I asked OSHO, what do you think of these Stoics? For dream work, it’s not a bad way to be I feel.
He answered...
LAO TZU SAYS:
HE WHO KNOWS DOES NOT SPEAK;
HE WHO SPEAKS DOES NOT KNOW.
FILL UP ITS APERTURES,
CLOSE ITS DOORS,
DULL ITS EDGES,
UNTIE ITS TANGLES,
SOFTEN ITS LIGHT,
SUBMERGE ITS TURMOIL,
- THIS IS THE MYSTIC UNITY.
THEN LOVE AND HATRED CANNOT TOUCH HIM.
PROFIT AND LOSS CANNOT REACH HIM.
HONOUR AND DISGRACE CANNOT AFFECT HIM.
THEREFORE IS HE ALWAYS THE HONOURED ONE OF THE WORLD.
Language is human; obviously it has to be very limited. It is good for objective things, it is completely useless for the inner, the inside.
Language can say something, but it cannot say the all. If you are sitting at the dinner table, language is useful for saying: Please pass me the salt. It is utilitarian. It has use, but it cannot say the truth, because truth is not a utility, and truth is not something objective. It is not there outside you, it happens somewhere at the deepest core of your being.
So the first thing to be understood very deeply, because it becomes a great pitfall if you don't understand it, is that language can be dangerous, one can be deluded by it.
You know the word God, but the word God is not God. In the word God there is nothing godly. The word God is absolutely hollow and empty. It has nothing in it. You can go on repeating it millions of times; nothing will happen to you, it is an empty shell; inside it is hollow. Words cannot carry the inner experience.
It may have been true when a Jesus used the word, it may have meant something to him, but not to those who heard him. This has to be understood.
You fall in love - then you know what it is. You may go on reading a thousand and one books about love, and they may be beautiful books, they may even have been written by those who have loved and who have known what love is, but reading them you will never come to know what love is.
Love is not a concept to be understood. It is an experience to be possessed by. When love takes over you are thrown off centre, you are no more there, love exists and you are not. You cannot manipulate love. A concept can be manipulated, you can interpret a concept, you can put this meaning or that into it; but love? Love cannot be manipulated.
It is not that YOU love, it is nothing that you do, it is something that happens to you - suddenly you are in a whirlwind. A greater force than you has taken possession of you. You are no more yourself, you are possessed.
That's why people think that lovers are mad - they are. Love is a beautiful madness. It is like madness, it has a quality of madness, because one becomes possessed by it. People say: Love is blind. They are right, love is blind. Because love has its own eyes! These ordinary eyes don't work. Love has its own ways of seeing and feeling and being. All ordinary ways are thrown - off the track. Love has its own sort of world - a new world is created around the lover. He looks blind to everybody else, but he is not blind in himself; in fact for the first time he has attained to eyes, to vision, to insight.
Three planes have to be remembered. The first plane is of the head - which is the most superficial:
the world of language, concepts, theories. You can manipulate it very easily, you are the master there.
Then there is a second plane, deeper than the head - that is of the heart. There your mastery is not at all. You become a slave. You cannot control it; love becomes the master, you become the slave.
It possesses you completely.
But still mind can say something about love, because heart is not very far away from the head, the distance is not very far. Mind can have a few glimpses, it can look back, it can look within, and have a few glimpses - that's why poetry is possible, painting is possible, music is possible. These are all glimpses from the head of the heart.
But then there is a third layer of your being which is the last layer, the very substratum, the very ground. That is your BEING. Head is thinking, heart is feeling, being is simply being.
God, truth, ecstasy, nirvana, enlightenment - they belong to being. The head has not even heard about it. It can have a little glimpse of the second layer, that is of the heart, love; it has not even heard that there exists another layer deeper than the heart... Heart can have a little glimpse of the being, because it is nearer to it. So people who are in love can have a little understanding - I say A LITTLE - of prayer. Because prayer is just like love.
When Jesus says: God is love, he is talking to the people of the heart. He was talking to his disciples.
Because all that is spoken is just a hint. Nothing is spoken in it. It is just a net, a fisherman's net, so that those who live in their heads can be caught. Once they are caught, the use of language is finished. Then their heart starts throbbing. Then a communion - not communication, a communion - happens between the Master and the disciple, then their hearts start beating in the same rhythm.
Then they breathe in the same rhythm. No need to say anything then. Then everything is understood without being said.
All talk is to prepare you for silence, and only in silence can the truth be given.
All philosophies, all that can be said, are just like the porch of a palace. I see you every evening in DARSHAN, in the porch - because all questions can be solved only in the porch. Once you are ready there is no question, then you can enter the palace. Have you ever heard the name of a Greek wise man, Zeno? He was the founder of the Stoic philosophy. Just like me, he used to teach in the porch. The word 'stoic' comes from a Greek word STOIKAS, which in turn is from STOA, which means porch. His whole life he was teaching in the porch and people would say: You have such a beautiful house, why do you teach in the porch.' He said: All teaching is just like the porch; when you are ready to listen to the silence you enter the temple - then there is no talk. From the word STOA, porch, his whole philosophy is known as Stoicism.
All words at the most can become porches; they lead you towards the inner temple; but if you cling to them then you remain in the porch - the porch is not the palace. Lao Tzu is saying something which is just like a porch, a door. If you understand it, you will drop all words, language - in fact the whole mind. Where you leave your shoes in the porch, you should leave your mind also. Then only you enter the innermost shrine of being.
HE WHO KNOWS DOES NOT SPEAK; Even if he speaks, he speaks Only to say this much. Even if he speaks, he speaks only against speaking. He does not want to say something in it, he simply wants to destroy all the words within you - his speech is destructive. He simply wants to create a vacuum within you, and of course words can be destroyed by words only. Poison can be destroyed by poison only. You have a thorn in your foot - another thorn is needed to pull it out. All that I am saying is like another thorn to pull out the thorns that are already in your beings. Once the first thorn is out, the second is also useless - you throw both of them. All words are used by knowers to pull out other words which have already settled within you. Once you are empty - finished.
...
Wonderful meaningless words. If you ever get cold, don’t forget all your books and knowledge, they burn nicely in the fire.
What is left after words...after love?
The Stoa/porch is not the palace.
Leave your shoes on the porch and come inside.
Once you are empty of words and concepts...finished.
The INNER SANCTUM...SILENCE.
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