Question – Beloved Osho, What is Innocence, What is Beauty?

Osho – Ram Fakeer, to live in the moment is innocence, to live without the past is innocence, to live without conclusions is innocence, to function out of the state of not knowing is innocence. And the moment you function out of such tremendous silence which is not burdened by any past, out of such tremendous stillness which knows nothing, the experience that happens is beauty.

Whenever you feel beauty — in the rising sun, in the stars, in the flowers, or in the face of a woman or a man — wherever and whenever you feel beauty, watch. And one thing will always be found: you had functioned without mind, you had functioned without any conclusion, you had simply functioned spontaneously.

The moment gripped you, and the moment gripped you so deeply that you were cut off from the past. And when you are cut off from the past you are cut off from the future automatically, because past and future are two aspects of the same coin; they are not separate, and they are not separable either. You can toss a coin: sometimes it is heads, sometimes it is tails, but the other part is always there, hiding behind.

Past and future are two aspects of the same coin. The name of the coin is mind. When the whole coin is dropped, that dropping is innocence. Then you don’t know who you are, then you don’t know what is; there is no knowledge. But you are, existence is, and the meeting of these two is-nesses — the small is-ness of you, meeting with the infinite is-ness of existence — that meeting, that merger, is the experience of beauty.

Innocence is the door; through innocence you enter into beauty. The more innocent you become, the more existence becomes beautiful. The more knowledgeable you are, the more and more existence is ugly, because you start functioning from conclusions, you start functioning from knowledge.

The moment you know, you destroy all poetry. The moment you know, and think that you know, you have created a barrier between yourself and that which is. Then everything is distorted. Then you don’t hear with your ears, you translate. Then you don’t see with your eyes, you interpret. Then you don’t experience with your heart, you think that you experience. Then all possibility of meeting with existence in immediacy, in intimacy, is lost. You have fallen apart.

This is the original sin. And this is the whole story, the biblical story of Adam and Eve eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Once they have eaten the fruit of knowledge they are driven out of paradise. Not that somebody drove them out, not that God ordered them to get out of paradise, they themselves fell. Knowing they were no more innocent, knowing they were separate from existence, knowing they were egos… knowing created such a barrier, an iron barrier.

You ask me, Ram Fakeer, “What is innocence?”
Vomit knowledge! The fruit of the tree of knowledge has to be vomited. That’s what meditation is all about. Throw it out of your system: it is poison, pure poison. Live without knowledge, knowing that “I don’t know.” Function out of this state of not knowing and you will know what beauty is.

Socrates knows what beauty is, because he functions out of this state of not knowing. There is a knowledge that does not know, and there is an ignorance that knows. Become ignorant like Socrates and then a totally different quality enters your being: you become a child again, it is a rebirth. Your eyes are full of wonder again, each and everything that surrounds surprises. The bird on the wing, and you are thrilled! The sheer joy of seeing the bird on the wing — and it is as if you are on the wing.

The dewdrop slipping from a lotus leaf and the morning sun shining on it and creating a small rainbow around it, and the moment is so overwhelming… the dewdrop slipping off the leaf, just on the verge of meeting with the infinite, disappearing into the lake — and it is as if you start slipping, as if your drop starts slipping into the ocean of God.

In the moment of innocence, not knowing, the difference between the observer and the observed evaporates. You are no more separate from that which you are seeing, you are no more separate from that which you are hearing.

Listening to me, right now, you can function in two ways. One is the way of knowledge: chattering inside yourself, judging, evaluating, constantly thinking whether what I am saying is right or wrong, whether it fits with your theories or not, whether it is logical or illogical, scientific or unscientific, Christian or Hindu, whether you can go with it or not, whether you can swallow it or not, a thousand and one thoughts clamoring inside your mind, the inner talk, the inner traffic — this is one way of listening. But then you are listening from so far away that I will not be able to reach you.

