Life is Always Fresh – Osho

If my mind still controls and blocks my feelings, how do I discover what is the next appropriate step for me?

Listen to this question again, very carefully: If . . . It is not a true question; it starts with ‘if’. It is as if you are asking a hypothetical thing. You are supposing a question.

Never ask such questions. At least be honest about your questions. If they are there, then ask. And I know the question is there, but you don’t even want to take the responsibility for it. The question is valid – but you start by an ’if’? Can’t you say that “this is my problem”? You want it to appear theoretical? You want it to appear impersonal? Then you will miss the answer – because I don’t give answers to theoretical questions.

This is not a philosophy class – I am not teaching you philosophy – I am teaching you life. not a philosophy of life, but life itself.

Remember: when you ask a question, let it be true. Don’t camouflage it, don’t cover it. Don’t try to be clever with me, otherwise you will be at a loss.

It may have happened unconsciously; I am not saying that you have put that ’if’ consciously. You are not that conscious, I know. It must have happened mechanically. You may have learnt the trick of how to ask questions – and remain aloof, and detached, and out of them.

This is not the way to write or ask a question! – with me at least. You have to be in your question. I am going to be in my answer, and if you are not in your question, where and how shall we meet? If I am in my answer, I am absolutely there.

You have to be in your question – only then is the meeting possible. And the meeting is the solution – not the answer, not the question: the meeting. The point where my consciousness touches your consciousness. But if you are not in your question and I answer it, how am I going to touch your consciousness? You will be absent! I will be knocking on a door where you are not.

Don’t be so much afraid of the answer. Be authentic. Be existential! Let the question have the flavor of your being! Let the question have a life – it should have a heart which beats, it should breathe! Then only is there some possibility . . .

You kill the question from the very beginning: ‘if’?

If my mind still controls . . . as if it is not controlling and you are asking for others’ sake.

If my mind still controls . . . and just watch how many times in such a small sentence ‘I’, ‘my’, ‘mine’, have come.

If my mind still controls and blocks my feelings, how do I discover what is the next appropriate step for me to take?

With so much ‘I’, whatever step you take will be wrong. With so much ‘I’, a right step cannot be taken at all. The ‘I’ is the poison. It will destroy whatsoever you do.

With so much ‘I’, if you love, your love will turn into hatred. With so much ‘I’, if you meditate, your meditation will be nothing but a madness inside. With so much ‘I’, if you look at the flowers, you will not see the beauty.

The ‘I’ is ugly, and it creates ugliness all around it.

In fact, the very question: . . . What is the next appropriate step? Is because of the ‘I’. The ‘I’ wants to control not only this step but the next too. It has been controlling all your past steps, it is controlling your present step, it wants to control the next step too. What do you mean by appropriate? That which fits with your ideas of right, true; that which fits with your idea of religion, spirituality. And what do you know of religion and spirituality? What do you know of truth? How can your next step be adequate? appropriate?

Any step which is in accordance with the truth, any step which has the quality of suchness in it, is appropriate. But what do you know about suchness? You have lived in the mind – with the ‘I’, ’me’, ’mine’. All that you know is just rubbish. And out of that rubbish, you want to take an appropriate step? Remember: out of mind there is no appropriate step; out of mind all steps are inappropriate. Why? What do I mean when I say that?

Let us move slowly into this phenomenon.

Life brings a situation. Those situations are always new. Life is immensely creative; it never repeats. Even if you feel it is a repetition, it is not. There are vital differences, subtle differences . . . may not be available to you on the surface, but have you seen two mornings exactly the same? Have you ever come across two rose flowers exactly the same? Have you come across two human beings exactly the same? What to say about human beings? – you cannot find two pebbles exactly the same. You can search the whole earth . . .

Life is always fresh. That is the meaning of being alive – life is always moving into new spaces. And your mind is always old; it knows nothing of the new. It knows only of the past. It knows only of that which has happened. It accumulates experiences. ’Experience’ means it has happened. And remember: life is never going to repeat the same situation in which that experience happened. And you act out of the mind, hence there is always a gap between you and life – and nothing is appropriate. How can it be appropriate?

You act out of the past experiences and life is always creating new spaces. You never meet with life, you never merge with life. You are always inappropriate. Your answers don’t fit the questions that life raises. Your responses are not responses but reactions.

To be appropriate means to me to be spontaneous. Not to act out of the mind is to be appropriate: to act in this moment, to act utterly in this moment, to see the situation and to act, respond to the situation.

Don’t search in your memory for what is appropriate, because the memory will supply you with answers which are not appropriate and cannot be appropriate. The memory is always irrelevant. You have to put the memory aside. You have to be in a kind of absolute exposure to the reality, to the situation that is.

And let your total being respond. Don’t decide about it. Don’t rehearse it. Don’t prepare for it. Let it respond! And then it will be appropriate.

