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by Pravin Kumar » Tue Sep 14, 2010 11:49 am
What is Truth. This is taken from The Great Osho's Book "The Path of Meditation" Chapter No.34
As I have said, by focussing your attention on these five chakras and by making suggestions to those particular parts of your body, these chakras will become instantly relaxed. You will give the first chakra a suggestion to relax and simultaneously you will imagine that the feet are relaxing -- and the feet will become relaxed. Then you will move upwards. You will suggest to the second chakra near the navel to become relaxed, and all the organs around the navel will relax. Then you will move upwards, and you will suggest to the third chakra near the heart that it should relax, the and the whole complex of the heart will become relaxed. And again move upwards and suggest to the fourth chakra between the eyes that it should become relaxed, and all the muscles of your face will relax. Move upwards even further and suggest to the fifth chakra that it should relax, and everything inside the brain will become relaxed and silent.
The more total you are in making the suggestions, the more total the happening will be. After practicing it continuallly for a few days you will start to feel the results.
Don't be afraid if you don't feel anxious. Even if it takes many lives for someone who is thirsty to discover the soul, it is not much time. It takes us years just to learn ordinary things. So by doing this experiment with total determination, patience and silence, the results are assured.
You will relax the body by giving suggestions to these five chakras. Then, when I tell you to relax the breathing, let it relax. And I will tell you that your breathing is becoming silent.. then make the suggestion. Finally I will tell you that your thoughts are disappearing and the mind is becoming empty.
This will be our meditation experiment. But before this meditation, we will make these suggestions for two minutes, and before making these suggestions for two minutes we will make the resolution five times.
Now we will start the night meditation. Everybody has to lie down for this meditation. It is only to be done lying down. So make space for yourelf. We will sit and make the resolution, make the suggestions, and then lie down.
Someone has asked: What is truth? Is it possible to know it partially? And if not, then what can one do to attain it? Because it is not possible for every person to be a sage.
First, each person has the potential to become a sage. It is a different matter if someone does not transform this potential into a reality. It is a different matter if a seed is unable to grow into a tree, but every seed has the intrinsic capacity for becoming a tree. Every seed has this potential. That it does not become one is an entirely different matter. If it does not get fertilized, does not find any soil, does not get any water or light, the seed will die, that is possible, but the seed did have the potential.
Each and every person has the potential to become a sage. That is why you should first of all drop this idea from your mind that to become enlightened is the special privilege of only some people. To become enlightened is not the right of any special people. To become enlightened is not the right of any special people. And the people who have spread this idea are only doing it to feed their egos. If someone says that it is very difficult to become enlightened and possible for only very few people, it nourishes their ego. This is just a way for some people to fulfill their ego. Otherwise, everyone has the potential to be sage, because there is space and opportunity for everyone to experience truth.
I said it is another thing if you don't experience it. For that, only you will be responsible, your potential will not be responsible. All of us sitting here have the power to get up and walk, but if we don't walk and go on sitting, then what? You discover your powers by making them active; you don't know them until you use them.
Right now you are just sitting here, and no one can know that you have the capacity to walk. And if you look inside yourself, even you will not be able to locate this capacity to walk. You will not be able to find it. You will only know whether you have the capacity to walk after you try to walk.And only after you go through the process of trying to become enlightened will you know if you have the potential or not. Those who don't try will defnitely feel that only some people have this potential. This is wrong.
So the first thing: you have to understand that to attain to truth is everyone's right, it is everyone's birthright. In this respect no one has any special rights.
And the second thing which has been asked is: "What is truth? And is it possible to now it partially?"
Truth cannot be known partially, because truth is one. It cannot be broken into parts. This means that it is not possible for a person to know a little bit of truth now, then a little bit more, and then a little bit more. It does not happen like this. Truth is experienced as one. This means that it is not a gradual process. It is experienced totally, it is experienced in an explosion. But if I say that it can only be known totally, you will feel a little apprehensive because you feel so weak, how can you possibly know it totally?
When a man climbs up to the roof of the house he reaches it all at once, yet he has climbed the steps to it one at a time. He does not reach the roof in one step. When he is on the first step he is not on the roof and when he is on the last step he is still not on the roof: he begins to approach the roof, but he is still not on it.
It is possible to move closer to the truth gradually, but when you arrive at truth it is total. This means that you can gradually move closer to truth, but the attainment of truth is total, it is never in parts. It is never in fragments, remember this.
