Послания любви. 365 писем Ошо

Give my kind respects to everyone there.

I am waiting for your promised letters.

1966

36. Love.

I was very happy to meet you the other day.

I felt the stirrings of your heart and the longing of your soul.

You have not yet flowered as you were born to:

the seed is ready to sprout and the soil is right.

You will not have long to wait.

But now you have to work with great determination.

It is only a matter of starting the journey,

God’s gravitational pull does the rest.

37. Love.

It is good that you are forgetting the past –

it will open up an altogether new dimension of life.

To live completely in the present is freedom.

The past does not exist apart from memory

and nor does the future apart from castles in the air.

What is, is always present,

and if you start living unreservedly in the present

you live in God.

Once you are free of past and future

the mind turns empty and peaceful,

its waves die down

and what is left is limitless, endless.

This is the ocean of truth –

and may your river reach it!

P.S. I shall probably go to Ahmedabad in January,

can you come with me?

It would be good if we traveled together for a few days.

38. Love.

I am glad to see such thirst for God!

To have this thirst is a divine blessing;

where there is thirst – there the way is.

In fact, intense longing becomes the way.

God is summoning us at every moment

but because the strings of our heart are slack

we don’t echo his call.

If our eyes are closed then even if the sun is at the door

we will be in darkness;

and the sun is always at the door –

we only have to open our eyes and let it in, that’s all!

May God give you light, that’s my wish.

My love and I are always with you.

Regards to the family and love to the children.

39. Love.

I have your letter.

The wheel of the world keeps spinning

but why spin with it?

See what is behind body and mind;

that has never moved,

is not moving,

can never move,

and thou art that, tat tvam asi.

Waves lie on the surface of this ocean

but in its depths – what is there?

When the waves are taken for the ocean

it is a terrible mistake.

Look at the wheel of a bullock cart:

the wheel turns because the axle does not;

so remember your own axle,

standing, sitting, asleep or awake,

keep it in mind.

By and by, one begins to encounter

the changeless behind all change.

You have asked me about the poem.

I had a little piece read out by someone,

then it came to me: I should hear it from you yourself!

Now when you read it out to me I shall listen –

and then I can read both you and your poem.

40. Love.

I received your letter on my return.

I welcome this birth of determination in you.

Such strength of will alone

takes us to truth.

Our deepest powers are aroused by it,

the unorganized energy becomes organized

and then there is music.

What tremendous energy exists in this atom of self!

But it can’t be known without utter intensity of will.

You must have seen rocks

that even the strongest chisel cannot break,

and yet the sprouting shrub or plant

slips cracks and crevices through it so easily!

When the tiniest seed is filled with determination

to push through and reach the sun,

even the hardest rock has to give way.

So a weak seed wins over the mighty rocks!

The tender seed breaks through the hardest of rocks!

Why? Because no matter

how strong and powerful the rock,

it is dead,

and because it is dead it has no will.

The seed is tender,

it is weak,

but alive!

Remember, where there is will there is life

and where there is no will there is no life.

The seed’s will becomes its power,

and with this power

its tiny roots sprout,

enter the rock and spread out,

until one day they break the rock.

Life always wins over death.

The living force within has never been defeated

by the dead obstacles without – and never will be.

41. Love.

Your letter was received with joy.

When the heart thirsts so much

for truth,

for peace,

for religion,

one day you come face to face with the sun

which dispels all life’s darkness.

Thirst!

Pray!

Strive!

Wait!

A journey of a thousand miles is covered

step by small step,

so don’t lose heart.

Vast distances can be covered one step at a time

and an ocean filled drop by drop.

My regards to all.

I shall be coming soon now.

The rest when we meet.

42. Love.

Your letter has arrived.

You ask me about sex.

That energy too belongs to God

and through meditation it too can be transformed.

No energy is bad but there can, of course,

be wrong use of energy.

When sex energy flows upwards

it turns into brahmacharya (godly behavior).

It is good that you are becoming detached from it

but that isn’t enough.

