From Death To Deathlessness
Beloved Osho,
I ask you a question because I want your attention. And the only question that
occurs to me in the two years I have been here is about the dark
night of the soul. You said sometimes that we have to dance and
celebrate so that we can go through it easily. In the back of my
mind there is a question: what is that dark night of the soul? Am I
missing something?
You are not missing anything, not even the dark night of the soul: You are already in it!
To be unconscious of your actions, your thoughts, your feelings creates your dark night of the soul. The moment you are aware of all these three
layers of your being....
Thought is the most superficial,
feeling a little deeper,
and then being, the last thing that you have to lose into the ultimate.
The process is simple, the process is the same.
Watch, witness, observe your thoughts - without any judgment, without
any condemnation or evaluation. Because the moment you make any judgment for
or against, you are no longer a witness; you have already become part of the
thought process.
Remain silent, and just see whatsoever is passing on the
screen of your mind, the way you see a film. Just remember that you are only a
seer.
And the same process when you have succeeded on the first layer will
make you capable of seeing your feelings which are more subtle. But the person
who can see thoughts and remains silently a witness automatically becomes
capable of the second step. Soon you will be able to see your feelings, sentiments,
moods, emotions.
Once you are beyond the second, then the third... it is the deepest in
you, the feeling of "I", the separation of you from the universe. Actually you
are not separated for a single moment, you cannot exist in separation. You are
in tune in every possible way. There are thousands of bridges between you and
the existence around you.
Now watch this silence, this is-ness, this feeling of am-ness; simply
watch. There is nothing else to watch, just a small boundary around you.
As you watch thoughts, thoughts disappear.
As you watch feelings, feelings disappear.
As you watch being, you are no longer separate.
Only the witness remains, which is your eternal reality. And it has
nothing to do with you; it is universal.
Your witness and my witness are not separate.
Wherever witnessing happens, it is the same. It knows no distance in space and no distance in time. For the witness
there is no space and no time; it has no limits.
Before you arrive at this point, all else is the dark night of the soul.
Your arrival at this witnessing starts the beautiful day of the soul.
It is a sunrise which never sets.
But just listening to me will not help. You will have to practice this
as much as possible. And it needs no separate time - that you have to sit for
one hour, or twenty minutes, and witness. If you have time you can sit
silently and witness, but there is no necessity. You can go on doing your work and
still be witnessing.
The whole thing is how to make your witness stronger and stronger, so
that it is capable of losing all identities. Only a strong person can lose all
identities.
And to be in utter silence... there is light, a light that never began
and never ends. And it is yours just to claim. And the effort is not so
difficult as religions have been telling you.
Walking on the road, what is the problem? Why can't you simply watch
your walking? The question is not of the object that you witness, the question is
that you witness. Anything helps to strengthen your witnessing energies.
Looking at a beautiful sunset, don't just get lost, don't forget
yourself. Remember that you are only a seer. It can go on twenty-four hours a day
without anybody knowing that you are doing something. Religion is not something
that the world has to know about. It is something that you have to do within
yourselves.
Start from this very moment.
This immense silence - thousands of people, but it is as if there is no
one... just witness. The faraway sound of an aeroplane... You remain only a
witness.
And then go on practicing the same thing whatever you are doing
-
eating, taking a shower, doing some work in the garden, in the field. It does not
matter what you do, what matters is that your witness is always present.
In the beginning you will forget many times, because for many lives you
have never been a witness, you have always been a doer. So it is just an old
habit. Old habits die hard, but they certainly die.
And it all depends on you. The more you make it a process almost like
breathing.... You go on doing everything, still you are breathing. You don't
stop your breathing because you are digging a hole in the earth.
Witnessing has to become just like breathing.
It in fact is the breathing of the universal soul in you.
And once you have tasted just a moment of being universal, the morning
has come. The dark night of the soul is over.