OshoSpeak – 2009: #7

From ‘Sufis. The People of the Path. Talks on Sufism / Vol 2’

Yes, it is a touch, it is a flame from one lamp to another lamp, a jump of the flame. Once you have felt it……………….u have become aware of the sacred……………..
‘So Sufis say the greatest blessing of life is to find a Master, one who knows, one who sees, one who is.




Man is a paradox. And man is the only animal, the only being, that is paradoxical…..
……….A tree is a tree, and a dog is a dog, but man is never in a state of isness. He is always becoming, growing.




Look into the eyes of a cow – how peaceful, calm, tranquil she is. There is no anxiety, no anguish, no clouds. Look into the eyes of a man. They are always cloudy……..




No synthesis is needed between a rosebush and the lotus – they are perfectly beautiful as they are. Lotus is lotus, rose is rose, Islam is Islam, Hinduism is Hinduism, Zen is Zen, Sufism is Sufism. And Judaism is Judaism, and Jainism is Jainism. They are perfectly beautiful as they are. They are not lacking anything




Iman Muhammed Baqir is said to have related this illustrative fable:

‘Finding I could speak the language of ants, I approached one and enquired, ‘What is God like? Does he resemble the ant?’’

‘He answered, “God! No, indeed – we have only a single sting, but God, he has two!” ’


That’s how all your religions and philosophies are – God is just your magnified roop, form. You have one sting, he has two. You live seventy years, he lives eternally……….Your God is your projected, reformed, modified, decorated form.


What is God? Al-Hillaj Mansoor says:

It is the gathering together than the silence
then the loss of words and the awareness
then the discovering and the nakedness.

And it is the fire clay then the fire
then the clarity and the cold
then the darkness then the sun.

And it is the orgy then the casting away of cares
then the wish and the approach
then the conjunction then the joy.

And it is the strain then the relaxation
then the disappearance and the separation
then the union……
then the fusion

What is God?

It depends on you………..There are as many Gods as there are possibilities of looking at God. It is natural.




It is said in the Bible that God created man in his own image……………..Just the contrary is the case. Man has created God in his own image.




When Nietzsche said ‘God is dead’, he was saying that all formulations of God up to now have become irrelevant. Man has gone beyond them; man has become more mature………………Look in the Old Testament. God is ferocious, very jealous………This seems to be a very primitive God; seems to be conceived of by a Genghis Khan – not very cultured, not very sophisticated yet.

The Hindu God is far more sophisticated. Krishna with his flute is far more cultured. But Buddha reaches to the very peak because he drops the idea of God. He talks about godliness……….Buddha drops the very idea. He says…………….Existence is full of divineness, bhagwata, but there is no God like a person sitting there on a golden throne controlling, managing, creating………….Now this is a far higher concept………….We make God more like a process……….Buddha……….says ‘God is creativity, not a creator.’




The whole philosophy of Sufism is to approach God as cosmic energy, with no concept. But we all have concepts and all concepts are juvenile, childish. God cannot be conceptualized.




God is not a person………It is human to think of God as a person…………Lao Tzu says ‘Tao’, but Tao doesn’t seem so warm. You cannot hug Tao. Tao cannot hug you. Buddha says ‘Dhamma’ – the law. But the law seems to be cold. You need some warm embrace, you need a God who can love you, who can caress you………This is human desire, desire for warmth………..You transform God into a person because of your need.




You will never meet God, remember……….The ego disappears and then there is experiencing – continuous, constant, eternal. That energy, that everflowing energy, is what God is.




…….Sufism is not a philosophy, it is a science. It does not believe in speculation, it believes in experience……..nothing else can be decisive………..Sufism ………….It wants you to drop all kinds of beliefs because they will be barriers to knowing…………Only when you are empty of all thought are your eyes ready, receptive. Then you can see.




………there are four ways to approach truth………..

The first is known in the East as karma yoga – the way of action………you can act with total absorption, and you can offer your act to God. You can act without becoming a doer………..The goal of karma yoga is freedom, moksha………..This is the path of Jainism, yoga and all action-oriented philosophies.

The second path is the path of knowledge, knowing – gyana yoga…..Thats what Krishnamurti goes on teaching…………You just have to attain to clarity………You just have to see that which is……..You simply have to drop your prejudices and……..your concepts, notions, which can interfere with reality………..And that changes you………The goal of the path of knowledge is truth……..The goal of the path of knowing – Vedanta, Hinduism, Sankhya………Ashtavakra, Krishnamurti – is truth, Brahman……………..

The third is bhakti yoga – the way of feeling. Love is the goal…………..Vaishnavas, Christianity, Islam…….Ramanuja, Vallabha…….they say that subject and object are not separate.

These are the three ordinary paths. Sufism is the fourth……..it is neither of action, nor of knowing, nor of feeling……….is the way of transcendence. In India this is called raja yoga – the royal path……..you simply accept whatsoever is…….In that very acceptance you go beyond. You remain just a witness…………Zen and Sufism belong to the fourth. That’s why Zen people say ‘the pathless path, the gateless gate’ – because there is no goal………….You just have to be silent and see.




The Sufi sage, Abdulalim of Fez, refused to teach, but from time to time would advise people about the way to proceed on the path.

One day a disciple, who was both incapable of learning and regularly driven abnormal by attending ‘mystical ceremonies’, visited him.

He asked, ‘How can I best profit from the teachings of the sages?’

The Sufi said, ‘I am happy to be able to tell you that I have an infallible method which corresponds to your capacity.’

‘And what is that, if I am allowed to hear it?’

‘Simply stop up your ears and think about radishes.’

‘Before, during or after the lectures and exercises?’

‘Instead of attending any of them’