I am existing. This is mine. This is this. O beloved, even in such, know illimitably.
I am existing. You never enter deeply into this feeling. I am existing. You are existing, but you never dig deep into this phenomenon. Shiva says: I am existing. This is mine. This is this.
O beloved, even in such know illimitably.
I will tell you one Zen anecdote. Three friends were walking along a road. Evening was just falling and the sun was setting when they become aware of a monk standing on a nearby hill. They started talking about the monk, wondering what he was doing there. One of them said, “He must be waiting for his friends. He must have gone for a walk from his hermitage and his friends are left behind, so he is waiting for them to come.”
The other denied that and said, “This is not right, because if a person waits for someone, sometimes he will look backwards. But he is not looking backwards at all. So my assumption is this – that he is not waiting for anyone. Rather, he must have lost his cow. Evening is coming near, and the sun is setting, and soon it will be dark, so he is looking for his cow. He is standing there on the hilltop, and looking for where the cow is in the forest.”
The third one said, “This cannot be right, because he is standing so silently, not moving at all, and it seems that he is not looking at all; his eyes are closed. He must be in prayer. He is not looking for any lost cow or waiting for some friends who have been left behind.”
They couldn’t decide. They argued and argued and then they said, “We must go to the top of the hill and ask the man himself what he is doing.”
So they reached the monk. The first one said, “Are you waiting for your friends who are left behind to come?”
The monk opened his eyes and said, “I am not waiting for anyone. And I have neither friends nor enemies to wait for.” He closed his eyes again.
The other one said, “Then I must be right. Are you looking for your cow which is lost in the forest?”
He said, “No, I am not looking for anyone – for any cow or anyone. I am not interested in anything except myself.”
So the third one said, “Then certainly, definitely, you are doing some prayer or some meditation.”
The monk opened his eyes and said, “I am not doing anything at all. I am just being here. I am just being here, not doing anything at all. I am just being here.”
This is what Buddhists say meditation is. If you do something, it is not meditation – you have moved far away. If you pray, it is not meditation – you have started chattering. If you use some word, it is not prayer, it is not meditation – the mind has entered in. That man said the right thing. He said, “I am just being here, not doing anything.”
This sutra says this: I am existing. Go deep into this feeling. Just sitting, go deep into this feeling – “I am existing, I am.” Feel it, don’t think it, because you can say it in the mind – “I am” – and it is futile. Your head is your undoing. Don’t go on repeating in the head: “I am, I am existing.” It is futile, it is useless. You miss the point.
Feel it deep down in your bones. Feel it all over your body. Feel it as a total unit, not in the head. Just feel it – “I am.” Don’t use the words ‘I am’. Because I am relating to you, I am using the words. ‘I am’. And Shiva was relating to Parvati, so he had to use the words ‘I am existing’. Don’t. Don’t go on repeating. This is not a mantra. You are not to repeat “I am existing, I am existing.” If you repeat this you will fall asleep, you will become self-hypnotized.
If you go on repeating a certain thing, you become auto-hypnotized. First you get bored, then you feel sleepy, and then your awareness is lost. You will come back from it very much refreshed, just like after a deep sleep. It is good for health, but it is not meditation. If you are suffering from insomnia you can use chanting, a mantra. It is as good as any tranquillizer, or even better. You can go on repeating a certain word: repeating constantly in a monotonous tone you will fall asleep.
Anything that creates monotony will give you deep sleep. So psychoanalysts and psychologists go on telling people who suffer from insomnia to just listen to the tick-tock of the clock. Go on listening to it and you will fall asleep, because the tick-tock becomes a lullaby.
The child in the mother’s womb sleeps continuously for nine months, and the heart of the mother goes on… tick-tock. That becomes a conditioning, a deep conditioning – the continuous repetition of the heart. That’s why whenever someone takes you near his heart, you feel good. Tick-tock – you feel sleepy, relaxed. Anything that gives monotony gives relaxation; you can fall asleep.
In a village you can sleep more deeply than in a city, because a village is monotonous. The city is not monotonous. Every moment something new is happening; the traffic noises go on changing. In a village everything is monotonous, the same. Really, in a village there is no news, nothing happens; everything moves in a circle. So villagers sleep deeply, because life around them is monotonous. In a city, sleep is difficult, because life around you is very sensational; everything changes.
You can use any mantra: Ram, Ram, aum, aum – anything. You can use Jesus Christ; you can use Ave Maria. You can use any word and monotonously chant it; it will give you deep sleep. You can even do this: Ramana Maharshi used to give the technique “Who am I?” And people started using it as mantra. They would sit with closed eyes and they would go on repeating. “Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?” It had become a mantra. That was not the purpose.
