Look! See! Feel! Touch! — you will be nearer. But don’t think

Existence has no language… and if you depend on language there can be no communication with existence. Existence is a mystery, you cannot interpret it. If you interpret, you miss. Existence can be lived, but not thought about. It is more like poetry, less like philosophy. It is a sign, it is a door. It shows, but it says nothing.

That’s why, through mind, there is no approach to existence. If you think about it, you can go on thinking and thinking, about and about, but you will never reach it — because it is precisely thinking that is the barrier.

Look! See! Feel! Touch! — you will be nearer. But don’t think. The moment thinking enters, you are thrown off the track — then you live in a private world. Thinking is a private world; it belongs to you. Then you are enclosed, encapsulated, imprisoned within yourself. Nonthinking, you are no more, you are enclosed no more. Nonthinking, you open, you become porous; existence flows in you and you flow into existence.

But the tendency of the mind is to interpret. Before you see something you have already interpreted it. You hear me: even before I have said anything you are already thinking about it. That’s how listening becomes impossible. You will have to learn to listen. Listening means you are open, vulnerable, receptive, but you are not in any way thinking. Thinking is a positive action. Listening is passivity: you become like a valley and receive; you become like a womb and you receive. If you can listen, then nature speaks — but it is not a language.

Nature doesn’t use words. Then what does nature use? Says Heraclitus, it uses signs. A flower is there: what is the sign in it? It is not saying anything, but can you say it is not saying anything really? It is saying much, but it is not using any words — a wordless message. To hear the wordless you will have to become wordless, because only the same can hear the same, only the same can relate to the same.

Sitting by a flower, don’t be a man, be a flower. Sitting by the tree, don’t be a man, be a tree. Taking a bath in a river, don’t be a man, be a river. And then millions of signs are given to you. And it is not a communication — it is a communion. Then nature speaks, speaks in thousands of tongues, but not in language. It speaks through millions of directions, but you cannot consult a dictionary about it and you cannot ask a philosopher what it means. The moment you start thinking what it means you are already on the path of going astray.

Somebody who had come to visit Picasso, a very learned man, a critic, he looked at Picasso’s paintings and then he said, “They look beautiful, but what do they mean? For example this painting” — the painting just before which they were standing — “what does it mean?”

Picasso shrugged his shoulders and said, “Look outside the window — what does this tree mean? And that bird who is singing? And what is the meaning of the sun rising? And if this whole exists without meaning anything, why can’t my painting exist without any meaning?” 

Why do you ask what it means? You want to interpret it. You want to give it a linguistic pattern. You want to communicate, not commune. No, it doesn’t mean anything. It is there in its total glory. It is a meaning but it doesn’t mean anything. The meaning is existential. Look, watch, feel, move into it; allow it to move into you — but don’t ask questions. If you ask questions, enter a university — you cannot enter the universe. If you want to enter the universe, don’t ask… there is nobody to reply to you. You will have a totally different quality of being; only then will you be in contact with it.

It is reported of a Zen master — a very rare phenomenon, unbelievable because the mind boggles — that he had done a painting in the king’s palace, and the king was asking again and again, “Is it complete?”

And he would say, “Wait a little more, wait a little more.”

Years passed and the king said, “It is taking too much time. You don’t allow me even to enter the room” — because he would lock the room and then paint — “and I am getting old. And I am getting more and more excited as to what you are doing inside the room. Is not the painting ready yet?”

The master said, “The painting is ready, but I am watching for you — you are not ready. The painting was ready long ago, but that is not the point. Unless YOU are ready, to whom will I show it?”

Existence is there, always waiting, ready. At every moment, at every turn of the road, just by the corner, it is always and always waiting. It is an infinite patience, waiting — but you are not ready. Then it is said that the king became ready and the painter said, “Okay, the time has come.”

They entered the room — nobody else was allowed in the room. The painting was really wonderful. It was difficult to say that it was a painting — it looked real. The painter had done a painting of hills, valleys, and they looked almost three-dimensional, as if they existed. And by the hills there was a small path going somewhere inside. Now comes the most difficult part of the story. The king asked, “Where does this road lead?”

The painter said, “I have not myself traveled yet on this road, but you wait, I will go and see.” And he entered the path, and disappeared beyond the hills, and never came back. This is what a mystery means. It says many things without saying anything.

If you move into nature to find where it leads, don’t stand outside it and ask because then nothing can be done; you have to move into it. If you move you will never come back, because the very movement into existence… and you are losing your ego, you are disappearing. You will reach to the goal, but you will never come back to relate the story about it. The painter never came back. Nobody comes back. Nobody can come back, because the more existential you become, the more you are lost.

Existence opens millions of doors for you, but you stand outside and you would like to know something about it from the outside. There is no outside in nature. I would like to repeat these words: there is no outside to nature, everything is inside… because how can anything exist outside nature? The whole is the inner. And the mind is trying the impossible; it is trying to stand outside, to watch, to see what it means. No, you have to participate. You have to move into it and become one, and disperse like a cloud — whereabouts unknown.

Osho