---
section: Library
booktitle: "The Old Pond ... Plop"
booktype: "Diaries"
bookcode: "POND"
dategiven: "04 January 1981 pm"
place: " in Chuang Tzu Auditorium"
chapternum: "Chapter #4"
chaptertitle: "None"
acode: "8101045"
shorttitle: "POND04"
audio: "No"
video: "No"
esttime: ""
displaytitle: "The Old Pond ... Plop: Chapter #4"
---

```style
.sutra {
  font-style: italic;
  white-space: pre-wrap !important;
}
```
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> [!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[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up.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.]


Man has to transcend two things, the first is knowledge and the second is ignorance; but knowledge comes first because it is knowledge that goes hiding ignorance. It is a cover-up. Unless you renounce knowledge, you will never be able to know your ignorance. Knowledge is a deception. It keeps one deluded. One goes on thinking 'as if' one knows, but that 'as if' is too big; one knows nothing. Knowledgeability is not wisdom, it is all borrowed. And whatsoever is borrowed is ugly, it is a burden. It keeps you tethered to the earth, it cuts your wings, it does not allow you to fly into the unknown.


The unknown is like the sky and the known is like the earth. knowledge has to be transcended; and that is not only the first thing to be transcended, that is also the more difficult thing. To renounce ignorance is very easy because knowledge fulfils the ego, hence the difficulty. It is a nourishment for the ego, the ego cannot exist without it. So the ego will find every rationalisation to cling to knowledge.


Once knowledge is dropped, once you become as ignorant as a child, then the second step is very simple. In fact you have not to do it, it happens of its own accord. The man who has the guts to renounce knowledge has earned, deserves, the help of the whole. He has proved himself worthy of the grace of the divine.


The moment you are ready to accept your ignorance, ignorance starts disappearing. Socrates says 'I know only one thing -- that I know nothing'; he has renounced knowledge. Now whatsoever man can do he has done. He has done the most impossible task.


Now the second thing happens as a gift because ignorance does not feed the ego, so there is no clinging to it, no attachment to it -- who wants to be ignorant? It starts slipping, like a dead leaf it starts falling from the tree, the tree need not renounce it. It is dead leaf; just a small breeze or a rain shower, anything can become the excuse for it to fall. And the moment ignorance also disappears then innocence is discovered -- that is the state of the sage.


Sannyas is the beginning, the beginning of the pilgrimage that ends in sagehood. I don't call the ultimate state the state of a saint -- that word has become ugly because of associations. The word 'sage' is still virgin, it has not been polluted by the so-called religions.


So these things have to be remembered: renounce knowledge -- that you have to do -- and then the second thing comes as a by-product, renunciation of ignorance. And the third thing is discovered when knowledge and ignorance both are gone. You are gone, the ego is gone. In that moment of egoless silence one discovers the primal innocence, the innocence of existence itself. That's the goal of sannyas!


Truth cannot be reflected upon. One cannot think it. One can think about it, about and about. The word 'about' means around. All thinking goes in circles, it never reaches to the centre. All thinking is superficial, it never touches the real, the essential. That's why philosophy is a failure, it has not contributed anything to humanity. It is the greatest exercise in utter futility. For thousands of years thousands of talented people have wasted their energies and lives in reflecting; and they have reflected about everything possible, out they have not come to any conclusion.


Philosophy, by its nature, remains inconclusive, because every conclusion creates more problems, new problems. It solves nothing, it brings more and more problems in. Hence I am against philosophy. My approach is anti-philosophical, it is existential.


Thinking has to be dropped if one wants to know the truth. Thinking is a barrier, not a bridge. So slowly slowly go on dropping the old habit of thinking. There will come small gaps, intervals, when you are utterly in silence and there is no thought. In those moments windows start opening into the unknown. And a few glimpses are enough; they become the proof that if just a moment's thoughtlessness can give you such immense insight into existence, then what is not possible if you can put all thinking aside and look directly, immediately.


Then one goes like an arrow, straight to the very centre of existence. And knowing it liberates.


Science is concerned with the objective world, with that which is outside you, it is not concerned with yourself at all. It is not concerned with your interiority. It is leaving aside the most significant phenomenon -- it is ignoring you. It is concerned with everything else. It is really very strange that the scientist goes on working on everything possible but he never bothers about 'Who am I? What is this consciousness within me?' Science leaves the scientist absolutely ignored. The scientist remains utterly ignorant about himself; so whatsoever he knows is not of much value, because at the very core of his being there is darkness.


Sannyas is concerned with the inner, the discovery of your own centre. It is the greatest adventure there is; but one has to drop the whole scientific approach. One has to forget about the outside world, at least for a few moments every day, so that one can become more and more attuned with one's own being.


