Osho on Beginninglessness – Slip out of the mind, and you will know what it is: the beginningless, the endless

Question – My mind has difficulty understanding the Existence of Beginninglessness. Would you please talk about it?

Osho – Prem Viraj, reality is indefinable. Reality simply is; there is no way to say what it is. It is not a “what,” it is not even a “that,” it is this. It is this-ness: you can experience it, but it cannot be explained.

And reality is beginningless and endless. The mind has a beginning and an end, hence the mind and reality cannot meet. The mind cannot comprehend the eternal. The mind exists in time, in fact the mind is time; it exists in the past and the future. And remember, time consists of only two tenses, the past and the future. The present is not part of time, the present is part of eternity.

Hence the mind is never found in the present. It is always wavering, either towards the past or towards the future. It moves into that which is not, or into that which is not yet. Its whole skill consists in dreaming. It is rooted in the nonexistential, hence it cannot understand existence itself. It is like darkness. How can darkness comprehend light? How can death comprehend life? If death can comprehend life then death will have to be life. If darkness has to comprehend light then darkness will have to be light.

And so is the case with the mind. If the mind wants to comprehend reality, it will have to come out of the past and the future. But coming out of the past and the future, it is no longer the mind at all. Hence the insistence of all the great masters of the world that the door to reality is no-mind. Slip out of the mind, and you will know what it is: the beginningless, the endless. Remain confined to the mind, and you will be puzzled; reality remains inconceivable.

I cannot explain it to you, because in explaining I will have to use the mind. Trying to understand it, you will have to use the mind. I can be silent with you, and if you can also be silent with me then there is understanding. Understanding is not of the mind. Then there is great intelligence, great insight. Suddenly you know, and you know from a totally different center of your being; you know from the heart. Your knowing has the quality of love, not of knowledge. Your knowing has the quality of transcendence. It is no longer scientific knowledge, reducible to concepts. It is poetic vision, it is mystic experience.

Viraj, if you really want to understand, you will have to lose the mind. You will have to pay the price of losing the mind. But if you insist, “I have to understand through the mind,” then only one thing is possible. The mind will convince you, slowly slowly, that there is nothing which is beginningless, nothing which is endless, nothing which is indefinable, nothing which is unknowable.

The mind will reduce your experience to the measurable, the fathomable, the knowable — and the knowable is ordinary, mundane. The unknowable is sacred. And only with the unknowable does life become a benediction, only with the unknowable are you thrilled with the wonder of life and existence. Suddenly a song is born in your heart — a song that cannot be contained, a song that starts overflowing, a song that starts reaching others. A dance is born in you — a dance that has to be shared, a dance about which you cannot be miserly, a dance that makes you generous. A love is born in you — a love that is so infinite that it can fill the whole infinite existence. That is real understanding. But it happens only when the mind is dropped.

Don’t try to do the impossible. Trying to understand reality through the mind is like pulling yourself up by your own shoestrings. Maybe you can hop a little bit, but that hopping is not going to help; you will be back on the ground again and again, and it will be very tiring. Just by pulling your own shoestrings you cannot fly into the sky; that is not going to give you wings.

Slowly slowly, learn the art of contacting reality without the mind interfering. Sometimes when the sun is setting, just sit there looking at the sun, not thinking about it — watching, not evaluating, not even saying, “How beautiful it is!” The moment you say something, the mind has come in.

The mind consists of language. Don’t use language. Can’t you just see the sunset and its beauty? Can’t you be overwhelmed by its beauty? Can’t you be possessed by its grandeur? What is the point of bringing language in? Nobody is asking you to say anything. The sun does not understand your language, the clouds that have become so beautiful and luminous in the setting sun are unable to understand your language. Why bring it in? Put it aside; be in direct contact, be thrilled. If tears come to your eyes, good. If you start dancing, good. Or if you simply remain unmoving, stoned on the beauty of the sun, intoxicated, you will have gained a little experience — a little experience that goes very far, a little glimpse of no-mind.

And there are a thousand and one situations every day. Holding the hand of your woman or your man, there is no need to talk. People are continuously talking — yakkety-yakkety-yakkety. And the reason why they are talking is that they are afraid to be silent, they are afraid to see the truth, they are afraid to see their utter emptiness, they are afraid to expose themselves, they are afraid to look deep into the other. Continuous talking keeps them on the surface, occupied, engaged.

