---
section: Library
booktitle: "The Old Pond ... Plop"
booktype: "Diaries"
bookcode: "POND"
dategiven: "24 January 1981 pm"
place: " in Chuang Tzu Auditorium"
chapternum: "Chapter #24"
chaptertitle: "None"
acode: "8101245"
shorttitle: "POND24"
audio: "No"
video: "No"
esttime: ""
displaytitle: "The Old Pond ... Plop: Chapter #24"
---

```style
.sutra {
  font-style: italic;
  white-space: pre-wrap !important;
}
```
<!--This file is automatically generated. Do not edit!-->
> [!info]
> Note
>
[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]


Truth cannot be found through analysis. Facts can be found -- that's the way to find facts, but not the truth. Truth is indivisible, hence there is no way to dissect it. For example, you can dissect a flower and you can find through analysis all the material constituents of it -- how much earth it contains and how much water and how many other chemicals -- but you cannot find the beauty. The beauty will disappear in analysis. The moment you dissect the flower you have killed its beauty. The beauty belongs to the whole, the beauty is organic. The beauty is spiritual -- it is the spirit of the flower. It is not its body, it is its soul.


By dissection, by analysis, you are simply working on the corpse. It is a post-mortem, the soul has left it; hence science only comes to know about facts. It is limited because of its very methodology. Its method is analysis. And because it cannot find through analysis anything like soul, consciousness, beauty, truth, godliness, freedom, it tends to deny them. Directly or indirectly its emphasis is, that which cannot be found through scientific methods is not existential, is only in the imagination of man. That is absolutely wrong.


The real existence consists of beauty, of love, of freedom, of truth, of godliness, of eternity. It is not part of time or space, It is not material, it is immaterial. It is not visible, it is invisible. And it is not divisible either; hence a totally new approach is needed. That approach is sannyas.


Sannyas is the very essence of religiousness. One has to go beyond analysis and then see. One has to learn a totally new way of seeing, of being, of relating. You can relate to the flower as a scientist, you can relate to the flower as a poet, you can relate to the flower as a mystic. The scientist will find only the material part of it. The poet is exactly in between the scientist and the mystic: something of the material and something of the spiritual will be there; hence poetry is a midway station between science and religion.


And obviously, because it consists of two diametrically opposite polarities, there is a certain paradox is it. The poet cannot be consistent -- that is impossible. If he wants to be consistent then he either has to all back to the plane of science, the lowest plane, or he has to rise above to the highest plane, the plane of the Buddhas. Then he can be consistent.
As a poet it is his destiny to be inconsistent.


Walt Whitman says 'Yes, I am inconsistent. I am vast enough to contain inconsistencies.' The poet has to be vast enough, because he is like a ladder between two different planes, two different languages, two different visions. The poet is a little bit crazy. It is bound to be so.


It is said about a great poet, Coleridge, that one professor of literature came to him and asked the meaning of one of his poems; a certain particular section of the poem was very elusive. And the professor said 'I always find difficulty with this part when I am teaching it to the students. And this part is such that somebody is bound to ask questions, and I cannot answer them. So I thought it wise to come to you; you are the only person who can explain it to me.'


Coleridge looked at the poem and said 'There were two persons who knew the meaning: one is god, I am the other. You'd better consult god, because I have completely forgotten the meaning. I don't know myself. When I am in a poetic flight I know what it means, but when I come back down to the earth I lose the meaning myself. So if you find the meaning some time, please be kind enough to tell it to me too, because I also feel puzzled. I cannot change it because it is so beautiful, but I cannot make any sense out of it either.'


This is always true about great poets: in their poetic flight they touch the other extreme. When they start expressing themselves they have to use language, logic, and what they have touched is silence. And the silence has to be expressed in words... it is bound to be very difficult, troublesome, in fact, almost impossible.


Sannyas is the third plane, the plane of awakened consciousness. It is beyond analysis, it is beyond poetry too. It is utter silence. Nothing can be said about it, nothing has ever been said about it. Nothing will ever be said about it.


