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Lead Kindly Light

Some Enlightened Moments with Osho
Talks given from 1972?

Miscellaneous
1 Chapter

Year published: 1972

This is a small booklet of Osho's words as reported by Ma Yoga Kranti. It is considered
to be very accurate reporting.

ShortTitle: LEAD01

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Question 1

QUESTION: WHY IT IS THAT EVEN SILENCE BECOMES ELOQUENT IN YOUR
PRESENCE.

Words are impotent to express Truth. Truth can be expressed only in silence. The
moment we enter silence, the mystery of Truth is revealed. Man's misfortune is that he
has forgotten to be silent; and therefore his entire relationship with Nature has been
vitiated. Nature knows only the language of silence. He who knows not that language,
ipso facto, loses touch with Nature. And mankind's misery is due to man's distance from
nature.

Only with the dissolution of ego, we can enter silence, when ego — alias T — is dissolved,
there is possibility of communion and integration with Nature.

Question 2

QUESTION: BUT HOW TO ACHIEVE THIS SILENCE?

Just be silent. It is not a matter of procedure or planning. See with your eyes and hear
with your ears the sights and sounds around you; do this with full consciousness, but
without any reaction to these sights and sounds. Silence will be spontaneous if there is
full awareness of, but no reaction to, the external stimuli.

Silence does not mean non-use of the faculty of speech. The basis of silence is not the
throat, but the thought. The root and centre of silence is in the mind and not in the vocal
apparatus. You may be silent without, but verbose within; and then you are not silent. On
the other hand, even if you are loquacious, but without thoughts which overwhelm your
mind — so that you are silent within — then you are truly silent.

It is like this: supposing you decide to fast; you may successfully abstain from food; but
you are not truly fasting if you keep thinking about food all the time. But there may be
another person who may eat without indulgence and eat consciously; in reality, though
not apparently, he is fasting. What matters ultimately and always is the man within, and
not his actions."



What matters ultimately and always is the man within, and not his actions.


[Somebody had brought beautiful flowers for Osho.]

The flowers are beautiful, but your plucking them was not a beautiful act. For whom
beauty is equivalent to Love, it is impossible to sever the flowers from their plants. The
plucking of flowers hastens their death; and nothing is uglier than taking life, even of a
flower. Non-violence is the acme of beauty; violence is the nadir of ugliness.

[Someone quipped, "But we like flowers: that is why we pluck them!"]

Love is opposed to the act of plucking flowers. Love and plucking of flowers can not co¬
exist. Plucking is not symbolic of love, but of cruelty. It is symbolic of our authoritarian
nature; we want to possess whatever seems beautiful, regardless of the possibility of
destroying that object of beauty. This is true not only of flower-plucking, but of all our
dealings in life, and of all our human relationships. We practise the same cruelty with
even the human beings whom we profess to love. For example, even with the beloved, a
lover seeks to enforce authority. We all seek to pluck the human flower, and in the
process, rob that flower of the sap or life, leading to its premature wilting"

Where there is love, there is no possessiveness or bondage; and bondage separates one
person from the other. Love is what unites and not what separates; Love is what protects,
not what destroys life; Love is what frees, not what enslaves. If you love flowers, you
give yourself to flowers; you do not try to own them by plucking. Love knows only
giving; it knows not the language of receiving — to say nothing of the language of
robbing. And please note that this is an axiom applicable to all aspects of life. Those who
know not this truth, look upon their cruelty and violence as a form of love. Though they
do not realise it, their hatred lies latent in their so-called love. And where they lay claim
to a sense of beauty, their outward aesthetics is just a cloak hiding crass ugliness.

[The writer felt Osho had touched a sore spot in her heart.]

Do not think; do not brood. Just watch. Thoughts lead you away from the Truth. Thinking
is a device to escape from yourself. It will be better if you observe within yourself the
truth of what I say. Open out in love, and make your own discoveries; they may
corroborate mine.

[A learned pandit wished to discuss Godly matters.]

