Tarot in the Spirit of Zen

by Osho

  Feeling is of the total—of the body, of the mind, of the soul. Feeling knows no divisions; feeling is indivisible. When you feel, you function as a totality. When you function as a totality you function in tune with the totality. Let me repeat it: when you function as a totality you function in tune with the totality. When you function as a part you have fallen apart; you are no longer in tune with the total. When you are no longer in tune with the total, whatsoever you think you know is false, illusory. When you are in tune with the total, you know that you don’t know anything. But even this “not knowing” is a knowing—it is a feeling, it is a love affair with the whole.

  The Heart

  The heart knows no negative language. The heart never asks, “What is beauty?” It enjoys it, and in enjoying it, it knows what beauty is. It cannot define it, it cannot explain itself, because the experience is such that it is inexplicable, inexpressible. Language is not adequate; no symbols help. The heart knows what love is—but don’t ask. The mind knows only questions and the heart knows only answers. The mind goes on asking but it cannot answer.

  Hence philosophy has no answers … questions and questions and questions. Each question becomes, slowly, a thousand and one questions. The heart has no questions—it is one of the mysteries of life—it has all the answers. But the mind will not listen to the heart; there is no communication between the two, no communication, because the heart knows only the language of silence. No other language is known by the heart, no other language is understood by the heart. And the mind knows nothing of silence. The mind is all noise, a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury noise, signifying nothing.

  The heart knows what significance is. The heart knows the glory of life, the tremendous joy of sheer existence. The heart is capable of celebrating, but it never asks. Hence the mind thinks the heart is blind. The mind is full of doubts, the heart is full of trust; they are polar opposites.

  But remember: the positive is joined with the negative, two sides of the same phenomenon.

  I am not here to teach you the ways of the heart. Yes, I use them, but only as a device. To bring you out of your mind, I use the heart as a vehicle; to take you to the other shore I use the heart as a boat. Once you have reached the other shore, the boat has to be left behind; you are not expected to carry the boat on your head.

  The goal is to go beyond duality. The goal is to go beyond no and yes both, because your yes can have meaning only in the context of no; it cannot be free of the no. If it is free of the no, what meaning will it have? Your yes can exist only with the no, remember; and your no can also exist only with the yes. They are polar opposites, but they help each other in a subtle way. There is a conspiracy! They are holding hands, they are supporting each other because they cannot exist separately. Yes has meaning only because of the no; no has meaning only because of the yes. And you have to go beyond this conspiracy, you have to go beyond this duality.

  Emotions

  Will it ever be possible for the head and heart to be married, or are they going to remain forever divorced? It all depends on you, because both are mechanisms. You are neither the head nor the heart. You can move through the head, you can move through the heart. Of course you will reach different places because the directions of the head and the heart are diametrically opposite.

  The head will go round and round thinking, brooding, philosophizing; it knows only words, logic, argument. But it is very infertile; you cannot get anything out of the head as far as truth is concerned, because truth needs no logic, no argument, no philosophical research. Truth is so simple; the head makes it so complex. Down the centuries philosophers have been seeking and searching for the truth through the head. None of them has found anything, but they have created great systems of thought. I have looked into all those systems: they never come to any conclusion.

  The heart is also a mechanism—different from the head. You can call the head the logical instrument; you can call the heart the emotional instrument. Out of the head all the philosophies, all the theologies are created; out of the heart comes all kinds of devotion, prayer, sentimentality. But the heart also goes round and round in emotions.

  The word emotion is good. Watch … it consists of motion, movement. So the heart moves, but the heart is blind. It moves fast, quick, because there is no reason to wait. It does not have to think, so it jumps into anything. But truth is not to be found by any emotionality. Emotion is as much a barrier as logic.

  The logic is the male in you, and the heart is the female in you. But truth has nothing to do with male and female. Truth is your consciousness. You can watch the head thinking, you can watch the heart throbbing with emotion. They can be in a certain relationship … .

  Ordinarily, the society has arranged that the head should be the master and the heart should be the servant, because society is the creation of man’s mind, psychology, and the heart is feminine. Just as man has kept the woman a slave, the head has kept the heart a slave.

  We can reverse the situation: the heart can become the master and the head can become the servant. If we have to choose between the two, if we are forced to choose between the two, then it is better that the heart becomes the master and the head becomes the servant.

  There are things that the heart is incapable of. Exactly the same is true about the head. The head cannot love, it cannot feel, it is insensitive. The heart cannot be rational, reasonable. For the whole past they have been in conflict. That conflict only represents the conflict and struggle between men and women.

  If a man is talking to his wife, he knows it is impossible to talk, it is impossible to argue, it is impossible to come to a fair decision because the woman functions through the heart. She jumps from one thing to another without bothering whether there is any relationship between the two. She cannot argue, but she can cry. She cannot be rational, but she can scream. She cannot be cooperative in coming to a conclusion. The heart cannot understand the language of the head.