As you become more and more centred you become luminous. Your inner world becomes lighted up. And then whatsoever you do in the outside world has significance, because it is coming from a source of light and not from a source of darkness. Science can be a great blessing to humanity, but it has not been so up to now, for the simple reason that science is a very lopsided approach. It has become the concern for the unessential, forgetting the essential.


I am not against science, but the priority has to be given to the inner. The inner comes first -- only then the outer -- because the roots of life are in the inside world, on the outside there are only leaves and branches, foliage. If you forget the roots the tree will die, if you go on feeding and nourishing the roots, then the tree will have thousands of flowers.


Science can become a blessing if it is in the hands of the mystics. But one of the misfortunes of human history up to now is that the mystics don't care at all about science, and the scientists don't care about the world of the mystic. And because of the division the whole of humanity is suffering. I want to destroy that division, I want to bring things into a deep harmony -- but one has to begin from the inner.


So for the time being forget all about science, the outside world, the world of objects, and become absolutely concerned, totally absorbed with your consciousness. Once the inner is realised then do whatsoever you feel like doing, then do whatsoever is spontaneous to you -- and there will be virtue and there will be service and there will be love and there will be compassion, but they will be natural phenomena, not cultivated.


When virtue comes spontaneously it has a beauty of its own.


One of the greatest fallacies that happens to almost every human being is the misunderstanding between love and attachment. People think attachment is love; it is not. It is just the opposite of love; it kills love, it strangles love. When your being is full of attachment then love cannot grow; that is not the right climate and soil for love to grow. Love cannot blossom.


Even if something like love exists it will die. One has to learn lovingness and unlearn the subtle ways of attachment. One should not cling, one should not possess the other, because the moment you possess the other you destroy his freedom, and he will never be able to forgive you for that. He will take revenge. And if you possess the other then he will try to possess you. Possessiveness breeds possessiveness in the other; it becomes a challenge and a fight -- who possesses who?. And in this war of possessiveness, love dies because love is a very delicate flower. There is nothing more delicate than love.


And once your love dies your life dies. Then one can go on vegetating as long as possible, but there will be no splendour, no song, no fragrance. I am for love and against attachments -- hence I don't teach that one should leave the world and escape to the mountains or the monasteries. The people who have escaped to the mountains and the monasteries are the people who are incapable of drooping attachments so they escape from the very situation where attachment is bound to happen. They know it -- so they throw the baby with the bathwater. Just to avoid attachment they become anti-love, but this is sheer stupidity.


Without love there is no prayer, no god, without love there is no poetry, no music, no celebration. And there have been up to know only two kinds of people the majority, the people who are known as the worldly people -- they kill love by attachment, and the so-called other-worldly, the monks and the nuns of all the religions -- they escape from love because they are afraid of attachment, they also kill love, by escaping. One kills by escaping, but both become loveless. That's why the whole of humanity is loveless.


And a life without love is a body without breathing it is a corpse.


My sannyasins have to learn the very subtle art of distinguishing between attachment and love; and all attachment has to be dropped. One has to be courageous enough to drop all attachment, all clinging, all jealousy, all possessiveness -- they all belong together, different faces of the same phenomenon. And when all that is dropped, love arises in its purity. And that ascending love takes you with it to the highest peak of existence, to self-realisation, to the experience of the infinite, to the realisation of the eternal.


The body is beautiful, the body is a temple; but it is beautiful only when you know that you are not it. If you become identified with it, it becomes ugly; it becomes an imprisonment rather than a temple.


If you know that 'I am not the body but only a guest and the body is the host,' then the body is a temple; and a temple has a beauty, a serenity, a sacredness. If you forget this you start thinking 'I am the body,' as millions of people think -- ninety-nine point nine percent of all people think that they are body. Even the so-called spiritualists who talk about spirit and god, etcetera -- if you look deep down in them you will find they are identified with their body. And all that they go on saying is mere jargon, it has no content in it, empty words. But words have their own fascination, words have their own hypnotic power.


There are words which can become obsessions, which can dominate your whole life. But reality is a totally different phenomenon.


People live identified with the body; that's how the body becomes an imprisonment. Rather than helping you to grow towards the infinite, your identification with the body makes you very finite, very small. And that is one of the fundamental causes of misery; the body will get old, then you will feel afraid, scared -- you are getting old; the body will be ill and then you will be in tremendous fear -- and sooner or later the body is going to die. You may not think about it, but it is there. You see people dying -- you cannot deny it; you may overlook it but you cannot deny it. You may no look at it, you may bypass it, but still it is there and deep down you know that you have to die. That creates a trembling, that creates a sadness inside that soon this life will be taken away from you -- and nothing is fulfilled yet, no flower has bloomed yet.


