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Osho – Whenever you see some imagination arising in you, be alert. Don’t let it grow, don’t let it become a big tree. It will be far more difficult then for you to get rid of it because you may become attached to it; you may have invested many things in it; you may have started liking its company; you may feel unsheltered without it. It is better to cut it from the very roots in the very beginning. The moment you see it arising in you, take care, beware — beware means be aware — Pull it out by the Roots.
People go on changing. They don’t pull out things by their roots; they substitute one fiction with another fiction. That may give you a relief for the moment, but it does not transform your life. Somebody is running after money, then he stops running after money; he starts running after power. Then he stops running after power and starts running after God or meditation or enlightenment. But he goes on running after something or other. He goes on substituting a new fiction for the old; the old functions no more. He has seen it is fictitious, but he has not yet got the point that one has to uproot ALL imagination in one’s being.
Lovebirds are supposed to be so devoted to one another that if one dies the other dies of a broken heart. A woman who owned a very cute pair had a fire in the house and one of the lovebirds was suffocated. Right away the other bird began to pine. The woman wondered if there was not some way to keep it alive so she put a mirror in the cage. The lovebird let out a joyous coo and cuddled up against the mirror, and lived for two years. It then died — of a broken mirror.
One can postpone — but don’t go on postponing. Your life is very precious. If one lovebird dies it is better to come to your senses rather than replace it by a mirror or by something else.
Watch out. It is a risky phenomenon to remain too much attached to your pleasures, to your imagination, because this is how you have been going from one life to another. The seed cause of birth and death is desire, imagination, hankering for more. And remember, you are feeling so discontented in life because of your imagination. The more imaginative you are, the more discontented you will feel.
Poets are very discontented people, so are painters, for the simple reason that they can imagine very well. They can imagine such a beautiful world that this world, in comparison, starts looking like hell. Ordinary people are not so discontented for the simple reason that they don’t have that much imagination. This world seems to be good enough for them.
When imagination simply disappears from you, this world — this very world — is the lotus paradise. It is because of your imagination that you go on condemning this world. And remember, your imagination will be with you even if you are taken by the back door into heaven. You will condemn it, you will find faults. You will find a thousand and one things which should not be. You will find loopholes, flaws. Even in paradise you are going to be miserable. And a man without imagination, without desire, even in hell will find paradise. It is not outside you that paradise or hell exist; they exist inside you.
If your mind is unclouded, if you can see clearly, then everywhere you will find bliss showering. Each moment you will find paradise descending in you. Each moment you will find yourself surrounded by God. You need not go to Kaaba, you need not go to Kashi, you need not go anywhere. God is coming to you in thirty-six streams, but because you are asleep that which could have been a blessing becomes a curse. Be aware and transform your curses into blessings. Just by being aware the transformation happens on its own accord.
Source: from Osho Book “Dhammapada Vol 10”