  The difference is not much as far as physiology is concerned; the heart and the head are just a few inches apart from each other. But as far as their existential qualities are concerned, they are poles apart.

  My way has been described as that of the heart, but it is not true. The heart will give you all kinds of imaginings, hallucinations, illusions, sweet dreams—but it cannot give you the truth. The truth is behind both; it is in your consciousness, which is neither head nor heart. Just because the consciousness is separate from both, it can use both in harmony. The head is dangerous in certain fields, because it has eyes but it has no legs—it is crippled.

  The heart can function in certain dimensions. It has no eyes but it has legs; it is blind but it can move tremendously, with great speed—of course, not knowing where it is going. It is not just a coincidence that in all the languages of the world love is called blind. It is not love that is blind, it is the heart that has no eyes.

  As your meditation becomes deeper, as your identification with the head and the heart starts falling, you find yourself becoming a triangle. And your reality is in the third force in you: the consciousness. Consciousness can manage very easily, because the heart and the head both belong to it.

  A conscious person uses the head as a servant, and the heart as the master. But right now, and for centuries, just the opposite has been happening: the servant has become the master. And the master is so polite, such a gentleman, that he has not fought back, he has accepted the slavery voluntarily. The madness on the earth is the result.

  We have to change the very alchemy of humanity. We have to rearrange the whole inside of man. And the most basic revolution in humanity will come when the heart decides the values. It cannot decide for war, it cannot go for nuclear weapons; it cannot be death-oriented. The heart is life’s juice. Once the head is in the service of the heart, it has to do what the heart decides. And the head is immensely capable of doing anything, just right guidance is needed; otherwise, it is going to go berserk, it is going to be mad. For the head
there are no values. For the head there is no meaning in anything. For the head there is no love, no beauty, no grace—only reasoning.

  But this miracle is possible only by disidentifying yourself from both. Watch the thoughts, because in your watching them, they disappear. Then watch your emotions, sentimentalities; by your watching, they also disappear. Then your heart is as innocent as that of a child, and your head is as great a genius as Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Aristotle.

  King of Water: Healing

  Be aware of your wound. Don’t help it to grow, let it be healed; and it will be healed only when you move to the roots. Go to the roots. Be with the whole.

  Everybody is born to remain healthy and happy. Everybody is seeking health and happiness, but somewhere something is missing and everybody becomes miserable. Misery should be an exception; it has become the rule. Happiness should be the rule; it has become an exception. I would like a world where buddhas are born, but nobody remembers them because they are the rule. Now Buddha is remembered, Christ is remembered, Lao Tzu is remembered, because they are exceptions. Otherwise, who would bother about them? If there were a buddha in every house, and if there were buddhas all over the marketplace and you could meet Lao Tzu anywhere, who would bother? Then that would be the simple rule. It should be so.

  Lao Tzu says that when the world was really moral there was no possibility of becoming a saint. When the world was really religious there was no need for religions. People were simply religious; religions were not needed. When there was order, discipline—a natural order and discipline. The words order and discipline didn’t exist. The idea of order comes in only when there is disorder. People start talking about discipline where there is no discipline, and people talk about healing when there is illness. People talk about love when love is missing. But basically, therapy is a function of love.

  Never look at a patient as a patient. Look at him as if he has come to learn something—a disciple. Help him, but not as an expert; help him like a human being, and there will be much healing. There will be less therapy and much healing. Otherwise, therapy continues for years and years on end, and the result is almost nil. Or, sometimes the result is even harmful.

  The word meditation and the word medicine come from the same root. Medicine means that which heals the physical and meditation means that which heals the spiritual. Both are healing powers.

  Another thing to be remembered: the word healing and the word whole also come from the same root. To be healed simply means to be whole, not missing anything. Another connotation of the word—the word holy—also comes from the same root. Healing, whole, and holy are not different in their root.

  Meditation heals, makes you whole; and to be whole is to be holy. Holiness has nothing to do with belonging to any religion, belonging to any church. It simply means that inside you, you are entire, complete; nothing is missing, you are fulfilled. You are what existence wanted you to be. You have realized your potential.

  Queen of Water: Receptivity

  One has to become feminine. One has to become receptive rather than being aggressive. One has to learn the art of relaxation rather than learning the strategies of how to conquer the world.

  Inactivity is negative, receptivity is positive. They look very similar. You will need very penetrating eyes to see the difference between the inactive and the receptive. The receptive is a welcome, it is an awaiting, it has a prayer in it. Receptivity is a host, receptivity is a womb. Inactivity is simply dullness, death, hopelessness. There is nothing to wait for, nothing to expect, nothing is ever going to happen. It is falling into lethargy; it is falling into a kind of indifference. And indifference and lethargy are poisons.

