---
section: Library
booktitle: "Scriptures in Silence and  Sermons in Stones"
booktype: "Diaries"
bookcode: "SCRIPT"
dategiven: "08 December 1979 pm"
place: " in Chuang Tzu Auditorium"
chapternum: "Chapter #20"
chaptertitle: "None"
acode: "7912085"
shorttitle: "SCRIPT20"
audio: "No"
video: "No"
esttime: ""
displaytitle: "Scriptures in Silence and  Sermons in Stones: Chapter #20"
---

```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[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up.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.]


Surati Barbara.


The beginning of religious consciousness is in the remembrance that we are outsiders here, that we don't belong to the material world, that our home is far away, that we have fallen from some paradise, that we have been expelled. This is what Christians call the original sin, the expulsion from the home.


The word "sin" is very significant; the root from which it comes means forgetfulness. We have forgotten who we are -- that is our original sin. And because we have forgotten ourselves we have forgotten all that is ours, the inner kingdom of God that is our home. The Garden of Eden is not somewhere else, it is in the innermost center of your being. But one can search for it only when one becomes aware that one is a foreigner, that one is not at home, that one is living in a foreign country, that one cannot belong here, that all is momentary.


We are trying our best to settle in time somehow, but nobody can settle in time. The very process of timing is unsettling, it is a flux. We can settle only in eternity, in timelessness, in God. It is a blessing to remember that we don't belong here because then the journey can begin.  And sannyas is nothing but a journey towards the real home. It is a homesickness.


A child was visiting his grandparents. He was very restless and very sad and very depressed. The grandmother asked him, "Are you feeling homesick?" He said, "No, I am feeling here-sick." But that's what homesickness is: when you start feeling here-sick then the journey is bound to start, it is inevitable.

Theodore.


Life is a gift, birth is a gift, love is a gift, death is a gift. If we know how to appreciate, all is a gift; if we don't know how to appreciate then there is nothing but complaints and complaints in life. There are only two types of people: those who know how to appreciate the beauty of that which is, of that which has been given to them and those who have no sense of appreciation. They are always condemning, complaining, asking for more and more.


Only the first kind of people can become religious, the second kind cannot become religious. The second kind is bound to deny God sooner or later, because God becomes an enemy who is not fulfilling your desires. It is these people who have made the proverb "Man proposes and God disposes." The proverb is made by non-religious people. They are always feeling frustrated. whatsoever happens is wrong. It is never up to the mark, it is never fulfilling, never to their heart's content; it is always falling short. They live in misery because there is always a grudge, as if they are deprived of something. How can they feel grateful? And without gratefulness there is no prayer, without prayer there is no religion.


Prayer is the foundation of religion and it is prayer realized that becomes the experience of God. The seed of prayer is gratitude: feel grateful, because great is the gift of God and it is constantly showering on you, but we start taking it for granted. That is one of the most stupid things that a human being can do, but mind is always doing it: it starts taking things for granted.


The sun rises, the dawn has tremendous beauty, but your mind says, "So what? It happens every day. It is just another morning, just like others." The whole east is red with the rising sun and the clouds are full of color, but the mind says, "So what? It is nothing new. Millions of times it has happened and millions of times it is going to happen again."


If this is the way of looking at things.... And this is how mind looks at things: it becomes insensitive -- insensitive to beauty, insensitive to music, insensitive to poetry, insensitive to love, insensitive to everything that is valuable. The naturally you live in darkness, you live in ugliness. It is your own creation.


Start feeling grateful. Grow the sense of appreciation. Praise existence for what has already been done and then much more will go on happening to you.  The more you praise, the more you become capable of seeing, the more perceptive you become. A prayerful person becomes so perceptive that he sees God everywhere, he finds his signature everywhere: scriptures in silence, sermons in stones.


Jan.


Millions are his gifts but love is the greatest, for the simple reason that it is through love that all that is significant, valuable, becomes possible. Without love there would be no poetry, no music, no dance, no song; without love there would be nothing valuable in life. Without love life would be just mechanical. Love is the only non-mechanical phenomenon; hence the computer can do everything except love. It can do great mathematics. Sooner or later it will be doing all the scientific work. Within a few years the scientist will find himself out of work, unemployed. His own invention will throw him out of his job, because the computer can do things in afar better way, far more efficiently than the scientist himself.


It can be very logical, absolutely logical, in fact it can never be illogical. Because man is illogical I say that he is not a machine; his illogicality proves that he is non-mechanical. And the greatest illogical phenomenon in man's life is love. It is beyond all logic, it is beyond all arithmetic. That's why people think that lovers are blind, that they are mad. In a sense they are mad because they are no more functioning through their intellects. They function from a totally different centre of their being.


Love is the only phenomenon that gives man the dignity of being a non-machine. Other than that, anything that man can do, machines can do in a better way, in a cheaper way, in a quicker way -- only love is impossible. It is inconceivable that two machines could be in love.


Love is the greatest gift because it is love that makes you really human. But very few people are really loving. And unless you love you will not live your life, you will only drag. Your life will be superficial, stale, dull. You will live and yet you will not live. You will die, but even your death will be dull, because unless you really live how can you really die? Only when a person lives intensely does he die intensely. Then life is beautiful and death too. But it is love that makes both life and death beautiful.


Let love be the only law, the only commandment. And it is enough: if you can fulfil one commandment the other ten commandments will be fulfilled automatically.


Andy.


