Osho on Contradictions

OSHO, WHATEVER YOU SAY SEEMS TO BE RIGHT FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF WHAT YOU ARE SAYING AT THAT MOMENT. BUT IT MAY BE CONTRADICTORY. YOU DRAW THE LISTENERS IN ONE DIRECTION CONFIRMING A PARTICULAR POINT, AND AT THE SAME TIME YOU GO VIA THE BACK DOOR TO THE OPPOSITE POINT. IT IS A SPIRAL — THE LISTENER HARDLY REALIZES WHAT MAY BE HAPPENING. IS THIS NOT FOOLING THE LISTENER — UNLESS HE REALIZES THAT THE REAL ANSWER LIES BEYOND YOUR SPOKEN WORDS?

GOURISHANKAR BHARATI, ALL statements are of the moment. No statement can contain eternity. And those who claim that their statements ARE eternal are simply lying. They don’t know what they are saying. The moment can contain only the moment. So whatsoever I say at the moment belongs to the moment. It is a flower of THAT moment. If it is raining, I say it is raining. Later on it may not be raining. The clouds may disperse. It may become sunny.

Yes, my statement is contradicted by another moment — but it is contradicted only if it was claiming that it has to be true for ever. I am not giving you dogmas. A dogma is a statement with the claim that it is true for ever. I give you only momentary flowers. I am not giving you a system that will remain forever and forever true. That is what has happened in the past, and man has suffered enough because of it. What Buddha said was HIS response to HIS moment. What Mohammed said was HIS response to the life that he encountered. It can’t be true for ever. And if it has to be true for ever, then life will never change, then life will become stagnant. That’s why people who believe in dogmas become stagnant. Their life is no more a flow, they are not river like. They become frozen. Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, Buddhists, they are frozen people. They have lost track of all that goes on constantly changing. Except change, nothing is eternal.

If I was creating a dogma here, then I would never contradict myself. You would be happy with that! because you would have something to cling to. You have not come here to become enlightened, Gourishankar — you have come here to become knowledgeable. My effort is not to impart knowledge to you: my effort is to awaken you. I can’t allow you to cling to any statement — hence I contradict. I am always in a hurry to contradict, so you don’t have any time to cling to anything. I want to take all knowledge away from you. I want you to be left alone, in utter emptiness and its purity, and its virginity.

That’s why my moment IS FOR the moment. It does not claim anything beyond it. Each statement that I make is only Forr THIS moment. Enjoy it! Just enjoy the rose that has bloomed this mowing — be full of its fragrance, sing it, dance with it, celebrate it. You are fortunate you have been able to see THIS flower. But don’t hope that you can keep it for ever. Unless it is a plastic flower it can’t be eternal. Only false things can be eternal, artificial things can be eternal. The reality is changing, it is flux, it is a river. Tomorrow I don’t know what I will say. I don’t remember what I said yesterday. I am in no way concerned with my past, and not concerned with my future either. This moment is ALL for me. Nothing else exists beyond it. I am UTTERLY disconnected from the past… and have no plans for the future. When the tomorrow comes we will see. And what I am saying to you now is not going to become an obligation for me to go on saying it forever. I have no obligation to confirm my past again and again. Yesterday is gone, so are the statements that were made yesterday.

But I understand YOUR problem. Your problem is: Then in what to believe? How to believe? But who is telling you to believe in anything? Rejoice! Don’t believe. Can’t you see the difference? The emphasis is different. I am not telling you to believe in anything.

Of course, if I am telling you to believe in something, then I have to persist again and again with the same thing; I have to say it again and again. That will be a kind of hypnosis. When something is repeated constantly, you become hypnotized by it. I am not here to hypnotize you. I am here for just the opposite thing: to dehypnotize you — not only of the statements that I have made in the past but of the statements of all the enlightened people that have ever existed. I have to destroy your knowledge, your belief. I have to destroy anything that you can cling to. Only nothing has to be left there….

One sannyasin has done well. He has called my path VIA CONFUSIVA — that’s right. That’s perfectly right. It is neither VIA NEGATIVA nor VIA POSITIVE — it is VIA CONFUSIVA. If you can be so much confused that you drop ALL belief, out of that confusion will come clarity. When do you feel confused? When exactly? Whenever one of your beliefs is attacked — you become suspicious: Now what to believe in? Whenever a doubt arises… but how is a doubt possible if there is no belief? The man of no-belief cannot doubt either. There is nothing to doubt. By destroying your belief I am destroying the very possibility of doubt. Can you see the point? Doubt is a shadow of belief. It looks like the opposite — it is not. Only believers can doubt. If you believe in God, doubt can arise. But if you don’t believe in God, from where can doubt arise? How can doubt arise? A man without any kind of belief will be without any kind of doubt too. That is clarity.

When I say something and it goes against your belief, doubt arises: Now what to choose? You have put so much at stake with your belief, you have lived with it for so long, and now suddenly doubt arises! It shakes you up. It makes you frightened. And if I go on saying contradictory things every day, great courage is needed to listen to me, Gourishanker, a great heart to contain, great love to understand me, and an intense desire to know, a passionate desire to know: “Whatsoever the cost, I am going to know. If all beliefs are to be destroyed and all systems have to be dropped and all religions to be thrown into the fire, I am ready. But I am going to know.” When this passionate desire is there, you will meet with me. Then you will understand my contradictions. It is a device. It is creating a situation. I will not allow my people any possibility to believe in anything, not even in me. When ALL belief has gone, what is left? You are just like a mirror reflecting all the moods of life, reflecting all the climates. Summer comes and you are summer… and winter comes and you are winter… and day comes and you are day… and the night comes and you are night. This I call totality. And to live in totality is to live in God.

