Silence, celebration and laughter

These two are the parts. The inner silence – the silence so deep that there is no vibration in your being; you are, but there are no waves; you are just a pool without waves, not a single wave arises; the whole being silent, still; inside, at the center, silence – and on the periphery, celebration and laughter. And only silence can laugh, because only silence can understand the cosmic joke.

So your life becomes a vital celebration, your relationship becomes a festive thing; whatsoever you do, every moment is a festival. You eat, and eating becomes a celebration; you take a bath, and bathing becomes a celebration; you talk, and talking becomes a celebration; relationship becomes a celebration.

Your outer life becomes festive, there is no sadness in it. How can sadness exist with silence? But ordinarily you think otherwise: you think if you are silent you will be sad. Ordinarily you think how you can avoid sadness if you are silent. I tell you, the silence that exists with sadness cannot be true. Something has gone wrong. You have missed the path, you are off the track. Only celebration can give proof that the real silence has happened.

What is the difference between a real silence and a false silence? A false silence is always forced; through effort it is achieved. It is not spontaneous, it has not happened to you. You have made it happen. You are sitting silently and there is much inner turmoil. You suppress it and then you cannot laugh. You will become sad because laughter will be dangerous – if you laugh you will lose silence, because in laughter you cannot suppress. Laughter is against suppression. If you want to suppress you should not laugh; if you laugh everything will come out. The real will come out in laughter, and the unreal will be lost.

This is the key – the inner part of it is silence, and the outer part of the key is celebration, laughter. Be festive and silent. Create more and more possibility around you – don’t force the inner to be silent, just create more and more possibility around you so that the inner silence can flower in it. That’s all we can do.

We can put the seed in the soil, but we cannot force the plant to come out. We can create the situation, we can protect, we can give fertilizer to the soil, we can water, we can see whether the sunrays reach or not, or how much sunrays are needed, whether more or less. We can avoid dangers, and wait in a prayerful mood. We cannot do anything else. Only the situation can be created.

That’s what I mean when I tell you to meditate. Meditation is just a situation; silence is not going to be the consequence of it. No, meditation is just creating the soil, the surrounding, preparing the ground. The seed is there, it is always there; you need not put in the seed, the seed has always been with you. That seed is Brahma; that seed is atma. That seed is you. Just create the situation and the seed will become alive. It will sprout and a plant will be born, and you will start growing.

Meditation doesn’t lead you to silence; meditation only creates the situation in which the silence happens. And this should be the criterion – that whenever silence happens laughter will come into your life. A vital celebration will happen all around. You will not become sad, you will not become depressed, you will not escape from the world. You will be here in this world, but taking the whole thing as a game, enjoying the whole thing as a beautiful game, a big drama, no longer serious about it.

Osho, Roots and Wings (A Bird on the Wing), Ch 10 (excerpt)