Osho Ecstasy: The Forgotten Language # 2 THE RADICAL REVOLUTION Question 2

Osho,

Sometimes listening to you, an overwhelming feeling comes over me of how absurd and ridiculous we all are and yet at the same time how incredibly beautiful life is. I feel there is so much I want to say to you, but it can’t be put into words, and I would like to just run up and hug you.

Good idea - but don’t do it. Because even then you will not be able to say what you want to say, even by a hug. You will be able to show your helplessness, but nothing will be said.

When something overwhelming is happening, it cannot be expressed. It is inexpressible by its very nature. It is intrinsically inexpressible, ineffable. So whenever it happens a very deep helplessness arises. Words seem to be futile, meaningless, trivial, and then one would like to say it in some other way. One would like to hug or kiss or hold the hand - but even then nothing is said. Only your helplessness is shown. One would like to cry or weep, but then too nothing is said. Only your helplessness is expressed.

Rather than trying to express it, my suggestion is, when this happens, remain with it. Don’t make any effort to express or not to express - because if you become occupied with expression, you will miss it. You are already diverted, distracted. That’s why I say the idea is good but don’t try to do it.

If you feel the benediction around you, the greater, the vaster surrounding you, the infinite just around you, rather than trying to express it, get lost in it - because now the ego is trying another way, now the ego wants to express it. And if you become too interested in expressing it, you may become a painter, because the painter is trying to express the inexpressible through colors on the canvas, but who has been able to express it? Or you may become a poet. The poet is trying to express the inexpressible in words, but who has ever been able to express it?

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This is the difference between art and religion. When the vast surrounds you, the artist starts making efforts to express it, and the mystic simply gets lost in it. And the mystic comes to know it. The artist misses at the very last moment.

It will be happening to more and more people around here. This is a very crazy place to be. It is really far out. To more and more people it is going to happen, so keep it as a deep remembrance that whenever you feel that something unknown has knocked on your doors, don’t be worried about expression, don’t start thinking how to say it or how to write it. Let it be. Go into it. Be drowned in it. Be drunk with it. Don’t make any effort.

These are the two efforts. First, people try - how to achieve it? They miss. I don’t teach you any “how.” Then when it happens they start thinking how to express it; again the “how” comes from the back door. Again I would like to remind you, don’t bring the “how.” It is good as it is. Unexpressed, what is wrong in it? Let it be so. Amen. Let it be so.

“Sometimes listening to you, an overwhelming feeling comes over me of how absurd and ridiculous we all are, and yet at the same time how incredibly beautiful life is.” There is no contradiction in the absurd and the beautiful. In fact the absurd is the beautiful and the beautiful is always absurd. Don’t see any contradiction.

The mind is always very tempted to see contradictions because the mind has been trained in a certain logic which does not allow contradictions to be together. The mind has been trained by Aristotelian philosophy, all over the world. Aristotle says A is A and never not A. This is the whole logic of the mind: A is A and never not A; A is A and never B. How can A be B? But in reality A is B and C and D - and the whole alphabet. In reality things have multidimensional qualities.

You see a man is loving. When the man is loving you think, “Yes, how beautiful a man.” But the next moment he is angry; then there is a contradiction. You say, “This man deceived me. Has this man not heard of Aristotle yet? A is A and never B. You are a loving man. Don’t be angry!” But man is man. He is angry and loving and jealous and possessive, and sometimes so sharing, and sometimes so mean. Have you not watched it? Sometimes your friend is so sharing and sometimes so mean. This is how reality is. Reality contains all contradictions.

You say, “.how absurd and ridiculous we all are and yet how incredibly beautiful life is.” Nothing is contradictory in it. If you were all very, very consistent, life would not be so rich. It would be stale and gray. Life is rich because it is a rainbow, it is psychedelic. It has so many colors and so many changing colors. And it is so unpredictable - that’s why it is absurd.

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Why do you call it absurd? - because you cannot contain it in your logic. Your logic falls short; it is bigger than your logic. It destroys your logic. Somehow you make a small part of your mind clear, and life comes and destroys everything.

Have you not seen somebody who for forty years has been absolutely logical and has never allowed anything in his life which is illogical, has said God does not exist because he is not visible, has said prayer is foolish and love is not possible? Then one day he comes across a beautiful woman and falls in love. Forty years’ training and logic, and all gone to the dogs within a single moment! Life is absurd.

But by absurd you simply say one thing: that it is not logical. But why should it be logical? It has no obligation to be logical. It has never pretended to be logical. It is man’s mediocre mind that has been trying to fix it somehow so you can be secure about it. No, it cannot be fixed. It is a constant flux.

And it is ridiculous, yes, because it is not serious. It is ridiculous because it is a play. In India we call it leela; it is a play.