So don’t make it a mantra, and sitting, don’t say, “I am existing.” There is no need. Everyone knows, and you know already that you are existing; there is no need, it is futile. Feel it – “I am existing.” Feeling is a different thing, totally different. Thinking is a trick to escape from feeling. It is not only different, it is a deception.
What do I mean when I say to feel “I am existing”? I am sitting in this chair. If I start feeling “I am existing,” I will become aware of many things: the pressure on the chair, the touch of the velvet, the air passing through the room, the noise touching my body, the blood circulating silently, the heart, the breathing that goes on continuously, and a subtle vibrating feeling of the body. Because the body is a dynamism; it is not a static thing. You are vibrating. Continuously there is a subtle trembling and while you are alive it will continue. The trembling is there.
You will become aware of all these multidimensional things. And the more you become aware of the many things that are happening…. If right now you become aware of whatsoever is happening within you and without, this is what is meant by “I am existing.” If you become aware in this way, thinking will stop, because when you feel you are existing it is such a total phenomenon that thinking cannot continue.
In the beginning you will feel thoughts floating. By and by, the more you get rooted in existence, the more and more you settle down in the feeling of being, the thoughts will be far away, you will feel a distance – as if those thoughts are not now happening to you, but they are happening to someone else, very, very far away. There is a distance. And then, when you are really rooted, grounded in the being, mind will disappear. You will be there with not a single word, not a single mental image.
Why does this happen? – because mind is a particular activity for relating with others. If I am to relate with you I will have to use my mind, language, words. It is a social phenomenon; it is a group activity. So even if you are talking while alone, you are not alone – you are talking to someone. Even when you are alone, when you are talking you are talking to someone; you are not alone. How can you talk alone? Someone is present in the mind and you are talking to him.
I was reading the autobiography of a professor of philosophy. He relates that one day he was going to take his daughter, who was five years old, to school, and after leaving her at the school he was going to go to the university to deliver his lecture. So he was preparing his lecture on the way, and he forgot all about his daughter who was sitting just by his side in the car, and he started lecturing loudly. The girl listened for a few moments and then she asked, ‘Daddy, are you talking with me or without me?’
Even when you are talking it is never without, it is always with – with someone. He may not be present, but to you he is present; for your mind he is there. All thinking is a dialogue. Thinking as such is a dialogue, it is a social activity. That’s why if a child is brought up without any society, he will not know any language. He will not be able to verbalize. It is society which gives you language; without society there is no language. Language is a social phenomenon.
When you get grounded within yourself, there is no society, there is no one. You alone exist. Mind disappears. You are not relating to anyone, not even in imagination, so mind disappears. You are there without the mind, and this is what meditation is – being without the mind. Being perfectly alert and conscious, not unconscious, feeling existence in its totality, in its multidimensionality, but the mind has suddenly disappeared.
And with the mind many things disappear. With the mind, your name, with the mind, your form; with the mind, that you are a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Parsee; with the mind, that you are good or bad; with the mind, that you are a saint or a sinner; with the mind, that you are ugly or beautiful – everything disappears. All that is labelled on you suddenly is not there. You are in your pristine purity. In your total innocence you are there; in your virginity – grounded, not floating, rooted in that which is.
With the mind you can move into the past. With the mind you can move into the future. Without mind you cannot move into the past or into the future. Without mind you are here and now – just this moment is all eternity. Nothing exists except this moment. Bliss happens. You need not go in any search. Rooted in the moment, rooted in the being, you are blissful. And this bliss is not something which is happening really to you – you are it.
I am existing. Try it. And you can do it anywhere. Just riding in a bus, or travelling in a train, or just sitting, or lying down on your bed, try to feel existence as it is; don’t think about it. Suddenly you will become aware that you have not known many things which are continuously happening to you. You have not felt your body. You have your hands, but you have not ever felt it – what it says, and what it continuously goes on informing you; how it feels.
Sometimes it is heavy and sad, sometimes it is happy and light. Sometimes everything flows in it, sometimes everything is dead. Sometimes you feel it alive, dancing, sometimes as if there is no life in it – frozen, dead; hanging on you, but not alive.
When you start feeling your being, you will come to know the moods of your hands, of your eyes, of your nose, of your body. It is a big phenomenon; there are subtle nuances. The body goes on telling you and you are not there to hear it. And existence all around you goes on penetrating you in subtle ways, in many ways, in different ways, but you are not aware. You are not there to receive it, to welcome it.
