Question – How is one who has been trained all his life to analyze and question and doubt to bridge the gap between doubt and trust?

Osho – DOUBT IS BEAUTIFUL in itself. The problem arises when you are stuck in it. Then doubt becomes death. Analysis is perfect if you remain seperate and aloof from it. If you become identified, then the problem arises. Then analysis becomes a paralysis. If you feel that you have become trained to analyze, question and doubt, don’t get miserable. Doubt, analyze, question, but remain seperate. You are not the doubt. Use it as a methodology, a method.

If analysis is a method, then synthesis is also a method. Analysis in itself is half. Unless it is complemented by synthesis it will never be the whole. And you are neither analysis nor synthesis — you are just a transcendental awareness. To question is good, but a question is obviously only half; the answer will be the other half. Doubt is good, but one part; trust is the other part.

Remain aloof. When I say remain aloof, I say remain aloof not only from doubt but from trust also. That too is a method; one has to use it. One should not allow oneself to be used by it — then a tyrrany arises. A tyrrany can either be of doubt or of trust. The tyrrany of doubt will cripple you; you will never be able to move a single step because doubt will be everywhere. How can you do anything while doubt is there? It will cripple you. And if trust becomes a tyrrany…? And it can become one; it has become a tyrrany for millions. The churches, the temples, the mosques are full of those people for whom trust has become a tyrrany. Then it does not give you eyes, it blinds you. Then religion becomes a superstition.

If trust is not a method and you are identified with it, then religion becomes superstition and science becomes technology. Then the purity of science is lost and the purity of religion is also lost. Remember this: doubt and trust are like two wings. Use both of them. But, you are neither.

A man of discretion, a man who is wise, will use doubt if his search is concerned with matter. If his inquiry is about the outside, the other, he will use doubt as the method. If his search is towards the inner, towards himself, then he will use trust. Science and religion are two wings.

In India we have tried one foolishness. Now the West is committing another. In India we have tried to live only by trust; hence the poverty, the starvation, the misery. The whole country is like a wound, continuously suffering. And the suffering has been so long that people have even become accustomed to it, they have accepted it so deeply that they have become insensitive to it. They are almost dead: they drift, they are not alive.

This happened because of the tyranny of trust. How can a bird fly with one wing? Now in the West, another tyranny is happening: the tyranny of doubt. It works perfectly well as far as Objective inquiry is concerned: you think about matter, doubt is needed; it is a scientific method. But when you start moving within-wards it simply doesn’t work; it doesn’t fit. There, trust is needed.

The perfect man is a man who has a deep harmony between doubt and trust. A perfect man will look inconsistent to you, but he is not inconsistent. He is simply harmonious — contradictions dissolve in him. He uses everything. If you have doubt, use it for scientific inquiry. And look at great scientists: by the time they reach their age of understanding and wisdom, by the time their youthful enthusiasm is gone and wisdom settles, they are always very deep in trust.

Eddington, Einstein, Lodge — I’m not talking about mediocre scientists, they are not scientists at all — but all the great pinnacles in science are very religious. They trust because they have known doubt, they have used doubt, and they have come to understand that doubt has its limitations.

It is just like: my eyes can see and my ears can hear. If I try to hear from my eyes then it is going to be impossible, and if I try to see by my ears then it is going to be impossible. The eye has its own limitation, the ear has its own limitation. They are experts, and every expert has a limitation.

The eye can see — and it is good that it can only see because if the eye could do many things then it would not be so efficient in seeing. In the eye the whole energy becomes sight, and the whole energy in the ear becomes hearing. Doubt is an expert. It works if you are inquiring about the world. But when you start inquiring about God through the same method, then you are using a wrong method. The method was perfectly suited to the world, to the world of law, but it is not suited to the world of love. For the world of love, trust is needed.

Nothing is wrong in doubt, don’t be worried about it. Use it well, use it in the right way. If you use it in the right way and use it well, you will come to an understanding: you will come to a doubt of doubt itself. You will see — you will become doubtful of doubt. You will see where it works and where it doesn’t work. When you come to that understanding, the door of trust opens.

If you are trained for analysis — good. But don’t be caught in it, don’t allow it to become a bondage. Remain free to synthesize also, because if you go on analyzing and analyzing and you never synthesize, you will come to the minutest part but you will never come to the whole.

God is the ultimate synthesis; the atom, the ultimate analysis. Science reaches to the atom: it goes on analyzing, dividing, until finally it comes to the minutest part which cannot be divided any more. And religion comes to God: it goes on adding, synthesizing. God is the ultimate synthesis; more cannot be added to it.

It is already the whole. Nothing exists beyond it. Science is atomic; religion is ‘wholly’. Use both. I am always in favor of using everything that you have. Even if you have some poison I will say, “Preserve it, don’t throw it.” In some circumstance it can become medicinal — it depends on you. You can commit suicide by the same poison, and by the same poison you can be saved from dying. The poison is the same; the difference is right use.

Everything depends on right use. So when you go to the lab, use doubt; when you come to the temple, use trust. Be loose and free so that when you go from the lab to the temple you don’t carry the lab around with you. Then you can enter the temple totally free of the lab — you can pray, dance, sing. And when you move towards the lab again, leave the temple behind, because dancing in the lab will be very absurd — you may destroy things.

Bringing the serious face that you use in the lab to the temple won’t be appropriate. A temple is a celebration; a lab is a search. Search has to be serious; a celebration is a play. You delight in it, you become children again. A temple is a place to become children again and again, so you never lose touch with your original source. In the lab you are an adult; in the temple you are a child. And Jesus says, “The kingdom of God is for those who are like children.”

Remember always not to throw away anything that God has given to you — not even doubt. It must be He who has given it to you, and there must be a reason behind it, because nothing is given without reason. There must be a use for it.
Don’t discard any stone, because many times it has happened that the stone that was discarded by the builders became the very cornerstone of the building in the end.

Source – Osho Book “Come Follow To You, Vol 1″

Question – Can Trust be Cultivated?

Osho – A cultivated trust will not be trust; it will be false, it will be insincere. It will just be on the surface; it will never touch your centre. Whatsoever is cultivated remains superficial, because whatsoever is cultivated remains of the mind. Trust cannot be cultivated, just as love cannot be cultivated: you can’t teach people how to love. Dangerous will be the days when people are taught how to love, because they will learn the lesson, they will repeat it accurately — it will be technological but it will not be of the heart.

Anything that belongs to the depth has to come out of its own accord. So what is to be done? I understand the question you are asking. Then what to do? The only thing that can be done is to remove hindrances. Trust cannot be brought out; hindrances can be removed. When there is no hindrance, it comes, it flows. Trust cannot be cultivated; doubts can be dropped.

So one has to understand the doubting mind, the very mechanism of doubt, why you doubt. One has to see through and through why one doubts, because doubt is the hindrance. When doubt disappears, suddenly trust is there. It has always been there. Only a rock was hindering the path, and the fountain could not flow. You come with trust. Every child is born with trust, every child is trusting, so trust need not be cultivated. That’s how everybody is born: it is in-built. You are trust.

But by and by, the child learns how to doubt. We teach, in fact — the society, the family, the school, the university, they all teach how to doubt. Because unless you doubt, you cannot be very clever and cunning; unless you doubt, you cannot be left in this great world of competition: you will be destroyed. So doubt has to be learned; and once you learn it, by and by, trust is forgotten. It remains deep within you, but you cannot reach to it — too many obstacles. You cannot cultivate it; it cannot be taught. The only thing is, you have to reverse the process — you have learned doubt, now unlearn it.

