more past and no more future. Now is all, and now is not part of time at all. Now is beyond time – it is part of eternity. It is not part of the flow of time, because now has no duration. You cannot divide it. It is so subtle that it has no duration. It is so sudden that it has no duration. So when you become perfectly aware, time disappears.

On the other path – love – when you are deeply in love, utterly in love, space disappears. Then you are in the here – and here is not part of space. Just as now is not part of time, here is not part of space. Now has no duration, here has no extension. Space means extension and time means duration. Now has no duration and here has no extension. And if time disappears, space automatically disappears – or the vice versa. If space disappears, time disappears, because space and time are not separate.

In the western consciousness for thousands of years it has been a settled thing that time and space are not separate. In the west the concept – that time and space are not separate – is very modern and entered with albert einstein. He coined one word, ’spaciotime’. They are not two. We can say that now and here are not two. Nowhere or herenow is one word – should be one word, because reality is one.

These are two ways to transcend: either you enter from here or you enter from now. The male mind enters through awareness, through the disappearance of time, because time is a male thrust. The arrow of time is phallic – it is male sexuality. And space is feminine – it is the womb.

A woman has space, a man has no space. Man lives in time, and woman lives in space. That’s why man is always restless and woman has a subtle centering. Man is always on the go – he has to go. Maybe he is not aware of where he is going, maybe there is nowhere to go, but he has to go and he has to find more and more speedy ways to reach there.

If you insist on knowing where he is going he may not be able to answer it, but he will say, ’That is not the point. I will reach there, and I am going to reach in a speedy way – I’m not going to use bullock-carts. I will use a jet plane. I don’t know where I am going, but I am going….

A woman is more settled…. In India, the woman is called the home, the space, because she has the womb… she is spacious. So the feminine mind enters into meditation through love – love is deeply related with space – and the male mind enters through time, awareness, because the male ego is deeply rooted in time. Both reach to the same ultimate point.

OSHO♥

REBELLION

Meditation brings rebellion in life — rebellion against all traditions, conventions, dogmas, creeds, rebellion against the whole past, because unless you are completely clean of the past you cannot be totally herenow. And unless you are totally herenow you will never know what the truth is.

Truth is never in the past, never in the future; truth is always here and now. Truth means that which is. You cannot use the word ‘was’ for truth or ‘will be’ for truth; truth is always ‘is’, isness is truth. Our mind goes on moving from the past to the future. It is like a pendulum moving from one extreme to another extreme. It never stays in the middle, and the middle is the truth. From the past to the future, from the future to the past, we go on shuttling like a goods train. We never stay in the now, and the now is the nature of existence. Existence knows only one tense, the present tense.

That is the greatest rebellion in life, to drop all the traditions and all conventions — Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, the Koran, the Bible, the Gita — to drop them all in toto. It needs guts, needs courage, it needs a man, not a child, It needs some integrity, some growth. And my whole work here is to help you to become more mature so that you can pass through this rebellion.

Once you have passed through this rebellion Christ is born in you, Buddha is born in you; they are different names for the same experience. But all this happens through meditation, hence sannyas revolves around the idea of meditation. I don’t give you any other thing, no character, no ordinary life style. I just tell you a simple and single thing: be meditative. In meditation is my whole philosophy of life. Out of it thousands of flowers bloom and blossom. Out of it everything that is needed comes by itself — you need not search for it.

Mind is an identification with the body. One feels ‘I am the body’; this is the state of mind. Meditation is a disidentification with the body. One starts feeling ‘I am in the body but I am not the body. The body is just like a house and I am residing in it. I have resided in many bodies, many houses — there is no need to cling to this particular house. This house is going to collapse as all houses always collapse sooner or later. But my being is eternal, it cannot collapse. It is not made of collapsible material, it is not made of material at al]; it is just pure consciousness.

As you move into meditation this feeling starts becoming stronger every day. That does not mean that you start neglecting the body, on the contrary, you start caring about the body more carefully because it is a beautiful house, a gift of god. You have to keep it clean and beautiful and young and vital, energetic, alive, because you have to live in it for many many years. There is no need to make it ugly, poor, starved. Make it a palace, make it a marble palace, make it a temple, but remember “I am not it,” so when it dies you are not dying. The body is born, the body dies; you are never born and you never die.

And the method of meditation is very simple: just watching. Three things have to be watched. The first is the body and its actions. Walking, watch it; sitting, lying down, watch it, and as you watch you will be able to understand “I am the watcher and the body is the watched. It is separate from me.” Then there is a deeper watchfulness, the second step. Watch your mind and its activities: thoughts, desires, memories, dreams. If you have succeeded in the first you are bound to succeed in the second too. And then suddenly you become aware “I am not the mind either.” Then the subtlest watching begins, the third step. Watch your feelings, sentiments, emotions, moods — which are very vague and subtle — watch your heart.

Once a person has become able to watch all three he transcends them, he becomes aware of the fourth, his true being. That is the moment when the soul is born, really born. Before that you were only so-so alive, lukewarm, but not intensely alive, not passionately alive, not totally alive. I believe in totality, intensity.

OSHO♥