Excerpts from Sufis - The People of the Path - osho

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Excerpt from Sufis: The People of the Path, Vol. 2

 

 

 

Chapter 5

 

" Sufis say that man is exactly like an onion. And religion is the art of

how to peel the onion and come to it's innermost core. And what is

the innermost core of an onion? Have you ever peeled an onion? You go on

peeling one layer. another layer, and another, and so on and so forth.

Then a point comes when the last layer is taken off and only emptiness

is left in your hand. That is fana. If you go on peeling your being, the

last layer will be of being - baka - and beyond that will be emptiness -

fana. So you can think in this way: at the very innermost core there is

emptiness, pure sky, nothingness, fana. The first layer around fana is

that of baka, individuality - what religions call the self, atman, the

soul. But the soul is already a step away from your being. The self is

already distant from your being. Buddha has the right word for it. He

calls it anatta, no-self. Your innermost being is a non-being. Nothing

is there, or only nothing is. The first layer, the first fence that

surrounds it, is baka, individuality. This is your true and simple

being: non-being surrounded by being, defined by being. The real core is

empty but the emptiness has to be defined by something - otherwise there

will be no division between you and anything else. So a thin. a very

thin, layer of being divides you. But that being is also a circumference

not the center. At the center is fana, dissolution, disappearance. Even

at the point of baka, individuality, you don't meet God, you are

still there. Very little is left of you, but there is still just a thin

line - even that has to disappear in fana. Then you enter God. Start

from the other end. Start peeling the onion. "

 

 

 

Excerpt from Unio Mystica, Vol. 2

 

 

 

Chapter 3

 

" The mind is a doer. Watch your own mind and you will understand. What I

am saying is not a philosophical statement, it is just a fact. I am not

proposing any theory for you to believe or to disbelieve, but something

that you can watch in your own being. And you will see it - whenever you

are alone, you immediately start looking: something has to be done, you

have to go somewhere, you have to see somebody. You can't be alone.

You can't be a non-doer.

 

Doing is the process by which the mind is created; it is condensed

doing. Hence, meditation means a state of non-doing. If you can sit

silently doing nothing, suddenly you are back home. Suddenly you see

your original face, suddenly you see the source. And that source is sat

chit anand, it is truth, it is consciousness, it is bliss - call it God,

or nirvana, or what you will.

 

From being to doing to having - this is how Adam-consciousness arrives

in the world. Move backwards, from having to doing, from doing to being

- this is what christ-consciousness means. But Sufis have a very

tremendously significant message for the world. They say the perfect man

is one who is capable of moving from being to doing to having to doing

to being, and so on, so forth. When the circle is perfect then the man

is perfect.

 

One should be capable of doing. I am not saying that you should become

incapable of doing; that will not be of any value, that will be simply

impotence. You should be capable of doing, but you should not be

engrossed in it. You should not become involved in it, you should not

become possessed by it, you should remain the master.

 

And I am not saying that all that you have has to be dropped, I am not

saying to renounce all that you have. Use it, but don't be used by

it, that's all. Then the perfect man is born. "

 

 

 

About: Unio Mystica, Vol. 1

 

This is the first of a two-volume series on Sanai's Hadiqa, about

which Osho says: " Such books are not written, they are born. These words

are saturated with satori. "

The story of Hakim Sanai, the twelfth century Persian court poet, begins

like a political thriller. Sanai is travelling with the Sultan of Persia

and army on an expedition to conquer India. As they pass a certain

walled garden they come across a drunken singer, who is really a great

Sufi mystic, an enlightened man named Lai-Kur.

Sanai is transformed, enlightened by this chance meeting. He leaves the

king and sets off alone to absorb what has happened to him. Out of this

experience comes a book of poems- the Hadiqatu'l Haqiqat, The Walled

Garden of Truth.

 

 

 

Reviews

 

" Some planetary collective awareness is continually building, along with

the tribal, personal, familial, national, and neighborhood

consciousnesses. They trickle, pour, drip-drop, and thunder down through

each other, altering the consistency and intensity of who we are and

what we know and feel. Soul is the usual hapless word we throw at the

process.

" I contend that Osho will come to be seen as a germane, yeasty presence

in our soul fermentation. The history of soulmakers is our most

significant history. They are the moving indices of how we say our

truth. "

From the introduction by Coleman Barks, poet and translator. His 16

volumes of Rumi translations have made Rumi the best selling poet in the

US today.

