Thinking, you are separated from existence. Thinking is not a relation, it is not a bridge, it is not a communication—it is a barrier. Non-thinking you are related, bridged; you are in communion. When you are talking to someone, you are not related. The very talk becomes a barrier. The more you talk, the further away you move. If you are with someone in silence, you are related. If the silence is really deep and there are no thoughts in your mind and both the minds are totally silent, you are one.
Two zeros cannot be two. Two zeros become one. If you add two zeros they don’t become two, they become a bigger zero—one. And, really, a zero cannot be bigger—more big, or less big. A zero is simply a zero. You cannot add something to it, you cannot deduct something from it. A zero is whole. Whenever you are silent with someone, you are one. So when you are silent with existence, you are one with it.
Be silent with existence and then you will know what God is. There is only one dialogue with existence and that is in silence. If you talk with existence, you miss. Then you are enveloped in your own thoughts.
Try this as an experiment. Try it with anything as an experiment—even with a rock. Be silent with it—take it in your hand and be silent—and there will be a communion. You will move deep into the rock and the rock will move deep into you. Your secrets will be revealed to the rock and the rock will reveal its secrets to you. But you cannot use language with it. The rock doesn’t know any language. Because you use language, you cannot be related to it.
Man has lost silence completely. When you are not doing anything, then too you are not silent; the mind goes on doing something or other. Because of this constant inner talk, this continuous inner chattering, you are not related to anything—not even to your beloved ones.
You may be sitting with your wife: you are chattering in your own mind; she is chattering in her own mind. Both are chattering. You are far away from each other, poles away. It is as if one is on one star, and the other on another star, and there is infinite space between you. Then you feel that the intimacy is not there, and blame each other—“You don’t love me.”
This is not the question really. Love is not possible. Love is a flower of silence. It flowers only in silence, because it flowers in communion. If you cannot be without thoughts, you cannot be in love. And then to be in prayer is impossible—but even if we pray, we chatter. To us, prayer is just chattering with God.
We have become so conditioned to chattering that even if we go to the church or to the temple, we continue chattering even there. We chatter with God, we talk with God. This is absolute nonsense. God, existence, cannot understand your language. Existence understands only one language—that of silence. And silence is neither Sanskrit nor Arabic nor English nor Hindi. Silence is universal; it doesn’t belong to anyone.
There are at least four thousand languages on earth, and everyone is enclosed in his own language. If I don’t understand your language and you don’t understand my language, we cannot be related. We are strangers. We cannot penetrate each other, we cannot understand, we cannot love. This is happening only because we don’t know a basic universal language—that is silence.
Really only through silence is one related. And if you know the language of silence, then you can be related to anything, because rocks are silent, trees are silent, the sky is silent. It is not only human, it is existential. Everything knows what silence is; everything exists in silence.
If a rock is there in your hand, the rock is not chattering within itself. But you are chattering—that’s why you cannot be related to the rock. And the rock is open, vulnerable, inviting. The rock will welcome you, but you are chattering and the rock cannot understand the chatter—that becomes the barrier. Even with human beings, you cannot be in a deep relationship; there can be no intimacy. Language, words, destroy everything.
Meditation means silence: not thinking about anything. Not thinking at all, just being—open, ready, eager to meet, welcoming, receptive, loving, but not thinking at all. Then infinite love will happen to you, and you will never say that no one loves you. You will never say it, you will never feel it. Now, whatsoever you do, you will say this and you will feel this. You may not even say it. You may pretend that someone loves you, but deep down you know.
Even lovers go on asking each other, “Do you love me?” In so many ways they go on enquiring continuously. Everyone is afraid, uncertain, insecure. In many ways they try to find out whether really the lover loves them. And they can never be certain, because the lover can say, “Yes, I love you,” but it will not give any guarantee. How can you be at ease? How can you know whether he is deceiving you? He can argue, he can convince you intellectually. But the heart will not be convinced. So lovers are always in agony. They cannot be convinced of the fact that the other loves. How can you be convinced?
Really there is no way to convince through language. And you are asking through language, and while the lover is there you are chattering in the mind, questioning, arguing. You will never be convinced, and you will always feel that you have not been loved, and this becomes the deepest misery. And this is happening not because someone is not loving you. This is happening because you are closed in a wall. You are closed within your thoughts; nothing can penetrate. The thoughts cannot be penetrated unless you drop them. If you drop them, the whole existence penetrates you.
You will become unlimited. You will become whole. You will become universal. You will be everywhere. And then you are joy. Now you are nothing but misery. Those who are cunning, they go on deceiving themselves that they are not miserable, or they go on hoping that something will change, something will happen, and they will achieve at the end of life—but you are miserable.
You can create faces, deceptions, false faces; you can go on smiling continuously, but deep down you know you are in misery. That is natural. Confined in thoughts you will be in misery. Unconfined, beyond thoughts—alert, conscious, aware, but unclouded by thoughts—you will be joy, you will be bliss.
Excerpted from The Book of Secrets/
Courtesy: Osho International Foundation/www.osho.com
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