OSHO| Devine Love: Essence of Sufi Wisdom #16

RRR podcast

In this discourse, Osho explores the profound nature of divinity, arguing that humans have not forgotten their divine essence but simply have not yet

Key takeaways

• Divinity is found not as an object to be seen, but as the subjectivity of the witness.
• Fear of others coming close is actually a fear of being seen through one's social mask to reveal inner emptiness.

Main topics

• Nature of Divinity
• Fear and Emptiness

Notable quotes

When the self is lost, the self is found.

Conclusion

The episode provides a transformative perspective on transcending the

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Osho, Sufis, the People of the Path, Volume 1, Talks on Sufism, given at the Osho Commune International, Pune, India, Discourse No. 16 The first question, Speaker 2 (0:21) why do we forget our divinity? What is the meaning of this? Speaker 1 (0:28) You Speaker 2 (0:32) have not forgotten it. You have never known it. So how can you forget it? Speaker 2 (0:43) Forgetfulness is possible only once you have known it, and once known, it is never forgotten. You are divine, but you have not known it yet. In fact, because you are divine, that's why it is so difficult to know it. It is at the very heart of your being. If it was something outside you, you must have encountered it by now. If it was something objective, you could have seen it. But it is not outside, and it is not an object, it is your subjectivity. It is not something to be seen, it is hidden in the seer, it is a witnessing. Speaker 2 (1:47) Unless you go behind yourself, you will not be able to know it. There are three things in the world. One is the world of the objects, things that surround you. Closer to it, when you come towards yourself, is the world of thoughts, dreams and desires that too surround you. That's what ordinarily you call the inner world. It is not inner, it is still outer. Speaker 2 (2:26) There are two kinds of outsides, one that you see with open eyes and one that you see with closed eyes, but both are outside, because whatsoever can be seen must be outside. To be seen it has to be outside, it has to be different than you. The object has to be different from the subject. And then the third, the world of your innermost core, your subjectivity. From where you go unseeing, to come to that is to realize one's divinity. One has to become a witness to objects, to thoughts. And by witnessing by and by, a moment comes Speaker 2 (3:20) when the turning happens. When there is no object and no thought left in your consciousness, your consciousness is pure. It takes a turn, a 180-degree turn. When there is nothing to be seen, the seer starts seeing itself. Remember, I am only using words which are not adequate anymore. The seer starts seeing himself. are not right words, because again the words indicate a division, the seer and the seen, and now there is no division. There is only you and you and you. There is not something that is seen and something that is being seen. It is pure consciousness. Divinity means pure consciousness. You will have to come from the world of objects. Speaker 2 (4:23) first to the world of thoughts, and then you will have to take another step, you will have to drop thinking, let thoughts disappear, let there be nothingness, and in that nothingness the turning happens. You cannot do it, you can only do two things. You can close your eyes to the world, and you can close Speaker 2 (4:45) your consciousness to the constant traffic of the thoughts. That's all you have to do. Then the third thing happens on its own. Suddenly you are aware you are a god. Awareness is what god is. But when you are aware, in a sense you have disappeared, you are no more there. The old ego is no more there, you cannot even say, I. Speaker 2 (5:16) Because the I depends on things and thoughts. The I is constituted of things and thoughts. When all the bricks of things and thoughts have disappeared, the building of the I also disappears. There is pure emptiness. That's what Buddha calls anatta, no-selfness. At the very core of the self, at the innermost shrine, you will not find yourself. And that's how one finds oneself. When the self is lost, the self is found. That's why at this point all great masters become contradictory and paradoxical. Jesus says, if you want to find yourself, lose yourself. If you want to lose yourself, then go on clinging with yourself. Very paradoxical. Those who cling will lose. and those who are ready to lose will attain. You ask me why do we forget our divinity. No, you have not forgotten. One never forgets. You have not known at all in the first place. Once known, it is known forever. But I am not saying that you are not divine. You are divine. So when we say that one has forgotten, the word forgotten is used metaphorically. It is not very true, factual. Nobody can forget. A Buddha can never become anything else than a Buddha. He cannot forget. He knows. He knows even while he is asleep. There is no way to forget it. Once known, it is known eternally. But we have never known it, and we have been it always and always, from the very beginning. We have been it, but we have not allowed our energy to turn upon itself. You must have seen old symbols, Egyptian symbol is there, the snake turning upon itself, a circle of a snake, and the snake has its own tail in its mouth. That's what knowing is. Speaker 2 (8:13) The snake has its own tail in its mouth. It is a complete circle, the two ends meeting. When you turn upon yourself, the circle is complete. That's why in many mystery traditions the circle is the symbol of ultimate attainment. Right now you are not a circle, you are a line. You go from yourself, but you never come to yourself. The ray of your consciousness goes on and on. It is linear, one-dimensional. This is what the sansara is, the world, the linear consciousness. Your consciousness goes on moving in a line, and goes on moving in a line. It has been moving that way for millions of years. Speaker 2 (9:17) When it starts becoming a circle, it starts moving backwards, it starts moving back home, and one day suddenly strikes itself, falls upon itself, then there is knowing, and that knowing is never forgotten. You Speaker 1 (9:38) are gods, but Speaker 2 (9:41) you have not recognized the fact. The recognition is missing, not that you have forgotten it. Speaker 2 (9:53) The second question, why do I feel fear when somebody comes close to me? Everybody feels fear, more or less. That's why people don't allow others to come very close. That's why people avoid love. Sometimes in the very name of love they go on avoiding love. People keep each other at a distance. Only so far they allow. Then the fear arises. What is the fear? The fear is that the other may be able to see your emptiness if he comes too close. It has nothing to do with the other. You have never been able to accept your inner emptiness. That is the fear. You have made a very, very decorative surface. You have a beautiful face. and you have a