Chapter: 9
The Fallacy of Knowledge

Teaching a doctrine is rather meaningless. I am not a philosopher; my mind is anti-philosophical because philosophy has led nowhere and cannot lead. The mind which thinks and the mind which questions cannot know.

There are so many doctrines, and infinite possibilities for many more. But a doctrine is a fiction – a human fiction; not a discovery but an invention. The human mind is capable of creating so many systems and doctrines, but to know the truth through theories is an impossibility. And a mind stuffed with knowledge is a mind which is bound to remain ignorant.

Knowledge comes the moment knowledge ceases. The known must cease for the unknown to be. And the truth and the real is unknown. There are two possibilities: either you think about it, or we go into it existentially. Thinking is something around and around, about and about, but never the reality. One can go on thinking for ages. The more you think, the farther away you go. That which is, is here and now. And to think about it is to lose contact with it.

So what I am teaching – I am teaching an anti-doctrinaire, anti-philosophical, anti-speculative experience. How to be, just to be. How to be in the moment that is here and now. Open, vulnerable, one with it. That’s what I call meditation.

 

Osho,
Do you think it is possible to link knowledge, speculative knowledge, theory, or doctrine with experience? Is it possible to try both and not only one?

It is not possible to try both because they are diametrically opposite dimensions. You cannot try both.

 

Is it not possible to subordinate knowledge? To consider it as subordinate to experience, but not to exclude it as a possibility of the human mind?

It is a possibility, it is a possibility of the human mind, but a possibility which leads into fiction.

 

If it is dominating…

If it is at all! It leads into fiction. It leads the mind into projecting things. It is a dream faculty, a faculty of the imagination. So both are not possible. But once you have known the real then you can use knowledge as a vehicle to express it – but not as a means of achieving it. Knowledge cannot be a vehicle toward the truth, but when the truth has been known it can be a vehicle. It can be a vehicle as a communicative medium.

Once you want to communicate, to share something with someone who has not known it, only then your knowledge, your words, your language, your doctrines and theories can become a means. But still not adequate. It is still a faltering means, a means which is bound to falsify – because something that has been known existentially cannot be expressed totally. You can just indicate, you can symbolize it. But the symbol goes – the symbol is communicated and the meaning is left behind. What I have known, the moment I express it, the word goes to you but the meaning is left behind – a word which is dead, in a way meaningless, only apparently meaningful, because the meaning was the experience.

So knowledge can become a vehicle of expression, but not a means toward the achievement, toward the realization. And both cannot go simultaneously. The knowing mind is a hindrance. The mind which thinks in terms of knowledge becomes a hindrance. It becomes a hindrance because when you know then you are not humble. When you are stuffed with knowledge then there is no space within you to receive the unknown. So the mind must become vacant, a void, a womb, a receptivity, a total receptivity without any knowledge in its possession, without the knowing attitude. As far as the truth, the existential truth, is concerned, you, you cannot survive with your knowledge now.

You must discard the accumulated knowledge because… There are so many things: first, knowledge is your past. It is what you have known. It is your memory, it is your accumulation, it is your possession. This accumulation must become a barrier; it must come between you and the new which is coming to you. It has to be discarded. It must not be between you and the unknown.

You must be open to the unknown, and you can only be open when you are humble in your ignorance. So be aware of one’s ignorance, be constantly aware, constantly aware that something is still unknown, and that knowledge must not come between me and the act, the unknown. But a mind which has based itself on memories, information, scriptures, theories, doctrines, dogmas is a mind which becomes egocentric, which is not humble. Knowledge cannot give you humbleness. Only the vast unknown makes you humble, makes you submissive to it, and makes you surrender yourself to it.

So the memory must cease. Not just that there should be no memory in between, but in the moment of knowing, in the moment of experiencing, the memory must not be there. In that moment a total, vulnerable mind is required. At this moment of emptiness is meditation, is dhyana.

 

There are many points. How do you experience, how do you realize this void? What is the possibility of each individual to have this kind of experience, what you communicate to us by knowledge – doctrine of the anti-doctrine, using knowledge as communication – and dangerously, as you put it. Behind the words expressing this truth of the “void mind,” how do you realize this? Is it possible to explain it in words?

