Richard, you say, “I have been very interested to listen to your lectures during the past few days. Far from being unintellectual, they could be described as an intellectual tour de force.”
When I am talking to you, even if I am talking about something supra-intellectual, I talk in intellectual ways because otherwise you will not be able to understand what I am saying. Intellect is the only possible communication right now. Unless you learn the language of total silence I have to go on talking in your language. You understand logic, I use logic – for very strange purposes: to help you go beyond logic. I use every possible way to help you transcend duality.
I am not unintellectual or anti-intellectual, but my effort here is to help you to go beyond intellect and anti-intellect both, to go beyond logic and illogic both. It is possible. When you are in absolute silence you are neither logical nor illogical, but that silence cannot be expressed directly; that silence has to be translated into your language. That’s what I am doing here. It is an arduous effort because much splendour and grandeur is lost in translating it. That experience of silence is so vast it cannot be put into words, but it has to be put into words. Only then will you be able to hear it. Even then very few people hear it, because people are not present; they are absent, they are asleep.
I have to start with your language, and slowly slowly, you will start learning my language. I am bilingual and I will make you also bilingual. There are two languages: the language of words and the language of silence. Right now I have to use the language of words to translate the poetry of silence, the music of silence. Later on, when you have developed a little meditativeness, you will be able to understand the poetry of silence, the music of silence directly – just by sitting near me. There will be no need for me to say anything at all.
I have to seduce you
towards something
which you have
utterly forgotten.
I am waiting for that day and I am really in a hurry for that day, because talking is becoming more and more difficult for me. To you it may seem that I can go on talking forever; as far as I am concerned it is becoming more and more difficult because I can see the impossibility of putting the unknowable into words. It seems murderous – the whole beauty is lost. Only something reaches you and that too depends on you: if you are available to me it reaches to you; otherwise it will not reach you. You will go on listening to that which you want to listen to and you will go on seeing that which you are capable of seeing.
For a holiday, Donnelly decided to go to Switzerland to fulfill a lifelong dream by climbing the Matterhorn. He hired a guide and went up. Just as they neared the top, the men were caught in a snow slide.
Three hours later, a Saint Bernard plowed through to them, a keg of brandy tied under his chin.
“Hurray!” shouted the guide. “Here comes man’s best friend!”
“Yeah,” said Donnelly. “And look at the size of the dog that is bringing it!”
You hear that which you can hear, you see that which you can see. It is a tug of war between me and you to bring you to a point from where you can see something that I am seeing.
Once I have accomplished the right number to create the buddhafield I will go into silence. The way you are going into meditation makes me hopeful soon it will be happening; it will not be long. Soon the right amount of energy will be available. Then I can just sit silently with you; you can dance and sing around me or sit in silence. And there will be a communication – more a communion than a communication. Something is bound to transpire then. But before that can happen I have to go on persuading you through words, through logic. It is a kind of seduction. I have to seduce you towards something which you have utterly forgotten.
Osho, The Dhammapadda: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 9, Ch 8, Q 1 (excerpt)
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