Tarot in the Spirit of Zen

by Osho

  XI. Breakthrough

  In English we have two words, very beautiful, of great significance: one is breakdown, the other is breakthrough. Breakdown is when you don’t know any meditation and your logic becomes irrelevant. Then there is a breakthrough: you enter into a new world, a new vision, a new perspective.

  If your head comes to a breakdown, don’t be worried. Use the opportunity of this de-structured state. In that moment, don’t be worried that you are going mad; in that moment, slip into the heart.

  Someday, in the future, when psychology really comes of age, whenever somebody goes mad from the head we will help him to move towards the heart—because an opportunity opens in that moment. The breakdown can become a breakthrough. The old structure is gone, now he is no longer in the clutches of reason. He is free for a moment. Modern psychology tries to go on adjusting the person back to the old structure. All modern efforts are adjustive: how to make the person normal again. The real psychology will do something else. The real psychology will use this opportunity … because the old mind has disappeared, there is a gap. Use this interval and lead the person toward another mind—that is, the heart. Lead him toward another center of being.

  When you drive a car you change gears. Whenever you change the gear, there comes a moment when the gear moves through neutral; it has to move through the neutral gear. Neutral gear means no gear. From one gear to another, a moment comes when there is no gear. When one mind has failed, you are in a neutral state. Just now you are again as if you are just born. Use this opportunity and lead the energy away from the old rotten structure, which is falling. Leave the ruin. Move into the heart. Forget reason and let love be your center, your target. Each breakdown can become a breakthrough, and each possibility for the failure of the head can become a success for the heart—the failure of the head can become a success for the heart.

  There are layers of energy. The first layer is a very tiny layer. It is only for day-to-day use—getting up in the morning, taking your breakfast, taking a bath, going to the office, earning your bread, coming back; that kind of work. That is a very small layer.

  When you start meditating, energy is being taken from the first layer, and that is a new kind of work. The old work continues and new energy is not yet available. If you go on celebrating there comes a point when you feel really, utterly exhausted. Only then, in that utter exhaustion, will there be a breakthrough and from the second layer energy will start flowing in you. Then you will never be tired. On the contrary, you will feel you have more energy than you can use; you have stumbled upon a deeper source of energy. That is the second source—it is enormous.

  It happens in situations, in ordinary situations too: you are tired—you have come from the office, utterly tired—you want to go to sleep. Suddenly your house is on fire and all tiredness disappears. The second layer is the emergency layer. When there is really a situation where it is a question of life and death, then it becomes available. You are full of energy—no sleep, nothing, no tiredness. You will come to that layer slowly, slowly.

  Then there is a third layer, which is not human at all. The first is individual, the second is collective, the third is cosmic. Very few people reach the third. To reach the third is to become enlightened.

  XII. New Vision

  Spirituality is not the practicing of any virtue; spirituality is the gaining of a new vision. Virtue follows that vision; it comes on its own accord.

  It is a natural by-product.

  When you start seeing, things start changing.

  This is a beginning, the beginning of a new life, the beginning of a new vision … the beginning of a new way of being. You will have to drop much, you will have to disconnect yourself from all that is gone, from the past. Don’t carry it anymore. It is an unnecessary burden. It hinders growth, it paralyzes. Slowly, slowly it becomes such a mountain that one is crushed underneath the mountain.

  One should be capable of dying to the past every moment so that it is never accumulated.

  That’s the path of the seeker—dying to the past every moment so that you are always young and fresh and alive, so that you are always present in the present.

  To be present in the present is to be present before God.

  When you start dropping your ego, which is the cause of your death, you start attaining to a new vision of life, a new style of life. You are resurrected. But it needs a humble heart, one who is not egoistic, one who is ready to surrender, one who can say to God, “Let thy will be done.”

  God is not a person whom you are going to meet some day. God is an experience—the experience of your dissolution, of your ego disappearing. And when your ego is no more, what is left? Just a pure vastness, an infinite nothingness exists. But that nothingness is not negative; that nothingness is a new kind of fullness. It is nothingness from the side of the ego, it is fullness from the side of the whole. It is nothingness from the old vision—but it is a new birth, and a new vision is born.

  And it is overflowing. It is overflowing with power. And this power is eternal; this power has no beginning, no end.

  Mind is confusion. Thoughts and thoughts—thousands of thoughts clamoring, clashing, fighting with each other, fighting for your attention. Thousands of thoughts are pulling you into thousands of directions. It is a miracle how you go on keeping yourself together. Somehow you manage this togetherness—it is only somehow, it is only a facade. Deep behind it there is a clamoring crowd, a civil war, a continuous civil war. Thoughts fighting with each other, thoughts wanting you to fulfill them—it is a great confusion, what you call your mind.