Knowledge can become a negative connotation. Through words, through language and through symbols the positive experience cannot be communicated, but the negativity can be communicated. I cannot say what it is, but I can say what it is not. Language can become a vehicle as far as the negativity is concerned. When I say language cannot express it, I am still expressing it. When I say no doctrine is possible about it, I am still using a doctrine. But this is negative. I am simply denying. I am not saying something. I am not saying something, I am denying something. The “no” can be said; the “yes” cannot be. The “yes” has to be realized; the “no” can be said.

One thing, potentially…it is very personal to ask: how can this moment of void be achieved? That is the most important and significant question. This void can be achieved, obviously, through living. First, the futility of knowledge must be understood as a background. If there is a lingering belief in knowledge, that will become a hindrance in achieving the void. So the first thing to be understand is the futility of the past, of the known, of knowledge, of the mind which is crammed with memories – the futility of it. As far as the unknown is concerned, the true is concerned, it can be…it can be an awareness, an awareness of what the mind has known.

There are two possibilities.

Either you become identified with what you have known, or you become a witness to what you have known. If you become identified with it – not that you have known it but you have become the knowledge – you and your memory are one in identification. If the mind is identified, the consciousness is identified with the content of knowledge; then the void will become difficult. But if there is no identification, if you have remained aloof from your memories – memories are there as a part of your accumulation, but you are aloof, separate, not identified with them – you are aware of yourself as something different from your memories. This awareness becomes a path toward the void.

The more you become aware, the more you become a witness of your knowledge. The less you are the knower, the less is the possibility of your ego becoming a possessor, a knower. If you are different from your memories…and one is different. Memories have come just like dust accumulating. They have come through experiences and have become a part and parcel of our mind, but still, the consciousness is different. The one who remembers is different from that which is remembered. The one who has known is different from that which has been known. If this distinction becomes clear and clarity is achieved, the void comes nearer and nearer. Unidentified, you can be open; you can be without memory coming between you and the unknown.

The void can be achieved, but this void cannot be created. If you create it, it is bound to be created by your old mind, your knowledge. So there can be no method because a method can only come from your accumulated information. And if there is any method to cultivate the void it is bound to be a continuity with your old mind. It will not be a discontinuous experience. And the new, the unknown, must come to you not as a continuity, but as a discontinuous gap. Only then is it beyond your knowledge.

So there can be no method as such, there can be no methodology; only the understanding, only the awareness that “I am separate from that which I have accumulated.” If this is to be understood, then there is no need of any cultivation; but things will happen. I am unidentified so I am the void. Now there is no need to create it.

And one cannot create it because a created void will not be a void. It will be your creation and your creation can never be nothingness, void, or be emptiness. It cannot be this space which is unlimited – because my creation, your creation, will be a limited creation; something with boundaries. I have created it.

The void must come to me. I can only be a receiver, so I can only be prepared in a negative way – prepared in the sense that I am not identified with knowledge; prepared in the sense that I have understood the futility, the meaninglessness of what I have known.

Only this awareness of the thinking process can lead me and others – can lead me into a jump, into a gap where that which is overwhelms me, that which is always present comes to me and I go to it, and there is no barrier between me and it. Now it has become one infinite moment, one eternity, one infinity.

But the moment you have known it, again you will translate it into knowledge. Again it will become part and parcel of your memory, again it will be lost. So no one can ever say, “I have known.” The unknown always remains. Whatsoever one may know from it, the unknown remains the same. The charm of it, the beauty of it, the attraction of it, the call of it, remains the same.

So the process of knowing is eternal. One can never come to a point where he can say, “I have reached.” And if someone says this he has fallen into the pattern of memory, into the pattern of knowledge again, which becomes a death. The moment one asserts knowledge is the moment of his death. Life has ceased because life is always from the unknown toward the unknown. Always and always, beyond and beyond. To know a religious person is not to know a person who claims knowledge. A person who claims knowledge may be a theologian, may be a philosopher, but not a religious mind. A religious mind accepts the ultimate mystery, the ultimate unknowableness, the ultimate ecstasy of ignorance, the ultimate bliss of it.

This moment cannot be created, it cannot be projected. If you cannot make your mind still, if you make it, either you have intoxicated it or you have hypnotized it. But this is not the void, the void which comes and can never be brought.

So I am not teaching any method in the sense that there are methods, techniques, doctrines. I am not a teacher.

