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CHAPTER 6
26 August 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
[A sannyasin says: I’m just getting ready to leave. I had many questions when I arrived, but I don’t remember them.]
That’s very good. That’s how it should be. When you come, you come with many questions. When you go, go without any questions. I’m not saying you will be going with answers, but if you can go without questions, that’s enough.
In fact there is no answer. There are only two states of mind – a mind full of questions and a mind empty of questions.
So the whole growth is to come to a point where you can live without answers; that is what maturity is – and to live without answers is the greatest and most courageous act. Then you are no more a child. A child goes on asking questions, and he wants answers for everything. A child believes that if he can formulate a question, then there must be an answer. If he can put a question, then there must be somebody to supply the answer.
That childishness continues even into old age. That has continued down the centuries. Even your so-called great philosophers remain immature. Because I call this immaturity – that you think that because you can formulate a question, there is bound to be an answer; maybe you know it or not, but somebody must be knowing, or some day you will be able to discover it. That’s not so. All questions are man-created, manufactured by man.
Existence has no answer. Existence is there, with no answers, completely silent.
If you can drop all questions, a communication happens between you and existence. A non- questioning mind is the universal mind. In the West it is thought that a wise man is one who knows
CHAPTER 6.
all the answers to all the questions. At least a wise man is supposed to know all the answers. He is supposed to be omniscient. But in the East we have a totally different attitude. The eastern attitude about a Buddha is that all his questions have disappeared, and now he is not hankering for any answers whatsoever. Not even a slight desire is there for any answer. He has simply dropped that whole trip.
The moment you drop questions, you drop philosophy, you drop theology, you drop logic, and you start living. You become existential. When there are no questions, that state itself is the answer.
[The sannyasin asks for a name for the groups which he runs in the west]
I will give you a name which covers everything and a little more. This will be the name [leaning forward to explain the name written on paper] : Shunyam. It means the zero experience. It means the point where you are nowhere, nobody, nameless, identity-less, formless; neither positive nor negative, but just exactly in the middle – the zero experience.
That’s what samadhi is – the ultimate goal of all meditations. Buddha calls his ultimate reality shunyam. One simply dissolves into it. It is, in a way, ultimate death, but that’s also an ultimate birth. On the one hand it is crucifixion, on another it is resurrection.
And now associate me with it also. So, ‘Shunyam Rajneesh Enlightenment Process’. You call it this. And now work for me.
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