The Journey is Without End

BELOVED OSHO, I SEE THE BEGINNING WITH YOU, BUT NOT THE END. PLEASE COMMENT.

There is no end to this pilgrimage, there is only the beginning.

It is a very profound question.

Gautam Buddha is reported to have said ”The world never begins, but it ends. Enlightenment begins, but it never ends. Ignorance has no beginning, but it has an end. Awareness has only a beginning, but no end.”

So it is absolutely correct that you cannot see any end, you can only see the beginning. It is not my fault, it is not your fault; it is how things are.

In ordinary life, in the mundane life, everything is limited; it has a boundary to it. In the spiritual realm, no experience has any boundary; it is oceanic. It simply goes on and on, you never come to a point where you can say, ”Now I have arrived.” You are always arriving and always arriving, but you never arrive – because that will be nothing but death. If the dimension of spiritual growth comes to an end, that will be a death and nothing else – because there will be no more possibilities opening, no more doors opening, no more flowers blossoming. All has happened. At that point everything is past, and there is no future.

That’s what the meaning of ”the end” is – when everything is past and there is no future.

The very pilgrimage with me begins by dropping the past.

The more you are unburdened of the past, the bigger your future becomes. When there is no past left, no psychological hang-up, there is an infinity confronting you – growth unbounded, a challenge forever. The more you enter into it, the lovelier it becomes.

The more you have traveled the path – the goal does not come closer, but you are more peaceful, more silent, more rejoicing. Your life goes on every moment changing into a more blissful existence; it becomes a benediction – not only to you, but to the whole existence. But there is no end to it, the pilgrimage is endless. It is only for those who are not goal seekers.

The goal seekers are mediocre people. They have a certain goal and they reach; they become the president of a country, they have arrived; they wanted so much money and they have found it. But have you seen the misery of the goal seekers? When they have found the goal, have they found anything, really?

By finding the goal they have simply found that they have been fools, that they have been running after shadows. Now somebody is president, somebody is an emperor, but so what? It is the same man, perhaps worse – because the journey that he has to make to become an emperor is full of violence, corruption, treachery, cunningness. He can do anything – but he wants to become the emperor. He can sell his own soul – he really sells his own soul – to sit on a throne but a soulless man.

Gautam Buddha was born as a prince, and he was the only son of his father. And just before he was going to be enthroned, he escaped. The father was old and he wanted to retire. And he had a beautiful, young, intelligent, well-educated man in Gautama. He was mature enough – he was twenty-nine – and the father wanted him to take charge of the kingdom.

In fact, that was one of the reasons why he escaped from the kingdom, because he had seen his father’s empty life – riches all around and poverty inside. He had everything that was available in those days and he had no peace, he had no love, he had no compassion. He had never understood what is beauty, what is poetry, what is music; there was no time for such things. He was constantly fighting against other kingdoms. His whole life had been the life of a warrior – and what had he gained? He had simply lost his whole life in futile wars.

He had never enjoyed a blissful night with the stars. He had a beautiful garden, but nobody had seen him in the garden. The roses blossomed but not for him; he had no eye for it.

Gautama had seen the emptiness of a great emperor, and he was intelligent enough not to repeat the same stupid circle again. He escaped out of the kingdom.

His father searched all over the kingdom; Gautama knew that he would search ferociously. His father’s whole army was all over the kingdom; that’s why he left the kingdom to go to another kingdom. But the people had seen his chariot moving on the road in that direction, crossing the boundary line, the checkpost. So the father informed the emperor of the neighboring kingdom,who was his friend, that ”My son has escaped into your kingdom. Try to find him.” And the neighboring king was overjoyed, because he was hoping that Gautama could be persuaded to marry his daughter. He had only one daughter, no son, and he wanted a capable man who could manage two kingdoms together. Both kingdoms were big kingdoms.

He found Gautama in the forest in a cave. He knew Gautama, Gautama knew him. And he said, ”What kind of madness is this? My palace is there; if you don’t want to live with your father you could have come to me. This kingdom is as much yours as your own kingdom – and this is bigger than your kingdom. And you are just as much a son to me as to your father. We are great friends, you know it. Don’t be foolish; just come with me and sit in the chariot. If you don’t want to go back home, you will not be forced.”

Gautama said, ”I have not left one kingdom to get another kingdom. I have not left the palace to get a bigger palace – because I know, if in that small kingdom and small palace there was so much emptiness, in your bigger kingdom and bigger palace there must be a much bigger emptiness, futileness.

”I can see it in your eyes. Watching my own father’s eyes, I have become almost an expert; I can see a person’s eyes and can say whether he has anything inside, or is just a poor man. He may be an emperor... to me, you are just a beggar, just like my father. You certainly are friends. And don’t disturb me. I am in search of something which cannot be taken away from me, which even death cannot destroy. I am in search of something which can bring a kingdom into my heart.

”I am not a seeker for anything that is outside me. Peace has to be within me, silence has to be within me, love has to be within me, compassion has to be within me, a sense of beauty has to be within me. Everything that is valuable is inner. I am in search of myself. Just be kind enough and don’t disturb me; otherwise, I will have to move to another kingdom.”

In the world there are goals. In the spiritual realm there are no goals. It is a pure journey, leading nowhere. Note down the word nowhere. It is a very beautiful word.

There was an atheist – and atheists are talking about God more than theists. This is strange... twenty-four hours a day they are arguing against God. He was such a fanatic atheist that even in his office, in big, capital letters on the wall, he had written ”God is nowhere” – so anybody entering into his office had first to read ”God is nowhere”. Naturally that became the subject to discuss first; the man would forget for what he had come.

One day the atheist was sitting with his small child who was learning to read. He could read small words. ‘God’ was possible for him to read – it was not that big a word – but ‘nowhere’ is so big.... The small boy read, ”God is now here” – he broke the word nowhere into now here. ‘Nowhere’ was too big, but he could manage it in two parts.

But his father – who had written it, who had seen it for years – had never been aware that ‘nowhere’ can also be ‘now here’. A sudden, shocking awakening – and he started thinking about it: ”Perhaps the child is right. All my arguments are only arguments, I have no solid proof of God’s non-existence. I have not explored the whole existence so that I can say he is nowhere. That statement is stupid. That statement can be made only by a person who has been everywhere, and has found that God is not anywhere.” Thinking about it, he thought, ”What to say about this whole universe? I have not even been into myself, and I am talking about ‘everywhere’. Perhaps I should start my journey again, from now and from here.”

The pilgrimage you are starting begins now, begins here; it ends never, ends nowhere – because it is always now and it is always here. In existence, only now exists and only here exists.

In language there is there... then – but not in existence. In existence everything is here, and everything is now. And now and here are not separate; they are two aspects of one reality.

This is one of the most important discoveries of modern physics: that space and time are not two things. Space means here, time means now.

Albert Einstein, who worked for his whole life on the problem of time and space, finally dropped the two words ‘time’ and ‘space’. He created a new word, spaciotime, because all his research led him to one conclusion – that time and space are not two things, they are one. You cannot divide now from here.

And the journey will move from one now to another now, from one here to another here, but it is not going to come to an end. It is an eternal pilgrimage.

And one should rejoice that life is eternal, that we are part of eternity, that there is no death, that there is no end, that there is no full-point....

OSHO
The OSHO Upanishad
Chapter 15. The Art of Remembering Who You Are