God loves children. Can’t you see it? Every day old people are taken away, and he goes on sending babies. How absurd. A person has been trained his whole life, for seventy years. He has become a great philosopher, a professor, a scholar - so many PhDs and DLitts and the DD - and now suddenly this mad God takes him away. What type of economics is this? And instead sends a baby, crying and howling. Again train him, send him to the school and the college and the university. And by the time he is ready and looks of any use, here comes God and takes him away. It is absurd.

God loves the absurdity. God is not a utilitarian. He does not believe in utility, he believes in play. The moment you become too serious, he says, “Now it is time. Please come back home. I will dismantle you and send you again. Now you need a mind wash: you have become too trained, too disciplined, too much of a commodity. You are no longer a freedom.” That’s why old people are taken away. He destroys them, again creates small babies, and sends them; and again they are there with all the nonsense. And again we are after them to teach them. Neither do we learn anything nor does God learn anything. It goes on.

It is ridiculous, but that’s why it is so beautiful. If God was a mathematician as Vinoba Bhave says. He says that God is a mathematician. Now this seems to be the most sacrilegious statement ever made. God a mathematician? No, he is not, not at all. The mathematician is an ugly thing. The mathematician is a computer. The mathematician is clever and cunning, but mechanical. Mathematics has no poetry in it. Mathematics is the only absolutely fictitious science created by man. In the room you say there are six chairs. There are chairs - but not six. Six is man’s concept. If you go out of the room, chairs will be there, but six has disappeared. Mathematical concepts are human creations. God is not a mathematician, otherwise such beautiful play will become impossible.

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Don’t you see, sometimes there are many things man is destroying, thinking that by destroying them the world will be better? God has never destroyed them. Trees have existed. Sometimes you think what is the point of a tree? You make furniture, cut it; make doors and furniture and then it is useful. Hills are there, the Himalayas are there, and the virgin snow on their tops, which nobody has walked on it. For what? What is the point of them? Why are the Himalayas needed? Make them a plain so people can live there and townships can grow. That’s how man has destroyed the whole of nature.

God is very playful. There are many absurd things. So many stars - for what? They go on moving. It is not a mathematical arrangement. God is very luxurious. He does not believe in necessity. He is a spendthrift; he is not a miser. He goes on throwing his energy - it is playful energy, it is just like a child splashing in water. Don’t ask why. He will not be able to answer. But he is enjoying it. It has no economical value, but life is not economics, nor is it politics. It is poetry, and poetry is by its very nature, by its very definition, illogical. Poetry is beautiful because there are sudden leaps and jumps. Prose is not so beautiful, because there are no sudden jumps and leaps. Prose moves on plain ground, in a logical sequence.

Sooner or later, when you are ready, I am going to drop talking in a sequential way. Sooner or later, when my sannyasins are ready, my talks will be more like a collage. You will have to find out what I mean. You will have to find out your own meaning. I will say a few things, but I will go on jumping and I will not connect as I connect right now. Once you are ready - more attentive, more aware, more alert - I will not connect with logic, I will drop the logic. The unity will be there, but not on the surface. The unity will be there because they will all be my statements - the unity will consist in me. And the unity will be there because they are to be understood by your awareness - the unity will come in your awareness. But taken directly, if a visitor comes, he will think this man is mad. Right now I connect, I connect because I know you will not be able to understand the absurd yet. I am waiting for the day you are ready, so I can be as absurd as God is.

Have you seen anywhere any symmetry in nature? It is not. Man makes things in a symmetrical way. If he makes a house he makes it symmetrical. But in nature there is no symmetry. A great pine tree, and just by the side a small rosebush. And you cannot ask what the connection is between the rosebush and the pine tree. God will laugh. He will say, “Who said that there is any need for a connection? The rosebush is a rosebush and the pine is a pine - and both are happy. There is no need to bridge them.”

Sooner or later I am going to become just like God. I will say something and then I will forget about it and I will tell a joke which is completely unrelated. Then it is for you to work it out. Then it will be more beautiful, certainly more beautiful, because it will be more playful. That is the meaning of a collage - so many fragments from so many dimensions together. On the surface, no unity, but if you look deep there is an organic unity. That unity exists in the painter, not in the painting.

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If you really want to know the meaning of poetry, you will have to go deep into the heart of the poet. For prose you need not go into the heart. Prose is plain, prose is worldly, prose is of the marketplace, prose is human. Poetry is divine. That’s why all the great scriptures of the world are in poetry - the Upanishads, the Vedas, the Koran, the Dhammapada. They are all poetry, beautiful poetry, outpourings of a singing heart. Logic, there is none. Love, there is much.

Osho Ecstasy: The Forgotten Language