Trust was there, trust is there, trust will be there. All that has to be done is to be done with doubt; nothing is to be done with trust. Why do you doubt? Why are you so afraid? — because doubt means fear. Whenever you love somebody, you don’t doubt, because fear disappears. Whenever there is love, fear is not. But when you don’t love, you doubt; when you don’t know a person, you doubt more — a stranger, then you doubt even more; unfamiliar, unknown, then you doubt more. Whenever there is fear, there is doubt. Deep down, doubt is fear. If you go still deeper, doubt is death, because you are afraid of death. And it seems that everybody is trying to kill you; fighting — everybody competitive — everybody trying to push you aside, dethrone you. Doubt is death.

The whole mechanism has to be understood. Then what to do? Why is one afraid of death.? You have never known death. You may have seen somebody else dying, but you have never seen death. When somebody is dying, do you really know that he is dying — or simply disappearing into some other world? Doubt is without base; fear is without base — it is just an assumption of the mind. When somebody dies, do you think he is dying, or simply disappearing into another world, moving to another plane of life, or to another body? You will have to know it in deep meditation. When thinking stops, suddenly you see that you are separate from the body.

So I don’t say trust first; I say meditate first. That is the difference between meditation and prayer. People who teach prayer, they say, “Trust first, otherwise how can you pray?” Trust is needed as a basic condition, otherwise how can you pray? If you don’t trust God, how can you pray? I teach meditation, because meditation doesn’t require trust as a basic necessity. Meditation is a science, not a superstition. Meditation says you experiment with your mind — it is too full of thoughts; thoughts can be dispersed, the clouds can be dispersed, and you can attain to an empty sky of your inner being. And it needs no trust — just a little courage, a little effort, a little daring, a little persistence and perseverance, a little patience, yes, but no trust. You don’t believe in God? That is not a hindrance to meditation. You don’t believe in soul? That is not a hindrance in meditation. You don’t believe at all? That is not an obstacle. You can meditate, because meditation simply says how to go withinwards: whether there is a soul or not doesn’t matter; whether there is a God or not doesn’t matter.

One thing is certain: that you are. Whether you will be after death, or not, does not matter. Only one thing matters: right this moment, you are. Who are you? To enter into it is meditation: to go deeper into your own being. Maybe it is just momentary; maybe you are not eternal; maybe death finishes everything: we don’t make any condition that you have to believe. We say only that you have to experiment. Just try. One day it happens: thoughts are not there, and suddenly when thoughts disappear, the body and you are separate, because thoughts are the bridge. Through thoughts you are joined with the body; it is the link. Suddenly the link disappears -you are there, the body is there, and there is an infinite abyss between the two. Then you know that the body will die, but you cannot die.

Then it is not something like a dogma; it is not a creed, it is an experience — self-evident. On that day, death disappears; on that day, doubt disappears, because now you are not always to be defending yourself. Nobody can destroy you; you are indestructible. Then trust arises, overflows. And to be in trust is to be in ecstasy; to be in trust is to be in God; to be in trust is to be fulfilled.

So I don’t say cultivate trust. I say experiment with meditation. From another angle try to understand it. Doubt means thinking. The more you doubt, the more you can think. All great thinkers are sceptical — have to be. Scepticism creates thinking. When you say no, then thinking arises; if you say yes, finished — there is no need to think. When you say no, then you have to think. Thinking is negative. Doubt is a basic necessity for thinking. People who cannot doubt, cannot think; they cannot become great thinkers. So, more doubt means more thinking, more thinking means more doubt. Meditation is a way to come out of thinking. Once the clouds of thoughts are not there, and the process of thinking ceases, even for a single moment, you have a glimpse of your being.

One of the greatest thinkers in the West, Descartes, has said, “I think, therefore I am.” COGITO ERGO SUM. And Descartes is the father of modern Western philosophy.’I think, therefore I am.’Just the opposite has been the experience in the East. Buddha, Nagarjuna, Sankara, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, they will laugh, they will laugh tremendously when they hear Descartes’ dictum,’I think, therefore I am’; because they say, “I don’t think, therefore I am.”

Because when thinking ceases, only then does one know who one is. In a non-thinking state of consciousness one realizes one’s being, not by thinking, but by non-thinking. Meditation is non-thinking; it is an effort to create a state of no-mind. Doubt is mind. In fact, to say ‘doubting mind’ is wrong; it is repetitive — mind is doubt; doubt is mind. When doubt ceases, mind ceases; or when mind ceases, doubt ceases. And then self-evident truth arises within, a pinnacle of light, eternity, timelessness; and then there is trust.

Right now how can you trust? Right now you don’t know who you are — how can you trust? And you ask, “Can trust be cultivated?” Never. Never try to cultivate it. Many have done that foolishness. Then they become false, inauthentic, pseudo. It is better to be a no-sayer, but sincere, because there is at least a possibility, through sincerity, that some day you may become an authentic yea-sayer. But never say yes until it arises from within and overwhelms you.

The whole world is full of pseudo-religious people: churches, temples, gurudwaras, mosques, full of religious people. And can’t you see the world is absolutely irreligious? With so many religious people, and the world is so irreligious, how is this miracle happening? Everybody is religious, and the total is irreligiousness. The religion is false. People have cultivated trust. Trust has become a belief, not an experience. They have been taught to believe; they have not been taught to know — that’s where humanity has missed. Never believe. If you cannot trust, it is better to doubt, because through doubt, some day or other, the possibility will arise; because you cannot live with doubt eternally. Doubt is disease; it is an illness. In doubt you can never feel fulfilled; in doubt you will always tremble, in doubt you will always remain in anguish and divided and indecisive. In doubt you will remain in a nightmare; so one day or other you will start seeking how to go beyond it. So I say it is good to be an atheist rather than a theist, a pseudo-theist.

You have been taught to believe — from the very childhood, everybody’s mind has been conditioned to believe: believe in God, believe in soul, believe in this and believe in that. Now that belief has entered into your bones and your blood, but it remains a belief: you have not known. And unless you know, you cannot be liberated. Knowledge liberates; only knowing liberates. All beliefs are borrowed; others have given them to you. They are not your flowerings. And how can a borrowed thing lead you towards the real, the absolutely real? Drop all that you have taken from others. It is better to be a beggar than to be rich; rich not by your own earning, but rich through stolen goods, rich through borrowed things, rich through tradition, rich through heritage. No, it is better to be a beggar, but to be on one’s own. That poverty has a richness in it because it is true, and your richness of belief is very poor. Those beliefs can never go very deep; they remain skin-deep at the most. Scratch a little, and the disbelief comes out.

You believe in God. Then your business fails, and suddenly, the disbelief is there. You say, “I don’t believe, I cannot believe in God.” You believe in God, and your beloved dies, and the disbelief comes up. You believe in God, and just by the death of your beloved the belief is destroyed? It is not worth much. Trust can never be destroyed — once it is there, nothing can destroy it; nothing, absolutely nothing can destroy it.

So remember, there is a great difference between trust and belief. Trust is personal; belief is social. Trust you have to grow in; belief you can remain in, whatsoever you are, and belief can be imposed on you. Drop beliefs. The fear will be there; because if you drop belief, doubt arises. Each belief is forcing doubt somewhere, repressing doubt. Don’t be worried about it; let the doubt come. Everybody has to pass through a dark night before he reaches the sunrise.