Yes, you can feel it when you are attuned with someone who has reached the point of no return, one who has gone beyond, entered into the very truth of existence itself. He cannot say anything; about it but he can show. His fingers can point towards the moon, his presence can be a triggering point, a catalytic agent -- and that's what the master and the disciple relationship is all about.


The disciple is simply saying 'I am ready to come close to you -- let me come in!' And the master is available, always available to anybody who knocks on his door. And once the disciple starts coming closer and closer and closer, a moment comes when the presence of the master triggers something in the disciple that takes him beyond all logic, all mind, all philosophy. He becomes part of a profound silence -- very alive is that silence. It brings thousands of songs to your being, it comes like a spring and you are all flowers, but that happens like magic.


The relationship between a master and a disciple is a magical relationship. It is a miracle -- a miracle which happens through two things: the utter egolessness of the master and the absolute surrender of the disciple.


The master is egoless; if the disciple also surrenders, he becomes egoless. And only two egoless beings can merge into each other, can lose their boundaries. Then one knows the taste of the wine; and the wine is such that it brings two things into your being: awareness and drunkenness together. One becomes drunk with the divine and at the same time, simultaneously, one becomes absolutely aware.


But one has to pass first beyond the scientific attitude, approach -- because we are trained for that -- and second, beyond the poetic imagination.


Science is thinking, poetry is imagination and truth is beyond both. It is neither thinking nor imagination. It is realisation.

Veet Shastro means beyond scriptures -- that's what sannyas is all about.


Words are inadequate. It is a direct communion, not communication. There are three ways to relate. One is head-to-head which is what people use ordinarily. The other is rarely used -- heart-to-heart -- only once in a while at the peak of their love people use it but very hesitantly, very cautiously, because it looks a little bit insane. They have lived their lives according to the head; the head is mathematical, calculating, rational, and the heart is irrational. So it looks as if you are going a little astray. One feels a little embarrassed.


All lovers feel embarrassed, for the simple reason that they themselves feel "What are they doing? What is happening to them?" Hence the phrase 'falling in love' exists in all the languages of the world. It is significant -- why is it called 'falling', why not 'rising' in love? Because the head is the top and when you fall in love you are getting down towards the heart, and the head is very egoistic. The head lives with the idea that whatsoever fits with it is right. Whatsoever falls below it is wrong; hence lovers are thought to be crazy, mad, because they start a different kind of relating. It is more poetic, more aesthetic, less prose-like, less logical; of course, more beautiful, but beauty has no value in the marketplace.


In the day-to-day world of business, beauty is not a commodity. Maybe in the off-hours, when you have nothing to do, you can take an interest in poetry, in painting, in beauty, as a hobby, but it cannot be made your life, it cannot be your life-style. That's what the head is continuously telling everybody. From the school to the university we are preparing everybody to live only in the head; twenty-five years preparation -- that is one-third of one's life and the most important one third. Naturally, the heart remains ungrown, undernourished, neglected, ignored -- and that is only the second layer. There is still a deeper part of your existence, the deepest: the being.


Something has to take a quantum leap from the head, and from the heart too, towards the being. It has to be a quantum leap, just a jump into the unknown. Only when you are in the world of being does real relating happen. If in the words of the head, in that terminology, communication happens, then at the heart level communion happens, and at the being level union happens -- not unity but union, a merger, a dissolution.
A disciple has to be ready for that; a deep union with the master.


The master is only a preparation ground. Once you have learned the secret of union, of merging, of melting, then you can melt with the whole universe. The master is only a window. Then you can jump out of the window, then you can fly into the sky towards the stars.


The scriptures contain words. No scripture contains the truth. By its very nature truth cannot be contained in words. So it may be the Bible or the Koran or the Gita -- it does not matter; no scripture contains truth.


