Osho – When listening to me, sit like a Buddha, silent, receptive, feminine.

Question – If i can truly experience the music of the fluteplayer, can that be on the same level as the experience you wish to occur with you? I am thinking of the sufis: i see, but i do not see. i am behind a glass wall.

Osho – The object is irrelevant. Only the subjectivity is relevant. Whether listening to me, or listening to a fluteplayer, or listening to the birds in the morning, or sitting by the side of the waterfall and listening to it, the same experience can happen. It happens not from what you listen to, it happens because you listen. Just listening gives you total silence; in deep listening you disappear. The whole art is how to listen.

Once you know how to listen, in deep receptivity, sensitivity, you are not there. The listener is not there, only listening. And when the listener is not there, there is no ego: there is no one who listens, only listening. And then it penetrates to the very core of your being.

If you listen to me with mind, you will miss. If you listen to the waterfall without mind, you will get. It is not a question of listening to me; it is a question somewhere concerned with you, with the listener. What I am saying is irrelevant; who is saying it is irrelevant. The whole thing is: are you surrounded by a deep silence? Have you become non-existent in that moment? Do you find suddenly that you are not, that you are a deep emptiness, throbbing with life, full, but empty, a tremendous silence, with not a single ripple of thought? Only then do you attain to a plane where truth can penetrate you.

So try to be a listener. Just hearing is not enough. Hear, you can; listening will need great discipline. It is the greatest discipline there is. If you listen, you are already delivered; because in that listening, suddenly you find yourself.

This looks like a paradox. You disappear, I say, and in that disappearance you find yourself. You are empty, and in that emptiness arises a fullness, a fulfilment. No thought is there. And then there is understanding. And love flows, like breathing — it goes in, it goes out, it goes in, it goes out. Then you start sharing your-your being with the existence that surrounds you. Then the part is no more part and separate — it throbs with the whole. You fall in line with the whole, you are no more out of step. A harmony has arisen — the celestial music, the music of the stars. Then suddenly you are open. From every dimension God flows into you. But the whole thing is how to be so receptive and silent. Just now it can happen, just now it is happening to many. I am not here; you are not there: and suddenly the meeting, suddenly the being.

What can you do? Because all doing will be a disturbance. Whatsoever you do will bring you in from the back door; whatsoever you do will be an effort and a disturbance. Don’t do anything; just be. The whole art of religion is nothing but this — just be, allow, be in a let-go; sitting by the side of the tree, just sit — nothing else is needed, just sitting. Buddha attained to truth just by sitting under the Bodhi Tree. Walking, just walk. Loving, just love. Being, just be. By and by you start feeling that within you the fragments arc disappearing, and an integration is arising. By and by it happens; by and by you start feeling that something is penetrating you from the unknown, from the beyond. You feel happy. You feel like a pregnant woman: the unknown has entered you. You don’t know who has come to your womb, you have not seen the face yet, but you can feel the weight, you can feel the unknown kicking in your womb. You know the unknown has penetrated you.

Then you walk more carefully, you sit more carefully, because you have to protect. The unknown has become your guest. You have to think and care about him, because the unknown is growing every day. the child grows and the mother disappears. One day, only the child is and the mother is gone. Mother means the past, and child means the present. Mother means you as you arc, and the child means you as you should be.

Nothing can be done specifically. You have just to create a climate around you of waiting, contentment, acceptance, delight, silence. You start already as if you have attained. Listen to me again: you start already walking as if you have attained. It will be ‘as if’ only in the beginning: by and by, the ‘as if’ disappears. Walk like a Buddha, look like a Christ, delight like a Krishna. In the beginning it is going to be just ‘as if’. But that ‘as if’ is not going to stay long, because you arc really that which you arc trying to act.

The whole thing is as if you go to Jesus, not knowing that he is Jesus, and he also does not know that he is Jesus; and you tell him that you are going to stage a drama and, “You look like Jesus. Would you please come and act as Jesus in it?” He agrees, and he comes to act. Of course it is ‘as if’ in the beginning, because he does not know that he is Jesus. You don’t know that he is Jesus; he only looks like, appears to be. And then he starts playing in the drama and, by and by, the ‘as if’ disappears because he is. By and by the reality takes possession, and suddenly it erupts, and he is no more acting. Hc is simply being himself.

This is the case with you. You look like God. I tell you: act like God! And sooner or later you will discover that just by acting, you have discovered the reality. Because in reality you arc already that; only you have forgotten it. So, if you start acting, the forgotten-ness will disappear. You will start remembering.

So, when you sit under a tree, sit like a Buddha. And don’t be afraid, and don’t be shy. Who is hindering you? And if you can sit like a Buddha, then why settle for less? When you play a flute, forget about yourself, play it like a Krishna. And I say to you: you are Krishna! And the flute is the same! Just you have to remember, and once you remember, immediately you will see the transformation — that now the song is not coming from you, it is coming from the beyond: you are no more in the way.

I have heard about Michaelangelo, that he used to use a device while working on his art pieces. Sometimes it would get dark; evening would come, and he would have to use candles. He would put the candles in a cup, because if you don’t put candles in a cup, then your own shadow falls between you and your work, and it creates a disturbance. So he would put the candles into a cup — then the cup protects; then his own shadow would not come between himself and his work, and he would not be disturbed.

This is what is happening to you. Your own shadow is coming between you and your reality. The day you realize that it is only a shadow, then there is no problem. One of the greatest thinkers of the West, Jean-Paul Sartre, has a certain theory. It may not be absolutely true; it is not. But it moves in the right direction. Even for wrong reasons he moves in the right direction. He says that there are two types of philosophies in the world: one, the philosophy of being; and another, the philosophy of doing. He himself thinks that he belongs to the second, the philosophy of doing, because he says, “Being in itself is nothing.” Unless you do something, how can you be? When you paint, you become a painter; when you sing, you become a singer; when you dance, you become a dancer. If you don’t do anything, who are you? All identity is lost — you become empty, you are no more there. So, he says, do something; because only by doing will you be something.

Buddha belongs to the first philosophy. He says: just be. Realize, without doing, who you are. Buddha is perfectly right, but Sartre is not perfectly wrong. And I can feel that what Sartre is saying can lead to what Buddha is saying. It can become a technique.

Act like a Jesus, and suddenly, your being is revealed. That being can be known without action also; but then it is more difficult, almost impossible, because you don’t know where to look for a mirror. Without a mirror you cannot see your face. The face is there; you know it is there, but you cannot see without a mirror. The doing can become a mirror, and in the mirror the being can be revealed. Once it is revealed, you can forget about the mirror; you can throw the mirror away — there is no need for it.

Walk like a Jesus, sit like a Buddha, play on the flute like a Krishna, and by and by you will come to realize that it was not just an acting. You have stumbled upon something real. Your own shadow is no more falling — the clarity is attained.

When listening to me, sit like a Buddha, silent, receptive, feminine. That’s why Buddha looks so feminine — have you watched — no moustache, no beard, and the face of a woman. The meaning is, when you sit silently, your feminine part comes up, surfaces. When you act, your male part comes up, the feminine recedes. When you do something, your male part comes up. When you are in a non-doing, your feminine comes up.

Buddha attained to God through the feminine — in fact there is no other way to attain. The ultimate has to be attained only when you become a womb, a receptivity. Then it makes no difference. Just sit and listen to the breeze passing through the pines, and you will find me there; or listen to me with no thought in the mind, and you will find the breeze passing through the pines. It is one and the same. But the whole depends on your listening — the quality of your listening is the question, not what you listen to.

Source – Osho Book “Come Follow To You, Vol 3″