You have to go through it to transform it,

rejection just leaves you arid and dry!

It is true you are not alone in your sex life

but sex is not essentially of the body at all

but a modification of the mind.

If the mind is completely transformed

it affects the other person too,

and one who is related so intimately

is quickly affected.

Until we meet, keep in mind that:

there should be no calculated ill-will towards sex –

cultivated detachment is useless.

Stay aware whilst making love,

be a witness in this situation;

if one can stay

in a state of meditation and right-mindfulness

then the sex energy can be successfully transformed.

We shall talk more about this when we meet.

Brahmacharya is a complete science in itself

and many doors to bliss open on that path.

Still, the very first thing is

a friendly attitude towards all one’s energies.

Enmity towards them does not lead to spiritual revolution

but to self-destruction.

Give my regards to all there.

You are not coming to Pune – I shall miss you.

43. Love.

You have asked me about the sense of humor.

We can talk about it in detail when we meet

but first of all:

the sense of humor should be directed towards oneself –

it is a very great thing to laugh at oneself

and he who can laugh at himself

gradually becomes full of concern

and compassion for others.

In the entire world no event,

no subject, invites laughter

like oneself.

About the truth of dreams as well

we shall have to talk in detail.

Some dreams are definitely true.

As the mind quietens down

glimpses of truth begin to appear in dreams.

Dreams are of four kinds

– those concerned with past lives,

– those concerned with the future,

– those concerned with the present,

– and those concerned with repressed desires.

Contemporary psychology knows something

about the fourth type only.

I am glad to know

that your mind moves towards being at peace.

Mind is what we want it to be,

peace and restlessness are both our own creations.

Man binds himself with his own chains

and so he is always at liberty to become free of the mind.

1967

44. Love.

What gift is greater than love?

And still you ask – What have I given?

Oh, mad one!

When love is given

there is nothing left to give,

not even the giver,

for to give love is to give oneself.

You have given yourself,

now where are you?

Having lost yourself,

now you are bound to find

the one you have been longing to meet.

Now she has been born,

and I am a witness to it,

I have watched it happen.

I can hear the music that you are going to be.

The other day, when your heart was close to me,

I heard it.

Intellect knows of the present

but for the heart the future is also the present.

1968

45. Love.

I received your letter.

The time of my birth will have to be looked up.

I think the day was the eleventh of December,

but even this is not certain.

But tell your astrologer friend not to worry;

the future will simply come,

there’s no point in worrying about it.

Whatever happens – ultimately it is all the same.

Dust returns unto dust

and life disappears like a line drawn on water.

My regards to everyone.

46. Love.

It is a long time since I received your letter,

you must be tired of waiting for a reply.

Still, patient waiting has its own joy.

On the path to God,

timeless waiting is the true sadhana.

Waiting and waiting and waiting.

And then,

just as a bud blooms,

everything happens by itself.

You are coming to Nargol, aren’t you?

My regards to all.

47. Love.

I was glad to receive your letter.

Truth is unknown,

and to know it one has to die to the known.

Once the banks of the known are left behind

one enters the ocean of the unknown.

Be brave and take the jump!

Into emptiness, the great emptiness!

Because that’s where God lives.

Love to all,

or to the only one!

For only the one is.

He alone is.

He is in all.

He is in all and in the emptiness also.

48. Love.

I have your letter and your question.

Wherever I is there is a barrier;

In fact, the I-attitude is the one and only barrier,

so sleeping, waking, sitting, walking –

always be aware of it;

see it,

recognize it

and remember it

wherever and whenever it comes,

for recognition spells its death.

It is not the truth

but just a dream,

and as soon as one becomes aware of dreaming

the dream vanishes.

Dreams cannot be renounced –

how can you give up that which is not?

To be aware of it is enough.

Ego is man’s dream, his sleep,

so those who try to renounce it

fall into yet another illusion.

Their humility, their egolessness

are simply more dreams –

like dreaming you are waking whilst still dreaming.

