| |
Question: Why should silence be threatening?
Osho: Silence is
great death, the greatest that one can pass through. The
ordinary death is nothing compared to it, because in the
ordinary death you still carry the seed of being reborn.
The ordinary death is not real death. One dies really in
silence – that is utter death. Hence the fear. Zen calls
it ’The Great Death’.
Why call it death? – because when you are silent, you
are not. You are only when you are noisy; you ARE only
when the mind is full of garbage; you are only when mind
is mad. In madness you are : in health you disappear.
Neurosis is very substantially needed for the ego to
exist. Once the neurosis is gone, the chattering mind
disappeared, you are not. Not that nothing is; something
is, but you cannot identify yourself with that
something. Something unknown, never known before, never
even dreamed about, something utterly unfamiliar,
something very disconnected from you, discontinuous with
you – hence the fear.
In silence you commit suicide. That’s what sannyas is
all about. In India we have the same word for death and
for ultimate meditation – Samadhi . Samadhi has two
meanings: death and the ultimate attainment of
super-consciousness. Very significant, indicates two
aspects of that ultimate silence. On one hand you die –
as you have always been you will never be again. That
old man simply evaporates.It is not modified, it is not
continuous in any way. It has nothing to do with the new
consciousness that arises in you. The new is Absolutely
new.
So on one hand you die, on the other hand a new kind of
life, the life of egolessness, starts. That is not the
life of humility, remember. Egolessness has nothing to
do with humility or humbleness. Humbleness, humility,
are again the ways of the same ego, subtle ways. A
Really egoless man is neither arrogant nor humble. If
you find somebody humble, then he is just standing
upside down; it is the same ego doing Shirshasan–
headstand. Arrogance can become humbleness. But when the
ego disappears, it simply disappears leaving no trace
behind – not even of humbleness. Hence the fear.
One trembles to take the jump. It is committing suicide.
You ask: Why should silence be threatening?
One: it is a death. Second: all that you know about your
mind, all that you know about yourself, all that you are
identified with, has been given to you by the society.
It is borrowed. Your identity is borrowed. You don’t
know who you are; you only know what others say that you
are. In silence, all those opinions will disappear. In
silence you will come naked, without any clothes, to
your utter loneliness. I call it utter because there is
NO why to change it. You can go on playing games of
being together with people, but deep down you remain
alone.
Aloneness is something which cannot be corrupted, it is
our very nature. You can create many illusions around
yourself, and you can create safeties and securities,
bank balance and love affairs and friendships and
families – I’m not against them. All is good if you know
that it is a game. Play it as well as you can, but never
be befooled by it. Underneath you remain alone. That
aloneness is not changed by your relationships – not
even love changes your aloneness. So when you are
silent, your whole world disappears. Not only do you
disappear, your whole world disappears.
Your whole world consists of words, opinions, ideas,
thoughts. Your whole world consists of language.
Christians are right when they say, ”In the beginning is
the Word.” In the end, too, is the word. The day the
word ends, you have entered again into the source.
Language is social; mind is a social product. You are
not social: you are individual. And all our security is
with society. So the moment you are silent, you start
feeling great insecurity arising. You don’t know even
who you are; you start trembling – a great nervousness.
In Zen they call it ’The Great Doubt’. It comes to
everybody when they reach closer to satori: a great
moment of doubt – because the old is disappearing and
the new you cannot even see. All that you have believed
in is no more valid, and nothing is yet clear as to what
is going to substitute it. You are left in limbo. In
that trembling, anguish, anxiety, great doubt, you would
like to go back; you would like to cling to the shore
that you have left. But there is no way to go back! Once
you have come to the moment of Great Doubt, there is no
way to go back.
You can only go ahead. Remember this basic dictum of
human growth. growth of consciousness: that there is no
way ever to go back. Whatsoever you have known, you have
known as there is no way to make it unknown again.
Wherever you have arrived you have arrived; you cannot
escape from it. The only way goes ahead. All growth
points are points of no return. So you can be troubled,
you can remain in anguish, you can go crazy, but there
is no way to go back. The Master is needed at the moment
of the Great Doubt, because there you will be very
helpless.You
will become again like a small child, helpless. The
child was perfectly okay in the womb, there was no
problem for the child. The child was absolutely secure,
comfortable. Never again in his life will he be so
secure and so comfortable. Those nine months in the womb
were the last thing in luxury – no worry, no
responsibility; all warmth, floating, relaxing; not even
the effort to breathe for oneself – the mother was doing
all. Then suddenly the child comes out of the womb after
nine months. He is absolutely helpless. He will need a
mother.
He would like to go back to the womb, but that’s not
possible; that is not possible in the very nature
of things. You have left that home, you cannot go back.
You will have to seek your home somewhere further ahead.
You will have to create a home and warmth and everything
again. The mother will be needed, otherwise the human
child will die. Exactly that is the function of the
Master; exactly, precisely that is the function of the
Master. When you come to the Great Doubt, you are
leaving one womb – the womb that you had created with
society, with people, in relationship, you are leaving
that womb.
You are entering into silence. You are getting into
another dimension: the non-linguistic, the non-verbal,
the no-mind dimension. You will again become like a
child, very helpless – even more so, because the child’s
helplessness was more physical and your helpless will be
more of the spiritual. It will be deeper – the deepest
possible. You will need somebody to give you courage, to
push you ahead, to seduce you to move forward, to allure
you, to promise you a thousand and one things.... Once
you have passed the moment of Great Doubt, the silence
is no longer threatening; then it is the very
benediction. then it is SATCHITANANDA – then it is
truth, consciousness, bliss.
There is nothing higher than it. But BEFORE it, before
the last barrier falls down, before you leave your
clinging to the past, you will feel almost as if
uprooted, as if a tree is being uprooted from its soil
where it has become very, very comfortable – a child is
being uprooted from the womb. Exactly the same is going
to happen... hence, you feel silence as threatening.
But one has to go through it. It is only through the
fire of silence that you become purified gold. It is
only through the fire of silence that mind burns and
no-mind becomes a flame in you. It is a blessing if you
understand. On one hand it is a crucifixion, on the
other hand it is a resurrection.
Soure: from
Osho Book "Zen: The Path of Paradox, Volume 3"
^Top
Back to Questions on Meditation
|
|