When the Shoe Fits - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 7. AUTUMN FLOODS
difference between philosophy and religion. Philosophy thinks that life is a riddle, you have to solve
it, find explanations, theories, doctrines. Philosophy thinks that there is going to be some answer,
that life is a question mark and one has to work hard at it. Of course, if you take life as a question
mark, your effort becomes intellectual. The very assumption that life is a question leads you into
more and more intellectual efforts, and in search of an answer, you decide upon theories.
Religion says that to take life as a question is basically false. It is not a question – it is there, with
no question mark. It is there as an open secret; it is an invitation. You have to become a guest, you
have to move into it. It is ready and welcoming, don’t fight with it! It is not a question, don’t try to
solve it! It is not a riddle. Come and become one with it, and you will know it. The knowing will come
from your totality, not from the intellect. Intellect is a partial effort, and life needs you to be totally
with it, to flow with it, so one with it that you cannot feel what is what, you cannot feel where you end
and where life begins. The whole of life becomes you, the whole of you becomes life. This is what
salvation is. It is not a solution, it is a salvation.
This is what Hindus have called MOKSHA: it is not a theory, a conclusion, it is a totally different way
to live with existence. It is not head-oriented; really, you become ’headless,’ you lose all distinctions,
the periphery dissolves, you are just like a drop in the ocean. You lose your boundaries and you
gain the cosmic boundaries which are infinite. The first thing to understand is not to take life as a
question. Once you take it as a question you will be in trouble; you will have already moved on a
wrong path – it will be a cul-de-sac. Somewhere, in some theory, you will be stuck. Everybody is
stuck somewhere in a theory, and then it is very difficult to drop the theory. You cling to it because
the question scares you – at least a theory is some consolation, at least you feel that you know.
You don’t know. Mind cannot know, mind can only theorise. It can go on spinning words faster and
faster; it can play with words, arrange them, but they are all interpretations – not the real, just your
interpretation of it.
It is just like a map. You see the map of India? You can go on carrying that map with you, you can
go on thinking that you are carrying India in your pocket, but the map is not the country. You can
have a theory about a rose, about what a rose is. You can even have a photograph of a rose, but
that photograph is just a photograph, it carries nothing of the living phenomenon that a rose is.
Look at a child – he is still without a mind. He opens his eyes and just looks at the world. Bring a
rose to him. He does not know the name, he cannot label it, he cannot categorise it, he cannot say
what it is. Still the rose is there – the colours flood the child, the beauty of the rose surrounds him,
the fragrance reaches to his very heart. He does not know what it is but he passes through a living
moment. You tell the child, ’This is a rose,’ and the experience will never again be the same, never
again will the child be able to experience what the mystery of the rose was. Now, whenever a rose
comes before him he will say: This is a rose. Now he will carry the word. You have made him poor
– he was very rich. The whole rose was there, and he could only live it; there was no other way to
describe it, to define it. A rose is a rose is a rose. You cannot say what it is, this or that. The child
was silent, there was no functioning of the mind, the mind was not there, there was no barrier. The
heart of the rose melted into the heart of the child, the heart of the child melted into the heart of
the rose. The child could not even say where he ended and the rose began, where the rose ended
and he began – there were no boundaries. They became one in that moment of awe. For a single
moment they were not two – oneness happened. But you have told him: This is a rose. Now, the
experience will never be there again. The moment the rose is there, immediately the mind will say:
When the Shoe Fits 93 Osho