Emptiness Means Death

Question to Osho By Nisha – WHY DO WE NEED TO GO THROUGH PAIN, TO REACH ECSTASY?

Osho Replied – Man is the only animal who is always confused, but that is his glory because he has to decide. He is always hesitating, always hanging between two alternatives – St. Francis of Assisi, St. Francis Xavier – and always risky. Just think of that man. If that hand is from St. Francis of Assisi and he says St. Francis Xavier – gone. But one has to decide. Through decision your soul is born; you become integrated.

Decide, whatsoever your decision. Don’t go on remaining indecisive. If you are indecisive you will always be doing something contradictory. You will be moving in both ways together, simultaneously – because indecisive, also, you have to live. Fifty percent you will be going towards the north, fifty percent towards the south. Then there is misery, anguish, suffering.

A man rushed into the income tax office and grasped the manager by the lapels.

“Look. I am in a bit of a state. My wife has disappeared,” he said.

“Has she?” said the inland revenue officer, “That’s unfortunate, I guess, but this is the taxation department. You ought really to inform the police.”

The man shook his head earnestly and replied, “l know. I am not being caught like that again. The last time she went I told the police, and they found her.”

Then why go at all to report to the income tax officer? But part says something has to be done, the wife has disappeared, the husband has to do something.

Another part feels happy and says, “Good that she has disappeared. Don’t go to the police station; they may find her again.”

This is how life goes on – half/half – and then you become fragmentary. The husband, the respectable husband, has to do something; and the man, who needs freedom, has to do something else. He is happy that the wife is gone. The husband looks sad – or pretends to be sad – shows his misery, is afraid that because of the inner man people may become aware that he is feeling happy.

That will not be good: that will be shattering to the respectable ego. So he has to do something. He cannot go to the police station: then he goes somewhere else.

Watch your life. Don’t waste your life that way.

Decisions are needed. You have to decide each moment. Each moment lost without decision creates fragmentariness in you. Each moment decided, by and by you become collected, one piece, you become together. A moment comes, you become integrated. Decision is not really the thing: decisiveness. Through decisions you become decisive.

It happened once: A terrified young woman patient went to the dentist and sat in the waiting room.

She had her sister with her to look after the three-month-old baby. Soon it was her turn to go into the torture chamber.

As she sat in the operating chair, she said nervously to the dentist, “l don’t know which is the worst – to have a tooth taken or to have a baby.”

The dentist said, curtly, “Well, make your mind up quickly please. I have got a lot of other people waiting.”

And I would like to say that to Nisha also. She has been hanging around here.

Make up your mind. Decide. Just hanging around is not good. Either be here or be somewhere else, but be. If you want to be here then be here, but then be totally here. Then this place becomes your whole world and this moment becomes your whole eternity. Or don’t be here, but don’t go on hanging. Be somewhere else, that too is good. Then be there. It is not a question of where you are. The question is, “Are you there?” Don’t remain divided. Don’t go on moving in all directions: otherwise you will go mad.

Surrender is a decision, the greatest decision there is. To trust somebody is a decision. The risk is there. Who knows? The man may be just deceiving. You fall in love with a woman: you trust. You fall in love with a man; you trust. Who knows? In the night the man may murder you. Who knows? The wife may escape with all your bank balance. But one risk: otherwise love is not possible.

Hitler never allowed any woman to sleep in his room. Even his girlfriends were never allowed. He would see them in the day, but in the night not in the room.

He was so afraid. Who knows? The girl may poison him, strangle him in the night. Just think, the misery of such a man. He cannot even trust a woman. What a life he must have led, a life of hell. Not only did he live in hell, all those who were around him lived in hell.

It is reported that he was talking to a British diplomat on the seventh story of his building, and he was trying to impress upon the British diplomat that there was no use in resisting him, simply surrender: and he said, “We are going to win the world. Nobody can prevent us.” One soldier was standing there. Just to give an example he said, “Jump out of the window.” The soldier simply jumped – out of a window seven stories high. The British diplomats could not believe it. The soldier didn’t even hesitate. And then to make the point even more clear he said to another soldier, “Jump!” and the other jumped. Now this was too much. And to make the point go exactly to the heart of the diplomat he said to the third soldier. “Jump!” But by that time the diplomat had become afraid and shocked: he took hold of the man, the soldier who was going to jump. He said, “Wait! Why are you so ready to commit suicide? Why are you so unhesitant to leave your life?”

The man said, “Leave me alone! You call this life?” And he jumped.

Hitler lived in a hell and he created a hell for others also – “You call this life?”

If love is not there, life is not possible. Life deeply means love: love deeply means life. Love is a trust, a risk.