Identification with the body becomes identification with death, old age, sickness. The moment you are not identified with the body, when you know 'I am separate, I am consciousness,' you are immediately freed from illness, old age, death. They will happen to the body but you are just a witness to it all, just an onlooker; it has nothing to do with you.


And the experience that whatsoever happens in the body has nothing to do with you is such a freedom, is such a relief, that suddenly you become weightless. That weightlessness is one of the significant by-products of meditation.


Meditation simply means the art of witnessing. Start by witnessing your body and then your mind -- and get out of both! In fact by meditating you will be out of both. And the day one knows 'I am not the body, not the mind,' one has come home. Then one knows who one is.


The English words 'mind' and 'man', both come from the same Sanskrit root, manu.


Mind is our past. It has no concern with the present or with the future, it is simply a record of all that has happened in the past. And remember that to live through the mind is a wrong way to live, because life goes on changing every moment. To live through the mind means to live through the past, to live through the dead, to live through that which is no more. It will distort your vision and you will never be adequate to the situation you are in, you will always fall short of the challenge, your response will never be right.


Mind is the cause of all our failures, because mind goes on giving you ready-made answers. Those answers may have been right in some other situation in the past but they are no longer right because life has changed -- life is a constant change. Only one thing is permanent and that is change. Otherwise everything changes.


Heraclitus says 'You cannot step in the same river twice'; and I say to you, you cannot step in the same river even once, because the river is constantly changing. When your foot touches its surface it is one river, it takes time for your foot to go a little deeper -- it is another river. By the time you reach to the bottom, of the river it is still some other water, it is no more the same water that you had touched on the surface. So even to step once in the same river is impossible.


We have to learn not to function through the mind. Mind is good as a record, good as a computer which contains all your past experiences, it is factually helpful if you want to remember somebody's name -- unless the person has become a sannyasin! (laughter) Then nobody knows! (more laughter) The mind is good for factual information; somebody's phone number, somebody's address, somebody's name, geography, history -- that kind of nonsense! But as far as reality is concerned mind has nothing to say to you -- so put it aside and look directly! Contact life immediately without any mediator. Only then will you be able to respond adequately, correctly; and each response will bring joy, and each response will bring immense fulfilment. That's what mediation is: putting the mind aside and responding to reality freshly, not with ready-made answers.


Once you are free from ready-made answers you are again a child, innocent, full of wonder, full of awe; and the whole existence starts becoming more and more mysterious. The mind tries to demystify existence and meditation makes you aware of its eternal mystery. That's what is meant by the word 'god': god simply means that existence is mysterious, unfathomably mysterious; there is no way to demystify it. The more we know, the more it becomes mysterious the more we know, the more we know that we are ignorant. And ultimately one stops the whole effort to know, seeing its absurdity one drops it, and only then one starts living.


Knowing is of the head, living is of your total being and it is living that will give you the taste of existence, it is living; that will bring freedom, love, truth, god. Everything that is valuable comes through living -- not by thinking, not by mind, not by ready-made answers given to you by others. These answers gather around you like dust gathering on a mirror and the mirror becomes less and less a mirror the more dust gathers. One day comes when it is all dust and there is no mirror left.


My work here consists in helping you to cleanse your mirror. Mind is only dust and meditation is the mirror.


Religion is not religiousness. By religion I mean Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, the organised dogma, cult, creed, a certain doctrine which pretends to explain everything. Religiousness is not a dogma, it is not a doctrine. Religiousness is your flowering. It has nothing to do with Jesus or Buddha or Krishna; it has something to do with you, with your reality.


To be religious the first thing necessary is to forget about the religions. It is religions which are preventing humanity from becoming religious, before a person can become religious, Christianity, Hinduism, Jainism, or Mohammedanism is imposed on him. The child is covered with all kinds of conditionings, he is programmed. By the time he become young, independent, able to think, his whole being will be so conditioned, his unconscious will be so full of cliches, that he will not be able to find a way on his own. Somehow he will remain burdened with the conditionings.


By becoming a sannyasin one takes a tremendous step of de-conditioning oneself. A sannyasin is no more a Christian, no more a Hindu, no more a Mohammedan; a sannyasin is religious, but has no affiliation with any religion. His effort is to discover truth on his own. And that's the only way truth can ever be discovered. It cannot be given to you by anybody else. No church can give it, no priest can give it.


The master never gives you the truth, he only gives you methods to discover the truth within yourself. And the moment truth is discovered you become a lotus flower, your life becomes fragrant with bliss, with beauty, with grace. And that life is religious -- but then there is no adjective at all. If somebody asks 'To what religion...?' you cannot answer.