 

The radiance of this extraordinary man can be felt between each and

every pair of lines, and one begins to understand why thousands of

people all over the world feel themselves attracted to this eloquent

master of language and of the heart. "

Carol Neiman, author of Afterlife and Miracles

 

 

 

Excerpt from Unio Mystica, Vol. 1

 

Chapter 3

 

" It is better to be silent, says Hakim Sanai, because at least in

silence you will not be lying to anybody. And you will not be lying to

yourself either. In silence at least you will be ignorant; you will not

pretend knowledge.

 

If a person can remain silent for a few hours every day he will become

aware of his whole phoniness because he will see his real face again and

again. If you continuously talk and continuously relate with people you

forget your original face because you have to wear masks continuously.

For twenty-four hours you are talking, using words, and when you

continuously use words, slowly, slowly you start believing in those

words, in the sound of those words.

 

Words have a hypnotic power. If you use a certain word again and again,

it hypnotizes you. If you use the word God again and again, slowly,

slowly you start thinking that you know what you mean, that you know

what God is. It is very dangerous to repeat words. But people go on

talking. They don't give any gap in which they can simply be silent

and be. If you are silent at least one hour every day, you will be aware

continuously that what you say is nonsense. And then ninety-nine percent

of your talking will start disappearing. What is the point of talking

nonsense?

 

But then why do people talk? They talk just to hide themselves behind

the noise. Whenever you are nervous you start talking. Now it is a known

fact - if people are forced to live in solitude, after three weeks they

start talking to themselves. They cannot bear silence, it becomes

intolerable, so they start talking to themselves. They have to talk;

words somehow keep them clinging to their personality. Once words

disappear, they start falling into the impersonal, and they are very

much afraid of the impersonal. And the impersonal is your reality and

you are afraid of the reality. And you are clinging to the illusions

that words create. "

 

 

 

 

 

Excerpt from Just Like That

 

Chapter 6

 

" You have to encounter yourself.

 

Self-encounter is a suffering in the beginning, painful, deeply painful;

it hurts, and hurts like hell. But only through suffering bliss is

achieved; there is no other way. One who has passed through all

sufferings becomes capable of the ultimate ecstasy - what Abraham Maslow

and the humanistic psychologists call the " Aha! " experience.

 

When you have passed through a suffering it is like a long journey.

Journey-tired you come, you cannot even move, and suddenly you see the

goal - and your whole being feels: Aha! - an ecstasy, and all suffering

disappears. And you are in a totally different dimension.

 

Self-encounter is the deepest suffering in the world; that's why you

are avoiding it. Socrates goes on saying: Know thyself - but nobody

listens, because to know thyself means to know thyself as suffering. Of

course, bliss follows, but that is not in the beginning, that is in the

end. The beginning is painful. It is like a birth. Birth is painful.

 

If a child becomes afraid in the womb of the mother, afraid to pass

through the birth passage - it is very narrow, it is painful,

suffocating, it is a trauma, it leaves a wound forever - if the child

becomes afraid, then there will be no birth, and there will be no life.

Then the child will die in the womb. If the bird in the egg becomes

afraid to leave the protecting shell…. He is closed in, completely

closed in, and protected from everything, and he has whatsoever he needs

inside. If a seed becomes afraid to sprout…because as a seed there

is no suffering, there is no death because there is no life. As a seed

there is no danger; the seed can remain for millions of years.

 

In Mohenjo Daro seeds have been found that are ten thousand years old.

They are still alive, they can sprout. In a cave in China seeds have

been found which are one million years old. They are still alive. Put

them in the soil, water them, care - and they will sprout. One million

years a seed has remained inside!

 

And you are the same seed. Wherever you are, in the cave of China or in

the cave of New York, it makes no difference: you have been a seed for

millions of lives. You have been afraid to take the jump and become a

plant. It is a great jump. It is a risk. The shell is torn asunder, the

protection lost; the security disappears.

 

The tender plant comes out, so delicate, so tender, and such a difficult

world! - where all sorts of hazards exist. Animals are there, and

children are there - and nobody knows what will happen. And the plant is

so tender, so soft, so feminine, and the seed was so masculine, so

protective, so hard, so strong. And life is soft, death is hard. Life is

tender…. For death there exists no hazard, because a dead person

cannot die again. For life - millions of hazards. Hazards and hazards -

it is an adventure into the unknown.

 

Watch a seed sprouting, breaking the hard shell, then the hard crust of

the earth, then rising into the world - the unknown, unmapped, uncharted

future. Nobody knows what is going to happen and all sorts of danger all

around. If the plant becomes afraid and remains in the seed, then it

will never taste what life is.

 

Don't be afraid. Come out of your ignorance, come out of your

protective shell, come out of the ego. Ego is just like the egg: a shell

which protects. Come out of your character, come out of your conscience.

Take the challenge! Adventure into the unknown. "