Osho – Look at the flowers — and not in a scientific way, because when you look at a rose in a scientific way it is a totally different kind of thing that you are looking at. It is not the same rose that a poet experiences.
The experience does not depend on the object, the experience depends on the experiencer, on the quality of experiencing. When the scientist looks at the rose he thinks of colors, chemistry, physics, atoms, electrons, neutrons and whatnot — except beauty. Beauty does not come into his vision, and that’s what the rose is.
To the poet, to the painter, the rose is a totally different experience: the rose is a manifestation of the unknown, of the transcendental, of the secret of life itself. It represents something of the divine, it brings into existence something of the sky, something of faraway stars. It grows on the earth, it is rooted in the earth, but it is not just part of the earth; it contains far more than that. It is not the sum total of its constituent parts. The scientist only comes to know it as a sum total of its constituent parts — there is nothing more to it — but the poet starts feeling something plus.
The moment you dissect the rose, the beauty disappears. The rose was only an opportunity for the beauty to descend, a receptivity of the earth to the sky, a receptivity of the gross to the subtle. The poet feels that; but it is a feeling, it is not a thought. So when you come out of your lab, forget all about atoms, forget all about the cosmos; rather, start looking afresh, with a different vision — the vision of a child, the vision of a poet, the vision of a lover. When you look at the woman you love never think of her in terms of biology, otherwise you will have missed the whole point. She is not biology, she has a being far greater than any biology can contain. When you kiss your woman don’t think in terms of what is being transferred from lips to lips chemically, otherwise you will be disgusted! You won’t see any poetry, you will be puzzled by what all these poets have been talking about. It is only an exchange of bacteria, germs, millions of germs — dangerous too. It can be a matter of life and death — beware!
When you are making love to your woman don’t think in terms of hormones, avoid that nonsense, otherwise the whole love act will simply be a mechanical phenomenon. You will be there and yet not there. You will be just an observer, not a participant. And the poet’s whole secret is participation.
Looking at a flower, become the flower, dance around the flower, sing a song. The wind is cool and crisp, the sun is warm, and the flower is in its prime; the flower is dancing in the wind, rejoicing, singing a song, singing alleluia. Participate with it! Drop indifference, objectivity, detachment. Drop all your scientific attitudes. Become a little more fluid, more melting, more merging. Let the flower speak to your heart, let the flower enter your being. Invite him — he is a guest! And then you will have some taste of mystery.
This is the first step towards the mysterious, and the ultimate step is: if you can be a participant for a moment, you have known the key, the secret. Then become a participant in everything that you are doing. Walking, don’t just do it mechanically, don’t just go on watching it — be it. Dancing, don’t do it technically; technique is irrelevant You may be technically correct and yet you will miss the whole joy of it. Dissolve yourself in the dance, become the dance, forget about the dancer.
When such deep unity starts happening in many many phases of your life; when all around you start having such tremendous experiences of disappearance, egolessness, nothingness; when the flower is there and you are not, the rainbow is there and you are not; when the clouds are roaming in the sky both within and without and you are not; when there is utter silence as far as you are concerned; when there is nobody in you, just a pure silence, a virgin silence, undistracted, undisturbed by logic, thought, emotion, feeling, that is the moment of meditation. Mind is gone, and when mind is gone mystery enters.
Mystery and mind cannot exist together; they are not, by their very nature, coexistential. Just like darkness and light: you cannot have both in your room. If you want darkness you have to extinguish the light; if you want light then you have to lose darkness. You can only have one, for the simple reason that the presence of light is the absence of darkness, the presence of darkness is the absence of light; they are not two things, in fact. The same phenomenon, present, is light; absent, is darkness. Now you cannot manage both, to be present and absent together.
Mind is the presence of the non-mysterious, the logical, and meditation is the presence of the mysterious, the miraculous. Hence, move from the mind. Let art, poetry, painting, dancing become more important — they will bring you closer to meditation — and finally take the plunge. If you have tasted something of poetry you will gather enough courage to take the ultimate plunge.
Hence, to me religion consists of three layers; the first layer is of science. Just as your body consists of material, atomic constituents, so religion consists first, the most peripheral part, of science. I am not against science — science is an absolute need — but it is only a peripheral phenomenon, the most superficial, the first concentric circle around your center.
Then comes the second concentric circle, which is deeper than science; that is of art, aesthetics. And then the third; that is meditation. And if you have entered these three concentric circles, slowly slowly you will attain to the fourth. The fourth in the East is called TURIYA; we have not given it any name, we have simply given it a number, “the fourth.” Nothing can be said about it, that’s why no name has been given to it. It is even beyond mystery. Meditation will take you into the mysterious, but there is still something more than that; that is inexpressible. Nothing can be said about it, nothing has ever been said about it, nothing will ever be said about it, but it has been experienced.
Source – Osho Book “The Goose is Out”