Meditation Is Such a Mystery
I HAVE HEARD MEDITATION SOMETIMES DESCRIBED AS A SCIENCE, AND OTHER TIMES AS AN ART; ON OCCASION YOU HAVE EVEN CALLED IT A KNACK. PLEASE EXPLAIN.
Meditation is such a mystery that it can be called a science, an art, or a knack, without any contradiction.
From one point of view, it is a science because there is a clear-cut technique that has to be done. There are no exceptions to it, it is almost like a scientific law.
But from a different point of view, it can also be said to be an art.
Science is an extension of the mind -- it is mathematics, it is logic, it is rational.
Meditation belongs to the heart, not to the mind -- it is not logic; it is closer to love.
It is not like other scientific activities, but more like music, poetry, painting, and dancing; hence, it can be called an art.
But meditation is such a great mystery that calling it `science' and `art' does not exhaust it.
It is a knack -- either you get it or you don't get it. A knack is not a science, it cannot be taught. A knack is not an art. A knack is the most mysterious thing in human understanding.
For example, you may have come across people... Somebody has the knack of becoming a friend immediately; just meeting him in the bus for a few moments and you suddenly feel as if you have known each other forever, perhaps for many lives. And you cannot pinpoint what is going on, because you have just seen the man for the first time.
I have a friend. He is a doctor in philosophy. He has never earned a single cent in his life, but he lives like a king. He has a certain knack that anybody becomes his friend; he just has to look at you and you are his friend -- and you feel as if you have been his friend forever. He has lived on borrowed money -- which he never returns because he cannot, there is no way to return it, but nobody feels hurt about it. Even though he has borrowed money from you and he has never returned it, he has the nerve to ask you again -- and you will give it! The man is so lovely, so beautiful, that to ask money from him simply doesn't seem right. And he never feels embarrassed, he never avoids people he owes money to.
I have asked him many times, "How long will you continue in this way?"
He said, "How long? The population goes on growing -- even if I live a million years, I will always have people to give me money."
And the beauty is that you give him money and you feel honored that he asked you, not anybody else. Now what will you call it? -- art? science? It is simply a knack.
He travels without a ticket, he has never purchased a ticket. I have been traveling with him many times. And he will say, "Why are you wasting money on tickets? Let the ticket checker come; after all, he is a human being." And once the ticket checker comes, he is caught into this man's net. He offers him a cigarette, and they are chit-chatting, and they start playing cards, and the ticket checker completely forgets why he has come. And now it is too late to ask for the ticket -- they have become so friendly to each other that the ticket checker asks him, "Can I help you in any way?"
He says, "You have to -- because I have lost my ticket!"
He said, "Don't be worried. I will be there at the gate."
He lives in friends' houses. He has no house of his own. He moves from one city to another city, but he knows all kinds of tricks with playing cards, chess, tennis, and all kinds of nonsense things in which people are interested. And he is a genius. In chess, you cannot win against him, in cards you cannot win.
And he is such a happy person that people like for him to come to them even if he is going to take their money, even if he is going to take their car and never return -- still people like him because he is simply likable. It is not on any condition that he is liked, it is just his whole personality.
Once he was staying with me. And just next door used to live another professor who was Indian, married to an American woman. The American woman was also a professor at the university. I spent the day at the university, so he started making friendships in the neighborhood. The American woman got into his net, and her husband also became very friendly.
Things came to such a point that the professor's wife wanted to leave with my friend. But he said, "It will be very difficult. I have no house, no shelter anywhere. I don't know where I will be tomorrow morning. You will be in difficulty with me, and I love you so much that I will not create such a difficulty for you. And I love your husband too; I cannot disturb his life."
But the professor was so enchanted by him that he said, "If you want, you can take my wife."
I told him, "Don't be stupid. You can take cars, that is okay; you can take people's tape recorders, that is okay; you can take their cameras, that is okay. But if you start taking people's wives, you will be in great trouble. So make it a point this is the limit. Don't go beyond this limit."
He said, "You are right. Rationally I also think that this is right. But isn't it worth trying once? When the husband is ready...."
I said, "Any husband will be ready! You are an idiot. It is not because of your charm, every husband will be ready. How many wives can you manage? You don't have any money. And remember, you cannot bring any woman into my house."
He said, "That's not right, because that's what I was thinking -- I will leave this woman here. Another woman ... I will get caught and I will leave her here. You can have disciples!"
I said, "I -- these kinds of disciples are of no use to me."
A knack is something mysterious, just a few people can do it.
I know a man who can make his ear lobes move. I have not found another who can move his ear lobes. Now what do you call it? -- science or what? Because I have asked doctors, "What do you say about ear lobes?"
They say, "It is impossible."
But I brought my friend to one doctor and, I told him, "Show this doctor...."
And the doctor said, "My God! He moves his ear lobes very easily, without any trouble."
In fact, ear lobes have no biological possibility of movement, you have no control over them -- you try. You don't have any control. They are your ear lobes, but you don't have any control. But I know one man who manages. And I asked him, "How do you manage?" He said, "I don't know. Just from the very beginning, I have been doing it."
It is absolutely impossible, physically impossible -- because to move those lobes you need a certain nervous system to control them, and the nerve system is not there. The lobe is just flesh. Meditation, in the last resort, is a knack too.
That's why for thousands of years people have been meditating, and teaching, but very few people have achieved heights in meditation, and very few people have even tried.
And the vast majority of humanity has not even bothered to think about it. It is something ... a seed you are born with.
If you don't have the seed, a master can go on showering all his bliss on you, still nothing will happen in you.
And if the seed is there, just the presence of the master, just the way he looks into your eyes, and something of tremendous importance happens in you -- a revolution that you cannot explain to anybody.
It is one of the difficulties for all meditators that they cannot explain to their friends, their families, what they are doing. Because the majority of humanity is not interested in it at all. And those who are not interested in it at all simply think about people who are interested, that something is loose in their heads, something is wrong.
Sitting silently, doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself -- but in the first place, why should you bother about the grass? Basho's beautiful haiku will look absurd to them. The grass is going to grow by itself whether you sit silently or not, why waste your time? -- the grass is going to grow by itself. Let the spring come -- spring comes by itself, and the grass grows by itself. Why are you wasting your time? -- do something else meanwhile.
If a man has not something in his heart already -- a small seed -- then it is impossible for him.
He can learn the technique, he can learn the art.
But if the knack is missing he is not going to succeed.
So thousands of people start meditation, but very few -- so few that they can be counted on ten fingers -- ever achieve enlightenment. And unless meditation becomes enlightenment, you have simply wasted your time.
Osho
Sermons in Stones
Chapter #4
Chapter title: The Mystery of the Knack
8 November 1986 pm
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