When you start feeling existence, the whole world becomes alive to you in a totally new way; you have not known it. Then you pass through the same street and the street is not the same, because now you are grounded in existence. You meet the same friends but they are not the same, because you are different. You come back to your house and the wife you have lived with for years is not the same.
Now you are aware of your own being, you become aware of the other’s being. When the wife becomes angry, you can enjoy even her anger, because now you can feel what is happening. And if you can feel it, anger my not look like anger; it may become love. If you can feel it deep down, then anger shows that she still loves you. Otherwise she would not be angry; she would not bother. She still waits for you the whole day. She is angry because she loves you. She is not indifferent.
Remember, anger or hate or not the real opposites of love – indifference is the real opposite. When someone is indifferent to you, love is lost. If someone is not even ready to be angry with you, then everything is lost. But ordinarily if your wife is angry you react more violently, you become aggressive. You cannot understand the symbolic meaning of it. You are not grounded in yourself. You have not really known your own anger; that’s why you cannot understand others’ anger.
If you know your own anger, if you can feel it in its total mood, then you know others’ anger also. You are angry only when you love someone, otherwise there is no need. Through anger the wife is saying that she still loves you, she is not indifferent to you. She has been waiting, waiting, and now the whole waiting has become anger.
She may not say it directly, because the language of feeling is not direct. And that has become a big problem today – because you cannot understand the language of feeling, because you don’t know your own feelings. You are not grounded in your own being. You can understand only words, you cannot understand feelings. Feelings have their own way of expression, and they are more basic, more real.
Once you get acquainted with your own existence, you will become aware of others’ existence also. And everyone is so mysterious, and everyone is such a deep abyss to be known – an infinite possibility of being penetrated and known. And everyone is waiting that someone should penetrate, go deep, and feel his or her heart. But because you have not known your own heart, you cannot know anyone else’s. The nearest heart remains unknown, so how can you know others; hearts?
You move as a zombie, and you move in a crowd of zombies; everyone is fast asleep. You have only this much alertness: that you pass through fast-asleep people and without any accident you come to your home, that’s all. This much alertness you have got. This is the minimum which is possible to man, that’s why you are so bored, so dull. Life is just a long heaviness, and deep down everyone is waiting for death, in order to be delivered from life. Death seems to be the only hope.
Why is this happening? Life can be infinite bliss. Why is this so boring? You are not grounded in it. You are uprooted; uprooted, and living at the minimum. And life really happens when you live at the maximum.
This sutra will give you a maximum of existence. Thought can give you only a minimum; feeling can give you the maximum. Through mind there is no way to existence; through heart is the only way.
I am existing. Feel it through the heart. And feel this existence is mine. This is mine.
This is this. This is very beautiful I am existing. Feel it, be grounded in it; then know this is mine – this existence, this overflowing being is mine.
You go on saying that this house is mine, this furniture is mine. You go on talking about your possessions, and you never know what you really possess. You possess total being. You possess the deepest possibility, the center-most core of existence in you. Shiva says: I am existing. Feel this. This is mine.
This too is not to be made a thought; remember that continuously. Feel it – this is mine, this existence – and then you will feel gratitude. How can you thank God? Your thankfulness is superficial, formal. And look what a misery… even with God we are formal. How can you be grateful? You have not known anything to be grateful for.
If you can feel yourself rooted in existence, merged in it, overflowing with it, and allow even dancing with it, then you will feel, “This is mine. This existence belongs to me. This whole mysterious universe belongs to me. This whole existence has been existing for me. It has created me. I am a flower of it.”
This consciousness that has happened to you is the greatest flower that has happened to the universe. And for millions and millions of years this earth was preparing for you to exist.
This is mine. This is this. To feel, “This is what life is, this is this – this suchness. I was unnecessarily worried. I was unnecessarily a beggar, unnecessarily thinking in terms of begging. I am the master.”
When you are rooted, you are one with the whole, and the existence exists for you. You are not a beggar; you become an emperor suddenly. This is this.
Oh beloved, even in such know illimitably.
And while feeling this, don’t create a limit to it. Feel it illimitably. Don’t create a boundary to it; there is none. It ends nowhere. The world begins nowhere; the world ends nowhere. Existence has no beginning and no end. You also don’t have any beginning; you also don’t have any end.
