Is not the urge to understand, actually the urge to become one—both inwardly and with our outer world?
Yes, Maneesha. It is a very complicated question that you have asked—it looks simple.
I have to bring Sigmund Freud in. Sigmund Freud was the first man in the world who said that the whole urge for finding the truth, liberation, salvation, is arising out of nothing but a deprivation. The child lived in the mother’s womb for nine months, one with the mother. That was his whole world, his whole cosmos; he knew nothing else.
The womb was the whole universe, and it was so beautiful, so relaxed. He had no worries of going bankrupt, he had no worries about the wife, and the children becoming hippies.
He had no worries at all. All nourishment was given by mother, all oxygen was given by the mother—everything was supplied without asking. He had lived for nine months in paradise.
But after nine months he is thrown out of paradise, just the way Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden of Eden. Then he encounters the whole world—such a helpless child—and the world is too big, and every day brings new problems. Every day he has to learn new things, problem upon problem.
Soon he will be going to school—and there are so many subjects. Soon he will be getting married—and there are so many troubles. Soon he will be in business, or in service… and all kinds of masks he will have to wear: before the wife, before the girlfriend, before the boss, before the servant. He will have to change his mask continually. A tremendous desire is to go back to the womb.
According to Sigmund Freud—and I agree with him—the desire to know the truth, the desire to be liberated, the desire to become one with existence, is an extension of the experience in the womb of the mother. The whole cosmos becomes your womb the moment you enter into deep meditation.
At the very center of your being you are connected with the cosmos; otherwise you cannot live even for a single moment. Your life is not your life; it is the life that the cosmos is pouring in you continuously. Your breath is not your breath; it is the cosmos that is continuously pouring oxygen in the exact proportion needed by you. If it were left to you to breathe, I don’t think anybody would survive. You will forget. Somebody insults you and you will forget breathing—first things first! You see a beautiful woman and you will forget that the heart has to continue beating; it stops. It will be so difficult…. Existence has taken care to keep every essential thing in its own hands. What is given to you is trivia; all essential things that are absolutely necessary for life are still in the hands of existence.
When you reach in deep meditation to your roots, you will find that a door opens into the beyond and you know that every moment life is rushing into you. The more you become open, at the center, the more life you have—abundance of life, so much that you would like to share with the whole world; still it is inexhaustible.
Yes, Maneesha, the desire, the urge to understand is really the urge to become one with the cosmos. Then there is no birth; then there is no death. The cosmos is eternal. It has never been created, as Christians have been telling you, and other religions also. It is evolving from eternity to eternity.[…]
These are two contradictory concepts. Creation means once and forever complete. Evolution means never complete, always going on and on. Always the goal is just nearby—but as you move on, the goal also moves on. It is just like the horizon: it looks just a few miles away. You drive, and as you drive the horizon goes on moving, further and further. The distance between you and the horizon will remain exactly the same—you can go around the earth—because the horizon is just an illusion.
The goal, every goal, is an illusion. The man of understanding lives without any goal. He simply loves to live, he simply loves to love. He simply loves to sing and dance and enjoy the moment, the opportunity that existence has given to him. In that total dance, you become one. In that total singing, when the singer disappears, you become one.
I have told you about Nijinsky, one of the greatest dancers the world has ever known. His greatness was not just his dance. His greatness was that once in a while, while dancing, he would jump so high… which is not possible according to scientists. Because gravitation is pulling you down, there is a limit, but he always transcended the limit so much that it was a miracle—what happens? What happens to gravitation?
And not only this, when he would come back down… Gravitation pulls with force; you will fall on the stage with a thump! But Nijinsky would fall down like a feather, just slowly moving. That too is against gravitation.
He was asked again and again, “What is the secret?” He said, “The secret I don’t know.All that I know is, whenever I try to do it I never succeed. In my aloneness I try to do it—I never succeed. When I forget myself completely in the dance, when there is no Nijinsky, only the dance, suddenly it happens. It is a surprise to you, it is a surprise to me. It is not my doing.”
Meditation is not your doing. You simply make the effort, but it is not your doing. Your effort is needed to prepare the ground. As the ground is ready, immediately you see you are no more; the whole cosmos is. You have entered a greater womb, an eternal womb of tremendous peace and ecstasy.
-Osho
From Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind, Chapter One
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