Everybody has to pass through doubt. Long is the journey, dark is the night. But when after the long journey and the dark night the morning arises, then you know it was all worthwhile. Trust cannot be cultivated. And never try to cultivate it — that is what has been done by the whole of humanity. Cultivated trust becomes belief. Discover it within yourself, don’t cultivate it. Go deeper into your being, to the very source of your being, and discover it.

Source – Osho Book “Come Follow To You, Vol 3″

Question – Why doesn’t trust arise out of the decision to trust?

Osho – TRUST IS NOT A DECISION ON YOUR PART. You cannot decide for it. When you are finished with doubting, when you have come to see doubt through and through and you are completely convinced of the futility of the doubt, trust arises. You have to deal with the doubt, you are not to do anything about trust. Your trust will not be of much importance because your trust, your decision, will always be against doubt. And trust is not contrary to doubt; trust is simply the absence of doubt. When doubt is not, trust is.

Trust is not the opposite, remember. Notwithstanding what the dictionaries say, trust is not opposite to doubt, just as darkness is not opposite to light. It appears opposite, but it is not — because you cannot destroy light by bringing darkness in. You cannot bring darkness in. There is no way to destroy light by throwing darkness on it. Darkness has
never been able to destroy the small flame of a very small candle. The whole darkness of the existence is impotent before a small candle.

Why is it so? If darkness is opposite, inimical, antagonistic, then it should be capable sometimes of defeating light. It is sheer absence. Darkness is because light is not. When light is, darkness is not. When you put a light on in your room, have you watched what happens? Darkness does not go out of the room; it is not that darkness escapes out of the room. It is found simply not to be there. It never was — it is pure negativity.

Doubt is like darkness, trust is like light. If you have doubt, then you will decide for trust. Otherwise there is no need to decide for trust. Why decide for it? You must be having tremendous doubt. The greater the doubt, the greater the need is felt to create trust. So whenever somebody says, “I trust very strongly,” remember that he is fighting against a very strong doubt. That’s how people become fanatics. The fanaticism is born because they have created a false trust. Their doubt is alive, their doubt is not finished. The doubt has not disappeared, the doubt is there. And to fight with the doubt they have created a trust against it. If the doubt is very strong, they have to cling fanatically to their trust. Whenever somebody says that, “I am a staunch believer,” remember, deep down in his heart he is carrying disbelief. Otherwise, there is no need to be a strong believer. Simple trust is enough — why strong? When you say to somebody, “I love you VERY strongly,”
something is wrong. Love is enough.

Love is not a quantity. When somebody says, “I love you very much,” something is wrong, because love is not a quantity. You cannot love less and more. Either you love or you don’t love. The division is very clear-cut.

Just a few days ago a new book had come, and the first copy I always give to Vivek. I wrote ‘With love to Vivek’. She told me, “Why not MUCH LOVE?” I said, “That is impossible. I cannot write that” — because to me, more or less is not possible. I can simply write ‘love’;'much love’ is absurd. Quantity is not a question, but simple quality. When you say ‘much’, you must be hiding something behind that ‘much’; something of hatred, something of anger, something of jealousy, but something which is not love. To hide that, you have to show your over-enthusiasm, what you call ‘gung-ho’: MUCH love, STRONG trust, STAUNCH belief. Whenever you are too much of a Christian, you are not a Christian at all. If you are too much of a Hindu, you have not understood at all.

Just the other night a young girl was saying to me that she was afraid. She wants to take SANNYAS but she is afraid, “Because it will be putting Christ as number two; you will become the first.” She was very puzzled. “It will be putting Christ behind you,” she told me. I told her, “Just look into my eyes. If you really love? Christ then you will find Christ in me. You will not find two persons. But if you are a Christian, then it is difficult. Then forget all about SANNYAS.”

One who loves Christ can love me; there is no conflict. One who loves Krishna can love me; there is no conflict. But if one is a Hindu, one is a Mohammedan, one is a Christian, then it is difficult. A Christian is not a lover of Christ. To be a Christian is a decision on your part; doubt has not disappeared, doubt has been repressed.

Don’t repress doubt. Rather, just on the contrary, watch, look deeply into it, analyze it. Don’t leave any part of it unanalyzed, unknown. Become acquainted with all the layers of the doubting mind. That very acquaintance, the penetration into doubt, will dissolve doubt. One day suddenly you will awake one morning full of trust — not as your decision. It cannot be a decision because trust is something you are born with; doubt is a learned thing. Trust is tacit, inborn.

Every child trusts. As he grows, doubt arises. Doubt is learned. So trust is there always as an undercurrent in your being. You just drop doubt, trust will arise. And then trust has a tremendous beauty because it is pure. It is not against doubt, it is simply absence of doubt. The rock has been removed and the stream has come bubbling up, flowing.

So please, don’t try to make a decision about it. Your decision will be a delay; and the more you decide, the more you will find, deep inside, the worm of doubt increasing. Then you will be divided in two and you will never be at ease, and there will be continuous agony.

So many people believe in God, and deep down is doubt — throbbing, alive, waiting for its opportunity to destroy the trust. And the trust is bogus because the trust is on the periphery, and the doubt has reached almost to the very core of your being. Never decide about love, about trust, about God. These things are not your decisions. They are not
arguments, they are not conclusions.

When doubt is no more there, trust is. It happens. It flows. It arises out of your innermost core, from the innermost shrine. You start listening to a new music of being, a new style of being, a new way of being. It is not of the mind, it is of the being.

Source – Osho Book “The Beloved, Vol2″

Osho – Faith is not belief. Many people misinterpret faith as belief. Religious people misinterpret it, anti-religious people misinterpret it; both are agreed on one thing, that faith means belief. Faith does not mean belief at all. Belief is of the head and faith is of the heart — they belong to two different centres, they are really diametrically opposite.

Belief is a repression of doubt and faith is an expression of trust. They are as far from each other as two things can be. But priests played a trick. Because faith has been praised, and faith is worth praising, they played a trick upon the word; they made it mean belief and they go on telling people ‘Believe, because the scriptures say if you don’t believe you will never attain to god.’ The scriptures certainly say if you don’t have faith you will never attain to god, you will never know what bliss is, what truth is, what love is. But faith is not belief.

Belief means falsifying. There is doubt in you and you cover it up with a belief. It is as if you have a wound and you put a rose flower on it: it is not going to heal it but you can deceive others, they will not be able to see the wound. And the most dangerous thing is that you may be deceived by your flower yourself, you may forget about the wound and you will start believing that there is no wound at all — look, the beautiful flower is there. Forgetting the wound is not going to heal it. And covering it is dangerous because it will go on increasing underneath the flower; it can become a canceric growth inside you.

That’s what has happened to humanity: for thousands of years people have lived with doubt repressed by belief and now the doubt has grown so big that it is throwing all belief away, it is erupting everywhere. Now the whole humanity is in a state of doubt. Even those who pretend to believe know that that belief is only formal. It may be utilitarian, pragmatic, it is good for other reasons, not for religious reasons to go to church every sunday. It is a social affair, it gives you a good social status. People think you are religious, virtuous. People give you respect and your ego feels good with the respectability that comes through it. But now almost half the humanity has gone communist, atheistic, and the other half is only formally religious, there is no true religion. And the people who are responsible for this whole nonsense are the priests — they deceived humanity.

