We will have a few questions from Yoga Sutra 30.
Sannyasin asked Osho – YOU SAID MAN IS A BRIDGE BETWEEN THE ANIMAL AND THE DIVINE. WHERE ARE WE ON THIS BRIDGE?
Osho replied – You are not on the bridge, you are the bridge. This has to be understood. If you think that you are on the bridge, you have missed the point – this is the ego misinterpreting the whole thing. You are the bridge. You have to be surpassed, transcended. You, as you are, are the bridge. You have to be left behind; you have to go beyond yourself.
If you understand this rightly then one thing can become very clear: if you are too much, you will become the animal; then too the bridge disappears. If the ego is crystallized too much, then too you are not a bridge, the bridge is no more – you have become the animal. If you are not at all, the bridge again disappears – then you are the divine. If only ego is left, you are a dog; the ego is the dog. If you have completely disappeared, then the remaining silence is divine, is God.
The remaining emptiness, the remaining void, the remaining space, infinite, with no boundaries – that’s what Buddha has called nirvana. The word “nirvana” means: when you have ceased to be. Literally the word “nirvana” means: when you extinguish a flame – the flame has disappeared, vast darkness, no light.
When the flame of the ego has disappeared – you have become infinite, you cannot find yourself anywhere now – then you have become the divine.
Between these two points – the ego and the egolessness – is the bridge. You are that bridge. It will depend on how much ego you have: if you have too much you are leaning towards the animal; if you have not too much you are leaning towards the divine. A rope stretched between the animal and the divine – but you are the rope. So don’t ask where you are on the bridge, because that is the ego asking. Just try to understand that you are the bridge. It has to be transcended, surpassed; you have to go beyond yourself.
Don’t try to be free, because that may be a subtle ego motivation. Try to be free from the ego – because even freedom can become a motivation for the ego, but then you will never be free because the ego is the bondage. The freedom is not going to be yours; the freedom will be there only when you are not.
Allow this feeling of “I” to disappear, and you need not do anything else. Just allow it to disappear… because it is such a false thing it has to be continuously created, only then it remains. You have to cooperate with it every moment. It is just like a cyclist goes on pedalling the bicycle: if he stops, the cycle will stop. The cycle needs continuous pedalling. The ego needs continuous cooperation. You need not do anything against it; you simply become alert and don’t cooperate. Be alert, go on watching how the ego arises, how subtle are its ways. Just watch, don’t cooperate – that’s enough: ego dies of starvation, the cycle stops. Without your pedalling, it cannot continue.
When you come to me and ask how to stop the ego you are like the cyclist who goes on pedalling and goes on screaming and asking people on the road, “How to stop!” and goes on pedalling. Don’t pedal. The cycle cannot continue on its own; your help is needed.
Your misery exists because you help it. Your suffering exists because you are behind it, feeding it. Your hell exists with your cooperation. Once you understand it, the cooperation dissolves; you are no longer part of the whole miserable game; you stand aside and watch. Sudden explosion – there is no longer any ego, no longer any cycle, nothing to pedal. That is the moment when the bridge has been crossed.
Another question by sannyasin – SOMETIMES YOU SAY THAT IT IS POSSIBLE FOR A MASTER AND DISCIPLE, FOR TWO LOVERS, TO MEET BEING TO BEING. AND SOMETIMES YOU SAY THAT WE ARE TOTALLY ALONE AND IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO EVER BE TOGETHER. IS WANTING TO MEET ANOTHER – BEING TO BEING – A DESIRE, A FICTION OF THE MIND THAT HAS TO BE DROPPED? PLEASE EXPLAIN IF YOU CAN.
To which Osho replied – Yes, it is difficult to explain. All explanations are difficult, because in the first place the problems are false. How to explain a problem when it is false? You are asking something absurd; the explanation becomes difficult. So it is right – all problems are difficult to explain. In fact, when you understand, there is no problem; when you don’t understand, there is a problem. So a problem cannot be solved, and I am not trying to solve your problems here; I am not a party at all to your foolishness. I am trying to impart understanding to you, not trying to solve your problems. They cannot be solved, because they are absolutely absurd.
All your problems are like a person who has a high fever – one hundred seven degrees – and goes on asking foolish things. He says, “Why is this chair flying in the sky?” How to explain it? His fever can be brought down, that’s the only way.