 

First of all, you speak of a negative preparation, the philosophy of knowledge and the distance you should have from it, turning toward your true seeker – the true as opposed to the false one; you point out the true seeker.
So when you’re talking about the philosophy of knowledge which indirectly is linked with the death of knowledge, what I think is the main problem for most of us is that we already know the words, we know the verses, we are aware of the danger of knowledge intellectually. Intellectually we might be aware of the danger of knowledge but it is still on an intellectual level.
How to transform the “right” knowledge? You are saying, and I can agree with you, that knowledge is dangerous, but how can you transform a conviction?
I might see somewhere that you are right, but how to transform my conviction to the kind of intuitive knowledge or “void,” as you use the word? How to transform these convictions to the intuitive grasping of the truth? How to relate to the void?

If you are convinced then there is no need of any transformation. But we are not convinced and we cannot be. We cannot be – how can one be convinced?

One can know and be convinced, but not through somebody else, not through me. How can you be convinced? And if you are convinced, this conviction’s existence is bound to be intellectual. But an intellectual conviction is no conviction at all!

I am not trying to convince you. I am just conveying to you, I am just conveying to you a fact. I am not trying to convince you.

 

What is the link between conviction and experience? Because I agree with you that you are not convinced if you are not already talking of something you have experienced. How to transform this to the kind of truth so I can say, “This is true”?

I understand. There is no “how,” because “how” means some method. There is an awakening; there is no “how.” If you are listening to me and something is felt by you, that “this might be true”… If this happens to you, “This feeling, this means this might be true”… Why does this happen to you? Because, there are two things: either you are convinced by my argument, or you see it as a fact in yourself. These are two things.

If my argument becomes a conviction then you will ask “how?” If what I am saying is experienced by you as a fact, that “Yes, knowledge is something apart from me. I am not the knowledge.” If this happens as an experience while I am talking, there is a possibility of it happening. There is also a possibility of my argument going into your mind. If my argument goes there, then there will be a question of “how.”

When the intellect is convinced, it asks “how? – what is the method to know it?” But I am not giving you any argument. I am not giving you any doctrine. I am just telling you of my experience. And I know all the while that both these possibilities are there.

When you are listening you may listen to it as someone saying something to you, or you may listen to it as something happening within you. When I say memory is something accumulated apart from me, that memory is something dead, a hangover of the past, that which I have known, that it is something from the past hanging with me, but I am separate… When I am talking about this, if this happens to you as a feeling, and if you come to a glimpse about your process of memory, and about you, and the distance between the two – the process of memory and your consciousness – then there is no “how.” Then something has happened, and this something can go on penetrating, not through any method, but through your awareness, day to day, moment to moment – about your knowledge, about your memory and about your self – this remembrance, this constant remembrance, around something different from what I have known.

Consciousness is something different from the content of consciousness. If this becomes an awareness moment to moment – when you are walking, when you are talking, when you are seeing, when you are eating, when you are going to sleep – if this becomes a constant awareness: that I am something apart from the memory that is being cultivated, accumulated, that is being built in in the mind, this mind is a computer, a computerized, built-in process… If this becomes an awareness, not a method, if you become aware of it, then something will happen.

No one can say when, no one can say how, no one can say where. If this awareness goes on, goes on, goes on, it goes deeper and deeper by itself. This is an automatic process. It becomes deeper: from the intellect it goes to your heart; and from the intelligence it goes to your intuitive mind; from the conscious slowly and slowly it goes into the unconscious. Someday you are totally awakened. Something has happened – not as a cultivation, but as a by-product of your remembering of a fact. Not by any cultivation of any fiction, doctrine, principle, technique, but as an awakening to an inner fact, inner division, something has gone deep in you.

When the moment comes, it comes completely unpredicted, unknown, as an explosion. And in that moment of explosion, you are completely empty – you are not. You have ceased to be. There is no intellect, there is no reason, there is no memory. There is simple consciousness: consciousness of the void. And in that void is the realization, in that void is the achievement, in that void is the knowledge, but knowledge in quite another sense. Now there is no knower; now there is no known. There is simple flowing knowing; only the knowing exists. This is existential.

And this cannot be communicated. What exists in that void, what that void is cannot be communicated. But all except that can be communicated. Obviously it will be negative because the innermost, the real-most, the ultimate, is not communicated – only the passage, the process. And that process cannot be conceived as a method because a method is to be practiced. Remembrance cannot be practiced. Either you remember, or you don’t.

 

Experience through awareness, if I understand.
When you classify negatively, or, don’t define, but indicate negatively, what might be the result arrived at from discarding thoughts from true experience?
You mention yoga sometimes… Do you recommend or do you practice these kind of exercises, or is it exclusively a kind of inner soul search? Do you think a special kind of life or a special way of living is necessary to achieve or to progress?