I go on trying but I will not be able to reach you. You are really on some other planet: you are not here, you are not now. You are a Hindu, you are a Christian, you are a Mohammedan, you are a communist, but you are not here now. The Bible is there between me and you, or the Koran or the Gita. And I grope for you but I come across the barrier of the Koran, I grope for you but there is a queue of priests between me and you. This is the way of knowledge, this is the way of remaining deaf, of remaining blind, of remaining heart-less.

There is another way of listening too: just listening, nothing between me and you. Then there is immediacy, contact, meeting, communion. Then you don’t interpret, because you are not worried whether it is right or wrong. Nothing is right, nothing is wrong. In that moment of innocence one does not evaluate. There is nothing to evaluate with, no criterion, no a priori knowledge, no already-arrived conclusion, nothing to compare with. You can only listen, just as one listens to the running sound of water in the hills, or a solo flute player in the forest, or somebody playing on the guitar. You listen.

But the person who has come to listen as a critic will not listen. The person who has come simply to listen, not as a critic but to enjoy the moment, will be able to listen to the music. What is there to understand in music? There is nothing to understand. There is something to taste, certainly; there is something to drink and be drunk with, certainly, but what is there to understand?

But the critic, he is not there to taste, he is not there to drink — he is there to understand. He is not listening to the music because he is so full of mathematics. He is continuously criticizing, thinking. He is not innocent; he knows too much, hence he will miss the beauty of it. He may arrive at some stupid conclusions, but he will miss the whole moment. And the moment is momentous!

If you can listen, just listen, if you can see, just see, then this very moment you will know what innocence is. And I am not here only to explain to you what innocence is, I am here to give a taste of it. Have a cup of tea! I offer it to you, each moment it is being offered. Sip it — feel the warmth of the moment and the music of it and the silence and the love that overflows.

Be encompassed with it. Disappear for a moment with your mind — watching, judging, criticizing, believing, disbelieving, for, against. For a moment be just an openness, and you will know what innocence is. And in that you will know what beauty is.
Beauty is an experience that happens in innocence, the flower that blooms in innocence. Jesus says, “Unless you are like small children you will not enter into my kingdom of God.”

Source – Osho Book “The Book of Wisdom”

Beloved Osho,

Watching the energy changes that are constantly happening in me, suddenly the question arises: what is that which is watching and in what sense is it different from the observed energy?

This is a beautiful space to enter into, when the question arises for the first time: What is the observed and who is the observer? This is a beautiful space to enter into - when the question becomes relevant.

Now, on each step, you will start losing the duality of the observer and the observed. The observer and the observed, in the ultimate sense, in reality, are one. They are two only because we have not yet been capable of seeing the One.

Remember The Secret of the Golden Flower. It says: Tao is one; then it divides itself into two, yin and yang, darkness and light, life and death. But the reality is One. It looks like two; it looks like two because we see it through the prism of the mind. The twoness of it is a creation of our minds, it is not there.

It is just like when on a full moon night you look at the moon and then press your eyelid - and suddenly you see two moons. And you know the moon is one. But go on pressing the eye - and you know perfectly well the moon is one - and now you can see two moons.

That's exactly what is happening. Mind is creating duality, because mind cannot conceive the One. There is an intrinsic impossibility for the mind to conceive the One. Try to understand why the mind cannot conceive the One.

Mind needs distinctions; the One is distinctionless. The whole purpose of the mind is to demark things. The whole purpose of the mind is to particularize things - this is a woman and that is a man, this is a friend and that is an enemy, this is food and this is just stone, this is a chair and that is a table, this is the door and this is the wall. This is the function of the mind: the whole purpose of the mind is to make distinctions. It is very utilitarian; it has to be used.

But in the ultimate sense, it becomes the barrier. That which is a help on the circumference becomes a hindrance at the center.

Mind has no truth, but only utility; just as a child is born: no child brings a label with himself, a nameplate or anything. He simply comes. You don't ask him, "Who are you, and what is your name, and from where are you coming?" The child will simply look at you and will think you are stupid: "What nonsense you are talking!" You start giving him a name, an identity. And you know that name is false, although useful, but false; untrue, but utilitarian. He will need that name.

