The following excerpt is from discourse number 3 from the series of discourses on the Bauls, titled “The Beloved”. In the excerpt that I have chosen, Osho speaks on Change and the Unchanging reality. He explains Maya in his own unique way. This is the start of the discourse so there is a Baul song to start things off.
Note – the subtitles and highlights are made by me.
To listen to this discourse and read the full transcript click here – The Beloved, Vol 1 Discourse #3.
A beautiful Baul song
“Nothing has happened
and nothing will happen.
What is there, is there.
I became a king in my dream
and my subjects occupied the entire earth.
I sat on the throne ruling like a lion,
living a happy life.
The world obeyed me.
As I turned in my bed, all was clear:
I was not a lion but a lion’s uncle,
a jackass, the village idiot….
Nothing has happened and nothing will happen. What is there, is there.
This is one of the most significant assertions ever made. It is so: the reality remains in its suchness. Nothing changes, nothing can change. But we see many changes happening all around. For us, everything is changing. Life is a flux.
Then something is wrong with us. Then the change appears not because it is there, but because we cannot see the eternal. Our inability to see the real, the eternal, createa flux-like phenomenon all around us. It is our flickering consciousness.
Have you watched sometimes in a dark room? A small candle burns, and it goes on flickering. Because of its flickering the whole room seems to be moving, waving, changing. If the flame is constant, the room stops changing – it becomes constant….”
What is Maya ?
Our consciousness creates the mirage, the illusion, the dream-like world that surrounds us. This has to be understood very deeply because this is the very base of all essential religions.
It is true as far as ordinary understanding goes: everything seems to be changing, nothing seems to be permanent. Nothing seems to be the same even for two moments, two consecutive moments. Nothing seems to be the same, everything goes on like a river.
To think of anything permanent is almost impossible. To think of anything that has remained the same for ever and ever is incomprehensible to the mind. The mind knows only the world of change. The mind knows only the dream, the illusion.
A life lived through the mind is a life of dreams.
That is the meaning of the concept of maya. It does not say anything about the reality. Remember: it does not say that the reality is not real, it does not say that existence is a dream. It simply says that the way you look at it is so unconscious, the way you look at it is so wavering, unstable, that your inner wavering gives you a world of flux, dreams.
Attain to inner integrity, attain to inner crystallization and suddenly all flux-like phenomena disappear, and suddenly you are face to face with the real, the substantial, the permanent – call it God.
The world and God are not two things but the same reality looked at in two ways. One is through the mind, the other is through no-mind – because if mind is there, there is going to remain, more or less, the flickering.
The mind cannot be constant. Have you watched? Even for a few seconds the mind cannot be constant. Just look at your watch someday; just remember that you are looking at the watch, and you will not be able to retain this remembrance, that you are looking at the watch, even for a few seconds.
Your mind will slip somewhere else: some memory, some imagination, some work that is incomplete, some worry, some plan; you must go somewhere. Again you will realize and you will see that for a few seconds you have not been here.
Try again, again the mind will go away. Mind cannot be stable, so all efforts to make mind stable are impossible. That is not in the nature of the mind. The only way to be stable is to drop the whole mind as such; to look into reality without any thinking, to look so directly that the medium of the mind is not there.
Look immediately – then suddenly God is revealed. Then, in all the forms the formless is revealed.
Then, you see that which the Bauls say:
Nothing has happened
and nothing will happen.
What is there, is there.
And what is not there, is not there.
But the mind goes on seeing that which is not there, and because of that which is not there, we cannot see that which is there. Because of the false, because of the projected, because of the dreamed, we cannot see the real, we cannot see the true.
When the false is dropped, reality is revealed.
Stop the Projector ! Find the Unchanging Reality
“…There is no other way to seek reality. One has to drop the very mechanism that creates falseness. Mind is a projector. You sit in a movie house and you see a thousand and one things passing on the screen – and the screen is empty, nothing is really passing except shadows.”
You go on looking at the screen and there is every possibility that you may not even think of the projector behind you which is projecting all those shadows, those pictures. You can start fighting with those shadows but that is not the way to stop them.
The way is to look back, to make a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn and go and stop the projector.
Once the projector is stopped, the screen is empty. Suddenly there is nothing, or only the whiteness of the screen is left.
Only the eternal is there and the changing has disappeared. But one has to stop the projector.”
What beautiful songs the Bauls have !! And Osho gives such a beautiful explanation of a complex thought – the changing mind and the unchanging reality. I also loved the explanation for Maya. It’s often wrongly explained as the veil that doesn’t let us see reality or as life being unreal. Both the explanations are obviously wrong.
Have heard this discourse a couple of times and will probably listen to it again a few more times to “get it” (hopefully).
Thank You Master 🙏🏿