We are not separate from existence, but we all live with the idea that we are separate. The idea of separation is the ego. The idea -- just the idea -- creates the whole hell, because then we become afraid for our own survival, we become afraid for the future, we become afraid that one day we will have to die -- and it is all concerned with the idea of the ego. We don't understand that we are one with the whole, that there has been no birth and no death, because we have always been here, part of the whole. It is just like a wave which rises in the sea: it was there in the sea even before it rose -- and when it has gone back to the sea to rest, it is still there. Birth and death both are false; the wave remains, sometimes latent, resting, sometimes manifest, but it is there, it is always there. It is part of the ocean.


We are also part of this existence, we are waves of this ocean. And once this is understood all anxiety disappears, there is nothing to worry about. We will be here, we have always been here. This is our home -- we are part of it. There is no way for us to be anywhere else or not to be -- there is no way at all.


And because it is only an idea it can be easily dropped, there is not much of a problem in it. But sometimes just an idea can create so much trouble that one cannot believe that only an idea -- which has no correspondence in reality -- can create so much trouble.


I used to live in a house for a few years and I never wanted -- there were many children in the family in that house -- that the children should come into my room and do their things, so I created an idea that in that room there was a ghost. (laughter) And I started talking about the ghost, of course, the children became afraid... about the stories. But I was surprised when even grownups started thinking that there was a ghost, and even they wouldn't come into the room. One day even the owner of the house wanted something and had to pass through that room; he asked me to come along with him. I said 'why?' He said 'I cannot go alone. How do you manage', he said, 'to live in that room? One night you had gone out and I passed from the room and I saw the ghost!' (much laughter) when I left the house the family sold it; they immediately left the house.


I wrote a letter to them. I asked 'What is the matter?' They said 'We cannot live there. It was just because of you that we managed; we knew that if you could live in the room with the ghost then you have enough power! But we are ordinary people and you are gone -- now the ghost can do anything. He may start roaming in the house...' (laughter)


After two or three years I went again to see the place -- the house was empty. I enquired 'What happened?' The person who had purchased it came to know about the ghost! And when his wife saw the ghost he sold the house! Since then the house is empty; now it is known as the "ghost bungalow". Nobody is ready to purchase it, nobody is ready -- a beautiful house! And I had just invented the ghost for the small children. I tried to persuade those people that there is no ghost, nothing at all; it was just an invention to prevent the children from coming into my room, disturbing my things, putting my things here and there, and I didn't want any noise in the room -- that was just an invention. They said 'Don't you try to convince us -- we have seen with our own eyes!'


The ego is just a ghost. Even if you have seen it with your own eyes it is just a ghost. Once you understand, it disappears. And that very moment life is a dance, a celebration, a festival.


Mind is doubt, the heart is trust. The mind cannot trust, the heart cannot doubt; so the whole thing is how to move from the head to the heart. There is no question of creating belief because belief is not trust, belief is again part of the mind -- as much as doubt is part of the mind. Belief is just a trick to cover up doubt, but doubt is there, hidden behind belief. You can just scratch a little bit and you will find doubt coming out of belief.


Belief is absolutely useless. It has not helped anybody ever. So I am not telling you to believe; I am telling you to shift your centre of energy from the head to the heart. Then, just as in the head doubt is natural, in the heart trust is natural, because th heart is full of love and the head is full of logic. To be in the heart suddenly a new door opens -- the door of trust. And it goes on opening, it goes on becoming wider and wider and wider. It becomes so wide that it can contain the whole sky. Even the sky seems to be smaller than the trusting heart.


And the process is simple: just become aware of your thought processes; watch your desires, your thoughts, your memories, your fantasies, and just by watching you will come to feel a new sense, a new sensibility that as you watch you are moving towards the heart -- you are becoming more and more feeling-full. Thinking is left far away and feeling has taken its place.


The moment thinking is replaced by feeling, doubt is replaced by trust. And trust does not mean trusting in god or trusting in somebody; it is simply a quality. The doubtful person doubts everything, everybody. He simply doubts -- that's his quality. and the person of trust, trusts -- simply trusts. There is no question of any object -- not in the Bible, not in the Koran, not in the Gita -- he simply trusts... the trees, the mountains, the rivers, the stars, the people, the animals. He becomes incapable of untrusting. He will trust even the person who betrays him.


Jesus trusted to the last moment the disciple who betrayed him, Judas. In fact because of his trust, Judas committed suicide the next day. He could not exist any longer; he became so burdened with 'What have I done? and to whom? To a man who trusted me, knowing perfectly well that I am going to betray him, knowing exactly that this is the last night and I am going to betray -- still he kissed me with deep love, he washed my feet -- and there was no complaint, not even a question asked "Why have you done this?"' The crucifixion of Jesus became too heavy on poor Judas; certainly he is a poor man, a man full of doubts and logic and scepticism.


But he had to commit suicide, he could not live any longer. Life would have been far more difficult than death. The story of Judas is the story of doubt and the story of Jesus is the story of trust.
			

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