No. No special living is required, but the moment you become aware, your living changes, your life will change. But those changes will come to you; they will not be practiced. The moment you practice something, it loses whatsoever is significant in it. It must come to you as a spontaneity.

 

But how to be with spontaneity because you might wish to be aware of the awareness?

No, don’t wish. There is no question of wishing. Don’t wish.

Just be; don’t wish.

 

No…because to wish is contrary to what you are saying, That would be contradictory in terms, to give any such advice – that if you want the void, don’t wish for the it. So I quite agree with you. But is it just to realize little by little and find the void, not realizing by wishing or wanting, or doing something?
I understand this, but how to stop the wish?

No, no, no. There is no question of stopping the wish. There is only the question of understanding. There is no question of anything being stopped or anything being practiced. The question is simply to understand that you cannot long for the void. It is not only a contradiction in terms; it is a contradiction existentially too. If it was only a contradiction in terms then there would be every possibility that it may not be so serious, but if it is existentially contradictory…

You cannot wish because the wish comes somehow from the “old mind,” somehow “knowledge” – the wish comes from you. And you must not be there. So you cannot wish; you can only understand. And by understanding you cease to be. You can simply understand that this is the fact: that I cannot wish for it, I cannot long for it, I cannot desire it. All that I can do is to be aware of what I am.

If I become aware of what I am, then I become aware of two things. One: that I have been thinking I am but I am not. And two: that I have never known. When I become aware of me as I am in this moment, there happens to be a separation, a division, a partition. Something of me becomes unidentified with something of me.

Then there are two: I and me. The “me” is the memory, the “me” is the mind; and the “I” is the consciousness, the “I” is the atman. So I am not to do anything; I am to be aware of what I am in this very moment. Simply aware without any method.

Someone may come to you and he may put a dagger to your chest. In this moment – for a single fraction of moment – you become aware of just what is. There is no method. You don’t ask them “How am I to be aware of it?” You just become aware of the situation. And in that moment there is no meditation. In that moment there is no mind. In that moment there is no “me.” In that moment the “I” is and the dagger is, and the situation, and there is nothing between. But that moment exists for a fraction of a second – the “me” comes in and begins to work: “What to do?”

From moments of danger, sometimes spontaneously you become aware. There is every possibility that because of this, there will be a hankering for danger. Then the danger is asked for, is sought, because of that moment, that fragment of a moment, that awareness.

If you are listening to me and are not thinking in terms of what to do about it afterward, but are simply listening to me, after some time you become aware. And don’t ask how because that is an impossibility. Become aware of what I am saying as an inner process – then you see it, then it becomes a conviction, not through my argument but through your remembering of a fact.

Simultaneously you must listen to me and listen to your inner mind, of the process going on inside all the time. What I say is becoming a part of your “me,” it is becoming part of your me – it is becoming part of your knowledge. This knowledge will ask how to transform; this knowledge will ask for further knowledge – about the “how,” about the method. And if some method is shown, that too will become part of your knowledge. Your “me” will be strengthened, will become more knowledgeable.

My emphasis is not about your “me.” I am not talking with your “me.” If your “me” comes in then the communication cannot become a communion. It is simply a communication – a discussion, not a dialogue. It becomes a dialogue if there is no “me.” If you are there – no, if you are here not through your “me,” then there is no question of “how.” What I am saying is that it will either be seen as a truth or as an untruth, either as a fact or as hocus-pocus doctrinaire. If it is a fact then something has happened; if it is a fiction then there is no question.

So I am concerned to create a situation either by talking, or by silence, or by teaching you in a way to create a situation, where your “I” comes in a form of…your “I” comes out, your “I” goes beyond your “me.” So what I am doing with my friends is just trying to create many situations.

 

What kind of situations?

This too is a kind of situation, this too is a kind of situation. I am saying absurd things to you, absurd! Because I am saying to achieve something, and still denying any method. This is absurd! Now I am saying something and still saying that it cannot be said, which is absurd.

 

But it is the only possible way.

It is the only possible way! It is the only possible way because it is the absurdity in itself that can create the situation. If I am convincing to you then it will not create the situation. It will become part of your “me,” of your knowledge. No. I must be convincing in a way that your “me” is not convinced. Your “me” goes on asking: “How? What is the way?” I will deny the way and still talk of the transformation. Only then does the situation become absurd, the situation become so irrational that your mind is not satisfied. Then something from beyond can take over, can take over the meaning.

