The Experience Has To Be Authentically Yours + Success Is a Natural By-Product

"One hot afternoon an owl was sitting in a tree and a swan flew up and sat there too.

'Phew, it is hot, Brother Owl,'
he said.
'The sun is bright and I am all hot and sweaty.'

'What!' said the owl. 'What, what are you talking about? Sun? Hot? When darkness gathers it gets hot. What is this sun you are talking about? Are you mad or something? What are you trying to tell me? There is no such thing as the sun. There has never been. What is this light that gets hot? We have never heard about it. It gets hot when darkness gathers? Are you trying to make a fool of me? And I'm not alone in saying so. All our scriptures also say so.'

The swan was flabbergasted by all this.
'How can I explain it to this blind old owl?' he thought.

'Look, Brother, I can see with my eyes. It is the middle of the day and the sun is shining brightly and it is very hot. You are saying that it is dark? How can I explain it to you?'

'Let us go then,' said the owl. 'There is a big tree over there where there are lots of owls and great scholars too. We will ask them about it – they know all about the scriptures, and a few of them are very learned. Come on! We will see if you are making a fool of me.'

They flew over and there were many many blind owls there.

'This swan has turned up,'
the owl said, 'and he says that it is the middle of the day and the sun is beating down and that there is light everywhere and that's why it is hot.

What do you people say?'

'What is all this?' they cried.
'Our fathers and their fathers and their fathers, in fact, nobody in the whole history of our community has ever seen a sun, so there is no such thing as a sun.

How can it be there? He is having you on. Don't listen to him. He is either mad or a very fraudulent fellow. He is trying to corrupt our religion. We have always lived in darkness and we have always worshipped darkness. It is the very foundation of our way of life. He will destroy our way of life. That is the sort of person he is. If you want, we will take a majority vote on it.'

One owl got up and said,

'What is the truth? Does darkness exist or does light?'

'Darkness, and darkness alone,' they all cried in unison.

'Why then has it got so hot?'

'Because it is so dark,' they cried. 'Heat is a function of darkness.'

'Don't let him stay here,' they all cried again. 'He will spoil our religion, our tradition, our very cherished past. Drive him away immediately! He is either totally blind or utterly mad.' - Osho

"This small parable contains a few truths of immense value.

First: truth cannot be transferred – there is no way to transfer it.
My truth is my truth; I can talk about it to you, but talking about it is not transferring it to you.
Listening to it is not understanding it.
You will have to open your own eyes.

The function of a real Master is not to tell you that God exists but to help you to open your eyes, to open the windows of your soul so that you can see, so that you can realize the meaning of the word 'God' in your own bones, in your own blood, in your very marrow.

I cannot see for you through my eyes and I cannot walk for you with my legs and I cannot fly for you with my wings. You will have to live your life and you will have to die your death.

This is one of the most fundamental things to be always remembered; otherwise one becomes burdened with borrowed knowledge which is not knowledge at all, but a pseudo-coin: it looks like knowledge, hence it can deceive you.

And that's what has happened to humanity.

Humanity is living under the curse of borrowed knowledge.

People go on reciting the Bible, the Koran, the Gita like parrots – blind old owls reciting the Koran, the Gita, the Bible. But this is not their own experience, their own experience is just the opposite. Their own experience simply denies the truth of the Gita and the Bible and the Vedas and the Dhammapada.

Their own experience simply says that 'Buddha is mad,' that 'Jesus is deceiving us,' that 'Socrates may be very clever, but beware of him, don't listen to him; he will destroy our religion.'

Man has created a religion with his blind eyes, and not one but many religions, because blind eyes cannot see the One, blind eyes can only believe in the many. Hence there are so many religions,

each religion proclaiming that 'My truth is the only truth,' that 'My God is the only God,' that 'All other Gods are false,' that 'All other truths are fabrications,' that
'All other paths only lead into wastelands – only my path is the path to paradise.'

These three hundred religions are continuously fighting with each other.

None of them is aware,
none of them has seen,
none of them has looked into reality face to face.

They have believed. These religions are not religions but traditions. They have heard – they have heard down the ages – and they have believed,

because to believe is cheap, to explore is risky.

To repeat like a parrot is comfortable, to go into the adventure of discovery is to risk your life.

It is dangerous.

Exploration is dangerous;

belief – convenient, consoling.

You need not go anywhere, it is given to you ready-made; but it is second-hand.

And miserable is the man who lives with a second-hand God, because God can only be first-hand.