Don’t fall into this trap.

Just keep in mind one thing:

Wake up and see!

Regards to everyone there.

49. Love.

I am so happy to have got your letter.

Can even a ray of love ever come

without the fragrance of joy?

And what is joy but the fragrance of love?

Yet the world is full of mad people

seeking happiness their whole lives –

but with their backs turned towards love!

The doors to God only open

when love turns into the prayer of our total being.

But perhaps his doors are already open,

yet eyes closed to love

will, even so, never be able to see them.

And what is this you write? momentary contact?

No! No! How can love’s contact be so?

Love turns even a moment into eternity.

Where there is love

there is nothing momentary,

where there is love

there is eternity.

Is a drop just a drop?

No! No! It is the ocean!

The drop seen through eyes of love becomes the ocean!

50. Love.

I have got your letter.

I know well how your soul thirsts;

soon it can be quenched –

you are right at the brink of the lake.

You only have to open your eyes,

and I can see that the lids are about to lift.

I shall be with you then,

always with you,

so don’t worry.

Be patient and wait;

the seed takes its own time to break and bloom.

Give my regards to all.

More when we meet.

51. Love.

I have received your letter and your questions.

About death I have remained quiet on purpose,

because I want to awaken inquiry about life.

Those who ponder over death reach nowhere.

Because, in fact, how can death be known without dying?

Hence, the total outcome of such thinking

is either a belief that the soul is immortal or

that the end of one’s life is a total end, nothing remains after that.

They are both mere beliefs.

One belief is based on the fear of death,

the other on the end of the body.

I want man not to get entangled in beliefs and opinions,

because that is not the direction to experiencing, to knowing.

And what else can be found by thinking about death

but belief systems and dogmas?

Thought never takes one beyond the known.

And death is unknown.

Hence, it cannot be known through thinking.

I want to turn your attention towards life.

Life is – here and now.

One can enter it.

Death is never here and now –

either it is in the future or in the past.

Death is never in the present.

Has this fact ever come to your attention,

that death is never in the present?

But life is always in the present – neither in the past

nor in the future.

If it is, it is now; otherwise it never is.

Hence it can be known, because it can be lived,

there is no need to think about it.

In fact, those who would think about it will miss it.

Because the movement of thought is also only of the past

or in the future;

thought is not in the present.

Thought too is a companion of death.

In other words, thought is dead,

there is no element of life in it.

Aliveness is always in the present – it is the present.

Its manifestation is now, absolutely now;

here, absolutely here.

Hence, there is no thinking about life,

there is only experiencing.

Not an experience, but experiencing.

Experience means, it has already happened;

experiencing means, it is happening.

Experience has already become a thought,

because it has already happened.

Experiencing is thoughtless:

wordless – silent – void.

Hence I call thoughtless awareness

the door to experiencing life.

And the one who comes to know life comes to know all.

He comes to know death as well

because death is nothing but a fallacy

born out of not knowing life.

One who does not know life

naturally believes himself to be the body.

And the body dies, the body is destroyed;

the entity called body disappears.

It is this that gives birth to the concept

that death is a total end.

Only those who are a little more courageous

accept this concept.

It is also out of this very fallacy of believing oneself to be the body

that the fear of death is born.

It is the people suffering this fear who start chanting,

“the soul is immortal, the soul is immortal.”

The fearful and weak seek refuge in this way.

But both these concepts

are born out of one and the same fallacy.

These are two forms of the same fallacy

and are two different reactions of two types of people.

But, remember, the fallacy of both is the same,

and in both ways it is the same fallacy

that is strengthened.

I do not want to give any kind of support to this fallacy.

If I say the soul is not immortal, then that is an untruth.

If I say the soul is immortal,

then that becomes an escape from your fear.

And those who are in fear

are never able to know the truth.

Hence, I say death is unknown.

Know life. Only that can be known.

And upon knowing that, immortality is also known.

Life is eternal.

There is no beginning and no end to it.

It manifests, it unmanifests.