I am against belief because belief is a repression of doubt. I am all for faith because faith is an enquiry, it is not belief. It is trust in existence, it is trust in oneself, it is trust in one’s consciousness, it is trust in one’s intelligence. If I am intelligent it is a simple conclusion that ‘How can I be intelligent if the whole universe is unintelligent? I come from the universe, I am part of it; if I am intelligent that simply shows that the universe is intelligent.’ It is not a question of belief, it is a simple enquiry, it is a simple logical process. There is no need to repress doubt.

Trusting one’s intelligence, trusting one’s enquiry, trusting even one’s doubts — that is faith. Because doubts are not bad. They are only question marks, and every question mark can lead you into enquiry, and every enquiry is good. If the enquiry proves that god is, it is good; if it proves that god is not, that too is good. Either way we will be discovering the truth. Whether god is or is not does not matter; whatsoever is the case has to be known.

Truth does not mean that god has to be. Truth simply means whatsoever is has to be discovered. In fact according to me, whatsoever is, is god. Even if there is no god then that universe without god is the truth. Faith is enquiry into truth, and faith is courageous enough to go into every question without shrinking. It is not cowardly, beliefs are cowardly. With is courage. Only the courageous can go into the unknown, only the courageous can ask dangerous questions, only the courageous can dare the journey into the uncharted.

Faith is beautiful. And remember, the meaning of Joseph is faith. There is no such thing as increasing belief. Belief is a dead thing, it does not increase. It is a plastic thing, you impose things on it. It neither decreases nor increases; it is like a plastic flower.

But faith increases and goes on increasing. There is no end to it, it is an eternal pilgrimage. The more you go into it, the more it increases. It is a movement, a process. It is not a thing dead and complete, it is riverlike. It is not like a pond closed from everywhere, it is moving towards the ocean. And to me it is significant that Joseph was the name of Jesus’ father. A man like Jesus can be born only to a man like Joseph. I don’t believe in the theory of his virgin mother. That is sheer nonsense. Joseph symbolises faith, simplicity, trust. A son like Jesus is possible only through such a man.

But somehow Christianity has been very unjust to Joseph. He has been completely ignored, not only ignored but insulted. The first insult is that they say that Jesus was born to a virgin mother. In fact it is an insult to Joseph, it is an insult to Mary, it is an insult to Jesus: he becomes a bastard. Who is this Holy Ghost? And if these ghosts go on playing tricks like this, can you call them holy? Then what is unholy? This Holy Ghost made poor Mary pregnant… and he is still part of the trinity. He should have been expelled — he committed a crime!

But Joseph is the most ignored. Mary at least slowly slowly has been accepted but not much. Many times there have been efforts to make her part of the holy family; from three the family should consist of four. But Christian priests have not accepted that; a woman cannot be accepted in the holy trinity. They are all male, all three. It is the male chauvinistic attitude. But at least Mary has been worshipped for the simple reason that they could not deny that Jesus came out of her womb.

At that time test-tube babies were not available, otherwise I am certain Christians would have dropped Mary also; just as they dropped Joseph they would have dropped Mary. They would have tried saying that Jesus was a test-tube baby.

The whole idea is rooted in antagonism towards sex. Sex is unholy — how can they accept a Joseph? But I accept Joseph absolutely. In fact without Joseph there would be no Jesus. We owe that much to Joseph. And his name is so symbolically meaningful that it is also a metaphor: a son like Jesus can only come out of a father like Joseph — out of increasing faith not out of belief.

I teach faith because faith to me is another name of love. Belief is ugly, heady; faith is beautiful, of the heart. And the whole energy of a sannyasin has to shift from the head towards the heart. If we can bring the energy from the head to the heart the miracle has happened. From there a totally new life starts, a life of bliss, a life of dance and song and celebration.

Source – Osho Book “I Am Not As Thunk As You Drink I Am”

Question – I believe in God, And it is not out of fear. Why do you say that all belief is out of fear?

Osho – Then why do you believe? You don’t know. If you know, there is no need to believe. All belief is out of ignorance Belief MEANS ignorance. Buddha knows, he does not believe. I know, I don’t believe at all. But why do you believe? From where comes your belief? It is not coming from your experience – then from where is it coming? It can come only from two sources, which are basically the same source – either fear or greed. Either you are afraid or you are greedy. And these are the two aspects of the same coin, fear and greed.

Greed is out of fear, and out of greed more fear arises. They go together. So either you are afraid of hell or you are greedy for heaven. Otherwise why do you believe in God? How can you believe in God? Your very belief simply says that alone you are afraid; you need a protection. You need a father, you need somebody to control the destiny, you need somebody to look up to.

And all belief is based in fear, and your gods are nothing but your fears personified. Your gods don’t say anything about the God, they simply say something about your pathology, about your mind.

A very religious man, deep asleep, had a dream. In his dream, God appeared and said to him: ’I have news for you – bad news and good news. Which would you like to hear first?’
’The good news,’ said the man.
’Well, the good news is that when you die you will be going to Heaven.’
The man, very happy, said, ’And what is the bad news?’
Said God: ’The bad news is that you are expected there by tomorrow.’

Even about Heaven you are afraid. You are afraid to die.

One alpinist fell down from a steep rock, and when he was falling he took a hold of a branch and kept suspended.
’Help me, help me!’ he shouted. ’Is there anybody above me?’
Suddenly a strong and deep voice echoed over the abyss: ’I’m going to help you, my son. But first I need your faith and you have to trust me.’
The man answered, ’Sure, I’ll do everything you want, my Lord. I trust you, I believe you.’
’Then,’ replied the voice, ’let loose the branch.’
A deep silence followed and the man shouted again: ’Hey! Is there another one above me?’
Even if God comes to you and says: ’Let go! Die! Disappear!’ you will turn your back towards Him. You will start searching for another god.

All beliefs are rooted in fear. And a really religious person is born only when all fears and all beliefs are burned, and the scriptures and the idols destroyed. When you are free of belief you are ready for truth.

Source – Osho Book “This Very Body the Buddha”

Osho – Trust is the greatest thing in the world that can happen to a man, because it is the most impossible thing. To trust somebody else is almost impossible, because doubt continues. Howsoever you trust, the other is the other. Who knows? How can you penetrate the other? You can at the most know something ABOUT him. You can know his biography, but the biography is always less than the man, and the man is still there, alive. The book is not yet closed; much more is still going to be added. Who knows?

And man is freedom. The man may have been good up to now, but what about the next moment? The next moment he can change, he can suddenly change. He can throw all his past and move in a new direction. Who knows? How can you trust the other? It is the most absurd and impossible thing in the world. But impossibles also happen, and once they happen they give you a totally new being.

I will tell you one story where a painter has described the way he recognized his calling. Somebody asked him,’How did you become a painter?’ The man had not been a painter up until his fiftieth year. He had lived as a broker, and you cannot imagine a broker becoming a painter. The callings are so different. The broker lives in the world of calculation, mathematics, logic — he lives in a very worldly world — and the painter is very unworldly. He lives in some unknown dimension. He looks like a fool. He has no logic, he lives an illogical life: uneconomical, unworldly. Somebody asked,’What has happened?’

The painter described his calling in a parable:’The Parable of the Ducks’ he called it. He said,’In this parable is the whole story of how I was transformed.’ He was living in a certain part of France. It was autumn, when the ducks and the wild geese fly south.