  But the same thing that becomes indifference can become detachment, and then it has a totally different flavor. Indifference looks like detachment, but it is not; indifference is simply no interest. Detachment is not absence of interest—detachment is absolute interest, tremendous interest, but still with the capacity of non-clinging. Enjoy the moment while it is there and when the moment starts disappearing, as everything is bound to disappear, let it go. That is detachment.

  Lethargy is a negative state. One is like a lump of mud just lying there—no possibility of growth, no exuberance, no flowering. But the same energy can become a pool, a great pool of energy—not going anywhere, not doing anything, but the energy accumulating and accumulating and accumulating.

  And scientists say that at a certain point the quantitative change becomes a qualitative change. At a hundred degrees heat the water evaporates. At ninety-nine degrees it has not evaporated yet; at ninety-nine point nine degrees it has still not evaporated. But just point one degree more, and the water will take a quantum leap.

  Positive feminineness is not like lethargy, it is like a tremendous pool of energy. And as the energy gathers and accumulates, it goes through many qualitative changes.

  Knight of Water: Trust

  Trust is yes. Knowing that this existence is our mother, that nature is our source and it can’t be against us, it can’t be inimical to us. Seeing this, understanding this, trust arises.

  Remember: one has to take the jump, even when there is doubt. If you wait to let doubt subside first, then the time will never come for you to take the jump because doubt is a self-creating process. One doubt creates another; another doubt creates another. And the same happens with trust—one trust creates another, another trust … then a chain is created. When you start, there is always a wavering. Nobody can start with a total heart because then there would be no need. One has to start with doubt, but don’t pay much attention to the doubt—pay much attention to trust. Then the energy moves towards trust, and the trust creates a chain. By and by, the energy of doubt is absorbed by the energy of trust.

  You have always been here, but you have missed many times. Why? The reason is always the same—you cannot trust. You go on finding arguments against taking a jump; and there are infinite possibilities to go on finding arguments again and again and again. Because once you feed doubt it becomes a cancerous growth—then it perpetuates itself, there is no need to help it. It is a cancerous growth, it goes on and on, and it grows. The same thing happens with trust.

  So remember that it is not a question of “When there is no doubt then I will trust.” It is impossible, that time will never come. You have to trust while doubt is there.

  And look at the beauty of it! If you can trust while doubt is there—and this is how human mind is, frail, weak, divided; you have to trust while doubt is there—if you can trust while doubt is there, it means that you pay more attention to trust and less attention to doubt. You are indifferent to doubt, your whole attention is on trust. Then a day comes when the doubt has disappeared, because if you don’t give attention you don’t give food—attention is food. If you don’t give attention the doubt cannot persist in its chain.

  Page of Water: Understanding

  In your very understanding you are free.

  You can understand only as much as you have experienced; understanding never goes beyond your experience. Words you can accumulate, you can become scholars, great scholars. And you will be in a new kind of illusion, the illusion that information creates. The more information you have, the more you start feeling you know.

  Information is thought to be synonymous with knowing—it is not. Knowing is a totally different affair. Knowing is experiencing; information only accumulates in the memory system. A computer can do it, there is nothing special about it; there is nothing especially human about it.

  Two large rats walked into a movie house one day and went straight to the projection room. Once inside they ate the entire reel of film. After eating, one rat looked at the other and asked, “Did you like the movie?”

  To which the other replied, “No, I liked the book better.”

  These are the scholars—the rats! They go on eating words, they go on accumulating words. They can have mountains of words and they become very articulate about words. They can decei
ve others; that is not so bad because they can deceive only people who are already deceived; you cannot do much more harm to them. But by deceiving others, slowly they become deceived themselves, and that is the greatest problem.

  When the head understands, then it asks, “How? Yes it is right; now, how can it be done?” Remember this difference: in the head, knowledge and action are two different things; in the heart, knowledge is action.

  Socrates says that knowledge is virtue—and he has not been understood down the ages. Not even his own disciples, Plato and Aristotle, have understood him rightly. When he says knowledge is virtue, he means there is a way of listening and understanding where the moment you understand a thing, you can’t do otherwise. When you see that this is the door, then you cannot try to get out through the wall. You will go out through the door. Seeing means acting, seeing brings action.

  But I tell you, “This is the door, so whenever you want to get out, please go through this door, because you have hurt your head enough by trying to get out through the wall.” And you say, “Yes, sir, I understand perfectly well, but how do I get out through the door?” Your question will show that the heart has not listened, only the head. The head always asks “How?”

  The head always asks questions that seem to be very pertinent on the surface but are absolutely ridiculous. The heart never asks—it listens and acts. Listening and action are one in the heart. Love knows, and acts accordingly. It never asks “How?” The heart has an intelligence of its own. The head is intellectual, the heart is intelligence.