BELOVED MASTER, FROM WHERE DOES FRESHNESS COME?

Prem Naren, it does not come from anywhere; it is always here. Existence is freshness itself. Existence is fresh because it is always now and here. It is not burdened by the past, it does not gather any dust from the past. It is never old.

Time makes no impact on existence. Time does not exist as far as existence is concerned. Time exists only for the mind; it is a mind invention. In fact, time and mind are synonymous. Stop the mind, and time stops.

Jesus is asked by someone, "What will be the most unique thing in your kingdom of God?" And Jesus says, "There shall be time no longer." A very unexpected answer: There shall be time no longer. That will be the most unique thing about the kingdom of God -- because there will be no mind, how can there be time?

Time does not consist, as ordinarily conceived, of three tenses: past, present and future. Time consists only of two tenses: past and future. The present is not part of time; the present is beyond time. And the present is always fresh. Present is part of eternity. Present is the penetration of the eternal into the dreamy world of time, a ray of light into the darkness of mind.

Past is never fresh -- cannot be, obviously. It is always dirty, it is always stinking -- stinking of death, stinking of all that is rotten, stinking of tradition, stinking of corpses. The past is a cemetery. And the future is nothing but a projection of the dead past. And out of the dead past the future cannot be alive -- the dead can only project the dead. What is your future? -- modified past, touched up here and there; a little better, a little more sophisticated, a little more comfortable, but it is the same past. You are hankering to repeat it. Your future has nothing new about it, it cannot have.

Mind cannot conceive of the new. It is impotent as far as the new and the fresh and the young is concerned. It can move only within the small world of the familiar, the known -- and the known is the past. The future is nothing but a desire to repeat it -- in a better way, of course. Hence future is also not fresh. The present is fresh.

Naren, you ask me, "From where does freshness come?"

Freshness never comes and never goes. It is always here, it is always now. YOU be here and now, and you are suddenly fresh, bathed in eternity, showered by something which is timeless. Call it God, call it the kingdom of God, call it nirvana, or whatsoever you want. All those names refer to the same unnameable. All those words try to express the inexpressible.

Just put the human mind aside. And by that I mean, put the past aside and the future, and look. This very moment... and the whole heaven descends upon you. You are overwhelmed. The birds are singing and their songs are fresh; they are not repeating old songs. They have no idea of yesterdays and they are not singing for the future. They are not rehearsing for tomorrows. And the trees are fresh. All is fresh except man.

So don't ask, "From where does freshness come?" Ask, "From where does this dullness come, this staleness, this deadness?" Because this deadness comes and goes. Freshness is always there -- it is the very nature of existence. It is God's presence.

Meditation is nothing but a way, a method, to connect you with the eternal, to take you beyond time, beyond that which is born and dies, to take you beyond all the boundaries, to take you to the inconceivable and the unknowable. And it is not far away; it is as close as it can be. Even to say that it is close is not right, because it is exactly your very being, it is you. Freshness is your soul.

Your mind is boring, utterly boring. Get out of the mind. At least for a few moments every day, put the mind aside, be utterly nude of the mind. And then you will know it is welling up within you -- the freshness you are asking about. From where does it come? It comes from the deepest core of your being -- and it does not really come. Suddenly you find it has always been the case. It has always been there like an undercurrent, underground, hidden behind many many layers of memories, dreams, desires.

Buddha says: Be desireless and know. Be desireless, and you will reach to the realm which is beyond birth and death, and you will enter into the unbounded.

But why is man not going into his own being which is so close? He is ready to go to the moon, he is ready to go anywhere! He is ready to go to the stars, but not into his own being. Why? There must be some deep reason behind it. The reason is: to go within yourself you will have to lose yourself. And one is afraid of losing oneself. One clings, one wants to remain oneself. One does not want to lose one's identity. It is a very poor identity and false too, but still, something is better than nothing. That is our logic.

We don't know who we are, so we cling to the body, to the mind, to whatsoever has been given to us -- the conditioning, Catholic, communist, Hindu, Mohammedan. We cling to all that has been forced upon us, because it gives us a cozy feeling as if we know ourselves: "I am a communist," that becomes my self-knowledge. "I am a Catholic," that becomes my self-knowledge. "I am an Indian," "I am a German," that becomes my self-knowledge.

You are neither a communist nor a Catholic, neither Indian nor German. Your consciousness cannot be confined to such stupid labels. Your consciousness is so infinite, it cannot be contained in any word. It is as vast as the sky itself.

But you are afraid to go into that vastness. That vastness appears like emptiness, void. And one clings to one's own small, arbitrary identity. Hence the fear of going into oneself. Buddha says: Know thyself. Socrates says: Know thyself. They all say: Know thyself. All the awakened ones have only one message: Know thyself. We listen and yet we don't listen. We go on moving on the same rotten tracks, we go on living in the same old miserable way. And the reason is, the old, miserable way has one thing to give to you -- the ego. And if you go in you will have to pay the price. The price is, you will have to lose your ego.

Osho: Dhammapada