‘At the time of the migrations a strange trait is seen in the regions where duck and geese are in great numbers. The domestic birds are, as it were, magnetized by the wild birds’ great triangular formations, and they themselves attempt an awkward flight but fall within a few feet. When the wild birds come, the domestic birds are magnetized by their triangular formations in the sky, by their flight, by their freedom. The domestic birds are magnetized and they also attempt, of course, an awkward flight. The call of the wild has been aroused in the strongest way possible. There is some strange vestige in the domestic birds. Something has happened: something in their unconscious is suddenly aroused, something deep in their hearts is touched by the wild birds.

For a moment, the farm ducks are changed into migratory birds. In that little hard head of theirs where small images of tides, worms and ants whirl about, there appear continental distances; the thirst for the sea winds and the vast expanse of the oceans, and the duck staggers from left to right in his fenced-in enclosure, caught by this sudden passion, not knowing where it is taking him, and by his vast love of an object which is unknown to him.

‘Likewise man, gripped by evidence of something he is uncertain of, discovers this sudden truth of freedom. Just like the domestic duck, he is also unaware that his tiny head is large enough to contain oceans.’

Whenever a Jesus walks by, you may be a domestic duck, but there comes a wild bird. Suddenly something in you is touched. Suddenly you are no more the domestic bird, no more in bondage, no more a GRASTHA, no more a householder. For a moment you have also become a sannyasin. Just the presence of a Jesus or a Buddha, and something which has always been asleep in you is awakened. He has touched your being — and the deep desire for freedom, and a deep desire to move into the sky, to go in search of the unknown. This is trust. You cannot be certain of what has happened. You cannot be certain of what has touched your heart. You are uncertain, but this much is certain: that something was touched, and something which is so significant that you are ready to risk your whole life.

This is trust: the courage to risk your secure life for an unknown end. Nobody knows whether you will be able to reach or not. Nobody knows whether anybody has ever reached or not. But now, nothing matters. Now you are no more a calculator; now you take the jump. Now only this adventure has meaning, and nothing else; and you are ready to sacrifice everything for it.

This is what Jesus means when he says that he has loved his own in this world. You are my own. If I have touched your heart and released the desire, the utterly impossible desire to be free, if I have been a wild bird to you and I have broken the bondage of your domestic habits, and you are ready, even in an awkward way ready to fly, ready to try, then you are my own. Jesus says again and again,’Who is my family? — those who have understood me. Those who have recognized me, they are my brothers and sisters, they are my family.’ He loved them unto the end, and only a Jesus CAN love.

Source – Osho Book “Come Follow To You Vol 4″

Osho – Two things have to be remembered. One is that faith does not mean belief. Belief is of the mind and faith is of the heart. Faith is a love affair and belief is only an intellectual conviction. Belief can be easily destroyed by arguments; faith can never be destroyed. No argument can destroy faith because it is not based on arguments in the first place. But belief is based in arguments.

Belief is philosophical; faith is religious. Belief is a false coin. It looks like faith but it is fake. Somebody believes in god — that is not faith. Jesus has faith in god, not belief. The pope believes in god — it is not faith. He has not experienced it himself. That is the first thing to be noted. I am all in favor of faith but absolutely against all belief systems.

The second thing is that faith is never static. Belief is always static. Faith is like a river: moving, dynamic, alive, increasing — like a tree growing, new foliage coming, new buds opening, new flowers. It is always a movement from one peak to another peak, from one perfection to another perfection, from one joy to another joy, from one mystery to another
mystery. It is a non-ending pilgrimage.

Belief is dead, it is like a corpse. It never moves. It is like a pond, stagnant, it stinks. And the world is full of believers; that’s why there is so much misery, so much ignorance, so much superstition. The whole earth is stinking for the simple reason that people have lost all contact with real religiousness.

Religiousness is always movement. Buddha used to say that the religious person lives in verbs, not in nouns. In fact nouns don’t exist in reality, only verbs. Nouns exist only in dictionaries and human languages. They are our inventions. For example a tree: it is a noun, it is only part of our language. If you look at a real tree, it is not a tree, it is a treeing, because it is constantly moving. When you are looking at it a few old leaves are falling, new leaves are coming out. It is treeing, it is not a tree.

We say river — that is a noun — but no river is a river, all rivers are rivering, moving, going towards the ocean. Faith is always increasing, and the person who lives in faith grows, grows to ultimate heights. And the person who lives in beliefs is a dead person. He trusts in something which is dead, and the ultimate result is that he becomes dead himself. Avoid beliefs and risk everything for faith.

Source – Osho Book “Fingers Pointing to the Moon”

Question – Beloved Master, Any marks for Choiceless UnAwareness?

Osho – Anand Buddha, even if you are aware of that, that will do. Are you aware of choiceless unawareness? That will destroy that choiceless unawareness. Make it an object of awareness and it will disappear, evaporate. And no marks can be given for it, because if marks have to be given for it then everybody will succeed in getting marks — everybody, because everybody is living it.

A huge bully sauntered into the dimly lit saloon. “Is there anybody here called Kilroy?” he snarled. Nobody answered. Again he sneered, “Is there anybody here called Kilroy?”
There was a moment of silence and then a little Irishman stepped forward. “I am Kilroy,” he said.
The tough guy picked him up and threw him across the bar. Then he punched him in the jaw, kicked him, slapped him around and walked out.
About fifteen minutes later the little fellow came to. “Boy, didn’t I fool him,” he said. “I ain’t Kilroy!”

A pretty young girl stretched out on the psychiatrist’s couch. “I just can’t help myself, Doctor. No matter how hard I try to resist, I bring five or six men with me into my bedroom every night. Last night there were ten. I just feel so miserable, I don’t know what to do.”
In understanding tones the doctor rumbled, “Yes, I know, I know, my dear.”
“Ah!” the surprised girl exclaimed. “Were you there last night too?”

People are living in unconsciousness, doing all kinds of things in unconsciousness. Everybody is an unconscious robot. We are just pretending that we are conscious; we are not conscious.
The moment you become conscious, all unconscious actions disappear from your life. Your life starts moving in a new dimension. Your each act comes out of inner clarity; your each response is virtuous, is virtue.

To live unconsciously is to live in sin; to live consciously is to be virtuous, is to be religious. And to live in total awareness is to be a buddha, is to be a christ.

It will be good if we start calling Christ “Joshua the Buddha.” His real name was Joshua; from Joshua has come Jesus. And ‘christ’ has become ugly because of the Christian church; the word has lost its beauty. It will be good if we change, if we start calling him Joshua the Buddha — because they are all buddhas, they are all awakened people. They live through inner light. You only grope in inner darkness.

Anand Buddha, I have given you the name Buddha. If you feel you are living in choiceless unawareness, make it a point to be aware of it.

A thief asked a great Buddhist mystic, Nagarjuna, “Can I meditate and still remain a thief?”
Nagarjuna said, “Yes. Just do one thing: while you are stealing remain alert, aware, conscious.”
The thief was very happy. He said, “You are the right master! I have gone to many people, and they all say, ‘First stop stealing, then you can be a meditator.’”

Nagarjuna said, “Those are not masters — they must be ex-thieves. I am a master. I am concerned with meditation, not with other things. What you do is YOUR business; whether you steal or donate, that is your business. My business is to tell you to be alert, and do whatsoever you want to do.”

