Question – What is a Mystic?
Osho – I don’t know, Purna, and nobody else knows either. That’s why a mystic is called a mystic. Something indefinable, something very elusive, something that cannot be grasped, that cannot be comprehended. Not that it is something special. It is very ordinary. That makes the mystery ten thousandfold.
A mystic is in a state of natural being. He is the most ordinary man, he has renounced allextraordinary desires. All desires are basically to become extraordinary, to become somebody.A mystic is one who IS and who has no desire to become anybody else. A mystic is a state of utter contentment, a state of no movement.
He is not going anywhere, he has no goals, not motives. He simply is. He has stopped all desires to know; rather, he has started living. There are people who go on searching for knowledge, They are anti-mystic; their whole effort is how to demystify life.
That’s what knowledge means. Knowledge means how to know each and everything, so that life can be demystified, so that the wonder of life is killed and man can become absolutely a boss, a manipulator. So that man can control everything.
Knowledge is an effort to control, knowledge is power. All curiosity, all desire for knowledge, is desire for power. Science is non-mystic. A scientist is just the anti-pole, the other extreme, of being a mystic. He is trying to poke his nose into reality, to find out its secrets.
He is trying to undress reality. He is trying to see reality so that reality can be manipulated.The mystic is one who has come to see the point that th ere is no way to know the reality, because we are part of it and how can the knower know itself? There is no possibility.It is an impossible search, it is doomed to fail.
A mystic is one who has become mature enough to be able to live without knowledge, to be able to live in ignorance, to be ready to live. He is not worried about knowing. He does not make it a condition that First I have to know, then I will live. How can I live without knowing? If I am to love, first I have to know what love is only then can I be loving.
If I am to enjoy, first I have to know what enjoyment is, otherwise how can I enjoy? He makes questions out of simple phenomena. He goes on creating questions, he transformseverything into a problem. That is the state of the non-mystic.
The mystic is one who has relaxed, who says, There is no need to know what love is, still you can love. Knowledge in no way helps on the contrary, it hinders. If you know everything about love you will never be able to love.
It is a blessing that you are not capable of knowing what love is. It is a blessing that God has made it an utter mystery, otherwise nobody will ever love. Once you know, love will disappear. Awe will disappear from life; your eyes will not know that quality of wondering.
You will become smug, you will become satisfied with your knowledge, You will become dull, knowledge makes people dull. The more knowledgeable a person is, the more dull he is, themore insensitive he is. The mystic has come to see the point that knowledge is not possible.
That the life, existence, God, or whatever you call it, is basically not only unknown but unknowable. All effort to know is futile. Relax and live. The mystic lives, the non-mystic thinks. The non-mystic thinks, How to live? How to love? How to be?
The mystic simply is. He is so much occupied with living that he has no energy for knowing.And the paradox: because he does not bother about knowing, he comes to know in a deeper way. It is not knowledge, it is experience, And the man who tries to know, never comes to know. His very effort is egoistic.
The seeker after knowledge is a rapist; he is violent, aggressive. The mystic loves life, and in that love mysteries are opened, veils upon veils are removed. But the mystery deepens; it is not finished. One door opens, and you see another door. That opens, and you see another door. Deeper and deeper you move, but there is no end to depth.