It moves from one form to another form.

In our ignorance,

these transition points of change look like death.

But for one who knows,

death is nothing more than changing houses.

Certainly there is rebirth;

but for me it is not a doctrine, it is an experience.

And I don’t want to make it a doctrine for others either.

Doctrines have badly undermined the truth.

I want every person to know it for themselves.

Nobody can perform this act for the other.

But, through doctrines,

it is this very act that appears to have been accomplished,

thus everybody’s individual search

has become dull and dead.

Believing in the doctrines and scriptures

one has sat down quietly,

as if one has neither to know anything for oneself,

nor has to do anything about finding the truth.

This situation is utterly suicidal.

Hence, I don’t want to participate

in this vast scale arrangement

for killing man through the repetition of doctrines.

I want to displace all the established doctrines,

because this alone seems compassionate to me.

This way, all that is untrue will be destroyed.

And the truth is never destroyed,

it is ever available in its eternal freshness

to those who seek.

52. Love.

I received your letter.

I am always with you.

Don’t be worried,

don’t be sad,

and leave your sadhana in the hands of God.

Let his will be done.

Be like a dry leaf,

let the winds take you where they will.

Isn’t this what is meant by shunya (nothingness)?

Do not swim,

just float.

Isn’t this what is meant by shunya?

My regards to all.

1969

53. Love.

Your letter has come.

Love has not to be asked for –

it is never obtained by asking.

Love comes through giving –

it is our own echo.

You feel my love pouring on you

because you have become a river of love

flowing towards me,

and when your love flows like this towards all

you will find the whole world

flowing in love towards you.

To respond with unconditional love towards all,

towards that which is,

is the God-experience.

54. Love.

Can two people ever meet?

It is just not possible on this earth,

communication seems impossible –

but at times the impossible happens.

The other day it did.

Being with you, I felt meeting is possible,

and also communication,

and without words, too.

Your tears answered me.

I am deeply grateful for those tears.

Such response is very rare.

I have seen your Madhu Shala,

seen it again and again.

If I could sing

I would sing the same song that is there.

I call that sannyas the real sannyas

which accepts the world with joy.

Aren’t sansara and moksha really one?

Duality exists in ignorance,

in knowledge there is only one.

Oh, can that really be religion

which cannot sing and dance the songs of bliss and love?

P.S. I hear you are due to come here.

Come, and come soon.

Who can trust time?

Look – it is morning and the sun rises.

How long will it be before it sets?

55. Love.

I am one with all things –

in beauty, in ugliness,

for whatsoever is, there I am.

Not only in virtue

but in sin too I am a partner;

and not only heaven but hell too is mine.

Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tzu –

it is easy to be their heir.

But Genghis, Taimur and Hitler?

They are also within me!

No, not half – I am the whole of mankind!

Whatsoever is man’s is mine –

flowers and thorns,

darkness as well as light.

And if nectar is mine, whose is poison?

Nectar and poison – both are mine.

Whoever experiences this I call religious,

for only the anguish of such experience

can revolutionize life on earth.

56. Love.

I have received your letter.

I was very glad indeed to get it,

more so since you have sent a blank sheet.

But I have read in it all that you have not written

but wanted to write.

Besides, what can words say?

Even after writing,

what you had meant to write remains unwritten.

So your silent letter is very lovely.

As it is, whenever you come to see me you are mostly silent,

but your eyes tell all, and your silence too.

Some deep thirst has touched you,

some unknown shore has called you.

Whenever God calls he calls this way –

but how long will you go on standing on the shore?

Look! The sun is out

and the winds can’t wait to fill the boat’s sails!

57. Love.

I have received your letters –

but they are not just letters really, they are poems born out of love,

out of love and prayer, for where there is love there is prayer.

So it is possible to get glimpses of God through another

whom one loves –

love providing the eyes that can see God.

Love is the door through which he appears.

So when one loves all he can be seen in all things.

Part and whole in fact are not in opposition:

deep love for even one other finally spreads to all

because love dissolves the self, leaving the no-self.