That’s what I am doing; that’s what my whole effort is about: to bring your fever a little down. If you understand, when the fever comes down, the chair flies no more. Then you start laughing at yourself, at how foolish you were.
It is difficult, it is almost impossible to explain, because in the first place whatsoever you ask is going to be something absurd. You cannot ask a right question, because if you can ask a right question there is no need to ask it. A right question is always carrying the right answer in it – because the real thing is to be right. If you can be right in your question you have already understood. But, still, I will try; I will try to bring your fever a little down. It is not an explanation.
“Sometimes you say that it is possible for a Master and disciple, for two lovers, to meet being, to being. And sometimes you say that we are totally alone and it is impossible to ever be together.” Both are true. We are absolutely alone and it is impossible to be together – this is absolutely true. And the other statement is also as absolutely true as this: that two lovers can meet being to being, Master and disciple can meet being to being. The contradiction arises because you don’t have any experience of it.
When two lovers meet there are not two lovers – only love exists. The two have disappeared, lovers have disappeared, because if lovers are there love cannot be.
When two lovers are there, there are not two and there are no longer lovers: only love exists. The two have become just like two banks of a river: in fact the river flows and touches both the banks. Without the river the banks are alone, separate, cannot meet. When the river flows the banks are meeting through the river, in the river.
When Master and disciple meet there is no Master, no disciple. There are not two; the duality is no longer there. Again one exists in its total loneliness, in its total aloneness. Two cannot meet, but if the two disappear then there exists that moment.
It is difficult, what to call it. If I call it a moment of meeting, you will misunderstand, because all meeting presupposes the existence of two. If I don’t call it a meeting then it will be impossible for me to call it anything else. This is the trouble with language. But you can understand: if you listen to me sympathetically – and there is no other way to listen – if you are in deep sympathy with me, not trying to discuss a problem with me but rather trying to feel my difficulty in expressing that which cannot be expressed, a deep sympathy, that’s what trust is, then you can understand. Then words won’t betray, then they don’t become a hindrance. Then they can become pointers, then they can have a certain significance – not meaning, significance – because you can have a glimpse through them.
You know they are gross, all words are gross, language is gross – silence is subtle – but if you understand sympathetically, in deep trust, in deep faith, then words also carry something of the quality of silence.
Listen to me: two cannot meet – that is impossible; and, two can meet, but then the quality of twoness has disappeared. When I say a meeting being to, being I mean now there is neither the lover nor the beloved… they are lost, disappeared, something else as a oneness has penetrated into their beings. In that deep silence love exists, not lovers.
When a disciple and Master are together, if the disciple is ready to be lost….
Because the Master is that who is lost already, who is an emptiness. If the disciple is also ready to float with the emptiness of the Master – with no demand, with no desire, because they won’t allow you to disappear; with no doubt, no uncertainty – if the disciple is ready to become part of this emptiness, the emptiness surrounds both. It becomes encompassing. In the cloud of that emptiness both are lost: that is the meeting between being to, being. It is a meeting, in a sense, the greatest meeting; it is not a meeting at all because there are not two to meet.
It looks contradictory that one time I say you are totally alone, another time I say there is a possibility to meet. When will that possibility open? When you are not trying to meet the other, only then. If you are trying to meet the other being to your being, the very effort will spoil the whole thing – because who will make the effort? If you are making the effort to meet somebody being to, being – to dissolve, the very effort to dissolve will be the barrier; the very effort to meet, the desire to meet, will create the discordance.
That’s why I say you are absolutely alone. Don’t try to meet the other. Just be totally alone, and if the other is also totally alone there will be a meeting – not that you prepared for it, not that you made any effort, not that you manipulated it. It is so vast you cannot manipulate it. It is so great you cannot catch hold of it.
You can only allow it to catch hold of you. You can only allow it to possess you.
God cannot be searched for. You can only allow God to possess you. You can only allow him to seek and search for you. Love or God are very great phenomena. You are very small. If you try you will fail, in your very effort is the failure. Don’t try.
Just be crystal clear in your aloneness, pure in your aloneness, silent, settled, rooted, centered. Suddenly something jumps in you and you are there no more.
The bridge has disappeared; the ego is there no more. For the first time, it always takes you unawares. When the Master jumps into the disciple, or the lover into the beloved, or the beloved into the friend – whenever this happens you are taken unawares. It is always a surprise. You cannot believe it, that it has happened. It is the most unbelievable, the most impossible thing, but it happens.
Tags: Being To Being Patanjali
