All that is beautiful and true happens only when you are not anxious about it. All that is lovely happens only when you are not even waiting for it – not asking, not demanding. Then the mind has no blocks. Thats why it happens when you have forgotten it.
Effort is needed. In the beginning, effort is a must – futile, but still a must. The futility will be realized by and by.
When you have glimpses, sudden glimpses, with the feeling that you were not making any effort and those glimpses have showered upon you, gifts from the divine, then you can leave the effort – and leaving the efforts, more and more gifts will come.
In the East we have always believed, and believed rightly, that enlightenment is nothing like an achievement. It is like a grace, it is a gift, it is prasad. God gives it to you, you cannot snatch it away from his hand.
For a Western seeker this is very difficult to realize, because in the West in the last few centuries, the whole human mind has been converted into a snatching thing. You have snatched everything from nature. Whatsoever secrets science knows, they are not given, they have been snatched. You have forced nature violently to open her doors of mysteries.
Because you have succeeded with matter, you think that the same can happen with the divine also. That cannot happen, that is impossible. You cannot attack heaven and you cannot go there with bayonets. You cannot force the divine to open its heart to you because whenever you are forcing you are closed. That is the problem; whenever you are force you are closed and if you are closed the divine cannot be revealed to you.
When you are not forcing but floating like a white cloud, just roaming, not making any effort to reach anywhere, when there is no goal and no effort, when you dont want to achieve anything and there is no straining for it, when you are happy as you are, when you are happy as the world is, when you accept things as they are and you dont want to change anything – suddenly, you are transported into a different dimension of being. You realize the doors have always been open – they were never closed, they cannot be closed. The divine mystery has always been near you. It was never very far. It cannot be because you are part of the divine. Wherever you go the mystery moves with you.
It is not a question of searching and seeking. It is a question of remaining silent and allowing. When you seek you miss, because a seeker is always violent. When you search it will not come to you, because the mind that is searching is too preoccupied, it is not available. It is never here and now, it is always somewhere in the future: when the discovery will be made, when the research will be completed, when the seeking will come to an end. It is always somewhere in the end, it is not here. The divine is here, so you never meet. A seeker never reaches.
That doesnt mean you shouldnt be a seeker. You will have to be in the beginning, there is no other way. In the beginning you have to be a seeker, you will have to seek and make all the efforts. Just by making all the efforts and becoming a mad seeker you will realize that it happens only when you are in a non-seeking mind.
Osho, My Way: The Way of the White Clouds, Ch 10, Q 1 (excerpt)