  But if you are aware that the mind is confusion, and you don’t get identified with the mind, you will never fall. You will become fallproof! The mind will become impotent. And because you will be watching continuously, your energies will slowly be withdrawn, away from the mind; it will not be nourished anymore.

  And once the mind dies, you are born as a no-mind. That birth is enlightenment. That birth brings you for the first time to the land of peace, the lotus paradise. It brings you to the world of bliss, benediction. Otherwise you remain in hell. Right now you are in hell. But if you resolve, if you decide, if you choose consciousness, right now you can take a jump, a leap from hell into heaven.

  XIII. Transformation

  The art of transforming suffering, pain, evil, into something good is the art of seeing the necessity of the opposite.

  Only through that acceptance is transformation possible.

  The art of transforming suffering, pain, evil, into something good is the art of seeing the necessity of the opposite. Light can exist only if darkness exists. Then why hate darkness? Without darkness there will be no light, so those who love light and hate darkness are in a dilemma; they don’t know what they are doing.

  Life cannot exist without death. Then why hate death? Because it is death that creates the space for life to exist. This is a great insight, that death is the contrast, the background, the blackboard on which life is written with white chalk. Death is the darkness of night on which life starts twinkling like stars. If you destroy the darkness of the night the stars will disappear. That’s what happens in the day. The stars are still there—do you think they have disappeared? They are still there, but because there is too much light, you cannot see them. They can be seen only in contrast.

  The saint is possible only because of the sinner. Hence, Buddha says don’t hate the sinner. He makes it possible for the saint to exist; they are two aspects of the same coin. Seeing this, one is neither attached to good nor detached from bad. One accepts both as part and parcel of life. In that acceptance you can transform things. Only through that acceptance is transformation possible.

  And before you can transform suffering you will have to become a witness; that is the third point. First: do not resist evil. Second: know that opposites are not opposites but complementaries, inevitably joined together, so there is no choice—remain choiceless. And the third is: be a witness, because if you are a
witness to your suffering you will be able to absorb it. If you become identified with it you cannot absorb it.

  The moment you become identified with your suffering you want to discard it, you want to get rid of it, it is so painful. But if you are a witness then suffering loses all thorns, all stings. Then there is suffering, and you are a witness to it. You are just a mirror; it has nothing to do with you. Happiness comes and goes, unhappiness comes and goes, it is a passing show; you are just there, a mirror reflecting it. Life comes and goes, death comes and goes; the mirror is not affected by either. The mirror reflects but remains unaffected; the mirror is not imprinted by either.

  A great distance arises when you witness. And only in that witnessing can you become able to transform the base metal into gold. Only in that witnessing do you become a scientist of the inner, a detached observer. Now you know the opposites are not opposites, so they can be changed into each other. Then it is not a question of destroying evil in the world, but of transforming evil into something beneficial; transforming poison into nectar.

  It is always worth considering, “Am I blissful the way I am living?” If one is not then one must take risks. New paths, new life styles, a new search will have to be undertaken. This much is certain: you have nothing to lose. You did not find bliss through your old life style. If you had there would be no need for the new. The old has become meaningless, this much is certain. The new can turn out to be meaningful or it can turn out to be meaningless. But at least in the new there is a possibility of it being meaningful. The old has been through the press. You have seen it, understood it, and lived it without receiving anything. As if one had been trying to extract oil from sand. How long will you wrack your brains trying to get oil from sand?

  I do not say that the new will definitely give you bliss, because bliss is less dependent on the path than on the traveler, the one who travels on it. Hence the real change is not in the path, the real change is in the traveler. But to change paths is a beginning.

  You are outside, so the transformation also has to begin from the outside. If you gather courage to change the outside it will strengthen your courage to change inside. And if a few drops of bliss start showering on you then the search for the new will begin with joy and eagerness.

  XIV. Integration

  At your very center you are integrated, otherwise you could not exist at all. How can you exist without a center?

  Integration has nothing to do with “becoming.” In fact, all efforts to “become” bring disintegration.

  Integration is already there at the deepest core of your being; it has not to be brought in. At your very center you are integrated, otherwise you could not exist at all. How can you exist without a center? The bullock-cart moves, the wheel moves, because there is an unmoving center on which the wheel moves. It moves on the hub. If the cart is moving the hub is there. You may know it, you may not know it.

  You are alive, you are breathing, you are conscious; life is moving, so there must be a hub to the wheel of life. You may not be aware, but it is there. Without it, you cannot be.

  So the first thing, and very fundamental: becoming is not the issue. You are. You have just to go in and see it. It is a discovery, not an achievement. You have been carrying it all along. But you have become too attached to the periphery, and your back is to the center. You have become too outgoing, so you cannot look in.

