Osho Rajneesh Book "Returning to the Source"

Returning to the Source

2 December 1974 am in Buddha Hall

JOSHUWAS A MASTER WHO STARTED TO STUDY ZEN WHEN HEWAS SIXTY. WHEN HEWAS EIGHTY HE FOUND ENLIGHTENMENT. THEY SAY HE TAUGHT FOR FORTY YEARS AFTER HIS ENLIGHTENMENT.

ONCE A STUDENT ASKED OLD JOSHU: ’YOU TEACH THAT WE SHOULD EMPTY OUR MINDS. I HAVE NOTHING IN MY MIND – NOW WHAT SHOULD I DO? ’THROW IT OUT,’ SAID JOSHU. ’BUT I HAVE NOTHING – HOW CAN I THROW IT OUT?’ JOSHU SAID:’ IF YOU CAN’T THROW IT OUT, CARRY IT OUT, DRIVE IT OUT, EMPTY IT OUT – BUT DON’T STAND THERE IN FRONT OF ME WITH NOTHING IN YOUR MIND !’

What is Joshu’s single note? This is the single note – emptiness. This is the lotus flower that Buddha

transmitted to Mahakashyap. And this is what all of the Buddhas have been teaching through the

ages – be empty. The ego wants to be All. The All happens, but it happens through emptiness, and

therein lies the difficulty, the impossibility of it. You can become perfect, but if perfection is the ideal,

then you will miss it. You can become perfect through being totally empty. That seems inconceivable

for the mind, because the mind says: To be perfect one has to make much effort, to be perfect one

has to create an ideal in the future, and one has to make effort to reach the goal. The goal happens.

Perfection comes to man, man need not go there. The goal comes to you. Nobody has ever gone to

the goal. It has always been otherwise; the goal comes to you when you are empty. And to be empty

is just the opposite, just the opposite of all efforts towards perfection, because perfection means you

would like to be God himself. Perfection means you would like yourself eternally, infinitely, spread all

over. Emptiness is just the opposite – you have to destroy yourself utterly. Not even a trace should

be left behind. When your house is empty, the guest comes. When you are no more, the goal has

been attained.

CHAPTER 2. THROW IT OUT!

So don’t make perfection your goal, the goal happens indirectly. You be empty, and you have created

the situation for it to come. Because nature abhors emptiness, nothing can remain empty. If you

empty yourself completely, you will be filled by the Unknown. Suddenly, from all directions the Divine

rushes towards you. You have created the situation; it has to be filled. When you are not, God is.

So remember, there cannot be any meeting between you and God. There has never been, and there

will never be. When you are not, God is; when you are, God is not. They both cannot be together.

Here you disappear, and suddenly the Total, the Perfect, the Whole appears. It has always been

there. But you were filled by yourself so much that there was no space for it to come in. It was all

around, but you were not empty.

You are just like a house without doors – just walls and walls and layers and layers of walls. And

remember, a house is in fact not the walls but the doors. Lao Tzu says: What is a door? – a door is

nothing, it is an emptiness; and from the door you enter. The wall is something, the door is nothing.

And have you observed that the house is not the walls but the emptiness within? The very word

’room’ means emptiness, space. You don’t live in the walls, you live in the space, in the emptiness.

All that exists, exists in emptiness. All that lives, lives in emptiness.

You are not your body. Within your body, just like within your house, space exists. That space is

you. Your body is just the walls. Think of a person who has no eyes, no ears, no nose, no windows,

no doors in the body – he will be dead. Eyes and ears and nose and mouth, they are the doors,

they are emptinesses. And through that emptiness, existence enters into you. The outer and the

inner meet, because the outer space and the inner space are not two things, they are one. And the

division is not a real division.

It is just like, you can go to the river, and you can fill an earthen pot with water. When the water

is moving in the earthen pot, the river outside and the water inside the pot are the same. Only an

earthen wall exists, and even that earthen wall is porous; water is continuously flowing out and in.

Your body is also porous; existence is continuously flowing in and out. What is your breathing? – it is

existence coming in and going out. And scientists say, millions of holes in the skin are continuously

breathing in and out. You are porous. If your whole body is painted thickly, and only the nose is

allowed to remain open, you can go on breathing, but within three hours you will be dead. Because

the whole body breathes – it is porous. Existence continuously renews you.

And inside who are you? Inside is an emptiness. When one realizes this emptiness, the ego simply

disappears – it is a myth, it is a dream, it is a fallacy. Because you have never looked within, you

have created a false ego.

There is a necessity, because no man can live without a center. And you don’t know your own center.

So the mind creates a false center; that false center is the ego. When you move inwards and look

for the ego, you will never find it there. The deeper you go, the more you will laugh because the ego

is not there. You are not there. Sometimes, just close your eyes and look for the ego. Where are

you? Who are you? And emptiness surrounds you from everywhere; nobody is there inside. And

this moment is the most beautiful and ecstatic moment possible. when you feel that there is no ego.

When there is no ego, you are empty. And when you are empty, the Divine rushes towards you. You

have created the situation.

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