So I am creating situations, all the time I am creating situations. As I know an intellectual person, so absurdity must be the situation for an intellectual. A person who…

 

An intellectual person and the absurd: this is a contradiction.

No, that is the potential, that is the potential; that has to be appealed to, that has to be appealed to.

With a non-intellectual person, absurdity has no meaning. Something else will appeal to him. So it differs from individual to individual. When a person comes to me, it means that if I love him he is put into an absurd situation, so that he becomes aware. We become aware only when something absurd has happened, something that cannot be put into the continuity – something that is bound to create a gap, something shattering, disturbing. So that this disturbance – a disturbance which is a disturbance to you may not be a disturbance to me, or to someone else.

I am reminded of an anecdote of Buddha.

 

One morning someone asks him, “Is there a God? I believe, I am a believer, and I believe in the supreme God”

Buddha denied it absolutely. “There is no God. There has never been one and there is no possibility. What absurd nonsense are you saying!” The man is shattered, but the situation has been created.

In the afternoon, another man comes to Buddha and says, “I am atheist; I don’t believe in any God. Is there any God? What do you say?”

Buddha says, “Only God is. Nothing else exists except him.” The man is shattered.

But a monk who is always accompanying Buddha is shattered much more because he had heard both the answers. He finds a time when Buddha is alone so that “I may be put at ease.” The monk is in anguish: in the morning Buddha has said, “There is no God”; in the afternoon, “Only God is.” In the evening a third man comes and asks the Buddha, “I am an agnostic. I neither believe nor disbelieve. What do you think? Is there a God or is there not?” Buddha remained silent. The man is shattered – but the monk all the more.

That night the monk, Ananda, asks Buddha, “Please Buddha, first answer me. You have taken my ultimate truth. I am at a loss! What do you mean by these absurd answers, contradictory answers?”

Buddha says, “Neither answer was given to you. Why have you taken them? Those answers were given to the persons who were asking. Why have you listened?”

The man said, “You are putting me into still more absurdity. I was with you so I have heard them both, but they are disturbing.”

Buddha said, “So now I will go to sleep. Remain in your disturbance.”

 

A situation can be created. There is this possibility: a situation can be created. A Zen monk creates one in his own way. He may push you out of a door, or slap you on your face, and a situation is created which is absurd. You had asked something; he will answer something else. Someone asks, “What is the way?” and a Zen monk answers – is not concerned at all with the way – he says, “See that river.” or “See that tree. How tall it is!” or “See the leaves, how they filter.” This is absurd.

The mind seeks continuum. It is afraid of absurdity. It is afraid of the irrational, and the unknown is beyond him. It is erratic. And the truth is not a by-product of intellectualization. The truth is neither a deduction or an induction. It is not logic. It is not a conclusion.

So I can simply say I am creating a situation. I am not conveying anything to you. I am just creating a situation, and if the situation is created, something which is unconveyable can be conveyed.

So don’t ask “how.” Just be. Be aware if you can. If you cannot, be aware of your “cannot.” Be aware; if you cannot be aware, be aware of your unawareness. Be attentive to what is. If you cannot be, be attentive of your inattention. And the thing will happen. The thing happens.

 

When you see it happening, how do you expect the experience to be? Is it possible that the feeling created is not a good space; it is already so totally absurd as you have said. This possibility of disturbing other people – is it a risk?

No. No. People are disturbed already. But because they are disturbed already, they have become identified with the disturbance. They have become at ease with it. It has become habitual. It has become everything. We are disturbed already – because how is it possible that a person can be undisturbed and not know the truth?

Disturbance is our situation. When I disturb you, your disturbance is disturbed. So quite the contrary appears. Disturbance disturbed is negative. You become for the first time calm. The reason is disturbance is not there now. This is not the result; rather this is the way to convey a message which is essentially unconveyable.

What you are asking, you are asking, “What will be achieved? What will be the result?” Something can be said, with the condition that it should not be taken as truth. It should only be taken as symbolic, as poetic, as a myth. If you take it as a myth it is possible that a thing may be indicated. If you take it as the truth there is every possibility that the thing may be hindering.

With the myth, the thing is that every scripture that is religious is a myth, and every assertion that comes from a person who has gone through the happening, is in a sense untrue – until you understand that it can only indicate. It is not the truth, but only an indicator. And the indicator must be forgotten before the truth can be known.

