I am not teaching a doctrine. Teaching a doctrine is rather meaningless. I am not a philosopher; my mind is anti philosophical. Philosophy has led nowhere and cannot lead anywhere. The mind that thinks, that questions, cannot know. There are so many doctrines. But a doctrine is a fiction, a human fiction. It is not a discovery but an invention. The human mind is capable of creating infinite systems and doctrines, but to know the truth through theories is impossible. A mind that is stuffed with knowledge is a mind that is bound to remain ignorant.
Revelation comes the moment knowledge ceases. There are two possibilities: either we can think about something, or we can go into it existentially. The more a person thinks, the more he moves away from what is here and now. To think about something is to lose contact with it.
So what I teach is an anti doctrinaire, anti philosophical, anti speculative experience. How to be, just to be. How to be in the moment that is here and now. Open, vulnerable, one with it. That is what I call meditation.
Knowledge can only lead to fiction, to projecting things. It cannot be a vehicle for the attainment of truth. But once you have known the truth, knowledge can be a vehicle to communicate, to share with someone who doesn’t know. Then language, doctrines, theories can become a means. But it is still not adequate. It is bound to falsify.
Anything that has been known existentially cannot be expressed totally. You can only indicate it. The moment I express what I have known, the word goes to you but the meaning is left behind. A dead word comes to you. In a way it is meaningless, because the meaning was the experience itself. So knowledge can become a vehicle of expression, but not a means toward the achievement of realization. The knowing mind is a hindrance, because when you know you are not humble. When you are stuffed with knowledge there is no space within you to receive the unknown. The mind must become vacant, void: a womb, a total receptivity.
Knowledge is your past. It is what you have known. It is your memory, your accumulation, your possession. The accumulation becomes a barrier. It comes between you and the new, between you and the unknown.
You can be open to the unknown only when you are humble. One must constantly be aware of one’s ignorance: that there is still something unknown. A mind that is based on memories, information, scriptures, theories, doctrines, dogmas – is egocentric, not humble. Knowledge cannot give you humbleness. Only the vast unknown can make you humble.
So memory must cease. It is not that you should be without memory, but that in the moment of knowing, in the moment of experiencing, memory must not be there. In that moment, an open, vulnerable mind is required. This moment of emptiness, of void, is meditation, dhyana.
WON’T THE EXPERIENCE ITSELF BECOME A DOCTRINE?
The experience can only be communicated to others negatively. I cannot say what it is, but I can say what it is not. Language can be a vehicle to express what it is not. When I say language cannot express it, I am still expressing it. When I say no doctrine about it is possible, that is my doctrine. But this is negative. I am not asserting something; I am denying something. The no can be said; the yes cannot be said. The yes must be realized. If there is a lingering belief in knowledge, it will become a hindrance in achieving the void, in achieving meditation. First one must understand the futility of the past, of the known, of the knowledge of the mind. As far as the unknown is concerned, as far as truth is concerned, such knowledge is futile.
Either you can become identified with what you have known, or you can become a witness to it. If you become identified with it, then you and your memory become one. But if there is no identification – if you have remained aloof from your memories, separate, not identified with them – then you are aware of yourself as something different from your memories. This awareness becomes a path towards the unknown.
The more you are able to be a witness to your knowledge, the less you identify yourself as the knower, the less possibility there is of your ego becoming the possessor of this knowledge. If you are different from your memories, then the memories become just a sort of accumulated dust. They have come through experience and have become part and parcel of your mind, but your consciousness is different. The one who remembers is different from that which is remembered; the one who has known is different from that which has been known. If you are clear about this distinction, you come nearer and nearer to the void. Non-identified, you can be open; you can be without memories coming between you and the unknown.
The void can be attained, but it cannot be created. If you create it, it is bound to be created by your old mind, by your knowledge. That is why there can be no method to attain it. A method can come only from your accumulated information, so if you try to use any method it is bound to be a continuity of your old mind. But the unknown cannot come to you as a continuity. It can come only as a discontinuous gap. Only then is it beyond the known, beyond your knowledge.
So there can be no method as such, no methodology; only the understanding that ”I am separate from that which I have accumulated.” If this is understood, then there is no need of cultivating the void. The thing has happened! You are the emptiness! Now there is no need to create it.
One cannot create the void. A created void will not be the void; it will only be your creation. Your creation can never be nothingness, the void, because it will have boundaries. You have created it, so it cannot be more than you; it cannot be more than the mind that has created it. You cannot create the void; it must enter you. You can only be a receiver of it. And you can be prepared to receive it only in a negative way. Prepared in the sense that you must not be identified with your knowledge; prepared in the sense that you have understood the futility, the meaninglessness of everything you have known.
Only this awareness of the thinking process can throw you into a gap where ”that which is” overwhelms you, where ”that which is”, is always present. Now there is no barrier between you and it. You have become one with the moment, one with eternity, with the infinite. The moment one translates this moment into knowledge, it again becomes part and parcel of the memory. Then it is lost. So one can never say, ”I have known.” The unknown remains unknown. However much one may have experienced it, the unknown still remains to be known. The charm of it, the beauty of it, the attraction of it remains the same.
The process of knowing is eternal, so one can never come to a point when he can say, ”I have reached.” If someone says this, he again falls into the pattern of memory, the pattern of knowledge. Then he becomes dead. The moment knowledge is asserted is the moment of death. Life ceases. Life is always from the unknown, towards the unknown. It comes from the beyond and goes toward the beyond. So to me, a religious person is not a person who claims knowledge. A person who claims knowledge may be a theologian, a philosopher, but never a religious person. A religious mind accepts the ultimate mystery, the ultimate unknowableness, the ultimate ecstasy of ignorance, the ultimate bliss of ignorance.
The moment of meditation, of emptiness, cannot be created; it cannot be projected. You cannot make your mind still. If you do, then either you have intoxicated it or you have hypnotized it, but this is not the void. The void comes. It can never be created; it can never be brought. So I am not teaching any method. In the sense that there are methods, techniques, doctrines, I am not a teacher.
The Psychology of The Esoteric
Osho
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