Osho on Understanding

ONE DAY, WHEN SUBHUTI WAS SITTING UNDER A TREE IN A MOOD OF SUBLIME EMPTINESS….

Remember the words SUBLIME EMPTINESS, because sometimes you also feel empty — but that is not sublime. Sometimes you also feel empty, but not ecstatic emptiness — a depression, a negative emptiness, not a positive emptiness. This distinction has to be remembered. A negative emptiness means you are feeling a failure, not understanding. You have tried to achieve something in the world and you have not achieved it. You feel empty because the thing you desired you couldn’t get; the woman you wanted you couldn’t get — you feel empty. The man you were after escaped — you feel empty. The success that was in your dreams could not happen — you feel empty. This emptiness is negative. This is a sadness, a depression, a frustrated state of mind. If you are feeling empty that way, remember, flowers will not shower on you. Your emptiness is not real, not positive. You are still after things, that’s why you are feeling empty. You are still after the ego; you wanted to be somebody and could not. It is a failure, not an understanding.

So remember, if you renounce the world through a failure it is not renunciation, it is not sannyas, it is not true. If you renounce the world through understanding, that is totally different. You don’t renounce it as a sad effort, with frustration within, failure all around. You don’t do it like a suicide, remember. If your sannyas is a suicide, then flowers will not shower on you — then you are leaving….

You must have heard Aesop’s fable….

A fox was passing, and there were grapes, but the vine was high on a tree. She tried and tried and jumped but they were beyond her reach. So she went away saying, ‘They are not worth anything, they are not yet sweet and ripe. They are sour.’ She couldn’t reach. But it is difficult for the ego to realize, ‘I am a failure.’ Rather than recognizing, ‘I have failed, they were beyond my reach,’ the ego will say, ‘They were not worth anything.’

Your many sannyasins, so-called saints, are just like that Aesop’s fox. They have renounced the world not because they understood the futility of it but because they were failures and it was beyond their reach — and they are still filled with grudge and complaint. You go to them and they will still be against, saying, ‘Wealth is dirt; and what is a beautiful woman? — nothing but bones and blood!’ Who are they trying to convince? They are trying to convince themselves the grapes are sour and bitter. Why talk about women when you have left the world? And why talk about wealth when you are not concerned with it? A deep concern still exists. You cannot accept the failure yet and understanding has not arisen.

Whenever you are against something, remember, understanding has not arisen — because in understanding for and against both disappear. In understanding you are not inimical to the world. In understanding you are not condemning the world and the people there. If you go on condemning, your condemnation shows that somewhere there is a wound, and you are feeling jealous — because without jealousy there can be no condemnation. You condemn people because somehow, somewhere, unconsciously you feel they are enjoying themselves and you have missed. You go on saying this world is just a dream, but if it is really a dream then why insist that it is a dream? Nobody insists about dreams. In the morning you wake up and you know your dream was a dream — finished. You don’t go telling people that whatsoever they are is a dream.

Remember one trick of the mind: you try to convince people about something just to convince yourself, because when the other feels convinced you feel okay. If you go and tell people that sex is sin and they are convinced or they cannot refute you, you become happy. You have convinced yourself. Looking into others’ eyes, you are trying to cover your own failure.

Negative emptiness is useless. It is simply the absence of something. Positive emptiness is presence of something, not absence; that’s why positive emptiness becomes a power. Negative emptiness becomes a sad, depressed state of mind — you simply cave yourself inwards, that’s all. Feeling a failure, feeling dejected, feeling everywhere the wall that you cannot cross, feeling impotent, you denounce, you condemn.

But this is not a growth, this is a regression. And deep inside you cannot flower, because only understanding flowers, never depression, and if you cannot flower, existence is not going to shower flowers on you. Existence simply responds to you: whatsoever you are, existence gives you more of that. If you have many flowers within your being flowering, a million times more flowers will shower on you. If you have a deep depression, the existence helps that too — a million times more depression will come to you. Whatsoever you are will knock at your door. Whatsoever you are will be given to you more and more. So be careful and be alert.

And remember, a sublime emptiness is a positive phenomenon. One is not a failure, one simply looks at the thing and understands that dreams cannot be fulfilled. And then one never feels sad, one feels happy that one has come to this understanding that dreams cannot be fulfilled. One never feels depressed, hopeless, one feels simply happy and blissful because one has come to an understanding: Now I will not try the impossible, now I will not try the futile. And one NEVER says that the object of desire is wrong; when you are in positive sublime emptiness, you say desire is wrong, not the object of desire — this is the difference. In negative emptiness you say the object of desire is wrong, so change the object! If it is wealth, money, power — drop it! Make the object God, liberation, heaven — change the object! If emptiness is perfect and sublime and positive you don’t see the object as wrong, you simply see that desire is futile; objects are okay, but desire is futile. Then you don’t change your desire from one object to another object, you simply drop the desire itself. Non-desiring, you flower. Desiring, you become more and more paralyzed and dead.

Source:

Listen to complete discourse at mentioned below link.

Discourse Series: And The Flowers Showered Chapter #1

Chapter title: Flower shower

31 October 1974 am in Buddha Hall

References:

Osho has spoken on ‘understanding, transcendence, Sannyas, bliss’ in many of His discourses. More on the subject can be referred to in the following books/discourses:

1. Beyond Psychology
2. The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol 1
3. The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty
4. From Death to Deathlessness
5. The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here
6. The New Dawn
7. Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 9
8. Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1
9. Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2
10. Sufis: The People of the Path, Vol 1
11. Sat Chit Anand
12. The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha
13. Ecstasy – The Forgotten Language