The experience has to be authentically yours; nobody else's experience can become the foundation of a true life.

Buddha may have seen, but to become a Buddhist is not going to help. Buddha was not a Buddhist – certainly not.

Jesus may have looked, encountered, realized, but to become a Christian... Unless you become a Christ you will never know God.

The really religious person avoids traditions,

the really religious person avoids second-hand gods, avoids beliefs, keeps him-self open, available for the truth to happen.

Certainly he works – it is only he who does work – the believer never works upon himself.

There is no need for the believer to work upon himself.

The explorer, the inquirer, the seeker of truth works hard upon himself because there are many things which have to be dropped, many impurities which have to be dropped, many hindrances and blocks which have to be dissolved.

The eyes have to be opened and the ears have to be unplugged and the heart has to be made to feel. One has to fall in rhythm with the existence.

When you are utterly in rhythm with existence your eyes are open, and then, for the first time, you see.

And that seeing is transformation, that seeing changes you, root and all. That seeing becomes a new vision, a new life, a new gestalt. You are no more confined then by your body, no more confined by your mind, no more confined by anything whatever.

You are unconfined, infinite, eternal. And to feel this eternity flowing in you is to know God.

To see this infinity extending into the eternal past and into the eternal future is to see God.

To feel godliness inside your own being is to know God.

This can't be second-hand."

"It was perfectly alright for the owls to think that the swan was mad.

That's how people have always been thinking: Buddha is mad, Mohammed is mad, Zarathustra is mad, because how can they believe what they cannot see?

It is perfectly alright for the owls to throw the swan out, to drive him away.

They became afraid, shaken.

If this swan is allowed to live in the tree he is going to disrupt their tradition, he is going to destroy their way of life. They have always lived in darkness and they have always believed in darkness.

Darkness is their God, all their rituals have arisen out of darkness. Their priests praise darkness, their learned people write great treatises on darkness.

Their whole philosophy is centered on the basic theme of darkness. In their philosophy there is no place for sun and light and day. Now this mad swan comes up and is trying to infiltrate, smuggle, some alien ideas into their world. Their whole structure will collapse.

That's why Jesus is crucified, that's why people are so much against mystics. They are trying to give you a new gestalt, a new pattern, a new way of life, a new approach to reality. They are trying to open a new door to existence. Naturally, those who have very much invested in the old patterns of life will be angry, will be madly angry. They would like to drive the mystics out of their world.

It is all natural, it is all simple. Once you understand it, you start laughing about it.

How do you go on believing in God? Why? How do you manage to believe in the soul, and why? The same reason: 'Our fathers and their fathers and their fathers, in fact the whole of our community has never seen a sun, so there is no such thing as a sun. He is leading you on. Don't listen to him. He will corrupt our religion.'

You have heard your father say to you,

'God is, and God is a Christian,' or 'God is a Hindu'; and they had heard it from their fathers and so on and so forth. Rumors, gossip. Neither your father has known nor have you known.

Gather courage to drop all that which is not your knowledge.

This is the first requirement for being alive – and this is the first requirement for going into the inquiry after truth scientifically: drop all prejudices, drop all a priori conceptions. Start from the beginning, from the very beginning, from ABC, as if you are Adam and Eve and there has been no tradition before you and there has been no scripture before you.

D.H. Lawrence once said,

If all the scriptures of the world are destroyed, man may become religious.'

If whole traditions are simply dissolved, then only is there some hope; otherwise who bothers to inquire?

When the tradition can supply you so easily and you have not to pay anything at all, why bother?

Others have known, you can simply believe.

But to know is one thing, to believe is just the opposite.

To believe means to go on living in darkness.

To know means to be transformed, transmuted, transplanted into another vision – luminous, eternal."

"The Old Master says,

"If quiet work is carried out daily without interruption, then success will be achieved."

Success is a by-product; one need not think about it.
And if you think about it, you will not get it – that is a condition.
Don't think about success, because if you start thinking about success you become divided.

Then you are not totally in the work; your real mind is in the future: 'How to succeed?'

You have already started dreaming how you will be when you have succeeded, how you will be when you have become a Buddha – what beauties, what benedictions, what blessings will be yours.

Your mind has started playing the game of greed, ambition, ego.

Never think of success. Success is a natural by-product. If you work really sincerely upon yourself, success will follow you just as your shadow follows you. Success has not to be the goal.

That's why The Old One says,

'Work quietly, silently, un-troubled by any idea of success or failure.' "

-Osho