🍁Osho, The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 1 Chapter #3.

Truth is. It needs no effort on your part to invent it. Truth has to be discovered, not invented. And what is hindering us from discovering it?

We have been taught many lies, mountains of lies. Those are the barriers which go on falsifying the truth, which do not allow our hearts to reflect that which is.

Truth is not a logical conclusion. Truth is existence, reality. It is already here - it has always been here. Only truth exists. Then why cannot we find it?

How do we manage not to find it?

Because from the very childhood we are taught falsities, prejudices, ideologies, religions, philosophies...all lead you astray.

Truth is not an idea. You need not be a Hindu to know it, or a Mohammedan, or a Christian. If you are a Hindu you will never know it; your very being a Hindu will keep you blind.

What do we mean when we say, "I am a Hindu, or a Mohammedan, or a Jew"? We mean, "I have already got ideas about truth - ideas from the Bible or the Koran or the Gita, but I have got ideas already. I don't know the truth, but I know much about it." And that knowing much about it is the only problem that has to be solved.

Once you drop your ideas about truth you will be confronting it, within and without both. You will be facing it - because there is nothing else!

But the parents, the society, the state, the church, the educational system, they all depend on lies. As the child is born they start trapping it into lies. And the child is helpless. He cannot escape his parents, he is utterly dependent. You can exploit his dependence...and it has been exploited down the ages.

Nobody has been exploited so much as children - neither the proletariat nor women, nobody has been exploited so much and so deeply and so destructively as the innocent children. Because they are helpless and dependent they have to learn whatsoever you teach them. They have to imbibe all the falsehoods that you go on forcing upon them. It is a question of survival for them - they cannot survive without you. It is a question of life and death! They have to be Hindus, they have to be Mohammedans, they have to be Jainas, they have to be Buddhists, they have to be communists.

Whatsoever you are interested in putting into their minds, you go on putting it in.

Instead of making them more alert, more aware, more alive, more reflective, instead of making them more mirrorlike, pure, you make them full of ideas...layers and layers of dust.

And then it becomes impossible for them to see that which is. They start seeing that which is not and they stop seeing that which is.

Hence, to be really religious means a rebirth: again becoming like a child, dropping all that the society has given to you.

Religion is a rebellion - a rebellion against all that has been forced upon you, a rebellion against being reduced to a computer.

Just look inside! Whatsoever you know, you have been told; it is not your knowing, it is not authentic. How can it be authentic if it is not yours? You are not a witness to it, you are just a victim - a victim of circumstances.

It is just an accident to be born in India or to be born in England. It is just an accident to be born in a Hindu family or in a Christian family. Because of these accidents your essential nature has been lost - you have been forced to lose it. If you want to regain it you will have to be reborn.

That's precisely what the meaning is when Jesus says to Nicodemus, "Unless you are born again you will not enter into the Kingdom of God." He does not mean that you actually have to die, commit suicide, and then be born again. That won't help, because again you will be born to some parents in a certain society, within a certain church, and again the same stupidity is going to be done to you.

Jesus means by 'rebirth' that deliberately, consciously, now you are capable of dropping all that has been taught to you.

Drop your knowledge and become innocent. And that is the only way to become innocent.

Knowledge is a contamination. To be in a state of not- knowing is innocence, and to function from that state is the only way to know the truth.

Meditate over these tremendously significant sutras of Gautama the Buddha. He says:

MISTAKING THE FALSE FOR THE TRUE

AND THE TRUE FOR THE FALSE,

YOU OVERLOOK THE HEART

AND FILL YOURSELF WITH DESIRE.

Mind is nothing but desire. The heart knows no desire. You will be surprised to hear it, that all desires belong to the head. The heart lives in the present; it pulsates, beats, in the herenow. It knows nothing of the past and it knows nothing of the future. It is always now, here.

And I am not talking about a certain philosophy. I am simply stating a fact so simple you can observe it within yourself: your heart is beating now. It cannot beat in the past, it cannot beat in the future. The heart only knows the present, hence it is utterly pure. It is not polluted by the past memories, by knowledge, by experience, by all that you have been told and taught, by the scriptures, by the traditions. It knows nothing of all that nonsense! And it knows nothing of the future, of the morrow. For it, past exists no more, the future not yet. It is utterly here. It is immediate.

But the mind is just the opposite of the heart: the mind is never now, here. Either it thinks of beautiful experiences of the past or it desires the same beautiful experiences in the future. It goes on shuttling between past and future, it never stops at the present. It is utterly unaware of the present.

For the mind, the present exists not.

See the point: the present is the only thing that exists, but for the mind the present is the only thing that exists not. Past is nonexistential, future is nonexistential, but those are the things which are existential for the mind.