Beginning and end are because of the mind – mind has a beginning and mind has an end. Go backwards, travel backwards into your life: there comes a moment where everything stops – there is a beginning. You can remember back to when you were three years of age, or, at the most, two years of age – that is rare – but then memory stops. You can travel backwards to when you were two years of age. What does it mean? And you cannot remember anything previous to that, previous to that age of two years. Suddenly there is a blank, you don’t know anything.
Do you remember anything about your birth? Do you know anything about the nine months in your mother’s womb? You were, but the mind was not there. Mind started around the age of two; that’s why you can remember back to that age. Then there is no mind, memory stops. Mind has a beginning, mind has an end, but you are beginningless.
If in deep meditation, in such meditation you can come to feel existence, then there is no mind – a beginningless, endless flow of energy, of cosmic force; an infinite ocean around you, and you are just a wave in it. The wave has a beginning and an end – the ocean has none. And once you know that you are not the wave but the ocean, all misery has disappeared.
What is deep down in your misery? – deep down there is death. You are afraid of some end which is going to be there. It is absolutely certain; nothing is so certain as death – the fear, the trembling. Whatsoever you do, you are helpless. Nothing can be done – death is going to be there. And that goes on and on inside in the conscious and unconscious mind. Sometimes it erupts in the conscious – you become afraid of death. You push it down, and then it continues in the unconscious. Every moment you are afraid of death, of the end.
Mind is going to die, you are not going to die – but you don’t know yourself. You know something which is just a created thing: it has a beginning, it is going to have an end. That which begins must end. If you can find within your being something which never begins, which simply is, which cannot end, then the fear of death disappears. And when the fear of death disappears, love flows through you, not before it.
How can you love when there is going to be death? You can cling to someone, but you cannot love. You can use someone, but you cannot love. You can exploit someone, but you cannot love.
Love is not possible if fear is there. Fear is the poison. Love cannot flower with fear deep inside.
Everyone is going to die. Everyone is standing in a queue waiting for his time. How can you love? Everything seems nonsense. Love appears nonsense if death is there, because death will destroy everything. Even love is not eternal. Whatsoever you do for your beloved, for your lover, you cannot do anything because you cannot avoid death – it is just waiting behind everything.
You can forget it, you can create a facade, and you can go on believing that it is not going to be there, but your belief is just superficial – deep down you know it is going to be there. And if death is there, then life is meaningless. You can create artificial meanings, but they won’t help much. Temporarily, for some moments, they can help, and again the reality erupts and the meaning is lost. You can just deceive yourself continuously, that’s all – unless you come to know something which is beginningless and endless, which is beyond death.
Once you come to know it, then love is possible, because then there is no death. Love is possible. Buddha loves you, Jesus loves you, but that love is absolutely unknown to you. That love has come because fear has disappeared, and your love is just a mechanism to avoid fear. So whenever you love, you feel fearless. Someone gives you strength.
And this is a mutual phenomenon: you give strength to someone and someone gives strength to you. Both are weak, and both are seeking someone, and then two weak persons meet and they help each other to be strong – this is just wonderful! How does it happen? It is just a make-believe. You feel that someone is there behind you, with you, but you know no one can be with you in death. And if someone cannot be with you in death, how can he or she be with you in life? Then it is just postponing, just avoiding death. And because you are afraid, you need someone to make you fearless.
It is said, somewhere Emerson has written, that even the greatest warrior is a coward before his wife. Even a Napoleon is a coward, because the wife knows that he needs her strength, he needs her in order to be himself. He depends on her. When he comes back from the war, from the fighting, he is trembling, afraid. He rests in her, he relaxes in her. She consoles him; he becomes just like a child. Every husband is a child before the wife. And the wife? – she depends on the husband. She lives through him. She cannot live without him; he is her life.
This is a mutual deception. Both are afraid – death is there. They both try to love each other and forget death. Lovers become, or appear to be, fearless. Lovers even sometimes can face death very fearlessly, but that is just appearance.
Our love is part of fear – just to escape from it. Real love happens when there is no fear – when death has disappeared, when you know you never begin and you are never going to end. Don’t think it. You can think it, because of the fear. You can think, “Yes, I know I am not going to end, there is no death, the soul is immortal.” You can think because of fear – that will not help.
If you move deep in meditation it will happen. Fear will disappear, because you know yourself endlessly. You go on spreading endlessly – back into the past, forward into the future, and this very moment, this present moment, in the depth of it you are there. You simply are – you never begin, you are never going to end.
Feel this illimitably – infinitely.
-Osho
From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #59
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From I Am That, Chapter 87.