To be near me is to be tremendously in love because that is the only way to be near me. I am not here just trying to propagate some teachings. I am not a teacher. I am giving you a different vision of life. It is risky: I am trying to convince you that the way you have lived up to now is basically wrong, there is another way – but of course that other way is unknown, is in the future. You have never tasted it. You will have to trust me; you will have to move with me in the dark. The fear will be there: the danger will be there. It is going to be painful – all growth is – but through pain one reaches ecstasy. Only through pain is ecstasy reached.

Question to Osho – DURING MEDITATION I INVOKE YOUR EMPTINESS AND I FIND THAT GRADUALLY YOUR EMPTINESS PERVADES OVER ME. CAN I, BY THIS METHOD, IMBIBE YOUR TOTAL BEING? WILL I BE ABLE TO INVOKE YOU TOTALLY IN ME? PLEASE BLESS ME. (YOU MAY NOT EVEN REPLY VERBALLY.)

Osho Replied – I am never replying, ever, only verbally. Whenever I am replying to you, the reply is two-dimensional. It is on two planes together. One is the verbal: that is for those who cannot understand any other dimension – that is for the deaf and the blind and the dead. Then simultaneously on another plane there is a nonverbal communication: that is for those who can hear, who can see, who are alive.

And never ask for my blessings, because they are always there whether you ask for them or not. Whether you cooperate with me or not, whether you are for me or against, that does not make any difference to my blessings. My blessing is not an act. It is just like breathing: it is always there. If you can feel, you will always find it there. I am my blessings.

And you have stumbled upon the right method: “During meditation I invoke your emptiness and I find that gradually your emptiness pervades over me. Can I, by this method, imbibe your total being?” Yes, absolutely yes. Go on, don’t be afraid, because emptiness will sooner or later give you a deep fear – because emptiness means death. Emptiness means you are disappearing, and before your reality opens, you will have to be gone from there completely. You will have to be absent before you can feel the presence of your reality. Before you can feel the fullness of being, you will have to become absolutely empty. There is a gap – you become absolutely empty, almost. There is a small gap and that gap is deathlike. You are gone and God has not entered yet, just a small interval, but that small interval looks like infinity.

In a court there was a case, a murder case, but the jurors and the judge were going to decide that the man is innocent. Because there were reliable witnesses who said that only for three minutes had he gone out and then he was again back amidst them. Only for three minutes was he not there with them, and it seems too much to commit a murder in three minutes. Then the lawyer from the opposite party said, “Let me try one experiment.” He took his pocket watch out and he said, “Now, everybody should close his eyes and remain silent. After three minutes I will give you a hint that three minutes are over.” Everybody remained silent.

If you remain silent for three minutes, three minutes is long, very long; they last very long. They appear very long, nonending. Have you ever stood – somebody dies, a political leader or somebody, and you have to stand for one minute in silence. That one minute looks so long that you start thinking that this political leader should not have died.

Three minutes… and after three minutes were over, the lawyer said, “I have nothing else to say.” And the jurors decided that this man had committed the murder. They changed their verdict. Three minutes are so long.

Whenever you are silent, one moment of silence will be very, very long. And it is impossible to imagine what happens when you are absent. A single moment may be the gap, but it looks almost like eternity. One gets very much afraid. One wants to go back, to hold on to the past.

Soon that fear will arise. Remember that time, don’t be afraid. Don’t go back; don’t fall back. Move on. Accept death, because only out of death life is abundant. Only when you die, you attain – to the deathless.

It is always there waiting for you. It is not something outside you; it is your very core of being, the deathless. But you are identified with the mortal, with the body, with the mind. These are momentary, changing. Somewhere within you there is pure consciousness, untouched, uncorrupted. That pure consciousness is your real nature.

The whole yoga is an effort to reach to that purity of being, to that virginity and out of that virgin, Jesus is born. Once you have touched that virginity in you, you are reborn; it is a resurrection.

Let me be your death so that you can be reborn again. A Master is a death and a life, a cross and a resurrection. You have stumbled upon an exactly right method.

Now go ahead. Imbibe that emptiness more and more, become empty. Soon, everything changes – emptiness disappears. First everything else disappears and emptiness gathers inside you, then when the emptiness is total it also disappears.

Buddha used to say to his disciples, about this phenomenon, “It is as if you burn a candle in the evening.” The whole night the candle goes on burning; the flame burns the candle, the stuff of the candle. The flame goes on burning it. The candle goes on disappearing, disappearing, disappearing…. By the morning the candle had disappeared. The last moment, when the candle has completely disappeared, the flame jumps and is gone. First it destroys the candle, then it itself is gone.

The same happens first if you try to imbibe emptiness, nothingness, egolessness, it will destroy everything else. It will remain like a Flame destroying everything.

When everything is destroyed and you are completely empty a jump of the flame, and emptiness is also gone. Suddenly you are back home, fulfilled, overflowing. That’s where a man becomes a god.