The head is the problem...and the heart is the solution.

The child functions from the heart. As you start growing, you start moving from the heart to the head. When you graduate from the university you have completely forgotten about the heart. You are hung up in the head, your whole energy has moved to the head. Now you don't know anything of reality. You are full of garbage - scholarly garbage, academic nonsense.

You may be a Ph.D., a D.Litt. You know much, knowing nothing at all! - because real knowing happens in the heart, not in the head. And the universities exist to distract your energies from the heart to the head.

All the universities in the world up to now have been enemies of humanity. Their whole function is to serve the state and the church. They are agents of the status quo, they are agents of the vested interests. They don't serve you, they serve the powers, the masters, the oppressors, the exploiters. Whosoever happens to be in power the universities serve. They are not in the service of humanity yet.

If they were really in the service of humanity, then the university would be the place to learn rebellion. The university would create revolutionaries. The university would not create conventionalists, conformists; the university would create nonconformists, nonconventional people. It would create rebels - adventurous, ready to risk their lives for truth. That has not happened yet.

It is a sad fact that in the name of education something ugly is continued, something very ugly. Behind a facade, something very criminal continues.

And this is the crime:that they divert your energies from the heart to the head, they destroy your capacity to love and they force you to learn logic. Logic is more important than love for them, thinking is more important than sensitivity. This is just putting the bullocks behind the cart. It is totally topsy-turvy.

That's why humanity is in such a mess: the untrue seems to be true and the true seems to be untrue. They have succeeded in distorting your vision.

The buddhas have been fighting against all these vested interests.

Buddha says: MISTAKING THE FALSE FOR THE TRUE AND THE TRUE FOR THE FALSE, YOU OVERLOOK THE HEART AND FILL YOURSELF WITH DESIRE.

Mind is desire, and you go on filling yourself with more and more desire, more and more ambition, more and more longing for power, prestige, wealth. And you completely forget that there is a heart beating within you which already lives in God, which is already part of the ultimate law - aes dhammo sanantano - which is already part of the inexhaustible, eternal law.

You are joined from the heart to God. Your hearts are the roots in the soil of God.

Your hearts are still being nourished by God, by truth, but you are not there. You have vacated the place. You live in your head. Day in, day out, you live in your head; you never descend from there.

Even in the night while asleep you go on rumbling in the head...dreams, and dreams upon dreams. In the day thoughts, in the night dreams.

They are not different.

The dream is only a translation of thinking in the language of sleep, and vice versa: thinking is nothing but a translation of dreaming in the language of the day.

You go on moving between these two: dreaming and thinking. Both are desiring. What do you think? What is there to think except desire? And what do you dream except desire?

Buddha says the false appears to be true because you have become false to your own truth, to your own heart. Come back to the heart, and then you will be able to know the truth as the truth and the false as the false. That is enlightenment, that is coming home.

SEE THE FALSE AS FALSE.

But from where to begin? Begin from seeing the false as the false.

That's why all the buddhas appear to be negative, all buddhas appear to be destructive.

They negate. Jesus negates. He says again and again: It has been told to you in the past, but I say to you....

And he changes the whole standpoint.

For example, he says: It has been told to you in the past that tit for tat is the law. If somebody throws a brick at you, react by throwing a rock. But I say unto you, if somebody hits you on one cheek, give him the other cheek too. And if somebody takes away your coat, give him your shirt too. And if somebody forces you to go one mile with him, go two miles.

Mohammed is against all kinds of images of God, because his people were worshipping for centuries; they had three hundred and sixty-five gods - one god for every day of the year. The Kaaba of Mohammed's days was one of the greatest temples on the earth - dedicated to three hundred and sixty-five gods! Mohammed destroyed all those idols. It looks negative....

Buddha says: There is no truth in the Vedas, in the Upanishads. Beware of beautiful words, beware of philosophic speculation. Don't waste your time with hairsplitting, with logic. Be silent! Throw the Vedas out of your head, only then can you be silent. He looks negative, he looks nihilistic, he look dangerous - but that is the only way you can be helped.

You have to be told the false is false. You have to begin with this: neti, neti - neither this nor that.

The master has to say to you, "This is false, that is false." He has to go on pointing out to you whatsoever is false first, because when you have known all that is false, suddenly a transformation happens in your consciousness.

When you have become aware of the false, you start becoming aware of the true.

You cannot be taught what is truth, but you can certainly be taught what is not truth.

You have been conditioned, you can be unconditioned. You have been hypnotized - as Hindus, Mohammedans, Christians, Jainas.... The function of a master is to dehypnotize you.

Once you are dehypnotized, suddenly you will be able to see the truth. The truth need not be taught.