"Once upon a time, in an emperor's court, a poet came to recite his compositions; these
were in praise of the emperor. The words of the songs, as well as the voice of the singer
enchanted the emperor, who announced a gift of five thousand gold coins to the poet. The
gift was to be presented the next day. The poet who was a poor man living in a small hut,
returned home overjoyed on being a successful bard. The thought five thousand gold



coins did not allow him to sleep. During the night, he kept planning and re-planning how
he would spend the windfall; and this kept him tossing in bed till the dawn.

In the morning he presented himself before the emperor. The emperor greeted him and
inquired, 'What brings you here, Oh poet? What do you want?' The poet was confused; he
queried anxiously, 'Your Majesty! Have you already forgotten that only yesterday you
had announced a gift of five thousand gold coins in appreciation of my poems?' The
emperor said, 'You are a silly simpleton. You had pleased me by your words; so I thought
it proper to please you with my words. The give and take is over!'

In our relationship with God also, this is true. Results are achieved neither by thoughts
nor by words nor by plans, but by the life lived. In living lies the reward.

[On a long train journey with Osho they noticed that each passenger readied himself to
alight, much before he reached his destination. Commenting on this common practice,
Osho said:]

How alert we remain in an ordinary train journey! And how we lack totally this alacrity
in the important journey of life! We neither know our destination, nor are we prepared to
alight. When death comes to rob us of life, we are caught unawares. And then, belatedly,
we realise that we had forgotten about death; we had forgotten to prepare ourselves for
dying.

Question 3

SOMEONE QUESTIONED, "WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY THIS ALERTNESS AND
PREPAREDNESS?

First thing to bear in mind is that life is a journey. We begin at one point and move on to
some other point. We are not perfect, but we have to strive to be perfect. For the perfect,
there is no travel and no destination. But, for the majority of us, who are far from being
perfect, the journey, the quest, the search, — call it what you will —is essential. When we
feel that life is a journey, it is a sign of imperfection. But this feeling is important.
Concentrate on this imperfection; see the limitation; or at least have a glimpse of your
incomplete state. He who realises he is imperfect, will be filled with ambition to be
perfect; just as he who is ill and ailing wishes fervently to be well; or just as he who
enters a dark room, instinctively thinks of switching on the light.

Question 4

SOMEONE ASKED: EVEN IF THE REALISATION OF OUR IMPERFECTION
DAWNS UPON US, WHAT GOOD DOES IT DO?

When you feel thirsty, what do you do? Does not the thirst rouse you to search for water?
Similarly, the realisation of one's imperfect state rouses one to seek for perfection. Then
life's goal is sighted, and one begins move towards that goal.

Whereas meaningful life is a yoga, aimless life is a 'bhoga' or all indulgence. The life of
'bhoga' is like a lake which has stagnant water, which flows nowhere, and which, in time,
dries up. But the life of yoga is like a river, which, for ever is rushing towards the ocean.



To you I suggest: Be like the river which moves towards the ocean, only then you will
find life worthwhile. The lake exists in its narrow confines; it travels not. It has nowhere
to go, and nothing to become. On the other hand, the river is not confined; it is expansive;
it likes to move and flow, because it aims to be the ocean. It is not satisfied with being a
river; it aims at being a vast, limitless body of water. When a man realises his inadequate
condition, he also becomes ambitious like a river. Therefore, it is a fortunate thing to be
dissatisfied with imperfection; this dissatisfaction is the first step towards the goal of
perfection.

[Walking with Osho, they see some fish on the river bank which had been caught by
fishermen.]

Like fish out of water, man also gasps for breath when he is not in his divine element.
Question 5

SOMEONE ASKED: WHAT IS THE CAUSE OF OUR MISERIES?

Don't say miseries; say 'misery', since there is only one misery, i.e. isolation from God.
We are not aware of this fact; surrounded by a multitude of miseries we forget the
original misery. The one root misery creates the illusion of a number of miseries. We
have to be radical, and deal with this root misery. If a tree is to be destroyed completely,
one does not cut a branch here and a branch there, but either uproots the tree, if that is
possible, or cuts the main trunk near the roots. Similarly, we have to destroy the root of
all miseries.