Love is like the sun, the individual like frozen ice.

Love’s sun melts the icebergs, leaving a limitless ocean.

So the search for love is really the search for God,

because love melts, and also destroys;

because love only melts and only destroys.

It is both birth and death.

In it the self dies and the all is born.

So there is certainly pain –

in the birth as well as in the death.

Love is the deep anguish of birth as well as death.

But the poetry flowering in you shows that you

have begun to experience the joy that lies in love’s anguish.

58. Love.

Your letter has filled my heart with joy.

You are at the threshold of a great revolution;

now, even if you want to run away I will not let you.

You will certainly have to perish in it

so that you can be reborn.

Gold has to pass through fire – only then is it purified.

Love is fire for you, and I pray to God

that your ego burns in it.

Then if love comes, prayer can come too;

without love prayer is not possible.

Remember that body and soul are not two.

The part of the person that can be seen is the body,

the part that cannot be seen is the soul.

The same holds true for God and matter:

God made visible is matter, and what cannot be seen is God.

Take life easily and naturally, just as it comes.

Welcome it in its endless forms with an attitude of complete acceptance.

And do not impose yourself on life;

life has its own discipline, its own wisdom,

and those who are ready to live totally

have no need for any other discipline or wisdom.

But you have always been afraid of life

and therefore you are afraid of love.

Now life has begun penetrating you,

breaking your walls of security.

So, God’s infinite grace showers on you!

Don’t run from it now, accept it gratefully

and my good wishes are always with you.

59. Love.

Be aware in the waking state,

don’t try to become aware in sleep or dreams.

If you become aware in the waking state

awareness in dreams and sleep comes easily –

but you don’t have to do anything for it.

Doing only creates difficulties.

Sleep reflects the waking state:

what we are when awake we are in sleep.

If we are asleep in the waking state only then is sleep really sleep;

the stream of thoughts during the waking state becomes the web

of dreams in sleep.

Being aware in the waking state will begin to reflect itself in sleep too,

and if there are no thoughts in the waking state

dreams disappear altogether in sleep.

Everything else is fine.

My regards to everyone there.

60. Love.

I was overjoyed to receive your letter –

as pure and innocent as your heart.

You want to write that which cannot be written

so you send an unwritten letter.

This is good, for it is better to remain silent about that which cannot

be expressed.

But beware, silence also speaks,

it speaks and speaks so much!

Silence can speak even where words fail.

The void envelops even that which lines cannot contain.

In fact what can resist the embrace of the great void?

Nothing is left unsaid by silence.

Where words fail, silence is full of meaning.

Where form ends, the formless begins.

Where knowledge (veda) ends,

transcendental knowledge (vedanta) begins.

When knowledge dies, the beyond begins.

Freedom from the word is truth.

61. Love.

How can I describe how happy I am

to have received your letter?

Whenever I saw you,

only one question arose in my mind –

How long are you going to keep away from me?

I knew you had to come closer to me, it was only a matter of time,

so I kept waiting and praying for you.

To me, prayerful waiting is love.

I also knew you were going through the pangs of a new birth

and that rebirth is very near –

for only this can give soul to your songs.

Words are the form and form has its own beauty,

its own melody, its own music.

But this is not enough, and he who considers this enough

remains discontented forever.

The soul of poetry lies in silence.

To me, prayerful waiting is love, and the void

is the door to the divine temple.

You have come to me and I want to take you to the Lord

for how can you come close to me

without first coming closer to him?

In fact without coming close to him you cannot come close

even to yourself.

Then as soon as you come near him you attain that life

for which you have gone through so many lives.

To come close to oneself is to be reborn –

the principle of being twice born is just this.

And remember, not even the pebbles lying on the road are just pebbles;

they too await a new birth, for that second birth turns them

into diamonds.

P.S. To run after desires is to run after a mirage.

It is a journey from one death to another.

In the illusion that is life

man dies this way time and time again.

But those willing to die to their desires discover that death itself

dies for them.

