Rajneesh Foundation - Your answers questioned: explorations for open minds

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Contents

from green to lighter green to just a hint of pink. And on this one morning, after a rare full day of sunshine the day before, they had all burst into full color. The overnight transformation was breathtaking, and just as I came even with the house I heard the little girl say, Mummy!! Mummy, look!!! and I knew she had seen them too. Her mother said slowly, precisely, in the way one teaches a child, Yes dear. Those are hy-dran-geas.

During the rest of my walk to the train station, this little exchange hung in my thoughts. Would this small girls mind forever associate the word hydrangea with moments of wonder and beauty? Faced with her first awesome sunset at the beach, the first stirrings of romance in her heart, would she say to herself, Its just so so hydrangea ? I couldnt figure out whether to laugh or cry. This has happened to all of us in so many ways, this transformation from child full of wonder to adult full of answers often to questions we havent even asked. We learn to label things, to compare and categorize themhydrangeato add them to an increasingly heavy yoke of customary answers and conventions, and set about to collect more.

Not to say that answers arent useful sometimes. They are. But when they pile up unquestioned for yearsfor generations, centuries, evenwell, its clear what a mess thats got us into.

In her search for intelligent life in the universe, Trudy tells us that shes discovered that the human mind is kind of like a piata. When you break it open, you find all kinds of surprises inside.

The premise of this book is that your answers form the shell of your own individual piata. And if you can take the risk of breaking it opennot in order to substitute new answers for the old ones but to clear a space and let the breezes blow throughyou just might find, as Trudy has found, that losing your mind can be a peak experience!

Carol Neiman

ARE YOU READY?

The less people know, the more stubbornly they know it.

The intelligent person hesitates, ponders, wavers. The unintelligent never wavers, never hesitates. Where the wise will whisper, the fool simply declares from the housetops.

The truth is only a way of speaking; there is not something labeled truth such that one day you will find and open the box and see the contents and say, Great! I have found the truth. There is no such box. Your existence is the truth, and when you are silent you are in truth. And if the silence is absolute then you are the ultimate truth.

But dont think of the truth as an objectit is not an object. It is not there, it is here.

Each day brings its own problems, its own challenges and each moment brings its own questions. And if you have ready-made answers in your head you will not be able even to listen to the question. You will be so full of your answer, you will be incapable of listening. You will not be available.

Many of our problemsperhaps most of our problemsare because we have never looked at them face-to-face, encountered them. And not looking at them is giving them energy. Being afraid of them is giving them energy, always trying to avoid them is giving them energybecause you are accepting that they are real. Your very acceptance is their existence. Other than your acceptance, they dont exist.

There has never been a person like you before, there is nobody else like you right now in the whole world, and there will never be anybody like you. Just see how much respect existence has paid to you. You are a masterpieceunrepeatable, incomparable, utterly unique.

Stop judging yourself. Instead of judging, start accepting yourself with all the imperfections, all the frailties, all the mistakes, all the failures. Dont ask yourself to be perfect. That is simply asking for something impossible, and then you will feel frustrated. You are a human being, after all.

Dont be bothered about perfection. Replace the word perfection with totality. Dont think in terms of having to be perfect, think in terms of having to be total. Totality will give you a different dimension.

There is a tremendous difference between perfection and totality. Perfection is a goal somewhere in the future, totality is an experience in the here and now. Totality is not a goal, it is a style of life.

The greatest calamity that can happen to a person is to become too serious and too practical. A little bit of craziness, a little bit of eccentricity, is all for the good.

Courage means going into the unknown in spite of all the fears. Courage does not mean fearlessness. Fearlessness happens if you go on being courageous and more courageous. That is the ultimate experience of couragefearlessness. That is the fragrance of what happens when the courage has become absolute.

But in the beginning there is not much difference between the coward and the courageous person. The only difference is, the coward listens to his fears and follows them, and the courageous person puts them aside and goes ahead. The courageous person goes into the unknown in spite of all the fears.

Existence is not a problem to be solved, it is a mystery to be lived. And you should be perfectly aware what the difference is between a mystery and a problem.

A problem is something created by the mind; a mystery is something that is simply there, not created by the mind. A problem has an ugliness in it, like a disease. A mystery is beautiful. With a problem, immediately a fight arises. You have to solve it; something is wrong, you have to put it right; something is missing, you have to supply the missing link. With a mystery there is no question of that.

The moon rises in the night. It is not a problem, it is a mystery. You have to live with it. You have to dance with it, you have to sing with it, or you can just be silent with it. Something mysterious surrounds you.

You go on dreaming, imagining beautiful things for the coming days, for the future. And in moments when danger is imminent, then suddenly you become aware that there may be no future, no tomorrow, that this is the only moment you have. Times of disaster are very revealing. They dont bring anything new to the world; they simply make you aware of the world as it is. They wake you up. If you dont understand this, you can go mad; if you understand it, you can become awakened.