  Create a little insight. The word insight is beautiful—it means to have sight in, to look in, to see in. Eyes open outward, hands spread outward, legs move away from you. Sit silently, relax the periphery, close your eyes, and just go in … and not with effort. Just relax—as if one is drowning and one cannot do anything. We go on “doing” even when we are drowning.

  If you can simply allow it to happen, it will surface. Out of the clouds you will see the center arising.

  There is one of the most ancient meditations still used in some monasteries of Tibet. The meditation is based on the truth that I am saying to you. They teach that sometimes you can simply disappear. Sitting in the garden, you just start feeling that you are disappearing. Just see how the world looks when you have gone from the world, when you are no longer here, when you have become absolutely transparent. Just try for a single second not to be. In your own home, be as if you are not.

  It is really a beautiful meditation. You can try it many times in twenty-four hours. Just half a second will do; for half a second, simply stop … you are not … and the world continues. When you become more and more alert to the fact that without you the world continues perfectly well, then you will be able to learn another part of your being which has been neglected for long, for lives—and that is the receptive mode. You simply allow, you become a door. Things go on happening without you.

  First attain to the receptive mode, first attain to the passive, first attain to the non-active. And when your inner being flowers and you have come to know the integration inside—which is always there, the center is always there.

  You are already integrated. Not on the periphery—on the periphery there is much turmoil. You are fragmented on the periphery. Move inward, and the deeper you go, the more you will find that you are integrated. There comes a point, at the very innermost shrine of your being, where you suddenly find you are a unity, an absolute unity.

  XV. Conditioning

  Whatever you have learned from others is not you. That is your persona, and you have to find your innocence again.You have to find your essence before people started putting layers on you, before people started civilizing you.

  An ancient parable in the East is that a lioness, while taking a jump from one hillock to another hillock, in the middle of the jump gave birth to a child. The cub fell, on the way, into a crowd of sheep. The sheep nourished the cub, not knowing that it was a lion—their enemy. And the cub never came to know that he was a lion because everybody around him was a sheep. So he walked in the crowd of sheep, just like a sheep.

  Sheep never walk alone; they walk as a crowd, almost stepping on each other, rubbing their bodies against each other. They are afraid to be alone; it is dangerous to be alone, any wild animal can catch hold of them—they have to be together.

  Lions walk alone, never in a crowd.

  Lions have a very big territory. They don’t want anybody to enter their territory. Sometimes one lion will have an area of miles as his territory. No other lion can even manage to get in; otherwise there is going to be a ferocious fight till one is dead, or perhaps both are dead. And they walk alone.

  But this poor lion had no idea that he was a lion; he had no idea how he looked. He became bigger and bigger, but the sheep had become accustomed to him; they had been bringing him up from his very childhood. Although he was a strange sheep, he was a sheep … because he used to eat grass, which lions don’t eat. They would rather die than eat grass. He used to eat grass—he remained vegetarian. He used to go into the crowd, just in the middle, to be safe, although he was taller, bigger … but without any idea of it. And he never roared once like a lion, because if you don’t have that idea, how can you roar? He dreamed like a sheep, feared like a sheep, was afraid of wild animals that could not do any harm to him.

  One day an old lion saw this scene. He could not believe his eyes! The young lion was so big, and he had never seen a lion and sheep mixing. There has never been any friendship, there is no possibility. But the sheep were moving with the lion without any fear, and the lion was also moving with the sheep, afraid to be alone.

  The old lion could not believe his eyes. He ran after the crowd. Naturally, all the sheep started running and making the noise sheep make. And the young lion was also making the same noise. It took much effort—only with great difficulty could the old lion catch hold of the young lion. And the young lion was crying and weeping, just like a sheep.

  The old lion dragged the young fellow to a nearby pond. The young lion was very much afraid; he was not willing to go, he was very reluctant. And he was more powerful than the old lion.
If the young lion had known that he was a lion, the old lion would not have been able to pull him to the pond; he would have killed him! But he was a sheep, so he allowed the old lion to pull him—although reluctantly, unwillingly, resisting, knowing that this was sure death, because many sheep had died, had been killed by the lions. Now his turn had come.

  But at the pond a miracle happened: the old lion said to the young one, “My son, just look into the pond”—where they both were reflected. And there was a sudden transformation, because the sheep was not a reality, it was just a false idea implanted by the society in which the lion was brought up. It was his personality, but not his individuality. It was his ego, but not his real self. It was just a mask, but not his original face.

  For the first time he looked at both the faces; and suddenly there was a roar. From the depths of his being came a great roar shaking the hills around.

  The old lion said, “My work is done. All that I could do, I have done—now you are on your own. Now you know who you are.”