Of course the thief was very happy — happy because now he could have both worlds. But after fifteen days he came back, fell at the feet of Nagarjuna, and he said, “You are a very sly fellow! You destroyed my whole profession — because if I try to be alert I cannot steal; my hands simply won’t move. Last night I entered into the king’s palace; this was such an opportunity that it happens only once in a lifetime. It was very difficult to enter — my whole life I have tried — but it must be because of your blessings: last light I entered, and all the guards were fast asleep. I opened the treasure and such precious diamonds I have never seen in my life! I could have become the richest man, and everything was within my grasp, but you were standing between me and the treasure. You were telling me, ‘Be aware!’ You were shouting at me, ‘Be aware!’ And if I tried awareness, those precious stones looked just like stones, not worth bothering about. If I forgot about awareness, they were again precious stones, tremendously valuable.

“It changed many times. I became aware and they were ordinary stones; I became unaware and they were great riches. But finally YOU were victorious. I have come back to you. Now initiate me into sannyas.”

Nagarjuna must have been a man like me; otherwise, ordinary teachers can’t accept a thief.
Sometimes a drunkard comes to me and he says, “I am a drunkard. Can I also be a sannyasin?”
I say, “Don’t be bothered about small things. Sannyas will do! You first be a sannyasin, then we will see.”
He seems to be puzzled, he can’t understand. But once he becomes a sannyasin, things start changing. Sooner or later he comes and reports that “You did the trick. I cannot drink anymore; it has become more and more impossible. It is so repulsive, disgusting.”

One drunkard told me — he has become a sannyasin just a few months ago — he said, “It has become so difficult. Now I know the strategy and the trick behind these orange clothes, because when I go to the pub people start touching my feet! They say, ‘Swamiji, this is a pub! You must have come thinking it is some other place.’ And I say, ‘Yes — is this a pub?’ And I have to turn back! I can’t even go in.” He was really angry at me; he said, “I can’t even go to the movie, because standing in the queue people start touching my feet, and they say, ‘Swamiji, what are you doing here?’ And I have to escape!”

Just a small bit of awareness and it will affect your whole life. Just a small bit of awareness and your total life as you have lived up to now will be shattered, will collapse, and a new life will start arising around that small center of awareness.

Source – Osho Book “The Dhammapada, Vol8″

Question – Beloved Master, I can not trust anybody, Why?

Osho – Sargam, I will just tell you a story. Meditate over it.

The hired boy gets the youngest girl in the farmer’s family to go out into the hayloft with him. She comes back and tells her sister, “Say, the hired boy sure knows some good tricks!”

The sister goes out to the hayloft too, and comes back saying the same, followed by the mother, and finally the farmer himself who has heard his wife’s remark that, “The hired boy certainly knows some tricks.”

When the boy sees the farmer coming, he thinks fast and begins doing cartwheels and acrobatic tricks all over the walls of the barn. The farmer watches him and then goes back and tells his assembled wife and daughters, “Guess you are right. That boy sure knows some fancy tricks.”

“God almighty!” cry the wife and daughters. “Did he fuck you too?”

Sargam, meditate over it. If you can’t trust anybody that means you must be deceiving others. It is not a question of others, it is a question of you. You must be deceiving, and if you are deceiving, how can you trust? You can trust only if you allow others to trust you.

It is better to be deceived than to deceive, because if you deceive, you lose the greatest treasure of your life: you lose the capacity to trust. And let me repeat: the capacity to trust is the greatest treasure of life, because without it neither love is possible, nor prayer is possible, nor God is possible.

Source – Osho Book “The Dhammapada, Vol4″

Question – The other day you said that belief was like a lantern in the hands of the blind. May i know what faith is?

Osho – Faith is like eyes: you see yourself. Belief is like a lantern in a blind man’s hand: he cannot see, he cannot even use the lighted lantern. Even that lighted lantern will be just a burden to him, to be carried. And if the light goes off he will never become aware of it. Belief is just believing what others say. It is not faith; faith is knowing. Faith is existential, belief is intellectual.

Buddha says something, or I say something; you listen to me, it appeals to your intellect. It seems to be convincing to your reason and you start believing in it. Then it will be a lantern in a blind man’s hand. But if you listen to me, something appeals to you and you don’t stay with the intellectual understanding but you try to make that your own experience..

If I talk about love and Iistening to me you don’t cling to my words but you move into love, you take the risk of love, you move into the danger of love, then you will come to an understanding which will be like eyes. If you just listen to me, it is very cheap. Just listening to me you can collect information and you can say, “Yes, I know much about love.” Your knowing will be a deception.

I have heard…. Mulla Nasrudin and his wife went to Israel for their holidays and visited a nightclub in Tel Aviv. A comedian was on the bill who did his whole act in Hebrew. Nasrudin’s wife sat through the comic’s act in silence, but Nasrudin roared with laughter at the end of each joke.
“I did not know you understood Hebrew,” she said to the Mulla when the comedian had concluded his act.
“I don’t,” replied Nasrudin.
“Well, how come you laughed so much at his jokes?”
“Oh,” said Nasrudin, “I trusted him.”

You can laugh at a joke without understanding it, but what sort of laughter will that be? It will not arise in you; it will be just a painted laughter. It will be just like an exercise of tne lips and the face. It will not have any center in your being. It will not be coming from anywhere — because you can’t understand the joke, you can’t understand the language — how can you laugh? But Mulla says, “I just trusted him. He MUST be saying something beautiful; others are laughing.”

Buddha must be saying something beautiful — so many people believe in him, so you believe. But you have not understood the joke; the laughter is not yours. It will tire you, it will not refresh you. When laughter happens to you it spreads from your very being, from your innermost core of being to the surface. Your whole body ripples with it, pulsates, throbs. It gives you a sort of bath; you are new after it.

But if you simply trust, believe, that is not going to help. Many people have just been deceived by their beliefs about many beautiful things. You think you believe in God, you think you believe in soul, you think you believe in this and that, and you have not known anything by your own experience. Then it is better not to believe — because if you don’t believe, if you know that you don’t know, there is a possibility that you may seek and search. Your belief will not allow you even to seek and search because you already think you know.

Belief is dangerous. Even to be a sceptic, to be an agnostic, is better. To be true when you don’t know is better because this honesty of accepting that you don’t know will help. This honesty will grow. One day or other you will start seeking, because nobody can remain in deep ignorance for long. Everybody wants to KNOW. To know is such an intrinsic desire in man that you cannot avoid it if you are true.

Please drop your beliefs so your mind is not clouded with rotten furniture, and you can see what you know and what you don’t know. To know exactly what one knows and what one does not know is the basic step towards knowledge. To be absolutely clear-cut that this is all that you know and this is all that you don’t know. You cannot remain in this state. You will start moving towards the unknown, because it is human to seek to know.

Every child is born with infinite curiosity; that’s why children bore you to death with their questions. They go on asking and asking. They don’t bother whether you are interested in answering them or not; they go on asking. You want to keep them quiet but they go on bubbling again and again with new questions. What is happening? From where do so many questions come? a deep desire to know. But this desire is crippled by your beliefs. Beliefs give you an appearance as if you know. That ‘as if’ is very costly.

I have heard….
The nervous passenger was standing with the pilot of the river steamboat as he twisted and turned the wheel.
“Don’t you worry none,” said the pilot. “I have been running boats on this river so long, I know where every snag and sandbar is.”
Just then the boat struck a submerged snag with such force that the whole boat shivered from stem to stern. “There,” said the pilot triumphantly, “that is one of them now.”