All that I am saying is not a kind of doctrinizing — it is not at all. Its purpose is totally different. But the purpose is so different, that’s why such questions arise. When you go to listen to somebody else, he is there to propound a philosophy; he is explaining his philosophy to you. I am not explaining because I have no philosophy. I am utterly anti-philosophic. When you go to a priest he is there to explain to you a certain dogma that he believes in; he is there to convert you. I am not here to convert you: I am here just to destroy you.

So remember: all statements are of the moment, just as all flowers are of the moment. Spring comes… and there are so many flowers. And then the spring is gone, and you never go to nature and say, “You look very contradictory. Where are the flowers? And how can you go on contradicting yourself in this way?” Tao is contradictory. It has to be. That is the dialectics of life. But you never go to nature! If a cuckoo is calling and then suddenly it stops for no reason at all, you don’t go to the cuckoo and say “Why have you stopped? This is so contradictory! Calling so beautifully, and then falling into silence? Either be silent or go on calling — be consistent!” But you don’t say that. In the rains the trees are green. In the summer the leaves will disappear and branches will be standing bare, naked, dry, against the sky. But you don’t go to the trees saying “How dare you be so contradictory!”

I am part of this Tao. I am not a philosopher. So all my statements are of the moment, for the moment. Remember it. There is no need to believe in them. Enjoy them! Relish them! While the flower is there, drink its beauty. It will be gone soon. Before it is gone, celebrate its being.

Celebrate me! Rather than believing in me, celebrate me. That is the difference — the difference of emphasis. Let my presence be a feast to you. It should not become a prison. It should not become a definition of your mind. It should not fill you with ideas but with dance and song. If you want to remember me, never remember me as a philosopher, as a priest — no, never. Those are dirty words for me. Remember me as a poet. You never go to the poet and say to him, “You are contradictory,” because you understand. A poet has no obligation to be consistent. He can sing a thousand songs of different moods. When he is sad, he sings a sad song; and when he is happy, he sings a happy song. You don’t go to him….

My being is more that of a poet. And if you really want to feel my presence, you will also have to learn the way of poetry. Art to me is the greatest religion — the religion of the future. Aesthetics to me is prayer.

And second: there is no opposite for me. It looks contradictory to you; for me it is not. For me there are no contradictions at all, because each contradiction is nothing but a complement. There is no way to really contradict. The night does not contradict the day. It only gives rest to the day energy to be revived again in the mowing. If there was no night, there would be no day again. It is through the night that the day lives, regains vitality. And it is through the day that the night is born. It is through life that death arrives, and it is through death that life comes back again and again. They are not enemies: they are friends, partners in the same game, complementaries. So if you understand me with great love, you will see that those contradictions look like contradictions to you because your understanding is small. When your understanding is a little greater, when you have moved to a little higher stage of consciousness, those contradictions won’t look like contradictions — they will be complementaries. They will make whatsoever I am saying very rich. It makes them rich.

If you talk only of Zen, it has a kind of richness. If you talk only about Sufis, it has another kind of richness. But when you talk about both Sufis arid Zen, your richness is immense. It is more than the sum total of Zen and Sufism. It is not only Zen plus Sufism: it is Zen multiplied by Sufism — it is multi-dimensional. Hence I go on speaking through different windows. Sometimes I stand at the window that opens to the east and I talk about the east and the sun that rises and the morning. And sometimes I stand at the window that opens to the west and I talk about the evening and the sunset and the beauty of it. And I go on changing because there are many many doors to the divine.

Jesus says: There are many mansions in my God’s palace. There are millions of possibilities. That is the infinity of God, that you cannot exhaust him. But to take note of ALL possibilities certainly makes you infinitely richer. So there are no opposites for me, but only complementaries.

AND THIRD: there is no answer, real or unreal. I am not giving you any answer as such. What I am giving you is an insight into the mystery of life, not an answer but an insight into the mystery of life. If my answer provokes the mysterious in you, I have succeeded. If my answer becomes an answer to you, I have failed. Don’t take my answers as answers. I am not a schoolteacher. I have no answers to give you. That which I have to give you is the sense for the mysterious and the miraculous.

But I understand. It is difficult – I speak one language, you speak another language. When I say ‘language’ I don’t mean English, German or French. I mean… my language comes from my being; your language comes from your being. We may be speaking the same language on the surface, but deep down it is almost untranslatable, what I am saying to you. It is impossible to translate it into your language. Then why am I saying it at all? I am just crazy. I cannot resist. It is overflowing. There is no way to prevent it. I have to say it – just like a cloud is burdened with rainwater and it has to rain! Whether you are able to soak it in or not, that is not the point. Rocks may not be able to soak it in. Or, some soil may be able to soak it in and will be full of greenery and beauty will arise. But that is all undecided. It is an open thing. It may happen, it may not happen. It depends how you let me in…

What I am trying to say to you is a kind of music that I have heard. It has not been heard verbally. It is in the sound of the running water. It is in the wind passing through the pine trees. It is in the songs of the birds. It is in the silence of darkness. It is in the dancing rays of the sun. It is all over the place! But it is a music. And unless you are capable of understanding this music, you will not be able to understand me. You will go on misunderstanding me.

Source:

Listen to complete discourse at mentioned below link.

Discourse series: The Perfect Master, Vol 1 Chapter #4

Chapter title: Via Confusiva

24 June 1978 am in Buddha Hall

References:

Osho has spoken on ‘silence, music, clarity, eternal, religion, poetry’ in many of His discourses. More on the subject can be referred to in the following books/discourses:

1. Beyond Enlightenment
2. The Divine Melody
3. The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha
4. The Invitation
5. The New Dawn
6. The Golden Future
7. The Messiah
8. The Rebellious Spirit
9. The Zen Manifesto: Freedom From Oneself
10. Unio Mystica