Holding the hand of your woman or man, why not sit silently? Why not close your eyes and feel? Feel the presence of the other, enter into the presence of the other, let the other’s presence enter into you; vibrate together, sway together; if suddenly a great energy possesses you, dance together — and you will reach to such orgasmic peaks of joy as you have never known before. Those orgasmic peaks have nothing to do with sex, in fact they have much to do with silence.

And if you can also manage to become meditative in your sex life, if you can be silent while making love, in a kind of dance, you will be surprised. You have a built-in process to take you to the farthest shore.

People make love in such an ugly way that if children sometimes see their parents making love, they think they are wrestling, fighting — that Daddy is going to kill Mum! Groaning, breathing in an ugly way, violent, their movements have no elegance. It is not a dance; certainly it is not a dance.

And unless it becomes a dance it will remain very very physiological; it won’t have any spirituality in it. But it is impossible. Unless your whole life is saturated with those moments that come when the mind ceases, your love life cannot move into silence.

The night is full of stars. Lie down on the earth, disappear into the earth. We come from the earth, one day we will be going back to the earth to rest forever. At night sometimes, lying on the lawn, disappear into the earth. Look at the stars — just look, a pure look. Don’t start thinking about the names of the stars, the names of the constellations. Forget all that you know about stars, put aside all your knowledge, just see the stars. And suddenly there will be a communion; the stars will start pouring their light into you, and you will feel an expanding of consciousness. No drug can do it.

Drugs are very artificial, arbitrary and harmful methods to know something which is naturally available, which is easily available, beneficially available. Just watching the stars, you will start feeling high, you will start soaring high. Make as much as you can of all the opportunities that life and existence allow you. Never miss a single opportunity when you can drop the mind, and slowly slowly you will know the knack of it. It is a knack — it is certainly not a science, because it has no fixed methods.

Somebody may be thrilled by the stars, somebody may not be. Somebody may be thrilled by the flowers, somebody else may not be affected at all. People are so different that there is no way of determining it in a scientific way; it is not a science. It is not even an art, because an art can be taught.

So I insist on the word knack. It is a knack. You have to learn it by doing a few experiments with yourself. And once you have the knack… and everybody can have it, because every child is born with it. Every child brings wondering eyes into existence. Soon we force dust into his eyes; we cover his pure mirror with dust. Sooner or later, he becomes knowledgeable — and the sooner he does, the more happy we are. Our happiness is really in poisoning the child.

If the child sees that the parents are very happy because he has become knowledgeable, he starts gathering more and more knowledge. He starts forgetting the knack that he had brought with him into this life, that was inborn. By the time he comes out of the university he has completely forgotten one of the most beautiful things that was given to him by God: the capacity to wonder, the capacity to see without thinking, the capacity to contact reality without the mind continuously interfering, distorting.

You will have to regain it. The sage is the person who regains his childhood; hence he is called “the twice born.” Jesus says, “Unless ye are born again, you will not be able to enter into my kingdom of God.” And the kingdom of God is here, but you have to be reborn — reborn as a no-mind.

And I am not saying that when you are reborn as a no-mind you cannot use the mind. The mind has its limited uses. Use it. When you are working in your office, I am not telling you to be a no-mind. When you are working in your shop or in the factory, I am not saying to be a no-mind. I am saying be perfectly a mind. Use the mind but don’t carry it continuously, twenty-four hours, day in and day out, with yourself. Don’t go on dragging it. Use it as you use a chair. You don’t go on carrying your chair everywhere, wherever you go, just because you may need it.
The mind is a beautiful instrument if you know how to be a no-mind too.

Viraj, the mind is impotent, incapable of knowing the beginningless and the endless. The mind exists between birth and death; it knows nothing beyond birth and beyond death. You were here before you were born, and you will be here after you are dead. The mind has a very limited existence, very momentary — one day it comes, another day it is gone. You are forever. Have some experience of your forever-ness. But that is possible only through no-mind. No-mind is another name for meditation.

Source – Osho Book “The Book of Wisdom”