We certainly are like fish out of water, — like the fish we saw dying on the sands. We can
well imagine those around us and even ourselves as the dying fish on a river bank.

Come to think of it, man is both the fish that is dying on the sands, as also the fisherman
who casts his net in the river. Man is both the fisherman and his catch. Man has himself
to blame for his bondage and unhappiness. But in this very fact of he himself being the
cause of his miseries lies the hope and possibility of his freedom and happiness. It is all
up to him. The day he decides, he can be reunited with his creator. It is simply a matter of
resolution; what appears far, can be quite near. Man's freedom lies buried just underneath
his seeming thralldom.

Question 6

SOMEONE EXPRESSED HIS DEJECTION ON THE SPIRITUAL PATH TO OSHO.

Once, in a prolonged warfare, a king was given the news that he had lost a battle.
Naturally, his disappointment was abysmal. He almost fainted on hearing this sad news.
When he recovered, he felt depressed and gloomy; his palace and possessions suddenly
lost all charm for him. The queen tried to console him, but the king kept mumbling, 'My
army has been defeated; I have lost all my artillery,' so on and so forth. The queen in
trying to assuage him said, 'My sir! I have known about all this. But I have even worse
news to give you!' The king stopped his soliloquy, and asked in amazement, 'Worse than



this news! What can be worse than this news!' The queen said, 'You have lost a battle, but
you can still win the war. What worries me is not the loss of your army, but the loss of
your courage. And that is by far a worse loss. The loss of hope, enthusiasm and courage
spells a sure doom, whereas the loss of military power is comparatively nothing. The
future is bleak for him who is hopeless. Take heart, therefore, my lord!'

The queen's words were not meant for the king only; they apply to us all. Instead of
taking things to heart, we have to learn to take heart. We have to overcome depression
and defeatism and despondency; for he who loses hope has no future ahead of him."

Like the sun disappearing in the sea, religion too is gradually disappearing from our
midst these days. And that is the basis of all the woes of mankind.

The waning of religion is due to lack of unity amongst divergent faiths. The forces of
religion and all that is good in life are very much scattered. That is why religion seems to
suffer defeat at the hands of its opponents; and mankind is the loser by this defeat. This
state of affairs cannot last for ever. Now is the time in the history of mankind, when, if
the forces of good and truth do not bury their differences and unite, we shall perish. The
decisive battle against forces of evil can be fought and won only by complete unity of all
the forces for good.

Question 7

QUESTION: IT DOES NOT ENHANCE HUMAN DIGNITY TO CREATE FRICTION
BETWEEN FAITHS - AND THAT TOO IN THE NAME OF RELIGION! THERE
SHOULD BE NO CONFLICT AMONGST VARIOUS FAITHS; BUT, COME TO
THINK OF IT, THE WORLD HISTORY OF FAITHS IS FULL OF STRIFE AND
WARS. NOT ONLY THAT, EVEN IN ONE AND THE SAME FAITH, THE
VARIOUS SECTS MALIGN ONE ANOTHER AND QUARREL AMONGST
THEMSELVES! WHY?

Ego is the root of all evil. There can not, and need not, be any friction between faiths. The
differences lie only in the egoism of so-called followers of faiths. It is ego that is militant.
And it is ego that creates frictions and factions even amongst followers of one and the
same faith. Actually, not only in religious matters, but in all spheres of life, the
underlying cause of conflict and disharmony is ego; and the solution to these fissiparous
tendencies is dissolution of ego; because love — which is the opposite of ego — creates a
common meeting ground for divergent groups of human beings.

Ego is irreligion. Religion is not the cause of quarrels or battles or so-called holy
crusades; these are caused by the lack of religion in the so-called followers of religion.
And this will continue to be the state of affairs so long as religion is predetermined at
birth, and has nothing to do with the life lived. The trouble is that without having to be
religious, people inherit a ready-made religion. History of mankind would not have been
so gory if religion were not familial or heriditary by birth. Those for whom religion is not
a living experience create chasms between the various faiths. No faith is ever harmed by
irreligious people outside its folds so much, as by people within it. The harm comes from
the inner group that is irreligious. The ignorant believe that the danger to faith is from
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