Osho – The truth cannot be your expectation. Whatsoever you expect will be a lie. Whatsoever you expect will be a projection. Whatsoever you expect will be a part of your mind. No, truth cannot be expected. It takes you unawares. In fact, it comes when you were not even waiting for it. It is a sudden enlightenment.
Expectation means your known projecting itself into the future, into the unknown. That’s why I say if you are a Christian, or a Hindu, or a Buddhist, or a Jaina, you will miss — because what does to be a Christian mean? It means a Christian expectation. It means a god seen through Christian eyes. It means a conception, a philosophy. What does it mean to be a Hindu? It means a system of belief. It gives an expectation: you expect a god, you expect the truth; the truth will be like this, the god will be like this — the face, the figure, the form, the name you expect.
Your expectation is the barrier because God is the unexpected, the truth is the unexpected. It has never been theorized about, it has never been brought into language, it cannot be forced into words; nobody has ever been able to and nobody ever will. It remains the unexpected! It is a stranger. Whenever God knocks at your door you will not find a familiar face, no. It is the unfamiliar, the stranger. You never thought about it, you never heard about it, you never read
about it. Just the stranger… And if you cannot accept the stranger, if you ask for the familiar, truth is not for you.
Truth is a stranger.
It comes without giving any intimation that it is coming.
It comes when you are not expecting, not waiting.
Remember this, that people meditate and meditate and meditate — that’s a must — but truth never happens in meditation. It happens outside. But meditation helps: it makes you alert, it makes you watchful, it makes you more aware and conscious. And then suddenly somewhere — it happens in such unexpected moments, you cannot believe why God chooses such unexpected moments.
A nun is carrying water, and the bamboo breaks, and the earthen pot falls on the ground, and the water flows… and suddenly she is awakened. What happened? For forty, fifty years she was meditating and it never knocked — because meditation means you are expecting, you are watching for something that is going to happen. Your mind is there, working — very subtly, very, very subtly; you may not even be able to detect where it is. You may think that now everything is silent, no thought, but this is also a thought. You feel absolute silence, but even this feeling that now there is absolute silence, now soon the door is going to open — this is a thought. When you become absolutely silent, even this thought is not there, that “I am silent,” but that means you must not be meditating. And this is the paradox: meditate as much as you can to bring a moment of a nonmeditative meditation.
That happened to that nun. Carrying water, she was not worried about God; the bamboo was old, and she was worried about the bamboo. She was holding it this way and that, worried that it may break any moment. And the pot was earthen, and it would break! She was not at all at the door, and the door was open because she had meditated for forty years. So the door was open and she was not there at all… suddenly the bamboo breaks, the pot falls, breaks, and the water flows. It is a shock! For a moment even this worry dissolves. Now whatsoever was to happen has happened. Now she is in a nonmeditative moment — and God is there. And it happened.
It has been happening that way always — in such moments one never expected. When you expect, you miss, because you are there in your expectation. When you don’t expect, it happens, because you are not there, nobody is there. When your house is totally empty, so empty that you are not even aware that “I am empty” — because that much will be enough disturbance, when even emptiness is thrown, he comes.
Source – Osho Book “The Hidden Harmony”