Truth has to be discovered by everyone on his own. One cannot borrow it. One can become learned through the scriptures, very learned, scholarly, but all that learning and scholarship is just pure rubbish, unadulterated rubbish. It simply helps you to become unaware of your ignorance. It becomes a cover-up. All knowledgeability is a cover-up. But it does not make you wise, it does not give you eyes. It is like a blind man learning about light -- and he can know everything that is written about light, he can learn the Braille script and he can go on reading and reading and reading, and he can accumulate much information -- but that will not give him any experience of light. The only thing that matters is experience.
Hence one has to drop clinging to the scriptures.


I am against all scriptures; against, because they are the cause of keeping humanity in ignorance. My effort here is to help you to become as unknowledgeable as possible, so that a few windows and doors can open up.


Ignorance is far more beautiful than knowledgeability because ignorance is innocent, and knowledge is very cunning. And from ignorance one can move towards wisdom, but from knowledge there is no way. The person who is lost in knowledge is lost in an endless jungle -- of words, theories, ideologies, theologies, philosophies -- it is endless. Hence the first thing required in sannyas is : put aside all your knowledge, burn all your scriptures; be totally free from the past and from whatsoever has been told to you; from all your conditionings of being a Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, communist, atheist.


Just today I was reading a letter of a great atheist. In the Indian constitution there is no provision for the atheists, so when the election comes and the voter lists are prepared, every voter has to fill in a certain form in which he has to show to what religion he belongs. Now if he is an atheist he is in a difficulty. If he does not fill in the form, even if one item is left out, the form is invalid. He has to show whether he is a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian or a Jaina or a Buddhist; he has  to show his religion. If he does not belong to any religion, if he is an atheist, then there is trouble, then he cannot be a voter. So this rationalist thinker has written a letter to the government saying, "There should be a provision in the coming elections, there should be a place for atheists also."


When I was reading his letter I could see that he has no idea that there are people who may not be even atheists -- for example, a man like me who is neither a Mohammedan nor a Hindu nor a Christian, neither theist nor atheist. What about me? There should also be a provision for somebody like me who can simply say all this nonsense is nonsense, that it is all irrelevant, that "I don't belong to any ism, not even atheism"; that too is a religion; the religion of godlessness.


There are religions which believe in god and there are religions which don't believe in god, so it is nothing special. It belongs to the same category -- whether you believe or you don't believe -- but I consider the whole matter pointless; there is no question of belief or non-belief. I neither believe nor don't believe; I just don't think it worth any consideration.


And that should be the approach of a real sannyasin. The question is of experiencing, and when you experience then you cannot say what it is. You can sing, you can dance, you can laugh, but you cannot say what it is. You can show it in many ways but you cannot say it.


Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the great logical thinkers of the West, one of the most significant philosophers of this age, says, "If nothing can be said about something, then nothing should be said." I agree, if nothing should be said -- but this is only a half-statement.


I would like to add something to it, if nothing can be said about something, nothing should be said, but you can show something about it; there is no need to say.


The real master shows it by his very gestures, the way he looks in your eyes, the way he sits, the way he walks, the way he is; his very presence is the message.


Marshall McLuhan has just died, a few days ago. He used to say "The medium is the message." I can change it a little bit; the messenger is the message.


When Hazrat Mohammed died, his wife Ayasha was asked, "Can you say something about his character, how he was?" And what Ayasha said was really of great significance; she said, "His character was just like the Koran." Only this much she said: "His character was just like the Koran. The Koran is his message and that was his character too; the way he walked, the way he sat, the way he ate, the way he slept, was just like the Koran -- the same song, the same flavor, the same fragrance, the same music, the same dance, the same beauty."


The master shows it, he cannot say it. That's why only a few people are capable of partaking of the master's being. Those who come as observers are going to miss the point, those who come as critics are certainly going to miss the point. Those who come in deep trust and surrender -- only they will be the blessed ones, because only they will be able to understand.


Sannyas makes you a blessed one. It gives you the opportunity to live side-by-side with a Buddha, with a Christ, with a Lao Tzu, with a Zarathustra! It is the greatest opportunity, the greatest blessing that can ever happen to any man. There is nothing greater than that. This is the greatest gift of existence.
Respect it and rejoice in it!
			

> [!info]
> Copyright 1964-1990 Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)
>