What type of knowledge is this? How is it going to help? Your whole so-called knowledge is only like this; it does not help. It simply gives you a certain egoistic idea that you know, but it doesn’t help in life, it does not help you on the path, it does not help you to avoid ditches and pitfalls, it does not help you to move towards the right direction, it does not help you in any way to avoid calamities. Still you go on thinking that you know. Drop this so-called knowledge. This burden is useless; don’t carry it on your head anymore. Once you drop it you will feel clean, fresh.

I have heard…. Aldous Huxley had a very great library, his whole life’s efforts. He had collected many rare books. And one day it caught fire. The whole library burnt; his many valuable manuscripts were burnt, many valuable art pieces, statues, paintings. He had really been a great seeker of beautiful things; they were all burnt down to zero. He was standing in front of the fire, and nothing could be done.

And somebody asked him, “You must be feeling very very sad.”
He said, “I am surprised at what I am feeling. I myself am surprised. I am simply feeling very clean, as if the whole burden is gone. I have never felt so clean and unburdened. I am surprised myself, because I was thinking I would feel sorry, I would feel tremendously miserable, for years I would not be able to forget my library and all these things I have collected, but suddenly, seeing everything going into flames, I am feeling very unburdened, weightless, clean.”

When you throw your beliefs to the fire, you will feel very clean. It is just a burden. It is not yours; it cannot help. We know what is right but we do what is wrong. We know anger is bad and we go on being angry again and again. We know what should be done, but we never do it; we do just the opposite.

What type of knowledge is this? We know where the door is and we always go on trying to get out through the wall. We stumble and we are knocked down, and we hurt our own being, but again and again we try to get out through the wall. We say we know the door; is it possible that you know the door and still you try to get out through the wall, and you get hurt and hit in the head? It is not possible. You have simply heard about the door. That door exists only in your fantasy, not in reality.

Whatsoever YOU know, you always behave accordingly. That’s why Socrates’ famous dictum: Knowledge is Virtue — but it is not your knowledge. He says, “Once one knows something is right, one does it. There is no other way.” When you know two plus two is four, you cannot make it five, can you? Try one day — just sit, write two plus two, and then try to write five. It will be impossible. Even if you write it you will laugh; you are joking, befooling. Once you know two plus two is four, there is no way to forget it. The basic thing is to have known it, and the knowledge should be your experience. Otherwise, you can always find rationalizations.

I have heard a small anecdote. A small town chorine had theatrical ambitions. Her parents finally agreed to allow her to try New York City, but on two conditions: first, no men were allowed in her apartment, and second, she had to call home at least once a week. “Remember,” said her mother, “I will worry about you, so please don’t forget to call.”
Armed with a letter of introduction, she went to see an agent. He agreed to help her and started squiring her about town. At the end of the week she called home. It was late and mama was perturbed.
“Honey,” she said, “you know the bargain we made about no men allowed in your apartment, and I hear a man’s voice in the background.”
“Oh,” said the future actress, “that’s my boyfriend. But don’t worry,” she hastened to assure her mother, “we are in his apartment. Let HIS mother worry.”

We can always find ways, rationalizations to avoid that which we want to avoid, and to do that which we want to do. And if your knowledge is just intellectual, just verbal, then it is not going to help in actual life. Actual life needs actual knowledge. If you want to write a book, it will be okay. If you want to give a lecture, it will be okay. If you want to discuss with your friends, it will be okay — because a verbal knowledge is enough for writing a book, for giving a lecture, for discussing with your friends. But if you want to translate it into your life, it will be impossible. Life does not believe in that which you have accumulated very cheaply. Life believes only in that which has been earned the hard way.

I have heard about a Sufi mystic, Bayazid. He meditated for years, and it is said God was very, very compassionate towards him. He had made such great effort; arduous was his search, intense was his prayer. So God sent an angel, and the angel came and said to Bayazid, “God is happy, and whatsoever you want He is ready to give to you. You just ask. Your days of seeking and inquiry are finished.”

But Bayazid said, “But no, that is not the way. I don’t want to get so cheaply because I know well…in life also I was deceived because of this cheap possibility. Now you cannot deceive me. Tell God that I will earn the hard way.”
But the angel said, “You are foolish! He is ready to burn the innermost light of your being. Just ask!”
But Bayazid said, “Thank you, and give Him also my thanks, but I am not going to do that because it will be borrowed; even if borrowed from God, it will be borrowed. Let me seek and search.”
The angel said, “God will feel offended. It has never happened; His offer has to be accepted.”

Then Bayazid looked around — he had a small lamp and the oil was almost finished. He said, “If He really wants to light something, tell Him to light my lamp because the oil is almost finished and the night is dark, and I have still to meditate. Just this will do. You just tell Him to give me one blessing: that my oil should never finish so I can meditate the whole night.”

That’s all he asked for, and it is said that God was very happy and He said, “This is the right way.” If he had asked he would have missed; if he had accepted he would have missed — because whatsoever comes to you without your earning it is never yours. You possess only that which you have lived. You possess only that which YOU have known. You possess only that which you have earned.

A young boy had been taking swimming lessons. He rushed home one afternoon and breathlessly announced that he had gone off the diving board by himself.
“That’s fine, Johnny,” said his father. “But I thought you told me you went off the board last week.”
“I know,” said the boy, “but last week somebody shoved.”

Going by yourself is really totally different. When somebody shoves you, it is qualitatively different. When I give something to you, it is not the same as when you earn it. Remember it: many will be the temptations on the way. When things are available very cheaply, avoid them. Always remember that one has to go the hard way, because that is the only way. All shortcuts are false, and belief is a shortcut. Faith is a hard way.

Source – Osho Book “The Beloved, Vol 1″

Question – What is the difference between Surrender and Blind Faith or Belief?

Osho – MANY THINGS HAVE TO BE UNDERSTOOD. First, the difference between faith and belief, and second, the difference between surrender and faith. Belief is always blind and cannot be otherwise. Belief, as such, is blind. No belief is possible if you can see, because belief means you don’t know and still you believe. If you know, there is no need of belief. Something you know, you know. There is no need to believe in it. The need for belief comes only when you don’t know. Belief is part of ignorance.

I am here. If you know it, there is no need to believe in it Belief is unnecessary; knowledge needs no belief. If you believe in something it means you don’t know and yet you think you know.

Someone says he believes in God. It means he has not known God yet. That’s why he believes. But the belief creates such an attitude within him that he begins to feel that he knows.
Someone asked Shri Aurobindo, “Do you believe in God?”
He said, “No.”

The man was bewildered. He couldn’t conceive, he couldn’t imagine, that Aurobindo would say no to the question. He said, “What are you saying? Are you an atheist?”
Aurobindo still said, “No.”

The man said, “Why are you creating a puzzle? You say you don’t believe in God and then when I ask if you are an atheist you again say no. What do you mean? You are contradicting yourself.”

Shri Aurobindo said, “Wait a little. You aren’t allowing me to say anything more than no. As soon as I say no, you start asking other things. Wait a little. I was saying that I don’t believe in God because I know him. Because I know him I don’t believe in him. He is. This is not a belief. This is my knowledge, my knowing.”

Knowledge comes from seeing, and belief is blind. Belief, as such, is blind. Even to say ‘a blind belief is unnecessary, because belief means blind. It is just a repetition. Then what is faith? Faith is also blind, but in a different sense. Faith is blind in a different sense because it has its own way of seeing. It is not seeing through reason; it is seeing through the heart.

