< Previous | Contents | Next >
Chapter 24 - All our doings are disturbances
You are saying, "I find that the true moments of joy..." Have you ever known untrue moments of joy? Either joy is, or is not. Have you ever experienced untrue moments of joy?
What do you mean by "true moments of joy"?
Certainly, you are comparing with your moments of hypocrisy, when you try to appear to be happy, joyful, and you know you are not; your smile is just an exercise of the lips. The heart is not behind it; most probably it is just a way to hide your tears. You are afraid if you don't start laughing, you may start crying; it is better to laugh so you are not exposed to others.
People try in every way to hide their misery, their pain, their anguish. Just go to a Lions Club or a Rotary Club and see people -- everybody seems enlightened, and the same idiots, for twenty-four hours a day in life, are behaving as unconsciously as anybody else. But they are simply following a ritual. You are supposed to smile, you are supposed to look happy. Slowly, slowly, you simply become a supposition.
Mrs. Reagan boarded a train in Washington late one night and was escorted to an upper berth. Nancy climbed up, stretched out and tried to sleep. However, a man in the lower berth was snoring intolerably. His loud snores became so unbearable, the President's wife leaned over and jabbed the man with her umbrella.
He awoke immediately, looked up at her and said. "It won't do you no good, lady, I had a good look at you when you got on the train." People are showing one thing, thinking something else. Now when he was looking at Nancy, he was not showing what was going on in his mind.
We have become so pseudo, and to a pseudo personality, nothing of value can ever happen.
Ramfakeer, I would like you to remember that either you have moments of joy or you don't have. There is no third alternative because the third alternative will be simply fake, untrue, dishonest. And once you become accustomed to the
dishonest, to the insincere within yourself, then your darkness will start getting darker. Rather than moving towards light, you will be moving towards darker spaces of your being.
You are saying, "I find that the true moments of joy and peace in my life come when I am the witness." You have never experienced the witness, because to experience the witness is to go beyond peace, is to go beyond joy, is to go beyond everything into absolute nothingness and silence. There is no experience.
Witnessing is not an experience. Witnessing is going beyond all experiences. Experiences are other than you; witnessing is your very being. Experiences are like clouds in the sky --
sometimes very beautiful -- white clouds, black clouds with silver lines shining through them, or rainbows passing through them, or at the time of sunrise or sunset, when the whole sky becomes psychedelic... But the clouds are not the sky.
You are not your experiences. Your experiences are just clouds in the sky of your being.
When all the clouds are gone and the empty space remains, you will know what witnessing means.
"Witnessing," according to you, "seems to come easier when I make some effort for it, such as now in Vipassana group. You talked recently about futility of will, but for me, it seems some effort or will is needed for the growth of awareness."
Osho - The Hidden Splendor 240
< Previous | Contents | Next >