good smile, and you talk well, and you are very articulate, and you sing well, and you have a beautiful body and a beautiful persona. But these are on the surface. Behind them is simple emptiness. You are afraid if somebody comes too close, he will be able to see beyond the mask, beyond your painted face. He will be able to see beyond your smile. He will be able to see beyond your words, and that frightens. And you know that there is nothing else. You are just a surface, that is the fear. You don't have any depth. And not that you cannot have the depth, you can have it. But the first step you have not taken, the first step is to accept this inner emptiness with joy and go into it. Don't avoid your inner emptiness. If you avoid your inner emptiness, you will avoid people coming closer to you. If you rejoice in your emptiness, you will be completely open, and you will invite people to come close to you and have a look into your innermost shrine. Because accepted, the same emptiness has a different quality. Rejected, it has a different quality. In your mind is the difference. If you reject it, it looks like death. If you accept it, the same thing becomes the very source of life. Only through meditation you will be able to allow others to come close to you. Only through meditation, when you have started, you will be able to feel your inner emptiness as joy, as celebration, as song. When your inner emptiness no more freaks you out, when your inner emptiness no more frightens you, when your inner emptiness is a solace, is a shelter, is a refuse, is a rest, and whenever you are tired you simply drown into your inner emptiness, you disappear there. When you have started loving your inner emptiness, Speaker 2 (13:38) and the joy that arises out of it. Thousands of lotuses flower in that emptiness. They float in the lake of emptiness. But you are so afraid of being empty. that you don't look at it. You make every effort to avoid it. You will listen to the radio, you will see the movie, you will look at the TV, you will read the newspaper, the detective story, something. But you will continuously be avoiding your inner emptiness. When tired, then you will fall asleep, and you will dream. But you never face it. Speaker 2 (14:29) You never hold it close to you. You never hug it. That's the reason. You ask, why do I feel fear when somebody comes close to me? It is a great insight that has happened to you. Very few people are aware of it, and everybody feels fear when somebody comes very close to you. Closeness is not light. You allow people closeness only. Speaker 2 (15:03) very conditionally sees your wife, then you allow her to sleep on your bed, to be with you in the night. But still you keep an invisible wall between you and the wife. The wall is invisible, but it is there. If you want to see it, observe it, you will find it. It is a very transparent wall, a glass wall, but it is there. You remain private to yourself, your wife remains private to herself. Your privacies never meet. You have your secrets, she has her secrets. You are not really open and available to each other. Even in love, you don't allow the other to come really into you. You don't allow the other to penetrate you. And remember, if you allow the other to penetrate you, There is great bliss. When two lovers penetrate each other's body, there is a physical orgasm. When two minds penetrate each other, there is a psychological orgasm. And when two spirits penetrate each other, there is a spiritual orgasm. You may not even have heard about the other two. Even the first is a rarity. Very few people attain to the real physical orgasm. They have forgotten about it. They think ejaculation is orgasm. So many men believe that they have orgasm. And because women don't ejaculate, not at least visibly, 80 % of women think that they don't have any orgasm. But ejaculation is not orgasm. It is a very local release, sexual release. It is not orgasm. A release is a negative phenomenon. You simply lose energy. And orgasm is a totally different thing. It is a dance of energy, not a release. It is an ecstatic state of energy. The energy comes to become a flow, and it is all over the body. It is not sexual, it is physical. Each cell and each fiber of your body throbs with new joy. It is rejuvenated. Speaker 2 (17:52) There is great peace that follows it. But people don't know even the physical orgasm. So what to talk about? How to talk about the psychological orgasm? When you allow somebody to come very close to you, a friend, a beloved, a son, a father, a master, it does not matter what kind of relationship. But if you allow somebody so close that your minds start overlapping, Speaker 2 (18:28) penetrating, then there is something so beyond the physical orgasm. It is a jump. The physical orgasm was beautiful, but nothing compared to the psychological orgasm. Once you have known the psychological orgasm, the physical orgasm by and by loses all attraction. It is a very poor substitute. But even the psychological orgasm is nothing compared to the spiritual orgasm. when two spirits, and by spirits I mean two emptinesses, two zeros, overlap. Remember, two bodies can only touch, cannot overlap, because they are physical. How can two bodies be in the same space? It is impossible. So at the most you can have a close touch. Speaker 2 (19:35) Two bodies can only touch. Even in sexual love, two bodies only touch. The penetration is very superficial. It is not more than a touch, because two physical objects cannot exist in the same place. If I am sitting here in this chair, then in the same place nobody else can sit. Speaker 2 (20:04) If a stone is lying in a certain place, you cannot put another thing in the same place. The space is occupied. Physical objects occupy space. So two physical objects can only touch. That is the misery of love. If you know only physical love, you will be always miserable, because you will be only touching, and the deep desire is to become one. And two physical objects cannot become one. It is not possible. A better communion happens with two psyches. They can come closer. But even then, two thoughts cannot occupy the same space, because thoughts are subtle things. They can touch far better, they can get entertained far better than two things. Things are very solid, thoughts are very liquid. Speaker 2 (21:16) It is like two stones coming together. That is what happens when two lovers' bodies meet. It is like water and oil coming together when two psyches meet. Yes, a better meeting, but still a subtle division. Two thoughts cannot occupy the same space. When you are thinking one thought, you cannot think another thought at the same time. Speaker 2 (21:51) The first thought will have to go, then only you will be able to pay attention to another thought. Only one thought can be in your mind at one time and at one space. So even friendship, psychological friendship, misses something, leaks something. It is better than the first, but nothing to be compared with the third. Spiritual penetration, Speaker 2 (22:24) is