Knowledge is based on reason. Belief is also based on reason. Knowledge and belief are both in the head. Knowledge has eyes and belief is blind, but both belong to the head, to the intellect. Belief is intellectual. Faith is emotional, intuitive, of the heart. It has its own eyes, but those eyes are not of reason; they are like the eyes of love. People say that love is blind. It is, because it doesn’t have rational eyes. But it has its own eyes, and better ones. The heart has its own reasons and they are better than rational reasons. Faith is trust; it is not belief. Faith is trust, deep love, trusting love.

And the difference. Belief is always in some idea, ideology. Faith is always personal. It is not in some idea but in some person. You can say, “I believe in God” — God is an idea. You cannot say, “I believe in Jesus”; you can only say, “I have faith in Jesus.” It is a personal love affair; it is a deep trust. Faith means faith in someone. Belief means belief in something. Faith is a deep, personal relationship. It has its own eyes, eyes of the heart.

There are basic differences. Reason is analysis, reason is argument, reason is an intellectual process. The heart synthesizes. It is not analytical, it is not argumentative. It is intuitive. What is intuition? When you fall in love with someone, what happens? Can you give any reasons why you have fallen in love with a particular person? Why? Why is Majnu in love with Laila?

It is reported that because of the anguish of Majnu, the king of the country became very worried. Majnu was weeping, crying, moving from street to street looking for Laila, his beloved. Laila’s father had moved from the city because of Majnu. He was not willing for them to be together; he was against it. Even the king heard about the love affair, and the weeping and crying and anguish of Majnu.

He is reported to have called Majnu to the palace. He said, “You are stupid. I have seen your Laila. She is just an ordinary girl. Why are you making a fool of yourself? Look at these girls” — he had called twelve beautiful girls, the most beautiful in the city. He said to Majnu, “Choose any one of them. Laila is nothing compared to any of these girls.”

Majnu said, “But how can you see Laila? To see Laila you need Majnu’s eyes. You cannot see her. You must have missed her, because Laila is incomparable. There has never been a woman like her and never will be. But I understand you. Laila can be seen only through Majnu’s eyes. You cannot see her. That is why she may have looked ordinary to you — because you don’t have my eyes.”

This is intuitive, of the heart. When you fall in love with someone, you don’t have any rational grounds. That’s why we call it ‘falling’ — falling from the head. No one says that someone has risen in love with someone. ‘Fallen’ — because we live in the head and the heart is below. When someone is in love he has fallen from the head, he has gone mad.

Why do you fall in love? What are the reasons? No mathematics is involved, no logic. You need not be an Aristotle to fall in love. Just to be Majnu is enough. When you fall in love what has happened? You have felt something. You have felt something so deeply that your total personality is involved in it, not only your head. Your body, your heart, your soul, everything is involved in it — your totality. This involvement is not something that can be calculated by you. It has happened to you. It is a happening; it is not a doing on your part.

Faith is just like love, with one difference. In love, you are both on an equal level, on the same level. Faith is love with a person who is higher than you. It is love with reverence — deeper than love, higher than love, but love is there. Those who gathered around Buddha were in love, in deep love with the man. Not only in love. Reverence was also there. Love plus reverence is equal to faith.

Faith is something that one should not miss. Belief is just ordinary. It is good not to get involved in beliefs because they make you a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian. They make you divided; they make the whole earth a conflict. Beliefs create fight, struggle, wars. Belief divides.

It is good not to have beliefs. But to have faith is a deep experience. Faith will not divide you with anyone; it will unite you with someone. Belief will not unite you with anyone; it will simply divide you with everyone. Ideas, ideology, is divisive. Faith is unitive.

Have faith. That means: be ready to fall in love with someone, with deep reverence. And then, surrender. What is surrender? To surrender is to be ready for faith. Surrender means to be yielding, to allow faith to happen. It means to be receptive, to be unguarded, to be vulnerable, open.

If you come in contact with a Buddha, with a master, yield to him. Don’t resist him, because you are resisting yourself, you are fighting against yourself. If you resist a master you are not allowing him to work; you are not helping him to help you. You are creating problems, unnecessary anxieties, unnecessary barriers. You already have too much nonsense. Don’t create more barriers. The master will have to do much work upon you as you are, even if you have surrendered. If you are nonsurrendering, you are creating unnecessary troubles and it will become impossible to help you. You are working against yourself.

Don’t be against yourself — that is what is meant by surrender. Yield, allow, cooperate, so that something can be done and you can be transformed. The master, the guru, is a person with whom you are in deep love and faith and reverence. It is not just a relationship; it is a deep creativity. He can create you, he can transform you, he can give you a new birth.

But then, you will have to be ready to pass through many things. Many unknown paths will have to be travelled, many unknown doors will have to be passed, many unknown locks will have to be opened. If you are not in a deep surrender, you will not move into this unknown territory; you will resist. You need a deep trust so that when the master moves into the unknown you can follow him like a shadow.
Surrender means a deep yes-attitude to the master — never say no. If you say no, you have taken yourself in your own hands. If you say yes, you are in his hands.

I will tell you one anecdote: There was a great master, a Sufi master. A disciple came to him. This disciple became very famous later on. The disciple’s name was Bayazid.

Bayazid came to his master. The master looked into his eyes and said, “Remain silent.” He had not even uttered a single word; the disciple had not said anything, he had not even been introduced. This was the first thing the master said. He looked into the eyes of Bayazid, the young man, and said, “Remain silent.”

Bayazid thought, “He may be occupied. I will wait.” But this waiting lasted for twelve years. How could Bayazid speak when the master said to remain silent? So he remained with his master for twelve years, not speaking a single word. Many came and went in these twelve years, crowds came and went. Bayazid was there, just waiting, waiting. It was a long, long wait — twelve years. And because the master had said, “Don’t speak. Remain silent,” of course he would not speak to anyone else either. He was totally silent.

By and by, thoughts dropped. If you don’t use them, they drop. By using them, you give them energy and fuel. Finally, thinking stopped. After twelve years of no speaking, no talking, just waiting, the mind dropped. Suddenly one day….

The first time Bayazid had come, the master had looked into his eyes. After twelve years, he again looked info Bayazid’s eyes and said, “Now there is no need to speak” — as if this was the second sentence, connected with the first; as if there had been no twelve years of waiting in between and he was still speaking: “Remain silent. Now there is no need to speak.” But there was a gap of twelve years between these two sentences!

Bayazid laughed. The master said, “Now, you can go and teach others. You are ready. You have become a master in your own right.”
People asked the old master again and again, “How did this happen? This young man was not doing anything and now you say he has become a master in his own right. He was just waiting here, wasting time. He looks stupid, dull. He has not even uttered a single sentence; he may be dumb. He goes on sitting and sitting; he’s just lazy. What are you saying? How can it be that he has become a master in his own right when he has not practiced anything?”

The master said, “But he need not practice anything. He didn’t need to. He simply surrendered, and I could work.” He said, “Then there was no need on his part to do anything else. A total yes was enough on his part. Then I entered him and worked. For these twelve years I have been working. He was simply allowing.”

This is what surrender means. Allow. Relax your ego. Then, much is possible. Otherwise, you go on destroying yourself, doing many things against yourself.

Source – from Osho Book “The New Alchemy: To Turn You on”