62. Love.

Where is truth?

Do not search for it, for when has truth

ever been found through seeking?

For in seeking, the seeker is present.

So don’t seek but lose yourself.

He who loses himself finds truth.

I don’t say: Seek and you will find.

I say: He who loses himself, finds.

63. Love.

I was happy to receive your letter.

The drop doesn’t have to become the ocean.

It already is the ocean,

it just has to know it.

What is,

however it is –

to know it as it is,

is truth.

And truth liberates.

64. Love.

Life is an infinite mystery, therefore those who are filled

with knowledgeare deprived of life.

Life becomes known only to the innocent,

to those whose intuition is not covered with the dust of knowledge.

65. Love.

Do not seek nirvana as something opposed to life,

rather, turn life itself into nirvana.

Those who know, do this.

Dogen has these beautiful words to say:

Do not strive after moksha (liberation);

rather, allow all your actions to become liberating.

This happens.

I can tell you this from my own experience;

and the day it happens

life becomes as beautiful as a flower in full bloom

and brims with fragrance.

66. Love.

I received your letter on my return.

Just as the seed within the soil waits for the rains so you wait for God.

Prayerful, wholehearted surrender is the door

leading to him.

Let yourself go completely,

just like a boat floating on the river.

You do not have to row the boat, just let it go loose.

You are not to swim, just to float, then the river itself takes you

to the ocean.

The ocean is very near – but only for those who float

but do not swim.

Do not be afraid of drowning because that fear makes you swim –

and the truth is that he who drowns himself in God is saved forever.

And do not have a goal,

for he who has a goal begins to swim.

Remember always –

wherever one reaches, that is the destination,

therefore he who makes God his goal goes astray.

Wherever the mind is free from all goals –

there alone is God.

67. Love.

I say: Die, so that you can live!

When the seed destroys itself, it becomes the tree;

when the drop loses itself, it becomes the ocean.

But man – man refuses to lose himself.

How then can God manifest in him?

Man is the seed, God is the tree.

Man is the drop, God is the ocean.

68. Love.

Leave the old track –

only the dead walk on trodden paths.

Life is the continuous quest for the new.

Only he who has the knack of being new

every moment truly lives.

Die to the old every moment

so that you are forever new –

this is the crux of the transformation of life.

69. Love.

Truth is like the sky: eternal, everlasting, boundless.

Is there a door to enter the sky?

Then how can there be one to enter into truth?

If our eyes are closed, the sky exists not.

The same holds good for truth.

Opening the eyes is the door to truth; to close the eyes

is to close that door to truth.

70. Love.

Where to find truth?

Well, it has to be sought within one’s own self,

within one’s own self

within one’s own self

within one’s own self.

It is definitely there.

One who seeks it elsewhere loses it.

71. Love.

I am extremely grateful for your loving letter.

I take life as a whole and I am incapable of viewing it in bits and

pieces; it is already the whole but because it has been viewed

in fragments for so long it has become perverted.

There is no politics, no morality, no religion;

there is life, there is God, whole and unfragmented.

It has to be sought, recognized and lived in all its forms,

therefore I shall continue to speak on all its forms.

And this is only the beginning.

Answering journalists is just preparing the ground.

All paths lead to one end – certain friends might take some time

to understand this truth.

As things are, this delay in understanding the truth is unavoidable,

but seekers of truth won’t be afraid – courage is the first condition

in the search for truth.

Remember, as long as spirituality does not become a philosophy

of the whole life it proves impotent,

and only escapists will take shelter behind it.

Spirituality has to be turned into a force,

spirituality has to be turned into a revolution,

only then can spirituality be saved.

My regards to all.

72. Love.

Man becomes a slave because he is afraid to be alone,

so he needs a crowd, a society, an organization.

Fear is the basis of all institutions,

and how can a frightened mind know the truth?

Truth requires fearlessness and fearlessness comes from sadhana,

not from societies.

That is why all religions, institutions and organization

bar the path of truth.