When oneness happens, then one’s self is not

How am I related to the cosmos and to other people?

Relationship exists between two selves. I am one who is not related, one who is not in relationship. Relationship is always between two. This may look paradoxical, but in every relationship you remain unrelated. Howsoever you are related, you will remain unrelated, because relationship exists between two. The two will be there. So relationship is only a facade to hide the duality. For moments you delude yourself that you are related, but again you are. You have fallen back to yourself, and there is no relationship.

For example, when we are in so-called love, we appear to be related. We create the fallacy of relationship, but in fact, we are just deceiving ourselves. The two will remain two. However near, the two will always remain two. Even in a sex communion, they will be two. The twoness only creates a fallacy of oneness. Oneness can never exist between two selves. Oneness can only exist between two non-selves.

So as far as I am concerned, I am not related to the cosmic reality, not related at all. And by that I do not mean that I am isolated. By that I mean there is no one who can exist in relationship. As far as the cosmic reality is concerned, I am one, and the cosmic reality is one with me.

From my side, I am one, but as far as others are concerned, I am not one from their side. They are related. Someone is related as a friend, someone is related as an enemy, someone is related as a brother, and someone is related as a disciple. They may be related to me, but I am not related to them. And the whole happening in me is to make them unrelated. But there cannot be any effort on their part, that only can be a realization of no-self.

If they know that there is no one who can be a disciple and no one who can be a guru, if they know that there is no one who can be related to anyone, only then the self falls and your emptiness is naked. And there are no clothes which give you a boundary, a self. In your total nakedness, when you know that there is no self, you are but a space, an inner sky, emptiness – then you become one. Or I may say then you really become related. When oneness happens, then one’s self is not.

You have asked me how I am related to the cosmos and to the people. To me they are not two things – the cosmos and the people. The cosmic happens in so many ways, and one of the ways is the people. The cosmic happens in so many ways – the sun, the stars, the earth, the trees, the animals, the people. Only frequencies differ, the divinity is the same. So to me, the cosmos and the people are not two things.

Whatever I have said before is not from thinking. It is a fact. But if I think – and I have to think if I am to understand your side – then you are related to me because you are and as long as you are, you will be related. That creates a very difficult situation. Daily, moment to moment, it creates a difficult situation.

You feel yourself related to me. You feel that you belong to me. Then you begin to expect that I should belong to you. Because you feel that you are related to me, you begin to expect that I should be related to you. Because of that expectation, I know that you are bound to be frustrated. With a person who is a self, it is bound to be frustrating, but it may take a longer time. But if you are with a person who is a no-self, it will not take even a short time gap. Every moment will be frustrating because there will be no fulfillment of your expectations. There is no one to fulfil them.

So I am very irresponsible, because there is no one who can be responsible. There are responses but no one who is responsible, so each response, therefore, is atomic. It cannot be a sequence, so you cannot expect anything from the moment that will follow. I even do not know. The response is going to be atomic, each complete in itself, not in any way related with the past or with the future.

The ego is a series of events, happenings, and memories. It is so because you exist in a series – and you try to take me as a series, but that becomes difficult. So everyone will feel, sometime or other, angry with me, because my response is atomic and not a serial one. The serial response becomes responsibility. Then you can rely.

I am very unreliable. You can never rely on me – I myself cannot rely on me. I do not know what is going to happen. I am completely open and accepting to anything that happens. And I never think in terms of relationship, I cannot think; rather, I live in terms of oneness.

Whenever you are near me, it does not mean that I am related to you. It is that I become one with you. And this oneness you interpret as love. But this oneness is neither love nor hate, because all that is known as love can change into hatred any moment. But this oneness can never change into hate. You may be near, you may be far; you may be a friend, you may be an enemy; it makes no difference. As far as I am concerned, you may come to me or go from me, it makes no difference.

Relationship is conditional; oneness is non-conditional. Relationship is always with conditions. Something changes in the condition, and the relationship will change. Everything is always on a volcano. Every relationship is always in a wavering state, always in a dying process, always changing. So every relationship creates fear, because always there is the danger of its being broken. And the more there is fear, the more you cling, and the more you cling, the more fear you create.

But oneness is quite diametrically opposite. Oneness is unconditional. It exists because no condition, no expectation, no fulfillment, no future result, is hoped for. It is neither conditioned by the past nor oriented to the future. It is a momentary, atomic existence, unrelated with the past, unrelated with the future.

So I feel oneness with the cosmos and with the people also, and from the cosmos, the feeling is the same. As I feel one with it, from the cosmos the feeling is of the oneness. Once I was not feeling this, but I now know that the cosmos has always been in the same feeling towards me.

Oneness is always flowing, it has always been flowing; there has been an eternal waiting for the cosmos. Now I feel it towards the cosmos; I feel it also towards the people. The moment someone feels this oneness towards me, he becomes a part of the cosmic. He is then not a person, he becomes cosmic. And once you feel oneness, even with one person, you have known the taste. You have known the taste of ecstasy. Then you can jump into the all.

So this is what is happening around me. I do not say I am doing – this is happening around me.

I will call you near just to give you a taste of oneness, and if you can realize this even for a single moment, then you will never be the same again. This is a very patient effort – very unknown, unpredictable. No one can say when the moment is near. Sometimes your mind is so tuned that you can feel the oneness. That is why I insist on meditation, because it is nothing but tuning the mind to such a peak that you can jump into the oneness.

Osho, I Am the Gate, Ch 1, Q 2 (excerpt)