Author: Catalin Amza

The more you are spontaneous, the more you feel a new discipline arising in you — moment-to-moment discipline. It is a very different dimension, so it will be better to understand it clearly. When you decide beforehand what to do, you do not think you are conscious enough to act in the moment — spontaneously. You are not self-confident. That is why you decide beforehand.

And still you are deciding. You cannot act in the moment, so how can you decide beforehand? On the contrary, you will be more experienced when the moment comes. Now you are less experienced. If I decide today for tomorrow, I will be richer; and if I cannot believe in the “me” of tomorrow, how can I believe in the “me” of today? When I have to decide it beforehand, it carries no meaning. It will only be destructive.

I decide today and I act tomorrow. All has changed. Everything is new and the decision is old. I am new, the moment is new, and the decision is old. And if I do not act accordingly, there is guilt. So all those who teach deciding beforehand, they create guilt. I do not act, then I feel guilty. And if I act, then I cannot act adequately and frustration is bound to follow.

So when I say you have not to commit yourself to any decision, you will be free. Let each act, each moment, come to you, and let your total being decide. In that moment, let the decision come as the act happens. Never let it precede. Otherwise the act can never be total. One should know that when you decide beforehand you decide intellectually. Your total being can never be in it because the moment has not come.  

If I love someone and I decide that when I meet him or her I will act this way, I will say this thing, I will do this and will not do that, this can only be intellectual — mental. This can never be total because the moment has not arrived. The total being has not been challenged. So how can the total being act?

And when I have decided beforehand and the moment comes, the total being will not be able to act because the decision will be there. So I will only imitate, follow, copy, the preceding. I will be the false man. I will not be real because I will not be total. I will have a blueprint to act; I will act according to it. Again this will be a mental act, not with your total being. So either you succeed or you fail, still in both cases you have failed because the total being could not be in it. You will not feel love.

So let the moment come. Let the moment challenge you, and let your total being act. Then the act is total. Then your total being comes to act. Then you are totally in it! And the best that is possible will come out of this “totalness” and never out of the decisions.

Osho – I Am The Gate (Spontaneous)

And unless you accept the responsibility, there is no possibility of any revolution in your life. You can go on cursing the whole world, you can go on saying it is fate, it is karma, it is the economic structure, it is the state, it is the church. You can go on finding some causes for your misery, but that is not going to help, that is not going to change you. In fact it is a way of consoling yourself, “What can I do? It is predetermined. Nothing is in my hands so I simply have to accept it unwillingly, in despair. But I have to tolerate it, I have to live with it.” Then life becomes a misery.

The real source of beauty is the explosion that happens when you reach the centre of your being. The moment you touch that centre, suddenly there is an explosion of joy. Every cell of your being starts dancing, every fibre of your existence starts vibrating in an unknown, mysterious melody. And then there is beauty is to experience your aloneness, because the person who knows his aloneness becomes immortal, death cannot destroy him. Knowing his aloneness he has already lived his death — now what can death do to him? He has experienced it.

If you go outwards it is mind, if you go inwards it is no-mind. If you want to know the world then you have to use the mind, if your enquiry is scientific or philosophic, then the mind is a must. But if your enquiry is mystical, spiritual, religious, if you want to know yourself, if you are trying to explore your own interiority, then no-mind is a must.

Be life-affirmative. Rejoice in being alive and help others to rejoice. That’s the true work of God. That is the new light: life-affirmation, a tremendous love for life, so much so that ‘life’ replaces the word ‘God’; only then will we be able to bring spring to millions of people.

Man’s greatest need is to be needed, and to be needed by god, by existence itself is to become meaningful. Then you are not just dust. Then you are not just the body, you are far more. And the feeling of that ‘far more’ fulfills one, gives tremendous contentment, makes one feel at home with existence.

Searchers never find him; only the people who invite him have found him, because invitation means a great task: you have to transform yourself totally to be worthy to receive. You have to be loving, you have to be alert, you have to be sensitive, you have to be creative. You have to cleanse your being; you have to become silent, spacious. You have to make your being a small shrine, worthy for God to abide in. He comes to you only when you are absolutely restful, relaxed, calm, quiet, when there is no desire, no thought, when you are not asking for anything, not praying for anything. When you are simply there, in that simplicity god arrives. And because you are saying something you are not silent even with god. Prayer is a dialogue, and one thing has to be very deeply understood — that god understands no language except the language of silence.

God understands only silence. Prayer is the last function of the mind. Where prayer ends meditation begins, you drop saying anything to god. What can we say? What have we got to say? Prayer is saying something, meditation is listening. Rather than saying something to god it is better to be silent and to listen. And in silence the message comes, in silence not only the message but god himself comes. God does not come like a person. He does not come shouting, knocking on your doors. He comes very silently, like a fragrance, making no noise. no fuss. God is not a person but a presence. So god is not a person but only a presence, a feeling. And that feeling wells up from your innermost core when you are utterly silent, when the mind has gone into complete cessation.

Concentration is a state when you are focussing your mind upon an object, meditation is a state of no-mind. Concentration includes only one object and excludes everything else. Meditation is just silence — inclusive of all, excluding nothing. You are simply available to existence and that availability creates the ultimate peak of consciousness.

The story of Gautam the Buddha is that when after his death he reached the doors of heaven, the doors were opened and the angels celebrated his coming, but he didn’t enter. He stood on the door, his back towards heaven, and looked towards the world which he had left far behind. The angels were disturbed. They asked ‘What is the matter? For whom are you waiting? Enter! We have never given such a welcome to anybody.’ And in the story Buddha is reported to have said ‘I will not enter unless every being, every suffering being in the world has entered. I will be the last one. So please keep your doors closed; it is not time for me to enter yet. I am going to be the last person. I will wait for everybody else to enter first, I will help people, I will show them the way, because I love, because I feel immense compassion. Heaven is not for me yet. I can see millions of souls struggling in darkness, in suffering, in pain, and I am in a situation to help them. I am not obliging them, it is just my joy.’ But he refused to enter heaven.