Bliss is only for those who are courageous, daring, brave, because bliss happens only when you have moved beyond the known into the unknown.  Whenever you become confined to the known your life becomes routine, repetitive. It goes on moving in the same rut, it goes around in circles, and slowly slowly it dulls all your sensitivities, all your receptivities. It harden people. It makes them blind, it makes them deaf, it makes them dumb, because there is nothing to see and nothing to hear and nothing to taste and nothing to feel.  They have known it all; it is the same repetition. How can there be bliss in such a life? Such a life has only one taste -- that of misery, depression, a sadness, a settled sadness.


But if one is courageous enough to move continuously from the known into the unknown, from the familiar into the unfamiliar.... It is risky, because the familiar is secure, safe. And who knows what is going to happen if you go into the unknown, into the uncharted? You take your small boat and you go into the uncharted sea. who knows if you will ever come back to the old shore again?  Who can give you a guarantee? There is no guarantee.


But unless one is ready to live in such a dangerous state one cannot remain blissful.... Live dangerously -- because life knows no other way: it has to be lived dangerously.


Remember that as one of the most fundamental qualities of a religious life -- particularly the way I see religion. For the sannyasin courage is the greatest virtue. and then bliss goes on happening: you need not seek or search for it, it is a by-product of a courageous life. If one is ready to live dangerously many flowers of bliss are going to bloom.

Chitprem means conscious love.


Ordinarily love is unconscious, it is instinctive; hence it is not love but lust. Unless we transform our love into a conscious phenomenon it is not really love. and to make love conscious takes great effort. That effort is meditation: meditation is the process of changing love into a conscious phenomenon.


Become more alert to everything in your life. Only then can you ultimately become conscious of your love. Walk consciously, eat consciously. Talk, listen, consciously, with great alertness, intensity, attentiveness. Let attentiveness be spread all over your life, from very small, ordinary acts like taking a bath. When you can transform these ordinary things into conscious acts then it will be possible to bring consciousness to love energy.


Love energy is the deepest energy of your being. First transform the circumference, then the center. But the process is the same; the name of the process is awareness of meditation. and that has to be your work: be meditative. It is meditation that is going to give you a new birth.

Satgyan means true knowledge.


Knowledge borrowed from others is untrue, knowledge gathered from the outside is untrue. It hides your ignorance but it does not make you wise. It covers up your wounds but it does not heal. In a way it is very dangerous because one tends to forget one's wounds, and the wounds go on growing inside; they can become canceric. It is better to know them. It is better to open them to the winds, to the rains, to the sun. Hiding them is protecting them, and they are your enemies. It is better to let them be exposed -- nature heals. Hence the first step of true knowledge is to know "I know nothing"; that is exposing your ignorance. And from that moment a turning happens, a great change happens: one starts looking inwards.


True knowledge has to happen within you. It can't come through thoughts, it has to come through a thoughtless space within you.  It cannot come through studying, it comes through meditation. It comes only when the mind becomes absolutely contentless, so utterly empty and pure, uncontaminated, unpolluted, that your own inner sources start flowing because all the hindrances have been removed.


The source from where the spring can flow is there, but there are many rocks in the way, and those rocks are thought to be knowledge. They are not knowledge but enemies of knowledge. Drop all that you have learned from the without so that the within can speak to you, and then you will know the flavor of true knowledge, knowing. True knowing liberates.

Gyanprem.


That's exactly the meaning of philosophy -- love of knowing, and of a philosopher -- a lover of truth, a lover of knowledge. The only thing to be remembered is that knowledge does not consist of accumulating information. It does not consist of learning from others; on the contrary it consists of a process of unlearning. One really becomes a knower when one becomes as innocent as a child again. When the mirror of consciousness is absolutely contentless, when the lake of consciousness has no waves, no ripples even, then the whole sky, the whole existence, is reflected in you in all its glory, in all its beauty, in all its grandeur; and that experience is God.


Be empty, be still. In fact be not. Be just nothingness so that the whole can descend in you, so that the whole can be reflected by your consciousness. That experience is the only religious experience, the only mystical experience. It gives you a certainty about God, not a belief but absolute certainty. It gives you absolute clarity. God becomes your own experience. It is not that Jesus says so or Buddha says so or I say so, but that you know it. The experience penetrates into your very guts, it becomes part of your being. Only then is the goal achieved and is life fulfilled.

Deva Stephan means the voice of the divine.


God speaks in everyone's heart, but we are so occupied in the head that we never listen to that still, small voice within. There is so much clamoring, chattering, so much unnecessary noise -- we have made the head a marketplace -- that the heart goes on calling and we remain deaf to it. God is not far away, he is very close. All that is needed is the art of making the mind a little silent, a little less noisy, a little more peaceful, relaxed. as the mind settles into relaxation, suddenly you start hearing a divine music within you. God has started playing on the instrument of your heart, on the harp of your heart -- and that music is transforming. Once heard it is never forgotten; once heard life is never the same again; once heard you have become part of immortal existence; you are no more a mortal.


And this is my whole work here: to help you to get out of the mind, to put the mind into deep silence so that the heart can start functioning, to come closer to the heart so that you can hear what its message is.


All the Bibles, all the Vedas, all the Gitas, all the Korans, are hidden in your heart. Every heart has all that is worth knowing; one need not go anywhere else.


Lao Tzu says, "To know truth you need not go outside your room," and by room he really means your body. You need not go out of your house -- by house he means your body -- "You are already provided for." Truth is our intrinsic heritage, but we go on living in the mind, in dreams and desires and all kinds of stupid ideas, noises. We go on living in that confusion called mind.


By becoming a sannyasin you are taking the first step towards the heart, from confusion towards clarity.
			

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