When you are not, it will be appropriate. When the mind is not brought in, it will be appropriate. When it is spontaneous, it will be appropriate. Bring a little preparation in it, just a little bit, and you have poisoned it, then it is never appropriate.

Life is not a school examination where you go prepared. That’s why schools are so ugly – they don’t prepare you for life, they destroy all possibilities of life. Schools have to disappear from the world, and the colleges and the universities. They are anti-life. They believe in rehearsals. They believe in giving you fixed answers – as if there are fixed challenges! – the basic fallacy.

And one third of the life is wasted in the university. By the time you are ready with a Ph. D. one third of the life has gone down the drain. And what are you ready for? You have simply bookish answers crammed into your head; you have become a computer. And now, with all that knowledge, whatsoever you do will be inappropriate!

A knowledgeable man has never been known to be appropriate – never. He always goes on missing the train; he is always late. He is never to the point – he cannot be. His arrows never reach the target – they cannot reach, because the target is moving! and his ideas of it are fixed.

Education no longer prepares you for life: it prepares you for death. Your universities are cemeteries where the past lives and goes on killing the present – and the future too. Education, as it is in the world now, is very reactionary. A totally different kind of education is needed – not that which simply goes on helping you to cram answers, but that which helps you to be open, which helps you to function from a state of not knowing.

Mm? – that’s what meditation is all about: a state of not knowing. Then whatsoever you do is going to be appropriate, because then you are no more the doer – then God is the doer. Then life itself is responding.

Just try to observe a few moments when you are spontaneous – they will give you such joy.

For example: somebody is drowning in the river, and you stand there and you think about it – “What should I do? What is appropriate?” If you are a Christian missionary, you will think this is a great opportunity to help and serve humanity – this is a way to reach heaven and be special there. And you repeat in your head all the quotes from the Bible, what Jesus has said – that service is the way to God . . . and you jump! You are not concerned with this poor human being who is drowning: you are concerned with your ego trip you call spirituality. You want to be virtuous.

This is so ugly! This spirituality, this religiousness, this service, is so ugly. It is not a spontaneous act, it is not out of your heart it is out of your head.

And if your head has been prepared in a different way, for example, if you had been born in another religion . . . there exists a religion in India, a sect of Jains – Terapanth: if you had been born into that sect, then these ideas wouldn’t come to you. A follower of Terapanth will stand there on the bank, he will also think just like you are thinking, but he will think . . . his scriptures say: Everybody suffers according to his karmas. Now, this man is drowning, he must have done some bad karmas in the past. And his scriptures say: ’Don’t come in the way of anybody’s karmas. Now, he is being punished by his own karmas – you need not jump and save him. That will not be a help; you will be hindering; you will be delaying! If you get him out of the river and you save him, someday he will again have to fall into the river and drown. Mm?’ the mathematics of karma: he has to. Maybe he killed his wife in some past life by drowning her in water – now he has to suffer!

Now think! From these two different minds: the Christian thinks this is the opportunity to go to God and the Jain thinks this is the opportunity not to get emotional – mm? – this is foolish to jump; it is emotional, sentimental. He has to control himself not to jump and not to save this human being, because he is suffering his karmas – let him suffer so that he can be finished with it. Next life he will be born in a better life, in a better way.

Now both these people are acting out of their memories. Can’t you see a third possibility: just acting out of the spontaneity of the moment, on the spur of the moment – neither a Hindu, nor a Christian, nor a Mohammedan, nor a Jain, nor a Buddhist . . . nobody? Just acting out of the situation itself? Then it is appropriate.

That is my definition of ’appropriate’. Act out of the mind and it is inappropriate; it is not true to the situation. Act without mind and it is appropriate.

Now I will read the question again:

If my mind still c0ntrols and blocks my feelings, how do I discover what is the next appropriate step for me to take?

Don’t think of the morrow. Just be in this moment, spontaneous, and out of the spontaneity of this moment the spontaneity of the next will follow of its own accord. You are not to plan for it.

But we have become great planners. You come from the office, and you start planning on the way what your wife will ask and how you will answer, and you prepare everything. You go to the office from the house, and you know what your boss is going to say and what you are going to answer.

You go on preparing! You don’t trust life.

To trust life is to be appropriate. What do I mean by trusting life? I mean let the moment come . . . let it happen . . . you be there present . . . you be available! And then whatsoever happens through you is good, is virtue.

Virtue is not a decision on your part. Sin is a decision on your part. Whatsoever you decide becomes a sin. The word ‘decision’ is beautiful. It is made of two words: ‘de’, ‘cision’ – it means ‘cut off’. Every decision cuts you off from life. When you act out of decisions, you act against life. When you allow life to take possession of you, everything is appropriate.

-Osho

From Walk Without Feet, Fly Without Wings, Think Without Mind, Discourse #4, Q2

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