There are three words which are the last line, the boundary line; beyond that comes silence. These boundary words are sat-chit-anand, sat-chit-anand: existence – pure existence; bliss – pure bliss; consciousness – pure consciousness. These three are words that create as one. These three words are phases of it, or not even phases. When we make a concept of it, it becomes divided into three. It is experienced as one, but conceptualized as three.

These three: total existence, absolute existence, authentic is-ness, authenticity of is-ness. You are, only you are. Neither this nor that. Simply is-ness – you are not this nor that. You are; being, unidentified with anything. That’s why it is “pure.”

Second: bliss. Not happiness, not joy: bliss. Happiness has a shade of unhappiness, a remembrance, a contrast. Joy, too, has tensions overflowing, not at ease, continual tension, which is bound to be released to go down. But bliss, bliss is happiness without any shade of unhappiness. Bliss is joy without any abyss around it, going downward. Bliss is nondual happiness – the true joy. There is no contradictory term for bliss. It is the midpoint.

The contradictory terms are always of the extremes – of one extreme or of the other. Joy is one, sorrow the other. Bliss is the midpoint or the beyond point or the transcendent. It has both the depth of sorrow and the height of joy. Joy is never deep. It is superfluous. It has a height, no depth. Sorrow is deep, it has a depth – an abysmal depth, but no peak. Bliss is both: the light of the joy and the darkness of sorrow; depth and height both, simultaneously. So it transcends both. The light is pure. Only a non-extreme midpoint can be a point of transcendence.

And the third is consciousness, chit. Chit is not our conscious mind, because our conscious mind is a fragment of a greater unconscious one. It is not the consciousness which has with it the unconscious. When you are conscious you are conscious of something. Our consciousness is always objective; it is about something. Chit consciousness is simply consciousness, about nothing. It is conscious and conscious not of any object; a light. But we never see light. We see only lightened objects. We never see the light; light is never seen – only the object with the light. A light-fallen object is seen; light as such is never seen. So we never know consciousness, we know a consciousness which is always objective of something. Chit is absolute consciousness, consciousness as light, not as the lighted object. Consciousness not arrowed against something, but unarrowed. That light can be infinite and pure. There is no object in it. Nothing can make it impure. It is and it is and it is.

These three terms, sat-chit-anand, these terms are positive. So these are the boundary terms, at the most what can be said. But this is the least of what can be experienced. This is the last boundary of expression and the first jump into the unexpressed. From here – not that here is the end. From here is the beginning, from this point our mind can have a glimpse. This glimpse, too, is of our world, of our knowledge, of our minds.

So this is the expression, not the real. If this is remembered, then no harm is done. But our mind forgets it, and this expression sat-chit-anand becomes a reality. So we go around these theories, doctrines, and the mind becomes closed. Then there is no jump. This misfortune has happened in India. In this land the whole tradition has been woven around these three words – around the Upanishads, the Vedanta, the Sankhya, all around these three words. And these are boundary words, the frontier of the mind. So the reality is not sat-chit-anand; it is beyond, but with a “how much can be put into words,” it should be taken as a parable. The whole of religious literature is a parable; something said and done in words – verbalized – which is intrinsically inexpressible.

I always fear to even use these words as myths, because the moment the mind knows what will happen there, it begins to create theses, it begins to long for it. It begins to ask and demand and desire. When it demands sat-chit-anand, when it demands sat-chit-anand then there are teachers who supply the demand. It demands methods, demands mantra, tantra, technique, method; and there are teachers. Every demand will be supplied. The nonsensical demand will be supplied by nonsense; an absurd demand is supplied by absurdity. All theologies and all gurudoms are created in this way.

So one has to be aware all the time not to make the ultimate into a desired whim; not to make it a wish, an object; not to make it something somewhere far off, to be achieved and to be traveled to. It is just here and now. And if we can become aware of other inner processes, the explosion can happen. It is already around, it is our nearmost neighbor, but we go on, far off. It is right beside us, and we go on a long pilgrimage. It always follows us like a shadow, but we never see it because our eyes are far off, are eyes are far off. We are always hankering for the distant.

If one becomes a becoming and loses the desire, life must become being in the present. There is a saying of Lao Tzu: “Seek, and you will lose. Do not seek, and find.” The man who seeks goes far off. The man who is, and is not seeking realizes the near one. Even to say the “near one” is absurd because the near one, too, is distant. It is “I,” not even the neighbor, but the owner of the house. The neighbor, too, is distant. It is the host. And the host has gone out.