When the Shoe Fits - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 4. FIGHTING COCK
The Sufi came to stay with me for three days.
He chanted continuously – the Sufis call it GIGRA – the name of Allah. Even when taking his bath
he would go on chanting. I asked him: Why? If you are now able to see Allah everywhere why
go on chanting his name? What are you practising for? If AlLah is everywhere and the Divine is
everywhere, to whom are you calling? And who is this chanter inside? Drop it! For the three days
that you are here with me drop all your practice. He could see the point, he was a humble man. He
could see the point that if you are still practising then it has not been achieved.
He said: I have absolute confidence that it has been achieved. So I said: Then you drop it. The
moment he said ’absolute confidence’ it was clear that he would be in difficulty if he dropped it.
He dropped it, he had to, and for three days I watched him. On the third day, at four o’clock in
the morning, he came running into my room, started shaking me and said: What have you done?
Everything is lost! I cannot see God now; things have started to appear again. A tree is a tree, a
stone is a stone. What have you done? You have killed me. You have destroyed my thirty years’
effort. You are not a friend, you are an enemy.
But I told him: Be a little more silent and sit by my side, and let us see what has happened. I am not
your enemy. Because even if you continue this practice for thirty lives, nothing is going to happen.
You will always be almost ready. Any time you stop this practice, the old will be back. It has not
disappeared, it is only hiding, and you are pushing it in. Your practice is nothing but pushing it in.
You stop the practice and it uncoils, it is like a spring. You go on pushing it and you think everything
is okay; you take your hand off and the spring opens and uncoils and everything is back as it was.
So don’t be angry and don’t feel at a loss, this is a great realisation. Now don’t practise, just look
at the tree! You need not project God into it. This is the difference between an authentic and an
inauthentic religious man. Look at the tree, don’t impose God on it. If you say it is God and go on
repeating it you will be almost at the point where it will start looking like God, but that God is false.
You have imposed it, it is a projection. Look at the tree and be silent. No need to project your God on
the tree, the tree is God enough. It doesn’t need your God to be imposed on it, you just be silent with
the tree, and by and by, as you become more and more silent, by and by you will see that the tree is
transforming with your silence. And one day you will realise that everything is divine but nobody can
take that divineness away from you. It is not a practised thing, it has happened. The real happens
not through words but through silence.
And this trainer said that now he was nearly ready, because he had practised, had been forced.
This is how many so-called saints are ’completely’ ready, trained. They are good for demonstration,
but deep down good for nothing. A real sage is one who lives spontaneously. All his experience is
without any projection of the mind.
So what is to be done? In the beginning you will have to practise, otherwise the spontaneous may
not come. And you have forced it to such hidden depths, it may not bubble up, it may not pop up
into your consciousness. So what is to be done? Practise first, and practise so totally that you also
come to the point where I can say to you: Now you are nearly ready. Then the next step is to drop
all practice, and just watch what is happening. If you drop the practice, then everything old will start
coming again. Now just be a witness and watch it. If you can watch, it will exhaust itself – no need
to do anything.
When the Shoe Fits 59 Osho