The Tongue5Tip Taste of Tao Talks given from 1/10/78 to 31/10/78 Darshan Diary 31 Chapters Year published: 1981 The Tongue-Tip Taste of Tao Chapter #1 Chapter title: None 1 October 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive code: 7810015 ShortTitle: TONGUE01 Audio: No Video: No Tao Devam. Tao means the way -- not the way to any goal, but the way things are. Tao has nothing to do with goals; it has no future-orientation. It is the present moment and the things that are in the herenow. It is the totality of existence in the present and the law that holds it. Tao does not believe in any cause and effect. It does not say the seed is the cause and the tree is the effect. It says the seed is the tree and the tree is the seed. They are not two so how can they be divided into cause and effect? It is not that the seed causes the tree but that-the seed becomes the tree. And the beginning also is not something new. It is just unveiling that which already was. It is a discovery, not an invention. All already is. Sometimes it is hidden and sometimes it is manifest, but there is no division in existence. Tao is that indivisibility. And to understand tao is to become divine. To live in tao is to live in god. Tao is a far better word than God, because the very idea of God creates the desire to worship... or to deny. So a few become worshippers and a few become antagonistic to it. Tao does not create the desire to worship, because it is not a person; it is simply an impersonal law, like gravitation. And because it does not create worship it does not create antagonism either. So one cannot say 'I believe in tao' or 'I don't believe in tao'. Tao is so vast it can contain belief and disbelief both. That is the beauty of it. The word 'God' is a little small, tiny, narrow. It cannot contain the disbeliever. It is arrogant, it immediately becomes jealous. Tao accepts all. Whether you know it or you don't know it does not matter; any way one lives in it. If you start living consciously in it, you become divine. If you don't live consciously in it, you remain worldly. Sannyas is an initiation into tao. It is a tongue-tip taste of tao. It is a beginning... a beginning of something that never ends. You are entering a path, the way, tao. But remember again: tao is not the way to some goal; it is the way things are. Trees are green -- this is tao. Rivers are flowing towards the ocean -- this is tao. Children are becoming older this is tao. An old man is dying -- this is tao. This whole complexity, this totality is tao. [A sannyasin who is going to the West says: I'm really scared of leaving. Osho asks: What is the fear? He replies: I don't know.] That's a good kind of fear if you don't know what exactly it is. That simply means that you are on the verge of something unknown. When the fear has some object it is an ordinary fear. One is afraid of death -- it is very ordinary fear, instinctive; nothing great about it, nothing special about it. When one is afraid of old age or disease, illness, these are ordinary fears... common, garden variety. The special fear is when you cannot find an object to it, when it is there for no reason at all; that makes one really scared. If you can find a reason the mind is satisfied. If you can answer why, the mind has some explanation to cling to. All explanations help things to be explained away; they don't do anything else, but once you have a rational explanation, you feel satisfied. That's why people go to the psychoanalyst to find explanations. Even a stupid explanation is better than nothing; one can cling. You have a stupid dream -- ninety percent of one's dreams are stupid, rubbish -- but if you go to the psychoanalyst he will give a beautiful interpretation. He never says that any dream is rubbish. He finds out something, invents, and gives you a very coherent picture, and suddenly you feel very good. Nothing has happened, but something was there hankering in the mind, 'Why?'; now the why is answered. The answer may be as stupid as the dream itself; in fact, it is, because you cannot intelligently answer a question which is not intelligent. A stupid question creates a stupid answer. Ninety percent of your dreams are rubbish -- and I am being very conservative when I say ninety percent; in fact, to be really true, ninety-nine, because your mind when you are awake is stupid. How can it be intelligent when you are asleep? It is bound to be more unintelligent, more foggy, more clouded, more confused. But the psychoanalyst will give you a beautiful explanation that satisfies you, so now you know why you dreamt this way -- maybe something in your childhood, the relationship with your mother.... That psychoanalyst goes on digging up old graves. And this has been observed again and again, that if you consult a Freudian, slowly slowly you will start dreaming Freudian dreams, and if you consult a Jungian you will start dreaming Jungian dreams. There is a mutual satisfaction: first the psychoanalyst gives you satisfaction -- giving you a beautiful explanation to make you feel that you have done something really great, that you have created a work of art.... Your dream is not ordinary -- it has many mysteries, and each symbol indicates great things, complicated patterns of thought, being, conditioning, past.... And when the psychoanalyst gives you so much satisfaction, it looks impolite not to dream the dreams that he would like! So slowly slowly the person starts dreaming the dreams the psychoanalyst is waiting for. And the mind is very very adjustable; it adjusts to all kinds of things. Slowly slowly a mutual satisfaction arises between the psychoanalyst and the analysed, they both feel good and great. The patient brings the dreams that he can interpret beautifully and he gives beautiful interpretations. It is very ego-satisfying, but nothing happens out of it... no change, no transformation ever. But the mind has a hankering for the why; it always asks 'Why?' Existential psychoanalysis will not ask the question 'Why?' There is no need to dig up old graves; let the buried remain buried. It is unnecessary.... It is better to see the thing as it is without asking why. This is a tremendously potential approach. You have fear -- don't ask why; just look into the fear, go into it, watch. Don't be in a hurry to analyse, to explain, to interpret, because if you bring in your interpretations, your explanations, the purity of the fear will be lost; you will start molding it into certain patterns, to fit into certain theories. You will start giving it shape and form and labels. You will start distorting it -- it will no more be the natural, wild phenomenon that it was. You will start training it, conditioning it, and sooner or later it has to agree with you -- it is your fear. It is your shadow; it is bound to agree with you. But you have destroyed a beautiful experience that may have led you into new spaces. Let this fear which has no object become the object itself. Don't ask why -- why you are afraid. This is a wrong question. Ask 'What is this fear?' Ask what it is not to find an explanation but to go deep in it: What is this fear? 'What' is the right question. And don't be prejudiced from the very beginning that 'fear is wrong', 'it should not be'. If you have that attitude you will not be able to enter into its innermost core. With no judgment enter into it and experience it in its totality, and you will be surprised -- it is just the beginning of a new space in you. And everything new makes the mind scared: the newer it is, the more fear. If it is absolutely new then one is really scared to death. Something unknown is hovering around you, and it is going to hover around every sannyasin. This is the fear every sannyasin has to pass through. And I am not here to give you explanations but to push you into it. I am not a psychoanalyst -- I am an existentialist. My effort is to make you capable of experiencing as many things as possible -- love, fear, anger, greed, violence, compassion, meditation, beauty, and so on, so forth. The more you experience these things, the richer you become. Everything has to be experienced. When you have experienced all possible experiences, you mature, you transcend. By knowing all, one goes beyond. That beyond is tao or god or nirvana. So make this fear your meditation. And the mind will ask again and again 'Why? What are you afraid about?' Don't listen to this question; that question is dangerous. That leads you into more and more verbal explanations; it is a camouflage, a distraction from the fear. Just go into fear itself, with great love for this experience. If trembling arises, tremble; if you feel shaken, then shake. There is no need to hide it. Don't condemn yourself, that you are a coward; these are the tricks the mind plays.