There are millions of people. If he falls in love with a woman and she wants to write a letter to him, how is she supposed to write a letter to a man who has no name? How can the letter be delivered to him?

It has utility in the world. We give him a name and slowly, slowly we completely forget that the name is just a utilitarian device, it has no truth about it. You can change the name. You can go to the court, declare that you drop your old name and you will be a new name. You can change as many times as you want.

Exactly like that, mind is a device, a natural device to help you function in the world, to find you things. If you drop the mind, all is blurred into one reality. Then it will not be possible to make any distinction between what is a marshmallow and what is a pillow. You may start sleeping with the marshmallow underneath your head and you may start eating the pillow.

So I am not saying mind is not useful. Mind is useful, but its very usefulness is based on creating distinctions.

But when you start moving in meditation, you are moving beyond mind. You are moving beyond utility into truth. Then you are trying to see that which is, not that which is useful. Then slowly, slowly the duality will disappear.

...

We are all part of one reality. I am in my right hand, I am in my left hand. I am in my body, but my body is joined with the earth and the sun and the moon. We are all joined together, interlinked. Nobody is independent, we are all interdependent.

When slowly, slowly the mind takes a leap from you - you say goodbye to the mind and the no-mind opens its infinity - then you are the bamboo, then you are in the bamboo, as the bamboo. The observer has become the observed. And the tremendous benediction of it! And the great transformation that comes through it!

And this will be happening, more and more. You have earned it. Don't be afraid! It will appear like insanity and the mind will condemn it like insanity.

This is the point when you have to listen to the Master, not to the mind. I say to you: go ahead. You have risked a lot; now risk a little more. Let this distinction also disappear, and with its disappearance, the satori.

Why is love so essential for spiritual growth?

Love and awareness is the highest form of polarity - just like man/woman, life/death, darkness/light, summer/winter, outer/ inner, yin/yang, the body and the soul, the creation and the creator. Love and awareness is the highest form of polarity, the last polarity, at which transcendence happens.

Love needs two. It is a relationship, it is outgoing, it is energy moving outwards. There is an object: the beloved. The object becomes more important than yourself. Your joy is in the object. If your beloved is happy, you are happy; you become part of the object. There is a kind of dependence, and the other is needed. Without the other you will feel lonely.

Awareness is just being with yourself in utter aloneness, just being alert. It is not a relationship, the other is not needed at all. It is not outgoing, it is ingoing.

Love is the movement of the light out of your being. Awareness is the reverse movement, the backward movement of the light to the source again, returning to the source.

...

Love is very essential. You have to lose yourself to gain yourself. Love is the only possibility of losing yourself totally. When you are lost totally, then you will be able to remember what you have done.

It is like a fish which has always lived in the ocean. It will never become aware of the ocean and the benediction of it. It has to be caught in a net, a fisherman has to come to take it out, throw it on the shore. Only on the shore, in the hot sun, will it remember for the first time. Although it lived for years in the ocean, it was oblivious, completely oblivious, of the ocean. Now the thirst, the heat, makes it mindful of the ocean. A great longing arises to go back to the ocean. It makes every effort to jump back into the ocean.

That is the state of a seeker: thirsty to be back at the original source. And if this fish can enter the ocean again... can't you imagine the celebration! And the fish has lived in the ocean forever but there was no celebration. Now there is the possibility of celebration. Now it will feel so delighted, so blessed.

Love is a must for spiritual growth. And, moreover, love functions as a mirror.

...

In moments of deep love there are glimpses of the original face, although those glimpses are coming as reflections. Just as on a full moon night you see the moon reflected in the lake, in the silent lake, so love functions as a lake. The moon reflected in the lake is the beginning of the search for the real moon.

...

Love on the one hand will give you great joy and on the other hand will give you a thirst for eternal joy.