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‌CHAPTER 22

24 March 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin says: I’ve been avoiding you for a year now.] That’s a good indication!...

That means that something is going to happen so the mind is afraid. The mind is never afraid without any real cause, so the people who avoid me are the people who are going to be transformed by me. They try to escape, they try to create many barriers, hindrances, because they are afraid: they know that if they come close the point of no-return is bound to come. That very fear prevents them. And those who try to avoid me are my people. So a good indication; nothing to be worried about, mm?

I am your shepherd (chuckling). You can avoid, you can escape; I will find you! And the more you try to avoid, the more you will feel pulled, because there are things which cannot be avoided: Love affairs cannot be avoided, and this is a love affair. The more you try to escape, the more attracted you will feel. My presence will become haunting and I will follow you wherever you go.

It is easy to escape from me but how will you escape from the attraction that I have for you? That is within you. So wherever you go you will carry it with you. You will become more and more conscious of it because by continuously escaping your mind will become more focused on it.

Hypnotists talk about a certain law, very basic to the human mind; they call it the law of the reverse effect. If you try to avoid something you are bound to fall into it; that is the law of the reverse effect. If you avoid and you don’t want to see something, you will see it again and again and again.

But, it is natural, mm? it happens. Nothing to be worried about! [A sannyasin says that he can’t think of anything to say to Osho.]

CHAPTER 22.

Mm, that’s good... that’s good, because in fact there is nothing to say. The more you search to say something significant, the more difficult it becomes to find. If you are really in search of saying something significant you will fall into silence, because all that can be said is just superfluous. In fact only the superfluous can be said, only the arbitrary, the mundane, the trivial, the rubbish, about which it does not matter whether you say or not.

That which can matter cannot be said because it is more a feeling than a thought. Or even more deeply, it is more a being than even a feeling. It is so deep that you cannot pull it to the circumference; it is at the very core of your being. It can be communicated only in silence.

In the East we have developed great possibilities for that communication. We have a special term for it, we call it ‘satsanga’: a master and disciple sitting silently. The disciple has nothing to say because all that he can say is futile, meaningless. Why waste time with it?

The master has much to say but it cannot be said, it is so significant that words will not convey it, so they sit in silence. They just become empty spaces for each other, and then there is a communication between two silences, merging, melting, entering into each other.

Words keep us apart so language is really not a means of communication but rather of avoiding it. It is a tremendously insignificant instrument to avoid communication. When you don’t want to say something, language is very useful. You can create a great cloud of words around you and you can hide behind it.

But when there is silence you cannot hide anywhere, there is nowhere to hide. Then you are naked and nude: in silence you are vulnerable, open. That’s why people are never silent, because it is dangerous to be silent: anybody can hit you hard; it is too soft. Words give you a protection, an armour.

We call it ‘satsanga’ when two persons are just in tune, just falling into one rhythm, just becoming one. And then something can really be said... not through words but through love.

Just be here and enjoy being here, mm? And that which you want to say will be conveyed, and that which you want to hear will be heard!

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