So the introduction to meditation that I have given you is a set of steps: you will not know truth through them, but you will move closer to truth through them. And at the last step which I have called 'emptiness of the emotions', when you jump beyond this emptiness of the emotions too, you experience truth. But then truth is known in its totality.
The experience of the divine does not come in fragments, it happens as a whole. But the way to reach the divine is divided into many parts, but truth itself is not in parts. So don't think, "How can a person as weak as I am know the whole truth? I can only manage to know it if it can be known bit by bit."
No, you will also be able to know it because you only need to walk on the path for a short distance at a time. It is not possible to walk the whole length of the path all at once. You cannot walk the whole length of a path at once; you have to walk a little at a time. But the destination is always reached as a whole, you never get there in parts -- remember this.
Someone has asked: What is truth?
There is no way to say it in words. To this day, it has been impossible to say it in human language -- and it will never be said in the future either. It is not that in the past we did not have a language rich enough to say it, and that we will be able to say it in the future. It will never be said.
There is a reason for this. Languages developed for the purpose of communicating with other people. Language was created in order to communicate with people, it was not created to express truth. And it is unlikely that any of the people who created language had known truth. This is why there is no word for the ultimate truth. And the people who knew it through silence. This means that when they exprienced truth they were totally silent, no word for the ultimate truth. And the people who knew truth did not know it through language, they knew it through silence. This means that when they exprienced truth they were totally silent, no word existed there. So there is a problem: when they started talking about it after the experience, they found one point, truth, which there was no way to describe. It is not possible to provide words for it. And when they provided words, the words were incomplete, they fell short.
And on the basis of these words alone, conflicts arose -- based on these very same words. Because all words are inadequate, they are unable to express truth. They are just like hints. It is as if somebody is pointing his finger to the moon, and if we grab his finger thinking that this is the moon, then there will be trouble. The finger is not the moon. The finger is just an indication. Who ever grabs hold of the indication will be in trouble. You have to let go of the finger so that the thing to which it is pointing becomes visible. You have to drop the words, and only then will you have a glimpse of truth. But someone who grabs hold of the words will miss the experience.
This is why there is no way for me to tell you what truth. And if somebody claims to be telling you, he is deceiving himself. If somebody tells you this, he is deceiving himself and you. There is no way to describe truth. Yes, there is a way to tell you how to experience truth. The method to know truth,the process, can bedescribed, but what truth is cannot be said.
There are methods to attain truth, but there are no definitions of truth. During these three days I have discussed these methods, and you may feel that we have completely ignored truth itself. I have talked about truth, but I have never said what truth actually is.
No, it cannot be said, it can only be experienced. Truth cannot be described but it can be expeirenced -- and it will be your experience. The method can be given, but the experience of truth will be your own. The experience of truth is always individual, and it is not possible to communicate it to another.
So this is why I will not tell you what truth is. It is not because I want to withold something from you, but because it cannot be said. In ages past, during the time of the Upanishads, whenever it happened that someone would go to a sage and ask, "What is truth?" the sage would look hard at the person.
Again the person would ask, "What is truth?" Then he would ask a third time, "What is truth?"
And the sage would say, "I tell you again and again, but you don't understand."
The person would say, "What are you saying? I have asked you three times, and all three times you were silent. And you say that you have told me again and again?"
Then the sage would say, "I wish you were able to understand my silence, because then you will have understood what truth is."
Silence is the only way to say it. Those who have known truth have become silent. When truth is talked about, they become silent.
If you can be silent, you can know it. If you are not silent you will not be able to know it. You can know the truth, but you cannot make another person know it. This is why I won't say what truth is -- because it cannot be said.
Someone has asked: Are a person's actions bound by the result of the actions of many lives, and if so , then what is left in the hands of the individual in this life?
The question is: "If we are controlled by our actions in the past and the values of our past lives, what can we do now?" It has been rightly asked. If it is true that a person is absolutely bound by his past actions, then what is in his own hands? What can he do in the present? And if it is true that he is not at all bound by his actions of the past, then what is the point in doing anything? -- because if he is not bound by his past actions, he will not be bound tomorrow by whatever he does now. So if he does something good today there will be no possibility to benefit from that good deed tomorrow. And if he is totally bound by his actions in the past there will be no meaning in anything he does -- because he cannot do anything, he will be totally bound.