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Chapter 2 - Just see it
Enlightenment is ungraspable, so the more you try to grasp it, Bhagawati, the less it is possible. You cannot hold enlightenment in your fist -- the tighter the fist, the less is the possibility. But you can hold enlightenment in your open hands; that is the only way to hold it.
In your open hands you can hold the whole sky, all the stars, the whole existence, but in your closed fist there is nothing. The more closed it is, the more tight it is, the less is the possibility of anything being there. Enlightenment has to be achieved with open hands, by relaxed, calm, quiet resting in your being.
It happened to Lao Tzu that way. For years he was trying to grasp and grasp, and nothing was happening. That morning he simply forgot all about it. It was so beautiful, so sunny, there was so much delight all around, who cared about enlightenment? For a moment that ambition was put aside. And just by coincidence a dead leaf, which must have been hanging off the tree, started falling.
Lao Tzu saw it falling from above, slowly slowly. He watched it, he became just a watcher; there was nothing to do. He observed it; he remained aware of the swaying, and the leaf falling in the subtle breeze of the morning. As it settled on the ground something settled in Lao Tzu too. Suddenly the feeling of "Eureka!" Suddenly a great outburst of joy: "Aha!" He danced... the goose was out!
When the goose is out, what else can you do except dance, sing, laugh -- laugh at the whole absurdity of it all, that you were never in, that you believed that you were in? Your belief was the only imprisonment.
You say:
I FEEL THAT WE NEED TO HURRY...
What is the hurry? The whole of eternity is yours! You have always been here, you ARE
here, you will ALWAYS be here. Nothing is ever lost. Now it is a confirmed scientific truth that nothing is ever destroyed. If matter is not destroyed, why
should consciousness be destroyed? Matter belongs to a very gross plane of existence. If the gross is so valued by existence, do you think the higher manifestation is not valued by existence? The higher is more valued! If matter persists and is impossible to destroy, consciousness cannot be destroyed either. It is the highest expression of life; there is nothing higher than it. It is the very Everest of life, the peak beyond which there is nothing. The whole of existence is moving towards that peak. There is no hurry.
The whole idea of hurry is a creation of the mind. Let me say it in this way: mind and time are synonymous; the moment your mind stops, time also stops. The more you are in your mind the more you are in time; the less you are in your mind the more you are out of time.
There is a famous statement of Jesus Christ -- of course, not related in the Bible. The Bible has missed many beautiful statements of Jesus, but truth has its own way of persisting. It has been carried by the Sufi mystics down the ages.
The statement is... Somebody asks Jesus, "You talk again and again about the Kingdom of God. What will be the most special thing about the kingdom of God? What will be the most unique phenomenon in the kingdom of God that you talk about?"
Osho - The Goose is Out 20
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